Raise your hand if you’re extremely burned out. Oh, everyone? Us too. Today we’ll practice Dr. Emily’s three-step push-up to prioritize rest and prevent burnout, along with NessLabs founder Anne-Laure Le Cunff, a PhD researcher investigating how different brains learn differently.

Thank you for listening! Staying emotionally fit takes work and repetition. That's why the Emotionally Fit podcast with psychologist Dr. Emily Anhalt delivers short, actionable Emotional Push-Ups every Monday and Thursday to help you build a better practice of mental health. Join us to kickstart your emotional fitness. Let's flex those feels and do some reps together!

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The Emotionally Fit podcast is produced by Coa, your gym for mental health. Katie Sunku Wood is the show’s producer from StudioPod Media with additional editing and sound design by Nodalab, and featuring music by Milano. Special thanks to the entire Coa crew!

Ready to break an emotional sweat? Welcome to Emotionally Fit with me, Dr. Emily Anhalt. As a therapist, I know that staying mentally healthy takes work and repetition. That's why I'll share emotional pushups, short, actionable exercises to help you strengthen your mental fitness. From improving your friendships to managing stress, let's flex those feels and do some reps together.

Hey there, fit fans. I'm so excited to be here today with Anne-Laure Le Cunff, CEO of Ness Labs. Anne-Laure, thank you so much for being here today.

Thanks so much for having me, Emily.

It's such a pleasure. And I'm curious, what has your relationship to burnout been like over the last few years?

It has changed a lot. I started by experiencing it in my first job without knowing what it was and now, I still experience it, but I feel like I have enough knowledge of what the symptoms are like to identify it before it gets too bad.

Oh, well you're ahead of the game here, and that's what we're going to be talking about today. The way I think about rest and burnout is a little like the way I think about putting gas in a car. Being mentally healthy is like making sure that your car has gas in the tank. And when you have a long drive to do, it's a little inconvenient to stop along the way to get more gas. But if you let the car completely run out of gas, then it ends up being way more work. You have to call AAA. You have to walk to a gas station. You have to maybe deal with damage to your engine, et cetera. And most people I know don't wait until the car completely runs out of gas to stop to put more in. But when it comes to our work, it's really common for people to wait until they're completely burned out to prioritize rest.

The problem is by then, they need more than rest. Now they actually need to heal from the damage that the burnout caused. So for this reason, when it comes to burnout, I think prevention is really important. Anne-Laure, I'm curious. What do you think about this idea?

I absolutely agree. I think prevention is very important, and I also think that having more open conversations about it is crucial, which is why I'm really glad that this is what you're talking about on this episode because we do need to talk about it more. That's half of the battle. And in my case, having experienced it several times, I do agree that if I had known the first time I experienced it what it looked like, and if I had stopped the car, as you say, a little bit earlier, it would've been probably easier to deal with.

What was it like when you did hit full-blown burnout? When you sputtered out, damaged your engine, what did that look like for you?

I think I realized something was really wrong when I was on a meeting and someone gave me very good feedback, constructive feedback, and I just started crying. That was on an online call at the time. I was working on another time zone. And instead of telling my colleagues that I had to work different hours, I just worked both hours, the hours of the city I was in and the hours of the city where my colleagues were based in. I pretended that the wifi was really bad and I quit the call so they didn't see that I cried, but that's when I was left sitting in front of my screen, crying, that I realized that something was really wrong and I started wondering what exactly that was.

Oh my gosh, I can completely relate. I have also faked wifi problems to deal with something I've been feeling. But working two time zone hours? No wonder you were exhausted. Oh my gosh. Okay, well I think that leads perfectly into our pushup today, which is to figure out what our early warning signs of burnout are.

So these are the things that happen before we're completely exhausted that signal to us that we probably need some rest. So for some people, that might be that you stop eating lunch or that you're a little less patient with people in your life or that you complain a little more, or maybe it's that you don't sleep as well. So for those listening in, press pause here while you think about what your early warning signs are of burnout, or keep listening to here Anne-Laure's.

So, Anne-Laure, how do you know that you're approaching burnout? So before you're in tears on a Zoom call, a few days, a few weeks before that happens, what kinds of things might you notice that key you in to needing rest?

For me, it's when I start canceling plans that I know would be good for my mental health, so if I stop seeing friends or if I stop going to the gym, things that are part of my routine that I know do contribute to my general wellness. And I start canceling this because I feel like I have too much work and I feel too overwhelmed. This has been an early sign for me.

Oh, that's such a great answer because it speaks to the irony that at the time that we most need those practices, we cancel them to try to catch up. But then we put ourselves even more behind because those are the things that would give us the energy we need to do the work. So I love that. Great answer. I really relate to that.

So then step two of this pushup is speaking to the communication part you talked about, which is to recruit people in your life to help you keep an eye out for these things. So maybe you email a colleague or have a conversation with your partner and you say, "Hey, if you see me canceling the things that you know are actually really good for me or if you see me skipping lunch three days in a row or if you notice I'm complaining a lot about stuff I normally enjoy, will you please remind me about this conversation and give me a boost to take some rest?" So, Anne-Laure, who in your life do you think you could recruit to help you keep an eye out for your early warning sign?

I think that it would be my best friend, so that would be the person I would ask to be my burnout watch out buddy.

Burnout buddy. I love it. And actually, I think that makes sense, too, because I imagine that doing things with your best friend might be one of the things you would cancel when you feel overwhelmed, but that you actually really need for your soul. Would you say that's true?

Yes, absolutely. And they would also be probably some of the people that are close enough to notice other signs that you may not aware of yourself. Because even if you tell them, "If you notice that I do this specific thing," they may notice something else and just tell you, "Oh, I've noticed that you've been looking a little bit annoyed or you're losing your patients a bit quicker lately." Things like this. Those are the kind of things that I think someone that is very close to you, such as your best friends or a family member or a very close colleague, would be able to spot.

That's such a great point. So maybe step 2.5 of this pushup is also asking the people in your life, "What else do I do when I'm approaching burnout? What should I be looking out for?" and give them an opportunity to queue you in. So I love that. That's a great one.

So then step three of this pushup is to think of what shock absorbers we can put into place when these warning signs do get reflected to us. And by shock absorbers, I mean things that you can do for yourself that refill your tank. So it might be taking a mental health day, taking a day off work or taking a walk through nature, spending some time with your dog, treating yourself to dinner at your favorite restaurant. So for those listening in, think about what your shock absorbers are.

Anne-Laure, how about you? What are the things that you can do to refill your tank when you're feeling tired or overwhelmed?

When I'm in that situation, I usually need a proper break. It doesn't really cut it if I take a 10-minute break or something like that. I need to take a full day. And during that day, I only focus on taking care of myself. That may be reading a book, taking a very long bath or calling my mom and having a very long conversation with her, asking her about all of this stuff that she's been doing. The keyword for me is unproductive. I try to only do things that have nothing to do with work that have no specific goal but to make myself feel good.

Oh, I love that so much because I feel like our entire life is about production. We have to be producing in every moment to feel valuable, and I think the unproductive moments are the ones that really fill us. So I love that.

And I'm thinking about your situation of if the things that you do to refill your tank are the things that you'd move away from when you're overwhelmed, how do you think you can make sure that when your best friend comes up to you and says, "Hey, we were supposed to hang out and you canceled. And you have told me that sometimes you do that when you're approaching burnout," how do you think you can motivate yourself to say, "Okay, I know I just canceled something fun because I feel like I need to work, but that's actually a sign that I need to cancel work to do something unproductive"? How do you think you can motivate yourself for that?

I think this is why, at least in my case, only proper breaks work because I tend to cancel something because... For example, I usually exercise around lunchtime, and it's very easy to cancel that if I have an important meeting in the afternoon and I feel like, "Okay, I'll just skip my exercise session," and then I'll work on whatever project. So I think this is why it's helpful that instead of forcing yourself to try and go to that gym session or to try to go to those fun plans in the evening, it's really, really hard, you're not in that mindset because your mental health is suffering at that moment, is to really take a clean break, a full day.

And you don't even have to make plans because you'll wake up in the morning. You're already told your boss that you're taking that day off. So then you decide what you do, which could be nothing. You could just stay on your sofa and just daydream the whole day, if that's what you want to do. So I think the first step, instead of forcing yourself to keep those plans going is just to take that break and then figure out what you want to do with the break.

I love it. I mean, the idea of really doing nothing feels so foreign and yet so important. I imagine, too, for someone like you who is busy and in high demand, you probably have to actually schedule in that break. You probably have to block it on your calendar, tell people it's a non-negotiable. How do you protect that time for yourself?

This is why it's so important to talk about it and to have a culture where it's okay even from a day to another to say, "Actually, tomorrow I really need a mental health day." I'm very lucky that I'm a founder, so I have created that culture in my company where anyone can say, "I'm not working tomorrow. I need to take care of my mental health," and everyone will jump in and say, "Okay. What parts of your work can I take care of?"

Especially if it's for one day, except if you're a neurosurgeon, probably nothing really bad is going to happen if you're not showing up to work. I think it's really all about the culture. And unfortunately, I know that for some people it may not be the case that they work in the company where this is the case. But I think if anyone listening is a manager or a leader or someone who has any kind of impact of the decision-making of the company, creating that culture is also your responsibility.

I love this point that we convince ourselves that we're so important that if we were to step away for even one day, things would completely all of art. And that's almost never true. But I almost think we have that attitude because otherwise it's like, "Why are we working this hard, then, if it's not this important?" So there's a bit of a disruption we have to be willing to take on in order to think differently about that. So I love the suggestion. Thank you so much for flexing your feels and breaking an emotional sweat with me today. I'll be curious to see what it's like the first time your best friend is like, "Hey, you said that I should let you know about this thing."

For those listening in, check out Anne-Laure's social handles in the show notes. She's one of my very favorite social followers. She has a phenomenal newsletter. So much going on. And Anne-Laure, thank you so much for being here and doing this with us today.

Thank you. That was so much fun.

Thanks for listening to Emotionally Fit, hosted by me, Dr. Emily Anhalt. New pushups drop every Monday and Thursday. Did you do today's pushup alongside me and my guest? Tweet your experience with the hashtag #emotionallyfit and follow me at @dremilyanhalt. Please rate, review, follow and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

This podcast is produced by Coa, your gym for mental health, where you can take live therapist-led classes online. From group sessions to therapist matchmaking, Coa will help you build your emotional fitness routine. Head to joincoa.com, that's join C-O-A.com, to learn more. And follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @joincoa.

From StudioPod Media in San Francisco, our producer is Katie Sunku Wood. Music is by Milano. Special thanks to the entire Coa crew!