Someone asks how you're doing and you've said "good, busy" before they finish the sentence. It's automatic now. You've said it so many times you're not sure what's actually underneath it anymore.

This is a solo episode about the people who don't look like they're struggling. The ones who answer every email, show up to everything, remember the birthdays, carry the whole thing and feel nothing, or feel too much, or feel a kind of tired that sleep doesn't touch.

Burnout has a branding problem. We picture someone who's stopped working. But most burnout looks like competence. It looks like someone performing perfectly while quietly running on empty. That's the version nobody catches, because the entire point of high-functioning is that it keeps functioning.

Michelle gets into the part people don't say out loud: that pretending to be fine is its own full-time job. That maintaining the mask is more exhausting than whatever's behind it. That there's a specific loneliness in being the reliable one — the person everyone assumes is okay, precisely because you've gotten so good at making sure they assume it.

This one's about emotional exhaustion, emotional suppression, and the strange numbness that shows up after you've held too much for too long. About the distance between how your life looks and how it feels. About being told your whole life to manage your emotions, then wondering why you can't locate them anymore. About the difference between feelings that are technically valid and feelings that ever actually got to be felt.

If you're emotionally exhausted, mentally overwhelmed, numb, disconnected, lonely in a way that doesn't make sense given how full your life is, or just done performing fine for an audience that now includes yourself — this will probably land a little too close.

No advice. No five steps. Just the conversation you've been having in your head, out loud.

Mentioned in this episode: Gratitude Meditation: Grab it here

Loving Hot Mess Magic? A 5-star review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify helps the right people find it. Screenshot the episode and tag Michelle.

Instagram: @michelleaburke

This podcast is based on personal experience and conversation and is not a substitute for therapy, diagnosis, or professional medical advice. If you're struggling with your mental health, anxiety, depression, or thoughts of self-harm, please contact a licensed mental health professional or your local crisis support line.

I almost didn't hit record this week. I kept putting it off and putting it off or I would have a whole episode come to me while I was in the shower, but not of my phone handy or a dry erase marker or anything to jot down what was going through my head as I was standing there in the shower reciting a whole podcast episode.

There were days when I didn't want to get out of bed this week. There were days when I would send a friend a text saying I need a hug. And when they asked what's wrong, I said I'm overwhelmed. And that's what I want to talk about. Overwhelm. Cause I feel so many of us are in this state right now of feeling overwhelmed about life as a

A fucking hole.

Where we're in this place.

Or financially you're feeling it. Emotionally you're feeling it. Psychologically you're feeling it. And it's psychological warfare.

The point here is to realize that your feelings are fucking valid. What you are feeling right now in this very moment is valid.

And we're this generation where we would be sitting there eating an ice pop and get to the point in eating it where it falls off the stick, the dog starts eating it and we're sitting there crying and our parent asks us what we're crying about, looks, starts laughing and says, I'll give you something to cry about.

Or ⁓ not again. Or really? That's what you're crying over? It's an ice pop. It's like yeah, but in that moment as a kid, you were upset that you didn't get to finish your ice pop and the dog is sitting there eating it off the floor.

Your feeling in that moment was valid, but it was not validated. So we learned not to validate our feelings. We learned not to express how we truly feel. We are a generation of repressed emotions.

And as we've gotten older, all of this repressed shit is coming to the surface for us to work through, for us to fully validate our feelings. I had someone send me a message asking me how I was doing. And this was someone I knew I could be totally honest with. And I said to her, I'm overwhelmed.

and told her something else and she responded back to me saying as to how refreshing it was for me to give an honest answer. Most people would have just said fine. But fine is feelings inside not expressed.

And this is why we have such a mental health issue.

Because our feelings were never expressed.

We never learned how to express them.

We were taught to shrug it off, to suck it up.

That'll give you something to cry about.

'Cause it's okay to not be fine. It's okay to not want to get out of bed. It's okay

To be angry, to be frustrated, to be sad, it's okay to want to scream. It's okay to want to punch the pillow.

And

If someone asks you how you are or how you're doing and you give them that honest answer and they don't respond

They really didn't care how you're doing.

Anytime I have messaged a friend

And ask them how they're doing and they tell me that they're okay. I'll say just okay and they'll go no no no, I'm fine, I'm good.

Right there I will go bullshit. And I'll tell them bullshit what's wrong.

Well, ⁓ here you know, h here it is.

We've been conditioned to say I'm good or I'm okay or it's all good.

every single person on the planet is fucking going through something.

So can we stop pretending that we're not?

Can we stop pretending that it's all roses and rainbows?

sometimes it's shit.

We don't talk about those shitty moments enough.

And that's where I'm moving into.

with this show normalizing the shit. Normalizing the fuck ups, the failures, and everything else that we don't talk enough about.

The problems that so many of us have, yet we're embarrassed or ashamed to say that we're going through it.

Whether that's the financial fuck ups, the relationship fuck ups

The feeling like a failure of a parent

The feeling like you should be further along in your career or that it at this stage in your life you shouldn't still be living with your parents. Life happens.

We have to remember to express the gratitude for the shit. And I know that that sounds so fucked up, but hear me out here. Cause it's these shitty moments.

teach us, And I have a gratitude a gratitude meditation that I'm gonna link in the show notes that goes through expressing gratitude for the shit.

So here's what I want you to take away from this episode.

I want you to claim what it is you're feeling in this very moment.

And I want you to honor what it is that you're feeling. Those words, honor what you're feeling, are the other words that got me through.

those beginning months of grief after losing my dad and my grandma three weeks apart.

was first thing on my to do list. Sometimes it was the only thing on my to do list. Honor what you're feeling because your feelings are valid. You do not need to explain them to anyone.

And when I mean that you don't need to explain them to anyone, you don't need to validate why You are feeling what you're feeling. That feeling is valid. It's what you're feeling in that moment.

Feel it. Because when you feel it, when you sit in that ick.

That's when you move through it.

That's when you start to recognize the pattern. That's when you start to recognize the programming.

That's when you start to recognize your conditioning. And that's when you start to grow.