How to beat perfectionism, people-pleasing, conflict-aversion, and the many other things that amplify your sense of overwhelm.
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Mentioned in this episode:
Get Your Life Back
A practical guide to setting boundaries for professionals who can’t just ‘walk away”.
Recently, we ran a survey asking people what keeps them awake at night.
Speaker:And we got an overwhelming response from hundreds of you.
Speaker:Mostly it was an overwhelming workload.
Speaker:And then the worry that you've missed something or made a mistake.
Speaker:A lot of people said they were worrying about their team, about team dynamics.
Speaker:They felt so responsible for stuff.
Speaker:And then when we asked, why can't you leave work at work?
Speaker:You talked about doing other people's work for them, not be able
Speaker:to switch off at the end of the day in case your team needed extra
Speaker:support from you, or feeling guilty because you've not done enough, or
Speaker:firefighting stuff all the time.
Speaker:So in this quick dip episode, I want to talk about the way that
Speaker:leaders in health and social care can actually amplify that own
Speaker:workload by that hone behavior.
Speaker:And when I say leaders, I mean, anybody who has any
Speaker:responsibility for anybody else.
Speaker:So as you progress in your career, you will turn into a leader if
Speaker:you are supervising anybody.
Speaker:If you're just someone that your colleagues come to for help and support,
Speaker:if you're a coach, a mentor, a clinical director, a senior partner, a line
Speaker:manager, you name it, you are a leader, whether you like it or not, whether
Speaker:you see yourself as a leader or not.
Speaker:And when it comes to workload It's just too much to do.
Speaker:There's no denying it.
Speaker:And it's not just in health and social care that this is
Speaker:happening, it's all over the place.
Speaker:Since COVID what let's have just ramped up, and it doesn't help
Speaker:with the economic climate and the lack of funding for various things.
Speaker:But in health and social care, there is overwhelming patient demand,
Speaker:people are going off sick with stress and burnout, people are leaving.
Speaker:So that just leaves more work for the people who are left.
Speaker:Now many, many people.
Speaker:In the answer to the survey said that one of the reasons they can't leave
Speaker:work at work because they're so busy during the day job at work that they
Speaker:have no time to do that management and leadership responsibilities.
Speaker:And we know that there's a lot of stuff which comes with that
Speaker:such as appraisals, once a ones, you might be organizing the rota,
Speaker:thinking about strategy, just general support for your team.
Speaker:All that stuff takes time.
Speaker:And it's very rare to be given enough time to do that.
Speaker:But on top of that, there are things that make this worse.
Speaker:This is a You Are Not a Frog quick dip, a tiny taster of the kinds of things we
Speaker:talk about on our full podcast episodes.
Speaker:I've chosen today's topic to give you a helpful boost in the time it
Speaker:takes to have a cup of tea so you can return to whatever else you're
Speaker:up to feeling energized and inspired.
Speaker:For more tools, tips, and insights to help you thrive at work, don't
Speaker:forget to subscribe to You Are Not a Frog wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker:Now, most of us think that the reason that we are overwhelmed
Speaker:is completely external.
Speaker:It's just, there's too much stuff coming at us.
Speaker:That's quite a dangerous mindset to be in because let's face it, there's
Speaker:always going to be too much to do.
Speaker:And we know that we have no control over patient demand, about the
Speaker:stuff that other people give to us.
Speaker:So then we think that we have no control over the workload.
Speaker:If we think like that, though, what happens is we just work harder and
Speaker:harder and harder in order to do everything that's required of us.
Speaker:That leads to stress and burnout.
Speaker:It also means we don't have any time to look after ourselves
Speaker:to keep ourselves fit and well.
Speaker:And we feel like we've got no choice.
Speaker:We fill out that we have to do it.
Speaker:And the amount of people that say to me, if I don't do it, who's going to?
Speaker:When we are in the mindset that we just have to get on with the workload and
Speaker:there's nothing we can do to control it.
Speaker:It feels like we've got a big wooden box and that box is our
Speaker:finite time and energy and people keep giving us water balloons.
Speaker:These are the tasks that we need to do, and we're trying to squash
Speaker:these balloons into the box.
Speaker:Now.
Speaker:We think that we can just get more and more efficient and more and more
Speaker:productive, and yes, there's a little bit of efficiency that can be made,
Speaker:but as we know, when we try and go for too much efficiency, when we try
Speaker:and aim for too much productivity, then patients suffer, services suffer.
Speaker:And all that happens is that the quality goes down and we still feel overwhelmed.
Speaker:So it's rather like trying to squash these water balloons into a big box
Speaker:and we're trying to push them down, but they just keep bolting out elsewhere.
Speaker:And what happens is that either the water balloons exploding leak
Speaker:everywhere, or the box breaks and we can no longer do anything.
Speaker:I want to talk to you about a different way of doing things.
Speaker:And that is.
Speaker:As if you have the box and you've got some water balloons, but you're
Speaker:taking on less water balloons, and what small, these water balloons
Speaker:have less in them, so there's more time and space and you have the
Speaker:time and capacity to do everything.
Speaker:And the way you do that is by identifying the five ways
Speaker:of behaving that are actually amplifying your overwhelmed.
Speaker:And these five things are under your control.
Speaker:Now, a few months ago, I was talking to a large group of GP trainers
Speaker:and I asked them what was stopping them, giving their best at work.
Speaker:And they said, well, there's lots of different things,
Speaker:but it's mainly the workload.
Speaker:I just have too much to do.
Speaker:And when I asked them what they felt responsible for, the answer was
Speaker:pretty much everybody and everything.
Speaker:When it came to their trainees, they felt incredibly responsible for whether
Speaker:their trainee passed their exams or not.
Speaker:They felt responsible for the trainees' wellbeing, whether
Speaker:they were enjoying their job.
Speaker:They felt responsible for all the patients that the trainee saw.
Speaker:They felt responsible for the ways that other people in the practice
Speaker:interacted with their trainees and how happy they were at work.
Speaker:And when I ask them about what the consequences of that were for them,.
Speaker:I got answers like, well, they were coming home from their
Speaker:annual leave to, to, to mark the portfolios that been handed in late.
Speaker:They were bending over backwards to make life easier for their
Speaker:trainees at their detriment.
Speaker:And these behaviors just didn't work.
Speaker:It seems to make things worse, actually.
Speaker:So these GP trainers were falling into the trap of the
Speaker:first overwhelmed, amplified.
Speaker:That is over responsibility.
Speaker:That is feeding responsible for things that are outside of our control.
Speaker:There's no way that these trainers could be responsible for whether their
Speaker:trainees pass their exams or not.
Speaker:They were not in the exam hall with them.
Speaker:They could not write the answers for them.
Speaker:And there are so many things that would have affected that
Speaker:candidate's performance on the day.
Speaker:The trainer could not possibly take responsibility for that,
Speaker:but they felt that they were.
Speaker:As a consequence, they were rushing around getting very frustrated and
Speaker:not just feeling frustrated, but feeling very guilty when anything
Speaker:went wrong for that trainee, even if it wasn't their fault.
Speaker:And that's the emotion that we feel predominantly when things happen
Speaker:that are outside our control, but we're taking too much responsibility
Speaker:for those, we just feel guilty.
Speaker:And this adds to our workload as we just work harder and harder
Speaker:trying to effect everything.
Speaker:But no matter how hard we work, we'll just be ineffective, because
Speaker:if it's out of our control, there's nothing we can do about it.
Speaker:So they were just increasing their workload and their
Speaker:stress, when an actual fact.
Speaker:They weren't taking control of the things that they could do, such as
Speaker:setting proper deadlines for the portfolio, having the conversations
Speaker:they needed to with their colleagues when they weren't delivering the
Speaker:right training sessions, and setting boundaries with their trainees to help
Speaker:them survive once they've qualified.
Speaker:Now the way out of this over responsibility amplifier is to accept
Speaker:that we can't do anything about things that are outside of our control.
Speaker:And one thing that's really helped me is knowing the difference between
Speaker:caring about something and carrying it.
Speaker:Because I may care deeply about my trainees and their success, and
Speaker:if they pass their exams, But if I can't control the outcome, then
Speaker:I can't be responsible for it.
Speaker:I can care, but I can't carry it.
Speaker:I can't carry that load of responsibility.
Speaker:So working out the difference between caring about something
Speaker:and not carrying it is vital here.
Speaker:So, what is it that you care about deeply, but you can't carry?
Speaker:The next overwhelmed amplifier is actually making the opposite mistake, of
Speaker:not doing stuff that we could control.
Speaker:Like I mentioned before, setting boundaries saying no, having those
Speaker:difficult conversations, giving the feedback, and addressing the issues
Speaker:that, you know, you need to address before they just spiral out control
Speaker:and take you an awful lot more time.
Speaker:This takes courage and it takes a bit of skill.
Speaker:And a lot of us, if I'm honest, don't really know how to have
Speaker:those difficult conversations and we really fear conflict.
Speaker:So we avoid doing those things that we could do.
Speaker:We avoid addressing issues.
Speaker:And this just increases your overwhelm and your workload by letting
Speaker:issues spiral out of control, and they take an awful lot longer to
Speaker:source out further down the line.
Speaker:Uh, I heard a very useful analogy, which isn't entirely appropriate,
Speaker:but I'm going to share it anyway.
Speaker:Someone said to me once, well if you're going to be kidnapped, the time to get
Speaker:his way is the minute they grabbed you and they're pointing a gun at your head.
Speaker:You need to kick them shout and scream and run off, because you're much more
Speaker:likely to survive than if they stick you in the boot, drive you off to
Speaker:a place, and hold you in some sort of shed in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker:So the time to deal with issues is straight away.
Speaker:But we fear, we fear conflict.
Speaker:We feel the effects on the relationship.
Speaker:We fear their shorts and consequences, don't we?
Speaker:But in the longterm, It will increase our workload.
Speaker:It will increase our stress.
Speaker:If these things aren't addressed.
Speaker:So avoiding potentially difficult situations, avoiding conflict is
Speaker:the second overwhelm amplifier.
Speaker:What can we do about that?
Speaker:Well, firstly, identify the things that we could do something about
Speaker:and get upskilled, learn how to have those difficult conversations, get
Speaker:some coaching, get some training.
Speaker:And if he wants to find out more about that, we did a whole Frog Fest Virtual
Speaker:live training about This Time it's Awkward, how to have those awkward
Speaker:conversations, so you can check that out and we'll put all the links to
Speaker:our resources in the show notes.
Speaker:One thing you could do if you're worried about compensation
Speaker:is just get really curious.
Speaker:Say, well, I'm curious about what happened there, which meant
Speaker:that this behavior happened.
Speaker:Just state what happened.
Speaker:Make sure you ask for their perspective, ask them how they thought about things,
Speaker:or even get them to write their own performance and ask them how that went.
Speaker:And then there'll be much easier to address things with people.
Speaker:So the first two overwhelm amplifies the firstly over responsibility,
Speaker:second avoiding conflicts or difficult conversations.
Speaker:Now the third one is getting stuck in the urgency trap.
Speaker:So many people told us that they spent so much time firefighting
Speaker:urgent stuff for other people.
Speaker:And just doing stuff that came up, that they had to do their
Speaker:regular work in the evenings, outside of the normal working time.
Speaker:Cause they just didn't get anything done.
Speaker:And the urgency trap.
Speaker:Is where everything seems urgent and important, and it becomes
Speaker:so stressful that we can't see the wood for the trees.
Speaker:And then the stuff that's urgent seems to trump the stuff that's important,
Speaker:and this is particularly stuff.
Speaker:Other people.
Speaker:And this is where the people pleasers in a surface.
Speaker:We don't want to upset people, but you don't want to say no.
Speaker:We want to help, we want to be supportive.
Speaker:But it's a profoundly, stressful place to be, and we end up ignoring
Speaker:those important tasks that we really, really need to get to.
Speaker:And again, this just increases our workload.
Speaker:The way out of this is to learn how to prioritize powerfully.
Speaker:And we used our shape, the prioritization grid to do this.
Speaker:But even if you've just spent 10 minutes writing down what the really
Speaker:important things were for you, what your priorities are, the things that you know
Speaker:would move the needle massively for you, you'd know what you need to focus on.
Speaker:But then the issue is saying no to that stuff that you know,
Speaker:you're not going to focus on.
Speaker:And the fourth overwhelm amplifier.
Speaker:Is getting stuck in rescue mode, taking the rescue at mentality.
Speaker:Several people in our survey say that the reason they couldn't leave work at
Speaker:work is 'cause they spend a lot of time doing other people's work for them.
Speaker:And as leaders, every bone in our body wants to support our
Speaker:teams, be a good human being.
Speaker:And often we interpret that as just taking over for people,
Speaker:fixing it for them, doing their work when they're overwhelmed,
Speaker:or helping them out when they get stuck and often doing it for them.
Speaker:The problem is that this rescue mentality is actually a very
Speaker:toxic form of leadership.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Because it keeps people stuck, disempowered, gets them into
Speaker:unhelpful victim patterns.
Speaker:And the problem with being in the victim mentality is that's quite
Speaker:comfortable because you don't need to make too much effort.
Speaker:You can blame everybody else.
Speaker:So we end up in the stance.
Speaker:We end up stuck in the drama triangle.
Speaker:So taking the rescuer mentality means that again, our workload is
Speaker:massively increased as we just feel.
Speaker:We've got to do everything for everybody else.
Speaker:And as a consequence, we don't let anybody grow and develop, solve their
Speaker:own problems or learn for themselves.
Speaker:The way out of that is to instead take a coaching approach.
Speaker:Now, we teach a lot of coaching techniques and teaching models
Speaker:but you don't need to, to a massive long coaching course
Speaker:to take a coaching approach.
Speaker:You could just ask somebody well, what could you do about this?
Speaker:What have you already thought of?
Speaker:How could you solve this for yourself?
Speaker:What I did is you have?
Speaker:And leave the ball in their court.
Speaker:But there's one more, and this just trumps all at the And actually
Speaker:it's at the root of everything.
Speaker:And those are the three toxic tethers.
Speaker:The three behaviors that mean, we can't say no or set boundaries, or
Speaker:when we do set boundaries, we just crumble in the face of pushback.
Speaker:And that is perfectionism, people pleasing, and pre living.
Speaker:Perfectionism means that we can't possibly leave anything undone.
Speaker:We've got to get to the bottom of our to-do list, because if we don't,
Speaker:that means we're not good enough.
Speaker:We're not, we're not perfect.
Speaker:And the thought that we're not perfect quickly leads to the thought
Speaker:of, well, I'm not good enough, which quickly leads to I am not enough,
Speaker:and that is the basis of shame.
Speaker:So many of us feel shame when we have to set limits around our time and
Speaker:our work, and so we don't do that.
Speaker:We want to believe that we are superhuman.
Speaker:And we can cope with everything.
Speaker:People pleasing.
Speaker:We hate upsetting people.
Speaker:We feel guilty even if we're not responsible for stuff.
Speaker:We feel guilty if we can't see everything for everybody.
Speaker:Now, this is hardwired into us.
Speaker:Our amygdalas will detect a threat if we upset people so we've very,
Speaker:very quickly default to guilty.
Speaker:I've realized that most healthcare professionals have got a
Speaker:massive chip on their shoulder.
Speaker:It's a guilty chip.
Speaker:We so quickly take on the blame for everything and feel guilty for
Speaker:stuff that's way out of our control.
Speaker:And what happens then is we work harder and harder, we try and
Speaker:do something about it, adding.
Speaker:So our workload.
Speaker:And then a third toxic tether is pre living stuff, thinking what
Speaker:will happen if I get complaint?
Speaker:What if this goes wrong?
Speaker:What if I've made a mistake, what if I've missed something?
Speaker:We pre live stuff that hasn't even happened yet.
Speaker:Mark Twain said I'm an old man.
Speaker:I've known many troubles.
Speaker:Most of them haven't happened.
Speaker:And pre living stuff leads to fear.
Speaker:What if they do think badly of me?
Speaker:What if they think I'm not good enough?
Speaker:And so we work harder and harder and do more and more in order
Speaker:to avoid guilt, shame and fear.
Speaker:That adds to our workload.
Speaker:And adds to our stress.
Speaker:So we have a choice.
Speaker:We can continue thinking that our overwhelm and stress is entirely due
Speaker:to the external workload that's coming at us, and try our best to do it all.
Speaker:That way lies, overwhelm, stress, guilt, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker:And it's very hard to break out of that cycle.
Speaker:Or we can decide that there are things that we can do about
Speaker:our overwhelming workload.
Speaker:At the very least, we will decide not to make it worse ourselves by avoiding
Speaker:these five overwhelm amplifiers.
Speaker:Because we are in control of the way we think and what we choose to
Speaker:do and what we choose to take on.
Speaker:And here's the thing.
Speaker:Your wellbeing is directly linked to this.
Speaker:The biggest reason I think for healthcare professionals feeling
Speaker:stressed and burning out and having their health and their wellbeing
Speaker:suffering is because they do not have the time to attend to their own needs.
Speaker:If we solve overwhelm, I think we still have wellbeing because we
Speaker:all know what we need to do to keep ourselves fit and well, to practice
Speaker:that necessary care that we need to.
Speaker:So can I suggest that next time you are in that mindset of
Speaker:overwhelm, you look for where you are, exaggerating it for yourself.
Speaker:And firstly you note, okay, which overwhelm amplifying
Speaker:behavior have I fallen into?
Speaker:Is it over responsibility, the urgency trap, is it rescuing, is it
Speaker:avoiding conflict, or is it those three toxic tethers of perfectionism,
Speaker:people pleasing, and pre living?
Speaker:Write it down, identify it and just go, oh, that's interesting, there's
Speaker:a bit of over-responsibility.
Speaker:Next, write down what emotion you're feeling.
Speaker:And I bet you there'll be some guilt, some shame, or
Speaker:some fare at the bottom of it.
Speaker:It might also help to write down the story that you're telling yourself.
Speaker:I should see that extra patient.
Speaker:Because otherwise there'll be cross with me and the
Speaker:receptionist will think I'm awful.
Speaker:Or I really must check my emails at 11 o'clock at night, otherwise
Speaker:my colleagues might think I'm checking my responsibility.
Speaker:What are the toxic stories you're telling yourself?
Speaker:And then I'd like you to write down.
Speaker:What happens when you believe those stories, and what
Speaker:consequences it has longterm?
Speaker:And then write down the reason why that story isn't true, or actually
Speaker:another story that's more helpful.
Speaker:What are the long-term reasons why you might be choosing
Speaker:to set those boundaries?
Speaker:It might be, you know, there's no point anyway, because
Speaker:you're not in control of it.
Speaker:It might be that, you know that the rescuer mentality is actually
Speaker:very toxic in the long run.
Speaker:Write down the longterm reason why you are going to choose to stop with
Speaker:the overwhelm amplifying behavior.
Speaker:Now there, of course, are some mistakes that we can make in all of this.
Speaker:The first is just blindly accepting that all the work that's coming at
Speaker:you is just what you've got to put up with and not ever talk to your
Speaker:organization about what's going on, and asking them to put some limits on it.
Speaker:So by all means, have the conversations that you need to
Speaker:do to address what's going on.
Speaker:The second is trying to address this stuff when you are.
Speaker:In the midst of the overwhelm.
Speaker:It's really, really difficult.
Speaker:I did a podcast recently called you.
Speaker:Can't organize your way out of overwhelms that if you are right in
Speaker:that situation right now, and you just can't think straight, and we can't
Speaker:think straight when we're stressed, the best thing you can do is rest.
Speaker:Take a rest, take a break.
Speaker:UN.
Speaker:Start to think about this stuff when you're back in your parasympathetic,
Speaker:when you've had a good night's sleep, when you've got a bit of
Speaker:brain space to think about this.
Speaker:And by all means, find a friend, talk about it, discuss it, get some
Speaker:coaching, ask people what they think.
Speaker:And finally, don't wait until you are not overwhelmed to have
Speaker:time to look after yourself.
Speaker:You need to put in the wellbeing stuff right now,
Speaker:even when you don't have time.
Speaker:Because believe me, you'll get your time back, you'll be pleased you did, and
Speaker:you'll be in a much better mental state to be able to deal with all of this.
Speaker:And don't forget to get the help and the support that you need with this.
Speaker:We've got loads of stuff available.
Speaker:You can join the Shapes Academy.
Speaker:You can do our Beat Stress and Thrive course.
Speaker:We've got some short courses on boundaries called Get Your Life Back.
Speaker:So all of those resources are in the show notes below.
Speaker:So recognize that when it comes to overwhelm, you do have a choice.
Speaker:Not over everything, but you have a choice over some things which
Speaker:will be making your overwhelm and stress much, much worse.
Speaker:And that sorts and quite difficult to hear.
Speaker:And I'm really not trying to minimize the issues that are out there.
Speaker:But there is no Knight in shining armor that's going to
Speaker:come riding and rescue you.
Speaker:There are small things that you can see yourself.
Speaker:And honestly, They'll make a load of difference.
Speaker:So go, well, good luck with all of this, let me know how you've got on and
Speaker:I'll see you for the next quick dip.