Name: Burned Out, Not Broken: An Honest Conversation for Communicators
Uploaded: 2025-05-13T16:16:09.045Z
Duration: 1 h 16 s
Description: Burned Out, Not Broken: An Honest Conversation for Communicators

Transcript for "Burned Out, Not Broken: An Honest Conversation for Communicators": Hello, everyone, as I remove my glasses. Welcome to our event for May. We've been promoting the hell out of this event for all of the right reasons, all about burnout around communicators. One of the things that I absolutely love about the chat is all the interactions that are happening in here. Shout out to Panaki for, being a bit of a hype man in here and also providing some weather reports that I'm seeing in the chat. So that's awesome. Apparently, I'm also being supervised in here, which is great. I've got my boss looking over my shoulder. Love seeing all the introductions in here. If you haven't gone and introduced yourself, please do so. My name is Chuck Gose. I'm the founder of ICology and excited to help facilitate this conversation today all around burnout not broken. And as all of you are going into the chat, here's your first assignment as I go through some basic announcements. Go into the chat and leave either a GIF or an emoji that shares with us a bit about where your mind is today, how you're feeling today. GIF or emoji about how you're feeling today. Tired Tuesday. Yes. If I could go in and do something about a coughing GIF in there, I would do that because as I talk about coughing, I'm battling a cough here. But I do wanna share, obviously, welcoming all of you to this. We love hosting these types of conversations with psychology, which we know might not be the most fun conversations to have, but are always helpful as an industry for us to be vulnerable and share and excited to have Kelsey Buckholtz join us today. One of the things we do inside Ecology for all the members that are joined you know this. For people that are not members of Ecology yet, you'll get a little insights into how we do things. Every month, we host a campfire discussion. So we gather around the campfire. We had Kelsey join us and share some of her insights and also give a chance for our members to share their insights, their experiences around burnout. And then the next month, we share some of that knowledge with all of you. So you'd like to be on the inside early parts of that conversation, go to joinicology.com, learn all about ICHOLOGY, all the things we're doing in there, and be a part of it. But we also wanna share this knowledge with all of you as well. Before I invite my guest onto the stage, I wanna go into your to the chat and see what we have. We've got some to do lists. It's just too much. Let's see what we've got in here. People drowning in papers. What is happening, Alyssa? Okay. Bye. Again, this is one of the things I love about, the chat. Let's keep this going. I do now want to welcome author Kelsey Buckholtz to the stage. Kelsey, please join us here for our May event. Hello, Kelsey? Hi. I was excited about this conversation when we first talked about it. And now I'm so glad we're doing it based off of the Camp Fire discussion that we had, with psychology members last month. Before we get into your talk, Kelsey, I'm just curious from you, what were some of the things that you learned or you appreciated about what the psychology community shared with with you? Yeah. I think one of the first things that comes to mind we'll talk, you know, about what burnout is and some of the stages. And I was shocked by how many people, first of all, opened up and were vulnerable about sharing their stories, which I just so appreciated. I'm gonna share a little bit about mine, and it was just really nice to get that back from the community. But then also to hear how many people had experienced burnout to the the stage of needing to take time off work and some having, you know, medical issues and diagnoses that were a direct result of their stress. So it just really highlighted for me how serious this can be. And that's why I'm so when we I was excited about this conversation that we were having it and then really felt validated when we saw what the community was sharing with us around burnout. Like, okay. This is a really big problem, something you have experienced personally. Mhmm. So I'm gonna stay on screen with you, Kelsey, but I do wanna give you a chance to introduce yourself, tell the world a little bit about you, and then get us started into the conversation. Yeah. Let me see if I can share my screen. That's the first trick. There we go. Okay. Well, thank you for that introduction. I can give a little bit of background about me and how it is that I came to be here talking to you about burnout. So today, I'm a director of communication strategy at Local Wisdom, but I actually started my career at a Fortune 50 pharmaceutical company. I started as an intern and worked my way up for over a decade. And throughout that journey, about in the middle, I wrote my book, Strong, Calm, Confident You, about my experience with burnout. And it started you know, starting as an intern, I was one of the youngest people at this company, and I had the most intense imposter syndrome. I just felt like every day that someone was gonna figure out that I didn't belong there. And I think a lot of people can relate to that feeling, especially when starting out your career, but it just never subsided for me no matter how much I proved my worth. Once I got hired I thought once I get hired full time, I'll feel really confident. No. That didn't happen. Okay. Well, when I get this title, then I'll feel really confident. When I get this job that I really want, then I'll feel confident. And it just it never came. And so the expectations and the pressure that I was putting on myself to succeed and the bar that I was setting for myself just wasn't attainable, and it wasn't, it wasn't feasible. So I was coming home from work multiple nights a week in tears, holding it together at work. In fact, when I published my book, people at work were like, I had no idea that you were struggling. And that's because I was wearing a mask. I was holding it all in at work and then coming home and taking it out on the people that I love the most. And I can remember the day that I knew something needed to change like it was yesterday. And the funny thing about that is I don't remember what happened at work that day, but I remember the results, because it didn't really matter what happened at work that day. I'm sure it was something small, but it was it was the final straw for whatever reason. I came home, and I was already in hysterical tears by the time I walked in the door. And I threw my bag and my shoes in the entryway. I went straight to my bedroom where I flopped face first into bed and refused to get up. And that was really uncharacteristic for me. Usually, my stress response is to do more. Like, let's just work a little bit harder. Let's stay up late. Let's keep going. And this was like, I'm done. I can't do this. I cannot keep pretending. And, I lived with my boyfriend at the time. Now my husband, he's stuck stuck with me through all of this. Thank god. But he he was the one to say, like, I don't I don't know how to help you. I think that you need to get some help. This is this is not like you. And so that's when I got myself into therapy. I was diagnosed with anxiety, got on medication for that, and through therapy, learned a number of tools that I wanna share with you guys today. But first, I wanna talk about a little bit more of what burnout really is and what I was struggling with that day. So I know now that that day, I was seeing the beginning stages of burnout. Burnout is actually an intense state of exhaustion brought on by by prolonged periods of stress. So all of us have stress in our lives, but it should sort of be an ebb and flow. There are these periods where you have something big going on in your life or at work, a big project, then you need to have these periods of recovery, those slower periods at work, that vacation, something. And if if you're on the other side of this screen laughing like, yeah, there's no recovery, that is a bad sign. If you're living up here, that's a recipe for burnout. And that was what was going on in in my life for sure. Through my research, I learned that there are actually 12 stages of burnout and that it can be life threatening. We talked about we we learned from folks in the psychology community, that have gotten further on this skill than I have. And I'd love to hear in the chat as you're looking at these stages, like, how far have you gone and and what what what could you share about your experience? But I can literally map out my progress if you hear it in my story. Starting as an intern, I had that compulsion to prove myself, which led me to work harder and harder and harder to get those promotions. Then I started neglecting my needs. Right? Working late, skipping meals, skipping the gym, doing the things that I knew made me feel better. I started having conflicts with, my partner. Instead of, you know, taking those things out at work, I was taking them out at home. And then you start to revise your values. You start to care less about the things that matter to you, and you're only focused on work. You might deny those problems. And then for me, I got to about the withdrawal and the odd behavior stage where I came home. And instead of overworking, I was just like, I'm done. And that was that was really weird for me. And luckily, that was when I noticed something was wrong, and I was able to get some some help, before it got to these advanced stages. But I'm seeing a lot of people on the chat saying, like, stage 11, stage 12. It can be serious, and it's very common to have to take this time off of work. Yeah. When I fur or when you shared this chart with me for the first time, Kelsey, I'd mentioned that I had never really seen burnout laid out in this way of it being this slow or fast procession of of people going through these stages. For some people, this this procession might be a year or two. For some, this might be within a month or two months of this cycle going through. For you, what was this what was that time line like for you when you hit I think you said, like, that seven to eight was where you felt like you were hitting. Where what was that timeline like? For me, I think it was a slow burn because I started as an intern. You know, like, that was really stage one. Like, I was I was already in stage one starting my career. And then it was, like, my first job, my second job. I would say it was my I think it was my second job at the company, my second real job, full time job that really sent me into that withdrawal stage because I was I was growing. And it was a job that I really wanted and I wanted to do well, but it was one that was, like, a little bit of a stretch. I had some stuff to learn, But it took me probably a couple of years to get there, so mine was more of a slow a slow burn. I I think what's also interesting about these stages is we view especially, I would say, maybe at least the first four, you could spend to yourself as a very positive thing. Yeah. You could say, like, no. I'm gonna prove myself. No. I'm gonna work harder. No. I'm gonna put my needs aside and help this out. So I'm gonna not manage that conflict and choose, you know, these other ones instead. And I think some people on the surface might see that as growth when in fact, that's that's very much the opposite. So Yeah. The the other question I have for you, Kelsey, on this is actually the word burnout. Mhmm. And I when we were going through some of our earlier conversations, planning for this, I'd ask you the question, like, is this a word that we have weakened, or have we bastardized in some ways? Because you people might say something like, oh my gosh. I've had Italian food three nights this week. I'm so burned out on Italian food. Or, oh my gosh. I bought some show I binge watched. I'm so burned out on that TV show. Are we minimizing the word at times when we use it in that way? Because the number one say, like, oh my gosh. I'm so burned out. Is this a little bit of a crying wolf situation for some? Yeah. I haven't I haven't thought about it in terms of using it, like, outside, work and home and family, because you could be you could be burned out at home too. But, yeah, I do think, you know, being so burnt out of a show or something like that could be minimizing it. I do think it's a good thing if people are saying they're burnt out before they're at stage ten, eleven, 12. Like, if we're what I would love to see is more people talking about this in the early stages at work. So saying, like, man, I'm starting to feel really burnt out. I noticed I'm, like, fighting with my spouse because I'm stressed out at work, or I really haven't been taking care of myself and getting to the gym like I need to. Like, recognizing those warning signs of burnout, I think, is really important, rather than rather than waiting to call it burnout until we're needing to take leave from work. Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned it about it being both a situation at work, but also potentially not a situation at work. Yeah. Because we're we're old in our house I'm gonna hold this up. We still get the printed newspaper delivered to our house during the week, so we have support journalism. However, this was from the weekend paper, and it was an entire section called a wake up call for caregivers. Mhmm. And it was, again, all it was all about burnout. It was all about, the struggle that people have with balancing high stress, lack of support at home, at work, all of those things. So, yes, some journalism. Yay. But, also, like, these conversations need to be had. And I and I think about things like this actually opening up people to be on, like, oh, is this a big part? So I wanna give you a shout out for recognizing this is not just about what you're doing at work. If you have Right. Small children, dependents, maybe you're caring for elderly parents, whatever the situation is, you've got a community that depends on you. Mhmm. It doesn't just have to give out what happens at work. All these are all LEGO blocks that can feed into a challenging situation for everyone. Yeah. Anywhere that you have responsibility is a potential place where you can get burned out. Yeah. The, I just saw Panaki put into the chat, excuse me, learning that even good stress is still stress. I believe it was during our campfire discussion that, Panaki made the mistake of saying something about laughing hurts, even laughing hurts, which is now, like, like, a tagline for Panaki. But, yeah, let's let's keep moving on. I really do think this this stage is thing. Hopefully, all of you have found this helpful. Yeah. This is all being recorded as well, so you have access to this. Or you wanna take a screenshot of it? Yeah. You can do that. Yeah. I want us I thought, was such a great way to categorize it for people beyond just sort of this amalgamous shape, but actually recognizing. So if you see that you are somewhere on this now and you haven't sought out help, now is the time. Now is the time. Yeah. And we're gonna talk through some of the ways to prevent burnout. So, hopefully, we're catching you in some of these early stages, and we can we can start to work on this. Because it is I would actually love to know if someone isn't on somewhere on that spectrum, to be honest with you. I I I I would worry a little bit about if you don't feel some of that at some point in time. But, yes, the further along you are, the more a different presentation, I think. They're not anywhere on there. But, yeah, I it it is it is preventable, no matter where you are on that scale, really. Like I said, I for my journey, I got into therapy after that after that day, and was diagnosed with anxiety. I was put on medication, but I think and that helped take the edge off for sure. So if that's something that you need to explore, I definitely recommend talking to your doctor about that. There's no shame in that. It's mental health month. I think it's really important. But even more than that were the lessons that I learned in therapy, and I wanted to share three specifically with you guys today that have most impacted my journey. So when I first started therapy, I thought that my job was the problem. I thought it was, like, corporate America, too much pressure, all of that. But what I learned was that burnout isn't just about having too much on your plate. It can stem from these deeper roots like your attitudes, your beliefs about work, and the behaviors that those beliefs strive. So for me, this took the the manifestation of perfectionism and people pleasing. Those were kind of my two vices, and I think a lot of you will probably relate to this. We'll start with perfectionism. I think this is one a lot of us often, wear like a badge of honor and maybe even say it's our our biggest weakness in a job interview. It's like, you know, it's a weakness, but I'm so perfect. But this can actually be really serious too. I know Chuck and I were joking. When you look at the signs here, you know, like, who doesn't have extremely high standards for themselves? Like, hopefully, we all have high standards for ourselves. But I think the danger zone is when you get into this my worth equals my productivity, this all or nothing mindset, this inability to ask for help, needing to be in control, valuing success over the process. That's where perfectionism can really become a problem. Yeah. I see in the chat. Surprised to see procrastination as a form of perfectionism. Yeah. It can actually go both ways. Some people will procrastinate because they can't do it perfectly. It's like, I don't know where to start, and it's not gonna be perfect enough. So I'm just putting it off putting it off. Or it can be, like, overworking, like, you know, obsessing over something to the point of exhaustion. So it can it can go both ways. I don't tend to be a procrastinator, but I know I know a lot of people are. And the other side of perfectionism, something that I learned about in research for my book is called socially oriented perfectionism, and that is when you are acting out of perceived expectations from other people or society. I'll give you an example of this. When I first moved in with my boyfriend, I thought that it was my job to make dinner. And I wouldn't have told you that out loud, but that's how I was acting. So every night I worked later than him, but I was rushing home from my stressful job and rushing in to make dinner. And I was, like, slamming the cabinets around the kitchen being like, oh, I'm such a great partner making dinner every night. And I was complaining to my therapist about it one week, and she said to me, did you ever ask Chris if this was important to him? Like, if that was something he expected of you? I was like, no. Actually, I didn't. And when I talked to him about it, he was like, no. Like, he had grown up in a completely different family than I had, and so that just wasn't the dynamic. So from there, I realized, you know, that was an expectation for myself. You know? It was a it was a perceived expectation, maybe even a societal one that I just assumed that was, like, the woman's job. And so it was time for me to reexamine those expectations and build our relationship, you know, from the ground up. So that's just an example of where you can be acting out of expectations that you think are coming from other people that may not be. So the second, affliction that I had was people pleasing, and I see a couple of you in the chat. Liliana, people pleaser. Here I am. A pathological people pleaser. People pleasing in that, usually, people aren't as quick to to agree to to say, yep. That's me. So thank you, Liliana. But this is it's not just being nice to people. That's what I first thought when it was brought up to me, that I might be a people pleaser. I'm like, isn't that just being nice, being a good person? But, again, it's it's the extreme. It's it's avoiding conflict for fear of upsetting someone. It's apologizing too much. It's having trouble saying no because you don't wanna upset anyone. It is burnout bingo. That's funny. Didn't Chuck, you call this burnout bingo, didn't you? Yeah. I I was gonna mention that without saying that yeah. When we first did our review with this, I was like, oh my gosh. It looks like burnout bingo. Yeah. That's funny, Aria. It is. It is. Sorry. I totally got distracted by that. That's funny. But, yeah, it's when you swing too far. And a big lesson for me in therapy with people pleasing was that you cannot control other people's emotions. So I was trying in so many areas of my life to make people happy or to make people like me. At work, I wanted everyone to like me. And I was in a job where, I was like a a filter for internal communications, and I had to say no to some communications that people wanted to go out. And it was so hard for me because I wanted them all to like me. I wanted them to think I was good at my job, not a pain in the butt. So that was something that I really struggled with. And that can be, you know, a sign of people pleasing because you really cannot make other people happy. You can't make other people like you. You can only be your authentic self. And another one that I wanted to point out here is is getting along with everyone. This is something that I thought was a good thing. Like, oh, I can get along with anybody. But I I learned that that can mean that you're molding yourself to different groups rather than just showing up as authentically yourself. So I'm curious to hear what resonates here on the bingo board and how many of these are resonating with you guys and, Chuck, anything that you have to add. Yeah. I I love that we're now calling at the bingo board, and and this is not like a prize. If you cross off all the squares, we don't want a blackout situation here. Like, we don't that that's not a good thing. But I think you to your point, Kelsey, I you brought up a really great observation, which is about being authentic to yourself. I think there's also a part of truly usually being honest with yourself when you're evaluating these things. Like, are you overachieving, or would you just call yourself that? Do you ask for help, but just not maybe do everyone? And so are there elements you know, we're we're not gonna be all or nothing in a lot of I mean, there's always times, like, the internalize your stress. I think that's one that I would say I'm very guilty of. But I don't have a problem with trust. I I trust others all the time. So it's it's gonna be bits and pieces, and that's what makes us all unique in doing this. Yeah. It's not it's not an all or nothing on these, I guess, my control. And you might find yourself I think this would be more the observational part is do you feel yourself doing more of these than maybe you've always done in the past? Or I think your point, Kelsey, around getting along with everyone, it's not that we don't wanna get along with everyone, but are we removing boundaries? Are we changing who we are in order to meet the needs of others? We should all probably, at times, try to avoid conflict, but are you afraid of conflict? So, yeah, I I just like having this up here for people to sort of internalize, digest, process. And, yeah, I'm curious for those. Are there some that even maybe you're like, yep. No. I'm that one doesn't apply to me as well because I'm seeing, like, people are saying eight out of 12. There was one comment I wanted to find earlier on here that someone oh, yeah. So Alyssa is saying saying no to work is hard, especially when that work may be for the good of the team. And, again, that may be an ounce for pleasing others. We're like, man, let me this is actually better if I can get this stuff done. So I do think it's taking the time to think through all of these, process them internally, and just rate yourself on where you where you fit on these. And, yeah, it's not we don't wanna check them all off the box. That's not a good thing for us. But I think having that honest personal assessment is, the most valuable part of it. Anyway, we did in our introductory discussion, we also did talk about how is this something that you know, there's obviously a lot of people in in Comms Land here that have joined us today. Would this look differently for people that maybe naturally go into accounting or HR or engineering? How what does that look like for them that might be a bit different than us? Or is it really all the same? You know, we just don't know their world like we know like we know ours. Yeah. It'd be interesting research for sure. There's your next book. Kelsey, there you go. Boom. Next book. My next one's gonna be about parenting and burnout in parenting. And I saw somebody say, others' emotions, especially as a parent, is so hard. It is. Because, man, they have a lot of emotions. You can't fix them. You can't. You cannot. As a recovering engineer, I think it's basically the same example. They're just different. Yeah. Yep. I did. I think it's all this is all human nature. We might think we're unicorns and special flowers in the comms world that we feel things that others don't, but I think, ultimately, no. Like, this is very human nature for for everyone. We just a human experience. Yeah. I'll keep us moving. Another, Swifty reference for you guys here. Thank you all for sharing, first of all. I think it's important to use this tool and to use the stages just to own your role in burnout and where I saw that Taylor Swift gift. I love the chat, and then it distracts me, and I'm like, squirrel. So for me, I realized I had been blaming others for my stress and my burnout. Like, I thought work was the problem. I thought my boyfriend was the problem. But, really, it was my anxiety creating these unrealistic expectations of squirrel. Creating these expectations for myself. So it's not them that needs to change. It's us. We have the power to change our expectations and our reality. Only you have that power. And it starts with setting boundaries, which is my second lesson from therapy. And I could talk about this all day, but I'm not going to because I have one more lesson. But if you take one thing away, let it be this, is that boundaries are the most important thing you can do for yourself to prevent burnout. What are boundaries? Boundaries are rules that we set for ourselves of how we are going to respond to different situations. They are not rules that we set for other people. It's a really important distinction. And, again, this is one of the most important things that you can do to prevent burnout. But they have to be consistently communicated and upheld. Let me show you a couple of my boundaries as an example, and I'll share a quick story with you. So a couple of mine, I try not to answer late night work messages. I protect my lunch hour. And now as you know, my husband and I take turns making dinner. So an example of how these boundaries can come into question and how you have to consistently communicate them. In my, former job, a coworker texted me late at night, like, between eight and 9PM, something like that, asking me if I could present in a meeting that was, like, weeks away. And I lost my mind. This was when I started to have boundaries, and I was like, he doesn't respect me. This is so rude. This isn't urgent. Why would he text me after hours? Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Until I finally was like, wait a second. I have a choice here. I get to decide how I'm gonna respond. And so what I did was wait until the next morning, and I responded via email during work hours, which I thought was the appropriate channel and time for this communication. And I said, hey. I saw your message last night. I'm trying not to respond to things after hours, but I'm happy to present. Let me know if you wanna talk about it. And his response might surprise you. I was so nervous to send that email. But his response really surprised me. He said, you know what? I need to get better at that too. And so that was a lesson to me that people can respect your boundaries, and you can also give them permission to do the same. So, you know, you're teaching people how to treat you when you set boundaries and you communicate boundaries, but you're also, you know, showing them that it's okay to do for themselves. So that was a really great experience for me. But the other thing that I've had to learn over time is that just because I had that conversation with him once didn't mean that he wasn't gonna text me the following week. And that wasn't that wasn't my problem. It was his. And I had to learn, like, my choice I can't control his behavior. I can only control mine. So I'm not gonna respond if you text me after five, but I can't control his working hours. You know? Like, that may be his process, and that's something that I had to learn too. So focus on what is in your control and keep consistently communicating it. Because, eventually, if he does this again, he's gonna learn, like, oh, well, Kelsey's not gonna respond to me, so I might as well not send this text. So I'm curious, Chuck, if you wanna share any of your your boundaries or funny examples like this from your career. Yeah. The, I will admit this and this is not a this is not a badge of pride. There's there's no trophy on my shelf back here behind me for this. This is not a skill set of mine of setting boundaries. I'd I absolutely my wife is listening to this, so she can account for this. I absolutely need to do a better job of setting boundaries. You know? But there there are a few that I will say that I have, especially with the amount of travel and stuff that I do. I do not take red eyes flights. I just won't. It's just not healthy. It's not the right thing to do. It's not good for me. My reframing, though, of boundaries is it's sort of like a way of, like, burnout prevention. What are the what are the rules that I need to put into place to protect myself? I don't think we always think about that as a protecting ourselves. We always think about how do we protect others. And I think boundaries are very much a self protection, but I think you bring up a great point Yep. Kelsey, is that not everyone knows those. Unless we stand by them and communicate them, no one's going to know them if everybody has their own. My favorite story about this, again, this goes along with our printed newspaper thing. I can remember my dad worked at General Motors when I was a kid, and he was a materials manager at a factory. And some real bad stuff had to go down for work to call the home phone. And this is back when there was a home phone in the house, no cell phones or anything like that. You guys would call Someone's phone, pick up answer, hand the phone to someone right there. So some real serious stuff had to go down for work to call. Then I remember the day he brought home a pager from work, which then meant his coworkers didn't have to call the home phone anymore. They could just page him. My mom, who was a very mild mannered, lovely woman, lost her mind that day because she saw right then a boundary had been crossed. All of a sudden, they she knew that boundary of calling the home phone and he worked there. Emergency, yes. You call. But now he might just get that number on a page. It wasn't like the cool text to pager either ones. This is just number would show up and you'd have to call to figure out what's going on. Lost her mind. Mhmm. That seems so basic now to what technology is for all of us today. That's literally what technology is like, willingly bring it all to Yeah. It's we we have an started it. We've invited it. It breaks through every boundary. Time zones, email, remote work, Internet access, cell phone, what messaging whatever it is, we have we have knocked down all those things that we have to build up our own wall. So I would love to hear in the chat from people of I need to learn from all of you. What are some of the boundaries that you put into place? Either work related, personal related, what what have you put into place to help you provide some structure and other sort of burnout prevention for for you. Because I need to learn from all of you. And and, Kelsey, I would be curious. I you've got your lunch hour, which to me sounds awesome, taking turns on dinner, not answering late night work messages. All those are great. What are some other are there any others that you have, in your life of of helping you keep some of that structure? Yeah. I I would say I'm working on my, like, parenting boundaries of, like, what do I need to be a good mom to my three year old who takes a lot out of me? Like, what are those boundaries for me? And part of it is just, like, getting some alone time to myself, filling my own cup over the weekend. And another one that I'm learning, I'm learning that I get really overstimulated by, like, noise and being touched out. Like, you know, her wanting to sit in my lap while I'm eating dinner. I'm like, can't I just eat a meal? So this just so those are some of the things that I'm learning. Like, those are some areas where I can set boundaries with her of, like, nope. Mommy needs space when she's eating or, you know, putting on my headphones when there's too much background noise going on and just, like, ways to preserve my energy. Those are the ones that I'm working on and trying to figure out in my personal life. I think you've I believe it was you. And it might have been someone I believe it was you shared a story about sometimes you just need a break and to get away and go do something that that you enjoy away from everything else. And that could even be part of the boundary. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually a good segue into the third lesson, which is about self care. And Do you mind if we jump into the do you mind if we jump into the chat first and see just some of the, Yeah. Go ahead. Boundaries that people have set up for themselves? Let's see. Worked in. Right? Put delays on email. Yes. Scheduling emails. Scheduling emails Good one. To people, I think, is a great one that's so easy to do. No work emails on phone. Great. I know that, again because you're not other people are like seven. Yeah. Limited the number of apps that they have on their phone. Like, you only put the apps that you need, not out of convenience, but you need. If you're gonna sit and work, do it at your desktop. Mhmm. Yeah. But that's Sarah time at home. I love that. This Sarah Sarah Julian, this concept of shutting down a computer, we talked about this at Campfire because I never do, my partner does, ritualistically, shut down laptops. I never thought about that from a boundary standpoint, and so we just had this Campfire conversation about it of when your laptop or your desktop or whatever is always on, it's so easy to just hop over to it and do something real quick. And then you think you're gonna get out of it in a minute, but it's probably ten or maybe longer. But when you actually have to turn it back on, like, to me, like, that's such a great mindset to have of of shutting that down, both technologically shutting it down and mentally shutting that down. I think that's such a great, such a great practice. Mhmm. Team shutdown. I love it. Hashtag team shutdown. See, Kelsey, removing our outlook from my phone apps for coming through work vacation. I did that once for Slack. I was Slack was like a drug for me pulling me back in, and I deleted Slack. And I'm like, oh, yeah. You don't you actually don't need it. Actually, I'm I'm supportive of deleting all Microsoft apps from your phone, just to be clear. Teams, Outlook, any of them. You don't need any of them on your phone. Especially Teams. Right? Especially. Just at minimum, delete Teams off your phone, please, for all of us. So carry on. I've interrupted you there, Kelsey. I just like seeing everybody's examples. Just reading this last one. I'm not bringing the phone into the bedroom. Yeah. It's hard to do. So many people use it as an alarm clock, but there are other options. There I again, our house is split on this. Person. Kristen leaves her phone outside the bedroom. Mine is my alarm clock. So, yeah, it's it's tempting to have it there. I'm like a happy medium. I keep mine on the other side of the room, so I don't, like, lay in bed and scroll. And I don't check my email, like, first thing when I wake up. But I use it for an alarm clock when I have to cross the room. I'm sure research has been done on this. Is Yeah. Like, the what the scrolling does to our mind and not just having a phone lit up. I've seen that from, like, the light and all that. But that constant feed, that constant scroll that was really never there before, and it's just feeding that. So yeah. Fascinating to me. Yeah. It's like Our dog for doe for doe for Our dog does operate as an alarm clock that is accurate. Alright. Yeah. Let's keep going and do the third lesson here, which we're starting to touch on a little bit, but it's really about making time for self care. And one of the ways that I like to do this is through a daily check-in because something that I also learned in therapy is that feelings are for feeling, even the ones that we label as bad, which, Chuck, I know you would like to point out how many of these are negative emotions versus positive emotions on this slide. But the idea is that no emotions are really bad. They they may not feel good, but there's nothing bad about them now for us to feel. And so much of our suffering is when we resist an emotion. So feeling anxious, for example, if you can just let that run its course, Most emotions only last, I think it's ninety seconds. I read a research study on that. But it's our resistance to it. It's our rumination on it. It's like, why am I feeling this way? I shouldn't feel that way that that prolongs it. So the first step here is just to notice how you're feeling, and I like to do this at the end of the workday, especially if I'm feeling kind of, like, amped up for some reason. Like, hey. What's going on here? And you could start on the inner ring and then go further out to explore what other emotions you might be feeling. And sometimes I'll set a timer just to allow myself to feel it. I know on the psychology campfire, I shared moves I'll put on the ten minute version of all too well, and I'll just let my feelings fly. And then after that's over, I try to shift into something more positive. I do something for myself in the form of self care. I wanna call out a very interesting Okay. I I wanna jump in and share a very interesting observation from Arlene in here. I think this is something we've all experienced. She's like, I've come to realize over the years that many of the people who I thought were unfriendly and inflexible Uh-huh. Were simply good at setting boundaries. To a large extent, we're strong, confident, and empowered individuals. Arlene, that's it. Yes. I talked about this. I talked about this in my book a little bit. But, yeah, it's something that I realized too. Like, the people that I felt, like, distance from, like, my reaction was like, I don't like them there. They're, like, not nice people or whatever. If I examined it further, it was because they were really good at this, or they had something that I was sort of envious of, which was boundaries. So, yeah, it's that's definitely something to examine in this. And I could see that's where someone might be accused of not being a of, like, not being a team player or not pitching in or working a bit longer, like, if you've set those boundaries up, when in fact, no. They're actually looking out for themselves and honestly doing what's probably best for them and the team. It just doesn't feel like it to that moment. So good shout out there, Arlene. This coping wheel is so cool. Whoever sent this. Kelsey, thank you. I love this. This is like what I was trying to create with this self care menu. So I'm gonna look at this and and maybe make a new version of this. But the idea here is to have your own self care menu of the things that work for you with these different kinds of emotions. So, this is mine. I have some of the handouts that I'm gonna give to Chuck to send out after the call, so that you guys can make your own because what works for me may not work for you. But I think that wheel and my menu are hopefully a good start to get you thinking about it. So some things that I do if I'm feeling lonely so that I can connect with my loved ones. If I'm feeling sad, I have a couple of things I do for comfort, so, like, my self care playlist. When I'm tired, I try to get around for a walk or do some meditation, something to give me energy. When I'm stressed or overwhelmed, I set a couple of small goals or I do a brain dump. If I'm angry or anxious, I often need to release that negative energy, and so I will often go for a walk, get outside, do a workout, or also journaling is another way to get get those feelings out. And then I have some things, like, if I'm bored, if you are in that endless scrolling loop, like, what do you what do you really need? Maybe you could clean something. Maybe you could organize something. Maybe you can find a new book or a podcast and do something productive, because you're probably seeking that dopamine that we're looking for when we're scrolling. So I'm curious, what are some of your coping skills, Chuck, and what would you put on your self care menu? Yeah. For for me, it is very much about, I would say, quiet and silence and and Yeah. Moments of solitude. I think those are those are parts of need for helping to recenter at times. You were talking before about being in loud environments and stuff like that. I find myself getting very Yeah. Overstimulated. So not not being alone, but just those moments of solitude. You know, I've I've shared for people one of the things that the challenge I have with and I've worked remote now since 02/2008, is taking breaks. Naturally, not very good at that. All hours will disappear. Hours will move along. Having a dog in our home who needs to go out on walks is the best thing that I could do for myself mentally because it truly forces me away from my desk to take Hard Dog out for a walk. And then I get to choose, do I want to use that time to your point, do I listen to something? Do I use that time for something else? Or is it no no earbuds in, no AirPods in, just Mhmm. Talking to the dog on the walk, you know, as part of it. So I do think there there's some of the things that I've noticed that whatever it might be. Yes. Whatever it might be. But but I do find that, for me, that's I also think Las Vegas. I recommend anybody going to Vegas for self care. 10 out of 10. Awesome opportunity there for self care. But now I love hearing what, all these see these other examples of what other people are saying. Hugs, great one. Mhmm. There there again, I know there's all this research out there around the the, let's say, the the value, but the impact that physical touch has on people and the value of of hugs and you know, I think we talked about this in the campfire, all the things that we can learn from children, or if you have children or you have or you have young kids in your life in some way, we see them being very much more expressive about things like that, about wanting hugs, giving hugs. But, also, you know, I facetiously or or maybe simplistically at times call them emotional terrorist children. Mhmm. But we also see them move through their feelings very quickly, and then they move on. You don't really see them holding on this love for days or weeks or months like adults do. They move through them pretty quickly. And, Kelsey, I'm I'm seeing you nodding along to that. Yeah. I I might have shared this during the campfire or during one of our prep calls, but, yeah, this was like a recent realization that I had in therapy. It was like I I happen to have a therapy appointment right after my daughter had had a really tough morning. And so I went into therapy, like, overstimulated and just, like, still amped up. And so she had me do, like she had me stand up and literally, like, shake my body. It's like moving the emotion out. And then we sat down and did some breathing. But it was important that she had me, like, shake first and just, like, move my body and, like, kinda fling my arms around, whatever. And afterwards, I was like, wait a minute. That is what my toddler does when she has big emotions. She throws her body all around. She cries and she screams, and then she was like, I want Alfie, and she asked for a hug. So, like, they know what they're doing. Mhmm. And so it was just a really interesting reminder for me, of, like, peeling our feelings. And, you know, maybe you don't have to flow. Probably full blown tantrum, but there is some science behind that, I think. I did see I forget what workplace it was, but they you know, they've got those, workstations that you can kinda close the door and it's like a little quiet cube. This workplace did them, but they call them scream rooms. And you can just go in there and close the door and just scream. Like, just let it out. Wanna open my house. So they just sort of in inverted the the, yeah, screen rooms or WordPods. I guess, do they serve both for what, what you need? Let me keep us going so we can get to some questions too. This is my last content slide. I wanted to talk about how do we know when we're getting it right. When you have effective boundaries, you're in great in your alignment with your values, and you feel like you're thriving. You're focusing on the right things. You're happier, lighter, and showing up authentically. That's really important. It's also about recognizing that you can't keep all of the plates spinning at once. It's about recognizing which ones are glass and which ones are plastic because some are gonna drop. And that's really the key is recognizing that we can't we can't do it all. We have to prioritize, and that's where that's where boundaries come in. Alyssa, that's great. And somebody actually shared this glass versus plastic analogy with me when I came back from maternity leave, and it really, like, changed the perspective for me. And she was one of those people that I kinda felt I didn't like her very much. Like, I just I felt like we didn't vibe, but she was a mom of three. And I was like, how are you doing all of this? Like, how are you how are you balancing work and all the kids and stuff? Like, I feel like I'm not doing anything well. This is, like, right when I came back from maternity leave. And she said to me, you you can't keep it all you can't keep all the plates spinning. You just have to figure out which ones are glass and which ones are plastic. I was like, wow. And that was one of those moments that I was like, you know what? I'm envious of her. And she could teach me a lot about boundaries because I think she was really, really good at it. I think that was an excellent point, whoever brought that up. Alright. So as you leave today, my my takeaway for you, I want you to think about what's one boundary that you can set in your life to put you in greater alignment with what matters most to you. And if you wanna chat more, I'm happy to, to set up a a conversation. My email's at the bottom right there. There's also a link to my book if you're interested. I'd love to spend the last ten minutes, taking any of your questions. This has been a great conversation so far. Thank you, Laurie, for getting the book. Yes. Yep. We I have your book right here as well, Kelsey's. And also for all of the excuse me. I'm fighting off a cough here. All of the campfire, psychology members who attended that also got a copy of this as well. So we're making little changes one at a time with everyone, but it does come back to us. Can we please give just a a virtual round of applause to Kelsey, one, for her work that you've done, Kelsey, on improving yourself, battling burnout, making the improvements, all the things you needed to do, and then putting it here for all of us. Yes. Going into it with all kinds of GIFs and and emojis out there. And and thanks to all of you for for joining this conversation. I wanna bring up one thing that our friend, Panaki, asked. I think it was more a rhetorical question. I'm actually gonna take it as a question though, Panaki, where he put, like, what kind of work culture do you have if you have screen pods at work? My take, you have a healthy culture. You have one that actually has looked out for people and recognizes that people need those moments. Even if you've got the the you think it's the healthiest, greatest culture in the world and everybody gets along, it's it's not the case. So I would say a company that provides that is actually looking out for their employees and recognizing, like, you're gonna have some days. You're gonna have some moments. So we want you to be able to feel those feelings, that that Kelsey talked about. Let's use this time and see. Did we did anybody use we have nothing in in the q and a. Excuse me. Go into the chat if you have questions. I have a couple questions for you, Kelsey. We're gonna leave that slide up so people can scan that QR code, and get that book. My question for you, Kelsey, you talked about how you wrote this book while you were working for a company and still working for that company when the book came out. Mhmm. Did that create some very healthy conversations with coworkers? Did it also create, I don't wanna say some negative ones, but hopefully some constructive conversations with some of the company? Yeah. Yes. Yes and yes. And if you read the book, it's not like a corporate tell all about how they ruined my life. It's really about recognizing my own role in burnout. So, you know, I was really nervous about it. I can remember because I started writing it during the pandemic, so we were working from home. So I can remember calling my boss, like, and I wanted to let her know that I was doing this. But I I remember worrying that they'd be like, well, how do you have time to do that? Like, I need to give you some more work or you know? But I was getting up early, and I was doing the book, you know, a couple of hours before I logged on to work and then spending my weekends working on it. But, yeah, I was I was nervous about it. I was nervous about people finding out my truth because I really hadn't told anybody at work how much I had been struggling. And it was like this kind of secret side project for a while. But then as I started to share it more, the coolest thing happened is that people opened up to me and started sharing their stories and started sharing how much it helped them. And it did open up a lot of really cool conversations. I got to do I did a bunch of talks on this topic at the company. I did a TED talk for them. And for the most part, everybody was really, really supportive. I will say one of the difficult conversations that I had to have was with our friends at legal because, you know, they wanted to protect the company and make sure that, you know, the company wasn't being bad mouthed, I guess, which, again, like I said, if you read the book, it's not really bad mouthing the company. But I had to put, like, a disclaimer on my website and things like that that my views didn't represent my company, which I think just makes you more curious to, like, look up and see where I worked. But, I did that for them. And one of the boundaries that I set was they they had asked me to create a separate LinkedIn, like, that I would be Kelsey Buckholtz with x y z company and Kelsey Buckholtz offer. And I was like, no. I'm not doing that. I'm not the CEO of your big company. So nobody cares. Like, no nobody's connecting those dots or or cares, really. So I fought that battle and won, which I was happy about because I felt like my LinkedIn was my personal profile, my personal career, because I wasn't a big fancy executive at the company. So but, yeah, it opened up a lot of really great conversations with people at work. And then we already have one commitment from from Arlene about, setting a new boundary. One was about dinner duty at home. So your one person is already inspired by, your your personal boundary setting. Another question that came in, here, which I think does get a little bit tricky, but I think this is just the recognition of it, but around boundary setting for global teams where you're working on multiple time zones. I have a thought on this, but I wanna hear yours first, Kelsey. Yeah. I think I think it really has to be up to you and what's appropriate for you. I know a lot of people who work with global teams that do kind of adjust their working hours, but I think a lot of people don't too. So I think it it depends on what works for you, and it's up to you to set those boundaries. Like, maybe you are able to work a little bit earlier in the morning. Maybe that works with your schedule and with your flow states, and you're happy to log on a little earlier, but then you're gonna log off earlier in the afternoon. Or maybe you can work late at night and you don't mind doing that. But where are you gonna make up the time, I think, is the is the important thing. Like, you shouldn't be you shouldn't need to put in twelve hour days every day just because you work with a global team. Like, Like, what are what are your working hours going to be? And see where they overlap with others. Because the work the work will get done. What's your I I think this is I think this is Melissa's Melissa's commenting here, which is actually what I was gonna comment, is that this seems to be largely a North American problem, maybe more specific an American problem. People in other countries, not this is universal, but tend to set better boundaries than I think we do. So, again, it it's up to us. It's up to us. That's so true. They will tell you. They'll be like, oh, that's, you know, 8PM my time. They don't do that. They take Alright. We're gonna do one vacation. Couple we'll do a couple lightning ones here Yeah. About prioritization and requests and everything feeling urgent. We've got ninety seconds. What's some of your recommendations here around not wanting to drop the critical comms plate, so to speak? Yeah. I'm just reading through the question. I think I think having a framework is key, and it depends on the client. I know at LocalWisdom, something that we do is called combo meals, and so we'll literally map out what does urgency mean for our clients, so that they can have sort of a prioritization filter in terms of when those requests are coming in. And also having a really clear communication strategy is also a nice filter. So when requests are coming in, you say, does it align to these goals that we all agree on? Those two things, I think, can be really helpful. Yep. So we've got thirty seconds left. I wanna be respectful of everyone's time. Kelsey, do you mind, stop sharing your screen so we can see you full screen? Everyone give another round of applause for Kelsey, one, for for helping us have this very important conversation. It's a conversation we will be having all the time, not just during May, but, you know, Kelsey, I do appreciate your expertise and your experience bringing that to all of us. At ICology, we are happy to host conversations like this. We'd love to do more of them, and we will. Next month would be a very different topic, one that I'm sure you all know I'm very excited about. We're gonna be talking about Microsoft Copilot, different strategies that communicators can use with Copilot. We've got Katie Labrun and Carrie Knutson who will be leading that. More to come. All of you will get this by by email. And if you wanna be part of a community that truly does care about the world of internal comms and internal communicators, join us at joinicology.com. Hope you all have a great day. Set some boundaries today. I'm gonna work to do the same, and hope you all have a wonderful week. Thank you so much. Thank you all so much.