Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (7 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Get on the waitlist now! https://bit.ly/UNFRIED

“Making yourself feel good in your own space is really important,” urges host Cait Donovan on today’s episode of FRIED, the second in a six-part series dedicated to the various factors that make us more vulnerable to burnout. Following the episode which covered factors in the workplace, today’s episode discusses the impact of our environment—both interior and exterior—on our parasympathetic nervous system and our ability to handle stress. Today, Cait will cover the importance of light exposure—and lack thereof—as well green spaces, clutter piles, and when. You’ll learn why even the way you store your cutlery can change the way you feel in your own space.

No matter how much time, energy or money you have to devote to changing your environment—every little adjustment makes a difference. Cait shares research and science behind her suggestions, while also encouraging you to cater to your own individual preferences. She’ll share the three colors that are proven to inspire calm in the home, how to increase the function of your prefrontal cortex and how to create community around you even when you live alone.

What small shift can you make in your environment in the next week? With that one small change you will begin to buy yourself the energy you will need to make the larger changes in your burnout recovery.

Quotes

• “A lot of times, this is something that we have a lot of control over for relatively low cost—if not totally free—and we’re not thinking about it because so much of the “self-help” work out there is about fixing your mindset, and managing your perfectionism and doing something about your boundaries. Sometimes, when you can’t do any of those things, I want you to know there is still something you can do, some changes you can make, some influence you can have without having to be focused on doing all this work all the time.” (2:02 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “When you view the sunrise and view the sunset and your eyes are exposed—there are actually cones and rods in your eyes that are exposed to a particular level of blue light that’s given out during those hours, that help to set off your hormonal cascade, the circadian rhythm of your hormonal cascade properly.” (6:49 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “When we’re thinking about burnout recovery, we [often think] ‘Go boundaries, and have these conversations and maybe even quit your job or talk to your manager,’ and do all these big life things. Sometimes, the first thing you need to do is buy a round nightstand or something else equally seemingly insignificant in your world that will help lower your stress level so that you can manage the other things in your life with more ease so that you have more buffer in your stress response system to be able to handle the rest of life.” (13:41 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “You should feel community within your household if there are other people who live with you, and/or around your household. So, if there is no community at all in your neighborhood, even if the only community you have is that you have a dog and the fellow dog walkers say hello to each other when they’re out, that matters.” (17:32 | Caitlin Donovan)

Links

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (7 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Get on the waitlist now! https://bit.ly/UNFRIED

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (7 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Get on the waitlist now! https://bit.ly/UNFRIED

“I completely lost myself, my physical, mental and emotional well-being, but I lost my identity. I was no longer Claudia, I was the caregiver,” explains today’s guest Claudia Taboada, a holistic wellness and burnout prevention coach, bestselling author and international speaker who joins FRIED today to discuss the experience of burnout by those who care for neurodiverse children. After her oldest son was diagnosed with autism in 2003, Claudia left her job to care for him full time. Soon, not only was she mentally and physically exhausted from trying to be, as she called it, the “autism supermom” but she lost sight of her own goals and aspirations along the way. On today’s episode, she explains how a guide dog who had been gifted to the family to help with son’s development, actually helped her realize how important it is for those who care for everyone else to carve out time to care for themselves, to de-clutter their minds, to get their bodies moving and reconnect with themselves.

Of course, for most women, this is easier said than done. Claudia talks to host Cait Donovan about the pressure to people-please, to put one’s own needs last on the list, and the importance of filling your own cup. She also discusses setting mental boundaries against toxic people and influences, while also pushing past our own limiting beliefs and fears, and what she does to foster a growth mindset.

Quotes

• “It was really about decluttering the mind. On these walks, I was by myself—and the dog—but I was into the present moment. They were mindful walks, I called them ‘the mindful walks.’ I was on my stride, and the smells, the sights—everything. So, I was in the present moment and that finally allowed my mind to start decluttering. The mind started to declutter and I started to reconnect with myself.” (9:37 | Claudia Taboada)
• “I crossed the finish line and that was the moment, that was my epiphany—my real epiphany—where I said, ‘This is it. Burnout stops here. I need to take charge. I need to take charge of my physical, mental and emotional health because I have been neglecting myself and as the mother of a severely autistic child who is going to be dependent on me for the rest of his days, I cannot die. I need to recover from this burnout and I need to stay in peak mental, physical and emotional state to be able to not only take care of him in the long run, but also go after my dreams and my aspirations, which I had lost.” (13:26 | Claudia Taboada)
• “I also have my own identity now. So even though my life is harder now because I’m by myself, taking care of my son, I’m also feeling fulfilled and I’m doing my things and I have my business and all that. And I have learned how to put my boundaries around my caregiving role so that I can do my own things as well.” (20:15 | Claudia Taboada)
• “Women, we have been conditioned to give, to be everything to everyone and we put ourselves at the bottom of the priority list, and when we start setting boundaries and when we start saying, ‘Well, maybe I also have needs,’ we feel guilty. Whether it’s at work or it’s at home, we feel guilty.” (22:02 | Claudia Taboada)

Links

Connect with Claudia Taboada:

https://claudiataboada.com/

www.linkedin.com/in/claudia-taboada-216a901bb

https://calendly.com/claudiataboada/30-minute--gameplan-call

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (7 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Get on the waitlist now! https://bit.ly/UNFRIED

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (7 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Get on the waitlist now! https://bit.ly/UNFRIED

“Irrational fear is just a sign of depletion,” said Sarah Vosen in a recent conversation with co-host Cait Donovan. This profound insight became the foundation for today’s episode. According to Chinese medicine, the paralyzing anxiety that often accompanies burnout—leaving you disconnected from yourself and others, doubting your intuition, and retreating from the world—stems from a depletion of energy in the kidney system. Citing the book “Rooted in Spirit: The Heart of Chinese Medicine,” Cait explains that when the heart and kidney systems fail to connect and communicate, it leads to insecurity, hesitation, and a loss of perspective on life’s possibilities.

So, what can we do about it? Since fear is a physical symptom of a deeper issue, the solution lies in the physical realm. Sarah and Cait discuss dietary changes, exercise, and environmental adjustments that can help restore kidney energy. They also delve into a specific visualization technique and even suggest the best fashion choices to support this healing process.

Join the conversation to discover the surprising and common physical signs that may be linked to the kidney’s energetic system, along with a specific exercise that could bring you the relief you’ve been seeking.

Quotes

• “When you’re feeling irrational fear, it feels like it’s the biggest thing, top priority, it is coloring everything in your world. It’s a big deal.” (2:31 | Sarah Vosen)
• “It’s just a sign—not to minimize that it feels gigantic, but it’s just a sign—it’s just one of the ways that your body’s telling you, ‘I’m so depleted that I am terrified of everything on purpose. I’m telling you that I’m scared of everything because I want you to sit still. I want you to honor this fear and stop pushing yourself because you are dangerously depleted.’” (3:45 | Sarah Vosen)
• “This goes both ways: when this communication is disrupted, fear is the result. And also, when there is too much fear, a disruption of this communication can be the result.” (9:11 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “Your hesitation to take a step forward in any direction because you feel like it’s all wrong and you’re going to hurt yourself and you just don’t know. You can’t trust because you’re disconnected from your heart. Your heart is no longer leading you in the way that it used to. We didn’t even used to think about it, but a lot of times, you just thought, ‘Oh. That feels good. I’m going to do that.’ But when you’re not connected to your heart anymore and this fear is driving you, it actually just drives you straight into the ground.” (10:29 | Sarah Vosen)
• “Most people don’t necessarily know this but the heart sends more signals to the brain during the day than the brain sends to the heart—this is not Chinese medicine, this is Western research. So, your heart is sending more information to your brain than the other way around. So, your heart has a lot of influence over how you function on a day-to-day basis.” (11:19 | Caitlin Donovan)

Links

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (7 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Get on the waitlist now! https://bit.ly/UNFRIED

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm