- https://www.mind.org.uk/workplace/mental-health-at-work/dealing-with-burnout-when-working-from-home/
- https://mentalhealth-uk.org/burnout/
- https://www.calm.com/blog/how-to-deal-with-burnout-at-work
- Approaching the conversation doesn’t put ‘ideas’ into people’s head
- Safety in disclosing
- Support shifts over time
For further info on Power of the Parent you can head to our website http://www.power-of-the-parent.com or connect to the founder, Charlotte Speak on LinkedIn.
Episode Transcript
Hello and welcome to Power of the Parent, the podcast. This series is a new format and we are going to be focusing on a different topic each week, bringing you three things you need to know about whatever that may be, mainly from an employer perspective. But of course, there’s plenty of reframing that parents could do to benefit from the content as well.
We will be covering everything from parental leave transitions, managing boundaries, what to do when your talent pipeline looks a bit dodgy, tips on gathering feedback, and things like establishing parental support networks. So let’s dive in.
Today we are gonna be talking about burnout in parents. Now there is no way of softening this. Burnout is crap, and something regularly hitting the headlines with rising numbers of people experiencing it over the last four years.
In the episode today, I’m going to be talking about how we can support parents and carers who experience burnout. What I’m not talking about specifically is parental burnout, which is a different thing, albeit a close sibling of the more all encompassing burnout. Before I dive into the three things, I’ll start by outlining the definitions of both to bring to life the differences and ultimately the similarities.
So the definition of parental burnout includes experiencing physical or emotional exhaustion, or both, feeling shame about their parenting or that they’re not as good a parent as they used to be, feeling overwhelmed or fed up with the role of being a parent, and feeling emotionally disconnected from their children.
Despite many people feeling this way, recent research from the Parenting Research Center shows that 60 percent of parents don’t routinely do anything to relax and recharge. This research reports 2 in 5 parents feel tiredness impacts their ability to be the kind of parent they want to be, and nearly half of all parents think that there’s not enough time in the day to get everything done.
Which is a pretty rubbish picture, isn’t it? Now, burnout is recognized by the World Health Organization as an occupational phenomenon. And although I have absolutely no business challenging WHO, my experience over the last six years suggests it’s not really limited to that. And certainly not something reserved for those in some form of employment.
While it’s not a medical condition, it has been classified as a syndrome, meaning a collection of symptoms or signs associated with a specific health related cause. Some of the flags for burnout include, feeling tired or drained most of the time, feeling helpless, trapped, and/or defeated, feeling detached or alone in the world, Having a cynical or negative outlook, self doubt, procrastinating and taking longer to get things done, and feeling overwhelmed.
Now I’m going to focus on the second version here, but there are lots of amazing resources and fonts of knowledge on parental burnout out there. Professionals like Anita Clear and Nicola Lowe are excellent. And the glorious Emma Svanberg has written an incredible book, as well as regularly sharing free resources and discussion topics online. I’ll leave a link in the show notes to her info.
What you’ll notice about the definitions is that one specifically addresses a parenting angle. Both refer to feelings of helplessness and exhaustion though. So whilst as an employer, you may not be wanting to wade into parenting discussions, totally understandable, what is evident is that regardless of either scenario, these are people in your workplace right now.
So the three things that I’m going to be covering are firstly, approaching the conversation doesn’t put ideas in people’s head, secondly, safety in disclosing, and thirdly, support shifts over time.
So let’s start with number one. Approaching the conversation doesn’t put ideas in people’s heads. Now this isn’t uncommon for us to feel. You know, what if mentioning burnout leads someone to being burnt out? Sadly, or maybe luckily, it’s not as sequential as one conversation being the thing that pushes someone towards experiencing burnout. It’s likely to creep up on us over time and it’s not always easy to spot. I’ve personally recently come through the other side of burnout and it was probably going on for about four months before I got to the point of recognizing there was a difference from a day to day, what I would deem an acceptable level of tiredness and overwhelm for me through to experiencing actual burnout.
If you think you’re spotting the signs of someone in your team, you can approach it in a compassionate way without overstepping boundaries. Think of it from a place of responsibility of someone’s wellbeing in the workplace. Something along the lines of, I’m worried about you at the moment, I’ve noticed X, Y, and Z, and although I’m not saying this from a position of extensive knowledge on the subject, I wondered if you might be experiencing burnout. Maybe we could look together at where you’re sitting on that scale and start to come up with a plan to help. Whether or not it’s burnout, I want to make sure you’re doing okay. Now everybody’s going to be different. I’m sharing that as an example. Please use your creative licence and care to shape something that you would actually say.
So secondly, safety and disclosing. Admitting to burnout can be an incredibly vulnerable move to make. There are so many connotations of what it might mean. Many of them negative, of course, but don’t worry. I’m not going to pick off the negative connotations one by one, and nor will I go down the route of calling burnout recovery, any sort of superpower or positive, albeit I do think there are instances where it can have a really empowering long term impact when handled well. But what I do want to say is that feeling safe to share what you’re going through is incredibly important. Consider things like your reaction. Nobody’s perfect and we’ve all reacted to things in the moment, but we need to hold front and centre that any disclosure is about the person in front of you. If you don’t know what to say, it’s okay to declare that. Far better to say I’ll help however I can starting with listening rather than rushing in with lots of suggestions, than to feel like you’ve got to have some sort of word vomit and end up tripping over lots of things. Promise the confidentiality someone might be craving, but be honest, if you need to seek guidance from someone else.
For a parent or carer, this could have a level of worry about people’s views on their ability to manage a caring responsibility. So be mindful they’re coming from an angle that carries a huge societal judgement and pointing that out, not because you have to solve it, but having an awareness of it that that could be going through someone’s thoughts, can go a really long way.
And finally, support shifts over time. This is a short and to the point one here, what someone might need from you at the beginning of identifying burnout will likely be different to what they need weeks or months later. One conversation doesn’t fix it all. So whatever you agree with your valued employee in terms of support, it’s important to also agree when and how to check in with them.
I’m also going to treat you to a bonus idea today. It is a great start to look at what you’re celebrating. If it’s all long working hours, presenteeism and one particular way of working, you may be inadvertently contributing to the challenge. We are human and often seek validation and to know we’re doing a good job.
If the thing we see held up as a good job is putting in 14 hour days and having zero time to look after ourselves, our survival instincts are still present and we’ll do what we can to ascribe to that way of working. So have a think about where you might be able to bring in other forms of celebration and recognition.
I’m going to end by saying, of course, things like counselling services or access to an employee assistance program can be wonderful sources of support. However, those first reactions and ongoing day to day practicalities are the things that you can play a vital role in as an employer.
And that’s all for this episode, I will be back next week with three more things you need to know about.
Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of Power of the Parent with podcast. If you have got a few spare minutes, who am I kidding? Of course you haven’t got a few spare minutes, but if you would like to choose to spend a few of your minutes giving me any sort of review or rating, I would massively appreciate it.
It does help other people find it. And it also lets me know that I’m hitting the spot with listeners. For more free resources, you can head to the show where you’ll find a link to the Power of the Parent website. Or do head on over to LinkedIn and give me a follow. Search Charlotte Speak and my grinning face should pop up.
Until next time, take care.