Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. Are you tired of feeling just perpetually exhausted? As if life is this never ending treadmill of tasks, responsibilities, and stress? What if I told you there is a way out of this exhausting cycle? I am so excited because today, we dive deep into the world of burnout recovery with Kate Donovan, a remarkable woman who has reshaped her life through the lens of Chinese medicine and life coaching.

Erica: Known as the burnout queen, Kate is here to share her insights and strategies on how to reclaim your life from the clutches of burnout. Y'all are not going to want to miss this as we take you on a journey from exhaustion to exhilaration.

Erica: I'm obsessed with all things growth and abundance, and I'm here to talk you through the tried and true secrets to get you to level up your career and your life. We talk about the hard stuff here. Imposter syndrome, perfectionism, fear, and burnout.

Cait: So pull

Erica: up a seat, pop in an earbud, and let's dive in. Today, we have Kate Donovan, an amazing woman who has transformed her life little by little with skills in Chinese medicine and life coaching, and she is what I like to call the burnout queen. And she is all about supporting you on your burnout recovery journey. So, Kate, I am so thrilled to have you on the podcast from now to next. How are you today?

Cait: I am great. We're at the beginning of a new year, and I had a really wonderful amount of space to, like, check some things off that I just hadn't gotten to in ages. So I had a really clearing end of the year while I was able to just, like, really refresh. Yeah. I was able to hit refresh on a lot of things, so I'm feeling really good.

Erica: It's one of my favorite pieces of that quiet lull of December into the New Year.

Cait: Me too.

Erica: But I would love to hear more about who are you, what is this burnout recovery thing, and how do you help people today?

Cait: We we were just talking about my about page a second ago. And on my about page, I have the same thing that I write about myself in my book just copied and pasted onto my about page. And it starts with the words I am and a reminder that the words that come after I am are the most powerful words that we could ever say. And so you're asking me that and nor my my normal story is coming up to the very surface. And then I'm starting to say, is that still the story that I need to be telling?

Cait: Which is an interesting space to be, but the story that I normally tell, the things that I normally share, are that I grew up in a fairly destitute city in Massachusetts, lots of drugs and gangs. My father was an alcoholic and a drug addict until I was six. My family's still very happy. I didn't really admit to anything being wrong with my childhood until I was 35 and recovering from burnout because my parents are still together. My father's been sober a long time.

Cait: We all laugh together. We spend a lot of time together. And in comparison with a lot of my other friends' families and the way things are going, like, my family's pretty killer now. So there's a disconnect for me always there that I don't know how it could have started like that and ended up like this. You know?

Cait: So that's part of it. I fought for a long time to get away from that hometown because I was so afraid to get stuck there. And so I made a lot of bold moves that people were like, you were so courageous. And I was like, no, honey. I was just afraid to get stuck.

Cait: And so I pushed myself beyond a lot of things that should have been possible for someone from a place like I'm from. I started out in college at a from like, I was doing med school. So I started out as a premed student. I had always wanted to be a doctor that took a left hand turn. I ended up moving to California and studying Chinese medicine instead, still a four year master's degree, a pretty serious program.

Cait: Finished that. And in the meantime, had met someone from Poland while I was traveling through Argentina. Listen. I can't even keep track of where I am anymore either. So if some of you are lost, don't worry about it.

Cait: It doesn't matter. I then moved from California to Poland to get married. Got to Poland, still needed to prove myself, still needed to be successful, had a brand new master's degree, no idea if I could practice acupuncture in Poland, and no language skills. Ended up building a massive acupuncture practice in Warsaw, was very successful. By the time I was 28, I was in magazines, on TV, speaking Polish fluently, had a three to six month waiting list, all the things.

Cait: And it nearly killed me. It nearly killed me. So my move to Prague, my husband and I moved to Prague about, six years after I got to Poland. I went through my recovery in Prague. Some of it, I didn't realize I was going through my cover my recovery, then I realized it was burnt out then went through it on purpose.

Cait: Then we moved to The US, so another international move. Since coming back to The US, I've really dug into the area of burnout. I did another degree so that I would really know what I was talking about because I'm an overachiever. That's the burnout. Right?

Cait: Like, I know who I am. I'm not trying to pretend like I got away from that and burnout. I still have this need to prove myself and to keep going and to push forward. But now I do it from a different sense of knowing who I am.

Erica: I love that you talk about not getting away from burnout. Right? This is not a check done box. You can't check it off like I've unloaded the dishwasher. I'm moving along.

Erica: It is the continual work, and I think it's powerful because one of the questions I always get asked about sticky floors is do they ever go away? And the answer is always no. They never do. You just get better and stronger and faster about recognizing those cues and the things that kind of stress you out and tick you off and set you off, whatever that is.

Cait: Yeah.

Erica: But one of the questions that I have for you, and you mentioned you had this need to prove yourself, and you've talked about the fear of wanting to get out of Massachusetts. Where does the need to prove oneself come from, do you think?

Cait: If we're gonna be sort of, like, emotional about it, the need to prove to yourself comes from low self worth. If we're gonna be really psychological about it, the need to prove yourself comes from poor attachment styles in childhood.

Erica: And how do you work through that? And I ask that because so many of the women on this podcast, for my longtime listeners, they've all heard that these different women saying, I wish I knew my worth. So it's not uncommon.

Cait: No. I was looking at a meta analysis research study, and, what it said was that during the childhood years, when they can study attachment styles from the way a child reacts to its primary caregiver in a room and leaving a room, etcetera, they realize that fifty one point six percent of people have the healthy secure attachment style, which leaves nearly fifty percent of people Yeah. Without the healthy attachment style. So I think if we're starting out with a base amount of people that have poor attachment styles, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, etcetera, if we have these attachment styles that are not healthy from the get go and we do not know how to self soothe and we do not feel on some level that we deserve care, we were not we were on some level, whether it was just interpreted or whether it was intentional or whether it was a mistake or whether it was it doesn't matter. I'm not blaming parents.

Cait: This is just human. We were neglected. And so then we neglect ourselves. How can you feel worthy when you are neglected, especially by yourself? But you learn to neglect yourself because no one took care of you.

Cait: At the end of the day, we are individual people, and we need individual things. If you have been the mother of more than one child, you know how true this is. You can give the same exact thing to two different children, and one of them will form a secure attachment and the other one will not because people are different. So for the parents out there, please, really, this is not about blaming you. It is almost impossible for you to know the needs of that little being, to really truly know them.

Cait: You do the best you can with what you've got and with whatever you've been carrying with yourself throughout your life and with whatever else is going on in your life at the time. So parents know it's not it's not your fault. And at the same time, those attachment styles and what we're able to get when we are small children can really set the stage for our ability to see ourselves as valuable human beings. I do believe that this core separation between these attachment styles is one of the main factors in eventual burnout.

Erica: Yeah. I think you're onto something there. Absolutely.

Cait: And people are like, but we both work the same job, and why did this person burn out and that person didn't? And I'm like, well Everybody's different.

Erica: My question about your burnout, and you write about this in your book, and this is how sneaky burnout can be, is that it crept up on you and happened when you were doing something that you loved.

Cait: Yeah.

Erica: When you were a fertility acupuncturist.

Cait: Yeah.

Erica: So walk me through this story. I would like to hear really how what kind of symptoms of burnout were you experiencing? How did it show up in your life? And how did you have this moment of realization of like, oh, shit. I am burnt the f out.

Cait: Yeah. So I was doing something that I loved, but I wasn't doing it a good way. So that's step number one at the time. Like I said, I was 28 when I was reaching sort of peak success, and I didn't understand at the time that hiring a receptionist would have made me more money. The only thing I could think about, but that was what it was gonna cost me and how I had this, you know, $100,000 U United States student loan payment to make.

Cait: And I was working in Poland earning a lot less money than I would have been earning had I been in The United States. So this bill was three times the size depending on the currency rate at any given moment. My health was breaking down. I was gaining weight. My thyroid was all over the place.

Cait: They found fibroids in my breast. My cycle was off. I was resentful as all get up. I was angry. I was irritable.

Cait: I wasn't exercising. I, like, couldn't even my legs were so heavy that I could barely function. And I kind of blamed being in Poland for all of that. So I told my husband, like, I gotta bounce to it. And he happened to, at that time, get a job offer in Prague.

Cait: And I'm thinking to myself, when it happened to go great, Eastern Europe to Eastern Europe, just what I need. Wonderful. So we moved to Prague, and I worked a lot less. I knew that I needed to work less. I knew I needed to work differently.

Cait: I knew things weren't quite right. But in Prague, I had to start over. I was only working twenty five hours a week. And even when I got busy, I was still only working twenty five hours a week, so I wasn't really overdoing it. But I was still tired.

Cait: I was still a little resentful. My friendships were annoying me. Every time I got a text, it was like, you wanna go have lunch? The first thing that came to my mind was like, girl, do you think I have time for lunch? Hello?

Cait: Meanwhile, I'm working twenty five hours a week. I have plenty of time for lunch. But in my mind, I was so overwhelmed that I was like, don't you understand that some of us have things to do? Which is so rude. I was I was out of my mind.

Cait: And then one day, I was sitting in front of my computer. I was reading an article. I think it was a Harvard Business Review on burnout. And I was going, oh, oh, shit. Light bulb.

Cait: Light bulb and crash. It settled into my bones. You know when you read something and it resonates so deeply and you just can't I almost collapsed that day because I was like, oh my god. How did I didn't even know it was a word. I was a health care practitioner.

Cait: I didn't even know burnout was a thing. I just and and Chinese medicine inherently teaches you how stress affects the body Yeah. In every single way in a holistic manner, which really helps inform how I'm able to help people now. But I just was like, and then I went through the self blame and the guilt and the judgment of how could I let this happen. I should know better.

Cait: I'm a health care practitioner. I've been meditating since I was 18. Like, what is wrong with me? So when it came to burnout, when I I started sort of trying to figure it out, and then I stopped at one point, and it was the first time in my life. And this is one of the most important lessons that I've learned that I've taken with me, and it has saved me so much trouble over the years.

Cait: One of the most important lessons I learned was I have actually taken this as far as I can, and I don't actually know enough to make myself better, not because I don't know enough. Almost everyone I work with has been in therapy for ten years, has read all the books, is a self help junkie. Like, I talk to people every day who know what they're talking about and think that they are self aware, and they are to a certain degree. But I knew that I had taken myself absolutely as far as I could go and that I wasn't gonna get through it without help. I did not figure it out alone because I don't think you should, and partially because and we go back to the attachment issue.

Cait: Partially because you don't recover from burnout until you learn how to coregulate with people. Burnout is a relationship problem between you and people, between you and work, between you and your life, between you and your friends, between you and your partner, between you and the earth. Burnout is a relationship problem, so you can't actually get out of it by yourself.

Erica: Well, they probably didn't experience true burnout, and you actually bring me to a really

Cait: great true recovery.

Erica: Right. You bring me to a really great topic that I wanted to talk about because you mentioned, like, I didn't even know that burnout was a thing. And now it's on the cover of every magazine. Everybody's writing about it. It's almost become this buzzword.

Erica: And also too, people just say, oh, I'm so burnt out.

Cait: Yeah.

Erica: Which we know it's like, okay. That's just your way of saying you're very overwhelmed right now. How can people truly tell the difference between true burnout and just needing to take a small break?

Cait: Yeah. So the the most simple difference is that when you are just stressed, you can take two or three days off and recover and feel ready to go again on Monday. When you are burnt out, you can take a month off on a private island and sleep for the whole entire time and come back and still feel exhausted. The name of my book is called the bounce back ability factor. This bounce back ability is the difference between being just stressed or burnt out.

Cait: When you are burnt out, you do not have bounce back ability. It's so minimal, you can barely feel it. So if you can take a vacation and feel better, it's not burnout, honey. But if you take three months off work and you're not sure if you can go back, it's burnout.

Erica: I think that's a really great checklist. Right? Very basic. If you felt like you had r and r time and you are back on day one and you are back in that place of resentment and frustration and you can't go on anymore, that's burnout. If you're hitting the ground running, you just might have been a little stressed.

Cait: You just needed some time, which is it doesn't one of them is not better than the other or worse than the other. It's just the state of your health at any given moment in time. And if you continue down the just stressed road without managing it at all, you will end up burnt out.

Erica: Absolutely. One thing that you also mentioned, and I love this, is you say that burnout is not your fault. No. But it kinda feels that way sometimes.

Cait: I know.

Erica: So walk me through this. I'm here for it too, by the way. Why is it not our fault, and whose fault is it?

Cait: I don't really think burnout is anybody's fault, just like I don't necessarily think that cancer or diabetes are is anybody's fault. There is a holistic way to view burnout that shows us that there are workplace elements that affect us, that affect our ability to burnout, our vulnerability to burnout. There are cultural factors that affect us. There are familial and genetic factors that affect us. There are trait factors that affect us.

Cait: There are health factors, and there are environmental factors. And the web of causation tells us that diabetes type two doesn't just happen because you overeat sugar. It happens because of access to food. It happens because of where you live. It happens because of not enough exercise or lack of green space in order to exercise.

Cait: It happens because all these factors have to come together for type two diabetes to happen. Burnout is the same. There is a web of causation. This is where my Chinese medicine background is so useful. In Chinese medicine, everything has a web of causation.

Cait: We've been talking about that for three thousand years. But and you if you look on LinkedIn and on Instagram, a lot of people are saying, the root cause of burnout is x y z. You can't get fix burnout until you get to the root cause. And I'm like, bish, there is no root cause. There's, like, 87 root causes, and some of them you can't even control.

Cait: So how can something be your fault when there's a 103 factors involved and you only know six of them?

Erica: I'm just I'm envisioning this and myself and all these other women that I know and that I've spoken to. We are all ambitious, high achieving women. So we are all doing the thing that has always brought us success. And then it feels like it's not working.

Cait: So then like it turns on us.

Erica: Yes. And it feels like it's my fault. So I love this web of causation and all of the different factors that come in and how you tie it up with something no one considers their fault, right, like a cancer diagnosis or something like that. What does the recovery process look like? And I'm sure it's different for everybody.

Erica: But in your line of work, when you are working with anyone who's going through burnout, what does that recovery road map look like?

Cait: There are I'm glad you said. It's different. It really is different for everybody. It's why I don't have a, like, burnout recovery framework that I try to force all of my clients into. Because some people, I start with what's called life pruning, and some people, I start with, actually, you need to buy a new nightstand.

Cait: Really depends. One thing that we always need, always, everyone that's going through burnout needs this, is an increased feeling of inner safety. You need to convince yourself that you are safe, at least in your home, which means things as important as update your alarm system, if you need to, and things as silly as if that blanket that looks really good on your couch is actually scratchy so you don't use it because it's uncomfortable, get a softer blanket. Little things. And people always laugh at me when I say stuff like that.

Cait: But I have seen it work over and over and over and over again. Your nervous system cannot move itself away from trying to protect you unless it doesn't have to protect you. So you have to increase your feelings of safety. Some of that is external. It might mean, honestly, like, if you hate the color of your walls in your bedroom, you might have to paint them.

Cait: Make it a more soothing color that you enjoy more. Your your literally, your nervous system will react to that. There are studies to prove it. Do whatever you can externally to help you feel safe, and then we have to work on internally feeling safe. Now this is if there is trauma involved, this can be a weird thing to figure out because the whole world loves to say, well, just breathe and be mindful.

Cait: But breathing might bring you a panic attack, and burnout is often, like, associated with high levels of adrenaline. So you're, like, in this fight or flight, like, kinda have shaking all the time. You're exhausted, but you can't sleep. You're tired, but wired. You're ready to fight something, but, like, you don't have the energy if you tried, and you're in this weird, like, in between space.

Cait: So sometimes the answer is breathing or body scan type meditations, but we have to figure out what's going to create feelings of safety for you. This is another reason it's important to work with people because you don't always know what's gonna create safety for you. Probably, if you knew, you would already be doing it. So sometimes it's breathing, but focusing on increasing levels of external safety and internal safety is absolutely critical for every single person going through burnout recovery no matter what. When I said earlier, change your nightstand, this was an actual client.

Cait: We were talking about safety in her household, and she walked me through. And I I looked and she mentioned that when she goes to bed at night, she's always afraid a little bit that she's gonna knock her eye on the edge of her nightstand because it's a little bit higher than her mattress and it's a corner. I said, well, you need you can't have that nightstand anymore. Go buy a round one that's lower than your mattress. And she was think probably thinking to herself, I paid you a few thousand dollars to tell me to go to IKEA?

Cait: Like, are you serious right now? I was like, Wayfair is good enough. I don't even care. But you get yourself a round nightstand because you are literally going to bed in fight or flight every night. You can't do that to yourself.

Cait: So that's number one. That was a long winded way to say safety, but I think a lot of times when you say increase safety, people don't know what you mean.

Erica: I think that was a really great example. What about people who maybe they don't necessarily feel so safe in their work, in their job?

Cait: So we have to go through the quit or grit exercise. I am not the person who purports that you always have to quit your job to recover from burnout because I don't think your job is the primary suspect necessarily. However, if you are working for a bully, you have to quit your job. You can't protect yourself in enough energetic bubbles to avoid having a bully affect you. I am not teaching people how to survive in toxic traumatic environments.

Cait: I do not believe that to be a smart way to move through life. So quit or grit, you need to figure it out. And if you are to the point where you are willing to quit, then you should throw everything at it. If you can make it safer, then you do. You have those difficult conversations that you've been avoiding.

Cait: You get rid of those parts of your job that you really hate and see if you can actually do it. If you get the support and things can shift and you get moved to a different team and you get a different boss and you get you never know what's gonna happen. If you're gonna quit anyway, you might as well try and get what you want before you do. If you think you've tried to do that already, I need you to ask yourself if you have been explicit enough and concise enough and direct enough. If anything that you have offered has been a hint and you're waiting for somebody to figure something out, you have not yet asked for what you want and need.

Cait: End of story. So when you're in quit or grip mode, you have to throw everything at it to see if it's actually possible for it to work. This is like last ditch marriage counseling before divorce. And if both sides are willing to make it work, it works. I've seen it work a lot.

Cait: But if they don't care and they'd rather fire you and hire three people in your place, then you need to get out of there because the two of you, you and your job and your workplace have created a relationship that is unbalanced and unfair?

Erica: One area I really think that a lot of women, myself included, struggle with is the people pleasing aspect of it. Not only are we ambitious, but we also want everyone around us to be happy, which I think is totally normal.

Cait: We don't want everybody about us to be happy. That's not people pleasing.

Erica: Okay. Tell me more. Educate me. Get it to me, Kate.

Cait: People pleasing is wanting to avoid people disliking you. People pleasing is not about other people at all. People pleasing is about your fear of being disliked, unloved, and unworthy.

Erica: Hey there, listeners. If you have ever felt like you're stuck in a place, held back by self doubt, perfectionism, or that pesky inner critic, you're not alone. We all face those sticky floors that keep us from reaching the heights we dream of. But guess what? It's time to shatter those limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities.

Erica: My book, Glassy Leads and Sticky Floors, is your ultimate guide to smashing through barriers, overcoming limiting beliefs, and stepping into your full potential. This book has been endorsed by none other than the great Mel Robbins, best selling author and motivational powerhouse. It's also been featured in Success Magazine, so you know it's packed with insights that work. Inside, you'll find real life sticky floor stories, practical strategies to help you navigate your own sticky floor moments, and a whole lot of inspiration to keep you climbing. This isn't just a book.

Erica: It's your roadmap to success, confidence, and freedom. Grab your copy of Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors today at www.ericaandersonrooney.com. Whether you're in the boardroom, the classroom, or just starting out, this book is for you because no one, and I mean no one, deserves to stay stuck, No one deserves to feel small, and you have glass ceilings to shatter. Let's do this. Y'all, we are peeling back the onion today.

Cait: We are not messing around. I do not mess around.

Erica: We are not messing around. That is very deep. And as you said it, I was like, well, shit. That is very true. It is.

Erica: It's more about your own personal fear. So then my question for you, Kate, is how do we move through that fear of what other people will think or that fear of not being liked to have those explicit, concise, and direct conversations because I feel like that fear stops those conversations.

Cait: It does. And we get back to this the other thing that stops those conversations is an inherent belief that those conversations are not safe. And we just said that what you need is safety. Yep. And these conversations are risky.

Cait: So that's why we need to build up the safety on the other hand because we need to have enough safety buffer to be able to make the bold risky move. It's I think we just have to agree to agree that these conversations are risky and difficult, and they're gonna be uncomfortable. I am not here to promise you that you're gonna be able to do it guilt free and not feel anything. I think that that's absolute bullshit. I also don't think you're gonna be able to set boundaries without feeling guilt.

Cait: That's not how they work. Choosing yourself for the first time in your life is extremely uncomfortable. Does it get less uncomfortable with time? Sure. Does it ever totally go away?

Cait: I haven't gotten there yet. I'm still choosing myself and living with that discomfort because it's either the discomfort of choosing myself or burnout. And I'd rather have the discomfort because I did burnout, and it took me eighteen months to find my way back. I don't wanna do that again. I'd rather disappoint you for an hour.

Cait: But is it comfortable? No. Hell no. But what I'm say what I want you all to hear is the conversations that you need to have in order to make the changes that need to be made are inherently uncomfortable and unsafe. So you increase your feelings of safety before and after them.

Cait: You create safety buffers before and after those conversations so that you can afford to have them because you have to start having them. You have to start choosing yourself if you're gonna get out of burnout. There isn't literally no other

Erica: way. You truly have to start putting yourself first. And I wanna say this. It might bug you, but in the nontraditional sense, we've gotta flip the script. Right?

Erica: Because right now, putting yourself first is I left early to go get a massage, or I'm meeting a friend for a cup of coffee. And meeting a friend for a cup of coffee could be a very great form of putting yourself first. Right? But I'm just saying, we need to look at it in that very basic sense of choosing yourself.

Cait: And this to me starts with so if the first thing we need is safety and what another component that we just talked about is boundaries and sort of difficult conversations, a third component that everybody needs that I know so far that I've seen go through burnout is what I call foundational self care. And this is how we heal the self neglect and the feelings of low self worth. It never worked for me to look in the mirror and say, you are beautiful. I love you. Never worked for me.

Cait: I understood why people were trying to get me to do it. It just didn't get there for me. But you know what did work for me? Taking an extra thirty seconds in the shower to, like, actually properly wash myself instead of tits and bits and run. Yeah.

Cait: Getting up and going to the bathroom and being a minute late to a Zoom call instead of holding my pee for an hour.

Erica: For the next hour. Oh my gosh. Yes. What else?

Cait: When I say foundational self care, I literally mean pee when you have to pee, drink when you're thirsty, eat when you're hungry, rest or sleep when you're tired, move when you need to. I mean, meet your body in a space where it starts to trust that you are going to tend to its very basic core needs, because this is what it was missing in the beginning. This is how you plug yourself back in. Eventually, this will include learning to process your emotions in a reasonable time frame. But I believe that foundational self care doesn't start with any of the emotional things because I think those things are harder.

Cait: I think we start with peeing, sleeping, eating, drinking, moving.

Erica: And I wanna say for the people who are laughing at the peeing comments, you've never experienced it because I as soon as you said it, I was like, I know exactly what she's talking about. I can't tell you how many times. I've just been like, oh my god. I'm never gonna pee today. And it is that basic.

Cait: Yes. And this means to me that when you are continuously engaging in foundational self care, you can choose to put yourself second if it matches a different one of your values, and you're gonna be able to pay yourself back. So I'm okay with sacrifice sometimes. I'm not saying that you have to be in place number one and always be in place. Like, sometimes an accident happens on the next to you, and you have to cancel your day and wait for an ambulance to show up and tough shit.

Cait: We're we still have to be humans in this world together. You you're not here alone. So sometimes you are going to make sacrifice and changes for other people, but they are much easier to make when you feel generous because most of the time, you are filling yourself up. Then when those things happen, you don't immediately jump into resentment and anger and again. So I'm not saying put yourself first and stay there always and become selfish.

Cait: No. Take care of yourself enough so that your generosity doesn't get interfered with as easily so that the ways that you enjoy being generous, you can use with gusto because you have the power to do that.

Erica: It's almost as if by putting yourself first and by choosing yourself first in general, right, making sure you're in the safe spaces, making sure that, you know, you are making the cognizant choice of going to the bathroom, that if you do that enough, you will have that emotional reserve for when shit does hit the fan and you have to not choose yourself first for whatever reason.

Cait: Yeah. And there's gonna be a million reasons why you don't choose yourself first. Right now, you're probably picking some that are unnecessary.

Erica: I was gonna say make sure it's worth it.

Cait: Yes. Absolutely make sure it's worth it. If that's if you are sitting in a hospital listening to this right now because your kid got diarrhea and now they're dehydrated, everything else is in second place right now. Yep. We get that.

Cait: Everything else is in second place.

Erica: Yeah. Yeah. There's there's no choosing yourself at that point. However, our hope is that you are choosing yourself on so many other choices throughout your life that when that shit does hit the fan, you can show up for your kid and put everything else first.

Cait: And I think that this is the sticky floor. The sticky floor is choosing other people when you don't have to, assuming their wants, needs, and preferences, and desires when you don't really have to. It's I just recorded an episode for Fried that's, like, don't give away the good plate.

Erica: You

Cait: know, when you're, like, you're preparing a meal and you put everything on let's say it's not family style and everything's plated, and you take the plate that has, like, the best piece of meat and, like, the perfectly charred broccoli, and you put it in front of your partner. Like, don't why are you giving away the good plate? You just cooked for two hours. Take the good plate.

Erica: And, also, they don't even know what it looks like. So generally take

Cait: the good plate. And a lot of times, we're making assumptions about what other people think the good plate is. We think it's a good plate. That doesn't mean that they think it's a good plate, and then I'm resentful because you're not grateful that I didn't do the thing. Stop.

Cait: Stop tying yourself up into knots for the things that are not explicitly asked for, cared about, or important. Stop guessing. Stop hinting.

Erica: So, Kate, you've given away so many amazing tidbits and pieces of information. I feel like we could talk for hours. I mean, gems upon gems here. But I wanna ask you, when you think back to the Kate who's doing the thing that she loves but is burnt out, fried. Fried.

Erica: What is that one piece of in of advice that you would give her today?

Cait: Just because it looks good and you're supposed to love it on paper doesn't mean you really love it. Even if there are parts of it that you really if you've grown beyond it, it's okay to grow.

Erica: I love that. Give yourself permission to grow. Thank goodness for reinvention. Kate, where can people find you?

Cait: Katejonovan.com is the best place. And if people want need need more information on burnout recovery, the best place to get that is Fried the Burnout podcast. There's 230 some odd episodes waiting to help you heal. Every single episode, the focus is that you will get at least one piece of information that you can integrate into your life that will help you unwind some of your story.

Erica: I love that. It's back to that peeling back the onion. So important. Kate, thank you so much for being here.

Cait: Thanks for having me.

Erica: I am so thrilled that you joined us today on this just amazing journey with Kate Donovan. If today's conversation resonated at all with you, remember, you are not alone in your struggle against burnout. Girl, we have all been there. Taking the first steps towards recovery can be as simple as recognize the need for change. And I'm here to say, go ahead.

Erica: Take that action. So if you're with me, let's begin this journey of self recovery together. And please, please, please share this podcast with someone who might need it, and don't forget to subscribe for more inspiring content. Together, we can turn the tide. We can turn this whole burnout ship around, and we can step into a life that we are so happy to be living.