Why You Keep Burning Out at Work and in Life (and what to do about it)

 Welcome to the Outsmart, A DHD podcast. I'm your host, Jamie Catino, board certified occupational therapist. Two-time Ted Speaker, A DHD coach, A DHD, advocate and Reality Show, contestant. Now let's talk about A DH. D.

  Hello, beautiful humans. Happy Wednesday. I can confidently say Wednesday because the day that I release the shows Have you noticed? I am really excited to talk to you about this topic today. Typically, the formats of my podcast are, Hey, let's talk about all the shit and then what you can do about it, and I always wanna leave you with something that you can do about it.

This episode is gonna get more into the nitty gritty of what happens when you don't do something about it. So if you're left feeling not all warm and fuzzy. That's okay, because that discomfort in you is what's gonna allow you to take some action. So let's get into it. Today is about the cost of loose boundaries that nobody talks about.

There's a lot of talk on, if you have bad boundaries, what it could look like or just. General talk about, oh, here's how you do set a boundary, yada, yada, yada. But let's get into the nitty gritty of what life really can look like when you have loose boundaries. I'm gonna prelude this with saying that I'm gonna be giving examples from my life.

And I'm happy to get personal with you because I know that you are experiencing similar things that I've gone through and I've come out on the other side and I wanna talk about it.

So first off, let's talk about what a boundary is. A boundary is a very clear line of what you allow into your life and what you don't.

Boundaries are the gatekeeper to your sanity. But until you understand what a boundary is and how to exercise them, you're gonna be letting a whole lot of shit into your life that you didn't bargain for.

You might think that your life is exhausting and that there's no way out. When you unintentionally created it that way, or you haven't broken cycles yet. Big emphasis on yet. So here we go. Let's talk about what your career can look like if you've got some loose boundaries. You probably start off at your job really excited because you're gonna be doing all these new fun things.

There's new people, dopamine everywhere, yada, yada. You take on way too much.

And then about four months into your job, you find yourself saying, I fucking hate this job. I hate this job. When you come home from work, you're ruminating about how you have to go back to that fucking job tomorrow. Not realizing that the reason that you're ruminating is because you were given yet another project when you were already behind on the work that you have.

Nobody else volunteered for it. So you volunteered for it, or you were voluntold to do it, but forgot that you have a voice to say no. Or, I'm gonna need some help with executing this if you might need me to also have x, y, z done by the state. So you keep getting more and more piled on your desk.

The weight of the world feels like it's on your shoulders. The second that you walk in the door of the building that you work in, or the second that you walk into your home office, if you work from home, or your couch that you normally work from doesn't even seem comfy anymore because you are associating it with a job that you fucking can't stand.

Now, here are some hard truths. One, you cannot change the fact that your boss is a piece of shit. You can't change that. I wish you could. I'd be okay with being out of a job if that was the case, because well, actually I wouldn't be out of a job because that's only half of the problem. So let's talk about what you can't control first.

'cause I'm gonna acknowledge that so that you don't, he listen to this and glaze your eyes over and think, oh my gosh, Jamie, you dumb bitch. Why are you even talking about this? My, my boss is the problem. I understand that they're part of the problem. Okay? There's a lot of really crappy people in leadership who.

God knows how they got the fricking job and now they're ordering people around because they weren't doing very good as a worker bee. And why not promote the person who's doing very little right? I don't understand why so many corporations and companies do this. So anyway, that's the thing. You cannot control your boss.

You also cannot control who your coworkers are. Okay? I will say that finding a job where you have really good bosses and coworkers. It can be very hard to come by, and if that was your only saving grace, then you'd be fucked. The good thing is you're not fucked, but if you have loose boundaries, you can end up absolutely resenting your job.

You can go to school for well over a decade, get certifications, get all of the education that you need to do what you thought was your dream job, get there and end up hating your career.

To the point that you burn out or

end up rage quitting your job. Oftentimes people will be burning out without even realizing it, and then rage quit their job out of nowhere.

The way to deal with a shit boss is boundaries. You have to learn how to speak to a boss, someone who's in an authoritative position with enough conviction and. Self-esteem inside you to give you the power to use your voice, because somebody can tell you to say something all day long, but until you feel like you have the authority and the power of your in yourself to say it, you're not going to.

But that is what's gonna keep you enjoying your job, at the very least, being neutral about it. Because you decide that you're done being everybody's punching bag, you're done being the person who cleans up every mess. You are done being the stop gap. The person in between, you're the, you're gonna stop being the person who fills in the communication gaps when they're there between a neurotypical and an A DHD human.

You decide that you are going to stop being the person. Filling in all of the gaps. The yes person, the go-to person, everybody's everything. But if you don't do that, what it can look like on the most extreme ends is burnout, rage, quitting, and either a cycle of every maybe year, getting another job. I know that's what my cycle was.

Or having a really hard time finding a job

because let's be realistic here. When you have a resume that shows that you bounce from one place to the next, it makes you not as hireable I,

but in order to be able to stay at a career longer term, happily, you do need boundaries. The very worst case scenario of having ship boundaries in your career can be unemployment. And guess what? It's really hard to pay for your rent or your mortgage with hugs.

Now let's talk about friendships. I've yet to work with someone who hasn't struggled with friendships in some point in their life, and 99% of the time it comes back to poor boundaries again. Here's the thing with friendships or in a job or any with anybody or anything, when you start off that relationship with poor boundaries, you are teaching them how you deserve to be treated.

Not how you actually deserve to be treated, but you're telling them, this is what I think I deserve in my life. So if you're always the one that bends to what they want, you're teaching them that this is how you operate.

And it's much harder to change the rules when you're mid relationship versus starting off with having healthy boundaries. That goes with your work life too.

I've been in a position where I tried changing the rules when I was in a job. Where I still didn't have a really good handle on what boundaries are and my ability to say no. But then much later on as an occupational therapist, I went into it with much healthier boundaries and had a whole different experience, a much more enjoyable experience.

But anyway, let's go back to friendships. You go in and you set the tone of what your friendship is going to look like, how much compromise there is going to be, what you are willing to give, and what you are happy to take. Now friendships that have loose boundaries, you are going to end up resenting that person because guess what?

You're gonna be saying yes to things that you don't have the energy to do. You are going to be picking up the phone when you do not have the energy to be that support person. You are going to be answering the text message about the boyfriend or girlfriend or person that they have broken up with and gotten back together with 17,000 times despite listening to any of your.

Advice about it, but you're gonna keep on picking up the phone that's gonna lead to resentment. You're gonna feel like they don't value me as a person. They don't care. Why am I going out of my way so fucking much? Why am I the only person in my friend group that seems to give a shit? Now, there's two parts to this part.

One, you have to go slow in picking your friends and let them reveal to you who they are. But part two, which is what you have control over, is setting the rules for relationships in your life. How much compromise are you willing to give when it's something as simple as, where do you wanna go eat? Are you someone that speaks up?

Are you someone that says, eh, I don't really care. I know there's some times where we just really don't know what the fuck we're hungry for, but how many times have you said, I don't really care. When you really wanted crab racoon or. Chinese food, like apparently I'm thinking about Chinese food right now, or Italian food or Mexican food.

How many times have you not spoken up when you really wanted something? Something as simple as that sets a tone in a relationship that says, Hey, I matter too. I. And a healthy person that you're friends with wants your input because guess what? It can be exhausting always being the person that's making decisions.

And a healthy person wants to know what your preferences are, wants to know what's going on in your life and wants to be there for you too. But a friendship with loose boundaries can look very similar to a career with loose boundaries where you are filling in the gaps being what they need at all time.

I. Loose boundaries really doesn't look very different from one setting to the next, and that is why a hundred times out of a hundred, if someone has loose boundaries in their personal or professional life, they have it in the other setting too. Now, the worst case scenario of having loose boundaries with your friends is that.

You end up having friendships that don't value you. You end up finding out they didn't really care about you much the whole time, and when you switch up the rules, you find that you're feeling pretty lonely because they weren't people that were willing to give what you were willing to give or that weren't willing to give what you needed in a friendship.

That's why it is so incredibly important to be very upfront about your boundaries, about what you can offer somebody. And also to know what you want out of a friendship and what's gonna work with you, work for you and what doesn't. It's also very possible that two people can really enjoy each other, but one person has more to give than the other.

And a healthy person, if you are the person that has more to give than the other person, a healthy person is going to step back and. Happily be there for you in a larger capacity when you are ready to show up in a larger capacity too.

This isn't something where you're fine, that where you're always keeping score on a scoreboard of, did they do more for me or did am I doing more for them? It's more so a general feeling of are we able to show up for each other? When we're having hard times or are we upfront with each other when we're not able to be there for each other?

It's also very possible that two people can be going through a very hard time at the same time, and you both need somebody else that has more capacity to help you through it. But the worst case scenario in friendships is if you have loose boundaries, is that you end up not having many friends because you're not upfront with those boundaries and you find out that those people really aren't your people.

The type of people that you are going to attract when you have really solid boundaries is a very different type of person than the person that you're gonna attract when you have very loose boundaries. There are people who are energy vampires out there, who are looking for people who are very selfless and have a lack of boundaries, and are people pleasers, and you will find them when you have the loosest of boundaries.

And when you have, are practicing healthy boundaries, you'll be able to see those types of people from a mile away.

Now, let's talk about romantic relationships. It's not very different from the first two things I talked about with your career and your friendships. In my romantic relationship, I didn't realize it for a very long time. I disregarded my preferences for everything I'm talking. Even food. I didn't realize that going to the grocery store, I just defaulted to whatever he wanted to buy and the shit that he would buy because he grew up with an almond mom who apparently never wants to get her eating disorder in order anyway, I did not talk about what I needed, what I wanted, what tastes good to me, something as simple as I want to buy fucking Miracle Whip because I don't like mayonnaise in my tuna salad.

When you find yourself having very loose boundaries, you lose sight of who am I and what do I want? This is something that I want you to really ask yourself when you're practicing healthy boundaries. Who am I and what do I want? Something as simple as, what do I want to watch on tv? Do I want the TV for right now?

Or are you always the person that doesn't have the remote and is sitting and watching their dumb ass shows?

Are you someone that doesn't speak up when you really wanna stay home for the holidays and they wanna go see their family? Are you exhausted? You just need some time for yourself, or maybe you wanna see your family? Are you spending all of your time and your money on plane tickets to see people who really don't value what you have to say?

These are things that happen oftentimes in romantic relationships where you have unhealthy boundaries or loose boundaries. You end up also filling in the gaps for that other person, what they want you to be as a partner. But the thing is, again, if you're with a healthy partner, even if you've had loose boundaries for a long time, they want to get to know who you actually are.

What do you really want?

Because it can be hard being the person that has loose boundaries and is resenting the other person. But it also can be hard as the other person who's deciding everything and has no idea what the hell you want. A healthy person wants to know what you want and what makes you happy and wants to compromise.

This is a huge reckoning that I had in my relationship. I'm using examples from my own life.

Growing up, I was taught not to have a voice, and I didn't realize how much that bled into my own personal relationship until we got to a point where I really did not think that we were going to make it. Now being on the other side and having professionals that helped us and really working through a lot of personal shit with my coach, we have a genuinely happy relationship.

I'm not someone that is gonna say that. It's always rainbows and unicorns all of the time. I think anyone who's in a relationship, and if they say that, that'd be very disingenuous, but for the most part, we communicate very well. Arguments are resolved pretty quickly. We both are able to say what we need to say without having a pit in our stomach, feeling like we're ruminating over the thing that we wish we would've said.

And I think that's about the best you can ask for, because shit's always gonna happen, but it's knowing how to work through it and knowing that your voice matters enough to speak up when you feel like you are leaving yourself behind. Now in the worst case scenario, with loose boundaries, you could be with the right person, have loose boundaries and end up getting a divorce or splitting up.

I am not someone who demonizes divorce. I think the divorces are amazing things that are the healthiest choice for so many people. But for myself, I was with the right person, but I was not using my voice and I was not setting healthy boundaries, and I was not setting a healthy expectation.

If you're struggling in your relationship, it could be that they're not your person. They could be a selfish piece of shit that doesn't care about your boundaries. But if you're with someone who does care about your boundaries and does care about what you want the right help, a couple's therapist, your own personal coach to help you through shit, can help you determine, Hey, is this person actually for me and I just wasn't using my voice?

Or are they a stupid piece of shit? And you get to decide that, and it will reveal itself over time. Now, the last setting I wanna talk about is the relationship with yourself in all of these different areas in your career, your friendships, your romantic relationships,

it is all going to come back to the relationship that you have with yourself. Do you know that you truly matter? That what you want matters. That your voice fucking matters. When is the last time that you sat there and thought about what your life would look like if it had no expectations, no obligations.

How? When is the last time that you have let yourself just fricking dream?

That is where boundaries start. It's knowing what exactly do you want in your life? What do you want your career to look like? What do you want your friendships to look like? What do you want your romantic relationship or romantic relationships to look like? If you had no boundaries on what that could be, what would it look like?

And let that be the starting point to setting boundaries in these other areas. So that is your action step, is to really think about what you want in all of these different areas. I hope that this was helpful. I hope that it called you out in the kindest way possible to know what areas of your life that you need to change.

And I hope you know that setting boundaries is a skill, is a very learnable skill. There is not one person listening to this who does not have the ability to learn that skill. It just takes support and oftentimes the right professional to help you through. Discovering that voice really helping you to dig deep and dream, because guess what?

Learning how to dream is also a skill, which good thing for you skills are very learnable

now.

And one last thing. If you would do me a huge favor and leave me a five star review on Apple Podcast. Don't forget to write something or else I won't know who to think. I personally thank everybody who leaves. A five star review on Apple Podcast. I saw that this last week. Somebody did give me like a five star rating, but since they didn't do the review, I wasn't able to see their username to thank them.

So if that's you, I believe it'll let you go back and type something and I will personally thank you. But if you go on Apple Podcast and leave a five star review, I will personally thank you for it. It is a very kind thing for me and it's a very kind thing for other people because it allows them to easier find this podcast and get the information that they may not have otherwise.

Okay, friends, I think that's it for now. I will see you next week. Bye now.

 Are you a high achieving woman with a DHD looking for a coach or maybe an event coordinator looking for a wildly captivating speaker? Perfect. Go to outsmart adhd.co. That's out. Smart adh adhd.co to get in touch. And before I forget, would you mind taking a minute to share this podcast with someone you love?

It would mean the world to me. Thanks, my friend. Until next time.