From Burnout to Balance: Rediscovering Your Purpose with Rebecca Claeys

Episode 20 · Laurie Groh, MS LPC SAS with Rebecca Claeys, BSN, RN, CPC, CPIP (Cleopatra's Seeds) · 2024-05-28

I'm seeing burnout with more and more of my clients. People feel drained, and the dread they describe about work can get pretty extreme. Most of the advice out there says: get your self-care time. My guest for this episode has a different take.

Show notes

Rebecca Claeys is a registered nurse, a certified professional coder, and a certified program integrity professional. She worked directly on the COVID-19 response with her state's emergency operations center. She also burned out badly afterward, and what she learned digging herself out became the framework she now teaches through her company, Cleopatra's Seeds.

Why the usual burnout advice wears off

Rebecca tried everything. Books, podcasts, TED talks, coaching. Each helped for a couple of days. Take a vacation and the work is waiting for you tenfold when you get back.

What she noticed is that nearly all of it focuses on reducing stress. That's valid, because burnout involves a lot of stress. But in her view, stress is a symptom of burnout, not the root cause.

She explained it in nursing terms. When medicine treats a symptom, it's because there isn't an adequate treatment for the cause yet. During COVID, before there were real treatments, that meant helping people breathe so the immune system had time to fight. Rebecca thinks that's how we treat burnout as a society: managing the symptom because we haven't named the cause.

The root cause, in Rebecca's words

When she looked honestly at her own burnout, she found she had tied her sense of worth to how much she was producing. I produce, therefore I'm worthy. That belief means you always have to achieve more, and there is never a finish line.

For people in medicine, public service, or any helping role, there's an extra layer. Other people are depending on you, sometimes for their lives. If you pull back, you worry the work lands on your team or the people you serve get hurt. Rebecca called it being trapped in molasses, and I hear that exact thing from clients.

Human being, not human doing

Rebecca's turning point was a phrase she'd heard as a child: you're a human being, not a human doing. She decided she has a purpose simply by existing. Nobody can take that away.

The next question was what that purpose is. A speaker at an all-staff meeting, Dr. Jasmine Zapata, introduced her to a purpose board: like a vision board, but about the whys behind what you do. Rebecca had always been a "why" person, but she'd never asked why about herself.

We hear "I am enough" everywhere. Rebecca's point is that you can't believe it until you let go of the idea that your worth depends on what you produce.

Where we learned this

Rebecca argues this is a societal issue, which is why there's no clean treatment for it. We both remembered the pizza-for-reading program in elementary school. It taught us to pick the shortest books and count volume. Then it's the honor roll, the athletic record, the name on the board. It follows us home, too: how many sports can you get your kids into?

Finding what matters to you

The hard part of Rebecca's process is a question that sounds simple: what matters to you as an individual? She asks people to set aside every responsibility, to kids, partner, work, and friends, and look at what's left.

One exercise is looking at your artifacts. What have you carried from house to house in the same falling-apart box, never opened, but you'd be devastated to lose? Why? From there she helps people identify core values, and those become a purpose statement that works like a compass.

Then you tie your worth to whether you're in alignment with your purpose, not to output. Nobody can move those goalposts. Rebecca said productivity still follows, but it comes easier and feels softer when the work lines up with your values.

She also said clients often find pieces of themselves they'd shelved because they weren't marketable. For her, it was creativity. That's not becoming a new person. It's coming back to yourself.

Three things to try this week

Rebecca offered three steps:

1. Check in on what you want, separate from everyone else. Pick one thing that matters to you and why. Start running choices against it.
2. Say no, or say it honestly. If a flat no isn't safe with your supervisor, try: "This is what's on my plate. It has filled my capacity. If this is a higher priority, what should I set aside?" Take your sick days. The team will figure it out.
3. If you lead people, model it. Your team won't take a break they never see you take. Rebecca's line: people don't quit jobs, they quit bosses.

That last one is what we try to do at Shoreside. We're the instrument. If we're depleted, our clients feel it.

Key takeaways

1. Most burnout advice targets stress. Rebecca sees stress as a symptom; the root, in her experience, is tying your worth to productivity.
2. Helping professionals feel this hardest because other people depend on their output.
3. "Human being, not human doing" is the pivot. Worth comes from existing.
4. Measure yourself by alignment with your values, not by whether you cleared the list.
5. Leaders set the culture by what they model.

If this one hit close to home

If you're exhausted, dreading work, and self-care isn't touching it, Shoreside Therapies offers therapy for burnout in Wisconsin and online in several other states. Our intake coordinator will help you find the right fit, even if it isn't us.

More on this topic: Burnout & Nervous System hub · Burnout Recovery When Rest Isn't Enough · High-Functioning Burnout and the Quiet Collapse · Workplace Culture, Leadership, Boundaries and Burnout

This episode is for education and entertainment. It is not therapy and does not create a therapeutic relationship. Hosted by Laurie Groh, MS, LPC, SAS.