Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Danielle Cobo: In today's fast paced world, it's becoming increasingly common for people to feel overworked, overstressed, and burnt out. Burnout affects our work performance, our physical, and our mental health, and even our relationships. In this podcast episode, we'll be discussing the signs and symptoms to watch out for, and most importantly, how to prevent and overcome burnout.
We'll be joined by Catherine Moore, who is a licensed clinical social worker with over 11 years of experience as a social worker. Catherine, thank you so much for joining the podcast today.
Catherine Moore: Thank you so much for having me, Danielle. I'm excited to be here.
Danielle Cobo: Yeah, before we jumped on, we realized that we are both from the same town of Orange County and went to schools right by each
Catherine Moore: other. Yeah. We're like
Danielle Cobo: neighbors. Yep. So you went to Long Beach?
I went to Fullerton I do miss the weather in Orange County is absolutely beautiful. But hey, I also enjoy Florida.
Catherine Moore: Yeah. You can't beat it here. but we've been having a lot of rain, which is interesting. Yeah. And really throwing me off like it's May and it rained and I just don't know what to do with myself.
I'm like, can I go to the
Danielle Cobo: beach already? Which is funny because the rain. In Florida, all the rain happens during the summertime, so that took a big adjustment when I moved from Southern California where it only rains during the winter, and I just thought that it was always like that everywhere. And then I moved to Florida.
I'm going, wait a minute, there's thunderstorms at three o'clock in August.
Catherine Moore: Yep. And Floridians, and they don't even bat an eye. Mm-hmm.
Danielle Cobo: No, I do not bat an eye anytime that there's thunderstorms. In fact, I absolutely love it. So well, you have this extensive background and burnout and resilience, and it is really your area of expertise.
What led you into pursuing a career in burnout?
Catherine Moore: Yeah, so it's an interesting question because I didn't intend to pursue a career in burnout. It more just found me. So my background is as a mental health clinician, specifically as a social worker. And I love helping people. I love helping them navigate through the challenges of life, life transitions.
And with change comes a lot of anxiety. A lot of overwhelm and of course burnout too. And that experience of helping other people through challenging life situations, coupled with my own episode of burnout, really led me into digging deep into this topic and realizing like, man, there is a really big
Danielle Cobo: problem here.
Okay, so I wanna dive in deeper to your own experience of burnout, because I believe that. everyone's had some sort of experience of burnout. Maybe we haven't put a name to it, or maybe we've just kind of pushed through and didn't realize we were going through it. But let's hear from you.
What was your experience with
Catherine Moore: burnout? Sure. Yeah. So this came a couple years after grad school. I was working full-time in my job and people had always warned me, don't get burnt out. Watch out for it. And I thought, shh. They don't know me. I love my job. I love my clients. I love the work that I do.
There is absolutely no way this is going to affect me. And so I was working, like I said, I loved my job. The company was great and I had become a new mom and I was going back to work and it got to the point where I was. Just going all day especially as a mom from like 6:00 AM to 9:00 PM just going all day just to make the ends meet.
And I felt like I wasn't really getting ahead. I was actually falling behind, which was even more frustrating and more stressful. And so it was this vicious cycle of me working my butt off just to try to keep up with the demands of my job. Of my boss, cuz I was starting to get in trouble. I started to get reprimanded for not keeping up with, my duties.
she even pulled me in to talk about my demeanor with my coworkers about how normally I'm just very, friendly, very open, very conversational, caring. But lately I had been just very cold and short, and I would respond to emails with yes or no instead of, Hey, thank you so much for the question and all the fluff that we like to add to emails.
And I'm embarrassed to admit, but I got offended. I said, Why are you talking to me about my email conversations? I mean, I'm getting my job done. sorry. I'm not sorry for not being more friendly, but I'm getting my job done. I'm here, What more do you want from me?
And that was essentially how I showed up in life. Which started to impact my relationships and my family and my personality. it went deeper than just getting in trouble at work. But my boss was pointing out a personality change in me, and my husband noticed it. Everyone noticed it except for me, and I was just in denial.
Until it all came up to accumulative point, this one Tuesday evening where I had finished cooking dinner and I was washing the dishes and I'm looking around my house thinking what? A mess. There's so much that I need to do, so much. I need to clean up. I need to still put my kid in the bath, do bedtime stories.
I need to catch up with my notes cuz I can't be getting in trouble anymore with my boss. I have to be prepared for the meeting for the next morning and I'm exhausted. So I need eight hours of sleep and I'm just in my head thinking there's no freaking way this is gonna get done tonight. There's just no way.
There's not enough time to do all of these things. And my husband, he is so sweet, and he interrupts my thinking and he says, honey, you know, why don't you take a break and come watch a movie with us tonight? And Danielle, I started crying. I was just bawling like there is no time to watch a movie. How could you even suggest I watch a movie at this time?
And in that moment, I knew there was something wrong because I am not that girl who cries when I get invited to a movie. I love movies. I love hanging out with my family, and I knew in that moment that. This just wasn't working anymore. All of the things that I was doing, it just wasn't working anymore.
And it was just staring me straight in the face as I'm still crying, washing the dishes. Cuz I couldn't even stop to cry because there was just too much to be done. and I, found that this is a common story for a lot of people where you just keep going and going and going. And even when you are forced to cry, you don't stop even at that moment.
Yes.
Danielle Cobo: being a parent, let's just tap into this a little bit. Even for those that are listening that aren't parents, that constant go, go, go, go. I wake up at 6:00 AM I get my kids ready, then I take them to school and it's work, and then it's pick them up and then karate practice, and then it's cook dinner and bedtime routine and, get them off to bed.
And then as you mentioned, you look around the house and. There's a pile of laundry over here and you still need to make lunches for the next day. It can feel nonstop and overwhelming, and there's something that you said that really picked up on and it was need to. When we start to get into that mindset of saying, I need to do this.
I need to cook dinner for my family, I need to do the bedtime routine. I need to read my kids a bedtime story. That in itself is a little bit of that self-awareness to go, wait a minute, I feel like taking care of my kids is a task versus enjoying creating the memories with our kids.
Catherine Moore: yes. And that's a really great point because We can lose out on a lifetime if we're not careful.
Danielle Cobo: Yep. I remember this moment when I have five year old twin boys and I remember putting one of my boys to bed and as I'm laying next to him, kissing him, goodnight. Okay? We read the bedtime story and as I'm, walking out of the room, my son looks at me and he goes, mommy, will you lay with me?
And I go, bub. Yeah. Next time I need to go do whatever it was. It was like the laundry or something like that. And I remember sitting down on the couch and folding the laundry and going, Wait a minute, I can't even take the time to just lay with my son, cuz that's not gonna last forever. I don't imagine them being 16 years old and saying, mommy, will you lay next to me?
So now, my son asks me this, every single night, will you come lay with me instead of thinking about all the things I need to do? It's just reminding myself of that. Enjoy these little moments cuz they're not gonna last forever. Even if it is a pile of laundry on the couch, like that can wait.
Yeah. Does it need to be done right now? If it sits there for a couple days? I've learned to just kind of let it be so that I don't distract from the memories that I'm creating now.
Catherine Moore: Definitely and think about the message that your son is getting. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That he is more important than everything else, as opposed to the opposite message.
Like, oh, okay, I guess I am less important than this pile of laundry.
Danielle Cobo: Ooh, that hurts. Yes, it does hurt. It does hurt. And you're exactly right. and whether people have kids or not, just, it could be our friend, it could be our significant other. If we're so focused on the tasks at hand and we're saying, oh, nope, I can't watch a movie with you.
I can't go to lunch with you. I can't. Snuggle next to you as you're going to bed, because I've gotta cook dinner and do laundry. And yes, those, task are important, but really taking a step back and pausing and prioritizing really what's important. So, let's kinda talk about, you've had this, moment where you've been asked to watch a movie, but you have broken down into complete tears.
What did you do next?
Catherine Moore: Next well, I finished the dishes to be honest, but after that I didn't do any of that stuff. My husband kind of took over for the evening and I really sat down and, therapied myself. And really looked at what was going on with me because this is not sustainable. This has to change, and I really wanted to first focus on my values and really having that self-awareness of, okay, this is not the life that I can continue living.
I enjoy all of these things. How do we. Put some boundaries in place. How do we refocus? Which is really what it's about. It's refocusing in on what was most important. So I got a piece of paper and I literally wrote down what my values are and I saw my list of values and I saw, my calendar and how is that?
Correlating, which obviously it wasn't because work was consuming all of my time and my energy and my family and spirituality and physical health and mental health was getting the little teeny tiny bit that was left over that they had a split. And so really looking at that and seeing, okay, what can change here?
What's the priority right now? So I still have to work. how do we do this, How do we make these changes? I wanna have a relationship with my family. What does that look like? What do I need to do in order to see those changes? So really, Focusing in on the values and then breaking them down step by step into manageable task, into realistic, like what does that look like for me and what's most important?
Danielle Cobo: Okay, so let's talk a little bit about, you've written down, and I love this exercise. I actually talk about this being almost a gut check question that question you ask yourself when you put all everything that you've got going on in your life and you look at, these are my values, this is what's going on in my calendar, and like, does your calendar reflect your priorities?
And that is a gut check question. That's hard to ask. Yeah. So now you've taken the time and you've written down your values and you've recognized that maybe it's not aligning with your calendar. What did you do next?
Catherine Moore: So next I figured out what are the things that I personally have to do and what can I delegate out?
So a lot of times we have control issues that we like to see things done in a particular way, which is great, We have high standards. However, when it gets to the point that it's causing problems, As it was in my life, then that's when you really need to reevaluate, okay, is it important that I do this particular thing or can someone else do it?
And I have to just accept that they're going to do it their way. For example, do I have to cook dinner every single night or could I put my husband in charge of dinner some nights and just accept that it might be takeout. It might be something that I wouldn't necessarily cook, but the important thing is that we're spending time as a family and we have food in our bellies.
Okay. Yeah, so
Danielle Cobo: I, will admit I'm the one that cooks dinner during the week and we have this agreement. I cook dinner the week because my husband gets home really, really late from work. Poor guy has like a three hour commute total. And so I'll cook during the week and he cooks the weekend, but I can't remember the last time he cooked.
But that's okay, cuz you know what? His cooking's, okay? Mm-hmm.I, I much rather go to a restaurant anyways, so I like how you say releasing that control. And if it means sometimes you're going out to dinner versus cooking at home. another example is I'm teaching my five-year-old kids, even though they're really young to put their laundry away.
Now, I wouldn't say that when they put their laundry away, it's folded, but it's in the drawers. And they're learning the task, but it's releasing the control to give them that independence to do it.
Catherine Moore: Yes, exactly. That is a great, example too because you don't physically have to be the one to fold the laundry and put it away.
I don't have to be the one to, to do bath time every night. Thankfully, cuz my husband's there. It's not gonna look like I would, or, her hair is not gonna look like I would do it, but that's okay. So finding out what it is for you that you can let go, let other people help you, because I know you don't wanna believe it, but people like to help.
Danielle Cobo: Yeah, they do. I remember I was listening to, I don't know if it was Brene Brown's book or if it was a podcast that I was listening to, but I remember she was on her way to the airport for a speaking engagement, and she looks at her husband and she says, oh my gosh, I forgot to prepare the dinners for you while I'm gone this week.
And she's stressing out over it, and her husband looks at her and he goes, Can I be honest with you? And she goes, what? He goes. We don't eat them anyways, he says, we go out to dinner every night. And ever since hearing that, I will stock the fridge with food from my family, but if I go outta town, I'm like, dude, you guys are on your own.
I'll look at my husband and I'll say, look, you're a soldier. I'm sure you can figure out dinner dinnertime for the family.
Catherine Moore: Yes. And it's tasks like that, that people are grown adults, they can figure it out. And that is how you learn and how you grow. And one of my favorite things, this is gonna sound terrible to say, but is to leave my family and to let my husband figure it out,
So let him figure out the lunches for a week. And this is going to do a couple different things. One, it's gonna increase his gratitude for you because it's a lot of work. Two, it's going to allow him to problem solve and figure things out. And three, it's gonna allow him to bond in a different way with the children than you would if I wasn't there.
instead of thinking, cuz this is the other thing that we can get caught up in, is, in order to be a good. Whatever, mom, wife, worker, sister, friend, I must do these things, We have these high expectations for ourselves, and I would challenge that and say, is that actually true or are these just pressures that you are putting on yourself that is making your life harder?
Danielle Cobo: Okay. And so for the men out there that are listening to, I wanna,share this. The gratitude goes both ways. Cause I, believe that this is a big, important, topic to discuss. when I leave and I go and I have a speaking engagement and then I come back, my husband is very grateful that I've come back and I'm starting to do the lunches and things like that.
But when my husband was deployed, he was deployed for a year when my twins were one and a half years old, and I was taking on the responsibility. it's this running joke that every time a spouse deploys, everything breaks in the house. Our dishwasher broke, our garage door opener broke, refrigerator broke.
It was just a running joke, and it was good in the sense of, I remember. Taking the time to learn how to fix things, and that helped build my confidence. And I also say one of the qualities that I'm extremely grateful for about my husband is he can fix anything. And I just,love that quality about him.
He can fix anything. So, Yes. Now that I've learned the tools to do things around the house and I can fix it, I always go up to him and I'm like, babe, will you please fix this? And I feel taken care of that way. And it's gratitude. So I just wanna mention that for the men and the women out there, the gratitude goes both ways.
Catherine Moore: definitely. And these are all part of really being resilient. I know that you've talked about resiliency a lot, but resiliency is a skill that you can develop, but it's not comfortable to develop, you have to intentionally kind of switch your thinking around to, okay, what is the main priority here?
How can we kind of flip this into something that's beneficial? what am I gaining? What am I learning from this?
Danielle Cobo: Okay, so you recognize that you were in burnout. You then realized that the power of delegation and how that can releasing control. Was there another step that you took to help get you out of that
Catherine Moore: burnout consistent action.
So consistently reminding myself, I don't have to be the one to do this. Refocusing on the priorities and, also having those boundaries because I'm, one that likes to help and I like to be a team player and to say yes, but what I had to do was really focus in on is what's being asked of me, is this in alignment with my top five values?
And if it wasn't, then I'm sorry, I, can't help you. For example, currently I am being more aware of one, so I don't burn out, but being more aware of what I need as far as like mentally and physically. So what I need now is time with my family, time with my kid, and sleep. And rest. And never underestimate sleep.
Yeah. for example, one of the things that's been asked of us is to volunteer at the for the kids. And I'm like, Ugh, okay. This sounds like fun. I know I quote should be doing this. However, at the end of the day, Taking a nap or spending time with my kid is going to be a lot more in alignment with my values, and I'm gonna be happier at the end of the day.
So is there a different way that I can help out? So what I decided to do instead was donate some chips and food and drinks to the carnival. So there's ways to still be of value, be of service that doesn't, take from your energy and is more in alignment with, what it is that you wanna do and the life that you see for yourself.
Danielle Cobo: And let's also add, releasing the guilt for that one because I was school. Being a parent, you get asked to volunteer for a lot of activities, which is good. They keep the kids engaged. But I remember one of the classroom moms, she's a dear friend of mine and I'm like, know they want us to volunteer for this upcoming event, but I've already got work and I'm feeling really guilty.
And she looked at me and she said, Danielle, it's okay. She says, I don't work. That's what gives me the time to be the classroom mom. that is her priority right now. But she says, but you help out in different ways. She says, you donated resources. To the school because you are working, you've had the financial means to be able to, and I've donated in person, but it's, just a different capacity.
I'm glad that you kind of addressed that, that sometimes we are able to participate in things, but it may just look a little bit differently depending on where we're at in our life and what's going on and what's on our plate.
Catherine Moore: Exactly, and it's all valuable. Mm-hmm. So never dis discredit that you're not doing things in a certain way, cuz they already have people to do things in a certain way.
You're gonna do it in your way and with the guilt, you don't have to be everything to everybody all the time. there's gonna be times where, you I'm sorry, I, just don't have the capacity right now and that is okay.
Danielle Cobo: Yeah, it absolutely is. So it really just depends on what's going on in the phase of life that you're at too.
and that, varies I realize as kids have gotten older, I've been able to get more and more involved in my church, but that was a little hard to do when I had, one and a half year old twins and a husband deployed. So it's sometimes just circumstantial on where we are in life.
Exactly.
Catherine Moore: Yeah. And just being realistic with what it is that you can and cannot do, and knowing that this stage in life is temporary. Well, thank you
Danielle Cobo: so much for joining the podcast. I really appreciate it. And, for sharing just your own experience of burnout and not only sharing your experience of burnout, but the steps that you've taken to overcome it personally, but also applying those professional tools that you have, being an expert on resilience.
Catherine Moore: Yes. Thank you. I'm so glad that I was being here. And I think my takeaway here is it's a daily intentional change that you're making if you feel like you are on the road to burnout or trying to recover from it. It's a process. And it's a journey.
Danielle Cobo: Oh, well said. thank you.