Avery – 00:00
Definitely.
And like when you listen to your story, you can hear mental energy drains, physical energy drains, emotional energy drains, the fulfillment energy drains.
So like all four of your batteries were being drawn to burnout.
You just were right there in that space.
And I think you, I definitely had an awareness as I said that, that what I was doing and how I. Hi, I’m Avery Thatcher, a former ICU nurse, and this is not your standard stress management podcast, where we just focus on those bandaid solutions, like the benefits of meditation, mindfulness, and self
care.
You already know that you need some kind of recovery strategy to deal with your stressful life, but what you may not know are all of the sneaky ways that society, our upbringing, and our high achieving nature, and so many other factors contribute to our risk of burnout.

Avery – 00:52
That, my friend, is what we talk about here on this podcast because you can’t do something about a situation that you’re not aware of, right?
So if you’re ready to get out of the pattern of burning out, feeling better, only to burn out again, It’s time for us to shed the light on the truth about burnout.
So welcome, Courtney.
I am super excited to have you here.
We met a little while ago and I came in and did a workshop for you for your community in January.
And I am so excited to have you talk about your story here.
So thanks for joining me.

Courtney – 01:27
Hey, my pleasure.
I like that we’re doing a little like knowledge swap.

Avery – 01:32
Oh yes, always, always.
Because I am the first to admit that I do not know everything and that I am not the right person for everybody.
So I really want to make sure that we bring in a group of people.
And you and I do similar things, different angles, I feel, but yeah.
So tell me a little bit about you and when you first noticed that you were a high achiever.

Courtney – 01:56
Good question and I feel like my story as to how I’m going to answer this question, I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it publicly before.
It’ll reveal some like some like real nerdiness in my in my past.
So right now I am a body image coach and anti-diet fitness instructor.
I have my own community online LOYOBO which stands for Love Your Body and I really am passionate about Helping women but really anyone who’s marginalized by the patriarchy to step out of shame, to reconnect with their body and use fitness as a way to build their confidence.
I’ve had a couple different lives in my own working lifetime but I’ve been doing this now for about, oh my goodness, about seven years and it’s something that I really do love and enjoy.

Multiple speakers – 02:45
And you’re very good at it.

Courtney – 02:46
Oh, thank you.
Thank you.
It’s one of those perfect things that it married my joy and some of my skills.
To answer your question, though, Asfar, I feel like I knew really, really young that I was a high achiever and that I had a large amount of self-drive and self-motivation.
I remember in grade school, And this must have been young I would have said like I’m gonna say like grade three or grade four.
When you’re first starting to do like projects for school and you got like the risk awards.
I remember in summer break, when we weren’t in school.

Courtney – 03:28
I assigned myself projects and I would make my mother or dad take me to the library and I would research the heck out of something and then make a Bristol board just like you would in school and make them sit down and listen to my presentation.
I remember I did one on horses.
Oh my goodness.
And that was fun for me.
I enjoyed doing that.

Avery – 03:54
Courtney, I feel like I’m talking to a twin because we literally had a science lab in our basement that we like ran experiments for and like we were doing like basic trigonometry and I mean basic but when I was in like grade five because we did those like baking soda rockets we put all baking soda

Multiple speakers – 04:11
and vinegar in and shoot them up so yeah we were calculating how high they got based on how long they took to come back down So we were basically like same nerds opposite ends of the spectrum as far as I was not the math and science I was like let me learn about horses and like fashion.
Oh it’s so good though yes I can totally relate to that.

Courtney – 04:30
Yeah and I also remember doing things like in grade seven I got together with a bunch of my friends at the time and we like started a not-for-profit like again just for fun and just as a way to spend our time and I ended up spending I think a year or two just like collecting toiletries and like
calling up big corporations like Johnson & Johnson and getting them to donate supplies for the local women’s shelter so I think it was just always like I didn’t ever I still don’t ever I struggle with being still I mean I’m sure this is going to come out later I struggle with truly understanding how
to rest because I love being busy I love being engaged and I love Clearly.

Avery – 05:16
Like, I’m sorry, you started a not-for-profit in grade seven.

Courtney – 05:20
So I did.

Avery – 05:21
Yeah.

Multiple speakers – 05:23
You have like the biggest high achiever flag waving over your head.

Avery – 05:27
Be like, yes.
I can do anything!

Courtney – 05:29
Especially before all those, you know, I feel like for me it was really around that grade seven, grade eight time when, you know, a lot of the insecurities started to come in and a lot of the self-doubt and the negative self-talk and kind of like caring about what other people thought.
But before then I was just like, I was just loving my life and not caring about any of that and being like this is what this is what I do and not thinking twice about it and having that unabashed confidence in myself that like yeah I can call up a I can call up a major multinational corporation as
like a 12 year old and get them to give me free stuff of course I can why couldn’t I?

Avery – 06:09
Totally I feel like especially for most of us high achievers we kind of lose that sort of no fucks given So talk to me a little bit more how your high achiever sabotages you a little bit now.

Courtney – 06:34
Yes, I feel like I’m going to do a bit of an arc of even bringing back that point that you just mentioned about how we kind of lose it along the way.
I think that when you are someone like us who maybe struggles with rest, That those energies and that effort can go into the wrong things and the wrong places.
So I definitely went through a phase in high school where I was really lost.
Fell in with a crowd that did a lot more partying than studying, let’s say that way.
And I struggled with my self-esteem a lot.
And I really cared about what other people thought, which meant I Very much self-censored what I was interested in or what I wanted to do or the direction that I thought my life could take based on how I felt I would be seen by others.
So I think that all my energy and all that good stuff that, you know, was innocent in the elementary years ended up going to things that really didn’t align with my values, really didn’t push me forward in the ways that I, um, hoped it would like too much partying and Being too obsessed with boys

Courtney – 07:51
and you know again like caring about what other people thought and I think especially in relation to the work that I do now I spent a lot of time and energy trying to fix my body and fix what I perceived was broken with me or searching for those magic answers that would make me feel worthy and
enough.

Avery – 08:12
Totally.
I don’t agree with a lot of what Brene Brown says because I feel like it is a little bit of a limited view, but she does talk about how the opposite of belonging is fitting in because then you’re not actually showing up as you.

Courtney – 08:28
And you still end up feeling isolated and lonely.

Avery – 08:30
Totally.
So that really sounds like you were searching for belonging.

Courtney – 08:35
Yes.
In all the wrong ways.
Yeah.
I think that the high achiever can really end up getting strongly linked and strongly tied to any of those voices inside that say, you know, not good enough, not worthy.
And I think for a long time, especially like through anything that required I’m going to say some sort of like evaluative performance-based criteria so like definitely in school when I went to like university and did my masters and then definitely as soon as it was in a job where again performance
is linked with pay or linked with you know title or promotion status and then especially as an entrepreneur It’s taken a lot of work and I’m still very much in the process of it to untangle those two things and redefine how I think of success or how I think of my self-worth and have it not be so
tightly Involved with my ability to be productive.

Courtney – 09:47
I think that that’s really how it ends up harming me is like the inability to shut it off and the guilt and the shame that can come with needing human things like rest and the ability to turn my brain off and you know time to heal and recuperate and things like that.

Avery – 10:09
Totally.
And if you’re listening to this right now and you’re just like, oh, Courtney just described me, you’re not alone.
No.
This is very, very common.
And it’s what we’ve been taught.
And there’s a ton of episodes, like if you look back, that talk about this, the way that we grew up with perfectionism and how that influences us, but then also living in a capitalist society and just how capitalism, the patriarchy, all of that needs to equate productivity with worth.
So it’s not your fault.

Avery – 10:38
But it is your responsibility to fix.

Courtney – 10:41
Yeah, exactly.
And I think it’s amazing now that we’re having so much more conversation about this kind of topic.
I Especially in those formative years like the high school and the university I don’t remember this ever being something that was even on my radar.
The only pathway forward was basically like if you want to be successful you have to work hard and put in the time and go and burn out and hustle was just Normal.
That was just the sacrifice of the price of entry and anything other than that was really shamed and degraded and looked down on.

Avery – 11:29
Definitely.
So what kind of brought you into the burnout that you think you’re experiencing right now?
Because you shared before that you are still very much in a burnout space, which I think is such a beautiful perspective to share, because it’s this wave where we continue to come back into that space.
So tell us a little bit about that.

Courtney – 11:50
Yeah, I, it’s multi-pronged.
Let me put it that way.
It always is.
Always is.
Right.
So I was one of those entrepreneurs.
So I had, um, a brick and mortar studio, a brick and mortar fitness studio during COVID.

Courtney – 12:06
Uh, and since I’m in Ontario and I was also at the time I was in Guelph, which was, I would say one of the more, um, Overly cautious and conservative counties in Ontario.
So we, I can’t remember the exact numbers.
I knew it at one point, but we were closed a lot as a business.
So, um, And because we were only 18 months old, I was just coming out of the entrepreneurial startup phase where I was working 16 hours a day and not paying myself.
And so I was just coming into the phase where like, wow, I’m getting days off and I’m getting normal work hours and I’m starting to pay myself.
And then COVID hit and basically all of that disappeared in a moment.
And I was back to incredibly long days, like 16 hour days, seven days a week, obviously not sustainable and not a sustainable pace.

Courtney – 13:02
At the time though, both myself and all the other small business owners and all my mentors just kept saying, this is temporary.
Like you, you just have to make it to the end of this.
You just have to make it till we open again or till we have a vaccine or what have you.
Obviously none of us anticipated that it was going to be, you know, three long years of on and off closures and different rules and regulations where business wasn’t, um, as usual.
So I feel like in hindsight, I leaned into a non-sustainable model to get me through the COVID crisis as a business owner that I ended up not being able to step out of, at least not very quickly.
That combined with, I was also a COVID bride, so I had my wedding, it was supposed to happen in 2020, obviously did not happen.
um so i was juggling having a business that was being incredibly impacted by covid having a wedding that was being impacted by covid and doing all kinds of things behind the scenes to try to stay afloat like me and my ex-husband which i’ll share that details me and my ex-husband moved in with my

Courtney – 14:14
parents um and then we moved to a different city all trying to like save money and make things financially work at a time when things were really tight um and then at the end of 2020-2022 my ex-husband and I actually ended up separating.
So it was just like a four-year crunch of a high amount of business stress, a high amount of, you know, big changes in my personal life and also going through some other big life events like both a marriage and also a separation that just Emdied the tanks, for sure.

Avery – 14:55
Definitely.
And like when you listen to your story, you can hear mental energy drains, physical energy drains, emotional energy drains, the fulfillment energy drains.
So like all four of your batteries were being drawn to burnout.
You just were right there in that space.

Courtney – 15:14
I definitely had an awareness as I said that what I was doing and how I was both making ends meet from a financial standpoint but also everything that you said like an emotional and a physical and all of it I knew was unsustainable as I was going through it.
Yet since there was that narrative of I think that many of us, pandemic aside, Definitely that recognition of like, this is a game that many of us play, right?
I’m only going to do this temporarily.
I’m only going to sacrifice myself temporarily.
And when I insert whatever arbitrary milestone or achievement or end date, Then I’ll give back to myself or take time off or give myself a raise or whatever it is and unfortunately you can often like I did both from external means and also from our own pressures you get stuck in that temporary
phase.
Much longer.

Avery – 16:17
Oh I love that you shared all of that because I’ve heard so many people say like oh yeah like I just need to kind of overwork myself until blah.
So it is so common, so common.

Courtney – 16:31
You end up kind of training everything in your life and the people around you to operate In an unsustainable way, so it makes it, it makes changing back to something more healthy and more balanced even harder because, you know, from a work perspective, I remember literally having conversations with
my mentors being like, how do I now adjust my client’s expectations back down?
Like I went so above and beyond for COVID.
And I can’t do that anymore.
So how do I get them to be okay with accepting less or perceived less when really like that wasn’t sustainable.
So that’s like that it makes it harder for yourself and the people around you to get out of that unhealthy behavioral pattern and lifestyle.

Avery – 17:25
So beautifully said, so beautifully said.
So tell us a little bit about what it feels like, like when you’re in those burnout energy drains, like what does it feel like for you?

Courtney – 17:35
Yeah, great question.
It’s a part of part of the big changes over the last four years as well was getting a couple new mental health diagnoses which has meant a big pattern or I don’t want to use the word pattern again a big theme of the last year I would say has been learning how to ride the waves and learning to
accept that the waves exist and impact me.

Avery – 18:09
Oh my gosh, yes, I have a whole episode on riding the wave for my MCD when I was going through the exposure response and prevention therapy because yeah it is ugly and it is scary but it’s doable.

Courtney – 18:22
Yeah and I think that was a big, I think for a really long time I was in denial that I was in burnout.
I blamed a lot of other things first And it wasn’t until I really was like working with my therapist and I had to accept that it was much, it was a much easier story to tell myself because it fit with that old narrative of like, well, it’s something wrong with me.
It’s something that I’m, I’m not doing or should be doing.
It’s something that I need to fix.
And again, that idea of like, I just need to push past it and that will fix it.
And it took.
Talking to someone outside of myself to help me have that perspective of like, no, like you’re, you’re tired.

Courtney – 19:08
Your body is tired.
You’ve drained your resources.
Pushing through is the same approach that you’ve been trying for the last three years.
Can we try something different to see what happens?
And I would say like that was the hardest part of just accepting that As part of this healing process, I had to be really uncomfortable, be comfortable with being really uncomfortable and accepting that what Those arbitrary expectations of myself that I had, of what life should look like, of what my
productivity should look like, of how I should feel, I had to accept that those just weren’t the case the moment and to focus more on what I was feeling and what I needed and what my body was asking for without that judgment and adjusting and creating new expectations for myself.

Avery – 20:14
Yeah, so I think one of the reasons why a lot of people feel the way that you did is because burnout is shared as a stress management problem.
If you just managed your stress better, you wouldn’t burn out.
But it’s not a stress management problem, it’s an energy management problem.
And so that perspective shift is really tough.
What works for you?
How did you start shifting that perspective to be able to say, okay I want it to be like this, but right now it’s like this?

Courtney – 20:49
I mean, I think a little bit it was force fed to me.

Multiple speakers – 20:53
Yeah, fair.

Courtney – 20:54
Yeah, good answer.
Yeah, because I got to the point where, where my body like could not do what I was asking it to do.
I was, I was getting sick a lot more than I used to.
And just again, my mental health issues were rearing their ugly head.
We’re just like, even, even if I wanted to push through, I couldn’t, I was, I was having moments where the physical body was, was Demanding that I take rest.
So that was part of it was just having that forced upon me.
I think the other really important piece was doing exactly what we’re doing now, which is having conversations, having conversations about other people who had experienced burnout and what they had gone through, having conversations about Priorities in life and what I wanted and breaking down a lot

Courtney – 21:49
of the walls of exploring why I had these expectations for myself.
Even something as simple as I remember on my social media talking about publicly like when I was in the thick of the burnout as it was happening before I fully realized.
I was already starting to have conversations as a millennial who is definitely nowhere near home ownership.
I remember talking about this frustration openly on my social media and I had a lot of people privately reached out and actually share that they also were renting or that their parents had helped them out or what have you and really Made me realize that those expectations that I had on myself that
were often very much based on comparing to other people and what I thought they had already achieved or what I thought, you know, they had for themselves.
And so also giving myself permission to spend time really reflecting on, okay, what are the pros and cons?
Why would I want home ownership?

Courtney – 23:03
What stress is that dream or expectation adding to the picture and the equation?
Allowing myself that opportunity to again sit in that discomfort of, okay, can I let that go?
Can I just literally take that out of my current frame of reference as to what I’m working towards and just let myself off the hook and start clearing away so that I can focus on what really matters.
I think that was a huge part of conversations of Breaking down that wall of actually… What’s the word that I want to say?
It was like pulling back the curtain for the Wizard of Oz of realizing that this vision that I had for what my life was supposed to look like wasn’t actually based on a lot of fact or truth.
And I had to have conversations with other people to really find that out.

Avery – 24:08
Hmm.
So tell me how all of these reflections and realizations, how is that showing up now in your work in your business as an entrepreneur?

Courtney – 24:19
How does that change things?
I feel like it’s made me a lot more slow, but in a really Like yummy kind of way.

Avery – 24:30
Oh my gosh, my word for this year is patience.
And right underneath it says slow down, you’re doing fine.

Courtney – 24:37
You’ve been talking to my therapist, haven’t you?
She keeps, I am not a patient person.
I feel like that goes hand in hand with the high achieving.
I want it now and I want to know what the outcome is.
So my word has definitely been patience.
And every time she sees me getting uncomfortable, she’s like, this is the work and I’m like, but I hate it.
I know, I know.

Courtney – 24:57
This is terrible.

Avery – 24:58
Isn’t it awful when they, your therapist like says the thing and you’re just like, damn, I needed to hear that, but I hate it.

Courtney – 25:04
Yeah and it’s like you’re so right and I hate you but I also need you and this is great.
Yeah and what that looks like from like a like real time like I’m going to use the word administrative like decision making is, I’ll give an example, like an hour ago I was looking at my calendar and I had it as a goal for myself to do a free masterclass in one of my Facebook groups on April 23rd
and I’ve been procrastinating on this task.
And there was this ickiness in my chest that was like, it was feeling like the overwhelming and those thoughts were coming up.
Oh, I just got to push through.
I just got to make it work.
And I’ve learned to kind of sit with those and be like, but why do I have to do that?

Courtney – 25:51
And just even asking a simple question out of my brain, I was like, what else could, how, how could I create a little bit more time and space and not listen to that voice to push through?
And I actually spent just 15 minutes looking at my calendar and realizing, oh my gosh, it’ll work so much better the week after.
I’m just going to shift it and I’m just going to let myself off the hook and be okay with that.
And just getting used to having that kind of conversation of rather than when I feel that ick, when I feel that overwhelm, when I feel that stress, rather than the knee-jerk reaction being, oh, I just got to push through, shove it down, get it done.
It’s allowing myself to be curious and be honest with myself about whether or not that actually needs to happen.

Avery – 26:37
Or if you just want it to happen.

Courtney – 26:39
Yeah, or if it’s part of that, again, just like, if you actually question yourself, like you do with me, like, why was my expectation that it had to happen on April 23rd?
Like, there wasn’t any.
Like, if I really dig, it was just like, well, because it just feels like it has to.
And these, like, just arbitrary, like, you just create these structures and these rigid rules and You just got to like give a moment and kind of kick the tires a little bit and be like, oh, I don’t actually have to be this hard on myself.

Avery – 27:13
Yes.

Courtney – 27:14
Yeah.

Avery – 27:15
So what do next steps look like for you?
Because you’re still in your recovery phase.
So what’s on the horizon?

Courtney – 27:22
I feel like the other word of 2024 has been stability, of really seeking out stability.
So that’s where I feel like my decisions are taking me, is trying to find ways both professionally and personally that I can create certainty and predictability and allow myself to have that foundation that I feel like I’m sure for many of us like COVID kind of took that away for a long time created
this you know that unprecedented chaos so it’s bringing I felt like for so long there was so much out of my control so it’s the focus is really on okay what can I control and what variables can I adjust And that’s mostly really focusing on my schedule, really focusing on saying no to more things,
saying yes to the things that Check both columns of both.
It’s hard for me to actually say.
I think that’s why I’m stumbling on my words a little bit.
Check both boxes.

Courtney – 28:40
It’s really easy for me to seek out those things that check the box of personal fulfillment or I’ll say like professional goals.
And it’s really easy for me to sacrifice financial stability.
And it’s really easy for me, one of the ways that I think contributed to my own burnout was saying yes to a lot of things that didn’t necessarily bring me Closer to wealth or pay me well or pay me fairly or pay me at all.
So that’s something that I’m also putting high on the list of really valuing paying myself and creating that financial stability so that I don’t necessarily have to work as hard even as I still currently am so that I can take that step back.

Avery – 29:29
Mmm, that sounds so powerful.
It’s like you really just want to create calm, so that way you can feel like you can move through your life rather than, you know, hanging on to the outside of a freight train and just being like, oh, as you zip through everything, you know?

Courtney – 29:45
And stepping out of that, I feel like I’ve lived a lot of my life in the reactive mindset of feeling like so much.
My focus was so much on, as we talked about, like what other people were doing, what other people were thinking, what was happening in the world around me.
And using that as a marker to make my decisions and set my priorities.
And I feel like I’ve, I’m working really hard to flip that and say, Nope, the only things that I’m really judging and the criteria that are using are like, how does this make me feel both mentally and physically and spiritually and emotionally and financially, um, and letting those be the barometers
for how I determine whether I say yes or no to something, which has been a really big shift.
I highly recommend.

Avery – 30:36
Yes.
And it’s easier said than done, of course, but it is one of those things that when you work towards it and you start to see the benefits of it, it gets exciting.
And you’re like, yeah, okay, I want to do this more.

Courtney – 30:50
Yeah, and I feel like it has that amazing ripple effect of also when you show yourself compassion and when you are making decisions from that place of self-love and self-trust, it also really cultivates a new sense of compassion For others around you and a new sense of respect for their boundaries
and even curiosity and awareness about their boundaries.
And so I feel like even to come back to that idea of belonging versus fitting in, I feel like the more work that I do on really learning how to trust myself and show up as authentically me as possible, both for all its beauty and all its messy chaos, Because there’s been times where in order to get
the space and the time I need, I’ve had to admit things to people in my life that were terrifying.
Like I’m tired or I’m not doing okay.
I need, you know, an extension or I need this to be a different day or I need to stay home.
That opens up this new way of you interacting with people that allows you to be a safe space for them to end up doing more of the same on their end, of feeling safe being their authentic self, of being safe communicating their boundaries and their needs to you.

Courtney – 32:11
So I feel like it’s also really improved my relationships.

Avery – 32:15
Yeah, definitely.
Oh, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to kind of bring it all together and wrap it up.
So thank you so much, Courtney, for all that you shared, your vulnerability and your openness and just really for giving us the raw version of what burnout is looking like for you right now.
It’s just so powerful.
So thank you so much.

Courtney – 32:38
Thank you, I think as I said having conversations has been such an important part of my recovery and so I hope even if one person listening as you said feels not so alone or feels heard or feels seen or feels hope that there is you know a way out it’s always worth it in my books.

Avery – 32:57
Wonderful, so tell people how they can learn a little bit more about you or connect with you.

Courtney – 33:02
Yeah, I’m big on the Instagram, so if you’re on there, find me at Loyobofit, that’s L-O-Y-O-B-O-F-I-T, or head to loyobofit.com slash become dash VIP, and that’s where you can find my newsletter and I’m sending out.
All kinds of musings from my own mind as I go through this journey and also other resources to help you embrace some tools that can help with… I know that these end of podcast blurbs are generally really repetitive and only say, make sure you’re subscribed.

Avery – 33:32
Beautiful.

Multiple speakers – 33:33
Today, I have a little happy challenge for you.

Avery – 33:36
Thank you so much again, Courtney, this was so wonderful.
Before you sit down to do your next work block, I encourage you to take five slow deep breaths for five seconds on the inhale and five seconds on the exhale.
Doing this helps us turn off our stress switch which then regains access to our higher level thinking brain which is something that we talk about in the free course that’s included in the productivity partner app which helps you design your pre-work ritual.
And inside that productivity partner app, each day there’s a mini habit challenge where I take 60 seconds to explain something like this that you can do in your day to become even more effective and impactful as a high achiever.
You can try it for one week for free by going to thetruthaboutburnout.com.
You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Go give it a try.