Treating clients with severe burnout: Part 2 - moral injury and cynicism (with Dr Ben J Searle)

[00:00:05] Bronwyn: Hey, mental workers. You're listening to the Mental Work podcast, the podcast about working in mental health for early career mental health workers. As always, I'm your host, Dr. Bronwyn Milkins, and today we are continuing our deep dive into severe burnout.

In part one, we explored how burnout can manifest as exhaustion and loss of meaning, and practical strategies for recovery. In this episode, we'll go further. We'll unpack the realities of severe and prolonged burnout, what makes it so sticky, how clinicians can support recovery, what the early warning signs are, and how we can protect ourselves from the same fate.

Here to help us out, this topic is our guest, Dr. Ben Searle. Hi Ben again.

[00:00:42] Ben: Hi, Bronwyn.

[00:00:43] Bronwyn: It's nice to have you back on the podcast for this part two.

[00:00:46] Ben: Oh, well, thank you. It's delight to be here.

[00:00:49] Bronwyn: We had so many questions for part one, well, I did, and we had so much information from you just being a wealth of knowledge on this subject that we had to come back for a part two. So I'm glad we can answer some of the remaining questions.

[00:01:01] Ben: I'd be happy to help.

[00:01:02] Bronwyn: For listeners who did not hear part one, and if that's you listener, do go listen to it. I've popped the link in the show notes, but could you just briefly introduce yourself again?

[00:01:12] Ben: Sure thing. I am an organisational psychologist. Uh, my PhD and research background is occupational stress and how it is influenced by personal and environmental factors. Um, I was an academic for 20 years studying stress and burnout, but I left in 2021 due to my own experience of burnout. So I'm now director of my own independent practise and host of my own podcast so people can find me at uh, Mind On The Job.

[00:01:39] Bronwyn: So let's get straight into it. What are some of the early warning signs of burnout, the early, early signs.

[00:01:46] Ben: Alright, So we think of burnout. The burnout is typically described as these three symptoms, this exhaustion that is sort of persisting throughout the day, this, uh, cynicism and, and distrust and, uh, detachment from, so many aspects of life, and the third concept being a lack of efficacy, a lack of of self-belief, um, which many people misinterpret as work performance issues. And they, they, you can get work performance issues, but it is not, itself a, a work performance problem.

Self-efficacy is about someone's beliefs in, in how well they can do things. A classic example there is, is imposter syndrome. So inefficacy can be that it doesn't always emerge as that. Uh, in fact a common- common issue that some people have with some of the research is that it is not really clear how closely tied in those beliefs in, in your efficacy in being able to do things, um, is as part of the, the burnout syndrome. Um, I think that, you know, it, it does still work, but we need to, to take a broader view of it. One that includes coping efficacy, because so much of burnout is about feeling overwhelmed, about feeling like you can't cope, and that is an important part of self-belief about what you can and can't do.

But those are the three components. Exhaustion, cynicism, or detachment and inefficacy. But the thing is that for a lot of people. The more obvious elements of, of chronic day to day throughout the day, exhaustion, uh, deep cynicism and, and some of that imposter syndrome, like efficacy, doesn't happen until people are quite seriously ill. People are quite severely burned out.

And some elements might not happen at all. You know, if you're working, say in an environment where. People are doing things that, that they believe in, people are working in, in hospitals, people are working in, um, environmental movements, they might have a strong passion for the cause, and so when they read descriptions, they hear people talk about cynicism, they might say, well, I don't have that, even if they might have a lot of complaints with the organisation at that stage. On the other side of that is that a lot of burnout can happen in toxic environments where people might say, well, I'm, I'm cynical about the organisation, but I've got every right to be.

So in fact it is, it is so much more useful for us if we can identify burnout early on, and early on, burnout looks a little bit different, it does still have some of the same elements. So, exhaustion is something that comes up. It may not be the very first thing, uh, there's variation between people in this and with all of the symptoms. But, um, uh, the exhaustion that you start to see early on is being tired when people are trying to do work. So they're sitting down to, to do something more difficult at work and they start going, oh, this is, oh, this is hard, oh gee, I'm really tired today. Um, and noticing that as a pattern in the workplace before they start to see it somewhere else.

Another element, which we would probably put in the same basket as cynicism, is really more a kind of disengagement, and it's not about negative attitude so much... early on, it's much more about losing that enthusiasm about parts of the work that you used to enjoy. So there is a little bit less of a sense of, of joy, of excitement, of achievement in regular work activities. And then after a little while, you might even start to notice some of the enjoyment you're getting out of activities that are happening at home. Some of the things that you like to do for fun aren't as much fun anymore. So what we're seeing there is a general disengagement from, not just things that we might have reason not to like, but things we actually have good reasons to enjoy.

Another thing that we start to see is people start thinking about work more often when they're away from work. They start to have, have difficulty maintaining that separation between work and home and getting unbidden thoughts popping into their head about things that are going on at work. And that's that ability to regulate that. And part of- part of that might be because things are becoming more pressured and maybe they are having difficulty managing real connections, managing, you know, a firmed detachment from work at the end of the workday, and they're getting emails on their phone... but you do see some, some intrusive thoughts about work popping into their heads.

Um, and related to that. As a, as a very early symptom is people notice that they are having difficulty relaxing. So just sitting down and watching TV or something at the end of the workday, they are not finding that they are unwinding. And I noticed this myself that, it was not right at the beginning necessarily of the burnout process, but it was one of the first things that made me sit up and take notice was that I was holding this tension in my abdomen and I just couldn't relax it away, it was staying there. So those are some, some very early indications... You also can start to get some cognitive symptoms.

[00:07:30] Bronwyn: I was gonna ask about that actually. Like I was thinking memory and trouble finding words. I've had a bit of stress over the past few weeks and those are just the things that I noticed in myself, actually, it was like my brain is not working good.

[00:07:43] Ben: That's, that's an excellent point. Uh, and you do see that, and, and although it's, it's somewhat controversial, some of the, the newer models, some of the newer measures of burnout... yeah, some of them have moved away a little bit from self-efficacy, and they are looking at things like these cognitive difficulties, these, these cognitive errors. So you do see memory issues, people storing and retrieving, uh, information from memory. You do see attention and, and focus, um, being more of a problem, executive function problems. And that tends to start, at the early level, fairly early level as well.

And another component that maybe is, is just sort of at the end of this early stage, you do start to see some emotional dysregulation. And that's, that's another component that's coming into a, a lot of more modern models of burnout. So-`

[00:08:37] Bronwyn: So like anger, irritability.

[00:08:39] Ben: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. People getting irritated by things that they used to be just okay with.

[00:08:45] Bronwyn: So, so it's like you walk into the office and, uh, Sally has always tapped her pen on the desk for the last 10 years, and you've been like, whatever, Sally can do what she wants. And then over the past month, it's been, I cannot stand it when Sally taps her pen on the desk if she does that one more time.

[00:09:03] Ben: It is, it is starting to become fingernails down at blackboard for you, yes. And the problem with any one of these things is that any one of them can be explained away saying, oh look, I'm having a bad day, or, I didn't get enough sleep last night... but you start to put all of those things together and there aren't that many explanations for why I would have, you know, difficulty concentrating and I would be losing enthusiasm and I would be having difficulty relaxing at home. And those things, when we start putting those together, are a good indication that something might need to be done, because once you start getting into, oh, I hate this workplace and everything about it, that's really not a great time that you really wish you would, uh, would've done something before you became really cynical.

[00:09:55] Bronwyn: Yeah, absolutely. And I wanted to circle back to your pointing out of the, what I call somatic symptoms, so you notice the tension in your body, and I thought that was a really good one. And could it be other somatic symptoms like increased heart rate? It's like your heart rate is just going way faster and you're like, I haven't done any exercise, but it's going pretty fast.

[00:10:15] Ben: So there's a whole lot of things that can happen when we've, we've got those stress hormones circulating a lot of the time. Um, so yes, you can get heart and circulation issues. Uh, you can find that you're hyperventilating or, struggling to breathe deeply. You can start to develop a bunch of other little things; headaches, you can have sleep difficulties, you can have, uh, skin problems, uh, and these, these are all elements of what your parasympathetic nervous system is supposed to be doing. It's supposed to be redistributing resources and making all of your maintenance things happen, um, looking after your, your long-term health systems. And, um, it can vary a lot between people depending on, you know, their, their health background and their typical ways of, of trying to cope with stress.

[00:11:11] Bronwyn: Very interesting and I'm glad that we can have such a robust, um, discussion about the early warning signs, because sometimes people might not relate to all of them, but like you say, there might be a few things, and when you think about what's been happening at work and how you've been responding, it can help people recognise that.

I wanted to move on to cynicism, which as you said, it's a real hallmark symptom of burnout. And just in case people don't know what cynicism is, I looked up a little definition. It's a negative attitude characterised by a general distrust of others' motives. A belief that people are motivated by their own self-interest and a lack of faith and the sincerity of their actions. To summarise, it's like they do something and you like they're just doing it for themselves.

[00:11:56] Ben: Yeah.

[00:11:57] Bronwyn: What are some ways that we can get out of a cynicism?

[00:12:01] Ben: So it's a great question. Um, it is, it is a very challenging part of the syndrome, and as someone who has tried to support clients with burnout, you would know that it's a really destructive attitude to have because it, it means that you tend to push everything away, that people can try and help you and, and you can be very resistant to, to doing that. It becomes a real barrier to recovery, that you don't actually have a lot of confidence that someone who's trying to help you is gonna have success. Um, and when you combine that with, with, inefficacy with, with a lack of self-efficacy beliefs, um, uh, you get people who think, oh, well what have you encouraged me to do? I'm not really gonna do a good job of it, so is there really any point putting in effort?

But yeah, for, for, for the cynicism, it is, it is really important to try to reengage people with some positive experiences. Um, so it can be very useful to encourage people to engage in recreation that they enjoy, to engage in mastery activities that are in their areas of personal interest. It is important for them to choose things that they care about and they are interested in because that's where they are going to experience the, uh, the most benefit. And you need to be careful not to, to rush them too far into, oh, well, if you enjoy baking, then try and bake a, a complicated cake or something. You've gotta start really simple. So that, that is, you know, recreational activities and mastery activities in an area of interest are really important.

There are activities that we can do to get people to just make slight adjustments to their attention. So they are more likely to notice things that are going well. Encouraging selective attention to, to what's going well rather than things that are not quite what they expect. Making a record of things that happened that they enjoyed, taking photos, making some notes, um, uh, getting a souvenir, and then encouraging them to get actively involved in the activity either by, you know, doing something with their hands, to talk to other people about what they have enjoyed as a way of reinforcing that experience of, of joy.

[00:14:30] Bronwyn: I guess like in that selective attention training, would you recommend, for example, if a person is thinking that their boss only does things in their own self-interest, would you be wanting them to note when their boss does things that are just genuinely nice, like giving a compliment or assigning tasks that are enjoyable to their workers, that kind of stuff?

[00:14:53] Ben: That's a great, that would be a great example. That would be a great thing to do, and this is why, um, I think we spoke before about gratitude, um, gratitude activities can be very good at reminding people because, you know, we all know that by the end of a given day, we won't remember every piece of minutia of the things that we've done during the day. And if you've developed this very cynical mindset, then it is much easier for you to recall the things that are consistent with those, those attitudes and beliefs.

But by getting a practise together of reflecting on these were positive experiences that I had, these are things that I'm grateful that people did, then you are forcing yourself to pay attention to those, you're making a record of those, you're more likely to remember that those things are happening.

[00:15:44] Bronwyn: That makes a lot of sense, 'cause I guess, um, sometimes, yeah, when we're burnt out, it's like we do slide into that negative bias of only noticing the negative. So the gratitude directly can contradict that and remind us of different aspects to what our brain is automatically concluding, um, which can give us a more realistic perspective or handle on the situation, right?

[00:16:05] Ben: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And similar, I mean, taking the next step on from that, one of the things that, uh, has come outta from research that my colleague, uh, Professor Monique Crane has done, um, is about reflecting on how you have handled stressful situations successfully, because something that isn't ideal, something that might be a little bit stressful, things like that are gonna come up all the time. But what we tend to pay most of our attention to are the ones that we didn't handle very well. And we go, oh, there was this occasion where, oh, I've had this radio interview and I'm messed up the first question, and I felt really embarrassed about that, uh, as per our earlier conversation. Um, and, and that's where a lot of our attention will go, particularly if we are burned out, particularly if people are depressed people, if people are, are managing anxiety issues. But we can learn a great deal more about trying to reflect on those occasions when something stressful happened and we handled it okay.

[00:17:07] Bronwyn: Yeah.

[00:17:08] Ben: Now part of the benefit of that is just trying to reassure ourselves that we can cope with some of these situations, but in fact, there's, there's a lot of clues that, uh, can happen if we look at, here's a series of events where something stressful happened and we coped, where we can start to say, oh, hang on, there's things that I am doing in those situations that seem to be working fairly reliably... Now identifying these insights on your own can be very challenging, particularly if you are dealing with some of these, uh, you know, very challenging conditions, but this is where mental health professionals can be very useful to, to get people to talk about, okay, what was, what was the last time something stressful happened to you that you did cope okay with? We don't need to say things you cope with really well because being able to identify them in that way might be beyond a lot of us, but, um, things you cope with okay.

We are often distracted by the details in these situations, uh, and we can be very hard on ourselves and we don't necessarily get a good sense of, of how other people are, are, um, are perceiving these situations. So if you get clients to walk through some of these steps, you can start to use your expertise as a mental health professional to help them to identify some of those insights. So asking questions like, how did you react at first when it became clear that things were difficult or demanding? What was it about the situation that led you to react in that way? What were some of the first things you did to, to try and cope with the situation once you realised you were starting to feel stressed? Okay, of the actions that you started taking, which ones were useful? And, and talk through some of the things they did, the, the personal qualities that they might have applied, the resources they, they drew on in that situation. And through a number of events like this, you can start to piece together, well, what, what can we learn? What lessons can we learn about ways that you are able to to handle these situations well?

[00:19:29] Bronwyn: Those are really helpful questions, and I think this leads me to the next area that I wanted to explore because there may be some employees who are cynical and they are overly cynical, so it doesn't really match the reality of the situation. It's like they're, they're assuming their boss has their own self-interest at heart, and that doesn't match the situation.

But there may be some workplaces, but that's absolutely true. Their boss is like, you are just a cog in the wheel to the employer, you are replaceable, I don't really give a stuff about you. I'm only doing these nice things. So it costs more money to replace you. Um, so how do we work with clients when their cynicism is matching the facts of the situation and promote their personal recovery at the same time?

[00:20:13] Ben: So I think that discussing the nature of the situation is important and it... I don't know what's, what your experience is with, uh, with clients Bronwyn, but I wouldn't think that many people with burnout are, are very reticent about, uh, discussing the nature of the situation. But may-, maybe I'm wrong.

[00:20:35] Bronwyn: No, I think most people are very open with discussing the nature of the situation, so I think that's a really good tip. Most people can't wait to- to talk about!

[00:20:43] Ben: Yeah, and this is, this is an issue, uh, as well. So encourage them to talk through what were the problems that they were encountering in the situation because it is acknowledged about burnout, that it is almost always a workplace cause it is almost always, um, you know, the nature of, of excessive demands or insufficient resources or things like some, some value fit problems where, you know, you feel like things ought to be done in a certain way and you're being told, no, no, we're gonna do it this other way. There are problems that can occur with interpersonal conflicts and bullying. Um, there can be exposure to unpleasant or traumatic experiences at work. So there's a whole host of things that can happen. Uh, I have to say that when we have have captured this, we do see that bad management as per your example, comes up quite often, and those things are real.

And particularly with burnout, when people tend to be going through a lot of, uh, discomfort, not just with the symptoms, but with the shame that a lot of people feel when they burn out. Now, partly that is sort of an internalised, uh, stigma about mental illness, and part of it is just this general sense that what you're supposed to do in life is, is be persistent in the face of, of obstacles and setbacks, and they feel like I've failed at that.

Uh.

[00:22:11] Bronwyn: I was gonna say, usually it's, I've failed, yeah.

[00:22:14] Ben: Sense of failure is, is so big, you know, and I had had, and, you know, occasionally still have it myself. it is, it is a huge challenge and it's really important for people to understand that they haven't failed and that there isn't anything to be ashamed of. And part of helping them to accept that is encouraging them to identify some of these issues, some of these challenges, they were put in front of some of these toxic situations or, or difficult people. And just very honestly, you don't need to exaggerate anything, just very honestly reflecting back, wow, that sounds awful, um, um, I can quite understand why that was very hard for you.

[00:22:55] Bronwyn: Yeah, so I guess maybe my takeaway from that is, and I don't think clinicians would do this, but maybe some of them would, but don't try and shy, make a silver lining out of a situation when it actually might be rubbish. It's like by acknowledging the realities of the situation with the client, we can help them to alleviate that guilt and shame and promote their recovery that way by being like, look, you're exposed to some rubbish circumstances and here's what we can do now.

[00:23:21] Ben: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:23:22] Bronwyn: I wanted to ask you about moral injury. So moral injury has now been recognised in DSM, so the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the psychiatry bible that psychologists and a lot of other mental health professionals use. And let me just read out the definition of moral injury... so we've got psychological harm incurred from committing, witnessing, or being subject to actions that violate one's moral code. Ben, could you tell us a bit about your understanding of it and how it contributes to burnout?

[00:23:50] Ben: Sure thing, Bronwyn. So it is, it is an important part of, of our existence. We have values that tell us right and wrong. There's a sense of responsibility we have, uh, to do things that are right and to, to not do things, or to stop things from happening, that are wrong. Um, and there are some environments where this is, is much more important than others. So we tend to see a lot of this discussed in medical settings. Um, so nurses, for example, have care responsibilities for lots of people who are in pain. They have a sense of, well, I, I ought to do this to help this person, um, and sometimes feeling that they are prevented from doing that. There's, there's been research on, uh, veterinarians who are asked to put down otherwise perfectly healthy animals, and, um, so these things can be, can be very unpleasant.

And it fits into that, that very common, uh, cause of, of burnout or contributing factor to burnout of, of values misfit. Where we have values that tell us that things ought to be done in a particular way and we are prevented from doing it in that way, or we are unable to stop things from happening that we feel are wrong, then that's where you get that moral injury.

It is a very real component to, to burnout experiences. One, the one I like to use to illustrate this is, the children's film, The Incredibles. So you will remember from The Incredibles, um, uh, superheroes are banned from using their superpowers, and Bob, who is a, a superhero, who, who really cares about helping people, gets put into a job in the American, uh, health insurance system, um, where his responsibility is to prevent people from getting paid money to support them with health concerns. And you can see that it is literally breaking Bob to try and do the job.

[00:25:50] Bronwyn: Yeah, yeah.

[00:25:51] Ben: And that's, that's what this is, that's what we are seeing when people are encountering moral injury at work. It's what we're seeing in that broader bucket of, of values misfit happening in organisations. And it's one of the reasons why we sort of recommend that as part of a, uh, a treatment plan for people with burnout you have conversations about values because it is really important for people to be able to, to recognise what it is they care about. Because sometimes you don't know, you don't necessarily think about these things from one day to the next, and, um, so it can be a, it is often a shock to people who experience moral injury that, oh, actually this is something that I care deeply about.

 A lot of the way that we perceive values is based on society's values and the values of people around us. And so understanding our own values is an important thing to do. Particularly if we want to look at, well, where can I go to next? Where is a job that I can go to where I won't experience moral injury, where I will have a better value alignment? You need to know your own values to do that.

[00:27:08] Bronwyn: And I was just thinking as you were speaking that that could help alleviate that sense of failure as well. It's not that you failed in your workplace, it's that you had a value and that's important to you and you've had that value for a really long time, and that was transgressed in the workplace. And that's not a failure, that's just like a personal standard or guiding value that you have.

[00:27:27] Ben: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, this is, this is one of the things that we don't really think about that much with organisations is that... and it's, it's very difficult to manage this from the organization's point of view because these things emerge over time in a, in a fairly, um, uh, nebulous way, but an organisation as a group of people has a set of values. It has things that it prioritises over other things, and a senior leader in the organisation could say, oh, to starting tomorrow, we are valuing this thing above all the other things. And it won't just happen, um, because of all of these assumptions and expectations and, and the way that people see not only their own role, but but how other people are doing things in the organisation. So having an understanding of, oh, this is why I found it very difficult in that role, what the organisation wanted from me, the things that the organisation prioritised were, were A, B, and C, um, and what I was prioritising was X, Y, and Z.

[00:28:33] Bronwyn: Yeah. That's a much better perspective to have. Yeah, absolutely.

Ben, I think a common thing that can happen for mental health clinicians is that they feel a lot of pressure to fix clients who have experienced burnout. They just want them to be better and they wanna make it go away. Could you speak to your thoughts on this?

[00:28:53] Ben: Oh, absolutely. Recovering from burnout is almost always slow and messy that people who are going through this should be expecting setbacks and relapses and certainly, uh, the clinicians should be expecting to see their clients have setbacks and relapses and get quite frustrated occasionally, uh, 'cause they're gonna feel like nothing is getting any better or they'll feel some improvement and throw themselves into something before they're, they're ready for it, and then find, they start going backwards.

So one of my suggestions, and I'd be interested to hear your views on this, is to be quite open about this with the client, uh, because if they don't improve soon or, or if they start to improve, but don't see that that is continuing, that cynicism we spoke of, the cynicism of burnout is going to make them think, well, this is rubbish, this isn't working. Um, and, and stop turning up, um, or possibly the inefficacy of burnout is gonna make them say, oh, well, I, I, obviously I can't do this, this is beyond me.

[00:29:58] Bronwyn: Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. I think that's an a great approach, particularly when people feel a strong sense of failure or a prone to feeling failure. Um, I wanna be realistic about what's in store for them with treatment. And saying to them that it's not a linear path here we are not like, yeah, we're gonna get to recovery and it's gonna be a straightforward path is very helpful I feel, to reduce that proneness to failing. 'Cause it's like not only have I failed and I'm burnt out now I'm failing at my own burnout treatment!

[00:30:31] Ben: Do they believe you when you tell them that this is, this is going to be non-linear or it's going to be tricky?

[00:30:36] Bronwyn: I think, um, I think I'm psychologists, like I think myself, it's sometimes I realise the amount of power and influence I have over clients, so I feel like if they, if they believe me, it's because they believe that I'm an expert. Um, and they'll be like, okay, she knows what she's talking about. And, and truthfully it's like, you know, I've worked with a lot of people who've experienced burnout and it honestly is the journey, it's very, it's very non-linear. And you've experienced that, I'm sure in your own recovery too.

[00:31:05] Ben: Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:31:06] Bronwyn: So maybe there's a part of them that doesn't fully believe, but maybe there's a part of them that is willing to be like, oh yeah, maybe, maybe she's right. It'd be an interesting study to see whether, uh, people's belief in whether burnout recovery is linear or not is like a moderating factor to recovery. Um, I reckon those who, who believe it's nonlinear probably will feel less failure.

[00:31:26] Ben: Yeah, and it's, it's, it's important to be able to do that because, you know, a related issue is you have to, to prioritise handling shame and, um, because we, we do all feel this, this sense of shame when this is happening, and it, it won't just diminish over time, linearly, just like nothing else about this is going to be linear so the clients will get frustrated with themselves and they will get embarrassed about fronting up and admitting yet again that, oh, they were too overwhelmed to do the things you suggested, or, oh, they had a really bad week, and people were saying, why aren't you better now? And so you need to be able to work with that. Um, and, you know, self-compassion is, is a. Is an effective way of, uh, of doing that. But it does need to be a, a really high priority because that sense of frustration and shame that comes with, oh, I'm still dealing with this, it is so unhelpful.

[00:32:29] Bronwyn: Absolutely. And I was thinking as you were speaking about just, you know, society's messages is-, are so unhelpful that like, you know, capitalism, maybe a bit of education about capitalism, that you're only, um, worth as much as you can produce can be helpful for some people and to, to understand. So it's like under capitalism, you're never doing enough, if you're resting, that's bad. Uh, you know, so you'll never be enough according to society. So when people say those like bull crap messages, it's like we've gotta return to what's actually real here and what do we know about recovery... It's, it's a nonlinear process.

[00:33:04] Ben: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:33:06] Bronwyn: Ben, what do you hope that listeners will take most of all from our conversation today?

[00:33:10] Ben: Look, I hope that they will take that it is a, a challenging process to, to recover from, uh, from burnout, but there are things that will help. That there are, um, a lot of pressures on them that are going to affect those feelings of shame, and that those feelings of shame aren't coming from a place of, you know, actual failure. They're not coming from a place of having done things that were wrong, and that this is part of the healing process is coming to accept themselves for, for who they are and coming to just try and do what they can to work on their recovery.

[00:33:51] Bronwyn: Beautiful. Ben, if listeners want to learn more about you or get in touch, where can they find you?

[00:33:56] Ben: They can find me at mindonthejob.com. Bronwyn, everything, uh, about me can be found there - probably too much.

[00:34:05] Bronwyn: Wonderful. And I'll pop your podcast in the show notes as well. And I recommend listeners give it a listeners as well. I love supporting other people's podcasts, and that includes guest podcast and I'm sure it's awesome. I need to actually listen to it, I have a listen to an episode. What episode would you recommend that I should listen to?

[00:34:19] Ben: Bronwyn, I think you should probably have a listen to, um, um, Professor Helena Nguyen talking about emotional demands and, um, emotional labour in the workplace.

[00:34:31] Bronwyn: Done. That sounds awesome. What a great topic.

Okay, listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you follow the Mental Work podcast. Rate and review it on your favourite platform, and share it with a friend or a colleague who might find it helpful. It's the best way to get the podcast out there. That's a wrap. I'm Bronwyn Milkins. Catch you next time, bye!