A reflection on burnout, identity, and recovery — plus practical action steps

There’s an addiction we rarely talk about because it looks like ambition.

It earns praise. Promotions. Respect.
It hides behind phrases like “driven,” “productive,” and “hard-working.”

But for many high achievers, work isn’t just effort — it’s a coping mechanism.

In this episode, Dawn shares her story of a “workaholic blackout” — the moment she realized work had become her drug. After years of recovery from substances, she found herself caught in a new cycle: overwork, anxiety, identity tied to productivity, and eventual burnout.

At one point, she drove home from work and had no memory of the drive. That was the moment everything shifted.

What followed was a diagnosis of extreme burnout and a realization that she wasn’t just “busy” — she was addicted to working.

When Work Stops Being Healthy

One of the most powerful distinctions Dawn shared is this:

Working hard doesn’t make someone a workaholic.
External pressure doesn’t equal addiction.

Workaholism comes from the inside.

It’s marked by:

An internal compulsion to keep working
Self-worth tied to productivity
Constant thoughts about work
Anxiety or guilt when not working
Difficulty detaching — even during rest

You can meet deadlines, put in long hours, and still be healthy.

But when work becomes how you manage fear, grief, identity, or anxiety — it shifts from effort to escape.

Burnout Isn’t Just Exhaustion

Burnout isn’t just being tired.

It’s a full-system collapse:

Physical
Emotional
Mental
Spiritual

For many high performers, burnout mirrors an addiction “bottom.”
You keep pushing… until your system can’t.

And then something breaks.

Relationships suffer. Health declines. Meaning fades.

And the work that once energized you begins to feel like pressure, obligation, or proof of worth.

The Cultural Trap

Our culture celebrates overworking.

We glorify:

Hustle
Sacrifice
Endless productivity
“Grinding” for success

But we rarely talk about the cost:

Anxiety
Family strain
Loss of identity outside work
Chronic stress
Emotional detachment

Workaholism is often called “the respectable addiction” because it looks admirable from the outside.

Until it doesn’t.

Recovery Isn’t About Quitting Work

Unlike substances, you can’t abstain from work.

Recovery is about boundaries, awareness, and redefining your relationship to productivity.

Dawn shared practices that helped her rebuild balance:

Under-scheduling instead of over-planning
Creating “top lines” (healthy behaviors to commit to)
Creating “bottom lines” (behaviors to avoid)
Protecting time for joy, relationships, and rest
Spiritual grounding and daily reflection
Detaching self-worth from output

It’s less about doing less — and more about working from a different place.

Not fear.
Not “not enough.”
Not urgency.

But intention.

Action Steps: Rebuilding a Healthy Relationship With Work

If this episode resonated, here are simple starting points.

1) Notice the fuel behind your productivity

Ask yourself:

Am I working from joy… or fear?
Is this aligned… or avoidance?
Am I creating… or proving?

2) Separate urgency from importance

Not everything urgent is important.
And not everything important feels urgent.

Pause before reacting.

3) Identify your “bottom lines”

Examples:

No work after a certain hour
No phone during family time
No checking email first thing in the morning

4) Define your “top lines”

Healthy commitments like:

Movement
Hydration
Connection
Rest
Creative time

5) Schedule spaciousness

Recovery often begins with:

Fewer commitments
Fewer calls
Fewer goals at once

Space allows clarity.

6) Detach identity from productivity

Practice this reframe:
“I am enough — with or without what I produce today.”

7) Watch for the “self-care productivity trap”

Even healing can become another project.

Self-care isn’t something to optimize.
It’s something to experience.

Reflection Prompts

Where is my self-worth tied to achievement?
What am I avoiding by staying busy?
When do I feel most at peace — and why?
What would “enough” look like today?

Resources Mentioned

Workaholics Anonymous literature and tools
Journaling and recovery reflection practices
Byron Katie’s “The Work” inquiry process
Anxiety and habit research (Dr. Judson Brewer)
Recovery communities and peer support spaces

(Referenced from episode transcript)

Final Thought

You don’t have to burn out to change your relationship with work.

You don’t have to earn rest.
You don’t have to prove your worth.
You don’t have to run on fear.

There is another way to work — one rooted in clarity, presence, and enoughness.

And it starts with one honest question:

What’s really driving me right now?

Guest Contact Info:

👊🏼Need help applying this information to your own life?

Here are 3 ways to get started:

🎁Free Guide: 30 Tips for Your First 30 Days – With a printable PDF checklist

Grab your copy here: https://www.soberlifeschool.com

☎️Private Coaching: Make Sobriety Stick

https://www.makesobrietystick.com

Subscribe So You Don’t Miss New Episodes!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon Music, or you can stream it from my website HERE. You can also watch the interview on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/@theonedayatatimepodcast?sub_confirmation=1

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast/id1212504521

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4I23r7DBTpT8XwUUwHRNpB

Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a8eb438c-5af1-493b-99c1-f218e5553aff/the-one-day-at-a-time-recovery-podcast

Dawn

Well Dawn. Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m excited to be here. Yay. Me too. Listen, I was just about to tell you a story and I was like, you know what? Let me just hit record before I launch into this thing, and I wanted to invite you on to talk about workaholism type issues because. You told me a story ages ago, and you might have to just retell it in your own words, about a workaholic blackout, and I was like, holy crap, I didn’t know that that was a thing.

And you must have told me this probably two or three years ago at least. It was a while ago. And it’s an idea that has continued to haunt me because I myself go through like this. You know, I’m sober from drugs and alcohol and mostly sugar ish, but, uh, I, I still have some issues. I still have my ways that I like to distract and work is my favorite work, is my favorite distraction.

And I kid myself [00:01:00] that I’m in service. I am creative. I’m producing from love. But the truth of the matter is, is I often cross the line and start creating from a place. Of fear or dysfunction of some kind of self avoidance, not so can you sort of tell the story, I don’t know if you remember the one you told me, but, um, this idea of a workaholic blackout?

Well, you know, fortunately for me, although, um, I’ve probably had. 10 years of drug and alcohol blackouts that I wouldn’t be able to tell you about. Um, I didn’t have a lot of, I haven’t had a lot of workaholic blackouts in my life, so I, I know the story that you’re talking about and, and it’s a good starting point for a conversation about, um, workaholism because it, it really was the bottom for me.

It was when I surrendered, it was my first step. If you please, when I, you know, the first step of workaholics [00:02:00] anonymous. Um, is we admitted we were powerless over work, that our lives had become unmanageable, and this was in and around that time, that time period. So it was 2011, it was February, 2011, and I had been, um, gosh long story, I guess in recovery from substances since 1987.

Haven’t drank alcohol since 1987, or done cocaine since then. Smoked a lot of cannabis for two years. Gave that up in 1989. Was well, well kind of integrated into a. Substance free life. Um, over the next several, whatever, 10 to 15 years. But what happened for me is I moved onto other things. You know, there was a period of love addiction somewhere in there.

I don’t remember exactly when and, um, but when work became my drug, it was kind of at the end, at the beginning and end of a couple of things. One is I had. Lost my mom. You know what that is like. So I, I’d gone through this period of losing my mom and over 16 months she was diagnosed and then [00:03:00] subsequently died after 16 months with leukemia.

Then I was behind on finishing my PhD, which I did, and as I was finishing up my PhD, and again, just kind of like, almost like workaholic with that, like, you as Stu we can be, as with school, we can be like we are with work or other things. Just totally immersed in it. So I finished school and at the exact moment I was finishing my PhD.

I ended up in the hospital with colon cancer and nearly died. So I came out of kind of losing my mom in the grief around that, you know, going through 13 years in a row of school, culminating in my PhD and getting con cancer at that same time. And I came outta that, you know, kind of moved here to the west coast where I live now in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia.

And, um, felt like after the year of chemotherapy that I had to undergo when we moved here. I just had the sense, I was 45 years old and I was like, oh my gosh, I’m so behind. First of all, I was addicted till I was 27 and then 29 if you count, the Mari won’t wanna, and then I was in school for all these [00:04:00] years, and now then I had cancer and a year of chemo and I need to get going.

I need to get going with my career. I need to get going, raising kind of, um, revenues, you know, making money. So I, I, I started teaching at the university. And I started doing or continued doing consulting work that I had started during my graduate degrees. And um, and then I got headhunted into a full-time position in government leading a large research shop.

So from 2005 when I was doing chemotherapy and I started doing this work, um, until 2011, I was operating three full-time basically careers. Oh, well that’s not true. Teaching was, teaching was part-time, but teaching always takes more than just teaching for the hours that you’re teaching, right? There’s prep and there’s marking, and all those things.

So for six years I just ran myself ragged, ran myself into like extreme burnout, and so in February, 2011. [00:05:00] A couple of things happened. One was, well, three things basically were, my bottom one was for no reason whatsoever. I burst into tears during, um, a meeting with leadership, with like my bosses, and it was just, um, we were talking about deliverables and I knew I was late on getting something completed.

And, and for whatever reason, that was devastating to me and I burst into tears. Not really noticeably, but like I was crying. People knew something was going on, but I didn’t speak, I didn’t say anything. I left the meeting and about a week later, uh, the same thing happened. Only this time it was, um, my boss looked at me funny, and I’m sure I it, you know, it was just that, oh my gosh, that look she gave me was turned into this great big, huge story in my head, and I was done.

Like I was, oh my gosh. I just, I don’t understand what’s going on here. Everybody hates me. I’m gonna get fired. None of those things were true. I went back to my desk and I worked through that day in this, um, [00:06:00] just this real, really vulnerable emotional state. And plowed through my, I don’t know, 180 or whatever emails that I would get on any given day.

And, and, and then it was the end of the day, probably most days would’ve ended for four, at four 30. For most people. It was probably closer to six for me, but I thought, oh, I’m gonna go home early today because I’ve had such a rough day and I’m feeling so I emotional and upset, and I’m not myself. And I got in my car.

Drove home, apparently. I mean, I have no recollection whatsoever of driving home, but all of a sudden I was pulling into my driveway and I was, and some of this, I’ve, you know, some of what I’ve told you about that day, I re, you know, I pieced together afterwards because when I pulled into that driveway, I realized I have no recollection.

Of driving home and the drive home during, you know, from between four and seven at night where I live, it’s about a 20 minute drive. And I was like, how [00:07:00] did I just appear? How did I just get in my driveway? And then I was like, and what happened today? Like, what happened today? What’s going on? Like where, what?

And that, and I was like. I was crying was that last week that I was crying. ’cause it had been last week. But I know, I feel like I was crying again and, and what did I do? And what happened today? And I went in the house and I had a blackberry. And this is 2011, right? Yeah. And I, and of course I could go through my emails and I saw that, no, I responded to a lot.

Like, I don’t remember responding to these, these emails. I don’t remember reading them. The whole day was like a black. I was like, I’m something is really wrong. Of course, I go to immediately like, that’s an aneurysm or brain cancer or something. It’s not like burnout and overwork, it’s a tumor. So the next day I did something that I never, ever did and I called in sick.

I think it was a Friday, so this was on a Thursday, and I went to my doctor. I could get into my doctor right away and described for her what was going on, and she was like. Tell me like she, I haven’t seen you for a really long time. Has your health been regularly quite good? ’cause I haven’t seen you for 18 months or whatever it was.

And [00:08:00] I was like, well no, I’ve been getting headaches and you know, stress in my back and my neck and all these things are going on and I’m not eating and there’s lots of things going on. Do you think I have cancer again? And she’s like, no. Why haven’t you been coming to see me for these ailments? And I was like.

Too busy working man. Like, just too busy working. And she’s, okay, well let’s just tease this apart. She said, you’re like, you’re experiencing extreme burnout, and that explains the crying jags and it’s like mini, um, anxiety attacks and you’re gonna need to take some time off. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh.

Like, it’s the weekend. I’ve got the weekend. Okay, I’ll take the weekend off. This is my, this is how my brain worked. I won’t work this weekend like I normally do. And she’s like, no, you’re gonna take more than that off. So she said, you know, you’re gonna need like at least four days or something like that.

Maybe there was a holiday coming up or something. ’cause it was like, why was I thinking it was a four day week? So of course I go back and you know, tell my team that I’m need to [00:09:00] take the few days the next week off and I don’t know what happened. I guess just like with any other addiction. There’s a point where you actually start to see that there’s something amiss.

And I spent those few days, she wanted me to go back and see her, and I went back and I said, I, I think I’m gonna need more time off. I’m starting to realize that I think, I think I have a problem. Like I think that, I think that I’m wired to my work and I know that because like, I can’t, even though I’m off sick, like I’m on my Blackberry doing email, like I can’t detach, I can’t, I.

So, uh, and I don’t know how to, so she just suggested that I do a few things, which is, um, you know, I told my boss that I was going to be off for an unknown period of time that I had, and, and I didn’t have to tell her it was stress leave or burnout. I just, you know, medical leave. I’m going on medical leave, and I handed in my Blackberry and I went to my team.

I, I quit my job [00:10:00] teaching, like I wasn’t even finished teaching the course, and I said, I, I can’t finish this course. I had one consulting contract that I had to wrap up, so it took me a few days to do that and, and yeah, I just like, I disengaged from February till June from all things working. Started to think about my life and how this felt like bottoms that I’d hit before with love addiction and substances and codependency, and I had to work it just like I had to work any other program.

And I, I learned at that time, well, I knew for, I’d known for a few years that there was a program called Workaholics Anonymous because Get this, a friend of mine, dear friend. Had given me a book called Workaholics Anonymous several years previously when we were working together. Mm-hmm. And I remember when she gave it to me thinking, oh, that’s nice.

She knows that I’m in a 12 step recovery program for addiction, so she thinks I’m gonna be interested to know that this is one for workaholism. [00:11:00] It never occurred to me she was, or someone else was giving to me because. Like it was just how nice of you to think that and, and yet I knew that I had that book somewhere and it was under my bed, so I found it under my bed with all the dust bunnies on it, and I picked it up and read it.

And it was just kind of that, you know, again, for anybody who’s listening like that, those moments of, oh my God, how did I not see this? How did I not see this? And that was the beginning of my recovery from work. Long answer. No, that was the exact right answer. Now, I can’t imagine, um, what it, what it was like telling your boss.

Were you terrified or were you just so like, bottomed out? You were like, I, you know, fuck it. I’m just gonna tell her, you know what? I didn’t like her. Um, she was a, you know, she was. Nobody liked her. Um, so at first I think that I probably, the, the first part of my process was a lot like it would be [00:12:00] with other addictions, right?

Was like, she did this to me. This is her fault. And, um.

You know, this is the thing about workaholism that you can actually be a per and I, this is fairly newer research, and again, I only learn things when I’m ready to, because I’ve been researching and presenting on workaholism since 2011, and literally in the last year I came across some literature, um, academic studies that I either hadn’t.

Read properly before, or it just, I wasn’t ready to hear it because I used to think if you’re a person who just works all the time, all the time, all the time, you’re a workaholic period. Anybody who works all the time is a workaholic. Anybody who works like way too many hours for extended periods of time, or even short periods of time is a workaholic.

Kind of like, you know, if you drink too much, you’re, you’re an alcoholic. Not necessarily. You might just be. You might just be going through a period of alcohol misuse, right? I mean, that’s possible. Some people then just put it away. Sure, [00:13:00] yeah. Yeah. But what I learned is that, you know, there are people who work a lot and, and that, that a lot of it is external pressure to work.

Like they’ve got a deadline and they’ve gotta work like for days, weeks, months, because of this external deadline, but they don’t have the. The thing up here that I as a workaholic have, which is it’s the internal compulsion to work. So regardless of what’s happening to us externally, regardless of the pressures of timelines and deliverables and productivity expectations, like you can do that and not be a workaholic.

You can work all those hours and not be workaholic. There has to be these other kind of pieces. Right. Um. And that’s, that’s the difference. And that’s, you know, there has to be like, uh, an inner compulsion, um, kind of the idea that self-worth is tied to work, right? This is the addictive component. Um, there needs to be co a cognitive element, right?

The constant thoughts about work, [00:14:00] kind of the inability to detach. And then there’s also emotional, like the negative emotions when not working, like. Who am I? If I’m not working, I, I don’t feel worthwhile. I’m not, my worth is tied to my work. And then, and then the behavioral, which is kind of the excessive work hours beyond what is expected.

Again, there, if it’s expected, it’s, it’s not, it’s different. So that was really interesting to me. Um, I did this presentation just a couple of weeks ago, like a, a formal presentation on this to the Global Exchange Conference just last week. And that was a new piece for me to kind of get, dig into. Um. So that’s interesting, but it’s just the difference.

So anyway, when I was on my like recovery journey, thinking about all of this, I went through the period of time where like it’s, it’s the organization and, and to be honest, like governments are workaholic organizations. Like there are, there are unrealistic kind of expectations and timelines and, and that type of thing.

And that can be really bad for someone like me. [00:15:00] There are other people who are boundaried and healthy and they go like, I’m sorry, I’m not answering my boss’s email at 10. I’m like, I have my phone, I have my phone set, and if there was an email at 10 o’clock I was up and answering it. So that’s some of what work holism looks like differently than just kind of people who work a lot.

Yeah, that makes sense. Uh, I was thinking about my brother as you were talking. He’s an attorney and so he, he’s under a lot of pressure, external pressure to put, you know, for billable hours. And so he works crazy hours sometimes and like days and days without a day off and, you know, um, but, uh, when I was thinking about how I, my relationship with work is this.

Internal pressure. You know, what you said about tying the work to my self worth really resonates with me. And I’m coming to realize I’m doing a little research, um, around anxiety. I’ll be talking to Dr. Judd Brewer who wrote Unwinding [00:16:00] Anxiety and, uh, so in, in my research, um, for that discussion, you know, he’s talking about, you know.

Having this feeling of anxiety. You know, he’s an addiction expert and he’s talking about having this feeling of anxiety. And I really relate that to, you know, Tara Brock, uh, talks about self avoidance, and so I have this way of creating all this work for myself. It’s like. It’s pressure I put on myself, you know, I’m 57, I’m looking at retirement.

I left my Silicon Valley Tech job where I made a lot of money. I mean million do millions of dollars over like a 10 year period, you know, over my career. And, you know, going striking out on my own is a very, you know, letting go of the title and the money and all that stuff. But this, um, my friends are always telling me, oh, you put too much pressure on yourself.

But it’s like, I can’t [00:17:00] help it. Right. And I, I try not to come from this place of not good enough. I try to come from a place of, um, creating out joy, but this. That is a new experience for me. That came out of a summer. I did self-care summer ’cause I was so burnt out. Like my idea of taking a break. I was like, okay, I have 12 interviews in the can so to speak.

I can take three months off. And just focus on self-care. But what I ended up doing was I still did the podcast. I still did some interviews. I, uh, SI turned my self-care project into another workaholic thing. I was like, I’m gonna read all these books. I’m gonna do all the nos of workbook. I’m gonna meditate and journal and exercises and blah, blah.

I’m gonna keep track of everything on a spreadsheet and measure my, and I was like, what am I doing? Like it took me a minute. To realize I was turning self-care [00:18:00] summer into another form of workaholism, and it took me, I actually interviewed a guy who was talking about coop black and talking about surrender, the magic of surrender.

And I realized I needed a little wind down period before I could really, like surrendering was a process for me. Did you have a similar experience? I mean, I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t disengage, and even after I handed in the Blackberry, it was still like just. Thinking, right? I mean, I couldn’t, couldn’t stop obsessing over what are they doing?

How is it going over there? I wonder. Um, and so a couple of things. First of all, um, Dr. Judd Brewer is also, he’s mind shift recovery, right? He is a MD that specialize. He’s a psychiatrist that specializes in addiction, but he wrote that book, unwinding Anxiety. That was a New York Times bestseller. I think I get him stuck with a, a Jeb.

So anyway. That’s okay. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but that made me think of [00:19:00] something that I was talking about last week with somebody. I don’t remember who, where, what about, um, so at the time that, uh, that I hit my bottom, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder as well. Mm-hmm. So burnout and GAD and I, I didn’t even know what GAD was.

Um, but somebody the other day was talking about high functioning anxiety. And it’s quite interesting. It’s not in the DSM, so it’s not like a people, you, it’s not like a clinical diagnosis like ga like um, GAD is, but it’s almost like I think work as workaholics or work those of us with workaholic tendencies.

It’s more like what you’re describing, which is. High functioning anxiety, kinda the anxiety is related to our functioning and being able to function at a high level. And so for me, like I had to stop and my project, which I had to be very, very intentional because my project became blogging, and what happened was I [00:20:00] was seeing a therapist who just suggested that I start.

Journaling about my time off and like, and I did, and I, it was kind of unpacking my grief from my mom and the fact that, whoa, you know, I had cancer and I didn’t really, you know, nearly died and I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about that. And I started journaling and then I decided that I wanted to just do blogging was just kind of a thing in 2011, I thought.

I’m just gonna blog, not for anybody else to read, but it was just a nice way of it being on the computer with a pretty picture behind it. I don’t remember the name of the blogging platform, but like you could just, you could choose your design behind. And so I was blogging to myself, but it was an open blog and then people started reading it and it was called Recovering Dawn.

And I was just talking about work holism. And then that evolved and it was so for me, I had to like, I had to, it just needed to be journaling. It couldn’t be, I was writing and editing it, like it, I, you know, I had to really work hard and it was just kind of like, wow. Into the [00:21:00] blog almost daily, like a day.

But, but I had to catch myself from trying to do more with it. Um, and it just felt really good. And then when people started engaging with it, it was like, ah, now what do we do? And so I would just, you know, respond a little bit, but just really kept it as it filled me up because I felt. Like, I dunno, somehow journaling wasn’t productive enough, whereas I had this thing that was up and out, right.

Um, but didn’t turn it into a big project until I had to go back to work after four months. And then when I went back to work at four months, I knew that even though I was just journaling, that I couldn’t actually, the. This, the back, the back to work schedule that I had for myself was literally go to work, stop for coffee in the morning or decaf.

’cause I gave up caffeine as part of this recovery. Stop for a break, a snack, a drink stop for lunch, go for a go out and take a walk, stop in the afternoon and leave work at four or four [00:22:00] 30 and not be on a computer at all at night. So I could no longer, um, blog. Like I couldn’t go home and blog at night because that was so, and I had to do that for like six months.

And what I did was, instead tn my daughter at the time said, well, why don’t we just start a Facebook page and then you can. You know, you can just post, like if you just wanna keep engaging around this idea of women in recovery, which is what I was really getting into, all types of recovery, my workaholism, my cancer, my grief.

Um, I could just post a post or a thought on a Facebook page, a fan page. They were called at the time, and I’d be done, it would kind of keep me connected to my blog, but I was off the blog now and I could do that. Like, it would take me five minutes. Either I could do it at lunch if I had time at work or when I got home.

Um, you know, I just had to have my computer off by six o’clock and, and no computing after that. And that’s when we decide, I decided, we decided to start the Facebook fan page called she Recovers. So that was [00:23:00] kind of the beginning of, and, and, you know, the continuation, continuation of my own inner searching for how on earth did I get so, so sick again.

Um, because I do feel like. At the end of my run, like my workaholic run, um, my marriage was in ta like my marriage was in trouble. My daughters were barely speaking to me ’cause they were so tired of me just repeating the old, you know, I can’t do that with you ’cause I have to work. My health was suffering.

My friendships were suffering and I was a disaster. And so. So yeah, it became really, um, it became my job to know how to recover and to just kind of continue that conversation. And, and then at the end of this, at around the six month mark when I was, I’d been great going to work and really, really, and the thing that I had this wonderful team of people that worked for me with me.

They were invested in my health. So I mean, they’d be knocking on my door at four o’clock and say, you better wrap up. It’s time to go. [00:24:00] Uh, you know, nobody ever kicking you out, me out of hours ever again. And at the six month mark, um, uh. The court, the, the company, or sorry, the government decided to dissolve the unit because of financial issues, budget issues, and so I got given a one year package to go off and be paid just as much money as I was making to work only now I didn’t have to pay for parking or panty house, and I had a year that I wasn’t allowed to work as a consultant because I would like, had a no, a non-competing clause.

So then I had a year. To think, what am I gonna do next? And really kind of dug into doing something more and deeper with She recovers more with women in recovery. Um, I determined that we would, Taryn and I hosted a retreat. It was the beginning of She recovers, was a retreat in Mexico in 2012, and that all kind of unfolded from there.

Then at the end of the year, I realized [00:25:00] that I needed to be a consultant in order to make the money that I needed to have the life that I needed to have, and that she recovers would just be, um, a passion project. And then, you know, ended up through the years, truthfully, there have been times since 2011 when we started that Facebook page and started, she recovers.

There have been, um, four times where I’ve had severe relapses into work, holism and all four were tied to conferences. Uh. So I would, the big events would get to a conference and you know, our conferences. Yeah, you’re amazing. And by the time we got to the conference, I would know, like, I’m in it, I’m wired.

The only way I’m gonna get outta this is to get through this four day weekend and collapse and start all over again. So I did that four times and so I know, and at the last one, Peyton, my coworker and our event producer and I, and the rest of the team, but mostly Peyton and not Peyton, I said, we can’t do this again.

Yeah, it’s just too hard on us, so we haven’t done it, but, so I know [00:26:00] that it’s still in me, like I can still get there. Um, the difference for me with work like the, when I was overworking and in my workaholic. Like real deep into it. I was, there’s no other way to put it. Like I was getting off on it. Like, I was like, ah, this is, like, I’m doing this.

You know, like you’re just like, whoa, whoa, feels good. So productive and it feels so good. And got through all those emails and got this contract signed and I nailed this in and I’ve been on 17 Zoom calls today. And like, you feel it and you know it. And the difference for me now is when I’m in it, all I wanna do is get out of it.

And that was the case for all four conferences. So I was in it, but I was not like enjoying it. Like I just didn’t want, I was like, oh yes, this is how this feels. And so now in retrospect, I look at that as almost like, maybe that’s what I’ve learned recently. Right? But these were external pressures making me do it.

But, um, I can’t say that I wasn’t, uh, it wasn’t approaching those week, those months and weeks and days [00:27:00] as in a workaholic, because I was like, I was obsessed and wired and just giving her the whole time. So, so I don’t wanna wake that up anymore. I’m 65 years old, I wanna wind down and I don’t know what winding down looks like, because I do still have to make a living.

Um, yeah. But I, you know, I’ve at least started thinking about what winding down looks like. Yeah, that’s good to start with just like a vision and plant a seed and let it grow and see what happens. I’m sure you have lots of opportunities and, um, options presented to you, uh, from a variety of different things.

So I could see that that might be a fun, uh, time of exploration for you, you know, and I’m so curious, um, what you learned when you were doing the research for your presentation that you did recently, and the thing that comes up. For me when, you know, I consider workaholism is the how the culture really supports it.

Like workaholism is really kind of seen as a badge of honor, but people don’t [00:28:00] really understand that this can bring you to your knees and break you in ways, just like drugs and alcohol can. I always say the purpose of obsession is distraction. Right? And, and we can run that distraction, um, till it, till it breaks us.

And that’s typically, you know, I always get this visual of me carrying a big stack of books and God just comes up and smacks a books on my head, like, put it down woman. You know, like sometimes I need sort of like that hard wake up call to like start to let it go. But I feel like workaholism is so celebrated in our culture.

Oh my gosh. It is, right? I mean, the, the presentation that I give or, or that I gave, uh, recently was, um, workaholism the Respectable Addiction. Right, right. It, it is, and, and the positive views of workaholism. We’re all familiar with them. Right. Oh my gosh. But he or she is worked so hard and. Oh my gosh. You know, like they’re real climbers.

They’re really out there doing what they [00:29:00] love and they’re so successful and fulfilling their calling and all those things. Yeah. And when we think about those things, it’s almost always associated with somebody who we can see from the outside is like working, working, working, working. Right. Um, the entrepreneur, the idea of the entrepreneur is just giving it their all working so hard, sacrificing so many years and sacrificing everything.

And I just watched, um. Watched the movie last night, Jay Kelly with George Clooney about this, uh, uh, it’s about a, a, a movie star in Hollywood. And he gave up his entire life. His family liked everything to become a star. And now he’s at this age, he’s actually 60 in the movie he says, but where he’s reflecting back and he wants to, he wants the time back and he wants to do it over again.

But, but you see, like, yeah, he’s, you know, he’s reached this pinnacle of success. He is like, so, so successful and. Um, it’s only in retrospect that we kind of look back and I think that, you know, we, so there’s all these. Positive ideas and, [00:30:00] and that we have about people who work really hard and then we don’t think about the negative outcomes of that work, right?

The things that, that I experience, like the stress at work and the poor family relationships and the marital dis dissatisfaction and the conflict and my family over how much I was working and let alone, you know, the blood pressure and, and the other risk. The physical risks and not sleeping properly, and then, you know, culminating in burnout.

Right. But burnout is, to me, like burnout is, is physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. It’s like I was done. I was done. Yeah. And, uh, and I needed to recreate a life. Yeah, that, that burnout is rough because it, I equate the workaholic burnout to the alcoholic bottom, like the rock bottom, like where you’ve, you know, you just have all this momentum behind you so you can work and work and work and accomplish and achieve and all that stuff.

But it, like, for me, it started to, um, I was [00:31:00] feeling discouraged. I was feeling like I wasn’t getting back what I, like, I was pouring myself into these projects that were not filling my cup, like I wasn’t feeling appreciated. Like I was going into total martyrdom, like victim mentality, and I really hate that.

Mindset, and I don’t like myself when I’m sort of in that mindset of like, oh, I’m working so hard and, but I take it to the place where I’m working so hard, I’m not reaching my goals. I get really frustrated. Everything is my fault. And it sort of, it feels like a failure. And it sort of reinforces this idea of not good enough, which then sort of fuels the anxiety, which fuels the need to take action.

And it’s just like this. I feel like I’ve been going through like this workaholic burnout cycle like many times over the last, you know, 30 years it feels like, and you’ve just sort of reached a point where like, okay, I wanna get off this hamster wheel. [00:32:00] It’s rough. I, I think, you know, you just, you nailed it, right?

It’s the knock it enough button and Yeah. Until like, I, I don’t know why or when it happened. I just, and it’s only probably been in the last five years. Um, but yeah, like I, I’m, I’m good enough with or without the work I do. The work that I do for, she recovers now. I mean, I get paid a minuscule amount of money compared to what I make when I’m consulting.

Um, and that’s okay. I feel like whatever I give I is, is enough. Like I, I give enough and it is good enough and what I get back, I’m not looking to get anything back. But what I get back is kind of, it’s almost like, you know, when I see, when I see a woman doing well or celebrating a milestone or something, like that’s good enough for me.

I’m, I’m not looking for kind of, I don’t, I don’t need kind of the external pats on the head [00:33:00] anymore. And I think it comes with age. I, I, I can’t think and experience, but I, I do think it’s just like one day, the flip, the switch flips and I no longer really care what other people do. Like I’ve thought about.

If, if I had to step away from she recovers, just ’cause if I got tired, if I got sick, if something happened, like I could do that because there are enough volunteers now in place that they would keep what needed to keep going, going and I’d be happy to, you know, to just be over here cheering them on. Um, you know, we, we live in a, uh, you know, I’m set up in a place where we own a home and.

If again, like, ’cause I’m 65 health issues, my husband has health issues, I’ve got a few health issues. Like if things came tumbling down, I need to be prepared for that. And I feel like I am, like it would just look like totally just going into. Just hanging out mode and being myself and like spending time with my grandkids and my kids and my friends.

Yeah. And, and I would do that and, you know, we’d either sell the [00:34:00] house and live on the equity or give up my she cave and rent it out to pay whatever. Um, you know, it’s just all these things. Like I, I guess I’m just at that place where I’m not going to work myself to death. I’m not going to go there again.

Right. I’m not going to, uh, and, and I’m not saying that I’ve got it all figured out. I still have to figure out. Like next year, right? There’s all these important, exciting things that we say we’re gonna do what she recovers and we’re gonna do some of them, but we’re not gonna do all of them. And it’s my job as CEO to say we’re not doing them all.

Like we just had a period. Again, as a leader, I try not to do this, but we had to launch our year end fundraising, which every nonprofit knows. This is the most important, it’s the most important time of the year. I could sing that like it’s a Christmas song, but um, it’s not the most beautiful time of the year.

It’s the most stressful time of the year. And leading up to it, everybody was like, we were like on, oh my gosh. Somehow this one week before last week, everybody was like. Afraid and fried. And it [00:35:00] was like before that it had been kind of manageable. You know, there’s a few people on our team that it didn’t feel manageable to, but for the most part we did okay.

But then we had that one week, and it’s just that one week to remind us that. We can’t do this. Like we can’t set ourselves like next year. We’re gonna need to plan further out from year end and, and those types of things because it doesn’t feel good for me as a leader, as a person, as a person in recovery from mer alcoholism to, um, again, like I had, I worked probably five, 12 to 14 hour days in a row, and I don’t do that at all in my life anymore.

And so when I did it the week before last, again, it was like I was not thriving and getting off on that. I was like. I freaking hate this and I do not wanna do this again. How do we not do this again? So, um, yeah, it’s interesting. But I do think it’s, and you know, how old are you? May I ask? I’m 57. Okay. It’s three years from now.

Like that not enough button is just gonna go away. It’s like not even gonna matter. You’re gonna hit magical 16, you’re gonna go. [00:36:00] What matters, really? What matters? Um, something about it being like the third chapter for me, right? It’s ’cause that’s how I feel. So everything is kind of looked at like in that light, right?

Like, I mean, I’m just, I’m not, I’m not gearing up. I’m gearing down. Gearing down. I’m not gearing down yet, but I’m like, I need to, it’s kind of like you go, and now you gotta go like this for a little while. Plateau a little plateau, and then you gotta go down like this. I, I don’t think I could go like this.

I mean, right. I’ve, I’ve done that, but that’s up and down’s. That’s necessarily healthy. So It is. And I love, you know, it’s very interesting. I love that you at least had the. For you knew that you needed to take the summer of self-care. Yeah. And you set the intention even if you didn’t execute next year, you can execute right.

Based on the lessons from this past summer. Well, I gotta tell you. So the first part, I didn’t realize what I was doing. I was just transferring my addiction to self care. [00:37:00] And then after a little while I realized, I caught, I caught, I caught myself. I saw what I was doing and then I, you know, looking back, I recognized that was my wind down period.

And then I put the. Projects away, the self-care projects. I put everything away and I decided I am only going to do things that bring me joy and I still, I do. I’m sort of a self-help junkie. I love to consume information. I find it helpful for my clients. It just seems like when I’m learning something that sort of strikes the vein, so to speak, that it’s useful.

We all seem to be connected and kind of going through the same things at the same time, and it came across. This, uh, teacher Joe Hudson who was talking about, um, how to cope with some of these things. And I have a little sticky that’s right in front of me. You can’t see it, but it says, I don’t have to get anywhere.

There’s nothing to figure out, and it’s never going to be enough. [00:38:00] So it’s okay. It was almost like, oh. It’s never gonna, I’m never, it’s never gonna, there’s nowhere to get to. It’s never going to be enough. And for whatever reason, like that just allowed me to settle and feel more grounded and have more peace, and I really do now.

Um. Set my day with intention of, you know, what’s important, what, what’s the difference between important and, and urgent? You know, the urgents not always important, you know, just, you know, I do have a spiritual practice, so I do ask to be led, like, what does God want me to do? You know, during this day it’s certainly not beat myself up for not doing enough.

Right. So just trying to have more compassion and be more conscious. I, I’m really trying to, um, switch the fuel source from where I operate. So before it’s anxiety and fear and times running out and I have to figure it out. Like that kind of mindset to switching to what feels [00:39:00] authentic, what is joyful, what is the truth?

Because in my mind there is. This idea like, I’m running out of time or I need to make more money, and those things aren’t actually true. The, the one process that’s really helped me is the Byron Katie’s, uh, the Work. Yeah. Is it true? How do you know it’s true? How would you be without this thought, you know, in doing some turnarounds, and that’s really helped me to sort of break my limiting beliefs and let go of this idea that I’m not enough or I’m a failure for some reason.

Yeah, I think I love what you talk, I mean, for me it’s about creating more spaciousness in my days, you know, not Yes. Because that will add up to my life, right? So I, I do, I have a few, I have a spiritual practice as well, and I ask for help in the morning and thank, um, my higher power for guidance at the end of every day, but.

I have a not to-do list, which is, you know, I do, I definitely have my to-do lists and, and I look, [00:40:00] I kind of, I have a running to-do list because I never get, I never put anything on like, I’m gonna get it done today. And then I, I, so I’ll look at my to-do list in the morning and I’ll go, okay, what am I do?

What really needs to be done today? And what can I just leave on there? And again, like, so I just leave it on, I think it’s upstairs right now, but I leave it on, I have things to do list that I started. It on this book That’s, I mean, it’s been weeks. The things are on there and I’m just not getting them to, because I’m prioritizing what do I have to do today?

I try to build in, like, I won’t, I’m trying not to do as many Zoom calls on any on and on every day because I find that they’re, and this is fun, but I mean like to have like six Zoom calls. Yeah. Like six hours a day on Zoom. I can’t do it anymore. I just, ’cause then you’ve got. If you’re working an eight hour day or seven hour day, you’ve got no time to do the work ’cause you’ve just been grading all the work.

Yeah. Yeah. So I, and I don’t schedule calls, um, zoom calls or meetings on Fridays because I like to either catch up on what I absolutely have [00:41:00] to do on Friday morning, but more than like, I like to take Friday afternoons off. I don’t work on weekends generally. Um, I don’t work in the evenings anymore and, and I just kind of try and I.

I try and stick to my own rules, right? My own guidelines around that. And it’s, uh, you know, I, I know some people who are, are really, really good at boundaries around work, and sometimes I just have to like watch them and remind myself that Oh yeah, like one of our team members. Like she works Tuesdays.

That’s what she does. She works Tuesdays. That’s it. Tuesdays, that’s it. Yeah, Tuesdays. Yeah. I mean, she gets optional. Paid to work Tuesdays, but Right, right, right. I mean, I, she fits it in, she fits it in, and if she doesn’t get it done Tuesday, she gets it done next Tuesday. And I just, I’ve watched her do this for years and I’m like, that’s amazing.

So it is possible. Yeah. I, I feel like I have to have really, I have to have a backstop at the end of my day. Yeah. Like by six o’clock. And I used to, um, put a class, like a, uh, bar class. [00:42:00] Like, I like group exercise. Group exercise is good for me ’cause I won’t quit in the middle of an exercise if I’m surrounded by people.

It’s like the shame factor. It’s like I can’t bear it. So I go to, so I used to do a an A group exercise class and that was the backstop for my day. ’cause otherwise it’d be so easy to just keep going or doing things. So I had to do little things like that to sort of, uh, put boundaries around my day. I, I, I really focus on, I mean, the tools that I use to heal from overworking are like under scheduling.

Mm-hmm. Uh, focus on play, you know, like when I’m with my grandkids, I don’t have my phone. Um, asking for help is a big practice. Like, I, you know, I can’t do this. I need somebody else to help me with it. And then in, in, we’re colic anonymous and another. Programs and other kind of, um, healing modalities.

There’s these ideas of like bottom lines and top lines. Hmm. And so like a top line would be, um, like, I will do such and such. Like I will ensure that I drink my [00:43:00] eight glasses of water this size today. That’s a good one. I’m really behind, so I’m just gonna be chugging like I’m at the bar by the end of the day.

’cause I’ve been talking for hours on the call. But I will do that. I will get up and move. I will do whatever exercise it is that I’m into this time. Um, and then the bottom lines are like, I won’t take my phone to the park with the kids and I won’t have my phone in my hand when people are visiting me in my living room, and I won’t.

So just kind of, you know, just kind of these guidelines that I put in place for myself and, and then hold myself accountable to them. I won’t, um, like I won’t when I go to bed, I always have a novel. And sometimes I’m exhausted and I read two pages and I’m done. But like, I won’t go to bed and think about what I need to do tomorrow for work and I won’t get up in the morning.

And the first thing I think is gonna be at work, like I’m gonna, you know, get up and do my little morning practice and at night go to bed and do my little nighttime practice. And, and those are my like top [00:44:00] lines, like those I do every single day. What is, what are your nighttime and morning time practices?

Well, literally just what I said, I basically go, okay, just reading bed before you asleep. And I’ll read like, yeah. So I this, I get into bed, I have a sip of water, I have a Tums ’cause I have skirt. I, I have little Tums. It’s like there’s a habit. And then I’ll, you know, I’ll, I’ll read my, I’ll read a few pages of my novel and then I’ll be falling asleep and I’ll turn it off and I’ll just kind of do my, like closing prayer.

Okay. You know, gratitude, prayer at the end of the day. And then when I get up in the morning, it’s kind of like before my feet even hit the ground, I’m. Kind of. Asking for guidance I get in the shower and do a lot of gratitude, you know, so privileged to live a life where I have a hot shower every day.

Yeah, beautiful smelling soaps and, and all those things that, you know, that I don’t ever wanna take for granted. And then I make myself a latte. ’cause I’m fancy like that. It’s decaf. ’cause I don’t drink caf caffeine anymore. And then, yeah, I’ll sit down and I’ll, you know, sometimes [00:45:00] I’ll read from my book and sometimes I’ll read from, um, a book called, uh, meditations for Women who Do Too Much, but that’s upstairs beside my chair.

And Yeah. You know, start drinking my water and then kind of then obviously open up my list and look at it and see what I’m, what I know I need to do. And you know what, one of the things I do before I close off at the end of the day is I look to see what’s my first thing tomorrow, so that I know, okay, I need, need to have my hair looking like, not like this because I’ve got a, a zoom call at 10.

Um, and then, yeah, I open up and I kind of look and have a, have a little gander through the emails. Yeah, just kind of, I try and kind of in the morning, get into it for an hour or two and then take a break and do something around the house. Like right now I’m trying to clean out one of our spare rooms because it’s, I’ve got all sorts of Christmasy things in there right now, but it’s just a big disaster.

So after this call, I’m gonna go up and I’m gonna spend an hour organizing there. And then, [00:46:00] um, today I think I do have a little bit more work to do on my computer, so I’ll get back on for an hour and then, uh. It’ll be time to get outside and get some fresh air and come back in, and I don’t cook clean or do anything in the house.

I have a partner that does all that, so I’m pretty fortunate I don’t have to fit those things into my schedule. But we’ll sit down and have a lovely meal together as we do it each and every evening. ’cause he prepares it. Otherwise we’d starve. God bless the husband. So likes to cook. I have one of those too.

That’s, that’s amazing. No, that sounds just like so grounded and it, it does give a little bit of room so that you can work because I know. Uh, you know, most of the programs, they talk about abstinence, but like in the eating program and work alcoholism program, we have to, uh, have, uh, boundaries because we still have to, you still have to eat, still have to work and earn money and things like that.

So, um, yeah, it’s not, it’s not really an abstinence thing, it’s a moderation thing. We also have a life where I actually [00:47:00] leave on January. January 14th, I’m going to Mexico for two months to host five retreats in Mexico. So that’s, then it’s about balancing the work that I need to get done and being a retreat facilitator, because I can’t stop working.

But then it just becomes, you know, I mean, again, I’ve got it figured out. Right. I’ll get up early. Okay. And I will do a little bit of work before yoga. And in the afternoon I’ll go and find an hour when other people are napping or walking or whatever they’re doing. And on Thursdays, when we send the women off to, um.

Like all Thursday’s excursion day, so it’s quieter like, and I’ll work that day. And I’ll figure it out. I mean, I’ve been doing it for a lot of years, but it’s also a time where it’s, uh, a rejuvenating period for me because I’m on retreat with 12 other amazing women in recovery, and we’re talking about all these, all this and other things.

And so it’s, you know, people go, oh gosh, isn’t that a lot of work? And, well, not when you’ve, when you’ve hosted 70 retreats, it’s not that difficult. I’m good at at it, I know how to do it. They kind of, they, uh, yeah. We’ve set it [00:48:00] up so that the retreats kind of just take care of themselves. And I’m there.

Yeah, we’re there. The facilitators, my friend Joanne, and I’ll be at these Mexico retreats. Oh, that’s beautiful. Five back. Back. So does your husband come with you? You’re back to back. Because I can’t do back to back. ’cause I do need some space. I recognize this. We used to do three back to back. So now we’re doing one and a week off three, back to back a week off, and then the last one.

Oh, I see. Okay. And that’ll be over a two month period. Excellent. And it’s such a beautiful place too. I mean, that’s how she recovered, started with was one little retreat, right? And now we’re, we’re, you know, we still do retreats in different places. These ones aren’t, she recovers per se. They’re, they’re fundraisers, but she recovers.

But, uh, you know, our focus as a, as a non-profit foundation is to provide free offerings for people. So online meetings and, and education series and in-person sharing circles and those types of things. Yeah, those are all really important. I refer to people, I, I put it in my book, but I refer people all the time to, she recovers, you know, for the [00:49:00] people who just really, you know, can’t get on board with traditional programs.

It’s really important to have an alternative. And I refer people to your book because you know what I see more, and I think I’ve talked to you about, this is probably another conversation about 12 step recovery. But what I’ve seen is that people come onto like an online platform like ours, and they get recovery, whether it’s from alcohol or, or drugs or, or whatever it is, and, and their recovery is virtual and they don’t have any in-person support and they get to that place.

Yeah. After a period of time we’re like, oh, I love this so much. I’d like to do this with people in real life. Yeah. And we just say, like, I just say immediately like, you’ve gotta check out a women’s AA or an Na NA meeting. Like you’ve got to, yeah, and, and I can arm them with all sorts of information so that when they get there, they feel confident enough to say, I.

You know, like what I say is that it’s like when that person inevitably may come up to you at the end of the meeting and say, you gotta do this and you gotta do that, and you gotta do this and you better do this. You can just look at ’em and go, oh my goodness. Thank you so much. You know, I thought that the only requirement was a desire to [00:50:00] stop drinking.

So I’m gonna start with that. But thank you for your, for your feedback. Um, I, I, I love that response because listen, what I, what I, what that is, is an opportunity to practice setting boundaries. And sometimes we just need to arm people with the actual phrases of what to say. Like, people just, they’re like a deer in the headlights and they’re, they don’t know what to say.

They run out and they don’t come back ’cause they don’t know what to say. And because I think that those expectations are real and that those are the requirements, those are not the requirements people. That’s not the requirements. No. It cracks me often. So I’ve been, you’ve sharing this analogy that I heard lately, uh, a long time ago, but I’ve been sharing it a lot lately.

And because I think that experience in itself is valuable. There’s, there’s this analogy. A gemologists will take two rough amethyst and put ’em in a Tumblr, and as the amethyst tumble in that they, they knock up against each other and they rub their rough edges off and they come out smooth. I feel like going to these meetings where all these people [00:51:00] have all these, listen, it’s not the hot bed of mental health, right?

But people have these rough edges, like we’re controlling, we’re, we’re, uh, what’s the opposite of controlling? Like, we’re totally la Some people are like totally dismissive or like lackadaisical. They’re like, oh, I’m not gonna do any work. You know, I just go to meetings. Like, they don’t, they don’t know that there’s a difference between the program and the, and, and meetings.

Like the, the program is the steps. Yeah. Anyway, it’s a whole thing, but I think it’s so interesting for these people to like tumble against each other because it, it triggers us. And I strongly believe that there is a treasure under every trigger. Like I don’t believe in bubble wrapping people. I believe in arming people with language so they can set boundaries, but you need to, you need to be able to practice that stuff.

And when we tumble around with these interesting characters in these meetings, it gives us an opportunity. To practice all these tools and you know what? We just come out a little smoother, right? We don’t get triggered by the things that used to bother us ’cause [00:52:00] we’ve been able to identify somebody triggers us.

We’re able to sort of like get to the wound under the trigger and heal that. But sometimes we don’t even know where that is until we experience a trauma. So I, I still see that there’s benefit even when it’s uncomfortable. I consider that to be like growing pain. So. I I, I’ll get off my, thank you for coming to my TED talk, you know, my soapbox.

But, but yeah. Um, I agree. I agree. And I, and I just do think like women who have, if they’ve kind of gained their kind of some, they’ve got their footing in recovery because of what they’ve been doing virtually or somewhere else. Yeah. Yeah. And they just have that confidence to go into a different, a new recovery, um, kind of.

Orientation or meeting or or gathering or community. Yeah. And have the confidence to, whereas if you know you’re brand new and the first thing you ever do is walk into a meeting and somebody comes up to you and starts telling you the nine things you have to do, like you’re not coming back by, I’m not coming back.

I’m like, I, I can’t do that. Yeah. [00:53:00] I can’t go to 90 days. It kicks off in 90 days. ’cause I have four kids, no car and no money for a babysitter. Like, so why are you telling me that’s what I have to do? Yeah. Yeah. That, that makes me really sad. That happens. But yeah, we need to let people know that that’s not, there is no, you will not find that in the literature.

I really encourage people to read the actual literature. Yeah. Um, because not, and I just always stress, I just always stress tradition three because that is, that is the only re there’s only one requirement. Yeah. And that’s not how it sounds sometimes. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That, see that, that’s why people like us need to continue to advocate for the the vulnerable people.

The new people. Yeah. Yeah. We offer a little protection because I, I think if we can get past, if we can help people get past some of that stuff, like the, there is a magical transformation, um, at the end of that process. Mm-hmm. And there, there is a safe way to do it. So, but yeah, I’m with you. There’s, there’s many paths [00:54:00] to recovery and, and I’m, I’m not a, as much as it sounds like it might sound like I’m a 12 step thumper, I’m kind of agnostic.

Yeah. And I mean, it’s okay for us to have our favorite ways, right? I mean, I, I think that, I love she recovers, but also we need to kind of develop a roadmap for people because at least, yeah. Because there are people who just come to, she recovers and think, I’m going to the gatherings. I’m in recovery.

That’s it. Like, and the work of recovery, we try and say like, we don’t, we don’t, we’re not a program because we want you to go to 12 step or go to therapy, or go to treatment, or go to, you know, do all these things. But I think, you know, this many years in, we’re kind of at a place like we kind of do need a roadmap that is kind of like a program for people.

And you know, I’m obviously gonna work on that and it’s going to. It’s gonna not parallel, but it’ll be modeled after some of the same, some of the same characteristics of a 12 step recovery program. Um, but, but different, you know, I think there’s some things [00:55:00] that I, I think are different, but yeah, the work needs to be done.

And, and again, that’s why I love that the 12 step model, you know, thank gosh that there was the 12 step. Workbook for work call. It’s anonymous. I’ve never been to a work call. It’s anonymous meeting. Oh, just you went through, I was gonna, I meant to ask you about that. Say you went through, do the work through the workbook.

Had the workbook. I’ve done the steps twice. I’ve got like the, their literature is all available online in PDF form. Like there’s the most amazing tools. There’s this one piece that I usually have up on my wall and I don’t know why I don’t right now, um, called The Gifts of Rest, and it’s just like one of their pieces of literature.

There’s like characteristics of recovery that list like. You know, this is what it looks like when you’re in recovery. Uh, it’s got the 20 questions. Are you a workaholic? Like all these, it’s just a wonderful website and, and because I do recognize my privilege in being able to buy the book and the workbook, you don’t have to be able to, you don’t have to buy that.

You can access all of their [00:56:00] literature in different, um, singular pieces of PDF on their website. Nice. Nice. Well, I’ll definitely leave a link to all, all of the resources. God bless chat, GPTI can put this whole transcript in there now. It’ll pull out all the resources for us. It’ll all be in the show notes.

But, uh, Don, thank you so much for your time and for your wisdom. All the. All the work that you do, but I really especially wanna thank you for focusing on this aspect. I just don’t hear about it a whole lot. But I remember years ago when you started talking about it and I was like, I am gonna have to pin her down and ask her about all this stuff.

’cause I, I think it’s just really important for people to know that there’s a way out. It was perfect timing and even more perfect because we had the scheduled for earlier this year and I got sick. And like it was between then and now, I actually, you know, got into the databases and re reread all the most the latest literature.

Yeah. So I feel like I’m, you know, I have new information and, and a new way. And my next, the next [00:57:00] iteration of it is to talk specifically about women and work holism. That’s kind of what I’m working on next. Okay. Well when you have that, let me know and I’ll include it in my newsletter or my resources or whatever.

But, uh, really important work that you’re doing, Don, I just adore you and I’m for promoting your book. Thank you. I just adore you. Thank you for your time and uh, I look forward to our next conversation. Thank you.

Burnout, Identity & the “Respectable Addiction” of Work