Nahal Yousefian, former Head of HR at Netflix, shares her journey through burnout and the lessons learned about workplace culture. She discusses how corporate jargon and unclear communication contribute to employee stress. Nahal emphasizes the need for honest conversations and proactive strategies to enhance well-being. The conversation also touches on the impact of AI on creativity and the critical shift needed in HR practices to adapt to a changing workforce. Ultimately, Nahal advocates for a future of work that prioritizes genuine connection and mental health.

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]Burnout sneaks up slowly, leaving you drained and wondering what went wrong. Cait Donovan joins Nick Korte on Nerd Journey to talk about how chronic stress builds over time, why layoffs can be a breaking point or a relief, and what it really takes to recover. She breaks down burnout risk factors, the role of personal history and workplace culture, and why some people hit a wall while others find a way forward. How do you know when it’s time to make a change? What steps can you take to regain control? Cait shares strategies for protecting yourself, setting boundaries, and rethinking resilience in a way that actually works.Quotes“Burnout has to be the end result of a long period of chronic stress. It’s like chronic, chronic stress.” (06:03 | Cait Donovan)“Sometimes we have to start with the really practical stuff and allow that to shift our emotional state rather than sitting and working through an emotion while the stressor is still alive for you. We have to shift the stressor so that you can work through the emotion and not the other way around.” (17:15 | Cait Donovan)“If you are in a situation that for some reason is toxic or sort of impossible to ignore, you can’t meditate your way out of it.” (26:51 | Cait Donovan)“I think that it’s wise to remember how much power and autonomy you do have in your life. When you are under chronic stress, we tend to end up under this illusion that we don’t have any control and that we don’t have enough autonomy. And if you’re feeling that way right now, I would challenge you to challenge that.” (50:28 | Cait Donovan)LinksThis episode was also published on Nick's show Nerd Journey - https://nerd-journey.com/chronic-stress-connecting-the-dots-between-layoffs-and-burnout-with-cait-donovan/Nick's Layoff Resources Page (the most impactful conversations and advice from his show on burnout, including the one with Cait) - https://nerd-journey.com/layoffresources/Nick's blog post that speaks to his love for podcasting and how the layoff resources page came to be  https://blog.thenetworknerd.com/2025/01/25/a-healthy-obsession-lessons-learned-from-300-episodes-of-the-nerd-journey-podcast/.Previous episodes featuring Cait in which she shared her story of burning out and the transition into coaching and speakinghttps://nerd-journey.com/across-the-patterns-of-burnout-with-cait-donovan-1-2/https://nerd-journey.com/the-beautiful-right-turns-with-cait-donovan-2-2/Some of the most impactful episodes featuring technologists sharing their stories of burnout:https://nerd-journey.com/riding-the-burnout-wave-with-jonathan-f-2-2/https://nerd-journey.com/countdown-to-burnout-with-tom-hollingsworth-3-3/https://nerd-journey.com/management-and-the-hypergrowth-startup-with-andrew-miller-2-3/https://nerd-journey.com/pause-and-step-outside-with-andrew-miller-3-3/https://nerd-journey.com/burnout-and-recovery-with-josh-fidel/Connect with Cait:Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcaitInitial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahvBurnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]Burnout is more than feeling tired. It’s a challenge that affects every aspect of life, especially for healthcare professionals. In this episode, Dr. Jessi Gold shares her deeply personal experience navigating burnout as a psychiatrist during the pandemic, and offers a rare glimpse into the struggles even experts face. What can we do when the very systems designed to support us become the cause of our suffering? Dr. Gold and Cait Donovan explore the systemic issues in healthcare that perpetuate burnout, from overwork to the culture of self-neglect ingrained in medical training. They also discuss how small shifts—like embracing vulnerability and prioritizing self-care—can make a meaningful difference, even in a broken system.How can we address burnout without blaming individuals for their struggles? Dr. Gold and Cait’s discussion invites you to rethink how we approach burnout, recovery, and the collective responsibility to create healthier environments.Quotes“As a psychiatrist who is an expert in burnout, I have an extra added layer of fun to this story, which is that I see people all day and tell them they’re burnt out and don’t necessarily apply the same thing to myself.” (04:32 | Dr. Jessi Gold) “It’s so hard to admit that something like work or systems at work could make you feel ill. I feel like it’s so much easier to be like, it just made me tired, but it didn’t actually hurt me in some way that needs to be replenished or fixed or whatever.” (14:21 | Dr. Jessi Gold)“Our culture is a culture of silence and shame. Most of us are struggling and don’t mention that we’re struggling. And if we knew other people were struggling, even a little bit, we would open up to them more and feel safer in our culture.” (42:42 | Dr. Jessi Gold)“If someone said this job is really, really hard emotionally, physically, every other thing that you can think of, and it will impact you, and you will burn out from it. And as a result, you need to take care of yourself in the process. I would have been like, ‘Oh, okay.’” (43:53 | Dr. Jessi Gold)“The second I started to burn out, that’s what went, right? Like, the second that I was not okay, like, to a more extreme extent, I was not treating patients the way that I would want them to be treated, right? As humans.” (50:42 | Dr. Jessi Gold)LinksConnect with Dr. Jessi Gold:https://www.drjessigold.com/https://www.instagram.com/drjessigold/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessi-gold-md-ms-14844bb/Connect with Cait:Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcaitInitial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahvBurnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Discover the power of self-compassion in burnout recovery. Embrace your limitations without shame and learn that healing isn’t a race. Listeners share insights on personalizing self-care and the unique, non-linear journey toward wellness. Explore how to simplify recovery tactics and establish healthy boundaries, while also highlighting the impact of community support. With heartfelt anecdotes and practical strategies, this discussion empowers individuals to navigate their recovery paths authentically.

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]“This isn’t some soft skill, or a ‘nice-to-have.’ It’s a must-have,” says Jennifer Moss, workplace strategist, co-founder of The Workplace Institute, and author of award-winning books on leadership. Her latest book, “Why Are We Here?,” discusses how we can use hope as an operational strategy at work, how employees can learn to bring their whole, best selves to work by meting out goals in small steps and celebrating each small win en route to the larger goal. Leaders, in turn, can learn to, rather than mitigate those efforts, be conduits to employees’ mental health, in part by being encouraging and being receptive to employee feedback.This isn’t about drumming up toxic positivity but creating a safe and openly communicative environment, which is more easily said than done when employees feel, even subconsciously, that their freedoms are being taken away and that promises have been repeatedly broken. Jennifer and host Cait Donovan discuss how to foster trust between leaders and employees and how caring for oneself creates a feeling of safety—starting at a physical level—which is the first step in opening up lines of communication, and facilitating what Jennifer calls “a culture of positive gossip.” As many as seventy percent of employees report that their managers make or break their attitude toward their jobs. Join today’s episode of FRIED to learn how to introduce a hope-based strategy into your own work environment. Quotes“We can help our employees have quick wins every day, celebrate the smaller wins, recognize that we spend a lot of time lately only celebrating and rewarding and recognizing the big project end goals, not realizing that the day-to-day ennui, the day-to-day tedium is what is burning people out. And if we just made these goals more incremental — it’s actually how you support young kids, especially kids who are neurodivergent—you chunk out the goals and adults need those same inspirational ways of working, and that’s how we make hope a strategy.” (12:29 | Jennifer Moss)“That’s where we make hope a strategy and operationalize hope. It’s first recognizing that it isn’t some sort of soft skill or a “nice-to-have,’ it’s a ‘must-have,’ that it’s real. The military abides by this rule, and it can be operationalized on a day-to-day engagement in our work and in our employees’ tasks.”  (13:10 | Jennifer Moss)“You can be highly passionate about what you do, and highly driven and care about your organization and…highly engaged, but you can be similarly at the same stage of burnout. And if we can’t talk about those things, no one will know, and that’s when people quit, that’s when people hit the wall. It’s where everything just ends.” (24:33 | Jennifer Moss)“We are subconsciously rebelling because our freedoms are being taken away and we’re not necessarily aware of why we feel this dissonance.” (33:51 | Jennifer Moss)LinksConnect with Jennifer Moss:https://www.jennifer-moss.com/ https://www.instagram.com/betterworkinstitute/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenleighmoss/Connect with Cait:Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcaitInitial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahvBurnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]“We’re at a time when things are going to be shifting and changing,” says host Cait Donovan who, on this solo episode of FRIED, shares a workplace forecast for 2025 and explains what business leaders can do to best navigate this new landscape, rocky as it’s predicted to be. Today, Cait shares findings from a number of experts, including the future of DEI initiatives, how AI will affect employee benefits’ packages, which position on the corporate ladder will likely burn out en masse and what leaders can do now to best mitigate the fallout. She also discusses the increasing opportunities for freelancers as more and more workplaces continue to embrace flexible work. It’s not enough, she explains, to prevent the workplace environment—and the burnout that transpires therein—from becoming worse. Steps need to be put in place to actually make things better. Employers must be trauma-informed, to create psychological safety and transparency in the workplace, and in turn, employees need to be especially transparent and communicative about what they really need and want from their jobs. Join Cait to learn more about what to expect in the year ahead and how to continue championing employee wellness throughout 2025. Quotes“We can approach DEI practices through the lens of biology and physiology. So, I believe that the biology of belonging and the biology of psychological safety really roots the things we need for real true DEI overall into a science-based model that helps people feel a little more grounded in the approach and makes people less likely to have bad reactions to it.” (1:47 | Cait Donovan)“The reason that I think it’s important for them to be burnout-informed is because we can’t shift things in the culture to protect people if we don’t know what the risks are. And I think, we can’t really also create a positive culture without knowing which things make a negative culture.” (4:14 | Cait Donovan)“I think this is going to be probably a little bit messy to start out, but longterm, I think everything is getting more customized. Medicine is getting more customized, jobs are getting more customized. So, I do think this is the way of the future, I just think we need to be really careful, very inclusive, very transparent, and very clear about our intentions as we’re doing this, so we don’t create more problems as we go.” (6:50 | Cait Donovan)“I think we need to really be focused on that mid-level manager and their well-being because that’s where a lot of the well-being of the company spreads from.” (8:13 | Cait Donovan)“We’re going to have to make people more comfortable around change. We’re going to have to create a different level of psychological safety so that change can actually be absorbed and actually dealt with.” (9:33 | Cait Donovan)LinksConnect with Cait:Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcaitInitial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahvBurnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]“People leave the field not because they don’t love the work, but the confines of the work structure make it impossible for them to do it,” says Regan Parker, Chief Legal and Public Affairs officer for Shift Key, a technology marketplace that connects licensed independent healthcare professionals with facilities who need their services. As healthcare workers continue to feel overworked and undervalued, they continue to burn out, leaving healthcare facilities with staffing shortages. By allowing professionals to set their own rates and to select work on a shift-by-shift basis, Shift Key’s model offers the flexibility and autonomy to maintain a work/life balance. It also provides relief from the expectations of a traditional employee’s schedule, while providing similar relief to company teams who are understaffed and thus at equal risk of burnout. On today’s episode of FRIED, Regan joins host Cait Donovan to discuss why this approach to work—which is gaining traction across all sectors—is especially helpful for those who are natural caregivers and nurturers and, as a result, don’t have the most business acumen or are even sure they should be charging for their work at all. The two discuss the importance of offering per diem workers a social safety net and protections under the law which, at least in the U.S., have traditionally only been offered to a company’s employees. Join today’s discussion to learn why Shift Key’s system is the future of work and how it could be game-changing to a number of professions. Quotes“At my very first marketplace company, I got to see how technology could enable people to work on their own terms, and the people that that impacts the most are moms, caregivers, people with disabilities, people who can’t work in a traditional setting, who really need flexibility and autonomy and choice. So, I saw the ability for technology to connect those parties to work.” (4:08 | Regan Parker)“When you understand the humanity of how certain aspects of the healthcare system currently works and how that impacts the person, their home life, how they feel, how they’re able to perform their work, it really changes the conversation in a way that I think was important.” (5:05 | Regan Parker)“The reason people leave the field is not because they don’t love the work. They love the work. These are people who get into it because they want to care for people. They care about keeping people healthy and safe and heard, but it’s the confines of the work structure that make it impossible for them to do that.” (6:08 | Regan Parker)“I was always turned off by the notion that anybody would ever incentivize a race to the bottom. ‘How cheap can we get that one task to be?’” (20:58 | Regan Parker)LinksConnect with Regan Parker:www.shiftkey.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/regan-parker-58ab531ahttps://www.shiftkey.com/trendsConnect with Cait:Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcaitInitial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahvBurnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Discover three effective ways to bring more ease into your hectic day, without altering your responsibilities. Learn how to focus on relaxing tense muscles to reduce stress and signal to your vagus nerve that you're okay. Explore the benefits of slow grooming as a reminder of safety. Plus, find out how to combat that false sense of urgency that many experience. Incorporating these simple strategies can transform even the busiest days into more peaceful ones.

Rochelle Younan-Montgomery is a published author, keynote speaker, and the founder of The Reset, specializing in compassionate leadership. In a candid discussion, she reflects on her journey through grief after a miscarriage and the burnout that followed. Rochelle emphasizes the importance of self-compassion and setting boundaries. She introduces her "Open the Front Door" framework for effective communication and navigating resentment in relationships. Her insights on listening to one’s body as a guide to authenticity are both powerful and transformative.

“Spoiler alert: You’re not stuck. There’s always something you can do,” explains today’s guest Erica Rooney, keynote speaker, highly-sought after executive coach and author of the best-selling book, “Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors,” the latter of which, she explains, are the limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors that keep so many of us from moving forward and reaching our goals and potential. On today’s episode of FRIED, Erica joins host Cait Donovan to discuss the fear of asking for help, the fallout within a generation of women who were raised to believe they can have it all, and why, for most of us, burnout started before we even reached the age of five. Like so many women, Erica was “working like she didn’t have kids and parenting like she didn’t have a job,” and turned to alcohol to cope with the never-ending list of “shoulds” she kept piling onto herself. She and Cait discuss the parallels between addiction–so much of which is not to substances but feelings and expectations—and burnout. Erica discusses her SNAP method, a four-step science-backed framework to help you become more aware of your body’s signals, to ask yourself the tough yet important questions and to pivot into a new and more productive mindset. Join today to learn the mentality that makes Cait want to kick people in the teeth—with love—and how to choose a better way of thinking. Quotes“The core of the problem wasn’t my corporate job, it wasn’t anything external. The core was within my own expectations and what I felt I had to do. No one else was putting those expectations on me.” (5:43 | Erica Rooney) “There’s a very similar stigma that we’re holding onto with addiction, alcoholism and also with burnout because burnout often feels like, ‘Well, I should have made better choices, I should have done something differently.’...Burnout is not your fault. This shit started way before your burnout happened. If you’ve burnt out in your life, let me promise you that that shit started before you were five.” (12:42 | Caitlin Donovan)“Addiction is so much more than substance. Absolutely agree with that because when I think back on the things that just fueled me up, kind of like that first sip of wine—yes, here we go—it would be a raise, a new job, a new title. ‘Oh, I’m being sent to France for work. Look at me. Look at my fabulous life.’...it is very, very addictive to be able to call people and, ‘Oh, what’s going on with your life?’ Oh, I just got promoted to this.’ And it’s all crap. (20:40 | Caitlin Donovan and Erica Rooney)“I recognize that the system is the problem. The system is the problem but what I know about changing systems is it takes generations and generations. And we are changing the system, we are, but it will not be at the level that I want it to be until I get six feet under the ground. So, for me, I thought, ‘What can I do? What can I do? There’s got to be something that I can do, not to change the system, but for my own self, so that I don’t have to be person experiencing all these gaps.’” (30:24 | Erica Rooney and Caitlin Donovan) LinksConnect with Erica Rooney:https://www.ericaandersonrooney.com https://www.instagram.com/ericaandersonrooney/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericarooney/ https://ericaandersonrooney.myflodesk.com/Connect with Cait:Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcaitInitial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahvPodcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm