Episode 187: Breaking the Burnout Cycle with Dr. Judy Wright

[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Back on Track Achieving Healthy Weight Loss, where I help you get on track and stay on track with your weight loss journey. I'm your host, Dr. Alicia Shelly. So let's get started.

[00:00:27] Hello, and welcome to the Back on Track Achieving Healthy Weight Loss podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Alicia Shelly. In today's episode, we are diving into a topic that affects us all. The fast-paced, convenience-driven culture we live in, while modern conveniences promise to make life easier, they often leave us feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and struggling with our health.

[00:00:53] Could our quest for that quick and easy be sabotaging our well-being? Well, today we'll explore how this lifestyle fuels burnout, weight gain, and chronic stress. And most importantly, what we can do to break free. So let's get into it. Our guest today is Dr. Judy Wright. She is a family medicine physician, and a wellness and performance strategist, and CEO of JW Health Consulting, LLC.

[00:01:22] She has been featured on NBC, ABC, CBS, and PBS. And she helps professionals overcome burnout and achieve sustainable success. As a success magazine, 2023 woman of influence, she authored, Girl, Get Your Life Off the Fall. And co-authored, Safe Care Is Not a Mani-Pedi.

[00:01:45] We are so honored to have you on our show today, Dr. Judy. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you, Dr. Shelly. Thank you. It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. You know, I've been following you. You took me through many at early drive. So I am very excited to be here. Thank you. Well, let's start off getting to know you a little bit more. Can you maybe tell us more about yourself and how you got into this space?

[00:02:12] Yeah. So thank you for when you hear someone talk about you, you're like, oh, that's me. Like, yeah. You know, I always, and by always, I mean very young, single-digit age, you know, I wanted to help people. My parents are from the Caribbean originally. And so there's that whole, or what are you going to be, a nurse, a teacher, this, that. And of course, here I am. I have to, oh, shoot, no, I'm going to be a doctor. That's what I'm going to be, right?

[00:02:42] So, all right. And so I knew that from early, how that was going to look, I didn't know. And I finally decided I was going to be a family physician. And I was going to help the community. I was so impressed with how our own family physician, how he was so respected in the community. And I don't mean on a, oh, we're going to hold him up like this higher power, but just people really trusted him and really respected him.

[00:03:10] And I wanted to understand, because he didn't live there, right? So I wanted to understand, how did he garner that? And so I was a sociology major in college because I wanted to understand groups and people. And I took that with me into going to medical school. So I knew I was going to be in the community a lot.

[00:03:32] But the thing is, medicine, as I used to look at my physician, and I'm sure I was looking at it through these glowing rose colored glasses. I'm sure I was. But I still think it was different than what it was by the time I became a physician. And I loved my patients. I did. I loved my patients. I even had patients that went out of their way when I would transfer from one place to another to come and see me. And that was the kind of doctor I wanted to be.

[00:04:01] I just felt that it wasn't how I thought it was going to be. And I'm always willing to push through. But I really felt like if I couldn't help my patients the way I wanted to, the way I knew I could to really work with them as a team, as one of their team members, it just wasn't doing it for me. And so eventually, I didn't leave medicine. I left direct patient care.

[00:04:27] But I still decided I wanted to work in helping the population as best I can. And that's why I went into the big bad world, as I know some people see it, health insurance. Because I wanted to impart my knowledge, my sense of being, my empathy, and my sense of helping, okay, to even that and put a different vent on it. And so that's how I got there.

[00:04:54] And that's how I decided to become a physician and just help. Well, why burnout? Why was that a space that drew you as far as in your performance strategy? Because in looking back, in experiencing what I feel was, if not complete burnout, and I say not complete because there's no doubt in my mind, Dr. Alicia, that I was going to burn out. I just didn't realize it at the time.

[00:05:21] And in being able to sit down because I had been diagnosed with cancer, and so I had to go out on medical leave. I had to get treatment, and I had to recover. And being able to sit down and just make myself sit, which was not easy for me, I started to realize, I think you were about to burn out, right? And I wasn't the most pleasant person to be around for my family, at least. There was just a bunch of things.

[00:05:47] But, you know, Dr. Alicia, I also realized that I had been here before. One of the things I do is I focus, you know, I'll help anybody, particularly professionals and definitely medical professionals. Because medical professionals are often the last people to realize that they're about to burn out. They will notice it on somebody that is one mile away from them, and they see it immediately. They don't see it in themselves. And so in realizing that, I was like, I think I've been here before.

[00:06:16] I think I've been here more than once. I think I was here before I left patient care. You know what I'm saying? So in the end, it took me a couple of years even after that to say, I think this is what I want to do. I think I want to help others. I think I want to help other professionals who are high achievers. I think I want to help medical professionals because you work in a high-stress environment, right? And we have lives outside of that high-stress environment.

[00:06:41] And that's how I came to talking about burnout and balance and taking care of yourself, not ignoring the signs, not ignoring your needs, and what that can do in terms of your trajectory. Your trajectory for your professional life, your trajectory for your personal life, what that can do in terms of winning out in these streets. Yes, that's amazing. I definitely have been in burnout, like you said, more than once.

[00:07:11] I get every January, I get the seasonal blues. It is hard. A fact that works. And not even generally, it's the entire month of struggling. And sometimes, like you said, we just go, go, go, go, go. My friend was like, oh, please call me when you get a moment when you're resting. And I'm like, when am I ever resting? I'm always doing something. I'm always multitasking. I don't know how to turn my mind off.

[00:07:38] And I know part of our audience feels the same way. Yeah. And so, I mean, I know we have people who have gone, you know, have that fast-paced life where there's always something going on. Like you just can't necessarily seem to rest. So what are some of the common health issues that you see that directly link to this little fast-paced life? Yeah. So let's start with some symptoms, right? Because we like to ignore that.

[00:08:05] Headaches and the heart palpitations that sometimes we'll, I don't want to say just say, because anxiety is something too, right? But sometimes we'll just say, okay, maybe I have some anxiety. And it may be bigger than that, right? It may be even bigger than just some anxiety. Profuse sweating. Stomach issues. Okay. Ooh. Yeah. Right? Which can either be going either direction, either constipation, diarrhea.

[00:08:32] But every time that stress level is through the roof, your stomach is just a complete and utter mess. Right? But you can find that you can't sleep. You can find that you're sleeping too much. The weight gain or the weight loss unintentionally. Both unintentionally because most of us aren't out here. I'm not going to say all of us. Most of us are out here not trying to gain weight. So unintestially, weight gain, weight loss, right?

[00:08:59] Even sometimes in the face of you haven't even really eaten that much, but somehow you're putting all this weight. Cortisol much? Mm-hmm. Yep. Cortisol can't increase your weight. Yes. Blink for show now. You feel tired all the time. You feel irritable, moody, right? You can snap on a dime. But the other thing is sometimes you start to feel apathy. Just like, I don't care.

[00:09:29] And that's happening more than normal, more than your norm. So those are the types of things you can look for. But also, it can bring it on and also can worsen. If you have a history of high blood pressure, this can make it worse. Heart disease. Again, GI issues that you have to get taken care of. All of those things, right? And it can bring down your immune system. Absolutely.

[00:09:55] Now, are there some early signs that we need to look out for that indicates that someone is leaning toward burnout? Yeah. Yeah. You feel exhausted all the time. You're not even running a marathon. And if anybody could talk about a marathon, Doc and Lucia, you can't. You're not running a marathon yet you feel like you are. You could be sitting in place. You're exhausted. There is no amount of sleep that's getting you from feeling like that. This feeling of disconnection. Disconnection from your work.

[00:10:24] Disconnection from your colleagues. Disconnection from your family and your friends. There's that feeling that you're feeling disconnected. And sometimes what people tend to go to first oftentimes is depression. And it's not that depression is not there, but it's rolled in. Burnout is even bigger than that, right? And this feeling of why am I even doing this? This feeling of who am I if I'm not doing this? It's all that.

[00:10:50] But that energy situation, that exhaustion that's beyond anything that you can understand. And you go to your doctor and you say, I'm not feeling well, but they can't find anything. Yeah. Everything's negative. Everything's negative. Well, how do you feel that the society is glorifying us overworking and leading to burnout? How is our society and our community? I'm going to try to make this small because I could talk about that all day.

[00:11:20] One of the things is that we live in a society where, honestly, we glorify overwork. This is not a game. And we actually not only normalize stress, we glorify stress because it shows out like we're super busy, right? We're super busy and super busy means super productive. No, no, it doesn't. Because there's a lot of busy work out there, right?

[00:11:43] But in the super busy, overloaded, overstressed, you just used the word actually where we are doing a bunch of things all at once. Oh, multitasking. Oh, multitasking. And doing that. Go. We're super over glorified that. Right? What do we do? We gravitate toward what is convenient, right? So we need things that are going to make our lives super convenient, super easy. It makes us move less.

[00:12:11] We're not cooking our own food. We're going out and we're buying fast food. Guilty as charged because I've done it. Right? And so we are setting ourselves up not to be healthy. We are setting ourselves up not to be our best self, not to be well. Okay? The very thing that we are trying to elevate, we're holding ourselves down because we're not at our best level. And it's all because we are glorifying all this.

[00:12:40] When we have to get extra people to do things for us, that's fine. I don't have a problem with delegation. But sometimes it's really because we're too fatigued to do it. So we have to delineate. The difference. The difference. That is true. It reminds me of a Saturday Night Live skit where they had during Weekend Up, they're like the lady who's too busy and she's coming in, she's reading a book, she's doing her taxes, she's doing this. She's like, I'm too busy. I'm too busy. Doing stuff, doing stuff. He's like, well, what are you doing? Nothing.

[00:13:12] No, because he was like, I'm doing everything, but nothing really. I don't just need to be done. So what are some practical ways to help create that balance in our daily lives? That we're getting here and overwhelmed and doing so much that we look back and we're like, well, I'm not really making that impact. I'm not making that difference. So what are some practical ways we can use to have that balance? So let's talk very simple, right? Because people think it has to be a big thing.

[00:13:39] And that's why I always talk in the terms of prevention is better than cure. And when you get to a point of burnout, you're not at a point that you can't get out of. But man, the work you got to put in to get out of it is no joke and it takes time. So how about doing things ahead of time? Many pauses. Make sure you have many pauses throughout your day. Literally just stop, okay?

[00:14:06] And if you feel like, well, when am I going to catch that? Schedule it. It may help if you know what your day is going to look like. But some of us have careers where no one's going to give us a pause. We have to take it. And we won't take it. You know this. We don't even know what time it is, right? We look up and three, four hours just went by. And we're like, what just happened? So you have to schedule it. You have to schedule your pause. Your pause could be five minutes. It could be the bathroom break because we've been there too,

[00:14:35] where we ignored the fact that we had to go to the bathroom four good hours ago. Okay? So many pauses are very important and you schedule them throughout the day. Now this doesn't mean that once a week, once every couple of weeks, you shouldn't have a nice, good, big pause. Yeah. Right? Right? But many pauses throughout your day and make that regular and every day. Also, you have to check in with yourself. Self-awareness is super important. So check in on how you're feeling.

[00:15:05] And that you can do sometimes in conducting with the mini pause. How am I feeling? Where's my head space right now? What am I thinking? Because that becomes very self-aware. Don't ignore that pain that you know you just felt. Don't check in with yourself. How's my body feel? Do a body scan. Literally just focus and go through your body from top to bottom and see how you feel. Right?

[00:15:29] So even doing that and then making sure that you are eating right. Yes. And exercising. We have to make sure food is medicine. Yes, it is. And I know it's not always cheap, especially now. So. All right. Oh, goodness. I get it. But food is medicine.

[00:15:55] And so you have to nourish your body and you have to nourish your body regularly. And I'm not saying anything to anybody out there that I don't have to tell myself on a regular basis. When my husband's like, did you even eat today? I did. I did. Wait. I did. Let me think. Right? So even that has to get scheduled where I put it on my thing and said, okay, you have to eat. Make sure you eat.

[00:16:20] And unless I'm doing something like with intermittent fasting, so I might not eat or drink a tea or something until later in the day. I have to eat. Right? Or else I'll just forget. And these are just three very simple things. There's more. But those are three very simple things that everybody can do. Let your calendars and those timers on those watches that you're wearing and your cell phone be your best friend.

[00:16:48] You can turn off the notifications of all the other stuff that's so distracting, but use your digital stuff as ways to keep you on track. Period. So, well, thank you so much. I love the mini pauses because I think that's so important. I remember when I was studying, especially as an adult in med school, they were like, you know, you need to take a mini pause at the beginning of each hour so that you can be able to refresh your mind. And, of course, we don't do that when we're working.

[00:17:16] And so it's so nice to be able to have, like, hey, I'm going to take a mini pause. You know, put it on there on your alarm. Every day I take a mini pause during the week so that I can be able to have that time just to recoup. It makes a huge difference. Huge. Huge. Huge. And I always say to the medical professionals out there, because it's so easy, just like a mom, and I'm not slighting the dads, but just like a mom, a mom will put everybody in that household in front of herself.

[00:17:45] Physicians, nurses, we often do the same thing because we came to work to do what? Take care of other people. Mm-hmm. Right? And so that's what we focus on. So if you don't put stuff in place to make sure you're checking in with yourself, taking time for yourself, go and eat some lunch. Go for a 15-minute walk. Please declare your head. Things of that nature. Even down to the fact, Dr. Alicia, that we run from room to room to room to room to room where we're doing patient care.

[00:18:15] Sometimes we're not even finishing the notes before we were. So now we're building in our own issue, right? Where we're not getting a break at all. Yeah. Now, I agree with you. Well, as we close, any last-minute advice strategies you have for people who are in that little bit of a rut and are trying to break that cycle of burnout? I was blessed. I know people are like blessed. Yeah, I was blessed with the fact that I had to sit down and recover because I had cancer.

[00:18:45] And then the pandemic happened. And so now I really got to sit down because everybody had to sit down. Everything slowed down, right? I really want everybody to realize that you have the same amount of time everybody else has. And yes, some of you have more responsibilities than others. Trust me, that's why I wrote the book, Girl, Get Your Life Off the Fault Line, right?

[00:19:10] Because it can become overwhelming, but you really have to start to prioritize what's important to you. And one of the first things you need to prioritize is yourself. So pencil in some time because you're the CEO of yourself. Yeah. Pencil in some time for yourself every week, right? Just to check in, just to make sure you're staying on even keel. Just to say, okay, let me look at the calendar because I need to make sure that I have some self-care in this month,

[00:19:39] that I have some big self-care in this month. Not just the ones that I'm doing every day because you should be doing it every day. Yeah. Make CEO time for yourself every week. I like that. Make CEO time for yourself every week. Now, Dr. Judy, tell us, where can listeners connect with you and learn more about what you do? You can connect with me.

[00:20:08] I am on LinkedIn. Oh, I? So I am on LinkedIn.com and my handle is at JudyWrightMD and the same on Instagram. My handle is JudyWrightMD. Now on Facebook, it's a little different. It's Judy.Wright.7771.

[00:20:27] But you can also go to my website, my website, wellnesswithdrg.com, where it has information and it talks about when I have my webinars just to help the community understand about time management and energy management and dealing with stress and performing well in a sustainable way. So they can find me in all of those places. Well, thank you so very much, Dr. Judy, for coming, for sharing your insights, telling us that we need to do our mini pauses.

[00:20:58] I appreciate that. And I thank you all for joining us today on the Back on Track Achieving Healthy Weight Loss podcast. If you like this podcast, please share it with others. Like it and subscribe. And don't forget to leave a five-star review. Have a fabulous rest of your day.