Burnout: Recognizing the Signs and Reclaiming Your Energy

In this episode of The Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about burnout, not just feeling tired or having a hard week, but the deeper, chronic exhaustion and self-doubt that so many high achievers experience but rarely name. My guest this week is Alison Campbell, founder of unBurnt and a former senior corporate leader who turned her own health crisis into a mission to help others recover from and prevent burnout.

Alison shares her journey from fast-paced corporate roles in finance, retail, and tech to the moment she landed in the ER, the wake-up call that changed everything. Together, we unpack what burnout really is (and isn’t), how to recognize its unique signs and why exhaustion, cynicism and self-doubt often travel together. We also explore practical ways to shift from constant reactivity to proactive self-care, including Alison’s simple but powerful stressor scan exercise to bring clarity and agency back to your week.

About My Guest

Alison Campbell is the Founder of unBurnt - a company on a mission to eliminate workplace burnout with modern and measurable solutions. Aimed at improving resilience across teams and helping employees build sustainable micro-habits to reduce chronic stress, unBurnt is tackling the global burnout epidemic with a fresh and innovative approach.

Prior to founding unBurnt, Alison had nearly twenty years of corporate experience across Finance, Ecommerce and HRTech. In her last corporate role, she was the Chief of Staff and Head of Strategy & Analytics at a $1B global company. But after years of accepting exhaustion & overwhelm as normal, a health scare became the catalyst to change course.

Now, Alison is combining her operational experience with expertise as a Certified Health & Wellness Coach to reimagine how we work, lead and live. With a deep understanding of the challenges faced by professionals in fast-moving organizations, unBurnt delivers workshops, training and coaching interventions to unblock friction and help companies thrive.

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Connect with Alison:

Website: www.getunburnt.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alison-campbell-3035b63/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/get_unburnt

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Transcript

Kim Meninger

All welcome, Allison. It's so great to see you. I'm excited for our conversation, and I'd love to start by inviting you to tell us a little bit about yourself.

Alison Campbell

Thank you. I'm really so excited to be here, and you know, I think we've got some juicy topics to dive into today. So my name is Allison Campbell. I'm the founder of unburnt, a company with a mission to help people recover from burnout and find ways to build connection, trust and better rhythms at work. So I work with organizations and people directly really focus on burnout prevention, and so we can, of course, dive into that further. But you know, my background is really rooted in corporate America. I spent almost 20 years in a variety of operational roles. So starting off in finance, coming out of college and wanting to go the investment banking route, worked on Wall Street for about a year, until I had my first burnout experience and found that that just was not going to be, you know, ultimately the career choice for me. And so I quickly pivoted into merchandising and branding at a company called HSN Home Shopping Network, where I just, I fell in love with brand and product, and, you know, the ability to bring vision to life through retail and E commerce. And so since then, I've had a variety of different branding roles really got bit by the entrepreneurial bug when I was at Wayfair for almost seven years. So joining that company, when they were a small, scrappy startup, and sort of staying on board post IPO, and then finally, in my last role at an HR tech company called Work Human. So incredible company, great mission. I loved my time there. I was there for almost seven years, but that was kind of the culminating period in my life where, not only was increasingly becoming more complex, more challenging, you know, as my role continued to grow and I became a senior leader an executive with lots of responsibility, a global team. My kids were getting older, and then we hit the pandemic, right? And so that was really the moment where, over a period of probably 18 to 24 months, I was incredibly burnt out, really, really overwhelmed, but denying it. And I think this is something that, you know, I chat with women every single day where they have this experience where they're just pushing through, right? You know, we work so hard to check all the boxes, and, you know, we find that it's hard, it's messy, you know, and we don't want to necessarily admit that it's a struggle to kind of hold all the pieces together. So that's a very long intro. I didn't mean to go that long, but just to give some context, you know, sort of from corporate to founder life, how I arrived at unburnt. I can share more about, sort of the catalyst for why I left and, and now what I'm doing with unburnt as we dive further in the conversation.

Kim Meninger

Yeah, I so appreciate you setting that as the backdrop for our conversation, because I think a lot of people can relate to what you're saying, and particularly as, as part of the pandemic experience that I think brought to the surface a lot of the challenges that maybe people were sweeping under the rug that we didn't have language for, right? I feel like that was this, this moment when a lot of cracks in the foundation were discovered. And so I'm curious. I would love to hear more about what was kind of the final straw for you, or what you know, what was the, the, the catalyst, as you said, for moving forward in the direction that you went into.

Alison Campbell

So, you know, I think was so fortunate and so grateful that both my husband and I were able to work through the pandemic, you know, sort of shelter in place in our little bubble, you know, be able to continue to work. Our kids were able to be home schooled, and so on the surface, given just how terrifying it was and how scary, not only the virus, you know, covid itself, but also, you know, industries were upended. People overnight, lost their jobs, lost their income, lost their businesses, you know, so there was this feeling like we'll just be grateful that you're able to keep going, and that there's this whole other potential version of where not only are we dealing with the pandemic, but we also are out of work. And so you rationalize, you rationalize the overwhelm. You rationalize because you're saying, Well, yes, I'm homeschooling my kids, but it could be so much harder. And so, as I mentioned, for a period of probably 18 to 24 months, I was starting to feel really unwell, but I was normalizing it as being a busy working mom. In 2021, I was back to traveling globally. So that was well before most folks were really comfortable with business. Travel. But as the Chief of Staff to the CEO, you know, our company was exploding. You know, us trying to bring culture, bring connection to other companies, was so needed during the pandemic. And so I just got on the plane and did it right again. That period of really feeling unwell but ignoring the symptoms, was going on and on. I was having stomach aches until finally I landed in the ER, and I was, you know, doubled over, in pain, super unwell. And ultimately, I had to have surgery. And I talk about this as that wake-up call moment, and that moment sort of lasted a couple of months in the run up to scheduling a surgery, having the surgery, going through recovery, where I just felt such a range of emotions, right? I was I was frustrated, like, I don't have time for this. I was so disappointed in myself. Of course, I was unwell and grappling with okay, like, how do I figure out how to put the whole routine back together and investigate new nutrition plans and all of these things that are going through our minds as moms like, I've got to keep everything running and also figure out how to make space for me to be well. And so I realized that that sort of disappointment and ignoring the warning signs was a really, really loud call, like, I couldn't ignore it, and I knew that if I just went back to work, I'd go back to exactly the way things had been. And so super fortunate that I was able to press pause and take a little bit of space, which was a grieving process in and of itself, to sort of walk away from a career I built for 20 years. But was absolutely the right thing for my family, the right thing for me, my wellness, my health, to really recover and process what had what I had just gone through.

Kim Meninger

Yeah, I so appreciate your sharing that, and I don't want to minimize what your personal experience was, but I do. I hear a lot of kind of universal themes, right? I've heard similar variations of your story from so many people, which you know, on the one hand, is helpful to normalize it. On the other hand, it just reinforces what a pervasive issue this is. And I think you pointed out some things that I think complicated even further, which is that not only is there that temptation to push through it and say, I don't have time for this, but there's also that added layer of perceived weakness, almost right? It's like I should be stronger than this. I should be able to keep going and not, not be slowed down by something like this and, and unfortunately, all too often, as you're describing, it takes some kind of health event, some kind of crisis, to raise the alarm to a high enough level that we actually pay attention.

Alison Campbell

Absolutely. And I think yes, you know, the experience of burnout or stress or having some kind of crisis moment is, is so common. Unfortunately, it's so sad. And that's what I really started to realize as I kind of went through my own recovery, went through my own period of processing, like, Okay, what? What just happened? You know, how did I get here? Why couldn't I keep up? You know, there's a lot of shame and guilt around looks like everyone else has it. Like, why? What? Why couldn't I do it? And I realized that it is a very insidious thing, because we suffer in silence, right? That perceived weakness that you pointed out is part of the reason why everyone puts that veneer of we've got it right, we don't want to admit it, because it could be perceived as weakness. It could mean not getting that promotion right. And so we hold it all together. We kind of keep it in. We don't want to admit it. And yet, it's a pretty universal thing at some point or another, most people have some sort of experience, you know, with burnout, overwhelm, sort of chronic stress.

Kim Meninger

Yeah, you're right. And that's the sad thing. Is that everybody's looking at everyone else's veneers and thinking, there must be some something wrong with me. And really, it's just a silent, you know, competition to see who's going to crack first. And I think that's an unfortunate way of dealing with it is, you know, then we realize, oh, maybe, maybe it's not just me. And I want to take us back even just a step or two, because I want to hear your definition of burnout. That's a word that I think, when it became officially recognized as a thing, right? For lack of a better term, I think people started using it more often. But burnout is something pretty specific. Pretty specific, and I'd love to hear how you differentiate it from just general stress.

Alison Campbell

Yes, such an important question. And I think there is absolutely research and the definition the hallmarks of burnout that we can talk about. I think it's really important to say it is. Also a very unique experience. So before we get into the kind of the classic definition signs and symptoms, everybody sort of feels it differently, goes through it perhaps a little bit uniquely versus somebody else. And even differently than maybe they experienced a previous time of going through burnout. So just really important to normalize that it is not a cookie-cutter. You know, you don't go to the doctor and get a diagnosis that says, yep, these are the things you're burnt out. So just want to start with that caveat. But with that in mind, yeah, I mean, the classic signs of burnout, the definitions according to the World Health Organization and the, you know, the research that's been done, three classic sort of hallmarks. So the first is one that I think many of us recognize and relate to. It's that feeling of exhaustion, right? The total depletion, the I woke up even after a great night's rest or a great vacation, right? And as soon as I'm back at work, I'm right back into that stress cycle. And so it's different than just having a busy week, a deadline and then sort of bouncing back. It's that chronic, lasting exhaustion that feels sort of like an overhang and begins to have other physiological symptoms. So that's the first, the first piece, the second, which, in doing this work, it's surprising how many people don't necessarily realize this is part of burnout, but then connect it and say, oh my gosh, this makes so much sense. It's, it's negativity and cynicism. It's that feeling like I'm working so hard, and you know what? It's not going to make a difference. Why am I going to this weekly meeting? Nothing ever changes, right? So and even as a really optimistic, pragmatic person, you start to get sucked into that negativity spiral, because it just feels like we're stuck in this state of relentlessness, right? So number one, the exhaustion starts to impact our rational thinking, our decision making, and so we start to just really feel like, oh, there's no way out of this. I'm just gonna, like, check the box and survive the week. And then the third one, which is so sad, and for me, you know, I chat with women every single day, every single week, this one's really sad for me, because it's that feeling of not enoughness. It's starting to question our own abilities. And as I mentioned, because burnout has physiological symptoms related to the chronic stress cycle that we're in, again, maybe we're making some mistakes. We have foggy thinking, maybe we forgot something, and so we're showing up in a meeting, and there's that sort of self-doubt loop where we start to question, am I even good at my job? Right? And so when we combine one or two of these things in a prolonged period and it starts to feel really chronic, that's what becomes burnout, and differentiates it from, you know, just a really stressful week with lots of stuff going on.

Kim Meninger

I'm so glad you pointed out those specific features of it, because I think most of us, as you said, will point to the exhaustion piece. But one of the things that I have been noting lately, and some of the people that I have in my world that are very high achievers, people who typically are the first ones to jump in with new ideas and really want to make an impact. Have started saying those things like you said, but I don't even care anymore, right? Like, I, I'm just not even going to try, and that is so unlike them. And they will even say things to me, like, I don't know what, what's going on with me, like, something weird is happening. I just don't, don't care. I'm like, the burnout, like the signs are going off, the flags are starting to raise.

Alison Campbell

Absolutely and it might mean that there's a fit piece, or you're going through a really intense period of work. So it's not, it's not an all-or-nothing proposition, and I talk about this a lot, right? It doesn't mean, oh my gosh, wait. Now. I need to quit my job. It just means that it's a signal to your point, to pay attention to and start to really take note and be aware. Like, how often has this been happening? Are there things I can do? And so I know we're going to get into that piece further, but to your point, these are signals to start to bring awareness to how you're feeling, how you're thinking and how you're showing up.

Kim Meninger

Yeah, and I really appreciate that, almost as a segue into the, the action piece of this, because I'm a big believer in just kind of doing an audit, right, of like really looking at, as you said, How often is this showing up? Where is it showing up? What? What am I feeling and, and I think too. And obviously, your story is a good example of this. Sometimes we feel it in physical symptoms that we don't think are related to this experience. So if you're having stomach issues all of a sudden, if you're having more pain, if you know things that you might also dismiss as kind of a an aside or. Sure, but, but can be your body's way of setting off the alarm that something's off here.

Alison Campbell

Absolutely, you know, it's when it becomes unsustainable and we start to have physical symptoms we absolutely have to notice. As moms, as working women, we often they'll want to take care of everyone else, and so we just sort of brush aside what we're feeling and figure, okay, I'll get to that on my next day off or when that next deadline is done. And you know, the list will literally never end. So we have to take note. And I think it's this is a really important point to say, if you're having any physical symptom, pay attention and check it out with your doctor, right? As I mentioned, there's no official This is burnout in terms of a diagnosis. So you want to make sure, first of all, that you're rooting out other things, right? You're not ignoring something that could be potentially another underlying, you know, condition. And at the same time, you want to get your doctor's support around, like, Okay, we've ruled out everything else this could potentially be chronic stress, presenting and manifesting in physical symptoms, and so you want to get a healthcare provider's perspective on that and not ignore what you're feeling in your body.

Kim Meninger

Yes, I'm really glad that you said that, because either way, if your body is responding to something. There's something going on there, right? So what else do you think people listening should think about or start to maybe take some action on, if they're resonating with what you're saying and this feels really familiar to them?

Alison Campbell

Absolutely yes. So I love what you mentioned around the audit. So there's an exercise that I take clients through, whether it's through a team workshop, team building, culture, work or individually with one-on-one clients. There's a piece around the awareness and shifting out of the overwhelm, the perpetual mental list, right? Just reacting, doing the next call, you know, looking at our calendars and just doing the next thing and shifting into proactivity. And so one exercise that's been, I've sort of refined it, but it is super powerful, is something that can be done in 15 minutes or less. And so this is, like, a super actionable takeaway here. It's called a stressor scan, and you sit down, there are prompts. I have a free version on my website, but you essentially go through giving yourself permission to name what it is that is either stressing you out, worrying you, you know, maybe an unexplained anxiety that you feel like is looming, but you need to kind of get your arms around right so you sit so you sit down, pen to paper, you name what it is that's stressing you. And then the next step is to really dig deeper and figure out why. Because so often it's not just, I have a big meeting, you know, I'm stressed because I have to come to this meeting and deliver something. The underlying is probably, I want it to go well, I've been working so hard, you know? I want this to be another data point for that promotion that I know I've been working toward I deserve, right? And so when you start to really unpack the layers and get your arms around not only the what, but the why, it gives you even more information. And so there's a series of additional prompts. But as you flow through this writing exercise, it gives you the agency, the space we're shifting out of reactivity and allowing our brains to create a plan, right? So when you think about, I'm really stressed. Okay, had this meeting I wanted to go well, you kind of take a look and you forecast out what else do I have, and it gives you the opportunity to prioritize. And it's different than just and before we hit record, I was doing my to do list. So often we just keep adding and adding and adding, right? This is different. This is sort of a bottoms up. What's the most important, and then how can I allocate my time? And so it's not, it's not a perfect science, right? That doesn't mean that you can cancel every meeting you have that day and just focus on the one thing, but it does give you this practice that is in your back pocket. Even if you don't have time to write it down, you can kind of go through the prompts in your mind to bring calm to sort of identify the what and the why, and then if you don't have time in that moment to just make a commitment to yourself, to revisit later, like I am going to sort of put this down, and I'm going to come back to it and make sure I'm creating space to prioritize this really important thing that, you know, I'm worried about, or I want to make sure it goes well.

Kim Meninger

I love that, and I think that's so important, because as somebody who has been prone to anxiety throughout my life, I know what it feels like to basically have just this cloud hanging over you if I have so much to do, but it's not necessarily clearly identity. To find it's not paced appropriately. It's just this, this generalized sense of, I'm busy and I don't know how I'm going to get everything done. And although we have our calendars, which structure a lot of our day, there are other things that maybe we haven't put on the calendar or that just feel a little bit heavier that we carry around with us. And so I have found it particularly useful, as you're describing, to kind of go through Week by week of what are the big things that are weighing on me, like, what are the things that I'm you know, my stomach is feeling a little bit uncomfortable with, or I'm worried that I'm not going to have enough time for and really making sure okay, how am I going to get this done? How does it fit into the other priorities of my week? Is there anything else that I might want to take off the list this week and move to another time so that I can really give my attention here? And I think what you're talking about really is, is more you mentioned it as proactivity and intentionality, because I think we are so wired to just react to everyone else's crisis, right, whether it's our kids, colleagues, right? Our boss. It's like my job is to fight everyone else's fires, and then I've nothing left, nothing left to give.

Alison Campbell

Absolutely and I think so this is just one practice and a toolkit that, you know, becomes much larger, but it's, it's about awareness, naming it to your point creating just a little bit of space to recognize in your body where you're feeling it. That is information, as we've already discussed. And so the other piece around beginning to get into a cadence of that proactive sort of look ahead, if you will, means that you can also identify very small blocks to proactively build in recovery, right? You have that big meeting, make sure you're taking a block of time. Don't just switch off or leave the conference room and go to the next thing. Proactively build in an hour to take a walk, get a coffee, just thank yourself for showing up and doing a great job, right? We don't do that right as women. We're just like onto the next, onto the next. So it's giving yourself that space. It's identifying, what do I need to feel well this week? What do I need to feel well next week, honoring those commitments in the same way we would a board meeting or taking our kids to soccer practice. It's, it's a juggle. It's, it's a struggle, because time is finite, so, but it is about looking out and saying, I have to take two walks next week. It's nonnegotiable. So I'm not just going to leave my calendar open to be booked and then look at it and say, Oh, well, that window is gone. I now I can't do it, it, it. We have to do a little bit of that upfront, to prioritize ourselves and make sure we're on the list. Because you just, you just said it. We're fighting fires and making sure that we're helping everyone else. You got to look at the list and make sure you're on there too.

Kim Meninger

Yes, and you use the word agency before, which I think is a really good one to capture what we're talking about, because we do often feel like we're at the mercy of everybody else's schedules. And if you work for a demanding boss or, you know, a really busy company, there's a way in which we, we tell ourselves and we truly believe, I just don't have time. And really, everyone, every human, has exactly the same amount of time as any other you mentioned it's a finite resource. Nobody has more and nobody has less than 24 hours in a day. We ultimately get to decide how we use that time, and there may be certain nonnegotiables on that calendar, as we're talking about, certain work meetings, certain obligations to our families, but there is undoubtedly space, if we choose to use it to prioritize our own needs, what we really need to grapple with is the guilt and the shame and the, you know, sort of feelings of inadequacy that come with using that time for that purpose.

Alison Campbell

And one of the things that I struggled with was really separating my output, my productivity, the work product, from my value. I was the person that wanted to be helpful say yes to everything, and, of course, take pride in the work and move up and sort of like build this career that I always dreamed of. But I also really attributed so much of my value to getting those external nods and accolades. It's inherent. It's ingrained in so much of many of us. It's sort of how we were raised. But I think being able to say, yeah, there are some nonnegotiables. I have a job, I get a paycheck, I have to do certain things, yes, yes, yes. It's also information if you feel like it's a relentless slog to get through your day and your week, that is a moment that is maybe your stressor scan on a Sunday or a Monday to say, where is their time for me, do I need to have a conversation with my manager? None of this is easy, and I don't want to paint a picture for your listeners that. But it's a one-size-fits-all, or it's like a one conversation and done. This is hard because we're fighting against systemic sort of structures around how work gets done. Post pandemic, workplace is still grappling with what does a hybrid culture mean? Look like? How do we show up? How do we get the work done. So this is hard stuff, but we all do have permission and agency to notice, to ask questions and to make sure that we're sort of shedding that guilt, shedding the shame of wanting to carve out bits of time to recover rest and ultimately show up and be able to do our best work and serve everyone else in the way we want to.

Kim Meninger

Yeah, I think that's a really important point, and I appreciate you're also bringing into the mix that feeling of, I'm only valuable if I'm contributing and if I'm, you know, going above and beyond, right? And I think that part of it too, in thinking about that meta level, maybe, sort of analysis of what's going on is, What's my motivation for doing it? And if the motivation for doing it is proving yourself, that's a separate problem that needs to be addressed, right? It's not there. There's a difference between feeling busy because you truly have a busy job that requires, you, know, a certain amount of effort and constantly saying yes, because you feel like, if you don't, you're going to be less than or you're, like you said, you're not, you're not going to get whatever promotion or because, because, one of the questions that I often Ask when people say things to me like I'm super overwhelmed and, and I feel like I'm not meeting the expectations. Is, is that coming from someone else, or is that something that you're telling yourself, right? And there's a big difference.

Alison Campbell

100% and I think you know, to some extent, again, with a job, there are certain baseline responsibilities and duties that we have to fulfill. And at the same time, we get to choose. We get to say, I am proving myself. This is a three-month sprint where I'm going all out, right? I'm going to double down on my career. This matters. This is important to me. I've worked so hard, I'm going to take this promotion over the first over the finish line. I'm giving a very generic example. That is 100% your prerogative. You get to decide. And if that is coming from an internal sense of, this is my why. This is my purpose. That's fantastic. And to also recognize, so it's sort of like a yes end at the end of this sprint, I need to recognize that this was not a sustainable pace, right? I think we shift into high gear, and then we just maintain that pace and we're in overdrive, and all of a sudden we look up, and it's been 20 years, right? And that is the unsustainable pace that we've been running and never baking in those periods of rest and recovery. So I think it's also just bringing awareness to why am I doing this? And then what is getting back to sustainable look like?

Kim Meninger

Yes, yes, you're absolutely right. We were not built for a 20-year sprint. 

Alison Campbell

Not at all.

Kim Meninger

Alison, I am so grateful that you're here, because I think you've shed light on something that a lot of people are listening have probably not been able to put their finger on, but they know is real for them, and it's showing up in lots of different ways. As you mentioned, I'm really appreciative to the fact that you described burnout as looking different for different people, so I think that's an important part of this conversation as well. And so for anybody who is listening and wants your scanner, wants to find you, follow your work, where can they find you?

Alison Campbell

Yes, thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure. I've had so much fun chatting about this with you. We could, of course, go on and on, but if this resonates, and if anyone wants to find out more, you can check out unburnt at get unburnt dot com as you mentioned, I have lots of free resources. I have an on-demand video archive of webinars with other experts in the space talking about a variety of topics. So that's all free on get unburnt dot com and you can find me. I mostly hang out on LinkedIn, so my name Alison Campbell on LinkedIn, that's where I spend most of my time. And would love to connect with anyone if you just have questions or want to learn more about the work.

Kim Meninger

Wonderful. I'll make sure those links are in the show notes too. And thank you so much for being here.

Alison Campbell

Thank you. This has been so much fun.