Episode #280: Preventing Burnout: How to Flourish in a World Full of Needs

Transcript — scroll to read here (or download above)

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Grit ‘n’ Grace — The Podcast

Episode #280: Preventing Burnout: How to Flourish in a World Full of Needs

“Have you ever felt like your big heart and deep emotions are both a gift and a challenge?

If you’ve struggled with burnout — or wondered how to make a difference without losing yourself — today’s conversation is for you.

My guest co-host, Dorcas Cheng-Tozun, shares how to
use your emotional intensity and empathy as strengths …
care for yourself while caring for others … and
serve others in ways that don’t leave you utterly depleted.

Keep listening for truly practical tips on setting boundaries, practicing self-compassion, and sustainably serving the people God has called you to serve.

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Welcome to Grit ‘n’ Grace – The Podcast for Highly Sensitive Christian Women!
I’m your host, Cheri Gregory.
Are you tired of the overthinking, overwhelm, and exhaustion that come with being a Highly Sensitive Person?
Are you ready to stop worrying that something’s wrong with you and start understanding and nurturing yourself as an HSP?
Together, we’ll build resilience, practice self-compassion, set healthy boundaries, unlock your creativity, and learn to embrace—not fight—your God-given sensitivity.
Let’s dig in!

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I had THE BIGGEST epiphany when talking with today’s guest co-host.

And I was going to save that epiphany to share with you another week, but then I changed my mind and I’m going to go ahead and share it with you at the end of this episode.

Because I am dying to hear what YOU think!

But first, a bit of backstory.

The conversation you’re about to hear was recorded earlier this year for The Sensitive & Strong Community Cafe — which is the membership for HSP Christian women that I’ve been co-facilitating for more than 5 years now!

Our monthly rhythm in the Cafe goes like this: Week 1 is Instruction, Week 2 is Reflection & Discussion, Week 3 is Application, and Week 4 is Restoration.

So what you’re about to hear started as a series of short pre-recorded video conversations between Dorcas Cheng-Tozun and me … the first week of March, I believe.

And then during Week 2, Dorcas joined us via Zoom for our Reflection & Discussion session. It was truly paradigm-shifting for me — that’s when I had the epiphany that I need to remember to share with you at the end of this episode.

(LET ME MAKE A Post-It Note TO MYSELF!)

Okie dokie.

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun is an award-winning writer, speaker, and communications consultant with nearly two decades of experience in nonprofit and social enterprise work. She is the author of Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul: How to Change the World in Quiet Ways and two other books. Her writing has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Christianity Today, and Image Journal.

A Stanford graduate, Dorcas now teaches social innovation and helps highly sensitive people engage in justice work sustainably. She and her husband, an entrepreneur, live in Silicon Valley with their two sons. Dorcas brings wisdom and warmth to the intersection of faith, compassion, and meaningful action.

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Cheri Gregory
So Dorcas, as I’ve already kind of explained to you [that] we are focusing on me and my big emotions, and one of the biggest hot buttons that triggers big feelings in HSPs is a sense of injustice. And so we see other people being treated unfairly. We want to do something about it, like we really want to right all the wrongs, but then I’ll just speak for myself, I start seeing so many needs, and there’s only one of me, and then, as an HSP, I become overwhelmed so easily. And I actually want to quote straight from your book about this, because you said it so well. You said, our expansive hearts collect the anger, frustration, despair, sorrow and grief that is infused throughout social justice work and our neurons fire as we ruminate again and again over long periods of time about society’s ills, possible solutions, our contributions, our mistakes, and how we can do better. So clearly you understand this bit of wanting to write the wrongs, while also becoming easily overwhelmed as an HSP. So one of the things that cafe members are familiar with is, I believe that highly sensitive persons are wired by God for servant leadership, and that God will guide you to the need with your name on it. So would you share with us just a bit of your story about how God has guided you to the need with your name on it, and what your journey has been like as an HSP?

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun
I’ll say, you know, I grew up in a Christian family, and while it was very loving, devout family, there was not a lot of emphasis put on the external world. You know, it was really just about our spiritual, inner, spiritual life and connection to God. And so it wasn’t until I went to college that I My eyes were open to wait. This is what the rest of the world looks like. This is what other people experience. And when I was a sophomore, I went on what was called an alternative spring break trip. So instead of going on vacation for spring break. You go on a service learning trip. And we went into the tenderloin, which is a District in San Francisco that’s very under resourced, and spent a week we we stayed there. We did a lot of service on the ground, and the focus was trying to understand the issue of housing, why people don’t have housing, why people are on the streets, why is housing so unaffordable, especially here in the San Francisco Bay Area? And it completely woke in me, this this sense of Oh, because I had grown up with the belief that it was all about personal responsibility, right? And then, and then, when I experienced that week in San Francisco, I began to understand people can sometimes do all the right things, do exactly what society tells them that they should do to succeed. They can get a good education, they can work really hard, they can try to make all the right choices, and yet, there are still systems that work against people, keep them down, make it really hard for them to get ahead in life. And when I realized that and understood that, well, these are systems that were built by people and perpetuated by people, then it gave me the hope that, well, maybe it can also be undone by people. It can be made better by people. And so then that’s really where my journey into justice began and and so as a college student, I got involved in a number of ministries and student groups that helped to serve people who were unhoused, and then went into the nonprofit sector after I graduated from college, and it’s been the the primary focus of my career ever since, aside from writing, I would say those are my two great loves, is justice and writing, and it has been incredibly meaningful. It’s been wonderful. I’ve met so many amazing people along the way. Had a lot of really transformative experiences, and it’s been utterly exhausting. And so I think ever since I was 24 and I am much older now, I, for a long time, was in the cycle of burning out pretty much every two years, because I just did not know how to be in the space in a way that was healthy and sustainable for me. I tried to, like you were saying, I tried to do all the things and address all the needs, because I felt like the world needs me and and I gotta do it, and I gotta do all right now. And so I put so much pressure on myself, and inevitably, I just buckled under that pressure. Every once in a while, you know, would crash and burn and take a long break and then, and then dive right back in. And and eventually, over time, as I got a little bit older and wiser, realized that I substantially needed to change my rhythms and my patterns in order to be able to stay in this work that I love. Yeah,

Cheri Gregory
you know you’re you’re illustrating one of my favorite things about HSPs, and that is, we don’t quit. We keep on going. We try so hard. And as I look back, I’m 56 now, and I look back at, you know, at my life, and I look back and I’m like, oh, so if, without knowing what I now know about being an HSP, so many of the ways I tried hard were guaranteed to fail. Like I feel so sad for my my younger self, who really meant well, and who was just positive that this was going to be it. This was going to be the the grand hurrah that fixed everything. And you know, when I’d get on board, and in your book, you talk about the ideal that we, you know, we build for ourselves. And I was so certain that I was one book or one workshop away. Yeah, it’s like, no, no, no, no. I there was so much I needed to understand about, you know, my god given HSP, brain and body and how to steward it well, that I just had no clue. Yeah.

Cheri Gregory
So one of the defining qualities of being an HSP is emotional intensity. And most people, including HSPs, consider this a weakness. But I want to flip it, and I want to ask you, how can our HSP tendency towards this emotional intensity actually be a strength when it comes to responding to injustice?

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun
Yeah, for me, I see our emotional intensity as one of the primary ways in which we stay connected to people and their needs, right? It’s like we we feel it, we feel what’s wrong. We feel the pain, and that keeps us in it, and that keeps us really focused. Because I think sometimes in the world of advocacy, you’ve seen it can be easy to get caught up in in the politics and the strategy and the programs, and that is very much a part of how things work. But at the heart of everything we’re doing right, it’s to advocate for others. It’s to serve others. It’s to be with others in their hardship, in their suffering and and so that, that emotional connection, it just keeps us laser focused on this is what matters most, is the people at the heart of it, right? And it’s, how are they doing? How is their quality of life? Are they able to live with health and safety and dignity and opportunity? And so HSPs are wired to be so people centered that they tend not to lose sight of that ultimate purpose. And I think also what you’re saying of that perseverance, right? It just keeps us going because, because we care so deeply, right? I think unless you are in the various very serious stages of burnout, which I know we’ll talk about later. Apathy is is a very strange and foreign concept for HSPs, right? Like we just we, we feel so strongly and that that makes us, that motivates us and wants, makes us want to keep going.

Cheri Gregory
Do you feel like HSPs focus more on individual people than causes, abstract causes.

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun
Well, it’s a good question. You know, it probably depends on the person, right? I mean, there’s so many different flavors of test piece. We can’t necessarily put ourselves all in one box. I would say for me, I actually kind of like to move between both, okay, because it well, I, you know, one thing about HSPs is we like to kind of keep things interesting and always be learning and always be, you know, and so that that movement between, I’m going to think about this individual question story as well as these, learn about these larger social issues. That’s really helpful for me to remain interested and engaged. And I think to some degree, it’s also a little bit healthy in terms of when you think about the totality of what is going on in this one social issue, or in this entire country or community, it can be completely overwhelming. But then when we focus in on, okay, this is one family, this is one individual, this is one smaller community. It gives us more of a focus, and I think a sense of empowerment of I may not be able to change everything in the world, but I can certainly make a big impact for these individual people. Yeah, I’m

Cheri Gregory
just thinking back to the very first time I as a college graduate, that I got something from my alma mater, my the high school I graduated from, and they were asking for a donation, and they knew how to do their copywriting, because they had a picture, and this is Martha, and they had me, this is Martha, like I did, and they gave a little story of her, and then she needed a new sewing machine in the home ec department, which, you know, this tells you how long ago it was that there actually was a home ec department. And there was something for me that felt really good about giving $25 towards a sewing machine for Martha to use in the home ec department I had been in, as opposed to some nebulous cause. So just that’ll be worth discussing this month in terms of, because I can also see the value of, if an individual starts feeling too intense, like focusing on individuals, starts being like, oh my goodness, I can’t solve all their problems, then backing away to the larger cause, I can see how that could be healthy.

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun
It can be a lot harder to set boundaries, right? Yes, when you are deeply involved with an individual, person or family, oh,

Cheri Gregory
you hit you hit the boundary. Word, right there. Good point. Good point. I.

Cheri Gregory
All right. So my next question is, what have you seen happen to HSPs (and perhaps you’ve experienced this yourself!) when we go charging in to right the wrongs without taking into account our unique wiring and needs.

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun
Yeah. Well, first off, I think it is a beautiful quality of HSPs that we do want to charge it and we do want to write the wrongs. I think that’s one of the best things about who we are. At the same time, it’s risky for us, because we are perfectionists. We tend to be people pleasers, and so we will do almost anything to try to be who others want us to be, right and so we will contort ourselves. We will bend over backwards. We will exhaust ourselves to to try to fit the ideal, as you mentioned, right of who we think we need to be to to address this, this cause, this need. You know, do I need to be the person who’s protesting, who’s yelling, who’s marching, who’s challenging these authority figures? Certainly I may see a lot of other people doing it. So that’s what I should be doing as well. And And yet, when we do that without thinking about, who am I really? How am I wired? What is healthy for me? What is not healthy for me? Then, then we can really easily become overwhelmed and exhausted and and I think we can put ourselves in a place where all we see are our deficiencies, right? All you see is like, this is how far short of the ideal I am, and that’s incredibly discouraging. And so I think to put ourselves on that path of, I’m just going to jump right in and not think at all about who I am and what I need and what best fits me. Yeah, it is kind of the perfect formula to put you on a path toward exhaustion, being extremely unhappy, potentially to the point of anxiety and depression and burning out, which is certainly what happened to me so.

Cheri Gregory
Well, let’s talk about burnout in your book. And again, I’m going to go ahead and read this. One’s coming from page 15, because I don’t know that. I don’t think I’ve ever read it stated quite like this at the very bottom, page 15. Well, earlier you say, if significant enough, burnout can be a form of trauma. And so I just want to sit in that for a moment, because those of us who are HSPs may have burned out like you multiple times in our life. I would never think about that as a form of trauma. I would have thought of, well, I just didn’t try hard enough. And then you you’re quoting researcher Bessel van der Kolk. Trauma produces actual physiological changes, including a recalibration of the brain’s alarm system, an increase in stress hormone activity and alterations in the system that filters relevant information from irrelevant. And then at the end of that page, you say, to experience burnout is to harm your mind and body in serious ways. I come from a conservative Christian tradition that says to experience burnout means you’re serving God correctly. Now they would never have said it in those words, okay, but like that was your trophy. That was proof that you were actually being obedient enough. If you were so exhausted you couldn’t keep going. And then you rose yourself from the dead the next day, and you kept on going. So talk to us about burnout, specifically as HSPs, burning out in these here. We are trying to help. We’re trying to make a significant difference. So what does it look like for HSPs? What does it take to recover once we’ve burned out, and how do we prevent ourselves from repeating the same old cycle over and over again.

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun
Yeah, well, I will say that mindset of, if you’re burning out, you’re doing it right, that very much exists in the social justice sphere as well. Okay, there is, you know, I talk about this in my book. There is real peer pressure. If you’ve been in it and you felt that you might have thought you were imagining it, but you actually are not imagining so there, there’s a lot of research that’s being done now on activist culture. What is the culture of these activist groups, community organizers, nonprofit organizations, and there is absolutely this culture of you just have to be 100% dedicated to the cause every waking moment you need to be working on this. And it is not okay to take breaks, it’s not okay to take the weekend off, it’s not okay to go on vacation, it’s not okay to rest and and as HSPs again, I think it’s very easy. We are very sensitive to that. We’re very attuned to these messages, right? And so we will try our darndest to be exactly what other people are telling us that we need to be like and and yet, the I have come to learn the hard way. And so, you know, I certainly hope that you and I having this conversation can help others not go through what we’ve been through. But it just so I feel like burnout can look a number of different ways for different people, right? So there’s the kind of burnout I’ve experienced, which is like, you just go, go, go, go, go, until you just crash and burn. And it happened to me twice. I’ve burned out many, times, but the two worst experiences I had were when I worked myself down to the bone, and then I woke up one morning and could not work any longer. My mind and my body would not let me because they had been giving me warning signals for months, right? So for me, warning signals are an elevated heart rate, like all the time, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, insomnia, all of these things like it would go on for months, and I would just ignore it, ignore it, ignore it. Because I thought, well, you know, it just it just means I care a lot. It means that I’m working really hard and and all I have to do is maybe do a little bit more yoga and I’ll be fine, but, but my my mind and my body shut down, and it took me months, actually, I will say, the first time that happened, it took me about six months to recover. The second time that happened, it took me about a year and a half to recover, because I had taken so much out of my body, out of my emotional health, spiritual health, that there was nothing left, you know, all I got to the point where, and this me in my 20s and early 30s, it’s not like, you know, that’s when you’re supposed to have the most energy. And I got to the point where all I could do was lie in bed, I could sleep, I could cry, and I could eat like thankfully, I could eat, but those were the only things I could do. I didn’t want to see anyone, I didn’t want to leave the house. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I certainly couldn’t work. So in both of those instances, I had to quit my job just right. Way, could not go back to work, could not function. So So I think that may be the model of burnout that that people are most familiar with and hear about the most. But in my research for this book, I also learned that there is a form of burnout that kind of sneaks up on you. So Barry Yeager is a work expert who writes about how highly sensitive people can can thrive or not in the workplace. She has this great book called Making Work work for the highly sensitive. And so she named something called drudgery, yeah, which like sounds sort of innocuous when you think about it, but then really what she means is it is a form of work that just slowly sucks life out of you. And it can be work that’s really boring, right, work that doesn’t challenge you, where you’re not learning anything, where it’s super repetitive. But it could also be work that like maybe you’re in an organization where they have a super meaningful mission, and yet the culture the organization’s really inhabit, your coworkers are really difficult to deal with, and there’s just something in the workplace, in the work experience, that’s just wearing on you, little by little by little. And HSPs tend to be pretty loyal, and so if we feel like this is a meaningful job. I believe in my boss, or I really support the mission, or, you know, they used to be good to me, even though they’re not. Now, right? Like we’ll find all kinds of reasons to stay, even when we’re unhappy or it’s not working for us. And so this kind of burnout, it just sort of like slowly builds and builds and builds to the point where you actually arrive at the same place as the crash and turn person of exhaustion, of there’s this emotional disconnection that happens. There is this apathy that settles in because you just you don’t have the emotional energy to care anymore. You’ve been caring too much for too long, and and so the the recovery from burnout is it’s not easy. I mean, of course, I there are different levels of burnout. If you pay attention to those early red flags that your mind and body give you, then then you can hopefully avoid the worst of it. But if you don’t, and you end up like me, then, yeah, it’s time for serious intervention, you know, so counseling, therapy, talking to wise friends, you know, changing your sleeping habits, your your exercise habits. And ultimately, for me, it was a lot about kind of re imagining who I was and how I could be in the world, how I could still work in the spaces that I felt called to and felt really meaningful for me. And yet, how do I do that in a way that is sustainable? Because I really did feel like I’m going to kill myself eventually, you know, I’m going to have heart attack at 35 if I just keep going at this pace and you like, you start to feel the risks increasingly, I think the longer you’re in it. And to the quote that you read, you know, I absolutely experienced that of the more I burned out, the less tolerance I had. I think somehow I had it in my brain that it’s like I would only build my tolerance for stress over time, and it was exactly the opposite. It Yes, less and less tolerant, like I got triggered more and more easily, to the point where, you know, in my early 30s, I developed chronic anxiety, and it’s never left me. I’ve, you know, it’s been 15 years, I still, I still live with chronic anxiety, and it is now just a part of who I am, because I so rewired my brain in those in those times of incredible stress and burnout, that that my body is now very, even more sensitive to it, and it’s like, I’m going to tell you right away if you are on a path that is not healthy for You. And so in terms of how we prevent ourselves from repeating that cycle, I mean, I do think it requires taking a good, hard look at who we are and recognizing, not only recognizing, but to some extent, embracing our own limitations. You know you can only be who you are and who you are is beautiful and wonderful. And I’ve actually found that in embracing my own limitations, it has given me the capacity to have so much more grace for other people’s limitations when when you feel like you’re the go getter who can do it all, it is really easy to expect that of other people as well and wonder what is wrong with you if you see somebody who’s not operating in that way. But when I, when I came to truly understand, no, there are certain things that I cannot and should not be doing, then it, it really allowed me to empathize so much more with okay and the. Other person, yeah, they’ve got their limitations too, and that is fine, and it’s a beautiful thing to honor your limitations. I actually feel like when we honor our limitations, we create space for other people to shine and and to step up and for God to do amazing work and and there’s this really healthy humility, I think, in that and acknowledging that I can’t do it all. I can’t save the world, and it’s not on my shoulders alone. I just I’m one person, and I can do my best, and that’s it. I can’t actually do more than that, even though, even though oftentimes we try to, yeah, I.

Cheri Gregory
So I’ve got a couple other quotes from your book that I want to that feel really relevant here. You said, sometimes I shake my fists at the heavens and demand to know why I care so deeply about contributing to social change. Yet I don’t seem to have the right personality traits for the job. And I think all of us can identify with that. You know, wanting to be more than we are, basically wanting to have no limitations, right? Wanting to be like everybody else, except, as you’ve discovered, everybody else as limitations also. And then I’m moving over to page 17. You said that in order to be able to sustain basically, you said it requires extending our wide and robust compassion towards ourselves and listening carefully to the warning signals of our hearts, minds and bodies. And you know, one of the things I have found over the years of working with HSPs is that so many of us have tried to ignore our bodies like no, you know, just dissociate or ignore or suppress or whatever it might be, because there’s such important things in front of us to do. And I think that when we can attach self stewardship, really taking good, gentle care of these HSP brains and bodies God has given us, when we can recognize, okay, that might feel like it’s taking away from the work in front of us, but when we can recognize that that’s what allows us to to keep going over the longer haul and not have I’m like, you I know that my body doesn’t trust me. Like you know, I’ve had the same experience. Each burnout was worse. It got to happen sooner. It lasted longer. And so now there’s a part of me that is so, so gun shy. I’m like, I can’t afford to do that again. I don’t know how long I’ll be out of commission, right? And so part of it is recognizing that depletion that happens. So one question that we’re not going to attempt to answer today, but we’re going to just put it out there as a teaser for the zoo, the live zoom that we’re going to have together in March is, how can we, as HSPs, sustainably care for causes that are near and dear to our hearts. So do you have any quick takeaways, or should we just leave everybody with that to ponder and promise that we’ll have a great, great discussion about it when we get together in March? Yeah. Well,

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun
I just want to add on what you were just saying, which is one of the favorite pieces of research I came across in writing this book was that that idea of self compassion, which I think sometimes we see it as like a cop out or a form of weakness or something, right? But, but as more research is being done on what self compassion is, what it looks like, researchers are actually finding that the more we express compassion toward ourselves, the more it grows our capacity to be compassionate toward others. It is this multiplicative substance. It’s it’s not like, it’s not finite. It grows and like what I was saying about acknowledging our limitations, which then allows us to acknowledge others. It’s that same thing of we have compassion for ourselves. It’s a way of practicing compassion, and it grows our ability to have compassion for others. And so I do think that that is one of the places to begin when we talk about what sustainability looks like, is can we truly know what it is to be compassionate toward ourselves and then to extend that same compassion toward the others around us that we see in need.

Cheri Gregory
Self Compassion has become everything for me. In the last couple of years, I’ve been doing a lot of research and regret and rumination and recrimination, self recrimination. So the way I define self compassion is intentionally and fully embracing God’s grace for myself. Because I think what most women, well, many of the women I work with hear self and they immediately go, that’s selfish. I can’t do it, right? And so it’s like, no, no. It’s not about self at all. And when we practice self compassion, we actually have more to give to others. We are so much better for others. But it’s hard to believe that if you’ve been raised to think that the word self automatically is sinful and awful and you should avoid it.

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun
Yes, it definitely takes some undoing of these very strong messages that we’ve been taught.

Cheri Gregory
Dorcas, I would love for you to just share with us, as a Christ follower and an HSP, what might self compassion look like and sound like for you on a day to day basis in any of your various roles?

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun
Yeah, I am in this extremely busy season of life right now and and so I have found that one of my most meaningful spiritual practices is to nap. So I have been napping a lot in the last so I’m a first year teacher too, if that gives you additional context. And I just started teaching in August, starting a brand new career in my 40s. Don’t know what I was thinking, but yeah, it has required napping to to get me through every day and every week, I’m all for napping and and so I think, on a day to day basis, well, well, let me backtrack a little bit, because so many of you have been talking about burnout, and that’s very much a part of my story as well. And, and I think having been through very severe burnout. And so I you know that have had two occasions. I’ve had many burnouts, but I’ve had two occasions of burnout that were so severe that I was in a very, very deep depression for somewhere between six to 18 months, right? And incapacitated. Couldn’t get out of bed, could hardly do anything except eat and cry and sleep, and having seen the other side of what what it looks like to burn out, i i It to me, it’s become a very clear choice in my mind of well, either I practice Self Compassion and I’m able to continue to engage with the world in ways that are really meaningful to me and that make make a meaningful difference, or I burn out and I’m completely out of the game, and to me like that is not that. Is not the option that I want. You know, I would rather pace myself. I would rather it. Take things kind of day by day, acknowledge my limitations, honor them, so that I can continue to be part of causes that that mean a lot to me for many years, instead of, you know, the the average amount of time that any activists, regardless of their faith background, can be involved in social activism, is two to five years, and then they burn out, and then they’re done. The vast majority of those who burn out, they leave social activism and they never come back, because they do not know of any way to remain in the work in a way that’s sustainable. And so to me, that’s very grievous, right? If you think about all of the energy and enthusiasm and passion and love and experience and skills that we are losing because we don’t know how to take care of ourselves or one another while we are engaged in this very hard work. And so to me, then it’s become this choice of okay, if I want to remain in it, if, if I want to continue to be able to to care about the people around me, the environment, the things that are close to God’s heart, then, then I have to pace myself and and I find comfort in the example of Jesus in Scripture, right? I mean, I haven’t done this yet, but I think one of these days I need to go and count. Like, how many Bible verses are there that talk about Jesus sleeping, Jesus, withdrawing, Jesus, finding a quiet space, Jesus praying, Jesus hanging out with just like one or two close friends, right? Like, sometimes even the 12 was too much for him. It’s like I just need my one or two closest homies. I mean, that was his ongoing rhythm and, you know, and he did it for three years, which, and I imagine most of us are trying to do this for even longer than three years. So so that rhythm makes so much sense to me, right? I mean, if, if Jesus needed to do that, yeah, totally. It makes sense that I would need to do that too. So anytime he had some sort of, like before, any kind of major event, major teaching, and afterwards, there would be these times of quiet, solitude, prayer, rest, right? And that, I think, is sort of just how we’re wired as human beings, and us, especially as HSPs, is that the the rhythm of how we operate is to engage and then to sort of, you know, withdraw, not in a I feel like I had a lot of negative connotations, but withdraw in the sense of just like Having that solitude, having that quiet, having that time with God, with the the people who are closest to you and with yourself. And so that’s even on daily basis. I think about that you know, of like so you know, for example, my my teaching, the actual time that I spend teaching in the classroom takes so much out of me that I have made the fairly conscious decision to not really socialize with my fellow teachers. I’m totally friendly, I’m very approachable, but I don’t seek out conversations with them, because I just don’t have it in me. And so to recognize that like, like, there’s almost this kind of like meter, right, that you pay attention to within yourself, of like energy, and can I do it? Can I not do it? And, and so day by day, I’m measuring that of, okay, well, I had a super busy morning with a ton of meetings where I taught this morning, so the afternoon, I’m going to try to take it easier, or the first two days of the week were really intense, so I’m going to try to balance it out with the rest of the week, and I think the you specifically were asking Cheri about being a Christ fellow or being an HSP. And so much of the practices I think that I try to engage in are around really understanding myself and knowing myself, knowing my limitations, knowing my strengths, knowing what brings me joy, knowing what really drains me. And I find that it’s actually very much tied with my faith. Because the more I understand myself, the more I understand who God created me to be. Then it’s like the more I see God’s work in my life, the more I understand God’s heart. And one other thing I’ll add about the topic of burnout, is I, for a long time, felt like I was not worthy of joy. I think those of us who are called to justice work take very seriously the call to grieve with those who grieve, and be in lament and stand with those who are suffering. And I believe that is all legitimate, that is all good and wonderful, and God also wants joy for us, deep, lasting joy. When we deprive ourselves of joy, then it’s like we almost forget how beautiful and amazing this world is and the people around us are. And when we forget that, then we sort of lose our North Star of why are we? Even doing the work that we’re doing, and to me, Joy is one of the greatest antidotes to burnout.

5 — WRAP-UP with LINK:

Okay, I’m back with my Post-It Note that says, “Share Epiphany!”

My epiphany, which came toward the end of a powerful discussion with members of the Sensitive & Strong Community Cafe — I think we had like a dozen Christian HSP women of all ages and stages on that Zoom call — was this:

When servant-hearted Christian women burn out, what if it’s not our fault? In fact, what if we’ve been BRAINWASHED to BURN OUT?

I know these are STRONG WORDS.

So let me hasten to assure you that Amy Carroll will be back VERY SOON for a candid conversation in which we’ll explore this whole topic.

For now, if you find yourself resonating with today’s episode and wondering how to start making needed changes in areas like
boundary-setting
burnout recovery
balance development

… I hope you’ll check out The Sensitive & Strong Community Cafe.

CheriGregory.com/Cafe

The Cafe is a learning community of like-minded women, and there’s no one right way to be a member.

Whether you prefer attending live Zoom sessions … or watching pre-recorded videos … or working one-to-one with one of our Sensitive & Strong Certified coaches — you’ll feel right at home.

One of our newest members shared this with me over the weekend:

“This group is such a blessing. Hearing from others who can relate to my experiences brings affirmation to my heart. You get me!”

::

Thank you for listening to Grit ‘n’ Grace – The Podcast! I hope this episode leaves you feeling encouraged and equipped to thrive.

Be sure to follow in your favorite podcast app and share this episode with a friend!
If you’re brand new to the whole HSP concept, come take the “Am I a Highly Sensitive Person?” quiz — you’ll find the link in the show notes.
And remember: God created you sensitive; in Christ, you are always strong.

::

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun

We all have these little red flags that come up, right? Our bodies are incredible. Our bodies are like prophets. They’re speaking to us constantly and telling us really important things. And so we all have those little signs that our bodies are giving us, of like, oh, you’re pushing yourself too far. Oh, you’re like, on the edge. And so for me, I become short of breath. My heart starts racing. I’m really, really exhausted to recognize those things and to become better at adjusting, even on the fly, even on a daily basis, of like, okay, I’m noticing this. This is not good. I need to make an adjustment. Yeah.

Cheri Gregory

Something I’ve come to recognize over the last year is how badly I’ve ignored and even neglected my body. It made sense at the time — I didn’t understand why I was receiving SO MANY sensory signals … and I believed I didn’t have the TIME to pay attention or “LISTEN to my body”.

But listening to our bodies is a vital life skill — especially for HSPs.

It’s the key to learning how to metabolize our emotions in healthy ways and how to serve other people in sustainable ways.

So, one of the most important additions we’ve made to The Sensitive & Strong Community Cafe this year is regular “Systems Check Check-In” training sessions that help you increase your interoceptive awareness.

And we are seeing real-life results. One Cafe member shared this recently:

Last night at 10 pm for my 2 hour flight home, my senses were on overload – the adolescent girl giggling the whole time, the gentleman snoring, the light another gentleman had to have on, the two other gentlemen non stop talking. Physically my hips and shoulder hurt and I was a hot menopausal sweaty mess. To stay calm I covered my ears and closed my eyes. I went through each body part and breathed calmness into it. I invited the Holy Spirit to take over. I reminded myself I am safe and I am strong. After the flight I was well enough to drive half of the way home. Praise the Lord and praise this group for all I’ve learned !!!

https://CheriGregory.com/Cafe