Why Self-Abandonment Fuels Burnout (with Lolita Guarin)

[Dana] (00:04)
Welcome back to Phoenix in Flame. I’m Dana, and we have an awesome guest with us today. As I’ve told you all before, I absolutely adore podcasting, because it gives us all access to amazing people who have really experienced some tough things in their life and have learned amazing things from that. Today we get an opportunity to talk to Lolita Guarin. Now, when Lolita arrived in the United States about two decades ago, she was juggling 50-hour work weeks, taking on projects and additional responsibilities to prove her capabilities. She was scared of saying no to her coworkers, and she found herself overworked and eventually succumbed to burnout. The stress eventually caused her to collapse on her kitchen floor. Most of us can relate to that. Lolita, welcome to Phoenix in Flame.

[Lolita] (01:09)
Thank you so much, such an honor to be here, Dana.

[Dana] (01:12)
Awesome. Now I noticed that you were seeking out natural stress management solutions, you embraced improved time management skills, you learned to decline additional burdens, and even adopted a healthier diet and incorporated some exercise. But despite all of those positive changes, you felt something essential was missing. Tell us about your journey, because it seemed like you really did so much, and all of those things sound wonderful, but yet it wasn’t quite enough, and something was off. What was missing? Just start wherever you would like, tell us about your journey.

[Lolita] (01:58)
So, as you already mentioned, when I came here to reach my American dream, I came from Lithuania, so I wanted to prove to myself and the rest that I can do this. And I pretty much did, but the majority of people just do the best they can in the workplace to meet the deadlines and get those overtime hours, and just prove to themselves and their coworkers and supervisors that they are needed in the company. And I was always afraid that I was going to get fired — if the supervisor asked me to come to his office, I was really scared, like, oh my gosh, I’m being let go. And so, as you already mentioned, I just got to the burnout, and I started doing all the regular things they say, like writing a diary, doing meditation, doing yoga. But then I realized, okay, if something’s happening in the room and it is stressful, there’s no way I’m gonna say, okay, hold on, wait a minute everybody, I’m gonna do my yoga session for 30 minutes, I’ll be right back. So that was one thing — I thought, okay, well, this is all great, all of those things, it’s kind of like leisure things, you can schedule into your day, and I totally recommend everybody doing that, we do need to take care of ourselves, we do need to pencil ourselves in, it’s a very busy schedule. But I was doing that, and it really improved my health a lot, but I didn’t really feel like it hit the bottom of it. But since I didn’t know what the bottom was, I thought that was enough. And then when I became a stress management coach, that was like 10 years ago, I was, you know, usually a solopreneurship, wearing all the hats, doing the marketing, the website, all these things. And I was reading a business book about how to run a coaching business, and the author mentioned that what helped her a lot was, she realized her father was an alcoholic, and she read a book that was for adult children of alcoholics, and I was like, what? I mean, this thing exists? I was just blown away, because I grew up in a dysfunctional family too, my dad is an alcoholic. And now, those listeners who are thinking, oh wait, I don’t need to listen for the rest of the podcast because my parents are not an addict — guess what, we all have childhood traumas. I have clients who come to me and say, I am totally burned out, I cannot do this anymore, I’m all stressed out, but I grew up in a perfect family. I’m like, okay, meaning probably your emotional needs weren’t met, because if you grew up in an environment where you were not accepted the way you are, or you didn’t get enough attention or love and appreciation for who you are, you understood that, oh, if I’m not being loved for who I am,

[Dana] (04:48)
Mmm.

[Lolita] (05:10)
I’m afraid I’m going to be kicked out. And this goes very much into our survival brain, that we need to be accepted by the group in order to survive. So if they don’t like us, then we think, oh, I need to be useful, and that means you’re going to start doing all the work for everybody else, you’re going to do this people-pleasing, you’ll be afraid to say no,

[Dana] (05:19)
Mm-hmm.

[Lolita] (05:35)
you will be useful in the house, especially if you’re a kid, you will try to help your parents, do your homework and cook and clean and help other siblings. And then when you grow up, you become a workaholic, and society has a tendency of, oh, look at those achievers. There’s quite a few documentaries on Netflix about a few people, I’m not going to say about who, because maybe there are legal things, very famous people, and they were talking about their childhoods, and they realized they had very oppressive fathers, and they were trying to prove to them, like, look at me, look at me, you see how good I am, please love me.

[Dana] (06:08)
Ha ha ha.

[Lolita] (06:19)
And so when I read this book about adult children of alcoholics, I realized, oh my gosh, I grew up in a dysfunctional family, and that just unraveled everything, how I react to any situation in my life, how I react to stress. Because you can have two people in the same room and something happens, and if one grew up in a dysfunctional family, they’ll act very differently than someone who already healed, to the point where they can regulate their emotions and their stress levels. So that was the point when I realized, aha, that means a lot, and I learned a lot from that, and that’s what I’m trying to spread the word about, saying, look, there is more to it than just meditate or do yoga.

[Dana] (06:59)
Ha ha, I love this, I love everything you’re saying, you are spot-on, you’re hitting so many nails on the head. And I wanted to reiterate something you pointed out — you were saying to the listeners, if someone’s thinking, oh well this doesn’t pertain to me because my father wasn’t an alcoholic — if there’s a person in your home who has some kind of significant mental illness, it could be bipolar disorder, it can be some kind of personality disorder, like borderline personality disorder, or something along these lines. If there’s someone in your home who is dysfunctional in some kind of way, you get exposed to a lot of that — they call it ACOA, adult children of alcoholics — you get exposed to a lot of those dynamics, even though the person wasn’t specifically an alcoholic. That research was done around those dynamics of families to figure out what happens in the family that’s wrapped around this person who has a significant issue. So I’m really glad you pointed out that it doesn’t necessarily have to be apparent with alcoholism, it can be apparent with anything significant.

[Lolita] (08:31)
or grew up in a family where there was a narcissist, that’s also a lot of neglect, emotional neglect that can happen for a child.

[Dana] (08:36)
Yes, yes, that is huge, narcissism is a really big deal. And I really would like to hear you talk more about the difference between, when we’re kids, we’re kind of born into that environment and we don’t have any control over that, we have to survive, like you were pointing out, we have to be useful so we don’t get abandoned, so we don’t get rejected and abandoned, we have to stay in that group. And then what happens from your experience, when someone gets older and they’re no longer a child in that environment, but they still have these dysfunctional patterns from when they were a kid, what has been your experience yourself, and also what you’ve seen some of your clients go through, in trying to navigate how that impacts them as an adult?

[Lolita] (09:32)
So there are quite a few things that I think really helped me a lot, but the number one thing, and I always recommend to my clients, is: stop abandoning yourself. And someone can say, what do you mean abandoning yourself, I take myself everywhere I go, right? I’m sure you’ve heard this, when somebody asks, oh, are you happy you’re here in the US now that you don’t live in Lithuania, and they say, it doesn’t matter where you live as long as you’re happy, anywhere you go you take yourself there. But if you abandon — let me explain — you grew up in a family where your needs were not met, and I’m not talking about being totally neglected, like you had no food and walked barefoot, no, that’s even not getting enough attention or validation for your feelings, or not getting enough credit for the things you do, or for good grades that you got — basically you’re not getting your fulfillment on an emotional level, and because of fear of survival, you will do anything that they tell you to do. So let’s say there’s a part of you, let’s say you love singing and that’s the part you love about yourself, but if the family or siblings give you the idea that, oh, shut up, you have no voice, stop doing that, you will separate that part of yourself and tuck it away, because you think, oh, this part of me is embarrassing, this part of me is not welcome in the world, or maybe even punished. I was listening to another famous person on a Netflix documentary, and he said his father didn’t want him to sing, and threw away all his records and told him never to be interested in music. So when you think about it, that’s a serious childhood trauma. So if you grow up separating this part of yourself, meaning you’re neglecting this part of yourself, that’s how the shadow is created. If you’re not into self-development, you push away yourself, and then there are some other things somebody doesn’t like, and you push away, you dissociate yourself from that part of yourself. The sad part is, when you grow up, there are so many parts of you that you’ve abandoned that you feel lonely. And when I was reading one of the books about shadow work, it really struck me deep when they said, when you grow up in a dysfunctional family, when somebody tells you I love you, you don’t really believe them, because you think, you don’t even know me, how can you even love me? So that’s the abandonment — when you’re abandoning yourself, and how we can see this in everyday life, is when you are afraid to say no to people, meaning you will allow them to force you into doing something. Also, let’s say it’s New Year’s, so everybody has New Year’s resolutions and diets, and the gym is full, and there’s so many speakers and success gurus, I’m not gonna mention names, but a lot of them say, you know what, you just need to power through it, you’re just gonna power through it, do your workout, do your work. And you know what that is? You’re abandoning yourself all over again, like your parents abandoned you. So instead of listening to what your parents told you to do, now you’re listening to the guru telling you what to do. But the bottom line message to yourself is, I am not enough, I constantly need to run to the horizon. Then guess what, the horizon never arrives. And there’s a lot of those gurus that say, well, you need to accept yourself and live in the moment, yes, accept yourself. So my advice is simple: if you just started your diet or your gym routine, and one day you wake up and say, you know what, I feel not well and I don’t really want to go to the gym, but I have to go — and then you go to the gym, you’re not really honoring yourself, you’re abandoning yourself, this time as your parents abandoned you. So the day you say, you know what, I don’t want to do this, you honor yourself, you honor your needs, you give the support and appreciation to yourself. And you tell yourself, you know what, I don’t feel well today, I’m gonna be on the couch.

[Dana] (14:39)
You know, Lolita, I really admire and respect what you’re saying, and I’m known as the queen of boundaries, and I’m also a psychotherapist, so I can hear so much truth and authenticity weaving through everything you’re saying, and I’m hearing stories that I’ve been told from countless patients I’ve had. And as I’m hearing you talk, it’s like, if we have abandoned ourselves,

[Dana] (15:10)
then it’s virtually impossible to set healthy boundaries with someone, because what I’m hearing you say, and please correct me if I’m wrong and add on more, is, if we are abandoning ourselves, we become a people pleaser, we become all about what someone else wants, and when we’re doing that we cannot set healthy boundaries and honor our own feelings and our own thoughts, because we’re too focused on someone else’s, because we don’t even know what we want, because we’re not even paying attention to that, we’ve abandoned that. Am I hearing you right?

[Lolita] (15:51)
Yes, and boundaries, as you know, are not only for other people, boundaries are for yourself too, to identify who you are. But if you’ve been told from a young age that who you are is wrong, and you weren’t allowed to speak up, to have your opinion, to do things, to have your feelings, and you were constantly invalidated, you grew up with a lack of identity of who you truly are, because you become this chameleon, every time you talk with somebody else you just switch into the person they want you to see. So setting healthy boundaries with other people really starts with setting boundaries with yourself. And for someone, when I heard this, you have to set boundaries with yourself, it really triggered an immediate response in me, as a child of an alcoholic, like, oh my gosh, you mean I’m still not good enough, I have to punish myself more, because I understood setting boundaries as something bad, like you’re being punished, that’s why I’m setting boundaries, here’s a little area you cannot cross over. But when I finally understood that it really means I have permission to be myself, this is the time for me to discover who am I, what do I like, really honoring yourself, voicing out the opinions you have to other people, not listening to other people telling you what to do when you really feel like this is not the right choice. Start listening to your intuition, start doing things that remind you who you are, rebuild this. Setting boundaries with yourself is knowing who you truly are, and then you can set boundaries with other people.

[Dana] (17:37)
That is fabulous, that is absolutely 100% true. You’ve got to — I say you have your own yard, and then there’s a fence, and then there’s the other person’s yard on the other side of the fence. I want to wrap back around to something you said earlier that I think is really key, and I was interested in more of your opinion on it. You mentioned what it was like being raised in an environment where the parent is rather narcissistic, and trying to find room, and I think sometimes maybe finding ourselves for the first time as an adult, not necessarily rebuilding but building for the first time, because what are your thoughts on what that’s like, when you’re being raised in an environment where the parent is narcissistic, and it makes it all about them, what they want, what their needs are, if they’re upset or not upset, everything’s always about them. And how do you feel that impacts someone trying to find who they are as an adult?

[Lolita] (18:39)
It is very difficult to find yourself when you’re constantly catering to somebody, because then your wellbeing depends on the other person, because obviously you are the codependent one, and you want to make sure the other person is always happy, satisfied, and you’re constantly looking for approval. I remember, before I started having health problems, before I dove into my self-development journey, meditations, all of that — I remember I was in my early 30s, and I would still call my mom and tell her all about my day, just to get approval from her. And now when I look back, I’m like, that’s ridiculous, she doesn’t need to know everything I ate today. But because I was still that child, and I felt like — any journey or goal you set for yourself, you really need to understand that you are worthy of doing that. And if you grew up with childhood trauma, there will be a moment when you just wake up and you’re not in the place you wanted to be, and you’ll be super hard on yourself. I read an article that said, if you grew up with a narcissist, you behave toward yourself the same as

[Lolita] (20:06)
the narcissist did to you, and at first I was like, this is not possible, and then I was like, wait a minute, that is so true, because I realized I am super hard on myself as well, and since I want to be always approved, and I want to be this achiever, showing look at me, look at me, you see how well I’m doing, I’m working 50 hours a week, you see how good I am, I get a bigger paycheck — but obviously that didn’t go well. And I remember one exercise that really helped me start seeing my own value, when I read a book, I think it was Jack Canfield, and he said, write it down, all of your achievements on a piece of paper. I had issues with that, I immediately thought, no, I am not good enough, what achievements are you talking about? Okay, well, I finished high school, I finished university, that’s my achievements. And he says, no, you need to do small ones too. And I was like, okay, if I compare myself to other people, well there’s some who don’t even have a driver’s license, put that on too. So when I started my journey with my coaching clients, I tell them, write a list of all your achievements, no matter how big or small they are, and then you can look at this list every time you doubt yourself, when you’re about to take on your project, or you want to do a diet, or those dipping moments, when you’re like, ah, I’m not gonna make it today, forget it. And I realized that since I grew up in this dysfunctional family, for me it was all

[Dana] (21:45)
Oh.

[Lolita] (21:50)
or nothing at all, so one day I’m flying colors, like yes I can do this, and the next day something happens and I’m like, ah, forget it, I’m done, I’m never coming back there again, but that’s because it’s swinging from left to right, because I grew up in this environment. And so now, when I start dipping into thinking, oh, you know what, I don’t think this is going to go well because I don’t see the results yet, I take my list and read it to myself. It’s kind of like reminding myself that I’m worthy, I already accomplished lots of things, and even if my parents had never seen my worth and I was not rewarded or validated for the things I achieved at that point, it doesn’t really matter. But there is one key that really helped me come to peace with realizing — when I first found out that, oh, I was an adult child of an alcoholic, immediately there was this thing of, oh my gosh, I’m broken, and this is it for me, because you can succeed only if you’re not broken, but now I’m broken and there’s no more life for me. But then I realized, no, you can heal and you can move on. But there were lots of different stages of anger toward the way I grew up, grief of the childhood I didn’t have, all of those things that had to really pour out of me. And when I finally understood that childhood trauma goes from generation to generation, and my mom and dad, they were behaving the way they were behaving, it’s really,

[Lolita] (23:31)
suiting themselves, the addiction, the narcissism, it’s really the mechanism to suit their own pain, because they themselves didn’t get enough of that attention or whatever they were lacking as children. And especially, I come from Lithuania, so in Europe we had lots of wars, there’s always a war going on, so when you think about all the loss that goes from generation to generation, and the parents trying to

[Dana] (23:47)
Mm-hmm.

[Lolita] (24:02)
cope with lack of food or whatever — I’m not saying Europe is always starving, but I’m saying simple needs cannot be met because other needs need to be met, and we don’t know how to regulate ourselves emotionally, that’s like an entire world, no matter what generation you look at. I realized that they are the same wounded children, and when I released that burden for myself, of just forgiving them for who they are, that made a very big impact for me, because now I can have a very healthy relationship with them, I can go for Christmas and have no resentment, because I look at them as other human beings who just need love and appreciation themselves

[Dana] (24:39)
I love that. So here’s a question for you, because I’ve run into this situation before, of what you’re describing, and you have situations sometimes where the parents — there can be forgiveness because all of that icky stuff that happened was in the past when you were a kid growing up, and they’re not really behaving that way now. What advice, what words of wisdom would you have for people who understand everything you just said, they understand their parents went through a hard time and everything their parents were doing was a result of something they were struggling with on their own, and they probably did the best they could — but for different reasons, the parents are continuing to behave in these dysfunctional ways, even well into their adult years? If we have any listeners who are like that, what would you suggest for them?

[Lolita] (25:50)
One of the things I realized when I grew up in that kind of family is that I felt personally responsible for my parents as well, how they were behaving, were they happy, whatever, out of survival. So when I grew up, I also thought, oh, they have to improve their lives. So I have clients who have parents who are still alcoholics, and they say, but I have my own children now, and they want my dad to come over for Christmas, but I don’t want my children exposed to this. So what’s happening is, we need to realize one thing: everybody has their own lives, and I love this saying, you can take the horse to the river, but you cannot make them drink it. You have to honor yourself and your own journey, but also you need to honor their journey too, maybe they’re going through something, and if they really want help, you can help them, but you cannot force the help onto them, you can ask them, let me know when you need help. But other than that, you have to own the choice to do whatever they’re doing, you cannot force them. Also, when it comes to, let’s say, a client who says, I really want my father to come over, but he’s drunk and I don’t want my children exposed to that, is to realize that, first of all, she probably still has this need for validation from her father, that’s why she wants him to come over, so he’ll say, oh my gosh, I really see how wonderful you are, you have this beautiful family. But she also loves her father, so the boundary needs to be drawn — I’m sure you can teach about that — like, if you want to be around my family, you need to be sober, and if you especially have family and children, your children are the number one priority, not your parents, that just comes by nature. You cannot force anything, you can tell them, you can help them, but you always need to take care of yourself and your family first, and your own needs. And I have clients who tell me, I don’t have time to do my five minutes of meditation every day because I’m so busy, I’m a single mother with two kids, I’m running the business. And I said, who’s gonna run that business and take care of your kids if you’re in the hospital? Nobody. So take care of yourself now. So if somebody says, I want to please all of those people and I want my father not to drink and I want all of this, start with yourself, give yourself time, set your boundaries, help yourself so you can help those you love.

[Dana] (28:36)
I love that, that is amazing. Now there’s a question here I did want to ask you — there’s several, but I’m going to pick one. How can individuals cultivate resilience, particularly those with challenging backgrounds, to navigate conflicts at work and in relationships? I love the concept of resilience, being able to keep coming even though they’re taking hits. And I’m also interested in your comments about relationships, how they can have resilience there, because we know when we’ve gone through dysfunctional things growing up, and if we have a parent who’s been narcissistic or an alcoholic or fill in the blank, then lots of times we have trust issues, and we expect people to behave a certain way, and there’s that unpredictability we were exposed to. Sometimes the parent is fantastic, taking us to the park or giving us compliments, and then the next day the parent is totally different and saying very different things, and you never know who’s gonna walk down the hallway, you don’t know which parent is gonna be there that day. And so you live with this constant not knowing, and thinking, okay, it’s not stable, it’s inconsistent, you don’t really know what’s gonna happen. And so as we grow up, that plays out in our relationships, we don’t trust, we’re like, well, you might be this way today, but how are you gonna be tomorrow, how are you gonna be next week? And so we kind of are expecting that. So I’m very interested to hear your words of wisdom on how to develop that resiliency as adults trying to form relationships.

[Lolita] (30:30)
So, you know how they say, be the eye in the storm, right? Be in the world but not of it — what did Jesus say, be in the world but not of it. And when I read that a few times, I was like, that’s easy to say, when you have everything in control, that’s awesome, but how do you not get triggered by all the people in your relationships? It really starts again with first realizing that you are enough, you are enough as an individual, that’s meaning when you’re starting, you set your boundaries with yourself, you’re realizing who you are, and then when you get to the point of, okay, now I know who I am, you’re honoring your needs, and I bet your need is not really to be triggered by your parents or your significant other who says something like, oh, I cannot believe you did this again, whatever. So you need to pay attention to how you react to triggers, and then really work from a place of who is the most important right now, in this moment, and am I that child who thinks it’s helpless, or am I the adult now who can take care of the situation? And the more times we stand our ground, we set more boundaries, we learn to trust ourselves, because we’re like, oh, you know what, last time I said no and nobody died. So I’m gonna say it again, then next time at work you’ll say no to projects, you say you don’t like to do something, and then you say, hey, how about I do something else. And then you see that other people react differently to you now, and you start carving out more space, more time for yourself, this means you’re honoring yourself more. And what helps me a lot when I get in stressful situations right now, especially with my parents, because they always would trigger something, is I look at them now as another individual who also has needs, and for example, when they throw a tantrum, I don’t react so much anymore, because I look at them as if this were a three-year-old child throwing a tantrum, even though it’s my mom, I’m like,

[Dana] (32:55)
Mm-hmm.

[Lolita] (32:56)
I see she has this tantrum, I don’t have to go down that hole with her, I just can observe her, I can give her that space, and I can nod and just agree with her. And if she throws some sentence at me, she says, oh, you know, you’re gaining weight, you need to go work out — before I would say, yes mommy, I’m gonna work out, and try explaining myself and please her. Now I just say, yeah, you’re right, I’ll do the other, okay, and just agree, and realize, it’s just like, okay, you just give them what they want in the moment, but you have to know at the same time, you are you, and give them what they want and stay where you are. And the more you start repeating situations where you gain more trust, the more you trust yourself, the more relationships will be in a place where you don’t get triggered so much.

[Dana] (33:59)
I love that, Lolita, I love what you’re saying about, we may not be able to trust other people sometimes, but we increase our trust of our self, that we’re able to trust ourselves, and that’s awesome. Now we’re about out of time, but I did want to make sure all my listeners are able to access you, if they want to talk to you more or get hold of your products or whatever. Where do they go?

[Lolita] (34:26)
So they’re welcome to go to a website, BeAmazingYou.com. Also, they can find me on Facebook, just search for Lolita Guarin, on Instagram, and I have some worksheets that are free for those who would like them, on my website as well. And I have books on Amazon, the latest one they published was “Crush Stress While You Work,” and then the one from five years ago was specifically for the workplace, and “Stress Management for Adult Children of Alcoholics,” which also covers everyone who grew up in childhood trauma.

[Dana] (35:03)
Wonderful. Lolita, thank you so much, I appreciate your willingness to take your time and your energy to come and share your wisdom and your experience and be so transparent with my listeners, and maybe send that lifeline out to someone who might be listening, that if they’re going through this, there’s a way to do it, to develop resiliency and to not be alone. Thank you so much.

[Lolita] (35:29)
Thank you for inviting me.

[Dana] (35:31)
Listeners, I know you have heard something today from Lolita that has been amazing, and you know what, maybe you’re thinking, I have a friend or a coworker or a relative that needs to hear exactly what Lolita is saying. Then take this podcast episode and put it on your favorite social media sites, maybe copy and paste the link in text or email, get it out there, spread the word, let’s grow our Phoenix and Flame community so we can reach out and know that we are all in this together,

[Dana] (36:01)
and we’re going to have a great future. I hope that you’ve had a wonderful day, and I hope the rest of your day goes fantastically. This is Dana on Phoenix in Flame.