Ep 447: Don’t Ignore the Signs: 7 Telltale Indicators of Burnout and How to Restore Your Peace with Chantay Golson

Mentally and physically exhausted? Suspect you might be headed toward burn out?  Feeling exhausted, trapped and frustrated by your career, business or life?  Chantay Golson is an executive leadership coach specializing in emotional Intelligence.  Burnt out yet still hustling Chantay reached a point where she had to choose herself or her business. In the process of recovering from burnout Chantay created a time management system to help her bounce back.  She’s now on a mission to help women set up systems to avoid or recover from burnout so that they can thrive. In this episode of The Health Fix Podcast Dr. Jannine Krause interviews Chantay Golson on what it takes to recover from burnout and master the art of self care as woman entrepreneur or executive. 

Resources From The Show:

• Chantay’s Quiz to assess your work-life balance – https://www.thelevelingplace.com/quiz
• Chantay’s – Meditation
• Youtube – Chantay Golson
• Chantay’s Blog – Her Freedom Quest – coming soon!
• Linked In – https://www.linkedin.com/in/chantaygolson

Our Partners

Podcast Transcript

1:13 What lead Chantay into emotional intelligence

7:43- Chantay’s three step system for emotional intelligence

8:50 – Simplifying your daily tasks / Time management system

13:33 -Understanding the root cause of the burnout / What is the trigger?

20:10 – The physical effects of burnout / stress

21:17 – Self care is soul care

25:21 – Identifying who you are or where you lost yourself

26:41 – Identify who you want to become

33:59 – Chantay’s 8 week live training

36:10 – Helping you identify burnout / 7 signs

44:30 – Emotional control / emotional intelligence

46:50 – How guilt can creep in when taking some me time

51:40 – Where to find Chantay and her program

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Welcome to the Health Fix Podcast, where health junkies get their weekly

fix of tips, tools, and techniques to have limitless energy, sharp minds, and fit

physiques for life.

Hey health junkies on this episode of the HealthFix Podcast.

I’m interviewing Chantay Golson.

She’s an executive leadership coach specializing in emotional intelligence.

And today we’re going to be talking about burnout and how that impacts you and how

you can find those signs that something might not be going well in the career department.

And let’s just face it, it’s tough to find life and work balance.

And in this episode, it’s going to give you some really amazing tips to help you get things

back on track and to work on taking care of you.

Because after all, she is on a mission to create a culture of self-care in the executive

world for women.

Let’s introduce you to Chantay Golson.

Hey, help junkies. I am Chantay Golson on today. We’re going to be talking about emotional

intelligence. I’m going to figure out how she got into this career. And we’re also going

to be talking about burnout, which is such a huge thing that happens with women as we

get older. It is a thing. So Chantay, welcome to the health fix podcast.

CHANTAY: Thank you for having me.

Well, tell us a little bit about how you ended up finding emotional intelligence and really

understanding what it takes to get out of burnout because one of these things are just

so rampant in our lives right now. What, what was your story and how you came to it?

Emotional intelligence was a default after understanding what the cause of my burnout was

and the ability to apply practical strategies in order to recover myself, which actually took

seven and a half years. And so as you know, we women, professional women have to pursue

throughout the burnout. We’re still working, we’re still grinding while they’re still burnout

sitting on our shoulder. So my story persists. I’m being a medical provider, five clinics,

managing that as well as staff, having just so much energy going, you know, going and going and

going for years and years, decades actually. And so just one day, one– something just fell

on me. I really can’t describe it in context to what it felt like, but I could– can describe it as

the air being quickly sucked out of a tire. So you’re talking about somebody who’s been

servicing patients for so long and just one day the air is just flat. So my day consisted of

leaving my home at 8:30 in the morning and returning about 10.30 at night. That’s what my

six days a week looked like for years and years and years and years. And so as a result, I burnt

out as you can imagine, the way I help people to understand how burnout persists is, look

at it from a pouring of a picture. So you have water in this picture and you are pouring,

pouring, pouring, but the got you is if there’s never any refills. So in my circumstance,

giving to patients, giving to patients, giving to patients while not being restored. No one pouring

back into me. Then that is what calls the depletion and thus therefore running on fumes. So as I began

to understand the red flags, I did not capture it until I began to see my behaviors. And this is

where you are cynical. This is where you do not care. This is where you are not functioning your

responsibilities correctly. And I want everybody to know that there are six to seven levels of burnout.

I was on the sixth level and that’s severity. That’s almost chronic to where you just don’t care

about anything. I stopped caring about my personal responsibilities. I stopped caring about my

business responsibilities. At this particular point, I began to lose a lot of money, quarter of a million

old this month, this month large amounts because I was not managing staff. And so then it became

a financial deficit. Not only was I mentally exhausted, not only was I cynical, not only was I

irritable, not only did I not care. And every time I went to my business, I sat in my office

wishing that people cancelled. But because I was so needed or my reputation around the whole state

was high, I always had patients coming in. And so I just one day stopped and thought about

how I needed to address this because I recall even now sitting in my office,

turning the lamp on, turning all of the major lights down. Looking at my computer while my

Secretary bring my lunch, mind you which became a lot of junk food, right? To cope. 

JANNINE: Sure.

CHANTAY: And so with that being stated, turning on Netflix didn’t want nobody to bother me. And there were

several days like this to where I wish I could go home. Think about it. Your own business,

filling trapped, having financial difficulties because you just no longer have air in your tire.

And so I began to work on me, but first I had to make a hard decision.

I had to either choose my business and everything that came with it or choose me.

Long story short, I chose me. I closed all the doors. I laid off. I came in home and I did telemedicine

and I could only muster two days a week in serving. That is a I could only muster.

So this is deep. This is not something surface. This is like soul

plaguing.

And so I began to work on me. I could not have worked on me

through the channels of hustle, the hustle culture, going and

going. I wouldn’t be able to have worked on me. And so from there,

I began to slowly plan, create activities and strategies that

could help me to restore myself. And the very first thing that I

created was a time management system, which would allow me to give instructions to myself

by creating what I needed to do and breaking them down so far that it was nothing to think about.

All I had to do was just follow my directions. And if I did not could not follow my directions,

that means that my activity was not low enough for it to be simple. So I began to put time with it.

I began to then excel in my energy and my tasks and then the list goes on and on on how I further

recover. But as a result, I’ve created a three step system that I now teach clients about and

therefore incorporate an emotional intelligence because we know by definition that emotional

intelligence is all about awareness of me and awareness of other people in my environment

And how do I handle that in a healthy way?

JANNINE: That makes sense. That makes sense. I mean, a lot of things you just said resonated with me.

I also, same kind of thing, busy practice, just let everything go, had to move home and take care

of my dad. And that was a point at which I let things, you know, kind of, I had to figure out what

was going on. So, you know, for what you’re saying, I think a lot of women can resonate.

And I think the most important thing that I’m hearing you saying, I think a lot of women need

to hear this is that it is really hard to work on you when you’re in the midst of the hustle.

And that you said, you said the time, you notice like if I can’t take care of it,

if I can’t do it, it’s too hard. I need to simplify. Tell us a little bit more about that.

CHANTAY: Yeah, so my system, time management system is called the order of organization.

And so it’s an advancement of a to-do list.

So you start off with the tactical task of identifying what you need to do.

And as you learn what you need to do, you also learn what you don’t need to do,

because there’s something called busy work.

And so we often get enamored with busy work and we find ourselves never progressing towards our

Target which is straining and frustrating.

And so you will create the things that you need to do.

We’ll simplify it and look at a 24 hour period.

You write down everything you need to do.

And this is an all categories of your life.

I have something called four quadrants, which is your work,

your family, community, and whatever else you’re leisure time.

So we’ll look at that the four quarter quadrants.

And so you are writing down everything you have to do in these quadrants.

And then what we’ll do is we will name each quadrant and we’ll bring over the task in their specified quadrant will then break down the time that it takes from the very beginning to the end.

So for an example, if I needed to go to my PO box.

box, then how long would it take for me to get in the car, drive to the post office, go

into the post office, get the mail, come back and return to the office. That’s what we need

to look at, right? Not just going to get your mail, because it won’t be measurable at that time.

And so if I could say I could do all that in 15 minutes, then I am listing the time per each

tests of how long they will take realistically. From there, I then order or put in order the least

time frame of an activity to the greatest. I’ll start with the least and then I’ll start

with the next lease, the next lease, the next lease until that particular

task, all those tasks are done. Now, the reason why you want to reduce the

the task in such a small way is because when you are allotted to do one thing and you

complete it, that creates motivation. And when you have motivation, you can see yourself going

to the next one. You say, oh, I’ve got those things done in 10 minutes. That could have taken me an

hour some time ago. And then it motivates you. Oh, let me just keep on and keep on. Next thing,

you know, you kind of on this, this, this high, if you will, of wanting to see how much you can

get done and or you are affirming yourself to say, wait, I do have strength to get things done.

It was miraculous when I pieced it all together and there are other components about it that I did not include, but I can provide access to this for your guest and, you know, however you choose to allow that.

that. But the time management system, the order of organization, that got me going again from a

small amount until I began to increase my strength and further began that.

JANNINE: Wow. No, that’s awesome. Because I mean, I think a lot of women, especially as entrepreneurs and

folks who have a lot going on, we, we do kind of base our day on our to-do lists. And some women,

And I’m sure maybe you might have felt this was discouraged

when you don’t get the whole to-do list done.

CHANTAY: Right.

And or the to-do list becomes a greater to-do list

because as you’re going throughout the day,

as you’re reading your emails,

as you’re listening to other people,

as you’re gaining calls,

as you’re trying to finish up this,

that other things are attached to your to-do list,

which becomes discouraging

because you started off with five and now you got 15.

JANNINE: Yeah.

I laugh because I, oh, I know this.

I know this.

My goodness, I know a lot of women can resonate with that.

Plus just having a win, you know,

with the time management is huge.

So huge, so huge.

So what’s next?

What happens next after the time management system

once you got that done?

CHANTAY: Well, once I got that done

and I was able to intelligently understand how it works

and the power that it brought back to me.

Then I began to understand,

I began to study myself and understand the root cause

of the burnout,

because there’s never an event or scenario in your life

that is not started or identified first through a trigger.

And let me share this as well.

This, this comes up as I shared earlier, kind of the symptoms or the signs that I knew that I was going through burnout.

And again, I haven’t shared all the signs, but one thing came to mind, this was the got you. This was the slap in the face.

Now, I share with you that I have been gone home, loved serving people. I serve children, teenagers and adults.

And so, you know, my particular gift, my spiritual gift is to heal.

And with that being stated, one day I was servicing a child and I went out to the lobby to speak with the mother and I was consulting the mother in regards to a balance that she had.

And at this particular time, she made a comment to me

that echo for a long time,

because I had never heard this.

I had already always heard that I was nice,

always heard that I was helpful,

always had been appreciated.

And it wasn’t the fact that I heard criticism

because I really don’t, that doesn’t bother me.

Let’s just say it that way.

But I knew something was going on with me.

So when something is going on with you,

but yet you really don’t want to believe

that something is different about you,

then you become somewhat offended, right?

Now, while I’m very good at masking my emotions

because that’s just a part of the professional game,

she called me stoic.

I thought that was interesting.

I know that may not mean anything for anybody else,

but stoic it, huh?

So that simply means it reminds me of being like a statue,

not letting any emotions in or et cetera.

Now I cannot deny that it’s a possibility

that I was giving that off because I was doing my best

not to show her my pain.

Now here’s the got you.

Not only was I burned out, but I was broken hearted at the same time.

At the same time.

JANNINE: Wow.

CHANTAY: So I had to wear this mask, but I also had to climb into that statue just to make it every day.

To not cry, right?

To not get angry.

Not to show my frustration and my irredibility.

And so then that’s when the things begin to domino effect in a negative way.

JANNINE: That’s hard.

That is so hard because I can hear you.

I, I’ve been there. I’ve been there.

CHANTAY: Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, especially when you’re thinking you’re getting married and things that particular sort.

And so I had to heal from burnout and broken heart at the same time.

time at the same time. And when you look at it from a mental

health point of view, those are those are two brief components

that are very hard. And I’ll share with you as well as your

audience, that when I had that breakup, something died in me.

I’ve always been this go getter at always accomplished things

very young. I knew what I wanted to do at a young age. So I went

for it. And that’s how I was able to accomplish a lot. I bought

a house in my twin is I had all the cars I wanted. But

something died in me. And when it died in me, all of my air

diff you know came out of the tire. And I was deflated. And

So walking on fumes plus deflated,

you could imagine how mentally exhausted,

how foggy my thoughts were, how indecisive I were,

how procrastinated I was.

I understand that’s not a word, but I just made it up.

JANNINE: It’s a good one.

It’s a good one and it captures exactly what happens.

CHANTAY: And so, I heard the other day on also somewhat

a podcast, this young lady says that procrastination is the

assassination of your dreams. And that resonated because my

dream was to help heal people from a very young age as a shrink

a medical provider or what have you. And I did it. But this

thing now is starting to shred me to pieces. The lady that was a

go getter that would accomplish a lot that could handle a lot. Where

did I go? I literally did a blog post last week in terms of where did my creativity go?

Did my career cause me to not be creative anymore because of how serious it is?

Working with people who are suicidal, working with people who are depressed and highly

anxiety and the list goes on and on. And so that took a toll, not the issues that I helped because

I have a special gift for those things.

But the biggest hurt for me was that I began to resent my business.

And that’s like your own baby.

Imagine carrying nine months, giving birth and resenting the thing that you cultivated.

JANNINE: It’s the worst feeling in the world, having been there early.

You know, it’s the worst thing in the world.

You feel like you’re turning your back on yourself almost.

CHANTAY: Mm-hmm, yeah.

And then here comes what?

All of the distractions, all of the depletion,

all of the mental exhaustion and et cetera.

And that takes a toll on your physical body.

And so this healthy lady now having to take

medication for blood pressure.

Now having fibroids.

Now having to take medication for fibroids.

You know, so medication is helpful in its own capacity,

but what I’m talking about is the pressure

of the work hustle culture

and how we can take a toll on your physical body,

your mind and your soul.

And so one of the themes that I do in helping professional women

is to understand how to incorporate soul care.

So I have a theme, I have a saying that I created.

Self-care is soul care.

And so as I empower the professional women to thrive,

I help them to dish stress,

overwhelm and burnout by creating personalized self-care

routines that lead to balance and a fulfilling life.

And that’s what’s important to me right now.

That’s my way of giving back and helping to heal.

‘Cause I no longer at this particular point

desire to do it one on one at this particular time.

So we say what happened next, what happened next is

I identified my tolerance level,

what I was able to handle and what I was not able to handle.

And I began to set boundaries for myself and other people.

And anything that hindered my peace,

it was not welcome in my life.

And then that began to allow me to heal further

and to understand myself further

and to understand what went wrong.

There were a lot of things that went wrong.

I can list them down,

but I had the energy, the hammer them,

but once the energy left,

they were too much to hold on to.

And so anything that bothers your piece is too expensive.

JANNINE: I like that saying.

CHANTAY: It’s too expensive.

– Yeah, it’s too expensive.

So that’s why I have a heart for professional women.

JANNINE: Makes sense.

CHANTAY: You know, we can do it, we can have our dreams,

but there is a way that we can do it

that defeats the tradition of working yourself to death

and or not even understanding your stress level.

And therefore, especially African American women,

we have this concept that has been passed down to us

some verbally, but a lot non-verbal, excuse me,

non-verbal, which is called limiting belief.

This is what we’ve seen,

although we didn’t hear the words that you work until

you don’t, can’t work anymore.

So sometimes we cannot identify our stress tolerance

and it’s we can only see it when it’s too late.

And that’s where I come in.

I bring strong awareness and helping them to understand

how to move from unconscious to conscious.

how to work on, do the work that I teach them about awareness, helping them to move from

their existence to the woman they wanted to come.

And sometimes we have to let go of traditions in order to do that in order to shift that

mindset.

JANNINE: Incredibly important to acknowledge the traditions because I think for women, that

What is the big deal for us?

We’re caught sometimes depending on the age we’re caught between taking care of our kids

and our parents, sometimes against uncles, and then a career.

I’m guessing that that’s something you see quite often with a lot of women.

CHANTAY: Yes, yes.

And also that brings the point that for the women who have raised children and now they’re

empty nesters, they don’t know who they are now.

And that puts them in a whole nother spin tail.

And that, so what some for some, they allow their work to be their identity.

And then when work isn’t going well, they don’t know how to find themselves.

JANNINE: You know, that’s an incredible point right there.

Because I do think when work starts to collapse in and for someone that, that’s a yes, the

children are out of the house or they’ve never had children.

It’s yeah, you wrap your whole identity and that.

And then when things are crashing down, you’re like, oh, my gosh,

I don’t even know who I am anymore.

I don’t know what direction to go.

What, what kind of things would you say to someone who’s feeling that right now?

CHANTAY: What I would like to share with them is that it’s important for them to identify

who they are and if they cannot find the positive flair into who they are, I get them to go back

to identify where they left themselves. And we do work from there. They may say, well, 20 years

ago, I was this and I was so happy and we start there. And we help them to identify the transitional

or the journey as to where they lost themselves.

JANNINE: And then working forward to kind of create a new identity.

CHANTAY: Yes, to refine themselves,

to change their belief about themselves.

JANNINE: Creating the new belief about yourself

is a really, really huge, huge,

I think, part of emotional intelligence,

but also just as of getting older

because things change as we get older with our bodies,

but also life changes, career changes.

There’s so many changes happening

that I do find in my practice and in with myself,

it’s hard to kind of figure out

what do I want my new identity to be?

Where do I even begin?

CHANTAY: Mm-hmm, yeah.

And I actually have an exercise that help women

to identify who they wanna become.

My value propositions is be, do, become.

And so I’ve worked through those value proposition in order to weave them in and out of what they feel like they are to where they want to be.

One of the coping strategies that I teach people is to identify who you want to be.

You may not know all of the way, but you know how you want to feel.

you know, maybe what, how you want to dress.

You know, maybe the environments you like

that you haven’t had an opportunity to see

or haven’t been to for a long time.

So I have them to start in a small baby form

to build up to who they can identify.

And then we use her, we’re gonna call her her,

the becoming self.

We use her as a means to refer back to

when we are having challenges in the present.

Would she do that?

Would she say that?

Would she curse her husband out?

Because she’s in peace.

Would she allow her peace to be bothered?

Would she assert herself presently

so she can be at peace?

So I teach all of these components in such a way

and I’ve heard over the years, over the 30 years

that I’ve been working.

I’m in social service and/or mental health

that I’m a great teacher.

Now I have previously,

I was a literal middle and high school teacher.

And I found the students coming to me to talk,

not about school, not about their assignment, about life.

So I said, let me get out of here and get back on track.

Let me finish up my degrees.

So, you know, so yeah, so there are a whole lot of strategies that I teach individuals,

but the power behind that is teaching them the fundamentals of how to create strategies to be

able to navigate challenges in life.

JANNINE: You know, incredibly, incredibly powerful. And one of the things you said about teaching,

you know, kind of like, man, we need this, we need this in like grade school,

for young women and men too, I think, you know, both.

But in particular, I feel like this message is something

that, you know, unfortunately now for a lot of women,

it’s we’ve gotten to that place of burnout

because we’re really in probably maybe the second generation

per se of women that have really embraced working

outside of the home.

So we’re really starting to just learn what happens, right?

And I’m like, man, we really need to get those

into the grade school.

But that’s my soapbox on that.

Have you thought about that in terms of how you could incorporate

programs or things of that nature in the future?

CHANTAY: Oh, absolutely.

I spent countless years servicing at risk youth.

I have always had a heart for the youth

because there was an event that happened when I was a teenager.

I am a PK, if you will.

So I went to one of the ministers at church

to share some thoughts and get a little bit of mentorship.

You know, I’m trying to think of what,

you know, I don’t, I want to have sex,

but I don’t, because I know it’s not godly, you know,

can you, you know, can we talk about it?

Can we help?

Because I certainly wouldn’t go,

wasn’t going to go talking to my mom about it, right?

So I thought to find a minister who I felt that was cool.

And the only thing he said was pray about it.

I said, what in the, what is this?

And so it’s something that’s part,

it’s something that birthed me right then and there.

Because I said, this is not guidance.

We need guidance, we need real practical, realistic answers.

And that was the start of working with teenagers

when I was a teenager.

JANNINE: Wow, wow.

CHANTAY: So I have been teaching for a long time.

JANNINE: You’re born to teach it sounds like in this case for sure.

CHANTAY: Yeah, yeah. And so I, these practical tips, these, these, the understanding of emotional intelligence and helping teenagers to understand themselves, help them to

grow into someone they can be proud of and considering their future presently because

I tell teenagers what you do today you will do tomorrow.

So with that being stated, yeah, I was well known as the state, the hospitals and etc.

What’s in all the at risk you to me because that’s what I was, I specialized in.

JANNINE: Wow.

You know, I do believe by helping women entrepreneurs who have kids or even, you know, grandkids,

I feel like we are helping because their message is going to come across, right?

And the hope is that they also transfer it there too as well.

So I like the idea of the full circle.

But now you’re saying too that you’ve moved from one on one and you’re doing group programs.

So I’m guessing that you’re also seeing families

as a whole benefit from the group programs

because the woman’s bringing what she’s learning

to the family.

CHANTAY: I would hope so because I do teach them

the fundamental components of how to look at their scenario

and how to strategize through.

And I teach them from a component that no matter what

the face look like, the scenario or the sound,

you apply these strategies that I’m teaching you.

And they’re able to weave them into their life

as they begin to practice.

But one of the challenges that women have

is unlearning and practicing new information.

I let them know that mental wellness work is work.

Don’t think that you’re going to talk with me

and I’m going to last in your brain the whole week

until you can get a hold of me next.

This is what I tell people.

Now I do actually still see patients one on one

in a very small chunk of time.

I will tell you that because I still, you know,

have to maintain the requirements for my license.

However, what I’ve decided to do

that is getting ready to launch

is to create a membership.

So there are gonna be two components.

first is your DIY do-it-yourself digital courses at your own speed and on time that are going to be

dripped so that you can have time to concentrate do the work and learn so that it can build upon

the next lesson. But also the second tier is you also have access to the digital courses

but you have access to me as well. So it would be a eight week live training with me. So I’m taking

no more than 12 women at a time in the four cohorts and I probably will do it only three times a year.

JANNINE: Okay. Okay. And 12 women. So, so if you guys are listening right now,

you’re like, well, I want to get on this. You got to get going on it. Now, now, I notice that

you have a quiz. 

CHANTAY: I actually do because a lot of people ask themselves, is this me? I don’t know.

Let me see. No, it’s not me because I’m more right. I’m more ABCD early.

E. But one thing I try to help people to do in this process, you have to be vulnerable with you

first before you can be vulnerable elsewhere. Because vulnerability is going to help you to gain

insight into your consciousness to have access to the real answers. So the quiz is my way of

helping them to see if they are in an emotional, intelligent woman, or are they

on the way and also are they a beginner and me to learn further?

JANNINE: Okay, okay. And so would you recommend for people who are kind of contemplating your program

that they take the quiz first to see where they’re at or go ahead.

CHANTAY: Absolutely. 

JANNINE: Okay, okay. That’s kind of what I was thinking. I was like,

of how the cause is a good starting place to kind of get moving and really understand

where are you at. Now, one of the things you had mentioned, Chantay at the beginning, was

the seven signs of burnout. And we talked about a few. And I think right now, I would love to kind

of go over those so that we can really kind of help inspire some women to take action if they’re

feeling any of these signs of the burnout. 

CHANTAY: Okay, so there are when we talk about burnout,

I’ll just follow your lead regarding it because there are seven stages. JANNINE: Okay.

CHANTAY: Out of each stage, there are multiple signs, but what I would like to do just for

not to be so overly complicated and make it easy, we’re just going to talk about the seven signs

of burnout. We’ll just we’ll just shoot seven signs. 

JANNINE: Okay. 

CHANTAY: So the first one we’ll say is exhaustion.

You feel constantly tired. Even if you’ve had decent risk and you feel depleted both physically

and emotionally, but I will tell you that the physical takes place first. This is where you feel

your muscles tightening up, your back’s on her, you figure out what is going on.

Did I sleep different? Did I follow? I didn’t know about, you know, etc. And emotionally,

this is where you’re starting to have a pool of energy escape you for no reason.

the simple fault of something that you would normally quickly understand and make a decision.

It becomes harder and harder because your brain is foggy at this time. And what happens if we

look at the sky and we see a cloud that doesn’t that cloud our vision to the other side to the blue

Scott, think about it from a mental point. Your cloudy, your clutter, and you can’t see your way.

And so you can’t think through that. And as you begin to prolong your stress, the longer your stress,

the bigger this cloud becomes. Well, number two, we’ll talk about being cynical and detached.

And this is where you can start to feel cynical about your work and even lose interest in things

that you once enjoyed. And some people ask me, well, isn’t that somewhat of a sign of depression?

Not necessarily at this point, but it can turn into feeling sad for longer than two weeks, which is

the definition, the DSM definition of depression. Now the DMC, DSM is just like a career

bible, if you will, for my profession. And that’s how we use, that’s what we use to diagnose. Okay.

And so basically you become detached from your colleagues and your clients. Remember me telling

you that I became detached. 

JANNINE: Yeah. Yeah. 

CHANTAY: I became detached from my

responsibilities. I became detached from my staff. I became

detached from the clients. So no longer joyful that the clients

how many clients we have today? Well, I’m always booked. I know

my I’m gonna be there for 10 hours. But when this stage

happens, how many we have your booked all day? Oh, God, help

me.

JANNINE: And when you’re praying, you said this earlier, like when

you’re praying for someone to cancel like that, I know that.

CHANTAY: Yeah. 

JANNINE: Oh, aw. 

CHANTAY:  Yeah. And cynical, you know? That’s where we’re if we were talking about

communication styles, that’s when we are passive aggressive,

we’re I mean, we’re stating a message, but we are being

somewhat rude or possibly cruel in our message. But yet, we

don’t want our message to come out and people to immediately see it as

aggressive. So it could be, oh, you couldn’t have you couldn’t turn that

in quicker than today. Right. 

JANNINE: Yeah. Yeah. 

CHANTAY: The next one, and I’m going to

know with that, but the next one we’ll talk about is reduced productivity.

And that’s clear as day isn’t it? You you you find it difficult to

concentrate and complete tasks. And that is why I had to, when I say

had, I’m going to express had to create something that would

allow me to get something done in the day. And that’s how the

order of organization came about I had to because there was no other

way that I was going to push myself. I just did not care. But I

I knew I had to do things.

And you may also start making more mistakes than usual.

Yeah.

You’re preaching to the choir, amen.

JANNINE: Yep.

– Yep.

Simple things and you start to think you’re losing

your mind a little bit or dementia is happening.

CHANTAY: I wouldn’t say dementia, that’s a whole nother level,

but I do get your point.

(laughing)

– I’ll put those words coming from me.

(laughs)

CHANTAY: And you know, we’ll continue if you would like me to.

JANNINE: Yes, yes.

CHANTAY: So if we’re looking at the next,

what comes to mind is being negative and irritable.

And I’ve described to you that I was snapping.

Ooh, I was snapping.

But I also tried to be quiet

because I know I have a strong personality.

And so I know that it was never my intent to intimidate anybody.

It was never my intent to be passive aggressive or irritable or negative.

I wasn’t necessarily negative because we can weave in and out of some of these signs.

I wasn’t necessarily negative.

I was just, how would I want to describe?

Maybe it was more so of an irritability where I was a little snappy and I was less forgiving.

And I was less tolerant of being late with assignments appointments, not answering the

phones on time.

I do remember that.

Why is this phone ringing?

You know what I mean?

(laughs)

You know what I mean?

Because the second day there was writing her desk,

what are you doing?

(laughs)

JANNINE: Oh my goodness.

CHANTAY: So you may snap at people, you know?

Now I never snap that clients.

And now I was very intentional and conscious.

If I needed to squeeze my buns,

if I needed to pinch myself, whatever I needed to do,

I was not going to do that

because you remember the story about the latest

that I was stow it, that brought attention to me. And I was trying my best, trying my best,

not to corrupt my name. And that’s why I had to make that choice, me or this business,

because it was about to go down. You hear me? 

JANNINE: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.

CHANTAY: Now, in this phase also, when we talk about irritability,

not only are you snappy at work, you’re snappy at home.

Because when you are burned out,

that’s not something that you can take off like a hat

and leave it at the office and lock it up

as you close the door.

You are coming home and you are spreading that butter,

if you will, all over your family and your kitchen.

And so irritability and the lack of cooperation

and being in protesting,

I see that a lot in the professional women, they protest.

Protest doesn’t mean going downtown

which will sign and marching for rights,

but you’re protesting,

you’re deciding not to look at yourself

in the state that you are in,

but yet the symptoms are flying out left and right.

And then, thus, you’re having trouble controlling your emotions.

And I’m big on teaching women about emotional control.

And that’s another reason why emotional intelligence

came out, because technically, when you Google

emotional intelligence, it is specified

in a part of the emotional control.

But there is a separate entity regarding

how to control your emotions.

And so I let women know that, listen, controlling your emotions is all about being intentional.

So I’ll move on and talk about the last couple of ones that comes to mind, which is what I’ve already mentioned, the physical symptoms.

And you, you know, you may experience physical symptoms such as headaches, like headaches coming out of nowhere.

Stomach Aids, I think I remember having some stomach aches and muscle tension most definitely.

And when it gets to a point that is causing you to have sleep deprivation,

if you are not wondering what’s going on with you at that point, then I just don’t know.

You’ve got to be attentive of yourself and that’s one of the downfalls of the hustle culture, isn’t it?

just keep going.

JANNINE: Yep, yep, don’t complain, just keep going,

just keep pushing, just keep, yeah,

I’ll sleep when I die, yeah, that’s all.

CHANTAY: Yeah, I’ve heard that and that’s a miss

aint no life, right?

And so I’m at the point in my life

that I’m cultivated in peace now.

Nothing can intrude my peace.

And once they are finished with my program,

they can move into the inner circle

where I teach them about peace and how to manage it

because now they have the basics

of understanding how to get there.

But we’ll talk about two more

’cause I stated that I will talk about seven.

We’re also gonna talk about the difficulties disconnecting.

So you’re finding hard disconnecting from work.

Ooh, I remember that.

And you have some sort of guilt in this, isn’t this ironic?

JANNINE: It’s so crazy.

It is so crazy.

Yeah. 

CHANTAY: Right.

You feel guilty for sitting down

watching the television show

because multiple tasks come through your mind.

You could be doing this.

You could be doing that.

And then it takes you,

especially when you are a business woman,

but I believe also as an executive,

you’re me to high level executives.

You have no sensor to where you can divide your personal

and professional life because what?

The culture hustle says, get it done, no matter what.

And so you see people bringing home work and et cetera.

Now I barely brought home work.

I know I had that boundary set

at a very young stage of my business.

But my mind would race and think about the things

that I should be doing and thus feeling guilty.

And I had to really, as I was maturing through burnout

and recovering, there was some residue left

from some of those habits that I created

as a means to protect myself,

to include the isolation,

to include watching Hallmark Moveies All Day Long.

I can tell you how many,

I probably should be a stock member for Hallmark.

(laughs)

JANNINE: Oh my God, you and me both, you and me both.

CHANTAY: Yes.

So when we talk about difficulties disconnecting,

we’re talking about guilt,

we’re talking about the inability to relax

and that’s very toxic to a woman as a human being.

And that’s why I drive home self-care.

The biggest part of the work that I do

with the professional women is helping them to understand

their self-care is their soul care.

I don’t just talk about it as a tree

I teach them what self-care is.

I teach them how to grab a hold of self-care

to understand the fundamentals of self-care,

to understand that they are active activities

intentionally every single day.

Self-care is not just taking a day and going to the spa.

That is a part of it, but it’s much more than that.

And so this individual, when we talk about

not disconnecting, we all know the checking your email thing,

right or checking your work phone that anybody call me, I can’t

miss if my boss buying a house. I miss you know, all of these

work problems, even when you’re not at work. And I just think

that that’s very challenging for a lot of women until they meet

me. Hi, I’m Chantay Golsen, leadership coach specializing in

emotional intelligence. And then we’ll talk about one more,

which is a loss of sense of accomplishment. And this is

when you feel like you no longer have a sense of accomplishment because you are burnt out.

You are mentally exhausted.

You remember me sharing with you that I represented my business?

JANNINE: Yeah.

CHANTAY: So you may start having questions about your skills and your abilities and your talents

and your future, but at the end of the day, all of it, you just try to wash out of your

mind because you don’t want to think about the state that you are in, i.e. protesting because it’s

hurtful and it makes you think that you are not the strong woman that you’ve always been.

So this is an emotional journey and that’s why I believe I’m well equipped for it because I have

30 years in mental health in which I’m trying of transitioning over to mental wellness

to coach leaders, professional women, on how to gain themselves back.

JANNINE: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s so everything you’re saying is so relevant, especially, you know, in my,

my own personal life, I’ve been through every single seven of the signs I’ve had them probably

all at once and in any given time throughout my career. And so, those of you who are listening

and thinking, “Oh, man, maybe I’m heading down this path.”

She is dead on, dead on as someone who’s come back from burnout.

She’s dead on.

Oh my goodness.

And going from mental health to mental wellness, that is a huge transition.

And I’m so glad that you’re doing it because you’ve got everything dialed here from what

you’ve just went through.

I’m like, “Gosh, it’s like the perfect program.”

So I’m like, “Tell us, tell us how do folks…”

We take the quiz.

get connected with you, how can folks find you? Are you on Instagram, LinkedIn? Give us all the

ways that we can connect with you so I can put them in our podcast notes at doctorjkrausend.com.

CHANTAY: I am everywhere. I will be honest. I focus more so on YouTube and I am on LinkedIn at The Levelling

Place. Also, Chantay, Golson. And I am on YouTube. I have a

YouTube dedicated just for burnout and and having interview

podcast interviews with other women in regards to burnout. And

so that’s at Chantay, Golson on YouTube. And I’m also creating

separate you to which is going to

chronicle my life now as semi

retired and rediscovering myself.

So lifestyle will talk about

will talk about travels will talk

about experiences and just

side chats about life.

And that’s at Her Freedom Quest,

which also has an accompanying

blog and they can tap into that real soon like literally in February.

JANNINE: Okay. Okay. Oh, gosh. Yeah. I think watching the journey can help too, because I think for a

lot of us, we sometimes need to see the visuals, but also just the good reinforcement to understand,

you know, where we act kind of put ourselves in check, maybe give ourselves a reality check.

And how important it truly is the self care. I have a quote here from you about when you take care

of you, everything else falls into place. And can’t express that enough. So gosh, so

many great things here, Chantay. I’m excited to put this podcast out. And I look forward

to putting all of the notes there, especially about the YouTube and for folks so they can

get ahold of that. And guys, also she has the quiz. It is over at the levelingplace.com.

I will put that together for you in the podcast notes

that doctorjkrausend.com so you guys

can get ahold of the quiz.

Chantay, thank you so much for coming on

and chatting with me about all the great work you’re doing.

CHANTAY: It was a pleasure.

I enjoyed it and thank you for the invitation.

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