Burnout Resilience & Burnout Prevention Strategies

Ann Diment is Empowering Professionals to Thrive as Resilient and
Compassionate Leaders

Ann Diment has spent her adult life recovering from cPTSD after a traumatic
childhood bouncing between divorced parents and living with an alcoholic and mentally ill mother. She spent her 20s and 30s rebuilding her life after leaving home at 17, and most of her 40s trying to understand why she kept burning out & how to prevent it happening again.

Recently, aged 52 she realised that she was neurodivergent, so is embarking on a new
learning and healing journey. She campaigns, trains, and coaches on creating resilience and smashing stigma about mental health and has written a bestselling book 'Turning the Tables on Burnout' to share the tools that have enabled her to now live a more joyful and less-stressed life.

Ann has over 20 years’ experience in managing workplace wellbeing, reaching the top of her profession as a chartered fellow of the institution of occupational safety and health (CFIOSH) and gives back by mentoring women in Safety leadership roles and judging an international workplace safety award. She discovered EFT (tapping) in 2018 and found it so transformational for her own recovery and healing that she trained as an advanced practitioner and now draws on her lived experience of mental health stigma and cPTSD recovery, to offer trauma-informed transformational group and personal resilience coaching.

She is an ambassador for ADHD UK and is training as a specialist ADHD coach.

Ann also sustains a socially engaged creative practice as an exhibiting artist, published poet, social justice campaigner and performs with several bands around the UK. She is host of the creating resilience podcast where she invites guests to share stories and tools to bring more creativity into your life to achieve better balance and flow.

Ann can offer listeners insights into her own recovery journey, tips on managing and
preventing stress, bringing more creativity into your life and a whole host of coaching tools and tips from her professional practice.

Most of all, her passion is talking about mental health, so more people feel safe to reach out for support when they need it. Her mission is to build resilient and engaged communities, smash the stigma around mental health, and empower individuals to embrace their creativity.

Here is how you can work with Ann:
● Get her new book ‘Turning the Tables on Burnout’
● Feeling overwhelmed or stressed? Download a guide to taming your stress triggers
● To book a 1:1 coaching discovery call to burn brighter and break free from burnout
● To read blog posts or visit her website
● For all the links to her creative work
● To join the private Facebook beat burnout support group
LinkedIn
Instagram

Category: Health

Transcript

[00:00:14] Amy: Hello, everyone. Welcome back today to the Holistic Health Show. We have Anne Diment joining us today. Anne is a creative change maker, an author, and an EFT practitioner and coach. Today, Anne is going to share with us about burnout resilience.

[00:00:34] Amy: She has a new book. So we're going to hear all about that. , burnout is so common. So Anne, thank you for joining me today and talking about this really important topic. I'm really excited for it.

[00:00:46] Ann Diment: Thank you so much for inviting me, Amy. , we haven't mentioned that we're on opposite sides of the world while we're talking. So it's a real honor to be with you. 

[00:00:53] 

[00:00:53] Amy: It's so good that we were able to connect. 

[00:00:55] Amy: Tell me a little bit and tell our listeners, How did you get into this right? So it was kind of a mouthful.

[00:01:01] Amy: So I'll say it again a creative change maker I want to know what that is and what that means an author and an EFT Practitioner and coach so can you tell us a little bit about what they are and why you've gotten into these different modalities.

[00:01:17] Ann Diment: sure. Well, By creative change maker, I, I use creativity at the heart of , the wellbeing and coaching practices that I do. And by definition, if you're being creative, [00:01:30] you're not in the stress or trauma process because your brain is allowing you to be in flow. So I put creative change maker there because I'm trying to disrupt how, work is organized, how we treat people.

[00:01:43] Ann Diment: Work life balance and create change in how we, live our lives and how we manage our workplaces and how we connect with our emotions because the EFT that you mentioned is emotional freedom technique, which is also known as tapping and it's a tool. It's one of, it's one of many tools that you can use to help you to regulate your nervous system to process and clear emotional responses to past experiences and trauma.

[00:02:09] Ann Diment: And generally just help you to tune into the emotional, responds to everyday life, really, 

[00:02:17] Amy: I hear a lot about EFT and I know it's not something that I practice regularly at the moment, but When I was younger, it was something my grandmother would always have us do.

[00:02:28] Ann Diment: Oh, wow!

[00:02:29] Amy: yeah, she, she thought it was excellent. And I've heard really great success stories on it as well. Can you tell me a little bit about how that works?

[00:02:39] Ann Diment: Sure. Well, the way our brain works is that the very primitive part of our brain that keeps us safe, because our brain is, you know, it's a very wonderful supercomputer, and it's there to keep us safe, and the very primitive part of our brain that is common to all. You know beings is, is the stress response part.

[00:02:56] Ann Diment: So there's a little tiny peanut shape of our brain called the amygdala. [00:03:00] And that is in tune with every one of our senses. So if it's always standing for danger and danger could be physical, it could be emotional, it could be a strange smell or, you know, every sense that we have. And it's. When it senses something that could be a threat to us, it fires off all those stress hormones that, you know, have such a really, really, really strong Big impact on our bodies, so it can cause physical health and mental health conditions and tapping is a way that it tunes into the autonomic nervous system.

[00:03:31] Ann Diment: And basically, when you tap on acupressure points, the same points that you use in acupuncture, so they sometimes call it acupuncture without needles. So there is a series of points, meridian points all around the body, and you tap on those acupressure points.

[00:03:42] Ann Diment: And, that helps to tune down, like a little dimmer switch, it tunes down the amygdala, the emotion, the stress response to whatever you're thinking about or experiencing in that time.

[00:03:51] Amy: Thank you for sharing that with me. And then let's get into, burnout resilience. So are you saying that you're using EFT to assist with that? And I guess I want to know as well when you're working with people, are they already in burnout or are you, are you trying to get people before they're, they're getting to burnout?

[00:04:09] Amy: How does that kind of look as well?

[00:04:11] Ann Diment: Kind of approaching it from many angles. Obviously I've done my background is in health and safety. I was over, well, I've been working for over 30 years now. And , just to share the reason how I got into this, if that's okay. I experienced a lot trauma in my early years. And , it can be classified as adverse childhood experiences, [00:04:30] ACEs.

[00:04:30] Ann Diment: And it wasn't until I was 38. , so I'd lived for 38 years over 20 years with this trauma and sort of struggling with my mental health throughout my twenties and thirties. I was diagnosed with complex PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder. After that, so I'll give my age away now for the past 14 years, I've been, I've been on a journey of understanding how that impacted my brain and why I kept having depression, anxiety and burning out.

[00:04:58] Ann Diment: And through that journey of discovery and healing, and I discovered quite a few tools, , creative tools were the key ones, but EFT was the final piece of the jigsaw.

[00:05:08] Ann Diment: I discovered that actually if you've experienced trauma at all in your life, you are more, more at risk from burning out because the behaviors you put in place to protect yourself from getting re traumatized, so perfectionism, people pleasing, and not being able to say no, all those, quite a lot of those behaviors you put in place are more likely to make you burn out.

[00:05:29] Ann Diment: And I. explain to people that burnout isn't about you as an individual. It's about your exposure to workplace stress. And that is very clear in the definition of burnout. So the link between burnout and resilience is sometimes misappropriated, I guess. I mean, in Japan, they've got a word, they've actually got a word for work related suicide, the suicide from overwork.

[00:05:49] Ann Diment: So I'm sorry if that's a trigger for anyone, but it's actually accepted in Japanese society that people. I get worked so hard for so long that they just can't take it anymore and [00:06:00] they, they take their own life. That, that is a symptom , of the culture. 

[00:06:03] Ann Diment: So burnout, It's been seen as an individual issue as in, oh, you can't cope or your whatever, but actually it's about how your work's managed and I'm trying to campaign. And that's, that's why I've written the book and in my coach experience, coaching , and talking to people like yourself on podcasts is that we have to understand that if you've been , , exposed to trauma in your early life, you have to understand the impact that had on you and get the right support to help you heal, but also understand the behaviors that you put in place to help That make you more likely to burn out.

[00:06:34] Ann Diment: So it, it's really trying to understand, how it works and how your brain works and, and arrange work and do stress risk assessments and do all those things that I used to do in health and safety, in my role in health and safety to prevent stress from getting to the point where it caused you to burnout.

[00:06:50] Ann Diment: So it came to a point where I realized that The creative practice that I developed during my periods of illness, as in going to art classes, just to relax and switch off. I thought, well, actually I'm going to take a break. And I went back to art college when I was 48 did an art foundation.

[00:07:06] Ann Diment: And that was the first week I was there. I realized that for the past 20 odd years in health and safety, I've been terrified of making mistakes, terrified of getting things wrong because it could cause somebody harm. You know, Didn't correct something or made, you know, that could, could quite literally hurt people or, you know, people could die. .

[00:07:28] Ann Diment: But at art [00:07:30] college, we celebrated mistakes, you know, we went, Oh, you know, there's a splash there or that, what, I wonder what that, and you developed it into something creative or something beautiful. And it was such a release for me that it was okay to make mistakes. It was okay not to be perfect. And through the creative projects over the two years, I did that course, I managed to. process all the trauma and heal by sharing my experiences , in a creative way and being taken control of my story. . And so through that process, I realized that actually art and creativity in other forms, not just painting or drawing or sewing, but, you know, singing, playing music. All those processes, are healing. And there's lots of research papers on that. You know, there was lots of evidence to show that these things are healing and good for our wellbeing because it includes connection with other people.

[00:08:25] Ann Diment: It involves different parts of our brain. And there's a, there's an art project here called quiet places for unquiet minds. And because if you're busy in flow with whatever creative project you're doing, you're not ruminating. 

[00:08:38] Amy: It would be nice if there was an off button, switch off button. So this is where the creative change maker comes in. It's this sort of art therapy that you've kind of undertaken through the college that you went to. So is that what you're doing now? You're running classes for other people to help them get in touch with their emotions through art, [00:09:00] or how are you helping others through this?

[00:09:03] . I do run creative workshops. So I did a series of workshops for a local charity last year Which basically took them through the process of creating calm, then creating connection, then creating kindness, and then creating resilience. Which, you know, each one was a separate workshops that could be run independently, but it took them through the, you know, the process of accepting the difficult part is accepting how you feel or accepting what is already here.

[00:09:29] Ann Diment: And it's all to do with mindfulness and meditation as well. It how your emotions show up for you and your body that that comes from the EFT the emotional freedom techniques and then understanding safe ways of processing those emotions and responses and finding different ways of reframing them so we use creative practices to do that or tapping or other mindful practices like meditation and bringing all these practices into to workshops to Look at things in a creative way.

[00:10:00] Ann Diment: So, you know, introducing all these tools and then the participants can see which one resonates with them the most. Needle felting is a good one. Needle felting is great because lots of people, it's the stabbing action. You can get rid of a lot of stress with stabbing action and you can create some

[00:10:14] Ann Diment: beautiful things. 

[00:10:16] Most people, when you talk about art and creativity, they say, Oh, I'm not creative. Or I was told at school I wasn't creative. So they don't view, they don't value themselves as a creative person, but I say, well, how do you dress?

[00:10:27] Ann Diment: Do you, how do you present your hair? [00:10:30] you know, how do you present your food? How do you show up in the world? You know, there are some creative choices you make every day. And the fear of that blank page, if you're saying, let's do a creative activity, it's quite, it says a lot about an individual if they're terrified of a blank page because they're frightened to get it wrong, you know, frightened of going out of the lines or not doing it right.

[00:10:50] Ann Diment: And, you know, it's, it's interesting. You can tell a lot about a person by how they present with a blank page, . But a simple exercise that I use is just get your hand. Put it on a piece of paper, 

[00:11:02] Ann Diment: take a pen or whatever you want to make a mark with, and start by your thumb.

[00:11:07] Ann Diment: And as you breathe in, you go up your thumb, and as you breathe out, you go down. And you just do that. So you're mindfully breathing and drawing around your hands. So not only are you doing the slowing your breath and meditating, but you're also getting the sense of touch. on the acupressure points on your fingers and you're slowing down and then we can extend that to say okay so on every hand every finger point just write what matters to me five things that matter to me or you could write five things i'm grateful for and that just is a really simple introduction you can you can paint it you can color it you can collage it and that's being creative and 

[00:11:42] Ann Diment: combining mindfulness tools together 

[00:11:44] Ann Diment: we do a lot of visualizations and , creative reframes to try and make the brain feel safe to, to, Process or connect with your subconscious mind get to the core of these beliefs about yourself. You formed over the years and the analogy that we [00:12:00] use is your beliefs are like a tabletop and the legs of that table

[00:12:04] Ann Diment: have been put there probably before the age of seven by your caregivers, by your society, by the experiences you've had. So you don't even realize you form these beliefs and where they've come from. But as an adult, they , may not be relevant or, even, Your beliefs anymore.

[00:12:21] Ann Diment: They're just beliefs that have been there. You've never challenged them because it's not been felt safe to.

[00:12:26] 

[00:12:26] Ann Diment: So it's like whipping those table legs out and saying, okay, what do I really believe about myself right now? Based on where I am right now. , we use creativity to do all these little things and that's where the creative change maker part comes in. 

[00:12:38] Amy: you just mentioned your book. Turning the tables on burnout. 

[00:12:42] Ann Diment: Burnout really is it's a workplace phenomenon. It's in the World Health Organization defined as a workplace phenomenon.

[00:12:48] Ann Diment: It's not about you.

[00:12:49] Amy: So your book is discussing burnout and offering tips to help overcome it. 

[00:12:55] Ann Diment: It's shows my own experience of recovery from trauma. There's a chapter on how your brain responds to stress. So you get to understand how your amazing brain works, all the different key elements of your brain. So you really understand , why you're responding that way, and how you can start changing it.

[00:13:10] Ann Diment: there's a bit about how work is organized. So, and it goes into some of the, you know, the protections are already in place for people who are in work to be able to work. Assess risk for stress and you know, it's not a blanket thing because your experience of a stress in the workplace or your response will be completely different to mine because of our past experiences and [00:13:30] behaviors that are formed. So it's really important for employers to understand that , they have to be general practices, but also there has to be targeted and individual approaches.

[00:13:37] Ann Diment: , the big thing I'm trying to campaign on is just offering that screening for adverse childhood experiences in your health screening. Because if somebody realizes that they've been exposed to those traumas when early in the life. I mean, the studies show that if you've had four or more of these traumas, and the trauma could be living in poverty, it could be parents divorcing, it could be being bullied or experiencing domestic violence, there's a survey you can do the links are in the book, And , they've studied people over the years and shown that it can shorten your life by, you know, up to 20 years.

[00:14:07] Ann Diment: It can make you high risk of addiction, heart disease, all these serious health conditions through no fault of your own, just by the circumstances you were subjected to when you're younger. So if you're made aware of that and offered support, then you can start processing and learning how to deal differently with workplace stress.

[00:14:25] Amy: Yeah, or even the opportunity to engage in, in these traumatic experiences and reflect on them or acknowledge that they've existed. I imagine that this work would be, in some cases, quite challenging because, you are reflecting back and I know that some people really do a lot of work to forget trauma so going back and addressing that, it's really important that you do have a safe space and, a professional to help you work.

[00:14:49] Amy: And most workplaces don't offer this sort of support. They, they don't acknowledge it and they don't screen for anything. They don't check in. And then unfortunately, it's kind of the [00:15:00] norm. So I wonder, does the book touch on what employers can do or maybe what employees can request of their employers?

[00:15:10] Ann Diment: Yeah, there's a chapter on that called how to be an ACE informed workplace. And there's actually a charity called PTSD UK that I'm supporting with the book. So I'm giving them 10 percent of the profits from the book, and I'm also collaborating with them. So I've donated that chapter to them as a resource for their website.

[00:15:28] Ann Diment: To share the word, because obviously they're campaigning to support people with PTSD. And obviously there are many occupations where people. Develop PTSD as a result of doing their job, you know, , first responders, emergency services, anyone who's been exposed to violence at work.

[00:15:42] , it is important that employers are aware, are trauma informed and there's a bit about how to support a colleague as well. But then the last part of the book is basically how to create your own resilience toolkit. So when I, when I said earlier that, you know, resilience, Is important, but it's not, the only solution to burn out I would be very surprised if nobody listening to this has ever experienced trauma or stress in their life because we all do. It's a condition of human living, isn't it? But it's how we respond to that. So the Buddhist concept of the second dart. We're not our experiences, we are how we respond to them.

[00:16:15] Ann Diment: , we have to learn ways to respond to them in a healthy way or let go of them. So, I take you through the tools of, , acceptance. What can I learn from this? Forgiveness is a big one 

[00:16:25] Ann Diment: and then obviously EFT and all your creative tools and all the other tools that [00:16:30] help you process and recover.

[00:16:31] Ann Diment: It's about building your own resilience toolkit the last half of the book.

[00:16:34] Amy: It's interesting, isn't it? We can be so angry with people and have these grudges and rightly so in, in many cases, but it's, it makes us sick, it, it really negatively impacts us and our physical and mental and emotional states and the other person is completely unaware, 

[00:16:54] Ann Diment: understand how your brain works and you understand that it's a very simple thing that every time you think about that person or experience and respond in the same way,

[00:17:05] Ann Diment: You're poisoning yourself with all those stress hormones and chemicals because your brain doesn't know the difference between the first time they hurt you and every time you recount that story in the same way.

[00:17:15] Ann Diment: So it's about telling the story in a different way.

[00:17:18] Ann Diment: How you respond to that. So it doesn't change what happens. It doesn't change what happened at all. It doesn't make it right. You can still say, I'm not happy about how that happened or what they did to me, but you can choose the emotional response and emotional connection

[00:17:34] Ann Diment: And that's why I said EFT was a final key in my healing process, because the creativity was great. But I still had that internal emotional blocks around forgiveness and accepting myself and changing my beliefs about myself and my abilities to move on.

[00:17:51] I've had clients who have been very traumatized, for example, by boarding school experiences, and they've not even been able to go back to the same town as [00:18:00] the school was in. And that's been with them for 35 years. And in two hours of EFT, They've just cleared it because we've used a movie technique where you can freeze frame the movie and choose who plays you in the movie and change the scene.

[00:18:12] Ann Diment: , so it's very creative and ,.

[00:18:14] Ann Diment: It's such a liberating experience , and they can do it so easily, using EFT as a tool. And it's amazing the difference. 

[00:18:21] Ann Diment: They bring in pets, they bring in whoever they want to support them in that moment. And without going into too much detail, if you've been disassociated, you freeze at that point of trauma. So by giving up that part of you, what it needs at that moment, you're free in that part to. Re associate as well.

[00:18:36] Ann Diment: So it's, it's a really powerful technique. 

[00:18:38] Ann Diment: We carry trauma imprinted on us from before we were born.

[00:18:41] Amy: Absolutely. And I actually do have another episode on past life regression and overcoming traumas that you may have had in a past life that you're bringing with you in this one. And so I would encourage anyone listening to also have a look at that episode. We all have something right, whether we remember it, or whether we recognize it, or.

[00:18:59] Amy: We're aware of it. It's almost like when you reach a certain age, you should just have the opportunity to do something like EFT to go, okay, I've now, I've now done a decade in this world,

[00:19:10] Amy: Let's do some work , even if you, you've never been bullied or nothing really obviously traumatic has happened.

[00:19:17] Amy: I feel like we would all benefit just from every so often, and I don't mean every month, but I mean, , every few years, , just going back and going, okay, I'm gonna do some tapping and, and see what comes out and release and just, why not, [00:19:30] right? It's not gonna do you any harm 

[00:19:31] ,, we did a day where we took , every class in between the COVID lockdowns to have an outdoor classroom and each, each class came out for a 30 minute session with me and I taught the young children, these are primary school kids, , emotion coaching for kids, teaching children how to accept and connect with their emotions is really important because how many people are damaged because they've been told not to cry or not to speak out and their voice is silent, so they don't ever speak out. Allow themselves to connect with or express their emotions and that can cause a lot of damage later on in life.

[00:20:04] Ann Diment: So, teaching kids to say, I felt angry about that, or I'm, I'm a bit scared, you know, teaching them to tap and just happen on the side of the hand, you know, even though you said that to me, I feel scared, or this test is coming up, I have this anxiety about this test, you know, it's brilliant to be used for teenagers and kids and Dr.

[00:20:21] Ann Diment: Peta Stapleton, , an Australian psychologist, . She spread the word about EFT. She's done this, she's done the evidence based, she's done the science, she's done the brain 

[00:20:29] Ann Diment: scans, 

[00:20:30] , she's written a book called The Science of Tapping.

[00:20:32] Ann Diment: That really brought it into the mainstream and actually got it accepted as a, as a useful tool. You know, there's many other tools that can be used, but it's a tool. And if it's used in the right way, it's, it's brilliant. The Peaceful Heart Network is an amazing charity, international charity, and they go into war zones in Rwanda with all the child soldiers, people who've survived genocide, you know, they go into those zones and they , they don't speak.

[00:20:56] Ann Diment: They just do silent tapping and they bring joy into it. They bring singing and [00:21:00] music and connection. And , they've helped some people , who've endured some very, very, very serious trauma to. process a lot of that without having to share what they've gone through. So they're not re traumatizing them, which is the key thing in EFT.

[00:21:11] Ann Diment: You don't re traumatize a person because they don't have to say anything. They can just tap.

[00:21:14] Amy: , it's remarkable work. It's so important. I hope it's really rewarding for you you're just doing amazing, amazing work. So I want to really thank you from the bottom of my heart for that, for helping others.

[00:21:25] Ann Diment: Until I did all that healing, I couldn't start sharing my story in the book. I couldn't have written the book, 

[00:21:29] Ann Diment: The most heartwarming thing that's happened in the last month since I've been launching and released the book is the messages I've had from people. Quite a lot of people who knew me, but people who didn't know me have just reached out and thanked me. You always say this, but I wish I'd done it earlier, but I had to be ready, you know, I mean, and it's, yeah, so I'm, I'm grateful that I've been able to do it and I'm grateful that it's actually getting out there and if it just helps one child or one adult not suffer what I did for 30 years, then it's done its job, you know?

[00:21:58] Amy: I'm happy that people are reaching out and letting you know, cause it's so important 

[00:22:01] Amy: sometimes it's just about getting the conversation started, it's almost like we all have these big secrets that we, we feel like nobody else has experienced or we're all living the same life really, you know, we're all on the same planet and as far apart as we are from each other and the different experiences that we are going through, the trauma manifests in a lot of the same ways.

[00:22:20] Amy: Where can people get your book? 

[00:22:22] Ann Diment: It's on Amazon. Look out for Van Diamond Changemaker on Amazon. It's called Turning the Tables on Burnout. 

[00:22:28] Ann Diment: I, , want to say is you are enough.

[00:22:29] Ann Diment: [00:22:30] You deserve to be happy and you, you can control how you feel no matter what life throws at you. And if you remember that, then you'll get through anything really.

[00:22:38] Amy: You are enough. And I hope that everyone listening takes that on board. And again, if you're going through something, reach out. You can reach out to me. Head to Anne's website. Look at some of these resources. Check out the book and just seek the modalities that resonate with you and something that you'll feel comfortable doing,

[00:22:55] Amy: Find somebody where you feel safe and that you can talk to openly. And if you enjoyed this episode, please like or comment, share it with a friend if you think they may benefit from it. And as always, I would appreciate your reviews. They keep me motivated to do more.

[00:23:12] Amy: To go, as Anne said, it's always nice to get that reassurance from people, even if you don't know them through, through reviews. It lets me know that the work I'm doing is valuable so we always appreciate your support in that way.

[00:23:27] Amy: Ann I want to thank you again for the work you're doing and for sharing your story and the work that you're doing with us and everybody listening.

[00:23:34]