Many people sadly ignore the telltale signs of burnout, which ultimately suppresses one’s passion and purpose. Once you feel what you are doing does not serve you anymore, do not waste more time and start reconnecting with your authentic self. Janine Hamner Holman chats with executive coach Alyssa Gioscia about what it takes to overcome burnout and reclaim your purpose. Alyssa presents the dangers of ignoring what your body is telling you, which could lead to serious physical and mental problems. She also underlines the importance of prioritizing self-awareness, securing support systems, and realigning with your core values to live a truly fulfilling life.

GUEST: Alyssa Gioscia | LinkedIn | Visit their Website: Alyssa Gioscia

HOST: Janine Hamner Holman | [email protected] | LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter | Subscribe to my Newsletter! | Book me to Speak!

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Welcome to The Cost of Not Paying Attention. I’m your host, Janine Hamner-Holman. You all, this is our second episode with Alyssa Gioscia. She is the first person to get to do a second episode here on The Cost of Not Paying Attention. I am so excited to be doing this with her. Her first episode was about processing grief. You all have to stick around to see what her second episode is going to be like.

Alyssa is a high-EQ, heart-centered coach who has dedicated her career to helping executives achieve profound personal and professional breakthroughs so that they can lead with purpose and passion, and without sacrificing authenticity. Alyssa, what is the one thing that you have realized, either within your business or with your clients? What’s the one thing that they have been failing to pay attention to, and what’s the cost of that inattention, or what’s the problem that that inattention is causing?

Janine. I love this question. I love that this is what you explore on your podcast. What I’m really seeing is this essentially ignoring of our authentic selves and ignoring what our personal mind and body are actually telling us. I know I personally have ignored this to some major health detriments in the past, which you and I have talked about. Really understanding, what do I actually want? What’s working for me? What’s not working for me? When I start noticing that things are not working, how do I fix it? Because we tend to put that placation over it. We tell ourselves, “It’s fine.” It’s really not fine, and then we’re so far into it, we’re crashing and burning at that point.

I love this conversation. If you all love this conversation too, you can also look back. Several podcasts ago, I did a podcast episode with The Happiness Coach about what we do when we find ourselves in a successful career, in a successful marriage, having a perfect Instagram life, but in our real life, we’re not feeling happy or we’re not feeling satisfied, or we’re out of alignment with something, or our bodies are telling us something, and we’re just trying to power through, and yet all is not well. Listen to that episode after you listen to this episode, because these are connected. What I love is, last Saturday, I just had an opportunity to be the keynote speaker at a women’s wellness retreat.

Nice.

Career Journey

All four of the speakers ended up talking about their personal physical health and personal mental health journeys that led to some breakdown in their physical and or mental well-being, and then needing to put themselves back together again. Unfortunately, this is really common, especially among women. I’m thrilled that we’re having this conversation because it is so timely and it is so important. Where would you like to begin this conversation?

Let’s say from the beginning. I think what you said for me was the exact story. I was working my way up the ladder because that’s very much the conversation, “Boss babe, have it all, crush it at your job.” I enjoyed it and was good at it. Financially, I was like, “This is the best money that I’ve ever made.” It was awesome. I felt like, “I’m really successful, and on paper, it looked very good. I realized, I don’t really love this job.” I think what happens too is, what we’re doing in our 20s and 30s energetically is fine, and it works great. Going up that ladder is what we want. We have the energy for it, but when I flipped over into, “I’m in my 40s,” my energy changed. My values had changed.

I realized that I’m pushing towards something that I don’t necessarily love, and because of coaching, I was working my way up. I was one step away from the person in my organization who was in the C-suite. I thought, “If I were to move up, where would I go? Because I know I don’t want this role. I’m not sure what else I would even do.” You have that identity moment, but my joke is that I would come and sit on my couch, and I would put my head between the couch cushions. I would think, “If I could disappear into Narnia, I would be fine.” I don’t know why Narnia, but apparently that’s where you go when you want some peace. I would be looking off to the side.

The TV would be on. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. And then I had my therapist and my personal trainer, rapid-fire, were like, “I don’t think you’re OK. You’ve been saying that you’re tired for too long and not in a normal way.” I had quit my job, but I was able to change roles. I don’t necessarily recommend doing that. My goal as a coach is, “Can I help people not get to that place where they’re rage quitting? Let’s not do that.” But I said, “I can’t do this anymore. This job, I’m good at it, but it’s not fulfilling me,” which that’s a hard one to step out of also.

That’s right.

Because I’m good at it.

I’m good. I am doing a great job at my job, and I don’t want to do it.

You go, “Now what?” Because when I was a little kid playing with dolls and Barbies, they were rock stars. I was a rock star. I envy the people who are like, “I’m four and I want to be a doctor,” and they knew it since they were a baby basically. Everything in their life, they’re a doctor. Like, that’s their passion. I never had that, and so I found different jobs that I enjoyed and/or was very good at, but didn’t necessarily enjoy. I thought, “Something has to change,” and my doctor basically was like, “Drink coffee, and here are some antidepressants.” I was like, “No, thank you,” because that was not what the issue was. I found a holistic doctor, which was the right journey for me.

That was eight months and a lot of money out of pocket to get back to a place where I could function. I had completely annihilated everything in my body from the standpoint of hormones and adrenals and all the things you need to function for work. It happens very insidiously until one day you’re just not working. Like physically, you’re like, “I’m not working,” and you don’t really understand it. I almost felt like, “Isn’t everybody tired? I’m always tired. That’s just how it is.” That is not the way I want to live. That’s not what I want for my clients. It was an interesting journey in that, just like the heat keeps getting turned up. We joke about this, the frog in the pot doesn’t know that it’s boiling. It’s just comfortable until it’s not. There’s no amount of baths or glasses of wine that help. It wasn’t good.

 

I’m not sure how much I have talked about this on the podcast. I have a similar journey. I was in a job that I was very good at and, in many ways, that I enjoyed. I was at a very large organization. As often happens inside large organizations, there are many microcultures. I had the opportunity to work inside of a microculture that was led by a pretty toxic person, or a person who had pretty toxic styles of management. I went to the doctor and I said, “I need to go on antidepressants.” I went to, actually, my best friend’s psychiatrist and I said, “I need to go on antidepressants.” He talked to me for about ten minutes, and he said, “Here’s the thing. You are actually in crisis. You are pulling from your adrenal gland, which is what women do because we don’t have testosterone very much.

Certainly, when we’re younger, we almost don’t have testosterone at all. In order to get it up, in order to survive in that world, you were pulling very hard from your adrenal gland. You’re on the verge of adrenal burnout. You’ve really lost your sense of self. I’m sending you out on immediate medical leave.” I said, “What? No, I just need some drugs.” I was the opposite of you. I was like, “I just need a pill to help get me through this. I’m fine, Doc.” He said, “No, you’re not, and I am the doctor here.” I said, “Can I think about it?” He said, “If I told you you had cancer, would your response be, ‘Can I think about it?'” I said, “I hope not. I need to think about it for a minute.”

 He said, “Here’s how it works. I can’t send you out on medical leave without you sitting in front of me as I’m diagnosing you. If you walk out of my office and, 30 seconds later, you want to come back and have me send you out on leave, I can’t. You have to set a whole new appointment. I have to re-diagnose you. That’s your choice.” I said, “Because I need to think about it for a minute.” I walked outside, and I called my best friend, and I said, “You’re not going to believe it. Dr. Rosenberg said I have to go out on medical leave. It’s absurd. Can you believe it?” She said, “Yes, and honey, I’ve been telling you this for six months.” This is a person who has permission to tell me hard things. Our deal is I will listen, just like I have permission to tell her hard things, and she will listen. I said, “In those same words, have you been telling me this?” Because I had literally not heard her. Long story, slightly less long, I made another appointment, went back in, and got sent out on medical leave.

What I realized relatively quickly, as this frog got out of that pot, was that I really had not only lost my sense of self, but I had lost my sense of self as an effective human. I had been severely undermined, such that my sense of self-worth was pretty much gone. I entered into a period of intensive psychotherapy and all kinds of alternative therapy, being on drugs, and really working on putting myself back together again. Because that’s what happens when we are in a situation, I was in this situation for eight and a half years. We’re in a situation in which our self-worthiness is being called into question, is being undermined. Eventually, for some large number of us, some fantastic percentage of us says, “Screw you, you’re full of it, and I’m out of here.” I applaud those people.

Some much larger percentage of us hunkers down, especially if we know we’re good at the job or we’re getting other things, usually financial remuneration, in exchange for our dignity. We’re trading our dignity for money. Not a very good trade, but we don’t realize it until something happens, and we are forced to step back. I, too, was in that situation. I was presenting at a woman’s wellness and leadership workshop, and all of the presenters, without knowing it, as we got up and were talking, were like, “Me too.” I love it that we’re having this conversation because it is so timely. If you are a woman or a man who is out there and realizing, “Crap.”

That’s me.

I think that might be me.

Getting Back To Alignment

It’s interesting, Janine, too, because the company that I worked for was actually one of the best cultures I’ve ever been in. For you, there was that added piece of the toxic culture, which can sometimes be easier to see, if we’re not excusing it. But I actually didn’t have that. I loved where I was working, really enjoyed it, had a lot of really great opportunities, wonderful colleagues. It was even harder for you to say, “I really like it here, and I can’t keep doing this.” I happen to have a lovely situation happen where our CEO had a conversation with me because, at the time, I thought, “Surely, they’re going to be like, ‘Cool, we don’t need you to give us some loose time that you might leave. We’ll take that as your two weeks. Goodbye.’” But because I came forward and said, “This is what’s going on,” which a lot of people will just go out the back door, it opened up a conversation with our CEO, and I was able to negotiate something that worked better for me.

I’m not there anymore because I’ve chosen something different. That made a big difference. When you like it, and it’s going well, and you get more responsibility, which is supposed to be what you want, like you said, you’ve got the money coming in. It’s hard to say that anything’s wrong. The idea is we’re supposed to keep hustling and growing and building. Even as a coach, I had to realize, if I only focus with my clients on performance, we could actually be adding to that. That’s why I like to have that more holistic view of, like, “What’s going on in all of your life? How’s your health? What’s your body telling you?” Because, like you, adrenals have to be rebuilt. Cortisol and cortisone have to be rebuilt. Hormones, for women anyway, have to be rebalanced. It is a stepping stone.

It took months to get back to normal. Thinking, “I just need to sleep,” but then I couldn’t sleep, so, then I would just wake up angry. “I’m exhausted, and yet I’m waking. What is happening?” That’s the other thing too, how do you know that you’re out of alignment? Is a friend telling you? Is somebody else telling you? Which, in both of our experiences, it was somebody else who had to point it out. Saying, if things are going well and I still feel out of alignment, what does that mean? Being okay to acknowledge it so that you can figure out what’s right for you. The other thing is, it doesn’t have to be what it was last year. It could have been fine, and now it’s not, and that’s okay too. We don’t just have to keep going because that’s how it’s been.

What happened last year does not have to happen this year. We do not have to keep going just because that’s how things has been. Share on X

That’s right. I’m working with an organization, and one of their mid-level leaders is at a place where I was asked to have a few conversations with her. She is at a moment where she’s just had her last child. She’s clear that this will be her last baby. The organization is growing enormously, and the department that she’s been leading has gone through enormous change. She’s a human, like many of us, who really likes things settled and really likes it when things are black and white. She has a hard time in the gray. She’s actively thinking about, “Do I want to stay in this leadership role, or do I want to stay with the company?” Because I love the company, just like where you were.

I love the company, but I may want to take a step back and be an amazing individual contributor for a while and step out of leadership. It is yet to be determined what she’s going to decide, but we have this preconception. Part of the reason I was asked to speak with her was to help her see that the path wasn’t, “Stay in this leadership role, continue to grow your leadership,” or “Leave the company.” That’s what she thought the only possibilities were.

 

I would agree with you, and on top of that, if you have been on a track for 5, 8, 10 years to work your way up, there’s like a shame, may not be the right word.

Except it kind of is.

It kind of is, right?

Yep.

It’s like, what would my family think if I was the VP, and now I’m just an individual contributor?

What is everybody else in the organization going to think?

Yes, is it a demotion? I loved going from director to individual contributor. I went from like 150 emails a day to 9. It was amazing, but you have that thing in your mind. What do people think? Does it look like I got in trouble?

That’s right.

Also, I’ve been pushing towards this for years, and now I don’t want it. Wait, what? There’s all of that confusion and shame and discomfort that comes along with it as well. What if there’s no position that exists? A lot of people are not comfortable going to their boss and saying, “I’ve created this new position. I would like to step into that.”

 

If I step out of leadership, and then 18 months, 4 years, whenever it is, if I want to step back into leadership, then does that mean that the person who has taken my job, that they have to leave? I said, “The company is growing enormously. The positions that exist now probably aren’t going to exist in 18 months or 4 years, and so we don’t have to worry about that problem. I have been led to believe that there will always be a place for you within this organization for as long as you want there to be a place for you.”

One of the things that many people at this leadership and wellness workshop had in common, not only the presenters but also the participants, was that when we look back on those moments in our life where we realized we needed to step back, step off, create a different path, it was often men who were opening that window, opening that door, having that conversation with us, saying, “Let’s just go one more block.” Whatever it was, it was often a man, and really, how effed up is that? Because, in part, we were not able to say, nor did we have sisters in the struggle who were able to say, “So what if you created a whole new position for yourself and then stepped into it?”

Years ago, one of my coaches made that suggestion to me.

You clutched your pearls.

I clutched my pearls. This was so foreign to me. I was like, are you out of your mind? I had no idea. That was one of the first, for me, experiences of coaching and really thinking outside of the box and blazing my own trail, but it was a shocking suggestion to me at the time. It really was.

Struggles In Women Leadership

I think for most women, it is. There are many reasons that I participated in this Women’s Leadership and Wellness Workshop. The things that women and the things that we are struggling with as women and the opportunities that we have, and the ways that we see things and the ways that we see ourselves, it is profoundly different from the way that men see themselves.

A man often doesn’t have a problem with, “I would like to create a whole new position in the organization because I think it’s needed and I’m the right person to then fill that need.” Most women don’t think that way because we haven’t been taught to think that way. We haven’t been coached to think that way. We have been coached that the only way forward is largely to act like a man and keep moving ourselves up the ladder, and what you are proposing is that there’s a different path.

I fully bought into that exact thing that you’re talking about, and depending on your personality, it can be very easy to step into that. But for me, like in reality, I wasn’t necessarily really built that way. I forced it to work for me, but then my body was like, maybe not. But you’re right. It wasn’t shown that way. Early in my career, there was 1 or 2 women above me. Most of my industry experience in corporate had been male-dominated, so you just get in where you fit in.

That’s right. Women are 58% of the workforce and we are just over 10% of leadership, not C-suite, but leadership in Fortune 500 companies. There’s a reason that we think looking up, of course, we have to act like men because that’s who’s up there. If we want to be up there with them, that’s the first question. Do we actually want to be up there with them? We’re not taught to even ask that question at any point in time along our journey, whether we’re in our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s. We’re never taught to ask that question. Is that actually what I want or do I want something different?

I certainly wasn’t. Until life slapped me in the face with that question, and then I said, I want something different. Is that allowed?

Is that OK?

What does that look like? For me, it was leaving corporate, but that’s not for everybody. Sometimes it’s just that simple shift of, “Can I be an individual contributor?” It almost takes the permission from someone else at this point, working with a coach or something to help with that. And then the other thing I see is for my male and female clients is, “I just got to stick it out a little bit longer. If I stick it out a little bit longer, it’ll change. A little bit longer, it’ll change.” I said to a client the other day, who went from already being upset and sticking it out to being fully in tears, “We’ve been having this conversation since July, and it was not new then. It’s October, basically, and still nothing has changed. How long do we keep white-knuckling it and hoping it’s going to get better?” Because you could do that for a year or years and nothing changes.

 

Our human brain is wired so that that is exactly what we do, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel up there at some point, and so I’m just going to white-knuckle it through this difficult little time, but this little time, it’s not permanent. It’s all going to get better. I know it is at this other time in the future, and then the carrot just keeps moving.

It’s like a perpetual three months. You can three-month yourself into years or decades, and you only get more tired and more unhappy. I got to a point where I’m like, I’m crying when my alarm is going off because I don’t want to do this. I don’t have the energy, and I need to take a sit-down between two meetings because my energy is so low that having a conversation is exhausting. That’s what I always invite my clients into: how long do you watch that carrot? Do we give it 60 days? Do we give it 90 days? How long? Because if nothing has changed, at some point, there’s a different conversation to have because you can just do that forever.

That’s right. My coach used to say to me, “How long do you want to sit in that dirty diaper?”

That’s a great way to say it.

It’s great because whether we’ve had kids, whether we’ve babysat, whether we’ve been a kid, whatever it was like, we just have a visceral understanding of what that’s like, sitting in a dirty diaper. It’s uncomfortable. How long do you want to be in that mess before you’re willing to make a change? You can choose to sit in that mess for as long as you want. If you want to sit in it for three months, rock on. That doesn’t sound like fun to me, but with your bad self. The thing that is so tricky in this conversation is that, obviously, we’re giggling in a very serious conversation, in part because that’s what you have to do in very serious conversations, keep moving it forward.

You got to have your humor. The other thing is, often our bodies are giving us information, and sometimes it’s whispers and sometimes it’s yells, but they’re giving us information that we are often not paying attention to, whether it’s a whisper or whether it’s a yell. In both of our cases, on the verge of adrenal burnout. Everything’s fine, like I’m just whistling Dixie. I need a little help, Doc. I need a pill or not a pill, but really, I’m fine, and our bodies are saying, “Everything is not fine over here.”

Body’s Telling Signs

Everything is not fine. I understand how not in tune I was with my body then. I had headaches all the time regularly, sleeping was all over the place, if I was getting any back pain or neck pain, all of those kinds of things. You mentioned in our previous podcast, things like grief. There are many things that we don’t talk about that just get stuffed down, and because we’re not thinking about it consciously all the time, we think it’s fine. We think it’s been resolved, but it hasn’t. Those things will find a way out. It could be emotional expression, whether it’s tears or anger or whatnot. It’s physical expressions. I was definitely ignoring, not even ignoring, oblivious to, those things until somebody else pointed it out.

Now I’m much more in tune, and I still find myself pushing. I was telling you earlier, I pinched a nerve working out because I wasn’t really interested in listening. I’m okay now, but I was like, you knew better. It doesn’t take me near as long as it did any kind of time, but being in tune with that is so important.

I remember twenty years ago, I was in a job that I loved, working with a boss that I loved. We had a board of directors that was significantly problematic. Some things were happening within the organization, and I got debilitating back pain. I could not move, I could not get out of bed, so I was in bed, taking muscle relaxants and trying to heal, and then went back to the job. My body said, you didn’t get the message. For the first time ever in my life, I got a yeast infection.

Went on a Z-Quil pack, or it’s not what it’s called, but the anti-inflammation steroidal pack. That cleared it up, I went back to the job, and I got another yeast infection, like boom, boom. I’ve never had a yeast infection in my life. I’ve never had a yeast infection since, but my body was like, how many different things do we have to throw at you before you realize it’s the going back to the job that’s the problem?

The other thing, too, that you mentioned earlier is just speaking up. I feel like, as women, we’re not given the same training in using our voice. At least, maybe it’s different if you’re in your 20s or 30s or teens, but for me, for us, it wasn’t a thing, you just suffered in silence. You maybe told a friend about it, you had some trusted people, but you didn’t really voice when things weren’t working. I know a lot of clients, and this was true for me at some point, too, where they’re afraid to tell their boss something is wrong because they think that if they are not okay, there’s going to be some negative ramification. For you, it’s like back pain. I got to go back because that’s what we have to do.

Women are not given the same training to use their voices as men. Share on X

That’s right.

Whatever’s happening, or I guess I just put up with the toxic environment because that’s my job, and that’s what I got to do. I can’t say anything about it because that’s just who they are and how it is, or whatever. We don’t voice it, and then that also is a stifling that goes in our body. Our body is like, this has to come out.

That’s right. If you’re not willing to put it out your mouth, then I’m going to put it out in your body.

That’s right.

Part of what’s great is that the younger generations seem to be unwilling to put up with organizational toxicity and toxic managers. They have a great perspective on the one hand, they graduate from high school or college and are like, I’m ready to take over your Fortune 100 company. On the other hand, they have a great sense of personal resilience and that they can cobble stuff together. They can side-gig enough stuff, they can couch surf, they can move back in with mom and dad, they can do whatever is needed in order to enable them to not put up with a toxic situation. Hopefully, that thing is going to become less and less common, and with bigger organizations, it is still, unfortunately, quite common.

Reclaiming Your Purpose

I was just asked to be part of a five-day multi-speaker workshop, where one of the big things that they’re talking about is bullying in the workplace. Unfortunately, this has not gone away. Hopefully, it will go away as the millennials and the Gen Z start to move into leadership positions and organizations. I think that’s what it’s going to take. If someone is out there, and they’re listening to us, and they’re thinking, “Whoo, I think this is me, too,” what are some things that, in addition to getting in touch with Alyssa, her information will be in the show notes, and she’ll have an opportunity in a minute just to tell you the best way to reach her, what are some specific things that we might recommend that people do, or don’t do?

My hope is that people are not just self-medicating it with either self-care that’s not really doing anything, or things like shopping, alcohol, etc. Because in the end, that’s really just a band-aid, you’re not getting at the symptoms.

If you feel your life is not fulfilling anymore, do not self-medicate through self-care. Doing mundane things like shopping or drinking alcohol are just band-aid solutions. You are not getting at the symptoms. Share on X

That’s right.

For me, it took radical honesty with myself about how I felt, what was working, what was not working, and having the conversations with the right people to figure out what the solutions were. Because there are usually more solutions than what we think, which, like you and I have talked about, having the conversations and being authentic with myself, ourself, is very important. Because until you’re willing to do that, you’re just going to keep pushing, and also stop ignoring what your body is telling you. We did it, and it’s not a good way to go.

If part of the mix is that you’re also dealing with depression, which, if you’ve been feeling undermined, probably in your case, you were dealing with some level of depression, but probably less than mine, where I was massively depressed, even though I didn’t know it. I didn’t have the experience of myself that said, “I am depressed.” I just knew I needed some help. Thankfully, I wasn’t turning to prescription or non-prescription or any other kinds of drugs, including alcohol or shopping, to try and self-medicate.

Sometimes it takes a trusted advisor or a doctor being able to cut through that noise to say, this actually is something that is important, and so how can we help you through it? Because when we’re depressed, we only think there’s one option, or maybe two. There are always many more options that are available to us than we’re able to see at those points in our lives, and so if someone would like to reach out to you, what is the best way for them to reach you?

They can find me on LinkedIn and message me or go to my website. There are resources there. If they’re interested in that, they can also book a call with me if they want to chat and find out if coaching is right for them.

Episode Wrap-up

Fantastic. Alyssa, this has been a challenging conversation that has actually been really fun. I want to thank you for your authenticity, for your vulnerability, for your interest in paying it forward and helping people lean into really working to figure out what’s going on with them, what they need, and what might be an unexplored path, what might be the road less traveled, that they want to explore. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Janine. It was great getting to talk to you again, and I really hope this conversation helps other people catch these things sooner so they don’t end up where we were, and they can get the help and the guidance that they need.

I am Janine Hamner-Holman, and this has been The Cost of Not Paying Attention. Remember, great leaders make great teams. Until next time.

 

Important Links

• Alyssa Gioscia
• Alyssa Gioscia’s LinkedIn
• Alyssa Gioscia’s Facebook

 

About Alyssa Gioscia

With over a decade of experience in coaching, Alyssa combines her extensive knowledge of leadership development, performance psychology,

and personal growth strategies to empower her clients to excel in their respective domains.

She possesses a remarkable ability to connect with individuals, build trust, and create a safe space for exploration and growth.