WS 491 Burnout, Self Care, and Rest

Listen to “WS 491 Burnout, SelfCare, and Rest” on Spreaker.

 

WS 491 Burnout, Self Care, and Rest

 

For March 22, 2026, Ms Harper brought the sort of apex content you all look here for, with an in depth, live discussion on Burnout. Learn to recognize the signs that you may be about to flame out hard, and then learn how to ameliorate the effects and even heal from the stress induced burnout. If you recognize yourself in this discussion, that’s ok! Just listen, internalize, and then reach out for help from the friends and family around you. There’s an extended discussion about how to deal with stress related burnout that has actionable tips for you, too.

 

(0:02 – 5:33)
There’s my chime. That’s how you know that it is time. Head to communitykink.com. Chat room’s open.

For those of you who are joining me live tonight, we’re gonna talk about self-care and rest and the importance of knowing when to stop, when to slow down, when to relax and just quit it. Quit running around, y’all. Our society and our culture glorifies the grind.

The idea of just continually and constantly working again and again and again over over and over and that blows because it does not give you any room or space to rest, relax, recover. Stop running around. You get none of that.

You get nothing. You’re stuck in a continual constant cycle of go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. So stop.

Pause. Go join the chat. Communitykink.com. You guys have noticed my audio issues are continuing with my volume going.

I swear to God. I swear to God. So I have the control panel open.

So you can go and you can look at the properties of your device. You can look at the levels. Hello, bitch.

So I set it at 100 and it goes, no, I don’t feel like it. I’m just gonna change that. I don’t know what is changing it, the levels on my mic, but it needs to fucking stop because I’m gonna kill it.

So there’s exclusive mode. You’re supposed to turn that off. What happens if I turn it on? Right? If I apply that and then I tell it to turn that all the way the fuck up.

Let’s see if, does this change it? Because I don’t know what has been changing the volume. Levels. Oh, changed again.

Okay. I’m fine. I’m good.

I’m very cool. Very chill and low key about this. I’m fine.

Joining us in the chat, Mistress Michelle has joined us. I’ve got Carly, Matt, Patty, Sissy, Addy, and Tina. And if this thing turns my volume down one more time, if I find out that it’s because they installed like an AI that thinks it knows better than me, I’m going to revolt.

I’m going to revolt. I’m going, I’m going to cry is what I’m going to do. I’m going to fucking cry and stomp my feet.

Ms. Hyde has joined us in here as well. Well, hello. Okay.

We’re going to talk about rest. We’re going to talk about not being in the constant and continual grind because it’s bad for you. It’s extremely bad for you.

And you should not constantly, continually over and over and over, over, over, grind and grind and grind. Also, so if anybody can figure out how to make my computer stop changing the microphone levels in a way that it sticks and it doesn’t keep doing this where I talk at a normal, like I’m, I’m not close to the microphone. There’s a solid, I would say eight inches between me and the mic.

And it still is like, no, I think you’re too close. I’m going to turn your microphone lower. If any of you can figure out how to make it not do that, I will give you a 10 minute call with me, like email me and tell me how to fix this.

And if it actually works, yeah, let’s talk. Tina says there’s buzzing when it changes the volume. That’s fine.

That’s yeah, that’s definitely a thing that happens. We Yeah, I’m here for it. That’s so yeah, it’s fine.

(5:40 – 10:18)
Tina says what software do you use? Windows 11. And it’s currently on a Edge browser for Podbean. Edge shouldn’t be changing my fucking microphone settings though.

Right? Graphics Acceleration. Printers. I don’t fucking know.

Yeah, Windows 11 is full of bullshit. It’s full of crap is what it is. It’s full of unpleasant things that we do not care for.

Like, they crammed a what was it Cortana or whatever that shit was. That’s in there. If you ever use Google, well, now you’ve got Gemini that listens in on everything that you do.

Copilot. Thank you. Kali says I’m still on seven myself.

Treasure it. Treasure it. It’s so good.

It’s so much better. Because I bet yours doesn’t just change your microphone settings for you. That’s it.

Oh, of course not. Because that would be madness. Turn exclusive mode back off again.

You cock. Sorry, it did something. And he says I dislike the AI assistants.

They refuse to read erotica for me. You know what you send me a script. I’ll record it for you.

Like hell yeah. You know, reasonable prices considering you get this voice. So Podbean speaking of AI, Podbean has decided that they’re going to expand the use of AI to make podcasts.

And so they’re shifting their business model towards pre recorded or AI created audio content instead of live streaming audio content. And so a live podcast like this, like Miss Krista’s Kinks and Drinks, that one. Hunter has Hanging with Hunter.

That’s on Thursdays. Wednesday, you get Kink Corner with Constance. Tuesday, you are with Miss K Marie.

We’ve got a collection of really great live entertainment for y’all. So Podbean isn’t going to let us do a live show on their platform anymore. And I think they’re starting that in like, May, April, May, sometime in there.

Patty says what? I know. They fucking suck. So just like a year or so ago, a yeet.

My shit. Oh, I know what that’s supposed to say. You think you’re funny? Um, has joined the conversation.

Welcome to the show tonight. Love that for you. Open wide.

Um, okay, nobody’s in the other chat. That’s good. Patty says was that the whole point of the platform? Womp womp.

(10:19 – 20:14)
So a year or so ago, we had to switch from Spreaker, which we were using to do the live shows to Podbean because Spreaker got bought by iHeartRadio. And iHeartRadio said no, we want to corner the market on live entertainment. Therefore, you can’t.

They wanted us to just record it and then upload it. But honestly, the interaction part is the best part. Right? That’s what makes this fun is the fact that it’s a live show, you can head to you know where the chat is happening, and say stuff.

And I will read it out loud on the air, because it’s fun. Patty says the whole point of listening to this is to listen live. Exactly.

Lots of people do listen to it. Because, you know, obviously, it’s recorded, and then we upload it and it goes all over the place. And it’s syndicated, etc.

So you can absolutely get a lot of value out of Whore School, your live adult sex education podcast, you can listen to all 490 episodes and not ever interact with me. Weirdo. Yeah, weirdos.

Or you can come and join the live show. Kelly says there are podcasts that don’t have a live chat, but this is not one of them. Yeah, no, this is the whole point.

You’d interact with me. Ms. Hyde says I’ve listened to after the show just because real life happens. And when it’s not happening, I often sleep.

Sleep is good. And thematic. That’s in line with the show’s theme tonight.

But I’m letting you guys know, we won’t be on Podbean for much longer or ever. We’re going to Discord. I’m so sorry.

I know that there’s a bunch of you who are like Discord sucks, and I hate it. And I don’t want to be on there. Yeah, okay, you might have some valid concerns.

But also, look, of the options to produce a live show of this format. There aren’t many. I could get on Twitch.

We could do Twitch. But I’ve never been on Twitch. I’d have to learn a whole new platform.

You’d have to learn a whole new platform. I don’t know how to read. Like you can.

I’m sure you can record on Twitch, but I’m not sure how. So excuse me. I breathed wrong.

Seriously, I’m trying to joke myself. That’s what I get for talking shit. I talk shit.

I get I get spit in my throat. Gross. Alright, so we’re not we’re not we’re not gonna do Twitch.

Miss Michelle thinks that I’d make a great VTuber on there. The fuck? VTube. Pardon me.

I’m just about to become old. I eat says bring back live 365 and tunes. Yeah, for that one.

You can blame the Recording Industry Artists Association, RIA because they wanted us to pay them for every song to pay royalties on all of the songs and they were charging a whole lot. So technically we could use that. It’s expensive as shit though.

So no. Not gonna happen. The reason why Krista has music that she can play at the beginning and end of her show.

She bought that and bought the rights to that music. She owns it outright. Oh, I eat says live 365 costs users money now.

Yeah. Poop on them. Matt says that my mic seems to be working right now.

Well, I stopped fucking with it because fuck it. I’ll just fix it in post. I’ll edit it later.

It’ll be fine. I I download every single show I have them all I have a external hard drive that has two terabytes in it. I have nowhere near filled it up.

So I have all of the previous episodes, all of them. And they’ve all been compressed. And I’ve fixed the audio on all of them.

And they all sound really, really great. So no matter what happens, wherever we go, it is possible to upload all of the past episodes. They exist.

They’re in my computer. They’re in a they’re in a little blue brick that sits next to my computer. So we’ll be moving to discord and you can find the discord by typing into your computer discord.gg slash in chantrix empire.

All one word. Okay, and that’s like go join us. It’s free.

You don’t have to pay any money to join our discord. Some discords you have to pay you have to buy the invite. You hear me typing? It’s because I’m putting it in the chatroom.

Click it. Join it. Miss Hyde said so this is going away.

Technically the community kink chat room is going to stay there and we use it for other things. Like it’s going to be there for always. But it’s so much easier to use the audio and the chat on discord at the same time.

Like it’s so much easier. Several years ago, people were upset because they thought that discord was a little bit data scrapey. They’re not.

They fixed a lot of the issues that people had with them. They have in the years since added two factor authentication so that you could why is my cat sniffing me? Why are you sniffing me? I showered recently. Fucking weirdo.

Michelle says people actually pay money to join discord servers. Technically, I have not paid to join a discord server. But I did pay a Patreon to support some artists that I like and they have a discord that you can only join if you have paid for their Patreon.

Yeah, Patty says sometimes it’s a perk of Patreons. Yeah. I’ve also seen people like porn stars are like, yeah, you can join my discord server.

But you have to give me like $10. And then you can join their discord server and get access to like, you know, special content. So yes, people have paid money to join discord.

Patty says just paying for discord itself feels weird. I have nitro on discord and it’s because I wanted the I like the boosts I get with with nitro. I can use all of the emojis.

I’m addicted to emojis. Ms. Hyde is very sad because she does not want to join the discord. I’m very sorry.

I know that you have had a long standing objection to discord. I don’t. Discord if you join discord, we make the shift I may do the whole episode for next week about discord.

When you join discord. Do not go insane and just start friending people. Don’t do that.

Discord would be like, that seems sus. You’re weird. Who joins discord and immediately has 25 friends? Nobody does that.

(20:17 – 27:22)
Despite the fact that you know what anyways, so it’s part it’s their algorithmic anti spam protocols. So don’t do that. Just join join our server.

You can chat with people you can private chat with us through discord. You’ll get access to all of the live stream podcasts. Everybody’s choosing a different time to swap over and start using only discord for this.

I know that Miss Krista was like, Oh, I last night was her last show on pod bean. And she’s gonna go over straight to discord. She’s like, Yep, I’m joining discord.

Fuck this. I’m out. She’s been on discord.

We have the femdom Fridays podcast is on discord and has been it is a multiple mistress event. Miss Michelle is often on femdom Fridays. I am often on femdom Fridays.

So as Miss Krista, Miss Becky, Miss Demi was there for a bit. She’s taking a break. We’ve had Oh my god, I can’t even begin to tell you how many people have been there in the past.

It’s as as people want to they drop in and out and then they join. It’s wonderful. Friday nights at 9pm.

It’s a discord event. You can also find it we upload it to Spreaker. So it’s archived.

And it’s archived because before it was on Twitter, recording a Twitter space is a pain in the ass. I don’t know if it’s possible. I don’t think it is.

Or no, it was, I think. But I wasn’t in charge of that. So fuck it.

People are joining and leaving as is. Is our site going funky? It’s probably our site. So you join discord.

Miss Michelle says she caught the replay and the show was a riot. And she says she loves giant as power fantasies. We had so much fun.

I was the hostess for last Friday. We did giant as fantasies. I swear we I laughed so much my face was sore afterwards from laughing so much.

So shifting over to discord, you will not see a degradation in the audio quality. The audio will be perfectly okay. I guess it’s gonna sound like this.

Yeah, it’s gonna be great. Join us. So Watson, the healing power of laughter.

Hell yeah. Yours. I think I closed all my links.

I did. I closed all my links. Okay, so let’s talk about self care and self soothing.

Because they’re different things. When we want to start talking about what burnout is, burnout is different from just, you know, being tired, burnout. People who are prone to being neurodivergent are more prone to burnout.

It is emotional, physical and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. So constant, unrelenting stress, or just working, working and working and working and working and working and working. Without ever stopping, pausing, taking a break is going to lead you to burn yourself out.

Kelly says, fuck stress and everyone who causes it. Patty’s worried she’s gonna get called out. And as Michelle said, a lot of us are gonna get called out in this one.

It happens. Stress, by the way. So yes, there’s a lot of stress that comes from like, deadline after deadline after deadline after I gotta do this, I gotta get this done.

I’m meeting my metrics. The boss is angry. The boss is sad.

I have to do this. And I need to meet with this person. And I you know, or if you’re in university, well, I’ve got a test and I got a paper and I got to read this book and I got to annotate this article.

And then I got another test and there’s a pop up quiz and all of that’s very stressful. What’s also stressful? If you pay attention to current events, that’s stressful. All of this is stressful.

If you handle the budget for your house, that’s fucking stressful. If you are worried about the rising price of gas, that’s fucking stressful. If you have anyone that you care about, who might be of age to be fucking drafted, that’s stressful.

All of those things are stressful. They’re all stress. Okay.

And your burnout can happen from a combination of stressful things. So it could be that you’re mostly okay, you know, you work, your job isn’t, you know, maybe, maybe you do customer service, it’s not earth changing, whatever. Who cares if you stocked the toilet paper aisle? Who cares, right? It’s if you’re in community college.

So who cares if you didn’t do as well on an exam as you’d really hope to, whatever, you can talk to the professor and make that up. But it’s oftentimes a combination of things. And think of burnout happens.

It’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. That one last itty bitty little thing that goes and sends you right over the fucking edge, right into dirty sobbing on the bathroom floor, because you just fuck, it breaks you. You’re done, you’re down.

(27:23 – 27:45)
So, and it can be something like, you’re holding on by your fingernails, you finally get a break at work, you go down to the local kiosk, and you’re like, oh, man, I’ve been thinking about this all morning, that I’m going to come over here, I’m going to get a baked potato, and it’s going to be so good. And you walk up and they’re like, I’m sorry, we just sold out. Fuck.

(27:47 – 28:37)
Like a cake hitting the ground. Splatter everywhere. So, it’s a moment of break and a moment of crisis.

But then the burnout part is where after that, after you’ve reached your limit, and you have gone, like you’re done, you might be done for a couple of months. And depending on how long your burnout has been building, and how poorly you’ve been managing your stress, it can take you out. Six months? A year? Burnout’s not fun.

Stress will fuck you up. Hard. Yeah.

(28:38 – 29:02)
Michelle said, the tears I would cry over not being able to get some comfort food, right? Some carbs and some cheese, and you’ve just been thinking about, you know, put butter on it, and it’s going to be so good, and then they’re like, oh, we sold out. In the grand scheme of things, not that big a deal. But, oh, oh, no.

(29:02 – 29:29)
You go down and you’re staying down for a while. You’re gonna, you’re gonna squinch. As Hyde said, this is a topic that she knows about, but doesn’t know how much she should share it.

So as much as you feel comfortable with. So, when I was in university, my mom was working, I’m not going to tell you where, but she was working a job and it was extremely stressful. And it resulted in her having some health issues.

(29:31 – 29:59)
She wound up with GERD. Any minute now, my brain will cough up exactly what that means. Gastroesophageal reflux disease.

Basically, it’s heartburn turned up to 11. Oh, Patty says I don’t feel great about my mental state right now. Okay, don’t worry, I’m going to tell you how to start working on fixing it.

(30:01 – 30:06)
Start working on fixing it. There is no quick fix. Unless.

(30:07 – 30:20)
So, she had GERD, which is heartburn on steroids. And she’s going to the doctor and the doctors are like, we don’t know what the hell is wrong with you. Like, she would, she would get, she would just throw up.

(30:21 – 30:37)
Right? For no reason. Just vomit. Her stomach hurt.

She was having gastrointestinal everything. She was losing weight. She was losing hair.

(30:39 – 30:53)
It was all stress. That was stress. So, she’s not doing well.

She is of a generation that did not believe in mental health issues. And I laugh. Because.

(30:55 – 31:06)
Irony. As soon as she, she hit a wall. She hit a wall at work and was like, I can’t do this anymore.

(31:07 – 31:19)
I’m going to snap. My co-workers are stupid. My boss is a moron.

I can’t do this anymore. I quit. Fuck it.

I quit. I quit. She quit.

(31:20 – 31:40)
She had been having this horrific gastrointestinal esophageal bullshit going on for a year. Every weekend it would affect her. And she was like, I can’t keep anything down and I can’t eat and this is bullshit.

(31:40 – 31:53)
She quits her job and all of her symptoms went away. So. I will tell you this much.

(31:54 – 32:17)
After her experience with you take away the source of the stress and all of a sudden all your symptoms massively improve. Shocking. She was much more understanding and accepting of other people’s mental health challenges after that.

(32:17 – 32:26)
Because she was like, I can’t believe that stress was doing this to me. Just stress. Just being stressed about work was enough to do this to me.

(32:27 – 32:37)
And I was like, yeah. Yes. Your mind and your body’s response to stress will fuck you up.

(32:40 – 32:54)
Fuck. Up. Your.

Shit. As Hyde said, stress in the workplace is deliberate. It’s part of the company policy.

(32:54 – 33:15)
It’s been proven that a relaxed, happy worker is more productive, but then they get a sense of self-esteem and a sense of value like they’re contributing. They want the employee to feel worthless and frightened of being fired every second. Productivity goes down, but the employees are less likely to ask for raises or expect promotions if they’re afraid and stressed.

(33:16 – 33:33)
That way they can funnel more of the salary budget to management. Burnout is an absolute real thing and it blows. It sucks so hard.

(33:41 – 34:02)
Burnout… So, if every single day is bad. Ooh, that’s a problem. If caring about… If you don’t have the energy to clean your house, that’s bad.

(34:02 – 34:18)
If you don’t care about whether or not your house is clean, that’s very bad. If you don’t care about whether or not you’re doing a good job at work, ooh, that’s bad too. If you are exhausted constantly.

(34:21 – 34:52)
If the majority of your day is spent on tasks that are either mind-numbingly dull or overwhelming. Or if you feel like nothing you do makes a difference or that nothing you do is appreciated by anyone. All of those are warning signs for, ooh, you either are or might be approaching burnout.

(34:56 – 35:04)
I feel like protesting now. Girl, yeah. Go set fire to some shit.

(35:06 – 35:20)
Michelle says, oh, I say fuck the world at least three times a day for sure. Yes. Honestly, the systems in which we live also want us constantly teetering on the edge of burnout.

(35:20 – 35:42)
Because if you feel like nothing you do is ever going to make a difference in your personal life or at work, then you also feel like nothing you do is ever going to make a difference in the world around you. You become powerless. You won’t bother to call your elected representatives because it’s not going to make a difference anyway.

(35:42 – 35:54)
Right? See, and Tina is from France and she says, as a French person, I would tell you go on strike. Uh-huh, general strike, bitches. General strike.

(35:54 – 36:05)
If we all strike, fuck them. Burn it down. Anyway.

(36:06 – 36:18)
So, burnout is a gradual process. It does not happen overnight. It’s cumulative.

(36:25 – 36:49)
Ms. Hyde said one of our highest up supervisors accidentally sent out a company-wide email that was meant for managers only. He stated, if your employees are enjoying their jobs and not constantly stressed, you are not doing your job as a manager. That’s a direct quote.

I saved it. I no longer work there. Damn.

(36:51 – 36:56)
Yeah, that’s some bullshit. That’s some fucking bullshit. No.

(37:00 – 37:07)
Patty said, I don’t feel great now. Yeah. So, it’s cumulative.

(37:08 – 37:27)
All right? If you’re getting sick more often because burnout can lower your immune response and it can make you less capable of fighting off illness. If you have frequent headaches or muscle pain. If your appetite changes, your sleep habits change.

(37:27 – 37:45)
Like if you can’t sleep or if you sleep all the time. If you either cannot eat or you just cannot get enough food. Both of those.

Either direction of those. It’s in the change. The change is what you need to pay attention to.

(37:45 – 37:59)
If normally you have a fairly balanced diet and then you go all of a sudden to, the only thing I want to eat are candy bars. Okay, that’s bad. Or you have a fairly normal diet and then you go to, I can’t eat anything.

(38:01 – 38:14)
That’s bad. That’s bad. Kylie says, I haven’t had a bad boss at my job but still, fuck capitalism.

(38:14 – 38:34)
Honestly, do not make me devolve into an entire discussion about the fact that capitalism as a system sucks. And it’s nowhere near as old or long lasting as people seem to want to think it is. They’re like, well, how did you pay for things before? You would barter.

(38:36 – 38:57)
And just because capitalism is new doesn’t mean money or a medium of exchange is new. Capitalism concentrates capital into the hands of a few. Like the fact that you don’t own a business is because of capitalism.

(38:58 – 39:09)
Anyway. Fuck capitalism. So if you have a sense of failure and self-doubt.

(39:09 – 39:16)
If you feel helpless, trapped, defeated. If you feel detached and alone in the world. If you’re having a loss of motivation.

(39:16 – 39:28)
If you are cynical and have a negative outlook. That one, there’s a few people in the chatroom I’m staring at. And by a few, I mean at least one person who should be squirming right about now.

(39:28 – 39:37)
If you have decreased satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment. If you’re withdrawing from things. If you’re isolating from people.

(39:37 – 39:47)
If you’re procrastinating. If tasks take you longer to do. If you’re tempted to turn to drugs or alcohol or food to cope.

(39:47 – 40:12)
If you take your frustrations out on people. If you start skipping out on work. Okay.

So. How do you deal with it? Now that you’ve recognized that, uh oh, I might be burned out. Michelle’s like, I came for the self-care talk and I’m sticking around for the class consciousness.

(40:13 – 40:26)
Girl, we have nothing to lose but our chains. Seriously, we have nothing to lose but our chains. Tax billionaires out of existence.

(40:31 – 40:39)
Patty said, I might have been chatting with someone literally tonight about a lot of these behaviors. I might need help. Hey, therapy exists and it can help you.

(40:42 – 40:48)
Ms. Hyde said, once upon a time that would have been me you were calling out but not anymore. Good. Excellent.

(40:50 – 40:58)
Okay. Step number one. You have to recognize it and realize when you are approaching burnout.

(40:59 – 41:13)
Or when you are undergoing burnout. Knowing is kind of important to help you deal with it. If what I’m saying to you is like shocking.

(41:13 – 41:27)
If you’re like, what? Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re describing my life. I never thought of it that way. Yeah, surprise.

Hey, bitch. You’re burning out. Let me ring the bell for you.

(41:27 – 41:35)
Ding, ding, ding. This is burnout. You’re burning out.

(41:36 – 41:47)
So, seek support. Manage your stress. People exist in the world around you and some of them literally have the job of helping you.

(41:47 – 42:02)
At your work, go talk to HR. Human Resources because you are a human and you are their resource and they’re supposed to be managing you. Sometimes in a toxic work environment, this can backfire on you because they’ll use it as a reason to fire you.

(42:02 – 42:10)
In which case, hey, the problem solved itself. You don’t have to deal with those shitheads. We’re looking at things on the bright side.

(42:12 – 42:41)
But you can go and talk to your Human Resources department and ask them if they have any resources for you, the human, to help you deal with the fact that their job, your job, is stressing you out. You can also take steps to take care of your own physical and emotional health. That’s where I want to talk about self-soothing and self-care.

(42:47 – 43:11)
Tina shared a link to the Maslach Burnout Inventory. It’s the gold standard to evaluate if you suffer from burnout. Ooh, saving that link.

Thank you. Oh, you have to pay for it? I’m not paying for shit. Don’t worry, I’ll find a free version of that.

(43:16 – 43:33)
Okay, so self-soothing and self-care are different things. And oftentimes people will say to themselves, well, this is self-care, when really what you’re doing is self-soothing. Self-care moves you towards healing.

(43:35 – 43:55)
Self-soothing alleviates discomfort. It’s the difference between putting a knee brace on and going to physical therapy. PT is going to help you heal the damage and learn to move better in your knee.

(43:57 – 44:09)
The knee brace makes it stop hurting in the moment. You need both. You need self-soothing so that it stops hurting quite so much.

(44:09 – 44:41)
And you need self-care so that you heal and recover from the things that have caused the burnout. Sometimes one major fix for burnout is to remove the thing that has stressed you out. So if you are taking 21 hours of university course credits in a single semester and you are stressed as fuck, drop some of that.

(44:41 – 44:46)
That’s too many. Put some back. Put some of those back.

(44:46 – 45:42)
The assumption is that for every one hour worth of course credit, you are spending three hours outside of class working on that. So if you’re taking a three-hour course, they’re assuming that you’re spending nine hours per week studying for that three-hour course. Right? Yeah, Patty says, I did end up taking three courses per semester instead of five.

I needed that. Yes, it might be slower, but way better than crashing entirely out. And Miss Hyde says she’s saving all her pennies so she can call me.

(45:42 – 45:44)
Hi, girl. Hi, girl. Hi.

(45:46 – 46:04)
Ooh, Tina found the free version. Opening link. Patty said, so now everybody else is still doing five and all the people I knew in my program last year are ahead of me.

(46:04 – 46:11)
Yeah, comparison is the thief of joy and also it will drive you absolutely insane. So don’t even worry about that. So self-soothing.

(46:12 – 46:47)
What are things that make you happy? That make you feel happy, relaxed, content, and good? What are the things? Is it, do you have a specific snack that makes you just go, I got a good snack. Do you have a specific, maybe you have a comfort item, like a stuffy that you like to hold and squeeze on when you’re stressed? Oh, squeezy, squeezy. Do you have a specific blanket? Do you have incense that always, you’re like, oh, it smells so nice.

(46:48 – 47:01)
Like, what are the things, what are the activities that make you happy? Is there a specific movie or TV show that every time you watch it, you’re like, ah. Matt says, I listen to music. That’s always a good one.

(47:02 – 47:14)
Michelle says, taming sluts makes me feel incredible. Oh, yes. So, get a box.

(47:15 – 47:27)
And put the things that make you happy into the box. Or at least a representation of them. It can be like a big jar or a basket and you write the name of the things that make you happy in there.

(47:27 – 47:54)
And when you are feeling excessively stressed, pick one or two things out of your box and do them. So, if one of the things that makes you insanely happy is going to the movies, getting a large popcorn with extra butter, sitting in the back row and watching whatever new release is out that day. All right, great.

(47:55 – 48:03)
That sounds like a fabulous way to self-soothe. You stop thinking about whatever the fuck has stressed you out. You reward yourself for like two hours.

(48:03 – 48:10)
You get a nice carb and fat laden snack. It’s not going to ruin your whole diet. Fuck that.

(48:12 – 48:20)
Do that. Do the thing that makes you feel better. You’ll feel better.

(48:21 – 48:30)
This is self-soothing. It does not alleviate the problem, but it does make you feel better. And once you feel better, then you can alleviate the problem.

(48:38 – 48:56)
Let me check the chat. Both of the cats are trying to be in my lap at the same time. Really, guys? There’s food in your bowl, right? Pretty certain that I fed you.

(48:59 – 49:18)
Oh, Patty is feeling socially disconnected because she says she lost friends and acquaintances over not taking as many classes. Start a study group. Join a hobby group that does a hobby that makes you happy.

(49:18 – 49:30)
Join a book club. Join a spiritual group, whatever spirituality appeals to you. If none, see if there’s an atheist group.

(49:31 – 49:50)
Join a political action committee. Do something to get you more social interaction. Ms. Hyde said I’d sign up for three hours because the advisor advised it.

(49:50 – 50:01)
My parents saw my schedule and scheduled classes all day. Every day. Like a school schedule.

(50:01 – 50:06)
They wanted to get rid of all my free time. I crashed. I had a literal nervous breakdown.

(50:06 – 50:20)
That would be burnout. Recovering from burnout once you’ve reached the point of… takes a while to do. Preventing it is far preferable.

(50:23 – 50:32)
Far preferable. Patty said I try to go to a board games club once a week. There is no try, there is only do.

(50:33 – 50:57)
Make that a higher priority. See if there is group counseling. Is there one-on-one counseling? Is there therapy you can get specifically aimed at? Burnout.

Stress. You cannot deal with this on your own. How to deal with burnout? Other people.

(50:58 – 51:09)
Social support helps so much. Reach out to people and ask for help. Join a community group.

(51:09 – 51:17)
Find friends. Ask for assistance. Cut out negative people.

(51:17 – 51:35)
If someone in your life is a negative Nelly and always stresses you out, stop hanging out with that person. You do not need their stress on top of your stress. Yikes.

No. That’s too much stress. Find something you can do to help other people.

(51:35 – 52:20)
What you might do is see if there is an adult literacy class where you can go and help people learn how to read. If you happen to speak more than one language, are there groups that are helping people who are immigrants to your community who speak the languages that you speak and you can go and help them? Are you taking any classes? Are you taking fun classes? Are you learning a new hobby? Are you learning a new art form? Something outside the official university platform. Go learn something new.

(52:20 – 52:25)
Something completely unrelated. Go learn how to crochet. Go learn how to knit.

(52:25 – 52:41)
Take up a hobby. Ms. Hyde said, guess what I discovered helped with stress? Was it sex? It was sex. Okay.

(52:44 – 52:57)
Sometimes if the source of your stress is your work, you might have to change your career. It’s a pain in the ass. So my mom had GERD.

(52:57 – 53:09)
She had stress so bad it was killing her. She quit her job and immediately got healthier. Sometimes that’s the answer.

(53:09 – 53:31)
Sometimes the answer is to reframe the way you think about your work. When I worked, not sex work, I had to learn how to divorce my self-image from what I did for a living. Because if I did good at work, then I was a good person.

(53:31 – 53:38)
If I met my goals, I was a good person. I was worthy. And if I didn’t, then I wasn’t.

(53:38 – 54:01)
And that’s fucking stressful and also stupid and bad for you. Don’t do that. So reframing your interaction with and attitude towards work, what you do for a living, and separating your personal identity from what you do for a living, is absolutely fucking vital.

(54:03 – 54:14)
Close your eyes. Answer the question. So who are you? What do you do? And whatever that answer is.

(54:15 – 54:37)
So if your answer is, well, I’m a sales associate at the mall. Uh… Boring. No.

Who are you? Really. Who are you? I reframed that and I changed the answer to, I’m an artist. I make art.

(54:39 – 54:51)
Which… opened my brain and mixed things around and did good things. You are not your job. Stop identifying yourself as your job.

(54:52 – 55:11)
Okay. You may have to re-evaluate your priorities in life. There you go.

Tina said, perfectionist personalities are generally the most prone to burnout. Yes. Re-evaluate your priorities in life.

(55:11 – 55:24)
There’s a reason why I go through life now and I have, I have these phrases that I use all the fucking time. Half-ass is better than no-ass because I’m a perfectionist. And if I can’t do it perfectly, it’s not worth doing.

(55:24 – 55:37)
But half is better than none. So fuck it. When I started doing this job, I would be super stressed about, oh, I have to write a blog post and it has to be good.

(55:37 – 55:52)
It has to be like, worthy. I had to reframe my brain away from, I could win a Pulitzer for writing a smutty blog post, to nope, nope. Half-ass is better than no-ass.

(55:53 – 56:01)
Fart out some smut. It’s just porn. It’s just porn.

(56:04 – 56:10)
Just write it. Just go in and do, like, just fart it out there. It’ll be fine.

(56:12 – 56:21)
Because I’m a perfectionist. And otherwise, I wouldn’t do anything. Patty said, I wish I could just do things poorly and be fine with that.

(56:21 – 56:26)
Here’s the fun part. You can. It’s a mental trick.

(56:30 – 56:39)
She said, damn it, I need more help than I thought. Yeah, therapy. Michelle, that’s where that mantra came from.

(56:40 – 56:44)
Hell yeah. Fart out some smut. It’s because I’m a perfectionist.

(56:45 – 56:55)
Otherwise, I would be like, no, I think I could convey the way that the light glistens off the head of a dick a little bit better. No, it’s a fucking dick. It’s a dick.

(56:58 – 57:03)
This is, it’s not poetry. Just, just fuck it. Send it forth.

(57:03 – 57:12)
You can do things poorly. And in point of fact, you must do things poorly. You are required to do things poorly.

(57:12 – 57:35)
It is the actual literal only way you will ever learn something. Okay? You will learn more from attempting, half-assing, and failing than you ever will from doing a thing perfectly the first time. Fuck up.

(57:36 – 57:45)
Do the thing. Fuck it up. And yes, this does require that you completely reevaluate and reframe all of your priorities.

(57:47 – 57:55)
Sorry. But it’s important. Also, tips to manage your stress.

(57:59 – 58:03)
Exercise. Get your heart rate up. Move around.

(58:05 – 58:14)
Physical activity helps. It really does. If the root of burnout is stress, then you should do things that alleviate stress.

(58:14 – 58:22)
Go sweat for a while. You’ll feel better. If all else fails, go volunteer with a community garden.

(58:23 – 58:27)
Touch grass. Play with some dirt. Sweat a whole lot.

(58:27 – 58:36)
You will feel so much better. You will feel infinitely better if you can do that. Prioritize physical exertion because that’s going to help you.

(58:37 – 58:50)
That’s going to help you so much more than anything else. Walk around the block. Do jumping jacks until you’re like, Oh, like exercise.

(58:50 – 58:55)
Do the exercises. Get your heart rate up. You’ll feel better.

(58:56 – 59:07)
I swear to God you will. Yes. Miss Michelle said sucking at something is the first step to being really good at something.

(59:07 – 59:23)
So get in there and start sucking everyone. Yes. If at all possible, pay attention to what you’re eating and drinking.

(59:24 – 59:28)
Drink more water. You’re dehydrated. I can pretty much guarantee that.

(59:29 – 59:34)
You are dehydrated. Drink more water. Try to eat more soluble fiber in your diet.

(59:34 – 59:39)
It’s good for you. Try to eat a balanced diet. It’s good for you.

(59:40 – 59:45)
Do the best that you can. Half ass is better than no ass. A little bit more fiber.

(59:45 – 59:47)
Hey, that’s good. Great. Keep going.

(59:49 – 59:56)
Perfection is the enemy of good. Just half ass it. Okay.

(59:56 – 1:00:08)
If you cannot get dirty and sweaty because whatever reason, maybe you’re like, Oh, then I’m disabled. Okay, great. Do something.

(1:00:11 – 1:00:14)
Something. So make friends. Get friends.

(1:00:14 – 1:00:17)
Get a hobby. Do something creative. Exercise.

(1:00:18 – 1:00:22)
Pay attention to your diet. Drink more water. Okay.

(1:00:23 – 1:00:29)
Yes. There. Self soothing.

(1:00:29 – 1:00:34)
Absolutely required. Self care. Also required.

(1:00:35 – 1:00:46)
Burnout sucks. Whore school. Pay attention to the whoreschool.net blog because that’s where I will let you know where the next episode is going to be.

(1:00:46 – 1:01:00)
I haven’t decided if I’m going to do it on Podbean again. I might in order to be able to give you a tour of Discord next week. I had something else planned, but I might bump things around.

(1:01:01 – 1:01:07)
So pay attention to the blog. That’s where the announcements will be. Okay.

(1:01:09 – 1:01:21)
I said that I had a lot of sympathy when I said, I’m disabled. I have a lot of friends who are disabled. Sometimes they sound like that.

(1:01:22 – 1:01:31)
It’s fine. We will not discuss how bad my knee is. I completely understand about the whole, I cannot walk around a whole lot.

(1:01:36 – 1:01:42)
Same. Anyway, this is Whore School. It’s adult sex education.

(1:01:42 – 1:01:53)
Aimed at grown-ass adults who want to learn things about life, sex, sexuality, gender, and gender expression. I am Harper. Whore School airs live every Sunday.

(1:01:54 – 1:02:01)
And it has since 2016. Podbean can suck it. 11pm on Sundays.

(1:02:01 – 1:02:09)
That’s 8 to 9 on the West Coast. Figure out your own fucking time zone. Follow me everywhere.

(1:02:09 – 1:02:15)
I’m on all the social media, but especially on Discord. Join us. It’s not scary.

(1:02:16 – 1:02:21)
You’ll like it. It’s fun. Alright, I will see you all again next week.

(1:02:22 – 1:02:23)
Good night.

 

Find the Whore School Schedule right here, and remember to join the Whore School discord for more memes, connection, and all the resources used by Ms Harper for the show. Whore School is adult sex education with no fear, no guilt, and no shame!