Burnout, Perfectionism, and Finding Balance with Emily Labutta

Written by Julie Woon, MSJ

In this illuminating Q&A from the YMyHealth Podcast, counselor Emily Labutta shares valuable insights on burnout among millennials, the perfectionist trap, and strategies for reclaiming balance in our lives.

Emily Labutta is a licensed associate professional counselor who specializes in working with high-achieving adults and teens struggling with trauma-related symptoms, perfectionism, career stress, burnout, sports performance concerns, and disordered eating. As a former prosecutor, she brings a unique blend of legal expertise and mental health practice to her work, offering trauma-informed strategies to help clients reclaim their well-being and thrive.

Before we dive into burnout, could you share a little bit about what led you from being a trial attorney to becoming a counselor focused on mental wellness?

Labutta: Sometimes when people ask about that pretty big career change, I'll kind of jokingly say, "I burned out. I burned out hard." It's part joke, but it's also part truth. I was working as a criminal prosecutor, so I saw really any kind of crime you can imagine—from dog bite cases and noise violations to murder, aggravated assault, and child abuse cases.

I was seeing a lot, from people being dealt bad cards in life to truly evil things. I didn't have adequate support systems, and I didn't know how to draw lines in my own life and say, "No, I'm putting this case file down. I need to look after myself."

That, coupled with really wanting to help but in a different way...I think it boils down to: before, I was fighting the darkness, and now, hopefully, I'm trying to add to the light.

What specific factors do you see contributing to burnout among millennials compared to other generations?

Sometimes when we talk about burnout, it becomes another thing that somebody's doing wrong. Like, "Great, I feel terrible, and now it's apparently my fault that I feel terrible."

If we think about it as being fish in water, it's not just how we're swimming, but it's also the water we swim in. We live in a culture that tends to elevate busyness over rest. If I come into the office and say, "Oh man, I was here like all Friday night till 8 pm," what's the next thing someone's going to say? "Oh, yeah, I was in here Saturday." "Oh, well, I was in here all weekend." It becomes this one-upmanship where busyness and hustle are prized more by our culture than rest.

Burnout is generally a product of caring. It's not the people who don't care about their jobs that burn out. It's the people who care—and care a lot—but don't know how to also care about themselves in that mix.

For millennials specifically, we're living through what's the running joke on some memes: "Oh, the millennials are just living through our next once-in-a-lifetime event." That creates what's called allostatic load on the system, leading to stress. We're carrying financial worries, we're seeing the second stock market decline...all of that plays a role. It's not just "you're swimming wrong," it's "hey, this ocean has got some stuff in the water."

What patterns do you see for individuals who are struggling with perfectionism or people who have been historically high achievers?

What I'm always looking at is: what happens if you're not perfect? What happens if you don't achieve? Looking out for trying to do our best is a great thing. Most of us want to do well, achieve great things, and hit our goals. But is it safe for us not to do so? Is it the end of the world if we don't? Is it so intolerable that we're more willing to drive ourselves into the ground rather than be a little... not even subpar, but what we view sometimes as subpar?

A lot of it comes from previous history. Where did these beliefs start that "I'm not good enough and so I have to prove my worth through how I achieve," that "I don't belong, but if I can make myself valuable, then maybe I belong," that "I'm not worth anything unless I perform"? Things like that are often rooted in childhood. We see those beliefs play out, whether in school or our career lives.

A lot of people who struggle with perfectionism and burnout also tend to be people pleasers. Is there a connection between those two characteristics?

I would say there is overlap—more correlation than causation. If we look at things from a lens of creating safety, a people pleaser is generally coming from a lens of "I'm not okay unless everyone else is okay." A perfectionist is coming from the lens of "I'm not okay unless it's perfect."

Sometimes that blends because sometimes other people want us to be perfect, and sometimes other people are pleased by perfection.

For individuals struggling with perfectionism, people pleasing, or burnout—how do you start making changes to take those stress levels down?

I say the first part, let's start with noticing. Usually, by the time someone says "I'm burned out," we've had some warning signs along the way. Some warning signs to pay attention to are increased irritability, increased fatigue—things that are our body's reaction saying, "Hey, I'm overloaded."

It's also when you start feeling atypically or uncharacteristically different in your performance. These are typically very high-performing people, and suddenly it's like, "I can't get anything done. I'm procrastinating. I'm waiting till the last minute. When I do something, it's taking me longer."

What most people will do is put their heads down and say, "I just need to try harder, push harder, work harder, do more, be more." Instead, it should be a sign to get curious and say, "What's going on? Let me look at my support needs, my life, my structure—let me look at the water I'm swimming in and see if I can keep swimming." Not just "I need to swim harder and better."

Setting boundaries is something we do for ourselves. It's not something that controls other people. My boundary doesn't say what they get to do; my boundary tells them what I will do. If I say to my boss, "Hey, I know I used to work till 8pm That's not working for me anymore. I actually need to leave at 5," my boss might decide to fire me. And I get to decide which one of those things is more painful.

Where it isn't tenable to draw those boundaries, we need to look at getting our needs met in different ways and tuning into what those needs are. When we think of self-care, most people think of bubble baths, reading a book, or lighting a candle. That's all great, but self-care is also things like doing the dishes now because it will make future me feel better when I walk into a clean kitchen.

We need to meet all our needs—emotional needs, social needs, spiritual needs, and physical needs. Often, what we'll do is meet one of those and think it's enough. "I started getting good sleep, so I should feel better." But did you connect with nature, connect with a friend, move your body, and connect with your sense of purpose in the world? If not, it makes sense that you would still not feel the greatest.

What are the mental and physical health effects of chronic burnout?

Chronic burnout is very tricky because it can feel like a loss of identity in a lot of ways. Generally, we're going to need a deeper sense of rest—a deeper sense of stepping away from hustle culture, screens, stimulation, things that tell your nervous system to heighten and ramp up. We need things that slow it down.

Things that can feel ineffectual in the early stages but are designed to work—things like breath work, meditation, literally going outside and touching grass—actually legitimately work. Get in nature. Treat yourself like a complicated houseplant that needs some sunlight and nourishment, and also movement.

That process can take months and years to get out of burnout, depending on how long we've been in chronic burnout. What I see is that people can feel unlike themselves. They're like, "But I'm this high achiever. I do everything. Not only do I do everything, but I do more than that, and I do it all well. I can spin every plate there is."

If you get to the point where you're done, being in that more restful state is going to feel antithetical to who you are. Some of the work becomes identity work. Are you the work that you did? Maybe not. Maybe you're your values. Maybe you value being disciplined. Maybe you value showing up for people. But maybe working yourself to the bone is coming from a sense of not-enoughness and not from a place of value.

You discuss self-compassion in your approach. Can you expand more on that approach to perfectionism, burnout, and imposter syndrome?

I think self-compassion is rooted in what Kristin Neff calls the three prongs, including mindfulness—let's just pay attention. Let's develop that sense of interoception, or awareness of what's going on inside ourselves.

For millennials, there's a sense that we're supposed to have it figured out. But I haven't met a single adult who feels like an "adulty" enough adult. Sometimes we can feel shame that we "got it wrong." Maybe you didn't miss anything. Maybe you did exactly what you knew with the information you had at the time, with the sense of self you had at the time. And maybe that self and that knowledge have changed.

It doesn't mean you got anything wrong. It means change is an inevitable part of life. Can we accept it? Can we embrace it? The very idea of drawing awareness and talking about this is predicated upon the idea that we can do something about it. And if we can change, I think there's a level where we have to not shame ourselves for not knowing or not being perfect because we're growing and changing, and evolving human beings.

Is that how you would define imposter syndrome? A lot of people say they struggle with feeling like they're in a position that's not deserved or that they're not qualified for.

I think imposter syndrome is slightly distinct from burnout, but they can go hand in hand. With the Dunning-Kruger effect, when we know a little bit about something but not a lot, we think we know a ton. Then, when we know more, we feel like we know nothing. A lot of high achievers have hit that point where they know just enough to know exactly how much they don't know.

Where I see imposter syndrome coming up—and this is a gross overgeneralization—it tends to be people who would identify as a minority in some way, whether women, racial minorities, sexual minorities, or even just what field you are in. Counseling is a very white woman-dominated industry, so a man in counseling could feel imposter syndrome. Tech tends to be male-dominated, so a woman in tech may feel some sense of imposter syndrome.

This is not just perceived internally; it's also how we are treated by the people around us. We know from studies on implicit bias that if a man interrupts somebody in a meeting and says, "Well, I have an idea," he's leadership material. If a woman does the same thing, she's "power hungry" at best. So it's not just how we perceive ourselves, but how other people treat us.

What changes are you seeing in younger generations and how they approach work-life balance?

Some of it is rooted in a shift in how offices, cultures, and companies treat their workers. With older generations, you started somewhere and stayed there, paid your dues, and worked your way up the ladder. Now, we know that making horizontal or diagonal moves is the way to climb in most jobs.

When we look at younger generations like Gen Z, they play out the disillusionment of millennials. Where millennials are like, "Okay, you kicked us while we're down, we'll just stay down here," Gen Z is like, "We ride at dawn!" They're saying, "This wage is actually untenable for my bills. I am leaving at 5 because there's no climbing of the corporate ladder anymore. I get nothing by staying late."

Some of that is actually really healthy. But sometimes it potentially goes maybe a hair too far, where it's "if I don't want to do it, I won't." And while I love that we protect our personal boundaries, that doesn't mean there aren't consequences associated with that decision. Living with that tension is something that Gen Z is still learning how to navigate.

Are there any other insights you've gleaned from working with clients who are experiencing burnout?

The biggest thing is that the people who experience burnout are the people you want on your team. They're the people who care, who want to do a good job, who are trying their hardest. These are people who say, "I don't want to do a bad job. I really actually want to be here. I care that it's done right."

It's just that at a certain point, maybe it wasn't safe to be wrong, to be less than perfect, to say, "No, I'm leaving at 5." If these people can learn how to harness that energy in a way that says, "This is something I value, I am going to make value-driven action towards my goals," while also putting themselves in that category of something they value, then you're golden.

What gives you hope when it comes to addressing this epidemic of burnout that we're seeing with millennials?

Personally, I have been very burnt out and had to take a step back. While getting my graduate degree, I worked at a local running store—I went from being a trial attorney to working retail. Not only was that a big difference in pay, it was a very big difference in the type of work I was doing. I couldn't really leave a file at the office emotionally or mentally, but I could leave retail at the store.

I learned how to set physical boundaries of when I'll see clients and when I won't, but also the mental and emotional boundaries of not spiraling or worrying about clients to the point where I can't hold my own stuff anymore.

What gives me hope is that I feel like I have recovered through it. If I can do it, surely other people can too. Gen Z also gives me hope—they're approaching things from a different lens, showing us that a difference is possible.

And just the sheer fact that people who experience burnout are the high achievers, the perfectionists, the people who feel like imposters. That very thing that can feel like a weakness is really a strength in a lot of ways. These are driven, capable, caring people. If you want me to put my money on someone, it's them.

Want to hear more from Emily Labutta? Listen to the YMyHealth podcast!