Now, / the reason this topic, / exploring how calling work our family can be problematic and breed burnout, / the reason it's important to me is because I've personally lived it. // Before we get into that though, / let's first baseline by understanding why calling work our family / at its core can be problematic. // Doing so / psychologically infers a really big blur and betrayal in our boundaries. // Work and family are different entities with different goals, / expectations, / and responsibilities. / And therefore, / should be separated and boundaried. // For example, / I'm not going to be in the shower one day and / notice a really weird mole on my pregnant belly and / roll into my boss's office like I would my mom and be like, "Hey, / can you... can you get in here and look at this? // This looks kind of weird. // I'm freaked out." // A few of us are giggling or laughing, but I'm sure a few of us too / in our heads are like, / "Oh, have I done something weird like that at work? // Have I crossed a boundary before?" // Boundaries are hard for a lot of us because many of us never learned boundaries. // It's kind of a newer / buzzy phrase that / not many of us really have learned or defined before. // So let's start by defining what boundaries are / and why they're so important to our mental health. // I like to think of boundaries as our ability to identify, / communicate, / and take action on our needs. // Being able to say, / I need to eat, / I need to rest, / I need some space right now. // Survivally speaking, / boundaries are critical / for us as humans to be able to say, / I need something, / to be able to find safety and resourcing. // However, / it can also be advantageous in certain situations to delay or deprioritize our needs too. // For example, / if I'm a human back in the day running away from a tiger, / if I happen to be hungry, / it'll / of course be beneficial to delay that need for hunger until / I'm safe again. // However, / if / after the tiger has left / and I'm safe, / I keep staying stuck / and being scared of the tiger / and delaying my hunger and not eating, / that becomes unhealthy too. // This shift / of delaying our needs into the unhealthy without knowing it / is where a lot of us find ourselves unknowingly stuck today. // Somewhere in our lives, / we learned and adapted that repressing or sacrificing our needs for others / was beneficial, / but that became so autopiloted in our subconscious / that it goes past the point of diminishing returns and becomes unhealthy. // To where maybe we land into a workplace and we hear we're like family / and our brain just triggers into / give it everything no matter what. // We sacrifice our boundaries, / our time, / our relationships, / and we start living life in these big swings of overworking to burnout. // And maybe we rationally know that it's not the healthiest pattern in our life, / but we feel stuck. //