#straightfromcait: How to End Rumination, People Pleasing, and Perfectionism

A wonderful day to everyone! I’m Cait Donovan, your burnout recovery coach, helping you in your healing journey. Today, I will address the question of one user in the Facebook group about taking small, daily, simple actions to overcome rumination, people-pleasing, and perfectionism. I also highlight the ideas of other members to handle these problems effectively. 

Episode Highlights:

To deal with rumination, there are two actions you can do. Firstly, when you notice you’re ruminating, stop it immediately. Then close your eyes, inhale and exhale, and question yourself; I wonder what I'll think of next. The second action is called Go Grok Cards, wherein you play by guessing your feelings and needs. These two suggestions focus on being mindful and curious as the key to overcoming rumination.

For people pleasing, practice disappointing people in any small way. When you start to disappoint people, you will find that the things you're doing don't even disappoint anyone. One example is that when someone in your household can’t find something, don’t help them and just say they can do it without your help. You may feel fear practicing this, but it will help you to see that it is okay not to do what people want from you.

Lastly, Cait suggests that to overcome perfectionism, people must choose one or two places in their lives where they use perfectionism on purpose because it’s useful and not in the places where it is useless. Another action you can take is just to be grateful when receiving compliments and stop unnecessarily saying sorry.

Every person is different, and so there are numerous actions you can do to quit ruminating, slow down people's pleasing, and control perfectionism. Find what suits you the best, and share your process to help others in the community. Let everyone be successful in this burnout recovery journey!

Connect with Cait:

Cait Donovan is a keynote speaker, author, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, specializing in burnout, mis/match, and sustainable performance at work. She partners with corporate leaders, teams, and professional associations through keynotes, workshops, and leadership sessions that treat burnout as data, not failure, to help organizations reduce burnout without blame or shame and build healthier, high performing cultures.

To bring Cait to your organization or event, book an inquiry call here: https://bit.ly/bookcait

Learn more about Cait’s speaking work: https://www.caitdonovan.com/speaking

Short on time? Watch this 3-min video: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025