#straightfromcait: The 3 Types of Self Care that are Critical to Burnout Recovery

When people think about self-care they often picture soaking in a bubble bath, but in reality, self-care is so much more than that. Self-care is an absolutely critical part of burnout recovery. In today’s #straightfromcait episode, Cait Donovan, host and burnout speaker, shares the three types of self-care that are crucial for both burnout prevention and recovery.

Cait explains that the number one type of self-care for burnout is foundational self-care. This means that you must take the time to learn how to recognize your body’s signals and actually respond to them. As you do this more, your body learns that it can trust you to meet its needs such as needing to go to the bathroom or being hungry or thirsty. Once you have invested in foundational self-care, you can move on to self-advocacy, which requires you to start speaking up for yourself and asking for what you want. This is much easier to do after building up your sense of self worth with foundational self-care. Lastly, Cait shares that sometimes coping mechanisms that used to be beneficial can become maladaptive and need to be revised. Take a look at your coping mechanisms to see which ones might still work for you and which may need to be upgraded.

You know that self-care is much more than just taking a bubble bath or meditating for a half hour. True self-care is all about investing time into taking care of yourself both physically and mentally and realizing that you are deserving of having your needs met. 

Quotes

• “Taking self care out of the burnout recovery equation is doing a massive disservice to everyone who needs to recover from burnout because you can't actually get out of burnout without some sort of self care.” (1:20-1:34 | Cait)

• “If you do not ever learn how to speak out loud the things you want, need, desire and prefer, you are very unlikely to get those things.” (7:35-7:44 | Cait)

• “If you want to recover from burnout, you must engage in the self care of self advocacy.” (9:19-9:25 | Cait) 

• “This unwinding of your current coping mechanisms and keeping the ones that work well and upgrading some other ones that maybe don't work so well, is an absolutely necessary part of self care.” (12:13-12:32 | Cait)

• “Coping mechanisms sometimes become maladaptive and they need to be upgraded.” (14:19-14:22 | Cait)

Links 

Heather Hansen (Self Advocacy):  https://www.instagram.com/anelegantwarrior/

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

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm