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Podcast Transcript: Your Home and Your Burnout

Writer's picture: Jayne MorrisJayne Morris

Updated: Nov 18, 2024

Listen to our latest podcast where Jayne is in conversation with Suzanne Roynon, a Feng Shui and Interiors Therapy expert to discuss the impact clutter and home environments have on burnout. They explore how objects such as plants and art can affect personal energy, contributing to burnout. Suzanne explains Feng Shui principles and house types, highlighting how spaces can influence well-being and relationships. The conversation delves into the psychological and energetic impact of the surroundings, stressing the importance of curating supportive and balanced environments to prevent and manage burnout.




Here's the full transcript:


Jayne: Season 3, Episode 9, Your Home and Your Burnout with Suzanne Roynon. So I'm settling into this space today with Suzanne who's joined me to have a conversation together about burnout and our spaces, the spaces that we live in, the spaces we work in and any other spaces we might frequent that I imagine may pop into the conversation.

We'll see where it goes. So those of you that are dialing in and maybe feeling a bit burned out at the moment or have recovered from burnout and you're wanting to keep it at bay and you don't want it creeping back into your lives, this episode is for you because clutter can really impact on your energy.

And Suzanne's an expert in how to prevent that clutter from seeping into your life, what to do when it is there and you need to get rid of it and everything else in between. So Suzanne, I'm so excited to speak with you. Thank you for joining me today.


Suzanne: It's an absolute pleasure, Jayne. Thank you for having me.


Jayne: And what you don't know is that just before we started recording, Suzanne was looking around my office and asking me about my plants. So I've already started learning things that I didn't know about before. I had always been interested in clutter and the moving around of objects and things. I think actually since I was a child, I mentioned to you Suzanne about picking up a couple of books when I first started working as a coach.

But actually, when I was a child, I used to move things around in my room quite often, and I would rearrange our home I, I would just feel that things were getting stuck, and then I'd have a kind of an instinctive need to do something about that. Where would you like to begin in relation to this topic?


Suzanne: You touched on plants, and we, we were talking about plants and burnout, weren't we? I was explaining that if you have a spiky plant like your glorious yucca right there beside you, so these leaves, the leaves of plants which are sword like or dagger like or very prickly or have those little claws on the back of them, now those cut into your energy and the energy around you.

And this can really cause burnout. It can cause irritation, prickly conversations. And you said that you had got rid of your mother in law's tongue plants. They were also called snake plants. Now these have been really promoted lately because they're one of the few plants that exudes oxygen at night.

So they're being sold as this panacea for poor quality air in homes. That's absolutely rubbish. The amount of oxygen that they put out is not going to feed a house sparrow, let alone two snoring adults, but the sharp energy of those plants will really cut into the space around you. And it can lead to feelings of exhaustion, of burnout, that irritability, frustration, irritation.

Cacti do the same thing. So my recommendation to anybody who has these plants is to repatriate them somewhere else, out of the house. If you live in a place where it's warm enough to have them outside your front door, and you live in a particularly high crime area, by all means, put them there. They will deter unwanted visitors.


Jayne: Right.


Suzanne: Problem is they will also deter the wanted visitors. So you use them very specifically and only for a very short time. But if you do live in a high crime area, if you put a couple of cacti on your windowsill at the front of your house, that will deter anybody who's thinking, "Oh, that might be a nice place to burgle".

But you just really need to use them with extreme caution and if you don't have any of those problems at home. Don't have spiky plants. Simple as that.


Jayne: Very fascinating. I'd never heard about this before. And so it's got me thinking now on all, cause I love plants and I've got plants everywhere.

I'll need to now sadly say goodbye. Yeah. So I'm wondering because different things in our environments in general can obviously affect how we feel. And some of those things in our environments could go on unbeknown to us that they're affecting us like spiky plants, for example, we might not appreciate that they're actually draining us or frustrating us or giving rise to frustration in us.

And of course, when things are draining us and frustrating us, those can be contributing factors in burnout. So I'm wondering what other insights you might have that you might want to share.


Suzanne: Interior therapy covers the whole home, so there are all kinds of things, and I talk about them a lot in my book, which is called Welcome Home, How Stuff Makes or Breaks Your Relationship.

But let's just give some value right here, right now. Buddha is a highly regarded spiritual leader. He is not a fashion item. or something that is going to make your bathroom feel like a spa. And what I see in stores and I see in so many of the homes where my clients are celibate, or if they're in a relationship, they're feeling very lonely and possibly also celibate, financial challenges, and just genuinely feeling very alone and lost.

I'll say to them, tell me, are you a practicing Buddhist? And they'll always, because a practicing Buddhist manages these things totally different, they'll always say no, I'll say why have you got these Buddhas in your home? Oh I went to Thailand and they were selling them at the airport. I saw it in TK Maxx.

My friend had one and I thought it might make me feel calmer. No. If you understand the story of the Buddha chose to leave his wife and son and his role as a prince. So he had extraordinarily wealthy situation he was living in. He left his wife and child to live a life of solitude and spirituality, and celibacy and living on the charity of others.

And this is what the energy brings into the homes of people who aren't practicing Buddhists. Now, practicing Buddhists would have their Buddha in a shrine and they would show it respect and they would make their devotions to it. They don't use it as a decor item or a bit of fashion or because they think it's going to make them feel like they're in a spa.

So that's one of the things that actually inadvertently can cause burnout because if your money situation's dried up and your relationship has gone to pot, that's going to make you feel really uncomfortable and bad about your situation. So if you have a Buddha in your home and you aren't a practicing Buddhist, I always say to you, why have you got this?

Tell me what it's doing for you. That's just one thing. Art is another thing that can really impact on your well being. If you've got what I call an angry abstract on your wall, those big, slashy, burny paintings, they're often in red and black and especially when you've had an interior designer do your home for you.

They're following your remit, your guide, and they're bringing in what they think reflects that, and that's great. But, if you look at a picture that's all sort of splotches and bars of red and black, it's going to stress you out. It's going to make you feel anxious. and then it can lead to burnout. So again, we're looking at all of the art throughout a home and actually saying what's this saying?

What does this mean to you? How is it impacting on you? And you would be astonished, Jayne, at how much art mirrors what's going on in people's lives. So if you want things to change, go look at your art. See what it's telling you. Ask yourself whether that's actually how you want it to be.

You'll often see a picture of somebody sitting alone on a jetty over a very calm lake.

You've seen that one, haven't you? And these people will say, my life's going nowhere. I feel on my own. Nothing's ever happening for me. Yeah, you're sitting there on that jetty in total stillness, total stagnation. Nothing's happening for you. Or you might get and this tends to be in the homes of slightly older people, or people who've been in the forces, fight scenes.

So if they've been in the Air Force, it might be a dog fight over the countryside, or if they've been in the army, it might be, a platoon climbing over a hill. And in front of that picture is always where they have their worst arguments,


Jayne: Right.


Suzanne: Okay let's rethink that, these things will all contribute to your burnout.

But, when I'm working with people, the first thing I'm trying to ascertain is what kind of house type they're living in. And I wondered whether it might be a good idea to talk about Feng Shui house types because these are a good way of working out what's going on in your home to start with.

And realising that perhaps it's not you, perhaps it's your house and your surroundings that are contributing to this. And if you balance that out, then everything else just gets a whole lot easier. So would it be okay to describe the house types?


Jayne: Absolutely. It sounds really interesting. Yes.


Suzanne: Okay. So maybe while I'm doing this, if you think about, cause you've just moved, the house you've moved from and see if you can work out which one that might be.

So house type number one is a place that's good for money and it's good for people. So this is a place where you will always have sufficient money and your relationships will be strong. If anything goes wrong, it will be quickly rectified. Something will always go wrong in a home, but it's not going to be so much of a struggle.

Health tends to be good. The kids tend to be fairly reliable and not act up. It's the lucky house on the street. It's the one that everybody would choose to have as their environment. Might not be the most beautiful house on the street, but it's the one where everything goes right. Yeah.

House type number two is bad for people. But it's good for money. So the bad for people will often manifest as a long term illness or a constant flow of niggling injuries that you're never quite right. Or you fall over and you strain your ankle. And as soon as you start running again, something else happens.

So you can't, it's those just niggles. or chronic illness or really significant illness in some cases. But it's also a place where you get the divorces and quite often the high net worth divorces. So I've worked on a property where there had been six divorces in 12 years. And it is a spectacular house.

It is the one that everybody wants to live in. It's huge. It's Edwardian. It's got everything that somebody would want to move into. But over the last 12 years, couples have moved in. It's been their forever home. Within two years they're divorced, they've moved out, sold on to somebody else. They'll always make money on it, not the happiness. Happiness is much harder to come by in a bad for people home. But, you've always got the money to throw at it. Some people would say that's all that matters.

House type number three is good for people, but it's bad for money. So you will get the happiness and the well balanced kids and the fact that you feel connected and secure in your love for one another. Your health is generally good. But there is never enough money and that can cause all those stresses and strains that come with having a shortage of available funds.

The last type: bad for money and bad for people. OMG, not a comfortable place to live in. How do I know this? Because I did.

And the thing is, we are drawn to homes which have similar energy. When I moved into a house that was bad for money and bad for people, it was really stressful. When I went looking for another one, it felt very comfortable moving into that same energy, but I did not understand at that point that I was inadvertently moving into these properties, which were just going to make my life really difficult for me.

There's never enough money. The relationships are challenging and health isn't what it could be, and that can be physical health, can be emotional, mental health. You will really struggle in a house that's bad for people. So fortunately for me, I realised that I needed much bigger help than moving some bits and pieces around inside the house would give me.

And so I got off proper feng shui report prepared and whoosh, things started to quite dramatically make a difference, which was wonderful, which is why I then retrained from following Western feng shui into doing traditional feng shui. So I would understand all about these house types and what it would do to people.

Several years on more than I care to think about, I can actually drive along a road now and I'll have a fair idea about which are the bad for people and bad for money houses. And if I'm working with a client on looking at a potential new home for them, we will absolutely be avoiding certain house types unless they are willing to commit to making the feng shui changes they need to make to that property in order to bring it back into balance.

And it's not difficult. You just need to know what you're doing.


Jayne: Yeah.


Suzanne: So of all of those, where do you think you've just moved from?


Jayne: I think actually probably a one to a one. But not, not as you said, not that it's ever always perfect all of the time and that there wouldn't be things that would happen, But I don't, yeah, I think we've been quite fortunate with that, but I can definitely think as you were, it was too small.

So there's only so much you can do when you outgrow it. That's right, and


Suzanne: You can have a house that's good for people and good for money, which is literally a studio apartment, or it could be a ginormous mansion. And exactly the same for any of the other house types. Around 20 percent of the houses in the UK would be good for people and money.

So how very blessed are you to be in that situation?


Jayne: Yeah, I can think of places I've lived where that hasn't been the case as well. And the feeling of being in those spaces is very different. As well as recognising how there's a parallel with that and people's work, the comfort zone thing and how people can think that if they change their job, they'll escape the terrible work culture and the way they felt in their role.

But if they aren't aware of the things they need to also change, they just end up going to,


Suzanne: They'll go from one rubbish situation to another rubbish situation, where it might actually be a simple case of okay, these are the remedies that you need to put in, that will bring your house back into balance.

And then suddenly, the difficult employee leaves or the boss who's been making your life misery somehow gets moved to another location and the job you're in turns out to be the one that you love the best. It's incredible how these things can work. And this is what I love so much about working with my clients.

I've gone from the South of France last week, where I was working with within the expat community. And being able to say to this client, yes, your home is good for money, but yes, it was also bad for people. We've seen all of that. Frankly, your 18 Buddhas aren't helping. Can we perhaps let those go?

And we got them out. And the way you just saw her go from quite in to, oh yeah, actually. This is pretty good. This is me taking control. This is me being the person that I choose to be in my wonderful new lifestyle, not the downtrodden feeling a bit lost. So it's such a powerful thing to do. And, we talked about briefly about clutter and perhaps we should come back round to that because, you were saying that from childhood, you would want to move things around a little bit.

Children are so intuitive. They really are. If something isn't in the right place and you connect in with that child to say tell me why, they won't be able to say, they'll just say, no, it has to be over here.


Jayne: Yes. And,


Suzanne: and, they'll move their bedrooms around. You will walk into your child's room on a Sunday morning and discover that the bed that was here is now over there.


Jayne: I remember literally doing that, like lying on the floor. And putting my feet on big pieces of furniture to to have the power to, to move them. And my youngest is the same. She constantly wants to change her room around.


Suzanne: Yeah. It's just, it's because they realise that the energy isn't working for them as it is.

Now they might move it and then move it back a couple of days later, but they've had to try it out. When I moved into my, my new apartment and I've got three options for where the bed would be. And I put it in the first option and it was like, no, absolutely not. And, tried option two.

No, it was like Goldilocks and the three bears, option three. Yes. This is so beyond perfect. I've slept well ever since I'm feeling totally supported by my bedroom space. And I absolutely love it. When I've been away working somewhere, the fact that I can come back and just come into my room and go, Oh, yes, I love it!

Such a good thing to be. And this is available to everybody. And this is what's so sad for me. And as a coach, you'll have seen this for all of your years in coaching. It's just like you look on a zoom call and you look behind them and you can see that they're not coping, that you can see the stress around them.

Yes, I'll look at art, but if I see bookshelves that are crammed and jumbled and doubled up, or there's a, an overflowing bin, or there's a pile of stuff in the background, I know that you're struggling. You don't need to tell me you're struggling. I'm going to say to you let's, before we try and think about smart goals or a future or anything else, let's just take control of the space you live in.

Because frankly, until you are in control of that space, you're going to be constantly on a back foot. You can go to your office and you can achieve incredible things. You can get the finest award that's in your industry. But when you come back into that home that is not supporting you, you sink back.

So for me, it is the foundation of absolutely everything. The Interiors Therapy goes through several stages. We get clarity about the things you own. Are they helping you? Are they supporting you? Actually, are they bringing you down? The simplest thing, a glorious photograph of you taken on that windswept beach with your hair looking perfectly tousled and the sun behind you might be an amazing photo of you.

But if actually it was taken 10 years ago by your coercive boyfriend, actually, what you see when you look at that photo is not, "Oh, look at me. I look so fabulous", it's the coercive boyfriend behind the camera. So that's an example of something that really is not helping you. There will be other things that really are.

So we pinpoint the good stuff and make sure that it has an appropriate place in your life, but anything that isn't serving you, anything that's actually working against you physically or energetically, then I'm going to be giving you permission to choose the option of maybe releasing it. Because if you're not seeing that thing that's actually hurting you on a subconscious level, every time you're in its vicinity, you don't have to look at something directly for it to be in your peripheral vision, or even that you just know it's there for it to impact you.

And suddenly when it's not there anymore, the feeling of liberation, of lifting out of that hole that you feel like you're in. It's just incredible. So I've been rabbiting on for quite some while. Great questions, Jayne.


Jayne: I love it. I'm just connecting bits in my head and thinking how true all of that is. And there was something somebody shared with me a long time ago about objects and how it's the kind of cumulative effects of them, isn't it? It's not even necessarily just one thing, but if there's multiple things, even with the clothes we wear, if there's things that we don't enjoy really wearing and I've noticed with clients, they'll often end up gravitating towards wearing the same thing all of the time. And it's one of the questions I'll ask people.

Do you feel like you're always wearing the same clothes? And and it's quite often that they, it's just easier because everything feels like an effort. So they'll just select the thing, and it's often black as well, but they'll end up wearing all black clothes. And it's because they've lost the enthusiasm to, or spontaneity to choose something that affects how they think.


Suzanne: Black is so draining as a colour. It will make you feel miserable when you wear it. I mean, an artist would say that black is a non colour.

But obviously a fashion designer will say, no, black is a colour, here it is. I think we just held this for you. But yeah, if you're feeling low, the worst thing that you can do is wear black or interestingly enough, very dark blues, but a dark blue, if you're feeling strong and you want to give a sense of strength and security and stability, you would choose a dark blue.

Interesting, huh?

Police uniforms, I think, used to be dark blue. I think they're now black. But it is one of those things. I used to work with the most amazing chief executive. She was the most dynamic and incredible woman. And you knew if she had on her red jacket that it was just like, nothing would get in her way.

She would sweep through and what she said she wanted done, got done. And, I'll use this colour energy as well. If I want to blend into the background to be invisible, I'll wear black or I'll wear a dark blue. If I want to just be in touch with nature and just feel connected within myself, I'll wear greens, probably a khaki.

If I am working, if I'm working in somebody's home and I need to keep my energy levels and my vibrancy up, I'll be wearing a red of some description, most, most likely this kind of red because I like this best of all, but it will boost your energy. Now that beautiful top that you're wearing is a pastel and this is metal energy.

So this is you cutting through anything that's getting in your way. We're not taking any prisoners here. It's slash, slash, let's go for it. So all of these colour energies, you can use too to support yourself. And, if you go deeper into feng shui, you'll find out that they're for each individual person, and it's based on when you were born. There will be colours that feed you and colours that deplete you. So for me, I would be terribly depleted by pastel colours. Not only that, but I look horrible in them to be fair. But I would say you're probably very fed by these pastels because they're metal energy.

So I feel very safe and secure in browns and beiges and taupes because I need a lot of earth energy.


Jayne: Yeah.


Suzanne: But the fire energy feeds me. There are all these things that you can work with. At a different layer of your feng shui and your knowledge to say, okay so I was born here, so this means that in all likelihood, this colour will feed me. Why don't I try getting a shirt in that colour and see if it makes me feel a little better?


Jayne: I think that's the important part, isn't it? It's trying things out and noticing what you notice and seeing whether it corresponds for you.

And. Because definitely there are colours I know I can't wear or they drain me and like you said they, they would drain your complexion as well as your energy and it's quite obvious isn't it often when we put those things on or we feel a bit repelled by them for whatever reason.


Suzanne: Yeah, don't ever put me in peach.


Jayne: I was also just thinking about the object thing and how often people will end up keeping things because someone has maybe given it to them. And they somehow feel that if they give that away or they do something with it, the other person is going to think badly of them or think ill of them. And yet they'll have that thing then lying around and every day they're walking past it on some level not liking it and feeling that every day. There was a saying: Do you use it? Do you like it? Do you love it? Let it go if you don't. I think that's really.


Suzanne: That's right. And, people keep things out of habit, fear, guilt. So that's, the obligation, the guilt, confusion. I don't know what to do with this. You know, and sometimes spite and spite's the really vicious one. And this often happens in divorces.


Jayne: Okay.


Suzanne: You know that this is his precious vinyl and he really wants the vinyl, but yeah, actually you bought it.

So you're keeping it. You're going to keep that vinyl, even if you don't have a record player, even if you can't stand Pink Floyd and Peter Frampton, you're going to keep it anyway, because he wants it. That's spite. And that is a really bad reason to keep anything. The obligation that you talked about is again, keeping an ugly vase that you were given on your wedding day, just because somebody's great aunt thought it was a great thing to give you this ugly abomination, and you still keep it on the fireplace, just in case she passes by, even though she died 30 years ago, somebody might be offended if they come into your home and it's not there. Here's the thing, they probably won't notice. In reality, they will not notice. And especially if you change your home around quite often, even if somebody says Oh, where's that such and such a thing. Where's that crystal goblet I gave you with, the witch hanging over it. Oh, I've put that away for Halloween, actually.

Yes, I put it away for Halloween in somebody's charity shop six months ago, and that's fine. And I don't feel any sense of betrayal or anything like that, because the only things I choose to have around me are things that nourish me and support me. The use, the need, the love, if they don't fall into those categories, frankly, they're taking up real estate in your home that they do not deserve and also in your head.


Jayne: Yes. And my goodness, the thought clutter and the drain that can bring as a contributing factor to burnout is huge. So it's really relevant. Yeah.


Suzanne: If you've got piles of stuff knocking around that you haven't dealt with, that's visible procrastination. And actually you might be looking at it and thinking, I'm dreading going through that pile of paperwork. I'm going to have to deal with stuff. Actually, 90 percent of that stuff is envelopes and bits of paper you can just shred Or better still, have a bonfire, because how cathartic is it to have a bonfire? And then the stuff that you do need to deal with will probably actually be so simple, it'll take one phone call, or nipping onto the internet and doing something online, and it's done.

And you'll think, I don't know, that's been sitting there for six months and all of that for nothing. So it's these little things that you can do that really transform, I call it the energy of your home, but you call it the look, the feel, the sense that you get. If you come home at night from work or if you've been out and you just come home and you're like 'euugh', that's not going to do you any favours. If you come home and you just think, Oh, this is so good. I love being home. Then you know you're getting something right. And your home will work with you rather than against you. And even in the most minimalist homes, You can do interiors therapy, and even in the most cluttered homes, you can isolate the really brilliant bits that will absolutely support somebody.

And in fine tuning that, allow them to release the stuff that's holding them back, that's creating stagnation. It's blocking the flow of positive energy that they would love to have around them. We deal with it. It's a bit like the Wizard of Oz, at the beginning of the Wizard of Oz where everything's in black and white and it's always been there and it's just so and, because your mum had it there and your grandmother had it there and your great grandmother had it there.

You have to have that ugly dish on the console table in your hall. And then I say, why? How's this serving you? Tell me about it. And they're like, I don't know. And then suddenly it's gone and actually the whole place feels nicer. You're not stuck in the past anymore. It's epic. It's absolutely epic.

And this is why what we do with our various forms of coaching, coaching is part of interiorist therapy. It's what I do. I'll come out with the most random things. Maybe slightly through my intuition, but often because your house is telling me something and it's saying, all right ha ha and I'll go, Oh, tell me have you ever experienced this?

And it's sometimes just mind boggling that I'm tuning into their innermost thoughts where actually, so sorry, I am, I'm not mystic Meg. I am in fact describing what you've created in your home and how that's impacting on you.


Jayne: And having that insight for that person in that moment can make all the difference.

Yeah. Oh, it's been really great suzanne speaking with you. I think for anybody listening, there will be little light bulbs going off and people scurrying away to think, Oh my goodness, I need to get rid of that thing that's been hanging over me. And what happens if I do this with this area? Will it free up energy?

It's such a great catalyst. I think, as you say it's stuff that associates people with the past and people get stuck. And so if they move things around and get some of the energy going again, at whatever stage they're at in terms of burnout it can only ever help. Yeah, thank you so much for your time.


Suzanne: You are abundantly welcome. I've loved it.


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