Speaker A: Welcome to the Therapist Burnout podcast, episode 27. Hey therapist, welcome to the program. I am talking to you a little bit more about careers today. So the topic is the reasons why you aren’t quitting or changing your practice or your job. There’s a lot of them. So we’re going to unpack that. So I have about four reasons today, so I will jump into that in just a moment. Before I do that, I just want to share a little bit about gratitude. I am just feeling very grateful for this community that’s building. If you haven’t found me on LinkedIn, I’m over there and I’m going to talk about a post that I posted I think really highlights what’s going on for therapist right now. I’m just also reflecting on summer in Maine. So I live in the state of Maine, in the US. I live on the coast and it’s a beautiful place. And oftentimes I really don’t appreciate it, especially for someone who grew up in the south. And I don’t love cold. So six months out of the year, there are no leaves on the trees. I’m just enjoying all of what summer has to bring in Maine. So I live kind of north of the town of Portland. And we, my partner and I have been married for 15 years yesterday and we took a beautiful cruise around Casco Bay. And that cruise has three lighthouses. And it was a wine tasting. So I was definitely relaxed, you know, enjoying the breeze. It’s been warm here for Maine. We don’t have central air, so I was just enjoying the. All the sensory things that were happening on that cruise, just feeling really alive, feeling human. I think it’s important to tell you that not because you’re like, I’m burnout and like, I’m not feeling any of those things because I wasn’t feeling any of those things when I was in the midst of my burnout. And we forget, I think, when we are so stuck in the rut of what burnout brings, which can look like depression, it looks like, looks like anxiety, a lot of feelings of hopelessness and not knowing what to do that it’s hard to allow yourself to have those experiences of play, of being human, of awe, really. There’s a lot of research, I think, in finding experiences of awe and being on a sailboat on Casco Bay that definitely did it for me yesterday. So I’m just so appreciative for the season we’re in. So summer in Maine, which is beautiful. It’s not especially hot in our climate. So it’s wonderful, you know, being married for 15 years and having a fantastic partner who supported me through so much, through the pandemic and really throughout our marriage. So I’m so, so thankful for that as well, I think just enjoying really delicious food. So on this little wine cruise, they put a little snack. It wasn’t. It was a box. Yeah, like a box. You know, one of those paper boxes where they put things in. And I was just like, this is a lovely little curated box. So it had almonds and, like, craisins, like, golden raisins, salami, which I just had a little piece of. I’m not very salami person. Three different artisan cheeses with, like, crackers and stuff. And I was just, like, happy with my little box and sipping on the wine. And, I mean, I just. I could not be happier in that moment. So I think. And I sat next to the person, they were from Chicago, and they were like, you know, a lot of people don’t even see the ocean. Don’t get to experience that. And I forget about those folks that are in, like, a landlocked state in the US or a landlocked part of the country where they don’t go to the ocean, they don’t experience that. And so just kind of being thankful for where you are or appreciating those small moments or those big moments, that was, like, kind of a highlight of the summer for me right now. But I think it’s important just to pause to notice when it’s so easy, especially if you’re in burnout, to feel like everything is caving in on you. So back to the burnout train. So I wanted to talk a little bit about one of my posts that went viral for me on LinkedIn. Finally, over there. By the way, I am Jen, a Furblandschetz, psyd licensed psychologist. That is two t’s and an e, if you didn’t know. My viral post from this week was titled, therapists are tired. We’re dreaming of working at target and sipping lattes all day. True story. That was. That was me. I would be so happy just working in target, like, drinking a Starbucks. I could even just mop the floor. Like, I don’t even care. Um, and I know I’m saying a lot of privilege in that statement because I know as a therapist, we make a lot more money, but I was truly, I had nothing left to give for many, many months, years still giving. Some of us even fantasize about working in libraries. So many of my comments on that post were like yes, a library. It would be so cozy. But mostly we want to go home at night and not worry about our clients. We want a job that ends at 05:00 p.m. that doesn’t zap all of our energy. And some of your comments to that post I really enjoyed. So one person said, I fantasized about being a dog walker and now pet sitting because I’m doing it currently. So last episode I talked about therapist career. So check out episode 26 if you haven’t listened to that one yet. It’s a good one about all the different careers that therapists can do. So I talked about careers you can do within your practice using your license, therapy adjacent careers. And the last one were complete departures from the field or just a career pivot or change. So pet sitter is a therapist gig that seems to be pretty popular in therapist groups. Facebook posts and quite a few therapists were like, yes, I think we just need to stay with the animals for a while. One person was saying their backup plan was a UPS or FedEx. A lot of people identified with wanting to be in the library 100%. One therapist interestingly posted this. They said, four years into being a therapist, I dropped down to part time in therapy and took a job at Victoria’s Secret. It was so nice to have a primary goal of color coding bras and helping people find things that were pretty after years of crisis calls and safety planning. And they did it for about a year and it’s really nice to have a reset. It allowed them to get back into full swing, so that’s cool. A lot of people talked about retail as well. One person said, oh what a relief to know that other therapists also think about working in supermarkets or a library. I’m just speaking. And I responded. I said, I’m just speaking my thoughts out loud. I am not the only one. So funny. Someone said, I always thought that working at a bookstore right next to a library would be my dream job 100%. Anyway, so it was a wonderful discussion on LinkedIn. Join me over there. Jump into some of the discussions we get into. I also put a post out there for people who wanted to come on the podcast and share their story. So if that’s you, you can certainly send me an email or find me on LinkedIn. Send me a message. I’m recording a burnout story episodes in the next couple of weeks and so I wanted to I know you guys are hearing my story all the time, but you might want to hear some other therapist stories. So I want to highlight some of you wonderful folks who are doing beautiful work in the world and need your stories to get out there. So I am really looking forward to talking to some therapist over the next couple weeks and then getting those episodes out to you, probably one or two a month. A therapist story at least, because I think it’s important that we do that. Okay, so back to the topic at hand. So, reasons you aren’t changing your practice or doing anything regarding your therapy career, number one. And it goes off of that post. You’re tired. You are just exhausted. And so it’s really hard when you’re dreaming of working at Target or the library to feel like, okay, if I’m, let’s say, private practice owner, I’m going to maybe go off insurance, insurance panels and raise my fees, or maybe I’m going to get a contract job to replace some of my therapy income or look at another job. All of that feels so overwhelming when you’re in the throes of burnout and exhaustion that at the end of the day, there’s pretty much zero energy left. So it makes sense that you fail to move. And I think the thing that I want to tell you is that the exhaustion is not going anywhere. I tried so many times in burnout to think, okay, maybe if I reduce my caseload, increase my fees, or change things up with my offerings. I offered intensives, I took Gottman training. I thought, maybe I’ll do couples because they don’t stress me out. I got some pretty stressful couples cases after that. And I was like, okay, that’s not it. I wanted, okay, maybe it’s group, going to run a group. So I was trying to do all these things. And I think part of that was really good. Like, I did little experiments. I was trying to see if it could work 100%. I think emotionally, a lot of us are scared. We’re fearful of the next step. We have chosen this career, and that’ll get into the second point. But I had a real sense of fear because I didn’t know what to do. And so I think I just was honestly paralyzed. I think that was the trauma response that I had in the pandemic anyway, to just freeze. So if you’re in freeze mode, number one, that’s your nervous system. Don’t blame yourself. And I wanted to give you a reframe for each one of these. I am not going to tell you to be in abundance thinking, like, manifest being untired. We don’t want to hear that. But I want you to look in reality it makes sense. You’re tired. So a reframe could be, you know, let’s just put a CBT, you know, frame on this. It makes sense. I’m tired, and I’m trying to work on how I can become less tired of or find something that renews me this week. Something tangible, something that you can do, because changing your whole practice can feel literally overwhelming. So reframe like, it makes sense. I’m tired. I can do one thing today, like leaving early or taking Wednesday off next week, so I can give myself a break and see how that feels. So I want you to just think about tangible things that you can start doing, put into place, that can start to take some of that exhaustion and fatigue out of your work a little bit at a time, just to give yourself some space. So my second point is, you thought you were called to therapy. So I think this goes into the myth of having one career. Like, we have one career, like, there’s one partner for us. And if we find the one, then we will be fine. We will make it, we will know our calling, and we will fulfill our dream. And I think that works for some people. So that was episode 25, I believe, where I talked about the passion hypothesis, that we have to follow our passion to be happy and fulfilled in our career. And really, that’s just not true. Yes, we can become passionate about our work, but I think we have to look at our skills, look at what we are good at doing. I talked a lot about that. I’m weird, and I love meetings. And a huge piece of my burnout was isolation and being in solo practice alone. And then the pandemic just kind of added fuel to that fire. And I was just like, I just can’t. I just had to take a break. So the myth of the one career is that there’s one purpose for you, there’s one dream that you need to fulfill, and there’s no other way to do it. And so for careers, like therapy for careers, like teachers or priests or those careers where it feels like I’ve been wanting to do this my whole life, I trained for this for however many years that I did, and now I’m saying to myself, I can’t do it anymore. What does that even mean about me? So then we take this personalization of the career. It becomes part of our personality, part of who we are, and we believe now that something broken, essentially, within us. So I think the feeling that comes up with that a lot of times is shame. So I must be bad or broken because I can’t do this work anymore. And as I’ve highlighted on this podcast many, many times, it’s burnout is systemic in nature. It’s not a personal failure on your part. So I really want to dispel that myth that you are somehow broken because you could not stay in your career. Another wonderful thought that, I don’t know where it came from, but perhaps you had this dream of being a therapist, and you fulfilled that dream, you achieved that dream, and now you’re on to a different dream, a different mission, a different career. Maybe that career could be something that’s kind of like, I can just do that and then focus on fun stuff in my life, get a job that makes money, and then move on. So there’s a lot of ways I think we can reframe this, but I think it’s from that idea that we have to follow our passion, we have to follow this mission career or dream career, and that that is the only one path to work. And also, it’s just not based in research. So most people do not stay in one job or one career anymore. We tend to move around more. Okay, so how do we reframe this thought of being called to therapy? I just want you to think about giving yourself a reframe. So if we reframe that thought of, I have to continue to use my license, or I have to continue to use this career because I’ve invested so much. We can always go back to my episodes on sunk cost fallacy that makes us believe that we have to continue to pursue something because we’ve invested too much already. And I think when we look at that and develop some different beliefs about our careers, that there are many clinicians that can no longer stay in the field of mental health due to burnout and due to systemic reasons for needing to leave the field. Also, personal reasons can be I can change my mind. I used to love being a therapist, and it no longer works for me. Or I used to have a private practice, and I’m finding that I like different work better. So there’s so many ways that you can start to get some of these ideas that can help you with creating some motivation for change. I know it’s hard to think of these things because we’ve been programmed to kind of stick with things as therapists. Like, we don’t give up on our clients. We are caretakers. Why would we ever think about leaving? Which kind of helps me with my next point. You hate the thought of letting your clients down. That was huge for me. I started a private practice, really, honestly, truly wanted to be there for my clients as much as possible, to my detriment in many ways. And I had this conversation with my partner yesterday about why he never burns out and I burn out, why he works at a natural pace and feels like he doesn’t have to always have frantic energy or do so many things. He just naturally does not fall into that pattern in his life. And I think one thing he talked about was having, like, some variety. And in private practice, we often don’t have a lot of variety in our work. So intentionally thinking of that, like thinking about adding, like, different things into what you’re doing or completely a different job or other things, I think some jobs can naturally give us this in the field. Like, for him, he does supervision. He doesn’t, he doesn’t do any therapy. He does testing, but he has a lot of, like, super supervisory roles and what he does. And so I think that can really help. But I think this thought of letting your clients down, maybe more so for women who tend to be caretakers, tend to kind of take on that identity more. So holding our clients up can be more challenging to kind of break away from, but it really isn’t our job to be codependent with our clients. I know we’d never say this out loud, but when I look at it after being away from it for a year and a half, I think in some ways I was. And, you know, it’s like you can’t see when you’re in it. And so sometimes you need to really look at those relationships and say to yourself, does this client really, are they benefiting from the service anymore? Am I doing something that might be preventing them from getting better, perhaps? Or is the work, for me, detrimental to myself? And so that’s why we need to think about those referrals ethically. We need to start thinking through that. I’m going to do a whole kind of episode on ethical termination. And when I, we need to kind of think through clinically when it’s time to make a break. So I will have a whole episode that’s coming out on that. But I think the thought of, like, our clients, sometimes we view them as eggs, you know, like, thinking middle school time when you had, like, the, you had to build something to protect your egg. Like, they would drop an egg, and you had to build, like, this little thing to make sure your egg didn’t break. And sometimes we treat our clients that way, that we have to protect them from harm, protect them from falling. And that is not our job, our job is really to facilitate their own process of healing, to help them figure out life, not to protect them from it. So I’d really have you think through is the thought of letting my client down or putting boundaries in place that I need to put in place for my practice or for my job or perhaps with my supervisor or my manager. Am I worried about letting them down, that I do things that are burning me out or that are causing me detriment? And then my last one is kind of like, you have no clue what you like anymore. You have been in this career for so long and I think you’ve kind of gotten in a run of not knowing what you want to do. So really thinking through like what things in your career have brought you joy in the past. So if nothing in your practice or working as a therapist is bringing you any type of joy at work, go back in time and look at, you know, what are the jobs that I really felt like were a great fit for me? What experiences have I had that were really great fit? So when I did some of this work, you know, I thought about those jobs that I had that were really a great fit for me and one of those was a training job that I did. So I love to do training. I love to do presentations. That is something Im doing. This podcast, obviously its something that I like to do to talk to other people about ways they can improve their life or just to educate on a particular topic. When I’ve been in those roles, I have really excelled. When I’ve collaborated with other people, I’ve really excelled. So I’d like you to think through what are those experiences that you’ve had that have really been helpful? That’s what I do with my clients when I work with them. What are some experiences that you really felt like yourself and it really played upon the innate skills and abilities that you have. So really think through that. Think through what can I do? What do I like to do? I always remember my one, I used to teach CPR in one of my jobs. So as a foster parent trainer many, many years ago, we taught CPR and we provided, you know, different education on topics. And when we taught CPR, my colleague, she would always be like, I’ll do anything but talk in front of people. So I was always the one doing the training piece and she would be around like cleaning the dummies and doing the paperwork and whatever else that she could do to not present. And I’m like, that’s fine. Like, you excel actually at doing that paperwork and organizing and doing the back end of things. And so we need all of that in different roles and work. And so if maybe you enjoy, like, being behind the scenes, it could be doing something like that. So I digress. But I want you to think about, if you have no clue what you want to do anymore, think through that. Another thought I talk with people about is the fear of being burnt out again. So what if I jump into, let’s say, a different clinical career and I just become burnout again, and then I hate it and I burn out of it, and then it’s just like I’m doing this whole cycle over again. And I think that’s when fear is motivating us to, like, jump a career or to add something in that we’re not ready for. And so I think really the antidote for that is really taking time to heal your burnout. And just like in trauma recovery, we know that that takes time. So clients come to this and they’re like, okay, I’m ready to process my trauma now. I’m getting through this. We have, like, you know, a few weeks, right? We’re just going to get through this. And I love to tell you that there is a quick fix to fixing your career or your burnout, but it takes time. It just takes time. Healing takes time. If you’re scared of that, it’s likely because you’re still in burnout. You’re still in the throes of burnout, and you need some support for that healing. So I would just, you know, encourage you to build your team. So if that’s where you are, build your team. I don’t believe in, like, burnout proof practices. Oh, my gosh. When I see that advertising, I just get really mad. I guess it’s marketing, right? But I would never put that in a marketing message. But just managing your burnout, it’s just like having anxiety or depression. Some people are more prone to it. I think I’m very much prone to burnout. I can still burn out. I might burn out of this pod. I might burn out of my burnout podcast. I have tried to, like, put the guardrails in there for myself 100%, but wouldn’t that be so meta of me talking about I’m burning out of my burnout podcast. Believe me, I am trying 100% not to do that. I know you’re laughing in the car or laughing with your earbuds in right now, because if you burn out of stuff, you know exactly what I’m talking about. So being afraid of burnout is just like anything. It’s like being afraid of being depressed again. I’ve had that. I struggle with depression. I’ve struggled with anxiety, with panic attacks. So I’m scared of a panic attack happening again, even though I’ve been through years of treatment for it, even though it’s like, I’ll get that pre panic sensation and I’ll be like, I’m going to freak out and just have. Be in full panic. Yeah, that’s a real fear. I mean, our clients have it. We have it. I think most people have that fear. That’s really completely normal. And your brain wants to go there because its job is to keep you safe. And so when you’re about to plunge it into some job where you have no idea what it’s going to be like, your brain is giving you all this stuff, like, don’t do that. That’s dangerous. We’re gonna get burnout. We’re gonna hate it. We’re gonna. It’s gonna give you all that stuff. And so that’s just what our brains do. We have to know that. And I think it just comes with, like, more time of being able to see that you can do a career without burning out with your body knowing, like, I’m not gonna push you to the brink of a panic attack or having a mental health crisis or depleting your body’s resources. So part of my burnout was certainly, like, my body breaking down on me with the panic attacks, with getting sick, a lot things of that nature. And I know I’m not alone. I know people have struggled with medical issues related to burnout, and so your body remembers. Your body remembers all of that. As Emdr therapist, I know all of this. However, it’s hard for the healer to heal yourself. So I think we have to be able to. We have to get support in that. It’s imperative that we get support. And there’s all kinds of ways. I think I need to do, like, a podcast episode on, like, all the types of support that we might need. So just quickly, I mean, my team has been my therapist, a PT at times, you know, doing massage at times. Yoga. I teach as well. I teach yoga classes. It’s yoga ish, you know, it’s to lyrical music. It’s just like, it’s moving mindfulness. For me, being outside, that’s been my mix. But my team is definitely, you know, still have my therapist making sure that I’m following up with my doctor. I have a wonderful nurse practitioner who also manages my hormone side of things. So I have a medical history. I might talk about women and hormones and menopause and all of that stuff because it’s related to burnout, especially in midlife. We’re gonna go there 100%. So I’d like to have someone who is likely a doctor and an expert on just that phase of life for women, because I know a lot of the people that listen to this podcast are in midlife and are women. And so even if you are not in midlife and not a female identifying or woman, you need to know about that, because you might have someone you’re working with that is struggling with that. I won’t go into all the crazy making that we tell women about their bodies and about midlife. Just that is a whole episode. All right. I think the reframe for that would be. It is normal to be scared about burnout again, you cannot predict it, but you can build a team. You can start to take some action on things that you can do to put guardrails up. I can build my guardrails as maybe something that you can say to yourself when your brain wants to go there, which is normal. So I think, you know, allowing it to go there and then just trying to ground yourself is really important. Okay. Did I give you reframes for everything? Sometimes I get talking and I have a plan, and then I just start going off the cuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the reframe. I don’t think I did the reframe for letting your clients down. I think it’s really normal. It’s normal. Like, we. We don’t want to let our clients down. We don’t want to have anybody be angry with us again. We’re programmed to want to have people be happy with us. You know, it’s kind of that fawning response, the trauma response. We’re thinking about fawnings. We want people to. Especially people who can dysregulate. Right. And be really kind of scary in our nervous system, which can be some of our clients. Some of our clients make our bodies react in ways that we don’t like. And we are told in our training to not notice that, to not do anything about that. Okay? So if we’re trained not to notice that and not how to utilize that in our own healing, then of course, we’re going to want to avoid it. So I would just continue to be curious about this and tell yourself that it makes sense. I don’t want to let them down. At the same time, it’s hurting me, and I need to address it, or I need to learn to address it. I need to learn to get support around that, or I can get support. So, so many things that we can kind of use a balance thought there. So, to recap, the reason you aren’t quitting or changing anything yet is, number one, you’re tired, you want to work a Starbucks or the library instead of making changes right now. Normal. 100% normal. Two, the thought you were called to therapy. This was your mission. This was something that you were supposed to do. 100% makes sense. So it’s like, what is? I had this thought, actually, I didn’t talk about that in this section, but, like, I didn’t trust myself. Like, how could I be so wrong? Is one thing I told myself. How could I have gotten it so wrong? I think for that, the recipe is self compassion. You know, to see yourself, to know that I couldn’t have seen this. There’s no way I could have seen this happening and unfolding the way it did. I couldn’t predict a global pandemic, a cultural dumpster fire, people sicker than they’ve ever been in a mental health crisis. I couldn’t have predicted any of that. And so maybe I should be a little easier on myself. Maybe I shouldn’t be a complete ******* to myself. Think about that. That’s getting me emotional, y’all. All right. Number three, I think I went out of order, but that’s okay. You hate the thought of letting your clients down. Normal again, normal. All these are normal. They’re normal thoughts and feelings. We just don’t say them out loud. And so I think that’s a little body work that you have to do. Reframing can be helpful, but also, like, noticing what’s coming up for me and my body around this client. Why am I so scared to tell them that I’m going off an insurance panel or I’m quitting soon, or I need to change my hours, or they need to pay a no show fee or all of those things. What’s happening for me right now, when I think of that person and getting support, getting case consultation, I think that’s why I encourage people I know. Like, sometimes I think some of these, like, consultation things are like a pyramid scheme with EMDR, but the consultation piece is really helpful. And I feel fine about paying a therapist for consultation because, number one, I’m supporting that therapist in helping them reduce their burnout by doing this consultation and talking about their work and talking about therapy, which is wonderful. So I’d have you think through getting you know, paying for consultation, paying for supervision if you’re able to, or if it’s in your. Your place of employment to try to do some peer supervision, talk to other people about your work. And four, you have no clue about what you like anymore, either life wise or job wise. I struggle with both of those in the pandemic because I feel like everything that really helped ground me, I was untethered to. So the exercise, my tennis, you know, the things that helped me stay who I was weren’t there anymore. And then job wise, I think not having any clue about what else I could do, whether that be different things to do in my practice or a whole different job. So I would add, I think, to the end of this, why should you change now? Why should you start to take some action now? I think because it can only get worse, because I know this, I’ve lived this, that it can lead you down a road where you’re struggling with your own mental health issues, with your own health issues, more difficult relationships in your own life, and so getting help sooner than later, acting sooner than later, and listening to your body, your body screaming at you, likely. I could always tell how my day went by how my cuticles went, how my cuticle looked. At the end of the day in the pandemic, I just hadn’t gotten used to being on a screen so much. And I know all these grounding tools, but yet, like, I. My hands would be bleeding sometimes at the end of the day because I had, like, picked up my cuticles and I started to use, like, putty and things like that and some grounding tools. But I think I just was so tense in my body from just the collective trauma that was happening, the pandemic, and not realizing what I needed to do to help myself through that. I just thought I had to kind of do it, you know, I just had to show up to therapy and, like, do what I had to do and then deal with the consequences later. Stacking that throughout your career. So for me, it’s over a 20 year career so far. Stacking that over and over and over again and just being there for somebody else, it takes a toll. I think knowing when you need help is likely before you think you need it. So I would encourage you, don’t delay, get support. Whether that be reaching out for your own therapy, whether that be with any of my services, whether that be doing some peer consultation. I don’t really care what you do, you know, but if you just think through, I need to act on this now because it’s going to cost me so much more later in missing sessions, in trying to figure out and spend money, because I spent thousands of dollars trying to figure this all out on my own and with other people. So I will say I did. You know, I have a therapist and things of that nature. I did consultation and whatnot. Some of that I think I just would have spent anyway. But I think a lot of, a lot of time I spent and money that I spent in just spinning and spinning and spinning about what to do. If you want help with that for me, I’d love to talk with you more. You can reach out to me and I’ll put that link for a consult call if you want to just get more support and talk about ways of how to change things in your practice or heal from your burnout. I’m here for it all, so let me know. I’ll also drop just my email if that’s easier for people. I haven’t really dropped my email in there, but I’ll drop that into the show notes that is in your podcast player. So if you don’t know what show notes are, there are little notes. So you kind of have to go in there and there’s a bunch of text and they are there. Also, another way that you can help spread this message is send this to a therapist friend. Send it to a therapist friend who might want to listen to this episode. And if you could give me a rating and review on Apple Podcast, it really does help the podcast spread and I greatly appreciate it. Have a good one.
Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the Joy after Burnout podcast. Be the first to hear new episodes by following the podcast in your podcast player. This is an informational podcast only. Any information expressed by the host or guest is not a substitute for legal, medical, or financial advice.
