Speaker A: Welcome to the Therapist burnout podcast, episode 65. Hey, therapist, welcome back. This week I am talking to you about a continuation of how to reclaim your week.
So we’re going to talk a little bit about using your calendar as a tool for caretaking. Notice I don’t say self care ever.
It’s just like a dirty word around here.
And also I want to touch on my Alive series that I’ve been talking about on the email list, on the pen pal list.
So if you aren’t on the pen pal list, join me over there. I’ll include that link at the top of the show notes. And so I’m wrapping that up this week.
So if you are not on that, I. That comes out like Monday evening. It came out on Tuesday because I had a rough week. And I’m going to talk about my rough week a little bit too, because you guys love that stuff.
You tell me you love all my V vulnerable shares, even though I’m like, okay, all my vulnerable things are out there for just public consumption. It’s great, right? It’s wonderful.
But I think that’s what you guys tell me is, is helpful and my guests as well. So just April preview. So in April, I am going to go back to talking a little bit about money and just hot takes on.
On where we are right now. I feel like there’s just a lot of tension that I’m hearing from therapists regarding change. Like, it feels impossible to change right now with the state of our current world, our government and how people aren’t, I mean, people just aren’t buying things.
So I get that. So I think it can feel like, can I even change anything right now? Oh my gosh. So, all right, so let’s start with talking about my live series.
Yeah. You know, I was reflecting this week on the work that I do is often saying goodbye to things.
A lot of grief work, a lot of encouraging people to leave the things that no longer work for them. The people I work with, therapists, you are, they feel stuck and overwhelmed and they’re not sure, like, should I close my practice?
Should I look for another job? Should I start an income stream? Should I blah, blah, blah.
And if you were like I was and many of my folks that I work with, you’re spinning and that’s normal for this abnormal situation you’re in. But it can feel just so hard to untangle it.
And it’s the antithesis of feeling alive. So if feeling depleted is that depleting other side of feeling alive, that’s what Burnout feels like. Burnout feels like depletion. It feels like you don’t know yourself.
You don’t trust your judgment. I often would say that for, like, a year or so after I closed my practice. And it’s been two years officially, like, at the end of March, which feels weird, but, yeah, it’ll be two years.
I closed end of March 2023, and here we are, March of 2025. So, yeah, I often felt like I didn’t trust myself. And I would also say I feel like my body is against me because it kind of took me out.
You know, I had panic attacks. And that is also the antithesis of feeling like you’re in control of your body and your mind. Where, you know, for me, it was driving.
That’s where it showed up. But it also showed up in other places, and it still shows up. Anxiety. I always call it like an octopus. And if you haven’t seen just how an octopus can fit into anything, you should watch a video of an octopus.
Like, there’s this one on YouTube. Maybe I should link it here of this octopus that can, like, reduce itself to the size of a pipe so it doesn’t have any bones, and it can really get into everything.
That’s often the metaphor I used for anxiety. Like, we think it can’t get in in this place, right? We’re like, I’m good. Like, I’ve, you know, been through therapy. I’ve looked at my schedule.
I’ve done all the things. And then anxiety is, boom, just gonna pop up here just because it seems good today. Not today. Anxiety. Anyway, so I had a little of that happen this week.
I work contract as a school psychologist. I’ve talked about that a lot on the podcast. And January through June is our busiest time of year, and I was just drawing, like, a parallel.
So it’s my third spring being here, and I always feel like I take on too much at this time of the year, and I have some kind of meltdown slash breakdown, slash, what is happening to me during this time of year, because it’s a lot of work. That’s when all of our evals tend to hit.
And I’m not the best at pacing. I just talked about pacing on the last episode. So go Back to episode 64 of the podcast. I talk about pacing and, you know, I always think about therapist.
Heal yourself, Jen. Heal yourself. Listen to your own knowledge, because there’s themes. Okay, So I was in this meeting, and I won’t give you the details of that because I can’t I just felt like, you know, it was tense, and I felt like I just might lose control of my emotions.
Like, I felt that feeling where you get, you know, like you feel like tears are behind your eyes and just kind of worried that my emotions might take over in the moment afterward. I had, like, an ache in my throat.
I can still feel it. A little bit of emotions that didn’t seem to stop for a while. And so it was probably about. I don’t know, we’re like 48 hours after this, so I can still feel it a little bit.
But at least the first. The immediate 24 hours, like, that wave of emotion kind of wouldn’t stop. And I just. My. My worst thought is, I. I’m not gonna be able to work anymore, not gonna be able to do this.
What do I do if I can’t do this anymore?
And it’s not a place I love to be in. That’s the place where I was when I was in my practice. And I’m sharing that with you because that’s what other therapists tell me all the time.
Cause I know I was there. I know many of my clients are there right now. I know you are probably there. If you’re listening to this right now and your fear is, I’m not gonna be able to hold it together, that fear may be real.
I feel scary as hell. I sat with one of my consulting clients this week, and they were kind of wondering, how am I gonna be able to do this? I don’t.
I don’t know if I can show up tomorrow. Like, I don’t know if I can hold it together. And that. That is burnout. That is chronic fatigue. That is the overwhelming exhaustion that can come from constant giving.
So Human giver syndrome. Just look up Human giver syndrome, by the way. Anyone hasn’t done that before, please look it up.
It’s constantly. That’s us constantly giving, constantly outputting and not having time for us to rest. And so I. I. In episode 63, I talk a little bit about why you’re overwhelmed and the neurobiology of it.
So I feel like that’s really comforting to know. Like, it’s. It’s. It really is what is happening in my brain. And there are things that I can do. Yes. But I have to start untethering the life that I’ve created for myself.
And what I found in my burnout recovery is that this work for me is something that I just continue to do. So it’s something I. You know, I had this tough week, and So I kind of processed things like with the closest people to me, which I’m so grateful for, those people in my life, you know. You are. So. Thank you. I feel like today, like Brene Brown talks about on her podcast, she calls it the pause.
She calls her podcast the pause cast sometimes because she’s just like breathing and taking time and letting things land. So this might be a little bit of a pause cast today because, yeah, a lot of emotions coming up for me today.
So, yeah, I processed it with my. My closest peeps. That was helpful. And I gave myself permission to just take some breaks yesterday. You know, I had a pretty packed and, you know, took some more breaks. Went to my favorite store. It was weirdly regulating for me to go to like my favorite grocery store. No, it just is what it is.
Got myself some sushi, you know, little, little things that kind of can help me care take. Went to bed early, exercise. I saw my pt. So that just happened to be on that same day. I don’t know. PT I just find super regulating. Just. It’s wonderful. So I always recommend, you know, some kind of body based modality in your care if you have been burned out.
So a lot of my clients, like, I have one. Yeah, I feel like everyone’s doing a body based therapy right now, like acupuncture, cranial sacral, PT massage. Yeah. Seems like most of my people are doing some kind of body based work, so I’d consider that for yourself. Okay, I think I can speak. So burnout makes us feel like everything is too much. When you’re burned out, everything feels overwhelming and your brain is looking for ease. You’re drowning in exhaustion and too much to do.
So I haven’t really talked about this explicitly on the podcast, but. No, I mean, I’ve mentioned it, but I think we therapists chased all these certifications because doing something feels better than facing this.
Something needs to go. You can’t keep carrying everything. You can no longer keep caretaking as much as you are doing. I did a rough estimation of some of the certifications that I got.
And some of this was like, I feel like in Covid a lot of us were probably doing some certification stacking. We’re like, wow, I can do some online learning. That’s cool.
I. I couldn’t access, like, I thought about doing an Emdrea EMDR training for many, many years. So I did a Pesi one in like 2014, I think with one of my babies.
Who was a baby then? I don’t even know. Gosh, I was Nursing and like pumping during part of the training. So I never could see, like, how could I even do the three required weekends to be EMDR certified.
But when a pandemic happened, it was like, oh, you know, I think it’s, it’s cool that we can do some things now that we can’t do. And so I think a lot of us got wrapped up into certification stacking.
That a lot of us did. Right. So anywho, I’m estimating I probably spent two to three thousand dollars on my website making changes to trying to figure out, okay, can I market intensives, can I do couples retreats, could I change my whole niche into doing brain injury?
So I was kind of more open. I did change my niche, so I did practice as a Christian psychologist and I had that on my website. And that no longer worked for me to advertise and see that clientele for many reasons that I want to do a podcast episode on.
Not sure if I have my mind around all of that yet.
Uh, so I took all that off my website and was going to focus on niching and brain injury. And so I did a whole website on that, hoping to kind of come off panels and do that insurance panels for those of you who are not US based.
So focus on a niche. I estimated that really I probably lost $40,000 worth of income because I wasn’t earning potentially what I could if I had a job, a different job.
Right. So that’s probably like 40,000 a year I could have been making.
My EMDR certification was probably upwards of $5,000 worth. All of the consultation hours. So I, I can submit for EMDRIA consultant. Tell me if I should do it.
I don’t know.
I, I, I do, I do appreciate the training that I got. I feel like it really helped me get a deep understanding of trauma treatment that I probably wouldn’t have accessed before.
And I feel like I bring that knowledge to my work as a consultant and as a school psychologist. Now, for folks who maybe don’t understand the nervous system as well, don’t understand trauma as well, and I feel like it is an asset that I think that’s good that I have that training still cost like nearly five grand, though. I’m estimating that perhaps my burnout cost me $87,000 or close to that in the time that I was trying to figure this all out. And I, I just feel like giving you that number is helpful because what I see a lot of therapists want to do is get all these certifications in order to figure out their next step when it you may not even go in that direction.
Right. And so it’s a lot of energy to put into like doing an EMDR certification or an IFS certification or a coaching certification when I don’t know if that’s where you’re going to land.
And so what I really would like you to do is take a break. And I just celebrated with a consulting client on them taking a break and ooh, I was so proud of them.
Just so proud, so proud of them for doing that. What today I want to talk to you about after all that vulnerable share and the certification corner is. Oh, and by the way, I think some of these, I think some of these organizations are an ML, MLM company, a multi level marketing company, their pyramid scheme, you know, they make their money off of us, off of us getting these certifications. And why aren’t we getting them when we’re initially trained if they are so important to our practice and we feel like that is the next step that we have to do that.
Why are we not being trained in EMDR as a new therapist and getting the supervision that we could have with EMDR or with IFS or with, you know, dbt, lmnop, all these certifications that we don’t have training in in our foundational training programs.
That’s a whole aside on how we train therapists and how I feel like a lot of times when I sit with therapists who don’t have these certifications, they feel like I don’t know enough, I should be getting all of these certifications.
It’s not enough for me just to have my license. I feel like when I got licensed I felt like I was impostering, that I didn’t know enough. Just, I think that’s just, just more the consequence of what happens in our field that we have kind of set up this situation in our profession to feel like we’re inadequate at the outset when as far as furthest from the truth.
Right. I value the, the newness, the creativity that a new clinician can bring that a more seasoned clinician may not have. Right. I think at all stages of our development in our careers we bring a unique skill set that perhaps a more mature or established clinician cannot bring.
Here’s my segue.
Your calendar as a caretaking tool. And I’m not going to say self care burnout makes you want to escape and run from all the ball of hard things that you’re doing instead of running or getting under your covers.
Sometimes you have to do that sometimes I have done that. Right? I have done that. I’d like you to think about as one tool in your burnout toolbox, as using your calendar for, to care for yourself.
Okay? A exercise I do with my consulting clients is I have them look at their calendar and do a depletion to renewal view of the things that are happening in their lives.
I have them write down. So you could even do this now, right? I want you to open up your calendar system or do this later. But if you’re in a, you’re not driving, you’re not doing all the things, perhaps just even doing a scan.
If you do your calendar in Google or you have some kind of ehr where you put most of your things in, look at it and from there just notice what tasks, sessions, things that you were doing has you feeling depleted in your week, what tasks are draining your energy.
And that can be. I want you to look at everything, Everything. At home, at work, all the things. Even when we think sometimes about, you know, oh, I’m, you know, doing these appointments to kind of help myself, I’m doing exercise or I’m meeting up with somebody, sometimes that’s not always an energy ad.
We think it’s good for us, right? But we really need to feel like, how do I feel at the end of that? Do I feel like it was something that renewed me, that felt good?
And I know sometimes if you’re in burnout, we don’t know, sometimes it could be renewing or depleting, depending on the day. But if there are things that are always depleting, that gives us information, it gives us a lot of information and like things you’re doing at home.
So open up your calendar. I have three Google Calendars and so I did this this past week. And when I do it, I am in such a better place. During my weeks, when I actually look at all of my three Google calendars and I wrote down everything that is on those Google calendars and see if number one can do,
I want to run away from this week. Is it doable? Can I do it? If not, what? What can I think about taking off? Sometimes we can’t take things off.
You know, things. Some things are a must. They have to happen. They must happen. Some things we can have control over. So a lot of times we feel like I’m looking at my calendar and I can’t change anything because everything is colored by burnout.
Everything is colored by feeling depleted constantly. However, there are often when we look at our calendar, there’s things that we can change. There’s control that we can have. Even if you want your practice to be gone or changed, or you don’t want to be in the agency job, or you just want something completely different, there’s something you can change right now. And I want to empower you to think through this. Even the smallest, smallest things, those. Identifying those energy drains and making small fixes.
So a small example for this is I don’t want to cook dinner on Thursday nights. I don’t want to do it. Someone else needs to do it, my partner mainly.
And I want them to like take the initiative and they would probably just go to the store and like buy sausages and have sausage, which I won’t eat. I won’t eat like grilled sausages.
No, no, thank you. But I just seem to probably let them do it and maybe I don’t eat it. I can just eat whatever the hell I want.
But I can also plan for some dinners, right? I can make like this weekend making a big batch of meatballs and we can have that again for something. I can let the kids cook eggs one night and just like, hey, you guys make dinner, you love eggs.
Let’s just do eggs one night, do breakfast for dinner. That’s fine.
So how can you create some ease in meal planning? Oftentimes for me it’s like that’s one of my big time commitments during the week is planning meals, cooking the meal.
Yes. That’s sometimes two hours at night, if we were thinking about sometimes three, start to finish. That’s a lot of time to think about. And often during all that, kids are, you know, all the making other demands of me, which they do because they’re children and that’s what they excel at, making demands of me. I don’t want them to feel like they’re draining me, you know, I don’t want them to feel that from me. I want to be able to be responsive and not seem like I’m about to snap.
So I need to have that be sustainable. So for you, you know, this is like one example in my life how that works for me. Right. So I’d have you think through, were you overloading yourself at home?
Are you cooking every night when you work just as hard as your partner?
Are you managing your kids entire social schedules?
What is your unseen mental load that you’re doing? So, you know, when I sit with this calendar, I’m writing down all the things in my Google calendar, I am doing kind of a brain dump as well of anything in my mind that is Weighing on me.
Anything that I have to do in the week, but also that I’m holding psychically. I just put that all. I have like a. It’s not even a branded planner, but I have one where it’s dated and then it has like a place where I can just write down anything that I’m kind of holding on to in my mind and I put everything.
So it’s brain dump E. You know, a lot of people talk about brain dumps, but I like to put it on my actual calendar so then I could potentially schedule it because then I have a place for it.
I’d have you think about that. I love brain dumps as well. So if you just want to brain dump and then do the calendar second, that can be totally be your process and I might get back into.
So when I worked in neuro rehab, I had folks often do a whiteboard system where they would have one thing they need to remember to do or when they would start a task and their brain would just interrupt them so many times.
I have them have a whiteboard and I have one on my desk. I have a small glass whiteboard which I don’t know where the actual dry erase marker is right now.
So maybe I need to buy some dry erase markers. I’m going to write that down on my calendar. Where are you calendar? Because I could be writing that down on my dry erase board that’s right in front of me so that I never miss it.
And then when it’s gone, I erase it. Those are like the things when you’re trying to do some kind of deep work or now writing notes, which everything will come in.
When you’re writing notes, you have your little whiteboard or you have your, you know, you have your pad of paper. So you don’t go into opening a tab or opening your phone or oh, let me look this up real quick.
You can write it down so it doesn’t distract your brain from the actual task you’re trying to do.
Okay. So identifying our drains each week, writing down everything that is happening in some kind of brain dumpy way, I do it right on my calendar. You could also do a separate note pad of paper that needs to get done.
And so think about like if you think I’m the one managing my kids social calendar, you know, and doing all that, perhaps you still take that if you’re like the contact between the parents.
But perhaps you ask your partner, can you take, you know, Billy to soccer or can you do the X, Y and Z? Can you take this Part of it. So you’re asking for support because oftentimes we have that mental load that’s running in our brain that we don’t often like.
Our partners aren’t aware that we’re struggling with it. They’re just like, oh, okay, they do that. I do this. That’s the conversations I have with my partner. Often. They don’t understand how it might be weighing on me.
And I feel like my growth edge has been asking for support when I need it and in very specific ways. So I would encourage you for that if you have a partner to do that.
If not, then it is all on you. So writing down everything is important. So you know what all those things are that you need to do. If you’re a caretaker for someone in your life or other people that you need to look after in your own life to think through that.
If there’s anything when you’re writing, when you’re looking at your calendar and you’re seeing the energy drains, I would encourage you. Is there anything you can just say no to?
We’re just saying no to this. We are not doing this anymore. Like, I am not scheduling myself after 3:00, after 4:00. That’s a no. I don’t see. I don’t see clients after that time.
Or I don’t take clients on Mondays. I don’t see clients on Wednesdays. I’m just going to write on Wednesdays. That’s something I’m. I’m thinking about doing, is just doing writing and content creation on Wednesdays, perhaps.
So I have that day of deep work. And by the way, deep work. Recommend it. Cal Newport, if you need some strategies for that. I often use some of his strategies.
And slow productivity, which is a really balanced way to look at productivity because it’s not like a, you know, we’re going to pomodoro everything. Doing 20 minutes on task and 10 minutes off and 20 minutes on and 10 minutes off.
Oftentimes our brains don’t work like that. So think about that. So if there is anything you can say no to, like, it’s easy, you know, let’s just. We’re done with that.
We’re not doing that anymore. No, let it go.
I won’t sing Let it go to you, but I’m thinking of it.
If you need permission, I grant it. I do.
Okay, so we’re gonna say no to some things. You know, can you drop that laundry off this week? No one’s gonna know. Let’s do it. I support it.
And then we’re gonna plan for some energy restoration.
So I want you to think of all those renewing experiences.
One energy renewal category per week. Okay. So the different categories are nutrition, sleep, movement, and connection. We’re just going to focus on one. If you do more, that is a bonus.
But I find that if we don’t build small habits. And again, James clear all the things related to building habits. I love his book, which is based in behavioral psychology.
Hidden invented. There’s no really new ideas, but the way he packaged it, packages it was really, really helpful. So check out that book. So scheduling your renewal. Renewal time. So I didn’t realize just how much I’m not taking lunch during the week.
So take a lunch. That sounds crazy, right? To some people. Oh, I’m actually going to, like, sit down and have a plated lunch every day.
When I’m at.
Sometimes I’m working at a school, I’m actually going to go like in the break room, pick up the lunch and sit there, maybe talk to people. That might be good.
So stop eating at your desk crouched over your laptop.
Literally. It takes about 10 minutes to eat. I promise you it doesn’t take that long. But the. The restoration you can feel of even just if it’s 10 minutes, I’m happy for 10 minutes.
I would love 30 minutes for you. I’d love an hour for you. But if we’re starting with I’m gonna heat up my food and I’m gonna sit at a different location than my desk.
Perfect. Love it. Put that in your calendar. Plated lunch or lunch in a separate setting, please. We can start there. I am guilty of it too. All right, so I want you to think of any other experiences that you can put in your schedule. Like sometimes I have to put in my schedule to call my friends to connect with people that I want to connect with.
Plan my tennis for the week. So I often plan. Will plan my tennis and make sure I’m getting together with the people that I like to play with. And you know, in there is some connection sometime where I can talk with them.
And so I’m trying to do that every week where I’m making those connections and focusing on that for myself and also, you know, just touching base with the people I really care about.
My cousin is one of those. My parents who don’t live near me are those people. My brother, he’s a great. He calls me all the time, so I’m so thankful for him.
And he. He usually just has. His energy is wonderful. Like, he’s a sal and he is just funny. It’s just hilarious.
So I love my conversations with my brother and then touching base with the people that are, you know, give me energy that I text with and enjoy talking with. I think, you know, making sure that I do that as well.
So schedule that renewal time for yourself. You know that it’s going to be part of your caretaking to do those things again. I would think of, you know, one connection point.
Can we plan one physical connection with another person? For me, that’s tennis. Like, I’m going to plan. I get a double win because I get to play tennis and I get to, you know, hang out with somebody I really like.
So that. That’s what I schedule in my schedule. Right now. I would like to get to doing, like a monthly coffee chat with a friend as well. So I’m thinking of incorporating that because I keep saying it’s going to happen and it hasn’t happened.
So, you know, I heard this podcast this week by Cal again. Cal Newport is often in my brain in my podcast feed, and he was talking about, like, when in the 50s and 60s, like, if we think of the Mad Men kind of advertisers, they. The p. When they first started going to doing knowledge work, you know, and they.
People weren’t farming or doing hard labor for their work. No one thought of exercise. They didn’t realize that we had to think about exercise now. And so they had to.
I think there was a big focus on, let’s exercise. Make sure you get your exercise in. So I think that was kind of the health focus at that point in time.
And now with the way our lives are, with being siloed more than ever. I’ve talked a lot about how people feel more disconnected and lonely. We have to now think about planning our connection.
And I think the friendship research is telling us this. There’s people feeling like we don’t have friendships anymore. It does take intentionality to do this. So just like in the 50s and 60s where they had to intentionally think about exercising because they weren’t working on a farm, when we’re on our computers and devices all the time, we’re not thinking of actually seeing people in our lives, of calling someone in our lives. So if you can plan that one connection this week, that’s what I’d like you to think about, putting that in your schedule.
I’d like you to think about one way you can move your body. I am, you know, I teach like four fitness classes a week, and I play tennis three or four times a week.
So I, that is just me. That is something that I love to do and it works for me. A lot of times I’ve worked with, I mean, over the years when I work with people after concussion, they had exercise intolerance and they were not moving at all.
And so I would really help them think about what is the smallest way you can get movement in and joyfully what’s going to work for you. So if it’s going outside for 10 minutes, I’d rather someone just go outside for 10 minutes, be outside, look at a tree.
I’m looking at snow falling. It’s March. I wouldn’t even touch base on that. How I’m, I’m almost, it’s almost April. I’m ready to not see snow anyway.
But is there a walk? Is there a favorite workout class? You know, like a yoga class or a dance class or a weight training class? Or maybe you like weightlifting.
Maybe it’s going to the gym and doing, you know, a circuit that you have liked to do in the past. Maybe it’s a run. Maybe it’s just some way to think of what is one way that I can schedule in my week if I’m not doing it already, to move my body.
And for those of you who are over exercisers, I, I guess I might be considered that to think about what is one way that I can slowly move my body, that I can slowly do a restorative practice. So sometimes I will, since I teach fitness classes, I will do like the warmup portion or the mobility portion of my workout.
So I’ll practice that at home on my mat. And so that is really just to have some more regulation in my day, which also helps with, you know, when I’m typing a lot.
It helps with that kind of shoulder fatigue that I can get into from typing and also from 30 years of playing tennis. So way to move your body. I would have you think about that.
And I hate to call it exercise. So I often talk about what is a joyful way to move your body. This week think about that. If you can get the double win with having a friend on a walk, I love that too.
What’s one bedtime habit to improve your sleep? So one of the biggest things that we know is implicated in chronic stress is lack of sleep. So is it I’m going to park my phone by 10pm and not look at it anymore or I’m going to pick out a new novel that I can read at night because I know that’s going to relax me.
Before when I was in burnout, I was in this phase of just like reading all these business books or all these books on trauma or I don’t know, I was just in this knowledge consumption phase and I had to move to reading a novel that would not activate me.
Sometimes I read like dystopian future novels because I have like existential, all kinds of things. Existential. I’ve always thought about life or death and that’s a, that’s fun for me to do sometimes.
But not before bed. Oh yeah, I can’t read Viktor Frankl before bed because it gets me just in weird places, you know, that kind of thing. When I was in this phase of burnout, I was trying to kind of wrestle with my existence and who I was and what does this mean?
And we need ease.
So at bedtime we need a wind down habit. Think about if you are a parent or if you’ve seen a routine for a child. Like that is something you did with them every night to get them into that routine of okay, every night we do your bath, we do, you know, a story, we do a song, we turn down the lights and we say goodnight. You give a kiss and a cuddle. We need a routine for ourselves as well.
So is it. I’m going to lower the lights, I’m going to, you know, get all my things ready, I’m going to put on my lotion, I’m going to, you know, get my water by my nightstand, my novel, and I’m going to read for 10 minutes and then maybe I’ll write down.
So if I always have a pad of paper by my bed in case I need to do a brain dump. Because oftentimes if my brain is really not able to relax, I’ll just write it down.
So I’m not going to engage with it, but I’m going to write it down as more of a brain dump activity to help myself sleep. But one bedtime habit, not all the things that Jen does.
Oh, myself mine down. So I might say I’m gonna park my phone by 10pm or I’m gonna put out my novel that I’m gonna read at night. Maybe I won’t even read it.
Sometimes I read like actually three sentences and then I put the book up and I really don’t read it at all. Sometimes I don’t read before bed. So it’s just there.
So I know it’s there if I need that to fall asleep. So immediate shifts that you can make this week, I would have you focus on the different pillars of brain health that I talk often about.
So that’s nutrition. So what is the one meal I can plan? Maybe it’s just one dinner or one breakfast or you’re gonna pack your lunch every day for the next day to take care of yourself.
This is caretaking that we’re gonna take care of ourselves in this way. What is one habit that can help improve my sleep? Is that parking my phone at 10pm Is that reading the novel?
Whatever. You want to do one thing, one way to incorporate movement in your week. So I’m going to plan a workout. I am going to do 10 minutes of walking after work every week, whatever.
Like just plan one thing and then one friend to connect with. I would love you to do it in person. So one plan to connect with someone per week. That is what I have.
That is what I would like you to think about putting into your schedule. So the power of one is very, very powerful. I want you to think about habits versus radical change.
So those 1% changes that we can make to start to make those small shifts to start to feel like you’re more connected to yourself and more connected to other people.
I would also love you to think about the power of play. So if any of these things you can incorporate some kind of play to restore your energy and joy.
So anything you can try, like board games. I’m a tennis player and I just read some research that tennis players can live up to 9.7 years longer because they’re involved in often social circles.
And I think of bilateral stem. Hey, we’re moving both sides of our body. That’s great. Also, I think it’s a social nature of racket sports. So pickleball is huge. It’s bigger than tennis, which I, I have feelings about.
I can’t even. But a lot of people are playing pickleball these days. And if you like pickleball, it’s good for you.
But I think of thinking of some type of play and if it’s joyful, do it. If it’s not, don’t, don’t do it. Maybe it’s a board game. Maybe it’s something you, you do just to incorporate that spirit of play in your life that it doesn’t feel like competitive or too much.
So those small light moments that bring life back into your week, each week I’d have you think about, okay, so what I want you to take away from today is burnout makes everything feel huge.
Like, I can’t change this. I can’t feel better. Nothing feels good. I want you to think about small, intentional shifts that create real change over time. That’s going to be the way things change instead of radical things that we need to do.
If you need a radical change, like if you are not functioning, you need a break. Like, you 100% need to not work for a little bit, whether that be a few days, a few weeks, or a few months.
That’s what you need to think about if you need to stop. But if you’re not at that place, then thinking of these small moves is best. So ask yourself what needs to go first?
What is one small thing that you can do to feel alive this week? All right, therapist, I will leave you with that. Have a good one.
