I have known Amanda since our mid-teens and what she is doing with her work at https://www.amandarocheleau.com/ is some of the most important work I have come across in my 20 years of practice massage. If you have not had a chance to listen to her, take it now.
Amanda is a registered social worker who specializes in teaching classes on dealing with burnout. Amanda shares her personal experience of going through a burnout in her 20s, which led her to become passionate about talking about burnout, compassion fatigue, and related psychological issues. She discusses the signs and symptoms of burnout. Amanda emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, self-compassion, and mindfulness practices to prevent and recover from burnout. She also highlights the concept of 'empathy-based stress' or 'emotional residue' that healthcare professionals often experience when connecting with patients' suffering. Amanda provides insights & practical strategies for managing burnout.
The three general chapters of the burnout experience: exhaustion, mental distancing and cynicism, and feelings of inefficacy or lack of confidence. She explains how these symptoms can manifest and how they can impact an individual's personal and professional life.
Amanda emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and self-compassion in preventing and recovering from burnout. She discusses the concept of 'near enemy,' where good qualities can be taken too far and become detrimental. Amanda also highlights the role of mindfulness practices and grounding exercises in cultivating self-awareness and self-compassion.
Amanda introduces the concept of 'empathy-based stress' or 'emotional residue,' which refers to the stress and emotional burden that healthcare professionals experience when connecting with patients' suffering. She discusses the importance of differentiating between one's own emotions and those of others, as well as practices for cleansing and releasing emotional residue.
Troy and Amanda discuss the importance of maintaining a sense of purpose and hope in the healing process, both for healthcare professionals and their patients. They explore the role of context, rapport, and vulnerability in the healing process, and the need for humility in recognizing that not every approach works for every individual.
Amanda shares information about her website and podcast, where she provides free resources and tools for assessing and managing burnout and compassion fatigue. She emphasizes the importance of seeking help and support when experiencing burnout symptoms.
Action Items
I have known Amanda since our mid-teens and what she is doing with her work at https://www.amandarocheleau.com/ is some of the most important work I have come across in my 20 years of practice massage. If you have not had a chance to listen to her, take it now.
Amanda is a registered social worker who specializes in teaching classes on dealing with burnout. Amanda shares her personal experience of going through a burnout in her 20s, which led her to become passionate about talking about burnout, compassion fatigue, and related psychological issues. She discusses the signs and symptoms of burnout. Amanda emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, self-compassion, and mindfulness practices to prevent and recover from burnout. She also highlights the concept of 'empathy-based stress' or 'emotional residue' that healthcare professionals often experience when connecting with patients' suffering. Amanda provides insights & practical strategies for managing burnout.
The three general chapters of the burnout experience: exhaustion, mental distancing and cynicism, and feelings of inefficacy or lack of confidence. She explains how these symptoms can manifest and how they can impact an individual's personal and professional life.
Amanda emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and self-compassion in preventing and recovering from burnout. She discusses the concept of 'near enemy,' where good qualities can be taken too far and become detrimental. Amanda also highlights the role of mindfulness practices and grounding exercises in cultivating self-awareness and self-compassion.
Amanda introduces the concept of 'empathy-based stress' or 'emotional residue,' which refers to the stress and emotional burden that healthcare professionals experience when connecting with patients' suffering. She discusses the importance of differentiating between one's own emotions and those of others, as well as practices for cleansing and releasing emotional residue.
Troy and Amanda discuss the importance of maintaining a sense of purpose and hope in the healing process, both for healthcare professionals and their patients. They explore the role of context, rapport, and vulnerability in the healing process, and the need for humility in recognizing that not every approach works for every individual.
Amanda shares information about her website and podcast, where she provides free resources and tools for assessing and managing burnout and compassion fatigue. She emphasizes the importance of seeking help and support when experiencing burnout symptoms.
Action Items
Hello, everybody. Welcome again to another podcast of the Sensory Approach to Manual Therapy. My guest today is Amanda Rochalou, who I have known 25 -ish years now, since we were teenagers. And I'm excited to talk about her because the last couple podcasts we've done have really focused on what we in the profession experience with burnout, some of the signs, things like that, some of the results of burnout.
And one has been from an athlete on what they do to help cope with it and another professional, but this time we're going to speak with someone who teaches classes on how to help people deal with burnout, especially in the healthcare industry, which is really important.
So I'm going to let Amanda introduce herself here and say hi. Hey, thank you. That was actually a pretty good introduction right there. That is what I do, and that is who I am. My name is Amanda, and I'm a registered social worker in Ontario, actually.
So I am on the border, still a Quebecer, living in Gatineau, but my practice is in Ontario. And yeah, so as a life of a social worker, I spent a lot of time with folks who are dealing with pretty severe mental health issues and addiction issues and trauma issues.
And it took about 10 years into my career for me to realize how important the topic of burnout was to me personally and to my profession. And that's because you experienced that, correct? Because I experienced a massive burnout in my 20s, which I'm open book, but love talking about it actually, because I tell my story.
But that being said, I've heard my story through others like a thousand times over now. But that was a turning point in my career. And so now it's days, I really am passionate about talking about burnout and other related psychological issues like compassion, fatigue and secondary traumatic stress, really relevant to any sort of I call, I call us all helpers, like it's like the collective term that sort of brings us all together.
We help in different ways. And we have different backgrounds and different professions, but different job titles. But we're, you know, the thing we all have in common is that we're out there just trying to help people.
And, and there's there's a there's a tax to that experience. And so These days I do workshops, as you said, I teach about how to protect ourselves and how to prevent burnout but also how to recover from it.
I talk about workplace wellness and personal wellness and what I like calling mindful self care. I love breaking the rules about self care and to try to define it differently than just kind of the pampering ourselves kind of aspect.
And then I'm really excited to dig into that. Right. Like, yeah, we got a lot to talk about. So, yeah, so that's a little bit of what I do and, and, and what I've experienced so far, and I would love to have this conversation with you, but all that.
Fantastic. And about a year ago Amanda actually had me as a guest on her podcast, The Giving Tree, and it was a similar subject only we approached it more from, I approached it more from a physiological aspect of what's happening to the brain through memory and habit and habituation.
And today I want to have her approach to it which is going to be focusing a lot on the self care aspect because I think that's something that a lot of manual therapists are taught body mechanics they're taught how to try to maintain grounded presence during treatment so they don't walk away with transference issues and things like that.
But, you know, most manual therapists are not business professionals, they're not taught how to run a very successful business. And yet most of us are self employed it's still the largest category and so the stresses of running a business, let alone client retention all these things like that come into like you said there's a tax on being a health care provider.
And those taxes are often not accounted for. And so I'm excited to talk about that. Now, with that in mind, do you want to start with maybe your personal experience around your burnout and your story because I'm sure some listeners, like I know myself, because I know your story but I'm sure some of my listeners will also sit there and relate and be like, Oh, that's, that's something that that I fully understand and relate to and to see now that you've come out of it shining really and stronger for it will hopefully give them an understanding of hope as well.
Yeah, well, and it's interesting that you word it that way because I often say to myself on a regular basis, you know, when I'm kind of doing some gratitude practices, I often mentally say to myself that I am grateful for my burnout because it was a massive pivotal moment in my life and, you know, makes me who I am today.
So I don't regret it, I don't try to hide it. I am grateful for it. So I don't know, where do I even start with that story? I mean- You started with addiction mainly, correct? Yeah, I was working in the shelter systems in Ottawa and I was working in the shelter systems in Ottawa working, you know, in very psychologically demanding jobs.
I mean, you know, providing, providing, you know, psychotherapy, counseling, providing crisis interventions, it was intense work. At the time, I had normalized it a lot, though. You know, when you're doing that work, it just becomes your world.
And a lot of people kind of say, directly or indirectly, kind of like, well, this is what you know, it's tough. Which is a really interesting way. Yeah, it's a really interesting way of deflecting the importance, seriousness and severity of the impact that type of work has.
It just kind of says you don't have it. Yeah, exactly. So I mean, looking back, it's like, it's so funny having left those that that kind of crisis work. Looking back, I was like, Oh my god, that was really wild stuff.
So it was so needless to say, there were a lot of stressors, you know, there was just a lot that I was exposed to things I had to do things I had to see decisions I had to make that were, you know, frankly, very troubling, very stressful.
And so there was that like the mental load and the emotional burden of going through those struggles. But another big part of the burnout story was just also, frankly, my personality and my core beliefs of what I was going into adulthood, a career and becoming a parent, you know, all of those beliefs were pretty much set me up to fail.
It's a burnout. Because I thought it was one of the rare times I'll hear someone say my beliefs set me up for failure, not success. And it's so funny, because you can look at them from these different angles and you think like, well, those are some pretty cool ideas like, you know, this like, mission in life to be the best person that you can be and to be, you know, this generous, giving, you know, helpful person.
Of course, those are a lot of my core values, and they led me, you know, factors in a lot of my decision making. But you know, I kind of like kind of joke about it, but I sort of raise my hand and kind of go like, I'm an overachiever people pleaser in recovery.
Like, that was that was me, right? And so being an overachiever people pleaser meant that I did prioritize the needs of others over my own, pretty much all the time. And I had no sense of personal boundaries.
I had no idea that I had limits. I thought I was a superhero who was just like, go, go, go, and could live off coffee. You overachieve your people pleaser. My God, I'm going to remember that one because you just perfectly summarize like most people who believe in anything that you would say is like slightly for the betterment of the world, which is self -imbetterment, mindfulness, all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, you kind of just... Yeah, yeah. Very well defined what happens if they don't have limits on their ability to care for other humans and not put themselves into the realm of people who need care.
Yeah, even my quest for self -development, you know, how much time and energy I would spend in, you know, just trying to grow as a human being and like expand my mind and, you know, be aware of what is going on in the world.
That quest for self -development became this relentless cycle of self -improvement that led to me believing that I was never good enough as I was. Never good enough in that you can always do better even when you have an empty gas tank.
You can always give more, you can always give another dollar, you can always give a little more of your energy, you can always be friendlier, give an ear to someone even when you're the one who needs it.
You bet. That's exactly it. Self -improvement's a bitch. What's that? Self -improvement's a bitch is what you're saying. Well, you know, it's interesting, I later in life learned a term, it's a Buddhist psychology term, and it's called the near enemy.
And so we often think about things in opposites. We think, oh, there's self -improvement over here and then there's, you know, I don't know, laziness or, you know, something like that over here. But the near enemy is always like, it's like when you take a good thing and you just go a little too far with it and you cross that line.
And that language, that term resonated a lot with me. And then I was like, I do a lot of really good stuff. I've got a lot of really great, you know, aspects of my personality and like drivers and quads.
qualities and strengths. And then I just, I just seemed to always just push it a little too far into that near enemy, you know? I think I love that term too, but you're also describing to me something that happens so much in the self -employment world, which again, is most manual therapists, which I know at the time you were working a lot for yourself.
And it's this thing of separating the self from their business identity, meaning, you know, with your friends and your family, when you're a giver, you're going to want to give no matter what, when someone who you know personally is in need, you're going to give everything you can to help them out.
Yeah. And then when it comes to business, because that's a personality trait, it's a difficult thing to put limits on and to say, I need to step away. I need to have boundaries. I need to limit my availabilities.
I need to turn my phone off. I need to not answer those messages. simply because it's, it's in our nature to want to do that. And then we wrap up our business with our identity. So it's like, if I don't do it, then I will, I will not only be changing my identity, but I'll be losing my business at the same time.
There's those limits. Yeah, absolutely. And there's, you know, when you work for yourself, there's nobody really who's, you know, helping you be accountable to those limitations. And there's no parameters around the job.
I mean, any of you go into a job that, you know, that they give you a job description, they say, well, you're going to work 40 hours a week. And you're going to take your lunches. And this is what you do.
And this is what you don't do. And you know, even in Ontario, now they have laws that are about, you know, like not being communicated with after after work, I've completely the Yeah, and for instance, like that on Sunday, the right to disconnect the right to disconnect, right.
And so you know, it's like, again, there, when we're sort of employed, there, it's a little easier to figure out where those boundaries are when you're self employed, you have to make up the rules yourself.
And, and we do put a lot of pressure on ourselves. And that's, I think, the part of the burnout story that I like talking about the most is sort of the psychological part of it, the untold story that's happening in your own head, and with your own fears and with your own, you know, traits and characteristics, because we all have stressors, like without a doubt, you could you can just create this formula that says like, if you have enough, overwhelming amount of stressors that cause overwhelming amount of stress or chronic stress, like that's what burnout is essentially a chronic stress syndrome, it's, you know, you will absolutely experience burnout symptoms, if you're dealing with chronic stress, and chronic stress typically comes from chronic stressors.
So that's like most of our lives. We all have like so chronic stressors. Yeah, that's a fantastic. way of saying it because in all the other podcasts I mentioned it and I'll mention it here again. I don't know if I remember, I don't think I knew it at the time when I did your podcast, which was allostatic load.
And allostatic load is defined as the ability to withstand daily cumulative stress. That's it. And allostatic overload is when we're overwhelmed. So it's like you said, chronic stressors, you know, some are momentary, traffic accident in front of you, some are lifelong, you know, your job, things like that.
And so you're just describing this amazing term that we have, allostatic load, which when it becomes chronically overwhelmed, creates this background stress that that's hard for us to manage over long term.
So what are some of the symptoms that you find? typically are appearing not only for yourself, but also for the people who you work with a lot of the time where you're saying, okay, your chronic stressors are, you know, like here are some warning signs that you should start paying attention.
Yeah. Well, the research I've done around burnout do typically give you sort of these three general chapters of the experience. And then in those chapters, there's some symptomology. So chapter one is exhaustion, right?
Energy depletion. So that is one that most of us can relate to. And that is, if you start noticing that, that chronic exhaustion, right? That the way I always say it is like, when you start borrowing energy from tomorrow to get through today, and then you start your day tomorrow with like in debt, in energy debt, right?
And that if that happens long enough, then that's not only very, you know, like that, that causes a whole other sort of stress on the body, right? Because your nervous system knows that it is not regulated and that it is trying to do more than it can replenish, kind of like trying to drive the car on an empty gas tank, right?
But the next chapter of that is really interesting because it is an attitude shift that happens. It's the mental distancing. It's the cynicism and the negativity that starts to seep into your psychological experience and how you, how you approach the world and how you live your life and how you are in your relationships, or how you are, how you see your job or your business, right?
And it's just like, that negativity seeps in and it's like you put on that lens and you can't, you know, there's no, there's, it's not just a matter of relaxing the body or replenishing the energy at that point.
It's that you cannot no longer relax the stress of how you see the world. So that mental distancing, I think is essentially like a psychological coping mechanism because you're like, wow, everything's so overwhelming.
So if I care less, or if I'm less mentally, engaged as I go through the motions, then maybe that's just the only way that I can replenish or like hold some energy, you know, that really makes me think reevaluate that really makes me reevaluate a dark senses of humor, because I'm a big fan of cynicism.
And it just makes it really interesting. All of a sudden, we're like, Oh, I wonder that there's there's probably an equilibrium somewhere where cynicism is not related to burn out, right? But it would just be interesting to look back like I look back at some of the people I've worked with when I was on the cycling circuit.
And I look back on some of the people I've worked with in the sports industry. And I go, Oh, they were cynical humans, and they were burnt out, I can like literally go through the names in my head. And I'm like, that person was in a bad mood cynical, that person was in a funny mood cynical.
And you can tell when they were like, Oh, you should have left the industry change teams, you should have changed jobs, or taken a break. because it was obvious now that I look back at it. Yeah. I think it's important to look at the nuances for sure.
And like what I think I hear you saying is that there is this kind of intuition that sort of says like where there is a line, even though it's really hard to articulate that. Cause I also, that's actually one of my warning signs that I sort of track for myself is my humor.
So just in general, like if I, I mean, I just, my husband just said this morning, like you've been really playful for like three weeks. And I mean, like, yeah, like that's like really in the indicator of like where I'm at in terms of that balance, right?
And how far from burnout I am. And so the playfulness disappears, the creativity disappears, the humor doesn't disappear, but it gets like, like I'm pretty sharp. I think I'm like humor is like also, you know, And yeah, exactly, you know, and I like the dark humor and I know who I can joke with that way, but some, you know, one of those like little red alerts is when something comes out of my mouth and like either my partner or friend, I'll be like, ooh, like too far, too far, too far.
Or it doesn't get the laugh you thought it was gonna get. And it doesn't, and it just makes their jaw drop. Then you're like, yeah, that's not just my regular old, you know, kind of dark humor, that's.
That's a passive aggressive version of saying I'm not happy. Yeah, that was something coming out there trying to be expressed. So yeah, so that's phase two, too. And you know, it's kind of subtle. And again, we can break it down to other symptoms, but the humor is a perfect, you know, little sliver of it.
Phase three of the burnout experience is the feelings of inefficacy or like lack of confidence. So the way I always say it is sort of like that, like cynicism gets turned inward. And you're not valuable enough kind of things.
Yeah, it's like self judgment. And you're questioning. everything, imposter syndrome, self doubt. And in reality, you actually by the time you get there, you actually have been probably making a lot of mistakes, because the chronic stress is piling up and it is impacting your decision making process and 100%.
So so then you start you start personalizing all that instead of seeing it as symptoms of burnout, you know, oh, like, naturally, I'd be messing up a lot, or, you know, not building great connections with my clients or something.
Because of all this chronic stress, no, no, then you then instead you go, I'm, I'm, I'm f up, you know, I'm, I'm, you don't have this podcast has vulgarity on it. It's okay. Okay. So so but yeah, it's all that personalization now of the whole burnout experience.
And it's amazing how when I'm talking to burnout how personal they take it. and feel and I love doing that work with people and therapy to help them understand the whole thing as an equation and I call it like the ecosystem.
Like you're in this environment, this ecosystem and frankly, we could probably go on a big rant to just about how like in general society kind of sets us all up for burnout, right? I was gonna go back to- I felt that we're all trying to live.
Yeah, I was gonna go back to point number one because to me that one, it's interesting because I can see exhaustion being a stage where people are self -aware. Oh, I'm tired. I feel exhausted and it's been long -term.
Stage number two, I can see beginning in the process of like, oh man, that was dark, that wasn't dark, that was passive, it wasn't passive. So you're kind of conscious of your behavior but kind of unconscious.
And the last one, I really, I can see people being completely unaware of that level where they're so burnt out that they're disconnected from themselves and they don't realize that that lack in self -confidence, that imposter syndrome is coming from behavior that they've set up and it almost, it's so internalized that it's unconscious.
And so it's interesting because with the exhaustion level, I mean, I could probably go outside and talk to 50 of my neighbors and 49 of them will tell me they're exhausted. Yep. And so how do people begin determining or understanding this level of exhaustion is a positive, because like, for example, I can be exhausted because I worked out or I did a big construction project or I've been teaching a lot of classes or had big caseload, or I can be exhausted because I'm like depleting the tank because you're not sleeping enough, kids are sick or you're just exhausted in general.
How do you start distinguishing between, okay, this exhaustion that you're feeling, this fatigue that you're feeling is a positive, or it's just something that you're feeling. you know we're covered from or now it's getting chronic.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I want to, I want to say two things. So I want to answer that question, but I also want to back up to that unconscious experience that we were just referring to, because I think, I don't think we talked enough about that.
And I, there isn't necessarily any, anything to back this up. But as a, I would say, you know, a professional and an expert in the field, basically, I call that first phase burnout. Everything after that is numb out.
Oh, I like that. Yeah. So, and that's just the way I think about it. And the way I see it story after story after story, I think you are 100%, right? That that burnout is, it's just a way of, for me just to, I don't know, it's just way of classifying it, you know, but like, I see that pattern of like, Yeah, there's the burning the fuel, and just like having to gas up burn fuel and gas out kind of thing.
And then after that, I think a lot of the coping mechanisms that I see are like related to avoidance and without going like too far into, you know, psychotherapy terms and stuff, but like, that that is one of our go to, right, like fight, fight or flight, and or freeze our stress responses and how that shows up in our lives today, is like numbing out on the phone, you know, procrastination, sleep deprivation, decision procrastination.
Exactly, right. So, so yeah, so I so I really like that, that point. And that is why that a lot of people in really, really like in the later stages of burnout, is almost like, it almost like comes out of nowhere to them.
They're like, Whoa, I didn't know this was gonna happen to me. It's because yeah, we're just going. So, avoidance, do you feel like that? That's a I mean, sure, it might be a protective mechanism. But is it also perhaps just a mechanism of almost like a fear of admitting that there's a weakness within ourselves, which as a society, especially in the West, you know, people have a really hard time saying, I f'd up, I made a mistake, this isn't right.
And so here to say, Oh, I need to take a break. I'm not strong enough to handle this, which is obviously something a lot of people have a hard time saying. Is that avoidance more from an aspect of cultural education?
Or is it more just something internally that as humans, we like, no, we try to avoid change? Well, all of the above. I mean, I think that I think that that is one of those resiliency factors that can either make people a little bit more susceptible to burnout or protect people from burnout is their openness to vulnerability.
Their ability to ask for help. Even their perception of stress is one of the things that has been, you know, researched about the stress experience. is that if you kind of like what you were talking about before about sort of the I could be exhausted from from the workout.
And you accept that experience because there is this belief that I need to sort of stress my body in order for it to grow. And stress is not a bad thing stresses just, and we talked about this on honor on the podcast on my podcast right was like, instead of like demonizing this idea of stress being this negative experience, that people who who see stress and have these core beliefs where we go, well, this is this is actually okay, this is life and, and view it that way, actually experience less long term chronic stress as a result, right, it's a resiliency factor.
So, so yeah, I think that I think that some of the earlier warning signs like how do we know this exhaustion that we're experiencing because we're just living these full demanding, excuse me, busy day -to -day lives.
How do we know when it's a problem? We're crossing the line from just regular exhaustion to an issue that can lead to burnout. The questions that I always ask is, well, how do you refuel? How do you recharge?
How do you take care of yourself? And I know when people are like, I don't know what that means. I don't ever do it. I never take time for myself. It's always family first and job second or vice versa.
Then I know you're not just living a busy life where at the end of the day you're spent. I know now you're in debt because you are not consciously refueling. You're not consciously recovering. How do you encourage people?
Because for me, the word resilience is so vital. It's so important and so relevant because there is this aspect to being a human where resilience is necessary and without it we have... And people are resilient in some things.
I'm resilient in some aspects, but when it comes to speaking French, like learning the language perfectly, I've been speaking it for 43 years. I still don't speak it perfectly. I make mistakes all the time and trying to learn it hurts my brain.
My ability to withstand the stress of learning a new language is very difficult, whereas learning a new mathematical equation is my brain loves that kind of stuff or problem -solving behaviors. And so that ability to handle resilience...
I'm trying to remember his name. He was at the American Massage Therapy Association National Convention. He does something called the GRIT score. I can't remember his name, but anyways, he does something called the GRIT score.
And the goal was to find out where you fit on the resilience scale, essentially, and tools you can use to help it grow. But is that something you try to encourage people to do? like work on aspects of the resilience?
Well, it's interesting. I think that I think that that can definitely be a question that I ask, where sort of I'm looking for strengths. And interestingly enough, I think that what a lot of the helpers who are, you know, frontline workers doing kind of human service work, veterinary work, that kind of stuff, a lot of them will actually say, Oh, yeah, I'm a super resilient person, because we actually deal with a lot of crises and stuff like that.
And, and yeah, you know, I do that every day, and I'm, you know, haven't gone nuts yet, you know, maintain some sanity. So, and, and I actually could can really relate to that in that during the most crisis type situations, I'm probably one of the people in the room that's gonna have the most, what we call equanimity, right?
Like that psychological stability in the presence of chaos. And yet then again, I go, oh, okay, cool. So great strength, I mean, it's super important to, and we can call that resiliency in the sense of like, again, our ability to adapt and recover from a stressful experience.
But then when you like, so that's a little like, kind of like acute situations, then when you span out to sort of, as you were talking about that, that everyday stress, that's usually when they kind of go, and again, when you really cue them and go, so what do you do to recover in those moments?
They haven't a hard time naming it. Sometimes people are doing things, but they don't realize that those are actually recovery modes, or people are doing things and it kind of works in the short term, but probably not like, for example, avoidance by numbing on our phones, right?
Or eating something sweet, you know, it's immediate gratification with long -term consequences. Exactly, exactly. So that's the work that I really like doing, if getting people to become intentional, self -aware, you know, and doing things that you know actually are sort of filling up the cup from the bottom up, right?
Just not just like enough to get through those moments. So- I think you're describing something for me that I really like, which is like, most humans would say that in a crisis, they're good. Whether they are or not is a completely different subject.
Well, not most, not most humans, actually. Well, I don't know, I feel like most people would say, totally able to handle it or, you know, like, not everybody- And maybe it's something that is a very common experience amongst helpers.
And so you're talking to other helpers who are like that. Yeah. Like the reality is I think there's a lot of people who react really badly in crisis. In crisis, yeah. So the question there for resilience though would be not in the crisis moment because where I'm seeing, like with a lot of my clients right now who are burnt out, which I seem to, you know, because I just went through a burnout last year, I seem to be seeing a significant number of clients obviously, because that's part of my practice now.
And I'm seeing that it's not in the moment of crisis that they're failing. You know, like in the healthcare industry, all the nurses in Quebec, like most of the world right now are all overworked and things like that.
And so they're not failing when they're at their job. It's they go home, they're not, they don't have the energy to eat. Like I have two nurses right now I see who say they go home, they're so tired at the end of the shift that they go home, they fall asleep, they don't have time to eat food.
So they're not handling the resilience outside of the K of the crisis. And so with allostatic load, one of the things that I talk about in my courses, in my classes is . not filling the cup up from the bottom necessarily.
But if we look at our life like this vase and you fill it with information, eventually when we numb out, which I love that term, we check out, we do all these coping mechanisms that are designed to reduce chronic stresses.
What happens with long -term exposure to that is that we end up taking this large vase and making it small because we adapt to the stresses. We adapt to the container. The container adapts to the level of stress within it.
And so what happens though is that when that container gets smaller over time, we are then less able and less resilient to handle stressors that are different. And so how do we take that container and instead of filling it up from the bottom or emptying it out from the top, which however, instead of reducing the level of chronic stress, instead it's how do we take that container and say, let's make the container bigger.
Let's teach mechanisms where you are not going, that you're gonna be able to handle just the same level of stress and more with a positive outcome. And that's one of the things that really interests me with a lot of the work that you do.
Because to me, like when I listen to your podcast, that's all I'm hearing from people is that they're not necessarily in the place where they can reduce the stresses. They're not getting rid of their family.
They're not changing their jobs. Their stress levels are at a minimum and slash maximum at the exact same time. And so it's a fine balance. So how do we take their experience and say, okay, well, instead of keeping you within this tiny container, let's make your life, let's make it so where you can handle more.
And I like the mindfulness aspect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's probably my go -to mindfulness work, self -awareness work. Sometimes I say self -awareness because mindfulness freaks people out. They're like, oh God, is she gonna make me meditate?
I'm like, no, I'm not gonna make you meditate. I'm gonna make you pay attention to your life. I call it kinesthetic awareness. There you go, right? We all have these like workarounds like that. You're aware of your body in space and time.
Yeah, absolutely. And and you know, like, yeah, certain certain words kind of trigger us. And, and again, it's that comfort level of being vulnerable. Because one of the reasons why I say we're so many of us are not self aware or are afraid to do that self awareness work is because we're afraid that would or when we actually look in and say, how am I really doing?
Or what's really going on with me? How am I really feeling? What is my body telling me? We we approach that experience with judgment, with, you know, analysis and measurements and comparison. And obviously, it's a very unpleasant experience.
So then we avoid doing it. We just stay focused on everybody else and what's going on in the outside world. And we stop paying attention to the inside world. So the the combo is doing the self awareness work paying attention, and doing it with compassion, self compassion.
And If, you know, on a, on a, on a personal, psychological kind of healing process, those are the components that every person needs in order to heal from burnout or protect themselves from burnout. We, you know, you get those because I find they're really important.
Yeah, so self awareness and self compassion. It's it's the building blocks. So my self compassion is one. Yeah, the self compassion is one that I, I tell my clients all time because like they'll come in and I'll talk about posture and then they'll instantly change how they sit.
And my response is I don't care about the posture. There are millions of humans who have horrible posture who are pain free. So have whatever posture you want. I don't care about it. I do not believe that posture equals pain.
I believe posture is a consequence of pain. And most therapists would actually say it's posture is the reason for your pain. And so I tell them instantly your judgment on your own self is likely adding one chronic stress.
And it's also making it difficult for your willingness to change because you're getting stuck in this loop of guilt around your own behavior makes you less likely to change your behavior out of fear of failure.
And so I always tell them I go if you didn't do your exercises, I don't care. Yeah, I really don't care. We're going to get through this. It's going to take time the goal. It's a long recovery process.
If you have bad posture, if you didn't take your notes, if you didn't do no guilt here, it's about if you didn't do it, it's because you obviously had a level of exhaustion where the priority was recovery, not activity.
And I think that's something that just too many people aren't willing to be compassionate with themselves. We're in a world where harshness is a common reality. And so they think they have to crush themselves.
Yeah, exactly. The you know, the the stronger I'll be that you know, the faster I'll go. And, and yeah, it's about this sense of worthiness, right. So somebody could come in and say, you know, I'm worthy to be here.
I'm worthy, worthy to be on this journey. I want I want to treat myself kindly. I want to take care of myself. In reality, that didn't really come to fruition this week in terms of doing my exercises and my stretches and blah, blah, blah, blah.
But but but just because it didn't necessarily fit into my life in, you know, that that practical way, I still feel worthy. And then you have the opposite or people are like, I did my exercises and they're like, stressed about recovering properly.
Yeah, that is just they've completely missed the mark of just like sitting with the worthiness and exactly compassion, right? Pete Holmes, who's a comedian has this great bit where he says, you know, you think your problems matter.
It's like you think you're in Gatineau right now. Zoom out. Yeah, you're on a rock, floating and floating in infinite nothingness that's expanding. That doesn't make sense. And it's like, yeah, seriously, if you think this week you miss your exercises and your self -care and that it's going to play into the lifespan of your existence, zoom out and go, Oh, out of the 52 weeks in the year and the 60 plus years of my life is one week going to be what ruins my experience on earth, you know, like, no, it's not that one week of self -care where you're going to go, I failed horribly as a human.
And it's about reducing that level of guilt. And that's where that that's where what you do to me seems so important. I mean, you talk about compassion fatigue so much for first line workers and frontline workers.
And people have such a hard time being compassionate with themselves. And that's really what I want to spend the rest of this podcast about is, is you really expressing how it is that you think people can, you know, the tools that people can use, but also just just experiences that people can be aware, like, why am I not giving compassion to myself?
Because like during my burnout, that was definitely one of the biggest consequences. And without my wife helping me through it, it would have been a much different experience. But the fact that she gave me space to say, it's OK, you're allowed being weak, you're allowed feeling weak, you're allowed taking time, you're allowed, you're allowed not doing your exercises, you're allowed crying today, all these things like that, that sensation of feeling safe and vulnerable to have love for yourself and compassion for yourself really made it where, OK, I took maybe nine to 10 months to get out of my burnout, which to me is incredibly quick compared to what I see a lot of my clients going through who are at, you know, year three, year four, some of them.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so that idea of compassion to me really interests me. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's I think I think if you're going to talk about burnout, you have to talk about that piece, you know, again, both in the self -compassion being, you know, a bit of the antidote to it or a way of building up that immunity, that that resiliency, you know, the more we have self -compassion, it's kind of like it's kind of like boosting.
boosting your immunity so that when stressors come in, you're sort of, you know, you've got that buffer, that ability to, you know, get through it. So I think that self -compassion, again, from all angles, you know, or prevention, getting through difficult times and as well as recovery is super important.
And that piece around compassion fatigue, it's really tricky. I mean, this is what compassion fatigue really is and the terminology is kind of shifting that we call it empathy -based stress. So then when we're talking about all of the stress that's in our life, doing things, trying to keep up with the laundry, you know, trying to keep the business afloat and all this sort of stuff, there's all of those things.
Then there's empathy -based stress, which is the stress that we experience by connecting heart to heart with other people who are in struggle. So when people are on the bed and you're like, you're like just trying to, you know, maybe they're going, okay, like, did I pay the bills this month, and all that sort of stuff.
And then, you know, like you were saying before, like, you know, like, then somebody's confiding in you, and talking to you about their personal problems, because they feel safe in that space. And now they're starting, it's starting to flow, the vulnerability is because you've created this safe space.
And as you're moving the energy through the body, and you're asking them curious questions about their well being and about their life, right, all of a sudden, there's this openness, so people start talking about their personal problems.
And if you're an empathetic person, if you approach that wholeheartedly, you know, you're you're not just like, yeah, I'm writing down a note or something like that. But you're really like, wow, you're going through a lot, I empathize with that, I moved by that.
That's empathy based stress. So that is this like, that's an even more subtle chronic stress experience that's at play. So that, that, that can, you know, the way I always describe it is kind of like, you start off wholehearted, and then you connect with people, your empathy connects you to suffering.
And then you feel the brokenhearted, because you know how people are struggling. And then you don't know what to do about that. So what compassion fatigue is, is basically your heart going, I'm getting hurt out there.
Every time I listen to people. I love the way you just described that because yeah, it's, you know, as a massage therapist, we're not psychologists, and we're not supposed to be psychologists. And yet, you know, we talk about it's a joke in the industry, but we talk about it all time.
Someone is majority of the time naked under some sheets letting you touch them, aside from your spouse or your doctor who does that. And so there's this level of trust that is usually associated with your spouse or your doctor.
And so they confide in you and stuff that you're like, I wasn't ready for that story. I'm not trained for that story. But I have confidentiality laws around. around it, I'm not allowed, and I'm not allowed interacting in a certain way, because I'm not a psycho, I just have to hold the space.
But it means as a therapist, you have to sit there and go, I don't know what to do with this. That's wonderful, I love that. And I remember saying earlier in my career, like I wish I could unhear what I've heard sometimes, you know what I mean?
Cause like, yeah, sometimes you're in those spaces and you're like, I didn't consent to this, like this isn't coming at me. And once you know it, you cannot know it. And if you approach it, not just with knowing it, but like you're approaching it honestly with your heart, it creates heartache and your heart, everything in you is designed to survive, right?
Like it works just that's the way we're programmed. And so again, from that psychological point of view, like your nervous system, your psyche, your spirit goes, Oh, my God, this this is this feels dangerous.
This feels like a lot. I need to protect myself. So what do you do? You put walls up around your heart. You you numb your empathetic concern. You numb your self -awareness. You numb their feelings in order to get through that moment.
So it's not so painful as you're absorbing this information. The problem is that then that becomes pattern and it trickles into other areas of your life. So now this business that you created that you were incredibly passionate about, that you were so enthusiastic about, you know, spending the rest of your life doing, you're like, I feel nothing.
I know you have no joy around the experience and no joy around the experience. You go home to your partner and you're like, oh, everybody's like so excited that you're finally home. You're like, I feel nothing.
Yeah, because I checked my heart at the door. Right. Yeah, exactly. I have to leave because because it's hard to switch the emotions on and off. So if you have those walls around that empathy, you don't bring it home and go, I'm going to take these walls down because then everything comes out.
Exactly. You can't turn it on and off. And it's interesting because when we talk about allostatic load, you know, I talk about allostatic load and I tell people, you know, you got to remember going to the bathroom as part of allostatic load.
Breathing gravity is part of it. Like we forget gravity is a stress on our bodies. Yes, it's unconscious. It's in the background, but it's present temperature vibrate and all these things. And we forget about that.
But I historically have not talked about what you just described, which is true. Empathetic stress like that totally fills up the jar, especially in this industry. It fills the jar up a significant chunk, especially if you are overloading your caseload.
The other day, I had a series of circumstances where I had to work an eight hour day in massage instead of a four hour day, which is not encouraged that much. It's a lot to see eight clients in a day, especially if they are all going to have stories.
And of course, on the day I do it, they all happen to have heavy stories. And so it means you go home and you're like, man, I'm sleeping on my own tonight. I'm checking out mentally. And it's interesting because I'm going to have to add that to my classes when I talk about the effect of.
static load, because that empathetic background stress is so vital to us. Yeah. So, so as a therapist, obviously, I signed up for sitting with people and they're listening and being with them. But I definitely never learned about, you know, what to do with the kind of the emotional residue that's left behind, even when they, you know, walk out the door, like what stays with me.
So, so that is very much what I do nowadays and talk a lot about, you know, with individuals and what I teach my workshops. So you're, I'm sorry, you're filled with nuggets of good information, emotional residue.
My God, I love that term. I'm gonna go through this podcast and just write down all the terms that you've used. I'm super visual. And so, and so when I, whether I picture the problem or I'm picturing a solution, I'm trying to apply Um, I have to, I have to put a visual to it.
So, so I often think about like a veil, you know, of like, like imagine that eight hour shift and every, um, you know, every client that you see that day, like there's this residue or this veil that they leave.
And then, you know, if you add like, you know, eight veils over your eyes and, and, and then again, just like what you were saying, literally the gravity of that, the pressure, the weight of that, right?
Is that, so you want to, you don't, you know, you know, so it starts to accumulate. So it's that cleansing experience, that transition at the end of the day, that is so important. And so I imagine the emotional residue and I literally go to the bathroom.
And I put the warm water on and I have my scented soaps and my everything into my bathroom that, you know, um, I've kind of, uh, tailored just to my liking. Right. And I have this practice where at the end of my day, I just wash, I just walk, I would pretty much wash my hands right up to my elbows and I just.
Breathe deeply. And as I'm looking at the water, go down the drain, I'm imagining that emotional residue going with it. And I just, and it's just this grounding practice at the end of the day. Which is super ironic now, because I don't actually transition very much from like work to home because I work in my home.
I had to build in, cause it used to kind of be part of my drive home. You know, I sort of blare the music. I'd like, I always said, like, as long as I could feel the vibration of the beat in my chest, it was like, it was just like, it was like vibrating and cleansing in that experience.
I always love a little plum crazy into the speakers. That's right. You know? Oh, you laugh at like, we still have plum crazy on cause then. Um, so, so yeah. So these practices to be. move that energy through to cleanse.
I think that's super important. One of the preventative practices that I bring into my work is I have this little mantra that I say pretty much every day before I start my job or like before I start seeing clients.
And it goes be the strain or not the sponge and be the strain or not the sponge. In other words, if you know that you are going to be in the presence of suffering, then you need to make sure that you're going into that understanding what is going to happen and how you want to approach it.
And I want to, so there's be the strain or not the sponge and because I'm definitely the sponge. If I'm not careful, I'm the sponge. I'm this absorbent, right? Like I just take it all in. I think most first frontline and most keywords are probably be the sponge.
Yeah, exactly. The swing though is like what we were talking about before. After you've been the sponge and you get oversaturated for long enough, the swing over to the other side is the rock. You harden.
right? And it's like, nothing's coming out, nothing's going in, right? And, and, and that really, like, I've been there plenty of times too. And usually people kind of go like, what the hell's going on with you, right?
Because you're so out of your character when you're in that in that space, right? It's this overprotective over rigid kind of kind of place. And that's why then, like, when just like the little things don't go the way they're planned, you know, he's just you're so rigid and so hard into it that you're like, you have no tolerance for there's no psychological flex.
Yeah, there's no compassion. Yeah, so so I don't want to be the rock, but I also don't want to be the sponge. The middle place is this idea of being the strainer. And again, I'm a visual person. So that just helps me just, I just visualize this idea that I, I may be in the presence of suffering, I want to stay present with it, I want to hold space for it.
But it's gonna pass through me. And I'm not gonna hold on to any of it. It's not my story. It's not my pain. Holding on to it doesn't help anybody. Holding on to it and absorbing it so that then like, they get home and my partner says like, what do you want for supper?
And then I like, wring out the sponge on him and be like, like, emotionally dumb. You make dinner and I want no decision process. We've all been there, right? Where exactly you kind of absorb everything stresses of the day, and then you sort of say, so that that's a really helpful one for me.
I used to do one. I used to do one called mine or yours. And I used to imagine, if you're at like a convention, and everybody and you don't know people, everybody has name tags. And so you sit around a circle, I sit around a table, and everybody with their eyes closed, takes off their name tag, and they put it in the center of the table, somebody mixes it up.
And then with your eyes closed, you pick up a random name tag. And then you put it on. And when everybody has one, you open your eyes. If it's your name tag, you keep it. If it's not, you just put it back in the center of the circle.
And people are like, yeah, that sounds super easy. It's like, yeah, now just replace it with emotions. If it's yours, you get to keep it. If it's not yours, you put it back down. And after my clients, especially my big sessions, I'll tend to sit there and I'll go, okay, I just take like two minutes with the door closed to sit there and go mine, yours, mine, you know, which ones are mine, which ones are yours so that I remember at the end of the day, this is not mine, I don't need to hang on to it.
This one is mine, and I should hang on to it. And that's the mindfulness practice, right? Because then you do have to know what's your attentionally. Exactly. You have to be self aware enough to know what is yours and you have to take a minute.
Just take a minute. and do and go through the process. The way I the other visual that I apply to it is like imagining that we're oil and water. And that when you're together, and there are times at the end of the day where it's like it all gets stirred up.
And so you can't differentiate what's what it's just all in the glass together. But if at the end of the day, you put the glass down and you just set let it settle. Just quiet your mind quiet the world and just sit for a second.
That oil and water will separate again. And then you do mine yours. Yeah, I love it. I love it. So I love that we're like that we're vibing in the same way. Right. But it's so so it's that and I and I call that differentiation, you know, the skill of being able to differentiate what is my story and what is theirs and what is mine and what is theirs.
And, and, and we differentiate in order to avoid disconnecting because if we don't differentiate consciously intentionally, then we will unconsciously disconnect, right? It's much more rigid. And it's much more like I can't go there.
So or we disconnect from ourselves. Do you find that switching subjects here to the cynicism aspect of it a little bit where when we differentiate like mine yours, the rock, the sponge, things like that, I can see the rock, you know, creating cynicism, essentially, kind of thing like that.
But then I've also found that like, sometimes I'll be with other therapists and we're that cynicism tends to come out, but it's more of in a it's interesting, it seems to be more in a joking jovial connecting manner.
And part of me always wonders, is that a true bitterness? Or is that no, this is a connection that we're seeking with like minded individuals versus no, I'm bitter, I'm in bitter toward this experience.
You know, because I can see that cynicism being a really fine balance for a lot of people and a lot of the listeners I happen to know are cynical by nature, or who have been in the industry. for a very long time and cynicism will be something that we've all experienced in the industry.
And so it's one of those fine things of, okay, if I am cynical, do I need to pay attention and instantly recover to find my empathy again? Or is this, no, okay, I'm just taking a moment to be me? Yeah, I think that we...
I do think that foundationally, what is super important for us to carry forward, whether we're like making jokes about what's going on or talking about the realities and the difficult parts and stuff like that, I think that we need to carry forward this kind of client -centered, sort of compassionate point of view, hope.
Because when I think about cynicism and that jadedness, I think that it's when we start feeling kind of like the, what's the point? part. And I and then and I think that that is us potentially losing sight of our mission and our purpose.
And so a lot of the work I do in my workshops and with individuals is that work like of like, well, we need to remind ourselves why you do what you do. In fact, that's usually like also is one of those signals of burnout.
Or compassion fatigue is like when you wake up in the morning going like, why the hell am I doing this? Yeah, why am I in this job and not why do I I don't even want to anymore. So I think I think again, this is those those layers of it and the nuances, I don't think that we need to be chipper and positive about the work we do all time.
And I think we can bring in humor. And I think we can bring in the stories. And I think we can have some good vent sashes. But underneath that is still this hope, or this understanding of why we do what we do, and that it's all still worth it.
And that we feel yeah, yeah, like that we still get satisfaction we do. So I think I don't know how to, I guess there's it's sort of doing that self awareness work of sort of stepping back and saying, am I doing this in a way that still like is balanced out by hopeful conversations and like, you know, kind of like, yeah, well, that was fun, just to like, you know, rip off a few jokes.
But now like, let's take a breath and roll our shoulders back and go like, let's do this. Let's go come to the intent of the purpose. Yeah, yeah, come back to it. And so let's just like you said, spanning out, like always think about like your guard, your guiding light or your North Star is your mission, your purpose.
And we have to span out from the day to day BS, and yeah, difficulties and remember that guiding light like the purpose, you know, purpose is such an interesting thing. Because when I was when I was going through my burnout, that's easily the thing that I felt I'd lost the most was purpose, you know, like, I knew that what I was doing helped people with their pain.
So they had a better quality of life. But I remember also thinking, anybody else can do this. There's no reason it has to be me. And there was a big loss of sense of purpose. And I think when I started feeling motivated, again, purpose was easily the thing I felt coming back, you know, like there, there is a reason for this.
And I think that really helped bring in a desire to be mindful and a desire to have a connected experience with the clientele again. So that was the purpose was so valuable to coming away from essentially that cynicism.
And I think that the thing I want to add to that because when I went through my burnout and I very much was the same thing. It was like, what the hell is the point of all of this? Where's the purpose in all this?
It was because I was so focused on seeing these positive outcomes that I didn't see because the nature of my work often meant that I kind of swooped in, helped in the way. I never really got to see the end of the line, the stories.
So I was so, so focused on those positive outcomes being the reason why this was all worth it. And when I wasn't seeing that, I lost hope. So a part of reconnecting with my purpose was making sure that the way I describe it is it's just like faithfulness.
It's this, if there's any, not in a religious sense, but like this faith, which is believing in something even when you can't see it. And so that is something that I think I do a lot with now as well of maintaining that mission and that purpose is just believing in the impact, even when I don't get to see it all.
Yeah. It's interesting because lately, lately I would say most of my career actually, I think one of the things that most of the clients who I've seen have enjoyed in their experiences is that they can come into a session feeling, and it's happened recently, coming in feeling demoralized by their recovery process.
They'll have gone three weeks pain -free and then on week three, their pain comes back and they're like, I didn't do anything. Why is my pain back? And they're not understanding necessarily the neuroplastic aspect of habituation around chronic pain.
And we talk about all that. And I've noticed though that most of the clients who are demoralized by the end of the session, they walk away hopeful. And I think that's one of the things that more we look at patient -centered care and the biopsychosocial approach into medicine, the more we're seeing that walking away with a sense of hope and purpose for a client is almost as valuable as literally having them experience pain free behavior.
You know, like the pain free behavior is obviously very, oh, I got a result. And that's great. But having this hope that long term, there's this recovery process taking place long term, there's this goal where I will be pain free or close to pain free.
That that sense of purpose is so so important for them in the session as a client, but also for a therapist to sit there and go, I'm content to work with this client from the next six months, you know, studiously to make sure that they're pain free.
And I see the results happening. Because I think a lot of people get burnt out on that, too. They go what the what I'm doing doesn't seem to be effective. In which case, yes, you may have to change techniques.
But I also think there's a component where people just get that lack of sense of value in their work. Hmm. Well, as you're saying all that too, though, I think something that we have in common is that sometimes despite your commitment, your hope, your efforts, your skills, that the outcomes don't happen because there are a lot of personal barriers that that patient is experiencing.
That I say these words very cautiously in the sense that there's a lot of associations with this term, but self -sabotage. And I say that the reason why I say it cautiously is because I don't think anybody in this world goes, aha, I'm going to self -sabotage so I can live in pain, you know, emotionally, psychologically, physically.
I think of humans I know who might do that. Maybe there's a few out there. We used to call those the purples in my work. We used to color code client experiences. And so you said, I can swear on this.
They were the fuckats, like we call them the purples. And they were the ones that just like, I don't matter, you don't matter, nothing matters. Lost all aspect. And, you know, undoubtedly, there are some people who have gone through some very difficult lives.
And that's the outcome is that perspective. But no, I think that for most of us, though, we are not intentionally self -sabotaging, but as you said, we're in patterns. And there are habits that are not serving us well, that life as it is, the ecosystem is sick.
The environments that we are in are not healthy and balanced. And we are in, you know, I mean, when we talk about, you know, as a social worker, I'm constantly looking at what we call the biopsychosocial structural lens of every client.
And so we're looking at the structural factors, economic status, race, gender, family status, you know, social status, all that. We're looking at, you know, psychological experiences, you know, childhood experiences, trauma, history, all that sort of stuff.
And we're looking at the body and biology, like predispositions and conditions and health factors and all that. And it's all at play. And that's just within an individual, then you take all these individuals and you create this massive ecosystem that is all at play and frankly, not always super healthy out there, right?
Not harmoniously. It's not a smooth world that we're living in. So why do people stay in pain? Lots and lots of reasons. And I think that in my career, I have had to also be humble about that and not take ownership or responsibility for the lack of progress, despite my efforts.
And even going in with not owning that, it's not my responsibility. Yeah, the lack of progress is such a great one too, because in manual therapy, we get it all the time, you know, you do you treat somebody for a condition, let's say low back pain.
So you know, 10 of your clients get better, one of them doesn't. And you're like, what did I do differently? And they're not realizing necessarily that one of the largest and most impactful aspects of recovery has nothing to do with what we do with our hands, and has everything to do with context.
And context plays into rapport, it plays into trust, vulnerability, it plays into places and stages in their life. Like I have this, I have several clients right now who are going through in Quebec, it's called SINEST, which is you know, employment insurance because of their injuries.
Now they're all better, they feel better, but they still have to go through these processes. And they go to these appointments, and it takes time out of their life. And the appointments are no longer valuable, but they have to do it for the insurance purposes.
And so they go to these appointments, and they walk in with an attitude of, I don't really care. And it makes sense because they feel safe, they feel healthy, it's no longer valuable for them. And yet they're being forced to take part in these treatments.
And a lot of the times therapists like if you belong to an insurance network, those are the therapists you get, whether you get results with them or not doesn't apply. It's this is who you get because the context of report, you know, like if I have a female client who comes and sees me, and they start talking to me about sexual abuse, one of the first conversations I'll have with them is do you want me to refer you out?
Because do you feel vulnerable with me as a male therapist? And some are fine with it, some aren't. And it's one of those contexts where if you don't take the rapport into account, the healing process gets very limited because it goes so beyond structure and function, it goes into so many more.
And a lot of therapists forget that, like you said, being humble is being willing to admit, I'm not the solution for everyone. I'm only the solution for the people who get better with me. I'm not the solution for every human who comes through the door, that would be arrogance.
And so it's a hard thing to learn to say that, especially when, like we talked about earlier, you're self -employed and you're thinking, oh, my rent is due and I need this extra client to pay my rent.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I've been working with people just working with everybody instead of considering the context and the match and the connection. And that's all there.
And people you know, I don't know if you ever think about it this way, but that they're actually being for people in the room with you when you're there together with a patient. Are you talking about 90, 10?
I don't know. I'm talking about. Person in the present and the person in the past. Yeah. Basically the present and you in the past. Yeah. Exactly. It's exactly your baggage. I call. at our ghosts, you know, that you, you know, and, and so even with that individual in front of me, like what's there that I can't work with is their ghost, their past.
And they may not have, they may not even be aware of their ghost. So it's not even like they can consciously bring that in and say, this is what I need from you, or maybe this should be considered as we work together, my history, my past, my feelings, because they may be numb to that and haven't done that work.
So, and a lot of us haven't done the work. I mean, I'm like always doing the work. Like it's a lifetime experience, right? That's why I'm doing these podcasts. This is my version of work. Yeah, absolutely.
It's like talking about it, getting curious about it. And that's why I always say I'm grateful for my burnout because it snapped me out of oblivion. And, you know, it was just this moment where I was like, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta look at this stuff.
You know, who I am, what makes me tick? My ghost, what I bring to my relationships, to my job, to my adult life, you know? I love that you say you're grateful for your burnout because I mean, I'm in the same boat.
I think it was one of the better things to happen to me, even though it was painful in the experience. And it's something I tell clients all the time is like, I know you're in pain right now and you don't like to think of it this way, but pain is always a positive experience.
Pain is always protective in nature. It's always defensive in nature. It's always attempting to save something. It's designed as a reaction to something to make us protect our own existence. And people who experience chronic pain don't like thinking of that.
Because they go, oh, well, that means this pain that I've experienced, I need to be thankful for it. I need to be happy that it's happening. Which is obviously difficult to, you know, it's a hard conversation to breach, especially in the beginning.
But it's like you said, being grateful for the valleys in life helps bring us to the peaks. And that's a great way of, yeah. And not all of us can say we're thankful for our pain. That's a pretty, you know, funky statement to make.
almost sort of go like, but pain does have a purpose, and you might see it like Tignot Huns says in his books, you know, and this is, you know, sort of Buddhist approach to suffering is, you know, this idea of like the plant that dies and becomes refused, you know, that if you are the gardener who understands how to take that, that, that, you know, dead thing, and, and turn it into a compost, right?
Or like, to take the shit that we see in life, and go, okay, well, that shit now, but I can turn that shit into fertilizer, and grow something new from it. So again, it comes back to those, those core beliefs about what is resiliency, and it's not just about...
opportunity, privilege, like, oh, well, it's good for you that you can, you know, get through stress, because maybe your stress is different than mine. And that's another one too, that I always say, yep, we are not all on the same boat.
Like that whole idea that like strokes of stress. No, it's not my last my last guest was a black man who lives in Texas. And during the Black Lives Matter, we know him and I talked about my last interview, but how he gets pulled over with an intro, he's married to an intro, a white woman.
So they are an interracially married couple in this small town in Texas. And I'm like, yeah, we don't have the same stresses. I can't imagine being in that scenario. I can't even put myself in that position.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, all suffering is not the same, but all suffering is worthy of compassion. Yeah. And so again, including our own, the big the small, you know. Yeah, so so what's your takeaways, Troy, like self awareness, self awareness is key.
Pay attention to your exhaustion. Exhaustion is really important. Once we've hit cynicism, that's a big sign. And those are signs that other humans around us can pay attention to to let us know, oh, we need to start turning around or shifting shifting attitude or behavior.
And that when we've gone burnout, really, you've gone to burn numb, which you're numb out, which which I think is great. I really love that. And then what was the people pleaser? What was that one? Overachiever people pleaser.
Overachiever people pleaser. I think that one is going to be the title of the podcast, because I think that one is like, you know, I can I can think of the many massage therapists I've taught the 1000s of people I've encountered who are massage therapists and manual therapists and go, Oh, that's that that you Yeah, you fit that description quite well.
And, you know, whether they've been in the industry short or long. And so I love that one. So thank you. If people are interested in learning more about your stuff, feel free. This is your moment to tell them where they can hear more of your stuff.
I do try to add a lot of free resources and helping people with their experiences with burnout and compassion fatigue on my website, which is my name, amandaroshalo .com. I have a free resource page there that you are welcome to visit at any time.
I'm constantly updating it, throwing new stuff out there. Right now I've got a self -compassion video up for free. So if you want to sort of dabble in self -compassion and sort of see what it feels like to have a self -compassionate moment, there's a video, a guided kind of meditation there for you.
And yeah, I'm a public speaker and I do workshops and I have some associates. We're all providing therapy, trying to get the capacity to be able to serve Quebec patients as well. Right now we are dealing with colleges and weird restrictions and jurisdictions and all that sort of stuff.
So if anybody is out there, you know, just wanting to get curious about your experience if some of the things that were said today were like... a little illuminating to you. And you thought, maybe that's me.
Maybe I'm on stage three, or maybe I'm, you know, feeling something. There's some assessment tools there. Some, I always call them like the cheat sheets, you know, like the one you're like, I'm not sure what I'm experiencing.
Well, there's some tools there to answer some questions and it's going to give you some information about maybe kind of where you're at on that, like stress continuum or the mental health continuum. So, um, yeah, I invite you all to visit my website at manorachal .com.
The Giving Tree podcast is out there too. You can listen to it. I had to do our interview in a two parter because we just talked for nonstop. We was late at night and we were rambling and we were just, it was, and I, and I edited a lot out too.
I listen to your podcast all the time. I encourage a lot of my clients. I share your podcast with most of my clients actually, especially who are in the front and the healthcare industry. Yeah. Yeah.
Cool. Thanks. Yeah. Awesome. That's me. Thanks. Thanks so much for having me, Troy. Thanks so much, Amanda, for helping talk about some of the psychological aspects to some of the stuff we talked about with burnout and, uh, I appreciate it and, uh, it's great to see you again.
The people who own it that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.