Nursing U's Podcast
Ep #002 - Overcoming Burnout with Personal Healing Techniques
Can nurturing your emotional well-being transform your career in nursing?
Join Julie and Caleb, seasoned registered nurses, as they explore this profound connection. Caleb shares his deeply personal battle with PTSD and reveals how breathing exercises, particularly the box breathing technique, became a cornerstone of his recovery. They draw a powerful comparison between mental health and tilling a garden, underscoring the essential practice of tending to one's inner world to foster resilience and growth.
This conversation takes an unexpected turn as they dive into the intersection of nursing and woodworking, illustrating how these seemingly disparate fields can offer profound insights into managing the emotional toll of caregiving. By addressing the concept of passive nihilism, they confront the sense of meaninglessness that can arise from constant exposure to suffering and death in high-stress environments.
Psychological tools, self-care, and personal boundaries emerge as critical defenses against burnout, enabling nurses to maintain their mental health and professional efficacy. Caleb's unconventional journey into nursing, marked by perseverance through personal struggles, serves as an inspiring testament to resilience and continuous growth. His story is a beacon of hope for those facing similar challenges.
This episode also underscores the importance of finding balance and establishing healthy boundaries. Caleb's journey of reclaiming professional confidence after severe burnout, aided by the Wim Hof method, exemplifies this. It serves as a powerful reminder that self-care is not a luxury, but a necessity for maintaining mental health and professional efficacy.
This episode candidly explores the intricate and often challenging landscape of nursing, offering valuable insights and tools to foster healing and innovation within the community.
Can nurturing your emotional well-being transform your career in nursing?
Join Julie and Caleb, seasoned registered nurses, as they explore this profound connection. Caleb shares his deeply personal battle with PTSD and reveals how breathing exercises, particularly the box breathing technique, became a cornerstone of his recovery. They draw a powerful comparison between mental health and tilling a garden, underscoring the essential practice of tending to one's inner world to foster resilience and growth.
This conversation takes an unexpected turn as they dive into the intersection of nursing and woodworking, illustrating how these seemingly disparate fields can offer profound insights into managing the emotional toll of caregiving. By addressing the concept of passive nihilism, they confront the sense of meaninglessness that can arise from constant exposure to suffering and death in high-stress environments.
Psychological tools, self-care, and personal boundaries emerge as critical defenses against burnout, enabling nurses to maintain their mental health and professional efficacy. Caleb's unconventional journey into nursing, marked by perseverance through personal struggles, serves as an inspiring testament to resilience and continuous growth. His story is a beacon of hope for those facing similar challenges.
This episode also underscores the importance of finding balance and establishing healthy boundaries. Caleb's journey of reclaiming professional confidence after severe burnout, aided by the Wim Hof method, exemplifies this. It serves as a powerful reminder that self-care is not a luxury, but a necessity for maintaining mental health and professional efficacy.
This episode candidly explores the intricate and often challenging landscape of nursing, offering valuable insights and tools to foster healing and innovation within the community.
Hi, I'm Julie.
Speaker 2:And I'm Caleb. Welcome to Nursing U, the podcast where we redefine nursing in today's healthcare landscape. Join Julie and I as we step outside the box on an unconventional healing journey.
Speaker 1:Together, we're diving deep into the heart of nursing, exploring the intricate relationships between caregivers and patients with sincerity and depth.
Speaker 2:Our mission is to create an open and collaborative experience where learning is expansive and fun.
Speaker 1:From the psychological impacts of nursing to the larger implications on the healthcare system. We're sparking conversations that lead to healing and innovation.
Speaker 2:We have serious experience and we won't pull our punches. But we'll also weave in some humor along the way, because we all know laughter is often the best medicine.
Speaker 1:It is, and we won't shy away from any topic, taboo or not, from violence and drugs to family and love, we're tackling it all.
Speaker 2:Our nursing knowledge is our base, but we will be bringing insights from philosophy, religion, science and art to deepen our understanding of the human experience.
Speaker 1:So, whether you're a nurse, a healthcare professional or just someone curious about the world of caregiving, this podcast is for you.
Speaker 2:One last thing, a quick disclaimer before we dive in. While we're both registered nurses, nothing we discuss here should be taken as medical advice. Always consult with your doctor or a qualified healthcare provider for any medical concerns you may have. The views expressed here are our own and don't necessarily reflect those of our employers or licensing bodies.
Speaker 1:So let's get started on this journey together. Welcome to Nursing U, where every conversation leads to a healthier world. I feel so good. I do too. I know we just did some breathing exercises, a little Wim Hof method. I've never actually done that one. I've done breathing exercises like that before, but not like that yeah, and I can see how you could really build. It's like running a 100-meter dash in three parts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, for me it was life-changing, going from being really knocked down with PTSD, I could feel it in every part of my body with ptsd, um my, I could feel it in every part of my body but there really wasn't, uh, any part of me that didn't feel it and, you know, could not do loud noises. My kids, when they, would you know, kids want to sneak up on their dad and scare him. Not a good idea for me. I mean, I never, I never hit them or, you know, really lost it on them, but it was, uh, I I yelled at them and, uh, because it was just painful, like shocking and painful painful in your tissues.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like, almost like. I don't know the way I've always described uh, my experience with PTSD is that the parts that were supposed to be in here were outside and it was almost an electric feeling.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's how I would describe it Like electric, like an electric shock. Yeah, almost.
Speaker 1:And so how do you feel that the breath helps that Like in your mind? How do you picture that?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I didn't. I don't think I understood it. In 2017, I went through a program called Warriors Ascent. It's a local organization that helps war vets war veterans, first responders, ptsd uh, that's in the service community and, uh, I was actually, I believe, the first nurse to go through the program, which was really surprising to me. They, uh, when I was going through the application process, I remember they said I was they'd never had a nurse go through and I was just shocked. So interesting. Yeah, I was like Because nurses are warriors?
Speaker 2:Oh for sure, yeah, no question, it's a battlefield yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's a whole. I mean we could go down that rabbit trail.
Speaker 2:Like it's a, it's a battlefield that only has a front line. There's really not a second line or a third or fourth. Um, you know, second shift, third shift, maybe you know that's you're the only deal, yeah, yeah. So I went through that program and they taught me box breathing, uh, where you, you breathe in for four seconds, you hold for four seconds and you breathe out for four seconds and hold for four seconds, and I did that for. I did that for I don't know four or five months and I did it every day on my lunch break, uh, from like 11 to 11, 15, I did 15 minutes of it just like ritually, yeah, and um, after, after a few months, I was like, I was like this is changing me.
Speaker 2:Like I can feel a change.
Speaker 1:I feel better, like how, like less.
Speaker 2:That electric feeling. That outside of my body feeling was like getting closer to normal, and I wasn't. I just wasn't as reactive, and so do you think it's the breath?
Speaker 1:Is it the oxygen? Is it the concentration? Is it focusing? Is it?
Speaker 2:counting. No, it's the breath, it's you know oxygen of the breath.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so like uh, in in Hebrew the uh, the word for man is Adam, and so when you get it, we dig a little bit into what that word means. Ultimately, it means dirt, it gets back to the root of dirt. And so if you think about breath, as if you think about a garden garden, a garden needs to be tilled and it needs to be. You know, the dirt needs to be moved to, uh, oxygenate that land, oxygenate that ground, so the vegetables and plants will grow. Yeah, so we're no different. Um, I, I think I realized that pretty early on just like it's, I'm, you know, essentially tilling the dirt of my being.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so good, yeah, yeah, because you have to tend to the garden, you have to go out there, you have to pull the weeds, you have to give it water. It has to have adequate sun and nutrients, and part of the way it gets the nutrients is by tilling up the soil, yeah, and adding that in to make it fertile ground so that new things can grow.
Speaker 2:It's a beautiful metaphor. It really is.
Speaker 1:It really is. So I'm very glad that we did that. Yeah, I think it kind of grounds our minds. It just allows us to get in the flow of whatever we're getting ready to do. Gets connected.
Speaker 2:Connects you, yeah, like it reconnected me, yeah yeah, I always said that my healing was kind of on this trajectory. I was doing lots of spiritual uh healing and, uh, you know, I was working, I was doing all the things that I felt like I needed to be doing to heal, heal therapy and and community and all the things. But once I so I was doing the box, breathing for the three to five months and I feel like the trajectory was here. It was very slow. When I, when I found Wim Hof method, it went like this oh.
Speaker 2:And six months later I was applying for nursing jobs Again. You know, therapist felt like it was, yeah, appropriate. Um, everybody in my life felt like it was, you know, a reasonable step for me to to take. And I felt like, you know, after taking several years off, I had, for sure, mixed feelings about returning to nursing. Um, after doing all my, all the therapies, all the different things that I've done to put myself back together, going back to nursing was it felt like I need to go. I can't let this break me.
Speaker 2:This isn't going to break me, I have to go back, and so when I decided to go back, it was really I'm coming back to this to kind of observe it like an outside observer like I'm inside of it for sure. But to understand myself better, I need to go back and confront this fear that I have, because the conditions that I left under were so horrific. You know, you were there for that event.
Speaker 1:Well, it was like you healed enough to. I mean, clearly you weren't done with nursing, you weren't done being a nurse, because you would have just went a different direction, you would have just done something else.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I think that I I don't think that you ever stopped being a nurse, right, like once you, once you've done it for a sufficient amount of time and developed the mindset of a nurse, uh, it's really very difficult to to not be that. Um, it's becomes who you are.
Speaker 1:So it was drawing you Cause, like why didn't you just say you know what I'm just going to do, my woodworking? And, um, I'm not, I don't even need to deal with that anymore because I'm Well.
Speaker 2:I mean I would say that woodworking and nursing for me are inextricably bound.
Speaker 2:They're, they're, they are two sides of the same coin.
Speaker 2:In a lot of ways I feel like nursing cultivated in my mind a passive nihilism.
Speaker 2:You know nihilism as a philosophy in the, you know, 1800s, 1700s, 1800s was really looking at at the you know, the coming industrial revolution, science and and all this progress that humanity was making, and the nihilists, progress that humanity was making, and the nihilists, the nihilist philosophers, were saying that you know, cosmologically there's no God, there's nothing beyond the experience that we're having and we're just biological machines and it doesn't mean anything. And so that is kind of a backdrop for the idea of passive nihilism, where I've never studied nihilistic philosophy but I definitely came to a system of belief that through the experience of nursing, watching people suffer, watching people die, that I think, once you cross a certain threshold of experience as a critical care nurse, as a critical care nurse, if you don't have proper structures in your life, that kind of support you, and you know, if you don't have a proper support system, it will cultivate that passive metabolism. I mean, I think that to me, in kind of understanding myself, I I understand why healthcare workers to. To that, to the extent that I'm able to understand.
Speaker 2:I understand why suicide is so prevalent in the healthcare community.
Speaker 1:So when you say passive, it's almost like it's happening to us, where we get to the point that we also feel like there's no meaning, it doesn't mean anything, because we're just almost like we're going through the motions.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that it's impossible for us, as human beings, like separate our person out from. I'm a nurse, I'm also a human being. I'm a nurse, I'm also a human being, and it is impossible to care for others and not see ourselves in our patients. And I mean, I don't remember any specific conversation with you sitting around in the middle of the night going don't do that to me, i't? You know? I don't want to go that way. If I'm going that way, you better.
Speaker 1:You know, I think that's part of why we're sitting here today is because up until recently, neither one of us ever thought about that. It's not a conversation. People have. It happens so undetected until it's just massively on top of you. And I think, talking about it now because so, knowing what we know and having healed, I mean I look back on my career it would be totally different. My outlook, my look upon a lot of times, how I felt at the bedside taking care of patients, would be extremely different. Because if you allow yourself to see a little bit of yourself in everyone, I mean, it would just be different. And if, if you don't purposely do that, then you are just. You just succumb to passive nihilism. You, you succumb to the groundhog day you succumb to. There is no point in any of this and that's like a death sentence, honestly. Well, it.
Speaker 2:It a slow one, yeah, because you know so much of the. You know I remember I'm going home and I'm getting drunk, or you know whatever your maladaptive behavior was or is when you go through something, because we aren't you know. That's one of the one of the failings of the nursing education, in my opinion, is that system. There is no methodology for processing the trauma that we take on. So I do think that psychological tools are the answer, that educating people that, like at the end of the day, like this, is a foundational belief, because it's my experience the system can't help you. It's not, it's not designed to help you, it doesn't like. It is on us to take care of ourselves and set healthy boundaries and do all of the, all the things that hopefully, as this, what we're doing progresses and unfolds, we'll be able to, to hand those tools over to people and help them to find healing and who are dying.
Speaker 1:Because it's part of our job yet maintaining a space or a place for your own feelings about it, because they're separate sometimes.
Speaker 2:How do I make sense of this? Yeah, yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so I think that's kind of the key, where you can be a nurse and of like liminal space between like a plural space almost Ooh, I do too A space that's soft and smooth and runs, but separate but yet needed, and then you have your inside that you can tend to a care care. Yeah, god, if we could.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Prescription Prescription yeah, if only it was yeah.
Speaker 2:Prescription.
Speaker 1:Prescription yeah, only it was that easy, I know. But I mean, you just got to start talking about it and that's what we're doing I know, so the breath work this morning.
Speaker 2:Got the dirt moving.
Speaker 1:Got the dirt moving, got us talking.
Speaker 2:That's right, got us feeling good yeah. And moving forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we could talk for days about that, yeah, so, but since we're all energized, maybe you could start until since we talked about my journey. We could talk about how you got into nursing and kind of how that journey looked for you.
Speaker 2:How I, how the inside got to the outside.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, cause see, we kind of talked about the inside going back and the outside going back inside.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so now we're going to start circling back and yeah, Start from the beginning. Yeah, um, I had a, you know, maybe not a normal path to nursing. I don't know what is a normal path to nursing.
Speaker 1:I don't even know it's yours, it's Caleb's. Yeah, it's mine.
Speaker 2:It's my path. I became a dad for the first time and I needed to feed my kid and you know I was not a great student in high school. Uh, not a great student in in high school. Um, some learning disabilities, dyslexia and whatnot, um, that uh really prevented me psychologically. It was I had a real mental block against school because I just hadn't succeeded in it and didn't believe that I could.
Speaker 2:Uh, so after, you know, losing my job on September 11th 11th I decided to go back to school. Uh, and and and really that was eight months pregnant, uh, with with my first daughter, and 9-11 hits, that first plane hits. All the orders were canceled for the rest of the year and um, and my boss called me in the office as I was walking out to lunch and said I gotta let you go. You got a job down in tulsa. I want you to go, pack and go.
Speaker 2:So the trauma of not being able to feed a mouth that isn't even here yet was like too much. So that really has impacted the rest of my career choices going forward. You know I'll try to circle back and fill that in, but essentially it made me want to work hard to be in a position of utility that I was going to be useful. No matter where I went and no matter what I did, I would be useful and um, and learn everything I could about what it was that I was doing. So that happened. I went to work uh, cleaning carpets in.
Speaker 2:Tulsa and uh, just did not I.
Speaker 2:I no, this ain't it, so went to the junior college, took one class. I think I got a B in my first English class and I was super stoked I mean, I don't know if I ever got a B in high school. I really that's an honest statement so that encouraged me to take another one, and then another one and finally I found myself on the dean's honor roll and, uh, really excelling. I found a way to study and and part of that was choosing to really apply myself because I had, you know, not really applied myself in high school I just didn't.
Speaker 2:um, I didn't understand why we were doing what we were doing and didn't feel like anybody understood. Nobody understood why I couldn't read until seventh grade. They diagnosed me in seventh grade with dyslexia, and that's late.
Speaker 2:That's late, but back then that's just how it was yeah, it's just what it was and I'm actually thankful for it now because it's given me my, it's given me so much being dyslexic, because my creativity, I think, is rooted in that Uh, my ability to look at problems from different angles is rooted in that Um, you just figure it out, yeah, yeah. So I went, I went to the, I went to the counselor. We were having, like I it was at a point where I need to make a decision what my, my study course would be and I said what degree can I get that I'll always be able to feed this kid with? And she said nursing. So I just said sign me up.
Speaker 1:That easy, sign me up.
Speaker 2:Sign me up. Yeah, I think I, you know, I, I know I don't have to say I think I know that, um, I didn't believe that I was smart enough to be a doctor. I don't necessarily believe that today, Um, but I also have a lot more experience. Yeah, know that I'm not stupid Like right. You know that is such a ridiculous label to put on anyone, and you know as much as anybody else externally to myself.
Speaker 2:Put it on me, I put it on myself as well so, but I have enough experience in it, and just in life and in work and all the things that I've done, that I know that that's not true, right so? So it was a choice. It's a choice to like. I don't have to listen to that tape continue to play. There's so much negative self-talk and just ingrained beliefs that we are something that we're not. Even if I do something stupid, it doesn't mean that I'm stupid.
Speaker 2:I did a stupid thing done plenty of stupid things, but it doesn't mean that I'm not that I'm lacking in any in any way. Um, and from that experience, I would say that most of the times that I make a mistake, I generally figure out how to use it for a positive change, or I figure out why I did it. So I think that's true for everyone. I think we so often experience things that we perceive as negative only to find out in the long run it was maybe great or the greatest thing that could have happened in that situation.
Speaker 1:Because, I mean, I think that's how we learn, I mean it's part of part of how we learn is by making a mistake or choosing the wrong thing. At that point, looking back, re, you know, re-evaluating and making a different, you know, a different choice.
Speaker 2:But then is it even in a mistake a mistake?
Speaker 1:I don't, yeah, I don't really even think so. It's just a choice. It's mistake? I don't, yeah, I don't really even think so. Yeah, it's just a choice, it's just true. Yeah, yeah, and you can make better informed choices and as you evolve and grow and get experience and do all that, you you do have more information to make those better choices, but just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean, I think that's really the key.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah I mean it's simple and they say you know the one day at a time and what I mean. It feels true now that I've been able to do that at some points, which is be in the moment and then be in the next moment and then be in the next moment, and you don't need to think about what's going to happen in 10 moments. You're just in the moment and it feels like the more that I practice that, I have less anxiety, I have less worry because I literally have no control over what's going to happen 10 moments later. Sure, I only have control of my choice and how I behave and what I say and things right in the now, and you know that's that's helped me a lot.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's part of the experience that we share in ICU and ER settings, critical care settings Like you're coding someone and you know you have this information right now and you make your clinical decision to do X, y or Z and from there forward everything you know, whatever the body tells us needs to be done, then we respond. It really is very true, it's very much like.
Speaker 1:Like you can picture right now in your mind coding someone and you're not thinking of. I mean, you are literally not thinking of anything else.
Speaker 2:Nothing.
Speaker 1:You're thinking of right now. What's the rhythm, what's my count, how many attributes? You know when?
Speaker 2:How many minutes has it been? And you're just waiting, so you just continue and continue and you take in.
Speaker 1:Someone says, oh, the potassium's low, you know. So then, right, then you do that. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2:It's very much living in the moment, it's so I mean, and like we've talked about this before, that it's an expanded moment, like we are not really in our like we're somehow outside of our body.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like it's just our brain, like you know puppeteering our hands to do this thing.
Speaker 2:Like, like the like. One of the things that one of the things that I love about nursing and our relationship is in those moments when it was super critical. This person is going to live or they're going to die based on how we perform. You know, I can be doing whatever task it is that I'm performing and, without any words, see what you're doing and know what your next step is, and into it. You know, I need to grab this and I, I, I'm, I'm here, doing this, uh, do that a little bit quicker, and then grab that and hand it to you, and then I'm back to doing what I'm doing and there's no words, it's just and vice versa, like we both we've we both have lived that.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's such an incredible experience to be in that moment, yeah, and you know, then there are experiences, because some nurses might be like that's not my experience. I mean, when you are in a code situation or a situation that becomes life and death and you don't feel like that it could be experience. It could be, you know, you're just not in the moment in that at that point, and it may be your own protection mechanism that just makes you escape out, and then you're the one that has to be told can you go get that, can you bring that here? Will you do that? And then you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Those, yeah, they kind of respond like automatically, like that but, it is a very unique situation when you're at the patient and it's like a symphony of you know, and they teach that in ACLS you know, we watch those videos of teamwork and that's essentially really what they're teaching, Although they make it very clinical and cold. And you know, closed loop communication, Right right right, that's what they call it.
Speaker 2:That's not really what's going on. No, I mean it is, but yeah.
Speaker 1:And so you do step outside of yourself. Yeah, you know, it's like you take the brain. The brain does the thing Well.
Speaker 2:I think that you have to get to a certain skill level or experience level. Where that happens, you don't start there for sure. I mean, like I remember, I remember my first code and I was, you know, I had to be told what to do. I didn't just jump in and know what to do. Like there's no way anybody could do that. Yeah, no matter how much Grey's Anatomy they've watched, there's no way anybody could do that, no matter how much Grey's Anatomy they've watched. That's true.
Speaker 1:But I might be able to do brain surgery. I'm just saying I might, I could, I mean I'm. I mean there's like 27 seasons or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's crazy, it is, it's so crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I think as like a new, those new nurses come in, they sense that song and dance. That's happening, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Because it's very narrow, don't you think it's right there at the bed?
Speaker 2:Oh, for sure, it's a circle above the patient going on.
Speaker 1:It's the breathing.
Speaker 2:It's the heart.
Speaker 1:It's pushing. It's all right here, yep, and once you're in there, the people that are in there.
Speaker 2:That's where it is. That's the dance, yeah, yep.
Speaker 1:So how do you think that that affects us stepping outside of ourselves to let that happen? Do you think it's necessary to reconnect, or is that what maybe a debriefing is?
Speaker 2:I think that's what a debriefing would be, and I think that I mean, I have a few lines of thought to answer that One. We don't really have a proper toolkit for how to behave or how to put that back in the box after the chaos, because it's typically those experiences where you leave and you go I'm getting drunk tonight or I'm going to smash something, or whatever it is and I think that you know that that kind of energy that has no place to go is going to find a place to go. Yes, no one way or another.
Speaker 1:Because if you think about the disconnection, so you're literally disconnecting for for those moments, yeah, but whatever happens here between that disconnect and then reconnecting, there's something that happens there that if you don't reconnect the mind with the body for that particular situation, that energy is stored somewhere and it's not processed. So whether that's in your low back, whether that's in your mind rage, it's somewhere, or whether it comes out in 10 years when someone bumps the back of your car or your kids say mom, for the 20th time you know, I mean it'll come out.
Speaker 1:And for debriefing, they places that I've worked have had, you know, a box to check. Did you debrief?
Speaker 2:I've never seen that, and what does that even mean?
Speaker 1:What is it? Yeah, who says what that? How do you do that, you know? And now there, I think there's lots of people working, I think lots of people would have lots of opinions about it, but the fact that there isn't a step-by-step process that nurses can go through kind of the same time every time, I mean that's uh, that's lacking, you know I mean, I think that having you know like really uh objective tool like that, yeah uh, would be handy.
Speaker 2:I'm of the opinion that that we have to cultivate the tools within the individual that they're. They, they value these tools and see, see that they are able to help them navigate that. And then they're taking responsibility for it themselves Because, like like at the beginning, that, like, the system isn't designed to take care of us, so we have to, we have to take care of ourselves.
Speaker 1:We have to teach ourselves for and learn what those are, so that because, okay, you check the box debrief after a code or a death or something like that. Nobody has time, right? Nobody has more than three minutes.
Speaker 2:Unless, debriefing means changing your scrubs because you're covered in shit or blood.
Speaker 1:That definitely could be. You will debrief in the bathroom.
Speaker 2:You will debrief Debrief check.
Speaker 1:We need you back out here. We're getting another patient from the O.
Speaker 2:Right, okay, you got five minutes. You got five minutes.
Speaker 1:But I totally agree. I think that if it became more of a practice of debriefing yourself, you know better with other people, especially if you can get your charge nurse involved or someone who has some experience with that, especially when you're newer doing it, so that you don't have to do it by yourself, maybe the first couple of times. But you know, if that were part of a toolbox the nurses were given for psychological tools to you know, that would be one time to use it and I think would help a lot.
Speaker 2:Well, actually we've talked a lot about this. You've actually sent me some resources about it and I've gone through the nurse coach training but you're connected to a group on Facebook that is working to get nurse coaches in the hospital. Yeah, that would be the perfect role. It would be perfect Like. If that role really became established within the healthcare system, it could be a tremendous resource.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as it would. And you know there's going to be health systems that do that and have that and have the ability to provide that, and there's going to be other health systems that are not. And so if you can work for a health system I mean I don't even know if that's part of Magnet that would be an interesting question, but at least having some kind of place to start to do that on your own Sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's what we're trying to create Totally Is a resource toolkit for people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, yeah. So, when you decided, sign me up sign me up, sign me up you did. And you started, I did yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And you did good.
Speaker 1:How'd it go?
Speaker 2:My first job was working for a pulmonology doctor, transporting his his patients. You know, I I remember there was one particular gentleman that I would doctor transporting his patients. I remember there was one particular gentleman that I would pick up and take to his appointments and we always had nice conversations. He was a smart guy and got himself a diagnosis of pulmonary fibrosis and just wasn't doing well and it was a really quick course. I enjoyed the conversation. I enjoyed connecting with people.
Speaker 2:I think that I've always enjoyed connecting with people and and helping people. It's part of you know, that goes back to the learned disability being in in ld classes, uh, where people were really actually More so than you yeah, they were really, they had real disabilities. I just couldn't read. I had everything else, I just couldn't read. So, being in that setting, the teacher would lean on me to provide care to the other students, and you know other students and you know so. I think that that really formed me as a caregiver in a lot of ways, not so much like you know your experience of taking care of your family at home. You know there was a little bit of that in my nuclear home, but not like what you had to experience. My, my caregiving came from that experience.
Speaker 1:But I also.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think that's just part of who we are I mean? I don't think that you get to be a nurse without it just being without being a caring and and generous person.
Speaker 1:Well cause there'd be other people that they were like well, nursing, you'll always have a job in nursing. It'd be like hell no I am. Oh, I cannot do that. I mean people just are like there's no way, I can do that.
Speaker 2:And so I do. Well, I had that moment. I definitely had that moment. I had my first clinical day. I almost quit nursing on that day. I had a CHF patient with, you know, necrotizing venous wounds in his lower legs. You know, never seen anything like that, never smelled anything like that. And then the manipulation you know, his hand was right here, he could pick up the remote control, he could pick up his fork. He could pick up his fork, he could pick up his other things. But then it came to his water and and he was like give me a drink. And I was like bro.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Like I just saw you do these other things, I'm pretty sure you can do this as you see my hands down here wrapping your legs Right.
Speaker 1:Just give me a minute, yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, right and just that whole experience. I went home and I was like, nope, can't do this, this is not it, this is not for me. And uh, and I was, I mean all evening, the whole night after, after clinicals, I'm walking around the house going I can't do this, I can't do this, this is, this is too much. I just can't do this. Woke up the next morning for day two and I can't do this. I'm pulling through the drive through to get my morning sandwich and orange juice.
Speaker 1:I can't do this.
Speaker 2:You know all all the way to the parking lot of the hospital. I can't do this. You know all all the way to the parking lot of the hospital. I can't do this. I got. Then I got this kid, I got a feed and I got this struggle. I gotta do it. I like I just put one foot in front of the other and I just did it because I didn't want to quit and I had so much time invested and um, and I think it was just the path I was supposed to be on, so I overcame it and I pushed on and um, I still think it was the right decision, but it's been. There's been a lot of hell, it's been. It's been a hard road.
Speaker 1:Well, and I mean, don't you think lessons that were presented to you during your nursing career would have been presented to you in just another form?
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's one of the things that I kind of wrestle with is that, you know, I think we live in a society that's traumatized and how is nursing unique in the trauma that we take on as nurses?
Speaker 2:You know, cops are seeing the same clients that we see.
Speaker 2:Firefighters are seeing the same clients that we see.
Speaker 2:You know, I will say, when I went through warriors ascent, the police officers and the firefighters, they all saw really terrible things, but the volume of things that I had seen in comparison of them was exponential, because we see all of it, yeah, the the worst of the worst, and, um, you know, and then we're stuck with them, not stuck, we are in that setting for 12 hours and we never leave the person, we're always there and the emotional drain that that that takes, I mean and that's not to say that you know the cop that goes from one call to the next call. That's its own unique form. So, like that's one of the things that I do want to explore in our conversations. How is nursing unique in terms of the trauma? Because you know, in the research that I've done about PTSD and nursing, nursing suicide it's the number one occupation of all profession professional professions, licensed professions. It is the number one profession for suicide amongst women and it's rapidly rising for men since 2013. So I think that there is something there that makes nursing different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's definitely different because I mean there is a lot of and you know, I mean I'm married to a retired police officer. The things that they go to are also very traumatic and, almost for the event, sometimes more traumatic. If you want to put it on some kind of scale, then maybe what we see we're not seeing them at the scenes, we're not seeing them with their heads cut off we're not seeing them, you know, with their guts exploded all over the car.
Speaker 1:We're just not so. That is traumatic. But I think you also add in trauma from patients', families, administration, physicians, everybody else who has a dealing with how the nurse cares for the patient. I think is a little bit, because it feels like sometimes we're the ones that are doing it all. We're doing it and caring for the patient in conjunction with everybody else.
Speaker 1:So we have to have so many other people's input. We have to have the physician's input, all the ancillary department's input. We have to have environmental service there, we have to have people from dietary, we have to have the administration, we have to have a staff, we have to be paid, we have to have the business office, we have to have HR, we have to have the training. So we're, everything is connected and so it feels like our hands are tied a lot. So we're doing all of these very what can be traumatic things and emotional things with a lot of, you know, being bound almost is how it feels to me that kind of accumulates in the traumatic effect on our body. So, rather than you know it's hard to explain, because even I don't, the lay people that I've talked to about nursing and even during COVID and things like that. They're shocked sometimes at oh how many nurses are just really struggling from that. What do you mean? What do you mean? You don't, you wouldn't, you wouldn't know. Like you don't know that, like, how could you?
Speaker 1:Yes, they're dying and they're leaving the profession in droves because something is wrong. Something is wrong and so it's very hard to pinpoint. And I think, with us talking about nursing, trauma and and PTSD and burnout amongst nurses doesn't negate any of the other professions that that happens in, or any any. Anything, even in you know business or you know just a workplace in general, can be traumatic. But there is something, and what we're specifically talking about is within the nursing profession and mostly in a high acuity hospital setting. Sure, you know, I I think doing my little home health job now and working in a smaller hospital that I worked as PRN, is that something that I could have managed better? Would I? Would I have been better off or less traumatized having worked in a in a less acute facility? Maybe?
Speaker 2:Well, I do meet nurses that there's like a almost a sense of I don't know, not lacking, but or maybe jaded, like that. I feel like that person is more of a whole person as a nurse than I am, because they're not angry in the way that I'm angry.
Speaker 1:It feels unfair yeah.
Speaker 2:Like you're so cute.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like which is patronizing. I'm not trying to patronize, no, it really is, but it you can feel it Like you haven't experienced, you don't have the experience that.
Speaker 2:I have and like, even in the clinical setting that I'm currently in, there are people that that that I know, like I just, like you, don't even have to. You don't have to tell me, I know, like you just don't have, you haven't experienced what I've experienced yeah yeah, and and we are not on the same playing field and and like I'm watching from a different like plane of understanding that you know, like if, if, that situation that you got going on over there, goes bad, like I'm right on it Right which they're completely oblivious yeah.
Speaker 2:And they're like maybe not completely oblivious, but don't fully understand.
Speaker 1:And they don't have to think about it.
Speaker 2:How bad it could get. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:And they don't. They just don't have to think about it, and what a gift that is yeah Right. You know, because I think when you see the worst, you will always see the potential for the worst. Absolutely yeah, and if you've not seen that or been around it, it's not in your. Your limit doesn't go there, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that's just a little. A little bit about the PTSD. For sure, yeah. And so after so, you, your first experience was with that guy and you did pursue.
Speaker 1:So, you did pursue some nursing, you did pursue the school. I kept going.
Speaker 2:You did and you graduated. I graduated and I would say it. You know, my first job as an RN was working with you in the ICU. Previous to that, though, I had worked at one of the downtown hospitals for a number of years as a tech and got a lot of valuable experience that I you know. When I say that I've been a nurse for 20 some years, I count those few years that I was there, because you know that experience was, you know, invaluable. By the time I hit the ICU floor after graduating as a new grad nurse, I knew timing of I's and O's and chest tubes and all of the tubes and all the things Like. I had so much experience with all of that that I was able to graduate and just step immediately into my position. And you know it took it still took a lot of training. I was able to graduate and just step immediately into my position and you know it still took a lot of training.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean the orientation, but your mind and your mental place changed was perfect to come into an ICU as a new grad? Yeah, so, cause not everybody can do that, no, and nor does everybody do that. And depending on who the manager is hiring, you know you even good like that with experience, you may get passed over. Um, and so you know, and I think because you were so open to learning, because when I worked at that time it was the culture of it, it was very much team learning, being as smart as we can, knowing as much as we can.
Speaker 1:We focused a lot on education and learning and stepping outside of comfort, doing lots of other things.
Speaker 2:And I think we had. I mean, we were such a busy unit at that time and we had such dynamic cases. We had, you know, our CTS program. Our surgeons were very active, and so I was stepping into a culture that demanded high performance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and not only that, but you wanted to know everything, because you always wanted to provide and never wanted to be Absolutely Like I wanted, like I, I was truly interviewing the hospitals.
Speaker 2:You know I was going into those interviews, going. You know, are you going to let, are you going to train me, not only in the ICU? Are you going to let me go to the ER? Are you going to let me go do some cath lab? You know, like all of those things, and I got all of it Good, bad or ugly, I got it all.
Speaker 1:You didn't even know what you were asking for.
Speaker 2:That's the best, yeah, and so, being a new, grad like kind of describe your experience when you first started in orientation and how you felt going into it. Looking back now, I I think you know it was a a strange, strange mix of knowing that I didn't know anything and arrogance I mean, which is almost you need that though, yeah, yeah yeah, so that is an interesting relationship that, like, I know that I don't know and, but I'm confident enough, arrogant enough, whatever to push forward.
Speaker 2:I feel like that's what we're doing here. I feel like we're stepping out of our comfort zone. Um you know it's scary, stepping out into the unknown, but you know I have had, you know I've I've had enough opportunities to prove to myself that that I can perform and and adapt to situations and and be successful. I mean not not that I haven't failed, I've had lots of failures. But if you, if I focus on those things, then I'll never do anything or go anywhere, and that doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1:No, because that's right back to where we were talking about is what's the point?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's no meaning. Yeah, it's passive nihilism. Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so true. So, we're doing it. Yeah, I mean, and the air of confidence I think is also something kind of like along the lines of your personality to become a nurse. I mean, you just you can't be very passive and standoffish to work in an environment that we did, so you have it's like you have to have that piece and kind of know how to gauge that a little bit.
Speaker 1:You don't want to be too much you know I mean, and that's that's hard to do, especially in an intimidating place as an intensive care unit, with other nurses who have been there for a long time, a long time, yeah, and you know and those will keep you humble.
Speaker 2:That arrogance gets smacked down pretty quick.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's still there.
Speaker 1:And necessary. And so at what point did you feel that it either became, that it just changed, like there was a pivot or a door open or a different hallway that you were going down, or something changed in there for you that you know, because then you left. We worked together for how long? Seven years, seven years, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, so around what point? Looking back, do you see that you came to the decision to leave. Basically, is what I'm trying to say, like how did that, how did that kind of come up, and what were some precipitating factors to that? What were?
Speaker 2:some precipitating factors to that.
Speaker 2:I think that you know we were going, we were on a speed bullet, yeah, I mean, we like, I think both of us, all of us in that setting that are seeking the experience.
Speaker 2:You're just going, going, going and there is no break, there is no pause, it's just I'm amassing all of this experience and, you know, while it is all of that experience that makes me a good nurse today, that experience is what ultimately broke me and put me in a position where I couldn't take care of myself, let alone anyone else, so that it was the cumulative effect. I think the cumulative effect of all of that caregiving trauma of none of those internal structures of the system or myself, my own ability to care for myself, because you know I got to take care of everybody else, you know, yeah, which I mean for me ultimately ended up in, I would say, a projection, like I was. I was like projecting onto those around me, like I need to be taken care of. I'm entitled to I'm in entit that's the word Because I'd given so much to community, to people that I've cared for. I'm entitled to like melt down?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:Like I can't, I can't keep going. I just can't keep going the way this is going.
Speaker 1:That's right you just know and that's what's really sad is that it for a lot of nurses it gets to that, and that's kind of where I always wonder, like, how do you prevent from getting that far? And so I think that's why we're talking about the tools and things.
Speaker 2:But we didn't know any of that Right.
Speaker 1:So we're just going on autopilot, almost, you know, trying to navigate all of that and all of the what is the point? The stress of maybe doing things without everything that you need, you know, supplies, staff, positions, lights, whatever and then also trying to learn who you are as a person. Are as a person, you know. I feel like I left that out a lot, just because you know you're so focused on everything else, yeah, that it really becomes easy to just be in the background and the shadows of everything, and so it just, it just breaks yep I mean there were, there were certain cases that I was involved in that were pretty critical, that you know.
Speaker 2:I think there was one case where a young man just he was just a few years older than than I was at the time and he had, he had taken his own life and I was basically, uh, you know, I, I got him once we pronounced him brain dead. You know, I cleaned him up and got his room presentable and I let all of his, his people, come in and and view him for the last time, and I won't go into any of the gory details, but there was a moment where I could see myself in that position and suicide became a thought for me. That was I like, almost like, like. When I think about that moment and that guy, I almost feel like I caught it, ah, like it was something I could catch, like a cold, and I don't know what that is, but I know that that it is attached to the lack of meaning in my life.
Speaker 2:In control? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Like, if you felt like you really had control over your own mind and spirit, it wouldn't be necessary. But when there's no control there, anything sounds better than what's going on, absolutely, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to throw this out there. I love this. It's not mine. A dear friend of mine. In our conversation about this, she said she threw out this word Suicide is the seduction of rest.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:How perfectly, how perfectly stated Right, how perfectly stated Right. I mean like I just want a fucking break.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Really so kind of along the lines of like you know, I'm getting so drunk I'm drinking a whole bottle of wine, that very similar, because it's escape and it's ridiculous. Sometimes you know you're like, oh, I'm drinking, I'm gonna have eight shots.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is that right? Is that good for you? That's going to make you feel great, very similar.
Speaker 2:I don't care no.
Speaker 1:And so you know you think suicide and intellectually you're like I mean, that would be a mess. You know how we would. How would you do that? You know all that but yet it it still remains like an option, right, yeah, which is very weird.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I think, like I think also like, because in that conversation, like that I brought up earlier, I don't want to go like that.
Speaker 2:Right, don't let that happen to me like if that, if I'm in that bed yeah you better, like, fill me up with that bottle of, you know, whatever, whatever drug your choice is Cause you know, and that's the thing is that we have all the tools. Yeah, we know how to do it and we know how to be successful. Yeah, and that is you know. That's part of the thought process, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because you know that's part of the thought process, I think Because you know at least a few of the suicides that I am, you know, aware of how it was done it was medical.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They medically took care of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, we've seen what works and what doesn't.
Speaker 2:We know what works?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So, and I think we've even had conversations like well, if you really want to get it done, yeah, oh, absolutely, you know, don't take tylenol. That's just stupid. Yeah, that's silly. There's other ways to get it done yeah, much quicker and and clean yeah, like I don't. I don't want to be messy, no. So how weird that we have those conversations.
Speaker 2:So weird yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so almost like it not normalizes it, but buffers it a little bit, rather than it being so shocking to talk about.
Speaker 2:Well, or to feel like, to feel those thoughts like as an individual, like you have like, and I think that's the like, that's the camaraderie of nursing that we can have those conversations with the closest people that we work with and we understand that we're not speaking seriously about doing this but I've heard this thought.
Speaker 1:Maybe that is a deep bond, maybe that it is a deep bond, and I think that maybe having those conversation keeps people around, and the ones who don't have that conversation, those are the ones that that don't make it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, deep breath on that. That's a heavy, heavy topic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so bring us back around to kind of current day and what you're doing, and you know just a little bit of how that worked out for you.
Speaker 2:Well, I would say that, you know, after taking my time off from nursing and taking that time to find healing, after hitting absolute rock bottom, I was looking at going. Like I said, after finding Wim Hof, I went. My trajectory of healing went. The trajectory changed dramatically. I would say that six months after, after finding that, I started looking at at jobs and not maybe I could take care of people again. You know, my license was about to expire and and so I went and I got a uh, I got a job at an IV clinic starting IVs and I remember you know it had been a good long while since I, since I started an IV and I was shaking.
Speaker 2:I was like it was. You know, like I'm here, I'm doing this it's something I've done a thousand thousand times before and I know, and it was like it was surreal how regimented it was. It was just like, I mean, it was like riding a bicycle, like I just got back on and I started doing my job and, uh, I didn't lose any skill, I didn't. I mean, it was all there. It was just something I hadn't done in a while and that was shocking to me just in. You know, there was a healing element to taking care of. Like I've gotten myself back to a place where I not only can take care of myself, but now I can take care of someone else. Like that was tremendously empowering, um, and it's just an IV, but at the same time it's IV you know, not everybody can do it.
Speaker 2:Um, and I got that first one, you know, without even thinking about it, it was just such a great feeling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is a great feeling, uh, I love starting so from there. You know, I I did that. Uh, I did that part-time, you know, a little more than part-time for a while and, um, it was a med spa type setting and so it was super chill and, like you know, not the experience that I had in healthcare previously and, and you know the more I did it, I had a. I had a couple of, you know, people that came in with some serious issues and and had to refer them out. You know I came in and kidney failure and.
Speaker 2:I'm like, bro, this is the wrong place, this is not going to help you, this is not it. You know, and uh, cause we did do some very basic labs and uh, and he was just obviously yeah, so sent him to the ER and those little tastes of it were like you know, maybe I could do this again Like a crack in the window up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know a few months of that and you know I was always trying to start this stupid woodworking business. Like I'm not a business person.
Speaker 2:I don't I'm, you know, I may have an. I mean, I have an entrepreneurial experience.
Speaker 1:I'm here doing this.
Speaker 2:We're doing this. So I I definitely have a part of me that you know I was raised around entrepreneurship, so I've seen it, I know it's possible. I know it's possible, but I don't have. I didn't have that experience, and so at that time I was still trying to make this dream of woodworking a reality. And it was because woodworking and nursing were so intertwined with you know, my design process is nursing, process is nursing. I just kind of figured a way out. I figured out a way to put my care into woodwork, which goes back to the whole lack of meaning. And you know why am I here? You know all the existential questions, and woodworking for me really became the vehicle for meaning, and it's such a limited vehicle that that meaning couldn't carry me it carried no real weight for long-term.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So um. So I had to, you know, I had to find my spirituality, I had to find you, I had to find some structured philosophy. Classical literature has helped me, your meaning I had to find meaningful things. I've been searching it out for 10 years now.
Speaker 1:Thinking that it would come from, or thinking that it was coming from our job, from what we did.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's part of the problem is that caring for others consumed me, consumes us as nurses. We just keep giving without any boundary to it, and it ends up hurting us. So you know that when what you do is providing you with your sole source of meaning, not healthy not healthy.
Speaker 1:And nobody tells you that. No, nobody tells you that it's not healthy. They say even working the night shift they're like well, I hope you get some sleep today.
Speaker 2:I'll call you at 11. See if we need you.
Speaker 1:Right, 11. Yeah, come on, I know 11?. Yeah, come on, I know God, I know yeah, yeah, so no, you know, and it's. It's really that fine balance between giving of yourself and having the appropriate boundaries. And that's probably one of the hardest things that it was for me, because I'm trying not to say that I'm a hundred percenter anymore because I don't want to be, but I would have considered myself a hundred percenter in the employment department, a hundred percenter in the charge nurse role, a hundred percenter at the bedside a hundred percent at anything I'm doing.
Speaker 1:a hundred percent are with the mom and as you do that in too many things with no boundaries or what you think you've created are enough boundaries. You're just going to burn out Like you cannot maintain it.
Speaker 2:Once it falls down, once the kind of house of cards that you built falls down, you come to this realization that, like, I have to take care of myself If I don't take care of myself, I can't take care of anyone else Like it's just a necessary collapse of all your systems.
Speaker 1:That's perfect. A necessary collapse of all our systems. That's. That's what it feels like when you truly burn out and you can't do it anymore. I can't do this anymore. That's exactly, and so I think part of why we're here is help to prevent that from happening to other nurses through education and just storytelling, so that there may be something there that other people can pick up to use for themselves. For themselves, yeah, yeah, absolutely so. After the job, you kind of got dipped your toes back into it. Where'd you go from there?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I had, you would know, this person. We worked with her. She went to work in a recovery room and she she would call me in the ICU and she'd be like Caleb, come work in the recovery room with me, come work in the back you. And I was like, ah, you know I'm doing this, this is what I do, this is what I do.
Speaker 1:That's boring. That's so boring yeah.
Speaker 2:So, as I was looking at hospital, like what would I possibly do, and I went, I had a, I had someone that kind of helped guide me through making my decision and she, in our conversation, conversations, it came up that you know, I wanted to use the skills that I have. I don't like I've only known critical care, all I've ever done and so I wanted to be able to use my whole brain in that way, use all my skills. And so and I'd been in recovery for all those years already, so it was poetically fitting for me to go to the recovery room and recover patients, wake people up.
Speaker 2:Wake up, like you know hey, surgery's over. Time to wake up.
Speaker 1:Totally yeah. Oh, you know, hey, surgery's over. Time to wake up Totally yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's so perfect, it was perfect. I mean it's poetic, I mean I, and I tell my patients that when I'm, you know, when it's appropriate, I have that conversation with them, because, you know, I encounter broken people. Yeah, I mean that's why they're there. There's something broken. Yeah, broken people, I mean that's why they're there. There's something broken, whether it's, you know, a bone or an organ or whatever it is they're, they're somehow broken, and some more so than others. And when I see someone that is, you know, in my, in my care, that needs to hear about what I've been through, I'm always willing to share that, and so it does create some really meaningful and positive conversations with my patients.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is so interesting and feels different even in your body, to talk about what we do now, after we've done so much healing, and the way that we look at it and view things compared to before. It's dramatic for me, anyways, you know to, to feel the way I feel about myself and about the meaning of life and about the meaning of all of this and, and having put some definitions to some of those things, for myself to interact with patients who other human beings, um, in that particular setting of their need. You know I am totally different, sometimes even wishing that I could not quite, but a little bit just redo a small portion. I just would like to see myself.
Speaker 2:But if you go back and you change that, the whole universe changes.
Speaker 1:You're right, it's a whole nother. It's a whole nother realm, whole nother podcast. Yeah, so it is very nice that we can calmly, with a breath of fresh air, reflect and feel good about where we are in life. It does feel real good to be, to feel calm and to feel in control and to feel that we have a lot to give and that it doesn't feel like splitting that energy. I don't feel like I split a lot of energy.
Speaker 1:I either create more energy or reroute the energy you know, whereas before in my mind I feel like I focus on how you focus, where you put your intentions of you know, your daily grind, or all the things you have to do with kids or schooling, or you know and work and at work, and all of those things you know I I would have a different perspective of all of that, absolutely, and no, I don't want to go back and do it again.
Speaker 2:I don't think that I mean if you, if you, if you did, you wouldn't have the experience that you have today. That informs all of those Totally.
Speaker 1:It wouldn't be Perspectives. So again, so just, it is what it is and it happened the way it happened. It was meant to be that way, and and so being able to enjoy the journey that I'm on and where I came from that's been part of my growth really is to not beat up on myself for not being able to tolerate it, Cause that's how I felt when I left after COVID, especially when I left the management position. I just felt like, wow, what a letdown you are.
Speaker 2:You know like look, I mean. No, I felt that too. I mean, that's like getting back to the place where I can go start IVs in this clinic. Yeah, like it was a big yeah, like I cannot let this define who I am Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cannot let this define who I am, right, yeah, or I'm going to redefine who I am by showing myself that that this is what I do love, and you know that I can find another way to have that in my life.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's huge and that doesn't come easy and it doesn't come quickly, right, you know. But just a simple breathing exercise, honestly, is where it started for you. Yeah, I don't know where it started.
Speaker 2:I mean it's still the thread like through my whole, like breathing is. I do it at my last, uh, my last job, uh, they called me the bearded breather uh, my last job. Uh, they called me the bearded breather good, yeah, yeah, well, I wore it, perfect, yeah.
Speaker 1:And think of how many people sounds like some exotic animals. Well, it really does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like kind of like a bearded snake but a bearded breather, or like one of those little flying marsupials or whatever.
Speaker 1:I don't know what the name are Like bearded.
Speaker 2:They are Like a bat, something weird. I'm fine with that, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm definitely fine being weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, you hug a tree. You're a little bit weird, not so much, I know, I know. Well, I think that wraps it up for today. How do you feel? Awesome, I know me too. That was great, so great.
Speaker 2:We hope you've enjoyed this week's episode.
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Speaker 1:Together, let's continue to redefine nursing and shape a brighter future for those we care for. Until next time, take care, stay curious and keep nurturing those connections and don't forget to be kind to yourself.