Homework
0:00:01.6 Latrina Walden: Alright, guys. Hey, fellow NPs, so we are live right now. So as usual, Happy December. If you’re watching this and it’s not December, that’s fine. Happy whatever month it is. But as you know, we’ve been kind of talking about self-care, and we’re setting up to talk about self-care. For this month and the next couple of months. Why? Because we realized the holidays, it gets a little tough for people around the holidays, and then the first of the year comes and we all feel like we need to do all of the things all at once right now. So, we are just going to kind of start addressing that and kind of telling you, you don’t have to do that basically, you don’t have to do all of the things right now. And then especially with us being caregivers that’s an important thing, and we are caregivers, so there’s extra added stress on us, so we are likely caregivers at work and we may even be caregivers at home, so that too is a concern. And you guys know I tout this all the time about taking care of yourself and what that looks like, and it means different things for different people.
0:01:18.8 Latrina Walden: So, with that being said, we have our special guest tonight who is going to talk about self-care, and quite frankly, he’s made it his mission to talk about self-care with nurses, and fellow NPs, and anybody in the healthcare industry who will listen, basically. And so we are really, really excited to see that. Hopefully, you have seen him on IG, but his name is Earl Johns, he’s a BSN and RN, registered nurse, AKA Nurse Earl. He’s 23-years-old. A registered nurse from San Francisco. Shoutout to California people. He received his Bachelors of Science in Nursing from the University of San Francisco, USF, in May of 2020 and currently works in the cardiovascular intensive care unit at a level one trauma center in California, where he plans to obtain his CCRN in cardiac surgery subspecialty certification. Earl saw that there was a need or, yes, a need and a lack of self-care centered resources for nurses online. He is dedicated to using social media to help and inspire others to pursue their individual wellness journey. In addition to being a dedicated student, he worked per diem throughout nursing school, while also providing a source of inspiration and education for prospective students through his Instagram account.
0:02:43.5 Latrina Walden: As the demand for nursing school guidance grew, he began informal mentorships that led to a specialization in personal self-care. Earl’s mission is to help healthcare professionals to awaken their highest purpose as a healthcare professional through education and action-oriented empowerment self-care. He’s the author of his e-book, “The Rainbow Nurse CLEP Study Guide: How to pass it the first Time,” So we are super excited to have Nurse Earl with us.
0:03:16.7 Earl Johns: Hi everyone. Oh my goodness, so excited to see all of you, and I just wanna say first, Happy Holidays. You’ll see the Christmas tree in my background, but we’re gonna have such a great time today just learning about self-care and ways through which we can get through the holiday season, which can sometimes be super busy, and super crazy, and super stressful.
0:03:41.6 Latrina Walden: Absolutely, so we are excited. So, with that being said, Earl has provided us with power point, so I am going to allow him to just kind of take it away.
0:03:54.0 Earl Johns: Yeah, so today I’m gonna be talking about self-care essentially during COVID times, and just to give you an overview when we talking about self-care basics, the types of self-care, emotional and mental self-care, physical self-care, spiritual self-care, as well as some recommended resources and organizations to keep you connected. And then we’ll wrap it up, have some next steps for you to take some action, and we’ll do a quick Q&A. And just thank you all for being here, and I’m excited to present. So, before I start, I just wanna invite you to join me on a little mindfulness meditation exercise, and I know that we all have busy schedules. We’re taking the time out of our day-to-day to watch this, so I just want to just start off with a centering exercise. So I want you all to close your eyes and you’re going to be taking five slow deep breaths. You’re gonna be inhaling for five seconds, holding for three seconds, and exhaling for eight seconds. Allow yourself to feel your feet on the ground and try to relax your muscles, so we’ll start. Close your eyes.
0:05:24.7 Earl Johns: Inhale. One, two, three, four, five. Hold for three, two, one. Exhale for eight. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Inhale. One, two, three, four, five. Hold. Two, three. And exhale for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Inhale for one, two, three, four, five. Hold for two, three. Exhale for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. One more breath. Inhale for five, four, three, two. Hold for three, two. And exhale for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Now, I invite you to just feel your body now. Relax your muscles and your jaw or relax the muscles in your shoulders, your chin, feel your neck, and release that tension that you’re holding. If your hands are gripped, relax your hands. Relax the eyebrows of your face, and when you’re ready, go ahead and open your eyes. Okay. I hope that felt great for you. So, next slide is just a little bit about me, about why I’ve been doing the self-care. So I am a registered nurse, I work in the CVICU, a very stressful place to be, but I’m also a public health nurse and I have direct experience with mental health issues in children, depression, anxiety, substance use abuse, so very difficult things.
0:07:20.6 Earl Johns: I’m also experienced as a crisis text counselor with people who have in the past or just currently are going through active issues including suicidal thoughts and essentially working to help them get through personal crisis. And lastly on my Instagram, you can find me talking about self-care and mental health as I am the biggest advocate ever, I think everyone should do self-care. So I’m gonna start off with just saying that self-care is not selfish. As many of you know, you work very difficult, high stress, high-stakes jobs, it’s not easy, but with self-care, you’re able to fill up your cup so that you can pour it into others, so that you’re able to give better care and when we take really good care of ourselves, it is so much easier to take better care of others. So self-care, why is it important? So, self-care is the foundation of our work and our life. Without it, we can’t simply live our fullest best life, and especially now during COVID where people’s self-care have been impacted due to changes in their work, home, finances and just everyday life, along with the fear and anxiety around getting sick, quarantined, social distancing, these all increase the risk of depression and even loneliness.
0:09:00.2 Earl Johns: And collectively right now, we are grieving the loss and a lot of things, whether that’s a loved one, a job or opportunity, or in general, our freedom, it’s so important for us to take really good care of ourselves during this rather difficult time. So common self-care misconceptions I want to go over are, “I have to spend money to do self-care.” Self-care isn’t only bath bombs and face masks. I think that we often sell self-care on social media but there are so many other ways to do that, to take care of yourself. Self-care is not anything that can make you feel good because sometimes the things that you feel good can take away from your values, sometimes these temporary fixes or temporary pleasures are things that don’t align with your values or are getting in the way of you achieving your goals. Because I consider it healthy, it is self-care. So self-care really has a definition and today we’ll look at that and sometimes we forget what is healthy and unhealthy, that doesn’t mean what works for you will work for another person. However, there are clear definitions of taking care of yourself that are indeed evidence-based and actually work. So again, treating yourself to a pedicure, eye mask, bubble bath, and wine are the main types of self-care.
0:10:37.6 Earl Johns: Yes, we get it. Instagram or Facebook or whoever story is posting and telling you to do that, but self-care is very personal, you have to personalize it to yourself. And again, what may work for you may not work for someone else, or what may work for someone else may not work for other people or yourself. Self-care takes a lot of time to do and impossible to fit in a busy schedule. I know some of you are already thinking, “Where the heck am I going to find the time to do self-care? I’m so busy, I work 40-plus hours a week, I can barely breathe.” And I totally agree, I think we’ve all been there, but just like anything else in our lives, have to carve out some time for it, and when we intend to make something happen, it will happen. “Self-care is selfish because it takes away from helping others.” So again, like the last quote I said it’s not selfish. It actually helps you take better care of other people. It helps you show up to your highest self and helps you pour more. If your cup is not full, you can’t pour anything. And as professionals, we need to be at that 100% to do our best and to also take care of people our best.
0:12:08.7 Earl Johns: “Self-care would happen after all my work is done.” How many of you are like, “Once I finish X, Y, Z project, I’m going to take really good care for myself,” or “Once I finish working this 60-hour work week, I can’t wait for my vacation.” So, this is a misconception because you actually have to do things every day to take care of yourself. Whether we like it or not, we do things already that we essentially do to take care of ourselves. But why is this here, it’s going to happen in the future. Why can’t it happen now? During the week, you’re so busy and stressed, why can’t you enjoy a little bit, a little bit or a drip of self-care for yourself? So it’s not this thing you’re always looking forward to or that you’re going to do, because sometimes that time may never come by for you, for others. So these are all some misconceptions and I hope that they kind of explain ’cause I feel like we get on Instagram and we see self-care, and we don’t really know exactly what it exactly means. So just going over the types of self-care, we have mental and emotional self-care, physical and body self-care, and social, spiritual self-care. And wellness, this is often referred to mind, body soul, but again, self-care is mainly in these three dimensions, and we may have really good mental and emotional self-care one day and really bad physical and body self-care another day and vice versa.
0:13:56.1 Earl Johns: So, it’s really important that we not only optimize one category but also optimize as many as we can. So, How to improve your self-care? First step is to assess where your self-care is at. So, if someone ask you right now, “How is your self-care?” And, How would you respond? Whatever answer that you came up with of how is your self-care, is truly how you feel. Whether you’re burnt out, whether your self-care is really bad right now, whether your self-care is awesome, it’s good to be honest with yourself. If you’re not doing any self-care, it’s okay to admit it, don’t feel guilty because this is what this presentation is for, for changing those behaviors and changing those beliefs and misconceptions that you may have. The second step is to establish some self-care habits, so how did we begin to do things that make us feel better? And then from there, maintaining those habits and also evaluating our own self-care, how are we doing and how do we keep it consistent? So defining mental and emotional self-care. So this is the first type of self-care that I wanna talk about and essentially it is taking care of your thoughts, feelings and behaviors to optimize positive emotions, cope with negative emotions, and increase personal resilience.
0:15:44.0 Earl Johns: So this is my personal definition of emotional self-care and you won’t find this on Google or Wikipedia or Urban Dictionary, because it really has these two different components of optimizing your positive emotions while also being able to helpfully cope with your negative ones. So, I want you all to answer for me, if you can, you don’t have to put it in the chat or anything like that. I just want to ask you, “Where is your mental health at?” Again, this is assessing where you’re at on a scale of one, being the best, I feel really good, I’m so happy right now, I feel so much joy, I feel that peace, to 10, having a complete emotional breakdown, feeling like you don’t care about anything, feeling hopeless. Where are you at right now, honestly? And I want you to just write out that number or keep it in your head when we talk about these topics. Personally, right now, I’m a three. Things are bothering me but I’m coping and I’m just right now trying to get to that one or two, but this is helping, and I’m very happy to be talking to all of you, so, is always good to assess yourself, how am I feeling? So habits of mentally well people. The first habit seems very simple but it’s something we often neglect, it’s practicing mindfulness. So this is living in the present and not in the past or future. How do we use that or are we living in a society where we’re always planning the next thing?
0:17:36.1 Earl Johns: Exactly to be mindful is in a lot of ways to be different, but essentially by living in the present, you are essentially just being a non-judgmental person towards what’s going on and you’re taking things as they’re happening so that means engaging your senses. If you’re sipping tea or coffee, how does it taste like? What does it smell like? What does the mug feel like in my hand? What do I see? Those types of things, what’s engaging your senses. The other thing is not living in the past. Are you replaying painful memories or past mistakes, or past embarrassments, or even past shames? Sometimes we can get so stuck. Our heads be stuck on bad things that happened in the past but they’re not really happening in the future, and it’s with this mindfulness that we can feel better, we can feel more connected to our bodies. Number two: Practice gratitude and avoid comparison. So in our social media driven world, it’s very, very difficult to do this because X, so-and-so just posted that they bought Y house or Z just got a new car and F just got engaged and you’re just overwhelmed by seeing other people do things, but I think for me personally, I like to write at the end of the day three things I am grateful for. They can be anything, they can be absolutely anything, nothing is too small or too great to be grateful for.
0:19:24.8 Earl Johns: You can be grateful for electricity, you can be grateful for a roof over your head. Some days, you can be grateful for a job promotion or you can be grateful for a huge success that you made with your exercise goals. So there’s nothing too small or too big to be grateful for, and just making that time to remember the things that you have going for you. So back to that comparison piece, limiting time on social media and use it intentionally. Who here is the type of person to doom-scroll on Instagram or Facebook or even just forget what they’re doing? Like how did I even end up on this person’s baby shower’s photo? Why am I looking at this right now? Am I the only one? But sometimes with social media, we just forget that we’re doing what we’re doing, and a lot of the times it can start to feel awful, ’cause instead of focusing on our own lives, we’re starting to look at other people’s lives, what other people are doing, and in a lot of ways that can take away from your own self-care. By limiting social media, you’ll have more time for yourself, but you’ll also have less time to make those comparisons.
0:20:47.5 Earl Johns: You’ll have less time to get into those negative head spaces of what you lack, you’ll have more time to focus on your own life and what’s going on for you. Talking to friends, family members and people who support you. Relationships, relationships, relationships can be the most wonderful and most horrible thing, but it’s the way you show up and I think that when we’re sad or we’re going through an emotion, it’s very human nature to close up, to isolate yourself, but happy people and mentally well people do the opposite. And this is a skill called opposite action. I’m so sorry, my alarm. [chuckle] This is a skill called opposite action, and with this skill, you’re doing the opposite of what you feel. So if you feel like isolating yourself, if you feel lonely during this time, do the opposite. Reach out to a friend, text your family member, and surround yourself with people who support you. It’s okay to take time to kind of assess your relationships. Does this relationship fulfill me or is it draining me? Does it feel equal? Another habit is to plan and cope ahead. So we often have stressors in our life, whether that’s a big presentation, whether you have a work performance review, whether you have to plan your kids birthday party, or make it on time to this wedding.
0:22:26.4 Earl Johns: There are so many different stressors, whether that’s a financial stressor in the future, we have to be able to be ready for these, and there’s a skill called cope ahead to kind of anticipate our events and visualize ourselves doing well in these situations. So let’s say you have a work performance. Imagine yourself getting good feedback and imagine yourself being assertive. Imagine yourself saying the things you want to say. And all of these things can make you feel better, whether it’s before an important conversation or a big event, this is almost like the skill of mentally rehearsing. Next habit. Avoid ruminating and catastrophizing. So again, ruminating is kind of being stuck in the past. Ruminating is, “Why always me? This sucks. Why do things happen to me? I hate this. This is so bad.” It also includes complaining to other people. You’re kind of just staying in that stuck space of, “Oh my goodness, why is this happening to me?” And in a lot of ways, that protects ourself, but it also keeps us stuck. And again, going back to that mindfulness, living in the present and recognizing that sucked, but that’s in the past now. What can I do to move forward? And what can I do now to heal? And sometimes healing starts with self-care.
0:24:02.8 Earl Johns: On the other hand, catastrophizing is kind of looking into the future. I’m just thinking of a random thing right now, but there’s so many news stories of groceries becoming more expensive. If you’ve watched at least one news stories, you’ve heard something about the supply chain, and this information is just at the end of the day information, but it’s the stories that we create about this information that make us feel anxious. “Oh my goodness, I need to stock up on food for a month. There’s going to be no food at the grocery stores,” those types of thoughts might scare you, but that’s catastrophizing. That’s thinking worst case scenario when something hasn’t happened yet. So I invite you, the next time you’re trying to prepare yourself for the worst case scenario, reminding yourself that maybe it hasn’t happened, maybe I think we can step back and just be mindful and stay back in the present, because nothing exactly has happened yet. And this applies to a lot of different things. Taking prescribed medications if necessary. I think there’s a huge stigma in society and just in general, for taking medications for mental health and I don’t think there should be. We wouldn’t tell a diabetic to stop taking their insulin, nor would we tell someone with heart disease to stop taking their statin drugs or just stop exercising regularly. Why? Because these things add to their wellness.
0:25:50.1 Earl Johns: So if you’ve ever felt like you wanna try to be on some psychoactive medications or have felt this fear or even judged yourself, it’s important to remind yourself you wouldn’t tell someone else with a physical condition to stop taking their medications. So why should I take that judgment? Because mental disease as just an equal, if not sometimes more awful effect than physical disease, and it still counts as a disease. The last thing and the last habit will be to get help regularly from a licensed therapist, counselor, Crisis Text Line. You can always Google, and I like to recommend this to everybody, free and affordable therapy, in whatever city they live in. So for me, free and affordable therapy in San Francisco. Wherever you are, there’s options. There are options including sliding scale which are low-cost options for people who want to see therapists but don’t have that much of a budget. Okay. So now to the nitty-gritty, how do we handle the stress, this anxiety and this depression? So the first step is to self-validate your emotions and have some self-compassion. So let’s say, you lost your job or let’s just say they cut your hours at work and you’re not able to work with the same amount of clients as you typically do which means less money, and you’re just stressful.
0:27:35.7 Earl Johns: And you could say to yourself something along the lines of, “Now is an incredibly hard time in the market, it is normal to feel discouraged and scared right now.” Often we’re feeling things that we don’t even notice but it’s in power of naming the emotions that can really help you start to process them. If you don’t know what you’re feeling, how can you begin to make sense of it? And often in times of feeling scared or feeling a negative emotion, we judge ourselves. “I can’t feel scared, I can’t feel afraid. I just need to deal with this.” We push them away, we put on this facade of strength but research and evidence… This researcher named Kristin Neff says that people who are self-compassionate actually bounce back quicker than people who are self-criticizing, because there’s two options when we have something negative happening to us specifically; we can be self-compassionate or be self-critical and if you have the choice, self-compassion is always an option. It’s hard because in our society we are not trained to think that way, we’re not trained to be kind to ourselves, we’re always trying to improve.
0:29:08.4 Earl Johns: However, studies have shown that people who are more self-compassionate achieve more, are healthier and ultimately live happier lives than people who are self-critiquing. And again, that’s kind of this misconception that, “If I’m really hard on myself, I’m gonna do better, I’m gonna improve.” But the research shows that being hard on yourself actually holds you back, it actually stunts your growth. Self-soothe with healthy habits and pleasant activities. How many times do you come from a very difficult shift and you’ll just been like, “I need to drink?” Or you’ve just had a really rough day and you’re like, “I need to text my bestie and just tell them all about it, I just need to talk to someone,” and you just send them a long, long, long text. So there’s a lot of things will make us feel better, but often more than not, these things have effects on ourselves and other people. And sometimes it’s our inability to sit with this stress that causes us to go to these quick habits. “Hey, let me just have a doughnut,” or “Let me just grab this bag of popcorn. It’s okay, it’s just one bag.” We just need to feel this really, really quick sense of relief, but I like to tell people, there’s a difference from feeling good and doing good. Not everything that feels good does good.
0:30:53.8 Earl Johns: So drinking doesn’t really feel well on your body and maybe doesn’t align with your values. Venting everything to a friend might actually overwhelm them and maybe might make your relationship more strained, and it’s really in the self-soothing, watching your go-to movie, eating your favorite home-made meal, exercising, go for a run, these are all things you can do independently and things you can do with yourself, which we’ll go in more detail ’cause I have a ton of self-care examples when we get there. Self-help and self-connect. We’re not supposed to go through this world alone or just keep to ourselves, we are social beings, so that means we need to be able to talk to other people, we need to be able to schedule that time. Why do we schedule time to do work but we don’t schedule a friend time? It’s normal to put, “Oh, I have to do this,” but it’s not normal to put in your calendar, “Let’s text X, Y and Z.” It should be because we’re social beings, and again, evidence has shown that being around other people helps improve our wellbeing. So make it a point to schedule social activity in your calendar. I don’t care who judges you, I don’t care who’s like, “You’re crazy, you’re supposed to be getting things done, check, check, check off your list. Stop wasting your time.”
0:32:33.7 Earl Johns: No, you have to be intentional, you have to carve out that space, and if it means putting an hour or two in your calendar of, “Let me just call this person,” or making the goal to reach out to two people every week, that’s huge. You need to set yourself up for that, you can’t just expect people to come to you, and I like to call this the proactive approach. So ways to not handle stress and anxiety, I kind of went over them but any sort of self-criticism that you’d have taught, comparing, rejecting your emotions, basically pushing away. So an example is, “I can’t be scared right now. I’m such a loser and I can’t find a job that isn’t stressful. I can’t deal with this anxiety. I hate myself and I wish my life was better. I kind of be like, Hi, she has her life together.” This kind of includes everything but it’s so easy for us to let our inner critic run wild, but it’s being mindful and taking back and putting that self-compassionate voice into the dialogue. Any self-soothing through binging and numbing of any sort. So binging and numbing meaning, just some examples, watching the entire season of Netflix. I love watching Netflix episodes but have you been there where you’re just like, “I need to distract myself, let’s just… ” And even that can make you feel like you’ve waisted your day.
0:34:10.9 Earl Johns: Eating immense amounts of food or starving yourself, taking drugs, which, yes, includes Caffeine, masturbating excessively, sex addiction, overworking to keep busy. All of these things make you feel better in the moment, but often have more difficult consequences as a result. The last thing is self-isolation and self-harm. So not reaching out to people or hurting yourself or you can hurt yourself basically, you don’t really have to cut to do self-harm. You can do self-harm by not being your authentic self, not being true to your goals, not being true to your values, that’s also self-harm. Just some suicide prevention I’d just throw in here, so if you do see these behaviors in other people, just be mindful that checking on people you care about and just a little bit of awareness, I’m not gonna touch too much on it, and there are suicide hotlines available. Okay, now we’re moving from mental to physical. So I like to define physical self-care as treating your body with kindness in relation to nutrition, regular movement and an insight into physical sensations. So physical self-care is not posting the best-looking picture of you in a bikini or swimsuit on Instagram or it’s not looking good. It’s again, focusing on feeling good.
0:36:08.2 Earl Johns: So here are some physical self-care practices that I highly suggest, and they include nutrition; so nutrition, I’m not an expert or a registered dietitian but any sort of dieting can easily lead to relapses and binging, so just be mindful. If you’re gonna change your nutrition, make it a lifestyle change, don’t make it a temporary fix, because often, once we go so much in one extreme, we rebound and go to the other extreme. And my gentle, gentle, very basic advice for nutrition is just aim to have more fruits and veggies with every meal every day. I’m not saying, “Don’t eat Chick-fil-A or don’t eat French Fries.” I’m not telling you what and what not to eat, I’m just saying, every day, just try to incorporate more fruits and veggies, it’s that simple. Sleep. Who here has done an overnighter or just done stretches of work where they’re like, “I can survive on three hours of sleep?” So that’s not good [chuckle] and it’s often very human of us to think that way but sleep is a priority because it can do so many different things, and eventually you need to catch up on that sleep that you missed.
0:37:32.0 Earl Johns: So by you not sleeping less, you’re not being more productive. You’re actually just staying in this… You’re postponing it, you’re not really showing up as your best self. And sleep has a lot of benefits and I think sometimes as the caretakers that we are, being so selfless, we forget how important it is to just get enough sleep, so definitely try to focus on getting good sleep. And the second or the third point is just exercise quality is more important than quantity. We’ve heard all across the world that exercise is good for you but how many implement it practically into our lives? And I’d like to say that quality is more important than quantity and consistency is more important than intensity. So a light to moderate workout, four to five times a week is better than intense workout two to three times a week. And again, it’s just doing that regular movement, because like sleep, you can’t really get ahead of exercise by postponing it, it’s just doing it up in this moment and choosing to do it at this time that makes the difference.
0:39:05.6 Earl Johns: You can’t skip brushing your teeth one day and brush your teeth twice the next day, it just doesn’t work like that, and just encouraging yourself to try to keep those habits consistent, because exercise makes you feel better, and you have to find differently ways. So the next point I have to make is, daily movement is healing but also personal, and I like to think of exercise, and a term I’m most comfortable with is daily movement ’cause I just feel like exercise is just throwing in so many different connotations and can feel really, really difficult and even emotional and triggering for some people, but just incorporating daily movement for yourself is very healing so figure out your what, when and where. Your what: Are you going to stretch? Are you going to be doing yoga? Are you doing pilates? Running, lifting weights, Cross-fit, hiking, cycling, jogging. There’s probably stuff up there that I didn’t include but even walking, that’s all really good for your overall health, just to do and then figure out your where. Are you in spin class? Are you in a workout studio? Are you doing it at home? Where are you doing it? And then the when. The first thing about when I want you remember is, it’s personal. And if you feel like you can workout first thing in the morning, go for it, but if you’re a night owl and have a lot of energy at night, go for it too.
0:40:52.0 Earl Johns: Honestly, you know your body. Find the time where you feel like you just sync well with the day and feel most energized and get your workout going on. The only caveat, I will say, just because I’ve been placing a really high importance on sleep is, try not to exercise within two hours before sleeping because sometimes that can keep you up. Again, I will give you more examples of physical self-care, but these, I would say are just the baseline habits. And when you’re asking that question, How is my self-care? Physical self-care often comes to the forefront. Okay, the next pillar of self-care is spiritual and social self-care. These are practices and rituals that keep you connected to others and/or higher meaning and purpose. So spiritual and social self-care involve community, involves feeling like you’re part of something bigger than yourself, feeling connected, feeling like you’re a part of something bigger than yourself. These are some examples of social and spiritual self-care, making sure to schedule family, friends, children and loved one times every day to connect, even if it’s just five minutes of texting or a quick phone call, these things are scientifically proven to make you feel happier. So again, back to that idea, you need to schedule social time in your calendar like it’s a priority.
0:42:39.7 Earl Johns: Secondly, connect with people who you work with but do so vulnerably. Often we don’t like to share a lot at work, but honestly, you can be professional and have a deeper connection with others by learning more about each other, and it’s been shown to increase not only your productivity, but the productivity of the person you have a relationship with when you can be vulnerable and learn more than just small talk or talking about how it’s so cold or raining or traffic, right? Let’s try to not ask those questions, ask them like, “What made you go into nursing? Or “What do you like most about working here?” Those types of questions show you who a person is. Thirdly, practice your faith, religious and value-based practice as desired or needed. So prayer and worship is very powerful in increasing positive emotions, so if you wanna say a prayer before work or if you’re feeling really sad and you wanna go to church, those things are part of that spiritual self-care. And even if you’re not spiritual, you still value something, whether that’s kindness or bravery or peace or relaxation, do something to uphold that value. That to me is in a lot of ways being spiritual, being true to yourself, being aligned to values that are higher that connect you to something more meaningful.
0:44:13.5 Earl Johns: Join a group or community; so look up social meetup groups near you and then find other people in your profession to do similar hobbies with. It can be very, very intimating to do this because you can be an introvert, it can be hard to talk to people but it’s so much easier to connect with people who share the same values and hobbies, and you might make your best friends, you might find your best friends. You never know what you don’t know, that’s coming until you put yourself out there. Be mindful of social media usage and set boundaries. This is gonna be a big, big theme because I think this is the one thing we haven’t really talked about that has changed with our society in the modern day, is social media. It is okay to set limits on zero social media use. It is okay just tell yourself, “Today, I’m gonna spend 20 minutes on Instagram,” or “Today I’m going to spend 30 minutes on Instagram and the NP collective, etcetera.” It’s okay to have these boundaries. It’s been shown more than often that social media can increase negative emotions, so be very mindful of the content you consume and how long you spend. I like to say to people, “If you don’t like someone or if their posts make you feel bad about yourself or sad, unfollow them.” Social media is a space you can curate.
0:45:44.3 Earl Johns: I follow therapists, I follow positive people, inspiring people, people who I look up to, those are the type of people I follow. Just because you know someone, you don’t have to follow them, you don’t have to tune into their lives if it makes you feel worse. Again, creating this more positive space for you and for somebody that maybe then be collective, and it’s really spending time in communities and spaces where you feel best. Online communities are beautiful ’cause you get to connect with people from all over, but it’s just really important that with your social media use and digital use that you be very intentional. So, I just wanted to give you some self-care ideas for the holiday season because I think these are very important. Social wellness, make sure to spend time with people who you generally care for and avoid those who treat you poorly, I think that’s given. Express your needs and make plans ahead of time. I think during the holidays, we tend to do things last minute and it’s very helpful to just carve out time to think, “What do I want to come out of this interaction or event or this family gathering or this dinner? And how can I plan for that?” Be present when you’re around others and keep your phone off. I feel like this really improves just your listening and also makes other people feel respected.
0:47:23.2 Earl Johns: I think we’ve all been guilty for replying to text quickly while we’re with someone, and that’s okay, but it’s really the present moment in front of us that creates the magic between other people. Limit time on social media. As I said, it’s a highlight reel, you can get into comparison mode. Nurture your existing relationships by doing a quick check-in and finding time to connect, even if digitally. Help someone, donate or volunteer for a cause that matters to you in person or online. And the last one might be a little bit controversial, but set firm yet respectful boundaries with friends and family members. If you have a boundary, it is valid because that’s your boundary and uphold them if challenged. Mental wellness. So going back to this, taking care of our minds. Unfollow or mute social media accounts that spark comparison or make you feel bad about yourself, follow social media accounts that inspire you, interest you, or add joy into your life. Challenge unhelpful thoughts through journaling, meditation. I love meditation, some people don’t meditate and I totally understand, but even talking to a friend or a therapist can help. Writing down everything you’re grateful for, focusing on the things that are going right. We have a very common human tendency to focus on what’s going wrong in their lives and the problems, but the magic happens where we can see the things that we have going for us.
0:49:00.5 Earl Johns: As I said, read, journal, meditate and reflect, and kind of this theme of self-care is find a time or ritual to do every single day, a self-care practice every single day. I’m not talking, “Do a face mask, do a bubble bath, light three candles.” I’m talking doing one thing for yourself every day that you don’t have to do on vacation, and that adds up and it just will make you start feeling less burnt out, less overworked, and honestly, just fill up your cup, you’ll feel happier. Physical wellness tips. So stay hydrated. I just say make water a default beverage. I love tea also but I think with the amount of different beverages we have in the world, we forget that we are made of water, we need to drink it then. Sleeping enough to make you feel rested, fruits and veggies in your daily meal plan. This one is very specific to the holidays, but treating yourself to holiday food without any guilt. So you eat that Cranberry Bliss Bar, enjoy that ham or turkey or whatever holiday dish you have without any guilt because you deserve it and you’re not doing it every day, so it’s totally okay.
0:50:26.5 Earl Johns: Follow a workout routine that is fun and realistic. Emphasis on fun and realistic because it’s shown that having a workout routine with those two components is what makes it consistent. If working out seems like a chore to you, you’re probably not gonna do it. If working out is like washing dishes, it’s probably not going to feel good, so finding something you really enjoy can help you build that workout habit. Taking a hot shower, bubble bath or doing a face mask. So that is self-care and I guess my points earlier was just that self-care isn’t only that. Spending more time outside or take a daily walk, cook more meals at home, these tend to be healthier. You can even make it a ritual in your family or with your partner or your loved ones, it can be really fun. Stretch and take regular sitting breaks and also regular standing breaks. If you’re the type of person to sit down a lot, make sure to stand up every hour or two, and if you’re the person who’s standing a lot, make sure to sit down for every hour or two. Get a massage, light a candle or use aroma oils, essential oils, and probably one of my favorites is, cleaning your space and decluttering your space for movement.
0:51:50.4 Earl Johns: This kind of is both ’cause you get the exercise but you also get that mental peace piece. These are just some recommendations of apps ’cause we all have phones, I assume. If you are looking for apps to improve your self-care, here’s some examples. So Calm, Headspace, Mind Strength, Galio, Shine, Sanvello, Talkspace, and my personal favorite, Fabulous, which is really cool, it’s like a reminder Smith or a self-care checklist for your personal habits whether that’s doing your gratitude journal or making sure you sleep. I highly recommend Fabulous. And they do have a free version but it helps you build those healthy habits and stay consistent. Self-care practices, again, just exercising three to five times a week for at least 30 minutes. Again, consistency and quality over quantity and intensity. Doing your daily gratitude journal, connecting regularly with other people, more fresh fruits and veggies, rest and relaxation through hobbies and getting enough sleep. Here are just some resources regarding mental health that for those of you who are interested in learning more about mental health and taking care of your emotional wellness and practicing emotional self-care, and here’s some physical health.
0:53:32.0 Earl Johns: There’s American Academy Family Physicians, American Heart Association, Food and Nutrition Center, MyPlate, which helps you choose healthier foods and Nutrition.gov. And then here’s some social and spiritual health. There’s the National Institute of Health Social wellness kit, and a couple of links, how to have a healthy relationship with social media. There’s a spiritual care resource list here, and then just googling local spiritual organizations near you. So we wrap up the next steps for your self-care. So these are our action steps I want you to take this week, you don’t have to do them today but maybe tomorrow. Plan to take some time to do some self-care for yourself. These are just some examples but you have plenty, and I want you to try to do something, one thing for yourself every day and it’s actually fun ’cause you get to look forward to it like, “Friday, I’m going to see a friend and have some coffee. On Saturday, I’m gonna do a nice workout. On Sunday, I’m going to sing and dance.” One thing every day, one little thing. Plan meaningful ways to move so finding out what you like. Do you like walking? Do you like yoga? Do you like cheer? Do you like hiking? Those are all great examples.
0:54:56.5 Earl Johns: Kind of social date and reach out to friends, whether that’s even through text or phone call, and securing mental health resources. Choose two to three websites you will regularly visit maybe every week or every two weeks, that just uplift you. One of my favorite wellness websites is Psychology Today. I just love reading the blog posts and articles, and if I’m bored or just be like reading up, I go there, and another one is mindbodygreen, and then downloading one to two mental health apps that I mentioned that you can use daily. I just wanna end this presentation saying this quote by Rumi, one of my favorite philosophers, “I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being.” Self-care, again, is not selfish, and it helps us be not only better caregivers but also enjoy life and live lives that we feel are meaningful, are connected and ultimately just overall happier. Now, it’s question’s time. If you have any questions, just type it in and or pop right in, and I just wanna thank you all for listening to me and please follow me on Instagram @TheRainbowNurse if you want more resources and tips.
0:56:24.0 Earl Johns: But I’m just so thankful for each and every one of you from joining me today. I hope it helped you, I hope you got one or two things that you can do this next week because I want you guys to do something for yourselves, and again, it can be really small, so just thank you.
0:56:48.5 Latrina Walden: That was so excellent, Earl. So, we really appreciate it. I know you probably couldn’t see the chat or anything like that but it is basically us just talking amongst ourselves when you were speaking. [chuckle] We felt like you were calling us out as in we were not doing those things or wanting to do those things, which is meditation. A lot of us in here workout regularly, so that is one thing I think the collective has on lock, is that we do workout regularly but it’s the other pieces that we need to kind of add to it ’cause like you said, it’s that balance of those three things.
0:57:37.7 Earl Johns: And then I think also for those of you who are like, “Oh, you’ve said a lot of things,” I think you will all have access to slides so everything in my presentation that I talked about, you can print it out, you can go back over if there’s a specific thing you liked. Just so you know, you’ll have access to that.
0:58:00.5 Latrina Walden: Awesome, thank you ’cause they were asking so that was probably one of the many questions was, would they have access? And I did let them know, yes, you absolutely are giving us access, and a lot of them mentioned that this is probably good for their patients too. They’re nice, easy, accessible, simple things that while we are doing our thing in the clinic, being able to provide these very accessible things that you gave us to our patients as well.
0:58:30.1 Earl Johns: Right, and I think it doesn’t have to be fancy back forms or various trips to hotels, self-care can be as simple as saying what you’re grateful for every day.
0:58:43.7 Latrina Walden: Right, right. I think that’s where just as a society, we get a little caught up ’cause I’m very much like you, I need the other things to do besides self-care, and they know I’m a big proponent of it, but don’t tell me to go to the spa, don’t tell me to do a face mask. I love those things and I do those things, and I know it is a part of self-care, but give me something else.
0:59:10.5 Earl Johns: It’s very personalized, it’s very personalized, and you know as busy people, as busy as you are, you find what works in your schedule, and that’s the thing about self-care, it’s what might seem really relaxing to one person might not be relaxing to another person. I honestly have never had a bubble bath in my life and I don’t plan to. [laughter] But I love running, I love also friends and coffee dates, and that’s the thing about self-care that’s so magical, it’s really what can I do to fill my own cup, and the person who knows yourself the best is you.
0:59:48.5 Latrina Walden: Yeah, yeah. I know, that’s amazing. So someone is asking, “How do you do the opposite thing that you talked about?” Again, if you could touch on that?
0:59:56.5 Earl Johns: Yeah, so when you wanna isolate, it’s very easy to stay stuck in that feeling and how you start, it seems counter-intuitive, but before you even feel like socializing with people, you just socialize with someone. So the emotion of wanting to be open or wanting to talk to other people, isn’t even there yet. You don’t. But you’re doing the action. So let’s say you’re feeling very lonely one night, and this COVID thing is happening, you can’t spend time with family and you’re just feeling all crummy and you’re on social media and you’re just watching other people do lovely things and you’re just like, Wow. One way to act the opposite is just to text or call a friend randomly, or text your group chat, or call someone you know from work, so you may not even feel like doing so, but again, it’s this idea of the action preceding the emotion, and oftentimes than not, you’ll feel better after. Right?
1:01:13.5 Latrina Walden: Right. Now, it’s kind of like that. You never want to workout, we do not enjoy. We will start out saying, we do not enjoy it, but once we are in the motion, and especially once we are done, we feel better. So how do you start it? It would be to do just what you said is, “I am feeling the isolation, I am feeling that way right now, let me hop in the NP Collective and see if anyone else is awake and just kinda wanna chat about something random, or let me text a friend because maybe I don’t wanna talk quite yet, but let me text a friend and if they answer, then I gotta talk to them [laughter]” You don’t have to talk about that kind of situation. So, [laughter] yeah, just start small. You just gotta jump in there and try to hit it off at the pass, basically.
1:02:11.5 Earl Johns: I was able to actually see most of the chat ’cause it’s in the comments, I saw a question that said, “Can coping be a bad thing, a way to avoid things?” And my answer to that is, no, because coping in of itself is not avoidant. Avoidance is a behavior, essentially, that’s the opposite of coping. Avoidance is, I don’t wanna feel these feelings, I’ll deal with it later, or let me just do this, whereas coping, you’re acknowledging. Coping starts with acknowledging, I feel bad today, or I’m just having a really, really rough day, and then adding a behavior to make yourself feel better. Oh, when I get back home, I’m ready to do something small for myself, I’m gonna open up my journal, or I’m gonna look through happy photos of when I was on vacation doing X, or tomorrow morning I’m gonna get brunch with me and my friends, or I’m gonna order Starbucks as a little treat to myself. Those are type of coping behaviors, but coping in of itself is not avoidance because you’re acknowledging an emotion and you’re doing a behavior to offset that emotion. Avoidance is just, I don’t wanna feel, I don’t wanna deal with this, this feels icky but I’ll deal with it later. But what happens is, through avoidance, you intensify that emotion and it gets to worse. And then over time it grows ’cause you’re not relieved, and then you have an even more extreme reaction to the emotion.
1:03:55.7 Latrina Walden: You know, that’s good, I like that. Like you said, It’s an acknowledgement, but at the behavior and that’s the part that is difficult. That’s the part that is difficult for people. But also remember, even as we tell ourselves, and if we’re telling our patients, their behavior doesn’t have to be ginormous, it doesn’t have to be something huge, it can be a small behavior that is just included and that is your coping skill. So that is wonderful. So this is good. This was really good. We are setting up to talk about this, I have the collective no’s, I truly believe in taking care of yourselves because it’s just a different world nowadays, and then you throw in a pandemic, and [chuckle] it is a completely different story that we are experiencing as caregivers in healthcare. So I really appreciate you joining us, and so thank you so much and we can’t wait to have you back again.
1:05:08.5 Earl Johns: Yeah, I just thank you all and thank you to the NP Collective, and thank you, Latrina, for having me. It’s always nice to spend time with you guys and talk about these things because these things are important, these are things you don’t really talk about in our every day, but these are the things and the foundation for a happy life.
1:05:30.0 Latrina Walden: Absolutely, absolutely, fantastic. So guys, we’re again thanking Earl, and I’m glad you guys loved it, [chuckle] I see you guys, and then for all of our friends who were probably still at work and still unable to make it, all 75 of them, [chuckle] we’ll have to tell him about Nurse Earl and to come and watch, and like I said, just turn it on and listen, because at the end of the day, we all picked up that one thing that you were going to take away, what we’re going to do as well is we are going to create a checklist for you as your homework. So it is simply the things that he has mentioned, but we’ve taken a few, you know, one or two, three things. I think there’s about five things. So not to overwhelm anyone, but taking that, because everyone wants to know, how do we start? How do we start? Well, here we are giving you a little cheat sheet to his entire presentation. We are gonna give you access to that as well, so that’ll be in your portal, so for those of you who want to use it for your patients, it’s probably a very good idea. That’s actually a really good idea because it’s very accessible for them.
1:06:43.6 Latrina Walden: But we are gonna give you a cheat sheet and feel free to share that [chuckle] with your patients as well if you want to, but I’m so excited and I hope that you guys take care of yourselves over the holidays, because we are slowing down and we are slowing down to gear back up in January, but I hope you enjoyed it, and as always, we are around, the whole team is around, I’m around and I will see you in the group. Alright, you guys. Take care of yourself. Alright, talk to you later, bye.