Self-Care Strategies with Julie Pouliot

03/14/24 • 59 min

Is your mental health stressed and overloaded? Are you always in a position of helping others, to the point where it is affecting your health - while causing stress, anxiety, and even depression? Do you feel fatigued, overwhelmed, or, on the verge of burnout? Are you looking for strategies on how to care for yourself, while caring for others?
In this Health-FULL episode: "Self Care Strategies to Relieve Stress", we uncover ways to build up your mental health amongst the stresses of day to day life.
Perhaps you are a health practitioner, therapist, or, the caregiver of a loved one. The exhausting weight of constantly being in a caregiving position can surely chip away at one's health. Unless, strategies are learned to properly resource ourselves and move into a position of power, strength, and resiliency.
In this episode, we hold nothing back as we share 30 years worth of caregiving advice. We ask Julie Pouliot, Registered Massage Therapist, for her expertise and advice on this topic. Thank you for watching, and we hope listening brings you improved mental health and hope for the future.
- Introduction
- What is Somatic?
- Relationship with ourselves and others
- Safety and Presence and the effect on our nervous system
- Self care for Practitioners and Caregivers
- Know Thyself
- Know your needs
- Be kind to yourself
- Know your capacity and understand that it will change day to day
- Running on low emotional capacity
- Self-regulation
- Balancing work life with home life
- Tips for caregivers of family members or friends with illness
- Take pauses throughout your day to recharge
- Placing our problems on the shelf, with the promise to come back at the end of the day
- Building resiliency
- The wounded healer
- Trauma discharge
- Herring's law of cure
- How do you create a safe space for someone when you don't know the ins and outs of their personal needs?
- Validation
- Empathy and compassion
- Burnout and nervous system overload
- Building resilience by doing difficult things
- Mind over matter
- Making acts of service fulfilling to yourself
- Curiosity instead of judgement
- Conclusion
To learn more about Julie, you can find her on Instagram: @symbioticallyfluid
To learn more about Monica, you can find her on Instagram: @acu_osteo_nelson
To learn more about Forrest, you can find him on Instagram: @rebalance_mte

Previous Episode

The Myths of Deep Tissue Massage

Deep Tissue Massage is all the rage. "No pain, no gain" has become a term that echoes through the offices of therapists everywhere. When we are talking about acute or chronic pain, are painful treatments the only way we can attain muscle, tendon, and ligament release?
In this episode, we discuss our anecdotal and scientific psychology perspectives around deep tissue massage. Why is it so popular? What is a "release"? Can deep tissue massage injure a patient? Is there an emotional component to the amount of pressure a person is able to receive?
Podcast Summary Notes
- Intro
- Forrest discusses how the concept of personal space may inhibit us from actually getting as deep into muscle tissue as we think we are
- What is deep tissue massage? Because as Forrest points out, it's not taught in RMT schools in BC
- Forrest shares a clinical story
- Working the correct muscle group
- Fascia release - what are we actually doing?
- The Psychology of deep tissue massage
- What is a "release"?
- Nourishment of tissues from a Chinese Medicine perspective
- Tendons and ligament release
- Injury from deep tissue massage with story
- How to communicate with patients regarding pressure during massage
- How do we educate patients about the risk vs. reward with deep tissue massage
- Patients may feel pain in one area, but it's caused from a remote area of the body
- What does it mean when a joint is "out"?
- Can massage address alignment issues?
- Conclusion
Thank you so much for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Health-FULL!
To learn more about Monica, visit her website at www.acunelson.com
Instagram: @acu_osteo_nelson
To learn more about Forrest, visit his website at: www.rebalancing.ca
Instagram: @rebalance_mte

Next Episode

Empathy, Sympathy & Compassion Defined

In this Health-FULL episode, we discuss the differences between Sympathy, Empathy & Compassion. What is a healthy state to deliver care in? Is it good for mental health to be in a constant state of empathy?
Being in a position of balanced mental health and wellness is extremely important to avoid the jaws of stress and anxiety. Taking on emotional patterns of others by unknowingly being too empathetic, can be damaging in the long-term.
We discuss real life scenarios with our patients that have shaped us into the practitioners we are today. This is a vulnerable episode. We discuss patient mortality, and the first time we had a patient pass away - while they were under our care umbrella. We elaborate on our grief and chat about the amazing relationships that are formed with patients over the course of many years,
We love this Health-FULL topic and hope you enjoy the show.
Yours in health, Monica & Forrest
Episode Summary
- Intros
- Where should we sit in the Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion scale as therapists?
- How being empathetic is a blessing and a curse
- Monica delivers a story about the death of her first patient
- Forrest shares about the death of his first patient
- Being triggered by our patient's emotions and how to approach that in a healthy compassionate way
- We can choose compassion and to protect ourselves
- 4 pillars of compassion and how to achieve compassion toward others
- personal ethics vs. professional ethics
- "Do no harm" through compassion
- Sharing personal experiences with patients - is it ok? If so, in what context?
- Redirecting conversation back to our patients always
- The "You're not alone, I've been there too" approach
- Authenticity and being genuine, in the face of compassion
- Patient autonomy and being respectful of that
- Creating boundaries around our emotions
- Using hand signals :) Helping patients feel safe and like they have an "out" if a topic is not safe for them
- "I statements" vs. "You statements"
- Having a heart and caring is a GOOD thing
- Conclusion