Will Power
Being a physical therapy entrepreneur can be unbelievably challenging at times. From patient care, to running the businesses, to balancing a family, it’s no wonder many entrepreneurs feel overwhelmed and burned out. Each Tuesday, join Will Humphreys, a retired private practice owner and medical entrepreneur, as he introduces game-changing leadership concepts and interviews other successful leaders in healthcare. If you want to start, scale, or sell your outpatient physical therapy business, this is for you. Together not only can we increase our income, impact and freedom, we can build the largest network of healthcare leaders in the world at the Will Power Podcast.
Will Power
Recognizing and Managing Stress with Dr. Jaime Raygoza
Transformative Approaches to Stress Relief
In this episode, Dr. Jaime Raygoza, an expert in psychology and stress management, helps uncover subtle signs of stress and offers strategies for preemptive care to avoid burnout. Challenging the notion that seeking help is a weakness, Dr. Raygoza provides practical approaches to stress recovery, including integrating laughter and fun into daily life for improved well-being.
Key Takeaways:
- Recognize subtle stress indicators, like irritability and isolation, before they escalate.
- Understand chronic vs. acute burnout and their impact on all life areas.
- Changes in communication can signal stress—stay aware of your patterns.
- Simple laughter exercises can relieve tension and boost resilience.
- Embrace small, consistent steps for long-term stress management and overall well-being.
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rock stars. Today's guest is dr jaime regoza. He has a doctorate in psychology and human and organizational psychology. He is an expert in handling stress and burnout guys. So he is a career and stress coach currently and the founder of the rainbow career coaching center. He's going to start by explaining what stress really does to us mentally and physically. He's also going to address the smaller signs and symptoms of stress and burnout that we can get in front of, so that we don't get to the point of panic attacks and major burnout, which I'm sure all of us have experienced. But he does this in a way that's going to help us not just address it personally, but for our teams. I love this episode because we're going to talk about how maximizing fun and laughter actually produce results in a way and helps us get unstuck in a way that nothing else can. So, guys, enjoy the show.
Speaker 2:I've been working a lot with entrepreneurs, small business owners as well as high achievers who want to get into leadership, and a lot of their main problems is that they feel like they don't have work-life balance. They have this I call it an audacious goal that they feel is audacious. That's too far away, but they feel like they can't get there and they want the assistance to be able to still get there, but not sacrifice everything in order to reach that point. So I teach a lot of stress management, burnout recovery and things like that.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. And so you're working with clients who are highly achievers or just high leaders with a lot on their plate. They want to go to a certain place. They might feel stuck. So for stress and burnout, how does that look for you in terms of what does stress and burnout do to people that limits them to get there? Why do you think that causes that limitation?
Speaker 2:A lot of the reasons is that we're taught at a very young age that we have to do it all, that we succeed on our own and we fail on our own, and I think a lot of individuals have this mentality, and especially for males I notice that more so than females that we're taught that asking for help is weakness.
Speaker 2:Asking for support will make you lesser than, and it will make your accomplishment less great, if you had help along the way. Turmoil that they have. They're just piling on, piling on, piling on different stressors and what ends up happening is just imagine yourself as a cup and the more water you fill in you get to the rim and eventually you just put one more things and it all spills out. And that's when it's too late. The cup is already full. It's going to take 10 times longer for you to recover from that than if you were more preventative from the get-go. But that doesn't mean that it's game over. It's just going to take a little bit longer. You're going to have to invest a little bit more on yourself, on the self-care, change some of your habits so that you can recover from burnout and hopefully stop it from happening in the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is fantastic, so kind of getting back into the line of questioning. This is fantastic, so kind of getting back into the line of questioning. I like how you said, dr Kamehau people who experience burnout like the second, they're feeling it like that cup overflowing. It reminds me of dehydration. The second we're thirsty. We're already dehydrated, but it's not the end of the world. You can do things about it that help dramatically improve those symptoms. So can you speak about chronic burnout? Do you see burnout as a chronic disorder and what's the difference between chronic burnout versus acute burnout?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So first I do want to preface that burnout itself is not a diagnosable term. It's not something that a psychologist or a therapist can say oh, you're diagnosed with burnout, not like depression, anxiety. So there hasn't been enough studies to really link that. So when someone goes to their therapist and they're like we're burnt out, a lot of the times they won't address the burnout. They'll address they're like well, where does this stem from? Are you just depressed? Are you anxious? And they'll try to find different things.
Speaker 2:So when someone says I'm burnt out or they're feeling like they're being burnt out, what they mean and what the definition is is an insane amount of stress where it has impacted your cognitive processes, where you can no longer function at the level you used to used to, and there's going to be a cognitive decline over time. And we're at the point where, no matter what you do, you're going to stay at this flatline level because you're just so chronically burnt out. And it could be just from various things. A lot of people consider burnout to just be from work, but it can be from your personal life, it can be from your relationship, it can be social burnout. There's so many different types of burnout. So when you don't address these stressors from these different areas of your life, they can all impact you at the same time.
Speaker 2:Therefore, causing that lower threshold of cognitive performance and some things that people usually miss is they no longer have the will to want to get out of bed to go to work. They don't get excited to do certain things. You get invited to go see your friends and you dread the idea of getting up, getting out and about. Things at work that used to excite you no longer excite you. Now they're more of a nuisance. You get very irritable. Other things that your body can show would be massive headaches, migraines. You can start having like stomach problems, digestive problems, even going to the bathroom. So many things that your body's trying to like give you red flags. Hey, pay attention to me, stop what you're doing. You need rest.
Speaker 1:Interesting. What are the most common symptoms that you see? With all those symptoms, I'm sure, because, like I, have variations of those symptoms on a day-to-day basis, and I have stress on a day-to-day basis, right? So what symptoms would you look at? From your experience of coaching companies and high achievers, what are the most common symptoms that you see of this not officially diagnosable term called burnout?
Speaker 2:So a lot of it is isolation. So that's the first thing I always pay attention is how often do they participate in group activities? How often do they communicate with their workers, with their staff, with their family members, like who is their inner circle, and how often do they interact with them? If I notice that there's a pattern where they tend to isolate, they always make an excuse not to hang out, they make an excuse not to participate in certain things and even if it's something that's really fun, like that most people would consider fun, that could be like a big red flag. Another thing would be lack of communication.
Speaker 2:So a lot of things is very staccato communication very abrupt. Get to the point, I really don't want to do the fluff. So, once again, that isolation piece, really trying to not connect with other people, even though a lot of the solution to this is to connect with people, is to communicate, is to hang out with people that love you, that want do good. It's kind of like our brain is counterproductive. It's like we need to get away from the stressor versus and actually deal it head on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get that. I feel like this episode's more for me than anyone else.
Speaker 2:I really do Dr.
Speaker 1:Jaime, as you're talking, I'm like me, me, me I am a very high achieving individual. In the last two months, I've launched a few podcasts, I have four companies, four boys in addition to that and any number of things that are happening simultaneously, and I was telling my wife recently I feel like I've painted myself a little bit in a corner and I think our listeners can probably appreciate that. But I've done this before and I know that the path out has to deal with confronting these things head on. But I will tell you that just to confirm, confirm what you were saying.
Speaker 1:When I am not working, gratefully, I'm already starting to feel better, but, like a few weeks ago, about a month and a half ago, I started feeling super overwhelmed and I like, when I got home, I told my wife I'm like, I just, I just need to be alone, so that isolation piece I identify with and for me it felt like just a chance of like reducing stimulus is the only way I could have described it, because I just felt overstimulated and exhausted all the time.
Speaker 1:But the problem is that I feel like there's these unhealthy ways of dealing with stress, like for me, a common thing is to go on some social media apps on my phone and just start scrolling and it's weird because it numbs, but it doesn't really help either. So let's talk about how Dr Jaime can help me. Like, what do you recommend for someone like in my position, especially when I'm in that place of like chronic burnout and I'm using that term, that's not an official medical diagnosis but where I feel like I go through these periods where I get super excited about what I'm doing, and then I burn myself out.
Speaker 1:What would you recommend for me in those cases?
Speaker 2:So one thing is kind of like I mentioned before, finding out what do you want to work on right now and what can you put a pause on to work on later. I think a lot of the things is that we especially multifaceted individuals who get super excited. They want to do everything, they want to conquer the world. It's hard for us to put a pin on things, so we're like, if I don't focus on this right now, I'm going to lose that momentum and I'm never going to get back to it again. Yeah, which is false, you know like we will get re-inspired.
Speaker 2:That is something that, like we tell ourselves but it's a fallacy, it's not really true Is make a list of things, kind of like a bucket list. That's why we have a bucket list, because you know there's things that we eventually want to hit on. It's not a bucket list because we need to dump everything out and do it all at the same time. The thing is that we're trying to bite too much into life at the same time that we're starting to choke. So you have to take smaller bites and choose what you want to eat first, what you want to do first, and then focus on that and just trust yourself that you will get the other things done when you make time for it.
Speaker 1:Got it. Ben, that's exactly the truth. I feel this sense that if I don't get it done, it will never get done. I will tell you that when I used to own my private practice like a lot of our listeners who can appreciate, this is that when I had multiple locations and I felt it didn't feel like I had much of a choice. Even now it doesn't feel that way.
Speaker 1:But to what you're saying, if I really wanted to, there are things I could put a pin in. But when I was treating and I had multiple locations and a team, I had too many hats on but none of them felt like they could drop, because margins are very low in physical therapy and if I'm not treating a ton of patients or managing my team which the little help I get comes from them then it feels like I get stuck. So in those cases where, strategically, I'm working on how to put a pin in things, what do you recommend? Obviously, one of the things I want to mention to rock stars who are listening is that Dr Jaime is a career and stress coach who has a number of different tools in his belt and one of them is laughter yoga. I don't think it would shock the audience to know that yoga is a common, healthy tool that can adapt and help people with stress. But explain why laughter yoga is so valuable in what you do, Explain what it is and how you use it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's something that you can do on your own and you can do in like bite sized moments when you're feeling a sense of overwhelm. And it goes back to the root that laughter is our brain's natural way to calm down our stressors. It's a natural way for us to reduce our stress hormones, increase serotonin, increase endorphins and really make us feel good. And the whole purpose of laughter yoga is to have more air, more oxygen run through your veins, more to your heart, to your brain, and release out that laughter so you can increase the serotonin and endorphin boost. So what I do with all of my clients, especially if they're having a really bad day, I was like let's do a mini session right now, let's do five, 10 minutes and then just like, let's breathe it out, let's do some laughter exercises and a lot of this is also reintroducing play into your life.
Speaker 2:Because we get so serious about having to meet all these goals, we forget to enjoy the precious moments that we have. We forget to actually enjoy the process. We're so hyper-focused on reaching the end goal that we forget that it takes longer for us to get to the end goal than it is to actually reach there and stay there. And there's a fascinating study that actually came out two years ago that showed that the average individual will feel happier while they're working towards a goal than when they actually the day they actually achieve it.
Speaker 1:Really so we are. We have more joy in the process of achieving a goal if we let ourselves, I guess versus actually achieving.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then it's like it declines because so they did the research. So like, let's say that a goal of losing five pounds lasted you three months, you felt so much, so much pride, so much joy in just working on yourself and you felt like you were doing that growth and you were reaching that goal that once they hit that five pound mark and they lost it, the joy went down like instantaneously, like within a week, and no longer lasted. And they were dissatisfied and they were like, okay, what now? Like okay, I reached this. What was the whole point? So then they set another goal and then they start having those feel-good feelings again Got it Interesting that that's the process if we let it happen.
Speaker 1:I know for me when I was a physical therapy owner and at times, even recently, where I look at that and it doesn't feel like it could be true. It doesn't feel like, if I'm going to be in the process, that it feels like it's joyous. But, to your point, I think that's when we're going too fast, maybe obviously taking on too much, and that's where it may be hard to be present and enjoy the process as we unfold it. My favorite coach once told me. He said you know, instead of resenting your physical therapy practice because it limits you from having fun and being fun, start showing some gratitude for it, because where you are going to end up financially and leadership-wise is because of it. At that place of gratitude we can find opportunities to introduce fun back into it.
Speaker 1:I love that you said introducing fun back into it. So that's why laughter yoga is so important. It introduces more elements of fun back into it. So how do you convince someone who's in the mire of depression or not mire of depression, but the mire of like burnout? How do you? How do you, how do you get them from that into being playful and laughing during yoga?
Speaker 2:So a lot of it is one building rapport, getting them to feel like they're in a safe space. Not everybody's going to want to jump into a public yoga class with me and just like laugh it out in front of like strangers. It's very intimidating. So I'll do the one-on-one session, like kind of you and I right now, and then I will do an easy one which is pretty much like I call it, counting laughter.
Speaker 2:And it's really hard for you not to be able to do that, just because it's very contagious and all it is is I'm going to count to 10, but instead of saying numbers, we're going to laugh it out and each time we're going to add more equivalent to that number. So it would be ha, ha, ha, ha ha ha. And then you just like let let it out until you reach 10. And, to the point, a lot of them end up forgetting like the counting and they just like start laughing and I I laugh really loud, I have a very strong laugh. Some people say so it's really hard for them not to hear me laugh and not join in.
Speaker 1:Okay, there's a short video that I honestly have earmarked, because it's these two guys and they're doing an interviewer, a reporter in some foreign country, I don't even know the language. The guy is, he says something and the other guy laughs and he has a really funny laugh, it's like, and then the other guy laughs and then the guy laughs harder and so his weird laugh gets louder, and then pretty soon they're both just on the ground and they can't stop laughing. It's laughter is contagious.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, oh yeah, definitely. And it goes back to like when we see a baby, when we hear a baby laugh, it's hard for us not to smile, it's hard for us not to want to embrace that joy and then join in. So the same, the same concept is like when you hear someone laughing and then something just kind of triggers in your mind and you start joining in and then you start feeling that sense of relief.
Speaker 1:Oh man, that does make a lot of sense. And so you introduce that. So it's mechanical, you're forced, not forcing, but you're saying, okay, no one feels like laughing, everyone, start laughing here. Ha ha ha. And then it just starts building on its own.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and we do different activities. Some of them are very silly, some of them are like I said, said you have to use your imagination and we end up doing it together. And then there's some props that not everybody uses, props but I do use like um juggling scarves. I use like big, like a big um mushroom tarp where, like that rainbow one they used to do when you were, when you were young, I mean the fun one, where you like get in and you pull it around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that yes, I bring that in, I bring balls, I bring like masks, I bring like stuff.
Speaker 1:So anything just to kind of, let you reintroduce that sense of play dr hymie, I love this concept of like coming in, having you come into a company and show people how to reconnect the laughter and fun and counter that, because it really does provide that.
Speaker 1:But they have to feel like they're in a safe place. Because I discovered that in my own company, where it didn't matter anything I tried to do to build my culture. If there were people in the company talking trash about each other behind each other's backs, there was nothing I could do to make that fun. But when I had a good team that was just overworked, then these concepts would have been golden back in the day. So I'm sure you can Do. You ever run into that where you're working with clients and you find out that maybe their culture is toxic? Or does that not really play into how you operate?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's why I call myself a career coach. I don't necessarily work with people who just came fresh out of college. I work with people who are already in their career, just came fresh out of college. I work with people who are already in their career and if we decide together after we're coaching them with the stress and they notice that a lot of the stressor is because their work culture is just very toxic, then I'll help them transition into another career so that they can help them get away from that stressor and into the next one.
Speaker 1:Or, if it's a business owner, maybe transition that person out of their company and into a different company.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or their system, changing their system to make it better. So it's just like whatever is holding them down. And then even like sometimes I've had business owners who've had problems with their staff and it's a problem that wasn't even related to work, but it was a personal problem that that person was having. But by just acknowledging that they are a person ended up solving the tiff that they had together.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. So who are the type of people that seek you out? What is it that I mean? Burnout is so vague. Who are your clients typically?
Speaker 2:So a lot of people who usually are overly stressed. They have a business, they're high achievers at work, they're leaders, managers, ceos, and they typically want an out. They want something to help them regain control of their life and learn how to manage their stress in a positive way, because they're feeling like they've tried everything else. They've tried therapy, they've tried different groups and different things and different things like, and it's just not working for them. So they're like okay, help me, like I'm, I've tried everything, I'm willing to try you too.
Speaker 1:and I was like okay, let's do it you know I so back in the day this was like 15 years ago I got so boring because it was so stressful all the time owning a practice and having people just constantly hey, can I talk to you for a second? And dump throw up on me repeatedly Like you know, I'm not happy here and just all that stuff. It was like day in, day out, 12 hour days, never feeling like I was caught up, and so I went out and I joined an improv group. I started by doing classes. So I want to just like testify that like what you're talking about here is like the magic thing. That like what you're talking about here is like the magic thing.
Speaker 1:You know, I think people on the outside, especially if they're coming from a judgmental, serious, introverted place, would look at like laughter, it's not laughter yoga, what's it called? Again, it's uh, I got it. See, yeah, it's laughter yoga. They would look at that and go, yay, I don't have time, who has time? But when, when I started doing improv and and then and then eventually I made the main stage where I was doing shows and I would go off, it was cool because we started going into corporate environments where we would meet with a bunch of engineers like 200 to 300 engineers and we would play these improv games, not trying to get them to laugh, but teaching them communication, because what's powerful is that when people are laughing and they're in their higher tone, it's like a waveform that brings positivity into their lives and connection with other human beings and it was weird to see these introverted engineers who couldn't even look at each other and pass a clap, like they'd look at each other and go clap and they would, over time, start by the end of it.
Speaker 1:They were like being super silly and like pretending like they were you know cogs in a machine together and they were. What's. What was the byproduct? Laughter, and the laughter. At the end, productivity would skyrocket. Afterwards. Talk about results after you work with your clients. What does that look like? You work with your clients what does that look like?
Speaker 2:you know, with results no-transcript it's easy for us to forget. The good stuff around us happen. You know, like you said, the gratitude and all that stuff. And after a few sessions typically I work with my clients anywhere from two to three months and at three month mark, that's when I start noticing like completely different person. The person that came with me at the beginning is no longer the person at the end. They're being grateful. They're actually saying like, wow, this thing and this thing and this thing is happening to me. I'm just really happy. I feel like my life has changed. And when we look at their chart and everything and we're comparing and I was like you know what these things were already happening to you. It's just that you finally decided to put your focus on the good stuff versus the bad stuff.
Speaker 1:And it helps you. I had a patient once who was dying of cancer and she came in every day and she was so like she was in her late seventies, but beautiful. She had these colorful scarves that she'd wear around her neck and would dress up for therapy. And she had so much radiation in her neck that her neck had been deformed. There was a lot of tissue that was taken out of her neck and she had these beautiful scarves that were hiding in. So she'd pull off her scarves and then lay on the table and I had to do some of the most painful physical therapy there was. I would stretch her because of the scar tissue and it was so painful for her and she.
Speaker 1:You know it was a little bit emotional sometimes for us as we were doing this, but when we weren't stretching and doing the painful stuff, we laughed and laughed and we talked about so many things I'm getting a little emotional thinking about it. We talked about just silly things and I remember asking her once I just said what is it why you're dying? You know you aren't going to live. Why are you able to find some? How are you able to find so much joy and like positivity? And she just said well, I'll never forget this. She said life isn't a series of up and downs, it's more like a railroad track.
Speaker 1:There, life isn't a series of up and downs, it's more like a railroad track. There are two rails. One is everything we don't have and things we wish weren't happening to us, and the other thing is the other rail is everything we do have and everything we are so lucky to have, and positive she goes. I choose that other rail. I know there are days where I lick my wounds and I cry and I have hard times and I worry about what my family's going to do when I'm gone, but most of the time I choose the other rail. And because of that she extended beyond what people thought she was going to live. But more importantly, dr Jaime, she changed other people's lives in that place. So when we talk about this thing called laughter, is there anything else in life that matters more than our families but laughing with the people we love?
Speaker 2:And so it's like it's so beautiful and it's choosing to choose that side, like in that analogy, choosing to go on the right side of that railroad versus the left. And just because sometimes you end up on the wrong side of the railroad doesn't mean you're going to stay there forever. Like I told my clients, you're going to have some bad days. I can like. Nothing in life can like get you not to have those bad days. But take those bad days, let yourself feel what you need to feel and then choose to switch lanes and go on to the other side. Choose to switch lanes and go on to the other side, Because if you stay too long on the other side, then it starts corrupting everything around you and you will impact people.
Speaker 2:No matter what we do, we always impact the people around us. So do you want to impact people in a negative way? Do you want to impact people in a positive way? Because if you're sharing brightness and gratitude and having a good time and laughter, other people around you are going to bring that back into your life tenfold versus if you're bringing people down and you're being negative and being a negative Nancy, then that's what people are going to return back to you.
Speaker 1:And or like you're hiding the negativity, like the thing that I'm really good at is pretending like I'm really happy and secretly imploding. So I think that energy like maybe it's a little bit less overt in the sense that, like I can fake it well and that carries me through some of these rough days. I do believe there's a state of like fake it till you make it kind of thing. But if every day, secretly, I hate what I'm doing, it's going to bubble out of me and I love this idea of like no, we're gonna. We want to be in this state of play, creativity, where we can find the solutions to these stocks that we think are impossible to overcome, right, so I I love what you're bringing to the table, dr Jaime, in terms of everything here. Can you share with me a personal experience when you felt burnout stress?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've had a lot of downsides with burnout, hence why I decided to do this as a career. I always tell people who want to go into coaching, into therapy or the helping fields, you become the person that you needed when you were younger. So I tried to have all the tools ready so that I could have helped the younger version of myself. But one of the most recent ones had to. It was like around 2021 through 2023. So, like during the pandemic, I was offered a job to work as a consultant for a. It was a startup that was going to shelter kids that were on the border and they were going to reconnect them with their families. So they were split up and we were going to connect them with their next of kin. It was a big pressure not to go with all the details, but they had seven days. The case managers had seven days to rehouse these individuals. If not, they would take them to another shelter and they would start their journey again. So, to not re-traumatize these kids, they have seven days.
Speaker 2:They brought me in. They had about a turnover of. They had 365 staff. About 50 to 75 staff were quitting every single week. They had no training protocols. Their managers didn't know what they were doing. They were working out of flip phones, they had no computers, they were doing everything via paper. Everything was just insane. So when I went in there and they asked me fix this, I was like shoot, this is an insane project. I was like, shoot, this is an insane project. It was a 24-hour shelter, so they had staff working 24 hours a day. So in order for me to impact everybody, I had to sometimes work 24 hours a day so that I can talk to every single person at the shift. They literally designated a bed for me so I can nap at the shelter.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh so that I can work with certain staff, and I worked with them for about four months and during that four month period, I ended up burning myself out so much because I cared so much about the cause and the people. Towards the end of the four months, it was like a drastic change. They ended up having about five people quit a week, versus the 75 that they had they had their numbers were doubling and the people that they were housing and everything was great. But even though the processes were going good, I was burning myself out and it wasn't until I literally started having an anxiety attack in bed, trying to fall asleep, forcing myself to fall asleep, and I was like this is too much. It's too much for me.
Speaker 2:I was no longer finding the joy. I wasn't eating. I was losing a lot. I lost 20 pounds during that four-month period because I wasn't eating, because I felt like I didn't have time to eat and it was just so much stress. I started becoming more irritable and I was like I don't like this version of myself and I don't like what's becoming from this project. So I ended up doing more self-awareness. That's when I got introduced to laughter yoga in 2022. And I started doing laughter yoga and I started really grounding myself. I ended up finishing that job. They ended up doing well, but I promised myself I was never going to get to that point where I was working, because I was working like 120 hours a week. It was insane.
Speaker 1:I can't believe that. So can you talk about panic attacks? You mentioned this journey of like having panic attacks is kind of like the bubbling over of that. How do you see panic attacks? What are they from your perspective?
Speaker 2:So it's an insane amount of stress where your body's holding on to all the stress and it's trying to find a way to release it, since you're not doing it yourself. So your body can find different ways of releasing the stress. Some of them can be migraines, some of them can be seizures, some of them could be heart palpitations. They mimic other illnesses. So it can mimic a seizure, it can mimic like an epileptic episode, it can mimic like a heart attack. It truly feels like you're dying. You're not getting any more oxygen into your system that you need because you start hyperventilating and all of your body starts mimicking epileptic episodes.
Speaker 2:So I would start seizing very rapidly. Every single muscle of my body would just start shaking and I started contorting myself. Everything was very fetal position, forced. I didn't have no control over my body for like a good 15 minutes and then. But my brain was like very aware of what was happening and I it's like the sense of you cannot control your body because it's like getting worse and worse and worse. And I've known people that they've had like severe the look, sounds, it feels like they're having a heart attack. I have others that feel like they're drowning, like they can't breathe. So it just really reflects different people. But you have to. I always say it's when you've gotten to that point you missed all the small signs that led to it.
Speaker 1:What are the smaller signs?
Speaker 2:For me and a lot of people feel this is the most common thing. Sometimes you feel like a random muscle spasm in your body, like a twitch. The most common is like the eyelids. Underneath the eyelids you start feeling that little twitch. Sometimes you start getting migraines. Sometimes you just feel very tired. Even though you've gotten a good night's sleep, you've been eating well, you still feel like exhausted, loss of appetite or even a lot of that like the opposite, where you just are constantly hungry. All are very important signs that something's coming up. Um. Another common one is numbness in your body. So you lose sensation in your fingertips. You lose sensation in your face, your legs, because the blood is rushing other places and you're losing all the sensation in that specific body part that makes sense.
Speaker 1:You're going through a sympathetic response and so your body is channeling the blood and in different areas, to get ready to run away, like to your muscles instead of your extremities. So you get numbness. Yeah, and that is so interesting. I never knew that those were my earlier symptoms for stress and burnout. It's, uh, for me, my pelvic, my heart, palpitates. When I start getting stressed out, they'll start skipping beats.
Speaker 1:And there was a period of time when I had a really difficult challenge with my team, with people talking a lot of trash behind each other's backs most of it about me where I um was told I needed a pacemaker by an electro cardiologist. They put a heart, uh, halter monitor on me. They said that I had over a thousand skips in one day and I felt them. It was hell, it was. It was literally this feeling like my heart just stopped and they would kick in again.
Speaker 1:We've all had those heart flutters from time to time, but this was, this was all day, and to the point where I felt like I was going to pass out at times. And I've also found that magnesium and potassium supplements will help me just temporarily mitigate that. But the bigger problem is the stress, and so what you do is help address the bigger issue by finding healthy ways to help handle that. So that's is that what you when you have when you work with people who aren't super burned out? I'm guessing your approach is still the same, it's just that it's a lot more effective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's more preventative side, because a lot of people tend to come to me after they're having the anxiety attacks, after they're having that loss of motivation and everything, and I'm like, okay, this is good, like we just don't fix, fix this, but next time don't wait till you get to this point. Because the thing is that we have stressful events and we're like I feel fine, I'm great, I'm not stressed, yeah, I can do all of this, like I feel fine, but you're, the symptoms don't come during the stressful event, they come after. They're like earthquakes the earthquake will hit and you're like I'm fine, but it's the aftershocks. That is that what screws you over. Wow, like I feel no stress, but I'm having like anxiety attacks back to back, like I can't breathe. I just don't get it. Like everything that like was causing me the stress is gone and I was just like I ended up switching jobs, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay, when was the big stress event? And I was just like two weeks ago.
Speaker 2:Okay, you didn't allow your body to feel it back then, so it held on to that stress, it accumulated kind of like a tumor, just started adding on, adding on, adding on, and even regular, small stressors that are typically good for us physical stress or just like small little things like that will cause us to get motivated or ambitious will now become negative because we have this cluster of stress and you broke. And the easiest way that people break is when they're relaxed, because now they don't have the tension holding that stress together. It now dissipates all at once and it over floods. And what I tell people is one of the things that you notice is when you're really stressed like let's say when you're in college during finals week you're stressed, stressed, stressed, stressed. You're working a hundred percent, but the week after you get sick because your body shuts down and your immune system goes down because you worked it so hard the week before and people were like I don't get it, why do I always get sick after? And I was like because you overworked your body.
Speaker 1:That's mind blowing. I'm having a hard time processing this because I'm again. This is more for me. I hope people get a lot of. Anyone listens is going to get a ton out of this, but literally no one more than me. Because I, yeah, man, like when I've had breakdowns or like physiological symptoms, it's always like later on, like on vacation, for example, where it's like why am I having a panic attack on vacation? But it's, and it's. What's weird is that I don't see the correlation. Logically, it doesn't make sense to me. When I feel those symptoms, because they're not, there's a delay between the cause and the effect. So, like when I'm stressed, I honestly am just getting through it and I'll tell people I'm stressed and I might be losing some sleep and whatever, but it's. It's one of those things where I I tell people but I'm fine, I, I'm fine, yeah, give me more to do I can take on that task as well, because I'm breathing fine.
Speaker 1:I don't feel worried or bad right now, so I keep taking on more, and then it's only later, at random times of rest, that things really implode. Now, when things are really bad, they happen whenever. I've been to that point too, where the physiological symptoms will emerge at any given time, but it's almost like most recently we're talking four weeks ago, I was on vacation. We were driving around Yellowstone and I had this massive panic attack and like just my heart was skipping. I was shaking at the wheel and it was just like what is that? And I was like I'm not. You know it was in your brain is trying to make sense of it.
Speaker 2:So I've learned that one tactic I'll do is I'll tell my brain.
Speaker 1:I'm just excited to be here, but I think that's a temporary solve for a bigger problem of not measuring how much you take on and going through that experience. I think some people are so chronically in that mode that they're even numb to their own stress and it's almost like they can't stop doing it. I know this is a true story. I know a guy that he worked his butt off and he created a business that was over half a billion dollars. He sold it and he dreamed all day about the day where he would wake up the next day and just have a drink of coffee on his porch and watch the sunrise and during that sunrise.
Speaker 1:He had a heart attack the next day after he sold his business.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:And I've always thought of that, but I never recognized it until you were just talking about how these things interact in that way where it's like, yeah, the body always keeps score right. There's a book, I think, by the same title. Have you read that book?
Speaker 2:Yep Fantastic book.
Speaker 1:Talk about that.
Speaker 2:How does the body keep score of our stress. The problem is that we may fix things in our mind saying like we're fine, we're fine, we're fine, but the body still keeps that trauma inside us and it could be from childhood trauma to work trauma, to trauma as an adult. Like we will start gaining habits, we will start doing things to kind of protect us when they no longer serve us. So this is a conversation I have with majority of my clients where I told them prehistoric age our monkey brains were conditioned to freeze, fight, flight or fawn those are the four responses that we do right. Flight or fun those are the four responses that we do right, and most of our actions derive from these four things. When we have conflict or any type of discomfort, our brain senses stress as a danger. So one of those four things will happen. So sometimes, when we get overly stimulated and we have so many things to do, like I'll share with me. One of the things that trigger me is when I see I leave for vacation, come back and I see a million emails in my inbox Instead of tackling it one at a time. My freeze response will activate where I get overstimulated and I will ignore it. I will just like be like. You know what this is too much for me? Today I'm getting like palpitations. I'm just be like you know what this is too much for me? Today I'm getting palpitations. I'm just going to wait until tomorrow and I'll just freeze and do it tomorrow. The next day, same thing happens.
Speaker 2:So, unless you start training your mind and being reflecting, there's a technique which is be aware, assess, observe and experiment. So assess the situation. What is causing my stressors? Is it a real threat or is it something that my mind is convincing me is a threat? Observe what are the things that are potential, things that you can do to kind of fix it, what are some things that are not going to help you, and then experiment ways to kind of tackle it. And then focus on the system so that it doesn't repeat again. And I always try to people be aware of your surroundings, be aware of, like, whether the threat that you're having and the response that you're having is really in par with the situation.
Speaker 2:If somebody says we need to have the talk, like I need to talk to you, if we start having anxiety from that saying like what did I do? Like what's going on? Like, why do they want to talk about me. Did I do something wrong? Blah, blah, blah. That response may be fawning, where you're like trying to find a way to people please them beforehand because you feel like you did something wrong. But think about it. Have I done anything wrong? I don't think so. And if I did, is it going to be the end of the world?
Speaker 1:No, so let's just go in with a very normal conversation and find out, with a curious mindset, what's going on. I think curiosity is a really cool lead into that too, like being able to be curious about it and understand it. One yoga guy I remember working with was telling me he's like, even when, if we are in the worst case scenario in our minds, there's still a part of our brain that's really curious about it. So to lean into that, like what is this? This feels like death, but am I dying or am I just so excited? My body's trying to tell me something else? Yeah, because when we resist it, I've learned that the heart rate when I resist my, my moments of extreme anxiety, is when it really amplifies, versus being like it's okay, we're going to let it come, we're going to sit with it as long as it needs to do and, honestly, in some cases it can help us perform in small doses. But overall it's not a healthy partner to lean on, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:No, and the easiest way to do this is to force yourself to reflect every day. So I know that a lot of people are against this, but journaling is really good, you know, leaving yourself voice memos, doing a vlog. You don't have to share it with anybody and just do it for you and then really see, like I told people, what was the rose of the day, what was like the best thing that happened to you, what was a thorn, and then what can you do tomorrow to fix that thorn, to make it into a rose?
Speaker 1:Wow, I love that. Well, dr Jaime, it has been an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast and I thank you for the insight of what's really going on when we're feeling stressed and burnout and ways that we can tactically address these issues. If people wanted to get ahold of you and have any questions, how can they do that?
Speaker 2:You can shoot me a message on my website at rainbowcareercoachingcom, or you can it's the same handle for any social media. So Rainbow Career Coaching and just shoot me a message there and you can just say hi or ask me any questions. And if you want to hear more things like this, I also have a podcast Finding the Unicorn in you, so feel free to tune in on that.
Speaker 1:Finding the Unicorn in you, that's awesome. So feel free to tune in on that. Finding the unicorn in you, that's awesome, man. Yeah, so check out his podcast. Everybody, make sure that you dial in and ask him questions, like if you have a team that's in particularly stressed out, if you're feeling a lot of stress, reach out to Dr Jaime. He's clearly got a lot of experience. I've been around this thing called stress for a long time and I've learned a lot today.
Speaker 2:So, dr Kami, thanks again for being a part of our show, of course.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me, guys, thank you for taking time to listen to today's episode. If you found today's information to be useful, could you take a minute and help me? I would love it if you could leave a podcast review in your app so that other people who are looking for this information can find it. Plus, my dream is to have the largest network of medical entrepreneurs and leaders in the world so that together, we can change healthcare to make it better for all. So, in addition, if you can think of anyone that you can send this to, not only would that mean a lot to me personally, but it would build this network so that we can make healthcare the way that we want it.
