Hi there,
My name is Wendy Williams.
I'm a nurse educator and I am all about mental health and
well-being as well as resilience.
I'm looking forward to being a resource out here on Insight
Timer.
I think I found my people group.
So,
The name of this track is Burnout to Breakthrough,
Finding Your Built-in Peace.
You know,
It took me a while to find my built-in peace
and there's a particular chapter in my life that I'm remembering so well.
I can feel myself
pushing away my chair from my desk at my office.
I was an administrator in a very reputable
institution of higher education here in the greater Boston area.
I was working in the
School of Nursing.
As I mentioned,
I'm a nurse and those nursing students,
Doggone it,
They weren't
doing what I was asking them to do.
They weren't turning in their materials on time.
The end of the
semester was coming up.
I could tell by the calendar on my wall and my mounting email box
and the manila folders that what I was using at the time were piling up,
Piling up,
Piling up,
And there were faculty members knocking on my door adding pressure,
More pressure.
I was
done,
Cooked,
Gone.
I could,
Like I said,
I could feel myself pushing away from my desk
and I said,
Nope,
Not doing this anymore,
Not liking it,
Not coming back,
And if I don't wake
up tomorrow,
That'll be fine.
Now,
If you know Wendy Williams at all,
I am a glasses half full
kind of person.
It takes a lot to make me downhearted or see the darker side of life,
So I knew I was in trouble.
I called my family.
They came and they got me and they took me to
the right places and,
You know,
You can imagine what happened.
They did a good evaluation,
Checked the box that I didn't need to stay overnight at the hospital.
I was not an immediate
threat to self or others.
Check a box that gave me my prescription for some anti-anxiety.
Check
another box gave me a prescription for a new antidepressant,
And check another box made a
appointment for me to see a therapist coming up.
All that was done and,
You know,
I'm glad to say
within a couple of months I was feeling much,
Much better.
Took a couple weeks off of work,
Went back to work,
And,
You know,
Carried on,
But that was a dark,
Dark season,
And you know what?
It was all about those students,
All about those manila folders,
All about the end-of-semester
details,
All about the deadlines,
All about the emails,
All about the pressure.
Well,
What if I actually look back and say,
Huh,
I think I have burnout and the entire concept of stress
wrong,
And typically we look for stress as being outside of ourselves,
But turns out the stress is
actually closer to home.
We can have stressful thoughts about things,
But that doesn't make
the things themselves able to emit stress waves.
Do you know what I'm saying?
That calendar on the
wall,
I might look at it and get panicky about the dates getting closer and closer,
But the reality
is it didn't have any ability to send me a rapid heartbeat or anxious feelings,
And those manila
folders,
They might have piled up,
But they still didn't have the ability to beam negativity my way.
Those are just inner things.
The only thing that was making those things and the stress in my life
feel that badly was how I was thinking about them.
That's really it.
My thoughts revved up
my circumstances to a point of real distress,
And that's common.
I mean,
You've heard of the game whack-a-mole,
Right?
This pops up,
Knock it down.
That pops up,
Knock it down.
My kids are misbehaving at school.
Not tonight.
You can't do that now.
I am really
under the gun at work.
You've got to just calm down because I can't handle all this.
I have to
manage this stress.
It's interesting,
Right?
That's just the way that we're kind of
enculturated to believe that stress comes from the outside in.
I'd like to challenge that notion for
you today.
I'll conclude with this.
I have an invitation for you.
I'd like you to look around
in your world,
And I want you to notice the things that are triggers,
Things that you believe are
causing you stress.
How about this?
Try to look at those things as neutral events,
Neutral items,
Unable to actually beam stress or anxiety or distress your way.
Now,
I don't want to leave you with the impression that we're talking about positive
thinking here.
We're not.
We're talking about a new psychological paradigm that's called the
inside-out paradigm.
That's what I'm all about with my clients and my patients.
I'm looking
forward to sharing more with you.
In the meantime,
Take a look around.
What's stressing you out?
Try to see what it feels like to look at that as a neutral event,
A person,
Place,
Or thing.
All right.
Until next time,
Again,
Wendy Williams,
Nurse educator specializing in
mental well-being and resilience.
Take care.
