Resilience Development in Action

E.221 From Survival Mode to Sustainable Service: A First Responder's Guide to Wellbeing

• Steve Bisson, Deidre Gestrin • Season 122 • Episode 221

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The weight of caring for others can become unbearable when we forget to care for ourselves. This powerful conversation with Deidre Gestrin, a licensed clinical professional counselor and certified health coach, takes us deep into the reality of burnout among first responders and helping professionals.

Deidre shares her profound personal journey through burnout - a harrowing experience that led her doctor to deliver the stark warning: "Your job is killing you." With remarkable candor, she reveals how her dedication to helping others in crisis led to working literally 24/7, developing physical health problems including arthritis in her mid-30s, and ultimately experiencing secondary traumatic stress so severe she couldn't tolerate family members standing behind her.

The discussion illuminates the science behind burnout - how chronic stress essentially shuts down our frontal cortex, impairing judgment and decision-making abilities critical for first responders. Steve and Deidre explore why those drawn to helping professions are particularly vulnerable to burnout, and why changing jobs often fails to solve the underlying issues.

What makes this episode uniquely valuable is the practical, realistic approach to recovery. Rather than offering platitudes, Deidre provides tangible strategies that work within the constraints of demanding professions. From establishing sleep hygiene routines that function even with irregular schedules to creating small, intentional habits that regulate the nervous system, listeners gain actionable tools for resilience.

Perhaps most compelling is Deidre's revelation about recovery timelines - the small shifts at three months, the ability to work again at six months, but the full two years before feeling completely restored. This honest assessment serves as both warning and hope for those navigating their own burnout journeys.

Connect with Deidre at abundantwellnessessentials.com to explore personalized strategies for overcoming burnout and reclaiming your purpose and wellbeing. 

Her Social media presence: 

https://www.youtube.com/@deidregestrin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/deidregestrin/
https://www.facebook.com/dgestrin/
https://www.instagram.com/dgestrin/


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Resilience Development in Action, where strength meets strategy and courage to help you move forward. Each week, your host, steve Bisson, a therapist with over two decades of experience in the first responder community, brings you powerful conversations about resilience, growth and healing through trauma and grief. Through authentic interviews, expert discussions and real-world experiences, we dive deep into the heart of human resilience. We explore crucial topics like trauma recovery, grief processing, stress management and emotional well-being. This is Resilience Development in Action with Steve Bisson.

Speaker 2:

Welcome, welcome, welcome. Episode 221. If you haven't listened to episode 220, it was with my buddy, Bill Dwinell's, so go listen to it. We talked about Fortress, among other things, which hopefully that'll pique your interest and go listen to it. It's a new approach and adding another element to how we can support first responders on a regular basis. But episode 221 was with Deidre Guestrin.

Speaker 2:

Deidre Guestrin is the founder of abundant wellness essential. She is a certified health coach and a licensed clinical professional counselor, lpc, who understands the challenges of high-perform career. She is based out of Ohio. She's worked with private and governmental contracts, as well as the DOC in Idaho department of corrections. For those who don't know what that means, deidre is on a mission to help high achieving professionals, as well as first responders, conquer burnout and thrive in their careers in the next few years. So she reached out to me on Facebook and I can't wait to hear her interview. So here it is interview. So here it is.

Speaker 2:

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Speaker 2:

Get freed from writing your notes, get freed from even writing your transcripts. Use that to your advantage. Freeai, a great service. Go to getfreedai and you will get one of the best services that will save you time and money and I highly encourage you to do so. Well, hi everyone and welcome to episode 221. Very happy we can. You know you connect with people in different ways and we have a great group on Facebook for first responders and therapists and I had asked if anyone was interested. I know we had a couple of other guests, but you know, one who spoke up really quickly was Deidre, and Deidre was really excited to come on and I'm so happy to have her on. So, deidre Gestron, did I get that right?

Speaker 3:

You did.

Speaker 2:

All right. Welcome to Resilience Development in Action.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thanks, steve. It's great to be here. You know first responders are near and dear to my heart.

Speaker 2:

Any particular reason.

Speaker 3:

Well, when I was a kid, my, my father and then both my aunt and my uncle were volunteer, so I lived in I live in such a small community that when I was a child it wasn't a paid district, it was all volunteer for first responders. And so I just remember as a kid, right, if I was with my dad and he'd get a call, he'd take off to town and I'd hang out in the fire station until my mom came and got me, yeah, and so that's kind of why it's near and dear to my heart and I know a lot of people in the field and it's a it's a stressful job and it takes, I think, a certain personality to sustain it.

Speaker 2:

You know, that's a great place where we can go later on, because it's also the type of person that will go above and beyond, to a point of burnout, and that's what I think we're going to talk about today.

Speaker 3:

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

But maybe it's good to start off with something simple like who are you, what do you, what do you?

Speaker 3:

you do everything else that goes with that, other than have parents who work in that field yes, so I have actually been a licensed mental health counselor, for I think I'm going on 16 years and about two years ago I added a health and wellness coaching certification to that. Part of that was through my own burnout journey and recovery from that, because I truly believe to heal us as individuals, we actually have to look at both the mental health and the physical health component, because it's so intertwined. And so I've been, you know, the last, I would say, since COVID. My therapy practice has become like 90% about burnout and stress and then that's kind of between that and my personal journey and my own health issues because of it led me to add the coaching component, because it's so prevalent in our world today and too many people are struggling. Too many people are leaving the careers they feel passionate about and they feel called to and they're leaving because of burnout and it's the numbers are just astronomical in every field.

Speaker 2:

If you expect me to argue with you, number one, you know I'm going through my own. You talk about 16 years. I'm 26 years in doing therapy and I just turned 50 a few months ago. One of the things I'm thinking about right now is exactly that and again, most of my clients heard me say that privately to them, so I don't care about saying it here. It's not about one client. It's about the overall journey of seeing 120 to 130 individual sessions for the last 26 years.

Speaker 2:

That right now is just grinding the hell out of me and I don't want to burn out. So I'm taking my time and looking at my options. I don't want to say I have which options I'm going to take and all that fun stuff, but I am looking at those and I'm trying to be truthful to myself instead of burning out and wanting to fuck this field because that's field Cause that's definitely not where I want to be. But uh, we all have our own journeys with burnout. I'm, I'm. I'm assuming there's a. There's a story here. Deidre's going to tell me oh, here's my story. So I hope that you can share that with, because I think it's always important. One of the things about first responders is they want that personalization. Oh, that's why you know a lot about this shit and I think that that's what they like the most. So you know. There's so many things you talked about, but that's the first question I have is what's your personal experience with burnout?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and I'm happy to absolutely share that because it's it's a big, significant piece to why I'm on this journey Right and why I'm here today and in my entire career not just as a counselor but prior I've actually hit burnout three very distinct times in my entire career, but it was this third one that really had the most impact on me and that I want to share a little bit about. And part of that is because in my recovery my burnout actually became secondary traumatic stress and there's a lot of research out there that will kind of put those in the same bucket. But I don't see them that way. I see one as one leads to the other. And so little bit of background on kind of my last round of burnout.

Speaker 3:

I was working community health, I was program manager but still seeing clients. So I was doing right multiple roles. We managed our own crisis line, which means people if they were at the ER because they were feeling suicidal, we would get called to go in and assess them, potentially find placement. Well, as a supervisor, I had to support that as well, and I was helping some residential programs right. But what happened was when I say I was working 24-7, like I am literal, steve. I was working 24-7. I was doing my day job. If the crisis worker had three people they were trying to assess and I was their backup, I had to go in and help them at night. Or we had some kids running from a residential program. So, trying to maintain a good working relationship with our law enforcement, what did we do? We'd go out and help, look for them, and so I really did work 24-7 for a while.

Speaker 3:

Well, what happened was I wasn't sleeping and it was starting to take such a toll on my physical health that in my mid 30s I developed arthritis and I'm like I'm too young for this. I went to a doctor visit which I see, a doctor who does more functional medicine, right, so preventative, let's get to the root cause. And if I was to quote him, he said Deidre, your job is killing you. If you don't make a change, I can't help you. That was the biggest light bulb moment in my journey, because I was so tired, I was very cranky, I didn't care what I said to my supervisor, that I knew something had to change Right, and so, thankfully, I had some very supportive colleagues that I worked with and one said Deidre, take FMLA, you have it Well. Steve, I don't know if you know this, but the World Health Organization actually has an official definition for burnout and there's more people today who are taking leave of absence and FMLA for burnout than they are for physical health reasons, for chronic illness More people because of burnout.

Speaker 3:

But in my journey I did that for three months, tried to figure out okay, what do I need? Change jobs? Because we all think, oh, I'll change jobs and then things will be fine. No, no, not the case, because where I went to it was very much played down the issues the facility had and the doors closed six months after I got there. I had to stay for two more months to finalize help clean up. So I moved states for a job that I thought would help lasted eight months. But that's actually the blessing to where my recovery process started, because that put me on unemployment, which meant I could sit back and focus on myself for six months, not worry about finances, and truly go OK. Why did I allow this for the third time, three times in right? Why did I allow this for the third time three times in right? 20 plus years? That is that's too many times in my opinion. Once is too much.

Speaker 2:

I was going to argue that point, but thank you for doing that. But I think that what you know, there's, there's, there's like what I like fascinating guests and such you. You fall in that category. I've got like five notes I want to bring up, but I think a good continuance here is I'm happy you didn't burn out, because it sounds like you're bringing a lot of good stuff to the world, so so happy that you took care of us yourself and take us up of us now.

Speaker 2:

You know the first responder world. I'm not the first responder, but I do work. Number two I work in social services and I I worked on on the actual crisis team while I was working in the residential program and the supported housing program. So there's a lot of what you said really resonated with me, because you know it's like a passion, but when your passion turns into obligation it changes and I think and I think that's where you know I had to take a step back myself. I'm lucky I never got to burnout. I hope I never get there, but I certainly had to take a step back and work less and feel guilty about it, and I'm sure that you know all the feelings.

Speaker 2:

But I guess the question. The natural question that comes with everything we just talked about is, if I'm a police officer, I'm a firefighter, I'm a paramedic, I'm an EMT, an ER nurse, it can't just be like you know what, I'm going to change my job right now. Thank you, because I'm sure there's someone yelling at the radio saying, oh yeah, I can walk away from being an officer. What the hell is she talking about? So how do you talk about that with a journey, with first responders, particularly in regards to burnout and prevention, and all that fun stuff?

Speaker 3:

I think it's important to you know, explore that a job change doesn't necessarily fix it Like it can help in the moment. But if we're honest, right when we, if we look back at who gets into the field of first responding or any helping profession because that's really what you and I also do, steve, and we get into it because we care, we want to help people, and that takes a certain personality, right, and that's not an easy thing to just walk away from. So you can walk away, but you're going to probably feel like a piece of you is missing, right, and so instead you have to explore okay, what changes can I make so I can once again be passionate about what I'm doing? Look forward to what I'm doing, because I do think we're going to have ups and downs, regardless symptoms or burnout, right, that physical, because I think I mentioned with me I had the extreme physical symptoms, started developing diabetic numbers.

Speaker 3:

Mine went into trauma that I didn't even like my family standing behind me. I had to sit with my wall, my back against the wall at a family function, and so we have to really get back to why am I doing this? We need to explore back at our purpose but then look at what can I do individually. But I also want to recognize we have many fields that have we might call them broken systems. Healthcare is a broken system, right.

Speaker 2:

That's an understatement, but anyway.

Speaker 3:

It is, and so I don't want to discount, like there's things organizations and companies also need to implement, which is another part of kind of my mission but there are absolutely things that we can do individually. But we have to kind of ask ourselves what's important. We have to stay focused on that.

Speaker 2:

And I think that what you just talked about is exactly. You know, one of the things I've seen too is that you said that you know it goes into physical aspects. Is that you said that you know it goes into physical aspects. You know, I do have a few first responders that I work with that have developed, like you know for lack of a better word autoimmune issues from being burnt out. And you know the medical profession is not too happy when we say, well, it's a symptomology of the burnout, not that they have an autoimmune issue, they get upset with that. And that's what I mean about the system being broken because someone somehow physical health is above mental health. I don't understand.

Speaker 2:

But how do we kind of like tell people like chill, I mean, you know, like to me, like it's that old saying right, has anyone ever calmed down by being told, hey, calm down. Oh, geez, that's a great idea, let me just calm down. No, no one's ever done that. So saying, yeah, you know what Chill, or you're going to burn out.

Speaker 2:

I know that in the helping profession that I work in, if you would ever told that to me and be like, okay, thank you, and I would have been like yeah, no, until I was probably broken down completely. But anyway, how do we get people to like slow down? Because I think the other aspect that people seem to don't understand is that if you're not doing good within any organization, but particularly in the first responders, you only have two or three guys on with you. Fire and police is typically like that you not doing well is affecting two or three other people, including their safety at times. So I think that that's the other part too is like how do we tell people to chill and how do we explain a little bit of the effect on the team?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's a great question. So several of the things that I really come back to when I work with individuals is we have to get back to a few basics. So we have to get back to things that regulate our nervous system, right. So instead of telling somebody to just chill out, I might tell them take a five minute break and go for a walk and take some deep breaths right, get that nervous system to calm down, because what people are not realizing is any form of stress.

Speaker 3:

Our body responds as if we're in survival mode. It is the exact same mechanism, right, and so the higher and the longer we're in that state of stress, our body changes where that energy goes, which is why chronic illness or autoimmune diseases can develop, because our body's not functioning normally. It's not digesting food the way it should be, and so anytime you can do things like take a two minute break and go walk, get a little movement right, get some of that deep breathing. So you're not holding your breath, because a lot of us hold our breath when we're stressed. It's all those things. That's going to help in the moment, because, you're absolutely correct, if I'm stressed, I'm going to react a little more emotionally, which means the other person's not going to handle that. Well, right.

Speaker 3:

Right, they're gonna be like wait, wait, what's going on? And so then they're going to start being on edge around me, right, and going should I say something, or is she going to react? And that's where it starts to affect those around us because they're like, okay, I'm just going to stay away. But that doesn't work if you have to work as a team and there's not many of you.

Speaker 2:

And I would agree with you 100%. Let me add a question slash my observation with you a hundred percent. Let me add a question, slash my observation. When we're stressed, we up to a point where we're close to burnout, Our judgment is worse and the people I don't want their judgments to be fucked up. Is, first responders, right, Because even if it's not me, it might be a family member or someone I love or what have you. And so to me, I think you know that's the other explanation. I don't know if you agree and maybe we can talk about more, but to me it's also like your judgment's affected when you're that stress. And how do we communicate that? And does that? Does that even resonate? Or am I completely in left field, Cause I don't know everything? I'm just some guy.

Speaker 3:

Well, you're actually a% correct there. It changes because if we talk a little bit more scientifically, if you will, about our stress response right so if our stress response increases and that triggers our fight or flight response, the frontal cortex of our brain where we reason, problem solve, make good decisions and judgment turns offline it is not even functioning right Because that survival goes back into our brainstem to get us through the situation as safely and quickly as possible, which is also back where we're kind of stuck in the emotional side, which is the reactionary. And so in that case if you are chronically stressed and headed to burnout, you're not thinking clearly because you're too stuck in their survival part of your brain.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Yeah, I, I, I also tell people that once you're in your survival mode, what are the three most you know? I can talk as a therapist and say four, but let's go with three for now. There's the fight, flight or freeze, and then for all you therapists who are listening out there, I know about fawn, okay, I know about it, but I don't think cops and firefighters want to hear about fawning, although they encounter it regularly.

Speaker 2:

But anyways, getting off subject, but I think that when you're in a fight or flight response, your judgment becomes razor sharp for one particular thing, this particular situation, and sometimes the threat that's occurring is not even real, it's one that you imagine in your mind or whatever. Because of your burnout, because of where you're at, you don't sleep 24, seven. I mean, your cognitive limitations are right there and that's not an attack on anyone, it's just what it is. And I think that's the other part. That's hard to explain is that your cognitive abilities have diminished. And then fight flight, yeah, it can be very beneficial if someone pulls a gun on you or you got to do cardiac arrest or whatever. Those are great. But when it's a simple and I don't want to say a simple medical, I don't want to upset people. Simple, blank medical and then you're overreacting to it because you're in fight or flight mode. That is not good for the team, that's not good for the person on the ground. Frankly, it's not good for anyone.

Speaker 3:

Right, right, absolutely. It's not good for anybody.

Speaker 2:

So how do I so? How do I get unburnt? I mean to me that's, that's like you know, like again I I'm gonna play devil's advocate, but please understand, I get it, deidre. Oh yeah, I'm gonna walk away from a fucking uh shooting by going let me go breathe for five minutes. Yeah, that's great advice, deidre. So I'm playing devil's advocate purposefully, and if people think I'm an asshole, believe me, there's at least four people saying that in their brain already. So how do I tell someone, how do we do this whole walking away, relaxation, taking care of oneself, stuff like that? How do we communicate that?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so that's a great, a great point in question, and you make a good, a valid point, right, because when we're talking to first responders, you can't just walk away in the moment. It is not possible. It's not part of the job. What we can do, though, is we can do things before a call, we can do things right after a call, right, that are going to help in the moment, and so, when we talk about, we'll stick with, like taking deep breaths and going for a walk for a minute, as an example, I work with a lot of high functioning people, right, high achieving people.

Speaker 3:

We're talking leaders, we're talking tech as well first responders but what I have learned, and I have seen repeatedly, is, when we build in throughout our day, we're just intentional to focus on taking those deep breaths throughout the day, right? So every time I'm cooking a meal or I'm washing my hands and I am intentional with some slow, deep breaths, what that does is in the moment of stress. You don't have to think. I better take a deep breath to stay in my logical brain. Your body will naturally tap into that, because you've been intentional and created as a habit, right, and so I'm all for what are habits we can create.

Speaker 3:

So then in those stressful moments, you can regulate and respond versus reacting and survival. So it's and I'm all about small steps right, Because if we want this elaborate plan, who's going to do the elaborate plan? None of us, right? We go. That's too much, and so building small, intentional habits throughout your day is what's going to help in the moment. The other thing I would say is things like if you prioritize getting quality sleep, you, your brain and your body recover, so then the next day when you're back on shift, you're going to respond more effectively. But if you're not sleeping, you will be reactionary, and so there's a lot of things we can do right outside of the shift.

Speaker 3:

What's that?

Speaker 2:

what do you?

Speaker 3:

mean right, yeah, um, and there's actually some some great youtube videos, videos on the benefits of sleep, ted talks that I've seen but it's, it's those things. That's what are you doing intentionally. So I would say, if we're back to okay on a call, you can't do anything. When you're done with a call, what do you do? Put it aside and just move on. Well, that's just building up that stress. So that's where I would say, can you take a few minutes and walk it off and let your brain process? It is after the fact.

Speaker 2:

All I can say is I agree with you wholeheartedly. And while you were talking, it took a couple of swigs in my water, and that's the other one that I say is simple stuff. Like you know, taking a water break and people like, oh yeah, and then they down. They down 16 ounces in about two seconds. Your body's going to reject it. That's just how it is right. Um, you'll learn to go slowly and take a few sips. Your body will absorb, it will calm itself down. The regulation of water on the body is absolutely phenomenal. Yes, and the other part too.

Speaker 2:

For those of you who will be saying I'm making a car, I'm making some sort of like advertisement. I, you know my advertiser. I don't advertise anything. I don't believe in my sleep number. Bed sleep might save my fucking life because it adjusts my, I adjust my the sleep and makes me sleep. It tells me how the quality of my sleep is and I look forward to going to bed. Yes, it costs me a lot of money and I get that, but to me, if you're going to spend a third of your life which is, by the way, you can look it up, that's what it is on something I might as well be fucking comfortable, enjoy it and, frankly, if it can give me data as to how I'm sleeping and everything else, the more the merrier. But I make no money. You can choose whatever bed you want. This is not an advertisement, but why aren't we investing on our own mattresses? I just don't get it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'm with you there. People think that they, you know, I hear all the time I'll sleep when I'm dead. Great, you'll have a shorter life, right? I don't, sometimes don't know how to respond, so it's absolutely be comfortable. Get a mattress you're comfortable with. I'm also going to say look at your routine 30 minutes before you want to sleep, because that has a direct impact on your quality.

Speaker 2:

I have the same sleep. I call it sleep hygiene. 30 minutes before bed, take my meds Currently has a sinus infection, so I got to do some stuff for that Get into the shower, I take a bath yes, it's not manly, I don't give a shit. Read a book, write in my journal, go to bed. It's pretty much every time the same thing. And guess what my body knows, once I start the first step, it's going to start winding down. I try to avoid screens. I'm not saying I'm perfect. I do avoid screens, that sleep hygiene and setting that pattern up. Even if you work for a second or mids, it does not matter. Or if you're a firefighter, 24 off and 24 on, find that sleep hygiene because your body will actually adjust. Even if it seems irregular, it actually is regular to go 24 on, 24 off, 24 on, 5 off, 4 off, depending on the departments or 3 off for some others.

Speaker 3:

I'm not trying to over generalize, but you got to get your body ready for sleep yeah, you make a great point there in that it's that routine you create because it we're creatures of habit as humans, right, and that routine does train our mind and our body. Oh, it's time to rest and regardless of your, your schedule, it works right. I've worked with, I had, a tech individual is one that stands out in particular. So, most of the time, sure, it's a traditional day job, right, but if they're updating software, what happens? They have to work all night and it was not sleeping. And so we worked on this routine, which is similar to what you just described, which is similar to mine, right, what you just described, which is similar to mine, right. A bath calms the body, journaling, reading calms the mind, and even on those on-call nights, or those nights he was up all the time to update stuff, his quality of sleep improved so much he's just like, wow, you know. And so it really does speak to routine matters, no matter the irregularity of a schedule.

Speaker 2:

You create a pattern. You create a pattern which we know, the first thing, the other stuff that you mentioned that I want to get back to. There's so many things, but you talked about patterns and one of them is if your department feels called out, I'm calling you out. Sometimes you don't get an organization, particularly police, fire departments, and they're not supportive of these things and they don't understand burnout, and burnout means okay, we just got to replace them for six weeks, six months, whatever the case may be. How do we talk about to larger organizations, particularly and again, yes, people with bars. You heard me say it about this, because when your officer burns out, your firefighter burns out, your EMT burns out, there's an impact on the whole team. It's not just that person that's impacted.

Speaker 3:

So I think for one, we have to start with getting organizations to understand that burnout is a real problem. Most people in leadership are like that's an individual problem, burnout's not a problem, people just need to push through. But what I think they need to understand is somebody who gets burnt out say to the point, I did right that I shared earlier. It is a two-year recovery to get back to who you are.

Speaker 2:

Two years.

Speaker 3:

Two years and I can actually track certain data points in my own journey right. Three months I noticed a small shift. Physically, I could move better than I was. Six months I felt like I could start to work again, some not necessarily jump right back into the same kind of situation I was, but I distinctly remember that two-year mark. It was like a light bulb or a switch flipped in me and all of a sudden I felt like myself again.

Speaker 3:

Two years, right, and I think organizations need to understand that it's. There are things that we've talked about that the individuals can do on an individual level, but on an organizational level we have, on an organizational level we have to recognize burnout is a real problem and it will take people out of the job permanently if we're not careful. Right, and then organizationally it's. What can you do to support that? How can we as an organization help support? Yes, therapy is important, right, especially if you hit that secondary traumatic stress level like I did. But organizations have to listen to people when they say I'm not functioning well, right, exhaustion, decision fatigue, cynicism, all those things. We need to listen as an organization and then say, okay, what can we do? Do we have policies and procedures. We need to shift a little bit to help, because a lot of them think well, we have this wellness program, they can go get health coaching and they can get therapy.

Speaker 2:

Wonderful, that's a piece of the pie, it's not the whole pie hey, here's a pill, yeah, now they're fine, they got a pill, yeah. Um, yeah, I think that that's the. That's the other stuff, too, that you know, as I work on it's not the whole pie. Hey, here's a pill. Yeah, now they're fine, they got a pill, yeah. Yeah, I think that that's the. That's the other stuff, too, that you know, as I work on creating a program with my colleague and co-business owner, I'm all for peer support. I'm a hundred percent behind peer support.

Speaker 2:

I like crisis intervention, stress management. Yes, you can go do wellness visits, but you need all three in order for an organization to be effective, because for some people they won't react to one of them and I don't want to pick on one of them, I'm just saying one of them and I think that that's the other part, too that I feel particularly leadership doesn't get. But we got this wellness program. Meanwhile, it's some Joe Schmo that no one likes, who said they had experience with first responders, but doesn't understand the culture nor the terms, and they ask you, like what's a world call? And you're like, why would I go talk to that guy?

Speaker 3:

Right right.

Speaker 2:

So I think that you know I, when I think about organizations, I think it's the support that you talked about. More importantly is that know who you're working with and not have one resource. You know it's not like I never said to one of my clients you know what? Go take a bath, you'll be fine. I've never given one solution. I think it's absolutely band-aiding stuff when you just give one solution.

Speaker 3:

Right, right, yeah. And I would say to that part of my journey was I had to explore internally why did I allow myself to get burnt out for the third time? Because, yes, there were things that my supervisor and my organization could have supported me with, right, when I'd go to them for a year and said I need a break from the crisis line. I can't do this night thing right now and I don't get heard the organization's failing, supporting me, right. But I had to do that internal work to go. Why did I get there? And for me, it was because I have an anxious attachment style, so I'm going to give more, so I feel needed, right. Or, if you dig into your personality styles, I dug into my enneagram number and I went oh my goodness, okay, no wonder it's that people pleaser of me that puts myself last.

Speaker 2:

But we have to find those root causes too and I think that what one of the other things that I want to come back to, um is. You talked about know the mind affecting the body and all that. I my my view, and if people have read my book and if they haven't, that's fine. I talk about the mind, body, spirit, like a whole lot of people too. It's having some sort of spiritual life, and when people hear spiritual, I always tell people I don't really care what you believe in. If you believe, it doesn't harm it. Whatever you believe in doesn't harm other people. I'm 100% behind it. There's no problem on my part.

Speaker 2:

But I think that that's the other part too, and I think that when you talk about burnout is, I think, reconnecting to that spiritual side. Whatever we'll say God, goddess, goddess, gods, no God, but spiritual, I mean I don't really care. I mean there's a lot of Native Americans that believe a tree is a God and there's nothing wrong with that personally, and if that's where it brings you, it brings you. But I ultimately think that the burnout is also really I'm looking for the right word here it really is helped when you have a spiritual side on the other side and if you believe that we're dead and there's nothing and there's never been nothing, then that's also a spiritual belief and you got to live like that, Because if that's the case, you want to leave a burnout body, you want to leave a burnout vision of yourself, or what do you want to do. That's still spiritual, yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, and that's a hundred percent. I would agree with that Right In in my program. I really have, like you, you could search right these wellness dimensions online and I felt like how they were they were viewed to me didn't fit, and that what you're saying there is 100 true. Our spiritual self has to be at the center because it is directly connected to what you believe. Your purpose is right, not just what you believe in, but it's where your sense of purpose comes from. So if you're not connected and you don't have that, you're going to continue down this route of burnout. But that part really does kind of get to the core of what's going on with burnout.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think we touched a lot of the stuff here on burnout and I think that you talked about managing it on an individual level, but sometimes we need help, and what I mean by that is great ways to reach out to Deidre. How would people get in touch with you?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so the best way to find me or get in touch is to go to my website, which is abundantwellnessessentialscom, and if you want to just book a free call to chat, just go to abundantwellnesscom. Forward slash consult. Be happy to just help you kind of figure out what's going on and what would be the most helpful for you.

Speaker 2:

And if? If I'm not in Idaho, can I still contact you? Yes, so as far as I, like to put that in because people will be like, well, that's great, I'm in Massachusetts. Yeah, coaching is not limited to that.

Speaker 3:

So, yeah, yeah, if you're looking for therapy specifically, then yes, you'd actually have to be in Idaho, washington, montana or Oregon, because I'm licensed in four states and do a lot of tell out, but coaching you can be anywhere, and even if you're looking for therapy, I'm happy to support you in trying to find what you're looking for.

Speaker 2:

So we'll put that in the show notes so they can reach out to you on the web any social media that they should follow or so you can actually find me almost on any social media.

Speaker 3:

I have a YouTube channel as well. Most of my handles are either D guest or YouTube, might be Dietrich guest or in full name, so either one. You can find me Facebook, linkedin, youtube, instagram, all of the above.

Speaker 2:

And I'll make sure that people can reach you because I think this is so important talking about burnout, particularly my first responder people, but I want to thank you for your time. This was an awesome interview. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thanks for having me, steve.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you, deidre, really helpful. Go check her out on our website. Amazing conversation and I hope you join us for episode 222.

Speaker 1:

Please like, subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful and, as a reminder, this podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. This podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation. If you are in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance. This number is available in the United States and Canada.

People on this episode

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Steve Bisson

Host
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Courtney Romanowski

Co-host