Welcome And Why May Feels Hard

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Employee Wellness Wellcast. I'm so glad that you're tuning in today. I'm taking over the mic again this month. My name again is Cody Ryan. I'm one of your health educators on the Employee Wellness team, and I am lucky enough to be your host this month. As some of you may know, it is Mental Health Awareness Month, and we really want to focus in on that. Our programming for May is called May Sember. When we asked you all about what the most stressful times of the year for county employees are, we were told that it's often May and December. May is often referred to as May Sember, as you tend to run into similar mid-year stresses that you would at the end of the year. So we're focusing in on mental health and how we can support all of you. One of the reasons I'm also so excited to be hosting today is because we have a special guest, Deanna Weeks. Deanna is a licensed clinical mental health counselor and works here at the Government Center and the Healthy Me Clinic. Deanna, thank you so much for being here, and I'm so excited to have you. Before we jump into interviewing you, please tell us a little bit about yourself and about your background.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Hi, Cody. Thank you for that nice introduction. Like you said, I work here at the Government Center with uh Dr. Sheehan in the Healthy Me Clinic. I see county employees and their dependents, primarily adults. I I do see a couple teenagers here and there. Um I have been a therapist for about 10 years. I specialize in anxiety and anxiety-related disorders. So I'm happy to be here. And thank you for mentioning Mental Health Awareness Month. I think mental health is just health. And so anything that we can bring awareness to that is really important.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Agreed. Thank you so much for being here. And thank you for what you do. I feel like it's an underappreciated job many times. So thank you so much for taking care of all of us.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Diving in, we have some questions for Deanna based upon information that we got from you, our participants, and from VEST, our EAP program. We're going to be breaking down our questions and the topics into three little sections. The first section is foundational daily maintenance, addressing common challenges, which is from our EAP data, and then tools for the heat of the moment when we're in those stressful times. So jumping into those foundational questions, Deanna, we want to focus a little on understanding maintenance. We're used to maintaining things like our cars, our home, our technology. But when it comes to our mind, that might look a little different. What does basic maintenance look like?

SPEAKER_00 3:03

I always say basic maintenance looks like these five categories. The first one is sleep. Right? Am I getting regular sleep seven to eight hours a night? The

The Five Basics Of Mental Maintenance

SPEAKER_00 3:18

second one is nutrition, and I'm not talking about anything um exciting or trendy in terms of nutrition, but am I eating healthy food, maybe using an 80-20 rule? Movement. Am I exercising? Am I moving my body? Medication. Am I taking my medication as prescribed? And also the flip side of that, am I self-medicating? Um and then the last one is mindfulness. Uh I don't like to be someone who gets on the soapbox of meditation, although I do think that for some people that can be very helpful healthy and helpful. It doesn't have to be meditation, it can be creativity, it can be music, it can be play, it can be prayer, whatever quiets your mind is probably something to have in your daily practice. So that's usually where I start with folks is we kind of take an inventory on how is your sleep, nutrition, movement, what are we doing medication-wise, and the last thing, uh, mindfulness.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

That's amazing. I love that so much. And I love how you broke things down and just like simple steps, just making sure we're getting our sleep. Nutrition doesn't have to be perfect. 8020 is enough. Just getting our movement, making sure we're taking our medications regularly in the way that they're prescribed. And then I love how you included just anything that calms our mind and mindfulness. I love that so much. Sure. I think it's so important for us to remember that there's no silver bullets, so to speak, when it comes to taking care of our mental health. It is an overall holistic situation that we need to be looking at.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Exactly right. So for some people too, like that whole list can feel overwhelming. So I would say take it in a bite-sized piece. Like, what's one thing I can focus on this month, right? Can I focus on sleep this month and just that? Um, you don't have to like run around and be like, oh, I have to be managing all these different areas. Can I make small improvements?

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Definitely. I feel like that's a trap that we all fall into and that we try to do too much and then we get overwhelmed, and then we stop. And it's it's as if we did nothing at all. So that's such great advice.

unknown 5:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

I'm gonna try and change everything all at once.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Yeah, just take it a step at a time. And one of my mantras is progress over perfection. So if I'm doing a little bit better today than I did yesterday, then we're we're getting somewhere, we're heading somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Right. We're in the right direction. Good.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Right. Well, thank you so much. That's some great information for us to mull over and to think about. The second question that I was gonna go into is de-escalating the Sunday scaries, if you've ever heard that term. Many of us, when we're getting prepared to go back to work on Sunday evening, we just get that feeling of anxiety that even if we love our jobs, that we have responsibilities and things to do. Do you have any tools or practices that we can do to practically de-escalate that anticipatory anxiety and reclaim

De-Escalating The Sunday Scaries

SPEAKER_01 6:35

our time on our weekends?

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Sure. I think as human beings, we do this a lot, right? We live into the future. So sometimes on Friday, Friday feels so good because we're living into the future of, hey, it's my last day at work. I'm heading into my weekend, right? And then on Sunday we start feeling like, oh no, and that's our time off is ending. So one thing that I encourage people to do is take stock in the moment, right? Again, this is a mindfulness practice. Where are my feet right now? Right? What's happening right now in this moment? Can I just stay in this moment? Now, a lot of us have a lot of responsibility at work, and so sometimes it is helpful to take a few minutes to maybe write a to-do list or prepare, make sure that things are ready, meal prep, or make sure our clothes are ready or uniforms or things like that can help us feel more prepared and less anxious about the coming Monday, whether that's on an actual Monday or not, right? Because a lot of our employees work around the clock. And so, you know, that their beginning of their week, wherever that is. So I always recommend taking a balanced approach of being prepared, but also being aware of like where am I right now.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

I love that. Yeah, giving ourselves time to prepare, but also living in the moment. I love that. I feel like I am one of those people that tends to live a little bit in the future, and that's something I could definitely work on. So thank you so much for sharing. Yeah, we love definitely one of those people. I have a fun event that we're doing tomorrow at the Meridian Center that's a de-stress event. But I've been living forward for that and been very stressed about this event that's supposed to help people de-stress. So it's just one of those funny things, but I know as we get there, it's gonna be great. But we just worry sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

But I love that. I'm gonna be living in the moment for the rest of the day. I'm gonna do things to repair, and then I'm just gonna know that it's gonna be great.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Right. Most things work out. Um, oftentimes uh when people are first starting therapy, their initial session in the very beginning, I'll ask them, How are you feeling right now? Are you feeling nervous? Especially if I can tell, you know, through their body language. And people will say, Yeah, I'm really nervous. And then at the end of the session, I'll check in, how are you feeling now? You were really anxious in the beginning, and 99.9% of the time, it's like, oh, it's better, it's better than I thought, right? Because our anxiety tells us it's gonna be worse than it is. So even that reminder of like, you know what, my brain is always telling me it's gonna be worse than it actually is. Usually once the event happens, I'm like, it wasn't so bad, right? So can I remind myself beforehand? This is just my brain doing what it does. It's telling me it's gonna be worse than it is.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Totally. And especially in a therapeutic situation, vulnerability can be a little bit scary and intimidating, but once you open up to a safe person, it feels good. So I love that you shared that. Thank you. So let's jump into our second section here, addressing common challenges. So our EAP data showed that anxiety is a top concern for participants in our program. Beyond long-term work stresses, what are the best recommendations for managing anxiety and not allowing it to overflow into our life at home so that we're reclaiming that time for ourselves?

SPEAKER_00 10:01

That's a good question. And I think that I want to go back a

When Anxiety Spills Into Home

SPEAKER_00 10:05

little bit. Everybody experiences stress and anxiety, and that is a normal part of life. We don't want to confuse that with an anxiety disorder. So if you feel that your stress and anxiety is overflowing into your personal life, into your personal relationships, creating havoc even at work, right? It's hard to be on time or get things done, or, you know, I find myself worrying, I'm stressed at work, I'm breaking into tears, I'm not taking breaks, like all of these things. So then we might be talking about something a little more clinical, and that needs to be diagnosed. If we're talking about just general stress and anxiety that comes with life, the first thing we want to do is normalize. The second thing we want to do is recognize that this is an emotion that is normal and actually is for my benefit. Like you were talking about your event tomorrow. Some of the stress that you're experiencing filling out to that is to help you perform, right? So anxiety increases performance up to a certain point. After a certain point, it starts to decline. If we start to notice we're in decline, that's when we want to start using some coping skills and like you said, managing that uh anxiety. We're not really getting rid of it, we're learning to manage. Specifically, you talked about when stress spills over into my home life. Just a practical tip that I always share with people is well, what's your routine when you leave the office? You know, do you just jump in your car and drive straight home and you're thinking about work the whole time? Or do you actually de-stress, right? Can you get in your car and maybe take one minute to just breathe? Right? Do we close up the day, right? One practice that I have when I get home is I change my clothes. So just making that transition and that change helps me to move out of my work brain and into I'm home now. And for different people, that's different things. It could be I go to the gym before I go home, or I do a meditation in the car, or I listen to music that I like in the car that I might not listen to once I get home when my partner might not like it, or my family might not like it.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

That's amazing. I love that. And I do some of those things, and I don't even think I realize that that may be why I do those things. Okay. Yeah, I usually take a minute when I get to my car and just take a couple deep breaths, and then I go to the gym. And yeah, it could be a good separation of my day, and I didn't even realize I was doing it. Yeah. So thank you so much for that. I did have a follow-up question to something that you mentioned, and that was anxiety versus an anxiety disorder. And you mentioned that if an anxiety disorder is happening, we would need to go and get that diagnosed. What are maybe some signs for people who may be concerned if they may have an anxiety disorder to know that they should go and try and get that diagnosed?

SPEAKER_00 13:09

So some of the things to look out for is like my anxiety is interrupting my daily patterns, right? So it's not just I'm feeling stressed, but maybe I'm not able to recover as I used to. I'm not sleeping, I can't eat, or I'm eating too much, or I'm self-medicating, or I'm feeling more irritable, I'm I'm, you know, like having emotional outbursts. I'm avoiding a lot of things, right? Because we're really good at avoiding things that make us uncomfortable. That's part of our survival instinct. And yet, if we start to avoid too much, that actually increases our anxiety.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Okay. Good to know. Thank you so much. Um, because I'm sure that there are going to be listeners who may have questions about that. And I hope that that information is able to help someone. And I'm sure that it will. So thank you. Our next topic that came in from our EAP information was about relationships and how that we can maintain healthy relationship dynamics with people in our lives, both at home and in the workplace.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

So that's a big topic, of course. Easier, easier said than done. But I think, you know, the the golden rule of like I'm gonna treat people the way I want to be treated

Keeping Relationships Healthy

SPEAKER_00 14:36

applies here. The other things that I always encourage people is, you know, open, clear communication, uh integrity matters, right? So when we say we're gonna do something, we do it. If we can't do it, we need to communicate. Trying not to make assumptions. If we are making assumptions in the positive way and not the negative, right? So I'm assuming good intent with the people that I'm dealing with as opposed to assuming malintent.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Amazing. Yeah, those are great tips. And especially that last one, I feel like assuming that people have the best intentions takes a lot of stress off of you and a lot of worry off of you because you don't have to worry about, like, oh, this person did that just to make me mad, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

I love that. So thank you for sharing. You're welcome.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

It's an easy thing to say, it's a nice thing to say, it's a harder thing to put in practice.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

It definitely is. I can agree with that. It's something I've been working on too. So I love that you shared that. That was lovely. Okay. Moving into our last section: tools for the heat of the moment. First question is revolving around managing emotions and high-stakes situations. How can we manage our emotions when the stakes are high and we feel like we might be losing our cool?

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Right. If we feel like we're losing our cool, we probably are. Right? Right. So that's the time to take a break, take a time

Staying Calm In High Stakes Moments

SPEAKER_00 16:14

out, um give yourself a beat. The time to practice emotion regulation is not when our emotions are way up to the ceiling. I always say when emotions go up, rational thinking comes down, right? And in order to use coping skills, emotion regulation skills, and taking a breath, we can't be all the way at a 10. We kind of have to catch it when we're at a four or five. So some of these practices that I talked about, the you know, getting good sleep, mindfulness, movement, all of these things are to help us slow that process down. If we feel like we're going from, you know, one to ten in two or three seconds, that is the time to reach out. That is a time to say, oh, I'm not in control and I I maybe need some help here. So I would say if you feel like you are about to explode, it's okay to say, like, I need a minute. I I need to go take a walk, you know, go to the restroom, wash my hands with cold water, maybe splash some of that on my face, breathe, turn the temperature down a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

For sure. That totally makes sense. And I feel like in most situations, if you told someone, hey, I need a minute, they're gonna be pretty accepting of that. I don't think that there's gonna be many situations where that's not acceptable.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

My follow-up to that is if you're the one who asked for a break, you're the one that goes back and says, okay, I'm ready to talk about this again.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Yeah. Like you said, open and clear communication. Like give yourself that minute to be able to have that. So I love it. I also loved that you brought it back to those foundational things that we talked about at the beginning. Our sleep, our nutrition, our movement, mindfulness, all of those things together are gonna help us to keep our cool. And thinking about it, it makes sense. Like for me, if I'm tired, I'm gonna be much more likely to escalate quickly. Or if I'm hungry, there's a reason why people say that you get hangry. I I get it. It all makes sense and it's clicking in place. So I appreciate that. This might just end up being a podcast for me where I'm learning lots of great things. So I appreciate you. Yeah. And then our last question is about positive affirmations. I feel like they're everywhere, they're a really hot topic, but sometimes they can feel forced, or maybe we hear so much about it that we think, oh, it's just like a pop culture trend. What are your thoughts on positive affirmations and how we can use them realistically and or effectively?

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Sure. So everybody is a little bit different, right? Some people might really like them and they might might be helpful. Me personally, sometimes

Neutral Self Talk That Works

SPEAKER_00 19:07

saying I'm joy and I'm bringing joy with me everywhere I go, like doesn't quite feel true. So maybe just challenging a negative thought and can I make it more neutral, right? I have good intentions. Other people have good intentions, right? Not necessarily this rah-rah. And if the rah-rah helps you, then you know, God bless, use it. But it's not gonna help everyone, right? Kind of knowing yourself and knowing what helps. If you know, a positive affirmation of it's a beautiful day, I'm happy, healthy, and wonderful. If that doesn't feel right, can I at least curb my thoughts into a more neutral statement? Instead of this is hard, this is gonna suck, I hate this, right? That's going on in our head. Can I turn that around to like, you know what? Life is hard sometimes. This is a difficult situation, but I'll probably be okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

I love that. I love that so much. I feel like we all have that internal critic will be like, oh, we're not doing great at this, or oh, this is so hard, this is the worst. But just being able to be like, okay, I recognize that this is a hard situation. So we're not devaluing the way that we feel, but we're also I'm competent, I can handle this, make it through, it's gonna be okay. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Being honest with yourself and also passionate with yourself, right? So I always talk to people about talking to yourself the way that you talk to somebody else. So in my own brain, I might be saying, like, this is awful, I hate this, no, no, no, I can't do it, I can't do it. But would I say that to someone else? Probably not. I would say, okay, you got this, you can do it, you can try. Like it's hard, but you can keep going, right? So can I talk to myself that way?

SPEAKER_01 20:56

I think about that all the time. How much better would my life be if I talked to myself the way that I talk to others? Because in a situation like that, I'd be like, oh, that sounds really hard. Like, how can I support you? Why can't I say those types of things to myself instead of being like, this is so hard, and you're gonna fail.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

And you can talk to yourself that way.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

We gotta work on it. It's so many things to be aware of. I love it so much. Thank you so much for your time and for coming on. Were there any other things that popped up that were top of mind that you would want to share today that maybe tie into this? Or if it's about anything else, I just want to make sure that we give you proper time.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Well, I just want to say thank you for having us on. Thank you for talking about mental health awareness. And I think it's important that we are here for you. Uh there's no shame in reaching out. And if you feel like you are struggling with stress or anxiety

No Shame In Getting Support

SPEAKER_00 21:50

or anything else, that's what we're here for to help support the Salt Lake County employees.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

Perfect. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for coming on. Really appreciate you. And likewise, here at Employee Wellness, we're here to help everyone. We want everyone's lives to be as good as they can be. And that goes for you as well. So if there's anything we can ever do to support you, we would be happy to. We think that you do great work and we really appreciate you.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Great. Thanks, Cody.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Yeah, thank you for coming on, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

Have a good day, everyone. Thanks for joining us.