Your Funeral Coach Talks

Breaking the Silence: Burnout & Balance in Deathcare with Monica Torres

• Lisa Baue

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Join Lisa Baue on Your Funeral Coach Talks podcast for an insightful conversation with Monica Torres of NXT Generation Mortuary Support. Monica brings a wealth of expertise as an author, public speaker, technical trainer, licensed funeral director and embalmer, certified restorative mortician, desairologist, postmortem reconstructive specialist, and an advocate for overcoming fear in the funeral profession.

Monica discusses the deathcare profession's challenges of burnout, compassion fatigue, and mental health. She shares her journey towards better work-life balance and mental health, emphasizing the importance of self-care and leadership in funeral service.

This episode offers valuable perspectives and strategies for funeral professionals seeking to enhance their well-being while mentoring the next generation. 

Tune in to learn how to navigate these personal and professional challenges effectively.

Lisa:

Hi everyone, this is Lisa Baue, your funeral coach. I have a 45 year degree in funeral service. I've been licensed for over four decades and my mission is to help the next generation of our profession be better, grow themselves, mentor and coach them and help them become the leaders of tomorrow. And I'm here speaking of leadership. with Monica Torres of NextGenMortuarySupport.com. And Monica has got some great leadership. She founded her own business. She does goes out there and she teaches all over the country as well as the world. Uh, she's a public speaker, technical trainer, desirologist, postmortem reconstruction, Specialists say that really fast three times and best of all, a fear fighter. So Monica also teaches the next gen and helps them learn and improve all their skills in the preparations of deceased human remains, as well as she has served as their mentor. She founded a new cold hand studio learning center, which is in the Phoenix, Arizona area and where she teaches and trains others. How to be better in all that they do in the care centers and embalming rooms. And she also has a wonderful Doberman Pinscher and she enjoys hosting guests out at her facility. Welcome Monica. Excited to have you.

Monica:

How you doing? I'm so good. Thank you. Thank you for having me back. I am so humbled to be invited and be on your podcast again.

Lisa:

Well, we're excited to have you. We're going to talk a little bit about leadership and mentorship, and you're learning some things while you're out there in the field training people. Some of the next genders are coming up to you and they are sharing some things with you that are, I think, important for all of us in our profession to hear. Tell us about that.

Monica:

Yeah. So, um, through my travels, I am, I get to, through my travels, I get to speak with many funeral directors and embalmers, and It seems like there's a common thread between people being really, really, um, burnt out and also those who are facing compassion fatigue. And I am a person who has taken a step back this year and reevaluated What my priorities are and my health being number one, mental health included. I really decided to, yeah, yeah. I take, I've decided to take a step back and, and do the hard work to get better. I myself have been struggling with, uh, secondary traumatic stress disorder, as well as PTSD. Compassion fatigue and burnout. Believe it or not, they're all different things. So, yeah. So I noticed I was kind of, um, I was struggling in silence. I think like many morticians do putting on a brave face on social media and kind of working through things on my own. And I started realizing every convention that I was traveling to, I had another colleague. That was coming up to me at least one, sometimes more, and I was seeing tears and real vulnerability and confessions of anxiety disorders, panic attacks, serious burnout, suicidal ideations, and the list goes on. Oh, dear.

Lisa:

Oh, dear.

Monica:

Yeah, so that's when I started to realize like this is a real conversation that needs to be had. And I'm feeling these things too, so I thought, you know what, I need to get myself better. I need to start actively working to manage my own anxiety. And, um, my own stressors and traumas. And so that's what I've been doing. I took off my first holiday ever as a mortician this past year. And

Lisa:

Monica Torres, your first holiday ever as a mortician, we do need to talk about your work life balance lady.

Monica:

Yes. Yeah. Well, I'm, like I said, I am working on it and I've made a commitment to continue that. Yes. So it was not overrated. Any morticians that are listening right now, I'm going to tell you. It is not overrated to take that time off and completely disconnect and put your phone completely down. It was so healing for me. I feel like. I had a lot of guilt that I wasn't hadn't dealt with because I had basically left my family for so many holidays thinking, Oh, you know, I have to be there. I have to be there. Well, no, we don't. And I think the rest of the country realizes that now too, like, you know.

Lisa:

I think you're absolutely right. You have to be there for yourself first, because if you're not there for yourself first, you're not there for anyone else because you just don't have anything left. Well, I want to tell you something. I've got this little sign behind me that says, do what makes you happy. So happiness, the happiness factor in the United States is not good. Uh, in fact, Gallup just came out with their happiness level, uh, of how we rated in the United States. We are at 23rd in the world and Monica, we were at 15 last year and I really do believe from everything else I've seen is that we have some serious issues in how employers are treating, engaging, and caring for their staff. They're not focused on wellbeing, they're not focused on work life balance, and they are exhausted themselves because of coming out through the pandemic. Some of them are halfway out the door. They're thinking of selling, but they're also not engaging their young people and teaching them how to become owners and how to become leaders. And this is really affecting this next generation. Um, one in two employees, according to Gallup, are leaving their organization. That's really huge and that's not good. So we have a responsibility as coaches and mentors. As women leaders in this profession to help coach, guide and mentor these young people. There's a 66 percent issue with engagement and culture and wellbeing and work life balance. So what are we going to do about this? So you took the first holiday off in your entire career. So I'm not going to scold you here, but you're learning some good things that we all need to learn from. Um, it's important that we take care of ourselves. First and foremost, and employers, if you're listening, you have to take care of your employees wellbeing. This is really a serious issue. One in four us employees feel strongly that they're one in four, only one in four. Feel that their organization even cares. And it's interesting. I've got this graph here that in 2019 it was way up there. It was close to 50%. Guess where it is now? It is down less than 24%. So what's going on with employers that they don't care anymore and why is it no wonder these young people are feeling the stress of this. No wonder there's an increase in suicide. What are we doing wrong? What, how can we fix this? What do you think?

Monica:

My personal thoughts are, I'm just gonna spill it out there.

Lisa:

people are spill it out there. Girl. Older. That's what we're here for. You gotta figure this out, , the older generation. You and I can can figure it out. Who else can, right? Yeah.

Monica:

They, they're gonna hate me for this, but I am gonna throw some blame, um, out to the boomer generation and those that came before them because it is our culture as funeral directors and morticians. To work, work, work, families come first. That's a, that's a saying that is familiar to many more families come first. Families come first. Well, you know what? My family comes first and I decided that this past year. Um, but prior to my grand decision, it has always been in our culture, our industry, our profession, that. If you, if you can't do the job, then you need to not be in this profession. If you have emotions, if you can't hold it together, if you can't show up For work after working 12 hour shifts and be there on the weekend and be there to backing the chapel 8 a. m. On, you know, 7 a. m. On Saturday or whatever, then you need to find another career. That's been the mentality for a really, really long time. It has been, it

Lisa:

has been shame, shame on our profession.

Monica:

You're, you're, you are an owner for most of your adult life and you know that, like, I'm sure that to some degree you expected your, uh, staff to be there. And you know what? Let's not, let's not shed tears at the grave site, okay? Because we're the ones that are supposed to be strong for the family. Right. So, I think now, What we have to do as owners, as managers, is we have to really, really take a step back and reevaluate what our policies are on, um, boundaries, help helping staff members to set personal boundaries. Also, flexible work schedules because we do have limited staff. When does your staff wanna be there? Right, right. So those are just some small things that I'm going to be presenting this May and my upcoming presentation that focuses on. Um, self care and, um, stress management for funeral directors. These are some things that we can do and there's, I have a whole other plethora, but I do want to say this has to be a movement. It can't be just one. I'm going to do this at my funeral home. This has to be on a grand scale. The leaders in our state and national associations really have to embrace this because These younger, uh, generations that are coming in to work in funeral service. They do not want to work that hard for the money that they're working for and all of the trauma and stress that they're going to have to face. Their relationships are way more important. Their families are way more important and we need to wake up.

Lisa:

I absolutely agree. This is a huge wake up call. I had mine about 15 years into my career where I hired a business coach to come in because I was having all kinds of problems. We had. We had employees quitting. We had them leaving. We had, we had the unions in there saying you're not treating your employees really well. And I finally did a 360 on me. And so you gotta, you gotta take some risk here, owners, and you have to take some responsibility that maybe it is you. Maybe it's your culture. Maybe it's your schedule. You can't expect these people to work 10 days straight without a break. You know, we eventually at Baue's, we put in nap rooms. or break rooms where they could sit in a massage chair. We brought in massage therapists to come in and give them back massages. We would give people. You know, time off, take a break, go put your tennis shoes on, go take a long walk. You have to recognize that these long hours are going to cost you and it's going to cost your employees and they're just not going to stay. It is going to cost good people. And I'll tell you what, the majority of them are women because women are over 70 percent coming out of mortuary school and they want to have a quality of life. They want to get married, they want to have children and they want to be there for their activities as a family and the children's activities. And you know, I'm as guilty as most. I had my kids in the office. I would like carry my son around in this little, little thing in the front, right? I mean, I'm pumping breast milk and I've got my kid at a babysitter and sometimes I never even got to pick him up till seven o'clock at night. That is not okay. And we were taught a different work ethic. I also learned through my 360 and my business coach that my people didn't feel like I cared for them. I tell you what, Monica, it broke my heart. I think I was so focused on caring more for our client families than I was on my staff. And when I turned that around, And flip that and started listening to them and say, what can we do to do a better job in our culture and touch your heart and help care for you better? The whole culture of our company turned around when we started asking those questions and listening and changing our business practices. It just can't go on like this much longer, or I think, unfortunately, we won't find anyone to work for us. Right. And these employers are out there saying, I can't find anybody. Well, maybe you need to look in the mirror first, right?

Monica:

Right. And I feel as well that there's like a fear for funeral home owners or managers and the way that our culture has progressed over centuries here, that we have to serve that family right now. Right. Yeah. We have to get the body embalmed immediately. We have to serve that family right now. We got to be there, right? We go to the house and meet with the family. And you know, the one thing that I learned through the pandemic. Is that those families had to wait in order for us to process the paperwork, just logistics of moving bodies to get them into a place where they could be embalmed or they could be, um, reach disposition. And these families were waiting some of them months. I have bomb bodies that were supposed to last for three months before people can have a funeral.

Lisa:

Which is sad. It's sad. It's sad that people have to wait that long. But I heard this. I know we had the same problem weeks before they can even get in for arrangements or make them. It's just so sad.

Monica:

Families get it. Families understand. And that's what we need to understand. Yeah. Is that, you know what, sometimes, and I'm talking about boundaries here, is setting boundaries and you know what, sometimes I know it's hard to like, it's hard to hear this for a lot of people who are, you know, they, they own a funeral home or the bottom line is the dollar, but sometimes you have to let those families walk in order to like just keep your staff and be able to support the community because I'm telling you, like since I started to set boundaries. with, with families and say, Hey, this is the time that I need in order to offer you this service. I haven't had one family go to another funeral home or say, no, you know what? We decided to go somewhere else. I just haven't. And it's a conversation that I have with the family. It'd be like anything else, any, any type of conversation around the arrangement table. It takes communication, and if you don't have communication skills, and that's an area that you need to polish, take some classes, go online, get a book. There's free information where you can learn how to communicate with families, and set boundaries that are respectable, and people are, they understand, you know, this is what we do. There has to be some absolutely

Lisa:

to, you know, Brene Brown has this great book called dare to lead and it's about having courageous conversations and you also have the crucial conversations book, which is in its 3rd edition and we have to teach these young. New arrangers and funeral directors and young managers, how to be able to have these courageous communications with the families they serve as well as with their employers. I'm not going to work 10 hour days. I simply can't do that. This is about work life balance. May I suggest a better schedule for all of us? How about we get together? Be a leader. How about we get together with our whole staff and try to figure out a schedule that works for everybody so we can have trade offs when we need them, so we can all have some weekends off, so we can have some holidays off. I think employers need to let a lot of their next generation come together and try to figure this out. I'm even hearing about some companies that are going to, uh, let their staff have a sabbatical. And take maybe six months or a year off. They do this in Europe all the time. Employers will do this in Europe, right? It's

Monica:

very needed. And I want to encourage any morticians, any funeral directors, specifically SCI corporation, those people that are listening, utilize your trade service people. Don't be afraid, be courageous. Utilize your trade service people to come in and give your staff a break. Say, you know what? We're not embalming sharing weekend anymore sharing. That's right. We're not, there could be job sharing. We're noting on the weekend anymore. We're hiring a trade service person to come in and embalm every weekend. So that, guess what, everybody gets to have the weekend off.

Lisa:

Wouldn't that utilize

Monica:

Yes and utilize the call service, uh, these services that they're wonderful and all these answering services. Work out the money so that your staff can have that time off because you know as well as I do, when you're on call, you're not really off.

Lisa:

Right. Exactly. I mean, I'm still hearing that we have funeral directors and embalmers that are single licenses and they're making, having to go out on call at night. They're having to stay and embalm the bodies and then they'd get no sleep and then they're meeting the families the next morning. That is no longer acceptable.

Monica:

Acceptable. Yeah.

Lisa:

If you're a smaller firm, I understand when you'll have to do everything, but take turns and agree. And that's when

Monica:

those conversations are important with your community. You're only one person serving the whole community. You have to be your own best advocate and let people know, hey, just like our firefighters, just like our police, just like our paramedics, just like our police, We struggle with this too. Publish a, uh, a, um, a journal in your local newspaper talking about, uh, post traumatic stress or secondary traumatic stress and how it affects the funeral director. These are simple things that funeral directors can do in small communities. Yes, and they're always looking for stories. Absolutely.

Lisa:

Well, that's, this is, you know, we're not going to solve the whole problem overnight, but I love all your ideas. So let's just keep speaking up and telling everyone we can in our profession, how important this is. And let's encourage these next generations, the millennials and the Gen Zs to speak up as well and to share their thoughts. And if you're with a firm where your needs are not being met, don't give up on the profession. It's still a wonderful profession. And there are so many employers out there that are better. And are looking for you. So give Monica a call. Give me a call. Uh, check in with your state associations and your national associations. The jobs are there. We have to work on the reciprocity. That's going to be a real important thing so people can, can move to different states if they need to. And that we can help them. Others out. I love the trade services that are special that will come in and actually, but you want to take a vacation, they'll come stay at your funeral home and they'll make arrangements your way and they'll serve your families and they'll do your embalming. So I think there's some new creative things that can happen in this profession. But overall, the work life balance and the engagement and the culture of caring for our staff first and foremost. More than we do, our client families has got to be part of our future. Hey, Monica, give us one thing that you learned when you were on vacation in Chris at Christmas for stress relief because you and I are talking right now. It's April stress relief month. What do you do to relieve stress now since the Christmas at Christmas time that you've learned is important for you? Give us a tip.

Monica:

Well, I have a ton because I've been doing this now. I've been working on it for the past several months, but the one thing I could say, if I can only name one. I have really embraced water therapy and taking baths. It makes me stop, it makes me relax, I can't do anything else, I'm not rushing to wash my hair or whatever. I created this whole area of water therapy. Zen in my bathroom, and I'm doing that probably three times a week now, and that is the one thing I can say. It really has really helped me in an amazing way, and I recommend it to anyone. It might sound kind of cheesy and like, oh, how is a bath gonna help? No, no, if you do it regularly, I promise you you'll see a difference emotionally. Mentally and physically, if you had Epsom salt,

Lisa:

I love that. That's a wonderful tip. Do you journal? Are you a journal journal or at all?

Monica:

Yes. Yes.

Lisa:

So I find that getting myself centered in the mornings and, and as well as in the evenings when I've just had one of those hard days or early mornings or late nights is to journal a little bit about how I'm feeling just to get it out on paper. I think that's so important, but I love the self care, you know, and if you can't afford a manicure or pedicure, you know, just go to the, go to the drugstore. Or go to Dollar Tree and get yourself some of the, the facial items and, and the foot scrubs and give yourself your own little spot, spot area in your, in your own bathroom. I mean, there's ways that we can take better care of ourselves if we get focused on why that's important and just do it more often. Thanks for being with us today. Yes, we do. We got to take care of ourselves first. Nobody's going to do that, but us, right? I'm so proud of you for actually taking a vacation over Christmas. I hope you do it next time. And you continue to take some breaks and weekends off. And I know, where are you going to be next? Where can everybody find you? Uh, Coming up. I think you've got some travels coming up this summer.

Monica:

I do. I do. My next presentation is going to be in Florida with the Independent Funeral Directors of Florida. And we're going to be talking about self care and mental health. That's what my presentation is going to be covering. It's called Hard Case Hangover. And it's about the most difficult cases of my career and what I am doing now to battle my own secondary traumatic stress disorder and post traumatic stress. Thanks.

Lisa:

I love it. I love it. That's awesome. Well, everybody get down to Florida. That's a great place to go relieve some stress anyway, isn't it?

Monica:

Yes. Yes, it is.

Lisa:

Thanks. Thanks for being with us again, Monica. And if people want to get ahold of you, they go to NextGenMortuarySupport.com Monica at, correct?

Monica:

Yes, and you can also find me@coldhandshost on Instagram, that's where I am most active on social media. Yes, you are. And I'm on Facebook, and I'm all around. You can message me. You're everywhere.

Lisa:

You're everywhere. That's good. Well. Best wishes to you as you go through the rest of your spring and summer and working on your self care. And if you need some coaching or some mentoring, especially in the areas of restorative art, this is your woman right here. I appreciate you, friend. And thank you for being a wonderful woman leader in our profession. And we'll talk to you soon. Come back again.

Monica:

Thanks, Lisa. See you next time. Happy embalming.

Lisa:

Bye everybody. Take care of yourself. And if you need any more. It's coaching support, mentoring support, or want to learn how to put mentoring is wonderful programs for engagement into your own firms. Please give us a holler at lisa@yourfuneralcoach.com. Take care and live a stress free life. You are the answer. Your Funeral Coach Talks is a Crab Shell Media Podcast.