The Ritual Nurse

Nurse Avatar Part 1 of 2: Special Guest "I see you"

• Riva - The Ritual Nurse • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Navigating the ever-changing landscape of healthcare during a global pandemic is no small feat, and few understand this better than our guest, Jamie, a dedicated nurse who has transitioned from a med-surg unit to the ICU in the midst of chaos. Her journey is a testament to resilience and adaptability, shedding light on the stark contrasts between pre- and post-pandemic nursing. Together, we explore the expectations placed on new graduates who joined the field during these tumultuous times and delve into the personal growth and self-compassion necessary to thrive amidst adversity. Jamie’s insights offer a compelling perspective on finding one’s footing in a rapidly evolving profession.

Balancing the professional and personal aspects of nursing can be a delicate dance, often leading nurses to compartmentalize their lives in order to cope. We dive deep into the nuances of this disconnection, discussing the notion of “faking it till you make it” and the eventual need for authenticity in practice. Jamie shares her strategies for maintaining sanity, embracing self-awareness, and nurturing empathy, even when faced with difficult situations like addiction. This discussion underscores the importance of integrating mindfulness and self-care into nursing, reminding us that personal well-being is as crucial as professional competence.

Maintaining mental health in the wake of secondary trauma is essential, and we explore practical self-care strategies that are both achievable and impactful. Highlighting the concept of incremental progress, we introduce Robert Maurer’s "One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way" as a valuable resource for building positive habits. Additionally, we discuss the powerful themes of patience and balance using oracle and tarot decks, illustrating how self-care and self-awareness can prevent emotional disconnection. This episode serves as a heartfelt reminder for nurses to nurture their whole selves, balancing the demands of their professional roles with personal needs for a sustainable and fulfilling career.

Hey! Make sure you subscribe to stay connected. Love a nurse? Who doesn't! Share with all the nurses you know. The more we reach, the more we help. We feel like no one deserves center stage focus more than nurses and our mission is to reach the millions of superstars out there. We'd love to hear your stories, your adventures, your wins, and especially your needs and questions! Email us at hello@ritualnurse (dot) com. Also, you can send us fan mail! Use the link at the beginning of the show notes. Resources, classes, blogs, and podcast info can be found on our home site at TCTH.org. The Ritual Nurse Podcast is part of The Code Team educational platform.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Ritual Nurse, where healing meets humor, science and a touch of magic. I am so excited, you guys, because I have a guest with me today who is a fellow nurse, and I'm going to let Jamie introduce herself and tell you a little bit about her. But I could not be more excited to have her as a guest on the podcast. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I was so excited when you hit me up and was like I'm doing this podcast, and I was like, yes, yes, I want to do this. Um, so, thank you, it's just as much of an opportunity for me. Um, I'm excited, love it. So give me, um, a little bit, if you will, just kind, of your, your background or your, you know our nursing pedigree. As we, as we say, just get, yeah, give me a little bit about your background, okay, um, so I spent the first two and a half years of my nursing career on a med surge unit. From there I've been in icu for and then, back when I was on the med surge unit, um, um, I did have, uh, the opportunity to do some charge shifts, nice, yeah. Um, I learned a lot, uh, from different perspectives about being there and I realized that being a leader is hard. Yes, yes, yes, girl, yes, um, I also came in just for, like timing sake. Um, I had three months of being precepted and then I was on my own for three months and then COVID hit. Okay, that's really significant. You and I were having a conversation earlier that really involved that. Talk to me about those early challenges. What did that mean for you? So the way I like to think about it is I was quote unquote born into nursing in a time of instability, absolutely. So I was able to, in those first six months, see and witness what stability looked like, but it really hasn't been the majority of my career. And so I think that you develop differently as a nurse. Coming in right around COVID like that, I think you don't ever learn the stable way, absolutely, absolutely, kind of like how you were explaining.

Speaker 1:

Like you know, there was a ground at one point. Yeah, there used to be a ground. There was structure to this, scaffolding, to this, and all of it evaporated during the pandemic. And I think nurses prior to the pandemic and nurses born into nursing during the pandemic, we have different experiences of it, but the end result was this mess of chaos, this mess of instability that was kind of dumped on our laps. Okay, here now, deal with it Right.

Speaker 1:

And you know, now I'm observing, you know, the system, quote unquote, try to bring stability back Right. And I recognize it for what it is, but it's weird. It's like what is that healthy, you know, like necrosis uncovered, if you will, in pockets of healthcare, in healthcare itself during the pandemic, that we can't go back to what was, what existed before. That makes sense, and so it's kind of like we're going to establish the new normal and it's not normal like to any of us, not to you guys, not to nurses before the pandemic, not, I don't think, even to nurses that are just hitting nursing now. Yeah, it's an interesting time, the chaos, the trauma.

Speaker 1:

So there's a couple of things that come to mind. One is that I was so hard on myself and I had really unrealistic expectations, and this is something that, like, I will talk to new grads about and I'll be like listen, you're comparing yourself right now to a nurse who's been nursing for seven years, 10 years, whatever, and it's not a fair comparison. You are not going to function that way. Period. It took them seven years to be that nurse. Yes, it took me seven years to be that nurse. It took me five years to be this nurse.

Speaker 1:

Don't expect everything to go great, especially in the first year. The first year is one of the hardest, especially if you start off as a new grad in ICU. Yeah, I did too. Yeah, that's a double hard thing. Yeah, it's almost like a fourth year. Well, depending on how long your nursing school program was. But it's extra nursing school. Oh yeah, because in addition to learning how to be an actual nurse for the first time, you're learning the specialization of being in a specialized field for the first time. I don't think I breathed the entire first year. I was a new grad.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there were two instances and that happened in one. One of them was when I was a new grad and the other one I went to ICU. Yeah, and it is. It's like you and my preceptors were like listen, coming to the ICU is like being a new grad all over again. I told you I was like whatever, you're just blowing smoke, nope, um. And then I was like after a while, I'm like you know what that's really accurate? Yeah, I think learning how to handle the challenges that you handled as a new nurse really involves a level of resiliency that I don't think anybody teaches us how to develop. That I don't think anybody teaches us how to develop Like handling adversity is one thing when the variables are expected or when at least some part of the structure is expected.

Speaker 1:

Handling adversity when you don't know what, you don't know, like, you have no idea what form or shape the adversity is going to take, aka our exposure to secondary trauma, the stress and trauma of of taking all of these you know these responsibilities on. We don't know what form that's going to take because we've never experienced it before. Are there things that, looking from the point of experience that you have now, that you would say like navigating that difficult kind of terrain? What would you tell yourself now in regards to okay, this is how you withstand this kind of adversity, whether it be challenges, trauma codes, exposure to trauma, the stress and anxiety of having responsibility for human life while you're still learning how to maintain, you know, to stop the unaliving? Is there something you would tell yourself now that?

Speaker 1:

Or you would tell yourself then, as the nurse you are now, I would say one, don't take things quite so personally. Oh, good one. Oh, my gosh, so people are going to die and it's not going to be your fault. Oh my gosh, that just slapped new nurse me from around the corner. Okay, yes, and I even see older, more veteran season nurses struggle with this, where it's like, oh my God, what did I do wrong? Nothing, absolutely. You did absolutely nothing wrong, absolutely. Um, and that's where to having your maintaining those relationships within the nursing field, because sometimes it takes that person on the outside coming in and going. I saw what you did and you did everything right. Yes, you know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, do you feel like as nurses, I kind of feel like you know people will say to us like, oh, you're doing such a good job, like during the pandemic, we heard this the whole time that you know you guys are heroes, you're doing such a good job, and it really is going to sound weird, but it really didn't mean anything. No, I hear exactly what you're saying. You know what I'm saying. As a matter of fact, the moment those words, I went through this period of time where, the moment those words came out of somebody's mouth, it was this automatic, like disconnect, like you don't see me, you only see the nurse. Like you have no idea what I'm actually going through. Yes, and though those comments and those statements were all made with good intent, it just made me feel that much farther away from yes, and that that what you, the aspect that you just discussed right there.

Speaker 1:

We kind of touched on this earlier when we were talking about nurses we're human, but there's this weird I don't know if it's both societally driven and, I think, personally driven to meet those expectations and standards, and it's not just nurses. I feel like I see a lot of physicians with it, I see a lot of our healthcare colleagues with it. There's this weird disconnect between our avatar as a nurse and the expectations placed on it and our existence as a human. Yep, like. There's this weird separation where the emotions, the struggles, the actual humanity of our existence and our experience in the context of things around us is somehow completely like, unplugged from our avatar, our functioning avatar as a nurse, absolutely Like, and honestly, part of what helped me get through those first few years of nursing is that idea of fake it till you make it yes, because how often do we hear that?

Speaker 1:

Right, and I'll be honest with you, I don't know how healthy quote unquote that perspective is, but it does give you that third person removed, objective perspective where you can really self-evaluate without hurting yourself. Yes, and you can evaluate the situation and, okay, I as a person maybe did not handle this well, but I as a nurse would handle it like this. Right, and it's just learning to, unfortunately, compartmentalize. I have to separate a lot of things, like there are a lot of things that go down in a hospital that I would not be okay with in real life, like the way that some people talk to me. I'm like I would have walked away five minutes ago because you would not be allowed in my life, because that is a personal boundary that I have, exactly.

Speaker 1:

But as a nurse you're expected to, like I don't know, not have boundaries, I guess, unless it comes to treatment, and then you have to have the boundary to get the patient to take the treatment Correct and it just gets like kind of convoluted, absolutely Personal boundaries for your own self, the human self, are what's not allowed, but the nurse avatar and our executive functioning, oh then you can have boundaries because it is for the betterment of someone else. And I think that now do you think, as a new nurse, that compartmentalizing that we do oftentimes as a trauma protection, just a shield, that we quickly learn how to do to stuff things in boxes and keep moving. Do you think as a new nurse were you able to do what you can now and look in those boxes and objectively evaluate the contents? So I had to go through a period of not having that coping mechanism, developing that coping mechanism and then go back and kind of reevaluate that coping mechanism. And so by the time I hit the point of reevaluating that coping mechanism, I did realize that there were certain things that I had naturally ingrained into my practice. So, for example, I would look around at the other veteran nurses and I would pick qualities from people, and even sometimes they were just newer nurses too. But they figured something out that I had Excellent, and I would incorporate that into the quote. Unquote nursing avatar yes, and then eventually it became more natural and I realized that part of the reason it wasn't me faking my way through, it was me seeing something in somebody else that I admired, or quality that I saw in myself that I wanted to express in my practice. Right, you were evolving, yes. So when it did come time to really look back and be like, do I need this like third person compartmentalized avatar thing going on, right, it wasn't that big of a deal to me because I just integrated. What Like do I need this like third person compartmentalized avatar thing going on? Right, it wasn't that big of a deal to me because I just integrated what I wanted to integrate. I just was being mindful about it. Yes, that's a really, that's a really advanced ability to do so.

Speaker 1:

I think a lot of nurses I know that we leave nursing school without really having any of those tools on board in terms of self-awareness and evaluation and integrating qualities and traits within ourselves alongside the compassion of being human. As you're integrating these traits, it's not going to snap on like a Lego. You have to evolve into it. You're not going to do it right every time. You're not going to emulate that like a Lego, like you have to evolve into it. You're not going to do it right every time. You're not going to emulate that trait right every time. That muscle memory isn't there yet In your journey to get from not having that skill set to not only having that skill set now but actively engaging with it to evolve yourself.

Speaker 1:

What were some of the self-care practices that kind of helped, or the holistic and self-care practices that kind of maintain your sanity along that path. So a couple of things that I did to help maintain my sanity in all of this is one I was taught by a friend, and it was the idea of he's like okay, you get a puppy, puppy pees on the carpet, are you going to be super angry and punish them and treat them the same way you would treat your adult dog that knows better? Like, no, you wouldn't, right, they're learning Because they're learning Right. And so I actually carried that philosophy over into a lot of what I was doing as a nurse, because a lot of the resistances I was coming up against were things like addiction, yes, and so it's for people who are used to having control in their life and now they don't. And it's like okay, listen, you can't punish people for feeling the way they feel about the situation that they're in. They're struggling, they're having a hard time, right. So instead of fighting that resistance, why don't you go along with it and slowly guide people in a different direction? Okay, that makes total sense.

Speaker 1:

And those implicit biases are things that we, as nurses, learn to kind of do the shadow work, if you will, when we're actively engaged in mindfulness, when we're setting aside intentional space to craft these rituals for ourselves, if you will, because we're doing it with intention, we're doing it with the expectation of a result or a growth, or even not just a result or growth but an understanding, like a light bulb coming on Right and to just kind of loop it back around to the question, I know that was the long way around. I would go through that process of basically taking the emotion out of a situation or seeing it from a third person party or seeing it from a different perspective when I was in a place to be able to digest that, and then I could be like, okay, this is where I went wrong, this is where I went right, this is how I would handle it next time. And it was all very nonjudgmental because I pulled the emotion out of it when I was in a headspace to be able to reflect. Excellent, I couldn't have said it better myself in terms of the intention that we set when we create the space for ourselves is to be able to be in the mindset of objectively looking at the contents of those boxes. And, okay, I'm going to evaluate this without judgment. That's not going to get in the way of my productive engagement. With what's there, I can take what suits me, I can leave what doesn't and continue that evolving process.

Speaker 1:

And right now we're getting close to the 15 minute mark. So if you have to head back to shift, we both wish you an absolutely phenomenal shift with the coolest residents and the best orders ever. If you don't have to head back to the floor, then take this minute to refresh your coffee or your tea. The musical interlude is just kind of a key for you to press pause and know exactly where you are when you come back to the podcast. But when we come back, we're going to continue talking with Jamie about some more of the holistic practices that she utilizes to stay in this mindful space and some self-care for mind, body, spirit. And, of course, we're going to do our coffee, crystals and divination segment towards the end, and Jamie actually brought an amazing deck to take a look at, so I'm really excited for that. So, anyways, enjoy the music and we will see you shortly. Thank you guys so much. If you guys have stuck with us and you're coming back to the podcast, love it, and we're so excited to keep talking. I have a podcast guest here, jamie, and we're going to continue our discussion that we were having before the break, still kind of focusing on the holistic and self-care practices that really help you deal with the adversity that we face in nursing.

Speaker 1:

So, the secondary trauma that we're exposed to, whether it's emotional, whether it's physical, what are some of the spaces that you create for yourself to maintain that balance, if your mental health balance, your, your, your equilibrium, I've had to learn how to check in with my body, because my body will tell me when I'm not okay before my mind will, and so, holy crap, that was amazing. So I've had to learn the little cues Right, and I didn't realize how many little cues I had until I started paying attention to it, and so sometimes it's little cues, like you know. Oh, I feel a little spacey, I'm probably hungry. I should probably eat something, so I don't like bite somebody's head off later. Right, exactly, hangry, yes, exactly. So that's been a really big part of my balance in the workplace.

Speaker 1:

I wanted to ask you have a book with you here? I do, and when we're thinking about mind, body and spirit and nourishing those, that's one of the primary ways that we maintain our resilience and protect our mental health. This book, what do you get out of this book? What is this, your intersection with this? So I brought the book with me. One Small Step Can Change your Life the Ties and Way by Robert Murr. Okay, and the reason was that you know I would get all this advice of you should do this and you should do that, but I never understood how to implement it. Excellent, and so one small step can change your life is about creating habits in very bite-sized small pieces, like, if it feels like effort, you've already been off too much. Okay, that's extremely significant.

Speaker 1:

A few podcast episodes I was talking about how the feeling of overwhelm, especially right now, for people just even thinking about listening to self-help or thinking about listening how to address a problem can actually be that's too much dopamine. I don't have enough dopamine for that right now. That's too big. And so what is the one small thing you can do to accomplish self-care, regardless of your to-do list or any of the other overhanging anxieties? Just one small thing that you can accomplish for self-care could be eating a snack. It could be sitting still for five minutes doing breath work. It could be sketching something, any small thing that you have the dopamine for, and that's such an amazing reflective sentence. If it feels like effort. You've probably already bitten off too much. Yeah, because that's exactly what that is.

Speaker 1:

So what about this book? Showed you how to do what are like the small steps? Like, does it does it show you, does it talk to you about how to engage with it or how to break it down? Or so I think one of the biggest lessons I walked away with this book, and I'll give an example in the book. I know that I personally, especially as a night shift nurse, struggle with overeating and eating a bunch of carbs and sugar, and the book isn't like, well, don't just stop, like don't do that to yourself, right, right. The book is like, literally, if your morning routine is I go, I get my coffee, I get my chocolate croissant. Well, take one less bite of your chocolate croissant. That is so powerful because people can do that Exactly, exactly, right. And the idea is, once it becomes, you know, easy, you don't have to think about it, you just take one less bite and you're satisfied. Then move on to two less bites, exactly.

Speaker 1:

And I have found that, when it comes to because self-care is a change, you know, and it's effort and it takes time and I really have struggled to integrate that into my life. But I found that taking smaller, bite-sized pieces and then evaluate them and growing them has been so much more helpful to me than I'm going to wake up and start a 35-minute meditation followed by a 60-minute workout. I am so called out right now. I am so called out right now. I don't know if it's my ADHD or what it is, but I'm so called out right now. I'm so called out right now. I don't know if it's my ADHD or what it is, but I'm so called out right now. So, like, let me give you.

Speaker 1:

Let me give you another example. I decided um, I know the best time for me to work out is first thing in the morning. Um, the only thing I've committed myself to is wake up, do 15 minutes period, and it's kind of evolved into 15 minutes of stretching Checked, cool. And it's kind of evolved into 15 minutes of stretching Sure, cool, but still You're moving your body. I'm checking in with my body. I'm like where am I tight? Yes, what needs attention? Phenomenal. And then there are some days where it'll naturally grow into something else, and that's how I know it's time. Or I also use a habit tracker, okay, and I do track the days that I do and don't do it, and I can see, wow, I'm really struggling with my commitment right now to myself. Okay, and my commitment to myself is really important, like I need to be able to trust my own word, right? So let's work on the commitment aspect and not worry so much about whether I accomplished a quote, unquote goal. The goal is do it Right. What is blocking or impeding my commitment to myself? Yes, where am I putting myself? What am I putting myself? Second to yes, that's amazing and I think.

Speaker 1:

Do you think we talked before the break about how we're? We exist as humans, but yet we operate as these nurse avatars. Do you think that there's some validity to the thought that we suck so badly at self-care because there's two versions of us and the one that's operant and visible to everyone is the avatar? Wow, that's a big question, right? Because it just occurred to me. I was like it's so difficult for nurses to do self-care. We don't drink water, we don't take our own advice, and everybody on the podcast I don't want to hear it because you know what I'm saying is true, but really I think it's because we invest so much in the maintenance and sustenance of our avatar and we're not, we don't ever. You know, there's so much stigma around talking about our existence as humans that it's like a little golem that we don't, you know, we don't pay attention to. Yeah, but the self-care it's the human we have to do the self-care of, not the avatar, right? No, that's such a trip. I had never thought of it that way before. Interesting.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that I think as a nurse, you innately have to learn to emotionally distance yourself Absolutely and I think that also plays a part Absolutely. We have to disconnect and kind of disassociate from our humanity, not in a compassionate sense, not in like how we approach others and treat them with humanity, but I mean our own feelings, our, our personal psyche like me as Reva, you as Jamie, our actual personal psyche. We have to emotionally disconnect from that to withstand the levels of stress and anxiety and trauma that we're exposed to, because the nurse avatar has to keep functioning and meet those and meet expectations. And I think there's also a separation in your mind too where you're like it's the nurse avatar taking the trauma, not the human. Holy crap, we are like round for round slugging it out. I love this. That's phenomenal.

Speaker 1:

I think that's part of our compartmentalization, because we have this fixture in our mind, this avatar image of what we're supposed to be. It's in social media, it's in stereotypes, it's in every picture of a nurse in COVID. It goes back to that whole. You guys are such heroes and we immediately disassociate. Yeah, because the nurse avatar is what we're looking at. There's no mirror reflecting us as humans.

Speaker 1:

But I don't think that we can get to the self-care part or even the holistically nurturing our mind, body and spirit part. The nurse avatar doesn't have a mind, body or spirit. We do Right, right, well, you know what? Okay, I don't even know how relevant this is, but it's really just off of my mind, but it kind of makes me wonder, like you know how, when people go through enough trauma, they end up with like a dissociative identity disorder, absolutely, and I kind of wonder if nurses kind of tap into that a wee bit. Oh, I think we, we absolutely disassociate as protection against trauma, which I believe I am not a psychiatrist and I have not studied did. But I believe that the nucleus of the schism, the, the fracturing of the personality into those separate ones, is a traumatic event, that then that other personality is created to shield and protect, right so. So it kind of makes sense when you think about it from that aspect. It makes a lot of sense. That's such an interesting concept.

Speaker 1:

And how do we teach nurses then to begin reintegrating themselves to the extent that they're capable? Because to some extent, I don't think I don't know personally that I would be able to fully integrate myself and continue to do what I do with repetition. I think that requires skill sets that I probably don't have full mastery over in terms of my resilience. Navigating, like that's where you need a professional colleague therapist, psychiatrist, psychologist who that is their wheelhouse, just like they would need us to titrate pressers for them. But as a nurse, like, how would you find a provider with that wheelhouse? Like, what are the buzzwords? What do I need?

Speaker 1:

Trauma-informed care, yep, trauma-informed care, finding a therapist or psychologist who specializes in trauma-informed care, because the nucleus of our problems stems from exposure to an experience of trauma. Just being a nurse inherently by itself is not traumatic. It is our job environment and the constant, repetitive, consistent exposure to either emotional sometimes physical, but emotional and mental trauma, both secondary, like of other people, or ours. Nobody comes to see us at work because it's a great day, right? No one's like hey, so glad to see you Right.

Speaker 1:

Exactly so, in one vein or another there's a problem, and you know constant exposure to these problems with the expectation that you fix it, you have the responsibility for fixing it. Whether that is the mega problem of stop the unaliving or it is, you know, emotional distress and grief and the grieving process or anger, loss of identity, loss of control. Patients are in a situation where they have no autonomy or control over what they're doing in the hospital or themselves because of the disease process. But we inadvertently because I'm not trying to say that they do it on purpose we inadvertently catch some of the brunt of that and so we have to emotionally process and we wade through that and deal with that. And when that happens to you every day, day in, day out, every time you go to work, you got to process that Well, and people too, like the saying you know a smile is contagious.

Speaker 1:

Yes, you know well, it's not just a smile. No, the energy across the board, the spectrum, is contagious. Yeah, and you can see it. You can see it on the floor when you have a code that goes sideways and then suddenly sentences are shorter, people, you know, are sighing more. Shoulders are tensed, conversations are yes, I mean, it's settled in just like mud, you know, and you can feel it, and it's this unspoken yeah, it's this unspoken thing that everybody can feel and you wade through it and dig through the muck and keep going.

Speaker 1:

But I think that we have to find some way of teaching nurses how to integrate with that avatar so that we can maintain mind, body and spirit, and I think that's a super cool lead-in to us being able to do divination and our coffee crystals and divination, because I'm really interested to see what the deck thinks about the nurse avatar. Okay, you know what I'm saying. You know what I'm like, fascinated by this idea. Right, this is a first. I've never, ever, heard of it referred to as a nursing avatar. So, whatever we just came up with, right now I'm digging For this week I don't have a particular drink.

Speaker 1:

Last week, when I was talking about it, I'm like, oh, next week I'll resume having a polished presentation and some kind of cool drink. I still don't. I'm still in the. I'm living everyday, moment to moment. And I think, when it comes to creating intentional space, I want to encourage people to focus on making the intentional space something about it intriguing or beautiful or interesting or kinesthetically satisfying.

Speaker 1:

So picking a drink that is warm or cold or soothing, or the scent of it, something about it, engages one of the five senses and allows you to more fully plug into that five-minute break. So, whether it's your favorite coffee, whether you are an absolute citrus fan, it doesn't matter what it is Pick something that really draws you in and incorporate that into your drink of the week and use that to really plug into your five minutes of just calm, just five minutes of self-focus, because I think right now people are so overwhelmed with sensory input that trying to craft some kind of unique concoction, no, go simple. Just go super simple. Something that you absolutely love. You love strawberries. Make a strawberry flavored milkshake. You love citrus drink a citrus tea and add lemon to it and inhale the scent of the citrus. So I think that will work.

Speaker 1:

Both of us drank coffee and water. I brought my water right, yes, yes, you did so, did I? So, as nurses, surprise, surprise, we actually were hydrating. I think I'm going to draw the crystal prescription for this week and see what the crystal prescription has to say along the same lane, in terms of the nurse avatar and incorporating it. I do think that I have had one or two suggestions from people about doing just a like crystals and divination episode, and I've been toying with the idea A lot of times. We incorporate the science and everything else into it. But I think it'll be interesting to see what the crystal prescription has to say about the nurse avatar idea.

Speaker 1:

How late Patience. This deck I am still using the Crystal Portal Oracle from Moonstruck Crystals. If you haven't seen this, you're going to want to look it up. It's on socials. I posted a picture of it and I tagged the creator. It's an absolutely stunning deck. I posted a picture of it and I tagged the creator. It's an absolutely stunning deck and it's super fun because there's a lot of attitude to it.

Speaker 1:

So the stone is how light and it represents patience, which is rest, mindfulness and emotional freedom. So this card is your gentle reminder to take a deep breath, relax and recharge. You may be feeling stressed and or have been pushing yourself to the limit lately, so slow down and find your sense of patience. Just like the sands in an hourglass take the time to, or they take time to, cascade down. Remember that great things take time to unfold. Take a step back for a moment, trust in the process and know that good things come to those who hustle hard and rest hard. Actual, I think that's amazing, and I think that good things take time to evolve is particularly poignant when we're talking about the nurse avatar and that process of integration. That makes sense, because we hustle hard. But what do we not do? We don't rest hard. The rest aspect is what's missing.

Speaker 1:

So if you have how light how light is actually a very beautiful, almost kind of marble looking stone. It's usually a bright white with veins of thin veins of gray and black. It is a soft stone. So if you're going to carry it around with you or wear it, just make sure that it's in a pocket or on like a bracelet. That's not going to get roughed up too much. But for this week, carry your Howlite around with you and every time you see it, think about that balance. If you hustle hard and we know we all do then you have to rest just as hard.

Speaker 1:

So what tarot deck do you have with you? Oh gosh. So I brought the Yuletide tarot deck with me, okay, and it looks super cute. It was, uh, it does. This is, this is gorgeous, okay, yeah, it is very direct and right to the point. Okay, I would not have expected that. Okay, no, you wouldn't. You're like, oh, it's a cute little Christmas. No, it's not. This book is absolutely gorgeous. I love the illustrations. I like it because it pulls on different Yuletide traditions throughout cultures, throughout the world. Oh, I love it. So it's not just one or the other Love it. The Magic of Midwinter oh, this is such a beautiful book. The candy cane striping oh, there's breakfast. Okay, interest.

Speaker 1:

Normally, I pull one. However, because this is your deck. If you want to pull a spread, you're more than welcome to Three spread, whatever you feel called to do. I don't know how this deck likes to communicate these. They have kind of long-winded answers. They're good answers, got it okay, but I'm thinking maybe we keep it a little shorter. Perfect, for time's sake. Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

And did you want me to pull on the nurse avatar, or just pull a card, or what do you? What are you feeling like? I'm curious about this nurse. Okay, let's. Okay, then let's do it. Let's do it, because my deck is not a beater on the bush. Okay, let's do it. Let's do it. Yeah, what do we need to know about our nurse avatar? I'll let you pick one. Hmm, I don't know, this one's like a different color.

Speaker 1:

That's the king of gifts in reverse. Yes, king of Gits. What an interesting image, right? All right, so the buzzwords are reliable supporting, enterprising, wild Okay.

Speaker 1:

In contrast to the other kings, who can all appear somewhat self-serving, the King of Gits is significantly more generous. They are successful individuals who have made their ambition and ideas and use their talents to secure a stable and happy environment for themselves and those they care for. They find value and meaning in faithfulness and will reward those who serve to help better themselves. They are generous with their time and their experience. I'll bet there is an element of control to this person, especially when it involves self-discipline. Wild Okay, the gift that they hold is not necessarily one that will be given to you, but we are looking at a figure who leads by example. They will provide, but not if you do not learn to provide for yourself. Oh my gosh, your deck is wild.

Speaker 1:

I told you it just described the nurse avatar and then was like hello, right, you have to give to yourself. If you do not take their lead or advice, they are more likely to show their dismay in actions rather than words. Interesting, right? So this is the reversed meaning and I think this comes a lot. This actually does play a lot in the self-care, but this card, in reverse, says this is the antithesis of success and determination. Weakness and apathy are blighting the king and they are unable to see their own abilities clearly. They have become a victim of their own success, which has led to painfully stagnant situations. So think about it the nurse avatar. The features and qualities that it described before are everything that social media society sees as the nurse avatar, yes, when really it is in reverse.

Speaker 1:

And another way of looking at apathy is emotional disconnect Yep, looking at apathy is emotional disconnect, yep, and the problem of of being emotionally disconnected is actually what is impeding our ability to to effectively like to survive self-care. So this is like the ideal nurse avatar, I think in the description, um, but then when you flip to the reverse, this is what happens when your nurse avatar is not healthy. Correct, the human is not healthy, the nurse avatar is not healthy. Exactly, it's like the underlying problem that we're not, yeah, a painfully stagnant situation. Yep, you can't evolve, you can't advance, you get stuck, absolutely. Yeah, you get stuck in your own thoughts, your own emotions. It's just a clog and then you're just miserable and it's utterly painful.

Speaker 1:

Whether it's physical, emotional, mental, it comes out Like you were saying. You know you, listening to your body, the little things tell you something is wrong, long before your brain is engaging. Yep, because we have that apathy towards our own needs, I'm telling you I am going to have to do this like on camera, because I've never even seen this deck before. You can't plan this stuff, but you know they're so on the nose and accurate. I know people have got to be like nah, this is all scripted. They had to have picked them before. So I'm going to have to start doing this on camera because every week that we've done the oracle and divination, it has been so targeted. This is incredible and well, you're not kidding, that was not. That does not match the art style, yeah, no, no, not match the art style at all. Well, I want to thank you guys for sticking with us and listening to the podcast. This. This is actually episode one of two with Jamie. The next time, the next episode that we are going to cover, we're going to delve more into resilience and support systems and advice and kind of looking ahead to the future. So make sure that you subscribe to the podcast. Tune in for our next episode. If somebody is listening to this podcast right now.

Speaker 1:

What is just one piece of advice that you would give? I know I've harped on this a lot but honestly I just struggled with it so much. Don't compare yourself. The way you do things is not going to be the same way as someone else does it. That doesn't make it wrong. It's those differences and all those little pieces that come together as a whole that create the healing environment. Absolutely, absolutely Right. Well, one patient I can give might be completely different than another patient and they might be holistic in different ways, or you might be the right person for that patient and I may not be, and that's okay. You have not failed at your job because you did not meet that human, okay. You have not failed at your job, right, because you did not meet that human marker, right? That's absolutely phenomenal, phenomenal advice. Well, I want you guys to focus on being just as compassionate towards yourself and finding balance and center this week. Remember, if you hustle hard, boy, you better rest hard. That is the message from this podcast as we continue to look at our nurse avatar. So I want to thank you so much.

Speaker 1:

This is your ritual nurse signing off and I love your faces. This is your ritual nurse, reva. Thanks for tuning in to the ritual nurse podcast. You can find us wherever you listen to podcasts, so don't forget to subscribe and stay connected For all our social links, free education classes, blogs and podcast notes with resources head over to tcthorg. Until next time, love your faces.