226. Why PTO Doesn't Fix Burnout (And What Does) with ShannonElaine John

If you've ever come back from a vacation still running on empty, you already understand why PTO doesn't fix burnout on its own. In this episode of The Traveling Therapist Podcast, I sit down with ShannonElaine John, a licensed therapist and EMDR specialist who spent over a decade in the travel industry before founding Travel To Retreat, a travel advisory built specifically for burned-out healthcare and service professionals.

ShannonElaine unpacks the guilt and savior complex that keep so many of us from actually stepping away, why the balance between rest and fun determines whether time off actually works, and how that same thinking is showing up in her work with ancestral travel and retreat planning for other practitioners.

In This Episode, We Explore…

• Why guilt and a savior complex keep healthcare professionals from truly taking their PTO.
• The two-part balance between rest and fun that actually resolves burnout.
• How a decade in the travel industry shaped ShannonElaine's approach to burnout prevention.
• What ancestral travel is and why it's becoming a meaningful way to reconnect with identity.
• How ShannonElaine helps other practitioners plan and run their own retreats.

Connect with ShannonElaine John:
Website: https://traveltoretreat.com/ | https://alongyourjourney.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannonelaine-john/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShannonES.John/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happychani | https://www.instagram.com/traveltoretreat

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• www.instagram.com/thetravelingtherapist_kym
• www.facebook.com/groups/onlineandtraveling/
• www.thetravelingtherapist.com

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

I'm Kim Tolson and I'm the traveling therapist. It's my passion to teach therapists how to navigate online private practices and multiple income streams so they can travel the world. I'm a digital nomad with a virtual insurance-based private therapy practice and a multi-six-figure coaching business. In this podcast, I will discuss my journey as a digital nomad. I'll chat with other traveling therapists and help you navigate the complexities of running an online insurance-based practice. I'm so glad to have you with me on this journey. Would you spend less time chasing claims or only working with clients who value your skill set? What if you had more time for yourself? Alma empowers you to confidently accept insurance backed by an all-in-one EHR that simplifies scheduling, documentation, and day-to-day practice operations. Your dream practice is closer than you think. Learn more about AMA at helloalma.com. A year from today starts now at helloAlma.com. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Traveling Therapist Podcast. We have a very interesting guest today. Therapists in the travel world helping therapists with their travel. Pretty cool. So glad to have you here. Shannon, Elaine, John, glad to have you here. I always start out with that question like, how did you go from being a typical therapist to a traveling therapist? Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

To answer your question, I started out in the travel industry in general. I was a flight attendant, a tour agent. I kind of started out there. My father passed away, and that caused me to hang up my wings, go back and get my education. And so it's just kind of been these two worlds just already there, just kind of simmering below the surface.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Okay, gotcha. So tell us about the travel industry. You spent a decade doing that, right? So flight attendant, wholesale travel agent, and a tour agent. Can you talk about that a little bit? And then I'd love to hear like, like, so what was that thing that made you leave that? Your dad, of course, passing away. Sorry to hear about that. Thank you. But what was it about that that made you like decide you need to like buckle down, I guess, and get it get a, I don't know if you call it a real job. I don't know. I mean, I feel like this already was a real job. Yeah. So maybe tell us a little bit about that, that decade, and then what led up to, you know, all right, now I've got to really do something different. I'd love to hear about that.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

So I started when I was about 16.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

I lived in Las Vegas at the time, Nevada. And I started as a tour agent helping a local tour company there. I'd go collect tickets, drop them off, sometimes meet people at the airport, and just really just kind of help them just get set up and get their tickets for their shows and all those sorts of things. I really love the travel industry. So I went on to get a trade degree and then worked in wholesale travel agent just after that.

unknown 3:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

But even in the trade school, I really wanted to be a flight attendant. So that was the drive of like, I just need to, you know, get my loan paid off and, you know, get out there and stuff. So I got hired technically by Southwest just before 9-11. And then 9-11 happened. Yeah. Yeah. So they delayed my training for about four months. And then I ended up going to a regional carrier because I really just still wanted to be working. And then yeah, that was it as a flight attendant for about five and a half years or so, uh, until my father passed away. And that, you know, when we have those experiential moments, those existential kind of moments when someone we are really close to leaves us. It has us to kind of really reflect on where are we at? Where do we want to be? What did we say we were gonna do? Right. So I remember these conversations that I had had with my father, and I just didn't do it. I just didn't do it. So when he passed, I was like, I'm doing it. So I put myself through undergrad in grad school, just a straight 10-year no.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

And yeah. So what are you doing now, like in your practice? Like, I guess you you went ahead, you got the undergrad, the master's, uh, your license now. Can you tell us a little bit about like your background as a therapist now that you switched over to that? Yeah, I know you're doing both. And I want to like show how you're intermingling the two. But yeah, can you tell us about like what you do?

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Yeah, absolutely. So currently I'm a small group practice owner. I started travel to retreat just before the pandemic. Left my full-time job literally the week before the pandemic just opened up here in Colorado. But yeah, I am I've worked in integrated care. So I did my two years acquiring my hours for full licensure, you know, in integrated care. Did an internship in correctional facility. I worked three years, I'm guessing right now off the top of my head, Fort Logan Mental Hospital while I was in grad school.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

And then even before that, we when we had registered psychotherapists here in Colorado when they were more prominent. I started in domestic violence, working as a bilingual counselor, women's counselor, and addictions work, and just you know, had my foot in mental health before I even started my my graduate program.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Wow. Okay. And now you're EMDR trained, right? EMDR certified, right? MDR certified, yeah. Yeah. Okay. And doing like the intensives model, is that is that right?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Yeah. So I do I do, you know, weekly sessions, but I also do intensives.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Yeah. Very cool. I love that intensive model. I think it's just so smart. Yeah. Especially when you're a traveler, you know, because it it, you know, it's you can kind of like knock them out and then take some time off, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you talk about like why that like take your PTO fails as advice for healthcare and service professionals. Let's talk about why you say that and then what actually does move the needle, like for people therapists, you know, mainly that are burned out, that kind of thing. Why just like, oh, take a few days off isn't exactly the best like solution. Can you dive into all of that for us?

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Yeah. So, you know, what comes to mind first is like what prevents a lot of healthcare workers, professionals, just professionals in general, right? From taking their time off. A lot have a very driven kind of type. Hey, go get them, grit, all these sorts of things. They also have a tendency to believe that a lot of their value is tied up in the giving, right? The idea that if I leave, then who's going to be here to take care of X, Y, and Z? Whether it be, you know, in-home care, counseling, teachers, you know, taking care of students, like whatever, doctors, whatever it looks like. So the guilt creeps in, the nobody will do it as well as I do it, and all these sorts of thinking pops in. So that's one of the one of the first struggles is kind of challenging some of that. Sometimes it also comes down to boundaries, just individuals not being aware of their boundaries, or yeah, maybe not having as many as we could have.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

So you're saying, like, even when you're taking your PTO, you've got like this guilt and this like savior complex, maybe that a lot of us have that like is just like lingering. So it like totally overshadows the time off. You're not able to actually unwind and like rejuvenate, regenerate, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Is that a little bit of both? I think a lot of the the other stuff is what prevents people from actually taking it. They're more likely to take a spectration or they're more likely to just let it accumulate uh over a long period of time because they're just not taking it. And so that's the factors that I think are tend to be more in kind of the earlier stages. And and I'm I'm imagining too, there are a lot of individuals, and I've heard actually a lot of individuals that have a hard time enjoying their trip when they do take one.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

But what happens when people are on the trip, first thing is that they want to plan a trip. Again, this is the travel advisor part coming in. Yeah. They want to plan a trip the same way that they run their work. So they want to go, go, go, get it all done and that kind of thing. Of course, that's not going to translate to, you know, feeling like you actually had some time off if your nervous system is running at that same level. So, you know, when I as a travel advisor, this is where I bridge a little bit of, you know, my own self and my own knowledge as a counselor. And is that the way you want to be doing your trip? You know, and we have a conversation about what that means and what it would look like. I'm I support them just like a counselor, would have like your choice, your decision. But we do talk about like what would be the best way to really get the most out of it, not just in what they're gonna see and what they're gonna eat, but also in like how they're gonna experience the trip. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

It's more like, and I was gonna ask you kind of like what's the difference of like a travel agent and travel advisor.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

And it sounds like it's more of a it's interchangeable, it's like counselor and therapist, it's just an interchangeable language, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Okay, I gotcha, I gotcha. But it sounds like you do go a little more in depth, like you actually like listen to their why a little bit and then try to structure the planning around what would actually support them and not just like throw a thousand excursions at them or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

Yeah, absolutely. You know, uh a travel agent slash advisor, again, they're they're terms are used interchangeably, similar to like flight attendant and stewardess, right? They're just kind of maybe dated terms or just depends on what you like better, counselor or therapist. But they qualify, it's called qualifying a client. So they basically do the interview and where do you want to go and what is your budget and like what already do you have to identify that you want to do or stay or those sorts of things? And they go at it from that approach. I integrate a little bit as myself as a therapist, not in a I'm providing counseling, but in a in a fashion that says, I understand the way we communicate, I understand just kind of what maybe below the surface a little bit, and I ask probing questions to get a little bit deeper when I am qualifying a client to help them have the best experience, not just see the most things or do, you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

That's really cool coming from it from a therapist perspective and have that deeper understanding of what's really going on. Yeah, I love that. So, what actually moves the needle on burnout then? Instead of just like take your time off, go do an excursion. Like, what would have you found like in your experience actually makes a difference?

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Again, pulling from the therapist counselor side, there are two factors that are needed for someone to actually feel rejuvenated and that the time off, you know, lowers the needle on burnout and that sort of thing. Those two factors are rest and fun enjoyment. If you have ever thinking back to like your 20s and 30s, whatever, right? You're you're just growing up. If you remember having a really, really laid-back weekend where you laid around on the couch, read books, maybe bench to watch some shows, and then you went back to work on Monday and you were like, Oh, I just still feel really burned out and I don't want to be here, right? What's missing there? Missing is the fun. Yeah. Right. And then if you have like those crazy fun weekends with friends and doing birthdays and doing, you know, concerts and movies, whatever. You go back to work on Monday and you're like, oh my gosh, I just still feel so overwhelmed and burned out. Yeah. It didn't have a relaxation factor in there. And so an individual has their own personal balance of what is needed, and that can change over time. But that's something else that I bring into the conversation. When's the last time that you actually did some fun stuff? When's the last time that you actually did some relaxing stuff? And then we talk about what makes that trip specifically. Where do we want to bend the needle there? Yeah, that makes so much sense. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Let's talk next about how did coming to therapy from the travel industry shape travel to retreat? And what is travel to retreat? Like, let's talk about that whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Travel to retreat, it's a small travel agency that caters to individuals that are professionals that are those, you know, guilt, can't take time off ridden individuals, the ones that are burned out, the individuals that maybe have, you know, poor or kind of loose boundaries, or maybe just don't know what they look like, or are not as balanced in that relaxation, rest with the enjoyment and fun, and they just don't know really how to find that relaxation or the self-care. So I started that to support those individuals actually taking their PTO, having them, you know, get the best experience out of that PTO, alleviate a lot of the planning. Individuals that are taking care of everyone else in their normal workday life and then their home life, you know, not a lot of them are really jazzed about the whole idea of spending hours researching and finding and planning their trips. You know, they they know what they want, but they would rather just not have to do that also on top of everything else. And so that is what I bring in is that, you know, decade plus expertise in the travel industry and counseling kind of thinking in background to help people really get the most out of those trips. And that is that to answer the first part of your question, that is where these things meet up. You know, I'm bringing the reading between the lines, the dual processing, the communication, the understanding of boundaries and what that looks like and how to listen for where it exists and where it doesn't. And just really helping individuals figure out what it is that they want to get out of that trip.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

So when people book their own travel online, what does it really cost them when something goes wrong versus maybe using somebody like you that just kind of plans the whole thing out?

SPEAKER_01 13:39

So, like I was saying, it does take hours of research, especially for individuals that don't already have a lot of the knowledge running around in their background, like advisors do. So I want to back up just a little bit. Advisors train just like counselors do. There's CEUs that they're doing, there's, you know, these different trainings. You know, are they a cruise specialist, which I am, or are they a, you know, land specialist, which I am? So like they go and they do these different trainings and webinars and all of that. It actually mirrors, ironically, it mirrors a lot of the way that we do our education, continuing education and counseling. And so they bring all of this knowledge and then they have their own network, just like counselors do, right? So as a counselor, you know, if I need to consult around, does this person maybe have an eating disorder, but that's not something I specialize in, I'm gonna reach out and say, give me your insight. This is your expertise, so that I can gauge ethically whether I need to refer out or whether I'm in a safe space within scope of practice or whatever. Same thing for advisors and travel agents, right? They have their whole network and have a consortia and all of these individuals that they have relationships with that might specialize in a specific location, they can reach out and be like, give me the rundown on this. I have a client that wants to do this. I haven't taken that training, but give me the rundown, you know, on this. And they're more, they have access to individuals that are in these little niche pockets. A consortia is a larger umbrella. So they're individuals that'll go and just buy a whole plane or buy like 30 cabins on a cruise at like really low rates. Oh, cool. Right. And so travel advisors can then tap into those pockets and pools to then offer those things to their clients.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

So there's like deep, deep discounts that you guys can access that we couldn't as just like a lay person trying to book or travel.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Yeah, sometimes it's discounts. A lot of times it's more in the line of amenities. So we will have like all of these fluff editions kind of plugged in that really just makes the experience. And you won't be able to find those through, you know, online platforms. What a lot of individuals in traveling don't realize, they might just hop on any one of these tech platforms and just book themselves. And we do, we can. They are a travel agency. The difference is those commissions are built in already automatically. So you can either hire a travel advisor to do this for you, or you can do it yourself, but the tech company is keeping that commission, you're not getting it in the form of discounts. Oh, I see. Right. So more often than not, you know, they can fluctuate five or 10, whatever dollars. Like if you're gonna get into like the tiny little bits, those individuals probably are better off doing it themselves. The counselor and me would be like, there's some other clinical issue there. But yeah, you know, if someone's really concerned about five dollars difference, then yeah, they would be better off probably doing it themselves. But there's variation, so it'll kind of ebb and flow in some little small range like that. And that's not it, that's up to a travel advisor that is doing it to go through all of the suppliers and still find those good rates for clients. Whereas when they're doing it themselves, they'll just go to their go-to most of the time of like, oh, I know this one is I go there and it's good, and I'll just go with that one. So they're not even really price searching necessarily, or even supplier searching. So more in alignment with what feels good is the searching for what I know will follow through. So I might work with a supplier, and maybe there's a few hiccups and over a couple of years of like they're not actually having accommodation, like it just not working out where they show up and they're like, we don't even have a room here or whatever, right? That's bad example because I always call ahead. But the point being is like some some extraneous circumstance. I might decide that's not the best supplier to continue using if they're having these issues. But I have those ones that I've developed relationships with that I know time and time again follow through. And that doesn't always exist on those platforms. Very interesting.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Yeah, I love that. Oh my gosh. There's something else you talk about that I found really interesting. That's this ancestral travel. Is this like popular? Is this like a trend right now? Or what is this? Ancestral travel. I'd love to talk about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

So as you're probably seeing in the world as a counselor, there's this paradigm shift happening. There's a lot of polarization, there's a lot of disconnection. And so individuals are looking for that. They're maybe looking for friendships, right? We hear this in our counseling sessions. They're looking for dating or friendships or whatever, and they're having a hard time in that area or estrangement from parents or these sorts of things. You know, in the in the travel industry, so individuals are using that as an avenue to be like, let me go connect, let me go, you know, to where grandma lived, you know, when she moved here before she moved here to the United States, those kinds of things. And to go a little bit deeper, this is where the cultural competency, cultural awareness piece comes in. I don't remember if I mentioned or not, I do have a minor in ethnic studies. And so that's in another little small pocket niche of where I look at where these intersectionalities of oppressions kind of align up in different situations in therapy. And this is where it's flowing over into the travel industry, and that in America, we have an American identity, right? A white American identity, and not a lot of people really know what their lineage is. Whereas individuals of color absolutely do know and they care about those things. They really, really value that their spoken language or their the way that their you know great-grandparents cook meals or those sorts of things. And so I encourage, you know, traditional Americans to go find some pre-colonial roots. That way they can create a balance in their identity and be able to meet individuals with an understanding of why that might be important to them as well. Really cool.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Yes. Oh my gosh. Okay. So how do people find you? Like, how do they work with you? What's the process look like? If somebody's listening, they're like, okay, I want to, you know, I want to take some real time off. I don't want to be like just burned out when I get back. And I love this ancestral kind of thing. Like, how do people find you and work with you?

SPEAKER_01 19:53

So I'm pretty, pretty out there on pages. I have traveltoretreat.com as the website. I am on Instagram and Facebook as well. I believe we also have a LinkedIn page. So we're out there in social media as well as the as well as the website. I think it's important for me to state ethically, I do not provide travel services to client counseling clients, and vice versa. If I have had, you know, if I have provided a travel-related service to somebody, they do not then get to become my client as a counselor. I refer those individuals out. Yeah. As far as my private practice goes alongyourjourney.com. Yeah. And I'm actively seeing clients in Colorado and Washington.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Nice. Okay. And it's just it's called travel to retreat, right? Because I I was looking at your bio earlier and I was like, you're not helping like service providers also build retreats, right? You're just like helping them live. Oh, you are?

SPEAKER_01 20:51

I absolutely am.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Tell us about that. Cause I wasn't sure the wording. I was like, are they are you helping them like retreat, like like we've been talking about, or do you actually help build retreats? Because I'd like to hear about that. Tell us about that. Because I'm sure people listening want to know about that too.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Yeah, absolutely. So for anyone that has done retreats, they know there's a lot of back end pieces. There's a lot of like blocking the rooms and all the moving pieces. You know, as a travel advisor, especially for somebody wanting to break out into the retreat industry, they don't even know where to start and trying to do that. So I can come in and hold that kind of administrative piece on the back end and help them navigate that so that they get to focus on what's their workshop, what's their you know, purpose in doing it, who are their people that that space. And I can focus on all the technical stuff on the background. Absolutely help individuals that have that are wanting to just break out into retreats or individuals that have done them before, but the but the but the administrative stuff that part is not their fun part, not the stuff that they like. I'd be like, Great, assign it to me and I'll take it over.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Amazing. Yeah, because I mean I run the traveling therapist Facebook group and I'm like, I've literally never had like a retreat, you know, because because of that very reason, it's like too much. Like the logistics, I'm like, I don't even want to think about how to set all that up. It just seems like a lot, but that's cool. Yeah. So somebody like me, I'd reach out to you and just say, like, I'm thinking I want to do like what a 10-person retreat in a rebuck. And you like hook me up and you'll like find the place and get the block the rooms. And do you do you advise on like, well, this is how much you should charge, or you know, it I mean, all of those moving pieces, or is it more like the travel logistics?

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Well, I can't tell you what to charge because you know what your value is on what you're providing. Sure. I can help you break down the monetary amount on the on the administrative travel side of things. I can provide air for the in for the attendees that want to, I can help you build in excursions if you want that with reputable individuals. Like I can bring all of that into it so that you can find a balance of like we're gonna go and do these collective fund things together that I don't actually have to know how to do this or hire somebody to do this. You know, I can bring those in. And so the, you know, the facilitator just gets to focus on what they are cultivating there, what is, you know, maybe what their workshops are or or what they're doing in those in-between times of, you know, when the excursions are plugged in.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Yeah, that's really cool. Is that all on your website too?

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

All right. I'm gonna check that out. That's very cool. Yeah, I love that. That that will help people a lot, I think, knowing that. Yeah. Thank you so much. So we'll put all your information down in the show notes, your links and everything. Is there anything else you want to share or anything we didn't ask about?

SPEAKER_01 23:37

I don't think so. I just want to say thanks for having me on your podcast. And I look forward to yeah, supporting anybody that I can and what wherever they're at in travel and burnout or you know, in their counseling needs.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

That's amazing. Yeah, EMDR intensives. Anybody listening in the state of what Washington? Is that where Washington, Colorado? Yeah. Okay, very cool. Yeah, love that. Well, thanks so much for taking the time today. Thank you so much for listening to the Traveling Therapist Podcast. For show note links and downloads, head over to Traveling Therapist.com where you'll be able to learn more about my journey, the courses I've created for you, and other exciting resources to make your dreams become a reality. If you've enjoyed this episode, please share with your traveling therapist friends. Subscribe to the podcast, and if you love this episode, please leave a review.