Outgrowing the White Coat: Moving Beyond PT and Healthcare as a Career (Part 1)

In this episode of the Sink and Swim podcast, I share Part 1 of my story about walking away from the physical therapy profession when I was at the absolute peak of my career, and how choosing to sink a thriving career opened doors that never would have been possible had I stayed put. 

In Part 1 I reflect on the challenges and transformations I faced (and sometimes continue to face) when extricating myself from a career and professional identity, the negative impact of healthcare regulations on my ability to provide excellent care, and the not-so-subtle toxic dynamics among female colleagues and impossible pressures placed on on women and working mothers in the profession. 

05:55 Reflections on Leaving Physical Therapy

11:20  The draw to shift into coaching: a ripple effect is created

29:45 The Not-So-Hidden Culture of Competition Among [Female] Colleagues

41:27  The Pressure and Encouragement of Self-Sacrifice in Working Women & Mothers

52:47 Navigating a Loss of Identity and Purpose

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Transcript

Julie Granger (00:00)
Welcome to Sink and Swim,

podcast that invites you to sink deeply into your

the stories you were born to tell about yourself,

swim and shine unapologetically into your soul's

I'm your host, Julie

this is the space where we celebrate the powerful, raw, and transformative stories of

have discovered that life isn't sink or

It's sink and swim.

These are the people who have gone from paddling furiously to rise, succeed, and stay on top in life,

and their relationships,

to instead sinking into the deepest and most hidden stories of the soul

discovering there the power to rise to even higher heights.

My guest and I will share our untamed, unfiltered truths and

and illuminate how to live in love with more purpose, wholeheartedness, freedom, and

So take a deep breath, settle in,

on your swimsuit, goggles, and

and get ready to sink into the deep end with us.

Julie Granger (00:59)
Hello, welcome to this episode of the Sink and Swim podcast. This is actually a solo episode. I'm really excited to have some of these where I just get to tell you stories about myself, about people that inspire me. We get to talk about topics that are going on in the world. I might do a book review. We'll just see how this goes. And one particular topic that is really, really meaningful to me is the story of how I got here.

how I got to this podcast, how I got to this part of my life, how I got to this part of my professional world. It's something that I love to help people look at for themselves and see a lot of times those moments that you think were the worst moment ever, being able to look back and see the alchemy of it, see the gift in it. And that usually takes quite a bit of healing, quite a bit of...

time to be able to look back and see something. I don't usually suggest that you try and find the meaning and the lesson in something immediately. A lot of times you can't see that until later. At the same time,

I do suggest in the theme of Sink and Swim that you accept it and you sink into it on the faith that one day you will swim and while you're swimming, you will look back and see way in the depths of whatever it is you were navigating. There was a gift, there was something that you were able to tap into some power that's greater than you that did help lift you, that did help heal you. It could have been that power within yourself. It could have been

a power within whatever divine spirit, God figure you pray to, it could have been the power of your community. So anyway, I'm looking back at something that was instrumental in my journey here in this episode. And for me, that was my time and my role in the physical therapy profession. And what's interesting, at least to me about

this part of my journey was it's something that I never thought I would move away from. I never thought that I would do anything but practice as a physical therapist for my entire career. I thought I was gonna retire there. And for someone with $180,000 of student loan debt,

parts of me thought that I might die there. But it's now March 2025 when I'm recording this and

I am now going into seven years total of not doing physical therapy. The last time I did physical therapy was in late 2018. And in that time, bravely walked away from a profession that I thought I would be in forever. I'd given it my whole heart. I'd given it my whole life.

I'd given it multiple six figures of investment and I had given it more brain power and energy than I could ever measure, tangibly speaking. And the truth is, even in that moment when it was very brave, I didn't go without kicking and screaming. Honestly, I resisted it for a long time. Even before that time in late 2018,

My soul whispered, you are complete. This is enough. I had already moved into the coaching world for several years and I was doing great as a coach.

I was making enough money as a coach. was feeling fulfilled as a coach, but I definitely went kicking and screaming for sure. That's really common with a lot of people who make a fairly momentous shift

mean, that happens not only in your professional identity, it happens in anything where you might be letting go of something and moving into something new, whether it's a relationship, whether it's anything like that. it's not like this is a new concept, but it's definitely one that I never really expected and it deserves its own podcast episode. So what I've done is I've actually wrote a blog on this several months ago in celebration of six years.

that I had no longer been practicing physical therapy. And I shared six reasons why I still won't go back. There are a lot of reasons that I left that are like very surface level. Like I have a better lifestyle as a coach. I am able to sink more deeply into my craft.

as a coach. I can work from anywhere as a coach. I can certainly make a lot more money as a coach. Those are all more practical reasons that I won't go back to physical therapy. But there are six often unspoken reasons that I won't go back to the physical therapy profession, at least not at this point in my life. And I'll be sharing three of them in this podcast episode and I'll be sharing three of them in a later podcast episode.

So I hope you'll stick around for both of them and give it a listen in terms of my reasons for why I won't go back. Now, before I dig in, one thing I want to say is a bit of a disclaimer. The first thing is I have great respect for the physical therapy profession. I have great respect for the American Physical Therapy Association. I have great respect for the people who continue to pour their hearts and minds and souls into advancing the profession of physical therapy across the world.

I have great gratitude for the formative role that physical therapy played in my life. I have so much love and respect and gratitude for my colleagues, my friends, my mentors who helped me grow, who challenged me, who pushed me to become better and they continue to do so. stand by

these truths, these reasons why I won't return to the profession, these reasons colored and shaped my experience alongside wonderful and amazing experiences and people. So I think two things can be true at once. I think you can have an amazing experience in something in your life and you can see the somewhat hidden or invisible truths

that hide behind those great things that aren't so great. Two things can be true. And so this is a story of my experience and it's three of the lessons I've learned given that experience. It's three of the reasons that I won't return to the profession. And another disclaimer, is that if you're listening, I don't expect that you will agree with me. I don't expect that this will...

be the same as your experience. I'm in no way here to convince anyone that my experience must be the same as yours or yours must be the same as mine. I'm not here to convince anyone that if it happened to me that it's happening to you. So I fully honor that we all have very, very different stories and very different experiences. That's what kind of makes the world cool. And so I'm sharing this not only to just share my truth,

But also if you happen to resonate and see yourself in any of these stories and truths, I'm sharing it to let you know that you're not alone. Okay, so let's dig in. So first of all, I think there's a really interesting question that I get all the time. I actually got it yesterday from a neighbor. We were out on a walk in the neighborhood. And the question that I get all the time either from me asking myself the question or from someone else asking me is would I...

go back to physical therapy. I honestly probably ask myself this at least once a week, if not more. I happen to ask myself this a lot more often when things are going perhaps a little slower than I expected in my coaching business and my brain is looking for some area of certainty or comfort.

And it goes, well, you could just do PT because you know how that works and you know how to grow that and you're really good at it and all those kinds of things. Not that I also don't know how to grow a coaching business. I've grown a million dollar coaching business, but for some reason, the PT one is just a more solidified identity for me. So I often have these thoughts. I often check in with myself and to be honest, I've always left the door open.

to returning to physical therapy. The reason for that is when I left, when I finally walked away in December of 2018, it wasn't from a place of spite or disgust. I wasn't burned out on physical therapy. I wasn't angry about anything. at that moment in my life, I truly felt complete with it.

As I mentioned, when I graduated, I thought being in physical therapy was going to be my lifelong career. However, it really only took about nine and a half years for me to outgrow that vision. And I know for some people, especially people I've mentored and coached now for several years, it goes even faster. I know there's so much turnover in the profession and I know that, you know,

One of my colleagues, her name's Tavona, she just put out a post asking where all the old PTs are. Where are they? There aren't that many. I don't know what the definition of old is, but like people who stay in the profession for the longevity of their lives. That's not to say that you're not out there. actually had many mentors who were in their late 50s, 60s, early 70s, still practicing. But there's definitely a dwindling and dropping off.

in age groups. I don't know what the statistics are so don't ask me to give you those. But it's just definitely an obvious thing that we know. To be honest, it took me nine and a half years to walk away from the profession, but I probably outgrew it before then. The only thing that happened that slowed me down was this little thing called cancer. That's a whole other story for a whole other podcast episode. It's probably another story for a

podcast episodes. So you will hear about that some more if you haven't heard about it already.

What was really interesting was when I walked away, I continued to coach and mentor other PTs and health professionals in defining who they are, defining what they wanted to do within their careers, defining how they wanted to live their lives, and helping them grow businesses. And so even though for years I haven't been doing PT, I still feel like I'm

intrinsically connected to it by helping other people who do it. So I think that's a really important point is when someone comes to work with me, whether we're working on your own inner self-confidence, your own inner resourcing, your own personal development, whether we're working on your own career development, your own career track, or whether we're working on your business, I have no agenda simply because I've walked away from physical therapy to

get anyone else to walk away from physical therapy. In fact, if someone wants to stay in physical therapy, I very much support that and want to help them, you know, have a really wonderful experience and Build a career and a lifestyle that truly reflects who you are, what you value and what you want to do with your life that truly allows you to

feel joyful and fulfilled. So that is one wonderful thing that I really feel has allowed me to create this ripple effect where I can have almost a bigger impact on patients by impacting the lives, the careers, the businesses of the people who serve the patients. And it allows them to show up as the best version of themselves for their patients.

So even if I'm not directly having my hands in the mud in patient care, there's still a way that I'm impacting those patients' lives, which I think is just really, really, really cool. that my clients have told me about how the work we do together impacts their patients and also their families and the families of their patients.

is why I do what I do is that ripple effect of just allowing for people to really be who they are no matter where they are and feel a life full of joy and happiness and freedom. That's why my company is called Illuminate Freedom. Anyway, so despite

having moved on from physical therapy, despite not being in the mud in the weeds of physically practicing physical therapy myself, I still have literal occasional dreams of doing it. a couple months ago, I literally had a dream one night that woke me up the next morning and took my breath away, stopped me in my tracks, because in the dream I was, I don't even remember what I was doing, but I was...

Helping a patient or doing something where I was practicing physical therapy and I was so happy. My guess would be I was probably working with swimmers because that's what brought me the most joy. that morning I woke up and I was like, my God, like, should I be listening to this? Is this like an invitation to go back? I even found myself going down these rabbit holes

researching what does it look like to be a PT for maybe professional swimmers or the Olympic team or something like that or the Paralympic team went down that rabbit hole and I was like, well, I could do that. And I honestly gave myself some space for a couple of days to just let it sink in and examine did the universe plant this dream in my subconscious as a nudge to go I honestly still don't know the answer, but

What I did figure out as I was really sitting with it and calling on my soul guides and my unseen team and journaling about it and really being with it was it wasn't an invitation to return. It was more, I think, just an invitation to really sink into the gratitude of what that part of my career brought me and see the ways in which that part of my career is now shaping my current.

life and my current career. And I mean, I started a podcast, it's called Sync and Swim. I loved working with swimmers. I am a swimmer, was a swimmer, I'm a swammer. If you know, know what swammer means. And I think that it was just a moment to see that those parts of my identity haven't left me. They've just found their way into my life and in my career in new ways that are really meaningful.

But it still stopped me dead in my tracks. And when I stopped dead in my tracks that morning and for the days that followed, and I was examining, should I, shouldn't I? The thing that made me realize, no, this was not an invitation to return, was the surfacing of the six reasons that I won't return to the physical therapy profession. So.

We'll get into the first three of those six here in this episode. And what I wanna offer is a lot of these reasons might seem really obvious to you if you are in healthcare. And then some of these are a little more hush hush. Some of them are the type of thing where, mm.

we don't say that kind of thing out loud because that's not very nice. And the thing is, this is my experience and having coached people in health care in their careers, their lives, and their businesses for almost 10 years now, I can with authority tell you that at least 1,000 people have this experience too. And that's

just a small drop in the bucket of the number of people in this profession. So I think that it's important with respect to give voice to some of these reasons, not only because it's my experience and it's simply my truth and I'm allowed to own my truth, but also because I think that for people out there listening who have experience to this, and even if you haven't, it's important to just call a spade a spade, tell the truth.

And if you see yourself in this, just let it land with you and let yourself decide what it means for you. It may mean nothing for you. It may mean something for you to let you know that you're not alone. So let's dig in. All right. So the first reason that I walked away from physical therapy and won't return is that the rules and regulations felt so strangling that

Eventually, the reason I stayed in physical therapy was not the reason I got into it in the first place. I felt that the essence of my why was being suffocated. Now, this reason might be very obvious to some people. It's also very present in the news. Turn on the news most days of the week and you're going to hear something about

the rules and the regulations and the insurance problems and the cuts and the problems of healthcare. You can open up any newspaper, you can open up any magazine and read about it, pretty much. And honestly, this particular truth, this particular reason I walked away isn't unique to physical therapy. This is the same in pretty much every healthcare profession. So this is another if you know, you know thing.

But for me, one of the reasons I got into private practice, so before I moved into coaching, I had my own private physical therapy practice that I did out of my own home. One of the reasons I did that was to get away from what we might call the back-ass word insurance regulations in the profession in more insurance-based practices. So for anyone listening who's not in healthcare in that,

doesn't make total sense to you, the layman's terms of that is you can go to a healthcare provider who takes your insurance and they bill your insurance and you almost never see a bill. And sometimes you do and you pay a copay or a coinsurance. And the idea is it brings down your cost for you. Although with most of the insurance plans today, you and I know that you still might have a huge deductible or a lot of costs even when your healthcare provider supposedly takes your insurance.

on the other side of it, you can also do what's called out of network health care practice, where you don't necessarily take the insurance company's contract. And so typically, the cost is a little bit higher per visit to the patient. But it gives the health care provider a lot more leeway, a lot more time to provide really high quality care.

So you've got in network is where someone takes your insurance just by default. And then out of network is where they still may file it with your insurance, but there's going to be more of an upfront cost on your part, depending on your insurance plan. So I moved into private practice to do an out of network, what we might call cash-based concierge type physical therapy to give me the ability to practice in a way that allowed patients to get the care

that they really needed and allowed me to feel like I was still in it for the essence of my why, which was truly to care for people, young athletes and swimmers who deserved the highest quality, the highest empathetic, the most connecting person to person care possible. So that was one thing that got me into private practice. But ultimately what I learned was that I still had to follow all the rules and the laws.

Even if I didn't file with someone's insurance, they might have wanted to take a claim or a super bill from me and file it themselves. They were allowed to do that. And I still had cross my T's, dot my I's. And if not, then I could get in trouble for insurance fraud. So not fun at all, actually.

Another thing that makes practice really cumbersome for healthcare providers are any number of licensure, federal, state laws, anything from how long you're supposed to do things, how you're supposed to bill, how you're supposed to chart and document things, the order you're supposed to do things, how you're supposed to report things, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And again, that's just one of those things that feels constraining and constricting and suffocating on my ability to provide the care that the patient desires and the patient needs. And most importantly, the care the patient deserves. So eventually, even in private practice, I still had to follow the laws. Like, I wasn't going to go around and be a rule breaker in that way. I just, it became too much.

You turn on the news any time today here in 2025 and you hear lots of, lots of debates about Medicaid cuts, Medicare cuts, things like that. The government in control of how health care is paid for by health insurance companies. You hear about the swindling and the greed of private health insurers. You hear about the capitalism of health care. You hear about the...

CEO of UnitedHealthcare getting shot point blank on the street. So it's no secret that there are lots of problems in the delivery, in the billing, in the provision of healthcare. So for me, it became hard to be a physical therapist, a healthcare provider, even in private practice where I had a lot more control. It became really difficult to be someone who values high quality care, who values deep,

connection with people who values other people and giving them what they deserve, it became hard because at some point you either have to like break the rules in order to do what's right or you have to leave because you can't change the system yourself. So for me, I left.

I think the thing that I also could no longer condone was being part of a profession that continued to support corporate run healthcare systems. Now, there's lots of different ways we could look at this. genuinely I believe that

Most corporate run healthcare systems, hospital systems, large private practices, well, yes, they need to make a profit because if you don't make a profit, you don't have a business. I don't believe that they're so profit driven, most of them, that it all becomes about money. Although you do hear plenty of stories about healthcare systems, hospital systems, there's one pretty local to me that is always in the news that does seem to cut a lot of corners in order to maximize profit.

to the detriment of both the provider and the patient. But I genuinely believe that most healthcare systems are in it for good at the end of the day. Even the people all the way at the top here are making a lot of money. But they get squeezed by all of these federal and state laws, these funding, Medicare, Medicaid cuts, they get squeezed by back-ass word insurance regulations. They pass that squeeze along to their providers who work for them.

which then trickles down to their patients. And how that looks is expecting providers to see too many patients in way too little time. These are the nurses that have way too many patients on their caseload in any given shift that things get missed. These are the physical therapists who are seeing four patients at one time in a corporate run private practice with a physical therapy aide or tech running around teaching exercises.

The physical therapist is trying to chart and get everything accomplished while also trying to put their hands on patients and give them the manual high quality treatment that they need.

Corporate-run healthcare systems, hospital systems often pass it on to providers expecting them to also spend endless hours charting, writing notes in electronic medical records systems that ultimately changes every three to six months when the EMR system gets an update because technology is always being updated. So.

These providers not only are constantly having to navigate these very complicated medical charting systems, but as soon as they learn it, it gets updated and they have to relearn it, or they switch to a new system or something like that. It is the biggest headache.

And, you know, healthcare systems don't want their providers to work overtime, but they want you to be face-to-face providing quality care while also making sure you chart in extremely thorough ways. So it's just, it's a whole thing. It's very complicated. And by the way, these healthcare systems also expect providers to be a team player.

And what that means is you volunteer, you serve on committees, you do projects, you try and further your department or your company or your profession or whatever it is, going above and beyond, whatever it is, maybe not even getting paid for those extra things.

They expect you to be doing research, speaking at conferences, mentoring up and coming students, all things that you're not necessarily getting paid for. So that happens in so many healthcare professions, so many healthcare systems. It's an absolute recipe for disaster. And to the point about the United Healthcare CEO getting shot point blank, absolutely horrible situation.

Absolutely horrible. But what I want to say is sadly it doesn't surprise me. In a country where the people in charge don't do anything to actually serve the rest of the people or they appear to not do anything to actually serve the rest of the people.

it's really sad but true that people feel so desperate. They feel so disenfranchised. They feel so unseen, unheard, and uncared for that they resort to violence to feel heard and seen. That's human nature. It's what humans do. I'm not saying it's OK.

I'm just saying it's a thing. It's what humans do. It doesn't just happen in healthcare. So my heart breaks that it came to this. But the scary part is that if it wasn't a patient or a family member resorting to violence, it might have been a provider.

I'm not saying I ever would have resorted to violence. But I once worked for a practice where United Health Care, same insurance company, deemed an hour of physical therapy only worth $55. Now that might sound like a lot, $55 an hour. But actually, I wasn't getting paid $55 an hour. When you divvy that out over the overhead, the expenses of the practice,

I ended up taking home what I calculated out with $7.27 an hour.

that's less than minimum wage for a doctorate degree, umpteen certifications behind my name that I paid out of pocket for myself, and nearly $180,000 in medical school debt. The math ain't mathin'.

and there are way too many systemic issues to unpack there. So this is the biggest reason it's why I'm mentioning it first, that so many people leave healthcare practice and it's why we have to talk about it. There's so many people who've talked about this. I'm not the first person. It's the most obvious truth on why I won't go back.

but there are so many more. So without any further ado, let's move on to truth number two. Truth number two as to why I won't return to the physical therapy profession at this point in my career is the not so subtle one-upmanship

between female colleagues that masquerades as supporting each other.

I remember early on when I started my private physical therapy practice, I was out on a coffee date with a friend of mine who invited me on the coffee date as a means to support me in my new business. Now, I remember her asking me a question. Her question was, so how busy are you these days? Which on the surface seems like an innocent question, right?

But something didn't sit well with me when she asked it. It's not what she said, it's how she said it. And it was even the subtle hidden energy within the question. And you know what I'm talking about when you can feel what they're asking, not hear what they're asking, but feel it. I'm a highly sensitive person. I can pick up on these little nuances pretty right out of the gate.

So when she asked it, I bristled and resisted answering the question, but at the same time, I didn't want to withhold the information because she posed it as an innocent enough question. So it's almost like I was backed into this corner where I knew there was something hidden underneath her question.

And so I just decided to play along.

This question showed up in other ways from other colleagues. not only when I was new to private practice, but further on as I continued to grow my practice. The question would show up in a way such as how full is your schedule? Or where do you find patients and how easy it is for you to get them on your schedule? Or are you ready to hire another therapist yet?

Who sends you all these referrals? Again, these questions seem innocent, they seem supportive, it seems like they're seeking information maybe so they can learn from me, but most of the time I would get that icky, scratchy feeling. And ultimately what I knew was it was posed as supportive, but actually

deep down the hidden energy was they were trying to size up how full I was in my schedule, how much money I was making, and therefore put me into an invisible and unspoken ranking system of, quote, who is the best in town? And quote, how do I become better than you or stay better than you? And I know this is true and I know that this exists even if we don't talk about it that much.

because in the last 10 years of mentoring and coaching physical therapists, I have talked to thousands of physical therapists, mostly women, who have told me that they have felt and experienced the same thing.

And someone out there who is very wise might say, well, that's just your own insecurity.

It could be. We could just have a profession full of insecure people. But what if it's a profession full of insecure people and the most insecure people are constantly trying to size everybody else up?

So the way to fix insecurity is not by meeting it with insecurity. Interestingly, when I wrote the blog about the six reasons I won't return to physical therapy and I sent it out, hundreds of people reached out to me and said, yes, I've experienced this too.

And yet very few people speak up to it or call out their friends and colleagues because all of these ways of trying to appear supportive, they appear well-intended. It's passive aggressiveness, gaslighting and manipulation at its best.

And the way I know this is there's the women who will attend conferences or courses or and they will say, my God, it's so good to see you hugging each other, toasting at happy hour, taking selfies, pretending like we're best friends. Yet behind the scenes, they silently check on each other's social media profiles.

to see who has the most likes, who has the most followers, who has the funniest reels and TikTok videos. And and they tell me that, well, I feel so insecure because that person has such a bigger following than me and they're like such an international sensation. They're such a guru, I'm not as good as them.

There's this invisible race that exists between women, not only in the profession, it exists everywhere, that none of us really signed up for and yet we're in it. It's far more subtle, it's far more covert and far more passive aggressive than that between men. In fact, the men in the profession pretty much are pretty aggressive. They just come out and say, I'm really good, you're not, I'm better than you, I have more clients than you, I make more money than you, you need to hire me.

They just go there. They're just very direct about it. It seems gross, but honestly, sometimes I'd rather have the directness. So we at least know no one's trying to masquerade it and hide it behind this saccharine trying to be sweet and kind, there's something lethal underneath. There's a quote from the show Parks and Recreation, one of my favorite shows, by the way, where the character Andy Dwyer calls it nicey meany

And I think it's such a great example. Nicey meany. It appears to be nice, but it's actually mean underneath. And again, generally speaking, people who are passive aggressive, it says more about them than it does about the person receiving it. But that doesn't mean that the person receiving it deserves to receive it. And I'm also not saying that everyone does this. There's plenty of people.

who do not, but it's basically like a sport.

And it shouldn't be a sport, right? It's a professional context. It's where we want to help and serve other people, but it's become a sport. if another place to really look this up, is Facebook groups. Facebook groups claim to be supportive of other physical therapists. There might be a group offering support for clinical mentoring in a certain specialty area. Maybe they're helping you grow a business. Maybe they are...

helping you find an alternative career, whether it's in healthcare or elsewhere. And if you read the comments on any number of posts, you might see that some comments are quite supportive, for sure. But you might see some other comments that are absolutely falling in line with this being a sport, this being a competition with an invisible ranking system. You might see people...

jockeying to comment to show off who has the most knowledge or the most experience or the most wisdom to offer. You might see who is just like unrelenting, like not giving up in the comment section on who has the last and final word. You might see someone asserting their, you might see someone asserting their superiority over anyone else, you know, talking about their certifications or credentials or I have all this experience and you need to listen to me.

And it's not just passive aggressiveness that fuels the problem. It's also this invisible race to learn from the quote gurus who are up on a pedestal. They quickly post online about their course, their program or a conference where they're speaking and they leverage the insecurities and scarcity complex inherent in a lot of people in the profession.

And there's this race. They say, okay, everyone comment that you want a copy of my PDF, or you want to be the first to find out about the course I'm selling, or you want a ticket to this conference. Comment, and then you see this race. You see hundreds of people commenting on the thing. And yes, I know this is simply often a social media tactic that you might've been taught to use, but here's the thing.

people who race and comment are feeling that FOMO, they're feeling that scarcity complex, they're feeling not good enough. And you go comment on something when you know you're not actually gonna buy the thing, or you're gonna buy the thing and you're not actually gonna use it, or you're gonna buy the thing and you're gonna go to the thing and then you're not really gonna enjoy it or be fully present.

A real mentor, a real guru who's truly in it from a place of service knows and believes that you, with a doctorate degree, are sovereign and smart. Knows and believes that you know better than anyone else when you actually need something and when you don't. They're not going to need to use FOMO or scarcity tactics or peer pressure to get you to act

so that they then feel important.

I said it, I'm gonna say it. And as someone who has been put on that pedestal somewhat unwillingly, I hated this. I also hated that I was taught to leverage the pedestal to get people to buy from me. It was the most disgusting thing. I'm not gonna say that I've never done it before. I hated it. And I was taught that was actually ethical, but honestly it was an unethical way of tapping into people's...

vulnerabilities and insecurities leveraging them for my own gain. Not okay. Not okay. Definitely not okay. Super gross.

Honestly, at its root, it's a middle school popularity contest. It's a sorority rush at best. And I have the authority to say that because I was the president of a sorority. I know how that works. The only thing is here in the healthcare world and the physical therapy world, it's sophisticated and professional. It's dressed up as, you know, we're supporting each other. It's posing as the female pack mentality, the female need to belong to a group.

the female benefit of oxytocin and bonding and community. It's absolutely leveraging that deeply feminine need that we all have. But actually it's there to show dominance over each other. That's what's actually happening. Some type of domination tactic.

And it's all happening behind a screen, which makes it even worse. If you think that the book, The Anxious Generation, only applies to kids and teenagers, think again. That's exactly what is happening here. It's bullying, but dressed up as professional and sophisticated and supportive.

So that is reason number two that I won't return to the physical therapy profession. Now, as I mentioned, that is not unique to physical therapy. It happens in literally every other profession that exists, especially ones that have a high percentage of women in it or not gendering it, like feminine energy types. It's really tough to avoid. But you get to decide who your people are. And

It's one reason I personally unsubscribed from the profession. I unsubscribed from that type of activity. I hated being around that. I hated that it was normalized. And if I wanted to get anything accomplished, I basically kind of had to subscribe to it. And it's one reason I won't return any time soon.

All right, so that's reason number two.

The third reason that I won't return to the physical therapy profession, at least at this point in my life, is because of the glorification and celebration of self-sacrifice and, quote, doing all the things in the name of balance, especially among working mothers.

Now, before I dig into this one, I'm gonna own two things right out of the gate. Number one, I'm not a working mother if we're defining mother as mother of human children.

So do I know what it's like to carry the load of mothering a human child? I don't. And if you're gonna come at me and say that I don't know, please don't. That's gross. have no idea why I'm not a mother of a human child.

I do know deep down that I don't need to be a mother of a human child in order to empathize. Empathy doesn't require you to live an experience in order to empathize with someone else.

I also think it's really important to weigh in, one, because these are the people I help, and because it's just as important, if not more important, for the people who aren't working mothers to stand up for them. And so that is what I'm doing. That's number one. That's the first disclaimer. Disclaimer number two on this one.

the glorification and celebration of self-sacrifice in the name of balance, especially with working mothers, is not unique to the physical therapy profession. But as a profession that is chock full of parents from all genders, especially those who identify as women and mothers, it's poignantly present.

All right, so what women as mothers are taught, at least in this profession, is you can have it all. Somewhere along the way in history, well-meaning feminists taught women, mothers, and parents of all genders, one, you shouldn't stay at home with the kids all day. That's wrong.

Somewhere along the way, well-meaning people taught women, mothers, and parents, you can have a career, you can have a professional identity, you can make a name for yourself, you can have your own income, you can be independently wealthy from your spouse or your parents or whoever, society. Ra-ra, equal opportunities and feminism, right? I love this journey, actually. I actually love that message. It's wonderful. I love it for women, I love it for people.

who identify as mother, I love it for marginalized populations in general. Especially in a society that currently, and maybe all the time, has literally tried to erase the voices of these people.

So this problem is amplified in empathy-based professions, most of which have feminine types of energies and people flocking towards them. And what's interesting in these helping professions, we'll say healthcare in general, you pledge an oath before you start.

before you're allowed to have your degree, before you're allowed to have a license. It sends the message that you are pledging allegiance, that you are now literally and figuratively contracted to this profession. And you're contracted through a rigid indoctrination, schooling and training process. There's a lot of good in that schooling and training process, but there's also a lot of perversion.

in how it indoctrinates you to think about yourself, how to think about how you help other people, how to think about how you serve, and the true meaning of what those things are.

In that indoctrination process, you're taught in celebration for going all in out of service and the goodness of your heart. There's the value of altruism, the value of teamwork. Translation, join the pack, join all the women, band together, pledge allegiance, put everyone else's needs before your own at work and at home.

And that's the rub. So we already talked about the sacrifices that you're expected to make in healthcare. That was in point number one, We've already talked about the pack mentality of women that actually seems to have a lot of toxicity behind it. So that's what happens within the profession. But then you're taught not only by society, but also by your profession, which claims to be focused on the wellness of people.

And here's the thing. Yeah, you can do all the things, but you're still the bearer of children. You're still the hub of the wheel of your family. You are biologically responsible for keeping those children alive and safe and fed. Yes, I know there are alternatives. Yes, I know there's lots and lots of ways people can help you out with that. That's not what this is about.

it's still hardwired into that extra X chromosome to be biologically responsible for keeping your children alive, whether you like it or not. I don't need to be a mother to tell you that, and you don't need to be a mother to know that, right? Just look at the amount of shaming that is given to mothers, whether online or anywhere, for using formula to feed your baby when you're not using your

biological body to feed your baby. Anyway, so you're taught to be the doting and perfect mother. You're taught to be the doting and perfect healthcare provider. And you're taught to be a doting and perfect spouse, partner, child, daughter. Maybe you need to also take care of your parents, your aging parents. And, and, and, and don't forget, now you're being taught to be doting and perfect to yourself too. Hashtag self care.

Chances are you're saying this exact message to your patients if you're in healthcare. So you're told subtly and not so subtly to carry the weight of everyone's world. And by the way, balance it all. So you're juggling all these balls. You're probably able to keep all those balls in the air. But you and I both know that if one ball drops, they all drop.

And now for anyone who's followed me for a while or you've researched what it is I do, you might be thinking, wow, you're kind of the pot calling the kettle black. Don't you help women create their ideal life and their ideal work and their ideal business and let them be mothers and have a business and all that kind of stuff. And first of all,

I don't tell working mothers that they just need to work on self-care and set boundaries because if it were that simple they would be doing it already because working mothers are freaking rock stars. When there's something they know they need to do they do it for the most part right there's obvious exceptions to that. I don't tell working mothers they just need to learn to ask for help so they can balance it all. One they might not even know what they need to ask for.

Number two, they might know that they need to do the thing. If you're a working mom, you might just know you need to be the one who's in charge of the things. It might not be safe for anyone else to step in and help you.

No, what I do is I help working moms figure out exactly what they need to feel safe in their lives, to feel supported, to resource externally and internally for that. to figure out exactly what they want to do in each season and section of their life. Even if that means they shift and mold and change how much they show up at work, how much they show up at home.

everywhere in between.

And a lot of that sinking process, you've got to really sink into yourself, requires an enormous amount of grieving, an enormous amount of identity loss, identity questioning, an enormous amount of soul searching an enormous tug and push and pull on wanting to have some type of career purpose, but wanting to be home with your kid. That is incredibly emotional. It's incredibly vulnerable.

Just throwing self-care and telling a mom, just take care of yourself better, just honor yourself, doesn't help anyone. Sometimes you need to sit in the darkness with her when she's crying and just trying to feel like she matters. And she's not just a milk factory to a baby, with all due respect to nursing moms.

I help women who have climbed all the way to the top of their careers overcome the stigma and the shame of quote, just wanting to be a stay at home mom. There's no just behind that. It's an incredible, incredible thing to stay at home with your kids. Also, it's a full-time job. Side note, right? I help women find peace and purpose in feeling like enough that attending your kids' basketball games on weekends

is a great thing. Feeling like it's good that you're home cooking nourishing meals for your kids, reconciling your deep desire to have more time to tend to yourself without making it a to-do list item and feeling safe in the loss and the grief that comes with not doing your work that you once set out to do. On the flip side, I've helped moms go from being at home with their kids for 15, 18 years, three years, five years, however long.

and feeling like you've lost touch with yourself, lost touch with your purpose. I've helped moms to go back to work, to build a business, to find meaningful purpose in your community. I've helped moms build a side hustle coaching business, run a huge brick and mortar practice, I've helped moms feel okay and safe with saying, you know what? I actually want to go to work because I'm going to go insane if I'm around my kids all the time.

I've helped moms hire a nanny, hire a driver, hire a meal prep or a personal assistant, a virtual assistant, an office manager to take some of the day-to-day load off of them so they can go be with their kids more, so they can be with their kids less and be with themselves less, so they can stick to their running and yoga schedule so they can keep their sanity. The point is it's not about balance, not about just saying, you know, find balance and do self-care. We don't need to add more things.

to the to-do list of women. We don't need to tell women they're doing things wrong and need to do them better because women are freaking rock stars, especially working mothers. You don't have to sacrifice yourself to follow all these rules to fit into a mold that the world or your profession expects of you, especially if you carry the responsibility of keeping small and not so small humans alive, happy and sane. You don't have to do it all, even if your heart feels tugged in a billion directions.

I love that about you. I love that your heart feels tugged in billion directions. That doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. It means there's something incredibly right. It means you're a deeply feeling, deeply caring human who loves to put your whole heart into everything that you do.

that you're intense, that you're multi-dimensional, that you are sensitive. It means you're loyal to your soul. It means that you are authentic, that there are so many things about you that are true, and you want them all to be true.

It's good when your heart gets tugged in a million directions. I love that about you.

Nothing is permanent, nothing is absolute. You get to evolve what you do in every season. That's the point. You may not stay in a profession forever, even if you think you you're going to, you may not. Change is the only true constant.

If you're feeling pressure, it's often an invitation to say, How can I tap into my inner problem solver and come up with a creative solution to this problem and offload the pressure? Even if I have to change and evolve what it is I'm doing in my work.

even if I'm going to upgrade the story that I tell about myself,

So the pressure that's put on women, especially working mothers is another reason why I've unsubscribed from both the identity and the practice of physical therapy. It's not because the practice or the identity itself is wrong. There are plenty of people in the profession, probably more that actually

lead by example in the most wonderful way. I've helped thousands of them now. They're out doing wonderful things. But what I can't get on board with is that the energy of so many people in the profession continues to feed a narrative of excellence, balance, service, when actually it's just feeding more weight onto your shoulders, more pressure,

more not-so-subtle one-upmanship, more rules and regulations that strangle you, a recipe for constant pressure, self-sacrifice, and martyrdom.

And there's so many people out there who have made this work, who have figured out how to find harmony in themselves. who stay in the profession. And I think that's a wonderful thing. We need people to stay in the profession. It's a great thing. I personally feel like I have more impact taking one step outside and helping the people who want to stay in the profession.

figure out how to make it work for them, make it work for their families, make it work so they still feel like they're rooted in their soul's purpose without getting too sucked into all of these toxic truths.

So these are the first three reasons that I walked away from physical therapy six, almost seven years ago and why I continue to stay away. here's the thing, I'm not a negative Nancy. These are the reasons why I walked away. I have written countless blogs, published countless accounts of why physical therapy was a great thing for me.

If you want any access to any of those, shoot me a message, comment on this episode and I will make sure to share those with you. the things I loved about the profession far outweigh the things I don't.

I have so many fond memories. It's why I have those fond dreams that stop me in my tracks and make me wonder, huh, is it time to return? I may never return and maybe I will someday. The thing is, as I mentioned at the beginning, two things can be true at once. You can have fond memories of something. It can absolutely have played an enormously wonderful role in your life. And

you can see the bitter truth that perpetuates behind those memories too.

For me, the bitter truth became something that I couldn't unsee. It didn't matter how many good parts were there, there was so much good, but I was ready for great. And leaving the good for the great came with its own incredible.

soul searching and grieving process for me as well. And it does for almost every single person that I coach. That's a lot of the people that I coach. That's not to say that everyone I coach is trying to leave the profession, but it is a lot of people. You'd be surprised how many of your skills and your experience translate to completely different professional outlets and avenues. I just had a conversation with someone this morning who I'm actually going to interview in an upcoming episode on the podcast.

who is originally a speech language pathology assistant. And now she works part-time in the tech world and is building this huge, beautiful networking support group for women entrepreneurs. And she's done a bunch of things in between that aren't even on the surface related to speech language pathology.

And she told me the story this morning and I was just like, yes, I love that you followed your heart and you see how transferable your training and your skills are to other places. So stay tuned. I'm going to highlight her in an upcoming episode. The point being though,

When you leave the good for the great, comes with its own identity reinvention process. You have to re-examine all the stories you told yourself about yourself. You have to re-examine.

What you thought your soul's purpose was, it's a sink and swim process. You can paddle furiously to stay afloat and avoid that soul searching process by staying in the profession. You can try and rip the bandaid off and move into a new profession. But if you don't do that sinking process, that sinking process is gonna find its way to you. I've seen so many people who've ripped the bandaid off and tried to move to another profession or job or career, whatever it is.

and they somehow find their way back to the original profession because they never did the soul searching process. Or they carry the problems from the original profession into their new one. It's kind of like people who grew up in an abusive environment always seem to flock towards abusive environments. The problems follow them if you don't do the deeper process of sinking. So that's why this podcast is called Sink and Swim. I help you sink in a way that feels safe.

in a way that feels supportive into that process, do the soul searching, rewriting the story of your soul, or actually just discovering the story of your soul and letting that create the vision for what's next for you and then actually manifesting that vision. So in part two of the six reasons why I won't return to the physical therapy profession, at least at this point in my life, I'm gonna go over

the grieving and soul searching process that I went through to walk away from a profession I so lovingly pledged allegiance to so long ago and to reinvent my own career, which trickled into my own life and the lives of so many of my clients as well. And I'll unveil the last three reasons that I walked away from the physical therapy profession. So this episode was the first three reasons. The next episode on this topic will be the next three reasons.

I have written a blog on this on my website, www.illuminatefreedomcoaching.com. So if you want a sneak preview, you can go over to my website and check that out and read the blog. And I'd love to hear what you have to say about this.

parting words here, will I always stay away from the profession? I don't know. I am completely surrendered to letting time and life make that decision, which could change tomorrow or next week or next month, who knows. I'm perfectly at peace with the path I'm on, even though sometimes my brain wants to get sucked back in. I still keep my license current. People ask me that all the time. I still take continuing education courses. In fact, I'm going to one.

with Anthony Lo here in a couple of weeks. I still read the newest research. I'm still a student of the craft. I still, the reasons I got into physical therapy, that nerdy deep zeal for wanting to learn about the human body and help humans, that still exists. I just choose to evolve what I do with that craft at this point. So if you've ever...

left your profession or you're thinking about leaving it or any of this resonates with you, leave me a comment. I'd love to hear from you. Make sure to like or follow this podcast if something landed with you and you'd like to hear more and definitely reach out. Share this with a friend who might need to hear it and I will see you in the next episode. Bye.

Julie Granger (1:01:04)
Thanks for joining me on this episode of Sink and

hope today's story has inspired you to sink into your raw, unfiltered truths and illuminate the power to rise and swim into the most authentic soul story that's been waiting to be told and shared with the

As your host,

an honor and joy to share the story of luminaires who have done and continue to do exactly this.

I hope you enjoyed diving into today's topic.

If you're feeling the tug to discover more,

be sure to check out the show notes where you'll find links to resources, articles, and more.

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for listening, and until next time, keep sinking deep so you can swim into a life that aligns with the story your soul came here to tell.