Outgrowing the White Coat (Part 2): Moving Beyond PT and Healthcare as a Career

In this continuation from Part 1 of this series, I share the raw, nuanced journey of identity transition that so many women in healthcare face. Whether you're still in the clinic, halfway out, or building your own path from scratch, I hope this episode reminds you that your transition isn’t a detour—it’s the work.

This episode doesn't offer quick fixes—it offers permission to be in process, question everything & find your voice even when it shakes.

I unpack what it really takes to leave behind the white coat identity & embrace a more expansive, integrated version of yourself. 

From the slow burn of transition to the internal friction of choosing a new path, this conversation is a balm for anyone navigating the messy middle.

I talk about the patterns I had to unlearn for more capacity and presence & how honoring every past version of yourself becomes a portal to greater wholeness. 

I explore how my body signaled threat long before my mind caught up, and how tracking sensation & building capacity for discomfort support deeper transformation.

I also get real about the final 3 reasons I won't go back to healthcare - which I believe are keeping many women from showing up authentically in their work.

03:47 – The Journey of Identity Transition
Leaving the white coat isn’t a single decision—it’s a slow, layered unraveling. This chapter explores the discomfort of not knowing who you are without the title, and why that in-between is where the real work begins

10:06 – The Challenges of Choosing a Lane
For multi-passionate women, "niching down" can feel like soul-compression. I explore how trying to fit into one box often leads to hiding parts of yourself that hold real power

12:52 – Integrating Past Experiences into New Identities
You don’t have to discard the old you to become the new you. This chapter is about composting past skills, titles, and patterns so they can actually nourish your next evolution

18:54 – The Role of the Nervous System in Change
Here, I reflect on how building capacity for sensation—not just pushing through—was essential in my transition. It's not just about courage; it's about learning to feel safe in new territory

25:02 – The Hidden Truths of Leaving Healthcare
Leaving a profession you worked so hard for can feel like betrayal. I name the grief, anger, and reckoning that come with stepping away—and why we need more honesty about it

45:45 – Reasons 4-6 for Not Returning to Healthcare
I talk about why I’ve chosen not to go back, even when I could, and how honoring this gave me access to a more authentic version of leadership and service

01:06:31 – The Identity Shift: From Healthcare to Coach
It’s more than a business model shift—it’s an identity recalibration. I unpack what it meant to become responsible for my own safety, rhythm, and expression

If you haven't listened to Part 1 of this 2 part series -- make sure to check it out now! 

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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 (00:58)
What's up everybody? Welcome to part two of this two-part episode, Outgrowing the White Coat, which is my story and my truths about leaving the healthcare industry and all of the stories, all of the circumstances that came with that, that oftentimes either I don't talk about or people don't talk about.

This particular episode, part two, to me feels a little bit more vulnerable to talk about. And let me just illustrate what that actually looks like. I have been putting off recording it for several weeks, coming up with lots of really important seeming tasks to do in the place of this. I even put it off this week. I knew it needed to happen this week because it's supposed to come out next week. And I just, you know,

decided to do other things with the podcast or work on client work or write posts to put on social media, all worthwhile things that kept me from sitting down and actually doing this. And I think that part of it is I have shared this part two in a blog. There's a two part blog series on my website, which you can go read, but

I'm not using my throat chakra to convey the message. There's something that is so much more empowering about using my voice, but it's also therefore more vulnerable. And I think that the things I'll share today actually really illustrate why it's vulnerable and why it's difficult to use my voice and why for so long I felt silenced.

So that's also why my nervous system kicked into high gear and was coming up with all sorts of ways to protect me and keep me from doing this thing that it sensed was dangerous for me. And again, I think that the fact that I sense danger just illustrates exactly why I need to be talking about it because I've heard from thousands of people, thousands of people in healthcare over the last 10 years of working as a coach supporting people, particularly women in healthcare.

that they feel the same way. And when I give voice to it, it gives them even just a little bit more permission to actually drop down into their bodies and feel what they feel semantically, rather than constantly tread water, trying to stay afloat, trying to perform, trying to look a certain way, be a certain way, all in honor of a profession. And

When people are performing, it means that they're not fully embodied. It means that they're not fully being themselves. And that's to me, one of the biggest tragedies of our existence, whether it's in a career, whether it's in a marriage, whether it's in anything you're doing in relationship to other people, where you don't feel like you can speak your full truth. And so first of all, that's the purpose of the Sink and Swim podcast is to give voice to these things that are sometimes really difficult to talk about. And

With that, there's a disclaimer on this particular episode, is the same one that I gave on part one of this episode, which is this is my truth. And I know that it's the experience of a lot of people, because even after episode one, I heard from a lot of people that, my gosh, you're totally speaking about something that I've experienced as well. And I want to honor that this may not be your truth. This may not be your experience.

And I think it's important to recognize that lots of things can be true at once. We can all have different experiences. And so the second disclaimer is me sharing this truth is by no means in purpose to convince you that your truth has to be the same as mine and that you need to see it this way.

But if you happen to be feeling something in your body, if something stirs in you when you hear what I share, and it helps you feel seen and it helps you feel heard and it helps you feel valid for your own experience, that's my goal, is to help you see, hear, feel an experience that you're not crazy and that you're not the only one. And that there's not something wrong with you for seeing, feeling, or thinking about

your identity, about your position in healthcare the way you do.

The identity shift for myself from healthcare to not healthcare as my career, but also my personal identity was not an overnight transition. And I think that a lot of people might hear my story or see my story and be like, well, she went from clinic to coach. She went from making, you know,

low hundred thousand six figures as a clinician to a million dollars as a coach. And you like hear that before and after and you think, like that's a really cool thing. I can do that too. And it took years and it's still taking years to make this identity transition, to make this career transition. And that's completely normal And I think I'm still in the middle if I'm being honest, even though I now identify as a coach

and I have a coaching business, I don't do any healthcare whatsoever, I think I still have one leg in the clinical world and one in the more esoteric, spiritual, intangible world of healing, the unconscious world, the psych world, the emotions, the spirit, the business world, the marketing world. I think that, that's normal to feel like you have one leg in one world and one leg in another. And it's not just okay.

I'm complete and I'm never going to look at that again and I'm just going to put that in a treasure chest in the attic and never talk about it again So it's completely normal if you're in some type of transition to understand that it's not just a one and done leap that you make. Even if you actually feel like you've made a leap, even if you haven't made the leap yet and you feel like it's going to be this huge leap, it's actually more of a slow crawl. Always.

Even if you leap, like you kind of get into a flight response and you just run to the next thing, your nervous system, the universe, all of the things are going to find a way to kind of drag you back through the mess that you left behind and almost force you to clean it up and face the music at some point. It's like you can't shove the things into the attic without knowing at some point you're going to have to clean out the attic when you move out of the house.

It's been an incredibly zigzag path for me to land where I am now. And I think a big reason for that is...

I just allowed myself to sink into the process while also being in the struggle of having this belief ingrained and drilled into my head that I have to choose a lane, that I have to choose a label to define who I am, to define what I'm doing, to define who I'm helping, and to keep me in a certain very well-defined targeted rigid scope.

of practice. And what that does, and I'll talk about this quite in more detail in the rest of the episode, is that has a really good intention, mostly rooted in licensure rules in a profession, which are designed with good intention to protect the client and protect the public. But

when we put all of our protection in the clients and the public, what it can do is create this constraining corset around us that doesn't take into account that we are multi-dimensional beings, that we might have more than one interest, that we might have more than one specialty area, that we might have knowledge and skill in more than one thing. And for me in my career, even when I was in healthcare, I never felt like I fit into any one of the clearly defined specialty boxes.

When I graduated from physical therapy school almost 16 years ago this week, I knew I wanted to specialize in a very certain niche of client. And when I say niche, I don't mean they're identifying labels like women's health or like orthopedic problems. I mean, I wanted to work with this very multi-dimensional problem.

evident in young female athletes. I wanted to be able to support them mentally. I wanted to be able to support them physically. Obviously, that's what physical therapy is. I wanted to be able to support their families. I wanted to be able to support them spiritually. And I found that when I graduated, first of all, there weren't clearly defined jobs that allowed me to do all of those things.

And it was very, very quick to see that if I like treaded too far out of my clearly defined physical therapy scope, I could potentially get in trouble. But at the same time, I knew that I was a multi-dimensional being and I had way more knowledge, skill and expertise in

more than just physical therapy. So was very difficult for me to even figure out continuing education courses to take or ways to define myself to the public. The other thing that's really interesting about the "choose a lane" philosophy is it can be really polarizing. It can create a "you versus me" and "us versus them" mentality between professions, within professions. You see these turf wars.

especially in the healthcare world, you see them within the profession between certain specialties, you see them between professions like PT versus physician, PT versus chiropractor. So when we try and put all these labels and boxes around things, while it can protect the public, obviously, it can actually create this culture of conflict within the professional world.

It creates this idea that someone owns a certain area of the body or someone owns a certain realm of health. But the problem is claiming so is not only reductionist, but it sets patients up for failure because they might go see the person who specializes in the knee and that person who specializes in the knee is not even thinking about how when they play tennis, their shoulder problem might actually be contributing to their knee pain. That's just a

purely physical example. And this is becoming more common, that people are looking at the interplay between not only different body regions, but also different realms of health, like how does your psychology affect your sports performance and how does that affect your proclivity for injury and all those types of things. So we're seeing a shift, but...

I, from the get go, I was that person who was like, I don't fit in a lane. I see how all of these things work towards this person's wellbeing. And it felt really unfortunate for me to have to be limited on what I was allowed and not allowed to talk about with these people when I knew I had the skill and expertise. And I want to be clear that this wasn't like a control freak thing. This wasn't like a me trying to be everything to everyone type of thing.

where I wasn't willing to work with other people, work with other professionals, work with other disciplines. I absolutely was. I loved doing that. I loved collaborating. But at some point for a client, it can also feel really heavy for them to have 15 different professionals that they need to see to help them feel well, because then they're now outsourcing all of their power to all of these people. They're outsourcing all of their knowledge and

silencing their inner expertise, their inner wisdom, and trying to get all this inner wisdom from someone else or lots of other people rather. So the choose a lane philosophy can be a real problem and it from the very get-go it was something that I knew was self-limiting for me and it trickled down to be self-limiting to the client for the reasons I've mentioned and for so many more reasons than I've mentioned here. It's also sort of this

very masculine approach to create these rigid boxes. When I think females, we tend to be just naturally energetically inclined to have more flow, more fluidity, more nuance in how we approach life. And that's always how I've been. It's something that I've had to wrap my head around and come to learn to accept and love about myself. But I think that there's this beautiful balance we can have.

which is knowing we need boundaries, we need lines, sort of like the fence around the dog park, where you have this fence that keeps you contained so you don't go too far off the map, so to speak. But within that fence, you're allowed to run free and be all that you can be, so to speak. Not to borrow the phrase from the army, but here we are. And the thing is, for people who are multi-dimensional who have...

who straddle these worlds just naturally, the world doesn't provide offense. You kind of have to ethically build your own. And the key phrase there is ethically. So you have to really be aware of what's truly within your expertise and what's not. You have to be aware of the problem that you're helping people solve and

where you stop and another professional needs to start. And that takes an enormous amount of self-awareness, an enormous amount of honesty, an enormous amount of humility to move forward and know that I don't need to have all the answers and I don't want to have all the answers. I do want to collaborate with other people and I don't wanna be a one-stop shop for someone, but at the same time,

I can see the through line on how their emotional problem relates to their body problem, relates to the spiritual conflict they're going through, relates to how they feel in their work. And I think we just need people who can live in and navigate that nuance in an ethical client-centered way. People who can see those through lines that connect the multiple realms. And I am one of those people. And generally speaking, if you're identifying with that,

most of the people I help are that type of person, are this multi-dimensional being who loves to bridge identity work, purpose, career with body and health, somatics, nervous system work, spirituality, energy work. And that can be such a difficult thing to wrap messaging around, like from a marketing perspective, which is why I love to help people with their marketing message, because there's usually a through line there. But if you try and

explain to people who you help and what you help them with by defining it on the surface with like a body problem or a stage of life. Like maybe you're like, I help people with pelvic pain or I help people with perimenopause symptoms or I help people with their relationships. It's, really reduces down the impact you actually make. And so what I love to help people do is come up with the actual deeper through line that connects all the things you help people do. So then you have that ethically sourced definition.

what it is you actually help people do and where your own little fences are for your proverbial dog park, so to speak. So anyway, that is where I am now in my life and what I love to help people do, not just with marketing, but with all parts of your life and really sinking into the uniqueness of the story your soul came here to tell, not only in your work, but also in your relationships, in your

life in general and how you see yourself and helping you really own that being someone who navigates nuance, being someone who sees yourself in multiple ways is not a bad thing. It doesn't make you inconsistent. It doesn't make you flighty. It doesn't make you too unfocused. It actually makes you incredibly strong for the right people.

who want someone who can very quickly see all of them and see those through lines in them as well. So anyway, that is where I am now, but it's taken me a long time to really own that that is the work I do. It's taken me a long time to wrap words around it. I'm still working on wrapping words around it. Literally, I have this...

pinned note in my notes app of my phone where I'll be on a walk. This just happened to me yesterday while I was out on a walk. And I was just contemplating staring at the trees while I was walking. And suddenly I had this download of a different way of putting words around what it is I help people do. And I just wrote it down and I was like, yeah, I need to digest that a little bit. I'm not ready to like release that out into the world, but it was...

what I call your own internal message. It's like getting clear for myself before I release it into the world. And that is that ongoing slow crawl of changing not only what it is you do, what your purpose is, but an even deeper version of shifting your identity around it. And the reason it's a really slow crawl or needs to be a slow crawl and not this massive leap is

Our identity and our purpose is wrapped in our nervous system, our limbic system to be specific. So whenever your limbic system is sensing, you're going to make a shift or you're to make a big leap, it starts to fire up. It'll either get you to go into fight mode, which is usually looks like resistance to change. looks like coming up with all of these cunning reasons for you to stay put in the life and the identity and the world and the job that you're currently in.

You can go into flight mode, which I already mentioned, which is like, OK, we're just going to rip off the bandaid and make the leap and apologize later and ask questions later. And you will get dragged back through apologizing later and asking questions later. Whether you like it or not, you all know how that works. It might look like freeze mode, which for most of the women I support is actually a functional freeze. You're not actually moving forward, but you're doing a lot.

that looks like you're trying to make the shift from one life, one identity, one career to the next. And for a lot of women, that looks like leaving the healthcare world or leaving a healthcare job and starting your business, either a business that is your own version of a healthcare business or a coaching business. And they are doing all these things. They're working on their website. They are taking courses, getting credentials, getting certifications.

posting online about it, but they're not actually making the move. They're not actually leaving their job. They're not actually fully extricating themselves from the world they're trying to leave. So it's a functional freeze in that you're not getting anywhere, but you feel like you're doing a lot. It's like treading water. You're not actually swimming forward. You're just like spinning and not going anywhere. And that's another limbic system response.

And that's a way that women tend to function in a lot of ways is in functional freeze. And then the last way is a phoning response. And this one can be really, really, really tricky to spot, but what it can look like, I call it the extinction burst or the throwing yourself at your new life. So the extinction burst is where it looks kind of like a fight response where for your old life, your old career, your old identity, whatever it is, suddenly you start throwing yourself at it.

full bore. Like you go in and you're taking courses and you're cozying up to the gurus and you're literally like hardcore putting yourself in that part of your profession. Like you're like the super rah rah cheerleader about it. That's a fawning response. The other way the fawning response often shows up is doing the exact same thing, but for your new life. So you're cozying up to the gurus, you're taking courses, you're doing all kinds of things that make you feel like you're part of that.

world, but you're not actually making the moves yourself. You're kind of cozying up to all the other people, like commenting on their social media posts, following them, stalking them, becoming parasocial friends with them, whatever it is. So this is all the system's way of protecting you from what it senses is this giant leap. You're trying to go from one mountain top where you're like fully established and have a reputation.

the other mountaintop where you're fully established and you feel like you have a reputation, you're safe there, your identity is safe. But what you have to do to get from one mountaintop to the other is slow crawl through the valley, whether you like it or not. And in that valley, there's going to be maybe some floods, maybe some rainstorms, maybe some thunderstorms. Maybe occasionally it'll be nice and sunny and the sun reaches the depths of the valley. But you have to go there whether you want to or not. You can try and take a helicopter from one to the other.

but you had to pay a lot of money for that helicopter. came at quite a cost. it's generally speaking, it's not this quick one and done leap. It's a slow crawl. And the sooner you can come to terms with that for yourself and accept that that is just human nature, that our nervous systems need a slow crawl in order to titrate themselves.

to a new identity, to a purpose, the easier the shift is going to feel. It's never gonna actually feel easy, but it will feel less resisted. And if you have felt burned out in your old life, the more that you try and leap, the more burned out you're gonna feel in the process of change. That's just human nature and that's how it works.

So that is the process that I have made in my own transition from healthcare into the coaching world. It's the process I guide people through. Basically, I'm here to guide you through the valley yourself. You're the one taking the steps, but I'm here to walk along with you and be your guide. And I'm here to tell you

a couple stories, number one, about what it actually looked like to be in my own valley and what it continues to look like. And then as promised in part one of this two part series, I will share with you the three reasons that I won't be returning to healthcare, at least at this point in my life.

I've been calling them hidden truths. They're things that didn't make me leave because I had really good reasons to leave, to move towards what my new life was going to be. But they are reasons that I won't go back. So I'll be highlighting those in this episode as well. But first, let's dig into the part of the story about really sinking in

to the valley and really owning that I can't just make the leap myself because at some point I also thought that I could simply just leap. So probably about eight or nine years ago, I finally completed my coaching certification. I knew that I wanted to

to be full-time as a coach. I had already started my own physical therapy business. I had already left my healthcare job. I had already gone through quite a valley simply to start my own healthcare private practice. And that valley was called cancer. That's a whole other story for a whole other episode. But I was now on the peak of having my own healthcare private practice and...

was doing great. I was thriving. had a fully booked schedule. I loved what I was doing. In fact, I took all of those multi-dimensional interests of physical therapy that I had even at the very beginning of my career. And I finally created a job that allowed me to almost do all of those things. But what I wasn't able to do within my scope of practice obviously was that more intangible stuff with people.

emotional work, the spiritual work, the somatic work, the nervous system work. So I knew that coaching was going to be the place where I could spread my wings, create my own ethical

dog park fence around myself and help women and teenage girls the way that I knew I was designed to do, the way that my soul's story was telling me to do. Well,

I finished my coaching certification about nine years ago and I was confident in my skills. but the problem was I had a really hard time identifying as a coach. I felt really, really safe and secure in my identity as a physical therapist, but I

even though I had the credential telling me I was certified, even though I had the green light to go out and do the thing, I didn't feel safe in my identity as a coach. And that showed up in not knowing how to effectively communicate with people, what it was I was doing, who it was I was helping. And I didn't quite know how to effectively design a program.

that encapsulated all of the things that I so desired to help people with And so I bumbled along for maybe about another year and a half in my healthcare private practice, continuing to do physical therapy for the most part, knowing and almost like kicking myself every day that I really wanted to be in the coaching world.

But I wasn't there. I was frustrated. I was trying everything. I'd worked on my website. I hired a business and marketing coach to help me figure out my messaging. And I was getting there. But I was doing all these things on the surface. I was performing as a coach, trying to convince myself that that performance was going to help me feel deeply rooted in my identity as a coach. And it wasn't.

So the idea of fake it till you make it, let me just do the thing and then I'll feel like I am the thing doesn't work in this process. You have to actually sink in and figure out how to slow the roll, into allowing yourself to gently step into that identity. And ultimately what ended up happening was I started to get some coaching clients. So I did start to get some proof that, hmm,

people actually trust me as a coach. I felt like I didn't quite still have a grasp on what it was I was doing. I was helping some women with their hormones. I was helping some teenagers with chronic pain. I was helping some teenagers who were having period problems as young athletes. I was helping some teenagers with more emotional and psychological stress at school and within their families. I was coaching their parents on how to better parent them.

And It was very effective. But I felt like I was all over the place and therefore, again, not really rooted in my identity of what I was doing. I was trying on a lot of different costumes, but I hadn't quite found the outfit that worked right for me. And and what I know now, looking back, was I just simply wasn't rooted somatically-- My nervous system wasn't feeling safe in my identity.

When I think back on it, I spent years developing an identity as a physical therapist. And on day one, as a physical therapist, once I'd graduated and gotten my license, I still didn't feel like one. But

Only practicing the thing is not going to be the thing that cements the identity. You've also got to do the deeper work and make sure your emotions and your nervous system feel safe in doing the thing. And a lot of times there's something in there that's holding you back. So about a year and a half to two years into

playing the game of being a coach, we'll say, I finally had a moment. I'd felt this tension building in my body and I'd had enough clients at this point as a coach to actually financially support myself full-time as a coach. But something still didn't feel right. I still didn't feel ready. And for several weeks, this was the end of 2018.

I was feeling so anxious. I was kind of randomly crying at random moments. And I also started to feel this building resentment towards my work as a physical therapist. When someone would show up on my schedule as a physical therapy patient, I would be annoyed. Not with them, but I was just annoyed that I was still working with them. I was kind of browbeating and shaming myself

behind the scenes of like, can't you just make this shift? Why are you still doing this? And to be clear to anyone who's listening to this who might've been a patient, it wasn't about you. I genuinely enjoyed when I was in the moment working with you. It was just more that I so wanted to be in that world of coaching exclusively and something was holding me back. Finally, one day I was sitting on my office floor with

our previous dog named Raven, I was curled up and just listening to some music and this song came on that is by Lauren Daigle. I can't even remember the name of the song but the first line of the song is "you are not hidden, there's never been a moment that you were forgotten" and just hearing the line of that song with all of the tension that was pent up in my body I

burst into tears.

And I kind of looked at it as I was crying and there was this just moment of allowing the tears. One of those cathartic releases, I had no idea what I was crying about. All I knew is the song just triggered me, but I had this very deep intuitive knowing to just be with it. Now granted, I'd also done approximately four years of healing and therapeutic work.

to give myself space and grace to sit with emotions as someone who once suppressed and hid emotions very, very well from herself. So I had the capacity to do that. But I knew I needed to just allow the tears to be. And as I really sank in to my body, I allowed all of the sensations I was feeling in my body to tell a story. And what ended up happening was an image came to mind.

There is this picture of a little girl standing by a lake and she had one foot on the dock and one foot on a boat. Her legs were in a split and she was crying. She was crying just like I was crying here in real life. There was a person on the boat who was there and she was looking at the little girl. And what was interesting is I realized in that moment that both of these people were me.

The person on the boat, the person rowing the boat was me, current me, and the little girl was a past version of me. She was the version of me who loved physical therapy as a patient, who went through her own process to recover from shoulder surgery to try and reclaim her swimming career, and then turned that into a career to help other athletes reclaim their careers.

She was the version of me who grew her heart, who grew her mind, who fine-tuned her hands and her consciousness to recognize and help people alleviate their pain and suffering. She was the version of me who built relationships and friendships with colleagues within her profession and from other professions. She was the version of me who partnered with brave and beautiful patients and clients

She was the version of me who felt so proud of herself for speaking on huge stages because she loved seeing the glimmer in the eyes of the audience when they had that aha moment and something landed with them. She was the version of me who gave kids and teens a voice who otherwise didn't have a voice in a world that doesn't understand them.

And she was the version of me who gained beautiful mentors who had helped her along the way.

And what she sensed was...

she was being left behind. That she was going to be forgotten. So no wonder the line of the song that said, "There's never been a moment that you weren't forgotten." No wonder that was what got her to finally say, "You're talking to me. That's me. That's my line!" Cause she felt that she was going to be forgotten. She felt that current me, the, the current version of me on the boat was just trying to make a leap without

honoring her. She was actually ready to let me set sail, but she wanted two things. She wanted to be honored and thanked, and she wanted to be brought along for the ride.

So in that moment.

The boat captain version of me pulled her into her arms and said, yeah, you can come along for the ride. I'll never forget all of these beautiful things that you've done. I want them to be a part of our story. I want them to be a part of what we do together, moving forward to help people. We may not be doing things on the surface that look like healthcare, but all of that experience, all of the things you've gained from that

chapter of our life is an important and integral part of the story that we're going to continue to tell. It's part of our soul story. There's nothing lost. There's nothing wrong with any of those parts. I want to learn from you. I want you to be there as I coach people in my back pocket, whispering to me wisdom and guidance for these people. And so

me, the version of me watching all of this going down, the version of my soul that was sitting and holding these two versions of me, saw the truth, which is it's not a leap. It's not a shift from one to the other. It's not a shift from one label to the other label, from healthcare to coach. Those rigid boxes that I had been programmed to believe were what defined me or kept me safe and my client safe.

we're actually creating this tension and this problem of completely disconnecting from who I really was and how I was telling the story. The way I like to illustrate this to my clients is it's not identity shift that you're doing. It's not a job shift. It's an identity integration. It's a job integration. And the process

requires that you sink in to whatever this moment is, and it's going to look different for every single person. And instead of trying to like shove that part of your story into the trunk in the attic and put it behind you, no matter how painful it might've been for you, it's an important part of your story. And that's not to discount that there might've been pain, trauma,

or things that you truly do want to forget. And there may be healing therapy and all sorts of support you need for that and is important for you to do. And part of that sinking in process right there is sinking into it, allowing it, accepting it for what it was, forgiving any parts that need to be forgiven, healing any parts that need to be healed. And then moving forward with that is still an integral part of your story.

That's not too.

So for me, this was one of many, many, many grieving, sinking in, accepting parts of the story of the shift from healthcare to coach. And I think that

When I say I'm still in that shift, I'm 100 % still in that shift. Even though I'm now on the surface from a label perspective in the coaching world and from this moment was the moment that I said, okay, I'm going bring you along. And that's what gave me the safety and security.

to move forward. She didn't want to be left behind. She didn't want me to change my identity. She actually wanted to be integrated and to be a part of it, to be there cheering me on as I move forward. So with that, this is a brutal process. It was not sexy.

to be lying on the floor. I mean, it was cute that my dog was there, but it was not a sexy process. I continue to have these moments that come up where that little girl speaks up, especially in moments where I might be saying something negative about the healthcare world, which by the way, I'm gonna highlight some negative aspects of the healthcare world in this episode. And I think that it's actually her who has been resisting me speaking up.

because she wants to make sure I'm doing it in a way that respects her role and her process in being part of that world.

And she comes up when I might be feeling worried or insecure about a new business program that I'm doing or a brand shift that I'm making within the coaching world. She comes up saying, hey, you can always come back to health care. You can always do that. And I will find myself down these rabbit holes of looking at health care jobs, telehealth jobs, like negotiating with her.

because truly I feel so safe and secure in that identity that I could absolutely return at any moment. And in this process of shifting out of the white coat, I have always left the door open to return. And I think that was a really important piece for me. Number one, I didn't leave health care from a place of anger or burnout or wanting to run away from something I hated.

I left when I was at the top, when I was doing well, when I was thriving, I left on good terms. And I know not everyone has that experience, but that's mine. And so one of the things that made it more fluid for me to do this identity integration was to know that the door was always open. That part of me, that little girl holding that door open,

is who comes up whenever I do have moments of, maybe I should return, when I'm typically on the verge of something new in my coaching work, in my own version of identity integration in the coaching work. And Usually, it's more of a present day identity integration that I need to do within my own.

various layers of coaching identity and coaching story and coaching truths that I need to tell about myself. But this whole process is not an either or process. It's not one career to the next career. It honors the nuance. It honors the continuation and it honors the layers not only of my identity, but what I help people do is come to terms with the fact that we are all nuanced, that you can't just slap a label on yourself and expect yourself to feel safe in that new place.

And that's what allows your limbic system to develop a firmly rooted foundation of safety is letting it be a slow crawl and accepting that this is an integrative process. It's a continual process. It's an infinite process. It's accepting the oneness of life and it's accepting that

circumstances are simply invented by the human psyche to give meaning to things that are otherwise nuanced and hard to explain. And so when you can allow yourself to embrace that there's nuance and a continuation, even though your limbic system might not like that and it will throw up all of your fight, flight, freeze, fawn responses to try and keep you from being in the nuance.

We all know that the sooner we sink into the messy middle and allow those vulnerable, uncertain, poorly defined parts of our lives to actually be embraced, the easier it is. All right. So with that, I teach clients the process of sink and swim happens to be the name of this podcast. And part of that is identity integration. And part of it is also reckoning with

the parts of your previous identity, your previous life, your previous relationships, your previous job, whatever it is, that actually were not so great. It's coming to terms with what I call sacred anger and actually allowing yourself to sink in and feel anger about things that were not so great that you maybe never acknowledged or gave voice to.

Acknowledge that maybe those aren't the reasons that you are trying to make the shift but maybe they are because behind your anger lives your self-respect and Self-respect to me is what I call your soul. It's your soul story It's honoring the story that your soul came here to tell and so me illuminating these three

unspeakable truths is also me giving voice to the things that I was always angry about, but I tolerated I kept swimming and I put on a smile and I'd act like it's fine. I was compliant. I wouldn't speak up about things. Sometimes I would speak up about things and there would be pushback.

With that I will now illuminate the three remaining truths from part one of this podcast series of why at this point in my life

I won't return to healthcare, specifically the physical therapy profession. So my desire and my drive to run towards my next chapter, to allow myself to live, work, play in that nuance, in my multi-dimensional way of being, thinking, feeling, and supporting others was my main motivator. So these three reasons I'm gonna highlight were not the reasons I left.

They're simply the reasons I won't go back. And I think when I'm helping clients through this valley, through this identity integration and this shift, the biggest mistake I see people make is they leave, they go into flight mode because there's something they don't like, which is a good reason to leave. But they never develop.

a true clear vision on what it is they actually desire. They don't sink into themselves and fit their soul story, who I am, what my purpose is on this planet, into a new identity for themselves. And so oftentimes they just go recreate the same problems from the life they're leaving in their new life. I talked about that in the first part of this series as well. So

With that, it actually makes sense because if your limbic system is really fired up, it's angry about something in your job, about how someone's treating you, maybe you're really burned out and exhausted, and you know you just need to get the hell out of there, this is a normal, healthy human response. That's good. It doesn't sustain though. If you're constantly running from something without a target of where you're running towards, you're going to burn out in the process of trying to get out. And chances are,

like health-wise, something's going to collapse. And you're going to need to really buckle down and take care of yourself. Or you're going to find yourself creeping back towards that thing that you're running from. Option three is that you will recreate the problems in whatever you run towards. Like you might create some type of new job, new career, new relationship, whatever it is. But you bring the problems with you.

My job is to help you not only create safety in your nervous system, in your mind, in your soul with the leaving process, but then also create the safety and the vision and the desire to move towards something that actually serves who you are on the soul level and serves what it is your truest purpose is to do. So for me,

As I shifted towards that desire led focus, I knew what I desired. I had to try on different costumes as a coach and land in what the new identity was and put that on the map and set my GPS towards it. I started to really reckon with these three areas that just did not sit well with me. There were reasons I couldn't go back.

And also it was opening the door for me to examine what it was I really wanted. So that's something that I also see people miss is you run from what you don't want and see it as this thing that you hate and you just want to lock it up and never talk about it again. But those things are actually a golden doorway for you. They're actually

an opportunity and an invitation to say, okay, well, I know what I don't want, but what is it I actually do want? Can I actually look that thing in the eye, look at my anger about it, look at my disgust about it, look at my exhaustion about it, look beneath that at my self-respect and see what it is I actually deserve and want instead. And that's also the work I help people do. And it can be incredibly brutal to look those things at the eye that you're angry about, you're burned out about, you're exhausted about.

and really give yourself the opportunity to step into what you really desire. So what's beautiful about these three truths I'm gonna share is we're just illuminating what it is I want and what it is I actually value and how I incorporate that into my life and into my work now. All right, so here we go.

So this is part two of the two episode series of Outgrowing the White Coat, and I'll be sharing reasons four, five, and six that I won't return to healthcare. So reason number four is what I call the Clinician Contract and I already alluded to this, but it's the turf war that is not so subtle in the PT profession that is waged against anyone

or anything that does not pledge allegiance to physical therapy. It's a performative one-upmanship disguised as being supportive, which I talked about in the first part of this two-part series, especially among women colleagues. There is a cult mentality. We could call it borderline religious, borderline like a political party.

that basically is if you're not with us, you're against us. You have to pledge allegiance to our doctrine, our beliefs, our way of being, thinking, feeling, breathing. And if you don't, you're out. There's something wrong with you. We're gonna shame you. We're gonna outcast you. We're gonna fight against you. And this right here is a reason why people stay in the profession because it feels safer to stay put

in a place where at least you feel belonging. Belonging is another deeply human limbic system driven need and desire. And when we fear that we're going to be cut off, cast out, exiled, whatever, we will continue to remain compliant. We will remain silent. We become so afraid to speak up, speak our truth or move into a new world, a new life.

because there's a fear of losing that belonging. So we'd rather stay in something that's abusive or terrible or awful if it gives us our people in the exchange of not being cast out and feeling alone and like the only one. So this was extremely evident in my last job as an employee.

And it was just, it's a microcosm of the profession as a whole. So I'm just going to illustrate what it looked like in that job. So my last job as an employee was on paper, an amazing job. It was one that I dreamed of from the moment I was a physical therapy student and had cast my eyes on this particular practice. And I knew that I wanted to work there one day. I was like, my gosh, this is like the Shangri-La.

of physical therapy, not only for patients, but also for providers. And they had the cream of the crop, the best of the best working there. And truly these people were amazing clinicians who did amazing work with lots of different types of clients. But upfront was a lot of brainwashing and a lot of

putting themselves, particularly the owner of the practice, putting herself on a pedestal, talking about how great she is, this very hyperinflated narrative about how wonderful it is. And anyone who was not in her practice or supporting her practice was wrong, outcast, and shamed, basically. And so the culture war was not only in the profession, but

This was a microcosm of the whole profession. So what happened with this particular leader of the practice, she would notice when people were prospective employees. And from a very, very early on stage, love bombed them. There was a lot of grooming going on. There was invitations to attend certain courses while

building this person up to be part of this exclusive practice and to train to one day get to work there.

From a very, very early on stage, a very vulnerable, high achieving, clinician, I was absolutely smitten to be flattered and built up and to be given a map on where I could go. So I did any and all things to comply to.

basically fit myself into the narrative that I was going to be a part of that group. So if it sounds like a cult mentality, if it sounds that way, it probably is. And maybe that sounds strong or harsh, but honestly, from like an emotional perspective, that's what it felt like. Eventually I was offered a job there, started working there. And yeah, there was absolutely a honeymoon period. I was built up. I was love bombed. I was given...

know, press releases about how great I was and even like preached at how and even the practice like preached their values teamwork. We all work together. We collaborate excellence. We're really trying to be the best of the best, like be leaders in the profession on exactly what patients deserve and what good care looks like. And then compassion.

that we're really here, we sink deep with our clients and we're here for them. Within a couple months of working there, I started to see that teamwork was actually competitiveness and trying to undercut each other. I saw that excellence was unrestrained growth, unrestrained training, unrestrained belief that nothing you have is ever good enough. And compassion was codependency and emotional enmeshment with patients.

And what was interesting was I could feel the dissonance. could see what was actually happening compared to what was being said and preached on the surface. But I didn't know what to do with that dissonance because it seemed like everyone else had drank the Kool-Aid. And yet we would sit in staff meetings and my anxiety would skyrocket. If you spoke up about the dissonance and called out, you know, this doesn't seem to match what it is you preach who we are.

You were criticized. I was at one point taken into an office and yelled at. You were brainwashed and preached that a good employee wouldn't say anything about this, and you would simply just continue to suck it up and go above and beyond, all while being paid peanuts for someone who was striving, going above and beyond, having a doctorate degree and $180,000 of student loan debt.

And all of that was preached and bottled up and messaged and spun into, well, you know, that's just what it is to be the top of the top of the profession. You're not here for money. And if you want more money, you can work more hours. We didn't have limits on our hours. But let's just say that when I started to really catch wind of this,

I realized that on one of my paychecks, I was being paid $7.27 an hour for the number of hours I was putting in the amount of work I was doing. For someone with a doctorate degree, this was in 2013. So not exactly minimum wage even in 2013.

We also had this really strict contract with a really strict non-compete, non-solicitation agreement. So even if I wanted to leave, it would be very difficult for me to continue to practice the way I wanted to practice in the same city. So basically this contract was We own you. I started to really realize how dysregulated my nervous system was. I started having panic attacks.

And I put it together immediately that it was, it was not only my personality and the parts of me that I'd been suppressing and not working on myself, but also the environment I was in that was not helping me at all. And so I hired an attorney because I was like, I need to get out, but I have no idea where to go because part of the brainwashing of the job itself was we're the best. There's nowhere else for you to go. We've differentiated ourselves so much that we have no competitors. And.

If you try and leave and do your own thing, you can't because we basically own you. So I hired an attorney and the attorney thought that this contract was not defendable in court, but at the same time, it wasn't going to be worth it to try and do anything about it. Eventually, all of that unrestrained growth, all of that unrestrained toxicity grew inward. I grew a tumor. And the tumor had probably been growing in me for decades.

This was the straw that broke the camel's back and cancer that may have gone for a couple more decades undiagnosed and unnoticed. My body was so inflamed. My body was completely worn out and strung out. I was paddling on the surface, treading water in a functional freeze, doing everything possible. I was fawning. I was in a fight response, like my panic attack response.

is exactly my body trying to be in a fight response. And I was trying to leave and use my healthy flight response, but I didn't see anywhere to go. So cancer was my way out. And obviously, I went through all of the things for cancer and healing and all of that, but

I realized I needed a break and it was the first time I ever really took a break and looked inward and sank inward and realized something had to change.

Well, a couple months into cancer, I was in the shower one day and had the intuitive download that there was a way for me to do my own practice, something I never imagined I would do. There was a way for me to do it legally within the confines of my contract. And perhaps this whole turn of events of cancer, while not pleasant and nothing I would wish on anyone, was in fact the doorway to a complete

new way of being. But of course, even that part of opening my own practice wasn't an overnight thing. It wasn't an overnight shift from one thing to the next. It was slow, steady crawl of identity shift from being an employee to being a boss, So that to me is a microcosm of the profession as a whole.

And when I work with clients who are trying to go from either being a PT employee to running their own business as a physical therapist, or <insert healthcare profession>, to working in a more intangible type of coaching or consulting role, every single person has had to go through this.

identity integration process. And one thing that compounds it is this dirty truth, this number four, which is what I call the Clinician Contract When you graduated from whatever healthcare training it is you did, you literally took an oath. You held up your hand, the physicians take the Hippocratic oath, every other profession takes something somewhat similar to it, and you pledged allegiance to this profession. You energetically pledged allegiance before you even took the oath.

I wanted to be a doctor when I was five. So I energetically, from an identity perspective, started to wrap my identity around it at a very formative age in my brain. So my nervous system was really rooted there. When you add on, pledging allegiance to a profession that expects you to act a certain way, that has these rigid standards,

expectations of you that they masquerade under the guise of professionalism or supporting each other or being a team or striving for excellence or being compassionate to people. And making that shift can be extra hard when you feel you've been wrapped in this identity and this definition of who you are, how you're supposed to be, how you're supposed to operate.

you're supposed to breathe. And so that Contract or what I now call a Conformity Corset where you conform to the cult or else, can be really, really difficult to break out of. Now this might sound extreme, but it can be a really similar emotional dynamic and spiritual dynamic to people who are breaking out of abusive relationships, breaking out of cults.

shifting out of religions that have the same rigid expectations of "you're either with us or against us." It happens when people are changing their political beliefs, because don't forget, your family, your friends, your colleagues, your mentors, what we need more than identity safety is belonging as humans. And so you're not only changing your identity, you're changing your tribe.

and that can feel so scary. So if you're in some type of shift, especially out of healthcare, and it feels scary to make the leap, this is normal, and this is why. So number four is the reason I can't go back to healthcare because I don't wanna be a part of the cult anymore, and it's very difficult to exist in that world

without getting sucked into the standards of the cult. And I mentioned in the first part of this two-part series that a lot of those healthcare, more like rules, regulations, insurance regulations are also really difficult to break out of. And that's part of the identity and the belonging. Those are more logistical reasons, but the more cultural, psychological, emotional standards that are held for you as a healthcare clinician are very difficult to break out of too.

So if you identify with any of this, you are not alone and I want you to know there's nothing wrong with you. It's completely okay in the spirit of sacred rage. If you feel angry about these things, good, because behind that anger tells you what you want. And for me, what I ultimately realized that I desired was freedom to be me, freedom to feel what I feel, think what I think. Yes, have people challenge me. I'm open to challenges.

but at the same time, not be so constrained and constricted to have to follow certain doctrines and belief patterns so that other people feel like they can control me. So I wanted complete freedom, which is why my business is named Illuminate Freedom. And sometimes when we are going through something really, really hard in our work, in our lives, in our relationships, that thing that we really hate, that thing that makes us so angry,

is actually the doorway to what it is we actually want, the freedom. If we can just look it in the eye that way. All right, so that's number four. Number five. All right, here's the fifth reason why at this point in my life I will not return to healthcare, It is the push

and the race for never-ending alphabet soup behind your name. And what I mean by that, if you're a listener who's not in healthcare, are all the letters, all of the credentials, all of the certifications behind your name, all of your titles, all of your degrees, all of those things. For me, I probably at some point had 10 different acronyms behind my name.

And this is pushed on everyone in healthcare, but specifically in the physical therapy profession. It is like an epidemic where you are told when you are a student, how important it is to, to seek training and certifications. there's this unwritten

agreement that the more letters you have, the better you are. The more safe you are, the more worthy you are, the more admired you should be, not only by patients, but by your colleagues. So in the first part of this two-part series, I talked about the subtle and not so subtle one-upmanship among female colleagues, which is more

I would say emotional warfare happening between women, which happens among women everywhere. But this one is for everyone, every gender, the alphabet soup race. And in both examples of the race, both the one between women and this one, it's this race to be the top of the top, to be seen as the guru, to be seen as

the most coveted figure that everyone worships and looks up to. And the profession itself reinforces it. Like the national organization, with all due respect to the APTA, even prefers, I learned this many times that I spoke at the national conference, they prefer to have people who have the board certification behind their name, a subspecialty certification. And that's great because those things show

those people who are geared towards excellence. That's an important thing. But any medicine when used to an extreme becomes poison, And it turns into this never ending alphabet soup race. So on my first clinical internship as a student, I remember

being told to sign my name with their credentials SPT, which stands for student physical therapist. I remember being proud, but I also felt small next to my clinical instructor who signed next to her name, PT, DPT which stands for physical therapist, and then someone with a doctorate of physical therapy. Long story about why you put both of those things behind your name. Don't worry about it. So I remember just counting down the days until I graduated and had got to put those letters behind my name. And you see this.

everywhere, especially now that social media is everywhere, that new graduates cannot wait to post on their Instagram, on their TikTok, on their Facebook, I'd like to introduce you to Dr. Julie Granger, PT, DPT. I'm so proud of myself, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, first of all, you should be really proud of yourself because you worked really, really hard.

for credentials, especially sitting for and studying for that licensure exam. Holy cow, super hard. And that race, that urge to tell everyone your letters is again, healthy medicine until it becomes poison and it becomes a never ending race.

As students, we drank the Kool-Aid. We were immediately programmed into our identities, into that culture of physical therapy that you're worth and your importance are defined by the letters behind your name. If you have more letters, you're more worthy and therefore more confident, you belong. There's that belonging thing again. So it gets hardwired in there as this desire, this un...

reachable desire because when you get a certain set of letters then you want more then you want more then you want more and it's never enough.

So you and I both know, if we're just going to be frank with each other, that it doesn't matter what letters are behind your name. It doesn't matter how many certifications are behind your name. It does not matter to the patient. mean, they want to make sure that you're going to do so in a legal and ethical way. But at the end of the day,

If you help them get from point A to point B in a healthy and supportive way, it doesn't matter what your degree is, what your certification is, what your background is, what your training is. It doesn't. That is just the truth. And so it's fruitless to have all those letters behind your name as a marketing move to promote yourself to the public because they don't know what any of those things mean. It's fruitless when I see people out there trying to explain on their websites or in social media what all these things mean.

doesn't make sense to the patient no matter how seemingly smart your explanation is.

But coming back to it, it doesn't matter how many letters are behind your name. It doesn't even matter where you went to school. And this is coming from someone who once believed it really matters where I go to school. I went to Duke.

I went to Emory, two of the top medical training institutions in the country. I'm proud of going to both of those schools and all that I learned from there, not to discount that, but it doesn't matter. Here's a great example.

When I was about 30, I had a random medical thing happen. This was before the age of cancer for me. And I was referred to a surgeon who had amazing credentials. He'd gone to, Johns Hopkins for undergrad. He'd gone to, Yale for medical school. And then he did all of his residency training at Harvard, like top of the top when it comes to training and credentials.

I walked in to see the surgeon and the way he was condescending, the way he discounted my fear and how he completely cut to the chase and didn't ask consent for any of the care that he was recommending. It didn't matter. It didn't matter what his credentials were. I felt so unheard, unseen and unimportant.

as the patient.

And so when you lead with your credentials as a way to try inspire confidence in people, it's probably one of the least important things you could be doing. When you lead with that to yourself, because that's what you've been ingrained to believe makes you competent and confident and worthy, you're leading from this place, again, of that functional freeze of I'm paddling on the surface and everything looks good, but I'm actually feeling insecure underneath.

It's a disembodied way of presenting yourself to the world. And what ends up happening is there's this secret race, not only with yourself to get more letters and letters and letters behind your name, but it happens between clinicians. It happens between people in the physical therapy profession and people not in the physical therapy profession. It gets ingrained in your identity that "this is what makes me great. This is what makes me belong."

So one thing I work on with clients is the rewiring of this, especially when you're trying to shift from an identity as clinician into coach. I can't tell you how many people get caught in that fawning response, which is like a functional fawning response, which is taking every certification, every course in the new profession and identity, cozying up to the experts, being in their Facebook groups, going to their conferences, signing up for every live stream training.

they do, putting them up on a pedestal, fawning over them, but have a really hard time making the shift. Because of this piece here, you are programmed to believe that certifications, credentials, et cetera, make you safe and make you belong. And so unwinding that and rewiring that in that valley, in that walk from one identity to the next is really important to do.

And what I hear a lot of people try and do is just tell themselves on a thought level, yeah, courses don't matter. I'm just going to like not think that anymore. And they find themselves then in a functional freeze, working on their website, tinkering with their marketing message, doing a million marketing trainings because they think, okay, I'm just going to work on my marketing. And when I have all the marketing things intact, then I'll feel safe and I'll feel like I belong in the new profession. Guess what?

That doesn't work either. You can't skip that sinking in part of really reckoning with the underlying limbic system wiring that's happening there. And that's what I love to help people do. And it's nothing to be ashamed of. This is just human nature. All right. So that's reason number five. The reason that I won't return is even if I stay super focused in my own lane,

It's really challenging when I'm surrounded by everybody else in the profession, who also lives by this mentality.

All right, last reason. So reason number six that I won't return to the physical therapy profession, at least at this point in my life is,

that PT in general has a marketing problem.

And that marketing problem is trying to be everything to everyone. This is not a winning marketing or PR strategy. And I know this because in the almost 20 years that I've been involved in the profession, it seems that the very smart powers that be on the level of the national organization, the APTA have had a really hard time coming up with a unifying message of who we are and what we do.

what problems we help people solve. at some point there was a campaign called Move Forward, which I thought was quite good because generally that extends to every arm, every specialty of the profession. But you've got like the 30,000 foot view of the profession and then you've got all of these professionals who like me are incredibly multi-dimensional.

they saw the multifaceted holistic approach to healthcare, which can be incorporated into physical therapy in many ways, but they didn't have a great way of defining that out to the public. So that's where you see these physical therapists who offer 30 different services in their practice and have a really difficult time.

telling the public what it is they do. And part of that is, personal identity issues It's just not knowing how to reconcile your multiple interests into your rigid boxes of physical therapy and your scope of practice. All the things I've already talked about. But part of it is systemically what happens on the very large profession level. And it also is rooted in that cult mentality where you're trying to fit

every single completely unique person into one box, into one Clinician Contract into one Conformity Corset It's taking these people who are really, really great at helping people recover from a stroke and trying to apply the exact same standards, the exact same doctrines to people who work with professional athletes. Those are two completely different

emotional skill sets with people, completely different intellectual skill sets, all of those things. And when you try and apply the same standards to people of very different personality types, even it can create a problem, not only really on that deep personal level, but on the systemic cultural level as well. And what's really, really interesting is

for someone who's multidimensional, neuro-spicy and loves learning, I, as a student, loved the fact that there were so many different areas of physical therapy that I could potentially move into and specialize in. I loved my acute care hospital rotations. I loved working with patients who had had a stroke or an amputation. I loved speaking Spanish to underserved populations in Texas. I loved working with children. I loved working with athletes.

I loved all of it. I was the kid who growing up in school never met a school subject I didn't like, with the exception of physics, that one's debatable. But once out in the real world, I really saw that in physical therapy, was a very "Houston, we have a problem" when it comes to PR situation. Literally nobody other than physical therapists themselves could define what physical therapy is with any accuracy. And here's how that shows up.

So, you you go out to a family reunion, you go out with your friends for drinks, you are standing with moms in a carpool line and you say, I'm a physical therapist. You're going to get responses like this. A PT just came over to my grandma's house to teach her how to get on and off the toilet after she had a stroke. And you're like, well, that's not what I do, but that is one branch of the profession. Or someone might say to you while you're sitting at dinner, hey, you know what? You're a PT. My knee hurts. Why? What is that?

And you roll your eyes and you're like, I have no idea. I have a million questions, but I can't just tell you why your knee hurts. You have people who believe that PT is all about pain and torture. That's what it stands for. And they'll never go to PT ever again after having a really bad experience, when most of us know that that's not at all what physical therapy is. You have people who don't know that physical therapy works with kids because they have no idea.

that kids with developmental or congenital disabilities or cancer or whatever go through physical therapy. They have no idea that that's a thing. You have people who have no idea that physical therapy helps women with pelvic pain, pelvic floor problems, urinary incontinence, all of those things. You have people who just go to TikTok and watch people do exercises and think that that's physical therapy.

You have people who think that physical therapy is a big scam They think it's just a money grab. So this is not unique to physical therapy. You see this in other healthcare professions as well. You probably see it in psychotherapy where there's lots of different specialties, but as a profession, it's so vast and so wide.

and has so many subspecialties that as a result, it just naturally has a major public relations problem. And there's turf wars, there's other professions will get involved on the on the legislative level, where they fight over who's allowed to do certain treatments and who's not in certain states,

It's a whole thing that happens when there's actually a PR problem and we can't unify. We try and unify as a cult with all of these doctrines and beliefs, but then it's all this posturing to compensate for the fact that we're not actually unified in the first place. Hard truth, but I said it. So part of the tactic here in this we're trying to be unified is

that the profession as a whole, but also people within it, have waged war on anything that's not physical therapy. There's this unspoken hatred to chiropractors. There's an unspoken hatred to athletic trainers. There's this belief that surgeons only want to cut on people and don't believe in rehab. There's this belief that if you take medication prescribed to you by your primary care physician that you failed, that you need to be doing physical therapy for literally everything.

in your life. Physical therapy solves all your problems. Well guess what? It doesn't. And all of these professions are valid and nobody is a true sworn enemy. But one tactic that works not only in healthcare professions but in any part of the world, whether it's politics, religion, friend groups, is creating a scapegoat.

and creating this war against that person, we see it throughout history to help you feel more powerful. It's not a winning PR strategy. So not only is trying to be everything to everyone not a winning PR strategy, but waging war on anyone who is not you is not a winning PR strategy. And I think that...

Ultimately, you have to ask the question. If you have to wage war and try to be everything to everyone, what is it you're actually compensating for? What is the actual problem here? Why can't you just own who you are, be proud of that and not have to bring anyone else down in the process? Why does it have to be a war?

So that is reason number six that I, at this point in my career, won't return to the physical therapy profession.

These truths are what I experienced as a physical therapist. They are what I continue to experience coaching women who are shifting their identity and their work either within the healthcare profession or trying to shift out of it. So I can only speak for what I've experienced.

And by no means am I here to convince you that my experience needs to be yours.

I will also say, and I said this in the first part of this two part series is there are more good things about the profession than there are negatives. So if this is the first time you've ever heard from me and you're like, wow, she is like bitching and moaning about lots of things. I want you to know that I have spent way more time building up the profession and supporting it.

And if you want me to direct you to all of the resources where I've done that, I'd be happy to. But I shouldn't have to defend myself for that because again, simply speaking my truth, it's my truth and it doesn't have to be yours. And I'm not here to convince anyone of anything otherwise. So You're welcome to have a different experience with me.

And I actually hope that the people who are in the profession still are having a good experience. So I'm not here to take it down. I'm here to actually call out these truths and hopes that if you are wanting to stay in the profession, that you can take a hard look at these truths, take a hard look at the role you play in contributing to them and maybe possibly help slowly shift the culture from within.

Maybe that's too high a hope for me. Maybe I'm looking at it through rose colored glasses. But I do know a lot of people who I work with, clients I work with, who continue to remain in physical therapy, who are leading by example, by taking these truths and creating a different culture, even if it's a micro culture within the profession. And I think that's really, really cool. So if you are one of those people, keep up the good work.

If you are hearing this and you feel that showing up for the profession every day is right for you, then I mean it from the very bottom of my heart when I say, I am so happy you feel aligned and I'm so happy you found your soul's calling. That's amazing. And I'm also so happy that the profession, your colleagues and your patients

have you. That's so beautiful. For me, I always thought that when I pledged allegiance to the profession, that I had found my soul's calling for life. But then I outgrew the white coat. The beckoning in my heart called me in a different direction. And for you, if you're listening to this, and that beckoning is there for you, you are invited to listen.

Even if you don't do anything about it, my invitation to you is to simply turn inward and listen to that beckoning. Listen to that version of you who's in the rowboat. Also listen to that version of you who's the little girl or the little person on the dock begging you to stay. It's okay to hear them both out and there might be more versions of you that are speaking up and that's okay. And if you need someone to help you listen to those versions of you, that's what I like to help people do.

It might feel super impossible at this point to change course or leave. One thing I'd love to ask you is if you didn't care what anyone thought,

How would you spend your time? If you knew that everyone would unconditionally support you no matter what, how would you spend your time?

And behind that answer is often where you actually belong. If you could imagine your wildest dream, even if you believe it will never come true, if you could paint the picture of a perfect career for yourself, wildest dream, we're gonna go wild here. We don't need to know how it's gonna happen, because it may never happen. What would you do? I just wanna invite you to give yourself permission to sink into some of those little

experiments. Just do little experiment.

And it's okay if you don't ever change course, even if you have this little tug, that's okay. No shame. It's okay if you stick around because the health insurance benefits are too good. I totally get it. It's okay if you feel like you so want to make this shift, but you know that you're standing in your own way.

Maybe the shift just needs to be titrated into a slower crawl instead of one big leap. It's okay if your parents paid your way through school or you have a gazillion dollars in student loan debt and you feel like you are literally indebted to the profession, yet you want to get out of it.

That's all okay.

This is completely understandable. And I get that you may want to stay cozy in the cocoon for a little bit longer, even though when you're getting really honest with yourself and looking at some of these truths, you're like, sucks. It's not actually that cozy.

So if you're looking for someone to have your back, even if it's just someone to bounce ideas off of, I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear what's percolating for you. If you have a vision of what could be next for you and you know what you need to do but haven't done it yet, I would just be happy to be a listening ear and I'd love to hear what's on your heart. Please reach out to me. I'm not gonna push you. I'm not gonna convince you. I'm not gonna tell you you have to move. I'm not gonna lecture you to get out of your own way. And I'm not gonna say you need to just

rip off the bandaid and do it. Because you're a sovereign being and you have full consent to when you decide you're going to make the shift.

At the same time, you can only truly gain reassurance, safety, certainty, confidence, all those things your limbic system is dying for by trusting yourself, sinking deep.

putting one foot in front of the other through that valley, seeing what it's like, examining some of those deeper stories, and walking the path to get to the other side. You can't make it perfect. Can't wait until all the ducks are in a row and all the stars are aligned because the universe might find a way to push you off the cliff instead. For me, it was cancer. For a lot of people, it's a body problem.

But I will tell you, when you start to speak up and put words to your truths, to your desires, to your visions, to the truths about the parts of your work or your identity that you no longer identify with or you no longer like.

It opens the door to more life, to more aliveness And part of that more life and more aliveness might be some icky, scary thoughts and even more icky and scary feelings. You might get pushback from people because when you illuminate your truth and when you shine your light on your power and your courage, it illuminates for others that they too have the power, but that can scare the shit out of them. So just know.

when you look from one mountain top to the next.

You still have to walk through the valley of the hard parts too, to get there. So I'm here with wide open arms, ready to listen. Thank you for listening to my story with wide open arms. It's an honor and a privilege to integrate my identity as a physical therapist and continue to call myself that. And it's an honor and a privilege to know that having the label of physical therapist is not a binding contract to continue to actually do.

physical therapy. That label comes with the privilege of choice. I can choose to switch specialties. I can choose to switch offices. I can choose to switch from being an employee to being a business owner. I can choose to switch professions. You can too. Having the label doesn't mean you have to stay there. Having the label doesn't mean you have to do it. Even if you've sunken so much time,

so much energy, so much heart into it. There's no sunk cost fallacy here. It's okay to let it go. It's okay to, as I did with the little girl on the dock, bring her along into the next chapter. So go forth, walk your path, sink and swim. Thank you for listening to this episode. If you didn't listen to part one, I recommend you go back and listen to it.

And stay tuned for more coming from the Sink and Swim podcast.

Julie Granger (1:17:35)
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.