Unzip Yourself: How to Stop Carrying Your Clients’ Lives Home

Have you ever left work feeling emotionally drained after listening to clients all day?

In the beauty industry, you’re not just providing a service—you’re holding space for people’s lives, stress, and emotions. And if you’re not careful, that can lead to burnout fast.

In this episode of More Than the Chair, Jeri Mallow shares one of the most important lessons she’s learned in her 34+ years in the beauty industry: how to stay present with clients without carrying their emotional weight.

Using her signature “Unzip Yourself” analogy, Jeri explains how beauty professionals can set healthy emotional boundaries, support clients without trying to fix them, and protect their own energy throughout the day.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed, drained, or emotionally exhausted after a day behind the chair—this episode will give you the clarity and tools you need to create a more sustainable and balanced career.

🎯 In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why beauty professionals feel emotionally drained after clients
• The “Unzip Yourself” concept and how to apply it
• How to support clients without fixing their problems
• Simple ways to reset your nervous system between appointments
• How to separate work life from home life
• The key to preventing emotional burnout in the beauty industry

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome to More Than the Chair. My name is Jerry Mallow, and I've been in the beauty industry for over 34 years. I've built a million-dollar nail business, trained hundreds of students at my nail academy, and worked with women at every stage of their beauty business, from brand new to fully booked for years. So have you ever felt like you left a full day of clients and you just knew you were already completely drained? But not because of the work. I'm talking about the kind of tired that doesn't come from doing hair or nails or massages or facials. It comes from listening, from holding space, from hearing like story after story, and someone feeling like you're carrying all the pieces of all of those clients home with you. And the crazy part is they don't teach that in school. They really don't. It's in your heart, it's in your mind and it's in your energy. So today we're going to be talking about something that honestly changes the way that you experience your entire career, how to stay grounded while listening, and how to support people without carrying their life, and how to protect your peace without becoming cold or disconnected. And I call this unzipping yourself. So I want you to imagine this. When a client sits down in your chair, they start talking, and slowly it's like they're unzipping themselves emotionally. They open up their thoughts, maybe it's they open up and tell you all their stresses and their pain and their stories. And that's where a lot of new technicians and designers and stylists make a mistake because they step inside that unzip. They enter the client's story, they feel responsible for it. They try to fix it or solve it or carry it or take it home with them. And that's where the exhaustion begins. So here's a new visual for that. You stay outside the unzip. You are present, you are kind, you are supportive, but you don't have to climb inside their life. You are there to comfort, but you don't have to comment or diagnose. And this one is going to save you years of emotional exhaustion. You're not a therapist, you are not a fixer, and you are not responsible for solving their life. You are there to create a safe space. You're there to offer calm energy and to just be a kind human. That's it. Sometimes newbies in the beauty industry feel like, well, I should say something helpful. I should give advice, or or I should tell them like this is what I do. No. Because you actually don't know the full story. You don't live their life. And giving advice can actually create pressure or liability. Instead, you can use some simple responses like that sounds really hard. Or I'm really glad you shared that with me. You're not alone. That's a lot to carry in a day. Just saying that is a really, really sad situation. I'm so sorry. That's comfort. And in your position, comfort is enough because comfort is a safe space for everyone. You can support without fixing. And I get it. The majority of us go into this industry because we are empathetic. We love people. We want to work with people. We want to give them maybe just a couple hours of joy that day. This, but this is where emotional maturity is going to come in because supporting does not equal fixing. So you can listen. You can be present. You can absolutely acknowledge their situation without taking responsibility. And here's what fixing sounds like. You know, the old you hear a story and you're like, you should leave him. Right? You should leave him. You need to do this. If I were you, you know, but that pulls you into their life. Instead, stay grounded. Say them, I trust you're going to figure out what's right for you. I think you've got a great mind and a great heart, and I know you're going to figure this out. That one sentence keeps the responsibility with them and your peace with you. And one thing I love to tell some of my new students is it's okay to change the subject. And I think, you know, sometimes we just need to normalize that. Like you're allowed to protect yourself. And if a conversation feels too heavy or it feels too personal or too political or too religious, it's just too tricky triggering, or it's just uncomfortable. You can gently redirect. This is not rude. This is professional emotional boundaries. You can say, hey, let's talk about something lighter. I like to say, how about those packers? How are they doing? Or what are you doing this weekend? Or oh, I really could use some happiness. Let's talk about something good that's going on with you. It's just switching gears for a minute. You're allowed to guide the energy in your chair. I had a past um student that I actually am a coworker with now tell me I cannot stand one of my clients. Like everything I do is not good enough. She doesn't like the work that I do. She doesn't like anything. She's just nitpicky about absolutely everything. And because she's probably been there about a year, you know, she's cautious. Like, am I am I struggling? Is my talent there? Is my skill there? And I have to say, it is. I know her and her skill is there. You're gonna have people that are like that, but that drains her. That drains her. And I had a conversation with her where I said, you have the right to say when she's acting like this to you, I don't think I'm the nail tech for you. There's someone else here that I know is gonna provide the service that you require. And it's really important that you get exactly what you're paying for. That takes her out of the responsibility that I have to do whatever it takes to make this client happy because you don't. You don't have to do whatever it takes. You don't have to take someone being rude to you. You don't have to take someone who believes your skill level is not good enough for them. Great, find somebody who does have the skill level. There's more than enough clients out there. Protect your space, protect your respect for yourself. And just remember, you are not part of their life, you're just an hour of it. And that one can be really grounding. You are an hour or two hours in their day. You are not their whole life. And sometimes, I get it, clients share something that's really heavy and then they leave. And then you think about it all day. And sometimes those clients come back. And in my early career, I used to say, Hey, how's your one cousin that you were telling me about? And they're like, What? Oh, I don't know. I haven't talked to them. And yet the whole hour they spent with me, it was it was horrible. It was horrific. What that cousin was going through. But remember, they go back to their life, they have other support systems, and their story continues without you. So don't carry what isn't yours. It's okay to say to yourself, I was a safe space for them for this hour or this two hours. That's enough. And when you have spent that time with somebody like that rebooting your nervous system, this is where you can stay healthy long term. You cannot listen to people all day long without resetting your body. So I like to do kind of these micro reboots between clients. And I'm talking 30 seconds sometimes, and I used to, I used to laugh, but sometimes it's when I'm in the bathroom, going to the bathroom, that I just go, okay, I got 30 seconds to myself. I just want to take some deep breaths. I shake out my arms and my hands to release that energy. And honestly, sometimes I see people, they they'll shake some legs, they'll shake their whole body, whatever it is. A great visual of that is if you've ever seen a dog that's just shaking. And sometimes you see them in those really sad rescue videos, or sometimes you just see them when they're standing by the door waiting for their owner to come home and they shake. The reason they shake is actually because they're releasing the energy that's built up inside of them. So when my dogs start to shake now, I actually do give them more love, but I don't try to calm them down because they're doing a great job of it all on their own. That shaking is calming them down. I will also like step outside just for some fresh air. I try to roll my shoulders. I go in the opposite position of how I sit all day long. I close my eyes for 30 seconds. Just even these small resets are gonna matter. They really do add up because I think when we start our day, I look for the last client. I'm like, oh, if I can just get to her. But there's no reason to do that. I can be patient with myself all day long. But at the end of my day, you know, when I'm done working, don't go straight home to your home life carrying the day. Create some type of transition ritual. So I like to say, I just sit in my car for two minutes before I take off to head home. I take a deep breath and I'm like, work stays here. I'm going home. Work stays here. Even when I owned the salon, which I owned it for 27 years, I think. I still said work stays here. Yes, I'm gonna answer text messages. Yes, some things are going to be told to me after. But I'm talking about client life. Work stays here, I'm going to my home life. I wash my hands in between every client, anyways, but I wash my hands before I leave the salon, even to just wash them with intention. When I get to my house, I immediately change my clothes. I change clothes right away to keep work at work. So sometimes I'll get home and we're still going out to dinner with another couple and I'm still looking pretty good in my outfit. I don't care. I'm changing my outfit. These are signals to your brain. This part of my day is complete. Now I'm going to be home. Separating that work from home is so important. Because if you don't separate the two, your work is going to follow you home emotionally. And over time, you're going to feel drained. You're going to feel snappy at people, right? You're going to feel overwhelmed, sometimes even disconnected because you've been with people all day long. All I want to do is go home and sit on the couch and scroll and numb, right? So create clear boundaries. At work, you are a hairstylist. You are an aesthetician. You are a massage therapist. You're a nail tech. You are an eyelash specialist, whatever it is. But at home, you are you. You're not the listener, not the absorber, not the fixer, you're just you. Integrating that self-nurturing into your day is so important. And I call self-nurturing instead of self-care. Let me explain the reason why. Self-care to me tells you what you should do. So you're supposed to journal, walk, light a candle, take a bath. I get those things. But self-nurturing asks you, what do you need? And that could be anything you want that you know clears your head, gets you grounded, allows you to connect to your heart. Self-nurturing is such a necessity because self-nurturing can actually look like eating regular meals, not skipping, drinking water in between clients, taking short breaks, maybe playing music that lifts your mood in the workplace and at home, having quiet moments, right? And emotionally it's not over-engaging, not overcarrying, not over-giving, not over-functioning. Because the more you give away all day, the less you have left for yourself. These are small moments where you override yourself. And in these small moments, you can choose to do something different. Have you ever held a beach ball underwater? So if you're pushing this beach ball underwater, what happens to you when you let it go? Right? It flies up in this fun, splashing explosion. Well, that's what happens when you stop listening to your heart and you push your feelings and your needs down. When things get to be too much, you're gonna release them. And most of the times they don't come out in such a fun explosion. They're gonna come out sideways, and sometimes they come out hurtful to others and ourselves. So if we learn to pause and breathe and ask ourselves, like what we need and walk through the feelings of our heart and kind of navigate those needs, we can actually connect to our heart and we're gonna bypass any explosions. So connecting with your heart, coming home to yourself doesn't have to be complicated. The heart often reveals itself when we express, not when we dissect it. Because I know you, you're intelligent, you have read the books, you've listened to the podcast, you've Googled your issues, and you still can't seem to integrate them into your life. And sometimes you feel stuck because I've been there. But the simple act of listening to ourselves can release that burden because we're not broken. We just forgot to ask ourselves, what do I need today? Not what do I need to do, what do I need today? So let me give you an example of a daily occurrence where I bypass a simple need. So we're gonna say it's Tuesday at two o'clock, and I have to pee. It's a glamorous example, I know, but my body's pretty clear about this. And instead of going to the bathroom, I actually delay it. I say, I'm gonna go after this client, and then I'm gonna go after that client, and then I'll go at the end of my shift. Or sometimes if I'm shopping, I'll be like, I'm gonna go at the next store I'm at. I don't feel like finding the bathroom here, or I'm gonna go after this one errand, or the worst, I'm gonna just wait till I get home. And then hours later, I finally respond to that need and I go to the bathroom. It sounds so small, but it's not because that's what the pattern has turned into. That small little pattern is overriding myself in small ways. We don't give ourselves the simple act of what we need, and then we wonder why we feel so disconnected. So it doesn't need to be an hour. It doesn't have to be an hour of self-nurturing or connection, it can be 30 seconds. Just just pause and say, what do I need right now? Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Am I tired? Am I overwhelmed? Um, maybe I need time with a friend. Maybe I need to go outside, maybe I need to go to the bathroom, whatever it is, just ask yourself and notice what do I need? And then the big aha moment comes with responding to that need, and it sounds basic. It sounds basic, I get it, but if you don't delay that simple need and you respond to yourself every time, your body starts to learn I'm listening to you, I love myself, I trust myself, I'm safe, I hear you. So self-nurturing is not big, it's actually small. It's pausing when you'd normally numb yourself, right? So when I come home from work and I want to hit the couch and just, you know, go on social media because I just need to numb myself, it's pausing and going, that doesn't fix anything. I actually usually feel worse after I'm done. It's choosing to sit when you normally wouldn't. It's giving yourself grace instead of criticism, and it's saying no instead of yes to sometimes and some people. It's not adding more to your life, it's actually softening inside your life. And one of the biggest shifts is stop negotiating with yourself because strong, powerful women negotiate constantly. What do we say? I'll eat later, I'll rest later, I'll sleep more tomorrow, I'll deal with it later. But when it's a basic need, don't negotiate. Respond. And every time you respond, you rebuild. You rebuild trust with yourself, you rebuild a love for yourself that can just move mountains, I tell you, and you rebuild your own safe space to come home to. And that doesn't make you weak, it makes you human. But being human doesn't mean you have to carry everything because you can care for people without carrying them. You can listen to people without losing yourself, and you can be safe without becoming their space. And that's the difference between burning out and building a career that actually feels good to live inside of. So the next time a client sits down and starts to unzip their world, just remember you don't have to step inside. You can stay grounded, you can stay present, and you can stay you. Because at the end of the day, your most important responsibility is not just how you show up for others, it's how you come home to yourself. And when you can do that consistently, gently, honestly, you don't just become a better nail tech or hair stylist or aesthetician or massage therapist or eyelash specialist, whatever it is you do, you become a stronger, more connected version of yourself in every part of your life. You need to take care of that energy, you need to protect your peace. And don't forget, you're allowed to feel good at the end of your day. You deserve that, and you deserve that peace. So if this episode spoke to you, I'd love for you to share it with someone in our industry who needs this reminder. And if you're looking for more support, more real conversations, maybe some tools that actually help you integrate this, not just learn it, be sure to follow along. So this is more than the chair, and I'm gonna see you in the next episode.