If You’ve Ever Questioned If You’re a “Good Mum” as a Therapist

If you’ve ever sat there and questioned if you’re actually a “good mum”… this is for you.

In this episode, I talk about:

• This isn’t about doing more.
  It’s about reducing what your brain is responsible for.
•   what I’m actually holding right now, and how 
•   why so many therapist mums feel like they’re constantly split 

If you’re feeling like your brain never switches off, I’ve created something for you.

My private podcast is designed to help you reduce your cognitive load in just 20 minutes a day.

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You can sign up to get access.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Cognitive Capacity Chat. This is the podcast for the therapist ready to think beyond the therapy room. I talk about our cognition as our foundation, not just for our clients, but for ourselves. Because the way we think, organise and live directly shapes our clinical work, our capacity and longevity in this profession. I'm Imogen, an OT, here to bring you practical conversations that fit into real life. This podcast is for the therapist who wants more depth, more clarity, and more life. Welcome. Episode 5, thank you so much for being here. Today I wanted to get a little bit vulnerable and talk about my post that I recently shared on Instagram. It was seven things that I have capacity for that would send most therapists into burnout. Now, the reason that I say that I'm being vulnerable is because sharing that post gives me a lot of anxiety around people looking at that and saying that she's not a good mum or she's too busy to be a good mum. And I wanted to show some real-world insight into how I actually have more capacity to have a bigger output with things. And I'm not a superwoman, I'm just an ordinary person that that has optimized their capacity to increase my output. And I think there's a societal narrative that once you become a mum, your sole focus should be your children and your capacity should decrease. Or you almost lead to this burnout that you just do everything for everyone and you lead to this burnout. And I just don't agree with that. I'm also not wired to be someone who is a full-time parent, stay-at-home parent. I have a full-time parent, I'd hope I'm a full-time parent. But you know what I mean. I really didn't always have the capacity that I do or the output that I did. I am very privileged to have a husband that works shift work. So he is home a lot with Evie. And I have the capacity to work a lot more, but we did keep her home for the first two years of her life. And it was a real juggle. But I think that just helped me understand that my skill set of understanding people's functional cognition and how to manage my workload effectively to output more, but not increase time actually has enabled me to become a really productive business owner, a present occupational therapist, and also a present mum. I also want to acknowledge that this ebbs and flows. Be present with Evie when I'm with Evie. When I'm at the gym, be at the gym, and when I'm at work, be at work. And what matters most to me is Evie feeling like she has a present mum. And so really working hard in the background to get systems so that I can leave work at work. And I really feel for occupational therapists because we are a female-dominated industry, and we have a tendency to give all to our clients, good give all to our workplace, but not necessarily know how to balance that in a way that you can also give to your kids when you clock off work. And I am just ready to talk about and work with all the mums to actually develop their output at work or their systems at work so that they can actually be present at home. Because I think that's so important. I'm sure everyone would agree that that that is so important. I wanted to give you a little bit of insight about what I'm holding from that post, particularly if you haven't seen it. So at the moment we're going through renovations, and huge props to my husband because he is carrying the majority of this. He is making most of the building decisions. He was a project manager for construction in a previous career life. So he organized the builders, he's doing the demolition, he's also working overtime so he can get more cash to pay for the uh renovations that we're doing. He's also engaging in his meaningful activities of playing football, uh, going to training, catching up with friends, etc. Uh, and we're also living in temporary accommodation with the toddler. So we have a lot of routine changes, a new environment, and sleep disruptions has been really big the past two weeks. That's settled down a little bit. But that alone can make people spiral. And I know that people feel like that's too much. But when you have capacity at work or systems at work or other systems in place, you actually feel like you have more space to hold things. Currently, I'm also starting to engage in NDIES audit and registration. Who knows what is going to happen with the NDIES, but a lot of the whispers are that registration is big gonna become somewhat compulsory. And I just want to get ahead of the curve. We're already providing, we're already completing work at a high level and just getting that um certification process completed just makes sense for us. So because we already had certificates uploaded in CANU with the expiry dates tracked, we have a really good tracking system of our consent form. I delegate to staff that they need to get the consent form signed and service agreements signed, and then we have the admin assistant uh providing with a tracking measure of if they're signed as well as home visit risk assessments. So when the auditors come in, everything's sort of already there. And if they ask for something, we can export the data really quickly to show them that we have this information. We still need to work on our therapy plans a little bit, but how much of a difference it makes that we're already tracking all of the required documentation, most of the required documentation, because we have a system. Now, the system is in place to actually reduce my team's cognitive load. I want them to be able to focus on the therapy rather than the administrative tasks as much as possible. So doing that by having a checklist of everything they need to get done makes sense to me. But because that system exists, the the byproduct of that is that we have a really nice tracking system and we're able to audit our task. The next thing that I'm holding is returning to Netball. I realized that I was me missing something, I was missing joy in my exercise. I had been training for powerlifting and I can continue to lift weights in the gym in a strength-based progressive overload manner. But the idea of gym training is quite isolating. Additionally, you only compete in powerlifting every few months, and I guess I just wasn't getting that regular competitive edge that I really love about netball. And I have always loved Netball, but in 2021 I had an Achilles rupture of my right foot. I didn't return to Netball in 2022. I coached, and then in 2023 I was pregnant, so I had Evie, and then in 2024 I decided to return to Netball. In the fourth round, I broke my foot with a Liz Frank injury. Not a great injury to do because it's uh it's quite challenging to repair. Fortunately, I didn't need surgery, but I had just started my business. I was six months postpartum, so I was still breastfeeding, and um original social media followers will know that I had my peg leg that was a crutch for my leg, so I could actually care for my for Evie whilst I was non-weight bearing for six weeks. So the return to Netball is not simple, it's not straightforward, but I I realized I needed an outlet that wasn't parenting, wasn't just disciplining slash motivating myself to get into the gym. I was I liked powerlifting because it was really flexible in when I needed to train, but I found that flexibility was actually too too much flexibility. So having structure with netball locked in every Thursday night and every Saturday, and something that is structurally away from parenting, from business ownership, and I can just be a netbowler has been really integral for me to actually open up capacity. I mean, I often talk about how cognitive load and the traffic jam analogy, what lanes can we open up? How do we open up lanes? And that is definitely something that Netball has enabled me to do. It's that engagement of a meaningful activity, it's the joy, the exercise, the physical activity, and the social connection as well. I'm also working behind the scenes. Well, I'm also launching this podcast, which is another thing which you know all about. Um, but it takes a lot of effort to put a podcast out into the world. You have to one, think of the content that you actually want to say, two, write your skip script, three, the logistics of it all, and four, listen to it back, listen to your own voice, and edit it and make sure that you are happy with what you are putting out there into the world. Additionally, I still hold a complex caseload. I work with highly level disability neurological clients where I'm scripting complex wheelchairs, bed solutions, commodes, home modifications. Majority of my clients have a 24-7 carer uh support team, so manual handling and upscaling carers, two-to-one transfers, and all that comes with that. You know, these clients have a lot going on in their world and they need a therapist that can show up and help collaborate with them, communicate with them, and help push the needle forward to to facilitate that change. I don't rely on my brain for that because if I did and if I tried to hold all of those tasks and all of those clients in my head, then there's no way that I would achieve what I wanted to achieve with my my clientele. And it might seem like okay, something's got to give here, but without going against APRA, all of my work has generated further referrals from a perspective of now. I personally think it's I collaborate a lot with my clients. So I personally think it's the way I collaborate, but obviously it's also the skill set that I provide to my clients as well. Additionally, I'm supporting uh my team and super um supervising people to deliver the service that I want to deliver at a high level of integrity for occupational therapists. So I hold my team to a very, very high standard. I expect that they are collaborating, they are providing excellence, and they are assessing in a really critical and functional way. And all of my team do a really great job of this, but again, it's another thing to hold that high level of integrity and hold your whole team there as well. So that is something else that I have a lot of I have to have capacity for. So I output supervision, holding team accountable, and I bill about 15 hours a week for my complex clients as well. Supporting myself. Another thing that I do is I engage in two coaching containers, much to my husband's dislike. I genuinely believe that coaching accelerates your growth so much, and you just get so much from being able to engage in someone who has been there or has experience with where you want to be. You get accountability, quick out answers, and confidence. And that's through my business coach as well as my discipline-based challenge. I'm actually do a 10-week challenge with Digge from Discipline Base. And I love everything she puts out. If you don't follow her, you need to follow her because her main messaging is around in a modern society how we overconsume and we also have so many excuses for lack of discipline or engaging in activities that aren't good for us in the long run or in the short term. We overconsume social media, content, distractions, food, and we tell ourselves micro-lies about how we can't move forward as well. And so since engaging in that challenge, I've reduced the use of social media, I've been more consistent in the gym, I've launched this podcast. And again, it's not about doing more, it's just getting rid of the noise. It's getting rid of the microlies of oh, I can't get to the gym because I'm too tired. It's getting rid of, oh, I don't have time to put out content because I'm spending too much time on social media. It really is about trying to be the best self so you have more capacity, more output, because that's a hundred percent what I do. The final thing that I talked to on my post was releasing something for the busy therapist, for the person who is already overloaded, who is in the system that I was in four years ago, where you had to meet billable expectations, you had to do professional development, you had to attend team meetings, you had to uh meet NDIS audit requirements, you had to do so much and fight for that promotion to get to the next stage of your career. And you were never taught to hold all of that, you were never taught how to organize that, you were never taught how to even manage a clinical caseload, let alone the leadership and the management of a team. And I think, particularly for uh mums, we also have more responsibility, more mental load, and more invisible planning and expect it to function the same as well. So, what I've actually done is created a private podcast that's actionable, digestible, really functional, 20 minutes a day to help move the needle forward. Now, this is being released on the 27th to my newsletter, and they're going to get an exclusive code. So I really, really hope to see you there. If you aren't signed up to my newsletter, it's Imogenot.com.au slash newsletter. Also be sure to listen in next week because I'll likely give my putty listeners, my faith people, um, a discount code as well. So if you're really wanting to create breathing room, have a few small wins, help you clock off and be more present and reduce the Sunday scaries, this is going to be for you. And I've created it for the busy therapist. And so I wanted to finish this episode with saying you can have more capacity, more output, and still be a present mum. You can still engage in being that business owner, being that high-level occupational therapist delivering high-level quality service and still have a toddler, still have night wakes, and still have a life. Motherhood doesn't need to reduce your capacity, but you do need to action things yourself to optimize your cognition to get to a point where you can be present at work and you can be present at home too. I really hope that you sign up to my newsletter to jump into that product, and I will see you next week.