Two Nurses & A Therapist
Working in healthcare is not (now or really, ever has been!), for the faint of heart. So many of us are overwhelmed, exhausted, and considering hard choices.
We get it.
We've been there; even before the pandemic years.
For the three of us, there has been a big shift in how we see things. We see things from the inside out now - not from the outside pushing in on us.
It's been the best thing - personally and professionally.
Two Nurses & A Therapist - The Innate Health Podcast. By & for healthcare providers who would love some peace of mind and mental well being.
Join us.
Two Nurses & A Therapist
04 - Rethinking Mental Health: Embracing Homeostasis
What if the mind has a drive to homeostasis like the body? Join us as we explore the concept of mental homeostasis—a natural state of balance our minds strive to achieve. Picture yourself being effortlessly carried by ocean waves, a metaphor illustrating how embracing relaxation and presence can ease anxiety more effectively than a reliance on medication. Through our shared experiences as healthcare professionals, we reveal insights often missing in traditional clinical/provider education, highlighting how genuine engagement and understanding can support mental well-being.
We invite you to rethink anxiety and distress not as problems to be solved, but as vital signals from your mind. Much like your body reacts to troublesome foods, these signals urge immediate attention to avoid long-term imbalance. As we discuss the risks of overriding these cues, we underscore the importance of acknowledging and acting on them for sustaining mental homeostasis. Alongside these reflections, we hint at future discussions on the personal versus impersonal perspectives in mental health, encouraging you to suggest topics that matter to you. Tune in and discover how to harness your intrinsic ability to maintain mental equilibrium.
Two nurses and a therapist walk into a bar. The nurse orders drinks, but the therapist opts for water with lemon, explaining she's the designated listener, calling all healthcare providers welcome to Two Nurses and a Therapist your podcast for raw truth and real relief. These hosts share a profound understanding about the mind that leads to a happier, healthier life. Imagine feeling more than okay, not just faking it, but truly thriving. This podcast isn't about band-aids. It's about learning what is not yet taught in nursing schools. But if we have anything to say about that, it will be because it makes a huge difference for the health of the helper. Meet your hosts Wendy Williams, tyson Larson and Laurie Carpenos. They've seen it all on the front lines and they're here to tell you you're not alone. So grab your beverage of choice and join us, because in this crazy world of healthcare we can all use friends. And they promise only 25 minutes for each weekly episode, sometimes less. This is Two Nurses and a Therapist. Let's listen in.
Tyson, RN:Welcome back everyone to Two Nurses and a Therapist. This is one of the nurses, tyson and I'm joined with my good friends Wendy, the other nurse, and Lori Kropenos, the therapist, and on today's episode we are going to be talking about homeostasis. Physical homeostasis is pretty well known. Mental homeostasis is something that we've, I think, steered away from in our society, in our culture, and we want to kind of reiterate the fact that we do have a mental homeostasis and we're always being guided towards that. But we work against it so diligently innocently of course, but it's been so to for us to to try to do something to bring ourselves back to homeostasis. But in that trying we just get further and further away from it. So I'm gonna have laurie, give some examples first oh, thanks, t.
Lori, LMFT:Yeah, it's so interesting, isn't it, that it's almost a societal conclusion that we have to do something to bring our mental wellness into homeostasis. We have to do whatever people make up. That's a technique or a strategy, and I love what you said, Tyson, that in doing that, that's actually speeding us up, because we're going against the grain of letting things settle down.
Lori, LMFT:A metaphor for this that just came to my mind is you know, when I'm in the ocean I live not far from the ocean and when I'm in there and a wave comes and I start getting excited and upset could be the wave of anything happening in life, but in the ocean I start flailing around. It's almost, you know, my anxiety comes out and what I've noticed is all I have to do is relax and a wave will carry me to shore. So I'm like working against things by going with my anxiety of I've got to stop this, I've got to fix it, I've got to whatever. When I'm relaxed and nature, it feels like nature takes over and guides me. When I'm not overthinking about what I'm supposed to do, when I'm just open to seeing, okay, I know I can trust in my quiet mind and it will guide me.
Wendy, RN:I love that example. I love that example of literally the body and oceans know how to Ready for a second. I just looked it up. I just want to tell you what the definition from WebMD is for homeostasis. Okay, you ready?
Wendy, RN:Homeostasis refers to any automatic process that a living thing uses to keep its body steady on the inside while continuing to adjust to conditions outside of the body or in its environment. The body makes these changes in order to work the right way and survive. When it does this successfully, it will continue to live. When it's unsuccessful, it can cause imbalance leading to disease or death. Now bear with me, I'm going to read this with the mind uses to keep its mind and brain steady on the inside while continuing to adjust to conditions outside of the body or in its environment, or in its mind or in its you know scope of interest. The mind and the brain make these changes in order to work the right way and survive, feel better, get back to normal, get back to homeostasis. When it does it successfully, it will continue to live, to thrive, to feel okay.
Wendy, RN:When it's unsuccessful, it can cause imbalance leading to disease diagnosis or death. I guess, in this extreme form, when you're feeling really out of sorts with anxiety. It can it. It can cause a problem and people can actually die.
Tyson, RN:Yeah, and that it just reminds me. You know, when we are ramped up, a lot of times people will tell us just relax, just relax. And that's not necessarily always helpful. Or they'll tell you or prescribe something.
Tyson, RN:And what I've noticed in working in mental health if somebody comes up to me and asks for a medication for their anxiety, if I just walk with them and have a conversation I can see why they need the medication, why they're anxious, because they're thinking they might be getting discharged tomorrow. They might've just had an upsetting phone call and the way to help them calm down isn't to tell them calm down. And I mean I could certainly give them a medication and that would help them calm down. But in my seeing where their anxiety is coming from, I can just simply walk with them and talk about, you know, point out the trees outside and talk to them about what they enjoy doing when they're not in the hospital outside and talk to them about what they enjoy doing when they're not in the hospital, and that just brings their level of anxiety down, their level of thinking down, and they're not focused on their perceived problem and they're just now, present, in the present moment, and sometimes it does take help to do that.
Tyson, RN:We can't always do it ourselves. Once you really understand this, this where our stress and anxiety come from, and that we do have homeostasis, it becomes much easier to see it in yourself. And and during that transition time when you're not seeing it, it's very helpful to have a guide and I hope that's something that and I know that's something that has been so helpful for me in learning, in learning this kind of understanding um is having guides to show me that and it's not a, it's just a pointing towards, it's very gentle and it's almost I don't want to say it's sneaky, but it's just kind of a natural progression and it can be so frustrating sometimes at the same time, but once you are guided towards that and you see that homeostasis and that natural, our natural not our normal, but our natural way of being is this calm, centered, peaceful way it's, it's just a very nice way to to be.
Lori, LMFT:Oh I love that. Our natural versus normal. Maybe we need that. That'll be another episode. I love that, right, because our normal is what we've taught ourselves how to behave and what we learned about that.
Lori, LMFT:One of my clients is a flight attendant and there was a lot of turbulence which she is really used to because she's had so many flights and one of her passengers was so upset. She went over to him and she said is there something? She said he was yelling, an older man. He was yelling. And she went over and said is there something, can I help you? And he was just continued to be upset and she said it's okay. Okay, you know, we're used to this turbulence. And then she went back to the galley and started talking with another stewardess and he calmed down, not because of what she did or said, what her, what she noticed, because she's learning about this inside out. Understanding what she noticed was that her calm helped him to calm down. When he saw that there was a whole galley of two or three flight attendants and they were all calm, he realized that he could settle his, thinking the worst possible scenario, what could happen, and then he calmed down himself.
Tyson, RN:So that's it what a great example of our minds going back to homeostasis when we just allow it, and it's really super simple. We want to make it complicated all the time and give prescriptions and practices, but the way that that flight attendant was able to help him return to homeostasis it just happens so naturally and when we allow it, to which, since she's learning this understanding, she knew that just her presence and her calmness and everybody else's calmness within the other flight attendants would just bring his natural state of being out without even pointing it out to him. I mean, that's what our bodies are meant to do. We think of our livers and our you know. We're going through all these processes digestion. Our hearts beating, our lungs are breathing. We're not doing any of that and we're not telling it when to. We don't need to tell our stomach when to digest our food. It knows when we eat. The digestion's starting before we even eat our food without us thinking about it. And it's the same thing with our minds.
Tyson, RN:our minds always want to come back to that settled natural state and what a great example of having someone guide, guide that that pass upset passenger back to homeostasis without even pointing it out, because we don't even need to point it out all the time I know in fact, when we point it out that upsets.
Lori, LMFT:I know In fact, when we point it out that upsets the person more, yeah, like you were saying earlier, Tyson and Wendy, I don't remember.
Lori, LMFT:One of you said you know, when you say calm down, or when somebody says calm down, just settle down, just relax, Ooh, that does not help. No, just settle down, just relax. Ooh, that just not helped. It's like pointing a finger like you, bad person, you're too ramped up. No, when you just get calm yourself in the presence of someone who's ramped up, they're going to feel that, they're going to sense that they're going to, you know, like group homeostasis. Right, we affect one another through a feeling yeah, that's true, it's.
Wendy, RN:eah. Back in the days in nursing school, they always used to say anxiety is catchy. If you I don't know if that's the way they worded it with you guys, but anxiety is contagious, uh, which is an interesting concept, because I think, I think it can be we ramp one another up and we can also have a modifying effect on one another. I mean that's why moms rock babies and soothe babies and put their babies up against their chest. I mean we do can help. Co-regulate, I think is another techie word or another medical word.
Wendy, RN:I love what you said, yson, too, about the gut. We don't have to tell our gut and sometimes our gut talks to us and goes oh, uh-oh, you need to stop what you're doing and you need to get to a bathroom really quickly, and it's a sign that something needs to be done in order to get things back in balance. And we don't usually go oh my gosh, I had a bout of whatever and I can't believe it. And then you go wait a minute, I just ate two Coney Island hot dogs. Maybe that's why that happened. You might know why you had a problem, right. But typically most of us do what we need to do and maybe put a warm compress on our belly and move on.
Wendy, RN:But with anxiety, we have been taught, like Lori says, to get anxious about it and go. Oh, what does that mean? I need to figure that out and that's a problem. And we try to make anxiety a problem, versus anxiety telling us something like whatever, go rest, go take a walk. You know this is not an environment for you right now. So what we found out, the three of us, is that these moments of anxiety or the moments of distress are signals, they're not problems. And unfortunately, in the past number of years, we've been told that we have mental health problems and we need to be under therapy or medication. Sometimes that's true, but a lot of times it turns out homeostasis of the brain. Yeah, what were you going to say, yson?
Tyson, RN:Yeah, and I just love that. You know what we're going to say. Tyson, yeah, and I just love that. You know we do have those signals. If we eat two Coney hot dog islands hot dogs, it's probably going to send off like a huge signal in our stomach and we might have to run to the bathroom. And if we were to ignore that and kept eating those foods that upset our stomach constantly, we'd have long-term effects from that and we would see it manifest in other ways. It's the same thing with our mental stress. When we don't listen to those signals or act on those signals right away, we're going to have longer term effects where it might take a little bit longer to kind of bring us back to homeostasis because of the, the out of balancedness I don't know how to say yeah, that we've put ourselves into first for a prolonged period of time. So it's going to take a little bit more nurturing, maybe a little bit more self nurture.
Wendy, RN:Yeah, I think of it as overriding the system, like all right, well, maybe I've had two hot dogs and my stomach's starting to rumble, but I don't care, I really like these codes, I'm with my family, I'm going to keep it. Oh, my stomach's really rumbling, I don't care. Like we would say to that person or ourselves what were you thinking? Like, why would you do that to yourself? Why would you hurt yourself like that? And that's kind of what happened with prolonged focusing on ignoring the anxiety as opposed to going. Oh, interesting, I need to back off, but no, we keep picking the scab, as I like to say.
Lori, LMFT:It reminds me of the personal versus the impersonal, the personal versus the impersonal. So maybe that'll be our next episode, unless somebody writes a comment about something they would like us to talk about. Yes, please remember to leave comments about anything you'd like us to address. We're happy to do that. No-transcrip
