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
05 - Worry vs. Concern
What happens when we confuse love with worry, and how can we shift towards a mindset of care and concern instead? Join us for a heartfelt exploration as Wendy opens up about a personal story involving her husband's choice to keep his father's health situation private, leading her down a path of spiraling worry. Learn how understanding the thin line between concern and worry can empower us to make conscious choices, steering us away from anxiety and towards a more supportive and balanced approach to life's uncertainties.
Through rich narratives and insightful discussions, we uncover how societal norms often equate love with worry, challenging this notion with stories like that of a young man who finds tranquility after leaving a toxic job. Tyson shares her parenting journey, highlighting the importance of trusting children’s innate wisdom, while Lori reflects on her experiences in healthcare, emphasizing the value of seeing patients as capable individuals. These stories invite you to rethink your responses to challenges, revealing the transformative power of a care-focused mindset in fostering mental well-being and supportive relationships.
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.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, thank you for joining us. I'm Laurie, the therapist of the three of us, and I'm here with my two friends, the nurses Wendy and Tyson, and today's topic is about concern versus worry. Now, before we got on, wendy and I were having a little chat, and I'd like to begin today's episode with Wendy talking about something that first occurred with her. So, wendy, let's hear your story. I'm ready, sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I really love my husband. He's one of my favorite people in the world and this just happened in the last 24 hours where something was going on with one of his parents, his father, and he had been kind of on the phone in a concerned tone of voice talking about his father's situation. And I came and I said what's going on? What's going on? He said, well, he said I'd rather my dad tell you about what's going on. It's really his story to tell.
Speaker 3:And there was something really uncomfortable, painful, about having my husband kind of put up a hand and say you know, I'm not going to let you in, you know you're outside of this little group. Me and my dad and one of his sisters was on the call too. And he says you know, you're kind of outside the group and I just felt a sting and that sting prompted me to kind of go and look at this situation up close and personal. Like this is the distinction that we'd like to make today about the distinction between concern and worry. I began to be worried. What does this all mean? Is my father-in-law okay? What's going on with him? Why am I being kept out of the loop? Did I do something wrong? Did I offend my father-in-law? Did I forget his birthday? Did I offend my sister-in-law who says that she don't tell Wendy? I mean, my mind was spinning and spinning and spinning and I was worried about these circumstances. The circumstances were my father-in-law had something going on. He was sharing it with his two children my husband is one of his children and my husband turned to me and said I'm not going to share what's going on, I'll let my father tell you if he wants to. Those are the circumstances and I leaned into worry. Now, worry in our what we're trying to say here is kind of taking it on, massaging it, kind of creating scenarios like what does this mean? What if this happens? What if that happens? And looking back, what did I do wrong? I wish I hadn't. I'm not even sure what I did wrong. This sort of like just really massaging a set of circumstances.
Speaker 3:Concern, on the other hand, is looking at the same circumstances going oh well, my father-in-law's got something going on. I guess if somebody needs me or my input or my nursing help or whatever, they'll tell me. And my husband is choosing to play it close to the bone. I'm not sure what that means and I'm not sure why. But if he's going to tell me that I've done something offensive to he and his family, he'll tell me.
Speaker 3:I'm being very cold and dispassionate about it right now, being very level-headed, and it's just in service to kind of draw an example, draw a circle around the example of what's the difference between concern and worry. Circumstances are the same, my response to them can be different. Now can we, you know and notice I use the word response, different from reaction. So you know, I flipped right into worry very, very easily without much forethought about that. But with this inside out, understanding, the understanding literally of understanding so many times that word is being used of how the psychological system works, has been gold to me personally and professionally.
Speaker 3:I could notice that there I was in worry and I could kind of my take my foot off the gas pedal, if you will, and say, ah, interesting, Okay, I'm worrying about something, but I don't have all the facts, I really don't know what's going on and if I need to be called into action I will be. And concern is to say, okay, something's going on, if they need me, they know where to find me and you know, to kind of cool down and be able to kind of move along in my life concerned, available, ready to do something if called on, not worrying about a the thing itself and b what did it mean that my husband didn't want me to know right away. So that's a really wonderful to me, a really good example of the difference between concern and worry. And this understanding of how the psychological system works from the inside out lets me know that, instead of being at the mercy, if you will, of the circumstance, something's wrong with my father-in-law. I'm not getting the full story because that's the way my husband chose to do it that circumstance.
Speaker 3:I have a choice, I have a choice. I have a choice and the choice comes now, in 2024, because I understand the difference. I understand how the psychological system works, but in years past, when I thought stress, anxiety, worry, concern all these kinds of words came from the events themselves. Now I know that how much weight I give something is totally on me and what I do. So it's just such a different day and I'm so, so grateful for it. Yeah, laura, you do have a particular example of concern versus worry, so let's talk about that.
Speaker 2:Sure, and also your story, wendy, really illustrates for me the difference between taking something personally Like you. I'd be curious, when you do talk to your husband, I would I'm not going to make a bet, but I would like to make a bet that his reasoning might have been something totally different than what the reasoning you came up with in the moment of having your heart hit, like what am I? Chuck Lipper, I'm not part of this clan. You know, and we all do, that the three of us Wendy, tyson, lori, the three of us have been around this understanding. For you know, I think it came out to be like, if you put it all together, 80 plus years and we still catch ourselves taking something personally. But it doesn't take more than a few moments to realize the feeling, what it feels like when we're taking something personally, and that feeling used to say to me I'm feeling bad because of what that person just said to me, I'm feeling bad because of the thing outside of me.
Speaker 3:Right that I have no control over, right, I can't say what's going to come out of my husband's mouth or anything. But yeah, no, I agree, taking things personally. Yeah, yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 2:And it's not the kind of thing, right, wendy, it's not the kind of thing that you could say to people. Well, just don't take it personally. It's like, yeah, no.
Speaker 3:Yeah, been there, done there, done that, got the t-shirt, been the recipient of such advice and tried to give such advice. Has it ever worked in the history of humanity? No, tyson's shaking your head and grinning Tyson's shaking your head and grinning Right, it doesn't work.
Speaker 2:You know, and that's the beauty of why we talk about this inside-out understanding you have to really see it for yourself, experience it yourself in your own life. What we tell you is not something to put on a post-it note, you know, and put on the mirror and try to memorize and remember. No, you want to like turn your brain off when you're listening to us, listen through your feelings.
Speaker 2:Your feelings will really guide you in a better direction, and we'll talk more about that. That's a whole episode in itself. So you know, before I launch into my story, I want to hear from Tyson. I'm going to give you the floor next.
Speaker 4:Well, I just love Wendy's example of how our mind works and how it, how we can create so many different stories, and I've noticed in myself whenever I go into he she it them, they are the problem and I'm feeling bad. It cannot be. It cannot be. It's always because of the way I'm thinking about whatever just happened, and when I can bring myself down, then I can see that it isn't personal. I may not have liked what they said or the situation or the circumstance, but I can always come to a different understanding and change my perspective on it when I come to the understanding of it's not because of them, the understanding of it's not because of them. But that was just a perfect example of that, wendy.
Speaker 4:And then to move on to concern versus worry Worry doesn't equal care and I think, especially with parents or even with nursing, we think we need to worry about our kids. We think we need to worry about our kids. We think we need to worry about our parent or our patient because for some reason it's been ingrained in us or that's what I've seen that if we worry about someone, that means we care about them. But what I've seen since learning this understanding is that caring well, first of all, caring isn't worrying, and worrying isn't seeing the innate health in whoever we're worrying about or what we're the situation that we're worrying about, and it only causes more suffering. Really, the worry just causes more suffering. And yeah, I don't have a I can't think of a specific example but I just wanted to point that out that worry doesn't equal care and I think we've been misled in that in that way.
Speaker 2:But, lori, I know you have a story just from yesterday, so it's really fresh. I'm a therapist, I work with families, so I'm working with this family and and they are so worried about his choices. Citizen, you know, grew up that way and the parents are saying I don't know what happened to him because all the other parents would say my gosh, your son, you know, when he was young and a teenager. He's so kind and thoughtful and he's brilliant. He's really super smart, top of his class. What happened to him? Well, here's what happened to him.
Speaker 2:To me it was wisdom, but the parents have a different idea. He left a job that was you know, a lot of people use the word toxic. It was a very difficult job, not for his brain, but for his sensibility, the way the company was treating all the employees. He just couldn't abide by that. So he left without another job.
Speaker 2:Now, my, you know, the son knows that he just needs time off. He's spending time in his garden. To me I mean, isn't that wisdom? To like cool your jets? He loves being out in the garden, he's close to nature.
Speaker 2:It's just the brilliance of wisdom, but the fear of people observing through the lenses in their mind no, you don't leave one job until you have another job. No, if you get fired or something, then, man, you are spending day in and day out, and so it's a job looking for a job. Well, not necessarily. That might be the wisdom from somebody who operates that way, but you know, I don't know, it doesn't sound very wise to me. Sounds a lot wiser to me to take a break, take time off, get your mind settled, your heart back in your chest, you know, and then you have so much more perspective on being able to find the right job. And it's like through this understanding it, it has looked to me like miracles happen, like jobs fall out of the sky. Is how it works to me when I'm in the right frame of mind.
Speaker 2:And I'll just say one last thing about this, which is, you know, it's like picture two plus two equals four, on a blackboard right. A lot of parents, grandparents, siblings, relatives think that love equals worry, think that love equals worry. And that is not true, because when somebody is worried about somebody, they're giving them the impression that, well, we're worried because we don't think you have it in you to do what you need to do. We don't think you have the intelligence, the wherewithal, we think there's something wrong with you, we don't realize that you don't need to be fixed. That's the message that comes across to the person that's being worried about. Now there's a difference, so I want to turn it over to Wendy looks like.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know what? What intrigues me from this concept of worry versus concern is the experience of the worrier or the concerner. My experience when I worry about something is I literally, may, quite literally, wring my hands and I'm chewing it over. And you know, I'm a person of faith and I kind of say, oh, I don't think the universe, God, has the wherewithal, the ability to take care of this situation. So I need to figure it out, add up the numbers differently, look it up, call people up. I need to, I need to.
Speaker 3:The event, the experience of worrying is weighty and there's a lot of thinking going on. Now, take whatever the experience is. If I was this young man's mom and I said, why is he leaving a job before he gets another one? He's spending time in the garden the worry part of me might be like oh my gosh, well, maybe I'll look for a job for him and I'll send him some job postings and I will, and I will call him up every you know, five or six hours and say how you doing, have you thought about getting back to the computer and looking for a job? And you know, and I might call my friends and say what would you do with your son if you worry versus concern, which is huh well, he's 24 years old. He's shown good common sense up till now. I really wish he had another job because it's I, you know. I really want him to have enough money in the bank and pay his Well.
Speaker 3:Okay, there's a qualitative difference to feeling concern about something like it's not gone away. It really is something that is in the external world. We're not denying the external world here, folks. We live in the real world too. But there's something interesting about inside out versus outside in. So my son doesn't have a job I really wish he did. It would make me sleep better at night is a concern, and I'm interested and I'm here for him for it when he wants to talk about it.
Speaker 3:Or I might say hey, have you thought about calling your old friend Steve? You know that kind of thing versus worry, which, subjectively, like I say, the experience of the worrying or concern is where I see the beauty of the homeostasis of our psychological functioning coming into play. There is a choice, there's a little choice point between saying I'm going to step on the gas and really feed this issue and make a worry out of it, versus take my foot off the gas and say, all right, my kid doesn't have a job. I think I'm going to go play tennis now and I'm here for him if he ever needs me. And I think when you're worrying you're feeding a sting. Whatever that sting is, You're really kind of holding on to something. So that's what strikes me in our topic of worry versus concern or concern versus worry. Is that subjective experience of it? Yeah, Lori.
Speaker 2:What's so interesting to me is it just occurred to me this is how the brand works. What just occurred to me is that I wish we had said worry versus care. When we care about somebody, we're asking them how are they? How are they doing? We're not putting our own thoughts on them. We're not even asking how are you doing with your job search. We're simply asking how are you doing? I'll just say one more quick thing, because we're going to get off like we promised 20 minutes tops. When I was in graduate school, before I knew anything about this inside-out understanding, before anybody even spoke about it, this is back in the mid-'70s I was in graduate school and we had a book that was on in on the curriculum.
Speaker 2:We had to read it. The name of the book was love versus fear. So love does not equal worry. Yeah, love equals the opposite of fear. Love is knowing that your relative, your person, has what it takes to get through the difficult situation. And you're just going to be there to be the designated listener.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, right From our introduction. That's great. Yeah, yeah, I love what you and Tyson are pointing to, that it isn't. I just love how this has gone both ways, how much better it is to the people in our lives when we care about them or we have concern about them versus worry about them, and how much better it is for us, subjectively, to be in the space of care and concern versus worry. It's so interesting that the ripples, as I like to say, of mental health can go out when we are in that space of understanding that things always equal out and always recalibrate. So, yeah, hey, tyson, before we leave, you got anything that's come to mind?
Speaker 4:No, but I just really like what Lori said with the distinction between the care and the worry, and I know it's made all the difference in my parenting. When my kids were little I was a worrier. I mean, you have your first child and everything was like, oh, are they okay? Are they okay, are they okay, do I need to call the doctor? I got to call the doctor and now it's like oh, no, they're fine, yeah, yeah, and I've seen it play out too. I mean, I'm not going to list a bunch of examples, but I know that when I don't worry and I see that they have their own innate wisdom, I may not agree with what they're doing and I might see the end result of that. But their wisdom there is always wisdom in what they're doing. Unless they're in danger, I would stop them, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 4:Right, right.
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 4:What's that I feel better.
Speaker 3:Right, I feel great. What's that? I feel better. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's a wonderful thing too, that, as nurses and therapists, the shift in my own practice from seeing everybody as innately healthy and able to get out of scrapes on their own and I'm there as a support and a pointer, oh my gosh, what a wonderful shift as a, as a healthcare provider. A wonderful shift for them and for me.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I've also seen it a lot in laboring patients. I mean their bodies. When, when I can help them get into their body, their bodies know what to do, when they're not so worried about the pain or how it's going to happen or what's going to happen, what's the timeline, Is my baby safe All of the questions that are legitimate concerns. But when I can help them step back into their body and let their bottom body guide them- or their bottom guide them, as a case may be, of childbirth.
Speaker 3:Yes, I'm sure their bottom has guided them quite nicely, anyway, all right. Well, on that note, thank you all for, uh, joining us, or thank you for joining us and we'll, um, we'll be back soon with another episode of two nurses and a therapist.
