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
07 - Finding Balance in Life's Uncertainty
Imagine finding serenity in letting go. Wendy, a dedicated nurse with a natural affinity for control, shares her transformative journey of learning to trust her husband, Jeff, after he was suddenly jobless after 17 years. Wendy opens up about how relinquishing control and embracing trust changed not just her relationship but her entire outlook on life’s unpredictability. Joined by Lori and Tyson, we explore what it means to truly support a partner and how this wisdom can strengthen any bond, offering insight into how understanding and trust can be powerful tools in navigating life's challenges.
We also dive into the fascinating world of mental homeostasis, where practices like meditation and yoga transition from obligations to sources of genuine joy and peace. Our discussion highlights the beauty of listening to our bodies and the universe, prompting self-awareness and reflection without the pressure of achieving a particular mental state. Through personal anecdotes and thought-provoking insights, we celebrate the ongoing journey of understanding as a gift that continually transforms our daily experiences, encouraging listeners to see life through a refreshed and more manageable lens. Join us in this enlightening conversation and discover how these insights can lead to a more fulfilling and balanced life.
Thanks for joining us. This is Lori, the therapist, and I have just been talking with Wendy and Tyson, the two nurses, on our podcast and I'm a little teary right now because it was just such a beautiful discussion and I said, oh, I wish we had recorded this. And I said, oh, I wish we had recorded this. And so we're going to record as close to our initial discussion we had, because it is so powerful how this understanding shifts things in our lives. And you know, I'll speak for myself. I'm just so grateful that I stumbled on this back in 1985. I just stumbled on it and I'll tell that story at some point, but I really want you to hear what I just heard from Wendy and Tyson and Wendy, well, you choose which one of you wants to share first. I'll go oh, thanks, wendy, thanks, yeah.
Wendy, RN:So, yeah, hello, and yeah, I agree that we just had a really wonderful conversation before we jumped on the recording here. And I have been married to my husband Jeff for about 27 years now and I got familiar with this understanding of how the mind works about eight years ago and my husband Jeff as we're recording this, it's the month of September and my husband Jeff lost his job of 17 years in April, so a number of months ago now, and it's, you know, the down to one income is making itself known in not the most comfortable of ways. Grocery prices are way up and income now is way down. I mean, there's just a confluence of things that are difficult, and I am a nurse and one of the things that nurses are like is we're extremely practical and we take action. We see something that needs to be done and we go after it and we do it. That's kind of in general terms. I haven't met too many nurses that are not in that mode. So in years past, when we've had some financial strain, for whatever reason, we might have been both employed, but two boys in college, et cetera.
Wendy, RN:There would be some times when I would be like, all right, these are the five things we need to do. We need to call this one and ask for a two month break in the payments. We need to do this and how about you try this and how about you try that? And I would send my beloved husband a list and I would watch him like a hawk and did you do this and when are you going to report back that you did it and what was the outcome? And very, take charge and really try to really, really try. What I was really trying to do was to decrease my own anxiety about not having all the ducks in a row that we usually had. So what was my goal? It wasn't necessarily to tell my husband what to do. It was to tell my husband what to do in order for my anxiety to get lowered. Which, as I'm sitting here talking about that, that's really what that was about. Which, as I'm sitting here talking about that, that's really what that was about. And I am. I married my best friend 27 years ago. This is a good man, a good guy, and so fast forward to this year with this job loss, that, like I said, unwelcome moment after 17 years in the same group, same company, and it's been a few months now, and I am.
Wendy, RN:I tapped into this morning when I was talking with my friends Lori and Tyson about how grateful I am that I look down the pike at my future and I don't get anxious, I am not scared. Do I run scenarios and say, well, if we have to go live in somebody's basement in our 70s because we, you know, you know, you know all those kind of scary things of the future, you know, name that scenario, I'm like it's going to be OK, no matter what it looks like. That feels authentic, real, sustainable, true, and I'm not kidding, I'm not saying this because I'm some pie-in-the-sky podcast queen, if that's even a thing. I'm saying it because it's real, it's my lived experience and as an example of trusting our future and trusting Jeff to be Jeff and Wendy to be Wendy. I, in these last number of months, have not made Jeff a list. Well, I use this analogy when we were talking If there were a thousand hours of time between April and now where I could have Berlin, now, where I could have made suggestions or poked or prodded or questioned or assisted, however you might want to word it in years gone by, when we've had other financial bumps in the road before he lost, you know, years ago.
Wendy, RN:Out of those thousand hours I probably would have inserted myself into his thinking, into his plans, into his daily life 955 out of those thousand hours. But I promise, when I tell you that today, looking back since April, I've probably poked my nose in and made suggestions and prodded four and a half hours out of a thousand. My trust in Jeff's ability to do life and my trust in our future is just so much more available to me as I've come to understand the design of human beings. Is that homeostasis of body and mind that I know that everything about my life, everything about how I experience life, all the signals that I get are driving me toward homeostasis or an even keel and peace of mind. That is how the system works. My lungs are oriented to balance out oxygen and carbon dioxide. My gut is oriented toward clearing out the things I don't need and keeping in the things I do need. And so that trust is just really lovely to sit in, and I'm sure if we would have Jeff himself sit in on this podcast he would nod vociferously that it's a lot easier to be Jeff without Wendy poking and prodding him.
Wendy, RN:Now do we encourage one another? Do we say don't forget, you wanted to go for a walk every day, wendy. Yes, we're not talking about that kind of encouragement or prodding. I'm talking about trying to quell my own anxiety by poking and prodding another person, namely my Jeff. So I think one of the things that we talked about this morning that was particularly moving, if you will, was how Jeff has kind of taken on a new habit. Now he goes, he packs up his bags every morning and he puts his computer in his backpack and off he goes to the local library to do his job searching and his networking without the distraction of being at home, networking without the distraction of being at home, and how it's just like a very, an easy flow and trust in our future that whatever's going to come is going to come and that we will be able to be together and handle it, no matter what it is.
Wendy, RN:And as a a kind of like a final little glimpse into our little love connection here, I got home after a physical therapy appointment this morning.
Wendy, RN:It was at 7 am and I got in the house around 8 am and the dishes were done, a fresh pot of coffee was made, an empty cup waiting on the counter for me and Jeff, showered and ready, with his backpack on, ready to take our one car and go off, go off to the library, and it's just, it's, it's, it's a it's a good day. It's a good day and it's, and it's in no small measure because, again, years ago, before I knew how my system worked, my brain and my mind system worked, I would try to take the bull by the horns and really try to minimize all those external things that I thought were making my life difficult. I would minimize, minimize, minimize, chase after it. And now I realize that I'm uniquely designed to live in the world that I live in and just going with the flow is so much easier than fighting the system, which is what I used to do before. This understanding, this inside outout understanding, so, yeah, so the power of the understanding has been significant for me. So thanks for asking, lori.
Tyson, RN:Thank you for sharing, wendy. That was beautiful. And something else that we had talked about and you kind of brought it up was homeostasis and how our body's always asking us to go back to homeostasis and our nervous system wants to always be regulated, which it can't always be. And we had talked about doing different practices and how I heard in the three principles, we don't do practices, we don't do meditation, we don't do yoga and different practices to calm our minds. That's what I had heard, and in my past I fell into meditation. Like literally, somebody was like oh, what about meditation? And I just gave it a try. I would listen to things, guided meditation before I went to bed, and then it switched over to meditating every morning just on my own, to meditating every morning just on my own, and my life transformed.
Tyson, RN:After that I went through a divorce, I went through nursing school. I had complete trust in everything and then, after I completed nursing school, I don't know what happened, but I had a lot of thinking. I had a lot, a lot of thinking and then I started reaching for meditation, I started reaching for yoga and I tried to do all of these practices that had worked, I thought worked for me in the past, but I came at them in a way where I thought I needed them to make me feel better, where I thought I needed them to make me feel better. And then, when I learned the principles, I stopped doing everything. I thought I was supposed to just sit with all of my feelings and my thinking was just going to change. Little did I know that by doing that, though, I was actually making my thinking worse. I was playing with my thinking. I was telling myself that my thinking was wrong, I was broken, I needed to change my thinking and I wasn't supposed to do any of these things that had worked for me in the past. And then, recently, I have started to meditate and I've started to a yoga practice, and it feels so different than it did when I was reaching for those practices to change anything.
Tyson, RN:And upon reflection, I noticed that, you know, when I was meditating and doing yoga before, those were just things that I happened to do. I could have been gardening. It could have to do, I could have been gardening. It could have been camping, it could have been running, but those were things that just brought me joy and quieted my mind. I didn't do them to quiet my mind, but they did quiet my mind and so I really see how, understanding how thought works and how our system works and that we always are turning towards homeostasis and our body is always nudging us, always giving us signals, and even I guess you could say the universe is sending us signals as well, through people, through circumstances, that we don't always see those as very kind things that are happening to us. But if you can see it as a nudge towards, or what I've done is see it as a nudge towards ooh, my thinking is a little rattled here because of the circumstance.
Tyson, RN:It's not because of the circumstance, but that is a nudge to look within and see where maybe I'm neglecting myself or where I'm having a lot of thinking about things and I've learned that I just have to drop that, you know, and my body might tell me, or something might nudge me towards going for a run or doing some yoga, or doing a meditation, or going for a walk, being out in nature. These are all things that help me anyways, but for other people it might be knitting, or sewing, or exercise. There's a gardening. There's so many different things that that help different people quiet their mind. Um, however, it's the way in which we go about it and I don't even know how to explain that fully. Maybe Lori can help me put words to this a little bit more, but I'm just seeing this now. And what the difference in those things calming my mind and using those things to try to calm my mind and there's a big difference there oh, wow, your stories came out as wonderful as the first time I heard them.
Lori, LMFT:Thank you both. Um, it's, it's just really touches me to hear stories like this. You know how oh, if only my mind could go to, oh, if only I knew this when I was younger, before knowing this understanding. And that's just a bunch of thinking too. And then I go to gratitude, like immediately. It's almost like my brain knows to cancel that out, it knows to hit delete, because the brain is like a computer. So I'll have this thought like oh boy, if only I knew this. And I could get sad about not knowing it sooner, sooner. But hey, whenever we find something that is really, really useful in life, what's the point of thinking too bad, I didn't know this sooner, I would have had an easier life. And if I had an easier life I wouldn't be a therapist, maybe because I wouldn't have had life experiences to inform me about the fact that we really are living in an inside out reality. And I loved both of your stories and I guess you know I think everybody can relate to Wendy We've all gone through a loss of income, whether we're single or coupled.
Lori, LMFT:And how do we deal with that? You're either poking and prodding the other person or yourself. The poking and prodding certainly doesn't help. No, poking and prodding certainly doesn't help. No, or we're seeing something that is meaningful and purposeful. Isn't that interesting that Jeff got into the groove when you stopped poking and prodding? And I have a story from a client that I'm not going to tell now. I'll tell it on another episode, but it's so in line with your story and it's everybody's story. And Tyson, you know, just for the sake of time, I could go on and on about Wendy's story, but, tyson, that was really, really remarkable.
Lori, LMFT:I honestly did not realize, you know, I did not realize that people like you could be hearing that you're supposed to sit with. Until you see more clearly that you're not supposed to do the things you love to do yoga or dancing, even you know or walking, whatever it is you love to do, go do it. And what a difference it is when you realize that's wisdom. That's wisdom telling me to do it. It's not that doing those things are going to give me relief. I know that my relief comes when my mind changes. Period, full stop. Yeah, so thank you both, just beautiful.
Wendy, RN:Yeah, yeah, thank you, tyson, I really yeah. I heard something new when we talked about it before we were recording, and I heard something new again as you shared how you've traveled with this understanding, and what I love about this understanding is it's the gift that keeps on giving. I mean it. Just right, I can see you nodding and smiling.
Tyson, RN:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's the whole point of doing this podcast is we hope that you listening will just get something out of it.
Lori, LMFT:You don't have to analyze it, but something will land, hopefully, and kind of change your perspective on something and help you live a little bit easier. Yeah, that's the name of the game, isn't it? To lighten our load and see life through a new lens. It makes things so much easier. So thank you for joining us and please put any questions comments below so that we can respond to that as well, and see you soon.
