214. Why Therapy Helps but You’re Still Burnt Out (Do this btwn your sessions)

Samantha Hawley (: 00:00

This episode is for my therapy girlies. It's for those of you especially who go to therapy, who love therapy, and when you go, you come out of it, you leave your session with insights and understanding, but at the same time, you might hate to admit this, you're still burnt out or stressed or overwhelmed and you keep

therapy consistently back in: 2021

all of the specific things that I was going through in my marriage and how I was feeling. Gosh, that was so long ago now. I wish I could remember the specifics. But know, how I, like specific things that made me upset or frustrated or things that I wish I could say to my partner at the time. And then I got a divorce, smiling as I say that. was a happy thing over here.

⁓ I learned to stand up for myself. learned to hear my own voice and whatnot. But what happened during that time was a whole lot in therapy. And in my therapy sessions, I started to realize that when my therapist said certain things, I had so much awareness of like, whoa, I didn't realize that I felt that way.

when like certain things really resonated with me or I felt some resistance with certain things that she brought up or we were talking about one thing but then in the back of my mind a completely different topic popped in my head that we didn't get around to talking about because our sessions are only an hour and we were talking about something else but you know like the chatter in your head of like different things just keep popping up so something else popped in and

There was just so much, or another big thing is I would be talking about something that I said or my ex said, or honestly even something about my work, and my therapist would just have a facial reaction. And her reactions have sparked so many journal entries for me that were unexpected because that reaction that I saw was just so...

sometimes validating, sometimes eye-opening in the sense of like, ⁓ is that not normal? Is it okay to feel this way? Should I not be feeling? It was just so many subtle insights and aha moments and whatnot inside the therapy session. And all of that is amazing. And you obviously in therapy talk about what's happening in your life.

And you can go deeper in why you react in certain ways, why you show up in certain ways. All of that is so valuable. And it's not enough. I've noticed that there are gaps in, and there's really two types of gaps. The first is knowing all of these things and then deepening the reflection, especially on your own. Maybe this is jumping ahead a little bit, but a lot of

my clients, they enjoy going to therapy and they mostly go like once a month or every couple of months just for like tuneups and whatnot. But after working with me and doing coaching and or strategic journaling in between their therapy sessions, when they go back to therapy, my client tells me that their therapist says to them, what have you been doing in between because

Our sessions are so much more productive. We got so much deeper and you came into the session already so aware, already so primed, if you will, with where you want to go in the discussion. It wasn't 15 minutes of, how's everything going? Good. And then it takes you warming up in order to go deeper. So anyways, and it's because of this first gap.

all of the knowing that comes from your session and then deepening it in between, and I'll go into more of that in a second, but then that second gap is the knowing, it's understanding, and then the doing. It's the embodiment of the change. It's doing something about it, about what you learn about yourself, the changes that you want to make.

Let's go back to the first because I want to share some tips with you about what needs to happen between the insight and the therapy session and the transformation, if you will, so that therapy is even more of a benefit to you and that burnout that we started off talking about and the stress and any of the residual emotions that

are happening because of whatever brought you into your therapy sessions, that also gets addressed. So when I talk about the gap of knowing versus deepening the reflection, lots of therapists mention journaling. In fact, my therapist talks about this and a lot of my clients come to me and they say, my therapist told me to journal, but I don't know what to journal where do I start?

And so that's a very big topic and question. And I love when people come to me one-on-one about this because I can ask them personal questions and whatnot. But for the purpose of this podcast episode, what I mean by knowing and deepening the reflection is simply thinking back to whatever your conversation was with your therapist that during your most recent past sessions.

And asking yourself, prompting yourself in your journal or Google Docs, whatever it might be, and asking like, where else in your life has this pattern showed up? Maybe it did, clearly it did show up in your marriage, for example, or the office, whatever situation it was relevant to the conversation, but where else? And just get really curious about that.

And then you can also get more curious. What else did your therapist say in your session? Or what reaction did she have? Or what did you react to that maybe made you think differently? other thoughts maybe popped up in your head like I was talking about? Did she say something that made you feel some resistance or that you wanted to address? But again, you just had that hour so you couldn't

go off on all the tangents that your brain wanted to. Was there anything that popped up, whether it be silently or verbally, that made you want to understand more or question more, whether it be yourself or your therapist, and ask for different insights? So this is what I mean by deepening the reflection. And you can do this on your own. It's just giving yourself that space and time. And what I mean by time is,

did in the very beginning in: 2021

in my marriage, but I just would have these like visions in my therapy session of me being at my ex's house and just feeling like this tiny little mouse. And that wasn't something ever said in that particular meeting, but I journaled on it. And then I prompted myself and just asked, why did I feel that way? What is another situation? then it brought me into...

my work situation and how I thought that I was leading my team from a place of like confidence. And I don't think it takes away from that. I do think I was leading from confidence, but at the same time, I was the person that would outsource decisions as much as I could. Like the simple ones of if my team was like, where should we go out to dinner? During a team outing, I would be like, oh, anywhere. When in reality,

I never even stopped to ask myself where would I like to go out to dinner if I had the option? Because back then, truly, I believed that I was a person that I could eat anywhere. Like, I'm just not picky, you know, but it's because while that is true, I'm not picky, just never stopped to, again, think, okay, well, if the options were barbecue or Mexican or...

I don't know, Italian, those are very If I'm honest, I don't think I really like barbecue that much. And some nights I love myself a spicy margarita. And other nights I love myself some pasta and wine. Like those are very different. And you know what? Yeah, one day I would definitely choose Mexican over Italian. But if somebody else chose Italian, part of me would feel like, ⁓ bummer. I was really hoping for that margarita.

What a tangent. But those are the types of tangents that I went on in my journal in between my therapy sessions that led to so much awareness, so much recognition of the beliefs beneath the habits that I had, the decisions that I was making. And so that's the gap between knowing and just deepening the reflection and

identifying where else is this showing up, and then that second gap of the knowing and that awareness and understanding and doing. And this whole podcast, Beyond Awareness, closing the gap between knowing and doing, what I mean by this is knowing you've tried to keep the peace. Let's just keep going with that example of the peacekeeper, peacemaker, people pleaser.

We know in this example that you've tried keeping the peace in your marriage, in your family, in team meetings. But the difference here when you take it out of the therapy office and into the real world is practicing opposite, essentially. So for example, asking your spouse to take the kids to practice one night so that you can

Maybe just relax on the couch with nothing to do. And practice not feeling guilty for doing nothing during that time when he would maybe normally be doing that. Not even asking your spouse to take the kids to practice so that you can do laundry and dishes and catch up on house stuff so that you can literally catch up on reality TV. What comes up for you when I say that? Something might be like, my no way.

I could never, like, you need to be productive during that time, right? Wrong. if that was wrong? What if there's a belief beneath that proving that you need to be productive in order to ask for support, right? So practicing that in real time. Or another example, something that happened in my therapy session, I remember I had gone to Target and my Target has a Starbucks, maybe they all do now.

And I had gotten fancy drink, which I never do, but I don't even, it was like a chai with espresso, I don't know, something fancier than just a coffee. And at the time I got my now ex a regular coffee. And in my mind, I knew was like bold of me to not get my partner fancy drink as well.

But I was like, can't not get him just rude. I would definitely not hear the end of it. So I did get him a coffee. And when I brought it home, I didn't hear the end of it about how I got myself a fancy drink and how I just got him a coffee. And I brought that to my therapy session. And then me practicing it in the real world was actually not getting someone drink when I was out because

Not only did I feel weird if I was out by myself treating myself to something, and then I was going to be meeting up with anybody, not even just my ex, my sister, a friend, my mom. Honestly, if I was going into an office with like a teammate, I would feel some sort of pull like I should bring them something. And honestly, it was coming from a place of, that would be nice.

I want to be like a sweet friend, sister, boss, mom, know, whatever. at the same time, I had the realization of, but I also have the choice that I don't have to do that. And so practicing the choice of doing something just for me, not also for my son, not also for my team, for my ⁓ ex, for my family, you know what I mean?

And so that's another example, or, asking a team member to lead a call and give them the opportunity to feel empowered instead of you taking charge to feel like the leader or to prove that you are the only one that can do it right. And this is likely subconscious. You might just be leading the team meetings each week because you've always done it. And because

deep down you do feel like the boss, you're the one that does it right. You might feel like, ⁓ I don't want to make that person feel uncomfortable. I don't want to put too much on their plate. So I'll just lead the call. But let's practice. Give your team leader about whatever it is that you want to talk about. Give them the opportunity to lead the call or lead the meeting and let them step into that role and see what comes up for them and for you.

Right, so many different ways of embodying what you learn from your therapy session and the way that you come up with what to do, that is where strategic journaling comes into play. Not gratitude journaling, not affirmations, but prompting yourself in your journal based on the incredible conversations that you're having with your therapist and then the residual

effect of and really utilizing that to your benefit and utilizing your emotions, letting them guide you towards what you want, what you don't want, what feels uncomfortable. Those examples that I gave you of even like the food choices and actually stating, yes, I want a spicy margarita, let's go to Mexican or I am out and about and I'm not going to get somebody coffee. Even still right now saying that I'm like, that feels

Weird it feels wrong, but at the same time it felt so liberating and it gave me a choice and it created a ripple effect of ⁓ things can be different and the powerful thing is that when you make a different choice you then are able to experience a different reaction from people and most times the choices that we make

It's because, especially as a people pleaser, it's because we want to please others. And when we fear that if we don't make that choice, it will be met with upset or disappointment or I don't know, yelling. And of course there might be that like in that coffee example, but you're doing it from a place of self-improvement and with supportive people around you,

more times than not when I'm challenging myself and practicing these certain things, the reaction that I get is so empowering because it's no reaction at all. Like when I started to not bring people coffees, for example, or when I started to state where I wanted to go out to dinner or when I started to ask other people lead the team calls, it was either no reaction, like they didn't care at all. And I was like,

all that stress, all of that thought loop in my brain for nothing, or it was a positive reaction. It was met with, wow, thanks so much for giving me this opportunity, when in reality I was like, ⁓ I thought they were gonna think it was too much on their plate. So be giving yourself the opportunity to make a different choice, to witness their reaction, and that reaction is often what will set you free.

because it's like it gives you permission to make that choice again. And that choice is one that aligns with you. It aligns with what you want. It aligns with the type of person, mom, partner, business owner, woman in leadership, whoever it is that you want to be. I love this episode. feel like someone out there needed to hear all of this when I talk about strategic journaling.

I was getting a lot of questions about this back in the day people were asking me specifically, what are you doing? Because I can tell that even though you're going through a divorce, you are like, they use the word glowing and like you're positive and looks like through social media, your days are easy and whatnot, even though you're also solo parenting and running a business and whatnot. And so that's where I slowed down to actually flip through my journals and think,

What am I doing? What am I journaling about? And that is where the Calm Mind Blueprint was born. It's five strategic prompts that are what I journal through no matter what it is. And it takes you from overwhelm or the awareness in general of whatever big emotion or situation that I was going through to actually understanding it and questioning it.

and seeing it from all angles like we talked about in this episode to then getting the clarity, to then getting the direction, not just the awareness to direction and action steps. It's really that whole process and not getting stuck in it. And again, therapist approved, I wanna say, because therapists can immediately tell when their clients use the Calm Mind Blueprint. And this is one of my completely free resources. So if you enjoyed this and if you wanna test it out,

completely for free, then click the link in the show notes. And if you enjoyed this episode and you want to work one-on-one together to really go deep into whatever is stressing you out and burning you out so that you can truly enjoy your career and enjoy your marriage and feel connected and patient and present and all those things with your family, in the show notes, you'll also see a 90-minute breakthrough intensive. So that's just one 90-minute time slot.

and then two weeks later we'll have a follow-up call. And then I also, at the time of this recording, have three private coaching spots available. So we could have a whole four or six month container together too. Thank you for listening. I hope that you found this valuable and I will see you on Thursday.