223 | Staying Whole While Helping Others Heal: A Mindful Path to Resilience For Healthcare Professionals

Show Notes:

How do you keep caring for others when the system—and your soul—feel worn thin?

In this heartfelt episode, Michael speaks directly to medical professionals and caregivers, offering strategies to stay grounded, mindful, and resilient while navigating the trauma of modern healthcare systems. If you feel stretched, unseen, or on the edge of burnout, this episode is for you.

Takeaways:

• Discover 5 focus areas—craft, body, mind, recovery, and optimism—to help sustain your energy
• Learn how to protect your nervous system and sense of purpose during chaotic times
• Understand why emotional fatigue, anger, and grief are not signs of failure—but of humanity

Take a deep breath and discover how to continue to offer care, resilience, and healing in a world that so urgently needs you.

00:00 Introduction and Dedication

01:11 The Challenges Faced by Medical Providers

03:25 Strategies for Staying Strong

06:24 Mastering Your Craft

07:34 Taking Care of Your Body

09:18 Nurturing Your Mind

10:38 The Importance of Recovery

12:10 Embracing Optimism

13:53 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript:

 This episode is dedicated to all medical providers who help us heal. In this episode, you’ll discover how to stay steadfast during a very chaotic time.

Hey there, it’s Michael. Welcome to whole again. A show about helping survivors of physical injury and trauma reclaim their strength and resilience through the wisdom of kazuki. In this episode, you’ll learn strategies to help you play the inside game because it’s so hard to control the outside world.

But before we get there, I wanna take a moment to thank you for being here. Thank you for being a survivor, and if you’re a provider, thank you for helping all survivors heal. All right, let’s get into it. As you can imagine, I have a very warm place in my heart for all medical providers. They all made a difference in my recovery and I love them all and I didn’t meet all of them, but as one human to another, I have pure love for them ’cause they help me become whole again and I often gift my app.

Pause, breathe, reflect two hospitals and clinics. As a service, as a way to give back. So if you’re listening and you want to provide it to your hospital, let me know. So this episode is really about how our medical professionals, our providers, our doctors, our nurses, our technicians, our therapists, the support team, how can they carry the weight of the world and also take care of themselves.

As they do their work, they’re often not seen. They’re fighting battles that no one sees, and if you’re still showing up in face of shortages and staffing changes and policy changes and cuts and Medicaid, kerfuffles and all of that, I see it as the slow, but sometimes it’s not that slow erosion. The support systems that are supposed to sustain you, that keep you steadfast, and maybe you’ve noticed that you’re exhausted and the exhaustion is crept into your body and into your spirit.

You once were optimistic and now you’re feeling maybe a bit pessimistic. Maybe you find yourself wondering, should I stay in this profession? How can I keep serving others when I feel so unseen? How can I serve others when I’m going through my own mental and physical trauma? And you’re not alone in asking that.

I talked to many who say something very similar, hence the reason why we’re doing this episode. So today I want to share how you can stay strong, how you can stay steadfast. Even now, even during all this craziness that we’re experiencing and a lot of that craziness we can’t control, certainly we can vote, we can lobby decision makers.

So as we remember the Serenity Prayer and having the courage to know the things that we can change and the wisdom to know the difference. We know we can’t change all of the outside world, but we can master the inside one. We can master what’s within us. So as you might know, I’m a big believer in naming it so you can claim it.

So let’s name it. Let’s call it out. The elephant in the room. The healthcare environment here in the States and really across the world is traumatic. I already mentioned being understaffed. Budget cuts under supplied, you name it. It creates emotional and moral and ethical and physical trauma, and it can be damaging.

It is damaging, and it can compound each shift, each patient. Each compromise or struggle takes another bite out of our morale, out of our optimism. But here’s the thing, exhaustion is not a sign of weakness. So if you’re feeling tired, that’s not a statement that you’re broken or weak. Anger too is not failure.

You have a right to be pissed off and worried or anxious, and grief isn’t unprofessional. It’s a natural human emotion. These are all signs, these emotions that you might feel are all signs that you care that your humanity is intact. So that’s a good place to be, not the place where we wish to be, but it tells me that you’re human.

It’s good to be human. So how do we do it? How do we stay strong without burning out completely and just tapping out and getting out of the industry? Here’s our focus, our craft, our skills, the body, the mind, the importance of recovery, and the importance of optimism. These five areas can influence how you show up.

And these are important to all of us. They’re not just a medical provider thing. This can help all of us as we go through whatever we happen to be going through. And they can nurture us, they can protect us, they can protect our energy and our sense of purpose. So our craft is, your craft is, I should say.

Practicing medicine, providing, providing care and service, and that’s still yours. You can still master that. You can still get better at your craft even when the system fails to make sense, and you have to deal with all the suits you can still work on and pursue excellence, not perfection. Those are two different things, but the kind of quiet mastery.

I’m gonna be present with my patients. I’m gonna bring all the compassion and all the skill that I have to this moment because this particular patient needs it. They don’t care about all the other kerfuffle ness, which I think is just a made up word, but you get the picture focusing on your craft restores your agency.

It restores your power. It reminds you that. You are still a creator of healing. Even when the conditions are unpleasant or harsh. The next area of focus is the body. Your body is that vessel that allows you to do your work, that sacred work you do, and it’s not indestructible. It needs to be treated with a level of care.

So when we feel fatigued or injured or there’s tension, these are simply signals, not flaws. Again, this makes you human, but taking care of ourselves is simply not an indulgence. It’s it’s essential. So nourish yourself where you can, even in micro moments, we talk a lot about micro moments, microdosing moments of recovery.

Here at pause, breathe, reflect, and whole again. So find time during your shifts or during the day where you can offer yourself nourishment. It could be in the form of a little stretch. Maybe some movement, some hydration, some good food, which I know can be hard to find in a hospital. It could be a little cat nap if you have the luxury of doing so.

All these little micro moments matter they add up. You could simply unc unclench your jaw or do one of the practices that we have here at Pause, breathe, reflect a progressive muscle relaxation practice. It can be really effective in helping you let go of any stress you might be carrying with you throughout the day.

All these are ways that you, again, can exercise your agency, exercise your power to nourish your body. Now, let’s talk about the mind. As you might’ve heard me say in the past, I. The most important conversation you have every day, and you have it multiple times a day, is the one that you have with yourself.

So when you have moments where you’re beating yourself up, you’re in a state of defeat or tiredness or guilt, or any belief that self-limiting hip pause, take a deep breath, and instead, in the moment of reflection. Instead of beating yourself up, you can speak your truth to you in a kind, compassionate way.

You’re doing difficult work in difficult circumstances, and you’re enough and you’re strong. The mind is where your real strength lies. It shapes everything, and whatever happens in the mind. Has a way of impacting the body and vice versa. So the mind and body are not two systems, it’s one ecosystem. So working on both nourishing both can help you maintain your energy.

And speaking of maintaining your energy, this is where recovery becomes so important when we’re exhausted. Sometimes grabbing our phone and doom scrolling feels like recovery. Or we tend to eat poorly or just have other habits that don’t fully nourish us. That don’t help us to recover. And endless scrolling.

I hate to break it to you, isn’t true restoration. It’s not true recovery. It might numb us out, but it doesn’t fill us up. It can often leave us more depleted. That’s the feedback I get when I do my smartphone Wellness checks for people. People say after X amount of minutes on social media, they actually feel worse, not better.

So true recovery is about finding a way to nourish yourself as opposed to numb yourself. So it might look like a few quiet moments, a good meal. A few minutes of shuteye, some laughter or creativity or simply going outside if you can. Anything that genuinely refuels you can be restorative. And a good question to ask yourself when you’re feeling tired, is this action really refueling me or is it simply a distraction?

Let’s get to optimism. This is super important. Optimism isn’t blind positivity. It’s not all rosy and rainbows. It is though a daily decision to believe that something good can happen. That healing is possible even when we feel broken. Even when the system doesn’t seem like it wants to fix itself, optimism helps us to stay in the game.

And one of the best ways to enhance your optimism is to hang with other optimistic people, right? No one gets optimistic. Hanging out with Debbie Downer, hanging out with people who are pessimistic, and in my experience, and simply it’s just my experience. People who go on to do great things in sports and medicine and business and theater and a whole bunch of other facets of life tend to be optimistic.

So try to spend, even if it’s just five minutes a day, spend time with people who bring out the best in you. Voices that can help you feel hopeful and optimistic about the future. And be mindful of voices or opinions or influencers that can bring you down, that can turn you into a cynic or feel bitter.

You deserve to stand and be with people who lift you up, not drain you. This is also part of your power. This is part of your agency. So as we look to wrap up, one thing I wanna stress to you, strength is not pushing through at all costs. True strength is knowing how to protect your energy and how to care for yourself as fiercely as you care for others.

It’s found in your craft, your body, the mind recovery, and your mindset, your optimism. These are anchors that can help ground you to keep you stable as we go through this chaotic moment. But know this, you are heard, you are seen, and you are loved. And thank you for providing all the care that you do. You are needed in so many ways.

To help all of us feel whole again.

In this episode, I shared five areas to focus in on for healthcare professionals everywhere to help you stay steadfast as you provide care for others, and as always. Thank you for being here,

and if you wish to learn more about creating beautiful ripples and how to prevent a bad moment from turning into a bad day, please visit my website, Michael O’Brien schiff.com and sign up for my newsletter called The Ripple Effect. And join us each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday here at Whole Again, and discover how you can heal, grow, and become more resilient and celebrate our scars as golden symbols of strength and resilience.

Until then, remember, you can always come back to your breath. You’ve got this and we’ve got you.