Therapists Need To Get Serious About Their Health

https://youtu.be/aAa1QHbBKpE

As Therapists it’s easy for us to get really busy. Between seeing clients, taking notes and sometimes even running our own practices, we often neglect and take for granted our health, and it can cost us everything! I got a scary wakeup call recently that has me changing my lifestyle for the better and I want the same for you, because the only way we can show up as our best selves for our clients is if we start taking better care of ourselves overall.

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If you look on social media, you’re going to see all kinds of fitness and health influencers telling you how they got in shape, how they got their bodies and physiques to look the way that they look. But I wanted to make this video for my colleagues, my fellow psychotherapists and mental health professionals. And I’m going to tell you the exact opposite. I’m going to tell you how I got out of shape because I think it’s relevant to the work that we do and the way that we show up in our field, like so many of us prioritize our clients and the people that we serve even more than ourselves. And that mentality and that thing has really caused me significant harm. So I want to make sure that you can avoid some of the harms that I did to myself.

So I’m going to tell you a quick story about my health journey and I’m really going to focus on how I got out of shape.

Prior to entering into this field, I was actually in very, very good shape. I worked out a lot in college. I was a college athlete and I had a very physically fit body. I had muscles. I was perfectly comfortable taking my shirt off. When I finished college, I gained a little bit of weight because I was done with sports and it was the first time in my life I realized, “Okay, I need to work out for exercise purposes. I need to work out to keep myself fit.” And I started going to the gym and working out to keep myself fit. And I really maintained that until I went to graduate school.

And the first year I was in graduate school, I went to the gym when I could. But then graduate school got so intense, so many classes, tests, practicums, all kinds of things I had to do. So for the next couple of years, the last couple years of graduate school, I did not go to the gym at all. I just worked and make sure I was going to finish my degree.

When I finished my degree, I got a job in this field and I was lucky enough that I had what we call a pre-license. So like if you’re watching this video, not in our field, to become a psychotherapist, you have to, you get a pre-license and you practice for 3,000 hours and then that’s when you get your full license.

So I was lucky enough that the place where I worked, they hired me as a counselor even though I had my pre-license, and I had to acquire 3,000 hours. So I was working intense hours. So I didn’t go to the gym. When I got my full license, I opened my therapy practice and very soon started seeing loads of clients. And before I knew it, I had gained a lot of weight, literally like 100 pounds.

And what happened to me was, I would see my first client at 10 in the morning, and I’m not really a breakfast person, so I would get up and I would drive to my office and I’d see my first client, 10 in the morning. And I would typically work straight through until about 9pm. Now, not every second of that was with clients, but those of you in the field know even between clients you have phone calls to return, emails to return, progress notes to do, charting to do. It’s a very full day.

I would have every intention of having a healthy meal at some point throughout the day. I would be like, all right, look, I have a break in my schedule at one, so at one o’clock I’m going to, you know, go to the local restaurant, whatever, and I’m going to get a salad, I’m going to get, you know, something healthy, grilled chicken sandwich, whatever.

But what would happen is during that one o’clock hour, it would be filled with some new client that called that scheduled that needed to come in for an emergency, or some client would call me in a crisis, have to deal with that over the phone, or I had so many phone calls to return or emails to return, I’d miss that meal. And then I’d work through the rest of the day.

So by the time I got to the end of my day, I hadn’t eaten a whole lot. I had some snacks and stuff in my office, but I hadn’t eaten a whole lot. So now it’s like 9:30 at night. I finished my day, and I’m absolutely starving. And then I would have two problems. Number one, I’m starving. And when your brain is starving, it doesn’t make great nutritious decisions. And number two, the really healthy options aren’t really open. So what’s open at 9:00, 9:30? Especially in the area where I was practicing, which is Keller, Texas. McDonald’s is open, Chick-fil-A is open. Wendy’s was open. So I would drive to those places, make a super bad decision and be like, all right, I’m do better soon. But soon never came.

And I practiced in that way for years, about eight years. I was in full time private practice.

Also throw in there, I started writing books, and I was traveling all over the world, and it’s so hard to live a nutritious life, or at least that’s what I thought. I was eating in food courts and airports and eating in hotels and eating in restaurants. And before I knew it, my health had suffered significantly.

And not just, “Oh, I’m out of shape, I don’t look good anymore with my shirt off.” But, I mean, the functionality of my body.

When I started this journey, I was like, 32 or something like that. I’m 48 years old now, and now my body is not responding and functioning in the optimum way that it once did, and I’m aware of that.

So I look back now that I’ve had these things happen, and if there’s one thing I could do, I wish I had more time. I wish I had the ability to go back in time and tell that Elliott, “Look, being healthy and staying nutritious, it’s actually not hard. You just didn’t know how to do it, so it felt hard.” So I want to make videos like this because I know that there are other colleagues out there that would love to be making healthier choices, that would love to be making more nutritious choices, but you don’t know how either.

I’m in a position now where I’ve hired a nutritionist, and I’m getting information that I used to not get, that I didn’t know. Now I’m realizing how important it is to fill your body with the right things, to eat seeds and nuts and what they do to your body, and to make sure you’re getting the proper nutrients.

For example, your body is supposed to have a certain amount of nutrients in it, and the soil used to be so rich in these nutrients that you could actually get these things into your body via your food. Because, for example, the soil was so nutrient dense that the grass would grow from it. The cows would eat that grass, and then they would become nutrient dense, and then we would eat the cows, and we would inherit those nutrients.

But now, when scientists test the soil, it is nutrient deficient. There are certain nutrients, magnesium, for example, that used to occur in the soil, and it is no longer in the soil, but our body still needs these things. I didn’t know any of that. And I’m now in a situation where I have the resources I can afford to work with a nutritionist. And all I can think about is you guys, like those of you out there who are struggling, and maybe you don’t have the same information that I have. And I realize now that I suffered not because it’s hard, but because I was ignorant, and I want to make sure that I’m going to share with you what I’m learning.

This is literally the breakfast I have every single day. And it’s not very hard. And I think back, what if every day…. I had a refrigerator in my office. And you know what I put in it? Soda. All those years I had a mini refrigerator in the break area of the office that I had in private practice all those years, and I put soda in it.

And now I think back, what if I had made healthy choices? What if I put water in there? Spark sparkling water. Sodas that weren’t sweetened by either sugar, or unhealthy, scientific, synthetic, artificial sweeteners. And then what if I had gotten kale, which you saw me put in my smoothie. What if I had gotten frozen berries, which are high in antioxidants. And what if I’d gotten all of these nutrient dense things and I’d gotten a portable blender, which is what you saw here.

I’m not endorsing any of this, by the way. I’m just showing you this. What if I got one of these? And every day instead of going to McDonald’s or going to Burger King or Wendy’s or Chick-fil-A, wherever I was going, I just made one of these every day.

I also didn’t know that if you have a certain amount of protein…. Your body, number one, needs protein. It produces muscle energy, bone density. And another thing it does, it makes you feel satiated, it makes you feel full. So I would have gotten to the end of my day without feeling starving and thus be more capable of making healthy choices.

So, look, it actually isn’t hard to be healthy. I experienced it as hard, in fact, I experienced as impossible. There were people around me who cared about me, who saw me gaining weight and looking unhealthy. And they would ask me to take care of myself. And I was like, “I’ll take care of myself when I surpass this threshold, or when I have enough clients that I don’t have to keep seeing.” But I kept making excuses. And the truth is, the reason it was hard or the reason I experienced that as impossible is because I didn’t have the right information.

So I want you to have the right information. I want you to do the thing that I couldn’t do, which is when I was in my early 30s, make choices that would put me in my late-40s to be able to be successful.

Now look, I did go see a doctor and the news I got from my doctor wasn’t great, but it also wasn’t catastrophic. And it was the kinds of things that I could reverse by taking care of myself. So I want you to take care of yourself too.

I’m happy to teach you everything I can about Solution Focused Brief Therapy. I’m happy to teach you everything I can about running a successful business. But none of that really matters if you’re not taking care of your health.

So now I’m going to make videos like this from time to time, and I’m going to show you the things that I’m learning so you can take care of your body.

So in this video is the whole recipe for this. I went to Walmart and I bought this portable blender. I don’t remember how much it cost, was somewhere around $30, but trust me, that is far less expensive than your health.

The other thing that I used to think is how much money it costs to be healthy. And the truth is, it doesn’t. My nutritionist gave me a bunch of ingredients I needed to go buy. She gave me a bunch of supplements I need to go buy. And I’ll probably make another video about the supplements that I take and why I take them. And I remember going and buying all these things and think, wow, this is expensive. But then when I realized what this is saving me from buying in terms of fast food and delivery services and all that stuff, it’s saving me a significant amount of money. And when I also realized the expense of being out of shape, this is just a much better, cleaner, healthier way to live your life.

So look, I love you all. I want you to be as healthy as you possibly can and make the kind of choices that you will be grateful and thankful that you made.

So that’s why it’s important that you focus on Solution Focused Brief Therapy and really master that skill. That’s why it’s important that you focus on the skills that you need to build your therapy practice and your therapy business. But you also need to focus on your health so you can live long and be prosperous (I didn’t just mean to sound like Star Trek right there), but so you can live long and prosperous and enjoy the work that you’re doing.

So love you. Make one of these. It is delicious. And by the way, last thing I’ll say is I’m not one of those people that can just choke down nasty stuff just because it’s healthy. I need to be able to enjoy the things going into my body. And I was shocked. And I’m not. I. To be honest, I don’t really like strawberries. I don’t super love raspberries and blackberries and the kind of berries that went into the smoothie. But the first time I made one of these and I drank it, I thought, “Oh, my gosh, I can do this.” because it tastes good and you can blend it to the texture that you want. It’s amazing.

So I want you to love your life and look, you can blend it to the texture that you want. If you don’t like kale, put in spinach. If you don’t like cashews, put in peanuts. If you don’t like unsalted pumpkin seeds, put in salted. You can do it the way you want to, but I just want to make sure you guys are healthy and making better choices than I made 15 years ago.

I’m so excited about the choice I’m making now for the Elliott I’ll be 15 years from now. But I want you guys to benefit from the knowledge that I’m learning. It’s not hard. It’s definitely not impossible. You just don’t have the right information. But now you do.