Dear Social worker, Welcome to the world's number one personal
development podcast. For social workers.
Skill alone isn't enough. Building character is what
sustains careers in social work. I'm Lisa Ran, a social worker
and full time entrepreneur and founder of Social work coaching
hub.com. And whilst I cannot reduce your
caseload, I can help you level up your career with practical
tools, leadership strategies and tips to build resilience.
This is real talk. From one social worker to
another, empowering your personal growth, you're exactly
where you need to be. Let's talk.
This week we're going to be focused on listening to your
body and our quote and our book recommendation comes from Doctor
Bessel van de Kolk, The Body Keeps Score.
Today's episode is for anyone who feels like they are
constantly on the go, moving from 1 task to the nest without
a moment to breathe. Now, you might think I'm fine,
I'm handling everything. But your body might be telling a
different story and I'm guilty of that.
That happened to me. It could be there's tension in
your shoulders, you may be getting headaches, or there's
just exhaustion that you just can't shake.
These are all signs your body is processing stress, even when
your brain refuses to recognize it.
As social workers, we are conditioned to prioritise
everyone and everything else, but today we're going to explore
why tuning into your body and recognising these signals is
essential for sustainability in social work.
I'll never forget a time in my career when I ignored my body
signals. And it happened when we had a
health assessment. All social workers were offered
like a health and well-being assessment.
They were trying to help us prioritize our well-being.
And I remember sitting down with this lady who was just asking
general questions about health like what have you eaten over
the past week and how have you slept over the past week?
And she was scaling and scoring these the answers to the
questions. And I never forget that week.
I remember I had not cooked anything.
I'd eaten out for breakfast, lunch and dinner and I remember
in that moment I felt really embarrassed.
Embarrassed that I was spending time caring for, advising,
supporting, advocating for everyone out to look after
themselves or to lower the risks in their home and focus on their
well-being etcetera etcetera. And I was completely neglecting
my own. And she'd only asked me
questions around that previous week, right?
So yes, to an extent I shouldn't feel that bad.
It's only a week. But for me, it was a moment of
clarity. It was a moment of clarity where
I realized that I was ignoring my own needs and I was ignoring
my body signals Forrest. You know when your body craves
sugar and craves salt, sometimes it is an indication of poor
sleep because the body is responding to stress.
When you start picking on cookies and cakes and things and
sweets, all of those can be something that is used to manage
stress. And whilst I was juggling
multiple cases, back-to-back meetings, endless paperwork, I'd
convinced myself I was fine because I didn't feel stressed
emotionally. I was still able to get up, I
was still able to make safe decisions.
But my buddy told a different story and it was only when I
stopped and I was asked the question by someone else, not me
doing self reflection. When someone else was in the
picture asking me these questions, I was like, I'm
ignoring what my body is telling me here.
Eventually, I had no choice but to listen when I experienced
burnout. So since then, I've learned to
recognize the signs of stress in my body and take action.
However, I was not successful in taking action before the burnout
appeared again In my social work career.
I made some changes but not enough boundaries.
And then I've made some boundaries but not enough
changes. And then eventually I found
around the right formula that worked for me and that minimized
the chance of me experiencing burnout again in social work.
So I'm going to talk to you today about how the body keeps
score. And let's delve into the
disconnect between mind and body.
Perhaps you struggle with downtime.
What does your downtime look like?
Can you even relax? I got to a place where I wrote a
journal called the self-care Journal for Social workers.
It's available on my website. It's available from Amazon and
you just tick off what you've achieved and when just so it's
something really quick for you, but it really helps you focus on
what your well-being needs are for that week.
So I would highly recommend you get something like that that you
can hold on to, you can carry with you.
But at the beginning of that book, you have a list of or a
template that asks you what do you want to do to relax?
And it gives you all the different categories and ways of
relaxing with some examples. And that is something that I had
to do when I was in practice because I struggled to relax.
I was so used to the busyness and so used to the stress that I
felt it was my norm and it really wasn't.
Now another disconnect may be experiencing physical symptoms.
So I worked with a colleague who used to have constant migraines
and headaches. And yes, there can be other
reasons why this is happening, but in this case it was related
to stress. And I also had another colleague
who had digestive issues and really struggling to keep food
down, not feeling like they wanted to eat sometimes as well.
And there wasn't an obvious cause for that.
And when they went to get it sorted, nothing was found, you
know, when she went to the GP. So these things can be signs
that the body is under stress, but we accept them as the
norming keep trying to pardon and go and keep going and it
never ends well. Another common sign could be
forgetting things or feeling scatterbrained because your
brain is overloaded with information so much so that it
can't remember what you'd just said or where you'd put
something. I'm not talking about, you know,
getting to the top of the stairs and saying, oh, I've completely
forgotten what I came for. I'm talking about things really
related to work where you just feel like you haven't quite got
a handle on things and you're ignoring it because you just
need to get the work done need and you're focused on getting
those outcomes for children and families equally.
What's happening is that your brain is becoming so
overstimulated that it can't retain the same level of
information that it may have done if you had some rest or
you'd had some downtime or you were just taking breaks.
And one of the last signs of the disconnect between mind and body
is feeling fine. You feel fine emotionally, but
your body tells a different story, whether it's having
sniffles or sinus problems and colds and flus and coughs.
And all of these can be contributing factors to you
being overloaded, exhausted, and stressed, but you still feel
fine. So I'm going to give you 3
practical strategies for tuning into your body.
Even as a student social worker, you still need to be aware of
these things because you will get to a place where things feel
like they're out of control. And this is one of the things
that we don't have influence or control over as a social worker
because we cannot have a handle on how many families need
protection and advocacy and support.
That's something that is beyond our control.
We are on the back end and have to respond to what the needs are
and it's important that we recognise what we are not in
control of and focus on what we are in control of in order to
support sustainability in the career.
So the first practical strategy for tuning into your body is to
pause and check. In that story I told you where I
had that well-being assessment and it was only in that
assessment I recognize that I wasn't looking after myself the
best way that I could. And I believe that stop that
pause throughout that day invited me to check in with my
body and I had to start asking myself questions.
So I'm asking you these questions.
Are you clenching your jaw? One of my social worker friends
said when she went to the dentist that inside of her gums
were black, There was a line that was black inside and that
was because she was clenching her jaw at night due to stress.
Is that a way of you managing your stress and you feeling fine
but actually your body is keeping score of that?
Are your shoulders tense? There's an easy solution for
that guys. Book in a massage.
If you remember at the beginning of the year, I said if you
remember, book in your holidays a year in advance all the way to
December. Those dates do not have to be
definite. They do not have to be in stone.
You do not have to go on holiday.
It may be that they're admin days, but they serve a purpose,
one to remind you to take a break.
So make sure they are regular every six to eight weeks,
whether it's one day, two days over the bank holiday, a week.
Make sure that you've got something in the diary to remind
you to take a break. Of course, you must take a break
on some of those dates. And then lastly, lastly, you're
able to prioritize yourself care according to that.
So it may be that you book a massage in let's say, November
2025. It's booked ahead of time,
right? And that's a way that you can
find a solution to some of these bodily responses to stress.
Another one, which I've heard someone talk about this before,
He's holding your breath. Sometimes holding your breath
can be a stress response. And I've heard the phrase e-mail
apnea before. I'm trying to recall the
author's name of the book. It might come to me by the end
of this podcast. But e-mail apnea was a really
interesting concept and holding your breath may be something
that you do. So try and just observe yourself
this week and really check in with your body and say, what is
my body trying to tell me? Because every action or every
response that your body gives, it's a it's telling you
something. And these small moments, these
small pauses that you create for yourself is going to help you
become more aware of your stress signals before they escalate,
which is the key. We don't want to get to burn out
and then start trying to figure it out because you're going to
be exhausted, right? It's kind of going to be the
back way of doing it. So try and get ahead of it #2
create a stress map. Have you ever heard of one of
these? It's a journal for a week.
Jot down when your body feels off.
Now you can use one of my publications.
It's called the Mood Tracker Journal, and it's available from
me directly at Social Work Coaching Hub, or you can go
direct to Amazon. And it's a way of you
documenting how you're feeling, how your body's feeling.
Because over time, when you look back over this journal, you
might notice patterns. Maybe your headaches spike after
certain meetings, or your back pain worsens after long periods
at your desk. Recognizing these activation
points in these triggers can help you address some of the
root causes of stress. We don't want to just skim the
cream off the coffee. We want to make sure that we've
got a very good idea of the roasting bean that makes the
coffee, IE the stress the root cause of that stress.
And #3 it might be you have to engage your body now.
Movement is medicine and moving your body more, particularly in
the age where we are working from home more, will really help
you get rid of some of that energy, some of that vicarious
trauma that's been thrown at you throughout the day, right?
So it may be you look at deep breathing exercises and I can
recommend a called Balance. I think you have the first year
free. If you're a Christian, you can
use the app Abide. Again, I think you have some
meditations on there free. Whether it's joining the gym,
stretching, dancing, walking in nature or anything that moves
your body. We all know that it's good for
us. We all know it can be difficult
to do that, particularly in the winter months, but you've got to
find something that works for you because movement is medicine
and it's certainly going to help with some of that stress relief.
So consider how you're going to integrate that into your week.
Now we have a couple of questions this week.
I'm going to focus on one. If we have time for the other
one, I will. This has come from Will, who is
listening from London. So hi Will, thank you for your
question. And if you want to send in
questions to me, you can info@socialworkcoachinghub.com.
I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear your journeys
and please do like this podcast, share this podcast and write a
review. If you're listening on Apple, it
goes a long way. So Will asks, I'm always on the
go and feel guilty if I stop. How do I give myself permission
to rest? That word, the P word
permission. Let's think of it like this.
You are not giving yourself permission to rest.
You're not. You're not giving yourself
permission to rest at all. You are giving yourself
permission to be on the go, and that's because somewhere it is
serving you more than rest. There's a message that's been
given to the neurons in your brain that you are being served
more or better than resting. So we need to reframe what rest
is actually going to give to you in order for you to think of
rest in a different way. So we have to reframe that,
perhaps thinking of it as a necessity and not a luxury.
And perhaps we could use an analogy of you charging your
phone. We all charge our phones, right?
Every single night we charge our phones.
We make sure we've got our plugs and we've got our leads.
We put them in our car with us. We put them in our bags, our
handbags, they go everywhere with us, right, Because our
phone needs the juice. You need the exact same thing.
If you don't take time to recharge, you're simply going to
run out. It is that simple.
That's the only direction of travel.
If you don't take the time to rest and you won't be able to
function effectively and you'll start neglecting yourself and
eventually you'll you'll be moving towards exhaustion and
burnout. So I want you to start small,
Will. I want you to schedule 10
minutes of uninterrupted downtown, downtown downtime.
And I want you to do that at least three times a week, three
times a week, and gradually build from there.
Decide what you're going to do in that 10 minutes.
Now, it could be something that brings you absolute joy
listening to your favorite songs, painting, dancing,
whatever it may be. You've got to decide what that
is. And if you want a resource to
help you, if you go to socialworkcoachinghub.com/books,
you can get a copy of my book, The Self-care Journal for Social
Workers, and that's going to help.
It gives you great ideas for downtime and rest, and it really
helps you focus on giving yourself the permission to rest
and keep yourself accountable to that.
The book recommendation for this episode, as I've mentioned, I
highly recommend that something I refer to in my coaching
sessions is The Body Keep Score by Doctor Bessel Van the Coke.
Now the book explains how stress and trauma are stored in the
body. Do what I said, it's stored in
the body. It's not stored in the mind,
it's in the body. So whether you think you're fine
or not, it's the body that will really tell the story.
And it offers insight into healing and self-awareness.
And if you'd like to bring training to your local authority
or to your organization, Ioffer trauma informed self-care
workshops and training. And I've delivered this to the
ambulance service, to trade unions, to social work
organisations. And essentially it teaches you
to consider the trauma that you are exposed to in the workplace
and create a self-care plan according to how you're
responding to that trauma. So you walk out out with a
trauma informed well-being plan. So you can go to
socialworkcoachinghub.com/speaker or if you'd like me to be a
speaker for your event, you can go to
socialworkcoachinghub.com/speaker or just reach out to me on
Instagram and LinkedIn under my name, Lisa Ann Edwards, which is
LESIN. Let's dive into the three main
takeaways from this podcast episode #1 stress isn't just in
your head. Your body holds on to it as
well. It will tell your story.
If you do not do right by your body, eventually it's going to
show up in a different way #2 tuning into your body signals
can help you prevent burnout and take proactive steps toward
Wellness. I recommended my journal, the
Mood Tracker Journal, where you can just track how you're
feeling, track the stress points, and then that puts you
in a better position to create solutions.
I also mentioned the diary. Make sure you've planned your
diary for the rest of the year, even if it's just one day off.
Create those boundaries now and then you're able to book in,
say, a massage or a pedicure, whatever it may be, way ahead of
time, and that helps you focus and keep in mind yourself.
Care #3 Rest is not a reward, it's a necessity. self-care is
not selfish, it's a necessity. Listen to your body, it's always
speaking to you. So to help you start tuning into
your body, I want you to download the body stress
checking guide from the show notes.
It includes prompts and techniques to help you identify
stress and perhaps integrate some exercise into yourself.
Care, perhaps daily if we can manage it as social workers.
I know it feels like a lot if we say daily, right?
So let's just go with what you feel is realistic.
So if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share it with
your colleagues, and let's create a culture in social work
that values our well-being as much as we are valuing others.
So thank you for tuning in to the number one personal
development podcast for social workers.
Remember, thriving in social work starts with you.
If you're ready to level up your career, visit
socialworkcoachinghub.com for more tools and resources.
Until next time, keep growing, keep thriving, and God bless.