Dear Social worker, Welcome to the world #1 Personal
Development podcast for social workers.
I can't solve your caseload, but I can help you level up your
mindset, mental health and resilience, real talk, practical
tools, and empowering growth. Because thriving in social work
starts with you. Settle in.
Make yourself at home. You're exactly where you need to
be. Let's talk.
We are back. We've had an extended summer
break. Thank you for your patience.
But we are back. And today's episode is entitled
Self Refer Yourself. Yeah, I'm saying it like it is
self refer yourself, addressing mental health in social work,
because we know that as social workers, we give way more than
what we get back sometimes. And as a result of that, we're
the ones left running on empty. In this episode, we'll dive deep
into three critical mental health challenges that you as
social workers face, including denial of personal needs,
overriding feelings and bodily cues, and long lasting impact of
trauma. We know as professionals in this
field, we prioritise others over ourselves and that can lead to
burnout and emotional exhaustion.
And today we're going to explore how recognising these
challenges, these issues and committing to personal
development, like being here every week, can not only enhance
your well-being, but improve the quality of the care that you
provide to others. Getting straight into this
number one is the denial of personal needs.
I've definitely done this. If you don't know my story, let
me remind you. Let me remind you I have been
burnt out several times. I've attempted to step away from
social work several times and I've tried my very best each
time I go back. Not to deny my personal needs,
but the truth is I simply did not have the right boundaries in
order to look after myself properly and to deal with the
trauma that I was being exposed to every day in social work.
It's all good and well having boundaries in other areas of
your life, but having boundaries for yourself, your health, and
your well-being is also paramount.
I can't stress that enough. So my first question to you is,
what are your boundaries for maintaining good well-being?
How often do you keep to those boundaries?
How often are those boundaries challenged or you're put in a
position of compromise? Now I know the everyday work of
social work creates high pace stress, high cortisol levels,
snacking of biscuits. Now that's my confession, not
yours. But essentially, as we are
natural caregivers, it often leads to denying your own needs
because your number one focus is caring for someone else, fixing,
changing, problem solving, firefighting.
So whether it's pushing through with long hours or not, taking
breaks or avoiding seeking help, often many social workers
struggle with self-care. I got to a point where I didn't
even know what I could do for fun anymore.
I literally had to write a list and go, what do I enjoy?
I was so disconnected with my own self, with my own body, that
I wasn't sure what I wanted to do to relax anymore.
And although I've been out of frontline practice for nearly
two years now with the Social Work Coaching Hub, as you know,
which offers coaching resources, this podcast and events, and
we're expanding. If you're thinking about
starting a business, check out the show notes.
I've got some new training coming up for that.
But it's key to recognise the patterns of this denial of
personal needs. The only time I recognise the
pattern pattern is when I stepped out of social work and I
was off with work stress. You realise it on your way to
that point, but often it's too late.
And what I want to invite you to consider here is how the job
naturally, naturally puts you in a position where prioritising
yourself, care is a necessity. This isn't something you can put
last. It isn't something that you can
deny because the denial can lead to feelings of resentment and
exhaustion and ultimately burnout.
And I've experienced that multiple times because my focus
was just making sure I got my working on time.
I was doing the best for the children and families and I was
keeping the people that were under my watch, so to speak,
safe. And that required more of me.
But whilst that required more of me, on the other hand, I was
denying some of my personal needs.
I'm waiting too long to prioritize them.
So the importance of self-awareness, knowing
yourself, knowing the way your mind and your body works is
going to help you acknowledge your personal needs because it's
crucial for the long term sustainability in the profession
#2 overriding feelings and body signals.
I talked about how this happened for me, but I'll give you
another example of the biscuit tin.
If someone came in the office with a biscuit tin, those
biscuits are gone like that, right?
Those cakes are gone like that. And often it's a response to
stress. So all of us Sydney Saphis were
denying the feeling of stress and instead of taking 10 minutes
away from the desk, we would stuff our faces with biscuits
and cakes or whatever was on the snack table, right?
Override the feeling of stress or a response to trauma and feed
it with something else. So in the rush to meet deadlines
and support children and families, those with mental
health, whatever group you're working with, children or
families, we as social workers can often override our own
emotions and physical signals and ignoring stress, anxiety or
even physical pain, it can become second nature.
This powering through approach, it comes at a high cost, let me
tell you. Even though I step back from
social work frontline practice for the past two years, I am
still on my journey of lowering stress levels.
Although my coaching business is full time, I speak for different
companies. Ioffer training, I do online
training, online coaching, I host events, there's an array of
different things that make up the social work coaching hub and
this is what I do everyday full time now.
But what I have noticed is sometimes my to do lists are a
little bit longer than they should be.
And I was having a conversation with someone the other day and I
was thinking about am I recreating the level of stress
that I was on there when I was in front line practice.
It's taken time. I remember when I first stepped
back, it really took time to calm down what I describe as
coming down often high, that I didn't have to wake up and go to
work for a certain time. I could choose the hours in
which I start my coaching sessions.
I can choose if I want to travel to London or travel abroad to do
a public speaking engagement or host a workshop.
But often I would find myself creating a space where I can't
say the same level of stress because obviously I'm not in a
place where I'm offering a crisis intervention service.
But I found some similarities between the stress I was under
when I was in practice to the stress that I was arguably
creating whilst running my own business.
Now we know that comes with its own stresses, absolutely no
denying that. But I was noticing some patterns
and I'm still working on eradicating some of those
patterns where that ignoring stress and ignoring high levels
of or high volume of work becoming second nature.
And the fact that I'm aware of it in a space where I'm not in
frontline practice demonstrates to me there is some growth
there. I do.
I would like to make some more progress, but the awareness is
the place where it starts. So examining how the habit of
being disconnected from your well-being and looking at
strategies to tune back into your emotions and your body will
pay off for you way more than the high cost of powering
through. I just mentioned that I am going
to be launching a social care business course.
I'm so excited because I get asked lots of questions about my
exit plan. How did you do it?
Why did you do it? How have you started your
business? How are you still in business?
So I will help you to start, structure and showcase your
business offer. If you're thinking about exiting
social work or it may be that you want to do it as a side
hustle. I started as a coach as a side
hustle. I was coaching in my lunch hours
and after work four years before I decided to take the leap and
step into full time entrepreneurial mode.
So if you want to learn how to do that, the link will be in the
show notes to join the wait list.
By the time this airs, it might actually be out.
I need to think of the the time for that.
But either way, it'll either be a wait list or you can access
that course straight away. And by joining that course you
also join a thriving community of social care business owners
wanting to do the same thing. Networking is a massive part of
social care business and it's important that you are
connected. If you're interested in that, go
straight to the show notes as I lead you straight into #3 trauma
and its lingering effects. We've talked about trauma many
times over the past year or so, but this is not just workplace
trauma. This is also trauma you've
experienced yourself. Everyone has some form of trauma
they've experienced in their life, and when you go into a
profession where workplace trauma, you could argue is the
norm because you're exposed to it, you've then got the primary
trauma and then you've got the vicarious secondary trauma
through the vulnerable communities you are serving.
When that is left unaddressed, it can resurface in damaging
ways and it can show up in your personal life and it can show up
in your professional life. It may show up in your
professional life, for example, by procrastinating, holding
yourself back, not being able to build rapport or connect with
your vulnerable communities in your personal life.
It can show up in many ways in the relationships that you have,
the way that you communicate, the way that you attach or
detach as the case may be. So how trauma manifests, it's
important knowing that that what the consequence could be and a
lot of you are working with the consequences of unprocessed
trauma. You'd now you understand the
importance of processing it and how investing in your personal
development, whether it's through this podcast, whether
it's through counselling, coaching, therapy, art therapy,
whatever it may be, whatever suits you.
But investing in your personal development can help you build
emotional resilience and support long term mental health.
You're in a profession where trauma occurs on an everyday
basis. You have got to decide how you
are going to protect yourself and your well-being whilst you
are still helping others. So the key takeaways here is
recognising and addressing personal needs.
It's not selfish, it's essential and it's essential for you as a
social worker to thrive. Overriding feelings and body
signals can lead to disconnection and burnout.
I've been there, it's not a great place to be.
You've got an opportunity to prevent it, just like we do
preventative measures when we work with our children and
families. You've got an opportunity to do
that for yourself. It's vital to listen to your
feelings and your body signals and most importantly, respond to
them #3 we know that trauma, both direct and vicarious, is a
reality in social work, so processing it through personal
development is key to your healing, key to your growth, key
to sustainability and social work, key to your mental health.
I cannot stress that enough. Invest in coaching.
Book a free consultation with me.
Invest in counselling. If you know there's something in
your past that's still following you now, which you feel is a
wait for you. Invest in art therapy.
You have to take responsibility for your own well-being.
The employer can only do so much and there are offers there that
I would encourage you to access and where you feel comfortable,
access those services in a way that serves you.
Just cherry pick what's going to suit you, but do something.
You're exposed to it every day. Let's not normalize that.
So I want to know, send me an
Instagram message at Dear Social Worker Podcast, send me a
LinkedIn message, Lisa Anne Edwards, and send me an e-mail
info@socialworkcoachinghub.com. I want to know what stands out
for you from this particular episode.
And if you have any questions for me, I'll be more than happy
to answer them here on this podcast.
So thank you for listening to the world #1 Personal
Development Podcast for Social workers.
You've made yourself at home. You're exactly where you need to
be. We've talked, we've listened,
we've reflected. Have a blessed week.