With tech layoffs and job offers being rescinded, all against the backdrop of an impending recession and a never-ending pandemic, career anxiety is at an all-time high. We're talking all about professional anxiety, career fear, and work worry with Clinical Psychologist, Author, and Content Creator Dr. Jessica Borushok, Ph.D., C.Psych. Dr. Jessica helps busy minds get unstuck, out of their own way, and back to their best selves. Through one-on-one work in private practice and her popular course, Busy Mind Reboot: 30 Days to Your Best Self, Dr. Jessica has helped hundreds of productive procrastinators, overwhelmed high-achievers, recovering perfectionists, and self-proclaimed "control freaks" transform their relationship with their thoughts and optimize their world. As an award-winning author and recognized expert in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dr. Jessica has co-authored numerous books and self-growth tools, including The ACT Deck. She has been featured in The List TV, Art of Charm Podcast, Thrive Global, and The Good Men Project. Follow Dr. Jessica at any one of the links below. Therapy: https://www.busymindreboot.com Website: https://www.busymindpsychologist.com instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theacttherapist tiktok: @theacttherapist youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU32xZFYYe0D2CQD9g4AawA
Bryetta Calloway:
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to I've Been Thinking, with your host and digital best friend Bryetta. I am so thrilled to be bringing you another episode. One of my favorite things to do is to have conversations with folks who are willing to answer all of my incessant questions about all of the things that I am thinking about. Selfishly, a lot of these episodes are for me, but then hopefully they provide value for folks who are listening. If you listen to last season of the podcast, we had Dr. Jessica Borushok on last season, and I am a veracious consumer of her content. I think she's amazing. A lot of what she focuses on is so salient to me.
Bryetta Calloway:
You are a clinical psychologist. The Busy Mind is really the thing that caught me when I first discovered you on social, because I loved the way this was phrased, about helping busy minds get unstuck out of their own way and back to their best selves. I love the fact that you really do seem to focus on, and the way that I saw it framed in the language were like productive, procrastinators, overwhelmed, high achievers, recovering perfectionists, and self-proclaimed control freaks, which the translation of that is Bryetta. That's the translation for that. You really help folks transform their relationship with their thoughts and optimize their world.
Bryetta Calloway:
Yeah, you do so many great things. I know that you're an award-winning author and that you've also co-authored numerous books. You have a lot of wonderful self-growth tools that I'll let you tell us more about, but Dr. Jessica, super thrilled to have you back on the podcast. How are you?
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Oh, Bryetta, it's so nice to see you again. I feel like we can all relate to being a little bit more isolated in the last couple of years. It's always nice to see a friendly face. I'm doing really well. I have my private practice in California, which is going great. I've been dipping my toe into social media a little bit. In addition to having an Instagram account, now I'm on TikTok, which is a little bit scary given that I'm in my thirties, but has been a lot of fun, and I started a YouTube channel. If anyone wants to find me, they're all under the ACT Therapist. ACT is just A-C-T Therapist. I've been having fun making videos and trying to take good science backed mental health information to the masses.
Bryetta Calloway:
I love that so much. I do appreciate the fact that there are so many different ways to get information to folks these days. Experimenting with all of those is really wonderful. I also spend way too much time on TikTok for someone who is at my age and stage in life, I believe, but I've chosen to not have judgment about that and just say like, "Nope, I'm embracing, I'm embracing the TikTok revolution."
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Yeah, I have learned a lot of things about a lot of very specific and random niches on TikTok.
Bryetta Calloway:
Same, same, same, same. Well, you mentioned it, it has been a while since you and I chatted. I was thinking about this in preparation for this conversation. The last time we spoke, COVID and where we were in the pandemic was just becoming the reality of the future. We were still very much so in the stage of like, how long is this going to last?
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
More than two weeks, but now it's better. It's like, "Oh, gosh, is there an end? What's going to happen next?"
Bryetta Calloway:
That's exactly right. It's interesting to me that there's been so much change that's happened over the last few years, that every time I stop to think about how folks are reacting to that, it always makes me want to reach out to someone like you, to gut check some of the assumptions that I may be making and really the reason, and I mentioned this to you in our brief prep for this. One of the reasons that I wanted to reach out to you is similarly to the last time we spoke, it's like you have COVID looming in the background. Then, you add on top of that other big uncertainties. For me, I've been really noticing in my network, specifically professional networks, there's been a ton of layoffs that have happened in the tech industry.
Bryetta Calloway:
Job offers have been rescinded. People are really struggling and the recession is looming in the background. It makes me want to try to be helpful and useful to people. But everything that I say is going to be a Bryetta assumption and not science backed and based. I was like, "Let me find an expert who can help us talk about this." I'm thrilled to have you come on the podcast so we can chat a little bit more about it.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Oh, I'm excited. I just like nerding out about all of this stuff. Even being a psychologist, being a therapist, this stuff still affects me too. It's not that, "Oh, once we have the understanding and information, nothing ever bothers us again." I just have a bit more, I think, awareness of what's going on and then I can provide tools for what do we actually need to be focusing on and what are the things that really work?
Bryetta Calloway:
I love that you said that because it is something that I think we all need to calibrate, because it is something that affects all of us, and we're all struggling or working through all of the things. But the very first question that I wanted to ask you, because I do think it's important to frame this because I do think that simultaneously with the last two years of dealing with the global pandemic, there's been a lot of focus around mental health. I think because more people are struggling or at least putting language to that. We hear terms that are just thrown out there. Everybody's like, "I have anxiety." Or, "I'm feeling anxious." I'm guilty of saying those words, but I'm curious from your perspective and your expertise, what actually is the clinical definition of anxiety?
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Absolutely. I love this because I have ... one of my biggest pet peeves is people who throw out like, "I'm so depressed," when they mean sad. It is just like a quick tangent here. When we use those words in their inappropriate ways, we normalize the language, which seems super great. But then when someone is actually struggling, we tend to dismiss them a little bit more because it sounds pretty normal. This happens with anxiety a lot too. Just to start off with, anxiety is not a diagnosis. Now, there are different types of anxiety disorders. That's what it's called in our diagnostic manual, the DSM five. This could be generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety, these types of phobias.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
You're afraid of birds or snakes or something like that. Really, what anxiety is is it is a full emotional, physical, and mental distress. People experience anxiety when they feel stuck or trapped. When they're hyper focused on either the what ifs of the future or reviewing things that have happened in the past. Anxiety can present in a couple of different ways. Sometimes it's just the feeling of being anxious, so this might be jumpy, on edge, frazzled, tensed. There might be a physical experience. You might find yourself tapping your foot often and being very fidgety. You might experience your heart fluttering really hard in your chest or feeling like you can't breathe, or like someone's got their hand around your throat.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Some people describe feeling like they got like an egg caught in the base of their throat, like they can swallow and they can breathe, but it just feels a little bit off. A lot of people experience GI distress. A lot of kids, for example, who are afraid to go to school, they can't describe what they're feeling, so there's like, they have a tummy ache. Adults today, we end up having a lot of GI distress in terms of constipation or cramping or all of those types of things that sometimes we feel uncomfortable talking about, but it is pretty normal. Then, you have the thoughts. These thoughts can be things like worry and rumination.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
We're just concerned about either a specific situation, like an upcoming job interview or how we're going to pay our mortgage, or whether we're ever going to be able to buy a house, or it can be concerns about basically just everything. Everything feels overwhelming. Our mind is constantly jumping to all the what ifs, trying to basically plan everything so that we can be completely prepared, because when it comes to anxiety, we really don't like uncertainty or feeling startled in any kind of way. It feels wildly out of control, which frankly feels a bit scary.
Bryetta Calloway:
I love so much of what you said, because you did touch on some of the things that I often think about because there is the, I guess, and you'll help me if I'm saying this incorrectly, but there's the part that happens in the brain with the thoughts and the fears. You mentioned the rumination or all of that stuff happen. Then, there's the stuff that happens in the body, that feeling. Sometimes you experience one and not the other. For me, I know that whenever I'm feeling anxious, I start to do this with my hands. I can feel myself trying to unclench my hands. That's always a sign to me to pay attention to, "Am I breathing deeply? What's actually sparking this sensation?"
Bryetta Calloway:
I guess my question is, does someone have to actually be "diagnosed" with anxiety? But I guess you said it's not a diagnosis, so someone can be experiencing anxiety without them having gone to a therapist, then they say, you have anxiety.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Absolutely. Someone can feel anxious. Right? That's just the word, like I feel anxious. The more specific that you can get about it, I'm feeling really tense or I'm feeling really jittery, the better you're able to communicate. One of the actual issues in therapy is a lot of times people label things as anxiety, all capital letters. Then, they become afraid of that because anxiety is bad, even though anxiety can tell us important information. Sometimes though it just gets turned up to an 11 and then we're no longer able to listen to the signals or the signals it's telling us aren't helpful anymore. But for example, anxiety tells us about what's important to us.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
If we're worried about this promotion, well, it tells us that our career or our financial stability is important to us. Anxiety is not bad and we all feel some level of anxiousness throughout our life. It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with us. In fact, it is incredibly normal.
Bryetta Calloway:
That's so helpful because I do think that it is one of those things where big feelings we tend to want to demonize. You get afraid of having that big surge of feelings, but I love what you're saying, which is, it's actually a way for you to pay attention to, like, "This actually matters to me, or this is something that's important." Or, even better, what's hiding underneath the anxiety, which is one of the things that I'm always trying to do, and trying to ask myself, like, what's the emotion behind the emotion? Is it the fear that's triggering that sense of anxiousness or something else?
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Of course, of course, if we look at, let's say even just anxiety disorders, what often happens is that either someone's default. Everyone has a certain kind of default. The folks who tend to really struggle with anxiety are the folks who are great at analyzing, planning, all of that future organized type of stuff. Because every once in a while you encounter a situation that is out of your control. You encounter an environment, like a pandemic, with a lot of uncertainty. Suddenly, your primary way of coping and dealing with something such as coming up with a plan, A, B, C, D, and E, thinking through all the scenarios, creating a checklist, all of that kind of stuff, doesn't help anymore.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
You're just feeling really scared and alone and not sure what to do. Sometimes our defaults just aren't a good strength for the situation, but we still default to them. That's where we get stuck in that rumination, where we're trying to analyze and plan in a scenario where that's not actually what's useful in this moment. Then, on the other hand, we get into a situation where sometimes maybe we've had a really scary event or our body just misfires. We end up having, let's say, a panic attack. Well, our mind is trying to protect us and figure out why that happened. Sometimes it gets a little overeager and it's just running around ringing alarm bells when really there's nothing to be afraid of.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Therapy can help with both of those types of things to just learn like, "Oh, we're not going to listen to those alarm bells. That's a false alarm." And, "Okay, how do we develop some different skills?" Because what you normally do isn't working right now.
Bryetta Calloway:
Well, and I think the reason why this is so important as the foundation for what I wanted us to chat about is because when I think about all of the people that I know or even what I'm seeing in social media, et cetera, about all these folks who are experiencing layoffs or folks who are now faced with searching for a new job or they thought they found the new job and now that's not what's actually happening. Then, you're faced with this idea of like, "Now, I need to do something and doing something feels really hard when I'm feeling all of these feelings." I know that so much of what you focus on is about focusing your busy mind.
Bryetta Calloway:
I'm curious, what are some of the ways that someone can actually think their best thoughts or actually use their brain to support the things that they need to do while also dealing with like, I'm feeling scared, I'm feeling anxious, all of this feels super uncertain, and I've got to have ... I have three job interviews coming up or I need to be on my best.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Life doesn't stop.
Bryetta Calloway:
Right.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
[inaudible 00:15:44] go with it. The first thing is just notice when you're stressed what you tend to do. Most people, when they're feeling something uncomfortable, we try to escape. Some people escape by overworking. These are the workaholics who are going to have a heart attack at 40, because they're just go, go, go, go, go, and stopping feels really uncomfortable. Other people totally check out, that these, we might take a nap. We might watch Netflix. We might do anything possible except for the thing that we should be working on. Then, some of us get really stuck in our head. If you looked at us, we might not be doing anything. We were just staring off into space.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
But our mind is just spinning and spinning and spinning, trying to problem solve our way out of here. We can't change patterns that we don't know are happening. The first step is just understanding, when you get overwhelmed, when you get stressed, what do you tend to do in response? Know that that's a perfectly normal reaction to something really uncomfortable. If we can identify that, so whether we're doing something in the world or we're doing something in our head, then the next step is asking yourself, how is that working for you? We do it because people are like, "Oh, no, it's horrible. It doesn't help me at all." But you wouldn't keep doing it if that were the case.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
You're doing it because just like eating dessert before having dinner, it's something that makes you really happy or it gives you a sense of relief or escapism that just allows you to put your hands over your ears and shut the world out for a little bit. Asking yourself, how is this working in the short term? Usually, it's helping to some extent. Then, how is this helping me move forward in the long term? Because, Bryetta, you said it perfectly, we still got the three job interviews to prepare for. We still have maybe kids or a partner or I got my dog sleeping over here in the corner. We have responsibilities that still need to be met.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
If we can really take a pause and acknowledge, what I'm doing isn't helping me. It feels like if I let go of this, I'm just going to crumble or dissolve into a puddle or something, like this feels like the only thing that's keeping me in place. But in reality, it's keeping us stuck in this pattern of being overwhelmed, of being scared. If we can notice where our mind goes and then notice that, "Hey, it's not really helping us in the long term." Then, we become a little bit more willing to do things that feel a little scary. Unfortunately, I don't have a magic wand to just wave and make all the worries go away and end crime and poverty, issues with the criminal justice system.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
I do not have those magical powers. The truth is that sometimes those thoughts are going to show up. Frankly, as I said before, it's appropriate to be stressed out about losing a job. It's appropriate to be stressed out about potentially moving because you can't afford a house in this neighborhood anymore, or you can't send your kids to this school anymore, and so now you're looking for another job because you need to move out of town. You're supposed to be stressed or anxious in that environment. That's appropriate. What we don't want to do is just stay stuck focusing on it. The final piece that we want to practice is notice when your mind is going somewhere else.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Whether it's jump into the future or the past, or whether you're trying to check out by watching Netflix or doing tasks that don't need to be done. Then, pause in that moment and ask yourself, what is one thing I can do in this moment here now that can move me a little bit further towards what I'm working towards? Now, that may be something very tightly directly connected to employment. That might be having someone look over your resume. That might be, I don't know, creating a post on LinkedIn. If that's where you're networking from. Looking for a job search or sending out or following up on an interview. But it may also be there opportunities where you're like, I sent on all the interviews, my resume's top notch.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
I have a friend who's reaching out to this other person about a job. I got no more moves. Well, in that case, take care of yourself. Do your laundry. Go for a walk outside. Drink some water. Laugh with a friend, even if it's on the phone or on video chat or something like that. In that moment, take some steps that are genuinely going to refill your cup so that you have the energy when it's time to hit the road again and really push hard on your career that you have the bandwidth to do it.
Bryetta Calloway:
There's so much good stuff in what you said. I love that there's some actual, actionable things that you mentioned. I do love what you said, because there is sometimes that fear that you have of like, well, I've done all the things. Like, I feel like I've done everything that I know how to do. For people like myself who do have a busy mind and are constantly trying to figure out like, what's the next thing to do in that? I love that your suggestion is like, okay, the next thing you can add to the list is have you done all the things to take care of yourself in that? You've done all the other things, and what I love about that is because it works with your nature and not against it. I'm never going to easily respond to someone who's like, don't add something to your checklist. I'm like, that's not helpful for me.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
I'm not going to do that. I'm just telling you right now. I'm not going to do that.
Bryetta Calloway:
That's exactly right. I have said that to people, I'm like, "I'm sure what you're saying is really great. I can't hear that because that actually feels more scary to me than anything else." I love the idea that I can add something to my checklist, but it's like the other things to do. I think that's super helpful.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
For some people, it's sitting down and watching a movie, but for some other people, that feels like torture. I have clients who are like, "I can't sit for that long period of time." I'm like, "Cool. Vacuum, go for a walk with a friend, so you're doing some socializing, getting some sun, moving your body a little bit." There are things that you can do that fit in that are just easier and at ease with how you naturally are, but are keeping you moving forward rather than keeping you stuck in this avoidance escape, I'm going to pretend that life isn't happening right now cycle.
Bryetta Calloway:
Yeah. That's so good, because I do think that one of the things that I'm often trying to figure out, I'm someone who's always trying to reverse engineer the problem so I can be one step ahead of it, which might be causing some of the cyclical nature of how I deal with change. But I do think about, is there a way to prevent fixating and ruminating on things? Is there a trigger or a switch that you can flip that will stop you from getting to that place?
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Oh, man. If there was, I'd be so wealthy. Here's the thing. Our mind is a threat detection system, and it doesn't find a lot of value in being present when there is no threat. It doesn't care that you're just like hanging out on the couch with your dog answering emails. That's not useful to it. Your mind is always going to default to either reviewing things in the past to find out how you messed up then and how you won't mess up in the future, or jumping to the future to anticipate any problems that might arise. Again, these are not bad behaviors or things that we should stop doing always.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
They're very useful in certain situations. They allow us to learn from other people and avoid potential catastrophes in the future. But what it means is that our mind is not trained to just be. Really, that switch is that practice of saying, "Oh, my mind went somewhere else. I'm going to bring it back here for three breaths. Oh, my mind went somewhere else. I'm going to take one bite of my food and enjoy it." I don't mean like I take a bite and I put the fork down and I chew it 30 times. Just taste your food, smell your food. It's a good test for if you have COVID, and just practicing being here and experiencing your full experience.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
It is my belief that the reason we always say time's moving by so quickly these days, is because as we get older, we have more responsibilities, more things that we're worried about. Our mind is constantly time hopping to the next thing instead of being in this moment. Try practicing it with very mild or neutral experiences. You're dropping your kid off from work. You are answering a boring email, and you can do without thinking. On your commute, when you're taking a shower, just pause and notice all of the sensations you're experiencing, the things you can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell.
Bryetta Calloway:
What to me feels really important about what you said is this idea of like, again, not making a feeling bad, right? Just understanding that the brain is doing what it's supposed to be doing, which in and of itself, and I think this is, I don't know the clinical perspective around this, but I know for me worrying about worrying triggers worry.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Exactly.
Bryetta Calloway:
I'm like, "God, I don't want to worry about this." Then, I start worrying about the worry.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
My favorite example that everyone knows is, if you feel like you can't fall asleep, the fastest way to wake yourself up is to worry that you're not going to sleep that night, and to worry about not being able to fall asleep, it's immediately activating. Honestly, that's a lot of what anxiety is. I like to divide it up between pain and suffering. We all experience pain in our life. We're going to be stressed and sad. We're going to grieve over the loss of someone. We're going to be angry when someone violates our boundaries. We're going to be overwhelmed when we finished our work and miraculously, now we have someone else's work to do.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
We're going to feel all of those things. But what happens is when we take a moment, like you mentioned, you like to plan and think ahead and be prepared. When you reach into the future and identify the five top most likely stressors that happen, and then you worry about them, what you're doing is you're grabbing worry that you're going to experience in the future. Pulling it into the present moment and just holding onto it until that future happens or until you realize it doesn't happen because you have to pick one of the five pathways, and that's where suffering comes from.
Bryetta Calloway:
Yes.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
It's the worry about the future pain that you might experience. What happens in panic attacks often is someone has a panic attack, it's a very scary experience. I have friends who are psychologists who have gone to the hospital convinced they were having heart attacks, and they were having a panic attack. It's a terrifying experience. The next time their body gives them any kind of signal that they're having a panic attack, their mind goes, "Oh, no, oh no, we're going to have a panic attack. I can't handle this. This is too much." They ramp themselves up and ends up creating the panic attack in themselves.
Bryetta Calloway:
The thing that feels so important to highlight about this is this idea, as you mentioned, the difference between pain and suffering, because this is, I think, the space where I wanted to provide value to people in the community, or friends, colleagues, or just people that I see. It's like, the pain of losing your job and a layoff is like a momentary thing that you obviously have a natural reaction to. It's scary. It's stressful, but the decision to preempt the suffering part of it feels hard, I think, for people to even imagine because, and I know for me, I always say like, "I'm someone who has secondhand worry and I like to worry in advance." Then, I get that secondhand worry where I'm seeing people talk about like, "I don't know what this means for X, or this makes me really worried about that."
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Do you know why you do that? It's because, so I would bet a million dollars that I don't have, on the idea that you really struggle with uncertainty.
Bryetta Calloway:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
When there's not something actionable that you can do when you're startled or surprised by something, particularly something that you view as negative or bad, it is excruciating.
Bryetta Calloway:
Yes.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
The way that you try to avoid future you experiencing pain is by now you working out all the little plans. Look, sometimes this is helpful. If someone tells you like, "Hey, the airport was super chaotic. I'd get there a little bit early." You taking the time to figure out when you're going to get to the airport, helpful. If you hear from a colleague like, "Hey, they're doing another round of layoffs." You take a moment and go like, "All right, I'm going to spend some time today working on my resume. I'm going to start sending out some fillers just in case I'm one of the ones who's cut." That is useful. But if we just sit there and we go, "Oh, my God, what if I get laid off?"
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
You just start imagining, like, "I'm going to lose my house. My girlfriend's going to break up with me. I have to pay off this car that I just bought. What if I have to go back into this field that I hate, or I have to take a job at this company that I swore I would never go back to, but they probably take me back?" That is utterly useless. All you're doing is creating chaos and pain in your life. It can be helpful to plan for the future, but you have to have two criteria. One is you have to ask yourself what new information do I have? If you are just repeating the same plan over and over and over again, you are wasting your time and causing yourself stress. Then, the second is, is this new information significant enough that it is going to change the plan outcome that I have?
Bryetta Calloway:
Oh, that's good.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Maybe you hear something, but you're still going to do the same thing at the end. You don't need to review all the tiny steps to do that. Nine times out of 10, it's the latter, where we're just reviewing stuff over in our head to make us feel like we have a plan. It's this pretend feeling that we're in control, but it's utterly useless and not helpful.
Bryetta Calloway:
No, that is so, it's so true and it's actually really helpful to hear, because I do think that part of what feels so big and it feels like the big thing to surmount when you're navigating a period of time, where you feel unsure, especially with your career, which so many people, so much of their security is based upon, what do I do and how does that funnel or feed my life, my dreams, my security? For that, in any way, to be challenged feels really scary. But I think that is the question, which is, this is one of the big philosophical questions, but why does that trigger so much fear? When you hear about layoffs or you hear about a recession, or you hear all of these things, why does that spark so much fear in people?
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Part of it is the unknown. There's that phrase like, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know, because even if you're in a not great work environment, let's say, or you're getting underpaid or your boss sucks, at least you know what to expect. There's this fear that if I go into another environment, it could be great, but it could also be terrible. We hate that sensation of not knowing. It's a very primitive reaction, because if we think about it from our ancestors or our nomadic tribes and things like that, if you're sitting there and you're going, is that a lion, and you are wrong, then you don't get to see tomorrow.
Bryetta Calloway:
Right.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Those folks who are like, "Ah, it's probably not a lion, we're probably just fine." Their ancestors aren't here.
Bryetta Calloway:
That's exactly right. Those people were killed off.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
We've been trained over generations and generations to be cautious, to want to have as many factors known as possible, because historically the unknown is dangerous. Now, for someone who is employed, maybe you're in a larger area, you'll be able to get some type of job or you have some type of money saved up. You probably won't end up without a home. Our mind can go to some really dark places, and you do hear really horrible stories, but the way that you can buffer against that a little bit is when you're in a really good spot, start planning. Have an emergency fund. Feel like you're saving money in your 401k, or however you want to invest for your future.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
So that if you do hit rough spots, you have a little bit of a buffer. It's also one of the reasons, and we don't like thinking about it this way, and I don't mean to say we're using people, but it's one of the reasons having a community, whether that's the family you were born with, the family you create, friends, co-workers, old colleagues that you still network with, your neighbors. Having those people around you help to create a little bit of buffer for when things go wrong.
Bryetta Calloway:
That's so true. I do think that that's one of the big lessons to take away from even the last several years. There are so many people, and we all know this to be true, that there has been a need to look into your community of choice or design and say like, "I actually need help with something." Having that community has been the first line of defense against all of the other things that do feel out of your control.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
The hard piece is that, at least here in the US, there's very much this belief about pick yourself up from your bootstraps and work hard. It's this like kind of puritan mindset that's been baked into the dominant culture of our society. Corporations have reinforced it, but it's this idea of independence. Look, I'm not hating on independence. I'm a pretty independent person, but the idea, what it does is it creates shame, shame around asking for help. Everyone needs help. We are pack animals. We are not the lone wolf no matter what you think. We need other people. We need a community to get a job and build a house and raise kids and all of these types of things.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
One of the biggest barriers when something bad happens is we feel like we're alone in it, even when we aren't. I would encourage you, if you are feeling ashamed or embarrassed, or you're burdening someone for asking for help, ask and see what happens. Because I know I love the ability to help friends and family members and people in my community. Even if it's as simple as opening the door for someone who's coming through with groceries. That feels good. It feels like I'm giving back. By not asking for help when you need it, you are depriving someone of the ability to help you. You're also ensuring that they're never going to ask you for help when they need it.
Bryetta Calloway:
I love what you said here, because as you were saying that, I could think of three people that I've spoken to in the last two weeks where I have said those things. Certainly, not as eloquently as you said it, but I was, I was like, "This is not a time to think that the solution can be found solely within yourself." I think to your point, and I think this is one of the things that I'm always hungry, not just to share with people, but also to say to myself, to have grace for yourself to say like, it actually might not be that you can do this by yourself. That doesn't mean that you're not skilled. It doesn't mean that you're weak.
Bryetta Calloway:
It actually will take more than me, more than you to do this, so asking for help is actually a logical thing to do. I think that's really important for people to understand, because there are the pockets of people who are super emotional. Then, there are people who are like not, and so trying to appeal to their logic, I'm thinking of a very specific person, where trying to appeal to her logic and say like, "No, it's actually logical to ask for help."
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
If you could do everything on your own, the most successful companies would only have one person working for them.
Bryetta Calloway:
Exactly right.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Companies need a team and it's not because the idea is bad or the product is terrible or anything like that. It's just like, this is how you do more.
Bryetta Calloway:
Yes.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
If you want to amplify your life in lots of different ways, you need a team around you and it's just, you're not paying these team members, you're giving them emotional support and you're hanging out with them and you're babysitting their kids. It's a different, and I don't even want to put it in terms of a transaction, but it's a different type of team, but it's still a team.
Bryetta Calloway:
That's exactly right. I do think that maybe sometimes the barrier for people, because I definitely see and understand the shame piece of it. People get embarrassed about asking for help. People feel ashamed or they think people will think less of them. But I also think that people just get paralyzed. There is that shock to the system when something changes, where you literally don't know what to do next. Then, people give you platitudes about like, "Well, just do the next best thing or all of those things." It's like, "Well, I don't know what that is."
Bryetta Calloway:
I'm curious, from your perspective, if someone is feeling paralyzed or they're feeling like I don't know what to do, how can we help someone figure out what the next thing to do might be?
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Two things. The first is reach out to someone that you trust and ask to set up a phone call or whatever, and you don't have to have an aim to the get together. All you're going to do is just tell them, talk out loud with them about what you're going through and walking through the options. This is a really good way not to get stuck in your head with too many options, is to say it out loud, have someone be able to, even if they're just sitting there asking questions, but having someone else help you unpack it so that you are not getting trapped. The second piece is cover the basics. If you just got laid off and your mind is spinning with mortgages and how much money you have saved.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Maybe you're angry because you've worked at this company forever and you've given them so much and they're already underpaying you and all that kind of stuff. Feed yourself. I'm not saying this sarcastically. Eat food and drink water and take a shower and go for a walk and listen to a song that you love. Not a sad song. You're going to want to lean towards sad or angry songs because it's matching your emotional resonance there. Listen to happy, upbeat, nauseatingly fun songs. Dance to them if you want to, but do laundry and put it away. Do the simple things that you know how to do right.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
What will happen is when you start doing some of these activities that feel very safe, very easy to do, it'll help your body and your brain slow down a little bit enough to pause and just be like, what just happened? And process that. Then, process it with someone else, so you don't get trapped in your head.
Bryetta Calloway:
I love so much of what you just said here, because one of the things that I learned about myself is that I am a thinker, which is why I tend to be an over thinker, which is why I tend to get anxious. For me, one of the things that I learned, and I actually learned this because I used to dance. As a dancer, one of the things I learned is literally just moving my body would help me unlock my mind. It was the thing. I actually would feel myself get emotional when I would start to move my body, because it helped me quit over indexing on my default. The way that I do that now is I do a lot of walking meditation, just truly getting up. I know, I laugh sometimes in my apartment, like in New York City you can look and see what the other person is doing.
Bryetta Calloway:
I can't imagine what people think I'm doing in here when I'm just up moving around. But it is my way of just saying, get out of your head. Drop into your body. What are you actually feeling? Because I actually have this thing that I do where I say to myself at the end of the day, I'm like, "I'm upset and I don't know why, so let's unpack. What am I feeling? Can I figure out when that feeling started by getting up and moving around?"
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
That is so beautifully said. Anyone who tends to really get stuck in their heads, take this and adapt it in the way that fits best for your life and who you are. Because what happens is we almost become so cerebral that we forget we have a body and we stop attending to any sensations it's giving us. Whether that's tired or hungry or really tense.
Bryetta Calloway:
Or, even having to use the bathroom. I am someone who I get so locked into my thought pattern that I literally will realize I'm like, "I have to use the bathroom." I truly, but it is the thing that I know about myself, so to your point before, just knowing it helps me to have better awareness of it.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
There have been reports that women in corporate high powered positions end up dealing with things like urinary incontinence, where they accidentally go to the bathroom because, one, they're working so hard trying to prove themselves that they're constantly pushing off breaks and working through lunch and those types of things. They get really caught up in their head and they're no longer listening to the signals of their body. Same with hunger. You might have experienced periods of time where you're super focused on just trying to solve a problem or working on things, and you look up and you're like, "It's been 12 hours and I haven't eaten anything."
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
You stand up maybe to go to the bathroom and you feel a little woozy and you're trying to figure out what's going on. Then, you're like, "Oh, I'm lightheaded because I haven't eaten calories."
Bryetta Calloway:
Yes. It's so, so true. I love that. I think for anybody who's listening it really, I know this to be true. It is truly the thing that has helped me, which is just getting up and moving my body. Ironically, what's the opposite of this is, so I know someone who's a very physical person, like used to be an athlete, so physicality is their default. For them, the challenge is to sit still, to sit still long enough to actually say in their brain, what am I feeling? Because their default is like, I'm just going to get up, going to go do some things. I'm going to run. I'm going to do all the things. Then, they're not thinking about what they're feeling.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
That is the perfect example of how, one, there's not a one size fits all. Two, any behavior can be used in an unhelpful way. People can be like, "Oh, you just go and went out for a run. That's awesome." But if you're doing it to escape, to punish yourself, you're not listening to your body, that leads to injury. It leads to so many different problems, which just compound on top of each other. If you are someone who tends to be very active in response, I would say, work hard to rest your eyes from the screens. For folks who tend to just work forever. I used to have a joke with a client of mine, of like we're going to practice taking a rest day this week.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Because exercise was so instrumental to helping them with their mental health that it became this fear of like, if I don't exercise something bad will happen. It could be an active rest day where you go on a nice stroll, but stretch, do some kind of stretch. You can type in YouTube yoga and like a billion videos will pop up. Do a five or 10 minute thing for sitting at a desk all day.
Bryetta Calloway:
It's true.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
It'll help.
Bryetta Calloway:
Well, and even challenging the ways that you do stuff, and I love what you said because even for me, as someone who has struggled with disordered eating and things, and using exercise as a way to lose weight or to maintain weight, one of the things that I was wrestling with, I was like, "I know I need to move my body in order for me to not fixate and ruminate on things." The one thing that I tried was like, "But I'm going to walk, but I'm not going to take my Fitbit. I'm not going to use it as something to like, how many calories did you burn? How many steps did you ... ?" I'm going to use it purely as a way to be kind to myself. Instead of turning it into like a thing.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Absolutely, that idea, that like, "Oh, if I don't have my ... " I have an Apple watch now, but I used to have a Fitbit. If I don't have my Fitbit, the steps don't count.
Bryetta Calloway:
That's exactly right.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
It's such absurd logic that we have, that come up, but I do the same thing. I have a tendency to try to make everything a growth moment. For me, it's, I'm going to take my dog on a walk, but I'm not allowed to listen to a podcast or a book on tape. I guess they're not technically book on tapes anymore, audible book. I'm going to just listen to music, fun music. I'm not allowed to use my brain for things, because my brain needs to rest right now.
Bryetta Calloway:
I think that's so great. Something that you said is actually such a great segue into the last question that I have, which is, you said I don't have to use every moment as a growth moment. I think this is also something that I find in, again, in my circles because a lot of the people that I'm surrounded with are very similar to me. They're very productive. They're very goal-oriented. Something like this happens where they're laid off and they say, "I'm going to start a company now." Or, "I'm going to write the great American novel." That focus on, I must grow from this opportunity.
Bryetta Calloway:
I think what you're saying is really helpful and I'd be interested to even hear a little bit more about how can people find the right balance between doing the things that you need to do to be productive and also acknowledging that it is okay to just be in this moment?
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
The first thing I would say is it's not only okay, but it is necessary. Just like in exercise, you need rest days in order to actually get stronger and get better and be better on the long term, and not have these injuries and recovery periods. In life, you have rest moments and you have push moments. There are going to be periods of your life where you're building a company and you're super invested and believe in it. You're working what other people would consider ridiculous hours, but it feels great to you, but you can't do that forever. Then, there are going to be periods where you're appreciating life or your family, or you're focusing on your health.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
I went through a period. I'm not working full time right now because I was going through some health stuff and still trying to sort some things. I was trying to balance it all and my body kept telling me, this isn't working. Finally, I listened to my body, probably a little bit too late, and it feels wrong, but it's working. What I would say is taking a longer view, a forest instead of the trees view and ask yourself, what is the kind of life that I want to have? Who are the people? What are the things? If I could imagine a perfect weekday or a perfect weekend, what would that look like? You might say like, "I don't have the money." Fine, whatever, but start with that vision.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Not just the vision because a lot of people will be like, "Oh, just I'm retired, and I relax all the time." But I imagine for most people who are under maybe 55 or 60, if you do that for more than a week, you're going to lose your mind. You're going to get antsy and want to do something. But think about, what do you want to spend your time doing? Who do you want to spend your time connecting with? What is the type of person that you want to be in those moments? Because sometimes we can reach a lot of success, but we become a person we don't really like in the process. Then, see, okay now based on where I ... and why do I want to do those things? I really want to connect with people or my health is really important.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
I just love being out in nature. Then, look at where you are in your life now and say, how can I start incorporating some of this stuff, these principles, these what we would call values into your life now? Because I have to work for rent and to feed my dog treats. I'm not in a place where if I won the lottery today, I would still work, but maybe on a lesser scale, but I'm in the process of trying to find out where I want to live. I'm focused on my health and I'm really focused on trying to reach as many people as possible and share information for even folks who might not be able to access therapy because of financial or time costs, or they don't feel like it might be appropriate to them, and so I'm starting to map out my life based on that.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Of prioritizing, taking my dog for a walk, going to bar classes, having time set aside for creativity and filming and also time for seeing my clients and showing up really well for them. The hard part is, is it's unique to everyone and it changes. You have to really have some deep conversations with yourself and then review it every couple of months.
Bryetta Calloway:
I think that's such a wonderful place to end the conversation, because I do think that when we think about the hard work that needs to be done when you're experiencing change, it's this stuff, right? It's the forced pause, and I think you and I even talked about this the last time we spoke with COVID, it's like, it forces you to pause enough so that you can actually ask the question of like, am I actually living the life that I want to live? Especially, and I think about this specifically where a lot of the layoffs that have been in the news are in the tech space. The tech space, it attracts driven folks who want to do big things, and you can get addicted to the pace of all of that stuff.
Bryetta Calloway:
You just mindlessly chase the next growth opportunity, the next big deal, the next whatever. Maybe this is the time for you to stop and say like, "Oh, wait, is this when I think about what my life, what I would want it to be, what I dream it? Is this path going to take me there?" Maybe that's the hard work that you can be doing.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
The other piece is, and I mean this in the kindest way possible, is that you're not 19 anymore.
Bryetta Calloway:
Yeah.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
People will look back and they'll be like, "Well, I used to work hundred hours a week and I had no problem, and I would get four hours of sleep and I'd wake up and I'd drink a red bull, and I'd be fine. Now you can't because you did that before. It's not that that didn't impact you. It's just, it took longer to impact you. But if you work in some of these rest periods, maybe you're working at 90% instead of 100%, but you can work at 90% a heck of a lot longer than you could at 100%. We're really working on our life on the long game here.
Bryetta Calloway:
It's so good and so important because even what you said resonates with me personally. It's like, I think about what I was able to do a decade ago versus what I'm able to do now. It's one of those things where I can do it, but it just feels different in the body. It's one of those things where, again, if you're someone who's looking for something concrete and tangible, even that idea of giving yourself that 10% to rest means that you can accomplish even more with the 90%, but just acknowledging that and being intentional about it is really important.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
When you have the chance, the time to step away and do something else you enjoy, because rest doesn't mean just like laying in front of the TV.
Bryetta Calloway:
Exactly.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
It could be playing a sport, going out to dinner with friends, that kind of thing. You get reinvigorated when you come back to it. One of the things people learn during the pandemic is they cannot spend 24/7 with their partners.
Bryetta Calloway:
Yes.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
A lot of people, their relationships ended because it's like, we are not meant to have this much together time.
Bryetta Calloway:
That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
We have a little bit of space outside in order to have fun and play and explore so that we can come back and appreciate what we have in front of us.
Bryetta Calloway:
So, so good, Jessica, thank you so much for this conversation. Again, I'm super selfish with a lot of these episodes. I took away so much, so that in and of itself feels successful. But also I do think that this is really wonderful, helpful information for people who candidly are facing any flux or change. But I feel really, really privileged to extract some of your knowledge for people who are listening. For those who want to learn more about you or follow you on any channels, where can folks find you?
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
I am on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok at the ACT Therapist, the A-C-T Therapist. Then, I have a Busy Mind quiz, which are those four different components, the productive procrastinator, all of that kind of covering perfectionist. You can go to busymindpsychologist.com, complete that quiz and you will get a free personalized handbook for some exercises to get you started. Then, if you're in California and you're interested in therapy and you think we might be a good fit, you must be physically located in California, and you're interested in doing virtual therapy with me. You can go to busymindreboot.com and schedule a free 15-minute consultation to see if we'd be a good fit.
Bryetta Calloway:
I will have all of those links in the description for this episode. Dr. Jessica, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation and I have no idea how we would have met had it not been for a global pandemic and all the things that happened. But I can take that as one of the silver linings of all of those things, because I value so much of what you share and what you do. I'm so thankful that you spent some time with us today.
Dr. Jessica Borushok:
Oh, thank you so much, Bryetta. I was so happy when you reached out again. Yeah, this has been so much fun for me.
Bryetta Calloway:
Well, to everyone who's listening, you know that one of my favorite things to do is to provide value. I think I did that today. For everyone who's listening, I hope that you will visit the description for this episode. Download any of the information that we share there. Please follow Dr. Jessica on her platforms, on her website, on any place that you can find her. We will be back with another episode really soon, but in the meantime, have a wonderful day and I'll talk with you soon. Bye, everyone.