Podcast Transcript

Renfrew Conference Mini-Series Episode 6: Navigating Burnout with Beth Hartman McGilley, PhD

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INTRO

Sam: Hey, I’m Sam.

Ashley: Hi, I’m Ashley and you’re listening to All Bodies. All Foods. presented by The Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders. We want to create a space for all bodies to come together authentically and purposefully to discuss various areas that impact us on a cultural and relational level.

Sam: We believe that all bodies and all foods are welcome. We would love for you to join us on this journey. Let’s learn together.

INTRODUCTION TO THE EPISODE

Ashley: If you have been in the mental health field for any length of time, it’s quite possible that you have experienced fatigue largely brought on from lending yourself compassionately to others. Beth McGilley, PhD and certified eating disorder specialist sat down with us to discuss her experience with compassion fatigue and how this was especially heightened during the COVID-era. She also reminded us how brave it is to be kind to ourselves, while experiencing transition, existing in the space of the unknown, and reconciling that we do not have to be everything to everyone. This episode is so special and we’re excited for you to hear it.

EPISODE

Sam: Welcome back, All Bodies. All Foods., we are here with Beth McGilley, PhD, FAED, and CEDS-S. She has provided supervision training and treatment of eating disorders trauma, athletes, and grief for 40 years. Her practice is informed by feminist, health at every size and social justice perspectives. She is co-editor of the book, Treatment of Eating Disorders, Gap. Welcome to the show.

Beth: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Sam: Beth, you are a speaker here at the Renfrew for Conference. You had a workshop this morning. I’m going to read the title here. Beyond Burnout, Feminist Perspectives on Therapists in Transition.

Beth: Yep.

Sam: And I have to say, Ashley and I have already heard through the grapevine that this was a very powerful workshop. In fact, people were crying.

Ashley: People were emotional.

Beth: There were tears. I had tears. I think all the three speakers had tears. For the record, I’ve never done a workshop at the Renfrew Conference without crying. However, there was something going on in the room.

Sam: Yeah, so that was my question. What was going on in there? What is it, do you think, about burnout or therapists in transition that brings up so much emotion?

Beth: Well, I am a therapist, so I’m going to answer this process and content. Yeah. I think the process, we were very intentional about asking people to kind of just show up and get somewhat intimate from the very beginning. We wanted to set that tone. And then there’s a feminist perspective that, you know, when one woman speaks her truth, she gives other women permission to do the same. And so that’s why we did our stories more in depth at the very beginning, each one of us kind of saying what brought us to that topic and that room, in this moment. Showing our vulnerability, kind of, it’s like, you know, you start in the shallow end, and we just kind of wanted to dive deep right from the beginning. You know, how many opportunities do you have with friends or strangers to really talk about what it’s like to have been you in the past three or four years of our lives in this planet when we were all under attack and experiencing the pandemic in so many different ways. So there were women in the room who started their practice in the pandemic. And then there were people like me who were 40 years into it and nearing the end of our career and feeling like it was derailing these really cherished opportunities we have with our clients. So, I think there was a lot of pregnant emotion and I hope, I mean, my wish would have been that we gave everybody permission just to go there. So, my experience as a speaker was that people really showed up. That’s what it looked like. I didn’t get to sit in any of the circles, but my sense was there were a lot of people who really just decided to show up and they welcomed the invitation.

Ashley: So, and I saw this, I was telling Sam, we took a break around the same time and I saw some of my colleagues in the hallway and just big doe eyes full of tears and just saying how impactful and wonderful it was up until that moment, you know, and the whole thing hadn’t even finished yet. But I’m thinking about this topic of burnout and I’m thinking about the pandemic. Sam and I are both clinicians. We, you know, had our own experiences also during the pandemic. And I’m not even sure, honestly, Beth, if you touched on this, but even as a clinician going through our own experience of what was happening in the world while also holding space for all of the people that trust us. It was hard, like really, really hard.

Beth: Yeah, I did talk about that because, so I’m from the Midwest, I live in Wichita, Kansas. I said aside from 9/11, which leveled so many people emotionally, spiritually, and every meaningful capacity. In Kansas, I wasn’t that close to it. I didn’t have my next-door neighbor or somebody’s father or daughter in the towers or in any of the other places that were directly hit. So, I felt the impact of 9/11. It reverberated through the world, but I wasn’t on the front line. My husband is an infectious disease specialist. He was the front line. I watched my husband come home the first week that it was called the pandemic and wept in our bedroom and after they lost their first patient and said to me, we don’t know what we’re doing.

Ashley: Wow.

Beth: So, to me, it was the first time as a professional where I was in the very same nightmare as my patients. There was no, I mean, I think it’s an optical illusion of separateness anyway, us and our clients. The healing is a reciprocity. Let’s just get real. You know, that doesn’t mean we bring what we need into the session, but we get something back through that healing process. But this time we were in it simultaneously. And so, I think it’s hard to put in words for people who aren’t therapists. I think we know, you guys are going to know what I’m saying, but we draw from a certain bank as therapists. And then we go home, and we take care of the dog and our children and our partners or whatever else that we do. But we have this special place we draw from. Well, that place was hijacked.

Ashley: Yes, it was.

Beth: Because we needed it to be who we were and what we needed to do and find toilet paper or sanitizer or a mask, you know? So I know this is going to sound almost contradictory. Because as hard as that was, from a feminist perspective, it really just lifted the veil. You know what I mean? It’s kind of like the Wizard of Oz, you know, like, okay, we’re back here and you know, we’re the emperor with no clothes. We feel, we need, we hurt, we live with trauma. I’ve had an eating disorder, you know. So, it kind of lifted that veil of us, you know, being once removed or whatever. So, in some ways, I think the intimacy that happened in our therapy was intensified for good. The paradox is it was also happening on Zoom. You know, I think it’s so funny that word Zoom. I mean, we were zooming in with our clients when we were further away from him. It’s such a bizarre paradox. But I think I don’t like the word burnout. I think it’s a pejorative term and it implies that somehow, we didn’t work hard enough. The term compassion fatigue works better for me. What I said in my workshop is I’m not burned out. I love what I do. And I mean no disrespect to other people in my life or what else I do, but I’m alive in the therapy room in a way that nothing else compares. But I’m lit up in different ways in my life now, and I want that energy, that place I’m talking about that has always gone to my work. I need that for my people now. My husband, my dog that’s 13, my friends who have needs, the people who I want to go to when they’re in the hospital and I want to be at their bedside. And I can’t do that and be with my patients and all the other things. So, I don’t know, people use the expression, find the blessing and things. Maybe that’s one way to think about it. There was good that came of the pandemic or at least we can find meaning in it and make meaning of it for the good of our own healing. So, I just think that, you know, we’ve got a lot of healing still to do. Being married to an infectious disease specialist, I need to tell you, this pandemic is not over. You know, there’s a massive wake-up call. Things like this are going to happen again. But I think finding out how much we needed each other and humanizing ourselves and that humanizing being translated into our therapeutic relationships. I mean, didn’t your patients ask you how you were doing? Yeah. I mean, the veil was lifted. That veil that, as feminist-oriented therapists, we always knew was a false veil anyway, you know. Honestly, so when I was trained 40 years ago, beyond them knowing my name, I was literally told as a therapist in training not to have a diet pop in the room because that was self-disclosure. I’m not exaggerating. Nothing on the walls that said anything about who you were, what your values are.

Ashley: What did you have? White walls.

Beth: You know, abstract paintings or whatever. Yeah, well, let me just say I never followed the rules very well around all that nonsense, but you know, I found feminist oriented therapy pretty early. So, you know, and I think good patients know when you’re acting fraudulently anyway. And I always tell clients, your first job is to fire me. If in three sessions, you don’t feel like you’re at home here, let me help you find it. Eventually their job is to fire me anyway if I do a good job, but you know, it’s too important the relationship.

Sam: So, this concept of compassion fatigue, what exactly is that how do you know if you’re experiencing it how does it impact the work that you do?

Beth: Do we have like three hours? Well, I’m going to say that how you know you have it, is going to be a very personal awareness. I know it when I know, when I’m at a place where I’ve overextended myself, when I start getting really distracted, when I have to work harder to stay in the room or to pay attention to what I know is what is my divining rod in therapy. It’s very energetic to me. That was the hard thing for me. I’m a kinesthetically oriented therapist. When you say you feel somebody’s feelings, I have that. I have that ability. I don’t understand it. But it doesn’t translate through Zoom. So, it was exhausting to me, to do Zoom because I didn’t have my secret sauce. So, there was this internal exhaustion, the effort that it took. I felt different at the end of the day, more depleted than energized. Good day of therapy, you know, there’s a certain kind of tiredness to it, but it’s an, it’s going to sound paradoxical, but it’s energizing.

Ashley: I feel the same way.

Beth: So, for me, the way I knew it is I was feeling depleted and depleted and depleted and things that I would ordinarily look forward to. The other thing was I became more absent-minded about things. I mean, it just shows up for each of us, I think in its own way. So, what I would say to people is you need to know you and signs that you aren’t on your game, so to speak. and pay attention, the body tells the truth. And if we don’t, our bodies are going to let us know in a much harder way than it would have if we’d listened upfront. We’re going to get sick, we’re going to break our kneecap, we’re going to do something, we’re going to trip, we’re going to spill the coffee. So, I think it’s a dullness or an ache or an emptiness that is signaling to you that you aren’t being, you don’t have the same well to draw from. That’s the best way I can describe it. I mean, there’s lots of literature written about it. It’s a concept, compassion fatigue. I just don’t like the word burnout because to me it sounds pejorative. And I’ve never liked that word. And you know, I struggled with it and using it in the workshop, but it’s a term that people resonate with, right?

Ashley: It’s a common one. It’s a known term.

Beth: Yeah. But I did say in the workshop, I don’t feel burned out. I feel lit up differently. So I’m just reframing it.

Ashley: So, this concept of therapist in transition, yeah, can you share with us a little bit about that?

Beth: Yeah, so we realized that the pandemic itself catapulted everybody unwittingly into a transition, in very literal terms, online therapy. I mean, everything changed. The main, this talk lived in me for the past several years because I saw myself, I’m 63, I saw myself moving towards the end of my career. And nobody before me had ever done a workshop on it. And a very, very dear friend whom you should have on your podcast is Dr. Michael Barrett. He is an absolute prince of peace. One of my favorite human beings. And he was nearing retirement. And Michael and I would talk every Renfrew Conference. We’d walk in the morning, and we’d be talking about it. What’s this like for you, Michael? And what are you facing? And will you do a workshop with me about this? Yes, yes, yes. Well, the pandemic happened. It precipitated his retirement. So, Michael wasn’t here to do the talk. So, I asked Judy Rabinor and Amy Banks because I wanted, you know, sometimes we do workshops to help us learn what we want to know. And so, I knew, once you say you’re going to do a workshop, you spend the next six months of your life, like it’s constantly there, like, you know, you’re like a twin. So, it really was about, for me, about therapists in the later transition of their work life, but we expanded the frame for transitions of any kind. So, you know, there was a young woman in there who started her practice in the pandemic. I mean, I literally cannot even imagine what that was like for her, but she was surrounded by women who’d been working for 40 years. So, I hope in that three hours, she got some mentors and perspective on, you know, how to, how to move forward. But it was really about, you know, periods of time of change. And if there was a takeaway that we intended and that clearly came through was to stop apologizing for the women, especially in the room. And I thought about it later, probably even more so than men, because men have gotten this Western culture view that to be successful is to be over-functioning, over-productive, to do more. And anything less than that is like burnout. You know, there’s the term. Like, you’re not doing enough. You’re not working hard enough. And I really, I was stunned by some of the reactions I got from some of my closest colleagues when I said, you know, and they were old, some of them older than me, you’re going to, you’re going to retire? I’m like, we’re not fully retiring. All of a sudden, I’m apologizing and I’m toning it down. The truth is I’m in semi-retirement. I’m just not taking any new clients. I’m only working three days a week. I’m taking more time off. I’m going to travel more. But I began to be apprehensive. And so, I think part of what the workshop was and the feedback I got was thank you for reframing that it’s okay. We’ve been trying to do this for generations, telling women that you don’t have to be all things to everybody. It bears repeating. That’s what I think. My hope is what people came away with was a different kind of permission and validation about what it means to be them with all that they do and all the people that they serve. And, you know, we talk about self-care all the time, but this is self-care kind of in a different context.

Ashley: I’m just thinking I went to a friend’s birthday party recently and my friend group, we are all turning 40. And so, that is a little bit of a transition as well. And we were around a bonfire and she encouraged us, so she had, this was truly just a couple of weeks ago. She had her old Christmas tree from the year before. And we each took a branch and we spoke about what we wanted to let go of in the past and what we wanted to invite in, in our…

Beth: That was the essence of our workshop. What a beautiful ritual.

Ashley: It was so beautiful. And the thing that I said was being all things to everyone. So, when you said that, I’m like, chill bumps, because it is such a message, truly, that I do think we as women internalize, but it is taught to us.

Beth/Sam: Oh, yeah.

Ashley: And that’s I have a two-year-old daughter now. So, I am your role model. I’m role modeling, but I’m doing my best to not, you know, put that on her yet. But you saying that, like it’s so, it is something that we’ve like truly culturally as a female, I feel that I have felt that burden, if you will.

Beth: It is a burden. Yeah. It’s exhausting.

Ashley: Yeah. For years. And so anyway, well..

Beth: That’s funny because I remember what I told myself that my gift to myself and my 40th birthday is. is the same thing in a different version. I said to myself, if the person that I am in relationship to has never seen me blow out my birthday candles, they don’t get a vote. It was really, I mean, I’d spent my whole life worrying what people think. All things to everybody, you know? And so I was playing my life out to strangers. And I thought, if they’ve never seen me blow out a birthday candle, they don’t get a fuck. They don’t get a vote. Are we editing this?

Sam: We can keep that in.

Ashley: We want to keep that in?

Beth: See, that’s what happens when you turn 40. You study your vocabulary, you just do. No, that’s exactly what I meant to myself. Like no more are you going to play your life out to people who’ve never even seen you blow out your birthday candles. And that worked for me.

Ashley: I love that image.

Beth: I’m not perfect at it. I worry because I’m alive and that’s just my psychological makeup. But it was the gift I wanted to give myself.

Sam: What a gift. I think that would work for a lot of people. I think there’s people probably listening and they’re thinking, I’m going to use that.

Ashley: I know.

Beth: I give that to my patients. Have they ever had these people, you know, they’ll be telling me their story and what are they going to think? And what am I going to do? And I’m like, have they ever seen you blow out birthday candles? Why are you asking me that? Like, why are you giving them so much power? Do they even know your birthday?

Ashley: So good.

Sam: Great question.

Ashley: Well, Beth thank you so much.

Beth: You are so welcome.

Ashley: This was so lovely.

Sam: This was wonderful.

Beth: Thank you. It was lovely for me too.

Ashley: If you want to come back for a full episode, you are welcome.

Beth: Bring it on. This is the kind of thing I do want to continue doing and love doing.

Ashley: It’s so, well, sharing her stories, right? Yes. Giving other people permission to share their stories. Yeah. Being vulnerable, being transparent, inviting them in.

Beth: Yeah, it’s like lighting candles, one from the next.

Ashley: Thank you so much.

Beth: Thank you.

OUTRO

Ashley: Thank you for listening with us today on All Bodies. All Foods. presented by The Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders.

Sam: We’re looking forward to you joining us next time as we continue these conversations.

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