Ep #72: A Quick Tip to Disconnect from Work

Episode 72, A Quick Tip to Disconnect from Work.

Welcome to Clinicians Creating Impact, a show for physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists looking to take the next step in their careers and make a real difference in the lives of their clients. If you’re looking to improve the lives of neurodiverse children and families with neurological-based challenges, grow your own business, or simply show up to help clients, this is the show for you. 

I’m Heather Branscombe, Therapist, Certified Coach, Clinical Director, and Owner of Abilities Neurological Rehabilitation. I have over 25 years of experience in both the public and private sectors, and I’m here to help you become the therapist you want to be, supporting people to work towards their dreams and live their best lives. You ready to dive in? Let’s go.

Hi there, friend. I hope you’re doing well today. I just came back from a super fun weekend away to take a course. Not really directly related to our industry, but it’s fascinating how the brain can give you lots of ideas when you just open it up and just let it play. 

I love thinking about clinicians just like you who are listening to this podcast and where you are, who you are, where you are in your work, in your career, and how I can best help you next. So as I’ve been thinking about this, part of the plan is to do some more podcast interviews in the future with fellow clinicians just like you. So I just want to open this up and say if you’re interested in being part of this podcast and part of this community, please feel free to connect with me and let’s chat more about that. 

Today I wanted to share a quick tip that I came across, and when I heard it I instantly thought that you may find it helpful as well. I’ve been experimenting with it as well and I can confidently tell you that I believe that this tip can help you to disconnect from work so that you can truly rest. 

Oftentimes as clinicians it really can be hard to fully disconnect from work, and that makes total sense. We generally, in this industry and professionally we’re relationship-based people. And relationships are essentially the thoughts that we have about people. We are helping people to solve problems in our work, so it makes sense that our brains may think about those people and our relationship with them when we aren’t at work. 

I also want to offer that thinking about your clients or your work isn’t necessarily a problem, unless you’re noticing that you might be overthinking and or if it’s interfering with your rest and relaxation. And that rest and relaxation is critical for you to be a better clinician when you are at work. 

So if you’re thinking about your clients and your work after work and it’s not a problem, amazing, this tip may or may not be super helpful to you. But if you are and you would like another tip to be able to better disconnect, you’re in exactly the right place. 

I do want to also mention if you do feel like this is an issue for you and you want to do a deeper dive, I share more of my thoughts about that in episode 21, How to Truly Enjoy Your Time Away from Work. But for now, let’s talk about this quick tip. 

Before I share this tip, I know that you may already know this, but this podcast is actually a passion project of mine because I truly want all clinicians to have the ability to use this kind of tool set and tips like this as a way to magnify their impact, even if they’re never either working alongside us or with us at Abilities. I consider myself so lucky to be able to do this and to share this as part of my work week. It is really one of the funnest parts of my work week. 

So you can help me to make this podcast more meaningful to more clinicians by helping to spread the message. More clicks and more tips help more clients and more clinicians, so let’s work together to make that happen. So you can help me in a couple of concrete ways. 

First, if you can follow, rate and review this podcast to help feed that algorithm, that means that when a clinician just like you is searching for information just like this, the podcast will come up for them. Secondly, if you can share this podcast, or even better yet a favorite episode that you have with a colleague, that would be even more amazing. 

If you’ve heard this before, and you probably have if you’ve listened to another episode, and you’ve meant to do it but you haven’t done it yet, it’s okay, there’s no shame. Let this be the sign, today, like no, actually today is the day that you can actually help other clinicians by sharing an episode just like this. 

And if this is your first episode, first, welcome. Thank you so much for listening and hopefully as you listen you can decide who of your clinical friends would love to hear more of this kind of information to help them at work. Thank you again in advance for your action here. And with that, let’s get back to the episode. 

So without further ado, let’s talk about this tip, shall we? I want you to try this at the end of your next workday. Before you start this tip, I want you to take a moment, we’re going to do a quick assessment. And in this assessment, I want you to start with a brief body scan to see what the sensations are in your body at the end of the workday. 

How is your body actually feeling at the end of the workday? And then notice what your mind is doing. Notice what kind of thoughts are there. Do you feel a sense of a transition? Just notice those things without any kind of judgment. I just want you to hold those sensations and thoughts while we try this brief visualization. 

So next, I want you to picture a board with a bunch of wires coming out from it. Now, for those of you who might be older, this could be something like the old fashioned operator who actually connected phone lines through plugging in connections. But for those of you where that may not connect with you or it doesn’t resonate for whatever reason, you can think of the equivalent, which might be something like a wall with a bunch of like aux cords coming from it. 

No matter what kind of cords you decide they are, imagine that they’re actually all connected to you and your brain. And each individual cord is then connected to a client or a problem that you interacted with today in that wall. So imagine at the end of the day that you are physically unplugging each cord from the wall that represents your clients or the challenges that you encountered today. 

You are actually in your mind and in your imagination disconnecting from the clients that you saw today and ready to reconnect to them on the next workday. But for now, you really are truly disconnecting. If it’s helpful, you can think of having one connection kept to your mind, whether that’s the connection that you have to your higher self, to your inner wisdom, or whatever you want to call that for you. So you can keep one connection left, but I really want you to invite yourself to think about disconnecting from the clients and the challenges that you’ve had at the end of this workday. 

So this is a small and pretty quick visualization. Some might even think that it’s silly. And if you do, that’s totally great. But it really can help you to emotionally disconnect and to tell your brain that work time is finished and now it’s time to rest from work. We do that all the time, we talk about transitions with our clients all the time, but we often don’t do that for ourselves. 

So let’s check in again. Notice how you feel at the end of that once you try this simple visualization. Do you feel any different sensations in your body? Do you feel different in your body? And what, if anything, is going on in your mind? If the feelings feel more relaxed, then this may actually be a useful tool for you. If not, that’s okay as well. 

This is just a great time to notice that if you have any other rituals or small things you do to symbolize to yourself, more importantly to your brain and your nervous system, that the workday is ended and it’s time for something new. And if you have those things that are different than that visualization, I would love to hear about it and even to share it with others. 

So giving your brain and the body the cue that it’s time to shift can be, again, so helpful to your nervous system, which integrates your body and your mind to start to shift that state. Give it a try and let me know how it goes. Yes, I am busy. Of course I’m busy. But I’m never too busy to connect with you. You can feel free to email me at Heather@abilitiesrehabilitation.com. That’s Heather@abilitiesrehabilitation.com and tell me how it goes and I’d love to hear more about it. With that, enjoy the rest of your work week and I’ll talk to you soon. 

If you enjoyed today’s show and don’t want to worry about missing an episode, you can follow the show wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you haven’t already, I would really appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review to let me know what you think and to help others find Clinicians Creating Impact. 

It doesn’t have to be a five-star rating, although I sure hope you love the show. I’d really want your honest feedback so I can create an awesome podcast that provides tons of value. To learn more about me and the work that I do, visit my website at www.abilitiesrehabilitation.com/clinicianscorner to download your free Getting it All Done at Work process and to see what I’m up to. Thanks so much.

Thanks for joining me this week on the Clinicians Creating Impact podcast. Want to learn more about the work I’m doing with Abilities Rehabilitation? Head on over to abilitiesrehabilitation.com. See you next week.