Ep #54: When You’re Frustrated at Work

Episode 54, When You’re Frustrated at 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, friends. I’m recording this in early January, and I’ve really just recently come back from a family trip to Arizona where it was so much warmer and so much sunnier than here in BC. And I’m so lucky because I’m now looking forward to my next trip coming up super quick, where I’m actually going to be turning 50 in Hawaii in early February.

All this to say, it has been a massive privilege, and it is a massive privilege, to be able to do so. And I’m so excited to give you a lot of tips and tricks and just general value between now and when I leave next. And I am definitely back in the groove. 

So whether or not you’ve recently set some goals, and if you haven’t maybe even decided yet, or you possibly want to already redefine those goals, definitely my last three podcast episodes could help you decide and give you some insight on how to move forward. But I wanted to start today by giving you the gift, really, that my career gave me last year. 

So my biggest gift that my career gave me last year was to really understand the feeling of my own frustration. And it helped me so deeply and propelled me, as I’ve kind of mentioned before in some earlier podcasts, to have one of the most professionally successful years in my career. And the truth is, I don’t want you to have to wait 26 years like I did to benefit from this gift. 

I’ve learned so much from other colleagues, and this is my gift back to you, my fellow colleagues, to use and to help you to use it to help others. I actually just reconnected this week for lunch with a former colleague. I think it’s been at least 20 years ago that we worked together. You know who you are. I love you, buddy. It just reminded me about how much I have learned from listening and connecting with other colleagues, just like this colleague that I had lunch with today. 

In that same spirit, I just want to share that this podcast is a passion project of mine because I want all clinicians, even if they never work with us at Abilities or work with me directly, I want them to have the ability to use this tool set as a way to magnify their impact. And one way to do that is for you to help to spread this message. 

You can help me to do this in a couple of ways. One, to follow, rate and review this podcast to help feed that algorithm so when a clinician, just like you, is searching for something like this, this podcast will come up. And second, if you could share this podcast, or even better yet, share a favorite episode with a colleague. 

Consider it an early birthday present to me if you want, because I would be eternally grateful to you for doing any and all of the above. Again, thank you so much in advance for your help. I so appreciate it. And with that, let’s help you get the most out of your frustration, shall we? 

So how can your frustration help you at work? Let’s talk about frustration. Most of us see the feeling of frustration or whatever that flavor is, you might call it something different, as something inherently negative or as a problem. And when we experience this kind of feeling as humans, we typically do one of three things. 

One, we either avoid it/react to it. Secondly, we dismiss it altogether. Or three, we actually sit with it and embrace it. And I’d like to offer the argument of why option three of embracing it can actually be the best option. And if you let it, it can be one of the best tools in your clinical toolbox, especially in terms of your career. 

So why would I say that? Frustration ultimately tells you something is off, because we know that behind that feeling of frustration there is a thought that’s driving that feeling. Those thoughts are often something like something is going against your values, there’s an indication that you’re looking or yearning for something more, or there just is a general opportunity to look deeper in whatever the situation where this feeling is coming up. 

And it makes total sense, logically, that over the course of a workday, your year at work, or even in your career, that there are going to be times of frustration. Even in a career that you’ve worked ever so hard to get. I know that most of us can see that logically. And yet, when that frustration comes in at work, sometimes it can feel wrong to feel it, especially when you believe that you’re in your dream career, and possibly your dream job. 

Or you see some of the clients that you’re working with, and you can think maybe that you are so much farther ahead with them, you have so much more privilege. And so frustration isn’t something as a result that somehow you’ve decided that you should feel. 

There’s also that kind of feeling of like, should you feel frustration in a career or a job that you worked so hard to get? Did you work so hard to just work in a place where you feel frustration? Or sometimes your brain will offer you something like, does feeling frustrated mean that you’re one step away from burning out, which is often a challenge for clinicians just like us. And ultimately, nobody wants to have that. 

And then there are some thoughts that can feel something like, well, maybe if I had more money, or had less of a workload, or had more breaks in my schedule, this feeling would go away. 

So if your brain offers thoughts and action plans like this, congratulations, you are a normal human clinician having a normal human experience. And I just want to say, I did so much of that same thinking and planning for so much of my career, and it still happens. I’m not going to say that I am over that, not in any way, shape or form. But I want to offer you the idea today that there’s another way to think about that feeling of frustration when it comes. 

So what if the feeling of frustration at work is actually a gift to you? Now, again, I’m not going to say I love feeling frustrated because I don’t. I won’t even say that I feel it less than I used to, even in my current dream job, because the fact is, I probably feel frustration more today than I did before. And I feel it more not because of the work itself. 

Again, I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. I love the work that I do and the people that I do it with. The difference is I’m doing the best, I’m being very intentional not to avoid that feeling of frustration when it comes, or to quickly solve for it with some kind of short-term fix. The feeling of frustration is really the biggest gift to me when I have the foresight to ask myself why. Why am I feeling what I’m feeling? What is it trying to tell me? 

Now, for some of you who naturally feel your feelings, this may make some sense to you. But I want to reach out to those of us, because I was this person, where that feels a little bit more woo-woo, like feeling your feelings. Hustle culture might tell you to push through, ignore your feelings to get what you want as quickly as possible. 

I just want to share as clinicians we know that our body offers us sensations and then makes meaning of those sensations through feelings. And both of these can be super helpful to problem-solve what is going wrong so that you can make an educated plan to move forward. That’s not woo-woo. 

I’m here as a living experience to tell you that your feelings as a clinician do matter. And it really can be the key to help you problem-solve how to make things better, both for you and for the people that you work with and serve. 

If you choose hustle culture or to power through, and that is a choice, just know that you’re missing a key piece that can actually make things easier and faster. If you choose to listen, to lean into that feeling of frustration when it comes up, and what it’s trying to tell you, you can then use that information to make a more informed decision as to what you want to do next. 

The easiest way to do that is to simply ask yourself when it comes up, what is your frustration trying to tell you? I like that because it’s just my way of telling my brain to slow down for a moment, pause, and to really just feel the feeling. 

To use my own feelings as an example, there was a time that I was frustrated that I had clients and space to offer a clinician, but I didn’t have the clinicians that I wanted to fill that space and to see those clients that I knew needed help. It was so frustrating to know that there were families desperately wanting help, and we had a space to offer that help, but not the people to provide the help that was wanted. 

When I used to ignore or react to that frustration when it came up, it generally then looked like me hiring the wrong people too quickly and blaming the clinicians if they had any challenges because ultimately I didn’t want to accept the responsibility that my position as the clinical director requires. 

And then for a lot longer than a year, I would say this is something that I’ve been working on for a long time and I’m really seeing the results of it now. I’ve been leaning into the frustration that I’m feeling and asking both directly and indirectly what that feeling was trying to tell me.

So what was my frustration about hiring trying to tell me? It has, and it continues to tell me today, a lot of things. It told me I needed to change how I thought about hiring. To slow down, to listen more, to take responsibility, to empower the people I work with, to deliver more support. Isn’t that amazing? Frustration, when I listened to it, was very smart and very thoughtful. 

And so I did. And it’s one of the reasons that actually this podcast and this episode is even here today. Ironically, by leaning into the frustration, it actually helped me to lessen that feeling in this particular area. And funny enough, hiring is not one of my frustrations now. I know that that is when you talk to people, whether they are doing the hiring themselves or they are part of a team that’s hiring, I know that it’s like a generally acceptable term to be like, there’s not enough clinicians and we just need more clinicians. 

I really don’t actually feel that that’s true now. Hiring is really one of my favorite parts of my work. Hiring and supporting clinicians has literally added to my dream job. And it’s really come from leaning into my initial feeling of frustration. 

So let’s talk about you for a moment. Where are you currently feeling frustrated at work? Is it a client? Is it a co-worker? Or even are you frustrated with yourself? So often when we think about this, it’s often around a person, and that is okay. And then I would offer you to ask again, why are you feeling frustrated with that person, client, co-worker, yourself, or something different? 

Could it be around things of documentation, about compensation, or even for you setting and holding your own boundaries? And what do you think your frustration is trying to tell you? Ask yourself and let me know how it goes. 

Yes, I am busy, but I’m never too busy to talk to you. Feel free to email me, heather@abilitiesrehabilitation.com because yes, the fact is I do have time and I do want to help you for free. This is not some sales thing and to try and get you into some kind of paid thing. I generally want to help you as a fellow clinician. 

So with that, have an amazing week and I will 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.