Ep #69: An Easy Way to Set a Boundary as a Clinician

Episode 69, An Easy Way to Set a Boundary as a Clinician.

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. How’s it going? How is spring or whatever the season is when you’re listening to this episode treating you? I love that today as I’m recording this, it’s spring. And what’s happening is the days are getting sunnier and the weather is getting warmer. 

And one of the favorite things for me to do, especially on a day off, is to take my 10 year old dog, with my husband on a walk in the forest. I love it so much. I consider myself so lucky to live in BC and to have so many spectacular hikes so accessible to me. Now, I don’t know about you, but there is something about taking time in nature that creates an amazing relaxing feeling in my downtime. 

Now, as I mentioned, I have a 10 year old dog. He’s actually a mastiff, lab, collie cross and he’s about 90 pounds. And he’s certainly getting into his senior years as a 10 year old dog. So these hikes together are feeling kind of extra special right now. 

And so today I wanted to share a tip with you that I can’t even honestly remember where I heard it from. I’m pretty sure it was from another podcast episode sometime in the last month. But truth be told, I listen to a lot of different podcasts, and so my apologies in advance for not giving the full credit to whoever said this. 

But this is just a tip that I feel like is too good not to share with you today. I’ve been incorporating this tip everywhere in my life, especially in the past month, especially at work, and I have found it so helpful. So I wanted to share it with you as well. 

But before I start and share that tip, I know so many of you already know this, but this podcast is really a passion project of mine because I really want all clinicians the ability to use this kind of tool set as a way to magnify their impact, even if you never work with us at Abilities or you never work alongside us. 

I consider myself so lucky to be able to do this and to share this as part of my work week. It’s so cool. So you can help me make sure that this project is more meaningful by helping to spread the message. As the cool kids say, I’m clearly not cool, but as the cool kids say, don’t gatekeep this if you’re finding it helpful. Help a fellow clinician out. 

You can help me in a couple of ways. One, when you follow, rate, and review this podcast, it really does help feed that algorithm. So when there’s a clinician just like you searching for something just like this, this podcast will come up. And secondly, and even more importantly, if you can share this podcast directly, or better yet a favorite episode, with a colleague that you want to help. 

If you’ve heard this before, and you meant to do it, I’ve said this before, and you haven’t done it yet, it’s okay. Let today be the sign that this is the day that you can help other clinicians just like you. But if this is your first episode, first of all, welcome. Thank you so much for listening. And hopefully, as you listen, you can decide which of your clinical besties you would love to hear more of this kind of information to help them at work. Thank you so much in advance for your action here. And with that, let’s get back to this episode. 

So I just want to share that for so many of us that work as clinicians, setting and keeping boundaries can feel hard sometimes. I get it. And it makes total sense. We get into this kind of work because we want to help people. And when our brain tells us at times that we need to choose between our needs and the needs of those that we work with, it’s almost culturally noble to serve others without thoughts to your own needs. 

Now, I want to pop that bubble first, that you can only serve others while ignoring your own needs. That is not only not true, it is a sure way to burn out because eventually your body is going to express its needs in louder and more deeper ways, and that looks a lot like burnout. Those needs can look a lot more like being more tired, losing joy in the work, being quick to blame others and being overall less happy. 

I know so many of us know that and yet it can be hard to start to put the boundaries in to create that and. What I mean by that and, is how can we serve clients and ourselves? How can we meet our needs and the needs of our clients? How can we create what we want for ourselves and for those that we work with and for? 

Here’s my tip to start you on that path. You always have the option of a pause as a start to a boundary. And this is what I mean by that. When our brain goes to that kind of black and white thinking, that it’s all or nothing, it’s this or that, which it will, it’s supposed to as the more efficient lower part of our brain does. A pause gives the higher part of your brain, that part of the brain that you really do want to work with, time to catch up. 

So a pause can look like a few things. Let me give you a couple of examples. It could look like something like saying, let me think about that for a minute, to a boss or a client in response to a request. It could look like saying, can I get back to you about that? If you’re in discussion with someone, anyone at work, and the situation feels a bit activated for someone in the group, even for yourself, it could sound something like, let’s take a break and talk about this later. 

What a pause really does is it gives you and maybe those around you time and space to use all the parts of the brain to help to problem solve, instead of that default lower part of the brain that’s typically running the show, especially in situations that feel a bit harder. 

Now here’s how I used it in real life. Part of my work week involves a weekly meeting that I have with my support team. And in that meeting, we talk about a lot of things, including policies and procedures for our organization. I really do like this meeting because it’s a way that we take one of our core values, which is to find a better way, and we really try and live it in real time. 

So not too long ago, we were talking about charting and documentation. And there was a request by someone on the team to have a standard for how quickly charting or documentation should be completed. Now, I want to say I actually love standards as a way to help show and help us as support staff give and get great service. But for some reason, I really didn’t want to give a standard on this, which is interesting, since it is my job as the clinical director to have these kinds of standards. 

So what I did is I noticed that and I listened to the team tell me their perspective. I thanked them for telling me their reasons and then I asked for some time to think about it. Once I had some time, I was able to figure out why I had been feeling so resistant to it, which just between you and me was some low-level PTSD about charting in the past, which I was able to work through and be able to then think of a way where we could both set a standard and help our clinicians meet that standard from a place of support and not a place of shame. 

So what this pause did is it actually helped me to figure out why I had an issue and then helped me to decide how to proceed that aligned with my needs in how I want to lead. 

So saying all this, I wonder how adding a pause could help you at work. Think about it. Give it a try and let me know how it goes. I really do want to hear how things are going. I want to hear the wins and I want to hear where you’re having challenges. Yes, I am busy. Of course I’m busy, but I am never too busy to talk to you. Please feel free to email me, Heather@abilitiesrehabilitation.com. Let me know how it’s going and if I can help you, I will. 

Thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your 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 forward slash clinicians corner to download your free Getting it All Done at Work process and to see what I’m up to. Thanks so much.

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.