When a Client Feels They Aren’t Making Progress

Photo by Michelle Tresemer on Unsplash

You see an email from a client between sessions that states they don’t feel like they are making enough progress in therapy. You find your stomach tightening and your mind begins to spiral. You catch yourself thinking, “am I not an effective therapist? Am I failing them somehow?” After all, many mental health professionals take ownership over session progress or failure as we have a lot invested in the clients we serve.

I want to normalize this experience by stating that an initial emotional reaction to perceived negative feedback is valid. Our desire to help others is valid. Even the client bringing up their progress or lack thereof is valid. To truly embrace this experience as a growth opportunity for our clients and ourselves, consider the following steps to remain grounded and present through the process.

Notice Your Own Stuff. It’s important to notice our reactions and responses to a client saying they don’t feel they are making progress. We may question our abilities. We may find ourselves hurt or defensive. We may want to argue with the client. Notice how you want to respond and hold space for those feelings. Seek supervision or consultation if it can help you hold and process those emotions in preparation for moving forward to the next step.

Remain Curious. It’s important to remain curious about why a particular response is coming up for you. Do you recognize a people-pleasing part of that wants all clients to be happy with the work you do? Are you fearful of a negative review? Did their comment reveal deeper fears of feeling out of your element or incompetent? Perhaps you are feeling blindsided by their feedback because you felt the last few sessions were full of powerful processing. Remain curious about what response is showing up loudest and why.

Boldly Brainstorm. Once you’ve recognized your own response to feedback and work through it, you are ready to re-engage your client. What would it be like to explore their bravery at naming how they feel? Can they identify the barriers that prevented them from bringing it into the room in a previous session? Is there an expectation that needs to be clarified for them to feel good about the work? Or do they need a different fit or referral based on their progress to date? By modeling for the client that these types of conversations are welcome, not only can we better understand where they are coming from to brainstorm solutions, we can also encourage transparency in communication going forward.

Although a client reporting they feel they aren’t making enough progress can be initially upsetting, it can serve as a powerful opportunity to reconnect and communicate on the expectations and structure of therapy for the better. I hope these ideas can help you navigate unfamiliar territory with grace so that future feedback can not only enhance a client’s therapeutic process, but your clinical skills as well!

A Letter to Professional Helpers

Hello fellow helpers! I’m so excited that you’re considering my new book Helpers with Hashimoto’s: The Rise of Thyroid Conditions in Professional Helpers and What We Can Do About It.  Written for professional helpers experiencing compassion fatigue, stress, burnout, and so much more, we have a calling to help others that, in turn, feeds our soul. We breathe it. We embrace it. We live it. 

We want to make a difference and an impact in others’ lives! As a mental health therapist for more than a decade, this resonates with me. It’s the starfish story. If you haven’t come across this poem before, I hope you’ll search for it! I get goosebumps and teary eyed almost every time I share it with someone new. Of course, we all want to make a difference for each starfish/person we help. But we also struggle to slow down and take care of ourselves. How do we do both? Can we help that starfish then sit on the beach, digging our toes into the sand and feeling the sun on our faces? How do we learn to breathe it all in? Can we remain helpful without running ourselves into the ground?

As a therapist, I discovered I was suffering from burnout in 2017. I had symptoms for years before then and pushed through them. In the words of Petersen, How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation, “Like other type-A overachievers, I didn’t hit walls, I worked around them” (2020).

It’s awkward to admit that as a professional, I didn’t really register what was happening. Even though my hair was falling out, I had gained weight, and I was experiencing mood swings where I fantasized about quitting my job almost daily. I’d ignored the puffy face I didn’t recognize in the mirror between meetings. I’d feel depression symptoms in the morning and bounce back to feeling like myself by lunchtime. It was wild. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s in late 2018, being told by the doctor that as long as I wasn’t planning to have kids anytime soon, I would just live with the symptoms as they were.

No thank you. Suffering through symptoms isn’t good enough. Not by a long shot. With thyroid conditions on the rise, there is more overlap between chronic stress, burnout, and thyroid functioning than we’d previously realized. Folks are being diagnosed with anxiety and depression who actually have a hypoactive thyroid. One in eight people have a thyroid condition now, most often women. And since women are also more likely to choose helping professions, I started to see them more frequently as clients in my therapeutic work. I could no longer ignore my own thyroid condition. My clients were paralleling my journey of desiring a better quality of life and I wanted to help them achieve it.

Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune condition that attacks one’s own thyroid and kills it over time, is the culprit for a lot of my symptoms. It contributes to fatigue, weight gain, anxiety and depression, and creates pregnancy challenges for some women. As I saw more and more professional helpers in my therapy practice, I realized they were being given the same messaging as me. Deal with it. Push through as is. This is your life now.

I refuse to accept this messaging and you should too. This book serves as a guide back to wellness. It is a journey of four professional women, myself included, who fight for the quality of their lives so they can remain impactful helpers and healthy individuals. Like Briana, who went through several doctors before she found answers as to why she’d gained 60 pounds within months. Or Liliana, who works through a checklist each month to explore if her symptoms are due to her thyroid, burnout, or something else. And Amy, who is still adjusting her diet in response to thyroid flare ups and gastric distress years after her diagnosis. Or me, a burnout consultant who questions if I’m doing enough for my clients while not wanting to ignore my own body’s needs. It’s a daily balancing act.

If this resonates with you, I’m glad you’re here! As professional helpers, we need to better understand our susceptibility to chronic stress, burnout, and resulting thyroid conditions. Join me in exploring the contributing factors of helping professions that make these challenging experiences more likely. Let’s begin our journey of reprioritizing your health as a professional helper. Grab the book on Amazon in paperback and Kindle here.

Warmly,

Khara

Meeting Your Money Milestones

For many small business owners, entering the last quarter of the year prompts us to revisit our numbers. Perhaps we are trying to wrap up projects or carve out time for new ones in the new year. What if we are wanting to see if we hit our annual revenue goal? Or maybe it’s our desire to see how 2021 compared to the strangeness that was 2020. Whatever the reason, we tend to feel some pressure to finish strong before the holidays. I know this feels true for me, especially with the added milestone of buying our first house this Fall! So what are you missing in your toolkit to meet your money milestones? Let’s take a look at some Financial Therapy tools that have worked wonders for other business owners!

Know Your Numbers

I know this may seem like a no-brainer, but it isn’t uncommon for a small business owner to experience avoidance, overwhelm, guilt, or shame when trying to get closer to their numbers. Do you know your monthly expenses? How about how much you make each month? What are your periodic expenses for the year, factored over 12 months? Although it may be emotional, this is an opportunity to get closer to your money which has long lasting, positive effects including increased confidence and security in your business. Do you feel like you already have these elements locked in? Consider the 50-30-20 rule for your business versus your personal expenses. This can be a thought-provoking, next-level exercise in healing our relationship to money for driven professionals everywhere!

Rename Your Accounts

A personal favorite, it’s amazing to see the shifts that happen when business owners rename their accounts to something that has more emotional buy-in. How different would it feel to see a savings account named “Vacation to Hawaii” or an account that says “Dream Home” when putting money aside each month? How would it feel to rename a credit card to “Life-changing Trip to Italy” rather than credit card debt? This simple but powerful shift in how we think and feel about our money can make all the difference in staying committed to our savings goals or our debt reduction plan. So think about what words would capture a positive emotion for you when you sign into your bank accounts online. Try a couple of names on for size and see how they land. You can always rename your accounts again and again as you work to find the best fit.

Talk About Money

This tip may seem strange and yet talking about money continues to be a taboo conversation for many. Maybe it was discouraged in your family. Maybe it’s created a visceral reaction in you to talk about money with your partner, spouse, or business partner which has lead to fighting in the past. In order to heal your money story, you have to get close to it and talk about it. To be clear, I’m not suggesting you go around saying “I can’t afford ______.” That’s a self-limiting belief that we have all been caught saying to ourselves. I’m talking about taking the power out of money by making it a more casual conversation. Perhaps it’s celebrating a milestone with a colleague you trust. Or having what Bari Tessler calls a Money Date with your partner or spouse to check in on your goals. Maybe you are sharing what you’ve learned about yourself in your Financial Therapy work with friends and family. Although we know not everyone can hold these conversations with you in having to do their own work around money, modeling money chats as safe can cause a positive ripple effect for those who wish to partake.

Revisit Your Money Monthly

Lastly, once you start the work of knowing your numbers, don’t forget about them! The work of money healing is not a one-and-done process. You have to check in once in awhile. So what would it be like to set up a money date for yourself to review your numbers? Will you run a P&L for the business? Review bank statements to see what you made this month? Utilize a tool like TillerHQ, MoneyGrit, or YNAB which give you a snapshot of your month? There are plenty of possibilities here so discover what works for you and go for it!

I hope these tools are as impactful for you as they’ve been for other brave small business owners who wished to redefine their wealth, worth, and work-life balance. This is just the tip of the iceberg of what Financial Therapy can offer! If you feel inspired, intimidated, or just want the accountability of doing this work with someone who can offer the safe space and compassion to create a difference, please reach out!

Khara Croswaite Brindle is a Certified Financial Therapist-Level I™ Professional. Schedule your free 20 minute discovery call to explore Financial Therapy here.

What the Movie “Knives Out” Teaches Us About Money

There are millions of people in the world who would describe their relationship with money as “complicated.” Maybe it’s the belief that more money would make them happier, so they struggle with workaholism. Or they were taught that being rich leads to greed, so they spend their money as soon as they earn it. Perhaps they avoid looking at their bank statements because it causes them distress or shame to see the growing debt. All of these reactions are valid and become the focus of money healing work offered through Financial Therapy.

So where does the movie “Knives Out” come in? For someone who’s ready to explore their relationship with money, I encourage them to notice what shows up as they witness each character’s relationship with money in the movie. Is there a character you relate to? Does their behavior cause an emotional reaction in you? Notice any thoughts, feelings or judgements that come up.

“Knives Out” captures several money disorders in action. There are ten money disorders identified within Financial Therapy so far and these characters represent the emotional toll of disordered behaviors with money. Behaviors many of us want to heal and change in ourselves. So grab your popcorn and get ready to look at “Knives Out” from a whole new perspective by revisiting the characters below.

Are you similar to Marta Cabrera, the main character who finds herself the recipient of a large inheritance in addition to sudden grief and loss. Marta is a caregiver who suffers from Noble Poverty, the phenomenon that one must sacrifice their own financial stability in the name of helping others. The inheritance initially causes her distress and triggers questions about her worth until she shifts to seeing it as an opportunity to help her loved ones.

How do you see Ransom Drysdale, the antagonist in the story? Ransom’s expectation is that he is one of the rightful owners of the family fortune and should remain such, which causes him to threaten violence and be manipulative to get his way. His grandfather Harlan Thromby’s decision to bequest his fortune to his caregiver Marta instead of the family, infuriates Ransom. Ransom demonstrates Financial Denial about the changing circumstances of his spending due to his grandfather’s decision, which threatens the lifestyle Ransom has come to expect with his grandfather as his benefactor for years.

Maybe you recognize the behaviors of Linda Drysdale, mother to Ransom and daughter to Harlan, the benefactor in this story. Linda is a Financial Enabler, believing Ransom and the other family members deserve their inheritance based on blood relations and the commitment they’ve maintained to Harlan over the years. Because of this belief, she attempts to convince Marta of her obligation to return the inheritance to the family to allow them to continue their lifestyles, believing they have earned that right.

What about Walt Thromby, the dedicated, hard-working son who is left reeling when his father refused to bequest the business to him after his death. Walt knows he has helped grow the business and thus the fortune, demonstrating signs of Workaholism to prove his worth and value to his father Harlan for decades.

Or perhaps you recognize the emotional reaction of Joni Thromby, daughter to Harlan. Joni has leaned on the contributions of Harlan as a single mother. She demonstrates Financial Dependence, which causes her to panic when hearing from Harlan that he will no longer fund her lifestyle, reporting she is now on her own.

Which leads us to Meg Thromby, daughter of Joni. Meg represents Financial Enmeshment. Her dependence on mom Joni and reliance on grandfather Harlan who pays for her schooling, is jeopardized by Harlan’s decision to stop funding her and mom’s lifestyles. As a daughter, she feels obligated to speak up and secure funding in response to reactions of stress and self-preservation in both her and mom. Joni leans on Meg to fix things by asking Marta to return the money to the family.

Last but not least is Richard Drysdale, husband to Linda. Richard has married into the family and has his own agendas throughout the movie, which we learn when it’s discovered that he has a secret relationship with another woman. This leads us to wonder if he represents Financial Infidelity in addition to Relationship Infidelity, hiding accounts or funds from his wife as part of his secret life.

Other money disorders include Hoarding, Gambling, and Compulsive Spending. Although not blatantly represented throughout the movie, these money disorders could also be contributing to the urgency and unrest of the family, which aptly categorizes this movie as a drama.

What’s coming up for you? I enjoyed this movie for the entertaining who-done-it element that kept us all on our toes the first time we watched it. Now I value it for the money exploration and self-discovery it can offer in the world of Financial Therapy. Are you ready to watch it with new eyes? Perhaps it can assist you in crafting a new relationship with money!

Khara is a contracted Financial Therapist with Financial Therapy Solutions in Denver, CO.

Learn more about Financial Therapy and work with Khara here.

How Financial Therapy Supports Small Business Success

I’ve been a small business owner since 2014 and at the start, I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into. As a mental health therapist and serial entrepreneur, I take pride in my ability to create and help others to heal and grow. Yet like so many in my field, I hadn’t earned a business degree to embark on my small business journey with the confidence I craved. I was anxious that I was going to be part of the statistic that says 50% of small businesses will fail in the first five years. And as a driven professional with my small business being my sole income, that felt like a lot to risk!

Luckily, several years into my business, I was fortunate to be accepted into the Goldman Sach’s 10,000 Small Business Program, a mini MBA that catapults small business scholars into a better understanding of the world of business. Things took on more dimension and clarity. I left feeling motivated and invigorated. The experience brought so much value to what I wanted to accomplish within my business and community.

Fast forward to our time with COVID. Workaholism is on the rise with the hope of financial security in the face of so much uncertainty. I too found myself backsliding into a scarcity mindset and was suffering from Noble Poverty. I knew I needed to continue to work on myself and my relationship with my business to find balance again. Enter Financial Therapy!

Financial Therapy is a process of healing our money stories and improving our relationship with money. It’s exploring our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors around money. As a workaholic therapist with significant student loans who comes from one saver parent and one spender parent, I knew there was work to be done.

Wealth

Financial Therapy is offered with compassionate curiosity, inviting us to do the work of uncovering what wealth means for us. Is wealth about having financial security? Taking vacations without guilt? Paying for our kids’ college? Getting out of debt? Perhaps our process begins with being more comfortable talking about money. By exploring how wealth is defined and measured for us each as an individual, we can invite wealth into our lives through saving, strategizing, and embracing money tools that work for us to be one step closer to our money goals.

Worth

There are several studies out there that say happiness is defined by a specific yearly income. But what if I told you our hardship over happiness isn’t actually about money? For some driven professionals, it’s about our worth being wrapped up in what we do. What we contribute. How we help. We are only as good as what we do. What if our low sense of worth prevents small business owners from raising our rates or collecting payment for a job well done? Money is one piece of our worth story. Financial Therapy uncovers the complexities that shape how we show up in our personal and professional lives.

Work-Life Balance

If Workaholism is defined as a money disorder, then I’m one of thousands of professionals looking to maintain a better work-life balance. Folks who are fighting against the urge to work 24/7 and feel guilty when we take a break. Small business owners who skip social events to work long hours or weekends. Entrepreneurs who struggle to stop thinking about their business at all hours of the day and night. It doesn’t have to be this way. Financial Therapy uncovers that inner dialogue about worth and work that can signal the beginning of healing our money story. Work-life balance is possible! Financial Therapy can be part of the magic to making it happen.

If you relate to any of these experiences, Financial Therapy may be the missing piece you’ve been seeking to achieve the next level of your small business success! I know the process has been invaluable to me as a driven professional and the team at Financial Therapy Solutions would be honored to help you on your journey to financial freedom!

Supporting Small Business Owners to Redefine Wealth, Worth, and Work-Life Balance

Originally Written by Khara Croswaite Brindle for Financialtherapysolutions.com

Emotional Valet and Elevated Antibodies

What if thyroid antibodies become elevated as we hold stress for others? It’s one of the many questions I explore in my soon-to-release new book Helpers with Hashimotos. My inspiration was my clients and colleagues over the years. And of course my own journey to find answers.  Clients were coming to my office with thyroid problems, anxiety, and depression, in some ways paralleling my own personal journey with Hashimoto’s. Then a fellow helper shared that her antibodies climbed dramatically while she was doing her own trauma healing work and a lightbulb went off.

Is it possible that our vicarious trauma and holding of space for others as professional helpers is adding to our risks for developing a thyroid condition? Is one of the ways this shows up in our body increased inflammation and antibodies? Is this adding to why 1 in 8 people have a thyroid condition, including 1 in every 5 women?

So many questions and not enough answers! Yet it all starts to make sense when we think about caregivers, called to helping professions, who put on the superhero cape daily at the risk of their own compassion fatigue and burnout. Becoming an Emotional Valet for others. What’s the cost? An increase in thyroid antibodies and resulting thyroid diagnoses in helping professionals, I suspect.

Intrigued? I’m excited to share more later this year in Helpers with Hashimotos: The Rise of Thyroid Conditions in Professional Helpers and What We Can Do About It. Exploring a relationship between helpers and thyroid conditions, it’s time to embrace strategies to get us back to wellness so we can continue to do what we love!

Self-Care Isn’t Always About Slowing Down

As a workaholic choosing balance on a daily basis, I know that if a stranger were to approach me tomorrow and say, “Khara, just slow down!” I’d politely acknowledge their suggestion without any desire to act on it. As a driven professional, I’ve heard this sentiment for years. From family, friends, and colleagues. Even briefly from my doctors. Yet like many of our clients, having someone suggest slowing down isn’t enough. Workaholics have to examine it, plan it, and justify it to avoid the resulting feelings of restlessness or guilt.

I saw a quote this week that said, “If you don’t make time for wellness, you’ll be forced to make time for illness.” Truth! To ignore the warning signs of burnout or write off self-care as frivolous isn’t an option. However, slowing down isn’t a comfortable option for driven professionals either, so what can we do?

I watched a respected colleague experience distress when exploring how to slow down her life. An extrovert and passionate business owner, she named that she had no desire to have unstructured weekends or embrace boredom. I can relate. I spoke to this in a previous blog called: What If Working Is Your Self-Care? My response to her distress was to share that self-care isn’t always about slowing down. It can be about pivoting and pouring our energy into something restorative and energizing instead. I watched her shoulders drop and a smile return to her face as she began exploring a new way to define her self-care strategy. Discovering what could support her in feeling restored without feeling bored.

People continue to think self-care is vacations, spa days, and bubble baths. All have an element of slowing down, which has value in certain situations. But what if we don’t like any of those things? What if these activities breed discomfort or resentment instead of joy? For workaholics and driven professionals, the abrupt change from 60 miles an hour productivity to full stop leaves them feeling like they’ve been hit by a truck.

It’s why I’ve talked in previous posts about redefining self-care as rest AND restoration. Maybe as a driven person, you like the idea of restoration more than rest. Maybe it fits your personality better, much like my colleague. Instead of binge watching a show and vegging out on the couch, maybe now you are walking in nature or cooking a nourishing meal. Perhaps you are painting or dancing or creating instead of embracing stillness. After all, a lot of entrepreneurs find stillness painful, worrying that it invites in stagnation. Moving and creating feel better to these folks.

So what would be on your self-care list if it wasn’t about slowing down? What would replace the naps, movie marathons, and pedicures if we wanted a self-care activity that was equally active and invigorating? Take that next step and watch how your work-life balance shifts for the better!

Participation Trophies and Perfectionism

What if participation trophies have caused more harm than good? The running criticism of the Millennial generation is that participation trophies were awarded to kids to make sure no one was left out and to promote a feeling that everyone wins. Enter eye rolls of the older generations as we explore how participation trophies could be a possible culprit of increased perfectionism in both Millennial and Gen Z generations.

The Millennial generation is defined roughly as individuals born 1980-1996. Stereotyped as the entitled generation that moves from one job to the next, Simon Sinek was willing to name some of the challenges in his viral video on Millennials in the workplace. Dr. Jean Twenge explored additional factors for this generation in her book Generation Me. Thanks to her research, I discovered a detailed picture of how and why perfectionism has elevated since the early 1980s. Additionally, the full experience of Millennial finances and workaholism is captured in Anne Helen Petersen’s book Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation.

Following the Millennial generation, Gen Z captures folks born roughly 1996-2004 and has been named a generation that is more open to talking about mental health, quality of life, and feelings of isolation. Dr. Twenge dedicates a book to this generation’s challenges called iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—And What That Means for the Rest of Us. Serving this population in my mental health practice, I continue to see themes of perfectionism, anxiety, and burnout based on high expectations of themselves to perform well and achieve success.

How does this connect back to participation trophies? Please allow me to explain. A client of mine was doing therapeutic work around messaging their received in childhood about their worth being wrapped up in what they do. Their belief was that the more they do, the more value they possess in the eyes of others. They described getting a participation trophy for an event and recognized that it mean nothing to them because everyone else got one too. Not only that, they felt the trophy encouraged imposter syndrome in feeling like a fraud! Therefore my client felt they had to work even harder to earn accolades and positive feedback on their worth as they got older. Enter workaholism, poor boundaries, and absent self-care which landed them in my office.

Does this resonate with you as it does with me? As an Elder Millennial and therapist, I recognize powerful patterns in my own worth as well as my clients work. Is it possible that participation trophies started a spiral of messaging that our worth is wrapped up in what we do? Combined with money earned for good grades, promotions for working overtime, and focusing on our children’s accomplishments when asked how they are, is this not the perfect storm for perfectionism, workaholism, and resulting burnout as adults?

Participation trophies are not the only piece of this puzzle. I am honored to continue this journey of self-discovery with my clients as a Perfectioneur, mental health therapist, and burnout consultant. My client’s disclosure provided another layer of perspective related to rising perfectionism and burnout in these two generations. It’s not the end of our story! Our narratives of self-worth, value, and workaholism are worth exploring and rewriting to remove our badges of busyness and achieve better work-life balance!

How to Stop Celebrating Noble Burnout

What if we’ve received messaging that we are only as good as what we do for others? This is a common core belief for helping professionals. Subconscious or not, it has the potential to increase risks of poor boundaries, workaholism, and burnout.

If we choose a profession built on caring, responding, and helping, we tend to carry the weight of being vigilant, responsive, and always “on.”  As we work harder to help others and meet work demands, we pay less attention to our own boundaries for self-care and that superhero cape stays on way too long.

It’s a phenomenon I like to call Noble Burnout. The cape starts to weigh us down as we run the risk of forgetting our own needs entirely, which results in burnout. Yet we are praised for our sacrifices and our worth remains defined in what we do for others. While the effort to help so many people is noble, it’s not sustainable as we neglect our own self-care needs. Even superheroes need a break.

Finding Balance Over Noble Burnout

1) Learn to Say No, More. I’ve heard it called “acting your wage.” Stop working for free when what you offer has value! Having some prepared phrases or responses can help you hold your boundaries and practice of saying no.

2) Improve Your Relationship with Money. Exploring your money messages will help you identify a healthier relationship with your finances as a professional. What if you think poorly of people who are rich or well-off? What if you worry about becoming Scrooge? These internal beliefs may prevent you from meeting your full financial potential because you worry about the impression you make on others. Healing your money story is an important piece to the Noble Burnout puzzle.

3) Remember Your Values. If you are working within your values, you’ll enjoy the rewards of fulfillment and purpose at work and home. If your values are absent, how can you bring them back into the equation? If our values are identified and prioritized, we can utilize them as a healthy gauge for wellness rather than misplaced fuel for the Noble Burnout fire.

4) Embrace Authenticity. You are a person first and professional helper second. This means being able to honor your needs and take break. Being human, having limits, and saying no are all allowed.

Together we can stop subscribing to Noble Burnout as helping professionals and as a community! Just imagine what we could accomplish if we weren’t celebrating self-sacrifice and instead chose to celebrate self-care.

What if Working is Your Self-Care?

I was bonding with other powerhouse business women in a working retreat recently and was asked to facilitate a goal-setting exercise. What do we want to accomplish in the next six months and how can we help one another achieve these goals? I’d had them narrow it down. Brainstorm. Prioritize. Share. Ask for help.

Then it was my turn. I jumped in with enthusiasm, rattling off my goals of book sales, the Amazon best-seller list, and a TED Talk. I was excited to share! To manifest, to make it more real. And then came the question. “Khara,” one of my colleagues said, “that sounds great. But, what’s the end goal?” I felt my excitement wheeze and deflate like an untied balloon. I felt confused, unsure, and started to sweat. Why couldn’t I come up with an answer for her? An answer for myself? I knew in my heart that I didn’t want to retire early and not have work. Working gives me a sense of direction. Work gives me purpose. More specifically, creating gives me purpose. And yet I didn’t know the end-result. Through a constricted throat, I claimed I’d have to get back to her, finding my mind going blank.

Soon after the retreat, she texted me. “Khara, I owe you an apology. My question to you was flawed from the beginning. It was a projection of societal expectations that there has to be a particular outcome more than just enjoying the process. Enjoying the process might be the point and that is actually really beautiful.” She proceeded to send me this quote:

“The fruits of a fulfilling life—happiness, confidence, enthusiasm, purpose, and money—are mainly the by-products of doing something we enjoy, with excellence, rather than the things we can seek directly.”    --Dan Miller

The tightness in my chest loosened, the panic of not having an answer and worrying about not having an answer, lifted. I felt seen. It lead me to a question of, “what if working is my self-care?” What if working is yours?

They say “if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” That may be true for some, but it’s also one of the villains we blame for our current workaholic culture. Doing what we love is a privilege. Does the work invigorate you? Inspire you? Feed your soul?

I can tell you that creating for me brings feelings of happiness and joy. It’s as close as I get to contentment in knowing I’m producing things of value. I can also tell you that to the outside world, I’m churning things out at a breakneck speed. A speed which others might find unhealthy, believing I subscribe to workaholic culture, I am workaholic culture, and that I need to take it down a notch. That I’m steamrolling instead of stopping to smell the roses. They assume I don’t get enough sleep.

There’s a sweet spot for functioning in a productivity loop. For those creatives out there, you get it. We get ideas in the shower, while driving, and at 4am out of blue. We feel a rush to put our ideas into motion, creating something that can have a positive impact for ourselves and others. We do in fact maintain enough sleep to get to good ideas, the ahas that inspire action. So to tell us to slow down, stop our work, or accuse us of poor self-care is missing the mark. It’s once again operating from the flawed lens of society. The all or nothing thinking. Society which demands answers to the question, what’s the end goal? Why do it? What’s the point? Why?

Simon Sinek said it best when he said start with your why. If you embrace it, the rest will fall into place. If our why as women entrepreneurs is to make an impact and a meaningful difference in the world through our products and leadership, we can do that. We can work and have it be meaningful, fulfilling, and consider aspects of it as part of our self-care.

Self-care has been commercialized, having us thinking of vacations, massages, and manicures. In previous talks, I’ve invited others to redefine self-care as rest versus restoration. Rest is easy to measure. Taking brain breaks, vegging out, getting enough sleep. But what feels so enticing for creative entrepreneurs is restoration. What energizes you, invigorates you, inspires you? From this lens, it’s not surprising that parts of our business can restore us. Creativity. Leadership. Integrity and Purpose.

Adam Grant highlights the importance of creativity in the workplace by showing that employees who had 20% of their work hours carved out for creativity were more productive, were responsible for some of the latest innovations to change the world, and were more emotionally invested in their workplace. Does this not sound like a great recipe for burnout prevention and challenging our workaholic culture?

I’m asking you to change your beliefs about the churn. Creativity and enjoying the process in your work can be self-care. Creativity at work serves the dual purpose of encouraging feelings of productivity and contentment. Working may not be rest but it can be restorative. Therefore it can be part of your self-care practice. Do something you enjoy with excellence, and the fruits of a fulfilling life will follow.