63 | Am I a Terrible Lactation Consultant?

Annie: Well, hey there, Leah.

Leah: Hi, Annie. I'm so excited to be back with you again today. How are you?

Annie: I am great. We are recording this right after our deeper dive into I'm so Over this Pandemic but this Pandemic isn't Over my Private Practice with Hope Lima. If you missed it, you can purchase the recording.

Leah: It was so good.

Annie: It was so so good. We'll make sure to put the link in the show notes. I mean, Hope is always great but we talked about rapid tests, we talked about masks, we talked about testing, we talked about human milk and risk reduction. It was so good.

Leah: Yeah, it was really helpful. I just was so happy to have that communal space around COVID. I know we both been, all of us, we both me and you and the entire world have been drudging through the pandemic, and it's just been feeling so heavy. So it was so nice to just be like in camaraderie like, hey guys, we're all dealing with this and it sucks. But let's learn good things and keep getting out there and doing good things because we've got good knowledge. Oh my gosh, Hope's like a great just wealth of knowledge and research. I love how inspired I felt about human milk after I heard all she had to tell us. It was so cool. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. Today, we're taking a way different turn than that. Annie, what are we going to talk about today?

Annie: Well, today we're going to talk about am I a terrible lactation consultant, and okay, you're not a terrible lactation consultant. So we're actually going to talk about all the things that make us feel like we're terrible lactation consultants. Before we go into our topic for today, not only was it great being with other lactation consultants to talk about COVID, it's just great being with other lactation consultants talking about the things that only they understand. If you are available on February 11th, it's a Friday, and you want to spend the day with me and Leah, we are partnering with USLCA to host a workshop called Nurture Your Private Practice, Build Sustainability. It's an all day thing but guess what, it's not all day of Zooms. I mean, it is all day of Zooms but we are going to not only be talking about private practice topics like taxes and legal issues and things like that that are really important for our infrastructure, we're going to be listening to a panel of amazing lactation consultants talking about all of their big ideas and how they make them happen. We are going to be going deep into nurturing our own circle of care, putting together all of the pieces that help us to make our private practices take care of us so we can take care of other people. Within all that, we're going to have breakout rooms with discussion questions for you to interact and make connections with other private practice lactation consultants. We are also going to be doing intention work, breathwork, and movement. That is the piece that I'm most excited about because, I mean, I love the Zooms and I love to talk, but we're also going to be doing these physical things together and getting into our bodies and remembering that we're not just these amazing clinical minds and caring hearts, but we also have arms and all of these things. We're gonna be focusing on all of that.

Leah: And how all of that really, in turn, nurtures ourselves so that we can sustain a private practice. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but this pandemic has added such a layer of stress that it's hard to be a business owner and live through a pandemic, I have learned/ boy have I had to really reach far and wide to learn how to nurture myself so that I could keep showing up for my business, for the families I want to serve, for the people that work for me. I mean, there is a lot to it. Annie and I want to share with you, what we have figured out. Some amazing people that we have made connections with that we know can share with you such amazing tools, strategies, but also that fun stuff that we definitely need to be talking about too to build that good private practice foundation and sustainability. So I am so excited about it. I can't wait to have you guys all there with us and have a great day and also there's going to be networking.

Annie: Networking.

Leah: I can't wait to talk to everybody.

Annie: I know. I'm excited to see who shows up because you never know what you're going to get. We know we're going to get good people because there's good people in private practice. So we will put the link in the show notes. It's uslca.org/nurture-your-pp. We'll again we'll have that link in the show notes but please, registration is open and we would love, love, love to see you there.

Leah: Okay, so here we go tackling the not fun thought that so many times comes across our mind even after I've been working with families for like what, 17 years if you include the time that I was volunteer work and there's been a fair number of times that I have questioned if I am just a terrible lactation consultant, and should possibly hang up my, what is it lactation consultant badge or I don't know what you hang up when you're done being a lactation consultant. But whenever you hang up, I know there's a moment that I have questioned that in myself, and Annie, I'm sure that well, let me say I hope that I am not alone in this or this is gonna be a really awkward podcast.

Annie: You're 100% not alone. I spend quite a bit of my time feeling like I'm a garbage lactation consultant and wondering who on Earth let me do this work. Then I think we're also, I don't think I'm alone in this, I had a consult today where the family was so happy that they texted me later to say I'm so glad you came today and I feel so much better. How come I don't let that live in my body and in my soul the way I let the people who are like Annie Frisbee didn't help me and she didn't help my neighbor. That's a comment that haunts my dreams.

Leah: Oh, man, it is so true. I think there's plenty of research out there that talks about negativity bias and how back in caveman days, it was probably good that you hung on to the thought that tigers live in this particular area and you probably shouldn't go over there. Maybe not so much of like, the good thoughts. It's crazy how we just attach everything to these kinds of probably really rare, really not that common instances where we might really feel not great about maybe our performance or our knowledge base or whatever it is, and dwell on it and let it fester inside of us. Like you said, how many years has it been since I've heard that story so many times, like, so long since that review or comment or whatever it was, but it's crazy how it just lives on and on and on. So today we're going to tackle that thought and those thought patterns and why they live there and we're at least going to build some tools they're going to happen, like because we have negativity bias so they're gonna happen and we're gonna accept that. We're gonna learn how to tackle them in a couple of different ways because I think that's so important. When we maybe dwell a little bit too much on them, we might show up from that place. That's not going to help as many people as if we show it from the place that you left when you heard that wonderful comment today saying, thank you so much. You're so amazing. I'm so grateful for you. We need to show it from that energy. It's hard sometimes and I've had so many times where I've left a consult going, oh my gosh, I'm sure that they're like never gonna talk to me again, or something. They're the ones that like, call you back, and like, you were so amazing. I was sitting there for days thinking I was horrible and they probably didn't find it helpful or whatever and all along they were so grateful. Have you ever had that happen? I feel like that's the most frustrating thing.

Annie: Yeah. It's something that when I was researching a talk I gave recently about nurturing your private practice and I was reading about burnout and in a book called The Resilient Practitioner. It's for therapists, but there was a lot in there that applied to us. The one thing that you know, resonates from that book with what you're saying is that in our work, we have a lack of closure, that lack of closure contributes to burnout. That's something that happens all the time, which is like we go help somebody we're involved in their lives for a small sliver of time, relatively speaking, and they're not always going to be telling us thank you for coming today.

Leah: Exactly.

Annie: Or I wish I'd never met you whatever it is. A lot of times, they're like in their hearts they're so grateful we came and then they go live their lives because we're not that important to them. So we don't get to hear that feedback, positive or negative, that we need to process and assimilate the relationship that we created with them and the emotional investment that we made in them. That is a really challenging part of the job. You do have to create that closure for yourself. I think some of the things we're going to talk about today are going to help with turning what could be negative thoughts about the interaction that you had or the fact that I didn't hear from them, therefore, they must hate me, which is where we kind of default to instead of something that is more productive. So tell us what the framework that we're going to be talking through today?

Leah: Well, I've got a couple. I dug up a couple of different strategies about negative thought patterns because that's basically what it is. I am guaranteeing that, I guess I can't guarantee, but I can with, high likelihood if you're listening to this podcast you are not a terrible lactation consultant. You are investing in your knowledge base. There's probably 100 things that I could come up with just not even with knowing you personally, that I know because of your actions. So there's probably like, I could sit here and say that about somebody else, I probably would have a hard time saying that about myself. So much of these things are not true thoughts. They might be negative thoughts but we could also not only challenge the thoughts, we could challenge the language we use around the thoughts. We could also use the thought as a goal mind to dig into what's beneath it. These are a couple of things that we're going to talk about today as we think through this thought, I'm a terrible lactation consultant. It could be any version of that, that you feel yourself kind of coming to oftentimes. Before we go there, though, one thing is, I do think it's helpful to have, like you were just saying, some self-evaluation that helps you kind of know I did my very best. One thing to always remember, like, we're human beings and you are not going to show up as the most 100% person that you ever were on every single consult every day for your entire life. You have a life outside of consoles, you have things that might be going on your body, you might have not slept well that night, blah, blah, blah. There can be all kinds of things that make one console feel like oh, my gosh, it's the best console I've ever had in my entire life, and then the next one like waa waa but if you could have some metric for like, okay, I showed up. I was kind. I was compassionate even though I didn't sleep but four hours last night. I was kind. I was compassionate. I shared information. I made sure the door was open if they needed more help. If you could say, what are your values when it comes to a consult, that's gonna be your metric that you can walk out of the door and say, like, I am not 100% today but I know that I hit my metrics for myself, and then give yourself a pass. Like, who cares if you weren't the perkiest bubbliest as human that ever existed during that visit. You were just what you needed to be today and you showed up and you hit your metrics for what is a good lactation consultant. Then you just keep doing that day in and day out and we're human, and you don't have to be perfect. If anybody hadn't told you, you don't have to be perfect to be great and good and wonderful.

Annie: My client today who texted me that she was so happy that I came during the consult, I was demonstrating how to do the armpit massage for lymphatic drainage. She started doing it and she smelled, she's like I don't know if I put on deodorant today. I was like, it's fine, I think I forgot to and we all had a laugh about that. I mean, it's winter, but I don't know, We don't need to show up with like, our perfect everything, hair tidy, pulled back in a neat bun if you've got long hair like I do, and perfect everything, branded everything, whatever it is. Did you show up? Were you present in the moment with that person in a real way? Were you authentic with them? Were you focused on them? Were you also displaying humility about the things that maybe you don't know? For example, they might have a situation come up where you haven't encountered it before and you're not experienced with it. Were you able to respond honestly, and say something like, I've never seen that before. Let me get you more information about that. That's what I think you're getting at when you talk about not being perfect. Are you being real? Are you bringing all of your skills and all of your humility to your encounters with your clients?

Leah: Yeah, and I want to recognize that there's gonna be ebbs and flows. There's gonna be good days and bad days. But I think if you're anything like me, and I don't know, maybe you guys aren't like me, but on the days where I know I'm not feeling great, maybe I didn't sleep great. Or maybe I've had some other thing that's just really weighing on my mind. I know like, this isn't the best console I've ever provided in my entire life. I might have not been as energetic but at least I can always fall back on like I said, I have these kinds of, I guess my standards, my bare minimum standards. If I can least hit this, even if I don't know all the answers, even if I can't fix all their problems, even if I'm not as perky or my hair looks crazy, or oops I forgot to put deodorant on all those things. At least I can say, like my values, what I think I should be doing, I'm showing up and doing and providing. Sometimes that will be with gold dust on top of it because I am closing in on like, that was amazing and I'm like feeling really good. It might also be on those days where it's, you know, it just it was enough and it is enough, and is enough and enough and enough. I am now going to move on from it because I did what I was coming to do. Even still, we can have maybe some nagging negative thought patterns and one strategy that I found really helpful and, of course, probably heard it on the 50 million podcasts that I listened to, I could not tell you exactly which one but I've also read a lot of her work, so Byron Katie, she has a kind of process of challenging a thought when a negative thought arrives. It's called the work. One of the things I love about this is sometimes if you find that you're kind of swirling, so I know we have those times where the thought is probably a bit irrational, but we can't really see that it's irrational like I'm a terrible lactation consultant. It could even be as simple as like, I didn't answer that parents question as good as I could and I can't believe I did that. Then you can go through this thought process. So is that true? Yeah, I didn't enter it as good as I could. I really felt like I left out some information that I probably should have shared. Okay, can you be absolutely certain that you? Well, I think so. I mean, I feel like I left some things out. So yeah, I think it's absolutely true. Then what happens when I believe that? Well, I started to think that I'm a terrible lactation consultant and I didn't show up as my best self. Then the next question is, who would I be if I let that thought go? Well, if I let that thought, go, if I didn't have that thought I would say well I did the best I could in that moment, and maybe circumstances in the conversation just didn't allow me to expand as much as I wanted to, which is okay. We can't give every single piece of information to every single family and every single consult, they would never call us back because it'd be way too overwhelmed. So I have to trust that in the moment, whatever decisions I made about the information I gave were a response to what was happening in that moment. But I can get to this point where like, well if I didn't believe that thought, I would say, you know what, Leah, you did the best job you could in that moment and we're gonna move on. You know what that thought is not serving me and I don't have to go down that gravy train of dwelling in it and you can do this with every thought. So we can do it with the title of the podcast. The first question is, is this true? Am I terrible lactation consultant? So, Annie, you can answer these questions this time. Do Annie, are you a terrible lactation consultant? Is this true?

Annie: I am not a terrible lactation consultant. I am gonna own that. I'm not a terrible lactation consultant.

Leah: I know you're not.

Annie: I think I'm pretty good.

Leah: Yeah, absolutely. But we're gonna pretend like you said, well maybe because

Annie: Maybe, maybe I am. I'm having a bad day.

Leah: This that happened and I didn't do this this one time. Then we could challenge it again, we can say are you absolutely certain it's true?

Annie: One of the things that comes to mind when I questioned my skills is like, I think about things that I've missed. So I know there was a baby about four years ago, where I missed laryngomalacia because I wasn't experienced enough. It wasn't just like, I was like, I wonder what that is, let me go find out and never found out but it was like, I literally didn't even know what to look for necessarily, it never even crossed my mind. Then at the time, I was so focused on positioning and I was so focused on tongue-tie or suck training, that whatever I knew about laryngomalacia was not anywhere accessible to my brain. I got very blinkered about it. When I think about like, am I a terrible lactation consultant, because I missed this and I never counseled the family about it, and they never heard about it from me. They can say, my lactation consultant never said anything about this. That would be a true statement. But can I absolutely be certain that that makes me a terrible lactation consultant? That's where it starts to fall apart, in terms of doing the work is to say, no, it makes me a fallible lactation consultant who missed something, and now it's my responsibility to grow from it. So if I change the thought into a true thought, which is the false thought is I'm a terrible lactation consultant and the truth thought is, I am a fallible lactation consultant. I'm not perfect. I have room to grow. So how do I react when I believe the thought that I'm a terrible lactation consultant makes me not want to see clients at all. But when I think the true thought, which is I always have room to grow, it inspires me to want to learn more, so that that doesn't happen again. There might even be room in there where I might, not in this particular situation, but there might be other situations where there might be something where I would go back to the client, and try to say, look, I missed something, can we talk some more? You know, whatever it is. Who would I be if I didn't believe the thought that I'm a terrible lactation consultant? Well, I would be somebody who believes that I can always be improving and that's a person that I want to be. I think it's so helpful to really tease that apart, what's helpful and what's not.

Leah: Yeah, so I have so appreciated these simple questions in kind of challenging negative thoughts in all realms of my life that might come up. It's so applicable here because we are so passionate about our work, and we probably are really more critical than a lot of professions, because there's a lot hanging in the balance. I appreciate how much impact we have. I feel like there's a lot hanging in the balance of us showing up as the best that we can. So I think we kind of all probably tend a little bit towards being fairly critical or fairly introspective of like, did I do the best? Are these people going to have a good outcome? Did I miss anything? Could have done something else, like that kind of thought process. Which I think, is helpful. One of the things that I wanted to kind of come to as well, because it kind of leads from the situation that you had is when this thought comes up, and it's nagging at us, could we maybe also turn it from a place of curiosity? So everything that happens in your life, that seems to be a challenge, or a mistake, or feeling like a terrible lactation consultant, could possibly be something that we need to learn. If we got more curious about why is this coming up for me? Why have I dwelled on this so much? Why am I, four years later, talking about this on a podcast? It's like, okay, just what you thought there, is there a skill or a knowledge gap that this is kind of shedding light on? Okay, this is great that I have this, you know, it's like, we could almost say, thank you nagging thought. I'm gonna go hunt down a training on laryngomalacia or oral airway issues. I'm gonna go find a training that has more information about that. The other thing is we need support, we need to talk things through. Sometimes if we are in our head, thoughts coming back and back, that's such a great time to reach out to somebody and say, look this what happened, I've left myself feeling like a terrible lactation consultant, can you just talk through this with me? Maybe they can help shed some light on something you could have done differently or something you might not have known about yet, just like you. There is no way every lactation consultant can know all the things like that is one thing I am for certain I will, until the end of my days as a lactation consultant, will never know it all. The list of conferences and classes I want to take prove that because I have a never-ending list of trainings that I want to take. So I know, there's always room to grow, but we might help ourselves by instead of beating ourselves up, try to get curious about what is this kind of shining a light on for me. Then also, we tend to be really hard on ourselves. And I don't know if you found this because this is what the pandemic has done to me really hard on ourselves when we're in burnout when we're in overwhelm. Something that we might have given ourselves a lot of grace for on a normal time in our lives, if we're coming from a place of emptiness, burnout, overwhelm, we're going to be showing up for ourselves being that really rude voice. It's like, oh my God, you're so terrible. Why can't you get it together? Why is your life more organized, blah blah blah? I know that's super true for me, and I've become way more aware. Do you find that? I just know, I'm so much meaner to myself when I am burned out or overwhelmed. Is that the case for you, Annie?

Annie: Definitely. It's where I start feeling like all I can see about myself are the places where I feel sloppy or I cut corners or where I know, like, I'll say like, was I really giving as much energy as I should have been giving. I just really start to beat myself up and it's all of my flaws. It's not wrong to recognize that you have flaws. Nobody has, like you said at the beginning, nobody has to be perfect, but they just get so amplified. Where I start to think like, oh yeah, that's all people see when they look at me is they see all the things that are wrong with me and that's not a true thought. I mean, I hope it's not true. The people that love me are just staring at me thinking about all the ways that I fail them on a daily basis.

Leah: It does feel like that when you're burned out though. When you're buried under it, you're just like, pouring gasoline on the burnout fire. It's so bad. It's so bad.

Annie: It's like poking a bruise too. When you're in that negative place, it can kind of feel like, you just want to keep punishing your, like, yeah, I am terrible. Yeah. And not stopping and saying, no, I'm not terrible, I'm tired.

Leah: Yes. We don't recognize it for what it is.

Annie: Yeah, and I think that is so so important that we extricate ourselves from the position of punisher.

Leah: It's almost like we have to be the policeman of our own selves, like stop being mean to this person here, they're tired, they're worn out, they need a break.

Annie: When you go see a parent, like a family, and the mom is sitting there, and she's like, I'm so sorry, my house is messy or they cry and they always say sorry when they cry. Is there ever any thought in your mind where you're like, boy, she really should have cleaned up for me, my heart, you're like, no.

Leah: I'm always tearing up with them.

Annie: All you want to do is redirect their thoughts from like that of like, I'm not thinking that at all. In fact, I'm looking at you, and I'm seeing how hard you're working. I see how much your baby loves you. I'm seeing how much you're putting into this. That's what you do for them so do it for yourself

Leah: Exactly. Sometimes we need to be our own, like that version of lactation consultant for ourselves. I think it's so fascinating how the human brain doesn't default to that. I think that's so frustrating. I'm sure there's like, psychologist could tell us all the reason why that doesn't actually happen, but I think we do really default to that. The more tired we are, the more brain doesn't work so we can't even call in these resources. So just to recap, okay, you could do the work, that would be one strategy. You could also see if maybe this thought is because there's a knowledge gap or something, get curious with some questions like, is there something I need to learn? Is there somebody I can reach out to and talk to? Is this a moment that I'm really recognizing I'm burned out and I really need to figure out if I need to change some boundaries in my life right now or do some more work on myself and what I need? Then from there, I think the other thing that you can always do is just challenge the language. You really pointed to this in the beginning, I loved it so much, because you like bringing it all home. Then, in the beginning, you said, wait a second, I'm not a terrible lactation consultant, my truer statement is I'm a fallible lactation consultant that can learn more. That's something that we can always kind of turn the tide of, like, if you hear a statement that just feels shockingly not accurate. You're like that's just like so far beyond accurate, but maybe you could come a little bit kinder, and then a little bit kinder to yourself. So you might not be ready to jump all the way into like, I'm the best lactation consultant on the planet. We probably aren't quite there if you're already dwelling in this other thought, but you could maybe bring it a little bit closer, or something that feels more true, not quite so like, just stabby. Like, I'm just doing this to be mean. I think that's hard sometimes because sometimes we just might not even have the language. That's where talking to somebody. I know I've reached out to you before. I've reached out to other lactation consultant friends, and just told them the situation, and gosh sometimes it's so helpful to somebody reflect back like, well yeah, that was a crazy hard situation. Like, I don't think anybody would walk out of a console that that happened and be like, oh, this is the best thing. Leah is actually a terrible lactation consultant or like, they could have walked out and been like, I would have taken care of that, no problem. You know what I mean? Most of the time, when someone reflects back to us, it's like, oh yeah, you're right. So we might be able to do some of that for ourselves, too.

Annie: Has there ever been a time where you've reached out to somebody that you trust who knows our work to tell them, gosh, I'm in a really bad place about something that happens today? Has there ever been a moment where that person was like, yeah Leah, you're 100% right to be in a bad place about that. In fact, I think you need to stay there for the rest of the evening. Whatever fun plans you had for yourself with your family, they're canceled, because I need you to just sit in your terribleness. That is the most important and valuable thing you could do for yourself and the universe is. No. We're like, oh my gosh Leah, that sounds really stressful and I'm so sorry that happened to you. Here's something that you can do to help yourself feel better, or, oh yeah, actually you could share this link with your client, I came across it the other day. This will be really helpful. When you're helping a friend who's in a hard place, you're always there to, or a client, validate what they're feeling, hold space for them, empathize with them, and then just give them some helpful information. Then reinforcing how hard they're working at whatever it is they're working on. We can do that for ourselves but you also don't have to do it for yourself, because you can find somebody that will do it for you. That can be something if you like to journal that's a place, you know, those are good question prompts for journaling. Having a friend that can just help you reflect through those questions when you're in that place, it's so great.

Leah: I know, I know. I think it's so important for us to talk about these kinds of like, not as much fun to talk about sides of lactation practice that you don't like you said from the beginning like you don't get closure. You don't always hear back. You might be in a situation that you can't quote-unquote, fix. You weren't granted the magic booby fairy wand. It's hard work. It does really work over our psyche in so many ways, that can be really detrimental. But also, when we can talk about how hard these situations are and really make sure that the tools that could be helpful are out there in the world. That's what motivates me, for our podcast and talking about some of the hard things that we end up talking about is because I'm like, we need to get this out there that this could be something you come across some time in your journey, and you don't have to dwell on it. There's ways to work through it and ways to maybe not be so hard on ourselves. So I just want to remind you guys like if this thought ever comes into your head, let's first challenge thought, and maybe do those four questions if that's helpful to you. Then you might get curious, what is this thought showing up to teach me and you can even thank the thought be like, maybe I should turn the tides and say thank you thought, like, I actually wanted to take this class. And you know what, this is my motivation now, so we could get curious and thankful. Then we can always reframe it, rephrase it, try to change the language because your brain actually believes what you're saying, which is the sad thing. So the more we say that statement, the more your brain might believe it. Like I was saying, from the beginning, you end up showing up from that place, and we want to show it from a good place. So just changing your language like Annie did, and rephrasing it, it might not be that you're rephrasing it something your brain isn't gonna believe, like, I'm the best lactation consultant that ever existed. Your brains gonna be like, whatever, but your brain could totally get on board with, I'm a fallible lactation consultant that can learn and grow and continue to educate myself and show up the next day even better than I was the day before. Your body can believe that. Your brain can believe that. Then we show up from that place and we're going to be fantastic lactation consultants because that's the energy we want to put out in the world. So yeah, what are your thoughts, Annie? Do you have anything else you want to share or like to add to that I just wanted to kind of give a good recap so everybody can really have some solid tools to use because I'm fighting the thought that we're the bad lactation consultants.

Annie: I think that the stigma of self-criticism is it's not what it used to b. I do think that there was a time where you really had to show the world like this confidence and this, like, I can do this. I think it's okay, to say like, I can't do all the things that I'm not always gonna do them perfectly. That's, in fact, what makes me like somebody that is worth having in your life, because I'm not going to try to be perfect. I mean, that was like, probably a really like, gross generalization of everything Brene Brown has ever written.

Leah: That was awesome.

Annie: Yeah, but it's, I mean, it's really true. There's so much value in being able to show up as that vulnerable self and to be able to really be self-reflective about these situations that you find yourself in and knowing that sometimes, you're gonna have a negative thought that does teach you something. Where you're like I did make a mistake. I mean, I've had those to where I'm like, yeah, I did actually mess that up and you don't always get a chance to make it better for that specific client but you do get a chance to make it better in your life by doing better and learning more and pushing yourself and learning what you're supposed to be taught by this negative situation. Then there's other thoughts that are negative that are just there to distract you and keep you from doing the work that you're supposed to be doing.

Leah: Yes, remember these hold you back. These can be limiting beliefs, and we're not going to.

Annie: Or they can keep you from enjoying the rest that you've worked so hard for you. Don't let that take away your nap or your reading time or the time if you want to spend some time just staring at your phone and these negative thoughts are taking away your staring at your phone time.

Leah: No way, no way. It's so true. Well, I'm so glad we got to have this conversation and that we are breaking the chain of people allowing these negative thoughts to be in their head because that way we can create even more powerful impact on the families that we serve when we really challenge these thoughts and get curious and reframe, rephrase it.

Annie: We're gonna be doing so much of this at the USLCA workshop on February 11th. Brandie Mitchell, who's one of our speakers, is doing a full hour on nurturing your circle of care. She is a nurse coach who we've had on our podcast and also as in a deeper dive in our archive presenting about self-care. She's just going to really take it even further than she has in the past but you can get a taste of Brandie now by looking at our deeper dive with her, the podcast episode we did with her, and then join us in just a few weeks. Check that link in the bio and we hope to see you there and until then, it's been great talking to you, Leah.

Leah: As always, Annie. Talk soon.

Annie: Bye.

Leah: Bye