Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome to The Health & Wellness Practitioners Podcast! Dr. Danielle and other guest experts talk about everything from getting your practice started, developing your clinical skills, growing your practice YOUR way, and dealing with the real stuff life burnout and work/life balance. Whether you’ve been practicing for decades or just started your journey, you’ll find something here for you!
DR. DANIELLE: Hello everyone. I have been chatting so far for the last 10 minutes or so with Jessica Butts. Jessica is a psychotherapist and we're going to be talking about healing the hustle, which is the title of her soon to be book it'll be coming out next year, her third book. And Jessica, I think has a unique story to share about her own experience with healing, the hustle, you all know, I had my own story about healing, the hustle. Probably like multiple stories now. But yeah, Jessica, if you want to just dive into sharing how you arrive at the life that you're living right now and what that looks like and what got you there. Let's start there.
MEET JESSICA BUTTS
JESSICA: Thank you. Hi everybody. And thank you for having me. That's I prompted you or said this would be a good, great question. And then when I get asked, I'm like, wow, there's so much to talk about. I'm not different than anybody watching or listening right now in that I built a life that was likely not designed for me. So there's a whole bunch of backstory about a wasband and, you know, getting into corporate America and having that not be a great fit.
But recently in COVID I had a very, very, very, very busy business. I had all these employees and I was making a ton of money and I was on what I would consider a train. It chokes me up, even thinking about it right now. A train that I could not get off of. It was just overwhelming. I had employees and the money going out and the, the things that it took to run my business, the people and the, the systems and the structures and everything that was going on. I was no longer a therapist. I was running a business. It was fascinating to me. I was like, I miss my clients. Like, I'm so busy doing all this stuff. I've got assistant coaches and coaching those coaches. And I was like, I'm not even doing what I love anymore. And I'm also spending a gazillion dollars and I'm in meetings and it was, I just realized this isn't, this is not why I became a therapist.
And realistically, I actually wasn't very good at it. I wasn't good at that. I'm an excellent therapist. I was not an excellent business owner, per se. And so I, like many other people, I was on speaking. I had group programs, in person events, all of these in person things. And so on March 5th, 2020, just like so many other people I literally called my mom and was like okay, so this is it. Like my intuition could just see what was happening. And I was freaked out and I'll be honest, part of me was relieved. I thought, okay, wow, this is the thing that's going to slow all of this down and give me an opportunity to reevaluate what I want to be doing in my life and what I want to be doing in my business.
So for about a year I unraveled my life. I let my employees go slowly. I stopped my group coaching programs. I obviously stopped doing in-person things. And then in March of 2021, I just decided I needed a break. And I was, you know, it's a very privileged place to be, but I was in a position where I could take about six months off. So the second I decided to do that, Danielle the second I decided to do that the Healing the Hustle book got downloaded. I just had all this spaciousness, right, to be able to breathe, to be able to think. And so the book just downloaded and I took about six months off from anything. And again, very privileged place to be able to say that and do that. And I just worked on this book and worked on the content and worked on why we need to be doing this.
And then in about October, November of last year, 2021, I decided to make my life an experiment and to really put my money where my mouth was at 48 at the time. And I sold everything I own. I ended a three and a half year relationship. I decided to leave every single person I know in Seattle and live a lifelong dream and moved to Maui. And I have been there about four months and I own basically nothing. I joke a lot that I don't own a can opener. I don't own a trash can. I don't like sometimes I'm in my rental, like going through things of like, oh, I don't even own this. I just don't own anything. And I also can't accumulate things because of my transient kind of lifestyle at the moment.
So I'm very aware of capitalism. I'm very aware of consumerism right now. I'm very aware of this bucket analogy that I learned in graduate school and hypnotherapy school actually years ago about the need to go outside of ourselves to fill up our bucket, to fill up ourselves and all the things I was buying, and the things I was doing was like to heal this mother wound in me and to prove and to, to show, Hey, look at me, oh, look at this business I'm in. And like the world we live in right now of buying things and to followers and the obsession that we have with showing off basically, and people pleasing and the likes and the dopamine hit that comes from things outside of ourselves.
And so, again, I just decided, like I just turned 49 years old, like for my 49th year, I'm not dating. I'm going within, there's no dopamine hits. There's no buying stuff. I'm just in this silo of healing, this bucket, the hole in the bottom of our bucket. And so to elaborate on that analogy, each of us has a hole in the bottom of our bucket based on traumas, our family of origin, our culture of origin, big tea, little tea traumas. So some people might have a pin prick and some people don't even have a bottom in the bottom of their bucket. Their traumas are so big that there is no, there is no bottom.
And so what we do is human beings, and we've been conditioned. This is a learned behavior to go out into the world, to go get water, to fill this hole in the bottom of our bucket to fill our bucket up. So we over eat, we over drink, we over sex, to over work, to over busy, to buy things, consumerism, all of the things out, again, the dopamine hit, the followers. All of that stuff is a futile effort until we stop and we slow down and we turn off Facebook or we sell everything we own or whatever version it is of you and we look at the hole in the bottom of our bucket. And until we repair that hole, it is never ending. It is never ending.
I have a very, very severe mother wound and I have come to an awareness in the last, quite honestly, last few weeks of how intense my need is to get approval to people, please from other people. And I share on my own podcast, like I record on Tuesdays and it goes live on Thursdays. And so my whole thing right now is like, I'm just keeping it mega mega mega real, like I am just bawling and crying and doing all the things to show that even therapists are far from perfect. We have our mother wounds, we have wounds from our past that affect how we show up. And so in my need to people please, and my need to show up and be seen and be validated. I mean, it's so embarrassing, right. But just to be validated is my mother wound. It is not about the stuff outside of me. So until I really, for the first time, really, really, really take care of that hole in the bottom of my bucket. It's just never ending. It'll never be enough. And so we all have that. And so that's healing the hustle. This is our job as we move forward in the world.
BURN OUT FROM NEVER FEELING LIKE ENOUGH
DR. DANIELLE: You know, what's interesting is that I talk to people every single day about this exact issue, which is they sometimes describe it as just constantly feeling overwhelmed or they feel burned out. And it's not - the clinical definition of burnout includes a sense of apathy about your work. Like you don't really care about it anymore. And it's not, that's not what I actually see in people. When they say that they are burned out, they do actually care about helping people. They don't necessarily feel resentful toward their patients or clients that sometimes they do, but they still care about them. So it doesn't really - my real world experience of the definition of burnout doesn't really fit the clinical aspect. But it's almost as if we care too much that what leads to the burnout in the first place.
JESSICA: I agree.
DR. DANIELLE: Right? And so overwhelm burnout, exhaustion, fatigue, like they're constantly tired, no matter what they do, no matter how many supplements they take or how long they sleep. And at the root of it, whenever I talk with people as a coach about this, it always comes back to what you're describing. That sense of, I can never do enough. In other words, I never feel like I am enough.
What the fuck? Where does this come from? Like it's in practically every person in some way or another, is that what we’re on the planet for, to figure out how to deal with this?
JESSICA: Probably, I think that was the awakening for COVID. I mean, there has to be a reason that all those, you know, hundreds of thousands of people died and we went through what we went through and I hope that part of that trauma for the global perspective was that we do get an opportunity to slow down and reevaluate while we're stuck in our houses. And so to answer your question, I believe, and the work that I'm putting into retreats I'm doing and the work that I'm doing with people and to finish this gosh darn book is that it's nature and nurture.
So internally, I believe we are born with a certain personality type. There are certain ones of us that are more hustlers than others. And then we have to look at all of the things that come into play. I mean, girl, 10 years ago, we did not have all of this stuff. There is now MarcoPolo, Voxer, Instagram messenger, Facebook messenger, text, email, phone calls, and add in whatever else. Those are eight different ways that total fucking strangers can contact us. That's insane.
DR. DANIELLE: Snapchat, WhatsApp. Like the list can keep going.
JESSICA: I mean, right? There's so many different ways. So if we look at social media culture, the ways that people can get back to us as business owners, because I don't agree that it's apathy. I agree with you that it's that we care too much. We want to do so much. And going back to, I'm not going to remember his name, but the guy who writes you about the, we gotta figure out how many Fs we give. I don't remember his name.
DR. DANIELLE: Mark! I have his books. I don’t know where they are.
JESSICA: And we just have to figure out how many we're going to give quite honestly and where we're going to give them. I mean, one of the best things I do with my clients is like, we just figure out old school rocks. Like it's just straight up from wow. Name dropping all these people that I don't know their names. Stephen Covey, Steven Covey talks about rocks. And we are now in a world of sand. Like all we are doing are these itty bitty pebbles, all these little, teeny tiny things that don't matter. And then we're not paying attention to ourselves, our family, our children, our health, our clients. And there's just not a lot of other things that matter.
I mean, living on Maui, it is utterly one of the thing I'm going to astute human observer. Like I love to people watch and watching families and couples in Maui, they've probably spent a year planning this trip. They've spent 10 to $20,000 being there throughout these crazy awesome bougie hotels. And they are spending their time taking five second videos of their entire day to put on social media. That is fucked up. This is the culture that we live in right now, instead of connecting with ourselves, getting quiet, turning off technology, being with our people and doing those connections.
And so it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that this is the world that we live in. And I believe women, I don't know how old you are, but women of our age, I think there's going to be a whole uprising that we are just going to heal the hustle. We're just going to say no. And so for me, it was transitioning from one to many back to one to one. And cutting out things that don't matter in my life. I work with my clients one on one, I still do some speaking. I do some small in-person retreats. You know, I used to host 200 person events. There's no connection. Now I have retreats in Maui that are 12 people. And like, we get to really deeply connect. And so I think we get to make a choice as practitioners to not get obsessed with what everybody else tells us we need to do. The one to many, the group programs, all of the obsessive things, the online. I mean, quite honestly, I went down that I took my entire business online and now after COVID everyone's like, I don't want this. I don't want your fricking online program. I don't want zoom. I want you. I want in person. I want connection. So I'm going old school sister. I'm going backwards. I am absolutely like a growth mindset person. I do not believe in like going backwards, but in this way I am not about the meta universe I am about in person. IRL in real life connection. And slowing down, slowing down and figuring out what's important.
HOW TO LIVE LIFE DIFFERENTLY
DR. DANIELLE: So outside of the business, things that you've changed or that other people might consider changing, right? Where do we start? How do we start to change this moving forward? How do we start to live life differently?
JESSICA: Yeah. In my opinion, I don't know if it's the first thing, but one of the many things I mean, there's so many, I could like list them off. So first thing is, shut some stuff off. I believe everybody for at least a couple hours a day needs to turn their phone off. I believe in solo trips, I don't care how many kids you have. I don't care if I've, you know, when I was not rich, I went camping. Best thing I've ever done in my life, solo camping is like the most glorious thing in the world. You don't have to have a lot of money. You can camp, but take a solo trip.
Cut out some of the noise. People are always on their phone. They never take a look up. They don't journal. They don't know what they feel. They don't know how to process anything. They literally don't know because they're so busy. Part of that is reality. And part of that is choice. So I would ask people to look at that. So turning off podcasts, turning off music, turn off your freaking TV and go for a walk in silence. Figure out what is your body telling you. You're a chiropractor. Like our body holds everything, our somatic response, your stomach ache, your back ache, your shoulder ache. So much of that stuff is somatic responses to what's going on outside of you.
DR. DANIELLE: Yeah. When you, when you said the name of your book, Healing the Hustle, I was getting this feeling in my throat like I'm going to throw up. And a few years back, maybe about four years ago, or so my coach at that time would ask me, what did your body say? And I'm like, what, what are you talking about? Like, I dunno what my body says. And after practicing it for, you know, four years now, I've learned that when I feel that kind of sensation, I would normally think that it was a bad thing or a negative thing. It's usually like a thing for me to lean into like, oh gosh, that that's like resistance. Right? And the resistance then is a place for me to lean into.
JESSICA: Yeah. And you're crying. I mean, when I'm with my clients and they start crying, I'm like, excellent, great. That means this means something. And they're like, I'm sorry. I'm like, one, never apologize for your feelings or for moving in front of me. And number two, great, now we're onto something.
When I was getting divorced, you know, it was a very, very, very hard decision. I was with him for 20 years obviously, but my heart was broken. And so it was failing me. My head was so confused. I couldn't make a decision with my head or my heart. And you know, what made my decision, Danielle is my body. I had a somatic response one day. I will never forget. He walked in the door and I went backwards and I went, oh, okay. Like, I can't even, I can't do this. So our bodies hold everything. It tells us things. But we are obsessed with being busy. We don't know how to just sit.
So that would be number one, number two. I mean, there's so many different things. Figure out your type, all of this, get a therapist, get a coach, whatever. But also this is a big one is to look outside of your bucket of what you are obsessing about. And in my opinion, we live in a capitalist society and we are obsessed with things. We are obsessed with stuff. It is amazing experience giving away everything you own. It is the weirdest feeling ever. And to go through the feeling of how much money did I spend on this? What wound was I trying to heal? What dopamine hit was I trying?
I mean, I love me some target sister. I love going to target. I love all that crap. I love it. And I would go and get a coffee. We all know it. We love it. And I would go and fill up those red and white bags. And the dopamine hit was so real. And then what do you do? You go home, you unpack all the stuff you hang the stupid $10 t-shirts, you put all the goodies away, the hair, goodies, the whatever. And then you're like, it's over, it's over. And it's just shit in my house now. That is what we do over and over and over and over and over again. And it's never going to heal that wound.
So that would be, I mean, it's, there's a million answers. I mean, I've got a, you know, 225 page book almost on it, but the first one is like cutting out the noise, cutting out the business, whatever the thing is outside. Are you gambling? Are you over busy? Are you buying shit? What is the thing that you're doing? The social media hit? I mean, maybe take a week off. That's what happened when I decided to take that six months off, I also made myself a bet. I woke up one morning. I was like, I need a week off of social. I just, who cares? Let's see what happens. This was the deal I made with myself. Every time I picked up my phone to scroll Facebook or Instagram, I wasn't into TikTok at the time. I had to meditate. I had to meditate. Instead I meditated nine times before 9:00 AM. Wow. 9:00 AM. So between like six and nine, I, that this is a dopamine hit. I just picked, this is what we, I picked it up. I couldn't, I, I couldn't believe it. And so give yourself a break. You know what? The world's not going to fall apart. All those people will still be there. Your life is going to go on. But the best gift that you can ever give yourself is to just cut out that noise. Just start there.
DR. DANIELLE: You know, what's interesting is that I used to read or listen to a lot of books and a lot of podcasts from roughly like 2014, then starting my own podcast in 2015, all the way up to about 2020. And then suddenly I couldn't do it anymore. And I don't think I've finished - maybe I finished like one or two books in the last year and a half or so. Part of it is that I almost feel like I don't have the capacity to focus that long. Because there's so many things that come in such small little bite size amounts of information now. But I also just feel like I needed to stop listening to everything outside of me and just go in. I went a lot longer than I thought, I thought let's do this for a week or so. And now it's been a year and a half.
JESSICA: No. And it's weird to say that you're a podcaster. I'm a podcaster. I'm a therapist. I'm a, you know, I do trainings. I do retreats. I do all this stuff. But one of my number one goals with people is I want you to stop listening. Our greatest guide, everybody in our human suit, our greatest guide is our intuition. God cannot talk to you if you're busy. So Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this in big magic. Then the idea cannot land on us. She talks about it like a butterfly. The idea cannot land on us when we're like this all the time. And this is what we do. This is our world. Slow down, cut out the noise. How do we even know what our intuition believes when we're listening to 16 different podcasts telling us something different? Or when I work with people, I say you can only have one coach at a time. I don't need to be your coach forever. I think we need to work ourselves out of a job, but meaning you will move on. You will learn what you need to learn. But when we're just, oh, they told me this and they told me this, what did you tell yourself?
DR. DANIELLE: Yeah.
JESSICA: What did your own intuition tell you? That's what we need to be working on right now. And it terrifies people. And as it seems like you know, and I know it's the greatest thing you will ever do for yourself.
DR. DANIELLE: I'm in a whole new phase of it now. You know, I've gone through a few different experiences with burnout and, and like healing the hustle. And then I think for moments or longer, I thought like, oh, I'm good. Like, I did this. I overcame it. And then a whole new level of like, mm, Nope. Don't got it - came along a bit later. Yeah, I'm kind of in that, I'm kind of in a new phase of it right now where I have so many things on my calendar. I'm like, how did I get here? I'm a person who helps other people work less and live more. And yet my calendar is too full. But it's because of the, the, the stories that go on unconsciously that are still running the show.
JESSICA: Yep. And that takes work. Yeah. You know, when I start working with somebody, we think, oh, you know, I don't know, like session five, six is just juicy. And then we're always like, oh, you know, they're like, oh, I think we're good. And then session like 10, 12 is like, this is the unconscious beliefs. This is the family of origin. This is the old wounds. This is the real trauma. This stuff takes time. And you know, I've said for years, it is not for the faint of heart. Your listeners are, you know, personal development gurus and junkies, just like, I am just like you are. And this is not for the faint of heart. This is for people who really want to be living their absolute best lives. And it's a hundred percent worth it.
And we are not meant to be status quo. We are not meant to be linear. We are meant to have ebbs and flows and we are evolving. And again like that book mindset, it is like a growth mindset. What's next? Will I live in Maui forever? I have no idea right now. I have absolutely no idea. Will I own another business someday? Will I be married again someday? Like we don't know, but life is meant to be lived. It is meant to be experienced and to evolve and grow.
BEING HONEST WHEN IT’S NOT WORKING
DR. DANIELLE: So for someone that's in the place right now where we've both been in where they're like, this is not working but maybe it hasn't gotten painful enough yet to make them make some hard decisions, what would you want to share with them?
JESSICA: That's a really great question. Probably the first thing is just getting really honest with yourself. I mean, I think we all know right when something's not working, whether it be our marriage, our business, our health and we then suppress it by over working, over drinking, over eating. Like, we don't want to look at it. We don't want to look at it. And yet our bodies are taking a toll.
So if you know something's not working, I really encourage you to get a therapist or a coach because a third party, I have a therapist, like I'm going through some right now. I don't expect my friends. They're on my side, they're team Jessica, like, but I need someone to like, be honest with me, like a third party perspective. And so having somebody to talk to about it, getting honest with yourself, telling yourself the truth, and then knowing that again, life is such a journey. It is such a journey. I mean, I'm 49 now. And so I feel like I can like really say that there's so much ebbs and flows to life.
And then probably the li like a very, very tangible thing. And that, yeah, it's probably going to make some of your listeners have that throw up in their throat quite honestly, to take a solo trip. Not with a friend, not with your phone, go on a solo retreat and journal the out of your, just write it all out and get honest with yourself. And know that on the other side of a breakdown is always a breakthrough, always.
But if we never get to a breakdown, we're never going to have a breakthrough. I've had a lot of them. I'm probably working on my sixth right now, just on my knee moments, praying to God, like I need some help, bro. I need some help. And that there are not, I don't believe we have breakthroughs without breakdowns. And so until you get really honest of like, what do I actually want? What do I actually need? How do I want to feel in my life without a podcast telling you, without your spouse telling you, without your best friends telling you, without social media telling you, without TV telling you, what do you want?
JESSICA: I mean, picking up and moving, I didn't ask anybody's opinion. I didn't ask anybody. I made the decision to move to Maui by myself. Everybody I know lives in Seattle, EV all of my friends. I mean, that's not true. I guess I have friends all over the country, but everybody, my family, everyone, I didn't ask anybody's opinion because of course they're going to have an opinion and it may not be what I want to hear. I just had no outside influence. I decided it took me that kind of six month period to get very, very quiet, to get really, really intentional of like, what does the next chapter of my life look like? And my friends listening, watching whatever you're doing right now, we are meant to have different chapters. In fact, I had a client say the other day, girl, this isn't just a new chapter. It's a whole new book. And I was like, I'm absolutely borrowing that.
We just get to have this. And so, whatever form of getting quiet, getting honest with yourself, telling the truth, going on a solo retreat, talking it out, giving yourself spaciousness and knowing that breakdowns are hard as hell. But man, the breakthrough on the other side is always like a glorious, glorious gift.
DR. DANIELLE: I'm totally with you on the breakdown to breakthrough philosophy. I think that it's delicate because I never want to tell someone like, you've gotta go through painful things and if you're not willing to do the painful things, then you're not going to get the good stuff on the other side. Right? Yeah. But unfortunately, reality shows me experience shows me that that's true. It's true. Until you really feel, I think it's human behavior though, until you really feel the painful feelings from your current reality, you don't have the motivation to do the hard things to change the current reality,
JESSICA: A million percent, a million percent. You're not going to make that big leap. I mean, I have client, you know, I do couples therapy and I've had, I don't know, a dozen women over the LA, that's probably not true. Probably a couple dozen over the last 11 years, ask me like, why do we, why do men, you know, being a little sexist, men always have to have their backs up against a wall in order to make change. And I'm like, because this is what we do as humans. Like this is human behavior. Is that when things are fine, right?
We're in our zone of competency to quote Gay Hendricks, we're in our zone of competency and things are fine. We're not making changes. Like we gotta have some sort of breakdown. We gotta realize this is not working. My health is a mess. My marriage is a mess. My business is a mess that train that I was on, which we talked about, you know, half an hour ago, that train that I was on, that I could not get off of. I'm sorry. I needed COVID to happen. How much longer would I have done that? It's hard to say, I'm embarrassed to say that - would I have gotten off of it on my own? Maybe, maybe not. But knowing that I needed to make that change was there, but man, it took a breakdown. It took a breakdown for that to happen. And then the breakthrough can happen.
I'm not, by the way, don't message me and say, oh, I did it. And then I expected the breakthrough the next day. Sometimes to happen sometimes it's a week. Sometimes it's six months. Some, you know, it takes awhile, it does not overnight.
DR. DANIELLE: What a gift for you to share your experience and your story. So thank you so much.
JESSICA: Thank you.
DR. DANIELLE: For people that want to connect with you and learn more about you and about what you do, where is the best place for them to go?
JESSICA: Yeah, I've got a couple; I love my website. It's just easy, right? Where it's kind of old school these days, but it houses everything. It houses my podcast and my retreats and a way to contact me and a way to, you know, schedule appointments. So I'm Jessica Butts, JessicaButts.com. And then, I had to start all over on Instagram, which you'll love that story. So I had this front seat life, you know, 10K thousand followers, all of the things, hacked and deleted, gone in a minute, right in this time that during that six month time and I was like, okay, God, you are really messing with me right now. So I've restarted. I am @JessicaButtsMA over on Instagram. And that's just kind of where I play. I, again, I'm healing my hustle. I'm not all over the place. I'm in two little places.
DR. DANIELLE: Thank you. Thanks for leading by example.