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Burnout is driving talented SLPs out of the profession, and perfectionism is a major reason why. In this episode, we break down the myth of the “perfect SLP” and how unrealistic expectations that start in grad school, intensify through credentialing culture, and follow clinicians into the workplace are breaking speech-language pathologists. We talk honestly about burnout, fear of mistakes, productivity pressure, and why so many clinicians feel like they’re never doing enough, even when they’re doing everything. This conversation reframes burnout as a systemic problem, not a personal failure, and names what SLPs actually need to stay in the field.
If you missed the infamous Dr. Kroll and Phuong Palafox discuss burnout, get caught up here!
If you missed the infamous Dr. Kroll and Phuong Palafox discuss burnout, get caught up here!
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Creators and Guests
Host
Jeanette Benigas, PhD/SLP
Host of Fix SLP
Host
Preston Lewis, MS/SLP
Co-host of Fix SLP
What is Fix SLP: Advocacy & Accountability in Speech-Language Pathology?
Fix SLP is an SLP Podcast by Dr. Jeanette Benigas about advocacy, autonomy, and reform in Speech-Language Pathology. This show exposes credentialing gatekeeping, dismantles CCC requirements, and helps SLPs advocate for change. Each episode equips SLPs with tools to reclaim their profession. Subscribe now and join the movement transforming speech-language pathology. Follow @fix.slp on Instagram and TikTok. Visit fixslp.com.
Hey, Fixers. It is the week of January 25, and I am preparing this episode for a Thursday, January 29 drop. The episode was recorded on November 14. If you've paid attention to what's been going on with me and Fix SLP, I made my last social media post until recently on November 21, one week after this recording, and then I disappeared for eight weeks. Holy cow, was this episode a call for help. I wish I would have been able to pull my life together enough to get this edited and out before I had to step away, but I think if you give it a listen to the end, you'll have a better picture of what was happening with me and the episode isn't about me, but what was happening in my life certainly inspired the topic and a lot of what I pulled together for Preston and I to discuss. I found it interesting because I said in the episode that I had started setting boundaries and probably needed to tell some people because I wasn't doing a very good job of communicating what was going on with me. And I think you all saw the result of that. The topic the week before we recorded this was setting boundaries in the school workplace, which was really applicable to all settings. And I think that discussion will probably continue into the coming week. So please give the whole thing a listen to the end and then let us know what you think.
Jeanette Benigas:Welcome to Fix SLP, the podcast shaking up the field of speech language pathology. We're calling out the barriers that hold clinicians back, fixing broken systems that limit our care, and giving the power of our profession back to the people who live it every day. This is where fearless clinicians come together. It's time to change the field with our voices, leadership, and advocacy leading the way. So let's fix SLP.
Jeanette Benigas:Hey, everybody. Welcome back. It's Jeanette and Preston. Last week, we called my basement well, Preston called my basement the Fix SLP bomb shelter.
Preston Lewis:Mhmm.
Jeanette Benigas:My husband was listening while I was editing, he was highly offended. But I said, Jon, there's no windows.
Preston Lewis:What would you expect, though, from our organization, which is built on subscribers who are scared to death? Yeah. I mean, where else would we run this operation from other than a secure fortress Right. In an undisclosed location in Ohio?
Jeanette Benigas:Exactly.
Preston Lewis:Right.
Jeanette Benigas:100% I'm with you. So where are you?
Preston Lewis:I am actually this would be a SLP first. I do apologize if there's a breeze.
Jeanette Benigas:There's a big breeze.
Preston Lewis:Oh, sorry. I may try to take a little bit more sheltered position, but I had the opportunity to produce a fixed SLP pod today from a national park, because I am inside Hot Springs National Park here in beautiful Hot Springs, Arkansas. And below me are the Hot springs where the water is very, very warm and Bathhouse Row is behind me. Nice. And so what a better opportunity to make Fix SLP happen from a national park.
Jeanette Benigas:My concern is if we get hot and fiery and you need to cool off during this episode, it's a hot spring. You can't go cool off.
Preston Lewis:I'm gonna push right through it. I think the warm healing waters Now, were documentaries that have been made about hot springs where gangsters, Al Capone used to visit here, Babe Ruth during the baseball off season would come here to take in the warm waters. This is a very vibrant part of the natural state and I'm honored to be here today.
Jeanette Benigas:Now you're speaking my language, Al Capone, Italian,
Preston Lewis:Yeah, Italian yeah.
Jeanette Benigas:Also very fitting because as I've mentioned on a couple podcasts, I am just drowning with children things. Last night, my both my husband and I were up with my seven year old son, Abram, polishing off his patriotism project Aw. That we've been working on for for a week, and it still wasn't done, and it was due today. So, yeah, very fitting. I I did my patriotism project last night and it was sent in to school for presentation.
Jeanette Benigas:So two weeks ago I was sharing with you our podcast with Dr. Kroll and Phong Palafox has gone gangbusters. People are loving it. It is quickly shooting up to one of our most listened to episodes. I'll link that up in the show notes just in case you missed it. But one of the things that we're getting in terms of feedback is how much it speaks to people in terms of burning out, burnout. And I know that your topic that you always bring up is we're losing great SLPs to this kind of stuff. And we saw that I tagged you a couple of times personally when it would let me of people saying I've left the field because of this. We've got a surprising number of those, which was really sad to read because I'm sure those people entered this field because they love it and they want to help people, but they just didn't want to put up with the baloney anymore, which is totally understandable. So as I was thinking about the topic for this week, a lot of times we're pulling our topics off of what's going on on social media, but I started thinking more about burnout.
Jeanette Benigas:I think it is something that I have been experiencing over the last couple months. I think I have gone long and hard for a very, very, very, very long time, even before Fix SLP started. I have a long story of just going hard and never taking a break and then press it one day I was like snot crying to you on the phone. And you're like, I think things are gonna change after this. And I'm like, Oh my god, they have to because I can't live like this anymore. So just what's going on with me personally and then like seeing the the burnout stuff online, I started thinking about the myth of the perfect SLP is what I'm calling it. So this perfection culture and why it's burning people out. And I I think I'm this is this is a podcast preaching to Jeanette today. You know, pastor John might come out of her mouth and who knows? But, like, I think as a professor, once I started teaching students, it it was never more clear to me that this was a thing.
Jeanette Benigas:So it's that idea that you have to know everything, handle everything, and never ever make a mistake. And spoiler alert, it's burning people out faster than anything else in our profession, I bet. Because there are a lot of type ASLPs.
Preston Lewis:There are. And I think it goes back to something that we touched on in the previous pod when we talked to Phong and Doctor. Kroll. I think about what they said, SLPs are supposed to be these helpers, it's almost like a first responder kind of nature to where we have to be always on. We have to be flawless.
Preston Lewis:And there's that culture in graduate school, which sort of diminishes sometimes our own voice, our own needs. It's just like, you're gonna march in this step, otherwise you're inferior. And you lead off with that. And then for some of us, we get thrown into a public school that says, This is how we do things here. And you're expected to do this, this, and this. Otherwise, you're non compliant. Or if you go to work in the rehab setting, you're gonna be this much percent efficient from day one on productivity, or you're gonna get a bad note. So there's never been that opportunity for an SLP to not feel like they always have to be on. And that's a terrible thing. And so now as we reach this breaking point with stagnant wages, with uncertainty about what kinds of therapy we can provide and what's gonna happen to our billing codes, we're now looking at it like, who are we as individuals? We've marched through this pandemic, and now we're at this point where we're even more questioning. And a lot of folks signed on to Fix SLP because through all that, we look at our national association who sends us magazines that look like what kind of food we're supposed to buy or talking about frying in our cars. And it's like, but please keep tipping us every year, sending us this money. And so for us, that was a breaking point with ASHA, but other people are at that break point with their career. And I reached out to some of these people you tagged me on this week. I haven't heard from them because they probably think I'm asking for ASHA dues. But I really do want to encourage those of you that are listening to this pod today to reach out to us. Have you left the field? Why? That's a conversation that we actually would want to have. It's depressing to think about those that have left the field, but I think if we don't start talking to some of them or people who are right there on that precipice, I don't think we're really getting to the root of what SLPs need right now. So yes, talking about burnout, that was a big episode. And I think right out of the gate, I would just say a call to action for those that are out there that have left or thinking about it, get in touch with us, call the minivan belt down line, Get on the website. Email us. We want to talk.
Jeanette Benigas:Mhmm. Yeah. So I have a a little list of we I really want to dismantle this with you. And I told Preston before we started, I knew when I sent him what we were going to do today, he was going to be like, what even is this? But I told him, I have experienced this perfectionism culture, this holding myself to a standard that literally doesn't exist for so long as a student, as a PhD student, as a professor, as a clinician, I've held myself to that standard in many different settings. And I told him the one thing I've never done is I've never held myself to that standard as a man. I've never been a man. And so I don't know what this looks like for a man. And Preston doesn't represent all men, Preston represents Preston and probably some women and some men, but it's good to have that different perspective because Preston and I are very different people. So we're really good at riffing and bouncing off each other. But I did write down a few notes as I thought about how do we dismantle this a little bit. So I'll try to keep us on track so we can kind of hit all of them. But what I want to think about too is what we can do to break out of some of this because Doctor. Kroll and Fong gave some good suggestions for SLPs in the schools, but there's more to this than just burnout in the school. And I wanted to look a little closer at this today and just have an honest conversation about it.
Preston Lewis:Jeanette, I wanna weigh in on one more thing that right now, if we're talking about that breakpoint, and I'm going to get just a little political for a moment, so please forgive me, but I am the policy analyst here. We already know based on what we're seeing with job listings. We already know based on conversations with Meredith and just the statistics within our field, how many people have already made that jump to ten ninety nine World. I'm in that world. You're in that world, Jeanette.
Preston Lewis:I worry now that there is another possible breaking point with folks that are out there on ACA healthcare plans, that they're getting through the exchange. And if, and I put on the political hat for a moment, if those insurance premiums aren't addressed and we do see these radical increases of fifty, seventy five, 100% of the premium cost, I don't know how much more we can carry on our backs, especially for those of us that are in that October world. And so the question becomes, do you go to the W-two world again and march back into that world knowing you're probably gonna go back to a job that was paying the same wage fifteen years ago? Or do you leave the field altogether? So I think the timing right now for those that are out there in this moment of what do I do is important because we could see some dramatic increase in our costs.
Jeanette Benigas:Yeah. All right. So what does perfection culture look like? I kind of wanted to frame that a little bit. I think the first thing is we don't have a physical checklist, but we have sort of this checklist via the ASHA standards, right? Where that starts our unrealistic expectation, where we're supposed to be an expert, right?
Jeanette Benigas:Like what we really are are generalists. We generally know about all of those things. But to us, we then internalize that as we are the experts in pediatrics, adults, dysphasia, AAC, literacy, voice, fluency, TBI, dementia, early intervention. And oh, by the way, you should know every single insurance rule, do perfect documentation, never run behind, meet the caseload, meet the productivity, do all the things, right? That's that's where it starts.
Jeanette Benigas:And then when we do those things, we have to do it with a smile and have clip art worthy teacher pay teacher therapy materials and try to design the perfect room and have gorgeous handwriting on sticky notes and have your hair done and your makeup on and your documentation submitted. And what happens if you don't do all those things? You suddenly feel like you're failing. And the truth is SLPs, I don't think are perfectionists by nature. I think we have a lot of type A people who come to this field or who aren't who come to this field and then they're trained to be like that.
Jeanette Benigas:The system built this again, systemic issues that we're looking at. The system built this and then we just internalize it. And then the myth begins to fester in grad school. So let's talk about how we got here. The first stop of dismantling this is grad school. And oh, boy, grad school is ground zero for perfection culture. Now, Preston, remind me, when did you go to grad school?
Preston Lewis:That would have been in 02/2010.
Jeanette Benigas:Okay. So was there a problem for people getting into grad school when you started? Had the recession started yet?
Preston Lewis:Yes. The, you know, great economic collapse of two thousand seven, '2 thousand eight was well underway. And it was a time when certainly and it's no different than now, but a lot of people that were taking student aid in order to get into grad school. I came in a little bit later. It was competitive, no doubt about it. I think that I had a good GRE score. I probably didn't hurt that I was the only male in the tranche of the program at that time, But, yes, it was it was difficult to get in.
Jeanette Benigas:Okay. Now when I went to grad school just a few years prior to that, that culture did not yet exist. When I went to grad school this is wild. This this story is wild when I tell it to people. I graduated with a small handful of women.
Jeanette Benigas:I'm gonna say 10. I don't know what it was. But none of us wanted to stay at the university that we were graduating from, and they had two full rides, fully paid, fully paid graduate assistantships that they passed to nearly every single person, not me, because my circumstances were a little different, but they passed it to nearly every single person. We all applied all, but two of us got on, got in me and one other person because of timing. We ended up getting accepted later. But so we'll say eight. All eight people got in. All eight people were offered those assistantships one at a time. They just passed them around. Everybody said no because you literally got into every school you applied for or 75% of them and we had options back then.
Jeanette Benigas:And so if that doesn't speak volume, and it was pre 2008, if that doesn't speak volumes, I don't know what does. So this this we were all perfectionists back then. But I really think it started with that time that you're talking about where you had to have straight A's and never miss a point, and then pass the praxis with the highest score possible and the GRE and get all of the hours that you need, that's when that started. We started that with undergrads where we started telling them, well, if you don't have a four point zero, you're going to be waitlisted. And that was happening.
Jeanette Benigas:By the time I was a professor, a full tenure track professor in 2014, that was happening. If you did not have a 3.9 or a four point zero, you were likely getting waitlisted. And it was insane. We would have hundreds and hundreds of applicants for twenty, twenty five or 30 spots. So we can see how this this began. And it's a lot of pressure.
Preston Lewis:I will say, and perhaps this is why I've never swam in the waters of ASHA and really been dazzled by anyone in the ivory towers or wanted to play by the trees. I came to the time when see, Jeanette, I will ask you a question. Were you married during that time? See, I I was, and I was a newlywed. And I think I was already of the mindset that I have a spouse, which, you know, I have another degree of perfection. And I came to the field a little later, so I just didn't give a damn meter was already there. I didn't care about perfection. It was like, I'm gonna take the TRE, see how I do on it, I'll get in. If not, there are other pastures that I can try, but this feels like something that I would have an aptitude toward. But I didn't feel like my son rose and set based on speech language pathology. And to the point where I think that was off putting to a lot of the professors and maybe even a few peers that it's like, well, why aren't you sweating this? Why aren't you upset because you didn't make a purpose for this? Frankly, I found other meaning at that time. So perhaps that was just coming at it later in life. Perhaps that was marriage. I don't know. But yeah, I can empathize with what you're saying. I hear that. I know that that is probably the experience for 90%, maybe 80% of the SLPs that walk into the field because I can see that experience based on a lot of peers that I had at the time. But for myself, you know, I should put my best foot forward.
Jeanette Benigas:And that's the way it should be. I just know I had more conversations than I ever thought I would have with graduate students at that time, way back when, more than a decade ago, where we knew that they had to have this perfectionist standard to get into grad school. And then we would tell them, even in orientation, you've made it. It's time to relax. It's time to relax.
Jeanette Benigas:Now, don't get Cs because obviously there's graduate school standards and you don't want to be dismissed from the program, but you don't have to have a four point zero anymore because literally nobody cares. Not one employer is going to ask you what your graduate score GPA was, right? No. And even I wasn't the best student. My GPA wasn't super. And if you want to go get a PhD, I still got in and I was fully funded without a great GPA. So we would tell students that all the time, but it was hard to watch as a professor. It was hard to watch these students struggle. I remember while I was still getting my Ph. D, I was a doctoral student.
Jeanette Benigas:I was teaching intro to communication sciences and disorders. So freshman and sophomore undergrads. And I would have like a lecture hall of up to 120 students. And I remember one, I think I taught it every semester. And one semester at the end of class, there was a student down at the table after class crying already because of the pressure and the stress. And I thought, oh, girl, you are in for a treat. If, like, if you're already crying in the intro class of undergrad, it's going to be a long life, sweetheart. So I mean, that that that was hard to watch. And again, as I as I said at the beginning of this, I think we kind of trained people to act like this. You have to get good grades. You have to have the GPA. And I think the difference for you, Preston, is you didn't go through undergrad preparing yourself to be a speech language pathologist. So you didn't get that input of perfection, perfection. You didn't know I'm going to have to get a four point zero to get into grad school. You didn't know all of that stuff that many thousands and thousands of people were fed at that time.
Jeanette Benigas:But I will say too, adult second career SLP students are some of the best. Some of the best. So I could see that how that would have been a little different for for you. So anyway, there's a lot of pressure. But when you graduate then from this grad program and you think the real world is going to continue to be that way, it it doesn't.
Jeanette Benigas:Practice is messy. Materials aren't perfect. Sometimes you get to that first nursing home and there is no standardized assessment. There are zero materials and the real world doesn't look like what it looks like in grad school. And so now, but you've been trained all these years to have this stress and pressure, this internalized stress and pressure.
Jeanette Benigas:So then enter ASHA. You kind of brought that up a little bit. The CCC marketing, the message is it feeds the perfection culture. It screams you're not complete until you have our credential. Preston, I know you've seen this.
Jeanette Benigas:You might have felt it. I know I did. What do people feel like when they finally get that CCC? I You're like, I don't know why I didn't feel that.
Preston Lewis:I mean, for me, I felt like, Oh, okay. Thanks. I got this. And I guess I felt like I was at the end of a road and I'd finally jumped through all the hoops and had attained everything, but I had been working in a setting. It's not like I woke up the next day and felt different.
Preston Lewis:Certainly I was glad that it was like, okay, I've crossed this threshold. I've reached this marker. And it felt like, okay, so be it. And for a lot of people, it's also, okay, I guess I can go find another job now in case this one's not adequate. That wasn't quite my experience, but I think for some people it often is, well, took a CF job and now I'm gonna try to get a triple C job, but sometimes.
Jeanette Benigas:And that's just the thing. Nothing magically changed when you got those letters. But we see this culture on social media too, where we see the CF supervisors throwing the party for the person who finally got their C's. Well, the certificate of clinical competency, the C, actually, it's not C's, it's not a plural thing, but we still say it. The C, the certificate, is not the endgame.
Jeanette Benigas:It's the state license, which we've said. But we've put all of this pressure in graduate school, in undergrad, that you have to get the CCC. That's the credential you need. And now once you get that, you think, Okay, I'm supposed to know everything now. And then you start looking at these job postings that thankfully the Informed Jobs is trying to flesh out a little bit.
Jeanette Benigas:But they're looking for like this, this pediatric swallowing expert who also specializes in AAC and it's an entry level job and they're going to pay you $58,000 a year. Great. Now you're living in poverty. So there's that. And then again, this social media where we see people posting the perfect stuff.
Preston Lewis:Yeah.
Jeanette Benigas:Do does social media does a lot you your algorithm probably is not filled with SLP videos, No, is no.
Preston Lewis:No, it's a lot of 1980s baseball and Canadian politics, you know, different things. But I will say, Jeanette, I think that perfection, it can be found in job offerings, but that's not necessarily unusual with any profession.
Jeanette Benigas:Okay.
Preston Lewis:It's often that people will say, Well, we expect this, this, and this, and we want all of these things. I think the problem for SLPs is that they take it so damn literally. They really think that, Yeah, I have to be all of these things, otherwise I am invalid. Yes. And that's not true.
Preston Lewis:I mean, I can apply It'd be like if I listed my job at a psychiatric hospital. And yes, there are many different skill sets and all the big nine that are involved on where I work. Am I an excellent dysphasia therapist? Yes. Am I an average, at best, AAC therapist?
Preston Lewis:No, I'm actually really not. That is just not my thing. And would that meant that I couldn't do that job? Why, hell no. I mean, because here's the thing, there are resources out there to help me bridge that.
Preston Lewis:There are fellow SLPs and colleagues that do specialize in these things. And so I'm not an idiot. I'm a professional. I have a license. I will get the resources that I need, but I'm not gonna go in there and say, Hey, I am just the superman of SLPs and I can do everything, so I feel valid for this job.
Preston Lewis:I think if you go into it with that mentality, you really are gonna burn out because we aren't perfect. You know, there's nobody, it'd be like in baseball, you know, there are those five tool players that can hit, field, pitch, you know, throw, although not everybody's Shohei Ohtani, and it's okay. You can be somebody who's really good at one thing in your field. And as long as you're competent, which, you know, yes, I am competent, but I am able to get the resources and provide the services that I need in a way in which I know my clients will benefit from.
Jeanette Benigas:Right.
Preston Lewis:That's the problem I see is I think everybody takes everything in speech language pathology so damn literal. And it has to I think it breeds down from the grad school. It breeds from ASHA and this idea that it's perfection in all sense. No, it's not. You know, we're human beings.
Jeanette Benigas:You hit the nail on the head that you were putting this pressure on ourselves and burning out.
Preston Lewis:Oh, yeah.
Jeanette Benigas:Topic for the day you just summed it up. Yeah, we can't do that. And where it's being and it's like this in all parts of life. But in speech pathology, it's being compounded by seeing this perfectionism in social media. You know, if I'm posting a fees video, I'm not going to post the video that looks like somebody like that I pushed the scope through a snowstorm.
Jeanette Benigas:That's not the video I'm going to put out. I'm going to put out the clean, video where I can make the point I'm trying to make. So we don't see the sessions tanking with the kids or the kiddo who needs the extra support having the tantrum on the ground. We see the cultivated stuff that went right to teach someone to make a point or to sell product. And so we're seeing the perfection, which just reinforces that we need to be perfect.
Jeanette Benigas:And so then that starts to show up, I think in real life, but in real life of speech pathology. And I have a really good Fix SLP example of something that happened this past week. So what happens is now we start apologizing for everything. And this was something that I learned as I got my competency training for fees. Don't apologize while you are doing a session. Putting a scope in somebody's nose is not comfortable. It shouldn't really hurt them, but it's not comfortable. You don't need to say, I'm sorry, every time they flinch or or make a face, because then what you're subconsciously doing is telling them you've done something wrong when really you're there just doing your job. And maybe you bumped a part of the nose and it hurt for a little bit. Okay, you can say I'm sorry there.
Jeanette Benigas:But, you know, generally we just start apologizing. Sorry, the session wasn't perfect. Sorry. Hey, I'm sorry. I need clarification for.
Jeanette Benigas:Sorry, this this report took me longer than I expected. No, stop apologizing for being human. And so that's what I want to point out as our Fix SLP example this week. We were having this gangbusters post, right? This gangbusters episode that had very supportive, clear posts.
Jeanette Benigas:Our even our post this week did very well on social media. And I think the second one I had put together carefully. We put some thought into this and I use I use like Grammarly and some AI stuff sometimes to check typos. And I did that. Okay, I did that. I wasn't rushed. I did it. I have ADHD. I don't see typos until two weeks after they happen. This is my whole life. Okay, I didn't know it was because of the ADHD until I was diagnosed, but that's why I have to use extra support. So I did that. And then I went back and I started changing the content. I was like, oh, I can make this sound a little better. Oh, I could sass this up a little bit because our brand is sass. That's what we do. And when I look at something and I'm like, oh, I can sass that a little better. I sass it a little better. Okay. What I didn't do is run it back through spell check after my kids walked in the door from school.
Jeanette Benigas:And you hear me talking about all this freaking I was Patriot projecting people. Okay. So I'm start I'm doing the Patriot project, and then it's time to post. And I was like, oh, I'll just repost it. What, you know, what could like, I didn't even think there could be a million typos.
Jeanette Benigas:There were five typos on the slides, which if you're on Facebook, you may not have seen because I can fix them and swap them out. But on Instagram, you cannot. And I got crucified. DMs, people under the posts giving me advice about taking my time and not being so angry. I wasn't angry at all. I was living my life. Okay? Like, I was just but we're not even allowed to make mistakes. And what I didn't do, this was very purposeful. I did not apologize. I said, thanks for remembering that we are a team of volunteers doing this in real life because that's what I was doing. I did that post in real life and I wasn't even allowed the grace. Well, probably hundreds of people gave us some grace, but I wasn't even allowed the grace by a small handful people to make a couple typos. When we've put out hundreds of pieces of content that are generally super clean, one post. Perfect. This isn't acceptable. This isn't acceptable for you, somebody said. With your level of whatever, this isn't acceptable. You need to be proofreading before you post. We're not allowed to be imperfect.
Preston Lewis:It's one of the things that I would encourage our audience that might need a bit of a pick me up, is to really sit down and write a list of your strengths as a clinician and think about your caseload. It's always frustrating for any SLP, and I've felt this way before, when the OT comes up to us and says, Can't you make that kid not have that lisp? Or, Why can't he do this yet? Or, why is Mrs. Jones still forgetting her walker as she leaves her room? And you get that sort of question from a nurse or from an OT or another colleague, and sometimes you feel kind of seen about that. My advice is make a list of your strengths and make a list of your patients and realize that you are going to have some patients that are very, very moldable and are very susceptible to treatments and are going to thrive. Harness that energy. Don't sit there and dwell on the negative comments. Don't sit there and think, Well, I'm not perfect because I didn't get this done.
Preston Lewis:Or This one kid who just tells everybody to go jump off a cliff every day and doesn't have terrible social pragmatics. Maybe you aren't going to win that battle. But are you confident that you are making a difference in other patients' lives? If they're all bad, then yes, maybe it is time to consider something else. But focus on the wins.
Preston Lewis:We just so often look at our defeats and we look at those comments and that negativity and that sense of perfection. We really need to make a list and celebrate the victories. That's that's advice I would give anyone.
Jeanette Benigas:Yep. And that's sort of what I did this week. I thought, you know, I could focus on this and get really upset about these typos, or I could fix what I can fix, let it roll off my shoulders and just remember next time, hey girl, hey, you don't see these things. Don't forget, run it one more time. So it can cause some harm too.
Jeanette Benigas:And that's what I wanted to jump into next is if we start believing these things and hearing these things, perfection culture isn't just tiring. I think it can become really toxic. And I think that's where I've landed in the last couple months. I'm behind. I need to catch up. I'm still behind. Now I'm failing. Now I'm not and now I'm I'm literate you can hear it in my voice. I'm literally starting to tear up. Now I'm not good enough.
Jeanette Benigas:And we can stay in that and spiral for years. I'll be damned if I'm gonna be in this for years. Right? Like, I'm taking some steps to get myself out of this, which is why you're now hearing a podcast on Thursdays and not Tuesdays because we record on Friday. And I used to spend hours of my weekends and Mondays editing so you could have it for Tuesday. And now I'm not doing that. I am taking my weekends to recharge so I can be here for the things I need to be here for. It leads to burnout. And I've I've asked I I've been I've been in therapy for years. I think it's healthy.
Jeanette Benigas:I've asked my therapist. I'm like, am I depressed? Is this what depression looks like? Because sometimes I just can't get off the couch lately. And she's like, no, you're not depressed. You're burnt out. You you have zero symptoms of depression.
Jeanette Benigas:But I could see how this can lead to an early exit from a from the profession. You're now lacking confidence. You fear advocating. We see that online too, Preston, where we can't even ask questions online if we don't know something. Now they have this anonymous feature where people are asking things anonymously and answering anonymously.
Preston Lewis:Oh, yeah. Anonymity.
Jeanette Benigas:Yeah, we can't even be ourselves and just be like, Hey, I don't know this. It's why I think I have only ever gone anonymous once and it was an accident. And I tried to undo it and it wouldn't let me because I had already interacted on the post. But I won't do it. I feel like I need to be an example of making it be okay to be yourself on a social media platform so I won't go anonymous.
Jeanette Benigas:If I can't say it as Jeanette Benegas, I am not going to say it. So I think we see that people are afraid. They're afraid to advocate. They're afraid to even ask.
Preston Lewis:I'm gonna break this down to something really simple too. And Jeanette, can shake a stick at me if you want. But it came up like when we discussed the NOMS, and so many clinicians said, Oh yeah, I've gotta do this. And I simply said, Oh yeah, I did that for a little while, and then I just put NA on everything. And there was this just gobsmacked sort of attitude and said, Well, what do you mean you did that?
Preston Lewis:And I said, Yeah, I just put NA. And they're like, How many times did you do that? And I said, I don't know, like two years. And I got to thinking about there are two kinds of SLPs out there. They're the ones that will color outside the lines because they're just trying to maintain their sanity, or they're just colorful like I am maybe, and just like, Meh, I kinda wanna test things.
Preston Lewis:And then they're the ones that fill out every damn box on the protocol. I don't do that. I'm sorry, I don't fill out every single box. But some people say, Oh my God, you don't do that? Aren't you afraid you're gonna get into trouble?
Preston Lewis:And I said, Yeah, I'm real worried that the ASHA police are gonna come knock on my door in the middle of the night and drag me out in the street. No, I mean, that's the thing is that you have to learn to let some things go. And I know there are a lot of SLPs out there that say, Yeah, I did that a long time ago to maintain my sanity. But sadly, there are some, Jeanette. Yeah, as you're raising your hand right now, this is, What do you mean?
Preston Lewis:You didn't do the test? Or what's the See, I can't even remember what the damn thing is. What's the thing where you're on the test, it's like the plus or minus? It's like the, test reliability range.
Jeanette Benigas:The confidence interval. The confidence interval.
Preston Lewis:Thank you very much. See, that's how much you know? And I put it on every single protocol. And after a while, I thought, who cares? Who cares? You know, I'm not in a clinical lab here. I'm not doing some study. I mean, yes, if you're doing research, absolutely. But I am just trying to make a bunch of mean little hellions get some social pragmatic therapy. And whether or not, you know, this is plus or minus this, I need to be back in the clinic right now. I need to be not sitting here figuring this up and wasting three or four minutes out of my precious time every day doing this. And I'm sure there are some people out there with their hair on fire going, How did you not do that? That's so important. Why? Why is that important in the grand scheme of me just trying to manage my caseload?
Preston Lewis:Folks, you just have to prioritize your skillset sometimes and your energy.
Jeanette Benigas:Continue to hit the nail on the head. That ties it back into where I said like this starts at grad school. In grad school, I had professors who taught me, you fill out every box because the boxes are there for a reason. If they didn't need those answers, then they wouldn't be there. Okay. Well... uh...
Preston Lewis:Oh, you know, I can remember can you remember? Because I had professors that said, oh, and if you make a mistake on there, you can't cross it out. You just have to go get a whole new protocol. OMG.
Jeanette Benigas:No, I didn't have that.
Preston Lewis:Oh yeah, no, I heard that. It's like, or if you cross out something, you have to initial it as if I'm writing a contract at the bank for crying out loud. Yes. No, I scribble all over mine. I'll put whatever kind of profanity my kid used against me in my session, I'll ride to the side, certainly knows these five F words, whatever.
Preston Lewis:That was ingrained in grad school like, oh, you'll invalidate anything if you color outside the lines. What the hell with that? I wish I could just go find those professors right now and give them napkins to smell.
Jeanette Benigas:Here's a hot tip that you didn't learn in grad school that I am 99.9% positive to be true. Your work like that, I forget what the name is, but there is specific work that is specific to you and your process and what you're doing cannot be subpoenaed in court. A protocol like that or or if you're writing a sticky note or you're writing yourself a little note that is part of your work in your process, no one's even going to look at that if something happens because that's part of your work. They would get the report. They wouldn't get the protocol. Yeah. I mean, it could get sent if someone's stupid, but they don't teach you that in grad school. Right? Instead, they're like, every box must be filled out, and you must initial and get a new one, and no white out. Oh my god.
Jeanette Benigas:Don't use white outs. Yeah.
Preston Lewis:I mean, I always ask where is the poster of the 10 most wanted SLPs that violated these things? You know? Is that some is that a is that a poster at ASHA? You know, this was the guy that didn't, you know, give this extra part on the self. You know? Where where is he? Is he in ASHA jail? You know?
Jeanette Benigas:I feel a meme coming out this week, Preston, of a carousel of these people.
Preston Lewis:All right. So, yeah, know that And again, I know that there are lot of SLPs out there that are saying, yes, I lived in Realville by now. You know, I get it. But wow, I would be I bet there are a lot that aren't. Yeah. I bet there are a lot of new grads out there that are saying, Wow, really?
Jeanette Benigas:Oh yeah, 100%
Preston Lewis:The thing is, is that you are a professional. You know what is sufficient and competent because, you know, guess what? You actually earned the dadgum certificate and paid for it in the beginning. You earned your license. You are competent. You are a professional. And you don't have to do everything in a certain sequence. And right now you need that advice more than ever because the pay ain't going up, the hours are getting longer and the conditions are getting worse. And so you have to find a way to celebrate your wins, maintain your sanity, and tell everybody else that's maybe implying or telling you that you're not good enough to step off.
Jeanette Benigas:Preach. Yes. I wish your face wasn't halfway in the screen or that would be a preview reel.
Preston Lewis:Oh, I feel like I'm in the screen, but hang on.
Jeanette Benigas:I'll figure it out.
Preston Lewis:Yeah.
Jeanette Benigas:It's it's dangerous. And you know, when we burn out like this, when when people leave, when these awesome clinicians are leaving the field, who benefits from us staying quiet, from us not advocating, from us not asking questions? It's the broken structures, because at the beginning I said this is a systemic issue. The systems that profit from our silence are the systems that wanted us exhausted in the first place. They just want a warm body to walk in there, make them some money and walk out.
Jeanette Benigas:Don't challenge the system. Don't speak up for yourself. Don't protect your peace. Remember a couple of weeks ago, one of us said, do self care, but don't challenge the system. Or we said something like that.
Jeanette Benigas:Like they want us taking care of ourselves, but they also want us compliant. Right? And so when people are leaving, those are the people who felt like they couldn't speak up or they did and they weren't heard and they weren't able to protect themselves and their boundaries for that type of self care or whatever it is that led to them leaving. And we're seeing this across every state. We saw it so much this week in the comments.
Jeanette Benigas:These clinicians are brilliant. They're competent. They're safe. They're ethical. And they've been convinced they're not enough or they can't do it anymore.
Jeanette Benigas:And literally, you don't have to be convinced that you can't do it anymore. You just hit a wall and you literally can't do it any more. And then you're asking your therapist if you're depressed.
Preston Lewis:Phong, she really nailed it in her presentation to us and in the paper, which was the lost benefit of jointly advocating. And I'm not even talking about in a union sort of way, but one SLP showing up and complaining, I mean, that's something, but coordinating with your colleagues to approach a school board, to approach a rehab company manager, that has value. But as I put myself back into that position, because now I work on the island of Misfit Toys, so it's just me and another SLP and people are just glad we go in there and manage the island. But when I think back to working at rehab companies, I think about school SLPs. One of the things that I think would've prevented me from trying to jointly advocate is that culture of fear, where I didn't trust my other SLPs because they might say, Hey, he didn't fill out every single part on the RIPA.
Preston Lewis:He didn't fill out every single thing. He gave this as a testing protocol, and they would snitch on me. I didn't trust my colleagues sometimes that they wouldn't get lost in the minutiae. And boy, that's that culture that really has bit us in the ass, because if we're all suspicious of each other, wow, how well do you think we're gonna sink or swim as a profession if we're trying to jointly advocate? So that's gotta go. We can't sit here and snipe at each other, and we've gotta realize that we're all trying to make this profession better and we do it a little differently. We bring different skills and different strengths and weaknesses, and that's okay. Just because I color outside the lines on the protocol, That's not what matters. It matters that we all stay in the field and we have great working conditions and an environment where we can thrive.
Jeanette Benigas:Mhmm. So some more of the solutions. Perfection culture isn't solved by bubble baths and mindfulness. We have nothing against bubble baths. I said it a couple of weeks ago.
Jeanette Benigas:You can't yoga yourself out of a broken system. This is not this type of stuff is not going to fix the systemic dysfunction. But but what will? And I think the first thing are these arbitrary barriers that we're setting for ourselves, you just said, filling out every box or making ourselves feel like we are the expert at everything. Getting rid of outdated credentials.
Jeanette Benigas:I got to put that in there. Right? Yeah. We don't need to have this credential. We don't have to have the CE to be a good competent speech therapist.
Jeanette Benigas:Getting our autonomy back and practicing within our license without fear. That I think goes a long way. Phong hit on this a lot and she was such a beautiful soul that you could just like see this emanating out of her as she said these kinds of things. But we need to feel human again. We need to not let these unrealistic job criterion define who we are or what makes us successful if we're not meeting productivity or we're not getting all of the paperwork in on time or, you know, if we're not meeting all of that, that doesn't define who we are. And if we have to say no to protect ourselves so we don't burn out, that's okay. For the first time ever this week, I said no to a speaking opportunity for a continuing education. Somebody wanted to record with me. I know what I have coming up, and the old Jeanette would have said, yeah, sure. Let's do it. I'll figure it out. The new Jeanette said, I really wanna say yes to this, but I'm going to have to say no because there's not enough lead time for me to prepare. And I know that on paper right now, it looks like it would be a squeeze, but when I get to it, it's going to crush me. So it's not a no forever. It's just a no, I can't do this one.
Jeanette Benigas:So just to help protect myself a little bit, we have to start saying no. And if people are going to be disappointed, then they're gonna be disappointed because at the end of the day, we're the ones that we need to protect because we can't help other people if we're burning out and leaving the field. No. I can't help SLPs if I'm burning out and leaving Fix SLP. I have to protect every area of my life, my marriage, my parenting, my friendships, my hobbies, which I've don't have anymore.
Jeanette Benigas:You know, Fix SLP like I have to protect all of those things. And I think it starts with a really solid no.
Preston Lewis:Well, and the one thing I would add to that, the people that I'm always protecting are my patients because I'm no good to them if I am constantly jumping through other people's expectations, pedantic little rules, how many meetings do we really need to have about this one topic? Could this be in an email? My obligation is first to my patients because they entrust me with their care. And so I have to work within a sustainable system that allows me to continue to provide that care that is not only complete and gives them the time that they need, but it's also unique. It gives me an idea to sometimes do things that are outside the box, because if I go in every day with the same workbook and the same tired approach and the same cards and the same crappy room, I don't know that I'm giving them the full experience of what can be happening, especially if you're talking about social pragmatics.
Preston Lewis:I've gotta get them out in the real world as much as I can.
Jeanette Benigas:Yeah. Been taking some notes as we've been talking. I want to talk quickly about how we can start to break this cycle. Certainly, we all have different reasons why we're starting to burn out. I think some self reflection, it's hard to do because again, like me, if you're someone who's hard on yourself, then when you start reflecting, I can get really caught up in nasty self talk.
Jeanette Benigas:I don't have suicidal ideations or anything like that. Myself. I'm not mean to other people like I am to myself, but I will literally a voice in my head. I can be so mean to myself when it comes to perfectionism. So we kind of have to look at personally, what do we need to do to protect ourselves from burning out? How can we break this cycle that we're in so we can serve our patients or our students, serve our families and still be happy at the end of the day and not on the couch. Like, I don't want to get up and do anything because I'm so tired and burnout. And I think the first thing I said this earlier, one, we need to stop apologizing. We need to stop apologizing for existing. We need to stop apologizing for making mistakes at work.
Jeanette Benigas:We need to stop apologizing for not being able to stay an extra hour at the nursing home to do an eval on the person who walked in twenty minutes before we're supposed to be off the clock. We don't have to apologize for that. We do not owe our employers our lives. We owe them what we have contracted to do. And maybe that's a forty hour work week. Maybe that's a five hour day. I don't know. Everybody's circumstances are different. We don't have to apologize for saying no. So we need to stop apologizing for existing.
Jeanette Benigas:We need to ask the question, ask the coworker, ask the supervisor. Curiosity is safety. I think, as Preston was saying, he didn't trust his coworkers. He wasn't safe there. And so he also probably couldn't be curious to learn and grow.
Jeanette Benigas:So we need to get in a space where it's Okay to ask and then we need to set boundaries. You are not obligated to answer your emails at 9PM. And I think this is for me in my process here. I think this is what the people in my life are struggling with the most. I am not tied to my phone twenty four hours a day anymore. I am not checking my email every day. I have 10 email accounts that I manage and have to check. I'm looking at all of them every few days, but I am not looking at team@fixslp.com 17 times a day because there's 300 emails. It's okay. I don't get paid for this. They'll get read. Right? My husband has learned. I might not answer you at 01:04 PM.
Jeanette Benigas:In the afternoon if I'm working. My phone is on do not disturb and it's in another room. And it's the people that I've taught that I will respond to you are are having the most trouble. But for the most part, people are, like, okay with it. I've gotten, like, some not great things have happened from some of this, but also my communication through the process, like, I didn't tell anybody I was doing that.
Jeanette Benigas:So my husband's like, hey, why aren't you answering me anymore? I'm like, oh, I'm setting boundaries like two weeks later. So maybe communicate that you're doing that. That'll go a long way. But start setting boundaries.
Jeanette Benigas:My mom will call me at 10:30PM or eleven. Last night, she text messaged me at 01:19AM. Hey, if you're still up, can you do it? No. No. Even if I am still up, I'm probably not doing that. I don't answer the phone. If she calls after 09:30, I don't answer the phone. I do need to tell her that because again, my communication through this process has stunk. But I haven't told her I'm not answering her calls after nine or 09:30. I just stopped answering them.
Jeanette Benigas:So I set those, I decided I'm setting boundaries and I'm all just like everything else in my life, I'm all in. I am all in on this. And then check whose standards you're trying to meet. Some of these standards weren't meant for working clinicians, they were meant for 2008 undergrad students who were trying to get into grad school and we've never let that go.
Jeanette Benigas:And we're not in that culture anymore. I saw that a lot too on social media this week. Well, there's not enough grad programs and you know, no, guess what? There are grad programs now clamoring for students. There are grad programs not filling. I followed very closely the number of grad programs in each state for some research I had to do. There was a grad program that closed not too long ago because they didn't have enough professors and there are programs closing. Okay. We flooded the system as a result of what happened in 02/1989. We flooded the system with programs to deal with the bottleneck, and now we're on the other side of that.
Jeanette Benigas:So think about the standards. Whose standards are you trying to meet? And are they realistic? We talked a little bit about competency. It's not omniscience.
Jeanette Benigas:It's like Preston said. It's knowing what to do, when to ask, when to refer, when to go find the resources. You don't have to know everything. It's knowing where to get the help and how to get it. I think check those job descriptions. Is the job description from the outset demanding? Is it a demanding job description? Ask questions in that interview. Know what you're walking into.
Preston Lewis:I wanna jump in on the job description thing because it's nothing new that there are going to be job descriptions that are lofty sometimes. And as much as you may go into it with lofty expectations for salary. But I would look at job descriptions a bit like a dating profile on Bumble. Sure. I mean, somebody might say, Gosh, I'm literally looking for a guy that makes 6 figures. He's six foot four tall and has a beard and a truck, and he likes to go camping every weekend. Yeah, okay, maybe. But perhaps I'm not that guy. Perhaps you're not that kind of lady that's a size two. A job description is what it is.
Preston Lewis:It's an aspirational list that an employer puts out there. But just because you don't check every single box on there doesn't mean that you don't need to feel worthy going into that. Because if you don't, if you go into it thinking, Well, I don't have this, you're probably not going to get the job. If you go into it knowing that I can provide all of the skills necessary for this and I can also grow into maybe something even more from this, then that's different. It's a lot like dating folks and you're not going to match with everybody and there are gonna be some that you may try to jump a little high for, that's okay.
Jeanette Benigas:Yeah. So another example just from myself that I had to deal with a long time ago, two years ago when Fix SLP started. I am someone who did my hair and my makeup every single day until the pandemic. And in Ohio, we had this place that was literally cleaning N95 masks and the KN95 masks. So we weren't allowed to wear makeup because they stained the masks. So we would wear the mask, put it in this box, they'd get shipped off to Columbus, they get processed in a chemical and cleaned and sent back, and then we'd wear them again. But we weren't necessarily getting back our own masks. So it was during the pandemic working in healthcare that I really stopped wearing makeup because I couldn't. And then I had this come to Jesus with myself. Why are you doing this every day? And it was fine. I worked in health care. I would usually put on makeup if I was going to teach. But other than that, I wasn't getting up every morning and doing it. And then I started putting my face on social media for Fix SLP. And I had to come to a place where, Okay, you don't have to be perfect to challenge a system. You just need to show up. And that was a hard journey for me. I I have done lives and reels and things in my pajamas, in my robe, not feeling great, tired. I literally. Well, I don't want to say I don't care about what I look like when I come to you guys, but it has gone from a Jeanette who maybe in 2020 would have had to have that perfect polished hair done, makeup done, perfect clothes look to what you've been getting. And that was definitely a shift. So same thing in the field. Just remember, you don't have to be perfect to serve your patients. You don't have to be perfect to challenge the system.
Jeanette Benigas:You don't have to be perfect. You just have to keep showing up. And same thing with podcast. You know, most people hate hearing how they sound. Like, you just have to remember editing yourself for hours on a podcast. I don't have to sound perfect. I just have to get this out there. I can leave in some ums and some some of Preston's coughs and we don't have to sound perfect. We just have to get this out to you as best as we can. Our profession doesn't need perfect clinicians. We need reflective ones. We need ethical ones. We need curious ones. We need human ones. That's something we tell you all the time.
Jeanette Benigas:We do this in real life. Start setting some boundaries. Do your job as best as you can, I think in real life? Anything else, Preston? You want to jump in there?
Preston Lewis:I would say find the unique aspects of your patients, find new ideas, get out of that rut, find new places to do your therapy if you can, find new activities. And they don't have to be activities that got the most thumbs up at the convention. It can be something that you wanted to do that's outside the box maybe you've never thought about doing. It can be sometimes deciding, I'm gonna do a language activity, but I'm gonna actually maybe take it into the kitchen and piss off the OT in the process, whatever. There are unique things to do that keep you engaged, keep you thinking, keep you aspired.
Preston Lewis:And yeah, you don't have to be perfect every day. You don't have to look perfect every day. I show up some days with my Toronto Blue Jays t shirt on and my scrub pants and I go to work. And then other days, like yesterday, I'll get really dressed up just because I kinda wanna make people wonder what the hell is he doing? He's taking job interview today?
Preston Lewis:You never know, you keep them guessing. And it's kind of a good way for you to just mix things up. So absolutely, find that uniqueness in the day and realize that you are more than just the ash of ease every year. You are more than the magazine that you get and the expectations that your grad school professors put on you because chances are they were assholes anyway. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Some of them were. Yeah.
Jeanette Benigas:So the profession's not broken because clinicians aren't perfect. The profession is broken because the systems around us keep demanding more from us. They give us less. We're going to keep pushing back on this. We don't need perfection. We need autonomy. We need clarity. We need realistic expectations and we need to take care of ourselves so we can keep coming back and serving people, which is what we wanted to do in the first place. So hope you get in on the conversation this week like you did a few weeks ago. If you're hearing this today, Thursday, I am in Washington, D.C. I am not going to the ASHA convention, but I will probably go into the Convention hall. So if you see me, please do not feel like you can't stop and say hi or, you know, Chad, I want to meet people. Next week is Thanksgiving. Preston, we didn't pre talk about this. Are we putting something out on Thanksgiving? I think we did last year. It was an I'm thankful for.
Preston Lewis:Yeah.
Jeanette Benigas:Yeah. We might have something for you next week. Maybe I'll even put out a rerun. Preston and I will have to talk about it. Thanks for fixing it, everybody.
Jeanette Benigas:Thanks for listening to the Fix SLP podcast, the podcast shaking up the field of speech language pathology. Don't forget to check out our social media or fixslp.com for our latest promo codes for continuing education, therapy materials, merch, and more. Supporting our sponsors also supports our Fix SLP team. Don't just listen. Be a part of the change. Share this episode and our social media content, and let's keep fixing the field one fight at a time.