277: When Work Stress Impacts the Relationship with Guy Winch

Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch! This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

In this episode, Shane talks with Guy Winch about when work stress impacts the relationship. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots, and watch it on YouTube – follow and leave a 5-star review.

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The Couples Therapist Couch 277: When Work Stress Impacts the Relationship with Guy Winch

This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit https://helloalma.com/dg/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=privatepractice to learn more

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In this episode, Shane talks with Guy Winch about when work stress impacts the relationship. Guy is a Psychologist, Speaker, and Author who’s a leading advocate for integrating the science of emotional health into our daily lives. Hear why it’s hard to leave work at work, how work stress works, how to help your clients separate work stress from home life, how much to structure your week, and what we can learn from firefighters. Here's a small sample of what you'll hear in this episode:

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To learn more about Guy Winch, his latest book Mind Over Grind, and his podcast Dear Therapists, visit:

GuyWinch.com

Mind Over Grind

Dear Therapists

 

Show Notes

• 277: When Work Stress Impacts the Relationship with Guy Winch
• This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit https://helloalma.com/dg/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=privatepractice to learn more
• [1:29] Welcome to the show Guy Winch!
• [2:27] How work stress transfers to partners (burnout crossover)
• [3:55] The difficulty of leaving work at work
• [6:43] Understanding the stress response and fight-or-flight
• [10:34] Why we can't just "snap out of" work stress
• [11:59] The problem of rumination after difficult workdays
• [14:46] How work hijacks your life 
• [16:09] Curating breaks during the workday
• [18:28] Two-minute to five-minute strategic breaks
• [19:27] Creating end-of-day rituals not just routines
• [21:20] This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit https://helloalma.com/dg/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=privatepractice to learn more
• [23:10] Defining your purpose when transitioning home
• [24:38] The "red light, green light" email checking technique
• [26:34] Recovery requires a sense of autonomy
• [28:30] Setting boundaries with children and bedtime
• [30:52] Mental fatigue vs. physical fatigue
• [32:42] Reclaiming parts of yourself outside of work
• [34:10] Communication with partners: an ongoing dialogue
• [36:34] ROI on recharging activities
• [39:20] Challenging the "my job is too stressful" mindset
• [41:14] Being nuanced about when work is actually stressful
• [43:12] Mind over grind: changing how you think about work
• [44:34] Learn more about Guy Winch, his latest book Mind Over Grind, and his podcast Dear Therapists
• This episode is brought to you by Alma. Visit https://helloalma.com/dg/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=privatepractice to learn more

 

What is The Couples Therapist Couch?

This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Many of the episodes are interviews with leaders in the field of Relationships. The show is meant to help Therapists and Coaches learn how to help people to deepen their connection, but in the process it explores what is most needed for each of us to love, heal, and grow. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

Learn more about the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/

Find out more about the Couples Therapist Inner Circle: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/inner-circle-new

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:00
My job now is to connect with my partner. My job now is to have quality time with my kids. My job now is to relax and get my mind off work.

00:15
to the Couples Therapist Couch, the podcast for couples therapists, marriage counselors, and relationship coaches to explore the practice of couples therapy. And now, your host, Shane Burkle.

00:31
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Couples Therapist's Couch. This is Shane Burkle and this is the podcast that's all about the practice of couples therapy. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and the goal of this podcast is to help you learn how to more effectively work with couples and possibly even learn how to have a better relationship. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates.

01:00
Alma handles all of the paperwork and guarantees payment within two weeks. Visit helloalma.com or click on the link in the show notes to learn more. everyone, welcome back to the Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Burkle and today I'm speaking with Guy Winch, psychologist, co-host of the Dear Therapist podcast and author of four books, including the newly released Mind Over Grind, How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life. Hey Guy, welcome to the show.

01:29
It's great to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely. It's great to talk to you again. Uh, for those who, uh, enjoy the show, they might be interested in listening to our previous episode as well. That was episode number 202, but, I'm excited to hear about your new book. Why don't you tell us all about it? Well, the new book is, uh, is a look about how work impacts us within work, but mostly outside of work. And it has a huge focus on how

01:57
our relationships are impacted by our work. And here's a spoiler, not in a good way. In other words, there's a ton of research that's really fascinating about how much we bring home our work, how much that spills over into the home, how much it crosses over onto our partners, all in ways that we're not aware of. For example, there studies that show that when one member of a couple is really stressed out at

02:27
work, their partner will start to develop symptoms of burnout. I mean, that's the level of transfer. work, know, so it's really insidious in the way this happens. And I've talked about five cases throughout the book, we just follow these five cases. And in one of them, literally the person and these are all actual cases. In one situation, the person actually fell out of love, because of work pressures, not because of any changes in the relationship. So I don't think there's a lot out there that

02:56
alerts people, therapists and other people in relationships about, hey, you really need to pay attention to what's happening in your work life because it's really coming home. Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like as therapists, we might give people a recommendation like, oh, you just got to leave work at work, right? And you got to be present when you're at home. And what makes it so hard to do that? Because it sounds like good advice, but it's very hard to apply. It's very, very hard to apply.

03:26
And the more pressured your work is, the more demanding, the more strain you have at work, the harder it is to apply. Think of it this way. When you're at work in certain workplaces, and by the way, this can be if you're self-employed and you just have a lot of internal drive and pressure to accomplish certain things, to do certain things. Some people, you know, like they have very difficult days. You know, if it's therapists, you know, you all have these days where you look at, you know, who you're seeing and you're like, oh, that one's not gonna be easy and this one's gonna be

03:55
tough and these couple is really gonna put me through it. When you are on high alert like that, because we go into fight or flight, oh Our nervous system, when we have to be anticipate stress or tension or conflict and in couples therapy, that's what the sessions are about. you go into fight or flight, your system can be in that mode all day.

04:22
And when you're in fight or flight like that, when you're anticipating dealing with high tension, stress, conflict, pressure situations all day, you don't just come down on a dime. You don't just like snap your fingers. And now I'm calm. It actually, you know, it takes a while to be able to come down and it takes a lot of intentionality and effort to be able to come down from that. Most of us cannot. And when you get home or if you're working from home, you you close your laptop and you end the day, you are still

04:52
wired. You are still in that tense, preoccupied, kind of stressed uh frame of mind. And then when your kids run up to you, it's very natural that you're going to stiffen because you're not ready for that yet. And when your spouse rushes up and goes like, hey, great, look, can you look after the baby because I need to do X and Y, what you're going to feel like is like, I need a moment for goodness sakes. And you're going to get irritable about it. And that's just a very natural

05:20
And you might then understand it as they're being inconsiderate. Don't they know I just had this very, very difficult day, but they're not being inconsiderate. know, they've had, you know, your spouses have had a difficult day too. They also need some help. Your kid just wants to say hello, but this is where things start to go awry because we are not aware that we need to be much more intentional in how we do these transitions from work to home.

05:45
Absolutely and the partner of that person might interpret it in a way that feels really negative that, my partner isn't happy to see me, they're not happy to be home, something like that. Right. And then of course the dynamic forms, right? Because they're not going to love the fact that you just snapped at them or just stiffened when they gave you a hug or just kind of just, well, just give me a minute. And they're going to interpret that as I guess they really, why aren't they happy to be home?

06:13
Why aren't they happy to see me? Why aren't they, you know, like loving, you know, and then, and then they will react to that by being a little bit more distant or a little sharper themselves and these dynamics form. But what kicks off that snowball is the work stuff. And if we're not aware that that's going to kick it off and that that's really how it starts to ping pong, then it's just going to get worse and worse and worse. Yeah. So can you talk, I know you're an expert on this. Can you talk a little bit about,

06:43
how stress works and why it comes into, what happens inside of us when we start feeling overwhelmed and stressed about whether it's work or anything else in our life? So look, the stress is not bad in and of itself, right? Stress has a bad reputation, right? mean, is like stress is bad. Stress is not bad in and of itself. The stress is good for us in many ways. It is good for us when it operates like it should, i.e. there is something and a stressful event coming our way.

07:12
We have to kind of go on alert, get into the fight or flight mode, be highly activated, deal with the thing, the thing passes, we come down from that. The system in our body that puts us into the fight or flight, it activates us, is sympathetic nervous system. The thing that calms us down is our parasympathetic nervous system. And they work in tandem. One activates and then when the all clear is there, the other one calms us down. You can see the, I use this example a lot just because it's so familiar to people.

07:42
We've all seen the nature documentaries, right? Where the lion is hunting the gazelle. And what happens is the gazelle is running for its life and clearly sympathetic nervous system, highly activated, fight or flight, and in this case flight like crazy. And they run for their life. The lion veers off and two minutes later, the gazelle, you can see their tail swishing around and they're munching on the shrubs and they're like, they're good, life is good.

08:11
Because that's how effective their stress response is. It activates quickly and it goes down quickly. That's the ideal. That's not how we are as human beings. Because in the current environment, we don't get these short bursts. We are not in nomadic tribes in which the short bursts is we're going on a hunt and we're running after the bison.

08:36
You know, and then there's this moment of cornering the bison, et cetera, et cetera. And then that, and then the minute the bison's dead, everyone's like, yeah, and everyone's cheering. And then you get calm again. And that, or you're having a squabble in the tribe. That's not what happens. We are in a workplace in which for hour after hour, after hour, after hour, there's tension and there's stress and there are very few breaks and it doesn't go up and down. It goes up, stays up. And so you are activated all day. Why? That's bad for you. And this is the part of stress that's bad. That's when stress becomes

09:06
chronic or it lasts too long. And when it does and you're not getting the breaks, it's not coming down. There's a lot of wear and tear on the body because when your stress response is activated, your body starts operating very, very differently. Right. You know, your gastrointestinal system starts functioning quite differently. know, sugars are produced because, know, you need them for energy, blood rushes to your extremities. Like there's a lot of physiological, hormonal and neurophysiological changes.

09:35
that happen in the body in that high stress moment. And then they're supposed to go away. They're supposed to calm down, but they don't. And so, you know, it's like, you know, running a car in fifth gear without brakes, the car will start to break down. And so that is uh the problem of our current, you know, workplace. We haven't evolved to be at this level of stress. We have to find those brakes and we don't typically do that. So that's the problem with chronic stress. It really creates wear and tear on the body that will over time.

10:05
not just create likelihood of burnout, but it will have mental implications like depression and anxiety, and it will increase likelihood of disease and cardiovascular disease and all of those things. It's really bad. I was thinking as you were talking that idea of the evolutionary like helpfulness of stress when our ancestors hunted for the bison. And part of that was about survival, right? Because once they killed the bison, they're going to eat for a week.

10:34
And for us, when we go into our workplace, there's still this sort of sense of survival. Like I need to perform in order to provide for my family, or I need to perform in order to pay the bills. And if I don't do this, we won't survive. And maybe that's not entirely true, but there's this pressure that makes the stress feel so intense. And like you were saying, it doesn't just go away. There's not like

11:02
I just kill the bison and then it goes away. It's like there's constantly the next thing to stress about. Yeah. And you're absolutely right. I mean, that's a really, really important point that you make. Maybe it's not true that my survival depends on it, but it feels true. In other words, my nervous system doesn't know the difference. Correct. In other words, your body is responding as if your survival does depend on it. Your nervous system doesn't distinguish. If it goes into activation, it doesn't really care.

11:31
if that's happening in a therapy session or on the battlefield or in a conference room, it doesn't care. It's the same activation. So it feels, know, your body's responding as if your survival does depend on it. The other problem that happens then is because this really matters to us and our careers really matters to us. know, for therapists especially, there's not a one of us that won't get home in the evening after a really difficult session.

11:59
and not think about it afterwards and process it. And if something goes badly and things took a step back to kind of like replay those moments. And so we are prone to ruminating, to brooding about the workday when we get home. And what that does is, you know, and we are not just prone to brooding and ruminating, we're prone to doing it in an unproductive way to not to figure something out, but to just kind of replay those upsetting

12:27
kind of moments and that just extends the stress of the workday because when we're ruminating we're activating our stress response again. So we're not getting the break we need again and we're checked out with our families instead of being present again and they can tell and again what are they going to interpret that as they don't care all they care about is work now it's not that we care about work we're actually just having a really hard time.

12:53
switching off, we're a really, know, ruminations are intrusive thoughts. It's very difficult not to think about it. And, you know, when our clients have very stressful jobs, you know, it's very difficult for them to shed that at the end of the day, and they're brooding and ruminating, and it's not voluntary. And you can tell them you need to be more present with your family. But that's not easy to do when you have intrusive thoughts about how your, you know, co-workers stabbed you in the back in a meeting, or your boss chewed you out and you feel humiliated and like,

13:21
You're going to be ruminating about that for hours. You you need much more robust tools to address these things than just intention. Yeah, I mean, there's the reality of people who bring their work home, right? So someone could be sitting at the dinner table and they're responding to emails or taking phone calls or working on a project for work. And it's creeping into those hours. I mean, that's obviously problematic in a lot of ways, but

13:51
What you're saying is even less conscious or less intentional, where I could have the intention of I'm going to leave work at work. I'm just going to come home and be with my family. But there's the rumination and the brooding that it's like my mind can't let it go, even if I want to. Right. And that's a great distinction, right? Because some of this is voluntary. When you're sitting at the table doing emails, that's in your control. You're choosing to do that, which you should probably not.

14:21
Not probably, you should not. But when you're at the table intending to be at the table, but just constantly your mind is bombarding you with these worries, with these replaying this thing, know, just worrying about, my boss really hates me, what am going to do? And my boss really hates me, what am going to do? Then that's not voluntary. You don't have control over that in the moment. And you're not trying to be checked out by you are. So that's the much more insidious form.

14:46
of how, and this is why I, in that subtitle of the book, it's about how work hijacks your life, because hijack is not a voluntary thing. There are all these ways in which these things happen to you that either you're not aware of, and if you are aware of, you're having trouble controlling. And that's what you need to become aware of and need to regain control of. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. When you were talking about the tools, that might be something people are interested in. I'm imagining that

15:16
It starts from the very beginning of the day, right? These are, and you can let me know if I'm wrong, but you know, that there might be tools that I can use throughout my work day to help with this, but also tools once I get home that might be different to help me be more present with my family. Yes. So let's give some examples. Absolutely right. During the day, what we tend to do, we tend to be very mindless about our days. We have appointments scheduled.

15:44
whether you're a couple of therapists, no matter what you do, you're usually going from task to task, whatever that task is. And very few of us will pause, look at our day, look at our week, and start to curate where we need breaks and what kind of breaks we need. If you have two really difficult sessions in a row, and then you're quickly going into another thing,

16:09
That's probably not good because after those two difficult sessions, you could probably really benefit from 15 minutes, 10 minutes, five if you don't have it, to get your head straight, to come down from that because not the rest of the day doesn't have to be at that level of activation. So you need to get a break. Like, where's the recovery time? Where's the reset? Do you have 15 minutes to take a walk around the block, to sit in the park, to call the loved one, to do something?

16:35
that kind of again engages your parasympathetic nervous system that kind of calms you down a bit that, you know, break with a colleague to vent about how difficult that session was or to get support. Like very few of us curate that way. Therapists don't and people in the workplace don't. They just go and this is how we respond to a lot of demands and pressure from work. We just put our head down and on autopilot and just go from task to We just get through. Task to task to task. We're just getting through.

17:04
It's problematic because you need when you need to curate, you need to be more intentional about recognizing where my stress points are during the week and where I can get breaks from them to get some oxygen and to get some relief during the day. So yes, it starts at work. Do you think, um, do you think people should go to the level of structuring?

17:32
their whole day, structuring their whole week, of like really scheduling in those times where they can decompress, whether it's take a walk or maybe even do a workout or even just sit and meditate for 10 minutes or something like that. Yes, yes. Now look, a lot of people will hear that and go like, I don't have that option because my schedule is made for me, et cetera, et cetera.

17:59
Some people feel like they don't have the option. Some people do. If you have the option, please do curate. If you don't, and this is what I get into in the book, in the book, in this section, I talk about there are, two minute breaks, there's studies about what's the best, most effective thing you can do if you have two minutes, if you have five minutes. And I don't want anyone to tell me they don't have two minutes or five minutes, because you are going to the bathroom during the day, right? So don't tell me you don't have the two minutes or the five minutes. You do.

18:28
and if you have 10 and if you have this. you know, it, whatever you can do, be strategic about how to use whatever breaks you can in an effective way, because what people tend to do on their breaks is go to their phones, go to social media, go to the news, go to things that are notorious for actually stressing us out, not making us feel good, you know, like numbing with distraction.

18:58
but not doing the thing that will actually recharge us a little bit during the day. And so like we have to be much more mindful. At the end of the day, this is another thing I talk about in the book, you want to train your brain to come down from that sympathetic arousal, from the activation, from the high stress to a calmer state of mind. It is very difficult to do that shift. So I advocate creating a ritual that you repeat daily.

19:27
And again, our brain learns repetition. When it sees you following a certain kind of steps all the time, in a behavioral, Pavlovian way, it will learn to associate, like, oh, now we're transitioning to a different mindset, to our personal lives in that way. And I say ritual, not routine, because both of them have steps, but ritual tends to have deeper resonance in terms of meaning. Rituals have meaning, routines...

19:56
do not necessarily have meaning. you know, the ritual should have meaning, you know, it should involve like sound, like music is very evocative. So what kind of playlist can you put on? What kind of song can you put on if you're working from home just to listen to as you're wrapping things up to start kind of bringing you down? You know, like most people who have kids, young kids, know that an hour before bedtime, you start shifting the mood.

20:24
We start putting the toys away. We lower the lights. We put in a certain kind of car music. Our tones slow down. just because we are, it takes an hour to get the three year old to go down from playtime to be ready for bed. So it's very clear to us. We are the same. It's the same brain. In other words, we don't need the hour, but we need something to help us transition. You know, it's the same logic that we need to apply.

20:52
And so, you in the book, I talk about how to create these kinds of rituals that will really help your brain classify and shift the mindset and recognize that you're leaving the battlefield quote unquote, and you are now going to a very different space. Building a private practice can be challenging. Filing all of the right paperwork is time consuming and tedious. And even after you're done, it can take months to get credentialed and start seeing clients.

21:20
That's why Alma makes it easy and financially rewarding to accept insurance. When you join Alma, you can get credentialed within 45 days and access enhanced reimbursement rates with major payers. They also handle all of the paperwork from eligibility checks to claim submissions and guarantee payment within two weeks of each appointment. Plus, when you join Alma, you'll get access to time-saving tools for intakes, scheduling, treatment plans, progress notes, and more in their included platform.

21:49
Alma helps you spend less time on administrative work and more time offering great care to your clients. Visit helloalma.com or click the link in the show notes to learn more. That's great. I mean, I feel like there's whatever activity that I'm doing in the moment, and then there's the meaning that I'm making up about what I'm doing. So if I make up the meaning that I need to respond to emails and get a lot of work stuff done,

22:18
but then I'm just sort of like looking at social media or doing something else, distracting myself. Then if there's like an extra layer of judgment that I'm putting on myself that creates extra stress, right? But like I'm imagining if I can create some of these rituals, it's almost like it's fine to decompress in certain ways, it's like giving myself permission that.

22:44
during this period of time, it's okay to look at social media or during this period of time, it's okay to wind down and not think about work. And it's like almost like taking away that judgment of what I should be doing, you know, by not being present in whatever I am doing. Yeah, exactly right. And the way you do that is you have to define what the purpose is of what you are doing. In other words, you actually have to say to yourself, my job now.

23:10
is to be present with my family. My job now is to connect with my partner. My job now is to have quality time with my kids. My job now is to relax and get my mind off work. In other words, really, what I do at the end of the day is one of the things that I do is I literally, close the door to my office, symbolic act, right? Rituals are symbolic. I close the door and I say to myself in my head or to anyone else if there's somebody else in the room,

23:39
now my evening begins or it's time for the evening now. Like I literally announce internally or externally or both that done with work. Now for most people it's not possible at six, seven, five, seven, whatever eight to not dip into work at all to not check an email. Right. I mean, I mean, if you, if you can terrific, then, you know, make the announcement, wave the checkered flag.

24:09
and now you're starting your evening. But if not, then you also have to be very careful about how you do that and when you do that. Because a lot of people check emails every 10, 15 minutes. And that means they're thinking about work every 10 or 15 minutes. And here's the thing, if you are thinking about work, when you're home, you're at work. Even if you're at home. Your brain is at work. You're activating yourself. You're not in a calm mode. You're not focused on your family.

24:38
you're still at work. So you have to be very, very careful about when you do that. I can see how the curated structure would be super helpful, right? Because maybe I could say from six o'clock to seven o'clock, I'm just going to be present with my family. I'm going to put my phone away. That's my purpose. And if I really need to check email, can put, you know, I can schedule it from seven to seven 30 where

25:06
I can communicate that with my partner and my family. can, you know, put myself in a different room. I can create the structure where that's what I'm supposed to be present doing during that time or something like that. Perfect. Exactly right. Now, here's why that's important. The research tells us that to recover from the workday, there are many ingredients that we need to have for our recovery to be effective. When our recovery is not effective, like, for example, we just

25:36
plunk down on the couch once the kids are asleep or whatever, we plunk ourselves down on the couch and then we just watch shows, say, and just every once in a while glance over, check an email, respond, whatever. We're gonna wake up tired the next day because we rested, but we did nothing to recharge. Our batteries didn't deplete, but we didn't recharge them, we didn't fill them in any kind of way. Plus we were constantly at work, so we weren't that rested to begin with. So you actually, m

26:06
one of the ingredients that's super important is to feel a sense of autonomy. You need to feel that when you're not at work, you are in control of your time. And if you have to, quote unquote, check emails every 10 minutes, you don't feel in control of your time. You do when you do it like you suggested. When you say to yourself, I am going to have the quality time with phone off between six and seven. Then at seven to 730, I'm going to check emails. Then at 730, I'm going to reengage.

26:34
with my partner and have an evening and then at 9.30 I'm going to go to bed. Then the hours are rough estimations, you adjust them as you may, then you are in control of the evening. And that's a technique that I talk about in the book, I call it red light, green light. And the goal of the technique is to frame what you're doing at home as the main event, as the show from which there is an intermission like you have in shows in which you check email. So the email is not

27:02
the foreground, it's the background. The foreground is the show and you are in control of your time, you are defining what your evening is about ahead of time, letting people know ahead of time, then taking a quick break from that to do what you need to do and then getting back to the show. That keeps you in a kind of unactivated state because you're calming but then you're just dipping in as opposed to threading that throughout your evening and then you're constantly going up and down in activation and then...

27:31
you don't feel in control of your time because you had to respond to emails. You might, but do it when you choose, when it works for you, when it doesn't disrupt everything else that you're doing. Yeah. Do you have advice for people with children where it doesn't feel like you have control of your time? Yeah, when are they going to bed is my first thing, right? mean, that's when I'm working with couples. like, how old are your kids and when did they go to bed? And, know, and too many people like, oh, my kids five, they got a

28:00
I I

28:30
And so, you know, first of all, create the time for yourself. Don't smear it by, you know, spreading out bedtime when it shouldn't be done. And if you have older kids who are, you know, tweens and teens, then they're not that interested in hanging out with you in the first place. So have the, you know, be in your room. Good luck. If you need something, let us know. We're doing this now. Yes. You know, if you're a parent, single parent, and you're coming home and you need to make dinner for your kids, et cetera, et cetera, then tell them I'm in the kitchen.

28:59
half an hour making dinner, do not disturb me because I need some time for myself. And then give yourself some alone time to kind of use the cooking time to de-stress and to kind of refocus. And in other words, when you're a parent, take control, create the boundaries. It's really important because otherwise you're on duty 24-7 and then you're going to get burnt out. Yeah. And hopefully

29:25
if you're doing that as a parent, you're modeling those healthy boundaries that will help your children have a better sense of creating that structure in their life. Very, very important to model those boundaries and to model the idea that my uh life is not all about serving you. I got to serve me too. Yeah, that's great. You had made a comment earlier, like, I forgot how you said it, but it was like,

29:53
It's not great if you just come home, you don't have a plan, you just sort of sit on the couch, start watching TV. That's not super healthy. I was wondering, you know, what would a health I mean, is what kid watching shows be a healthy part of your evening? Or is it does it depend how you structure it and how you set it up and how you define your downtime or something like that? Yes, but it can't be the only part. In other words, if that's what you do every evening, you'll just

30:23
sitting yourself down and watching shows, then where are you giving oxygen to those parts of you that is not about being a professional? Like, where are you giving oxygen to the interests you used to have, the passions you used to have, the hobbies you used to have, to the aspects of your identity and personality that you don't get to express during the workday or as a parent? Where does that come out to play? How do you recharge? How do you revitalize?

30:52
One of the interesting things that I talk about in the book, and again, it's about hijacking. So this is another way, you know, things get hijacked is our mind doesn't distinguish well between mental fatigue and physical fatigue. You'll get home after a day and you'll be like, I am wiped out. I am totally drained. What'd you do all day? You sat. You're mentally drained. You're not physically drained. We are.

31:18
using our spare time today like we did during the Industrial Revolution after 16 hour shifts, you know, like, like stirring fabrics into divots, you know what mean? other words, like, sorry, yeah, we didn't do physical labor for seven for 10 hours for 15 hours, we sat. And what did we do? And we sat, we talked to people, we did it via screens. And so like, yeah, your mind is telling you, you drained, you wiped out mentally, but not physically. Now, it's very difficult to get yourself off the couch.

31:46
But anything that's actually recharging, that's recharging for you, if you're athletic, it is some kind of workout. It can be 15 minutes, but it's a workout. And if you're creative, it's doing something different and creative. And if you're a maker, then it's making something. And if you're an organizer, it's organizing something. And if you're an extrovert, it's catching up with people in person or on video in some kind of way. And anyhow, whatever the thing is that's recharging for you, it cannot happen on the couch.

32:15
Because that's not where recharging things happen. That's where the restful stuff happening. Where does the recharge happen? So it's not that resting and shows are bad. It's just it's one ingredient of others. Where's the recharging stuff? And that again, takes more effort because your mind is going to tell you that you're too tired for that. Right. What were you into before you became a therapist? What were you into before you became a professional? What were you into before you started having a family?

32:42
why not dip into that for 10, 15 minutes a week and just feel like what it's like to be that person again. It doesn't take full-time occupation. It just takes some experience. Literally 15 minutes, 30 minutes a week of doing it can make you feel like, yeah, this is part of me too. Yeah, that's great. And if we are a single individual, you know, before we have a partner, before we have kids, it is

33:10
In some ways, certain things are easier because you do have control of your time. You can make decisions for yourself. Can you talk a little bit about the communication that's required once you have a partner you're sharing your life with? Once you have kids, you know where I, it is still important to carve out time for those, those things as an individual and like my wife and I might have very different personalities or different things that we need in the evening. So that communication becomes so important about.

33:40
how we carve out the time. Yes. And the communication is critical and it's not a conversation. It's an ongoing dialogue. Right? mean, it's a constant tweak just because when you have kids, the circumstances change all the time. Now this is going on in school and that requires more of one of you or now the kid is going through this phase and that requires more of different, know, like the circumstance shift on you all the time. The demands go up and down. You know, suddenly there's some periods where like, well, the kids seem to be just

34:10
you know, like wind up toys that are taken care of themselves. And then the other case is like, oh my God, every second of the day, you know, like they need something. So you have to adapt and be nimble, given those demands shifting as, they tend to do when you have kids, but it has to be a dialogue. It has to be like, Hey, I would love an hour over the weekend to do this thing that would feel great for me. How can we make that happen? How can we give you an hour? What would you like to do? Like let's trade off.

34:38
Let's try and set up something where there can be a play date that, know, you take them to, then I can do this or I take them to, then you can do that. How can we marshal our resources so that we can each get some time to ourselves? And then even during the evenings, let's get the kids to bed a little earlier. I would love 15 minutes to go into the garage and work on that thing that I was working on. maybe you want, you know, like half an hour to go and just kind of do some meditation or yoga or, you know,

35:08
go across the street to talk to your friend, the neighbor, whatever the thing is, it's, it feels like a zero sum game because there's too much and there's not enough time. But if you put both your needs on the table and say, here are needs, here are the demands. How can we, what's the best we can do to make room for them? Cause it's about what the best you can do. can't, it's not gonna be perfect, but what's the best we can do. And let's be very thoughtful about it. Yeah. I was thinking.

35:36
as you were to let's say that I want to play an instrument. Let's say that, you know, that's something that would be like very fulfilling for me as an individual or something. And that's definitely something I can imagine when people have kids, it's start you start to not have any time to do that, or you or you think you don't. And that's something that could be helpful to bring back into your life. I'm wondering if you like if you would think of it like, like, like my my initial mindset is

36:06
Well, that just feels like one more thing on my list. I'm already so overwhelmed. I already don't have any time. How am I going to make time for that? would you say it's sort of like if I make time for myself, let's say I for one hour a week, I decide to play my instrument. Like, would you say that that'll actually help me in my like, I'll maybe have more energy in my workday or more energy when I'm with my family or you know that

36:34
Even though it seems like another thing on my list, it'll actually be beneficial. That is exactly what I'm saying. It's about ROI, return on investment. That hour of investment will return so much more energy and make you feel so much better about yourself and revitalize you and then make you more productive and more efficient in other things. That's the thing about the recharging and revitalizing activities. They require energy.

37:02
But when they're the right thing for us, they return that with a lot of interest. They really restore way more energy than they deplete. Playing an instrument is a great example because we might, maybe we were in a band. You know how many people I know who are in a band and I can't be in a band because I don't have time to actually rehearse, actually perform. But playing for an hour a week, and it can be two sessions of half an hour, playing for an hour.

37:28
is so restorative. It makes you feel so good. It reminds you of what it it just recharges. reminds you of what that feels like. It makes you feel young. It makes you feel vital. It's such a great thing to do. so, find the half an hour. And the other thing when your parents is, know, when your parents, it's not about or rather it is about doing two things at once. If there's an instrument.

37:55
And you need to watch the kids and they're at a certain age, you can say, guys, two options. There's your iPad, or if you want, can come and watch me play. And I'll play one song that you like. know, like in other words, so you can do two things at once. You know, do you know what I mean? Like you have to watch the kids, help them with the homework, play the instrument while you're doing that. Once in a while you pause to answer a question, but like, you know, they like the company. You know, how could you like the synergy?

38:24
of it. But yes, but answer your question. Absolutely. Those return so much more energy than they consume. And they will make you happier. And they will make you less stressed the next day at work. And that's what work-life balance is about. It's in your head. It's about doing things that make you feel like you have a life outside of work. And often when you have kids, it's like from duty here to duty there and where am I? That is the most

38:53
important thing you can do. Yeah. Do you have any advice for some if someone were to say, Yeah, yeah, guy, this sounds great. Sure, sure. But my but you don't understand my job is so stressful. I have so many so much pressure so much so many time constraints. You know, they're really they're really having a hard time stepping out of that. You know, thinking that the truth with a capital T

39:20
is that their job is, they just can't step away from their job or something like that. So here's the thing what I would say to them. Number one, say like, you are probably doing hours of unpaid overtime at home by ruminating about your job in unproductive ways. By just brooding and stewing about certain things that happened. You are wasting a lot of time for sure. Unpaid overtime.

39:48
with ruminating, so you have time there. As I said, a lot of these things don't take a lot of time. They just take mindfulness and curation and being more intentional and deliberate. But here is one thing I can suggest to you, this made up person, that will take a chunk of stress off your plate right away. And here's what it is. Do not frame your job as stressful all the time.

40:17
Because by doing so, you have increased exponentially the stress you experience at work, simply because no job is stressful all the time. No job. There are always the down moments, the meetings that are boring, if not stressful. The 15 minutes you have here, the one person you do like seeing in the office, the one part of your job that is kind of enjoyable.

40:44
But when you frame it to yourself as I never have time because my job is so stressful, are putting, you your mind hears that and stress is very psychological. So you are putting yourself an anticipatory dread of stress all day, all the time, even at times where it's actually not. So you have to be more accurate and more nuanced. You have to say to yourself, I have some really intense, conflictual, difficult meetings today.

41:14
But I have that one hour at three o'clock that's not going to be so bad. I have a really challenging day with my boss because whenever he's around, I have to be very, very careful. But I do have those 20 minutes for lunch. I'm going to prepare my favorite meal and really take 20 minutes, sit outside and enjoy it. If you're more accurate and you're more nuanced so that you're highlighting here the difficult moments, but they're not all difficult, then you have prevented yourself from being in stress during a lot of the moments of the day.

41:43
in which you're not. The example I give in the book for that is firefighters. You would think that rushing into burning buildings makes their job intensely stressful. I've worked with many firefighters, none of them defined their job as intensely stressful simply because it's not a lot of the time. They're in the firehouse a lot of the time. And what they found stressful about being in the firehouse are things like, it's my turn to cook, it's stressful because people don't like my cooking and they always bitch about it. Or, you know, things like that. It's not the burning buildings. And so if fire people, you know, like

42:13
firefighters don't define their job as intensely stressful in a holistic way, and they are more nuanced, you should be more nuanced because you're not running into burning buildings. Yeah, that reminds me of what you were saying toward the beginning, which is like, stress is healthy, right? If you're trying to save people from a burning building, they're probably, you know, that's not a stress that's bad for them. That's like they're present in the moment. It helps them

42:42
to um rise to the occasion of what needs to happen in that moment. And that's a good thing. But um that's a good analogy, right? Because none of us are probably, the things we're stressing about are not about saving people's lives from a fire. Right. But again, when somebody comes and says to me, don't understand, my job is super stressful, I'm like, you're already adding stress. You're already mismanaging the stress of your job by putting yourself in stress in a lot of moments in which you do not need to be.

43:12
So there's a lot of opportunities perhaps where we can change our belief system around what's happening, what's going on. Yeah, that's why the book is called Mind Over Grind, because if you change how you think, you manage the psychology of the situation more effectively and in a healthier way, it's not about changing the workplace, it's not about changing your job, it's about changing how you deal with a job, how you deal with a job at work and how you deal with it outside of work.

43:42
And those can create a huge, a huge, huge difference. And anyone is empowered to do that for themselves. We don't have to wait for the workplace to change. We don't have to wait for our, you know, our sessions to change or our, you know, our workplace to change. We can take control by being much better in terms of how we use our mind in these situations. Yeah, that's great. Thank you so much. This has been super helpful. I'm excited.

44:10
to get a copy of the book. When this comes out, it will have just been published. all of you listeners out there, you can go get a copy right away. Any other final It's also audio book and ebook and hardcover. Oh, nice. The audio book will be ready right away as well. Yep. And I read it. Oh, nice. That's great.

44:34
Can you mention your podcast again too so people can come find you there as well? Deer Therapists is the name of the podcast. It's live sessions. oh Literally live sessions and many of them with duos, couples, mother, daughter, et cetera, and many with individuals. So you're not going to hear live sessions a lot of places uh in the podcast sphere. uh You can also, I'm at Guy Winch in most places, LinkedIn, Instagram, et cetera. You can follow me there and guywinch.com is my website.

45:03
Okay, great. Perfect. Well, I'll read the title of the book again so everybody can remember and go get a copy. It's Mind Over Grind, How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life. So thank you again, Guy. Really appreciate you coming on. It's always great to talk to you. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. The episode this week is brought to you by Alma. They make it easy to get credentialed with major insurance plans at enhanced reimbursement rates.

45:31
Alma handles all of the paperwork and guarantees payment within two weeks. Visit helloalma.com or click on the link in the show notes to learn more. And thank you again, everybody. This is Shane Burkle and this is the Couples Therapist Couch podcast. It's all about the practice of couples therapy. I hope you have a great week and we'll see you next time. Bye everybody.