Rewiring the Brain: A Journey of Neuroplasticity and Overcoming Burnout – Interview with Angela Lockwood – The Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast

Prompted by a question from the Future Proofing Health Professional Facebook group about neuroplasticity, Angela Lockwood returns to join Jo on this week’s episode of The Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast to discuss neuroplasticity and its role in burnout and recovery from burnout.

In this episode, Jo and Angela discuss:

• What neuroplasticity is (and isn’t)
• That neuroplasticity isn’t reserved for certain people, professions or ages
• How neuroplasticity can contribute to health professionals experiencing burnout
• The need to be aware of the signs and symptoms of burnout
• The importance of creating space and taking an extra moment to enjoy moments of joy or peace and how it helps to reset our nervous system and brain
• How to utilise the neuroplasticity of your brain to recover from burnout

About Angela Lockwood: Angela is an Occupational Therapist, Podcast Host, Guest Expert, Speaker and Author. 

With over two decades of experience as an Occupational Therapist, Angela has immersed herself in the exploration of focus—examining how individuals think, learn, and interact with their surroundings, their work and their mindset. As the author of “The Power of Conscious Choice” and “Switch Off: How to Find Calm in a Noisy World,” Angela delved deeply into the intricacies of mindful decision-making and attention management. Her podcast, “Distracted,” serves as an invaluable resource for those seeking clarity amidst the chaos.

You can find Angela via her website at www.angelalockwood.com.au 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Future Proofing Health Professional Facebook group 

 If you know you need more support, please visit my website at https://jomuirhead.com

Finally, if you loved this episode, please make sure you subscribe and leave us a review.

Transcript

Jo:
It is great to have you with us today at the Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast. I am your host, Jo Muirhead, and today we have the incredible Angela Lockwood back with us. But before we get into this incredible discussion today, I just wanna acknowledge the Darug people of the land that I am coming to you from today. Thank you to their leaders, past, present, and emerging. And thank you for taking such incredible care of the land that I get to call home.

So, Angela, you are not new to this podcast. You’ve been here before you actually helped me with my book back in 2017, 2018, but today’s topic has actually come from my community. And as soon as somebody said to me, can you get someone to come in and speak about neuroplasticity and the role it plays in burnout, I went, I know exactly who I want. And that person was you. So welcome back. And let’s get into this discussion.

But before I start talking about all the things I wanna talk about, can you just refresh our listeners memory as to who you are, what you do, how you turn up in the world? Just give us a bit of a bio.

Angela:
Jo, thanks so much and it is great to be back on here. And you know that I’m a big fan of yours. I love watching the work you put out. I love listening to the work. So I’m very honoured to be a part of that crew again. And it was interesting just off air, we were chatting a little bit about the book that I wrote back in 2007 called Switch Off, how to Find Calm. Thank you very much for the plug <laugh>. And it’s interesting. I’ve been talking about how we find calm in our thinking for so long. And you know, 2017 was when I wrote Switch Off initially, and I feel like I could republish that book now ’cause whether not enough people read it or that we just haven’t learned the lesson, I’m not sure which one it is yet, or it’s a combination of both.

But for those people that haven’t been in my world before, I am an occupational therapist by background. And I’ve been working for 20 years with busy brains, really is the way to say it. Both kids and adults. So I’ve been very fortunate to be working in schools alongside educators on helping them really be inclusive around all different learning styles. Be inclusive around how kids think, how their brains develop, and how we can help them be the best versions of themselves. And while I was doing that also speaking about exactly the same things, but in the adult world and people always go, hang on a minute, don’t you work with kids or when I’m working in schools, don’t you work with corporates? And I’m like, yes, I

But the core messaging is really how do we find calm in a very busy world. And I’ve been speaking about it for 20 years, I’m seeing books be published now and topics be discussed that I go, hang on, we’ve been talking about this for a very long time. This is not new. Or this is not cutting edge. But I’m very excited that there’s a bigger platform now that we can share these messages. And people are more open to receiving that, to do more in life. You don’t actually have to speed it up. You don’t have to do more. You don’t have to cram on. And I know we’ll cover a lot of that in our conversation today, but I’m very fortunate to work with a whole range of people in helping them find calm in their lives. And I’m learning as I go, Jo to live with a busy brain. It’s a learning curve for me too. <Laugh>

Jo:
Certainly is. And ou know, people will often say to me, don’t you work with people with severe disabilities? Don’t you work with corporates? I work with people, people everywhere who have these issues. It’s people everywhere who have these problems. It’s just my messaging around that and the way I get to deliver that might look different. So you get to take your message into corporate, you get to take your message into schools, and I think that’s wonderful. I don’t work with kids ’cause you know, no thanks <laugh>, but you get to affect people positively across a lifespan. And to me, that’s exciting. It’s like the generational change that we can now start to hope for as opposed to feeling disenchanted by it.

Angela:
Even yesterday, Jo, I had a conversation with a childcare educator. It was really interesting. And she said to me, and it was really powerful, I thought about it so much after I left, and she said, I find it really difficult to help children regulate their emotions when I can’t even do it myself. And for me, I go, that’s the power in that lifespan education of knowing that if we’re going to be great role models for kids, then we need to also have the skills on board as well. So I’m very thankful and very grateful for the work I get to do and to be able to speak to communities like yours who have the ability to affect so many people. And if just one thing that we talk about today can help someone do things differently, then I am so happy.

Jo:
Absolutely. And the thing that excites me is people will reach out to me and let me know that they’ve listened to a podcast and they’ve applied it to their own life, but they’re now working with their clients around a similar concept as well. And I guess that’s my hope is that we get to change some of the negativity and address some of the risks for us in our own work, because of that we actually become better clinicians. And we could talk about our philosophies around that forever, but that’s not why you are here. <Laugh>. So I am now really nervous because before we hit record, I could not say the word neuroplasticity, so I feel like I’m gonna stumble over it every time I try now. But that is the topic of today’s conversation. And I wanna say a really big thank you to Yale who put it in the Future Proofing Health Professionals Facebook group, saying, could you please find somebody to talk about this?

So we’re gonna cover a few things today to keep you enthralled and excited. I’m gonna get Angela to give us a bit of a definition, a working definition. We’re gonna cover off what it’s actually not, because we’ve probably got a lot of people on TikTok. I wouldn’t know. I’m not there. But TikTok telling us what it is and it really isn’t. And then I’ve asked Angela to talk specifically into the neuroplasticity contributions to burnout and burnout recovery. So that is the pretty meaty subject topics that we are gonna take on today. Okay. So can we just start with, what is it? What is neuroplasticity? Let’s start there.

Angela:
Well, the fact that even you’ve had a listener, or somebody in your community even request this topic shows how far that we’ve come in understanding and to be able to talk about neuroplasticity and how the brain actually works people, it’s showing that people now are realising that we do have some control over how our brains function. And that we want to know how can we use this amazing thing that we have that we carry around with us everywhere? How can we really unlock its potential? So that makes me excited. So thank you so much for posting this question because neuroplasticity is something that even though it’s been a concept that we know now, it hasn’t really been around for that long. I don’t know, mid 1940s, I guess, that it really came to light.

But neuroplasticity really is the brain’s ability to reorganise itself and form neural connections. So that’s probably the most simplistic now neurologists that are listening to this are probably going, is she serious? She’s just simplified that way too much. But for the benefit of listeners, I think if we can realise that our brain has neurons in it that basically talk to each other in everything that we do through its synapses our brain’s ability to adapt to things that either are great for us or not so great for us is really quite remarkable. And in the late 20th century, there was the concept of neuroplasticity. Now I always get this guy’s name wrong, so I’m sorry if I pronounce it incorrectly. But Paul Cherita is his name, I think is how I, how I say it.

But Pedro Cherita, he was a Spanish poet and professor, and he had a stroke. And what happened was that his left arm was paralyzed. So on one side of his body, he was paralyzed and unable to speak. And so what he did is he went out and saw all sought medical opinion from so many different doctors, and pretty much they said, look, you’re not gonna recover. You are gonna remain disabled for the rest of your life. You are gonna have impaired function. So unlucky mate, this is your lot in life. And his son who was a doctor thought, no, this is not right. This is not this doesn’t feel right. I know that there’s more to just saying unlucky, that’s that’s your lot. So what they did is they looked at rehab quite differently.

And what I love about this, Jo, is for us, it’s like, of course they did. You would do this. But back then this was cutting edge. So what they went through is the rehab program was very much based on exercise, just daily exercise, physical exercise, it stimulated movement and coordination. All of those things that we know in a rehab program is a part of it now. But also as a part of that program, they looked at repetitive tasks and things that were very task orientated. Now, obviously as an occupational therapist, this super excites me ’cause I’m task orientated, <laugh> and integrated this into life functional activities. But what he did is he did these daily exercises. And what they found with the daily exercises, of course things started to improve and he started to see functional improvements in his movement. But it wasn’t just about the physical exercises, it was also about the cognitive exercises that they were doing alongside it.

So what he was doing as a part of the rehab program was doing things like reading and writing and solving puzzles and, and really integrating the physical aspect with the cognitive aspect. And what they found through the recovery is that he improved more. Of course, the doctor said he wouldn’t improve at all, but he improved quicker. He regained his ability to walk and to speak and perform daily activities independently. So they knew they were onto something. And so what I guess this exposure and this experience, or obviously led to more studies being conducted because that worked. How come that worked? Well, we better find out why. And then his son went on and did a whole lot of scientific validation around it. And what they found was this concept of neuroplasticity that no matter what happens, the brain has an ability to shift and reconnect and learn new things.

And I think that’s really, it’s a really exciting process to go through because when you look back at its origins, it was almost found through somebody being questioning the medical system. It was someone going, hang on, this can’t be everything. This can’t be enough. We want more than what we’re being given. And how often do we hear that, Jo? Where people are told something, they question it, and then their recovery is so much greater than if they just sat on their laurels and went, oh, well this won’t, this won’t change. So what happened with neuroplasticity is the world went into looking more around people who had also sustained brain injuries. And what they found is through a lot of, and we are gonna cover this a little bit more, what are some of the things we can do to help our brain make these neural connections? It doesn’t have to be just after a major incident, like a stroke. It could just be, and as we were explore in response to burnout in response to daily stresses. But pretty much in summary, neuroplasticity is really about the brain’s ability to be able to reorganise itself and form new neural connections so you can do more.

Jo:
Yep. Great. I love it. And I do appreciate the simplicity. And I’m thinking that the neurologists who are listening to it are going, oh, thank God I’ve now got a simple statement I can say to the next patient who walks through the room. So thank you because I had an appointment with a neurologist this weekend. I think she’s a lovely person. And I appreciate her help, but Jesus. Wow. Those words were big and <laugh>, and I wasn’t having a good brain day. So my brain was sitting there going, well, her mouth is moving. Don’t really know what’s coming out of it, but okay. <Laugh>

Angela:
And even the word ‘neuroplasticity’, right? Like neuro, we know brain and the plasticity is really about being malleable, being able to change. So if you look at the word in itself just think about your brain has the ability to adapt and to change. And I’m definitely not a neurologist or a neurosurgeon, so there’s people who are way smarter than me that can unravel this in a lot more detail. But for the benefit of listeners who are going, well, how can I use the my brain to the best of its ability? How can I work with it so that I can unlock more potential in me? Well, let’s make it as simple as possible.

Jo:
Absolutely. I think that’s absolutely wonderful. So I’m assuming that there are now some people around who have misconstrued or created some definitions or experiences of neuroplasticity that aren’t helpful. Have you got a couple of things that neuroplasticity is not?

Angela:
Well, what I am interested in is I’m not on TikTok, so what are these TikTok things you’re referring to?

Jo:
Neither am I <laugh>. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. So some of the things that I have heard in my own world is that neuroplasticity only works after a traumatic event. And you’ve already debunked that myth, right? I’ve even had some people tell me it’s not real <laugh>. So I think that’s kind of a bit ridiculous. Or that it’s only the domain of people like you and I that a psychologist or a psychotherapist or an exercise physiologist or an ophthalmologist, like they don’t have any real responsibility or authority to be working with neuroplasticity. So I think that’s a bit of a myth too, right? Because we’re all working with the brain <laugh>.

Angela:
They’re all myths. And if with any type of learning, if you are interested in a topic, you go to the sources that have credibility. And let’s face it, TikTok is not one of them <laugh>. Unless there’s a neurosurgeon on there that is using TikTok as a platform, right? But you go to sources of credibility to find out the information that you need. And really, I find so much what we do nowadays Jo with, when it comes to our health and with understanding ourselves, we really overcomplicate things. We really try to look for ways to sometimes even counterbalance what we know intuitively is right, <laugh>. And really it’s quite a fascinating human trait that we have. But if we know that our brain has the ability to adapt, there are so many real life examples of this.

Look, I’m one of them myself, as you know, my story is that when I was 17, I sustained a brain injury myself. I was hit in the temple on the left side with a hockey ball. And what I know throughout that experience was my brain really was never the same. And I’m so thankful for that <laugh> ’cause I know that there was a certain way that my brain functioned prior to that. I was told I would never speak again. The doctors, my neurosurgeon, who was somebody who was very knowledgeable, he operated on my head extremely successfully. Had a conversation with my parents that Angela would not be able to string a sentence together because of where it hit me in the head. Now, if I had taken that on board and my parents had taken that on board and went, oh, well, she’s never gonna speak again. She’s always gonna have brain connectivity issues, I wouldn’t be doing the work that I do today. So what I did, which is what we’ll explore a little bit more, is had a team of professionals around me to help. But also what I did is I educated myself. Now, I was only 17 at the time, and clearly had didn’t want to be a 17-year-old who couldn’t speak or had difficulty with coordinating movements or had difficulty with long-term memory. Now, I had things I wanted to do in life, Jo, <laugh>, I wanted to go to uni. I wanted to do all these things. So what I had to do is, I didn’t know it at the time, but looking back at it, it was neuroplasticity in action. And it was neuroplasticity in action because of the repetitive activities that I did, because of the professionals that I sought because of the physical activity, the types of work that I was doing, the cognitive demands I was placing on my brain. But now that I look back at it, it was also the rest that I was giving my brain that was as equally as important. So it wasn’t always pushing and learning and doing and doing and doing it was also about giving my brain the ability and the space to heal itself. And that’s where neuroplasticity really is important to part of the silly analogy, but get your head around <laugh>.

Jo:
<Laugh>. I was waiting for it.

Angela:
Come on. We’ve gotta say that, right?

Jo:
We really did.

Angela:
<Laugh>. But yeah, so I look back on my own experience professionally, but also personally. And I think if I knew what neuroplasticity was back then, that was that in action. But now that I know what I know, we all have the ability to tap into the power of our brain. We just need to educate ourselves on how we could do that.

Jo:
Yeah. That’s great. And I can imagine there are people listening to this now who are starting to join the dots and going, oh, that’s why this happens. And that’s why this happens. But we really wanna unpack it and make sure that you don’t miss any of the dots. You’re already starting to connect here as well. So there’s something very powerful in understanding that our brain is not a fixed organ, right? It can actually change and actually move. And I was actually reflecting, I can’t actually see it on my bookshelf, but my very first neuropsych textbook told me that the brain was fixed. And once it was damaged, it, it couldn’t, that was it. Right? And, and that’s now a history book because it’s been debunked, right? But understanding that all the things we do very repetitively, right, is what is helping our brain go, oh, we do this thing a lot. So I’m gonna take it from the really painful, hardworking, front part of my brain, and now I’m gonna put it into the filing cabinet part of my brain, because it’s easy, because I know what to do here. I know what to expect here. I’m going to put my other resources to use in making sure that we’ve got the protections going on, or, ’cause we’re gonna need. So Angela, my next question is, how does neuroplasticity then contribute to health professionals experiencing burnout?

Angela:
Mm, really great question. If I can just really quickly jump back to something that you said, and I think that’s really important. People go, I’m, we’re definitely not talking about that the brain can’t be damaged. Of course it can be damaged. What happens is our brain is so amazing that it almost calls in the troops to go, Hey, we’ve got a bit of damage here. How can we restructure? And how can we rework ourselves so that we support that area of our brain? And we know, like for little kids, there’s developmental neuroplasticity, they’re learning to walk, they’re learning to, to crawl, they’re learning all these new things. We also know that there’s adaptive. So neuroplasticity, which is like for us in older people, not children is our brains are always learning new things. Gosh, like look at AI at the moment!

Jo:
Oh, you and me both.

Angela:
I dunno if it’s neuroplasticity or explosion, but either way I’m learning a whole lot of new stuff. But there’s also functional neuroplasticity, which is where your body learns to move in different ways. And of course your brain has an effect on that. So there’s a whole range and there’s also structural neuroplasticity as well where your actual brain structure starts to change. But I think it’s really important that we highlight that the brain can be damaged. Yes, the brain does get damaged, but our brain has this. And the neurons in our brain have this amazing way of rallying together and go, we need support in this area. We need to tap into this area and really help that be as functional as possible. And that’s what we’re talking about when it and that’s the stuff that we’re gonna talk about now. Sorry, I digress.

Jo:
No, I think that’s a really important, ’cause if anyone was sitting here going, oh, there’s no such thing as a brain injury according to Jo and Angela is like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not what we’re saying. <Laugh>

Angela:
<Laugh>. Yeah. I still have residual brain trauma, I guess. I still get headaches in that part of my brain, so I know that there’s definitely damage there for sure. But I also know the rest of my brain really kicked in and helped out a lot. <Laugh>. Absolutely. So let’s have a look at your question around burnout. Okay? So burnout in health professionals, let’s say it’s four health professionals, but if you’re listening and you’re not a health professional, of course it applies to you as well. What happens with burnout, of course, it’s that you wanna have a much more beautiful definition of this, but burnout is really that effect of feeling like we don’t have enough energy. We might be feeling cognitive fog. It might be that we are physically feeling drained, that our brain can’t make great decisions. There’s a whole range of symptoms that occur because of burnout. And everyone has their own definition of burnout too. So I don’t wanna give an explicit definition. But what happens with our brain when it comes to this chronic exposure to stress our brain actually undergoes structural changes and functional changes to adapt to that. So if I can go through just a really quick scenario. I’m gonna call this lady Sarah. Let’s just say Sarah. So Sarah is really busy at work. She’s got a big team of people working with her. She’s getting lots of work coming her way. Initially, what Sarah can do is make changes to her life by working longer hours, she can multitask to meet deadlines so her brain can adapt, she can adapt her lifestyle to counterbalance some of that stress. And her brain allows her to jump from one thing to the next for a little while. Okay? Because our brains are phenomenal. But what happens after a while, if that becomes Sarah’s norm, if she continues to face these competing deadlines, people wanting too much of her time, her not giving herself time to press pause and rest, what happens is the brain actually starts to make maladaptive connections. So the brain starts to go, Hey, this connection isn’t working for me, but this seems to be the norm. So let’s create that connection and that becomes the new norm. So it’s not this beautiful flow of communication. It now becomes something that it’s like a glitch in the system. But that glitch becomes the new norm.

And it affects different parts of your brain, like the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus. It affects all of those different parts of the brain. Now, when it comes to the point where your brain goes, oh, this is like my new normal this doesn’t feel comfortable, then that’s when burnout jumps in, okay? That’s when burnout happens. And what we find is not only just from a physical point of view, but there’s negative thought patterns that start to jump in with that. So remember right back when I was talking to you about the the beginning of neuroplasticity where the gentleman who had the stroke was doing physical activity, but he also started to do the cognitive activity with it as well. What we find because of the neuroplastic changes that happen because of burnout, is that these negative thought patterns also become a part of the norm. So not only do we have physical structural changes happening, we also have the thinking behind and the cognition behind the burnout starting to work together.

Jo:
Oh dear. And then, because I know the children’s song here, the shoulders, knees. So then we have emotions, and then we have hormones, and then our joints that don’t wanna work properly anymore. And I’m like, oh my God, really? Is it this? Oh, we’ve just really made that simple, but also oh my gosh, this is actually bigger than I thought.

Angela:
I often think about I have a gas cooktop, okay, so our stove is a gas cooktop, and when I turn it on to straight away from off to full on, it’s like all the gas just goes and comes out at once and it almost takes you back a little bit and it scares you sometimes. And if the connections just that little bit outta whack, so I don’t know what it’s called, but there’s like a little thing that connects to the rest of your stove. Sorry if anyone’s listening to this and knows what I’m talking about, but that little connection piece, if it’s out just a little bit to the left or right, it starts to splutter, it has this little gas leakage almost and you can start to smell the gas leakage and that really freaks you out.

So I liken it to that, that when even though you’ve got all the power there, sometimes it can be really lovely and the flow can be through coming through the gas system. If something’s just that little bit, the connection’s not right, then it does become something that can be dangerous. It becomes something that you need to action immediately. Otherwise, you get gas leakage, <laugh>, literally, the system doesn’t really work. You don’t get to cook what you need to. So what we have to do is turn that off, give it a bit of breathing space, don’t turn it back on again, otherwise there’s gonna be a fire or an explosion. But you need to give it a little bit of time just to let that gas go back into the way that it needs to fix the problem, turn it back on, and then you’re good to go. And it’s like with burnout with our brains that if the connections aren’t working smoothly.

Angela:
If things aren’t talking to each other in a way that they need to be talking to each other, then the flow on effect is huge. We get not only physical sickness, but we also get mental fatigue. We get relationship breakdown as well because we don’t have that ability to pick up people’s cues of when they’re unhappy, when they’re sad. And we also start to get really disillusioned that this is the way life always needs to be, but it doesn’t have to be. So hopefully that makes sense for people without gas cooktops, you’re probably thinking, I have no idea what she’s talking about <laugh>

Jo:
But that’s okay. We’ll, we’ll come up with another story in the next little while. So I wanna give an example. I’m gonna use myself as an example now because I’ve been very, very clear that I used to be the queen of burnout. And I say used to not because I’ve gotten rid of it, but because I’m much more aware that it’s something I need to monitor. It’s like a risk of me. I learnt how to be really good at burnout. So my brain got used to overworking, overcompensating doing more than what was reasonable in a day. I got used to people pleasing and wanting to be the best I could be and helping all the people that only I could help because I’m so good at what I do, you know? And then my body got used to me ignoring hunger, needing to go to the toilet, understanding that I had a headache, wondering why I felt sick all the time. I just learned to push all of those things down. Now, I did that for 30 years. Now we know that chronic stress is about, what, three months?

Angela:
And you did it for 30 years. Wow. Look at you sticking with it, <laugh>.

Jo:
I know once I’ve got a good pattern. Who wants to change it? No, <laugh>. Okay. So cancer really did a number on my brain, and I had to learn how to do things differently. But if we know that chronic stress kicks in around the 12 week, three month mark, and most of the people who are listening to this have been doing the work for a lot longer than that, our neuroplasticity is well established right around the features of burnout, which is why I wrote a book in 2017, this is alarming. We don’t have enough people staying in the industry because all the health professionals are burning out. Again, people weren’t really interested in that story, but post Covid, particularly here in Australia, and I know in the US we do not have enough health professionals to meet the need. We’ve got more university programs coming out in this country now for very, very low cost for Australians, because we need the graduates, but it’s gonna take ’em four or five years to be ready.

So, coming back to this whole, if you’ve been doing this work for longer than 12 weeks, then we’ve probably got some patterns already starting to be established, and we haven’t been very good at interrupting each other, right? So during Covid, we all just got in and got busy. It’s what we do, particularly mental health professionals, regardless of your discipline, you just got in and got busy, you got in, you saw the people, you saw the need, you could see how this was gonna affect communities. So you just got in and got busy. And to be honest, I only think we’re starting to wake up now and go, holy crap, I don’t wanna ever do that again.

Angela:
Yeah. It’s so right because we’re talking about neuroplasticity, obviously, but it’s about doing things differently. And what we know, like with the story that you shared, that so many people do this, they do they have habits and patterns that don’t serve them well for so long. It’s not 12 weeks. Gosh, if I met someone who was only stressed for 12 weeks, I’d be really impressed. You know, what we’re seeing is this chronic stress is just becoming such a part of our norm, that our brains are going, well, this is my norm, so therefore I have to respond to that. And when their response is so heightened all the time, and that’s what I’m seeing a lot with the clients I work with, that we’ve got people who have been heightened for so long, there is such a fear of pressing pause on it.

And these are very intelligent people who often are telling clients how to do this stuff but aren’t doing it very well themselves. We know that they know what to do from a logical point of view, but the fear of stopping pressing pause and taking a step back is too uncomfortable. So they continue to do the habits that don’t serve them well. And unfortunately what happens is it gets to a point where they have no choice. And so I’m seeing a really big increase in people who are going, you know, I can just feel I’m at that tipping point, whether that be psychologically, emotionally, or physically. If only they had jumped in a little bit earlier, that tipping point wouldn’t have been so crucial.

It wouldn’t have been so dangerous. So when it comes to doing things differently, if you are experiencing burnout or even better, you’re wanting to stop burnout from happening, and you’ve got this low level stress that you don’t wanna see creep up, realising that the fear of the stuff that waits for you if you don’t make a change, is gonna be far scarier than you just taking half a day off to go and have a massage. Or not just massage. People think that that’s gonna solve the world. I went and had one yesterday and my back still sore. But it was lovely. It was an important press pause moment, but that whole concept of the fear of stopping, that’s what I am really worry about for people is we are too. We’re so scared of what it’s like to feel calm.

Jo:
Well, I think it’s just so unfamiliar. It feels wrong and that could just be me talking. But it just feels wrong trying to get people to describe a time when they feel calm. And you’re just like, well, that, that’s great for you. But that’s possibly not calm.

Angela:
Just on that, with that feeling calm, also feeling joyful. When was the last time you had that massive belly laugh? You know, that really big laugh with someone where you’ve got tears rolling down your eyes. When was that last time when you looked at something and it literally took your breath away? It was something so beautiful and something so you know, so joyful for you and so peaceful for you that it literally took your breath away. I see that so often and I really, I’m really mindful of when that moment happens, to sit in that joy. And I think too often that when we have these moments, and we are slightly digressing here, but I need to say this, that we have too many of these moments in life where we are surrounding, we are surrounded by opportunities to press pause that aren’t scary.

And if we just stop long enough to go, I got it. I see it. I’m on it. That our brain will adapt to that. Our brain will go, thank you so much. It is exactly what I’ve been needing. It’s exactly the moment of connection that I needed just to help things decompress a little bit. So for people that are listening to this, if this is resonating with you, next time you you look at something and you just feel this overwhelming sense of joy, sit in it for a bit longer than what you’re allowing it currently to be. It might be watching your kids read at nighttime. It might be that moment of watching their little face and their little brain just trying to work out that word in the book. That is such a joyful moment because that stuff doesn’t last for too long.

Jo:
I think it’s really important. I know for me, in my recovery work around this, it’s becoming aware of the things I wasn’t aware of. So I was so focused on getting into the office early, and that just got earlier and earlier and earlier and leaving late later and later and later and not having bookends to my day. So one of the things I now do is I force people behaviorally. You have to have something to do before you start work and you’re gonna have something that you’re committed to at the end of work. So we are kind of containing your work into this box so it doesn’t become a 24/7 activity that you’ve got going on. But then the next thing I did was I stopped having appointments back to back. Cecause we actually need to go to the bathroom people and we actually need to drink more water. And I know you’re not drinking water, which is important for your health ’cause you don’t wanna have to go to the bathroom because you’ve got clients back to back, right? You see a client in the waiting room waiting for the next, and then you get to the end of the day and you’ve got all those notes to write because that client at 10 o’clock in the morning took a little bit longer and you’ve been playing catch up all day. And then you can’t be bothered doing your notes at night and then gotta go home and cook dinner and oh my God, I didn’t get the groceries today. And oh crap, I’ve just about run outta fuel. This is how health professionals are living their lives. And if you didn’t escalate in me just talking about that, then well done you, because I started to <laugh>

Angela:
It’s a really good point, Jo, ’cause you could hear your voice became quicker, you got a little bit louder, you started to move a bit more. And I think what we’ve gotta be aware of too, and I will go into what are some of the things that you can do to help calm your thinking and help strengthen the neuroplasticity of your brain is being aware of some of those signs and symptoms of what is showing up for you. And I know that this is definitely your expertise here for the signs and symptoms of burnout. But we too often just ignore them. We just keep going. We hear that elevation and when that elevation happens over a long period of time, and when I say elevation, it’s not in our voice, it’s in our shoulders. It’s in the clenching of our jaw. Everything just seems to go. Do you notice that when we’re stressed? Nothing ever goes down. We don’t feel more grounded. Nothing ever goes downwards when we are feeling stressed. Everything goes up. And often when I’m talking to people trying to get into the feel of what stress feels like, not what we know it to be, but what does it actually feel like for you? Often it’s a tightness in the chest and a tightness in our head.

Jo:
Yeah, the tightness in the head.

Angela:
It’s the tightness in the head and tightness in the chest. So if we’re looking for neuroplasticity, right? If we are looking for our brain to adapt, to make new connections and to work with us, <laugh> and us to work with it, we need to release that tightness. Nothing grows in constriction. So if our brains are like feeling like they’re in this vice, and I often I hear it too that our head feels like it’s in a vice, but our brain feels like it’s running.

Jo:
Yes, that’s a great description. I’m sitting here going, I know that.

Angela:
Yeah, I know. Like, our brain’s going so fast. Like it’s spinning, spinning, but the brain or your head feels so constricted. Now, if we really want full growth to happen and burnout and to have these things released from our lives, or at least the impact of it reduced ’cause we’ll always experience stress, then we need to give our brain some space. We need to release that constriction and give our brain some movement. Let it move. Let it have fun. Let it be joyful. Let it laugh. Let it think, let it be quiet. Let it be creative ’cause that’s when the real great connections will happen in our brain. It’s not through the pushing and through the demands and through the hard, it’s actually through allowing us some space to breathe.

Jo:
For me, it was like I was always trying to control it. No, I haven’t got time for this now. You can’t be sore now. You can’t. No, I can’t do this now. Sso I was overworking and overworking my brain, overworking and overcompensating. ’cause It’s like, oh crap, I feel awful today. I better make sure I turn up and be on my best game. So I would overfunction, which funnily enough, I got to page 91 in the book. And counterintuitively, we respond to being overwhelmed and overstimulated by doing more, which I’ve already previously underlined. Because this is one of the books that I have. It’s just like, it read my brain. And if you’ve heard that and you’re doing more to try and compensate for the fact that you’re fearful that you can’t do enough, which is fueling the whole cycle.

so now we know how our repetitive behaviours, our repetitive thinking are contributing to burnout. So basically we’ve created our brain to operate in a way that allows us to perform during burnout. But like you’ve already said, it won’t last forever. Okay? It’s maladaptive. So thank you brains for keeping us safe for this amount of time. But the world has changed. The world that I live in has changed. The demands of me have changed. The risks of this work as a health professional have intensified. So how do we then tap into our neuroplasticity to help us recover from burnout?

Angela:
Great question. You touched on it a little bit here. You actually said it earlier. The first step is awareness. Okay? Sowe can read as many books as we like. We can listen to as many podcasts as we like, get more information, more information, more information. But if you are completely oblivious <laugh> to what’s happening in your life, if you are completely ignoring the signs and symptoms that are happening in your thinking, within your body, within your relationships, then all the information’s not gonna make any difference whatsoever. So you need to become ware of what’s going on. And awareness is really difficult if you are running from one appointment to the next, to the next, to the next. If you’re just adding, adding, adding. So awareness, I’m gonna have to go back to this point again, is about taking a little bit of time out.

It’s about taking a step back. Now, don’t freak out if you are listening, going, I don’t have time to go on a retreat. I don’t have time to do this. You don’t need to do that. The most simple way that you can bring awareness to what’s going on is by when you wake up in the morning having a practice where you can just take a big deep breath. If the minute you wake up, big, deep breath in, big deep breath out. Now if you wanna overachieve, go for it and do a few more <Laugh> go for it. But if you are too busy and you are too stressed to wake up first thing in the morning and get a beautiful big breath of fresh air into your lungs, then we’ve got bigger problems than this podcast can handle. The next part that you do also is having a big glass of water. So having it next to your bed, flushing your system, letting your system know, Hey, it’s time where here we are on hydrating that brain of ours and going, Hey guys, we’re ready. We’re ready to work together. Okay, so that’s just two very quick wins that you can do in the first minute of you waking up in the morning. It’s not lengthy, it’s not demanding. It’s right there and then the habits that create more lasting change, of course is taking time out for mindfulness and meditation.

Now, people freak out a lot about these two concepts of meditation and mindfulness. We have talked about this a little bit. One of the ways that I integrate this into my day, and I see it time and time again, it makes the biggest impact for clients. If yes, you have the ability to sit and do that mindfulness for like one or two minutes and gradually increase it, great. But things like if you can incorporate it into your day where you do maybe come home at nighttime and look up at the stars. Big deep breath in, look up at the stars. Just be there for a minute. To me, that is mindfulness. It’s those moments of joy that everything feels like it stops. Those mindfulness and meditation practices are so important because it helps our brains quieten.

And of course, on top of those little moments where you can grab it sitting in the car, it might be you’re at the lights rather than picking up your phone and scrolling on it, which no one should do in their car. Why don’t you just sit there and take a few big, again, few big deep breaths, look out the window, look off into the distance? That is what mindfulness and meditation can be about. Now, if you wanna take this a little bit further, obviously doing a daily practice where you are in a space where you’re sitting and you’re finding quiet and you’re thinking setting a timer if you need to, going through a guided meditation, that really helps our brains build those strong connections, but also make new connections. So it’s not firing all the time, it’s in that rest phase. So that’s the number one biggest one.

The other one is through things like cognitive behavioural therapy, looking at how can I reframe my thinking? How can I re-look at the things in my life that I do so that I can retrain the way I look at things? And this does take a little bit of time, and this is where health professionals are so important in this phase for people, okay? You are so important to help people re-look at things in a different way. But if you’re struggling yourself with this stuff, put your hand up and seek support from a colleague or a friend or somebody who is in the industry who knows what they’re talking about. Because otherwise you are just being that Google, right? You’re just giving information and not really making any change. So if you can be somebody who is living and breathing this stuff too my gosh, the ripple effect is huge. And of course I’m gonna go to two more. Physical exercise, get moving people, <laugh>. Just get moving. However that looks for you, get moving. And then also the last one, which we all know is really important, is get adequate sleep.

Jo:
Yeah. And I just find it amazing that everything that we talk about, we think we’re so sophisticated and our issues are so modern, but yet we come back to can you get, drink enough water, make sure you’re breathing, move your body and sleep well. And I find it hilarious or a little bit scary maybe that these are the things we’re still recommending because nobody’s doing them yet.

Angela:
No. You know, Jo,I have my own podcast Distracted, and a couple of episodes ago I interviewed the CEO of Parkinson’s Australia. I have a very strong interest in Parkinson’s. My mom has Parkinson’s, auntie, I’ve got lots of connections with Parkinson’s. And of course it was from a professional stream that I was speaking to her. But I also have such a personal interest in speaking with her, I found myself almost waiting for the secret of how can I stop Parkinson’s from happening in my brain? I’ve had a brain injury. I know that there’s some factors that come into play. There’s a bit of genetics in there. You know what she said, Jo? please don
Jo:
Sleep, exercise.

Angela:
Again, it’s those things that are so simple for us to implement. And that’s where it comes into the neuro aspects. But I do wanna just say quickly a big part of a big area, and I know some people who are listening to this would be experts in this field, but the impact of gut health also on our brain. Such an emerging space that I know has been around for a while, a long time, but there’s some really great research now around how the gut affects how the brain works. So when we are talking about neuroplasticity, we can’t discount the effect of the gut and we can’t discount that these two talk to each other. They’re always in communication. So we can’t look at one and ignore the other.

Jo:
Yeah.

Angela:
So I’m not gonna go into gut health in this one, but for people that are listening, start to sit there, I guess the thing is to think about where is in my life, that awareness piece where I might feel a little bit outta control at the moment, or I know that stresses have gotten too much for me, or my brain is so sore that I need to give it space. If you can do the awareness, the strategies of what to do after that, we have the tools to know what to do. We just need someone, like a conversation like this that you overhear a book that you might read, something you might watch, and you go, okay, I got it. But unless we have that awareness piece we can’t do anything otherwise. The other stuff’s just adding to the overwhelm.

Jo:
Correct. And I’ve had an email go out today actually that talked about self-care versus self-compassion and how as health professionals, we’ve created all of these to-do lists around our self-care, which I can assure you is perpetuating the problem. It’s actually adding to this problem. The moment of pause are great, but if we don’t have a lifestyle of self-compassion to go, burnout is a real risk for me. It’s like a forest worker going to work with his chainsaw and not putting his hearing protection on, or god forbid, not wearing the appropriate gloves. For us, we now know that burnout is gonna affect educators and health professionals. So we’ve actually gotta learn to manage that risk. It doesn’t mean that we’re all gonna be a basket case in bed and not be able to do anything.

We’re actually trying to highlight the fact that our brains have the ability to adapt positively. If we get back to basics, if we find the ways and are brave enough to go, I need some help. I put my hand up here, say, I need some help ’cause I can assure you I am a smart woman who’s gone to university, who is a health professional. I could not do this on my own. I needed to have people around me who could give me perspective. And part of that perspective is, Jo, you have turned your cancer recovery into something that is burning you out. Because I always had to do ’cause If I wasn’t doing, I wasn’t gonna heal. But Angela, you’ve given us a great piece of advice here today. You’ve given us a lot. But one piece of advice, your brain needs to rest. If it’s sore, you’ve overused your muscle.
Angela:
Yeah. Your brain really does need to rest. And I think when we look at neuroplasticity, your brain will adapt to the stimuli that you give it. So if you are giving it stress, if you are giving it overwhelm, if you are giving it pressure, if you are giving it tightness, your brain will respond to that. It’ll adapt to it because it’s a stimulus that it’s been given. However, if you flip that and you know that that’s not working for you, if you flip that and you give it the stimuli of space, of rest, of creativity, of wonder, of daydreaming. If you give it that and you give it challenge, like through puzzles and cognitive activities, then your brain will respond to that. So the power that we have is the ability to choose which stimuli we’re giving our brain. Are we gonna give it the stress, the chronic stress stimuli, or are we gonna give it the calming stimuli? But also remember for people, when they often think of calm, they feel like they’re not gonna do anything. So it’s chilling out, it’s sitting under a tree. No, it’s not that. It’s allowing your brain the space, and the capacity to do what it needs to do. So we have the ability to choose which stimuli we give it. I know which one I have definitely dedicated my life to understanding better because chronic stress is so seductive. It’s such an exciting space to be in. But the other side will actually be more conducive to our health.

Jo:
Yeah. And longevity. Our health and longevity. And we’ve just learned that it’s a protection against Parkinson’s too. So, because everybody’s gonna say that, I think that is a great place to stop because we’ve been talking for a while and I think we’ve given everybody some really useful meaty things to be able to take away and make change. So before we end this podcast today, I just wanna ask the listeners like and come into the Future Proofing Health Professionals Facebook group and start and have this conversation ’cause Angela’s in there and ask, from one of the things you’ve heard today, what’s the one thing you wanna start? Is it drinking more water? Is it having a big deep breath when you first wake up in the morning? Not shallow breathing. Like, there are some really simple things that are incredibly sophisticated that we can actually take action on today. So I would love to continue this conversation in the Facebook group by getting people to tell us what’s the one thing you wanna commit to? Because when you’ve got awareness and then you make a public declaration to it, you’ll actually hold yourself accountable ’cause there’s nothing worse than feeling like someone’s gonna call you on your stuff.

And next time, well, we haven’t actually had a coffee in a cafe yet.

Angela:
No, we’ve haven’t.

Jo:
Still gotta work that out. So has your coffee order changed since we last spoke?

Angela:
It has. Part of my trying to get my brain in a better space. There’s been no alcohol for me this year and no coffee for me this year. Not that coffee’s a bad thing it’s just that it wasn’t working for my brain. So I’m like, so black tea, black Earl grey tea.

Jo:
Wow.

Angela:
But if I do have a coffee, it’s decaf. It’s a latte, and it’s half water and half milk. So I am so embarrassing to go and buy a coffee for.

Jo:
I will square my shoulders and point at you while I make that order, but I actually get it. So how can people learn more about you? Where do we go to find out about Angela?

Angela:
I like to have one point of contact if we can. And it’s at angelalockwood.com au. On there there are all the episodes of Distracted, which is my podcast. And you’ll get a whole lot of information, similar to this, but I also get a lot of wonderful experts come on as well. But also social media. Not great on Facebook, I have to admit, not my forte, but on Instagram at Angela Lockwood and also on LinkedIn. So if there are people on there, I do post a lot of articles. I think I have over a hundred articles on LinkedIn. So if you’re on there, jump over and say g’day and let me know that you’ve come through this podcast and I’ll let Jo know.

Jo:
Oh, that’s wonderful. So thank you again. I appreciate your time and your expertise and the energy that you always bring to my world. And this is me signing off from the Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast. Until next time, go be your awesome self.