Latest / The Diva Details / Healing the Healers: Tammy's Journey as ER Nurse and Empowered Coach

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Healing the Healers: Tammy's Journey as ER Nurse and Empowered Coach · The Diva Details

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Diva Details. Welcome to the Diva Details.
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  Where bold, confident women embrace life unapologetically.
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  From love and sex to wellness and reinvention. We keep it raw, real and powerful.
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  No filters, no limits. Just fearless conversations to help you thrive.
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  Let's dive in with Diva Mia and Diva khat.
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  Aloha, Divakhat Hi, Diva Mia. How are you today? I'm good. How are things going?
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  It's a little hectic today, but other than that, it's nice. The weather is nice.
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  It is nice. I love it when it's sunny outside.
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  Me too. Me too. Me too. Well, you know what? Today we got another special guest. Yes?
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  I'm excited. This special guest is really true to my heart. She's one of my
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  great, amazing friends.
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  No, I can't wait to hear all about it. She is a nurse for 20 years.
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  Oh, wow. I know. So she's got a big heart because that takes a lot of work to be a nurse.
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  I don't know anybody could do that job for 20 years. I know. It's a lot.
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  And I think that because she was a nurse and she'd had some past traumas in her life. Okay.
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  That she knew what to do when people needed help.
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  One of the things that happens is nurses need help too.
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  Nurses go through a lot of stress. I think the nurse is the most stressed.
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  I gotta have it in you to have that job.
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  I cannot do it. They take abuse from the patients, but they also take abuse
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  from the doctors and other people as well.
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  So they've got a lot of stress and things that go on. And remember,
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  COVID was crazy, right? Yeah.
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  So I think there might be a little bit of a mental health crisis in nursing,
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  as well as you have nurses that need to be coached in order to continue in the
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  field in order to stay and change their mental capacities as well.
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  So she started a coaching company and it's called North Star Nurse Coaching.
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  It is giving back to.
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  Nurses become vibrant and compassionate. It's helping people grow and thrive
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  in the nursing community.
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  And this coaching company, it just is really there. And it's a spiritual thing
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  for nurses because they lose their way sometimes.
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  Sometimes, all the time. And she helps them find their way back.
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  And there's other struggles too.
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  Sometimes there's legal issues in the nursing field that she helps people through.
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  So she kind of does it all.
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  So without further ado, I want to introduce Tammy. How are you doing, Tammy? Hey, guys.
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  Thank you for having me. I'm truly excited to be here. Well,
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  Diva Tammy, we are very honored to have you because I know you've got a super
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  busy schedule and you're booked all the time.
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  It's amazing what you do to help people. Can you kind of share a little bit more about what you do?
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  Yeah. So I'm still a nurse. I have been an ER nurse for over 20 years.
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  ER, not just regular nurse. God bless you.
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  Wow. ER nurse for over 20 years. And I also specialize in forensics.
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  So I specialize in sexual assaults. And I've been doing that for about 17 years.
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  So I have definitely pursued my passion with helping people,
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  but I think it's just come to a head where I was burnout and I had compassion
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  fatigue and I recognized it and I didn't know what to do.
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  I was very close to just quitting, throwing the towel and walking away from the whole profession.
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  But I did some soul searching and I was able to come back to what drew me into it.
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  And I've worked very hard the past few years to just get to where I'm at and
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  kind of stay focused on pursuing my passion with helping people.
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  That's awesome. Thank you.
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  The nurse, they got hit from every ankle. You really have to have it in you to have that job.
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  So can you tell me what kind of triggered or led you down the path of becoming a coach?
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  Because that is something that you have to step outside of who you are.
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  And you already help people so much with nursing, but now you saw opportunity to help other nurses.
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  Kind of what triggered that or led you down that path. Yeah,
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  that's a great story because it kind of just the way things align because,
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  so let me just start off by saying a majority of people in medical professions,
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  especially like emergency first-line responders,
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  unbeknownst to them, or even if they do know it, we have some type of prior
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  trauma in our lives that kind of led us to this path and we become the people that we needed the most.
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  So we already have this underlying kind of trauma and we're drawn to a profession
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  where we just kind of go for it and we're still head on in the trauma.
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  And that just leaves you for higher propensity of burnout.
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  COVID hit. I was already at that cusp of being burnout. COVID hit and it was
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  a very surreal experience.
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  We're living through a pandemic. I went straight up to Boston to work.
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  It's like my second home up there. I absolutely love Boston.
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  I was there for two years at a level one trauma center and always have a place in my heart for Boston.
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  But I went up there. I didn't want to be in the thick of it in New York,
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  but I wanted to be able to help.
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  Went up to Boston to help them with COVID.
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  And that was eye-opening because it was a lot of academia. We were doing real-time
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  practice as the pandemic's going.
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  We're, you know, like proning patients, the way we intubated patients,
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  the different medicines we use, the different things that we try to help with these patients.
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  And seeing firsthand the amount of,
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  I don't even know how to put it into words, but just seeing firsthand and being there and living it.
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  We're already masters at compartmentalizing to begin with. And that was just
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  another level of compartmentalizing.
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  And I think eventually when you had downtime in a pandemic and it's so quiet,
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  I got to sit in stillness.
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  And I think my compartment just burst and I needed to sit and reevaluate.
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  That was the perfect time. People were home from work. People were with families.
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  You know we saw things like people going back to basics
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  of how do you I remember this distinctly how
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  do you strip your laundry put some borax in with some vinegar
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  so people were going back to basics the fundamentals of living
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  rather than depending on the convenience of life and I was like well that's
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  kind of a a nice way of putting things so COVID allowed me to kind of sit and
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  still and so I remember again it's a surreal experience literally got to sit
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  with friends and co-workers that I worked with in Boston.
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  And during COVID, people would have those safe distance meetups where you sit
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  in the back of your car and you're like six feet apart.
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  We literally had brought in like lawn chairs and sat on a wharf in Boston, like downtown.
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  Nobody is around us. And I've got pictures where it's the middle of the day
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  and there's nobody in the streets walking.
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  And it was just a surreal experience. So we got to experience that like picnic together.
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  And I just remember we had a lot of downtime. And when you would go out into
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  nature, you'd go out in public, there's nobody around.
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  So that stillness allowed me to sit and really reflect on what was important
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  to me and what I was doing and kind of process what I was going through at that
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  time in real time rather than shelving it for later.
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  And that led me to do a lot of shadow work, which is like asking the tough questions
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  and answering them, I'm like getting really raw with yourself.
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  I just happened to...
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  Call a friend of mine who I'd known for a decade and have a conversation.
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  And we were just, you know, catching up. How's it going? He's a nurse as well,
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  but a nurse as long as I have.
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  And we both were talking about how we just felt unfulfilled and how we noticed
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  there's been a shift and a change in our career, the patients,
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  healthcare, our lives, what we were doing at this point in our lives.
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  And so just that conversation he and I had, very raw, very vulnerable,
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  allowed me to open up even more.
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  And then he sent me a book, and it's called The Burn Book.
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  And it was even more shadow work that could be done. Oh, wow. So I did that book.
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  And I remember very distinctly, I had just ended a contract.
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  I was in North Carolina. I rented a cabin in the woods by myself,
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  myself and my cat in the woods in nature just by ourselves I shut the phone off and I just answered.
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  Every question in that book and I got to go out and hike and sit in nature and
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  I think that week really helped me reset a lot of things so that was kind of
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  the turning point going forward yeah so I think what happened is I got to sit
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  back and look and say these are common denominators these are common patterns.
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  A majority of nurses, especially air nurses or firefighters or policemen,
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  we all have these common denominators and common patterns.
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  So how can we break out of that? Because if you continue down this path,
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  it's going to lead to this burnout. And so what do you do?
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  So you came up with a company named North Star. Is there some reason that you call it North Star? Yes.
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  And I realize it's a very long name for a company, but I have to say,
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  when I was thinking about this company, North Star is something that is a constant.
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  So when I was learning about coaching and holistic care, again,
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  you notice patterns and I kind of understand that healing is not,
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  linear. It is layered. So with that being said, I said, okay,
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  how can I kind of simplify it? Because this is the way we are in our society.
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  We just want to kind of simplify things.
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  North Star is not that long. Well, it's North Star Nurse Croce is the name. I need to rebrand it.
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  No, it's good. And see. Well, one of the questions I have, is it only going
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  to be for nursing or are you going to expand it to some other?
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  It's basically for everybody, but this is something that I resonate with.
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  I have firsthand experience with this.
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  And I'm like, okay, if I stayed in this path for over 20 years,
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  how can I help the next generation so that they don't go the path I went down?
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  Because it's very common for nurses to become alcoholics, to start diverting
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  medications for numbing the pain, doing behaviors that are a little extreme
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  and kind of dangerous to disassociate and numb the pain.
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  And you'll see the patterns, you'll see like the extreme behaviors.
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  And, you know, I'm not proud of it i used to go out and drink almost
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  nightly and party and have fun but it was
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  also a way that you let off steam with your co-workers
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  and you just bonded and it's a trauma bond and once you
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  recognize that you're like oh crap how can i get through this because you majority
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  of behaviors are typically trauma bonds or trauma reactions so then once you
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  recognize that then you can like kind of mitigate the funny you say well no
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  juby supply there's a lot of alcoholic doctors yes Yes. Yeah.
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  A lot of doctors that divert medications, too. I think there's a lot of alcoholic people. Yeah.
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  So you talk about kind of an evidence-based practice with mind-body healing,
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  like a whole, you're looking at the whole person to help them heal when you coach.
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  It's a type of life coaching to help a person grow and heal at the same time.
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  So what are some of the tools that you do in a session?
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  We do a one-to-one typically, and I want to see where these people are.
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  So it is customized, one-to-one personalized nurse coaching.
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  The reason I put the nurse coaching is because we utilize the nursing aspect
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  and the coaching aspect and putting it together. And it's a holistic type of process.
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  So do you use mindfulness or any type of relaxation techniques when you're coaching someone?
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  100%. Like we get to the meat and potatoes and we find out what exactly is the
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  root cause of the overall.
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  I'm not here to be your therapist. I'm here to be your coach.
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  As long as we can recognize where the pattern kind of began,
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  then we can start to work on mitigating the outcome.
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  Again, typical trauma response. If you were a kid that was constantly berated
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  and told, yelled at, or like you had overbearing parents that didn't allow you
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  to speak, you become a people pleaser.
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  You become quiet and you become very empathetic to the fact that you can tell
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  what's going on in a room because you have been quiet and you listen and you're
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  watching for those cues so that you don't.
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  Break the ice so that you don't cause strife so
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  those are trauma responses so you'll notice
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  a lot of people and typically nurses are very much we take
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  care of people and they just stay
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  quiet that's what I noticed right so they'll stay quiet they watch
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  the room but they also are in tune to know what is going to happen next and
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  we were taught to anticipate what a doctor's going to need because we need to
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  prepare for the patient and also advocate for the patient and it's a symbiotic
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  cohesive relationship with doctors and nurses and techs and the ancillary. Same with coaching.
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  You're going to do that one-to-one assessment. You're going to see kind of where
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  they're lacking or where they might need a boost of strengths or weaknesses like a SWOT analysis.
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  And then we're going to go from there and say, okay, so let's look at some evidence
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  base. We've got, we're constantly in a sympathetic state of fight or flight.
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  What if we need to get out of that and go to fawn or freeze or even just out
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  of it all together into a parasympathetic, the natural rest state.
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  A lot of us don't know how to do that. I can't tell you how many nurses are
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  like, I didn't do that on my day off because I can't rest. I just got to go, go, go, go, go.
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  And I was that person. I never sat.
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  I was always doing stuff. And the irony of it is like, I'm a bigger girl. I'm heavy.
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  I go to the gym, work out. I know my cortisol was way off the charts.
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  I drink energy drinks. I think at one point when I worked in Boston,
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  I was drinking like three large iced coffees plus a monster per shift in their 12-hour shifts.
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  And that's a lot of caffeine, right? So you just keep having caffeine and go, go, go.
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  And also it's instant gratification.
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  So if I'm hungry, I'm going to eat. Don't worry about the repercussions for later.
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  Unfortunately, that does catch up with you. So again, it's recognizing those patterns.
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  So we're going to work on a lot of evidence-based, especially with the reset
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  of this sympathetic response. So we're going to do some deep breathing.
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  We're going to do some mindfulness.
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  If we need to just, a lot of times at work too, we have so many new nurses, new generation.
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  If they're spiraling and I can see it, I'm not going to inject myself into somebody
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  just because I let them come to me, but I let them know I'm there for them.
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  So if I see them kind of spiraling, I'll say, hey, take a minute,
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  let's go outside and just get some fresh air.
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  And I'll like put your hand over your heart and just take a deep breath.
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  Just that couple deep breaths will help reset your vagus nerve.
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  And that helps a lot of times also if you take a cold ice pack and put it to
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  the inside of your arm or the back of your neck, that resets your vagus nerve as well.
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  So those are little tips and tricks that we forsake because we got to keep going, got to keep going.
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  I mean, I have a nurse I work with now.
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  Who is a newer nurse and I absolutely adore her.
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  And she was having a rough time one day and she was like, I can't stop. And I'm like, you can.
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  And I literally like had to like pull her away and say, you have to stop now
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  or else you're going to crash.
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  And I said, I'm just going to say my piece. You can do it or not do it.
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  And I think she ended up taking the second and walking away,
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  but that's all it takes is someone to acknowledge that you're in the weeds or you're spiraling.
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  We beat ourselves up over the little things like, oh, I should have caught that.
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  Now he's going to die or whatever.
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  And it's unfortunate, but it happens. But we keep doing that and keep doing
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  that and keep going without resetting.
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  So again, it just builds up, compartmentalizes, and all that energy is just stifled.
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  You mentioned SWOT technique or SWOT analysis. What is that?
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  Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
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  Business analysis. I highly recommend everyone do a SWOT analysis on themselves.
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  I think the biggest thing is for me was to know thyself.
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  So doing the shadow work helped to do that. I also encourage people like if
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  you if you're really interested to do like the Myers-Briggs test to kind of
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  see get an idea of what kind of personality you are and there's other different
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  kind of personality tests out there.
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  For me personally the Myers-Briggs has always been very consistent.
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  I get the same thing every single time. If I do other personality tests,
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  it depends on how I'm feeling that day and my mood will vary the outcome.
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  But Myers-Briggs has always been consistent for me. And having that.
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  I'm like, okay, so this is, it's facing the good, the bad, the ugly.
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  So you're going to look at me like, oh man, I am kind of judgmental.
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  Maybe I should work on that and be aware so that I don't do it as much or I
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  can, or I can like say it differently so it doesn't come off as judgmental.
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  So it's understanding You've described some resiliency that nurses have to do.
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  What do you do to work with nurses so that they can be coached into a way that
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  can make them stronger for the days they have to be extremely resilient,
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  especially after going through COVID?
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  I find that motivation really helps. It's kind of like this,
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  a balance of helping to regulate the nervous system a little organically.
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  And it's also motivation and inspiration.
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  Coaching is not something that I'm going to thrust upon somebody and just do.
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  They usually come to me because they're willing to do the work to do it.
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  And so it's a beautiful relationship where I'm holding them accountable.
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  They're holding me accountable.
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  But I'm laying out, like, these are the patterns I see. Do you agree or disagree?
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  Let's work on it. What do you want to do to work on it? Here's our goals. Let's go for it.
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  And that seems to help. Excellent. Excellent.
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  One of the things that I think nurses may have a difficulty time with,
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  I know I have it myself, is setting boundaries.
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  Because I bet there are patients that you get attached to.
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  And if something happens to them, I'm sure it's heart-wrenching.
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  So how do you teach people to set better boundaries?
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  Oh, I have suffered from this and I still struggle with this daily.
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  But to be fair, it is a practice.
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  And I'm not even going to lie. Like I watched a lot of TED Talks and I listened
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  to a lot of podcasts on how to script responses for boundaries.
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  And I just practiced them.
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  I know it sounds silly, but even like affirmations, like looking in the mirror
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  and having affirmations and kind of bringing the script through your mind,
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  that has helped me with the boundaries.
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  And one of the things I was guilty of as well as oversharing or overexplaining,
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  and I learned not to do that as well.
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  Don't get too attached. That's what they said. You can get somewhat attached.
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  There's some patients you're really going to have this attachment with.
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  Yeah. You know, even in the ear at the blink of an eye, but it'll happen.
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  And there's been many parts and there's been a few times in my career that had
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  just left a lasting imprint my whole life.
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  And they're very few and far between. But when they happened,
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  they were needed at that time. And I will never forget the moments that happened
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  because it really left an impact.
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  And you just take it for what it is. And when it comes to the nurses with building
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  boundaries, it's like, let's practice.
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  Why are you hesitant to say no?
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  Why do you feel obligated to work extra?
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  You know, do you need the money? Let's figure out why you're doing this. You just hate yourself.
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  Are you just that so committed to the trauma that
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  you just want to be in the chaos the whole time that's that's been a common answer
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  to you it's asking those questions that they're ready to
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  answer and sometimes it just leaves that mark just asking
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  the question it'll plant the seed yeah and that helps but it's going through
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  the repetition of hey if you can say no and this is why you're going to say
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  no but you don't have to explain it to them so do you find that the people that
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  need your services are more new to nursing because i know nursing has changed
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  a lot So are they newer nurses or are they,
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  is it, and new nurses can get burned out as well.
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  Or are they, you know, seasoned nurses that have been doing it for 20 or 30 years?
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  It's a mix of both. I have some newer nurses that are less than a year that
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  have like, oh God, I need help.
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  And I love that particular generation
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  because they are a little more self-aware than we were at our age.
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  So it's been great working with them. And then the more seasoned nurses that
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  are kind of my generation, now they're kind of that pinnacle,
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  like midlife, like, what am I doing? So...
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  They have, it's a mix. The middle ground, not so much. I think they're in the
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  middle of their career and they're just on their path.
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  But it's usually 15 plus years and then one to two years.
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  That's what I meant. Nurses is amazing. From my personal experience,
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  we have four nurses in our family.
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  None of them passed that five years.
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  Really? They changed careers after five years? Yeah. Really?
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  My baby sister become a chef.
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  And one of my cousin's wife, she become a personal trainer, and she was on stage.
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  She does not do nursing. She just coached. But do you see the pattern?
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  They're always helping other people. Yeah. The staff is cooking for people,
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  providing nourishment.
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  Personal trainer is helping people. Right. So it's the same kind of pattern
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  that we're drawn to this profession to help other people.
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  And the other two become Botox injection and fillers work at the med spa.
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  So they're still kind of doing nursing. They're still doing nurse work,
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  but it's not the hospital work. Yes.
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  Yeah, lots of overlap. Is there a certain personality type that you think is
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  better that will survive the nursing stresses?
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  Yeah, it's funny because each discipline in nursing has kind of its own personality.
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  Like, I wouldn't expect an oncology nurse to come into the ER and work because
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  ER is considered a little crazy and unhinged.
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  Yeah. And ICU is more structured, type A, things are lined up,
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  and where ER is like, if you have a cord and you wrap it around the way it's
• 22:08
  supposed to be, that's ICU, and your ear just kind of jumbles it and throws
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  it, that's the ER. So we all have different personalities.
• 22:13
  Yeah. My sister was a delivery nurse. Yeah. The baby come out,
• 22:18
  no breathing. That was the last one for her. Yeah.
• 22:21
  I personally am not drawn to labor and delivery. That is something I didn't want to do.
• 22:26
  She was like, that was the end. Yeah. Yeah, she couldn't do it. Yeah, those add up, too.
• 22:31
  And we, gosh, maybe a dozen deliveries in my 20 years in the ER.
• 22:37
  So I think what you're doing is great for the nurses. And if someone should
• 22:40
  reach out to you, maybe you could coach them through. You know what I mean?
• 22:44
  So what do you use? You have your training modules, the two,
• 22:48
  when you meet with them one-on-one, and you break it down as a module,
• 22:52
  step one, step two, step three, step five.
• 22:54
  Yeah, we'll devise a plan together. So it's like a one-to-one session to kind
• 22:59
  of see what the issues may lie or what the concerns may be.
• 23:04
  And then we come up with a collaborative plan together. And I'd say,
• 23:07
  make some suggestions. They say yes or no.
• 23:09
  I do have a few certificates in trauma-informed care as well.
• 23:13
  I'm a CISM provider, which is a certified incident stress management.
• 23:18
  And so that's just like if we have a demise, if we have a traumatic event in-house
• 23:25
  in the emergency room or with our colleagues like firefighter and police,
• 23:30
  I'm certified to do a debriefing with them.
• 23:34
  So if somebody died. Correct.
• 23:36
  You would be able to help debrief the nurse.
• 23:39
  Yes. That is incredibly stressful, just especially with the pregnancy delivery,
• 23:46
  the deaths there, the new babies.
• 23:47
  But also, especially if you got attached to someone and then they die.
• 23:52
  That's under your care. That's another thing.
• 23:54
  You know, my mom's in nursing home right now. And all the nurses,
• 23:58
  they've been working with this lady for the past 10, 15 years,
• 24:02
  day in, day out, more than the kids.
• 24:04
  What if something happened to them? Then what? You know? so your
• 24:08
  nurse is like you help them to reconnect with themselves yes I found that I
• 24:13
  was so immersed with my job I married my job very early and I became like this
• 24:16
  uber super ER nurse my identity was melded into this there was a separation
• 24:22
  between myself and my identity as a nurse and it's much like.
• 24:27
  Here's an example. Like if you have a patient and you're like,
• 24:30
  okay, you're diagnosed with high blood pressure and diabetes and fibromyalgia,
• 24:33
  you can talk to the patient and say, hey, you know, what's going on today?
• 24:37
  Well, I've got high blood pressure, I've got the sugars, and I've got fibromyalgia.
• 24:41
  They've now turned their whole identity and their whole illness into those labels.
• 24:46
  Their labels they're not saying i have this
• 24:49
  they're saying i am this and that's that's a you
• 24:52
  know that's a problem now they're identifying their entire livelihood
• 24:55
  and basing their life off of their labels same thing i did i based my whole
• 24:59
  livelihood off my title as an er forensic nurse so i did that and i was like
• 25:04
  okay wait this is this has got to stop who am i you know what makes me me and
• 25:09
  that's what that whole shadow work did is i had to determine what are my core values
• 25:14
  What are my non-negotiables?
• 25:16
  Am I going to stick by that? And I needed to simplify it kind of,
• 25:19
  and I hate to say in a black and white way, but it was easier for me to do that.
• 25:24
  And I totally understand now that you grow in the gray.
• 25:27
  I had to dip into that gray and I was avoiding it for so long.
• 25:31
  So being able to find my core values, and that's one of the things I send to
• 25:34
  my clients is before we even work, here's a list of core values,
• 25:37
  pick like three or five that resonate with you.
• 25:40
  And then those will be what your core
• 25:43
  values are so if you're bet with a challenge like let's
• 25:46
  say you want a new job and you go to an interview and you
• 25:50
  look at their mission statement or their you know pillars and it doesn't align
• 25:53
  with your core values then don't go it's a misalignment regardless of the the
• 25:57
  you know money don't go it's a misalignment you're not gonna be happy you have
• 26:01
  to stay true to yourself for 100 and i think i never did that so i had to take
• 26:06
  a step back and say, who am I? What am I about?
• 26:09
  What am I going to do? And that has helped me shape a lot of decisions going forward.
• 26:15
  I think this is great that she use her own experience to help others.
• 26:18
  I don't think you could coach someone without having this much experience.
• 26:22
  I think you need the experience.
• 26:24
  You know, you need to have gone through it in order to help other people.
• 26:28
  She gone through and she fight through it and then she come out.
• 26:30
  Yeah, she come out the other side and now she's willing to help other people even further.
• 26:34
  That is a very great concept, great idea.
• 26:37
  What do you think is the biggest thing that you're seeing as far as stressed
• 26:40
  out nurses? Is it like compassion fatigue or guilt or a lack of purpose or overworked?
• 26:47
  Overall, that's the entire thing. Everything. The biggest, yeah.
• 26:51
  Compassion fatigue is really big. I think the newer generation coming in is
• 26:54
  doing it for the money, which is not a fault.
• 26:57
  They still were drawn to this profession for a reason, But I think COVID really
• 27:02
  pushed people over the edge.
• 27:03
  Like they were travel nurses with $10,000 a week. And I said,
• 27:07
  let's, let's break this down. You're looking at the number.
• 27:10
  It's $10,000 a week before taxes. It's a New York state who has three different tax tiers.
• 27:16
  Plus, if your state has an income tax, it's federally funded,
• 27:21
  which means your tax dollars paid for you to work.
• 27:23
  Right. And then it's not just three 12-hour shifts.
• 27:27
  They were working six days in a row and sometimes 12, 16-hour shifts.
• 27:32
  And that's not evidence-based to be clinically safe at that point.
• 27:35
  So you're not safe for yourself or your patients. So you're doing an injustice.
• 27:39
  So they're like stay up for no sleep they're definitely like oh that's so dangerous for your,
• 27:48
  understaff or either something yeah i think nationwide you can only work a 16
• 27:53
  hour shift that's a straight shift not a lot yeah that's a lot but i think some
• 27:58
  people the the newer generation coming in that i've seen ill-prepared plus we
• 28:03
  had the covid nurses who didn't do clinicals which are hands-on clinicals.
• 28:07
  They did SIMS labs on the computer and pressed the mouse.
• 28:10
  Like, this is what it should look like. What's a SIMS lab?
• 28:13
  So instead of going to clinicals one-to-one because it was on pandemic,
• 28:17
  everything was locked down, you watched a video.
• 28:19
  Like, this is how you would insert an NG tube on this person,
• 28:23
  and it just shows you ideally how it should be done. They have a dummy. Yeah.
• 28:29
  Well, no, they didn't do the dummy because of COVID. All they did was watch
• 28:32
  the video. That's what she's saying. They never actually experienced it.
• 28:35
  If we were in school, we used to do it on the dummy. Yeah. And we have to get
• 28:39
  signed off and we would do it in clinicals with real people.
• 28:43
  I think that's one of the problems with health care is now we're sick here. It's an oxymoron.
• 28:48
  But the misconception is we have non-medical people running medicine and they
• 28:53
  put in a bubble that everything is a...
• 28:56
  Black and white ideal patient. And it's not. Everybody's individual.
• 29:01
  You can look at somebody and say, oh, this person's going to need this many
• 29:04
  resources and that's it. And that's not the case.
• 29:07
  Never the case. So then we have to go and document our butt off as to why it
• 29:12
  wasn't the case and justify what we did while we did it to explain why it took so long.
• 29:17
  Because the question is going to be, why did it take you so long to do this?
• 29:20
  Rather than, is the patient safe?
• 29:22
  Do you think that AI and some of the new technologies are going to help take
• 29:27
  some of the stress and the load off of a nurse?
• 29:29
  Or do you see that as replacing certain functions that a nurse has to do? What are your thoughts?
• 29:35
  I'm excited to see where it goes because technology and health care can be good.
• 29:39
  It could be a blessing in disguise or it could be a curse.
• 29:42
  I'm excited to see where it goes. I think if we do the due diligence of thoroughly testing things.
• 29:50
  And really executing them well, Because a lot of times you'll look at something
• 29:55
  and say, it's a great concept, it's a great fee, but the execution sucked and it failed.
• 29:59
  I think if we take that time instead of pushing it out very quick,
• 30:03
  I think it'd be very beneficial and be an asset to us.
• 30:07
  What's kind of right now the biggest struggle that nurses have to go through on a daily basis?
• 30:13
  Is it like dealing with the patients? Is it dealing with the administration?
• 30:17
  Is it just dealing with the stress and anxiety? What's the biggest issue that people have right now?
• 30:21
  It's a great question. I think it's a little individualized because I see certain
• 30:25
  people struggle with admin, certain people struggle with the patient.
• 30:29
  Patients have changed too after COVID. They have really changed.
• 30:32
  How have they changed? The family of the patient also changed.
• 30:36
  Yeah, because people couldn't go into the hospital. That's the worst. Yeah. Yeah.
• 30:41
  Oh, how do I say this? I think just from what I've seen, I've seen people become
• 30:47
  a little bit more dependent.
• 30:51
  On googling an answer rather than really
• 30:54
  digging deep and finding the truth so
• 30:57
  they're going to believe something over google that is subjective anyways because
• 31:00
  google search is geared towards the person searches and trust gpt right rather
• 31:05
  than doing the research because that takes effort takes time and somebody doesn't
• 31:10
  want to do that so they're going to take as face value that that's the word and that's it.
• 31:17
  And people just don't have the time and energy or patience. They want the quick
• 31:22
  fix. They want it now. They want a shot.
• 31:24
  They want a pill. They want it over with. And unfortunately, unfortunately.
• 31:28
  A nurse is supposed to also teach the patient, and we haven't been able to do
• 31:32
  that, and they're not open to being taught.
• 31:34
  Yeah. They want the quick fix. So if I make a suggestion, if someone's going
• 31:38
  to ask me a question, I make a suggestion. They've already got three rebuttal
• 31:41
  points, so there's no point in me talking because they're already… Right.
• 31:45
  Either that, they'll reach from Google. This is what they're supposed to do,
• 31:48
  so what am I here? And it's not as simple as black and white.
• 31:51
  Like, well, my doctor put me on this, and you're telling me this.
• 31:54
  I'm like, yeah, so you take a statin, and you're not supposed to drink grapefruit
• 31:57
  juice. blood and the doctor didn't tell me that.
• 31:59
  It was also in the insert that you're supposed to read.
• 32:02
  That's a sixth font that's five pages long.
• 32:04
  Yeah, I can't read that stuff anymore. My eyes are gone.
• 32:07
  I'm like, I think the fonts are getting smaller too. I have a friend that on
• 32:11
  blood pressure medicine but still eating grapefruit. I said,
• 32:14
  you know, you're not supposed to do that.
• 32:15
  Oh, I did not. Oh, really? For blood pressure? It's a statin. It's a statin.
• 32:20
  Oh, blood pressure medicine's a statin. No, no, no, no. It's cholesterol medicine. Okay.
• 32:24
  But like a statin in particular, you can't really have grape But you can on
• 32:28
  blood pressure medicine. Some you can, some you can't.
• 32:30
  But they should educate you on that, typically.
• 32:34
  Again, we used to be able to educate patients. We'd have like discharge planning.
• 32:38
  And I think there's just such a disconnect because I hand a stack of papers
• 32:42
  to a patient. Here you go.
• 32:44
  They're not going to read that stack. No, they don't. They are not.
• 32:47
  And they don't want to sit back and listen to you go through.
• 32:50
  They just want to go home.
• 32:51
  Yeah, they want. Robert Kennedy is trying to focus more on a make America healthy
• 32:56
  again approach. and incorporate, which is near and dear to my heart, more natural remedies.
• 33:01
  Do you see that ever making its way to the ER, integrating?
• 33:06
  Oh, it's really hard. I personally am woo-woo-y and crunchy as a nurse.
• 33:12
  I love the holistic aspect.
• 33:14
  I love natural homeopathic remedies and functional medicine,
• 33:18
  alternative medicine. I would love to see a merge between Eastern and Western medicine.
• 33:23
  What I'm experiencing and what I work in, no. Like...
• 33:28
  It just doesn't happen. Yeah, it won't support each other. With holistic medicine,
• 33:33
  you have to be very, very, very consistent.
• 33:36
  That's another thing. Yeah, with holistic medicine, too, it's very individualized
• 33:39
  therapy, right? Like someone's going to sit there and talk to you and say, what are your symptoms?
• 33:43
  Let's do these specific tests for you.
• 33:45
  You go into Western medicine, and it's a recipe, and it's like they're not taught
• 33:50
  to deviate from that recipe.
• 33:52
  Yeah, and always a quick fix. You take a pill.
• 33:54
  This is the problem. here's a solution and it's like okay
• 33:57
  well that may be the solution but what was the root cause
• 34:00
  it doesn't matter here's the solution and then that solution
• 34:03
  caused another problem and that solution caused another problem it's
• 34:06
  just a domino effect again i i'm i'm gonna
• 34:09
  be burned at the stake for this but it's it's
• 34:13
  not health care it's sick care we sick people
• 34:15
  make money we are a business it is a
• 34:18
  business well i also feel like the drug the doctors are
• 34:21
  just drug dealers now i feel like all they do is
• 34:24
  push one medicine and then that one gives you a problem then they have
• 34:27
  to push another one to fix the problem that the first one gave you yeah listen
• 34:30
  to listen to your doctors listen to what they're saying because they never say this
• 34:33
  is going to cure you they will never say that
• 34:36
  and they'll say let's try this medicine yeah they do always say let's try right
• 34:40
  because it's it's a black and white here you go versus this is specialized for
• 34:47
  you individualized now they'll say let's try this and what do they do let's
• 34:50
  try this for three months see how you do. So you're playing this game.
• 34:53
  Yeah, because it might work for me, but it doesn't work for you. Yeah.
• 34:56
  So I was in the hospital and I'm an amazing nurse friend that came in and was
• 35:03
  there for me and helped me through the process and was kind of my advocate because
• 35:09
  when you're in the hospital.
• 35:11
  And this is part of the problem with COVID too, you're drugged out.
• 35:15
  I mean, they gave me morphine for my pain. I was pretty drugged out. Oh, I love it.
• 35:19
  On top of that, I hadn't slept the night before because of the pain and so she
• 35:24
  was there for me and then other nurses came in well she was there just as a
• 35:28
  friend and nurses came in and.
• 35:31
  I could tell just from their vibe that they were kind of stressed out.
• 35:34
  So I cracked some jokes and we had some fun. And I tried to take a little bit
• 35:38
  of the stress off because, you know, I could tell they were getting beat up in other places.
• 35:42
  What is the proper way? I don't know if I was appropriate making jokes,
• 35:46
  but I thought it was kind of fun.
• 35:48
  But I like to treat people nicely as well. But what is the proper way that people
• 35:52
  should be treating nurses? Because you guys go through a lot of stuff.
• 35:56
  And I think it would be great if the in-person, the patient,
• 36:01
  could be more respectful and treat you better.
• 36:04
  And is it okay for me to crack jokes when I'm in the hospital?
• 36:06
  Oh, jokes are great. Yeah, absolutely.
• 36:08
  But I think this is taboo for me because I'm an ER nurse.
• 36:13
  And I don't have the luxury of getting to know somebody over a long period of
• 36:19
  time and taking care of them for, like, days.
• 36:22
  I am a very treat-em-and-sreat-em kind of person. Mm-hmm. And sometimes I would
• 36:28
  say, and this is just me being honest, read the room.
• 36:33
  If your nurse is not really talking to you, don't try to engage with personal questions.
• 36:40
  And this, again, it's just me. It's just me. So read the room is what you're saying.
• 36:45
  Yes. Yeah, if your nurse comes in and she looks like she's a little frazzled,
• 36:48
  don't sit there. Like, so how many kids do you got? Like, no,
• 36:50
  we're not going to have this conversation.
• 36:52
  I'm not going to give you any more of myself than the time I'm already giving
• 36:56
  you. And I know that sounds like the most jerkiest response in the world.
• 36:58
  But like, I'm here to do a job. I'm here on a mission.
• 37:01
  Please stop trying to like be my friend. And I know that sucks.
• 37:05
  Like, I think having those boundaries also keeps your sanity.
• 37:09
  Because at a certain point, if you let everybody in and everybody walk all over
• 37:13
  you, it would stress you out beyond and you would leave the profession because
• 37:19
  you wouldn't be able to keep your sanity if you're taking care of everybody
• 37:22
  at a deeply emotional level.
• 37:24
  Well, we'll go back to that woo-woo and the crunchy stuff. Time is a commodity
• 37:27
  that you don't have enough of it and you don't have an audible,
• 37:30
  a visual clicker to see how much time is left.
• 37:33
  And the other thing is energy exchange. I don't want to exchange a lot of my
• 37:37
  energy and have it sucked away because it's already being like drained to begin with.
• 37:42
  And physical touch will exchange energy.
• 37:44
  I don't want that exchange.
• 37:47
  Like, yes, I'm a nurse. Yes, I'm here to do a job. But like,
• 37:49
  I'm not here to give you a hug.
• 37:51
  Yeah. Well, some lady that go there, they actually need attention.
• 37:55
  I know for a fact. I know like personally no person.
• 37:59
  She's constantly in the ER just to get attention from the kid and the grandchildren.
• 38:02
  Because she said, once she's in the hospital, they all come see me.
• 38:06
  Yeah. Oh, that's so sad. Yeah.
• 38:07
  It's a misuse. And we see it. We'll see it in the ER. And we'll try to get case
• 38:11
  management involved. But we don't have enough staff to deal with. Yeah.
• 38:14
  People that do that. We've got a gentleman that comes in almost daily.
• 38:18
  Yeah. And he's like, he came in the other day cussing.
• 38:21
  And they're like, oh, Tammy, it's this guy. And he writes people up.
• 38:25
  And he cusses people out. And I'm like, I just give. I don't care. Mm-hmm.
• 38:28
  How has corporate, because I know a lot of the hospitals are going corporate.
• 38:32
  They're like franchises almost.
• 38:35
  Yeah, they're a big business money making now. Yes.
• 38:39
  How has that affected the way
• 38:41
  they treat nurses? And does that add to your client list because of it?
• 38:46
  Great question. I think across the board, nurses are very dissatisfied because I don't know.
• 38:53
  I don't think it matters if it's corporate or not.
• 38:55
  You have non-medical people running medicine and making decisions for the medical
• 39:04
  people. And I think that's a disconnect.
• 39:06
  I don't know. There's a lot that goes into it. And yes and no,
• 39:10
  I haven't seen an increase from the nurses that I coach.
• 39:14
  They're from kind of all over the country, people that I have worked with in
• 39:18
  the past or people that have referred to me.
• 39:20
  So I don't, I haven't connected those dots yet. That's a great question.
• 39:24
  I'd have to come back to that. I don't know.
• 39:26
  I think a lot of people transition to other things because they just don't get
• 39:29
  a good work-life balance.
• 39:31
  You were mentioning how you go to the gym and you work out and it helps with
• 39:35
  your stress reduction. and how do you coach other nurses that come to your coaching
• 39:39
  company to maintain that work-life balance?
• 39:41
  And what do you recommend to help nurses and assist them?
• 39:45
  Yeah, it's individualized per person. We kind of dig a little deep and say,
• 39:48
  what kind of, are they willing to do?
• 39:51
  What helps to ground them? I give them some options for grounding that's reasonable
• 39:55
  for them. Make suggestions.
• 39:58
  Huge advocate for journaling. Huge advocate for meditation. Yeah.
• 40:04
  It's so difficult. Like I remember when I first started meditating,
• 40:07
  I was like, I'm doing this wrong. This is what am I doing? I'm just sitting
• 40:09
  here. I'm almost asleep. What's going on?
• 40:11
  But after continuing consistency, I found the benefits of it.
• 40:17
  So if I've tried it and it didn't work for me, it's not going to mean it's not
• 40:20
  going to work for somebody else.
• 40:21
  So I have multiple resources to kind of dip my hand into and offer.
• 40:26
  Again, it's individualized what I think they're going to do.
• 40:28
  If a nurse comes to me and says, I don't have time to do all this.
• 40:30
  I work night shift. I can't do that's like, okay, what if you wake up an hour
• 40:33
  early and just do a 20-minute walk outside and just get some fresh air and then
• 40:36
  just take like, set your phone or your watch for like a mindful moment,
• 40:40
  which means it'll ding and then you sit there and you just breathe for one minute and that's it.
• 40:45
  Like breathing helps reset your vagus nerve.
• 40:49
  So you have more of a holistic approach to taking care of the whole person and
• 40:53
  it's got a balance of, you know,
• 40:56
  clinical and education things like systematic approaches to
• 40:59
  healing and stress reduction and then you know
• 41:02
  more natural wellness areas as well take a
• 41:06
  walk take a deep breath yeah so I know my yoga instructor
• 41:09
  actually go from hospital to hospital teach yoga
• 41:12
  does she yeah oh wow yeah that's
• 41:15
  a good source yeah I went to the hospital in California
• 41:18
  that had yeah this is in California like a mindless like
• 41:21
  a wellness kind of room mindfulness room where it was just a
• 41:24
  room that had like a recliner in it and the salt lamps and
• 41:27
  misted lavender and it was time it was
• 41:29
  a place where you can go and just have that personal moment for
• 41:33
  as much time as you needed but it was there at work a
• 41:36
  lot of like the the hospitals i worked at in california also offered they had
• 41:40
  a gym that was for like cardiac rehab or whatever with pt and they let the nurses
• 41:45
  use it at night it was free gym for them so all these little amenities that
• 41:50
  your hospital is willing to offer you one was a union hospital and one wasn't
• 41:54
  So it just didn't matter.
• 41:56
  I think it was a great culture that they had across the board.
• 41:59
  And one was Northern California, one was Southern, but they'd had this shared culture.
• 42:03
  Thought process to like really have the nurses have a balance at work and have a release and,
• 42:10
  one thing I practice is I have a dammit doll love
• 42:15
  this thing you basically take the doll and you hold it by the feet and you just
• 42:19
  get it against the the counter so I bring that to work with me and I keep it
• 42:24
  on my desk I just gotta let it out I keep it on my desk and I'm it's open to
• 42:29
  Anybody that wants to come by and just like slam it.
• 42:30
  And I know it may look horrible to like a patient or a family member.
• 42:36
  They can take it around the corner and use it if they want to,
• 42:38
  but it gives them a release.
• 42:40
  You got to let the anger out. Yeah. And I'm a firm believer in that.
• 42:44
  And anyone who's gone to therapy probably had a therapist say like,
• 42:48
  oh, get one of those pool noodles and hit the couch or get a tennis racket and hit your bed.
• 42:53
  It's a way of getting it out. And I'm such a huge fan of rage rooms.
• 42:56
  If you don't know what that is, it's a room that's like set up just so you can go and break stuff.
• 43:01
  Love it. I, it's so cathartic and I advocate anybody to go. Yeah.
• 43:06
  I know you said you don't do, you're not a therapist.
• 43:10
  And, but I think coaching kind of crosses the boundaries once in a while because
• 43:14
  you feel like when you have a client that you're helping them through and coaching
• 43:19
  them through a lot of stressful times. So can you speak to that a little bit?
• 43:23
  Yeah. Usually, traditional therapy likes to deal with getting to the root cause
• 43:27
  and dealing with the past and resolving the past.
• 43:30
  Coaching is more like, let's look at the problem, the root cause,
• 43:34
  but let's go forward from the problem rather than trying to fix that past.
• 43:38
  I think, again, it's a fine line, but it's mitigating the patterns and the problems.
• 43:44
  So focus on, find out what the root cause, focus what it does,
• 43:48
  and then move on how to the solution. That's what coaching is.
• 43:54
  When someone's stressed out and they're not burned out yet, but they're coming
• 43:59
  up, like, when is a good time for someone to come and hire you and your services?
• 44:04
  Do you work with people progressively, like prior to their burnout?
• 44:08
  Or is it until they get to a point where they're breaking? When's the best time
• 44:12
  for them to come and use you?
• 44:15
  Anytime I meet people where they're at. But anytime they can come to me.
• 44:19
  And again, we'll do kind of a screening. We'll do a discovery call on a screening.
• 44:23
  And the screening is just three questions. It's a pre-coaching questionnaire.
• 44:28
  And my reason to do that is to let them know this is kind of what...
• 44:34
  You should look forward to
• 44:37
  and I hate to use the word expectation because expectation has
• 44:40
  like you have an expectation and a downfall what I'm
• 44:45
  saying is I think don't wait till you'll get to your breaking point when you
• 44:49
  start stress you should reach out already no well I you know it's hard to ask
• 44:53
  for help yeah it's hard to ask for help too because think about these kind of
• 44:57
  people they're very proud yeah one of the biggest common patterns ego and I had it yeah 110 percent
• 45:04
  I was probably one of the loudest people in the room.
• 45:06
  I was like constantly talking, over explaining myself.
• 45:11
  I'm pretty sure that people that have healed and done the work that I did before
• 45:17
  I was there looked at me and was like, you poor girl.
• 45:22
  I've been where you're at, so I'm going to give you some grace, but you're so wrong.
• 45:27
  I was so ignorant to that because I was very egocentric, very egocentric.
• 45:32
  And there's a lot of ego, especially in emergency medicine.
• 45:35
  Not everyone I coach is from emergency medicine. They go from different parts
• 45:39
  of nursing. I've coached somebody who was not a nurse.
• 45:43
  She was a real estate agent and she wanted to go into the medical field.
• 45:47
  So she was transitioning from real estate agent to radiology.
• 45:51
  So, yeah, she's one of my favorite clients.
• 45:55
  I actually learned a lot from her just by coaching her, which was really great.
• 46:01
  That's brilliant. Yeah, it was really a beautiful type of.
• 46:05
  Relationship for that my thing is if
• 46:08
  you your job like stress you that much
• 46:10
  then reach out for help maybe you find an alternate way to
• 46:13
  make a living and you can't get this paid for by
• 46:16
  any organizations or your like companies don't pay for any type of mental health
• 46:21
  assistance or coaching do they no not yeah i mean there are some coaches that
• 46:25
  i went through the collective with that have that kind of corporate standard
• 46:28
  i've actually done a whole presentation proposal to my boss to incorporate what
• 46:33
  I do because I'm board certified.
• 46:36
  So I'm a board certified nurse coach and I've done a whole proposal and I gave
• 46:42
  it to my director and she's like, oh, this is great, but like we don't do this.
• 46:46
  I'm like, okay, great. And then I also- You never had budget for it.
• 46:50
  Well, I worked in a lot of metric for corporates. They can see like,
• 46:54
  this is what I'm going to be measuring to see whether this is a payoff for you.
• 46:57
  And then I also tweaked it and gave it to my CNO and she was just like,
• 47:01
  yeah, this is great. Sorry.
• 47:02
  So it wasn't received very well, but you know what? I'm going to just keep going
• 47:06
  so I can go to other places and offer services.
• 47:09
  Some of my cohorts use insurance. I have not done that yet. I don't think I will.
• 47:15
  I think I'll just do cash pay or whatever pay. I don't want to go through insurance.
• 47:18
  There's a lot of red tape with insurance. Yeah.
• 47:22
  The company I used to work for, they actually have the whole department for that.
• 47:26
  So we have four ladies there it's like
• 47:30
  a gym but they call wellness room and they
• 47:33
  actually the company paid for it but you know what when the
• 47:36
  the company got bought off those lady was the
• 47:39
  first person who got let go that's how
• 47:41
  much they don't believe in that yeah i i've some
• 47:45
  companies believe in it like traditional companies will
• 47:48
  believe and my mindset when i was in
• 47:50
  business was your first customer is your employee
• 47:53
  and I always kept that mindset yeah I don't
• 47:57
  see that in businesses today yeah it's sad
• 48:00
  that we don't focus more on mental health in this country
• 48:03
  because when you don't have mental health you don't
• 48:06
  have any health yeah and mental health should be the very
• 48:09
  first health you work on there's mental health there's physical health mental
• 48:12
  and physical they tie together and sexual health
• 48:15
  and spiritual health there's health across the board but if you
• 48:17
  don't have mental health you can't even get to the other levels yeah so
• 48:21
  it's sad that they don't put more money into it and i
• 48:24
  think a lot of disease is caused because of a lack of mental
• 48:26
  health as well i think it starts from there yeah but we call it a whole nother
• 48:31
  fault i can go down that rabbit hole real quick about how the disconnect and
• 48:36
  dysregulation can cause like yeah disorders like autoimmune disorders but that's
• 48:41
  a whole nother subject yeah yeah
• 48:43
  yeah something always triggers those things, doesn't it? It is, it is.
• 48:47
  So what is your favorite, if somebody's stressful, stressed out,
• 48:51
  and they're not to the burnout level yet, so they may not hire you yet,
• 48:54
  but they're just beginning, what is your favorite self-care ritual right now
• 48:59
  that someone could do to help just kind of let the stress go?
• 49:02
  I'm a big fan on breathing exercises, but again, you have to like get the feel
• 49:06
  of what the patients, what your client is willing to do. Mm-hmm.
• 49:10
  Some moms need just a minute to breathe.
• 49:17
  So a lot of nurses, a lot of medical professionals are balancing being a parent
• 49:21
  and probably the sole provider, if not one of the providers.
• 49:26
  So a lot of nurses that have children, they need just that minute,
• 49:29
  like the mommy moment or whatnot.
• 49:31
  So I'm like, hey, is there any way you can get a sitter for this, like just for an hour?
• 49:34
  Just go get yourself a coffee. Like self-care is not selfish.
• 49:37
  And just kind of reassure them like that they're
• 49:40
  not alone we are the worst to
• 49:43
  ask for help we are the the last people
• 49:46
  to even want to be seen as vulnerable so we
• 49:49
  don't want to ask for help it's listening to what
• 49:51
  their needs are and saying you're going to make a suggestion like can
• 49:54
  you take a minute to have a coffee can
• 49:57
  you go outside and breathe can you ground yourself
• 50:01
  real quick like stick your bare feet in the in the grass can
• 50:04
  you journal for 30 minutes can you just set a timer and journal for 30
• 50:07
  minutes just like word vomit on the page and get it out i'm a
• 50:10
  huge proponent of better out than in i think
• 50:13
  the theme is just that one the little stillness like
• 50:16
  mindfulness and stillness is a big thing like they have to
• 50:19
  have their their personal time yeah i i'm
• 50:22
  a believer on the stillness every morning
• 50:25
  i do my 15 minutes stillness you know i try i
• 50:28
  try to meditate but i lay in bed and i think and
• 50:31
  i fall right back to sleep yeah it's a beauty it's
• 50:34
  not for everybody right like there's so many different modalities you
• 50:37
  have a way of trying these different modalities and
• 50:40
  what works for you yeah i couldn't do self-meditation so
• 50:44
  i have a brain tap headset that is guided meditation and i do that every morning
• 50:49
  yeah then i do my little rituals like i'm gonna get up i'm gonna wash my face
• 50:53
  i'm gonna brush my teeth right and you're just so sometimes you become emotionally
• 50:57
  numb and you shut down and the dysregulation is really big It's huge.
• 51:02
  And you don't recognize that until you stop and take a look back.
• 51:07
  If you're reevaluating your life and you're like, well, this happened,
• 51:09
  this happened, this happened. And you can honestly say, what's the common denominator and say, it's me.
• 51:14
  That is like the biggest hard truth you'll ever face. Like, I may be the drama here.
• 51:18
  And then once you recognize it and you accept it, then you work on it.
• 51:23
  I'm a true believer. I wish I'd done sooner.
• 51:27
  Then I started yoga, the yoga and the breathing.
• 51:31
  So I just started it like seven years ago. And I blame on like, I work too much.
• 51:35
  I don't have time for this. But you do have that half an hour every morning.
• 51:39
  Yeah, I truly believe if you don't make the time now, Oh, you're going to be
• 51:44
  forced to take the time later.
• 51:47
  And that's just, I see it every single day in the year.
• 51:51
  Every single day I'll have a client come in like, oh, blood pressure's 200 over 120.
• 51:57
  And like, my heart feels kind of funny. It was running kind of fast.
• 52:01
  Well, today's Saturday.
• 52:02
  It happened on like, oh, Tuesday. So for six days, you've had this issue.
• 52:07
  Yeah. Why did you wait? Well, I thought it would stop. I didn't want to come
• 52:10
  in. I had work to do. There's always an excuse.
• 52:13
  So, you know, you can have results or you can have excuses. And I get it.
• 52:17
  We're stubborn. We're all stubborn.
• 52:19
  And I live that little nugget like if you don't make the time for your health,
• 52:23
  you're going to be forced to take it. And right now you're taking that time.
• 52:26
  So what are you taking away from today? You took away from your family.
• 52:30
  You've got your wife sitting here who's taken away her time.
• 52:33
  But she's been telling you for three days to come in when you finally told her something was wrong.
• 52:37
  But in that meantime it added up that you're
• 52:40
  in a bad rhythm and that rhythm can cause a blood clot and
• 52:43
  a blood clot can kill you well they they don't
• 52:45
  want to hear that so they're like oh it's not gonna happen so same
• 52:48
  goes with same goes with the nose they get blood tall right i always say excuses
• 52:53
  are justification for laziness that's really all it is and if you think about
• 52:58
  even excuses we tell ourselves if you have oh i haven't lost weight because
• 53:03
  i just don't have the time that's a justification for laziness.
• 53:07
  If you have an excuse, oh, my mother was fat, therefore I have to be fat too.
• 53:12
  That's a justification for laziness.
• 53:14
  I think we allow a lot of times our laziness to interfere with our health and our mental health too.
• 53:22
  I don't want to go see a therapist or get a coach because I'm justifying my laziness.
• 53:26
  If something's important to you, you just have to do it. Right.
• 53:29
  So there's that conscious effort there. You got tired of it
• 53:32
  and you made that conscious effort i'm going to do something about it and people
• 53:37
  sit in this pre-contemplating phase like i know i need to do this i know i need
• 53:41
  to do that oh my god i want this so bad for years you go from pre-contemplation
• 53:45
  to contemplation is the action yeah it takes bravery to take the action because
• 53:49
  you're actually doing something but.
• 53:52
  Whatever it was that inspired you to do it kicked in yeah for me it kicked my
• 53:57
  nerve and my blood pressure goes up. I'm borderline diabetic.
• 54:01
  Oh, wow. Yeah, I have like.
• 54:04
  The cabinet medicine, full of stuff. Oh, I'm anxious. I'm going to take a pill.
• 54:09
  Oh, I can't sleep. I've got insomnia. I'm going to take a pill.
• 54:12
  And I trusted my doctors. I trusted my providers.
• 54:17
  And unfortunately, I've got insomnia. I've got anxiety. Now I've got depression.
• 54:22
  Now I've got panic attacks. And I'm like, okay, what am I doing here that I'm
• 54:26
  just putting a band-aid over a bullet hole?
• 54:27
  Let me get to the root cause. And when I moved here, I made the conscious effort
• 54:33
  like I'm going to cut out all pharmaceuticals.
• 54:36
  I'm going to do things as natural as possible. I'm on that road to I'm going
• 54:39
  to be diabetic. I'm going to have high blood pressure.
• 54:41
  I'm going to have blood sugar. And I'm probably going to have an autoimmune
• 54:43
  just because I've been inflamed for so long.
• 54:45
  So I had to make a conscious effort to stop all that.
• 54:49
  So it took me about a year to wean off like anxiety medicine and depression
• 54:54
  medicine, which is very synonymous with medical professionals.
• 54:58
  We'll all talk about oh i'm on my xanax i got my welly oh
• 55:01
  wow yeah we just it's like common like
• 55:04
  how much xanax are you on okay and what kind of welly do you
• 55:06
  take do you take your welly with lexapras what's a welly uh well-beatron i don't
• 55:10
  even know what that is it's a inviting depression medicine medicine you know
• 55:14
  i'm so anti-medicine i don't even know what half these medicines are oh i love
• 55:18
  medicine but after she's a pill popper yeah after a while it caught it caught on to you Yeah,
• 55:24
  I mean, you build a resistance to it and a tolerance to it.
• 55:27
  You build a tolerance to it. I had to go off of those. And with that,
• 55:30
  I'm like, what can I do in lieu of that?
• 55:32
  So I looked up natural homeopathic ways, like vitamin supplements,
• 55:36
  and then again, a whole other ballgame of different types of vitamin supplements.
• 55:41
  So now, rather than taking prescription medicines, I take cycles of ashwagandha.
• 55:46
  I take max glycinate to sleep.
• 55:50
  For like clarity I'll do like mag 3 and 8 and then
• 55:53
  probably some taurine so I do the homeopathic
• 55:57
  on that and then I cut out like preservatives and
• 55:59
  dyes from my diet night meal prep I certainly
• 56:03
  got off that path when I started a job at a
• 56:06
  level one trauma center down that kicked my butt and
• 56:09
  again it was just going back to habits of like I'm stressed let
• 56:12
  me eat I'm such a feelings eater kind of person man
• 56:15
  I eat my feelings like nobody's business but it
• 56:18
  was give and take so the habits
• 56:21
  I've kept since moving here for the past three
• 56:24
  years is staying off the prescriptions cleaner eating
• 56:28
  meal prepping and just being as wholesome with food as possible like not doing
• 56:34
  the process I cheat I'm not gonna lie I'm a human being if I get stressed at
• 56:39
  work yeah I'll order something but fried chicken always helps no it does not it does not,
• 56:47
  Made with seed oils. It's terrible for you. Fried chicken and ramen.
• 56:51
  No. Extra carbs. No. It's a comfort food, ramen. I was craving that the other
• 56:56
  day. Yeah. I talked myself out of it. I was craving it.
• 56:59
  I think I'd watched a couple TikToks. I had it on. Damn it. Now I want ramen real.
• 57:03
  But yeah. Do you have any like mantras or affirmations that you say to yourself
• 57:07
  in the mirror or anything that helps you get through when you have stressful situations?
• 57:11
  You know, for me, this is very personal. My biggest one is I'm worthy.
• 57:15
  And that goes way back to deep-seated childhood
• 57:20
  trauma but my biggest thing is I am worthy and
• 57:23
  some of the things I always pass in my mind is
• 57:26
  they don't know what they don't know that keeps me from being wicked judgmental
• 57:30
  they don't know what they don't know and just give
• 57:33
  them grace and then give myself grace I'm I'm my
• 57:36
  hardest critic well I think the journey that
• 57:39
  you've taken and from your childhood on to now has
• 57:42
  made you the perfect coach because you've been
• 57:45
  through the shit it's if you've been through the shit
• 57:48
  then you know from beginning to
• 57:51
  end how to help people survive it and that's
• 57:54
  the only way is going through the shit i
• 57:57
  like the word shit a lot once you get through that now you have the ability
• 58:02
  to pull people up with you and take them with you yeah i hope so i like to think
• 58:08
  that i'm able to help people that can't help themselves or who don't know any better.
• 58:15
  When I was in college, one of my sorority sisters experienced a very tough situation
• 58:22
  that majority of women find themselves in.
• 58:24
  And that prompted me to do public speaking.
• 58:28
  So that I could basically tell my story to help her and anybody else that experienced
• 58:34
  something about that with sexual assault and sexual abuse.
• 58:37
  And that lit a fire. I was very passionate about public speaking.
• 58:42
  And I think that helped me become the sexual assault nurse examiner and specialize in that.
• 58:47
  And with that, I was able to help train unit victim advocates when they deployed
• 58:53
  overseas for the military.
• 58:56
  Spoke to graduate nurses on what a forensic nurse is and how to treat patients
• 59:02
  when they come into emergency room.
• 59:04
  I had a lot of platforms for speaking on that.
• 59:07
  My hope, my goal is to have a thriving coaching practice.
• 59:12
  And in turn, I want to be able to give back to
• 59:15
  survivors of people that have been abused sexually or
• 59:18
  trafficked to help coach them to come
• 59:21
  out of it a little bit easier so you're going to add to your
• 59:24
  coaching business and now coach people that have gone through rape
• 59:27
  or molestation or been sexually trafficked in
• 59:30
  the future yeah that would be a pro bono for them that would
• 59:33
  be like my way of giving back to the community is to help
• 59:36
  survivors that's amazing that's amazing especially
• 59:39
  now yeah yeah even though just to help with
• 59:42
  veterans that just came back from the world you know how many of them
• 59:45
  that are ptsd ptsd well the therapy would help that but then she can coach them
• 59:50
  into their future yes i said i i used to work in the military base and i have
• 59:55
  a lot of military friends that have now retired but i i've spoken to them about
• 59:59
  the brain tapping yeah again it's a it's a headset for guided meditation not a spokesperson.
• 1:00:05
  But it's helped me tremendously it's helped to like calm me down it's helped
• 1:00:11
  me to have perspective it's helped me to sleep better at night i don't have
• 1:00:14
  to take melatonin or sleeping pills asleep at night like I used to.
• 1:00:17
  And sleep is so important to heal. Yeah. Sleep is very important.
• 1:00:22
  I will tell you if I don't get enough sleep.
• 1:00:24
  Nothing's happened in that day. Me too. I will try and I'll struggle through,
• 1:00:29
  but I will not be at my best.
• 1:00:31
  If I miss my nap and I'm cranky by dinner time.
• 1:00:34
  I can't work out hard. If I don't sleep well at night, my gym routine suffers
• 1:00:39
  and I'm all inflamed. I can't do it.
• 1:00:41
  I mean, I'll do it, but I begrudgingly do it. I think sleep is so underrated. Yeah.
• 1:00:47
  Sleep is really important. Everyone needs eight hours sleep.
• 1:00:50
  So if somebody wants to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to contact
• 1:00:55
  you as far as getting in touch with you to hire your services?
• 1:00:59
  My website is in this direct way, possibly, or like I post daily on Facebook and Instagram.
• 1:01:07
  And they can just reach out and direct message. And your website is?
• 1:01:14
  Www.northstarnursecoaching.com. Gotcha. So how long, and I know you can't really
• 1:01:20
  put a number on it specifically, but typically when somebody comes in,
• 1:01:24
  how many sessions do they go through with you in order to grow and to heal into the next steps?
• 1:01:29
  Sure. So we have like packages. I do a three-month and a six-month package.
• 1:01:33
  The three-month is guaranteed at least an hour every week, one-to-one. Oh, wow.
• 1:01:37
  Yeah, one-to-one, an hour every week.
• 1:01:40
  And then also it's whatever they are
• 1:01:42
  interested in again when we get together and we work on that like if
• 1:01:46
  they want homework or goals then we
• 1:01:48
  i would come up with tasks for them to do
• 1:01:51
  yours is more of a one-on-one and i get that yeah yeah so going forward do you
• 1:01:57
  see this hiring other coaches under your systems or do you think this is still
• 1:02:02
  going to be a one-on-one type of program oh good question i could be your patient coordinator.
• 1:02:10
  She wants a job. I need a job.
• 1:02:14
  I think right now it's one-to-one. If it were to grow, I refer people out to
• 1:02:19
  other coaches, like people that I've gone through the collective with,
• 1:02:22
  with my coaching practice, the training.
• 1:02:24
  There's specific women that specialize in menopause health and they're all,
• 1:02:29
  these are all nurses. We're all nurses.
• 1:02:32
  There's one in particular is a gentleman, He's a nurse, but he specializes in
• 1:02:37
  military, coming back with PTSD, and he's drawn to helping military with that.
• 1:02:42
  And he is very much based on his Christian faith as well.
• 1:02:46
  So evidence-based nursing practice and Christian faith. So he does that,
• 1:02:50
  and I would refer them to him.
• 1:02:51
  So we have a good network already. I don't think we need to have.
• 1:02:56
  So it's based on how busy you are, basically. Yeah. So have you ever turned
• 1:02:59
  people down just because you didn't like them?
• 1:03:02
  I wouldn't say I didn't like them. It wasn't a good fit. Okay.
• 1:03:05
  This is kind of the expectation that we're going to go forward with.
• 1:03:07
  If you're not going to do the work, then we can't work together.
• 1:03:10
  Right. Not the magic pill, not the magic fix. You're going to have to actually
• 1:03:13
  do the work. Right. Yeah.
• 1:03:15
  Yeah. That's one thing that they have to understand. Coaching,
• 1:03:17
  it just guidance them. They have to be the one who do the work. Yeah. Right.
• 1:03:23
  I've had coaches, and I've been a coach. And I will say, I don't have a lot
• 1:03:28
  of patience for the people that don't want to step up and perform when they
• 1:03:32
  say that's what they want. Right.
• 1:03:34
  The lack of consistency with them actually devoting their time to what they
• 1:03:38
  say they want drives me nuts.
• 1:03:40
  Right. So that's why I don't want to be a coach. I admire coaches and I think they do a great thing.
• 1:03:45
  They do, but people need to realize it's consistency.
• 1:03:49
  It's consistency. And I think that we are so capable as a human species,
• 1:03:54
  and I know this is a little awkward, we do not use our mental capacity the way
• 1:03:58
  we should. We do not grow in the way we should.
• 1:04:00
  We do not. No, we've gotten too complacent as a society. Lazy.
• 1:04:04
  Lazy. Completely lazy. And I think going forward, if people could just.
• 1:04:08
  Take a breath, take a step back, analyze where they're at.
• 1:04:12
  Because we need to evolve as a species. And I don't think we're evolving because
• 1:04:17
  we're going backwards in several areas because of the ease of living.
• 1:04:21
  And I don't think people realize that you really need to learn to control your
• 1:04:25
  thoughts and your mind to grow as a person, because that's the only thing in
• 1:04:29
  this life you actually have control over.
• 1:04:31
  You don't control other people. You don't control the weather.
• 1:04:33
  You don't control traffic. But you do control your mind and how you react to situations.
• 1:04:38
  And I can say, I can attest that I sat on this cruise control of so long,
• 1:04:43
  of being numb and in that fight or flight constantly, but I also was emotionally reactive.
• 1:04:49
  And that's what really caught my attention. It's like, I need to not be,
• 1:04:54
  like, people have triggers. Everyone has a trigger.
• 1:04:56
  But I found that how I was reacting to them was emotionally irresponsible.
• 1:05:00
  And I was like, I need to cut.
• 1:05:02
  I'm responsible for myself. I can't keep blaming other people for my actions.
• 1:05:06
  And that's the hard truth and some people can't accept
• 1:05:09
  that truth and it's called accountability and some people can't do
• 1:05:12
  that and you'll have people
• 1:05:15
  come like yeah okay so my wife says I need to be coached so I'm reaching out
• 1:05:18
  because like I like what you said and like you're going to help me I'm going
• 1:05:22
  to help you help yourself right so I'm going to help you recognize your patterns
• 1:05:26
  and then we're going to try to like rebuild and make constructive like good
• 1:05:31
  decisions that are evidence-based that can help you individually.
• 1:05:35
  And if you're not able to do that, then we'll just part ways and I'll refund your money. Yeah.
• 1:05:40
  Yeah. Well, is there anything else you want to add to your program,
• 1:05:44
  how you help women, or anything related to your business that you would like to add at this point?
• 1:05:50
  No, I think we've covered a lot.
• 1:05:52
  And I appreciate the platform. Thank you very much. Well, do the Tammy.
• 1:05:56
  We all respect because what you do is a struggle every day, and we respect that. Yeah, I think,
• 1:06:05
  Most people, not just the nurses, they could relate to that.
• 1:06:10
  They can. Yeah, at some point, you know.
• 1:06:13
  Well, this is Diva Mia. I think we're going to wrap it up now.
• 1:06:16
  Yeah, that's all I have. Do you have anything else? No, I'm good.
• 1:06:20
  So this is Diva Mia signing off. Diva Cash, talk to you soon.
• 1:06:24
  Thank you for having me, guys. All right. Have a great day, everybody. Ciao, ciao. Ciao.
• 1:06:31
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• 1:06:35
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• 1:06:40
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• 1:07:03
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• 1:07:09
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