TRANSCRIPT - Mental Health Matters - Stop Burnout and Move Forward in Healing Ð 5/1/23

>>Amelia: I'm super excited but super nervous. My name is Amelia. I am a licensed clinical social worker based in Utah. TSBVI reached out and asked that I put together a Coffee Hour presentation on helping to cope with stress and trauma and burnout and all the things. So as I started to plan my presentation, I decided that I wanted to have this theme of, like, we're taking a journey together. And so throughout my presentation, I've used visual elements, roads, signs, maps, et cetera. At the time I thought it was a cute idea and now I'm just worried you guys will think I have a weird obsession with traffic signs. Sorry about that. I come from a family of teachers, special educators, and I know the stresses that you all go through on a daily basis are as unique as the students you are helping from complicated IEPs. You all have big jobs and I by no means would be considered an expert on this but I do hope what I put together for you guys will at least be a little helpful. My presentation today is going to include some instruction but I also hope we can practice some strategies for managing stress and burnout together and really talk about maybe brainstorm some good ideas on how that can be managed. And I also hope, again, just to echo Kate, that you guys will all participate in the conversation by using the chat. Feel free to chime in and ask questions and I hope I can answer some of them. I wanted to start out with a little practice by doing a brief mindfulness exercise, just to get us all focused, shake off the stress of this manic Monday. I'm going to invite you all to participate in this exercise to your comfort level. If you're not comfortable closing your eyes, that's okay. Just keep them open. Just find a point to look at and just soften your gaze. And I think everybody's cameras are off so nobody looks at you when you're doing mindfulness, because it's kind of weird. Okay. We're just going to do a brief little exercise. Okay. So I'd like to invite you to close your eyes. And I invite you, when you take your next breath, to simply be more conscious. Allow your breath to bring you into the present moment, the here and the now. Breathe through your nose. Inhale cool air and nurture yourself. Exhale warm air and expel any tension and negative emotion. Feel your feet connecting you to the floor, connecting you to the Earth. Gently correct your posture by slowly lifting your chin until the top of your head radiates up towards the sky. Relax your shoulders down like ice melting in a hot spring and feel your neck grow long. Relax your forehead. Relax your eyes. Relax your jaw. Relax your ears and relax the muscles at the back of your neck. Notice your breath and allow it to bring you into the present moment where you're safe, relaxed, and doing something positive. Quiet your mind. Let thoughts go by, like leaves floating in a mountain stream. Bring your attention to your breath disengage from the past and from the future. Enjoy fully the present moment. Begin to cultivate an inner peace, a safe place in your heart filled with love and light. And breathe. When you're ready, I'd like to invite you to open your eyes and rejoin us as we continue our journey. Okay. All right. So on this slide we have a map of the world with three map pins indicating my three objectives for today. My first objective is hovering over the United States and Mexico in orange, and it is to discuss a little about what happens to our bodies when we experience stress and why it's important. The second objective is this blue map pin hovering over the continent of Africa and it is to define burnout and understand its symptoms and causes. And the third objective is in green, hovering over Siberia. And it is to learn practical strategies for dealing with burnout. Like that three-minute meditation that we just practiced together. So to start I want to talk a little bit about what the research says about you folks. So here we have a chart that reflects some research completed by the Rand Corporation and it's comparing the overall well-being of teachers, principals, and working adults. The first is frequent job-related stress. The teachers are from red and the principals are in yellow. The research shows that 73% of teachers surveyed and 85% of principals surveyed indicated that they experienced frequent job-related stress. This is when compared to just 35% of other working adults with their color being green. So the second item surveyed was burnout. 59% of teachers and 48% of principals reported experiencing burnout in their jobs. This is compared to 44% of other working adults. The next item is symptoms of depression. So 28% of both teachers and principals surveyed indicated that they were experiencing symptoms of depression compared to 17% of other working adults. And the fourth item shows us that 24% of teachers and 19% of principals reported that they are not coping well with job-related stress when compared to 12% of other working adults. So this last item here is the only category on this survey where teachers and principals reported lower numbers than other working adults. And that is resilience. Based on the survey, 80% of working adult responses indicated resilience, whereas 67% of principals and 46% of teachers' responses indicated resilience. So before we go further into this presentation, I just want to take a minute and let you all know that I know that on some level I'm going to be preaching to the choir. Your jobs, like many others in Human Services and human service-adjacent fields have so much going on and so much is out of your control. State, national politics, budgets, staffing shortages, all of it. It all affects your stress level and how you manage. What I hope for today is that I can help you find effective tools to manage ongoing stressors in your job and hopefully build a little resilience while we're at it. So my worst fear with this presentation is just that people will leave and be like, well, great. Yeah, but at the end of the day there's still stuff that's stressful. Yeah. There is stuff that's stressful and I'm very sorry for that. So hopefully we can work on some of this together. So I'd like to start with a quick activity. If you can turn your attention to the chat, I first want to take a quick poll on what kinds of professionals we have in our group today. What's your occupation? Who are you? What's your job? If you wouldn't mind, just quickly typing your answer in the chat. 

>>Kate: Kaycee says education consultant for Deafblind education. Liz says healthcare. Joyce, vocational rehabilitation teacher for blind adults. Tara is a TVI. Linda is a Braillist. Superintendent. No stress there. TSVI and special education specialist. We have an orientation and mobility specialist, more TVIs and vision rehab. AT coordinator, in-home trainer. The list keeps growing. TSVI and O&M. 

>>Amelia: Okay. So we have a few different jobs here. Okay. So now -- this might be a little bit scarier. I'd like to invite you to chime in and share just one or two stressors in your job. What makes your job hard? 

>>Kate: You said just one or two? 

>>Amelia: Yeah. Just a couple. [Laughter] 

>>Kate: Other people not doing their part of planning lesson plans. Understaffing. Time constraints and ARDs, that's what Texas calls IEP meetings. Trying to support so many different needs all over the state. Outside forces, like you said, policies, budget, et cetera. Changing job positions. Yeah. 

>>Amelia: I imagine there's lots of things and I think it probably depends on the day too. It depends on the kids you see that day and maybe some of the families that you work with. I'm a therapist so I know that not everybody is sunshine and rainbows and it can be really hard. So what does that information -- so we know who you are and what you do. We know some of the stressors you're facing in your job. If we were to go to the chat and look over everybody's answers -- thanks to the people who were able to participate. What does this information tell us about stress in the workplace? 

>>Kate: Everyone has it. 

>>Amelia: Everyone has it. Thanks, Kate. Oh, Karen. Sorry. 

>>Kate: There's a lot of it. We need more teachers out in the field. 

>>Amelia: Okay. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. There's a limitation on resources and that there's a lot of stress. People are retiring faster than they can be replaced. Goes back to that staffing issue, right? Ooh, we are often the lone ranger out there so no one understands what we do. Sorry, Kate. I'm taking over your job. Being stretched too thin, not enough support. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah. All of these things. All of these things. Oh, this is just so exciting to me. Not that you guys are stressed but that the camaraderie that I can feel, even in the chat, is really cool. I think it's interesting how many answers are kind of echoing each other. So what your answers tell me about stress in the workplace is that definitely -- and we've had a couple people say this in the chat. Everyone that's here today is dealing with stressors in their job. Everybody, even if they're not here today, are dealing with stressors in their job. Everyone is experiencing more than just these one or two stressors. Like Kate said, just one or two? It's almost harder to narrow it down to just one or two than it is to just say it all, right? Number three, stress is not something that can be avoided when working with certain groups of people or in certain fields. Kind of comes with the calling, if you will. I don't know what you guys view your occupations, if this is just a job. I doubt it is because if it was just a job then you probably wouldn't be here and you probably wouldn't be doing what you do. And some jobs come with different levels of stress. But you are not alone with your exposure to stress. Your colleagues are going through the same things and are facing similar stressors. You folks have really big -- again, really big and really hard jobs. Stress is expected and you are -- not to say this is what you should settle for. Stress is going to happen but we want to help you learn how to push through and to heal the stress and to cope with it. Manage. Manage is a good word. Manage it. So I want to start, continue our journey by discussing a little bit of terminology. I want to do this because sometimes it's nice to have a label to what you're experiencing. So let's talk about compassion fatigue first. So I have this yellow warning sign here to help illustrate this. Compassion fatigue is more of a general term that applies to anyone who suffers as a result of serving in a helping capacity. Whether it's their profession or not. Somebody mentioned in the chat, aging parents. Sometimes the compassion fatigue comes from just being a kid of aging parents and they need more help and sometimes that can wear on you. Babette Rothschild is a therapist who has spent her career studying stress, trauma, and how to treat it. She has published several works on burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary trauma. And her book, help for the helper, she states that compassion fatigue happens when you become any combination of mentally, emotionally, or physically exhausted from doing compassionate work. Caregivers of all sorts are at high risk for compassion fatigue. And that's the end of her quote. Compassion fatigue can be managed with self-care and scheduling, but what happens when you want to help everyone? Do you often put your needs aside to take care of others? I bet more than one of you would answer yes to that question. So let's do a little bit of a self-assessment. I'm going to read through these habits that are often experienced by people who have compassion fatigue. And I want you to just ask yourself honestly if you have noticed this in yourself. Again, this is a self-assessment. You don't need to share anything with the group, although you are very welcome to. If you learn anything or come to any realizations or ah-ha moments. Okay. So do you push aside your own feelings to prioritize those of others? Do you isolate and not seek support? Do you skip meals? Neglect hydration? Reduce or avoid breaks? Do you postpone normal time off such as weekends and holidays? Do you feel guilty about taking any time away for yourself? Do you work beyond the hours that you're actually paid for? This would be in your employment? Do you delay or stop taking vacation time? Reflect to yourself how many of these are your habits and how many times have you justified to yourself, oh, I should just save my time off anyway. Or less water means fewer trips to the bathroom. If you had noticed these same behaviors in a friend, family member, colleague, what would you advise them to do? I'm going to jump to the chat on that one. If anybody has any thoughts. If your colleague, you noticed, was skipping meals, not drinking enough water, avoiding breaks, really isolating, what would you tell them? Not what I do is what I would say to them. Advise people to take care of themselves. Take their vacation time. Self-care, oxygen mask scenario. We're going to be going over that in a couple of slides. Emily, be sure to take care of yourself. Leader's responsibility to not expect those things of their employees. You can't take care of anyone else if you're not taking care of yourself. I'd be having a little chitchat with my friend about taking care of themselves. Let's go to lunch. I love that. Okay. So what I am not seeing in this is telling your friend or your loved one or your colleague, maybe all of the above, maybe they check all of those boxes, to, oh, why don't you just push through the hunger? It will get better. You have two more hours left and then maybe you can go home. Or have you ever just tried sleeping less? No. I am not seeing any of that in this chat. We would never tell that to our friends, how how many times do we tell this to ourselves? Well, if I just take -- sleep an hour less I'll be able to get to the office earlier and take care of that before the day happens. Or stay up an extra hour. I am definitely the stay up an extra hour person because getting up any earlier than I get up just is not possible for me. But either way, still not enough sleep. Okay. So how do we combat compassion fatigue? How do we fix it? Well, as illustrated by this blue services sign, the answer to that is self-care. It sounds cliche, really cliche, but we need to take care of ourselves and we need to honor our needs. Self-care for each of us is different and it's more than just doing stuff I like. Self-care is engaging in activities that are restorative. They help to replenish our mental, physical, and emotional energy. There are different types of self-care to help restore the different areas of our life. These can include physical self-care, mental self-care, emotional, spiritual, social self-care, workplace, and even financial self-care. Different areas require different attention. We'll come back to these different types towards the end of this presentation. Okay. So sherlin brought up our oxygen masks. As professionals who work in human-related fields, we love helping people but we also need to make sure that we're not ignoring our own needs. Picture here we have a flight attendant holding up an oxygen mask. While it's been a while since I've been on a plane, I feel like I still have echoes of the flight safety speech bouncing around in my brain. The flight attendants always tell us in the event of the oxygen mask being deployed, put your own oxygen mask on first. Even before your own kids. Put it on before your own child. Okay. If you pass out, putting someone else's oxygen mask on before you have a chance to put your own on, then nobody gets to breathe. So we have to learn how to show ourselves the same compassion that we show others. If we do not take the time to take care of our own needs, then eventually no one's needs are going to be met. Now this brings us to what happens after our needs have gone ignored for extended periods of time. That is burnout. We experience burnout. So on the slide we have a drawing of a human head and where the brain should be is a low battery indicator. And then on this slide we have another road sign and this one is a road closed sign. Along with another great quote from Babette Rothschild. So when she discusses burnout in her book, help for the helper -- it's a good read. She states, quote, burnout occurs when inadequate self-care from any combination of risk factors becomes so extreme that your ability to function normally becomes severely compromised. Think of burnout as a potential any time someone is overloaded with responsibility to the point of mental and physical collapse. End quote. So what this description doesn't mention is whether or not burnout is job specific. Burnout is not limited to any particular job. Anyone, in any occupation, can experience it. Doctors, nurses, accountants, teachers, principals, parents, even kids, students. They can experience burnout any time they're overloaded with responsibility. So let's review some symptoms of burnout. As I read these, just reflect to yourself if any of these sound familiar. Physically drained, feeling overloaded, overworked, skipping out on social activities, sleep problems, waking up tired, dreaming about work, missing deadlines, little or no motivation to go to work, loss of enthusiasm and pleasure, loss of concentration, quality of work is inconsistent and declining, missing deadlines, disengaged, thinking often about quitting. Is any of this sounding familiar to you? If it is, you might be burned out a little or a lot. Okay. Do we have any questions? Okay. All right. So by this point you guys are probably feeling like you have heard this speech a lot before. Like, before. You probably even attended seminars, trainings, conferences where they talked about burnout, symptoms of burnout, and let's engage in self-care together. And we all make a resolution to engage in self-care together. Like you, that was my experience working as a therapist, working with therapists in the criminal justice field and also as a trauma therapist. There's a lot of overlap there. It was just kind of like, okay, cool. More self-care. We'll work on it. Move on. Right? It really started to make an impact for me when I understood more neurologically what is happening for -- inside my body. What's happening in our nervous system and when I'm experiencing these things. I want to talk a little bit about that next. This might be a concept for -- that some of you are familiar with and maybe you have heard of it. And this slide has a lot of information on it. So don't worry. We're going to break it all down in the next upcoming slides. This is just the overview. So here's a little chart that I created to illustrate this concept called window of tolerance. This concept is developed by a psychiatrist named Dan Segal and it's used to describe what he calls the optimal zone of arousal for everyday functioning. So if someone is operating outside of this zone, this window of tolerance, what they can tolerate, they are able to deal with the everyday ups and downs in life and manage their emotions. So that's kind of confusing phrasing. If they're operating within their window of tolerance, they're able to tackle the everyday ups and downs. So what I've created here is adapted from the national institute for clinical application of behavior medicine, just this kind of visual aid. We have five colored boxes arranged vertically. Each box or zone describes a state of arousal within that window of tolerance concept. At the top we have a red box, which is hyperarousal. Then below is a yellow/orange-colored box titled dysregulation. Then below that we have our green zone, which is our window of tolerance. And below that we have a blue zone, which is also dysregulation, just a different kind. Below that we have hypoarousal. Hypoarousal. Let's start with the green zone in the middle. That's going to kind of be our center. And, again, this is our optimal zone of arousal. If you're in this zone, you feel present, regulated, and safe. You have your ups and downs but overall life feels manageable. You feel in control. I also like to call this the okay zone. That's what it's called in the trauma resilience model. If we go up to the orange box, above green, we have one of the zones of dysregulation. This kind of dysregulation is the kind that leads to hyperarousal. So if you're in this zone, you're feeling some frustration and agitation increase. You might feel like you want to explode or completely isolate yourself. You're uncomfortable but you're still in control. If we go up to our hyperarousal zone, our red zone, when you're in this zone you feel overwhelmed, anxious, and out of control. This is where we experience that classic fight or flight response. We want to fight with someone. Every time I do this -- when I think of fighting, I think I've got to take off my earrings first. We've got to fight with someone or we prepare to run away. And then if we reorient ourselves, down to the green box again, our window of tolerance. And then we go down to the blue box, which is our other zone of dysregulation. When we experience this type of dysregulation, we feel like we're becoming increasingly unmotivated, maybe increasingly lethargic and we're close to shutting down or zoning out. But, again, we're still in control. Uncomfortable but still in control. Below the blue zone we have our purple zone of hypoarousal. This is where we feel physically numb or frozen, disconnected or zoned out. Our extremes are hyperarousal and hypoarousal. Let's dig into this zones a little more and see what we can learn about our nervous system. So our red zone, hyperarousal, I've used a volcano graphic to help illustrate. What happens when our brains and bodies are in this zone. Hyperarousal is also known as the fight, flight, or freeze response. It's when our sympathetic nervous system -- so our autonomic nervous system has two branches: Sympathetic and parasympathetic. It's an escalated state of activation and energy. This is when our nervous system kicks into high alert. Like our nervous system is detecting that there is a threat present, even if there's no threat present. We feel out of control of our emotions and our actions when we're in this state. Sometimes it kicks in when it's supposed to but sometimes it kicks in when it's not supposed to. We usually see that in somebody who has been exposed to a lot of stress, a lot of trauma, a lot of opportunities for dysregulation. Sop I've divided the symptoms into two categories: Things you might do, things you might feel. Feeling being physical or emotional. Things you might do when you're in hyperarousal include emotional outbursts, breaking things, name calling, fighting, lack of concentration, memory problems, or you freeze, like a deer in headlights. Things you might feel include anger or agitation, fear, anxiety, panic, overwhelmed, sweaty, tense, hot flashes, and insomnia. Okay. So take just a minute and think about those symptoms we discussed and think about maybe a time when you were experiencing this and what was your body experiencing? When you were in hyperarousal or close to hyperarousal. You're in that yellow/orangish box of dysregulation. What was that experience like? And just take note to yourself. Do you lose concentration, fear, panic? Are you like me and you physically get super hot? Okay. Let's talk about our purple zone, hypoarousal. So this is when our parasympathetic nervous system gets overloaded. It can impact your sleep and eating habits. It leaves you feeling emotionally numb. Again, I divided these into the things we do and the things we feel. So things you might do if you're experiencing hypoarousal. Stare is space, cancel plans, hide away. Struggle to keep up in conversations. You might engage in substance abuse or misuse. Binge-eating behaviors. You might experience a lack of concentration, and you're likely to ignore text messages and phone calls. You just kind of want to hide away. So when we experience -- and the things we might feel, you might feel depressed. You might feel nothing. You might feel numb. You might feel empty, frozen, and disconnected or dissociative. This is known as our shut down or collapse response. It can often be triggered by feeling threatened or recounting traumatic memories or maybe even feeling emotions associated with past trauma. And it can also be triggered by extreme stress. So, again, we've got a little cartoon here of a brain that's on fire and before we talk a little more in depth of our green zone, I want to bring up that Babette Rothschild quote again about burnout. Burnout occurs when inadequate self-care -- from any combination of risk factors -- becomes so extreme that your ability to function normally becomes severely compromised. Okay. This sure sounds a lot like hyper or hypoarousal, doesn't it? This is a nervous system response. It's not just based off of our environment, your nervous system is also telling you something too. Your body is telling you something. Okay. So let's move on to our green zone. When we're functioning in our window of tolerance, we feel balanced, we feel calm. We are relaxed. We feel in control. We got this! Like my little stick figure person says. I got this! We are able to take on those daily challenges and we feel okay about it. Doesn't mean that bad things don't happen. Doesn't mean that we don't have our moments of highs and lows, it just means that we feel like we can tackle them. We feel competent and confident in our ability to tackle them. So let's talk -- right here on this slide we have a graphic of a window. You can see clouds in the sky through it and the sunshine. And this is our window of tolerance. It's known as our resilience zone or our okay zone. Sometimes our window is bigger than others. Sometimes that window seems pretty tiny or maybe it's not even existent. On this slide to the left -- like right-left. To the left of the window we have a red stop sign and that is a list of some common things that shrink your window of tolerance. Things that are going to make that smaller. Poor sleep, physical illness, anxiety, trauma, poor nutrition, stress, grief, rejection. This is not an exhaustive list but these are a little bit of the really common things. On the right side of the window we have a green road sign that lists things that expand our window of tolerance. These things include gratitude, mindfulness, grounding exercises, self-care, and movement. A lot of lists that you see will say exercise. I don't like to say exercise because that makes it sound like it's a chore. It should be something that you enjoy. Mindful movement of your body. Find a way to move your body. Doesn't mean going to the gym for an hour every day if you dread going to the gym hour for a day. Don't do it. Just find a way to move your body. Neither of these lists are exhaustive and there are many more things that could go on either of them. I do want to take a quick second and check in with the chat to see if we have any comments or questions. 

>>Kate: Apart from needing the fiery brain in an emoji, no. 

>>Amelia: I know. Why do we not have a fiery brain emoji on our phones? Okay. All right. So on this slide I have a picture of a tiny window and then an arrow that points to a larger window. And I'd like to spend the rest of our time together talking about ways that we can expand our window of tolerance. Expanding your window of tolerance is more than just figerring out how to get through the next crisis or the next few minutes or the next few hours or I just got to make it to Friday afternoon and I'm good. Those skills are what we would call help now skills. The things that get us through the next few minutes. Those are help now skills. This is taken from the trauma resource model from the Trauma Resource Institute. If you were to do a Google search -- Google is your friend, everybody. Google stuff. Google five-minute meditations, three-minute grounding exercise for stress reduction or sleep meditation. Google is your friend. You can find so many cool resources on Google. If you were to Google "help now skills" you would find lots of articles written that include these basic ten -- I think I have nine on here -- things. But what this is it's an opportunity for you to shift your focus to new sensations. Because what's happening is happening in our body, right? We're starting to feel numb or disconnected or we're starting to feel really hot and irritated and agitated. The help now skill helps us to redirect that to something else. Something that feels more pleasant or more neutral in our body. So this list on here that I'm going to go through quickly -- because I'm running out of time. I'm sorry! Drinking a glass of water. Just take -- this is actually kind of important. So the goal of these activities is just to let your nervous system know that there's not a threat. That you're okay. And for the most part spending just 20 seconds -- and lots of research and things that have been done in recent years, spending just 20 seconds focusing on a positive or neutral sensation helps to reset your nervous system and let your brain know that you're okay, you're not going to die, and you can keep going. So if you're feeling to the point where you're just like, oh, I'm going to lose it. Take a second and reset your nervous system. Just spend 20 seconds and just notice the temperature of the room -- I'm going to work backwards. Notice the temperature in the room. How does it feel on your skin? Notice the sounds, either in the room or outside. If you're indoors, notice the furniture. Touch the surface. Notice is it hard, soft, rough, rigid? Name six colors that you see in the room or that you see around you. Count backwards from 20 as you walk around the room again. Moving your body is really good. Walk and pay attention to the movement in your arms and your legs. Feel how your feet connect to the ground -- I'm in a wheelchair so my feet don't connect to the ground, my chair does. But it feels different when I -- different, depending on the ground I'm on. Push your hands against the wall or door slowly and notice your muscles pushing. Just find a wall and just push. Look around the room. Pay attention to anything that catches your eye. And then drinking a glass of water, juice, or tea. Also, cold really helps too. When I'm feeling -- like, I'm getting to the top of my -- I don't often go low. I go high. My definitely go more to hyperarousal. If I am feeling this way, I wash my hands in cold water and cold really, really helps to kind of reset that. And then just to remember that these skills are focusing on sensations. How does it feel on your body? Soft, hard, pleasant, neutral, unpleasant, squishy, bumpy? Whatever. Focus on that sensation where it's hot, cold. Okay. So here -- so those are some help now skills. And then I want to talk about longer things, things that we do to establish a routine, like a wellness routine. So those are things that help us in the moment. Habits -- everyday habits or weekly habits that helps take care of you is really what helps to expand your window of tolerance. So on this slide I have a pie chart with eight different areas of wellness. This is called the wellness wheel. You can, again, Google. There's lots of things out there and there's even cute little worksheets where you can grade yourself on each slice of the pie and how you feel like you're doing and set up your goals. We have occupational, physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, environmental, social, and financial wellness. Okay. And then I'm going to skip over the descriptions for each of those because we're running out of time. But there's, you know, you can imagine what occupational wellness, environmental wellness. That one is a little tricky. That can be like your environment as a whole. Recycle. But also specifically like your workplace. Your workplace, your home, or your car, the places you live and spend your time. What can you do to make that a more -- how can you improve that and add that to your wellness routine. Okay. So it's important to really reflect on these. Determine where you're at and maybe where you're out of balance. Maybe you feel like your home is really perfect and everything that you need but maybe your work space can use a little bit of work. Could use a little bit of adjustments to make it work the best for you. Okay. So tips to expand your window. Again, these are things that you can implement that hopefully we can implement on a daily basis or a weekly basis. Again, not all of these are things you do every day or every week, but a wellness routine. I feel like I'm starting to talk like a caveman. Wellness routine. So, we'll start with the top left: Color. Cook your favorite meal. Make a cup of tea. Eat regularly. Stay hydrated. I say eat regularly because for some people they feel pretty good if they do the two meals a day and snacks. Or maybe you're three meals a day and some snacks. Whatever. Make sure you're fueling your body. Stay hydrated. What that looks like is going to be different for everybody. Brush your teeth. Gratitude list. Write in a journal. Again, doesn't have to be every day but maybe you set a goal to write in your journal twice a week. Breathing exercises. Go to therapy! Eat three meals a day, if that's something that's important to you, if that's a goal you have, make that part of your routine. Seven to nine hours of sleep daily. Meditation. That can look like lots of things. Make your bed. Read. Spend time with family. Say five things that you love about yourself. Affirmations, so good. And, again, moving your body in a way that feels good for you. So my challenge to you all is take a look at this list -- I know there's a handout. I don't know if we can also -- and the handout is kind of like the words. But I also welcome anybody if they want the slides or if you guys are going to post the slides, that's totally fine. I kind of -- there's a lot of information on each of the slides but I kind of created it so that this could be a resource for people to go back and look at and kind of see what they want to work on. But my challenge for you guys today is just to pick one. Pick something that you could integrate into your wellness routine today or this week. Something that seems manageable for you. So maybe it's, you know, three days this week I want to write down three things I'm grateful for. Or I want to take ten minutes at the end of my day to read. Whatever that's going to look like. Something that's manageable for you. And read something that's, you know, stimulates your brain in a different way than maybe something you would read for work. So something that you're not already doing. That's my challenge for you guys today. Okay. Sorry. I'm kind of cutting close on time. Does anybody have any questions? Any thoughts, concerns? 

>>Kate: Not yet. 

>>Amelia: Okay. Whew! Kind of one of those things where I don't know if I over prepared or underprepared. I was going to end with a loving kindness meditation or a meta meditation. Those are great. They're probably my favorite kind and you can find recordings or YouTube or Spotify. There's playlists of meditations. Mindfulness is a really, really big part of self-care, I think. More and more research is showing that not only the emotional and mental health benefits but also the physical benefits of practicing some form of mindfulness. And so even if it's just a few minutes every day. So there's lots of things and resources out there.