Balancing Act Mastering Stress and Well being with Isabelle Tierney

I think for any caregiver, there's burnout. I think in the service profession, it is really easy to get burnt out. I was seeing eight clients a day, five days a week before I burnt out, and I can't even imagine what that's like anymore.

You also identified just the experience of having to kind of be supermom and the correlation to how that actually impacted your spousal relationship.

I remember my brother, who is a psychiatrist. He's like, I don't even know how you get out of bed and in the morning.

Welcome back to Innovate and Overcome. Today we are joined by Isabel Tierney. She's a licensed marriage and family therapist, stress management expert, and an international speaker. She holds two master's degrees as well as a certification in energy healing and authentic relating. After running a successful therapy practice for more than 10 years, Isabel's journey took a turn, and burnout led her to the loss of her health and her marriage. In response, she developed a transformational methodology for less stress, more aliveness, more inspiration, and more joy. Welcome to the show, Isabel. So excited to have you here.

I'm really happy to be here, and I can't wait for our conversation now.

This process, running a business, first off on a practice in the area that you work in itself is a. Is. It takes a toll on people you're meeting with, people you're listening to, fundamentally their issues, their troubles, their problems, helping them get to terms with those and try to move past them, and spending 10 years doing that, I can see how that might lead to burnout. In fact, I would imagine it's probably somewhat common to a degree in your industry.

It is very common. And what I was working. So I moved to Boulder in 2003, became licensed as a marriage and family therapist, and then worked with eating disorders was one of my specialties. So marriage and family therapy and eating disorders, and I don't know how much you know about eating disorders. One in 10 people who gets the diagnosis of anorexia dies. It is actually the highest mental health death of any mental health disease. And so I was literally seeing clients on the verge of death all the time. I would have hospitals calling me from all over the country to say, hey, can you take this client? Can you take this client? So that. And then couples, you know, even though couples. I love couples work, you know, couples rarely come to you when they're doing well and just. They just want to get better. You know, they usually come in crisis, and usually one of the member of the couple has been dragged there and really doesn't want to be there. So, yeah, it was a lot. And, you know, I think for any caregiver, there's burnout, people who take care of people who are sick, people who are therapists, teachers. I mean, I think in the service profession, if we're really committed and really want to create impact, it is really easy to get burnt out. And if we're people pleasers, too, which many of us in the service profession.

Are, I can see that. And it's so interesting what you share about the eating disorders. I was unaware of that. And so I think that's very helpful information for our viewers to know and quite fascinating. And so I can. Again, just thinking through that, putting. Trying to put myself in your shoes to some degree, and being around that experience on a regular, repetitious basis, getting the phone calls from the hospital. Can you help this person? This person is in dire need, dire straits, and being called to do that type of work. You know, when you see people going through major challenges. And I have a neighbor who's a amazing guy. He also works in a hospital industry, and he tells me the stories about individuals that come in and the things he has to see on a daily basis. And it's really, really impactful. I know for the many servicemen and women who also work in as first responders, I mean, they're impacted by a lot of these things. And so how is it that you were able to last even 10 years before you reach burnout in this business?

Yeah, it's a great question. So in my history, because I grew up with a lot of trauma as a child, that's the way I learned to cope with my trauma. I developed, like many good girls, an eating disorder. I had everything on the outside. You know, I got the two master's degrees. I went to a really incredible boarding school. I had all the things. But I struggled with food and body image, and I struggled with bulimia. And so my own healing journey really informed my desire, as many of us. Right. Our wounds are often what we end up helping people with. That's why I wanted to work with women. It was mostly women. It was like 90% women who had eating disorders as well. Cause I had found a way. I had found a way, and that's why hospitals were calling me, because I was not working unless they were seriously sick and medically dangerous. I was working from a place of acceptance, like, oh, you're using this coping skill, which is really not working for you. Can we see this other coping skill to make you feel better? But I'm not gonna get rid of the one you've got until we find better ones. So I was never pushy, I was never shaming, I was never in fear. And so they were not used to it. They come into my office thinking I was gonna get rid of their favorite coping tool, and I'd be like, no, unless you're medically dangerous, let's wait. Let's see if we can find other ways to cope in life. And that's why my work worked so much. So I was very passionate about healing that population because few people are really trained to work with that population.

That makes a lot of sense. And so when did you start to recognize and see, you know, the. I guess the culmination of the work, of the activity you were doing was beginning to take a toll on you.

Personally, I think it's chicken and the eggs. So there were two things that happened to me, which I think I say in the. In the cv. The. The what? The bio you read. So Brian and I went through a divorce. And so, you know, a divorce is never a one reason thing. Right. There were a bunch of things in our. In our family in that were not working. But I know without a doubt that my having so little bandwidth at the end of the day and on the weekends for him because I was always taking care of people who had more need than him. Right. And it was either my clients or my children. I had three children. And I, because of the abuse I grew up with, I, like, swore that I was gonna be the best mom. And I really was like, you know, my kids just came to visit last week and, like, I did a really good job. So guess who was the one who got nothing of me? None of me. There was my husband. And so that was one of the piece. There was also, you know, other puzzle pieces. I want to keep those private. So that was one. And then I kept noticing I was exhausted. You know, like, I would last like two hours and then I'd be so exhausted. And I remember going the medical route and no, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine. And finally I went to an alternative practitioner who made me do a cortisol test with saliva. And I remember getting the results, and I basically was out of cortisol. So cortisol comes in order to, you know, when we need stress, right? When we need to engage in a stressful thing. Well, if you overuse it and you're chronically stressed, your body stops even having any. And I had, like, nothing left, which is why I Was so tired. And I remember my brother, who is a psychiatrist, so he knows numbers. He's like, I don't even know how you get out of bed in the morning. And it was so helpful because I didn't understand.

Interesting that again, your brother psychiatrist, you know, the testing you did to help really get clear and discover what some of the underlying, I guess, medical aspects that were happening. And so. But you also identified just the experience of having to kind of be super mom and the reasons for that that were really important to you and the correlation to how that actually impacted your spousal relationship, which, I mean, I can totally understand. It just makes sense that that would happen. And I suspect there's similarities for a lot of people who go through similar challenges.

Yeah, I mean, we have so many things, all of us, we need to take care of. And how the heck do we prioritize those things? And so it seems like dying clients, children, although I probably would put children first. I don't know. It was that taking care of a household, having a social life, you know, exercising, because I was always. Because of my former eating disorder, I always was it, you know, who like the husband. Oh, cats, dogs, you know, it's like. And the husband is like, well, he's a grownup. He's not. He doesn't have an eating disorder. He's not a child. He's fine. You know, so. So we make assumptions and. And we make assumptions that, you know, I made assumption that he needed less of me than he. Than the relationship needed. You know, we, you know, this. We need to cultivate relationships, especially when we have all those stresses. The relationship should be. The home should be the place we get revitalized in or renourished from. And that was not what Brian and I did with other. Wow.

And so when, you know, how did you start to really come to realization of that? And I guess what were some of the first steps that you began to take to see about creating self repair, I guess in what you were starting to come to terms with and identify.

The first piece was nutrition. And so I started, you know, taking a lot of supplements to repair my nervous system, because my nervous system was completely shot. And then, you know, Brian and I, we divorced. But by the time we did it, and I think that was part of already my starting to heal. We did it really consciously. So thankfully, we did not do it from the place in which we initially decided to do the divorce, which was very stressful, lots of conflict. But we really refused to do that for our children. We refused to do that for ourselves. So even in the act of divorcing, even though that sounds like it's an extreme stressful thing, I mean, we had dinner the night before we got our divorce papers, and when we went to court, we had a cup of coffee afterwards. We had tried so hard to, you know, to fight less and to solve our conflict, but I think both of us came from such stressful places. He because of his own issues, me because of my own issues. We just were not regulated, you know, that we're regulated enough to be able to not take it out on each other, the stress that we were experiencing. So I had a year where we were, you know, we really only stayed apart a year and then we started repairing again. But it was actually really good year. I started really taking care of myself. I didn't have the conflict that was going on all the time. So that really settled me a lot. I actually did a one woman show in New York during that year. And I stopped working so hard. I mean, I had to really make some very clear decisions about what I gave my priorities to. And so I was seeing eight clients a day, five days a week before I burnt out. I can't even imagine what that's like anymore. Like these days, like three to four clients, you know, also do all, also a lot of other work, but like actually really three clients, one on one, which is different than the rest of the work I do. It's maximum. Like, it's maximum because I, I didn't realize how much, how present I have to be to people. And even though it's invigorating, it's also, if you do it eight times a day, hearing trauma, very, very depleting too. So time seeing less clients, nutrition space. I had never been alone, right, because I'd gone to college, met Brian at 22. So I, that year I was alone, also living at home alone. My kids were out while one child was home. And so all that started settling me and meditation, you know, and all, all the things that we do to take care of ourselves and not working out to lose weight and, you know, like working out to actually settle my nervous system, not to do more, which was.

Also a big piece of, wow, incredible. The full gamut. And we're going to hear more about this incredible journey as we come back after these important messages.