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Episode 15 - Burnout Is A Real Thing In Grad School with Gabrielle Juliano-Villani
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From Intern to Entrepreneur is the podcast for counseling graduate students (and other grad students in mental health fields) to start planning their journey to private practice while they're still in graduate school! Host, Cori White, started planning her journey while she was still in her graduate program and it paid off BIG to start planning EARLY.
In this episode of From Intern to Entrepreneur, Cori interviews Gabrielle Juliano-Villani about her area of expertise - BURNOUT!
More about Gabrielle:
Gabrielle Juliano-Villani is a licensed clinical social worker, consultant, coach, entrepreneur and educator based in Sarasota, Fl. She has been in the mental health field for over a decade specializing in stress, chronic health conditions, and trauma. After scaling her group practice to 7 figures and realizing her own burnout in 2021, she sold her thriving group practice and made it her mission to educate others on the impact stress has on our everyday lives. Gabrielle pulls from her experience as an EMDR and Polyvagal Informed therapist to utilize mind/body approaches to help others implement everyday strategies to manage stress and live their best lives. Gabrielle is an international speaker, retreat leader, and has been featured in Authority Magazine, The Daily Om, Bustle, and the Everyday Woman TV Network. When she's not working, Gabrielle is teaching Zumba, surfing, or reading a psychological thriller at the beach
Connect with her:
tiktok.com/@gabriellejulianovillani
youtube.com/@gabriellejulianovillani
Gabriellejulianovillani.com
Medicareconsultingfortherapists.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriellejulianovillani/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/createanabundantgrouppractice
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Licensing Advice
00:00:00
Speaker
This is from intern to entrepreneur, the podcast for counseling and therapy graduate students who want to start planning their journey to private practice while they're still in grad school. I'm your host Corey White. And within three years of graduating from my master's program, I had a six figure thriving private practice in large part because I started planning my path while I was still in grad school.
00:00:21
Speaker
This podcast is full of stories and information meant to give you ideas about how you can carve your own path to the therapy career that you want. Please note that when you're listening to this podcast, licensure laws and requirements vary from state to state. So check with your state board about what you can and can't do on your journey. And without further ado, enjoy this episode of From Intern to Entrepreneur.
Guest Introduction: Gabrielle Giuliano Vellani
00:00:46
Speaker
Hey there grad students. This is episode 15 of From Intern to Entrepreneur and today I'm interviewing Gabrielle Giuliano Vellani who I know personally because I met her at a therapist retreat back in I think it was May of 2022. I know I always preach about the importance of going to events and making connections wherever you are but this is one of those stories where
00:01:11
Speaker
I met Gabrielle and she's just awesome. She's a light. She has so much great energy and I'm so grateful to have her as a contact of mine and as someone who I can call on to come talk to y'all. So network, meet people, you know, that's what my whole shtick here.
00:01:28
Speaker
Gabrielle is a licensed clinical
Gabrielle's Business Journey
00:01:31
Speaker
social worker. She's a consultant, she's a coach, she's an entrepreneur and an educator, and she's currently based in Sarasota, Florida. She has been in the mental health field for over a decade and she specializes in stress, chronic health conditions, and trauma. This is one of the coolest things about Gabrielle's story. So she grew her business to over seven figures, which for you non-math whizzes out there, that means like over a million dollars.
00:01:54
Speaker
And then she sold her practice. I did not even realize until when I heard this that you could sell your private practice and make money from it. And she did it. So she sold her private practice and made a bunch of dollars from it. That's amazing. But since then, she's been doing a lot of work primarily around burnout. And that's what she's here on the podcast today to talk about. If you're listening into this in real time, it's November 16th. So a lot of you are probably in the really hard part of your semester.
00:02:21
Speaker
And so this will be a really good time for you to listen up, perk your ears and learn about burnout so that you can prevent it from happening to you. And if it's already happening to you, you can start to dig yourself out of
Community and Resources
00:02:34
Speaker
that hole. So before we get to the interview, though, just a reminder that if you're not in our from intern to entrepreneur Facebook group,
00:02:41
Speaker
You should get your butt there and connect with all of the other grad students who want to be entrepreneurs one day or who maybe are already entrepreneurs. And also, if you're interested in my 2024 Therapist Goalbook, go to my website, www.frominterntoentrepreneur.com. You can click a button and then you'll get updated when it is ready and released.
00:03:01
Speaker
Okay, but let's get to this interview because I really want you to hear the things that Gabrielle has to say about her journey and about burnout. So grad students, meet Gabrielle.
Career Transition and Growth
00:03:17
Speaker
Hi Gabrielle, thank you for being here on the podcast with me today. This is so exciting.
00:03:23
Speaker
I am happy to be here and I know that we have been trying to do this for a while and I am glad that it's finally happened and we have reconnected.
00:03:31
Speaker
Yes, and I feel like that's 2023, that's life. And so yeah, who cares how long it took? We're here now and this is awesome. I want you to start though by telling the grad students that are listening a little bit about your journey because your journey is very interesting and has had a lot of different growth points and change points. So I think it'll be interesting for them to hear such a unique story.
00:03:54
Speaker
Yeah, and my story is kind of unique. I never thought it would end this way, but here we are. So I am a licensed clinical social worker. I have my BSW and my MSW. And I started in this field actually working in child protective services, got burnt out there.
00:04:15
Speaker
And then I moved to working for Humana, the insurance company doing in-home care management with their Medicare Advantage people. And I really loved that job. However, you know, they didn't really see it as essential and I knew that a workforce reduction was happening.
00:04:33
Speaker
So I was kind of at this point where I was like, what do I want to do? I don't want to go back and work in child protective services. I had also worked in victim's advocacy in the past, and I loved that, but it didn't pay enough. And one of my coworkers, who has actually become a very close friend and a mentor of mine at Humana, was like, I'm going to start a private practice. You should do the same thing.
00:04:58
Speaker
And I was like, well, that sounds fun. I always want to work for myself, but how do you bill insurance and like, how do people find you? And I didn't really have an entrepreneurial mindset at that time, but I knew that it sounded exciting and I like a challenge. So I quit Humana. I started a private practice working solely with Medicare clients. That was my niche. And I filled up very quickly because of that specific niche and
00:05:27
Speaker
Once again, when somebody in my life was like, why don't you hire somebody because your caseload is full and that'd be a good way for you to scale. And again, I was like, I don't know how to do this. You know, I didn't even know like how to get an EIN and like, how do you pay someone? But I figured it out and I hired one person. She got full and that went well. So I hired another. And before I knew it, I was running a group practice of 15.
00:05:54
Speaker
and got burnt out again for the second time in a very deep, different way. And I decided to sell my practice in 2021. So I had scaled it to seven figures. I was done with it. I sold my group practice in 21. And now I've completely pivoted and I do a lot of
Burnout and Pivoting Careers
00:06:15
Speaker
things. I'm multi-passionate. I help people move beyond the one-to-one model.
00:06:20
Speaker
I help folks scale their practices at other income streams. I also do training, consulting, and coaching on burnout prevention using polyvagal theory. And I run retreats. I do speaking engagements. I have an Etsy. I think that's most of it. So that's where I'm at now. That's a lot. And it seems like there were different points in your journey where you recognized, okay, like I've done a lot of this. I've done enough of this.
00:06:49
Speaker
I've, my mental health has had enough of this and now it's time to pivot. So can I ask what gives you like the guts or what is it that allows you to pivot? That is a great question because I can see that now. However, you know, when you're in the middle of it, it's really difficult to see that. And the first couple of times that I went through changes, I feel like they were kind of forced upon me.
00:07:17
Speaker
But this last one, when I sold my group practice, that was a really big pivoting point for me because I remember the day when I woke up and I was like,
00:07:27
Speaker
Not only do I not want to do this anymore, but I don't want to live like this. I had just gotten so used to going through the motions and just being really angry and really short and just very irritable, among a lot of other things. And I was like, I don't want to live my life like this. That doesn't sound fun, right? I don't want to wake up hating everything and yelling at my husband and being annoyed with my staff. That's not how I want to live.
00:07:55
Speaker
And so obviously, at that moment, I had already gotten so deep into it. But now I have done so much work, it's been almost three years through all of that regulating my own nervous system, understanding myself better, I got diagnosed with ADHD a year ago, and that's really helped me
00:08:14
Speaker
and understanding like these are the margins and the things that I need to set in my life and to work a certain way so that I am doing my best work. And another thing that's really important that I want people to hear too is I ask myself often, like, what is my why? What are my values? And is what I do every single day aligned with those?
00:08:38
Speaker
That's a really great question. I'm going to have to like make a little meme of that with the audience and then you can do something with it. But that's an important question as I think that's important for grad students to ask that when they're going through their program. I think it's important for them to ask that when they pick a internship and practicum site, when they take their first job, if they decide to start a practice, those things have to really be aligned in order for you to not be burnt out or feel fulfilled in your job.
00:09:06
Speaker
And that can change. I imagine if you asked yourself that question when you started your practice, the answer is probably yes, there's alignment there. But we grow and we change and our professions do. I know I thought when I started as a counselor that I would just be doing one-to-one work and that's what a counselor did. I didn't realize that there were other paths or ways to grow or ways to shift. So yeah.
00:09:32
Speaker
Thank you. And I was in the same boat, which is, you know, I appreciate you sharing that too, because that's what I always thought also. And I've told this story before, but I'll say it again, that when I graduated with my MSW, I told my advisor, like, I need to make at least $40,000 a year because
00:09:53
Speaker
got all the student loan debt. And now I know everybody laughs at that. But at that time, it was different. It was like 10 years ago. And I said, I need to make 40K a year. And she started laughing. And she said, good luck. And I thought the same thing. I was like, I'm just going to have to be miserable working as a caseworker in child protective services, making real shit money for the rest of my life. And you don't. We can do so many things. And there are so many different paths to doing that.
00:10:23
Speaker
And if you want to scale beyond one to one work, you can. And if you love it, you can do that too, or you can change it. And you can make things work how you want them to fit into your life. Because if 10 years ago somebody said you would be working whenever you want and wherever you want and traveling the world and doing retreats and getting paid for it, I would have absolutely never thought that would be the case. But that's why you never say never.
00:10:53
Speaker
as a transition to our topic of burnout, it seems like a lot of the decisions that you've made to pivot have come from the place of you being burnout. And rather than just quitting the profession completely or quitting, I don't know if you identify as a counselor anymore or not, but you're still in the mental health sphere, right? You've made switches and pivot.
00:11:19
Speaker
Let's talk about burnout. First, I want to check in with this because I've been thinking this about burnout and I'm, because you're a burnout expert, I just want to check in with you. I feel like burnout has become kind of a watered down word or like almost like self care in a lot of ways where people kind of throw it around without really understanding what it is. It kind of sounds like it's a, or it kind of feels to me like it's like a catchall for like, I'm stressed.
Understanding Burnout vs Stress
00:11:43
Speaker
And I don't know if you've experienced that too.
00:11:45
Speaker
I have and I love that you're bringing this up too because I feel the same way that people are like, Oh, I feel so burnt out right now. I'm like super burnt out. I'm so fried and
00:11:56
Speaker
If anybody's listening to this, I will tell you, burnout and stress are not the same things. They're besties and they hang out together, but they are totally separate. Stress is really too much and hyperactivity and going, going, going, and burnout is the exact opposite of that. It is being numb and detached and dissociated.
00:12:18
Speaker
and depressed. It's like deep, dark apathy. And stress is like kind of anxiety. So they are totally different. And I appreciate you saying that because it kind of has been watered down. And again, people are kind of throwing it around. And if you have been through true burnout, it's horrific. It's horrible. You're basically just in a deep, dark depressive episode and you're
00:12:44
Speaker
And it takes years to come out of like, I mean, mine probably started in 2020 and it's the end of 2023 now. And I finally feel like I'm sort of on the other side of it. So it's not something that we want to throw around because it's serious. Do you think that people confuse depression and burnout? Like, do you think people go feel burnout and go, Oh, I must be depressed based on your definition?
00:13:10
Speaker
Sometimes there's definitely an overlap. And I think what happens a lot too is that obviously being burnt out is a risk factor for developing depression. And oftentimes by the time you really figure out that you are burnt out, you might already be in a depressive episode. So those are important things to differentiate because burnout really will just have like the difference really is that burnout just has negative thoughts about the thing you're burnt out about.
00:13:39
Speaker
But if you're depressed, you're going to have that low self esteem, possible suicidal ideation. Like the negative thoughts are about everything, but the burnout is really just about whatever you're burnt out about. And so because this is a podcast for grad students,
00:13:57
Speaker
What should they know about what burnout might look like in their grad programs? Because I imagine that a lot of students get burned out. I think that I was burned. I don't know that I had the language for that. Yeah. I started having panic attacks. I had my first panic attack in grad school. I didn't know what it was.
00:14:16
Speaker
And I think there was a lot for me of just getting by. I think I got up and I did the things because I felt like I didn't have a choice, but I know toward the end of my internship, I was putting all of my energy into showing up for my clients. And then I was like a dead fish in the rest of my life. So like flopping around, right? When I show up in my internship and then the rest of it, I'm just like,
00:14:44
Speaker
not aware, not present. So what do you think about burnout in grad school? I was thinking about this before actually when we before we got on the podcast because I knew that we were going to talk about this and I feel the same way. I developed really bad habits in grad school and very similar to you. I was like pushing through. I somehow was doing my internship
00:15:10
Speaker
doing school and I was working part time and I would also pick up extra shifts that I got paid for at my internship site also. And I have no idea how I did that. And I remember like, this actually might've been in my, I can't remember if this is my BSW or my MSW now, but I remember I was at the domestic violence shelter that I interned at.
00:15:33
Speaker
and there was a critical incident. And it was the first time I had experienced that. And I totally had this very reactive fight or flight response. And it was very telling. Like when I look back on it now, I'm like, obviously I knew what was happening there. And I just kind of came back and everybody was like, are you okay? I'm like, yep, I'm fine. And I just kept pushing through. And those habits just kind of continued as I continued to work in very stressful environments.
00:16:04
Speaker
And I think that happens a lot because in grad school, you're doing a lot of things. It's a lot. It is very stressful and difficult. And I even still supervise some grad students and I'm shocked at what they tell me what they're doing every day. They're like, I'm working and I'm interning and I have a family and we are foster parents and it's a lot. And so I would just really encourage you to start having good habits now.
True Self-Care
00:16:33
Speaker
I think we talk about self care more and we're talking about it differently, which I appreciate. And so the slowing down and knowing that those habits that you create in grad school will probably follow you. And it's okay to say no, and it's okay to set those boundaries. And I don't know, I'm sharing this again, because maybe somebody will resonate with it. But I felt like
00:16:56
Speaker
I was young and I was the intern and I was learning. And so I never said no to anything. And I didn't know how to set boundaries because if somebody asked me to do something, I was like, I'm just gonna do it. It's part of the job. And that just continued throughout my life and career and caused more problems.
00:17:15
Speaker
And you had mentioned self-care when you were just talking right now. I also have a big beef with the word self-care. Well, not in general, but the way that people use it is very like, oh, it's like bubble baths and get your nails done. And those things, of course, could be self-care, but self-care has also been watered down. It's so much deeper than that. It's not just a one-off thing.
00:17:39
Speaker
When you say self-care, what does self-care look like when you're going through a grad program? What's the difference between getting your nails done and actually doing deep self-care work that is habit forming? My favorite question. So to me, self-care is understanding your nervous system and regulating your nervous system. And I wish that somebody would have taught me that 10, 15 years ago.
00:18:08
Speaker
Instead of telling me, oh, social workers and counselors have a really high rate of burnout, you need to take care of yourself. And nobody really explaining how or what that meant until it was too late. Like a lot of the things that I had actually learned that helped me were after I had really severe
00:18:27
Speaker
trauma, secondary trauma with clients. And I was seeing a therapist that the county that I was working at contracted with. And he gave me some helpful tips that I was like, it's too late now. I wish I would have known this before. But to me, that is true self care is understanding what you need because we're all different to take care of yourself and to protect your own energy and to regulate your emotions because
00:18:53
Speaker
we're gonna get triggered, right? Our clients trigger us, we know this. And we don't like, you know, get born with a little printout of like, here's all the things that are gonna trigger you throughout your life, make sure you avoid them. Like that's not how that works. So we need to do the deeper work of understanding us and how we manage those triggers and how we can, what's the word I'm thinking of? Like protect our energy and get back down to our baseline is I guess how I would say that.
00:19:23
Speaker
And when you describe yourself as someone who does burnout work using polyvagal theory, is that how you would say it? Yeah. Is that what you're talking about when you say polyvagal theory? Is that what you're talking about, work around the nervous system?
00:19:37
Speaker
Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Okay. So can you tell people a little bit about, you know, one of the things I try to do on this podcast is that when terms come up, that grad students might not have been exposed to at this point, whether it's because they're in a specialized program, you know, I was in a marriage and family program. So like, even when you say nervous system, I knew the nervous system was a thing. And I don't know if in clinical mental health programs, they're talking about this too. I knew that was a thing, but I didn't really understand it.
00:20:05
Speaker
until in the last few years when I've been doing more education around trauma. So even nervous system, what does that mean to you? Well, what does that mean? That's not really up for interpretation, I guess. And then polyvagal, define these things so people know what you're talking about in case it's the first time they're hearing it.
00:20:24
Speaker
I mean, I didn't hear it until a couple of years ago. So it was not talked about in my grad program at all. And I had an adult mental health concentration and we just, we kind of like skated over trauma. It was like, Oh, yep, you know, a little bit of that, but back to CBT. So I definitely did not learn about that at
Polyvagal Theory and Trauma Education
00:20:45
Speaker
all. I learned about it when I got trained in EMDR and then further when I got consulting.
00:20:52
Speaker
with my EMDR consultant. And what else? There was something else I was going to say about that. Oh, so this kind of ties into it is I spoke at the Colorado Victims Association conference a couple weeks ago, and I did, you know, a talk on burnout prevention using polyvagal theory. And I said somewhere in the summary about it, that self care is more than bubble baths. And somebody who reached out to me afterwards, she's a new
00:21:19
Speaker
MSW grad, and she wants me to come to her agency to do this talk. And she was like, that little line is what got me. And she was like, I just learned so much. And same thing, I had never heard about polyvagal theory. So
00:21:31
Speaker
What this is, is I know it sounds really sciency and scary, but it's a theory that was developed by Steven Porges. He is a psychiatrist and I mean, we all have a nervous system. We all have a vagus nerve. There's tons of research about that. And Dr. Porges, he rediscovered these two other pathways in our automatic or autonomic nervous system. And all this to say that our nervous system and our body is
00:22:01
Speaker
responding to our environment externally and internally and making decisions to either keep us safe or you know if there is a threat of danger to respond in that way. And so we have three stages. The first one is often called safe and connected arrest and digest but as we maybe there's something stressful that happens we move into fight or flight and I wanted to say that because I know everybody
00:22:30
Speaker
has heard of that, right? Like we all know what that means and what that feels like usually. And there's also a third stage that comes after fight or flight and that's freeze and that's where burnout lives. And so this is important to me and why I talk about this is because everybody has a nervous system. If you're listening to this right now, your nervous system is responding to what I'm saying and what Cory is saying, even if you don't know it.
00:22:53
Speaker
So it happens subconsciously. And once we slow down and become aware of it, we can understand it better. And some people will say, you can change it and you can change your responses. I really like to think of it more as just understanding ourselves better and understanding our responses better so we can do whatever we need to do to either mitigate those responses or just again, have a better understanding of us and how we work.
00:23:21
Speaker
Yeah, why don't they teach that to us in our grad program? I wish they would. And you know what, that's, I think that's changing a little bit. Somebody reached out to me two months ago and she's teaching at USC and she is teaching this like experiential social work class. And so she actually had me come and talk about polyvagal theory because they're talking about
00:23:43
Speaker
like energy healing and somatic experiencing. And so I appreciate that somewhere out there, they're starting to sprinkle this stuff in a little bit. You might be right about that because I remember when I was going through my program that it was like,
00:23:58
Speaker
there was like a trauma class. And that's where trauma got talked about. And in looking back in hindsight, I'm like, what like there was an optional class should be operated in like every corner of a program because now that I work with clients, it's like, that's what people are coming in with.
00:24:14
Speaker
Well, they're coming in with other things, but at the base of what almost everybody I see has is some type of trauma that is deeply impacting them. And I will say that my more recent interns do tend to have a better understanding of that than I did when I was at their stage. So I hope that by people like you continuing to talk about it, that it starts getting into seeping into the water a bit more.
00:24:42
Speaker
what do you want people to do with the information? So okay, great. We understand that there's burnout. We understand that polyvagal theory can help you with it. But like, what do you do with it? Yeah, also a great question. I want people to use it. I want you to, you know, either do consulting with me, go on YouTube and look at Deb Dana and Ariel Schwartz and or read a book like do something to
00:25:10
Speaker
understand deeper about what I'm talking about here, because it impacts you every moment of every day. And once you start to understand yourself and your own nervous system, there are activities you can do to do that, by the way, either on your own, if it's safe, or with a therapist or with a coach. And those tools will help you understand you. So I know, for example, like when, like I'm introverted,
00:25:37
Speaker
And when I have to do public speaking, which I force myself to do all the time because I love a challenge, I get super nervous. And I need some of that fight or flight energy to push me to do my presentation. But I know that after that, I'm in my freeze response and I'm spent. And so I even said this in Costa Rica when I was speaking about this, I was like,
00:26:01
Speaker
Uh, nobody come up to me after this. Like if you see me at the pool with my headphones on and my sunglasses on, it means that I'm decompressing. And so no offense to any of you lovely people. We can meet up again tomorrow or later, have a drink at the bar. But like after this, I need to come down. And so I know that when I'm in my freeze response, it forces me to rest. I know that I need to rest. I know
00:26:27
Speaker
that when I'm in fight or flight, I know what it feels like. I know what I need to do to manage that. And it's not about forcing myself to not be anxious. It's about I got to sit with this anxiety for a minute. And here are some things that help me do that.
Managing Personal Energy
00:26:40
Speaker
It's so interesting to hear you say that because something that I've noticed is when I hold workshops or even when I go to like a like a vendor event, right, where so where I'm representing my counseling practice and I'm talking to people.
00:26:57
Speaker
I do get a little bit nervous about those things, not in a way that it stops me, but I also have recently noticed that when I'm done with those things, I have all these plans about, okay, once I get home from the event, I'm going to immediately reach out to all the people that I met. And I just like crash. Yeah. And I have been really curious about that recently. Like, man, like I just know that about myself. But as you're saying this, I'm like, no, that's what's happening for me. Yes, we're on the same page.
00:27:23
Speaker
Oh, that's so wild. I love doing this. I learned so much. And that's good that you and that's good that you even were aware of that before because even if you didn't like realize like, Oh, I'm in my freeze response or whatever, like, you know that about yourself that like, Hey, yeah, I do crash after these things. And it's okay. And I think that goes along with it is that helps to practice the self compassion and take away some of the blame, especially for people who have had trauma,
00:27:51
Speaker
with this work, which is kind of a separate conversation. But anyway, it takes away some of the blame. It's like my body and my nervous system are just simply having a response. And so instead of telling myself, I should be doing this, right? We love the shoulds. I know that it helps me reframe it. It's like, actually, I just need to listen to myself. If I feel
00:28:13
Speaker
overwhelmed or overworked or like I've done too much socializing. I know that I just need to chill on the couch tonight. And my jammy is watching Housewives and I'm not going to feel guilty about that because that is how I recharge.
00:28:29
Speaker
I'll slice it up if that's your thing. Do you think that this could happen to grad students who are starting their practicum or internship if they see a full day of clients and then are done with it? That was not experience that I had or I've ever really had in terms of when I've been seeing my clients, but there have been a couple of interns that I've had over the years that seem to really be depleted after that. I'm wondering, is this a similar situation potentially?
00:28:59
Speaker
I think so. I also think just talking from somebody who I get depleted and that's why I don't see therapy clients anymore because that's a different story too. But either way, I think that it is part of it. I definitely think that it could be a nervous system response and I also think that we have to be very careful
00:29:21
Speaker
If you are somebody who is highly sensitive, neurodivergent, or whatever, like you need to really be careful about how much energy you're taking in of other people's stuff. And that's another thing that really contributed to my own burnout is I wasn't paying attention to that. And I didn't realize how much stuff I was taking on from clients. And so when I started to put more things into place,
00:29:51
Speaker
about protecting my energy and clearing my energy and doing some self-care. I put that in quotes, but really more about like energy protection and boundary holding. It was too late. It's like I was already past the point where I would be able to do that. And so now when I do that with coaching clients, I'm very, why is my brain not working today?
00:30:14
Speaker
having a flare-up of Hashimoto's is probably the answer to that, but I'm intentional. That's the word I wanted. I'm intentional about my schedule. So I know that for me, and this is the beauty of being self-employed, which anybody can be who's listening to this, by the way, you can create your own schedule and your own life however you want it. I know that even though I'm up early in the morning, I don't work first thing because it makes me feel rushed. So I don't
00:30:43
Speaker
start until about 10 o'clock because I want time to enjoy my coffee and go to the gym and then I start seeing, you know, having meetings or whatever. So I know that about myself and I'm intentional about not booking things back to back. I don't have coaching clients back to back. I know that if I'm doing a training or speaking or a webinar workshop, I don't like bookend that with stuff either. I make sure that there's time before and time after to decompress also.
00:31:12
Speaker
And so if you are somebody that's feeling depleted after you see clients, see if there's anything you can do in your schedule. If you're an intern, maybe not, but maybe you can advocate for yourself if those are not your ideal clients or there are other things that you can do to, again, protect your energy and make sure that you're not taking on too much of their stuff because it's really easy to do that.
00:31:37
Speaker
I think one of the themes that I'm hearing from you that you haven't said directly, but you're definitely speaking around. It's like, it seems like preventing burnout is very personal and individual.
Personalized Burnout Prevention
00:31:49
Speaker
It is. And so people ask me all the time, like, what do I do? I'm like, what you do is you learn about your nervous system and I can give, you know, some things that have really helped me. Like I'm happy to talk about that, but it is very individualized because
00:32:05
Speaker
If you're extroverted, you might get energized from seeing clients. I didn't. It felt, again, very depleting to me. It was very draining to me. But the things that I do to take care of myself are different than what you're going to do. One of my things is I'm a Zumba instructor, and I love to dance. And that's one of my things that keeps me healthy. Some people hate dancing.
00:32:31
Speaker
don't do that. What do you like to do? You like to go for a walk? You like to go to CrossFit? Like whatever it is, do those things. And so we all want this like catch all answer of like, here's the step by step of how to prevent burnout. And how to prevent burnout is do the work on yourself and understand yourself and also radical change. Nothing changes if nothing changes. And so if you are already feeling burnt out, you got to make a choice. You have to wake up every day,
00:33:00
Speaker
and do the things that light you up. And when you're feeling depressed and or burnt out, it's very hard, but that's why we start small and just small little itty bitty changes over time.
00:33:12
Speaker
Yeah, and you alluded to this a few minutes ago, but that's one of the reasons that I love having a private practice is so that I can create the life that works for me and allows me to not be burnt out. And the more I learn about myself, the better I get at creating my work life so that it balances whatever that means.
00:33:37
Speaker
with my mental health and personal life. So yeah, this is awesome. So one of the questions that I ask everybody on this podcast, and though this wasn't really the topic, do you have any advice for someone in grad school who wants to have a private practice
Overcoming Imposter Syndrome and Closing
00:33:58
Speaker
one day? What's your advice for them? Ooh, my advice is really cheesy, but it's true. And that is to believe in yourself.
00:34:07
Speaker
truly like the imposter syndrome and the shame and the self-doubt creep in all the time and it sabotages us. And if you truly can, and I'm not saying don't feel those things, right? Like we all feel them and I feel them every day still, but I do the work and it is work to work through it and to put myself out there, even though I'm very afraid of being seen, but I know it's the only way to grow.
00:34:35
Speaker
And I have to do that because I believed in myself. And if I hadn't believed in what I could do, I would not have
00:34:43
Speaker
You know, built a group practice and helped so many therapists and clients in the community that really needed it. And I wouldn't have changed my life so that it works exactly how I want it to work. And I do all the things that I love because again, I had a lot of narrative and messaging that like, you know, you only can work in this one way and success equals money. And success is, you know, you can't be an entrepreneur and all of these things. And how can you be successful?
00:35:12
Speaker
you know, doing coaching or on Etsy, even like all of these little, these little messages that come through from the outside that I always held very deeply inside of me. But you truly can have your dream life. If you dream it, you can have it. And I always use this totally different example. But truly, entrepreneurs can have whatever they want. And there is this girl that I used to know when I lived in New York,
00:35:40
Speaker
And she is now called the hot rabbi. And that's what she does. She travels with these super rich billionaire clients in New York all over the world to do their Shabbat and their bar mitzvahs. And that's what she wants. So if she can be the hot rabbi, you can do whatever you want. First of all, I love that. I'm going to have to check out the hot rabbi. And it's so true. If you have a dream for something,
00:36:10
Speaker
Even if nobody's doing it, I mean, how many hot rabbis? I'm sure there's a lot of hot rabbis, but nobody. Yeah, exactly. But like, if you have a dream to be something, you can do it, but you have to believe in yourself. Yeah. That's awesome, Gab. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. If people want to connect with you to learn more about burnout or polyvagal theory or all the cool stuff that you've talked about, what's the best way they can connect with you?
00:36:39
Speaker
I'm very easy to find because of my name. My website is just gabriellejulianovelani.com. I'm the same on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok. My Etsy and my Instagram are at gjvconsulting. I will link that all in this show notes so people can find you. I also want to say you have a great Facebook group too, by the way.
00:37:04
Speaker
Yeah, I could mention that. It's a great Facebook group that I can also link because there's a lot of good engagement there and you post a lot of cool stuff there. So people should go there too. But thank you so much for coming on today and I hope that you have an awesome rest of your day. Yeah. Thanks so much everybody for listening and I'm excited to connect with you further.
00:37:28
Speaker
I hope that you loved this episode of From Intern to Entrepreneur. And if you want to learn more about what we talked about, check out the show notes. If you love this podcast and you want to support me and continuing to create content for entrepreneurs, then please share this with a friend, a grad student who you think might want their own private practice one day, and also like, subscribe, and review this podcast wherever you're listening to it.