The Person Behind the Professional: My Journey to a Healthier Life

Dear colleagues,

After writing about the reality of burnout, the feelings of imposter syndrome, and the battle of untangling self-worth from performance, I want to pull back the curtain a little further.

In previous blogs this month, we’ve talked about Navigating the Unique Challenges of Being a Therapist and Battling Burnout, Navigating Imposter Syndrome as a Therapist, and Untangling your Self-Worth from your Practice. I write about each of these topics because they have been, and still are to some degree, present in my life and practice.

So today, I’m sharing my own journey: how these challenges have played out in my own life, and the conscious actions I’ve made to fight for a healthier, more sustainable way to be ‘Nikki, the person’ who does Athletic Therapy, and not ‘Nikki, the Athletic Therapist’. This is a post about my own struggles as a person and professional, rather than a how-to guide.

Setting the Stage: When the Lines Blurred Too Much

I’m not going to sugarcoat this: I hated university. HATED IT! Through most of my university career, I was teaching swimming at Pan Am pool, and teaching and touring as a professional dancer (ballet, jazz, kung fu, hip hop, contemporary, etc.). I despised sitting in lecture halls, I hated studying, and I used to throw up before practical exams because I was so nervous. Academic life is not for me. BUT, you cannot dance forever, and I thought the human body could only take so much abuse. I figured a university education would give me career stability . . . HAHAHAHA!!

Even back then, my performance was tangled with my self-worth. To be so anxious you are physically sick before an exam was my brain saying, “If I fail, I will have proof that I am not enough.” I didn’t know this was my subconscious dialogue, but now I see it.

Eventually, I had to walk away from dance and turn all my focus to university. I am not an academic, and I essentially had to sell my soul to the program to make it through to certification. I worked my ass off to be a ‘B’ student. I failed the practical certification exam twice. Once I treated the practical exam like a skills evaluation, I passed with flying colors. This is why today I can say your performance on a practical exam does not dictate your success as a therapist. I failed the practical twice! If you give up, however, that will affect your success as a therapist!

I share this because with each failure I basically had a personal identity crisis. Of course, you would, when your self-worth is tied directly to your performance. So, with each failure, I had a personal breakdown, and then doubled down, losing more of myself in the practice.

The BIG Performance: In Creeps Imposter Syndrome & Burnout

Once I started as a therapist, the grind didn’t stop; it just changed focus to building my practice. It was a performance. Speaking to each client as if I knew exactly what was going on and how to fix it. Reality is a stark contrast from university where exact answers are expected, but the human body is not textbook. We are simply not smart enough to know exactly what is going on, so patients get an educated guess.

I was burning out. After a few appointments, I would go home and sleep. I worked and I slept. Trying to fit each assessment into the neat little university box of answers was a ballet I couldn’t do. I felt like I didn’t know enough, like I wasn’t good enough, and didn’t have the answers. So like many, I immediately sought more education. Now I was burnt out and trying to learn more to increase the tools in my toolbox. I worked seven days a week with availability from 6:00 am to 10:00 pm. You can forget personal relationships, seeing family, or any kind of work-life balance. Sure, I built a successful practice, but at what cost? Hobbies? Yeah, right! Vacation? Nope! Romantic relationship? Don’t make me laugh! My mind was always on work. There was no separation between what I did and who I was.

I knew it was unhealthy, but when you’re stuck in the grind, you don’t see any other way of existing. No time to. Especially when your self-worth is tied to your performance . . . and when you’re a perfectionist, nothing is ever good enough, which means, you are never good enough. I was exhausted, and when I wasn’t working, I was sad. More importantly, I still didn’t feel fulfilled. It felt like the performance of a lifetime!

The Twist: First Comes Awareness, Then Untangling

Being a person who wants to fix things, I tried a few sessions with a mental health professional. In her initial conversation with me, she said, "You are successful because your fear of failure is what fuels your drive." She also said it might not be a bad thing because that is the drive for a lot of high achievers. I took this as interesting and, without acknowledging the issue, moved on with life.

Then about a year and a half into my practice, a friend told me about a website called ‘Pathway to Happiness’. Basically, a self-awareness podcast. I ended up listening every morning for about a year. One of the first podcasts was the turning point in my thought process. A podcast titled “Feeling Not Good Enough.” The author, Gary, talks about his own journey, and part of it is allowing yourself to think about being not good enough by your own standards and how that plays out. YUCK! It was a terrible feeling to sit with, and it took me three separate tries to get through it. It felt like I was accepting the idea of being mediocre, and I saw this as giving up, being a coward, a loser, living life half-assed—and that wasn’t me.

What I eventually learned was that this expectation, these criteria we have to live up to, are created in our own minds. Once I realized I was in a box made by boundaries I created myself, they eventually dissolved. You can have a lot more fun playing in life when you don’t have the expectation of absolute excellence as your everyday standard.

As a side note, I often continue to struggle with this in my professional and personal life. It’s an ongoing process that we could talk about for hours, but that’s not the goal here!

Battling Imposter Syndrome: A Change in Treatment Philosophy

Once I was able to step back and observe my emotions instead of being driven by them, I started to change the dialogue in my mind. The first burning question, “Am I an effective therapist?” It’s an unreasonable question. A new question, “Am I an effective therapist most of the time?” I looked through charts over the last year, and the answer was, yes, most of the time my patients get better. Suddenly, my intense need for high performance and education changed from a bandage for insecurity to genuine curiosity.

Now when I feel ineffective as a therapist, I take stock of how my patients are doing and their success. Rather than be subjected to a feeling, I look at reality. If the feeling persists, I know it is not true, and I can wave at it like a car passing by!

The next question, “Do I always need to have an answer?” It would be unreasonable to think I would always have an answer.
The most significant shift in my practice was when I gave myself permission to not always have an answer. The human body is vastly complex and dynamic, and I believe it is both ignorant and arrogant to think we have all the answers. Instead, I began looking at people from the perspective that the human body was designed to heal. In this way, it was my job to investigate a potential cause, implement a change, and then get the heck out of the way to let the body do the rest (I think Ben Trunzo teaches this in class!). I began to share my process out loud with patients, explaining the potential reasons for their pain/dysfunction and the intervention I was choosing and why. This is university 101; I was just vocalizing it, making them a part of the process.

I don’t need to be right all the time; I just need to be open to adaptation in accordance with how their body responds. It is their body leading the rehab, they are the ones healing, it is their responsibility. I am here to investigate and educate and offer different options. Either way, the body adapts and heals; we are just finding the most efficient path to get results. And, if we are not getting results after trying different methods, refer on. I think my silver lining is that up until university, both my careers were all about observing, deconstructing, and modifying movement of the human body (swimming and dance). Observing movement was my jam, and the body will show you what’s happening if you take the time to listen and observe without bias.

This shifted the onus onto the client, and it turns out, people both love and, frankly, deserve to play an active role in their healing process. Now I have patients who get better with simple changes like increasing their water intake, better sleep, or basic lifestyle changes that have nothing to do with change in movement pattern or introduction of rehab exercise. Sometimes people get better with one movement modification or a single range of motion exercise. It turns out, less is more.

The Struggle is Real: Growth in Crisis

At the end of 2016, I created Revolution Rehab. Four years in, I was starting to feel like I had a handle on avoiding burnout, even though all I did was work. I didn’t see it, but I sold my soul to my business, and yet, I felt like I was getting better at separating myself from my practice, and overall, I had a sense of satisfaction from life. Now I know this is because I had purpose, and that is healthy, but not to the extent I was in it. I was starting to date a great guy, the business was going well, and I had hobbies. I could see how the work-life balance was going to come as the business became more self-sustaining. Then Covid hit, and the business was forced to close, but we still had to pay monthly rent and business loans. Suddenly, the reality was that I could very well lose the thing I sacrificed everything for – my health, time, money, relationships, family, life comforts, etc. – because of something that was entirely out of my control. Suddenly, my work ethic and sacrifice meant nothing when someone else’s decisions could simply crush the thing you’ve given everything for. There’s being able to look yourself in the face each morning for an honest day’s work, and there’s going down with the ship because you put everything into that ship. I had to learn two very hard lessons:

1. You need to put your family first in every thought, even work. You still need to work hard, but in what way does it benefit you and your family? Where is the sacrifice coming from? This idea of "take care of Revolution and it will take care of me" only goes so far. And, what happens if that ship sinks? I go down with it – finances, self-identity, purpose, everything.

2. Which leads me to lesson #2: I had to let go of Revolution. I had to let the business die in my mind for my own mental health. It was painful, and it was healthy. Now, I look at the business as a tool. If I lose that tool, sure there’s some financial loss among other things, but who I am as a person does not die with it.

The Ongoing Struggle: Work-Life Balance with a Family

Today, the Revolution therapists are dependent on me, my patients are dependent on me, and our infant, William, is dependent on me. Suddenly, the lessons I learned about untangling my self-worth from my clinical performance and the clinic’s sustainability are being tested on a whole new level – in the realm of my personal performance as a wife, a mother, and a business owner. This new chapter has forced me to apply those hard-won lessons with even greater intention.

I used to think "leaving the clinic at the clinic" was hard. Turns out, leaving the business at the clinic, especially when you're the owner, and then transitioning into "mom mode" while simultaneously trying to be present for your team, is a whole new beast. But the core principles remain the same, just with a different lens:

• Defining "Nikki, the Person" Beyond the Clinic and the Crib: This has become even more critical and immensely difficult. While my son brings immense joy, it's easy for my identity to become solely "mom" or "business owner." I’m often torn between feeling like I’m sacrificing one for the other. I need to carve out moments for myself – whether it’s listening to a documentary while cooking, talking to friends or family on the phone, or even just enjoying a cup of coffee in the morning before the house wakes up. I try to remind myself that these small acts aren't selfish; they're essential to remembering who I am outside of my roles, but that struggle is always there.

• Practicing Functional Separation: Right now, I’m working on "leaving the clinic at the clinic" or at least having more set hours. It's about defining "work hours" and "mom hours,” but this is incredibly hard when both parents are business owners and the business never really stops. I am working on being disciplined with my time in the clinic, streamlining processes, and delegating where possible so that when I'm home, I can genuinely be home.

• Acknowledging What is Beyond My Control: Just as a patient's healing journey has external factors, so does a baby's sleep schedule or a business's growth trajectory. I've had to let go of the perfectionist ideal of "having it all together" or "doing it all perfectly." Some days, William has needs more from me, or doesn't sleep well, and my work productivity suffers. Some weeks, a business challenge arises, and my mom time is impacted. I remind myself that these are variables, not reflections of my inadequacy as a mother, an owner, or a wife. It's about adapting and doing my best within the circumstances, not achieving an impossible ideal. There is a lot of stress and pressure, but I try to remind myself that at the end of the day, we are fed, warm, and safe.

• Embracing "Good Enough": Trying to embrace “good enough” is my most difficult but vital tool. My house isn't always spotless. My to-do list is never fully checked off, and I forget to respond to emails. And sometimes, a blog post takes a little longer to write! But "good enough" allows me to breathe, to enjoy the moments, and to recognize that striving for perfection in every single facet of life is a recipe for constant disappointment, burnout, and frustration. It means remembering to celebrate that I got some work done, that my son is happy and healthy, and that I'm present, even if imperfectly. It means I’m also thankful for a hard-working and patient husband.

• Leaning into My Support Systems (And Building New Ones): My personal and professional networks are more crucial than ever. This includes my husband, family, and trusted colleagues who understand the unique pressures of our field and parenthood. Asking for help, delegating, and simply sharing the load (and the struggles) has been transformative. It's a reminder that I don't have to carry every burden alone.

• Recognizing "Human First" is the Ultimate Anchor: This fundamental truth – that my inherent value is not tied to my performance – is the bedrock that allows me to navigate the chaos, even if I forget sometimes. If my son has a rough night, or a business decision doesn't go as planned, it doesn't diminish my worth as Nikki. It simply means I'm a human, doing my best, learning and growing through life's challenges.

The Unending Evolution of Self

The journey from "Nikki, the Athletic Therapist" to "Nikki, someone who does Athletic Therapy" was profound. Now, the journey continues as "Nikki, the person, who is also a mom, a wife, and a business owner." It's an ongoing process of self-awareness, boundary setting, and radical self-compassion. I don’t always get it right, but I’m trying.

It's time we recognize that selling our soul to any profession is not sustainable or healthy in the long term. Yes, work hard and create value by helping others, but remember that your well-being is paramount, and cultivating a robust sense of self-worth that exists independently of your performance outcome – in any role – is the most profound step you can take toward a fulfilling career and a balanced life.

What strategies have helped you navigate the demands of your personal life alongside your professional role? Share your insights in the comments below or send me an email at contact@revolutionrehab.ca!

Author:
Nikki Smith