This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Why We Brush Off The Idea Of Self-Care with Dr. Christine Coleman | 223

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

Why is it that when someone says self-care, I have to keep my eyes from rolling into the back of my head? Why does it feel like it doesn’t mean what it’s supposed to mean anymore? Is it really the answer to ALL of our problems? And does it even help to tell women who are already exhausted and already have more shit than they can handle to do more self-care? I don’t know, friend. But we’re going to talk about it. Our guest is Dr. Christine Coleman, the Founder and CEO of POC Thriving, a private practice specializing in the intersection of mental health and inclusion, as well as the Executive Director of Sol Sisters Inc., a nonprofit with a mission to help diverse women overcome societal barriers by providing educational and empowering experiences that promote their personal and professional evolution. Working with companies like Pinterest, Business Wire, Mulesoft by Salesforce, and the Major League Baseball Network, Dr. Christine focuses on mental health, inclusivity, and belonging initiatives so organizations can better prioritize the psychological well-being and retention of their employees. Prioritizing yourself, and taking time to care for yourself sends you and others a message about your self-worth. You’re teaching yourself and others how you deserve to be treated. And it radiates into all areas of your life. We’re not meant to be running on fumes… we get to find the fuel we need. Connect with Dr. Coleman: Website: https://www.drchristinecoleman.com/  IG: https://www.instagram.com/drchristinecoleman/  LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drchristinecoleman/  Complimentary 30 min coaching session: https://www.drchristinecoleman.com/booking We’d love for solsisters.org to receive donations for under-resourced women to receive a free membership to our courses on mental health, physical health, creative expression, and professional development. Here is the link to the Enrich program https://www.solsisters.org/enrich-membership  Like what you heard? Please rate and review  Thanks to our This Is Woman’s Work Sponsor: Visit  https://www.heyfreya.co/ and use promo code TIWW for 25% off Quench to keep yourself hydrated, as well as all their other products!

I am Nicole Kalil, and I have to imagine if you listen to This Is Woman's Work on a regular enough basis, you must appreciate hearing someone question the status quo or challenge those one-size-fits-all solutions that are being shoved down our throats. Or you wouldn't listen, right? And in almost all cases, I don't think that the status quo that I'm questioning is altogether wrong, or that the solutions I'm challenging are altogether bad. In fact, in all cases, I know I could find women who have benefited from them. I mean, if they didn't work for anyone, we probably wouldn't be hearing about them so much. So my beef isn't usually with the idea or the solution that's being presented.

It's how it's being presented. As if it's the only right, clear, best answer to all of our problems. As if it's simple. And if you just listen and follow directions, everything would be great. And if it's not great, it must be because you didn't listen or didn't do it right. And therefore, shame on you for not being smart, strong, disciplined, committed, talented, or wealthy enough. It feels sort of like this. You don't have the home, car, body, bank account, or vacation property you want? Well, you should have manifested it better.

Feeling mentally or emotionally worn down? Well, then you should take the next 75 days and be as rigid as possible about mostly physical tasks because clearly you aren't mentally strong enough. And if you mess up even one day, start over, you weak piece of shit. You want success? Get up at 5 a.m. I mean, it's pretty simple. If you woke up at 5.15 or 6.30, well, you might as well call it a day because success has moved on without you. That's how it feels sometimes, right? It's not just me, is it? Again, I know there are people who are out there that these things work for, and I'm glad that they do. But I personally struggle when trends become so mainstream or

phrases become so mainstream that it feels like it's all anyone talks about and it becomes the answer, the go-to solution for all problems. Let's use the example of self-care, shall we? Do I believe in the value and the power of taking care of yourself and prioritizing your mental, emotional, social, spiritual, and physical health, you bet your ass I do. So why is it then when someone says self-care, I have to keep my eyes from rolling into the back of my head? Why does it feel like it doesn't mean what it's supposed to mean anymore? Is it really the answer to all of our problems? And does it even help to tell women who are already exhausted and already have more shit that they can handle on their plate to do more self-care? I don't know,

friend, but we're going to talk about it. Our guest today is Dr. Christine Coleman, the founder and CEO of POC Thriving, a private practice specializing in the intersection of mental health and inclusion, as well as the executive director of Soul Sisters, Inc., a nonprofit with a mission to help diverse women overcome societal barriers by providing educational and empowering experiences that promote their personal and professional evolution. Working with companies like Pinterest, Business Wire, MuleSoft by Salesforce, and the Major League Baseball Network, Dr. Christine focuses on mental health, inclusivity, and belonging initiatives ask you first, am I alone in feeling like self-care is just this word or phrase that's being thrown around as if it's a simple solution to all of our problems?

No, not at all. Thank you again for having me. And I love that introduction. I was nodding my head the whole time. If you can't see me, just 100% agreeing with you. There's a lot to unpack here. Absolutely. You're right on track.

Okay. And is anybody else annoyed by it? Like is self, is that an extreme reaction on my part? I get annoyed a little easy. No, not at all. I think, I think so. I mean, I'm a therapist and I get annoyed with it because it's, you know, on my end, folks are asking me, what do I do for self-care? Or on the other hand saying, I'm tired of trying to

self-care, whatever that might mean for one. So no, you are not alone in that. And it is not extreme by any means. I think that there's a lot more that we can do to help us reframe what self-care means and how we can personalize that more to what our personal needs are. Okay, good. So that's exactly where I wanted to start with sort of this reframing. When you say self-care, what do you mean by that? Or when you're helping people to determine what self-care might be or look like for them, what's a working definition of self-care so we can have a starting point in which to move from? Absolutely. I really loved the way that

you broke down the different ways in which that we can access self-care. And my definition might be even more simplified, but it really, to me, is just the opportunity to care for ourselves. And that is a deeply personal decision. And only we know what self-care is for our own self. And part of the annoyance, I think, is we are told what self-care is, and we're supposed to just pick and choose from the options that have been given to us versus really looking deeply within ourselves to identify what does caring for myself look like and what does that mean for me? And then how do I move forward to seek out and receive what I need versus what's being told to me or better yet, or maybe worse yet, sold to me because it has become so monetized? Yes. The sold to me part, I think, causes some pretty extreme annoyance on my part. Also the messaging around it. I kind of have some beef with the idea of posting about self-care on social media. I get that that is a great way we can get messages across, but I've just personally found anytime I'm doing something where I'm actually taking care of

myself, the next step isn't for me to go post about it. Typically, when I'm posting on social media, I'm, I mean, this is maybe deeply personal, but I'm almost always doing the opposite of self care. I'm doing something tactical or business related or others focused. I don't know. Any pushback or thoughts on that? No. I mean, we all have on the topic of social media, we all have our own relationships to social media and seek out different things. Some people have a relationship to social media based on our work and our personal brands. Others of us use it to connect with others. And maybe that could be a form of self-care to reach out and let folks know, this is what I'm doing to self-care

for myself. This is what I suggest. Or I'm reaching out to community to call in folks to know that I'm not okay or that this is something that I might be struggling with. So social media is an interesting place. I know we all have our own personal connection and even wrestle with it at times. But for me, I can share personally as well that I lost my mom about a month ago and I'm a therapist. Thank you. And it's interesting to be a therapist who's also grieving and experiencing such a huge loss. My mom had stage four cancer and fought really hard to get through it. And even though there's anticipation for her to pass, you never know. And I never know or knew or expected what it would feel like. And so to be in this space

where I talk about self-care, I encourage people to look within themselves and find what they need as a person who's quote unquote doctor and a therapist and posting and all these different things I do to hopefully encourage one or many to take good care of themselves. Some of us are just stressed at work. Others are experiencing huge losses. Others are navigating extreme traumas or anywhere in between. And so when someone tells me, take good care of yourself, I'm like, well, how? How? I just experienced this huge loss. How am I supposed to look at myself when I have to navigate all the logistics, the grief? I have children. And so I just say that to empathize with the frustration. You can probably hear my tone shift because it's become a loose term. And I think it's not sticking the way that it once maybe was first intended. Self-care, excuse me, has been deeply researched in the

past. When I was in my postgraduate studies, one of my professors did her dissertation on self-care. And I'll have to go back and ask her her findings all these years later to refresh my memory. But self-care is not just a buzzword or a phenomenon that we're experiencing now. It's something that has been deeply researched and backed. And yet, as we see the frustration and the lack of stickiness that we're experiencing now because of the way that, again, it's just been so loosely used, we find ourselves even in the psychology field asking ourselves, what can we actually do to help people, namely women, really take care of themselves, especially with all the hardships that we carry. As you were talking, I think you hit on a few things of why I have this because you're right.

And thank you for saying it. Self-care is important. It does matter. It does work. There is a lot of evidence and I'm absolutely pro us caring for ourselves and not, you know, sacrificing ourselves for everyone and everything else. And it feels like it's been hijacked a little bit or, or like you mentioned sold or, and thank you for saying that with social media, because you're right. There are a lot of ways and reasons to be on it. And there are a lot of things that can be helpful. Obviously, my experience with social media is fraught. It's your job. And I think it's a couple things. First, it's a little bit, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, so absolutely say if I'm off base here. But it feels like almost a bad thing to say to somebody who's hurting.

It feels like another thing to do or like if you're hurting that you must be doing something wrong, so just take care of yourself. I don't know. Maybe it's because it's flippant or because we mean well, but it doesn care of yourself. I don't know. Maybe it's because it's a flippant or because we mean well, but it doesn't land well. I don't know. There's something about that. I think of, I heard a woman of color who was talking about how heavy things were in her life and how she just wanted to give the finger basically to everybody who is like self-care, self-care. And it was not necessarily that self-care is wrong. It's how we're doing it. And then the second thing is I think a lot of self-care has been hijacked to be sort

of frivolous and unrealistic and it's for the rich and it's almost kind of silly in some cases. So there may be other things, but I think where I have the visceral reaction against self-care is when it's done, and I'm going to put an air, it's almost like it's being done to us, right? Yeah. And then also- Filling it at you. I'm telling you to do this thing, much like I mentioned grief, but there are a lot of different ways this can show up. But I'm essentially telling you what I think you should do. It's almost like the question, how are you? It's a big question. If you really wanted to know how I am, we would be here for 15

minutes. But usually we ask the question, assuming someone's going to say good or fine. And I think that's when we are looking at and equating maybe the self-care term with these very loose, flippant ways to just brush somebody off, but mean well. And I think that- It's like the all things work for good. I believe that, but don't fucking tell me that when I am in the depth of despair and heartbroken or whatever. I just, I don't know, again, maybe it's just a me thing, but it's. No, we're, I'm right there with you. I'm right there with you. It's, I think it's become watered down to the point where we're using it as an opportunity or, you know, even, even with the most well-meaning person, it bypasses sitting with the hard. And that's why I think we use it. And we, we tell people that, and I think one solution to that, that even again, I'm, I'm in my own season of hard. And so what has helped me, and I,

I wonder if this helps anybody else when we're in the seasons of, of hardship and navigating hard things, and it could be events and it could be long things, deep things over time that just walk with us every single day. You know all experiencing different things. But I love when people ask me the question with self-care, what are you doing for self-care? How are you practicing self-care? And really allowing me to sit with that. It challenges me to think versus telling me what to do and me saying, oh, okay, I guess I'll go try. I don't know. It feels more intentional. And even with that, I think that we, because the term has become just such a buzz term, phenomenon, et cetera. It doesn't maybe land with us as much as we want it to in a positive way. But I think asking the questions that prompt us to think about those opportunities

to self-care. So when a friend, for example, asks, what are you doing to take care of yourself, Christine? I can pause and I can think, well, I've gotten a little bit more rest. I've asked a lot of community to help me with my kids so that I can figure out these documents that I don't know the first step in to navigate. I've never done this before, right? Or I've gotten a chance to take a nap or go for a walk or things of that nature. Those are examples of self-care that we hear often, but I get to identify them and someone opened the door for me to challenge myself to think about them and to be able to reflect back what they are to me. And maybe that's the shift that we're looking for in this moment. I love that.

That speaks to me, coming from a place of curiosity and support, telling people the answer or even, and I liked what you said too about sitting with the hard. I think we have become not very, I don't know if we ever were very good at that, but I feel like we've become not very good at that. And sometimes that's what we need. That is the self-care we need. We need somebody to hold space and allow for us, for it to be hard or to listen or even just to cry. Like the best act of self-care I can do right now is just cry because that's what's true and right and real. And I liked the examples that you gave too, and us thinking of our own, because I think sometimes it feels like it needs to be big in order for it to count, right? I need to go on a retreat or I need to go do a spa day or, and again, that's back to that, like, hey, listen, I love me a spa day, but when we mostly need self-care, I think it's more of the day-to-day, small, impactful, real, true things that matter.

Yes. Thoughts on that? Yes. I 100% agree with you. It goes back to, again, the luxury pushed efforts that lean into the consumerist side of us. And that's not entirely what self-care is. I love a spa day. I love retreats, but I can't access those when I'm in a low moment or when I'm in the middle of shuffling between work and picking up my children.

And then I remember my mom's favorite song and I just break down like, this is real life. And right, those might be what the means might be able to say, hey, nanny, hey, extra help, help me with that. But many of us don't have that opportunity, even if we are, quote unquote, doing well for ourselves. And so self-care all across the board, and then even with the work at Soul Sisters and reaching out to and having community with women who don't have access to as many resources as maybe some of us do who have careers in education and so forth. How do we tell somebody

from a low socioeconomic status to self-care when they're working two to three jobs, when they're worried about what's happening in their communities and their children and their own lives. I had a client once who actually, she's a woman of color who was at a great corporate job and worked really hard for herself, but came from an immigrant background. And little therapist me was like, how can we integrate some more self-care practices in your life? And she was like, what's that? And I was like, oh, self-care, you know, like everybody, you know, the buzzword, the thing everybody talks about. Are you on social media? You know, it just kind of,

wow, it took me a moment to really sit with we as a community, maybe again, who are exposed to these phenomenons, maybe exposed to the resources that allow us to have time and break and whatnot, might take self-care for granted or might roll our eyes at it. And there are many people, even those who are well off, who don't even know what self-care is. And I asked her what maybe she witnessed as forms of self-care in her upbringing, once we broke down the definition and what it could look like, she said, I never saw any women in my life practice self-care. And so we have to really, I think, redefine, as we mentioned, reimagine, reevaluate and reframe what self-care can be. So we broke it down just to what you're saying, really small bits. She was battling really, really strong, severe depression.

And we had to really pull everything back and start small and build up. And I saw a huge transformation over time, but we can't always assume that people know what self-care is. And we can also find so much, so much value in the small things, as you mentioned. Are you hydrated? That's a serious question because I know we've all had times where we're too busy to drink water or didn't want to drink too much because we don't have time to pee every single hour. But hydration is not just about water. It's about having the right balance of electrolytes and sugar. And if you're anything like me, you're probably thinking, great, that's just another thing that I have to worry about, which is why you need to

know about Quench. These 16-ounce packets taken daily provide that critical ration of salt, sugar, and electrolytes and blend powerful antioxidants for you. They're clinically formulated to keep water in your system, not running through you. And they're brought to us by Hey Freya, the company that has spent years researching and practicing in women's health. So it's made by us for us. Get yourself hydrated by going to HeyFreya.co and use my code T-I-W-W to get yourself 25% off Quench and all their other amazing products. Again, that's heyfreya.co. Use my code TIWW to get yourself 25% off. Okay, let's get back to the show. Thank you for sharing that. And it perfectly leads into two questions I had. One of them for women of color or women who have lesser resources,

who might be already burnt out from all the things and are dealing with big societal problems, safety concerns, caring for extended family, not just, you know, their own family if they have, I mean, it's just working multiple jobs, stress about being able to pay bills, let alone spa days, right? Like how does self-care work or support or how might we be able to think about it differently so it includes, not separates? And so that they hear about it as much, well, maybe not as much as we are, but as much as we need to. Yeah. I love that question. I used to have, I haven't run it in this year of 2024, but last year and the year before, I had a women of color thriving coaching program. And as of this year, I have a women of color thriving therapy group where I call in

various women of color in leadership or executive senior level roles, essentially, for this very purpose of this conversation, right? How do we take care of ourselves? How do we prioritize our mental and emotional wellbeing? And we have these tough conversations around all the different things that we are expected to do, how we are expected to climb. We have climbed. It's not pretty at the top. It's really tough. We're still battling with all these different challenges, even though too many we made it.

And that is, how do we sustain that? And it's very difficult to sustain. And we're seeing, you know, even in the, in the media, how women of color and leadership roles are being kicked out, pushed out, have severe mental health challenges to the point of ending their own lives. You know, it's, it's, it's really serious and it's, it's very real. And so, so much of what I love to do, especially in the context of race and ethnicity, is to really call in the cultures and what even the history of our cultures value. Because even though self-care is such a westernized concept, people across cultures have practiced self-care

for centuries. And a lot of that has been found in community. And that, I think, is where we're missing that is self-care, as we started off, is do it by yourself, right? I have, like you said, I have to figure it out. How frustrating is it to say, okay, I have to put it in my calendar to figure out a place to put self-care? Like, no, that's another thing I need to add. And I'm doing it likely by myself. It's something else I have to figure out. When we call in community, when we focus and prioritize our cultural values, whether it's in our own cultural background or maybe the diversification of cultures, like in a therapy group that has black and brown, AAPI women and so forth, we get to learn about

each other, but we also get to do life together and know that we're not alone. So even in a group like that, where we're asking, hey, what did you do to prioritize yourself today? It's in community, we feel safe, we feel like we belong. And we get to tap back into the wholeness of our identities versus the ones that are maybe most celebrated, like our successes and our professional statuses and so forth. Really get to tap back into who am I as a whole? Do you see me as a whole? Are you willing to sit with me out of curiosity, as we mentioned, to really see what are the ways in which you are actually sitting with yourself and I'm not sitting alone or having to figure it out alone? Everything you said just like, I don't know, it, it spoke to something that I know is true and

right, because I think that's another part of the beef with self-care is the self part of it. Yes, it's the prioritization of, of caring for ourself and having our needs met and taking care of our energy and our health and all of those things. But I think you just hit the nail on the head. It's never meant to be done alone. I liked what you said, calling in our community as an act of self-care, as part of a necessary integral part. That feels true and right and real for me. And I think that's maybe part of what has felt not right about the way that I'm hearing about it. So thank you for that. I said that something you said triggered two questions. My second was around the modeling of self-care because you're right. I don't know

that very many of us and most cultures would say that they experienced, especially our mothers or female figures in our lives. I don't, I mean, I'll just speak for myself. I don't have any like amazing example of that. Maybe my aunt, maybe one of my aunts. So in the absence of personal experience growing up, how do we find model people who are modeling this? Well, do you know of anybody? And then how do we begin to model it well for the people around us without making that another freaking thing to do, right? Another responsibility to take on.

Now I'm doing self-care for others. How do we begin to model this in a healthy way? Yeah. It reminds me of the story I shared just now about this client I had. I'm also thinking about my mom and how hard she worked, single mom taking care of me. And what really came to mind for me is I think it goes back to the question of what does self-care even mean? Because we have pretty rigid definitions around self-care, right? Relax, rest, go for a walk, hang out with a friend, read a book. And that's pretty much the list. cultural or historic piece of it, some of the work I've done with my clients and I'm doing even actively with myself is what was modeled that brought the person what they were seeking. So maybe by definition to my client was like, no, my mom didn't have time to rest or take a nap or

what have you, read a book. I didn't see that. But I saw her hanging out with her friends and they had such joy and laughter. My mom would work really long hours and I didn't realize it. She would go to the movies by herself on occasion. And I was always like, why are you going by yourself, mom? That's weird. Don't you want to go with somebody? And she's like, I just need time alone. And maybe that self-care was time alone. Other people find it maybe in their faith or belief practices where they're in community with spirit, with their spiritual groups. Um, so we actually have seen modeling. Uh, maybe we do see modeling, um, in other ways, especially with the ways in which many women like myself and me, and I know you as well move today, we are navigating career and climbing and leadership. And for some of us, mothers are being mother figures and partners and owning homes and

all property. There's a lot of things on our plates that might differ from the past ways that women moved. And so maybe that's where these new definitions of self-care come in, right? And so as leaders, especially, even if you're not in a leadership position by definition, we have a lot of opportunity to model. I asked my own therapist, how do I be a therapist and lead soul sisters? And she mentioned that exact term. You get a chance to model. And I get to work with my team and say, I'm taking some time

off. I'm not going to be around, right? The things that we do, right? If this is an emergency, here's how to contact me. I work a lot with executives and really how to move in their companies and their work settings, but also intimately, how do you actually pause the work and really lean into yourself and your needs? And sometimes my clients will send me pictures of them in nature to prove, right, I'm doing it. I think I'm self-caring, right? And so what's neat is, you know, even in the workplace, we're seeing a new norm. I'm part of that norm. I know it's definitely has its pushback for sure, but we are normalizing mental health in the workplace. We're normalizing these conversations about how to help people get outside of the box of these rigid expectations, especially

for women who want to be career women, are driven. We care about our statuses and our accomplishments and our accolades, but it's not everything. So sometimes I just tell my clients, let's model by actually using our sick hours and our vacation hours. Let's model by when we have time with our children or our families or our friends, our interpersonal relationships, let's turn our phones off. How can we actually do the work and say that we're these new women, modern women embarking on these new opportunities if we're not actually taking care of ourselves? But it can work so much better if we're holding each other, not just accountable, because accountability even to me feels like, did you do it? It's like, can we work in a really tender, mindful way to call people in and do this together and just let you know, this is a hard time for all of us in our own different ways.

Let's walk together and let's be together in really tender ways. I love everything about that. Sign me up. Thank you for modeling, especially during a very hard time and for being here today during it. And if you want to learn more about Dr. Christine and her work, the best place to go is soulsisters.org. And on a side note, they also receive donations for underserved women to receive free memberships to their courses on mental health, physical health, creative expression, professional development, all forms of self care. I don't know about you, but I will be donating myself. And Dr. Christine, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anything to add about soul sisters

that I didn't say? No, that's, that's fantastic. Thank you so Thank you. Anything to add about Soul Sisters that I didn't say? No, that's fantastic. Thank you so much. You know, I do a lot of work with professionals and whatnot, as we've talked about today. But Soul Sisters is my heart. And it really is the work that we're talking about today is bridging two communities of women who maybe have more resources on one end versus the other end. But together, at the end of the day, we're all women trying to do our best and we need to do this together. We can work through these systems that have us separated and against one another or feeling like we're above one another and so forth.

We don't need to do that anymore. We really need the power of women in unity to come together. And we do that at Soul Sisters. So any donation helps, any volunteering helps, sharing about us helps, not just the org, but the women that we serve. So thank you so much. My absolute pleasure. Thank you, Dr. Christine. Okay. Here's what I know for sure. My eyes are probably still going to roll into the back of my head when I see the way self-care is being promoted, sold, and recommended out there on the interwebs and in the medias. Because my guess is that most of the self-care that's being done that actually improves our lives, our health, and our well-being is not what we see being posted about. It's the small things. It's the tender moments. It's calling in our

community. Because it's meant to be between you and you, but it's also meant to be between you and us. So here's what I'm taking away from our conversation today. Prioritize yourself. Take time to care for yourself. It sends the message to you and others about your self-worth. You're teaching others how you deserve to be treated, and it radiates into all areas of your life. And the ultimate flex, the end game of self-care, is living in a world and having the opportunity to create a life that we don't regularly need to escape from, where our everyday choices allow us to live our truth and our values, that we get to face life's inevitable challenges, make decisions, and show up most days on full rather than on empty. We're not meant to be

running on fumes. We get to find the fuel we need. Each of us having the opportunity to do that, it's necessary for self-care to even begin. Fill your tank. That is woman's work.