If you’re a nurse or an abuse survivor, you don’t have to be brave [PODCAST]

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“I’m not brave. I’m just me. Full of light and lifted by my light. You see, when you strip away the darkness and lies that others surround you with, you’re left only with your light. The genuine you. Moving forward in life in ways that are authentically you. Not because it’s brave to rise above and be disconnected from your humanity, but rather because when you become un-brave, you step into your own courage. Courage has understanding of what you’re doing and who or what you’re doing it for. Courage gives you permission to feel the feels, and connect not only with others, but also with yourself.

Whether you’re a nurse, an abuse survivor, or whatever has led to your belief that brave is the face you need to show, I hope you give yourself permission to become un-brave. Step into the courage that allows you to embrace the fears that are the keys to your strength, compassion, and humanity. May you show that courage first to yourself and the parts of you that are hurting, so that you can be genuinely and authentically courageous for others.”

Traci Powell is a nurse practitioner.

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “If you’re a nurse or an abuse survivor, you don’t have to be brave.”

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Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today in the show, we have Traci Powell. She is a nurse practitioner, and she wrote the KevinMD article “If you’re a nurse or an abuse survivor, you don’t have to be brave.” Traci, welcome to the show.

Traci Powell: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Kevin Pho: We’ll get into the article in a little bit, but first off, can you share your story and journey to where you are today?

Traci Powell: Sure. I’ve been a nurse for about 29 years. For the first eight years of my career, I was in adult nursing, and I transitioned into NICU. I was a NICU staff nurse for a while, charge nurse, and then I became an NNP once I moved from New Jersey to Florida. In the middle of my NNP career, I had kind of what I call my midlife meltdown, which wasn’t a midlife crisis. It was the fact that I had a lot of child abuse happen to me that I tried to pretend for many years didn’t happen. During that time, I had really bad PTSD, and it really started to affect me, and ultimately it almost ended with me ending my life.

So that really kind of forced me to start to get help that I was afraid to seek out, because I was a nurse practitioner at that time, and I was afraid that people would think bad things about me or think I wasn’t competent. As I moved through that healing process, I became aware of other professionals, especially nurse practitioners and doctors, who also had their stories that they hadn’t shared, and through hearing my story, they were starting to share. I ultimately met a nurse who, through hearing my story, told me that she had a suicide plan two nights later. I got her the help that she needed, and the woman is amazing now. It really woke me up to the fact that I can’t be quiet about this anymore. There are people struggling in silence because we’re afraid to reach out for help, especially in these kinds of roles.

So now I work toward helping professionals who are overcoming especially child abuse. It turns out there are a lot of medical professionals and nurses who are in that group, because we give away the care that we wish that we had had. So I went back and got my psych mental health nurse practitioner, and I have a private practice now where I work primarily with professionals. I also started a group called Nurses Healing Nurses to help nurses who are really struggling now with the way things are going in health care.

Kevin Pho: So you mentioned in your story that being a nurse practitioner prevented you from getting the help that you needed. Can you paint us a picture and tell us a story, a little more detail about why it was so difficult as a nurse practitioner to get the behavioral health help that you needed during these low times?

Traci Powell: Well, there are several reasons. One, I would hear nurses and other people who took FMLA for mental health reasons, and you would see people on Facebook looking at their pages and being like, “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with that person,” and kind of making fun of that. There are boxes, as practitioners and as physicians, that we have to check that say, “I have no mental health issues that will impact my job.” And it’s funny, I get references for other practitioners, and it will say, “Are you aware of any mental health issues that this person has?” Who am I to decide for someone else whether or not their mental health affects their job? So that’s very intimidating. It makes you think, “I can’t admit it.”

And then I actually broke my leg around this time, and I got a text from one of my bosses that said, “I don’t care if you’re crawling, you better be back at work.” So if I can’t break my leg and take time off, how am I supposed to say, “I’m really struggling mentally, and I need time off”? So it was all those things, and then it was just the stigma of all of it, that here I was, this nurse practitioner that people looked up to, and how was I going to say that I was really struggling with anxiety and depression? Sadly, at the time, it seemed like the best answer was, “Let’s just end it,” rather than admit to everyone what was going on with me.

Kevin Pho: So a few years have passed since you got that help. What’s the situation now when it comes to behavioral health help for professionals compared to back then?

Traci Powell: I definitely think there’s more awareness related to it. I would like to say the stigma is a little bit better, but I think there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. I know of three colleagues who have died of suicide in the last several years. They were all people where we all said, “What?” and we were shocked that it happened. I think as long as that box is there that you have to check that says, “Does this person have a mental health issue?” it still contributes to the fear of “Can I reach out?” So there are more of us now speaking up, which I think is helping, and I have the group where nurses are able to come in and speak freely about what they’re struggling with, but I think we have a long way to go as well.

Kevin Pho: You talk more about this in your KevinMD article. It’s titled “If you’re a nurse or an abuse survivor, you don’t have to be brave.” Now, for those who didn’t get a chance to read your article, can you just walk my audience through it and share the story of why you decided to write it?

Traci Powell: Sure. It came really from my own experience. I was called brave most of my life. I had two kids that I raised by myself; I was brave for that. I was brave for going back to school and getting my master’s degree. I was brave for buying my house. I was brave for moving to Florida. But really, all of that braveness was me just trying to show the world that I was OK, I was fine, and I could muscle through.

Through Nurses Healing Nurses especially, and my own practice, I have so many nurses and medical professionals who reach out to me who feel like they need to show that fine face and be brave and muscle through. And then on top of that, they put the superhero cape on us, and then there’s this whole public persona of “Oh, you’re a superhero, so you’ve got to be brave.”

Really, what kind of put me over the edge recently was in one of the groups, a PTSD group that I participate in. There was a nurse in there who was contemplating, “Should I leave the field?” because she’s so burned out from what’s going on with the COVID unit that she worked in. A lady who was not a nurse responded and basically said, “If you’re not brave enough to do the job and you don’t care, then you shouldn’t be there.”

So I wanted to strip away brave, because I think we are all kind of fed the lie that we have to be brave and we have to suck it up and we have to be OK. But courage, on the other hand, allows us to step into our fears. It allows us to be more open with each other and share and be more vulnerable, so that we can be on a human level, because we’re all going through this together. So rather than shaming each other out of those feelings that we have, we support each other and take a little bit of courage in stepping into what is right for us.

Right now, for a lot of people, that courage includes leaving the role that they’re in or the job that they’re in. Literally, before I got on this call, I had a call from a practitioner who is really struggling in her job, and she’s like, “I need to get out of here.” But she gave me this litany of reasons why she has to stay, none of which benefited her. So it’s brave for her to stay and do what they need, but to step into her courage is to take her fear with her and realize that she’s unbelievably smart and has so many opportunities if she would just step into that.

Kevin Pho: So you mentioned that calling nurses and other health care professionals superheroes puts an added burden or stress on them. Why is that?

Traci Powell: Well, again, it goes back to that concept of if you’re a superhero. If you think about Superman when he’s flying around in the sky, right, if he sees a bank robbery down below, he flies out, he takes care of the bank robbery, and he goes back, and nobody worries about how he feels. So when you put that superhero cape on someone, it creates this whole public dissociation against what that person is experiencing, because if you’re a superhero and strong, then you must not be vulnerable, you must not have feelings. It’s much easier for someone to put someone in that category, and so people aren’t having to acknowledge what that person is actually going through and allow them to be human in the work that they’re doing.

And especially through COVID, so many people have been shamed and told to suck it up. I will never get the picture of the nurses with the trash bag that they were wearing out of my mind. How do you do that to a person and call them a superhero? Because, you know, “Be a superhero, here’s your cape,” and it’s a trash bag. It just kind of really disconnects the way that we see people as human beings.

Kevin Pho: Now, you’ve talked, of course, to a lot of nurses and nurse practitioners during this difficult time, and there’s a tremendous amount of pressure on them from their administrators. Like you said, all the floors are short-staffed, and there’s a lot of pressure to do more with fewer resources. In this environment, what are some specific ways that they can show courage and be more vulnerable?

Traci Powell: I think first, most importantly, they need to be connecting with one another, because this is a common experience everyone is having. COVID wasn’t happening when I was going through my stuff, and I kept it to myself. When I gradually started telling my story, I kid you not, every single time, I have one or two people come to me and say, “Me too. This happened to me. This is how I’m feeling.” So what we think we’re holding to ourselves, many other people are experiencing. So we can become more human, even with each other, and start to connect, and then we can support each other through, which is part of why I started Nurses Healing Nurses, so that nurses, instead of “eating their young,” as they used to say, come together and support each other through this.

Because sadly, I don’t know what the answer is to leadership, but that’s where a lot of the problems come from, and it’s people who don’t know what it’s like to be in the shoes of the person who’s walking those halls every day and dealing with the stress. So a lot of this is connection. And part of it is really contemplating, if you’re in a situation where it is so stressful that you don’t know that you can survive this, knowing that you’re not stuck. It might feel like you’re stuck, because our brains want us to stay where things are familiar. So even if familiar is uncomfortable, sometimes we stay, and we have all these reasons why: “I’ve been here for 10 years. I have a pension.” All these things. But if your life is miserable, dare to step into your courage and the fear of leaving, and see what other opportunities are out there, because in this field, there’s so much that you can do.

Kevin Pho: So give some examples of that, because in that story of the nurse that you just told, the administrator told her all these reasons why she just stayed, but none of those reasons really benefited her. What are some of the other options that nurses can look to when they’re pressured by administrators and perhaps thinking about leaving?

Traci Powell: Well, we know nurses are needed everywhere right now, so there are always other hospitals that you can look into. There’s travel nursing. Nurse coaching is very popular right now. Nurses are starting their own businesses. There’s educating. And I started my own business. I would never in a million years, three years ago, have thought I would be my own boss, and it’s been unbelievably freeing. But three years ago, I was in such a toxic environment that I thought it was impossible that life would ever get better.

So get out on the internet, look at the different jobs that are out there, and start researching what nurses and even doctors. I have several doctor friends who have broken free of a hospital, and they’ve started their own thing. There are so many jobs right now that you’re not stuck where you are.

Kevin Pho: Sometimes it’s so hard to let go. I talk to a lot of physicians, and even though that situation is toxic to them, it’s so hard to kind of let go of the familiar and jump into something that’s new and even entrepreneurial. So perhaps you can share a success story. What are some of the things that you coach nurses to do to try to let go of that toxic environment and to jump into something that is completely foreign or maybe unknown to them? What are some ways that you coach them through that?

Traci Powell: Primarily, it’s helping them find their own authentic selves, because once they get back to “Why did I go into nursing to begin with?” I really work with people, whether they’re a nurse or an abuse survivor, on getting back to their light. We all came into this world pure and innocent, with this light in us that guided the way, and somewhere along the line, some darkness came along and shadows covered our light, but the light is still there. So as nurses, I don’t think everybody’s done this, but when I went into nursing, we actually had a Florence Nightingale candle, and there was our light for nursing.

So we’ll go back into talking about what made you want to do this to begin with, where your heart was in this, how we help you find that again, and what feels authentic to you. Sometimes it takes a lot of work to help people really overcome that, but this is the thing: “I know it’s the devil I know, right? I’m comfortable in this place.” And it’s really scary to step into what could be a good life. That’s part of the courage too, embracing that fear of “I’m going to try this new thing.”

Sometimes it’s a transition. So stay in the old job, maybe cut back your hours as you’re trying the new thing, so you can feel a little safe and have a little bridge until you’re able to fully step into the new thing. And if the new thing isn’t what’s working, then there’s another new thing that you can do.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Traci Powell. She’s a nurse practitioner, and she wrote the KevinMD article “If you’re a nurse or an abuse survivor, you don’t have to be brave.” Traci, as we enter another winter of the pandemic, a lot of nurses, again, like you said, are under a tremendous amount of stress. You had trouble at your lowest time reaching out for behavioral health help. What kind of advice can you share with these nurses who are going under tremendous mental and emotional stress but are too afraid to look for help?

Traci Powell: I would just say, please, please reach out. I know some people are afraid to use their EAPs because they’re connected to their hospital. There are therapists all over the place who are there to help you, and it’s totally confidential. Unless you’re threatening to hurt yourself or someone else, it’s all confidential. Put yourself first, because if we don’t put ourselves first and take care of ourselves, we’re not doing a good job for our patients, at least not as good as we could be. So if you’re struggling, you can email me, reach out to me. Nurses Healing Nurses is there, and there are therapists all over the place who are anxious to help nurses. I’m actually trying to get a list of nurse practitioners, so we really are all nurses helping nurses. But the main thing is to reach out.

Kevin Pho: My final question: What are some of your take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience?

Traci Powell: Well, the biggest thing is kind of what we talked about: You’re not stuck. We give ourselves these conversations in our own head that say, “I can’t get out of here. I have to deal with the burden of this.” Just try to figure out ways to help you out of this. And if you want to stay where you are, then there are things that you can do. Like today, I just put on Nurses Healing Nurses: Research has come out and shown how two weeks straight of 10 minutes of happy music a day can help to lift your mood. Spending time with pets, doing things outside of work, that will help to increase your mood, so that as you go back to work, your tolerance level is a little bit higher than it would be. Because right now, a lot of people are taking all that stress home to their families as well. It’s just trying to disengage from work when you get home.

They can reach me, Traci, at tracipowell.com. Nurses Healing Nurses is a Facebook group; you can search that on there, and we’ll take all the nurses who want to join. And there’s, yeah, the two main ways. Or my Facebook page is called The Rebuilt Woman.

Kevin Pho: Traci, thank you so much for sharing your time and insight, and thanks again for being on the show.

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