What if the real secret to sustainable self-care isn’t about working harder—or even trying to be “better”—but simply about noticing, connecting, and giving yourself permission to take small, imperfect steps? In today’s episode, we’re taking a second look at the many self-care experiments we’ve shared throughout the year to reveal a refreshingly doable framework that can support you, not just in theory, but in real life.

As we wrap up the season and head into summer, we’re reflecting on the common threads woven through our self-care experiments— and offering you a fresh way to approach your own self-care journey. Whether you’re just tuning in or have been with us all season, you’ll leave today’s episode with a clearer, kinder path forward—and a little extra inspiration to carry you into your next season. 

Episode Highlights:

• Round-up of self-care experiments shared throughout this season
• Themes in experiments
• Notice/monitor/observe (kindly and non-judgmentally!)
• Connect with colleagues
• Challenge unhelpful beliefs with permission and imperfect action

Self-Care Experiment:

• Use the Notice-Connect-Challenge framework

Resources Mentioned:

• Visit our website to get your own copy of our FREE 4 C's Self-Care Assessment:  https://www.intentionaltherapist.ca

Connect with Melissa & Karen at Intentional Therapist:
[email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmelissatiessen/

Share one of your own self-care experiments via our SpeakPipe page at: https://www.speakpipe.com/intentionaltherapist

Disclaimer: This podcast seeks to be educational in purpose and is not to be used as clinical advice. Please connect with a therapist one-on-one for personalized support.

Have you ever looked at your schedule and wondered why everyone else’s needs made the cut—but yours didn’t?  In this podcast episode, we’re exploring a question we hear all the time: Why can’t I actually put myself in my schedule?!  If you resonate with this question, know that you are not alone, and, that you are not doing anything wrong.  

Please stick around as we explore what contributes to this struggle of protecting the time we want to devote to our self-care.  And most importantly, we will be sharing three practical, intentional ways to support your self-care efforts—without adding more pressure or guilt. These are simple shifts that can help you hold space for yourself, just like you do for everyone else. Let’s talk about how to stop squeezing yourself out of your calendar and start making your needs a priority again.

Episode Highlights:

• Change is hard, even for therapists
• Impact of our beliefs
• Impact of life circumstances and readiness for change
• Remember that change is a process

Self-Care Experiments:  

• Use permission liberally
• Use scaffolding liberally
• Figure out what doesn’t work for you

Resources Mentioned:

• Episode 2 on Toxic Time Messages 
• Episode 11 on Self-Care Sabotage
• Episode 12 on Personal Rights 
• Visit our website to get your own copy of our FREE 4 C's Self-Care Assessment:  https://www.intentionaltherapist.ca

Connect with Melissa & Karen at Intentional Therapist:
[email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmelissatiessen/

Share one of your own self-care experiments via our SpeakPipe page at: https://www.speakpipe.com/intentionaltherapist

Disclaimer: This podcast seeks to be educational in purpose and is not to be used as clinical advice. Please connect with a therapist one-on-one for personalized support.

What does your typical day look like?  Does it include regularly occurring breaks or do you often find yourself constantly on the go?  If you’re like most of the female mental health therapists we’ve spoken with, most of your days probably feel like you’re going non-stop, both at work and at home.  And while there can admittedly be some sense of accomplishment that comes with fitting as many things from our never ending “to-do list” into our days, it comes at a cost.  

In today’s episode we’ll talk about the concepts of energy expenditure and energy recovery and three important ways that breaks can contribute to your self-care.  And, as always, we’ll wrap up the episode with some practical self-care experiments, because taking breaks is often much harder than it seems!  So if you’re in need of some justification for yourself, or others, about why we truly need breaks, then stay tuned.

Episode Highlights:

• The importance of both energy expenditure and energy recovery
• Work and rest are partners
• We can get better at rest
• 3 benefits of taking breaks

Self-Care Experiments:  

• Monitor your energy patterns
• Add in some breaks to your schedule
• Experiment with how you spend your breaks   

Resources Mentioned:

• 2021 study by the Microsoft Human Factors Lab
• Book:  The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal, by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz 
• Book:  Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang 
• Podcast:  Episode 258 of The Lazy Genius Podcast with Kendra Adachi, about the 7 different kinds of rest 
• Visit our website to get your own copy of our FREE 4 C's Self-Care Assessment:  https://www.intentionaltherapist.ca

Connect with Melissa & Karen at Intentional Therapist:
[email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmelissatiessen/

Share one of your own self-care experiments via our SpeakPipe page at: https://www.speakpipe.com/intentionaltherapist

Disclaimer: This podcast seeks to be educational in purpose and is not to be used as clinical advice. Please connect with a therapist one-on-one for personalized support.

Have your sessions with clients ever incorporated the topic of assertiveness and its related benefits?  If so, then you’re likely familiar with the “Personal Bill of Rights” and how eye opening this resource can be to clients, particularly those who’ve regularly either ignored their needs or put them well below those of others. The Personal Bill of Rights can offer our clients a different way of thinking about themselves which, in turn, can help them start shifting their actions in ways that align more so with their Personal Bill of Rights.  

But have you ever thought about how incorporating a Bill of Rights might actually support your self-care?  In today’s episode we take a look at three rights, in particular, that can be particularly powerful in supporting female mental health therapists’ self-care.  So if you’re interested in finding ways to use personal rights to support your self-care, this episode is for you! 

Episode Highlights:

• What is a Personal Bill of Rights
• 3 key rights for therapists:
  • I have the right to my own needs for personal space and time
  • I have the right to make mistakes and not have to be perfect
  • I have the right to change my mind 

Self-Care Experiments:  

• Be an objective observer
• Embrace a right and act accordingly
• Imagine a female mental health therapist bill of rights      

Resources Mentioned:

• Kristin Neff's website:  https://self-compassion.org/
• Visit our website to get your own copy of our FREE 4 C's Self-Care Assessment:  https://www.intentionaltherapist.ca

Connect with Melissa & Karen at Intentional Therapist:
[email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmelissatiessen/

Share one of your own self-care experiments via our SpeakPipe page at: https://www.speakpipe.com/intentionaltherapist

Disclaimer: This podcast seeks to be educational in purpose and is not to be used as clinical advice. Please connect with a therapist one-on-one for personalized support.

How often do you take time to reflect on your beliefs and the ways they might be influencing your self-care?  If you’re like most female mental health therapists, you’re likely so busy tending to your professional and personal roles and responsibilities that this hasn’t even crossed your mind.  Yet, the reality is many of us may be unknowingly buying into beliefs that could be sabotaging our self-care.

In today’s episode we look at three types of unhelpful beliefs and the ways they might be sabotaging your self-care efforts.  We're also talking about how connection, compassion, and  courage can provide powerful antidotes to these unhelpful beliefs. So if you are ready to stop “shoulding” on yourself, please tune in!

Episode Highlights:

• Three types of beliefs that can sabotage our self-care
  • Therapist "musturbations"
  • "Shoulding" on our self-care
  • "Canning" our self-care

Self-Care Experiments:

• Be an objective observer
• Connect with others
• Challenge your unhelpful beliefs

Resources Mentioned:

• Book:  Leaving It at the Office by Drs. John Norcross and Gary VandenBos
• Visit our website to get your own copy of our FREE 4 C's Self-Care Assessment:  https://www.intentionaltherapist.ca

Connect with Melissa & Karen at Intentional Therapist:
[email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmelissatiessen/

Share one of your own self-care experiments via our SpeakPipe page at: https://www.speakpipe.com/intentionaltherapist

Disclaimer: This podcast seeks to be educational in purpose and is not to be used as clinical advice. Please connect with a therapist one-on-one for personalized support.

As a mental health professional, you undoubtedly know the significant role our relationships can have on our overall well-being.  In fact, it’s probably something you discuss with most, if not all your clients at some point during therapy.  But how often do you take the same time and care to reflect on your own relationships with others? 

In today’s episode we revisit the connection pillar of our 4 C’s model, this time, focusing on our connections to others and the important role this plays in our self-care.  We’ll also be talking about how connection plus courage can offer a particularly powerful boost to our self-care and our self-care culture and how all of this relates to compassion.       

Episode Highlights:

• The powerful benefits of connection plus courage
• Connection and compassion
• Connection as a way of overcoming limiting beliefs

Self-Care Experiments:

• Taking stock of our connections with others 
• Adding a dose of courage to our connections
• Connection as a way of overcoming limiting beliefs

Resources Mentioned:

• Visit our website to get your own copy of our FREE 4 C's Self-Care Assessment:  https://www.intentionaltherapist.ca

Connect with Melissa & Karen at Intentional Therapist:
[email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmelissatiessen/

Share one of your own self-care experiments via our SpeakPipe page at: https://www.speakpipe.com/intentionaltherapist

Disclaimer: This podcast seeks to be educational in purpose and is not to be used as clinical advice. Please connect with a therapist one-on-one for personalized support.

Have you ever thought of documentation as a form of self-care?  Of course, probably not!  We know that more likely, documentation often feels like a time-consuming, mentally draining task that takes away from the work you truly care about.  But we are here to try to convince you that documentation can actually be a key part of our self-care.  Yes, you heard that right.  There are ways to turn this often stressful task into a tool for personal and professional well-being.

So what if, instead of adding to our stress, documentation could be part of the solution? In this episode, we’ll discuss how our 4 C’s model—Connection, Compassion, Courage, and Creativity—can transform your approach to notes and reports. Whether you’re already overwhelmed by your documentation or just looking for a more intentional approach, we’ll share actionable strategies and experiments to help change the way you think about both self-care and documentation.  

Episode Highlights:

• How documentation fits into self-care
• How normal it is to struggle with documentation
• Applying the 4 C's to documentation

Self-Care Experiments:

• Create a notes template
• End your sessions on time

Resources Mentioned:

• Dr. Maelisa McCaffrey's website, QA Prep, and her book, Stress Free Documentation
• Our past podcast interview with Dr. Maelisa McCaffrey
• Visit our website to get your own copy of our FREE 4 C's Self-Care Assessment:  https://www.intentionaltherapist.ca

Connect with Melissa & Karen at Intentional Therapist:
[email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmelissatiessen/

Share one of your own self-care experiments via our SpeakPipe page at: https://www.speakpipe.com/intentionaltherapist

Disclaimer: This podcast seeks to be educational in purpose and is not to be used as clinical advice. Please connect with a therapist one-on-one for personalized support.

How often do you think of values when you think about self-care?  If you’re like many of us, probably not very often or at all.  Yet the reality is our values can play a huge role in our self-care, whether we think about them or not.  In this week's episode we explore three important ways values are related to self-care.  

And although most of the time connecting with our values is truly a valuable thing to do, you might also be surprised to hear that sometimes values can actually get in the way of our self-care.  So we hope you will stick around to hear more about how we can get our values to work for us, not against us!    

Episode Highlights:

• 3 ways values can impact our work life and self-care
  • Values and our work setting
  • Self-care as value-driven 
  • Value-driven work and burnout

Self-Care Experiments:

• Ideal work day
• Relationship values
• Planning for getting wet

Resources mentioned:

• Book:  Values in Therapy by Drs. Jenna LeJeune and Jason Luoma
• Book:  The Resilience Plan by Dr. Marie-Helene Pelletier
• Our past podcast interview with Dr. Marie-Helene Pelletier
• Visit our website to get your own copy of our FREE 4 C's Self-Care Assessment:  https://www.intentionaltherapist.ca

Connect with Melissa & Karen at Intentional Therapist:
[email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmelissatiessen/

Share one of your own self-care experiments via our SpeakPipe page at: https://www.speakpipe.com/intentionaltherapist

Disclaimer: This podcast seeks to be educational in purpose and is not to be used as clinical advice. Please connect with a therapist one-on-one for personalized support.

Do you ever find yourself wondering why self-care seems to come so easily for some of your colleagues or why you and your colleagues struggle in different ways with self-care? Or maybe you’ve been disappointed with the “one-size fits” all self-care messages you’ve been fed. If so, you’re not alone.

In today’s episode, we’re diving into the topic of individual differences. As female mental health clinicians, we share a lot in common, but we’re also each unique, and that uniqueness can play a huge role in how we approach self-care. We hope you will tune in as we explore how unique aspects of ourselves can impact the way we experience work, self-worth, and even the imposter syndrome. And what we can do to use this information to tackle self-care in a truly personal way.

Episode Highlights:

• 3 Individual differences we need to consider:
  • Neurodiversity 
  • Image of a “successful therapist”
  • Personal history and life circumstances
• Self-care experiments 
  • Review your workday
  • Talk about individual differences with trusted colleagues
  • Find colleagues who share similar life circumstances
  • Celebrate the everyday “wins” at work 

Resources Mentioned:

• Our past podcast interview with April Snow
• Our past podcast interview with Dr. Kelly Yanek & Dr. Michele Kinderman
• Our past podcast interview with Silvana Espinoza Lau
• Visit our website to get your own copy of our FREE 4 C's Self-Care Assessment:  https://www.intentionaltherapist.ca

Connect with Melissa & Karen at Intentional Therapist:
[email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmelissatiessen/

Share one of your own self-care experiments via our SpeakPipe page at: https://www.speakpipe.com/intentionaltherapist

Disclaimer: This podcast seeks to be educational in purpose and is not to be used as clinical advice. Please connect with a therapist one-on-one for personalized support.

We’re about to explore something that may surprise you—your brain’s survival instincts are still influencing how you approach self-care, and they might be working against you. Have you ever wondered why saying "no" feels impossible or why you can't seem to prioritize yourself no matter how hard you try? What if the answer lies in how our brains are wired for survival, and how that wiring affects everything from guilt to stress?

In this episode, we’re going to unpack how your evolutionary wiring could be sabotaging your best self-care efforts. But here’s the good news—once you understand this, you’ll have the power to work with your brain, not against it. We’re sharing insights on why it’s so hard to break the cycle, along with practical strategies you can start using today to make more room for yourself. So, stick around—by the end of this episode, you’ll have a whole new perspective on your survival and your self-care.  

Episode Highlights:

• 4 ways evolutionary wiring impacts self-care:
  • Conservation of energy
  • Acceptance of the tribe and the role of guilt 
  • Scarcity of resources
  • Living for today
• Self-Care Experiments:  
  • Recognize your signs of ‘survival mode’
  • Respond kindly to guilt
  • Create a ‘Not to do’ list

Resources Mentioned:

• Healthy Habits Suck: How to Get Off the Couch and Live a Healthy Life...Even if You Don't Want To by Dr. Dayna Lee-Baggley 
• Work, Parent, Thrive: 12 Science-Backed Strategies to Ditch Guilt, Manage Overwhelm, and Grow Connection by Dr. Yael Schonbrun
• Our past podcast interview with Dr. Dayna Lee-Baggley
• Our past podcast interview with Dr. Yael Schonbrun
• Visit our website to get your own copy of our FREE 4 C's Self-Care Assessment:  https://www.intentionaltherapist.ca

Connect with Melissa & Karen at Intentional Therapist:
[email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmelissatiessen/

Share one of your own self-care experiments via our SpeakPipe page at: https://www.speakpipe.com/intentionaltherapist

Disclaimer: This podcast seeks to be educational in purpose and is not to be used as clinical advice. Please connect with a therapist one-on-one for personalized support.