Episode 23: What Is Your Work From Home Environment Doing to You?

Around 6.7 million Australians now work from home in some capacity.

For helping professionals, that often means holding trauma, conflict, high-stakes conversations and emotional intensity inside our own homes.

But we rarely stop to ask:

What is our work from home environment actually doing to us?

In this first solo episode of 2026, I share honest reflections from my own experience, from working at the dining table, to sweating through confidential meetings in a hot garage, to overworking when unwell because “I’ll just work from home.”

This episode explores the hidden psychological impact of blurred physical boundaries, lack of transition time, overworking, and environments that quietly erode psychological safety.

In This Episode:

• Why your work from home environment directly impacts your mood, regulation and performance
• The hidden cost of no commute time
• The myth that working from home is a “rest” when you’re unwell
• Eating at your desk and unpaid lunch patterns
• Physical discomfort and its impact on client care and leadership capacity
• Climate control, sensory needs and cognitive load
• Small, practical changes that improve sustainability when working from home

This isn’t about aesthetics, although I must admit I do like a good office colour scheme.

It’s about whether your environment supports your nervous system to do complex helping work well.

Free Resource: Work From Home Environment Self-Audit:

If this episode resonated, you can download it for free now.

It helps you reflect on:

• Physical setup and ergonomics
• Sensory stimulation and climate
• Emotional containment
• Whether your environment supports psychological safety

Download it here

Ways We Can Work Together:

Boundaries as Practitioners – Self-Paced Two-Part Self-Paced Training ($59)

Clinical Supervision & Leadership Supervision

Organisational Training on Psychological Safety and Psychosocial Hazards

Learn more

If this episode made you pause, I’d love to hear from you.

At the end of a work-from-home day, how do you actually feel?

And what might your environment be contributing to that feeling?

Thank you for listening.

Jazmin

Episode 22: Are You Taking Your Clients’ Energy Home? Emotional Boundaries for Helping Professionals & Therapists (Part 2 with Sarah Xanthos)

Do you ever leave work still carrying your clients’ emotions?

Do you find yourself replaying sessions at night, thinking about their stories while you’re trying to switch off at home?

In Part 2 of my conversation with Sarah Xanthos, we explore emotional boundaries, empathy, compassion, and why helping professionals can feel depleted after certain interactions, even when they love their work.

If you haven’t listened to Episode 21 yet, I’d encourage you to start there first. This is a continuation of that conversation and builds on the foundations we covered in Part 1.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why helping professionals can feel emotionally drained
• The concept of “energy transfer” and resonance
• Why sympathy can lower the emotional state of both people
• How to hold space for your clients without collapsing your own boundaries
• Why focus on the ‘fixing’ can sometimes disempower your clients
• A simple visualisation ritual after sessions
• How to stop taking client stories home

One of the key reminders in this episode:

You can care deeply without absorbing someone else’s emotional state.

As helping professionals, many of us are naturally attuned to others. That attunement is often our strength. But without emotional boundaries, it can turn into over-identification, merging, or carrying work home long after the session ends.

Sarah shares practical tools including:

• Holding your own emotional state rather than matching someone else’s
• Energy boundaries
• Choosing compassion instead of sympathy
• An effective ritual to disconnect after client sessions

Whether you work in social work, counselling, psychology, disability, allied health, leadership, or supervision, this conversation invites you to reflect on your own emotional boundaries.

Listen to Part 1 (Episode 21)

Make sure you go back and listen to Episode 21 for the first part of this conversation.

About Sarah Xanthos

Sarah Xanthos is an energy healer and transformational practitioner based in Wallan, Victoria.

She offers one-on-one transformational sessions, energy healing, meditation classes, and an energy healing school. Sarah is also offering listeners access to her free meditation library.

Check out Sarah's Website

Free Meditation Library

Work With Me

If this episode resonated and you’re noticing blurred emotional boundaries or feeling drained after client work, there are a few ways we can work together.

Boundaries as Practitioners (self-paced CPD training)

Clinical supervision, leadership support and psychosocial safety consulting

If you’re an organisation wanting to build emotionally sustainable teams and psychologically safe workplaces, you can get in touch via my website.

Thanks for listening to Not Another PD.

If this episode was helpful and you’d like to find out more, you’ll find ways to work with me in the show notes.
And if there’s a topic you want covered, or someone you think should be on the podcast, I’d love to hear from you.
Remember, clear boundaries don’t just protect our clients, they protect us too.

Not Another PD | Season 2, Episode 21
What Is an Empath? Why Helping Professionals Feel Everything (Part 1)

We’re back for Season 2 of Not Another PD.
This episode marks the first episode of the new season, and Jazmin is excited to be back with more honest, grounded conversations for helping professionals navigating boundaries, burnout, and sustainable practice.

To open Season 2, Jazmin is joined by Sarah Xanthos, founder of Wallan Healing Tree and Healing Tree Courses, and host of the Healing Tree Hub podcast.

This is part one of a two-part conversation, exploring a question many helping professionals quietly wrestle with:

What does it actually mean to be an empath?

Together, Jazmin and Sarah unpack:

• What the term empath really means, and how it’s often misunderstood
• Why empaths are so commonly drawn to helping and healing professions
• How empathic sensitivity can develop as a survival response in childhood
• The emotional and physical cost of constantly tuning into other people
• Why switching off after work feels so difficult for helpers
• How blurred boundaries contribute to burnout and over-giving
• One practical boundary Sarah has put in place to protect her professional role

This episode will resonate deeply if you’re a helping professional who feels emotionally affected by others, struggles to disconnect from work, or carries more than you realise.

The conversation continues in Episode 22, where Jazmin and Sarah go deeper into energy, boundaries, and what empaths need in order to work sustainably.

About Sarah

Sarah Xanthos is an award-winning energy healer, educator, and author of the children’s book Scarlet’s Auras. She is the founder of Wallan Healing Tree and Healing Tree Courses, and blends modern coaching with ancient healing wisdom to support emotional healing, self-mastery, and personal transformation.

Connect with Sarah

Instagram

Facebook

TikTok

YouTube

Free guided meditation library

Sarah’s work includes:

• One-on-one energy healing and transformational coaching
• Online and in-person courses for self-healing and energy practitioners
• Meditation and group experiences focused on emotional healing and self-mastery

Connect with Jazmin

Instagram

LinkedIn

Website

Work with Jazmin

If this episode resonated and you’re noticing blurred boundaries, emotional overload, or difficulty switching off, there are a few ways you can work with Jazmin:

• Boundaries as Practitioners (self-paced masterclass)
• 1:1 supervision and clarity calls bookings
• Group supervision for helping professionals

Episode 20: Inclusion, Boundaries and the Stuff Workplaces Avoid

Most workplaces say they value inclusion.

Far fewer are willing to look at the systems, boundaries, and decisions that actually determine whether people feel safe, respected, and able to stay.

In Episode 20 of Not Another PD Podcast, Jazmin is joined by Patrick Rory-John (they/them), senior psychotherapist with The Identity Clinic, for a grounded, honest conversation about authenticity, inclusion, and boundaries in real practice settings.

Patrick brings together lived experience, psychotherapy, and national inclusion work across sexuality, gender, disability, and trauma-informed care. This is not a surface-level conversation about being “inclusive enough”. It’s about what workplaces routinely avoid, and the impact that avoidance has on practitioners, teams, and clients.

As Patrick puts it:

“Out of fear of getting things wrong, we avoid the conversation. And that actually makes the problem worse.”

In this episode, we explore:

• Why authenticity and modelling create more safety than perfect language

• How visual cues, intake forms, and workplace systems quietly communicate inclusion or exclusion

• Why practitioners from marginalised communities experience more boundary violations at work

• How minority stress shows up in helping professions, and why it affects wellbeing and retention

• The difference between equality and equity, and why “treating everyone the same” often causes harm

• Navigating dual relationships ethically in small or niche professional communities

• Why inclusion is not an optional value, but a workplace safety and sustainability issue

Patrick challenges the idea that inclusion requires perfection:

“It’s okay to get it wrong sometimes. It doesn’t have to be perfectly said. People will correct you.”

We also talk about boundaries beyond the workplace, including Patrick’s decision to stop being the “at-home therapist” in personal relationships, and the importance of having spaces that are genuinely non-clinical, restorative, and playful.

This episode is essential listening for practitioners, supervisors, leaders, and organisations who want to move beyond good intentions and into responsibility.

Connect with Patrick Rory-John:

LinkedIn

Instagram

Email: [email protected]

Find out more about The Identity Clinic:

Instagram

Website

Email: [email protected]

Connect with Jazmin Pursell

If this episode raised questions about boundaries, safety, or inclusion in your own practice or workplace, here are ways to work together:

• Boundaries as Practitioners (self-paced training)
  Practical, boundaries-centred training for helping professionals navigating burnout, blurred boundaries, and systems pressure
  Find out more here 

• Supervision & Coaching
  Individual and group supervision for social workers, allied health professionals, and leaders
  
  

• Organisational training, reflective practice & consultation
  Supporting psychologically safer, more sustainable workplaces through boundaries-centred practice
  Connect via the website or LinkedIn to start a conversation.

If this episode resonated, share it with a colleague, supervisor, or leader.

These are the conversations that shape workplace culture.

Thank you for listening!

In Episode 19 of Not Another PD Podcast, Jazmin is joined by her best friend Kim, a youth worker, former residential care worker, mum, and school wellbeing practitioner.

This episode is a raw, lived-experience conversation about gender bias in the helping professions, the expectations placed on women to be endlessly available, and what can happen when pregnancy and parenting quietly change how workers are treated.

Kim shares her experience of becoming unwell with the flu while pregnant, taking time off, and returning to significantly reduced shifts. Together, Jazmin and Kim unpack how this reflects workplace discrimination, and why these experiences must be understood as psychosocial hazards, not personal resilience issues.

They also talk about guilt around sick and carers leave, financial stress, identity beyond professional roles, and how boundaries often only become non-negotiable once the cost of not having them becomes too high.

This is a conversation many helping professionals will recognise immediately, even if they’ve never heard it named this clearly before.

Work with Jazmin

If you are an organisation or leader wanting support to promote psychologically safer workplaces, address psychosocial hazards, or strengthen boundaries and role clarity for your staff, I’d love to have a conversation.

You can email me directly to discuss supervision, training, or organisational support via my website here.

If this episode resonated, you might want to start with Boundaries as Practitioners, my self-paced training for helping professionals.

It’s practical, values-led, and designed to support clearer boundaries without guilt or burnout.Self-paced training | $59

Episode 18: Why Does “Being Nice” Feel Safer at Work?

Why does “being nice” feel safer at work?

In this solo episode of Not Another PD, I explore people-pleasing through a different lens, not as a personality trait, but as a stress response.

I unpack the fawn response, a lesser-discussed nervous system response alongside fight, flight and freeze, and why it shows up so commonly for helping professionals.

This episode isn’t about naming or shaming.
It’s about understanding context, safety, and the systems many of us work within.

I talk through:

• How the fawn response shows up as over-agreeing, avoidance, blurred boundaries and people-pleasing

• Why helping professionals are particularly vulnerable to this response

• The role of gendered expectations and socialisation in care-based professions

• How unsafe, unpredictable, or unsupportive leadership environments can activate people-pleasing

• A real example from my own career, and how I would respond differently now

• How to recognise the fawn response through body cues, thoughts and behaviours

• Gentle ways to interrupt the pattern through awareness, reflection and support

This conversation applies to both professional and personal contexts, because nervous systems don’t switch off when work ends.

If this resonates, you’re welcome to send me a DM and let me know where you notice people-pleasing or the fawn response showing up for you.

You can also explore my self-paced Boundaries as Practitioners training or learn more about group supervision options for practitioners and leaders.

Boundaries as Practitioners (self-paced training)

Group supervision with me in 2026

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Stillman, M., Sullivan, E. E., Prasad, K., Sinsky, C. A., et al. (2024). Understanding what leaders can do to facilitate healthcare workers’ feeling valued. BMJ Leader. 

Jobs and Skills Australia — Social Workers occupational profile

Episode 17: Failure Isn’t the Threat You Think It Is with Bree Coulter

Failure isn’t the threat you think it is.

For many helping professionals, fear of failure quietly sits underneath people-pleasing, overworking, blurred boundaries, and chronic self-doubt, even when insight, experience, and professional knowledge are already there.

In this episode of Not Another PD, Jazmin is joined by Bree Coulter, creator of the SHIFT Method, a neuroscience-informed approach focused on subconscious healing, identity alignment, and safety-based change to explore why awareness alone rarely creates lasting shifts, and how old safety patterns continue to shape how we show up at work, in relationships, and in leadership.

This conversation unpacks why knowing why you do something doesn’t always change it, how the brain prioritises safety over logic, why fear of failure keeps people stuck in repeat cycles, the role of the limbic system in people-pleasing and over-functioning, why many boundary difficulties are safety-based rather than discipline-based, how failure becomes feedback and direction rather than proof you’re “not enough,” and what shifts when professionals begin leading from self-trust instead of self-protection.

Bree also shares her lived experience of being a high performer with no boundaries, how those patterns were rooted in early survival wiring, and how developing the SHIFT Method allowed her to realign who she was internally with how she showed up externally, including the personal boundaries she holds to protect her energy and family time.

This episode will resonate particularly with helping professionals who have done extensive therapy, supervision, and professional development, want to understand some of their patterns intellectually, still feel exhausted, reactive, or stuck, and are looking for change that actually lasts, not just more insight.

How to Work with Bree:

Bree offers 1:1 coaching using the SHIFT Method (Subconscious Healing and Identity Fracture Transformation).

Website
LinkedIn

Bree also offers a free, non-sales clarity call for those wanting to explore what’s showing up and whether working together is the right fit.

Free Resource for Not Another PD Listeners:
A reflective journaling resource designed to help listeners understand where emotions are coming from, what the brain and body are communicating, and what may need addressing.
FREE MINI COURSE

Make sure to use DISCOUNT CODE: DECODE100 so it is FREE just for you, lovely.

How to Work with Jazmin:

Boundaries as Practitioners — Self-Paced Training ($59)
A practical, evidence-informed professional learning program supporting helping professionals to recognise boundary moments early, reduce mental load, and practise with greater clarity and consistency. ACA OPD Approved Training.

1:1 Coaching & Supervision
Individualised support for helping professionals wanting tailored guidance to apply boundaries and theoretical frameworks confidently and sustainably in complex work environments.

Episode 16: The Myth of the Good Practitioner: Letting Go of Perfection in the Helping Professions

In this solo episode of Not Another PD, Jazmin explores one of the most deeply ingrained beliefs in the helping professions: the myth of the “good practitioner.”

Where does this idea come from? Why do so many of us equate being “good” with being endlessly available, endlessly capable, endlessly calm? And what’s the cost of upholding that standard on our wellbeing, our families, and our identity at work?

Drawing on her own experience working as a primary school social worker, Jazmin reflects on how striving to be the perfect practitioner can quietly become part of who we think we’re allowed to be, and how to begin unravelling that pressure.

You’ll hear:

- What a “myth” actually is, and why the “good practitioner” ideal is one

- How universities, placements, and workplaces quietly reward overgiving

- The pressure to constantly prove your worth as a practitioner (especially early career)

- How perfectionism and blurred boundaries chip away at work-life balance

- A simple, visual reflection activity you can try today to start releasing those internalised “shoulds”

- How to start talking about this safely in supervision and peer spaces

Mentioned in this episode:

- Reflection activity: Write a list of all the traits you think a “good” practitioner must have, read it aloud, then crumple it / erase it. You’re allowed to let those expectations go.

- Supervision: Bring this conversation to your supervisor, external supervisor, or trusted peer and ask, “What expectations am I carrying that are actually costing me?”

Connect with Jazmin:

Website

Instagram

Boundaries as Practitioners Online Self-Paced Training ($59)

Subscribe to Not Another PD for weekly episodes on wellbeing, boundaries, and identity for helping professionals.

Episode 15: The Stories We Inherit: How Family Patterns Shape Us as Helping Professionals with Sarah Voronov

This week on Not Another PD, Jazmin is joined by her old high school friend Sarah Voronov, a Naturopathic Kinesiologist and Rebirthing Breathwork Mastery Practitioner-in-training, to explore how the emotional patterns passed down through generations shape who we become, and how we show up as helping professionals.

Together, they unpack how unprocessed experiences and family conditioning can show up in our work through people-pleasing, conflict avoidance, or even physical reactions, and what it takes to become the “pattern disruptor” in your own story.

You’ll hear:

- How childhood conditioning influences professional boundaries and behaviours

- Why helping professionals are often the ones to break generational cycles

- What it means when your body reacts before your mind catches up

- How to start freeing yourself from old family stories that no longer serve you

Sarah shares powerful analogies and gentle, grounded insights to help you reconnect with your body’s wisdom and approach healing with compassion and curiosity.

Connect with Sarah Voronov:

Website

Instagram

Free download: Emotional Self-Reflection Chart: A guided chart to help you process emotions and uncover what’s really going on beneath the surface.

Naturopathic Kinesiology sessions (online anywhere in the world or in person, Narre Warren VIC)

Work with and Connect with Jazmin:

Website

Instagram

Episode 14: The Excuses Leaders Use to Avoid Supervision (And Why They Don’t Stack Up)

This is the second instalment of my Bold Boundaries for Leaders mini-series, and today we’re talking about one of the most overlooked but essential leadership strategies: supervision.

Here’s the irony I see all the time: as leaders, we expect our staff to engage in supervision, yet so many of us don’t prioritise it for ourselves. And that comes with risks: to our wellbeing, our organisations, and the people we lead.

In this episode, I’ll cover:

• The three excuses leaders use to avoid supervision:

  1. The Firefighter - “I’m too busy putting out fires.”

  2. The Lone Wolf - “I can manage on my own.”

  3. The Banker - “There’s no budget, my organisation won’t fund it.”

• And why these excuses don’t stack up

• -Five key reasons you can use to self-advocate with your organisation about the importance of investing in supervision for leaders:

  1. Risk management

  2. Role-modelling

  3. Retention

  4. Professional standards

  5. Fairness and justice

Supervision isn’t optional, it’s your “regular service” as a leader. It helps keep you effective, grounded, and sustainable, and it strengthens your staff and organisation too.

Tune in and reflect on how you can stop hiding behind the excuses and start taking action on your own supervision.

Let’s connect: Visit www.jazminpursell.com.au, follow me on Instagram @jazminpursell

Send me a DM on Instagram and let me know which of the three excuses has popped up for you in the past, and what your next step towards prioritising supervision might be.