What is your relationship to self-care?  Self-care is quite the buzzword these days, both within our chosen field of work but also in mainstream media and culture.   As therapists, we know it is a vital part of our practices to avoid burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious traumatization.  In other words, it helps us to do the work better, to show up more fully for our clients and for our families outside of work.  But, for all we know about self-care, and for all the tips and tricks available to us, many of us still struggle to feel like we are doing much better than running on empty.  Often times, we feel we are just maintaining, rather than thriving.

Why is that?  You could say that Dr. Matt Hersh knows a thing or two about this, and today, he’s sharing his thoughts with me on the #POBScast.  

Dr. Matt Hersh is a psychotherapist, mindfulness meditation teacher, and heart-centered entrepreneur.   He is the founder of The Thriving Therapist, which aims to help therapists and healers provide the same care for themselves as they do for their clients.  

In this episode, Matt and I discuss:

• How we create sustainability in our self-care, the “over-striving for ease” paradox, and how to do it differently.
• Self-care a part of who we are or what we do, rather than another to-do, and how to tell the difference.
• What our deeper values tell us about the self-care we really need.
• The personal truths informing our self-care needs, the underlying universal needs contained within, and why they’re important.  
• The discovery pathway for sustainable self-care, on both intellectual and somatic levels.
• Matt’s personal story, in which a life-altering situation imposed an urgent and consuming need for self-care without the seed of sustainability, and how a fear-based relationship with self-care gave him insight into what most self-care practices are missing.
• Finding ease as meaning-making beings and choosing the “Or…”.
• Energy Psychology and what ease and being “in flow” really mean in mental, physical and energetic terms.

Mentioned in this episode:

Matt’s recent live-feed lecture "Psychotherapists and Our Self-evolutionary Path to Sustainable Well-being".

Matt Hersh references Nick Ortner’s work with EFT Tapping. 

Connect with Matt Hersh online TheThrivingTherapist.org.

If you are a therapist or healer who is looking for more support, accountability and community, to move through your fears and implement better habits, so that you can be held in your vulnerability while you vision and take action toward your more integrated, sustainable and fulfilling practice, consider joining the inaugural Connectfulness® Method Mentorship Program.