Dive into the meaning and execution of self-care in this episode with Tanya and Chris.
Tanya Johnson-Gilchrist is a veteran, USF alumna, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and a Certified Public Health Professional who specializes in trauma, PTSD, and family conflict. Chris and Tanya chat about integrating work and life, time management, interpersonal and client relationships, and the impact of trauma.
Learn more about the USF School of Social Work here.
Chris Groeber: Hi my name is Chris Groeber and I'm an associate in research in the University of South Florida's College of Behavioral and Community Sciences School of Social work. Welcome to the Remark-a-Bull podcast.
[Instrumental music]
Chris: Welcome back! I’m so excited to be sharing this “remark-a-bull" with you guys today. This is Tanya Gilchrist-Johnson and when she walks into a room, if you’ve ever met her, she lights it up. She’s got such a tremendous passion about the work and the field, and she, like so many of you, was a student, came right through our program, and she now teaches in the program. She’s a highly sought after faculty member, because people actually, she’s a practitioner, so people actually really get state-of-the-art information from this woman. And so I’m excited for you all to meet her today. Welcome Tanya, it's great to have you on our “Remark-a-Bull" podcast.
Tanya Johnson-Gilchrist: It is great to be here on your “Remark-a-Bull" podcast. Thanks for inviting me and I’m excited and I hope I do justice to that introduction.
Chris: Well you do, every time I see you it's the same. One of the things, I think, when you get to a certain place in your career is the sameness and the consistency of colleagues and it's a beautiful thing with that predictability that you … I can always count on you for a positive order or smile, so take it or leave it, it's the truth. Tell us how you got to be where you are right now because it's been quite an accomplishment in the past 10 years.
Tanya: Yes, and literally it's been 10 years. I’m in the class of 2012, University of South Florida, School of Social Work. I had an amazing cohort, amazing instructors, very motivating for sure. I loved the program, I loved the content and I had a really life-altering field placement in that I got to work alongside child welfare, but my agency wasn’t child welfare but with so much support I was able to be on an advisory committee for a very large case management organization and got to sit with DCF and their representatives on different children issues and even different clients. And so that kind of wedded my passion and I was always passionate about children’s mental health and you and I were speaking earlier; that placement along with having the child maltreatment course, which I know you are revamping and so that's exciting, that gave me my passion for children’s trauma and being able to work on those very difficult topics and situations. So, yes, I’m in the class; I graduated as an MSW 2012. I had already been a graduate student a couple of times, I had already had a dual degree, a master’s degree when I entered the program , so it was a long and hard consideration to come back to grad school a decade later since my previous master’s degree. And so when I entered the program, I was approached by the College of Public Health to say, “hey, how would you like to do our degree program?” And I was like no, “who needs four masters degrees,” like it's really ridiculous, and I’m supposed to be working on my PhD right now, but they sold the MPH programs so well and I kind of thought it was like Target, where you buy one, get one. And it's okay, I’m in …
Chris: Not that easy.
Tanya: Yeah, it wasn’t quite that easy at all, but it was an amazing pairing and so, as I was in the MSW program, I was a MPH student, as well, and still was able to keep some tinges of sanity through it all.
Chris: That. It's amazing. You know, as an adult, I got my master’s when I was an adult, or adult enough, anyway. And I worked full-time and I did that and I’ve got such a passion for those students who pay the bills and they get their degrees at the same time because it really is ... I talk to several other podcast participants about really being a risk management strategy or risk mitigation strategy, you know.
Tanya: I supervise interns for licensure and they look at my schedule and they just shake their heads. Like, I literally have to account for every half hour. It really, for someone who is very ADHD, it made me so responsible for my time management, like ridiculously so because, I didn’t, there was no room to wiggle.
Chris: Let me ask you, that’s a very interesting rabbit hole we’ll go down for a hot second because, so you’re talking about for you, you’ve really had to focus on that time management piece as a, really, a strategy for yourself care, so you can keep your time?
Tanya: So, I will be very transparent, I sucked at my self-care. I was horrible and I cautioned my students all the time, and my interns all the time. You should practice as if you were going to an outfield practice, right? So, my self-care was usually neglected and I feel like I’m spending the rest of my life trying to right size that, so to do that, first and foremost, it was time-management because I was, I did have the luxury where I didn’t have to work, but I was doing two graduate degrees and a 32-hour internship at the same time and the agency I was in, is a very small agency, an amazing agency and we just didn’t like clock out, you know, at five o’clock, if I was on call. My clients need me at eight o’clock there, there’s trauma here and I was doing that and working on two different degrees at two different colleges, that were, you know, were pretty demanding so I had to account for every minute in my day.
Chris: So, when you’re looking at it now Tanya, I mean because you made a point, you know a lot of our students, a lot of our master students want to hang out a shingle and become their own therapist and so hope do you control your time now? You’re an entrepreneur, you are the principal in your business, tell me how do you keep control of that?
Tanya: So, I still struggle but I know I need to disconnect and unplug. And so, I really do, I’m a very good gatekeeper for my down time. I don't have enough of it for sure, but what I have, I protect it fiercely and so I literally disconnect, I travel, I go away, I jump into, you know, my family, my friends and such. Unless my client is on fire, and every fire station in the area has shut down, I’m not going to be responsive in that way, I’m not their emergency, crisis-management, on-call person and I take it very seriously to direct them to that resource because when I’m unplugged, I’m really unplugged.
Chris: That’s still good to be able to draw that boundary. I think it's something, you’re right. By enlarge, most of us are pretty terrible at, because I think we are under this false assumption that we actually have a lot more control in people’s lives than we really do and I think they make us feel that way and that’s empowering, but I think, I was reading an article the other day and it was talking about how that kind of co-dependence is really a form of selfishness; it really isn’t sacrificial.
Tanya: No, it’s self-serving, right?
Chris: It’s self-serving and I thought about that and I thought, “wow, so what a thing to unpack, you know when you really think about self-care.”
Tanya: It is and even to train myself to use a different language, because I didn’t even know what a social worker was before I entered the program, right? Didn’t have any idea and I was mentored and molded and shaped by some really fabulous clinicians and case managers, like amazing, world-class. And so, I adopted the language of my client, my family, my child. I really even tried not to say my kiddo because it always seems as if we say “my kiddo,” if the child is in the system of care and I don’t call my children, “kiddos,” right? So trying to just change my language and how I don’t own this client, I don’t own their outcome, I don’t own this family, and just training myself because I really did, I was so emotionally invested. If my client had a bad day, I also had a bad day. If that’s not investment, I don’t know what it is.
Chris: I think, I just don’t know that we talk about that enough, because that stuff happens but then how do you back out of it, and you said earlier and I think this is so true, you want to start out the way you want to finish.
Tanya: Definitely, that language, I teach my interns, where I see them you know kind of using their countertransference and their kind of wrapping it around the process and the client and the session. And we unpack that and when you do that, when I encroach into my client’s face, even with the best intentions, I’m so well intended, I promise; that’s going to be my ticket to heaven I think, that’s going to be byline, I was so well intended. But even if I’m well intended, when I encroach, I leave less space for my client to grow.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. And you can’t grow for them, we talked about students and wanting, I can’t want your grade enough for you, I can’t want you to learn this content, you know, enough for you.
Tanya: And I wanted so badly, but I recognized if it's not in a point in your life where you can ingest it, actually I’m force feeding you, and that's not helping for you, that’s not helpful for ... I tell my students all the time, you’re going to be my future clients, I love teaching, I love supervising, I love this aspect, but it’s very selfish because you’re going to be my colleagues, and I’m going to be referring to you, and I’m going to be calling when you when I’m in a space where I don’t understand where this client is coming from or how I should move forward on with this. You’re going to be the professionals and I want to make sure I’m doing you creditable service. And if I’m dragging you through the class, that’s not very hopeful.
Chris: Don’t think that really ups the game though, when you look at that room full of students as future colleagues. I mean for me…
Tanya: I love it!
Chris: It puts a sense of urgency on my heart that I just think, “okay so I got to get this right,” and I tell students all the time, I don’t know what your experience is telling you, but I find families and children to be more complex now than we have ever seen them.
Tanya: Ever!
Chris: It's crazy to me. And so, they’ve got to be better, faster, smarter, stronger than we were when we were coming up and I guess …
Tanya: Smarter and faster than I am today.
Chris: Right?
Tanya: Cause this evolution of the dynamics that are impacting our youth and the families, oh my word, it’s so ... its game changing, mouth dropping.
Chris: Overwhelming. Yeah, I agree. Well, the other thing I want to go back to is you said you’ve done this for about ten years and I’m fascinated about childhood trauma, it’s something it keeps me thinking about all the time. Man, we have made some strides in ten years. I mean…
Tanya: Yes we have, yes we have. And I was always interested in children’s mental health, right? My first love was psychology and I didn’t even know, like, child trauma was a thing.
Chris: Right, it’s usually there for veterans. You know I mean…
Tanya: Yes, right? And I kind of had a front seat to someone else’s childhood trauma and a very young boy that was actually perpetrating on other children. And I had no idea that this could happen. I had young children and I didn’t understand, you know? I mean I taught my children "stranger danger,” and they knew. But I didn’t know children could perpetrate on other children and why they would do that and so that dumped me into child trauma. And I remember the little boy and I just wanted to be somebody that made a difference. I wasn’t riding on a horse where there would be no more of this happening, but I did want to make it at least one less. Because, you know it is a hard field to serve, for sure, but just being able to give one child an ability to find some sense of, “I’m okay or I get to be okay,” after something so tragic has happened to them.
Chris: Well, I want to just put a pin on that there because I think one of the things that's really important of what you just said is, in and of itself that’s a self-care tactic because I’m re-defining success, it's not a global success, it's a success with this one individual child where I think I can make an impact because they are in the right space and place.
Tanya: Certainly, certainly. And it evolve from there because, again, I wanted to work with youth, I wanted to work with young people. I’m a veteran, I love my service, and I didn’t want to work with that population, although when I came into the program that’s where I was directed, “Oh, you got a position at the VA, you can do your internship there.” And it is like, “yeah, I’m so glad that there are people looking to help veterans because we are definitely in need, but I just left my service, retired from a lot of years and a lot of conflict.” And I just thought, you know what, I really was thinking, because when I encountered childhood trauma, someone else’s, it was a military family, and I knew how much these conflicts were tearing down the military family and how the children were being impacted. So, rather than serve in the VA from that aspect, I’d much rather be in a position to help their families and the family dynamics right? So, that was my thought. It didn’t exactly work out in that way and then I had an amazing clinical supervisor and I expressed to her that as I was working with children and their parents were telling me stuff that I didn’t want to have information about -- their romantic relationships and who's not sleeping with whom. I’m your child’s clinician, that's all I wanted to be. And my clinical supervisor, a very, very amazing woman told me, “you cannot heal a child in a home that is not healthy.” Because I was like, you know, I got very uncomfortable with the parents telling me what’s going on in their bedroom and I’m not their marriage therapist. That’s what I told my supervisor, “I’m not the marriage therapist; they need to go find someone else to do that.” And she told me, “you’ll be for this family whatever helps that child. And if so, if the parents aren’t doing well, your child is not going to do well.” And that made me more open to working with families and the importance of working with families because I was really ready. When I graduated, I thought, “how about I just work with children and you know toss all the adults away, send them, Peter Pan them or something.”
Chris: It's not possible.
Tanya: It's not feasible.
Chris: And people take the child maltreatment class, it’s probably misnamed because it's really about family maltreatment.
Tanya: It is.
Chris: People say, “well I want to work with kids,” and I’m like, “that’s great but you’re going to work a lot with their parents, that's the way you work with kids.”
Tanya: So much more, so much more. I learned this when I was working prior to coming into this program, I would do amazing work with the child but, you know a year or two later they would come back. I didn’t work with the parents, I didn’t give the parents a strategy, I didn’t give them any way to support what we were practicing in the sessions. They had no reinforcements and it was failing.
Chris: So looking back, Tanya, this is one of the more on-the-spot, stump-the-guest questions. I’m sorry, but I’m fascinated to hear your answer to this. If you had to pick a couple of like your best learnings over the past ten years, things that you know you’re like, it was worth it to learn that, what would those things be?
Tanya: I think I learned this in a course, but in practice to say, “don’t ever make the presumption you know the client better than they know themselves, that you know the client system better than they know themselves,” and I think we often come in, you know, I took a lot of courses, training, credentials to become a quasi-expert, at any rate, in this field in my passion, but it's presumptuous to think I know the families than they know themselves. And I’ve had instances where a client would share something with me and to say I was blown back is an understatement, like I never saw it coming because I’ve kind of labeled them, I boxed them. And this is what they do, this is their behavior and this and ... don’t ever think you know everything about your client, don’t ever think you know more about them than they do themselves. We come with the resources, we come with the strategies, but the clients, you know, barring severe mental illness, they know themselves.
Chris : Well don't you think, the more I do these podcasts, the more that I am out there, I think we don’t do a good enough job at listening to people’s stories. I think we miss things because we're not listening to hear, what are your thoughts on that lived experience?
Tanya: Certainly, certainly. And I reinforce that to my interns that it's okay to sit and listen, just listen. And I get it, you're fresh and new and you want to prove that you have all this knowledge …
Chris: Check those boxes off.
Tanya: Yes, your clients are sitting with you because they see you as the profession, you have nothing to prove and you have so much to gain by listening, hearing their stories, validating them, and validating doesn’t mean giving them the thumbs up, “that’s great behavior you got there sir/ma’am,” it doesn’t mean that all. “I heard what you said. I heard how hard this is for you. I heard you say…”
Chris : “Oh. Wow. Oh, my.” You know, just basic, any response any of us would have.
Tanya: And I see, you know, and I probably did the same. I’m so ready to jump in with the response and answer, a treatment and by far one of the coolest things I share is when I was doing the dual degree, so I probably did a semester, at least one semester, in the MSW program and then started doing both, side-by-side and in the MPH program when I was talking about being client centered and empowering the client, and listening, and allowing the client to have input to their treatment, in public health, I sounded, like, brilliant. And so, I was like, “Oh wow, you're cutting edge.” And no, this is what we do all the time, and it's so important and it's really, I think it's really great to see. So, I also provide clinical supervision to those who are in the psychology program, as well, and to see that discipline adopt a new paradigm that is client centered and client empowering …
Chris: Yeah, truth and focus.
Tanya: Yes, because that's not the way I was taught it.
Chris: It's pathologized. Name it and treat it.
Tanya: Pathology, pathology and treatment, and to see that evolve is so amazing and I’m excited about mental health across the board.
Chris: Well it's so good to talk to a clinician than in 2022-23, is still excited about mental health. What makes you excited? You know when you look at this, you think about this upcoming year, what makes you excited about the field of social work?
Tanya: I’m excited because I feel that, in this field, we get to, and not always even see it to fruition, but we get to be part of that touch that allows somebody to move through their journey and often, because the focus on my work is trauma so, I also do trauma work for first responders, I do a lot of trauma training for the state. So, trauma is probably my umbrella, I do other things for sure, but to even be able to touch somebody in a very dark space in their journey and know that your touch may not be the one that, you know, allows them to come out in the light, everybody is singing about rainbows and unicorns. But your touch on top of somebody else’s touch, and maybe getting them to the next set of touches could really make a difference, not only for this client and their current client system, but we know how mental health impacts generations.
Chris: Yes, absolutely.
Tanya: Generations and I think that is so mind blowing, like if I make a contribution to this person being in a healthy space, then their children get to be more healthier and their children. And, you know, and I’m very okay with blowing up my own narrative in my head and five hundred years later they’re going to be talking about you know when my great, great, great, great, great grandfather was in mental health treatment, this turned our family around and I’m going to think it's all about me and I’m okay with that.
Chris: Well you know the cool thing is and I think this is a function of age, I don’t know, but it's such an honorable thing to plant seeds for trees you’ll never sit under, you know?
Tanya: I’m okay with that because I’ve already imagined how amazing it's going to be and I’m okay with my story.
Chris: I love being a contributor…
Tanya: I even have theme music, like superhero music.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And so I love, I love that. So looking, you know we’re talking BS, potential BSW, MSW, and PhDs, what's your best future student advice?
Tanya: My best future student advice would be, really, I think coming into the program, whatever your course of study, looking to learn more about yourself. I haven’t entered a PhD program yet, that is on my to-do list …
Chris: Sure, I’m sure.
Tanya: Yeah, just because I love it. But, I feel like, in each stage of your instruction, especially in a field like mental health and social work, specifically, you’re going to learn something about yourself and just be open to that. I have a close friend that I graduated with from this program, who just recently earned her BSW, and it made her peel back and learn things about herself that were life-altering …
Chris: It’s very humbling.
Tanya: Oh, she said she has never been so humbled. And to be able to successfully complete a very challenging program, it just strips you down and allows you to see what you’re made of and to be able to accept what you’re made of and it’s not all good stuff.
Chris: That’s right. And you know what, then fix it. You know, I mean if you don’t like your reputation, change it.
Tanya: Fix it and what you feel like is beyond your capacity to fix, find a way to love yourself in spite of that. Accept you, along with those flaws, accept that, you know, I’m never going to be the smartest, most brilliant, amazing person in the world, maybe the third best, who knows, to accept that. To understand that is you doing this work it is for a greater good, but there is also a good that you do to yourself and to the field and I think that’s amazing, so as you go on your journey, whether you are entering a program or soon to graduate from a program or you’re looking at your future graduation, what have you, just be open to learning, growing, evolving, because I feel like this is one of those fields, if you stay stagnant and complacent, you’ll shrivel up.
Chris: Well, not only, there’s so much new knowledge every, like, minute, like we talked about with trauma, I mean just discovery, discovery, discovery, you know the malleability and the synapses in your brain, and how you can go around things. So time is of the essence I think with some of this stuff, so we got to learn.
Tanya: Certainly, certainly. And you do yourself a disservice if you are not open to all of that, that experience, that exposure, and I would also say, I had the, I don't’ know, the good fortune, I think amazing fortune, to be able to work on a textbook for the VA and, of course, my portion of the textbook is about military trauma and how to help veterans with trauma. And one of the things I wrote into my chapter was about professional self-care. And self-care is part of your professional growth and development. It’s not a luxury, it’s not as if you can …
Chris: It's not an add-on.
Tanya: Yeah, it’s not an add-on, it's not an accessory. For you to be competent to work with the demands of this field, you really do have to manage your self-care, you’re cheating yourself, you’re cheating your clients, you’re cheating this discipline if you don’t do it, so…
Chris: That I’ll preach. That’s great advice.
Tanya: That's my parting shot, definitely to do that with every, as much as I wanted to learn everything and I wanted to train on everything and I wanted to be all knowing about mental health, I should've equally been working on how I do incorporate responsible, accountable self-care and I urge you to do that and I think any of our students think it's just a phrase and you say self-care, but you have these thirty assignments due by Tuesday. Yes, I want the thirty assignments due by Tuesday, I also want to take professional self-care, that’s not going to the Caymans every week. How do you incorporate that and look for advice and guidance on how to do that because yes, the thirty assignments still have to be done, but not at your detriment and not compromising your competency.
Chris: Well, and I think, you know, back to the trauma piece. You know trauma is not an in, there's this great thing called post-traumatic growth now.
Tanya: Yes, and post-traumatic strength.
Chris: Yes, and so, you know, you can come out of this. And I think people hearing that, hearing, “go take a lap around the building, go grab an ice-cream, go grab a cup of coffee,” whatever your thing is and build it into your schedule. Call it something really scientific, I don’t care, so people don’t know what you’re out doing, but do it.
Tanya: Do it. I even break it down to my students, like I’ve had students tell me at the end of this semester, you know, just checking in what are you going to do and they put off doctor’s appointments. One student told me, every light on her dashboard was lit up, like every one. That’s self-care, making sure your vehicle is okay, making sure your tires have tread, you know self-care isn’t always manis and pedis and massages. Self-care is going to your optometrist, self-care is taking care of that pain, so yes, you have to be intentional and just as if I would schedule to be a participant in a lecture, I have to make my doctor’s appointment, I have to do these things. This is all part of your self-care and to be intentional about it and definitely understand where you have to prioritize things, but for a student to be driving a car that’s basically a deathtrap, every day, two or three times a week to or from the campus, that’s, that’s not self-care.
Chris: Well I love, thank you for that. Because I think, you normalize things that people don’t normalize, so thank you for this time. I want to thank you for your practice wisdom, but also your real human being wisdom that, you know, we’re all works in progress and so, I knew this before but now, now I know a little deeper about your motivations. It just makes me proud to be your colleague Tanya, so once again thank you.
Tanya: I’m honored, as well, Chris. Thank you for having me and yeah, this was great and fun. Do you want to do it again tomorrow?
Chris: Yes, exactly. So reach out to Tanya guys, she's out there, she’d love to chat more with you. So, if you have more questions, you know, look her up and pin her down for a chat and you’ll be a better person for doing that, so thanks again and we’ll talk again soon.
Tanya: Certainly. Thank you.