Episode Transcript
Alan Helgeson (host):
Hello and welcome. You’re listening to the “Health and Wellness” podcast, brought to you by Sanford Health. I’m your host, Alan Helgeson, with Sanford Health News, and our conversation today is about mindfulness, how to practice, and the importance of self-care.
Our guests today are Kayla Salathe and Amber Mutalipassi. Welcome and thank you for being with us, ladies. Happy to be here. Can you guys share a little bit of your background and your role at Sanford? So Amber, let’s start with you.
Amber Mutalipassi (guest):
I am an integrated health therapist. I work a lot with interns and do direct patient care within primary care.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Kayla, how about you? Tell us a little bit about your background and your time with Sanford.
Kayla Salathe:
I, too, am an integrated health therapist working in the primary care clinic, so I work directly with patients on mental and behavioral health concerns.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Well, we’re so glad that you guys could take time out of your busy day, and I’m guessing you see a lot of patients through the course of your day. But talking about mindfulness, it seems like one of those things that even now more than ever, we hear more and more about it and we all need more than ever. Right? So for someone new to this, explain what is mindfulness? So whoever wants to jump in and tell somebody who doesn’t really know anything about it?
Kayla Salathe:
So I would say my best description of mindfulness is that it is a state of mind. It’s a state of being. It’s not necessarily a particular set of actions or behaviors, but just a mindset that’s focused on the exact present moment. And it incorporates two distinct concepts. So it incorporates awareness and acceptance.
Alan Helgeson (host):
So I think like normal brain mode is that we’re always thinking the next thing. We’re always making plans, we’re always going, “Hey, what’s coming up?” You know, 6, 7, 8, 9 steps down the road. So with the mindfulness, it’s just maybe just stop and saying, “hold on, let’s think about where we’re at right now, and kind of take an inventory of that.” Is that some of what you’re saying, Kayla?
Kayla Salathe:
That’s exactly right. We tend to either live future tense, right? Worrying about everything we have upcoming that we have to do or in past tense, right? Ruminating on what has already happened and, oh, I wish I would’ve done that differently. So mindfulness is just about holding up on that and bringing it to just be in the moment and be aware of what’s going on and kind of just accepting it for what it is.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Is it odd Kayla that we have to, as humans, think about how do we just stop and take inventory of where we’re at right in this moment? Is it, it’s kind of weird that we have to do that, right?
Kayla Salathe:
Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that with humans being part of the animal kingdom, we are the only ones that have to stop and live in the present moment. Any other animal in the animal kingdom just does that naturally. But being humans, that’s one of the things that sets us apart, is we have that ability to think ahead or ruminate on the past.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Let’s talk a little bit about some of the stats regarding mental health and stress, and why this is placing such an importance on mindfulness.
Kayla Salathe:
Looking at the stats on mental health and stress, one of the ones that stands out is that more than one in five U.S. adults lives with a mental illness, likewise over one in five youth, which would be ages 13 to 18, either currently or at some point during their life have had a seriously debilitating mental illness. Stress is also the number one health concern of high school students, and nearly 30% of adults will be affected by anxiety disorders at some point in their life.
Alan Helgeson (host):
You’ve run through all these statistics here and the one thing is we’re seeing here, it’s not a specific demographic here, a specific age. I mean it’s humans and wondering, Amber, if maybe you can jump in and share a little bit more about the importance here of mindfulness and you know, as somebody that is telling people why it’s important, I’m guessing that you can speak to it from probably experience.
Amber Mutalipassi:
There are many times throughout my day when I feel overwhelmed, and you see that in patients and providers and everybody. And it’s good to just take a minute and remember to take that breath, be intentional with your thoughts for even just a few seconds. It’s important on various levels, including reducing your mental anguish and improving your physical health.
Research has shown actually that participating in mindfulness practices can increase gray matter in the brain, creating better results in learning, memory, education, empathy, it can foster compassion. It also increases your ability to focus and increases your relationship satisfaction. There’s just, there’s no downside to mindfulness, and disregarding it can really hinder your life. Stressors hinder your life improving. So it’s important in many aspects of life.
Alan Helgeson (host):
So Kayla and Amber, I’m going to be honest here, and I don’t know if this is too much information. But as human beings, we know often things that we should be doing, but we don’t take the time to do it. Is there maybe special training needed for a person to practice this? Is it something that I need to do differently or anybody needs to do differently to get involved in this?
Amber Mutalipassi:
I’d say that it is not necessary to have specific practice training in it. That being said, there are different activities that people would like to do that could require training. And so seeking out a professional in whatever that activity is would be beneficial to learn how to do it. I look at mindfulness even down to the point of you can be mindful when doing dishes. You can. No one likes to do dishes and if they do, that’s fine, but in my experience, not a lot of people like to do dishes.
But this example where you stand at the sink and thinking about doing dishes, what is the scent of the soap? What is the water temperature? How does it feel to hold that dish in your hand as you’re cleaning it? I wouldn’t recommend tasting the soap, but you know, using all five senses when being mindful is a good thing.
But basically you’re intentionally being present in that moment with that dish. It’s a very simple act and not something everyone thinks about doing. A lot of times when you’re doing dishes, it’s looking out the window (thinking) what do I have do tomorrow? What else do I have to do right now? Give me the list and there’s a kid over there bothering you, or whatever the case is. Taking that minute, even just do the dishes, it goes by real fast. And then you go, oh wait, I feel better. Cause I’ve just thought about nothing for a good 30 seconds except what I was doing.
Alan Helgeson (host):
I want to go back here a little bit before we get into maybe some more of the things about how to practice. You know, over the last three years, our world, our country, our communities, and all of us have been touched by the pandemic and with the things that we’ve faced here in work, in our personal lives, in so many ways. So signs and symptoms of stress and burnout that are touching everywhere. Let’s talk about some of those signs, and where we might see some of those things manifest, especially in your roles daily within clinic. Can you share some of those here for us?
Kayla Salathe:
So there is a difference between stress and burnout. I want to make sure that we cover that. First and foremost, stress is that everyday pressure to get things accomplished and to get things done. Burnout is that chronic, prolonged stress where the person experiencing the stress does not have the necessary coping tools to manage it. So just making that distinction right there.
And when talking about burnout, there are three dimensions that will help recognize it. Those are chronic exhaustion, chronic cynicism and inefficacy. So with chronic exhaustion, it’s that feeling of emptiness and being completely depleted. You just don’t have the energy to give to things, even things you know you need to get done. And this can present in different ways. It might be physical, emotional or mental. Sometimes it doesn’t have to present physically either, right? You might feel OK, you’re not tired, you don’t feel depleted, but yet you just don’t have anything to give when that time comes.
Second, we have that chronic cynicism or depersonalization is another word for it. And when your tank is empty, your tolerance for any and everything quickly dwindles, right? You may notice that you’re more easily annoyed or irritable, you start to lack compassion or patience, you tend to be, become more negative, have this negativity around you. You’re not as kind as you used to be. That’s a huge red flag that, “hey, I might be burning out here.”
And then third inefficacy. Now the definition of inefficacy is lack of power, capacity to produce the desired effect. So when you’re burnt out, you don’t perform at your best period. And as that performance starts to decrease, so does your confidence in care. So inefficacy, that’s going to be best marked by that sense of who cares, right? Like what’s the point?
Alan Helgeson (host):
You can engage with mindfulness at any point along that way and it can make a difference like starting now. Is that right?
Kayla Salathe:
Absolutely. So like we said, mindfulness is bringing that awareness to the present moment and what’s going on with you around you. And part of stress, especially stress leading to burnout, is you’re completely unaware, right? You’re just going through the motions of life and you get so wrapped up in trying to get through it. You’re not giving it that active intentional awareness to notice, and we go from being ourselves and being able to function well and having all these good qualities to dipping down into that negative pattern.
Alan Helgeson (host):
So we’ve talked about some of these things to recognize this. Let’s jump right back in again here, Amber. I know it’s not as simple as this, but I’m going to ask you the hard question of how to practice mindfulness.
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Amber Mutalipassi:
Being intentional with your thoughts, behaviors, and actions, all of that can help with bringing mindfulness into your day.
But I usually tell people the goal of mindfulness is to help regulate yourself to a point where you can not react to the situation, but to take it all in and be able to be present in that moment. Identify what it is you need to be doing and then moving forward how to practice it. There are so many different ways to practice mindfulness. It can be as simple as taking that 30 seconds to yourself, taking a breath and refocusing your thoughts on what is it you need to do right now to setting time aside and practicing that daily or every so often as you can, and remembering to engage with self-cares and different things that you can do for yourself to make sure that you can refocus and recenter yourself.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Doing it over and over and over again so that you can maybe build it into your life. Because the things that we do, we make time for what’s important to us, right? And if we want to be better at mindfulness, it’s doing it more often and finding time to work that in. So making it part of a regular routine you’re suggesting as well, correct?
Amber Mutalipassi:
Yes. With the intention of, I’m going to do this so often that it just becomes second nature and my body just falls into doing these mindfulness acts as the day progresses or as my mood progresses. Like if I catch myself heading down that slippery slope into stress and burnout, your body just automatically goes back to being mindful of what do I need to do to keep myself on track and healthy.
Alan Helgeson (host):
So Amber, I want to jump to the next question here. We’ve been talking about how to practice mindfulness. And this might be something that there’s some confusion around this, but is it the same as meditation? Are they one and the same or are they different?
Amber Mutalipassi:
They are completely different and can be similar (laugh). It’s not as cut and dry as we’d like, but you can have mindfulness without meditation. Meditation is a form of mindfulness.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Are there some specific tools or maybe there are some apps that you could recommend that could even be just helping us get started?
Kayla Salathe:
One of my favorite resources to recommend is freemindfulness.org, and they have a selection of free resources, and it has a whole array of guided mindfulness exercises that range from just a couple minutes all the way to an hour.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Kayla, what about some of the apps? We’ve heard about Headspace or we’ve heard about Calm, and there are a number of them out there, probably more than we can count. But what about some of those are, are those of value for people as well?
Kayla Salathe:
Whatever works for you for using that mindfulness, that’s what’s going to be beneficial. Mindfulness is very much a unique individualized experience. The way one person practices mindfulness is not going to be the same as the next. So if you’re finding that your best way of working it into your day and giving it that importance and time it deserves is through an app, wonderful. Do that. Right?
Most of us have our phones on us all day long so if that’s what’s going to make it easy to pull out the phone and pull up Calm or Headspace for a minute, or even just 30 seconds if that’s all I have, something’s better than nothing. There’s no wrong way to engage in mindfulness really, as long as you’re just going with the two concepts: What am I being aware of right now? What am I noticing? And then that acceptance.
And I do want a quick say on the part of acceptance is sometimes that gets confused with being OK with how things are, and that’s not it. Acceptance is simply allowing things to be as they are without judgment and without trying to change it. Now you might not be OK with it, but that part is just trying to let go of that. Is this good or bad? Do I like this or don’t like this? It’s simply what are you noticing and allowing it to be.
Alan Helgeson (host):
This next question, Amber, I’m going to pick on you. Probably the hardest question you’ve had all day. How do I know if this stuff is working for me?
Amber Mutalipassi:
You feel better (laugh) mentally.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Good answer.
Amber Mutalipassi:
Mentally and physically, you just feel more at ease. When challenges come your way, you’re able to lean into resilience. If you feel the world is coming apart around you, you are just able to continue moving forward. It’s not something that is easily measurable to you always. It’s really checking in with yourself and, “Hey, do I feel this is different? Yes, it, I see a lot of people come in or just even like myself. Other people will notice it about me before I notice it, right? So, hey, you’re seeming a lot more calm these days. Oh, thanks, that mindfulness is working. Wonderful.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Let’s shift a little bit here. I want to talk about something else. It seems like one of those in some ways if you don’t know too much about it, you hear it a lot as almost in a buzzword sort of a way. But we hear a lot about the word resilience and I’m wondering, Amber, if you can speak a little bit about it. What does that mean? Why are we hearing so much about it and how does that work into our discussion around mindfulness, meditation and some of the mental well-being?
Amber Mutalipassi:
It really has become more of a buzzword, but it is also very important to know what it is. As you’re looking at mindfulness, resilience, it’s been defined many ways throughout the years, seen as something that you are inherently born with, which is not true. It’s become more seen now as a process that you can learn.
There’s two main components: it’s preventative and corrective work. These concepts work together by warding off negative aspects in life through decreasing adversities and burnout, as well as increasing coping mechanisms to deal with intense or high stressful moments. A person who is able to face tribulation in their life and move forward in a mentally and physically healthy way, they have high resilience. So resiliency and self-care and mindfulness, they all go hand in hand and work together to build that healthy network within yourself moving forward.
Alan Helgeson (host):
We hear a lot about self-care. What is self-care?
Kayla Salathe:
Self-care is the act of attending to your personal needs to maintain your health and well-being. There are multiple different dimensions to self-care ranging from practical self-care such as hygiene, sleep, eating, as well as dimensions of emotional, psychological, spiritual, physical and social self-care. And kind of like the theme with everything else we’ve talked about today, this also has two main components that are necessary in achieving self-care, and those are rest and rejuvenation.
So I like to think of rest and rejuvenation in terms of unplugging and charging. So like we said, technology is all around us now. So think of any device you have, but maybe for now, we’ll just think of our phones. You may notice your battery is dying right on your phone and you need that battery to last a while, so you’re going to put it down, right? You’re not going to drain that battery any further. That’s unplugging, that’s essentially the same as rest.
On the other hand, you may notice that your battery is dying and go, oh man, I need to charge this. Like anybody have a charger, like I need to make this last. And so you plug it in to give it some more juice to be able to last longer and that charging is rejuvenation.
So bringing those ideas back to self-care, consider what activities are useful for you in order for you to get that rest you need. Get that break from your tasks and duties of daily life. And then also, which activities are going to recharge your batteries and energize you and give you that extra juice once you return to those tasks and duties.
There is this cliche out there, right? When you hear self-care, oh, that’s just relaxing in a bubble bath with a glass of wine at the end of the night, right? Like that tends to be the cliche people go to. And that may be the case for some of you out there and some of you’ll be like, that’s not restful to me, that’s not rejuvenating.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Let me just say I’m in for that. I think that’s a good way to do it.
Kayla Salathe:
Doesn’t sound too bad to me either. (Laugh) But yes, Amber and I have very different self-care. I’m sure your self-care is going to look different from ours as well. It’s helpful to get ideas from other people to know what they do in case you’re really stuck and wondering where do I start with self-care?
And then bringing that mindfulness back into it of, does this work for me? Am I noticing that this is taking care of my needs? Am I feeling rejuvenated? Am I feeling restful in this activity? Alright, let’s jot that down as something I can continue to do for self-care.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Can you guys maybe throw out a few ideas or examples of how a person can maybe put a plan in place? Or just how do I get started from zero to maybe putting one step forward to create a plan for mindfulness or self-care?
Amber Mutalipassi:
For mindfulness, if you are very new to it, I encourage learning grounding skills or techniques things to bring you back into that present moment. For self-care, I’d mentioned earlier with the interns and myself and everyone around me, I very much advocate creating a wellness plan, including activities in the areas of your life. So social, physical, emotional, spiritual, and leisure.
Identify what works now and what you want to do in the future for self-care. Address any barriers you have and create a list of emergency strategies for those high stress moments. Include your mindfulness techniques into your self-care as much as you can, and remember to revise it as needed. Our lives change all the time, so your self-care will need to change with you.
Kayla Salathe:
I’m going to jump in quick too and encourage people to start small. Yes, life is busy and when we think about throwing in all these other things that are helpful, right? But still it’s one more thing to add on to our day. Start small. If you’re new to mindfulness, you might only be able to do it a minute, and that’s all right. It’s building a skill. You’re not going to be able to sit down and do it for 45 minutes off the bat. So be kind to yourself and just take it in small steps.
Same with self-care. You’re not going to be able to implement a new routine with 10 different self-care items today. Start small, start with one and build upon that as it becomes part of your routine.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Absolutely. What should people do if there’s some mental health needs that you or a loved one might be experiencing here beyond what we’ve talked today about and how do they get started in addressing some of those wellness needs?
Amber Mutalipassi:
So first and foremost, if you find yourself in an emergent state of need, mentally or physically, call 911 or get yourself to the emergency room because that’s where you’re going to start.
That being said, if you are struggling with mental health, physical health, or both, reach out to your primary care provider. They can help you start the process of addressing your concerns and can help by referring you to trained mental health professionals. Most of our clinics have IHTs or what we are – integrated health therapists – in their clinic. And if they can’t see you for therapy, we can help connect you to places that can see you for therapy, whether that’s within Sanford or without.
We want everyone to feel supported in their mental health and know that there’s nothing wrong with asking for that help. And as we’ve been talking about, if you find that you can’t get the self-care or mindfulness going, that would be a perfect start too with primary care because you come in, you talk to us, we can give you some starters and some skills and touch base, and that way you’re not feeling alone in this because no one needs that.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Any last things? How do we maybe tie the knot on some of the things that we talked about or any things that you wanted to share?
Amber Mutalipassi:
If you can’t be serious in your mindfulness, laugh at yourself because that really cures a lot of things.
Kayla Salathe:
(Laugh) Yes, yes. Along that same note is you don’t have to be perfect at it, right? Like a lot of people don’t try something new because what if I’m not good at it? That’s going to be part of it. And part of mindfulness is I noticed this about myself when I started. Your mind’s going to wander.
You’re going to, you know, sit down for a minute of mindfulness saying, “I’m going to be in the present moment.” And suddenly you’re thinking about all the things you have to do that night and all the things you’ve already done. And that’s OK. That’s going to happen. Just be kind to yourself, bring it back to the present moment and focus on what you need and you’ll be just fine.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Well, Amber and Kayla, I want to thank you guys for taking time to talk to us today about mindfulness and well-being and mental health because we all need more of it in our lives. And it’s such an important thing in what we do as humans. And it’s been just a pleasure chatting with you.
So this episode is part of the “Health and Wellness” series by Sanford Health. For additional podcast series by Sanford Health, you can find us on Apple, Spotify and news.sanfordhealth.org. I’m Alan Helgeson, and thank you for listening.
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Posted In Behavioral Health, Family Medicine, Fargo, General, Healthy Living
