Gentle Living for Highly Sensitive People with Becky Corbett

May 25, 2022

In Podcast Episode 17, Gentle Living for Highly Sensitive People, I chat with Gentle Living Nurse, Becky Corbett about what it means to be a highly sensitive person (HSP) and Becky’s gentle living framework that provides support for HSPs.

Welcome to Episode 17 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Gentle Living for Highly Sensitive People.

I’m joined by Becky Corbett, aka The Gentle Living Nurse, a holistic nurse and coach for highly sensitive souls.

We chat about what it means to be a highly sensitive person (HSP) and Becky’s gentle living framework and podcast that provides support for HSPs. Becky also shares insights on burnout and impacts on health care workers in recent times and how people can nurture and prioritise their own well-being as they care for others.

You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

In this episode, we chat about:

Becky’s background as a nurse and challenges faced
Shifting to a path of gentle living
Being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)
Strengths and challenges of being highly sensitive
How to balance your nervous system
High sensitivity and other personality preferences
Experiencing burnout and making change
Signs of burnout
Being a holistic nurse
Impacts on health care workers in covid times
Social media options as a highly sensitive person

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to Episode 17 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 25th of May as I record this.

I’m excited to have Becky Corbett join us for the podcast today.

Becky Corbett (aka The Gentle Living Nurse) is a holistic nurse and coach for the highly sensitive soul based in sunny Brisbane, Australia. The Gentle Living framework was birthed as a result of Becky’s personal healing journey of anxiety and navigating the world as a highly sensitive person (HSP).

Becky now supports other HSPs to create their own Gentle Living journey to nurture the nervous system, through combining elements of evidence-based science, spirituality and intuition. Her mission is to support as many HSPs as possible to connect with their sensitivity gifts to flourish and thrive!

Becky and I connected via social media and I have had the pleasure of chatting with Becky on The Gentle Living Podcast. So it was wonderful to connect again and focus on Becky’s very important work in the world. We chat about what it means to be a highly sensitive person (HSP) and Becky’s gentle living framework and podcast that provide support for HSPs. Becky also shares insights on burnout and impacts on health care workers especially and how people can nurture and prioritise their own well-being as they care for others.

Enjoy listening to this insightful and inspiring conversation and take some time to check out Becky’s fabulous framework and podcast.

So let’s head into the interview with the lovely Becky.

Transcript of interview with Becky Corbett

Terri Connellan: Hello, Becky. And welcome to the Create Your Story podcast.

Becky Corbett: Hello, Terri, it’s such an honor to be here. Thank you for having me on your podcast and congratulations on launching your podcast as well.

Terri Connellan: Oh, thank you so much. It was great to be on your podcast a little while ago, share our podcasting journeys and stories together.

Thanks for your connection across our work in the world, especially as it relates to personality, sensitivity and living our best life. And we’ve connected online around our work, so it’s great to chat further on this today. So can you tell people a little bit about you, a brief overview about your background, how you got to be where you are and the work you do.

Becky Corbett: Absolutely. Well, first up I’m very excited to be here because I’ve been following your work for a long time. Well before I even created my own business, so yeah, this is exciting. To give a bit of background about me, so I am a registered nurse, I’ve been nursing for about 12 years now, more recently in the mental health space. I’ve always had a fascination with the human mind and the body and what makes us tick and always searching for those deep answers to deep questions.

And through my nursing career, I’ve always felt as though something were missing. And I actually resonate a lot with what you say in your book Wholehearted about feeling half-hearted about what you might be doing and not feeling that sense of complete fulfilment. Like something’s missing, it’s sort of partly there, but it’s also partly missing. So yeah, through my nursing career, I always felt that something was missing. I don’t know. There’s probably listeners who work as nurses or doctors or health care workers and in the hospital system. It’s very directive. It’s very much, you tell patients what to do. You’re the expert, they’re not the experts. You have all the knowledge and the information. There’s a big hierarchy. The politics of the whole system, bullying is a really big problem as well. And so I experienced burnout quite a number of times through the hospital system and to deal with this, I really just pushed through because there’s this real culture in the healthcare system about we’re the people taking care of people.

So we have to push through and keep going. And so, yeah, I had lots of unhealthy habits as a lot of nurses do. So sugar, caffeine, bad foods, not exercising enough because I was always so tired. Alcohol is a big one for nurses as well. Just blowing off some steam with a few drinks because, it’s the quickest way to de stress. And anyhow, I eventually left the hospital system all together. I found it wasn’t serving me. I was really burnt out. I wasn’t really serving the people as best as I could do. Just wasn’t thriving in that sort of a culture.

So that led me down the path of gentle living, which is my business today. So I call myself the Gentle Living Nurse. And so somewhere along that path, I really reconnected with myself and my unique traits as not only being an introvert, but also as a highly sensitive person. And I understood that the root of all this anxiety and overwhelm and panic I was feeling sometimes was because my nervous system was so out of balance and I was just doing all the wrong things and seeking for the wrong answers.

So when I turned to the path of gentle living, which is all about gently exploring your nervous system health and taking care of yourself that led me to more fulfillment and that led me to the path of wanting to support people, to, nurture their gifts as a highly sensitive person, which is what I’m excited to speak more about today.

Terri Connellan: Well, thank you. Thanks so much for sharing about your journey from that sense of not feeling fulfilled in your work to moving through, to finding a path that takes those areas that you feel passionate about into new spaces and in new ways, and also growing your own self knowledge in that process.

So thanks for sharing about your journey and I love too that your focus now is on the nervous system and health and living holistically and living gently. So look forward to exploring that with you today. So your work focuses on the highly sensitive person, HSP, which you identify as, so how did you identify this in yourself and how might others also know they are highly sensitive?

Becky Corbett: Yes. So my work around the highly sensitive person, it evolved as wonderful things do. So when I first created my journey of gentle living, probably around the end of 2018, where I was really taking care of my nervous system and doing the things to nurture myself again and address the overwhelming anxiety that I’ve been experiencing for such a long time.

Through that process, yes, I had always identified as being quite an anxious person. I’d always been quite an anxious child. I suppose I didn’t really realize it at the time, but I look back and I think I was quite shy. I was quite anxious. I was quite withdrawal and at times, and there was never really an aha moment, I suppose, where I realized that I was a highly sensitive person.

It was just looking back in hindsight, I think. Oh yes, there were all these signs that, okay, this makes sense. I am highly sensitive. So as I was walking my path of gentle living to restore my nervous system, I realized that I wanted to empower and support other people to go through the healing that I had gone through and three things it and the stress and the burnout.

And through that, I learned a little bit more about the highly sensitive person. So I don’t know how I came across it. I don’t know whether it was 10 years ago, could have been earlier. Five years ago. I’m not quite sure, but it just all came to make sense. And a lot of people that I speak to who didn’t realize that they were highly sensitive and then I introduced them to the work of being a highly sensitive person, they sort of have the same, aha, yeah, that sounds like me.

So a lot of the research around being a highly sensitive person was pioneered by Dr. Elaine Aron, who is a therapist and scientist based in the United States and high sensitivity is a trait which is actually held by about 20% of the population.

So it’s much like hair or eye color. It’s not actually a disorder. It’s not a weakness. It’s nothing that’s wrong with you. Not any more than say having brown hair or blue eyes is a disorder. And it’s also not necessarily synonymous with being shy or introverted. In fact, there’s a strong correlation between being a highly sensitive person and being an introvert, but there are certainly highly sensitive extroverts as well. I think it’s around 30% of highly sensitive people are actually extroverts as well.

So to break it down for people that haven’t heard of the highly sensitive person, what it is, they’ll have no idea, the highly sensitive person, or as a highly sensitive person, we have more highly sensitive, nervous systems.

So what that means is we have very perceptive to the environment around us. We don’t really have as much of a filter on our nervous systems. I like to give the analogy of that. It’s not as filtered as say someone who’s a non highly sensitive person. So we navigate the world in technicolour. I sort of see it as so much sound, sensation, feeling, experiences that we go through. And that’s normal to us. We don’t know any different. And so that’s why as a highly sensitive person, if you’re not navigating life, taking care of yourself, taking care of the environment that you’re in or setting yourself up with the foundations that you need, you can become quite overwhelmed, stressed, burnt out because the world isn’t really set up for the highly sensitive person.

We pick up on subtleties in the environment, nuances, and actually some signs if you are a highly sensitive person and I suspect many of the people listening to this podcast, are probably highly . sensitive because most creative people, I would argue, have high sensitivity.

But the signs of being a highly sensitive person are things such as feeling your emotions really deeply, being moved by beauty, by nature, by the arts, by music, you might get quite teary if you engage with something that’s quite meaningful to you. I know for myself, I get quite inundated and flushed with emotion when I go and see a musical, for instance.

And I used to find that really embarrassing. Now I just take tissues with me and I allow myself to just really feel the experience of going to a musical. Cause it’s not a sadness. It’s sort of just an overwhelming sense of emotion that we experience. As a highly sensitive person, you’re probably also very sensitive to physical sensations. So very perceptive to things like touch, massage, might be a bit more sensitive to pain as well. We’ve got a really rich inner world and deep imagination, which makes us very good storytellers. Our imagination can sometimes run a bit wild and we can become overwhelmed and think anxious thoughts with that.

So we have to keep that in check as well. And like I mentioned, we’re very much effected by the external environment. So a lot of highly sensitive people will have some sort of sense that is a little bit overwhelming for them sometimes. And for myself that’s noise. I was just saying to Terri before we got on these chat that the man next door is mowing his lawn.

And that’s actually what aggravating to me, not to the sense that I’m going to tear my hair out, but, to the sense that it’s just a bit much. So I’m very sensitive to noises within my environment. So for other people that might be taste, it might be the smell, it might be emotions, it can be a whole range of different things.

It might mean that you’re also really affected by being in busy environments like airports or public transport, buses, shopping centres, being stuck in traffic, gyms, those types of things. And we’re also very deeply affected by the moods and the emotions of others too. So we’re very good at stepping into a room and then being able to detect the energy in a room. We can often tell if there’s been some sort of a conflict or there’s been something not quite right happen.

And we need to be careful not to absorb that as well. So a lot of highly sensitive people might get home from work and just feel absolutely drained. Not because anything significant has happened, but because the interactions, the sights, the sounds, the smells, everything that’s been going on through the day can become quite exhausting.

What else? Our conversations, we like to have really, really deep, meaningful conversation. So we make good podcasters. So like yourself, Terri, seeking deep, deep answers to deep questions. And with that too, we can ruminate a little bit, I suppose. We might come away from conversations and really over analyze what we’ve said or what the other person said. And did I say the right thing and what did they mean when they looked at me in that way? So we really need to take care to withdraw when we need to restore ourselves. And retreat into a little bubble sometimes too.

Terri Connellan: Thank you. That’s an amazing snapshot of what it’s like personally and for others who may be highly sensitive. So it sounds to me like, it’s almost like everyone has their own brand or experience of being highly sensitive that they need to learn to understand and then manage. Is that how it works?

Becky Corbett: Yeah definitely. Being a highly sensitive person. It doesn’t mean we’re all the same. We are all very diverse. And like you said, beautifully. Yes. It is almost like having your own brand of high sensitivity. So like I mentioned earlier, you can be a highly sensitive extrovert, so you can really enjoy being in loud environments, but at the same time, you might also be very sensitive to the sounds. Or you might be very sensitive to the conversations that are going on.

Or you might be more of an introverted, highly sensitive person. So it can just get a bit too much having too much social interaction, as well. So yeah, it looks entirely different for everyone. And it’s interesting because people that I have bought on to my podcast, actually, that didn’t identify as being highly sensitive, when they learnt more about the traits and what it involved. A lot of people have said, actually, that’s me. I think I’m highly sensitive because I think the word sensitive has a lot of negative connotations attached to it. And I think that’s sort of a cultural thing where we’ve been told that sensitivity is weak, or if you’re too sensitive, then you’re feeling too much and you need to toughen up. So perhaps some of the language around it can deter some people as well.

Terri Connellan: Well, that’s fascinating. So you’ve touched a bit on this, but interested to explore a bit more, what gifts do highly sensitive people bring to the world? You’ve mentioned creativity. That’s obviously highly correlated by the sound of it?

Becky Corbett: Yes. I love this question so much because so many HSPs that I work with HSP, highly sensitive person. So many HSPs I work with come to me and they just sort of feel like everything’s become a bit too much. They are overwhelmed. They’ve been told that they’re too weak, too sensitive, too emotional, too this, too that.

And so a lot of the work that I do is supporting people to realise that actually sensitivity can be a gift. And there is a lot that comes along with that as well. So interestingly, a lot of the great minds of the world, so artists, creatives, musicians, environmentalists, humanitarians, a lot of them are HSPs.

So some examples, actually if you have a Google, some examples I’ve found were, apparently, Albert Einstein, Princess Diana, Martin Luther King, Jr, Alanis Morissette, Jane Goodall. And so you can say they’re not just women either. So men are also highly sensitive, but again, I think a cultural thing is that men are meant to be sensitive. So perhaps women embrace it a little bit more, but I think the research shows it is 50 50. But yeah, women are more forthcoming about it. So yes, when HSPs let go of the story that they’re too sensitive or they’re too much, that then offers them the route to explore their gifts.

So yes, creativity is absolutely one. So deep imagination that we have brings life to things like novels, poetry, songs, beautiful books to the world. We’re very empathetic as well. So HSPs make wonderful friends, wonderful therapists, healthcare workers. But by the same token, need to be very careful not to become overwhelmed or to give too much or to take on people’s emotions too much.

We’re also quite intuitive. But often that is masked by anxiety. So if we’ve got an imbalanced nervous system that often manifests as feeling quite anxious and overwhelmed. We struggle to listen to our intuition, but when we can calm that anxiety down, then we can better tap into the intuition. And it’s very strong for us as well.

We’ve got a strong will to make a meaningful difference in the world. So we’re not interested in surface level questions or answers. In fact, those types of conversations are quite draining for us. There’s nothing, I hate more than being stuck in a meeting with surface level questions.

And oh yes, what are you doing on the weekend? You know, that kind of stuff. So I’m more likely to pursue those complex topics and to really seek answers there. We’re also peace and harmony seekers as well. So sometimes people may say that, we’re a little bit idealistic, but I think we need more idealism in the world looking at what the world is like right now.

That’s absolutely what we need and we do make wonderful leaders too. So I think there’s a lot of belief around leaders as being quite aggressive or arrogant, and that hasn’t gotten us very far so HSPs when they are in leadership, they make very fair, very strong and very wise leaders as well. So, yeah, that’s just skimming, the surface I’d say of the strengths of sensitivity.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, fantastic. What a great list of areas of gifts: creativity, empathy, intuition, meaningful differences, peace and harmony, leadership. They’re such a beautiful set of gifts to bring to the world. So I guess part of the challenge in learning to bring those gifts as well as you can to the world as a highly sensitive person, is learning to navigate the challenges. So what are some examples of the challenges that HSPs might face?

Becky Corbett: Yes. Well, because we are only about 20% of the population. The world is not really set up for the HSP. We do live in a very noisy world and if we don’t manage our experiences of anxiety and overwhelm, we are more prone to experiencing things like chronic illness or to experience even heightened mental distress, like severe anxiety or depression.

Some of the challenges in navigating the world as a highly sensitive person that come along because the world hasn’t been set up for us, we often try and camouflage in. So that can sometimes make us people pleasers. We’re very skilled at camouflaging and making sure that others’ needs are met so that we don’t seem like we’re too much of a bother or too much of a fuss.

So we’re very skilled at identifying the needs of others, but sometimes that comes to the detriment of our own wellbeing. And that might look like things I saying yes too often when you really want to say no. It might look like having really poor boundaries, not taking the time out that you need.

The overwhelm that we experience too can often lead to us, trying to perceive quick fixes to ease the overwhelm that we’re experiencing. So an example that I gave earlier in myself was my unhealthy habits, which was sugar to keep myself going, because I was always so exhausted. And when you’ve got heightened cortisol, the stress hormone in the body, you just more likely to crave and to seek out sugar, to mitigate that.

Alcohol as well can be a problem for some highly sensitive people, because it is a quick fix with our sensitive nervous systems. We are very responsive to alcohol very soon. So it just gives that. sort of instant relief. Caffeine as well to keep ourselves going, but then by the same token, and HSPs can become quite jittery with caffeine. And I suppose the strength that I mentioned before around having a lot of empathy or self-awareness, being able to look into conversations quite deeply, with that comes a tendency to ruminate. So we can go over things over and over and over in our minds and there’s no solution. It just makes us feel worse and our attention to detail as well.

We have a tendency to perfectionism. So a lot of the people I work with and most HSPs do identify as either being a perfectionist or a lot of them say that they’re recovering perfectionists, which is yeah, a challenge to overcome. And I don’t think there’s any quick fix to that either. It’s something we’re constantly navigating.

Terri Connellan: So in your work you provide solutions and strategies for some of these challenges based on your experiences and your skills. So as The Gentle Living Nurse, you offer a Gentle Living Framework and the Gentle Living Podcast for people who are highly sensitive. Can you tell us more about the gentle living framework and about the podcast too, and how it supports people?

Becky Corbett: Oh, I’d love to. Absolutely. So, as I mentioned earlier, gentle living is a framework that I really created for myself to start with. It was my own journey of trying to overcome this anxiety that I’d experienced really throughout my whole life, but never actually managed it properly.

I think it was because I’ve always been highly sensitive, but I grew up in a loving environment and everything, but I didn’t have parents that probably identified that I was highly sensitive. So when I pursued the path of gentle living, I was burnt out, overwhelmed, exhausted. And so I just returned to the basics of self-care, which involved taking care of the nervous system.

So it’s a framework really, which is based on my personal experience, my spirituality practices, but it’s also drawing upon the evidence-based strategies that I have used and learnt about through my psychology studies and also working in the mental health space. A lot of people who were experiencing mental distress or mental illness were highly sensitive people.

And so the foundation of it is really based on understanding your nervous system, how it works, viewing the self as a whole as well. Because I think in, especially in the Western framework, we see mind and body is separate and we still categorize them as mind, body, and spirit, but we are a whole person. And so we need to understand ourselves in the context of a very noisy world and understand exactly what we need as highly sensitive people to enable us to flourish and thrive. I see the HSP as being, like a rare flower or a plant, not a weak flower or plant, but just a rare one that needs ideal conditions to grow and to thrive.

And we know that when we’re immersing in the modern world and we’re not addressing our own needs and the nervous system is becoming more and more overwhelmed, it can really cause us to, wither up, so like a plant or a flower might wither up and not survive.

So I do a lot of work with people around identifying exactly what the stresses and triggers are in their lives, because we’ve got this tendency in our modern world, to just keep pushing through, keep going, ignoring any symptoms that we’re experiencing, ignoring any challenges that we’re going through. But really, we need to address the issues at the source.

So it might be things such as looking at well, what is your work situation like? Is your work burning you out? What’s your home situation like? Are you living somewhere that’s actually quite noisy and you’ve got noisy neighbors? Or you’re living in a big city and it’s not really the ideal environment for you. What do your relationships look like as well, because we as HSPs, although a lot of us are introverts, we still need that social connection. We need deep connections. So it’s important that we establish those deep supports.

The other thing is, are we living aligned with our values? And I know that’s something that connects with your work as well, Terri to really identify what are your values and are you actually living in alignment with them because we try to seek out the things that we think are going to be aligned with our values. But a lot of the time we are sort of living this lifestyle that’s just become too overwhelming for us.

The other thing is, do you listen to your intuition? I do a lot of work with my clients around listening to your intuition. What does it sound like? How is it different to your anxiety? And also rewriting any narratives that we have. So that may involve what I like to see as sort of re-parenting yourself in a way. So if you grew up in an environment where you might’ve had well-meaning adults or teachers or carers trying to look out for you, but they might’ve told you, “Oh you’re too much or too emotional, too this, you should go out, you should do this…”

And so a lot of that is going back to that, giving ourselves self-compassionate around that and identifying, ‘Hey, it’s okay that I’m this way,’ addressing what you need as a parent would to a child. So yeah, a lot of work is around identifying that the way that you are is okay. It’s not better than the non HSP. It’s not less than. It’s just as worthy as anyone else. And it’s really about creating a lifestyle that supports you. So again, thinking about that flower that might need the sunshine, might need ideal soil, shade, whatever it is, what are the things that you need to really flourish and thrive?

Terri Connellan: Mmm, it’s such important work in the world when you think of those beautiful cluster of strengths and gifts that we’ve mentioned. And then the challenges, your work is just so important bringing together personal experience, spirituality and evidence-based practices that, can really support people to get practical strategies for shining the way they are and not being too impacted by the challenges or being able to understand the challenge. A lot of the work I do, and I’m sure the work you do is about being conscious of things that are sort of bubbling away and I guess that’s where intuition comes in. Because often things are unconscious and then we don’t know why we’re going off the rails. Isn’t it? It’s about becoming more aware.

Becky Corbett: Exactly. And actually something just came to mind when you were speaking then I’m not sure who said this quote or where I read it, but someone out there and anyone that’s listening can, if they’ve heard the quote or whatever, I’m alluding to they can chip in. But there’s something said out there about being a highly sensitive person.

So when we’re navigating the world as a highly sensitive person, it’s like we have a pack of 48 colored pencils, whereas the HSP has a pack of maybe 12 colored pencils. So it’s okay to be exploring all of that, but perhaps not all at the same time. We need to appreciate that. Yes, we have these deep rich world, but we need to also honor our energy and our value system and our lifestyle too.

Terri Connellan: That’s a great way of looking at it. And it’s like, yes, you can do all those things, but not all at the one time. And your podcast too explores those areas too. You’ve got some great conversations with people about spirituality, evidence-based practice. And of course, just as on this podcast, personal experience, which is so important.

Becky Corbett: Yes. Yes. I love combining all of them because none of them need to be mutually exclusive either that you don’t need to just be a spiritual person or just be a science person. You can combine all of them to have the best results.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, I think it’s great. So I know you’re also an INFJ in Jung/ Myers-Briggs terms. And as you’re talking and describing all this, I’m thinking, that sounds a lot like NF sort of temperament, and I’m thinking, how does this relate to personalities? So, how does being highly sensitive relate to other personality preferences, like being introverted, intuitive, or feeling, for example.

Becky Corbett: Yes. It’s funny because you don’t necessarily need to be an introvert to be highly sensitive, but so many HSPs I know are also INFJs, which are as you know, the rarest type. So it’s funny. A lot of the people I work with, when I ask them, what’s your personality type? A lot of them say they’re INFJs. So I tend to attract other INFJs into my orbit as well. But yes, it makes sense. There is a strong correlation between the N and the F parts of the personality profiles.

So for people that aren’t aware N is the intuitive part and F is the feeling yes, yes. Which are both strengths to the HSP. We’re all often deep feelers, we’re deep thinkers. And interestingly, the personality preferences leaning towards connecting with emotions of the self and others are more likely to be highly sensitive people.

So if you do have that NF component, as part of your personally preference, there’s probably some high sensitivity there. I don’t know if there’s been many studies actually done on it, but I think it would be really, really interesting to explore. From what I understand, the feeling component is often linked with personality types who are inclined to follow their hearts, their feelings, emotions. They’re often compassionate, warm, and friendly. But then they often uphold the needs of others before their own. Is that right?

Terri Connellan: Yeah, very much so. And the other key things with the NFs, they often idealists. And their key focus is often around values. It’s very values driven. And as you were talking, naturally having that sort of knowledge in my head, I’m hearing you talk about that really strongly, that what we value and what we want to share with the world and how we connect with people and have those deep, meaningful conversations about it.

Becky Corbett: Yes. It’s so interesting. Whereas I know personally preferences, which are probably more T and what is that the T [Thinking]?

Terri Connellan: I’m an NT [Rational/Intuitive, Thinking] I’m I N TJ. So I actually have the same dominant preferences as you, which is introverted intuition. I think we chatted about this on your podcast. But as you say, it sounds like being highly sensitive could cross any of those, but is more likely to be correlated with someone who’s intuitive and feeling in preference.

Becky Corbett: Yes. Yes, I think so. And this is probably generalizing, but perhaps preferences that are more leaning towards facts, figures, logic, probably less inclined to be highly sensitive doesn’t mean that they don’t care. It probably just means that they’re less inclined perhaps to hold the highly sensitive trait. But it’s not impossible by any means, but certainly because intuition and feeling are so deep for the highly sensitive person. I think that makes sense. Yeah.

Terri Connellan: So for example, an ENFP for example, could be highly sensitive. And as we were talking about, that sort of brand or how it manifests for individuals. For that person, there’s an extroverted way it might manifest and P [Perceiving] is often about opening up options, not having closure, having choice. And I guess that for that person being highly sensitive, may have many strengths, but also might manifest as too many options, which can get overwhelming. So is that how you see it play out?

Becky Corbett: Yeah, I think so. I don’t have as much in depth knowledge about Myers-Briggs or Jungian psychology types as you do, but certainly I have noticed that there definitely is a trend or a pattern there. And I like actually what you said about it, having your own brand, perhaps the different Myers-Briggs types are sort of different brands of the highly sensitive person.

So say an ENFJ versus an INFJ might be very, very similar, but the difference there is the extroversion, but they’re still more inclined to be very intuitive, have those deep feelings and, and still to perhaps ruminate and be people pleasers as well.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah, the people pleasing comes into it because it’s about harmony. Particularly for people who have that temperament, it’s very important and some more than others, but have that sense of, everybody being happy about a solution or an outcome and not wanting to rock the boat.

We could talk about this all day and we might have some other conversations on this. I think it’s fascinating. So you’re a nurse by background, but as you mentioned before, you found that hospital-based nursing wasn’t for you and that resulted for you in a time of burnout and unhappiness. So how did you rebuild refocus and rewrite your story to help and inspire others?

Becky Corbett: Yes, I’ve had about three burnouts, I think, through my nursing career. And each time it happens, it’s trying to tell me over and over again, Becky, you’re on the wrong path. Do something different and it can be the case for a lot of other people too, to experience burnout more than once.

So the first time I experienced burnout, really the most significant time was in 2018. As I mentioned earlier, that’s when I first created or came up with the idea of gentle living for myself. So I took some time off from work. I was very unhappy. I took a trip to India and they say that India always has something to teach you. Have you been to India?

Terri Connellan: No I haven’t, but I always love hearing stories about India and visits there.

Becky Corbett: Yes. I had read extensively that India will always teach you something and it may not necessarily be something that you want to learn. And that was my experience. Absolutely. So at the time I was working a lot of shift work, I was saying yes to all these shifts. I was doing double shifts. I was burning out, drinking too much alcohol to calm down, to manage my stress, had next to zero unhealthy habits. And when I was in India, I had planned to go on a meditation retreat and to do my training as a meditation teacher.

And before I went on the retreat, the day before I was due to start… So I’d traveled around India with my partner for a couple of weeks. And then I was going to do this retreat for myself. The day before I just had this intense panic attack. And it came out of nowhere. I didn’t have anyone there. My partner had gone home by that stage. I was in a foreign country and although I felt safe, my surroundings felt quite safe. I found the Indian people to be quite warm and I really loved where I was. It was just this internal state of panic that all of a sudden came out which I’d never experienced before.

And I think because of my mental health training, I knew how to identify a panic attack. So I said to myself, okay, you’re having a panic attack. Just do this, you know, name five things in the environment. Breathe. Do all those practical grounding strategies. In the midst of that panic though, I just thought I need to get out of here. I just had this intense desire to just go home.

And so I spent way too much money to book a flight back home, and I didn’t end up going to this meditation retreat, even though it probably would have done me a lot of benefit and on the flight home, I just thought, gosh, I need to change something. This is too much. Okay. Yeah.

Anyone that’s experienced a life turning event like that would understand that it’s really hard to put into words what was actually going on. But it was just this real intense desire to make a change. So I got home and I just decided, yes, it’s time to overhaul my lifestyle. And that began with quitting the job that was burning me out. When I spoke earlier about stresses and triggers, that was the number one thing that I just had to cut out. I know it’s not always practical to say, just quit your job. And I was lucky at the time that that was something that I was able to do, but it’s really just about mitigating whatever stresses you’ve got going on in your life.

So for someone else that might not have the option of quitting their job. It might be about reducing hours or just finding something else that’s not as triggering to the nervous system. So I ended up going into community mental health and I had another burn out there. I had better balance, but I had another burn out and I still wasn’t feeling that sense of wholeheartedness, which you describe.

And that’s when I really decided that I would create my own business. So I took care of myself first. I made small little changes along the way, and I think that’s really important to highlight to people as well, that it doesn’t need to be this whole, I quit my job and I changed my life overnight. It is a series of small steps.

When we look at other people that may have changed their lives or created a successful business, we tend to think, oh, they have it all. They’ve done it so easily when really it’s just making tiny, tiny, small steps along the way. So yeah, I decided to create my own business as soon as I’d gotten my health back on board and I decided, yes, I want to work with people that are like me because I always felt so isolated in who I was. I suppose I always felt like a little bit of an outsider. I was very good at fitting in and camouflaging, like I said earlier. But I had this sense to really want to connect with other people that were like-minded.

I had this really strange aversion to the word coach though, which is interesting. And it’s funny. I think there’s a lot of words that we need to challenge for ourselves and the meanings that they hold for us. And another one that I mentioned earlier was sensitivity or sensitive having a negative connotation.

So I had this strange aversion to the word coach and I thought, no, I’m not a coach. I’m a mentor, I’m a teacher, I’m a guide. And I just got real with myself and I thought, well, why am I feeling that aversion? And I think it was just because of these perceptions that I had around what coach meant to me. In my head, coach held the connotations of maybe being really upbeat, really rah rah, change your life and change your mindset, change your life, which is not my style at all.

And I think that extreme approach to overhauling things really quickly, made me feel a little bit unsafe, but now I’ve transformed that belief anyhow, and I know that coach could mean a whole different range of things, and I embrace that title now.

So I certainly, I didn’t quit my job and throw it all away, but I steadily built the blocks to get to where I want to be in a way that felt safe to me. So it was just about pivoting. So for anyone else, that’s listening. If they’re experiencing a challenging time, don’t feel like you have to get from a to b straight away. Just take a small shift or pivot with what’s realistic for you. That might be reducing your hours, setting more boundaries, changing up your relationships. And for me, it really started doing the work of taking care of my nervous system. and yes, now I’m just continuing to build and grow and not looking back.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, that’s awesome. And they’re tough times, aren’t they?, when we hit b urnt out or hit the bottom or go through crisis. I certainly can relate to what you’re describing when you just know where you are is not the right path, but trying to work out what the right path looks like can feel quite challenging. But yeah, so agree with you, it’s just building small practices and often we can sort of say, well, I either stay or I go with our job, but there’s plenty of in-between options that people can explore. Like it could be working four days instead of five or working from home a couple of days or just something that helps manage. That maybe opens up some time for us to look at other options.

Becky Corbett: Hmm. That’s right just reducing the stress by even 2% to start with, 5%.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. We get a bit stuck, sometimes cause we’re overwhelmed, but then because we’re overwhelmed, we don’t have the time or the mental headspace to look at other things. Well, thank you for sharing your story. And, that’s really inspiring others and the work that you do is just fabulous. So what does your life look like now for you as a holistic nurse and coach on a day-to-day basis?

Becky Corbett: Yes. So I’m so pleased now that I balance an employed role that I really do enjoy as a health coach actually. So I support people in that role to reduce their risk of chronic disease. But I also run alongside that my business. Which I don’t see it as my side hustle. I see it as my main business and perhaps my employment is my side hustle. So the Gentle Living Nurse allows me to support my beautiful fellow HSPs, which has been amazing because I’ve been able to connect with other highly sensitive people from around the world. And connect to people who never even realized that high sensitivity was a thing.

So I support people through my one-to-one nurture program in which we address nervous system health. I’m looking to build into creating a group program as well, because I think it’s so important that us HSPs find one another, stick together and learn from one another’s experiences. Because like I said, we are in this noisy world where the majority of people are not HSPs.

I have periodic wellbeing workshops to learn more about sensitivity and what it means and how you can draw upon your own sensitivity gifts and learn more about the trait. And as you’ve mentioned as well, I have the Gentle Living Podcast, which you have been a guest on, which was so much fun to speak on all things about high sensitivity and how to nurture your nervous system. So I speak to people on a range of different things to address all the scientific elements, the spiritual elements, the practical elements, all of it, yeah.

Terri Connellan: Oh, that’s fantastic. You have a wonderful newsletter. I always love it when your newsletter lands in my inbox. It’s always like a warm hug around you as you read. We’ll pop the link in and just encourage people to connect with you.

So with the stresses on nurses and healthcare workers with COVID and other issues, what impacts are you seeing on individuals and how are you supporting them? You’ve covered a lot of work that you do, but perhaps there’s extra special things you’re doing in that field at the moment?

Becky Corbett: Yeah. Such an important issue. And I think a big problem is that a lot of nurses and healthcare workers don’t really seek the support that they need. There’s a big culture of not taking care of ourselves and one another. There’s the whole saying of nurses eat their young. So younger nurses come through the healthcare system and older nurses, which are burnt out. They might not even be that much older. They might have just been in the hospital system for five years or so, really give younger ones a hard time. And so they’re just not taken care of well enough, I believe. And the thing is a lot of HSPs are drawn to the areas of healthcare nursing, because they have a desire to make a difference.

But because it’s not the best environment, hospitals, are very noisy. They’re busy. They are overwhelming. They smell bad. They’ve go bad food. They’re not the best places for healing. So it’s understandable that even if you’re not a highly sensitive person, you just burn out quite easily in those fields. We’re losing so many wonderful doctors and nurses and therapists as well having worked through COVID and I’m not sure what the solution to that is.

But I think the entire health care model needs to change for a start. And I think more health care workers need to understand the signs of burnout for themselves. Because it’s very subtle to start with. As I’ve mentioned before, when I was in India, I was feeling exhausted. But realistically, looking back, I was burnt out, but I didn’t really realize it. And so I think identifying those signs of burnout. When I work with people in the healthcare field, it’s about identifying, well, actually are you burnt out? Cause burnout doesn’t need to necessarily mean that you’re physically burnt out.

It doesn’t mean that you can’t move necessarily, although it can be that, but it can also just be the experience of not thinking clearly, brain fog, feeling as though you’ve lost a lot of compassion. Not that you’re not a compassionate person, but compassion fatigue is a really big one for nurses and healthcare workers, because they giving, giving, giving so much of the time, but then they’re not receiving the support that they need.

It’s a really difficult question because I don’t know what the answer is. And I know for myself, the answer was to step away from that field. And I know that it’s not practical for everyone, but perhaps it’s taking those small pivots away, and finding something that’s more sustainable for them.

Terri Connellan: And also, as you said, just being more informed and more conscious of what’s happening to them. I think for all of us, but I’m sure those in the healthcare profession are probably even more likely to, like you said before, push through and think I’m okay, I’ll be right tomorrow. I’ll be better. But it’s just stopping, time out to identify those signs of burnout and that empathetic overload. The old oxygen mask story. Certainly experienced it when I was caring for my mother, a time when I was in that caring role, fairly intensely and that learning for me going through that time was I had to learn to look after myself to be able to care for my mother. And I think we all learn that on our life journey, but for those in the healthcare profession, that must be super intensified, it’s all about caring, isn’t it?

So speaking of self care, one thing I’ve noticed you have done recently, which I’ve been watching and finding really fascinating is that you stepped away from Instagram altogether and you also stepped away from social media generally for a while. So how does social media fit with being highly sensitive and living gently? And how do you manage your energy and choices?

Becky Corbett: Mm. Yes, I did step away from Instagram. It was a bit of an experiment, I suppose, towards the end of last year, I had a bit of a love, hate relationship with it for a while. So I loved the opportunity to connect with people. I connected with you and I connected with so many other wonderful people and I’ve been immersed in other people’s work. And I love the opportunity for collaboration and creativity. But it’s also an overwhelming space with complex algorithms. And I sort of stepped back and I started to think, if this was a physical place, what I want to be stepping into Instagram and immersing in all of this all the time?

So I did a lot of work around, I was really mindful of who I was following and I was trying to implement boundaries about not getting on and scrolling too much and fall into self comparison. But by the same token, it’s easier said than done too. So I found over time that the stuff I was creating wasn’t reaching people like it used to. And the algorithms have changed a lot as well. So there’s this whole thing with Instagram, where you have to be on the stories you need to do Lives, you need to do this and that and make reels.

And it was actually becoming overwhelming for me as a highly sensitive person. I was feeling, and I think it was pressure I put on myself obviously. But I was feeling this pressure that, oh, if I want to connect with people, I’m going to have to make a reel. I’m going to have to post this many times a day. I’m going to have these hashtags. And I got someone to help me out with my social media who helped with the scheduling for a little while, and she was wonderful, but it just didn’t feel right either. I like to be at the front end of creating all of my content and being in charge of that, I suppose.

I just was really cautious with how I was extending my energy and it was taking a bit too much of my time. And I found, I’m spending all this time creating this content. It’s not even reaching the people that I really want it to reach. And I experimented with maybe just diverting my attention to content that I knew was going to have a meaningful difference. For example connecting with my email list, connecting with my community. Having more time and energy for my one to one clients. Spending more time on my podcast as well, because that’s quite, time-consuming spending more time writing, blogging, all of those things.

And I just felt like my creativity flourished. It was sort of like if an HSP maybe steps out of a busy environment, like a shopping centre or a busy workplace, and they go into a little bit of a quiet bubble for a period of time, the creativity is more likely to flow again. And that’s just what I found stepping away from social media for a little bit of time.

And I went back on after a couple of months and I thought I don’t really miss this. I’m going to miss maybe seeing people’s stuff. But I don’t miss it as much as I don’t miss being in a really, really busy environment. And so I’m not probably off forever but certainly I’m enjoying being off it for now. And I think with some of the ethics, and this is going a bit deeper into it, but some of the ethics around social media and how it’s run as well didn’t align with me and my values. And some of it was a little bit icky for me. But I don’t judge people that are on social media and I don’t think I’m better than. Just a choice that you can make as a highly sensitive person. Just as much as you can choose to step out of a relationship that’s not serving you.

Terri Connellan: Good on you for honoring your creativity and your sensitivity and making those choices. I’ve shared that I love social media, but I must admit at the minute. I’m actually finding it a bit draining, which is unusual for me. So I think it is important just to tune into how you’re feeling about it at any one time and managing it, setting up structures, like you said, scheduling, someone else to support you. The nice thing about it is you can choose to turn it on and off. I love the way you described channeling your energy into connecting with your community, podcasting, writing, blogging, because it all takes time. And there’s so many hours in the day.

Becky Corbett: Yeah, that’s right. And I think there’s this big misconception as well that if you’ve got a business, you have to be on social media. And it’s absolutely not the case. It can be one part of it, but it doesn’t have to be. I think it’s a big trick that social media has made us all believe that you have to be on there to be making a difference, but you don’t.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. And just to choose for a while. We always want to be nurturing our community that we’ve built, but you know, to really focus on that, I think is really lovely way to look at it.

So a question I’m asking all guests on the podcast, being the Create Your Story podcast is how have you created your story over your lifetime?

Becky Corbett: It’s such a beautiful, reflective question. So I think many of us float along in life and we don’t, we don’t realize that we are the creators. We might have that realization at an early age, and then you may not, or it can be later in life that you realize actually, I am writing my story. And so I think I consciously took more control of this around 2018.

That magic time when I was in India, when I created Gentle Living. Before that, because I have experienced anxiety throughout my whole life, I just sort of thought, just float along thinking it’s just what it is. A lot of people don’t see themselves as in the driver’s seat.

So I have done a lot of work about rewriting my narrative, which has been a key thing. Understanding that no, I’m not too sensitive. I’m not too emotional. I’m not too much spite beliefs I might have had. Whether they came from adults or peers or people at school when I was younger. But actually learning more about being a highly sensitive person has been really, really liberating and empowering so much so that I feel that this is now my life’s work to support other people, to understand sensitivity and what it looks like for them and to come to the same realization that you really can create your own life.

And you really can overcome the challenges of sensitivity too. I think with the negativity bias that a lot of us humans hold or all of us humans hold in our brains where we weigh up the negatives in life a lot more than the positives. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of feeling as though a trait that you may have, or something about you just makes you not a great person or whatever. But really, there is so much more that you can rewrite and understand that yes, there are challenges and sensitivity or whatever it may be.

And you can capitalise or harness those gifts and then create your path going forward. So now I’m trying to set up a life that is supportive of my high sensitivity, going back to the rare flower analogy where I make sure that I have a lot of time in solitude, but also deep, meaningful connections. And I’m doing work that’s meaningful to me. That I’m constantly connecting with my values and doing that deep inner work as well to understand myself better. Setting up my life the way that I want it to be, which which we can do.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And I love that as you said, since 2018, particularly taking that time to rewrite your narrative to reframe both yourself and the work that you do in the world and focusing on that mission, that’s so important for you about supporting your own life. To live the way you want to live as a highly sensitive person, but also supporting others based on all your learning and your skills. Yeah. Beautiful.

Another question that I’m checking in with people on. As you know, I wrote Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and share 15 tips in that book. But love adding to that body of work through hearing what people would share as their top wholehearted self-leadership tips and practices, especially for women. So I’d love to yours.

Becky Corbett: Yes, absolutely. My top one and I think because it lines up with one of my values, is I very much value learning and growth. And I would guess that probably everyone listening to this podcast values the same. I would say never stop learning, especially about yourself. Because we live in our own body and we deal with our own thoughts every day, I think we think we know ourselves quite well. But in fact, we probably don’t. So explore more about yourself, understand yourself better, whether that’s through personality profiling, whether that’s through exploring the high sensitivity trait, if that’s something that you resonate with. And approaching that, learning with a childlike curiosity, as well is so important.

So approaching everything with a beginner’s mindset, not going in and thinking that, you know it all, because I think when we go in and we think we know it all, that’s when we stop growing. And yeah, I think we have sort of stopped evolving by that stage and we don’t need to close our minds. So never stop learning would be my top one about the self.

The second one would probably be to take a really honest inventory of your life, which is something that was key for me when I got back from India. So you might not be able to change everything at once as we were talking about before. I think when we get real with ourselves, we sit down and we think, okay, what’s going on in my life? What’s not serving me? Even if I can’t change it, writing it down, just really getting clear about what it is.

So whether it’s being unhappy or unfulfilled in your job, your relationship, all those things that we talked about before. Do you need to make some changes? And what’s one small step that you can take each day, whether it’s 1% of where you want to get to or 0.5% of where you want to get to. What can you do each day?

There’s always some action that we can take each day and something that I like to do. I don’t get a chance to journal every single day. I would like to make that more of a habit for myself, still a work in progress. But one thing I try to do each day is just write one step. I can take towards whatever my higher vision is. So that could be something like speaking up for yourself. So you might have something challenging coming up that day. But really, you want to be able to set your boundaries a little bit more and you want to be more authentic to yourself. So it could be speaking up for yourself even though it’s scary. It could be setting some sort of a boundary or could be working on yourself, learning something about yourself, learning something about someone else, taking an honest inventory.

And the third one, which I think is really especially relevant for highly sensitive people, but I would argue it applies to all people is to really expend your energy wisely. Not only to avoid burnout but because we are under an illusion that we need to be productive all the time and it’s just not true. It burns us all out.

And as women, especially, we do have greater fluctuations in our energy than men, perhaps. Say with hormonal cycles, men have more of a 24 hour cycle, whereas women’s fluctuates a lot more of a day to day whether you experience a menstrual cycle or not. Our energy is quite different, so we’re not designed to go, go, go all day, every day. We do need those periods of rest, restoration, balance. It’s like the yang and the yin. Yes. We need to get up and do things, but by the same token, we need to care for ourselves. So how can you take care of your energy a little bit better?

So for myself, I always schedule time to rest, do nothing, have solitude in between periods of busyness. So if I’ve had, even if it’s an enjoyable social day or I’ve seen friends and been a bit of a social butterfly that day, I’ll make sure the next day that I’m resting and not doing anything. Because I know if I keep going, if I socialize the whole entire weekend, I’m just going to burn my wick too short, and I’m going to feeling so exhausted.

So just identify, how can you expend your energy more wisely? Like how generally, most of us would have an idea of financial budget and how much you’ve got to spend. I think we should have the same approach with our energy too.

Terri Connellan: I love those answers. Three really top tips about learning, taking an honest inventory and expending our energy wisely. So some immediate takeaways for people to implement in their lives now, and shift towards more wholehearted living, which is what we’re both about I think in our work in different ways. That’s wonderful. Thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure to chat with you today, Becky. So where can people find out more about you and your work online?

Becky Corbett: Yes, well, the best place to find me is on my website. So you can go to www.thegentlelivingnurse.com. And I’ve got the Gentle Living Podcast as well. So I’m just about to start season three on that. So that’s exciting. But they’re probably the main places to find me. And you can find out more about how to work with me or a bit more about what it means to be highly sensitive as well. I’ve just created a Self-Soothing Guide for the Highly Sensitive Person. How we can take care of ourselves, nurture ourselves, soothe the nervous system, practical strategies to take away. Yes, but thank you so much for having me, Terri. It’s been so much fun and again, it’s been an honour to be here.

Terri Connellan: Thanks so much, Becky it’s been great.

About Becky Corbett

You can connect with Becky:

Website: https://www.thegentlelivingnurse.com/

The Gentle Living Podcast: https://www.thegentlelivingnurse.com/thegentlelivingpodcast

Free Self-Soothing Guide: https://www.thegentlelivingnurse.com/selfsoothingguide

Terri’s links to explore:

Podcast chat with Becky: https://www.thegentlelivingnurse.com/podcast/episode24

Books:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition: https://www.quietwriting.com/wholehearted-book/ & quick links to buy: https://books2read.com/wholehearted

Wholehearted Companion Workbook: https://www.quietwriting.com/wholehearted-companion-workbook/ & quick links to buy: https://books2read.com/b/companion

Free resources:

Chapter 1 of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition https://www.quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1

Free 10 Tips for Creating more Meaning and Purpose Personal Action Checklist https://quietwriting.lpages.co/10-tips-mp-checklist/

Coaching and writing programs:

Work with me: https://www.quietwriting.com/work-with-me/

The Writing Road Trip with Beth Cregan email list: http://eepurl.com/hNIwu9

Connect on social media

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writingquietly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writingquietly

Twitter: https://twitter.com/writingquietly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terri-connellan/

personality and story podcast work life

Shaping a Multi-Passionate Life with Meredith Fuller

January 6, 2022

Welcome to Episode 8 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Shaping a Multi-Passionate Life.

I’m joined by Meredith Fuller, Psychologist, Author, Media Spokesperson, Career Change Specialist and Theatre Maker.

We chat about shaping a multi-passionate life in practical terms! There are so many tips for living a full, wise and creative life without overwhelm.

You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

In this episode, we chat about:

Making transitions from work or a life we don’t love
Tools for tapping into what is not conscious
Living a full, multi-passionate life in practical terms.
Meredith’s book Working with Bitches
My book Wholehearted & how Meredith is working with it with clients
Thinking and Feeling preferences in women
Choosing projects wisely
How personality insights can help
How tarot insights can help
Setting boundaries
And so much more!

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to Episode 8 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 6^th of January as I record this and we’re firmly into the new year. It’s warm and humid here in Sydney with lots of rain, so it’s a perfect time for setting intentions and goals for 2022 and also reflecting on my word of the year. I shared about my word of the year for 2021, Author in the past week on my blog. So pop over to see how that shaped up over the year and some tips for applying this learning in your life! More on my 2022 word soon as I ponder on all that it might mean!

I’m thrilled to have my friend Meredith Fuller join us for the podcast today to chat about Shaping a Multi-passionate Life. You might remember Meredith featured in Episode 3 of the podcast as part of the first Wholehearted virtual book launch.

Meredith’s concurrent careers have included author, playwright, columnist & media commentator, talkback radio guest, theatre director & producer, TV co-host, actor, psychological profiler and trainer. As a psychologist in private practice, providing counselling and career development to individuals and groups, she has also consulted to organisations on professional development and interpersonal skills for over 40 years. She ran a university careers counselling service for 12 years and has been a sessional lecturer in postgraduate courses in vocational psychology at several universities.

Meredith and I met via our mutual interest in psychological type as members of the Australian Association for Psychological Type about 4 years ago. From that we have discovered many shared interests and passions. Today we will be chatting about the value of psychological type and personality insights in making change, looking at how tarot can help, my Wholehearted book, Meredith’s book ‘Working with Bitches’ and writing and creative living. One of the things we particularly chat about is being multi-passionate and having a number of projects. There is some fabulous advice about how to make wise choices about where to focus and how to practically structure your life so you don’t get overwhelmed or burn out.

A reminder before we head into the podcast about the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club as a focus for 2022. One of the things Meredith mentions in the podcast is about the value of community and it’s something that’s integral to my life and work. If you’re looking for community, support and accountability for living a more wholehearted life, join me and a wonderful group of women gathering for the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club to read and work through my book Wholehearted and the Companion Workbook together through-out 2022. Part book club, part group coaching, with weekly accountability and prioritising check-ins, it’s a gentle, focused and value-packed way to keep wholehearted living front of mind and make progress to the transitions and transformations you desire in the coming year.

We start on Chapter 1 of Wholehearted in mid-January so it’s not too late to join us now and there is a space for you. People in the group are already commenting on how the accountability is helping them to do things they might otherwise have given up on! So head to the Wholehearted Self-leadership Book Club.

You’ll also hear more about Wholehearted in this episode and how it can support you. Meredith wrote a fantastic review of the book you can read too.

So now let’s head into the interview with the fabulously multi-skilled and multi-passionate Meredith Fuller!

Transcript of interview with Meredith Fuller

Terri Connellan: Hi Meredith, welcome to the Create Your Story podcast. And thank you so much for your support of me and my book Wholehearted.

Meredith Fuller: I’m delighted with it.

Terri Connellan: Thank you. It’s great to chat with you today. So to kick off, can you tell people a little about you and the roles that you focus on in your work in the world?

Meredith Fuller: So, I’ve been a psychologist for over 40 years. I have a private practice where I’ve seen many thousands of individuals who come for career developmental or personal growth, and I’ve also spent a number of years working in organizations on organizational issues, whether that’s leadership, team communication, mainly it’s interpersonal issues.

And I also write plays that I direct and produce at our venue, and I assist my husband with his short documentaries. So, we’ve got a very psychological focus on that. So essentially what I do is assist people to be the best they can be. And I mainly find that people are often in a position of distress. It could be interpersonal problems with people at work, problems in relationships, a poor fit, and they need some assistance in moving towards whatever their life stage is.

And it’s interesting at the moment, there’s been obviously quite a lot of people who are looking at what next? I’m in my fifties, I’m in my sixties. What now? So there’s a very strong theme there. And the other thing that we’ve been doing for the past two years because of the pandemic issue is working with a lot of people using Zoom to do group sessions or one-on-one sessions.

So, I guess what happens for me is there’s lots of different projects that emerge and if I’m interested, I’ll grab it. So for example, at the moment, I’m making a film with some colleagues about domestic violence. So it’ll just depend on what seems to be the critical issues. And the other part of what I do in writing is I’m an author of books and I do a lot of book reviews and write articles for newspapers, magazines, do some TV work, radio work, just a lot of helping people to understand more about the psychology of people.

Terri Connellan: So many threads, but so many interesting aspects to your life and to your work. And I love that at its core about helping people to be the best people they can be and I think that’s where your work at my work comes together. We’re both interested in that space where people can make choices, make transitions, practice self-leadership, understand themselves to be the best they can be, but I absolutely love all the different strands. And so we’ll explore quite a few of those in our chat today.

So thank you. And thank you for your review of Wholehearted too cause, that was a beautiful first review, which I’ll put in the show notes, but thank you for that. And the work that you do, I’m sure is hugely appreciated because it’s one thing to write and create something, isn’t it? It’s about sharing it with the world too. So thank you for that. So we met through our mutual love of psychological type and it’s valuable insights. So why have psychological type and personality been such powerful frameworks in your life?

Meredith Fuller: I’ve always been psychologically minded. And even as a child, I wanted to be a psychologist and it struck me that I was fascinated all through school about what do I think people will become when they get older so much so that I used to write down all the names of the kids in my class and write down what I thought they’d be when they grew up.

So obviously, the issue of vocation spoke to me very early on, and it was clear to me that people were different and that you could cluster them in some way. And I used to wonder why doesn’t anyone else seem to see what I’m seeing? So I felt quite different and alone with that and I guess for me, what I love about AusAPT and working with psychological type is we have a group of disparate people who are all keen to understand what our differences and similarities are.

And we like looking underneath and we like reflecting back on what we’re observing and to my mind, there’s a great depth of thinking that is so helpful for people. And I certainly find that psychological type has informed most of the work I’ve done since about 1998.

Terri Connellan: Wow. It’s been a really long-term influence then. Yeah. So just to explain to people listening Meredith and I are part of the Australian Association for Psychological Type, which is a connection of people in Australia, but globally who have a passion for personality and psychological type and it’s great community for people who as you’ve said think really deeply about the way we’re made up, the way we’re wired and the influence of that with nurture too. It’s not all about how we’re wired is it? But it’s obviously a big player in how things play out. So how do you work with these insights with clients?

Meredith Fuller: Individuals will come for counseling or careers counseling, and they’ll normally present with distress about their relationships at work or their relationships in the family, or with significant others or their difficulty in forming relationships, their concern about their careers and we’ll explore their lives. And I like to look at childhood through to the present and I like to understand their narrative. But I also like to look at what are their ability, skills, interests, values to get that full picture and what their hopes and dreams are in terms of who was this child? What did that child want in the future? And who is this adult now? What does this adult want?

And increasingly, I’m noticing that there’s so many problems with people who are not being valued and validated in their relationships and at work. And so, the thing that struck me about your titles about, this wholehearted and the shadow coming to work and the half-hearted working. The turns of phrase you used were just beautiful because they just encapsulated for me how people talk about work versus self.

And, I loved the way you gave a number of activities and exercises that they could reflect on, that helped them to see what the misalignment is and what’s changed. And that just sits so nicely with the sort of work that I do with people where something shifted. And if they don’t address what’s going on for them, invariably, they get sick or they have to sever relationships or rethink a lot of things.

So definitely there’s a sense that people are coming because they’re not happy. They’re in distress. They know something’s wrong. And they know that it’s very toxic for them, but they feel so stuck and they often feel very trapped and they seek some support from elsewhere because there’s something intolerable that’s going on.

Terri Connellan: That makes perfect sense with me cause certainly when I went through my journey, in my case, I reached out to a coach. There’s lots of different people or actions we can take when we feel that. But it’s that, as you say, that real sense of misalignment between who we are, what we want to do, what we want to be, and then what’s actually happening. And there’s lots of reasons for feeling stuck isn’t there.

Meredith Fuller: Oh, absolutely. And also the issue of age, life-stage. The sorts of issues people might present with when they’re 27 are going to be very different to what they’re presenting with at 57. So, that’s of concern to me that there’s quite a number of women I find who haven’t got the financial security that perhaps men might have. Historically, we know why that is. And they find themselves in this position where they’re being edged out of their organization, or they’re not ready to leave, but there’s nothing for them anymore. And they’re really at their prime and they might be in their forties, fifties, and sixties, and they’ve got so much to offer, but they just can’t get a gig anywhere so that’s a real concern. And the other one is that similarly with a lot of men who are really stuck, lamenting that nobody wants them and what are they going to do with the rest of their lives? People that have been chewed up and spat out. So that’s very common.

Terri Connellan: And it’s ironic as we get through life, we get more wisdom, more skills and, then we get in a situation where we feel of less value. So it’s a huge issue and it’s obviously something we’ve both really noticed in the work and, and I’ve experienced it myself. So it’s something obviously you’re seeing in your clients.

So in Wholehearted, in your work with clients, we both use psychological type and personality as like a compass or a framework or a way of seeing personal development. I’ve spoken about that in my book, and obviously your story is very different. So do you want to tell us more about your psychological type makeup and how your understanding of your personality and how you’re wired has helped you grow and evolve?

Meredith Fuller: And so my preference is for introverted, intuition, feeling, perceiving, [INFP] and I was aware when I was very young, that there were two parts of me, two aspects. There was the very introverted—I loved reading. I loved thinking, daydreaming and performing, and this would be my outgoing situations. So I started working very young. So I was in professional salaried work when I was four and a half. That was because I came from a single parent home and my father had left and there was no supporting parent benefit. My mother was very unwell. We also had in our house, her mother and her mother’s sister who had Down’s syndrome.

So my mother was quite trapped, as a caretaker and not really able to go off to work. So it was quite dire. But from when I was very young, three or four, I just love singing, dancing, chatting to strangers, that sort of thing. And so there was a photographer called Athol Smith who was very famous at the time.

And he and his wife, Bambi, wanted me to do some modelling with them. And so that began a modelling career and that also led into an acting career. So I had a situation where I loved all that. I could go off to work and earn some money to help my family, but I could do things I enjoyed, which was entertaining groups, being in plays, et cetera.

But I knew that was a part of me. And the other part of me needed that balance of time alone. And I always had that fascination by how people were different. Why were they different? What can I understand about that and how to make sense of all of that? I guess I’ve always been interested in these things and another connection we’ve had is with the the tarot.

So I started reading tarot when I was about 15 and that’s always been a lifelong interest in collecting decks and exploring symbolism and the unconscious. And so locating MBTI when I was working at a tertiary institution. It was about 97, 98. It seemed to me that things very much came together with that because here was something cogent.

It made sense in a way that I just felt encapsulated everything I’d been thinking about. So I seized on that and became very involved in doing something to help people train and bringing that to tertiary institutions, bringing that to organizations and then working one-to-one with clients.

And I found it’s been the most useful thing because it isn’t about people running around doing a questionnaire. It’s about understanding yourself through that self-reflection and observation and imbibing the theory yourself. So, it’s got a lot more to offer than say, there’s a lot of tests and little questionnaires and things people do, and they’re quite simplistic.

And of course the fewer categories, the less comprehensive and the less good affinity. So there’s something about having 16 types that’s so robust and it’s something that people can grasp very easily and then it can help inform, well, who am I with? How do I work? What do I need? Where am my gaps in communicating? So it’s something very practical and very common sense.

Terri Connellan: That really aligns with how I feel too. First it’s making sense of your own personality and your own view of the world, I think often is part of the lens through which we see type. And then, in my role as a coach or your role as a psychologist using those skills to help others to see what your strengths are, where you’ve got blind spots, what you might be missing, because we all just naturally have certain ways of seeing the world that’s so natural to us, we think it’s the same for everybody.

Meredith Fuller: That’s a really good point you’re raising because obviously one of the issues about working in my field is that we see the people who don’t fit, who have got distress, who have got concerns, who do feel different. So , I do have a skewed sample in that sense.

So invariably, what I find is there are certain types who come for counselling and careers counselling and my husband, who’s a psychotherapist psychologist, he finds the same thing. So, we tend to work more with the introverted, intuitive, thinking or feeling perceiving or judging types than perhaps the more mainstream types.

And that interests me as well, that I can actually reframe a pretty horrible life experience for someone, and they can actually celebrate what is unique about them and then work to their strengths rather than feeling unwanted in our society.

Terri Connellan: That’s really powerful work. I think type’s such a valuable tool for reframing, for understanding. I like the idea of it as a compass, as Jung used that idea of the compass and the framework for taking us forward. So, thanks for those insights. You mentioned tarot, which is another love we share. I write about tarot as a tool and a support for wayfinding and personal insight in my book. And I know you have been collecting decks and have lots of insights. What are your thoughts about tarot as a personal development practice?

Meredith Fuller: I love the visual aspect for people. It’s very clear that some people are very auditory and they need to have deep conversation and, and music might be really significant in how I might work with them. For some people it’s visual. So films, things like tarot, help them get the awareness, get the insight, help them to name what’s going on for themselves, and also really help them connect with their unconscious.

And the thing that I particularly like about tarot is that it sits so beautifully with doing dreamwork and how in our dreams, we understand that present, past and future are interconnected. We don’t have linear time, that images can be constructed or archetypal. There are messages in our dreams.

And similarly with working with your tarot and working with your unconscious, you’re actually helping yourself to appreciate what’s going on for you in a way that enables you to perhaps have a few more resources in the moment when you’re feeling lost, uncertain, confused. So it’s something very tangible. And it’s also something that I really appreciate because I love ancient cultures, ancient religions, ancient symbolism, and also futuristic work. So I love how it just seems to combine all of those.

And it’s a great tool for quickly communicating with someone else. It’s a little bit like the way we use type that, you know, we can say, oh, you know, my preference is X. So suddenly we understand a lot very quickly. And similarly with cards, oh look, I keep getting certain cards, what’s going on with me. It’s a good way of quickly absorbing and integrating information that helps us.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. So I love two things you said there, firstly, about both tools,type and tarot, or both frameworks are ways of tapping into that unconscious, like what’s beneath the surface or what’s less conscious for us.

And then secondly, how they both like languages or symbolic systems or languages, we can become more fluent in. I love that idea because they do. At a type conference, for example, when we’re together, I just love it. We all understand, at different levels, but it’s sort of a language we can speak.

And as you say, it’s the same with tarot. When I talk about the Six of Swords and the Eight of Cups in the book, I hope people who don’t know that can also get a way in. But for those who understand that, they will bring that understanding to that book. So it just means we’ve got a language for communicating.

Meredith Fuller: It’s interesting. There was a line in the book that was really interesting for me, that you made that I hadn’t seen anywhere else before. And it was very significant. I think, as a teaching tool for a lot of people who are looking at this business of career change. You’re talking about, you’re leaving success. So you’re leaving things that are working, you’re leaving things and you’re going off and you made the comment, you’re actually choosing to leave the successful things.

And that was a very significant statement because for a lot of people where I find they’re stuck is: I earn X amount of dollars and I don’t want to learn less. I’ve been doing this for so long and I’m a partner or a senior administrator or an executive, or I’m a X, Y, Z ed. I can’t leave all this, all this work. I can’t stop and start something where I might earn less or not have my status or not have the recognition. And that can actually paralyze people.

And so we’re looking at the duality of, well, on the one hand, you’re saying you feel dead inside, you hate going to work. You feel there’s so much inside you that’s not being expressed. You’re bored with what you do, even though you’re busy, you feel trapped. And yet you’re saying I can’t let go, you know, do I stay, do I let go?

And there’s something about the way you’ve talked about this card and saying, you’re actually choosing to leave your success. It was just a beautiful way of describing an active decision. And I think that’s very empowering for people who are frightened about letting go of material things, or letting go of how much work they’ve put into something to begin something different.

And with that thread, you also talk about we bring ourselves to every new thing we do. So it’s just a different iteration of what we’ve done before, but some of those phrases will resonate with a lot of people. And it will help give them a boost to say, I can do this. I’m choosing to do this.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. Yeah. I think that idea of abandoned success, and the image of the Eight of Cups. If you have a look at a fairly traditional pack the cups stacked up, and then a person’s choosing to walk away from the full cups. Yeah. And to me, it’s about identity. It’s about how much of our identity we’ve invested in that role, that position, the money that we earn, whatever it might be. And then that choosing to find a new path is incredibly difficult.

Meredith Fuller: I guess what makes it hard is our society doesn’t understand. So when people say I’m having a change, I’m leaving X or, I was doing a more senior role, but I’m going back to do a more specialist role in the same organization, or I’ve worked long and hard for this and I’ve got all these qualifications and so forth, but I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m doing something else. And how other people really try to interfere and say, you’ll regret it. You shouldn’t do it. What if you can’t get another job and everyone will laugh at you and what a stupid thing to do. And they’re actually, I think often frightened because they don’t want that other person to go off and be happy because they’re not happy either.

So a lot of investment in keeping the status quo. So I think the way you’ve talked about the Eight of Cups in that sense, that it’s a really sound decision to choose to walk away from amazing success, because you know you will have different success and the success you will have is more congruent with who you truly are. There’s something in a lot of those comments that you’ve made that I just think for people reading the book will strike such a chord.

Terri Connellan: Thank you for those comments. I really appreciate it because it’s something I really felt personally. And my aim in writing the book was to help cause when I went through it, I also felt a bit lost. And there weren’t a lot of frameworks in writing the book. It was working through what I experienced, but then trying to provide some anchors for others.

Meredith Fuller: That was another thing. I did want to mention this because I was very struck by how you wrote the book. What’s unique about your book is that you talk about your own process, including everything you did, every book you read, every person you saw and you very generously talk about what you took from each experience. And it’s almost like a little road map of, here’s a whole lot of books you can buy or types of people you can go and see, and how a coach might be different to a therapist.

And there’s so much that you give in that that is so helpful because traditionally when people write self-help books or here’s your way of looking at your career or change or whatever. They’re very much about, well, this is the system and this is what you follow. And, they don’t compare and contrast other techniques or things that they’ve struck. They don’t suggest that very wide exploration and they don’t talk so much about the internal distress.

They’re much more about, okay, so here’s your problem. So here’s step one and that’ll go to step three and then you’ll be at five and then you’ll be done. And so there’s something quite desiccated about reading those books. Whereas with yours, a) because you’re so honest and open about everything that happened to you, people can feel that you understand them. But the way you talk about how you made decisions about, will I go here? Will I read that? What did that trigger? What did that mean? Why is this person good at this? It’s so much more comprehensive for people to say, okay, well, I didn’t like that book and I didn’t like that person. But you know, it’s like a hairdresser. I’ll go and find one that cuts the hair how I want. Thanks very much.

You’ve really given people permission to play with the way through. And I can certainly see how this kind of approach has been missing in the past because there are a lot of books came out in the eighties and the nineties. It’s almost like we get waves of things happening, but they never really hit the spot about people who had this profound sense of emptiness and loss and confusion and concern.

And they didn’t help people who couldn’t just snappily work through each exercise and tick off all the goals and have it neat and tidy. And, I like it cause it’s messy and our lives are messy. And you’ve really captured that for people, which is nice. And that sense that you have with your work is, well, it is going to be unexpected. We don’t know how this is all going away, but it could be this. It could be that. It could be something else, but there’s growth in it and there’s excitement. And there’s learning in this curiosity, and there’s a sense of mastery rather than having a person feel well look, I’m hopeless, even the help books don’t help me cause I’m so hopeless. So to me, you’ve really picked up on a book for our time.

Terri Connellan: Thank you. I really appreciate that cause often when you’re writing a personal narrative like that, it’s that challenge of sharing your experiences a bit like, show don’t tell. I was just chatting about this in another interview, the difference between telling people to do something versus this is what I went through. And here’s what I suggest, which I thinks a more powerful way to go. And you’re also an author. So tell about your books and the topics you focused on in your writing career.

Meredith Fuller: So I’ve written a number of books that were more academic, but the one I did that was more mainstream was called Working with Bitches and it was identifying the eight types of nasty people that you find, nasty women and how to deal with them. And why I did that was, again, part of the theme of what was happening with my work is women were saying I’m really struggling with a particular woman at work who might be my support person, my boss, my team leader, my colleague, and they were being undermined or they were being distressed and they couldn’t understand what was going on.

They didn’t know how to manage it. And they were being so triggered. It was causing great alarm. So I wanted to identify what was happening with these themes. So I did some research and worked on about 2000 cases and put together types based on all of the materials, the data that I gathered and then worked through, well, how could people deal with that in a way that was safe and in a way that also appreciated their personality structure. Because usually the people who were coming to see me were very much feeling preferred women who avoided conflict, who were frightened by power and control issues and were really getting decimated at work or in relationships. Often it might be something about a mother-in-law or a sister-in-law or somebody’s sister or something.

So it was a way of validating that what they were feeling was true, because there’s been such a theme of, oh, you can never complain about another woman. We women have to stick together because we’re all a homogenous group and men are the enemy. So you can’t say that you’re struggling with a woman. So they’re actually being silenced before they could even articulate what was going on for them. So it was a way of appreciating that all genders walk up and down a continuum of nice to nasty and what you can do to manage that better.

Terri Connellan: Oh, it sounds a really practical book cause that’s something a lot of us experience in different ways, but maybe don’t have any reference points to make sense of all of that. And often when that happens, we tend to think, oh, it’s us. Is that something you’ve come across?

Meredith Fuller: Absolutely, and of course the other thing with that too, is that often it’s about different personality types. And if you’re not as aware of your own style, you certainly not going to be able to identify what someone else’s style is or where there could be a mismatch or a misunderstanding, or how you could broach that to make it a little more palatable at work.

And one of the key findings in my work, and this has also been researched by Ian Ball, who is our colleague at AusAPT. Interestingly enough back in the day, many, eons ago, I used to work at a university with Ian where he was Head of the Psychology department. So I already knew him before we found ourselves back together in our association.

His research found that while there are far more feeling preferred females, for women in the workplace who had a more senior role, they usually had a thinking preference. So if there’s only about 25% of females have a thinking preference, 75% of those females will be in a senior role in the workplace.

And one of the things that was very clear to me was that people were coming to me with this terrible distress about a thinking preferred manager who actually wasn’t being a bitch, wasn’t being horrible, was actually really trying to help them grow and develop, monitor them, train them, work well with them, but there was such a misunderstanding about the way they went about this. They were really at cross purposes.

So it was also part of my book to say, hang on, maybe that person you’re having trouble with, isn’t a bitch. Maybe it’s something about you you have to look at. So let’s have a look at how you can work better with those people. And I certainly used to find that working in organizations. I’ve done a lot of work in banks and legal firms and universities, where there tend to be more thinking preferred females in positions of leadership and authority. And often they would be having difficulties with their feeling preferred females. And it really was, talking two different worlds, two different languages and so much misunderstanding.

And there were some things you could do to make it work and that really excites me. And again, one of the things I loved in your book, as a thinking preferred female, you operate very much using your feeling and your thinking preferences. And you talk about your integration of those things. And this is so important in terms of, I think all of us men and women being able to access all the parts of ourselves. So I thought you handled that very well. And one of the things I’ve noticed as, I guess walking the talk in your role as President of our association, I noticed that you do the very thing we talk about. You identify well, who are the people on the team, or who the members, or who am I working with? What do those people need to do their best? How can I respond to that, so that I honor the difference that I have around me and I see you actively do that. So I see you working very hard to connect with your committees and your staff and your members and your groups and whatever, and doing it well. And so to me again, there’s that sense of, okay, so here’s someone who writes a book and she actually practices what she’s talking about and I see it. So that was another thing that struck me about what you’ve achieved in this work.

So it also sat really nicely with me about knowing that, it’s very good for many women, I believe to understand a little more about what the thinking preferred woman’s doing, because, historically, that’s been really a problem for thinking preferred females. They’ve had a terrible time at school. They’ve often had a dreadful time when they not yet in a position of authority and they’re struggling. It’s one of those things where the more we understand our gender, the better, and you seem to be saying on our journey to become all of these aspects, let’s understand how it might be played out as we sometimes swing from one extreme to the other till we find that fulcrum balance and why it is important for us to take the time to consider that innermost part of our souls and how we are who we bring to work. We can’t divorce ourselves from all of that.

What happened for me with the book [Wholehearted] was thinking, well, I’m not able to see as many people. I can’t see them in person. We’re doing Zoom work. It’s a bit tricky holding people. Here’s a resource that people can work through that I would say is safe, trustworthy. It doesn’t humiliate anyone. It doesn’t cause people to feel stupid if they can’t work through the exercises or there’s no problem about working through the Companion Workbook and the book. And it’s something that gives us some dialogue when we have a couple of weeks gap between sessions. So I thought you’ve really come up with a tool, right when we must need something.

There used to be a number of books. Everyone would get one every year, like What Color is my Parachute? They were very superficial and they really didn’t hit this spot about people are really saying, who am I really and how do I want to live my life? What does my life stand for? And how am I in relation to others? And so those very fundamental questions and the way we’re changing work. We’re changing work to be, as you would appreciate, most small business run by women, most new business women setting up, most people going off becoming specialists or consultants who are collapsing who they work with at different times.

This is the way that we’re working and doing several jobs in a year. And just going with the flow. And historically, a lot of the books about careers and development just didn’t take into account the new way that work is emerging. So, I’ve been really happy to say, well, here’s a tool that I can recommend both to men and women, interestingly enough, and get them to work through. And then when we talk, they’ve had the chance to really work through some thoughts themselves and that really adds to our work together. So I’ve been really struck by how you’ve put, certainly your understanding of type in, but also your understanding about how organizations have been working and where they need to be working in the future. So it’s got a real breath of fresh air to it.

Terri Connellan: Oh, thank you. And I was really appreciative too of your comments that it’s a book you can use with clients, that idea of particularly in times when we’re not having as much, face-to-face, it’s something people can take away. And it was certainly designed to be part of a whole that people can work through the workbook, read the main book, have their own reflections, have space, create their own ways of working through it. But have a mix as we’ve talked about before of meandering, but also structure to work through. And I guess that’s the teacher in me as well as INTJ coming out. So, yeah, it’s designed to be that sort of self coaching, self-leadership guide as well, supported by also having a face to face.

Meredith Fuller: Yes, that was another thing I liked about it. We want people to sit with the uncertainty. We want people to explore symbolism and dreamwork and art and literature and film and tarot and everything possible. But we want them to be able to do it in a way that they can then integrate that into their everyday life and this helps them do that. Whereas some sort of new age materials, there’s no relationship to get up each day and go to work, come home, and you have to earn an income and you have to feed yourself. And, you have to be in relationship with other people who aren’t on the same journey and all of this sort of thing.

So I felt that you provided those safe walls if you like so there was plenty of space to bounce around in this, but you knew that you were being held in a very caretaking way while you went about exploring all of these, for some people, very new ways of looking at their careers, particularly looking at tarot cards, for example.

Terri Connellan: Exactly. And I think from looking at your body of work, which is a concept I talk about in the book, that all the skills, all the work that we do, the volunteer work, all the different work that we do, often that idea of having multiple sources of income, being a multi passionate, multipotentialite, is very much embraced, I think, by how I’ve moved and certainly it’s embraced in your life. So with all that amazing body of work you have over time and what I also hear from clients is sometimes having lots of passions, people can feel overwhelmed, by which way to go, what to do, what advice would you give to others who are also looking to embrace their multi passionate body of work and interests?

Meredith Fuller: So I had an INTP mother, which is a great mother to have, so she was quite unique and unusual, and her attitude was, you find your own way, Meredith. Value education and trust yourself, back yourself and so for me, I’ve always felt a little different from a lot of people because I’ve always known exactly what I wanted to do is from when I was very young.

So I’ve never felt, oh, there’s too many things, or I don’t know which one to do first. What I’ve always done is I’ve said to myself, I have to go with what’s most important to me at the moment. So what’s the most burning, exciting thing for me now. And I know there’ll always be plenty of time to either come back to something or do it, postpone it and do it later, or do a little bit of it, stop, do something else. I’ve never felt, aw gee, you can’t play with it all. I just knew you could never do it all at the same time. So I find that my question always will be when there are so many things I enjoy doing, how do I choose? I’ll go with what sits inside of me being best, right thing that I have the most energy for. So for me, it’s often about energy.

So I do a lot of pro bono work for clients, particularly cause I work in the creative arts a lot. There are a lot of people in the creative arts, who’ve got no money and I often see a number of those people for nothing. And how do I choose? Because so many people, how do you choose? And something will happen in that engagement with that individual that I’ll feel, and I’ll go with that. So for example, at the moment, this is a funny story, but it’s a good example of how do you choose what you do? We mainly do a lot of our house maintenance ourselves, but in a two story house, there was no way my 70 year old husband was getting up a ladder.

So we had a housepainter come to do the top bit. And he brought his son with him to help hold the ladder. And they were talking and his son had wanted to be an artist and he was really lost. And he was very distressed and there was something in this young man that I felt. So I’ve now been working with him for some months. So he comes every week and we’re exploring his move towards becoming an artist, how he will go about choosing a course to do, how we’ll go about earning some money, to be able to be a student, to purchase all his materials, how he works in the field.

And his sense of identity and who he’s becoming and how he deals with issues because we’ve all got issues, obviously. And because he’s such an aware person, he has a lot to work through. So there was something I felt in him where I felt he had something very special and I wanted to nurture that. And he’s a very humble person and he’s a very respectful person. He’s got qualities as well. So I’ve really felt drawn to working with him. So there’ll be something about that. Or if I’m choosing a play, I want to write, it’ll be a burning issue that I’ve got some energy for. Nothing that might be commercially successful.

It’s always about what I’m interested in and that’s what I’ll do. And if friends come to me and say, how about a project? I’m doing this. Are you interested? Again, it’s always going to be because I either love working with those people or I love the issue and I’m happy to just trust my own sense of where my energy is saying to go.

And it’s very much like that Eight of Cups card. Often it means I walk away from successful things because there’s something new I want to do and different I want to do that the energy is there for. And I know I’m not saying goodbye to everything forever because there’s plenty of time. So it’s something about noticing what’s the spark, what’s the energy, what’s the curiosity. And if you follow that, they’ll always be a few things that bubble up to the very top, rather than everything. And I really love this notion of, just because you’re really good at something, you don’t have to keep doing it. Do something else.

Terri Connellan: Hmm. I love that too. I think that’s great advice because just some of the people I’ve worked with, what you’re saying resonates. And some of them are INFPs too, which is interesting, it’s that idea of just so many passions, so many interests and they compete. But I think that idea of being more attuned to what you’re drawn to and prioritizing that. I’m also hearing you say almost taking a bit of a project approach to things, to help compartmentalize, I guess?

Meredith Fuller: Yeah, I think it’s really important to compartmentalize because I notice for me, if I want to fit a lot of things, I couldn’t keep doing too much of one thing because there wouldn’t be the space. It’s almost like asking yourself, how many days a week are you fit for counseling? How many days a week are you fit for writing? How many days a week are you fit to do radio interviews or whatever it is, and work out roughly what those clusters will look like, and then be really strong.

So I’ll be able to say, well, I counsel on these days so if you can’t fit in with me, sorry, I’ll refer you to someone else because I can’t keep stretching across taking the space from other projects that I really believe in. Because if I do that, I’ll end up getting sick. I’ll end up trying to overstretch and I won’t manage, and it won’t work.

Terri Connellan: So there’s a couple of questions I’m going to ask podcast guests as we go through. And, this being the Create Your Story podcast, it’s a big question, but I’m interested to see just what comes up for you when you’re asked the question, how have you created your story over your lifetime?

Meredith Fuller: Okay. I’ve created my story by allowing myself to sit a bit away from the mainstream. And I’ve enabled myself to listen to what my heart wants to do, even when it seems at odds with what the sensible thing to do is, or the smartest thing to do is, and almost like back myself, even when it looked ridiculous, because I told myself when I was very young, there’ll be a pattern, I don’t understand it yet, but there’ll be a pattern that will make sense to me, but it’s something that I’m doing that’s going to be unique to me. So I can’t be impacted by what everyone else thinks I should do or what one should do.

I have to trust that little voice in me that says, I know I’m here to do something unique for me. And I’ve always done that and to my detriment often, but it’s like I’m absolutely convinced for me that what’s helped me is by wanting to go off and do whatever it is I want to explore because I’m curious about it. Even if it’s not fashionable or even if it’s way too early and then once I’ve understood it or mastered it or done enough, I don’t have to keep doing that. I want to do something else. So a little bit like saying, yeah, just because you’re good at something you don’t have to keep doing it, do something else, as long as it’s what you’re interested in and you believe in it and it sits with your values.

And my values very much came from my childhood and my upbringing, which was about, to care for people and to care for relationships and to care for what the purpose is that we’re here for. And in a deeper sense, in a much deeper sense. And I’ve always appreciated self-expression. And so for me, creating my story was about saying, well, okay if I can trust myself to follow what my interests are and use that as my guide and not be swayed by what everybody else says you should do, or how everyone else goes about doing things, that’s going to keep me most aligned with my true self. And that’s what I’ll follow. And it was pretty clear to me very early on that I didn’t have a lot of the values that mainstream society seems to have.

I believe that if you do things that are really important to you and you do them very well, somehow you’ll be rewarded and it may not be quid pro quo or tit for tat or something, but somehow it’ll work out. If you are transparent and if you do believe in what you do, and if you do respect other people in how you go about that. You know, that whole thing, isn’t it about freedom but freedom as long as you don’t impact on other people’s freedom.

So that’s been a bit of a narrative for me. And it’s almost like if I had to say, well, where does all that come from? I’m convinced it came from being a little girl who used to believe in her dreams and sitting around daydreaming and imagining the future and imagining things way ahead of time and backing that instead of what was just literally right in front of me.

And that came from coming from a family where we didn’t have a lot, it was very difficult. So we had a lot of trauma in the family, a lot of poverty in the family. But what I had with my INTP mother was a woman who said, use your brains and you can help other people. Use your brains and you’ll find a way to construct something positive out of whatever happens. And I saw her do that. So I had a very good role model in my mother. And I also had a very good role model in reading because I love to write, I was always reading books.

I just found that I was far more interested in thinking big picture future than I ever was in what was going on in the here and now. So it was some something about a knowing that I had and that I couldn’t not know once you have that feeling. And also what was good for me, if this makes sense, it’s like I lived my life backwards.

So if you start working at four, that’s a long time that you’re in the workplace, and if you’re very famous, when you’re a child, well, you’ve sort of been there, done that. It doesn’t matter. It’s like I didn’t have to build up to anything. It’s like, well, I’ve already ticked off this and I’ve ticked off that and I’ve ticked off something else.

And so there’s so many things that I had done that really didn’t concern me at all that I could just go along my own merry way, do what I liked because I didn’t have to prove anything. If that made sense.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. That’s fantastic. Thank you. It’s just fascinating to hear how, with all those different things in the mix, how you created your story to where you are now. So thank you for that. So in Wholehearted, I share 15 wholehearted self-leadership tips, particularly for women, but for all people. So I’m interested in what your top wholehearted self-leadership tips might be for women.

Meredith Fuller: The first one is I believe that it’s a good idea to have a small group of people with you, like your clan or friends or colleagues who you trust, that you feel safe with and who have similar shared values. I take that very seriously. I won’t work on projects with people that I don’t feel that we’re aligned about our values and honesty, transparency, trust, loyalty, all those things are really important to me.

So, that’s a very important issue about who do you connect with. I believe that it’s important to work on communication. So, if I’m going to do it, I need to know how I feel. So I’ll do a lot of checking. How am I feeling? What’s being triggered in me? What do I need to do about that? Can I talk to someone? How do I do that? So in my life I’ve always been keen to look for wise counsel. When I was a child, I got to figure out what I would look for in a partner, because how would I know I didn’t have a father. We were very isolated in our home. There weren’t very many male role models.

So I read all the classics when I was in primary school and I thought, I don’t want all the exciting men. I want all the nice men that I’m reading about in these classics. So I thought: these are the qualities I want in a man. I want a nice man. And I got it from the books. And then as I got older, I realized that I want to understand myself and that will help me understand others.

So anything that would help me do the best I can for myself, I will do. So I went into therapy. I went into supervision. As a psychologist, I think it’s important that we do our own therapy and we do our own supervision. So, whether you go to coaches or whoever you go to, it’s going to someone where you can actually explore your process. So I think that’s really important.

And of course, reading, I’m always reading millions of books so I think that’s important. The other thing I think is working out very simply, what do you need for wellness? So, I’m a diabetic, I’ve got a lot of health issues. I have to say part of my day is managing my diabetes, is going to appointments and is to understand that as I get older, I have less energy than I did when I was younger because of that.

So therefore I have to really cherry pick my projects. So I think, know what your health is. One of the biggest problems I’ve seen in nearly every woman who’s come to me is they push themselves way too far. They work too long hours. Doing work that’s killing them and they can’t stop. And so I think it’s really important to say in the week, how much space have you got for work? How much do you need for sleep? How much do you need for your internal life? How much do you need for your relationships and make that pie and make it work?

And I’d also do that with being strict about those boundaries. So both Brian and I, because we’re helpers and we’re feelers, we’re busy. So people come to helping, feeling, busy people and you need to learn to say no. And so while it would be nice to do everything everyone wants you to do, I can’t. So, be really clear about how do you cluster it. So it might be for me, I work in clusters of time. So it might be two days for this and all night for that and a weekend for that. And that’s how I like to work. Other people it might be well mornings isfor this and afternoons is for that. So know what your best rhythm is and then be really strict about how you protect that. And don’t keep saying, oh, I’ll just let this one in. I’ll just let that one in because you’ll get overloaded and you get sick and then, you’re no good to anyone.

So I think they’re probably the key things for me, but, really overall, it’s something about, got to know who you are. You got to know what’s important to you. You got to know what you’re here for. What’s your purpose. And the threads will probably stay the same, although the execution of that will shift over time.

And so you have to keep saying, does this matter to me? Is this engaging me? Am I growing in this? Am I learning in this? Am I sharing with others with this? What’s the point of me doing this and doing it because you want to do it, you believe in it and you love it. So they’re probably the most important things, but you know, it be sensible. Like you might have to say to yourself, well, how much money do I need to earn to live for the week? Okay. I need to earn x dollars. How many hours a week can I possibly work x hours? Well, what do I need to earn per hour to do that? And what will I do to get that? And then if I’m prepared to say, I’ll do a day for that, then that gives me three days for something else. Okay. That’s fine. So it’s not like a childish, I’ll just do what I like, blow everyone else. It’s about making choices and decisions that give the bulk of your time to what you love and you think is very important, but also that you’re mindful that you do live in a society and you do have to buy food and pay rent and, you know, whatever. So something about, honouring, not only yourself, but the other in relationships.

Terri Connellan: It’s a rich body of knowledge, honed from all your experiences and all your client work too. So thank so much for sharing that. And thanks so much for your time today. It’s been a fantastic conversation and I’m sure the listeners will get so many gems of wisdom and prompts to think about themselves. And thank you also for your comments and kind insights about Wholehearted, my book as well, really appreciate that and your support. So, Meredith, where can people find more about you and your body of work online?

Meredith Fuller: My website’s MeredithFuller.com.au. That’s probably a good place to start.

Terri Connellan: That’s great. And you’ve got so much on there about all the things you’re up to your books, your work with your husband, Brian, which we didn’t talk about so much, but he’s a filmmaker, psychologist as well, and your partnership is an incredible part of your life as well. So we’ll pop the links to Meredith’s key work in the show notes and thanks everyone for listening and thanks so much Meredith.