367 | New Research on Imposter Syndrome and Strategies for Coping with Dr Alex Anderson & Dr Jamie LaPenna

[00:00:06] Welcome to The Optimal Body Podcast. I'm Dr. Jen. And I'm Dr. Dom and we are doctors of physical therapy bringing you the body tips and physical therapy pearls of wisdom to help you begin to understand your body, relieve your pains and restrictions and answer your questions. Along

[00:00:19] with expert guests our goal of The Optimal Body Podcast is really to help you discover what optimal means within your own body. Let's dive in. So before we hop into the interview I have

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[00:01:46] some barefoot shoes. Go down to the link in our show notes make sure you use code TOB20 at checkout to get your 20% off. We are joined by two physical therapists today where we're going

[00:01:56] to review new research that they've just done and this is very interesting not only for physical therapy but for everyone. Now Dr. Jamie LaPena is a PT-DPT, is a board certified clinical specialist in orthopedic physical therapy and a fellow of the American Academy of Orthopedic Manual Physical

[00:02:14] Therapists. She graduated from Northwestern University Department of Physical Therapy and Human Movement Sciences in 2009 and in 2018 she completed a fellowship in orthopedic manual physical therapy from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has presented at two national

[00:02:31] physical therapy conferences and participates in abstract reviews and mentoring. Jamie currently works as a full-time faculty member at North Central College in their doctor of physical therapy program in Naperville, Illinois. Now Dr. Alexandra Anderson, PT-DPT is a board certified

[00:02:47] clinical specialist in orthopedic physical therapy with nine years of clinical practice treating in both private practice and outpatient hospital-based settings. She graduated from Loma Linda University with me in Southern California and Alex moved back east where

[00:03:00] she was working in Washington DC for two years prior to relocating to Chicago, Illinois where she completed UIC's fellowship in orthopedic manual physical therapy. She has presented at national conferences, published case reports and contributed to authoring two book chapters for manual therapy

[00:03:18] for hip and knee. Currently Alex works part-time at the University of Illinois at Chicago while holding a determinist faculty position at Northwestern University and is a proud founder of her private practice the Physical Therapy Academy. Now again this is not just about physical

[00:03:33] therapists even though you're gonna have four physical therapists talking but it's really interesting research that's going to support a lot of people. Alex and Jamie two PTs we get on

[00:03:42] the podcast. Thank you guys for taking the time and creating the time I know we each have so much different things and finding you know four people on a podcast is a lot so being able to find the

[00:03:54] time for you guys to both come on I just really appreciate it. Yeah we're so excited to be here always good to talk to you as a friend but also as a colleague in PT and we're all fangirling over

[00:04:05] each other here so good percent so excited to be here. It's funny that you guys come on and say like oh Jen such a big fan and Allie of course you went you guys are good friends but you're like

[00:04:18] I'm a fan too and yeah I'm a fan of what you guys do and the research that you do because it's so necessary and it's on an interesting topic that I think you know you did research on imposter syndrome

[00:04:32] which we'll get into a little more of what that is if people haven't heard of that specifically within the field of PT which from going to school and knowing some of my classmates

[00:04:42] and how just strung out anxious they were about different aspects of school but then being able to work and being ready to work like I always thought I'm like this is crazy this can't be

[00:04:53] healthy so yeah I want to dive in and I really think it's going to be able to apply just even if you're not a PT out there whatever field you're working in or just in general life the

[00:05:05] lessons from that you guys have gleaned from this research I think can be so valuable. So with that set up what's imposter syndrome and why did this become a topic that was meaningful to

[00:05:16] both of you? Pausing quick from the interview to talk about one of our sponsors who has really helped level up Jen and my hydration game and that is Element Electrolyte Mixes because we're not

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[00:05:55] That's why Jen and I are constantly going back to our bottle because we have Element in it and it not only is hydrating us but it tastes so darn good. So if you want to level up your hydration

[00:06:04] game go down to the link in the show notes it's just drinkelement.com backslash optimal that's drink element spelled out l m n t dot com backslash optimal you get a free sample pack with every

[00:06:17] single order so you can try out all their different flavors and go back and know which one you want to get when you inevitably want to come back to get more. All right let's get back into the interview.

[00:06:27] Yeah so I like to say it's like a mismatch between what people are perceiving you as and then what you feel you are inside so it's kind of this perceived fraudulence but you know I've been through a lot of training for my career. I've been through a fellowship

[00:06:44] you know I have my my orthopedic certification basically all these advanced degrees on top of my doctorate and I know I'm smart I know I'm good at what I do but people look at me and see

[00:06:56] wow she is like she's a doctor she's OCS she's a fellow she's like and she she knows everything you know they they give me they like think I'm some like god and I'm like oh no like I'm learning

[00:07:10] every day you know I learn things every day I know my weaknesses I know what I'm not good at so I have a more balanced perception of myself versus someone else looking at me might view me as like

[00:07:24] like way more intellectual as I see myself so it's almost like this mismatch of I have to maybe like pretend to be the person that they're seeing me as when in reality like

[00:07:35] I probably am just as smart as they think I am but I'm in my head I don't feel that way. Yeah I think that's a great way to describe it actually it's the same I think for me I sought

[00:07:47] out extra training and certifications because I struggled to believe that I was intelligent like I always had to work really really hard whereas I saw for others that like came very easily and

[00:08:00] naturally that they could just sit down for a little bit study ace a test whereas for me I was the last one to finish the test so I think I sought out these additional trainings and

[00:08:11] certifications I thought certainly I'll do fellowship and then I'm going to feel like an expert and I think one of the things that I found out is the more that I know the less I know. Yeah.

[00:08:22] And it actually made it a little bit worse because I thought oh no now I have all these these letters behind my name people expect a lot and I still have the intuitive reaction to just be

[00:08:37] like oh let me refer you to somebody else oh I know somebody else that can do that they're going to be really good at this and I still just you know it's that whole process of counting yourself out so yeah.

[00:08:50] I think we all have these stories you know it even just I remember my social media was started building when I was in PT school and I was not posting about anything about the body but then

[00:08:59] once I graduated I was like you know I don't want to just do handstands and do cool stuff and like I want people to know that I have a little information but me starting to put that

[00:09:07] information out as a new PT not having any other you know certifications and more training behind me it was so scary so scary I was like okay well here's what I'm going to put out what I know and

[00:09:19] this can always change and this can always you know adapt but the fear of putting it out was just in it still is every day like is this correct and are there new newer studies that I should talk

[00:09:30] about and what about this other thing and then who's going to think this and it's like it's a never-ending process of no matter how much training no matter how many courses I take

[00:09:39] just like you said there's always this underlying well there's still more to know and I still don't know enough and I'm still will people question it and is this really helping? Not to mention that I love PTs and I love physical therapy but not to mention that

[00:09:54] PTs can be mean and people can be jerks when it comes to like what type of treatment protocol you should use or what exercise is best for this situation or what there are so many little

[00:10:07] what I would call petty turf wars within the field itself and then you know you broaden out to athletic trainers and chiropractors and you know all these other fields that are trying to argue over what's best when in reality those who know research well know that

[00:10:24] that's not really how it works because even regardless of what the research says you're dealing with a person and so yeah I feel like that compounds people's because they're afraid that they're going to get torn down by somebody who knows better or knows more and that's just like

[00:10:40] a shame. Yeah there can be a really toxic culture I think in all professions but specifically healthcare professions because it's which one is more relevant and which who's yeah it's it's very intimidating to get out put yourself out there to put your stance out there and just wait

[00:11:03] for all the incoming comments. Exactly. Yeah when we first did our like literature review on this just to you know get some more information we found that this impacts about 70 percent of working professionals at some point in their career so this is definitely not unique to healthcare although

[00:11:22] a lot of the literature out there is very specific to nurses, physicians, surgeons basically all these healthcare professionals but we weren't finding anything specific to physical therapy and as you

[00:11:37] guys know we spend so much one-on-one time with our patients we just have like a very unique as a you know as a doctorate we're also ruling out other things where we're expected to know a lot more and

[00:11:50] I think we have like kind of this unique kind of like burnout phenomenon that's going on in our profession right now and so we wanted to like explore because we love what we do right

[00:12:02] like we have high job satisfaction we kind of wanted to explore the relationship between feeling these um overwhelming like imposter like cognition you know feeling like a fraud or like you're going to be exposed or that maybe you just got lucky becoming a doctor you just passed the

[00:12:19] test because you happen to answer the right question if those sort of feelings feed into our burnout or impact our job satisfaction or even like Jamie said earlier and I felt the same way we

[00:12:31] both went for more training because we were feeling like what we have we have to know more there's so much more to learn we don't know enough and this will maybe fill the hole inside of us

[00:12:40] that's feeling like we're maybe an imposter but it's so funny because as I was sitting at the table I'll never forget this day it was the first day of my fellowship and I was sitting at the

[00:12:50] table with nine other what I thought like brilliant pts that got accepted into this fellowship and we're going around the room introducing ourselves and I'm listening to everyone else and their credentials and their training and I hadn't been residency trained I didn't have my

[00:13:06] OCS at the time and I was just like oh yeah I can I can't believe that I me I'm sitting at the table with all of these I'm one of the 10 like it was mind-blowing and I talked to another therapist

[00:13:20] who was in this cohort with us her name's Leanna good friend of mine now and she was like bro I literally thought that she was like I remember specifically listening to you talk about yourself

[00:13:31] and introduce yourself and I was like wow she's really smart like she's really successful and I was like no way I could like I could not believe it I was like there's no way there's no way you

[00:13:41] thought that she was like yes and I didn't find this out until recently I mean that's that's how it is most of the time that we're always looking at other people and like oh look at they're so good

[00:13:52] or they're they have this they have this and we're unfortunately a lot of times focused on what we don't have or what we're not good at enough rather than what we could just bring to the table so

[00:14:04] what did you guys end up doing within the research and what did you kind of find we put together a survey because we figured that would just kind of be the easiest way to reach as many people as we

[00:14:15] could we had originally talked with a researcher out of Texas Dr. Holly Hutchins Hutchins right yeah and she does a lot of imposter phenomenon research specifically related to academia and

[00:14:33] with human resources and so she kind of helped us to narrow down to some of the key items that we might want to look at so of course the clans imposter phenomenon scale we wanted to also assess

[00:14:47] burnout so we did a portion of the Moselak burnout inventory and then we did just some general demographic questions because we also wanted to capture how much education did all the PTs have

[00:15:02] we wanted licensed PTs but you know you could have your bachelor's you could still only have the master's or whatever we wanted to look at if they did advanced training post-professionally terminal doctorates how many years they've been practicing gender race where they were practicing

[00:15:19] mostly and then we also looked at the job satisfaction scale so this one was the Michigan inventory right and so we kind of just asked for all of it but we didn't want to make it too long

[00:15:35] so that was also the challenge we had to like condense it but still try to fit all the things in how many people actually did you get surveyed and how many people were able to answer all of this

[00:15:47] and then what did you guys kind of especially when we're just talking about imposter obviously I want to talk about the other things too but especially when we're talking about imposter syndrome kind of what did you guys find yeah so we distributed the surveys through our like

[00:16:02] manual therapy fellowship group through the Illinois physical therapy association and the California association we had we had a couple other authors on here Allison Chang out of Northwestern and then Dustin Willis who lives in California and you know Dustin because he was

[00:16:20] in the grade above us so what was nice is we kind of utilized both the California and the Illinois physical therapy association to distribute but on top of it we reached out to you Jen and your

[00:16:34] story and we got so many respondents from that so you really seriously yeah seriously thank you so we had a total of 520 survey responses and then after we excluded some of the responses

[00:16:50] from like we saw that there were some students in there and assistants we had a total sample size of 514 so still like really big and this is to my knowledge the only study that has looked at

[00:17:04] imposter phenomenon in physical therapists there is another study looking at students but this one is just practicing our licensed physical therapist what we found that I'm gonna scroll down here because I'm actually like looking at my by the way this is published now so you guys can

[00:17:22] all read it and Jen I'm sure you'll link this into the yeah definitely have it linked what journal was it in this is in the it's called health science reports the mean we abbreviate imposter

[00:17:39] phenomenon as IP so that mean IP score we found was 60.3 and just for reference I think we should explain how the imposter phenomenon scale works so the scoring is if it's below 40 you have low imposter feelings if it's between 41 to 60 you have moderate imposter feelings from 61 to 80

[00:18:05] you experience them quite frequently and then greater than 80 means intense wow okay so essentially our average score was 60 which puts people at moderate and it's like that's like very borderline to being frequent and the plus or minus on either end was about 15 so anywhere from

[00:18:30] moderate to frequent there was about 9.3 percent of people that experienced intense imposter phenomenon and then 42 experienced frequent 37.9 experienced moderate and then only 10.7 experienced low so so you can look at it as like 51.3 percent had greater than or equal to frequent

[00:18:57] imposter phenomenon and 89.3 percent had greater than or equal to moderate imposter phenomenon so this is pretty widely experienced in physical therapists right now. Well especially like you guys you know reaching out to other fellows and people who do have

[00:19:16] higher level certifications within PT you know so it's not just at the doctorate level but now we've gone a step beyond we've gone a step beyond and yet no matter the level of education or how many

[00:19:26] letters you have behind your name you're still feeling this way. And that was one of my questions did you break it down by education level I'm guessing in your analysis and was there significant

[00:19:36] difference or did the more educated groups have less imposter phenomenon? Yeah so what we found and this is after we ran a lot of stats to see if everything was clinically significant but what we found was that seasoned clinicians holding managerial positions exhibited a lower susceptibility

[00:19:56] to imposter phenomenon and then we had also looked at depression and anxiety coexisting because we thought that might play a role so individuals with mental health diagnosis emotional exhaustion and lacking a doctorate of physical therapy degree were more prone to imposter phenomenon.

[00:20:18] Other factors such as gender, race, sexuality, geographic location, practice specialty or setting also looked at APTA membership and job satisfaction did not significantly influence imposter phenomenon. I don't think that residency or fellowship having completed either one of those

[00:20:39] significantly impacted it right? No and then it seemed though as like a reduced likelihood of experiencing imposter phenomenon appeared to be associated with a greater length of time held in a professional position and there appeared to be a sweet spot in terms of years as a licensed

[00:20:58] PT so specifically having between 11 and 20 years of clinical practice was linked to reduced imposter phenomenon. So it's almost like if you have been a clinician too long you feel like you're out of the know but if you're fresh and young you feel like you don't know

[00:21:16] enough. Yeah. That's yeah no that's funny and I think a lot of like great takeaways there and to talk a little bit about my own imposter phenomenon going through school I didn't ever

[00:21:30] feel like I felt this to a significant extent because I've always been very low stress when it comes to school and learning and in pressure situations. Jamie I hate to say that I was one of

[00:21:41] those people that would I was always third out of the test because Morgan she was a speed demon. Taylor actually knew all the answers and I just answered what I knew turned my test in and was

[00:21:54] out but I feel more now that I have been a couple years out of clinical practice when a friend or a family member asks me to look at them or I look at something that's going on I panic in my head

[00:22:07] and I try to keep cool and act like I know what I'm doing. I'm a PT but I'm so out of practice but inevitably I work on them, I give them some pointers and they're like wow like I feel a

[00:22:19] difference already and they call me up three to five days later and they're like oh my gosh like that's amazing. These few things have helped so much and again it makes me feel so good because

[00:22:30] it's like okay stop thinking about yourself that way you do know things. But I think that you mentioned earlier 70% of people who work in different professional fields experience some level of imposter phenomenon. So what types of takeaways do you think we can glean or would you

[00:22:49] have for someone listening who's like hey I kind of resonate with this because I work in so and so field and I feel like I have no clue what's going on? Yeah so one thing I'll say is that a lot of

[00:23:00] our findings we can't say for certain that imposter phenomenon is affecting something. So for instance we saw that there's a correlation with a mental health diagnosis or high levels moderate or high levels of emotional exhaustion. We can't say that imposter phenomenon is caused by

[00:23:20] moderate or high level of emotional exhaustion because it could be that imposter phenomenon is causing the high levels of emotional exhaustion. We can't tell you which one is causing which we

[00:23:33] just know that there's an association. So as Jamie was saying before the more we learn the more we know the more we realize we don't know and so with this is just laying a foundation of research that

[00:23:45] says hey we need some more research on this and also unfortunately in the physical therapy community there is a not there's not a wide variety of like racial impact either so we weren't able to

[00:23:58] collect more minority groups or even like we try to look at gender orientation or sexual orientation like that kind of thing. So we also just didn't get a good idea based on the sample size participants

[00:24:14] and sample size so there definitely needs to be more but actually Jamie did some research on coping strategies and in our project we actually found a counselor mental health therapist and she

[00:24:28] also talked to us about some coping strategies. So I'll let Jamie talk a little bit about this. Yeah which is nice because you can use these no matter what profession you're in really but I think

[00:24:42] so two of the big things when we are coping there's either active coping or avoidant coping and I think most of us specifically myself I'm getting better though I'm mostly an avoidant

[00:24:55] coper and I think we like to avoid the uncomfortable feelings like it doesn't feel good to not feel like you know or that you're as good in your profession as you should be right we'll just use

[00:25:08] this as a specific example. I think there's a lot of shame, there's a lot of guilt, there's a lot of frustration all of those things associated with that anxiety so we don't want to sit with that we

[00:25:21] don't want to process that we just tend to avoid and then what happens is that leads to further like disengagement you know more I think it leads towards those mental health comorbidities so

[00:25:34] people get more depressed more anxious and then we get to denial essentially and we or we overcompensate so then we start taking on more work doing more of a hustle because we're like well I

[00:25:47] just I need to do more I just need to do more and then what can happen is that helps to kind of facilitate some of that burnout but we don't have the resource like the capacity emotionally

[00:25:59] mentally available to cope so that's kind of a cycle part of it but what we should be doing is active coping which is you know finding a way to acknowledge one that we have these feelings

[00:26:13] to see if we can engage with colleagues or you know professional mentors or coaches who can help us to identify either some goals or some cognitive dissonance you know essentially help us break that

[00:26:27] down because we may think that we are completely incapable yet if I read my bio if I look at my degrees like if I sit down and read an article I can understand it you know like there's proof

[00:26:42] that yes I'm capable and I can do these things so some key things that I know I've spent specifically I've been doing but also that talks about that's talked about the act of coping is one just

[00:26:54] internalizing your successes so taking a moment when something really good happens big or small to be like yeah I did that I did that I worked hard I put the time in I put the effort in and

[00:27:12] it may not have been perfect but I gave my you know 150 percent so I've been trying to pause more to do that to be like okay yeah I'm here I did this this happened this is great and it wasn't just

[00:27:26] by luck and then I think also again like on top of that just celebrating so like taking the time to reframe any of those successes or those negative thoughts of like I can't do this instead what I

[00:27:41] say is I'm learning so I'm embracing the learning curve this is new I'm not expected to be a pro like for instance I'm new to academia so I'm now teaching it was actually really easy for me to

[00:27:55] come into this position and embrace that I don't know all these things and I don't know how to do this position specifically and it's actually been really great because I still have moments of impostering where I'm like oh man I should definitely know that orthopedic thing and I

[00:28:15] don't I'm gonna go look that up right now but again I think demonstrating to the students that we are creating lifelong learners and that means you are not going to know everything so that means

[00:28:30] you need to be comfortable embracing the learning curve so I think just those little few steps internalize your successes recognize those thoughts that are not serving you and try to reframe them

[00:28:43] and then embrace the learning curve. I think that's a great way to you know for people to start to understand okay what am I reframing in my mind I mean this is what we tell patients

[00:28:53] with pain all the time right and how we're asking them to reframe and so being able to step into your profession or your everyday life and how am I reframing it and what am I saying to myself and

[00:29:06] what are the wins that I can really take apart rather than what am I not doing well or what I'm not you know. I also think just like sharing what we're going through too is so powerful

[00:29:17] because like this study showed that the majority of physical therapists feel this way right the majority so you're literally not alone like the research is supporting that most people feel this way so I think we walk through life sometimes keeping everything in because we don't think

[00:29:34] anyone else is going through something similar or feeling the same way and literally being open and vulnerable to sharing those struggles creates that power of like oh wow you're going through

[00:29:45] this too I'm not alone and that in and of itself can be so healing and empowering because you're like if I'm not alone maybe I'm not an imposter. And you know I think highlighting that the learning never ends no matter what profession you're in especially with healthcare like

[00:30:03] healthcare is always changing there's always something new to be looking at and observing and seeing what's possible you know which is so cool about what we do and how we help people.

[00:30:13] So do you think that it is then beneficial you know you both having been in this position do you think it is more beneficial to go through residency and fellowship or do you think you

[00:30:24] can continue learning with different CEUs or courses or things outside of PT as well? With just the doctorate. Yeah with just the doctorate like can you can you be a great PT and still like you know serve people

[00:30:40] or do you really think that having the residency fellowship is something that would help with this? So fellowship for me didn't teach me a ton of new information it changed the way I think okay so it changed it completely changed my practice it made me completely doubt myself

[00:31:01] with every freaking thought that seriously it broke me and then it re and then it rebuilt me slowly and I'm still honestly rebuilding this many years after fellowship it was a rewiring of my brain

[00:31:17] and it taught me how to metacognize so essentially like thinking about what I'm thinking about because so many times and especially as we go through you know gathering this expertise this clinical experience we start doing things just out of habit of doing things you don't even

[00:31:38] think about why you're doing it because you've done it for so long when you make pasta you don't think about what you're doing you just you've made pasta so much you know you have to boil the

[00:31:48] water you know you have to throw the pasta in there you know you have you know whatever it is but you don't you're not thinking about it's like when you drive home you don't you're like how did

[00:31:56] I get here I'm all over I'm here I was just on autopilot so that happens so much with PTs and when you sit there and because now you know I've mentored in in Northwestern's fellowship program

[00:32:07] and I get to watch these people go through these doctors go through training and a lot of them are like older than me like I mentored people 10 years my senior I'm like feeling imposter

[00:32:17] imposter is doing this but then I asked them a question why'd you do that well I don't know I was like well let's break that down what are you thinking what are your hypotheses like have

[00:32:29] you considered this and I've just restructured my whole exam so really like fellowship to me is about the mentoring process and it's about changing the way that you think and I have always been good at self-reflection and I've always been a good like dissecting what I

[00:32:44] did but having someone else break down your thought process is and making the time to like self reflect on paper and doing all these extra added things that really helped like that really

[00:32:56] changed my my my life my practice like so that's why I'm such a fan of this like contain you can still be a great physical therapist and still research you can still learn you can still still

[00:33:08] be an incredible practitioner there and I've I've met incredible practitioners I've learned from a lot of the fellows and training that I've mentored I've learned from them but it is completely a rewiring so I always like recommend it just for that reason alone. I think just even recognizing

[00:33:30] that we need mentoring you know like we just need mentoring and we need connection like we need to be able to feel comfortable like Alex said being vulnerable which might mean like I'm going to

[00:33:43] express what I do and what I think about this topic and it might not be right or it might not be the best thing but like you should feel comfortable we should be able to talk about

[00:33:55] those things and I again in fellowship you were forced to do that and I do love that I I always question myself now and I always reflect and think about that so I do think it helped

[00:34:09] me to be okay with being vulnerable in that sense but I don't think that you necessarily need to do that I just think that we need mentoring and we need to discuss this and we need to be okay

[00:34:21] being vulnerable with each other as clinicians to support one another and yeah I don't know that's just that's what I think. No I think that's huge and one of the main reasons I went

[00:34:32] to the first you know clinic that I went to when I started working is because I was promised mentorship and I'm like this I'm new to this so if you're going to promise me mentorship every week

[00:34:41] like I'm in but what was so interesting is watching his like he was so incredibly smart I got so much help out of his mentorship but watching his practice it was exactly what you said Ali it

[00:34:52] it was on automatic pilot this the upper body exercises went to the same upper body patients the lower body you know it was the same thing over and over again and I'm like how sad because when

[00:35:04] when I talked to you and I learned from you I learned so much different stuff but you're kind of just now going through going through the process which is what people do and and I want

[00:35:15] to tap a little bit into the burnout of what you guys found um you know I mean we're talking about PT but this can again relate to any profession especially those who are having a lot of imposter

[00:35:27] syndrome or going through a lot of patient care so what did you find with burnout? So we measured um emotional exhaustion because that is highly linked to to burnout so um we didn't just necessarily measure the burnout but we took the emotional exhaustion portion of this questionnaire

[00:35:49] and um we found let me pull up this part sorry so I want to give you the right numbers here no worries it should be on there okay so the score of 27 or higher indicates extreme emotional

[00:36:03] exhaustion levels 19 to 26 moderate and 18 or or under low level so let's see results findings here we go we found that job satisfaction was high which we didn't well we kind of expected

[00:36:22] yeah yeah um which is always so interesting when you look at you know how high imposter syndrome is or burnout you know burnout yeah yeah we fully expected some of that to go down right I feel

[00:36:37] like that like the job satisfaction we got into the field of PT for a specific reason you know we want to work with people we want to help people yeah you still get that satisfaction from the job

[00:36:50] we didn't realize all the other crap that comes with the job and I think that's I think that's the way that I sum it up like yeah you still get to have that

[00:37:00] connection with people you still get that warm feeling when you connect with someone in the room when you get to celebrate their wins with them and then you have to go document and that's that

[00:37:11] sums it up right there yes or or adjust your schedule yes I did see here we have like the emotional exhaustion um is correlated with like a higher likelihood of imposter phenomenon so they're definitely related and kind of like what I was talking about with the coping

[00:37:31] yeah you have fewer like when your battery is drained right there's just less resources to pull from to actually like cope with whatever you're feeling or whatever your struggles are to professionally so I mean it's just they all I think they feel each other really 259 people

[00:37:54] reported high emotional exhaustion 192 people reported moderate and 63 reported low and job satisfaction 423 reported high job satisfaction it's like we love our jobs so much that we burn ourselves into the ground yeah um so yeah for that yeah that is crazy and that is I mean that's like

[00:38:25] such a far left skew that so many people are have that emotional exhaustion where I the the imposter phenomenon kind of followed the traditional like bell that you would expect with people grouped around the middle but that's such a high level of people feeling very emotionally

[00:38:43] exhausted and I mean honestly from from the limited amount of time I did in the clinic I I can believe that I would have fallen on that scale too I don't I don't think I would have

[00:38:52] been one of the people on the low the low end based on how I throw myself into my work but um well and then also like your friend Stephanie who's doing more speaking on um she's now

[00:39:04] postpartum and had two kids and stepping back into PT and so not only do you have the mental exhaustion of imposter syndrome and continuing to learn and take courses and feel your best in PT

[00:39:15] but then you're also navigating home life and those adjustments and do I have enough money for child care and who's gonna you know there's so many other factors that also play into emotional

[00:39:25] exhaustion that it becomes hard as a PT or other health care professional. And I think COVID obviously just exacerbated all of that like it took whatever was already growing and just completely blew it up for sure um and also I was thinking too like we were talking about

[00:39:44] accessibility right and like the things that lead to more of those imposter feelings and I think like we live in a time of overstimulation right like we have this great gift of being able to

[00:39:56] access people all over the world because of social media and everything and then because of that which thank god I didn't grow up as a teenager with social media because I don't even know what that

[00:40:06] would be like but we have even more people to compare ourselves to or more like input that's saying like did you read this article did you know about this thing and it's just like oh man this is

[00:40:18] this is so much I don't know any of these things I didn't read any of this like you know there are already these other little low low doses of things that are saying like you're not good enough you're

[00:40:28] not doing all the things you should be doing everybody else is doing it. Yeah so interestingly like we also measured for time spent on direct patient care um or time spent with patients during

[00:40:42] like the initial evaluation and return visits and that did not appear to have a heavily impact imposter phenomenon so there has to be factors beyond workload and time spent with patients

[00:40:55] worth exploring and it really like just leaves it open for um like what are those other you know what are those other things but again we don't know if imposter phenomenon is causing the emotional

[00:41:06] exhaustion or vice versa so. Right and I think the most important thing and we've touched on it a few times is like this very much so is not a specific issue to physical therapy yes there are a lot of

[00:41:20] like specific keys that we can dig into more and understand more within within our field but between the emotional exhaustion um Jamie like you just pointed out the comparison that we face every day

[00:41:33] with social media especially our younger generations um in a way that we never had to worry about growing up I just wanted to get outside and skin my knees on something but I didn't have to worry about seeing everything online to compare myself to and and those little

[00:41:50] lessons that that we can take away that mentorship is good whether it's in your professional field or if it's having to do with your movement and pain journey which you know is what we deal a lot of

[00:42:01] deal with a lot of people sharing and finding community surrounding that we had such a cool challenge um recently where we launched a new course around strength training which a lot of

[00:42:10] our audience is very hesitant to do because they're getting into that that you know later even into their 40s you know 50s and starting to have joint pain and they're afraid to strength train

[00:42:21] and we had this amazing group chat where people are starting to share things and once one person shares something another does and it's this positive feedback where you grow community around

[00:42:31] it and you start to feel like hey I can do this they said they were dealing with that and strength training helped why not give it a try and so a lot of these lessons apply

[00:42:42] cross-spectrum cross-profession all the way down to learning how to move and learning how to get out of pain alley like we talked about in our first podcast and so I just love the lessons

[00:42:52] that are getting pulled out of this because yes applies to the physical therapist or the physical therapy student coming up but can really apply across many different areas of your life

[00:43:05] yeah well thank you guys both for you know doing this work and diving in even deeper what is kind of your takeaway and next step and in what you guys want to do well I've been celebrating my wins

[00:43:20] I'm like I did that like every little thing I'm like I'm gonna celebrate yeah honestly it's really helping I'm like especially going through like you guys know the physical therapy academy is

[00:43:33] my practice like I'm growing my patient volume there and I had even like a freak out the other night but then I've done so well with it that I'm like I don't know why I'm freaking like I don't

[00:43:44] know why I'm freaking out I've done I'm gonna celebrate this way I had a great day the other day where I just networked with a bunch of like amazing people in the wellness fitness community

[00:43:52] here in Chicago and it was just like such as success and I was I came home like I want to celebrate like I just ordered some good food and whatever it is like it could be something small but

[00:44:03] just I think celebrating those little wins helps you realize that you are achieving something that was maybe not something you thought you could do in the past and that you're doing now and even if

[00:44:15] it's a small thing like you should take to be proud of yourself because we do so much work and I think we're always looking for the next thing like oh but I have to now I have to like you know

[00:44:28] when we were working on this study it was like okay we got this study the survey results now we got to write it up now we got it we got to present it now we're always looking for the

[00:44:35] next thing when we when we presented this at a big conference like let's celebrate that instead of saying okay now we got to type it now now we got to publish it well now all the work is done

[00:44:46] but we tried to celebrate the whole journey so that each each part of the success was not lost that we were like going through this experience and actually living in the present and enjoying

[00:44:57] it and that made it such a unique experience and of course the incredible team that I worked with was was made it so much easier to do that because it was such a learning curve for all of us because

[00:45:09] yes are not researchers I mean Dustin just got his PhD um Allison Ching is getting her PhD right now she pumps out loads of research so she's allergic to research literally stats make me want

[00:45:24] jump off this balcony but um learning I mean we just it was just a learning experience and like you have to enjoy that part and so I think for us it's just like I want to enjoy sharing what we

[00:45:38] found with more people because I think this is really impactful like we did a podcast with um our manual therapy podcast group um AOMT and it was like one of the top 10 listened to podcasts

[00:45:54] um right next to like Chad Cook who's a major researcher on manual therapy like talks at AOMT every year and our names are like in the top 10 like I think we're like number seven or something

[00:46:06] so this really impacted people and I'm like I'm so excited that we did this just so that we can make the impact it's really for reaching other people and knowing that they're not alone in

[00:46:17] these feelings and that to me is like important work totally normalizing it really just making it like hey this is part of the process so again embrace that learning curve specifically for the students you feel uncomfortable now just learn to get comfortable with that discomfort and like

[00:46:38] find your group of people that are your safe space so that you can get vulnerable get support get your mentorship and yeah just celebrate those wins I love it yeah yeah and again such such

[00:46:51] amazing work and I'm glad that people are talking more about this like you said lots of correlation between this anxiety depression emotional you know overwhelmed burnout like yeah this has been shown to lead to suicide it can be really serious so

[00:47:08] physicians right yeah in physicians and medical errors and a bunch of things it can really go down a bad route if you don't take care of it early and I think when we talked

[00:47:20] to Holly Hutchins who's that major she's done a TED talk on this I mean she was like I had to go to therapy for you know so I think we're just we're realizing that it can be really detrimental

[00:47:32] to mental health so addressing these issues as they come up and especially in young people and students as they're going through school is really important to get it naked in the butt while it's

[00:47:43] there and so if we can get if we can get people like just bringing about awareness I think is is really powerful in and of itself totally I love it thank you so much guys for coming on

[00:47:55] we'll definitely have it linked up in the show notes so people can take a deeper look and keep celebrating those wins thank you so much for having us and for sharing the survey

[00:48:05] seriously you know a big part of it to you such a great conversation and I think this is such a valuable topic for everybody because we all go through imposter syndrome at one point or another

[00:48:17] so if you feel like someone out there would benefit from hearing this information getting to know more about imposter syndrome please pass this episode along if you haven't please consider leaving a rating and review on your favorite podcasting platform check out some of our other

[00:48:29] episodes that we've had in the past and of course we'll see you next time