How to Beat Burnout & Stress with Clinical Hypnotherapy

Charlene Gisele [00:00:00]:
We’ve normalized the status of being busy or stressed as equating success or being okay.

Nick Urban [00:00:08]:
You’re listening to High Performance Longevity, the show exploring a better path to optimal health for those daring to live as an outlier in a world of averages. I’m your host, Nick Urban, bioharmonizer, performance coach, and lifelong student of both modern science and ancestral wisdom. Each week we decode the tools, tactics and timeless principles to help you optimize your mind, body and performance span. Things you won’t find on Google or in your AI tool of choice. From cutting edge biohacks to grounded lifestyle practices, you’ll walk away with actionable insights to look, feel and perform at your best across all of life’s domains. Charlen, welcome to the podcast.

Charlene Gisele [00:01:00]:
Thanks so much for having me. I’m so happy to be here with you today.

Nick Urban [00:01:03]:
Me too. We’re going to be discussing the convergence of burnout and clinical hypnotherapy and stress and nervous system based health. Today we got a lot to cover. Where do you think is the best place to begin with these topics?

Charlene Gisele [00:01:20]:
Well, why don’t we talk about stress? Because I feel like it’s everywhere, right? Everybody is super stressed. And I don’t know about you, Nick, but I think it’s fascinating to realize that the most common question, the most common answer to the question, how are you? Is either I’m busy or I’m stressed. Right? So very often when I talk to my clients is I’m super busy, I’m super stressed. And it’s amazing to me how as a society we’ve normalized the status of being busy or stress as equating success or being okay. Right? It’s like, oh, yeah, well done, good job, you’re on the right track.

Nick Urban [00:02:01]:
And also the other common one is I’m doing well, like, very generic, doesn’t really mean anything because it’s so commonly used. But stress is a big one. And I think it’s also like the stress that we’re aware of the acute stress, but it’s also like different forms of stress because there’s the chronic stress that after a while we stop even recognizing that’s still affecting us. And people react to stress as, you know, in different ways. They fight, flight, freeze, fallen. There’s a bunch of different ways of reacting and responding to stress.

Charlene Gisele [00:02:33]:
Yes, absolutely. And I think we are so quick to actually neglect the importance of our nervous system because we often get a kick out of being in fight or flight. So if I remember my days as an attorney, as much as one could tell you, oh my goodness, you were working 90 hours a week. That’s crazy, right? But I loved it. I got that sense of, you know, addiction and the fuel and the adrenaline and the deadline, the things you’re not supposed to love. I actually made an identity around it, like I’m a hard working oil and gas attorney, you know, construction litigator. All the different status and all the different signals that you want to attach, be it you’re working at this firm, on that firm, or you’re working in this department, that department, there was something at an identity level that was happening. So when your identity gets so attached to how busy you are, that becomes very, very dangerous.

Nick Urban [00:03:33]:
And I was just realizing there’s also a lot of parallels between people who are really working to live versus those who are living to work. Like, like people who love the extreme sports. I’m one of them. Like the kiteboarding, the motorcycling, like skydiving, if it’s an option, all these types of things, they’re great, really fun. But then you also get a similar adrenaline rush when you’re working long hours doing something that you like or that you think you’ll like, and then over time becoming like biochemically addicted to that state of like, not only am I like getting an adrenaline rush and a cortisol rush and all these things, but then I’m also getting like the social recognition and like the accolades that come along with like hard work. Because it’s something that our society celebrates versus recovering, resting, relaxing. It’s looked upon as laziness and it’s definitely not celebrated.

Charlene Gisele [00:04:23]:
Yes. I’m curious, as someone into extreme sports, how do you calibrate whether your adrenaline rush is in the sort of healthy range or when does it become a little bit of a, like, maybe like mild to unhealthy range, where it’s more of the call of the rush than the rational mind pulling you in.

Nick Urban [00:04:46]:
Yeah, well, I think most of the time it’s not a healthy rush because it’s like your body can only go for so long in like a sympathetic mode and you need like the relaxation and recovery to offset that. And for me, it’s like when I’m doing these things, I’m really pushing myself. Then I know that I’m gonna have to ramp up my recovery period to compensate so that I don’t actually degenerate my body.

Charlene Gisele [00:05:07]:
Oh, very interesting. And it’s interesting because the reason I ask you is I find there is so much parallel between athleticism and elite performance and the business world. Right. So our audience right now could be fitness professional, or they could be corporate folks. My bottom line would be like performance is performance. Right. Whether you perform on a pitch, whether you perform in a club, whether you perform in sports, or whether you a bank or in law firm, your performance is measured, is tracked and is dependent upon your recovery. And we are so quick.

Charlene Gisele [00:05:48]:
And I put myself in this bucket, at least my, my previous version of self. So I used to think that recovery was not part of the equation. Frankly, I spent zero time thinking about the concept of recovery. I just wanted more. I wanted to do more, to produce more, to be more productive. And it’s amazing how when we chase that productivity, we don’t realize that the immediate price to pay is the lowering of creativity. So in this crazy chase for more productivity, which is really lower our creativity so much that we actually start to become less productive. But it takes a little bit of a healed brain to realize that.

Charlene Gisele [00:06:31]:
And the burnt out brain doesn’t really compute that because it’s going into the more. More, more equals better.

Nick Urban [00:06:40]:
Yeah. And these stressors too, they’re accumulative. So it’s like I might go off and do like some really intense motorcycling and then I’ll hop in a sauna and then in a cold plunge and then I’ll work along, along work week. And you look at each of them individually? Yeah, they might have their benefits and might inspire flow state or creativity or brown adipose tissue thermogenesis from the cold. But then when you actually add them together, that can be taking you further out of balance, accelerating your progression towards burnout. So what do you do? Like, how do you go about helping someone figure out where they are? Are there any like signs or symptoms you look for? And then what’s the, the roadmap to coming back from that?

Charlene Gisele [00:07:19]:
Such a good question, Nick. But it’s really looking at where you have shifted. So the first thing I like to look at, or what I call behavioral shifts. So what do I mean by that? Let’s say we did an audit of your week or your month and you tell me. Well, a year ago when I used to get up on the Monday morning, I would take two coffees. Now I take four. And I still felt groggy and tired. At night I would tend to drink casually three times a week with my loved ones, spouses, girlfriends, whatever.

Charlene Gisele [00:07:55]:
Two to celebrate. Mark, a good dinner. Now the rougher the day, the more of the chardonnay I drink. I kind of like drink to cope with the stress. I used to plan my meal, eat really healthily. Now I do a lot of stress snacking. I’m putting on those extra pounds. The more stressed I am, the more I eat, the less I work out.

Charlene Gisele [00:08:17]:
I’ll look after my body, the less my step count add up at the end of the month. Then I look at behavior within your community or your family unit. So whether you have a partner or whether you have a relationship, if you start to tell me that when you finish your day or you log off, you go into the home mode and you snap at your friend, you lose it with your pet, you have no patience with your parents, your children, or anyone in between in the family. Now I’m starting to see a deterioration, right? So the behavioral pattern of the person have shifted so much that we, we actually can see sort of two versions of that person and we can see a deterioration of relationship of health, but also drive and motivation. So typically when I talk to that person, they’re going to be a bit jaded. So they talk to me in a way that yes, they want the promotion, yes, they want the money, yes, they kind of want the job, but they don’t have the love for it anymore. It feels almost like a bad romance, you know, it feels like a relationship gone bad. So to me those are really big telltale sign.

Charlene Gisele [00:09:31]:
And the good news here, if anyone is self identifying, that’s totally reversible. Burnout is real. That’s really important to highlight. We know that burnout affects the brain. We’ve seen neuroscientific evidence to demonstrate that the burnout brain is actually different physically than the non burnout brain.

Nick Urban [00:09:52]:
Do you know what those differences are?

Charlene Gisele [00:09:54]:
Yes, I’ll be happy to walk you through. So the first one is at the prefrontal cortex. So there is actually a thinning of the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain that is really responsible for your executive functioning and making the decisions. And that gets thinner and thinner because of the chronic stress and anxiety combined with the sedentary lifestyle and lack of movement. So that’s a very dangerous combination and that physically alters your brain. The second thing that we found in burnt out brains is that the hippocampus, which is really the part of your brain that is responsible for your memory, is actually shrinking in terms of the gray matter. So the neurons sort of mass that’s within the hippocampus. So because that’s shrinking, you’re actually more prone to not necessarily being forgetful, but not remembering where you put your keys.

Charlene Gisele [00:10:51]:
Or not making as fast or as sharp decisions, being a little bit longer to make up your mind, having tendency to procrastinate as well. But the third thing, if that was not enough, you will also have a tendency to have your amygdala, which is your fear based center, a little bit over activated. Right. So now what happens is you’re more prone to anxiety, you feel more and more fearful, you start to imagine the worst. So we often call that in the realm of psychology, catastrophic thinking. So this is going to get fogged. I’m not going to make this, this is going to be a disaster. And you start to hit your pillow at 1am and you imagine everything that’s going to go wrong the following day.

Nick Urban [00:11:42]:
So it’s like fear based insomnia also.

Charlene Gisele [00:11:44]:
100%, which is what happened to me. Yay. I was diagnosed with chronic insomnia which was no fun at. I honestly just walked through life feeling like it was somewhat of an automatic twilight where you know, like days morphed into nights, nights morphed into days. And I was on this cocktail of adrenaline cortisol. It just really a recipe for disaster. And I completely had a moment where I was actually coming back from the office on my way home and I was taking a black cab because in London we call them black cab because they’re the one that you grab, you know. And I was at the back of the taxi and basically I just actually blacked out, you know, like you would from over drinking.

Charlene Gisele [00:12:39]:
I, I did not consume any alcohol. I had no drugs in my system except work, which I do consider a drug. And I just, I just passed out. My body literally collapsed. I couldn’t, couldn’t function anymore. I can’t tell you whether I was awake, aware, like past that collapsing. The only thing I remember is just sort of the taxi, lovely taxi man, just trying to like get my attention. And we get to this point thinking, well you literally passed out in a cab on your way back.

Charlene Gisele [00:13:10]:
Like something’s gone so wrong along the way. Right?

Nick Urban [00:13:16]:
Yeah. It’s a vicious cycle too because when I’ve had injuries and different things that have prevented me from sleeping well, then all of a sudden you’re, you have more hormonal dysregulation, you have impaired blood flow to the brain, like reduced waste clearing. All these types of things that make the recovery process, the healing process that counteracts burnout that much less efficient. So you’re getting like the double whammy.

Charlene Gisele [00:13:39]:
Indeed. And as well, the brain is what we need to do. What we do. Right. Be it riding a fast motorcycle or, or being a lawyer, you need to think fast, you need to be aware, you need to have sharp decision making. You need to be super switched on. You need to be in the zone. Now nobody, nobody is in the zone of focused without sleep.

Charlene Gisele [00:14:05]:
Like, sleep deficiency is a bit like being drunk in the office. You know, I’ve never been drunk in the office, but I’ve been sleep deficient in the office. And from a scientific standpoint, we know that it generates the same crazy results. Right. So it’s funny how from a societal standpoint, one would never think, oh, I’m going to get wasted and go to work. But you would quite happily, at least I did not sleep and then go to work. Right. And you make the same mistakes, errors, and frankly, your performance is just not top rank.

Nick Urban [00:14:37]:
Yeah. I think Matthew Walker in his book why We Sleep, cited research that when you go with, I think it’s five hours of sleep or less, it’s the like, legal equivalent or the coordination impairment equivalent of like one or two drinks. So it’s like you’re having a similar impact on your body and physiology and psychology from sleep deprivation as you would from impairing yourself through the use of substances.

Charlene Gisele [00:15:01]:
There you go, there you go. So you might as well have a vodka for breakfast, right?

Nick Urban [00:15:06]:
I don’t know that, but either way, okay, so then that is the like 10,000 foot view. How quickly are these symptoms starting to manifest themselves? Like, for most people, the burnout process takes a while. It’s not like all of a sudden you wake up one day, you went from totally fine the day before to all of a sudden totally burnt out the very next day. It’s like a gradual process. When you’re doing the retrospective, analyzing someone’s routine for the past month, two months, how long is it that you’re actually looking over that to start to notice these types of changes?

Charlene Gisele [00:15:38]:
Yeah, a really good question. So burn, not an overnight thing. So that’s really important that you pointed this out. Typically burnout is gradual and that’s what makes it dangerous. You know, it’s a little bit like that tale of the frog, right? So if you put the frog in lukewarm water and then you like softly boil it, I know this is a grim image, but it’s not necessarily going to jump out because it’s gotten accustomed to the warmth and then it’s going to die. Whereas if you put a frog into straight boiled water, it’s just going to jump up. Same thing. So your relationship to Work doesn’t typically start toxic.

Charlene Gisele [00:16:18]:
So a little bit like that pan, it’s not immediately boiling, but it’s lukewarm. It’s kind of okay to be in. And then what happens typically is you have what I like to call the honeymoon phase. So a little bit like, you know, you just got married, you’re in this honeymoon phase. You know, the way they smell is amazing, the way they talk is amazing. Everything that they do is just so perfect. And then after a few months, you just can’t stand each other, right? So it’s a little bit the same for the honeymoon phase with work. You get in, you love the shoes that hurt your feet.

Charlene Gisele [00:16:48]:
You love the bus that’s totally obnoxious. You love the office that are keeping you sort of locked in. You love the computer that soon enough you’re going to loathe. You just like you get the sort of shiny object thing, right? Like you just got so excited, you joined that dream organization. You working with top clients. You want the promotion, you want the big bonus, you want the big promises, you love the accolades, you like the LinkedIn status. It’s all good. Mom is happy, dad is happy, wife is happy, bank account is happy.

Charlene Gisele [00:17:22]:
So it’s pretty good on paper. And that in itself gives you a whole lot of drive and motivation, right? And it’s not bad. It’s really human. I was very drawn to all of those things. It’s not being materialistic or it’s. It’s. It’s natural to be ambitious. If you’re a type A ambitious person, that would be very attractive as a proposition, right? Why would you say no to that? You worked hard, you’re a high achiever, you study hard.

Charlene Gisele [00:17:50]:
It was a competitive industry to get in. You got this job, got this promotion, you’re going to work hard for it. But here’s what happens, though. Somewhere along the way, you become a trader. So I really believe that it doesn’t matter which profession we have. All of us are traders, but often we’re subconscious traders. We don’t realize we make trades. So let me explain what I mean by that, Nick.

Charlene Gisele [00:18:13]:
You walk into work and you decide you’ve had a shit night, right? So you just trade in a little bit of energy, a little bit of peace and quiet, a little bit of mental space, which you could have by doing some breath work or meditation or not looking at your phone. And you trade in being more available, being more present, being more responsive, answering the client first, answering your boss first. So you trade in your mental piece for discipline. At work for being a good coworker, for being good to your clients. Then comes lunchtime. There is a deadline. The client is calling. You have no time to get some food.

Charlene Gisele [00:18:54]:
So you trade in healthy options for more work, more deadline, more recognition, because you want to serve your clients again. All of the things that you’re doing, they’re not bad, right? Then comes nighttime. Maybe your girlfriend or your wife or your husband is waiting for you. But honestly, you’ve got nothing left to give because you’ve been working all day, answering all kind of demands, answering all kind of emails. And right now your mind is just not ready to process information. So you trade in healthy relaxation protocols for alcohol to numb and soothe, or maybe escapism, Netflix, Apple Play, anything that is going to numb this mind away. You want something to numb, to soothe, to alleviate, basically to make you forget. And we keep on making this train day in and day out, day and night, and you trade in more and more of your health for more and more of the money.

Charlene Gisele [00:19:50]:
But you don’t really realize you’re making that trade.

Nick Urban [00:19:52]:
And how is it that you’re trading your health when you’re substituting the healthy practices for Netflix? I’m assuming it’s because you’re not actually doing the things that would regulate your body and nervous system.

Charlene Gisele [00:20:02]:
I have come to the conclusion that it’s because you’re not aware that you’re doing that. None of us really, until something quite dramatic happens. Like in my case, it was my ex husband, you know, making me realize that my ways of working were very toxic. And him complaining that I was never home and I was married to work than I was married to him, which was entirely true. Having a diagnosis like being an insomniac or being diagnosed with general anxiety disorder, this kind of big life event hitting you in the face, those are the moments when you think, oh fuck, did I make a trade? And I wasn’t even aware of it. Like something comes to you, right? But it’s not like I walked into work thinking, oh, yeah, let me sacrifice my health, let me sacrifice my marriage, let me give you my marriage in a gold platter. And you take it away from me, thank you very much. Right? You don’t really do that.

Charlene Gisele [00:20:55]:
But over the next few months, over the next few years, things erode. Your relationship erodes, your health erodes, and you get addicted to the chase, the chase of the, you know, the mystical promotion or the bonus like organization. And it’s only normal because that’s the way organization operate. Always have a alert like something to keep you going. Right. So that there is always more for you to be willing to put in more effort because there will be an award, a reward, some kind of recognition, be it financial, being, promotion. So you chase that thing and you chase it till you don’t make it anymore. Right?

Nick Urban [00:21:42]:
Yeah. So you’re right. It’s usually like that, external labels of your behavior that get you to realize, oh, I’ve actually at some point been slipping down a path that perhaps I don’t want to be under because I’ve just got this diagnosis that I didn’t have before.

Charlene Gisele [00:21:57]:
Exactly right. I know this is a little bit grim and a little bit morbid, but I have come to the realization in my line of work that There are typically 3Ds that make people actually stop and realize that they’re entering a very dangerous path. And they usually seek help and call a burnout advisor like me. D, number one health diagnosis. The doctor called you and you’ve got type 2 diabetes or you’ve got another kind of cardiovascular condition that is pretty, pretty serious. The other D is D for divorce. Your wife can’t stand you being away from home or never present with you, and frankly, your marriage is hanging by a thread or your husband is willing to walk away. And the third D, and I’m sorry for the morbidity, but it’s death and it’s not yours necessarily, because then you wouldn’t come up to see me, but it’s somebody in the family, death in your surrounding or the realization of your own mortality.

Charlene Gisele [00:22:59]:
So for me, the D for death was the near death of my father. He had a burnout driven heart attack and just about survive a major heart attack followed by a stroke. And in this moment of life or death, I thought, this is my future staring me in the face. And it’s not a good one.

Nick Urban [00:23:19]:
You’re saying that he experienced a burnout driven heart attack?

Charlene Gisele [00:23:22]:
He did. Yes, he did. And you know, it’s interesting, Nick, because my, my father is the reason why I decided to become a successful attorney. You know, he was a huge role model and I always wanted to be the, the star, a daughter, you know, the, the good girl that studies hard and gets the good job and works his law firm and makes daddy proud. You know, that’s always been a big thing in my life. And it’s interesting because on the one hand, he’s the person that inspired me to do the profession that I did in the first part of my life, but he’s also the person that inspired Me to start that profession and start a new profession because his burnout heart attack inspired me to stop being an attorney to become a burnout advisor. So it’s interesting, you know, how this pivotal moment actually reshaped my career and my perception of success.

Nick Urban [00:24:16]:
Yeah, definitely.

Charlene Gisele [00:24:17]:
Wow.

Nick Urban [00:24:18]:
How prevalent are you seeing this? When obviously people you work with are working with you because it’s a theme in their life. But across the general population, are you seeing this as like a major issue?

Charlene Gisele [00:24:28]:
Major, absolutely. Major, major. And also the amount of people that actually think that they have chronic anxiety or they even think that they’re getting depression or they have all kind of other misdiagnosed or thought of conditions that actually you look at the. Of what is really going on, it’s textbook burnout. So this is an important topic to talk about, really, because it is not uncommon for me to have a client that was seen by a psychiatrist and was recommended to go on antidepressants and had a terrible time on antidepressant and then was told to come off antidepressant, which, as we know, is really, really challenging. And then they come to see me being quite unhappy with their journey. And it turns out that as evidenced by the psychiatrist, they were not even depressed in the first place. They were just totally burnt out.

Charlene Gisele [00:25:34]:
And the reason I’m really passionate about this topic is when I burnt out and I went to see a doctor for the very first time, I was offered a bunch of pills. I was given a whole bunch of antidepressants, which I never took because I thought, this does not feel right. I don’t feel depressed. Like, this label doesn’t, doesn’t fit with my map of the world. It doesn’t seem right, but it’s so common. And you know, I’m not saying clinical depression is not a thing. It’s a thing. And, you know, psychiatrists do wonderful work and I worked with many of them and I love the profession, so.

Charlene Gisele [00:26:07]:
So I’m not at all saying anything bad either way. But what I am saying is we should take a step back and not be too quick to throw a bunch of pills at people and instead do the holistic tools of, you know, are you actually burnt out? Meaning, do you just need to reset your nervous system? Do you need to recalibrate the way you work? And above all, above all, do you need to recalibrate your relationship to work? Work is a relationship. You have a relationship with your work. So is this relationship healthy or is this relationship toxic?

Nick Urban [00:26:43]:
I like what you just mentioned, though, because you can look at a lot of different conditions and diseases and symptoms and you can label them as an imbalance of this or that, and that can help and it can provide short term, moderate term relief. But usually these things don’t just spontaneously, randomly happen. There’s like some kind of trigger in the lifestyle, in environment, possibly elsewhere. And if you actually look at the diagnosis and you say, okay, this is what the professionals are currently labeling it as, could there be something below this that’s causing this? I didn’t have this condition six months ago, a year ago, five years ago, now I do. It’s probably not just like a neurochemical imbalance that I’ve had my entire life, it’s not genetics because I didn’t have this a year ago, but then actually looking at different, different symptoms through that lens. And there’s no cost of wondering if it could be something like a overall greater pattern like burnout. And if it’s not, so be it. If it’s not burnout at all, then go on and choose to address it in whatever way you want.

Nick Urban [00:27:49]:
But if it is, then you naturally ameliorate the symptoms and you address something bigger. Because if it is burnout and you’re just treating the symptoms, your nervous system, the rest of your body is still going to be degenerating and you’re going to be playing whack a mole with new symptoms as they arise constantly, over and over again.

Charlene Gisele [00:28:08]:
Exactly right. You’re spot on, Nick. That’s. That’s completely correct. So that’s why I truly believe in holistic roots. And I really love the field of functional medicine and functional health. And I think if anyone’s listening and hasn’t yet had consultation with a functional practitioner, those are wonderful, wonderful trusted advisor because they take a more holistic approach to health. So that’s always my recommendation.

Charlene Gisele [00:28:35]:
And same thing with getting blood done or getting panels or hormones. I always recommend that my clients be seen by functional doctors because we need to look at the whole person. And to me, a doctor that sees someone and doesn’t ask smart question around the way they eat, the way they sleep, the way they move, the way they work, the way they love. I think we’re missing a very, very dangerous piece in the puzzle here. And I like to take a very deep dive. And when I start working with a client, it’s a little bit of, it’s a little bit intimate, actually, to be frank, because I need to know, I need to know the answer to those things. I need to know what is the status of Your relationship with your spouse, like do they adore you or do they want to strangle you most of the time because you’re unbearable at home, because you’re snappy and angry and because you have a terrible mood. Like, I need to know the way you react, the way you approach things, the way you think, because that gives me a really deep dive understanding of where your psychology footprint is at and how we can really help you feel better and help your family unit, whatever that unit may be, thrive.

Charlene Gisele [00:29:48]:
Because you always have to take into consideration, you know, whenever I see a client, I need to know quite quickly who else is involved. And maybe it’s a pet, maybe it’s their dog, maybe it’s their cat, maybe it’s their boss, maybe it’s a colleague. Right. It doesn’t really matter. But, but I need to know who are the people or the things around you that get affected by the way you think, the way you feel and the way you act.

Nick Urban [00:30:14]:
Yeah. And there’s always things and people around you that get affected by it.

Charlene Gisele [00:30:19]:
Yes, definitely. Definitely, yes. Whether you’re single, whether you live on your own, there will be people, you know, community members, friends, colleagues, team members, relatives. There will always be, always someone. I, I mean, it’s not a funny story, but it is a true story. I’ve had a client really, really lose it with their little dog. Like they just got a little puppy and they just had a terrible day at work and literally lost it with the little puppy and felt terrible about it. So you know what I mean by that is maybe you’re listening to that and you don’t have kids or you don’t have a spouse, but maybe you have a pet.

Charlene Gisele [00:30:59]:
And like, how is your relationship to your pets? You know, everybody has some kind of relationship they can use as a sort of sounding board on how good of a partner are you to that person or that thing.

Nick Urban [00:31:12]:
Yeah, we’ve talked a lot about stress in the context of work, but even the people who are retired aren’t necessarily exempt from it. Like there’s a lot of other macro and micro stressors that are common in today’s life. And even if you aren’t working a full time job or even a part time job, there can still be lots of other things pushing you towards burnout that you’re not potentially aware of.

Charlene Gisele [00:31:35]:
Yes, absolutely. For example, it could be financial, you know, financial stress that’s not having your ducks in a row from a financial planning standpoint, being of the sandwich generation. So that’s typically happening when you have Little ones. But you also have to look after your parents. So that sandwich generation is a really tough one because on a Friday, you have to, you know, go to the caring home for dad, but then on Saturday morning, you have to take kitties to the pool for their swimming lessons. So you’re constantly split between two generational demands. That’s very intense. I see a lot of burnout in this situation, and I see a lot of burnout happening in what I call transitions.

Charlene Gisele [00:32:21]:
So life transition. So that’s typically happening during a promotion phase when you’re about to be made partner, you are about to be made md, or you’re transitioning into a new season of your life. And that can bring a huge amount of stressor because really, it brings forward the unknown. And we all know that the unknown often brings a lot of stress.

Nick Urban [00:32:44]:
Yeah. Well, Charlyn, what’s in your toolkit? How do people start addressing this? Of course, there’s the classic things that we can all imagine, such as quiet time, mindfulness meditation technologies, forest bathing. Like, what do you go to with clients to help them start shifting the balance from stressed towards more relaxed or at least just adding more relaxation into their lives.

Charlene Gisele [00:33:10]:
Yeah. So above and beyond all the above that you’ve mentioned, which are, you know, fantastic, the tool that I like to play with the most is the subconscious mind. And the reason for that is because that is actually a tool that we often really need help with. What do I mean? We all kind of know intuitively that we could or should or need to hack our diet movement. Like, walk more, you know, go more in nature, eat better, drink less, you know, sort of almost intuitive. Doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean we do it. But once we get the accountability and the discipline, you can do this on your own.

Charlene Gisele [00:33:49]:
Right. You may need a coach to sort of hold your hand virtually to do it, but you can do it on your own. The subconscious work that’s tricky to do on your own. I don’t really know of anyone that does their own subconscious deep work, because it takes a little bit of an external facilitator coming in and facilitating that trance state and using tools, methodologies, and protocol to actually work with your subconscious to access that trance state that will enable you, through the frame of clinical hypnotherapy, to work with your subconscious mind to identify patterns, to rewrite stories, but also to future pace so that you behave differently when faced by a trigger or triggering event or situation. So, for instance, in my experience, the reason I became such an Advocate and a practitioner of clinical hypnotherapy is because it worked wonder on me when I was insomniac. I was quite desperate and I did not want to solve it with pills, even though I did have my attempts at taking sleeping tablets, as you know, we all do when we’re desperate and really want to sleep. But it was never good success story. And I didn’t believe in having another chemical addiction.

Charlene Gisele [00:35:10]:
Like I didn’t think that was a holistic solution. Whereas hypnotherapy was very powerful because it really helped me change and shift my relationship to sleep at a really deep level. I didn’t realize that I had learned negative patterns from childhood. I had reinforced those patterns as a teenager and then I had made those patterns even tougher as I became a law student when I got into Cambridge. But if it wasn’t for clinical hypnotherapy, I would not have remembered or realized that when I was a little girl and I really just, just adored my, my daddy, you know, just waiting for him to come home, I would force myself to not fall asleep, learn tactics and techniques to stay awake so that I could wait for daddy to be home to kiss me good night, right? That was not something I was consciously aware of. But that memory literally just came back to me and I could see my little face, you know, just remembering. And I remember even the techniques that I use, I had like dalmatian stuff, bears, you know, like the little dogs from, from the Disney cartoons. And I would, I would count them and remember their names so that I would keep myself awake.

Charlene Gisele [00:36:27]:
I had all those techniques as a little girl, you know, quite smart girl, to keep my awake. Anyway, long story short, I would not have access those memory without clinical hypnotherapy. And those are not made up, patched together memories. They’re so clear when you access them. It’s like, oh, it’s like waking up from a dream, right? And now when you know that you can work with it, not against it, and rewrite the story of how you approach your relationship to sleep. So now I think sleep is a privilege. You know, if I, if I get to sleep, how lucky I am. Like I get to have a good night’s sleep, you know, it’s, I’ve become a bit of a sleeping queen.

Charlene Gisele [00:37:11]:
You know, I love my deep, I love to, and I love to stay in if I can. I, I love to do my little self hypnosis at night. I have my little sleep ritual and I’ve married someone who has a very Very healthy relationship to sleep. And that was a on the mental criteria for me because he’s so healthy and so disciplined with his sleep. Sometimes I can have my demons and I can test the boundaries and I’ll be totally honest, like, sometimes I try to like test his boundaries and he’s so good, he’s like, no, that’s my bedtime. And you know better, that should be yours too. And I’m like, I’m so grateful. This is exactly why you’re my husband.

Nick Urban [00:37:52]:
So explain the role of the subconscious here and the patterns that you discovered and how clinical hypnotherapy interfaces with those. Because as I understand, like we all know, as you mentioned, the core things that make us healthy and keep us healthy, yet a lot of times we don’t actually practice them, which is evident by the rising condition statistics and stuff like that. So what is the relation there between the subconscious and accessing the subconscious to reprogram the subconscious?

Charlene Gisele [00:38:20]:
Such a good question. So in my case and in most of my clients case, the subconscious mind is the mind that dictates the fact that you will not fall asleep, you shall not sleep because you are more loved, you are more worthy, you are better as a woman, as a professional, as a man, as a whatever. Fill the dots when you’re productive. That was my story, that was my belief. In other words, sleep is for whims. If you sleep, you’re wasting time. You’re not billing, you’re not making money, you’re not getting closer to a promotion. It’s not like I was walking through life thinking those thoughts.

Charlene Gisele [00:39:01]:
But it was my subconscious story that was so deeply rooted that at night when I laid on my pillow exhausted, totally tired, there was the subconscious programming keeping me up, right? Because I would go to. And I didn’t do that, and I haven’t done that. I would literally just feel like I’m going crazy at night because I had all those really, really loud voices in my head thinking about the things I could have or should have done better. And from a neuroscientific standpoint, that’s also explained because when you’re really addicted to work, and you’re working all the time, you’re always activating your executive network. You’re always in that part of your brain and you’re not spending a whole lot of time in your default mode, network, right? You’re always in this executive network when you become a little bit more at peace with the fact that you can be more productive when you’re more rested, which is not A contradiction. It’s actually an equation, right? And this really hard for a type B professional to, to sit with that thought. But it is true, we know that it’s been proven by science. So it’s not productivity or creativity, it’s creativity only if productivity is kept in measured.

Charlene Gisele [00:40:20]:
You know, if only if you use the right dosage then you actually realize that you take quieter moments in the day. So the more meditative like moments, the more restful moments, like little walks, moments where you’re playful and creative actually help you fall asleep better at night. So for instance, in between coaching session or if I know that I have a day that’s a little bit trying like yesterday I had one of those day where the stress was starting to accumulate. I know I had to work late for the US but I also really started my day super early for Australia. So it was one of those days that’s just, you know, really stretches with the time zones and that’s naturally going to happen when you have a global presence. But I could see that I was in my best self. I was starting to sort of drift into oh, I don’t love it. I don’t love that version.

Charlene Gisele [00:41:11]:
I love, I know this version. So I actually thought that’s going to affect my sleep because that’s me being super activated. So I took a break, a conscious intentional break. And I took a 20 minute meditative reset to really just activate my default mode, just mind wandering, daydreaming, meditative state. And I really felt my stress level drop down dramatically. And, and last night I actually slept well. And I know that a lot of it is because I took those micro breaks throughout a very intense day so that I didn’t go to the bed in a state where I just hope for the best. Like, okay, I was alert and aware all day.

Charlene Gisele [00:41:53]:
I was work, work, work, work, work. And now it’s 12 midnight. I should, I should go, I should drop like a fly. Like it’s not the way your brain works. Your brain needs time to reset, recalibrate, to rest during the day. We think that we can just go all out throughout the day and then sleep light out during the night. Now that would be super convenient, but it’s not the way our brain operates so you need to modulate. So if you have a really stressful day, you need to be intentional.

Charlene Gisele [00:42:24]:
I do a lot of self hypnosis, meditation and sdr and I do them intentionally during my most stressful period to downregulate my nervous system and to give my mind the opportunity to wander to daydream so that I can then find peace and quiet with my brain at night when I go to sleep, when.

Nick Urban [00:42:44]:
I do meditation or neurofeedback or heart coherence training, any of that stuff, I can actually use some of my technology and I can see my heart rate, my minimum heart rate going down below what I can get it when I sleep. So it obviously is very restorative to the body. And anyone who really likes data and actually see how like quantify their sessions, technology can be a big like motivator here. So it’s not like, well, I’m closing my eyes and I’m losing 20 minutes. Like it’s like no, no, no, I’m actually gaining more than 20 minutes because I close my eyes, I recharge and then I have more capabilities the rest of the day.

Charlene Gisele [00:43:17]:
Exactly. Right, yes, absolutely. If you track your hrv, you can see that, you can see that data. I do really large scale meditation workshops and I did one a few weeks ago where one of the delegate was a little bit on the skeptical side, but really into data and love to track his hrv. And we did the guided meditation and he was really excited because he was getting that kind of that live feedback and was like, oh my goodness, this is the best hrv. So yes, if you’re skeptical, if you have a scientific or you know, data orientated brain, meditation can be measured, tracked and it’s objective data, so be it. Meditation, nsdr, self hypnosis. Truthfully, those tools really are using very similar brainwaves and trans states.

Charlene Gisele [00:44:13]:
So that NSDR for example non sleep depressed protocol is very similar to what we would do to induce a person into a trans state during a clinical hypnotherapy protocol. So don’t get too attached to the label. If you currently have some kind of a meditation routine that’s already super close to getting you closer to a good night’s sleep.

Nick Urban [00:44:35]:
I know there’ll be some people listening in who heard you mention your subconscious story that you were subconsciously telling yourself over and over again whenever you went to sleep. And they might think to themselves, oh, I don’t have any of those stories. What would you say to that?

Charlene Gisele [00:44:48]:
That you remember? I would say that you remember I had no idea I was counting my dalmatians in my bed when I was a little girl. Like I remember that I had this many of those and I remember that I loved collecting those little dogs, those little bears, stuffed animals, not bears, but I do not remember that I was counting them now I remember because of the work that I did with my hypnotherapist. So anyone who thinks they don’t have a story or, you know, often the objection is also, but I don’t have trauma, right? I don’t have a big trauma. So what I say is great. So first of all, amazing, so glad to meet you where you are. But let’s not get confused with big T traumas. You know, we often think of those when we think trauma and of course those happen and those are extremely traumatic and we usually know when we’ve had a big T trauma. But what if you’ve had many little teeth traumas? Those count too.

Charlene Gisele [00:45:44]:
And in fact, those can really be problematic.

Nick Urban [00:45:48]:
Can you explain the difference? Because that’s actually a really important distinction. And I don’t think anyone, everyone tuning in knows the difference between a big T trauma and a little T trauma.

Charlene Gisele [00:45:57]:
So typically sexual abuse would be classified as a big T trauma. So rape or even just some form of sexual but non consensual sexual intercourse or interaction or any kind of verbal abuse. So it doesn’t have to be physical, it doesn’t have to be sexual. It can be a very abusive boss even. It can be where you’ve been really belittled, where you’ve been humiliated either in a workspace or in a personal area. The trauma that would have happened between the age of 0 to 7 would have had the most impact. So typically the big trauma that would happen during those formative years between 0 to 7 are going to have even more of an impact. But the little T traumas, if I give you some example, are going to be the one that typically my clients don’t remember up until the point when we do clinical hypnotherapy, very chronic bed wetting.

Charlene Gisele [00:46:55]:
So little boys who wetted their bed often and regularly and up until they were quite grown up and they got bullied by their friends or they were in school and they don’t remember, but they got bullied, they got humiliated in the school. Now you wouldn’t say it’s a big tea trauma. When you got home that day, your mom probably didn’t think that she needed to call a therapist and get you seen because, you know, you, you wet your pants, right? But truth be told, that bullying, that humiliation, the friends mocking you could have led to even things like erectile dysfunction or libido or loss of confidence, gain weight, right? So I’m telling this story because that’s an actual client story, right? So something that can seem quite innocuous, right? Oh, well, you, you, you wear your pants a bit. Little five year boy at school and people laughed at you. You didn’t even remember that story. You just remember your mom looking after you and picking you up from school. And then now everything is unfolding and from that point onward you were marked. You didn’t have as many friends, you were not a popular boy and so you found it harder to get girls affection.

Charlene Gisele [00:48:05]:
And then you got bullied and then you started to put on weight and you started to see your emotion with food and you learned that you were safer when you were bigger. And then you started to put on more and more weight because I was protecting you from the world and you kept a distance. So you know, like obviously we can go down and down and down, but those would be what I would call like DLT traumas where you know, if I ask you, you wouldn’t think of telling me that happened. But actually there was a chain reaction, like a domino effect. And I can go into the brain, so to speak, or into the subconscious mind and triage those stories and really put the pieces together for you. Join the dots and actually help you re empower yourself and change the narrative.

Nick Urban [00:48:49]:
Yeah. To be clear, the lowercase T traumas are not going to kill you and they’re not going to like noticeably change your life in a way that you’re aware of most of the time. Usually it’s like that’s part of the defining characteristics of a lower key lower case T trauma is that, that you don’t even realize how they’re impacting you, but everyone has them and if you address them some of the parts of your personality that you don’t like and your behaviors and attributes, they will naturally shift because you’re resolving in your subconscious something that was there from usually a long time.

Charlene Gisele [00:49:24]:
Exactly. Yeah. You, you’re spot on. You couldn’t have said it better myself. So thanks for that, Nick.

Nick Urban [00:49:31]:
You’re welcome. So clinical hypnotherapy in general though, how does it work? Like are you repeating a mantra over and over again?

Charlene Gisele [00:49:39]:
No, no, no.

Nick Urban [00:49:40]:
You’re going into a trance state. And when they go into a trance state then does the image just appear in their mind?

Charlene Gisele [00:49:46]:
Yeah. No. So it’s not tm. It’s not, it’s not that kind of protocol. We don’t use mantra. It’s very much part one being the trans state and part two being understanding what the goal is. So clinical hypnotherapy is really goal orientated, is really targeted. So words I will work with one particular goal.

Charlene Gisele [00:50:08]:
So in this instance confidence with women or erectile dysfunction or pain management for athletes or insomnia, smoking cessation, drug management. So it would be really targeted. So we, we tend to work with a target. And then my work as a clinical hypnotherapist is to go into the subconscious mind with your full consent and permission and and understand what may have been stories that form patterns and chain reactions that we can then rewrite and get clarity on so that we can meet the goal that has been set. So I don’t just go and poke around without any relationship to the goal. So it’s very much targeted. And I think that’s important to understand because it’s so fundamentally different to entertainment hypnosis like performed by a hypnotist for entertainment purposes, which has no clinical goal. So when you get hypnotized and you get transformed into a jellyfish, right there is no clinical goal.

Charlene Gisele [00:51:19]:
This is not for your well being. I’m not here meeting a goal that you’ve set. I’m just manipulating a state so that you act a certain way or react a certain way. The work that we do as clinical hypnotherapists is entirely different. We don’t do it entertaining or at least I don’t do entertaining and I would not do entertaining. I work holistically to meet my clients well being goal that we set previously doing a really deep dive where we actually establish what we are going to meet together during the session. And it’s typically established over the course of anywhere between six to 12 sessions. You can do with small targeted work, for example, like phobia, if you have a very targeted relatively, I don’t like to use the word easy, but relatively easy to work with phobia.

Charlene Gisele [00:52:18]:
Fear of lefts, for example, is. I’m not saying easy in belittling how tough it is to have a fear of lift. So just making that super clear if we have listeners. But it is relatively easy to solve just because depending on how old the story is, we can usually find the pattern, find the event and work with it. So I’ve done work around fear of lifts or fear of elevators within three sessions, depending on the intensity. But if we’re talking about something like, you know, smoking cessation or something that is deeply rooted, like my, my sleep, for example, took a good from memory, it was years and years ago, but a good 10 to 12 sessions because I was a pretty tough case and I had some really old patterns. So it really depends, you know, how old is your pattern and how deeply rooted is what you want help with this?

Nick Urban [00:53:14]:
Yeah. Okay. And is everyone hypnotizable? One, and then two. What is the actual process? Like, obviously you’re not going physically into someone’s mind. Like, are you asking them particular questions? Are you playing certain music, like frequencies? Like, how exactly does the process look?

Charlene Gisele [00:53:31]:
Yeah, it’s a great question. So is everybody hypnotizable? Yes and no. I’m sure this is not the answer that you want. Yes, in theory, no. Because if you really decide you don’t want to play with the person, I use the way play intentionally because I think there has to be an element of intimacy and trust and rapport. Like, it has a lot to do with the trust that you have in your therapist. Then if you really met with a. No, I would never even consider hypnotizing somebody who’s been not willing to participate.

Charlene Gisele [00:54:02]:
For example, you know, like, my wife asked me to meet you. Well, okay, great. But do you really want to meet me? Right. So if it’s. My wife gave me your card, and I thought it would be really interesting to call you, and I’m really curious. Okay. Sounds amazing. That’s like what I get most days.

Charlene Gisele [00:54:17]:
It’s often the spouse or the husband or the wives that recommends my services. That’s fine. But if you’re coming to me reluctantly because somebody told you to. No, that’s. That’s not actually very ethical at all. So I wouldn’t engage. So in my experience, everyone that I’ve worked with so far has respond positively, but that I only would consider working or even consider using the tool with someone who is wholeheartedly wanting it to work. Right.

Charlene Gisele [00:54:45]:
So there is a big element of trust, of consent, of permission, which is really, really important. And to put people’s mind at ease, I always offer, if my clients want to record the first session, just to make sure. Because in the trance state, you don’t forget, but you know, you don’t have. You can have what’s called time distortion. So you lose a little bit of the time and space. So you can feel a little bit.

Nick Urban [00:55:09]:
Is that a theta state? Like what. What brainwave is most dominant?

Charlene Gisele [00:55:13]:
Yeah, yeah.

Nick Urban [00:55:13]:
Data.

Charlene Gisele [00:55:14]:
Yeah, absolutely. Which is why we have time distortion. So I often say to my clients, just. Just to put your mind at ease. I don’t record. I do not offer recordings, and I’m not comfortable having any of my clients recorded, so I don’t do it on my side. But if you just want to have your phone and record my voice while I do in the session so that you can play it in your bath later on. Like, that’s fine by me.

Charlene Gisele [00:55:36]:
You know, if for the first session, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t suggest that we do it every time. But for the first few sessions, when you’re building the trust, that’s absolutely fine. But that’s typically how the process goes. And then it’s the repetition and then it’s the cues and then the trust. And I get to know the map of my client’s world before I start the session. So I know whether they’re more vision, whether they’re more audited, whether they’re more good tree. So I really know their senses and their activation. And I will leverage what I know of their map of the world through my cues and get to be as close to their map of the world as possible so that our cues are really aligned and they really respond to my voice.

Charlene Gisele [00:56:13]:
So, of course you can listen to pre recorded hypnotic guidelines. I do those as well. But those are going to be very soft, very gentle. They’re more like a meditation. A true hypnotherapy session is entirely bespoke, tailored to the individual.

Nick Urban [00:56:30]:
Interesting. Okay. And so it sounds like it’s going to be pretty different than the entertainment hypnosis that you referenced earlier.

Charlene Gisele [00:56:36]:
Yes. Entertainment hypnotist, yes, definitely. I have never turned a client into a jellyfish, I promise, nor do I intend to.

Nick Urban [00:56:46]:
Are there, like, generic? I mean, obviously, like, the more customized and bespoke to each client, the more effective it’s going to be because you’re actually meeting them in their physiology and psychology where they are. Have you found any, like, generic? Like, this hypnotherapy session helps with sleep. Like, do people get good results from that beyond a typical meditation?

Charlene Gisele [00:57:05]:
Yeah, yeah. So I’ll give you another example. For instance, I recently ran a marathon. It was my second one, and I wanted to do some self hypnosis. I’m not a particularly fast runner, far from. But for me it was a big undertaking, running a second marathon. And they were only like six months apart. So, you know, for my body, it was kind of a big ask.

Charlene Gisele [00:57:30]:
So I prerecorded self hypnosis, which were targeted to mileage and just, you know, keeping up the pace. And. And those can be very good. So if I have a client whom I know is performing a certain way, even if they don’t have a bespoke recording of me every time, we can have an endurance hypnotherapy, we can have a running hypnotherapy we can have a falling asleep hypnotherapy. So we can, in other words, pull themes. Confidence hypnotherapy works really, really well. So we can have themes that may not be totally targeted, totally bespoke, but can work for more than one individual because they align with the general themes. So I have sleep recording that have a lot of sleep cues and hypnotic cues, but I would be.

Nick Urban [00:58:18]:
What would those be? Like, what would a sleep cue and hypnotic cue.

Charlene Gisele [00:58:21]:
Yeah, so great question. So it would be a cue whereby I actually get you to visualize falling into sleep. So my voice will go deeper and deeper and I will go. And now as you close your eyes, you imagine the last time you were on your pillow. Your eyelids were heavier and heavier. And I get you to imagine the last time you fell into sleep. If I, if I do this long enough, you’re going to fall asleep.

Nick Urban [00:58:49]:
Don’t do it.

Charlene Gisele [00:58:49]:
Then you need to drive this.

Nick Urban [00:58:52]:
Yeah.

Charlene Gisele [00:58:53]:
And, and so what happens? That’s a, that’s a classic hypnotic cue. Right. So I’m getting you to visualize last time you wear sleep. So you actually imagine that slumber. Right. And, and so your body remembers. So imagine you falling asleep is going to help you fall asleep deep. But again, that’s a generic sort of evergreen recording, so to speak.

Charlene Gisele [00:59:17]:
It’s going to work, it’s going to be beautiful. I have a few of those that I love to send. But it’s never going to be as deep, as powerful as a practitioner helping me stop counting my dalmatians, for example. Right. Like you see, just because if you go with the personal story and the subconscious and the deep work and the tailoring, then, then you go into a deeper level. But I still use evergreen recordings. I make them, I love them. I use them on planes, trains, every time.

Charlene Gisele [00:59:47]:
And when I need a top up, then I go to see, you know, a practitioner.

Nick Urban [00:59:51]:
So, so are there like two different types? The kind, like, the more generic kind of like guides you through, say the sleep like you were just mentioning. And then also the ones that are like personalized to helping you stop counting dalmatians. Like where in the process do the dalmatians come into the.

Charlene Gisele [01:00:04]:
Yeah, that’s, that’s a tailored session. That’s, that’s somebody who is my practitioner helping me work with my pattern and helping me recover from insomnia and no longer be an insomniac. Right. So that’s.

Nick Urban [01:00:16]:
But then how would they even, how would they even find that? It’s like a sticking point, like you mentioned to them that you’re an insomniac. And then they’d be like, like, let’s go back through for like, imagine in your mind where this began. Or would they say, like, go back to your childhood. Like, how does that come into the.

Charlene Gisele [01:00:31]:
That’s, that’s really the work that you would do over the 10 to 12 sessions so that you do it. So it’s not going to come in one piece. And typically when I do that work with a client, when they go away with tools, I then give them tools that do include recordings that are generic sleep recording, because they’re still going to get into a fed state, they’re still going to get into their rest nervous system, and that’s still going to help me access translate quicker next time. So if you’re listening to this and thinking, oh my goodness, I have this recording that our online hypnotherapist is not bespoke. Great. Let me ask you this question. Is it working for you? Yes. Is it making you fall asleep? Yes.

Charlene Gisele [01:01:17]:
So don’t stop something that works, right? It’s always what I say to my clients. Now, if you’re telling me, no, it’s not working, I’m not falling asleep. I’m still in insomniac. I’m really desperate. Okay, then let’s have a conversation and let’s do the deep work. But if you have an online evergreen recording, really, honestly, I have nothing against them. I make them, I produce them. But again, are we working with like a big challenge or are we just helping solve, you know, something a bit uncomfortable that we can resolve quickly with a nice little recording? So just depends again which bucket we’re playing with.

Nick Urban [01:01:51]:
Yeah, makes perfect sense. Charlyn, I know you have to run in a second. It’s late over there. Before we do, I want to circle back to something that you might have thought I forgot, but I haven’t. That is. Why do you call work a drug?

Charlene Gisele [01:02:04]:
Oh, the best for last. Because it is really one of the most addictive substance. We don’t realize it necessarily, but we get a hit from it and we know that we actually get dopamine activation from getting the good feedback. It’s a very dopamine activating exercise. And it is a drug because it can lead to addictive behavior. So workaholism is real. It exists and it can be treated with clinical hypnotherapy just like any other form of addiction. So I do call work a drug because it can leave to.

Charlene Gisele [01:02:45]:
It can lead to addictive behaviors. And once You’ve recovered. So I’m a recovered workaholic. I’ve now adopted sober, like behavior vis a vis my work. Right. And I know that’s an interesting thing to say, but I work a lot still, and I think I always will. But I work in a way that is sober in a way that, you know, it’s similar to somebody who knows how to drink, but they’re not going to drink to a point that is going to be dangerous to the health of their relationship to others. So can you have a few drinks and behave yourself? Or if you have a few glasses, are you going to finish two bottles? It’s the same question, right? Like, have now a relationship to work.

Charlene Gisele [01:03:30]:
That is a healthy relationship. So I’m not getting that hit from like a drug standpoint. I dance with it and it’s a relationship that I can, you know, put boundaries around. But that’s why I call work drug around that subject.

Nick Urban [01:03:44]:
Were there any guardrails you installed that made a big difference in terms of your ability to dance with work but not let it over consume and not like, let it pull you back into a pattern that you broke?

Charlene Gisele [01:03:55]:
Yes, I use scheduling. I’m a big, big fan of scheduling. I know it sounds so simple, so basic, but honestly, it’s a lifesaver for me. Even my sleep, it’s in my diary right now, so I have a notification that says sleep, do not delete, exclamation mark. And, you know, it’s the kind of boundary I have to put in place to make sure that I live by my values.

Nick Urban [01:04:18]:
Yeah, that’s a good one. I have a reverse alarm on my phone which has the same thing. It goes off at 9:30pm and reminds me it’s time for bed. So don’t, don’t ignore this. It is late over there for you. Thank you for joining me on the podcast. If people want to connect with you, to work with you directly, how do they find you on the Internet?

Charlene Gisele [01:04:35]:
Oh, thanks for asking. So the first resource will be my podcast. The challenge is our show. We talk about burnout every Wednesday, so that would be the first point of call. I love to interview high performers, neuroscientists, doctors to talk about burnout, but also high performance and everything in between. And then I also have a burner online course, and I have plenty of sleep recording. As you can hear, I’m a little bit obsessed about sleep, so those are all free. So if anyone is interested in starting a meditation practice or listen to a sleep recording, just look for my name and sleep cast and you’ll find plenty of recordings.

Nick Urban [01:05:13]:
Perfect. And we’ll put links to everything you just mentioned in the show notes for this episode. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Charlene Gisele [01:05:20]:
I really appreciate your time Nick, and I hope you sleep well and I hope find my meditations. I would love your feedback on it.

Nick Urban [01:05:27]:
Will do. Thanks for tuning in to high performance longevity. If you got value today, the best way to support the show is to leave a review or share it with someone who’s ready to upgrade their healthspan. You can find all the episodes, show notes and resources [email protected] until next time, stay energized, stay bioharmonized, and be an outlier.