Balancing the Pitch: Navigating Mental Wellness as a PR Pro

PR pros, communicators, we work in a unique environment. In an industry where we feel compelled to always be “on” and available, it’s challenging to make the time to work on our mental health. Know that you are not alone and know that taking that time is not only worth it, it’s essential.

Mental health is a topic we’ve addressed in a previous episode and in this Solo PR Pro blog post.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:02):

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR Pros who work for themselves like me, Michelle Cain, and my company VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen, how's your day today?

Karen Swim, APR (00:19):

Oh, I'm so good, Michelle. How are you?

Michelle Kane (00:22):

I’m good. I'm good. I'm a little bit toast. Had some major client events happen this weekend, and towards the end of the week, it seems like everything is decided to happen in the same two week period, which in this business is often beyond our control, so we tend to roll with it and get through as best we can. So yeah. How about you?

Karen Swim, APR (00:51):

Same. It feels like October has been, we know that, well, for us, the fall is usually busy, but I agree with you. It feels like there's all of a sudden 10 things happening on every day. There's meetings. There have been so many more meetings to go to so many more events, some of them all happening within the same set of days. And I think that that's probably a good segue into our topic today too.

Michelle Kane (01:22):

Yes, yes, it is. We're going to talk about which something we touch on often, and we're pretty sure there's reasons for that mental health, especially for those of us who work in the PR industry, the personality type that it takes to do this job. You're someone who's conscientious, always concerned about getting the details correct, and usually the one balancing all of the plates in the air and the many moving parts of things, not just for yourself and your business, but on behalf of your clients. So after a while, that tends to take a toll and we need to be cognizant of that.

I speak more from more of a viewpoint of hopefulness about this, but try and plan for that as part of the planning process that we do for our work.

Karen Swim, APR (02:25):

I think it's so helpful to also have people that can help to pull you out of a spiral sometimes just saying things out loud to another human being who truly gets the work that you do in the same way that we talk to our friends, but many of us have friends that are not in our business, and so they can empathize on one level, but it really does help. So even if it means just hopping on a Zoom meeting with a fellow colleague and just having a virtual coffee and just chatting about stuff, just voicing it out loud, it can make you feel like you're not the only one struggling. It reaffirms us and it has a way of energizing us. And I know I recently just came to a whole new understanding that I am a big overthinker. I overthink everything, and in my head I'm always writing scenarios, and I have been like that since I was a kid, which makes me great for pr, but it's not so great when you are trying to have a peaceful stress-free life. It means that I have to work at that and I have to sometimes tell myself to stop overthinking everything and stop running scenarios and just enjoy life. Same. Take somebody else to say, don't overthink it because I'll overthink everything. And I'm always like, okay, but what if this happens? And what if this happens and I want to plan for all of it, all of us do because that's who we are.

Michelle Kane (04:01):

Oh, totally, totally. Always thinking through, okay, well if this happens, then what all the “if thens” and to be ready for as much of anything as you can. And yeah, and that totally bleeds into my personal life too. I like to have a plan because I like the rest in knowing how a day is going to unfold. Not that I don't enjoy being spontaneous, so it can be loose. It can just be, oh, we're going to go to Philly, hang out and have dinner. Then I know, okay, that's enough of a plan for me at the moment.

Karen Swim, APR (04:38):

I read the stat, and it's from a study last year, and they were saying that, or maybe it was 2021, they were saying that PR people feel guilty about taking time off from work for mental health reasons. And that breaks my heart because as business owners, as communication professionals, we should never treat mental health like it's separate from our overall health. And I know that many of us are also guilty of powering through everything. Looking at my wonderful co-host over here who recently worked through illness, we will power through it all, covid, pneumonia, broken bones, I mean seriously. And we have to stop doing that. It brings to mind Simone Biles, who at the top of her game, the GOAT, and she had to walk away from her job to take care of her mind, and she did. She lived her life. She walked away. No one even knew if she was coming back and I that maybe some of you are thinking, well, she had the financial resources to be able to do that, but it still is a matter of being strong enough to choose yourself and to prioritize your own health and not continue to risk it day after day by showing up with just fragments of yourself. And so maybe you don't take, what did she do, take like a year or two off?

Michelle Kane (06:24):

Yeah, she got married…

Karen Swim, APR (06:27):

She came back and she blew through every record and became even greater. And I think that we need to keep that story in mind that it's okay to walk away. What does that look like for us who are solos? It means maybe it means sharing work with another person. Maybe it means teaming up with a colleague. And even if you're not teaming up to work on every single account together, maybe it means teaming up as backup. Maybe you backup each other up. Maybe you form an agreement where it's like, Hey, can you take the lead for me for a week and make sure that you keep the communications going? And I mean, it will take some work for you guys to develop a system, but take some pressure off. If you have a junior person that's working with you, let them handle communications. Tell them, train them how to do things in your absence. A lot of times it's not about, because you don't have to set strategy every single day. There's a lot of tactical things that can keep trains running and on the tracks while you take some downtime. Do not be afraid to walk away because I promise you it's better to pull back and to care for yourself than to show up broken.

Michelle Kane (07:47):

Yeah, it's so true. And it was funny, I was speaking with someone last week. We both recently had Covid. They got over theirs much more quickly. And I said, well, you took off. I didn't. And I know that. I know that, and I think it's one of the reasons I do that is because you think, ah, what's my work? I'm sitting at a keyboard that's kind of restful.

Karen Swim, APR (08:12):

It's not.

Michelle Kane (08:13):

No, no,

Karen Swim, APR (08:14):

It's not.

Michelle Kane (08:15):

So as I say, not as I do,

Karen Swim, APR (08:20):

I'll share in full transparency that the past couple of years are really hard for me. I lost a brother and I spiraled, I was having panic attacks, and then I went through a really bad depression. I just wasn't myself. And I made a decision with my colleague Carolyn, because she also had back to back. She lost both of her parents back to back. We were just at the end of ourselves. And so we made the decision not to do any business development and we didn't took care of the clients that we had. We backed each other up. We do have other team members that we can tap into, but we just took care of ourselves. I needed every single second of that. And I share this because I'm not only a solo, I'm single and I am my only source of income. So it's kind of a big deal to pull the brakes and to let the chips fall as they may. During that time, we did have clients that fell off. We had projects that ended. We had clients that had to pull back because of budgets. And rather than operating in a place of fear and lack, I just trusted that it would all work out because I knew that I wasn't there yet. I wasn't ready.

Michelle Kane (09:40):

Well, and I think you knew deep down you were doing the right thing. And it does come to a point, and I'll hold myself accountable to that too. It's like at some point you can be doing a disservice by pushing yourself too hard, also being single, it's scary to make that choice because it's like, Hey, it's just me pulling  this wagon up the hill. But you can take breaks.

Karen Swim, APR (10:09):

And I shared that because I want people to know that that thing that you are so afraid of is really not that scary. Was my bank account exactly where I wanted it to be? Not exactly, but I also didn't end up homeless. I was able to still pay all of my bills. Life kept moving on and it was fine. And Mike, many of you where I had that fear where I thought, oh, and a lot of times we push ourselves for those reasons I can't take off. I got a kid in college or kids in college or Oh my God, what am I going to do? It's just me. I need to do. Sometimes you don't. You really don't. And you need to just take the time. And I took an extended time and I let a lot of things fall to the ground, unfortunately. And you have to let go of the guilt too, because it is what it is. I'm a human being. I'm not perfect. I didn't have it all together. I wasn't ready. I was not okay at all. I really was not okay.

Michelle Kane (11:13):

I think that was the wisest thing that you could have done for yourself. And we do talk about this a lot too, the difference in the generations. I think us being X and silent, we still have that workhorse mentality of you got to do the things to get things done. And also speaking for myself, growing up in the faith community I grew up in, there was a lot of talk of grace and rest, but a whole lot of, well, we got to do all the things and we got to do 'em today and don't slack and blah, blah, blah. And I am still actively unlearning that aspect because I know it. That is not correct. You shouldn't be grinding yourself into the ground for others. That's not the whole point of this life.

Karen Swim, APR (12:12):

Something desperately wrong. And I came to say this to myself, if you're nicer to other people than you are to yourself, there's something wrong. Because even the way that sometimes we speak to ourselves, we're not very nice and we're not very good bosses to ourself. And if you think of yourself as would I tell another person to work wounded? Would I tell someone, I don't care that you don't feel good today, I need you to just show up anyway. You would never say that to another human being. So why do we treat ourselves? I'm so horrifically, it's not okay. We should be kind to ourselves. And again, it's like some of us won't even take two days off to just breathe. The world will not fall apart if you take two days off. It just will not. Maybe something will get a little messy. Maybe you'll miss something. Maybe you'll have to shift something around, but I promise you'll survive it. It won't all die. You didn't build a business that is on sand. Hopefully you didn't. Is it that fragile that if you take two days off, the world is going to fall apart? It really isn't. That's just in your own head.

Michelle Kane (13:24):

No, no. And if you tell yourself, oh, but it'll be so inconvenient on the other side, trust. I've said that to myself. That's out of proportion too. It really is. We are not air traffic controllers. It may feel like we are sometimes, but we are not heart surgeons. We are not ER physicians. And guess what? Even they have someone on call for them after hours.

Karen Swim, APR (13:52):

They do.

Michelle Kane (13:53):

They will say, okay, I see you are not going to die in 36 hours. We will operate on you on Monday. And it's so true that recording in your head that you play for yourself is so important. And the way that you motivate yourself is so important because I used to do that too. I used to negatively motivate myself if I don't then. And that would give me what I needed to get through. And one day I just said, oh God, that's so stupid. Why am I doing this? This is ridiculous. And like you said, I would never dream of treating anyone else like that. I would quit. I'd be like, oh, sorry. Okay. You won't see me tomorrow. See me? Never.

Karen Swim, APR (14:47):

And I mean, sometimes I went through pretty serious things. Maybe it's not that serious. Maybe you're just feeling burnt out. By the way, I went through that too. So after I got through all of the other hearts, then got a full on whatever stage of life I'm in, crisis full on. It was not pretty. And I was feeling super burnt out from my job, and I thought that I just wanted to walk away. It just didn't even care. I'm like, I hate this. I cannot wait to be done with this.

So there's a trick for that too. And I think one of the common things is listening to that voice, listening to yourself, listening to your body, and taking some time to get to the root cause in dealing with it. So for me, the burnout was because there were just things that I didn't like doing anymore. I didn't hate my whole job. I just didn't like certain tasks. And I could then look at them clearly and say, okay, well, I think I want a new plan and there's a new direction that I want to take. And so then understanding what really energized me and paying attention to the things that I could just put my head down and do and time would just disappear because I was enjoying it. And I listened to what other people were telling me when they were saying, oh my God, you're so good at this.

So I found that light, and then I started walking towards the things that gave me that light. And so if that's you, I encourage you to pay attention to what other people are saying, how you're feeling throughout your day as you're doing your day-to-day job. Are there things that you're just avoiding and you're just like, Ugh, God, I hate this. But then are there things that you're like, I love this. I love when I get to do this because lean into the things that make you passionate and it's okay. We talked about this last week. Michelle said it perfectly that when you're in traditional jobs, you change jobs every couple of years. Some people every year. You don't do the same job year after year after year in the same exact way. It's okay to change it up. It really is lean into things that really make you happy. And that is going to be different in different years of your life, in different parts of your life, there are things that you're going to love and then maybe you don't love them anymore and it's okay to change. It's fine. You'll be fine.

Michelle Kane (17:14):

Yeah. I mean, we all change. You were a different person when you started your business, and I'm sure there were different reasons that we started our businesses. So we're going to change and give yourself that space. And even if you do need to hunker down and just get her done for a time, that doesn't have to be become your standard mode of operation. It's that huge adage, we train people how to treat us and just surmounting that is so big.

Karen Swim, APR (17:52):

So big.

Michelle Kane (17:52):

Especially in a business where you feel like you must be available and always at the ready.

Karen Swim, APR (18:02):

Not always.

Michelle Kane (18:03):

No, not everything's a crisis. It's not horrible to establish those boundaries and to just give yourself the space that you need.

Karen Swim, APR (18:16):

I completely agree. And listen to other people who have been through this that are outside of this profession. If you want to Google Clarence Bethea, he is a former client and a friend and has been such an inspiration because he is an entrepreneur who really went through a period of depression. And he is so open about what he went through as a founder, the pressure of building a company and everything that was on the line. And he's one of the most inspirational people that you will ever meet. He's fantastic. So even people that are not in the communication industry, they get it. Draw strength from what others have been through. Somebody else has walked a mile in your shoes already and can provide that guiding light. But we don't want people to just be out there alone and hurting. I would also say that one of the big reasons that we created Solo PR Pro in the first place is that so that you had community.

So you really are not alone. You do not have to be a paying member of our community to reach out to us and get support. We're still colleagues. We get it. And again, just sometimes sitting down with somebody or reaching out to somebody to say, Ugh, I just feel over it. What can I do? How do I get past this? Really helps to get past it. And Michelle, you talked about hunkering down. I feel like hunkering down to do the things that are necessary becomes a lot easier when you're planning to lean more into that thing that makes you happy. Because you can always flip that switch right away, but you can make the mental switch where you're like, oh my God, I found it. I found the thing that is making me so happy right now. And as you're working on that thing and working on the pivot, the other thing sort of then become less important. And I think it's because in our mind, we know that we're not with it. Like, okay, I'm not stuck doing this forever, so I can get that.

Michelle Kane (20:20):

Yeah. And it all comes down to just a basic notion of always have something to look forward to. How often don't we do that? How often don't we just make those little plans of, even if it's one thing a week, and again, I'm not saying it because I'm an expert at it, I'm saying it because I need to do it too.

Karen Swim, APR (20:40):

There's a proverb that says, okay, now I forget where it is. But it's basically that the absence of hope makes the heart sick. So what you just said is 100% true. Without hope, we can become super depressed and burned out, and we lack hope when we allow ourselves to get down and tired, and then we spiral, and then that's all that we see, and we just keep circling the drain, and that's not good. So we want you to be recharged, re-energized, and excited about your professional life and your personal life.

Michelle Kane (21:16):

Absolutely. We so do well. We hope this has helped you. If you're nodding your head through it all, just please keep on keeping on and really carve out time for yourself. Just sit back and think. You don't have to spend a whole day on it, even 15, 20 minutes. Just have a little mental reset and reprioritize to get you through the day and then the week and on and on, and know that we are always here for you and Solo PR Pro is here for you. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.