How to know if your health career is *really* the problem

We need to talk about that in-between feeling, you know, the one that, I mean like where you are still working in health, but maybe you've got another creative nonclinical gig on the side. And that feels like the work that you really wanna be doing. So in this episode, that's what exactly what I wanna talk about.

I wanna unpack what it's like to be in that really messy middle bit there. I know something's not quite right, but I don't exactly know what to do yet because yeah, I've been there. I, well, I think I really still am there, but since from secretly wishing, I'd be injured so I didn't have to go to work.

To genuinely wondering if I was just being super ungrateful for wanting out of something that I'd worked so hard to get into, or that was so hard to get into in the first place. So if that's you, if you are feeling disillusioned with your health career, but you're also not a hundred percent sure you wanna go all in and you're creative business, yeah.

This episode's for you,

Hello, hello. Welcome to the place for offbeat health professionals who have bravely swapped their healthcare hats for nonclinical creative caps. I'm Caitlin, a psychologist, turn copywriter, and this is healers with hustles.

so in the last episode I talked about how to choose a creative business using the concept of Ikigai. but today I wanna talk about

what happens after that when you've decided what it is. Maybe you've tested it out, you'd love what it is, and you're like, yes, this is it. But then you're still working in health and it's like, ah, what do we do that, you know, it's that weird wobbly, disorientating, middle. When you're doing the health thing and it, yeah, it took you years and years to study and to train and to build the confidence up to be able to do what you're doing really well.

It might be still paying the bills as well, and it might look impressive from the outside too,

it can be really hard to decide what to do. Like do you stay, do you do both? Do you go part-time? Do you just like flip the table and go out in your creative business? It can, it can be kind of hard to tell. and so the psychotherapist in me really wants to say that we can learn a lot. From discomfort, which sounds really like a bit high rolly and cringe, but it's kind of true.

Like if we sit there and we're trying to work out what the discomfort is trying to tell us, it can have clues.

Doesn't always mean that the profession is totally wrong for you. Like sometimes it's a setup, like it might be the structure of your day, the environment. Maybe if you worked in private practice, things might be better because you'd have more flexibility around the way you wanna work. Maybe your caseload's too much.

Maybe you need longer sessions or different clients, or maybe you just need like Mondays off. And sometimes those small tweaks can really change everything. So I really, encourage you to try and experiment, find out what the thing is that you don't particularly like about, your health work. So, for instance, with me, I know things dramatically improved when I was working in a government job and I took Mondays off and I was like, oh my God, this is the most amazing thing in the world.

'cause I had the Sunday dreads, hella bad. I wonder if maybe taking Mondays off is like an antidote to stress, maybe if it's possible. But then I also remember when I went into private practice, for myself. And that was another moment of realizing like, wow, I can really set this up how it works for me.

Like I can start when I want. I don't have to do six patients a day. I can do what works for me. I can do after hours appointments if I want. But in saying that, like if you've tried a few things and maybe you've, experimented a bit to try and work out what the thing is about health that you don't like. Well, maybe it actually is the profession. Because if you think about it, like we go to uni for so many years and we don't really get an idea of like what the actual profession is until we've always finished our degree.

So you might have like an internalized like fantasy idea about what the profession's like when you work in the job, but often it's really, reallydifferent I should say, and maybe the systems aren't set up so you can even do the work that you wanna do. I. I think that's why a lot of people go into coaching as well.

At least a lot of my copywriting clients, coaching copywriting clients who I've done their, website copy for. That's a lot of the key. Reason in their, story about why they decided to go into coaching is because they could, do the work that they actually really wanted to do by doing their profession.

But then when they went into the profession, they realized that, yeah, it's not so, straightforward. You can't exactly do whatever you want. There's so much bureaucracy or red tape. But then of course that means stepping out and leaving behind something that's really comfortable. Which cue discomfort. Again. So much discomfort. Right? Oh my gosh.

And that's really difficult to admit as well, when you've worked so long to get where you are. So yeah, then it was, you feel confused. And there's a lot of like mixed feelings as well. Like you can feel both proud of what you've achieved, but then also disconnect, totally disconnected from the profession.

Maybe you see others who are like love the profession, they're like literally their identity and it can feel really jarring when you are like quietly in the corner being like, eh, I don't know if I wanna be here. And so I wanna say this like you just because you can keep going, it doesn't mean you have to.

you might not be ready to hear this yet, but I wonder what it would be like maybe in like on alternate universe where there's no such thing as sex debt. The training time that you've, put in the family opinions, the colleagues opinions, the sunk costs weren't there.

Like, what would you actually choose to do? Would you stay in your health world or would you go and follow. Your creative business or maybe it's something else as well. Maybe it's a third thing as well. And I think that's why it's really important to actually sit in that and uncomfy feeling and see what emerges.

'cause you might be choosing a between A and B, but maybe if we sat there, a third thing might come out, A third thing might emerge, as Jung would say. And so I think as always, I just wanna say that you are allowed to feel like confused but you're also allowed to want more than what you have now, and you're also allowed to outgrow things.

you're also allowed to say like, I have no idea. And you're allowed to grieve the path you thought that you would be on or that you felt would be different, and you're allowed to be in this in-between phase.

I know it might sound really weird and maybe counterintuitive, but sometimes, like I've said, I'll say it again. Like sitting in this period and kinda sitting back and maybe not making big decisions, but just kind of.

Trying to work out what this discomfort is telling you, or maybe making small tweaks, like I said, about changing how you set up your day or the systems or maybe the people who you're surrounded with as well. There's so many, so many different things that you could be doing to try and, understand that discomfort or that what doesn't sit right about being in health for you.

I don't think there really is a clear answer and it's gonna be different for everyone as well. Like my experience might be totally different to, it will be, it'll be totally different to your experience and that's why I think having these conversations out loud is so important to help normalize it. To help normalize that.

Yeah, it's hard being a healthcare worker. It's so hard and it's okay as well. Like you don't have to keep pushing through if there's something else. That you deep down really want to do. And so I encourage you to, if this idea spoke to you and you know someone who might be going through something like this, share the episode.

Or even, send me a dm. You can always contact me. I spend far too much time on my, my copy Instagram, so, at Bell copy co. And I'd love, love, love to hear you if you found this helpful, or if anything I said resonated or maybe if you don't agree as well, I'd love, I would love to hear from you. Time. Bye.