4:13 Podcast: Can I Take Care of Myself Without Being Selfish? With Janice McWilliams [Episode 241]

Janice McWilliams: If it's not daily and doable, then it's not going to have that benefit for you. But I've just found that that's the kind of -- I want people to have a sense of efficacy, like, I can make this hormone soup taste, if you will, a little bit better, no matter how hard my life is.

Jennifer Rothschild: Hormone soup? Have you heard of that? Well, today you are about to. Today's guest, Janice McWilliams, a therapist and spiritual director, will unpack what it looks like to practice daily, doable self-care. And she's going to use the life of Jesus as a model. You are about to get some practical counseling insight to help you care for your soul, tame and tackle negative thoughts, and manage stress. And you'll get a taste of what hormone soup is. So sounds good, right? Well, 413'ers, our therapy session is about to begin.

K.C. Wright: Welcome to the 4:13 Podcast, where practical encouragement and biblical wisdom set you and I up to live this "I Can" life, because you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength.

Now, welcome your host, Jennifer Rothschild.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, hello. Welcome. Jennifer here, just to help you be and do more than you feel capable of as you live this "I Can" life of Philippians 4:13. It is Christ's power in you that enables you, equips you, empowers you to say "I Can" to whatever you're facing and however you are feeling.

And today we're talking about a subject that is kind of sensitive for some people because -- especially women, K.C. --

K.C. Wright: Mm-hmm.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- this idea we're all about taking care of everyone else.

K.C. Wright: Uh-oh.

Jennifer Rothschild: But then we feel guilty when it comes to taking care of ourselves.

K.C. Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: And what I love about this conversation you're going to hear is that Janice McWilliams, she's taking this to a very daily and doable level, not just a quarterly retreat where you go off to some monastery and eat kale. You know what I'm saying? I've done a few things just in the last few years. I found something that works for me that -- now, I don't do this daily, of course, but a special treat for me that really, like, is self-care for me is facials.

K.C. Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay. I had never gotten a facial before, and I did it, I don't know, six months ago, and then I -- well, I did it one other time, and this is what I want -- like, I told my husband, "Anytime you buy me a gift, I want a facial."

Okay. So the first facial I got, you lay down, you're on a heated bed, it smells like lavender, there's this spa music playing. And then these people, they can, like, wash your face on one way or another, like, with creams and this and that, for an hour.

K.C. Wright: Wow.

Jennifer Rothschild: My face has never had so much attention. Anyway, you leave there, all those little wrinkles that you earned from frowning and smiling, they're all reduced to nothing.

K.C. Wright: Wow.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay, but the last time I went --

K.C. Wright: Yeah?

Jennifer Rothschild: -- I didn't know I did it, but I evidently signed up for microdermabrasion. And so when the lady says to me, "I see you have signed up for the such and such treatment. Would you like" -- and then she names all these things, and one of them was microdermabrasion. I'm like, I haven't heard of any of them except microderm, so I said, "I'll go with the microderm." She goes, "Have you ever done it?" I said, "No." She said, "Well, it feels a little like sandpaper." "Okay, I'm good with that." So she goes through all these treatments, you know. And then she gets to the microderm and you hear this little sound. So you can't hear the spa music anymore because you hear this... [imitates sound]. She gets this machine in your face. And then honestly, K.C., it feels like you've got a supersonic cat sucking your face and licking it all at the same time, like, with this sandpapery tongue.

K.C. Wright: Oh, this is a bad visual.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay, but when it was done, oh, my goodness, my face, it just felt so soft and beautiful.

K.C. Wright: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: So anyway...

All that has nothing to do with anything except I have found things I like. I know that I like a facial. That is a win.

K.C. Wright: Jen, it does have everything to do with today's podcast because that's self-care.

Jennifer Rothschild: It is self-care.

K.C. Wright: When the plane's going down, they say you put your mask on first before the kids. You got to take care of yourself.

Jennifer Rothschild: That's right, you do. And there's some women out here who need to hear this today. And what I love is Janice really does make it daily and doable.

K.C. Wright: I just blessed my mama with an hour massage. It was her birthday. And she had never had one, which I find almost a sin because I'm all about them. And so mama had an hour massage. But when she walked out of that massage -- and we know the lady, she loves the Lord -- Mom sat in the car and she looked at me and she goes, "Besides Jesus, that's the greatest gift that was ever given to me." And so now she's going once a month for the rest of her life.

Jennifer Rothschild: Good for her. I think that's so good.

K.C. Wright: That's some soul care.

Jennifer Rothschild: It is some soul care and some body care.

K.C. Wright: There you go.

Jennifer Rothschild: All right. Well, let's get to this conversation. I love Janice. I had never met her before. And maybe you have not either. So, K.C., let's introduce her.

K.C. Wright: Janice McWilliams is the author of "Restore My Soul." She's a licensed practicing therapist and spiritual director. Her love of the depths of intrigue of the human experience is matched by her absolute desire to find her place in God's work of restoring souls everywhere. And that is just what you, my friend, are about to experience.

Jennifer Rothschild: All right, Janice. For me, self-care, it seems like an endless pursuit -- okay? -- like shopping for the perfect swimsuit, you know --

Janice McWilliams: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- because you just know there's got to be a better one out there if you could just find it. So I'm curious, in your opinion, what gives? Like, is there something missing from our modern perception of what self-care is?

Janice McWilliams: Oh, I love this question, because I feel like it's what is coming up for me with so many of my clients that I work with in the counseling room and the spiritual direction room. And what I've noticed is that the way society is telling us to practice self-care is usually sort of a singular one event, pretty expensive thing, you know, like a spa day or a vacation or fishing trip or something like that, or it's kind of -- self-care is mostly dealing with maybe an exercise regimen or, you know, way of eating or something. So it's either only occasional or it's only addressing one aspect of your life.

And what I realized is that client after client was coming for therapy, and they would be having all kinds of external stressors or, you know, illnesses, or their kids were going crazy or the marriage is just really painful or -- stuff would be going on, but they couldn't really stop. They couldn't relax their way out of it, you know?

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. Right, right.

Janice McWilliams: Like these stressors were going to go -- or a lot of people just had, like, a really unrelentingly intense work pace or something like that. But I found that no matter what was going on with people, I kept circling back to, oh, my gosh, how do I send you home empowered to feel better in the next hour? How am I sending you home with something that tomorrow you can wake up and do something a little bit different and it could feel better? And you might feel a little better than you already -- you know, you've been suffering this thing, and how can you help yourself?

And so self-care became for me, how do you deal with your inner world in such a way that in a moment-to-moment, hour-to-hour, day-to-day way that helps you just feel more grounded, more connected to Jesus, and ultimately feels better? And that's where I started trying to make this shift. Let's shift from this idea of self-care being the thing you do once you're exhausted, depleted, completely burned out, and let's shift into thinking of self-care as integrated and a part of your life and not that difficult to do. And that's kind of what came to me and what I'm passionate about getting out into the world.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, and it's so reasonable, Janice, because you're right. I like how you flipped the definition on its head, because we do. We think of it as an, oh, I've got to get to the spa or I'm going to die kind of thing. And you're saying basically to prevent that, you're teaching us a new way to do it on the daily. But here's the thing. Life can often feel way too busy to pull off self-care -- right? -- much less make it a priority. So why do we need it most when we think we have the least time?

Janice McWilliams: Oh, because our bodies are just an utter cesspool of stress hormone. That is why. I mean, one of the metaphors that has become really rich and helpful to me in understanding and helping -- for myself and helping my clients understand what day-to-day -- hour-to-hour, day to day self-care looks like is that of -- imagine your body as a vat of hormone soup that you're cooking every day. This metaphor came to me some years ago when I was living with a bunch of friends and my housemate made tortilla soup and she accidentally put one tablespoon of Cayenne in the soup instead of one teaspoon. And, you know, we were like, Woah." Like, a little bit of Cayenne's good in the soup. A lot was too much for our unaccustomed mouths, you know, too much spice.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Janice McWilliams: And it's similar with stress hormone. Like, you want to have some stress hormone in your body. But if you have too much stress hormone in your body and it's not balanced out with just -- a general term, with happy hormone, then you're going to feel edgy, anxious, fragile, teary, moody, irritable. You're going to feel terrible in your body if you have too much stress hormone in it.

And so what I've become interested in helping people consider is that -- like, the messaging about self-care is kind of telling you just relax, don't stress.

Jennifer Rothschild: Right. Which is the most stressful thing you can tell a person.

Janice McWilliams: I know, I know. Like, people start getting more and more anxious the more they hear that.

Jennifer Rothschild: Right, right.

Janice McWilliams: Or they're afraid to do it, you know, but there isn't -- like, they're in a busy season at work or their loved one is undergoing chemo treatment and they're just picking up all the slack. I mean, it's -- there are times of life we really can't just relax our way out of stuff.

And so the hormone soup metaphor helps me to understand that I can -- even if I can't do anything about the influx of a lot of the stress hormone, I can put in happy hormone alongside it and that can make a big difference. And happy hormone going in really just means changing the pace for just a few minutes, or changing what your brain is doing for just a few minutes to give yourself a little bit of dopamine or oxytocin or just a happy hormone that helps balance out the way this feels to have so much stress hormone.

So when the pandemic started, many people in mental health -- we all went all online with all of our clients, you know, and that was new. But on top of that, all of our clients wanted to talk to their therapist about their fear and freak out about the pandemic, which was exactly what I was experiencing too.

Jennifer Rothschild: Right. Yeah.

Janice McWilliams: And so it was a different kind of therapy when you're doing that.

And I had a group supervision with other therapists, and we were talking about how do we take care of ourselves, because this is really hard. And during that conversation, I decided that between every session I was going to do a sun salutation, like a yoga move, that stretched my body and gave me an influx of happy hormone because I moved my body in that kind of slow and stretchy way. But I also said -- I ended with a breath prayer. "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of David" on the inhale, and then I would exhale, "have mercy on me, a sinner."

And just, you know, breathing that inhale and that exhale would be like a body reset that put a bit of different kind of hormone in my body. And over the course of the day, it -- I mean, it probably took me at the most seven minutes to do that in between every session, and I felt different at the end of the day. So I hadn't stopped the pandemic, you know, I hadn't stopped the stressors, but I'd figured out what's a manageable daily -- I call it -- you know, it has to be daily and doable. If it's not daily and doable, then it's not going to have that benefit for you. But I've just found that that's the kind of -- I want people to have a sense of efficacy, like, I can make this hormone soup taste, if you will, a little bit better, no matter how hard my life is.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. It's like adding a little cream to it to disperse some of that intensity of the flavor.

Janice McWilliams: Exactly. Yeah. And that's what a seasoned chef will tell you, right? Oh, maybe this soup isn't ruined with all this cayenne. We'll put a little cream in there or we'll put some potatoes or chickpeas in there that will soak up some of that spice. So it's the same idea, exactly.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, your example, too, of what you did personally is super helpful, because in some ways it's counterintuitive. Because often we would think, okay, if I just got finished talking to somebody about their issues with the pandemic and I'm struggling with my own, then I need to sit with myself for a few minutes and discuss this some more -- right? --

Janice McWilliams: Right.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- and deal with the pandemic. And what you're saying is, no, you almost took a vacation from that stressor and you involved your body, your emotions, your spirit as you were -- with breath, praying, inhaling, exhaling. And I think that's a really important thing for some of us. I mean, that might be counterintuitive to somebody right now going, oh, well, I never thought about that. So I think that's really helpful.

And I love how daily it is, because, just like you talked a few minutes ago, a lot of us wait till, like -- well, what I would call the check engine light on our soul starts to blink -- right? --

Janice McWilliams: Right.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- and then we do something, right? So we treat it like it's a last resort.

So you just gave us a good picture of what you have done, so I'd love for you to expand on that. What does it look like for us to practice this self-care in bite-sized pieces, like in moments, in hours and days, instead of just, boom, all at once last ditch?

Janice McWilliams: Yeah, absolutely. I actually thought about this enough that I came up with a resource that anybody can download if you just go to hormonesoupresource.com. And it's 50 self-care ideas that are daily and doable and take less than five minutes to practice. And then you can kind of cherry-pick which ones suit you or feel like they are kind of aligned with who you are and your personality. Some of them are playful, some of them are spiritual, some of them are cuddly, some of them are dancey, you know, so there's just a lot of different ideas there.

But in addition to that, I love talking and working with clients about how do you deal with your inner experiences, like your thoughts and your emotions, in such a way that you, again, feel better at the end of any given hour. And when it comes to -- say, the thoughts and how do we deal with thoughts. So, Jennifer, if you sit around and really fret about something catastrophic that might happen to your career, say for an hour, how are you going to feel?

Jennifer Rothschild: Horrible and ready to quit before I fail.

Janice McWilliams: Right, right, right. So just quite practically, if you worry and fret for an hour, you're going to feel terrible. You're going to feel kind of anxious. If you ruminate and give yourself a hard time, your inner critic screams at you for an hour, you're going to feel really terrible and kind of down.

And so in my book, I really try to help people understand -- to learn and see how they tend to think, and to be able to look at that and see how much of this worrying or ruminating is really helpful to me and when does it just become circular and repetitive and mood affecting? Because all those cognitive processes do is impact our mood at a point. Now, that isn't to say that prayerfully really taking something that's important to us into a time with Jesus and a time of what I call productive processing and productive debrief, like, that's all very good. I think we need to work on stuff. But it's kind of that -- when we're only kind of semi-conscious of it and it's turning and repeating and spinning and going, all that is doing is putting stress hormone in our bodies, which will make us feel bad, which will affect our mood. And so if we don't understand how to shift our attention away from cognitive processes like that and into our present reality and our present life, then we may be missing a great opportunity to feel a lot better in any given hour or any given day.

Because it's winning over the moments of any hour that makes an hour feel a bit better. And that hour feeling better is going to help your morning feel better. And that morning feeling better is going to help your day feel better. So when you get to the spa day or the vacation, that time can really be replenishment for you, and not just recovery from your life.

Jennifer Rothschild: It's really -- you're describing, I mean, that -- the battle is often in the mind. It really is.

Janice McWilliams: Yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: As a person thinks, so is he or she.

But you know what I've noticed, Janice, with believers, especially in Christ, that many Christians can get really upset with themselves when they're dealing constantly with overwhelming negative emotions. Like, I should be better than this, or I should be able to overcome this, or I shouldn't feel that way. So I'm curious, if you see that, and if you do see that, why do you think that is and what can we do about that?

Janice McWilliams: Okay, I absolutely see that, and I'm really glad you brought this up. Because so many dear souls are accusing themselves, blaming themselves, and giving themselves a very hard time because they think, I shouldn't think this way or I shouldn't experience these negative emotions, it makes me a bad person. So two things that I want to say about that.

As far as kind of the thoughts that drop in on us and the emotions that come up for each of us, I would suggest that we're not really in control of those things that pop in. When we have efficacy is sort of after they start, you know. Like, when the thought pops in, that just happens. But then we can make a choice how long and how much attention we give to that thought. When an emotion comes up, most of us don't choose that, like, the emotion just comes up. And then how we respond, and do we live within the context of who and how we want to be given that response, like, that's all -- that is part of our efficacy. But the kind of thoughts and the kind of emotional reactions we have to things, it's really complicated. You know, it's about our personalities and our just biological who we are reality, how we're made by God. There's our family of origin and the kind of messaging that we received growing up. There's the environmental factors and trauma and hurts and wounds.

And so by the time we get to be a teenager and a young adult and into our adult life, the kinds of thoughts that get our attention and the kind of emotions that come up are kind of -- they tend to fall into a certain, you know, semi-predictable set of thoughts and emotions based on all those things I just said, you know, who we are, how we grew up, and the kind of trauma and pains we have.

And so what I first want people to hear is that stuff really is not your fault. The kinds of things that get your attention and the kind of emotions that pop up, that just is.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Janice McWilliams: And the second thing I want to say is that there is no better place for us to deal with our inner experiences than in relationship with Jesus. And so often when I ask my clients -- you know, when they're talking to me about something really difficult to process or an emotion that they really don't like that's coming up inside, and I'll gently ask, you know, "Have you taken that into your relationship with Jesus?" And very often, like, I'd say 80% of the time, people will say, "Well, no, I haven't, I haven't brought it there." There's kind of this unconscious assumption that they need to kind of work that out before they come to relationship with Jesus about it.

And that just feels to me like, oh, but we're created to experience the breadth of emotions. Jesus experienced the breadth of emotions. And so experiencing those emotions is not the problem, and experiencing them with Jesus, I believe is not a problem to Jesus. It's what we wind up doing in reaction to unprocessed emotions that can get us into a place where we're really feeling a lot of regret.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, yeah. And I'm glad you brought that up, too, because -- well, there is no shame, there is no shame before Jesus, or how we're feeling, or even how we respond to those feelings, because like you said, those feelings pop in. What we do with them -- sometimes we're going to handle them great, sometimes we're going to totally screw it up and make it worse.

Janice McWilliams: Absolutely.

Jennifer Rothschild: But Jesus is there with grace, grace, grace. So I'm so glad you brought that up. And it made me wonder, too, because as we talk about this, the soul restorative self-care that you've been describing, and how we even think about what we think about, all that -- okay? -- a lot of Christians may think, okay, listen, she's getting a little hully gully, or this self-care thing, it is just so indulgent. But I would love for you to talk about Jesus himself. Did he practice self-care?

Janice McWilliams: There's so many things that I love about watching Jesus and studying the Gospels and seeing, okay, how did this work out for Jesus? So a couple of things that I saw, as I looked at his life, is that we can take great comfort in seeing that Jesus moved both fast and slow. He had days where he was moving at a clip doing things, thing after thing after thing, and then he had times when he was going away to a lonely place to pray. So when we -- I think we can often put pressure on each other or put pressure on ourselves that slow is the only option and fast is wicked and sinful, or something.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah, yeah.

Janice McWilliams: And I always am (inaudible) -- I don't think that's necessarily what we see from Jesus' life. In Mark 1, Jesus goes to the synagogue and teaches. And, you know, that would be enough to wear me out for one day. But even after that, he does some healing and deliverance. Then he goes to Simon's house, where his mother-in-law is ailing, and he heals her. And then the -- quote, the whole town, you know, end quote, comes to be healed and delivered of demons, and so he does a bunch of that. I mean, that was a really full, busy day. That was a fast day, if you will.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Janice McWilliams: Now, the next morning, Jesus goes away to a lonely place to pray, and then the disciples come looking for him. Because the whole town has come now for day two of this awesome healing and deliverance ministry, you know, so, of course, wouldn't Jesus just keep doing it? There's more people. And the disciples come looking for him. I think they're assuming, you know, that, Jesus, of course you would want to keep doing this because it's going so well. And Jesus says, "No, we're going to go to other towns, for that is why I came out." And so what I noticed in that is that in prayer, Jesus found his no to the healing and deliverance ministry, and he found his yes going to the other towns to preach the Word there also. And then what I imagine is that they kind of packed up their things and started walking. They had a slow day right after the fast day as they journeyed on to the next town.

So I think that Jesus is a little bit squirrelly as far as, like, any daily rhythm as a model because he doesn't do the same thing every day. But I take great heart in seeing things like Mark 1 where you can see, oh, okay, Jesus did move fast, but then immediately after he slowed down and he -- so he moved fast and slow, and then in prayer he found his yes and his no. And ultimately that's the kind of self-care I think that we do best to practice.

Jennifer Rothschild: Ooh.

Janice McWilliams: Don't be afraid. Okay.

Jennifer Rothschild: That's so good, Janice. I mean, that is just so practical right there.

But I interrupted you. So you were about to say so don't be afraid -- what?

Janice McWilliams: Don't be afraid of moving fast. It only becomes really unhealthy for you if you never move slow. And the kind of self-care that I'm trying to push out into the world is the kind where in any given day, and even any given hour, you learn how to create more variation in your life, you know, that there's fast and slow. So something like stopping in the middle of your crazy, crazy workday for a midday prayer that takes three minutes to do, that's what I mean. You're almost never too busy for that.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Janice McWilliams: Or to have, like, a 3:00 in the afternoon dance party with kids when everything feels great. You know, that's going to get some happy hormone in there. That's going to change things up. It doesn't have to take long to do things that make a really big difference in the way you feel.

Jennifer Rothschild: This is so brilliant. And I am so recommending your book because I can just tell every page is going to be rich with resource and empathy and practicality, and that's what we need when we're on this journey.

But I'm going to have to get us to our last question, Janice, which is really hard to choose. What could be the last thing I would want to ask? But I'm going to stick with this. You talk about fulfillment in your book.

Janice McWilliams: Oh, yeah.

Jennifer Rothschild: And so I would love for you to end with telling us why and how fulfillment is so essential for the Christian to really experience a daily restored soul.

Janice McWilliams: I'm so glad you asked me about this. I have had so many clients who will come and report something like this: I've got the job that really suits me and it fits. I've got -- my family makeup is just what I always hoped for. We have money enough to get to the beach every summer. I've got everything I want in my life, but somehow I just don't feel like I'm in contact with it or that I'm really experiencing it the way I want.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Janice McWilliams: And so I have realized that there -- there's been so much work I've done with people around helping them figure out how to have more fulfilling hours and days so that their days and weeks feel better. Because if you do not have kind of contact with your beloveds in a meaningful way, even though they're around you, you're not going to feel that good. If you don't have contact with Jesus in a way that you're open hearted in that relationship and being filled and restored there, you're not going to feel that good. If you're not doing things that you value in the world and your church and your community because you feel like you don't have time, you're not going to feel that good. If you don't know how to do productive work in a focused way, you're never going to feel that great about your work.

And so this whole idea of fulfillment, being in the moments and hours of your life, like, what does it look like for you, for instance, to put your phone away and prep for a meeting, without any kind of interruption for one hour, and to potentially feel really good with the product at the end of that hour, as opposed to letting your phone or the notifications interrupt you. You know, sometimes I -- when I compare notes with people, like, sometimes 18 times in the one hour you're trying to work, you're not going to feel great about work if you've been interrupted 18 times.

If you're at home in the chaos, you know, if you have little kids and you're in that phase of life and you're in the chaos of your evening routine, but you're trying to get things done while you're trying to get those kids to bed, you're not going to feel in contact with them. You know, like, what does it look like to even just spend five minutes eyeball to eyeball with your three-year-old, letting them lead you in a playtime where you're -- I'm all in with you. I'm here.

The people who purport just feeling so disconnected in their marriages or their kind of roommate relationships or the primary people that they love, but then they just watch Netflix together, like, that's the main way they spend time together, you know, I'm like, okay, before you turn on Netflix, five minutes of contact, you know. Again, it doesn't have to be huge, but it can make a big difference with your sense of what life feels like day to day.

K.C. Wright: I got to say, she really made Mark 1 about how Jesus handled self-care come to life for me. Never ever have I seen it that way.

This was so practical, and I need her book. In fact, you need her book, too, so it's a good thing we're giving one away. Go to Jennifer's Instagram @jennrothschild to be entered to win. Or you can go to the Show Notes at 413podcast.com/241 to get connected to the Instagram content. Plus you can read a transcript of this powerful soul care conversation.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. You know, if you're like me, you need to review because it was so rich, there was just so much there. And by the way, we'll also have a link to her hormone soup resource that she mentioned. That will be there at the Show Notes too. Everything you need is at the Show Notes at 413podcast.com/241.

All right, our friends, take some time to pay attention to your soul. Practice some daily self-care. You can, because you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. I can.

K.C. Wright: I can.

Jennifer Rothschild: And you can.

K.C. Wright: Yes. And if you want to start a GoFundMe to raise money for us to go to Aruba -- no. I'd like a hot tub.

Jennifer Rothschild: That's your self-care?

K.C. Wright: That would be my self-care. A hot tub on my back porch.

Jennifer Rothschild: Ooh.

K.C. Wright: Wouldn't that be amazing?

Jennifer Rothschild: That does sound nice.

K.C. Wright: Let's pass the bucket.

Jennifer Rothschild: As long as I wouldn't have to clean it.