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Wow, what a wirlwind.
When was the last time I posted on here and actually emailed it, umm wow Nov. 19th!?! That’s forever ago.
My apologies. It’s been a wirlwind. How has it been a wirlwind you ask?
Well I’ll tell you.
My beloved cat died later on the day I released one of my workshops. I won’t go into those details here (though I will describe a bit of the impact on my life), because this post is a little more chipper—but if you want to read about it, it’s here: Grieving my furbaby. Why did I take this so hard? Well besides my husband whose my best friend, she was my little best friend too.
I shared a memorial post across my social media sites including on TikTok and that was fine, people were very understanding and supportive.
Then came another unexpected transition (I’ll explain what I mean by “transition” in a minute). I found out something that many therapists and nurses (and other professionals) already knew: our professional status changed in terms of student loans. Counseling and social work are no longer counted as “professional degrees” for certain higher borrowing limits. And I felt angry.
And I…broke my own rule about posting when I’m less than logical.
I made a post about it (while actively grieving), used the word grief, chose angry rock music (really really bad idea), and may have included the word screaming-oops. 😬 That combination—grief + something others view as a political statement—lit up TikTok in exactly the way my nervous system did not need.
The post didn’t go viral, but it was ramping up fast. The comments got divisive and they started attacking me, my bandwidth was gone, and my nervous system was like: nope. I ended up muting comments and switching it to friends-only. TikTok is a powder keg of wildness, in my humble opinion. I’m not saying I’ll never use it again, but I did get a very loud reminder that I don’t have to stay in conversations that are frying my circuits.
It was especially strange because I posted something similar on Facebook and that one was…crickets. Well, not totally crickets—there was some engagement, but it was normal engagement. Which, honestly, I was relieved about. I’m learning that this has a lot to do with algorithms and what each platform is optimizing for—what gets quietly buried and what gets thrown into the arena. And that TikTok thread? That was an arena, but it wasn’t my arena. As Scott Perry would say, I wasn’t playing my game; I was playing the algorithm’s game.
When life sideswipes you (and your work)
And this unexpected loss changed my world and it threw everything off. In my dissertation, I wrote about how unexpected changes can really knock us sideways, drawing on Nancy Schlossberg’s Transition Theory.1 2 3
TL;DR: I did not expect this loss bc she was healthy and zipping around, and then her health plummeted over a couple of weeks and suddenly she was gone.
Schlossberg says a “transition” isn’t just the obvious big things like moving or changing jobs. It’s any event (or non-event-something we hoped would happen but didn’t) that changes our roles, routines, relationships, or assumptions about how life is supposed to go.
She also points out that not all transitions are created equal. The ones we don’t see coming (a sudden loss, a health crisis, getting blindsided at work) tend to shake us the most. They’re off-time, out of our control, and they mess with our sense of safety. In those seasons, everything from our schedule to our identity gets scrambled.
Schlossberg invites us to look at four areas:
the Situation (what happened and how intense it is),
our Self (what we’re bringing in terms of history and resilience),
our Support, and
our Strategies for coping.
When those four areas are all under strain at once, it’s no wonder it feels like the floor just dropped out from under us.
This is the lens I’ve been using to make sense of my own grief, and it’s also a big part of why Compassion Reset exists in the first place: to help helpers navigate transitions as they face the inevitable compassion fatigue risks that goes along with helping.
Nerdy project update: AI, mental health, and Robot Blues
On a different-but-related note, I’m also collaborating with a group of women authors (organized by SheWritesAI) on a book highlighting women’s voices about AI. My chapter is on AI and mental health, and I just turned in the draft last night. (It’s headed to peer review next.)
That process was exhausting and eye-opening. I don’t want to spoil the whole chapter, but here’s the mini version:
AI is absolutely a force for good,
and a force for harm,
and a whole lot of messy in-between.
TL;DR: AI is here to stay, and we need to find a healthier balance with it. There are real risks in using it to process our problems and feelings—especially as a replacement for human connection. Buyer beware.
I’ll be talking more about this soon in Robot Blues, and how all of this ties back into compassion fatigue, boundaries, and building businesses that don’t eat our brains (yes that’s a zombie reference-pick your fandom).
AAANNDD… Offer Lab Anyone?
I’m so excited about this: my own offers are built, and I invited some awesome people into the Offer Lab to help me build with them. I wish I knew two years ago, when I started this business, that “if you build it, they will NOT come.” But if you build it with them, they will. 😂
There’s a lot more to say about that, but if you’re interested in learning more, you can join the Offer Lab waiting list. Send me an email at brie@businessfornerds.com and say OFFER LAB! Or just comment below.
If you want help now, all you need to do is ante up and become a paid subscriber, and I’ll gift you two weeks of free async coaching through Compassion Reset Intro.
If you’re a paid subscriber and have not yet participated in that, what are you waiting for? Just email me or DM me that you are interested in the Compassion Reset Quest Intro.
More soon, and thanks for sticking around through the plot twists. 💜
Willey, B. M. (2023). Understanding the Experiences of Compassion Fatigue Among Counselors in Private Practice: A Phenomenological Approach. Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 4446. https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/4446
Anderson, M., Goodman, J., & Schlossberg, N. (2021). Counseling adults in transition: Linking Schlossberg’s theory with practice in a diverse world (5th ed.). Springer Publishing.
Schlossberg, N. K. (1984) Counseling adults in transition: Linking practice with theory. Springer Publishing Company, Inc.
Bless you 🫶🏻
For those who are curious about The Offer Lab, I highly recommend it. Brie has created a special (and unique) place to build offers, one micro step forward at a time. Thank you Brie!