Erin Orekar – Empowering Women: Beyond the Burnout

Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we are speaking with Erin Orekar. Erin.

helps professional women who are burned out or burning out feel energized and excited about life. Again, I'm really excited to have you on the show, Erin. So welcome.

Thanks, Jill. Excited.

To be here. Thanks for having me.

So what's your story? How did you get?

Started doing all of this.

Yeah, that's a great question. I experienced my own health crisis, which led to a medical leave in a former career path. And yeah, it was extremely healing and I got very interested in.

Nutrition. And so I had worked in corporate healthcare and IT and insurance and more the financial and like a very savvy about insurance and.

Reimbursement and claims and the whole financial business of healthcare. And I never felt really connected to solving.

Or being connected to really the deeper issues going on in healthcare. And so I decided to go to Graduate School full time to learn about nutrition and integrative health and.

That experience really taught me life skills and things that I learned from that I now use to teach to my clients and really to uncover what is at the root of their energy depletion. And it's really much broader than nutrition. It's really.

Multiple aspects of their life and trying to dial that in and really look at for that specific person what might be their energy drainers.

What? What? What might those look like for various people?

Yeah, that's a great question. It really can depend a lot of it can be emotional and mental. It can be perception of.

Their life and whether they have control over it or not, it can look like.

Having a victim mindset or having an empowered mindset and helping people to identify which camp they fall into, and if they're wanting to explore more, helping them to really work through that along with the physical health.

So what kind of people would?

Would be drawn to you. I know you said you help professional women, but what kind of like?

Where would they be in their career? What would they be experiencing? What? What kinds of things would cause them to want to like?

Recognize that they're burning.

Out, I guess is the best way to.

Yeah. So that's a great question. There's probably a few types.

One is probably the young working mom who is.

Really managing a full time career, managing young children, managing household and not really knowing how to do all of that. That's one type. Another type might be someone who has had.

Or is developing A chronic disease that's really forcing them to reevaluate their life because it's a pretty major.

A major event like an autoimmune condition, cancer or something that's really.

Preventing their quality of their life.

And then I would say another type is. Is a woman who just does not feel satisfied in life. They don't know why they can't put their finger on it, but they're just they're just not.

Satisfied. And it's physically manifesting as either a disease, a chronic disease or.

Just severe fatigue.

So when you work with these women, how? How?

Do you work?

With them, is it?

In a group setting, is it 1?

On one.

Currently it's one-on-one. I'm looking to expand into a group program in the near future, but right now it is one-on-one.

And what kinds of things do you look at? I recognize that you take a way more holistic approach to people's health than just, you know, come in and tell me what hurts. And we'll give you a Band-Aid.

Yeah. So it's really up to the individual on how deep they want to go. I am also trained in in functional medicine. So if they are interested in and really looking at data and a lot of them are, if they're coming from a professional career, they're used to looking at numbers and spreadsheets and data.

So I will recommend specific testing for them and then we can really come up with a customized plan not only on the physical level, but also to support their emotional mental health as well, so that that can be really eye opening because many of them.

Don't know or have no awareness that there's something else deeper going on with their Physiology and their biochemistry, and until they see it.

On a test result and they see how far off they are from not even normal range, but from optimal range that usually gets their attention and their they're more on board with working on it because they see how far off they really are.

Talk about the differences between like Western medicine, the traditional MD doctor, Functional Medicine, and integrative medicine.

Because these we.

Throw these terms around like you know.

Everybody knows what that means.

But I think a lot of people really are confused about what the differences are and.

And why you?

Might want to choose one over the other.

Yeah, that that's also a great.

Question. And I think there's a couple different definitions to explain these, but I when I think of conventional medicine, I think of insurance based medicine, which is what most people are familiar with. So it's covered by insurance either through an employer or through the government.

Or if you're self-employed, if you have your own insurance.

And it's, you know, typically a brief encounter with a medical provider and you're typically what, whatever the reason you're going in for, you're given a diagnosis and typically the recommendations will be a medication.

Sometimes lifestyle, depending on the medical provider, it really just depends, but that's usually the model that most of us are used to.

And then you know, integrative people have and functional medicine people have different definitions for that. Some medical providers think of integrated as a combination of complementary alternative and conventional. I think of integrative is really more addressing the whole person.

Not necessarily the modality, but.

Looking at them more than just a physical body with physical biomarkers and using.

Either supplements and or medicine to for you know to fix the issue. It's really it's much broader than that.

And functional medicine, that's another one I think. I don't know what the exact definition is by the Institute for Functional Medicine, but it really is looking at more of a systems biology approach where.

Instead of.

In the conventional medical world, where you have different systems.

Or body parts by different specialists that these systems interact with each other and have impact on each other and can imbalance each other. That you're looking at it from an overall body system instead of just someone for your heart, someone for your bones, someone for your skin.

Someone for your hormones. It's really looking at.

The full picture.

Interesting how we've progressed over the years from.

They even, you know, just back.

The country Dr. that you know, you go to and he tries to fix you up as best he can to all the way on the other side where we're installing.

Mechanical bits to replace biological bits and bodies. It's just like we've come so far and.

We seem to be.

Rounding that corner and coming.

Back a little bit.

Towards let's look at the whole body.

And the person that's part of the body.

Because it's not just like.

We're not just a body, we're a body and a mind and a.

Spirit and we have.

Emotions and we have experiences and we have traumas and we have all of these things, lifestyles that affect how we feel, how our bodies act and it's.

It's really nice to me to see that there are people out there who are coaches or practitioners who are looking at the whole individual and spending more time with them to get to know really what's causing these problems and you know the.

Whole one-on-one.

Approach, even in in a group setting you can you can help.

People a lot.

Because sometimes people will ask questions that you may be thinking of, or that you haven't even thought of that.

Provide the solution that you're.

Looking for.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, that that's very true. And oftentimes.

People are so busy that they don't have time.

For self reflection.

And or people that are asking them bigger questions.

And that in itself can be very healing.

Yeah, just taking the time when you're talking about the people that you serve that you know, busy moms, people who have a career and babies. Man, that's a tough season in life for anybody.

But especially if you're, if you're a career person and trying to be, you know, super mom I.

Walked in those shoes and I don't wish it on anybody, but even you know, other busy professionals, they could be married, they could have other obligations in their life, they could be.

Taking care of parents.

I mean, this is a this is a.

That too.

Big thing that you know many in the sandwich.

Generation are running into, they've got elderly.

Parents who are living longer and they may not be all that healthy and they need to take care of them and they don't have time to take care of themselves and so they are. They're suffering too, and they may have, like teenage kids, teenage kids and, you know, elderly parents. It's like, horrible.

It is. I have. I've had clients like that.

As well. So thank you for bringing that up, yes.

Yeah, it's where you're wearing multiple hats, yes.

Yeah, you're trying to be the good kid and still be, you know, the responsible parent. And you know, kids have so many needs of their own, especially when they're teenagers, you know, they.

They have all of these obligations, but no drivers license.

So you're trying to like navigate everybody else's life and your own and you have all the obligations of your own life. And then your parents, they may or may.

Not drive still.

And you know the they have.

They have things that they need to do too that require transportation, so it's it can take a lot of wear and tear on a on a person, and you might not even think that you deserve to look at what it's doing to your own health. It's like, you know, I I'm just where I'm at.

I shouldn't. I could just suck it up and deal with it cause.

This is where I'm at.

In life, but it's not necessarily true. And when you find that you're in those kinds of situations, reaching out for help to somebody like Erin, who you know you, you can offer help more than just for the physical expression of what's going on.

And you know, people in those conditions, they just fatigue for a reason.

Yeah, they are. And I think I think oftentimes they come to me because of the physical symptoms and they're not getting answers in the places that they've been to and.

Oftentimes the feedback I get, it's like I mentioned, it's really.

Having someone asked them bigger questions that no one's ever asked them before is often times the breakthrough that they need to feel better.

So yeah.

Simple, simple things can have huge repercussions, you know, even little things like boundaries when you're dealing with a lot of different pressures from different directions coming at you without boundaries and without realize.

Saying that.

It's OK to.

Set boundaries. You have that right as a human being to say here no further and I can only do what I can do.

Yeah, because when you get burned out and you're, you're not really.

Able to serve anybody.

And it could cost you your job.

And you get pulled in so many directions, your job and.

Your health.

Yes, that's very true. And I've had a client that actually had to quit her job because her fatigue was so bad, she just could not keep up with the demands of everything else. So that that is true.

And I think we're trained to be people pleasers on such a great level as women.

In the world that.

It's just like.

Oh, we can do it. Yeah, sure. I could do that too. And then, you know, pretty soon you're all hunched over because.

So many obligations that you're committed to and you and you may do them, but you're not enjoying them and your life becomes really miserable and you may be fatigued, but you may just be like, I'm going to bed because.

I've just it's an excuse. I'm tired of everything else. I'm not happy with how my life is.

Knowing and then you know when you start going down that path, then you start having the. Your body tends to respond to whatever you're telling it. It's like. I just want some time to myself and you'll end up with the flu so.

And have time to yourself in bed not feeling.

It's true.

That's how it used to manifest for me. I used to call it my stress cough and it was my immune system. I know now it was my immune system going off the rails and anytime I.

Would feel that cough.

I would think about the times that cough would happen and it was always very high periods of stress.

Yeah, it's always talking to you. Your body is always talking to you.

It got a message and you know, if you listen, it's like.

It's really loud.

But if you're not, listen.

It has to keep.

Yelling at you and it'll, you know, it might just be.

Your big toe hurts.

Right next week, your big toe hurts and your stomach hurts, and then the next week it's your big toe, your stomach and your eye is twitching.

And then.

Combination and I don't think this is something that women.

They're with other women that they're experiencing these physical symptoms.

I don't think it's part of a normal conversation exchange.

Yeah, I.

Think so too. I think we're just trained to like.

You know, stuff's gonna hurt. Get over it.

And maybe it's because you know menstruation causes so many different.

Biological things to happen.

To you that we just kind of get.

Used to like there's.

Going to be times when you're just.

Not going to feel good. That's life.

That is life. A lot of the times and.

Having gone past menopause and my husband just retired.

And we walk.

And he's actually on disability because he has some neuropathy happening in his feet. And he was a truck driver, so.

It's interesting to listen to him talk and he's not. He's in great shape for his age and he goes, he likes to go to the gym and he works out and he eats, you know pretty well, but he complains about, you know, all of these body parts that.

Are causing him problems and we talk about it and make suggestions and he doesn't change anything and he still complaints.

And then he wants to go to the doctor. And it's like, we've been to the doctor. Do you think you're going to get a different answer if you go to the doctor again because you know?

Nothing's changed, yeah.

Yeah, well, that's where you know.

The support piece comes in whether it's working one-on-one with a practitioner or having a group of other people experiencing similar things. I think support is the number one.

Thing so that people don't feel alone and they have somebody to guide them through it, yeah.

And his number one complaint is that Google.

Is absolutely no help.

Not sure he's not part hypochondriac, but you know, we were. We had to make sure they didn't have.

Cancer and we all.

Of these other things, that was.

Through what's happening and he's not in any pain. It's like you're not. You're not in any pain, and yet you're wanting to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to do all these tests because we don't have medical insurance.

Good, good.

OK.

We have catastrophic insurance, but I don't. I don't really have a lot of respect for most doctors out there other than for critical care, but.

You know, it's like.

What? What is your expectation?

When we're going in here.

What do you hope to find out because you?

Didn't just go to the doctor and say.

Hey here I am. What's wrong with me?

You know, really deep pockets. You're not going to get any answers.

Yeah. I mean, I think I think part of a part of my journey and what I think I help my clients with is.

Really helping them to take ownership of it and I'm not a replacement for a physician, I don't diagnose. I don't treat and I'm I would never.

You know, say that I do that or I always have them work with a medical provider. If there is a true medical issue, that's probably who they should be seeing. However, I think.

You know, there's a real change in mindset from.

Why is this happening to me? I need someone outside of me to fix it to.

How am I Co creating this? What is this here to teach me and I'm ready to take ownership for it.

Yeah. And people have to be in the right place.

To take that on, you have to be willing to do some things differently in order to get different results, but.

Yeah, that that was part of my journey with having something significant enough to go going on a medical leave. It really was. What is this here to teach me? And I really had a positive attitude going into it and.

It makes all the difference. It's either you feel like you're empowered to make a change or you don't, or you might be in the middle and you want someone to help you with that. And if that's you, I, you know, those are the people I love to work with that are looking for some guidance and they have a willingness to take some ownership.

Yeah, I think ownership is the.

The key to that?

But it it's really the.

Beginning point for change to happen.

I know you.

You offer a free tip sheet, you.

Want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah, sure. I would love to. So I offer a tip sheet on.

Things to help you alleviate fatigue. And so I would love to share that with anybody who's interested. They are simple, doable tips. It's a quick read and it's something that may help you.

Perfect. And they can find that on your website and on the links that I'll put in.

The show notes below.

Send me the link to that.

Yeah. Yes.

And if they wanted to work with you, how?

Would they get in touch with you?

So you can either direct message me on LinkedIn and also on Facebook. Just my name's Erin Ricker. And or you can message me through my website too and I'd be happy to schedule a free consultation with you.

And we can see.

If we're a good fit for each other.

Awesome. So what's the one thing you want to leave?

The audience with today, Erin.

I would say that you have the power to control your health. You have the power to change it and you know, one action, one small action starts the whole process and so it doesn't have to be 100 step plan on day one. It's just one little step.

Really can make all the difference to get you to on the right path.

Bunch of them all strung together makes a huge change in life.

Yes. Yeah.

Thank you so much for joining me today. It's.

Been a great.

Thank you, Jill.