Mental Health in Transition: Surviving Job Loss and Beyond with Ciera Young LPC-A

We've all been there, staring at the pink slip, wondering what's next. Ciera Young LPC-A, gets real with us about the emotional toll of job loss or having to close a business. We navigate the intricate layers of the grieving process, creating a new normal, and moving on. Ciera’s insights into preparing for job loss, even when you're secure in your current job, are an eye-opener. She also shares the therapeutic power of going beyond the white couch when confronting self care and crisis. So, buckle up for a heart-to-heart on mental health like you've never heard before!

Ciera Young is a motivational speaker, mental health professional, and self-made powerhouse enhancing the lives of everyday people with her words and influence. She has committed herself to normalizing the conversation of mental health and empowers others to think forward to transform into the most authentic version of themselves.

https://www.recycledenergy.co/
https://www.facebook.com/beyondthewhitecouch
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciera-young-lpc-a-9a6138150

contact@recycledenergy.co

Transcript

Cindy Mendez: 0:07

Welcome back to another episode of Let Me Interrupt. So today you might be missing out on one of the squares on the video or Zoom audio, and that's because Melissa's not able to join us today. So it is just me flying high here, but I have an amazing guest to go with me along this ride. Today we'll be talking to Sierra Young. She is a licensed professional counselor associate, a motivational speaker and self-made powerhouse enhancing lives with her words, influence and laid-back style. She focuses on taking the conversation of mental health beyond the white couch, as she empowers others to think outside of the box when it comes to healing, prioritizing their mental health and learning how to own their own stories. Welcome to the podcast, Sierra. How are you?

Ciera Young: 0:59

Good. Thank you so much for having me and shout out to you for continuing to do this by yourself today.

Cindy Mendez: 1:07

Yeah, so every episode it's been Melissa and I, so this will be a good test run. Maybe Melissa will do an episode by herself and then, who knows, we might crank out more content that way. But I really want to just open up the door to you and tell us a little bit about who you are and what led you into mental health.

Ciera Young: 1:33

Yeah, so again I am Sierra Young. I'm a licensed professional counselor associate and I kind of got into this mental health journey basically with my own experience. I have faced a lot of challenges, kind of growing up in my teenage years and growing up in college kind of getting on the scene in there. There was a lot that happened in college that kind of emotionally drained me and I didn't realize that it was such a negative impact until after I had children.

Ciera Young: 2:06

And I remember going to therapy and starting to share my story after having therapy for the first time and people would come to me and they would talk to me and they would share things to me about what they were going through. And while it was helpful for me to talk to them and kind of listen to their stories, I felt like that wasn't enough right. There was not a lot of resources other than I could say we should go get you a therapist, and oftentimes that was not always something that people either had the budget for, they had the time for or were ready to do, and so I wanted to be able to be a resource more than just being a listening ear, and so that's kind of how I got into the field of mental health and becoming a therapist.

Cindy Mendez: 2:50

That's so powerful, especially because it came from a place that it was something that you used, right Like that you saw the benefit in, and so that's great that you were on the other side, because I feel like sometimes people might have the idea that it's like a failing to go and speak to someone because you can't figure out by yourself. So I mean, I think that's really great. Now in your intro we said beyond the way, couch, yes, what does that mean?

Ciera Young: 3:25

Oh, goodness it's for me, I know, and then for my clients and people who kind of talk to me. Similar to what I said, there's a lot of barriers that come into play when you talk about somebody getting professional help with mental health, and so I wanted to create a space of how do we create the norm of mental health that doesn't have to just take place in therapy. And so when you think about beyond the white couch it's all of this stuff that happens outside of therapy, right? How are you taking what you learn about yourself, about your upbringing, about the relationships that you have, life in general? What is it teaching you and how can you use that to move forward in your healing journey?

Ciera Young: 4:08

It's not always necessary for people to have a therapist. Now I believe that everybody should have one. However, sometimes, because of the barriers, you're not able to do that. So can we create a space that allows you to learn what can I be doing outside of therapy that progresses me forward when it comes to my mental and emotional health? So that's kind of what beyond the white couch is, and that's like, really, where I put a lot of my focus and emphasis, because a session a week, one hour or once a month is just not enough to devote to maintaining your mental health, and so there's work to be done outside of therapy, and that's kind of where the concept of beyond the white couch comes from.

Cindy Mendez: 4:51

And it takes a person away, I think, from that separate clinical setting. It sounds like I mean part of you know we like to share here. So part of the reason I guess sometimes I have a restraint or delay in getting into therapy or looking for the resources I'm like not one more thing on my plate to do because I think about it as separate from my day to day, like another task. Or the same way, when you go and like go get a physical, like you know you walk in. It's a different space.

Cindy Mendez: 5:30

you walk out, you go back to your life and it sounds like this is more a blending or a marriage of your everyday life. With those exercises, am I getting close?

Ciera Young: 5:44

Yes, that is perfect. I like to describe it If your favorite song comes on the radio, how does that make you feel? Right, it makes you feel good. You get excited. Like there's songs that come on the radio and it doesn't matter, I'm turning it up every time. And that's what kind of beyond the white couches, how I want people to be excited about whether you're going to see a therapist, whether it's prioritizing self care, whether it's learning how to identify your feelings right, and it's like I don't want to be excited because a lot of people don't know how to do that.

Ciera Young: 6:15

That takes work, that you have to apply every day.

Ciera Young: 6:18

It's not just a let's walk in and talk about something happening in the moment and then we walk out and then it's like well, I got to go to work, I got to take care of my kids, I have to do all the things right. Essentially, your mental health and how you navigate your emotions, and all of that shows up in every aspect of your life. It is very integrated. However, we're not really talking about it in a way that it's integrated with everyday life. It's more so situation based of oh, do you have trauma from when you grew up? Have you been in abusive relationships. Have you attempted suicide? That becomes the norm in the conversation about mental health, versus talking about what is happening on your job that's causing you some anxiety, what's happening in your relationship that's causing you not to have effective communication. How are you exercising? How are you not exercising right? So it really has a really big integration that we're not talking about and that's what my approach is kind of integrating it throughout your life versus at points in your life.

Cindy Mendez: 7:25

Before we jump into our topic today, I just thought of something that maybe others are thinking too, and it's you know what, if I'm not ready, like I, you said, you said a couple statements there and some of those I get a checkbox right Like, yeah, I remember I went through this thing or that thing, but I'm just not ready to open Pandora's box. Does that mean I just shouldn't go to therapy? Or is there kind of a place where you can work with therapists to I don't know, like time that out? How does that work, like if I say to you like hey, I'm just not ready to talk about that stuff right now. What is your MO? Like what happens next?

Ciera Young: 8:11

Yeah, so I'm always going to meet somebody where they are right. My job is not to open Pandora's box for you, because that has to be a choice, because if I'm pressuring you, the likelihood of you opening up to me, the likelihood of you kind of taking action, is going to be really minimized because you're not going to feel comfortable with whatever it is that open and pandora's box looks like, whereas if it's more centered around some things that are happening in the present moment that are addressed like you're stuck on or you're needing to navigate through, yeah, I'm all about giving people space to heal in whatever capacity that looks like right. But I think that redefining trauma, redefining healing, is something that's essential, because sometimes it's not about talking about childhood trauma. Sometimes it's talking about why, every time I go into the grocery store, I get nervous, right, or why I have to always feel that I need to be in control, right.

Ciera Young: 9:12

All of those things are things that may not have anything to do with some of the things that you kind of tucked away, but I'm the type of person that, as we navigate through some of those present things, you'll slowly realize, okay, this may be connected to something that I've been suppressing or something that I haven't addressed in a very long time as a protective factor and I think that's also something that a lot of people aren't aware of is that a lot of the things that you suppress are done because you're trying to protect yourself from something. What is that? Something I don't know kind of depends on wherever you are on your journey and whatever you've been through. But I'm definitely not a I'm not going to pressure you to not to talk about something that you're not comfortable, because that's not going to be a healthy, you know relationship between me and whoever I'm working with.

Cindy Mendez: 10:02

Thank you for that. So today, what we want to focus on really, and get your expertise on on the podcast today, is you know where our relationship with our employer lies and how that impacts us in ways that we may know and we may not know. Last season we had a guest on our podcast who told us about anxiety in the workplace, depression and all of the things that you kind of navigate while in a workplace whether it's a toxic setting or not. But after COVID a lot has changed in the landscape. You know people were able to certainly thrive in certain businesses. Ppp loans were helping people.

Cindy Mendez: 10:46

Now that money has run out, right Like now, people are starting to go back to normal and they may be losing their businesses or all of that budgeting that other businesses did. You know, tech companies all of that through COVID is now you have to face the piper and people might be losing their jobs. So I really wanna touch on today. You know what does that look like? You know the emotional rollercoaster that people and employees go when they're form of income, the way that they feed their kids themselves or, if you're just sitting pretty somewhere, the way that you get you know your copies, whatever. But can you kind of talk to us a little bit about what someone may be facing, that type of departure from either a business they built up or from an employer? What is it like for that person right now?

Ciera Young: 11:49

Yeah, so when you think about kind of being on a job for a long period of time or not right, getting in a space where you're used to something being a part of your routine, when that's taken away from you in a physical form, we call it death, right. And when someone dies, what do we do? We grieve. It's the same process when you have any kind of major change in your life, whether it's loss of a job, loss of a friendship, whatever, right. And so what happens is people have to grieve, they have to go through a grieving process because the life that they were living, the job that they were working, the norm, now becomes something that is not familiar anymore.

Ciera Young: 12:31

And that's scary, it can be heartbreaking, it can be traumatizing, it can be a lot of emotion, that, a lot of things that you're not sure how to process, because a lot of people will say, well, oh, you can find another job or you can, there'll be other opportunities available. But it's not giving people space to understand and process what's happening in the now right. And so for a person who may be experiencing job loss or having to shut down a business or even cutting hours, that's even something that could be major for somebody who's working or doing business with somebody, there's a grieving period that'll take place in that transition from where you are to what you're going to do next.

Ciera Young: 13:16

And so I think that it's important for people to understand that you're going to experience emotions, you're going to go through a lot of things, a lot of different things that you may have experienced. When you talk about a physical death and that's something that we don't culturally talk about a lot that death comes in many forms not in a physical one and so understanding that in the midst of your transition, what's happening is that you're grieving and that you have to create a new norm and you have to work towards navigating how you're feeling in order to put yourself in a different position or put yourself out there to start applying for new jobs or doing a new business right, there's going to have to be some kind of form of processing before you're able to move on, to get to wherever the next step is.

Cindy Mendez: 14:06

That was a great way to put it. That was an absolutely great way to put it because, luckily, I don't find myself in that situation right now. But if I can imagine, there are things that I wake up every morning ready to commit to my job right, and then I have my securities connected to it and I put all of my trust right, we get beyond the business, business and we start to think about I put trust in my company, I put trust in my coworkers that they'll do what needs to be done, and so there's all these real feelings that you either have in a relationship with someone that you start assigning to this business or this employer. So I can definitely see it from that perspective, for sure. Back to that, beyond the white couch statement, what are some approaches in this situation that you would recommend that would be helpful to deal with this situation? All those feelings you described? How would you use that beyond the white couch approach with someone?

Ciera Young: 15:18

Yeah. So I would say the first thing is giving yourself space to feel the feels right. That is something that a lot of people don't do. They put themselves in a oh, I've got to figure out what to do next. I have to feed my family. They're trying to jump to the next moment, right, and so being able to take a moment to just process, that's number one in anything.

Ciera Young: 15:38

Whether you're losing a job, losing a relationship right, you have to be able to stop and process. Right, because you have to give yourself time to bounce back from what's happening. Otherwise, it's kind of like a snowball effect if I don't process my feelings and I'm going to get overwhelmed from for looking for a job. The overwhelming is going to take place and now I'm going to have a hard time showing up for interviews and doing, you know, being able to actually put forth the right effort To to get another job or to build another business, because you haven't quite processed what's happening before. I think that's number one. It's giving yourself space to just feel the field.

Ciera Young: 16:18

And the next thing is like writing down a list of what do I want, what do I need and what do I desire Right, because when you start to think about those things, you start to position yourself a little bit differently, because a lot of times what happens is people want to chase the money.

Ciera Young: 16:35

I know I need to make the money. I need to make money so that I can pay my bills and take care of my family, and all of that is true. But what are the things that you value in a job? What are the things that you're looking for in a job? What do you need? What do you want and what do you desire? Because that's going to again slow you down so that you're not just operating off the emotional. I need to have a new job, but it gives you a sense of control as to, okay, I'm processing how I feel. I don't want to just look for a job to fulfill the Financial burden, but I'm trying to position myself to get in a different space and that's always, you know, in any situation, great for you to do, to kind of keep you grounded and in control of making a more logical decision versus an emotional decision.

Cindy Mendez: 17:23

And it'll give you more leverage, right, like I feel like when you're in a moment of desperation, right, I can think back to the time you know where, during COVID, I actually got let go and went for one of my jobs for a week from during COVID and it was I will take. I will take whatever comes my way Because, like you said, it's getting that safety, that financial security. But I think what that list will give you is a little bit of leverage to not just go and Set yourself in a situation that you know. You know you might get a new job and you might be here for another year, you might be here for another 10 years.

Ciera Young: 18:07

You want to start off, hopefully, on the right foot Right and it also puts you in a better position not to be in what you were describing that you talked about on previous. The episode about created the environment that you're working in and those anxiety and things that come from that. It because you're not in such a rush to move on to the next opportunity, you're being logical in making sure that the environment is healthy, that the culture, culture is healthy and that your job is not going to stress you and cause this anxiety and these negative impacts. Right, because you're looking for the opportunity. You have an opportunity kind of think a little bit more clearly and jump into a Opportunity that is more fitting for you, not just like temporary, but for the long run, that it's also healthy and conducive to your mental health. What would you say?

Cindy Mendez: 18:59

to folks right now that are in their job, they feel secure. Nothing's happening, it's just every other day. What is there anything that someone can do to prepare or At least begin that process? I mean, can you begin a morning process without an actual death? Is that weird to ask?

Ciera Young: 19:27

Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of times, especially when you're working for somebody else, knowing that, it Is kind of asking yourself it's any job really secure? I, covid taught us that that no job is really secure. There were a lot of. There were things that corporations or organizations they can control. Once the shutdown happened, there was no.

Ciera Young: 19:52

Well, we have to work through not for anybody else outside of healthcare workers, and so there's something that you have to kind of just prepare yourself for as far as mental process of is this really secure?

Ciera Young: 20:07

No, you don't have to try to make an exit plan or even prepare yourself for an exit in advance, but just asking yourself that kind of keeps that open mind to there's the possibility of it being there.

Ciera Young: 20:21

I think that a lot of times what happens is that we automatically assume that things are forever without considering the possibility of it being the polar opposite, and so just having that as something in your mind that you're consciously aware of, you don't have to like think about it every day or be prepared for it, but if it's something that you're thinking, you know like, okay, yes, my job right now is secure, but there's a possibility that one day it can't, it won't be.

Ciera Young: 20:49

You know what are those steps. How would that look like in asking yourself even just kind of journaling I think a journal prompt is if I lost my job today, what would happen? Right, getting into the habit of exploring the options, even if it's just like a mental exploration, kind of, gives you that like setting the stage for not being so overwhelmed in the moment if something does happen, because you're like oh, I thought this through before, I've kind of sat with what I might do next if this were to happen, and I think that's a good way to kind of prepare for that if it should arise.

Cindy Mendez: 21:26

Yeah, and it throws me back to I don't know if you ever seen like when a crime happens or something happens in the neighborhood and the news is out there asking the neighbors and they're like I would have never, never thought that would happen.

Cindy Mendez: 21:43

You know, sometimes I feel like that too, with situational, like I never thought these things would happen, but yet here they are A great way to mitigate that and the other thing. So I did do a little bit of digging on Google for you and I saw that you have worked with organizations, at least in the past, or if you're working with them now, to kind of support the mental health offerings that they possibly offered to employees. Can you tell us a little bit about that and maybe go into some options? If there are some leaders on this podcast listening right now, how can they provide support, either preemptively or to those employees that have been given a notice?

Ciera Young: 22:38

Yeah, so I think that a lot of companies offer employee assistance programs and those typically have maybe therapy services built in to, where the company may pay for so many therapy sessions with whoever is signed up with their program. But I think for a company and those who are in leadership roles, I think it's very important to integrate mental health into the company's policies and trainings and things like that, because a person's mental health, whether it's actively working with the company or leaving the company, is very important to the company's success. And I think understanding that shows that as an employer, you value your employees' mental health, you care, you show concern, which then gives people more motive to want to work harder, want to show up and do their roles and then not feel so like have create any kind of negative relationships should there be termination, letting go, layoffs and those kind of things. And so I think that it's really important to integrate that while you have people working and also have that offering available in people's transition, because that creates a great climate, a mental health climate, within the company.

Cindy Mendez: 23:59

Well, I know for the most part this provides a different perspective for people, right? Like it's sometimes hard to get your hand, your head out of the sand and look around and see like it's not a full loss, like I'm not. You know it's not over yet right. Right. Is there anything else that you think might be beneficial to add to that perspective that you can think about?

Ciera Young: 24:31

Yeah, I think just understanding that everything is not always going to be in your control it's something that is very helpful, especially when you're talking about job losses and transitionings within jobs, because you do have to work to make a living and you are, you know, providing for your family and not having that create stress and anxiety and confusion and a lot of different emotions. But understanding that you're not always going to be in control, right. And so when you realize that you start to focus on some of those things that you can control like we were talking about being proactive, about thinking about okay, if something does happen, what are my options, what can I do? Being able to be in a climate where your employer is catering to your mental health and having options available for you I think are within your control, right, and being able to focus on that gives you more self control if the outcome turns to something different.

Cindy Mendez: 25:28

As we round out our conversation, I wanna give you the floor to tell us a little bit about the services that you offer, the coaching that you offer, and are you open to any clients at the moment if somebody connected with you or wants to go further in this conversation with you?

Ciera Young: 25:48

Yeah, so I am currently accepting both therapy clients and coaching clients, and so let me just kind of explain the difference, cause I think that sometimes can be confusing.

Ciera Young: 25:59

So with therapy, we're going to kind of explore more of the why, the history and uncovering and unpacking some of those historic things that have happened, that kind of create where you are today, whereas in coaching we're more specific of what's happening right now and how do I move forward with the goals and personal or professional goals that I have for myself, and we kind of explore mindset and setting up strategic how do you accomplish those goals. But that's kind of where the difference is with coaching and therapy. So I'm accepting clients for both. If you're in South Carolina, cause that's where I'm licensed currently that's for therapy clients and coaching is all over. So if you go to my website it's recycledenergyco You'll have information on how to book a consultation, which is free, and then we can navigate what would be the best option for you and go forward from there If you're ready or need to work on something that may be resonated with you today.

Cindy Mendez: 26:58

Fantastic. So to our listeners, that'll be down in the notes below. That'll be in the notes below and you can give Sierra a look and see if she might be a good fit. Especially if you are going through this time of transition, I think there's no better time than now to get a hand and support, because you're not supposed to be or have to be alone doing it.

Cindy Mendez: 27:23

So, sierra, I just wanna say thank you for taking the time to have this conversation with us. It is so important for many people, I think, right now going through this time, but also for others who can understand and help at least their colleagues or their family members and not just be like just get another job, whatever, absolutely. But until next time, we wanna tell our listeners just keep interrupting.