Growing Tall Poppies : Thrive After Trauma

From Burnout to Creative Recovery: Permission to Pause and Reconnect for Women in STEM

• Dr Natalie Green • Season 2 • Episode 76

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In this powerful episode of Growing Tall Poppies: Thrive After Trauma, host Dr Nat Green is joined by Alexandra Reid, a creative wellness coach who specializes in helping high-achieving women recover from burnout and reconnect with themselves and their inner calm.

Burnout can feel isolating, overwhelming, and relentless — especially for women in high-pressure, data-driven environments such as STEM. Alexandra shares her personal journey from high-achieving professional to burnout survivor, and how she has used creativity, reflective exercises, and nature-based practices to rebuild resilience, self-awareness, and inner confidence.

In this conversation, we explore:

  • Why “doing more” isn’t always the solution — and how creative practices can quiet the overactive mind.
  • The importance of nature, movement, and simple daily rituals in restoring energy and balance.
  • How to recognize early signs of burnout before it spirals and strategies to prevent recurring cycles.
  • The power of reflective art exercises, like the bridge drawing, to uncover subconscious blocks and clarify goals.
  • Navigating systemic and gender-based challenges in male-dominated industries while maintaining self-preservation and boundaries.
  • The journey from burnout to post-traumatic growth, building resilience, and fostering self-confidence.

Whether you’re a professional woman struggling to balance high expectations or someone interested in creative recovery, this episode is packed with practical tools, insights, and inspiration to reclaim your energy, joy, and purpose.

✨ Key Takeaways:

  1. Permission to Pause – Rest is not a luxury; it’s essential for recovery and creative growth.
  2. Creative Practice as a Tool for Reflection – Exercises like bridge drawings bring subconscious thoughts to the surface and foster self-awareness.
  3. Nature and Movement Restore Energy – Even short walks outside can significantly reduce stress and reconnect you to the present moment.
  4. Recognize and Break Patterns – Learn to notice early burnout signs, perfectionism, and unhealthy work cycles before they escalate.
  5. Resilience is Built, Not Born – Rebuilding inner resources and confidence requires patience, self-compassion, and reflection.
  6. Boundaries and Self-Preservation Matter – Speaking up and walking away when necessary are critical steps in protecting your wellbeing.

🔗 Resources and How to Connect with Lexi:

This episode will leave you inspired to slow down, re

If this episode resonates with you then I'd love for you to hit SUBSCRIBE so you can keep updated with each new episode as soon as it's released and we'd be most grateful if you would give us a RATING as well. You can also find me on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/drnatgreen/ or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DrNatalieGreen

Intro and Outro music: Inspired Ambient by Playsound.

Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational purposes only. It is not intended to be deemed or treated as psychological treatment or to replace the need for psychological treatment.

Dr Nat Green:

Welcome to the Growing Tall Poppies Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Nat Green, and I'm so excited to have you join me as we discuss what it means to navigate your way through post-traumatic growth and not just survive, but to thrive after trauma. Through our podcast, we will explore ways for you to create a life filled with greater purpose, self-awareness, and a deep inner peace. Through integrating the many years of knowledge and professional experience, as well as the wisdom of those who have experienced trauma firsthand. We'll combine psychology accelerated approaches. Coaching and personal experience to assist you, to learn, to grow and to thrive. I hope to empower you to create deeper awareness and understanding and stronger connections with yourself and with others, whilst also paving the way for those who have experienced trauma and adversity to reduce their suffering and become the very best versions of themselves. In order to thrive. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. Hi, and welcome back to Growing Tall Poppies. I'm Dr. Nat Green and I'm really excited and grateful today to bring you our next guest on the podcast. It's my pleasure to welcome an amazing lady who has agreed to come and chat with us today about both her personal and her professional experience and to share her wisdom and wealth of knowledge with us. So let me start by welcoming Alexandra. We'll also chat with her and call her Lexi through the show. Alexandra Reid. She's a creative wellness coach who helps high achieving women recover from burnout and reconnect with their inner calm. After years working in science and medical technology, she experienced the toll of constantly pushing through stress and emotional overload, and now she supports women who feel the same, especially those who are sensitive, driven, and quietly exhausted. And I know that there's a lot of our listeners who are very much in that boat right now, and Alexandra uses mindfulness, neuroscience, and art therapy inspired practices and offers gentle tools that help her clients process emotions, release pressure, and feel like themselves again. So welcome, Lexi. It's so great to have you here.

Alexandra Reid:

Well, thank you Nat. Thank, I'm very happy to be on the podcast. Glad we got to connect. I know we're a few oceans apart, so that's terrific. You know, I'll start where you usually start at the beginning. So I did the typical academic route. Um mm-hmm. I always. Love doing both biology and art when I was in high school. But my parents, let's just say strongly encouraged me to go the science route'cause they felt that was definitely, more likely for job prospects. Okay. So I went into biology. I fell in love with molecular biology and I, followed a master's. I took on a PhD, I even did a postdoc. And by the time I got through the academic. Ladder, so to speak. I realized that I was tired of doing what, my postdoc friends that I called, they call it research'cause you redo it all the time.

Dr Nat Green:

Yes. I can so relate to that.

Alexandra Reid:

Exactly. So, it was, much as I love. Experimenting and discovering new things. The, daily grind of, showing up in the lab and just doing a lot of the grunt work over and over again. And I thought, okay I've done this. Let's see if I can do science in a different way. And I got into working for a not-for-profit, which led me to the federal government doing grant reviews. So I was on the side where I got to read all kinds of cutting edge research proposals from. Everywhere, like biology, physics, chemistry, engineering, and that was fantastic because I got to go out and meet these, young professors quite often getting started in their career. And the grant that I helped looked after was actually, an industry collaboration grant. So they needed to have. A company on board to partner on the research. So it was great. I got to go out in the community network, meet lots of people. And that's what actually led me into, my most recent role, working for a medical device company. I was out at a networking event talking, and they said, oh, we could really use your expertise in our business development. We do a lot of consulting. for companies to build medical devices for them. And so that was the most recent company. It's based here in Victoria. Called Starfish Medical, and I worked there for a number of years. First in the business development, like I mentioned, and then I moved over to the Quality Affairs. Quality assurance and regulatory affairs department, so QA RA work. Mm-hmm. Which is very, very detail oriented because essentially we are the last stop for the medical devices being, safe and effective to be used on people they, have to go to Health Canada. Mm-hmm. FDA to be approved. And it's, it's our job in that department to make sure not only is all the paperwork in place, but that the, the device is passed. All the testing, and so I did that for a number of years and it was during the pandemic. We landed a large government contract to develop emergency ventilators, and so obviously during the pandemic there was a lot of pressure for us to get these ready and out the door as fast as possible, so we ended up working. Especially our department. We were a small department. We were wearing a lot of hats and working closely with the engineers. And we worked pretty much 24 7 to get these ventilators approved and in the hands of Canadian government so they could get in hands of Canadians. Of course I'm working from home like everyone else. Mm. Um, I'm always on call. I ended up setting a desk in my bedroom'cause we were lacking space and I had young kids. Yeah. And so pretty much I'd wake up in the morning, go to my desk. And then check it throughout the evening and go to sleep and do it all over again. And it was just, it really began, taking a toll. It might disrupted my sleep. The stress got to me as it would, I think most people. Oh, definitely I did. Yeah. And I didn't know how to turn off. That was the other big issue. And, I've always done fine art on the side, but I found during this time I couldn't even paint. I, was blocked with this. What I learned was called burnout. At the time I was just like, I can't sleep. I can't stop thinking about work, but I'm not, I don't feel like I'm being as effective as I could be'cause I'm not sleeping, round and round it goes. And it was during that time and I thought I, really miss being in the studio, but I can't face tackling on a big. Painting, and mm-hmm. And to be fair, the galleries I used to show on had closed.'cause again, it's COVID. Yeah. There were a lot of artists, at the time suddenly stuck in their studios. There were no shows, there were no galleries. And being an artist didn't feel like a great relief either. But I turned to looking into art therapy'cause I thought, maybe that's an avenue I can explore and. Honestly, that was great because it took the pressure off completing a final finished artwork. Like I, I disassociated the creativity from needing to produce something that looked good. Something I, up until that point I'd been very focused if I spent time in my studio, I needed to be productive, I needed to make something. I could bring to the gallery, I could sell and. That sucked all the joy out too. So now here I have work burning me out here. I can't work in my studio. But I started doing these little simple creative exercises. They were almost like doodles. There was the mindfulness aspect and the nice thing about them is they were, quick and there was no pressure to make it look good. I don't know if you've ever played Pictionary, but sometimes not well. Exactly. But that's what took. Took the pressure off. It didn't have to look good. It was just more of a way to getting my thoughts out on the paper. Both a combination of pictures and words. And. It actually and then I I was like, oh, I am feeling better for doing this. So that's what started me to self-study into the neuroscience behind creativity, the neuroscience behind what is my brain doing while I'm doing this stuff? Because I am a scientist at heart and I wanted to marry my two interests together. Anyway, long story short. As you do. I started looking into, I thought at first of doing creativity coaching, but I really like the idea of using creativity for wellness, and that's why I decided to call myself a creative wellness coach rather than a creativity coach, because my goal is to use creativity to. Much like you've got like a Fitbit to count your steps. A Fitbit is a wellness device. It's, proactively trying to keep you fit. Versus like a pacemaker. It's a medical device, it's keeping your heart pumping. So there's a difference between a medical device to keep you healthy. It's treating you, it's diagnosing you and a wellness device. So I like to use creativity as essentially a wellness device. So yeah. And the women I work with are very much. Holding a mirror up to myself where I was five years ago. It's hard to believe five years ago was the pandemic.

Dr Nat Green:

No, it's crazy, isn't it? It just goes so fast and yet we still see so many consequences of it in our everyday life, don't we?

Alexandra Reid:

It is and in some ways I'd say the stress has almost boomeranged. We we all dealt with the stress of the pandemic, and there's a sense of solidarity. We'll all get through it together. And then certainly here in North America, there's been a huge push with the return to office.

Dr Nat Green:

Same here.

Alexandra Reid:

Yeah, exactly. And suddenly, especially women we juggle a lot. We look after the home, we looked after the kids, we can look after elderly parents. And now we got used to having maybe a hybrid system where we could build in that flexibility of juggling our jobs on our own terms and still deal with all of these. What they call it, the invisible labor, but it certainly doesn't feel very invisible when you're driving your kids around to appointments or driving parents around to their appointments and, then still trying to make dinner and clean the house. So it's, I would say in some ways the stress has ramped up even more after COVID I, at least, so I've seen with a lot of the women I'm talking to now, it's kinda like we, we dealt with that. Then suddenly now there's even more stress now that we're back. And yeah, so that's, so these are the women that I'm working with is often I do say the women I work with are the niche I look at is women in stem, so science, technology, engineering, and math. Which isn't to say that women outside those fields certainly aren't expressing burnout. I've worked in all the fields, I've worked in academia, I've worked in government, I've worked in corporate. So I have a pretty good sense of some of the challenges they're facing. And these fields still tend to be male dominated, so they're absolutely. So there's not just the challenge of doing your job well, but it's often doing it better than your male counterpart because. You're being judged on an uneven playing field that way. Oh,

Dr Nat Green:

how? How many times do we hear that? You've gotta do it twice as well to prove yourself. So there's that extra level that you've gotta push, So it's no wonder at all when you were on 24 7, that there was that huge burnout experience because you are also trying to make sure you had to do more to prove yourself, to keep up, to be even recognized despite the fact that. You are already doing a great job,

Alexandra Reid:

and I think a lot of times women, certainly the women I speak to, there's a big issue with giving ourselves permission to rest.

Dr Nat Green:

Yes, I hear that all the time. It's a, common topic that we talk about on the podcast because you know of, I think we're also intergenerational stuff, that's what's happened. You just keep doing it and it's passed on and it's passed on. We have really good teachers who self-sacrifice and keep going, and you don't have time to rest. But the reality is we have to rest. Especially when we have burnout.

Alexandra Reid:

And we never give ourselves a chance to recover. We think, oh I I, took a night off and now I'm gonna work twice as hard to make up for it. So you think you're giving yourself a break, but you're still pushing yourself as hard, if not harder afterwards. It's often when they, often say you, you get really sick on vacation. Because suddenly, all the time. Yeah, exactly. Here you are finally taking that well deserved break and your body goes, oh, it's about time. And it just collapses upon itself.

Dr Nat Green:

Definitely. So you talked about when you were deep in that period and then looking back, you thought, oh yeah, now I know it was burnout. So there was sleeplessness that being on all the time. What other symptoms did you notice with your burnout? Definitely

Alexandra Reid:

like it affected my moods. I would say I always joke about using my mom voice, which I realize is a really screechy, not pleasant voice to use. I had a short fuse right with my family. I just seem to be on edge all the time. Like I just, and again, I it was very hard and this is something I'm learning for myself. I'm doing a lot more meditation and mindfulness for myself. Is. I wasn't present in any of my moments. I was always thinking about the next task that I should be doing. And they, a lot of neurosciences showed we can't truly multitask, we just quickly switch between tasks. And studies have shown that we lose up to almost, I believe, 40% of our productivity due to this, what we think is being productive, multitasking, but we're not, and again, that adds up after a while, that sense of, the other part of burnout, which I didn't expect, is I knew I was doing something important. But it started to not feel that way. Like it was almost like I was becoming numb. And disengaged. So it was, yeah almost became an observer of. Anybody could do this. Why am I here? Is it's, I lost a bit of that sense of purpose, even though I knew intellectually on paper what we were doing was truly important, but it stopped feeling. Meaningful to me. And I think it was just my body again, protecting itself and shutting down emotions. And certainly what I've read about burnout, there is a very strong disengagement aspect to it as well. And almost disenchantment from what you truly loved before and then suddenly it, it's not. What you love to do and, you don't know why, because it was something you loved to do before that.

Dr Nat Green:

Definitely. And I know one of the things that I talk about a lot on here and in the work that I do with my clients is really about those three brains, the head, the heart, and the gut, and. When we go through trauma or experience significant burnout, one of those at least, but usually two will disconnect. So the head brain keeps going and we overthink and we overanalyze, and the heart brain that feels, we disconnect that from everything else and we go emotional numbing and we go down that route and, that. Gut stuff is the purpose and the meaning, so it makes sense why when we are really in the midst of that, that they're no longer integrated because it's a safety mechanism. Yeah, and I really loved what you were saying as well about how you got into the art and the art therapy because obviously with all your neuroscience work that was a beautiful way. To incorporate the analytical brain, but also the creative brain. So that was amazing. So tell us a bit more when you went down the neuroscience path, what that looked like for you and how you brought them all together in the work you do now.

Alexandra Reid:

Yeah. And it's still, I'm still learning there's still new studies coming out all the time, but one of the biggest things is when you're in, an anxious state, like that fight or flight or flop state, they, yes. It's, you can't be creative, right? It's just like that part of your brain is shut off. But even if you can. Almost force a switch. So maybe it's just, as I said, you just start doodling on a piece of paper. You just start one of the easy exercises I do is you draw to your breathing, right? You just actually, and that helps you slow down it helps you become present very and suddenly you're paying attention to your breath, and your hand is doing something and that trips you outta that anxious state. And it puts you into more of what they call the flow state, which I'm sure you're familiar with. Yeah. But it's almost like literally two parts of your brain. And it's not as easy to say left brain, right brain, because they are complimentary. It's not exactly. Yeah, it's not as straightforward as switching one, but it's definitely the patterns of the brain that light up are different at that point. And you can definitely see there is various different sectors lighting up that way. I can't remember all the names off the top of my head, but it's if you see two images of doing one creative activity versus another, and that could be anything creative. It doesn't, I obviously I'm drawn to the visual arts, but it's true with music. Music, yeah. It's true. Yeah, music is huge that way. But even things as simple as gardening, just being out cooking yeah. Like it's, funny when you think of here, I think of cooking as a chore for me, but there but if I take out the, drudgery of making the next meal and I just enjoy cooking. For cooking's sake, then it is a creative activity. So it's again, what they always talk about what fills your cup, right? So you, if you choose the activities that fill your cup That's what helps bring you back to yourself as well. And starting small. That's the other thing is that like I, I mentioned I felt completely blocked to take on a big painting. It was just like, oh, you know that beyond the blank canvas, it was just the thought of. The amount of work, like it just seemed like too much of a mountain to climb, but. I could go into the studio and do a little bit of collage, I could do a little bit of color studies, like just even playing with color, like just literally mixing paints together was soothing for me. So I think you have to figure out what, what works for you. But for me and certainly the women I've been working with, just these little simple exercises. The nice thing with the art therapy or art, I say art therapy inspired exercises.'cause we do a lot more forward thinking rather than reflective thinking as well with these. Okay. And that's what I find is the big difference between therapy and coaching is I find coaching very forward. Moving towards goals. Yes. Versus, yeah, therapy tends to be more reflective, looking backwards what got you to where you are today as opposed to what you want to get to. Yeah. So with these exercises, they are actually, they become artifacts of what your mind was doing, what your emotional state was at the moment you created it. We do another exercise where it's basically you draw like a gingerbread person very simple. Yes. And you do a body scan. You draw the emotions or the tenseness you're feeling in the body or where it feels light, you know where's where do you feel grounded? Where, does peacefulness live in your body? How do you, color code that you know what color feels peaceful? What shapes feel peaceful? And you can do that on a daily basis. You could almost take your emotional temperature with a body scan and. That's a great thing to reflect back on a week later saying, oh that was full of green, horrible spiky shapes and now you know, like what, whatever is your personal code for the stress or the anxiety. But it also realizes you realize, oh, I've been keeping it all in my shoulders and my neck and. Maybe I should do some stretching. Like it's another way of bringing self-awareness to parts that you may not be thinking about. Yeah. So yeah, we do all kinds

Dr Nat Green:

of little activities like that. It's amazing. I, I love a good body scan. I use a body scan all the time, but I really like that idea of that combination of the gingerbread man and doing that to cross over and really reconnect with yourself and what's going on. And visually be able to put it outside yourself as well. So I really like that. Excellent. And it's very

Alexandra Reid:

simple, right? Like it's, I love it and I often tell my clients you don't need an art studio. Like I, I quite often what I'm demonstrating on my videos, I'll use my kids' arts school supplies, like the Crayola markers and crayons, right? It's just whatever you have to hand something that I also tell my clients, if you wanna go to the art store and spoil yourself I wouldn't discourage that either be. It's what you have to hand as well is just fine. It's just the act of creating that is, is the healing part.

Dr Nat Green:

Yeah. So what do you think the turning point was for you to recognize that burnout? Start being able to go and draw again and, engage in that and shift from that merely surviving through to thriving.

Alexandra Reid:

It definitely took time. I will, say that and it took those small steps of giving myself permission to. Take time out to do that and not feel guilty or selfish that I was taking the time for myself and not quote, wasting time in the studio.'cause I wasn't producing something for, a gallery. But it was, I had to make a concerted effort of actually, no, I'm gonna take this time and talk to my family and say, look, can you make dinner tonight? Can you pick up can you drive the kids and. I had to work with my family to build that in. So it, it is definitely that act of taking the first step. But I realized I needed to do it right.'cause it was not gonna be sustainable. I was gonna have to step away from something and I didn't wanna step away from the family and I,

Dr Nat Green:

no, I

Alexandra Reid:

couldn't really afford to step away from work. So I'm like, okay, I have to figure out where this balance is. And. And I'm, still learning that balance. But it's. It is just deciding at some point where this isn't sustainable. And honestly like the days where you just feel like you're not gonna get outta bed, you're like, okay, I gotta do something right. Like this. This is not good for anybody. So I don't know if there was a hard. Turning point. Except for the fact that I was just feeling less and less myself and, my friend said that to me too. I guess maybe that was the other thing is that I had friends saying you're usually a lot more upbeat than this, right?

Dr Nat Green:

Yeah, but getting that feedback as well from others rather than just what you were thinking. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it sounds like there was some specific things like permission, giving yourself permission, speaking up. Communicating what your needs were and also putting some boundaries in place for yourself.

Alexandra Reid:

Boundaries is a big one that comes up again, both for myself and a lot of my clients. Definitely. It's that feeling that I need, everyone relies on me. I can't let them down, right? And. I think a lot of the women I work with are very professional, very high performing got straight A's in school and went on to get promoted and suddenly they're at this position where they're they, don't have the support beneath them. They've climbed up so high, so fast that. They haven't built those, external supports for themselves. And and realizing that they're necessary one another activity we do is, it's called the personal solar system. And basically you draw yourself in the center as the sun.

Dr Nat Green:

Yeah.

Alexandra Reid:

And you start mapping out who's in your orbit who, is closest to you, who's in your inner circle, and then you start looking beyond and who's further out and who would you like to bring closer and who, who have you let drift. Realizing that you let them drift. And then there's also the flip side of who would you like to let drift a little further out? Do you wanna

Dr Nat Green:

let go off to go into the solar system on their own in the galaxy? Yes,

Alexandra Reid:

exactly. But again, it's that sense of understanding. Who's in your support network and again, just paying attention to who you could reach out to or who you'd like to reach out to more.

Dr Nat Green:

And I think one of the things as well that you've hinted at there then as well, is that the energy drainers, that it's okay to put those boundaries in when we know that the people we hang around impact our own energy. And we impact their energy. So when you are hanging around people who are also burnt out negative, then it drags us down and we drag others down when we're in that state. So I think they're really important things to look at Who's in your solar system and your support network and community. What else do you think is important when you're looking at recovering from burnout, like the women that you work with?

Alexandra Reid:

Getting outside, honestly, that's much as I promote being creative, I think also I am I, learned about forest bathing, which is a Japanese term. I, have a beautiful forest path behind my house, and I try to walk out there daily with my dog and, it's funny, like for a while I could not do sitting meditation. I could not sit still. I was so much in my head it was not helpful. So I thought, oh, I

Dr Nat Green:

hear you. I still can't sit still, but that might be my A DHD

Alexandra Reid:

and getting outside with just and being in I'm very fortunate where I live. I can walk to the ocean, I can. Walk in the forest. So I, admit I'm very fortunate where I live, but I think even just going to a park and just sitting on a bench surrounded by trees and grass and just taking a few slow, deep breaths for yourself. That makes a huge difference. Just getting we quote the sunshine, the vitamin D I know it's tricky as we're starting to head into shorter days here where I'm, we've

Dr Nat Green:

got the opposite. We've just, you've got the opposite. Yeah. You're lucky. We've just Yeah. Solstice and we're moving into the nice, warm, warmer, longer days. Sorry. Yeah, just rub in. You've come out of it, you've just enjoyed it.

Alexandra Reid:

Oh, we are. And honestly, we're having a beautiful fall right now. Just that perfect blue crispness and so I do know the rain will be coming. That's something that we get a lot of here is rain.

Dr Nat Green:

Yeah. Be prepared for the rain. Yeah. And we'll prepare for the warmth and the heat, right?

Alexandra Reid:

Yeah. But yeah, that's something I encourage. The women I work with too is trying to do, two things is call a friend and go for a walk. So even if you're just doing, and I've actually started trying to do that with calling my parents is I try to schedule a call so I can go out and walk the dog and be outside and have that family connection. Yeah. And I find it's actually. You get so into the conversation that sometimes you realize, oh, I've walked on autopilot. So it, it's funny. Or other times where you realize, oh, this isn't a great conversation, but at least I can look at the trees and enjoy being outside

Dr Nat Green:

and be present, like you said, and be present. It's really important because when you're deep in that burnout or, trauma recovery. You don't really enjoy that present moment. So that's such a powerful thing, isn't it, to really soak in what's around you, and particularly that grounding in nature like you've just said. I love that. So if you were to look back at, when you were going through the adversity and the stuff that had gone on and your burnout, what do you think some of the. Key maybe qualities or personal attributes that you saw in yourself and in your clients. What are they for moving from that trauma into post-traumatic growth or burnout into burnout, recovery?

Alexandra Reid:

It's, building self-confidence. I think a lot of it comes down to, learning to build those internal resources, the resiliency, they, often talk about resiliency, about the ability to bounce back, but I think it's more than that. I, do think it's that, it's like building that, I often think of it as like a coal. Burning inside and you wanna fan the coal and keep it going, right? Because that's the energy that's gonna keep you going through the day. And I think a lot of people who deal with trauma and burnout, quite literally, that ember goes out. Yes. And exactly. It takes, it does take some care and some nurturing, self nurturing to get it back. And I, think for a lot of people, they don't. I would advise'em not to rush it because there's that feeling of, oh, I'm better now. And then you tackle on everything that put you in that position in the first place. Yeah. So I think there's that ability to realize once you've burned out start trying to either change what put you in that position. Or start noticing some of the warning signs that you may have overlooked or ignored blatantly. That's the other thing is that whole feeling of, oh, I'll just push through this. And realize when you start catching those old patterns that landed you in that position and that, we're not perfect. It's an evolving thing, but I think it's building that self-confidence, building that self-awareness, and again, giving yourself that permission to take a break and not be perfect, right? That, that's, there's, I haven't even touched on perfectionism, but it's always there in

Dr Nat Green:

us high achievers that go down that path. That's always there, isn't it?

Alexandra Reid:

Exactly. So it that's the elephant in the room that you know it like, I have to be perfect. I have to do this perfectly. Or I can't let anyone else do it'cause they're not gonna do it as perfectly as me. So there's, yeah.

Dr Nat Green:

And I would imagine that in that stem space that's even more evident.

Alexandra Reid:

Oh, it is. It's that's where all the t's and all the i's it's, that, yeah. Yeah, everything that's very data driven, it's very scrutinized and it's high pressure and high turnaround. And yeah, it's just again, that sense of I need to always be on or I'll miss something. And yeah, that definitely it, the job in itself creates that sense of pressure. But I do wonder sometimes if the men feel it as strongly as the women.'cause again, I talk to mostly burned out women, so I would be curious to know about that.

Dr Nat Green:

Yeah. And do you think, because that's the world that you've worked in for so long, do you think that there were men in that space who also were burned out but just didn't acknowledge it?

Alexandra Reid:

I'm sure because there's there's certainly a lot of cultural conditioning. We'll leave it at that, but Yeah, for sure. God forbid men show their emotions. Like that would be admitting weakness. Absolutely.

Dr Nat Green:

Yeah. There's so many layers aren't there, really to that? Oh, yeah. Years and years of things being ingrained and yeah. So many systemic issues as well.

Alexandra Reid:

Yeah, so I, wouldn't be surprised, but again, they wouldn't necessarily be the ones that would show up to tell me about it.

Dr Nat Green:

No, So being female in that very male oriented industry, how was it for you when you recognized this? Did you let them know what was happening? Or did you hide it?

Alexandra Reid:

It's interesting, a couple of jobs ago, I actually had a, male manager and he was saying some not quite appropriate remarks. And this, was before the Me Too movement. Yeah. And I remember discussing it, so he was my. Direct manager and I actually talked about it to our director who happened to be a woman. And this was really interesting as she said, oh, are you sure he's not just boys being boys. And I was like, I. How could you say that? Like it was just, I was just totally I, came to you vulnerable, I expressed my concerns and you've dismissed it and it, really set me back because here I was coming to a woman in authority Yeah. Who I trusted and have it be dismissed. And sure enough, down the road, he was actually let go from his position long after I'd moved on for those very same. Issues, but somebody else was willing to listen to it. So yeah, it's it, that was a lesson that was a very negative lesson to learn. But it was something that I'm sure I wasn't the only one to experience something like that.

Dr Nat Green:

Yeah. And as you were saying that thank you so much for sharing it. It brought up this experience for me, very similar that I was working well. Consulting in an organization, but treated very much like an employee and part of the family. And it was great in many ways, but I was experiencing some really inappropriate emails from one of the guys and really with that bullying tone and it wasn't very pleasant at all. And I went to the manager, similar things. She was female and I was told, I think you're being a bit fragile. I was like, gobsmacked. I'm like, what? And I had evidence and all of this and I just, oh, and I had very similar negative experience. In the end, I made a choice to walk away'cause that was what I needed to do for my health and sanity.'cause I was exhausted burnout and, experiencing vicarious trauma myself. But again, isn't that so like totally different industries? Yeah. But still happens. And I'm not talking that long ago, nor am I Exactly. We're not talking 20 years ago when this stuff wasn't talked about. And it's challenging, but I guess it's as, you said, you. Did something about it for yourself. You spoke up and then you made your own decision. I did the same. I spoke up, couldn't do it, so I walked away. And sometimes that's about putting those boundaries in place, self preservation, and giving ourselves permission, comes

Alexandra Reid:

back to permission. Yes, exactly.

Dr Nat Green:

The things that you have really beautifully articulated are so important. Yeah. So what other things. Do you work with the, ladies that you work with that you feel are important in their recovery journey? Do you have any other little gentle exercises or tools you'd love to share?'cause you've already shared some amazing ones.

Alexandra Reid:

And there's another when we talk about drawing as a coaching forward thinking tool there's another exercise, which was interesting.'cause what we do is I demonstrate on a video for them what to do. There's a list of questions and then I meet with them afterwards and we discuss it. It's interesting. A lot of them have said it's the discussion afterwards where they come back and look at they have a lot of thoughts and feelings come up while they're doing the exercise. Yeah. But it's the reflecting afterwards of seeing what subconsciously they put into their pictures. So the exercise was it was a bridge drawing exercise. And basically you have things on one side of the shore you'd like to walk away from, that you'd to leave behind that you're struggling with. Yeah. On the other side of the shore, whatever that may look like, is the things you want to move towards, the things you're aspiring to that bring you joy, that light you up, that bring you peace and calm, and you draw a bridge between the two areas, and it can be any type of bridge. And there can be any type of obstacles and. So I've met with a number of women and seen everything from the Golden Gate Bridge to Yeah. Rickety rope bridges to stone bridges with trolls like,

Dr Nat Green:

yeah. It's

Alexandra Reid:

really interesting to see what people come up with would be. And, but I had one woman say to me, she looked at her bridge and she'd drawn a rickety plank bridge. And each of these planks were obstacles and they were spaced far apart. She was worried she was gonna fall between them and she'd drawn these big waves of water underneath. And it looked very dangerous underneath. And she's I just realized I drew all these waves and I can't swim. Why am I, it was just, and it was totally unprompted. It was just really, I laughed'cause she laughed and she's like, why did I draw this for myself? And it's just those little moments where you get. Into the, art of creating and suddenly thoughts and, feelings just end up on the page. And it's not till you take that sober second look of go,

Dr Nat Green:

oh,

Alexandra Reid:

what does this mean? And a lot of it's up to interpretation, but I just, we both cracked up after that'cause it was quite pretty funny. But it's so powerful, isn't it? Yeah. Really? Yeah. It, really was for both of us. And that was just talking through her drawing, right? And what did this mean to you and what did that mean to you and Yeah, so it was just that, again, self-awareness. Building that self-awareness because. If you're not aware of your issues, it's really hard to figure out how you wanna change them or fix them. Absolutely.

Dr Nat Green:

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And it sounds like it's a beautiful way to bring that unconscious and subconscious stuff to the surface, which we often, eh, we might really know what's going on, but we've pushed it down so much and it can bring it up to the surface and, make us face it. Definitely as painful as it can be,

Alexandra Reid:

but yeah. Yeah. A lot of that is, it's, yeah, so I, really like. Discussing the work afterwards because there's, learnings that come out of that. There's, basically three stages of learnings. There's kind of the thinking about what I wanna draw. There's the act of drawing, and then there's the reflecting upon the drawing afterwards and what does it mean. So there's a lot of takeaways and the nice thing is, then you can go back to it months later. You'll know exactly how you felt at that moment. You were drawing it, which is quite neat. It's like a I was, I joke, it's a Kodiak moment, right? Yes. It's a snapshot of what you were feeling at that moment.

Dr Nat Green:

Yeah. Beautiful. I love that so much. Lexi, as we move to wrapping this conversation up, where can our listeners find out more about you and find you online? I'm

Alexandra Reid:

quite active on LinkedIn because again, my audience is professional women and it's, I really enjoy posting on LinkedIn and connecting. In fact, I've found some wonderful women. We've just connected through LinkedIn and world's away. It's exactly industries away. So that's, I'm quite active there. And also on my, website mindartwellness.com. There's a free challenge. It's like a five day email challenge where if you sign up, you get basically a daily creative prompt and a little video of me demonstrating it. So it's called the, five day Reset challenge creative Reset Challenge. So yeah that's, a great. Taster of what the coaching feels like. And then I have a newsletter as well, and I send out a weekly newsletter with again, links to creative exercises that I write about and blogs and so on. So there, there's a lot of resources on my website. So I definitely would encourage people to look for me there.

Dr Nat Green:

Fantastic. And I'll put that in our show notes for sure. So the five day Creative Reset challenge on your. Mind art wellness.com website. So I would highly encourage, I know I'll be checking it out and yeah, and signing up for the newsletter as well so I can stay connected to you and I know that our listeners will definitely be very interested in that.

Alexandra Reid:

Yeah, and I hope they connect with me on LinkedIn and all of those same links are there as well in my profile. And you can read more about me and, see what I've been up to as well.

Dr Nat Green:

Excellent. I'll put all that in the show notes for our listeners to check out. And I always like to wrap up the conversation with a question. What do you think your youngest self would think of where you are and what you've achieved now?

Alexandra Reid:

Oh she's gonna wonder why I didn't go into fine art, because she was convinced she was gonna be an artist when she was younger. But I'd like her to see the fact that art and science can live together and produce it's one of those they joke about hybrid vigor, when take two different things, and you combine them and the result is more than the sum of the parts. And so I'd like her to go you're, an artist in a different way now. And have her be happy with that.

Dr Nat Green:

I love that so much. And really you've come full circle. The fine arts is what you wanted and you went into, as you said to please your parents and pick that path. But you've come full circle and you've beautifully combined both. I love that. That's amazing. Thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your story and your beautiful, resources and your wisdom. It's been very powerful and I know that our listeners are gonna love listening to this episode. Oh, thank you. I'm glad we finally got to connect. after life stopped getting in our way. Exactly. Thank you so much, Lexi. Bye for now. Bye Thank you for joining me in this episode of Growing Tall Poppies. It is my deepest hope that today's episode may have inspired and empowered you to step fully into your post-traumatic growth, so that you can have absolute clarity around who you are, what matters the most to you, and to assist you to release your negative emotions. And regulate your nervous system so you can fully thrive. New episodes are published every Tuesday, and I hope you'll continue to join us as we explore both the strategies and the personal qualities required to fully live a life of post-traumatic growth and to thrive. So if it feels aligned to you and really resonates, then I invite you to hit subscribe and it would mean the world to us. If you could share this episode with others who you feel may benefit too, you may also find me on Instagram at Growing Tall Poppies and Facebook, Dr. Natalie Green. Remember, every moment is an opportunity to look for the lessons and to learn and increase your ability to live the life you desire and deserve. So for now, stay connected. Stay inspired. Stand tall like the tall poppy you are, and keep shining your light brightly in the world. Bye for.

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Dr Natalie Green

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