TFC001 - Dr. Candice Creasman On Female Entrepreneur's Increased Vulnerability To Illness

In the first podcast episode, Dr. Candice Creasman and I discuss some of the biggest hidden barriers to female entrepreneur's health.

Then, Dr. Creasman shares the three most effective, heart based and practical tools (that are seriously quick and easy to implement) to cultivate both freedom and vitality in life and business.

Dr. Candice Creasman is a Licensed Professional Counsellor Supervisor with over 15 years experience in mental health. She has worked in inpatient settings, rehabilitation facilities, and with the Veterans Administration.

For the past 7 years, Dr. Creasman has maintained a private group practice in North Carolina where she provides individual counselling to clients with a wide array of wellness goals, and clinical supervision to counsellors seeking licensure.

She is also a meditation teacher and believes the struggles of everyday life are the foundation of awakening.

Dr. Creasman is dedicated to helping people make meaning of suffering through awareness, compassion, and change.

Full Transcript Of The Interview:

Laurel: 00:00 Can you tell us maybe the worst piece of advice you've heard female entrepreneurs receive?

Candice: Honestly I think time is money is probably one of the most problematic idioms because I think it just keeps us in this mindset of constant grind, constant performance, um, and we just serve better than that.

Laurel : 00:26 You're listening to The Feminine Reclaimed, your source for unfiltered conversations about mental health and self employment for women's empowerment. I'm your host Laurel Anne Stark. Dr Candice Creasman is a licensed professional counsellor supervisor with over 15 years experience in mental health. She has worked in inpatient settings, rehabilitation facilities and with the Veteran's administration for the past seven years. Dr Creasman has maintained a private group practice in North Carolina where she provides individual counselling to clients with a wide array of wellness goals and clinical supervision to counsellors seeking licensure. She's also a meditation teacher and believes the struggles of everyday life are the foundation of awakening. Dr Creasman is dedicated to helping people make meaning of suffering through awareness, compassion, and change.

Laurel: 01:21 How many people do you think that you've worked with in terms of directly helping them with their mental health? Since you started your career? Just ballpark.

Candice: 01:28 Wow. It's funny because I have a drawer of 'em all the folders for each client I've ever worked with and you're supposed to like hang onto those for seven to 10 years for bookkeeping. And it's probably just that drawer is probably close to 200 or two, a little over 200 and that doesn't even count the years I spent working in agency settings where the traffic was even higher. So it's, yeah, it's pretty incredible how many people are willing to seek counselling and you know, the relationships that can develop over that kind of time.

Laurel: 02:03 Wow. So folks we have here today, a doctor who has had experience helping hundreds and hundreds of people with their mental wellness. So really excited to have your expertise here on the podcast. So one of the reasons I'm asking these questions is to sort of build a picture for female entrepreneurs that may or may not be necessarily aware of some of the external impacts of factors that exist within our system and our culture that, that, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs I find are not necessarily aware of how much they are swimming upstream outside of just sort of the job roles and the difficulties of being self employed, et cetera.

How much do you think Western culture values women, specifically?

Candice: 02:49 Hmm. And that is one of those really powerful and layered questions. So the short answer is not much. Um, I think a more nuanced answer. Um, I feel like Western culture is built largely on fear and competition and those ways of being end up taking form as racism and patriarchy and a lot of these other ring sort of practices and mechanisms. And so when fear gains power, it turns into oppression. So, wow, that's a quotable. Well, I hope so. It felt like it kind of summed it up, right. Because before, as important as I think it is to kind of bring the energy of frustration and outrage and, um, you know, righteous indignation to tackling how little women are valued. I think it's also important to stay in our softness and recognize that oppression comes from a place of fear. Yeah. And not to the extent that we need to, to be inactive or sit on our hands or you know, Oh, poor oppressors, you know? Gosh, they're just so fearful. I mean, I think we do have to come to any kind of change with an open heart if we're going to be effective though. So, yeah, I think compassion is important in that.

Laurel: 04:10 So, how does being an entrepreneur affect mental health and mental wellness ?

Candice: 04:18 Well, I feel like it, can affect it in extremes, whether that's for better or worse, you know, so I ended up working with, u, quite a few entrepreneurs, both as I'm trying to help, therapists develop their own private practices, but also my other clients who just happened to also be entrepreneurs. And, you know what? I see, um, is in the negative extreme entrepreneurship generates a lot of pressure and a lot of isolation in the positive. It develops a lot of a sense of freedom and a real sense of, um, self efficacy. You know, like I get to decide what I do and how I spend my time. And, um, so in that way I feel like it can, you know, create a lot of vulnerability to difficulty and, um, mental and physical illness, you know, if we're not mindful, but it can also create a lot of the causes and conditions that support us in our wellness too. So I feel like it shows up in extremes for entrepreneurs. Yeah, totally relatable. Yeah. Like same, and I'm also talking about myself right now. I had extremes as a direct function of being my own boss for sure.

Laurel: 05:33 Yeah. Agreed, same here. Absolutely. So if you were to take a woman who, as you were saying, in our culture is not valued and then put her in a role where she's got exposure to risks around her wellness and then add, our culture's relationship with technology right now. How would you say that that would impact mental health in addition to everything else?

Candice: 06:07 Hmm. Well, I mean I'll, I'll just speak to that from a personal standpoint because, um, you know, my interaction with technology at least when we were thinking about the big bad technology, like I immediately think Facebook, you know, um, cause that's my point of contact with, um, with marketing and, you know, social media, it really kind of is just Facebook for me. So, um, I have so many mixed feelings about it. You know, on the one hand, I feel compelled to use that platform to reach more people, right. To, um, you know, manifest my impact in a way that's going to be bigger and just more helpful if that's possible. Um, but then on the other, um, faced with, you know, the inevitable comparison that happens when we're, I mean, you see it on your website a lot or on your, your Facebook page a lot.

Candice: 06:55 This comparing your insides to other people's outsides, you know, that's such a useful frame. Um, and then inevitably I see, you know, someone who is talking about, they've got thousands of people on their email list and you know, they're doing all of these wonderful online things that they're talking about through Facebook. And I wonder, well, am I, am I doing something wrong? You know, so the self doubt creep then. Um, but ultimately I think whether it's technology, whether it's culture, you know, there's, whatever the external circumstance is that we are kind of pointing the finger at, there's just as much work to be done by checking out what we bring to that party. You know, based on our own struggles and our own beliefs and our own stories. Um, so I try to use even those rough days where I'm like comparing myself to people on Facebook or feeling inadequate in some kind of way as like just an opportunity to reflect on where that seed of doubt is coming from in me.

Laurel: 08:08 I love it. That's a really a much more empowered place than say being sort of a victim of, of, you know, the ever present Facebook notifications, et cetera.

Candice: 08:18 Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's room to do a little bit of both, right? Because we don't necessarily need to let these platforms or these systems comes off the hook and just always turn the mirror back on ourselves. Cause there is something to be said for how, especially social media platforms are really built to engage our reward centers in an addictive kind of way. Um, so there is something that's pretty insidious about that, um, and problematic. Um, and there's almost always an opportunity to do some internal work when we're struggling.

Laurel: 08:51 Yeah, agreed. Agreed. And in terms of the online to other people and sort of how they're doing, um, one of the things that seems to be ever present is that a notion of sort of the, the standardized female beauty standards and how would you say that that sort of present both online and offline, um, can impact, you know, a female entrepreneur who is already dealing with, um, sort of a culture that undervalues her and you know, um, possibly stressful job being an entrepreneur and then having sort of this exposure to the online world that is not really, um, something that you can opt out of these days. How do you think that that impacts us?

Candice: 09:40 Um, pretty badly. I would say the, again, her short answer, it's bad, but I think ultimately, you know, beauty standards are really a mechanism for, uh, oppression. Um, so if you take this idea of oppression, which is that some people have more worth based on certain characteristics such as being male, being white, being able bodied for example, you know, then those are just ideas until they're put into practice in some way. And I think one of the most toxic ways that those oppressive ideas are put into practice is through these unachievable, um, really just meaningless beauty standards, um, that are primarily directed at women. You know, so this goal of thinness, this goal of perfection that I think ultimately distracts us from our work. It distracts us from the things that fill us up from contributing to our businesses contributing to our communities and the world in a meaningful way. Um, so it's this real catch 22 for entrepreneurs, you know, especially in a social media environment, which is, you know, the sense that we as women have to look a certain way in order for our message to be meaningful. But then the standard for how we're supposed to look is built in the very systems that many of us are trying to work against. So it just sucks up so much energy. I think that is, could be so much better used if it's just directed at our actual purpose.

Laurel: 11:15 Agreed. And not just energy, but some of the statistics on the resource allocation to UT are staggering. I just read that the average New York woman will spend $250,000 in her lifetime on beauty, which apparently can get you a degree at Harvard or would pay for one

Candice: 11:34 and then some! And then that is shocking and like not at the same time. It's both shocking and not, you know.

Laurel: 11:40 Exactly. Wow. Yeah. The statistics, uh, the latest statistics I read or something around 25% of women have experienced abuse. And it's my sort of feeling in my experience with my sort of peers and women that I, you know, know and talk to, et cetera that number's a lot higher actually, and I'm wondering what your take is on it

Candice: 12:01 I would absolutely agree with that assessment that the numbers are low. Um, and I mean it's anecdotal on my end, but just in interacting with so many women who have experienced domestic violence, even the ones who have experienced very obvious physical violence still struggle to call it, uh, abuse oftentimes I think, and there are a lot of reasons for that. You know, I think certainly the systems of oppression that, you know, help us build devalued, um, individually and collectively. That's a lot of it. I think some of us are just so fearful of the implications of, of saying that we have experienced abuse. So that 25%, I'm, while I'm sure it does capture some women who are willing to acknowledge that abuse is more than just physicality. Um, I think there are still so many stories that are not included in that statistical picture by virtue of how low our standards are for the kind of treatment we deserve.

Laurel: 13:08 Wow. That's really powerful. How low our standards are for the treatment that we deserve.

Yeah. Yeah. One thing that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the notion of like sort of the bad guy or sort of, I know for myself how I was socialized to understand what, you know, like, uh, a bad guy would sort of look like. And I just always go back to kind of cartoons where it's like a very obvious bad guy because of, you know, he's dressed in like a black trench coat and he hangs up in the alleyway and, or he's a monster. So he's like, you know, oversize and hat is like visually ugly and threatening. Um, for example. And I think, I mean, yeah, again, this is just sort of my opinion, but I think that having that as being our notion of like where abuse would come from makes it really difficult to pinpoint it when it's coming from someone that doesn't look like that and maybe someone that is, that we're like very close with. Um, yeah. Would you agree that that sort of accurate,

Candice: 14:08 I think it's incredibly accurate. You know, and I see that a lot, um, in survivors of sexual assault as well, you know, is this real reluctance to name their experience assault, um, because it doesn't meet this very cartoonish man leaping out of the bushes, you know, stranger leaping out of the bushes to be more specific kind of image of what it means to have been assaulted. And, um, you know, I think it, it really kinda goes back to this lack of awareness, um, around the impact of fear, the impact of these patriarchal standards. When they get internalized by people, uh, they become a poison that, you know, uh, and I'm going to just default to saying men in this regard. I know it's certainly not all. Um, men are not always just men, but, um, so these guys who can present as, you know, pretty decent boyfriends initially, you know, maybe they're very attentive.

Candice: 15:15 Maybe they're, um, you know, really interested in commitment. They're displaying these, these traits and these characteristics that I think women are taught to see as being, um, scarce. And then there are these internalized kind of seeds of misogyny that ended up manifesting as these really problematic, harmful, um, and sadly often violent behaviours. So that's one of the things that I ended up saying to clients a lot who have survived domestic violence is, um, I really have to spend a lot of time validating that you can both love someone and they can hurt you so you don't have to choose one in the service of the other. Like if you were to acknowledge that this person really harmed you, that's not the same as saying that you don't care for them. Um, because those, that, that creates such an inner conflict that I think it, it keeps a lot of women stuck.

Laurel: 16:17 Yeah. I can imagine. It brings to mind the sort of concepts of cognitive dissonance or gaslighting and the confusion that can show up in those circumstances. So I was raised on the notion that, you know, equality was here, like, you know, if you wanted to be the president or the prime minister, as is the case in Canada, that, you know, women are allowed to do that now. And, you know, we can vote and we can work. So equality is here and I don't have to like fight for it or I don't have to even worry about it and think about it. And the older I get and the more experience I have as a woman in the workforce and just a woman society, the more I realized that that's actually not true. Um, would you say that that is sort of a form of gaslighting or cognitive dissonance?

Candice: 17:03 You know, I don't know that it's necessarily that intentional or, um, I think it's more wishful thinking. You know, I think it's more denial than anything because I think it's, it's just so much more difficult to sit with the truth that having a handful of laws passed, um, really doesn't do much to eradicate this really pervasive belief system that anyone who's not a white male is less than, you know, because that work is just so much harder. It has to have been in each individual person. It's, you know, very personal work. Um, and you really can't Institute that from the outside in. Um, at least not to the extent that it would be so much. It's more effective if you have the internal change and then that manifest is all these changes in, in policy and practice, you know? Um, but we're trying to do it from the outside in and I think that inevitably, um, fall short and that is sad and it's hard to be with that. Um, so I think people instead, oftentimes just choose to see a handful of laws as the only progress that was needed, but it's just not

Laurel: 18:21 very well said. Thank you. That's really valuable perspective. So if we have, um, sort of, I guess what I'm interested in is the aggregate impact of all of these factors because I see these statistics released and I see these studies released and I see them sort of as one off. And I'm really interested in what happens if we take a human being a woman who's an entrepreneur and layer these different situations sort of on top and add them together. And my sort of belief or understanding would be that the aggregate of all of these situations at the same time would be more like the, some would be greater than the parts. And I'm wondering what your thoughts, thoughts are on that in terms of the impact, uh, to be effective in our lives and to be mentally well and to thrive.

Candice: 19:08 [inaudible] yeah, I absolutely think the aggregate is a really negative outcome. Um, if women aren't aware, yeah, I think we have, there's so much power in awareness. So even if the circumstances, um, don't change a whole lot, our awareness of what is in fact causing us physical, mental illness, um, you know, that goes a really long way in helping us to, um, build resilience. So I think all of these factors, you know, the oppressive nature of being a woman in the workplace in general, but certainly in entrepreneurial spaces, um, you know, the impact of having minimal support system, DMS, you know, of, um, feeling pushed to achieve unattainable beauty standards. All of these things increase our vulnerability to illness. And so what's going to happen is if this woman keeps kind of running the race without awareness and she's going to get sick, um, she's, you know, going to develop some sort of physical symptoms that hold her back. She's gonna start drinking or smoking or taking pills or doing something to try to ease her suffering. Um, she's going to find herself in relationships that are dysfunctional in some sort of capacity. So I think the end result of being in spaces that are inherently dysfunctional without awareness is absolutely that we become ill and that illness is intended to be the wake up call.

Laurel: 20:39 Wow, that's so powerful. Okay. So awareness of being in a dysfunctional situation, a sort of a very first step. And then once we have awareness, then what, what are some other ways that we can sort of cope better or, um, mitigate some of these circumstances in order to thrive?

Candice: 20:59 well, I think one of the most powerful aspects of awareness is that we start to realize what's coming from the outside versus what's coming from the inside. Because so many of us don't experience, uh, you know, misogynistic beauty standards as an external experience. We experienced that through our own inner critic, which says, you're not pretty enough. You're not thin enough. You need to buy that diet regimen. You need to get better about carbs or something, you know. So we experienced that as this kind of internal narrative. So awareness helps us to see those parts more clearly. So rather than just, you know, hearing that critical voice say you need to lose 10 pounds or you're never going to get any more clients. And then just believing that to be true awareness allows us to hold that up to the light and say, Oh, you know, I'm just believing that because that's what the last 10 commercials I saw. It has been, you know, and multiplied times. My whole life has so me, that's not a truth out in the world. That's a reality that an industry wants me to buy into to keep it running. So awareness then allows us to say, I'm not going to drink that Kool-Aid today. Um, so I at least have some opportunity to feel at ease with myself as opposed to just critical

Laurel: 22:26 question. Uh, the followup one about that is, so, uh, awareness and then the ability to have sort of discernment as to what thoughts are ours in which ones have become internalized, do to serve a dysfunctional culture. That sounds like, you know, the next sort of step would be having the ability to choose whether or not we're going to believe these, these sort of internal thoughts.

Candice: 22:47 Absolutely. And I love that you used that word discernment because that's, that's exactly the process. So awareness allows us to see more clearly and then what we see more clearly, we have more ability to make more empowered, more skillful choices about, you know, so if I, um, can see that a lot of my suffering has coming from an internalized narrative about how I'm supposed to look, for example, well, we're just kind of, you know, gonna use that as a jumping off point. But, um, then, okay, so maybe I don't need to spend $250,000 a year on my skin care routine. Um, I might still spend some money on my skincare routine because maybe I like having my skin feel a certain way. So you're still allowed to want some of the same things to, you know, push towards some of the safe outcomes. But awareness and discernment allow you to do that on purpose rather than as a function of these just internalized toxic narratives. So, okay, so let's say that now I spend $100,000 even almost skin care routine a year. Um, that's $150,000 that I'm gonna put into something that again, with awareness and discernment actually connects me more deeply to my purpose. So maybe that's giving to a charity. Maybe that's, you know, um, bolstering my knowledge by taking a class. Like it just frees up not only the emotional resources, but the physical resources, um, that allow us to really kind of manifest our, our purpose and our greatness more effectively.

Laurel: 24:23 I love that notion because it really ties back what you just described as a notion of freedom. And that's was one of the first things that you said about sort of the benefits of entrepreneurship in terms of like through the lens of mental wellness is that we do have incredible freedom around time and resources and choice and then adding that layer of awareness and discernment around sort of external inputs. It gives us even greater freedom, but in between our two ears that that sounds amazing. To get more information on the resources we discussed in today's episode, please go to the feminine reclaimed.com there. You'll also be able to access past podcast episodes, learn more about today's guest and access any links or resources discussed in today's episode. Again, that's the feminine reclaimed.com for more tips and community connection too. In our group. It's totally free type female entrepreneur, mental health awareness to Facebook. Look forward to seeing you there. So, yeah.

Would you be able to give us sort of top three takeaway tips for increasing mental wellness for entrepreneurial women ?

Candice: 25:32 [inaudible] yeah, so I think the most practical way that we can cultivate those qualities, awareness, discernment and choice, the number one tip is to develop a meditation practice. Um, and whatever that looks like for you. You know, if that's prayer, if that's yoga, if that sitting on a mat and chanting whatever it is. The only way that I've really found to find stillness to find the stillness that actually cultivates the awareness and the discernment, um, is by sitting down and connecting really intentional personally with the present moment. Um, I think that is probably one of the hardest things for entrepreneurs to commit to is carving out space to quote unquote do nothing, you know, so cause there's always some other checkbox that you could be working towards. There's always something else on the to do list. Um, but if self care in the form of exercise is anywhere on your list of things that you have to accomplish in order to feel well, then just lump this in with that because this is exercise for your mind and your mind wild deeply benefit, from your ability to be aware of your ability to discern, um, will grow if you take time to meditate. So that's the number one.

Insight timer is an app, that has, I think it's something like 24,000 meditations on there now. It's incredible. It's, um, just this really vast community of teachers and meditators. Um, and so I recommend it, especially for folks who have a little bit of meditation experience, like if you've ever tried on your own before. Um, then insight timer is, uh, a great place to kind of renew a practice or um, commit to an ongoing practice. There's just so much content that's available there. Um, for folks who are new to meditation, I like some of the more structured apps like calm or Headspace, uh, cause they really just walk you through, um, um, in very concrete ways how to actually start a meditation practice.

Laurel: 27:45 Beautiful. Thank you for the defining sort of for beginners and for sort of intermediate and advanced. That's super helpful. So tip number two.

Candice: 27:52 Yeah. So I'm number two I think is related to taking care of your most basic needs. There's this idea, it's called Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And some folks may be familiar with that, that outlines this structure, this pyramid of needs that is built on a foundation of taking care of the most basic fundamental to survival type needs first. So we're talking eating, drinking water, breathing air, and being safe physically and emotionally safe. I feel like as entrepreneurs, since you know, the buck stops with us, you know, we can take situations that maybe are complicated and make them even more complicated by neglecting to take care of our bodies.

Laurel: 28:43 Yes. Agreed. Sometimes we think we don't have time for it. Right?

Candice: 28:47 Yeah. And it's, again, it's one of these things that is weirdly difficult for us to make time for it. You know, and I say weirdly because, you know, even a few generations ago when, you know, may be many people didn't have, I mean plenty of people still don't have access to basic needs, but especially in the United States, you know, if we kind of go back to generations of settlers, um, colonists, um, you know, the idea of, Oh, I'll just skip breakfast because I have five meetings today. Like that would not even register because the focus was so much on just meeting the basic needs on survival. So we moved into this kind of more complicated time where it's kind of translated into us thinking somehow we are no longer beholden to a human body and it can bypass those needs and, you know, just work on the upper layers of the pyramid instead meeting basic needs I think is, it's useful because it's another buff. Again, the negative emotion against the vulnerabilities of being a woman and an entrepreneur. Um, but it's also just I think an important act of being in reality to again, awareness, right? Awareness and discernment and know that your body has to be fuelled effectively if it's going to be productive. Um, so that would definitely be number two is just always check in, especially if you're stressed out to see if you met your basic needs effectively.

Laurel: 30:14 Brilliant, simple and easy to implement and brilliant. Thank you so much. I'm so excited. Okay, last tip number three. What is it?

Candice: 30:21 So number three is put some effort into your real relationships. I have some imposter syndrome that arises as I even say that out loud because I am the literal worst for maintaining and prioritizing my relationships outside of my client relationships. And I just, I know from my own personal experience and from the data, you know, there's just really strong data that supports, um, this really powerful connection between relationship and overall wellness. So if you aren't fostering connections with people that aren't just about making a sale or you know, finding new clients, if you're not connecting with people just as your authentic self without an agenda, then that loneliness will become a detriment. You know, that isolation will negatively impact you, your health and your and your business ultimately. So the third tip is definitely to make time for people, for people that fill you up for people that you have an opportunity to give back to is make relationships a priority because it will, it will reward you in the long run.

Laurel: 31:30 Beautiful. Thank you so much for how simple and easy to implement those tips are relatively speaking in terms of they're not complicated. You don't need to have a ton of resources or a ton of time or to like spend the weekend creating, you know, a project plan in order to execute wise are not going to get done immediately. Easy to implement, um, in our busy day to day lives and they make total sense. Wow. Thank you so much for your expertise, your input, your perspective on these issues and how to increase our quality of life and thrive even though some circumstances are maybe not ideal. Can you tell us if we wanted to access more of your, your heart-based wisdom and, uh, your services and how you help. Can you tell us where we would find you online in the best sort of, what your offerings are and what you want us to know about what you could do for us?

Candice: 32:20 Yeah, sure. So the easiest way to get in contact with me is I'm on via email so you can reach me@drcandacechrismanatgmail.com. Um, but also if you just want to hear some of these ideas and these principles kind of implemented in a mindfulness practice, uh, I do have an insight timer, uh, publisher profiles. So you can just download the insight timer app and search by teacher. So if you type in Candice Creasman, then you can get to my profile in there. You'll have access to, um, all of my guided meditations. And I also have a 10 day course that's called healing your inner critic. Um, moving toward establishing, um, a website that will have a lot of the content that I share with my therapy client in some bite sized chunk that everyone will be able to access for free. If you stay tuned, stay connected with me through email, then you'll be the first ones to know about when that goes live, which hopefully will be in the next two to three months. Wow.

Laurel: 33:20 Fantastic. Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate, like I said, your, your insight, your wisdom, et cetera. Everybody. Um, Dr. Candice Creasman, thank you again so much. Thanks for having me.