Fewer Sad Days as a Nurse #idocrossfit
Written by Stacy Stravitz - BSN, RN, CCRN, DNP 21’
Hi there! 👋🏼 We share stories from nurses like you about nursing in Arizona. We are out to build a better now and better next for RN and NPs in AZ 🤩
#idocrossft makes its way into more work conversations than you might guess.
Need to move a patient? #idocrossfit.
Need help disconnecting that IV tubing? #idocrossfit.
Need me to rotate in for compressions? #idocrossfit
Transporting down to MRI? #idocrossfit
It's as amazing/annoying as you imagine. 🙄
There's a scene in Modern Family where Phil, the well-meaning but often oblivious dad, describes Claire, the slightly high strung mother of three:
Phil: She has to run every day, or she goes crazy, she's like a Border Collie.
Claire: Did you just compare me to a dog?!? 🐕
Phil: The smartest in the world!
I resemble that remark. If I go more than a few days without being physically active in some way, I am a moody, grumpy, stir-crazy Border Collie. I feel super uncomfortable in body and mind. 😤
I've done some reading about personality types. According to the Enneagram typing system, my type is one in the "somatic" triad. (Beware, the Enneagram rabbit hole 🐰🕳 is a deep one). This category of people is very aware of their physical bodies and physical feelings.
Awareness is Necessary
A good nurse is aware of what bodies feel. We are looking at how a patient moves, what type of grimace they make, what foot they are favoring, etc. to figure out what is going on and how to help. Knowing what my body feels when it feels and describing those feelings helps me intuit what patients are going through.
I have anxiety and depression, the intensity of which has varied over the years. For me, exercise takes a lot of the edge off. At times it was antidepressants and exercise, with counseling sprinkled in for a time.
CrossFit became my antidepressant of choice when I went to a free trial workout, and it kicked my ass.
Sometimes You Need a Push - From Someone Else
I was never good at pushing myself because, well, it hurts, and I don't like that. As previously discussed, I am very aware of when my muscles are tired, when I am getting short of breath, and when I just want to quit. By myself, I will stop. But in a CrossFit class you like, have to keep going because you are low-key in competition with the other people in the class.
And it's embarrassing to be last. (Often enough, I am super last). In this physically therapeutic way, I am being peer pressured into getting a good workout. The biochemical results for me are fewer sad days. I often can feel my stress hangover from work melting away.
Yeah, It’s a Touchy Subject 🥴
Fitness can be a touchy subject with nurses. There's a sort of unspoken expectation that as a healthcare worker you are, like, healthy. Sorry to break it to you, but that is not what the whole 12-hour shift full of stress, no bathroom breaks, and junk food in the break room lends itself to.
Add in the complexity of having mostly women around you who have been socially conditioned to body shame themselves for not looking like an underwear model. It really gets tricky.
As "that skinny bitch” to many nurses, all I want to say is that #idocrossfit because it's how I take the edge off the stress I carry in my body and mind.
Maybe yours is yoga, or Zoomba, or hiking, or ribbon dancing (Will Ferrell can give you some inspiration) or whatever. The point isn't to make you look like an underwear model, it's to give you, the nurse, some of what you need for yourself. Without giving to yourself, you aren’t going to have much left for others. Let’s make that awareness a little more commonplace.
👩⚕️Hi I'm Stacy; as an experienced BSN, RN, CCRN in AZ, I'm excited to be a part of building a better way for RNs and NPs to be precisely matched with nursing positions that really fit them. I’m fueled by oat milk lattes, telling people I do CrossFit, and whisky 🥃 neat.