By educating your team and leading by example, you can foster healthy dialogue and healthier habits

Mental health awareness is more prominent than it’s ever been, and self-care businesses are key sites for the revolution. Great self-care businesses make sure their clients feel safe and cared for, but that poses its own challenges. Providers often end up listening to their clients’ issues while dealing with their own. They need support from their managers, who also have their own lives full of complex feelings or mental illness. How do you break through that nesting doll of mental health complexities?

In episode 6 of our podcast, Last Client of the Day, we asked licensed marriage and family therapist Sandra Shahrokh to help us figure it out. She had good news: Change starts at the top. Managers and owners can build the authentic, supportive environment of their dreams, and Sandra shared some tips on how to get there.

Embracing vulnerability

Every self-care client has to let down their guard to receive service. At a medspa, clients put their health and appearance in their provider’s hands. Spas get even more intimate as clients shed their clothes. And at hair salons, all the trauma around hair can come bubbling to the surface. Providers need to know how to hold space for those feelings, and they aren’t born with that knowledge.

Before she came on the podcast, Sandra asked her own hairstylist about what she heard from clients. The stylist told her that she hears all this trauma, and often ends up at a loss for words. “‘I’m just sitting with this person’s pain and trauma about how a parent cut off their hair, or how they’re mixed race and they always hated their curls, or their curls weren’t accepted,’” Sandra quotes. That provider may not know how to actively listen or reassure. They may think it’s their responsibility to solve their client’s problems. They may even collect their client’s tension and start carrying it in their own body, leading to even more stress.

As an owner or manager, you need to prepare your providers to handle those delicate situations. Training them in active listening is a great first step. When providers can show clients they hear and care about their problems, that can help lighten the client’s load and improve their experience. By using active listening as a strategy, providers can shift their perspectives and see the interaction as professional, rather than personal. That can help them compartmentalize the experience and avoid internalizing their clients’ tension.

To take things to the next level, Sandra recommends hosting monthly training sessions with mental health professionals. Those sessions can give providers more ways to respond to tricky client stories. Finally, you can gear up for serious cases by putting together a packet full of mental health resources. When providers feel it’s appropriate, they can then hand that packet to a client and encourage them to get the support they need.

Support your staff

Of course, clients are far from the only ones living with trauma or mental illness. Providers may have issues of their own. The difference, according to Sandra, is in their postures. Clients come in with the walls down, ready to share. Providers tend to come in with their guard up. They’re often just trying to get through the day, finishing their work without causing a problem. That can make it very difficult for them to open up about their feelings.

“They’re like, ‘No I’ve got this. I can see 5-10 clients a day. I’m fine.’ But then they’re going home and feeling burnt out,” Sandra says. “They may go to work with a smile on their face, but no one knows that they’re struggling.”

Some providers may want to air out their feelings. You can give them that release by setting periodic meetings for open discussion and encouraging them to share what they’ve struggled with lately. As people share, they can build up a culture of open dialogue that helps to keep their negative feelings in check. It can also encourage staff to open up when they’re not feeling their best, which gives you and your team the chance to support them.

These sessions can be even more effective if you share resources for identifying and managing negative feelings. That might include videos you’ve found helpful, online articles, guided meditations, or any number of other things. But what if you don’t have those resources? What if you don’t know where to find them, or how to know which ones are useful? In that case, Sandra suggests looking for a second opinion.

“If you’re feeling like a shift needs to be made at your company and don’t know where to start, hire someone. You don’t need to know where to start. You don’t need to figure it all out,” she says.

Lead by example

Before providers can feel comfortable sharing honestly, they need an example to follow. The best way to show your employees that they can be vulnerable with you is to be vulnerable with them.

“It has to start from the top,” says Sandra. “What are business owners doing to model that it’s ok to take time for yourself?”

Sandra recommends starting by taking your own temperature. How have you felt lately about work? Are you noticing that you’re short on patience or losing focus during everyday tasks? These may be warning signs that you’re running into burnout, and the sooner you respond to them, the better.

Although Sandra recognizes that therapy is not for everyone, she still recommends that managers and owners give it a shot. If it clicks with you, it can equip you with tools to identify your own struggles and handle them with grace. Best of all, you gain someone you can trust to help you through those mental hurdles.

“Therapy is a space where you can bring your stress, your worries, your anxieties, and you don’t have to do it alone. You’re getting support,” she says.

But therapy is far from the only option. Some people respond well to journaling. Others see great results with prescription medications. It’s a wide world of possibilities, and everyone’s path to mental health is different. Your staff doesn’t need you to solve their problems, but they will benefit if you give them the time, space, and support to find solutions of their own.

If you’re able to speak openly about your own process of self-discovery, you can help break down stigmas against vulnerability. Your staff can see that you believe in being vulnerable and honest, and they may feel more comfortable giving that energy back in an honest conversation. Building that culture lets them know that you will support them even on their off days — and we all have off days.