January 26, 2021
Coach Reita Johnston Explains REAL Happiness
Recently, TaskHuman specialist Reita Johnston sat down with Coach Jamie Carroll for a podcast interview about burnout on TaskHuman Talks.
Reita is a Trauma-informed Life Coach (she believes many people have trauma in their backgrounds), the founder of Power House Coaching, and a coach on TaskHuman. She regularly helps people dealing with burnout. She creates spaces for people to lean into their emotions, instead of avoiding them.
Reita has two critical messages:
- Attune to yourself
- Acknowledge your emotions
As a coach who went through burnout herself, Reita has critical methods for finding your meaning and learning your emotions.
1. Happiness Might Not Be What You Think It Is
Reita has described herself as “on a mission to find happiness.” Interviewer, Jamie Carroll wasted no time asking if she’s found it.
Reita admitted that her journey to happiness was not without work. When she began, she was a high-achieving woman in a competitive industry. She was earning the accolades and the money she thought she wanted. But something wasn’t right.
“I was achieving the things I set out to do, and I was miserable,” she says.
Misery wasn’t enough. Reita kept pushing herself until she was past her breaking point. She became sick. She was hospitalized. But there was even more of a “wake-up call.”
Her doctor said, “Whatever you have going on in your life if you don’t change, you won’t live to see the end of the year.”
With images of her young daughter in her mind, Reita knew she needed a change.
2. Burnout Is Everywhere
Her own experience inspired Reita to help others with similar challenges. She wanted to give people the tools they needed before they ended up in the hospital, or worse.
The first step: start to feel your emotions.
According to Reita, people are taught to push emotions away and ignore them. Because of this, emotions manifest themselves in our bodies – quietly causing havoc until one day we’re forced to notice.
When you allow yourself to experience the full-range of your emotions, you give validation to them. You open yourself to knowing yourself more.
You find happiness because you learn what you really want.
“It comes down to building a relationship with myself the way I would with anyone else,” Reita says.
Knowing yourself in times of stress is critical to your health. Reita cautions that in times of crisis (political and racial tension, as well as the pandemic, to start) we are traumatized, even if it’s not impacting us directly at the moment.
We all have a sense of loss. We need to work through it – not push it away.
Related reading: Using Relationships as the Key to Success in Burnout Prevention
3. Trauma Needs to Be Acknowledged
Recognizing and naming the trauma is the start. It gives access to the emotions and thoughts surrounding the trauma. Then you can begin to process it all.
People often create protective responses to trauma and the emotions behind it. Often these responses are body-based, motor responses (called Somatic Experiences). It could be tapping or hair twirling. It is anything we do with our bodies to make ourselves feel better.
Retia wants us to pay attention to our actions and when we’re doing them. It helps us tune into the sensations behind the emotion. Then, you can allow yourself to feel the sensation without feeling the emotion.
“We often learn these motions as children,” Reita says. “Then we are shamed for them.”
Using touch to soothe is normal, like a massage or a hug.
4. 2020 Has Pushed People Beyond Their Boundaries
Reita has not avoided the stress of 2020 and the beginning of the new year.
In the past year, Reita has seen an influx of people approaching burnout even quicker than usual. She recognizes the strain, adjustments, and lack of resources most people are facing. And she works with clients to help them face those challenges in the healthiest and most attainable way possible, while prioritizing her own self-care too.
“It’s hard to see all of the systems that perpetuate trauma,” she says.
The ongoing strain of reduced or different resources compared to our regular routines will continue to impact our lives.
Opening to your emotions is a practice that benefits you in all areas of your life—and one that Reita is ready to help you with.
Tune into Reita’s full podcast interview here.
If you are ready to work with Reita, or any other TaskHuman coach, schedule your 1:1 LIVE video call today.
