 Alright, what's up you guys? So I have been talking about my mental health and how I have realized that, you know, there have been moments in my life where I really haven't truly taken care of myself. I haven't kind of done the self-care that I need. And as a mom and a wife and a provider working in healthcare, these are things that you, like self-care is almost something that you put on the back burner. But it really shouldn't be because in those different areas you are giving so much and people are taking so much from you and rarely are you being filled back up. And so I talked about a young lady that I had spoken to before and she had decided to not pursue the PA career because she was tired of hearing noses, you know. And I thought I was super novel in coining this term like rejection fatigue but I wasn't. It's already something that was going. But I wanted to talk about that and how that pertains to our mental health and then also how we can try and combat this rejection fatigue so that we don't miss out on things that, you know, God has actually called us to. So this video is gonna be about rejection fatigue. If you are in like the healthcare career or trying to get into this healthcare space, this video is absolutely for you. And even if you're not, even if you're in one of the creative spaces, this video is also for you. So let's get into the video right now. What's up you guys? This is Donna. Welcome back to my channel. So I am a PA. I'm a trauma like Q care surgery PA and I cover other subspecialties on the side. However, I wanted to talk today specifically not necessarily about the PA career per se, just an aspect of it which is getting into PA school because that is where you can get bogged down with the nose. So we're gonna talk about rejection fatigue and if you've never heard about rejection fatigue, rejection fatigue is real. It is essentially this spiral that we can go into after hearing nose. So typically when you want to like recognize like, okay, am I in this space of rejection fatigue? There are some things that you can kind of realize and recognize about yourself in that moment and hopefully once you've identified it as rejection fatigue you can then pull yourself out of it. So with rejection fatigue, it's essentially you'll have this trigger of a no typically, you know, after a bevy of nose that you've already had and that no will then turn into negative self talk where it's like, oh, I will never be a PA. I will never be a chef. I will never be an actor. I will never be dot dot dot, right? You will never be this and then after that you'll go into more self talk about I am the worst or I am not good enough or I'm not smart enough and then when you've done that bad self negative talk, you will then spiral even more into a state of, you know what? Well, this is just not for me. I don't want to do this. You may have less energy throughout the day, less desire to do things that you wanted to do before and it's really just an essentially a state of depression that you get into after hearing a bunch of nose. So and you can also have anxiety with this rejection fatigue. So things that we are already terms are already familiar with in depression and anxiety but really triggered by a no. So now that we understand what rejection fatigue is, how can we actually see this in the career path that we're trying to get into, right? There are many careers where rejection is par for the course. When you are an actor, a model, a musician, an artist, a lot of these creative spaces, you get a lot of nose before you get that yes, right? Before you get your big break, there are lots of nose, you know, try again next time. Thank you so much for trying. The same thing goes for PA school and grad school for different career paths and even med school, right? You will apply to a ton of programs before you get into the one and a lot of us will have to apply more than once before we get actually even an interview and then hopefully an acceptance but even that is not the case. So a lot of times you're hearing no, no, no, no without even an explanation because you're just getting that deny a letter from the program when you're applying to PA school and then you're left to kind of your own devices to figure out, well, why wasn't I good enough? Why, you know, why couldn't I get in? And this is what can trigger the negative self-talk about not being good enough, not being smart enough, looking at your GPA and you're like, oh, well, you know, it's high but I guess maybe it's not high enough. There are other things that I could have done and that can spiral you down. So with that being said, once you have recognized that, you know, once you've realized like, man, I am in this kind of space of negative talk and, you know, I don't know if there's careers for me and you're realizing that you're probably at a place in life where it's like, you know what, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. This is your moment to really take a step back and truly assess where you're at so that you can figure out exactly how you can get yourself out of this, this negative space, this negative self-talk, this rejection fatigue and rejection burnout to put you back on track to get to the career that you want to get to, whatever career that may be. So let's talk about how we can get that done, okay? So obviously the first thing that you need to do is understand what rejection fatigue is. We've already gone over kind of a definition and things that you can look at and look for because if you don't know what you're in or if you don't know what state you're in, then you can't really combat it, right? So the first and foremost thing that you need to do is understand what rejection fatigue is, what that looks like in your life and being able to not only recognize it but to point it out so that you can now make the necessary changes. The next thing that you should really do is just kind of reframe your thoughts, okay? And by reframing your thoughts, you know, mind over body is like a powerful thing. We can set ourselves up to fail and set ourselves up to succeed. So rather than using the negative self-talk and saying I'm not good enough or I will never be a PA, I will never be a doctor, I will never be a nurse because you can't pass this NCLEX exam or whatever the case may be. I will never be, you know, an actor or a model, whatever it is that you're going for that you have been rejected from so often, rather than saying I will never, you reframe those spots to I will, I can, I am smart enough. There may be just some things that I need to look at and redo or adjust how I'm doing it, but I can do this. I am good enough. Reframe those thoughts and give yourself more self-talk so that in those moments of like down and distress you can actually help in pulling yourself out of those depressive thoughts and those anxiety fuel thoughts. Another thing with the reframing of those thoughts is you can look and you see well how will I feel about this decision if I choose not to move forward with it in five years or three years. What would I say to a friend of mine who was like you know what, you're, I'm not good enough, would I tell them yeah you're not good enough or would I say you know you are good enough, you can do this. When you look at those same moments from a different point of view it's easy to see all right, you know what, this is this this thought that you're having, these thoughts that you're having aren't good for you, this is not where you should be. So snap out of it, okay, so that is one thing that I want us to actually really think about and do is reframe our thoughts. The next thing that you should do is kind of like step off of this like hamster wheel of the application, okay. I know that it's easy to like apply every single year like every cycle because the cycle rolls around so quickly, you know like in no time like April comes around you're starting to apply your rejection letters may start coming in the fall and spring and then again April is here for the new cycle and so you're like okay I need to apply again and sometimes you don't do the necessary things that make the necessary adjustments to make your application for the next cycle even better and so you get stuck into this like vicious vicious cycle of like you know the negative thoughts and then the nose and applying again and it's like around and around and around we go right and so we don't want that we don't want this whole you're on this hamster wheel and you're just running so sometimes you need to take a step back step off of the wheel and actually take a bird's eye point of view of your application what you're trying to do where you're trying to go and look at the areas that you may be deficient in I guess you could say where you have room for growth you have room to better yourself make an actual like detail plan on what you need to do what steps you need to take to make those deficiencies strengths or get them to a point where they give you a better boost and then plan out a plan of attack for getting that done those are the things that we need to do and you're not going to be able to do that if you're constantly running on this wheel sometimes you have to take a step off you have to step off that wheel and actually sit back and look and make a true assessment of what you need to do so that you can better yourself so that your application is better for the next round and that may take a year or it may take a year and a half or two years but that is on you to decide how much you're willing to give how much you're willing to do if you really feel that this career is for you you see that little rhyme there man you know I could have been a rapper in another life thing that I think we should do is be able to practice gratitude and it's so hard it is so hard in those moments of like you know nose or anything like that um that you you can practice gratitude and be like you know what god I'm so grateful for XYZ like I'm so grateful for my family I'm so grateful that you've put me in this space I'm so grateful that you've allowed me the opportunity to even graduate from undergrad so that I can be in a place where I can apply to PA school I'm so grateful that I have the money to apply to PA school and to multiple PA programs thank you so much for all that you've done it's really difficult especially in those moments of no trust me I know like you guys were with me in one of my lowest moments of nose um and where I was like man I like god I feel like you're the one that brought me here like what happened why um you know but when you sit back like after that week of depression like deep depression that I went through um and I came back and I was like you know what no Adana like god has a plan for you like you are built for this like don't worry about it um and I looked at how far he has brought me um I looked at how I was able to get into school and pay for school and you know I didn't even really have the money to do so um you can see the the the bevy of blessings that you've gotten and as long as you're able to now acknowledge that and show that gratitude it will help even more bring you out of this state of anxiety and depression um that rejection fatigue kind of thrusts you into the last thing that I feel like you should do is just check in with yourself okay after you've gone through all of those things kind of do a self check be like you know what like where are you at on um on that like mental emotional level like yeah you may be down you know are you feeling like you can't make it are you feeling like good about this like you know go take some time for yourself go like do a spa day or something you know just give yourself some time to really sit back and breathe and decompress um and then you do that true self check because like I said and I've said before like PA school even being an actor and a model and all these other careers that we get knows on a lot it's not for everybody it's it's not uh and that's okay it may not be for you and the only way that you're going to figure that out is if you actually try or and and you know you don't get in and or if you do a true self evaluation and a self check in to realize like okay um am I going to be happy in this do I see myself being happy in this what does this job really look like what is the day to day in and out of the job are the people that are currently in the job that I want to get into happy um what does their lifestyle look like is this something that I can see myself doing when you're really able to kind of do that self check on is this really what it's all cracked up to be for me um and if it's not then you know you know like alright I gotta go do something else I gotta find what makes me happy if you still see yourself on that path go for it do it it is there and it is yours for the taking okay so those are just a few of uh the tips that I've come across and things that I've seen that can help you get out of this like mode of negative self talk and rejection fatigue and rejection burnout that many of us can have when applying to PA school or when applying to these more like other jobs and careers where uh rejection is par for the course okay if you guys have any other questions for me leave them in the comment section below thank you guys so much for watching if you haven't already answered like this video y'all follow me on instagram and on the pa and on instagram and get that to university um I will talk to you guys next time