TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce!

If someone has told you they appreciate you and still gave you an unsafe assignment you already understand the difference between being valued and being protected.

This week we're talking about the second Nurse Love Language: Protection. Not boundaries the buzzword, but the real, structural, embodied experience of having someone in your corner. Of knowing that if something goes wrong, you won't be standing there holding all the consequences alone.

We get into the nurse who won't call out and what's really driving that. The difference between resilience and being repeatedly exposed to things you never should have had to become resilient to deal with in the first place. The bully everyone works around because leadership won't move. And what happens when the absence of protection becomes so normal that speaking up is treated like whining or weakness.

This stuff doesn’t stay at work! We talk about home life too.

If you've ever been praised for your strength while the thing that required it was completely ignored, then you’ll love/hate this episode (read: you really need to listen to it).

Fan Voicemail

Link in the show notes! Tell me: a time when someone protected you and you could feel it or a time you realized something was missing and decided to stop accepting it. Stay anonymous or don't. Your voice matters here.

Support the show

Hey! Make sure you subscribe to stay connected. Love a nurse? Who doesn't! Share with all the nurses you know. The more we reach, the more we help. We feel like no one deserves center stage focus more than nurses and our mission is to reach the millions of superstars out there. We'd love to hear your stories, your adventures, your wins, and especially your needs and questions! Email us at hello@ritualnurse (dot) com. Also, you can send us fan mail! Use the link at the beginning of the show notes. The Ritual Nurse Podcast is part of The Code Team educational platform.

Follow for resources, classes, blogs, and podcast info:

• Instagram & TikTok: @ritualnurse TikTok @the_code_team IG
• Shop: https://bit.ly/RitualNurse
• Website: tcth.org

Love your FAYCES!

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce!

Lukewarm Love: how NOT to love a nurse (Part 2 of 6)

This week we’re talking about the first Nurse Love Language: Initiative. Or, in less clinical terms: "please stop making me carry the entire mental load of the known universe by myself."

If you’ve ever felt more exhausted after someone offered to “help,” this episode is probably going to hit a nerve.

We get into the invisible labor nurses carry every day: tracking everything, anticipating problems before they happen, managing emotional tone, remembering details nobody else notices, and functioning like a human air traffic control tower while pretending we’re totally fine.

We talk about:

• cognitive overload in nursing
• executive functioning exhaustion
• hypervigilance and nervous system burnout
• why “just tell me what you need” can feel so draining
• what initiative actually looks like in relationships, teams, and daily life
• the difference between shared responsibility and silently managing everyone around you

We also dig into weaponized incompetence, over-functioning, and why so many nurses end up becoming the default holder of literally everything both at work and at home.

And before anybody spirals: this episode is not about expecting mind reading or perfection from the people around you. It’s about shared awareness.

It’s about what happens psychologically when somebody notices, participates, and shows up without needing to be managed through every step. If that sentence alone made your nervous system exhale a little… mmm
yeah. You’re probably in the right place.

As always, we end with Coffee, Crystals, and Divination because apparently emotional revelations pair beautifully with caffeine and shiny rocks. Who knew?

If this episode resonates, please share it with somebody who carries too much quietly. Text me using the link at the top of the show notes. Seriously. I read them.

You can also send a Fan Voicemail directly through the show notes and tell me:

• when someone truly showed initiative for you
• when they didn’t
• or what carrying the mental load feels like in your life

Your stories are becoming part of this conversation, and honestly, hearing from all of you has been one of the best parts of this series.

Listen, share, tag me, stitch it, scream into the void responsibly.

apple.ritualnurse.com
spotify.ritualnurse.com

Support the show

Hey! Make sure you subscribe to stay connected. Love a nurse? Who doesn't! Share with all the nurses you know. The more we reach, the more we help. We feel like no one deserves center stage focus more than nurses and our mission is to reach the millions of superstars out there. We'd love to hear your stories, your adventures, your wins, and especially your needs and questions! Email us at hello@ritualnurse (dot) com. Also, you can send us fan mail! Use the link at the beginning of the show notes. The Ritual Nurse Podcast is part of The Code Team educational platform.

Follow for resources, classes, blogs, and podcast info:

• Instagram & TikTok: @ritualnurse TikTok @the_code_team IG
• Shop: https://bit.ly/RitualNurse
• Website: tcth.org

Love your FAYCES!

TXT us your feedback!! <3 your fayce!

Happy Nurses Week.

If you got pizza, a pen, and a “you’re a hero” sign, congratulations. The system remains unchanged.

If you got nothing, also congratulations. At least no one pretended.

Either way, this episode is not about that.

This is the first part of a six-part series about something we don’t name clearly enough: why nurses can be surrounded by “support” and still feel like they’re carrying everything alone.

This is about lukewarm love.

The kind that sounds right, looks right, and does absolutely nothing to reduce what you’re holding.

If you have ever left a shift thinking, “I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” and then showed up again anyway, this is going to make sense in a way that might feel uncomfortable at first, but also relieving.

We break down the difference between support that is said and support that is actually felt. The difference between perceived support and received support. The gap between intention and impact.

We get into what weaponized incompetence actually looks like in real life. Not as a buzzword, but as a pattern where the work of thinking, planning, and managing gets handed back to the person who is already overloaded.

We talk about the mental load of nursing. The constant tracking, anticipating, adjusting, and holding that does not show up on a task list but absolutely shows up in your nervous system.

And we talk about how this does not stay at work.

How the same patterns follow you home. How being the one who manages everything on shift often turns into being the one who manages everything in your life. Not because you chose it, but because you were trained into it.

This series is not based on the popular “love languages” model. That framework is not strongly supported as a fixed psychological theory. But it did give people a way to start thinking about how they give and receive care.

We’re taking that idea and grounding it in reality.

Over the next few episodes, we’re going to walk through four specific forms of support that nurses consistently need in order to function and sustain themselves:

Initiative
Protection
Relief
Witnessing

When those are missing, what you feel is not random. It is patterned. And once you can see the pattern, you can start to change how you respond to it.

REFLECTION

Where in your life are you accepting support that sounds good but does not actually help you?

And what would it look like if it did?

FAN VOICEMAIL

There is a new voicemail feature in the show notes.

Use it!! woooo!

Tell me about a time when you realized what you were getting was not actually support. Or a time when it was, and it changed everything.

Keep it short or don’t. Stay anonymous or don’t. Your call bestie.

Support the show

Hey! Make sure you subscribe to stay connected. Love a nurse? Who doesn't! Share with all the nurses you know. The more we reach, the more we help. We feel like no one deserves center stage focus more than nurses and our mission is to reach the millions of superstars out there. We'd love to hear your stories, your adventures, your wins, and especially your needs and questions! Email us at hello@ritualnurse (dot) com. Also, you can send us fan mail! Use the link at the beginning of the show notes. The Ritual Nurse Podcast is part of The Code Team educational platform.

Follow for resources, classes, blogs, and podcast info:

• Instagram & TikTok: @ritualnurse TikTok @the_code_team IG
• Shop: https://bit.ly/RitualNurse
• Website: tcth.org

Love your FAYCES!