Mood and Stress Expert Erika Ferszt on ”Using Your Brain to Prevent Workplace Burnout”

Welcome back to the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning podcast, for episode #198 with mood and stress expert, Erika Ferszt, who was a senior creative executive for over 20 years and for 10 of those years, led all of the advertising, media and digital efforts for Ray Ban. She must have made such an impact with her work that the Ray-Ban Erika’s were named after her! Watch our interview on YouTube here https://youtu.be/y-vFVaiBPrw On this episode you will learn: ✔︎ The signs and symptoms of work burnout that led Erika to leave a job she loved and create an app to help reduce workplace stress. ✔︎ How her health scare led her to pursue 2 years of Postgraduate studies in neuroscience. ✔︎ How someone without a science background can understand and teach neuroscience in a way that it's simple and easy to use. ✔︎ What she offers at Moodally.com for corporate executives. ✔︎ How a stress management program like her app can help improve self-efficacy, so we can better manage our daily stress. In 2015 she suffered a burnout episode and was hospitalized for 10 days with stress-related vision loss, and through this experience, went back to school to study the relationship between stress, the brain and the mind and founded her company Moodally.com as a result.   If you’ve been following our podcast, you will see clearly why I have asked Erika to join us today, for season 7 of this podcast where we are focused on brain health and well-being. Welcome back.  I'm Andrea Samadi, author, and educator from Toronto, Canada, now in Arizona, and like many of you listening, have been fascinated with learning and understanding the science behind high performance strategies that we can use to improve our productivity in our schools, our sports, and workplace environments. My vision is to bring the experts to you, share their books, resources, and ideas to help you to implement their proven strategies, whether you are a teacher working in the classroom or in the corporate environment.   Today’s guest, Erika Ferszt, loved her job with Ray Ban. She will tell her story, explaining it was not like she was working for a terrible boss in a toxic work environment, but quite the opposite as she loved her work, but when her body reacted to the constant stress it was under, she was forced to make some changes, that led her to a whole new path in life.   Let’s meet Erika and hear how her burnout led her to create Moodally.com and a whole new life.   Welcome, Erika, thank you for meeting me on a Friday night (I think??). Are you in Italy now? (I know you said Europe).   There was so much to your story, when I saw it that resonated with me when I saw the path that you took after your health scare, but I have to start with a question that’s not so obvious (like tell me where this all started).   Intro Question: I’ve got to say that most people I know here in the US push themselves hard work wise. You know, the American Dream can be had, but there’s a price to pay, and I’m always watching those close to me, looking for a sign that the push is too much, and now we can measure if our body is recovered or not with these wearable devices that can tell us if we need to rest and slow down. Were there ANY signs or symptoms that you can think of, looking back, with that episode, that you were close to burn-out?   Q1: So, you land in hospital, with quite a scary situation. I’ve lost my eyesight before, but it was temporary, and in one eye only, and I found out later, after I freaked out because I couldn’t drive the kids to school, that it’s common (it was an ocular migraine and I Googled it by looking out of one eye while calling my eye doctor) but your vision loss lasted much longer and was serious (and when I Googled loss of myelin sheath around the optic nerve I almost wish I hadn’t. Can you share what the stress did to your optic nerve to cause the vision loss, did you Google it and notice what I could have been, and with everything that you learned