Breakdowns Before Breakthroughs | Interview with Danielle Ireland
Listen to this episode!
In this episode:
Danielle is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, a podcast host, speaker, ballroom dance instructor and actor—to name a few of her titles. She fully embraces being multi-passionate and has built a diverse career.
But it wasn’t always that way.
In this open and honest conversation, Danielle shares her journey of chipping away at her own insecurities, limiting beliefs and comforts and how she has been able to step more fully into her personhood and built a career that she’s thriving in.
In this episode we discuss:
Danielle's story of building her creative career and the process of slowly chipping away at the question, "What am I supposed to be doing?"
The tension of being "in the middle" of a story that has yet to be resolved, and how to stay grounded in the midst of it
Why breakdowns have to happen before we can have breakthroughs, and how to recognize when you're getting close to having one
Breakdowns Before Breakthroughs | Interview with Danielle Ireland
Jennifer: Danielle, welcome to the career foresight podcast.
Danielle: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to do this.
Jennifer: I'm really excited to have this conversation with you. So as a way to get started, would you please introduce yourself by sharing your full name, where you live, and a little bit about what you do?
Danielle: My name is Danielle Ireland. I'm currently working as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. The acronym is LCSW and I have my own private practice in the mental health space. So I work as a therapist and counselor by day and by night I also have a podcast called Don't Cut Your Own Bangs. And I also do public speaking and training.
Jennifer: Wonderful. So, is therapist the best general word to describe you work in the mental health space, or do you prefer another word?
Danielle: No, therapist is the shorthand that I like to use. I have found though over the last few years as introducing myself as a therapist, surprisingly, several people say, “Oh, like a physical therapist?” And I, and I say, “Nope, not a physical therapist.” Probably the more accurate clinical definition is a psychotherapist, but I don't like the way that sounds. I don't know why I but something about like a psychotherapist that just, I don't know, it brings up, it conjures up images that don't feel warm and fuzzy and I consider myself a little bit more warm and fuzzy. So yes, therapist is very appropriate.
Jennifer: All right, so moving forward, we can use the word therapist here and everyone will know what that means to you.
Danielle: Yes. Thank you.
Danielle's story of building her creative career and the process of slowly chipping away at the question, "What am I supposed to be doing?"
Jennifer: So one of the I love about you and you that you briefly mentioned in your introduction is that you embrace being multi-passion
Jennifer: So one of the I love about you and you that you briefly mentioned in your introduction is that you embrace being multi-passionate and having a diverse career. And when I was looking at your website, I saw that you list like five different professions that you've had do have. You mentioned being a therapist, being a speaker and workshop facilitator, a podcast host, and then a ballroom dancer and an actor.
Danielle: Yeah.
Jennifer: Okay. Yes, this is so cool. This is something that I think will resonate a lot with a lot of the people that are listening because a lot of my listeners and clients have this in common with you. They have varied interests or varied passions and one of their goals for coaching is to really figure out how to bring that all into alignment and build a career that feels creative, meaningful and that helps them attain the different goals that they have.
So what I know is that it can be challenging for a lot of people is to come to a place where they feel comfortable with having multiple identities and different creative pursuits. So I would love it if you could talk me through your journey and kind of if you ever experienced feeling those ways and how you have brought it all together.
Danielle: I love this. It is probably one of my favorite things to talk about with people in life. And I think that's largely in part because what I've really come to understand that we end up teaching what we need on some level. And so I think my podcast was really birthed from me being on this journey and getting kind of trapped in comparison and feeling like my resume needed to look a certain way or just that my path should have looked different than what it was. And the podcast really kind of became, I think a love letter and a creative outlet for me to hear and be reminded a million different times that no one's path is the same and we're all trying to figure it out.
But to answer your question more specifically about me, I remind myself of this a lot that the way I'm feeling or like any presenting problem that I'm struggling with today, at one point I will be able to reflect on that in hindsight and have a different perspective on it. And so I think that's the gift of hindsight.
And also sometimes as a therapist and as an emotional, empathetic person where I wrestle is not wanting to present myself like I've got my life all figured out. So any of the conclusions I've come to haven't allowed me to kind of skip over the steps that I'm currently struggling with now.
I started working in commercial acting when I was 13. I'm 35 today. That really came about because I wanted to find a place to fit and belong. I really wanted that to be competitive sports, but sports didn't want me, like I wanted them. I loved the idea of like camaraderie and team and community and participating. But then when it came time to actually be on the field and care about what was happening, I would just lose interest. I would get distracted.
I tried every outdoor sport you can think of cause I loved being outside but it just didn't hold my interest. I would catch butterflies and instead of, you know, catching balls. So it was I think a process of just not finding my space and my niche.
Then someone said, “Hey, you should go to this open casting call for an agent. They are looking for young people to do certain things”. And I said, “Okay, sure I'll try.” And I started booking commercials locally in Indianapolis where I'm from and really loved that. And that got me more interested in thinking about acting. And then of course that led me to community theater and school theater and school plays.
And I found, again, this is all in hindsight, but I found a community where I felt like I fit. And so the performing arts became where I liked to play and express and explore and that carried me through all the way to college. I went to school, got an arts degree. I was a theater major and a telecommunications minor from Ball State University and I was utterly convinced, just so probably obnoxiously certain, that the plan was to move to LA and then I was going to make it on a sitcom like Friends and then I was going to transition into movies and be friends with Julia Roberts and also have Oprah's phone number.
And that was my plan. And I had checked all the boxes and done all the things that like a good student, people pleaser, you know, good Midwest girl is taught to do, right. Like you get the A's, you do everything right, you follow all the steps and I did all of those things. Then when it came time to actually packing my car and moving to LA—I remember I was shopping for apartments and I had what I probably understand now to be a panic attack. It just was just like a whole crisis of identity. This life that I had convinced myself of being my future, I realized when it came to actually uproot my life and start a new one, the only thing that I knew for sure at that time was this was not it and it was terrifying to recognize.
Then I felt like a big old failure and then enter pretty much from that point on to where I am today became a journey of discovery and trying to figure out “My God, who am I and who am I apart from what I do and what do I care about?”
And it was around that time that I had kind of bounced between working in retail in summers and holidays in college. And I just found myself as a college graduate working as an assistant manager in a retail store in our local mall. My self-esteem knocked down to dust, I just felt awful. And I was sort of floundering a little bit. And this is where ballroom dance comes into the story.
My parents actually met as instructors and their lifelong best friends still own the studios that they all worked at together. And it was an Arthur Murray franchise for anyone listening who may know anything about ballroom. But I think I was six months out of college and I was living at home and I was working in retail and I was still doing commercial acting locally. And every once in a while, I would hit something big like a Hoosier lottery thing or like a Kentucky lotto kind of thing. But anyway, the ballroom thing came into place because they were starting a new training class with instructors. And my dad just suggested that I try the training class and I did.
And what that became was basically a seven-year journey of just sort of detouring. I think ballroom dancing checked a lot of boxes, I was able to perform, it was a creative outlet but it also was so time consuming and it also ultimately became my entire social network that I think I put the self-discovery on hold because this felt so safe in a way.
The tension of being "in the middle" of a story that has yet to be resolved, and how to stay grounded in the midst of it
Jennifer: Interesting. So when you say a seven year journey, do you mean that became your primary career for seven years?
Danielle: Yes. So from the time I was 22 to basically when I got married at 29, And I would bounce back and forth between being a full time instructor for four years, something wouldn't quite feel right. I would think maybe I need to look for something else and I would go part time, we'll try to do other things.
But it was like in short burst because it didn't sustain me long term because ultimately I had to be the one to figure out what ultimately is truly fulfilling for me. But dance was that for a chunk of time.
Jennifer: So thank you so much for sharing that. That is so relatable. And it sounds like when you were in the ballroom dancing position, you found like a certain level of confidence, or security in that, but maybe not fully.
Danielle: 100% yes. I found confidence in this was something that I was good at, that I could do well and that was fun to do. It was, it took me that entire seven-year period though too, to really know that I'm doing a cool job that other people think is cool also. That it wasn't enough to sustain me long-term. It would kind of be like whatever your favorite dessert is, it would be like trying to have every meal be your favorite dessert because dancing was sweet and it was savory and it was delicious and it was fun and I enjoyed it every time I participated in it.
But it didn't fulfill me. It wasn't the thing.
Jennifer: Okay. So what words would you maybe describe where like underneath that like if the ones that were hard for you to acknowledge?
Danielle: There was a restlessness. And I felt, I felt kind of the way—if anyone who's been caught in like a Netflix binge has felt there's like that feeling you get when, when Netflix asks you if you want to keep watching, meaning you've watched like five episodes, and you're like, “Oh,” you kind of get that dull ache of like, I don't know what else to do, so I'm probably going to press play, but I don't really feel good being on my couch anymore. It's, it was kind of like that. I would say it was a combination of pressure. I think I felt restless, I felt distracted. And then I also started to feel, this may sound a little dramatic, but it was the truth, I started to feel a sense of dread when my alarm went off.
I wasn't excited about showing up for my day and I would do little forms of self-sabotage. I could snooze too many times maybe have an extra glass of wine the night before because I was uncomfortable. And trying to figure ways to manage that discomfort. I found myself in relationships that were really just taking up space for me to keep me busy and distracted and not look at a hard decision that I inevitably ended up making. But I, I was distracted, tense, irritable and yeah.
Jennifer: Those are great descriptors and I've definitely been in that place before whether it's been career related or otherwise, you know, when you know something's not right, and you might even kind of know what to do, but it feels so overwhelming and daunting. I’m brought back to that feeling a lot when I worked with my clients and a lot of the reason why they're seeking a career coach is because they feel directionless or they just kind of feel lost in where they are. And, it's almost like they know there's something in them that wants something more for their life and maybe the avenue that they're seeking that in is through their career or they want it to be through their career, but that fear that even if they try, maybe it won't turn into anything or it won't amount to anything.
Danielle: Yes, gosh, all of that, all of that really resonates with me. Because I think thought, “I know I need to do something else. But I have no idea what that is. So I'm just going to kind of pretend like I don't feel it.” And it was sort of every couple months that that cycle would present and present and present until I started to kind of chip away at figuring it out.
Jennifer: So can you walk me through that process? Like what was the chipping away process? How did you arrive at what you're doing today?
Danielle: So that's a fantastic question. Sometimes I still get lost in is looking for that checklist because it feels so freaking satisfying to cross something off. I wanted it to be like a, like a step ladder. So I do this step and then I do this step and then I land in my dream and I go avocado picking with Oprah.
What it became or what it really was like was this circular, cyclical, repetitive process. I would feel uncomfortable. I would either take that discomfort into some self-reflection, like journaling or I would turn that, that discomfort to a conversation with a friend and kind of hash it out.
Like it, it kind of came from the inside out. So I would look within because I'm uncomfortable or I'm feeling discomfort, I'm feeling restless, I'm feeling unhappy. And, I think another key element to that I was letting myself daydream and letting myself sort of whack-a-mole, beating my goals back.
So I, I tried that, I did that for a year. And what I have come to know about myself is that around the three week Mark, cause once things are no longer new and shiny and it becomes your day to day, I I that internal guts like Oh yeah, no this isn't the thing. Or Oh yeah, this is the thing. Yes. And, but then I ignored that instinct for a year trying to make it work because you got to follow through. You got to do what you say you're going to do. You said you're going to do this thing. Don't, don't be wishy washy. Don't skip around. I didn't, I didn't want to have a resume with 15 different jobs on it. And so I kind of shamed myself into a corner. Luckily that business actually went under. So life kind of made that decision for me to leave.
Jennifer: That’s interesting that you shared that because I've actually seen this as a commonality with handful of other people who are doing work that they really love. A lot of people point in their story to a time when they were let go or had something shut down or whatever. And that event launched them into really taking those nudges seriously and following them.
And that actually happened to me too. I was laid off from my first job and when I look back I'm like, yeah, I would not have left that job because I felt, “Oh, I need to prove that I'm reliable. I need to put in the time in this job.” Anyways, I find that so interesting.
Danielle: It is. And I'm so grateful because there were enough opportunities for me to say, you know what, this is enough. And I think it's time for me to leave. But I just, I just wasn't trusting that instinct. Which I now understand this. I don't think I quite trusted myself or believed in myself enough because I, I'm such a rule follower, but I didn't realize I was following other people's rules, not my own, because I just hadn't gotten clear on what those were. But when that changed, then I thought, Oh, I'll, I'll have what I call my devil wears Prada moment. And I applied for a job at it's a company called BCBG max, Andrea and I, I thought, Oh, this is going to be great. I'm going to work in fashion, I'm gonna get a great haircut and I'm going to have great outfits and I'm going to just like straight through life and have like a Stanley Tucci best friend and I, and it sounds so silly, like I'm actually not trying to be flippant.
That was truly what was in my heart. I, I mean I think I'm a romantic at heart and also I think the theater person and me not of course I understood and understand that movies and real life are not the same. Right? But what I think I was chasing and what I think is true with everything I did until I started doing what I'm doing now, I was looking for something outside of me to define me and do all of the work for me. I was looking for something outside of me, like a job or a vocation to kind of fill all those buckets. And each time I tried to do that, I quickly learned this isn't the thing. And so what I stopped doing was trying to search for the job to give me those answers. And I did some real deep digging in trying to uncover that.
And once I started really getting clear on identifying the things that I actually loved, what I was able to do was look back and see where those presented themselves and it like all the way back through everything I've done. And, and I was like, “Oh, that's what I loved about teaching dance.” It wasn't actually my personal passion for dance, but it was, you know, someone coming in saying that they're going to a wedding where their ex is going to be and they don't want to feel like a fool or a couple coming in and you know, their daughter's getting married and they want to be able to be on the dance floor with her and all her friends and not just sit and watch. It was, it was, Oh, and I can give you this thing. I can participate in this thing to help you feel something different with, in your own ability. Once I identified that it, it wasn't a quick pack, but it, it started the pain, the momentum started to pick up. And it, it took about probably another year or two of that same kind of process of sort of introspection, reflection, action, practice.
Jennifer: Wow. One of the things that you said that really stuck out to me was how, when you realized what it was about your ballroom dancing job that like really brought you the joy—what is so neat about that is that on one hand, it really dignifies the work that you were doing as a ballroom dance instructor. I think is so important because I know for a lot of people who are career changing or who, you know, maybe don't feel fully satisfied in their job, what a lot of people do is they tend to see the job as one-dimensional. They may describe all the stressful things about it or the negative things about it or what's missing and lacking from it being a good job and that’s not a very healthy place to start making a career change.
Because if you're always thinking that the problem is that something's wrong and that there's something that's just better and going to be easy, you're never going to find it.
Danielle: Right. But I've never thought of it that way before. But I really like how you phrased that, that there's inherently a problem with what you're doing now and the solution is an extra step. You haven't taken or another certification that you need or another yes, that I, I've definitely fallen into that before.
Jennifer: Yeah. Because work and life are, you know, way more nuanced than just that. I think it's so important that people like are able to identify the good things or the valuable parts of what they're doing and to honor those and respect them even if they can then also say, “But this isn't for me right now,” or “It's not for me anymore.” And then move on.
Danielle: I love that.
Jennifer: Is it okay kind of talking about your podcast?
Danielle: Oh yes, please. Yeah.
Jennifer: Okay. So first of all, the name of your podcast--I'm so glad that we were planning on doing this because it's been the reminder that I've been needing because I want a haircut so bad and I am planning to get my bangs back. So I definitely have looked up how to cut my own bangs. Then I'm like, “Nope. Danielle says don't do that.” So, can you explain like what that name means to you and what types of things do you like to discuss on your show?
Danielle: I would love to. So the title is Don't Cut Your Own Bangs and it actually is not a podcast about hair or hair tutorials or anything like that. I was trying to think of a title for my podcast and I was really struggling with it cause I wanted to have a cool like one punch word like Apple, Google, like you know, just brand. But I guess it came more out of what's the feeling that I'm really trying to build stories around.
And the whole story with the podcast or the through line that connects every episode is when you're trying to figure it out and you're struggling and you make a mistake. And when the mistake happens, you know, you either tell a story about yourself or a story about the world, either everyone else has got this all figured out, but me or I'm the only person who's made this stupid, dumb, awful embarrassing mistake.
And I wanted to create a whole conversation that remedied that feeling. Either there's something wrong with me or everyone else has it easier than I do because that was the, I think of all of the, of all of the struggling and suffering and stress and sweating that went into trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I think the thing that maybe drug out that process longer than it needed to be and made it harder than it likely had to be with feeling like I was alone and all of that.
So, that was sort of the heart of the message. But what I also knew too is that I wanted it to feel light, accessible and be enjoyable. I was sitting in front of my computer and it just popped in my head. I'm just, yeah, don't cut, just don't cut your own bangs. Because I think almost all of my friends have had an experience either with their own children or themselves as children where they grabbed scissors and with all the confidence in the world, they were like, “Oh yeah, I'm going to do this and it's going to look great.” And they go snip. And then as soon as it's over, they're like, “Oh no.”
Why breakdowns have to happen before we can have breakthroughs, and how to recognize when you're getting close to having one
Jennifer: Oh my goodness. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. One of my favorite things about your show is that iwhen you nterview your guests, you really like to focus on the middle of the story. Not just the beginning and not just the tied up, wrapped up end and that’s just makes them so relatable. And I love that because, thinking about narratives or thinking about life in the term in terms of a narrative is something that I've actually talked quite a lot about on this show and why being aware and conscious of the stories that we're believing in ourselves, you know, whether it's related to career or otherwise. And, but I think that the middle of it is the longest portion of any story.
Danielle: Oh, I joke all the time. It's like Harry Potter would have been two minutes long if it were the one boy up Baltimore. It's dead. It's like the whole, the whole, Oh, sorry, spoiler alert. If anyone has not seen Harry Potter, I apologize, but like that. But that is the whole, the whole journey is the second act. And I think that's where I also now understand the value. And I love that you use the word dignity, the dignity of my passion for storytelling and acting and performing. I bring that into a lot of the different things that I do, even though it's not. Like with the public speaking I do, for example, there's an element of storytelling that makes, I'd much rather learn a lesson through a really great book or a great story than have someone list out or in recite a bunch of facts to me.
And so when I make my experiences, if I kind of craft them into a story, it also helps me assimilate them. It's an exercise. There's actually a process of therapy called narrative therapy where you do what you're talking about. You, you look at the stories and the beliefs that define who you believe you are and who you, how you believe the world operates and how you fit within that world. And you can literally recreate that narrative. But the second act, the second act actually, if anyone wants to take this, you can totally run with it. The second act was a title that I was thinking about for a really long time, being the name of the podcast, the second act, but I was like, you know, if you're not a theater person, are they going to get what that means? Are they going to know? Like is that, so I got really hung up on that, but, but yeah, the middle, this is a direct quote from Brené Brown, but the middle is messy and that's where all the magic happens.
Jennifer: What's so interesting too about the middle is that like it never feels like you're in the middle when you're in the middle. Especially when the middle is years long or months long or whatever. You tried so many ways. And, I’ve been in this place myself where sometimes, you can’t even believe that something's going to change or something could be different and better. Like you sometimes just get totally stuck and somebody saying, “Well, you're in the middle and this is where the magic is going happen.” would make you want to punch them.
Because it takes being towards the end of the middle before you can even realize, “Oh, I'm learning.” Or, “Oh, I'm working through something.” So I'm like really curious from your own personal experience in your life, but also like from your experience as a therapist. Are there any practices that you've found are really helpful, help people kind of feel grounded and oriented with when they're in a season like that?
Danielle: Such an amazing question. And I'm going I hope I can answer it with true humility and awareness with my own limitations with this cause I'm still figuring this out too. What I'll say is that, so in a less sort of artistic creative way of expressing the middle is messy, but that's where the magic happens type of thing. There's in what I have said to clients many times because I've experienced this myself, is that the break down comes before the breakthrough.
You don't have the breakthrough without the breakdown. And that can literally be a mental breakdown or that can be a breakdown of a wall. That can be a breakdown of a construct of a way that you've seen yourself. You can define that however you want, but, but I think once you are aware of that, you can't skip the emotional step of experiencing the breakdown. And that is essentially grief. That's fear. That's shame.
Jennifer: All right. So to wrap this up on a fun note, I want to ask a question that I've been asking other people on this season of the show and it's about the future of work. What motivates you most about the future of work for creative professionals?
Danielle: Oh, what a good one. Initially when, when sort of the whole COVID wave washed through our country and in all the different precipitating outcomes of how everyone had to respond from that, I was really afraid of what that would mean for me and my business model because the greater part of my business and the way I get income right now is through my one on one sessions with my, my therapy clients. And I had done a couple of the sessions remotely, but zoom, Skype, FaceTime, tele-health, phone sessions that even though I knew that they existed, that wasn't a big part of my experience.
Important links to connect with Danielle:
And so I initially went from being really afraid, afraid. I was just, I wasn't afraid because it was changed to now being, gosh, seven weeks, eight weeks into working from home and realizing, Oh, okay, like technology is my friend. I mean it has its glitches and its challenges, but I think it excites me to think of the possibility that that technology could afford me in, in the field that I'm in.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this episode, and what topics would be most beneficial to you during this season. Send me your thoughts, opinions and questions by going to jenniferspoelma.com/contact and sending me a message!
