If you are an avid Love is Blind watcher, you will definitely relate to this episode. If you haven’t watched the show, we will catch you up on the structure of the show and why it is so fascinating as a study in relationships, both healthy and toxic. Emily and I both made lists of relationship red flags that we noticed in Love is Blind, and we are discussing those and how they relate to real-life relationships. As a disclaimer, I know that reality TV is heavily edited and that everything is contextual. We don’t know these people personally, so please take our opinions with a grain of salt. Join us!

 Show Highlights:

●      A look at Izzy and Stacey’s relationship—and the red flags on both sides of this polarizing couple

●      A Red Flag: Teasing and comments about appearance

○      What to watch out for: In early dating relationships, look out for how quick someone is to tease you about your physical appearance.

●      A Red Flag: When someone doesn’t have the emotional skill set to hold space for past trauma, mistakes, and vulnerability

○      What to watch out for: Someone who wants to establish their moral superiority to hold the power in the relationship.

●      A Red Flag: When someone’s enjoyment of me decreases if I’m not sexually attractive to them

○      What to watch out for: Someone who shuts down when you don’t look your best.

●      A Red Flag: Fake intimacy defending itself as “honesty” in disclosing vulnerabilities that are hurtful to their partner

○      What to watch out for: Someone who is emotionally immature about what intimacy and vulnerability mean in a monogamous relationship

●      The nuances of financial stability in a relationship–and who should pay for dates

●      Factors that determine compatibility in a relationship–and why that matters so much

 Resources and Links:

Connect with Emily Rose: Instagram and Podcast

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes.

• Transcript

  KC 0:05

  Hello, you sentient ball of stardust. This is struggle care. I'm your host, KC Davis. And I'm in the studio today with Emily Rose host of the podcast. It's become a whole thing. Hello, Emily.

  Emily 0:14

  Hey, KC. So lovely to chat.

  KC 0:17

  I'm excited about our upcoming conversation about love is blind and relationships and red flags and all that good stuff. Tell us a little bit about your podcast and where people can find it. Because we're going to do part of it here. And then we're going to do part of it over on your platform.

  Emily 0:32

  Yeah. So with it's become a whole thing. It's a subversive look at pop culture through the lens of the best and worst moments of reality TV. So there's no shortage of content there. And we look at it through the lens of relationship dynamics, diet, culture, cults, or cult like mentalities and how that's presented to us through reality TV, you can find it everywhere you find podcasts. And then I also do a slightly more unhinged weekly episode over on Patreon. That's hot topics and various life ramblings.

  KC 1:09

  So our chat we just recorded, it was like two hours long. Yeah. So what we're gonna do for y'all listening is we're going to split that episode into two, we will run one part here on struggle care, and then you can hop over to it's become a whole thing on all podcast platforms and hear the other part of that conversation. You don't want to miss it, the whole thing was so good. So Emily, thank you. And here we go. I was like this woman, those of you who don't watch Love is blind, there's this couple. And we're, by the way, if you don't want love is blind, it's fine. We're gonna catch you up on what we're talking about, we're not just gonna jump in. But the premise of the show is that they take these men and they there's these women that have never met each other. And they throw them together into these pods, meaning that they are sitting in this little room. And there's like this frosted glass between them, so they cannot see each other. And they basically like speed date, through these like frosted glass windows, so you can hear each other, they can't see each other. And the idea is that at the end of the experiment, I don't know how long they spend on the pods, like a week or something. But two weeks, maybe I don't know, they propose to someone like they pick someone to marry and propose to them sight unseen. And then there's like this reveal where they meet each other. And then they go on a trip, and then they move in together. And then like two weeks later, they go to the altar. And they either have to say like I do, or I don't. And they like save that decision for the end. Yeah,

  Emily 2:32

  so Lauren and Cameron really set the bar. Disturbingly, they're so lovable, and incredible. And one of the best couples come out of any reality TV dating show. And it feels a bit like a gong show since that, like it sort of feels like love is blind, in general has unraveled. And as far as looking for red flags, like there's no shortage of them in this season. So I was wondering if you wanted to kick it off with a red flag that stood out to you? Yeah.

  KC 3:03

  So and I'll say this, like, disclaimer, I don't know these people personally, everyone knows that, like reality TV is heavily edited. And everything is contextual. So I don't necessarily mean anything that I'm saying. Like, take it with a grain of salt. Whether it like applies to these people. Personally, I'm more just wanted to bring out like, because I talk a lot on my channel about relationships and about like, what are red flags and green flags. But when it comes to people being like, Okay, but what are the examples? I'm like, there are some perfect examples in this show. So the first one as I have like, teasing, and specifically like comments on appearance, so there's a couple in earlier seasons where like, that was like a big theme, but I specifically actually have two different clips that I wanted to play. And I want to talk about, like what I as a therapist see in these clips, okay, so let me give you a little intro. So this couple their names are Milton and Lydia, and this is on their little trip. So they have their little reveal and now they're starting to spend time together. And they have this interaction where she makes a comment that his ears are small. And he's like, Well, your ears are kind of big and she's like, Well, my ears are proportionate to my face. And so that's why we're picking up this conversation. Okay.

  I think you have a small face. Mason's and then big nose. Big Mouth to see a little bit a little bit ingrown hairs. I know I will punch I feel like wait till tomorrow shake or it's gonna hurt. can pick them out with a tooth. ever do that? Like that. I don't like it. It's gonna get nice and full. No All by I will say on this wedding day. No, I did not approve. Maybe I'll even really go to I'm not seeing any client not gonna do.

  Okay, so let me just give you some thoughts off the dome here. First of all, teasing and relationships is really contextual, like, so I'm not gonna say like, Oh, if you're ever teasing about appearance, however, one of the things that I find that happens that I really want people to look out for in early dating relationships, okay, is how quick someone is to tease you about appearance. Because oftentimes, and what I see with this example, and what the next one I'm going to show you, there's a difference between like, we've been together a really long time, and there's like a funny, you know, like my husband jokes that he's going to cut his hair into a mullet. And I'm like, Don't you dare, I would hate it or whatever, right? Or, you know, any of that this is early relationship, though. And what I find is that people will make these comments, and they'll pass it off as teasing. But there's like, some genuine irritation underneath where they're, like, not happy with something about you. And they want you to change something about you physically. So whether it's little comments about your weight, little comments about your hair, and I'm not talking I love when you wear your hair like that, right? But comments, kind of like what you see Lydia doing here. And in my opinion, she is criticizing him, because she is like has control issues. And that is something I think is going to be a mainstay in their relationship, that will always happen. And that to me, personally would be a huge deal. Like, I don't know, my husband has never criticized my appearance, even in teasing. Okay, this

  Emily 6:53

  is so fascinating to me. Because yes, I think it's important to distinguish what's okay in an early relationship and what's not because the teasing is, when it's in a healthy fun banter kind of way, it's something you build into, as you build trust to know like, you know, I can say a sarcastic comment to my partner, he knows, of course, I'm joking, we immediately will laugh. And if it was early on, it might be like, Who is this person? This is something that I'm looking at through the lens of I think, yes, Lydia has control issues. I think Milton is just along for the ride and seems to enjoy the thrill at this point, what I can't separate out is for me and my partner. So there's like this cultural difference where him and his family are from Mexico. And it's so different there the way that you comment on people's appearance. And this is something that we've talked over in terms of like, okay, what is acceptable? What is important to understand culturally, and then what is just something that universally is not going to be well received. So, with his family, like, they'll be like, you know, they're luckily there, they don't do this to me, but to him, they'll pinch his stomach and be like, Oh, gordita, you know, the first moment they see him? I would never imagine that in like, a white North American family. But so witnessing that I'm like, okay, you know, I see that there is some of that and, and at the same time, like there's ways that you navigate this, and there's the way that like talking about oh, your beard, and no, it's not acceptable. Like, that's not, I would say cultural difference. That's more just Lydia being very intense about wanting everything to be a specific way. And Milton just be like, I'm just, yep, whatever you want to do, you can just run through this situation. Well, I

  KC 8:41

  think that's kind of what it is for me. And I'm glad you pointed that out. Because if it's just you have little ears, you have a big mouth, like you're right, like culturally, making observations like that doesn't have ill intent depending on who you are. And so I'm glad you brought that up, because I do want to specify that for me the bigger red flag and like, if I was talking to a friend or a child and like giving them advice, it's the you're not going to do that. It's when the observation comes with almost like a coercion, or a preference of like, I want you to like there's this undercurrent of like so never wear your beard like that, please. Like we all have preferences. Like my husband knows that I like his beard and I hope he keeps his beard but like if tomorrow he decided to shave it. I wouldn't continue to make comments about Oh, you look so babyface. Oh, when's the beard coming back? Oh, with Does that make sense? Oh, completely.

  Emily 9:35

  And I need to also specify like all of her would never in a million years be like this is you're not wearing this like or you're not doing this or whatever. Like he really lifts me up but just in terms of like pointing out physical things. That is something that we've had to piece out what is just lost in translation and then what is just like personality things but it's like with the paper plates like with everything you're are putting things out there at the beginning and seeing how someone receives it. And you're never going to have a perfect match between the two of you. So it's how you deal with that. So even if Lydia's behavior is not healthy, it fits well with Milton who's just seems fine to go with the flow.

  KC 10:18

  That's the number one question is, Does that bother you? And if it doesn't bother you, it's not an issue. And I will say like, there's also like, neuro type implications, right? Like someone who's autistic might be making observations, and they're not making a criticism. They're literally making observations. And so for me, personally, I think it's that turn of, well, you're not going to do that with me. And you're going to It's like the difference between I love your hair up and oh, I wish you would wear your hair up more often. Your hairs down, it looks a little frizzy, you want to put it up like that, to me. And some of this is just personal, like, I could not survive or thrive in a relationship like that. Definitely

  Emily 10:56

  not. But yeah, the neuro type is an interesting also other dimension to add to it, because there's certain things that like saying, you look tired to a lot of people, that's an immediate visceral, like, don't say that that's rude. But to someone who is neurodivergent, or from just a culture, that's fine, they wouldn't be thinking anything of it. Of the You look tired. But they're, they do seem to be a good fit Milton and Lydia for all of their flaws. I

  KC 11:26

  think he's eventually going to be irritated. I see. Sometimes he like pushes back pretty hard.

  I'm not going to pretend like I wouldn't call up a friend after a day and be like, he was so creepy. He never blinked like, yeah, we're all human. We all make snap judgments. Like it's not a fault to feel those things about someone or to think those things. It's not a fault to not be attracted to someone. But you should for sure not tell someone that

  Emily 11:53

  Yeah. Oh, definitely. Yeah, you can think these things. You can say them in the group chat with your best friends, what have you. But it's you're not supposed to say that. And I think it's the same for really positive things like you first meet someone, you're like, Oh, my God, I'm picturing our whole lives together. Like, that's a thought too, that can pop up. But again, it's like judging whether that's appropriate to say out loud, which at first meeting is not, is where the real test comes in. And are you familiar with the Gottman Institute,

  KC 12:20

  very familiar, like, I know about the bids and all that. Okay.

  Emily 12:25

  So I don't know what your opinion is on them. But to me, when I was looking for red flags, and just looking at their relationships in general, I was seeing it through the lens of bids. And all I was seeing everywhere were rejected bids. And I just, I love the idea of bids. So for anyone who is unfamiliar, it's basically an attempt for one partner to turn to the other and get attention affirmation affection, like it could be something like simple as like a smile, like you smile at them, they return your smile, or being like, oh, look out there, look out the window, and they look and go, Oh, what is that? You know? And so a rejected bid would be like, No, I'm busy right now, which, you know, like, that's just a very small example. And that can happen. But on a bigger level, like they're putting themselves out there. And everyone in this equation on this whole show of love as well. And season five are just rejecting each other's bids, and like running them over left and right.

  KC 13:21

  Yeah. And there's, you know, it's just a bid for connection is all it is right. And it doesn't have to be huge. It can be really subtle. You put your hand out, or you ask your partner about their day or whatever. And I think that that's also what we see, like, that's a great observation that like what we're seeing here is, she says, like, hey, what do you think of the way I look? Right? And in that, like, is a bid, like, let's have this and he, like, we don't know whether he was like, totally pleased with the way that she looked. But he recognized that, like, there's this reach across the aisle kind of right, and he returns it with like, you're taller than I thought, but that's a good thing. Right? And but when he returns that, like, what did you think of me? Like to me, she very purposefully turned against that bid and like refuses to re extend any like validation or affection or connection. And it's often said that the Gottman study marriage, that's not exactly true. And one of the criticisms of Gottman, is that Gottman actually studies divorce. He looks at couples that are divorcing, and couples that are staying together. And he identifies what is in common with the ones that are divorcing and what's in common with the ones that are staying together. And they have incredible resources about those observations. So they talk about like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and it's like criticism, disturbing. I don't know what they are. He talks about the bids. He saw that like okay, when two out of three bids are mis directed or whatever, like that person is going to get divorced. They talk about all This, but one of the interesting, and I wouldn't even say it's criticism, but like critical thinking observations about them, that some therapists have brought up is, are these things, causes of the divorce, or are these things the products that you see of whatever's going on, that leads to the divorce. So for example, we talk about bids. And we say that like when your partner says, Oh, look at a bird, or how was your day or reaches out their hands to you, or any of that, we can observe that couples that go on to get divorced, are frequently turning away from and turning against those bids. So they're kind of like purposefully missing the chance to make that a moment of connection, whereas couples that stay together are frequently answering bids with affection and things like that. And that's true. But what happens from that is that then we get into this how to where people start talking about now we have to teach people how to respond to bids, we'll see that was a bid your wife made, and you missed it. And I think that there is some validity to that, because we may not be understanding when a bit is happening. And oh, if I slightly changed my reaction to that I could express the way that I actually feel. And there are certainly couples out there that deeply love each other, but are having deep miscommunications and feel alone. And sometimes you're missing the bid, because you don't like that person. You know what I mean? Like, if they don't like each other, if they don't respect each other, like teaching O'Shea how to respond differently, to Alia as bid may not be appropriate, because the issue isn't, oh, she's vulnerable. And, like, we don't want to teach him to just cover up the fact that like, he doesn't like her, like he is so disgusted by her behavior that he doesn't like it. And I think sometimes you see people like the bids are being missed, because they don't have affection for each other. You know, I mean, there's just so much like, my partner, and I have issues, everyone has issues, and sometimes they are very difficult to deal with. But I always say that, like we really like each other. And so almost every interaction is a received bid. Yeah. And

  Emily 17:04

  that's a really good point, because I actually hadn't thought of bids in terms of causation or correlation. You know, saying whether this is something that is the result of or this will cause it, the extent to which I liked the idea of a bid is just a good way of putting a label in context to your partner shutting you down, or not? Because yeah, we're going to be shutting down people that we don't like or don't agree with, or what have you. But I didn't realize until much later in life, that when you are compatible, there's so many bids, most of them will be received with open arms, that goes to, you know, when you're not in the same mood, but you still you know, find a way to bridge the difference or for me, pop culture is something that I love. And most straight men have found to be quite condescending, disparaging about it, that I love pop music, pop culture, all those things. And so but most of my bids, like if Oliver comes home, and I'm like, I need to tell you about something that happened like with the Kardashians, like he knows, like, yeah, okay, I'm gonna sit down and listen, even if it's not. And that might be a big ask, but it doesn't matter. Because there's, we're always going to, when you have the right person, you'll shine it on or you'll find a way to be just excited that that other person is excited. And

  KC 18:25

  that's kind of what I mean. It's like sometimes the issue goes deeper than just teaching someone. And sometimes that happens, like you realize, like, oh, when they're trying to talk to me about baseball, and I don't care about baseball, like they just want me to be excited about their excitement, like I'll have to be interested. But I don't have to like roll my eyes. Like, there's certainly times when you might be missing a bid because you just didn't recognize it as a bid. But in your heart of hearts. You want to respond to those bids. But like, I don't know, this morning, I got Egg McMuffin, and I got one for my husband. He didn't ask for one, but I always do when I'm getting one. And I came home, and he worked really late last night. So he was still asleep this morning when I got home for dropping the kids off. And our kids call the ham on eggplant muffins, hot meat. So they're like, I like those. I don't like the hot meat. Can I get one without hot meat? Like it's like we think that's funny, right? So I go into the bedroom and I'm like, I got you Egg McMuffins this time I got it with the hot meat. And his response was he was like on the phone doing something for work and he like put the phone down and what I like the hot meat so much. And it's like that, you know, if we were to like autopsy that invite, like that's a bid given and received like just a little joke that banters back but like, again, the observation about the bid being turned into isn't see they've mastered bids. It's like oh, these people enjoy each other. And sometimes if the enjoyment is missing, it could be missing because there's just been so many issues that you guys are having trouble getting back to that place because trust has been so broken and things have been so No harm, but you do really love each other. But that's a different scenario than these people no longer like each other. Yeah,

  Emily 20:07

  and I don't know if there's ever a context where it's okay to tell someone that they look like shit or that they look creepy, because even if someone's personality is off putting, you can address that, but you have to address the personality aspect. Well, that's

  KC 20:20

  also the part that like, when you talk about, like, knowing what's appropriate to do early on in this and the other, like, none of us are perfect with that. But in general, people are on their best behavior and the beginning of a relationship. So this is what they believe is their best behavior. And like we've all experienced, I think the issues of people are on their best behavior, and then you get down the road with them. And then like, they stopped making their best behavior, and the scary stuff comes out, and they're critical. And they're this and that, and it's whatever. And so like that happens, right? Like you don't usually see everybody's like, worst side on the first date. But that's kind of my point is like, if what your best behavior is like, what you're giving me out the gate is, I'm going to make a critical comment about your appearance, like, holy shit, that's your best. So like, how critical Are you going to be in six months when we're comfy with each other?

  Emily 21:12

  Yeah, exactly. And you could argue, I mean, this is different than your average relationship, because it's very compressed, they have a short amount of time. And while I'm not on Stacy's side to go back to Stacey and Izzy, I do understand being in a pressure cooker being like, okay, we're engaged. And we have three weeks to figure this out. So I'm going to be looking at everything you do under a microscope. And so I get that, but at the same time, like, just because you're in a time crunch, what people do, when they're stressed, is still who they are. So telling someone that they look weird, just because your stress is still not acceptable.

  KC 21:47

  Well, and some of this is like the emotional intelligence to be able to tell what you're feeling and why. Because, like, you might feel anxiety about I'm not sure if I'm attracted this person, I'm not sure if our lives line up, I'm not sure if like this person is going to be the right person, but recognizing that that's what you're feeling, and then being like, okay, so who's the appropriate person to discuss this with?

  Emily 22:11

  I had a question for you about something that was said in this was Milton's dad, on his wedding day, I thought was an interesting statement. He said, everything is good for the first two years during the honeymoon period. And then you deal with the rocky stuff. I've also heard the opposite, where oh, the first five years are the hardest because you work out your differences. And maybe there's no hard and fast rule. But I am interested in what you thought about that. Yeah.

  KC 22:40

  So there's this sort of like saying it gets thrown around where we say like marriage is hard. Marriage is hard. Marriage is hard work. And I think that it's easy to want to look at how I always say, like, I don't know, is the answer is like, I don't know if it is for everyone. It hasn't been for me. But I don't think that means that if you experience marriage is hard, it means you're doing anything wrong, necessarily. I think that life is hard that parts, and sometimes you don't have an opportunity to deal with certain hard parts about being human. And then until you get into a relationship with someone, and it kind of forces the issue. I think one of the reasons why my marriage hasn't been very hard is because of a few things. One, my partner and I are both in recovery for a long time. And so like we don't, we did a ton of therapy and a ton of our own growth as people we did it. There's a big emphasis on our programs about accountability, and taking accountability and making amends when you're wrong. And seeing the other person's side and exercise. It's like we did a lot of personal work before we got together, which I think smoothed a lot of things out for us. I also think that some of it is just luck, like our personalities are complementary in a way that is just luck. You know what I mean? What bothers us what doesn't bother us things like that. And then also, like, I think that we probably have a slight tendency to avoid conflict, which maybe three times out of five is a good thing for us. And then like two times out of five isn't right, because you let go of a lot of things. And that's good, because some things you should let go up. But then like, there's probably some things that you should drill down on that. You're like, Oh, I'm gonna let it go. But then you kind of get resentful or you get frustrated or whatever it builds. But I think what is really difficult is that, you know, sometimes you get together and it's the first time you're having to figure out things like how do I live with someone? And that's going to be different if you've ever lived with someone before. If you're trying to figure out, you know, how do I learn how to be vulnerable? Well, that's going to be difficult if this is the first time you're really drilling down on that how do I deal with conflict without being mean? Well, that's going to be difficult if if the majority of your life you haven't had as many opportunities to do that you haven't had blokes with friends in the same way, you haven't tried to work through that in the same way. So everybody's really different. And I think a lot of what is difficult about a marriage or a long term partnership is just difficulties in being human. And some people have their first experience with those issues when they get together and others don't. And there's also this really important nuance, where I think that there is a need to understand what is a reasonable amount of hardship, and what isn't, like being mistreated, being miserable. Every, like, life is hard, and your partnership should make it easier. But also, like, sometimes people have disabilities. And sometimes people relapse. And sometimes people have major medical issues. And that makes life hard. And that makes your marriage hard. And that read all of that. And I'm sorry, I'm like, I'm really getting to the point. But it's important that people know that if you don't look forward to seeing your partner, and in fact, you kind of dread it, and you find that there is like a level of mistreatment, a level of disdain a level of dismissiveness this level of, you can't get them to care enough to work on things. That's not what we mean by marriage is hard. We mean when two people are invested in the relationship and invested on working in the relationship, but we're two humans, and so we're going to knock heads and there's going to be misunderstandings, and there's going to be hurt feelings. Like that's hard. We're not talking about, I am pleading with my partner to care more.

  Emily 26:39

  That's the best explanation that I've ever heard about this. And you're summarizing a lot of disparate thoughts that I've had on this. And it's fine to the example of like, first, you know, living with someone for the first time and talking to about lack of compatibility, like I'm actually I'm half a year into living with a partner for the first time. And because we're like, very similar, we're both kind of glass half empty type of people, but it works for us. And so going into living together, we both focus so much on talking over our concerns that we actually once we moved in, like art experiences happened to be we're like cycling really well, like this is going to be thought and it's been smooth sailing and like not to say that we won't hit Roblox or whatever, but you have to dance with it. Like I, I kind of treat life like okay, it's crazy enough and throws wrenches at you, you know, left and right enough to know that that things are good now, and maybe I'll have to navigate tough situations. But there's something to be said for getting together with someone who has either done deep work on themselves or maybe hasn't, but is willing to go there. For you. It's recovery. And I actually saw a video you made about this the other day where you were like kind of joking cutting up, you're like find someone who's in recovery. And I just laughed because I was like saying, but for me, it was like big trauma and then had done a lot of therapy about it. That's what I went in almost as my number one thing. And that's what I found. And I'm like, oh my god, like, we're really able to speak the same language. And there's a lot of mines in the minefield that we've already like detonator or set like we've already like, disarmed ourselves. Like, we've already just figured this out, done a lot of homework just in navigating life, that there's not as much work to do now, that settling down to say, having done my 10,000 hours of past difficult lessons and relationships and everything.

  KC 28:46

  Okay, so on that subject, I have another red flag that kind of goes with that, which is like the exact same thing. It's like how somebody responds to you getting vulnerable to you talking about mistakes, things like that. So there's this other couple, and they're still in the pods. And it's Bucha. A is the man and Alia is the woman. And they have a great time. Yeah, yeah. And then at one point, she reveals to him that she cheated on in a relationship, and the relationship was two years prior. And she comes out with it. She says, I did this. And it's important for me to be honest with you, and yada, yada. And he's kind of like taken aback for a minute. And he starts to kind of, and you can tell like it really bothers him. Right? And so he even like challenges her a little bit with some of our explanations, because he's like, Well, how long ago was this? And why did you cheat? And she's like, Well, my needs weren't getting met. And you know, and she admits the entire time. Like, it was wrong of me. It was wrong of me to do. And he's like, Well, did you tell him? She's like, I didn't. Why didn't you tell him? Well, I didn't want to hurt him. Well, how long were you with him? If you cheated three months? Why didn't you just end the relationship? She's like, listen, I should have I didn't Want to hurt him by telling him and he's like, was it really about him? Or is it about you? Because then you would have had to sit through the backlash of your own behavior? And to her credit, she goes, Yeah, okay. Yeah, you're right. And so she's in this really vulnerable moment of like, I made this mistake it was two years ago, I want you to know, it was wrong of me. I don't ever want to do that again. And she even like, has grace for herself of like, I was in a hard spot. I didn't know what to do. And I know what I did the wrong thing. And she even says out loud, and I hate myself for it. And I want to play you his reaction made yourself be an honest person. You cheating on somebody, you being dishonest is about you. It's not about him. And I think he would have wanted to know about it. I cheated in a relationship, right? When I did cheat, it was when I was 18 years old and only kiss somebody else. So it's a little bit. So a little bit different. I would never do that to somebody else. And I think if I did, like I have the type of conscience where I would have to tell that person about it. Okay. I would put myself in that situation again, it would just be a no, I'm not.

  Emily 31:18

  How much longer were you with Matthew cheated on three months, three months. And you sleep with that guy another time. And

  it was just once, literally just once. That was my first and only time ever doing that in a relationship in your entire life in my entire life? Literally. I'm human, like I have my needs to. And I'm not saying that. Like it was selfish, but I have my needs to. And I'm supposed to just stay with somebody. No, no, you're

  breaking up with that person. I should just break up with that person.

  Unknown Speaker 32:01

  And I would do that now.

  Emily 32:12

  Yeah, well, thank you for being honest with me about that. You have more girlfriends or boyfriends. Okay.

  KC 32:19

  So I want to say a couple things out the gate. That is not how I personally would respond to someone being vulnerable with me telling them that I knew they had cheated on someone in the past. Because I think that it's an unkind way to respond. But that being said, That's not actually my issue, right? I don't necessarily have an issue with his judgement of her, because he might have a different value set, he might truly believe like, you know, because if somebody if some guy on a date were to tell me about something he did to his partner that I found so objectionable, and I felt like he was like, maybe making some excuses, I might have a strong reaction. Why would you do that? But that's about you. Like I wouldn't you know what I mean? Like, I might be concerned, I might be frustrated, I might kind of like, nail Him to the wall about it. And no

  Emily 33:10

  one wants to hear someone telling you the story of them cheating on a path, right.

  KC 33:14

  So, interestingly enough, although I don't like the way he responded, and I wouldn't continue in a relationship with someone who responded to me that way. I don't hold it against him for his having a very strong reaction for him having judgment on it, and even for the way that he pushed back on her, I don't think that's necessary, but whatever, right? However, here's my issue, he continues in the relationship with her. And to me, you get to do one or the other. Like, you either get to have this disdainful reaction and feeling about somebody's error, and grill them about it, and express that you are disgusted with the behavior and you can't believe and you would never do anything like that. Or you get to be in a relationship with that person. The fact that he continues in the relationship and still wants the relationship is a huge red flag for me, because what I felt like he did, it was like he just wanted to establish his moral superiority, so that he held the power in the relationship. And she should just be grateful that he deigns to continue to be with her even though she's such a fuckup. I

  Emily 34:27

  love that angle on it so much because you're allowed to put whatever parameters you want on a future relationship. You're allowed to say if I find out that someone has cheated in the past that is against what I believe I don't want to be with someone you're fully allowed. But if that's your belief, like do not pass go do not collect $200 like you, yeah, it's one or the other. And it was a moral superiority thing, especially in the context of okay if you're so against cheating, why have you done it in the past, like him positive Uh oh, I cheated. But it's okay. It's fully okay because I was 18. And I told her,

  KC 35:04

  you and I kissed it was just kissing, which by the way, we find out later that he cheated in relationships like three months ago, which

  Emily 35:10

  met people like that who are obsessed with cheating. They're always cheaters. And I had to learn that the hard way, like early on in dating, where I'm like, why it was accusing me of cheating, like, I would just say, and then oh, like they're thinking about it for a reason. But oh, this is totally okay. Because I was 18 You're This is completely not okay. Because was in this timeframe. And only two years ago, she said that, you know, at one point when she says, Oh, two years is a long time ago feels no, it's really not, though. Okay, like, then I wish you could have outlined like, what is the acceptable? Like, is there a statute of limitations for cheating, like is yours 10 years, so it's fine. And you know, the women when she went to them, I love that. I actually wrote this down, like one of them said, like, this is something that gives you clarity of how he reacts.

  KC 35:56

  Exactly. And it would be a red flag for me personally, just his whole reaction, even if he would be like, oh, I want to be I'd be like, no, because again, this is his best behavior is to be is to almost like emotionally Stonewall you to grill you to express disdain, in your moment of weakness. And again, the other thing is like, this didn't happen to him. Like if she cheated on him, like, of course, you know, like, these strong feelings, the strong feeling have to stay like that makes sense that he would get to express to her how he feels. But like, it's okay to feel those things. I personally think it was very unkind for him to say them, I think that you can keep those things to yourself and just not continue a relationship. But okay, whatever he said it, but like, if you say it, you don't get to then, like, put it as your trump card in the back. Like it just very, very red flag for me of like, a man that's going to react with anger and control and disdain to my moments of my mistakes and vulnerabilities.

  Emily 37:02

  Yeah, and if you look at the statistics on cheating, they're very high. And so if that's something you're against, that's really cutting down the dating pool, but also you're cutting yourself out of the equation, because you've cheated as well. So it is just about control. And I'd written this down as a red flag as well. But something else too in the follow up to this was when she came back to him and talked about how judged she felt and how hurt. And his first response was, did I say that though. And it was just that I was the most triggered of the whole season by this particular dynamic. This is so familiar to me. And my past, I was like, oh, it's the making her question herself. And while he's this angel, because all this is like, in the far rearview mirror for him,

  KC 37:50

  and we find out that one of the other girls on the show is actually his ex girlfriend. And he does not disclose that to like the very end. And Alia decides to leave. I mean, she ghosts leaves done. And he of course, makes some big deal about how horrible it was that he did that. But he continues to pursue her. And I feel like this is something that a lot of people struggle with, which is they're seeing behavior from a person that is hurting them that they feel uncomfortable about, but that person is still pursuing them. And they're still doing nice things for them. And they're still saying a lot of the right things. And it feels so good to be wanted. And it feels so good to be desired. That it can be really tempting to overlook that red flag.

  Emily 38:38

  Yeah. And for some people, they really get off on the continual asserting of control. Like for some people, it's like, oh, it's the thrill of the chase. But for some people it's not I mean, if it was about cheating, then he wouldn't have to or you know, like you said he would have walked away but it's about that continual like I'm going to take someone and I'm going to mold them to exactly what I want constantly because I'm going to turn this into my project basically Yeah, and

  KC 39:05

  I'm going to have the power like anytime we get to an argument this will probably be brought up she said she started on a level down from him and he has to prove herself and listen had she like not taken any accountability for it and been like it was fine and did it out like that i i thought it would have been more understandable to kind of be angry and be put off by it but it just anyone who contain maintains, like, disdain and meanness like in your vulnerability, especially if they weren't the one hurt. Like that's really the big key here. Alia

  Emily 39:36

  didn't have to tell him that fact. Just like ooh che could have maybe told her that Lydia the person is hugging Alia. She's sobbing is his ex. Maybe? Yeah. Well, I

  KC 39:48

  can't thank you enough for this conversation because I feel like it's exactly what I expected of like we're gonna talk about reality TV and how people actually on reality TV and it's going to open up some amazing conversations that like really matter about

  Emily 40:03

  how we do life. Yeah, we talked about the Venn diagram between both of our content. And I think on a very surface level, you might not see as much overlap, but it's so there's, we're really saying the same things in different settings. So just really looking at life and turning over these dynamics and seeing like, what we can pull out of them, and how that reflects in our own lives. So thank you for this conversation. This was lovely

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

As Thanksgiving is just around the corner, gratitude is an important topic. It is important to offer a more nuanced perspective, because gratitude can be complicated and can look very different for different people. Gratitude goes beyond the simple phrase, “Just be grateful.” In today’s Part 1 of two episodes, we want to give people a brave place to let their true feelings be what they are, regardless of others’ expectations. How do we practice gratitude in a way that isn’t toxic positivity but still validates our feelings and raises our quality of life? My friend, Christine Koh, is here to contribute to the discussion. She is a speaker, creative consultant, author of Minimalist Parenting, and the podcast co-host of Edit Your Life. Join us!

 Show Highlights: 

●      How we define gratitude–it doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone!

●      How gratitude can be an embracing the joy that is random in life–just as suffering is

●      How we define toxic positivity–and how it relates to motherhood

●      Why we, as a society, aren’t very good at sitting with uncomfortable emotions and pain

●      How Christine’s background and Asian heritage inform her view of toxic positivity

●      How spiritual bypassing relates to toxic positivity in not allowing feelings to be processed and explored

●      Why Christine is a fan of cognitive reframing–and how she uses this practical exercise to “flip the script”

●      Why we have to give voice to our suffering to process the feelings and move toward growth

●      How gratitude is an emotional muscle that we have to flex in our own ways

●      Christine’s advice to parents about teaching gratitude while not pushing toxic positivity on our kids

●      Why it is important for parents to model a wide range of emotions in front of our kids

 Resources and Links:

Connect with Christine Koh: Website, Podcast, and Minimalist Parenting book

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes.

• Transcript

  KC 0:05

  Hello you sentient ball of stardust. Welcome to struggle care. I'm your host, Casey Davis. And today is an exciting part one of a two part series. I'm going to be with Christine CO, who was a music and brain scientist turned multimedia creative. She spent a decade in academia during which time she was awarded a prestigious fellowship from the National Institute of Health to fund her PhD research at Queen's University and joint appointment postdoctoral fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Christina was about to become a professor when she decided to hang up her academic spurs in favor of more flexible and independent ventures. She's an award winning author, she wrote minimalist parenting, and she's a podcaster. She's the host of edit your life. She's also a creative director and strategist. And we're going to be talking about gratitude, toxic positivity, and how we handle hard times. So the first part of this episode is going to be right here on struggle care. And why did I say it that way right here on struggle care. And the second part of the episode is going to be over on edit your life. So be sure and hop over there when you can and hear part two. Okay, so Christine, thank you for being here.

  Christine Koh 1:17

  I'm so excited to talk to you. So I love your show. And we're both part of analyst and I just felt like it was time for us to come together on the mic. Absolutely.

  KC 1:26

  And I feel like this is like the perfect time to be talking about this. Because going into like you're in the US like Thanksgiving, and then Christmas like it's very much a season where people talk about gratitude. And there's this expectation that everyone is supposed to be excited and grateful about the holidays. And so I thought this was like a good it's were kind of like perfect timing.

  Christine Koh 1:50

  I think so. And I think it's so important to offer a more nuanced perspective to gratitude. I think it sounds like a simple thing. Like, oh, just be grateful, articulate what you're grateful for all will be well, and obviously it's so complicated. I mean, at the time that we're recording, we're a little ways out from the holidays. But I've been having some anxiety, just even thinking forward about people's expectations and wanting to stay true to my values, yet also not wanting to hurt people's feelings. I mean, there's so much wrapped up in this time of year. So I like to think of these two episodes, we're going to record together as a way to give people kind of a brave place to let their feelings be what they are, and dig in with us. And

  KC 2:37

  I'm super excited about the idea of having this nuanced conversation where we address the issues with like toxic positivity. And we don't like throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to gratitude. Like, I feel like we sometimes it's like toxic positivity is such a problem that we kind of like swing to the whole other side and say like, okay, like we need to talk about real stuff and hard stuff and have those feelings. And sometimes I think what's get what gets lost in that conversation is like, Well, is there any benefit to gratitude? And if there is like, how do we practice that in a way that isn't toxic positivity, but does make our life better, and doesn't invalidate what we're feeling? But does raise our quality of life? Like, I'm excited to get into this conversation?

  Christine Koh 3:28

  Mm hmm. Absolutely. I think I mean, we are complex mammals. That's something I often refer to. And I, it's a little puzzling to me why it's even an issue that people feel like we can't be multiple things. And, you know, I'm coming out of thankfully, a very, very difficult season of a couple year long season. And one of the things that I had to tap into often, mostly because I felt like I was kind of losing my mind, like how can I be in the depths of despair, or one moment, and then like really joyful about something the next moment, and I kept thinking about, you know, we are as humans, we have a unique capacity to hold both difficult painful things, as well as tap into good positive things. And that's a good thing. We need to be full dimensional people. So really excited to talk about this, and I can't wait to hear your thoughts about toxic positivity. I know you have a lot of that. And I think that's just gonna be a really good element to this conversation.

  KC 4:27

  Well, I thought we would start I had like a thought out of nowhere, but like, I think it'd be helpful to talk about like a good definition for gratitude.

  Christine Koh 4:35

  Yeah, I think if I had to just do one off the top of my head, which is right now, I would say it is figuring out a practice that works for you identifying that everybody's baseline is going to be a little different about simple ways that you can tap into appreciation for the moments that matter to you light you up, give you a little energy And then there's this whole side thing of while still acknowledging where you are in life. But I really feel like it's trying to find ways that work for you. Because there is no one size fits all solution, there can be a lot of suggestions about things that will help. And I know on the edit your life episode, we'll talk a bunch about tactics that we found useful over the years. But I just want to emphasize that there's going to be a little trial and error, I think, for people, and that's a good and natural part of the process. Yeah,

  KC 5:26

  I've been thinking a lot about like a working definition. And I think, for me, what I've come sort of rattling around this idea of like, it's the amplification of authentic joy.

  Christine Koh 5:37

  Oh, I love that that's better than let's use that that was framed beautifully. Well,

  KC 5:42

  and I because I was thinking about it this morning. And I was like, you know, part of this, like, we can't really talk about gratitude, without talking about joy. Because, you know, that we have to talk about, like, how do we begin to cultivate and recognize those like small moments of joy. And I feel like joy is the experience. And gratitude is the reflection, right? Like, think about something really small, right? Like I love when it rains. And I was sitting on my back porch this morning. And I like having a cup of coffee and looking at the rain, and like that brings me joy. But there's this like, extra layer, almost like meta layer of taking that beat to like, consciously recognize this is joyful, and then also have that reflection of, I'm really grateful, I read this really interesting article, talking about trying to define gratitude. And they were specifically talking about gratitude and relationships, like, Oh, I'm grateful for you. But they had this really interesting definition where they talked about like, gratitude is the ability to recognize when something beneficial is happening, and to acknowledge its external source. And I was like, Oh, that is a big part of it, which is like, I didn't make it rain. I didn't even like, even if I'm sitting on my back porch, like even the recognition of like having this beautiful back porch, like I didn't have to have this, this wasn't just because I deserve it. Like there was a whole lot of luck and good fortune involved in having a house that has a back porch, and being able to have the time to sit up like all of this kind of recognition, which I think is interesting, because so much of suffering, is grappling with how sometimes things are just random, huh?

  Christine Koh 7:31

  Wow. So we're talking about kind of, if I'm trying to wrap my mind around this correctly, is sort of embracing the random both for I mean, sometimes it'll just be confusing, perhaps in moments of suffering. And sometimes it will be a moment of serendipity like your moment with the rain and thinking about things that come to chance. I mean, just this past weekend, I was away with my family. And all of a sudden, my 19 year old, you know, who is by all technical measures, a grown adult, starts freaking out outside, and she's like, there's a rainbow, there's a rainbow. And we all run towards it, you know, and it was that joyful, tiny, little moment. And I don't think anyone said explicitly, I feel so grateful for nature. But I think that was definitely there, you know, similar to the rain that you experienced, like, wow, like, I'm noticing this right now. And this is pretty cool.

  KC 8:23

  And it's interesting, that connection of like, a lot of what makes like suffering extra hard is kind of like, I don't have a better term than meaninglessness, but like the randomness of it, right, like, bad things happen to good people. And we don't always have control and things don't just go according to plan. And there's like an extra level of sort of reckoning with that suffering. And I'm wondering if maybe gratitude is like, bringing that same like, ying yang idea to the other side, which is like, Oh, this is happy. This was joyful. But like, sometimes joy is so random. And

  Christine Koh 8:56

  those are gifts. I think that's like, it's such a I think it's a wonderful framing. And I think actually, you know, because if you are living in a on the grid, very prescribed society that way, I know you and I are I mean, we're used to control. And I think for some people control is very scary. So I think that is another reason why especially in times of suffering, that feeling that you're being done unto or that something's happening to you. It's difficult. It's very difficult. I

  KC 9:27

  wonder if that's one thing, and I want to get into toxic positivity quickly here because I don't want to just talk about how great gratitude is, but I wonder if that's something that recognition of sort of the randomness of joy. There's this like, so I went to seminary for my counseling degree I don't know if you know that I consider myself like a deconstructed seminary person but there's always this like interesting like Bible quote, where they talked about like, God give like it rains on the just and the unjust, basically. And so there's kind of this randomness of like knowledge Just like happens to you like sometimes good things, Joy things. And I wonder if like being able to embrace that on the joy side somehow helps with grappling with it on the suffering side,

  Christine Koh 10:11

  I think so it's a little bit and my background is experimental psychology, but it is positive reinforcement, right? If you embrace the joy in random things that happen. And you know, that's possible, that good things can come from random, you know, that'll help you hopefully, eventually, you know, mitigate or manage and those moments where the suffering feels random, I think you're onto something with this in another book. I know, right. It

  KC 10:37

  also reminds me of my favorite Rumi poem, where they talk about like, feelings and emotions, it's basically like, open the door to all of them, and welcome them in, even if they turn over the furniture and wreck the room like welcome them like guests. And I think there's a little bit of that there too, like, this openness of like, everything changes. And that can be hard because it means like, good things can change. But it can also be really freeing, because it means that even the difficult things change.

  Christine Koh 11:09

  Like that. So

  KC 11:11

  I think the issue with like, a lot of that good stuff there is when we rushed to it. Like I think we get so uncomfortable sitting with the difficult things in life that when somebody brings us something difficult, we want to like rush them all the way to the like, oh, but there's joy, and there's pain, and there's negatives are there. Right. And I think that's kind of where the term toxic positivity comes from. And while we're on the subject of definitions, what how would you define toxic positivity? I

  Christine Koh 11:39

  mean, I think it is a focus on the positive with complete disregard for lived experience, complexity of a situation, all of those things, and I think it invalidates experience, it's very, I like to think that because I do have an optimistic side to me, I like to think that perhaps the ideology was well intentioned. And thinking let's, you know, let's look on the bright side all as well, I mean, sure. Okay. That's like a, that would be just dandy if we didn't have all these other things in life, but it is really, really problematic. And I'm curious about your definition, as well. But I can later speak to some thoughts I have about how that ties to culture and kind of, I mean, I think it messed up my ability to emotionally process things a lot early on, over

  KC 12:31

  Sure. Yeah, I think about, I think there's like kind of two, like, I think definitely what you said like on the benefit, like I think we are sometimes wanting to help be like, Okay, if I can help you feel better by pointing out good things. Or if I can help you feel better, by making the thing, you're worried about a smaller thing, so you don't have to feel so strongly about it. But that doesn't ever work, right. But I think there's also this other side, where we as a society, like we're just not very good at sitting with difficult emotions and distress. And so when you come to me, and you're in distress, I'm uncomfortable, like, I don't know what to do with it. It's almost this, like, psychological, like, I don't know what to do with my hands, right? Like, I don't know what to do with myself. And I don't know what to say, and I'm uncomfortable. And it's almost like, I don't know how to deal with the feelings of discomfort that I feel in the face of your pain. So I really want to like fix it. And I want to tie it up in a little bow, so that I can not only stop your discomfort, but I can also stop the discomfort that I'm feeling at like not knowing how to walk you through this really difficult thing. Yeah,

  Christine Koh 13:37

  I mean, it's difficult. Just I love the way you articulate things. And I think that's one reason why I was so excited to talk to you. I mean, I think that you're really outlining how the reason it's so hard is because you or any of us as a human not only has to try to if you're in a an empathic space, you want to try to hold space and listen to the other person. And you're like, oh, my gosh, I am really uncomfortable as all get out. So I need to also manage my feelings while I'm simultaneously dealing with these other person's feelings. And it can be a lot. You know, I understand the avoidance. I mean, listen, I grew up in the Korean patriarchy. So we were, we were all about avoiding. So I get it, but I think it is really hard. And actually, when I think about phrases like good vibes only, like I think about kids wearing that on shirts, and like how that would seem like a cute shirt to pick up and how my 12 year old probably wouldn't think anything of a shirt would think, Oh, that's cheerful good vibes only but the fact that it really sets the stage for Yeah, you better only have your good feelings because I don't want to see your bet your negative emotion negatively valence emotions like Yikes, like that makes me that makes me very uncomfortable. I want my kids to have all the feelings. So

  KC 14:51

  you and I are both mothers. And you talk a lot about motherhood and I find that toxic positivity is like so are prevalent in parenting world. I mean, I want to say parenting world. But if I'm being honest, it really is specific to motherhood. Like, we are supposed to be happy and cheery and self sacrificing with a smile on our face. And there are so many times I will see someone talking about motherhood being hard. And then you open up the comments section, right, let's say we're on social media, and it's like, so much of that toxic positivity of, well, at least they're healthy. And you'll miss this one day. And just think I mean, it's just so so much. I mean, what has been your experience with toxic positivity when it comes specifically to parenting?

  Christine Koh 15:41

  Yeah, I mean, I think I mean, I'll just back up and very briefly say that my own history as a small person growing up was very chaotic, many adverse childhood experiences or ACEs if your community knows that acronym. And so I spent a lot of my early parenthood, trying to unwind overcompensation, being a perfect insert, air quotes, parent, all of that, because it just, it wasn't realistic. It's not realistic, it will drive you to madness, if you try for it, or unhappiness and disappointment with yourself and lots of guilt. So I guess I would say there were some act of unwinding I needed to do and as somebody who's been writing on the internet in the parenting world since 2006. I mean, like you said, I see it in the comments, I see it all over the place. I see it in Mother's Day, Roundup memes. I mean, Mother's Day is complicated. Some people have terrible relationships with their mothers. I mean, there's so so many things that don't get addressed. And I will say I think one of the most important things that we can do as parents in community is have conversations like these, where we air all the different sides and complexities of it, because that is one thing, I'm kind of a no holds barred person on the internet. And I talk about the good, bad and the ugly, very freely. And without fault. Anytime I talk about the really difficult stuff, I get a million DMS from people saying, I feel like I exist, you know, thank you for letting me see that it's okay to feel this way. Like, it's almost as if, in the face of toxic positivity, people lose sight of the fact, understandably so that they can still be really great parents and also be angry or frustrated or all these other things. And so I think sometimes people just need a reminder for that. It doesn't have to be for me, obviously. But I think the more we can talk about it and be honest and not try to gloss over the things, the better it will be for all of us.

  KC 17:43

  You mentioned how much your heritage sort of informs some of your view of toxic positivity and wonder if you could talk about that some? Sure.

  Christine Koh 17:51

  I mean, I think my growing up if I had to characterize it in broad strokes, I mean, classic immigrant Korean family, you know, my parents moved, well, they were already in the United States, but they started raising their family moved to one of the best, I'm using air quotes, because I don't really believe in best suburbs around but near Boston, literally a bus ride away from Harvard, so they could send all seven other children to Harvard. I mean, this was I mean, this is just you can't get more textbook. And there was also so much chaos behind the scenes, but we were always the party line was always to gloss it over. pretend nothing's bad happening is happening. If something bad is happening, hide it. I mean, I think there's also a measure of Asian silence and compliance culture in general that probably feeds into that. Not to mention like achievement culture, let's just focus on all the good metrics you might be achieving. Nevermind that that was difficult for me to even do because I was so mired in chaos and problems. But I think that all of that fed together to a situation for me personally, I won't speak to my six siblings, where I really stuffed down my feelings. I was tremendously emotionally repressed, I was oriented towards only focusing on the things I could report out on that were good if I had anything good. And I mean, it's work that I have been actively unwinding for as an adult. I mean, I actually you'll appreciate this given your experience in the field, but I actually have a children's feelings chart in my office, like a five by six grid of faces. Like that's how much I had to go back is like, okay, there's a feeling other than anger, and it's cousin frustration. And what is that?

  KC 19:35

  I'm such a fan. I think all feelings chart should have the faces. Because sometimes that's what it's like, I'm looking at the faces like which of these faces resonates with how I'm feeling?

  Christine Koh 19:47

  Yeah, I did. I was like, Okay, who produced? This is a total sidebar, but I think you'll appreciate it. But I was like, produce this feelings chart because it's illustrated it's not real faces and all the like, negative Ellen's feelings the kids look Asian, I guess. But anyway, it's been very helpful. It was given to me by my social worker, mother, mother in law. So, you know, I know there's a lot there. I mean, that's just the reality. There's a lot there. But I think, you know, I would say when we focus too much on the good stuff, and we tamp down, like all the other range of emotions, like it leads to problems.

  KC 20:26

  Okay, so I have a follow up question. Let's pause one second, we're going to hear from some sponsors, and then come back. So you mentioned that your family your parents immigrated? Is that correct is part of what happens because I feel like I've heard this before of first generation immigrant families where if your parents go through something really difficult, and they have to work so incredibly hard, through lots of hardship, that you're your problems, in comparison, seem like you're not really allowed to complain about them. Because in comparison, they're nothing compared to the problems and the challenges that your parents face. And so it creates this weird dynamic of maybe not feeling as though you're allowed to feel the full breadth of sadness, or grief or pain or disappointment, because there's almost this comparison, this measuring.

  Christine Koh 21:20

  Oh, absolutely. I mean, I actually am this week. It's my birthday tomorrow, actually. And it's a milestone. Happy birthday. Thank you. It's my 50th birthday. So it's a big one. And while you're the first person who's going to know that this is even happening, Casey because I just haven't even I haven't even told my husband, I'm doing this, but I'm writing a letter to my mom, and I'm gonna give it to her with a cash gift. It's very Korean, but it's like a gift to her as well on this milestone birthday. But in it, I do, it occurs to me, I start the letter by saying and in it, I thank her for a whole bunch of specific ways. She supported me in my life. But I start the letter saying something like, I know I've said this many times. But I truly have so many moments when I reflect on your life, raising seven kids being an immigrant dealing with racial atrocities, this, this and this. And I don't know how you did it. And I think that Gulf is even bigger for us. Because, you know, seven kids versus two kids, that alone is staggering. But then, you know, it was in coming to America and learning in English was the third language my mom had learned. I mean, there was a lot going on. So yes, I think that yeah, I don't complain a lot to my mom, probably. And I guess you're hitting on the reason for that? Well, it's

  KC 22:38

  interesting, because I feel like we've talked up to this point about toxic positivity, really kind of being something that we do to each other. But you can see how in certain contexts, like we would learn to do it to ourselves. Sure.

  Christine Koh 22:51

  Sure. Yeah. I think that makes sense. Because even when I think about, you know, our lives, and when things happen, I'm using bad and air quotes when bad things happen. I mean, I definitely have moments where I'm like, Oh, hold on, maybe I shouldn't really be feeling this way. Because I have a lot, I have a lot of gifts. And I think and a lot of things are really good. And while it's good to make note of those things, and be aware of them, you know, per our earlier conversation about joy and unexpected things. I mean, all the experiences matter.

  KC 23:22

  So when I think about, you know, my when I think about the most toxic positivity that I experienced in my life, and certainly parenting is a big part of it. But you know, coming from a church background, you know, toxic positivity has this like religious cousin that I call spiritual bypassing, yes, talk more about that. And I didn't come up with that phrase. It's a phrase that I've heard before. But spiritual bypassing is basically the idea that, you know, you come to me and say, Oh, I'm really struggling, I'm really you know, that that together, and I kind of give this faith based answer that tries to do the same thing that toxic positivity does, right, like, either says, we'll just have faith just let go and let God just something to kind of button it up and put a nice little bow on it. And just okay, it doesn't don't You don't have to feel that way anymore, because God is in control. And it's almost like these like thought stopping cliches, which I think are really common in toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing. But I've always appreciated that term bypassing because I feel like that's like at the heart of what toxic positivity is. It's like, I want to bypass the very real and valid things happening here. I don't want to give you any room to process them or to feel them or to explore them. It just assumes that what we want to do is move on as fast as possible because it feels bad, it feels yucky, let's move on as fast as possible to what will feel better. And I mean, it makes sense because nobody likes to feel distressed. But you can rush Go off and rush from the distress in a way that doesn't resolve any of those feelings that represses those feelings that invalidates those feelings, and actually makes the distress worse, right? And then you're lonely and then you feel isolated. And then you don't feel listened to you don't feel like any of it has been resolved. And you almost feel ashamed of it. Because there's this I mean, US culture is so impacted by Puritanism and religion in that aspect, that there really was this kind of dichotomy of if you are spiritually Well, if you have good faith, you won't even have those distressing feelings, right. And so if you are struggling, well, there must be something wrong with your faith, or that you must not be strong enough. And so we have all this shame of even having this bad, distressing experience to begin with. Because why can't we just be happy for what we have? Why can't we just have faith and make it go away? So I've always appreciated that term spiritual bypass? Because I saw it so so many times when I was involved in church.

  Christine Koh 26:06

  Yeah, that's really interesting. I had not heard that term. And I think it makes a lot of sense. And actually, it's interesting, because as I think about the approaching holiday season, I wonder if there is some amplification on that too, because I mean, we're coming up to times where typically people might only go to a church, you know, a couple times a year, and one of those is the holidays. So there is there are just so many potential factors where everything can come together. And it can kind of be a little bit of a perfect storm, this time of year. And

  KC 26:38

  I'm so curious if we can start sort of thinking out loud about how do we utilize sort of the power and the strength that can come from gratitude? And and I think in some sort of related ways, like optimism, without bypassing without invalidating?

  Christine Koh 26:58

  Yeah, I will say that one of my favorite tactics, and you know, I'm not the trained therapist here, but I am, I'm a big fan of cognitive reframing. And I actually have a whole episode on edit your life called The Power of cognitive reframing, because and I think one of the reasons I like this exercise, and for me, what happened was a couple years ago, or a year ago, when I was in this very deep, dark season, my life, I felt like a lot of bad things. It's gonna sound a little child like, it wasn't that they were happening to me, but I just felt like overrun with bad things in a particular vein of my life. And it was very, I just felt like powerless, I felt offended, I felt hurt. I felt a lot of things. And I realized, I'm trying to think if I know I didn't even have my, my current therapist at that time. So I was really Miring through this alone, but I did think to myself, wait a second, I think what I need to do is a little exercise with myself, literally in a Google Doc, where I had in one column, like the situation and what was bothering me. And then in the next column, like how I was going to what the actual reality for me was. So sorry, let me just give you a quick example. Because I think that's always helpful for listeners, I can't remember all of them. But just as a general one, in this situation, I felt offended because my value as a person was being questioned, as you know, a creative person, whatever I was given being given direct signals that I was not valued, appreciated, whatever. So my reframe was, I know my value, I don't need these people to so that's actually a moment where I could be grateful for like, wow, I have evidence of a lot of skills, and a lot of a lot of things that I've done, like, I'm clearly a competent person, the reframe there was, I know my value, my value in the world, I don't need, first of all, this interpretation by these other people is just wrong. And I don't need them to validate and tell me whether or not I'm a good person. And it was shocking to me how the simple act probably took me 10 minutes, maybe to sit there and think about a reframe. I think there was only one that I struggled to really flip the script on. But all the other ones I was able to do pretty quickly. And afterwards, I was like, wow, you know, so much of this game is in our heads. And I mean, it's also real, it's in our feelings, it's in our bodies. It's everywhere. But there is a lot we can do in thinking about the alternate reality to the situation. And if you have pushed back there, I'd love to hear it. But for me, it's been very, very helpful.

  KC 29:40

  I think it is really helpful. And I want to harken back to something you said at the beginning of the episode where you talked about like this unique human ability to hold at the same time, like the joy and the suffering. And I think what makes a cognitive reframe really powerful and what keeps it from being the Toxic positivity is that we get our we get the reframe. And an understanding that the reframe of like, I know my value doesn't fix the pain that someone else doesn't. It's not supposed to Trump it, it's not supposed to make it go away. It's not supposed to fix it. It's just supposed to give you something else. That they come together. Like, we can go, it is so painful that so I've just done something similar with like when I get hate comments online, and people will say, you know, you're a bad mom, or you're lazy or you're this or whatever. And people, it will really be hurtful. And of course, yeah, sometimes people will respond to that. And they'll be like, but you know, you're not a bad mom, or you know, you're not lazy and be like, you're right. I do know those things. But like, so then why does it upset you? And I was finally able to say like, well, like, when there's this aspect of okay, this hurts because I might be tempted to think those things are true. And I can use those cognitive reframes to understand, Okay, what's actually happening here is like, this person doesn't like me, they're thinking of the most painful thing they could say to me, they don't know me, this is not their, like, accurate assessment of me, this is just them trying to be hurtful. Here are the things I do know about myself. And that I'm doing that as a both and not an either, or, because then I can actually get honest about why it's so painful. And what I finally realized was like, you know, I'm grateful that I know my worth, I'm grateful that there are people that do see my work. I think what it is, is that this, it's still painful that someone wants to hurt me, even if they're not true, it's painful that there are people out there that want to bring you down a peg. And there was something about like nailing down the accuracy of that pain that made it tolerable. Like I could let it be there. I could feel it, I could grieve over it. And I didn't have to, like swim away from it really fast. Because I was worried about my worthiness. It's like, No, my worthiness is okay. But gosh, that was painful. And it gets to be painful. And I get to be sad about it. And it's kind of this it also reminds me of I was waiting for my daughter to get off the bus the other day. And I was so excited to see her. She gets off and she's a little bitty and she's like, totalling towards me. I mean, she's five, but it was like still a total because her backpacks really heavy. Mom, I mean, like the moment she gets off the bus, she just screams mom, like so excited. And she's at that age where like, she doesn't matter how many kids are around, she's going to yell for her mommy. And I remember thinking like, this is so precious. I'm so grateful for this moment. I am going to miss this. And I know that there's a lot of toxic positivity around that, like you'll miss this mama, like you'll miss all this. And the truth is is like when you say that to me when I'm saying like I'm really overstimulated, I can't get a moment to myself. It's really hard to do that. Like, I'm not going to miss those things. No, I'm not. Am I going to miss her coming off the bus and being that age where she doesn't care what anybody thinks? And she's Yes. And so the healing part wasn't? Oh, don't be upset about feeling so overstimulated all the time. It was, oh, they come together, like it's a package deal. Like it's a package deal that what's really hard right now is how much my kids need me. And I'm overstimulated. And it's a package deal, that that timeframe comes with these gifts, comes with these moments, comes with these moments that I'll never, you know, get to have outside of this stuff that's really hard, because it's a package deal. It's this, the suffering of it and the joy of it. And being able to hold space for both of those things, made it easier to be grateful for those moments and made it easier to honor how painful it is. And so I think that's kind of my feedback about cognitive reframing is that when someone uses it to cancel out the pain, it can be toxic, but when we use it, to give us the hold intention, it all is not lost. I think that's when it's so powerful.

  Christine Koh 34:29

  Yeah, this is reminding me of a beautiful I love you. I just love all your framings on all this stuff. And it reminds me of a conversation that is will be live by the time our episodes go up. But it's an interview I had with Daniel Koch Balfour. She is an incredible artist. People know her as oh happy Danny on Instagram. She's an author and activist and, you know, she does all this beautiful artwork, but it's very justice oriented and we talked a lot about how you need to give I used to suffering and through hard times, because and this relates to something you said earlier is in order to move through, and then beyond the feelings to your next thing, you have to process it, you have to release the valve, you need to do the things you need to go through the feelings. And then you can move towards growth. And she her phrasing about it she was talking about, we were talking about politics, and she was talking about how hope and doubt are not enemies, you know, she sees a lot of people have one, you know, one thought or the other on that, like, how can I be hopeful when there's all this terrible stuff happening? And her point was, yes, you can absolutely be hopeful while acknowledging that you have doubts about the world based on what you've seen and lived through and experienced, and that it's okay to do those things. So I think that that's a good episode for people to listen to, because it is a real caring reframe on and caring example, related to this conversation about really living in both of those spaces and allowing yourself to feel and just be in in all the dimensions. I

  KC 36:07

  know when I was in rehab, so I was like, 16, when I went to rehab, and they had us do so many things. And I mean, so many things that like I couldn't even really tell you what was and wasn't helpful, because it was just like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. And so who knows, I couldn't like parse that all out. But one of the things that they had us do was we had to write down 10 things we were grateful for every day. And at first, it just felt like it was a very like hollow thing. It felt very silly. And I think if I asked you to sit down today and write down 10 Things you are grateful for, like you could do that. And they would be like big things. I'm grateful for my kids. I'm grateful that I have a roof over my head I'm grateful for but I was in rehab for 18 and a half months. So realize that long, okay. Yeah, at some point, you're like 10 things.

  Christine Koh 36:52

  That's a lot of words, again,

  KC 36:53

  10 new things Wait, do

  Christine Koh 36:56

  they have to be different things.

  KC 36:57

  So they didn't have to be different. But like, they were kind of supposed to not just be the same list every day. And it was so frustrating at the time. But by the time I was like, a couple a few months in, I was like, I feel like I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel. So I would I would have to like look back at my day and be like, what's like, one thing that gave me just a ping of pleasure today. And so it ended up being things like, the clouds were really pretty today.

  Christine Koh 37:27

  Yeah,

  KC 37:28

  my lunch was really good today. And as much as the idea of like, start a gratitude journal, like makes me want to put my head through the drywall. I have to say like, I think there was something to that, that it eventually drove me to the tiniest of observations about my day. And also the kind of like, take for granted XRF my day, like, yeah, I am, like grateful that my like sums, I remember, sometimes I would have things like I'm grateful at how comfortable My bed was last night, like I found the perfect sleeping position.

  Christine Koh 38:07

  That's huge. I mean, I personally love sleep. So that's a big one.

  KC 38:14

  And the oh, that didn't erase all the really difficult things I was going through. But I think that in it is true. That gratitude as a as a skill, you know, it's an emotional muscle that we have to kind of learn to flex. But just like any physical skill, the form is important. And so like I think of like, toxic positivity is like having kind of like bad form, like if you you're not actually going to make that muscle stronger. If the form is poor over and over and over. Like, there has to be this like, it's okay to feel all of those feelings. Sometimes gratitude isn't about finding the good in what that shitty situation is. Sometimes it's what if I just what brought me joy today? And what were the little things today? We know what was that rain? What was that this? What was that the other end? So I think powerfully though, it is like it has to be said that it is so much more. It is so much easier to be grateful. When I am adequately supported. Yes,

  Christine Koh 39:21

  absolutely. I mean, oh, hi. You know, I think about I have the privilege of so much support. Like when I think back to my mom and all the things that she was dealing with, you know, I have a very supportive partner in my life. And so I think it makes a lot of difference. But yeah, I mean, I think it's a whole other conversation to talk through the systemic issues that are in play when we talk about the ability to have things to be grateful for, but or to tap into gratitude. And I think that is probably why I mean it's one of the many reasons why. You know, when you were talking about the as tiny little things that you were looking for, whether it was your lunch or the bed or whatever else, I do think as a practice, I've probably adhered to the power of that really strongly. Because it might also be because, you know, I was a former experimental psychologist, and I really like, you know, that is all about tiny little tweaks and dials and adjusting them and seeing what works and what doesn't, and what is a result and what is not. But I think that when we can look for those tiny little moments, and this refers also relates to a mindfulness conversation you recently had on your show that I hope you link up in your notes, because it's a great related episode to listen to. But I think when we can tap into those things, you know, and really think about what are potential levers for gratitude and things that can help us tap into that. The stakes are kind of lower, right? Because if you're identifying really small things, like it's accessible, and I think that's what's been really powerful for me, especially when I've been in my heart seasons,

  KC 40:58

  when I think it's most especially for practitioner, not practitioner, but like professionals like those of us who will be in the place of recommending gratitude as a practice or as an exercise to understand the limits. Like it cannot bandaid over systemic issues. It cannot fit like it is powerful. And there is this aspect of I mean, you you hear stories of people going through the most horrific circumstances and talking about finding beauty, that beauty still exists. But I think what is so critically important is that that story has to be that person's story. It cannot be prescribed, right, like it cannot be prescribed, we'll just find the beauty just tried to find the beauty Christy and I know that your father was just murdered, but find the beauty, right? Like if you came on here and was like my father was murdered. And let me tell you the story of how I navigated how horrific this situation was. And yet something in that, I learned that life is still beautiful, that life is worth living like that would be such a powerful story. But it would be so inappropriate and harmful for you to come to me in that moment of look what has happened to me and be like, well, you know, life is still beautiful, Christine, like totally. And so I think that there's like an interesting dynamic there of empowering yourself to kind of sort of find this Muscle Flex this muscle is very different in its outcome and impact on you than prescribing that to someone. Oh, yeah,

  Christine Koh 42:34

  it's such a personal process. And like anything, you know, some things are going to work for others. I mean, it depends on where your capacity to see and perceive is. There's a lot going on, but I do like the way you phrased it as an emotional muscle to flex because I think it's true. It requires practice and intention. And you know, probably a few tears. But I think I think we can all get there together in our own like slow and incremental ways.

  KC 43:01

  Yeah. All right. Well, I want to pause for one more word from our sponsor, and they come back and I want to ask you a parenting question as it relates to this. Okay. Okay, so before we wind down our this first part of this series, so my question is, you know, going back to this, this idea of parenting kind of being really hard, but being really joyful, and talk positivity. But I want to also ask you, if you have any thoughts or advice on how do we as parents not push toxic positivity onto our kids, while wanting to teach them the importance of gratitude and optimism and all these things? Because, you know, it's so difficult when your kid comes home and goes, Hey, Johnny didn't want to play with me on the playground. I don't have any friends. Nobody likes me. We want to jump right to like, yes, everybody likes you. You're so beautiful. You're so wonderful yourself. And you know, that we're doing the thing that we dislike when people do to us, which is sort of bypassing all of that pain and just trying to fix it. And I get in this place sometimes where I don't want I want to validate those feelings. And I want to teach her what to do next, though, like, I don't want to just like wallow, I don't want to just go Yeah, I guess you're you're right. You're right, honey, no one's ever gonna want to play with you again. But I find myself being you know, how do I do that? I don't want to just correct the cognitive, you know, things there. But I want to teach both. I want you to feel valid in your feelings. And I want to teach you how to move through to something that's a little more positive. Yeah,

  Christine Koh 44:28

  I mean, I think there are a couple of things that and it's sort of, they're sort of dependent on sort of where where the emotional volume is the with the kid in the moment and like perhaps your own I mean, it's always best to be in a calmer place. And you know, when you have these conversations, and certainly certainly for with my kids and as a parent, there are certain situations they might have that are definitely a trigger for me. So I have to watch myself in those situations that I'm not spilling my issues on them. I do think there are a couple of things. I mean, one And is we as parents, I think, as a generation seem to really want to fill that space with our thoughts. And so I really encourage people to listen first, really let you know, let there be a little awkward silence, silence, let your kid talk through, let them be upset, it's okay for that stuff to be happening. And I also think, before you offer whatever you think the solution is, I find it very effective to ask my kids what they think, because kids have a creative and different lens on things than we do as adults, they, by virtue of just years, and being younger, they have presumably a little less baggage in general. So I found that sometimes their thoughts about how to handle something are totally different, and sometimes totally better than what I would I would suggest. And also one thing I have actually been doing with my oldest, who is 1990. Now, and as I said, you know, by all counts and measures as a grown adult, but when she asked me for advice, I'm really working on trying to help her remember that she's in charge. So I usually start by saying, Well, you know, ultimately, I know you're going to do what you're going to do. And since you asked, you know, here are my thoughts, but I really want her to know that these are just thoughts and recommendations and possible options, but that she needs to try to tune into her gut, and think about what would be good in that situation. And the last thing I'll say is that I think it's so important for us as parents, too. I know, people probably roll their eyes when they hear the word modeling. But what I'm talking about is modeling the full range of emotions, like I used to not want to be upset in front of my kids, because for me, you know, emotional repression was a source of safety for me, you know, if I was not noisy and didn't cause a big stink, then I would be safe, right? So now I'm working on being okay, I actually just like had a huge meltdown last week about something and it was really quite funny. I was sitting on the front steps crying and my 12 year old was like, had an arm around me and she's like, It's okay, mom, just let it out. Like, all the feelings are good. I'm like, okay, okay, can hear her reflecting back, that's good. But I'm letting them see that that's okay. Because kids need to know that tough stuff is going to happen. It's going to feel terrible. And then they will get back up in some way, shape or form. It may not be perfect, whatever perfect means. But I think being able to see that in the people that they trust most, you know, ferment in many formation, family formations, like that matters a lot. And I think that's helped my kids a lot to see, you know, because I'm a pretty high octane, high functioning person. So to see me be a total rap, I think is actually helpful. That's what I'm telling myself.

  KC 47:46

  Yeah, no, I think that's totally true. And, you know, you mentioned that that is sometimes hard for you, because of growing up with sort of a familial history of repression. And I'm thinking to myself, it's probably also difficult if you are someone who grew up in the opposite environment, like if you grew up around adults that were unstable, and we're always sort of emotionally, what's that word, like, label libel on hinge? You know? Yeah, a bit like they were all over the place in a way that wasn't safe, or in a way that made you feel not safe, or in a way that signaled to you as a little kid, like, Oh, they're not in control, I'm not okay, I can imagine that that would also make it difficult to show your emotions in front of your kids, because you're thinking, I don't ever want them to feel this way. And I think it's important to always remember that, you know, our kids have a different emotional context for understanding things than we did. You know, if you are stable, if you are there for your children, if you do make your children feel safe, they're not going to then decide, Oh, my God, life is so scary, and I'm never safe, because they had an experience with their, you know, parent having emotions. And that can be really hard. You know, I always say that. I'm not called to be the parent that I needed. As a child, I'm called to be the parent that my kids need. And it can be hard. But I think that that's, I always feel like I'm simultaneously parenting myself and my children at the same time. And that nobody really teaches you how to do that. No, no. But thank you so much. I'm really excited about getting into part two and starting to talk about maybe some more tactics that we can use to flex that muscle and and how we can find support and get more practical coping skills. And I think that's going to be a great episode, and I appreciate our conversation.

  Christine Koh 49:34

  Yes, thank you for having me. I feel like I've learned so much from you just in our you know, short time on the mic. And I'm really grateful for the perspective that you bring to the world through your show. You're you're just wonderful. And I'm delighted that we're connected now. Likewise,

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

If you are a Southerner, you know we have unique words, phrases, and expressions that are not understood by people who aren’t from around here. My guest today is doing his part to educate the world about all things Southern as the content creator behind his hilarious social media accounts on Instagram and TikTok. Landon Bryant is a Laurel, MS, native whose Southern roots go deep; he is an art educator by profession–and he is learning to navigate life with ADHD. Join us to hear more from Landon!

 Show Highlights: 

●      An introduction to the Southern words “piddlin’” and “putterin’”---and what they mean

●      How Landon was diagnosed with ADHD as a college student and finally received helpful accommodations

●      Why Landon feels that being an art teacher is the perfect profession for someone like him

●      Why mental health issues carry a heavy stigma in the South, especially in rural areas where the church is the dominant force in the community

●      Highlights of Landon’s book, Bless Your Heart, “a beautiful guide to life down here” (Set to publish in early 2025)

●      How conversations and comments about ”fixin’ to” were how Landon got started on social media

●      How Landon’s wife, with a special education background, helps him in the writing process

●      How Landon is learning and growing on his writing journey by capitalizing on focused moments of inspiration

●      Accommodations that help him the most: lists, alarms, Google calendar, batching

 Resources and Links:

Connect with Landon: TikTok and Instagram

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes.

• Transcript

  KC 0:05

  Hello you sentient ball of stardust. Welcome to Struggle Care. I'm your host, Kc Davis And I am here today with content creator, Landon Bryant. Hello, Landon.

  Landon 0:15

  Hey, I'm so glad to be here with you.

  KC 0:17

  If you don't know Landon, he is the brains behind the hilarious account where he goes over all things southern. I'm gonna play you guys in a little example here. Sam

  Landon 0:28

  Hill is that well, I'll tell you because that isn't minced oath, which is a euphemism list just because I was just pedaling today. And I got to wonder and who in the Sam Hill is Sam Hill, nobody's ever explained to me who Sam Hill is I had to look into it had to see about it. And what I found was shocking. Sam Hill is maxed out. So let's manifestos when we take words. And we change them just a little bit. So they sound different so that they're not ugly words, so that they're not cuss words, say you can say him around your mom and them. And Sam Hill is not necessarily an actual person, Sam Hill is a replacement for devil or hail to urge we're not supposed to be saying we want to conjure up the devil by saying what the devil is that as teetering on the edge. And if you use hail appropriately as a customer, so we are left with what in the Sam Hill is that? And that is amidst? Gosh,

  KC 1:23

  I'm trying so hard. Not that I'm playing it. So you have these like delightful videos where you talk about all things Southern, especially like linguistic things. And I think my favorite one is where you talked about pitlane tell us what peddlin is?

  Landon 1:38

  Well, pitlane. And I guess when you talk about why we haven't talked about pidilite It's because I said peddlin in a video. And there's people all around the world that like comment on the things and there was somebody from the United Kingdom said that that meant like pee in the heart. And I was like, we have got to discuss this and make sure you set this straight. So because I said I was piddling in my garden, and they were like, there's so many questions like, why were you paying in your garden? I was like, Oh, absolutely, it was. Caitlin peddlin is just when you're doing the things around your house that are fun to do, but they're not necessary. They're like little tasks that are just giving you joy. I think the best example of pitlane is like well like taking care of your plants or like a hummingbird feeder like making sure it's okay worried about the hummingbirds, all that kind of behavior. pitlane is my best self honestly.

  KC 2:23

  I love it. See my home. We were puttering out in a bid lender very close. And my husband laughs at me a lot. You know, I'm from the south. But now that he knows that where he's like you do in your pattern you pattern around. I'm like, Yeah, I'm puttering around my house. Absolutely.

  Landon 2:35

  But there's not a better day than a puttering around.

  KC 2:39

  I mean, it's so great. It is specific. And what's funny is like, we're going to talk about ADHD but like puttering around the house is very, very close to me in my ADHD heart.

  Landon 2:50

  It is because it's like freedom to do whatever thought comes in your brain. You go do that on a puttering around. You just go

  KC 2:56

  for it. Yeah. And just my little projects, my little projects. That's what hecalls it a little project.

  Landon 3:01

  Exactly. Exactly.

  KC 3:03

  And you know, what's funny is it's like puttering around the house is never doing the thing like powder and or pillar. It's never the things that are like high priority. It's never like doing the laundry. Exactly.

  Landon 3:12

  That's not pitlane because that's the thing that you have to do if that's a chore. Bitcoin is not necessarily chores, they can be jobs, but it's not necessarily like

  KC 3:23

  dreadful tasks. Yeah, and it's not a hobby. Like it's not a thing that's totally unnecessary. Like, honestly, you're one of the burfi there's like the perfect one, like Oh, put them out Yeah, refill the birdfeeder refill

  Landon 3:33

  the birdfeeder. If there's a lot of looking out the window on a pitlane day and check in on thing, making your round. So to say,

  KC 3:42

  making your rounds just puttering around. Yeah, it's so funny, because, you know, your platform to me is so funny as someone who is from the south, and I'm from Houston, born in Dallas, and a lot of people are split between whether or not I have a southern accent, it really comes down to whether or not you are like from the city or you're from rural because I'm from the city. So it's not as pronounced as everybody else. But also it comes down to how in proximity I am to another southern person, because like it gets very obvious when I'm talking to somebody else. That's exactly

  Landon 4:18

  and it's even such a scale here. Like when I first started doing these things, where I am, I'm not nearly the most country accent at all. It's the country versus City accent you know, like there's so much more country accents available. So when people were like your accent, I was like, What are you talking about? I mean, like I'm be real, I get it, but it's just was surprising to me because I'm definitely not in the more country of speakers that I'm personally around so I don't know. I was like for a while I was like there's no accent I have no idea what. No concept.

  KC 4:51

  I did a video one time where I like purposefully did like a very southern Texas drawl. And somebody got offended. did and they were like, you know, I hate that. You know, people use a southern well first of all, they accused me of using an Appalachian accent and it wasn't it was a Texan accent, but they couldn't hear the difference. And so they said, you know, it's really not okay to use an Appalachian accent when you're just trying to mimic someone that stupid like, we already have people that think we're stupid and that and like, valid point, like, you shouldn't just like do a country accent when you're trying to imply that somebody's stupid. And so I responded to them. And I was like, first of all, it's not Appalachian. So that's a Texas accent. I am Texan. And I like to lean into it. Why don't want people to know that I you know, I'm doing a bit and it's not about being stupid. It's about having the audacity like, that was the point of the video.

  Landon 5:39

  Yes, definitely.

  KC 5:42

  I am a southerner. Like, my mom always laughs Like, my mom has a little bit of an accent, but my whole life anytime I'm mimicking her. I always like purposely give her like the most southern drawl because I'll be like, Casey, that is not fair. She's like, I don't sound like that's like, doesn't matter. It's like, anytime you're talking about someone else. It's like, you use the accent.

  Landon 6:04

  It feels good. It feels right. It does the feels a little bit better. I

  KC 6:08

  love it. So okay, but we're not just here to talk about South. We're here talking about ADHD. And you are someone who was diagnosed late in life, but not as late as some of us. So tell me about when you got diagnosed. So

  Landon 6:20

  I was a bully, like 2122 age I had. So I was very successful all through high school. Definitely the signs were there. Like, I loved every retainer, every pair of glasses, anything that needed to be somewhere and it wasn't there, it was gone. You know, like, there were obviously situations, which drove my mom and dad to the whole top. But I was still successful academically. And I mean, I was challenged through high school, but I had such structure set up because my parents were just so like, on top of everything, they were the typical, like what you see on Leave It to Beaver type of a show. And so everything was there and set up. So I had a homework time and had a study time. And there was practice this and practice that. So it all was worked out from the moment that I got out onto my own, immediately, like done, like not doing that right now. We'll do that later, I had never had to really like do the time management skills myself. And I'm so grateful to my parents for basically making me set out so well. But it also was like a thing. So when I got to college, I had to learn all those skills for myself how to take care of management, which was not a whole thing. But I was very good at so I bounced around from school to school, and then finally got treatment, and was very successful almost immediately, like after like the parent graduated within a year after that. And I had gone to three other schools. Before I finally got to the last bill that was out. And the last thing I was studying in it, it also was with ADHD, you have so many different interests. I went started in architecture school, went to nursing school. And then I finally graduated with a history degree.

  KC 7:50

  Oh my god, I love it. I did the same thing. I started with a philosophy degree. And then I switched to meteorology. And then the math was too hard. So I went to Oh, what did I do after that? I can't remember. But I ended up with a theater degree.

  Landon 8:02

  Exactly. It was like, I literally looked at my transcript. I was like, How can I graduate like I've got practically what I do in history was the thing that I had the shortest path to it. Definitely not the easiest, because there's a lot of writing. And I learned, it turns out, I'm so grateful for my street degree, which people will be like, liberal arts degrees, blah, blah, blah. But y'all, I learned so much and extra degree, like I learned about bias and how to search for it. And it opened up a whole world of academics to me. And it was the first time I was really successful in academics at a college level. So it was just, I had a great time, I had a great time getting that last degree that now don't do anything with the sides, like know that stuff. And it set me up for you know, we have to filter through a lot today. And that helped me look for what is the bias in this scenario, which has been very valuable.

  KC 8:49

  And part of what happened after you got your diagnosis what you actually finally got accommodations in college. Right?

  Landon 8:55

  Exactly. Immediately, I immediately got accommodations. And that was a struggle for me because I you know, there's a whole thing to accept that you might need an accommodation when I don't view myself as needing anything from anybody but that was the thing that did it for me. I got the accommodations I needed like some notes at the end, just a skeleton of outline of what was said. So I could go back and fill in stuff that I needed to do. They just end awareness on my professors part as to like help him stay in line you know, like they knew if I was like not paying attention, maybe I didn't get that part and the professors that I had were really great about it as well. But I got the end didn't like I didn't realize that taking the time constraints on stuff would be such a relief on like testing and stuff I didn't realize that I had that type of anxiety going into those types of things is just was a strange. I learned so much in the time period by being helped. I didn't even need though that I needed that help. And it was really transformative for me. I was really successful and then had a whole career for the past 10 years and now I'm doing this though

  KC 10:01

  Well, it's interesting, you bring up career and I feel like a lot of people with ADHD, we have that same thing where we have that wandering interest where we're interested in one thing. And then another thing and another thing, it's hard to commit. And I think it's hard to think about what careers would be like most forgiving for like having an ADHD brain or like, play most to the strengths. And so tell me a little bit about, you know, like that 10 year career and what that looked like in having ADHD.

  Landon 10:26

  Well, I ended up in education, my wife was in education for like, five years before I got into it. And she was already under specialist degree as far as it goes. So I had been listening to like about education for a while, and it basically just fell right into it. But I fell into the very best place. It was an art school, Public School of the Arts, and they teach academics using art. And I was like, done, that's me. I'm all over that and, and the art teacher there. And it was just super, if you have ADHD, and you're looking for something to do, I highly recommend being an art teacher, because first of all, you teach four year olds through sixth graders, that alone in itself, that the range of those things is an adventure, every single moment of the day, there's not a dull moment, and there's always something new. And second of all, the content was so different. And the way that they taught there, just appealed to me so much as somebody with ADHD because they would teach like, each week, I would be assigned to a different grade, and go teach whatever they learned academically using the visual art lesson. So we would make an art lesson out of it. And it was just so cool. And so exciting. And every day was very different. There was a new challenge, like a new thing to get ready for the next musical to prep for so just like really fed my interest, Bob, everything was so different every time. So it still was exciting. I was into that. I honestly imagine what they'll do in that first semester. So long, but then this happened some. And that's what I'm doing now. But he's got two young kids. It's very fun. So

  KC 11:48

  you're from Mississippi. And let's talk a little bit about the influence that Southern culture has when it comes to mental health and mental health access. Because there is, I mean, I think that there's stigma everywhere. But there certainly is like a pretty heavy, specific stigma in the South. That I think adds to it.

  Landon 12:12

  Definitely. And I think that has a lot to do with moss story, because especially somebody who was sort of successful in elementary school in high school, that definitely meant there was like nothing wrong, right. But it is just it the world is so big now than what it used to be used to be such a small world and communities are so small grown up is such a smaller space and mental health was when you're in religious communities, like without it, almost seen as like a weakness. And there's this whole concept of that you should pray about it, like go pray about it wouldn't be what you would be told if you were seeking, like, nobody directly said that to me, you know, but that is the general attitude about mental health because it was misunderstood at the time. Now, those same people understand it a lot better. So it's a whole different place than it was. And we all like grew together in this whole situation. But it's almost like things like that could be seen just just something that you should handle with your relationship with the church and with the Lord. You know. And so that's how it turns into kind of a stigma. And so people don't seek out that kind of help, they will seek out like, help from the church. But that was, it was such a different time period. And now, that was when the community was so small, even like you couldn't call long distance city over because it was a different area code like it's a small, that's not a big community at all. So the moment it opened up things pretty rapidly. But yeah, growing up, it was a different attitude towards mental health. For sure.

  KC 13:34

  When I think even with like the access that we have today, what I noticed is like, because I always lived in big cities, but I always had family that lived in small cities, or like small towns, and like being in a big city is very different than like the rural areas. I'm sure that's true everywhere. But in a lot of rural areas in the South. It's still the case that like the main social engagement is the church. Like that's the main that's like the hub of your life and your community. And you're right, like it was like what like I go to let's go talk to the pastor, right. Like, that's where you got that mental health advice. And certainly some churches are better at it than others, right?

  Landon 14:16

  It's the whole thing with community that you now hear that voice is the community or you don't even have to, it's just that that was the whole community was the church at the time period, then pretty much like where you went to church with your group of people and there was a really big influence. So it's a different it's a totally different thing. Now,

  KC 14:31

  I saw this Tik Tok the other day, and it was a couple walking down the street in New York. And they were taking up probably a little over half of the sidewalk and they were filming a tic tock video, you know what I'm talking about. There's this girl that's walking the other direction and just shoulder checks the girl and she's like, Oh, and the comment section was so interesting because everyone was divided on like, who they thought was being rude. And like a lot of people were like, Oh my gosh, like she should have said Excuse Use me like, you can't just like body check someone like she didn't even say excuse me. And then other people were like, Why are they walking that way? Like they're taking up more than their side of that, like, they're the rude ones like she was justified. And I had this thought when I saw that, like, how much that illustrates, like the difference between northern and southern idea of politeness and manners, and courtesy, because I have this theory that people in the Northeast thought that the rude people were the ones that were taking up too much of the sidewalk, because they're used to living in these compact cities where, like, people don't just drive ever, like, you have to learn how to share space with a lot of people. And so like, it's fucking rude to take up more than you're like, look how many people are trying to move. And I genuinely think that the people who thought that the other girl was rude, who like must have been from the south, because down here, we don't have to navigate that many people in a smaller space. And so like, our manners are all about verbal manners. Excuse me, thank you, bless your heart, like all of that.

  Landon 16:08

  I agree. And also, it's like not aggressive, aggressive, like, you would never physically bump into somebody to teach them a lesson here. That would be like so extreme. But I feel like people probably related to that too. But also get out of the sidewalk. Because how I felt about it, like off the sidewalk, don't bump into people, but also get out of people's way. Oh,

  KC 16:26

  I totally thought that they were the rude ones, mostly because of like, what they were doing and where they were not like I totally so like, I agree objectively, that the ones taken it up, were rude. But I just thought it was so interesting. Because like, we're so spread out down here. We don't there's not that many people on the sidewalks here, like so we don't grow up learning how to be that aware of like, you know, not taking up too much space and other people need to move and other people are going places and people are going to work and all that. And so like all of our stuff is like thank you and oh, have a nice day. Like it's all very Yeah. And like, let me get the door for you. Like that's our types of courtesy.

  Landon 17:02

  I have the funniest situation in our town right now. It's because of this very situation. Like, okay, four way stops was never that was never going to work with us. Because everybody's like, you go, No, you go, No, you go. Now we've got like a whole standoff. And they really had them in the past that they like really emphasized now and they redid downtown a little bit and with roundabouts. And it is a complete mess, because people were getting better at it. But that's not for Southerners. Because we want you to go first and the whole deal is yielding. Like, that's the whole deal is like you go new yield. And everybody's full stop that the roundup like full stop, because it's like you go first. That's the whole attitude to a fault. Yeah,

  KC 17:41

  and like, we're very big about like smiling to people when we see them in public strangers, and this, that and the other. And I heard someone say one time Yeah, the way the finger wave that, like they described being I think they were in New York, and there was a girl that had a seizure in a donut shop. And she would like it was like the perfect example of like the kindness of New Yorkers, because like, nobody stopped what they were doing. But as they stepped over her, they'd be like, here's an afghan, you'll be alright, there's somebody, it's like, I'm like butchering the story, because I can't remember exactly what it was. But it was like, the kindness is in the like, I'm not going to take up too much space on the sidewalk, the kindness is in the like, you know, let me hand you something that you need. It's like this very practical exchange. Whereas for us, the kindness is in the smiling and the talking. And like, it's this, this sort of, like sweetness that in the dance around things, which like, we can definitely also be rude in that way. But I just thought that was funny. It speaks

  Landon 18:43

  to the private versus public, like, the whole idea down here, like there, I think is the gift, you gave them the courtesy of the privacy of that moment, a little bit while taking care of them, you know, whereas here, we're gonna, like, be very loud about it, and everybody will know, in that kind of a way. Alright,

  KC 18:59

  so back to your journey with ADHD, you now do content creation 100% of the time, and you also are writing a book, tell me about the book.

  Landon 19:07

  Yes, I'm writing a voice called bless your heart, we net which is what you know, is very nuanced, but it's just gonna be a very fun, like, I'm trying to make it very beautiful Guide to Life down here and in a way that if you're from here, it's going to be hilarious to you the things that are southern that we don't notice that I I mean, this whole account was just blown my mind the things that we do that are specifically Southern and so it's fun from that aspect. There'll be there'll be there's gonna be like fun little glossaries and dictionaries and explanations of terms. But if you're not from the south, you'll learn a lot about all this nonsense that we're talking about, from a perspective, somebody from here so I think it's got something for everybody and it should be really fun. I'm really excited about I'm having a great time writing it like it's such a great it's depressing me writing it. They're like, I've just been surprised that I just took off in March and so like every day I wake up in talking to you as as breath, but writing the book and the interior journey has just been like a roller coaster. This surprised me so much the whole all of this. I

  KC 20:03

  want to talk about that in regards to ADHD too. But I don't want to lose this thought, which is you mentioned, like we don't even realize the things that we do. And like, so as someone from a big city, I always thought that I wasn't that influenced by Southern culture, because you know, we're in the big city. Now I have an accent with me. And I will never forget the time that somebody was like, poking fun at how southern say, I'm fixing to go to the store. And wait, this is the best. And I swear to you, I thought, what they were poking fun at was that we were dropping the G from fixing, like how we say I'm walking a mountain. So I was like, Yeah, we do do that. Like we dropped the G a lot. And someone had to tell me like, No, it's the fixing part. That's not what that word means. I was like, What do you mean it like I'm fixing to go to the store. I'm about to go. I'm fixing to go. And then I was like, Wait, that isn't what that word means.

  Landon 20:59

  The same dirt is exactly the same. That's what my account is because of that exact conversation. Like it was fixed into that did it I was telling a story about something else on Instagram before I blew up. And I said fix into in the story. And there was so many comments of people being like, what is fixed into? What do you mean, I was like, I had a whole existential crisis about like, what would you say instead of fixed into like, what is the phrase because they're like, I couldn't even figure out like what it was that would possibly replace fixed into because that is what you're fixing to do, like, not another way to express that. Yeah.

  KC 21:31

  And it's not even about to because like, I'm not about to I'm not like sitting here and then I'm going to like I am fixing to like I'm getting ready to Yeah, exactly,

  Landon 21:41

  exactly. It indicates preparation of some sort. That's so funny.

  KC 21:46

  And it's not even like physical preparation. Like I can be sitting at the table and be like, Hey, I'm fixing to go to the store. What do you need?

  Landon 21:54

  Exactly? This whole thing? That's what started this account. That's like, literally the first discussion I think I did where I was, like, let's discuss six into, and then it turned into the discussion, because that blew my mind. But things like that happen all the time. I'm constantly surprised by what is Southern and what is not southern. And also still surprised that I have an accent.

  KC 22:11

  have you covered? Now we're cooking with a well, gee, no,

  Landon 22:14

  I don't think I have covered now we're cooking with Aussie. It's every day. And I just add it to this list that I have on my phone, on the reminders. Anytime somebody says something like that, and I'll put it in there done. I'm going to have to give you credit for that when that start button. Now we're cooking with all your heart that so much and and you don't even think and it's all too Did you notice that it's not oil at all. Even though I

  KC 22:36

  say oil and every other context

  Landon 22:40

  that happens to it comes in and out. Bold peanuts did did a number on people. When I said bold peanut, they were like Excuse me? What do you mean by bold? And then also what a bold being? That sounds like a way nobody knows what bold peanuts are? Wow. So the content just creates itself.

  KC 22:57

  Right? So how are you finding writing a book? Well, having ADHD,

  Landon 23:01

  I've learned a lot about myself this whole years. And fortunately, my wife is was a specialist in instruction and curriculum specialists. And she's taught in special education. So her whole deal has been like making sure to get the right accommodations. So she knows how to motivate me if I need the motivation. She also knows how to help me structure the day a little bit. And so that's basically whatever a lot on I need deadline is the thing I've learned the most like it, there's got to be deadline. If there's not a deadline, it doesn't exist to me like it was this right before. And then you're not going to get the most quality work. So you know, chopping it up. And like I can't just be like your manuscript is due in March, then great. We'll start February, the last week of February, that won't work, right. So I've got to chop it up. It's little things like that I'm learning. I'm also having to let go of the just to like, go go go all the time. And like want to be doing something and all the time. So I'm having to like learn to not be guilty about like not sitting down and writing all the time or not making content. So there's two sides to the whole thing. It's just a matter of making yourself do it. Are you doing it too much. And you know, we hyper focus on stuff. So I can like really lose a day to whatever figuring it out everyday basically, is what I say about the book, but he's setting the structure of his heart. That's difficult. That's one of the challenges of this whole thing is when and where

  KC 24:15

  you start putter in that pattern and then like where'd the day go? We'll transition

  Landon 24:18

  into doing that from doing this like, whole thing. This is gonna sound so dumb to some people, but like, where are you going to sit? Start writing the book? What's the vibe that that area is the whole thing and then like you get distracted by moving something from that chair and this pile and that's what it is every day. So I finally got it down to where like this is where you sit for filming videos just sit right here like don't go anywhere. This is it. You don't have to question. So like that's taken a lot of the stress of the day for me, but it's just building strategies, building things every day to get better at it.

  KC 24:58

  I also like thought When I before I wrote a book, I thought that like authors, like when you think like, okay, that's their job I had in my head like, so they wake up, they sit down at a table, they write for eight hours, and then they put it away. And then it's like, that's what they do. And then when I started following other authors that would talk about how like, erratic when they were writing in the times we're in, like, for me, I've got kids in school. So like, I have to make it happen at certain times. But I didn't appreciate that they'd be like, yeah, sometimes like, for a week, I don't write, and then all of a sudden, I write for three days straight. And then sometimes I write for an hour, and then sometimes it's 10 minutes. And sometimes it's eight hours. And some of those that made me relax a little bit because like, you can't turn on the tap with ADHD, like you can't make yourself think of it. Even if I could force myself to sit down and put my fingers on the keyboard. I can't force my mind to like, get into a flow state and think of ideas.

  Landon 25:51

  Related to that so much Jack's actually like blowing my mind right now, that's part of this, because I have these discussions, right? I mean, there's so many layers to what I have to say about that. But I had these discussions, right. And every day, and I have a giant list of topics, there's so many topics that when I hear those topics, like cooking with all, I have a million thoughts about what I could say in those moments. But when I sit down to Record later on, I might not be able to talk about oil. And that's for real, that's not you know, like, it has to be at the right moment for that topic. That's why I have such a long list. And that's really the challenge of it for me is finding the moment that is the tap into that that is going to allow me to do my best work. Because when you're trying to force it, it just is a whole different ballgame. And like, I feel like it's pretty evident even in the work that I've done. Like I don't know, when I was like, not in the headspace to be doing that right then. But I had to because I like dropped out very best to be very consistent with it, which is just so strange for me to be consistent with anything. But I've somehow been consistent with this like everyday since anyway, is that such a challenge. And it's the challenge with writing as well. And then what you said about it than going in spurts. There's a part of me that I think learned, I learned to make sure I did this at the right time, make sure I do this the right way, a long time ago, to make sure everything was right. Because ADHD, you will forget to think you're not do the thing. And the erratic pneus of that makes me so nervous than I am. When I think about it that way I want it to be a package up like this is when you write this is when you you'd go get a cabin for a month in the woods. And that's where you write your, you know, be so structured with it. But isn't that at all, and I'm having to learn to work in that world and grow that way. It's a different thing entirely than what I've been doing for the past decade. And it's very fascinating.

  KC 27:32

  Yeah, there's this extra layer of like, I didn't do enough today, I didn't do enough to it's like you can't let like you have to like kind of lean what is there's no like formula. Like you have to lean into the flow and the natural like rhythm of inspiration enough to like, get the good ideas and strike while the iron is hot, and all that kind of stuff. But you can't have that extra existential terror of like I didn't do I haven't done anything today. I only did for 10 minutes today. Okay, I did it for eight, you know, I did it for eight hours, why can't I do it again, like that, like, that makes it worse. And so like trying to get that off, and sort of like respect the flow, and contend with the fact that like, you can't wait forever on the flow. Like, you got to figure out how to like make the like, encourage the flow? Because like there are deadlines.

  Landon 28:18

  Exactly. It's the whole thing. It's an add on just like wonder if people have the solution to it somewhere. And, you know, it baffles me that people, like I get genuinely baffled at people that are able to like be so structured about it. Like it's really something that if I ever feel less than I do genuinely like wish I was able to do that. I think it's like a superpower that people have, but I definitely don't have it. So I have to turn this into the superpower. Like the moment that I am hyper focused to capitalize on those and go with it that way. But it's just such a journey, because now there's so much information on ADHD out there, but there just wasn't this all the time. So anytime you learn something new, it's like, Wow, that really has affected my life this whole time, I had no idea that it was like not math, failure and math. Well, there's a lot of guilt that comes with it that you have to shake off as well.

  KC 29:07

  So the last thing I want to ask you is like, you know, there's a lot of resources out there for like, work accommodations, and you talked a little bit about school accommodations, but now that you find yourself working for yourself at home and even I mean like even I've talked about like accommodations for care tasks, but there's this weird sort of like in between like, just existing right like especially as like a one man show like try to be a creative like what accommodations do you put now provide for yourself that you realize you need? That

  Landon 29:35

  is such it just existing is is difficult. It's like that difficult? Well, fortunately, again, I have my wife, and she is a painter. So that fits in to her being able to help me out through things but just having that list that keeps going and the combinations that I'm using the most are alarms alarms very, very much always like try to ask for like a Google calendar invite for meetings so that I know when they are because at Tom's on into ADHD and it's a disaster. Like I cannot I have no idea like what time you're talking about. And I will. And then honestly, like, I got really good at being improv in the moment like, because I missed so many meetings, get the notification that it's right now and he had to get go. And so I've gotten better at like just knowing what I'm talking about all this, because it got a pay, who knows, they're calling next I really was for a while I got that way. Now I'm getting better about asking for Google invites. Because just the leap between you saying it and me putting it in my phone is such a large

  KC 30:33

  task leap for me, some detail will get messed up.

  Landon 30:37

  I don't know. So that Google invite is just so helpful for me if it's arrived in the calendar, so the little things like that, but I'm learning what ones I can do. And it's things like, I want to get better at batch filming. So I'm trying to like, learn how to go just record record record and not finishing get going. I don't know, just little, little tiny things, just maximizing the flow, if you figure that

  KC 30:59

  out, is a secret sauce, because I have recognized for a long time that there are so many creators out there that do it that way. And they sit down and they bash record. And I'm like, I can't sit down and make myself talk about anything, I have to be doing something and then all sudden somebody says something, I'm like, I have something to say and then I have to write then I have to record it right then like I can't figure out and I know my life would be better if I could batch it. But I can't. Exactly

  Landon 31:19

  because that's what I had to talk about. I just talked about it. That was the thing that I want to talk about right now. I don't want to talk about anything else. That's what I'm talking about. The whole thing, and in

  KC 31:29

  the amount of times that I've been like, oh, I have something to say about that. But I'll get to it later. And then I come back and I'm like, what was it I was gonna say? I can't I can't make it sound good. It back

  Landon 31:37

  the struggle with list every day. It's like, all these things were moments of a huge inspiration. But are they right now, who could tell you I could never know. So

  KC 31:45

  if you don't get into the flow, when you get it, it may not come back. No

  Landon 31:49

  surprise every day. But one day, it might come back that it's there on the list.

  KC 31:54

  And I feel like I have had to try really hard to sort of like create a life that allows for that as much as possible. I mean, like not everything can but at least like giving myself permission to do it when I can do it.

  Landon 32:07

  Exactly. And when you're not doing it enjoy the moment. I'm trying to tell myself that all the time. Like if I'm sitting here worried about it when I'm not doing it and I'm wasting the time that I could be enjoying something else, you know, it's a whole thing. I'm telling these things to myself every day, every single day away. Because also I didn't mean to do this. This is not something that I never imagined not teaching. I was going to teach all the time. So this whole thing is just brand new in a different world. The money thing is different. It's a whole situation. So it's just a new world and I'm trying my very best to like stop and pause and remember that enjoy the moment take it in and but I'm ready to go to the next thing all the way.

  KC 32:44

  Well, thank you so much for your time and this lovely conversation and when did your book come out?

  Landon 32:49

  March 2025. I'm

  KC 32:50

  so nice. Okay, we will look out or I will look out for it. I don't know why I say we all the time. I think I listened to so many podcasts of people that have like teams and CO hosts so they just say we sort of somebody's that sounds like more professional but there's no one else. Anyways, Landon, thank you so much and I have a great rest of your day.

  Landon 33:07

  Thank you so much.

I’m back with one of my favorite guests who is always up for the challenge of a podcast–no matter what the topic is! I want to explore the term rejection sensitivity dysphoria and get Dr. Lesley Cook’s take on it because I have so many questions. Let’s learn more together!

 Dr. Lesley Cook is a psychologist who works with those with ADHD and other kinds of neurodivergence. Born and raised in Hawaii, she now lives in Virginia and works with children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families.

Show Highlights:

●      What RSD (rejection sensitivity dysphoria) is and how it is manifested

●      KC’s personal experience with RSD and feelings of worthlessness

●      How RSD is different from sensory sensitivity and autism

●      Thoughts about the strong word dysphoria in RSD

●      KC’s personal experience with RSD and being told she is “too sensitive”

●      How we can grow, change, and find regulatory strategies for RSD

●      Why it is difficult to communicate the facets and nuances of RSD and other interpersonal difficulties

Resources and Links:

Connect with Dr. Lesley Cook: TikTok

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes.

• Transcript

  KC 0:05

  Hello you sentient ball of stardust. Welcome to Struggle Care. I'm your host, Kc Davis And I have one of my favorite guests back in the studio. Virtually, of course, Dr. Lesley Cook. Lesley, thank you for being here.

  Dr. Lesley Cook 0:17

  It is always a pleasure. I'm excited. Every time I'm here,

  KC 0:20

  I've recently started doing this thing where I actually meet with people before a podcast recording for 15 minutes and come up with like an outline of things we can talk about. And I'm like, This is so great. And not only did I not do that with you, I haven't even told you what the topic is today. I said, Do you want to do another podcast? And you were like, Yeah,

  Dr. Lesley Cook 0:38

  this is my wheelhouse.

  KC 0:39

  I love that. I love that I just what I learned was not everybody likes that or can do that. And so I went through a couple of interviews. I was like, oh, I need to start planning things so that I can help like guide the Leslie, I want to talk about rejection sensitivity just for Yeah, don't we all. And here's my like, whatever that word is that you say the disclaimer, I want 100%. And like totally down for any term that someone identifies with, that describes their experience that makes sense of their experience for them, and helps them navigate in a world where they can ask for what they need, and create accommodations in their life, and learn and grow and have self compassion for themselves. And like, I'm so down for that. Like, I'm never one of those people that like wants to take terms away from people are like, that's not the right time. Like, who cares? You like it? You got it? It's fine. I'm disclaiming that only because I have so many questions about this term. And sometimes, in order for me to understand something, I go to this like devil's advocate place of like, these are like the objections that come up in me. And I'm not voicing them, because I think they're necessarily right. But because I have to get these answered for me to fully feel like I understand something.

  Dr. Lesley Cook 1:59

  Yeah, absolutely. I was just talking to another mental health clinician about how like in the evolution of social media, mental health professionals, I did start as the person that was like, that's not the right term. Don't use it that way. And there's some merit to that in some cases. But one of the things I've learned, and I needed to learn by so much exposure to the consumers of our services and our content, is that disclaimer is that number one, people only create and communities only create words when there's a vacuum. So there's nothing here that describes what I'm trying to say. And so everyone is just dismissing it. And I think that term, the biggest thing it did, is it encapsulated quickly, something that we could all go, oh, yeah, yeah, I've had that. Like, that's a real experience. Yeah, it's a real thing. And you share it. It's something that brings people together into more understanding of each other. And I think it's less pathologizing than just don't be so sensitive. So I share that disclaimer, but you know, semicolon, I also have concerns with some of the terms that were adopted. And I think it's because of the fact that things grow and change. And so the original intent of that word, I wonder if we have strayed away from that.

  KC 3:14

  Interestingly, you brought that up. So people ask me, sometimes if I struggle with rejection sensitivity, dysphoria, and for anyone that's listening, it's like, what the hell is that it's a painful experience that you have when you are rejected, or you perceive you're being rejected. So it often comes up with criticism, even like healthy kind of criticism. And it's the idea that like, I basically like, cannot tolerate anything that feels as though I've done something wrong, or I'm being rejected. And I'm extremely sensitive to basically interpreting all criticism, critique, pushback mistake as being rejected, and that my nervous system sort of has this really overblown response to that, where I feel panicky, I feel like I'm in pain, I feel like I'm drowning. I feel all these things. So that's the colloquial like, layman's understanding of that. So people ask, and it's talked about a lot as a something that happens in people with ADHD. It's not officially a part of the diagnosis. It's not a formal clinical term. It's not in the DSM. And to my knowledge, I have not seen any research on it, have you?

  Dr. Lesley Cook 4:30

  Not necessary I think, again, social media is moving so much faster than our science can catch up. It takes years to like select a group and then do some testing. And so I haven't seen specific, you know, outcome research of what is this but I have seen articles and periodicals and shared experience publications that talk about the fact that this does seem to be something that is relatively unique as an experience, specifically for ADHD found in every person to some extent, but over represented for the ADHD crowd. But I think it's unclear where it comes from or how we would encapsulate it.

  KC 5:08

  So I actually looked up like an article on it. And this is from like, the attitude magazine, which is like the ADHD publication that comes out. And it says, What is rejection sensitivity dysphoria. And it goes on to say like, it's not a formal diagnosis. It's just like a common under researched symptom of ADHD. We don't actually know if it is or not, but it is experientially very common. Noticeably, the first thing they say is RSD is not thought to be caused by trauma. And this is one of the hardest things is like, if you asked me, Do you have rejection sensitivity, dysphoria? And then you say, it's what I just described? Like, sometimes you'd be like, Yeah, it's like men really being impacted by the feeling of rejection. And those are, there's a part of me that's like, is that not just having your feelings hurt? Like, isn't that everybody, like, nobody likes to be rejected. But I will say that most of my childhood, I do feel like I had an extra sensitivity to feeling worthless, like I struggled with feeling worthless a lot. And so getting rejected, felt more painful to me than it seemed like it felt to others. And the only reason that I know that is because through being institutionalized, and having to go through a lot of like confrontational therapy that like forced me to grow some ego strength, and then also doing some, like having some own, like growth around some spirituality stuff, there was literally this weird day. And I won't go into it, because it's a very weird woowoo story. But let's just say that I had a run in with this woman at my work that bullied me, and like, It tore me up on the inside, like I would literally reacted that day in the middle of an all staff meeting by screaming at her because she like made a face at me that was kind of like a meant to make me feel stupid, and like ran out of the room and then cried and then went to my car and was trying to drive home and then a pull over. And anyways, I at that time was like, looking into some of my own like spiritual texts, right. And I like read this thing. And it was really meant something to me. And I felt this like physical shift in my chest. And then all of a sudden, it got lighter. And it was such a weird sensation that I described my friends as it feel it felt like something Let go of me and left me. And I had this shift, where from then on and I mean, I also was getting so much therapy. So I feel like it was almost this combination of like a lot of therapy work, a lot of spiritual work a lot of sort of like meaningful things for me, where when I would get rejected or get criticized, it still hurt. It still didn't feel good. But what was gone was this like darkness that would like slither up the back of my throat and whisper in my ear. See, I told you, you were a piece of shit. I told you no one was gonna love you. Like that previous to that, like de that was my experience of rejection. It was intolerable. It was painful. It was more painful than just this hurts right now, I had never heard the term rejection sensitivity. dysphoria, right. And I think the differentiating factor that when you hear people talk about it, as they say, one, it is not thought to be trauma, I would have told you that reaction in me was trauma. And I know what it's trauma from it's trauma from some family of origin shit. So I wouldn't have ever said that, because the specifically they say RSD is a nervous system difference that is not related to trauma. Now, I think I had a nervous system difference related to trauma. And then I got a bunch of therapy and also had like this bizarre spiritual experience. And now I don't feel that anymore. So personally, it's hard for me to contextualize that, because when you describe it, yes, I remember feeling that way. But then when you needle down on, it's not trauma, it's a nervous system difference. It's, I'm like, Oh, well, how would we even know? Like, In what world does somebody with ADHD not have traumatic experience by the time they're an adult?

  Dr. Lesley Cook 9:04

  I think that is the core of where I think we're still kind of trying to develop a way to conceptualize this thing that we're calling RSD. And we're not quite there. And I think to piggyback on that, I agree and disagree and love how they described it and absolutely hate it at the same time. So we know that ADHD comes with this list of dis regulations. And it's not just as we all know, as we all in the club now. It's not just our attention and focus, it's also our ability to control up regulating our emotions, sometimes getting excited or motivated, sometimes down regulating. It's hard to inhibit our impulses. And so one of the most famous pieces of research that gets quoted a lot is kids with ADHD, hear their name called in a negative way, by I think it's AJ teen, like 20,000 times the it's a huge number more than other kids. And so we could look at it through one lens and say, well, that's not necessarily trauma. That's just the interaction of a nervous system that has trouble with this and the environment. However, that's also another way to look at trauma is that the interaction? So I think it's almost a non sequitur, like, is it due to trauma? Is it not? That almost doesn't matter? I think I think what really matters is to look at all of these kids, especially these undiagnosed kids who are growing up hearing that down, stop it go away, you're too much, you're not enough. If you could just focus that builds this sense that of impending doom, that every side glance, every miss text is about rejection is on the horizon. And I don't love the description, but I love the description of it climbing up your throat, I immediately identify with that experience. I even had one experience as a teenager where a friend that I had had since kindergarten, I guess I was probably being too much and too loud, getting on the bus. And she turned around and said, Don't you get it? We don't really like when you hang out with us. And that was my throat, realizing like, oh, it's me, they don't want me. And that was a formative experience to know. Would that have happened? Had I been dysregulated? Bless, maybe not. But those things, I think, you know, are part of the same phenomena.

  KC 11:21

  Yeah, there is this interesting, like hyper vigilance to rejection that you develop because of that. And that's the thing that I was trying to express at the beginning. Like, I'm not saying that the experience that we're all describing, when someone says rejection sensitivity, dysphoria is like not real, like I believe it is. I'm more interested in like, when you get down to this question of, is it an environmental, like, is it an experience that is just describing something we already knew about ADHD, the different factors of, you know, we knew these symptoms. So this symptom intertwining with this environment, creating this kind of, you know, traumatic experience, causes this experience, versus people who will talk about it as a symptom like no out of the womb, something with your nervous system and your brain wiring. Like, even if you've never had a negative experience, like, is overly sensitive to rejection. Because that was my other thing was like, when I read I was like, is that not just emotional dysregulation? I think

  Dr. Lesley Cook 12:19

  you could phrase it that way, you could look at it as functionally speaking, this is an emotional dysregulation that happens faster and more intensely. For those of us with this neuro type with this neurological difference. I think you could also say, maybe for most ADHD people, it's so common of an experience, that it might as well be a symptom. I think the danger in that for me, and this is like a bee in my bonnet as a clinician for years is that when we start believing that this thing, I'm holding up a little AirPods case, that this thing, RSD is like inside of me, like it's part of me, then it's always going to be here. And there's a tendency to think then when it happens, oh, it's RSC. Yeah, that happens. Versus if it's something that that I'm holding that I can look at, that I can examine, there might be a way for me to figure out how to maybe put it down a little more, how to learn how to get that cognitive thinking part of our brain online to say, is this really rejection? And you know this, because we've talked, you know, off of the online space, but I have friends where I try to actively practice, here's what I'm feeling. Am I literally making this up? And I have some amazing friends that will say, Yes, you are making that up. That is your brain has created that story. That's not what's happening. And that has decreased. That feeling of fear of rejection by probably 80%.

  KC 13:48

  Yeah, I think when I hear people talk about it as an innate thing, and to your metaphor, I think it's when we tried to put it in the same category as like, sensory sensitivity and autism, like that's in your brain, you came out the womb with that, like, not every autistic person has the same sensory or even any sensory sensitivities. But it's like, that is a sensory sensitivity that has to do with the wiring of your brain. There's no like cognitive restructuring that you could do to make yourself not be erect or in pain over that sensory thing. Like it is not a social construct. It is not an interaction between some other autistic symptom and your environment, like it is just straight up a neurological response to something that would happen in a vacuum. And I see a lot of people talk about RSD moving in that direction, as is like, No, this is an innate symptom separate from other symptoms that would happen even in a vacuum. And that's the one where I'm always like, Hmm, I'm not sure. And I'm not sure if it is, maybe it is, but if it's not, and we put it there will we be doing ourselves a disservice. And that's, I think what you were saying is like, well, here it is, you know, deal with it. It just sucks forever,

  Dr. Lesley Cook 14:56

  right? Like that's just what we have and I do think there are Some other pitfalls with that, as well, because it could be weaponized and and that could I see this a lot with kids. So if you have a child who like let's say, a teenager who is actually experiencing rejection, and they have ADHD, I have seen it, you know, well, that's your RSD. You know, it's possible that that can be weaponized against kids and adults alike, I

  KC 15:23

  don't have to take your hurt feelings seriously. Because your feelings are just an indicator that you can't control yourself, they're not an indicator, they're not couldn't possibly reflection that I hurt you, or that that thing really hurt you. It's just this, you know, and I have some friends that have borderline personality disorder. And they talk about that exact scenario with them. They're like, you know, I'm, and they're really healthy people, like really mature and healthy around their borderline. And they'll say like, the thing that sucks the most is like, really, actually having someone do something shitty to you, and like, try to talk to your loved ones about it. And they either say or imply like, well, like, Could this be the border line, and you're like, No, like, it actually was a really hurtful thing they did. And like, it's valid for you to be hurt.

  Dr. Lesley Cook 16:07

  And I think sometimes that's what happens when terms start out meaning something and then they get so blurry is that they circle all the way back around to the thing they were supposed to replace. So understanding BPD was supposed to be helpful, and therapeutic so that we don't stigmatize folks that are struggling with that understanding RSD was supposed to help us get away from, you're just too sensitive. But unfortunately, when we use it in this way, it becomes like, that's just your RSC it becomes you're just too sensitive. And I think the other piece is distinguishing between, I think the use of the word dysphoria, and it is really hard for me. And that is the one as a clinician that I'm probably too much of a stickler for I probably need to get over it. But I struggled because there's something it's like when people talk about pathological demand avoidance, and I refer to it just as demand avoidance. Because when we add pathological and when we add dysphoria, those words mean something, dysphoria means I'm feeling not right, based on something that is not necessarily acknowledged by everyone, right? That's a really imperfect definition of dysphoria. But really, it's just being highly, highly sensitive to and reactive to real or perceived rejection. But that's not a super fun descriptive term, like twice as many words, I

  KC 17:25

  think this article talked about the word dysphoria, it says dysphoria is the Greek word meaning unbearable, its use emphasizes the severe physical and emotional pain suffered by people with RSD, when they encounter real or perceived rejection, criticism or teasing, the emotional intensity of RSD is described by my patients as a wound, the response is well beyond all proportion to the nature of the event that triggered it.

  Dr. Lesley Cook 17:47

  And so that's where I struggle, right, because who gets to judge whether it's out of proportion. And that's what that kind of what I was trying to capture. And that's much more elegant way of saying it is that my reaction is out of proportion for what's happening. When we start going down that road for some of the symptoms, I think and traits, we get into messy territory, not only who gets to determine whether it's out of proportion, but also, if you heard your name called 20,000 more times, by the time you're 18. Why would your fear of an anticipation of rejection be out of proportion? To me, that's a perfectly proportionate response. But you are highly sensitive.

  KC 18:26

  Yeah, like in proportion to what in proportion to the thing that just happened, or in proportion to your experience, your lifetime of experience, about what that means about you and what that message is about you. You know, what's interesting about all of this, is that, you know, at the beginning, I asked like, is there any research on this yet? And sometimes, like you said, well, all times like, the world of psychology moves faster than the science of psychology. And so, like, you can't say like, Well, if there's no research, then it's not valid, because again, it moves faster. But one of the things that I think people don't always appreciate about research, it's not just this like, well, we need a bunch of white men scientist to say it's real for it to be real. It's like when we do research, like No person is just their diagnosis, right? And so if we were to say, well, let's get a bunch of people with ADHD together, and like, see how prevalent this description of this thing called RSD is, well, that seems simple. But like, when's the last time you met somebody that had ADHD and no trauma, or no other diagnosis? So even if, you know, wow, 30% or 60% say they have this. Okay. But how do we know the RSD that they all have is stemming from the ADHD because, again, a lot of this sounds like stuff that comes up in bipolar. A lot of the stuff sounds like stuff that comes up and trauma. So you have to do so much research and so many different control groups and, you know, people that only have this one diagnosis and then of them like, what's their educational background? What's their emotional background? What's their race? What's their Right, like, you have to do so much of that, to make sure that the symptom you're looking at truly is only coming from this one disorder. And think about how impossible that is with how high the rates of comorbidity is between ADHD and other things.

  Dr. Lesley Cook 20:16

  Yeah, it's incredibly difficult. And I think if we look through an intersectional lens to, it probably is going to look and feel and be conceptualized in very radically different ways behaviorally, for a black American teenager, and a white 44 year old psychologist, lady, right. So my experience of that is going to be very different, because I also haven't had to hide and shift and mask other parts of myself that other people had. So this is also where to get a little nerdy for you for a second, where I think I really see people not grabbing or going to the qualitative research. And if you're if you don't haven't heard that term before, quantitative research is more when we're doing what we're talking about now. So we have control groups, we're trying to isolate variables we're trying to look at does this thing cause this thing? Qualitative research looks at storytelling and common factors and common experiences. It's a wonderful way to learn. It's it's highly scientific, it's highly rigorous, and we don't we just don't talk about it, I think enough in in regular media. So I wonder, and this is me wondering, because I haven't thought about it. I wonder if there is some, some data and more the qualitative area, I'm going to write that down.

  KC 21:34

  I did do like a cursory Google search to see if I could find any, you know, research data, the PubMed data and things like that. But maybe there's stuff out there that I just haven't found. So I'll leave that obviously, as an option. When you were talking about like, what could be the downside of over pathologizing? The rejection response is that, like, I know, for me, there were so many clinical interventions that went into both clinical interventions. And just like personal work that went into getting to a place where I don't feel like my world is ending when I feel rejected. And my own experience, I think, was too far in the other direction, where I was kind of made to feel as though like that is a personal failing and me like you're too sensitive, and you're not tough enough. And you need to get a grip, like get a grip. Now luckily, I mean, that wasn't the solution. Like that's how they pose the problem is like, you need to get a grip. But luckily, I had access to resources where I could work on like, Okay, this is trauma. Where's it coming from? How can I heal that trauma? How can I learn distress tolerance? How can I widen my window of tolerance? How can I hang on to myself in those moments? How can I work on some cognitive restructuring where I can talk to a friend and be like, Okay, this is what I'm telling myself. And they can either go like, yeah, that just happened or like, no, that sounds like you but and, like, I'm so grateful that I was able to work on that experience, so that I don't have to live that way every day. And I think back to your point is like, if that just gets classified as like, well, you know, that's just a thing, and it will never go away. It's like, I don't want people to feel like shame about having it or that it's some sort of like character failing. But at the same time, like, you don't want people to feel like they just have to live with this incredible pain.

  Dr. Lesley Cook 23:19

  And I do think that's where I have concerns about some of these. And there's other terms too, but that we use for these diagnoses, because they don't necessarily allow for the opportunity for growth. And we need that another thing we know about ADHD brains, in addition to the things that are kind of always going to be there is that our brains do continued while everyone's brains continued to grow and change. But some of the development of that frontal lobe lobe system is just delayed. So some of our treatment is ADHD, or is life is continuing, like literally growing up, yes, keep going. It's going to take us longer to find these regulatory strategies. And so if you tell someone who's eight, this is something you have in terms of RST, not ADHD, and that's it, there's nothing we can do. I wonder if there are opportunities to learn that we can survive some of these challenges, and that you can reach out and have support people that you can check with your friends, and they'll be honest with you, I wonder if we deprive them of that I didn't have access to any of that. I had to learn that as an adult.

  KC 24:22

  Well, and I think most people that I've heard use the term RSD are using it in I would literally say like 95% use it to describe oh my god, I'm not broken. This is a part of my experience. This is why it's so painful. I'm not weak or stupid or any of these things like I just have a pretty unique neurology, whether that is always innate, or whether that was environmentally shaped like whatever it is like this is the thing, this is why this is happening to me. Or maybe like this is why this is harder for me 5% of the time. I hear it used to say because the It is harder for me, for reasons that are not my control, I don't have to work that hard to address the impact it has on others. And that is just a human thing. Like we all don't, you know, it's hard to look at yourself, it's hard to take accountability. And I think that, like, you know, it takes a scalpel to really kind of draw that line between, like, I always, like, My example is always like, I am sometimes late to things because of my ADHD. And what I learned was, like, the proper place for it's okay, it's just my ADHD, that's something I tell myself, that's never something I told the person being impacted by me being late. Like, that's for me to not hate myself, to not feel shame. It's not for me, like that's to address my feelings of being upset at me, it's not to address your feelings of being upset at me.

  Dr. Lesley Cook 25:54

  Definitely forgot what I was going to tell you. And I love that this is like a real world example of like, some of the things that can happen when you have space to be authentic. But I was gonna say is that also does it mean that we're not allowed to reach out for support or ask for accommodations or let people know that we struggle with something, but I 100% agree with you that there is a balance point of what I tell myself. It's kind of like when we talk to kids about inside thoughts and outside thoughts and learning which are, which can make profound differences, I think for ourselves, but also our relationships, so that others feel comfortable to say when we have impacted them.

  KC 26:29

  And like feeling bad about something is also nuanced. Like, I don't feel like so for example, I was 30 minutes late to a really important podcast recording because when I read it, I read that season at 930 cet, not 930 at so I had the time, but whatever showed up 30 minutes late everyone's calling me. So I don't hate myself for that. I don't think that I'm a bad person. I know that has nothing to do with me being irresponsible, I still feel bad, that it impacted the people who were waiting for me and their day, like their day also matters. And so like, I think that that's the other like, fine point in there is like, I know, that's due to my disability. And I sometimes will communicate that to people, not because I want them to change their feelings of aggravation, but because I want them to know that I did not intend for them. I don't think I better than you I know your day is important. And sometimes that's part of the wound of someone being inconsiderate. And your mind is like they think that I don't matter. And I want you to know, like, I do think you matter. I do think your time is as important in mind. That's why I want you to know that this was a disability related, you know, flub not just me being entitled. And I think that it takes a lot of nuance to communicate that in a way that says, I want you to know that I do care. And I'm sorry. And not, you don't get to have feelings about this. And I don't have to address this.

  Dr. Lesley Cook 27:53

  I think even this particular part of our discussion really eliminates why talking about RSD is so hard because all of these different facets of the nuance and understanding. And I think what, what always kind of brings it home for me is that it for this particular experience. I don't know that we've quite gotten it yet. I don't know that we've quite nailed it. What is this thing? How is it? You know, happening conceptually, because it's so hard to talk about, there's all of these facets?

  KC 28:23

  Do you find that that's particularly hard when it comes to any symptom that primarily expresses itself? interpersonally? Yeah,

  Unknown Speaker 28:32

  that's a great point. I

  KC 28:32

  mean, like being late is kind of interpersonally. But I mean, like, you know, there's this RST, but then with borderline personality disorder, there's this, you know, maybe push and pull or being mean, or feeling, you know, what people would say it's being dramatic, somebody that maybe has PTSD, and that is showing up as anger, like you don't even like things that emotionally come into play. interpersonally. Like, I wonder if that's why it's so hard.

  Dr. Lesley Cook 28:56

  I agree. 100% I think that's how we arrive at the difficulty when we talk about things like weaponized incompetence. And why that's so hard to talk about, is because there's just this overlay. Anytime you have an exchange of communication in some way. It gets really hard. And I guess that's where a part of me always gets hesitant to label something boom, that oh, that's RSD. Because I think I know from my work and also my personal life, just because I'm so different than a lot of the people that I'm in relation to that it's just not that simple. As soon as we add the dynamics of someone else, everything gets murky, and we have to consider all of it.

  KC 29:34

  I think that's also what makes the large scale communication about these topics so difficult, just like personally as a content creator as an author. Because if I'm interacting with someone specifically, like I can ask enough questions to understand the nuances and then give a piece of insight or a statement or whatever. But what usually happens when I'm making content about something like let's say I make it about RST at And, you know, you'll have this person, or this huge group of people that will be like, you know, I'm a good person, and I try so hard to love the people well, and I feel so deeply ashamed that I can't live up to the neurotypical standards. And the people around me are always telling me that, you know, I'm not good enough, because I can't do this. And thinking that my inability to regulate emotionally like everybody else is due to me being bratty or not caring. And it's like, that's so painful. And so you want to talk to that about like, this is not a moral failing. This is this is a disability to death. But for every group of people in that bucket, you have a group of people in a bucket going, yeah, like, my husband, or my partner, or my friend, or my parent, was a horrible fucking person, and either abused me or mistreated me or constantly hurt me in some way, and refused to take accountability, because they had fill in the blank of whatever disability it is. And it makes it difficult to talk in general terms about the two competing truths of like, disability is not a moral failing. And it's not an excuse to mistreat people. Yeah, I think it's one of, and that's an easy thing to say out loud. But if you go any further than that, you know, there's no other sentence, you could say, except for that one, before you feel like the people who were married to an abuser that had a disability or being discounted, or the people that were always demonized for having this disability feel discounted, and it makes it a really weird, hard line to walk.

  Dr. Lesley Cook 31:32

  It does. And I think the most common response that I get when I also make content like that, or have discussions like that is well then how do I know the difference? And the fact that there is no answer for that? How do I know if I have RSD? How do I know if I have sensory dysfunction due to this? Because we're all actual, like human blobs, and we have all of this stuff going on? It's incredibly hard to give that answer, especially in these kind of short sound, by the ways. And I think when you're someone say you're in my position, it's so easy to talk about the nuance when you're someone who is consuming that content because they are in daily pain. It is very hard to hear, I think, I don't know, I don't know, you would have to look at the entirety of your relationship, you would have to compare it to this. So I understand the frustration. And I wish it was simpler than it is.

  KC 32:23

  Yeah. Well, Leslie, we are at time. And I can't tell you how great of a conversation this is. It's always a great conversation. With all of the pre planning that I've been doing. It tickles me pink to have somebody that I can schedule a podcast episode with and not even tell them what the topic is going to be. I myself thought of the topic about 15 minutes before I logged on, because I was like, Wait, have we not talked about a topic? But this has been great. You want to tell people where they can find you if they want to hear some of your sound bits, wisdom of sound bits, sound bits of wisdom. Yeah.

  Dr. Lesley Cook 32:51

  I don't know about the wisdom. But I've got lots of sound bits right now. I'm just on the tick tock at Leslie society. So it's le SLEYPSY Be

  KC 33:00

  nice. Thank you so much. Thank you

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Earlier this week, our episode 59, A Grief Observed, featured three people answering the same questions about their personal experience with grief. There was actually a fourth person, Meg Boberg, with very different circumstances, and her story is today’s episode. She shares her experience with “anticipatory grief,” where she grieves a loved one who has not yet passed.

Unfortunately, Meg’s mother has now passed on since we recorded this interview. We extend heartfelt condolences to Meg and her family in this loss, and we sincerely thank her for transparently sharing her and her mother’s poignant story with us. Join us for Meg’s grief story.

 Show Highlights:

●      What is anticipatory grief?

●      Highlights of Meg’s experience with her mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis since 2019, including writing an article about their shared experience

●      How Meg responds to the questions, “What can I do? How can I help?”

●      What people said or did that was helpful in the face of her mom’s terminal diagnosis

●      What people have said or done that was not helpful

●      How close friends have shown up for Meg during her anticipatory grief

●      Why saying something is better than saying nothing at all

●      Why the only thing that is NEVER helpful is to disappear, disengage, and not make any effort with a grieving person

 Resources and Links:

Read the article written by Meg and her mother, Linda: Navigating Preparatory & Anticipatory Grief

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes.

• Transcript

  KC 0:05

  Hello you sentient ball of stardust. Welcome to Struggle Care. I'm your host, KC Davis, and welcome to this week's bonus episode. Earlier this week, I ran an episode called A Grief Observed where I interviewed three different people and ask them the same questions about their experience in grief. This bonus episode is interesting because I actually had a fourth person that I interviewed only this person, their loved one had not passed yet. When we did the interview, they talked about something called anticipatory grief. And I asked them the exact same questions, so enjoy the interview. So I have with me now, Meg, Bo Berg, who I spoke to recently because her and her mother actually wrote an article together about anticipatory and preparatory. Those are hard words for me to remember grief. Hi, Meg, thanks for being here.

  Meg Boberg 0:52

  Thanks for having me.

  KC 0:53

  So what is anticipatory grief,

  Meg Boberg 0:57

  other than a hard word to say? Yeah, right. And your grief? Well, first of all, I came across the subject when I was writing for my previous job, I was writing for what was a company that does in home care for elderly, the elderly, home nursing care and such. And I had to pick blog topics for them. So one was that I came up with was, how do I, as an adult child cope with my parents incoming or upcoming death, rather, is? How can I cope with that, and it came from my own experience, because my own mother has a terminal cancer diagnosis. She was diagnosed in the spring of 2019. And so I didn't even know what it was called. I just knew that it was something I was experiencing. So I googled it like grief when someone hasn't died yet. Because it's something that is, it's not conventional grief, or, you know, you can go through the five steps process and then move on to the acceptance. I don't think anyone moves on from grief. But you can do a whole other podcast on that Gacy. But it doesn't Victori grief is grief that occurs before the loss, or during the loss. And you may be grieving several things at once, like, at the same time, watching your loved one as change as they're going moving away from what you knew, and how you knew life as it was when they were their full, vibrant self before their terminal diagnosis.

  KC 2:32

  Yeah, and you know, there's not any rituals, like our culture isn't great with death, but at least we have some rituals for after a person has died. But there really aren't any grief rituals for knowing that a person is terminal, and that they're going to die and processing through that grief.

  Meg Boberg 2:49

  Correct? It does make it quite challenging. I've joined some support groups for children whose parents are upcoming deaths or terminal diagnosis, I should say. And you can lean on them a bit more. Because something we were said we were going to talk about me and Casey's, how do you answer the question? What can I do when people hear you're having a hard time because obviously, I would think most adult children or children, children, anyone whose parent is dying, is having a hard time. So they want to know what they can do. But they can't relate typically, because death is such an uncomfortable topic. Nobody wants to think of their parent or anyone close to them dying. But you know, you only have one mother, you only have one dead. So I typically lean on those who I don't even know them. It's just people online support groups. And they're the ones who I can lean on because they can relate to what it's like to lose someone or they are losing someone. And they don't have the say, quote, unquote, luxury of like, the rituals, like you said, because that's something where you can get closure. Well, there is no closure when you're watching somebody with her way. It's terrible.

  KC 4:02

  So speaking of that question, we're asking everybody, you know, how do you feel about that question? What do you need? Or what can I do? I'm sure that you heard that a lot when your mom got her diagnosis. I have.

  Meg Boberg 4:14

  And if you read the blog that will be linked with this podcast about anticipatory grief. It's my mom has had up and down health for less about 10 years, but she's been diagnosed with our terminal diagnosis for about four years. And it's been a long road. So people do ask that occasionally. And sometimes the cynical part of me, which is a large part of me, is I want to be like, Oh, you're just asking that to fill the air. You know, but I know a lot of people are sincere, and I will tell them, and it took me a while to wrap my brain around. What do I say? Because I'm like, I feel like people do have this notion that they want me to keep trucking because she's not gone. She's still there. Like, Just act normal. All an adult, be an adult, do what you're supposed to go to work to get your paycheck, pay your bills, you know, get everything done. But I feel like when they're asking what can they do, I finally found my answer to that. That helps me. I'm not saying this is universal to everyone going through anticipatory grief. But I say, please let me vent. Because I feel like it helps me get my thoughts out. Because it's all it's on my mind. And left to my own devices. I probably would do what many other Grievers do, which is sit and stew and stare at a wall and dissociate, which I think is unhealthy and just let the water cups on my nightstand pile up. Which is a direct correlation, by the way in between my clinical depression level. And just yeah, what's going on at the moment, it's just, I will sit and stew and bite my nails and just like get frenzied because there's nothing I can do but sit with my thoughts. So I love people ask me questions like how's it going? What's going on? And how did you feel about that? Like, they're not my therapist, obviously. But it's good to have somebody who wants to, like talk through with me, especially if they know my mom, because well therapy is great. She doesn't know my mom. So I talked to my mom sisters, my mom is one of seven sisters. So a five of which are living still. And I talked to my mom's friends I talked to Nancy stored all who wrote and writes the blog, Nancy's point, which the blog is we've been mentioning, and she's a great advocate for breast cancer, women with breast cancer and breast cancer survivors. And I just feel like it helps when people let you speak what's on your mind. Because I know not everyone is comfortable talking about Debbi topics like this. And I respect that I'm sure people see the name of this very podcast like, Oh, I'm gonna hear that one. I was too heavy. But it definitely helps me I listen to tons of podcasts just like this one, because they helped me hear other people's experiences. I'm like, Oh, God, thank God, somebody else, you know, felt bad that they didn't get to go through any rituals, either. You know that. It sounds silly, but it's like, I wish I could have some sort of closure, but there is no closure when they're still living. And it sounds bad too. It's like you I want to have something for me. When she's the one who's suffering, it just sounds bad to me. And I feel guilty and feel ashamed of myself. So it's just compound emotions.

  KC 7:41

  I hear the helpfulness in being able to because even now, it's like talking about what you're experiencing. And even those, like conflicting emotions, helps you process through that what those emotions are and what they feel like. And that's kind of the only thing you have right now. Right? In the absence of those other rituals in the absence of quote, unquote, you know, moving on moving forward. So let me ask you this, when your mom got her diagnosis, and as this, you know, progresses for her, is there anything that people have done or said that was particularly helpful to you?

  Meg Boberg 8:20

  Well, people who have helped even it's surprised me, because I posted something on LinkedIn, for example, on my LinkedIn saying, they're having a hard time, you know, going through family crisis, and hashtag bereavement or hashtag grief or loss. And then, like three people who I barely knew from a previous job reached out to me and they're like, they came with like, five paragraph messages to me on LinkedIn, about how they could relate to what I was going through, because one of them said, Oh, my father recently died, and I was the executor of his will. And we didn't even have a great relationship to begin with. And I have just gotten a new job. And I had a new baby and all this and I was like, wow, it just gave me a whole new perspective on things about how complex grief is and the motions behind it. And it just, it gives you like, fresh perspective on like, you get kind of in your own world and how nobody's problems are as bad as mine are, but it's, it's not true. Other people have different flavors of problems. I mean, it does definitely, like, you get morose and like such saturated and how terrible your grief is, but then you see other people going through different types of grief. You know, that really actually comforted me to read because read his thoughts of when I sent him blogs I've written or other things I've written about grief. And this was just an acquaintance. We'd sent like maybe a couple emails back and forth. And then you saw my posts on LinkedIn. And he pinged me and a couple other people pinging me and they're like, following Is the death doula on LinkedIn? And I was like, what the ever loving F is a death doula, but then I found out then they are like pregnancy doulas, or however you describe that I don't have kids, but they help you navigate the process of someone's death. So it sounds like an incredible service to me. But those were things that actually helped me that were constructive. And another thing was my aunt the other day, one of my mom's younger sisters, She's the eldest of the seven, by the way, asked me, What can I do. And I was like, thinking again, like, I knew she's the kind that likes to be useful. And she's a state away. So I said, Well, you know, something you could do is my dad is your caretaker, and my sister in law, and I will, I need to contribute more, but like to cook for them. So my dad doesn't have to do all the cooking. And I said, you could like, give them a meal, you know, order something, takeout for them, and have it delivered. So that was something that I felt good about having somebody into you, I'm sure felt good about contributing in some way. So just giving back to somebody when they're stressed out. It's not just when somebody's gone, like you need to, you don't need to, but it's helpful to pitch in. And like, because caretakers that can be a whole other podcast for you is the grief that caretakers go through because it is immense, I'm sure, and the burden or not, I don't want to say burden, because that's so such a mean word. But that what caretakers go through, it's incredible to watch them. I watched my grandma, my dad's mom care for my grandfather for a couple years before he died. And it was just incredible to watch because he couldn't take care of himself at all. Like he had something called multiple system atrophy, which is kind of like Lou Gehrig's disease or ALS. And he couldn't feed himself or go to bathroom by himself or groom himself. And she did all that. So now it's like, my mom's loose and all that. But my dad is taking care of my mom. In a lot of ways, though. It's just interesting how that happens. But yeah,

  KC 12:10

  I think it's really cool to hear that people have kind of pinged you on LinkedIn, because like you mentioned, death is a really uncomfortable topic for people. And I can imagine that there are people that are like, Oh, I don't know her that well, I don't know if I should talk and not that everybody would, you know, would experienced that the same way you did. But it's interesting to hear you know, you saying like really talking about it, like having people talk openly about it happening. People talk to you about it, even though you're What is it now four years in? Like, it's still a very present experience and topic in your life?

  Meg Boberg 12:46

  Oh, yeah. And things change all the time, her status, like even on a monthly basis, things continue to evolve. Just I won't get into the nitty gritty, obviously. But it's just always kind of heartbreaking to watch how things progress. And

  KC 13:03

  do you feel like you're witnessing just like 1000s of little deaths over the past few years? Yes. Well, let me ask you this. Is there anything that somebody has done or said that was maybe well meaning, but just particularly not helpful to you?

  Meg Boberg 13:19

  Yeah, just like those people, as mentioned before, my cynical thought of filling the air of I call them the hashtag thoughts and prayers type, just literally,

  KC 13:31

  sorry for laughing, but it's a great, it's a perfect description.

  Meg Boberg 13:35

  It's just the slacktivism throwaway thoughts and prayers. And I did tell that affirmation guy who I talked to on LinkedIn that I thought that about them, and he said, Well, you know, some people just get uncomfortable with death. And they are well, meaning I was like, I get it, but at the same time, I'd rather they just like, you know, figured out something a little more constructive to say, because that's just file that under column, you know, useless, because it does nothing to make me feel better. It just makes me annoyed. Because I'm like, okay, the thoughts are nice, but in the prayers, like, when you're a non theist, it just just grinds my gears. So, it uh, that bothers me. But, uh, we're to come to let's see, I haven't reached the spot yet. But if people were like, she's in a better place, I'd be like, Whoa, you know? Like, I'm laughing because I was just watching an episode of Golden Girls. And Dorothy and her mother, Sophia are like, You know what, 60 and 80 years old, and I was like, they like everyone should be so lucky to have their mother around when they're 60. My dad is 70 and his mom is 97 still kicking still lucid still with us. And I'm like, I won't be 70 with my parents, but I can't keep talking about that or I'll cry. So ask me something.

  KC 15:06

  Well, it's interesting. You know, I think when we think about grief, we typically think almost exclusively about when someone has already died. And as a culture, we're already really uncomfortable with death. So I can't imagine how uncomfortable people are with the idea of this anticipatory grief. And so I'm curious how have some of your like, closer friends reacted? Like, did you have anybody pull away? Did you have anybody really show up for you? Like, how have the people around you kind of been interacting over the past few years, people have

  Meg Boberg 15:39

  been pretty good about it. I mean, I try not to dump on them all the time, just because I know that's too heavy. And also, I don't want to talk about all the time. I mean, there's not like constant updates. I feel like I spread it up between different people. Even my own boyfriend is like incredible sounding board. And I can lean on him. And sometimes I do call him at like, midnight when he's in a dead sleep. And I'm, like, freaking out. I need somebody to talk to. But I'm trying to, you know, use it when I'm really in distress rather than all the time because I know people have boundaries, too, just like I do. And yeah, it's people are pretty good. People check in on me. And I'm trying to utilize the people who check in rather than go to people randomly and be like, can I talk to you about death? Like, I feel like that's like a religious person who walks up to your door and asks you to join the religion. It's just so unwelcoming. Or like, maybe they they have some agenda. And yeah, it's just yeah, I try to know who to talk to and who is probably uncomfortable. Some people also, they may have actually lost a parent, but they don't want to talk about it with me, because it's just too raw still, you know, that's what I'm trying to swim. Glad you said, you're going to talk to other people to get a more well rounded perspective, because I'm sure other some people are listening to this right now and thinking mag me, that's me, or it is way off. She's just like cynical and talking about like, oh, people, thoughts and prayers. People are assholes, like, you know, it's just Everybody's got their own opinion. I'm just one view of Benny. Well, I

  KC 17:17

  think that's important, though, like, one of the reasons I wanted to do this episode, in this way is because I think as a culture, you know, feeling uncomfortable with death, and we see somebody that's had a loss or is going to have a loss. And we want so badly to know what the right thing to do is we want like the script, like what is helpful, what isn't helpful. And the truth is, is like something that one person finds helpful, another person might be annoyed, just like, out of control about like, one person may love, you know, I have family members that say like, please do not bring me food, like, please do not, I hate that. And then other people would say, like, God, sending a meal is the best, like burden you could take off my back. And I think it's really powerful to hear people as individual unique people going through this experience of grief and loss, because at the end of the day, you know, us wanting the right thing to say is really about us and our discomfort. And I think what we're called to do when the people around us are mourning is just engage in this human messy human experience knowing like, I might not do it, right. I might not do exactly what you said. And I might say thoughts and prayers, and you get annoyed with me. And that's okay.

  Meg Boberg 18:31

  Yeah, I don't blow up with those people. I just gotta roll my eyes and turtle and I'm like,

  KC 18:37

  you know, and you get to have that experience. And it's not about me, you know what I mean? I don't have to worry that much about, you know, Oh, it wasn't exactly what she wanted to hear, like, you just I think,

  Meg Boberg 18:49

  I think saying something at all is better than saying nothing. Because some people say nothing. Like my mom, I know herself has had some people who are good friends who have just sort of withered away, like gone off the like, out of her life, because I think it's too hard to deal with watching a former BFF go through something so like dressing as cancer. I mean, it's hard. But that's pretty crappy to be like, Oh, I'm just gonna step back or step away completely, because what you're going through is too much for me.

  KC 19:25

  And I think that's been the only like, consistent answer between everyone that I've talked to is the only thing that is definitely not helpful, is just disappearing. If it's someone you have a relationship with, right? Like, just being so uncomfortable, or so worried that you're gonna get it wrong, that you just don't engage at all.

  Meg Boberg 19:46

  Yeah, ever does about like, I can bring up other topics that are unrelated to grief. Like for somebody like a friend who was transitioning, you know, from one gender to another, and like, people are like, Oh, good. Talk to them. because that's awkward and new name and what the hell, like, if I were to get married and change my name, nobody would be like, Oh, that's too awkward can't call you by your new maiden name anymore. It's like, just get hip with it, deal with it, and just make the effort. I'm sure they're not gonna freak out at you, if you accidentally dropped the wrong name. Just apologize and move on. And, you know, make the effort. Effort is always appreciated, even for me make the messy human effort Yeah, make the most of human effort. That's a perfect way to put it.

  KC 20:33

  Well, Meg, thank you so much. This has been a really insightful and helpful contribution to this conversation. And I wish you and your mother peace in over the next few months and years, you know, in whatever way that you can grab at it.

  Meg Boberg 20:49

  Thank you. Absolutely. Thank

  KC 20:51

  you. And we'll link that article that we mentioned down in the show notes if you guys want to check that out. I also noticed in the article that there were some worksheets that you and your mother had filled out to help process through some of those things. And so there's some cool resources on that blog. You guys could check it out. Thanks, Meg. Thank you

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

This episode is an unusual one as I’m joined by three different guests. We are getting a different perspective on grief as we wade into the messy complexity of interacting with someone deep into grief and being the person in grief who is trying to field all those interactions. These three people have experienced grief in losing someone very close to them. I ask them the same questions about what people said and did that were helpful gestures AND those that were not helpful, along with what they wish people would have done and said. Their varying answers are insightful and revealing, helping us to understand that there is no one right answer to navigating grief. Being human is complex and messy, and there is no better example of that than when grief and loss slam into our lives. Join us to hear the different perspectives on grief from my friends, Shayna, Rachel, and Portia.

*Sensitivity warning: We are talking about death in this episode, so be aware that our specific topics are infant death, spousal death, and the death of a close friend.

 Show Highlights:

●      My first guest, Portia Burch:

○      How she lost her close friend, Tish, unexpectedly, around the same time as another meaningful loss in her life

○      The value of those who “bear witness” to our loss

○      How Portia responds to those who ask, “What do you need? What can I do for you?”

○      Why Portia wanted people to let her be, act normal around her, and not expect too much from her

○      Why it’s good to ask someone how they would like for us to proceed as they deal with a loss

○      How we can rephrase our questions into statements and listen to context clues to better follow up with someone during grief

○      Things people say that are not helpful during grief: comments like “this will get easier,” and “she’s in a better place”

○      What it really means to comfort someone

○      What we should talk more about the joy of a person’s life instead the fact that someone is gone

○      Why Portia says, “Grief is what we feel when our love has no place to go.” 

●      My next guest, Rachel:

○      How she lost her husband, Jim, in 2017, just before Father’s Day

○      How Rachel responds to those who ask, “What do you need? What can I do for you?”

○      How Rachel thought of grief and the people in proximity to it as ripples on a pond

○      Ways in which people were actually helpful with tangible support and care

○      Why Rachel vigilantly safeguarded how her husband’s death was explained to her kids

○      Rachel’s take on what to say and do to help someone experiencing acute grief

●      My next guest, Shayna Raphael:

○      How she lost her daughter, Claire, eight years ago as an infant

○      How Shayna responds to those who ask, “What do you need? What can I do for you?”

○      What people did for Shayna and her family that were helpful actions

○      Things people did or said that were NOT helpful: comments about religion, closure, “a better place,” etc.

○      Why it isn’t helpful when people try to force comfort on a grieving person

○      Why those who show up and “enter into the messiness” are comforting

○      How Shayna found help and support through a Facebook group

○      Why Shayna and her husband founded the Claire Bear Foundation to provide safe sleep spaces to families across the US

 Resources and Links:

Connect with our guests: The Claire Bear Foundation

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

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• Transcript

  KC Davis 0:05

  Hello, you sentient balls of stardust. Welcome to Struggle Care. My name is KC Davis, I'm your host. And today's episode is about grief. But it's going to be a little bit different than the way you might have heard grief talked about in the past, what I wanted to do was sort of wade into the messy complexity of what it's like, when you're trying to interact with someone that is in grief, and what it feels like to be a person in grief, trying to field all of those interactions. So what I've done is I've gotten together three people who have experienced grief, they have lost somebody really, really important to them. And I asked them all the same questions. I asked them how they felt about the question, what do you need? What can I do? I asked them if they were ever able to find an answer to that question that actually helped them. I asked them what people said or did that helped them in their time of grief. And I asked them their opinions about things that people said or did that were well meaning but ultimately not helpful. I love the varying answers and the different experiences that came out of these interviews. And I hope that they are helpful to everyone that is both grieving and might one day know someone that is grieving. And I hope that at the end of the day, it's an invitation to the idea that there is no right answer, that being human is a messy experience. And that ultimately, it's an invitation to wade into the complexity of that messiness. Knowing that you are getting it right isn't the important point. Oh, and before we get started, I did want to let you guys know that we're going to be talking about death. Obviously, in this podcast, we're gonna be talking about infant death, spousal death, and the death of a friend. Portia, thank you so much for joining me.

  Portia 1:42

  Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

  KC Davis 1:44

  So you lost a friend recently.

  Portia 1:48

  I did. Her name is Tish Leticia was my Tesh, she was my ex partner. But one of my very best friends lost her on Valentine's Day, no less, very unexpected. She had diabetes. She was healthy. But she also suffered from high high glucose levels, low glucose levels. And unfortunately, she went to sleep and had a low and did not wake back up. And it was even harder because was right around Superbowl Sunday. And we had been chatting back and forth because my team was playing and talking about snacks. And I had sent our texts on Saturday didn't hear from her on Sunday got a phone call on Monday about her being gone. And Iraq, my entire world. Iraq, my entire world. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a little bit more intense. I know that people that are listening can't see. But behind me is my love you dad picture because I lost my father to in 2018. And those two were so incredibly close, even beyond like our relationship up until he died, she would go over and check on him just like I would. So it was a big, it was like loss on top of loss and all kinds of united and congealed. And so yeah,

  KC Davis 2:52

  yeah, I will say one of the things I feel like we don't talk about enough when we lose someone is that like, there's value. There's like a real tangible value to someone who has borne witness to your life. I was with a girlfriend that drove in nine hours just to go to a concert with me. And we're driving home. And this concert was like when we listened to when we were teenagers when we both had addictions. And like, we just gone through everything together. And as I'm driving, and I was thinking back as to the person I was and kind of looking back at her with compassion, even though she was kind of a fuckup. And thinking like this person sitting next to me, was witness to that person. And in a really tangible way. Like, she reminds me that person was real. And that person was worth loving. And she keeps that person alive. And she like she was a witness like I can everyone in my life. I can tell them about it. They can know about it, but like she bore witness to that. Mm hmm. And that's like such a huge thing we lose when we lose someone.

  Portia 3:48

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a Tish had lost her father too. And so when we were together as well, my dad got sick, and my dad got sick. And we lost him three days shy of a year of his diagnosis. So it was really, really fast. So kind of when you say like being bearing witness, she knew like my relationship with my father. And she knew how hard of a loss it was. And it was something that I was able to kind of hold close, where I didn't have to explain those feelings of missing him. And so losing her ties it all together, you know, so? Yeah. So I'm sure like everyone else you heard the question, what do you need? What can I do for you? And that's kind of what I've been asking everybody like, what is your feelings kind of emotional reaction or your experience with that question? I never know what to say. Because how do you know what you need? Like grief is so bizarre, even when you've experienced it even when you've had it happen multiple times every time it's like the first time. So knowing what I need Chicago's being Chicago behind me, it doesn't make any sense. So I generally just look at somebody and say, I have no idea. Recognize that I'm going to have moments where I am enraged, or I am full of sadness where I can't move

  Or sometimes I'll just need to tell you a story. You have to listen to it. And just let me kind of speak through it. So I don't know. I mean, honestly, I just ask for people to just let me be, and not expect too much from me. And does that for you mean, leave you alone? Or does that mean act normal? Or does that mean just be normal? But don't expect my normal self? Yeah, it's kind of like it's be normal be normal. Because I don't do well, with a lot of like, a lot of checking in on me that doesn't, because then I feel like I have to respond. And I know that I don't have to, like my mind says, You don't have to respond. But then my head's like, Oh, but I have to answer. So just kind of act like everything is normal. But when I reach out to you be there. And that was a struggle to kind of actually have that expectation. I guess I have somebody expect or have me expect somebody to be there for me when I don't know when that's going to be and then even when being there for me. Does that mean just listening to me? Does that mean giving me a meal? Does that mean coming and sitting with me? So it's really just kind of Yeah, just acting normal and waiting for whatever is going to pop up in that moment of this is what I need. I'm broken right now. Come sit with me or enraged right now. Come sit with me. Or I'm hungry, and I can't eat right now. Come sit with me and feed me. So I guess like an on call support system?

  KC Davis 6:09

  Yeah. And it's been interesting to hear the different responses to that. Because there are people that are like, I hate that question now. Because it was just so often, and I didn't know that then there were people that have said, I never knew what to say. But every time someone said it, I felt like they loved me. Like I appreciated that people kept saying it. There are people that said, I hated that people would just show up and do things, I needed space. And there are people who have said, I'm so glad someone just sent groceries to the door because I wouldn't have known what to do. And so it's like everyone is so different. And one of the things that I did sort of figure out to do with a friend that lost someone was when I had reached out to her, I finally like had the wherewithal to say to her at the end of the conversation. Do you want me to give you some space? Or would you like me to check in again soon? Yes. That was like, I don't know why it never occurred to me to ask because I'm always thinking that like, I don't know what to do. Would it be helpful? I don't do too much. I do too little. But I don't think it occurs to us to just ask someone, like, how would they like us to proceed?

  Portia 7:06

  You know, as humans, especially when we care about somebody, and we love somebody, it's instinctual for someone to fix them or fix the situation? And a question that I asked a lot when I'm helping other people or dealing with other people, even at a loss is, what do you need right now? Do you need somebody to fix something? Or do you just need somebody to listen? And that's very much the same question. Do you want me to keep checking up on you? Or do you want me randomly to check up but ask another person? What does that look like? And you made a good point, like somebody said that people would just show up, and that's annoying. And that absolutely is but then sending groceries is different. That is something where somebody does not have to be prepared to have face to face contact or try to communicate, but they're still having needs met. And I think that's a very intentional way of kind of taking care of people with also honoring the space that might be needed. Yeah, it's so tricky. I keep saying that. But you just don't know, you don't know until you're in it. And then when you're in it, that can also change the question, what do you need is a very loving question. And it's also a very confusing question. And it can be so overwhelming, because then you start thinking about what do I need? And that can send you right back into another grief spiral.

  KC Davis 8:16

  Yeah, you can never lose by being literal. Like, I think a lot of listeners might struggle with social interaction in general, or have had a difficult time with social interactions that don't have kind of set rules. And this is kind of one of them, where it's like, okay, there are some things I'm supposed to do, but maybe everybody's different. And there's, it's like, I don't want to mess up. But I don't want to do this. And I think one of the things that I think is really interesting is like I primarily started listening to your tic tock for your anti racism work. And one of the parallels that I've been thinking about while doing the interviews for this episode is this idea of, I'm so afraid to get it wrong, that I don't engage at all. And I know that if I do get it wrong, someone's going to have feelings about that. And that's okay. But that's not a reason to not engage. And it was like, I feel like I wanted this episode to kind of be this invitation to like, step into the messiness of human grief, knowing that you're not going to get it right. But you're, it's not about you.

  Like it's okay, it's not about you, you might piss your friend off, but like, okay, you'll be fine. Right? Right. That's a beautiful parallel, because you can't take on the feelings of somebody else when somebody else is grieving. So if the person that you're trying to reach out to the person that you're trying to help is like, Fuck you, I don't need you right now. That is not a personal affront. That is somebody that is just feeling a lot at that moment. And they cannot think about thinking about somebody else's feelings while they're trying to navigate this grief because grief can be so crippling, it can be so just polarizing and sometimes we snap back. Sometimes we just shut down and it's not anything personal. But it's also beautiful for people to keep trying. Because you're gonna get it right at some point. It is like the most loving thing because it's like

  If I'm going to take that risk, I'll be the one willing to fail. Because I know that you're in such a difficult spot, you're in such a human spot, you're like, like, I will take that risk on myself, I'll be willing to be the one that overstepped or under stepped or said the wrong thing like, not that and I do want to listen, I don't want to just keep saying the wrong thing, you know, after someone says, Hey, that's not healthy.

  But yeah, so was there anything for you? Like, did you ever come up with an answer to that you kind of mentioned saying, like, hey, just be there for me. But was Did you ever come up with an answer that felt like was helpful? To you and to others?

  Portia 10:35

  I would say after I said, I'm not sure to one person. If somebody if that same person asked me again, my best answer is like, don't ask me, please don't ask me. I will let you know. I don't want to be asked that question by the same person multiple times. Because my instinct is say, I don't know. And I'm not going to know by the next time you ask me. And if I do know that, I'm going to let you know. So that'd be like, that's probably the best answer is like, let me just let you know, let me reach out to you. Let me let you know what that looks like. I've got friends that I've been able to text at two o'clock in the morning, when I wake up just in a panic of grief. And they just listen, they might not even read it till the next day. And the next day, they might come back. And so you've got that off your chest. Did you need anything else from me? And I think that that follow up question of it's like, did you need anything else from me? I just got myself to an answer is a beautiful thing. You know, I don't know what I need. But if I tell you what I need, and you follow it up with what else? Is there anything else that you need? Is there anything else that I can do for you? Because I've already given you one answer, you've done something for me. Don't keep asking me what I need. But let me have the space to tell you. If I need something else, I will let you know. Yeah, I wonder also like, I feel like I always default to the question. What do you need? What do you what are you with whatever. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I am kind of becoming aware of that that does put that does sort of give, I don't want to say a burden. But it does, like put a person into a spot to then need to do something or think of something. And again, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. But it is sort of also occurring to me that like I can express the same sentiment and openness with a statement as well. Like I can say, you may not know what you need. But I'm here, hey, if you think of something that you need that I can do for you, I'm here. Like maybe I could, you know, not necessarily like one's right or wrong. But just as an especially when you're mentioning like as a follow up like, Okay, I don't have to keep asking you. But maybe after the first time I asked you when I see you to talk about, hey, great to see you. You know, I know you're going through a hard time and just remember I'm here if you need something that's beautiful. And you said it's not a burden, it is a burden. And it's not a problem calling it a burden, because burden isn't inherently a bad thing. But again, you have to think about what that person is already going through that heaviness that they already have. And adding even the smallest expectation on top of that can be just kind of that one little thing that just sends everything shattering. So you know, that initial question is fine, but like you just said statements for the follow up, hey, just remember, if you need anything, if you need anything, I'm here, don't forget that you can reach out to me, I'm thinking about you all have these little things that are very much expressing that love and that care and then availability to the person without making that person feel like, okay, when I reach out to Rebecca, then I have to know exactly what I need in this moment. And I have to have this answer the next time I see her. Meanwhile, I'm still crying every single day because I lost this person and just having somebody that's willing to say I'm here when you need me.

  KC Davis 13:25

  And I also think like the people in my life that I would feel comfortable doing something without them asking. I know enough to be able to reasonably guess what they would or wouldn't want, right? Like, I know that certain members of my family would rather die than have me send them food. Like it really makes them uncomfortable. So I know not to do that. But I wouldn't know. I'll send some flowers. You know what I mean? Like, I think that there are people if I truly don't know someone well enough to be able to reasonably guess what might be helpful, then that's probably someone I want to ask or make statements to not somebody, I'm going to just like, assume and do something because you know, and you are right, it is a burden. And I think that's why a lot of us don't ask for help is because the burden of asking seems greater than the burden of doing

  Portia 14:12

  100% It's also important to listen to context clues or pay attention to the people that you want to support. People will say things like I just haven't been able to be eat. I haven't been able to drink water. I haven't been able to get my clothes done and those little context clues there so that if you offer like, Hey, do you need a meal? Hey, do you need help with laundry? Then those questions that you're asking are more specific to because you've been paying attention to what they're telling you that they haven't been able to do, which aligns with, okay, this is what I need help with. You know, I haven't been able to take my dog out for a walk all these little things that they're saying. So when you have somebody that's grieving and you want to be intentional in your support for them, you have to listen to everything that they're saying. And not just hearing that they're sad, or hearing that they miss that person. Because beyond that, those are feel

  lanes. But beyond those feelings are actions and other emotions that come with it, that slow everything down and just have to pay attention to who you're talking to and who you want to support.

  KC Davis 15:09

  And I think there's also it seems like there are things that I can do that would go along with what my normal interaction with that person would be like, if you're someone that's lost something, and I've never been to your house, I'm not just gonna show up to your house, I'm probably won't even offer to come to your house. But if you're my friend that I go see all the time. Maybe the next time I go see you, I just Oh, and I brought a coffee. Oh, when I bought some of these things, you know what I mean? Like, I don't need to drastic, and I mean, it's not a rule, right? Sometimes there are people that I'm going to show up in a way I've never showed up before, because we need to rally, but sort of paying attention to that, like, Okay, I would normally, you know, go to this person's house, or I would normally check up on this person via phone and say, Hey, I'd love to send some groceries your way? Or can I send some dinner for the kids or whatever, that's always a big one. So in terms of people's questions, and things that they have said, you know, have there been things that people have said to you while you were grieving this person, and why you are grieving this person that they thought were helpful that you just went, Oh, God, that's like, so not helpful.

  Portia 16:10

  A classic one is in a better place. Now. Another one is, it'll get easier, I absolutely hate that statement. Because grief doesn't get easier, it gets different. So those are two things, I absolutely hate hearing a better place to have like, I'm not going to have a conversation about the sky Daddy that might take the person that I love away from me, for what, right and the getting easier. Things don't have to be easier to be manageable. It's just it's part of who we are. Life isn't all about everything being easy and great. It's about how we manage it, how we learn to live with it. And having this understanding that again, it just gets different. That's letting me know that somebody understands that grief is going to come up and smack me in the face some days. And some days, I will be able to tell a story about the person that I lost with a laugh, and some anecdote or something silly that we talked about. And that can happen at any time. And those two things can happen in the same exact day. So those are the things. Yeah, those are probably the only two things that I really just do not like and that have not worked for me. They make me bristle. They make me feel like somebody expects me to have my grief on a timeline, that they expect me to stop being sad, after X amount of time, and then likely not be sad at all.

  KC Davis 17:29

  It really does open up the question of like, what does it really mean to comfort someone? Because I do want to comfort that people, we do want to share someone's burden, we do want to help alleviate their pain. But how do you do that in a way that is communicating to them something other than like, Hey, let me take this pain away from you. Like because maybe that's not what someone needs,

  Portia 17:53

  Right? Like comforting somebody is it's going to be like an individual basis type situation. I think also, too, when people try to comfort, they try to take on everything for that person to try to remove everything away from them. And that's also not fair. Because we cannot have any type of healing if people are stripping away our feelings and emotions from us as a way to try to make things better.

  KC Davis 18:14

  We're used to exactly like trying to fix it. Yeah, I'm trying to take that pain, and put some happy things on it and bring the pain level down and put the happy things on. And I think at the end of the day, that's just that person's journey, like it is your individual journey to walk through that pain. And yes, sometimes you will need hope and comfort. But I do think it's important to be aware that we're communicating hope and comfort in a way that is not again, putting that burden of like, hey, it's going to start to make me uncomfortable. If you're not wrapping it up at some point.

  Portia 18:47

  That's exactly it. That's gonna be my next thing is people get uncomfortable with other people's big feelings. But other people's big feelings are their big feelings and your discomfort is not their responsibility. So you know, if I'm going through something, and somebody says to me, Oh, God, you've been really sad for like three weeks, I should have and I might be sad for another three weeks. And you being uncomfortable about that? Is none of my business. If you're uncomfortable about it, then you need to go somewhere else for a while and maybe tap into why that is gonna be okay. But yeah, you cannot be somebody's support. If you find yourself uncomfortable with how somebody else expresses their feelings.

  KC Davis 19:28

  You know what's wild about that? And this is gonna sound wildly disrespectful when I first say it, but I promise it's going in a not disrespectful way. I recently my cat recently died. I'm not comparing Don't worry. But one of the things I have noticed is when people I literally just got even a card from my vet, like when people respond to comforting me about my cat. No one goes to it won't always be this hard. It's gonna get better like no one does any of that stuff they've all done. They don't try to point to her death. They always point to her life. They

  I always say she was so grateful to have you. She was such a beautiful thing and your family, what a wonderful thing you gave her. And what's weird about that is as I think about the way we as humans sort of automatically go to comforting a person that has lost a human in their life, we automatically go to talking about the loss and making the loss, okay? And I'm just in this moment, wondering if like, maybe we have it better. Maybe we're like, better equipped at handling animal deaths? Because like, wouldn't that be a more comforting thing for me to because it doesn't fix it. And it might actually be painful to hear that, but it'd be joining you in that moment of it sounds like y'all had a beautiful relationship.

  Portia 20:41

  Yes, I can fully say that if somebody's going to talk to me about tissue or my dad, like my most recent loss, talk to me about when they were alive, that gives me something to remember, that's joyful. That brings me like something to smile about. But if you're going to help me with your, my grief, and you want to talk about, oh, my god, he was just so sick at the end. And it's a good thing that he's not suffering anymore. That's not a good feeling. Because now I'm just thinking about him being sick, and I'm thinking about him being gone. And, you know, Tish, I want to think about, like, the stupid shit that we us ed to do together, there was so much fun about the fact that Oh, my God, now she's gone, I'm aware that she's gone. Like, that's something that I'm smacked with every day that I wake up. So if we're going to talk about this person, that somebody lost, try and bring some joy back to it don't pile on to the grief that's already there, you know?

  KC Davis 21:31

  Well, it just kind of it made me really zoned in on what you were saying about, I think we are less uncomfortable when it comes to like an animal death. So it's, we don't feel the need to like, fix it immediately. But we are as humans, so uncomfortable, in the face of someone else's big grief about a loved one, that as a human that they've lost. It's almost like that's what makes us skip to the fixing, like because we can't handle the feelings that we have in the face of that person's feelings. When in reality, you know, if we could kind of hold on to ourselves in the face of that person's grief, we wouldn't, I think, feel as tempted to go right for the fixes. And we could join alongside them in that pain, and be able to say, I'm so sorry for your loss. It's not fair. She was such a beautiful friend. And you know, to lose someone who was a witness to not only your life, but to your dad's life into important parts of your life. Like, that's a loss, it comes with letting go of that discomfort around somebody else's feelings. And you make a good point when you talk about like losing a pet and everything. Because that pet didn't also have like a human connection. There's something there was a knowledge gap, but I'll close and I'll probably tell you about it later. But I can see what you're saying like, but we also if you look at it in general, when we talk about animals, animals are just so beloved. And of course, it's a big huge loss. And, of course, it's like, oh, it's the worst possible thing. But then we talk about it was such a great pet and everything. It's very interesting, how we're almost like better at it in some ways. Yes. And I'm trying to make the connection. And it's not going to be because the animal didn't have human emotions. That's really the only difference that immediately is coming to my mind. I'm gonna think about that one. You've sparked something in my brain, Casey Davis. I know. I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to mull over it too. Well, this has been really wonderful. And I really appreciate you making the time. And

  Portia 23:23

  I think it's gonna be a great end cap on this conversation about grief. Yeah, it is. Grief is something that we cannot avoid is where love has no place to go. So if you think about it that way, it's a cheesy little statement. But it's true. Because I think people think that grief means an absence of love. And that is the exact opposite truth. Grief is love with just no place to go. Just recognize that, Oh, I feel that intensely. Because when I think about the people in my life, and when I have feelings for them, it is as if they absorb those things. There's some where to send it and then all sudden, it is there's nowhere for it to go. But it's still coming out of you. And it just fills the room and sweeps you up and then you feel like you're drowning in it. Yeah, one last thing before we end. Are you familiar with the grief ball in the box? thing? Yes. But I don't think anyone's talked about it yet. So you should talk about it. Okay, So picture this a box with starts off with a pebble in a corner. The box is you the box is your existence, the Pebble is grief, that pebble can grow into a rock and can sometimes fill up that entire box. So all you have are these little pockets where you are trying to survive. That boulder can shrink down to a rock where you've got more space to survive, but it's still very there and still very present. And sometimes I'll go back down to that pebble. So ideally, the grief is always there. The grief is not going anywhere. It comes back to it's never easier. It's just different. And then those moments where it's a boulder and you feel like you can't breathe, just remember that that boulder is not gonna stay a boulder forever. It's going to come back down to a rock and back down to a pebble. And as you move through grief and you recognize that it's always there and you're not just trying to get rid of it, and that it's just part of your life in your

  KC Davis 25:00

  story now, but how do you live with that? You recognize those those that ebb and flow is normal, it's natural, and it's never going to be a boulder forever, you can come back to a pebble. Yeah, it's not that the pain goes away, it's that there's more room for joy, to be able to be experienced alongside that pain. Exactly. And the more that you find yourself, finding comfort and joy, because sometimes when we're grieving, we have guilt, about joy, especially when that grief is really brand new. But the more that you allow yourself to feel that joy, the more that boulder becomes a rock more prominently, and then sometimes even a couple more prominently. That's beautiful. Well, thank you, Portia. So much. We're gonna put everybody's handles and things in the show notes. So if you guys want to follow anybody, look anybody up, you can check down there. And I hope you have a wonderful day. You too. Thank you.

  Rachel, thank you so much for being willing to talk with me. Thank you for having me. So before we get started, can you tell me a little bit about your late husband?

  Rachel 26:05

  Yes. So my late husband's name was James, but we all call them Jim. And this little anecdote kind of sums him up as a human. When he was a kid, he went to a Catholic school. So there were a lot of James's in his class, like a lot, a lot. And so there was James and there was James M. And there was James S. And there was Jim and there was Jimmy. And so he really got sick of always writing James m on his paper. So instead, he made his nickname Jim J. i, m b, because it's spelled like limb where the B is silent. And that stuck, like that was his name on his office door as an adult. Pretty sure it was on his diploma from college like Jim J. and B. That was his vibe. That was his human was a very creative man. And how long ago did he die? He died six and a half years ago. He died in June of 2017. It was a rough two weeks, who really, he died? And then six days or no, sorry, for five days later was Father's Day, then it was my birthday. And then a week after that was his birthday. Geez. So it was like the worst weeks ever. Okay, so I'm asking everybody the same three questions. And the first one is, if you're thinking back to that time period of grief, how do you feel about the question? What do you need? Or it's SR question? So what can I do? I understand the drive for that question. I understand why people ask it. And I hate it. I hated that question. That question was work it to put it simply, that question was work because it required both my reflection on what I needed. I knew to categorize what it was that I could use help with. It required me to prioritize and assess what I actually could ask of this person, right, given their proximity to my life, what could I actually demand or ask of this person. And it required me to do a certain amount of self reflection of what I was ready to accept help with?

  Right, because I couldn't just say, I want you to come clean my house to most people, because there was like, on top of the fact that my husband died, I had small children, I was pregnant, I was trying to run a business. I was in school, and all these things happening. And then there was like, already this level of like, shame attached to like, I can't do it all. So then asking me how can I help required my own self reflection of like, what am I willing to let people in to see where I'm failing? Right. And that is a very personal thing. But I think it's not an uncommon thing. Yeah. So did you ever come up with any answers that were actually helpful to that question, like a way to actually get help when people ask that I did. For people who were close enough for me, to be honest, right? So I always think of it like, I think of grief and the people in proximity to grief as like ripples on a pond. So like, the person at the middle, the rock, the one that causes the ripple is obviously the person who died. And the first ring is like, their very immediate family. So like myself and my children. And the next ring is like, my family, his family, you know, our next level of extended family. And and as we go out, right, that proximity dictated how comfortable didn't dictate it completely, but it helps dictate how comfortable I felt in being honest with the answer to the question, you know, how can I help, right? Because if you're my sister, I could say like, pick between house kids or job, right? My answer was, usually I have jobs, or I have ways you could help me in each of these realms, pick one, because that helps me then narrow down what I can ask for, and that I felt, for me was kind of the most honest and easiest and most helpful response to how can I help because if I had realms of where You could help me then you can pick and I don't have to do all this mental and emotional labor. And then for the people who were not close enough, I could just be like, No, I'm good. We're surviving. We're doing okay.

  KC Davis 30:09

  So was there anything that somebody, you know, we sort of established that for you, you know, what can I do wasn't actually like a very helpful thing to say. Was there anything that somebody did or said that you did find helpful in that time period for you?

  Rachel 30:22

  Yeah, I would say the people who, instead of saying, How can I help the ones who were like, Hey, I'm doing this thing? Can I do this for you as well? So like, I'm making a run to Goodwill, can I bring anything for you? Right, or, like, I'm taking my kids to the park can your kids come with? And then honestly, and this is, you know, obviously not an intervention that a lot of people can do. But there was a family that I've known for 20 years who have kids right around my same the same age as me, right? Who were basically just like, we're going to drop you a check once a quarter. Because we know that one of the things that would be helpful until your finances balance out after losing your spouse is just knowing that you have this little bit of money coming in, you know, because GoFundMe is great, and it's a helpful infusion right away in the beginning, but the business of death is exhausting and complicated. Like I didn't finish wrapping up my husband's death stuff until almost three years after he died.

  KC Davis 31:24

  Especially as a young widow. Yeah. So when people did said like, Hey, I'm going to Goodwill, can I take anything like for you? Was it kind of integral to that being helpful? The fact that they were saying like, Hey, I'm going anyways, that was part of it. It took the like, it definitely made sure that there was no layer of like, guilt or like imposition. But it was more that it was a specific thing. Right. Like, I didn't have to do any mental labor in the planning. I didn't have to, like, it was a very simple yes or no, right? I'm going and doing this thing. Do you want to be involved? Yes, I'm doing this thing. Can I help? Is this helpful? No. Right. And that was the other thing too. Is it? Also, there was no guesswork involved? There was no like, having to figure out if it was gonna, like, yeah, I guess that imposition, but also like that.

  Rachel 32:11

  I felt comfortable saying no, yeah. Because, I mean, it doesn't like affect them. If you say no, they're just doing a thing and make it an offer. And they're gonna do the thing anyways. And so there's like, no pressure either way. Right. Yeah, exactly. I like that. So would you say that? If you think back to that time period, what did people say? Or do that you could tell was well, meaning, but ultimately not helpful to you? I don't think anything was actively unhelpful. Like nothing was harmful. Right. I don't think anything that happened during that time period.

  With the exception, I guess, I'd say one thing is trying to explain death and loss to my children without me present. That was frustrating. Whoa, people did that. Yep, they sure did. Because one of the things that as a counselor, but also as somebody who experienced great loss as a child, like my dad died when I was a kid, one of the things that I was very cognizant of was making sure that conversations about my late husband went a very particular way with my kids, right? Like, I didn't ever stop them from talking about their dad. But I also never use phrases like he's in a better place, or he's not in pain anymore, like any of that stuff. Because little kids, right? They don't have the ability to think abstractly enough to understand the layers of meaning to those phrases. So like, when people are like, well, he's in heaven. Now. He's watching them, he's in a better place club. Like, they don't understand what that means. And so having people tried to say that stuff to my kids was not helpful. But beyond that, you know, there were just things that like, I brought you a meal, okay. I appreciate that. But I have now how many meals in my freezer like, I think, with the advent of things like meal train, where you can sign up for that stuff that's gotten better, but like six years ago, that wasn't as big of a thing. And I ended up with like, here's enchiladas that nobody in your family except you will eat and you're going to have a whole tray that'll feed 40 people. So now you don't really have to eat this up. But you have to take care of the leftovers and then not feel guilty about throwing out what you don't eat. Like, again, emotional labor, right? Gift cards, man. That was helpful. The gift cards were helpful. Hell yeah. We had a lot of McDonald's and Pizza Ranch. Very local thing. That's awesome. That's all I have. That's just those four questions. Oh, okay. I feel like that what I said was not you know, it's too too far out of left field compared to what other people have talked about. No, it was perfect. The whole point of the podcast is not necessarily like to give like universal answers, but like specifically to hear the different answers that everybody has. Because you know, some will say like, I hated that question and some will be like, I liked to hear it. i It made me feel like people liked me or people cared about me, then people were like, I mean, it's fine, but like, it just made so much more work for me and other people were like, oh, what's what

  KC Davis 35:00

  Ever Right? Like, most people agreed that like, it's not that helpful of a question. But then what they did find helpful, was very different. And so but it's interesting rikes, it's like, well, but if I don't know what they find helpful, but I don't want to ask what they find helpful, but I don't. And that's kind of a point is just to, like, invite people into the messiness of grief, that everyone is different. And that, ultimately, it's not about you, the person asking, so like, it's not this like charge to not screw it up, or to ask the perfect question. It's more just an awareness of like, everybody's different. And the whole thing is messy, and you just gotta get in there with them. But I think also, what was so consistent was a recognition of like, with your example, about the rings in the water, like, people having a self awareness of like, where are they positioned in the rings? Because if you're a co worker, right, like, giving a gift card is great. You know,

  if you're my sister showing up at my house with food is great. Mike, my business partners, the day my husband died, we've actually had a really big falling out the year before. So like it did, we were still working together, but we definitely weren't as close as we had been. And the day my husband died, they both basically dropped everything and drove down to my house. And like one of them cleaned my cat boxes. The other one took my kids to the park, like, they were just like, you know, we've had our ups and downs, but we are we know, we're close enough. We've been in business together for how many years? Like, they just stepped in and did stuff they didn't ask, it was just like, We know what needs to be done. We're going to do it. Sorry, even though most people will say that, like, hey, what can I do? Like isn't really a helpful question. Everyone so far has agreed, saying nothing is like the worst thing you could do. Like, Oh, I'm so uncomfortable. I don't want to get it wrong. I don't want to whatever. Right. And it's not even What's so funny is like, I would honestly urge people like my 1,000% opinion, is if you don't feel comfortable, if you're like, I know that asking what can I do isn't helpful, but I have nothing to offer, right? I can't give you money. I can't afford a gift card. I'm not close enough to you to offer to come and clean your house, whatever. Like my proximity to you isn't enough. There is so much helpfulness and healing in just saying like, I'm really sad for you. And I will not forget your partner because I think especially that first year, right? Everybody remembers everybody steps in to think about the big things, right? It's your first Christmas, tell your partner, it's your first anniversary, it's your first, whatever. But then when you get into year two, and it's not as present in people's minds, it's not as fresh, right? Their lives have moved on. If you have that moment of realization, even if you're four or five, six rings removed, and you have that like glimmer, like, oh yeah, I remember when Jim said that thing, sending a Facebook message sending a text and being like, Hey, I thought about your partner today. And it just made me smile. Like that is so unbelievably like healing and helpful. And I don't think people talk about it enough. I get we don't we don't bring it up at all. It always feels like it has to be actionable. And it doesn't. Yeah, sometimes. And I think also, like thoughts and prayers have been such a phrase. And also like the recognition like not everybody wants you to talk about like praying for them. And I have found that like, it seems underwhelming. But it is so simple to just say to somebody like I'm thinking about you today. Yep. Like I'm thinking about you if you suffer personally, like on a scale of like, okay to work, and thank you, right thoughts and prayers is okay, great. Like, when it gets specific to their actual practices, that gets a little bit more meaningful. So I have a friend who's Buddhists who would tell me like, Hey, I'm chanting for you today. Thank you, right. I appreciate that. Getting to hey, I thought of I'm thinking about you today. They're kind of on the same scale. But then those really specific like, I saw this thing, it made me think of you and maybe think of your kids and maybe think of your partner or whatever. Like that really made an impact personally because it right, like ties in that sense of like, this actually happened. Right? It makes it more, more genuine. I think that's the word I'm looking for. Well, thank you so much. This has been really helpful. Yeah.

  So Shayna, thank you for being with me today. Could you take a minute to introduce yourself and talk to us a little bit about Claire? Sure. So as you said, my name is Shana and I live in the Pacific Northwest with my husband. We've had three beautiful daughters. My oldest is Lily. My second is Claire, and my youngest is Julianne, and we run a nonprofit called the Claire bear Foundation. And that actually started because of Claire eight years ago on my 31st birthday. We dropped Claire off at her in home childcare providers home like we

  Shayna Raphael 40:00

  I always did. And I'd taken the day off with my oldest for some one on one time before we went and picked Claire up early and celebrated my birthday with family that evening. And about midday, I started to get some phone calls from my mom, and then my husband. And as strange as it sounds, if my husband calls me during the workday, I know that something's up because he usually is not available. And I answered and he asked if I talked to my mom, I said, I hadn't answered her calls yet. And then he just told me that I needed to get to the hospital right away. But Claire was unresponsive when they woke her up from a nap. It was a Friday afternoon. So then I spent Friday afternoon traffic trying to get to the hospital got there. And then what I had feared the most had happened had happened and Claire, they weren't able to save her. And so that morning was the last time I was able to see Claire live. We later found out that our childcare provider who we had loved and trusted, she had watched my older daughter when she was an infant as well hadn't been transparent with us about where Claire was sleeping, and they had been having her sleep on their adult mattress since she was about seven months old. Despite showing us cribs and the other sleep space she was in and Claire suffocated. She was 10 and a half months old, it's not something that I would have really thought would have been a risk for her at that age. But unfortunately, she is one of the main reasons that safe sleep recommendations go up through one year of age. And so yeah, now it's been eight years and we miss her. It's just it's painful. Grief doesn't really go away. It changes over time, but we miss her like crazy. I think it's hard for any mother to wrap their head around that experience. So I appreciate you coming on and telling us about Claire and answering some questions about grief. And I've been interviewing several different people and hearing their different responses to these questions. And the first one really is how do you feel about the question? What do you need? Or what can I do? And so both any kind of emotional reaction you have to that or any kind of narrative that you had around people asking that I have a different mindset. Now, of course than I did when I was very fresh in grief. I wouldn't questions like that occurred right after Claire died, my initial response inside was, what do you need, I need my daughter back, I need to not be going through this. And so it's really hard. Now I'm able to look back and reflect and know how well intentioned everyone is with those questions. There's no malice. It's an impossible question. Because in that state, really the only thing you do need is to not be where you're at. And I don't think I really had answers for people. At that point. I know I needed to spend time with Claire's big sister, she was the reason that I was getting out of bed every day. I'm not sure what it would have been like had I not had her there to kind of keep us going. I needed my husband, who was really the only other person that got it. But it's kind of an impossible question. And it's difficult on both ends. For those that are close to you and love you and are watching you go through this and want to be able to fix it. And then on the other side where there's absolutely nothing that can fix it. Was there anything that anyone did do at that time or around that time? That was genuinely helpful? Absolutely. We had another couple that were very close friends of ours that we spent every weekend with before Claire died and they just showed up, they 100% just would knock on our door and show up and because it was them it was okay if it was family or them are pretty much the only exceptions to that rule. Also one of my very best friends who was working with me in the classroom I taught and at the time, she and her husband were just amazing. There was one time I remember I was texting her and we moved shortly after Claire died about two months after it was just too hard childcare providers house was just a few blocks from ours. And so we moved in, I'm packing up Claire's room and we had the you get the diapers, subscription each month. So they arrive and I'm packing up her room and I have all these diapers and I'm taking them out to the back garbage can and sorry, there's no room. Everything was full. And so I was texting my friend about this. And next thing I know 10 minutes later, her husband shows them goes into the alley and swaps my garbage bin with the neighbors down the street in the alleys fresh one. And it was just this immediate reaction of Oh, in my mind, they said and here's one small thing we can do to help

  Seamus, so we're gonna show up and do it. And little things like that were really helpful and just showing up and being there, it's this fine line, because like I said, there are other people, I had someone that I didn't know very well that showed up in front of her house one day, and this guy's not going to, I don't feel comfortable with this right now. But those people that you really can let your guard down with just show up, even if you say I'm not in the mood, and they're just there anyways, it really helped.

  KC Davis 45:26

  And were you able, at that time like to even vocalize those things of like, it would be nice if someone could come do this for me, or it would be nice if somebody would switch swap my like, not laundry, but my trash can. I really wasn't in a place where I needed that I was fortunate that I had this incredible support system, just the whole community really rallied around our family. And so I'm very lucky with that, I understand that not everyone has that. And so with that I have very close people in my life that were able to kind of keep two steps ahead of me. But I was not in a place where I was really able to articulate that one of the things that my doctor said when I went in, I think three days after Claire died and was basically like, I know, I'm gonna need be on to antidepressants. Can we just start me now? Can we take care of all this date me? Yeah, basically. And so you know, they gave me things to help me sleep and also for the anxiety and they were very, she was very clear of, we're going to do this for about three months. And after three months, I'm gonna expect that you're not going to need these daily, not antidepressants or anti anxiety meds, those stayed on November, the heavy hitters, heavy hitters of three months, three months, I'm going to expect you to kind of be able to come out this fog, things aren't going to be better or fixed. And man, was she right? That about those three months mark, I was able to kind of start functioning more and then transition into being able to articulate my needs without either

  Shayna Raphael 47:04

  complete sadness or complete rage, which had been the case probably the month after Claire died. So you mentioned the person that showed up that wasn't very close to you. I'm curious if there's anything else that people said or did then or now that is just patently unhelpful? Any comments? And I know, you've noticed about me any comments about religion? very unhelpful. Any comments about closure? Any comments about Claire being in a better place, I firmly believe that there is no better place for her to be right now than with us. She was not in a better place. And those were really unhelpful. And people who don't know the person, well, who's going through this loss.

  I felt like Claire's death was a tabloid story. Almost people just kind of coming out of the woodwork and messaging me and asking me for very specific details about Claire's death. Again, now I'm eight years out, and I can be more reflective. And I understand that they were probably coming to place from fear. We were at the age where a lot of us had infants, and I'm sure they wanted to know what happened so that it didn't happen to them. At the time, I felt like it was a complete violation of Claire's privacy. I didn't talk about how Claire died, or her death for a good year, year and a half after she died, because I just felt like this is the one last thing I can do for her, I can protect her privacy and be respectful of that. And now I understand that by sharing her story, I can help her memory go on and hopefully help other people from not having to go through what we've gone through. But at the time, it was very fresh. And I remember thinking that was just such a violation of my privacy and her privacy. Yeah, you know, I think one of the things that happens, especially when a child dies, and with other mothers is there's this, at least I find this with myself, like if I'm reading an article about a child death, there's something in me that wants to find a factor in that that was controllable, so that it relieves my anxiety. Okay, well, I'm not gonna go on a cruise. So, right or like, oh, I don't beat my kids, so I don't have to. Okay. And it always seems to me like that's what's behind some of those really invasive questions, which is like, I'm having so much anxiety hearing about your daughter. And it's really unfair because it's it affects someone saying, I need you. In your moment of loss. I need you to fix my anxiety. Yeah, absolutely. At the time, I really struggled to understand that point and some of the people that reach

  stick out. We're just I remember sitting with my mom. I was buying shoes for the funeral. And we ran into my mom and I both worked in the local school district at the time. And she was a high school administrator, we ran into another administrator, sat down with us in the shoe section at Nordstrom and said Sony news on all that baby stuff. And I just in my mom got really quiet. And I got really quiet. And so I did have some of those but the vast majority war, my peer group wondering how they could prevent this, I'm assuming, and I'm thinking of you talking about like, not wanting religious comments, and I assume that is that partially because you're not religious yourself? Yeah, not religious myself were very culturally Jewish. I'm very proud of being Jewish. We're not incredibly religious. And I remember I got into therapy almost immediately, I still see the same therapist. And I remember being really upset talking to her one day, almost wishing that I believed the way that other people believed wishing than I actually thought that she was in a better place, or that someone had called her home. And my therapist was really clear with me of, that's not always sustainable. So the fact that I was going through it and trying to do the hard work up front, could potentially delay that there can be a lot of layers of confusion and anger when you are inserting religion. And she knows that I'm not very religious. So it could be that she was trying to make me feel better about that. But but it really, did I just anytime someone would say something like that I wanted to scream back, like how could you possibly think that she's in a place better than with me and her dad and her sister? And you know, I would consider myself a religious person. But I don't think I think I would still feel the same way that you do. Because it's like someone forcing closure on you. It's like, they're uncomfortable with your grief, and they want to fix it, they want to, and I know people think they're helping. But the thing that I can't help but notice that all those things have in common is like, you don't have to be sad about this. Here's why.

  Yes, and then the insistence. I mean, you've seen this, I think on social media with me where I kind of push back and I say, just so you know, I don't find this comforting other people might not and then you'll have people argue with you about it about why it should be comforting. And even if you don't believe it, just so you know. And it's like, you know, people I think often forget, condolences are for the person receiving them, not for the person, giving them they're meant to make us feel a little bit better. And so if you're upset with how the person is receiving them, being reflected on why you're giving them, I think is an important step. Were there any condolences that anyone gave that were received in the manner they were intended, like phrases or sayings that people would say that you did find? Not helpful, but loving? Absolutely. And people still will tell me to the state, just that they're sorry, which goes a long way and how unfair they think it is that really just hits home because it is unfair. So I just had my birthday a couple of weeks ago, which again, was the eighth anniversary of her death and people texting me saying that they think of Claire all the time, and that they still can't believe how unfair this all is. And that means a lot in Judaism, there's a phrase, May her memory be a blessing. And that always is really powerful to me. One thing I Well, I'm not a religious person. One thing I do like about Judaism is the thought that your memory lives on by being remembered. So we aren't allowed to name our children after people that are living, we have to name them after people who have already passed as a way to keep their memory alive. And that I find a lot of comfort in goes along with that phrase, May her memory be a blessing that I find powerful. And I think it can fit everyone, no matter what your religion is. If you're not religious, that yes, the memory is powerful. And you'll get to a point eventually, where you can think about where I can think about Claire, and it's not all tears or sadness, and I can find a lot of joy in her pictures and videos now.

  KC Davis 54:29

  So I'm curious, how long was it before you could find you mentioned you couldn't articulate what you needed? For you personally? How long was it before you could articulate an answer to that question, what do you need? That was actually helpful? I would say it probably took a lot of therapy and a good year to be able to do that. And a lot of that process was learning about boundaries and that I can't

  Shayna Raphael 55:00

  control what anyone else is going to say to me or what they're going to do the time I couldn't control what was going on with the police department or any of that, but I could build boundaries around myself and my daughter, Lily to protect us and with those boundaries came articulating, not just what I needed, but also what I did not need, what I didn't have the emotional capacity for, and being really aware of that. Just processing what you said, I can't tell you how much I'm grateful for you coming on here and sharing Claire with us. And answering those questions and being willing to kind of revisit that time to share what that was like with you. And, and I hope that it's helpful to the people that are listening. One of the things that is my hope with this episode is that as we listen to people talk about how they felt about that question, which is kind of like our go to question. You know, you'll hear people say, I hated it. And then people say I loved it. And then people say I wish they would have just done it and left me alone. And then people say I'm glad that they did it without asking. And I think what is so beautiful about that is it really illustrates like there is no one right answer. Yeah. And like, I think as a person who, you know, wants to know how to help someone that when they're in grief, we can become so afraid of getting it wrong, that we just don't do anything.

  KC Davis 56:26

  And what's been beautiful, and listening to everyone is to hear about the people that showed up for you that worried less about, like kind of getting it perfect. And more about just trying to show up, but also trying to listen, when you were able to articulate, you know, I need more space, or I need you to come closer. And so you know, that's it's quite a different thing to kind of just enter into the messiness with someone. Absolutely. And like you said, it's so individualized and everyone grieves, but my husband and I agree completely differently. And for us that ended up being a good thing. I think if we were both going through the same thing, at the same time, I'm not sure how we would have stayed afloat. But it's it's hard and I'm forever thankful for my friends. I also strangers this sounds a like the anonymity of some of these online grief groups. Like on Facebook, I'd read a blog from my now friend Lexi that she written, and it's entitled to the grieving mama. And I remember reading it about a week and a half after Claire died. And I was just like, she's speaking to me. So I commented on it. She emailed me and said, Hey, I have this small private group on Facebook, would you like me to add you and there were about 15 of us. And my goodness, if these other women didn't pull me through grief over these last eight years, and really helpful seeing people that were just like me that were

  Shayna Raphael 57:57

  married and functioning, because I've gone to some in person grief groups, and I remember leaving, talking to my mom, and a lot of them had lost adult children and I just, which is just as horrific, but it's a different sort of loss and just seeing them for years after the fact still feeling like I was three weeks after the fact and calling my mom crying afterwards and saying is this is this my future Am I never going to be happy again. And so the those online support groups where I could choose when I wanted to access them, and when I didn't, when I had the ability emotionally to kind of dive into that they are still people in my life that I will never ever forget. And I'm so thankful for my husband and I have met a bunch of them in person now and it's just, they were definitely a blessing. Is there anything that you would like to tell us about the Claire bear foundation? What do you guys do and how can people give if they feel so led to absolutely after Claire died, we had a wrongful death lawsuit. And then at the end of it we there's nothing that feels good about getting a check in the mail as a result of a wrongful death lawsuit for us. It was more about justice that we weren't able to get through the justice system. And we were really at a loss of what to do. We do feel like at the hospital that night when they tried to resuscitate Claire, we were fortunate that the doctor working on her was also the director of the entire emergency department. And he was so kind and so compassionate. He met with me multiple times after Claire's death to just go step by step again through what happened that night. And so we donated the money to that hospital at the direction that it should go wherever Dr. Walkley felt that it should go and so they created Claire Wakefield training room and it's a high tech CPR trauma response training are almost like what you'd see on Grey's Anatomy where they're working on a child size thing and you get in the moment feedback and someone behind can kind

  have control what's going on. And it felt really good to be able to do that. And so that kind of started the Claire bear foundation and now we provide safe sleep spaces and sleep related items. So sleep sacks, pacifiers, swaddles portable cribs, to any family that has a financial need in the United States. We do a lot of education and advocacy on new committee with the American Academy of Pediatrics. I'm on the Sudden Infant Death prevention panel with our local county health department. I sit on the boards for ASTM standards where we set the federally regulated safety standard for infant products. And then related to grief. One thing that people don't think about and it sounds almost tawdry to talk about is that losing someone is very expensive. The costs that go into burying someone and the hospital bills you might get afterwards. It's not something that you think of ahead of time, especially if you just have young children. So we do provide financial support for families that have lost a child of of any age.

  KC Davis 1:01:18

  That's really beautiful. Well, thank you, and I hope you Yeah,

  Shayna Raphael 1:01:23

  that was just gonna say thank you for giving me such a nice space on here to talk about Claire and just thank you for being new because you've been so supportive and kind for me to me for the last couple of years and it's meant quite a bit

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

We continue with a Part 2 segment on the topic of hoarding. Many underlying issues play into disorders around hoarding, and they may vary widely from person to person. The good news is that there are multi-faceted resources and professionals available to help and jumpstart the process of change!

I’m joined by Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail, a professional organizer, presenter, and hoarding consultant. From her background as an educator, Dr. Leslie obtained her Ph.D. in Community Psychology and formed a new approach to those with organizational challenges, coming from a place of curiosity and a genuine desire to help. Join us to learn more!

 Show Highlights: 

●      How Dr. Leslie became a professional organizer

●      How the hoarding TV shows usually try to present the person’s background and trauma that have led to hoarding tendencies

●      How hoarding was originally classified as a subtype of OCD and not its own disorder

●      Why many hoarders think they need the protection of “stuff” because they have been violated in some way

●      Why simply cleaning out a hoarder’s stuff does NOT fix the problem or help in the long run

●      The best ways to help raise awareness about hoarding disorders

●      The stages of readiness in making changes: awareness (thinking about change), planning action, and taking action

●      How Dr. Leslie uses an icebreaker worksheet to start the conversation about possible hoarding problems

●      Where to begin if you need help with hoarding issues and want to change

 Resources and Links:

Connect with Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail: Website, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook

Mentioned by Dr. Leslie: Helpful resources through the Chicagoland Hoarding Task Force

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes

• Transcript

  KC Davis 0:05

  Hello sentient balls of stardust. Welcome to Struggle Care. My name is KC Davis. I'm your host. And today we are with Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail, PhD. Yeah, you want to put the doctor in there every time. Leslie and I have been following each other on tick tock for a while. And Leslie, will you just sort of introduce yourself? Tell us what you do who you are.

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 0:24

  Wow. Okay. So like a big question, right. So I have a professional organizing business declare order professional organizing, I've been doing that for about 12 years. Prior to that it was an educator in early childhood special education. So I came to professional organizing from a place of looking at people's strengths and what they're good at, and using that to teach them how to help them make changes in their space. And I wasn't so concerned with sort of the middle of the bell curve way of organizing. Then as I'm going along, and I'm doing those things, I really fell into learning more about people who have hoarding challenges. And it kind of reminded me of the Early Childhood Special Education days of when I was working with children with autism, autistic students, and we were just learning this was right at the beginning of learning how to really teach them to educate, and we had picture schedules, and it was all very groundbreaking, we had little Polaroid cameras. And this reminded me of that I felt like that people with hoarding challenges that I was seeing on those TV shows weren't being seen and heard properly. So that was I ended up doing a deep dive into it. And I thought I need to study this more. And I had like this midlife crisis PhD, I want to talk about the show hoarders, I just want your thoughts, your insights, that's how I found out about it about hoarding was from what I call it, those TV shows, right, hoarders and hoarding buried alive. And I was watching those that was not a professional organizer at the time. And that's where I had this reaction. Like, this is odd to me that they're coming in, and they're meeting a person in a time of stress, and they're forcing them to do something that's unnatural and uncomfortable. And then the families are all fighting, and it just was really uncomfortable. But I couldn't put my finger on why exactly. And I thought I'm going to write a book, which I have done. It's a middle grade fiction novel, it just hasn't made it out of the computer yet. But from the point of view of a child living in a home, because that's was my background, right? So I was trying to picture like, how is Child Development impacted by living in this way. And in my research, I found out about professional organizing. So I the long way around to say I ended up being a professional organizer. And four months later, someone who I had met, the president of my local chapter of organizers said, we've been called to do an episode, do you want to join us because she knew she and I had talked. So here I am four months into starting a business, I'm driving down to downstate Illinois to film an episode of Hoarders, you know, with Geralyn, Thomas, who at the time was like kind of a superstar host and all that. And I learned very quickly that, like it was just a TV show, right? They had a storyline, they brought in this dramatic team to we were all volunteers and we did what we could to. But it was almost like, they would move stuff out of the way to film the shot, and then move it back. And, you know, I wasn't sure that the people were being helped, necessarily. I mean, there's the clean out, and it's addressing the immediate problem and making the environment safer. But I wasn't sure but I did go on to do two more episodes of it as a volunteer on the team. And it's been over my journey of research and over a period of time that what I say now is that I find them exploitive, however, they have raised awareness about hoarding an incredible way, there's no way that kind of reach could have happened. And so when I did my research study, that I'm talking to people, and they're saying, I didn't know that I grew up in a hoarding home, I didn't know I was a child of hoarding parents and tell, I watched the TV shows, like, oh, that's what happened to me. Or I talked to people interviewed people who identify as having hoarding challenges, because of the TV show, and they know they need to do something about it before it gets to that level. So I get phone calls from people and they'll say, I'm not like that on TV. You know, I'm not like that bad. But,

  KC Davis 4:24

  ya know, there is something really well, first of all, I think one of the things that I appreciate doing a love doing and try to do on this podcast, it's like taking a thing. And doing like, the most difficult human thing which is holding it and all of its complexity, where it's like, there are parts of this, that are we would maybe say negative and then there are parts of this that we would say positive and and even that is not even the right language where it's like sometimes the thing just is and I think our tendency is to either want to hold it up and go, this is such a great thing or we want to sort of push it down and go here all the time.

  happens with this. It's so awful. And it's a lot more difficult to just talk about something, as you said, like, listen, there are some issues here. And there are some ripple effects here. And there's some ripple effects here. And I do totally resonate with what you're talking about. Because there's something about the recognition that what you're struggling with isn't unique, where you realize like, oh, maybe I'm not broken. Like maybe this is something, not just my own falling apart, inability to do something, because if so many people are demonstrating this same pattern of behavior. And it's even if it doesn't look exactly like mine, I don't know. But I feel like that offers a little bit of hope. Right? It gives you a sense of community like a place to belong. I noticed that in comment sections when I've talked about this topic, even on Tik Tok, the people that identify as being children of hoarding parents, they can talk to each other and say, Oh, my gosh, I didn't realize this was sort of a universal children reporting and parents experience and they find some commonalities and common ground. And there's something powerful in that knowing it's not just you, well, you have an interesting confluence of interests, because one of the things that I did learn from the hoarding shows, to their credit, they did make a point to go into someone's background, and talk about the trauma that they had experienced, instead of just going in and being like, look, go get a lot out of this, right, like they connected it to, like, there have been some real difficulties here that, you know, along with some other factors have led to this hoarding disorder or these hoarding tendencies. And I don't you know, that's really the first I mean, even with a counseling degree, that's the first time that I learned about that, right? That's the most recent conference that I went to just the other weekend, it was even brought up like, should it even be called hoarding disorder? Because there's so many co occurring conditions and so many other things going on? That why are we identifying it, but just the most visible tip of the iceberg piece, maybe it should be identified a different way, that hoarding is a symptom, that was just something that came to my attention that was, you know, a conversation that was had, you know, what it reminds me of is, for those who are not familiar with, like, all of the mental health diagnoses are in a book, like a big diagnostic book. And with a lot of disorders, for example, like anorexia, when you get a diagnosis, there are also what's called subtypes. So like, you can get a diagnosis of anorexia. And then you can also get a subtype of binge purge, which basically says, like, this is a person that meets all the criteria for anorexia. And there are these other subset of symptoms, where they are binging and purging over and over and over. Same with like ADHD, like you could get an inattentive type, or a hyperactive type or a mixed type. And, you know, when you first brought that up, my first thought was like, I wonder if it like better fits a different disorder. It's just like hoarding type or with hoarding tendencies, like you can sometimes like dock those things on.

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 8:13

  Right. So it'd be interesting to see where the research takes it over the next decade, because it was just added as its own standalone diagnosis in 2013. Where I think before it was, I don't want to say it incorrectly. But I think it was a subtype of OCD before. So you could have OCD with hoarding tendencies, and then now its own, but now it's like, Ooh, maybe the subtype was your boy, like, maybe that's more accurate. So if somebody is listening, and they don't really know anything about hoarding disorder, they might be surprised to hear that hoarding disorder was a subset of OCD. And even to this day, it's still in the chapter on obsessive disorders, or I don't remember what the like, it's still kind of lumped in the similar disorders, they might be surprised to hear that it is close to OCD. So can you kind of explain why that is? Well, it has to do with compulsion. Plain and simple like it's been instead of compulsion for ritualistic behaviors around cleanliness, and sort of compulsion for ritualistic behaviors about what to do with belongings. And many of the people's homes that I've been in that have these tendencies. It's fascinating. And I've heard you talk about it, actually, I think on a recent episode about dealing with the garbage and what to do with trash and how to process trash and keep it out of the landfill. And there's so many blocks that they have with being able to get rid of something for those reasons. Oh, I know what it was it was that that hoarder? It was a different podcast, you were a guest. And you talked about that. What was that? That hoarder or what is it called African?

  KC Davis 9:47

  I've been on so many podcast, I know what podcast you're talking about, but I can't remember the name of it. It's a good episode. And the show hoarders showed like that pretty extreme cases, do you find that people are surprised to learn that maybe they're dealing with the same issue because their house does not look anything like those sort of extreme cases?

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 10:13

  I think if they've seen that television show, they know that it could end up that way. That seems to be the universal response. It's like, I don't want to end up like that. Or it's, you know, it's not as bad as that of people that have the awareness to say it's not as bad as that are usually not someone with hoarding challenges, by the way, like there could be chronic disorganization, which is different than hoarding. So I guess I could take a second to say what I find, the easiest way to explain the difference is, is with hoarding, it's like a stuffed salad, where you've got socks with notebooks with food wrappers, with glasses, with earrings with hangers, where when it's kind of disorganization, usually, it's a little bit more categorize than that, you might have a room full of stuff, but it's all old clothes, and shoes, and some coats, you know, in, but they're all jumbled. But it's not this stuff, salad that you get with the hoarding, interesting, what is it that leads to the stuffed salad, it's just a way of going through the environment almost with like blinders that it's so fascinating to watch someone with hoarding challenges when you're in their space, because they put something to the side, and then it's gone, right. And things just end up on top of each other because they're not delineating the different Oh, this is a plate, I should put the plate here so that I don't forget, you know, you've at least put maybe all your utensils at least in a similar place or you know, there, but things just kind of you watch it, it's called churning that behavior where they're going through their stuff without actually making decisions and that churning. So I learned that very early on working with someone with paperwork, they had to work with me, because DCFS was on the case, the social worker discovered the conditions in the home, I would do it differently now. And I would do more to address the children the child's experience, because now I know more. But at the time, I didn't, but I was in the home and working on bills. And what I decided was I would put the bills in plastic bags by type in the gallon size bags. And we made a filing system of bags, because the person with hoarding challenges would just pull up paper and it would spread everywhere. And it would get lost in into piles because it just would all turn into the salad, right? The lettuce is everywhere, in between the olives and the carrot and everything else. But by having one little bag at a time, it didn't go as far or she could see in the bag and just pull out one or two items and put them back in and it helped things to not get what do I undo the work that we had done like in between appointments.

  KC Davis 12:48

  What's interesting is that when I think of so I'm somebody who because of my ADHD, like experiences, disorganization, and my house is pretty organized now, but it's still kind of messy. But one of the things that I am like hearing when you describe that is like, when I come to a room that's maybe like a doom room or a doom pile where everything's kind of all mixed together. And I want to organize it. The first step is like, pulling everything out and spreading it out and churning through everything. Because I'm like, I'm mentally trying to like understand what's there understand what do I need, understand what it is. But then I move on to like the second phase of that, right, which is making decisions about what I need or where it needs to go. That doesn't seem like a foreign thing to like churn. And like I understand that, but it's almost like people get stuck there. Yes. Like it just starts looping. You know what I mean? Like, that just starts looping and they can't move forward to the categorization. Yeah, and I know this, like, I've listened to people on the shows and stuff talk about how it's almost like this inability to really make decisions about what is important and what isn't, because it seems like everything's important.

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 14:05

  Yes. And I've worked with clients before too, that they, you can really see that they don't know what to prioritize. And so I'm going to add colored paper to this or colored marker to this and make it more important, but then when everything in the room has all the different colors on it, then nothing's important again. And so teaching through and figuring out helping someone learn. And I know that some of the techniques that some of the researchers you know, that they've come up with are things like calling an IV probably heard this calling an item a friend. In fact, I think I've seen done post on that with your kids like with their toys, is it a friend? Is it an acquaintance or is it family and helping to teach how to feel about this stuff and how to prioritize it. So I wanted to talk about children because one of the things that has been interesting with my channel, you know, learning you kind of talked about

  KC Davis 15:00

  The difference between individual psychology and community psychology and I kind of heard a parallel to that because I am so used to one on one, talking with someone and kind of explaining concepts to them and tailoring those wording to that person to having this large audience where you have so many different people in the audience. And what I've been talking about care and self care and care tasks, particularly about space, it's been really interesting to try and figure out the way to talk about that that is honoring to two different types of demographics at the same time. And one is that person or that parent who is like, let's take hoarding, for example, who is hoarding? who is struggling, who needs as we know, like, needs compassion, and needs skills, and to whom shame will send them further down the spiral. And I know that children that were traumatized or neglected in hoarding environments are listening, and they so desperately want and need to hear. That was wrong, you deserved better, you know, they should have done anything possible to get that help to make sure you were safe. And it's interesting to know, both of those people are listening. And how do you validate and help and have compassion to both demographics? Because sometimes it feels like, you know, in order to validate children, you have to be like, yeah, that was that was the most screwed up thing that ever happened. And then, of course, somebody who's listening and just hoarding is now kind of falling apart, because they're like, Great, I'm damaging everyone. Why do I even try. And I'm curious if you can kind of speak to your experience and with learning about the effects it has on children, and what the impact on children is,

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 16:47

  I've spent a lot of time over the past couple of years with the director of the minor and youth initiative of the children of Hoarders 501 C three is a nonprofit. And what I've learned from her is, they're just trying to raise awareness that it can be traumatic for children. And just being able to bring that up and talk about it is really helpful to be able to acknowledge it. And if there's someone that can be in that child's life, to provide a different kind of role model, if that child can seek out or the teenager that's watching you know it, helping them find someone, maybe it's going to the friend's house, or, you know, another family member or teacher or somebody. So we're Trisha with the two of us and her organization. They're trying to raise awareness with social workers, with coaches trying to work on how to get that word out there that if they people can learn to identify, I'm talking to a child that might be living in a house that is experienced has hoarding going on, but I can't do anything, because I'm just the soccer coach. But this is how I can help this child maybe in being aware of things that can help that child be get past some of the and be a stronger, more resilient little person, but then the parent because you can't necessarily get in and make a change. And then the parents and I guess I have in my head from caucus I listened to with you a couple of weeks ago, that just the parent just they might not be able to acknowledge it at that point. But just if they can, and know that their child can see them, making that effort to make a little bit of a change. But that's not always realistic, those two things are gonna happen at the same time.

  KC Davis 18:41

  I think that's really important. Because you know, if all you've ever been exposed to are like the hoarding shows, it really does feel like, okay, what the option is to fix this problem. You know, hire all these people get all these people on site, clean everything out, like make sure they have a safe place. And in reality, like you said, the soccer coach, the next door neighbor, the teacher, the person that is coming in contact with a child that's living in maybe a hoarded environment, they don't have those resources, they can't make those things and it can feel so powerless to go okay, as I'm thinking like, even as a therapist, if I have a client that is struggling with hoarding, and I know, they're small children, and I'm going okay, well, I don't have like the resources of a hoarding show. But the idea that there are small things we can do to mitigate impact, and even as a therapist thinking like there are, there could be a harm reduction approach that can still be honoring and helpful and, you know, that's something that I run into a lot when people are listening to me is we get so stuck on these all or nothing black and white thinking that sometimes you'll hear someone say, oh my god, the idea that I can just do one dish. And I'm just thinking to myself, you know, if I'm sitting in an environment that there's a lot of hoarding going on, and I'm Thinking, the only option to help my child is I have to figure out how to fix all of this. When in reality, like maybe there's some more reachable goals in regards to that child's room.

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 20:16

  And things that don't focus on the stuff, like the one kind of occupation that's just starting to come into the conversation now is occupational therapy, in part because they're the ones who maybe you can get insurance to cover. But what an occupational therapists can do is to come in and make sure that they're you won't fall down because of the way this is set up. And they don't look at organizing and sorting. And they're looking at how can I make it so that you can walk to the bathroom safely, and use the sink and place this glass here and it won't fall over? And so bringing them into the conversation now is a nice neutral option that's starting to gain awareness. So that way, it's not just focusing on you got to get rid of all this, it's how can we make it safer, and more functional for you. And so if they could think about it that way, to help the child, you don't want things, the pile to fall on them, for example, you know, the piles get high and they get tumbling. And so what can we do to just rearrange that, so that you can walk through here without twisting your body.

  KC Davis 21:21

  And I like what you said about like, if that child can see that parent, just making an effort, because a lot of times when I speak to children that have gone through really any kind of, especially in neglectful environment, obviously, like, no matter what living in a hoarded environment is going to cause distress to a person because it's just not functional. And it's hard to live in. But there's always this layer of pain that really goes even deeper than that with a child where they go, like, my mom didn't care enough, she didn't see. And I know as a mom, like when we struggle, it's really like I've never had a struggle where I've thought my children aren't worth it. But I also know from my background, with addiction, and with other sort of disorders like that, that as a child, what you feel like is, if I was good enough, if I was worthy enough, this person would be able, like this person would make me more important than this struggle. And

  I think we can't underestimate the impact that a child observing a parent, just try. Even if it doesn't change the function, the environment, you know, what I mean? Like, the amount, the like, what's the term that we use for like, it's like, when someone experiences trauma, there are factors that can like mitigate the harm of that trauma. I don't know, everyone's listening to this screaming at at the radio. Oh, and I can't think of it. But anyways, you don't I mean, like, I think that can't be understated is like, even if you feel hopeless to change, like, it can be a huge change to your child to just observe that messaging of you are worth it. I am trying, here's a small thing that I'm doing.

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 23:03

  When it comes to reporting where it's really severe, they might not be ready to do that yet. But even just thinking about it, like I've learned a lot about stages of readiness, and even just becoming aware that you need to do something, that means that the next step is maybe planning to do something. And then the next step is doing something. So even if you're not doing something yet, keep thinking about it. Keep sitting in that space of maybe I should be doing something because that's progress, if you've gone from not doing anything, to just thinking about it, because that's the only place you can go from Yeah,

  KC Davis 23:38

  that's great advice. Because I think sometimes when we think about changing and we don't we end up failing on that stage, because we think, Well, I'm thinking about it, but I'm not doing it What a piece of junk I am, I shouldn't like I don't even know what I'm kidding myself. And then we go back into kind of a denial. When in reality, like of the stages of change, the first stage is thinking about changing. And so I love your encouragement to No, no, stay there, stay there, stay there, that's good. It's good to be there. Don't beat yourself up that you're not the next one yet. Stay there because that you have to be there in order to get to the next one, right.

  So I'm wondering if we can close with maybe a couple of pieces of like practical advice or moves. I would love if you can remember any of the practical things that the organization was talking about for like what you can do for a child that you notice is in a hoarding environment. Oh, right. So you want to give them a way to talk about what's going on and they may not be able to identify what's going on. So one of the things that we're working on is this sort of icebreaker worksheet for people in the community to use when they think that might be something that's going on. And it so it's questions like, What is it like where you sleep? You know, tell me about

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 25:00

  Your sleeping environment because in a situation where they're scoring, their child is probably not in their own bedroom with a door, they can close and sleeping on a bed. They're probably in the couch in the living room Surrett. And so those questions about, like, what is that? Like? What is sleeping like? Or do you often run late for things because the parent might not be able to get coordinated with their schedule to get and that's, then we that's a general one, but they all impact and add up over a period of time, or can you not have appliances fixed in your home? Because you can't let anyone in? I mean, we didn't really talk about secrecy and shame and all that. But you know, that's a whole other thing. But so being able to just kind of in an almost roundabout way, you know, a asking questions about the conditions of the home without pointing fingers without saying, you just be like, are you able to use the stove or the bath and kind of going through those questions as an assessment or wait up an icebreaker to start the conversation. And that way, you can learn a little bit about what their daily experiences like? Well, I can imagine, like, even something as simple as, like bringing a child a lunch, you know, that like they don't have a sanitary environment to prepare food or, you know, like the fridge hasn't been opened and so long. Like, I think sometimes, as people, we're not very good dealing with the powerlessness that we can feel in the face of somebody else's pain that we can't fix. Well, I'll just say it's easier to just kind of shut down than to wade into it and do the one thing that you can do, and just learn to deal with the hopelessness. And I worked as a before and after school care director for a few years, recently, in addition to organizing, and one of the things I noticed was sometimes in schools, like a child who is not prepared for school is not ready, their backpack is a mess, their desk is a mess, they get picked on or the teacher, they're always in trouble. Instead of asking, why is that child? That way? Why are they coming unprepared? What maybe is going on in the house? How can I teach that child rather than expect them to know because it may be that no one's teaching them? So your videos about cleaning? And people I think they even at were asking you like, can you just show us how to clean because we no one ever taught us? Right? So being if you're coming into contact with a child who isn't coming prepared, is there something you can teach them, because sometimes don't have hoarding parents have to be their own parent. But with those skills they can be they can learn to do those things and do their own laundry, and make their own lunch and some of those things, but they don't know they can. But if someone gives them those tools, to teach them how then it's easier for them to be more resilient later when they're adults. And they come with those skills.

  KC Davis 27:50

  I love the schools that I've seen that have put in like a hygiene closet, where a student can come in and get a bottle of shampoo, they can come in early and get their hair brushed and braided. Because it's not just hurting like you just really don't know where students are coming from and to have a safe place for them to go. Get ready before they go into class where they're not experiencing that peer bullying or teasing or just that spotlight that goes on them. I think that's a great also like community led thing. Like if you are associated with a public school, if you live near a public school, if you're looking for a way to be involved with your child's school, I think having something like that can make a big change for all sorts of children. Okay, what about somebody who's listening and they're going, Okay, this is me, this is me. And I've been needing to reach out for help, like, Do you have any little actionable pieces about reaching out for help? Like, who do they even call about that? Because obviously, not everybody, you know, do I call an organizer? Do I call therapists do I call? We're like, what do I call?

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 28:49

  Right? Well, that's really the million dollar question, right? What are you ready to call like, are you ready to just tuck in call therapists and you have access to that kind of support, and you can pay for that and how that would work for you does that sound appealing? Um, it doesn't have to be an organizer to start like it doesn't. It can be an occupational therapist to start, you know, to help me if you're worried you're gonna fall and hurt break your hip or something. Starting with an organizer, sometimes you have to make sure that that person is trained. And they know so you call a few people and talk and see how they I get referrals more often than not from other organizers in my area, because they know they can't ethically do and help a person that calls and let's see, so you see what you're comfortable with what sounds like something but one of the things you also might think about is what can you do? Maybe there's you can't do anything about the stuff right now because you're not ready but you could do something for your financial health. You could change your Amazon shopping habits or your QVC shopping habits and take that credit card off of the account and slow the roll of the stuff coming in. That you know you're not going to let out could be one thing that's like, Okay, well I could do that I could do something with financial and get control of that, or maybe social, you know, you want to be able your daughter won't allow the kids to come over, because maybe there's one room that you could get to where you could agree that it would be safe to have the grandkids come over or a friend come over to your fixing your social health.

  KC Davis 30:21

  And I will say this, I don't, in general have a lot of faith in CPS, because of historically how biased they can be. But I do know, and there have been times where you know, me or someone I work with, because we are mandatory reporters, if we find out about an abusive or neglectful environment, and there are definitely some stages of hoarding, that would be that would be included in that we are mandated to call the state and we could lose our license if we don't, and what I've seen for so this is kind of a note for professionals as well. But what I've seen work well when you have to make that mandatory reporting, but you, you know, oh, God, this is gonna really sever the relationship, this is going to bring all of these, like worse things onto this person is to reach out to that person, and just be honest with them and say, here's the situation, here's what I have to do, here's what I think we can do together to mitigate the most harm and get the most help, which is to have that person if they're willing to join you on that call, to be able to say, I've talked with my therapist, she's told me she has to call and to be honest, I'm hoping you can help me.

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 31:31

  And the other thing communities can do is get the ATA the American Disability Act, invoke that, because that gives you more time, if the city saying you have to do this in two weeks, so no, this person cannot actually do that in two weeks, because you can see they have this disability. And but and that's another new way of approaching. And so it can take give them six months instead of two weeks. And that awareness is increasing in communities as well.

  KC Davis 31:57

  Thank you for mentioning that. But yeah, but as a professional, again, it's not like some Well, this is definitely not going to be harmful to you anymore. But it certainly can go a long way, especially in the specific case workers that get assigned to you their impressions coming in it is a little like kind of getting ahead of what might be their bias of you know, how do I need to deal with this? How do I you know, how strict do i It's like, okay, I'm sitting with my client. They're hoping you have the resources to help. They're hoping you can help them and sometimes that first impression can help mitigate the trauma and the disruption and the harm that can be caused by something like CPS or adult protective services. Well, Leslie, thank you so much. This has been a really great conversation. I appreciate you just jumping on with me and winging it with me. I will link some of the things that you mentioned.

  Dr. Leslie Hatch Gail 32:48

  Thank you for having me.

  KC Davis 32:49

  Awesome.

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Hoarding: the word is recognizable, but the truth is that most people don’t understand what hoarding is and how it happens. We are pulling back the curtain on the deeper emotions behind hoarding in today’s episode. I’m joined by “That Hoarder,” the host of the podcast, Overcome Compulsive Hoarding. You will notice that we are not using her name as she wishes to remain anonymous. Anonymity allows her to talk openly and honestly about hoarding and its stigma and shame. Join us to learn more!

 Show Highlights: 

●      What hoarding looks like–and why it’s much more than simply having “too much stuff”

●      The transition from being a “messy” person to someone who couldn’t let anything go

●      How That Hoarder realized she had an organization problem

●      Why finding bargains is a problem for That Hoarder

●      Why she started her podcast, Overcome Compulsive Hoarding

●      How she began therapy for PTSD and slowly revealed the hoarding disorder

●      What therapy techniques have helped That Hoarder: doing “experiments,” dealing with overwhelm, and asking why

●      Why curiosity is a valuable tool for That Hoarder

●      Common misconceptions about hoarding disorder

●      That Hoarder’s advice for someone with a friend or family member with hoarding challenges

●      What to consider when children are being raised in a hoarding environment

●      How to gain confidence and exercise your de-hoarding muscle

●      Helpful mantras and motivations that work best for That Hoarder

●      Early warning signs that someone is passing from being messy into hoarding

●      Why hoarding is more than just “keeping too much stuff” and boils down to the struggles of mental anguish, obsessing, and compulsion

 Resources and Links:

Connect with That Hoarder: Website and Podcast

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes

• Transcript

  KC 0:05

  Hello, you sentient ball of stardust. Welcome to struggle care. I'm your host, Casey Davis. And this episode is going to be a little mini series called two experts where I'm going to talk about a topic with two different experts. The first expert is an expert because of their personal first hand experience and the issue. And the second one is going to be an expert because of their training and knowledge from an academic route, like a professional route. So this episode is me talking to someone with first hand experience with hoarding disorder. And then later this week, I'll release a bonus episode where I talk to an expert who is an expert by way of their profession in hoarding. So hope you enjoy. And here we go. So I have with me here, the podcast host for that hoarder. And I just wanted to thank you, first of all, for coming on and taking the time to

  Speaker 2 0:54

  talk with me. Thank you for asking me.

  KC 0:56

  And so one of the things that the audience might notice is that I'm not going to use your name. And that's because you've asked to be anonymous. And do I understand correctly? You're anonymous on your podcast as well? That's

  Speaker 2 1:06

  right. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like I can talk more freely. My holding is a big secret in my life. And yeah, I feel like if people knew who I was, well, if people knew who I was, I wouldn't have the podcast at all. There's just so much stigma around the condition. And it's a hard thing to talk about. But if people don't know who I am, then I can talk openly.

  KC 1:33

  So where would you say if you were to kind of paint as a picture of what hoarding looks like for you?

  Speaker 2 1:39

  I used to think it looked like too much stuff. And it does look like too much stuff. But I have come to understand that it's actually a big, messy combination of being scared to make decisions and get things wrong. It's not trusting my own judgment. It's a lot of fear. It's indecisive lives. It's layers of trauma. It's all these kinds of I use the word messy deliberately things.

  KC 2:19

  Is there anyone in your life that knows that you struggle with hoarding?

  Speaker 2 2:23

  Yes, my best friend knows, although we have never talked about it, but she's the person who knows me better than anyone. And I know, she knows that she knows, I know. But we don't talk about it. My therapist knows. Although even with her, it took a while to tell her other than that. It's just kind of accepted that within my friends that we don't do things at my house, nobody asks why nobody pushes it. And same within my family. I think they can't have not noticed that I don't invite people over. And they have known me as a messy person through my life, but how much they know about the full situation? I don't know.

  KC 3:13

  So how did you first realize that you were experiencing hoarding? You know, you talked about kind of being messy in your life. But when did you realize that maybe it had become something different than just messy.

  Speaker 2 3:24

  So I was definitely messy growing up, that was the thing I would be in trouble for as an otherwise very well behaved child. And then I became a messy adult. And then there was a period of my life, were in my early 20s, when I had no income for a while for about six months, and then very low income for about a year after that. And I was in a place where if I got rid of something and needed it, it was impossible to replace it. I could barely buy my basics. So everything took on a new significance. And it was not inaccurate to say that, what if I need it was a real question. And I think that was the periods where I changed from a messy person, to somebody who couldn't let anything go. And then when I started having enough money to live again, I held on to the stuff I think partly, I knew now that that was a real thing that could happen. And if it can happen once it can happen again, and there was a lot of that, but also, I feel like it was there anyway, I feel like the period of poverty brought it out. And but even then, I didn't know the word hoarding. I didn't know hoarding was a thing. And I was convinced for a long time after that, that I had adds an organization problem. My problem was, I couldn't organize my things properly. And so I would buy shelves, and I would buy boxes, and it wouldn't solve the problems. So I would get folders and it wouldn't solve the problem. And it took me a long time to realize that I had a volume problem, not an organization problem. And by then it was it felt so entrenched that I just didn't know how to get out of it.

  KC 5:35

  So where are you now with hoarding with that journey,

  Speaker 2 5:39

  I am in a place where I feel like my head has made a lot of progress. And my home is making much slower progress. So I feel like I'm a lot better at being able to challenge my own bullshit, when the holding part of my head is trying to justify why I need to keep something, I'm so much better at challenging that and getting being more rational about things. And being more okay to let things go. And all of that, what I'm finding is that the physical process of doing it is really hard and slow.

  KC 6:27

  So when I was in school, one of the things that they when we would talk about hoarding, we would talk about kind of like two different subtypes. And one is when it's difficult to let anything go, it's kind of like the front door and the back door, right? Like it's difficult to get rid of anything you have. And then the other side of it was that you can't stop getting new things. So like, you might get new items at a quote unquote, normal pace, but you can't let anything go. And that can obviously cause a hoard. Or even if you let go of things at a normal pace, if you have so much stuff coming in, that can also cause a hoard. So do you struggle with one over the other,

  Speaker 2 7:05

  I would say an element of both, it's been more of a problem of letting things go. But I have certain boxes that if they're ticked, I want to acquire all the things. And so for me, probably the biggest one is bargains, if something is really cheap, or if something is great value, I find that hard. My biggest one to the point that I've had to stop going in them at all is charity shops, because it takes everything's cheap, you're helping a charity, everything's recycled because somebody else already owned it. It's all of these kind of, it's a mixture of I'm saving money. Plus, I'm a good person. And plus, I'm not making the world a worse place. All of those combine to mean that if I'm in a charity shop, I really struggled to not come home with things that I probably don't need. So for me, I'm not bringing everything in, but I do know, I have certain weak points that I have to be really conscious of.

  KC 8:19

  And how do you you talked a little bit at the beginning about the stigma that surrounds hoarding? You know, how do you cope with that?

  Speaker 2 8:28

  Weirdly, there are two reasons I started the podcast. One was that I wanted there to be a podcast from the point of view of somebody who holds rather than a professional, the ones from professionals are great, but I really wanted to hear that voice. And it didn't exist. And so I thought there's a space I have to fill, which is kind of what I do. So it was partly that. And it was partly that, at that stage, I had nowhere to talk about this nowhere. And I knew I needed an outlet. And I didn't want to keep a diary. I have 40 odd years of trying to keep diaries and failing. So I thought I'm just gonna tuck into my phone as I can audio diary. And so it started as I need somewhere to talk. This is a place to talk. And there's something about having talked about it now 112 times to arrange to either about my experiences, or to a range of professionals and hearing from other people because it took on this whole life that I wasn't expecting, that does make me it reduces that shame to some degree. Because when you hear from enough people, it's like you're in my brain, or it's so helpful to hear you talk about it or just I can really relate to that and you think Well, these are good people, you know, maybe I'm okay. And also speaking to the professionals I've spoken to, which has been like academics and therapists and all sorts is really, there's something about them just talking really normally about this thing that makes me think maybe it's okay. But then on the other side, I get so many messages privately because people say, I can't say this publicly, because nobody must know. But I listen. And I've got this problem as well. And so it's a real, I feel like that. Certainly, here in the UK, there are some quite high profile, mental health, anti stigma campaigns, and I feel like they've done good work, but they have never moved beyond D stigmatizing anxiety and depression. And I am all for D stigmatizing anxiety and depression. Don't get me wrong, but I want them to destigmatize schizophrenia, and borderline personality disorder and hoarding disorder and those that people have a much more negative reaction to or much more judgmental reaction to. And I'm kind of inadvertently doing some of that work myself unplanned. And there's something about if you keep saying, this shouldn't be shameful to other people. You have to apply some of that to yourself,

  KC 11:25

  I think. Yeah. So which came first, the podcast or the therapist, the podcast? Do you think having the podcast helped you to seek out a therapist?

  Speaker 2 11:35

  Yeah, I started seeing a therapist about something different. I also have PTSD. And I was seeing her about those kinds of issues. And I spent a lifetime or certainly an adulthood compartmentalizing this away. And so I have been really good about I've had mental health support over the years and never talked about this. And so I went into this more recent relationship with that same compartmentalization. Just I'm here to talk about this trauma thing that's risen up again, after being a bit quiet for a few years. And I will keep the holding compartmentalized. And then after a bit of time, it was becoming an issue that I wanted to talk to her about. But I was really, really, it felt impossible. And then I just told her, and we spent a long time talking about the fact that there was something I couldn't talk about. And then she was so nice about that, that I just kind of blurted out, and she's been great.

  KC 12:47

  I love that, because I feel like there was a lot of people that are seeing a professional and there's something that they're afraid to bring up. And we forget that there are more options than just say nothing or say the thing like there is this like third option of telling your therapist or your doctor, whoever, like, there is something I want to talk about. And I'm so frightened, and like that in and of itself. You can spend a long time processing before you're actually ready.

  Speaker 2 13:14

  Yeah, I really agree. And that's you can have this something I can't talk about conversation without ending up disclosing as well, that can be really valuable. And I think there's a place for that, because also therapists like this phenomenon, certainly with doctors, where they know that if you kind of get up and you're about to leave, and then say Oh, while I'm here, they tend to know that that's the real reason you're there. And the sore throat or whatever was just a ruse, but you actually need to talk about how depressed you are, or, or whatever it is. And I feel like most therapists would know that even if you're really open, even if your client is really open, there may still be things that are so well compartmentalized that you're not talking about. Yeah,

  KC 14:01

  we call those doorknob confessions as therapists, right. Like as you're walking out the door, you get your hand on the doorknob. Oh, by the way. Exactly that Yeah. So have there been any techniques that your therapist has helped you with? That has been helpful for hoarding? Yeah,

  Speaker 2 14:17

  I should also say, I did have some CBT specifically for hoarding prior to this therapist. I didn't want to have it, but I was kind of compelled because of my housing. And I went into it very, very skeptical, but thinking I've got to do this to comply with, you know, what I've been told, and it was actually genuinely really helpful. And so from that, there were a couple of things that I still use, even though this was several years ago. A big one is that we would kind of set a task that I would try and do between sessions so that you know we could See how it went? And I would get immediately anxious as soon as we started talking about it. But what if I can't do it? I don't know how, what if I can't. And the way she always framed it was to see it as an experiment, and just test it out. Just see. And framing, things I was scared of scared of trying, as an experiment was so helpful, because it suddenly it switched from something you either pass or fail into something that if it works, that's great. And if it doesn't work, you just need to adjust things a bit. It's not that you've been useless. And that was so a real shift for me that okay, I don't know if I can take five bags out. But let's see what the experiment shows kind of thing.

  KC 15:52

  I like that, because it's this idea that however the experiment goes, you're going to have useful information at the end.

  Speaker 2 16:01

  Totally, even if that information is that technique did no good at all? Will you just know that that's not the one for you, and try something different. Next. The other thing that was really, really helpful that I still use all the time, is, at that point, what I would quite often do if I would set myself a goal, like I'm going to do some tidying in the kitchen. And then I would walk into the kitchen and just go nope, and walk out again. I just couldn't. And what she got me doing was just question that, Nope, just work out what it actually is. And what I learned was that if I just said, Okay, why, you know, and if I could work that out, then suddenly it was like, Okay, that's a overwhelmed. Nope. Okay. Well, I kind of know what to do when I'm overwhelmed. I've got tactics for that. Or if it's a I don't know where to start? Nope, then I can kind of realize that's the issue and start looking at where to start. And just questioning what I felt was, I felt that it was like my brain shutting down. And she made me realize that it wasn't quite that. And that you can ask why. And if you know exactly what's stopping you, it's a lot easier to address that than just if you've got Nope, nothing else,

  KC 17:26

  like changing the period to a coma completely. And getting curious. Like my favorite. I think the most important thing I ever learned as a therapist was from a therapist mentor that said, like, you just have to get curious.

  Speaker 2 17:37

  Completely. Yeah, I have a regular guest on the podcast, who is a therapist who works specifically with orders, and she does act acceptance, Commitment Therapy, and she's a big advocate of curiosity. And I think it's similar to the experiment thing. It's kind of let's see what happens if, and it makes whatever you're trying to do less frightening and more intriguing, almost. And then with the current therapist, I think the main, the big thing I get from that is less, it's not a technique, he kind of therapy, but I get a lot more encouragement to give a soft break encouragement to be a bit gentle with myself to stop beating myself up so much. It's that kind of soothing, nurturing, kind of help, which is so appreciated.

  KC 18:35

  Do you feel like that kind of help ultimately impacts how you are relating to your space? Or how you are relating to the hoarding tendencies?

  Speaker 2 18:46

  Yes, in the less direct way, from the CBT. But I think something that we talked about when you were a guest on the podcast is that if you're beating yourself up all day, every day, it's really hard to take proactive action on anything. It's really hard to either think you deserve a nice home, or to just get out of bed, because all you've done is beat yourself up.

  KC 19:18

  And I do think there's also something to be said for, even if it's not impacting, yes, you still deserve to not hate yourself. Even if you still struggle with hoarding.

  Speaker 2 19:31

  Yeah, absolutely. Even if there are no material changes in your surroundings. Yes, you deserve to feel like you're a decent person.

  KC 19:43

  So what do you think are some of the common misconceptions that people have about hoarding disorder?

  Speaker 2 19:49

  I think a big one is that it's about laziness. I think people think you just can't be bothered tidying up or can't be bothered cleaning and done. It was an accusation I used to aim at myself all the time, because I couldn't work out what else it could be. But when I really made myself examine that, I realized a couple of things. One is that if I was lazy, and somebody came around and said, Let me clean this all up for you, I would say yes, please. Whereas, as a hoarder, if somebody said, Let me clean this all up for you, that would evoke absolute panic. I'm not a fan. I haven't watched it for many years. But based on the ones I have seen, I think the positive that can also be a negative is that more people are aware that this is a condition. But beyond that, I find that to make good television to make entertainment, the person whose home it is, has to be rushed and stressed into having a meltdown over a bottle lid or over a torn envelope. And the way it's done is very, it feels very exploitative. And while that all people involved who do seem to have some kind of understanding of hoarding, generally speaking, if a home is cleared, very quickly, and under duress, that is kind of prime, it's laying the groundwork for it to be filled up again really quickly, because whatever caused the problem in the first place, hasn't really been addressed.

  KC 21:39

  So let me ask you this. If somebody has a friend or a family member that's experiencing hoarding challenges, are there better do's and don'ts for that situation?

  Speaker 2 21:50

  It's tricky. I think the first thing I have to say is that if you grew up in a hoard, if your parents are hoarders, and you grew up in a hoard, that does your damage that causes trauma, and you are not responsible for fixing your parents, either illness or surroundings. And it's important to say that, because what I see, and there's a great group called children of Hoarders, and they advocate very strongly, what I see if you have a child of somebody with some kind of substance abuse problem, that child isn't generally expected to fix their parents, and indeed, most trauma specialists would advocate that they are not put in that position, then there are definite do's and don'ts. I think the big one is to try and be led by the person. It might be that I expect working with somebody who holds in this kind of way could be an immensely frustrating experience. I've got to tell you this. I know that even though I'm doing a lot better with my decisions and stuff, I know that I drive myself mad. With all the prevaricating I do over certain things. So I can imagine sitting next to somebody and spending 45 minutes trying to make a decision about an empty Coke, Ken would test your patience. And that's, you know, that's so I need to say that it's okay, if that's frustrating. I think if you can go at the person's pace, that's brilliant, and also ask what their priorities are. Because often, a person who's helping might assume a certain priority, like say, somebody can't sleep on their bed because of stuff, somebody was helping my assume that it will obviously want to clear the bed first, because you want you don't want to be sleeping on the sofa. But actually, for that person, they're not bothered at all about the bed, what they want is a clear path to the fridge. And if they've got that goal and that motivation, it's much better for both of you to be working towards that. So I think try to not make assumptions. Be as patient as you can step out, if it gets too much, and try and be led by that person and listen to I don't know where the line is between how much you challenge someone and how much you go with what they want. And that's partly why people like therapists and the professional organizers who work specifically with hoarders where they are very skilled in a way that I am not because there is a line of kind of encouraging someone but not pushing them. And that's a tricky one. But if you can master that then that is incredible. I always call it the de hoarding muscle. You kind of exercise it a bit so that over time, like for me, like nostalgic stuff, that kind of thing I can't deal with, I can't. But I know there's plenty I can be doing in the meantime, by the time there's only nostalgic things left, I will have exercised that muscle so much, that it will be easier. And I can have faith in that. Because there are things that are easier now that weren't easy two years ago. And every bit of doing it, whatever that looks like, helps you move to the next bit of doing it.

  KC 25:40

  I'm curious if you have a mantra or a saying or like a truth that you repeat to yourself or hold on to in those moments where it's difficult to get rid of something that kind of reminds you that you may be getting rid of something, but actually, it's about what you're gaining? And is there any sort of truism that's helped you get through those moments?

  Speaker 2 26:03

  Yeah, there's a few, I think, one is that any progress is progress. Even if it feels too small to register on the scale, it all counts, I think one is there are lots of kind of regular objections that come up. And one of them is it will be a waste of money if I get rid of this, and just reminding myself that the money was wasted when I bought it. And that what I do with it now makes no difference to the fact that I wasted the money five years ago, 10 years ago, whenever it was. So I remind myself that I remind myself, I'm making a lot more progress. When I make myself look at what I'm gaining. And I think I resisted that kind of approach for a while because it felt a bit like bit twee a bit, look at the positives, I don't really get along with that kind of thing. But actually, when it's if I can clear those boxes in front of the freezer, then I'll be able to have frozen veg. So I won't have to go to the shop so often because veg goes off. And it will be really nice to always have broccoli rather than only have broccoli, when I've just been to the shop and it's not gone off yet. Or I've not eaten it yet. If I have a kind of this is something I actually want, rather than this being some a chore I'm being forced to do, that helps a lot.

  KC 27:37

  One of the sayings that I've heard other people say is, you know, when you feel like, you know, hope but this thing is still, you know, to send this thing to the landfill? Oh, you know, I just can't send it to the landfill. And I finally heard someone point out like, you know, it's going to the landfill, no matter what, like whether it spends 30 years in your house first and then goes to the landfill doesn't change the fact it's going to landfill like the only difference is whether or not you have to suffer with it for 30 years.

  Speaker 2 28:06

  100%. My Location on most of my social media accounts is indoor landfill. And like we again, we talked about this when you were on my podcast that it's not just that me keeping it won't keep it from landfill, which I would say like it's going to landfill whenever it's either going to landfill now or when I die, but then you add it to that with. And the difference then is what are the next 30 years of your life going to be like? So it's not just that it won't keep it from landfill. It's that it won't keep it from landfill. And my life will be immeasurably worse. In the meantime.

  KC 28:48

  Yeah, like it's going to the landfill no matter what. It's just whether it's going to take you with it

  Speaker 2 28:53

  yet. So there's all these things that I remind myself of and, and it does help, I found that really long term goals don't do it for me. I tried ages for ages to just think that it should be enough that I knew what I wanted in the end. But I think that felt too big and too far and too impossible. So having a goal, like I really want to be able to use the freezer again, which I can maybe achieve within, you know, within a week or within a month that for me is working a lot better.

  KC 29:28

  So my last question is, you know, if somebody is listening, and they're relating a little bit, you know, what do you think are maybe some of the early warning signs that someone is sort of passing that threshold from I'm a messy person to hey, this might be moving into the area of hoarding.

  Speaker 2 29:48

  I think it's less to do with how much stuff is around you, although that is relevant. I think it's more to do with how you feel about the stuff that's around If you if you're imbuing this stuff with almost magical powers, if I get rid of this, then it means I didn't love my mom enough to keep it. Or, if I get rid of this, I will never be able to get another one, my life will change, and it will be awful. Or if I get rid of this, I might regret it for the rest of my life. It's those kinds, it's how you feel about the things you have. And how you feel, either when you try to get rid of it. Or when you think about trying to get rid of it, I had stopped even trying to get rid of things. So when I started doing the CBT, and started really trying to actually make changes, I hadn't even tried for a long time. And it felt like learning to walk almost the real basics. And that was because I guess I'd had a few years of trying and finding it hard and not knowing why and not having the resources to work out why and just shutting down. So if you're having those feelings when you get rid of something, or if you've given up trying to get rid of something, I would look at what those thoughts and feelings are, and see whether and really try and be honest with yourself about whether this might be a problem. And that might be reflected quite severely in your surroundings, or your surroundings might just look a little bit messy. But I would say it's more about what your thoughts and feelings are doing.

  KC 31:37

  You said when we first began talking, that hoarding for you really isn't about the stuff. It's about the mental anguish that you experience when trying to decide to get rid of something. And as I'm listening to you talk, and I'm thinking about that decision, you kind of referenced this decision point where you decided I'm just it's so much anguish to decide to get rid of something, I'm just not going to decide anymore. Almost as if there was this this place before where you suffered maybe for a long time with getting rid of things and it being really painful and being anguishing and that there was this part, this place where you said, I can't do this anymore. And I think that when we think of hoarding, we often think of the problem beginning when you make the decision to stop getting rid of things, that that's where the problem begins. But that's actually where the problem ended from your experience, right? Like the suffering and the disorder and the like, the actual not getting rid of things is, in some ways peace. It's a solid, it's the solution to what's really going on that you struggled with for so long.

  Speaker 2 32:57

  Yeah, that resonates.

  KC 32:58

  I feel like at the public, we get it backwards, like we were looking at the point after you decide is like that's the problem, the disorder is that you decided not to get rid of anything anymore, and you don't care and all these things, but it really seems as though the disorder is the mental. And in the new DSM, you know hoarding disorder is classified as an obsessive compulsive disorder. And it really makes a lot of sense, because that mental anguish, the obsessing, and the compulsion, that's the disorder, and someone who is now accumulating a hoard is someone who maybe just can't struggle like that anymore. Yeah,

  Speaker 2 33:38

  I think there's a lot of truth to that. I think the kind of tip over point was, I ended a relationship. And it had been a great relationship for a long time, and then terrible for a few months. And I ended it and the ending was horrible, because I wanted to, and she didn't want to, but I did. And it was very stressful. But I also felt a bit like, Oh, phew, there's going to be nobody coming around for a while. And so it was, I think adding to exactly what you've described, was a degree of this is me Reclaiming my space. That really shouldn't help. retrospect. But that I think there was an element of this is all mine. Now this is I can do what I like, you know, that very kind of

  KC 34:30

  a reassertion of your autonomy. Yeah.

  Speaker 2 34:33

  And I think that didn't help with a sense that, yes, so the empowering thing to do, is to stop trying.

  KC 34:42

  It makes a lot of sense. Now, when you said, you know, going in and sort of emptying out and cleaning out someone's hoard really quickly just sets the stage for more because you've taken someone from that place of relief, right, because that'll have to engage in the agony of trying to get rid of something, and just immediately put them back into that place of agony.

  Speaker 2 35:05

  And if this just was what made them feel safe, sometimes very literally, some people feel like feel like it's almost like a comfort blanket, or whether it made them feel safe because it had memories in it, or whether it made them feel safe for any number of reasons, because it reminds them of when they were a teacher, and they've got all their teaching materials. And add to that, that nearly every person who holds has either profound grief or trauma in their history, if not both, then ripping away that comfort blanket, however well intentioned, and taking away the things that that person felt were familiar and comforting and safe, you can absolutely see why. I don't know if on that show, they still do like the follow up visits six months later, or whatever, why they're quite often full again. And I think that is occasionally a good reason to do a kind of forced clear out. But I think that is very much the exception rather than the rule. And sometimes it's what authorities go straight for when it feels like that will cause added trauma. And you're dealing with a person who is probably already traumatized. And that's why places Philip again. And so I'm not saying first clear outs are never called for. But I think if that happens, it feels almost guaranteed that it won't be a long term solution.

  KC 36:43

  Well, certainly unless there is substantial support on the back end. It seems like that's just sort of waiting to happen. Well, this has been such a great conversation and I can't thank you enough for your vulnerability and your willingness after a long day at work to come and talk about this with me.

  Speaker 2 37:02

  Thank you for asking me I really appreciate it.

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

I stumbled across Emily Haswell on TikTok, and I knew immediately that we would be friends. Listen to hear Emily’s TikTok about wearing the “circus tent with pockets” that led her to say (as a 33-year-old plus-sized woman), “I will NOT be influenced again by what the skinny-girl influencers say we MUST have!” She has started a de-influencing movement that I’m totally here for. Join us to laugh and learn more!

Show Highlights:

●      How Emily got more followers when she started her honest, de-influencing movement

●      Why KC hashired Emily as creative director for the Struggle Care podcast

●      Why KC and Emily decided to cancel on having the well-known, Emmy-nominated Netflix stars, The Minimalists

●      How we critique The Minimalists’ philosophy because it spreads shame and doesn’t hold the value we are looking for (and who really does the dishes in their house anyway?)

●      How we have reacted to influencers with harmful messaging on health, hoarding, domestic tasks, etc.

 Resources and Links:

Connect with Emily Haswell: TikTok and Instagram

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes

• Transcript

  KC Davis 0:00

  Well now you can't cut it now we just have to roll the whole thing exactly like this. Hello you sentient ball of stardust. I hired Emily Haswell yay

  Hello, you sentient ball of stardust. Welcome to struggle care. I'm your host, KC Davis. And this is another bonus episode that I am giving to you. And I have a special guest with me, Emily, say hello.

  Emily Haswell 0:22

  Hi, I'm Emily.

  KC Davis 0:24

  So for those of you listening, I stumbled across Emily on Tik Tok and I want to play for you the Tick Tock that I saw. Okay, so I saw this tick tock and it's like this opening scene of a nursery and a woman and like asylum blue skivvies turned around on her knees and then all of a sudden you said this.

  Emily Haswell 0:50

  Did you think I was an escaped mental patient in your child's room? No, it's just me, Emily. And I'm wearing the two piece set that all you influencers told me to buy? And I looked like I could play the green screen. What is this? I ordered this do this free people hotshot do and I was so confident. Y'all had all said all you skinny girls told me you could wear this out to run errands. It's so comfy and it is comfy. Because it's a circus tent with pockets. It is comfy. But I put this on this morning in the dark. And I went to Wegmans with my baby. And then later on today, my husband saw me and he said did you play out? I said, Yeah. He said, Emily, that's a nightcap. I said, Oh, you're forgetting all the shorts, the shorts. So make it better. What are we? I will not be influenced again. I you know, here's the thing. I am a 30 year old plus size. I'm not 30. I'm 33. I have a 33 year old plus size woman. And I am watching these little girl skinny influencers and going oh, yeah, that's what I should get.Do you think that was correct?

  KC Davis 2:03

  So I just immediately knew that we would be friends. And you started a whole series of D influencing where you put on these outfits that as you say all these little little skinny girl influencers say we must have and then you just read them their rights.

  Emily Haswell 2:21

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's funny because truly, like, I wanted that article of clothing for so long. Like, that's what's really heartbreaking about it's like, I wanted it for so long. And then I like randomly got an Amazon gift card. And I was like, today's the day can I treat myself and it looks so crazy. And three people who makes like the real version sent me a bunch of stuff. And it's so expensive. And you know what, it looks so silly.

  KC Davis 2:50

  That is the part that I just like deeply fell in love with your ethos is that like this tick tock you made of the like free people do is the one that I just played like got 4 million views or something. And it caught the attention of free people that makes like the original and they sent you free stuff.

  Emily Haswell 3:11

  They sent me so much stuff review.

  But like the person that was messaging me from free people movement, which I guess is like their athleisure line or whatever was so nice. Like I I felt bad. I kept saying like, do you care that I'm like making fun of this. And she was like, I want you to make up a character for every single thing that I sent you. Like because people were saying like, now I kind of want to buy this it looks comfy. So like I guess they were still getting the sale? I guess so. And I mean, it is comfy. It's the greatest pajamas. I have for sure. Big shirt. Pockys it's great, but ya know, I couldn't lie to the people. I couldn't watch them and say this was worth $80 Were you nervous about like, talking about how silly it looked on you when they'd like set you free shit. Here's the thing I wasn't nervous because I knew there was no fucking way that I could stand on camera wearing these clothes and say like, Don't you guys love this? Don't you think I looked great? Like I couldn't do that because I didn't look great. I looked I mean they sent me a lot of stuff that was like way better than the dupe and stuff that I wear to like run errands and because whatever but like I couldn't go look at them in the eye and say yes, you guys should run out and pay $70 for these like kick around clothes like there's no way if I looked better I wouldn't maybe lie and try to get that free people partnership going. But no, no, I couldn't do it. I just love that. And so you have this whole series of de influencing and did it blow up your like did you get a lot of followers after you started doing that? I did I got a lot of followers, which is interesting because for so long I was just making like mom content It, you know, it was always like, it was always humor base like I was always joking around, I was never like, in my white kitchen like holding my baby and being perfect or anything. I don't know exactly how many followers I got from that. But I definitely got a lot and I got a lot of people like just watching every one of those videos consistently.

  KC Davis 5:18

  So I'm watching these, like de influencing videos of you. And you're so funny. And you're so creative. And I was genuinely so impressed and tickled by you continuing to like roast the EverLiving shit out of these outfits, even after the company sent them to you for free. And there was a part of that that was like, I mean, I love that vibe. I love that integrity. And I love that, just like holding on to yourself and what you want to do. And I thought that was great. And then I saw you post the video where you were like, does anybody have any work from home jobs? Because I want to drive off a cliff. Because you I guess you'd gone to a job interview?

  Emily Haswell 5:55

  Yeah, I went to a job interview. So you know, I've been a stay at home mom for all 18 months that my daughter has been alive. And I really like it, which I didn't think I would, but I do. But they reached out to me like this job reached out to me. And it was just like kind of a too good to be true opportunity. So I was like, Well, I have to go in for the interview. And it was a writing job in which they had a board where they ranked the writers every day for everyone to see. Oh, so Oh, that's exactly what I said in the interview.Love that. Love. Good.

  KC Davis 6:34

  Let me tell you nothing sparks my personal creativity, like being rated against my peers on a daily basis.

  I called you and I said well, I want to hire you. So I did. I hired you as my creative director for the podcast because I am a fucking basket case. And I am chronically underprepared. For every podcast that I show up for I'm just put my cards on the table here, guys. I started recording for my podcast like a year before I actually started it because I was I lived in fear that I would not be disciplined enough to like keep up with a weekly recording. And in three weeks, I run out of pre recorded episodes, and I still haven't like put more on the books. And so like the nightmare is happening. And so I just needed a little help. And meanwhile, my networks like you should put out more episodes. And I was like, So what's interesting is like, you literally came on board, like maybe the day that I canceled on like, a huge guest.

  Emily Haswell 7:30

  Yeah, that was so I mean, it was like very, it was the most thrilling thing I've done during that time in a while, which is like, not my naptime by the way. Which was like, talk to you about like, in real time. Like you were like, Yeah, I'm just gonna like research these people. Will you help me a little bit? And I was like, Sure. And then both of us at the same time, were kind of like, Hey, what is this? Like? What's going on here? And yeah, ultimately decided you decided? No, which I think was a really good call.

  KC Davis 8:03

  Yeah, so so basically what happened was I booked these, like, huge guests. I was so shocked that they even emailed me. And before we started recording, we went back and forth. Like, are we going to drop the name about this? Guest? Are we gonna Solly this guests name?

  Emily Haswell 8:20

  I think you should tell you

  KC Davis 8:21

  listen, time will tell whether you are ultimately a good or bad influence on me, but

  Emily Haswell 8:27

  or like, yeah, you'll be like Emily was the worst creative director. Yeah, yeah. Well, and I can't even throw you totally under the bus. Because we're recording the conversation about it. I can't pull like the ultimate white woman and be like, my team posted this. My team and it's just me. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Don't worry. It's just me, Emily. It's just me, Emily.

  KC Davis 8:52

  Okay, so let me set the stage for everybody. I get this email. And it is a PR person for the minimalists. The name is out there. Wow, powerful. The name is out there. They apparently have a Netflix show. They have a tick tock they like I don't know what they do things. It's men have a New York Times bestseller. They were nominated for an Emmy. And then they talk shit about the Emmys. But they didn't win an Emmy who love that for them. So all of this kind of gives the idea that that we're looking at more than just men with microphones, and they said, you know, hey, we would love to come set the guys up to come on the struggle care podcast. And at first I'm like, I sat on the email for a long time. So I'm like, I don't know if anybody is familiar with the minimalists. But like, they have this saying where they say like something to the effect of like, if your house is full of junk, then you're just living in a landfill with four walls or just like kind of weird Shamy shit, and they're very Uber kind of spiritual, not like religious, but like very zen about like being minimalists. And so they, I was sort of surprised like That's so weird like I have quite literally the opposite philosophy as these people like I am a self professed like functional maximalist, I have a lot of shit. I like my shit. I don't think your ship means anything about you at all about like, morally neutral approach to care tasks. And so I sat on it for weeks. And then I finally thought, well, maybe there could be good content. And I emailed back, but I wanted to be like, I wanted to have like integrity in it and say, like, hey, the only episode I see coming from this would be like talking about our differing approaches, and maybe challenging each other on those approaches. And I had actually stitched one of their tic TOCs, and was like, highly critical of the TIC tock and I even sent that to her. And I said, Please, you may want to watch this first. And then, like, make sure you really want to talk to me, and make sure they've seen this. So I'll play for you the Tick Tock that I stitched of them. Yeah, I don't think I've heard this yet.

  Male Speaker 10:59

  Every inanimate object in your house is having a conversation with you whether you know it or not. And I realized my guitars are always saying, Are you just done playing music? Is that who you are? Now? Are you are my books are like, are you gonna be stupid forever? And like, I've got clothes in my closet. They're like, why? Remember, when you used to exercise and you were actually in shape? We're just gonna be fat dead now. Is that Is that where we're headed? The dishes in the sink are like, Oh, you're gonna be that husband that just hates his wife. You can be that guy. You're hoarding hope it never. It was just lightbulb the camera, I'm having 10,000 conversations at the same time. The woodworking stuff is like, Oh, you're never gonna build that treehouse for your son or you. And he's going to go to college and you're going to share some we'll get to a cat's in the cradle. It never stops. And so it's really almost pathologically almost like civil. I'm trying to shut the voices. Yeah. And at some point, I can't compete. I've got to hand some of this stuff out. Right? Because it didn't stop. And if it were to spontaneously combust. The voices stop. Yes, always. as well.

  KC Davis 11:59

  Before we get into it, let me just play with you the steps that I did, like, your books aren't calling you stupid. Your exercise clothes, aren't fat shaming you. Those voices are not coming from the inanimate objects in your home books. Don't think dishes don't judge. Those voices are coming from your head, you are the one who talks to you yourself that way. And no amount of purging your material possessions in search of this perfect minimalist aesthetic is going to fix the way that you talk to yourself. Just like hoarding items doesn't protect you from loss and pain. Giving away your items does not protect you from self judgment and shame. So I sent that and I was like, let them watch this. Make sure that they understand like what kind of conversation we're going to have. Because I genuinely thought like, maybe that'll be like a helpful conversation. Like maybe I want to understand more about their journey to minimalism and what that's doing for them. And maybe, you know, I can push back a little bit on that. But I will say like listening to it again. It's just so interesting to me. It's such a weird take of like, I'm inconsiderate to my wife. So if I get rid of the dishes, I won't feel bad about that anymore.

  Emily Haswell 13:12

  That was a weird like that one moment really made me go like, Wait, what is he saying? You're really going to hate your wife is that what do you sound like? What are you talking about? Because she's not doing the dishes because you're not doing the dishes like? Yeah, that really gave me pause, or like the project he was doing for his kid. I'll just get rid of the project. And then I wanted to think about that fact. I promised my kid I would make this. Yeah, that was confusing as well, your kids? So? Yeah, I don't know. And like maybe my opinion is informed by like the fact that you and I went down like a rabbit hole with them. And we watched a lot of their videos and a lot of their other content. But like, yeah, I just, number one. I feel shamed by that. Right. Like, my house is a mess. I'm not a an organized person. I have a toddler. I don't have any free time. And when I do have free time at night, I sit down and I watch Love is blind. Like I cannot bring myself to take my two hours of free time a day and spend it like organizing and cleaning. I just can't. But the other thing is that yeah, it's like, I think you made that point so beautifully is that like those voices are coming from you. Like, you don't fix an internal problem externally.

  KC Davis 14:29

  Either way, right? Like keeping your shit or giving her shit away. Totally. You just have to like, figure out like, Who's that voice coming from? So we scheduled this interview they ended up needing to reschedule so we put it so I mean, my point is, is that this thing is on the schedule for like three weeks. And this is my part. Are you ready for being accountable? Like I did not sit down to like really dive into their stuff and come up with interview questions until like the morning before the interview that the interview is at 2pm I sit down at like 9am and I'm like, I'm gonna start like reading stuff. That is me. I'm not I'm gonna put a judgment on that. That's just always me, right? So I sit down to do it. And I'm like coming up with questions. I'm coming out with questions, and I'm going down through. But like, the longer I go through the content, and that guy that was talking, like he has his own tick tock that I actually follow, because I actually have liked some things that he has said before. But when I went to there, the minimalist tick tock, that guy wasn't there, it was just some other guys. And I'm scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. And I'm like, there's not a lot of value here to work with. And there were some stuff in the area of like talking about our space, where I was like, Okay, I want to ask some questions. I want to ask about how you became a minimalist. What is minimalism mean to you? Like, how has it impacted you? So I was going down, but what happens is, is that I get to this point where they start talking about food. And it's like, really intense, like, bro, toxic diet, culture, and fat shaming, and which there's even a little bit in that clip that you just played. And so I start to go like, Oh, no, like, it became obvious that like, there wasn't a lot of value content to work with to like, create a conversation. And like, I'm not interested in having a podcast where I like, invite someone on and then just like, blow their shit up. Like I'm not interested in like, embarrassing people, or like nailing someone to the wall or so like gotcha journalism, like, I don't really want to do that. However, if you have someone that's saying something so problematic, and you don't address all that problematic shit, like, that just doesn't feel like integrity to me, because now I've like, elevated these people on my platform. And even if I'm, like, challenging in good faith, and having a conversation on my episode, like, you know, I texted you and I was like, Ah, I don't know what to do. I don't think I can do this interview with integrity. But I don't think it'd be fair to them. I don't think it would have been I feel integrity to me, I don't think it's something I want to put in front of my audience. And you and I, like went down a rabbit hole and, and you and to read it, which is like genius.

  Emily Haswell 17:16

  I just wanted to see, like what people were saying, just about, like, what was the how are people feeling? And again, I am not like an expert on the minimalist. You know, I just learned about them the other day, but from what I could tell people were like, had gotten really into them during the pandemic, and kind of at home being like, Alright, I want to clean out my house. I want to declutter all that stuff. And then they were kind of like, why are these men who are telling me to declutter, also trying to sell me a book? And why are they also trying to like, why are they putting everything behind a paywall? Because I guess the majority of their podcast is behind a paywall. And I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there's people for whom they really helped. And I'm sure there are people that are still totally on board. Like I don't doubt that they they don't still have fans, of course, but it seems like some people are starting to question things, I guess.

  KC Davis 18:22

  Yeah, I found a Tiktok of someone who was like, you know, I used to follow the minimalists. And now I don't. And, you know, she talked about kind of the DIS what she felt like, was kind of the turn and content. And like, I can't, like emphasize how much the like fat phobic stuff really bothered me. And eventually, we got to one where one of the guys was like, Well, I used to be obese. And I went, Ah, there it is. When I learned from maintenance phase, when Aubrey talks about how some of the most fat phobic people that she's ever met are people who were formerly fat.

  Emily Haswell 19:03

  Yeah, there's just such it's, I mean, obviously, that's really sad that there's such self hatred there. The thing that really stuck out to me, I mean, the fat phobia obviously was, you know, really obvious from the jump, but there was this one video. I'm trying to find it right now. Oh, okay. Here it is. So they had this doctor on I don't know if you saw this one. And he was talking about like, how he basically like, was able to like save his health by just like eating healthy and exercising and like not eating seed oils, which I guess seed oils like not eating seed oils is a very like, kind of far right? Conspiracy sort of thing. I'm not sure like it maybe it's a dog whistle. Yes, it felt like a dog whistle. And that's the other thing right? It's like the kind of guests that you have on your show and that you let speak freely and that you then click and put on your tick tock like that says something

  KC Davis 20:00

  I think I did hear him. Is he the one that's like you don't cheat. You never cheat. Like everything was just very moralized.

  Emily Haswell 20:06

  He is that one. And he also said, like, at the beginning, so the beginning of the clip he's going on, he's talking about all the health issues he had, right? And it's very strange. He's saying, I had erectile dysfunction. I couldn't pay. I had eczema. And there were blood all over my sheets. I made noises. And my kids mimicked those noises when I was moving around the house. And then I started to eat healthy and exercise. And I'm so mad because I'm a doctor. And they should have told me they should told me in medical school that this is all it takes, right? Like that was kind of what he was saying. And it was very, the vibes are strange that right? The vibes are given Joe Rogan guest it's a little scary. And I watched it, and I was like, Oh, my God, and then I watched it with my husband. And he was like, first of all, no one's keeping the information from you to like, eat well, and exercise. Like, it's not a secret. And also, like, it's no one's telling you like, like, when you go to the doctor, the doctor isn't like, don't worry about eating well, or exercising. Just take these pills, like your doctor is always like, yeah, try to eat less, or try to eat better, or try to walk around the block whatever, like, which can be problematic, right? Like, even if you're having a real problem. Sometimes that is their advice. But he this guest that they had on. Let me find his name. Dr. Shawn Mara. Yeah, it wasn't just Oh, diet culture. It was like straight up fat phobia, medical misinformation. It was like, I'm a doctor, and I'm telling you don't go to the doctor. Just diet and exercise. That's really scary thing to say. And then he was talking about not cheating. Like, he was like, if you have a single bit of ice cream, your body has a an unhealthy orgy. And it's like, Do you know how harmful that messaging is for someone that is struggling with an eating disorder?

  KC Davis 22:02

  Also, did you just say unhealthy orgy?

  Emily Haswell 22:04

  He said the word orgy. I'm not even being funny right now. He said the word orgy. And he was talking about microbes. Yeah, microbiome, and I don't know, it was not sounding. Right. I mean, but yeah, just the thing of like, if you have one drop of ice cream, like, I don't think you should be saying that. It's giving very like health bro to alt right pipeline. That is exactly what it is giving. They also were speaking about cording. One of them was talking about like, his brother owns an apartment building. And are you doing what I'm going to talk about? Yes, yes, brother.

  KC Davis 22:43

  Well, that was the other thing is they were throwing around the word hoarding, in a very casual manner, like hoarding is, in fact, like a serious psychological disorder that like has specific parameters to it. It's not just like, it's not just like Americans are over consuming. If you walk into somebody's house, it's not like we're all a little bit hoarders.

  Emily Haswell 23:06

  Yeah, if you walk into somebody's house, and it's like, messy, they're not a hoarder. That's not what hoarding is. But yeah, I mean, right. But anyway, he was like talking about how like, and my brother was trying to help clean up this, this hoarders apartment hoarder in quotes. And he started to have that demon whisper in his ear. It was like, you could save me this and I was like, What is going on here today on this day? Why are so many inanimate objects talking to y'all?

  Which really might be great dudes, like, I do not know them at all. But I do think that they are maybe a little misguided in their messaging. For sure.

  KC Davis 24:24

  So I ended up emailing the PR person, like two hours before the interview and just said, like, I am so sorry for the late notice, but I'm gonna have to cancel the interview. I don't think this is a good fit. And I guess you didn't check your email until they were all in the studio. And that wasn't there. And because I get an email and I'm just like, anxious. I get an email back that's like, Hey, we're our whole team came into the studio today to do this interview. Can we jump on a phone call and talk about, like, what's going on? And like, we don't have to talk because I had said, you know, I have a lot of listeners that are in eating disorder recovery. I can't get Down with the fat phobic like the diet culture content. She's like, well, we don't have to talk about that. And I just emailed back and was like, listen, I apologize. I don't have a whole team. So like, it was just this morning that I was finishing up the research, and that is on me, that's inconsiderate to cancel that late notice, because I could have prepared beforehand I could have prepared before I even accepted. That is a negative impact that my own, like ADHD has on people, that is my responsibility to mitigate. And it didn't mitigate very well there. It just sucks that it still was the right thing to do. And at that point, the only options were to do that.

  Emily Haswell 25:33

  Yeah. Like obviously, ideally, you would have looked at this stuff earlier and gone, like oh, no, like, I don't want to do this. But it just it worked out the way that it did. Like you said, you don't have a whole team. And now I have you. Yes. And I will. Now I have you to read up about people on Reddit before we accept interviews. And yes, well, and you know, I'm just such an organizing great person. So that's gonna always work out 100% of the time. But I feel like we can always organize for people that aren't ourselves. It's true. And together, we make one organized person, I think half or two half organize people make one organized person. No, but I mean, to be honest, like I love doing this kind of stuff. I have like a background in journalism. So kind of doing a deep dive into people coming up with interview questions, but also just like having these behind the scenes conversations with you where we can go like, is this the right thing? How do we handle this? Like, I do feel very prepared for that. So I think that's going to be good. But yeah, I think it was the right call. It was tough. And I'm sorry, to anybody that's listening to this that like loves them or got a lot out of them. I mean, I think that you can like, take the good out of something. And that's great. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But you know how I screen you have some ice cream. I'm gonna go have some ice cream right now of ice cream. Yeah,

  KC Davis 26:50

  instead of most of my things. And all my stuff on my guitar that's talking to me. Well, Emily, thank you so much. I'm so glad to have you on the team. And I think we're gonna make great things together.

  Emily Haswell 27:02

  Thank you. I'm so excited too

  KC Davis 3:16

  In the review was you being like, not still silly bra.

  I just know that I just got a bad feeling in my skivvies that I wasn't going to be able to find enough value to have a productive conversation. That wouldn't be me just like ignoring the elephant in the room, and platforming what I think is kind of like a dangerous shaming message. It's like at its best, very shaming, very pop psychology, very self help fluff to me. And at its worse, like deeply harmful messaging. And like, they might be great dudes, but like, I don't think they're doing a great message out here.

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Social anxiety is a common experience for many people. Today’s show is about the tips and tricks we can use to deal with this kind of anxiety when we have to be social and in public. Join us to learn more!

I’m joined by Michelle Huillet, an interpersonal communication instructor at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. In her interpersonal communication course for college freshmen and sophomores, Michelle teaches all about communication in relationships, including listening, nonverbal communication, emotions, and social anxiety.

 Show Highlights:

 ●      How social anxiety boils down to a fear of judgment

●      How Michelle’s students describe their social anxiety

●      Why many people who struggle with social anxiety look comfortable and confident on the outside

●      Accommodations for social anxiety

●      How nonverbal cues, like eye contact, can allow people with social anxiety to remain engaged and participate

●      Challenges to do with baby steps to become more comfortable with social anxiety by “getting your feet wet”

●      How our imperfections bring connection points–and give a gift to those around us

●      Michelle’s words of wisdom for those who have social anxiety

Resources and Links:

Mentioned in this episode: The Anxiety Healer's Guide: Coping Strategies and Mindfulness Techniques to Calm the Mind and Body by Alison Seponara

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes

• Transcript

  KC Davis 0:05

  Hello, you're socially anxious sentient balls of stardust. This is struggle care. And I'm your host, KC Davis. And I'm here today with Michelle Huillet, we're going to talk about social anxiety. And when you have to be in a place where you have to be social, you have to be public. And we're going to talk about some tips and tricks to do that. So Michelle, will you introduce yourself, tell us what you do.

  Michelle Huillet 0:25

  Hi, KC. Thank you. I am Michelle Huillet, and I'm an interpersonal communication instructor at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon gobies. And I teach interpersonal communication to college freshmen and sophomores, which means that we talk a lot about relationships in our course, we also talk about listening, nonverbal communication, emotions, and of course, social anxiety.

  KC Davis 0:52

  So one of the reasons why I thought this was an interesting topic is because a lot of the bulk of my work is talking about kind of accepting us for who we are. And there's a lot of different reasons why someone might have social anxiety. And for those of you who don't know what social anxiety is, it is specifically an anxiety around fear of judgment. So being in an environment where you're so afraid that everyone is looking at you, everyone is scrutinizing you. And then that creates sort of even some physiological, some sweating, some nervousness, some heart palpitations, so it's that's kind of the specific social anxiety definition that we're working with. And there's a lot of different reasons why someone might experience that. And I think it's really important that like, we know that it's okay to be a shy person, it's okay to be introverted, it's okay to be neurodivergent. It's okay to have any number of reasons why you dislike or prefer not to be at social events, or to speak publicly, or to have to shake hands and kiss babies, as I call it. But that being said, there are times in our life where there is something that we want for ourselves and our life that is on the other side of interactions like that, that we need to be able to get through, or we want to be able to get through to get to that goal. So I would love for us to talk about what kind of tips and tricks that you give to your students when they come in? And let me start with this question. What kinds of things do your students say, when they're talking about social anxiety? Like, how do they describe that in your class?

  Michelle Huillet 2:26

  Yeah, oh, that's a great question. Something that I do hear from students is that it's very difficult for them to sometimes go to class when they experience social anxiety, or maybe, you know, today, in particular, they're just feeling particularly anxious, it can be difficult to go to class, particularly maybe a small class, when you know, my class, you know, we do participate with each other, we talk to each other, and we do games and activities. So sometimes just going into class is a big thing. Another thing I hear from students, and this was also my experience in college is that we're often told, you know, to be a good student, you should sit in the front row. And you know, I love when people sit in the front, that's great. But as a student, I never did that. Because when I sit in the front, it feels like everyone is looking at me. And even though I know now that we're all kind of thinking about ourselves all the time, we're kind of obsessed with ourselves, but in a good way, not a selfish way. It does feel like the spotlight is on you. So that's something that I hear sometimes just going into class as hard or even being out on like a busy campus are in a crowded area can be a source of social anxiety. That's why something that I have talked to about my students with my students is that even things like sitting in the back of the class is totally fine. That way you can see everyone. And you know, no one is really looking at you except for me, the teacher, but I'm looking at everyone. So that's definitely something I hear. And something else I wanted to point out is that when students talk to me like one on one about their social anxiety, I am always really surprised by the students that share that, because they don't look like people that struggle with social anxiety. There are people who often look comfortable in class or they seem really happy and really confident and they just have it all together. And there's been several students even this past term that shared that with me. And you would never guess that they struggle with social anxiety, because they look like they're totally comfortable and they connect well with people and they participate. And I think that's just a really good reminder for those of us myself included that struggle with social anxiety. Sometimes we feel like we're the only ones but that person sitting right next to us who's smiling and seems really comfortable and confident. might be feeling scared to death inside. So just because someone doesn't show it there are anxious doesn't mean what they're feeling on the inside could look totally different than the outside. So that's just a good reminder to sometimes it feels like I'm the only person that struggles with this. But a lot of people around us who look totally comfortable

  KC Davis 5:14

  That is so important, because part of what happens with social anxiety is it becomes its own anxiety feedback loop, right? Like you feel uncomfortable. And then you're anxious about the fact that you probably seem uncomfortable, and then you're anxious about the fact that people are noticing how uncomfortable you are with how uncomfortable you are. Right. And it makes it worse. And I love that sort of observation from your standpoint, which is, it's likely that nobody even notices you're feeling that way. Because it's so hard to pick out in a classroom who's feeling socially anxious and who isn't. And I love that your first tip was sitting in the back of the class, because I feel like this approach, where, you know, for a long time, I feel like the way we address things was like all challenge. And we didn't really talk about accommodating. And there are points in our life where like, that's the main thing we need is accommodation. But I love this idea that when we're approaching an issue like this, that we need a combination of accommodations and challenge, right, like an coping challenge, like coping skills that are a little challenging, right. So, you know, you might say, okay, one accommodation is sit in the back of the class one accommodation is go to this event, you know, an appropriate amount late so that maybe not everybody looks at you as you come in, or maybe a little early. So you're the first one that right, like there's ways to accommodate, it's not all just like you said, smash that anxiety out of you, but you can't be successful until it's gone. And then there's also like, ways of coping that might be a little challenging to you, which is like challenge yourself to say one word or challenge yourself to answer one question, right? And so, you know, what kind of other things do you have that people can use? If they want more accommodations? Or if they want more of those c hallenges?

  Michelle Huillet 6:58

  Yeah, so I'm gonna answer the part about accommodations first. And I think one of the best things that we can do if we feel comfortable and safe, depending on the environment, is just talked to someone about it, whether it's a friend, maybe it's a co worker, and you feel anxious, during meetings at work, or, you know, maybe you're in college, and you want to talk to your really friendly communication instructor during office hours or via email and just say, like, Hey, I have a lot of social anxiety. Sometimes it's hard for me to participate in this class, like, you know, what can I do, and I find that sometimes just talking with the student, even just for 510 15 minutes, is really, really helpful. So if you're in a place, and I realize not all like supervisors, and instructors might be comfortable or safe people, but if you can find someone around you, maybe it's just a friend, kind of in your social group, and just saying, like, I feel really anxious at these events, or I just, I feel really unsafe or uncomfortable, whatever it is just being able to talk to someone about it, I think is a good first step. And I think that's kind of a good first step for accommodation. So sometimes, you know, I'll tell students, if you're feeling particularly anxious, like you can always step out of the room, you don't need to ask, you don't need my permission, if you need to just like step outside and use the restroom or get some water or even just to get some fresh air,

  KC Davis 8:19

  When I don't know how it is now, but when I was in college, like there were whole classes where there was like, 25% of your grade was participation. Yeah. And it's interesting how they all paint participation as having to be active public social participation. And to your point, like approaching a professor and saying, I experienced some social anxiety, and I'm committed to doing my best. I wanted to know, are there other ways that I could demonstrate participation in your class that might be a little easier for me than, you know, just having to talk in front of everyone?

  Michelle Huillet 8:54

  Yeah, so I have a couple ideas for that. One way that we can participate, whether in a classroom at work, or even just if we're hanging out with someone is just non verbally just like showing that you're listening and paying attention, making as much eye contact as you're comfortable with. You don't have to stare someone down. But you know, when I'm teaching, like, I appreciate that people are, you know, looking at me for a good part of it. They're not just staring at their phones or looking out the window. Not that we have to make serious eye contact, but you know, people are looking in your general direction or my instructor friends and I joke we love like the head nod or in class if somebody just like nod their head and smile if they get what you're saying.

  KC Davis 9:34

  Which you can do by looking down at your notes, right? Like someone who's looking down at their notes and nodding their head is different than someone staring down at their phone.

  Michelle Huillet 9:43

  Oh, for sure. Yeah, people taking notes or when I say you're gonna want to write this down. This is super important or, you know, circle this in your workbook. I really want you to pay attention like seeing people highlight that or circle that those are always that we can participate in sometimes

  Seems you know, we'll do things where I'll say like, you know, talk to your neighbor in class about this concept, or let's see if we can look up this word and in our book, so instead of talking to everyone or having everyone's eyes on you, people tend to be a little bit more comfortable with talking to that person sitting next to them. Just kind of one or two people to talk to as versus a, an entire room and giving them like something to do like look in their book, or, or something like that, or do an activity together can be another way to participate as well. Sometimes we'll play we'll do different games, like, have you heard of Kahoot? Is this fun, like online quiz game, so it has music, and everyone just gets out their phones, and we just kind of log in with a code. And I'll have like, like a test review. So I'll have like 10 questions that are going to be on the test, just true, false, multiple choice, and they answer with their phones. And whoever answers the quickest gets more points. It's just like a fun little competition.

  KC Davis 10:58

  Oh, that's lovely. When you first said, there's a game we play, I thought, Michelle, I am the most extroverted person in the world. And I would want to die if my teacher was like, we're gonna play a game together. No, but that's genius to play it on your phone to have it. It's like a private public experience. And I also was thinking like, when you were talking about those nonverbal cues. I know for me, sometimes when I'm in a meeting, and I know that it's easier for me to pay attention, if I'm not looking that sometimes I'll even just express that before we get started, which is like, hey, I want you to know that I pay attention better if I'm looking down. So I am listening. And I try to still find a nonverbals that I'm comfortable with that can express that. And it made me think of your accommodation about sitting in the back of the room. Because I think that it kind of depends on who you are, and what's best for you. Like, if sitting in the back of the room, maybe that is what makes you comfortable enough to raise your hand, right? But then also, if you're someone who, hey, no matter what, I'm going to be too anxious to raise my hand, letting a professor know like, hey, I really can't cope very well with being like cold called. But I like to sit in the front, because I like for you to see that I'm paying attention. I like for you to see me taking notes, I like for you to see me nodding my head and like, I will give you cues that I'm listening. I'm just I'm not a student who's going to raise their hand a lot. And I am a student who's going to get extremely anxious if you call on me. But it's interesting how like, you almost could do the opposite, which is sit in front and say like, can you grade my participation based on your observations of me paying attention? Not my, you know, putting my hand in the air. So those are great accommodations. What do you have, by way of, well, let's do this, let's take a pause, we're going to hear from a sponsor. And then I want to come back and talk about maybe some challenges that people can do little baby steps to get a little more comfortable. Okay, we're back. So talk to me about some small little baby step challenges that people can do to get more comfortable.

  Michelle Huillet 12:53

  Yeah, so I call this kind of getting our feet wet. So you don't have to go to every social event, and be in large crowds. But are there things you can do to get your feet wet, so little bit of a challenge, you know, you can do it, but it won't be totally overwhelming. For one example, if you're I don't know, maybe your friend is having a large birthday party, and you just don't like large social gatherings like I don't. And I like small things. But your friend is really important to you, and you want to show up to their birthday, right? It's about them and other social, the whole social thing. And so I think a way to get our feet wet is really just maybe kind of like you said, before just communicating to someone like, Hey, I'm probably going to be able to stop by for half an hour or an hour. And then you know, based on how you're feeling, if you're feeling anxious and overwhelmed, you can get out and just telling your friend like, hey, I want to be there for your birthday, I've really been struggling with some social anxiety lately. So I'm probably just gonna stop by I want to see you give you a hug. And then I'll probably just need to leave in about half an hour or whatever the timeframe for you is. And so and then that kind of gives you an out. But I always think it's important to communicate. So instead of just coming to your friend's birthday, and immediately leaving, just like telling them or giving them a text or whatever, like I really care about you, I want to be here for you, I'm probably not going to be able to stay that long. It's just about communicating. Like you said, like communicating with your professor, you know, I really have some social anxiety, just being able to tell people like this is gonna be hard for me. But this is what I'm capable of doing. So that's kind of what I consider getting our feet wet. And there's a lot of different ways we can do that. So maybe you don't want to go to your big neighborhood potluck. But maybe you can go for a walk with a neighbor you've been getting to know, right, like maybe that would be more reasonable. So what's something What's a tiny thing that would be a little bit of a challenge, but not overwhelming that you feel like I never want to leave the house again. I'm going to lock myself in my room and leave. Right and another thing I want to talk about and this is just a principle that we teach in interpersonal communication, some

  thing that can make us feel anxious in social situations that you referenced earlier was that sometimes we feel this pressure to be perfect, I have to be perfect in order for this event to go well, or if I'm grabbing coffee with someone, I have to be perfect. And if I'm not perfect, this is going to be a disaster. But in interpersonal communication, we teach that we're actually drawn to people who show and communicate their imperfections, we like imperfections. And this totally makes me think of your work like me, and so many other people are drawn to you, because I can relate to the dishes in the sink in the messy room, and then not having a perfect house. And so sometimes we feel in our head, like I have to be perfect in order for this to go well, but actually, the research tells us we like people who are imperfect and who show that and communicate that, because we're imperfect. So when we meet someone who, you know, has some flaws, or maybe kind of embarrassed themselves, or is this something weird, we like that, because it reminds us of us. And that's a real connection point. So sometimes we think in order to connect, I must be perfect. But we know actually, connection comes from imperfections. So it's okay to as cliche as it sounds, be yourself, like, be a little goofy and weird. That is where connection lies.

  KC Davis 16:17

  It's a really great way of turning that concept on its head. And I kind of realized early on when I was trying to make like new mom friends, that it feels like the first time you ask someone for help, or the first time you're vulnerable around someone or you feel a little embarrassed around someone, it feels as though you're asking someone else to sort of hold a burden for you, because you've messed up, you're not perfect, you need something from them, you know, you're going to be in their debt, you need like the first time you feel like you kind of need grace from someone, you feel like you're though, like you're putting a burden on them. But in reality, people feel so much more comfortable asking for help when someone has already asked them. And people feel more comfortable being vulnerable when someone has been vulnerable with them. And people feel more comfortable not being perfect when someone else has not been perfect first. And so what I did was I started thinking that you know, me kind of being this, like fumbling human. It's not making someone else bear a burden. It's actually me doing them a favor, like it's me taking on the burden. And I would joke like the metaphor is that I always used to joke that my spiritual gift is going first in a buffet line.

  Because I've just for some reason been to a lot of things where it's like, whether it's a large family gathering, or it's like a you said, like a community potluck or a birthday party. And as soon as someone's like, okay, the food's ready. Everyone just stands there, and everyone is hungry, but like, nobody wants to be that first person to go through the buffet, because you kind of you just feel like, okay, I need to defer to everybody else. But then everybody's trying to defer to everybody. And I started doing this in my early 20s, I jokingly was like, This is my role in these situations is to be like, Okay, I'll bite the bullet. And I make a joke about it. And I always go get my food first. And I realized that people were actually really grateful because they're like, Thank God, like, It's too embarrassing to be the first one and to be judged by, you know, that person went first. So I was like, you know, what I will take this burden on for all of us. And it's funny, because people will generally think that like, Thank you, I was so hungry, but I did not want to go first. But I've been trying to think about that in an interpersonal sense, too, which is like the first person to mess up is actually doing everyone a favor.

  Michelle Huillet 18:30

  So well said and this is something I'm always telling my students like sometimes to be a good communicator, it means you have to go first. It means you have to be able to one that like opens up and says like, Hey, I've really been struggling with my anxiety lately, or I really don't like big social events. Can y'all help me out? Right? Like, I feel like sometimes we're all just like looking at the people in our life waiting for someone to go first. But just like your buffet example, like as you were saying that I was like, Okay, you're the type of person I want to be friends with. So when you go first than I know, I can go through the buffet line. I'm like, Oh, what a relief. Like you just take the pressure off of everyone. So we really yeah, sometimes we have to just kind of go first and be a little weird and awkward. And we're all very weird and strange, in our own ways. So when someone else this is what we call reciprocity when someone else goes first than I can too. And I like what you said about asking for help. You know, we talked about this in our class, and I asked my students, how many of you have a really close friend or partner needed help? How many of you would want to be there, you'd want them to reach out everyone always raises their hand. So sometimes we can actually ask people in our life for help, like, is there someone in your life who you think they're really good in social situations, or they seem to have it together? Or they're a good communicator? Like can I ask them for help? Can I say I have a real hard time when we go to brunch or I have a hard time speaking up at this meeting at work, but I want to make sure my ideas are communicated

  it, can you give me some suggestions? Can you help people love overall, I think people love to help each other out.

  KC Davis 20:06

  There's actually been studies that when someone feels like you are indebted to them, they actually see you with much more graciousness. And you'd think it'd be the opposite. Like, you would think that it's like, uncomfortable or something. But and a lot of people don't know this. But when I gave my TED talk, when I gave my TEDx talk, I messed up in the middle of it, I completely blanked and forgot what came next. And I'm talking crickets in my head. And it was in a place in the talk that I had never forgotten before, I'd never stumbled before. And what happened was, I was like, going along, and I was giving it and the audience laughed at this point that like, wasn't really supposed to be funny. I don't know if they were feeling like nervous, but it caught me off guard that they laughed at that point. And so I was like, oh, there let so that I had to pause for a second to let everyone kind of the laughter died down. And then it was just blank, nothing. And I like I ad lib, like a line. And then I just thought, you know what, I don't have it. I had to look offstage to one of the coaches who was like, following along, and I said, I don't know. And she had to feed me a line onstage in front of these people, and this camera crew, and then I had to go up. That's it. And then I looked out at the audience and smiled. And I said, don't worry about it. They'll edit this out. And everyone just burst into laughter. And then I just went on. And the other thing that I realized was that because everyone's like, Oh, your talk, your talk, your talk, and I've even had friends that have done talks, call me and be like, I'm just so nervous. I'm gonna mess up. And I'm like, Well, yeah, I messed up. And they're like, what you did? And I'm like, yeah, they edited it out. But yes, in a big way, in the biggest way, you could mess up a TED talk, I messed it up. And what I've learned from that situation, though, is that,

  like, if I'm watching a public speaker, and I, and they mess up, like, I don't have any feelings about them messing up. But when I can tell that they feel really embarrassed, and really uncomfortable, that's when I start to feel embarrassed for them and uncomfortable. And I'm like, oh, no, I don't want you to feel this way. I feel so bad. And like, that's what makes the audience uncomfortable. And so in that moment, like, acting as though it didn't bother me, even though it did, even though it was embarrassing, even though I was internally freaking out, but just acting as though this is no big deal. Don't worry about it, guys. It made the audience not nervous, and not register that as a big deal or as a failure or as anything wrong. And so, so I was able to just pick up where I left off, and just keep going. Whereas like, I think that if I had fallen into that hole of I've messed it up, oh my God, I've messed it up. Oh, my God, this is the worst thing ever. Like, that's what freezes me. That's what kind of makes me like, go down in flames and not be able to move on. And so recognizing that, like, if I fake that, it's okay. Everyone's just gonna go with it.

  Even if I'm messing up, like, if I almost like normalize the messing up. That is like, the biggest gift you can give to any audience is like, Oh, thank God, we didn't want to have to feel embarrassed for you.

  Michelle Huillet 23:22

  Yeah, it just makes you think of kind of, like laughing at yourself can be a good way, you know, to do that a little bit of like, you know, kind of poking some fun at yourself, you know, I have to do that in my classrooms. Because I mess up all the time, you know, I'll say turn to page 24. And I'm talking about something and it's on the wrong page. And they're like, What are you talking about, and I was like, I just wanted to make sure you guys were paying attention. But it's just like, it makes you a little bit more relatable. And I was like, Oh, whoops, um, I've just gotten ahead of myself, or, you know, I forgot what we did in our last class, because that's just human. And I think that the more I open up in my classes, the more students can open up to me and the more they can stay after class and say, I like that you said this thing today. You know, I also struggle with social anxiety. And that is something that I share with my students sometimes, you know, I teach this class typically of about 30 people and people are surprised that I'm very introverted, and only to leave the house. And I also struggle with social anxiety. Even though I come to class and they seem prepared and I probably seem like remotely competent. Inside, I am worried about what people think about me. And when I share that, it's just like, so many students are like, me, too. Me too. Me too. So I think when we open up and we laugh at ourselves are like, Oops, I messed up there. It allows people to say, Hey, I messed up in this way or I relate to you here.

  KC Davis 24:50

  Michelle. I really appreciate everything that you've said so far. And my main takeaways are kind of those two perspective shifts were that you offered that was number one, you know

  Probably no one can tell. And probably more people are struggling this with you, and you just can't tell. So if you can't tell that they're anxious, probably they can't tell that you're anxious. So you know, we can breathe a little bit. And then that idea that sort of like, it's doing someone a favor, to be the first person willing to mess up to be the first person willing to fumble like that really is doing the person in front of you, and even the group around you a favor, and people will feel grateful for it. And, and most of the time, instead of judging you for whatever little human blip mistake it was, they actually are inwardly relieved, that, you know, if they then are human, it's going to be okay. And so in some ways, you know, I think that's huge. So, Michelle, I appreciate everything that you've said, Do you have any, like little last words of wisdom for someone who is wanting to maybe try something new this week, despite feeling socially anxious?

  Michelle Huillet 25:58

  Yeah, I would just say, be really gentle with yourself, you know, take really small steps, make a small goal, you know, make it a goal to start by an event or, you know, make it a goal to just engage in small talk for 30 seconds with a co worker, give them a compliment, ask them for help ask them a question. Instead of saying, I'm going to throw a big party at my house. Like that's just not realistic. But is there a small goal is, is there someone that you've been wanting to get to know? Or maybe your goal can be like, I want to talk to one of my friends about my social anxiety? And I just want to tell them, I've this has been hard. And this is why sometimes I cancel at the last minute, when we have plans, like a really small step that again, yes, it's challenging, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. Can I maybe ask someone for recommendations? That's one of my favorite conversational tips. People love to give recommendations, whether it's food or entertainment, or you know where to get your dog groomed, or where's the best park like people? I mean, I love to give recommendations. I could probably talk for hours, you know, when someone's new in town, like, can I ask a coworker, I love your haircut, who's your hairdresser? Can you give me their contact information, maybe that could be a goal for you this week. Or maybe your goal is just to talk to someone about how you're feeling. Or maybe your goal is to make a goal, maybe you're not sure what that next step is. But maybe just keep it on the backburner and be on the lookout for an opportunity of, you know, I want to give that person a compliment. Or I want to talk to that person next to me in class, like, they're always so nice that I'd like to get to know them. And sometimes we're always thinking about ourselves, which is just a human thing. But something I'm always telling my students is that no one is thinking about you as much as you are. And this might sound a little extreme, but no one hates you as much as you do. Right.

  So, like, we're so hard, we're so hard on ourselves. So sometimes I think of it, instead of thinking about myself and my social anxiety. Maybe by talking to this person in class, or maybe one of my co workers or maybe getting to know one of my neighbors. Instead of being about me, maybe I can offer this person a sense of connection, and community. And even if I feel awkward, maybe I can help this person feel a little bit more connected and a little less lonely. And that makes me like that helps me branch out instead of being about me, What can I offer this person? Can I have a pleasant conversation for a couple minutes? Can I give them a compliment? Can I help them by opening up? Like what can I do for you. So instead of thinking about myself, I'm thinking about someone else and how I can contribute to their overall connection. So I think that can be a helpful way to approach it.

  KC Davis 28:51

  That's a great tip. Like, it kind of sounds funny, but like find someone in the room that looks even more anxious than you. And then be like, I'm going to do this person a favor by you know, complimenting their shoes by asking them if they know where the bathroom is, like, you know what I mean? Like just fight like, it really can help to switch that. So and then I wanted to give a little shout out for anybody that is looking for maybe some specific coping tips to get them through when they're in social situations. There's a book called The anxiety healers guide. It's by Alison seminara. And she's a licensed professional counselor. And this little book, it's called the anxiety healers, guide coping strategies and mindfulness techniques to calm the mind and body is chock full of small little grounding exercises that are something that would work really well with being in a social environment with people and feeling anxious to kind of help regulate that nervous system. So Michelle, thank you again, and I really appreciate all your tips.

  Michelle Huillet 29:48

  Thank you. It was so nice to meet you. And I know you talked about your TED talk and I wanted to tell you, I share that with my students on one of our discussion boards and we talk about it and I share tons of stuff from your book with them.

  My students, I referenced you all the time in class. So I'm just super excited to meet you and your work is Oh, thank you. It's changed my life. And I've recommended your book and all of your podcasts, your TED Talk to everyone and the people around me. It's really helped. So you're helping so many people and yeah, I am so happy to meet you.

  KC Davis 30:20

  Thank you

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

We are exploring the world of parenthood today, but this episode might be helpful even for those who aren’t parents. We are all in some process of trying to reparent ourselves, and it can be healing to hear how people are parenting, how they are failing, and why they want to do better. I’m joined by Yolanda Williams, who has built the Parenting Decolonized brand. She is a single mom, a conscious parenting coach, and a racial justice educator. Join us to learn more!

Show Highlights: 

●      Why sleep and parenting is a no-win situation for parents: the essence of the co-sleep vs. sleep train debate

●      Why parents have to figure out when their child is dysregulated and what works best for them–even if goes against “the rules”

●      How parents can learn about their triggers and how they project those triggers into the world

●      Why we don’t understand the fears, shame, and motivation that cause other parents to do what they do

●      How Yolanda feels about the parent-coaching industry

●      How Yolanda has built an intentional community in the absence of the ancestral village

●      How capitalism and racism have infiltrated our parenting techniques

●      Why Yolanda is working to form an intentional village community where parents help each other with whatever their “privilege” is

●      How to start decolonizing your parenting

●      What we should teach our kids about violence, restraint, bullying, and self-defense

●      A look at Yolanda’s recent parenting “wins”

 Resources and Links:

Connect with Yolanda Williams: Website, Parenting Decolonized podcast, and Instagram

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes

• Transcript

  KC Davis 0:05

  Hello you sentient balls of stardust, welcome to struggle care, the podcast about mental health, self care, wellness, by a host that really hates the term self care and is not super great at wellness. I'm glad that you're here. And I'm glad that you're gonna listen to me in this next guest. I've got Yolanda Williams on today who has an organization or company, what's the best way to say that is your company, your organization, your brand and brand got it? decolonizing parenting, and I love that. And if you're not a parent, I hope you stick around, I find that sometimes in the world of trying to reparent ourselves. There's something that can be really healing about listening to people talk about parenting, particularly listening to them talk about wanting to be good parents and how they're failing and, and how they're wanting to do better and what they think about parenting. So I'm glad you're with us. And Yolanda, I'm super glad that you're with me. Both of us had really rushed mornings. So rushed, I'm so tired. And the amount of podcasts that I roll into with zero plan would actually probably wouldn't shock many people. I don't tend to have a plan about anything.

  Yolanda 1:16

  I tell people, though, like it's like a like it's a thing. I'm just like, listen, it's conversational. I don't have questions. It's because I don't want to have them. I don't want to send you questions, because that means I have to do pre work. And nobody got time for that.

  KC Davis 1:28

  I know. And I try to check with people because I tried to appreciate that. Some people really need a plan. I am so happy to shoot from the hip. Yeah. Okay. So anyways, we were like talking about something and I was like, Wait, hit record, it's gonna be good. I was sharing that my morning was a little rushed, because I thought my daughter was sick. And then she made a miraculous recovery as many four year old to do once, she realized she had to actually stay in bed for the morning if she was sick. And so I had to rush her to school, and my older daughter actually sleeps with me. And we sleep really well together.

  Yolanda 2:00

  I don't, I haven't had a good night's sleep in four years is difficult. So like, recently, Casey had a post about sleep training. And I commented and I got I was like, well cried out is traumatizing. And the thing about me is I'm gonna say what I'm gonna say, right? And some people agreed. So people were just like, you know, why would you say that? That's not what she's talking about. And the thing is, I understand the like, the desperation because I still haven't had a good night's sleep. Do you wake up, she just started sleeping through the night at three. But she sleeps so terribly that I wake up multiple times a night just to switch to the other side of the bed. She's, I am on the edge of reason of the bed, right? Like I'm like, floating, the way that my mattress is now like each side has a divot of me, and then in the middle of a hill. So it feels weird to even sit in the middle because it's just like, This doesn't feel right, because that's how poorly she wants to be under me. And I think that's from nursing whenever she wanted to, and she wants to be touching me and it's terrible. So I understand that like desperation just like I need to get some effing sleep because I'm gonna lose my mind. I feel well and I

  KC Davis 3:09

  think that's probably why my daughter and I sleep okay to like, it's so it's such a different experience is because I didn't co sleep from a birth, like I did sleep train, I did cry it out. And so she got used to sleep like she never really had that like skin to skin all night long. And so she just like lays there like a little log. And so I, you know, what I thought was really interesting. So for anyone listening, I did a post about how I had sleep trained, and I did use cry it out. And what I found really interesting when you had commented cried out as traumatizing is that because you and I have a relationship, like we have the beginnings of a relationship. We've talked offline, we've sort of chatted about things we did that live together. It was interesting to me how different it was to experience your comment, because my experience of it was like, hey, that's what she believes that's what she thinks.

  Yolanda 4:01

  It wasn't like, I was like, Man on you. Yeah,

  KC Davis 4:05

  I like doing personally. And it was like, easier to hold. Like, that's her opinion. It's not about me. And it was just kind of an interesting reflection on like the internet in general. Because when I don't know someone, like if I hadn't have known you, and you had commented that like I would have taken it as adversarial. Yeah, like I would have felt attacked, I would have maybe even like pushed back really hard on it. And I did push back really hard on other people that said similar things, but it was like you and I had this container, that content recontextualize that comment,

  Yolanda 4:41

  and I think that's the important thing we need to remember about social media, the way we interact with each other online. It's just so nasty sometimes. And I think a lot of times we assume that people are trying to attack you're trying to be negative. And really I was just stating like what I feel as effects. And it wasn't like I'm trying to shame and say and that's why I had to Like a second thing, like, I don't know, if this is what you're saying, I was trying to, like, clean it up a bit. And so many words, I didn't want you to feel like I was attacking you. And that's also why I made like, 5011 response videos, because I wanted to give more context. And that's the hard part is like, these are some very short form, communication style tic tock, you know, so we are with, I think now they've increased like 10 minutes, like, who wants to know, on tick tock for 10 minutes with somebody to talk, but I don't, because that's not what it's for. That's not what we want it to be for. So we get these three minute sound bites of someone's opinion. And we have to remember, like, it's not the totality of what they're saying, because you had to then go in and talk about in your reply videos, other people, you were like, expanding on what you were saying, and I didn't want it. You know, I'm, I'm sorry, if I, you know, if I did make you feel away, because I wasn't definitely wasn't what I was trying to do. And I thought about it. And I was just like, well, I probably could have said that differently. But it's something I feel strongly about. And there's some cultural reasons that I talked about why I feel the way I do. And I hope that, you know, I was able to clear some things up for you, because I'm not worried about anybody else.

  KC Davis 6:10

  Well, that's what was kind of interesting to me was that, I think, had it been anybody else I would have felt like, what you were saying was that I had traumatized my kid. And then like, the natural, like, jump from that, it's like, that's a bad mom. But because I've talked to like you and I have had, like, we had a long life about parenting. And so I know, at least I think I know, your general opinions about me as a person. So I was able to hold that opinion differently. And it was just an interesting thing. And then I, it kind of also brought me to, I was thinking so like, long about what was interesting about just that, this in general, this concept of sleep and parenting, and I mean, at the end of the day, it's like a no win situation. For moms in general.

  Yolanda 7:01

  And for the children, right, we are either choosing ourselves or choosing them. And so in your case, you were like, I gotta choose me because I cannot. And in my case, I was like, I have to choose her. Because of the cultural context of we she's already born into this body as a, you know, as a black child, a disabled woman at that, a girl at that, so I'm trying to do everything I can to mitigate trauma. And, and that means I have to suffer. And that's what I've been doing, I'm I'm gonna lie. To y'all, I have been, it's been really difficult to not sleep well, and try to run a business or just trying to be a good parent, it really is difficult. So I understand what you were saying, when you were just like, I would choose this way any day. For me, I didn't feel like I had a choice and choosing my child, because of you know, white supremacy, delusion. And all this stuff that she has to deal with are ready come into the world, with a mom who's traumatized by whiteness, that's the things that I have to hold. And so it's interesting how we can see the same, like talk about the same thing. It's just so from two different worlds. And I think that's why we need to learn how to talk to each other, to understand the context. Well, and I

  KC Davis 8:11

  think the other you know, it's almost a similar idea is that the way that cultural things play out in my life as a white mother is like, there was just the fact that when I was sleep deprived, I was cold and angry. And I was incapable of being a conscientious parent, or a conscious parent, gentle parenting, respect for whatever you would call it. And you know, that I did not want to be that mother, that could not be responsive, right? Like that would have been, for me a legacy of isolation and coldness. And like we, you know, I am blessed to have a great relationship with my mom. But in general, like in the white world, the white community, like daughters and their mothers have a very complex, often screwed up relationship. And I think, you know, it's interesting when we talk about like, Okay, I chose me you chose your daughter, but I guess I see it a slightly different way. Because, like, the only when I look at like the options around sleep, whether it's like sleep training, and there are there are other ways of sleep training that don't involve like crying. I know a lot of people do like no cry solutions and things like that. I'm not as familiar with those, but it's like, it kind of seems like there's three options. There's like, Sleep Train your child to sleep in their crib alone. CO sleep with your child and a bed or just never sleep at all. To me that's like the only actual option that just never considers what you need is like just never sleep because then you can always provide, you know, the skin to skin, the clothes comfort, and there's no risk at all physical, emotional, like no risk at all, but That's not like, realistic. And I think in my head moms that closely, are going through the same process as moms that Sleep Train, like we're looking and going, Okay, we have to sleep, we have to sleep. And so if you have to sleep, the choices, you have to either sleep with your baby, or you have to figure out a way to get your baby to sleep by themselves. And there are certainly risk factors for both of those, like we talked about the risk factor, like I believe in looking at the research that is available, that there isn't enough sort of data that says, Look, we have this proof that this long term really negative impacts. Now, that doesn't mean that there are no negative impacts, it just means that there are no undocumented right now. And so I had to go in going it is a possibility that this could have a negative emotional impact. But for me, I also when I looked at ko sleep, I felt like there were still risk factors there. Namely, like safety risk factors, right? Like there is a possibility that a child could suffocate or asphyxiation in a co sleeping arrangement. And what I think sometimes happens, and I don't think you and I do this, but I think that like people who sleep train, will, the assumptions they make about the mother who co sleeps is like, she's laying in a fluffy bed of pillows, and she doesn't care about risk. And she's, you know what I mean? Yeah. And then like the mother that CO sleeps, when they see a mother asleep chains, she makes this assumption of like, she doesn't care about being responsive. She just shut the door and let the kids scream in their feces all night. When in reality, like

  Yolanda 11:43

  that is not what's going on for either one of

  KC Davis 11:45

  the mothers. Yeah, the mothers, I know that closely went okay. There is a risk here. Oh, yeah. But you took mitigating factors, right. Like, maybe you decided not to sleep with a big comforter? Maybe you decided to not drink? Maybe you decided to and like, that's what I did. Like I said, How can I mitigate the risk factors that this could have a negative impact. And so I chose, you know, okay, we're gonna do a schedule, like a pretty regimented schedule for two weeks before we do anything, so that you are adequately sleepy. And then I'm going to lay you down, I'm going to practice a bedtime routine. And then I'm going to lay you down. And then I'm going to leave the room for three minutes. And in three minutes, I'm going to come back in and for both of my daughters that actually ended up differently. So one of my daughters could not calm down in the crib, and like, I can tell the difference between I'm uncomfortable, I'm uncomfortable, and I'm dysregulated. I'm dysregulated. And so I found that she was dysregulated. She could not be regulated in the crib. So I had to pick her up and hold her until she regulated. And when I felt that regulation, I later back down. And I did it again three minutes. My other daughter what was interesting is that I found that if I picked her up, she got more dysregulated if I kept my little hand on her in the crib, and I patted her butt and I said Mommy's here. Mommy's here, then she would reregulate so like, I still co regulated with my kids. Right? Three minutes, we're out. Three minutes, we're out six minutes, we're out. Six minutes, we're out, always listening for that. Where's your window of tolerance, I want to make sure that I'm in what I deemed sort of like a comfortable level of tolerance and not a complete I can't loot right. And that was what I was comfortable with. Right? I would not have been comfortable with just letting them scream all night, I would not have been comfortable with vomiting and all this. But I also when I hear about that happening, I think to myself, Oh God that's painful to hear. And I would never do that. And I tried to also hold space for maybe if I was desperate enough, there's always

  Yolanda 13:49

  new ones people. And I even had to say, I have been working from home since I moved out here to Arkansas from California. I moved before I was up. Not before, while I was pregnant. When I found out I was pregnant, I moved near my family. And so I had the privilege of being at home and not necessarily having to leave the house to go do things. You know, she did not sleep well. And I learned that with autistic kids. A lot of them don't sleep well. So sleep training wouldn't have worked for her anyway, you know, and I quickly learned that when I told you my friend got me the sleep trainer. She did that was what she recommended was exactly what you just said. And I went and I redecorated the room. I got the blackout blinds, I got the white noise machine. I even got it was some sort of like a compression like sleeve that she hates because she doesn't like covers and so I got all these things and I was ready. I was like we gotta I gotta get some sleep. I would go sleep chain. I lasted an hour. I just couldn't do it. And because she couldn't do it and and it didn't matter if I was touching her if I picked her up, she was screaming. And I didn't know at the time that she was autistic. I think she I think I was about eight months. She was about eight months when I tried this and to get her diagnosis. She was 18 months or no, I'm lying after she was two, I've got that diagnosis. So I understanding that autistic kids, a lot of them don't have very good sleep, sort of routines and that kind of thing. I had to learn what was best for us as a family. And I think that is where I always tell people, I'm a conscious parenting coach, I tell parents, you need to figure out what works best for your family. In my family, there's a limited screen time. That's because we are neurodivergent people over here and screens actually helped me. They've been helping her learn how to speak, she has limited words, she has learned how to speak and sing using a screen. So we, it's unlimited screen time over here. For me, we don't go to bed early. She her bedtime starts it's about 10 o'clock. Anything earlier, she wakes up at 4am. And like this is this is clockwork. So when she goes to sleep, and it's like nine, I'm just like, wake up. Because she does not sleep through the night. Otherwise, okay, she wants to wake up at four o'clock and party. So I had to realize like, I cannot do things. Like everyone else. I can't follow all the rules. Like, you know, here's this book of things I'll the I had to do what was best for my family. And I think as long as we always keep in mind, like, like what you said, I can tell if my child is really dysregulated I can tell, I have to figure out what they need it, you figured out what each child needed and you went with that. It wasn't like you close the door. Because that's, that is what I hear when people say cried out, that's what I think of, because I have seen like on the shows like The nanny and stuff, they talk about doing that it's so brutal to me. And the history of just some of the some of these parenting techniques from like, you know, the boomers are so brutal to children. And, and so that is where my mind goes. But honestly, if you are like checking in and making sure like there is no thrown up there screaming into their horse, like to me that you're you figure out what's best for your family. That's your business. I'm just in my business is making sure children are

  KC Davis 17:04

  what's interesting about that is like, if I'm being honest about like, I truly believe, like I do not have, I don't look down on mothers that CO sleep like I couldn't. And there were a few nights where I would do maybe like the last hour because I was so sleepy. But like I don't know if it was my anxiety or what but like the risk that anything could happen. Even if I was fault, like mitigating the best I could like I couldn't get over it. I could not fall asleep. If I did fall asleep I jerk awake, I could not function. And so like, I was so afraid. And some of that was my own sort of like I had a really difficult time with infertility. I had two miscarriages and I had this like pervasive belief that like, I wasn't allowed to have good things. And if I did something bad would happen. And so it was like, I can't,

  Yolanda 17:55

  okay, okay, I'm gonna stop you there. So you just saying that, like something happened in my body. Because I have this, when GIA does something, and she scares the shit out of me, I get angry, I get so mad. And I really just started investigating that. And I realized it's because I have a fear that I can't keep her alive. It's a big fear that I cannot keep her safe. And I can't keep her alive. But you type a couple things together and what you just said, and I'm feeling like that is also a part of that anger that comes up for me, right? Because this child who is like so purely like loves me, like up, I just be like, girl, you love me so much. Love me less. Sometimes it's so it's so much. It's so much. I've never experienced a love like this. And it's overwhelming for me at times. And I'm scared of it. At times, I'm getting emotional. It's scary for me because I just want to protect her. So when she does something, I'm just like, oh my god, she could have died. And then all the stuff about myself would be true. But I'm not good enough to be a good parent. I don't deserve good things. I can't keep her safe. And I project that with anger, like, and I'm learning because that's my job as a conscious parenting coach, but also as a parent, to learn what those triggers are, and learn how I project those triggers out into the world. And so I'm learning that when I start to feel that fear and anger rise up, I leave the room. If she's safe, I just leave the room and I just kind of go and like punch the air or something. Because it's there. It's a trigger and it's real and I can't pretend like it's not but it's my responsibility to make sure I'm not projecting that onto her because it's not fair. I just want to make sure that she stays alive and she in every day. I have a sensory seeking autistic child. It's like why are you trying to kill yourself? Why are you got that in your mouth? Why are you touching that? What you know, why do you have a battery? I found a she was chewing on a battery. I was like why are you doing that? She walked over to me the other day and just vomited. I was like what the hell was going on? In the vomit was one of my crystals. It was huge. She was talking about it. I didn't know and I had to just walk Go away. I was just like, I don't know how I'm gonna survive motherhood. And Mike, can I be a mother? Like, I'm constantly it's a constant questioning of, Am I even cut out for this? You know,

  KC Davis 20:09

  man, okay, I have so many thoughts, but I'm gonna take a pause, and we'll come back after the break. Okay, we're back with Yolanda from decolonizing parenting. And here's something that so I see you eat with your own crosstable. Here's what's so interesting to me. Like, I have to admit that when I hear people talk about co sleeping, I sometimes have to battle, like my own assumptions about what that means, right? Because just like you said, you know, when I hear sleep training or cried out, I hear put them in the crib shut the door, you don't care about their needs. And when I hear cosleeping, where I immediately go to is this sense of how could anyone for their own fear or comfort, even take the slightest bit of chance that their child would be harmed? Like because to me, like, my kids feel so precious feel so right. And so like, because that's my context? It's hard for me when I hear people talk about cosleeping. Because I think what could be worth that? What could be worth that, even if it's a 1% chance, what could be worth that? But like, when I hear you, so if that's like, the only thing I hear about someone, like, that's what I feel, and I know not to, you know, I don't want to say that to them. Because what I have learned is like, when I listened to you talk, like you did right before the break about like that deep fear of like your worst fears confirmed, that you may not be a good mom that you may not have what it takes to protect them. Like, it makes me realize that you're just like me. And I see that humanity. And I see that like, like F like it, you love them so much.

  Yolanda 21:47

  You love them. So it's like, it's like, the worst thing sometimes is I was just like me looking at her. I'm just like, I would kill for you lady like little girl, I would literally go to jail for you, I would go underneath the jail for you. If that's a scary thing.

  KC Davis 22:01

  I have thought that before. And it's not a like boast. It's like a fear. It's like, if someone were to hurt her, I would not be able to control myself, I would go to prison will go to prison and see I have an extra layer. This is hypothetical in case someone is listening to this in the future. And I have in fact been accused of hurting someone. This is hypothetical, I would never actually do that. Okay, but ya know, it's terrifying. And that vulnerable moment, and it's always like 3am. And you and looking at this baby, and you're you feel so low and so inadequate. And I think that what's hard is to like, what I learned things about whether it like parenting tactics. Without context. It's like I struggle sometimes to hold the humanity of that other mother and not point that out. And I first of all, I love that, like, when you talk about decolonizing parenting, I want to get into that. And I love that when you talk about your house and you're like, like, there are really deep reasons, cultural reasons, like why we co sleep and I took you know, and I took steps to mitigate any risks to that. And we're at we have no limits on screen time. Like I love that talking of like, decolonizing parenting isn't just like a list of parenting decisions and traits. Oh,

  Yolanda 23:11

  absolutely not. We have to do this. That's the thing. One thing I'm very vocal about, especially on tick tock is how I cannot stand the parent coaching industry. I hate it, to be honest with you. And I'm part of it, y'all. It's because of the way that it is spoke, we speak about all these things in such binary. You know, I'm saying like really just black and white things, and that is broken a pistol folks off because the majority of the coaches are white. And so it just feels very regimented all the time just feels like you need to do this. And it's just like absolutely not. There's nuance that we have to consider we everybody has a different all kids are different, right? What we know universally is that all kids deserve and need kindness and empathy and patience, and love and guidance from their parents that's across the board. All kids need that what they every kid may not work well with certain types of the wet you know, communication styles. This is what comes with learning about your children. And I just hate the way that it feels like here's some tips and tricks to stop Trump stop tantrums. It's like no, that's not how life is.

  KC Davis 24:18

  And it's not even about the kid like what I can't stand about. It's like the people who are very sort of like hardcore, like, I spank and I do this and I do that there's this pride of like, I know how to do it. I'm strong, but then even on like the total opposite end when you get to like super crunchy moms that you know, they have their own list of like, I only breastfeed my only cause even then it's like it's still about them it's like liquid a good mom I am and I feel like parents are trapped in that like when they're trying to look for the quote unquote like right thing to do. It's like this minefield of making the decisions that make you a good mom. As opposed to making it child centered.

  Yolanda 25:03

  And that's my point, right? Because that's what I chose to do, I have to be child centered in everything that I do for cultural reasons. And when we talk about decolonizing, I had to open it back. And I read stuff around ancestral ways of parenting. And I wanted to do that. I did not want to do things that were sort of rooted in like an individualistic society. The problem is that we live in an individualistic society, right? And so the reason why I had to this day, I'm not getting any sleep and feeling sometimes trapped by parenthood by motherhood is because the village is dead for all of us, right? We are not living the way we're supposed to be living this whole siloed nuclear Yeah, well, yeah. But you know, the nuclear family structure is not a natural structure. And it's fairly new. And we have to understand historically, this is not how families functioned. And so when we start to look at like how race and class played a really big part into how we parent today, I want to know parts of that. The problem is that I don't have a village, right. So I'm trying to do things like ancestrally that require a village without a village, don't get me wrong, my family is out here with me, they help as much as I can, but we don't live together. And that's why I am doing the whole, I'm building an intentional community with eight other black mothers because I need, we all need to be in very close proximity to one another, to receive the help that we need to be better parents. So when I don't have it, because there's days I just don't, and those are the days I call just keep everyone alive days, where I don't do shit, but lay down and she gets to basically run the house. I'm just trying to keep her alive that day, because I don't have anything to give her a lot of spoons about energy and burnt out. If I was in a village, though, someone will come and take her right and entertain her and be with her and feed her properly. There's love chicken mcnuggets I happen on that day. And I don't care.

  KC Davis 26:56

  Well, the proximity thing is huge, because like, I'm really blessed to have some very close friends, close, emotional, intimate, vulnerable, I can tell them anything. But none of them live near me with the exception of one or two. And the ones that live near me have kids my similar age, and you would think like, oh, they're such great help. It's like, No, we can't help each other at all, because we all have the burden of our own whole nuclear family and house and care tasks. And like, it takes all of our time just to take care of what we have here. And you know, one town over, it takes all of their time to take care of their stuff, they're in the schedule, that it's actually really hard to get together. And when you do get together, it's like you can get together for a social thing. But that's different than like, Let's wash our clothes down by the river. Like, you know what I mean? Or like, my kids are going to run over to your house because I have something to do and then maybe I'll make dinner and we'll eat together. I mean, it's I used to be jealous of like it no way like covet, like Mormon polygamist wives, but I do sometimes get jealous about like the setup of, you know, three houses together with one shared backyard, and everyone is just helping each other. And

  Yolanda 28:12

  I mean, but you can still you can do that. Now, though. Maybe you can, like I'm literally working towards that very thing, we're gonna be limited. But I'm literally working towards that we're going out to Georgia performing a land trust. And we will do that exact thing, farm and everything else. Because the systems are not set up for Healthy Families. If you really think about it, everything when it comes to how we sleep, our children sleep to us, our decision to go to college, everything is really centered around capitalism. It really is. I'll send you this video when we get off. And it's around the why sleep training came about. And a lot of it was rooted in racism. But a lot of it was also because of capitalism, because of the church that says, hey, sleeping communities, perverse. It's not supposed to do it. It came from disease because people were so nasty back in the day, that it like people were catching diseases loving to live in such close proximity together.

  KC Davis 29:08

  So you're forming a community, intentional

  Yolanda 29:11

  community. So I'm doing that because I am trying to go back to that village where we are there for one another, there's a communal kitchen, but we have our separate dwellings and so on and so forth. It is necessary, like we can do that. But even just the other day, a friend of mine came called me and she was just like, hey, if you need me to help you with Gia while you get prepared for your parenting conference, let me know. And I was just like, yeah, so she came over and watch GIA while I worked. Like that, to me is a way that we can be in community with one another. It doesn't have to be where I hope that everyone starts getting back to the whole village mentality in an actual village, but since a lot of us feel like we can't, I want us to start thinking about like, how can we use what privilege we have to help someone else and fight Versa, right? People hear privilege and they get so upset because they think I'm only talking about race, but I have privilege of time, because I work for myself and I work from home. And so that same friend, I will pick her daughter up from school three days a week, from school and take her to the Child Development Center and come home, hour and a half out of my day, to help a friend who otherwise would not have child any way to transport her child. That is me being a village member and a community member. She then was just like, I want to help you do the same thing. So she came over my house and helped me with Gia with in brought her daughter and they played well I worked. And I was able to get some work done distraction free, kinda with the help of another adult, right? So we can figure out how can we be there for each other if you have the resources where you have time, and you love to cook. And you know, your friend does not have time, but they but they need a home cooked meal, cook some extra food, and maybe they can, I don't know, watch your kids sometimes like we start to talk to each other and figure out what each other needs and what we can do for one another, and start to live that way. So we're not so dependent on these systems, and we're not so individualistic.

  KC Davis 31:09

  That's great. Okay, after we take a break, I want to come back and ask you about some specific things that people can do to start to decolonize their parenting. Okay, we're back with Yolanda from decolonizing parenting. And I do want to say one thing that I love about you can I do

  Yolanda 31:28

  that? Oh,

  KC Davis 31:32

  one of the things that I've noticed about a lot of parenting experts in parenting spaces, particularly the ones that are led by white women, is that whether they intend to do this or not, there's this message that if you could just master and they do this even in like gentle parenting spaces, if you could just master gentle parenting, you wouldn't be struggling so much with parenthood, you wouldn't have so many behavior problems with your kid you wouldn't have like, it wouldn't be this hard, like. And so a lot of a lot of it draws a lot of people in because they are experiencing a really tough time with parenting. And they're looking for like the hack that will make everything easier. And what I appreciate about you when you talk about parenting and conscious parenting is that even when we are doing all of the quote unquote, right things, we're being conscious parenting, we're being responsive, we're being we're in an environment, that itself is going to be the barrier. And so we're still going to have survival days, we're still going to get angry and need to walk out of the room. And that's not because we're not being a good enough conscious parent. It's because there's no amount of conscious parenting that is going to overcome being a single parent or living in a capitalistic society, or needing to go to work when you haven't slept, or having been traumatized by your own parents, and now still dealing with this. And I find that that is rare in the parenting world to talk about that. At the same time.

  Yolanda 33:06

  Yeah, it's disappointing. And it's the reason why I choose to be so vocal about my own hangups and my in my own mistakes, who I want to humanize this whole thing, it is not just about like, talking softly and giving choices and like absolutely not the conscious part of conscious parenting is you being conscious of your trauma, your mood, your mindset, how your social economic status may be impacting right your decisions that you're making. And it's going to look different for everybody because of these issues around race and class and privilege. So my parenting as you know, a black single mother, who is has a visible disability, but who was able bodied parenting, an autistic child is going to be completely different than yours, right? And I want to hold space for for all of that nuance. And just tell people like, the more that you go within, the easier it does get, the more habit you can form to be conscious. But I feel like what these coaches are doing is telling people how to do conscious parenting, instead of How to Be conscious people. And so that's where it's different for me, because I just want you to be a conscious person, because those conscious as we learn more about ourselves, about our triggers, about how we respond to those triggers, how we communicate our coping skills. It's not just the parenting that's affected. It is literally every single relationship with every human being we come across. And so my goal with conscious parenting is not just about these kids, it's really about the world, right? Because I think about how many hurt people are walking around here and we don't know how to communicate. I mean, look at that thread or thread like we can see it people don't want to talk to one another. We don't care to have respectful communication with one another. So many hurt people walking around here being hurt, and just bleed all over everybody and not caring. And I just envision a future where people do care because we've been empathetic, we've listened to them, we've told them that their voices matter that their feelings matter. But there's boundaries, right? You don't get to speak to me like that just because you're upset. We've taught them boundaries, we've taught them respectful communication intact. And we've also taught them that everyone is not deserving of respect all the time. Right how to advocate for yourself, when to be violent. Like, for me as a revolutionary, there's space for violence in this world, just not against the most innocent among us, which is children. So it's like having that conversation being teaching those things to our children, for a more liberated future for everybody. Like, that's what I how I approached my coaching business, versus like, it feels like very present, the way that people are coaching people versus me, I'm more like, futuristically, we're doing this for future generations, I want my daughter to not have to go through the things that I'm going through now. So I'm hoping that she is just like this, because it's like, normalized, and it's who she is, if she chooses to have children, that they're that she she just does this naturally. She's a conscious parent naturally. And it's just the freakin preset. It's not, you know, she didn't have to learn it. It's just who she is, it becomes who our children are. And if we had millions of people who is just how they are, the world will look completely different.

  KC Davis 36:14

  It's so powerful, what you said about violence, because I, whenever you hear parents be like, if somebody hits you hit them back, and it's like, that doesn't sit right with me. And when I became a parent, and I have kids, there's also something that doesn't sit right with me to tell my daughter, there's never a reason to push them why there's never a reason so and I've told her before, like, if you don't like the way that an adult is touching your body, you tell them to stop. And if they don't stop after the first time you start screaming and pushing, right like, and I've told her also, if anyone is ever hurting your little sister, you are to immediately physically engaged with them. Like you said earlier, like everything is nuanced. But like I don't find any benefit and teaching my white daughters that passivity is always the right thing. And like you said, it's not about violence is never the answer. It's about oppression is never the answer, right? Like, no, don't ever push or hit your sister. She's little. She's your sister. But absolutely. Anybody else do we ever be let anybody else do it either. One of my good friends who's also a therapist, who does parenting stuff, like I tell my kid, never start a fight. But if somebody else starts one, you need to end it need to finish it. And she doesn't mean like, be bigger, stronger, hurt them. She just means like, you're not gonna lay there and just let somebody punch you.

  Yolanda 37:40

  No, no, we're not. I don't want you to ever start anything. And that's the problem like, and this is why I follow up so close with her at this at the park. Because she is like I said, She's autistic. She doesn't understand boundaries, right? So just the other day at the park, she pushed this girl so hard, and I was very close. So I was able to to tell her like, I'm so sorry. She's not supposed to be doing that. And I do. It wasn't looking at me. But I was just like, Gia, we don't push it like we need to go over here. The problem is that, again, folks just see the action and they don't have any there you know, and all these things will circulate on like tick tock and what would happen if your child got pushed by this bigger child, my bigger child is autistic doesn't understand boundaries. So um, as a parent, I'm right up behind her. But that's also my fear. So as a child who is autistic and cannot speak up for herself, because she does not speak very many words, that she's going to be harmed. So I'm very overprotective of my kid. And I hope that she's able to do some sort of self defense classes because I want her to learn some jujitsu. I want her and um, I want self defense in like the martial arts because they also teach you like restraint. Yes, restraint.

  KC Davis 38:49

  Yeah, that's what I actually really this is totally a tangent at this point. But it's important. I love jujitsu. I plan to have both of my daughters do it because especially some of the gyms like they actually teach it with an anti bullying curriculum where they talk about like, we never use our skills to hurt anyone. But if somebody is hurting us, or if someone is hurting someone else, we use our skills to hold that person down and call for a teacher.

  Yolanda 39:14

  It's a mindset shift for kids into really how we think about violence needs to shift and in the thing about violence in a country that is was literally built on violence. It perpetuates violence every day and how it does not take care of its citizens and skews the perception of what violent people look like. We have to be cognizant of the messages that we give our children, especially white children around violence I posted on Tik Tok recently, a black woman said White people don't want their kids. And I was like, Who told you that shit? Like, they certainly do. What are you talking about? But that is the perception that a lot of people have. And that's why when as a black coach, I hear that some White people should I'm not doing that I'm not doing a gentle parenting. That's why people stuff. And I'm just like, so what I'm hearing you say is that white people are more inherently gentle, and that inherently more loving with their kids. And we are not. That's what you're saying. And you may not know, that's what you're saying. But you're basically regurgitating really racist rhetoric that and that's just absolutely not true. And then the thread of people are just like, I got my ass kicked, like, What are you talking about?

  KC Davis 40:24

  Yeah, when I think about the stereotypical picture of like, a father with a belt saying, like, come here. It's always a white father, like, at least that's what I saw. With friends and family. And what we have started to land the plane here. And here's how I would love to end it. I'd love for you to share something in your parenting that is working really well, right now, just like a joyful sort of like, maybe it's a strategy or intervention or like a way of being that is seems to be working really well for you.

  Yolanda 40:56

  So when Julie and I got COVID, back in January, I was trying to figure out what the hell we're going to do for 10 days. And it turned out, she teaches me so much this is the whole point of that is that she teaches me a lot. And I feel like if parents are open to allow their children to teach them things, they will learn so much. What she taught me was the value of slowing down, and the value of visioning. Because she was like, I don't want to grab this house. I'm like, I don't know what to do. So we would just take drives in the country, and I was resisting every day for 10 days, we took a drive because she was like, I gotta get this house. But now it's like a thing that we do. We take drives through the country almost every night. And this is, you know, we're trying to move on to a farm in the country. So it actually allows both of us to like, just be in the environment that we that at least I want to for us to be in and I get to vision, and I get to slow down and I get to not be on my phone because I'm always on it. And I really get to like point out things to her. Oh, do you see the cows because I live in Arkansas, y'all. Do you see the cows? Do you see the horses like and we stopped sometimes and like look at ducks and there are walks into the pod. And her just sort of because she used to throw tent like she would just she would fall all the way out if we didn't leave the house. And that was the only way and I thought it wasn't going to be enough. And it is every day, she puts her shoes on the wrong feet. And we go and we get into the car. And she is so excited just to take a drive. And we've seen deer you know, as we were just like, Please don't come in front of me there. Don't do that. But it allowed us to slow down allowed me to slow down and to vision the life that I hope which is a slow life, which is eat a life filled with ease and rest and more visioning and not this frenzy that we're constantly in, and not the social media that I'm constantly on. This is what I'm what she made me do is what I actually want to be doing. And I but I resisted it. So just listening to her and being able to learn from her. Is has been, that's to me the biggest lesson. It's just like, she knows things too. She knows things and be willing to listen to it.

  KC Davis 43:03

  Okay, so where can people find you if they want to come and learn more from you?

  Yolanda 43:06

  Okay, I have a website, parenting decolonised.com. I'm also on all the social media. So Instagram is spelled funny. So I'm just giving you the I'll give you the link. But I'm on all social medias. And I also have my own podcast called parent to be colonized. And it's available anywhere you listen to podcasts, or Spotify. And I talk about how we can be colonized our parenting to raise more liberated children. I do send to the black family. But these conversations are for everybody. Because I believe especially for white people we need to be y'all need to be hearing these stories and understanding these things as well.

  KC Davis 43:42

  Well, Yolanda, thank you so much. This was an awesome conversation.

  Yolanda 43:45

  Yeah, so much fun. Thank you for having me.

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Welcome to this bonus episode! For the next few weeks I’ll be putting out some bonus content, and today we will explore coping skills. It’s a phrase that’s become a buzzword in the psychology world right now, along with emotional regulation, feelings, and trauma. Let’s clarify these concepts that may have gotten watered down with a closer look.

 Show Highlights:

●      “Emotional regulation” defined and explained: what it is and what it is not

●      The definition, Part 1: “Emotional regulation is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with a range of emotions and in a manner that is socially tolerable . . .” It is OK to have your feelings!

●      The definition, Part 2: “ . . . and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions, as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed.” Being emotionally regulated doesn’t mean you are a robot!

●      What it means to operate within your “window of tolerance,” the optimal zone of arousal (not in a sexual sense, but nervous system activation) for a person to function in everyday life

●      How your window of tolerance has red zones at the top and bottom of hyper- and hypo-arousal

●      The learning zone vs. the comfort zone

●      How coping skills help us bring ourselves back to the window of tolerance in the comfort zone

●      Why we should morally neutralize ALL coping skills

●      Examples of coping skills that help you stay out of the red zones and regulate well

●      Why self-compassion is THE most important coping skill

 Resources and Links:

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes

• Transcript

  0:05 Hello you sentient balls of stardust, welcome to struggle care, with your host, KC Davis And welcome to the bonus episode, I'm going to be putting out some bonus content for the next few weeks. And today I'm gonna talk about coping skills, coping skills is one of those words like emotional regulation, I've become really hot right now. Because I feel like there's a lot of talk in the psychology world about feelings and about trauma. And I just wanted to give you guys some information that I think will really clarify some of these concepts that I think have gotten a little watered down. So let's get into it. Let's start with the definition of emotional regulation. Because I've seen some people talk about emotional regulation in ways that I don't think is very helpful. And there's a example definition from the Cornell research study that says, emotional regulation is a term generally used to describe a person's ability to effectively manage and respond into an emotional experience. And I like that, but the best definition I've actually found, is in Wikipedia, and I like it because there are there's like five parts to it that I want to break down for you. It says emotional regulation is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with a range of emotions, and a manner that is socially tolerable and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions, as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed. Now, that's really a mouthful, I want to break it down piece by piece. So first of all, I mean, can you hear me panting? I swear to God, I sound like I just ran. And I just walked in here and sat down, and I realized I should have like, taking some deep breaths anyways, okay, the ability to respond. Let's start there. What does that mean to respond? Well, in this case, we're going to be talking about our behavior and our decisions, respond to what will the ongoing demands of experience, cut, I love that. I mean, it's kind of a fancy way to say life. But yeah, like life has demands, like, we're going to feel feelings, and we still have to do life. Okay, so we have to be able to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with the range of emotions got, that's so good. Because I can't tell you how many times I've seen people talk about regulation, as if it's the same thing as calmness, like being calm is not I mean, it is part like it can be like regulation can be being calm. But that's not all it is, you can be angry and be regulated, you can be sad and be regulated. You could be jealous and be regulated, you could feel shame and be regulated. Like being regulated doesn't mean not having feelings, it doesn't mean having small feelings, it doesn't mean being calm, especially in the face of something that a reasonable person would not feel calm in. So it's the ability to respond with a range of emotions in a manner that is, and then there's two things one, socially tolerable, God, the word choice is so good. And it didn't even say socially acceptable, because this isn't about, you know, doing right. It's socially tolerable. Right. And the way that I would expand on that is that was, that means, basically, unawareness, of the social repercussions for yourself and others of whatever behavior or response you're about to have. When I say that, again, awareness of the social repercussions, so you're about to react, you're about to respond. And you want to be able to respond in a way where you are taking into account basically like the social fallout of how you're about to respond. So that can be something as simple as hurting someone's feelings. It could be burning a really important bridge, it could be committing a crime, right? Now, you can, I mean, you could hurt someone feeling on purpose, it doesn't necessarily mean every time that you hurt someone's feelings, you're being dysregulated. But what we often see is we get emotionally dysregulated. And we end up making behaviors and decisions that are not socially tolerable, right. So that second part is not only do we want to respond in a manner that socially tolerable, but we also want to respond in a manner that is sufficiently flexible to permit two things, spontaneous reactions, as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions. Whoo. So let's talk about it. What that means. First of all, it says spontaneous reactions. This isn't about being a robot. This isn't about not having strong feelings or not having real feelings or being measured and nothing bothers you, and you are unbothered. It's not about that at all. It's the ability to balance the needs of honoring an authentic emotional experience, which is what you really feel what you really want to do, and the effects that such behavior will have on yourself and others. So the ability to feel your real feelings and to navigate them in such a way that you can feel your You'll feelings, basically experience what you really feel, do what you really want to do, and balance that with what you really want for yourself after this moment has passed, right? Because I don't want to lean into what I really feel hurt feelings, burn bridges commit crimes, right? And then now I've created a situation I don't really want for myself, whether that's a broken relationship or jail time. And then when you talk about also the ability to delay spontaneous reactions. I love that. Because sometimes I'm having a big reaction to something and I need the ability to put it on the backburner. As a therapist. Part of that is, you know, if somebody says something to me in a session, that hurts my feelings, I have to be able to put that on the backburner and deal with it later, if something horrific happens to me or in my life, but I still need to take care of my kids, I have to be able to delay those spontaneous reactions when I need to, I'll never forget going through a miscarriage. And but I still had to take care of my 18 month old and it was like, okay, like, yes, I want to honor my spontaneous reactions to this. But I do need the ability to delay those spontaneous reactions, or I will fall apart and not be able to take care of my kid. And then what do we mean by reactions, so I came up with like, five things. When we talk about spontaneous reactions, our feelings, obviously, our thoughts, our emotion related behavior. So this would be things like facial expressions, these are things we're not really choosing to do. They're just happening, maybe, you know, facial expressions, pacing, yelling, and then emotion related physiological responses. So heart racing, sweating. And then lastly, decision based behavioral responses. So the decision to walk out and slam the door, the decision to, you know, punch somebody in the face the decision to say something hurtful, those are the sort of what the reactions are. And again, we don't want to go so far on one way, that we're not having any authentic reactions, which buttoned up all the time. But we don't want to be so far on the other end, that we think every single spontaneous reaction to an emotional experience doesn't have to be mitigated or thoughtful or restrained in any way. Because again, that's how we end up with social repercussions that don't line up for the goals we have for our lives. When we talk about emotional regulation, let's kind of take it to the top. It's the ability for you to authentically experience the emotional experiences of life while still dealing with the demands of life in a way that balances, being able to honor what you authentically feel and experience and the effects that your reaction might have on the environment around you, and ultimately you and the people you care about, and to be able to move through your thoughts, feelings, emotion related behaviors, physiological responses, and decision based behavior responses in a way that does that. Well, now everybody has an ability to regulate, some of us have maybe what's called a wide window of tolerance, some have a small window of tolerance. And what the window of tolerance is, it's a concept originally developed by Dr. Dan Siegel. And it describes the optimal zone of arousal for a person to function in everyday life. So when we say arousal, we usually hear that in a sexual instance, but it refers to really any nervous system activation.

  When a person is operating within this zone or this window, they can effectively manage and cope with their emotions, right. So that arousal, here's that nervous system activation or that stress, and anytime we're experiencing distressing emotions, they're stressed they're there's nervous system activation there. And trauma does affect your window of tolerance, your early childhood abilities, experiences affect this. And this idea is that when you're in your window of tolerance, you still have ups and downs. So being in your window of tolerance does not mean being calm, it just means you're able to emotionally regulate Well, you might feel stress or pressure, but it doesn't really bother you that much. But you have your little ups and downs throughout the day. Now outside of that window of tolerance is sort of this what I call this red zone, both on the high end and the low end, the high end would be like a hyper arousal This is extremely anxious, out of control way overwhelmed. This is your body and brain going into fight or flight where your reactions just take over. And on the low end of it, you have what's called hypo arousal. So this is zoned out numb frozen. This is that freeze response. Again, it's not something you choose that reaction just takes over. So if you think of your little window, and then you think of kind of these red zones on the top and bottom, but there are other zones in there, too. There's this yellow zone. It's like this buffer zone in between your comfort zone inside that window and just total fight flight or freeze. And that stress zone is sometimes also referred to as the Learning Zone. It's where there's enough stress for you to be enough activated to be learning something New think about your muscles, right? Like you have your window of tolerance for your muscles, you could walk or you could rest, but everything's pretty, you know, easy. And then you have like that learning zone, this is where you maybe you go to work out or you go to run, and it pushes your miles, it challenges your muscles, right, and it that's good and your muscles might feel sore. And it might be really difficult. But in the end, it's making those muscles stronger. But we also know that you can push muscles so far that they don't get stronger, it actually makes them weaker, right? It's pushed too far, well, your nervous system and your emotions, they're the same. There's this comfort level, that's fine little ups, little downs. There's this learning level, we're being challenged, we're being stressed. But it's not something that overwhelms our coping skills. And then of course, you can be pushed so far that you're in fight or flight and you can't learn anything in those states. So tolerable stress Learning Zone uncomfortable, but your skills for coping are not too overwhelmed. This is actually a really good thing. And you'll hear sometimes there's an old phrase that a therapist used to say no comfort in the Learning Zone. And no learning in the comfort zone or no comfort in the growth zone, no growth in the comfort zone. And we know this right? Like sometimes, if you are asked to do something scary what a good example is if you take somebody that has agoraphobia, and they're wanting to work on their agoraphobia, well, staying inside the house doesn't make their agoraphobia better. In fact, it can make it worse if they're just never leaving. But at the same time, if you were to say, okay, that person needs to get in their car and drive down the block. Okay, well, that might be too much that might actually make the agoraphobia worse. So that's why therapists will look to find that yellow stress zone. So they might say, Hey, can you take Can you just open the door today, just open the door and look outside. And so the person will open the door and they'll look outside, and they will feel stress. But they'll work with their therapist for coping skills that they can use while they're feeling that stress, to begin to acclimate to grow that window of tolerance until eventually, they can open the door and it feels in their comfort zone. And the key here is not just exposure, its exposure and coping skills. So we don't just say, open the door until it doesn't bother you. Now you need coping skills as well. But let's talk about coping skills. What are coping skills, coping skills are how we attempt to bring ourselves back to that window of tolerance to that comfort zone. And there's a lot of moralizing that we do about coping skills. We talked about coping skills, we talked about defense mechanisms, we talked about maladaptive coping skills we talked about. So for a long time, we've been doing this and now we get to where we feel like some ways of coping are healthy. Some ways of coping are unhealthy, some are wrong, some are good, some are bad, some are whatever I want us to backup and maybe just morally neutralize all coping skills. At the end of the day, a coping skill is just how we are attempting to bring ourselves back into that window of tolerance and safety. Anything you do to downshift and activate a nervous system and decrease distressing emotions is a coping skill. So that means self compassion, counting to three when you're angry, calling a friend event icing your vagus nerve, taking a walk calling a therapist venting, journaling. But it also means drinking smoking, watching TV for hours scrolling tick tock maladaptive daydreaming, checking out not talking to isolating for days, I think it's really helpful to not think of things as inherently good or bad when it comes to coping. And instead, think of those all of those skills as having a cost benefit ratio. And one good example of this is if you think about a person who is autistic, and they're masking during the day, and so masking is a way that autistic person presents themselves as if they are neurotypical. And it's exhausting for them. But it's something that they do to get through a situation that involves painful or distressing nervous system experiences with the least amount of pain possible. And there are times when an autistic person masking is what gets them through the day. It's what protects them. And there are times when masking costs too much. And it causes other painful situations to collaterally crop up in your life, that overwhelm your ability to deal and now you're trying to find coping skills to deal with the fallout of the coping skill that gets you through the day. And all of that is morally neutral. It's just about your personal cost benefit. It's about you deserve this wide window of tolerance that allows you to experience what the world has to offer in a way that allows you to behave in a way that creates things that align with the goals for your life. You can live a joyful life

  there are some coping skills that are so overwhelmingly good at turning the off switch of painful emotions, like doing cocaine, like isolating for days and not talking to somebody and the issue is is not that they're bad or wrong. It's that they solve the problem in the moment so Well, but they do not help you learn any internal emotional skills that would help you widen your window of tolerance in the long run, which would allow you to deal with a greater and greater breadth of emotional experience. In fact, it can do the opposite, it can shrink your window of tolerance, some of those coping skills that are so good at just turning off the pain, end up creating this collateral painful experiences in your life, that bring lots of pain that you still don't know how to deal with. But you didn't have the skills to deal with the pain when it was at two. And now the cocaine has created situations that are at a 10. And you still don't have any more skills except turn it off with cocaine and with the cocaine, right like that is the crux of addiction. The best coping skills are the ones that provide the immediate help of downshifting in the moment, but allow you to work to widen your window of tolerance in the long run, right. So you know, doing cocaine, when you're sad is not going to open your window of tolerance in the long run. So we want to fight you deserve different coping skills. That's what I'm getting at. So other coping skills may not be as good at getting rid of the painful emotions immediately. But they do it enough that you know, you're safe, they keep you in the discomfort of learning. And it might take longer to recenter. But in doing so you begin to widen your window of tolerance. So what kinds of coping skills are out there? Well, I mean, I just listed some and and in some ways, literally any, almost anything can be a coping skill. It's just things that you do to stay out of those red zones and regulate well. And obviously, it's an infinite amount, not going to go into them here, because I could talk forever. But in general, when we blow our top, and we get to that fight or flight, what you need at that moment, is soothing skills, things that help you ground in the present moment. And when we bought them out, we freeze or dissociate, what we need is gentle stimulation and orientation to time and place. And it's not one or the other, it's common for people to kind of go into fight or flight. And then their response to that is to shut down afterwards. So it's not linear, you know, you might go up the top and then bottom out, some people just bottom out. And remember that these places are really places have a resting, it's not just I'm stressed out. And then lastly, I want to make it clear that going into fight flight or freeze on is not always avoidable. It's not always just because you didn't have good enough coping skills, there are certain things in this world that are going to trip your nervous system into this extreme state, it does not mean that you're not healthy enough or mature enough. Or if you just had better coping skills, there are just certain things that are traumatic, there's no amount of coping skills that can prevent you from going to that place. When that happens. The coping skills are about learning how to get out of that place and back to safety. And ideally, yes, we want coping skills that can help us kind of circle the wagons back around before we get there. And we want a good wide window of tolerance so that we can enjoy everything the world has to offer, and not be in as much pain. But there's no you could never therapy yourself to get a wide enough window of tolerance, where like nothing bad could ever happen to you. You still might go into fight or flight, you're still going to have traumatic things, you're still going to shut down, you're still gonna do this, you're still going to do that. But I think what can be helpful is morally neutralizing some of those coping skills, and instead just looking at them not as Are you doing good. Are you doing bad? But what of those coping skills are really working for you? And which ones aren't working for you? And what could you add to your arsenal that might work a little better. And so I hope that gives you some things to think about today. And I wish I could, you know give you a plan on a platter of the exact coping skills that you need. But the truth is, is that the most powerful coping skill to start with is self compassion. And it starts with giving yourself those messages, that you're not wrong or bad, that you're just human and you're allowed to be human and you're allowed to make mistakes. And you're allowed to have whatever window of tolerance you have, and you're allowed to want more for your life and to take a gentle path to get there.

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Have you ever been told to “do a mindfulness practice” only to find that it doesn’t work? Let’s talk about some alternatives to mindfulness that can help with unhelpful thoughts and negative feelings. I’m joined by Dr. Raquel Martin, a psychologist who’s here to discuss this hot topic in the current “therapy talk.” She may sound familiar to you if you’ve listened to my audiobook, How to Keep House While Drowning, as she wrote the section about caring for black hair when you might be struggling.

Show Highlights: 

●      How Dr. Raquel defines mindfulness

●      How mindfulness helps us distance ourselves from unhelpful thoughts and negative feelings

●      Why it’s helpful to think, “This is just a thing”

●      Why mindfulness is not the best fit for everyone

●      How a “stress kit” can be helpful

●      Why deep breathing is not the regulation answer for everyone

●      How alternatives to journaling can be beneficial without “writing”

●      Why therapy and coping skills must be customized to the individual

●      The difference in rules and boundaries

●      How different our world would be if people received mental health support

●      Why compassion and understanding are the keys in understanding a person’s mental health struggles and individualizing their treatment

 Resources and Links:

Connect with Dr. Raquel Martin: Website, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Mind Your Mental Podcast

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes

• Transcript

  KC Davis 0:05

  Hello you sentient balls of stardust, welcome to struggle care, with your host, KC Davis. That's me. And this is the podcast that probably knows that you are sick of hearing about mindfulness. And so we're going to talk about mindfulness, but in a way that maybe won't make you feel sick of it, because we're actually going to talk about some alternatives. And why you maybe have been told a bunch to do mindfulness, and it's not working. So I have with me here today, the great Dr. Martin, Dr. Martin is amazing. Don't let her tell you anything different. And she actually if you've ever listened to the audio book for how to keep house while drowning, you'll recognize her voice because she wrote the portion of my book about how to care for your black hair. When you might be struggling. I figured I could probably not cover that subject, as well. So Dr. Martin, thank you so much for being here.

  Dr. Raquel 0:55

  Oh, yeah, definitely. Thank you for having me. We really agreed on this like one topic, because I was just like, one thing I'm not going to do is tell you, you have to journal. Absolutely,

  KC Davis 1:05

  Yes. Oh, I'm so excited. So Dr. Martin, you are a psychologist. For anyone listening that doesn't know, I'm a therapist. And I feel like mindfulness has been like the hot topic in therapy for a while now. And I have to say that there are aspects of mindfulness that have been kind of game changing for me. But at the same time, it now feels like it's become like the panacea to all ILS. And I feel like it's like closely getting a little pop psychology II where like, just meditate, just journal, just be mindful. But I'm sure there are people listening that maybe don't even know what mindfulness is. So what definition would you give to someone just like a lay person that didn't know what mindfulness was?

  Dr. Raquel 1:47

  I typically talk about it in terms of like, it's the whole movement of being more aware of what's happening in the present moment, as well as like, instead of focusing on the intrusive thoughts that are happening outside, and the reason why a lot of times I feel like it's also been done wrong is because people will talk about tasks, like journaling, as like being in the present moment, but then they'll give them journal prompts, where you're meant to discuss like, how did I respond to something that happened like hours ago, which is not what mindfulness is, right? Like when you when one aspect of when we get trained it and when I knew that I was like, I'm gonna learn about this, but it's gonna be a strong though, for me, when I integrated into my own therapeutic technique, is we did tasks such as mindful eating, when all you're supposed to do is focus on like, chewing the reason? How are you feeling chewing? The reason? What is the texture in chewing the reason? What is the taste and chewing the reason? Like, what is the sound of hear you chew the reason, right, and doing that same thing when you are processing like your thoughts as they come in the moment, not like, Oh, I'm feeling stressed out. And it happened as a result of this 20 minutes ago, I'm currently feeling stress. And the stress in my body feels this way in that way, and things of that nature. And I do feel like it's very helpful for other people. However, it just never really resonated with me. And I also felt like, the way that I got education about it previously, is not the way I see it used by a significant amount of clinicians. And that's why I'm like, you know, I don't know if I am wrong about this, or if the general public is wrong about this, but either way, like, I'm just not going to, like, we get to choose what modalities we focus on the majority of the time, and people come to me for very specific thing. And I just found as though, you know, it's different when I give tasks such as let's look at your racial identity development and do journaling tasks. But that's not a mindfulness task. That's a, we're talking about processing the way this your development has dealt with everything. That's not mindfulness. And I've also felt really gross about it lately, because when I look at different clinicians of like color, and like indigenous background, stuff like that, they often talk about the way that it's been gentrified, and that it kind of is used inappropriately, so that also has made me not want to, you know, use it as a technique, because they mentioned a lot about like, well, this actually isn't anything different than what has been used in other cultures. However, the way it's been repackaged, is really inappropriate. And it's stealing from like native and indigenous culture. So that's always given me an IQ of about it as well, because none of my professors have ever been, who tried to discuss it native or indigenous, or like people with the golden majority. And yet, they're teaching me about this method. And I'm just kind of like, if you want to teach me about CBT, fine, but we're totally disrupting the whole education from the individuals that should be coming from.

  KC Davis 4:25

  Yeah, it is definitely an Eastern concept versus a western concept. And I think what I've seen also happen is that, as a therapist, and particularly like, as a white female therapist, so much of what I was taught was that like, the main problem in a person's psyche, is like the way they're thinking about things. And so my experience with a lot of therapists is that whatever modality they're using, and I've had it with a lot of different ones, they approach it as if like, okay, Casey, like your suffering will go away. If you could just master this modality and that only works with people where the only stressors in their life are like, the way they're thinking about things, right? Like not actual, I don't have enough money. There's some conflict with my spouse, I'm experiencing, you know, prejudice, like real things that like might not go away. And I will say that I'm with you. Like, I don't think people talk about what mindfulness is, I appreciate the definition of like, observing yourself in the present moment without judgment. Like, I think that can be really helpful. And I appreciate when people talk about like observing your thoughts, like clouds in the sky, because I will say that the way meditation was taught for a long time was about like clearing your mind. And I can't do that. And so when somebody was like, no, no, it's not about clearing it. It's just about like, watching it as it goes by. However, I will say the only thing that's ever for me, I felt like was like, what mindfulness could do is that I was thinking about this the other day, like, for a long time, when I experienced distress, it was like two layers. So there'll be like the primary distress of like, I'm angry at my spouse, but then there'd be like, this secondary, like, almost like meta distress of like, and I'm upset that I'm upset about it. Or like, I'm angry that I'm angry. I'm sad, that, you know, may or may be like, wake up in the morning, and you're like, I'm just feeling sad today. And I don't know why. But then there'd be like, a second layer of like, and I'm really sad that I'm sad. I'm not supposed to be sad. There's nothing wrong. Why am I feeling this way, and feeling as though like, there's always something wrong. And I will say that, like, I think it's not that I don't get SAD and MAD and feel depressed some days. But I feel like, I've learned how to not have that second layer. So like, I can beat wake up and be sad, and then be like, Alright, I'm sad today. Like, that's a thing. And it may not be there tomorrow. And it's kind of like, appreciating the impermanence of like, I may not be angry tomorrow, I won't feel like this forever. But it's also like, okay, for me to feel like I don't enjoy it. It's still distressing. But I'm not like distressed about being distressed, as if there's something wrong with it as if it's going to be permanent, as if I need to frantically figure out how to change it. And I don't genuinely like don't hear practitioners talk about that aspect, which to me was like the part of mindfulness that was helpful.

  Dr. Raquel 7:22

  Yeah. And you know, it's funny, because like, at one, like you're talking about the distancing aspect of it, right. Because like with mindfulness, you're supposed to like, distance yourself from the unhelpful thoughts and memories and just acknowledge them. But even the way that you discuss it is more helpful than the way I've heard other people discuss it, right? Because when you're distancing yourself from it, you're trying to do the same thing we do with like, not using diagnoses as adjectives, right? Like, you know, I am angry about this, I'm not an angry person, I am angry about this. And I'm not going to be angry permanently. Because it's not an aspect of my personality. I'm not defining myself as an angry person, I'm angry at my husband, and I will likely not be angry at him later. And if I am angry at him later, maybe I will not be angry. I have later on after that. But I'm not an angry person. Like, it's not a part of my personality. It's not an adjective that describes me, right? And most of the time when they're what I've seen people talk about it, it's kind of like what you mentioned, they're like, distance yourself from it. Right? Okay.

  KC Davis 8:16

  But that's not what I feel at all. I feel like I'm bringing it closer, because to me, there's distress from tried, like, I don't need to feel this way. I shouldn't feel this way. I don't want to feel this way. How can I get this feeling away? Something's wrong, how do I fix it? And to me, it's like, the opposite of distancing. It's like, I'm sad. And I, I'm gonna bring that in, like, I don't have to be afraid of it, or run from it, or panic about fixing it, because it's a temporary feeling, you know, of today, or like, it's a human feeling at least. So there's like, there's distancing and that, like, I'm seeing that, that, you know, things always change, Nothing stays the same. And so like, this negative feeling will change. But it's like, but I'm actually bringing, I'm like, not afraid, like, did you ever read is I don't, it might have been a Rumi poem, but where he talks about inviting all of your feelings in I have it, and he's like, let them come in. I'll look it up.

  Dr. Raquel 9:07

  Because to me, what you're describing makes me think more of like, Have you heard of like, the rain technique, like the you know, you recognize you acknowledge? Yeah, it's like, I did a video on it, where I use like a little Wayne song because he has a song where it's like, make it rain. I'll send it to you. But it's like, you recognize the emotions. And in the video I talked about, like, I was doing acting like I was working on an assignment. And then somebody came in, which was me, and I was like, you know, I came here to ruin your day. You know, I'm, I came here to ruin your day. And I look at the emotion and I'm just like, Oh, that makes sense. I'm feeling stressed out because I'm doing this assignment. As a result, I feel overwhelmed. And my emotion is like, well, I just came here to shut it down. Are you going to stop working and focus on me? And I said, Well, I'm acknowledging that your president I'm not really going to take you out of the room anxiety. I am feeling anxious because I'm in an anxious you know, situation. So like, go sit down in the corner. I see you. I get the church here, and I'm still just going to continue to work in and deal with that, right? Because you're recognizing the emotion, you're acknowledging where the emotion comes from. You're not identifying with it as like your individual, like you're an anxious person. And you're moving forward. You're like immutable trait. Yeah, it's just like, it's, and I think that's what like most people do, they'll be like, Oh, I'm an anxious person. Because it's like, no, it's like, I'm feeling just because I'm dealing with this. This is how it is, and doing it without like, having to dismiss it. Like, I'm not feeling that I'm fine. Like, it's not toxic positivity. Exactly. And that's why I go more so according to like the rain man, because the first one is recognize that is present. You know, I'm totally for the whole aspect of it, you know, you gotta like CBT is what insurance wants us to see us do. So we're like, looking at the cognitive distortions. And we're combating it with journaling and investigating where it came from, and what are things that support this thought versus go against this thought, and that's all well and good. Like, sometimes that will be helpful for people. However, sometimes, for a lot of people, it's just as helpful to be like, this is the emotion, you know, this even just identify, oh, I'm feeling upset, or I'm feeling distressed, or I'm feeling like this really took a bite out of who I am as a person and acknowledging that recognizing it. And then also not identifying with it, right, like I'm recognizing it, I'm acknowledging where it came from, from investigating it. I'm also like, the most important part to me of the array method is like non identification. Like I'm not identifying like, this is a key part of my personality.

  KC Davis 11:21

  So that's exactly this poem, I found that you want to hear it. It's called the guest house and it's a Rumi poem. It says this being human is a guest house. Every morning, a new arrival, a joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor, welcome and entertain them all. Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight, the dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

  Dr. Raquel 12:00

  I feel like that's perfect. And that whole poem, it doesn't say anything about this is a good thing. This is a bad thing. This is just a thing. It's just a thing. That should be the title of this. This is just the thing. It's just a thing, episode.

  KC Davis 12:15

  I also think what a lot of clients have when they hear this kind of talk about like, Okay, here's that feeling the feelings not forever. My first thought is like, there are people who are in circumstances that maybe they don't see them changing quickly, or they have been feeling this distressing feeling for so long. And they're going, How is this any help to me? Like, I have been depressed for three years, How is this any help to me, I have been in a marriage where my spouse does not respect me, but I don't see a way out right now I have been in a place where I am in poverty and will be so for the future. Like, this is not a feeling that will I'm not wanting to laugh at the you know, in the morning, because it's gonna go like it's gonna be here forever. So I want to I'm curious those thoughts, and then I want to hear about you. And this whole conversation started because you made this brilliant Tiktok, where you talked about how you talk about mindfulness as an offering, and that for some people, it's not a good fit, and you actually have alternatives that you offer, which I really appreciate. But let me let's do a quick little break. And then we will come back.

  Okay, so first of all, what would you say to people who are listening that are like, well, this is all good, and well, but like, my shirt has been shipped for quite a long time. Now, most of the time, I want to refer them to kind of like your stuff. But I'm always like, I always say,

  Dr. Raquel 13:37

  I'm like, I'm the monarch of meeting you where you're at, we're going to use what works and not use what doesn't work, right. I mean, it's difficult with social media, because some people will see stuff, and they're like, that doesn't work for me. And I'm always like, then this wasn't for you. And that's okay. It's important to realize everything isn't for you. But sometimes when I'm talking about one, I try to look at whether it's an internal thing or an external thing, right? Because that's the biggest thing. So many times I feel like therapy can be dismissive, if you don't have an appropriately trained person, where they're telling you to think happy thoughts and focus on what's happening in the moment, and not also thinking about what we brought into the room with us in that moment. Right. The reason why I feel like some people at the Global majority don't resonate with the way mindfulness is taught when it's taught in an inappropriate manner is because it completely disregards the aspect of oppression that we have to reside in, right, like I can talk about in this very same moment, like feeling a certain way and acknowledging that and then I'll leave and go to work, where I am, you know, the victim of like institutional oppression and internal questions, stuff like that, right? So when we're identifying skills, I typically say use what works and doesn't don't use what doesn't work. And I look at different aspects of it. One of my patients who I feel like she was very sensory person, and she was like me in a job where there's so much gray, like, there are so many where we have so much gray. So in talking to her, I was like, you know, it occurs to me that we have some similar aspects of our careers. And some of the coping skills I use are very, like black and white, they very much have an endpoint and that

  It helps me because my job doesn't have an endpoint. So how would you feel about some things that we look at Gatti towards certain senses? And she said, that seems good. And I was like, Okay, I crochet because I love the feeling of yarn. And I love the fact that if I mess up a knot, or if we even see if it's a knot, I can kind of just take it out and keep going. And the sensory aspect of just the tactile response of yarn like suits me. So we kind of spent some of the session like going over that, like, do you think that is helpful? You also mentioned that you're very sensory with scents as well, like, you know, when it comes down to it, how do you feel about you know, carrying around like a little aromatherapy spray, we created like what we created for her that was helpful was like a little pack, you know how everyone used to have those like makeup bags, I was a member of Ipsy for a little bit, so I had a ridiculous amount of makeup bags is when they used to send you makeup every month. And I gave her some because like Why pay for it, I said you can use a Ziploc bag, but I was like, I also got the so just take these makeup bags, and we created a kit that she would take with her it was kind of like her stress kit, right. And we put a lot of sensory stuff in it that she kind of resonated with. So we put like funny memes that she liked, like the visual aspect of it. We put like an aromatherapy thing in it, because like the scent aspect of it. And we also talked about the possibility of crocheting. But a lot of times when we look at skills to help us to help us in the moment, I think it's also helpful to look at things that bring you something that your typical wife doesn't bring you, right, like our job is very gray. So I'm like maybe it'd be a stress relief to have something that is concrete, where it's like this has an end date and a start date, right. It's one of the reasons why I like baking, I like baking more than cooking. Because cooking, you can kind of like play around with it and you can still come up good baking is very much controlled. And in a world where I'm dealing with so much lack of control, I like baking more. I like knowing that like, don't use a leveler use room temperature ingredients, just knock this out black and white. And I think sometimes when we're talking about coping skills, we also need to look at skills that give us something that are typical life doesn't like some people who have like, really concrete jobs may resonate more with like little art stuff that's like, oh, you know, like, I use the colors. And it turns out the way it turns out, it's meant to be that way. And when they go to work, it's very much this is the answer. But when they chill, and they're just doing watercolors, it's like, you know, happy trees or stuff like that. And then also look at it from a sensory perspective, a lot of us are really sensory, like a lot of us thrive off of like certain scents and tastes and touches and smells and stuff like that. How do we put that in your coping? What do we do with your Coping kit? Right? If you're more visual, how do we make your environmental just like you need like a more visually stimulating thing, when we're talking about panic attacks one time, like one of the stressors dealing with the symptoms, but one of the things that also stresses people is thinking that they're about to have another panic attack. Like when you mentioned your emotions on not only the emotion, I'm feeling bad about feeling that emotion, right. And it made me think of panic attacks because one of the stressors is the physiological symptoms. But another one is they stressed out about not knowing when the next panic attack is going to happen. Right? It's coming right it's coming don't have a panic attack. Now don't have it now don't have it. Now lock it down, lock it down. Just it's a very like it's a cognitive thing. And when I treat panic attacks on our treating patients, like when there's symptoms or like an increased heart rate, I make them have an increased heart rate. And then I let you know that you can bring yourself down like one of my patients had panic attacks, he said, every time I have an increased heart rate, I start thinking I'm going to have another panic attack, and then it makes it worse. So I'm like, Cool. So you're going to run around the building a couple of times, you're going to have an increased heart rate. And we're going to work on the ways that help you bring it down. Because there's only so many ways I can make you not you know, we can't really make you not have a panic attack. But what I can do is empower you to realize that when this happens, when I started had an increased heart rate in Dr. Martens office, I brought it down this way, right? Some people are more cognitive,

  KC Davis 18:30

  When even that permission of like, I'm allowed to have a panic attack right now. Like I'm allowed to like I can have one right here. Well, I'd be embarrassed probably have I been embarrassed before? Yep. Did I survive? Absolutely. But I'm allowed to have like, that's all right, I'm gonna find a good place to sit down. Like I'm allowed to have one right now. Because it is like so much of that panic. I think that's so true. And I can't remember who said this, but it maybe you saw it, but it was someone talking about like breathing. Like we hear that a lot. That's like a thing to talk about, right? Like, take deep breaths to calm down, take deep breaths to go grounding. And I remember hearing a therapist say like, you can't just go around telling everyone to take a deep breath, because for some people, that's going to be like more triggering to them. And she was talking about trauma patients, which I found really interesting. I hadn't thought of that before. Because for me, I'm always just thinking about, like, when we start to panic or get dysregulated you know, we're often like that prefrontal cortex where we do the thinking gets sort of goes offline, because we're gonna start to go into fight or flight. And the benefit of like breathing exercises is that you slow the heart rate down and you're like bringing enough oxygen to your brain that it cues that prefrontal cortex to go back online. But I thought she had a really good point where she was like, you know, for a lot of trauma patients, having them stop and do deep breathing. And I don't remember why she said that, but she was like, it is not helpful, like they need a different way to regulate. And I just always appreciate hearing someone say like, yes, because it's always like

  Some new thing, right isn't usually not new. But it's like new to popular psychology. And we realize how valuable it is. But then like, it reaches a point where it becomes the pop psychology and then it's like, everyone everywhere is just saying like this will solve it, just do this, just do this, just do this.

  Dr. Raquel 20:15

  And it's ridiculous, right? Because it's also like a thing of the time's right? Because there's so many people looking on the interwebs, because they don't have access to like services. And you mentioned this too, like, I very much feel like you can work on your healing and not have that help of a clinician, because most of you can't find a clinician totally understand that. But it gets so diluted, like it gets so diluted. And when people say there's one right way to do it, I'm always like, you know, use what works and don't use what doesn't work, right. Like one person, like I saw, they're like, I really resonate with journaling, but I just really don't like writing stuff down. Like I like the processing of it. I don't like writing stuff down. I said, do a voice memo. What you don't have to physically write I'm like, No, you could do a voice memo, you could do a voice memo. You can journal with pictures and identify like, don't feel bad, because you can't write it don't write, you can still process whatever.

  KC Davis 21:02

  I've heard people say that they when they got a journal that had the dots instead of the lines, that that was so helpful, because it felt like there wasn't yes, there wasn't this expectation that you write. And it's also helpful because it's not a blank page. And you're like, Well, I can't draw and it's like, okay, just connect the dots like, because I'm not like a good artist. But I would sit there and like make little trees out of the dots. And then I can write something. But then I don't feel it's just it's this very back when I had a workbook for a little while that was online. But that's when I did like free form pages. I always use dotted paper, like dotted graph paper. I know, I think that's helpful. I like that. That's very helpful. And you know, like, it's another aspect of like, maybe where you're at, right, because like some people can freeform right, I get that. Some people like prompts. So one post, I was like, ask your clinician knows your goals as much as you do. So if you're good at freeform, that's great. You can also ask them for some prompts that you feel like goes towards your goals. And they because I'm guarantee you they have questions that you can ask yourself that they want you to ask yourself that you could just answer is well, I had a client one time that we were processing a lot of trauma. And she didn't want to write about it, because she would have flashbacks. And so what we did was, each week, I gave her a question. And she would actually draw pictures as a response. So your question would be like, you know, how has therapy felt for you so far. And she would get the whole week to sort of think about it sit in it, and she would bring back a picture. So like she would bring back a picture of, you know, herself naked have stuck in the mud. And there were birds flying around and like so she didn't have to go to this place of thinking about such concrete words and memories and emotions, that she would kind of get thrown into a flashback, she could just sort of Intuit it. And then in the session in the safety of the session, we would look at the artwork. And I'd say, tell me about this. And she would describe the artwork. And that was the way that she was able to talk about what her experience was. And we did a lot of that with like, in the moment stuff like how is therapy felt for you so far? And what are you afraid of going forward with therapy? So we did a lot of like, meta expression about the therapy process before going into, you know, how would you draw your relationship with your mom, or some big, huge, whatever, but it was very, very cool. And like, at one point, I asked her like, what is it like to have a flashback? What is it like to have this trauma, and she would draw these pictures of herself like going about everyday life. And then there was like the shadow world that was always like on the periphery of her vision. And, you know, at one point, she had this beautiful picture of a closed door that she had locked in chains around it. And there were like, tentacles coming out of the sides. And she was like, if I open it, it'll be over. And each picture like, I was able to ask a question that was like a genuine like, I want to understand this more. And then she could go in her own way and process that. And we didn't have to do you know, tell me about it and do some deep breathing and and all that stuff that is can be super helpful, but shouldn't be like you said it shouldn't be that like prescription for everyone.

  Dr. Raquel 24:25

  Yeah, and think about like how powerful that is, right? Because a significant amount of my training is like trauma. And when we had to do like work with people on TF CBT, which, and they have to do their narrative, right. When we're working with children. We also allow them to like draw pictures. And it's one of the reasons why what some of the helpful things I did get from trauma focused cognitive behavioral therapy, is that when we did our training, the person who trained us was very much like this is because we were also working in a center where we also did an integration with the justice system. So not only am I working with them as the clinician, but I prepped, you know, everyone had an open case and I pray

  Have to my client for the case like we would walk through everything very much like how it should be if you decide to go through like with the whole judicial process, your psychologist talks to the district attorney talks to the officer talks to like everything like that was my job as well. It's like, I'm not only here for you, this is the process, Oh, I feel uncomfortable at the courtroom. Let's go. Let's go see it beforehand. That's how it should be. So I love when it's done right. Most of the time, it's not. But one of the things they told us is like when it comes to the narrative, the reason why people want us to like put it into the court case and stuff like that, it's because they think it's really like they're going to tear it apart piece by piece. We do not care as clinicians about what every single fact is, with this individual sharing their narrative. Because we are, and this is why I focus more on impact and not intent. Right? I am not a lawyer. If you feel as though something was, you know, like forever, like something like that. That's what it is. I do not care about facts without like, when we're discussing the narrative. It's your experience, you know, like, it's not about like, well, we're going to tear this apart in court to know about fact, by fact, oh, to me, the only fact that matters is the aspect that my patient felt this is truth. I don't care about the facts. The fact is, whatever my patient tells me, because that's what they felt. And that's what they experienced, right. And think about like the salience. And this is why a lot of people miss this as like licensed clinicians who are talking about this, because yes, we do get educated on this thing. But I would say the most salient aspect that I get is when I have a patient, and we go over crocheting, or when you have your patients, right, and it's like, oh, I can tell you what we can do piece by piece. But I can also tell you, this reminds me of this one patient I worked with who had really resonated with him to draw it, right, like practicing. Educating is one thing like having the degrees and certifications is the one thing, but most of it is when we're like off the cuff, giving everyone that the honor and the therapy that they deserve of case conceptualization and customizing it to you, and discussing what resonates with you and your individual skills, right to know that like, this also may be helpful for you. Because we get so much from our clients, right? Like Oh, aren't made work for you. But a voice memo may work for you. One of my patients does free guided freehand and writing out the prompt of once we come up with a prompt every single week. Some people do dots, some people do lines, and we get that from working with people. And that's why it's like, I think it's why both of us don't resonate when they're like everyone do this. We don't do that for all patients, because they're not.

  KC Davis 27:28

  And it's the difference I think between like a good therapist and a great therapist are like good therapy and great therapy is that some therapists are kind of one trick ponies. And that's fine. It really is like, if that's like this is my one approach. But if you're going to do that, then you have to be proactive about screening your patients and telling them point blank refer out.

  Yeah, I'm a CBD person, or I'm a DBT person. And like, this is what it is. And this Atlin let's make sure you're a good and I've talked about this before, there was a therapist that I worked with that he did things a certain way. And before he would even take me on he was like I need to screen you because if you've got a B, C, D, E, F, G, I don't do that, this will not be an appropriate process for you. And I think there are other therapists that have decided to have a more eclectic sort of toolbox, about things that work. And like, you know, same personality no matter what, like my personality is the same. But like, we can do art, or we can do CBT. Or we can talk about this or like I don't think that I was taught enough about like exposure therapy. I mean, so much of, you know,

  so much when we think about like distress tolerance. Because no matter what's going on, even if the things in your life can't change, like we can all reduce the amount of suffering in our life by increasing our distress tolerance. And I think that, you know, mindfulness says the way to do that is to sit in that feeling and feel that feeling and just embrace that feeling. But for some people, that's too much. Like they're going to be so flooded with that feeling that just skipping right to sit in that feeling and watch the clouds go by or whatever is like too much, as opposed to like, let's like you said where it was like run around the block. Like let's think of an environment that might bring this feeling on and then how could we experience it with safe risk? And because you usually only think about this with like, oh, agoraphobia, where it's like take one step out the door. Now take two steps, but like we can do this with other emotional distress, whether it's panic attacks or loneliness, right, like let's schedule a night to be lonely but only for a few minutes and then you go do something like thinking about like, that same feeling of I'm okay, like there is a central tree trunk that like runs through my being that I know that I'm okay. Even if like the wind is blowing, even if I'm experiencing really distressing feelings, symptoms, like there's this internal sense of

  have, like I can create enough safety to storm.

  Dr. Raquel 30:03

  So that makes a perfect point. But it also makes me think about that's why you're like the theory you came up with. That's why it's the theory you came up with. Because it It very much is an aspect of training. Right? I remember reading, there was someone who commented something on one of your page, and they were talking about boundaries. And you mentioned you're like, I actually see boundaries as a very different as a different aspect than most people because I was significantly trained in the aspect of boundaries, right? That's why when I came on my boundaries video, I was like, I have to send this to you first. Because like, I feel like this is what you say all the time. And nobody ever like verbalizes it right, right. Because you always talk about like boundaries are everyone I feel like who's trained in it gets it boundaries are guiding my behavior rules are guiding someone else's behavior. Like when I tell my students and said, Listen, my boundaries that I do not reply to emails over the weekend or after five, your boundary can be whether or not you do the same. But I'm telling you can send that email whenever you want. I'm not giving you a rule on this, my boundary is I'm not replying at this certain time I'm guiding my behavior, I'm not guiding your behavior, right. And that's it makes sense as to how you your theory is very much like this, you know, my boundary is when it comes to this space. If it doesn't serve me, I am not going to keep a space. I am not going to keep this under this ridiculous rule regarding folding clothes, or, you know, cleaning up the whole house at once. Because it doesn't serve me that's my boundary. Right? And very much saying that resonates with you, right. And I did a significant amount of training in trauma. And there is a lot of exposure in that piece. Right? There is a lot of I always say impact is more important than intent as someone who has to work with people on the impact that someone else's choices had on them, right. And that's why a lot of times, I'm always like, listen, I focus more on impact than intent. I also focus on some semblance of like, what the exposure is and what the distress tolerance is, as well, like when people say, I had no choice, that's not true. You just have to choose between one sucky choice and another choice, right, we have to decide which one distresses you more, a lot of times people will think like I have a it's a, you know, a very good decision or a very bad decision. But that's not what you're getting. In this scenario, you have to deal with some BS that someone put on you trauma stole your choice in that aspect, we have to, you know, like deal with some form of exposure. And then when we're dealing with distress tolerance, we go with like, you know, the whole ladder, the hierarchy, like what's going to make you less uncomfortable as we get up. Because no matter what, when I'm dealing with racism related stress, like you still have to go to work. I can't say that you can't go to work, you can't just leave this country. So let's figure out like how we deal with it. But it very much, you know, this is why I always thought maybe we could do another topic. This is why I always talk about like, you get so much salience from working with people who have made it a choice to streamline their training, I'm okay with knowing a lot about a little, because it really does help the individuals to to understand that right, like one of my favorite therapists, Colby Campbell, she mentioned, you know, everyone deserves therapy, everyone does deserve therapy, everyone deserves that space to resonate with taking the time to sit and deal with like what happens even if you know, the world is telling you to get rid of something that you stressed out about last week, therapy is one of those relationships, that is not really reciprocal. And all relationships are meant to be reciprocal. But I say that that's the power of therapy. It's like, yeah, you can ask me about my day, you also don't have to, I deal with you in the moment. And then I also case conceptualize with you, we also go over your plan or lack of plan, whether you want that or not. And I'm dedicated to you in that space. That's why we pay for like, specify people. And people will use therapy, like you need therapy as like an abrasive statement. And it's really like you deserve therapy. We all deserve a space.

  KC Davis 33:45

  The world would be so different if like if universal health care included therapy, because you deserve that. I would love someone to do like a study I read recently, there was a there was a school, I remember it was a little town, I think it was a school. And they did a study, they took all of the smartphones, away from the teachers and the students for a year. They all agreed voluntarily to do this. And they followed them over the year and checked back in to see like, how was your life and they reported some really interesting findings about the benefits that they found that year by not having smartphones. Now I don't I mean, I'm not one for like demonizing smartphones, but I wish that they would do that, like with therapy, like pick a school pick, you know, and decide this cohort of children will have therapy for the rest of their life and follow them and see how different you know, their life and the impact of the people around them would be if they were consistently supported in that way.

  Dr. Raquel 34:44

  That is amazing. And as someone who's currently writing grants for their lab next year, I don't know if they will be therapy, but I wonder if I could see if because I suppose it was a black identity development like what would it look like if we worked with the population and we follow them for Fortis

  Six years, and we specifically focused on socializing them appropriately.

  Ooh, if this comes out, you will definitely be in the acknowledgments. Yeah.

  KC Davis 35:12

  Thank you. Well, here's the thing is that it makes me think about the amount of studies and nonprofit initiatives out there that have this sort of like, Oh, if we just gave everybody, you know, like, they had the one where they, they were over, they were in a country in Africa, and they gave everyone D warming medicine. And they were like, it's, that's it. Now we're gonna go to school more, and they do this more, they do this more. And then you see all these studies about what if we give kids laptops in school? Or what if we had to? And they're playing with all these different variables? Like, what if we gave free lunches? What if we had this universal income? What if we had, you know, what if we did uniforms versus no uniforms? What if the teachers reflected who the students were, and I think all those variables are important. But I think it would be fascinating to see if the only variable that changed was that some of these children received mental health support, like maybe not direct therapy, but some sort of social emotional learning.

  And support, how different that would be, I like,

  Dr. Raquel 36:17

  love that full stop. That sounds amazing, because I think you could go into schools where they're already doing that, like my kid goes to a school where they do a lot of social emotional learning, but like, it's also like a private school, you couldn't say, oh, all of this is different, because they live because Piper learned that in the second grade, because the kinds of parents that send their kids to those kinds of schools are already doing that work at home. So you can't really and they probably have more money. And so all of these outcomes, you can't really attribute to that the school was that they had social emotional learning, because, well, there's money. There's your parents doing social, emotional, there's difference in the kinds of parents that send their kids. And I just think that would be so powerful. And I'm like, on the camera, and it's but it's kind of just like when I think I look up at someone who's not there, but like, that's a really good point. Okay. I mean, I hope you do it now. Yeah, well, I'm currently like writing grants to like, figure out what am I going to do for my lab in the fall? And that's a very good point, because I was going to try to work with this school. That's like a private school. But the reason why would have been helpful because they're very much like a blue.in, a red state, because I'm in Tennessee. So it would have been easier to get the buy in. However, just like you mentioned, that's not really helpful, right to show the efficacy of the actual program. Because if I'm dealing with the school, that's the blue dot and the red state, I mean, of course, they're going to be like, yes, how many parents moved to that area, because they wanted that for their kids. And those kinds of parents are already socializing their kids differently at home, versus going to another one and being like, oh, no, I was set up to fail. Okay, like this could have gone really bad. And it didn't. And what you're mentioning is like, kind of like what we discuss, kind of, to me, it makes me think about your work too. And like the work that I do as well, because the biggest thing I think people are missing are like perspectives. And I always say we're only as educated as the narratives that are shared, because more narrative shared or more perspectives, right. And what you're saying when it comes to longitudinal research is we get more information and more perspective. But as clinicians, we very much are like focused on the qualitative good clinicians, in my opinion, we're very much focused on the quality of what is shared, right? I don't care if I heard 50,000 stories that said this one thing worked, that one person who it didn't work for, we're coming up with another plan for them, right? It's very much the difference between quality and quantity, we get so many things about these methods. And that's kind of like with the mindfulness thing, too, right? It's like, well, this helps so many people, but it doesn't help my person, the quality of what they're sharing.

  KC Davis 38:41

  And if it's not helping them like and this was one thing that really changed for me, because I was very much brought up in learning to treat addiction. And I have lots of thoughts about the way we treat addiction in this country. But one of the things that was taught to me early on, was that like, if a client isn't getting it, then that client must just be unwilling, they must not want to be sober, they must be unwilling to do and so what happened was, we had all these that we were so niched down and like this is my one approach, that we could completely excuse our failures, or and something, it wasn't like, Oh, I did a bad job. But it was, hey, that didn't work. And some of that responsibility is on me not to blame me. But to go. Now I want to figure out what to learn and grow as a profession, to figure out other ways that I can help when this doesn't seem to be working for them. Because it's easy to write off a client as well, that didn't, they just weren't willing, they didn't want it badly enough when it's like, I mean, and maybe there are definitely people out there that don't want to get sober or that just want to play games or just want to whatever, but I should at least be able to offer them different approaches and modalities and things or refer them to somebody with a different modality. Because even if that is where they are, there are still modalities that can reach that person where they are and help them change.

  Dr. Raquel 40:00

  and my thoughts about that are twofold. One, you're at least as a psychologist, we're putting this environment we're supposed to know so many things. And they make it such a competitive environment when it's like cognition that I think there's some aspect of shame with clinicians when they feel like they have to refer someone out. Like they don't want to acknowledge that they don't know something. Because I mean, honestly, academia is very, it's very much like a shameful, like place like you didn't do a presentation, you didn't do this publication, you chose a B paper and stuff like that, like that's an issue. But it also made me think because I love group therapy as well of Yalom, who is like always lionized as this amazing group therapist, but I'll never forget when I, we were in class, and they were discussing how he decided that it was time to address and I forget the word that he mentioned, the client who was coming in late two sessions, like sometimes they were coming late to group sessions. And they were saying, clearly, they were avoiding being engaged in the session. Clearly, they don't want to heal. And I think that it is time that the rest of the group addresses this person's I forget what the word was, but aggressive address, basically, their lack of dedication or resistance, their resistance, it was resistance, and we need to address the resistance. And I remember when we're talking about in a class, that's interesting, because myself, I automatically go in, and this is coming from Community Mental Health and like dealing with people where it's just as simple as it's never a question of like, Are you paying for session? It's always like, Oh, I know, you're paying for session like nobody can, you know, you know, it's never that right? Me, I would automatically going to, Oh, I wonder if there's some resources I can do to help you come on time. I wonder if we need to, like, see if this group is for you. And maybe we can switch to a different day or time. Like I automatically went, in my mind when we're hearing the summary about Iago, who is just like the genius of all group therapy, we all have to learn about him. I automatically went to let me check in with the patient and make sure everything's okay, and see if there's something that I need to do to like help. Can I link you up with some resources? Do you need like a capsular was one of the places I worked at gay free capsules, if you came to therapy? Is it some family stressor? Like do you also need individual therapy, usually in group and this person automatically wit to like, attack him, he is disrespecting your time he comes to session late. He's not respecting the group. And I was like, it's so interesting. And you know, moral law. That's the thing. We jump right to moralizing the behavior, right? And I go to like, How can I help? What's going on? Like the same way, I had a student who kept falling asleep in my class, and it was this semester, and afterwards, I was just like, can I talk to you after? And he was like, Yeah, and you could tell he was already set up to be like, about to get in trouble. And I was just like, is everything okay? And he was like, I worked the night shift. And I come into class. And I know, I need to be present for the class. And I don't want to be marked absent. And I was like, Okay, well, I think you missed this. During our first week. I said, but I said, Listen, I don't do that when it comes to being present. I was like, it's very much a choice. And I said, also, I said, Honey, if you're sort of like, this is my honey, if you're not conscious, you're not President.

  You know, so I was like, you know, I just want to make sure everything was okay. I don't do that whole aspect of you can only have this amount of absences because you're an adult I but I do want to say that if you have questions about an assignment, a lot of times people ask them during class. So in order to accommodate that, if you can come to class once a week, make that the day if our class is on Thursday, review something on Wednesday, so you can ask me because you don't have two days to ask me because you can't come to the Monday class. That's what your shift is. But I automatically went to like, are you okay? Is everything okay? You know, like not, Oh, my God, my lecture is so boring. Like, when I can't believe they fell asleep. I was like, Honey,

  I know you were working on work.

  KC Davis 43:30

  I used to remember, did you ever this happened to you in school where like, if you yond there was always a teacher that was like, Am I boring? You Miss Davis, like, and I remember always thinking like, it's like now that you mentioned it. I remember thinking people don't yawn because they're bored, dumb as they yawn because they're tired. And that has nothing to do with you. I'm tired. So I just always thought that but yeah, I think and I know people are afraid like, well, you know, we have to hold people accountable. And that's true. But I also know that like, as someone's provider, I am best able to hold someone accountable from a place where they have experienced compassion and accommodation from me, because they're going to take me more seriously when I tell them. This is actually something that like, you might need to just do it. And then because I've believed them about their abilities and their limits, they go, maybe she's right, maybe I am capable of this. And she's not just someone that runs over the top of me and tells me every time that I should just be able to do it. She has recognized the times when I truly need accommodations, I truly need some grace. And so if she maybe maybe in this instance, there's enough trust there for me to go. Maybe she sees something I don't maybe I can do it.

  Dr. Raquel 44:44

  Because in that instance, you're modeling an appropriate rate relationship, right? Because it's, yes, we have all this training, but it's also the aspect of like the therapeutic alliance between you and your clinician. It's just as important to have that alliance with you and your clinician, right, because I believe in the whole Have you heard of like the dodo

  word theory where it's like, it came from Alice in Wonderland. And there was this race or something. And one person was like first and second, or third or 45th. And they were like, who won? And they were like, We all won. It doesn't, you know, everybody won, and it wasn't about. And then they say like, that's the same thing with therapeutic modalities. They're like, one of the things is, yes, some of these things work for people. But some of the aspect is like the therapeutic alliance that you have with someone by modeling appropriate relationships, like, like you mentioned, like by modeling compassion, that they see how they can be treated in an appropriate manner that they feel empowered to advocate for themselves. So it's kind of like, is it the fact that who won the race or we all won the race, it just matters that you cross the finish line? Is it CBT? Is it a CT? Is it DBT? ESG? Is it that LMNOP? You know, or is it just the fact that this person is clinician who was trained in different modalities and understood understands what I need in that moment in terms of the therapeutic alliance? Right? Because when it comes down to it, and when I'm like, training students, and they're like, you know, what's the best method? I'm like, Well, when you think of assessment, because we always start with assessment and trying to see what happens, you are the best, you are going to be the gold standard in terms of whether I'm using like a Beck Depression Inventory, or something like that, you're the assessor, right, because you are taking in information. That's why we constantly have to be educating ourselves, right and correcting ourselves, you are taking an education, and you decide if the root of that problem is attachment, you decide if the root of that problem is racism, you decide if the root of that problem is lack of knowledge around a skill, a skill, or empowerment and stuff like that. But that assessment comes from you. It doesn't come from the checklists, it comes from the fact that you educated yourself on these theories. You educated yourself on current events, you educated yourself on the narratives of other people. And you realize, like from my assessment, for my case, conceptualization, that's what we get. And I feel like a lot of people miss that in therapy, they think we're just talking and it's like, yeah, I would I'm be real with you. One. I don't talk that much in session. I think people assume because I'm a talkative person. It's like definitely a different person. Social media is not session me. And also because social media is not therapy. And it's also the fact of like, we do therapy, and then we case conceptualize, and then we help like with the plans, and then we check in like, the 15 minutes that shall see us or not the 50 minutes that I think about my clients, or my clients, like, are you serious, we would never make any progress. You know, I'm just like, I'm checking in on everything. So I think I feel like that's what a lot of people get wrong about therapy. And I think that's why they get it wrong with mindfulness too, right? Like thinking this works for so many people. Therapy is very much I shouldn't say boutique, because to me, that feels very luxurious. But it's very much like individualistic to you. Right? Like, I'm gonna be the expert in the room when it comes to psychology, but you're the expert in the room when it comes to you. And the same way, like your mental health is a fingerprint, your treatment plan is a fingerprint. Right? So if it doesn't work for you, we won't do it. Like, don't keep trying to make it work. Right. Like, oh, I kept trying mindfulness, I kept trying it. Why, you know, there's like 50 million trillion other things that could possibly help you, you know, like,

  let's go, like, Oh, it didn't work. Cool. Let's find something else. I always say like, let's figure out from a different perspective, but it's like if your sensory will go according to the senses. If your drum or cognition like when it came to panic attack somebody, some people do better with sour candy. Some people do better with naming a person from every single letter of the alphabet. That's sensory taste, that's cognition of thinking, some people can't think in that moment. So we do something else. Some people don't want to do diaphragmatic breathing. So it can helpful for them to have a stress ball. Some people do better with F it opposite action, you know, like, it's like, I feel like people, you don't need to feel the need. And this is where we both agree, like you don't feel the need to to put yourself in this box. Just because a skill doesn't work for you. Self Assessment is also helpful. Right? Like, if you feel like it doesn't work. You don't have to assume you're doing it wrong. You can just say that this isn't for you, and come up with something else because we have a million trillion ways to help you. And that's my job as a clinician anyway to be like, Hey, not Oh, I didn't do my homework. If you even do homework not you're being resistant, like okay, well, sometimes when people when I when people tell me they haven't done their homework one, I might have missed the mark on the homework two, homework isn't helpful for you. Three, you may have felt overwhelmed, I might have jumped the gun, or for you just didn't feel like it. All of these are valid. If you didn't feel like it. We're not doing it. Like it's just it's boutique shouldn't sound luxurious. But like, I really wish people understood that like self assessment word is just as helpful. We actually ask you to do it. So many people think, Oh, I saw this video. And it made me think I had ADHD, you'll think you'll go to a clinician, I'll be like, it was just a video or is that a different aspect of like information. It's not only about peer reviewed journals, blogs are helpful. Podcasts are helpful if you see yourself in this than you see yourself. And that's it. Let's go from there.

  KC Davis 49:35

  I love it. Thank you so much. This has been such a great conversation. And I feel like every time we talk, it's like, I feel like I could talk for hours fireworks.

  I really hope that you write the grant for that. That'd be so interesting.

  Dr. Raquel 49:48

  It's such a good idea. That was such a good idea though. Because so many times we're pinpointing one message but what you mentioned with longitudinal that's so it makes more sense.

  KC Davis 49:58

  Well and I'm developing a curriculum I'm for struggle care philosophy for like groups. So if you want to throw in some life skills things in there as as mental health help, we should link up on that.

  Dr. Raquel 50:10

  You don't have to threaten me what a good time. Right like

  KC Davis 50:14

  so where can people find you if they want to follow you on social media?

  Dr. Raquel 50:18

  On Instagram? I'm Raquel Martin, PhD are a qu e l Martin PhD on Tik Tok. I'm Raquel Martin, PhD on Facebook. I'm Raquel Martin, PhD. My website is Raquel Martin phd.com. I have a podcast where we're probably going to switch it out pretty soon. So mind your mental podcasts. We have two seasons. Next year, I'm actually going to be transitioning more to like a question answer portion because I really just want to be able to off the cuff answer stuff like I really just want to be like the black non problematic. You know, Frasier, Dr. Frasier,

  and with the podcast, I was just like, I like what I did with it. And I feel like I've reached my ceiling on it. So I kind of just wanted to switch it up. But the podcast is out there now. It's always gonna be out there. It's two whole seasons. Focusing on black mental health. The first season is very much interviewing people where they share their narratives about mental health to kind of like normalize like, it's different for everyone. This person's depression is different. And on the second season, just like bite sized episodes on like, Hey, are you ready for change or not? If you're not, it's cool show.

  KC Davis 51:17

  And we'll put all of those in the show notes. So thank you again and everybody out there. I hope you have a good day. Be a little gentle with yourself today. And try not to be too distressed about being distressed with you.

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

This is the show that will make you take a closer look at how the work is shared in your household. The problem cannot be solved by simply handing out to-do lists. I’m joined by Eve Rodsky, who is working to change society one partnership at a time by promoting a new 21st-century solution to an age-old problem. Still today, women shoulder two-thirds or more of the unpaid domestic work and child care for their homes and families, and this burden is taking its toll! Again, there are deeper issues to consider. Let’s talk about this topic with Eve!

Show Highlights:

●      How Eve came to write her book, Fair Play

●      How many wives/moms have an automatically assigned role in their homes

●      How the shift in marriage occurs where women do most of the “invisible work”

●      How Eve’s book is structured with information and practical ways to divide labor

●      How a story about the Tooth Fairy illustrates the mindset shifts that need to happen in both partners to have fair play

●      Why couples get into a measuring contest about whose job is harder

●      Why we need to break down harmful norms that hurt us all and be clear about each partner’s role

●      Is your home infested by RATs? (randomly assigned tasks)

●      Why accountability and trust are vital in home organization

●      Why the mental load is more taxing in most cases than the actual execution of tasks

●      How to view boundaries with a fresh and freeing perspective and find your “unicorn space”

Resources and Links:

Connect with Eve Rodsky: Website, Instagram (Fair Play Life), Instagram (Eve), and TikTok

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes

• Transcript

  KC Davis 0:05

  Hello you sentient balls of stardust, welcome to struggle care, the podcast about self care. And other things. I don't have a tagline yet. So I just wing it. And I didn't even think of one today, you'll have to excuse my frog voice. I'm under the house of perpetual Blegh. So but I didn't want to miss this recording at all. I'm here today with Eve rod ski. So Eve broadsky is working to change society one partnership at a time by coming up with a new 21st century solution to an old age problem that women shoulder two thirds or more of the unpaid domestic work and child care for their homes and families Eve broadsky. It's a pleasure.

  Eve 0:41

  Oh my god, I'm so happy to be here. You know, I think I was saying to you earlier before we started that, I do feel like we're friends already. Even though I can't believe this is really our first time. Really communing in person.

  KC Davis 0:55

  Yes. I feel that way too. I love that we have matching glasses.

  Eve 1:00

  Yes, we're matching glasses. Our hairs were I don't know, we have the same vibe going on today.

  KC Davis 1:06

  And I love it. It I feel like it's taken us like four different scheduling to actually get this recording done. But let me just tell you how this has been the least stressful process ever. Because there's various reasons why, like, you've had to change the time, and I've had to change the time. And typically speaking, I feel so much stress over that. Because I feel like there's this idea of professionalism, that's like, Oh, if you cancel something, or if you're late to something, but like, I've just had real life happen so many times this month, my kids, you know, are my husband, my family getting sick getting this. And it was actually really like a relief to feel like, you know what, it's gonna be okay with that. Like, she also has a life. And we're like, being vulnerable, authentic women who understand that, like life happens, and we'll get it done one way or the other

  Eve 2:00

  100%. And again, whether it was like my microphone was shut off, and I didn't know how to like do tech or childcare issues. I think, to me, this is a new way of working. And of course, that doesn't mean you don't you flake on people. But I think he's what you're saying. It's just this new way of being, which I think is hopefully came in with the pandemic. And that's one thing, hopefully a silver lining, we won't lose, which is this idea that it's really okay to be an authentic human. And I know that that is the beauty of your work. But I think that's where our work intersects, hopefully.

  KC Davis 2:36

  Yeah, it very much felt like the idea of professionalism was written by men who have a spouse at home handling everything. So you know, you show up and you don't reschedule and you don't do this. Yeah, yeah, it's the

  Eve 2:49

  we're the BBC dad. Yeah, we're literally a toddler is like coming into the frame. And you're like, taking a stick your giant hand and like smashing their face to get out of your frame. I'm hoping that that's not where we end up, or we don't go back to that's, again, to me, Where, where are the pandemic? I do think has been helpful for women. I think, you know, we don't give a fuck anymore. Are they? That's how I feel, right? I mean, the world is burning around us, we are drowning. And you know, we got to breathe that polluted air, even though it's burning, even though the air is full of smoke, Casey. And I think that's really where our again, our work intersects fair plays about the fact that yes, I wrote it to women 100%, not blaming you, for what happens to us in that society doesn't value our time, and that we hold all the unpaid labor for our homes on average. But I'm telling you that there's a way forward. And it doesn't mean I'm not fighting for you on universal childcare, and paid leave and other things that would make the world less burning or less drowning. But you still got to breathe, even though the air is so polluted.

  KC Davis 3:54

  Yeah, we got to figure out a way to wake up tomorrow and function. So let's get right into it. Okay, so fair play. So I get questions a lot on my various social media platforms about, you know, what do I do about the division of labor in my home? You know, I'm really, you know, looking at this morally neutral, I want to take all your tasks, but you know, my husband's not really on board, and how do we begin to have a conversation? And I've got to tell you, I had one idea about this topic that I put in my book, which is that instead of trying to make the work equal, you should aim for the rest. To be fair, yes, because I felt like that hit better on the time autonomy. And but besides that, I have no motivation to think more about it, because I truly believe that the book you have written is exactly the right book. Thank you. And so I just tell people to go read it.

  Eve 4:46

  Oh, I feel the same about yours. Again, it's so overlapping in its philosophy. And I think that that's a good thing, right? The philosophy is a philosophy of ownership, right? It's a full Philosophy of grace. And really, you know, just for your listeners who don't know me, I'll just give them you know, the two seconds of saying, you know, I didn't set out to be an expert on the gender division of labor, just how I know you weren't in your third grade. What do you want to be when you grew up born Casey and say, like, I'm going to write a book about how to keep house while we're all drowning, but life intersects. And for me, you know, I was one of the resolutely Gen X people that had so many dreams, like when I went to law school, and that's the way I look at the world. Why I think our philosophy intersects is because I'm not my cousins out there. The people who implement fairplay the most amazing humans are coaches and therapists. What I am is I look at myself as a behavior designer. I'm a lawyer, I look at governance, I work in family systems. And so I'm always looking at, well, if you want people to stop at a stop sign, what you do is you pass a law to tell them to stop at a stop sign, right? So I'm looking at things from a more holistic level of design, right how to incentivize behavior. And my career as a lawyer has been around organizational management, how to incentivize good decision making, but it was never around gender division of labor. But what happened to me was my own life intervenes, I loved my job. I wasn't the president and the Senator and the next city dancer, that I told myself, I was going to be in law school, I had big dreams. And the truth is Casey, like I thought, I'd be smashing all these glass ceilings. And really the only thing I was smashing 13 years later, after my Harvard Law experience, and I say that not just to drop that I went to Harvard, but I worked really damn hard. And it's so many loans to escape my working class background. And I was told that was going to be enough. But really, 13 years later, after I got that Harvard Law degree, the only thing I could tell you I was smashing was like, peace, the peace for a toddler. While you know, struggling to breastfeed a baby Ben, while my workplace, I wasn't president, but I did have a job I liked around these legal governance issues for family foundations and family businesses at a big bank. And that company was telling me that my lactation space when I got back from Ben was going to be a broom closet. And that that my direct reports were being taken away from me because they wanted to, quote unquote, make my job easier. And I was being paid less than my male colleagues. And all these things were happening around me. And I was feeling so abandoned emotionally, by my workplace in my career. And then the straw that broke the camel's back was the abandonment from my partner, it was Seth. And there's many stories I tell in fair play. But one of the earliest stories was Seth sending me a text that said, I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries. And what that meant to me that day around having a breast pump in a diaper bag in the passenger seat of my car, and gifts to return for newborn baby in the backseat of my car, and getting the emails from my workplace that I was going to have to pump in a breast in a broom closet. And then my partner, really assuming Casey that I was going to be the fulfiller of his smoothie needs, the assumptions in our house had gotten so bad. And I know as a kid, we learned that if you assume it makes an asset of you and me, but the assumptions based on my gender, about the fact that I made less money than then Seth, even though I'm way more educated. And I think I actually have a more important job. But the assumptions around what I was supposed to do in the home, it was so different than the partnership we had set up. And I was also being so abandoned from my workplace at the same time, that what ended up happening was the final straw that broke the camel's back, the final straw that broke the camel's back was because we don't have a social safety net in this country. And we're dealing with again, no paid leave, people go back to work. After two weeks, we're dealing with income inequality so bad that even two incomes can't make mortgages anymore. What was happening to me was that I was sold a lie that because we didn't have universal childcare, and paid leave that my community would be my answer that once my kids got into school, if everything would go away, your life would be easy. You get your routine back, the community around your school would be the most important people you'll ever know. And I believe that and I remember right after the blueberries, texts, and my job falling apart, I went to Zach, my older son, who was three at the time to his toddler transition program, breakfast. I remember sitting there with all these other moms and a couple of gay fathers doing pattycake with our toddlers, our three year olds, and the preschool teacher reinforcing this notion that these are the people who are going to save me from drowning. And then I looked down after she said, these are the people that are going to know you better than anyone's ever known you. And I looked down at my nametag Casey and it said it said Zach's mom. And that's when I realized you know, these are the people that are gonna know me better than anyone's ever known me. They don't even know my fucking name. And that's when I realized that I was in this like literal hellscape of sort of overweight Elementary sure at the same time.

  KC Davis 10:02

  And let me ask you this. First of all, I love the blueberry story that you tell, and you told it here. But this picture of, you know, you're dealing with these outside stressors, you're sitting in the car, you're pumping breast milk, you've got gifts in the back, you have this whole list in your head of the sort of invisible labor of the home that needs to get done. And the text that comes through is not even, why didn't you get blueberries, but I'm surprised you didn't get blueberries. And I think that is such a picture of how many moms and wives feel like we have this automatically assigned role in our homes. And I don't know about you, but I feel like for me, it that didn't come quite clear in my vision until after children. It's like before children, and I'm an elder millennial, right. And so I'm married to an elder millennial. And so I feel like our generation of men are Yeah, of course, I'm a feminist. Yes, I want, you know, to have an equal egalitarian role. Yes, of course, I ascribe to these things. And yet, if you're not explicit, I found that after the birth of children, everything started to shift. And I remember the first conversation about the first time I saw this shift, and I pointed out to my husband, and literally, our baby must have been weeks old baby a couple of months. And I said, Can I tell you something that I've noticed? And he said, Yeah, and I said, I've noticed that every time you take the baby, I use that time to either meet my basic needs, or take care of the house. So I use that time to go shower, I use that time to shove some food in my mouth, I use that time to do the laundry, or the dishes, or the grocery shopping. And every time that I take the baby, you use that time to recreate. So you get to watch TV, you got to play video games, you get to do your thing. And it wasn't either of us having like deciding to do that it wasn't him deciding that my time is valuable. Like, it was just this weird, unwritten script that we took on, you know, we could talk forever about all of the cool other so many cool things in your book, and I want to get into it. But one of the things that I really want to talk about is that I feel like when we talk about a woman who is overburdened with the home labor, and their partner who is not pulling their weight, we often picture someone who's like a deadbeat dad, or a husband that doesn't love their family or appreciate their family, or someone who's a misogynist, or someone who, you know, just isn't a good guy. And I'm actually and yes, those guys are out there. And those guys do behave like this. But what I think is more fascinating. In the hundreds of women that I've now talked to, is it's the good men. It's the good men who participate in this shift and don't see it happening.

  Eve 13:01

  100% Well, it is and that is why fairplay became a love letter to men, because what I started to do in my own marriage was trying to unpack what was happening to us. And what I found out Casey is that this has a name right there. It's been called the second shift emotional labor, the mental load. But my favorite term was a term called Invisible work. And because a we also knew around that term, that work gets more invisible for women as they have kids, men do five to 15 hours a week less. And one study, right? So this is not about an individual men, we love you. We're not here to bash on a gender. This is called the gender division of labor for a reason, because this is a systemic issue that helps nobody. And the reason why it doesn't help anybody is because I started to ask around the time that I heard the term invisible work when I was going through this myself and starting to feel really, like you said what happened your own marriage, this shift happening of assumptions. I started to you know, basically ask women you know what's invisible. That takes more than two minutes of your time and I started to write it down in this giant spreadsheet. And actually, Casey that was the first time in my life since having kids I didn't feel alone. It wasn't my partner that got me out of that it wasn't my community. With my Zach's mom nametag it wasn't my workplace. It was actually the mother's like you because this is before I had your book or anything could go viral. There was no tic tac there was just sort of word of mouth You know, it was I had Zach in 2008 when like how do you expect when you're expecting or whatever that book is was like the only resource we had we didn't even have iPads back then. And so this should I do spreadsheet that was created over nine months was really this antidote to my loneliness and it became this giant exercise around the country of women I didn't even know contributing it to it saying like thank you for putting making school lunches that takes five minutes or taking the kids to the doctor cuz I'm always the one who has to do that. That takes an hour, but you don't have elf on the shelf and on here you You've like that's, you know, 20 Nights time is an hour. And what about sunscreen? You know, like, what about sunscreen?

  KC Davis 15:11

  And that I have to tell you Eve, that is the thing I love the most about like your list. So and if people don't know, you also have a deck of cards so that because fairplay the first half,

  Eve 15:21

  it became a deck of cards. Yes, it became a metaphor, but it started as a list.

  KC Davis 15:25

  Yes, the first half of the book is this incredible unpacking about division of labor about this shift about how we got here about the myths that we believe about our times as men and women. But the second half of the book is a down and dirty, practical and you call it a game, like let's play the game of how to design your division of labor. And the thing I love the most is that yes, on the cards you have, you know, who's taking out the trash and who's cleaning and who's making dinner. But the things that I feel like overburdened women the most are the literal invisible, like Christmas magic, who is stuffing stocks. And those are always the TIC TOCs that I see is the mom sitting there going, if I don't stuff, the stockings, they don't get done. And every Christmas, there's nothing in my stocking, because I'm the one doing it for everyone else.

  Eve 16:14

  Ah, I love that so much. It reminded me of the kind of tell you a small story that it's not in my book or anywhere. It's sort of a newer story. But I think it sort of brings to home, what we're talking about here, it's a really small story. But again, it's what I love about your book so much too, is that you're also breaking down these assumptions. And you also have practical, prescriptive help. So like you also have that beautiful combination. But I want to tell you the small story because it just reminded me of that, as we talked about how I found out when I finally sent set that should I do spreadsheet, that list alone don't work. And I really had to take a step back and say, Do I live like this? Do I Eat Pray Love it out of my marriage? Because that was a popular narrative back then? Or do I get my ass in gear and become my own client and use what I've known, you know, now, you know, at that time, a decade now 15 years of organizational management, and really put a system into place. So I'll tell you the small story because reminds you, it's the magic stuff we're talking about. And it's so small, but it shows how the shift, pre and post fair play can really work for you. And reminds you a lot of your tick tock videos of just how a mindset shift can be such a difference. So there's this couple I'll call, I think I'll call them Richard and Amy because that's another couple I love. And this couple hasn't given me permission yet to use their story. But they're, you know, they came to fairplay during the pandemic, and they really wanted to do some work on their relationship. And so this couple comes to me. And as you said, part of the beauty of fair play is that I give you a system, it's a game, it's reliant on you understanding that you should have boundaries that your time as you said, you deserve leisure, you deserve a permission to be unavailable. It's the system handed to you on a plate. It's also a lot of communication tips. So this couple is doing fair play. And I love data. So they come to me and they say, Richard decided to take on one of those magic tasks that I really, I do presents for the school. I'm the one who puts notes you know, in my kids lunchbox, whatever. So Amy tells me Richard decides to take on magical beings. So that is Santa. And that's like Lucky leprechaun for them because they have Irish thing. They have a trap or something they were telling me about and then they had Tooth Fairy. So Richard takes on the tooth fairy, and he reports back to me that they do this in advance. That's what fist fair plays about these practice of like exercise, you have high cognition, low emotion conversations, he says I will own that's also fair play ownership. You carry through your mistake. You own it, you don't ask me what's for dinner. If you're in charge of dinner, not hard to understand. That's what we do in the workplace. Even my Aunt Mary's Mahjong group, you're out if you don't bring snack, we're used to owning things. So I bring that to the home. So he basically says the first night, it was his daughter's second tooth. The first night he's Tooth Fairy. He forgets the money doesn't go into the pillow. And his daughter wakes up and she you know, says the Tooth Fairy didn't come super disappointed. Amy tells me before a fair play. This is the dynamic of their relationship. She would have said to Richard, you've ruined our daughter's magic back to the magic. That's why I thought about this. You can't do anything for our house. I will never let you do anything again. You will never touch our living will. Because you can't even get $1 under the pillow. Richard told me that he would have blamed me for not reminding him to put the dollar under the frickin pillow. That's their dynamic post fair play. This is what happens. Richard tells me he opens his mistake. Because he said what my bad. This is totally my card. So that disarms Amy, because now she's feeling like oh shit. You know, he's actually owning something. It wasn't the assumption that I was supposed to remind him. She says, Okay, I will let you carry through your mistake and see what happens. Richard emails tooth fairy@gmail.com, he actually tells me he gets a response. There's somebody who answers that email address, he prints it out for his daughter, because she said something really beautiful, like, Sorry, there were so many teeth lost last night, I couldn't get your home in time. And then he told his daughter, when the tooth fairy is late, she brings double the money. No, I love it. That's the story. It's nothing big. It's nothing dramatic. It's just a shift in the mindset very similar, again, to how I love your work. Because it's not that hard. It feels so hard, because there's so much that we have to unpack around why we got here, it's not your fault. But when you can start to move and invest in these types of conversations in these types of systems and believing in your own boundaries, then things start to change.

  KC Davis 20:54

  I love when you talk about these time myths. And I love that you specifically talk to the stay at home parent, which is usually the woman because that's one of the questions that I get is, or one of the comments that I get is, I feel like because I'm a stay at home parent, I don't have the right to ask for more, or I don't have the right to demand time to myself that I have the easier gig, right. And that's where we kind of get into this measuring contest of whose job is harder. And in reality, whose job is harder, is a totally unrelated conversation. Because if you have children, they belong to both of you. And that has nothing to do with whose job is harder. If you have a home that belongs to both of you, that has nothing to do with whose job is harder. And that the time you spend. Taking care of your family taking care of your home is just as valuable as the time your spouse spends earning his paycheck, and that you both deserve the right to rest and recreate. And I think the other thing that's that's really powerful about fairplay is that as you're kind of in the midst of learning about oh, yeah, you know, it's that, you know, the division is unfair, and we should be able to make it fair. And it seems like that's all it is. Because I've heard women say, it's so much work to get my spouse to be involved, I would rather just do it all. And I could see someone ending there. But the thing that you say that's even more powerful is that you have this whole section where you talk to couples that have divorced after a long marriage. And you have this finding. And I wonder if you could talk to us about this about what the men typically tend to say about why they ended that marriage?

  Eve 22:42

  Well, it's such a beautiful question, because it was never like I ended this marriage. And actually women are the ones who initiate divorce over 80% of the time, because they I do think it's a resentful meter 10, you can't take it anymore. But what's interesting is that so many men and this gets back to the love letter to men. It was never that Oh, I hate taking my kids to school. No, it was women told me the overwhelm is too much, it gets too much to the point where they literally wanted burst with anxiety and resentment. But men said to me that for them, it was this quiet death by 1000 cuts of not knowing their role in the home. And I think what's so fascinating about that, again, it's not like, Oh, I didn't want to help. These are good men, this sort of this dynamic. It also happens in LGBTQIA couples that I have broken up to where these assumptions are not just for heteronormative couples, you know, these heteronormative assumptions can really affect us all even single parents, because they're assumed to not be as competent because they have caregiving responsibilities. So we're trying to break down these harmful norms that hurt us all. But I think what's so fascinating is that so many of these men, especially the ones who ended up in second marriages did so much more. I never found a man in a second marriage who did less. And I think it was this understanding that it is really psychologically unsafe to not know your role. And so what I mean by that is we now know in the work context, that context not control is a way to make people feel safe. If you give people context for what you're asking of them, they're more likely to do it. If you just give an order KC, upload this for me. And they don't know why it makes people feel controlled, and that they don't have autonomy over their life. That type of control is what men were reporting to me. We call it nagging, but that's too gendered. So I started to call it the rat. If your home was infested by rats, you're not gonna want to live there. And that was a random assignment of a task. And as because ultimately, what I found was that in most homes, women were the ones and that's why, you know, treating our home as our most important organization was my most important realization. But my second most important realization, Casey was that I had to ask a deeper question to get to what we're talking about. Now, why was this all happening to us? And once I could ask the question, how does mustard go in your refrigerator, everything changed for me in 2011, because I asked that for over a decade and what happened in 17 countries, even the Nordic countries that have paid leave, and all the other, you know, bells and whistles that we need here. What was happening to women partnered with men was that overwhelmingly, I'd say 80 90% of the time, women were saying to me that they were the ones mustard is in the refrigerator, because their second son Johnny likes yellow mustard with his protein, otherwise he chokes, they were the one noticing, conceiving of that mustard, they were the one telling me that they were getting stakeholder buy in for what their family needed on the grocery list. And they were the one monitoring the mustard for when it was running low. That's planning. And then they were telling me that their partner participates in the grocery shopping by going to the store for the mustard, but they bring home spices Dijon every fucking time. And so if you want me to trust my partner with, again, with my living will with my organ donation card with my DMV registration, absolutely not because this person can't even bring home the right type of mustard. Once I realized that that was a dialogue happening, I realized we can isolate the two words that make organizations function that we were losing in the home. And those two words that every healthy organization needs, our accountability and trust. When you start losing accountability and trust, everything falls to shit in every organization. And that dynamic of holding the conception and planning and having somebody else execute on your behalf is where this accountability and trust break down what's happening. So fairplay is all about rectifying that

  KC Davis 26:34

  that's where everything gets screwed up. Because good men will say, tell me what to do. Good men will say make me a list. Good men will say, What can I take off your plate? But even if you are going to the store to get mustard for me, first of all, many of us can so I can order that and have it delivered. Right? Like the execution is not actually the major part of the burden on me as a wife and mother. It's the other it's the mental load of who likes the mustard monitoring the mustard? When does the mustard get low? Is it one brand over the other that they tend to notice? At what point did they stop liking mustard and start liking something else. And I think the beauty of fair play is that it makes those things visible, and then ensures that whoever is owning the execution of that task is now owning the mental labor of it. So if dad gets the, you know, grocery store task, the conversation and what you learned through reading the book is that he now must also own the mental labor of that task, who likes what food, what food is low, what food needs to go out what food needs to come in, you know, what is being cooked for dinner this week, so that it is on the whatever. And that to me is what makes your book and system so different than any other thing I've seen out there. Because it doesn't help me to make a list. Now I'm just your manager. And I think what we see or what I've seen as a therapist in couples is that they come in as equal partners, they come in typically even as the man pursuing the woman, and then they become equal partners. And they both have careers. And then they have children. And then what happens is this slow shift, whereby the woman takes on more and more and more of this mental labor, she becomes more and more frustrated at her husband. And anytime he tries to insert himself, he's he doesn't see enough of the picture to actually be helpful. So you know, at best, he does nothing at worst, he makes it harder. And then she gets frustrated and sort of nag them down and talks him down. And now she's saying you didn't do this. And you did. And they begin to shift into this Mother Son dynamic. And he resents her for it, and she resents him for it. And then at the end of their marriage, right, when they're trying to figure out what went wrong. The most powerful thing your book said to me was the amount of men that said, When I married my wife, she was so interesting. And then I begged her to quit her job and be a stay at home mother. And here we are 25 years later. And you know, she's just not interesting anymore. So I left her. And it's like, these men aren't realizing that they participated in the assassination of their wife's spark, and personality and passion. And I'm not saying it's all their fault, because as women, you know, we don't even know what to do to get out of this. Or some of us even think, oh, there's some reward in this role. I'm doing my great little duty as a wife not realizing how much it shifts, not realizing how much I begin to martyr myself for the role of mother and I don't have time to be interesting anymore. And one of the things about my book and my work is that it yes, it's about dishes and laundry, but at the end of the day, it's really only about this more powerful message of worthiness that says you deserve to function. And I feel like fair play. Yes, it's about who's taking out the trash and who's doing the dishes. But actually, it's about a more fundamental message of worthiness, which is that you deserve to reclaim the right to be interesting.

  Eve 30:18

  Wow, can I take you on the road with me? Like, you're just Yes, please do whatever you just said to can you do that? Yes, you need to be my Tiktok representative, because that was so beautiful, because it is exactly that. We talked about systems, we really spent the majority of this podcast really breaking down the fairplay system. And we talked when we talked about Richard and Amy about sort of how they started to communicate. But I think if we could end on boundaries, what you just said, You gave me chills sort of repeating back, because this stuff still triggers me so much. It's so sad, right? But it's also so empowering. Because, Casey, I wish I could tell your listeners that. And again, whatever family structure you're in, it's valid. And I'm speaking to all the stay at home parents who, you know, the core premise of fair play, as Casey said earlier, is that an hour holding a child's hand at the pediatricians office is just as important and valuable as an hour in the boardroom. But I think, you know, when you get down to this idea of what a boundary is, that's the unlearning for why the system was so hard to introduce the society people were saying to me, I can't even get to the fairplay system, I can't get to fairness, this makes so much sense. But because I am being held back by my own assumptions about how I'm supposed to use my time, my time is predetermined for me. My time is, as a parent, a partner or a professional, God forbid, I use my time outside of those roles, I am not allowed. And when I say who's not allowing you who's not giving you permission, right? It's this overwhelming societal idea that women are really not allowed to be anything outside of those roles, we don't availability to those roles becomes part of our identity. And so like I said, if I could tell you anything about boundaries, it is one thing. A boundary is not a walk around the block. A boundary is not a drink with a friend. A boundary is your consistent interest in your own life. That's the boundary when you can take your reclaim your time and say, That's why the fair play, and KeePass, wide drowning, like that's why all of these messages are important, because it gives you some time back to think about how to reclaim but once you reclaim that time, it is not to fill it with more work, or to fill it with mommy juice or to numb your way through your life, like so many of us are told to do and we normalize it is to be consistently interested in your own life. And we're here for you those active pursuits, I call them unicorn space, because they're mythical. They're magical. They're the tie and the key to your mental health and your longevity. But they don't exist, like a unicorn does not exist until we reclaim that space.

  KC Davis 33:07

  Well, I have to tell you, one of my best friends is a marriage and family therapist. And she and her partner specialize in helping couples, and they're also sex therapists. And one of the things that they taught me about sort of their work, which is really pretty countercultural to her a lot, a lot of family and sex therapy do now. And she was telling me, you know, the common thing for marriage and sex therapist to do now when a couple comes in, and they're saying, Oh, we, you know, he wants it more, you know, we want more passionate in the marriage is they try to push them more together and say, Oh, make date nights. Ooh, schedule your sex. Oh, you know, you need to do this. This isn't the other. Oh, no, exactly. No, no. And she and her partner has those the most life changing view on it. And she said, the thing is, is that duty and eroticism can't live in the same place. And attraction is not something that you can turn on by spending more time with someone. Attraction is something that happens because you see someone as different and other than you, and you see them in their passionate place. You see them in their unicorn space. And they talk about how when you ask a man, you know what attracted you to your partner, when you first met, they're describing I remember seeing her give that performance. I remember watching her to date, talk about rescuing dogs, and how her face would light up. And she said, You know, there's these things that attracted us to each other that made us sort of an all of this person in front of us and sometimes what happens as we get married as we have kids as we get these careers as we're sort of trudging along, creating a life together, we'd become companions, but we can get so bogged down and she was saying this is kind of where it hits women, right? Like all of a sudden, every waking minute for me is childcare and home stuff and my career in childcare and home stuff in my career. And people want to make this superficial sort of, well, you know, you don't ever put makeup on anymore, it's like, that's not really what it is, it's that she does not have the time or the space to be an interesting person anymore to go home. And it doesn't have to be some world changing pursuit. But I love the stories in your book about, you know, one of them was that it was like, crochet, like, that was what she loved. And when she got the time and energy to do that, again, her husband's talking about van just to see her create these things, and then she connected with other women about and then she started going to these little fairs about it. And, you know, so they, when they started talking to me about we don't actually want to push couples closer together on, you know, scheduled date nights, we want to talk about how can we get this woman the time and energy to go be passionate person, because when their spouse can observe them be a passionate person, they can discover that attraction that's always been there. And vice versa for the man too, because sometimes men can get so you know, nose to the grindstone on I've got to make the money, I've got to make the money, I've got to climb the ladder, I've got to do my duty, that they won't let themselves to have space to go and do and say and be. And I remember reading your book and thinking this is exactly what they're talking about.

  Eve 36:21

  Oh my god, I love them. I love them. Please tell them that they're literally they're the best. That's exactly right.

  KC Davis 36:27

  Well, I have to tell you that your book changed my life. Thank you. And that's no small thing. I was in the middle of paying the pandemic. And I was buried and I am a upper middle class woman, I have the funds to outsource a great deal of care tasks. But in the pandemic, it was not safe to do so. And my husband had just started his first corporate law job. And so he was working seven days a week, and I was at home with a newborn and a toddler. And I was losing myself. And I was drowning silently. And I didn't even realize how much pain I was in. And when I started my Tiktok channel and it started to take off. You know, it gave me this little line of meaning and interest. And I still remember like I went to see my mom, I had seen a therapist actually because I was losing my mind I got to the point where I went to the water burger. I just walked out the house I said you have the kids are watching the house. I'm sitting in the drive thru line. And as I'm waiting in the drive thru line, all of a sudden, I start to panic. And the only thing that goes through my head is get out of the car and leave get out of the car and leave get out of the car and leave. I'm telling you I was on the precipice of psychosis, like I, all I wanted to do, and I had on like pajamas was get out of my moving car, leave it in the drive thru lane and just walk into the night, I had nowhere to go. But it was like that's the only thing left. And I called a friend. And I told her about it. And I said, Something's wrong. I started seeing a therapist, that therapist said you have to get away for a week, and I don't care what it takes. And I went to my mother's house. And I told her about this little tic tock channel that I had. And I was thinking about paying someone to make me a logo, but it was $300. And I just really didn't know if I could afford that. And, and you know, maybe my partner would be mad at me for spending $300 on this little hobby. And I remember my mom looking at it being like, I think you really have something here. And that was the process that I was in when I read fairplay and read about reclaiming the right to be interesting, and realized that I had lost a part of myself that I missed. And it was the part of myself that I was afraid if I lost it, I would lose my whole family, eventually, that this would bury me. And that's when I started taking my own unicorn space seriously. And it was really difficult. And I'm still in that process. But I'm just so grateful for your book, I'm grateful for your presence. I'm grateful that you didn't just to make it about equal division of labor. I'm grateful that you took that step and said, This is a systemic issue that will bury you and you deserve better. And I'm just so grateful that you gave us this Oh,

  Eve 39:08

  my God, then like I'm crying. I'm just like, such a beautiful story. And like I said, I feel so similar. And I think the reason why I was attracted to you, your work is because you are a walking unicorn space. And I'm here to tell you and to all your listeners, whether you make $0 from what you're doing, or a billion dollars from what you're doing, your work is as or more valuable than your partner's work. Because you are also changing lives. And I think there's three things that I see in your work. And you when I watch you on tick tock and you make me happy and normalize everything, always at the right time. The thing I want to end with I think that's so important is what I see in you what you're doing and how as a role model because again, let's just put the money aside Of course, we all need it. But that is not a unicorn space, it is not a side hustle, it is not a way to get rich. It is not contributing to the patriarchal capitalist narrative that time equals money. It is looking at how mental health needs to be redefined. And what I can say I think that you would agree with me and it's I put this in my second book, find your unicorn space. But it's just as relevant for fairplay is that for too long, we've been fed this narrative that we can gratitude journal ourselves to death. And as you said, this is a systemic problem, we cannot gratitude journal ourselves to death. Instead, what we have to realize is that the true definition of mental health is not how to be happy. And I feel like in the same 10 years of boss bitch, we had the same 10 years of how to be happy books. The true definition of mental health is a version of having the appropriate emotion at the appropriate time. And here's wait for it. This is the kicker, and the ability and strength to weather

  KC Davis 41:03

  how to hold on to yourself in the face of those emotions.

  Eve 41:06

  You and I had the appropriate emotion at the appropriate time, you were in a fucking takeout line. I was on the side of a road raging and throwing shit over blueberries. But the ability to you and I what we have now that we didn't have then is we have the ability and strength to weather the mundane does not mean life is easy. We which is what the global pandemic, we see things happening all over that are hard. But what we can say is that the unicorn space is your umbrella, when you have experiences that give you happiness and meaning together, not happiness without meaning not the binge watching the Netflix and again, the edibles and the wine, that sort of we've gotten through to numb ourselves and not the meaning without happiness, which is raising kids. But really these happiness and meaning bursts. What you're doing here, you have curiosity, you brought me out, I wonder what he was gonna say maybe it's good, maybe it's not, you connect, you had the we have the ability to connect with each other. And then even if you're not happy with what happened today, you're still willing to edit it and upload it to complete something. This podcast, your book is a cycle of curiosity, connection and completion. That is meaningless and happiness together. That is what we need to weather, the shit storms of the mundane of what it feels like to be a parent. And to be a caregiver, even if you're not a parent, or to be a single parent or to be somebody in charge of your aging and ailing uncle, we're here to say that you still deserve to be interested in your own life. And so I think that's again, where our work intersects. And it's different. It is different than other messages out there. Because it's a practice, like exercise. And we're not giving people a quick fix. We're saying this is a lifelong practice. And that's harder.

  KC Davis 42:55

  I love it. Well, thank you so much. Even and if you're listening, check out fairplay you have an audio book as well.

  Eve 43:00

  Yes, it's fun to listen on audio, especially if you're busy. But I would say that, you know, not everybody can afford all resources. Even today's we said that logo was expensive. So there we have a lot of free resources if you want to sign up for our newsletter at Fair Play life. Also, we have the cards again, all free resources in the Fair Play Life website.

  KC Davis 43:18

  Awesome. And if people want to follow you or learn more about you, where can they do that?

  Eve 43:23

  Also, all things fair play or fair play life. If you want a more raging political version, then you can always follow my personal account, which is just a Brodsky.

  KC Davis 43:33

  I love it. Well, thank you so much. And if you're listening here today, we're glad you're here and we just want you right now to know no matter what stage of life you're in, what family makeup you have, that you do have the right to be interesting, and to have the spaces in your life where meaning and happiness overlap and it doesn't matter what came before or after. You can absolutely start that journey today. So thank you for listening and II. Thank you for being here.

  Eve 44:01

  Love you, KC. I want to do this again.

  Unknown Speaker 44:03

  Absolutely.

We focus a lot on this show about survival skills regarding your life and your home. When we struggle–and our mental health is at stake–we have to let go of lofty ideals and just do the basic tasks we need to survive. Even though interior design is not normally classified as a survival skill, as today’s guest says, “We all deserve beauty.” It’s true. We do. I’m joined by Katie Soro, a vintage dealer and artist who decided to start a new kind of interior design to fuel her passion for vintage and helping people find, curate, see, and experience beauty. Let’s dive deeper into this important topic.

 Show Highlights:

 ●      Why function AND beauty can coexist—and you deserve them both in your home

●      The first step in decorating your home: Don’t think about what others will say; there is NO wrong way to do it.

●      How a lifeless, inanimate thing can be beautiful and bring creativity to your home

●      How thrifting and antiquing allow you to curate your own style that speaks to you

●      Why beauty in interior design comes from the feelings we get from beautiful things

●      Katie’s practical tips for home design: (Keep in mind that there is NO right way to do it.)

●      Start with a room by considering the mood and function you want in that room.

●      Use lighting to set the mood and be functional for tasks.

●      Use wall art, and remember that it doesn’t have to cost a fortune.

●      Katie’s tips for finding design inspiration: Think outside the box, use Pinterest, don’t be afraid to try and fail more than once, and start thrifting to find unique pieces that speak to you.

 Resources and Links:

Connect with Katie Saro: Website, Instagram, The Art of Vintage TV Show (Magnolia Network and Discovery+)

Mentioned in this episode: www.shopgoodwill.com

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes

• Transcript

  KC Davis 0:05

  Hello you sentient balls of stardust, welcome to struggle care. I'm your host, Casey Davis. And today we're going to talk about interior design. I have interior designer Katie Saro on the line with me, she actually sent me an email about resonating a lot with the morally neutral aspect of my platform. And I'm so excited Katie to talk about interior design being morally neutral, because I feel like a lot of what I talk about is sort of like survival skills for people like, you know, okay, it's hard to eat. So here's just how you get food in your body and like, it's hard to clean. So here's how you just get basic functioning. And one of the things that I say a lot is like you deserve to function. And what really caught my eye about the email you sent me was when you said, you also deserve beauty.

  Katie Saro 0:51

  Yes, and I, I've read your book, and I've listened to the podcast, and I'm nodding my head with everything that everybody says like, Yes, this is so great. And then at the end, I think, Wait, but what about beauty like these people that are struggling, who are underwater, who are trying to make their home functional and safe, and life enhancing, we're forgetting about beauty and that they also deserve beauty in their home and in their life. And I don't think that the interior design world ever has that message in it, at least I don't see it, not in social media, not in magazines, not in books, it's always about here are the shoulds like you should do this, you should have this, this is the rule for how to create a room. And what I've been trying to do is take your principles, and then find what the metaphor is in interior design. And it's been resonating with so many people. And I came up with just saying that your home design is morally neutral. There's no one design that makes a house look put together. There's no one design that says okay, this is the way your home should look like. So when people come over, they know that you have your crap together, because your own looks like this. You know, I saw one was a tic tac that you did, where you turned your chairs around to look outside, right. And maybe you can explain what that was.

  KC Davis 2:25

  Yeah, I had. So my bedroom in my new house is pretty large. And there's this like bay window on one side. And the way the room is sort of structured, it was obvious that that was supposed to be like a seating area. So at first I put it's like a curved bay window, right. So at first I put the chairs with their backs to the window, like facing in like it was like a conversation area. And it looks really nice. But like a few days went by. And what I ended up doing was like, I wanted to look out the window and like drink my coffee, cuz I have a really pretty backyard. So I turned one of them around. And there was this sense of like, okay, no, they shouldn't really go this way. And then I was like, Well, who cares? Like, I want to be able to like sit here and look out the window. So then I turned the both the opposite way. But then I still wasn't like close enough to the window. So I was like bringing them closer and closer and closer until they were literally like you could rest your feet on the windowsill. Right. And I was like, I am aware that this doesn't quote unquote, look right. But this is the way I want to use my space.

  Katie Saro 3:25

  Yes. And I love that because one of your prongs and tell me if I'm saying it wrong, is that a home should function in the way that you use it. And it should serve you use. It's not like you have a moral obligation to make your home look one way or the other. But when I saw that post, and you said, I know that this doesn't look right. But this is how it functions. And I'm going to do it this way. And what I thought as an interior designer watching it is I don't think that one way looks right or the other. I don't think that it looked better for the chairs to be facing the other way it might have been if it were an Instagram photo and you were taking a photo of the space and you wanted to show off the chairs, then that's what an interior designer would do. But I don't think that there was one way that you're supposed to put chairs like I would argue with you that the chair is facing one way or another is not an element of interior design.

  KC Davis 4:21

  Well, that's an interesting comment too, because I feel like so much of the information that I get about interior design are like the quote unquote rules of interior design.

  Katie Saro 4:30

  Yeah. And I saw that and I thought, oh, no, I would put them that way too. It's totally fine and totally correct. It's not throwing away design in order for your home to function. It's just that functionality and design should work together. Right? If we're saying shoulds so that's what caught my eye was that was the first spark that made me think okay, well, what does it mean for a home design to be both functional and beautiful?

  KC Davis 4:58

  Well, I love the idea like, you deserve beauty because I feel like for a lot of us, we feel like design and aesthetics and pretty much like we do so much work unpacking, like, Hey, that's not the most important thing, especially when we're doing it from a sense of like, I need to look like I'm put together I need to look quote unquote, right. And so we sort of put that aside, and then you just go for function. But I also think that there's this other like equally damaging belief that design and beauty like that, I'm not allowed to do that until I get basic functioning down, like until I can clean well and eat well. And rest well and exercise like until like, I just need to stay here in my basic white walls, because I can't even get out of bed. You know what I mean? Like, I have to get good at functioning before I can move on to like the extra,

  Katie Saro 5:49

  Exactly an episode, I have a TV show called The Art of vintage. And an episode of the show was a family that had three sets of twins. And they were both going through grad school, they had actually seven kids, and they wanted me to come into their bedroom and their house was beautiful, and their family was beautiful. And you could tell there was a lot of love in that family. But they're also just kind of drowning underwater for so many years. And finally, she said, I felt like we finally kind of started to tread water. And now we have room for beauty. And I It really blew my mind to think oh, you only have room for beauty when you're not drowning. And that thought was something that needs to change. There's always room for beauty. And the title of the episode is actually beauty is functional, which is kind of turns everything around on its head. Because we think of you know, a couch is functional because you can sit on it. And a table is functional because you can put things on it. But does it have to be beautiful? And I would say no, it doesn't have to be but you deserve beauty and beauty is functional. It enhances your life just as much as having a table to eat on enhances your life. It gets to be beautiful. You deserve to have something beautiful in your home. And it's so hard to convince people of this. Because I think beauty is a loaded term. I think beauty has been overtaken by commercialism. We think of the beauty industry. And there's a lot of negative things to the word beauty. And we think of beauty as something that's expensive that you buy in the store for your home. We think that it's for the rich, or it's for the people who have a nice home or for only people who own homes. If you're an apartment, how can you I'm not gonna make this beautiful. I don't own it.

  KC Davis 7:49

  Or like beauty also for me, it's like beauty is professional.

  Katie Saro 7:52

  Oh, there you go. Yeah, beauty is professional.

  KC Davis 7:54

  You know what I mean? Like, I feel like I would say like, I want this room to be pretty and beautiful. And then I'll like put some things up. I'll be like, it doesn't look right. Yeah. Like, it doesn't look like what I see other people doing and professionals doing and it's like, I don't know how to recreate those looks. But then it's like, I don't even know like, do I want those looks? And am I kind of in a wrong place of like it having to look a certain way. And I also feel like it's also like this big condemnation on like, feeling like a valid adult. Yes. Like there's this real, deeply embedded, I feel like consciousness where it's like, okay, when you have your favorite band poster tacked to your wall with thumbtacks. That's like someone who hasn't grown up yet. You know what I mean? And then it's like, when you're grown up, you have accent walls, and you have framed art. And you have this, that and the other. And I felt like I was like I didn't, I felt all of a sudden, I was a grown up and I was like, I don't know how to move to like, adult beauty now.

  Katie Saro 8:53

  Okay, yes, that makes sense. Or maybe it's because our homes are something that we invite somebody into. So whenever someone comes into our home, what we're thinking is, what are they judging about my home? And how are they judging me by what my home looks like? And it's the same thing for having a messy home or a clean home. But it's true people come into your house, and they probably are judging you and thinking, you know, what, who is this person? Let me look at their home and judge who they are as a person. And that can be so debilitating when we're trying to decorate if we think about it from that perspective. So when you're trying to bring beauty in your home and you're trying to decorate your home, the first step is to not think about what other people do or what other people are going to think about your home.

  KC Davis 9:43

  And even like I always say like there's the invisible audience like I carry an invisible audience with me. Even if no one is physically coming to my house. It's like I have an invisible audience in my head. That's giving me those judgments anyways,

  Katie Saro 9:57

  yes, yes. Oh, I love that. That's a good phrase for an invisible audience. And maybe we don't even know that we're doing that. But it's happening. And when I, if someone's coming to me and saying, I'm not really a decorator, I don't know how to decorate a home, I don't care about that, I just need to hire you to do it for me. And I'd say, the first step is to ignore everything that you've seen and what you think your home should look like. Because beauty isn't something that you buy, or design isn't something you buy. And the first step to designing a home is to forget the idea that there's like a right and proper way to design it. Like it's an art. It's not a science. So I can give you tips. And there are a million tips online of how to create the mood in the home, how to design a bedroom, how to hang curtains, and all those things, you know, might be helpful, but we're looking at it from the wrong way. Because the first idea is that there is no right and proper way to do it. It's about setting the mood for your home in a way that's going to enhance the way that the room and the home works for you. And you can do that through things, right? How do we do that? We do that two things. So there's an element to buying things. But what makes a lifeless thing? Beautiful. Let's start there.

  KC Davis 11:22

  Okay, let me pause. We're gonna hear a word from our sponsor, and then I want to come back and visit that,

  Katie Saro 11:27

  okay.

  KC Davis 11:32

  Okay, so ask that question. Again,

  Katie Saro 11:35

  What makes when you're buying things for your home, they're just things, right? They're lifeless, inanimate things that you buy. But what makes a lifeless inanimate thing, beautiful. I don't even know the answer to that. What I say is what makes a lifeless inanimate thing beautiful, it makes a decoration beautiful is actually humanity, that lifeless thing becomes beautiful when it points to something that's greater than what it is, when it points to something that's bigger than what it is in its own nature. So let me give you an example. You could have tile that has a printed picture of marble on it, right. And it's not real marble, it's just a print of marble on a tile, right? Or you could have a slab of marble. And what I think that makes a slab of marble more beautiful than a print of marble is that it points to something greater than itself, it points to the fact that there was a rock that was under extreme pressure and the extreme pressure that the rock suffered, created all these stray oceans and beauty and differences. And it was that pressure that made it more beautiful. And when you have that in your home, it becomes not just a table or tile, but it becomes like this sense of a gives this sense of wonder where we look at it and think is marble a metaphor for life? Like, how, how did this stripe get here? Why is this marble more highly figured than this other slab of marble? Is it because of all this pressure it went through? Oh my gosh, how old is this marble is this 1000s of years old, millions of years old. So that piece of marble that's just a thing points to something greater than what it is that marble table points to something greater than the fact that it's a table that points to the fact that we live on this earth with all of this wonder and that nature is beautiful, and that suffering brings beauty. And that's what I mean, when I say that a thing is more beautiful when it transcends what it is as an object and points to something that's bigger than itself.

  KC Davis 13:56

  How can I do that with something that's like a more mundane object?

  Katie Saro 14:02

  Yes. So the what I said was that a thing is more beautiful, because of its humanity, and what makes humans humans and not animals. And I would say more than anything creativity, right? Our ability to be creative, is what makes us human. So if you create your own art, like you just paint a painting an abstract painting or anything, you put it on the wall that is more beautiful than a print of art by the store, because it points to who you are. It points to your creativity and what you made. We have this huge painting in our dining room that my kids made. And I just gave them random pieces of objects like a stick and a ball. And I give them a bunch of paint and I just let them throw my canvas, right. And it became this big abstract art piece that cost I don't know $5 certain materials, and it's the focal point of our entire dining room, because it's not just a painting I bought at a store is a painting that points to something that's greater than itself. And what that is, is my family, the memory that we have creating it, the color choices that I made. And that brings me so much joy to see it, even though it's not a beautiful masterpiece, or work of art. And even though it didn't cost any money,

  KC Davis 15:28

  And those things also take time, like so my mom, I just my mom is moving down to the city where I live. And one of the things that's really struck me like so we're unpacking her things. And my mom has a lot of like, decorative items. But as I'm unpacking them, I just keep thinking, like, these items are so beautiful. And I'm remembering like, there's certain items of hers that I will like forever associate with like growing up and seeing that item. And then there's other items that maybe are like newer, but you know, it's like, oh, yeah, that's her like, that is something she would like or this, she bought this on a trip or she want this, I love that. And I said to her, you know, I sometimes beat myself up over, not having what I consider like a completely designed space, because I do want like meaningful objects. But like that takes a lifetime to collect, you know what I mean? And I didn't want to just like go to Pier One or Hobby Lobby and like buy the decorative stuff, so that there was something on the wall. And I told her I said, you know, it's making me feel better about my like, quote, unquote, incomplete house, because I hope one day when I'm your age, I am surrounded by like a way of decorating that has really deep meaning. Like, here's this picture that I brought back from Mexico for her here's this like, you know, cup that I made out of clay when I was four years old. And it was really like kind of a moment of oh, I feel this pressure to be like done and packaged with a bow right now at my age. Yeah, but I also want what you're talking about, which is like things to point to something more than they are.

  Katie Saro 17:03

  Exactly. And you said it takes time. And that doesn't mean that you won't have a decorated home until you're 70 years old. But it does take some consideration. So it doesn't take money. And it doesn't take a designer to make something beautiful. It just takes a little bit of consideration. And I think that sometimes we need to give people permission to take that time to give themselves beauty, because it is life enhancing. And it is important and it matters. And it matters because you matter if that makes sense.

  KC Davis 17:39

  Yeah, one of my favorite things in my house is this vintage lamp that is two Siamese cats. And there's like a little light bulb on the back. And the reason I love it is because it was a gift. First of all, I just like it think it's a really cool piece. It feels kind of one of a kind, even though I know it wasn't at one point, but somebody gave it to me for my birthday. And it was really meaningful that they not only like thought of me, but they like went to a thrift store in search of an item that reminded them of me. And I was like, okay, hold up, this is all I ever want for presents anymore. Like I want me in my friends to like go to thrift stores and look until we find something and it's like, it's always cheaper that way, number one, but also, it felt really cool to be like, Okay, this is so much more of an accessible gift. But also, I love the idea that they like walked around a thrift store until something sort of inspired them some aspect of me

  Katie Saro 18:37

  Exactly. And that's why I always talk about thrifting or antiquing or going to garage sales. Because if you go to a showroom and a furniture store, that store is telling you what your should your house should look like that store is saying this is what a room should look like you this couch should go with this chair. This is what's on trend right now. This is how much it costs and can't should on yourself like that you can't have that idea in your head that it should look like anything. And that's why thrift stores are so great. Because no one at the thrift store is curating a look for you. Right? You are the curator when you go into a thrift store, you are looking at what is around and saying, Oh, that really speaks to me that really speaks to me. And it doesn't go together because the store said that it's in the same line doesn't go together because the store said it's in the correct color scheme. And they can't trick you. Yeah, they can't trick you.

  KC Davis 19:36

  One of my favorite things that I heard an interior designer that I follow online say is like when you see something on a shelf like at Target and you think I love that thing. I have to have that thing. She's like make sure you take that item off of the shelf that's on and go put it on a different shelf and look at it by itself. Yeah, because there's so many times that you're like, you know what I walk into the Joanna Gaines section of target. I'm like I love all of these things. But I've taken I've like, bought something from that section and then taken it home and been like this is just a wire fruit basket. And it's not doing in my home what it was doing in that section because you're right, because they curated the whole space. Exactly designed. And so I kind of felt as though ooh, this one little item is going to carry all of that impact with it when it gets home, as opposed to sort of being enamored with the item itself.

  Katie Saro 20:30

  Exactly. And I think that goes back to, well, you're a therapist, and I learned in therapy, and I hope this is correct, that feelings, your feelings are always valid, but sometimes your thoughts are not, right. So you can say this thought I have is wrong. And I'm going to not think this that anymore. But your feelings are always valid. And when I translate that a home design, I say how a room makes you feel is something that you can make, you can create a room that makes you feel good. If this room doesn't make you feel good, then that's valid. And we can change that. But if you have a thought in your head that says I like this, because I'm supposed to like that maybe question that thought and say wait, is this really my thought? Or did I get this thought from somewhere else? Is this somebody else's thought that was put into my head, and I am a designer? And I do this every day and I still have things put my head in, I have to question myself and say, Wait, do I really like this? Or do I just see it on Instagram all the time? And think that I like it? Because I saw it a lot. So you always have to question those thoughts like, Is this my style? Or is this somebody else's style that I've seen so often that I think it's a good style? But actually I don't really like it?

  KC Davis 21:51

  Yeah. And then maybe also, I find that like the emotional reaction I have to a style sometimes is more about the context that that style was given to me in right. So like it when I see like cottage core tiktoks It's not just a design, you're seeing like, it's very emotional background music, it's some damn lady running barefoot through the woods. Right? And it's like, it conjures this whole, like, Wow, if I had that, I would feel peaceful. Yes. And I feel like that's almost like a little bit of a backwards way. Like, you know, I have to it's the same thing of like taking it off the shelf and looking at it by itself, where it's like, okay, I do want my room to make me feel a certain thing. But it's more helpful for me to start in the room not start with some like very curated piece of something I saw because again, a design in a really well edited tick tock video, or a piece, you know, a spoon holder in the curated Joanna Gaines section of target. Like that's kind of where I get sucked in. Because I'm like, Ooh, this is what I want. I want this feeling. And I take it home. And I'm like, I don't feel like this stupid spoon holder is not making me feel this way. You know? And so I like how you're doing it the opposite. So it's not like I stumble upon something that is evoking an emotion in me. And I'm trying to like copy that emotion there. It's like, okay, here's my living room, like, what do I want to feel in my living room?

  Katie Saro 23:22

  Yeah. How do you set the mood? Because beauty when it comes to home design is not a thing that you buy. It's a feeling. And we create feelings through beautiful things. And what I said was beautiful things are things that point to something greater than itself. Beautiful Things are creative, beautiful things are heirlooms, beautiful things remind us of a person, beautiful things point to something that gives us a sense of wonder. And beautiful things aren't just something that you buy from a curated place. And I can give tips to people of how to set the mood for their home. How to bring in beauty.

  KC Davis 24:05

  Yes, I would love some practical tips for that person, like sitting in their first apartment going. Okay, great guys, like what do I do now? Or maybe that mom that's really stressed out and they're going I really want a beautiful home. But I don't have time for that. I don't have time. Where do I go from there? Yeah, I would love some tips.

  Katie Saro 24:23

  Okay, I will give these tips but with a caveat that the first tip is that forget the idea that there's a right way to do it. And we all have always have to start from that perspective. One is the biggest tip is that you're going to want to set a mood in that particular room. So start with a room and you want to set a mood that you want that room to be. And let's say you're in we'll start with a living room. Right. What I see with a living room is that that's where we do all of our living. There's usually toys on the floor or shoes on the floor or your books on the floor studying and you think, well, this can't be beautiful because we use it every day. But that doesn't mean that it's a perfect showroom, a beautiful room isn't a perfect showroom, a beautiful room is one that feels comfortable and safe and inspiring. So here's a practical tip that I see a lot of people missing is lighting. It's not something that you buy, but you might have just inadequate lighting in your room, you should have should I say should, it's helpful to have a light that's on a table. So a task lighting wherever you sit and read. Of course, every room usually has overhead lighting, and then having little lamps in places to set like conversations. Or let's say you read a book in the corner, and you have a floor lamp there. Or you have sconces over your buffet, or just having lighting in different places, and then having the right type of light bulbs in those lights. So in a living room, I would always recommend warm light, or what's called soft white light. And that small change makes a huge difference in a room, it doesn't take any time at all. And it really makes the room feel more beautiful. Because it points

  KC Davis 26:18

  I did that in this house. And it really did make a huge difference because I don't like overhead bright lights. And so I started sort of collecting lamps like I thrifted some lamps and I there was like a one light from target that I got and little lamps and big lamps and floor lamps. And one of the things that I did that was really helpful is that online, I found these really, really cheap smart plugs. And I plugged all of my lamps into smart plugs so that I can turn them all on and off at the same time with my Alexa because at first I was like walking to each lamp every single time. And I was like this is not functional. But no, it's been amazing how much the lighting changes things,

  Katie Saro 26:59

  I have the low tech version of that, like the Christmas lights that turn on it like they plug into the low tech even cheaper than Alexa. But so at like five o'clock every night, the lights will turn on. And then the winter here, it gets dark before then, and then my kids and the whole family like oh, the lights are on, let's go into this room. And you can kind of create almost a theater in your room, or a theater in your home or like, Oh, this is the set design for after dessert. This is the set that we do in the morning when we play in the playroom upstairs. So yeah, lighting is a big change. That's very easy. And then the walls, the walls, I that couple I talked about that had seven kids with three sets of twins. And were going through grad school and building a home. I walked into their bedroom and it was blank huge white walls everywhere. And if you have a messy house, the mess doesn't get on the walls. That's a that's a greatest thing. So like we have a messy house. And I don't it doesn't bother me to have you know things around. But the walls are always the way that I put them. The walls are always the way that I arranged them with the paintings that I love. And the kids don't throw it away. I don't need to clean it up every night. I don't need to maintain the walls, it's just set the way that I like it. So, you know, some in one of your podcasts, I heard you say that some people say well, I just want like one space that isn't ruined, you know, one space in my house because I don't feel calm unless I have one room that's put together. But that's the beauty of having art on the walls that you've put up is that it never changes. Like you always have that and that's yours. That's the way that you arrange the walls. And that's always beautiful, and no one messes it up. So for me, that's what creates the Calm in the Chaos of our home is that I have these walls that I can look at that are beautiful, and I don't have to look down at the floor, I can just look up at the walls

  KC Davis 29:02

  Well and it's perfect for like parents too, because like I am not at it. My kids are three and five there. I'm not at a place where I can have like a lot of breakable items, or like decorative items like they're gonna get picked up, they're gonna get played with, you know, the dogs gonna run by your end table, whatever. So, let's take a quick break for sponsors and then we'll come back and keep talking about walls because I have more thoughts on walls.

  Katie Saro 29:25

  Okay.

  KC Davis 29:31

  So the other thing I think is really cool about focusing on your walls is that I think that it's a lot more affordable to get meaningful art than it is to get meaningful like, decorative items. Because like I've seen the tiktoks where people you know, they go to the thrift store and buy the $4 painting and then pop out the painting and they have this like incredible frame, right and then they get common What is it like unlicensed art from to download from the and then they go to fedex or Kinkos. And they blow it up big. And it's like, that's cool.

  Katie Saro 30:05

  Yes. And that's it's also like when you say art, you might think that's expensive. But it doesn't have to be it can just be creative, like what you said. And I think that we can go back to what is beautiful art. And it doesn't mean expensive art. It doesn't even have to be a painting, it could be a beautiful quilts that somebody made that you love, and you hang the quilt on the wall, it could be a mural that you painted just a really simple mural, or it could be your kids are in a beautiful frame, it could be a lot of things. But I want to have the caveat there that it's not about filling space on your walls with prints of things that don't mean anything to you, like, all it takes is a little bit of consideration of hey, what painting really made me think like maybe you study the painting in school, or maybe there's a painting that really spoke to you or it created some sense of wonder in you. And it's just a print off the internet, but you put it in a beautiful frame. And that's going to mean a lot more to you than like a print that says you know, live laugh, love, or whatever. And it's filling space on the wall.

  KC Davis 31:09

  And like pictures, I started really focusing on getting, like nice pictures made like the two apps that I use the most is I've used mix tiles, where you can get like, you know, several different ones. And when you get them for anyone who's not familiar, they're not like there's not glass, it's almost like printed on a plastic and then the little plastic frames. So they're really lightweight, and you can move them around. But I was able to get like nine little pictures for like 100 bucks, and they it takes up like a huge portion of my wall. And then I also use an app called keepsake, which is a little more expensive, but they do like professional framing, because a part of this is also like, okay, if I'm already overwhelmed, like the idea that I'm gonna like, take a picture, like print it somewhere, and then go buy a frame or then like, go get it framed, and it's really nice with the keepsake. And I'm not sponsored by keepsake at all. But it's like I literally just like pick the frame and the mat and then like it comes in the mail. And so even just like once a year, I tried to get like an updated family photo. That's nice like that.

  Katie Saro 32:14

  I love that. And if you don't have money for that third shot, your Goodwill has a website, you can go to shop goodwill.com. And all I bought the most beautiful canvas paintings that were just enrolled at Canvas original art for $5.99. Those three rolled up beautiful original works of art, and I just thumbtack them to the wall. I didn't spend the money to frame I just thumbtacks on the wall. And they make me so happy because it's like, I sit there and look at these paintings. And I wonder who painted them where they came from. Like there's the stroke of the human who made them on there. And it was cheap, easy, and really made are added to that sense of wonder that I'm always trying to create a house that creativity and sense of wonder that objects can bring to your home,

  KC Davis 33:05

  I have two pictures in my home that I really love. One is when we moved into this house. So the last house we lived in was like the first home we'd ever bought, like my daughter was brought home from the hospital there it was longest place we'd really ever lived. And when we went to closing on this house, our realtor like brought us a closing gift. And what he had done was he had taken a picture of the front of our house that we were moving out of and had someone on Etsy, like watercolor it and then he framed it and gave it to us and had the address on it. And I literally was like crying in the closing because I was like this is the most thoughtful thing. And like we're gonna look back at this house for the rest of our lives as like the first home that we ever had. And and then the iMac gave me the idea of recently we had to put one of our like, beloved cats down, she had cancer and this was actually my husband's cat he had her before we ever met at a time in his life that was really difficult. He like went and got this cat and like, you know now we've had her for over 10 years. So I did the same thing. Like it gave me the idea I took a picture of her and I found someone on Etsy that does like custom animal portraits and like for 50 bucks he sent me this like watercolor painting of her and it looks exactly like her and so now she like hangs on our wall. And it was like such an important thing for my grief especially because something about it hits different than just like a photo of her right and it's just like kind of like her head in her face. And now she's like framed up on the wall and it's almost like she's like kind of looking over us so she's like still there and so there's like these small things but that's like been like another thing where it's like okay, when I find like an art piece that I like I tried to get it and then I try to occasionally make photos but then that's like a little third category I've found like, Okay, this is like beautiful and reminds me of things but also was like I can do a little extra step, to make it really interesting and point to that like bigger thing.

  Katie Saro 35:05

  I think that's what I was talking about when I say that something is more beautiful when it points to something greater than itself. So there's a picture, right of a person. And then there's a painting of a picture of a person. And that doesn't just point to that person. But that points to how much somebody loved you to order that painting for you, it points to the artist who created that with their loving hands, you know, and all those different layers of humanity and an inanimate objects makes it more beautiful. And it's always hard. Just like the word beauty is hard. It's always hard to explain to people that some things are more beautiful than other things, because we kind of get this achiness feeling when we say that, like, don't tell me what's beautiful. Don't say don't there's no objective beauty. It's all subjective. And I don't mean it in a way that's putting down something that you think is beautiful, I say some things can be objectively beautiful, or more beautiful. And I can explain why the reason why is because it points to something that's greater than itself. And if we just take that small step to think about why something's beautiful, then we can create more beauty in our home. And that's what it's all about is just creating more beauty for ourselves as a gift to ourselves, just like care tasks are a gift to ourselves, creating beauty and just taking the time to consider what is beautiful is a gift to herself.

  KC Davis 36:40

  So let me ask you this, I'm gonna give you an example. And maybe you could kind of walk me through the process of what I should be asking myself. So one of the rooms in our house that has not been done anything with is the study. So there's like this little study, and then my husband was really excited about it, because he's never like, had a real in home office. And we haven't done anything with it yet. But like, what, what I asked myself, or where would I even start? Because I have no like designer knowledge about like, what to do in this room? Or like what pieces to get, but like, Where would I begin? If I wanted to decorate that room? Or design that room?

  Katie Saro 37:14

  Well, what I would first ask is, how do you use the room? Or how does your husband use just a desk, like he uses it to work basically. And he doesn't really have anything? And the only like, functional important thing is like his computer. Okay, that's like the functional how he uses it. And what is the light situation? Do you have windows, there's a really big window with like shutters on it that open, and then there's overhead lighting, and there's overhead lighting, okay, so we're gonna set the mood for how you use the room, and he uses the room for working. I'm doing this with my husband's in office right now, too, which is definitely a work in progress. But for my husband, he loves to work in rooms that have tons of light to needs lots of light, otherwise you get sleepy. So the first office we did was moody because I was thinking about zoom backgrounds and what a lawyer would have in a zoom background. And I did that like they just did, what I say not to do is I thought, What should I design this room to look like in a zoom background to make them look like an important lawyer. And that was the wrong way of doing it. And we painted the walls dark green and had velvet and books and wood. And he hated it because it was dark. So now we move to a different room. And we're saying, Okay, let's not think about what the Zoom background should be. Let's think about what you want in this space. So the functionality has to be one of the first questions. Yes, yes, the functionality and not what you think it should look like, which I did wrong. So he likes lots of light. And I hate white walls. I think that is it just doesn't inspire me. But he loves light, bright things. It has a lot of light. So we painted the walls white. And then right now, when we first did it, he just had what you have. So it's just a desk and a computer. And it echoes and I'm wondering if your study echoes when he's in there if it doesn't have any other furniture?

  KC Davis 39:11

  I don't know, I guess I've never looked, I do know that like functionally, you know, all he needs us to be able to do at a computer. He has like mentioned that he would love to have like, sort of like a big old school desk.You know what I mean? Like something you would see like, you know, a President signing something on or something, you know what I mean? Like just a big kind of stately desk, and he says he loves to be surrounded by books, there's really only has like two preferences beyond the functionality.

  Katie Saro 39:40

  Well, that's great. That's easy to do. It seems like he knows what to do. So I would say build some shelves and let's say you get an hour kind of push back on the big stately desk and ask him why he wants the big stately desk does he want the big stately desk because he thinks that that's what you're supposed to have when you're an adult and yet The Office, you're supposed to have the big desk? Or does he need a desk that has a bunch of drawers and is small so it doesn't get cluttered very easily? Or does he like to have a big desk because he likes to spread out and work in a bunch of clutter and have books stacked on there? So first, I'd push back on that and say, Do you really want a stately desk? Or should we have like a desk in the corner that small that doesn't get cluttered, and then another table, that's, you know, something else? So I push back a little bit on what people say that they want just to make sure that it's their own idea, and not an idea that they came up with? Because of what other people think. And then same with the books does he want? Does he use books? Or does he just want the look of books for the look of book?

  KC Davis 40:45

  Yeah, like we have all of our books that like we've read, but he like famously never wants to get rid of books. So it's not that they're like, they're all he's read them all. But he's not using like reference books, right, where he's needing to, like, get them off the shelves. And then the other thing is that, you know, so that was my first thought is like, oh, let's do like bookshelves. But then I get into these places where I don't know how to like work around certain features. So for example, in this room, there's wood paneling on the bottom half of the rooms. And in the ceiling is this I forget what it's called, where it's like a lot of different shapes. Does that make sense? It's like all of the like it's wood, a coffered ceiling. Yes, a coffered ceiling. So I'm looking at this. And I'm like, okay, he wants books. So I thought bookshelf, but then like, you can't really like put the bookshelf because like, there's not like a way for it to go up to the coffered ceiling without it can't go to do the ceiling. And it'll stick out a little from the wall over this paneling. And so that's always where I kind of freeze. I'm like, Okay, well, I don't know how to give him like, the look or the mood he wants with these, like restrictions.

  Katie Saro 41:56

  Got it. Got it? Well, and the thing with just the way that you said it kind of points to the problem, because you're saying it, how do we get it to go to the ceiling when it's a coffered ceiling? And then I'd say why does it have to go to the ceiling? You know, why? Can't it sit a little bit out from the wall? Why does it have to be a bookshelf? Why can't it be? Maybe around the so you have paneling or wainscotting? Is that what you're saying? So why don't you just put one shelf on the top of the wainscoting all the way around. And instead of bookshelf, it's just a shelf that's on top of the wainscotting that goes all the way around the room. So it still holds all the books, but it's not up and down, like what you'd see in the library. It's some strip of books that go all the way around the wainscotting. So a creative idea to that would be what I would say to that.

  KC Davis 42:45

  And then like, so if I didn't have access to you to be like, solve this. Yeah. What would I do? Like what I go to Google and like, Where would be good places to like, look around for like, if I got to a place where it's like, okay, this is the mood I want. These are kind of like, what I'm working with the Restrict whether it's like room restrictions or budget restrictions. And then you're saying like, the next step is get creative. So like, if I'm just a person who like, where do I go to get inspiration on how to get creative? Like, do you have any kind of go twos?

  Katie Saro 43:13

  Well, first, I would say that, okay, so you're saying no one like you don't have me there to help you. And we're thinking about somebody who's just in their home, trying to design around a problem. So the first rule would be think outside the box, and don't think that there's one way that you should do it. And then once you think outside the box and think, hey, this might work, then I usually go to Pinterest, and I'll just type in something and scroll through, and maybe some sort of inspiration might hit me. But really, the hard answer is that you have to try and fail a couple times, if you don't have a designer who's helping you are you really have a problem. The best way to do it on your own is trial and error. And that's how you learn, you know, try something if you don't like it, trust your gut, try something else. If you don't like it, trust your gut, try something else and know that it's not going to be done in a day. And that's that's the hard answer. But it's also

  KC Davis 44:14

  it's also kind of the fun answer, though, like not to get discouraged the first time because

  Katie Saro 44:19

  Yeah, and think of it, you know, like I said, it's an art, it's not a science. So, I mean, I hate saying go look on Pinterest for inspiration. I think you have to be in a good place before you go looking for inspiration on the internet for something and I think that you are the best inspiration. So really, trial and error is the best inspiration and to think that it's fun. It's like creating a painting, you might make a bright bad stroke and you gotta paint over it. And that in itself is a gift to you. So it's almost like the process of creating beauty is just as important as what it should look like in the end. Does that make sense?

  KC Davis 44:57

  Yeah, that's actually really helpful because Is that gives me sort of like an order of things to think on. I think that's like really helpful practical advice.

  Katie Saro 45:06

  Yeah, maybe just start is the best advice for anybody who's feeling like they don't deserve beauty, they don't know how to get beauty and they're looking around and not seeing beauty. Just start. And that's why thrifting is good to because you, it only cost you $4. So you can try something else. But you know, it's more about keeping the principles in mind than here, let me tell you your to do list of what to do in a room because it's not going to be the same for everybody. It's not going to be the same for every room. But that principle of not thinking what it should look like, of trial and error, thinking outside the box, being creative. And then thinking about is this beautiful? Because it makes me feel a certain way. And if it's not, you don't need to have it in your home. And like is the beauty because like if I was in a room alone, looking at it, like, do I find it beautiful, as opposed to like, is it beautiful? Because in my mind, the imaginary audience in my head would say that that looks right. Yes. And that makes me feel good. Like that does make me feel some type of way. But yes, and I don't know if that's even helpful. And I feel like I wrote down a list. Before we did this podcast of tips. I want to tell people tips. And people always ask me tips. And I feel like there's lots of tips on the internet for hang curtains, lighting, a rug, here's where to find them. And those can be useful. But really, the most important thing is just starting in the right place. And having the right idea before you start that it should come from within you and not from outside of you. And knowing what is beautiful. And what is commercially beautiful. So what is beautiful because of what it is and what is commercially beautiful.

  KC Davis 46:54

  I will say that that's been my like formula for my rooms here is like, Okay, I know that if I can get curtains, a rug, lighting and things on the wall that like, I have like a baseline room that makes me really comfy. You know what I mean? And then I work on like, what kind of curtains or what kind of rug or what do I want on the walls? But I know that at the end of the day, like if I could just do those. Was that four things I listed? Curtains, rug?

  Katie Saro 47:23

  Yeah, yeah, like walls, the curtains? Yeah, yeah.

  KC Davis 47:26

  Like if I could just do those four things in the types of things that I really like. And I even have some rooms where I was like, clearly this doesn't all go together. But each piece individually makes me happy. So who cares? Yeah, yeah. And like, that's kind of my little like hack for, like, if I could just do those four things that like this will feel like a room.

  Katie Saro 47:44

  And I would add to those four things, something of meaning something here, this is what I would add to those four things. Because maybe someone is like that family I mentioned who just had blank walls. And basically a cot bed, no nightstands and like a holy blanket like a one quilt on their bed. And that's all they had in the room, what I would add to your list is something that's beautiful, just for the sake of being beautiful, and no other purpose whatsoever. So something that reminds them of something they loves an heirloom piece, a painting a statue, and at least one thing in every room that you think is beautiful. And it's not beautiful, and functions, but beautiful because or is something that is just beautiful, like just beautiful for the sake of being beautiful. That's its function. Yeah. And it's functional, because it's beautiful. It's not also functional and beautiful. And I think you need at least one of those in every room.

  KC Davis 48:55

  I love that I'm gonna literally take that. And there's like one room I can think of in my house. And I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna do those five things. And I'm gonna see what it looks like.

  Katie Saro 49:06

  Well, I hope that's helpful. And you know, it's a long process, my bedroom right now has no art on the walls. We just moved in a year and a half ago. It has no art on the walls. It's just one bed. It's just the blanket that we moved. When there's no rug, there's nothing you know, and that's my job. And it's okay. It's just not where we're at right now. We have a lot of other things to do, and that's okay. But I want to give people permission to give beauty to themselves to create a beautiful home in a way that's easy and simple. Well, that's really helpful. Where can people find you if they want to follow you see you learn from you. I'm on Instagram at Katie sorrow. I have a website you can find out there. And I do have two seasons of a TV show called The Art of vintage bits on Magnolia network and discovery plus,

  KC Davis 49:58

  That's awesome. I'm gonna go check

  Katie Saro 50:00

  those out. Yeah, I don't know if I said anything helpful, but you did. You helped me Listen, I'm gonna I'm inspired on how to go fix these rooms now.

  KC Davis 50:09

  I really appreciate you reaching out. And I appreciate the conversation that we've had. Because I think that, that that is like one of the breakthroughs that I think has been most helpful to me, even as my mom's been on PI. It's been interesting. Like, when I unpacked my house, I have this like, order that I feel like I have to go and where it's like, I have to get everything out of the box, then I have to get everything put away. Then I can do the decorative stuff. And my mom, she like, got half of the stuff out of boxes, and then started hanging pictures. And there was this part of me that was like, ah, that's the wrong order. But then she said, she was like, I just need something beautiful on the walls, so that I can feel like we're getting closer to home. I love your mom. I know, I was like this is so it's such a metaphor for a life event. You know what I mean? Where it's like, Yes, I still, you know, this still needs to be functional. And I still, you know, need to meet my basic needs, and I need to survive, but like, she kind of looks at it at this holistic, like, it's just as important that I'm allowing myself to see beauty and do something enjoyable as it is to, you know, find out where all of these little votives are gonna go and like what drawers are gonna hold the silverware and things like that. So I just that was kind of my little

  Katie Saro 51:22

  Who needs a place who needs a place to sit when you have beautiful art on the walls. That couple that I designed their living room or design their bedroom that was empty and that said that they had been drowning for so many years. The first thing that I bought was a giant ostrich was a wooden ostrich that was painted multi colors. It was like life size. And that's the first thing I bought for the room. And that's what inspired the whole room and I didn't really do a whole lot else. I just bought this giant ostrich and put it on the wall. And it served No, I didn't turn it into a table. I didn't turn it into a chair. It just put it on the wall because I thought that that would inspire the rest of their house to say okay, what is the ostrich that this room needs? Like? What is the ostrich of this room? You know, what is the humor that I can bring into this room? What's the art for art's sake that I can bring into this room?

  KC Davis 52:15

  That's awesome.

  Katie Saro 52:16

  Because beauty first, maybe that should be the

  KC Davis 52:19

  I love it. Thank you so much.

  Katie Saro 52:22

  Thanks for talking to me.

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Today’s conversation brings us to the unusual intersection of social media influence, DIY home repair, and trans activism. I’m excited to introduce you to my amazing guest for today’s show!

Mercury Stardust, the “Trans Handy Ma’am,” is a professional home maintenance technician, burlesque performer, author, and award-winning activist. Mercury credits her TikTok success to her experience teaching burlesque, where she learned to communicate and create a safe space for students who had frequently experienced trauma. She has been featured in stories by NBC, NPR, Buzzfeed, Newsweek, the Washington Post, and Pink News. Her leadership within the trans community has led to collaborations with such brands as I Fix It, Lowe’s, and the trans healthcare community Point of Pride. Mercury’s recent livestream fundraiser ended up raising over $2.2 million, and she’s embarking on a huge book tour this fall to promote her book, Safe & Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair.

Show Highlights: 

●      How Mercury created a safe space with “Gentle DIY” in the male-dominated handyman world

●      How Mercury became a home maintenance technician to supplement her living as a cabaret performer

●      Why Mercury’s content caters to apartment renters and others who may not be comfortable with tools and DIY repairs

●      Why Mercury shows up authentically without pretense and perfectionism

●      What it’s like to be a prominent trans woman on the internet and still manage her mental health

●      How Mercury handles the task of setting boundaries with people to protect her emotional and mental health

●      Highlights from Mercury’s book, Safe & Sound, and her upcoming 52-city book tour

●      How Mercury leans into her weaknesses and insecurities

 Resources and Links:

Connect with Mercury Stardust: Website, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and Safe & Sound book

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes

• Transcript

  KC Davis 0:05

  Hello you sentient balls of stardust. Today is a good day for struggle care. I am so excited to have mercury Star Dust here on the podcast episode say hello mercury. Well

  Mercury Stardust 0:15

  hello, Mercury.

  KC Davis 0:16

  Mercury and I've been listening to my podcast episodes and I realized I never introduce anybody. So I'm going to do that right official Okay, so Mercury Stardust is the trans handy ma'am. A professional home maintenance technician, performer and award winning activist Mercury credits her tick tock success to her experience teaching burlesque where she learned to communicate and create a safe space for students who had frequently experienced trauma. She has been featured in stories by NBC, NPR, Buzzfeed, Newsweek, Washington Post and pink news. Her leadership within the trans community has led to collaborations with such brands as I fix it, Lowe's and the trans healthcare community point of pride. Let me just stop right there. Because Can we just start by saying that you recently did a fundraiser?

  Mercury Stardust 1:04

  Yeah. 30 hour live stream? Yeah.

  KC Davis 1:06

  Yes. And your goal was to raise $1 million?

  Mercury Stardust 1:09

  Yes.

  KC Davis 1:10

  How much money did you end up raising?

  Mercury Stardust 1:12

  $2,253,000 a pretty wild number, to be honest.

  KC Davis 1:20

  So before we started recording, you and I were talking about how both of us have kind of known each other para socially through Tik Tok. And I want to just kind of like get into your origin story. So those who are listening, you know, you are most well known on tick tock, as the trans handyman, where you talk about home repair, home maintenance, and you really kind of geared towards renters and people that maybe have never learned how to do those things. And you're a safe space. Like that's obviously a very male dominated space like the handyman world. Yeah. So talk to me a bit about creating this space where people who maybe often feel excluded from being able to learn those types of things can come to you,

  Mercury Stardust 2:02

  it is wild, because so much of the way I teach is a direct result of how I was treated, right. So like I was treated badly when I was learning these things. When I was trying to be able to become a part of this industry. I wasn't always treated with like rainbows and sunshine, I was treated with a lot of like, you know, mud in your eye kind of mentality. And in order to have me survive, I just kind of like toughened up and turn the other cheek. And I hate that mentality. I hate it. I never want anyone else to have to go through what I went through. So naturally, when it came to educating people, it just was like a natural transition for me in a lot of ways. And I know a thing or two about transitions. So like, I just like becoming online and doing all this stuff. And communicating what I call a gentle DIY is very much just instinctual because it's the way I wish I was taught when I was being taught all this stuff.

  KC Davis 2:55

  And so what kinds of things like what are some of your biggest videos on like home care that you do? Because you're not the kind of homecare that I am where we talk about like dishes and laundry and cleaning?

  Mercury Stardust 3:05

  Yeah, no, the biggest videos I've ever done had been a wide variety. I'm very, very lucky that I went viral for like 10 different things all at once. But one of the biggest things is probably my wall stud video, how to find a wall started with a magnet, how to fix a door, a bunch of loose screws and a door hinge with toothpicks. You know how to fix mini blinds in your apartment by taking the bottom blind and putting it in the middle. Just the list goes on and on. Really, all the stuff that I thought was pretty straightforward stuff. Right? Like either I learned it on the farm growing up as a kiddo. Or I learned it when I was in the industry for 16 years. And I just thought a lot of this was secondhand or or like instinctual? You know, but there's no such thing as common sense, right? As we both know, there's many common ideas, right? But that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is going to automatically know how to do this stuff. So a lot of the stuff that went viral for was things that are pretty foundational educational tools in the home maintenance industry.

  KC Davis 4:09

  So when you got into home maintenance, were you primarily working on houses or apartment complexes.

  Mercury Stardust 4:15

  I got in through the whole maintenance door through the back door. I was a traveling cabaret performer and I needed to make money. And here's the thing as a traveling cabaret performer, I went to all these shows across the country, right? 125 different cities 24 or 26 different states. And I made my living Thursday through Sunday, just juggling, I'm half naked in front of strangers, you know, because we toured primarily in gay bars all across the country. But you know, if anyone who's in the industry in burlesque and cabaret knows you just don't make a whole lot of money anymore from the industry. So a friend of mine said, Hey, you should try to be a maintenance intern at this, you know company that does theatrical lighting called latronnik theater controls. And you should become a maintenance technician in their facilities department as an intern for some money. And I said, Sure, I'll apply, we'll see what happens. I don't really want to do this stuff, I kind of hate it. But might as well, I guess I'm good at it. I'm good at fixing things and working with my hands. So why not? So I applied and I got the job immediately. And then within four months, I became a full time maintenance technician. And then within two years, I became a full time Maintenance Technician grade two, which is a big deal in our industry. And then I just kept on going, I just kept getting getting certification with the certification, and I got 14 certifications in the field. And I primarily at first worked in industry for 10 years as a building technician. That is, like more like big factory company technicians, people who walk around and fix machinery, or people who walk around and fix, you know, maybe doors and painting and stuff like that, but not a lot of home stuff. I then shifted into property management and into private contracting, while I was there as part time, and then it became full time later on.

  KC Davis 6:02

  One of the things that I love that you do quite a lot is that the amount of times that I've had something that I wanted to do or wanted to fix, and I go to YouTube, and I go, okay, and bla bla bla how to fix this thing. And it's like, go and get the Agra 3005. And I'm like, I don't own that like, and you have so many solutions that I feel like are actually reachable for somebody who might just be renting an apartment, like maybe they have a basic toolkit. And the super that won't fix something.

  Mercury Stardust 6:32

  Yeah, is this mentality that you and I know very well about intersectionality. You and I have talked extensively online about this. And I think that like this is the same mentality I had when it came to helping people with burlesque, right, and making sure that we open that door and make people feel comfortable with things where they're at and making sure that we lean towards voices that are not often heard in our spaces, right. And one of the voices we don't hear enough in home maintenance is renters. And if you lean into them, right, if you lean into their restrictions and their experience, what you actually end up doing is you make things way more accessible for literally everyone. If you're worrying about cost, right? Like there's a complementation well guess what happens, you're helping renters if you're talking about like basic foundational entry level home maintenance ideas, then yeah, that's almost perfect for renters, because everything is in a rental, it will be in a home, but not everything that's in someone's house that they own is going to be in a rental. So like, by that very definition, I was focusing on people that could help everyone and everyone else in the industry, including this old house, all of them are doing is focusing on huge ideas for people that have become a select few in this country. A lot of people now especially, you know, my age and younger cannot afford to access housing, right. And a lot of us struggle day in and day out to try to make ends meet. So yeah, you know, the trick I have that went viral a few weeks ago about using toothpaste to be able to place a picture on a wall, so you know where to put the nail

  KC Davis 8:08

  I just used i, Yes, in the video that I posted where I said, you know, I wanted to do my gallery wall. And I had this like, long thing in my head about, okay, I need to trace each one on butcher block paper, and then lay it all out. And then I need to a laser level every little bit. And then at the end, I was like, I'm not going to do this, this is too many steps. I just need to throw them up there. And that's what I did. I got I had some that had the two holes at the back and I was like oh shit, and I did I put the toothpaste around it and I stuck it on the wall and I could see where it needed to go. And that's the other thing we talked about both having ADHD, one of the things that I find is that if I need to do something in my home, whether it's like I needed to put together some shelves, I needed to put up a pegboard for my tool. So they're easier to find. I wanted to put up my gallery wall because of my ADHD, if it's something if I get in, and there's one thing different, like, okay, I can hang a picture, but I've only ever hung a picture with one nail with the you know, the wire and all of a sudden it's the two and I'm going well how do I make those even little things like that, that I feel like other people might be able to just swerve and Google and figure out it paralyzes me, you know, and I sit around, I put it off and I put it off and I put it off. And one of the things that your content has been really helpful for me is not only the literal tips and tricks that I've learned, but also just this idea of maybe I could do this though, like maybe I could do it and it wouldn't be too hard and it wouldn't be too complicated. And you know, and so sometimes I just need that extra sort of push to go well, maybe this won't be as complicated as I think because I am so used to thinking that everything in the home maintenance world is going to be complicated.

  Mercury Stardust 9:55

  Yeah, like everything. It almost feels like it's gatekeeping ourselves. In a lot of ways, because like, here's the thing, if you never see yourself on these screens, or in this field, when you ask for help, if you never see a queer person or a trans person, or a woman who's wearing overalls and tools and doing this work, you're gonna start thinking this stuff isn't meant for you, the representation works for us to like, isn't just about helping other people come to terms with who they are a representation can genuinely be us giving ourselves permission sometimes to be able to want to learn how to do this stuff.

  KC Davis 10:33

  And just showing up as a real person. Because, like, I know, plenty of women that do DIY content and things like that, where they're, you know, putting together two by fours. But a lot of them are very straightforwardly like, thin, tan, wealthy women with perfect hair that are like, so that I whipped up a cabinet out of scrap wood. And I'm like, well, that's not I can't do that. But it gives you this idea that like, you almost have to be the kind of person that has your shit put together to be able to do something like that.

  Mercury Stardust 11:07

  Yeah, there's some videos where I have like, stands on my shirts, and stuff, you know, like, you see me and it's like, does she just come out of like, a hotdog cart? Or, you know, and I'm 100% I think they're like, Yeah, I can be in full makeup, right. But I could also be in stand outfits and stuff. And it's really important to me, that I don't clean up completely for that notion. Because here's another thing, a lot of the DIY Girls on the internet that I followed for a long time before I came here, you know, on the internet myself, looked like they would commit hate crimes against me, you know, like, they didn't always look like,

  KC Davis 11:45

  I'm sorry, that's so funny.

  Mercury Stardust 11:48

  It's true. Like, sometimes, I would be like, Oh, I love her. And then I would like dig deeper into her and be like, No, I don't love her anymore. I mean, like, it's like the religious undertones. Or maybe they don't have very sensitive ideas to those who are disabled. You know, they don't meet you where you're at, still, in a lot of ways. They are upholding the patriarchy and not necessarily opening the door. It's this mentality of like, oh, I walked through the door. But in order for me to exist in this room, I have to make sure I slam that door shut before you get through it. And 100% feels that way in this industry, sometimes, especially for DIY, like FIM content creators.

  KC Davis 12:32

  And the amount of times that you've come on the internet and just said, I am having a really hard time is so important. Because you know, and I'm kind of similar to you, like I don't want to be all put together. And even when I'm doing something that's not about my house, I don't want to clean up my house just to make a video. Because it contributes to that idea of like, I'm not allowed to do a fun project. Unless I'm on top of everything else, I can't prioritize fixing that door that's been bothering me for however long, because I've got a sink full of dirty dishes, or I can't, you know, and there's just all of this weird moralistic, perfectionistic hierarchy. And there's something really powerful about the way that you show up, and sometimes say, I feel really broken today, or, you know, I'm not all put together today, but like, we can still get shit done.

  Mercury Stardust 13:20

  I am working really hard on myself. And I am working extremely hard on trying to take care of myself more, I'm not good at it. I'm very bad at taking care of myself. I'm very good at helping others. I have very little skill when it comes to making bridge for myself. And what I'm finding is that what helps me a lot is to just call what it is and say what it is sometimes, you know, if I'm having a real bad time, one of the biggest stressors I have is I gotta feel like I'm making content. I got to feel like I'm making content, I got to feel like I'm producing I got to feel like I'm on the top of the world. I got to feel like oh, how dare I even feel bad because blah, blah, blah. So what helps me is just to say, hey, you know, guys not doing good. I'm a hot mess right now. And I'm not positive, I'm going to be able to make content and I took most of this past month off. I took a lot of this past month off making content and boy feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

  KC Davis 14:26

  Alright, so I want to talk a little bit about that about what it's like being a large content creator and the mental health side of it and all this. Let's take a quick break, hear from a sponsor, and we'll be back. Okay, we're back. So I want I would love to talk to you about what that experience has been like for you because I know what it's been like for me and I am in a similar place of like I posted three to four to six times a day for like two years straight and then hit a place where it was like I could force myself to keep doing it at this pace, but I'm not feeling it. I'm not in the flow and you know, talk to me about what it has been like to Be a prominent trans woman on the internet,

  I knew I was gonna love talking to you, because I, you hit it right on the head. Sometimes when people ask me this question, they leave out the trans part. And it's a huge part of my identity, I just wrote a script for a new video that would coming out sometime soon, about how being trans is a small facet of my life. But it's also like, I'm five foot 11, right? Being mean being five foot 11, something I don't even think about. But other people perceive me as five foot 11 Because I am five foot 11. And how I am able to reach things off at the top of the shelf, how am I able to do all these things? I access the world through a different lens than someone who's five foot two? And that's just that's a fact of the world.

  I'm literally five foot two.

  Mercury Stardust 15:47

  Yeah, oh, yeah. I call that. But like, I have a way through the world differently. So how I experienced the things just are innately different. And sometimes people leave that part out about me. And it's like, You're not telling the full story. So to answer your question, Casey, like, I'm also transitioning in front of millions of people. If you look back two years ago, two and a half years ago, to my first few videos, my bone structure and my cheekbones are innately different, my chest has evolved much more, I don't look the same, I just don't look the same. I don't even sound the same contrary to a lot of people's belief system. I am in fact doing voice training. And my voice is changing slightly over the last two years. And how I'm trying to talk to my audience is changing. Being a large content creator in front of potentially millions of people every day is a lot on your brain, when you're also someone who a lot of trans people look up to a lot of trans people look up to me, and maybe they've been transitioning longer than I have. Or maybe they just feel like there isn't any other trans person and they know that they can relate to them. And we I'm someone they can relate to in some way, that those responsibilities. Oh, my God, especially right now with all of the legislation against trans people. And all the communication about trans people in the last year to two years has been just absolutely nuts. So but so it's been wild is I feel like I'm strapped to a rocket Casey. And I feel like someone lit it. And I'm just waiting for it to fly off the handle. And I'm just like looking at the wick as getting shorter and shorter. And it's terrifying. I feel like I'm white knuckling it every day. And that's part of the mental health part of the mental health struggle is me feeling out where I am in the landscape of living my life, because there is no more blueprint for me when I wasn't just a technician, and I would fix toilets. And I would fix sinks, and I would fix doors. There was a blueprint of how I did my life, you clock in you clock out, you go home, you you know, you raise the kids and you go back to work. And it made sense to me, it was a blue line, not my days are sometimes all over the place, I can work a four hour day, I could work a 16 hour day I could work. You know, I could be in Anaheim for a week, I could be in New York for a week I could be you know, I may be doing a 52 city book tour like him in the fall, right? I'd be doing all these things all over the place. And there is no more structure in my life that made me feel like I was tethered to a reality that I understood. I feel like I no longer am in the realm of realistic expectations. You know, I feel like I don't know what my life is anymore. And as a trans person who's also just like, trying to figure it out. It's terrifying, to be honest.

  KC Davis 18:37

  So let me ask you two questions. And you can answer either one, whichever one's more interesting. The first is, do you ever feel there's this thing that I experienced sometimes because so much of my platform was built on being sort of a compassionate therapeutic presence, that when I perceive someone demanding gentleness from me, despite their behavior, there's this like, almost rebellion where I want to be a piece of shit to them. Because I there's like this resistance to this, like, even though I was the one who chose like, this is going to be my platform or whatever. I kind of like refuse to be someone's little character. And then the next question is, you know, how do you feel like how is it to balance this feeling of being a leader in the space without being the spokesperson for all trans people, particularly with trans people looking to you and non trans people looking to you?

  Mercury Stardust 19:38

  I think for me, in a lot of ways I try to remember remind myself all the time, Casey, that I am someone who consented to one video on the internet. You know what I mean? I consented to me, telling people that I was an intersectional feminist and trans maintenance lady that was my original tagline. It was a stupid tagline. And I consented to this idea of like that video itself is going to be inspiring and helping people and being kind. And then I felt like I was forced, in a lot of ways to maintain that ideal. The more I went along, the more I got a lot more rebellious with that, like image of myself, you know, that's when I used to love doing my weekly burlesque show where people would watch me online because I got to be like, Fuck you guys. You don't I mean, I got to be like, Yeah, my butthole you know, I got to Conor act a lot of the notions about me. But now that I'm farther away from my retirement from burlesque, and now I'm just doing this as a full time content creator. It's gotten more and more where people look at me as like a holier than thou entity sometimes, and I do get very uncomfortable with it. I do find myself because here's the thing. I am nice. I'm kind, but I'm not as Jory. Lauric skull, my very good friend would say, I'm no one's pushover. And I think sometimes people like they'll like, sometimes they'll meet me. And they'll tell me, they're very, very traumatic stories. And they'll tell me how I helped him in those traumatic times. And I'm so grateful to be able to help people in that way. But I'm also not emotionally capable enough to process every single person's trauma, I'm not able to. So I'm finding ways to try to distance myself sometimes for my own mental health, from the absolute unloading of people's emotions. So like I am, I can be kind one of the kindest things I can do to people when they don't know who I am. And just come up to me and tell me this kind of stuff. It's been like, thank you so much for telling me that. I'm not in a great place right now. I cannot hear more of this. But I want to send you my love. You mean a lot to me. And that's it. That's kind that is kind. And that is compassionate. But also that's setting a guy named boundary. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I think for so long, I felt like if I said anything that was counterintuitive to me being like, don't you worry, you tell me everything. You tell me about all that pain that you have. And then I'm not going to I'm going to go home and I'm going to cry into a pillow alone for hours. Because now, not just you but five other people do the same thing to me at Walmart, you know what I mean? And that's something that's happened. I don't know how what you feel like and what you experience. But for me, if I go to any gay establishment, or if I go to, you know, a pride, or if I go to a gay bookstore, if I go to anything with gay, queer LGBTQIA in it, I'm going to get bombarded and often put into a situation where emotionally I'm going to have a lot to process. And it's a weird feeling to have to be in spaces that are safe spaces for the queer community, but are no longer emotional safe spaces for me, you know what I mean? Yes, I'm on Yeah, if I'm going to a nightclub, and I'm like, Oh, good, I get to see a drag show. Well, guess what, you're gonna be almost a bigger name than a lot of the drag queens on stage. So you better be on you gotta be in full makeup, you better be in full gear, you better just own it. Because if you don't own it, it gets even more uncomfortable. And that's a hard dichotomy. So now into the second question about being a leader and not being a spokesperson. Boy, after we raised that $2 million, the amount of of people who were wanting more from me was surreal, Jory. And I, both trans women, and we work with point of pride, which is a nonprofit organization that actually vets and helps people directly, they do mutual aid for us. So we don't have to vet every single person ourselves, right, which is a huge task, I could never vet that many people, right, we helped 11,000 people, that's an insane thing to do, right? without actually having a structure around you to be able to do that. So after we raised all this money for point of pride, and we do all that the one of the biggest push backs we got from people was that we should have did actual mutual aid. People were really upset with us for not doing direct GoFundMe for people or things like that. And there's no way at a large scale, to be able to help that many people you just there isn't a functional way that I can still live my life and still be okay. And to do that. That's where burnout comes and that's where like, there will be problems. You still if someone has said it was like, I wish you could do direct mutual aid instead of rolling a dice like You're lucky that you get randomly picked. What is me picking on GoFundMe randomly do is the same thing. That's the same thing. But in point of pride, the notion There are criteria that makes you eligible, they try their best as much as they can be equitable. So they focus really strongly on people who are the most marginalized to help them and because of that, and that's been who I'm I'm aligning myself with, I very much have been take During their example, and using that, to help me understand how to lead in this industry, like how to lead in my community, I don't necessarily have to be the voice for every single person. But I do feel like, I need to be hyper aware of how I am perceived by people. And I need to be hyper aware of how my actions will hurt or affect or uplift or diminish other people's voices. Yeah, be honest, I'm still working this one out, KC

  KC Davis 25:29

  Yeah, I mean, listen, meet you. Well, I was just gonna say that, you know, the thing that we're not saying to each other, is like, the caveats that I would give to somebody that wasn't also a large content creator, which is the like, now obviously, I love what I do. And I am very grateful to have a large platform, and it is very meaningful. And I know that I'm privileged to be able to make a living doing this thing that I really enjoy doing. Like, I don't feel the need to say those things to you, and you don't feel need to say them to me, because we know how awesome it is, and how much privilege to just kind of have gotten lucky on the viral videos.

  Mercury Stardust 26:04

  Yeah, this job is the coolest job in the world. Are you kidding me? You know, it is the coolest, you know, here's the thing, like, for me, I worked 6570 hours a week, you know, in either construction, or maintenance or private contracting for years for years. You know, like, I'm my knees are still shot, my back is not doing great, you know, this job is a whole different kind of exhaustion. There is a genuine, I gotta be honest with people, I would not recommend this job for people who have heart conditions, I'm not gonna lie, it isn't. I feel like I'm stressed to the max most days in ways I've never been. I feel like I've found new ways to be exhausted in the last two years of my life. And I'm grateful. Like, I am so grateful for having the team around me, I have some mercury starters, media is not just me anymore, it is six people total, we have five people who work with me most days, three of which are full time people, and everyone gets paid equitably. I do not make much more than everyone else does. The minimal person I think gets paid three, two bucks an hour. So we try our best every single day to balance things out and make it less scary for me. But yeah, it is a lot. It is so much. And when you're talking to other content creators, there's like a shorthand that you get to have with each other where it's like, Hey, you already know these things. And I can't imagine when content creators, don't have a business person don't have a creative director and don't have those people around them. I did that for the first year. I don't recommend it.

  KC Davis 27:46

  That's amazing. I don't have any of those people. But I will say this, because I publish with Simon and Schuster. I do have a publicist, I have an agent, I have an overseas agent. I have like a marketing, you know what I mean? But they're not like reporting to me daily. They're like working for Simon and Schuster. But it's still a huge load. And I do have a woman that does my Instagram for me. And I think that the thing is like, it is awesome. But there's also this weird space where like, it used to be that like, famous people were celebrities, you were a celebrity or you were a non celebrity. And it's weird to be on the world of content creating where you have a platform, you become sort of a known person. And also you're reading your comment section,

  Mercury Stardust 28:33

  back celebrities had insulation from themselves in their fans at one point. We don't, you know, like it's a direct line to us in a lot of ways. You know, I don't really read my emails or my fan mails, like I used to, I just don't, my team does, and they will pick ones that they think I would like you to give it to me. So we funnel it through me a lot more. That's been a huge change. Because I used to find myself well, if you wrote it, I feel like I have to read it.

  KC Davis 29:00

  Oh boy. And I felt like I had to respond. And it had to be a very emotionally laboris response.

  Mercury Stardust 29:06

  I was taking phone calls from people at two o'clock in the morning from Alaska to fix their sinks. That's a real thing I did. Oh my gosh, there was someone who sent me an email the first two months or something being the trans handyman. And she was in the worst way Casey she was panicking about her husband was in the military and she was all along and she's in this like backwards, you know, area and Alaska takes two hours to get this in the nearest store. She had nothing at home besides like baking soda and vinegar. And I spent like literally hours on the phone with her walking her through how to like take care of her clog in her bathroom. She was like so devastated. And I loved it though. I loved that kind of stuff. I thought that was a coolest thing in the world that I got to be that involved in people's life but then it started really shifting and now the bigger I got the As a human, I got to some people. And the tone in the comment sections stopped being about me being a human and sometimes about an entity, like people would either choose to look at the lens of my of only I was a trans person, or people were to look at me like I was like a trans holier than thou entity. And they would either use me as an example to put down other trans people, or they would use me as an example of how all trans people are this one way, and it started shifting. And I was like, I can't do this anymore. I can't be this directly involved in my audience anymore. I can't read every email, I can't comment everything, I can't do it anymore. It was a really hard shift. It's still hard. But sometimes I feel like I'm so far away from my audience now. But it's been for my best mental health I've ever done.

  KC Davis 30:53

  Good for you. Okay, quick break. And then I want to come back and I want to talk about your book. Okay, so you have a book, I have pre ordered it, I am so excited to get it. And it is called Safe and sound. So talk to me first about the title, why safe and sound?

  Mercury Stardust 31:10

  Well, it's safe and sound came because the pushback was they didn't want me to call it a renters friendly Guide to Home Repair. So ironically enough, safe and sound are renters friendly Guide to Home Repair was a way for me to compromise. Because again, they were so afraid of it being just for renters. But as I said, many, many times a focus is not an exclusion. So safe and sound, very much came about wanting to make the audience feel like they're being hugged by the book.

  KC Davis 31:40

  That is exactly how it feels.

  Mercury Stardust 31:42

  Because so much of things in this field are like how to fix your home for Dummies, you know, like drywall repair for Dummies, you know, or painting for idiots. You don't I mean, are Idiots Guide to this, you know, they're insulting you before you even open the book.

  KC Davis 32:01

  No safe and sound is such a perfect title, because it not only tells me that I can leave my apartment safe and sound like, obviously, I can't do certain things because it's not my you know, property. But it also made me feel as though I was going to be safe and sound in your hands like that I was going to be taken care of and I wasn't going to be shamed or made to feel stupid and any of that

  Mercury Stardust 32:25

  so much of the book that after every single chapter in the book, there's something we called an emotional reset. And it's like a paragraph to two to three paragraphs where I am trying to meet people where they're at. And I'm just saying, Hey, I know it's rough. I know it's hard. And if you didn't solve the problem, it's not the end of the world, you're gonna be okay. And I also have a QR video that we put the QR codes in them. And a lot of the book for not just the how tos, but also for the emotional reset. So you can pull the QR code up and you could see me in a video just saying something similar being like, Hey, it's okay. You know, sometimes things are hard and outcome that we wanted, didn't didn't turn out or you did it. And it was really tough. And now you're very tired. So take that break, you know, and that's the thing you don't, the reason why this book existed is again, because when I was starting in this industry, like 1516 years ago, my biggest source of learning how to do this stuff was books. But when I was reading it, I could never understand what they were talking about. I would listen, I would read Bob Villiers books and I loved his books are so detailed, but they were so detailed Casey that it was like, I was like, peeling back an onion that I would never be able to get to the center of I'm like, Well, you mean this thing, this like rubber gasket plastic thing, you know, and they'll have like a specific name a widget, ba, ba ba ba, like, what is the what you do Ba ba ba ba, you know, and they do just be a whole bunch of gatekeeping before I even got to the fix, you know. So when I was given the opportunity to do the book, what I really wanted to do was not focus on terminology, terminology is important and can be great for education. But there's a limit to it. There's a there's only so much new words I can take in in a single sentence. And if I'm going to call something that oh has a weird name to it by the specific name over and over again, you're gonna get confused. So I literally say Jigga thingamajig, like a bunch of this book, because as long as you get it and you can see an image of it and you have an idea of what it does. That's all that that's important. So that's kind of where a lot of the book The sense came from to was. It was kind of like taking my main idea online and just growing it and expanding it into a book.

  KC Davis 34:48

  Oh, I totally get that. I feel like that's exactly what I do with my book. It is genius to have the emotional resets in there. Because that's kind of like what I feel like when it comes to you and me and some other content creators like that's our life. corner of the internet is this idea that like who you are, and the fact that life can be hard, like, you don't have to check that at the door just to get access to some basic information. Like, one of the things that I felt was kind of like radical is that when not when I have zoom meetings with people now, I have really leaned into like, hey, we might have to reschedule. And there might be a kid in the background, and maybe you were sick that day. And maybe because I just realized, like, it's such a patriarchal idea that when we show up for quote, unquote, work, we're supposed to pretend like we have no life outside of that that could possibly be encroaching. And I feel like that's true of all topics and spheres of life, including people might think it's not profound, to allow people to bring their whole struggled self into home repair, but it is,

  Mercury Stardust 35:54

  you know, I'm gonna tell you something that I am just so scared to share on the internet, but I'm gonna say it anyways, my biggest fear in the world is financial stuff. And a few weeks ago, you brought on river nice, and that was like a life changing episode that you did. And that's the thing, there's so many aspects like, even for me, as a gentle di wire, there are so many things that I cannot get out of my own way on sometimes, because there's so much internalized things in the back of my head saying I'm not worthy, you know, and I think that there's the one number one thing that you meet, Revert a so many of us do, is that we are just essentially saying to people, that we are going to meet you where you're at, rather than telling you where you need to be. And that is a huge, the biggest difference. You know, like, when I'm showing people, how do we use toothpaste or a magnet or toothpicks to fix stuff, I'm just saying, Go to your cabinet, and grab what you got. And let's just do what we can, is it going to be perfect, maybe not. But you did something and you tried your best. And that's going to be a whole lot better than doing zero. So I don't know, I wish I could apply the same mentality to every single aspect of my life. But I'm still learning how to lean into my ADHD, I'm still learning how to lean into my insecurities about finances. And I'm really grateful for all our friends, a lot of voters I've never met on the internet, who are also doing the same things that you and I are doing, but in different ways to help bridge that gap for so many of us. All right, tell us about your book tour. My book tour is wildly stupid. It's 52 cities is the largest book tour in America this year. And here's a little tidbit of knowledge for you. The reason why we're doing 52 cities is because a friend of mine said to me that while you know you want to do 20 Some cities, that's quite a bit. I think that's a little like, that's a little hard to do. I don't know if that's gonna be reasonable. And I said, Oh, what will be the most unreasonable number that you could think about? And his response was 5050 would be an absolute crazy thing for you to do. And I was like, Okay, we'll do 52 I literally did this a respite. And if anyone knows me in real life, you'll know that I operate purely on spite. And I thought it'd be coolest thing in the world to travel for two months, and meet as many of my fans as possible and help spread the message that this book tries to give. And that's that everyone's worth the time it takes to learn a new skill. And I really do believe strongly in those words. And I was like, hey, you know what this puts me down in the south, it puts me down in the West Coast and East Coast and all over the place. We're going to so many bookstores, and we're going to almost specifically queer owned independent run bookstores. And that makes me so delighted. And the best part is, I think I'm some of the bookstores are going to let me fix up their bookshelves and fix up their walls and stuff while I'm there. So that's lovely. I'm so stoked about it. I think it's gonna be the funnest trip of my life. And it's going to be two months away. It's gonna be two weeks off, two weeks on two weeks off two weeks on two weeks off, all the way through December and then, right and the last trip is going to be in San Francisco. And me and my spouse are going to spend our five year anniversary in San Francisco for about a week or two. And I am so we're actually going to fly out the whole team. Everyone on staff is going to be flown out to San Francisco to so they can spend the holidays with whatever they want and with us if they want to. It was so grateful for all the love and support we've gotten to make this book tour happen.

  KC Davis 39:49

  Well, let me tell you one of the I haven't obviously read the book yet but so far my favorite thing about the cover is that your blue hair is on the cover because I I remember the video that you made when you first did your hair and talked about how you had always wanted blue hair. But that you just weren't ready to draw that much attention to yourself as this like beautiful trans woman that you are. And I remember that video, I've always remembered that video of yours. And so when I saw the cover, and I saw that, that I was like, This is what she wanted, like, this is exactly how she would have wanted to be on the cover of this book. And I'm so glad that you did.

  Mercury Stardust 40:26

  There's a good story behind that. So the person who did the illustrations on the cover, their name is glitter, hurricane, they're the very first Tiktok her to ever do wet or stitch one of my videos. They years ago, when they first did it, I messaged them and said, Hey, that was the sweetest thing anyone's ever done for me. You know, one day, I'm gonna find a way to how to repay you for that kindness. Because it was one of the very first videos I put me on the map. They like their video went viral about me. And it really started opening up my life in a lot of ways. So when I got an opportunity to have someone illustrating my book, and glitter is in a really wonderful illustrator. I was like, I got an idea. So I really started to glitter and have them do it. And they're their art style is so queer and whimsical, and I love it. But originally, my hair was brown at the time. And we were doing it and then I messaged glitter and said, Hey, I got a surprise for you. That's going to change everything we're doing for the book. And it's a photo of me with my blue heron. But like surprise, can this be in the book now. And we had a deadline, our deadline was like really close to happening. And they only had a couple of weeks to change all the color of all my hair. And then we're like, okay, as a team, I want you all to know that my hair is going to be purple and blue for quite a while. So you better just lean into that. Yeah, it's quite funny. But my hair was before I transitioned, I had blue hair for about 10 years straight. And when I transitioned, I felt like I could no longer have blue hair. Because I felt like like you said, I felt like I was a target more than I already was. And I felt like I had a grow the blue hair out. And then we had my natural brown hair. And I loved my natural hair color. But it was not me. I love the blue. The blue is so much more galaxy and whimsical and, and wild. And I honestly feel like more of myself now after me dyeing my hair, you know than I did before?

  KC Davis 42:32

  Well, mercury, I can't thank you enough for coming on. And I just love you. And I've always admired you and your work. And can you tell people where they can find you if they want to follow you.

  Mercury Stardust 42:43

  They can follow me on anywhere on the internet. Under Mercury startups. I'm on tick tock on Instagram, on threads on YouTube, on Facebook, I'm all over the place, always helping people with their homes in some way, shape, or form. Or you can always find me on Mercury startups.com We'll be making a whole bunch of stuff on there. This year, we'll be able to look at all my how tos on there, eventually, as well.

  KC Davis 43:09

  And they can order the book I know you can get on Amazon. And I'm assuming it's out the independent bookstores as well.

  Mercury Stardust 43:14

  I highly, highly encourage people going to bookshop.org and buying local bookshop. or.org is a wonderful website that helps you find independently owned bookstores across the country. If you're able to go independent, I highly recommend it. But if you're not able to and Amazon is just the easiest for you or Barnes and Noble are great. go that route too. But my book is literally everywhere in the country and no think we've already sold something over like 30,000 copies of the book. And it's only in preorder. So boy, we're spicy. We're just pushing that book out.

  KC Davis 43:48

  Well, congratulations. That's amazing. Well, I love you so much. And I'm so glad you're here and I just I could go on and on. I promise

  Mercury Stardust 43:56

  I could go on and on about you. So I feel like to che

  KC Davis 44:02

  and I will see you at the Blue Willow bookstore when you come to Houston. Oh, I'm

  Mercury Stardust 44:06

  so excited. I cannot I'm gonna give you the biggest hug in the whole world.

  KC Davis 44:09

  Yes, you can see that I really am five two.

  Mercury Stardust 44:13

  You can see that I'm 511 Six one but don't tell the internet

  KC Davis 44:18

  All right, well, those of you guys listening go check out Mercury stardust. Get the book, check out the website and follow on Twitter and we love you all go take care of yourself today.

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Honestly, this is a topic for everyone. Today’s show applies to all of us, whether we are parents, future parents, or someone who needs to heal their inner child. I’m excited to be joined by Rachel Nielson, the host and founder of the 3in30 Podcast. She interviewed me on a recent episode, and she’s returning the favor by joining me for this important conversation. Join us!

Show Highlights:

●  The structure for Rachel’s 3in30 podcast: 3 actionable takeaways in 30 minutes

● Why parenting values are far superior to parenting rules

● Why success in motherhood is most definable by the connection we have with our kids

● What Rachel teaches in her program, Self-Assured Motherhood

● Why there is an opportunity to parent your inner child by identifying your core parenting values

● How you can have different values for different seasons of your life and family

● How Rachel’s program helps women identify and uncover their values by looking inward and outward

● Why our values might be in conflict with each other

● How parenting partners can handle conflict in their individual parenting values

● Takeaways from Rachel about embracing your values, accepting them, and living into them authentically

Resources and Links:

Connect with Rachel Nielson: Website and Podcast

Find Rachel’s list of parenting values: www.3in30podcast.com/values

Mentioned in this episode: The Family Firm by Emily Oster

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes

• Transcript

  KC Davis 0:05

  Hello, you sentient balls of stardust, this is struggle care. And I'm your host, Casey Davis. And this is going to be another podcast about parenting. And as always, I encourage you to listen, whether you are a parent or a child. And that's all of us, like all of us have been children at one time. And I do my best to talk about parenting in such a way that if you are a parent, you are getting some really valuable information to us. And if you are an adult child, that you maybe can have an experience of healing your inner child listening to the kind of parenting that you deserved. So I have an awesome guest today, I have Rachel Nielsen, who is the host of the 3 in 30 podcasts that I was on recently. Rachel, hello,

  Rachel Nielson 0:44

  hello, thank you so much for having me.

  KC Davis 0:46

  Absolutely. So tell us a little bit like introduce yourself a little bit, what would you like people to know?

  Rachel Nielson 0:51

  Yeah, so I am a former high school English teacher turned podcaster. And stay at home mom. And from my experience, teaching teenagers how to take big complicated ideas and boil them down into thesis statements. I sort of do that now with parenting topics. So all of my podcasts are three actionable takeaways in 30 minutes, because I know moms don't have a lot of time to listen to parenting resources. A lot of them certainly don't have time to read these big full parenting books that get put out on the market. And so I'm like, I'll just give you the three takeaways make it as actionable and direct as I can. And Casey, everyone loved your episode that you recently did about rethinking housework, and three takeaways for that. And I live in the mountains of Idaho with my two kids, and my dog and my husband, and I love where I live. And I love what I do.

  KC Davis 1:48

  I'm so glad you're here. Because when you reach out to me with your idea for a topic of parenting, according to your values, I was excited about that. Because there's something that I've always said is like, when I became a parent, I had so many ideas about how I was going to raise my kids and I read like every blog there was, right, like I was like, okay, the best way to feed is breastfeeding, and then baby led weaning, and the best way to give birth is ABCDEFG. And the best way to to play is for wooden toys that we rotate out every three, you know, days, that don't do anything electronic. And then No, I'm not going to speak in a baby voice because you're supposed to speak like a normal voice to your kids. And I'm gonna read a lot to them. I mean, we're not going to do any screen time. And then we're gonna go to a Montessori school. And I mean, I just had, it's like any decision that you need to make in parenting, there is a blog out there that exists about the best way to do it. But what I found is that there is no blog that tells you how you're supposed to follow all of those blogs at once. And it was really disillusioning to go through the first few years of parenting and watch myself like, feel incapable of keeping up with all of these commitments about this idealized version of how he was going to be the perfect parent. And that kind of more for me, and this idea of like, I don't need parenting rules, I need parenting values, so that like I can make the decision about what's important right now. Like I realized I had to prioritize things. And the truth is like when I prioritize things, wooden toys and screentime and baby led weaning, like, didn't really ever make it to the top.

  Rachel Nielson 3:33

  Yeah. And you're so right, Casey, that there's no blog out there that captures it all. And also that that can tell you how to parent your unique children with your unique values and contexts that you're coming from as an individual Mother and I have found that my values are what matter the most in how I raise my children, the lens through which I can do the best job for them is by being true to my values and bringing to them who I actually am and what I actually care about, instead of what I think I should care about, or who I think I should be. And that took me a while to figure out to my first few years of parenting, I had oh so many shoulds that and I was miserable, because I wasn't living up to them. And I finally realized that I'm the only person who can give my kids a happy and fulfilled mom. And the way to do that is by being myself within my motherhood and bringing myself to them. And it's made all the difference in my level of fulfillment in day to day life as a mom and also I think, in the success quote, unquote, that I'm able to have as a mom because that is not definable by a set of rules or a standard it's really definable by the connection that I have with my kids. That comes from showing them who I am.

  KC Davis 4:58

  Yeah, I like that. And you know, this idea of values it like sounds really good. But I never got past that point of like, but how do I figure out what my values are? Because I feel like when we ever have that conversation with people, we automatically go to kinda like the fluffy stuff like kindness is a value and honesty is a value in it, right? But I have a feeling that you're gonna help us flush out something a little more actionable than that. Because like, how do I do with my kids toys? If I'm like, kindness is my value, like, I need a better like, kind of rubric to look through to know. And also that, like, whenever we talk about values being like kindness and honesty, like nobody would be like, Well, I think I'm not going to choose kindness as my value. But in reality, like, there's actually a lot of kind of almost morally neutral values. And we don't all have to have the same ones.

  Rachel Nielson 5:47

  Yes, 100%. I feel I teach women in a program called self assured motherhood, we do an entire month about values. And one of the first things that I tell them is that we're talking about the morally neutral values. We're not talking about like whether or not to kill someone, which I'm pretty sure we all agree, is not a good thing. And we all have a value against, we're talking about things like adventure like is that one of your values that is morally neutral, if you really value adventure, and that brings you joy, as a mom, and you want to take your kids on lots of adventures, wonderful. If you don't, and you value routine and stability, that doesn't make you any less of a good mother, you just value different things. So these are morally neutral, they are not tied to religion, or any religious principles. And you're right, Casey, that if you looked at a list of them, you might think, well, these all matter like, you know, kindness matters, and so does honesty and loyalty and productivity, yes, they all matter. And also, some do matter more to you than others. And that's okay. And sometimes it takes a level of self awareness to be able to sort through and sift out and figure out, I'm not saying that kindness doesn't matter to me at all, it does. But what really makes my heart sing is adventure. And so yes, of course, we're going to have like, we're going to be a kind family. But when it comes to prioritizing day to day life and activities, it doesn't resonate with me as much to think about kindness as it does to think about adventure. Whereas another mom might much more resonate with kindness. And she is like consciously thinking about taking our kids to serve the neighbor, or to go and sing Christmas carols at the nursing home or teaching them to be very aware of the people that they're interacting with at the grocery store and making eye contact and chatting with them. Again, not that the other mom is saying, We don't care about being kind, and we're going to be mean to everyone around us. But just that what really kind of gives them that zing of joy and excitement within their day to day life is different, because they have different things that they value.

  KC Davis 8:04

  And I wouldn't even say that's necessarily kindness as the value, it's almost like altruism is the value. You know, and the other thing I love about this, Rachel is that I'm seeing so much potential for me to also parent, my inner child in this like, and there's some conversations that I think are important about, like, we don't want to swing too far in the opposite direction. Like if you had a parent that yelled a lot, and you decide that like, I'm never gonna get angry, like, obviously, you know, we don't and then we just never set any boundaries, because we're afraid to set boundaries or be angry or punish or do any of this like, okay, at the end of the day, we need to be the parent that our kids need, not the parent that we needed. However, this week, when you talked about a spirit of adventure versus a spirit of I want to say like coziness and familiarity, my heart automatically, like leapt at one of those, and I know it came from kind of like a place of woundedness of like, there might have been a little too much chaos in my childhood for me to like, want adventure to be it right. And like I would sort of even like adventure is to me wouldn't just be like, Oh, hiking, it also be like, Oh, we're enrolled in so many sports, that like, every day, we're out of the house, always on the go. And so like that resonated with me where it was like, No, like coziness, and home and meals at home and predictability. I mean, is that part of it? Like, do you see that in parents? I mean, not that I would never tell my kids that can't be adventurous, but that like it's totally okay for me to lean into the one that is going to be more healing and more whole for me.

  Rachel Nielson 9:41

  Yeah, I mean, totally okay for you to do that. And also, I think that it's part of the work of healing your inner child to figure out if what you think is a value is actually a trauma response, and it's something that you want to work to let go of, and it's fine either way. way, you know, so you might say no, really the desire for coziness and stability and routine. It's not just that it makes me feel good because of the trauma from my past, it's that it actually makes me feel connected to who I feel I deeply AM. And that wasn't honored in my past. And so I want to lean into that with my own family versus you do feel a pull to adventure, but you are tamping that down, because everything in you is saying like, no, that's dangerous, you don't want to give your kids an experience that was similar to what you had. So that's more of a trauma response, if that makes sense. And only you can sort of sift that out and figure out what is truly a core value versus what may have become a core value, even though it's not really you because of negative things that happened in your past. And I wish that I could give like a formula for how to figure out the difference. I just think that so many of us are not even aware of the values conversation. And so even just listening to this podcast, some listeners are going to start looking for and thinking about their values in a different way. And it's a lifelong exercise in getting to know yourself and thinking, you know, I always thought that I really valued this. But I think that's actually because of hard things that happened to me in my past. And now that I've healed to a certain level, I want to start experiencing and experimenting with other ways of living. And I may come back to the thing and see it really was one of my core values all along. And it wasn't just a trauma response, or I may be ready to embrace something different that I previously had not realized was one of my core values, because it had been so buried by all of the hard stuff in my past, if that makes sense.

  KC Davis 11:50

  Totally. And I think I'm gonna we're gonna get into like some more specifics on how we kind of dig in. But I have kind of two thoughts as we're talking now. One is, I read Emily Foster's book, the family firm. And she talked a little bit about this concept, but just not the one example always stuck with me. She talks about how, you know, they have family dinner every night. And I think that what our society has done with the idea of family dinner is very much like over moralized it like it is the only right thing to do. And it's has all these benefits. And you know, if you don't do it XYZ, and I just really finally figured out that like just because something has benefits, doesn't mean that your child is going to be harmed if they don't get it. Mm hmm. Like, yes, there are benefits to having family dinner, and she decided that that was a value for her over, like being enrolled in extracurriculars. But extracurriculars also have value and like it would be perfectly okay for a family to say actually, like we value, what's it called, like team sports and being a part of a team and commitment and follow through, and discipline and hard work. And we can do all that obviously, with kindness, or you could do it with, you know, competition. But the idea is kind of mind blowing that when you're looking at a choice, that it may not be what does a good parent do? And what does a bad parent do? It might be? Here's a really good thing. And here's another good thing, and I can't have them or do them both at the same time, at least right now. And that I get to pick whichever one is sort of calling to me. The second thing I thought was, Do you think there's also room for like, having different values at different seasons? Like if I pick adventure? Am I stuck with that forever?

  Rachel Nielson 13:35

  No, absolutely not. I tell women in my program, I'm not saying I'm saying Try these values on so I have them actually identify, go through an activity, which we can talk a little bit about, because I would love to give your listeners some concrete takeaways for how to find their values. So I have them do that. And I tell them, you know, come up with five, and you're trying them on. And this is not going on your tombstone. So try it out for a while. And often we'll find that like, actually, the word kindness doesn't resonate. It's more compassion. And there's such a subtle difference there. But it's the word that resonates in your soul. That means something different to you or Casey, you've mentioned, like, that sounds more like altruism, like someone might think, oh, yeah, it's more altruism than kindness. But you have to start with a framework of identifying a few values and trying them on and then you sort of shift and change. And you may find that in a few years when your kids are in a different phase, that you do uncover a different value and that things sort of shift and change and that's totally okay.

  KC Davis 14:41

  Okay, let's take a short break for a sponsor, who we are very grateful for, and we're grateful for all of our sponsors, and we will come back. Okay, so we're back with Rachel and we're talking about how would I go about like, what if I'm listening to this and I'm thinking like, Wait, this seems like such a much better way of of parenting and frankly, like as you're talking I'm like this is just a better way of living? Yes, yes. Like, because it's not just parents who are stuck in this, like, you know, optimize everything all the time make every right parenting decision or you're a piece of shit. Like, I feel like humans in general, a lot of us are stuck in that place of how do we decide this job? Or this job? Or how do we decide to go here? Or go there? Or what do we do? How do we decide what our values are? If we want to move past the sort of fluffy, ambiguous stuff?

  Rachel Nielson 15:28

  Mm hmm. Yeah, for sure. So I mentioned that I have a an exercise I have women in my program do and I've actually made that available for your listeners, if they want, they can download it is the exact exercise I lead women through. And I'll put that at three and 30 podcast.com/values. So you can go and pull it up. And the first half of it is sort of brain storming, freewrite questions about what you loved as a child? And what made you come alive? And what sort of made your heart sing, I asked a question in there about, have you ever been involved in a group project or a job? Something that like you felt incredibly fulfilled doing it? And can you identify what it was about that particular project or role that really fit you? And so you go through these kind of brainstorm questions, and you try to pull out some themes of words that can capture, you know, and bring together the common threads between your answers to these different questions. So you're really looking inward, to try to figure out because your values have been with you your whole life, whether or not you were aware of them. So it's more of an uncovering than like a deciding on what your values are. Like, if I were told to decide what I wanted my values to be, it might be a different list, then truly getting honest with myself about, but who am I and who have I always been, and what has been important to me. I remember, as a child, middle schooler, noticing the kids that sat alone at lunch, and really worrying for them and trying to sometimes I'd actually, when I was at my best, I would actually go and sit with them and make an effort. Other times, I wasn't at my best, I wasn't confident enough to do that. But I noticed them. And now in my adulthood, I realize that that's a little unusual for a child that young to be noticing people like that. And that's something that I kind of wrote down in my brainstorm of, I've always just had a tender heart for the people who maybe are on the margins. And that is a sign that one of my values has something to do with compassion, kindness, service, like the divinity of other people inclusion, yes. And so I can play with those words a little bit. But recalling those specifics from my childhood helps me to get there. And so that's the first half of the exercise is really looking inward and seeing what you can uncover about yourself for yourself.

  KC Davis 18:03

  Well, before you do the second half, I want to play around with this for a second. So when you said that my thought immediately went to Thanksgiving, growing up, every Thanksgiving, I would go see my family that lived like a state away. And I had a cousin that was my age. And we had a bunch of older cousins, and my mom had two sisters and a brother and both of her parents and literally like everyone came. And we would sit around and play dominoes and eat Thanksgiving food. And it was like that was literally every Thanksgiving up until I was probably 16. And for some reason, that's right, where my mind goes. So if that if that's where my mind goes when you said like, think about something in your childhood that kind of like you enjoyed or made you feel alive, or has that comfort, like, how would I tease a value from that?

  Rachel Nielson 18:52

  Mm hmm. Well, I think I mean, I can just throw out a bunch of different words that you could try on sort of based around that like, to me it feels like family, connection, togetherness, coziness, which you already mentioned, traditions, I don't know. But those are some of the words that come to mind. For me, that can be teased from the fact that those times with your family meant so much to you, there's a value there. Can you think of any other words based on that? On your experience?

  KC Davis 19:26

  I think maybe the word community comes to mind because definitely family like that's part of it. But it kind of extends a little more than that, that that community of just like right where you fit in where there's people around and everything is kind of easy, like nothing is pretense if that makes sense. Like it's not always easy, but that idea of kind of just being surrounded by people.

  Rachel Nielson 19:51

  Yeah. And you just said there were nothing's pretend. So maybe from that you tease out like authenticity is very important to you feeling known and know seeing and loving the people around you in a deep, intimate way that's not fake is very important to you. So you and it's super helpful to talk this out. So to do this with a friend, or someone who knows you well, or a sister or a therapist, and say, you know, ask them say, this is the moment that stands out to me, what threads or themes do you see? And then when they give you some ideas, you always have to come back to yourself and say, nobody else can tell you what your values are, you have to be able to say what words resonate and give me that little zing inside. I sometimes think about Marie Kondo, who did the life changing Magic of Tidying Up and she'd say, when you hold your possessions, they should give you a little like King mark of joy. Yeah, spark joy. And that's how it should be with these values of like, hold these different words, kind of metaphorically. And ask yourself, does it give me a little zing, a little spark of joy? If so, then there's something there that I can explore as value.

  KC Davis 20:59

  You know, what's kind of wild is that you mentioned earlier, you know, these aren't necessarily like, we can look back and realize these have always been our values. And I'm already realizing the things that I've done as a person. And as a parent, according to that value. I mean, like, literally, we ended up moving to a different city for my husband's job. And like, pretty quickly realized, like, Oh, I'm not thriving here. And we talked about moving back where family was, but that kind of came in conflict with some other values that we had about where we were and why. And we ended up moving to a suburb, and specifically to live two miles from a good friend of mine, who was like, come here, live near me, we will be community with each other. And then shortly after that, actually talked to my mother about moving down, and she moved down. And we found we went and found a home for her, and helped her through the process of moving, she now lives 10 minutes from me, I see her multiple times a week, like my friend just stopped by to get my vacuum cleaner to try it. And like we sent our kids to school based on the idea that we could know our neighbors. And I'm like, oh, like, okay, so that makes sense on a big picture scale, right about like making those decisions. But, you know, even earlier when I was like, How do I decide what to do about the toys? Like, how would I decide how community applies to our toys? You know what I mean?

  Rachel Nielson 22:24

  Yeah, well, I love that you were just able to parse out how the memory from your childhood connects to the things you love in your current life, that's beautiful to hear how it all connects together. And I think that not every value is going to apply to every situation like Could your value for community connect back to what you do with the toys in your home, maybe, maybe you decide like, Oh, we're gonna have, you know, I'm keeping all these toys, like I'm keeping more toys than maybe another mom would, because I love to have my kids have their friends here. And to have lots of toys available so that it feels like a community place where people can gather. And that's why you know, my physical things reflect the center value. And also, maybe your value for community has nothing to do with your toys, and you decide to get rid of a bunch of them, because you also have a value for simplicity and order. And that's okay, too. And sometimes our values do get, they do sort of contradict each other. And that's when it gets tough. Like when women say to me, I have a value of connection. But I also have a value of productivity, or I have a value of connection. But I also have a value of order. And so my kids want me to play with them. And my connect my value towards connection says you should do that a good mom would do that. But I'm like dying over the messy kitchen. And my value of order says I desperately want to clean this up right now. And again, I wish there was like a magic formula I could give you of how to decide which value wins out in that moment. But I think it's a constant, give and take. And you just have to say like, right now, I am prioritizing connection. And order can wait. Or right now I'm going to clean my kitchen because I recognize we spent all morning together at the library or whatever. And that value has been fulfilled. And it's okay for me to lean into this other value without feeling guilty about it.

  KC Davis 24:27

  Yeah, I mean, as long as you're picking both right, like not that you can't pick them at the same time, but you could certainly have them in the same season. Yes. And get the benefits of both and even get the benefits of not choosing the other one from time. Like saying no to playing is good for you and your kids. Yeah, it wouldn't be good if that was all you ever said. And you know, saying no to the kitchen is good for you and your kids, but it wouldn't be good if you always said no to it.

  Rachel Nielson 24:52

  Mm hmm. Yeah. And again, just having the words and the understanding around values. I feel like gives you So much more self compassion and ability to coach yourself. It's a win win situation. Yeah. And to say to yourself, this is hard for you, Rachel. And I do I kind of have this like inner voice that talks to me and is this compassionate cheerleader. And it kind of talks to me in the third person, and says, this is hard for you, Rachel, because you really value order, but you also really value connection, and your best friend needs you right now. And so you do not have to feel bad about leaving your house in disarray, because you are following another value. And so it just gives you this sort of like, way to comfort yourself and cheer yourself on. So you're not shaming yourself for the things you're not able to accomplish at every moment of the day.

  KC Davis 25:40

  Let me tell you that I value rest, and sleep. Yes, I don't mean in like a, you know, a ha weight. I mean, in like a legitimate there are major decisions that I have made around valuing rest and sleep. And it's a big value to me because of how connected it is to my mental health, of how connected it is, to my physical health of how connected is to My psychological health, and just the acknowledgement of like, that's one of the biggest ways that I, as a mother choose myself. Mm, yeah, amidst sort of the chaos of parenting. And I mean, major decisions that people might not agree with. And I sleep, train my children, I am one of the biggest kind of attachment parenting people, and they're always so surprised to hear that I sleep train my children. Because the value of sleep one,

  Rachel Nielson 26:28

  yes. And the value of rest, I actually have never considered the word rest as a value until just now when you said it. And I think that's a beautiful value to hold. Like, think of all the different ways that rest can manifest itself in your whole life, not just talking about sleep, but in your in the way you set up your home, and the way you engage in your relationships, where people feel very at ease with you, they feel restful in your presence, because of what you bring to their life. You know, I think that's an incredibly unique value that you could bring into so many areas of your life, and that it sort of takes a big level of self acceptance in our productivity obsessed culture, you know, to say, actually, I don't value productivity, I value rest. And that is not a moral failing. That is an incredibly beautiful thing that I bring to my life and the lives of other people.

  KC Davis 27:22

  Wow. Yeah, because I do and have fun. You know, we talking earlier about you know, nobody prepares you how to parent your own children. And the truth is, is like my kids, they came and I was like, oh, no, your people, you're not ideas or blank slates, like you are people with your own brains and personalities. And, you know, I wasn't expecting to have neurodivergent kids, but here we are. And, you know, I have been doing for some time now, what I refer to what others refer to as low demand parenting. We don't have a lot of rules in our house. I mean, obviously, safety is important. And we do believe that boundaries are important. And you know, because I value Sleep, my kids actually go to bed at 730 Every night and will for a long time and rest, right? So that's value for them and me because I need that time as well. So I don't want to sound like you know, nobody, there's no structure in our home. But if I can say yes, I do, right, I don't care where you eat, I don't care what you're wearing, I don't care if you color on yourself, I don't really mind for color on the wall, right? Like, I'll tell you which wall to color on. But I'm now realizing that that is connected to probably a lot of values, but is connected to rest. Yeah, everyone just rests like it's just a restful place.

  Rachel Nielson 28:33

  And when you are tied into your values, when you are clued into your unique values, I feel like you are less judgmental of other people, which is a beautiful way to live. You can look at other moms and say they value something different than I do and I don't need to judge them or downplay that. I also don't need to judge myself. You know, I, you mentioned sleep training. I have had a whole conversation with a young mom that I love who's gone back and forth on whether or not to sleep train her baby and I've just said to her look, what do you love about motherhood, if you love you know co sleeping and having her with you and not you know, you do not have to sleep train your baby. But if you are miserable and unable to function during the day, because of the co sleeping you can sleep train your baby and it's she will be okay she will be okay either way, as long as she has a mom who is honoring herself and her needs as well as honoring her baby at the same time. And building a home life where the mom is happy and at ease or at least as happy as she can be. You're never going to be perfectly happy as a mom or a human. Because life is hard and there's hormones and postpartum depression and everything else. But you it's okay to build a family life around what you need and value as a mom and it could look totally different than another mom and you don't need to judge that other mom for the way she does it.

  KC Davis 30:00

  Okay, let's take another break to hear from a sponsor, we'll come right back. Okay, so you were going to tell us what the second step is?

  Rachel Nielson 30:07

  Yes, yes. So in the first part of my exercise, you're looking inward to see what you can, you know, tease out about your values in the second part, you can look outward and start looking at lists of potential values. So I actually have a list of 100 values on this worksheet. And you can either just go through the list and circle instar. Or if you are more of a hands on learner, you can actually cut them out. So they're little slips of paper, and then you sort of sort them. And you can sort them any way that you want. But the way that I often tell women to do it is to make three piles. One is not that important to me, one is important to me, and the other is most important to me. And so you take these words, and you put them in the three piles. And again, I remind women that you know, the pile that you're basically tossing out, you're not saying is not important to me at all, you're just saying is not as as important to me

  KC Davis 31:07

  wouldn't win in a cage match with a different value? Yes, exactly. I

  Rachel Nielson 31:10

  see, you're not saying like that you don't value health at all, if you put that in the category, but maybe that's just not one of your top values or priorities, and you don't build your life around, you know, your physical health, like some other people do. My husband is incredibly active and loves to, you know, eat lots of vegetables, and he has a different level of value around health than I do. And that's okay, like that would never be in my pile of top values. And it would be in his and that's okay.

  KC Davis 31:40

  You know, what's crazy about that is that I don't think it is for me either. And I've always felt really a lot of shame about that, because I know that like, I'm setting the stage for my kids and their health. But one of the things that I've never ways that I've never thought about it that I'm realizing and talking to you is that it isn't that I don't prioritize health, it's that I don't prioritize it above other values that are more important to me. But that's only in instances where health intersects with a different value. Like, if it's I'm going to puree, you know, the most organic, nutrient packed homemade baby food. I'm not going to do that, because I value rest. But rest is not always in the picture. When I'm deciding, do I grab this donut? Or do I grab these carrots? Like they're both right there, like I do multiple times a day make the decision? Hey, let's grab the carrots. And I mean, I'm not to say that doughnuts are not healthy. I'm just saying like in terms of, okay, am I going to feed them doughnuts all day? Or, you know, Hey, it's 100 degrees outside. So I'm not going to go outside and walk when my kids asked you because I'm not doing it. I don't know what but like, when it's 70 degrees outside, and they want to take a walk. I'm for it. And now and I feel like yes, let's do it. Let's get outside today. And oh my gosh, Rachel, the self compassion that just released inside of me realizing that I don't ignore health? Yes, I just I choose it in situations where it does not conflict with other values that are more important.

  Rachel Nielson 33:14

  Yes. Isn't it amazing the self compassion that it brings, as well as the compassion for other people that it brings the clarity that it brings? It's brought for me in parenting, like in co parenting with my husband, so much clarity around? Why is he so like adamant with them about certain things that I don't think are that important? where there might be conflict between us? Once I started thinking more about values, and I actually had my husband do this activity that I do with the women in my program. And once I knew what his values are, I could see like, oh, this really matters to him. That, you know, one example is that he really values he played tons of team sports growing up he but because he values, health and activity and all those things, and my son is not into it. And I was always like, why is he pressuring Noah to join these teams that Noah doesn't want to join? So then I had a conversation with Ryan and said, What's the values underneath that? And he said, Well, I want him to be active and move his body. I want him to build friendships and learn about teamwork. So we kind of identified the values underneath and I said, Okay, our son doesn't want to be in team sports. But I can tell that these values really matter to you. And they matter to me too. So what are some different ways that we can honor who our son is, and also bring these values in, and we came up with a plan and we brought my son and he's 12. So he has can have a lot of say in his life now. And we brainstorm together ways that he could work with a team. And so like joining the Lego team at at the middle school, the engineering team, and that he could move his body by riding his bike at the pump track and So we're meeting the values, while also diffusing the tension around specific activities that we sometimes as parents can get. So, like, caused so much conflict in our family, when really it's just a values issue underneath it.

  KC Davis 35:14

  Wow, Rachel, that is incredible. Because how many times do we do that we push our kids to do something. Because we know that there are benefits that we feel like are really important. But if we don't stop to realize, okay, it's not the soccer. Yeah, in and of itself, right. You know, it's the value underneath and like if your value and because as soon as you said that, where you said, as a team moving your body, I was like, well, theater does that,

  Rachel Nielson 35:38

  yes, so many different things can do that.

  KC Davis 35:42

  That's wild, it's, it reminds me of a conversation, I had my husband one time, he was a part of a fraternity and you know, fraternities have come under some hot water. And many, many years after he was gone from college, his own fraternity kind of gotten in trouble. And he was talking about, like, feeling those mixed emotions of, hey, I'm glad that like, things are changing, and things are going to be safer for women. And that, like parts of that culture are getting kind of snuffed out, like the dangerous parts of that culture and the gross misogynist parts of that culture. But I still find myself sad, because there were so many things that I valued that I got in that, you know, the feeling of brotherhood, the feeling of having someone to come home to the feeling of tradition, the feeling of sort of friends that are friends forever. And it was similar to that conversation, where it's like, okay, we can value those things. But when we identify what the values are, we can much more easily let go of things that might have kind of a net negative and go well, how can I find these values elsewhere?

  Rachel Nielson 36:46

  Yes, absolutely. And it can become such a connective activity for you and a partner to talk about it diffuses tension when you start talking about what's underneath the deeper person, why does this matter to you why, let's talk about it. And then you're then you know each other, it's intimate to know each other better. And then you're like, let's figure out together how to build our family life around these things that matter to both of us. And let's figure out what our shared values are and where we differ and respect that about each other and build a life around with an awareness of values underneath it.

  KC Davis 37:22

  Gosh, Rachel, I just think about how many parents are burning out because they are attempting to have every single value and the number one spot? Yes. Okay, we're gonna wind down a little bit. But I wanted to share with you something that I think is kind of funny, I heard someone say one time, you know that they don't have family rules, they have family values. And it was somewhat similar to this conversation. But they kind of said, you know, we have these four family values. And whenever my kids is they're getting older, like want to do something, you know, we don't have a rule about what time you need to be home or what things you're allowed to do. But we go to the family values and make the decision based on that. And so kind of similar to what you're talking about. But what was funny about it was I had just seen a tweet by this very bizarre there's this really funny account on Twitter called time scanner, and they sometimes tweet the most random things. And this was the tweet it said, be a Kermit the Frog, have a creative vision and no ego. Recognize the unique talents of those around you attract weirdos, manage chaos, show kindness Be sincere. And ever since I read that, for some reason, it is just stuck in my brain where I was like, that's what I want my family to be about. Those are the values attract weirdos, manage chaos, show kindness be sincere Hmm, that's beautiful. And anyways, I just wanted to share that with everybody because I was like, never has like a four sentences summed up what I care about about life before.

  Rachel Nielson 38:49

  Yeah, it like gave you that little zing in your heart. That's when you know, this resonates these are my values and like you could put that on your wall or frame it and put it in your kids rooms and, and talk about it a lot that we are a Kermit the Frog family. And this is what we value.

  KC Davis 39:04

  So Rachel, what do you want our listeners to know as they log off today,

  Rachel Nielson 39:09

  I want the listeners to know that whatever your values are, are good. And okay. And the more that you embrace the things that innately matter to you and start accepting who you actually are, instead of who you think you should be. The not only the more happy and fulfilled you will feel but the world will be blessed by it by you bringing who you actually are and owning it to the world. Whether that's just in your home or it's in your workplace. It's in the larger world and community. All of us will be blessed when we become more aware of our values, and we accept them and live into them.

  KC Davis 39:48

  I love that. Well Rachel, thank you so much. We will link that website that you mentioned earlier in the show notes for everyone. And I wish everyone a great day take care of yourselves and toodaloo

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Do you have too much stuff? As you look around your home, is it crowded and cluttered? Does your space make you feel burdened, unhappy, and frustrated? If you said–or shouted–YES, you can’t miss today’s show. Join me to learn more about gentle organizing. 

Alison Lush is a Certified Professional Organizer, Certified Virtual Organizer, and Master Trainer. After a 20-year catering career, Alison knew she needed better organization and management skills for her home and personal comfort. She learned to live and shop intentionally, creating and protecting the space in her home. Now she puts her expertise to work in helping others by empowering them and teaching them to put themselves at the center of their organization efforts. 

Show Highlights:

• How Alison became an organizer with a gentle spirit

• Why our interactions with our home, space, time, and belongings form the foundations of our lives

• Why Alison’s focus is on “organic organizing”

• Alison’s answer to a question sent in by Samantha about dealing with clutter, letting things go, and the functionality of her space

• How to organize your space by using Zone 1, Zone 2, and Zone 3—and consider the frequency of access for each item

• Ways to keep, honor, and display memorabilia by identifying the risk level in letting items go

• How to consider the purpose of items in our lives in deciding to keep them or let them go

• Alison’s answer to a question from Kitty about decorating, a sense of style, and learning to feel good about her space

• How to reframe what might look crappy and rundown to you as a life well-lived, meaningful, and full of love

• Why your decor should fuel you and recharge your batteries

• Alison’s answer to a question from Aria about separating and managing work life and home life

• How to legitimize, categorize, and systemize your space for the best functionality

• Why the professional organizing industry has the reputation of telling people to “just get rid of your stuff”

Resources:

Connect with Alison: www.alisonlush.ca and TikTok   

Connect with KC: TikTok and Instagram

Get KC's Book, How to Keep House While Drowning

• Transcript

  KC Davis 0:05

  Hello sentient ball of stardust. Welcome to struggle care. I'm your host, KC Davis. And I'm taking a break this August, but I'm replaying for years some of my most downloaded episodes. And today we're going to talk about professional organizing. Doesn't it feel like something that only really rich people who have their life together do? Well, it's not. And I want to talk today about that with Allison lash. Since 2010, she has been studying everything related to how we manage our belongings, ideas about what we need acquisition, ownership, organization, lifestyle habits, decision making emotional attachments, and letting go. She is a professional organizer that certified in chronic disorganization, she brings a person centered approach to organizing, and it's really a different take on organizing than I've ever heard before. So if you're someone who struggles in your home, and you really wish that you could be a little more organized, but you need a gentle approach, this is for you, grab a drink of water, take your meds and take care of yourself. Well, I can't tell you how excited I am to have you on today. Because when I started my tic toc channel and I started talking about you know, cleaning being morally neutral and having your home serve you and not the other way around. I remember stumbling on your content, and being like, oh shit, she gets it like this is someone who I could totally see, I would invite her in to organize my home and you just had such a kind and gentle presence. And I feel like that is not something that I see a lot in organizers like usually you think of, you know, Personal Organizer, or professional organizer as someone who is like, let's get it. Let's go. You know, we're going to organize these books into rainbow color. And you but you just had such a different presence. And I wondered if you could talk just a minute about you know, how did you get that way?

  Alison Lush 1:52

  Well, I have to start by saying I'm going to take a little pause here and say I'm absolutely thrilled to be here. I am a massive big fan of yours. And I send everybody to your page, I say if you're following me, you have to be following KC. She is the bom b. There's it's amazing of the voice that you've created in the platform you've created. And I'm so grateful for your presence on social media, because people obviously need to hear what you are saying. And you add weight and volume to what I'm saying. So I want to say thank you and congratulations, just need to get it's really important to honor what you've done. It's tremendous amount of work. So oh well, it's all very true. I'm so thrilled that we found each other how did I get to where I am the short story because people can read a little bit about my background on my website, I don't let's not waste time getting into that I fell into the world of professional organizing. And I landed quite quickly in 2010 in a school, a professional school for professional organizers called the Institute for challenging disorganization. And I just felt comfortable there that's like those people, they just resonated with me in the way that they were talking. It's like I wanted to buddy up with them. And I wanted to invite them into my home, the vibe was just like all about where I felt comfortable. And the way I describe it today, my industry is that there's a spectrum. And on one end of the spectrum are people like me, and on the other end of the spectrum are people who are mad crazy about organizing the stuff. And there is nothing wrong with that. Because there are clients who want that there are clients, that's all they want come and make my house pretty. And that's what I want. And because that's a it's an open market, and there's people who need that the fact that organizers specialize in that more power to them. But there's this other end of the spectrum where what I'm focusing on is people, I'm not really very concerned about the books and about the boxes, and about the cups and all that stuff. What I'm concerned about is the person and how they feel in their home. Does the person feel okay in their home? Do they feel comfortable in their home? Do they feel functional in their home, because if we don't feel good in our home, that launches us for the whole rest of our life. And it impacts on how we can accomplish whatever it is we want to accomplish in our lives. Whether we're a full time parent or working full time, or volunteering, or we're retired and just wanting to have you know, spend time doing record doesn't matter what we're trying to do in our life, our home, and the way we interact with our home and our belongings and our stuff and our space and our time. The way we manage that is our foundation for the rest of our life. So the better we manage those things, the better able we are to accomplish our goals in life, which is what is the target?

  KC Davis 4:32

  I feel like that's where you and I really resonated with each other was that we're both focusing on a person's relationship to their space, right, not just their performance in their space or the aesthetics of their space, but that the real work and the real reward is the relationship to their space.

  Alison Lush 4:53

  And the measure that I use to identify where are the issues is literally how do you feel like I see the way your desk is you showed me a picture of your desk? I don't have any judgment about that. I don't care if it's piled up to the ceiling. My question is, how do you feel about your desk? If you feel fine about your desk, and it's working for you, let's talk about something else. If you're unhappy about your desk, and it's causing you problems, do you want to talk about it? Do you want to talk about it? Because even if it's a problem for the person, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're ready or willing or able to deal with it?

  KC Davis 5:26

  Yes. And if you push that, they're more likely to kind of go to this protective space, where they're not going to be honest, are not going to be open, they're not going to call you back for the second session. And, you know, what you're describing about, you know, does it bother you is similar to when I talk about, you know, does it work, that's all it does it function. And that changes over a lifetime to because I'm someone who has almost always function just fine with clothes strewn about the floor, and dishes being done every three days. And you know, nothing really having a a formal organization. But I always kind of knew where everything was, that worked. For me for most of my life, it really wasn't until I had my second kid, that all of a sudden, those sort of pseudo systems began to sort of grown under the weight of the extra family labor. And that's when you know, my platform launched was me going, Oh, my God, I have to go back to the drawing board. Like I have to figure out some new ways existing in this space, because things that were working are now not working.

  Alison Lush 6:26

  The way that that shows up in my work is what I say to people is organizing should be organic. Our lives are changing all the time, the things that we own are changing all the time, our interests, and habits and lifestyle and daily routines are changing all the time. And so if we focus on the stuff in the space, we're only dealing with today's problem, what about next year, what about two years from now, so what I try to focus on is the human being and their understanding of themselves because they carry themselves in where whatever situation they're in whatever time they're in, whatever needs they're in, they carry themselves. So if they can focus on their own understanding and their skills, they carry that wherever they go, and it empowers them to be able to face whatever challenges they have in the future. I don't want people hiring me now to organize their cupboard. And then for them to have to organize hire me again next year, when they change what's in the cupboard. I want them to be able to organize their cupboard next year.

  KC Davis 7:20

  Yes, that's awesome. Okay, I feel like we could talk forever. But I really want to get into some of these questions. Because I've had people writing in, and I picked out a few that I felt like it'd be really good for us to talk about, and here we go. So this is from Samantha, and she says, I grew up moving around. And I have a lot of emotional issues and shame around resisting getting rid of stuff and decluttering. But I also have ADHD, and I feel overwhelmed by the clutter and an effects by functionality, any tips, both in terms of practicality, so ways to make it easier to let go of things I need to let go of. And in terms of philosophy, your mess is morally neutral mantra has already been such a difference. So I love this question. I feel like this is right up your alley. And I would love to hear your thoughts.

  Alison Lush 8:04

  It touches on a couple of really big issues. What is the meaning of our stuff? How does our physical stuff from our past add value to our life today? So there's our memorabilia type stuff. And then there's the stuff we're actually using today? And how do they actually live in our physical space. I encourage people to develop a personalized environment so that they have what they need. So if they need it in front of their face, it's in front of their face, if they need peace and quiet in front of their face. That's what they have. So it I encourage everybody to look inside pay attention to how you respond to your space. Does it help you and make you feel calmer? When you can see all your stuff? Or does it make you feel calmer when you can't see all your stuff? For example, that's the first thing are you hypo visually sensitive or hyper visually sensitive. And the same thing with space and with touch, if we can pay attention to how we react physically, personally to everything around us, we gather information that helps us therefore create personalized solutions. So that's one element. Second of all, the ADHD thing is a whole package unto itself. And there are so many specialists who talk specifically about ADHD, I talk about it a little bit on my platform, but not because there's so many people out there who that's all they talk about, I tend to defer to them. It is a personal path. And it's real. And it affects the way that a person interacts with their space and their time and their focus and their attention. And learning about yourself is the number one powerhouse thing that you can do and it will change over time. So this year, whatever you learn about yourself and your ADHD, it could be different six months from now or two years from now be ready for paying attention to change.

  KC Davis 9:45

  So she says she grew up moving around and that gave her a lot of emotional issues about getting rid of things.

  Alison Lush 9:51

  Right. So that's an issue that is like a really big topic of conversation on my page because I hear and I see people and the issue of shame and expectations and judgment. And I think that our society in general does us a tremendous disservice by setting up this notion that life is supposed to be like anything specific. It's supposed to be like this for all of us. I reject that. And I encourage everybody to reject that. I don't think it helps us, I think what helps us is to figure out what works for us. So when people come to me, and they say, I have all of this stuff, and I don't know if I should be keeping it or not, I ask them digging it, we delve down, we dig down and ask questions about what value is it adding to your life isn't actually adding value to your life? That's really super important. The second question is, what is it costing you? Does it cost you anxiety and stress every single month that you've got those 12 boxes of memorabilia sitting there? Or are they just sitting there and they're not bothering you at all? So the more we can get clear about the costs of holding the stuff and the benefits of owning the stuff, the more it helps massage us towards finding our own personal answer of just to what extent it's problematic to be owning that stuff. Because we, I do not believe that we should be allowing other people to be pressuring us to get rid of our stuff. That's not an answer, that's helpful. It's just not,

  KC Davis 11:16

  I kind of love where you're going with this, because that's where I always start with people too. Because we do have these sort of external ideas. You know, like, minimalism is really big right now. And people talking about, you know, you just you have to have a peaceful space, but they're sort of saying that the only way to have a peaceful space is to have a minimalist space. And so I do think there are people out there thinking, Oh, I've got to declutter, I've got to declutter. But you know, if you jump right to teaching them how to declutter, you can sometimes miss what you're talking about, which is, is this even a problem? Exactly. Some people love to have their stuff around them, some people have a peaceful place. So I want to give kudos to Samantha because she was able to say that she feels overwhelmed. And it affects her functionality. So she's kind of got that piece. But But you're so right. And that's why I really want to encourage people to always start with the functionality like is it working? Is it even a problem that you don't ever called your laundry? Is it even a problem that you do your dishes every three days? Is it really affecting you? Or are you going off of some external messaging about how your house should run

  Alison Lush 12:23

  100% could not agree more.

  KC Davis 12:25

  So if Samantha says to you, you ask her these questions, she says, Yes, it is actually a problem, it actually affects my functioning. And I would like to get rid of some of these things. But I don't even know where to start.

  Alison Lush 12:36

  It depends on what kinds of things we're talking about. One of the cores, elements of the work that I do with clients is I talk about Zone One, two, and three. And I find that this is a concept that is almost universally helpful for people to think about, I talked about in terms of the human being as being zone one, anything I can reach with my arms from wherever I am. So right now I'm sitting at my desk, anything I can reach with my arms without getting out of my chair, that's zone one space. And for my functioning, I should be prioritizing only things in my zone, one space that are contributing to whatever it is I'm trying to accomplish in this space. What however, I define that for myself, it's up to me, so only things that are contributing to what I'm trying to achieve here. Same thing at the kitchen counter, when you're standing at the kitchen counter, what are you trying to accomplish? Most people at the kitchen counter most people and I don't even make any assumptions about that. Most people at the kitchen counter are trying to either make food or clean up most of the time. So if that's the case, the only things that should be right there in that space is only one space prime real estate should be the things that are contributing to making the meals or cleaning up, if that's what you've just defined your use of that space. Right? Some people might do their podcast on their kitchen counter, and therefore it's a completely different conversation. Every person has to decide for themselves. So that's zone one. And we're going to start with one right always, because you start with the human being the human being is the center of the story. That's the thing that's kind of like the core of my philosophy. Because we typically start in our society with starting with the stuff, where does the stuff need to be? I flip that on its head? What does the human need?

  KC Davis 14:13

  Because I feel like a lot of people would start with the attic or the garage, right? The place where things are piling up, or oh, I have this extra bedroom and there's we just throw everything in there. I feel like that's where a lot of people think they're supposed to start because that's what they would say is the quote unquote, problem area. But you're saying no, it's how are you functioning in your home? And so if I'm sitting at my desk, what do I do at my desk? If I'm at my kitchen counter? What am I doing here? If I'm in my playroom, what are we doing there? I love that, okay, what's on two

  Alison Lush 14:42

  That's zone one. And in order to help us keep zone one, purified and functioning and minimalists so that we have just the things that we need, whatever that means, and it could even mean memorabilia. I'm not saying you shouldn't keep pictures of your family on your desk, if that contributes to you feeling good as you're sitting at your desk. Trying to get whatever it is you're trying to get done, then that's perfectly valuable. Every person decides for themselves what they need. That's like rule number one, every person decides for themselves. So zone two is the space that like, I have to get up from my chair and walk across the room to get to that zone two storage, it's totally easy to get to. But I wouldn't want to have to stand up 25 times a day and go to my zone to to get something that I need 25 times a day. So it's frequency of access decides what should be in Zone One. And what should be in Zone Two, Zone Two, it's hugely valuable storage space, but it's across the room, I have to get up from my chair.

  KC Davis 15:35

  So this is why I intuitively keep my vacuum cleaner out in my kitchen, because I have small children,

  Alison Lush 15:43

  And you reach for it 50 times a day,

  KC Davis 15:45

  50 times a day, right? I had it in the closet, I was trying to make it a zone two. And you know what, for most of my life, it was a zone to object. But then my life season changed. And now it's a zone one object, and that's why it's in the kitchen, okay?

  Alison Lush 15:59

  100% your instincts are right on the market, on the ball. And the third zone is longer term storage. And I the perfect example of what we I put I use it as a visual example to help people understand what zone three storage is, it's a pain in the butt to get to, it's like you have to go all the way down three flights of stairs to the basement, maybe you have to use a key to get into a storage locker, maybe it's in your parents basement, maybe it's up in the attic, and you have to climb a ladder, it's a pain in the butt to get to you only want to go there a few times a year. So what do we keep in zone three storage, we keep things like Christmas decorations. We keep things like our seven years of taxes, we keep things like childhood memorabilia, we keep things that we don't need to access on a frequent basis. Again, it's all based on frequency of access, how often am I going to reach for this thing? And therefore does it deserve to be in Zone One? Should it be in zone two? Or should it be? Could it be relegated to zone three?

  KC Davis 16:50

  Okay, so is in terms of decluttering? Can you almost reverse engineer this and say, Okay, here's this, you know, earplugs sitting on my desk. This is not something I ever need at my desk. And so then go well, is it something? How frequently do I need this? What do I need it once a year? Do I even need it there? Like is that a way that you can sort of begin to sort of ripple effect clear out and declutter some spaces?

  Alison Lush 17:17

  Yeah, absolutely. I visualized it in my own head. I don't know why. But I've always used the term massaging, I'm massaging my belongings, I'm pulling closer to me, things that are more important and meaningful, like your vacuum, your pulled it closer to you because you need it more often. And pushing away things that are less instantly necessary in order to make room for because one of the things I have 20 years background in the catering industry, I was a myth for the hotel. And I managed the floor of dining rooms and catering events. And one of the key things that I learned from that is humans need space to move and to do stuff. And we frequently forget to leave space for the humans. And so we have to factor that in. It's valuable to push things away so that there's more room for the humans to function.

  KC Davis 18:01

  And will you is that the zones? one two and three.

  Alison Lush 18:04

  Yeah. And then when you get to the end of zone three, it's like, do I even need to own this.

  KC Davis 18:09

  So when people talk about so let's say they get the end of zone three, and they're going to even need to own this. And if they're still having trouble letting go. There's a couple of things that I've seen you talk about that I thought were genius on your channel where you talked about memorabilia, and ways that you can keep honor and or display parts of memorabilia or your memorabilia without it, you know, maybe just living in its entirety and a Rubbermaid bin or whatever. Can you talk a minute about that?

  Alison Lush 18:39

  Yeah, there's two things I'd like to say on the memorabilia because it is such a huge issue. One is the example that you're giving is my daughter's Playmobil collection. It was a massively important part of her childhood. If we all had to choose one thing that was like significant of her childhood, it would have been the Playmobil. So I took a selection of it and put it in a shadowbox and it's literally hanging on our bathroom wall. And it's so cheerful and beautiful. And it honors her childhood and you know, our parenting and it honors a whole bunch of things on many different levels. And it means we don't have to keep that great big tote of Playmobil. That's one thing so keeping a sampling. Some people call it a sampling. Some people call it I forget something else. There's other terms. I learned that from Judith Kohlberg, who's an amazing person. She has a book called chronic disorganization, and it's available to the public. She has two versions, one for professional organizers and one for the public. Anybody who's interested in chronic disorganization can easily find her little book available on the internet and they might be interested in buying it. The second thing I want to say about memorabilia that I think is hugely important is a measure that me personally I use to help me decide sometimes is it okay for me to actually let this thing go or not? When I'm when we're sitting on the fence and we're feeling ambivalent, oh, I've got this thing. I wonder if I should be letting it go or not. I want to let it go. But I'm afraid to let it go. That we so often find ourselves in that position and it's very uncomfortable. So I came up with this visual, that I think, is really helpful. And people seem to get if it was a white t shirt that I was debating about, should I keep this white t shirt or let it go, Oh my gosh, I don't know what to do. If I let it go. And tomorrow morning, I wake up and I go, Oh, my God, I should have kept that white t shirt, I could really use a white t shirt. How difficult is it for me to go out and replace it. It's super simple. I could even go to a thrift store. And for four bucks, I could get a white t shirt like they're everywhere white t shirts, right. And if we're just talking about a white t shirt, it's just a thing, I can easily replace the thing. It sort of echoes the minimalists advice that if you can replace it for 20 bucks or within 20 minutes, then let it go. I like having guidelines like that so that we don't hang on to just everything. The other example I give like to complete the imagery is okay, what if I'm sitting on the fence and we're talking about my grandmother's pearls, she gave me her pearls when I got married. It's a necklace and a pair of earrings. I've worn them a few times, they're sitting in my jewelry box. But the reality is, they don't resonate with me, I don't feel comfortable wearing them. It's not my style. It's strictly a piece of memorabilia that was meaningful to my grandmother and meaningful for our relationship, I will probably never wear them again. So if I'm looking at that set of pearls, and I'm sitting on the fence, and I asked myself the question, if I let these go, when I wake up tomorrow morning, and I regret the decision, how easy or difficult is it going to be to replace them? The reality is, it's impossible to replace them because they came from my grandmother, they're one of a kind. So what that identifies using the example of the white t shirt and my grandma's pearls that identifies the level of risk. So the level of risk, if I make a mistake is not the same for every item, this is a mistake that we make, we simply often look at everything, and only think of the money value, or its memorabilia, therefore I have to keep it we put so much value on belongings it makes it so that they're like a ball and chain, and we can't let them go. So anything that we can do to identify ways that we can loosen our grip and let go of things that are less important. It means that we can hang on to things that are more important with a higher value and a higher risk value if we let them go, because we can't keep everything.

  KC Davis 22:08

  I like that what it also reminds me of is that I think sometimes when people are getting rid of things, maybe they don't want them, they don't need them. It doesn't function in their life. But it's not that having it is bringing value to your their life. It's that they feel as though the act of getting rid of it is somehow betraying it, or disrespecting it or you know, it's just so hard to get rid of something. And I think that's a part to look at too. Because in your example, like let's say you decide, okay, you know, you I don't want the pearl earrings, I think talking about then where are they going to go is different? Because of the choices? Do I keep the pearl earrings from my grandmother? Or do I throw them in the trash? Like, obviously, I'm not gonna throw those in the trash. But if it's do I keep them? Or do I take them to a secondhand shop? Or do I donate them to a dress for success for lower income women that can't afford me, then I feel like well, that's really honoring to my grandmother, actually. And I'm going to take sort of one of the Marie Kondo tips where she talks about, you know, has this item given its gift to me, and that gift can't be taken away, even if I pass on, and maybe it's honored if I pass it on. And in that vein, I sort of wanted to share a story that I found when I was younger. So I think everyone has had an experience with their first love. Right? Maybe you were 1516 20. And I had this box of memorabilia from my first love, right? This is the you know, just life changing, you know, you'll never forget that person. And pictures and love letters, nice things. And when I got engaged, I said, you know, I think as we move into this new space, I don't want to bring this box, right. Like it was a sweet relationship. And it gave me so much. But I don't need to keep hanging on to, for lots of reasons we could go into what the emotional significance of these things are for me when I move into this new space with my husband and my you know, like that. And but the stopping point, Allison was that I couldn't bring myself to throw it in the trash. And it's not like somebody I can't read gift pictures of me and my 16 year old boyfriend. And you know, what I ended up doing was I had a good friend at the time, who was sort of mentoring me. And I said, you know, I'd really like to sit down with you and show you my box. And I want to show you every picture and I want to read you every letter and I want to tell you about this relationship that I had that shaped the course of my life and how sweet it was and how bittersweet it was, and the things that still mean something to me today. And I want you to know I want to tell you the story. And when I'm done telling you the story, I want to give you the box and I don't ever want to hear about what you do with the box. And I mean I know logically she threw the box in the trash. She's not keep hitting this box, but I was removed from the significance of putting in the trash. That's not what I did with it. I told the story, honor the story. And I handed the box gingerly over to her. And she said out loud to me, I will take care of this for you. And I will honor it. And obviously, it didn't need to go somewhere. And I don't even like to say out loud that I don't want the trash. But it was such a cool way of honoring this thing. That was this memorabilia, but it didn't serve my life anymore. But I didn't want it to go in the trash. And so I'd love to share that story. Because it was one of my better strokes of genius about how to kind of get rid of something that had that weight to it.

  Alison Lush 25:37

  It's so powerful that story. It's a very, very beautiful, elegant and just infused with honor, what you did for yourself for the relationship for that other person for that collection. on every level, it was just filled with honor. And you found your solution, which is beautiful and phenomenal that you liberated yourself from the weight of that ownership of that thing. It takes a lot of courage to do that a lot of the people that I'm dealing with, that I'm working with that I'm conversing with, haven't yet gotten to the place where they could have that confidence or that courage to do that. So what we're doing is always just exploring anything that they could possibly do to liberate themselves, could they reduce the collection, I often encourage people to explore the meaning of the thing. So the meaning of the relationship, the meaning of the pictures, what might you do in the future, I still have my tiny collection, I've reduced it down to very minimal. But that collection that you were just talking about, I've still got mine. And I've still got it tucked away because I haven't been able to let it go yet, but it's very small. One thing I did get let go of was my collection of journals, I had a whole years and years of books that I had filled with writing years and years from about age, I don't know 16 to 25, or something like that. And when I started going on my real journey of decluttering. For myself, it's a whole process. I've been on this journey for 11 years now. And in about year five, I actually hired a professional organizer to help me get past some of the things that I was struggling with. And just by having her working with me off on my own, I went off on this tangent, I said, I want to deal with my journals. And I did it and I shredded them, all of them. I ripped them out of their books, I shredded all the paper through the covers of the books into the garbage. And I feel fantastic. Because what I realized is the purpose of those books, and this gets back to the meaning of the belonging. What was the purpose of those books, the purpose of those books was to help me in that moment to work through issues, and to learn and to move beyond whatever issues I was struggling with. They were like work papers, working through issues. And now it's like five years, 10 years, 2030 years later, I don't need to go back and see the work that I did on those issues. I've moved way beyond those issues, you are the work that you did exactly. So the books served their purpose. That's one of the things that I do love about Marie Kondo philosophy is thank the thing for what you got from it, and then move on and let it go. And that that was one of the examples of how I applied that philosophy. Absolutely.

  KC Davis 28:03

  Well, so when Samantha talks about a group moving around, I think it's really significant that that's how she starts it, because she's telling us that the emotional issues around getting rid of things probably has to do with the sense of either instability or impermanence that she felt when she was younger, you know, we typically associate the stability or the permanence of being in one place with the concept of home. Right home is not transient home doesn't change day to day, we're going month to month. And I think a lot of people who either it could be that you had a great, wonderful family and you moved around a lot, it could be that you experienced some adverse childhood experiences, whether that's abuse or a loss. And I think that brings a new level of complexity into our things. And I think it's important to recognize that and I think it sounds like Samantha does and and to honor that, like we've been talking about where we say, okay, you know, this broom, that, you know, is falling apart? What is that bringing up for me that fear of getting rid of that? Is it that I used to not be able to afford another broom? Is it that we grew up poor, and I can hear my meme on my head saying, you know, don't waste things, you know, good people don't waste things. Is it that the transient nature of getting rid of things, you never got to hold on to anything long enough to feel a sense of home? And there's no easy answer to that. But just being willing to say these are valid things to experience around my stuff. And I think that there are also some things you can do. First of all, I always want to say like, there's nothing wrong with recognizing that's why I want to hold on to things and so I'm going to hold on to them, hold on to them, if that's where you are in your journey, and you need that comfort that reassurance hold on to them. Now, if maybe it says well, it is affecting my functioning well, but maybe we can find ways to keep those things in a way that doesn't affect your functioning, right? And that's where we get creative. But maybe she does say no, I really do, you know, kind of need to get rid of it. And I think that sometimes we don't have to meet it head on. Like, I have this picture in my online shop, and you can buy it as a print or you can download it for free. And it says this home is a safe home, and I am safe in it. And I think sometimes we need these visual reminders. This is not my childhood home, I am safe here. This is my, you know, stable home. And I think there's a lot of things we can do in our environment that can help us kind of gain that reassurance we need so that we can maybe sometimes let go of an item we need to.

  Alison Lush 30:40

  Yeah, that's an excellent point. I don't think I've ever heard anybody talk in that in those terms about comparing the childhood home versus the today home and how we can create our today home to feel more secure. That's very beautiful. The way you just describe that.

  KC Davis 30:54

  Well, thank you. And it kind of brings just because I talked about hanging a piece of artwork. This question I thought was really interesting. This is from kitty. It says one of my struggles is decorating, which sounds stupid as I write it. But when I look around my house with its crappy mismatched decor, and it's dirty walls, Kid destroyed couch hand me down furniture and lack of any style. I'm defeated and deflated. Not talking about high end interior decoration, although what? What I wouldn't do to win the lottery. I would like my house to look more like a family lives here and less like squatters do. How do you hang photos? How do you paint walls? How do you feel good about your space? And this question almost makes me have tears in my eyes. Because I feel like when you're talking about our relationship to our space, and how do we make a home. And I was just curious if you had any thoughts on that.

  Alison Lush 31:44

  I certainly don't specialize in interior decoration. But I have got an image that and a notion that I had developed a several years ago, which I think might be helpful here. You've probably heard of home staging, when people are putting their house on the market, they want to sell a home. The real estate people want to be able to bring strangers in and walk them around and show them the place and we want what you want is for anybody walking in to be able to imagine themselves being able to live there. Therefore, it's important that the decor in the space be neutralized so that anybody can imagine themselves living there. That's the goal. So in staging, and I'm not a home stager, I hope I'm not speaking out of turn here. But my understanding of home staging is neutralizing the environment taking out the personal the over personal from the environment. And when I realized that a number of years ago, what I realized is my personal goal working with clients is to do the exact opposite. My goal is to reach inside of the human being, reach inside of the human being and help them extract and pull out whatever is personal and meaning for them and then infuse their environment with who they are and what's meaningful to them. There's no such thing as it should be this way it should be that way. Don't have to worry. I personally don't think the focus needs to be on how to hang a picture. The focus could be perhaps better invested in what do I want to be looking at it every every day, that makes me feel good. That reinforces my feeling of pride about my family, and I'm a good mom and I love my beautiful kids and my kids love each other and look at them having a great activity in this picture that picture. That's what matters. It doesn't matter what frames they're in. It doesn't matter what wall they go in. It doesn't matter how they're hung. It's the images. It's the life inside. It's the personal connection, and the resonance with the person and their life. That's what the value of home decor is. Whether it's color whether it's I want to have a yellow wall because yellow makes me feel cheerful, then that's the right color to have on the wall. There's no right and wrong the answers are inside of us. That's my view. .

  KC Davis 33:48

  I love it. And I think obviously if we're worried about oh, is it aesthetic, does it look right together? There are obviously people you could ask to come in and tell you that there you could get a handyman to hang photos. But I think I mean I hear kitty asking the deeper question that you're really answering which is we don't have to worry about creating some sort of aesthetically cohesive look. If you want that you can do that. It's more about as you say kind of unstaged the space and getting into you know when she says the crappy mismatched decor the dirty walls, the kid destroyed couch. Some of that is just changing the way you look at those items.

  Alison Lush 34:26

  It's a life that's being lived in when I look at my sink of dirty dishes. If I get up in the morning and I look into my sink of dirty dishes, I can either say oh Ellison you know you lazy slob. You should have to wash the dishes last night or I can say aren't we lucky? We had a wonderful dinner last night

  KC Davis 34:40

  Yes and that like I have a crappy kid destroyed couch. I have cats my couch is gross to look at. I mean there are stains on it. There's cat hair on it. But you know the meaning of that couch is a life well lived and now it's not pretty to look at but what I did was right above that couch on our window sills are hung these handmade ladybugs that my three year old made, and I feel like it's the perfect representation of okay, we don't love the couch, we'd like to get a new couch the couch isn't nice looking. It doesn't. I don't feel warm and fuzzy when I look at it. But in conjunction with these handmade ladybugs, there's something about them together. I mean, they're holed, they're up there with scotch tape, there's something about that picture together. That gives that couch meaning, right? It's not squatters that live here. It's little kids.

  Alison Lush 35:28

  I think that it's really important that we recognize that every phase of life that we're in, has different needs. And we're focusing on different priorities right now, anybody with kids growing up, like in Kitty's house, the focus is raising a family supporting those kids so that they can go out and have friends supporting those kids. So they can go out and get an education, supporting the parents so that they can support the kids. That's what it's all about right now in the family. My personal home, for example, right now, my kids have moved up, moved up, grown up and moved out. And so now it's just my husband and I, the phase of life that we're in is completely different. Our home, we have more space, we have more peace, there's fewer dirty dishes in the sink, it's a different phase of life, if we aspire to a style or an aesthetic that is beyond our reach, because it's not appropriate for the phase of life that we're in, we're guaranteeing ourselves to be dissatisfied. If we rather like you did with your coach. And with the ladybugs, if we rather say this is this phase of life I'm in right now and honor it and say I want to be a great parent I what's important to me is to have a comfortable, warm, fuzzy family home and couch where we can all cuddle up together. And we're not going to be stressed out about spilling the chocolate milk on the couch or whatever. What's more important is our time together, then the stains on the couch become much less important. And then later on, when the kids are grown up and moved out, you can get a pretty couch or you can always put a cover over it or something if you want to.

  KC Davis 36:49

  And when she says the mismatched decor, I want to bet money that that decor is something that she got off of a shelf somewhere because she thought to herself, that's looks like something that would be hung on an adult's wall, right, as opposed to something meaningful. And I think what you're saying can go hand in hand with what I'm about to say, which is sometimes when we are in the trenches of little kid life sometimes or thinking about decor, you know, we do want to be reminded that we are people outside of this phase of life. And one thing that comes to me is I mean, you know, I'm thinking kitty, do you have a favorite band? Do you have a favorite band? Do you have a favorite painting? Do you have something you loved? Maybe because when you were in college before kids, maybe you had those band posters on the wall. Now, you may not want to tack them up on the wall, but you can frame it, you can make it look like an adult lives and have these representations of you know, this is this is who I am. And that makes me happy to look at, you know, if you've got some sort of live, laugh, love nondescript scones on the wall, because that's kind of what you thought adults put on the walls. Maybe that's why it's not speaking to you. So I would lean into both like lean into Okay, let's put the ladybugs on the wall and lean into this is my favorite band. Why did I ever take that poster down? My husband and I have this was supposed to be a game room. But it was sort of our guest room slash where he was working for the longest time. And it just kind of became the Doom room. We dumped everything there. And we decided that, hey, when we sell this house, we will have to stage this area. And then we will be mad at ourselves that we waited until we were leaving to make it like a nice cool area. So we redid the area. And we didn't do anything like we didn't paint anything or do any construction, just simple, you know, got rid of some things brought a couple of little bookcases and chairs and, and when we stepped back, we looked at it and it's our favorite place in the house. Because it's the only place in our house, the kids don't go. And we find ourselves hanging out here all the time. And sometimes my husband even sleep up here, because it just it almost feels like a little bachelor pad. It feels like a little one room loft. We didn't want to buy new pictures. So we ended up putting some pictures of some renderings that I did when I was in college as a costume design student on the walls. We have a throw that says I wait here for you forever as long as it takes and we just tacked it up on the wall. And so we joke with each other that like we come up here to sort of cosplay like single people living in a loft in New York. Because, you know, the majority of our house is dedicated to sort of a kid centric space. And so I think there's a way to sort of lean into both of those things at once. You know what makes me happy because if you put something on the wall that makes you happy to look at all the sudden it doesn't bother you as much that it doesn't match the theme. 100% Yes, anything that we can do to recharge our batteries and fuel ourselves so that we can continue giving to other people and doing whatever it is that we're trying to accomplish. That's so valuable. Okay, I feel like we have question time for maybe one more question. And that's it. This one was interesting. This is from Aria, she says, my home life and my work life blur into endless chaos. Do you have some tactics for how to separate and manage the mental and physical clutter? When that clutter meshes into inappropriate times, ie I cannot turn off work on off days, because I'm very available to my clients, or I'm at work, but I'm worried about the mess in the kitchen. And you know, she's kind of talking about mentally, how do I turn it off. But what I was reminded when I read this, is that throughout this pandemic, we've had more and more people staying at home. And where it used to be, well, home is my home life, my family and office is my office. And you know, the bar is my social life. And then I go to the library to knit, like, all of a sudden, everything's at home. And I'm curious what any kind of insight you have on when we think about organizing our stuff, is there a way to organize our stuff that helps us with those boundaries and delineations. And I'm thinking particularly for someone that doesn't have the obvious option of Oh, yeah, just put it in your home office, right, because not everybody has a home office

  Alison Lush 41:02

  Reminded of the notion of what's enough. So for example, typically, well, one of the themes in people feeling absolutely overwhelmed and being very ambitious in their career or whatever, trying to squeeze in so many things in 24 hours, there's a density to what they're trying to pack into 24 hours and things over overlap, and they don't get time off. And I find it very helpful to pull it back and try to identify what is enough, if I give support to my clients, what is just enough support to my clients, what is just enough housekeeping, it's very much resonating with all of the language that you use, which is just enough to get myself you know, started on the next state, for example. Because when we're being ambitious, professionally, and out in the world, it's sort of like a black hole, it will suck out everything that you will give it, we have to make the boundaries ourselves. And we only have 20k. Here's another thought, and I'm bouncing a little bit on this one, too, I will confess time management, productivity is not my zone of comfort. And it's I don't specialize in it, because it's not something that I feel that I master on the one hand, and it's not a place where I feel comfortable speaking, my zone of comfort is physical stuff, and emotional attachment and skill development and getting people unstuck. That's where, especially with their physical belongings and helping people get refocused. But this comes up a lot people who are stuck with feeling overburdened with their met, how they manage their time in their space, one of the most powerful things that any of us can do is to remember that we only have 24 hours in a day. It's just like money, you only have so much we're accustomed to talking about money and money being a finite resource, you only have so much money to get through the month, or to get through the year. And we function with whatever money we've got. Or we keep sliding into debt. And it's obvious, we can see it right there on the balance sheet. But what we forget often is that we only have 24 hours in a day, and we only have so much energy and time. But we spend our energy and our time as if it was an infinite, as if they were infinite resources, and they are not. So anybody who's struggling with time and energy management, it's recommended that they spend a little bit of time doing, I just sent one to a client yesterday. It's a sheet like a spreadsheet. And you basically note down how you're spending your time there 24 hour period over a week. And you do that for like two weeks. And it gives you feedback about how you're actually spending your time and your energy. Because frequently when we're feeling overwhelmed and like we our boundaries are all intermeshed and we're not taking care of our fundamental needs. It's because we're spending our time and energy more in places where maybe it's not the best and less where we actually need it. And so we need to get a portrait of where we're actually spending it. And this is based on the concept that any financial adviser would have us do. If you're trying to get your finances under control. First, start by identify where are you actually spending your money. Let's start there. And then massage and put more here and less from there. And it's the same thing with time and energy, because they're finite resources.

  KC Davis 44:28

  What it also reminds me of is it be interesting not only to look at how I'm spending my time, but also mentally where am I? How much of the day do I spend thinking about those dishes? How much of the day am I spending thinking about those clients? And I'm reminded of a couple of things that have really worked in my home is I sort of famously have the dirty dish rack right because for reasons that are not important to this podcast, I sometimes have a difficult time taking a dish using a dish rinsing it off putting in the dish. I mean, it's just a lot of steps for me, right I can do about half those steps with ease So I got a dish rack, because what was happening was that when when the dishes were piled up in the sink, it was very overwhelming to me, I couldn't have access to the sink. And now I'm thinking about what a huge mess it was, when I got a dish rack and put it next to the sink and started stacking up the dirty dishes. For some reason, the same amount of dishes stacked, organized on a rack seems so much less intimidating and fewer dishes actually even then when they're bundled in the sink. And I'm also thinking about, you know, when we are looking at how much time am I spending thinking about these things versus doing these things? I'm wondering if there are these small organizational steps that someone like ARIA could take where, okay, you don't maybe have 10 minutes in the morning to do all the dishes. But do you have three minutes to put them on a dish rack? Because then maybe you won't think about them so much, because they're not cluttering the space? They're not, you know, oh, it's such a mess. It's like, no, it's staged, right, it's there ready to go when you have time. And maybe there would be a comparable way of sort of, it's almost like when she needs to work, she needs a way of triaging the home stuff. And when she's at home, she needs a way of triaging and there's, I can't help but think that there's got to be some visual and organizational systems that can help her feel as though Okay, these things have been bookmarked to be taken care of. And I don't have to sit here and think about them.

  Alison Lush 46:25

  So what you've just identified with the dishrack is, it's a container, you have given a specific container that has been earmarked for a purpose. And so you've legitimized the dirty dishes, which is the perfect solution in your situation, it's a perfect solution, when they were sitting in the sink, they don't really belong in the sink, because it makes the sink, not functional, it makes the sink difficult to access. So when you want to fill up that big pot of water to make pasta at lunch, you can't do it, because there's all kinds of dirty dishes. So to make the sink functional, you created a reserved specific space for the dirty dishes. And that was a perfect solution. So if anybody like for example, Aria, looking at something that's dysfunctional, the bothering her, if it keeps bothering her, I would encourage her to look at it and try to ask herself the questions. In what way? Is it bothering her? Is it that she's reminded of it all the time? Is it that there's some guilt associated with it? And if there's guilt, where's the guilt coming from? Is it some old cassette in her brain that was, you know, doesn't need to be there that she could replace with something else? Is it reasonable to feel guilty about it? Or is it perfectly normal to have dirty dishes, for example, and what other options might exist? So it's when we take any individual specific little thing exactly as you did with the dirtiness and the sink? And look at it and ask ourselves what is necessary here, and what don't I need, and then what is a simple solution to containerize and legitimize the thing

  KC Davis 47:55

  That is awesome, we get away from the scripts about what should be in our home. And we just look at what is actually in our home, if we we can make the decision to get rid of some things that aren't functioning, but when things are in our home, just legitimizing it and giving it permission to exist, allows you It frees you up for the creativity to go okay, so then we need a system here, we need a container, we need a place for these to exist that doesn't impede the functioning of the sink that doesn't have it always on my mind. I love that because I'm thinking of so many things in my home. That, you know, it reminds me of when I used to like it was a newborn and I would change her diaper. And we soon found that because the doors closed all the time for nap, the dirty diaper been made the room smell, and we're like, oh, she can't sleep in there. So we started we moved it out into the hallway. Well, when you're changing a baby's diaper, and then you grab the dirty diaper. Well, but now you have to put the baby into the crib. You're not just like walking out with it. And so I would toss them into the hallway, thinking well, I'll toss them into the hallway, and then I'll pick it up on my way out except I never picked it up on my way out. So I always had this pile of peepee and poopoo diapers right outside the nursery. And then I walked by they're like, ah, such a piece of shit. I can't believe I've done that so disgusting. But one day, I really did look at them and legitimize them like you know what this is what's happening right now this is like low on the totem pole of things that need to be solved in my life. And I just put a wastebasket there, right where the pile was. So that as I tossed them out of the room, they were going right into a little trash can. And now I can empty the trash can when it's full, and I just legitimized the pile of dirty diapers and gave them a container. And you know what, it was a short season of our life and it's not an issue anymore. And I'm glad that I didn't beat myself up or make myself sort of do what I should have done with them. Because at the end of the day, who's got time for that?

  Alison Lush 49:50

  I have three other echoes on that on the theme of categorizing and legitimizing when I'm working with clients, we always come across things that they're not ready to make a decision about yet, decision making is very, very difficult. I don't know what to do with this thing, whatever this thing is, I don't know if I should keep it or if I should let it go. If a person is really stuck on it, the worst thing that we can do is just put it down. Because then we're just creating chaos, if we're really close to like, I've got a lot of categories and things are going well. And I have this one thing I don't know what to do with. If I have a box called something like the ripening box or the indecision box or something, a space, that is actually a container, we can put things in there that we have no idea what to do with right now and then come back and revisit it later. And frequently, just the passage of time, when we come back, and we look at that thing in the future. Sometimes it's obviously, but we're ready to make a decision, because we've just let some time pass. So that's one. The second one is, when we're organizing and creating categories and putting labels on all kinds of categories, frequently, we ends up with things that they just don't fit into a category, they just don't. And so we use this word called Miss kibble. So the Miss kibble box is just like all the random stuff, it's like, rather than calling it the junk box, it's the Michigan kibble box. And we don't know what to do with it, just toss it in there, it'll be safe, you know, it's not lost, if you need it, you can go and look for it, it's a safe place to put things. And the third one is, many of my clients are creative types. And they have bits of pipe and bits of leather and bits of fabric and bits of plastic and all these things and they say, but I might be able to use it one day, which is totally legitimate, but they don't know what to do with it. And they feel everybody's always saying, Oh, just get rid of it. It's just a piece of junk. But they're creative people. And they see things in terms of possibility. So they see they know that they need raw materials in the future. So we create a category called raw materials. And that gets the name and legitimacy. And we can create a box for it and put all the stuff in that one box all mixed up. And they're happy, and they get to keep the stuff that they need. But it's got walls in a container, and it doesn't take over the whole house.

  KC Davis 51:56

  I love that there. I think that there are probably a lot of people here and we will wrap up with this. But I just there's probably a lot of people that resist reaching out to an organizer, because they know they're not ready to purge things, they're not ready to get rid of a bunch of stuff, they're not ready to, you know, go through that emotional process. And what I'm hearing is that you would be a safe person for someone to reach out and say, I'm not ready to do some big declutter, overhaul, get rid downsize. But I need some help. And I love that because you deserve to function in your space. You deserve to have someone that can meet you compassionately with creative solutions on how you can raise your quality of life. Even if you're not ready to do some big purge,

  Not everybody needs to purge stuff. What I focus on is helping people get unstuck. That's the way I think of it, people come to me and they say, I'm stuck. I don't know how to get past this thing. It's like this big boulder in my way, and I can't get past it. So we focus on what can we do about the boulder? Does it need to be, you know, blown up and event? It's going to be a whole bunch of little pieces? And you can just step over it? Or can we figure out a way to get around it? Or can we figure out a way to look at it differently. And it'll be see through, that's what we do is we focus on whatever is blocking the person, I sometimes do sessions with people. And we do one session or two sessions. And that's all they need in order to get unstuck. And then they're often they go on their own. We don't necessarily embark on a process where we're working together weekly for the next year or something like that. Every single person has different needs, and I adapt my services. And for whatever the person needs. It's totally, totally flexible and absolutely meets the person where they are. Not everybody needs to get rid of their stuff. That's a very dangerous assumption. I think that that's one thing about the professional organizing industry that is a shame is that we've got this reputation of being we're going to tell everybody to throw it all their stuff. I absolutely do not agree with that. Not helpful.

  Well, Alison, where can people find you if they want to find you on social media, if they want to work with you?

  Alison Lush 53:59

  The easiest thing to do is just to Google me and find my website. That's the absolute easiest thing to do. Alison lush.ca is my website. So you will find me. And there's information there. There's answers to questions. There's a link to a 20 minute introductory exploratory call, which is free I phone the person, we have a 20 minute phone call to see what their needs are and what services I'm offering and figure out if we'd make a good team together. So if people are curious about my services, they'll get information there and they can reach out to me and I'm on social medias as well. But that's the main place is my website or my tic toc alongside KC,KC news. And

  KC Davis 54:34

  Alison is with one L.

  Alison Lush 54:36

  Yes.

  KC Davis 54:37

  Okay. And she's also linked on my website. So if you go to struggle care.com And you click on Resources and homecare, she is one of the resources that I listed there if you want to check out her website and what is your Tiktok handle?

  Alison Lush 54:50

  I think it's Alison lash underscore enough. Pretty sure that's what it is. Alison lash underscore enough.

  KC Davis 54:55

  Great. Well, Alison, I can't thank you so much. This has been an awesome conversation. And I hope that everyone goes and follows Alison. But if you don't follow me, come follow me too. And Alison, it's been a joy. Thank you so much.

  Alison Lush 55:10

  It's been such an honor. Thank you very much and congratulations again.

  KC Davis 55:13

  Thanks.

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

In our first episode, you heard my conversation with Dr. Lesley Cook about executive functioning. Because she has so much great information and wisdom to share, I decided to bring her back to discuss self-compassion. Is it a bad thing to have TOO MUCH self-compassion? Join us for the conversation with Dr. Lesley!

Dr. Lesley Cook is a psychologist who does a lot of work with ADHD and other neurodivergencies. Born and raised in Hawaii, she now lives in Virginia and works with children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families. 

Show Highlights:

• How to find the balance between the message of self-compassion and the need for better life management and progress

• A basic understanding of self-compassion from Dr. Kristin Neff’s writings

• A closer look at shame and how we experience it in relation to self-compassion

• How to gently shift shame into self-compassion

• How self-compassion can become a learned behavior that we pass down to our children

Resources: 

Connect with Dr. Lesley: TikTok and Instagram

Connect with KC: TikTok and Instagram

Get KC's Book, How to Keep House While Drowning

• Transcript

  KC Davis 0:05

  Hello, you sentient balls of stardust. Welcome to struggle care. I'm your host, KC Davis. I'm taking a break this August, but I wanted to play for you some of my most downloaded episodes. This episode is with Dr. Leslie cook. She is an amazing psychologist who has experience working with children and adults. She specializes in ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, learning disabilities, and the like. She has extensive experience providing professional trainings in this area, and has a lot of really great things to say. So in this episode, she and I got together to talk about self compassion. And in particular, it's too much self compassionate thing. Can you enable yourself or enable others by giving too much compassion? If you've ever wondered this, stay tuned. Get a drink of water, take care of yourself. I'm here with my good friend, Dr. Leslie Cook, say hello, Leslie.

  Lesley PsyD 0:50

  Hey, it's nice to be here. Again,

  KC Davis 0:51

  if you're tuning in with us, you probably heard Dr. Lesley cook last week because I had her on to talk about executive functioning. And I invited her back and I had this great idea that we were going to talk about weaponized incompetence. And then as we got closer to the recording, I remembered we already did a recording on weaponized incompetence. And so I'm going to call an audible and pepper Leslie with Q and A's that we're going to answer together about that.

  Lesley PsyD 1:18

  It sounds great. I cannot wait.

  KC Davis 1:19

  Excellent. Okay, so I just want to jump right in because I've got some fascinating ones. Here we go. So as you know, much of my I'm just going to start with a real spicy one. Is that okay? Yeah, that sounds great. Alright, so as you know, my my content on tick tock is primarily about home care, self care, mental health, and self compassion, right all about sort of recognizing how many things in our life we feel like failures about and then being able to internalize like that struggling with that thing doesn't make me a failure. What often happens when I talk about this, is I get a lot of feedback that says like, Oh, thank you, I feel so much better. Thank you. I'm operating so much better in my home. Thank you. This really helps. But I occasionally will get people that have a similar reaction to this commenter. Okay. And so she actually commented twice. And the first time it was when I asked for people who wanted to do q&a, and this is what she said, I think it's great to help people get past feelings of failing for not doing maximum levels of housework. But I hope you also teach that when someone is using the struggle care techniques to survive, they need to also be facing how to get out of crisis, not having more kids or adding to their load, while they forgive themselves for mess and allowing for doing less, they need to also get real about getting their life to a more manageable place. All right. So here's the second comment, this was on a different video. Your videos have me spiraling this week, because I'm worried some people not you are getting the message to forgive themselves too much, and really not doing enough really failing their kids, I hope you'll keep reinforcing the part about how to do what needs to be done, versus doing too much or nothing. And this comment, first of all, thank you to this commenter for commenting this because I can tell that she's having a legitimate sort of emotional reaction. She's not trying to be any type of way, right? And I just, it's been rattling around in my brain. And I've been having trouble finding the words for what it brings up or what I'm seeing in it. So I'm just curious, your thoughts off the top of your head?

  Lesley PsyD 3:31

  I think in both of those comments, I do I do a lot of parenting work. And I almost feel like I hear a version of some of these early parenting messages that perhaps people receive when they're younger. And when we are under stress, a lot of those early messages tend to just come out all of a sudden. So when I hear that I almost hear, you know, it's okay to take a break on your homework today. But don't forget, you can't get too far behind. So you need to keep going to reach this optimal level. So part of me wonders if that's an old message. And the other part of me wonders, when we work with very young children, especially during their developmental period. We always meet them where they are, right. So if a child is learning to walk, our first statement isn't, you know, it's okay that you're crawling. But we got to we got to get to this walking phase, we have this understanding that crawling, enrolling leads to creeping leads to crawling leads to walking. But as adults, I think sometimes we forget that, that it's okay to meet ourselves with compassion, where we are today, even if where we are today is non functional. That doesn't stop our progress. In fact, it's an incredibly important starting point and it can be freeing to do that.

  KC Davis 4:46

  I hear a lot of fear in this comment. And my initial reaction when I saw this comment was that this person is perhaps either a child who was If not cared for in the way that they deserve by their parents, or is perhaps someone that knows someone who is not giving an adequate or functional amount of care to their children, right? Like, I really didn't read this as someone who's like, I really want permission to be judgmental, because sometimes that's what people mean, right? They feel like it's okay to extend compassion or teach people self compassion up to a point. But they have this like line in their head where it's like, but if you're doing X, you are you should not be using self compassion on yourself. You shouldn't be feeling shame, which I think just goes back to this idea that ultimately, as much as we say that shame is not a good motivator long term. That, that shame isn't the best change agent that we have. And in fact, it most often backfires, and stalls out change. That I think underlying belief is really hard to root out. And I feel like this is where it comes to the surface is like, okay, it's okay for us to be self compassionate about not getting our dishes done. But what about that mom who just left their kid in a dirty diaper for 12 hours, and now they have, you know, open sores on their bottom? Like, they're not allowed to be self compassionate, right? And so we get into this place of well, what do we mean by self compassion? What do we think self compassion does? And that's kind of where my brain goes with it.

  Lesley PsyD 6:31

  Yeah, I think I think what I'm hearing in what you're saying too, is there's some belief that's tied up with fear, if I have compassion for myself, I'm afraid that I could become that person, if I let myself versus I think one of the messages from from your content across all platforms is giving yourself Self Compassion, radically, unequivocally where you are, is less likely to lead you there that it's more likely to free you to imagine where you could be next.

  KC Davis 7:05

  So let's just take a minute and actually talk about like a definition of self compassion, because probably there's people listening that are going well, I don't even know what that is. Okay. So I'm gonna read you a definition of self compassion. This is from Dr. Kristin Neff. She's sort of the pioneer of self compassion research. Let me see Here she talks about the three elements of self compassion. So number one is self kindness, versus self judgment. It says self compassion entails being warm and understanding towards ourselves when we suffer, fail feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self criticism. Self compassionate people recognize that being imperfect, failing and experiencing life difficulties is inevitable, so they tend to be gentle with themselves when confronted with painful experiences rather than getting angry when life falls short of set ideals. People cannot always be or get exactly what they want when this reality is denied are fought against suffering increases in the form of stress, frustration and self criticism. When this reality is accepted with sympathy and self kindness, greater emotional equanimity is experienced. Number two, common humanity versus isolation. So first raishin at not having things exactly what you want is often accompanied by an irrational but pervasive sense of isolation. As if I were the only person suffering or making mistakes all humans suffer. The very definition of Being human means that one is mortal, vulnerable and imperfect. Therefore, self compassion involves recognizing that suffering and personal inadequacy is part of the shared human experience. It doesn't just happen to me alone. And then number three, mindfulness versus over identification. Self Compassion also requires taking a balanced approach to our negative emotions, so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. This equilibrium stance stems from process of relating personal experiences to those who are also suffering and thus putting ourselves in a larger perspective. It also stems from the willingness to observe our negative thoughts and emotions with openness and clarity, so that they are held in mindful awareness. Mindfulness is a non judgmental, receptive mind state in which one observes thoughts and feelings as they are without trying to suppress or deny them, we cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time. At the same time, mindfulness requires that we not be over identified. So self compassion, I think part of what I'm sort of hearing in this is that I think some people misconstrue that self compassion means permission for the behavior you're experiencing.

  Lesley PsyD 9:41

  And when you think about permission, that's an attachment to something not this kind of observational lens that we're talking about. So if it's, there's cups all over my house that have old coffee in them, and I'm allowed to do that, and I give myself permission and I don't care what impact that has a me or anybody else that's a that's an anxious attachment to that as a way to not have to feel as a way to get away from my feelings, or standing back. And being an observer that is not attached to that I can come from a place of compassion, which is like, wow, this is really a challenge for me. Here's the story of how this impacts me and other people. And there's no attachment. There's no end to that story. I'm free. So I love that. That detached observer.

  KC Davis 10:28

  Well, and I'm just curious, like the actual definition of compassion. Let's look it up. Okay. Let's see, let's see. All right, sympathetic pity. I don't love the word pity. But let's go with it. And concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others, who I love that sympathetic concern for the sufferings of others. So what, what we're talking about when we say self compassion is a sympathetic and I would say, sympathetic by nature is gentle, right? A gentle concern for the suffering of ourselves. Right. And I also just think about compassion in general, like this idea that compassion has to be permission or that it will give permission if we're too compassionate. But like, I have felt compassion for people and permission at the same time, right? Like I've looked at moms who are struggling, or young men who are struggling, really anyone and been like, they're giving themselves too hard of a time, they actually should be giving themselves permission to rest, right. But I think sometimes we don't recognize that we're doing two things at once I'm having compassion for their struggle. And I'm feeling sort of permissive or wanting to give them the the, quote, unquote, permission to rest or do whatever or let go of the dishes in the sink, right. But I don't know about you, but like I can, I have had compassion for people that I was not giving permission to. I've listened to actually just heard one recently. And I don't know how accurate the facts of the story is. But I'm just reacting to as if the facts of the story were what I heard. It was this woman who was talking in a court case, and I'm gonna do it just trigger warning, because I'm going to talk about some child abuse, but I'm not going to be graphic. She was describing to the judge in graphic details, how she had abused one of her children, and horrible ways. And she's crying as she says it. And at first, you're just like, horrified. And then you learn that what's happening is that this child was doing the same things or abusing her younger baby, like in really horrific, sadistic ways. And this mom is sort of like, crumbling in the courtroom saying, like, I was trying to say, you know, you don't like it when someone does this to you, and then doing it to him. This child eventually died from the abuse. Now, no part of that do I feel is acceptable, permissive. Okay. And yet, I found myself listening to this mom, who was clearly in pain, who was like thinking about her infant being harmed and tortured continuously, and was kind of at her wit's end and was clearly not equipped, mentally, not support it, like, I felt compassion.

  Lesley PsyD 13:24

  I think that that's an area that we really struggle with, at least in our culture at this time, is the duality of many things that you can be this and that at the same time. And in fact, that's important to be able to separate our compassion, and whether we are signing on to something or saying, oh, yeah, we throw our hands up, that's fine. I do find it. A lot of folks are really struggle with that with others, but especially with themselves.

  KC Davis 13:51

  Well, and I mean, I also felt compassion for that child that had passed away. Right? Like that should not have happened to him. He deserved better. Right? And you have compassion for this tiny little infant, right? Who has no one to protect them except the person that's protecting him in a way that's like not functional at all?

  Lesley PsyD 14:10

  Yeah.

  KC Davis 14:11

  So those are kind of the things that it brings to mind. And specifically going back, like, let's talk about, I saw a video recently of a person who kind of was saying, Gosh, I'm my neighbor's kids, like, keep hanging out outside on the stairwell. They're like two and three, and nobody's watching them. And she goes out with her video camera and sees and one of the little boys has a diaper that's kind of almost falling off covered with fecal matter, and you're just thinking What mother could do this. And I think that's where people's minds go when they go. We can't give that mother permission to be self compassionate.

  Lesley PsyD 14:47

  Yeah, but I think that one of the points you made earlier, so important that that focusing on permission separates us from other people. It does protect us a little bit from having to contemplate that I could never be I could never do that. I don't give permission, I don't I don't make excuses, because that's a whole other thing that I'll never do. Compassion requires that we see our connection. Compassion requires that we see ourselves in that person and imagine what would have had to have happened to take place in order to end there. And I think that that's hard. If you didn't learn that, as a child, or an adolescent, it's hard to be asked to find yourself in someone who is struggling at that level.

  KC Davis 15:27

  Well, and the idea that compassion and accountability can't be together. And here's what it also brings to me. There are people out there, that for whatever reason, whether it is psychological or moral, there's a and it's probably a small percentage, but like, they're just they are doing outright evil things. And they do not care whether they do not care, because they have some sort of psychological, whatever going on, that prevents them from tapping into that empathy, or they just don't, that exists. And I think what a lot of people worry is that what if you know my mother who mistreated me horribly, what if she was listening to Casey Davis and Casey Davis was saying, Oh, let yourself off the hook. Not all moms are perfect, you know, you're doing your best like, then that would have given my mom permission to like, feel right. But in my experience, people who are doing like evil, abusive things to people don't need permission to do them. Not only do they not need permission to do them, like they're going to do them either way. But, you know, they also weren't stopped by shame. They aren't permitted by permission, and they're not stopped by shame. So at some, at some level, like, I don't actually worry that much about some sociopathic person, you know, getting permission, quote, unquote, because like, they're gonna get that permission from themselves from somewhere else, it doesn't matter. I worry more about the person, like the woman that was my client a while back, who relapse on heroin while she was pregnant. And she sat in that group therapy every day, and she could not stop beating herself up, she could not stop being consumed with a feeling of failure and worthlessness. She recognized I have done this horribly harmful thing to my child, she recognized Yes, I have a brain disorder of addiction. And she felt 100% accountable. And I can tell you that sitting in that group over and over and over the majority of the way in which she was not able to show up for her child, the way her child needed at that time, was not related to the fact that she used heroin when she was pregnant. It was related to the fact that she now hated herself to such a degree. She had basically frozen herself psychologically, with how worthless she felt. And we all know what kind of life choices we make when we feel like we're worthless, right? We get with the wrong people, we self sabotage ourselves at work, you know, we don't put in effort to maybe making progress in therapy, because at some point, that motive of I want to get better. But when you're saddled with I don't deserve to be better, right? And so that, of course, is compromising her sobriety. And putting at risk not only not showing up for her kid the way she needs to, but dying, if she relapses again. And I'll never forget her because we're so afraid that if we were to give this mom permission, to have self compassion on herself, to gently look upon her suffering with concern, and kindness, that would lead to her sort of quote, unquote, letting herself off the hook, not taking accountability, not learning how to change her behaviors. But in my experience, we've really got it flip flopped. It is that radical self compassion that allows that mom to stand up and start to recognize what her values are, how her behavior in the past hasn't matched to those values, and not be too ashamed to ask for help changing herself so that she can live up to those values in the future.

  Lesley PsyD 19:35

  Yeah, thank you. No shame is a closed door. It's a period at the end of a sentence. There's nothing that comes after shame. Shame is the reason right because I'm bad because I can't help it because I'm broken. But self compassion leads us to questions like How did it get here and what would have to happen for this to be different? It's an open door. It's it's multiple open doors, in fact, and if we can Learn to view ourselves in that way and each other. I think we start asking the questions that actually do get us moving and are motivating. It's interesting shame really does feel motivating, even though it isn't, that's an interesting phenomenon. It always has been for me. And so it can be hard to break away from that pattern.

  KC Davis 20:19

  You know, I have this weird theory about shame if I ever told you this. So most of the therapists that I practice with talk about how there's really only seven primary emotions, I can think of like a color wheel, there's like, untold, you know, different cues. But they all kind of come back to one of seven emotions. So there's fear, anger, pain, loneliness, joy, guilt, and shame. Now, I actually would replace shame with disgust. Right, like disgust because we feel that for lots of things, and Disgust is this really interesting beast? Because it's both an emotion and, like a sense, like, you know, like, touch, smell disgust. And so when we think about, like, what the role of disgust is, when I think about things that disgust me, you think of like, poop, and vomit, and pus and open sores? And like, what's interesting about that, and is that almost exclusively like, or almost a unanimous, whatever word I'm looking for? It's like all human beings of all cultures experience disgust at these things, almost like it's biological, right? Yeah. And it's smart. Because when I feel disgust, I want to get away from something. And it's really smart for human beings to have this sense of disgust towards things that could get them sick. And I think that some of that overlaps socially, right? Like, what we feel disgust at socially, is typically what society is rejecting or pushing out. And so we don't want to associate with that we don't want to mate with that we don't want to get sort of lumped into the same category. And this is why like, I think when you look at a lot of the phobias, like homophobia, fat phobia, there's a real element of disgust in it. And we want to get out, we want to put that thing as far away from we want to separate ourselves from it, because that's the thing that is going to be pushed out. And we don't want to do that. And I really believe that shame is just disgust at oneself.

  Lesley PsyD 22:31

  And but you can't get away from the thing you're disgusted by,

  KC Davis 22:35

  exactly. You cannot get away from yourself. You believe yourself to be something that is, should be put out should be rejected. And yet, the other part of you is fighting for what is on a very basic level life and death, which is inclusion in your pack. Yeah. And, and so it feels like it feels motivating. Oh, God, I gotta, I gotta stop this, I gotta get away from this, I gotta fix this, or I'm gonna, it's not motivating. It's just panic, panic feels like motivation. Yeah. But I haven't really seen, I mean, you can get a little movement, right? Like, when I scream at my kids, and I feel shame afterwards, there's that this isn't my values. Like, that's like the gift of shame is it tells me when I'm not behaving in line with my values. But that's it. Like, it's just information, shame can give you information. And if we take that information, and then practice self compassion, we can then do something with that information to actually change. But it can only give you information, it can't give you momentum, it can't create change. And so what we do with that information matters, right? Like we depending on what we believe about ourselves, we can either bury the information, oh my God, I don't act within my values, I must be a piece of shit. I just screamed at my kid, I can't let anyone know that I do this, I'm gonna go drink to not feel about it, right. And then it gets worse and worse, or we can go, wow, that's not the kind of parent I want to be. And I'm probably experiencing a universal experience right now. And I'm gonna reach out for help. And I'm going to get support, and I'm gonna figure out what's going wrong so that I can be different.

  Lesley PsyD 24:21

  And that's the small shifts, I think that compassion allows us to have and maybe that's another piece of this is I think it may be difficult for folks to imagine going from a place of shame based behavior, to a place of self compassion. I mean, those seem like polls, but in actuality, self compassion just enables you to make 1000 Tiny shifts, and they don't always have to be in one direction. So I still experience I do this for a living. I talked to amazing people like you I still experience shame. I'm looking at a side of a room right now that does not bring me joy. But when you practice of compassion enough, that shift becomes was very quick and what you what happens starts to happen is I noticed the shame. And I gently shift towards self compassion. It becomes just a learned behavior that you can then pass down to children.

  KC Davis 25:11

  I love it. Thank you so much. This was so wonderful.

  Lesley PsyD 25:14

  Thank you for having me.

  KC Davis 25:15

  Of course.

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai

I’m excited to introduce you to today’s guest. Imani Barbarin is a disability rights and inclusion activist and speaker who uses her platform for conversations around the disability community. I’ve followed her for a while on TikTok and appreciate the way she expresses her opinions and helps educate the rest of us. Come join us now!

Show Highlights:

• How Imani explored and discovered her passion for advocacy for disability and inclusion rights

• How climate change and disability are linked

• Why environmental ableism is a real thing

• How people have become victims of their non-nuanced thinking, only wanting to be on the “right” side

• Why the COVID pandemic has become a “mass-disabling” event, especially regarding mental health

• Examples of ways in which the environmental movement has left those with disabilities behind

• Why society has a general disdain for disabled people and believes that they don’t (or won’t) contribute to society

• How the luxury of abled people trumps the necessity of the disabled

• What the function of capitalism is on disabled bodies

• How disabled people are used as pawns in the pro-choice/pro-life debate

• Why there is inherent racism in the pro-life movement

• What laziness is and is not

Resources:

Connect with Imani: Website and Instagram

Resources mentioned: https://www.sinsinvalid.org, https://disasterstrategies.org, https://www.americanprogress.org 

Connect with KC: TikTok and Instagram

Get KC's Book, How to Keep House While Drowning

• Transcript

  KC Davis 0:05

  Hello you sentient balls of stardust. Welcome to struggle care. I'm your host, KC Davis. And I'm taking a well needed break this month. But I want to play for you some of my best episodes my most downloaded. This episode here is called you can't save the rainforest when you're depressed. And it's an incredible conversation with Imani Barbara, and she's a disability rights and inclusion activist and speaker who uses her voice and social media platforms to create conversations engaging the disability community Born with cerebral palsy, Imani often writes and uses her platforms to speak from the perspective of a disabled black woman. So if you are someone who has ever experienced guilt or shame over not being eco perfect, and you need some more accessibility in your life, this conversation is for you. So Imani. First of all, thank you so much for making the time to be here.

  Imani Barbarin 0:48

  Of course, thank you for having me.

  KC Davis 0:50

  I have been following you. I almost said stalking you. But then I thought maybe that was on creepy on Tik Tok. And I really liked your content. And I learned a lot from you. And I really appreciate the way that you express your opinions on things from like several different identities that I learned from. I'm like Saltine, cracker white person. And I feel like I've learned a lot about you from about race. I feel like I've learned a lot about you in the disability realm. And so I'm really grateful to sort of bring your expertise to the next little time we have together.

  Imani Barbarin 1:30

  Oh, thank you. I'm really excited to be on this podcast with you.

  KC Davis 1:33

  So how did you come to a spot where you found yourself advocating for disability

  Imani Barbarin 1:39

  after college? Well, during college, I was kind of exploring my disability identity more, I was just kind of like hit over the head with all of these concepts about disability that had literally changed my entire life. But up until that point, but I had no words to put to it. And so like kind of discovering that language, like I was hungry for it. And I wanted to understand more about myself and my community is also my identity at the crux of being both black and disabled at the time. Well, always but and so like my professors were really excited to like, be like, go go wild with it. Like we don't care like, as long as you just turn in your assignments on time, you can explore whatever part of your disability you're writing. And so I was so grateful for that. Or that after college, I kind of worked as an assistant for a little while, but it wasn't really my thing. And I just started my blog because I really just wanted to write about disability, and just talk about it with somebody, anybody, and just talk about my experiences being black and disabled, and kind of feeling like very isolated growing up. And then from there, I just started promoting it on social media. And here we are.

  KC Davis 2:47

  So one of the things that happened to me when I got on Tik Tok, and I sort of accidentally found this platform where I talk about mental health was that I started talking specifically about the idea of adaptive routines for people with mental health disorders. So you know, the benefit of running your dishwasher every day. So that there's a routine for someone that maybe has ADHD, we talked about the idea of getting paper plates for someone who's too depressed and doesn't have any dishes to eat off of. And really quickly, I started to get a lot of hate comments from people who were saying, you cannot recommend this. It's so bad for the environment. And I understand the initial pushback, right. And so I would sort of say, well, here's the thing, though, we're talking about harm reduction. We're talking about adaptive routines for people with mental health disorders. And but what surprised me, and it's sad to me that it surprised me because what it tells me is that this is the attitude in general, and I just woke up to it in the last year was people would come back and say things like, you being sad is not an excuse to kill the earth with paper plates.

  Imani Barbarin 4:01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's really wrapped up in like white supremacy. And I feel like it's one of the very few things where people are actually passionate about. And so they see, climate change is a threat to the life which touch all of our lives. And so their virulence in their hatred of disabled people, when we say things like, that's just not feasible for us, like we were creating these routines. So it's accessible to us, but it's alarming to say the least.

  KC Davis 4:28

  And what I was doing some reading around that time, and one of the things that sort of jumped out to me and it wasn't specifically about mental health disability, but it was just about disability in general, when it came to climate change. The demographic that is one of the most impacted by the harms of climate change is the disability community. And they were talking specifically about some things that happened like in Hurricane Katrina, where the amount of people that died, who were disabled because they could not get out people could not service them. They did not have any access to the things that they needed was way overblown. In terms of like disability rate in the population like it should it was an unconscionable amount of people with disabilities.

  Imani Barbarin 5:11

  Yeah, I mean, it's always the risk. And so it's always really upsetting when people say the disabled people just don't care about the environment, because we're telling you what we need, but it flies in the face of your performative activism or their performative activism. And then when you look at the actual numbers about it, disabled people are the most affected by climate change. We cannot. I mean, if you ever see videos on Tiktok, there's several videos of like, kids in wheelchairs or kids on crutches and the fire alarm at school goes off, and nobody thinks to grab this kid. Right? If you nobody thinks to grab them. That is literally how we deal with climate change. We leave disabled people behind. And so like this pervasive ableism, behind this environmentalist movement, is really flying in the face of this goal of preserving the earth for all of us. Yeah, I think it's no mistake, either that the two highest groups for disability in the country are indigenous people, for the land back, and black people like to demographics of people who this country has been trying to eradicate, for centuries, have the highest rates of disability, if people who consider themselves environmentalist, have no problem doing away with these demographics and people?

  KC Davis 6:22

  And I mean, if I had to guess it would seem obvious that the role of white supremacy is a huge role in why these populations are seeing higher rates of disability. Oh, yeah,

  Imani Barbarin 6:35

  I mean, environmental ableism is real, if you don't have access to clean drinking water, that means disability, if you don't have access to doctors that believe you, that's disability, if you've structural racism, from institutions, that's disability, so it ableism and racism are interwoven so deeply, that it's alarming to me that people will be so overtly ableist and then claim themselves to be anti racist. You can't be one without the other.

  KC Davis 7:04

  Do you ever feel like sometimes as white people, like, we want so badly to be oppressed? And maybe we found that in environmentalism?

  Imani Barbarin 7:14

  Yeah, I think it's two things. I think that like, white people want to be oppressed. And so they found They latched on to environmentalism. But simultaneously, it's one of the few things that when you advocate for it, it doesn't have a voice of its own to disagree with you to say that you're not advocating for me correctly. It's more of a pet. Yes, the pro life movement of the left, like the perfect victim.

  KC Davis 7:39

  So because as a white person, I get to be simultaneously the victim and to the Savior. Yes, exactly. And who wouldn't want that. And I know that people sometimes bristle at the idea that white people want to be oppressed, but I'm someone who came from the evangelical church, I still very much a person of faith, but I'm sort of deconstructing my evangelicalism. And I've never been offended by that only because like, when you go to church, and the pastor tells you, like, you're on the right side, you're for God, but they don't know. And they want to stop you. And you know, we're gonna persevere. And we're this and it's like, that feels good.

  Imani Barbarin 8:17

  Yeah, it does. I mean, I grew up in the church. So I'm very familiar with all of the same rhetoric that you are. And one of the things about white supremacy is that it lacks nuance. And so whenever you think of yourself as the Savior, or is the one helping on the righteous side, everybody else is on the wrong side, right? It's not through, there's nuance to literally everything. And so when white people position themselves as environmentalists, and people were fighting back and be like, Listen, this is not as inclusive as you think it is, then everybody else is wrong, is is the exact same positioning, regardless of the argument.

  KC Davis 8:52

  It's the trump card, it's the ace of spades, as long as I'm on the right side. And you know, it's interesting, I see sort of queues of that show up a lot and some other content where somebody comes in at the most recent one was we were talking about like the breast is best campaign. And people come in, and they really think as long as I'm on what I believe to be the quote, unquote, right side of this information. It doesn't matter who I'm harming. Like, I'm absolved of who I harm who I step over, as long as at the end of the day in this sort of black and white non nuanced thinking. I'm on the right side of the issue.

  Imani Barbarin 9:29

  Yeah, exactly. And I think that I've seen some of this most like, disgusting ableism and racism towards the indigenous community here is demanding land back and rightfully so. Like every single indigenous practice, regardless of other malted meat or not, is more sustainable than what white people are proposing. You get people ignore them? Because it's more comfortable to believe that you're in the right simply because you're you're saying something when you're not like, you know, these practices have been in place for 1000s of years and simply just have the arrogance to say, to look at a community who's been living with so few resources for so long, based off of ancient practices and just be like, No, I don't like that at discount it. It doesn't apply to me. Like, that's arrogance. That's white supremacy. And it will kill us, who will literally kill us if we do not listen to communities who've been doing this for centuries.

  KC Davis 10:23

  So one of the things that I heard you say one time and a tick tock, you said that COVID is not just a mass mortality event. COVID is a mass disabling event. And I thought about that for days. And, you know, it's obviously a physically mass disabling event, we have people who are now long haulers with their physical health. But the other thing that I thought about was that it's also mass disabling psychologically, oh, 100%, like the amount of people that never dealt with mental health symptoms, or maybe were able to manage these mental health symptoms, are finding themselves struggling in a way that they weren't before, because of all the circumstances around COVID. And I thought that was such a thing we don't talk about. Yeah,

  Imani Barbarin 11:07

  I mean, I would even argue that people who never were diagnosed with COVID have exacerbated mental health symptoms, because of this sheer isolation if you're taking it seriously. And so there's going to be ton of people that are, you know, coming out of this, you know, with agoraphobia, and anxiety and depression. And I think that people are at a breaking point, you know, in terms of the mental health, which is very scary, because we simultaneously do not have any infrastructure for mental health care in this country. Like, I think I read somewhere that, you know, our prison system is the largest mental health system in the country. Does that why why? Why is that a thing? And so yeah, there's gonna be tons of people who are dealing with mental health care for the very first time, who don't know how to reach out to a healthcare provider. And because hospitals or get again, at capacity, are not gonna be able to get to see a mental health care provider, or, you know, be admitted if they choose to, for mental health care. So, yeah, we really don't know the long lasting repercussions of COVID. societally, interpersonally, we won't know those things until decades from now.

  KC Davis 12:12

  And one of the things that I found sort of fascinating was when people push back so hard on this idea of adaptive routines, you know, when I thought about this term, eco ableism, you know, what came to mind for me was sort of the plastic straw debate, which was sort of my most recent memory of the big environmental push that sort of left people with disabilities behind. And that was a big conversation. And so I'm curious if you know, for someone who's listening, that maybe this is their first time thinking about these types of issues. Can you give us other examples of ways in which the environmental movement has left people with disabilities behind?

  Imani Barbarin 12:54

  Yeah, I mean, so first of all, the straw bans were my personal health, but I never, I never want to talk about them again. or dislike them. I don't ever want to talk about them again. But no, I mean, I do all the time, because people just never let it die. So even you know, environmental preparation routines that people tweet out, or ableist, because they simply do not take into account like one of the recommendations for people to prepare for an emergency environmental disaster, is to collect one month's worth of medications, In what world, people are struggling to pay for insulin from month to month, and you're asking somebody to just save some insulin for literally a rainy day. That's not possible, you know, there needs to be infrastructure with that. And people always like, well, you could just siphon off a little bit here and there like this, no medication works. There's also the idea that single use plastics, like you said, are unnecessary to disabled people, disabled people we pay 28% More of our income, then non disabled people just to have the same quality of life. Because of inaccessibility, it little things like having to do the dishes, having to take the trash out and having a cleaner to help us. I'm having an assistant to help us. And people are like, well, you're contributing to plastics, why can't you just wash the dishes like everybody else? Because we can't do everything like everybody else you can try to tell I go and people get really belligerent when you bring up that fact. And I always kind of throw back in people's face, you know, although kn 95. All of these, you know, medical masks that we're not wearing for COVID-19 that doctors are wearing, keep you safe or maybe have a plastic. There's far less pushback when it comes to keeping non disabled people live than it is to keep disabled people live because we they do not believe we deserve to live in their heart of hearts. And that was one of the things that's so dangerous about ableism is that we are taught from a very young age to praise eugenics in our society. And the minute the minute, you ask somebody how their beliefs impact the disability community If they're progressive, they almost always flip on a dime, and start acting like, we don't deserve to live like literally on a dime. I've talked to people who are pro choice. And then as soon as I bring up the fact that Disabled Parents want to keep in half, they're having keep their children to be like, Oh, well, they should be sterilized, like literally on a dime. And that instinct is going to harm our entire society. Because when we think about, like I said before the racial breakdowns of disability, you cannot be anti racist without being anti ablest. And so the same thing applies to environmentalism, if you're telling a certain group of people that the way that they survive, everyday life doesn't matter, and that they should do what you tell them to do. Without any sort of alternatives that are actually feasible to that community, you're literally saying to them, I don't care if you live or die, because a lot of the things that people think is frivolous for the disability community is quite literally life and death for us. And so that instinct is going to do more harm than it could ever do any good.

  KC Davis 16:04

  You know, what it reminds me of is, every time somebody dies of COVID, the first thing that gets asked is well, did they have any underlying health conditions?

  Imani Barbarin 16:13

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. 100%. And people will say that automatically, I'm like, does my life matter any less? Because they did, or, and people really do tell on themselves? When they ask that question.

  KC Davis 16:24

  And I get why they're asking, I think there's this fear of, I want to believe this can't happen to me, I want to other myself, like, if I'm not somebody that has some type of disability, then maybe I don't have to deal with the existential anxiety around the fact that I too, can die.

  Imani Barbarin 16:43

  Yeah, and that's that cockiness. Again, because we're in America, like, the sudden matter of fact, is that not a lot of us have access to regular health care. So the idea that somebody can walk around thinking they're healthy is just false. If you haven't been to the doctor in a year, you have no idea what's going on what underlying conditions you have, even if you are seeing your doctor regularly, you may or may not know what's actually going on with your body. So the idea that is only immunocompromised people dying is only immunocompromised people that we know of.

  KC Davis 17:13

  Well, and when you talk about COVID being a mass disabling event, even for people that don't get COVID Think about the amount of women that didn't get their mammograms and 2020. Because, you know, the risk benefit at the time was, you know, let's not go out, let's not go to the doctor, let's push anything that's not urgent. And like some of those women have cancer that was not caught.

  Imani Barbarin 17:34

  Exactly. You know, even people who because there's certain medications, you have to be blood tested for me never gotten those medications, you know, the people who have lupus, and who want hydrochloric, when was trending or whatever, could not get their medication, their illnesses, were exacerbated as well. People who cannot get chemo treatments because hospitals aren't capacity. People who cannot even like minor things can turn into disabilities, if they're not treated. And with hospitals, that capacity, that's more likely to happen. So you can never say from one day to the next that you're not disabled, that's just not possible.

  KC Davis 18:10

  I'm still really like stuck on your comment about how, you know, when we talk about what the general public are, what a healthy person needs to stay healthy. no one bats an eye, even if that's a bunch of plastic. Everyone needs a mask. Now, everyone needs gloves now. Okay, let's do it. Because, you know, we have to obviously, if you tell them that same person, that somebody with a disability needs something with a disposable plastic to live, you're totally right, we do have this attitude of, well, you're just making it up, or you're just being indulgent. Or you can find another way. And I think I'm truly simultaneously blown away at that connection. And like, sad at the knowledge that obviously, that's true. And I feel like I wake up to pieces of this more and more.

  Imani Barbarin 18:58

  Yeah, it's one of the most upsetting things to learn about society. Is that like, you know, I remember somebody said to my video and said, like, I did not believe you when you said that most people hate disabled people. And I was like, yeah, that's not something I lightly say, I may be jokingly making a joke or be sarcastic about it. But it's very cool. This disdain that society has that, you know, the thing that society hates most about disabled people is that we've survived it despite his best efforts to kill us. And that's the truth. And so whenever people question what we do to stay alive, they're really questioning, why are you alive? Like, why? If your life is going to mean mine, then why would somebody less than me want to stay alive?

  KC Davis 19:43

  I mean, and not to mention, you know, we haven't even touched on how much capitalism has to do with this. Because if I'm taught from a young age that I'm only worth what I'm able to produce when I'm able to work. I mean, obviously, then that belief I'm going to color the way that I see someone who in my view, can't produce or can't contribute in the way that I can or even at all,

  Imani Barbarin 20:07

  you have not only can't but there's this perception that, you know, disabled people really aren't as disabled as we say we are and that we won't contribute as much as we should, which is a very important distinction, because then we, you know, we restrict social safety nets, based on this perception that people won't contribute if they get the necessary resources, or they won't participate in work, or life if they have access to health care, which is why our health care is actually tied to our employment because of racism. Because a lot of jobs, a lot of these jobs that came with health insurance, were mostly filled by white people. And that's why our healthcare is tied to our employment epoch. Yeah, capitalism is really like a mind bender. When you think about the ways in which disability plays a role in a lot of people disabled themselves with this idea to do they need to hustle and prove that they're better than everybody else, or prove that they're not as lazy as those other people who were just leeches on the system or whatever. So all around is very damaging. One of

  KC Davis 21:09

  the things that I heard you say in a tick tock was you were talking about cuz sometimes people will say, well, obviously, if someone needs that plastic, they can have it, but the rest everybody else should be. And I thought you had a really interesting point where you said, like, we can't play that game.

  Imani Barbarin 21:24

  Yeah, one of the things that, like, it should be abundantly clear to everybody is that things do not become available to disabled people, unless non disabled people want them, you know, work from home, telemedicine, all these things only became available, because it became necessary for non disabled people. Now transfer that over to the plastic and you know, recycling debate. If we don't have plastic straws, if you don't have plastic cutlery or paper plates, there's no way disabled people are getting them, because not only will they not be available, but also many places, they'll just be scarce, which means the price will go up, which means a lot of disabled people won't be able to afford them. And contrary to popular belief, not a lot of us have, you know, access to assistance or aides are people that will help us like this not a thing that happens. So they're literally like, piece by piece, a piece of plastic with a piece of glass, like killing off disabled people with a lot of their ideas. When you

  KC Davis 22:18

  talk about sort of exploring your identity as a disabled person, I'm curious if you have any thoughts on what I'm about to say next. Because whenever I talk on my channel about adaptive routines, and I talk about things like if what's gonna get you to eat today is a prepackaged salad. Like you need to buy the pre packaged salad. And when I get pushback from people about, you know, disposable toothbrushes, and they'll say, Well, you know, you can't promote this to people, because, you know, we're all going to kill the world, our disposable toothbrushes, but one of the things that I find is that a lot of people and this might be true of other disabilities, too, but in particular, a lot of people that I see with mental health disabilities, they don't quite know, whether they are disabled enough to deserve what they see as well. You can have it if you quote unquote, really need it.

  Imani Barbarin 23:11

  Yeah, that's something I see a lot in my advocacy is that at least people, you know, who are coming into their disability identity will tell me Oh, I didn't know that. Like, I could do that. And we're also it's not funny, but it's also kind of very just sad in a way, because whenever we hear functioning labels as disabled people, particularly in like the Disability Justice Movement, we cringe, because this is the purpose of those functioning labels, like high functioning, low functioning, is this way of setting up a hierarchy of who needs help and who does not. And we reinforce it every single day with our language, and with our perceptions of what high functioning versus low functioning people need. And people think that just because they're on one end of a spectrum versus the other, they don't need as many supports, or they'll pass judgment on somebody else for navigating the world in a different way, by saying, Oh, they're less than they just, they're worse off than me. When in reality, you just need what you need. Right? Like, you don't need to add qualifiers to you don't need to beg for acceptance from non disabled people, because honest to god, I do not care what those people think, like, I have to survive them every single day, you think I'm gonna give them the peace of purchase in my brain as well. Like, they don't have a lot of land up there. They just know like, I don't care. So you got like these functioning levels play like a very serious role in the way that we talk about disability. And people don't even understand like once they come into their disability identity, just how ingrained they are in us and how damaging they are. But I really hope that people kind of deconstruct that, because you're going to need what you're going to need you're not better or less than anybody else. Some people have more accessibility needs. Some people have less. Some people need to need plastic straws. Some people need like sippy cups like It doesn't stop passing judgment on what you need to survive. You're just do what you have to do to survive this, the only thing people can ask of you.

  KC Davis 25:07

  One of the things that was really hard for me postpartum both times with my kids was brushing my teeth. And I actually got postpartum depression and anxiety with my second who was born three weeks before the pandemic. And it was, the word that comes to mind now is suffering, like, it was so difficult, it was so hard. And I'm someone who for the most part, like I had addiction, really, really early on, I had some sort of diagnoses floating around. But then like, for the most part of my adult life was pretty stable, mentally, physically and otherwise. So to go through this pandemic, and all of a sudden feel like I'm not that stable anymore, despite being a therapist being mature, having all of this, you know, education and experience was interesting. And it was it got harder and harder. And I've tried lots of sort of, Oh, I'll put my toothbrush in the sink at the kitchen, I'll put it on my list of closing duties. And what I finally did a couple weeks ago, because I started having tooth pain, and I was like, I'm gonna have to go back to the dentist, I also have a complete phobia of dental work, I broke down and bought myself a box of 144 prepasted toothbrushes, and for the first time in 18 months, I've been brushing my teeth every day. And so I also have ADHD. So I think there's some executive functioning issues around it and you know, not having a nine to five job where you have the get up, go to the vanity, do your things. And I found myself even though I talk all the time about, you know, you need what you need, you know, using resources, it's not wasting resources, you need what you need, I have had so much guilt over it. I haven't even made a tech talk about it, because I thought I just I can't justify it, I'll never be able to convince people that I'm not just this wasteful. And what I did in my mind to try and sort of resolve this, like cognitive dissidence was I started thinking about, Okay, what in my life, could I take out, I'll stop using paper towels, I'll that's what I'll do. I'll stop using paper towels, and I'll stop getting Starbucks. And that way, it'll sort of even out so I'm not doing more. And that'll be my justification that I can tell people's Well, I cut these things out. So I'm not really my footprint isn't bigger. And what hit me all at once was, Oh, my God, paper towels. And Starbucks cups are not morally superior to prepasted toothbrushes. And yet, somebody somewhere who is able bodied able mind set the acceptable usage of plastic and said, You know, nobody is going to judge you for using paper towels. And there might be some people that will roll their eyes at your disposable Starbucks cup, but like you getting takeout once a week, nobody is going to come and give you a death threat for that.

  Imani Barbarin 27:44

  Yeah. And that's a wildest thing about ableism to me is that ableism is so pervasive that people I have never met in my life, people I will never meet people I don't even know don't even have a concept of cannot even imagine their faces have an effect on how I live my life. Because we have been recycling these exact same perceptions, about disability about wastefulness over and over and over again, people who do not like who people who I would not blink twice, that are shaping the way in which I live my life, so I feel less guilty for them.

  KC Davis 28:22

  I don't know. It's just wild to me that somebody who is you know, I want this is the best ever. I one time had a woman shame me for saying that I ran my dishwasher even when it wasn't full, because that's what allows me to overcome the executive dysfunction of like being able to keep up with my dishes. And I went to her page, I'm not kidding you and money. She was a travel blogger. You gotta be kidding me. This woman had been on at least eight airplanes in two years.

  Imani Barbarin 28:52

  No, no, no. See, that's the thing, like, because that's the thing, like, their luxury. Trump's your necessity.

  KC Davis 29:01

  Like, I'm just trying to brush my teeth over here. I know that if people have these ideas that maybe if I tried harder, I could do it in a more sustainable way. And I get it because I have those own internal voices. But I finally did almost take my own medicine and go Well, Casey, you know what, it's been 18 months. And it's been at least eight months of you trying with self compassion, but very much trying to find a routine in your life that will make this part of your health successful. And at the end of the day, they're probably going to use just as much disposable plastic to fix your fucking teeth at the dentist. If you don't stop, I'm gonna find a way to brush your teeth.

  Imani Barbarin 29:38

  Completely because I have trouble brushing my teeth too. When I get into depressive episodes, I have generalized anxiety disorder. And then I also have what they like to affectionately call double depression. So like I struggle with the same things. And I also grind my teeth when I'm stressed out. So like I remember like, just my teeth were so bad. I bitten to a chip in it. cracked my tooth, like in half. So my teeth are like, very sensitive, because of the sheer amount of anxiety that I've had my entire life. So I understand completely like the in the amount of like plastic bags that go into, you know, you're getting your free, you know, take home toothbrush after you for hours. Team and you're just like, well, I guess it is what it is now? Yeah, like, Why does her luxury, she's doing worse for the planet than you are doing just to survive your day. Like the audacity it takes to look at somebody else's life and be like, well, you're ruining the planet. I don't do any of those things. But I'm gonna go to Bali for like two weeks, and I'm going to not pay as much for food to underpaid, you know, the workers that are indigenous to that area. And, you know, right on a moped,

  KC Davis 30:51

  yeah, the issue really isn't that there's an objective amount of waste you're allowed to produce, it's that you can't produce it as a disabled person.

  Imani Barbarin 31:01

  Right? That's wild. Listen, any space you take up when people do not expect you to live is too much space for other people, they do not care. They think that you know, you living is a luxury, it is a privilege, and they can take it away from you at any second and pass judgments of your entire time here. And then with a real messed up part is when they use your life, to inspire themselves, but leave you in the US.

  KC Davis 31:30

  So you get to be inspiration porn, that's like the role that capitalism has made acceptable. Like, that's the only acceptable role.

  Imani Barbarin 31:37

  Yeah, I always say inspiration. exploitation is enable a society placing value on a disabled life where in which they do not find any otherwise. That's the function of capitalism on disabled bodies, if we take advantage of these stories, and we present them to disabled people and non disabled people and say, they're both for the grace of God go on, you know, that type of thinking, when in reality, we've left disabled people to die at every turn in this country. And your inspiration, is you just surviving that.

  KC Davis 32:10

  And I mean, we haven't even touched on the reality that the individual carbon footprint is like laughably, since like, 20%, right? Not really going to turn things around, for better or for worse, is really just not going to have an impact if we can't move things at a political level. And it must be scary that the people who are willing to move things at a political level still manage to leave people with disabilities behind.

  Imani Barbarin 32:40

  Oh, yeah, like, the reason why I don't revisit the straw man argument very often, is because we got death threats, like, people were telling us, oh, you should kill yourself. Disabled people don't deserve to live anyways, we'll just let them die off over straws. Like is the most absurd thing like when you just say like, it's just over straws, but it was true people were telling us that, you know, will compassionately euthanize disabled people. And if it comes to it, like,

  KC Davis 33:08

  it's like the liberal version of when conservatives blow up abortion clinics, because they don't believe in murder, right? Like, they kill doctors or like, rally, he was a murderer.

  Imani Barbarin 33:17

  Right? Like, and that's the scary thing. Like I said, people will shift their beliefs, the instant disability is introduced, and that instinct is gets a lot of people killed all the time,

  KC Davis 33:28

  you can walk so far to the left, that you just look back around and hang out with eugenics.

  Imani Barbarin 33:33

  Right? Like, we're kidding. When we say like people believe in eugenics, like hardcore, they really do. They do not think that they're just as bad as some other people. Because like we said before, white supremacy lacks nuance. So if I'm in the right, everybody else is in the wrong.

  KC Davis 33:50

  That's super fascinating. And you know, with the conversation right now, with the Texas abortion ban, one of the things you know, when you and you were recently talking about the rate of sexual assault on the disabled community, and how you know, when we get sort of blindly without nuance into something without being able to consider a disability, and you were talking about how sometimes sterilization was about preventing sexual assault. And one of the things that came to my mind was that it was so horrible, this politician, basically using the excuse that, you know, I think it was like up to 40% of people or babies with Down syndrome are aborted once that found out that they have Down syndrome. And he was trying to sort of conflate like, this is why this is a really righteous like, we can't let anybody get abortions, which was really kind of disgusting, but there is this side of abortion where you can get so blindly pro choice that you don't stop to have the nuanced conversation about the amount of ableism that goes into that choice when it comes to, you know, being able to fight I doubt that your fetus in utero has a disability.

  Imani Barbarin 35:01

  Yeah, and the abortion debate is very tricky for a lot of disabled people. Because, you know, I had relatives telling my mom to abort me when my mom thought I would likely be disabled and but my mom and I are both pro choice regardless, like my mom still carried me to term, but she's very pro choice. But my mom always reiterated to me like growing up like I wanted you like, I still want you, I want you as my daughter. But I still reserve the right to have a choice and for you to have a choice. And people really lack those conversations. And it's really irritating. Just how often disabled people are used as pawns in this argument over pro choice or pro life, and nobody really asks us what we need. You know, not a lot of disabled people even get sexual education. Not a lot of disabled people even get sexual health care. When I was talking about the story about people who sterilized disabled people, it's not to prevent rape is to prevent children, they're not meant to prevent the rake, they're just trying to prevent the children. And like, that's the more devastating part is like, they're not even trying to address the root issue to a lot of these problems. They know that the abuse is gonna continue, they just don't want any children birth and disabled people.

  KC Davis 36:11

  And the politician that was talking about, you know, uh, well, you know, it's just so ableist to abort a Down syndrome, a fetus that has Down syndrome. And it always comes across to me like, it's this like, gotcha moment, like, we know that the lefties are into not being able to. So what do you say now? Gotcha. And it is not it is being upon

  Imani Barbarin 36:34

  it is also a miscalculation of the left to cause like they will 100%. What are you talking about? Like, yeah, what of it? Exactly. But I think one of the things that is so irritating about that argument about people with Down syndrome being aborted is that like, if they had the social services in place, where disabled people to survive, once we take our first breath, rather than us just being in utero, less people would probably make that decision. Like, the nature of us being pawns in a lot of these arguments, is to just ignore us once we're alive regardless. So I don't like I hate that argument. Because I know how difficult of a decision it is for a lot of, you know, pregnant people to make that choice, whether to have an abortion, and to have an abortion, whether because it's a disabled child, or might just be a disabled child, it was a hard decision to make. And I think that people just erase the fact that if we did better by disabled people who were alive already, people would not feel as pressured to make that decision.

  KC Davis 37:42

  Yeah, that's kind of the breakdown of the whole pro life argument in general, which is, if you really wanted to reduce the amount of abortions, you would make it not suck so bad to be a parent. Yeah, who was unsupported or and a child who can't, doesn't get the social safety net?

  Imani Barbarin 38:00

  Well, I mean, it also points to the racism of the pro life movement, which is that they don't expect these children who these unwanted children, these pregnancies that are carried to term out of the soul and, and strife to actually be members of slidy, a lot of these children are shuffled into the prison system, like that's the entire point. You know, a lot of white people want a white ethno state, and then to arrest and incarcerate children of color, then, like, that's the end point. And so like, even the argument that we're trying to make is, you know, irrespective of this idea that race plays a role, it very much so plays a role. And I think the right has projected outwards decades, what they hope this moment in history will do for white supremacy. And so yeah,

  KC Davis 38:50

  you know, you started our conversation by talking about how, for lack of a better term, anti ableist. And what I think has been interesting is, as we've been talking, we're sort of naturally not even jumping, but like we're naturally having to talk a little bit about white supremacy and talk a little bit about the abortion debate, talk a little bit about indigenous rights talk a little bit about and it's, it really is so entwined, and I feel like well, I want to thank you, because I feel as though even having this conversation with you has been illustrative of that, that it's just been even impossible. It's like we can't sit down and go, Okay, we're just gonna talk about eco ableism for 45 minutes. No, like, by necessity, we had to sort of foray into all these other identity intersections and issues and so that I feel like that sort of makes your point so beautifully.

  Imani Barbarin 39:46

  It's one of those things where like, weather always makes fun of me because if anybody triggers a disability conversation to me, I will always bring up my statistics about how it affects racially. I mean, that's also the reason why we're seeing a lot of these Republican bills that look like how to menus on how to exclude disabled people, because a lot of the areas that they're excluding, and cutting and restricting voting access, fall along the lines of things that have aided disabled people in particular disabled people of color in voting in past elections. So yeah, it all connects. And I think that disability is kind of like the crux of a lot of different movements that I don't think people really realize can be used against them. Because like I said, that instinct is very frightening. And it will turn on a dime, to say, Oh, those people don't matter. But then we actually look at the numbers, you actually be like, Oh, crap, that would actually eradicate an entire group of people.

  KC Davis 40:41

  And I feel like ability, in particular, physical or mental ability is always like the unrecognized privilege. Like anytime I've brought up issues of privilege on any of my content channels, there's always like, the disaffected, lower income white person that's like, I really didn't have privilege, because they kind of do their list. Or I, sometimes I get it from women where they'll say, you know, if I can keep my house clean, you should be able to keep your house clean. And at the end of the day, they're like, Well, I didn't have any privileges, I can't afford a maid, you know, I didn't have these things. And you're like, the fact that you can stand for 10 minutes is a privilege.

  Imani Barbarin 41:23

  Yeah, I call them. I like to make fun of non disabled people a lot, just to keep them on their toes. And I call them like, celebrating their default setting, like, really good defaults, like, I get it, you could do all these things. But like, I don't care, I'm still gonna have to do what I have to do. Because the truth of the matter is, is because of a lot of the Savior behavior, they believe that there's always going to be somebody to help. That's just not true, that there's always gonna be somebody that will rise above and, you know, really make a difference. And social media has really impacted and kind of warped our perception of how we as a society help one another because we're doing a lot of this stuff on camera, we're filming people at their worst moments needing help, for likes. And people seem to think that that's the norm. It's not like that's not normal, but it's not normal, that people are gonna just rush up to me and help me, most of the time, people are just grabbing at me for fun. So it's not like people are going to actually be grabbing at me to help me nine times out of 10. And if they do, sometimes they actually wind up hurting me. So this idea that, like people have resources that we need, and we're just taking advantage of the system is kind of this pervasive idea that kind of started with Reagan. And you know, the welfare queen stereotype which is extended to black women, particularly who were disabled, that were leeches on the system, and that anybody who's taking advantage of a social safety net, doesn't actually need it, Reagan, it can be traced to a lot of ableism of the country, in the United States, particularly the way he weaponized racial stereotypes along the axis of disability.

  KC Davis 43:00

  I feel like so if you're someone who's listening to this podcast, and you're resonating with maybe some of the things we've talked about, about, you know, you need what you need. And you're still kind of hearing that inner voice that says, Oh, not me, no, I think maybe I'm just lazy. I just want to take a minute to say that as a therapist, I've seen so many clients, I've seen so many clients with mental health issues with addiction, seeing clients with physical disabilities, and I have to say, I've never met someone who's truly lazy.

  Imani Barbarin 43:30

  There's no such thing. Like, there's really no such thing as lazy. There are people that can, and there are people that just are not able to. And we have this perception that they won't, again, there's going back to this idea that people just won't do the right thing. Whereas there's not enough services is of course, for people to be able to survive. And so they're just struggling all the time.

  KC Davis 43:51

  Yeah. And I always say like, don't get me wrong. I mean, entitlement exists. Exploitation exists. There are definitely people out there that feel like they have more right to labor to leisure and rest than somebody else does. And so it really should be these people were breaking their backs and working so that I can rest. But that's not laziness. That's entitlement. Yeah. Right. Like the person listening to this podcast, who's like, Oh, God, I think I would probably finally get my teeth brushed. If I had prepasted toothbrush. It's like, you're not lazy. That's not it. Like the things that you're thinking, you would help you survive the day with meet your basic needs. That's not laziness.

  Imani Barbarin 44:31

  It's just you creating accessibility where you can. Like, that's the goal. That's what you need to have happen. So like, stop passing judgment on yourself. I mean, honestly, like my mom, my dad, always I have ADHD too. So my brain like, I'm gonna diagnose you, but I'm 100% certain the way my brain works like it's just but my dad used to tell me like I used to hate going to the gym. I still hate going to the gym to terrible degree. I really hate it for my dad. I always used to say, Who cares what they think they're not going to be there when you're struggling, none of these people who were staring at you none of these people were passing judgment on, you would never lift a finger to help you at all. So why are you keep taking into account what they think about what you need to do to survive? When they're not gonna be there,

  KC Davis 45:19

  you need what you need, right? So there's probably some other people listening that maybe aren't necessarily resonating with that message. But they're realizing that they have never really given a ton of conscious thought to ableism, or to eco ableism, or maybe just ableism in general. And I'm curious if someone's listening, and they're thinking, Oh, my gosh, these are concepts that I have totally never thought before, but totally seems like something I should be aware of. Do you have any recommendations on where you think someone should start if they wanted to educate themselves further, or if they wanted to sort of do the work to not be a part of movements in a way in such a way that they leave behind the disabled population?

  Imani Barbarin 45:59

  Yeah, absolutely. So I always recommend since aamva, leads Disability Justice work, they are excellent. There's also an organization called the strategic partnership for occlusive disaster strategies. They're working out of Louisiana right now. And they work internationally to prepare disabled people in particularly for natural disasters and climate change. They're run for and by disabled people, which is remarkable to see people in wheelchairs, like climbing rubble to get other disabled people out. Props to them always. There's also several articles that I wrote about climate change and disability. There's a couple of articles on my website on the straw ban, which again, I refuse to revisit, it's traumatizing. There's a climate change article about disabled people. There's the Center for American Progress also does a lot of pieces on the intersection of disability and climate change, as well as disability justice in general. They have a disability justice initiative that you can look at. So there's just some of the research just off the top of my head.

  KC Davis 46:57

  And where can they find you if they want to follow you? Oh,

  Imani Barbarin 47:00

  my website is crutches and spice.com at Imani underscore Barbara and on Twitter, and then at Coaches underscore and underscore spice on Tiktok and Instagram.

  KC Davis 47:10

  Awesome. Well, Imani, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed our conversation. And I always love when other people with ADHD are on the podcast with me because I feel like oh, we can just be ourselves. We can just non sequitur through the next hour together.

  Imani Barbarin 47:26

  I love that.

  KC Davis 47:29

  That's awesome. Well, thank you so much. And I am going to say goodbye to everyone now

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai