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Speaker 2:welcome
Speaker 3:to another episode of North Bay. This one is going to be sauce running it all on her lonesome. So I think you probably already know what that's like and I apologize in advance. Today we are going to be talking about burnout and with me today, I have two comrades nicely and Megan. Leslie, if you could go ahead and briefly introduce yourself.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Hi, I'm so happy to be here. My name is Leslie. I am from the, uh, Orlando Florida chapter of a Dsa was formerly the chair until fairly recently when I had to step down because of burnout. So, and also with us. Megan,
Speaker 5:Megan. Hi. Also glad to be here. I am living in the Chicago area. I'm working on my dissertation for my clinical psychology degree and slowly losing my mind. Yeah. I've had to take, I've been working with the Chicago GDC, which is you all have the GDC up there. Yeah,
Speaker 3:yeah. A GDC, the IWW General Defense Committee.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Yeah. So we've got a mental health working group out here though I had been working with for awhile and they're great. But you know, sometimes you have to put things on the backburner while you get your, your ducks in order. You can, you can cut all that out. That's boring,
Speaker 4:Tyler. Yes. You find that that stuff
Speaker 3:was boring. You can cut it out, but I think it was interesting. And I'm going to roll off that. I'm going to roll off that ducks thing anyway. So we're going to be talking about some of the things that can, the can fuck up your ducks and excellent transition. Thank you. Thank you. That's one of the reasons Tiberius keeps me around. Uh, talking about burnout, which in my understanding is kind of a chronic stress that leads to feeling exhausted, feeling useless, cynicism, detachment and general ad shit. That means you can't really function. Um, God, it's like you just read out of my diary, Megan. Leslie does that, that's kind of sounds, sounds familiar. Sounds appropriate. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I was like, I'm Leslie you, you might be actively experiencing this or this is a very relevant topic.
Speaker 4:Pretty chilly. Yeah. I'm not super like well versed in psychology, but I'm just there like lived experience recently. Yeah, check, check, check, all of those things off me plus some more. So
Speaker 3:how comfortable are you going into, into kind of how that felt and, and his feeling for you?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean it's, it's, I haven't really had a chance to like work through it except for internally, but I guess I can try to like kind of put into words how I have fell an MCLE now only if you're comfortable. Yeah, for sure. So, um,
Speaker 3:okay.
Speaker 4:So I've been the chair of our chapter since about May of last year, I think right before the, or right before the convention. So probably a little bit earlier than that. I was interim chair because our last chair stepped down. I'm sensing a pattern here, so that's probably like not super great for the first like few months. It was really amazing and it was really a fun and it was nice to have a little community of people that I could hang out with and, and talk about things with and plan stuff with and then it just sort of stagnated and stuff just wasn't getting done. And the like sheen of having all this responsibility and having this expectation just start kind of like the fun of it started to wear off. And I know that like, you know, I'm being a socialist and, and working to advance all of these things that we want to do is not going to be a a walk in the park every day. But it got to the point where I was like waking up and if I, if I thought about anything related to Dsa, I would just feel miserable. Even like sending a newsletter or reaching out to somebody from another organization just felt like the worst thing in the world for me. So, um, it got to a point where I was just like, I need to make a choice. Like, do I want to keep doing this or do I want to like help myself? And, um, so yeah, a couple days ago or a week ago actually, I sent out a letter of resignation and I've been to kind of taking a step back a little bit, working on myself. I may come back later at some point because obviously like I love this organization. I love the people that I met, including my friend sauce here. And it's really changed my life in a positive way. So I don't want it to all be for not, but for right now I'm just gonna like chill.
Speaker 3:That makes sense. I have stepped back a little bit from Dsa work myself in part because of the same feeling of whenever I thought about all the shit that I had to do, it did not feel good. I really appreciate my organizing committee. I mean there are great people on the organizing committee, but also it's tiny and it kind of felt like it was the same few people doing all of the work.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's funny. Relatable on on paper. Orlando is a pretty decently sized chapter. Like I think we have about a hundred members that are dues paying like on paper, but we have maybe about 20 to 30 people that show up semi regularly and then maybe about six that actually do work and that's really, that really put it all in perspective for me.
Speaker 3:Hmm. I think one of the things that hasn't really helped is not feeling very supported in the, in the larger context. Obviously being a socialist isn't going to be, I mean you know going to be loved and embraced by every single liberal out there and on the planet or anything that kind of feel pretty lonely.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that's real. It's like a lot of hard work facing a lot of grim shit and a lot of people are really hostile to you for it, you know? Well a lot of people can be, it's grueling work. It's girly.
Speaker 3:We are recording this in the middle of March and just as last week to members of the Boston steering committee. Both fans will, both women wrote about why they were not running for reelection and the reasons that they gave word that they felt that they had been shouldering more than their fair share of work. They had felt unsupported and that also they had felt that they had been the target of not explicitly harassment but gendered on comradely miss I guess would be be a way to to it. And it's, I mean this is probably the latest in a wave of people leaving DSA or leaving groups and we're getting now to the point where it's worked its way through the more marginalized up towards the slightly less margin wise, less marginalized and now it's up to women and femmes in general and soon all that will be left in Dsa is East Bay and Manhattan. They itself at Megan, do you have any, any hints on warning signs of Burnout? I mean
Speaker 5:yeah, I feel like we've talked about some of them but not explicitly. Yeah. Well so what comes to mind is comparable in therapy, which is vicarious trauma or compassion fatigue and it can be, you know, more intense when you're dealing face to face with, you know, the, the severe emotional impacts of trauma and, and hearing trauma accounts and stuff. Like there's, there's certainly some degrees, but I think in this work we're doing a lot of, we are facing a lot of trauma and we are working with other people's sort of ghosts. And so I do think that there's sort of an, I think there's a meaningful overlap there between like organizing burnout and and things like compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma. And so some of the signs of vicarious trauma that like a lot of helping professionals full experience mirror a lot of the symptoms you would see in Ptsd. So like the physical exhaustion and fatigue, like the sematic symptoms. So the way that are emotional and psychological stress can turn into physical like physical stress and symptoms like getting more sick more often or a migraine headaches or digestive shit, you know, like, and then there's also all the other fun psychological stuff like the heightened anxiety, insomnia, difficulty sleeping. Sometimes our sex drives can take a hit. There are so many, it's such a rich tapestry of awful. It's really, it can, it can go in so many ways. Like the depression. I know that sometimes. So when I was doing pretty intense trauma work, one of the things that hit me and I was like, Oh shit, I need to do something different was I would just break out the breakdown in tears at just anything like commercial on TV. I'm just a mess, you know, like there, there's sort of this emotional fragility that hit me and I was like, oh, this is a problem. I can figure out a different way, approach my
Speaker 4:work, or at least how to approach my like leisure life afterwards. And so that year that I was doing on that treadmill work, I ended up watching pretty exclusively like cartoons. Nothing, nothing that had any violence, nothing that had anything I was, that was emotionally difficult. It was like the last airbender and you know, like it was just, it was very straight forward, easy, gentle stuff. I would argue that the last airbender does it get pretty again? Yeah. Martial arts scene choreography, right. It's like the only time I've ever appreciated fight choreography basically. Anyway, sorry, we'll talk about that after. Okay. And now I'm feeling like I missed out by not having watched that. Oh, well, you know, my little time, there's still tonight. Yeah, we can do a whole episode on it.
Speaker 3:I think one of the things that that has been for me, an indicator usually that what's something that I have ignored until I look back later and realize, oh shit. Yeah, that was a sign is I, I tend towards introversion and I'd like tend to not really enjoy socializing very much, but with that ramping up so much that I get frustrated when people want to interact with me. I get like mad when people at work try and say hello to me. I'm like, no, just leave me alone.
Speaker 4:I'm Dario. Yeah, and I live in the south where that is like so, so much more prevalent. Like if I'm at the grocery store in 14 different people want to strike up a conversation with me about toothpaste. I'm like, when I was at my worst, I was just ready to explode on a just a nice old grandma. So I totally, totally understand how that feels.
Speaker 3:I think I'm a little bit privileged to having, being in California when nobody wants to talk about anything unless you're at whole foods and I don't go to whole foods and some of this also I feel burnout proportionately obviously has hit[inaudible] in DSA harder, but some of these, some of these signs and symptoms are probably more impactful on women and femmes like isolation and anger and depression and this lack of energy that I, things that I feel are unspoken expectations or even spoken expectations for him and that we be friendly and we'd be cheery and happy and we get a lot of shit done.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. There's this level of like, yeah, exactly. Expectation that we are able to do all of these things, plan events, call and interact with, you know, a bunch of different people to get them to come to these events and have the creative capacity to draw out flyers or other stuff like where we're supposed to be so multifaceted and like even we sort of, I mean I can only speak for me personally, but I sort of internalized that like yeah, I should be doing all of these things. And then I got to the point where I was like, oh wait, no, you can fucking do it. Oh, I'm sorry. Can we curse? Yes, you can. Okay. You can fucking do it. It's a weird pressure that we put on ourselves and other people put on us at the same time whether they know it or not. And it's so frustrating to like try to break out of that.
Speaker 3:There's this concept called stereotype threat, which is something that people who are in marginalized people or minorities experience when maybe you are one the only or one of a limited number of people who look like you or sound like you or act like you in a group and you feel like you are representing your entire group. So if you are the only person of color in an organization or a few or the only woman in leadership or you are the only queer person on a committee planning something, you feel then like you are representing your entire category of people. Um, and Megan, I know that you are better at pulling these things up, trimming from brain stereotype threat. Please correct me if I'm incorrect, is also one where you feel like your failure will be interpreted as I'm representing everybody in your group. Yeah, that sounds right. Especially if it's something that might reinforce stereotypes about your group. So if I get mad and I can feel that I'm starting to cry because I mad, I have that stereotype threat of Oh shit, I'm going to come from that stereotype of women as being over emotional and crying at everything. And then
Speaker 4:that's just the worst. That's such bullshit. It's such a betrayal of your own body. Right? It's like I'm furious. I'm not sad. I don't want anyone. Ah, yeah. And it's like I, yeah. If I want to cry, like it's, it's because of the situation, not because I'm like a Stepford wife. Like I am allowed to do that as a human. Oh my gosh. If I could
Speaker 3:somehow weaponize my tears in a physical fashion, like squirt them,
Speaker 4:looked at somebody like a water pistol, shoot out like acid, like that dinosaur from Jurassic Park. Oh my God. That'd be amazing. You can just be like Tyra and just like turn it in ice and then, yeah, and just bend. It would be a tier bender. Beautiful. Oh my goodness. But yeah, it's, it's so hard to, she let go of that. I have, I've been spending a lot of time like, and even now, now that I've left my chapter and stepped down, I keep subconsciously trying to blame myself for things like, oh, I should have done, I even spent some time thinking about how I should have wrote my resignation letter better. Oh, and it's just, you have to just shut that voice off because it is so internalized and it comes from years of, of having that beat into your head that you should be able to do this and do this a certain way, and when it doesn't work out because of actual external things, then it's still manifest as, as you failed, you did something wrong.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That sounds pretty familiar. I'm just as humans or just as beings existing in this state of Geo hell that we're in these days, you just, that has a certain layer of baseline stress that I would argue is for most people higher than it was maybe 10 15 years ago. For those of you who remember 10 or 15 years ago,
Speaker 4:some of our listeners may time I was away. I was not making sense anymore. Yeah. Right now. Yeah. Uh, Lennon's quote about, uh,
Speaker 3:there decades where nothing happens and then there are weeks when decades happen and we are in month 18 or 19 of decades happening every week.
Speaker 4:Hmm. Who notes of this episode. We'll even come out if something wild will happen between now and then. I have not, I don't know how much more I could take. So, um, a quick kind of,
Speaker 3:I suppose a quick guide to if you might be in danger, all four already approaching burnout would be if you can't sleep, if you are feeling more anxious, irritable, depressed than usual. If you a feeling more stressed than usual or more exhausted than usual, angry, unable to cope. Megan, anything I'm missing? I feel like I'm not getting all of them. And Leslie feel free. I mean those are,
Speaker 4:yeah. Like you're, uh, if you're like eating habits change, like the past three weeks I've eaten like, just complete garbage and it's big tries. Yeah. I'm just too tired to even like turn the part of my brain on that knows how to make a recipe or cook something because I'm just so fried. Um, so yeah. Any kind of dietary change? Not Eating, eating too much. Yeah. Just being tired all the time.
Speaker 3:Not feeling like
Speaker 5:any enthusiasm or any, any passion for what you're doing. Yeah, sure, sure. Let's say emotional lability is probably, that's when I noticed. Right. And so lay by on meaning you go through emotions quickly, you can, if you notice yourself served, you can snap into a different, like immediately into anger or sadness or you know, more so than usual I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Those kinds of wild and not so much really mood swings as like feeling something and then a couple of minutes later being like, well, okay, that's done. Why? Why did I feel that kind of stuff? Yeah. It's like an emotion, no speed bump and just like it hits you and then it's over. It's, Oh shit.
Speaker 5:I don't know. I mean I also, I think dissociation is often something that is under recognized. I think it's something that happens a lot more than people identify. Uh, so dissociation being any sort of disruption in typically a unified psychological. So that's okay. So what does that mean? Okay. So disruptions in time, like if you're zoning out a lot or you don't, you like there's like entire chunks of time that are missing from your day or if you like have disconnections with your body, like the really extreme forms would be like out of body experiences but sometimes more subtly there can be like a numbness or like a depersonalization, like your like your buddies, a really yours or, or derealization where you sort of feel like the world around you is sort of surreal or you maybe you feel like you're in a movie.
Speaker 3:The depersonalization one I'm often drawn back to when I talk about my daily interaction with my body, I'm drawn back to something that um, my, your Hornbacher wrote in her memoir about eating disorders that she described it as I have about body, not I am a body and I felt like some of that is also the baseline kind of, I mean my relationship to my body. But yeah, if normally you feel like you are a body and now you're feeling like you have one would be kind of a, a depersonalization or like you are just a brain stocking side. This is flesh lump.
Speaker 5:Very poetic.
Speaker 3:Thank you. I I live for your praise and make an yeah, so, uh, dealing with dealing with bone out, obviously if it gets to a point where where Leslie and I, uh, and with some other comrades are, I think really the, just disconnecting from what's causing the stress is, is probably the, you know, pulling the rip cord and getting out for a bit is that other stuff that we can
Speaker 5:do before we hit that point and we will, I think just,
Speaker 4:yeah, I think learning to recognize it is super important. I probably spent a lot longer than I should have. Just kind of like, oh no, I'm just stressed out. I'm just, you know, tired of, of this one thing. And I didn't realize like, oh no, this is not okay. And then I think if you're going to stick with it, I'm not expecting putting so much pressure for perfection on yourself. If, if things are going to go a certain way, then that's great if they're going the way that you imagined or envisioned in your head. Um, but sometimes most of the time that doesn't happen. So I think having a level of realistic expectation kind of like tunes out or a suppresses that burnout and then trusting other people to help you. There are like, despite my earlier ramblings, there are like a ton, a ton of people that in, in my chapter that have been really great. My, our secretary Nicole was amazing. She got our movie day started and all of these like outings and stuff and she totally rules. So trusting that she will take care of things for me, um, was, was really helpful too to kind of suppress the burnout for, for at least a little bit. But yeah, I think it's hard to trust other people when you are like in the very deepest part of being burnt out because a lot of that stems from people disappointing you and you disappointed yourself. So
Speaker 5:one thing that comes to my mind is noticing burnout potential in other people and doing your best to sort of raise that to their attention and encourage people to take more breaks and to, and to just be more mindful of it that, you know, reminding them of just what you were talking about. Right? So having that ability to internalize that sort of adjustment of expectations, but also seeing when our friends are overextended and you know, sometimes if it's possible we can help them, but we're also facing facing that then
Speaker 4:yeah, it can be something as simple as like just asking to help with something, you know, minor and boring. Like, Hey, can I help re rewrite in a spreadsheet for you? Like it's such a small way to help, but it's for a person who's like in the frozen being burned out, it's like such a huge gesture. So just having an awareness and thinking to yourself like, what can I do is super, super important.
Speaker 5:I also think one of the things that that helps me at least is knowing or feeling that what I'm doing meaningful.
Speaker 3:So, um, having, having that proof that, that we are in at least some small way making a difference and winning in some small way. So taking the time to celebrate that even in g hell, there are some, some small victories, whether that be we got the newsletter out or we had a meeting and nobody yelled. Or, um, we had a meeting and everybody yelled, but nobody fought. Like, celebrate what you can or you know, we had an action and a bunch of people came out out or, um, and we collected how as much money for the abortion fundraiser. Like these things that I feel like we, we run from disaster to disaster, um, from negative headline to negative headline. And in the long run, maybe that's what it takes to get people to wake up and pay attention, but it doesn't really help once you're woken up. I feel that just makes you want to go back to sleep so you don't have to pay attention to all the horribleness personally.
Speaker 4:Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Having a sense of levity when you are like planning and action, things like that. Um, back when we first started, we had a karaoke fundraiser and like maybe six people showed up, but it was still the most fun I've ever had in my entire life with my chapter. So having a sense of like, yeah, this is a struggle, everything is shit, but at least we can like make a joke occasionally and lighten the mood and help people not fall. So deep down they can't even see the sun anymore. Is, is super important and that definitely helps people to, to stay engaged and stay positively engaged.
Speaker 3:I was lamenting about low engagement and the, you know, we had I think 30 to 40 paper members and then only only three or four people would show two planning meetings and apparently 10% that is pretty good for a volunteer organization. So having people who will help you adjust your expectations as well. I mean being so close to San Francisco and Dsa, San Francisco and the amazing shit that they are doing. Um, sometimes definitely I get, I get that that's sibling envy of like they ought the perfect DSA child. And here we are still waiting for the NPC to say anything about our bylaws that we sent in so long ago. Please just say anything please. Um, obviously I haven't, you know, I've, I've stepped back but I haven't fucking disconnected. I'm still on Twitter and still, Oh yeah, I'm still screaming about so many banks. I feel like it, Megan, you can probably speak to this. Hopefully. Maybe that it, whether disconnecting completely is, is good to just kind of cut everything off and get away from it.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I mean I think that's going to be, I mean that's going to be an individual thing. You have to kind of gauge for yourself how, how it's working I guess. Like, well I guess what's so, so right now it sounds like you're still sort of hooked into the worst of this shit. Like you're still hearing about a lot of the bullshit but also not, not really getting, well, I dunno. Is that, is that accurate? And Twitter is this, is this on Twitter is the most distorted plates?
Speaker 3:Yeah. And yet it's where like 80% of my friends are there. So yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Same here.
Speaker 3:The Times when I, I've disconnected from Twitter have been wonderful, but also I've felt like, what am I doing if like that was, that was where I found out about most of the stuff that would then cause me to go out and do other stuff. So, um, yeah, I felt like I was doing things that I should have been doing because I didn't know that I needed to do them.
Speaker 4:Hmm. And I think with Twitter there's especially like left Twitter or GSA, Twitter, they're like, yeah, you're, you're in the shit most of the time. But there's still a level of like distance, which I think like for me, I'm still like right in the middle of Twitter, I'm still heavily involved and constantly extremely online. But like, it's not affecting me nearly as much as like being physically like doing physical work for my chaptered is. So I think because of that sort of distance between like what's going on in my life and what's going on in like other chapters and things and it's not all bad. I mean I'm all those chapters that have raised the money for an abortion funds by doing the bowl, have fun. Like that was fucking amazing. And I want to see, I want to see more like that and um, Dsa doc caucus. Like come on, I would never ever leave Twitter if it meant that I had to leave Dsa doc caucus. There isn't the most amazing and cat cock is too, I'm not going to leave them out but I gather that there's also a karaoke caucus. I think there is, I haven't heard anything in a long time.
Speaker 3:Probably saving the voices for the next actual event maybe.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. Let's hope so.
Speaker 3:Um, self care. Just careening wildly away from Twitter for a bit to what was my Osha. Also involved with the self care is kind of a, a nasty word that if some people talk about it, but self care can include things like making sure that you are sleeping and making sure that you're eating and drinking and breathing and that you are not entirely all the time having both shoulders stapled to your ear lobes. If you have the physical capacity to not do that, please, please send him some time not doing that. Obviously if, if that's the only position that we can do then then do that. But if you have the ability to move your shoulders down and relax them a bit, just please do that right now. Yeah,
Speaker 4:and it's like not all cam a meal tea and Blah Blah Bass. It's exactly that. It's just like, hey, did I eat today? When was the last time I ate? Or like when was the last time I egg changed my shoes?
Speaker 3:Sure. Vegetable.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I had, I had anything green in my body today. So, and not all of it's going to be fun, but in the end it's going to like, if it's going to help you out, it's worth doing.
Speaker 5:I would highly emphasize sleep hygiene. I think that is so much more critical than maybe some people don't struggle with this, but I do. Um, but w what I mean by sleep hygiene is like making sure that you're establishing habits that actually helped you get to sleep. So you're not on Twitter. Like, well, you're in bed, you know, trying to get to sleep. It's like not touching your phone for the, for the hour before you're about to go to bed. I admittedly am just fucking horrible at, I'm so terrible at Sam. You know, like not using your bed for anything other than like sleep and sex. You know, like having those be, having that be sort of like a sacred place, having
Speaker 3:some way to shut the light out if you yes. If, for example, you have a streetlight right outside your window, well, I don't know, daylight savings is kicked in at the wrong time or something like that. And trying to keep a somewhat consistent bedtime and wake up time. But cats are helpful for that, uh, impossible to sleep in when the cat is hungry. Yes.
Speaker 4:No, that's so, so important. Getting up, even if it's, you know, lazy Sunday, like I'm, I have tomorrow off after like working six days a week, six days this week and I'm still going to get up at eight 30. Like I always do because I know if I stay until 11, I'm going to feel like shit the rest of the day. Yeah, for sure. Making sleep a priority. Yeah. Yeah. How and when you sleep as is so important to feeling better and getting out of burnout and feeling more like yourself.
Speaker 3:That's right. And if you have, if you know that you have, uh, issues with substances or certain things that you use in order to avoid stress, for example, drinking, smoking, drugs, video games, sex, those kinds of things, keeping tabs on that. And if you know that you have an addiction, reaching out for help if that's available is, is a form of self care. If you notice that you are relying on these things more than than you feel is healthy or more than others, feel as healthy as well cause you may not have the best judgment in these things. Being able to reach out and talk to somebody who, who knows about these things, who can help you kind of reality check your way of relating to things. Probably Sleep is not an addiction, but I know that sleep is for me a symptom of when you don't, shit is not going so well. Just sleeping like 12 hours a day. If more. If, if I was able to, and I, I, I know that there's at least one of you who will agree with me on this, the the feeling being around a lot of socialists and that really, really strong desire for cigarettes. It's like Pavlovian, oh my gosh. Yeah. It's like Marlboro country. Marlboro commune. There we go. Yes. Perfect. There is an acronym that I know has come up in the DSA medics work, which is h a l t s Holts. It's for self care and kind of self awareness and being uh, taking a moment and checking on yourself so it's hungry, angry, lonely, tired or stress. So those, Phyllis for a kind of hopefully easier to address, but all five of them serve as kind of a, a way to to check in and see is there something going on. If there's something that could be pushing me to breaking point. So hunger, food and is or other things. Are you hungry? Maybe for affection? Oh, are you hungry for understanding? Are you hungry for just feeling like touch for another person? Because if you all living very isolated and you do not physically interact with other human beings, there is some physiological stuff that can happen. I'm not sure what, but you can kind of get this, this hunger for physical contact, anger, frustration, especially being angry, angry can come out in, in destructive ways. Especially if you are part of group or groups for whom? Anger that is stigmatized, you know, if you are a woman or if you're a person of color or if you, uh, I know there are other marginalized communities were expressing anger is, is seen as like a stereotypes threat or something, but they're not coming to mind. Loneliness, the isolation that we already kind of talked about hiding.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Which is just fun cause like, I mean we live in this capitalist nightmare hell scape, right. Alienation is like what's its game? It's what it does. And so like all of these things are, it's all shit. We're already dealing with the word why we're organizing in the first place. Right. So with what kind of, I'm sorry.
Speaker 4:No, no, no, no, go ahead. I was just emphatically nodding my head.
Speaker 3:We're um, in this, this catch 22 where we are all so ground down by just existing that we don't really have much extra to give. And yet we have, I personally feel like you have to give it in order to help yourself in the long run and other people. But knowing how much you have to give and not, not pushing all of it out. And I'm saying this probably like 90% for myself, not feeling guilty or like you're not doing a good job if you're not giving 100% if you are taking a break because you need to take a break. That's not bad. Okay.
Speaker 4:Yeah. You're allowed to say no. Yeah. And I feel like a lot of people, a lot of people recently, I feel like that's a bad thing. Like you're, you're hurting the movement if you're not participating nor are being active and, and I want to let you know, it's okay. You're allowed to say no, I don't want to go to this meeting or no, I can't. I can't write this proposal. Like I can't, you know, you're allowed to say no, no. And have it go to somebody else. It's like, it's going to be okay. Yep.
Speaker 5:And I think, I haven't done any actual research on this, so I don't know if this is pure bullshit or if it's, you know, anecdotal or whatever. But I do feel like there's big draw in the socialists, the certain, the leftist anarchist scene, like a lot of people who have experienced trauma and abuse I think are drawn to some of the more leftist spaces, you know, and I can go either way, but like a lot of people who are in these spaces have experienced a lot of this bullshit. And the part of why we're here and working on this is because we care. We think it's, we see it as bullshit, we know it's not okay. And, and so I think a lot of knowing our boundaries, like having, having dealt with trauma like that, it's hard to know your boundaries, right? So that's like the nature of trauma and a lot of ways is to violate and, and sort of a Nyli boundaries. So a lot of us in it, you know, I'm, you know, coming from sort of a shitty family, like boundaries were never taught in the first place. Right? Like that's like boundaries. We're not allowed. Right. So we're kind of, we're sort of, many of us are kind of coming into this with some deficits in that area. And I don't know, maybe I don't, it's probably the case that just most people don't really have good boundaries, right? I don't know if that's necessarily something that's specific to any of our circles because boundaries are all it's well taught. I do. I do feel what you're talking about, especially the, the impression that perhaps the left, especially people who are most critical of the status quo of Geo hell, uh, going to be those most effected by it. So the left probably has a high proportion of people who have been harmed and hurt by capitalism, by the patriarchy, by white supremacy, by structures of oppression. And so, oh goodness. The left is composed of innately good but profoundly damaged people. Um, and I feel like I've written something like that before. And Megan, I know that you've written in something along the lines of a activist spaces and, and the uh, psychology and dynamics of those that the left is made up of people and we do ourselves a disservice if we don't pay attention to that. That there are, I mean, as much as we'd like to pretend that we are a monolithic block that can move mountains were still made up of individuals and having our beliefs and our politics and behaving towards one another in a Comray leeway is towards ourselves in a calm rightly way is I think part of, of living, living our beliefs. So not hollering at yourself, like identifying and establishing boundaries for yourself can kind of, it can feel like it's not comradely in some ways, right? Like, cause it's like, oh, I'm not willing. Like I'm not in solidarity. I'm not helping, I'm not doing my part or you know, so it can, it can feel like the opposite of what we value. And so it can feel kind of, it could feel unnatural, it can feel against our values. But I think often you can only rarely know how critical it is to like sustainability if you've
Speaker 4:been through it. But hopefully that's not the only way. Hopefully you can also, you know, absorb some life lessons from people around you and you can see that it doesn't have to be like that.
Speaker 3:One of the things in the the DSA guidelines or Dsi guidelines for respectful discussion that comes up on the conference calls and I know some chapters have adopted for that community agreements and my Osi has adopted as part of that community agreements for meetings is step up, step back. And so if you are the kind of person who usually is on the periphery and doesn't speak up very much or doesn't do very much, try and step up. And if you are somebody who conversely is somebody who talks a lot or somebody who does a lot like stepped back to kind of even these things out. And I feel like I'm getting better about the stepping back part on the talking all the time, but I'm not so sure about the stepping back shit on doing shit all the time. Oh, you need somebody to be an unpaid therapist, but please come this way. I'm trying get better about not doing that as much.
Speaker 4:You got the little shack setup like Lucy from Charlie Brown. Yeah, the sauce, the sauce doctor is in.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Um, unfortunately, uh, inflation has hit all of us and it's$5 now. But I, I do, yeah, I do take all types of insurance and self pay as well because I know that insurance tends not to cover just a person on Twitter giving you a purple Heart Emoji and saying that you are valid for some reason that insurance won't reimburse for that. We are a approaching an hour, so this is a good option too for me to ask. Is there anything that either of you wanted to discuss or talk about that we didn't already cover?
Speaker 4:I guess, I mean I know we kind of like got in the slog of it and I do want to kind of leave it on a lighter note. So I just want to say that I appreciate all of the people that have reached out and have shown their solidarity and, and the people that have helped me, uh, pretty much everybody from Florida Dsa has is fucking amazing. Miami is killing it and they are super cool. Um, everybody on twitters has been super helpful and nice and thoughtful and caring and, um, and yeah, so it's, it's not, it's not always, it's not always going to be a struggle. It can be. It can be a party sometimes and we need more parties I think.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And Megan, anything that you wanted to touch on or maybe a, a podcast that you wanted to maybe blog that you haven't mentioned at all yet? Oh yeah.
Speaker 5:So everybody should listen to my podcasts as well. Uh, which is naughty by nurture. Thank you sauces. So that was very helpful. I totally would've forgotten. Um, so we talk about mental health and politics, um, and we're kind of all over the place. We did a an entire episode on dissociation and one on anxiety recently and trauma and you know, all the, all the, all the fun stuff, all the fun stuff there is to talk about in this world. So you can find us at NBN cast on Twitter. I think I'm going to start a podcast cause I don't know. Hell yeah. Not, not too many of them. Right. One more. There is always space for at least one more podcast. Hell yeah.
Speaker 3:I was, I was thinking earlier about, you know, the way that we, if we are taking a step back, the way that we talk about taking a step back or stepping back or taking a moment and I was reminded of something unfortunate. I don't know what book it's from, but it's a description of a meeting with Trotsky and Stalin and other Xeno VF and[inaudible]. And I gather from that Beagle that I just had that somebody that you're already familiar with this.
Speaker 5:Well, I saw something recently with at least some of those characters. So yeah.
Speaker 3:And, um, it reminded me of perhaps one of the ways to not leave DSA if you're leaving. And I want to, I want to share this even though it's not exactly about the topic of this conversation, but I'm sure we can turn it somehow into it. So the Trotsky announced his intention to resign from every one of his posts, including including his polit burrow and central committee membership and requested to be sent a world as a soldier of the revolution to assist the German communist in the plant cu. When one attendee from Petrograd fjord sober enough, known as Nikolai common off the son of poor peasants and himself, a former factory worker suddenly asked White Trotsky put on such as Trotsky exploded, he shot up stated, I request that you delete me from the list of actions of this humiliating comedy and stomped out from resolving to slam the cast iron door and massive metal structure not given to demonstratives slamming. You could only manage to bring it to a close, slowly, unwittingly demonstrating his impotence.
Speaker 5:MMM.
Speaker 3:Mental image of, of Trotsky, like trying very, very hard to sleep.
Speaker 5:Okay. Should this dramatically slamming door. That's great. Oh, around, we train to deactivate on Twitter, but you're on your phone, so all you can do is turn your no athletics a black picture for awhile pre deactivation.
Speaker 3:Okay. Well, I want to thank both of you, Leslie. Megan, thank you so much for joining me and talking about this. I know that we have probably not touched anywhere near all of the stuff that they is about burnout, but just mentioning that it exists repeatedly is important, I think. Yup, absolutely. Well, I do not have enough. Yeah. I do not have a fancy Sandoff a fancy send off Lake Tiberias does. Um, they are better at that. So,
Speaker 6:ah, what is it that they say? Go in peace and be in solidarity. Tom Writes, I like that. That's good.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. Okay.