[00:00:00] Amelia: the cure for the abyss is to disconnect your investment in the tiny socially constructed ideal of the uber culture and invest in connecting with the people in your immediate community who care about your wellbeing as much as you care about theirs, who will come and provide you with resources and remind you that you deserve those resources and care and time and safety just as you are, without needing to make any changes, that you already belong, you already conform to what they need and want and expect in terms of you being a trustworthy, valuable, lovable person

[00:00:53] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:01:03] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:01:05] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started.

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

[00:01:25] Emily: All right. Tell us your name, your pronouns, and your pets

[00:01:29] Amelia: My name is Amelia Nagoski. My pronouns are she/they. I have two dogs both rescues, one named Lucy, who is a maybe, maybe Blue Tick Coonhound,

and a larger white, probably Pyrenees mix named Sadie

[00:01:49] Emily: Tell us your story and how you got to where you are

[00:01:53] Amelia: Well, I think I'm here today 'cause I, I am co-author of a book called "Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle," which is very odd because I actually am a conductor. I have conservatory training as a classical musician. And during my doctoral degree in conducting, while I was getting that, I ended up in the hospital twice with pain that doctors were like, "Well, this is stress-induced.

You need to relax." But luckily, I have a twin named Emily Nagoski, who is already famous for her first New York Times bestselling book, "Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life." So, she has a doctorate in public health and is an expert in women's wellness. So when I was hospitalized with what turned out to be stress-induced pain I mean, I don't mean like I went to the emergency room 'cause I was having a, a panic attack.

I mean, I had, I had abdominal pain so bad I thought I was gonna die, and I ended up being kept in the hospital for four days. So I was truly, genuinely sick. When I say stress, I don't mean like some imaginary pressure. I mean my body was under strain that it could not, mm, keep me living my regular life. So, Emily came to the hospital and s- presented me basically with peer-reviewed research about what stress does to your body and I was like, "Wait a minute.

Stress and other emotions happen in your body?" And she's like, "You didn't know that? 'Cause, like, you're a musician and your job as a conductor is to embody emotions." And I was like, "Wait a minute, but if all the emotions are in my body, like my whole life I've had all these emotions in my body my whole life?"

And uh, it's really hard to look back at. At the time it was way over 30 years of mostly rage that I had suppressed and denied and and it, it it it inflamed systems in my body that, that harmed me physically.

[00:04:03] Emily: I have no idea what that's like. Our podcast listeners have never heard me soapbox rant about the many things that induce rage in my life.

[00:04:12] Amelia: Yeah. Emily thought that my story was an extreme illustration, but once we s- once we wrote "Burnout" and started talking to people who read the book, especially women we heard s- case after case of women saying, "I just got out of the hospital. The doctors told me it was stress." Like, it's so much more common than people are aware, I think.

[00:04:35] Emily: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I'm just gonna sidebar a bit and say the medical community is improving, and also it still has a long way to go in terms of not giving patients news in a dismissive way. So like my mom had a similar thing where she had like really bad arrhythmias throughout her 30s and 40s, and the doctors kept saying, telling her, "It's just stress.

It's just stress." And they were using the word just, and she was like, "Stop ignoring this problem. I'm going to die." Like she was so f- afraid for her life. And then she finally found a doctor who was like, " They're not wrong, they're just not explaining it to you, and they're dis- the, the use of the word just is dismissive.

Here is how stress impacts your health and why stress is causing these arrhythmias, and you are telling me that you live a life of chronic stress. And so your medical team is making that assessment accurately, but, but dismissing it to you so that you don't understand w- how, like how your stress is impacting you and causing these scary things, and also what you can do about it." 

[00:05:52] Amelia: Yeah. And I think part of the problem is that physicians don't know what to do about it. They have no idea how to manage stress. They were never taught in their lives how to manage stress. They are all burning out at unprecedented rates also because they don't... The advice that I was given was literally, "Just relax.

You, you need to relax.

You need to reduce your stress." Okay, I was

a full-time doctoral student commuting 65 miles each way to and from school, working three other part-time jobs, and step-parent to three teenagers. Like,

just relax, reduce your stress. W- w- k- n- no. H- how? Yeah. So I learned the good news that you don't have to be out of a stressful situation before you start to manage the stress that's happening in your body and feel better, which means that you can start to feel better so that you can start to manage the external things that are causing the stress in your body

[00:06:57] Emily: Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, first of all, knowing that you are a conductor makes you just even cooler than you already were. That's amazing. But also, yeah, how did you do that? How did you, how did you pull that off?

[00:07:12] Amelia: Becoming a conductor or becoming a conductor who writes about stress?

[00:07:16] Emily: no, no. Everything that you just said. Like, you were doing all of these things at the

same time, and obviously it didn't, it, it, it went sideways real bad for you. And then y- learning f- from your sister you know, about how stress impacts the body, it didn't... Learning that didn't make all of those life pressures go away, so how did you

[00:07:40] Amelia: thing one was accepting the notion that emotions are not some theoretical thing that exists out with the platonic ideals. The emotions are cycles that happen in your body, and that I had been denying and repressing a lot of feelings, especially negative ones like rage and grief, for decades. So accepting that, like, I had emotions in my body and I had to let myself feel them.

I had to, like, dig around and find them, and then let myself move all the way through them, 'cause emotions, as a metaphor, are like tunnels. You have to move all the way through the darkness to get to the light at the end, which is a delightful metaphor, but I am not a medical metaphorical person. I need it to be literally true.

How do I do that? So there was a lot of, like, mindfulness meditation and a lot of, like, just navel-gazing and therapy where I'd be like, "What, do I have a feeling? Oh, I found a feeling." Okay, also since the book was published, Emily and I both separately have been diagnosed with autism. Part of my autism that is not part of her autism is alexithymia, which is the clinical inability to notice my internal state.

So one of the reasons we had to write "Burnout" together was that Emily's ability to notice her internal state is, like, supercharged. She cannot ignore her internal signals, and she couldn't believe that I c-

could even be unaware. "How do you not know when you're having these something happen inside you?" And I was like, "I just don't." So, and again, we're identical twins, and yet our experiences are so different. So, like, she couldn't have written "Burnout" alone, and I couldn't have written "Burnout" alone because we needed this perspective of, like, just how v- varied people's experiences are.

Anyway, so I started with acknowledging that I have emotions and that they're real physiological things and letting myself find and feel them and practicing getting good at noticing my internal experience. And some of this happened through the therapy and the navel-gazing and the meditation, but also I started practicing tai chi, which was hugely impactful because it gives you kind of a structure and a focus of ways to attend to the internal experience and to move through them and to deal physically with the, ooh, sensations.

So that's how I started. That's the first door I went through to find out what the next door should be.

[00:10:15] Emily: Amazing. So yeah, A- Ally and I... So, to introduce you to our business, Pet Harmony, Ally and I met first and we worked together at a sanctuary that was traumatic for us in a lot of ways. I mean, there were also a lot of wonderful experiences there, yada, yada. But like, but what we noticed in that environment is that alone neither of us were fully successful because each of us had kind of complementary skillsets.

But when we worked together, we sort of like filled in the blanks for each other and we could be more impactful, and that's how we co-authored our book as well. We could- neither of us could have written it alone. We definitely needed each other to write the book. So I really resonate with your experience. And then we brought in Ellen as our third business partner when I started having some pretty serious health issues and I just couldn't, I couldn't pull my weight. And Ellen introduced us to your book, Burnout, and the podcast, The Feminist Survival Project, which we also love. And so Ellen's the one who sort of like introduced us to you and Emily and, and everything that you bring to the world. And needless to say, we're all massive fans of your work, and we recommend your content to everybody. We run a professional development mentorship program called Pet Pro, and a common thread that we're seeing is people come in And, and so for, the mentorship program is really about giving you support in every aspect of what it means to be an animal behavior professional and, and every part of that professional development process.

It's not just the training skills or the consulting skills. It's like navigating difficult conversations, your business, your financial mindset, your the logistics, executive functioning. Like every... You know, so like Pet Pro's really, it's not a program, it's a mentorship because it's like, well, what areas do you need support in?

And we'll support you in that. And what I find charming about humans in general, but especially like our group in Pet Pro, is how many of them come into the program, they're like, "Yeah, yeah, self-care. I've got... I know. Like

self-care, right?" And then when they get into the actual work of like what they need to do to build skills and build confidence and all of that stuff, it becomes like acutely they become acutely aware of how much like, "Oh yeah, no, self-care.

Like oh, taking care of ourselves. Like oh, burnout. Like no, no, this is real, and actually we do need support in this." And so I just, I... Like almost everybody, it's like all paths lead to bu- burnout. Like everybody gets there at some point in Pet Pro where we're like, "Read this book,"

right? 

[00:12:59] Amelia: Like, yay, but also, oh no. Like, I wish... We, we wrote the book in the, in the early 20-teens, mid-20-teens. It came out in 2019, and it- we put, like, all these, like, fun pop culture references in, thinking, like, "This is a book that's gonna be useful for a few years, but the world's gonna get better." And like, now it, it's, it sort of feels, like, a little dated because of all the...

W- we didn't know that it would be more relevant as time went on,

and like, that's, that's real depressing.

[00:13:27] Emily: I okay. The, I just find this really delightful because our book also came out in 2019, and we also didn't anticipate it be- having the longevity that it did, so, like, lots of parallels here. Yeah, but like, it's so... Like, that's the thing is you don't know how much people need your work until you put it out and you get that feedback and you're like, "Oh, this is something a lot of people need," and there's a, a dearth in resources that, like, I just showed up and I, I didn't know how much people were gonna need this. But yeah, we, we all, y- your book is well-loved in Pet Pro,

in our program. And one of the reasons that that's true and that what your work both with the podcast and the book are, are so impactful is because the animal behavior professions collectively we are a disenfranchised industry.

People don't take us seriously. I mean, let's be real, even mental health professions, it's certainly better than it was, but for humans it's still not super taken seriously, and so for non-humans that's even less so. Any time you're doing the non-human version of something, there's an element of like, "Oh, well you just work with animals," right? But at the same time, it's very emotionally heavy and thankless job, and- Even when it isn't, even when we're appreciated and, and, and our clients are like, "Oh my gosh, you've changed our lives," which is amazing when that happens, it's still a caregiving profession which means that th- there's a lot of emotional labor that's happening even when things are ideal.

Even when things are going well, it's still a, a high, high emotional, high emotional and cognitive load, right? And on top of that, the profession is largely, not entirely, we've got a bunch of great cis men in our industry, but largely our, our population is cis women and other marginalized genders and other marginalized populations in general. Which means that most of us have grown up being told that we don't deserve to, to charge what our services are worth, that we need to prioritize others over ourselves. We need to work harder than everybody else to get the same sort of level of recognition. So there's just these layers in our industry of things that contribute to the burnout issue and the, and the overwhelm and the overextension, right? And and I, and then on top of that, it's an unregulated field, which means that there's a lot of unethical stuff that happens in the name of training, and ironically, most of the people who are the least qualified to do the work are charging astronomical prices, and they're getting, they're getting paid that money. And those of us who actually know things and do things ethically are afraid to charge for even what our services are worth, much less 10 times what our services are worth, right? So there's moral injury on top of everything else because a lot of times we're cleaning up the messes of unqualified people who can legally do what they're doing, but what they're doing is horrific, right? So burnout is endemic in the field, and there's so much that you and Emily talk about that is applicable. But I would love to really hear your thoughts on that moral injury component because it can be really difficult to process burnout when a big driving factor is the moral injury that comes from dealing with animal abuse and neglect on a regular basis, and especially when that abuse and neglect is happening within ourse- like in, on our, in our ranks, right?

It's happening, it's coming from our own industry. So I what, what additional steps can we take as an industry or as individuals within this industry to complete our stress response cycle and generally just take care of ourselves when we're dealing with burnout that is, is fueled by moral injury?

[00:17:29] Amelia: So much of that experience is relatable to me as a musician because there is, in the music industry, very much a feeling of audiences feel like you should be grateful just to have any work at all, and w- h- how dare you charge me $200 an hour to do a thing that all you have to do is show up. It doesn't even take any work for you 'cause it's so easy, and you love it, right?

You don't... It's barely even work for you. 

Like, there's definitely a sense of that. Like, also, I was a public school teacher, so same. 

[00:17:59] Emily: The moral injury runs deep in that

field as well. 

[00:18:02] Amelia: yeah. So I, so I really get it. So I also wanna say that everything in "Burnout" is applicable to, and it's based in research that is done on people who are at kind of a standard baseline of mental health.

I would say that the experience of moral injury is a kind of trauma. It's really intense. It is more intense than a s- standard, typical life experience, and I would say that requires some professional assistance. That requires therapy. That requires, at, at minimum, I think group therapy of, like, at least talking to other people who are experiencing it, so you don't feel like you're experiencing it alone.

Which is kind of outside the scope of what we... I mean, we had to focus "Burnout" on something, so, errp.

So the stuff that has to do with trauma is a little bit tangential. We include some information about, like, if you have trauma, it might be more difficult in these ways. And I think that if you're experiencing this kind of moral injury, that the, the label of trauma applies to you.

Even though that might be hard to hear and you're like, "No, no, it's not that bad." Most people who experience trauma feel like, "Oh no, it's not that bad. Other people have it worse." And yeah, other people have it worse, but that doesn't mean that what you're experiencing isn't trauma. So seek professional resources and the kind of resources that are required for people who experience trauma.

That's thing number one. But thing number two is to recognize that the thing that initiates stress in your body is a separate thing that you can deal with in a separate process from the process you use to deal with the stress that happens in your body. When you Put the events that initiate a stress response kind of in a, in a little mental box, in a little closet in your mind, and you instead focus on the sensations that are happening in your body.

If you have experienced trauma, it may be that your body says, " No, that's way too much. I can't experience that." You might need to, like, take a little bite of that and say, "I'm just gonna focus on this one level," and deal with it piece by piece, and be content with a very slow pace as you gradually un- or gradually, I guess, complete layer, layers, like shallow layers, one at a time, very slowly and gradually of the stuff that's built up in you.

And when I say stuff that's built up in you, I mean, like, every time you see a terrible thing happen, you witness an injustice, stress responses occur in your brain. And when you're working in a field where that happens multiple times a day, it's gonna build up fast and hard. So dealing with the stress just a little bit at a time and remembering that tiny incremental improvement is incredibly valuable.

So if you don't feel, you, you know, you go for a run every day for your week and you're like, "I don't feel any better," I mean, do you feel literally zero better or do you feel like you've gone from a one on a scale of one to 10 to, like, a one and a half? 'Cause that's progress and, like, you probably feel like a one and a half.

You're just not satisfied with that because you're like, "I need so much relief right now." Sometimes it just doesn't come that fast especially if the, if the stress is v- very deep and old and repeated like that.

There was a thing number two I was gonna say, but I forgot what it was 'cause I lost track.

[00:21:29] Emily: I've

never done that before. I, I have no idea what that's like.

[00:21:32] Amelia: I'm sure it'll come to me eventually. But yeah, so it's go a little bit at a time, separate, understand that you're separating the stress itself that's happening in your body from the thing that initiated your stress and carrying with you all the time the mental load of like, "This terrible thing happened.

This terrible thing happened. How can I get over this? How can I move on? How can I be a human being in the world where this other stuff is also in this world?" You can fully be a human being who feels well in a world where terrible things are also true.

And I can prove that's true because you didn't used to feel so terrible, and it wasn't because there wasn't horrible things in the world.

It's 'cause you were not deeply personally connected to them yet, and the degree to which you are personally connected to the bad stuff is a choice you can make. You can manage how much of that you're exposed to. This is the other thing I was gonna say. So you're controlling how you deal with the stress in your body and having realistic expectations about how much progress is possible at what, at what pace that progress is possible, and you're also dealing with how much exposure you have to those things.

And you think, "I can't limit my exposure to that. The world is an unjust place, and I must take responsibility for the bluh-bluh." N- you don't have to do that. You get to choose

[00:22:55] Emily: Yeah. I I hope it's not rude for me to bring up somebody else's book in our interview, but if you've ever read Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit, she takes... I felt so attacked by the book. Like, she takes us to task because she's like, "If you are harming yourself because you're constantly throwing yourself in harm's way because you're trying to affect change, like, that's not it- it's ego," essentially.

Like,

you're, you are, you are choosing to self-destruct because you feel like you have to be the hero in the situation, and if you're not involved, then it's not gonna be fixed. And I was like, "Ouch, but okay." You know, like,

so she was like, "You have- it's a marathon, not a sprint. It's a

multi-generational process.

Like, you have to take care of yourself so that you can stay in it, even if that means that there are parts of it that you won't show up on the newspaper photos or whatever." You know what I mean?

And that was r- that was, like, a slap in the face, but it was one that I needed, right?

[00:23:57] Amelia: Yeah, that sounds like a great resource for people who are like, " I can't stop paying attention to the news, to the

terrible, awful things, and the world is on fire, and if I disconnect, then I'm being irresponsible." That's a message that we receive from the people who produce news shows and media because i- they want us to stay, you know, they want us to feel fearful and also bad 'cause our bad feelings keep us latched in, which is how they sell us soap, basically, or prescription medication or whatever's on the commercials.

That's what those media are for, are for selling ads.

And their strategy to do that is to make us feel bad. "If we don't turn that dial, more coming up next." Oh my God, turn the dial. You don't need to know the rest. You know enough. You're good

[00:24:49] Emily: Yeah, I I really struggled with, like, h- the balance between self-care and still staying aware of what's happening so I can be aware of ways in which I need to resist, right?

And um, my own personal technique that I, that I discovered is helpful for me is I subscribe to the AP News n- like, news alerts in my email. And then if I get... I read the headline when it, when it shows up in my inbox, I read the headline, and if I'm like, " I don't ever need to know more about this," I delete it right away. If I look at it and I'm like, "This feels, like, urgent, like I should read this right now," I'll open it, I'll read it, and then I'll pause to go complete my stress response cycle. If it's something that I'm like, I can tell that I do need to be informed about this, and right now I do not have the reserves to handle this without self-destructing, I have a folder that I put it into that's like, "Engage with this later when you've, when you have the bandwidth and you have the time to fully process." And that has been the most successful technique that I have found for myself to stay informed while also, like, setting boundaries around it so

that it's not consuming me. And I don't think I would have come up with that strategy if I had not read B- Burnout, so thank you for... I mean, I know that you didn't directly give me that idea, but, like, you gave me the framework to think about how to strike that balance between staying informed and taking care of myself. And so I, I just appreciate that you helped me find that solution for myself

[00:26:32] Amelia: That is a question we get a lot, actually. People responding to the book being like, "Okay, well how do I-- I mean, the world's on fire. How do I manage the, the news while I'm, you know, trying to deal with the stress that happens in my body as a result of the news?" The perspective that I like to give is the one really that burnout is based on, which is the kind of evolutionary perspective.

So for tens of millions of years, people who were humans and proto-humans evolved in an environment where they know what's happening immediately around them, and really that's it. And that's been true until about the Industrial Revolution, which, I mean, if all of human history is the length of your arms spread wide fingertip to fingertip, the Industrial Revolution is, like, half of your final fingertip, right?

So in all of human history, only in this tiny sliver of time have we been exposed a lot to news from places where it's not of immediate impact to us. We are not evolved to be aware of the war in Ukraine going on for years. Like, that is just not a thing that humans are equipped with

evolutionarily. We d- we don't have capacity for that.

It didn't, we weren't given it 'cause we never needed it.

And you still don't need it. Like, be aware of the war in Ukraine, absolutely. That, that's the extent of your responsibility here, unless it's litty, literally your job to end the war in Ukraine, in which case, good luck to you. Please complete your s- incomplete stress, stress response cycles.

But for everybody else, which is almost everyone in the world except for, like, a handful of people to... You don't have to stay connected and involved. The things that your body can handle, is designed to handle, are the things that are happening in your immediate community. So stay focused on that level.

The only reason you think that you need to be engaged with world news is because news shows want to create content that is universally important, right? Like, MSNBC is not gonna sell ad time if they talk about the, you know, municipal trash collection problems in one neighborhood of one city. But you know what?

That's the level of, of intensity that our bodies are designed to handle. So yeah.

[00:29:01] Emily: Yeah, it's that maintaining awareness of what you do and do not have control over, and really the limits of our control for things like, you know, what's happening in the Middle East right now, and the war in Ukraine, and injustices in Asia, the, what, five genocides that are currently happening

simultaneously around the world,

right? The, like, the only control that we have over that is voting for people who will make better decisions about how we as a country engage with that.

and, and, m- you know, like maybe like donating supplies to, to some organization if that, if you have that avai- availability, right? So like it's really about emotional budgeting.

Like if I give my time and energy and grief to this thing that I have no control over, will I have enough time, energy, and bandwidth to actually make an impact where I do have control? And that, it's really hard. It feels, at, at least for me, I can't speak for everybody, but for me, that was a really hard lesson to learn because it felt almost like a cop-out.

Like, oh, I'm just giving myself permission to like not pay attention to other people's suffering. And it really took me a long time to realize I can't, I can't reduce harm where I have the ability to reduce harm if I am sending myself into a pit of despair because

I'm focusing on all of the harm that I have no control over.

So it, I'm actually less impactful when I hyper-focus on stuff I can't control

[00:30:46] Amelia: Exactly. And this is chapter two in "Burnout," is managing things you can and cannot control when the stressors... So chapter one is dealing with the stress in your body. Chapter two is dealing with things that initiate stress response cycles in your body, and you divide those things into two cra- categories: stressors you can control and stressors you can't control.

And when it comes to, like, feeling the pain of the Sudanese or the Palestinians, like, y- you can't do anything about that. Your body's not equipped to handle that. May- if it feels good to make a contribution to an organization who is handling that, by all means. The th- the thing that "Burnout" the book is about is m- handling your own experience, making your experience better, making yourself healthier, more resilient, more capable of what you want to be capable of, ready for whatever comes next without being, you know, feeling like you're a s- a tube of toothpaste squeezed until you have nothing left and then discarded.

It's it's your individual experience. And you can, locally, within your family, chosen family or birth family or whatever you've got, deal with the pain of the people around you. And when you, you turn to them and they turn to you with equal shared care, that personal connection and engagement is the way you can tell your body that it has the... it's this personal connection of human to human, especially when we share co-presence, physical presence with each other. That's how our bodies feel like I am contributing. That's the way to make yourself feel like you've done something to help other people, when it's a visceral, immediate action.

Does that make sense?

[00:32:36] Emily: Not only does it make sense, that really aligns with my lived experience of, like, how people multiple people have asked me how I've been able to stay in something for as long as I have or, or do the whatever, whatever the questions are, which has been, you know, they're varied because people are varied. But in, in answering the question, it's always like I focus on what I can control, not on what I can't control. I, I am really strict with my emotional budget. I mean, let's be real, I'm more strict with my emotional budget than my financial budget.

So I've

got some, I've got some, 

growth

to do

there.

[00:33:14] Amelia: I don't think you're, you're alone in that, yeah

[00:33:16] Emily: You know, like I, I'm, I really c- like that phrase from Rebecca Solnit's book about like that this is the work of generations,

not of a lifetime has been life-changing for me because it means that I don't have to right now in this moment see the impact of the work I'm doing. I just have to focus on the way that I'm... the, the tiny changes that I'm seeing and the, the gratitude and the connection, the relationships that I'm building, the network I'm building, the community I'm building because of how I show up for, for people that I can impact. and and it- that's just kind of the recurring theme.

It's like I, I don't have as much capacity as I did when I was younger. I can't be as impactful as I was then, and I'm not sweating that because I'm just doing what I can when I can, and, and everything else is beyond my control,

[00:34:15] Amelia: My guess is that you probably didn't have that much capacity when you were young either. You were just accustomed to overextending yourself and had not yet paid the price

[00:34:25] Emily: I think it's a, I think it's a little from column A and a little from column B

because 

[00:34:29] Amelia: But for young people listening thinking like, "This is the time of my life when I could like pour out my heart." no.

[00:34:34] Emily: Yeah, please don't.

Yeah

yeah. We jokingly say that the unofficial tagline of PetPro is, "We messed up so you don't have to."

[00:34:41] Amelia: Yes When I, I, like if I were to blurb Burnout, it would be "Please let my suffering not have been in vain."

[00:34:48] Emily: Right, Right, right. exactly. So like, yeah, young people listening, don't think you have to go out and, and work 80 hours a week like I did.

But but like, so part of it was I had no concept of capacity. Like Emily, I didn't... I had... No, like you, I had terrible interoception, and I had to learn interoception over time with therapy and an occupational therapist and dietician.

Like, I had a lot of people who had

to help me with interoception. But right, professionals who had to help me with, help me learn interoception as a skill because I also, I am AuDHD, I didn't understand myself when I was younger, so I did overextend myself a lot, and also, I could get away with it, whereas now I can't get away with it because my chronic illnesses are d- you know, my body's deteriorating over time, and faster than, like, an able-bodied person because my chronic illnesses are, like, aggressively eating away at my capacity, right?

So, like, it's a little bit of both. Like, I could get away with it, and also I shouldn't have gotten away with it even then because I did a lot of harm to myself, right?

[00:35:59] Amelia: Yeah. I mean, I have long COVID now, and I have for six years. So the, the impact of physical ability on emotional capacity is they're the same thing.

They're not, like, separate things. So when you're measuring your emotional budget, your physical budget is the same budget. They're different line items maybe, but they, they cannot exist independent of each other

[00:36:24] Emily: Yeah, we've updated the spoon theory metaphor to be a silverware drawer theory now, 'cause you can be out of spoons but still have plenty of forks or knives.

And I, I was born with an abundance of knives and not that many spoons and forks, so I just

[00:36:40] Amelia: That's what I was

[00:36:41] Emily: a

[00:36:41] Amelia: thinking. I'm like, "I have so many knives."

[00:36:43] Emily: I have so many knives. Not that many spoons or forks, though.

[00:36:46] Amelia: Right. No, I had a lot of spoons and now I've got like two spoons. I still have a big stack of not

[00:36:52] Emily: Yeah. The, the knives will be with me till I die. They're

never rusting. So but yeah, I mean, that it's, it's true though. Like, you can, you can be completely depleted in one aspect and then, and still have reserves in another facet of brain-body connection and, and I don't know. I can't think of the word right now, but like showing up and being able to do thi- capacity, that's the word. But, but like, you know, like it doesn't, it's ... You still have to pay attention to that because like I, for me, I, I realized that like there's certain activities that I do as a part of my job that deplete cognitive capacity. And then I was trying to go do cognitive fun things with friends, and just melting down, and I realized it's because I've already spent all of my cognitive capacity spoons, and then I'm trying to show up with all I've got left is forks and knives, and that goes really poorly.

And then people are like, "Emily, why are you here? Like, if you're not having a good time." And I'm like, " 'Cause I thought I would have a good time. I wanted to have a good

time," but I couldn't, I, I couldn't assess that I had no reserve. Just 'cause I had physical energy left doesn't, didn't mean that I had cognitive energy

left, 

[00:38:03] Amelia: Yeah. Sometimes instead of a board game, you need to go play Skee-Ball

[00:38:07] Emily: Yeah. Yeah, or literally for me, curl up in fetal position under a weighted blanket with a cup of hot tea and watch just, like, a mindless show because I have no brain left.

[00:38:17] Amelia: Right. Yeah. But you still wanna have some, like, nice feelings. Yeah, 

[00:38:22] Emily: So I feel like that's, like we've kind of, drifted into something that I was gonna ask you about anyway, which is like when we are just under a constant never-ending stream of stressors because, you know, gestures at everything how do we, how do you engage in the marathon in a way that supports yourself? And I think you've said a lot of nuggets already. But is there anything that you wanna add? Like understanding that this is a marathon, not a sprint, that this is the work of multiple generations, that, you know, human behavior and world events are cyclical, so like even it's not even, some of it isn't even the work of generations, it's just always going to be the work because humans are humans.

And knowing all of that can be, at least for me, has in the past been really depressing when I have that realization that like we're just repeating history over and over again. And so that has reduced my capacity, just this idea of like, oh, this isn't a linear progress where we're just moving forward. It's just cyclical. Like brushing your teeth, like you just have to keep fighting off the dental bacteria, right? And like that's also true on like s- social movement levels, human rights levels. C- sorry. Perimenopause is just messing with my ability to retrieve words.

[00:39:40] Amelia: Yeah. For me, I, 'cause I started perimenopause only slightly before I got long COVID, which also gave me, like, intense brain fog. So my, my capacity to, to words is, ugh

[00:39:52] Emily: Words are hard. I lost it. It's gone. I don't even-

[00:39:56] Amelia: I think we were talking about how the arc of history bends toward justice, but it's a very long arc and very slow. Yeah.

[00:40:04] Emily: Thank you for... That was beautiful. Yeah. Ke- keep going

[00:40:07] Amelia: I remembered uh, one of the stories, like images we use in the book to describe how this feels is, i-if you imagine you're standing on the shoreline trying to move the beach, and all you have is a bucket.

That's gonna feel completely overwhelming and impossible but you're doing it anyway because you feel like it's important, and then you look to your left and to your right, and there's a whole line of people all the way down the shore, and they are also moving with their buckets. But even more importantly is you look behind you, and there's a whole crowd of people who don't have the buckets right now, but they are waiting to take over.

When you lose the capacity and you just, you're, can't do it anymore, 'cause you're gonna lose it eventually. You cannot keep going forever. That's a physical impossibility. But because they all know that this is not possible for one person to do forever, they're waiting to take over, to take their turns, and you hand them the bucket, and you go to the back of the line, and you have a rest while somebody else does the thing.

That's, that's how it's supposed to work, and in fact, that is how it works. We just have to remember, like you were saying with the Rebecca Solnit s-perspective, is like we, we are not the hero, and our whole culture worships the, like the lone genius, the individual hero who, who's the, the Sherlock Holmes who solves the problem, the one who does it.

But that is a myth. It doesn't exist. The way humanity solves problems is with cooperation, with group and community cooperation. That's Jonathan Haidt, the research psychologist described humans as 90% chimp, 10% bee. We are not built to do great things alone. We were built to do them together, which anybody who's done, I think, the work that you've done or, or is even interested in that kind of like way of doing work knows from experience that when good stuff gets done, it's because people work together, not because some lone hero rode in on a horse.

[00:42:15] Emily: Yeah, yeah. I have I have so much salt about the hero worship, like, mentality and culture, and not, I don't f- that, that ire is not directed at anybody who experiences hero worship. It is directed at the culture that has taught them that hero worship is an appropriate response to things.

And it's been really hard for me, because when our book came out, we weren't expecting people to care about it, and then it unexpectedly became a bestseller in our industry. Not a New York Times Bestseller, okay? But, like, within our industry. And I've had so many people approach me with kind of a hero worship mentality, and I've really struggled with, like, I wanna support you and I wanna make you feel loved and cared for and seen, and also, take me off your pedestal. Like, what are you doing?

I'm not a hero. Like, this is... Have you been reading anything we've been saying? It's about community, it's about, like, we don't... It's about evidence, it's about, we don't, we don't do co- cult of personality here. And it's so, and it's been really hard for me. I've had to learn how to be gracious and grateful and warm and supportive, and just set aside my feelings for the moment about hero worship.

But it's why we're in the position we're in and I don't just mean right now, I mean, like, in history cyclically. We get to where we are because of the, the hero worship thing and, and, you know, the cult of personality will lead all of us off a ledge over and over and over

again. And so, like, I, you know, I understand why people are drawn towards that, because our, our culture and many other cultures in, in human history have taught people that you are powerless and you are meaningless, and you're just a cog in the machine, and every, like, you need to, like, worship the person who's, like, the superhero. And I hate that people feel that about themselves, believe that about themselves, and believe that somebody else should be worshiped, right? Because that's how it, like, that's how people stay in charge, is they convince the in- the masses that they have no power

[00:44:19] Amelia: Yeah. There is a long history in conducting as being, you know, orchestral and choral conductors. There's a long history of the expectation that a conductor is the leader, the one in charge. And actually, there is a definite culture of musicians, especially amateur musicians, who want the conductor to be angry daddy.

You know, "Spank me, daddy, I've been a bad boy."

Like they... Because they don't trust someone, they don't trust their authority unless that person is authoritative in like a real old-fashioned, like Victorian big man kinda way. Like

robber baron sort of, "You all suck and I'm better than you, and I can prove that because I'm the one here who's standing on this podium."

And as a You know, someone who was assigned female at birth standing on a podium for me, and also from what I've actually learned about humanity and from the making of art, I know that people who are not feeling fear, who are not just doing what they're told, people who spontaneously have their own desire to express and be and sing and play and experience the music, and this is a metaphor so, you know.

The-- I think those people who feel their own impetus to act cooperatively in a group, that's how the great performances are made. Not because, you know, some dumbass stands on a podium and waves their arms in an eccentric way.

And I think a lot of people who observe conductors believe that that's what conductors are doing, is that they are being...

You know, 'cause you stand there and you're big. You're the one the audience sees, so everyone thinks that you're the one doing this, when in fact, and again, this is a metaphor. When in fact, the thing that the conductor is doing, and they are just as significant a part of the machine as each individual instrumentalist.

Everybody's equal, and the thing that's in charge is the music itself, and everyone's efforts come in service of the music. And this is a metaphor, so the music is whatever the thing that's important to you is. Social justice or s- service or life itself or the expression of love. The, the... Whatever that thing is, we all exist in cooperative groups, and unfortunately, history has been framed as conductors making decisions and telling us all what to do, and them being the heroes who we worship.

And that is just not how it has ever worked, and only,

I think, really, if we're speaking literally of conductors, the only conductors who are really like that, who are a little mean and condescending and give, like, strict instructions and want everyone just to do what they're told, those are bad conductors.

Those are conductors who don't have real training. They're pretending to be a thing that they perceive to be true. And now when we make that a metaphor, the people who are leaders, who are the, you know, the spank me daddy leaders are not leading from a place of competence. They're leading from a place of pretend, pretense.

So actual really great leaders understand that this is... What they're doing is helping shape cooperation.

Did any of that make sense or was it too musicy?

[00:48:01] Emily: No, no, no. It makes so much sense. And I'll say that, like, we have been telling people for a while that behavior consulting is, is at its core a project managing profess- profession. Because I think a lot of people think you have to be all things to all people. You have to have all the answers for your clients.

You have to be able to single-handedly help them reach their goal, and that's what they're aspiring to become. Like, "Someday I don't ever wanna have to, like, get anybody else involved. I wanna be able to just come in and be a rock star and, like, help my clients reach their goals." And that's never... That is a sign of inexperience if that's your mindset because a, a truly experienced behavior consultant is looking at their job as being the advocates for their clients and their pets and figuring out who else that client needs on their support team in order to get where they need to go, and how do we coordinate between everybody so we all have—we're all drawing from the same pool of, of shared information. And that is exactly what you described. A, a conductor is, is also a project manager because you're not calling the shots. You're making sure that everybody on the team is in commun- good communication with each other, and you're giving them all the opportunity to shine and do their job well. And, and all you're doing is coordinating other people's efforts and making sure that everybody's working in, in, well, in this case, literal harmony, not just metaphorical harmony,

[00:49:32] Amelia: Or at least purposeful c- disharmony,

if that's the style of music.

[00:49:37] Emily: Right, depending on the style of music, right? I-

intentional in coordination

[00:49:41] Amelia: just in the big picture, the, the, the... A leader exposes their greatness when they are able to be humble, able to let you know that they don't know a thing, they haven't thought about that yet from that perspective, and they're gonna go learn more about it, or they wanna know more what your...

If you ask them a question, they say, "I don't know," well, first of all, the fact that they can say, "I don't know," and admit they don't know something is a very good sign. And then it's even better when they say, "What, what is your perspective? How would you do that?" Like, that is, to me, the sign of somebody who's doing a great job with leadership, not somebody who goes, you know, who huffles and buffles and is like, "Well, I'm gonna make something up and pretend that I know," like you, you know, pretentious ass hat.

Sorry, was that too far?

[00:50:28] Emily: Not at all. Delightful. I'm here for it. I wanna be your friend.

[00:50:32] Amelia: Well, you already are, so

[00:50:34] Emily: yay. I wanna be respectful of your time, and I know we only have a few minutes left, but I'm hoping you can at least briefly comment on, we were kind of heading towards what I wanted to ask you anyway with this discussion because you talk about the abyss a- as being this gap between who we are and who we're expected to be, and I feel like what we've been talking about really is sort of related to that or connected to that because th- like, the, that hero worship comes from the belief that, like, I'm not good enough.

I'm expected to be a cog, or I'm expected to be subservient, or I'm ex- expected to place other people's needs before my own. All of that, it's all sort of, like, part and parcel of what we've been talking about, right? So what recommendations do you have for those of us who are, who are in a profession where that is acutely true?

I mean, I think it's true everywhere, but I feel like some professions lend itself more to, to that mindset than others. And, and it kind of feeds into a lot of weird patterns of behavior in our industry. Not just the hero worship, but this idea that you can't question anything, this idea that you have to just always be, like, positive and, like, cheerful, and you can never make anybody feel uncomfortable.

And, like, there's just a lot of, there's a ripple effect to that. So, what, what advice do you have for people who are, are not aware of the abyss between,

between who they are and who they can be?

[00:52:09] Amelia: chasm between who we are and what we're capable of versus what the world tells us we must and would benefit from being is vast for almost everyone because the, the world, the uber culture expects us to conform to a very narrow socially constructed ideal, which is rich, in the US, white, English-speaking, Christian, cis, straight, educated, speaking English as a first language.

Did I mention Christian? Anyway, thin, exactly able-bodied, neurotypical. The, the list goes on and on. And the less you conform to that very narrow socially constructed ideal, literally the more danger you're in. 'Cause remembering that humans are a, a hive species, a herd species when you're as part of a herd, where's the safest place to be in that herd?

The, the middle. 'Cause when the lion comes, it's the animals who are literally on the fringes who are gonna get chomped. And this again digs in deep into our evolutionary heritage, and our bodies know that the safest place to be in a herd is the middle. So when they feel the distinct I don't belong feelings

Your body will compel you to conform because that's safer.

That's your body protecting you because it understands that as part of a herd, you need to be in the middle. And because for s- this brand new experience that we have in the 21st century of being exposed to this uber herd that really does contain people who conform to that socially constructed ideal.

In fact, those are the people who are promoted on TikTok. Those are the ones who get famous and show us, you know, they wanna influence us. They're the influencers. They're the ones who show up in our f- when if we just look around to the people literally physically around us, there are not so many of those.

When we look at the herd who is our own personal herd, who, in the book we call it the bubble of love, the people who care about our wellbeing as much as we care about theirs, who will turn toward you and remind you that, no, you don't have to be rich, white, cis, thin, English-speaking, Christian, neurotypical, able-bodied, English-speaking.

They'll remind you that you, as you are, are part of the herd. You belong to your own little mini herd. You're protected by a bubble of other people who agree that your avocado countertops are just fine, that you don't have to have an HGTV kitchen in order to have a place where you and your friends and family gather and sh- share experiences and love and food together.

D- so the, the cure for the abyss is to disconnect your investment in the tiny socially constructed ideal of the uber culture and invest in connecting with the people in your immediate community who care about your wellbeing as much as you care about theirs, who will come and provide you with resources and remind you that you deserve those resources and care and time and safety just as you are, without needing to make any changes, that you already belong, you already conform to what they need and want and expect in terms of you being a trustworthy, valuable, lovable person

[00:55:43] Emily: I mean, I think this is true for e- every type of marginalization that the, the power dynamics at play also injure the people who are in power because they have to maintain this thing that's not good for them either, like this culture, this, these, this behavioral repertoire. And it's kind of funny because I surround myself with neurospicys since I myself am neurospicy. And I, I I know I have a couple of, like, childhood friends who... I don't like the word neurotypical because I, I really don't think it's as typical as we're told it is, right? But

the, the, 

[00:56:20] Amelia: Allistic maybe

[00:56:21] Emily: al- w- we can go with allistic as like our short, our shorthand, right? But the few, the couple people that were in my life and my childhood friend circle that were definitely allistic felt distress when they were surrounded by m- my neurospicy friends and me because they were, in our, in our bubble of love, they were the marginalized ones.

And what was wild was watching how they tried to compensate. Like, I don't know, because, like, this is in, this, like, my, how I do my makeup, how I wear my clothes, how I talk, how I behave, what I choose, what I care about in every other context this is successful for me, and in this context it's not landing and now I don't know what to do. And watching them try to adjust I found it fascinating because it's like I'm sorry that you feel like y- who you are isn't enough or isn't correct. And like, you're a- you're allowed to be allistic. There's nothing wrong with you being allistic. But you have been taught, like socially conditioned from birth to believe that being different from your group is bad and you can't... And, like, you've got all the power here, but because this particular group of people is marginalized, you f- you're getting a taste of what it's like for the, us everywhere else.

[00:57:45] Amelia: Yeah. Yeah. That's kinda when, w-when the, when the whole world went on lockdown initially in 2020 I was like, I know the world is suffering and that most people need to be out and connect with other people, but I, I was thriving like I had never thrived in my life in lockdown. And I know that's because I'm literally not typical.

Like, if I am-- my needs and my emotional whatever is... It was the first time in my life I'd ever had the world structured in a way that conformed to my needs, and I was like, " I hope the whole world can learn now what it's like to feel that the world is not structured for your needs, and maybe increase their compassion for the whole rest of the time when I'm living in their world."

Like, maybe, maybe, people will open their minds to the idea that, yeah, it's the way the world's designed, not that you're gifted in some capacity. Yeah. It's not that you're better, it's that you fit.

[00:58:47] Emily: You were born into a world that was built for you.

[00:58:50] Amelia: It must feel nice. And for like a few months, the world was built for me

[00:58:55] Emily: Yeah, I was, I was s-shocked by how utterly content I was to live in lockdown.

[00:59:01] Amelia: Yeah. Whereas my husband, who is, you know, holistic and and an extrovert, was suffering.

Uh, That poor... And I was like, "La, this is amazing." And he was like, "I need to get out of the house." Poor guy. Yeah. We all vary.

[00:59:18] Emily: We all vary, and I think that's the, the goal of social justice in general isn't to sort of switch who's in power. It's to dismantle the power dynamic altogether so that everybody can be supported exactly as they are, instead of there being a right way to be a person and then all these wrong ways to be a person, right?

And I love ...Like, that was one of the things that I, I loved about Nes- Nelson Mandela is when everything was, you know, when apartheid was coming to an ... I, I hate even saying coming to an end

[00:59:53] Amelia: And 'cause like, no, but like legally dismantled

[00:59:58] Emily: Right, there we go. That's the way to phrase it. And people were like, "Yeah, now we're gonna do to them what they did to us," and he's like, "No, that's like, that that defeats the entire purpose of this." And I, I, I love that framing because like, yeah, it does. It, it's not like we're trying to like put women in power over m- cis women in power over cis men and other genders now. It's like, no, we just wanna dismantle that so that nobody is harmed on either end of that power dynamic. 'Cause right now everybody's being harmed by the power dynamic, including the people in power. So like, let's just stop that. Let's not do that 

[01:00:32] Amelia: And I'm gonna go ahead and recommend another book, and that's one that we use as a, as a source in Burnout a lot, which is a book by a moral philosopher named Kate Manne. The book is called "Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny." And then her second book follow-up is called "Entitled," which is about that very dynamic of, like, who's in power and how that structure harms everyone, and wouldn't it be great if we all just decided it was our moral obligation to care for each other instead of some people giving and some people being entitled to that giving?

Kate Manne. She's great.

[01:01:07] Emily: I could keep nerding out with you for hours, but I wanna be respectful of your time, and I, I appreciate you going over time a few minutes 'cause 

it has been so delightful. But Amelia, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it, and I'm really excited to, to share what you've had to say today with our listeners

[01:01:25] Allie: I hope you enjoy today's episode and if there's someone in your life who also needs to hear this, be sure to text it to them right now. If you're a pet parent looking for more tips on enrichment, behavior modification, and finding harmony with your pet, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Harmony training. If you're a behavior or training professional dedicated to enrichment for yourself, your clients, and their pets, check us out on TikTok and Instagram at Pet Harmony Pro.

As always, links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes. Thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode and making us sound good. Our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixa Bay. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps more pet lovers and professionals find us so they can bring enrichment into their world too.

Thank you for listening, and here's to harmony.