Finding hope in the midst of chronic stress

Gillian and Joelle take a walk down memory lane to recall all of the helpful strategies and insights that we learned during the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic to consider how those approaches may help us now.  Overwhelming, disheartening, and even at times terrifying events are happening in our country and world.  We bear witness to those events while keeping our lives and work moving forward with diligence.  This can all combine into feelings of defeat, anger, frustration, and learned helplessness.  We learned many powerful and accessible ways to face this situation that we can recall and access now.  We recall ideas, such as sharing the worry and finding hope through action, as well as find new ones, such as time confetti. 

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Gillian: https://www.instagram.com/clearconnectionpsychology/

Joelle: https://www.instagram.com/joelle.vanlent/

Transcript

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Thank you. Hello, welcome back to Stance of Curiosity. I'm Gillian Boudreau. And I'm Joelle Vanlent. Hi, everybody. We're excited to be back with you today. We're recording today on the day we've released episode one of season four. So we're now going to be, um, you're hearing this closer to when we're recording it now, which is going to think, going to feel great. Right. And we're fully rolling. Today in Vermont, today is a snow day for like every, everybody it feels. I'm not sure there were any schools open today. We're recording this on January 26th. I, fun fact, I moved to Oregon, but I still have my Vermont bank. And I got a message from them today that they also are taking a snow day. So all of Vermont. Yeah, we're closing. I don't know. I kind of feel like that's wimpy. I think Vermont things should open. Come on now. Oh, I guess even bankers deserve a snow day. They do. And it's, you know, some things probably have to happen in person, although, you know, different. I think this is related to what we're about to talk about, which is like how you cope with like ongoing uncertainty and environmental stress. But like when I go to the bank drive through, which I still do, I think other people might do electronic banking. I go to the bank with paper. You do? Yeah, I do. Yeah. And so I really like the people that work at the bank. That is in my town. But I sometimes ask them at the end of a hard day. How do you feel about your job? Like, it seems like you just kind of process the numbers. It doesn't seem hugely stressful. And the sweet young man who works at my bank often says to me, 'I think you might be bored.' Thank you. But it's a pretty good job. And I'm like, 'All right. I don't know. It looks pretty good some days. I think you might be bored. No, because we do that inquiry here a lot, right? When we're talking about like vicarious trauma and burnout and stuff. About how these jobs that we have and probably that many of our listeners have. The good thing is they're never devoid of purpose or meaning. If anything, we're swimming in purpose and meaning, but they also are incredibly high stakes and nearly impossible much of the time. And it, yeah, I think we specifically wonder a lot on this podcast, what it might be like to have a cubicle job or to be a banker. What level of work-related angst? Right. Do folks have if they're not trying to keep children alive? Right. And you and I have like sort of an ongoing backup plan, which is to start an alpaca farm slash flower shop. Yes. And like, that's always there. And one of the strategies that we offer each other is that people

could offer each other is like: 3:14

I will sometimes text you and say the alpaca farm plan. Needs to be enacted. And instead of telling me, 'Oh, you're such a good psychologist. Oh, you shouldn't quit. Oh, you would love it,' you say things like. How many should we start with? What color should we paint the barn? Sometimes I'll send you, I'll send you the most recent set of, like, pun-based name ideas I've come up with. Yeah. I'm like, 'Great. Yeah.' And that is, yeah. So. Oh, man. Joelle and I have also been talking about how we developed all this material during COVID, in particular COVID lockdown. Because we were like, 'Oh, here's a really unusual and historic event.' For one, schools are closed, or they might be open, or closed, but we're having to learn to do that in different ways. We're having to figure out what's really a 'have to,' what's not. We're having to triage our work differently. Um, everybody is in danger. Everybody is kind of afraid of the same thing. Nobody knows what's going to happen. Things are really in flux. And isn't it so unusual? That right now we're all going through this, as like a nation, but also as like a community of educators or a school community. So in what we believed to be that one moment in time. We, you know, you all have heard us do it on the podcast before— we started talking about all a static load. Which is sort of the overwhelmed state that the human nervous system goes into if there's too much chronic uncertainty for too long. Um, In particular, like, will my school ever open again or will my family and I be safe from COVID, et cetera, et cetera. And so Joelle's Alpaca Farm is a good example of a flight response that comes up for her when she is feeling too much uncertainty too much overwhelm in her work. Yes, I try to be a good friend, but also we've studied together a lot about allostatic load. So we now know enough that you have to allow a person to go with. The survival response, and then they will come back to homeostasis. So if I were to resist Joelle's flight response to be like, no, no, no, you can't quit. Her flight response would be stronger because she would feel now like I'm trapping her on top of everything else. Right. So I just give her the same thing I would hope she would give herself, which is time to be like, you know what? Let's think about this alpaca farm. Let's do like a 10-minute flight response fantasy. Because that's going to feel great. And then that's actually going to return me to homeostasis, to be able to do my job quicker than if I tried to resist it. Bye. Joelle and I are noticing that a lot of our COVID stuff, so in particular... allostatic load. Everyone's scared. Everything's uncertain. People are cycling between. fight, flight, and freeze. What do we do? Um, the idea that. we're all trying to do our job while you know wondering if the very structure of the way we live is going to hold. Mm-hmm. All of a sudden... It really, not all of a sudden, but it's notable. how intensely it feels like we're back there again. So, you know, one thing that Joelle and I are watching is certainly what's going on in Minnesota. Which is currently being occupied by ice and is fighting back. Many schools closed there. People definitely probably going into COVID mode on a lot of fronts there. Right. While, while also like very actively trying to defend their communities, you know, like. Throughout the nation, people, I think, are kind of bracing to see. Um, if occupation is going to happen in other places. And it's. Joelle, I think you and I maybe feel a little bit. Comfort in a small way that it's like, 'oh, this is starting to be like those skills that we like honed and taught about.' During the first unimaginable historic event of the last 10 years, but it's also really hard that we seem to be moving in a similar direction again now. Yeah, I mean, there's certainly... similarities and differences with the environmental stress that comes from outside of our immediate job. Like we talk a lot about work-related stress that comes from within our immediate job. This is environmental stress that impacts our job. There are similarities and differences. I initially resist the notion that this is like COVID because I just don't want to go back there or imagine that we have to. Yes. But I think we simultaneously can recognize this is very different. In a lot of ways and also, we did learn a lot through that time. And so there are some things that we can come back to foundationally, like what did we learn and what helped us through that time that may be relevant for people now as coping skills. And one of them was for sure allostatic load. And if you're feeling like. If you're feeling like fleeing, or fighting, or freezing, that you're going to go with that instinct in those small, calculated ways to allow your body to get back to baseline, like maybe watching two or three Netflix episodes, not... many seasons.

An example of a freeze or flight kind of response is like: 8:27

'I'm going to flee from reality in this safe and calculated way.' So rather than suppressing and overriding those instincts, we go with them in small ways and it does provide relief. Like when you text back, what color should we paint the barn? I feel immediate relief. Like I have a path out and then I want to get back in my job. And if you text it back, you shouldn't quit— I actually would feel more desperate. So it is really interesting, yeah uh-huh. So on the micro level, it's like we're trying to use all the nervous system hacks we can. You know, to keep ourselves regulated so that we can maintain our full mental capacity online, right? We can maintain our full ability to think, to problem solve, to take perspective. Yeah. You know, while you know, COVID was also different because it was a, you know, a virus. It was certainly a virus sometimes being mismanaged by the government, but it didn't feel as behind COVID, right? You know, this is a different time because it does feel like there are people behind. The threat and the danger and the uncertainty. Mm-hmm. But also, you know, so that can feel a little bit scarier because it can feel like there's maybe more malice in it, or, you know, it can feel scarier than just a virus. But also... It helps me to remember that. Focusing on my nervous system is not that small and is not maybe that selfish in a way that I might worry that it is. Because I think some of. some of the fear states that let's say, you know, more authoritarian governmental structures try to create. Mm-hmm. Is meant to kind of steal people's bandwidth, is meant to kind of... freak us out to where we're not really thinking straight. Mm-hmm. And so this allostatic load stuff in a way, it is pretty radical. Because I think it teaches us how, like, in small ways, like day to day. Like, uh, half an hour of overwhelm to half an hour of overwhelm to keep the mainframe of our thinking brain from getting short-circuited by what can really feel like sometimes a purposeful barrage of scary and unimaginable material coming through the news cycle. Hmm-hmm. And one of the... One of the other key concepts that we talked about that's kind of radical that might not feel like it is to remain hopeful. Yes. And. I think. There was the book that Jane Goodall put out. Around that time, was it the Book of Hope? It had hope in the name. I remember we taught a course that was, was it just hope? Here, let me look this up quickly. Yeah, it's the interview. She's interviewed by this lovely man. And if you listen to the audio of the book, it's her voice. And it's really. Lovely. Yeah, it's the book of hope, a survival guide for trying times. Yeah. And that. was a really lovely grounding source at that time. And what she talks about is that hope is action. It's an it's an active thing to do is to remain hopeful especially at times where it seems illogical to remain so hopeful. That is, it's an action word. Yes. So to speak. I think our jobs, like what we, those of us who are in helping professions, which is probably most of the people listening to this, whether it's in your personal life, professional life, or both, when you help others, you are doing something that is active toward building a community that supports each other. And it is a form of activism is to create communities that support each other, are non-judgmental, are open. And so that, you know, just by doing the work that we do and being in community the way that we are. That's also radical and powerful and active. Act to do every day. So sometimes it feels like, what can I do? There's nothing I can do. We are doing a lot just by being who we are and the efforts that we put into our work every day. Yeah, I think, particularly in schools, right— which are little labs, little labs for how to live in community, right? They're little labs for community care. In a way, they're totally labs for mutual aid. Right. Particularly in Vermont. Oh my gosh. The amount of, just like, the ways that folks are gathering resources from one part of the community to distribute to another part of the community, that's happening all of the time. And I do think that one of the things. You know, if I look at how many societies have gotten through times where maybe the big macro structures are losing relevance or dissolving or are not working as well anymore— is that, you know, humans go to the micro and making things human scale and really focusing on the human level connections we can make. Focusing on the things that. You know, interestingly, the thing about allostatic load. It gets very bad in these modern times because we're dealing with so many threats that are bigger or more abstract than we could actually do much about in a given day with our own body. That creates a lot of, the human nervous system hasn't evolved for that. We're evolved for problems that are pretty proximal to our house. That we indeed might be able to go into action mode. Make a material dent in in the course of the day. And so, you know, the beauty of building a community like a school, right? Or really focusing on a neighborhood or even really focusing on local politics is all of a sudden. We can use our... fight or flight mode, hopefully paired with some hope. To take an action with our one human body that will be enough to materially help another human in our sphere. Right? Different than much that I could do, no matter how stressed out I get about it right now. To try to change the thinking of, you know, some megalomaniac who I don't know and we'll never meet. Right. Yeah. So it's like, what can I do? Well, I can slow down. I can focus on the small things that are beautiful and hopeful and inspiring. I can interact with people in a compassionate, considerate way. I can be really good at perspective-taking. When people frustrate me, I can slow down and be really good at looking at the situation from there. Perspective and so it's just like how can we be especially good humans in our day-to-day interaction, and that is contagious. It's powerfully contagious and the ripple effect of that is hard to measure. So it's a way to re-look at what can we do at times like this, and it's like thinking about what we are doing. Every day and recognizing the power in that. Hope is also close to imagination. And, um, you know, when I do sort of think about, you know, whether it's like sci-fi novels or whether it's looking at how other societies have, you know, moved through big change historically. One lens on it I really like is that. You know, totalitarian regimes, they try to crush the idea of not only hope, but imagination. Like those regimes win if everyone's sort of like, this is horrible, but there's no other way. We can't imagine any other way. So I guess we're just going to submit. While like, you know, in societies that have managed to kind of do something different, right. Or find a new way or rebuild themselves. A lot of that is allowing— you know, possibility. And it's hard— you know, curiosity, and fear. A little bit work on opposite channels of the nervous system, right? So this is called the Stance of Curiosity podcast. Curiosity is a really important answer to most challenges that people face as humans or in schools. I also like that name because the flip side of that is. You can't get to curiosity if you're awash in fear. So that also means we're going to have to address fear. We're going to have to establish basic safety. That's how we get to a stance of curiosity. So I think similarly, you have to establish a stance of basic safety to get to. Enough of an open mind to access hope or imagination. But then, if you can keep firing into your hope and imagination. Conversely, it makes it harder for fear to take hold because these things are kind of mutually exclusive channels. So I also like the idea that 'We are.' You know, we're being radical. We are fighting the status quo. We are fighting. The scary, you know. Totalitarian things that are happening. When we when we remain able to imagine something else. And I think hoping and imagining are both ways too. It's also like, you know, even when you're trying to change something that's going on with a kid. You don't want to focus on what you want them to stop doing. You want them to focus on what they can do or what you want them to do. Right. And I feel that way with societal change as well. It's like, if I get into fear, I'm really focusing on what I wish were going differently. And I might get really overwhelmed by that and lose sight of any other pathway and then sort of collapse. But hope and imagination allow me to focus on, well, what would be better, right? And how can I embody that? How can I do that in small ways? How can I keep my mind there? Yeah. Part of the definition of psychological safety is that the people, like especially for children, that the adults that they're interacting with, somehow communicate to the child, I believe that you can be more than what your current set of behaviors suggest. And like that is school, right? Like the whole idea of school is that we're learning and growing every day. And so everybody— The whole idea of school is that we can improve. Yeah. We can become something more than what we are right now. And so— It's an incredibly hopeful endeavor to be in a school and learn, but when a child feels like these adults are seeing what I am doing. Right now. And they believe, even in the presence of that, that I can be more than that at some point. Um, that is psychological safety, like the communication or the felt sense of that belief. So that is really important when you think about that. As our communities in our our society like, we could be, we can be more than what our current set of behaviors exhibits, and we have been more than that. It feels like we are not our best selves right now, and we can be more than this in the future. And the belief in that is what allows it to become so. And the belief in that is what allows it to become. So that's right. Yes. Yeah, we get more of what we expect. It makes me think about too. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So like, the question becomes like, what can you do today? Like, if you're particularly discouraged, what can you do today? Can you just focus on the tasks ahead of you? Can you just be patient with yourself and the people around you? And can you just focus on believing that they can be? You know, their best selves, you know, in the future or on another day when you have more capacity, can you, can you take those bigger picture? You know, kind of hopes and visions and, and imagine that, but like being really patient with like, what, what can you do today? What do you have in yourself today? And that's all that you need to do and be is whatever you have in yourself today. Yeah. Yeah. It also makes me think about, you know, Big moments in time. That predictably stress most people out. You know, like, um, I think that reminds me a little bit of the COVID piece too, but we talk a lot about how parents or team members, you know, on the adult side, or yes, of course the kids, right? How everybody can behave a little more erratically and a little bit more unreasonably when they're already stressed. And I think this is sort of like small comfort or maybe sort of slightly morbid comfort. But, you know. When there's big stuff going on, that's very likely to be stressing everyone out on some level. Sometimes that can help me with the bad days in schools that ensue. Even just being able to zoom out and be like, 'I think,' everyone is behaving like this right now, probably myself included. Because we're all terrified. And that naturally puts us all on the same team. And even in some days, sometimes. It might be a space where that can be talked about, right? And that maybe that can be brought into the room, like, especially if you're on a team where you feel safe with folks. You know where everybody's at. If you can tell that folks are being kind of nasty to each other in ways that aren't really true. And you also know that something may have happened in the news that day. That's panicking you and is likely panicking your friends. That can be a time to name that, right? To be like, 'Could we perhaps all be freaking out because of X, Y, Z atrocity?' And is that making us be mean to each other right now? But even if it's not quite a safe enough space for you to do that, I find that. You know, I do love to play that game, 'Who's afraid of what.' When finding compassion for people in my midst who I feel are behaving poorly. And moments in time like this, they do. They do offer a pretty universalizing who's afraid of what kind of game. Like we are all really in something together right now. And that can help me. understand in a more life-affirming way. The turning up of kind of the regular interpersonal BS that we usually do see anyway in schools, but especially when everybody's freaked out. Yeah. So it's sort of like when... Because I do think what we talked about in the last episode was parents behaving, or adults behaving badly, not being their best selves toward each other. And I think that when you wonder in the midst of that, what is this person afraid of? And how can I relate to that or empathize with that or reassure what I suspect might be their fear, right? And that, again, helps you not take it personally. And shift the dynamic. If you want to increase people's empathy, you treat them with empathy. Yes. And that's hard to do sometimes when you're also feeling self-protective and on the attack. Yeah. Self-protective is a really good word for that, I think. Yeah. You know, I'm also thinking back to that episode we did. It was probably season two now. With that educator from DC, from the Maryland area. Right. Which I think was probably a little bit quicker in the thick of just some of just the administrative-related stress that we're all really immersed in now. But I remember that they were talking about the power of just writing it all down. Right. Like if your worries are overwhelming you, if there's too much in your mind to be able to focus on the task at hand. How powerful can we just have a place where you brain dump that out of your hand and then you go like, you know, we've talked about the parking lot before and one of our go-to strategies. But sometimes I have to treat myself like a dysregulated child in moments like this and just really remember. What would I do for a kid? Oh yeah, I might sit them down. And be like, you clearly can't focus because you're so worried. Just here, get it all out. I'll look at it later. And then you might find you have more mind share. I've been finding myself doing more of that too, sometimes on a hard morning, even just in my notes app, just being like. I'm afraid of this, this, this, this, and I don't know what to do about this. And it, it really does then create a little bit more room. Just one of those allostatic load things. Yep. Yeah, it's so interesting. you can park in a parking lot or write things for people too. You know, what are you worried about and then you write down key words to what they're saying and that for them. So it, it works with people of all ages and abilities. Honestly, that's a lot of what psychotherapy is— people just tell me what they're worried about and I write it down. You know, and it like seems to really help. Time tested. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm trying to think, like, what were other key kinds of go-tos that we took away from this hope? Hope is an action word and radical. Going with rather than against our survival. It stinks. I mean, I do think this was the era where we also came up with stuff that works all the time, but it became more important to really focus on. Conscious complaining versus fear barfing. And sharing the worry. Yep. I think we really drilled down on that, just because of how much emotion contagion can make things worse when everybody gets scared. So when everybody is scared, we have to be more careful with ourselves, as far as like being smart about our own fight or flight reactions. And then also just to review. We've been referencing allostatic load a lot. Basically, all that means is that you're going to be cycling between fight, flight, freeze. You want to find a way to catch what that is and then go with it, rather than against it. So, if you're in a fight mode, you might know that you are like enraged at in a particular direction. And if so, maybe you could scream into a pillow, punch a wall. Call a senator. Um, punch pillow, not a wall, um, or write down everything you're super mad about, but you might also need to just get your body into movement. You might need to do some heavy work, like lift some heavy stuff. You might also need purpose and accomplishment. Like, oh my gosh, I'm finally. going to purge this drawer that's been bothering me for years. And then I'll be able to do something, see that I did something. The fight response likes that. Flight response, Joelle and I already talked about— that's wanting to flirt with escape. Whether that's mental escape or physical escape. And it's like, yeah, you either like fantasize about escape with your friend or you let yourself run around. You don't try to like fight or minimize the need to do that. And then freeze causes us to want to like hide from a threat that's too big to fight or run away from. And it'll make us kind of sleepy and checked out. And I like to encourage people to. become still, close eyes, maybe like ball up a little bit, power down like a robot for a few minutes if you can. So we have to be a little bit more in charge of our own nervous system, doing those sorts of practices when we need to, when things are scary. And then we also need to help each other. Be a little bit more responsible for and aware of our emotion contagion or the impact on the people around us. Um, you might find, if those around you are really scared, that somebody is coming into your office without asking for permission and just saying, at you all the scariest things they could imagine about everyone who's going to sue your team and also all the people who are going to invade the school and all these really scary things. Um, that can also topple your nervous system. If you're not careful, so we also want to get good at being like, 'Hey, okay, wow It sounds to me like you're worried about these three things that I've now heard on terrifying repeat for a moment. Did I get that right? You know, and then the person can be, like, 'Yes.' And you can be like, 'Cool.' I'm going to have to go in two minutes, but let's think about at least one thing we could do to materially make ourselves feel better about one of those three things. Do you want to do that together? And they're like, 'Yeah.' So, so also, it's learning how to stem the tide of a real tsunami of fear, or a real domino. Effect of fear taking you and your whole team out, if everyone is sort of being afraid at each other. Mm-hmm. Yes, so key. And then related to that is the idea, and I actually got a new word for this from a colleague lately, which is called... Time confetti. Ooh, time confetti. That means that when you have those brief pauses in the day, like two minutes, three minutes, five minutes between things. Rather than filling that with looking at your phone, checking email, checking texts, checking the news updates, taking those three, five short minutes that you have, it pauses in the day. To not let any new information come into your brain. Allow your brain to just process and sort the information that's floating in your working and short-term memory. Because your brain is incredibly good at sorting when it has a pause in input. So that it can just let go of stuff that's not essential, put in mental file folder stuff that is essential so it's there in the right place later. And if you're swirling with stuff that was not yours, you can send that back to those people with love, as we say. Yes. And you also will realize in those brief pauses when you have stopped allowing input that you have unmet basic needs and you can meet those needs. I need to go to the bathroom. I need to move. I need to sit. I need to eat. I need to drink. So time confetti is when that sprinkles down throughout your day. These little moments. There is a cumulative effect of of not taking that pause to allow your brain to sort and meet basic needs. In the negative, there's a cumulative effect of defer, defer, defer, where you're just completely sort of undone. By the time you might have a bigger span of time, like for example, when you try to sleep at night. Or there's a cumulative effect in the positive. When you just take those brief moments and say, 'No more input.' What does that mean? It means don't pick up your phone. Don't open your computer. If someone's coming at you looking like they want to fear barf on you, you need to say, 'I need three minutes. And I'll come find you.' I wish for people who work in common spaces like schools that they could have those three minutes somewhere other than a bathroom stall. Oh, me too. But sometimes you can't. It feels like the only place that you're not interrupted and maybe even, not reliably, if you have a personal device in there with you or whatever. So it's like, how do we take control of that time confetti and use that in the right way? Because there really is a huge, like... We were not as stressed decades ago, prior to the smartphones, because we did have those times, and our brains could sort of catch up. My mother-in-law has an expression. Do you need to catch up with yourself? And I think that's exactly what you're doing. It's like you need to catch up with yourself throughout the day. And I just think that we had more opportunity to do that before. The, you know, the world, zipped around us in this way where it's just always full and it's so information. And the cognitive overload is something hard to get ahead of. So taking control of that, you will actually be. More efficient it feels like, oh I must check those things during that time. You will actually be more efficient. In you know, when you have 10 minutes to check your email, if you have taken those tiny bits of time to unload that, you know, kind of swirl in your brain. I think that's very key. And I need to really remember that too. It's like. Mm-hmm. If I have an extra 90 seconds, that's. Not an opportunity. I'm not like. Behind on Mining. For more scary information from the world at large. Right. And sometimes I dive into my phone, like I'm. Dangerously behind on this. Like something horrible is going to happen, right? If I don't read one more article. Whereas no, in fact. I mean... My brain is in a lot more danger if I don't simply like staring out the window, if I'm lucky enough to have a window for those 90 seconds. Or if I don't simply take the moment in the bathroom stall and close my eyes. And, you know, the power actually in taking control over when you are willing to get more information into your brain. Right? Oftentimes we can't choose that, but there are pockets in most days for most people. Where things do stop even for a brief second, and we do have that choice. How much power we're abdicating. Mm-hmm. Bye. By not setting traffic cones around those moments when they come. That's such a good point. Yeah, I mean, one of Bruce Perry's, who is an expert in developmental trauma, one of his key concepts is the patterning of stress. And if it's patterned in such a way that it's moderate, controlled, and predictable, you can build pretty impressive stress tolerance. But if it's patterned in such a way that's unpredictable and... you know, not moderated by coping skills and other things, it can increase your sensitivity to stress. You have big reactions to smaller and smaller doses of stress. So an example would be if you said, 'I am only going to expose my brain to updates related to national news or world news.' Every day at these three times and it was the same three times every day. And you also recognized I'm having a particularly hard day. So visual information would be harder for me than auditory or like that if I read something or listened versus watched. If you did that, you would still have the information to be an informed citizen. But you would have patterned it in such a way that your brain can predict— I'm going to get freaked out. Every day at 7 a. m., 4 p. m., and 7 p. m. 4pm and 7pm. It's going to be great. Right. And in between, if you can have some kind of an impulse control to expose yourself to that. And if somebody brings it up to you, you could say gently, you know what, I actually am not. Updating myself on that information while I'm at work just so that I can focus. So if we could pause this conversation, I could call you on my way home. If you really want to talk, because that's when I do that. You're modeling for them really good coping skills. And what you're doing is your brain can have pretty impressive stress tolerance to that. Dosing of information because it knows when it's going to get it and you have some control over the format. That's I'm going to use that one too. Thanks, Joelle. This is really good brain hygiene for me. I didn't realize that I'd been falling into some. Hmm. Bad habits because I've been feeling kind of scared. And when we get scared, we go urgent and we just claw for more information because we don't want to get surprised. Yeah. I'm not pretending that I'm living what I'm saying 100% right now, but those are... Those are the guideposts. Those are the guideposts. And where we're starting to feel our stress level— our baseline stress level— eek up. That these are the kinds of fallbacks that we that we learned. And they were the kinds of things that we were studying before COVID. You know, when COVID first happened, one of the things I felt in the immediate aftermath was that, because that was such a sudden onset, unlike this. Um. I felt like I have no role in this, or I don't know what my role in this is. And then I realized, pretty quickly, I have some really clear information that's actually highly relevant, and I can find a role in this. And so I think that— is really important too, is that like we did learn a lot from that time. And we never wanted it to happen. It was devastating. And we did learn a lot from that time. And we can use those skills and strategies now. And we do know how to do this. We know how to be. Stressed in ways where we're self-protective and supportive of each other and cope well. And we also know how to move through massive societal change or. The day-to-day looking really different sometimes suddenly. If we need to. You know, and I think, you know, it's not looking like that currently where I'm living. I think right now it would be looking like that in Minneapolis. Like, you know, this might be more of a rolling version of that on this one than sort of the blanket one of COVID. But weirdly, I think I also take some solace in that. You know, Joelle, you said something to me that was like, 'man, we were living in a golden age and we did not even know it before.' You know, this BS was going to be happening all the time. Yeah. That is true, but in some ways I am a little bit grateful to... what we learned in COVID, right? We can go to distance learning if for whatever reason it suddenly becomes too unsafe to go to school. We can sort of, you know, change our priorities. We can. We can deal with the day-to-day, looking really different. In the service of keeping everybody safe. We know now that that's possible and that we've done that before. And I think. Weirdly, that feels like hope and imagination to me. To, you know, to be like I think we're going to be a more courageous. group now. in. Dealing with things looking differently suddenly, if we need them to, because we have a blueprint for that, that we didn't have six years ago. Even though I wouldn't have wanted that to happen. And I also, of course, would not want the level of uncertainty that we're dealing with now to be happening. Yeah. We're pretty resilient to change now. Yeah, and it turns out we always were— we just didn't know how. Yeah, right. We always were, it just wasn't in my life. It wasn't my lifetime. It wasn't as tested. Right. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Yep. Thank you. Oh, well, I do feel better. Hopefully others listening feel better too. Yeah. Well, what we did is we shared the worry, which is another thing, right. Is to find, you know, don't go, don't go fear barfing, but. With consent, finding safe people to go to with this so you don't feel so alone with it and that's true if a parent yells at you and you gotta share that with your team rather than just taking that on the chin and deciding you're bad at what you do. And that's also true with them. Processing the scrambly, uncertain anxiety of... Societal Shifts. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, thanks for joining us, everybody. Yeah, thanks, everybody. These strategies. Hang in there. Thanks for all that you all are doing. Yes. It gives. I think I can say 'us' and not speak for both. It gives us hope to work with all of you. Oh my God. So much educators and these like micro societies that are getting created. So much hope. Sometimes it's the only thing. Yes. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. All right. Thank y'all. We'll see you next time. Hang in there. Thank you for listening to another episode of Stance of Curiosity. Stance of Curiosity is an unscripted conversation between Jillian Boudreau and Joelle Van Lent. While both are licensed psychologists, this podcast is provided for informational and educational purposes only. The content presented should not be considered a substitute for professional, psychological, medical, or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Listeners should always consult with a qualified mental health professional whenever needed for specific concerns or questions related to their personal situation. Stance of Curiosity is produced by Jillian Boudreau and Joelle Van Lent. Our cover art is by Aaron Lanute and our music is upbeat indie folk by Twin Music. See you next time.