EP24: The Habit of Suffering | From Empathy Fatigue to Embodied Compassion — with Angela Melzer

Are You Carrying the Weight of the World? 

We often use the term "compassion fatigue" to describe the exhaustion of caring, but counselor Angela Melzer suggests a profound shift in perspective: compassion itself is an infinite resource. What actually drains us—what leaves us hollow and reaching for our phones to numb out—is empathy fatigue. 

When we over-identify with another person's suffering, we inadvertently jump off our own "boat" and into the turbulent waters with them. We lose our grounding, our creativity, and eventually, our ability to be truly helpful. This conversation is an invitation to stop rescuing and start responding from a place of steady, embodied presence. 

In this episode, we explore the path from burnout back to ourselves: 

• The Shift from Empathy to Compassion:
   Understanding why feeling another person’s pain is only a temporary tool, and how to transition back into your own body to offer a lifesaver instead of drowning alongside them. 
• Breaking the Cycle of False Refuges: 
  A look at how we use grasping, avoidance, and confusion to stay safe in old patterns, and the one confrontational question—"What am I getting out of this?"—that can finally unlock the door to change. 
• The Somatic Architecture of Healing:
   How trauma and repeated emotional patterns live in our physical bodies, and how modern tools like Somatic Experiencing and Ketamine-assisted therapy can machete through the neural "vines" of the past to carve a new way forward. 

Whether you are a professional healer or the person everyone leans on, this episode offers a gentle reminder: Feeling tired doesn't mean you are in the wrong life. It means your nervous system is asking you to return to your own spine, your own breath, and your own brilliance. 

Full show notes at netanyaallyson.com/episodes/24

Transcript

Defining Sympathy, Empathy, and Compassion

Netanya 0:00

There are moments in life that split us open. Quiet unraveling said frame or truth we didn't know we need it. Until we had no choice. This podcast is about those moments. It's about the turning points that change us. The things I wish someone had told me that I only understand in looking back. Come on in. You belong here. And we're gonna talk about all of it. I'm your host, Natanya, and this is what I didn't know. Before we begin, a quick note. This podcast explores themes such as mental health, addiction, trauma, and recovery. While the stories here are honest and heartfelt, they're not a substitute for professional advice, therapy, or medical treatment. Please listen with care and pause anytime you need to. Take whatever resonates for you and leave the rest. Today's guest is Angela Melzer. Angela and I take a deep dive into the mechanics of burnout and the science of somatic healing. We talk about how our bodies can repeat physical and emotional patterns if left unresolved, why it's not your job to carry the weight of someone else's journey, and we get into psychedelic assisted therapy, what it is, and how it's used to carve new neural pathways in the brain. Here we go. Angela, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. I am so the reason that we're having this conversation actually is because I was talking to a friend who works in recovery in a treatment center. I have I have several friends here that do that for work. Um, and he was talking about compassion fatigue. And he was like, I think, I think I might I might have that. And sort of we were with other people and everyone else kind of laughed, like as if it was a joke, because I don't think they got that it was a real thing. And I was like, I know what that is. Um and so him and I ended up having a phone call separately to to talk about it later. But it made me think of you and the training that you did when I lived and worked in Steamboat in recovery. And I think even in the episode that I did with Chris, we talked about compassion fatigue at one point using one of the metaphors that you taught us in that training because it was so useful. And so I would love to talk about just if you can start off with what it is for someone that may not have a clue, um, and we can go from there. That would be great.

Angela 2:28

Awesome. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. This is fun, and I enjoy kind of reconnecting with you again. So thank you for having me. I guess I'm gonna start off right away and just say that um in my practices and my teachings, compassion fatigue actually does not exist. And what we're talking about and what we're experiencing is actually called empathy fatigue. And so it's uh a lot of my teachings kind of go off of that that basis that we absolutely as as caregivers and as healers and uh people who work in the human um in the human services industry uh absolutely have extreme amounts of burnout and and fatigue from being around a lot of suffering. And uh when we're looking at what that actually what's happening in the brain and and what's happening in in our emotions is is actually more is more accurately called empathy fatigue. Compassion is is technically not something that we can burn out on if we're doing it correctly. So I guess I'll start there. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. What what comes up for you when I when I kind of state it that way?

Netanya 3:42

Um I think it makes sense. I always go into boundaries whenever I get into this this conversation of like what my boundaries are or aren't whenever I'm feeling that way. And just the fact that I think, you know, I brought it up in terms of a working situation, but I think it can happen. But please correct me if I'm wrong. It can happen in any sort of caregiving situation, even if it's not a job, correct? Where you are over giving of some kind. Um but say more about the empathy part.

Angela 4:13

Mm-hmm. So a lot of people, especially in our culture, uh really confuse empathy, sympathy, compassion, right? Sometimes those all get thrown into the same bucket, and they are very different. So if you look at Brene Brown has some great descriptions around the difference between sympathy and empathy, and sympathy is um, hey, you know, I'm sorry about what's happened to you. I have sympathy for you as if, you know, your suffering is so different from mine. And then empathy is very different in that it's I feel what you are feeling. I I feel this um this sense of suffering in my own body because of your suffering. And empathy, our our ability to be empathic is really important and and crucial actually in our culture and and as caregivers and as friends and family members, and the ability to to experience or have the desire to understand someone else's experience and and understand someone else's suffering, you know, empathy is very important and we need to have it. And so it's uh it's a very important quality. And as practitioners or providers or healers or even friends or family members who are working with someone who is in great deal of suffering, that we can feel what that person is feeling and and what what what technically I don't want to use, I don't want to use the shoulds, the shoulds and the coulds, but what typically happens is we we feel what that person's feeling and then and we're really just staying in that place of suffering and and really over-identifying with whatever that person's experience is, and we frantically try to fix it for them or try to alleviate it for them because our own suffering actually is getting impacted. And so when we talk about compassion, compassion is a very different experience and a very different response. Compassion is saying, you know, I want to have a response to your suffering. I want to be able to respond to your suffering and and um and so empathy is required for compassion, but then what I kind of explain is we want to essentially we we enter into an empathetic place, and then we want to actually move out of that empathetic place um and and uh really move more into a compassionate place, which is I want to respond to your suffering, and then I am getting back into my own experience and back into my own body. And and then going into I typically use the three, I don't know, the definition terms of compassion, which is um, you know, may you be free from your suffering, but you know, may you find acceptance and peace and may you find joy. And so the the the compassion component is really utilizing a piece of an understanding or a trust that the other person's experience is their own.

The Boat Metaphor: Helping Without Drowning

Angela 7:16

And really trying to trust and believe that that person's experience in their active state of suffering, but that it that it that it is their own inner inner brilliance or their inner intelligence that is working on their suffering, and that for us to feel what they're feeling and to stay in that place of of feeling what they're feeling is actually not honoring their own experience and their own story. And so we give ourselves permission to pull out of that empathetic place and and move more into a compassionate response, which is I am responding to your suffering within my skill set, within my own grounded self, that I can respond to you in a place where I'm and and I know you and I have talked about the metaphor of the boat, and I am happy to tell I'm happy to talk about that today. I got way too excited there. Uh so so you know that you know the boat metaphor, we've talked about it in the past, but for listeners, I have a metaphor that really kind of talks about empathy versus compassion, and and it's like being on a boat in the ocean. And if someone has fallen off of their boat and they're in an active state of suffering and they're in the water and the seas are turbulent and and the storm is hard, right? Whether it's trauma or whether it's um there's a lot of suffering happening right now, um, you know, it's it's pretty turbulent out there. So when we see someone who has fallen off their boat and they're suffering, the the first response is that empathetic response, right? Of of wow, that's gotta be really hard. They fell out, they're in the water, they're they're they're drowning, they're they're cold, they're shivering, they, they, they can't, you know, they can't, they're not able to get back into their boat effectively at this point. So sympathy, um in contrast, sympathy would be, oh, that that's a bummer. I I'm really feel for you that you're in that, that you're in that situation, but I'm gonna turn my boat around and drive away. Like sorry for you, right? And then empathy is, oh my gosh, that person is out there. And actually, I might even jump off my own boat and and really to understand what this suffering is like. I'm gonna jump off my own boat and be in that place of suffering with you, right? And that can serve a purpose uh you know, initially to really understand maybe how urgent a situation is, that we can really put ourselves in another person's shoes. At some point in time, though, you both being in the water of suffering is not helping that person. And so at some point in time, you got to swim back to your own boat, get back on your boat, and say, what tools do I have on my boat to help this person, right? And that choice right there to say, hey, I I feel what you're feeling, I I understand this is, you know, I want to get curious about what this experience is like for you, and and and I'm going to go to this place where I can feel centered and grounded and pull out my own skill set. And that is the movement from empathy into compassion. And so when I'm on that boat, I can throw them a lifesaver, I can throw, you know, I can throw them a buoy, I can throw them, you know, a life jacket, I can throw them a rope. And that is because I'm staying within my own presence of my own body, that I'm staying embodied in my own human experience. I'm staying on my own boat. And and so,

Recognizing Empathy Fatigue

Angela 10:50

and I'm I'm in that place where I know that I can be steady and that I'm okay in order to be able to throw you that that lifesaver, that life jacket, that rope. Um so compassion is a response to suffering on the premise that that it's really not our jobs to jump in and to be suffering with that person. That doesn't really help them, right? It helps them for at the beginning for us to understand what they're going through and then for us to then move into a responsive mode.

Netanya 11:29

That was brilliantly explained. I love the vote metaphor. And I'm curious, since I I know people that, like I said, are often in jobs or positions like this already. How do you, if you're already in this seat, how might one recognize that they're already in this place? What are signs or symptoms of being here?

Angela 11:50

Yeah, that's a great question. And and I'd love to address that. But I I guess I'd like to take a little step, maybe a pre-step before that. Sure. Which is, you know, if we if you're in the helping profession that you you're already probably naturally empathic, and that's a beautiful trait to have, and not ever being afraid of being an empathetic self and using it as a tool, right? So the ability to jump into someone else's shoes or to jump in that water with that person does require resiliency. It requires trust, it requires, you know, self-work. And also it's what makes the world go round, right? Empathy really helps. And so what I would say is, and actually they've done studies on this. I read a study many years ago that talked about um nurses uh and burnout rates and nurses who were trying to pull back their empathy and not feel so much interestingly burned out faster in their careers. And so what we know is that if we can actually embrace that we have this empathetic part of ourselves, that that actually helps with um sustainability in our career as being in the helping profession, or if we're in the in the position of um, you know, even being around loved ones, family members or friends who who may need uh extra support. And so um really welcoming that into your your skill set and your toolkit as being empathetic is is a is a little bit of a superpower. Um and then to go back to your question is how do we know that maybe we're we're in it a little bit too long? Like this is kind of silly, but I bought a sauna this spring, and like there's like a magic time that you, you know, you can be in the sauna and you don't want to be in the sauna for two hours. You'll get dehydrated and you can get dizzy and you know, things can happen, right? So, um, but if you're in the sauna for 30 to 45 minutes, it's really healthy for you. It's great for your cardiovascular system, right? So it's all about moderation, right? And and empathy is the same way. It's really good for you. It's good for you to experience empathy. And if you are sitting in it too long, you're out in those turbulent waters for too long, then you're right, we will start to have symptoms. And so to answer your question, symptoms would be um, you know, kind of your classic ones, right? Like I don't want to go to work, procrastination. Um a really big one is the tune-out screens, uh, the numb out. And so if we feel in an over exhaustion of emotions and we are feeling our tank to be a little empty or a little low, we're gonna trend towards numbing out and having a self-forced dissociation. And oftentimes what that looks like in today's day and age is our little phones, you know, getting on those phones and and doing the endless scroll. Um, so the the desire to want to numb out, get away, get on TV. Um another interesting uh what I have found personally just in in my own uh career being a counselor is that I lose my creativity. So if I'm noticing that I'm feeling a little bit of empathy burnout, that I don't find myself to be as creative or as innovative, I'm less likely to do projects or to want to write. And so that's a really big sign of potential burnout, irritability. Um and and I think what's really interesting when we talk about burnout is that just taking a vacation where you're checking out and you're going to the beach or whatever, if you're not actively healing from overextending yourself and you're scrolling and dissociating that whole week when you go back to work and you have to put your empathy hat on again, you're still tired, you're still you're still gonna feel that burnout. They did a really interesting study about that over the pandemic, actually. They were showing that these healthcare workers were not feeling rested even after a vacation because there was a lot of the numbing out practices that were happening. And so when we're wanting to refuel and get back on our boat, we have to actually be very intentional about how we do that.

Netanya 16:17

And what when you say actively healing, what is that what does that mean? What does that look like tangibly?

Angela 16:25

Oh, great question. Um, that's probably why you do these podcasts, right? You ask the best questions, Natanya. You always have. I love that about you. Thank you. Uh uh that's a that's a big one. Um, it's a long, actually a long answer. Uh how do you heal? I really believe in being very aware of your body and being very aware of of what your nervous system is doing. And if your nervous system is regulated, it's gonna let you know if it feels ready and if it feels recovered. And so practices like meditation, mindfulness practices, um doing um movement practices such as tai chi or yoga help you to be aware of where you're at in your recovery process. So I think it's um it's it's really based off of being aware uh of how tired or how fatigued, how how checked in, right? Like being checked out, being online, uh, being ready and being online. You you just gotta, you do need to have practices as a daily routine or a weekly routine where you know what your nervous system feels like when it's tired, and you know what your nervous system feels like when it's ready to go back to work. Um focus, concentration, attention. So practices that you're not trying for the first time, but practices that you've been doing and become part of your life and not necessarily like a rescue remedy.

Netanya 17:59

Mm-hmm. If you I'm imagining people out there who don't meditate, who don't do yoga, who like your other people that are outside of that box or don't have that practice already, are there alternatives? Yes, of course.

Angela 18:15

So again, I'd like to go back to nervous system regulation is is really there's a lot of things that you can do to help with nervous system regulation. So walking, just getting out and walking, listening to music, interestingly, right? So that can be really helpful with with burnout and regulating your nervous system. Curiosity and creativity are, you know, coming back to how can I be creative? Maybe if someone doesn't meditate or they don't do yoga, but maybe they paint or they or they like to draw, or perhaps they like to work on um cars, right? Or build things. Um there's a lot of adult Legos that are out now, you know, but I think really what it is is a it's a natural curiosity to do something that feels good. It feels like it's filling your cup. If you feel more energized after doing that activity, the walk, listening to music, listening to a book on tape, building some Legos. If you feel more rejuvenated after that activity, then that is something that fills your cup. And and really paying attention to how your body feels, you're gonna start to grow a list of things that feel good that really help with building, building really essentially like your recovery toolbox or your rejuvenation toolbox.

Netanya 19:40

So we talked about signs and symptoms of how you know you're there. We talked about actively healing when you step away from it. Are there, or what would you suggest for someone who's right inside of it? Right. So they're with a client, they can feel themselves, they've been in too long, they're not sure how to pull back. How do you do that in the moment to sort of reinstate yourself when you feel yourself leaning too far in a real situation?

Angela 20:09

I don't think it's an if question. I think it's a when. Um, you know, I've been working

Healing and Recovery Practices

Angela 20:16

on having these energetic boundaries for many years, you know. I've been in practice, I've been a counselor for 15 years now, and I feel like um you can do all the right things and you can still find yourself in that scenario that you just described. I'm sitting with somebody and I'm noticing that I'm checking out, or that I'm feeling flooded, or that I feel tired, or I feel annoyed that I have to be in this role, right? Like I don't typically feel the annoyed part, just so you know, but some people can and do. But I can feel some of those other things. I can feel sometimes that fatigue, I can feel maybe really just a shift in your ability to be present, right? So I think first of all is to know, hey, this is normal. This happens. And I think that feels really important, even in someone who has, I've devoted, you know, probably a a thousand hours and a more than thousands of dollars on on how to work with with burnout and taking care of my body and my nervous system, and it still happens, right? So I think just being able to say, yeah, this is kind of part of it. And one of my mentors when I was first in practice told me, if you're if you're noticing that you're losing yourself, find your spine, find your butt, find your shoes. Find your spine, find your butt, find your shoes. Noticing your own body in space. And and then she did say, and then maybe do a Kegel. Um which is kind of a funny response that she gave me, but it's it it's interesting, right? So if you do a if you do some Sort of an inner body muscular contraction, a kegel. No one can see you do it. Um, you're pulling, you're pulling actually your awareness back into your own body. And then so those two practices can be really helpful. And then sometimes even just a cognitive reminder of like, may I trust in the person's their own inner brilliance? That may I trust that this person is going through their journey and it isn't really my job to fix, save, or rescue them. It's my job to provide support and to be responsive to their suffering, but it's not my job to fix, save, or rescue. And I will say that even as a counselor, it is not my job to fix, save, or rescue my clients. It is my job to facilitate and to provide a supportive, safe, and informative setting for my clients to do their own beautiful, brilliant work that they already have within them. So I think sometimes that's good to just remind ourselves of that. Like, wait a minute, I can sit with this brilliant soul across from me and they are doing their work. I don't have to carry that. I don't have to hold it. Like, I don't know if you've noticed, but I don't say holding space. That's not a that's not in my vocabulary anymore. I don't hold anything. I can sit with and facilitate and compassionately respond, but I don't hold, I don't have to hold anything. They can hold it.

Netanya 23:27

I love that you said that. I also still to this day, probably on a, I'll say bi-weekly basis, use the term fix, save, or rescue in my own internal thing to just be like, nope, we're not gonna jump into that. Um, because it's a practice, right? And especially if you have, I have a past of of codependency and enabling and other things that I had to work through in many years, and a lot of that involves me trying to rescue, fix or save someone else. Um but you said you touched on trust for a second there. You said you have to trust the other person. What does that look like when you maybe don't have a great relationship to trust?

Angela 24:09

Well, I think my first response is that that's a wonderful and beautiful opportunity to do your own work. That when we are healers, we do need to trust. And even if something feels scary or even if there's a lot of unknowns, that and trusting doesn't mean that we're trusting for a specific outcome. We need to be really careful about that. We're trusting that that my body is gonna do the best it can given the resources that it has in this moment in time, and that um I'm also trusting this other person that they are going to do the best that they can given their resources at this moment in time. And that again, I'm staying on my own boat and I can give resources and I can give skill skill sets or tools, but ultimately I have to trust that this person's journey is theirs. It's their journey.

Netanya 25:10

I wrote that down because I liked it so much that you're not trusting for a specific outcome. And I think we get we can get attached to that. So in that space, do you do you call that non-attachment or detachment? Or like w is there a language here or term that I'm looking for that sort of helps you to step out of being attached to the outcome of yourself or someone else?

Angela 25:38

Yeah, I think I think those terms could absolutely fit and could be really helpful if that helps you to make sense. And and I would say that a a lot of my practices do come from what we would consider more eastern approaches or Buddhist approaches, and and a lot of it is about unattachment and not getting attached to outcomes and not getting attached to what I think is right or the path that I think I should be on, um, but rather using mindfulness, which is to be in the present moment without judgment and with and with kindness, is to let things unfold as they will. And there is a quite a bit of, you know, surrendering. When we talk about unattachment, we have to surrender that sense of we want to control, don't we? So yeah. So trust is, yeah, I think it's like uh it's like the the package deal there, right? Trust, attachment, control, surrender, words that we use a lot in in recovery and in the healing journeys and in doing our self-work. Those, those, those really need to be very uh present in our attention frequently, and that is included in how we are showing up as healers for others.

Netanya 26:56

Well, and you said um when you said mindfulness, you used the word uh judgment, right? And I'm curious about we tend to make things right or wrong, or good or bad, or this is the way this outcome should go, which is all looped into the same attachment, you know, conversation. What is the difference between judgment and discernment and knowing what's good or bad or right or wrong versus like this is for me or isn't for me?

Angela 27:26

Mm-hmm. Yeah. What a beautiful, beautiful way to kind of present present that because discernment, so how I how I have been taught uh about discernment is that it's it's very finely tuned of which path do I want to take. I'm using discernment, I'm using past experiences, I'm using maybe even gut instincts or how I'm feeling somatically in my body to make a decision that's in the best interest of either myself or another person, that I'm that I'm very mindfully and carefully uh looking at how to move forward, right? Um so I do think judgment is is is required actually in discernment. And and judgment, I think, in general, is is really quite frankly, it's it's it's an opinion, right? It's a it's a it's a narrative. And so we we sometimes use a lot more judgment when we actually need discernment. Does that make sense? So I think judgment is we have opinions about lots of things. I like this, I don't like, I don't like how that person's doing that, I like how that person's doing that, I don't like how this is going, or I do like well, none of those those are all just opinions. Those are all judgments, none of those have to do with actually needing to make a discerning decision about something, right? And so I think that I I have often said, and you have possibly heard me say this before as well, judgment is like sugar, that we need it. We need sugar. Actually, sugar is required for synaptic connections in our brain and for our brain to work, but we don't need to put sugar on every single thing we eat. You know? And so I think that that we have this society where we feel that we're almost privileged or in this place where we are allowed to judge every single thing. And that's not necessary. And that and I think also sometimes judgment comes into play when we are being caregivers and can create empathetic burnout. You shouldn't be responding this way, right? You should be better by now. You should da-da-da-da-da. Why aren't you doing these things I told you to do? Right.

Understanding Trauma and its Responses

Angela 29:43

So judgment can absolutely cause burnout, right? Where where I feel like discernment is at a decision point, you have to make you have you're needing to make a decision at that at that point, and you're discerning and capturing all this information that feels important in order to move forward.

Netanya 30:01

That was nicely explained. Thank you. Yeah. You said the word somatic. If someone doesn't know what that is, can you explain what you mean by that and what like even somatic experiencing is? Because I know you have experience with that.

Angela 30:18

So soma is Latin for body. So it's just a fancy word for body. Um the the soma, the body, is includes the brain and your nervous system and all of your muscles and and all of these things are constantly talking to each other. And so when we're talking about healing or we're talking about getting through something or moving through trauma or moving through our suffering, that it is not just a brain thing or a mind thing. It's actually a whole body thing. And so the soma or the somatic, and somatic is interesting, it's gaining some traction right now. It had a lot of a lot more people are using that word, and it is really to address and honor that our experiences, our whole body, the whole body, the whole soma. The and so um, and so yes, thank you for mentioning somatic experiencing. I am um licensed and trained in doing that type of trauma work. It is uh a pretty pretty amazing program, and it is um somatic experiencing is working on helping to regulate the nervous system after traumatic experiences and helping people to be more present in their bodies and in their nervous systems and to feel more regulated. Because trauma is now not defined by events. Trauma is now currently in today's day and age, currently defined as if your body is responding to something from the past in the present moment that it's not it's not congruent. If your body is responding in a way that is not congruent with your current moment, that that that your body is responding out of something from the past, that that is considered dysregulation and technically a traumatic response.

Netanya 32:13

Wow. So that's a lot of things that happen to a lot of people on the regular basis.

Angela 32:19

Um, and and a lot of times our bodies can figure it out, right? That we, you know, we get something may happen to us, and and boy, the next seven or eight exposures of something similar that reminds us of that, we get a racing heart or we get flushed in the face, or we we find ourselves squeezing our hands. And then maybe through time and you know, that that eases and calms down that that stress response is no longer happening, right? But then that when we consider it being a more of a trauma, um, it would be past six months. So adjustment disorder, stress response is going to be, you know, anything up to six months that might be happening. So I I think the reason why they're moving away from events being what defines a trauma is that if two people are part of the same event, they may have very different responses to what that event is. One person may walk out of there not feeling traumatized at all, and the other person may be very, very upset and affected by the event. And so they are really looking at then how is, you know, like that's why I was talking about with the timelines that if it's if it's six months or less, then they're just calling it adjustment disorder or stress response. But if those those responses that we have in our body or our nervous system continue to disrupt us during the day past those six months, then it is considered a post-traumatic stress response, a PTS response.

Netanya 33:53

That's fascinating. It also makes a lot of sense when you say it like that. I'm curious about something else that I know that you

Exploring Contemplative Psychology

Netanya 34:03

have studied extensively and also lends itself to the same paradigm of what we're talking about, which is contemplative psychology. Can you talk about that for a little bit and what it is? And and I just want to go down that rabbit hole a little bit because I did I'd never heard of it until I met you.

Angela 34:22

Sure. So just to let you know the background, I did enter into a program called Karuna, and it's um a program that teaches contemplative psychology in, I don't know, 20 countries or something. It was in Europe for a really long time. And probably maybe 10 or 12 years ago, they moved over to the states. So the mostly Western Europe were most of the countries, but um, but it is widely taught. And contemplative psychology is really looking at how has essentially Buddhism or Eastern philosophy handled the nature of the mind. And so how do they handle suffering? How how do we look at compassion? How do we look at what meditation does to the mind and how it can help? And so it really is a beautiful foundation for how to look at thinking and and mental health and behavioral health. And it goes into a lot more detail that I could probably talk about for hours and hours, but it breaks things down into different types of suffering and different resources we have and different ways that we create coping mechanisms

Coping Mechanisms and Their Impact

Angela 35:40

for ourselves. And so it's it's really it's really neat in that it's you know it's 2,000 plus years old way of looking at why and how we suffering is how we suffer and how we get out of it.

Netanya 35:52

Can I pull on that thread for a minute, which is coping mechanisms? Sure. And from that angle, anything you can tell me about what why we do that, what that what that turns into, or but coping mechanisms in general, obviously we all have them. They all look different. Some people tend towards this one and not that one. But anything you want to you want to go down the rabbit hole with regarding coping coping mechanisms?

Angela 36:16

Sure. So Buddhism loves to talk about, they like to categorize things. And so, you know, they talk about like the three three major behaviors that bring us more suffering. So I would consider those coping mechanisms, and they are grasping. So we grasp for what we want, and we um are always wanting or wanting more and and not wanting to let go when things are good. So there's a there's a grasping type of behavior that can cause us more suffering, which is considered kind of a coping mechanism, and an addiction is is part of that in that category. Um, the second category is avoiding. So those are pretty classic coping mechanisms in in our culture to avoid, you know, not checking the emails, not doing, not dealing with my trauma, you know, not not having that hard conversation, not not holding that boundary, not getting my self-care stuff done, not doing treatment, right? So avoiding is a huge way that people cope with dysregulation, dysfunction, trauma, stress. And then the third one is a little bit more vague, but it's confusion. So if we're not avoiding and we're not grasping, we can stay in a state of the I don't knows, or passiveness, like I'm just gonna stay confused so I don't have to make a decision. Or I'm just gonna stay in this place of creating more confusion around myself so that I don't have to make a decision or so that I don't have to do work. So those are our kind of three main categories of how we can cause more suffering for ourselves through those types of coping mechanisms. Yeah.

Netanya 37:59

You asked me a question once, and I still use it to this day. So I'm gonna, and it's in and around this category, which is what are you getting out of this? Can you talk about the kind of concept behind that question in the first place and why it's useful?

Angela 38:16

Well, humans humans are are certainly um habitual creatures, right? So if we are in an avoidance pattern, for example, then we are getting something out of avoiding, right? We're we're getting stability, or maybe we're getting, we get to stay in this place of not confronting our work. And same with grasping. If we're if we're grasping the next thing or or needing needing to be um that overachiever at work and we're grasping to get the accolades, then it is it's important to ask, like, what actually am I am I getting out of these behaviors? Same with confusion. You can ask that question in any of those three categories, right? What what are you getting out of staying confused by by being the I'm gonna just be really easy to get along with, or I'm gonna go with the flow, what are you getting from that? You're getting you get to be in a place where maybe you don't have to confront some harder decisions, right? So when we ask the question, what am I, what am I getting from this? That truly oftentimes our behaviors are moving towards a place that we we have, uh like Tara Brock talks about false refuges, that we're moving towards a false refuge, a false belief that this will make us feel stable, better, whatever, right? Mm-hmm. I don't know, did I answer answer your question? You did. Okay.

Netanya 39:39

You did. And I'm gonna use my own example personally because it helps me demonstrate something from something I've walked through, which was the point at which you asked me the question, I was we were talking about relationships, and I kept choosing men who were emotionally unavailable. And that was what you asked me. It's like, what are you getting out of this? Because this keeps happening to you. It's a it's a pattern now, it's repeated multiple times, right? And so what are you getting out of it? And I just remember sitting there and thinking, damn it, because you're right. And what I'm getting is I don't have to take a risk. I don't have to, I don't have to step out of an unknown. I don't have to really be in something with someone. I get to stay safe. I don't have to fully engage. I get to be right because um that person's not emotionally available, which means I have the upper hand in my own head. So he's always wrong. Um and I win really. What was the end of it? I remember saying I win and I was like, oh, that hurt that I said that because I felt all of those childhood wounds coming up and talking to me when I was answering the question. But it was such a useful question. And I've used it on other occasions with myself personally, but also with just in conversations with friends. If someone's stuck in something, and especially if they're complaining about something that happens excessively or multiple times over and over again, they keep finding themselves in the same place. I will ask that question. And it's just enlightening to watch.

Angela 41:07

And if you want to even take that a step further, which is is almost a little eerie, is that the founder of somatic experiencing, Peter Levine, who has studied nervous systems for half of a century. I mean, this man is brilliant, he's in his 80s, and he has found that not only do we repeat those patterns psychologically, but actually if we don't resolve our trauma, we can actually repeat physical patterns. People may get injured the same place or on the same side of their body over and over again until they resolve their trauma. So this is something that's much bigger and deeper, you know, than we even really can can comprehend like an intellectual conversation.

Netanya 41:55

I I think, yeah, my brain went off the rail there just for a minute. How does that even make sense?

Angela 42:02

Yeah. Yeah, there are actually scientific explanations for that. And I could spend another 45, 45 minutes talking to you about that. But yes, we have our nervous systems and our bodies go to these habits and patterns of how we show up, whether it's emotionally, intellectually, or even physically, or how we move, that can perpetuate the same injury emotionally or physically over and over again.

Netanya 42:30

So how do you break the pattern? I realize that that's not a small question.

Angela 42:38

You come see me. No. Um no, but on a serious note, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of amazing therapeutic approaches now, right? That aren't just talk therapy. And you you know my style. I don't do as lot as much talk therapy. I really do want to work with people's nervous systems. There's a lot of providers out there now who are doing amazing and powerful work

The Role of Psychedelics in Healing

Angela 43:03

around changing these deep, deep-seated psychological and and and physical neurological patterns. So, you know, somatic uh experiencing therapy, EMDR, and even, you know, somatic dance and a lot of the newer stuff, not new, but within the last 10, 15 years. And then, of course, psychedelics has entered the field. And that is huge in rewiring the brain and helping to kind of pull out of these patterns that we that we hold on to so dearly and and tightly because they feel like survival.

Netanya 43:38

Can you talk about psychedelics for a minute? I can. I would love to just hear your hear your scope on all things psychedelic. I know you have experience just in that realm.

Angela 43:48

Yeah, so it's it's actually kind of sweet. Um, we have someone in our community who did a study on our clinic. We we offer ketamine assisted psychotherapy in our clinic. And I actually just listened. She wrote a book and the book is out on Spotify and I think it's going to be in print soon. But um I was just listening to the chapter on on the study she did with us and and really being able to listen to people her, you know, her her experience of interviewing people who have done ketamine assisted psychotherapy in our clinic was very profound and and um the very I don't know it was very rewarding and very sweet. So we we really believe that doing psychedelics is an opportunity to to rewire the brain. And at this point in time, we are only offering ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. And and the state of Colorado, I'm not sure where most of your listeners are or all across the country or maybe even the globe, but the state of Colorado is the second state to have legalized psilocybin. And so people can go and seek out psilocybin journeys in our state. It's pretty hard to come into a healing center. There's a lot of red tape and bureaucracy around it right now, but there's a lot of providers who are doing the good work and actually providing that type of service. We are not doing that. So we really just do ketamine. But the way that I describe psychedelics is that if we have an old pattern in our brain that we're really struggling with changing, that being able to go into an altered state of consciousness and having certain parts of our brain shut down, like the judging parts of our brain or the uh over-analytical parts of our brain shutting down, it allows the ketamine to essentially carve a new path. And it's like a jungle. Think about a jungle with a whole bunch of vines, you know, that the ketamine is has the little or the big, you know, machete and it's and it's cutting the vines and making a new path. Now, if you leave your ketamine session and you don't think about any of that work ever again, and you don't ever go on that jungle path again, what's gonna happen? Right? The path is gonna just regrow because it has all these old pathways that it's been using for, you know, in my case, 40 plus years. And so we the ketamine and and psilocybin and and ayahuasca and many of these other medicines, they are carving the wade, but it's our job to um continue clearing that pathway, making it more set as an actual grooved pathway, a neuroplastic change in the brain. And so it ketamine is hard work because it may, it may offer us new perspectives, but all the work and the integration that it takes afterwards to actually be utilizing that new pathway, it's a lot of work.

Netanya 46:59

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, you know, I'm gonna ask about this because I have a background in addiction. How does that is that different at all if you are a person in recovery and trying to utilize a therapy like that? Is that recommended, not recommended? Does that matter at all?

Angela 47:17

So studies do show that psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is helpful with addiction. And actually, there's a lot of people out there who will tell you if depending on the type of of substance that you have addiction that you that you're addicted to or or have had issues with in the past, then there's certain types of psychedelics that would be better. So, for example, like ibogaine is a very intense psychedelic, and that is the essentially the gold standard for people who have heroin and opiate addictions. Ketamine has been proven to help with addictive um cravings and and kind of the the addictive tendencies. What I would say is that in our clinic, we have had a fair amount of people who have come to try to address mostly their relationship with alcohol. And I would say that we've been mostly successful. We have, I've seen it kind of go both ways. I've seen, I've seen it where people have had a few ketamine sessions and they don't want to touch alcohol and they don't, and they they are able to do their work, do integration, get help, and get sober. And I've also seen people where there are other traumas that are just still keeping them in that active state. I've I would say at the very worst, in regards to like outcomes with addiction, what I have seen is just decreased use, but not being able to get off the substance without a lot more support. So that's the worst. We in our clinic, we've been doing ketamine for over almost three years now, and hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of sessions. We have not seen any clients increase their use in their substance of choice post-ketamine. So I don't think that that's as much of an issue as it is how effective is it, right, with their sessions and how much are they addressing some of these other other underlying issues?

Netanya 49:24

Is it like you said, it's not you don't just do the ketamine therapy by itself. You have other things. Like, do people do you do that in conjunction with things like somatic experiencing or EMDR or talk therapy? Is there like, is it sort of a combo where you're doing more than one thing, or is it like ketamine has its own after things that you go through?

Angela 49:47

Think about is ketamine is just another tool in the toolbox in a therap in the therapist kind of belt, right? So um, like I have a client right now who is interested in ketamine, and we just do an evaluation around an assessment on what what maybe do we need to do prior to you doing ketamine, what would be your goals, and then you know, and that's where somatic experiencing nervous system regulation work may come up. And then afterwards, integration is is really non-negotiable for us at our clinic. And integration basically just means can you integrate the experience that you had and can you break it down into small bite-sized pieces so that you can continue to work on it long after you leave that ketamine session?

Netanya 50:34

That's fascinating and super helpful. I think in my brain, as a person who is in recovery, like I always just in the past have assumed I can't do that because I had an addiction over here, you know? But I generally also try to be a human of curiosity. And that's why I'm asking is for people out there who may be curious and also in the realm to get a better scope of what that might look like if they were interested in going in that direction.

Angela 50:59

Yeah, I think they just need to go with a very, very ethics-driven clinic where integration is very important because there's a lot of clinics out there that are happy to give someone an IV and leave them alone for 45 minutes and not really ask about integration or follow-up. And it's unfortunate and and I I don't feel very proud of you know being in the field where that happens, but it does. And so people need to be very careful. And I will tell you that I had a client who knew that ketamine would probably just be a little bit too, I don't know, gentle for her. And so she did a psilocybin session where it kicked her ass, you know. So I think that uh people need to be pretty self-aware of, you know, um, these sessions aren't for recreational use and feeling amazing and floating around and and have and and getting all blissed out and and leaving your life. It's about actually diving into your life and diving into your experience of the mind and your heart and your soul. And so the people are sitting in session with a mask on. They're they're having a date with themselves, you know. So oftentimes if there's addiction involved, they're having the opportunity to sit down and and be with that person that's inside there and maybe all these other parts of themselves that haven't been able to have a voice because of the addiction, right? That they get to maybe touch into a little bit. So again, it's you know there's a lot of medicines out there, and not every medicine is the right one for you know every person. And so it does take a professional to kind of walk you through all that.

Netanya 52:39

And I have another question regarding recovery, because we're going down the recovery hole apparently. And you wrote a book on mindfulness and recovery. And I have not read it, but I have seen other people that have and gone through the practice of it. Can

Mindfulness in Recovery

Netanya 52:54

you tell me about that a little bit and what the lens of recovery looks like through that scope of mindfulness?

Angela 52:59

Yes, that's um very sweet of you to mention. I think the book was not, I wasn't going out and like, I want to publish a book. No. I was consulting for a treatment center and doing a lot of work with them and education, staff consulting, staff support. And then I was also teaching the participants about the neuroscience around using mindfulness and recovery. And so I started just writing down um worksheets for for the group and and then ended up coming up with a whole 12-week curriculum. And in order for my work to be protected, I ended up publishing it so that it could stay mine and so that it could also have a place for for people to be able to reference it and use it. So it is a workbook. It's based off of very gently based off of the 12 steps, but it really goes more into the neuroscience around how does how does mindfulness and meditation and contemplative practices address recovery that we don't have, you know, yes, we can bring in the 12 steps, but there's other ways for us to to be working with the addicted mind and and working from a place of of more mindfulness. And the book really walks walks you through not only the neuroscience behind what medit what meditation can do, for example, in in your brain, but also contemplative practices like self-compassion, forgiveness work, and and similar uh concepts.

Netanya 54:37

That's awesome. Thank you. Um I have is there anything else that you want to talk about or touch on that I didn't know to ask you in what we're talking about in the realm of all of this?

Angela 54:48

Yeah. Um, you know, I guess I just had I know that we kind of started off the conversation with compassion fatigue, what I call empathy fatigue. And I guess um I'd like to speak to that for just a minute, maybe if we came full circle, if we were to wrap this up with a little bow. Um you know, everything that we're talking about, right, of brain changes and neuroplasticity and staying curious and continuing to kind of look at practices that feel good, whether it's through contemplative psychology or doing our own nervous system work or getting maybe some systematic experiencing work done, all of those practices have been, I would say, uh absolutely game changers for me in regards to my ability to not have empathy fatigue. And I would say that it has been a journey and a search for me to continue to show up as a practitioner for for people who are are in a state of suffering, it's a journey. And and doing nervous system work and doing self-compassion work and and learning about contemplative psychology and learning about psychedelics and doing psychedelics. I have done all of those psychedelics except ibogaine. I've not done ibogaine, I'm not interested in ibogaine. Um, but but doing ayahuasca psilocybin academy journeys in really amazing therapeutic environments has helped me to to really intimately know myself and to really feel like I could show up with this very pretty darn stable nervous system, which allows me to stay in my seat as a practitioner and as healer. And and that that that that is kind of a always always happening, always active journey, you know. And that that part of my expectation as a healer is that I am going to experience empathy fatigue, and that is my pause button to go back to all those practices that we actually talked about today. And and so if anybody is out there as a healer who has this expectation that they're not ever going to experience empathy fatigue, like that's just not gonna happen. It's about working with it and having the ability to push pause and to go back to any of these practices that we've just spent the last hour talking about. So that was beautifully said.

Netanya 57:23

Um, last question. Yes. What is something that you hope that listeners give themselves permission to do after listening to this episode?

Angela 57:34

Honestly, it's probably the advice that I wish someone gave me a few years ago when I ha was experiencing some pretty big burnout, was for someone to sit me down and say, listen, this doesn't mean that the career is wrong, and it doesn't mean that you're not in the in the right career, and it doesn't mean that you're not doing it correctly. It just means that this is part of it. You know, um, when I was on retreat, I uh a couple years ago, I had the owner of the retreat center come up to me and he said, You healers are so funny. You think that you get to live the same life as everyone else, and you feel and you think that you don't have to do extra work around, you know, taking care of these energetic and spiritual boundaries, but you do, and that's what you signed up for. And so just accept that. And I kind of sat there and was like, yeah, actually, right? I mean, right? So I think I I just wish someone had told me that, even maybe 10 years ago, you know, like just because you maybe feel tired and you feel super burned out doesn't mean that you're in the wrong profession, and it doesn't mean that you have to quit. It just means that maybe you stop, you pause, you you do some practices, and you and you, and you learn the very gentle finessing of moving into compassion.

Netanya 59:00

Thank you. Thank you for being here. Oh, thank you for having me. This is so great to connect with you. So thank you. And it was just good to spend time with you and see your face and hear your voice. Yeah. And so much wisdom. That was great. Just all the different aspects of conversation, and I have a lot of gratitude for you spending time with me on a on a weeknight to take time out of your life and come share that with people that I hope will get a lot out of it.

Angela 59:26

Yeah, well, it was an honor, and it was so lovely to see you as well. And um, thank you for letting me be part of this journey for you. I mean, this is amazing. Yeah, so good work.

Netanya 59:39

Thank you so much for being here. It means more than you know. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or leave a quick rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps more people find the show. If you want more of me, head on over to NataniAllison.com and enter your name and email for behind the scenes updates in between shows. New episodes air every Tuesday. We'll see you next week.