I’m joined today by Kristie of Sweary Therapy. I first heard of Sweary Therapy and Kristie vis The Unusual Buddha podcast. A friend and fellow firefighter Jim Martin runs that page and podcast, y’all go check him out. ….@theunusualbuddha on Instagram. You can also find Kristie on Instagram, she’s @swearytherapy with the best tagline ever…Its Just Fucking Therapy Y’all.
Stack: Welcome to another bonus episode of the things we all carry I’m joined today by Kristie of sweary therapy. I first heard a swear therapy and Kristie via the unusual Buddha podcast. . A friend and fellow firefighter, Jim Martin runs that page and podcast. y’all go check him out. He’s @theunusualbuddha on Instagram.
You can also find Kristie on Instagram. She’s @swearytherapy with the best tagline ever, “It’s Just Fucking Therapy y’all” a quick study of sweary therapy and Kristie’s approach was all I needed to know. I wanted her as a guest on the show. She brings an irreverence to what many, see, as a staid and sedate practice.
As someone who tends to buck tradition and normalcy, I can appreciate and celebrate her style. . Today is the first of what I hope will be many conversations with Kristie. As this show evolves. A quick reminder to please help us build a community which not only recognizes, but supports each other through the struggles and recovery.
Reach out through instagram @thethingsweallcarry or email mystory@thethingsweallcarry.com to offer support and share your story. Please remember to leave a review on iTunes and give a shout out to any first responder, you know, love or care about. Y’all enjoy the show.
And so
sweary: will be in the vein
Stack: of that as well.
sweary: Yeah, I like
Stack: that. All right. So this morning we’re sitting
sweary: down with Kristie out
Stack: of sweary
sweary: therapy. She’s from Florida. And I’m going to let her give her background in the therapy world and then we’ll move on from there. Good morning, Kristie. How are you? Hey, they’re doing pretty good. Thanks for the. Quick little intro. Appreciate
Stack: it. It was definitely quick.
sweary: So I apologize. Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s good. It’s weird. You’d asked me previously when how long I’ve been doing therapy. And as therapists, we have
Stack: to go to school, we
sweary: see clients at that time, and then we get registered with the state. And different states call them different things. Some places call them associates. We’re insurance here, registered interns, and we have to collect a bunch of hours after we graduate, but before we’re licensed and I started that process in 2019, and then I actually got my license at the beginning of this year, 2022, January 5th.
I started out as licensed mental health. Counselor. So I’ve been doing this for a few years now and sweary therapy has been in business on since this year, once I got licensed, that was the. The switch I made. To become the swearing therapist and really embraced my
Stack: So I really
sweary: am.
Stack: So let’s talk about
sweary: square therapy. Why do you call it
Stack: that? What’s the purpose behind
sweary: It came out of a couple of different things actually.
Stack: And it’s
sweary: working as a student and then as a registered intern, under other people and just being like now,
Stack: Told. You can’t dress that way or you have to make sure you talk to the patients
sweary: this way or this, that, and the other. And that’s just how I am. I’m not very sweary person. And I was actually talking to one of my very good friends, one of my roommates. And he made the joke. You’re just the sweary therapist, and I was like, I don’t want to be this very therapist. And then I started asking my clients, like what makes you comfortable with me? What made you pick me over another person? And at the end of the day, a lot of them like you swore during the intake and I’m like, great. So I just drop a few F-bombs and that’s what people want. Like what the fuck?
And they were like, no, it’s, it had more to do with, by you being authentic and swearing and talking like I do it. Let me know that I can talk the way I want you. I don’t need to censor how I feel and what I really want to say. And so authenticity is is really, really important to me. And once I really started embracing who I was and not censoring that for anybody, my clients started opening up so much more. And they were able to be really who they were. Because I’m sure you’ve been in a therapy room. With somebody that you’re like, if I say how bad this really is by saying, let’s really fuck it sucks. They’re going to freak out.
Stack: Or
sweary: they’re going to not like that language or whatever. That was exactly an experience of mine is it’s that comfort in that? Like I said that authenticity without it, you just don’t get that connection. And is.
Stack: As a firefighter or
sweary: in general as first responders, we definitely. W
Stack: definitely at
sweary: home
Stack: with swearing. That’s exactly. And
sweary: beyond fluent
Stack: in
sweary: it. Yeah. My veteran folks that I know the first responder folks, I know anybody law enforcement and then, I’m none of those things that I’m a big sweary person. So some of us are just like that. So I really wanted to make a space where people would feel safe to be who they are. And being the swearing therapist felt like a really fun way for me to do that. And it’s funny. I had a lot of pushback from certain therapists. It was unethical.
Stack: For me to
sweary: be the sweary therapist and have the tagline, it’s just fucking therapy. But that tagline came out of a conversation about it. It’s just therapy. And more and more people are starting to embrace that, but it’s not
Stack: like we’re
sweary: committing you. We’re not broadcasting it anywhere. We’re not
Stack: doing
sweary: rocket science or brain surgery. It’s just there. We’re just talking.
Stack: And that’s funny
sweary: because the other day I was having a discussion with somebody. I had to do a class after work one morning and I
Stack: had to run
sweary: because I had an appointment at noon. I had a therapy appointment
Stack: at noon, and I said to him, I said, I got to go. I
sweary: got
Stack: therapy. And he looked at me and he was like, what the fuck’s wrong with you? I don’t know. What do you mean.
I
said, there’s plenty wrong with me, but there’s nothing specific. It’s just.
sweary: It’s something that I’m doing now. It’s just, it
Stack: helps. And And so I know that it is it’s just fucking therapy
sweary: going. And do it.
Stack: We
sweary: don’t want to be so afraid of it. And and I get where that stigma comes from, there’s years and years of stigma there. And
Stack: there’s,
sweary: think that’s like I’m watching TV right now, watching law and order back in the day or whatever other, I don’t watch a lot of TV, so I’m pretty bad at this game, but I
Stack: can tell you that I’m one of the few that can be proud to
sweary: say I’ve never seen an episode of law and order, so I’m good.
Stack: Oh,
sweary: my God, my mom would have that shit on. I don’t know what channel and it would just play all day.
Stack: So that’s what we would
sweary: watch. A lot of that she watches all those shows, but anyway Half the time on these TV shows, whether it’s that kind of show or any other show. Who’s going to see the. The shrink, who’s going to see the therapist, right? These
Stack: people that are really fucked up or went through something really
sweary: bad until they’re portrayed is like, Broken somehow. Yeah. When therapies should be something that we’re all doing. Like when I was in school.
Stack: They drilled it
sweary: into her head. Every good therapist has a great therapist of their own. Everybody’s got stuff. We’ve all got stuff. Everybody’s been through shock.
Stack: Yeah. And it’s
sweary: easy for me to sit here today and go, Hey, just go. It’s fucking therapy. It’s
Stack: it’s not a big deal,
sweary: but it took me years. It’s fighting it and fighting that, that stupid stigma that we all talk about.
Stack: Especially in the fire service.
sweary: There’s that stigma of weakness. When you say, Hey, I need some help. And let’s be honest. We all fucking need
Stack: help.
sweary: If you don’t have something to talk about with a therapist you’re lying to yourself. That’s just all the rest of it. That’s how I think.
Stack: So what brought
sweary: you into the therapy world? A number of different things, I always have been interested in psychology, behavioral sciences and things like that. And when I was an undergrad Putting aside what I want to be when I grew up. And I took a bunch of different classes and ended up with a liberal studies degree. And one of my areas of study was behavioral sciences. So I took just a boatload, a different psychology and sociology classes. They really loved it and it was fun. And I just left it at that and I went and became a phlebotomist after that. And that was working, drawing blood.
Stack: And
sweary: I ended up getting a job as a teacher teaching full autonomy. And at the college, they were really pushing everybody to get their master’s degrees and. I wasn’t yet ready to make the transition. So I just went for Jay. I did a general psychology master’s degree, no clinical aspect of it at all, but during that time, My sister have been struggling with drug use. And she went to rehab for the first time. About a year before I started the program. And, or no, the year I started the program, she went to rehab for the first time. And I went and visited her every single weekend for three months. And those visits, we did the family therapy and we did the group therapy and we did all the things. So I did all the therapy things. And I had
Stack: a couple
sweary: of therapists. There’ll be like, you’re, you really seem to get this stuff. Your thought about. Your thought about this. And I was just like, now y’all are crazy. But that was really my first experience working within that space, for myself, for my sister. And she struggled with addiction for. Honestly, all the way up until the end of her life. And so that was probably 12 years she was in and out of different rehabs, sober for periods of times, really fucked up for other times.
Stack: And.
sweary: The more, she struggled with it.
Stack: The more
sweary: I thought about going back to school again, after I finished my first master’s degree. And I thought I wanted to work with folks that were dealing with addiction, but then I realized that if I did go into therapy, I actually didn’t want to specialize in that because it was just too close to home,
Stack: and
sweary: then my son was born and he has autism. And he’s
Stack: Low needs.
sweary: He doesn’t need a lot of support or whatever. And that got me thinking another way of okay, this world isn’t really designed for people that don’t, if you’re not around hold around peg to fit in that round hole, it’s hard to get by. Not started making me think too. And then it was really just a lot of little things with like school and stuff. While I was teaching.
Stack: All
sweary: the different problems my students would have and all the different things, watching them grow as humans, not just like I can draw blood now, but like they had the confidence now to go do other things. Oh, I guess I can be more than a phlebotomist. I can go be a nurse. I can go be a doctor. And all my students started going to these other programs because I started focusing on more than just teaching them via phlebotomist, but to teach them. Be more confident how to communicate. All of these things. And so it’s like a combination of like my sister’s issues, my son’s issues. And I’m watching my students really grow. They was like, you know what, I’m going to try that. I’m going to try my hand at this. I probably had enough confidence in myself to. And I went back to school for being a counselor. That was all well and good. And I was just going to take my time and do that slowly and do the counseling on the side. As I continue to teach.
Stack: And then
sweary: 2020 happens.
Stack: I
sweary: was in 2020 sock for everybody. I know. A little bit. Yeah. The suck started a little bit early for my family. That was the year my sister was murdered. In February is when we found out she was missing for a few days. And then we found out that she had been murdered by this gal, had nothing to do with her drug use either. It’s funny, you prepare yourself to lose somebody to drug use and then something totally different happens. You’re like, what the fuck?
I wasn’t ready for any of this. And so she was murdered in the end of
Stack: February. And I believe
sweary: our account went on lockdown.
Stack: The day
sweary: of her funeral in March. And it took a while for us to have her funeral because her body was in another state and we had to get it all down here and it was just a whole. So the whole thing, there’s a whole fucking thing. And I was already out. Obviously I took out. I took off because of my sister. And then COVID made everybody go home and my program got canceled. And so I had all this time at home.
Stack: And,
sweary: we get more into all the different fields that I went through and all the shit that was like. But honestly, like it was a few months later, I was like, why am I waiting? The fuck am I waiting for. Like I have no guarantee of tomorrow. At all.
Stack: Yeah. None of us do. Exactly.
sweary: And I knew that I knew that everybody knows
Stack: that. But I’d always
sweary: take something like this be like the wham in your face. You’re like, no, fuck. All right. And so that’s what really pushed me to hurry up, get my license hours hired, to get my license and really start pushing. To be calm a therapist full-time. And while I didn’t open the practice of swear therapy until this year, I started practicing as a therapist.
Stack: That moment.
sweary: Like when I finally went back to work, I started seeing clients again. She does around June of 2020. I think I was ready to start seeing people again. And I started slow and I built it up slowly and then word of mouth. It just took off. And yeah, it was after my sister’s death. And I was just like, I don’t know if I can time to wait around and do things anymore. This is what I really want. This is what I’m really good at. I was fucking doing it. And that’s how it was, where therapy came to be. And that’s like the long and the short of it
Stack: Where do you practice?
sweary: Do you do online or do you
Stack: in person and.
sweary: Is it. It’s
Stack: you’re in Florida. So
sweary: is it only in
Stack: Florida that you’re
sweary: working with people?
Stack: Yeah. only where your license is? Yes. Yes.
sweary: Yeah, we can only practice where we’re licensed to. Right now. I’m only licensed in Florida though. I am looking to expand that I do all telehealth obviously, and I was in training. My school was actually online. So I actually learned how to do therapy online. We did video software and all this other stuff. So I was actually really always been really comfortable in the online space. And then when I became a registered intern, I had to go to in-person and I hated that. And then I did it. It was fine. And then I actually had the luxury of getting a spot at this equine therapy place where they, it’s not the kind where you ride horses, but where you interact with horses. And we would use that as like a metaphor for,
Stack: I
sweary: see you’re doing the same thing over and over the hoarseness not working for you. How is that? Like when you’re trying to work things out with your wife? Or your boss or, I see you’re yelling at the horse and they’re really shying away from you. Can you think of a time when that’s, When does that happen at home? That kind of thing. So you use it more as like a metaphor.
Stack: Four. How
sweary: they solve problems and approach things and helping them become more aware The connect between your body language and
Stack: your.
sweary: Your intentions might be to be nice, but your body language is threatening. Or vice versa. You might be acting very assertive, but your body language is very, in the horse world. Significance right.
And so that was really awesome. So I really discovered that I actually really do working with people, but I only want to work with you in person if we’re outside.
Stack: If
sweary: we’re outside, if we’re in nature. But otherwise, yeah, I do it all online and I’m just super comfortable in that space. So I do walk in the park with a few of my clients, everybody else I see across the state. Via the internet and I’m looking forward to there’s something called the counseling compact. That’s been signed now by I think
Stack: 15 states.
sweary: Once it was signed by 10 states, it went into it became law and the states that had passed it. And what that’s going to do is it’s going to create license portability
Stack: for
sweary: licensed mental health counselors. And they’re actually in the process of getting that set up and like the first like commission on it will be meeting. I think October of this year, and then sometime, hopefully in 2023, probably towards the end. They’ll have a system whereby members states, like if I wanted to get licensed in your state and your state to member state, I could basically just sign up through them, but but but like, Hey, I have this license from Florida. I’d like to practice in Virginia. Here’s my money. Give me practice
Stack: privileges. That’s how that’ll work.
sweary: So it’s just a form of
Stack: reciprocity.
sweary: Yeah. Yeah. That’d be some version of that. Yeah. Which we don’t have right now at all. I guess before we get into the meat
Stack: and potatoes of this conversation, We should probably preface the fact
sweary: that you
Stack: are in Florida and that
sweary: this isn’t
Stack: any kind of paid advice. You’re not telling people what to do this. Just to
sweary: talk about some of the topics that have come up.
Stack: In
sweary: and around
Stack: the episodes
sweary: I’ve put out already.
Stack: Yeah. Yeah, you. You and I even, and
sweary: I had a
Stack: phone conversation a couple of weeks ago and
sweary: we just, we said, all right, these are some of the things we’re seeing. Let’s just talk about
Stack: them. We’re not offering
sweary: advice specifically
Stack: to people.
So along those lines, I think one of the big
sweary: ones is we talked about this. The idea of
Stack: big T
sweary: trauma versus little T trauma.
And
Stack: I don’t know where you’d like to start with that, but I thought our talk was
sweary: fascinating. So I’ll let go with that and then I’ll jump in when I can.
Stack: Sure.
sweary: It’s that phrase, trauma. little t trauma on my it’s I don’t love it, but it is a convenient way for people to understand the idea of trauma. I think most people think of.
Stack: What we
sweary: might call big T trauma, those big, horrible events that happen in your life. You know what I mean?
Stack: You
sweary: got in a car accident, you’re assaulted. Somebody died. You witnessed something terrible. One time, big thing. And that is a completely valid kind of trauma. It’s not the only kind of trauma we go through. We have little T trauma, which is all of those.
Stack: We’re going
sweary: to say smaller things,
Stack: but they’re no less significant.
sweary: But they don’t have that big one-time thing. It’s like a lot of repeated events. That occurred that really at the end of the day, make you feel unsafe. Now, sometimes we’re not able to connect with our feelings enough to know that’s what we’re feeling is
Stack: unsafe, but
sweary: at the end of the day, If your system, if your nervous system feels unsafe and that happens repeatedly over and over and over, that’s a trauma. And it
Stack: fucks up your
sweary: nervous system. And not to an error. It’s not irreversible, but.
Stack: It creates
sweary: patterns. That you end up living out and
Stack: recreating.
sweary: Because you’re not really conscious of what’s happening or you don’t know how to get to the next, Stage of healing. If that
Stack: makes sense.
sweary: When you
Stack: say it creates patterns,
sweary: what do you mean by
Stack: patterns?
sweary: I like to think of our body as a
Stack: computer
sweary: and it wants to run as efficiently as possible. And so create shortcuts. Like macros. It was a computer to run a macro
Stack: every single time.
sweary: And so if you grow up in a household where your parents are drunk all the time and they yell at you and you have to learn to manage their emotions so that your life doesn’t suck.
Stack: You
sweary: start thinking about things in a certain way so that you can keep yourself safe as a little kid,
Stack: right?
sweary: And then those pat those become like habits. You always check this thing, you always do this thing. You’re
Stack: always making this
sweary: assumption because in your life, at that time, that’s the reality. But that pattern gets baked into your system.
Stack: And
sweary: you’re like, I can’t wait to leave home. You turn 18, you move out. But your S your body is still running that old program that you wrote when you were a kid.
Stack: So I guess in
sweary: first responder world, And I can only speak for a firefighter because I’ve never been anything.
Stack: Outside of that in
sweary: the first responder world. To me, it’s the
Stack: So
sweary: we sit with our back to a wall so we can see exits and we can see people. Yep. And it’s that on edge waiting for, I know whenever I go into a place I make sure I know where all the exits are and I scoped that out first. It’s a second nature to do it now. And
Stack: so I guess that. might, That might. be What we’re talking about in the first responder world.
sweary: Yeah. And I actually I
was.
you know, I just went through some training on trauma treatment, EMDR treatment which, we’ll talk about, I know in a little bit, and one of the folks mentioned that there’s some interesting research to show some are first responders. Don’t end up with, PTSD from the job and some do, and they’re what’s up with that. And it may be that for those of you coming into the field with your own past little T trauma, it might have set you up to be more. I don’t want to say susceptible, but I don’t have another word right now. Primed your body to be more ready to.
Respond in that way to trauma, but also what you’re saying makes a lot of sense. If you’re in a world where, you know, knowing where your exits are repeatedly over and over is important. Why wouldn’t that become the habit and the rest of your life? Yeah, actually, I like what you were just talking about with the
Stack: the coming
sweary: into the, to the fire service at different stages, because I’ve talked to, I’ve talked to numerous people that came in. Started with the
Stack: Explorer program
sweary: at 14 to 16 years old. And then I’ve also
Stack: talked to my own experiences.
sweary: I came in with life experience behind me. I came in. As an older recruit into an academy.
Stack: And I had
sweary: a discussion yesterday with a friend about
Stack: just that. But
sweary: I wonder if the people coming in with some life experience already, or actually
Stack: better equipped
sweary: to handle with some of the traumas because
Stack: they’ve built
sweary: up a system throughout their life already.
Stack: I
sweary: guess it would depend on where they were in their trauma handling. If it’s not something that they’ve ever addressed at all. And their nervous system is stuck in this pattern of being highly aroused and scared and not feeling safe. And then you come into. At job where you’re highly aroused and you’re not really safe all the time or you’re facing things that are, the result of other people not being safe.
That might not be the best combination if you haven’t done any work for that. You know what I mean? Which yeah. Which is
Stack: a piece
sweary: that we didn’t discuss.
Stack: At least in my discussion yesterday. So that, that definitely makes sense. Yeah.
sweary: So it’s like my understanding of trauma and there’s different theories explore what it is and how it works and all that other stuff, but the version and I subscribed to. Has to do with how your nervous system is connected to everything and how memory
Stack: is
sweary: more than just in your mind, your body. There’s a whole book on this called the body, keeps the score. Your body.
Stack: Got it on the iPad right now.
sweary: Yeah it’s a great book. It’s a little heavy on the science, which I’m a big geek. So I love that. But there’s so much out there to support this idea that, It sucks that we separate mental health from physical health because your brain is just as it’s the same, right? It’s your body is your body. There’s no separation between what you think and what you feel. And, how you go about in the world. Like it’s all connected. And
Stack: we like to think
sweary: that it’s not. But it
Stack: is. Oh, it’s definitely
sweary: connected because I know that when things aren’t going
Stack: right. Emotionally
sweary: things aren’t going to go right.
Stack: Physically. And I mean that
sweary: in the sense
Stack: of, okay.
sweary: I’m not feeling it in the head today. I’m not going to, I know my workout is going to knock, going to be great. It’s just not going to be there.
Stack: Exactly. Unless there’s a lot of anger
sweary: because I’ve been using a
Stack: tagline. Anger is a hell of a
sweary: pre-workout and.
Stack: So
sweary: that’s one, addendum to it.
Stack: Yeah.
sweary: I like to think of it. Like when you’re
Stack: little.
sweary: And you go through your life and you have your experiences when you’re young. That sort of when you’re writing if you want to go geeky with the computer analogy, it’s computers run off
Stack: of like the motherboard.
sweary: The motherboard has bios. Like the basic, this is what we need to run. And I like to think of it. Like when you’re a kid you’re writing the code for how your system is going to run. When you get to be
Stack: a grownup.
sweary: Problem is if you’ve ever talked to a kid here, you’re talking to an eight year old and ask them to tell you, I don’t know where rain comes from.
Yeah, that would be an interesting
Stack: conversation.
sweary: So this same brain. That’s going to give you this crazy story that makes no sense about where rain comes from is also the same brain. That’s making sense of their experiences as a kid of all the things that are happening to them. So this is a lot of the little T trauma where we don’t really realize that it’s happening. And so
Stack: what’s really
sweary: interesting too, is that little kids can’t take like other people’s perspectives. You have this whole theory of mine that doesn’t really come online till you’re a little older. So if I’m holding a box, for instance, on each, four faces of the box, Have a different picture
Stack: on it.
sweary: When it has a heart, one has a star. One is a circle when I was a square. And I put the box and I sat across from a kid and the kid’s looking at a heart and I’m looking at a square and I asked this kid, which. What am I looking at? They’re probably going to tell me what they’re looking at. If they’re little
Stack: enough. They
sweary: have, they don’t have the ability to take my perspective yet the brain hasn’t evolved into that level yet.
Stack: And
sweary: so this is really important though, because let’s say mommy regularly, works three jobs has two other kids, husbands a shit. And the kiddo is having a real bad day and screaming and yelling because they hurt themselves. And mommy’s I just can’t fucking take this right now.
Please go in your room. I’ll come in a little while. This kid is unable to know that mom’s got all the shit going on, like 20 five-year-old them configured. They can know, oh, mom was really busy. The five-year-old them. It doesn’t have that perspective. All they know is they were told to go away. Why was I told to go away? Mommy doesn’t love me. I’m not important. My feelings don’t matter. There’s a lot of different meaning that can be made out of that. And if you think of that same five-year-old to eight year old brain, that’s going to tell you the crazy story about how rain has made, what are they going to make up about? Why mommy sent me
Stack: away.
sweary: And now that’s the kind of benign example, but what
if
it was more than that? What if mommy was drunk all the time and literally unavailable all the time? What if daddy hits somebody? What if other things happened? And sometimes it can just
Stack: be
sweary: there’s a lot of screaming and yelling in the house and, I grew up like that and. I was never in any physical danger, but five-year-old me didn’t know that when my dad screamed out loud, I wasn’t going to be hurt. That’s terrifying. Go. The five-year-old.
Stack: Yeah. And
sweary: you can. I guess it’s also goes back to watching those communication patterns. If they’re, if the communication
Stack: pattern isn’t set properly.
sweary: In the house, as That five-year-old is learning.
Stack: Is learning to
sweary: communicate the same way as mom and dad or whoever’s in the house communicates in. And that follows them through life as well.
It does. And it’s I’m using these like smaller examples, but that’s what, now you have this pattern. You have this pattern of behavior that you have to engage in order to, get
Stack: sick, get your needs met.
sweary: So you can try to feel safe.
And sometimes
Stack: those just ways that we manage work
sweary: when we’re young and then when we become adults,
Stack: They’re
sweary: no longer adaptive. They no longer really get us the. The result we’re looking for. And they end up bleeding to other maladaptive behaviors.
Everyone. It is probably familiar with that. You start using substances or you start, engaging in other risky behavior, you’re seeking something most of
Stack: the time. What are you seeking? Oh, w we as firefighters,
sweary: we don’t do any of that. Dress me. No.
Stack: You guys are like
sweary: straighten air, right?
Stack: Yeah. So when it comes to big T little T trauma, even though
sweary: you might not like
Stack: those, the terms there. Is there.
sweary: Is there a
Stack: difference in how you
sweary: would treat those as a therapist? Not really. I guess it depends on what kind of trauma treatment you engage in as a therapist. So for me, I tend to assume that most clients have some kind of trauma in their history. And tat like a trauma informed lens is this sort of acknowledged that most people are behaving the way that they are. For a reason that it makes a lot of sense, right? I don’t see someone who has a diagnosis of depression or anxiety, or, obviously PTSD. As somebody that has anything wrong with them, they’re not defective.
Stack: They’re
sweary: responding appropriately to the fucked up shit that they’ve been through in their
Stack: life.
sweary: Yes. There are some people that just randomly have anxiety and they have
Stack: no real good reason for it.
sweary: Sure. Those people exist. But really at the end of the day, when you get down to it, you really get talking to people. It’s very rare that they don’t go something. Somewhere in their history that makes that anxiety makes sense. And I think that’s a big difference, like from the medical model that, therapists used to be trained into. And this is another reason why folks might be afraid of therapy is that there must be something wrong with you. Your brain is
Stack: fucked
sweary: up. Whereas the trauma informed lens says you experienced some things and you are responding in a way that makes total fucking sense. And what we’re going to try to do as a therapist is try to help you understand what it is that you are experiencing now.
Stack: what
sweary: feeling. Is ha yeah. It’s a
Stack: feeling of unsafe,
sweary: right? That’s a good one to go with. I don’t feel safe.
Stack: If you don’t feel safe.
sweary: How do we get to the bottom of that? And so sometimes that involves teaching people, simple things like how to feel
Stack: your feelings. You don’t feel safe. And learning to
sweary: distinguish when you do feel safe.
Stack: And what
sweary: goes along with all of those things. And so there’s different ways to get into it. You can, we tackle core beliefs and getting to the underlying programming, if you will. What are those patterns of beliefs that I’m operating with? The way that I view the world, if I think everybody is a scary, dangerous person, that’s going to influence how I interact with
Stack: people.
sweary: If I think people are safe and trustworthy, I’m going to interact with folks in a much different
Stack: way.
sweary: There’s EMDR, which, uses like you usually hear like the eye movement or bilateral stimulation of some kind that helps the idea behind that is like reprocessing the memories in this in a similar way to the way your brain does it. When you’re sleeping with rapid eye movement, like that’s where the the theory
Stack: is based in, and it’s really
sweary: complicated and way too much for us to get into too much here.
Stack: This one fascinates me. And from a personal standpoint, because I did my first EMDR session this past. Wednesday. Exciting. Yeah, it’s exciting. We can talk about that some other time.
I don’t know how much time you would need to discuss it.
sweary: And maybe if you can give it like that brief synopsis, and maybe we do another show where we
Stack: just talk
sweary: about EMDR.
Stack: But I know. It’s been mentioned by a couple of
sweary: guests and some of the listeners have asked me about it. And
Stack: maybe we get
sweary: into it a little bit today and see where we
Stack: go there.
sweary: Sure. So I just went through training on it and I’m still wrapping my brain around a lot of it. And so the way that I understand it is. This has a lot to do with memory and the way that memory is coded. So we were talking earlier, if you go through an event, if something happens to you, whether it’s a little sheet trauma or big T trauma, doesn’t really matter. Shit happens.
Stack: And you store
sweary: it in your memory, right? Problem is sometimes some of that memory gets stored incorrectly. And so we’ll just use big T trauma. And as an example, like a PTSD type of idea of, because I think this is easier for people to wrap their brains around you go through something really big and you get in a huge car accident. Let’s just go with
Stack: that. The car
sweary: accident and it’s big and it’s scary. And your system doesn’t really, for whatever reason know how to process it. And so when it stores it in memory, it store it’s I like to think of it as like a storage too much. It’s so when you access that memory, instead
Stack: of it being
sweary: like the way you remember going to grandma’s house, when you’re little, and it’s just the sort of fuzzy image in your head, You get everything, you get all the emotions, you get all the body sensations, you get all of it. And that’s your flashback. That’s your nightmare. So that’s your right. The whole body becomes activated. And that’s not how memory is supposed to be a memory is not supposed to be that. Presence, it’s in the past. The past is supposed to be in the past. But it gets all fucked up. And so we access memory and it’s like happening in the present. Our brain cannot distinguish between
Stack: the past
sweary: and the present. And that’s why our whole, you have the shakes and the anxiety and the freaking out and all that good stuff. That makes sense so far.
Stack: It definitely makes sense. Okay. So
sweary: a lot of this theory, so really EMDR came up because the lady that developed it. I forgot her first name. Her last name is Shapiro. She happened to notice a pattern of something that she was doing automatically. And she started doing some research. She noticed that when she would think of this troublesome thought and she was moving her eyes back and forth really
fast, like
from one side of her field of vision, to the other. She noticed that she felt more calm afterwards. And she
Stack: was like, oh, that’s
sweary: interesting. And she started experimenting, and this is is is like, he’s a researcher. She studies, brain science and all this stuff.
Stack: She’s
sweary: geeking out on it and she’s starting oh, that’s a neat little thing. So she starts doing some research and,
Stack: We
sweary: also know. So simultaneously. Research has shown that. REM sleep, rapid eye movement. Sleep. That stage of sleep is super duper important and connected to the way that we consolidate memory.
Stack: If people’s
sweary: REM
Stack: sleep is all jacked up.
sweary: They have trouble with memory. Okay. I don’t know, the cognitive science too deep on that side, but what this lady figured out through her, like happenstance six, experiment that she just came up with, literally walking down the street. And the science behind memory and rapid eye movement during sleep. She put all that together and realize that there’s something and here’s the cool thing about brain sciences. We don’t really know why or exactly what the mechanisms are at work here. And that’s the same thing that you’re taking Prozac or any of those things. We don’t actually know the full mechanism of how or why it works for some people and not for others. So like, All brain science this is what we think this is our best guess
Stack: right now. And so
sweary: the best guess is that when you can stimulate both sides of the brain in the same way that you do, when you’re sleeping with that rapid eye movement. Ours are moving back and forth really fast. Somehow that is connected to the way that your brain is filing all those memories. So when you’re doing EMDR, You have to set up your clients. You’re not going to just come in and let’s do some eye movement and you’re going to be good. There’s a lot of setup. You have to make sure that your clients can put one foot in the present and one foot in the past that we can talk about this stuff, but they can stay present.
And you do that through teaching skills, like grounding. Self-soothing skills breathing. Yeah, we have one that everyone learns called the container.
Stack: They
sweary: gotta be able to self-regulate
Stack: because what you’re going to do is
sweary: you’re going to target very specific memories and you’re going to figure out what are the core beliefs, like? What does that say about you as a human.
Stack: We’ve
sweary: all made meaning out of it. Like I was saying earlier, this happened
Stack: to me because
sweary: I’m a terrible person. This happened to me because I have no control of everything that’s happened to me cause I’m powerless or I don’t deserve to exist or. Whatever there’s a bazillion options. It could be.
Stack: And
sweary: that Combination of negative core belief of what this means to me, plus this, like miss. Or it’s incorrect or faulty storage of this memory together create the problems that, if you’re living with PTSD, then you’re going to want to drink yourself until you’re numb or whatever.
Stack: And
sweary: so by targeting that and activating that bilateral stimulation, what we’re trying to do is to get them the brain re code the memory. Reprocess it and one of the things about memories, every time you access a memory, you fuck with it, and then you restore it. It’s never quite the same memory is not infallible. It does change. With your present, they thought exactly. So you start trying to like,
Stack: literally.
sweary: The reprocessing is the RN EMDR. So
Stack: you’re literally
sweary: reprocessing the memory through this bilateral stimulation, whether that’s through the eye movement or tapping or tones, or there’s a lot of different ways that people do it. And again, it’s like magic. You’re like, I don’t really know why this is working other than we know that it does some cool shit in the brain and it helps your brain process a different, it restores it in a way that. Doesn’t have. All of the body stuff with it anymore. It puts it in the past and it lets you stay in the present. If that makes sense. It definitely makes
Stack: sense. Okay, cool.
sweary: Because that’s really the first time I tried to break it
Stack: down.
sweary: Since I did my training. So I hope that makes sense. This is your final exam, actually.
Stack: Yeah, I feel. That’s
sweary: fun here. Shit.
Stack: I know you just did that
sweary: a
Stack: couple of weeks ago, so I appreciate breaking some of that down for me and the. I was going
sweary: to say funny, but that’s not the word I’m
Stack: looking for. The ironic thing I think
sweary: is that
Stack: you say that REM sleep is what helps you properly process these memories or these events. Which in our world? No, what’s that? Just life in general. But in our world
sweary: is as
Stack: firefighters with.
sweary: We wake up at one 30 in the morning for
Stack: four. At
sweary: this go with one of the worst things that in any of our experiences could be a pediatric code. So meaning that. Yeah. Is the CPR. And
Stack: people
sweary: are called in to take care of that.
Stack: You perform
sweary: a pediatric code, then you’re going to go
Stack: back to your bunk
sweary: and you’re
Stack: your REM sleep has been interrupted already and
sweary: not going to get that
Stack: proper sleep again. Cause you’re going to
sweary: get up a couple hours later to go home.
Stack: You never go into those proper
sweary: cycles asleep and. And
Stack: add to that, the
sweary: fact that we don’t want to fucking talk about
Stack: that. Yeah. Where are we going to go?
sweary: We’re going to go home and
Stack: talk about it.
sweary: The people we’re going to talk about it to friends who don’t know what it’s
Stack: like. No. So we’re not going to talk about it and then we’re not
sweary: going to process it. And then it’s going to get.
Stack: No go back. Go back to that
sweary: computer analogy.
It’s not going to get partitioned well enough.
Stack: And yeah, so it’s just going to come
sweary: back and haunt.
Stack: So yeah.
sweary: It’s that sleep again? That goes back for firefighters.
I
feel like we’re just setting you guys up. So with schedules that you guys keep and I’m sure there’s reasons behind it that they can tell me, but I don’t think it’s good for you.
Stack: I had this discussion with somebody who is definitely not good for us. But how do you provide community protection
sweary: without 24 hour
Stack: coverage? And I know.
sweary: I don’t know.
Stack: There’s a variety of schedules and none of them are minimum. We’re all perfect.
sweary: Obviously, because. Yeah, it’s still either. You’re doing all days and then some nights, or you’re doing 24. So you’re doing 36 hours or 48. It’s just a crazy schedule. Any way you cut it.
Stack: Yeah, one of the talks I’ve had with people is we’re not
sweary: designed to do this job for 20 to 30 years, and
Stack: that’s an antiquated
sweary: view of the job. And.
Stack: And
I love to push people
sweary: out of this job earlier, but that’s a, that comes back to a whole retirement thing and that’s a different subject. Yeah. And I feel like that’s a big part of it. Like it’s yeah, we don’t have time to talk about, capitalism or retirement or the state of our, or our society. But I, those things really are impacting. Our mental health, just like you just said, like just in the job what are you going to go do after that? Can you retire early? Probably not. And so I think people end up staying in jobs that are not good for them longer than they should, because they really do feel trapped. And
Stack: there’s a few
sweary: of the others. At the stigma too, of if I leave then I suck. I failed.
Stack: There’s a feeling there’s both
sweary: of those feelings. There’s a feeling of being trapped. There’s a feeling of the stigma, or even the fact that.
Stack: Man when that door closes behind a
sweary: firefighter to leave that door
Stack: slam shut.
sweary: You
Stack: don’t hear
sweary: about it again, you don’t, you. It’s
Stack: very rare
sweary: that you hear that name even brought
Stack: up again. And. That’s something
sweary: that as an individual I’ve been working on and trying to stay in touch with people who have left the
Stack: department, But there’s also
sweary: that there’s that addictive nature of the job. It’s
Stack: at chaos
sweary: that we like.
Stack: Yeah, it’s. Not knowing what’s
sweary: coming next. And then, you hear those tones drop and it’s for a structure fire. And it’s that. That intermittent reinforcement is just so
Stack: powerful.
sweary: I think you, you hit it on your head. See, like we were talking about your system gets used to being wired a certain way. So you get that, that you. Adrenaline junkie kind of thing. You get used to being in a state of high arousal of excitement of chaos. And then when you’re out of that, What else gives you that feeling
Stack: or that calm, scares? I speak
sweary: for myself. The calm.
Stack: Up until
sweary: recently, at least it scared me and I didn’t know what to do with the calm. And I think
Stack: that was hardwired
sweary: into my brain a little bit from. Not just from this job, but from other things.
Stack: And.
Yeah, you chase the
sweary: chaos. And that doesn’t lead to any that doesn’t lead to anything. Good. Not usually, especially for, not in touch with their feelings. And so that’s the thing, like you mentioned you,
Stack: we
sweary: come into the job as a firefighter, for example, already carrying our own stuff. Probably already wired to have an aroused system. If you grew up in chaos, I grew up with a house that yelled a lot and there’s a lot of we’ll just say excitement, but it wasn’t always really fun. Excitement, and so I didn’t join the fire service, but instead I became a wicked overachiever.
Stack: And
sweary: I. I also didn’t know how to say no to anything. And I’d be doing like 25 things. When I was in grad school, I had three internships. I was working full-time at the college. I was a mom. I had my own life of other things I was doing. And it’s just I was like, how do you have time for this? I’m like, oh, I don’t know. And then, my body was like, fuck you. And I had a giant
Stack: seizure. They have a slow way,
sweary: the hell down.
Stack: Yeah, your body was telling you, and you don’t have fucking time for this. It reminds you you you how, how much you don’t
sweary: have time for them. Exactly. And it took me a lot of time to really like. Oh, my gosh. Like when I didn’t have school, when I didn’t have internships in my life started slowing down. It was like, I have to sit with
Stack: me.
sweary: And I have to feel these feelings and I have to learn to be comfortable being quiet and being common. That’s a hard thing, especially for people that have gone through trauma, I’ve gone through some really fucked up shit. Feeling it’s all they say, all I ever want to do is to have a boring life and be calm, but then you give them that and they’re like, fuck, what’s wrong. This feels wrong. They’re. They’re not used to it.
Stack: So as much as they don’t
sweary: like feeling upset as much as they don’t like feeling anxious, you get used to it. It becomes the devil,
Stack: and that’s the one thing that we discussed.
sweary: After you listened to a couple of episodes, is that. Th that theme of the guests struggling to, to acknowledge and even.
Stack: Acknowledging
sweary: and actually explore how they felt about what they witnessed and they experienced.
And I think that’s exactly what you’re saying. You do need to sit with it. You need to acknowledge it. You need to talk, you need to,
Stack: and not just talk, not just
sweary: the dark humor that we use at work to talk about it. You need
Stack: to talk to somebody.
sweary: Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of times it’s it may not even be the thing you saw. I have talked to some first responders and it’s not as much. Sometimes it’s definitely certain cases. Definitely. So
Stack: with you. But
sweary: sometimes it’s like that case remind you of something. You’ve been through that. You’ve done that. You’ve.
Stack: Experienced. Yeah.
sweary: And sometimes that comes up too. And I think that’s also important is we all are carrying around these feelings. But a lot of us seem to think that, feelings are dumb.
Stack: They’re
sweary: not important. Or they feel really scary. Some people are afraid that if they feel their sadness all the way, that it’ll never stop and they’ll cry forever and
Stack: it feels
sweary: very. It feels very forever when you’re faced with something that really, if sad.
Stack: And it’s
sweary: a very blah emotion. You don’t want to do anything right.
Stack: Let’s touch
sweary: on that real quick. And this probably the last thing we’ll touch on for this one.
Stack: Okay. Cause we talked about
sweary: this when we talked a couple of weeks ago that thinking the feelings versus feeling the feelings. Yeah.
Stack: And I think that’s important
sweary: for us in the first responder world to, to take this into consideration. So I’ll let you run with it. And then again, I’ll just jump in wherever. Sure. Yeah. Like thinking your feelings versus feeling your feelings. I have this one
Stack: meme.
sweary: And I share it with with with like every one of my clients. And it’s like this possum making a face, like what the fuck? And it’s like my face when my therapist tells me to feel my feelings
Stack: and it’s believe
sweary: me guys, I get it. I know it sucks. And a lot of people seem to fake that they’re feeling their feelings, but most of us are often thinking our feelings and the difference would be, we call them feelings because emotions are meant to be felt in the body. If you’re feeling your feelings.
Stack: You’re
sweary: noticing that your sadness feels like a heaviness in your chest or a ball on the pettier tummy or whatever, is very sure buddy, right? You’re feeling the body sensations. If you’re seeking your feelings, you’re thinking, wow, I’m so sad. My life really sucks. Everything really is awful.
Everyone hates me. This thing happened, that thing happened.
Stack: Those are all
sweary: thoughts. Now does it feel shitty? Absolutely. But it is not the same thing as feeling your feelings. And it is a unbelievably difficult process to learn. And for those of us who are. Really intelligent as any, whether you’re Booksmart street-smart I just mean like really intelligent intellectual people have a tendency to be
Stack: really
sweary: bad at this and we will intellectualize the fuck out of all of our feelings. Okay. And I’ll be like, oh, I feel this way, but it’s also because of this. And because of that, and I understand all my feelings, look, I can see all the reasons why I am this way, but I’m not yet feeling any of my feelings. I’m just thinking
Stack: about them. And until you feel them, your
sweary: body, remember your body holds on to shit. Your body has to feel it too. Otherwise it just
Stack: gets stuck. And if it gets
sweary: stuck, it might turn into something
Stack: else.
sweary: And you know how sadness turns into anger? This is I like to imagine them as like little people like inside out version, if you seen the movie inside out.
Stack: If you
sweary: take sadness and you shove her in a closet and you tell her what a piece of shit she has, because she’s not allowed to be sad all the time. She’s. She’s getting mad after a while.
Stack: And
sweary: she’s going to bus out of that door. She’s going to make herself be heard and it’s going to be spectacular.
Stack: Yeah.
sweary: And then you’re like no. See, this is why I locked you up and you lock her up again. And you keep locking her up, but she just gets more and more. Upset. And, I know this, when I talk about it this way, it makes people feel like I’m saying everybody’s crazy, but
Stack: I
sweary: feel like we all have these different parts of ourselves and you probably know that too. You probably feel a part of me feels one way. And a part of me feels like you really do have different aspects of yourself.
Stack: And if we’re
sweary: constantly telling one part of ourself that it’s wrong to exist. How we one second to
Stack: do to your psyche? What does that do?
sweary: To that, five-year-old you? That was, we mentioned earlier, right? That was centrally my mom too. And now you’re turning them away. What does that do to
Stack: you?
Yeah, this.
sweary: This was again, I keep going back to a personal note, but this is something we’ve done in my own sessions is.
Stack: Tell me where that feeling is. And I, it took me a while. So
sweary: identify that. And then
Stack: it was, I’ll tell you
sweary: it was fucking uncomfortable at times. And it still
Stack: is at times, especially when there’s some powerful
sweary: feelings could be in dredged
Stack: up.
sweary: Yep. Because, yeah. Because
for
Stack: a long
sweary: time. Again, from my own
Stack: personal standpoint
sweary: for a long time, it was okay. And let’s just shove that shit away because we don’t need to
Stack: deal with it,
sweary: but you always, you’re always going to have to deal with it. Eventually you deal with it one way or another.
Stack: And
sweary: I like, I don’t know. I’m very big on When I first meet with my clients, I talk to them about the practice of mindfulness. So like I do all my work with my clients is all based on mindfulness practices. And, and teach them like you, you learn to be mindful. There’s a whole bunch of ways we can learn that. So that you can start to
Stack: be aware
sweary: of how your thoughts and how your emotions are combining together to create your behaviors. And by being mindful by understanding these things,
Stack: by learning to feel those feelings.
sweary: By learning to understand how those connected to certain thoughts, you can start to actually start to choose your response rather than autopiloting into various reactions that get you into trouble.
Yeah. And that definitely makes sense. It’s. It’s I do it on. On an informal basis, I understand mindfulness and meditation. And that’s probably that’s probably going to be a topic for another show because we can get into that in a All
Stack: upset on that, but for me, it’s it is
sweary: it’s that.
Stack: Is that taken
sweary: that moment when I receive news or a text or a call and
Stack: just taking
sweary: that moment, maybe even a night to respond to it. And yeah, that’s been a change for me because instead of allowing the raw emotion to respond, I sit with that. And now.
Stack: Hopefully let a
sweary: rational brain respond. Not that my brain is
Stack: always rational.
sweary: And it doesn’t always even have to be that way. Like when my sister died, I was
Stack: lucky that I had
sweary: gone through all the training that I’d gone through and that I had been on this journey towards my own growth, because I’ll tell you what, when I started counseling school and they were like, feel your feelings.
I’m like, what the fuck are y’all talking about? I am not a natural. This y’all like. I’ve had to work really hard to learn how to feel my feelings and to tell you where I’m feeling that in my body. But, I was lucky enough to know how important that was. So that way when my sister was killed, I knew I needed to do this. Writer was gonna fuck me up forever. I’m going to feel this forever, but I didn’t need to be like, I didn’t need it to turn into or transform into something. Yucky it’s yucky enough as it is. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I don’t need to add to that. I do not need to add any more shit to this shit sandwich it’s already shitty. When she first died, it was very much like, all I want to do is lay in bed and cry. So that’s what I did. And I laid in bed and I cried. And, my husband 0.4 husband, he didn’t know how to handle me cause I’m not that person. I’ve never been a person that Christ. I can take a count on one hand and the 10 years we known each other before that. The time she sees me cry. And now I cried a lot of things. He’s I still don’t really know what to do.
I’m like, it’s okay. I don’t really know what to do with me either, but I have to, I’m letting myself feel these feelings because I know that if I don’t. It’s going to fester, it’s going to turn into something else and I’m going to
Stack: want to
sweary: numb out in some other way. So you have to let that stuff be felt so that your body can process it and you can get to
Stack: a place where it
sweary: like, does it still hurt? Fuck yet. It still hurts. But does it cripple me when I think about it anymore. No, I’ve learned that I can carry this. I can walk around with this pain and it isn’t too much. I am able to do this and it’s not because I’m strong or any of that other shit. Everybody can do this. Yeah, I’m just human. Like everybody else. I just realized that the shit isn’t actually going to kill me by feeling it.
Stack: Yeah, I think that’s a perfect way. Yeah. Like you said it takes practice and it’s a perfect word. You have to.
sweary: And again, I’m coming at this from a novice standpoint. Because this is a relatively new thing
Stack: for me, but
sweary: I had this discussion with a coworker last night via text it’s a
Stack: it’s okay.
sweary: To cry about that.
Stack: He jokingly
sweary: used the words. I cried like a little bitch. I said
Stack: call me a bitch then ma’am Cause Because I. cried in my session.
sweary: More,
Stack: it’s rare that I don’t cry in a session.
sweary: Yeah, if you’re really doing the work and tears are really awesome it really is your body’s way of Of
Stack: getting
sweary: rid of things like they’ve tested the chemical makeup of tears. And depending if you’re crying tears or sadness versus tears of happiness, there’s actually a different chemical makeup in your tears. Because your body is releasing different things, depending on what it is that. You’re experiencing. So Crying is your body’s way of letting you process those emotions. And yeah, sometimes at first you cry every single time you think of something. She got a lot of stored up shit. You’ve been feeling that feeling like your tank is
Stack: full.
sweary: I make room for some other shit. And so you got to cry. You got to let yourself cry. You have to, and that’s probably the biggest scariest thing. That was the hardest part for me. Oh, my gosh. So hard.
Stack: I
sweary: don’t even have the same societal pressure as like a girl. As a guy does. So it’s even harder for you guys probably. And then within your field. Come on. It makes sense. Yeah. Totally makes sense. Why that’s hard.
Stack: Yeah.
sweary: It’s transformative when you allow it to happen,
Stack: though.
sweary: And if you cry, you’re going to feel tired, give your body that chance to rest. It needs that space to then shift everything around and make, you just made space for stuff.
And that’s exhausting. And that’s were saying earlier, like our mental is not separate from our physical, like physically you’ll be exhausted when you do this work.
Stack: When you
sweary: let yourself feel your feeling, sometimes that’s all you can do for
Stack: the day. Oh, yeah. There are a couple of sessions I’ve left. I
sweary: felt like I just had a workout. Yeah. Absolutely. And. Our society is not really set
Stack: up for the whole, like
sweary: mental health, they think. Can we talk about it? But We’re just, we’re not really good at taking care of ourselves and giving ourselves permission to not be productive. And so I like to change my definition of what does productive mean? Like it is productive for me to sit on the couch and do nothing because I processed a big emotion today.
Stack: It is
sweary: productive in the sense that I am going to be a better version of myself in the end, because I’m taking the time to do this, which means I’ll be able to do all the things that I really love and am passionate about. Even better later on. So I try to reframe the idea of productivity, but I don’t always have to be producing something to be worthy. Of rest or something like that. I think that’s a huge shift that our. Crescent day society doesn’t really.
Stack: Embraced. I think
sweary: it goes back to that glorification of busy. Everybody. Yeah. It just, you just feel this, most people feel this need to do. And
Stack: I feel it
sweary: quite often, but there are times where I just sit on my ass because that’s, what’s required. No. I would challenge people who feel like they have to
Stack: do due to think back.
sweary: Did you grow up in. Chaos. Is that what feels normal? Like I know. And that was how it was for me. It felt normal to always be busy.
Stack: And to
sweary: be busy meant that my nervous system was activated.
Stack: And
sweary: my nervous system. And so that’s where it’s a lot of times that’s where it comes from. And so you finally start, that’s where we start feeling your feelings. And you start feeling. I’m feeling this and I really It doesn’t really make sense, given where, what I’m doing right now. I don’t really need to feel this right now. So why am I feeling this right now?
Stack: It goes back. In that chaos.
sweary: Yeah. So then You know, sitting with that. I just had a situation with my husband. We’re driving this in St. Augustine. And I was in the car and we couldn’t find parking and I start freaking out and he’s honey, what’s wrong? And I’m like, There’s nowhere to park and I don’t know. And
Stack: he’s
sweary: it’s okay. And I’m thinking, I don’t know why my body was like, I’m about to be yelled at. My husband has never yelled at me.
Stack: We can
sweary: put shit like that ever. Just not the kind of guy to raise his voice. But I might’ve grown up in
Stack: a house
sweary: that was normal.
Stack: And so my
sweary: nervous system was preparing me to deal with this, something that hasn’t happened to me in 25 years.
Stack: Yeah, you were primed for
sweary: it.
Stack: That’s
sweary: prime for it. it. it. Right. And so finally he, he put, he’s he’s he’s like, ah, why don’t we
Stack: take a breath?
sweary: Everything’s fine. And I did, I sat and I thought about it and had to remind my body you’re fine, you’re safe. I know you have this feeling. And that feeling is valid, but feelings are not facts.
Stack: The
sweary: feeling is valid. It’s allowed to exist. There’s nothing wrong with it existing, but I can also use my big brain and see the best feeling is not based in the truth or the reality around me. Reality around me is that I’m safe? No, one’s gonna yell at me and I don’t need to be
Stack: panicking right now.
sweary: And so instead of say, telling that anxiety go away or pretending it doesn’t exist instead as I invited it to ride along as a friend and just be cool. We’re good. I got you. I’ll keep you safe today. And do my breathing techniques and all that good shit. And
Stack: then it just eventually dissipated and there’s, I didn’t have to do
sweary: anything with my anxiety just because I felt that. And I think that’s another part of learning to feel your feelings. They are not
Stack: meant to be fixed.
sweary: Sometimes they’re just meant to exist. Like the sadness that I feel when I think about my sister, you can’t fix that. That’s not going away. No,
Stack: this is supposed
sweary: to go away.
Stack: I’m supposed to be aware of that.
sweary: But other emotions are just as allowed.
We don’t have to fix all of our emotions. They exist for a reason.
Stack: Anxiety
sweary: helps keep you alert when you driving, you need to pay attention.
Stack: Fear keeps you safe.
sweary: Joy lets you connect
Stack: with other
sweary: people. Sadness lets you make space for other things. None of these feelings are bad. Anger exists to protect boundaries. Keep you safe. So the aren’t bad emotions that we shouldn’t feel, we just need to allow them to exist. So that we can understand what messages
Stack: that they’re giving us and
sweary: then respond
Stack: appropriately. Which again takes practice.
sweary: I think
Stack: that right there is a perfect spot to end this one. And we can revisit the rest of
sweary: the list later on
Stack: down the road. When you have some time to,
sweary: to come back and talk to me again.
Stack: Excellent. And I’m going to ask you the same questions I ask everybody
sweary: because I want to wrap it up
Stack: the same way. And okay.
sweary: And I don’t know if you’ve made it through any of the shows. I don’t care if you have or not, but what I do. What I do at the end is I have two different questions. One is, one is about what we call an everyday carry. Because I call the show. The things we all carry in. We were all carrying something into a job, into a call. If
Stack: it’s a fire,
sweary: it’s, it’s whatever tools you use in the fire to hose line it’s if it’s a medical call is aid bag,
Stack: whatever. But out
sweary: of that call, we’re bringing. Something out with us and that’s, it’s more indelible into it. It’s a little stamp on our soul or our psyche.
Stack: And but
sweary: I’d like to talk about what’s an everyday carry for you. Is there something that you’d taken wrong physically or even not even physically do something that’s always there with you that if you don’t have it you feel naked without.
It’s interesting. I’ve definitely tried to make it so that I’m
Stack: bringing with
sweary: me, like the practices that kind of help keep me grounded. My breathing exercises and things like that. Like I breathe
every day. I do at least a small exercise every single day, because that’s the only thing that really keeps me grounded. But if we want to talk about like a physical thing that makes me feel naked. If I don’t have it, honestly, and this sounds silly, but very normal is my phone. Not because I’m on my social media or anything because I do, but that’s not
Stack: it.
sweary: It’s like my whole life is organized and my fault, my schedule. My access to
Stack: like resources.
sweary: When I’m talking with clients, I’m like sending a means to make a point.
Everything is in my phone. So it’s two-thirds so like my. I bring
my spiritual
practice with me everywhere. And I bring my phone with me everywhere. And if. I don’t have those two things. If I don’t have access to those two things and I absolutely feel completely scattered. I just can’t hear them. Perfect. I like
Stack: it. So
sweary: the last question is
Stack: about a book, a podcast, a person. A movie
sweary: anything that you think would benefit the audience? Something they can learn from or. Or just
Stack: have some interest in. Oh, my goodness. There’s so many,
sweary: so I’m a big geek on books and I read like a dumb amount.
Stack: Ah,
sweary: let’s see. Gosh, I don’t even know. I’ll, I’m going to go away. Something that I encourage all my clients. Yeah, the river. I work with adults only.
Stack: But
sweary: the movie inside out.
Stack: Okay.
sweary: I freaking love this movie because it does such a great job of showing the importance of every emotion. And for those of you that haven’t
Stack: seen it,
sweary: I don’t want to give it being a way. It’s basically this conflict between joy and sadness, right? And what happens when sadness isn’t allowed to drive?
But she’s not allowed. To be present everything fucking
Stack: falls apart. And I think
sweary: that the takeaway from that movie is just so good that all the emotions are so important. And that they all have a role to play and that you can have more than one of them at a time. And so if you haven’t seen that movie, you should start that.
Stack: I’ll link the
sweary: movie in the show notes.
Stack: I’m also going to link up
sweary: the body, keeps the
Stack: score as well, just
sweary: because I
Stack: think it’s valuable. It was mentioned, and
sweary: it was mentioned in a previous episode. So it’s already been linked, but I’ll link it again in
Stack: this one. And yeah.
sweary: This will be released as a bonus episode, but it’s
Stack: still going to be,
sweary: I still do the normal things with my links. Excellent.
Stack: I
sweary: appreciate the conversation so much. I know you have a busy schedule. And I think you’ve got to get back to the airport and pick somebody up. Yes, I do. He missed his flight, so I have to go do that.
Stack: So I go take care of that. Enjoy the rest of your
sweary: weekend and
Stack: we’ll be
sweary: in touch and we’ll figure out another time to
Stack: talk.
sweary: Excellent. Sounds great. Thanks so much, man. Appreciate
Stack: it. Thank you. Take care.
sweary: All right. You too. Bye. Bye.
