10. My Next Chapter: Research, Advocacy, SciComm, & Becoming Myself

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to a chat with Uma, with me, your host, Uma R. Chatterjee. On this podcast, I bring together all of my roles as a neuroscientist, researcher, board certified mental health peer specialist, mental health advocate, community builder, and a survivor with lived experience to bring you honest and unfiltered conversations exploring our true human experiences in their fullest form. Every week, I'm bringing you conversations bridging the gap on all things neuroscience, psychology, mental health, lived experience, advocacy, psychedelics, and more. This is a space for raw unfiltered truth to truly explore ourselves for who we are and how we are. I cannot wait to connect with you, answer all of your questions and co-create this with you. Welcome to a chat with Uma. Hello, my friends. Welcome back to another episode of a chat with Uma. And this week is me just giving you all of the life updates, all of the truth, the unfiltered, raw processing of big, big choices and acceptances and just really bringing you into this new chapter of my life, which has been a long time coming, has been in process for so long, but I had a lot to navigate and process and really think about and really feel into and really make decisions about. I'm sure if you've been here with me the last several months, if you've been in my life, if you've been listening to the podcast, keeping up on social media, then you've seen that there's just been so many things that I've been hinting at, just different things I've been kind of quiet about, obviously, in the honesty hour episode, I really shared about where my head was at and all of the confusion and fear and lack of clarity that I seem to have at that time, but you've been really just getting a glimpse into the decisions I've been making, but for many reasons, I've kept the details about those exact places and exactly what I was thinking about to myself 'cause I really wanted to process that with myself and make sure I was making decisions from a place of autonomy, rather than what people knew and now it's done, now. I have made really big commitments, really big choices, I've gotten clarity and also I'm moving through so much uncertainty, so I can't wait to bring you along to tell you about all of it. And before I do that, I just wanna start the episode off with some really, really exciting updates, things that are coming up for me that I would love for you to be a part of. So I'll start with, I am going to be presenting at the aspiring scientist coalition I am giving a meeting on April 13th, Thursday at 9 a.m. Pacific time, so that's 11 a.m. Central or 12 Eastern? I think Mountain is like 10. (laughs) I came up with those three, but I always forget Mountain. Anyway, I am going to be giving a presentation to the aspiring scientist coalition, which is an incredible organization that provides really accessible science guidance, mentorship and networking to thousands of students in over 75 countries around the world to really just help bridge the gap between people who want to engage in research and people who are engaging in research. It was started and founded by Dr. Ben Rein, who if you don't know him, first and foremost, he is an incredible neuroscientist. He's a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford, studying the neurobiology of empathy, social connection and MDMA, and on top of everything he does with his science, he is a phenomenal science communicator. He really took the world by storm on TikTok and Instagram and other social media, really just distilling down very complex science papers and concepts into language and understanding for people who really want to know, but aren't in academia. And he is so incredibly good at it. He's so successful and through and through his mission is to help make science more accessible to people through the aspiring scientist coalition and his work. And it is such an honor to have been asked to give a presentation to the ASC, Ben reached out and wanted me to give a presentation and just share all about my very non-traditional journey into research in academia. And if you know anything about my story, you know that it has been a very long, windy, twisty road. And I would not have ever expected to be where I am today, let alone anybody else. So this presentation is really going to be giving a deep dive into how I navigated so much of my disabilities, my experiences, my conditions and how that brought me to research, how I found myself becoming a scientist and how I developed my research projects that were directly influenced by my own conditions. And also all of the advocacy and how that has been such a huge part of my research, myself as a scientist, myself as a human and how that all comes together. So I will be speaking for an hour with Dr. Ben Rein. We're going to be talking about everything my story and I would love to have you and anyone interested join us. It is completely free. All you need to do is become a member of the aspiring scientist coalition. All you have to do is go on their website and fill out a quick form. You're going to become a member and have access to that link and to be able to join us. Hear my story, be in a community of so many like-minded people and just ask me any questions you have as well as Ben. And I'm just so excited about this because I know that I didn't see people like me in science and I never knew that it was possible for people like me, especially with the different challenges I navigate. And it really used to feel like those things would hold me back rather than not only not hold me back, but be the reason why I get to do what I do. So I am just so grateful for the opportunity to bring advocacy to things like OCD and PTSD and living with young adult cancer, having the identities I hold and how that very much shapes my experience as a scientist and my research and to really show people that people like me can do this. And we belong here and not in spite of who we are, but because of who we are. So I'd love to have you join us. I will have that link to the aspiring scientist coalition in the show notes. You just have to go register and you'll get the link. And I can't wait to see you there. Another huge announcement I have. You're going to be hearing it first here because it's just got confirmed in the last week. I am going to be a speaker at the Breaking Convention in Exeter, which is the largest psychedelic conference in Europe. It's going to be happening from April 20 to 22. And I was just confirmed as an official speaker amongst so many people who have shaped and formed the field, people who I have looked up to and learned so much from. And I'm going to be there speaking as well. I am going to be giving a full talk at the conference. And I'm going to be speaking at length about the potential effects of psychedelic-assisted therapy for PTSD on Comorbid OCD. I'm going to be just over-viewing everything about the OCD and PTSD Comorbidity and the very, very real and important considerations and implications on how psychedelic-assisted therapy for PTSD is conducted in terms of considering Comorbid OCD. It is truly just such an honor and privilege to be able to share so much of my work and really a met-of-view of the implications of all the research I've done, all the presentations I've given over the last year and a half because this work is not, I mean, it's about me and it's about so many people. It's so beyond me. This speech, this presentation, this project is not just science. It's science and it's advocacy because in order to be able to do this research and do this science, I have to fully explain what OCD is and there's so many misconceptions and misunderstandings about OCD within the fields of psychiatry, psychology, neuroscience, anything related to psychedelic and psychedelic-assisted therapy. So not only is this an opportunity to really raise awareness for the research I'm doing and the very real implications on so many people, but it's raising awareness of what OCD actually is. And that is where so much of my advocacy, my lived experience and my research your hats, like they all come together. and I just can't tell you what a privilege it is to be able to raise awareness for my community and everybody like me at such a massive and incredible conference to the very people who need to hear it because the people who need to hear it are the people in the field doing the research in psychedelics and psychedelics. There would be there the people who can help reduce harm and who can help enact measures to be able to protect our vulnerable populations that may not be protected right now. So I am so grateful and honored for this opportunity and if you are in London or in Exeter in Europe and you either are attending the conference, I'd love to see you there. Please let me know. If you're interested in attending the conference, I would absolutely love to have you for not just my talk, but all of the prolific and incredible talks from people who I looked up to for so long. There are tickets that I can link in the show notes for you to check out and if you're not able to make it live, there's also a live stream option as well as recordings that will be available. So I would love to have you at the conference virtually in person to be able to share in the advocacy and science, especially if you are interested in psychedelics, science, in general and you'd like to learn from some of those foremost people in the field that are all going to be in one place and or if you are part of the OCD community and would like to represent OCD alongside with me as well as raise awareness and really learn about home-orbid PTSD and OCD, that's the place to do it. So I can't wait to see you there. I'm so honored to be able to share this with you here first before it goes out publicly everywhere and I will link tickets in the show notes. Okay, I think I will stop there because these are the most immediate and pressing updates that I have for y'all but this is kind of a really interesting segue into the whole episode because I actually have so many updates for y'all. There are too many things I say too many because I'm just like how am I going to do all of it? I don't know but from a place of so much fullness and gratitude, there are so many things coming. I can't even begin to tell you so many different conferences and presentations and initiatives and projects and just amazing privileges and opportunities that are coming that I get to include y'all in and I get to bring you along for and I'm just I'm still mind blown. I don't even understand how any of this is happening like truly but it is and I will use that to lead into this massive update of my next chapter. Okay, getting like goosebumps. I'm so it's so much to say out loud but okay I'll just get it out there because you're hearing it here first. I am officially going to start my PhD in neuroscience and I fully committed. I sent in my final acceptance of my offer that I chose yesterday and where am I going? That's the next question. I have not told pretty much anybody except for the few people who knew where I was interviewing where I was going. So you're really hearing it here first. I've gotten so many questions like, did I miss it? Where did I miss it? Where are you going? You didn't miss it. I didn't tell you. Here it goes. I am getting my PhD in neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in its neuroscience training program and I have so many things to say about that and how I got to this decision, how I got to this program and why on earth is this happening? But it's out there. You know it now and I finally get to just share with you the absurdity and wellness and excitement and fear, the crippling fear and everything that comes with it. So how do I organize my thoughts around this? Why did I decide to go? I guess is what I'll tell you because again if you have been hanging out with me and you've seen and heard especially on the podcast recently, just so much of my uncertainty and confusion and fear and just genuinely being completely unsure of if this is right for me if I am ready and if this is a line with my values. I wish I could come here and tell you right now that I figured all that out and I just got so much clarity and everything super clear and I'm just I just know and I solved the least problems and gave you a framework for how I navigated all my doubt and uncertainty and fear. But hopefully you know by now or you're ratified out if this is your first episode that I am not that person who is going to give you shit and tell you that I have some sort of secret magic sauce of just being able to figure out using a method and tell you how to do it because I don't think that that exists. I think there is supportive frameworks and guidelines that are really, really generalized but I sure as all didn't invent them and more clearly I didn't figure everything out and that's actually one of the most liberating beautiful meta points of how and why this is all happening. When I was so deep in the thick of processing and being confused and being so so uncertain and just taking where I was and what I had gleaned and learned from recovery about my values and about just learning to understand more of how I work and who I am. I had so many ways of applying that insight and that knowledge into so many different paths and being like which one is the right one. And I know I went on a whole tangent about how if there isn't a right one then how do you choose? And I think most people from there would think that I figured out which one was the right one and then I chose and the reality is I did not figure out which one was the right one. I figured out which one I was going to choose based on what felt the most true to me and it wasn't even a choice of a path. It was a choice of a feeling and I'll explain what I mean by that. So I should be fully transparent and open by saying that after I shared all that with you mainly on the Honesty Hour podcast episode a few weeks ago I was also really starting to notice the effects of perhaps the mostly the ketamine treatments and it could also be interfacing with a lot of the stress and really horrible things I was going through at the time. But basically a culmination of of course if you've been with me and if you know this and if you haven't then check out the episodes before of the ketamine diaries by psychedelic experiences by mental health journey but to sum it up I did a bunch of ketamine treatments to try to help a lot of conditions chronic pain, OCD, PTSD, anxiety, depression, suicidality a whole lot of things and what it really gave me somewhat of a boost on enough to really start moving forward in life again and feeling more safe and functional and on the road to recovery was it helped me with my depression mostly and some of my PTSD as well but mostly my depression and I had done very very very intensive ketamine treatments through December, January and I had to stop number one because I couldn't tolerate them, my body couldn't as much as I wanted to keep going, I couldn't so I had to accept that I couldn't continue taking them every month or every two weeks also though side note all of the ketamine clinics for the practice I went to actually shut down and I found that out in the last two weeks which is kind of hilarious to me because even if I wanted to continue it shut down and that's really you know hard to navigate because that was the only clinic that took insurance which I explained all on the ketamine diaries episodes but you know I could have continued perhaps but I couldn't financially so there's really not going to be another option for me with ketamine so what I had really talked about in my previous episodes and how I'm going to deal with not being able to do ketamine anymore and reaping the benefits for my depression was I knew that eventually the effects of the ketamine were going to win and I was going to have to try to recapitulate that with other similarly-ish working compounds that might be far longer lasting and far more potent in their dosage but could perhaps recapitulate what the ketamine did and for me that was a little siren. And again, I've spoken at length about my experiences with psychodeleics and would let me do this and why I made that decision for myself and I will restate and reinforce that anything that I have done and anything I do is completely from my choice and is not in any way shape or form a recommendation to anybody in a medical situation in a medical way. This is completely a personal decision and it's not an endorsement for anybody else. It's not a view of any organization or any institution that I am affiliated with. So without all out of the way, I feel like I have to keep saying that every single time. I, at the time that I did the honestly hour episode, I shared all of that. I also was starting to see in an exponential way that my physical psychiatric, psychological, like all versions of my depression were really coming back with the vengeance and it really sucked but it was a little bit liberating or relieving to at least notice that coming after some relief from the ketamine and it and also again interacting with the situations going on in my life. I'm sure they exacerbated the relapse or the vengeance with which it came back but nonetheless that was happening and it was getting to the point where like my body and my brain were getting so slow again. And I just knew that I needed to jostle shit up and I needed to reengage in a version of support treatment, whatever you want to call it, that work for me. So I took a dose of psilocybin on my own at home of course with a caregiver, a person who was able to stay with me and you know be with me for safety and to like walk me through my experience but I was pretty much you know going through this on my own and you know I could talk at length about the actual experience and that's maybe for another day but really what it did for me was it reinvigorated my brain. I mean that's just how it felt to me personally and not speaking so much from the scientific, provable, quantifiable standpoint right now. I'm talking about just like my anecdotal experience and I processed a lot which is very powerful for the course for me just having a lot of very very very intense fear and pain and trauma come up and that container of psilocybin and experiencing all of those being a safe place to do that. So that happened and it just felt like a lot of purging and shutting and really just some level of clarity and when I say clarity I don't mean like just knowing exactly what to do per se but more so having feelings and being more clear with those and in the integration and experience after what really came up was the weight of the decisions for me and it's so beautiful to me that I didn't really get an answer of is the right thing to do to do the hard thing and do try the PhD and go be hardcore science and go work really really hard and overextend myself perhaps and you know go do effectively the biggest exposures of my life in terms of challenging every obsession I have about myself as a person every intrusive delabitating fear I have about my integrity and capability and all of that or do I take the easier and more softer route and take time to explore other avenues and life and build my own path and have more time and space for healing and growing and this that like and then also just the unanswerable questions of if I am ready if I am capable if I am healed enough if I'm recovered enough if I'm in a place to be able to do this if I am going to crash and burn and this is the biggest mistake of my life like I wish I could tell you I got an answer to any of those questions but I didn't but you know what I did get I got just a very clear feeling within myself that a huge part of who I am it's not what I do but who I am is someone who's just intensely curious about the things that I'm curious about I have so much curiosity and I apply it constantly in my life to people to things to subjects to ideas to concepts to learning and that's just something within me that I either can't turn off or I don't want to and I really had to accept that within myself and I didn't realize how much I had been like pushing that away or I hadn't recognized that within myself and I know anybody who has been through you know a lot of trauma growing up in chaos needing to survive not having actualization of you know being able to figure out different parts if you are in a safe way needing to just like get by a survival mode and live through really really horrible things I know you can relate to the fact that when you get to a point of being safe enough and working through your recovery and trying to relearn safety sometimes you realize like you don't even know who you are you don't even know like what you are and who you are outside of survival and I had really I've been I've known that you know for a good amount of time and I've always approached it like I need to figure out what really interests me especially outside of quote unquote work and like not just constantly throwing myself until work all the time and maybe finding other things about myself that are hobbies or interests and passions and things that are outside of being productive right and that's all true but what I really realized through this reflection and this introspection and processing with psilocybin this time around which by the way it was my first psilocybin experience and you know macrodose in two over two years because I mean again this is all in detail in my past episodes but I had had done it in two years because I thought that it was just going to be horrible every time and I couldn't handle it and the cat and me showed me that I indeed could handle it and it's probably what I need right now so anyway um through this I realized that I had not really accepted or seen that I an accept that I am a curious curious person that I love learning that I love thinking and being creative with ideas and what I happen to be so curious and interested in that large is understanding the neurobiology of psychiatric illness and the conditions that I live with and that plague people around me that I care about so much and I so ridiculously love learning about neurobiology and psychology and psychiatry and just brains and our central nervous systems and just all of those things and psychedelics and pharmacology and I just love learning about them and I love thinking about them and I love creating with them and for me it's creative to be in science because I'm creating experiments and creating ideas and hypotheses and questions and all of those things like I love thinking and curiosity like that's part of who I am not necessarily I'm not identifying with the vocation here I'm just identifying with like how I show up in the world and just who I am and rejecting that and I know a lot of the rejection and the lack of awareness around who I am in that way was because of just being so shamed for being curious and having questions growing up by my caregivers by my community by my peers because I was a weird like by everyone's standards a very fucking weird child and I mean I never really stopped being weird but I definitely learned to just attribute all of my weirdness to something wrong with me rather than just and something I needed to change about me or suppress about me or hide at the very least I'm not really good at suppressing like myself but I am really good at hiding it molding it and being in tons of shame about it so I realize that that's a part of who I am and I have to I be remiss to not say that my husband and me talking through all of this I mean in him really reflecting to me who I am and what I'm saying and when I'm not allowing myself to say was so pivotal in being able to just really see this in myself so that was such a beautiful fundamental moment for me And from there is really where my decisions, my choices, my thoughts started to sprout from. That's the best way I can describe it. So it wasn't figuring out what's right or wrong, it was figuring out fundamentally who I am and, you know, parts of who I am at least. And where parts of my life can go and grow or not grow from there. And so, of course, coming to this very big decision about, at that point, the decision was, do I accept the offer at UW-Madison's Neuroscience Training Program? Because at that point, it was like, I'm either doing this program or I am going to do something else with my life because, if I'm going to do a PhD, it's going to be there. So from that visceral feeling, that recognition of myself, I naturally started thinking about how that informs and overlays my life and so many of the choices that had plagued me. And what I really thought about was, and I could really, really resonate with in that space, was there is not a perfect or right decision. There are only values and hopes and feelings and inklings I have. And if I make my choices from there, I'm doing my best and my choices are just choices that will pave my path. And you've definitely heard me say that before, right? But some level of disconnection existed from logically understanding that and truly internalizing and embodying that. And of course, it was aided by, I'm sure, the psilocybin and my experience, but really connecting to parts of who I am, how I feel, how I exist, just ways of how I view and experience the world from a place of empowerment and from a healthy way, because of course, like, we all experience the world from how we've been taught to experience the world, how we've adapted to experiencing the world. And there's so much that informs that, including traumatic experiences and pathology and beliefs and all of those things, right? All those caveats aside, though, it really felt like part of what I was accessing within myself was how I've viewed and experienced the world just as me. And that was that curiosity, that love for learning, that love for understanding and creating and discovering. And it just felt so clear to me that simply taking that and thinking about how that sprouts into different ways I show up in the world and how I use my time. And what I apply my bandwidth and resources and thoughts to, that I would be so excited and enthralled by and invigorated by learning more about neurobiology, learning more about psychiatry, thinking about the research questions I have and studying them. And doing that research and helping to start chipping away at the questions I have and starting to find some answers that seems like a big word in research. It's not necessarily answers per se, fully, but just understandings that come to looking at and thinking about what I care about. And it just felt so clear that this, there's the reason amongst many, but the main driving reason that I even applied and went through the grueling process of applications and interviews and even beyond that, just like going through my training and doing the hard pivot to neuroscience and working my fucking ass off in my classes and my lab and all of the research and. Outside research and independent projects and advocacy and like everything I've done, like I did that because of parts of who I am and what I love and. I did it to continue to, I mean I went through this whole process to perhaps get the opportunity to continue or to try, try as a word I'm really leaning into, just try it out. And what I could see really clearly was that is so true for me and I have so much fear so many reservations so many often valid and often irrational and often I don't know if they're valid or rational fears around that and that's not to say that they don't matter and that they don't play a role in this decision. They absolutely do, but I felt like I was starting to face this, it felt like a choice but it wasn't really a choice of like. This is part of who I am who I'm recognizing and honoring to be me and how I show up in the world for better for worse. This is what I care about and I get to show up as I am to do this thing that I want to try and that I care about and it might be really hard. It might be not right for me. It might be incredibly difficult. I mean like that's really what I'm so afraid of. My so many of my fears are like, can I handle it? Can I do it? Should I handle it? Should I do it? Am I in a place? Am I ready for it? I mean then you go into the whole like rabbit hole of just all the intrusive thoughts and fears I have about my capabilities and my intelligence, my knowing like whatever all of that. But I can't deny that this is part of who I am like my curiosity, my love, my just wanting to learn and what I care about and this avenue is such a resident, beautiful, exciting avenue with a lot of fear and a lot of reservations and a lot of unknowns. And I felt like the choice really was to make a decision out of fear and reject those parts of myself in this moment or to give those parts of myself a chance to try this, explore it and either that's the resident path for me when I start trying it or it's not and I tried and I learned what works and doesn't work. And I take those learnings, those insights and I help I use those to help pave the next part of my path and sprout more decisions from there. So it really felt like that was just the most aligned thing to do to allow myself to make an imperfect choice and to really really really make a choice from a visceral acceptance of uncertainty. And not knowing and fear and rather of all the fears existing and being okay with that and doesn't mean I got over them being okay just means I'm accepting them and I've said and talked about these concepts so much in my life and my work and my advocacy and understanding recovery across, you know, so many different domains, life in general, specifically those things. And this is what's coming to mind for me but in general yet this was just this visceral embodiment for one of the first times of how that plays out into my life and I felt like I had gotten it all wrong for a while. But my values would be something that constricted me into what's right and what's wrong rather than what aligns and what doesn't and what aligns more. And for me making a choice from this invigoration and passion and excitement is what aligns the most. What also came forth for me was the amount of autonomy and flexibility I have with this decision and it's not just if I decide I'm going to do it then I have to do it all the way in a certain way and I have to accept all of the horrible things that can and might happen as a foregone conclusion. I get to help shape my path moving forward I get to be someone with autonomy and I get to co-create with the environment around me and I have a voice I am a person who can advocate for myself and I just realized how much of my fear around the future and things going completely poorly and being abused and being in a horrible toxic environment. and being unable to. to withstand the work conditions that might come from this program. Like all those things, those fears were hypothetical. They were rooted in the very real experiences that so many people have. And yet it was also taking myself and past versions of myself with less awareness and putting myself in those situations like I have absolutely no autonomy, no control. And I will just, I'm basically throwing myself into an unsafe situation and I am being okay with it. And if you hear that whole narrative, you can probably clearly hear how much that is rooted in subconscious beliefs and trauma and how much I am taking or I was taking the past of being put into or at least perceiving that somehow my choices led me to horrible unsafe situations and being so afraid of making a choice that might do that as if it's my fault and as if I can't do anything about it. And when I was a child and when I had no awareness and I had no support, basically, and I had nobody advocating for me and keeping me safe, those were true. And now I'm in a different life and a different way of being in a different environment with a different people. And I'm a different person. I am that person and I'm so much more. So that's just not true anymore. And it's really hard for my system to accept that and I'm very, I'm trying to at least be very compassionate to my system for still feeling like everything's a threat and still having those thoughts that seem to drive so much of my fear and my decisions. And yet I also have a part of me that can watch that and notice that that's happening. And somehow I was able to really ground into that inside of why. And I'm showing myself that things are different. Things can be different. And you know what? In actual reality, outside of all of my fears and intrusive thoughts and this, that and the other thing and my beliefs, I could go into this and the things I am afraid of can happen. Things that are worse that I can't foresee can happen. And you know what? That's probably going to suck if that like is what my fears and my trauma and my OCD and like all the things like Glomon 2 later that like see I was right. But also, and I get to now immortalize this in a podcast. So I myself can hold myself accountable to this and literally listen to myself saying this. At least the healthier part of me saying this before if and when anything in the future happens. It's okay. If that happens, it's okay if things happen to go to shit in the future because then I can make different choices. I will be informed. I had tried and I can move through it because guess what? I have moved through everything else even with far less resources and less awareness, support and the presence and healing and recovery. So I won't let that keep me from trying and I can't deny genuinely how much joy and excitement I have for taking a step. And this is a step because this is a whole new chapter of my life. That's far beyond just picking. I am going to be starting a PhD program in neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It is me stepping into being so much of myself in so many ways without my fear fully limiting me from who I am and keeping me from who I am. And I see this as such a step to becoming more of myself, finding more of myself and healing because this is one step in accepting myself and showing my system, my brain, my body, my heart, like all of it that I am willing to advocate for who I am in my life. And I'm I'm willing to make decisions for who I am and that's to me just to step in starting to show myself love and care and acceptance rather than rejecting who I am so that I can live out of fear and self-protection. That's how it feels to me and I hope that that makes any sense. And so this one step is me unlocking the possibility of finding so much more of myself, which is really interesting and almost ironic to so much of the fear that I shared in honesty hour because I was so afraid that either I pick doing a program or I have time and space to buy myself and learn about myself and grow and do new things. Yet now I feel like doing this program is a version of doing exactly that and being the conduit for that because it's allowing me to to show up as myself and start letting other parts of myself come up and express itself and feel safe to start becoming passionate about things and engaging in things from a place of excitement and curiosity and finding hobbies and interests and living new ways that I have so deeply, so, so deeply craved and wanted for so long and yet just wasn't in a place from a safety standpoint, from a survival standpoint for so long to be able to ever even find or try or even know that exists within me. I have this craving but I have not known how to engage it and learn about myself and try things so it just feels like this is a beautiful way to do that and that's so beautiful and full circle for me and I get that really reminds me I guess of what I should probably tell you about the program itself and why I'm going there and about Madison. So, let me take you to, I guess, one of the foundational parts of how I came to this decision and how I am starting this next chapter which is UW Madison, how, where, why, all of it. So, when I applied to neuroscience PhD programs, I actually did it in a way that I was absolutely not recommended to, you know, I've talked at length in other episodes about how insanely competitive it is to get into a neuroscience PhD program. It, especially the cycle, I mean it's already just such a low percentage of people but the cycle that came out to be around like one to three percent of applicants got accepted and overall like across programs and basically the rationale of how to apply for programs is to, you know, of course, apply to your dream programs, top programs, whatever and then also apply to safety schools and apply to just as many programs as you can to cast the white a snet and get the, you know, a chance of getting into a program no matter if it's not in your top or not, you know, something super well-known in your field of interest or whatnot, like at least you're in a program, you're getting your foot in the door and whatever, right? And hello, Uma the contrarian, did not take that advice. I did quite the opposite. I applied to so few programs and I really only applied to programs where I could possibly study exactly what I want to study or something very, very, very close. And for me, that was studying the pathophysiology of OCD, perhaps also PTSD and pathophysiology means basically like how those disorders, how those psychiatric illnesses like look in the brain, how they're shaped in the brain, how they function in the brain on a neurobiological level. I wanted to study that and I wanted to study the effects of psychedelics on those conditions in preclinical models, this is what I applied saying. And of course, you have to know by now how invested I am in psychedelic science and research, given the research I've already done and all of my experiences. And I really wanted to use psychedelics as, or in the study of psychedelics as a way to look at how they interact with the mechanisms, the circuits, the functions that drive these conditions in the brain. And perhaps learn more about those conditions if they're interacting, if psychedelics are affecting those conditions on a biological level in a novel way that other treatments have not because if they're affecting them in a novel way, well, what are they affecting and what do we not know about how the disorder works in the brain because we really have so much to learn about them. So it sounds kind of like a lot, but in the field of neuroscience and applying to programs, that's like so niche, I can't even be can explain to you. And of course, I went in being okay with at least if I can't do all of that, then I have to be able to do one side of that. So either looking at those disease models and just like straight up studying those illnesses or studying psychedelics or in the neurobiology of psychedelics. So and then eventually in my future I could like bring those two together, but ideally do both, right? And even with applying to programs that I could do one or the other, there are so few programs and so not even programs. It's so basically when you're applying to these programs, you're applying to the program and you have to be a good fit for the program. Yet you also have to be a good fit with a good number of the primary investigators, the PIs, the people who have labs, who once you enter the program, you join a lab and you do your thesis, dissertation, research with this lab. They fund you, they mentor you like this is basically who you're married to for your PhD. And so a program is going to largely consider or accept a candidate based on how well they could fit with as many people within their faculty, within their PIs as possible. Because if you're only coming for one person, like that person could die, that person could quit, that person could be a horrible fit for them as a person. And you really can't accept a student based on like one person, they have to fit with enough people. Yet also like have a sense of what they want to do even if they end up changing later. So there's so many complex dynamics I play. And in terms of my interests, there are very few people doing anything I want to do studying either side of that equation I just told you about, because both of them are very novel and very niche. OCD is just, there's not that many PIs studying at the preclinical level or PTSD, but a little more for PTSD than OCD, but I'll admit, like I really, really, really want to study OCD. And there's also not that many people studying psychedelics. And so, and even if they are like to convince them to do it in the context of illnesses that I'm curious about, there's really not that many. So I applied to programs that I at least could find like two or three people that it could make my interests fit into their work, their lab slash they would let me expand into my work. And I connected with as many of them as I could and got really, really promising support from a lot of those investigators saying that, you know, if you were to make to the program, I'd love to have you in my lab. And so, with all of that, I only applied to a few programs and I was really not setting myself up for a whole lot of success in that and we can have a whole conversation about the entire application process and like all the dynamics of that for anyone interested another day. If you're looking to get into the field, I love sharing my experience to help demystify the whole process, but to sum it up applied and of the programs. I was the one program, I should say, that I on my application had too many people to list in my statement and on my application for who I could work with. And I say too many, I mean like over four people that it almost sounded like too enthusiastic was UW Madison. And that was something really interesting to me because I, so I initially looked at UW Madison because I had connected with a PI who studied psychedelics at a conference last year, who gave me a lot of support and basically really encouraged me to apply and you know, potentially work in their lab. And I knew someone, I know someone who's also doing very, very amazing psychedelic work at that school and I just thought it was an amazing fit. And so that's why I initially looked at that school and then in looking at the actual faculty of the people who listed their interests, I found more people who either did the psychiatric or psychedelic research that I wanted than I'm in a preclinical setting than any other school, which was really, really, really interesting. And so my application was like overflowing with people who I would potentially be able to work with and that really seemed to work out because I was invited to an interview, which I have to tell you I really really really didn't expect. And I speak at length about why and all the competitiveness and like my trajectory versus a traditional applicant and most of the people I was interviewing with in a cycle, their trajectories were far different and far more robust in certain ways than mine. So I was very surprised to receive an interview offer in general, especially there, especially because this program is so just I look I don't know that I love rankings and just quantifying things that way, but from like the standpoint of competitiveness and being able to get into a program like it's in the top 20 in the world for neurobiology. It's in the top five or 10 in the world for like psychiatric studies. It's just it's massive. They have a medical school. They have over 100 people and they're faculty members in their neuroscience department, which is not the thing I'm used to. Like it's just I truly didn't really see that in this cycle, I would be someone who might be going there to somewhere so just esteemed and so established in neurobiology and studies that I want to do especially psychiatric neurobiology. Yet it happened somehow and that was wild and then I went through my interviews and I met different faculty members and I just felt so so so resonant with the people who I talk to and I really you know once you get through the application side if you get an interview it's like you're in the final round of consideration. They basically it's like your qualifications are all set now it's about just you know sharing yourself and being a fit and being able to communicate and it's you know just a real life evaluation of a person rather than papers. So that my interviews were incredible. I got some just feedback I never expected at all about my competitiveness and being a fit for the program and I really really solidified my understanding of the fact that UW Madison of almost any of the neuroscience programs I've looked at neuroscience departments neuroscience PhD programs all of that like they folk they have like an entire heavy focus on psychiatric neurobiology which is so rare to find because oftentimes neuroscience really is looking at peripheral nervous system and neurodegenerative diseases and just the fundamental function of. You know cells neurons molecules like the properties of cells like all of those things which are so valid but I feel like there was so much missing in terms of feeling seen and feeling represented and wanting to study the applications of neurobiology and psychiatric conditions or neuropsychiatric conditions because of the. You know the stigma of mental illness it still exists in the world unfortunately and so being in an interviewing at an institution that so openly and prevalently and heavily endorsed psychiatric studies the point where they're. Outside of my interest just in general psychiatric studies there's just like an entire basically sub department an entire track of picking. Like on our application for that and just just tens and tens of faculty doing that like that really really solidified how much I resonated with the program and then also. On top of that they have one of the oldest psychedelic research centers out there they do everything from human studies all the way to the most molecular cellular things like it's just truly bench to bedside and they are very involved and immersed in. Psychedelic studies fields and so it just felt like. The exact right fit for me and then I got in it was amazing and I was flown out to Madison for a visitation weekend which typically for. Nurse or interview programs in general for PhD programs most programs would fly us out there for the interview itself and then. If you're accepted you just like decide but specifically for the ntp the you know you Madison I'm going to call ntp because that's what the program's called. They did all of the interviews virtually and then all the accepted applicants they flew out for a whole weekend which I thought was really cool because this weekend instead of like being bogged down. By the visitation and just like being under so much stress of all the interviews and being so distracted and associated and all that like I got to go and of course you're still being evaluated me to be. You know on good behavior and like presenting your best self but it wasn't in the context of interviews it was in the context of being accepted and getting to explore and see if this is a good place. For you a good fit really getting to ask more candid questions because you've already you have the safety of already being accepted so. I was blown out for a weekend to Madison and two of the four days were really doing stuff with the program and then I had two days to just explore and so for those two days that were not with a program my husband flew out to Madison to and. We. Explored everything about Madison and. It was in short. magical. And I mean, of course, I could tell you the vegetation itself was incredible. Everyone is amazing. The students were so kind. The current students, the people who really just answered so many of my questions. I got to meet so many principal investigators of whom like have now already reached out to me to ask me to rotate in their lab, which is so, so exciting because already opportunities of like being able to explore where I might end up if lab wise. So all of that was beautiful. The facilities were phenomenal. I got to meet my friend who goes there and does the research there. And so I got like more of an inside look into the labs beyond what the actual like program showed me. And just everything from the academic side, the campus, like whatever was beautiful. And I already started like everything I had experienced about the city and the place so far was so amazing. But of course, could have been covered or colored by rose colored glasses because of how great of a time I was having at this interview or this visitation weekend. But then the two days after that I was there without having to do NTP stuff, me and my husband like rented a car, scoped out the entire area. It was just so magical, neither of us expected to fall in love with the place as much as we did. Oh, and one of my dearest friends, Carly, who is one of the directors of IPN, the intercollegiate psychedelix network as well. Just in the most serendipitous way is also moving there. And we were both there at the same time to visit. So like I got to hear a lot of her perspective as well from exploring and her values and how her and her husband want to live and how much mass and fit that. And that just gave me so much more excitement and also just insight into the different places to look in the city and just like it really expedited the process of my husband and I like really immersing ourselves in the city and taking in the culture and the way people interacted with each other, how present they were. The words of Wisconsin people, like how aggressively outdoors everyone was even amongst a literal snowstorm and being in freezing weather, which I actually loved and I know like I'm speaking creatively and it's being there for a long time poses a lot of challenges, but I love the cold and I've been in the heat for far too long. And at the time people in Wisconsin also said that it was it was the most like ugly time ever there, like compared to the rest of the year. And that was wild to my husband and I because it was so freaking beautiful, like the frozen lakes so Madison is in an Isthmist as they call it or it is an Isthmist, I don't know. I have a lot to learn with Midwestern language and geography and all those things that I am very bad at, but anyway it's in the middle of two lakes and this lakes are just frozen when it's cold and it's just so beautiful. And there's so much elevation and nature and people are so just engaged with life and there's so much community and vibrancy and just oh my gosh I just I fell in love and he fell in love like aggressively and he's pretty much been sold on it for his life and his values and everything around him. And I have been sold on it except for my fears of everything I talked about in terms of like making the actual decision of why I'm moving there for what purpose the PhD program so just had an incredible weekend came back and have just been in the state of when I perceive to be confusion and fear doubt all of that but coming back to what I was talking about full circle though with making this choice and this choice being an avenue. For me to honor and claim parts of myself and that being how I can unlock and allow the safety for more parts of myself to come out and more avenues of my interest to to feel safe to express themselves. I felt so much of what I had been missing and what I had been craving like I felt a innate and active alignment and desire with Madison like I'm trying to put it into words that are translatable it makes sense but just the way people live the way people are the excitement the configuration like I I will ever forget this I got off the plane when I landed at Madison at the airport and I. Exited the airport with my bag waiting for the shuttle to the hotel and the first thing I did was I called my husband and I said I feel so alive right now and it was just like standing outside and experiencing just I mean I was at the corner of that city like I'm even experiencing the whole thing but like just experiencing. Madison and just the beginning of that I was like I feel so alive and that in some is what that city and that environment did for me just the ways people live and they are and how they engage and the culture and the nature oh my gosh the nature and so much of what I feel environmentally I haven't even had the ability to access within myself. I feel like I'm just trying to help myself so I feel like I'm just trying to help myself so I feel like I'm experiencing the whole thing. I can't go back and so part of this decision to move there is not just to do the PhD it's everything that comes with being able to actively see and be more of myself whoever that is that's such a gift because I have missed that for so much of my life and I felt that void and I've known for a while and I've always said like I don't have hobbies. I don't I'm so boring probably like all these very surface statements that they sound like at least but what I'm really saying or what I've been saying is like I don't have access to myself outside of what I perceive to be work and being productive being good being functional whatever becoming like stopping being in survival mode and like learning how to live and that's all well and good but there's so much more within me and this has just shown me that that is possible and I get to choose to take a leap of faith for myself to start finding more of that whatever that is and I don't even know what that is and that's the wild thing and I'm deciding from that anyway and also a huge part of this decision, this chapter, this realization that came from the call of the world. It came from the culmination of everything and really just showed itself after the sales I haven't experienced was that I have felt like I need to be either or in terms of sure I'm getting my master's neuroscience but either I need to claim my advocacy my lived experience and I need to just very in a small way inform my advocacy and when I care about that realm with the knowledge I've accrued this far and the research I've done in a small way not to say a master's a small but for me compared to what I know I can do and gain and achieve and learn through a PhD in that level of mastery. I felt like I either needed to just stop here and lean into my advocacy and the things that are very real and true for me or I needed to suppress more of my advocacy lived experience part of who I am and how I show up and lean into becoming what people becoming what has been shown to me to be a neuroscientist a PhD student candidate PhD like a person who fits a very specific mold who speaks about certain things and shows up a certain way and is just very professional follows a set of standards and rules and is very just what the system and what has been portrayed to me like is and I realized that that was eating at me and I thought I needed to be either or and I could not be all of it and so I felt like there was a decision to make and. None of the decisions felt right which I did say in the honesty hour episode but I didn't realize like that context that really visceral insight of why none of that felt right to me. And once again on theme on brand with this episode with everything I've shared, I realized that that was a belief I had created for myself. And of course, it's founded in a lot of information, data, reality that I have taken in, combined with interest of thoughts and fears I have. But it was grounded in what I had perceived from the system, from people, everything. And I am not a person who lives by those conventions. I haven't thus far. Nitrous directory has been, for better or for worse, like completely unprecedented, unique and out of the scope of normality. I don't show up in the world as such. So why would I be making a decision with that belief when I already don't live that way? I don't have to be either or a scientist or someone who actively advocates and shares lived experience. And don't get me wrong. I never would have gone one route or the other completely suppressed the other side per save. But I didn't feel like I could be all of that fully at once. And it's not even like, it's a pie chart where it's like some takes more than the other. It's like these different parts of myself that can equally express themselves at full capacity that just like any other human, they have so many parts of themselves and they all exist, different roles, different ways of existing. They all exist and show up together, sometimes more or less in different situations, but I'll show up together. I also have that in me. And yet I was thinking that I either had to shrink one or the other and just move forward with that. And the truth is I don't have to do that. Yes, I have not seen that model to me. I have not seen that normalized hell. I haven't even had that validated to me by people or whatever people that could justify this to me on either side, that that is okay. And also who cares? Like I, yeah, there's fear. Yeah, I'm a human being that I have deep innate primal instincts for acceptance and compliance and whatnot. And I get to recognize that and also realize that I'm now living in my world in this world where I've already not followed those conventions and I have gotten here anyway. I already have this opportunity. I have all these opportunities across all of these parts of my identity in the way I show up in the world. And why would I shrink any of them? Of course, a side of bandwidth and time, which is a different conversation, but in terms of just who I am and how I show up in the world, if fundamentally, coming back to when I talked about in the episode at the beginning, like if part of who I am is this deeply curious passionate person who acts on it with my thoughts and my creative nature and my expression, then why would I shrink that in any direction? Why can't they all sprout and why can't they all coexist and why do I need to think that I need to fit into a norm of one way or the other? I get to be who I am and that's ever evolving and who knows how much more will grow and change, but why would I pick a path quote unquote by like limiting myself and that totally changed how I viewed this decision because I can't be and am all of it. And I truthfully wasn't ever going to be able to turn one side off, but I was just thinking that there was an illusion of that and I was just going to be disappointed and suppressed and have to go through a lot of pain to come back to this realization, but luckily I had it now and I get to make this decision from a place of fullness and excitement and acceptance and hope and fear and shame and all the very real things that existed in that last episode and I talked to you about this and still exist now because they all can exist. All the parts meet can exist, all of the truths and realities can coexist and I can still move forward in what I now understand to be a values driven but even more so like a deeply accepting and this tiny part of me that's starting to grow, that part of me that is from who I am and who I was without all of the experiences that caused that to be suppressed. So that means I am moving forward as a scientist, as a researcher, as an advocate, as a science communicator, all of it and more. Those are just the things that I do with my vocation and then also my leadership roles and everything like how I express who I am and outside of all of that and in conjunction with all of that, I'm also moving forward with all the possibilities of the things I don't even know that are within myself right now that are waiting to be expressed and come out and meet new experiences to be able to show up in response to them and this choice, this chapter is for all of that and I am not diluting myself into thinking that it's going to be sunshine, daisies, roses, everything's going to go perfectly, that's just not life and that's okay, but I'm moving forward with what I have now and in acceptance of that and it's all of the things, it's all of the things but clearly you can perceive, you can see, you can feel my excitement, my elation, my joy, my hope, all of it and my fear and all of it. So now you have it, I am moving with my husband to add my dog to Madison, Wisconsin at the end of the summer to start my PhD in neuroscience at UW-Madison and I am going a full force forward with not only my research and my science career but also and also my advocacy, my outreach, my science communication, I am, I already told you at the beginning of this podcast, the two of the amazing presentations coming up and I have so many more incredibly exciting opportunities and conferences and things I'm going to be doing in line bringing together all of my roles and of course this podcast is that and I have to say I attribute so much of being able to accept myself at integrate all parts of myself into this very big chapter and decision moving forward. I attribute so much of that to this podcast and not just being able to do this podcast but being so accepted and uplifted and supported in this podcast because this is episode 10. I have put myself out 10 times at this point plus my trailer so really 11 times plus all of the social media, all of the promotion, all of the everything in this integrated version of myself showing up in what I didn't realize as the person that I didn't think I could be in real life. I was showing up on the podcast bringing together everything and you all okay I'm going to try not to cry. You all have just given me so much affirmation and support and kindness and love and show with me that I and what I do and me being every part of me makes a difference and is needed in this world amongst all everybody else's voice my voice and the way I show up makes a difference to you and the amount that you have uplifted me and supported me in this podcast has given me so much hope and empowerment for fully moving forward in this integrated way and for that I can't thank you enough. And I'll have to leave it there because I could go on forever but thank you and that is why among so many reasons this is such an honor and joy to share with you here first to tell you what this chapter looks like where I'm going what I'm doing everything to come to be able to share this part of my life with you and to celebrate your life and this community and your experiences by hearing from you is the greatest gift and I can't wait to keep going I can't wait to bring so much more to you from this integrated space all of the science all the lived experience all the advocacy all of the truth all of the real talk all the honesty all of the all of the everything because we are all integrated beings and I hope you got that from this episode so thank you for being here with me as I share this exciting next chapter and also everything within me that contributed to this decision, this path, because you know me. I have to tell you everything that came from the inside. That's just who I am. And I can't wait to be on this path with you and to grow with you. So as always, if you love the show, if you'd love this episode, then if you could just take one second right now to subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening to this episode, that way you will be the first to receive episodes every single week and it supports me so much. Also, if you can take five more seconds and just leave a really quick five-star rating and review wherever you're listening to this, because that is how the show can reach more people and can grow and this community can flourish together. It makes the biggest difference. So please subscribe, leave a rating and review and send this episode or any episode that resonates with you to anybody who you think would love to hear this conversation and be a part of this experience with us. And please share this on social media, share the clips and the images that I post on my accounts. It makes the biggest difference and helps more people join this community and just thank you so much for leaving me supporting me, sharing yourself with me and allowing me to see you in this year. This is the greatest gift. I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful you're here and I can't wait to see you next time on the next episode of a chat with Emma.