15. The Great (Recovery) Reckoning: Graduation, Burnout, & The Truth About Transition

(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 beautiful friends. I am back and it has been a minute. It's been a few weeks about a month, maybe a little bit over a month. And I definitely did not warn y'all about this because I didn't know what would happen either. And truthfully, I'm kind of sweaty. Like I'm kind of nervous coming back. I've been really anticipating this episode has maybe been a build up of like, how do I explain it? How do I make it okay, et cetera, et cetera? And I know, and I'm realizing on a visceral level too, but logically, I know that it's just an explanation of life being what it is. And living and breathing the example that I would hope I share for others of working on self-compassion and life, ebbing and flowing and needing to take a step back and deal with the circumstances. And there in this time since I've started the podcast, there was one week that I missed an episode. And that was because one of my parents had a very scary accident and was staying with us. And I had to take care of them and just a lot. And that made sense. And I felt so guilty and shameful about taking a week off, only to then several weeks later take a few weeks off. And it's a testament of faith and self-love and compassion and commitment to come back and just own it. And this episode is just a recap of all this time. But I just wanted to be, as always, you know this, so, so honest about how I feel, what's coming up for me. Just not putting on this facade of, oh yeah, I was gone. And now I'm back and we're returning back to normal, which we are in the sense that these conversations are not going anywhere. And oh my gosh, I cannot tell you the number of episodes I have interviews with amazing people that are ready to go, that just need me to actually edit them and put them out in the coming weeks, which will be happening, 'cause life is kind of sort of getting back on track now. I mean, I'm starting to realize that there might not be a track or on track that I just keep desperately hoping for, maybe at the stage or ever. But it's barring, you know, unforeseeable circumstances, which are always possible. Things are coming back to where they were and even better. So I have so many episodes ready to go. And the summer is chock full of interviews that I am so, so, so excited about with people whom I have looked up to for so long, and they're on the books and I'm just, I won't be a tease, but I'm so excited for all the theorists to come. But I also wanted to acknowledge that I committed to myself and to everybody that I'm gonna be here every week. And I did that for a while and then I needed some time and I didn't know I needed the time. And I'll catch you up on everything, but I just wanna say hello and I miss you all so much. And I'm sending you all so much love, all the love that I'm trying to give myself, I am fully giving to you all. And, you know, it's wild, it's so wild to me is I, you know, this is new, the podcast is new. I've been an advocate and someone speaking and sharing for quite a long time throughout the years and different ways in my life, but the podcast itself and like consistently committing to something and completely being on my own platform has been a new thing and, you know, I'm very, very early in my journey of learning and doing and being in this way as you of course know. And I mean, I just started this at the beginning of the year. So I totally 1000% believed that, you know, there's a reason that commitment and consistency and momentum is a thing that is generally helpful for nurturing an audience and creating a community and being just showing up, you know, and people generally knowing that there will be another conversation with Uma next week and I can reliably keep listening and stay engaged because this is new and we're developing this space of trust and support and love here, right? So I, knowing all of that, was fully 1000% convinced that with this inadvertent pause, I need to take for a few weeks that, okay, there goes the podcast, there goes, you know, the community that has been developing and the engagement, the interest, there's gonna be no listens, no new listeners, no nothing and those who were listening will probably drop it and think that this was just a podcast that someone started and talked for, you know, a few episodes 'cause there's so many podcasts, you know, there's podcasts that have like three episodes or maybe like 10 episodes and then nothing, it just they just stop because someone tries it out and they think it's, you know, gonna work and then it's not for them and they stop, right? So I was so afraid people were gonna think that and I was just fully ready to basically start over with this episode and rebuild. What I did not expect in the solitus was number one, you know, this is not for the numbers, this is not for any sort of thing, like I'm showing up as I am for this because I care and I love this and I am committed to it and it's for me and for you. However, there are numbers to just generally speaking show me if the things I'm talking about are engaging and what do people resonate with and what do they not and what keeps, you know, people the most supported and happy listening to this and how can I best serve the community that I'm building and talking to? So those numbers definitely thought they'd be like, you know, close to nothing zero and it would just be stagnant. (laughs) The reality blew my mind somehow, some way. I mean, I would love to know who the new people are that are joining us and how you're learning about this, how this is growing because I think, I don't know, I'm so bad at math, but like whatever everything was, like at the time I had the last episode I put out a few weeks ago to like now, it's increased by I think the number is 125%, basically like a fourth of what has happened has now been added. So the point is like a fuck ton more plays and unique listeners and just every week I look, I try not to look too much, but I look and I'm like, okay, this is the week that the listener count is gonna go down and to the numbers are just gonna stop and it just keeps going and going and going and going up every week. And I am just like who is listening, where is this coming from? I think it's across the board, most of the episodes are getting new listens. There are a few that like get far more than the others or like that were the most popular, but across the board, all of them have been getting a bunch more listens. And I just have to say, number one, welcome. Thank you for being here and I'm so, so excited to welcome you to this beautiful space and community that we're co-creating together. And to the people, I'm guessing that have been listening, that have been here from the start. I'm guessing that you're sharing the show with new people in your world who are then coming into this space and partaking and listening. And that is so beautiful to me. It's so wild, it's one thing to be on the side of the microphone and camera and just be asking y'all to share this and to be in support of the show and to share it with your friends and recommend it to people if you, if it calls to you. It's another thing to actually see that happening. And it's, you know, I could attribute that to, oh, I'm putting out podcasts every week and blah, blah, blah, but it's actually so beautiful to have had this data point of I stop and people are still coming and listening and growing and that has to be, I mean, I can't think of any other reason other than because of y'all. It has to be. because of y'all. I've eliminated pretty much all the other variables other than, I don't know, circumstance, but I don't think it is. I think it's y'all. And so thank you so much that just really just felt like so much love and such a big hug like through this the past several weeks of not being able to record episodes and just feeling so sad and shameful and disconnected and all of the negative self talk I had just to see like a literal objective proof of the other, of it being otherwise just means so much because this space and you all means so much to me and for y'all to show up and to support me and of course the messages and like asking where I was and like am I okay but I've been posting ish on social media so y'all know that I'm like a life indecently okay so there just isn't the question of is the podcast coming back or are you doing it and of course to those who ask I said yes it's just a pause. So thank you and I love you all so much and hmm enough to eat it up let's just get into the episode and all the recaps all the backgrounds and smelling all the tea and sharing all the things. Okay so let's go back to early May of obviously this year it's June 18th right now because yes I'm recording this right before the day it comes out because I just want the freshest update possible and I'm procrastinated. Anyway so May early May of this year I had just come off of like I don't even know like 10 presentations in the week's prior on so many different platforms domains mostly conferences it was just so much and I had come back from England from a 10 day trip amongst still being in full time school and getting close to graduation at all my lab work and whoo it was just a lot and I was already reaching by the end of my rope like bandwidth wise but I had to just hold the fuck on and just go go go because it was the end of the semester it was all of the final projects and exams and like just everything that comes at the end of the semester also I was about to graduate is my final semester ever and so just really wanting to end on a strong foot and make sure frankly that I get the 4.0 GPA and that's part of it a lot of it was my lab work so you know my lab work is so so or was because I'm done ish but my lab work for my master's was so so intensive y'all heard me talking about it and posing about it all the time because I was always in the lab outside of classes and you know surviving and I was doing such long experiments and so in terms of like finishing out it's it's kind of a funny thing like graduations one thing it's like graduating from school being done with the degree moving on like you've met your commitment with a lab like I'm doing this amongst my master's degree it's like a huge part of my development it's probably like by far where I spent the most amount of time for my degree and there's an element of getting for at least in my program like getting credits for it toward my degree but what I did for the lab and my work was far beyond the credits and the requirements and everything so it's like this whole other situation relationship like commitment to close out and so it's not just like oh this master's over I'm graduating by like I was using as a time marker for what I was going to ideally leave the lab but it's really about like finishing your experiments and not just that but whoo the data analysis and like so I maintained my schedule of all of the same intensity of my lab work and ramped it up a little bit actually in terms of specifically my experiments and to close everything out and then there were so many other things to close out which took out far longer than I expected and kids don't recommend but I had to okay maybe like long story short it wasn't super fun but the experiment I do it's like the same it's really long there's a lot to it but it's like doing the same thing over and over until 10s a week and so there's like a fuck ton of papers in terms of like literal papers like pieces of paper where I'm writing down all of the things that happen because for anyone who most of y'all are probably not in a wet lab or in a biological research lab like you have to write everything down you have to log absolutely everything related to your experiment like the dosages of things and the timing of things and did the animal wake up at this point did the animal like it's subjective based on experiment but for my experiment it's a very long like six to eight hour experiment every single time I do it and there's so so much to write down and so I had come up I'm a systemizer I'm an optimizer like that's how my brain works and so I come up with a system of like rather than okay so we have lab notebooks and that's where people write everything down and these are so so it's tedious as fuck but they're so precious and so important to research because it's really where integrity is held and where everything is recorded primarily in the moment ideally or like very soon after and it's you know the record of all things especially because once you know you're parsed through data or there's questions about things like that is the living breathing like diary of time or where everything is logged and you can see like for example there's like this weird week where the data looks different like oh you can see that maybe these things happened and there's a commonality or maybe the temperature is different you know whatever so this lab notebook is in some hugely important to research and I with my six to eight hour experiment every single day had like I would say like at least 10 to maybe 12 pieces of paper to write all the stuff on but like not in my notebook because I systemize it so I typed out like basically a skeleton to remind me of all the things I needed to write down plus more and so I have like that many papers per experiment and you know I just kept telling myself like oh I'll just eventually put them in my lab notebook and like organize all of it until the end of the time when I was supposed to be there so that was like a huge undertaking but I just knocked it out in like two days but it was just that was a lot so that was one tiny part of it but in reality I was just saying that's an example of like one thing that had to be done before leaving the lab there are far more things it was you know taking all of the tissue that I had frozen or cut from the animals that I've done my experiments on because I had been building a repository of a bunch of tissue for like a lot of it I had process and done stuff but then you know my primary experiment then collected so many different things for so many different other analyses and experiments to be done by other people that will you know be other parts of like the papers that I'm going to be a part of and so I had to go through and like I had been very diligent about like logging them properly and labeling them and it had a whole system but like I had to go through and make sure all of it was actually there it was labeled like meta labeled so that anyone who could like who would participate this in the future could like go in and look at my stuff and know exactly what to do where everything was and just like there was so much there was like so much to go through and then writing basically like an entire paper when I say paper I mean like a research paper about all the work I had done and like do and then that including doing all of the data analysis which was wild and it was so fulfilling but it was so much just work and interpretation and really really really taking ownership of my data and my work as a master student as someone who did a lot of experiments like very very intensively and I guess all of that to say I mean I just rambled about like some of the details and some of the my skip the details but the point is like it was I thought I would be done with the lab like by the time I literally like walked the stage or the day after so I scheduled my final like downloading like off-boarding meeting with my PI my mentor Dr. Colbert the day after I walked the stage and I think I walked the stage on like the 17th of May and so my meeting was the 18th of May and I was like okay I will be done and I had done to my credit I had done so much work to prepare for that meeting because I tried to anticipate and glean like any type of thing I'd be I'd be asked to do and I did and I was you know I was given affirmation of like being so prepared and yet there was so more to do and honestly like I'm the one who offered more things to do like I had more questions more race to analyze my data more edits just like things I wouldn't be pretty nasty me but I wanted to leave like feeling as much as I could that I had been like fully I'd done my best I had given all I could give and that doesn't really end necessarily like in science and research because you know The totality of everything that would go into the papers that are gonna come out for my work or still ongoing And so there's still more contributions to like re-inalize things and add to the picture and write and whatever But in terms of like the finality of as much as I could do I just wanted to make it as robust as possible and that meant So much more work and so it yeah, so I did that That was amongst just such a interesting transition period of Actually graduating with my master's which like I totally glossed over and talking about the lab stuff because On the one hand it felt like oh, I'm not done like I have so much to do but on the other hand like Holy shit. I Finished a master's degree in neuroscience like Like four years ago. I was just like Never thought I would go back to school to redeem my 1.83 GPA and my undergrad at the one institution I thought I would never go back to and like my life was in complete jambals and I'm now graduating with a master's degree like I That's almost it's all their episode like processing that but really it's just it was such a strange time It was so overwhelming. It was so fearful and there was so many It was just like a rife of intrusive thoughts of like did I do enough that I learned enough at my deserving of this like You know Those are the logical versions of the thoughts but really it was so intrusive so Overwhelming of just feeling like it would get Taken away from me logically or I was a fraud. I was a fake like you know, you can imagine probably and It was a it was a whole lot to move through when I was in I was such fear of it like Falling through and it didn't it didn't I graduated with 4.0 and somehow some way I'm here And that was just a lot emotionally. I was also I've just been going nonstop since I started like regaining functionality and going back to school and for my undergrad and then my masters and I Was so overwhelmed with how much I had been doing and at the same time it kept me slightly consumed and distracted from all of the like processing and Space and you know like transition to the next chapter that it was so fucking afraid of because I got Incomfortable with like the chaos of all that I'd been working to But only to like actually work to something and get it and then be in transition to something new like that's so new for me like You hear me talking today about all the things I'm doing and where I'm going and my degrees and my identities and blah blah blah But like this is so so new to me relative to the decades. I spent just being so lost and confused and Like I never dreamed about a life like this like I didn't even aspire for it because I didn't It didn't even cross my mind that it's a possibility for me and so I just have not had the space to adjust to Or even like try to start acclimating to the reality as much as there is obsession And it'll doubt like there is a part that can just kind of process and slow down and start to Slightly work on acceptance of of all that is and so that was all just you know coming to a head and Graduating and ending the lab meant that I was Officially I had done all of these things and I'm moving on to the next thing and The next thing is so fucking afraid by next thing I mean moving and starting a PhD in neuroscience amongst All the other things I'm doing but like that being the main thing It's so much more comfortable to just be a student like a master's student working toward this thing that now has been Handed to me that I have earned and Graduating from a lab feeling just like incomplete and feeling like I'm just I'm working toward this thing and like in particular my experiments It's kind of funny and Testament to like Feeding into the long game for me and not getting this immediate satisfaction of like my experiments take so long And I have to my particular experiment just had so many more subjects in the average experiment because of the nature of it Which we can get into another day, but there was honestly just this comfort of like Feeling like I'm in this marathon. I'm in this marathon. I'm like so deep in it and I Don't have to like I'm so far from the finish line. I'm working so hard at this marathon Even though it feels like I'm putting forth the effort of a sprint Because honestly, that's what I was doing. I was like sprinting amongst marathon a marathon Maybe one day I'll actually do any of this like an actual marathon, but Metaphorically, I'm sprinting in this marathon and it feels comfortable To be far from the end because I am so afraid of being who I am at the end and then starting something new based on what I had Accomplished in my first ever marathon that I didn't even know as possible so being just Deep in this marathon like it was I was so tired and burnt out and over it honestly very over it and craving space and time and yet my system also Wasn't feeling like it was ready for that and so There was a comfort of that and then I can kind of see how once I Technically graduated it was so fucking scary to just move into a different space of less going on and Processing all I had done and the transition and moving forward and like really accepting stuff and I definitely kept that marathon going with like my lab work until I Just couldn't and I had to just be done which took far longer than I wanted it was the beginning of June But I did it and I wish I could tell you that then I Started the time I needed but I didn't instead in the time since then it's been a combination of actual things going on in life that warranted a lot more attention and bandwidth and pain and fear and stress for an average, you know, a regular human being outside of me To begin with and then there's also the rules I played in that and My own baggage and the ways that I cope maladaptively that just really have gotten me to This place or I guess a little bit earlier in this place because obviously I'm here now and things are hopefully shifting but I was just in such a state of overwork and overwhelm and I felt frozen ending and there were opportunities to throw myself into because I being me As much as I have been just telling everybody and craving that like this summer I'm gonna have space and time outside of the few conference the few the few conferences that I'm going to That fill me up and are not easy but simple and bring you joy. This is gonna be space for me to finally rest and have time before I start this New level of marathon at the PhD but my system was just not was so afraid of actually resting and I had sent myself up for a far busier summer than I thought I would Just I mean high level long story short There are multiple conferences and it's not as simple as just presenting at them There's also involvement from like organizations I'm in and the the roles I hold but then them that are far more than presenting It's like sponsorships and events and Media and doing the nitty gritty and planning and doing and you know utilizing my strategic brain That from a past life of work and careers and how applying that now and being so aligned with the mission of things I've just like Taken it upon myself to fill all the gaps and everything that's not being done and just like throw myself into stuff and feeling like if they don't get done Everything's gonna go to shit and you know two things can be true like These are amazing opportunities that for you know my work and More importantly I for my the organization then I'm in that I think it's valid to want to take full advantage of these opportunities and do the absolute most and best to You know make the biggest impact and grow as an organization and For me I have really struggled with like because something can be done at a hundred percent should be done And there is no caveat of like my actual well-being or bandwidth or time And so I'm basically just like working all day every day even though I'm not in school. I'm not in lab and You know again those things and this is before getting into like the more serious stuff But like those things weren't time and energy and I have made it to where there is no option for me and there's no end and it just needs to be better and I can't I haven't been able to accept that maybe there's a Limit to what we can't do in my bandwidth and beyond that. It just is what it is and it will be as good as it is and we will move on And grow from there at a different pace and I just My system just like latched on to that because it was an excuse to just be busy and I'm saying it like it's done It's not done and there's more conferences and I'm so excited, but there was that and then More importantly, I would say Or I guess more importantly in terms of like the gravity of the situation I've talked about it the podcast before both my parents are having at the same time being completely separate from each other um They they're completely separate from each other, they're divorced, alone, immigrants. They're both having health crises. And I've been dealing with one of my parents, cancer diagnosis, and going through active treatment and supporting them and complications. And it's been a lot. And this past several weeks have been like a, we're not giving too much away for their privacy. Just like a huge sprint of daily, active, intensive treatments that as a caregiver, for them as their primary caregiver, I've been working through with them. And anytime I'm not doing that, I'm putting into basically working over full time for all the different things I have signed up for that I believe in that I'm doing. And this is not a complaining thing at all. It's really not. I take full responsibility for it. I think there's a bigger conversation to be had about the way I've been operating with this. And I know I'm not the only one. Here's the hard truth for me. The coexisting truth, I guess. On the one hand, I am a human who needs space and rest and recovery, processing. Ideally hobbies, things for fun, not being productive all the time, resting, taking care of myself, and the other coexisting unfortunate truth, 'cause the first one wasn't unfortunate, but the second one is the coexisting unfortunate truth is that all of the things I just listed, my system thinks is a threat. I have been conditioned to and have developed unhelpful maladive coping strategies to not do any of those things. And it is far easier to just busy myself to the bone and to be consumed by high level performance and vigilance and all of these things. And the thought processes that really fuel those really unhealthy standards and ways of operating are very valid and are rooted in the sad, traumatic grief-ridden reality that I lived so much of my life dysfunctional. Up till I was really truly, I mean, things started to turn around at 23, 24-ish, I'm 27 now. And things really sped up like 25-ish. So the last three years, really, have been of any, and I'm not saying even to this level, this level I'm at now is like nothing I've ever experienced, but the three years, the past three years of my life, relative to 27 years, so really like 24 years versus three years of like completely different existence of recovery, of purpose, of presence, of capability, of improvement, glimpses of joy, passion, drive, just a totally different life. And I've also like truly almost lost my life multiple times, both from attempts on my life, and just being so acutely aware of like, man, had I actually died from those attempts, I would never have lived this way, and I was so close to that I'm so acutely aware of the preciousness of life and the gratitude, and the luck of things turning around for me, and then like actually almost dying from being riddled by illness, and then particularly with cancer, it's just coming out of that, all of that, that, you know, builds up to all of that, and then like life changing, I'm living with an actual reality in the thoughts of like, wow, I have this new chance of life. Let me maximize this, let me do as much as I can. Let me take advantage because you never ever know when life is going to end and when things can change. And that has been true and is normal ish for people who are coming out of survival mode and who have struggled for so long and who are getting any chance of life in their perception, and it has gone so far beyond that, and has completely just coalesced and dug its claws into my maladaptive coping mechanisms and given it so much fertile ground to just fuel, working and doing and being productive and being busy all the time to avoid all that lies underneath and that needs attention to, because it's so scary and feels so unsafe, you know? And it's hard. It's also hard because I'm really sitting with this concept of, we'll let me back up before I explain the concept. So many times people are burnt out and so miserable because they're living their life out of integrity, out of authenticity, out of alignment, out of just, you know, all those buzzwords, but like really what I'm trying to say is like, they're doing things they don't wanna do, they're living lives that they don't wanna live, they don't care, they're not passionate, like, and it's not in any way, this is not like, because they're raw or bad, it's because like, we've been conditioned to just follow paths and you know, we've been fear-mongered and shamed into doing things we should do versus what we wanna do and you know, people come into their passions if they're lucky later in life and there's so many people living that way and burnt out oftentimes for many people comes from living so, like burnt out and sickness and pain and just suffering so many times, it's not the only reason, but can be hugely fueled by not doing what they, and some like, wanna be doing and living a life that they wanna live and then they, you know, see get a path of doing things differently and their lives improve, right? The issue for me is all that was true plus like so much other suffering that you know about or will know about if you listen in previous episodes and then I started building a life and starting to learn about myself and paving a carving a path that is taking twists and turns and gone places I did not expect it to but my life is so much like driven by purpose and I love the things I do, I love everything I do, I'm so passionate if it's not obvious, I'm just, I love everything about where I put my energy and time and so it's really hard because that's the answer for me isn't, oh like you're just not doing what you wanna do, it's you're doing too much and you're so lit up that that's burning you out, the concept of being so lit up that you're burnt out because you're doing so much and you're so activated and you're so passionate and you're so busy and you're so overwhelmed because humans aren't maybe supposed to do so much and I know everyone has different capacities and maybe I have a higher one than I thought but like I feel very non-resident with the way I show up and being so on the flip side of all of that I said just like so scattered, so overwhelmed, so behind, so not taking care of myself, so tired, so you know, I still live with disabilities and chronic illnesses and like I already, I mean even, I've heard this from so many different people like even the most able bodied like functional healthy person doing the amount that I'm doing, probably would be able to sustain it in a healthy way. It's just too much for like a mind to handle like this many things and of course people do it and how they do it is their prerogative but for the most part I'm doing too much for a human in general which is really hard for me because like I, it was hard for me to hear that because I kind of just thought that the reason I felt this way was because of my disabilities because of my limited bandwidth compared to other people and with the internalized judgments I have of myself I felt like that can't stop me, I still, like I'm alive like I need to do as much as I can like even if I had limitations like I will let my limitations stop me and that's self-love, that's self-judgment and that's self-hate and then to hear that oh even if you didn't have these limitations like you're doing too much for a person period that was like a whole new slap in the face and I reckon for me of like, what am I doing? And it's so hard because it's so hard to trim things for my life because they're all for the most part like super super super aligned and I'm so grateful and privileged to be able to say that that I'm there at this place in my life and I know what it's like to not be and I know how many people aren't there and so I think in that way it makes things even harder because it's truly just learning to have to say no and give up or limit things that I truly wanna do and love for the sake of this foreign concept of balance and space and you know my therapist has made a really good point that like I probably am not in a place to just like radically change everything right now like my system, there's a reason it's so busy it's just a way to consume myself from not being present with less stimuli and having to like learn how to regulate myself because I'm still very very traumatized, overactive, like unprocessed and-- visual and the sad answer is like slowly chipping away at it and slowly building mindfulness and slowly making more space and I have been doing that over like the last year but like it's very slow and I don't like it and I don't like how I feel being so just overactive and stretched everywhere and yet that is what my system has done and I sound like I'm shaming myself and I probably am but I also understand at least conceptually you see my eye roll right now but I understand conceptually why this is happening and I'm going into all of this because I know I'm not the only one that lives this way and that feels and hopes this way and I want to validate you and let you know that of course you're not alone that's like the whole point of everything I do for you to know you're not alone it's feeling powered and progress not perfection but also to just have an honest and open conversation about this version of existence because it's just not talked about as much and I wish that I heard other people just talking about having this experience even if they don't have the answer as if magic bullet answer existed but even if they don't have like a long-winded answer like I do like a like a solution which I don't I just wish I heard about it so that I could feel like I'm not the only one and not shame myself so much from a place of like look how fucked up I am compared to everybody else and I know we all know that we don't know it's actually going on in people's lives and we never know or we never will know really but I just crave more authenticity and like what's on the other side of seeing someone do all these things and being you know maybe maybe they handle it well and they're doing it for a healthy place and that's great and then there's versions of people like me where I'm constantly getting praise and accolades and whatever for like my busyness and guess and like yes the content of what I'm doing sure you may think is worth a shit I don't know I don't see it but you do and like what is the other side of that and what is the price and is it worth it and it's not a binary answer but why not ask the question and create the space so I had to bring it up and go on that tangent with you all you're not alone and I'm working on it every single day every single day every single hour minute which sounds exaggerated but it's really not because I'm so hyper aware probably to a fault in a judgmental way of how spending my time and what I'm doing and trying not to shame myself and just feel compassion and make different choices that when I can when I have the awareness and to know that there's not really a healthy way to radically completely change the way I'm doing because systems heal slowly and as much time it took to build a system that is mine it's gonna take time to adjust it and work on giving glimpses of healing to it that's just how it works and I can actually give you an example of that in action for me of just noticing and both of these things being true and just trying to make small choices to sort of shift things and like honestly how monumental some small choices can be rather than just like magically showing up as an entirely different person that's not even possible so obviously this these realizations are not like fully new and I've been sitting with them for a while and in the last few weeks it was the end of May beginning of June I had this amazing opportunity I had this amazing trip that was given to me by this beautiful company named by Havin and particularly Ethan Smith would have the most amazing humans to exist just if you don't already know him he is the he's a national advocate for the international city foundation he has been he just really really open and incredibly powerful advocate sharing his story and making a difference in the space for a very long time and he's also incredibly talented storyteller director he created all the OCD commercials that I'm in that I'm if I haven't talked about it already we will soon and just really brings us down together to do advocacy in a beautiful way and so he and this amazing company named by Havin who co-created those commercials and have been huge in the space of raising awareness for OCD and developing novel therapeutics they had me come to Miami to join them at the American Society for Clinical Psychopharmacology Conference because there was an event that they were hosting at the conference to lots of people in the field talking about their trials and they wanted me to be a part of it and to share my journey my story and present with them on the intersection of lived experience and research for OCD to talk to that community and so it was so cool and they had become to Miami and see I had been envisioning in my mind that there would be one day where I could just go to the beach and lay there and have space and I just like had this fantasy in my mind because I haven't experienced the beach in that way ever and it just you know it just seems like it's peaceful and beautiful and whatever and I had this opportunity come up that I get to basically go to Miami and present and do fun things with biohavin and then like do whatever I want in my time that I'm not doing that stuff and I was like okay this is a version of that I get to go to Miami I am staying on Miami Beach so like literally in the backyard of the hotel that they had me at I there's beach like I just walked to and be at all the time and I could sort of live out my fantasy of like laying on the beach and being present and going in the water and being in the sand and all those things and so I had a second vacation and standard for myself of like I'm going to every moment that I'm not doing work instead of going to the conference which me and conferences like take everything I rambled about before in terms of my tendencies and just like apply it to being at a conference where there's sessions all day long I take no breaks I go to everything I talk to everyone I just go go go go go make the most of it blah blah like I was like I'm gonna do the complete opposite that I'm not gonna go to conference and anything outside of the work I have to do there then I get to do there I'm going to be on the beach and chill and I was there for three days and outside of the time that I do work mostly I had like half the day each day and guess what the reality of it was it was at least it was in the middle it wasn't the other extreme which would have been me like six months ago or a year maybe even three months ago but I went and I did sit on the beach a lot I got really dark really quick which was an exposure to and of itself because I was raised to be afraid of getting dark because of my cultural the cultural background I come from and dark people being ostracized and I was a dark person already and that's a whole other conversation for another day but I got dark from being outside which was so so cool however I was on the beach and I had my phone which I couldn't I couldn't convince myself to just not go with my phone to like eliminate this need because I was like what if things happen like I need an alarm I need you know a way to contact you both so I was like maybe I will limit my phone use because I don't have a charger on the beach so that's my incentive but I definitely my brain found a way to use my photos which is possible I literally took work calls on the beach which was cool and beautiful and also I was really upset with myself and every time I shared that with my husband here mind me like what are you doing why are you doing this and I noticed that and then I also intentionally would notice that and rather than like waste I would notice how much time I would waste just being upset with myself about it rather than just like not engaging this like active mindfulness right like noticing and then doing something else so I would be ruminating be self-shaming and then I'd be like yeah but there's a fucking beach in front of me there is water I could just put my phone down and go to the water for a decent amount of time then come back and it probably won't be the time I have to leave yet and I kept doing that and it was just this like beautiful toggle of like all my tendencies and then like noticing them and deciding after a while, shaming myself to stop or to like take a pause and then go be in the water and like allow myself to feel glimpses and more glimpses of bliss and joy and peace and then like come back and do it again and I wish it was a glamour story of like I just had the three days on the beach but like it was more messy and it was not perfect but had I fully gone the other way we would be having this conversation and I could I imagine doing this like literally three or six months ago no so progress not perfection my friends and I can't finish talking about this without telling you actually how the experience of that conference and that event was because my god was it just so cathartic and beautiful in life-changing so this was probably really like the first experience I had of like being fully called upon to talk only about my lived experience and yes I took talked about research, I talked about me being a researcher and how much I appreciate the research and how becoming a research was influenced by my story and my experience with OCD and other things. But typically I, as much as I give all these talks and whatever, like they're usually about my research and I bring the lived experience into it and this biohavin and Ethan brought me out to talk about my lived experience and my story with real OCD and like the impact of the research and putting resources and support toward this topic and it was just so wild to me because I was giving this talk in front of like so many, just like PIs, meaning principal investigators like researchers like senior investigators whom I know by name and read most of their papers and I'm so in awe of and in reverence of and it was terrifying because there's still so much stigma for people in biomedical sciences and in research and I'm not talking clinical research I'm talking about like every other kind of research to actually disclose lived experience with anything like especially with mental or psychiatric illness because of the removal from like almost the empty component. Largely I'm speaking about the field as a whole and so sharing the this world details that I chose to share about my lived experience like yes I'm going to do it obviously saw this podcast it's like where I share so much within my research but it's usually protected by my research and being in front of so many people I respect and know and just like talking about myself as a survivor first and foremost was just so wild and terrifying and cathartic and beautiful to just be received and held by so many people who I just know typically there's an expectation of just being rejected and being judged from and I mean even famously told me that like he went and spoke after me as part of the whole presentation and he said that when he got to the front like there were a bunch of like as you can guess like old white guys that were weeping and that sticks with me because it was just to and I was validated in that as well because after the whole presentation was over I spoke to so many people in the audience and many of them were like just people that I would never have guessed would be able to have that level of compassion empathy and care for a condition and to receive me with my research experience in my background like as a survivor and to hold me in understanding and care and I'm just so grateful for that experience to happen now so early relatively in my life and my career especially as I embark on my PhD program and just being in so many more spaces like this so often because I have no choice but to show up as my full self and clearly my whole story is out on the internet with this podcast and I show up in this way every way but like I had never done that fully fully lived experience in that setting until like kind of burst that what's the term like pop that originated of that I didn't I truly had a block that I didn't think that was possible and I was kind of like biohavin like are you all sure that you want me to do this like do you think it's gonna work to anyone's benefit and they were right they were so right and I'm just so grateful to that fucking company and to all the beautiful people there and to even for just doing things differently and having a vision and only when people like actually trailblaze and do things differently can anyone else even know what else is possible and they are disrupting they're disrupting the space of biomedical science and pharmacology pharmaceutical sciences like the pharmaceutical industry they're fully disrupting it this is by the way not an ad this is not sponsored this is just me sharing my love and gratitude for these people and I am just so honored and grateful I got to be a part of that experience and to just witness things being done differently and to see more of the humanity in people and just honestly gets so much more faith in people and in the jadedness that has been spread in the space for valid reason because people have been treated like shit and I've been treated like shit and I've witnessed it and to see that things could start to be done differently just means more to me than anyone will ever know and that was so huge in terms of like exposing myself and doing an exposure and being afraid on so many levels and I just wanted to share that there's so much beauty on the other side of just allowing and trying and being ready enough to try being resourced enough to try and actually doing it and you know it's interesting I wish there were like a bow tying up this episode kind of like way of closing this out but the truth is there really isn't because this is ongoing and it's really just some form of a recap but also just so much context and like the internal experience of what the last this this initiation into transition has been like and that's really where I'm coming from like talking through the realities and the nuances and the complexities of transition and while the circumstances and the exact experiences are unique to me the entirety of the concept of like the the complication and the nuance and the the gray the messiness of transition and chapters closing and opening and all of the books that get crumpled the pages that get crumpled in between this makes sense in my head more than out loud but that transition is just just is what it is and it's not binary and I certainly hoped and thought it would be and I didn't foresee this but of course when has anything gone simply or cleanly in my life and is there beauty or growth in that probably not so that's at least the take I'm gonna take because otherwise I will just fully faster in shame and a lack of compassion in this episode and me just like coming back in a messy honest as usual open complicated way is is exactly that so hmm I will close with what life is looking like right now and what's coming up and how I'm going to continue to work on all this which is just you know my parent just finished their round of intensive radiation which is really really exciting and hopefully we'll get the results that for the time being no more treatment is needed just monitoring and things are shrinking in terms of the cancer so that's really really exciting and hopeful so that's a you know bookmark period and if things don't go that way then you'll probably hear from me about that too but that's where at and I tomorrow am flying out to Denver for a week for psychedelic science 2023 the largest conference in the world focused on psychedelic research and medicine and I am I'm gonna talk more about like the details of all of it when I do a recap episode because I know that's in a come from like a week's worth of experiences and learning and meeting and conference takeaways and all that stuff but for me personally it's just such a wildly full circle moment because I four years ago was that psychedelic science 2019 as a volunteer completely broken confused and lost inside barely functional don't know how I actually succeeded at volunteering and so much of that conference was me getting the glimpses of inspiration to try what I never thought I would ever do which is go back to school so that maybe I could at that time I thought through psychology like work with these compounds and understand how they can support and work therapeutically for other people because I had just started experiencing the wildness that are psychedelics but you can hear all about in my yes I've done psychedelics episode and my mental health journey my full journey like all of that will catch you up the ketamine episodes but basically four years ago I was at that place and now I'm going for a week and I'm speaking twice I'm presenting my research and I'm presenting on a panel with the intercollegiate psychedelics network and UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics and I'm speaking twice at the very conference that release shapes so much of my path and it's so full circle it's so wild and I get to show up once again as someone who is a researcher but my lived experience and really my lived experience is what inspires my research and I get to advocate for OCD and PTSD and the actual awareness of these things and oh if I could go on but that is coming up this week and so much I anticipate will be here to share but that's a huge opportunity for me to exercise self-compassion and balance and attempts at balance at least and just trying to make small choices that can give me a different experience compared to the ways I've done conferences and high intensity pressure situations before and then coming back getting like a week off and then going out for the International OCD Foundation conference to do it all over again in a whole new way but you'll be hearing from me amongst all of this so that's coming up and just finding a space to rest and experience different things all in between before my ultimate move with my husband and dog to Madison at the of July and packing up and transitioning and talk all about that later. And then having a few weeks before starting a PhD program. So there's just so there's so much going on and it's also like pretty simple just a lot of busyness and try and arrest and then moving and then starting my PhD unless life changes. So there's so much to share and I will be back. Of course I have really kick us interviews at beautiful conversations that are going to be coming out soon. Starting next week like actually this time. And then you'll hear from me on these solos as well. But I just want to say again, thank you all for being here. Thank you for showing me the love and support and kindness and care that you all have endlessly showed me and held space for me for on this podcast and sharing myself and learning and growing and evolving as I continue to do this and being so new at it. And if we're giving you so much love and care on social media offline, checking in on me and like all the things I wear about the beginning of this podcast for being so supportive and sharing the show and helping us grow our community and create a safe space for everyone to process and be as they are and learn and just be in solidarity and care and grow and challenge each other and evolve. And so hmm, I'm just endlessly grateful I get to do this and I feel so much better than when I started. I was so afraid and I just have come back to feeling just all of your energy because I am talking to you all and I feel you all and just thank you. I can't wait to be back next week with an interview. I cannot wait for you to hear what's so beautiful and you'll see soon who it is. And as always, it would mean the whole world to me if you could please take five seconds right now through listening and have it already to give the show a five star rating and a review and just talk about the things that you love from the show, the things you want from the show, the things that other people who find the show can feel like they're landing in a safe place by seeing your own experiences and your support of it. And if you can subscribe to the show so you can be the first to receive episodes which I would love and I hope you would love to. And if you can also share the show on social media with your friends, whoever you think this would resonate with. If you know anybody who needs to hear this or any of the other things we talk about, to please just shoot people episodes that helps so much and supports me in doing this and continuing to create this more than you ever know. So I'm so grateful for your support and love. I cannot wait to see you next week and have a beautiful week y'all. See you next week. We're another episode of a chat with Emma.