Money, Our Work, and Our Wellbeing
Support us in our mission of building connections between helping professionals and providing quality content.
Our last episode of Season 2! This season we delved into the lives and work of fellow helpers, why they chose this work, why they've stayed, and what they might need to keep going.
In this episode Blakely and Ben venture into how money influences our wellbeing, our relationships with the systems that control and manage the money.
We'll be back in September for Season 3.
If you'd like to share your story with us or be on the podcast, we'd love to hear from you! Email us at: Beingthework@gmail.com
Help us reach more helpers. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and tell us what you've enjoyed!
Transcript
Hi everyone, welcome to being the work.
Ben:I'm Ben Wire, and this is a podcast that is about exploring the ways
Ben:that our personal lives get brought into being a professional helper.
Ben:Today's episode is a special episode, it is the last episode of season two.
Ben:And so we just want to say thank you so much for all of
Ben:your support and your listens.
Ben:We see you guys out there and uh, We really, really appreciate this doing
Ben:this season has really just been such a pleasure to be able to meet and talk
Ben:with and dive into just the lives and the experiences of other people of why helpers
Ben:become helpers and the humans behind this.
Ben:We so easily get objectified and commodified by our mental
Ben:health system and people.
Ben:have a very difficult time understanding what it's like to,
Ben:to be us and to do what we do.
Ben:We live in worlds with other people of being present for pain
Ben:and it affects us personally.
Ben:It can
Ben:cause a lot of stress and strain.
Ben:It's difficult and we rarely get paid really what we deserve.
Ben:Uh, today's episode is an episode that Blakely and I recorded trying to find a,
Ben:a space where we could meet other people.
Ben:Uh, in person.
Ben:We tried out the library and so we weren't expecting to actually record an
Ben:episode, but this became a topic and an exploration of the influences on this
Ben:topic around the finances, about general influence of money and our relationship
Ben:to it, and the way that impacts.
Ben:The systems we work in, the system as a whole, just enhances the reasons
Ben:why we need close relationships to be able to understand one another,
Ben:to be there for one another, and be able to link arms going forward in
Ben:any kind of change that would help us objectified, othered, uh, commodified.
Ben:and actually be able to have some really lasting change in society and in our
Ben:clients lives and our lives as well.
Ben:And anyway, we just want to say thank you so much for the time
Ben:that you have spent with us.
Ben:As always, you can find us on Instagram.
Ben:Being the Work is our handle.
Ben:If you want to support the, the pod, go and give us a review.
Ben:Uh, let us know what your favorite part's been.
Ben:Any five star review will really help us get out there and, and
Ben:reach other helpers that may be going through similar stressors and
Ben:experiences of strain and fatigue.
Ben:We really are very passionate about this.
Ben:This project and and we are doing this out of the minimal free time we have.
Ben:And so if you also would like to support the pod, you can go to being the work.
Ben:com slash support.
Ben:And you can donate and give us a tip.
Ben:That would be incredible.
Ben:That would be so amazing.
Ben:Yeah.
Ben:We just want to say thank you.
Ben:Uh, season three will be coming out, um, just in a few months.
Ben:So this episode will drop July 10th.
Ben:We will be back in around September.
Ben:So we've done some interviews already.
Ben:I'm editing those, those interviews now, and.
Ben:We're planning out some other episodes.
Ben:And so, yeah, if you have any desire to share your stories, uh, to be a part of
Ben:this conversation and to bring some of you to any of this, uh, we would love that.
Ben:Um, I would imagine a lot of you are, are thinking, no, I don't, I
Ben:don't, I wouldn't want to do that.
Ben:But, um.
Ben:You're important and your story is important, and we, we appreciate
Ben:what you do and we, we want to celebrate you and bring you, bring
Ben:your story out, uh, into the world.
Ben:And so, we would love to hear from you.
Ben:Email us, beingintheworkatgmail.
Ben:com.
Ben:Uh, we would love to just connect.
Ben:Even if you don't really want to be on the, on the podcast yourself,
Ben:you can email your story to us.
Ben:But yeah, we just, we really care about helpers and it is amazing work that
Ben:we do and we need to be celebrated.
Ben:We need to be lifted and we need to be supported.
Ben:Um, self care is an objectifying message that we typically get.
Ben:We're typically scared into just trying to be ethical and we
Ben:rarely, rarely are celebrated.
Ben:We, that is what we are here to do.
Ben:So you take care.
Ben:I hope you all are doing well.
Ben:May you know the vibrance.
Ben:of your humanity.
Ben:May you know the wonder of your talents.
Ben:May you embrace the compassion and the joy that you bring the world by helping
Ben:other people through their suffering.
Ben:May you know the relief of the pain that you are in the
Ben:presence of, and may you know
Ben:a gentle pride.
Ben:May you know a gentle pride.
Ben:in the ability to bring a little bit of light to another person's life.
Ben:That is a compassionate, that is a loving kindness and compassion practice,
Ben:uh, that I just wanted to offer you.
Ben:So anyways, without further ado, we're going to get into this, this conversation
Ben:about money, how it affects us, and the overall system that we live and work in.
Ben:I was thinking this week, just like philosophically, I really want to
Ben:stop calling what I do mental health.
Ben:I want to call it mental sickness or mental illness.
Ben:Because most of the stuff I do, well, at least most of the ways that people
Ben:refer to my job or the what, what I get paid for, like the people who pay me
Ben:are paying me to treat mental illness.
Ben:They're not trading me for health.
Blakely:Well, because we've socialized a whole system where no
Blakely:one who's actually well seeks out mental health treatment, even though.
Blakely:We know that everyone pretty much should like your mental wellness benefits
Blakely:from attention and care and teamwork, a collaborative approach to your wellness.
Blakely:Well, then why don't we just have an episode that is, what
Blakely:the fuck do we call ourselves?
Blakely:What do you call you?
Blakely:Like, what, what do you tell people you are and how does that
Blakely:change in different settings?
Blakely:Right.
Blakely:Cause at a who, who party, I might say I'm a social worker or I might say I'm a
Blakely:therapist or I might say, and why, or am I a helper and my mental health professional
Ben:or am I just a,
Blakely:am I a qualified
Ben:consultants?
Ben:What do you do?
Ben:I just am a consultant.
Ben:What do you consult on?
Ben:Um, business things.
Ben:Right.
Ben:Well, it depends.
Ben:It depends on what deliverables each business needs.
Ben:Right, right, right, right.
Blakely:Huh.
Blakely:Well, I mean, is the problem in what you call it or is the
Blakely:problem in who it's marketed to?
Blakely:Like it has to be so bad before, like, nobody will go to therapy until it's
Ben:the last resort.
Ben:Right, exactly.
Ben:And by then, you're so like Well, and everybody thinks, everybody thinks
Ben:you have to be crazy to go get help.
Blakely:Well, and then by the time you go and get help.
Blakely:You're so desperate for a quote unquote fix that you're not
Blakely:there for the actual process.
Ben:And then it's a very long term process.
Ben:I mean, the whole thing is like, we don't, we don't deal in prevention.
Ben:We deal in illness, like, and we do
Blakely:that to
Ben:get paid.
Ben:We do that to get paid, but we don't do that to But that's not what we want to do.
Ben:That's not what I want to do.
Ben:No.
Blakely:And it's not what I set out to do, but it's just the, it's the
Blakely:terminology of where we found ourselves.
Blakely:Right.
Ben:So, and that's the
Blakely:system, right?
Blakely:And it's just another way that we mold ourselves to fit a system that's
Blakely:broken and doesn't work anyway.
Blakely:So we're amazed when it doesn't work.
Blakely:I want
Ben:to say it was broken.
Ben:I want to blame all of that system.
Ben:I want to blame that system for my burnout and me buying into it.
Ben:As well, because like the big like, so burnout is like the hopelessness,
Ben:apathy, ineffectiveness, right?
Ben:And it like is a slow build and mine built from, I think the time
Ben:that I started practicing is like.
Ben:I want to prove myself and I want to, but also like when you
Ben:get out of your masters, right?
Ben:Like you, you are told that you're prepared, but you're really not.
Ben:And so then there's a lot of learning on the job and constant.
Ben:Uh, but also people look at you like you are the, you are the professional
Ben:expert because you've got the license.
Ben:Right.
Ben:But you really don't know what the fuck you're doing
Blakely:because it's not prepared.
Blakely:I think it's just the expectations are so out of line.
Blakely:What you're expected to do with the preparation you have
Blakely:isn't, it just doesn't line up entirely prepared or intelligent,
Ben:educated.
Ben:What a spin.
Ben:Thank you.
Blakely:It's another way that that imposter stuff becomes our problem.
Blakely:Absolutely.
Blakely:We aren't the problem in a system that doesn't work.
Blakely:Right.
Blakely:So the system does very, very strongly contribute to our burnout.
Blakely:Absolutely.
Blakely:Because it's a constant juggling act of doing what we're going to do anyway.
Blakely:Like the work that I do with my clients is what I'm going to fucking do anyway.
Blakely:It's everything around that that I do to mold to someone else.
Blakely:True.
Ben:Absolutely.
Ben:It's not the work that burned me out.
Ben:You're sitting
Blakely:there.
Blakely:I
Ben:can easily say that.
Ben:You literally can't say exactly what you did in session.
Ben:You have to like paint lipstick on a
Blakely:pig.
Blakely:Oh yeah.
Blakely:We colored and talked about her shitty boyfriend, so, but then I have to
Blakely:turn that into interpersonal skills.
Ben:Right.
Ben:And like,
Blakely:uh, I have to put a six dimensional thing into a two dimensional
Blakely:product and that's what's actually hard.
Blakely:I don't mind working with very, very fucking sick people.
Blakely:But, like, everything around it has made it impossible, so I don't.
Blakely:Mm hmm.
Ben:And I think a big part of the conversation is advocacy, right?
Ben:Because like, what do we actually do about it instead of just
Ben:sitting here complaining about it?
Ben:And the people y'all listening is like, what, what, that's
Ben:what I would be thinking is like, okay, I'm listening here.
Ben:I'm listening to Ben and Blakely and going, yeah, that's right.
Ben:That's right.
Ben:And now what?
Ben:Well, we just get pissed and go on with your day.
Ben:But like, I don't know the answer to that question and it's like a unionize, can we
Ben:just create a professional helper union?
Ben:We all go on, go on strike and say, change it or we're not working.
Ben:I
Blakely:think there's definitely something to it, especially, I mean,
Blakely:cause we've worked in one of those communities where the organization we
Blakely:work for is utilized to minimize the visibility of suffering in that community.
Blakely:Like an affluent community still has mental illness, still has
Blakely:homelessness, still has poverty.
Blakely:And so when part of your job is to make that hidden, then you're
Blakely:constantly oriented to that stigma.
Blakely:And so how do we get out from under it ever when that's another
Blakely:layer of what's expected of us?
Blakely:And that is not what we signed up for.
Ben:Oh, it reminds me of the episode earlier in the season when you said,
Ben:um, that we support everything.
Ben:We support every bit of society.
Ben:I
Blakely:stand behind that because I want to ask all of these fucking people who
Blakely:are in charge of all of these things.
Blakely:Who's your therapist?
Blakely:I need to have a word.
Blakely:Your value system
Ben:is fucked.
Ben:I think there's, yeah, there's so many different ways to go on this, but like,
Ben:I keep going back to my experience of.
Ben:I don't know, before, before being a professional helper and after, before
Ben:I was naive, I was idealistic, I really wanted the world to just heal and saying
Ben:that sounds naive, but I wanted, I knew what it was like to feel alone and I
Ben:didn't want people to feel alone and I knew that together we're better, right?
Ben:Just idealistic.
Ben:Getting into the work, it, my, my goals transitioned to from, you know,
Ben:togetherness and healing and care, like the, my ethic of care changed a bit to
Ben:more of I need to be an expert at this.
Ben:I think the influences were like me feeling like I want to be the best
Ben:ever and my own little, like, ego arrogance, but also that's the currency
Ben:that was dealt in the places I worked and the system, like the better you
Ben:are, the better referrals, the more like reputation you get, the better.
Blakely:This leads me to wonder, how do you think our foundations,
Blakely:the way that I, even our, like, Education and training are set up.
Blakely:How do those prime us for falling into those pathways of seeking
Blakely:achievement in these ways?
Ben:I mean, that's all a part of it.
Ben:It's like, how many A's can you get?
Ben:Right.
Ben:And it's just like gold
Blakely:stars and hats on the back.
Blakely:Right.
Blakely:That operates in those kinds of like token rewards.
Ben:Yeah.
Ben:You're, you're waiting for people to give you token rewards
Ben:through your whole career.
Ben:And then you realize there's no more rewards.
Ben:God,
Blakely:but we've.
Blakely:We've taken that same kind of token system and on top of it, the burden
Blakely:of responsibility we've acquired is like actual life and death.
Blakely:So we're bartering with people's lives to get our money and to get
Blakely:our achievements and to get our recognition and to get our reputation.
Ben:But that's, that's, that's the work though.
Ben:Like, that's sort of what we signed up for in the first place
Ben:in just like being a human and being a professional in this work.
Ben:That's what we do.
Ben:Like,
Blakely:cause I don't think it's us or our clients that are at fault.
Blakely:I think that it's an awareness of.
Blakely:The other players that they can objectify all of that and take
Ben:advantage.
Ben:Exactly.
Ben:I mean, that's the thing is like when, when you, you actually put
Ben:meat on the bones of the story that you're telling, we are humans who
Ben:come into this work for very personal reasons and very personal motivations.
Ben:And then we want to be in those spaces to achieve wellness with another person.
Ben:Like we want people to be well, we want people to be healthy, we want
Ben:them to heal from their illnesses and we want to be a part of that.
Ben:That's not, that's a altruistic, but also like selfish desire.
Ben:And so like, that's not the problem.
Ben:The problem is when it gets flattened down and objectified.
Ben:Oh, that's what I mean.
Ben:The
Blakely:ways that it's taken advantage of.
Blakely:Yeah.
Blakely:By things
Ben:more powerful than us.
Ben:And, and I, that's the issue with commodifying health.
Ben:Prevention is not like prevention and actual wellness
Ben:is not what we're dealing in.
Blakely:Prevention isn't profitable.
Blakely:It can be.
Blakely:It's the same as, it's the same as what we say.
Blakely:Like we all bitch and moan, like there's just no money in mental health.
Blakely:Fuck that there's money.
Blakely:It's just not being routed and channeled to us.
Blakely:The money exists.
Blakely:The people that we, we in our democracy have elected to represent us don't.
Blakely:So what are we doing about that?
Blakely:Any kind of collective thing that we could do to push forward the
Blakely:progress that we actually need and the people we help actually need.
Blakely:But we're our own worst enemies because we're against each other most of the
Blakely:time because these systems have turned us against each other to fight for resources
Blakely:to the fucking helping hunger games and we got to cut each other's throats.
Blakely:To get fed and that's why, and that's why we can't unionize because what
Blakely:they have taken and objectified and taken advantage of and tokenized
Blakely:into money is our feelings.
Blakely:And the one feeling that we're going to feel if we decide to
Blakely:choose ourselves is fucking guilt.
Blakely:We feel too bad leaving someone hanging.
Ben:Oh shit.
Ben:Fuck.
Ben:Fuck.
Ben:Yeah, that was low hanging fruit, but then it hurt.
Ben:Yeah, that was, but it made the point.
Ben:I mean, that's the moral dilemma.
Ben:Like that is the moral dilemma that I, I mean, I felt that in my bones.
Ben:Oof.
Blakely:God damn.
Blakely:So we, we hold it.
Blakely:We take it because we're not taking it.
Blakely:We're not going to push more suffering onto the reality
Ben:though.
Ben:That is the actual reality that, yeah, that's a harsh thing to say
Ben:and even put out in the world, but it's less harsh than actual reality.
Blakely:We are willing to think about it and other people aren't, and they count on
Blakely:us being the ones who are willing to think
Ben:about it.
Ben:That I think that that fear is what is manipulated.
Ben:For me to not want to fuck with the system on
Blakely:every time someone says, Oh, I just don't know how you do it is
Blakely:another layer of, Ooh, you chose that.
Blakely:So that's your problem.
Blakely:Not our whole collective problem.
Blakely:There's a kid in my brother in law's a teacher and I know a kid
Blakely:died of an overdose this week.
Blakely:And it's in the back of my mind, not a community I work
Blakely:in, not anything I know about.
Blakely:But it's just a thing that's there.
Blakely:And that's a community problem.
Blakely:That's a huge problem.
Blakely:The fact that like people are dying of their own hands is everyone's problem.
Blakely:Right.
Blakely:I thought.
Blakely:But these are all the idealistic things that I thought about society
Blakely:before I started doing this.
Blakely:Before I had my own children, before we had fucking Trump for a president,
Blakely:there is stuff that I've had to face up to and have my face shoved into that
Blakely:makes me think differently about what my personal responsibility is and what the
Blakely:collective societal responsibility is.
Blakely:I don't think that that's different, but I think that it's not being stepped up to.
Blakely:I still think the responsibility is there, but I think that we are fucking failing.
Blakely:And I'm not sure why.
Blakely:I
Ben:mean, the thoughts I have right now as you're talking, I'm just
Ben:like, Uh, if I am, if I'm spinning my wheels, really trying to keep a rhythm
Ben:of helping my helping my caseload.
Ben:Then, you know, at the end of the day, like I saw a meme on Instagram
Ben:this this morning, and it was the caption said, After six hours
Ben:of therapy, I can finally relax.
Ben:And then this bald guy looking at just all sinister going, Are you sure about that?
Ben:And underneath his face, it said notes.
Ben:And I'm like, right.
Ben:I'm exhausted after my job.
Ben:The mental and emotional effort to engage in people's
Ben:traumatic content and distress.
Ben:Is exhausting and I need to get paid.
Ben:And I need to document so I can get paid.
Ben:I have been problem solving for six hours.
Ben:I need to rest and get ready to do it tomorrow.
Ben:I want to fix the system.
Ben:I want something better.
Ben:More prevention.
Ben:And I want more wellness in society.
Ben:But then we're talking about big things that are very difficult to
Ben:change and very slow to change and therefore need persistence to change.
Ben:But the resources and the energy and the focus, the trust in other people.
Ben:I mean, all of that is big question marks and big problems that if I don't have
Ben:What Someone telling me the solution, it's going to be very difficult to
Ben:motivate me to get to the solution because there's so much personal investment
Ben:and problems that I have to solve.
Ben:Add onto that if I'm burnt out.
Ben:Well, yeah,
Blakely:cause as you're talking, that's what I'm thinking.
Blakely:The, and I know cause this is what I did because I think so many of us
Blakely:are aware of just how much there is.
Blakely:There's a lot of stuff that's out here in the universe to fix.
Blakely:Like we're more aware of that anyway because of how connected we are.
Blakely:Like we've gone beyond even being able to think about a village we think globally
Blakely:all the time because it's in our face.
Blakely:But the easiest way for us in our professions to get out from under
Blakely:that existential dump of Holy fuck.
Blakely:The whole world is melting down is by sticking to what sticking to our work, the
Blakely:way that the system has handed it to us.
Blakely:They've taken our shit from us, repackaged it.
Blakely:into the hour by hour, all by yourself, bill it, or it didn't happen situation.
Blakely:We didn't design that.
Blakely:No.
Blakely:But by taking that and using it and saying, look at how worn out
Blakely:I am from doing this all day.
Blakely:I can't even write down what I already did.
Blakely:Let alone consider doing something else for anyone else out there except for
Blakely:these six people I saw today because I'm gonna see six more tomorrow and six more
Blakely:the day after that and then I'll have a day off and then I'll see four more
Blakely:on Sunday and then I'll see six more on Monday and it'll never fucking end.
Blakely:One person, one hour at a time.
Blakely:I can say I'm changing the world and it's not good enough, but if
Blakely:they keep us in that system out of our communal responsibility, then
Blakely:we will never actually collectively get together and change anything.
Blakely:And that's how they want it.
Ben:Yeah.
Ben:I mean, of course they do.
Ben:And I'm thinking of they as, you know, the heads of insurance companies.
Ben:Yes.
Ben:Me too.
Ben:And then also, I'm thinking.
Blakely:Cause we've handed them to keys, the keys to our entire
Ben:society.
Ben:When I, you know, I think, I think of just like, uh, group therapy theory,
Ben:uh, and theories of like that, where it's just like the person that is.
Ben:Going against the norms, the group will try to bring them back into the norms.
Ben:And so, I mean, that, that dynamic is just going to happen.
Ben:I mean, it's cognitive.
Ben:It's cognitive dissonance, right?
Ben:Yeah.
Ben:I mean, you just want like the mind wants harmony and hearing
Ben:dissonance or experiencing dissonance is, is the difficult part.
Ben:Like it wants it to change it back to, Ooh, no, that's uncomfortable.
Ben:Okay.
Ben:I mean,
Blakely:it's, it's always been hard to be so hyper aware of
Blakely:what our minds are doing, right?
Blakely:Of course.
Blakely:Like we know that we're a part of the problem.
Blakely:We know that we're not addressing what we need to.
Blakely:We know that our brains are, are cleanly severing off all the
Blakely:shit that we just can't deal with because we just can't deal with it.
Blakely:Right.
Blakely:Whether we should or not.
Blakely:Mm hmm.
Blakely:It's just more than I can handle.
Blakely:Which adds, I think
Ben:adds to burnout.
Blakely:Absolutely.
Blakely:Because I know I have been in the constant for years.
Blakely:Again, it's not my clients.
Blakely:It's the stuff that they deal with that neither of us can solve.
Blakely:No, yeah, absolutely not.
Blakely:It's the resources they can't get a hold of.
Blakely:Mm hmm.
Blakely:It's the, the, the shit that I have to deal with and how much time I
Blakely:have to take to do it, that I'm not actually doing what I'm good at.
Ben:Right.
Ben:I'm thinking of, uh.
Ben:Actual definition of burnout right now.
Ben:And I'm, and I'm, there's three of those things.
Ben:There's depersonalization, emotional exhaustion and pointlessness
Ben:or helplessness or feeling like you're not being effective.
Ben:But
Blakely:I've been pulled back from, I mean, I can say I still work, but it
Blakely:is at about 10% of what I did before.
Blakely:And I can't say that a lot of that is better because now I'm just, I've
Blakely:shifted my focus to all the shit I was ignoring on that whole time.
Blakely:Right.
Blakely:Like I have no faith in humanity or our society or our system.
Blakely:It's all breaking down.
Blakely:It's all dying.
Blakely:It's all dying.
Ben:It doesn't fucking matter.
Ben:Hopelessness.
Ben:Yeah,
Blakely:I'm curious, but no, I'm not hopeful and I don't
Blakely:think I have the evidence to be hopeful and I'm Doing some radical
Blakely:acceptance of hope isn't the point.
Blakely:Hope is unicorns look great.
Blakely:They might show up.
Blakely:I don't know My six year old fucking think so.
Blakely:I don't but she gets to keep believing in magic.
Ben:This is from the professional quality of life like Measure manual burnout is one
Ben:element of the negative effects of caring that is known as compassion fatigue.
Blakely:Do I just have a burned out personality?
Blakely:Like, was I just already burned out when I was born?
Ben:Because I'm starting to think this is burnout is.
Ben:From the research perspective, burnout is associated with feelings of hopelessness
Ben:and difficulties in dealing with work or in doing your job effectively.
Ben:These negative feelings usually have a gradual onset.
Ben:They can reflect the feeling, the
Blakely:gradual onset, and I just, I, it was just, it's just always there.
Ben:The gradual onset.
Ben:Uh, reflect the feeling that your efforts are making no difference or they can
Ben:be associated with very high workload or non supportive work environment.
Ben:The gradual onset for me was, I don't know, it's like over time,
Ben:my idealism and my original goals, what brought me here was not even
Ben:the support from the bigger system.
Ben:Um, from where the money comes from, from how other like professionals in nonprofits
Ben:or in help mental health centers or, or hospitals or whatever like that, you know,
Ben:cause I've, I've, you know, worked in, in drug and alcohol, I've worked in mental
Ben:health, I've worked in nonprofit, in home, out of home, in the community, out
Ben:of the community, I've worked everywhere.
Blakely:And it's amazing what's consistent between all the different
Blakely:settings, because I have two and I think we've made a lot of those
Blakely:moves seeking something different.
Blakely:And we find so much of the same in entirely different places.
Blakely:The
Ben:gradual onset part is for me was my goal of becoming an expert.
Ben:That was a early change from my original goal.
Ben:This slow, insidious.
Ben:Like not realizing that the system is not set up to help or
Ben:facilitate or support my idealism.
Ben:And then overall seeing, like having that question, it was like the first
Ben:time I had the question of what am I doing and why am I doing this?
Ben:Like it doesn't seem to be solving any problems.
Ben:You know, I think it was probably.
Ben:2015 or so when I started having those questions because I was working alongside
Ben:case managers and they seemed to be doing the same thing I was doing where
Ben:it was like problem solving situations for clients and trying to coach them
Ben:to do different coping skills or different behaviors in those situations,
Ben:but honestly, it was like, Teaching them or teaching them how to navigate
Ben:systems that didn't really want to support them in the first place, right?
Ben:And so when I'm trying to like mental health, them really.
Ben:It was, well, you're not quote unquote functioning in the community, so I'm going
Ben:to teach you how to play by their rules.
Ben:Right?
Ben:And, and so any way, any natural way that they didn't fit into those rules or those
Ben:rules were unfair, that was part of my burnout too, was what's the fucking point?
Ben:Right.
Ben:So, so I want to be an expert in this.
Ben:I want to be like the best therapist ever.
Ben:Inherently kind of knowing that's bullshit, Ben, but also another
Ben:part of me going, well, that's the only raft I can hold on to.
Ben:That's the door that's floating in the middle of the ocean.
Ben:Control it.
Ben:Yeah.
Ben:Exactly.
Ben:Cause I could read the DSM.
Ben:All the time and God knows I did, of course, and
Blakely:that was your, that was the door
Ben:you clung to.
Ben:Then, then I can go, I can go, well, a diagnosis is symptoms
Ben:over time and intensity.
Ben:And you know, what functional impairment does that cause?
Ben:Like, then, uh, then I think it was 2018.
Ben:I had this epiphany that was like, Yeah, Ben, but what about you?
Ben:What do you bring to the room?
Ben:You're making all these choices.
Ben:You're thinking you're like the best.
Ben:Knowing everything.
Ben:You like can assess things and diagnose things and all this.
Ben:But what if your perspective...
Ben:It's not right and I go,
Blakely:Oh my God,
Ben:it was an existential crisis.
Ben:Yeah.
Blakely:When something new clicks and you can't help but do that
Blakely:reflection back of, yeah, shit.
Blakely:What would this have added to my perspective before, right?
Blakely:Who was I blind?
Blakely:Who was I wearing blinders for that?
Blakely:I don't have those on anymore.
Blakely:Damn.
Ben:Exactly, exactly.
Ben:It was, it's the unconscious bias stuff that really flooded in and
Ben:going like, you don't know yourself, but then this is the thing, right?
Ben:That's another thing about the imposter syndrome of you're not good enough.
Ben:It was the same feeling I had when I got into the profession and I had a license.
Ben:I had my master's degree.
Ben:And I didn't feel prepared.
Ben:But the thing, like you said, expectations were higher than what resources I
Blakely:had.
Blakely:And fuck that.
Blakely:Your expectations of the system that was going to support you in
Blakely:being who you thought you could be.
Ben:Exactly.
Ben:Right.
Ben:And doing the work I could do.
Ben:And helping people I thought I could help.
Blakely:And did you ever take a moment to grieve all of the loss of all
Blakely:of those things that you just put on your lanyard, hop in your car, and
Blakely:go to the next home visit where you were going to look out for roaches?
Blakely:Crawling across your big toe and just act
Blakely:like to do is make this person in front of me uncomfortable in their own
Blakely:house just because I don't like a bug.
Blakely:They live
Ben:here.
Ben:I will push my disgust away.
Ben:And shake my coat out when I leave.
Ben:Oh,
Blakely:and that was just the first emotion I practiced pushing away.
Blakely:And that was because I worked in child welfare.
Blakely:Disgust was one I was not exactly prepared to deal with daily.
Ben:Oh, God, no, I, that the grief is right now and, and trying to help other
Ben:people like realize, Hey, you don't, don't, don't push this away, you know,
Ben:on your, on your drive into work or while you're doing the dishes or when
Ben:you go on a walk and you listen to us, um, just take a moment for yourself.
Ben:Right.
Ben:Because it's like.
Ben:Seriously, it took me a decade or more to actually look at
Ben:myself and go, you know what?
Ben:I don't have enough relationships with the people I do this work with.
Ben:Yeah.
Ben:And I need.
Ben:more support.
Ben:I'm a human being that has found identity in helping other people and studying
Ben:it, figuring it out and experiencing it.
Ben:And that's a really complicated
Ben:dynamic and process
Ben:. Ben: I'm not a neutral facilitator,
Ben:I have to use my empathy to actually, yeah, you
Blakely:can't control
Ben:for your influence, right?
Ben:And then like, I think what gets pushed, pushed on us is like, don't
Ben:let your values impose on other people.
Ben:Bullshit.
Ben:And I'm like, What does that mean?
Ben:Because a lot of the research shows my relationship with the, with the person
Ben:and our shared goals together are going to do most of the heavy lifting for
Ben:outcomes, you know, like the, it's like 15% of my techniques are actually going
Ben:to be the thing that caused change.
Ben:So like, okay, my feelings matter toward this person.
Ben:It's like all the Rogerian shit of.
Ben:On a, uh, unconditional positive regard.
Ben:Thank you.
Ben:And my genuineness and my unconditional positive regard and my
Ben:empathy is going to be a big part.
Ben:That's, that's me.
Ben:That is not the fucking master's degree.
Ben:That's not the fucking license.
Ben:That's
Blakely:me.
Blakely:Those are some of the first clues that this was going to
Blakely:get really confusing to me.
Blakely:Yeah.
Blakely:When all of the elements start coming together and I'm studying social policy
Blakely:and I'm studying person centeredness and I'm studying, you know, like our code of
Blakely:ethics and the conflicts start to pop up already in that I'm not supposed to be
Blakely:there, but I'm supposed to be genuine.
Blakely:How do you
Ben:know?
Blakely:Genuinely what?
Blakely:Oh God.
Blakely:I'm a genuine shell of a human.
Blakely:Right, right.
Blakely:I'm just, I'm just one of those, fuck, was it June bugs that like, I just left my
Blakely:shell here to cling and I just took off.
Blakely:Oh, shoot.
Blakely:Yeah.
Blakely:Just crunchy little guy.
Blakely:Yeah.
Blakely:I'm just hanging out here.
Ben:You remember like the interview with Felicity when she was like, um, I'm
Ben:not that person who's here to just go.
Ben:I went the world to be healed.
Ben:I am.
Ben:I love people.
Ben:I want to help.
Ben:And she's like, fuck, I got into this for me.
Ben:Like I needed to know me.
Ben:I'm like, that's honest.
Ben:Thank you.
Ben:If I were honest, I would go, my family has had a lot of
Ben:alcoholism and guess what?
Ben:Uh, I'm codependent.
Ben:Like I learn, relearn and reiterate learning around like my boundaries.
Ben:Every time I see a person.
Ben:That sounds unethical, but it's also like just human.
Ben:Oh, cause I'm thinking about
Blakely:all the times that it shows up in my personal life.
Blakely:And I get that look from people like, are you okay?
Blakely:When I'm in, I'm going to get shit done.
Blakely:I have shit to do.
Blakely:Give me an example.
Blakely:Um, I have one from the past and I have one from the present.
Blakely:Cause I just talked to my younger brother today.
Blakely:He's 22 and his best friend from high school, who's also 22 and
Blakely:has a baby is dying of cancer.
Blakely:Ugh.
Blakely:And.
Blakely:This one's hard because it's not directly personal for me.
Blakely:Like I, I know her family are from a really small town, but it's not my friend.
Blakely:And so I have to be cautious of how I coach my brother through the situation.
Blakely:Cause he kept saying like, I have to go and be strong.
Blakely:I have to go in there and be strong for her family.
Blakely:I'm like, that is no fucking point, dude.
Blakely:But like I feel the sense of my own personal one would probably be my
Blakely:brother in law got in a really bad car accident and his, his leg was amputated.
Blakely:He's fine now.
Blakely:It's a couple of years ago.
Blakely:Um, but even just getting that call and showing up to the hospital and the way
Blakely:that I feel, it's hard to give examples because it's an internal feeling.
Blakely:I don't really know what it looks like from the outside, but I know how other
Blakely:people react and it's usually with kind of a raised eyebrow of where'd you go?
Blakely:I can feel myself backing up and there's something else that's at the front.
Blakely:And it feels, it feels all, a lot of the things that I don't
Blakely:feel very often that I want to.
Blakely:It feels much more confident.
Blakely:It feels much more focused.
Blakely:It feels much more assertive than I feel in my own, in me, who I actually am.
Blakely:So whatever this persona is that I can do,
Ben:pushing away.
Ben:Uh, doubt pushing away.
Ben:Absolutely.
Ben:All of my
Blakely:insecure self stuff, all of my scattered brain shit,
Blakely:all of my like self absorption.
Blakely:I'm in my own head all the time.
Blakely:And this is a very much like separation.
Blakely:Well, and it's me being much more present than I usually am in a lot of ways.
Blakely:So it's both taking me away and leaning in.
Ben:Yeah.
Ben:I mean, it takes away the complications of.
Ben:It takes away complications, but it also feels like it takes away humanity.
Ben:Well, cause it fucks
Blakely:with my sense of identity to be able to say like, right,
Blakely:I'm, I'm clutch in a crisis, right?
Ben:I'm great at it.
Ben:I mean, how, how often did you do that when in crisis interventions?
Ben:It was literally
Blakely:my, our job title.
Blakely:So
Ben:daily.
Ben:So you're really good at it.
Ben:Really fucking
Blakely:good.
Blakely:Yeah.
Blakely:And that's messed up
Ben:when, when, uh, you get the whole, uh, experience of like it's normalized to
Ben:do a crisis intervention for 30 minutes.
Ben:Literally of screaming for 30 minutes and danger for 30 minutes and then
Ben:told, okay, now do their intake.
Ben:And I could like do a, you've already done 30 minutes.
Ben:Your body is like really revved up, right?
Ben:Fight or flight.
Ben:I'm just a floating head.
Ben:I turn everything.
Ben:Go ahead and go ahead and spend another hour with them.
Ben:Hour and a half with them.
Ben:Do all the intake paperwork.
Ben:You've seen enough.
Ben:You know, they qualify.
Ben:And I'm, I'm sitting there just numb, you know, going, okay, okay, sure.
Ben:Yeah.
Ben:Uh huh.
Ben:Uh huh.
Ben:And then was, I think you came into the office, you came into my office
Ben:and you go, no, you're not doing that.
Ben:I
Blakely:remember standing there and looking at you and, and having
Blakely:that, like, is it for me to say?
Blakely:Yes, I'm deciding it's for me to say, you're not doing that.
Blakely:I don't, I don't care whose boss said you're doing it.
Blakely:You're not doing that.
Blakely:No.
Blakely:I had
Ben:two feelings in that moment.
Ben:I thought to sort of paint the picture.
Ben:There was a young person kicking and screaming like a banshee.
Ben:She
Blakely:was drug in by, by her arms and legs, by like her parent, by her family.
Ben:She is, she is literally fight or flight.
Ben:Like she is.
Ben:in it, up to a, turned up to an 11, very little life in her eyes.
Ben:And got a, got a hold of our, our colleague's hair and just instinctively
Ben:I grabbed her hair too to try to keep her from pulling it out.
Ben:And I'm literally like three inches from this young person's face.
Ben:She's screaming.
Ben:I feel the heat of her breath and the spit on my face.
Ben:While I just sit there and I say their name calmly over and over,
Ben:or just calmly saying something is incredibly incongruent from my insides.
Ben:Yes.
Ben:My insides are going, and my outsides are going, um, like, like,
Ben:like that, not, not her name, but.
Ben:Uh, Blakely.
Blakely:Blakely.
Blakely:Blakely.
Blakely:Blakely.
Ben:Blakely.
Ben:And then, and then I noticed, I noticed in the, there was like one split
Ben:second that life flashed into her eyes.
Ben:She made eye contact with me.
Ben:I said their name.
Ben:And she let go and, and our colleague was able to get away.
Ben:We were constantly
Blakely:having to creatively maneuver situations that needed to be in
Blakely:spaces far different than what we had.
Blakely:Well, and that, that is a prime example of how I know that if we actually talk
Blakely:together, if we actually help each other, if we actually understand each other.
Blakely:We can make change.
Blakely:Collectively, all of this can be
Ben:different.
Ben:Right.
Ben:Because we did make change after that.
Ben:Absolutely.
Ben:As a team, we made change after that worth coordinating.
Ben:Because at the end of
Blakely:the day, no one can argue with what we see, what we
Blakely:hear, what we know, what we do.
Blakely:It just is.
Blakely:We've just been told it doesn't matter.
Blakely:We've just been told that it's good enough, even if we know better.
Blakely:Well, and that's, I don't know, this example from today, because
Blakely:talking to my brother, I do, I go into like, there's a different tone.
Blakely:I slow down.
Blakely:Right.
Blakely:Cause I usually talk pretty fast and I'm, I just like, it's so like mechanical,
Blakely:but I feel mechanical while I'm coaching someone through really strong feelings.
Blakely:It's so odd.
Ben:Cause I think there's two different experiences that you're talking about.
Ben:There's one where you're just getting shit done and that's feels more objectifying
Ben:where it's like, I just have to check.
Ben:Tasks off the list,
Blakely:but then there's also there's the in the moment that we
Blakely:have to do the stuff in the moment
Ben:with your brother, though, is more of a, it's, I feel like it's
Ben:motivated by more of an ethic of care,
Blakely:like I am here on my strength.
Blakely:You don't have to be strong right
Ben:now.
Ben:Exactly.
Ben:And that's pushing yourself aside or pushing your own like
Ben:feelings aside of pain or.
Ben:Angst or fear of death,
Blakely:but this is my brother.
Blakely:I don't have to go and then write it down in the terms that UnitedHealthcare
Blakely:will most readily accept,
Ben:or any other health
Blakely:insurance.
Blakely:I get to hang up and then just feel whatever I fucking feel about it.
Blakely:Right?
Blakely:And it's not, cuz I think I got confused for a lot of years about like, it's not
Blakely:my feeling and so I don't revisit it.
Blakely:It's someone else's thing.
Blakely:It's not mine.
Blakely:So I wrote it down
Ben:and it's done.
Ben:And in, in, in the episode before this, uh, I can't remember how many
Ben:before it was this, but it was.
Ben:Empathy, like empathy versus compassion.
Ben:That was a huge thing for, I just realized that the sheer of like doing like studying
Ben:for my dissertation, empathy is me.
Ben:Empathy is mine.
Ben:Like I never, I do not soak up other people's feelings.
Ben:Other people's feelings influence my feelings.
Ben:And they are mine.
Ben:And that's, I think that's what you're talking about.
Ben:One,
Blakely:I have to do, I, and that's why I'm just wired different than you.
Blakely:I have to intentionally acknowledge that I am, I am being influenced
Blakely:by other people's feelings because I don't lead with that.
Blakely:Empathy isn't something that is right in my face, in my particular system.
Blakely:Compassion makes sense.
Blakely:A hundred percent.
Blakely:Empathy doesn't always make a hundred percent sense to
Ben:me.
Ben:I feel like your empathy and my empathy are very, Like yours is
Ben:cognitive minds, emotional where
Blakely:I have to imagine I have in the place I have
Ben:affect empathy first and you have cognitive where you can.
Ben:You can put a mental picture together of what that person's whole situation
Ben:feels like, or is conceived of.
Ben:Where mine is, like, from the center out.
Ben:Like, mine's from the heart out.
Ben:Like, it's like feeling what they feel in their body, and then...
Ben:Like going out from there and, and like, that's, it's just something I'm wrestling
Ben:with this in this season is, is knowing that the way that I am affected in this
Ben:job, you, I cannot push my humanity away.
Ben:If I do, I will get burnt out.
Ben:If I do, I will not be prepared to cope with my life.
Ben:I will get pulled into the pain of all of this because it is my pain.
Ben:It is not their pain that I am just sponging up.
Ben:Well,
Blakely:and that's what I have to caution myself that it's
Blakely:not just imaginary pain for me.
Blakely:If I'm bearing this witness to it and I'm taking part of it, it's not just
Ben:imaginary.
Ben:Yes.
Ben:Yes.
Ben:Where, I mean, it's the same as like seeing a really sad movie and
Ben:crying at a movie or even laughing at a movie that you did their
Ben:laughter just soak into your body.
Ben:No.
Ben:Did their sadness just soak into your body?
Ben:No, there's no water here or liquid here to actually soak up.
Ben:This is communication.
Ben:My receptors are getting sparked and it's making a.
Ben:Physiological change inside of me.
Ben:That is my pain.
Ben:That is not their pain.
Ben:I can, and guess what I do.
Ben:I turn my ears off.
Ben:I turn my eyes off.
Ben:I turn all of the receptors off thinking, well, that's the way to stop.
Ben:I mean, we're talking compassion, fatigue, burnout, all of this stuff, right?
Ben:Where I become more jaded and, and less aware because I want to turn
Ben:the volume of the shit off because I have too much already inside of me.
Ben:And I, if I think that it's just, well, I've sponged up too much pain from them.
Ben:Well, yeah, guess what?
Ben:I'm not dealing with the actual thing that's happening inside of me.
Ben:It is my pain.
Ben:Seeing the pain in the world is, is terrible and also being
Ben:willing to go into pain is my job.
Ben:That's the thing I signed up for is a thing that I have identity
Ben:around to go help people and to do that, like swinging all the way
Ben:back around for this advocacy thing.
Ben:I mean, the pain in the world is
Blakely:terrible.
Blakely:And who's doing anything?
Blakely:And are we deluding ourselves into saying that what we're talking about, what we're
Blakely:dealing with every day, human suffering at our doorstep, that that's not political,
Blakely:that that's not, that we can separate out what we do or don't do about what's going
Blakely:on out here and the people that we help?
Ben:Yeah.
Ben:Really?
Ben:Gotta do, gotta do something, and I'm hoping also to actually, like, as I'm
Ben:growing in this whole, like, to figure something out to, to do a little bit
Ben:more of, like, systemic change stuff, but I still don't have, like, that's not
Ben:a script that's been written for me to follow, like, I do need to find something
Ben:to actually make that work, but, I don't know, I'm hoping to find something like
Blakely:that to, Like, with anything else that we want to change, We have to
Blakely:back up and examine what we already have, and I feel like that's also what hasn't
Blakely:been done and what we're trying to do.
Blakely:I think, I think
Ben:too, like, I have to normalize too, just the, the Stages of development
Ben:for anything is to notice there's a problem, to discuss the problem, to be
Ben:motivated to change it, make a plan, like go make the change, like, like, One
Blakely:part of our plan is more than just us in an echo chamber.
Blakely:Right.
Blakely:In a room.
Blakely:All the time.
Ben:Well, everybody, thank you for being here.
Ben:I hope this recording worked out and that this, uh,
Blakely:As always, it's an experiment.
Ben:Thanks, Blakely.
Ben:Thanks, Ben.
