The Way We Judge Ourselves In Quarantine

hi i'm hecate and this is finding okay sorry what do i usually say i'm usually like right on the nose but i just yo i don't have enough coffee my brain hasn't been working for a solid two weeks i think like i can't find words for anything anymore like yeah it's i've so i wish i could help but i can't remember either yeah i'm like is it like hell welcome i think i got it i think i got it wait i'm like wait i i think i remember i know i said this like three days ago but it's hard

hi thank you so much for joining me i'm hecate and this is finding okay a healing podcast for survivors of sexual assault and abuse i'm here today with elliot from real real human better and we're going to talk a little bit about some of the ways that we judge ourselves in quarantine

thank you so much for coming thank you so much for having me it's so great to virtually hang out with you i love it this is the first time that we're doing it with webcams so this is this is fun extra yeah it is it's extra i like it yeah and thank you for having me yeah it's been a while and it's always so great to to be on your program and hear all the other cool stuff that you have going on and different interviews so thank you yeah awesome well i think i think our rapport tends to i think with the history that we have together a little bit like the the comfort level as well we tend to to kind of like sink into things in a kind of a slightly different way than i do with people that i'm just speaking to for maybe the second time uh totally yeah i'm more willing to be like hey man that's [ __ ] up instead with you know other people i might be like yeah so something i notice in myself and maybe you notice this as well is you know instead i'm just like hey elliot [ __ ] this [ __ ] and you're like yeah [ __ ] that [ __ ] exactly and it is nice to be on the other end where i'm not um you know as a facilitator and real human better i often want to come without you know best foot forward i don't want to offend anybody i want to be very like conscious of my language how i'm showing up and it feels so relieving and relaxing when you're in company that you know there's a comfort level where they're gonna say dude like you crossed the line not okay it's like oh my goodness that one strong boundary makes me feel so much safer just chatting you know just i know i know where the lines are i'm not here to upset anyone and it's good to know where everyone's boundaries are

boundaries are hard to establish with new friends like it's so scary it it is it's and i know you've been doing a lot more online like gaming and interacting as have i and and then we make new friends right with new hobbies we have new friends that we make who share our new interests and yeah and you have to establish boundaries with people you've never met or seen it's like cool it's got real real fast i'm i'm still in the uh the connection phase so i haven't gotten to that scary like oh someone someone misstepped now we have to um create that i haven't gotten there yet so i'm sure that lovely day will come come soon and i'll have to get real uncomfortable or get things will get a lot more real real fast well it's funny too i forget about all the different video games that are out there now oh my gosh i should i'm like ahead of myself already i'm talking about video games because i notice a lot of people judging themselves for playing video games during a pandemic where we're not supposed to go outside and be near each other i feel like we need to let that go and i think we can all lean into video games as like a social medicine and they have advanced so much so that was the point i was getting to is that you play a lot of different kinds of games that are social i tend to come from this old school like mmorpg world so that's where i've been playing a lot more and the dynamics of how you engage matters so much on the game you're playing it's it's really fun and interesting to dip a toe in these different worlds like you may not get the same kind of intense reality checks that i'm getting in a simulacrum world smaller coding where it's not like an open world crazy do anything you want you know it's a little easier to stay on topic i guess like focus on the game but these big vast living worlds uh yeah you can just like essentially i love them because i feel comfortable doing things i don't do anymore like i go on grocery errands i go get crafting supplies i don't do any of that in real life anymore i stay at home

grocery runs are like harrowing events you know it's not a pleasant experience anymore so having a pleasant food shopping experience or food gathering experience feels like

do you remember when [Music]

um yeah i don't go on those either there my partner takes care of food shopping because he's the one that's doing the cooking um so it makes more sense to like reduce that um that vector kind of factor and it would it would it would make more sense like for no see that doesn't that still doesn't make sense i don't know i i keep like going back and forth with all these just sort of like well here's here's a way that maybe like we could reduce that vector even further and i'm like but no like if he has the exposure then it makes sense like that i'm contributing more by not exposing myself but i keep i keep wanting to get to a place where i'm like but here's something that i could do and i keep forgetting that something that i'm doing uh and not valuing is the fact that i'm not going anywhere that that is a contribution and it's just hard to feel like it's a contribution especially when previously uh if you weren't going anywhere or doing anything or here's you know i here's the rub like not making any money um then you know the the societal judgment was that you weren't contributing and so it's very difficult to value that contribution in a pandemic of like i'm not going anywhere i'm not doing anything and all of a sudden that's really important and i think people are stuck in that valuation system right like for so long for intergenerational stuff now we're talking hundreds of years there's been an impetus that if you're staying home and you're not talking to anybody you're isolating you're wrong right and this is some a behavior we have to fix yeah and then suddenly in this pandemic situation with an airborne virus it actually does become one of the most responsible and valuable things you can do and it's hard to do like granted some of us who identify as neurodiverse or challenged with mental health struggles like depression um like oh my god staying isolated at home is really easy for me but it's actually really like kind of hard on our psyches it helps us maintain for me i should say for me i shouldn't say for anyone but me but um i know it like helps me stay in that place of depression at the same time so it's an auroboris of like feeling comfortable in my known misery versus taking a leap to you know extend myself a little further but yeah for so long everyone's been like that's wrong elliot you need to get out more you need to be more social in real life and it's like i love being social i've always been a homebody i just feel safer at home and once that did become something we could value as a society for like a month and that was the bummer people valued that for a little bit of time and then it was like you can't lock me in my house and it's like i'm not locking you in your house i'm asking you to like make a few sacrifices so we we can all get through this together you know and the sacrifice is some of those social human natural tendencies that we have we're social creatures you know yeah we're so [ __ ] really smart i'm sorry i cussed we're all ahead there's there's a little there's literally a little box that i took that says explicit content and if we're talking i just assume that that box is already ticked like in my head it's just gone like i'm not gonna try there there are like some people i interview where i'm like oh does that offend you or maybe we should keep it clean because if you're listeners and with you i'm just sort of like no i assume that the people that are going to listen to both of us are just going to be like f-bombs ahoy and yeah everything's fine for real like fleet of f-bombs is launched

this is how we're doing this this is my mode of travel

but um but yeah back to that thing where it's like hard for us to change an intergenerational judgment about what you're doing and how you're valuing it and again i know the vaccine is big and people are excited for warm weather coming like framework right now it's spring and it's getting really nice out oh my god it's so nice out today but it's so beautiful and and my animals are all freaking out like i get it it's spring people want to connect and people are like i'm vaccinated so i'm safe but it seems to be this um misconception that like i'm vaccinated and now i will go out and destroy coronavirus when i encounter it and unfortunately that's not what's you're not you haven't become like this pac-man that eats corona virus like you're just immune to it which is great like i'm not it's a great thing and that's how we develop like a hurt immunity and safety for people who legitimately can't get vaccinated because their immune systems can't handle that medicine um you know we we enable those people to not have exposure it doesn't really give you because you become a transmitter in so many ways because now this virus can stick to you and you don't know about it and now you're transmitting it and because it feels kind of like i don't have to care anymore right right you still have to you still have to care and that's there's a there's a beautiful video that somebody did on like a tick tock and and it's just this uh this beautiful beautiful woman just kind of like popping out from behind things and just going the pandemic isn't over just because you're over it and just like again and again and it was

it was delicious i love it i love it yeah and i'm also i mean i feel it not just from the pandemic but social issues i'm like oh we we still haven't hit like qualified immunity is still a thing for most police yes sorry i just i just for the most part stopped looking at myself in the [ __ ] mirror like months ago oh my gosh i know now i've got sexy friends who want selfies and i'm like dude no

but i don't wanna [Music] i was like i was cute like a year ago when i got my eyebrows done and my hair done and like cared but yeah i stopped i stopped plucking my eyebrows for the first time since i was like 12 i don't know 13 maybe i have no idea but i got i got all my friends back i'm excited yeah i'm just it's just morbid curiosity at this point where i'm just sort of like i didn't know all those were there now you can do whatever you want and until further notice right yeah i'll let you know we'll do this for a while yeah oh but what what were you talking about before i was like oh just like um social and social issues that i'm still not over even though a lot of people are over it which include uh the qualified immunity for police that is still like rampant across the country like everyone forgot to care like i don't i don't really understand so i don't really feel safe in this country like at all actually um thanks brock turner thanks kyle rittenhouse i'm sure they're super stoked about that too i think that's what they're going for is they wanted to make us scared to leave our houses but the joke's on them because i'm amazing so like i'm not losing out by not going out into this very scary society i don't feel like it's a good boundary for me speaking of boundaries right like this is a new boundary i'm like oh right i'm pretty awesome y'all can find me i'm not i don't need to go into the fray necessarily to engage yeah i do that a lot as a bad habit for a long time so

[Laughter]

no it's great it's it's good good things to realize

yeah there's some oh go ahead

i was speaking with a friend at one point about um like one day when i get my spine back and he was like that's what you're doing right now like in these moments between is when we regrow our spine you don't just grow a spine in conflict at the moment i really like that i really like that smart people i'm so lucky to know smart people yeah i feel that i feel that and i gotta say you're one of those smart people

oh shucks

i have to something i'm realizing like the more i dip into the virtual world that i'm loving and living and enjoying is that i'm very like neurodiversity shows up so much more clearly in a small coded system like in a world of coding where you're you're relatively structured and limited the ways that different brains will read the same type of code as it were it's it's so illustrative like the things that make me tick or get me excited or scare me are not the same as other people's and it's a fascinating way to observe myself in interactions without again having to go out into the world and be a vector of disease or you know threat to others safety as it were good zen height by the way i saw that yeah i i for the first time i actually mute it to sneeze usually i just like let fly and they're just sort of like you know there's a mute button right and i was like all right sorry

ah yeah it's just that beautiful sunshine it comes with uh

oh having a body is so hard it is that is and i appreciate that this is not your normal circadian rhythm and you're helping accommodate for my circadian rhythm actually i've been i've been doing like i mean with the exception of like a couple of nights ago um for the most part i've been uh really doing great in terms of having a normal um rhythm like a sleep cycle i did a lot of work on that and i've been doing i've been doing fairly well uh and and actually really enjoying uh learning to appreciate the you know the morning and uh those hours and certainly having more sunshine in my life and they became they become very precious during the winter especially so yeah for real yeah and i think you were my first friend to presence the term uh sleep hygiene to me and i really enjoyed that yeah yeah my uh my sleep therapist gave me a little a little worksheet and it said like at the top of it like sleep hygiene and uh and had like all the the stuff so this is like an actual like term sleep hygiene and it had a whole bunch of um of habits basically that i guess um like non-vampiric people uh would pass down to their non-vampiric children and then they would rise and fall with the sun together uh it's just a part of their normal lives and this was not a part of my life at all so i just i didn't have those habits instilled in me as a child and uh and also just like never and if you don't pick them up at home how are you gonna pick them up you know out and about because it's stuff that happens uh a lot of the time like between you and the way you interact with the world like when you're alone in your own home and things that you do that are like very personal personal habits um and you know and also have included and evolved to include things like screen time and that's something that we're all pretty shitty about um i work we're great at how i

i'm really great at screen time

i have all of it i have all the screen time oh god all the screens are screened oh my gosh and that blue light though damn oh yeah i hear these everyone's got these funky little blue light glasses now i'm like maybe i'll check that out i just have the uh the settings just like go into every screen that i own except the tv and and you know just pull that that blue filter down to like almost nothing oh nice that's a that's a classy way to do it for sure for sure there's actually a there's a friend of mine that has a uh yeah she's been on the show but but kim has like a program that i still have to figure out like what it is but where you can go and like install an app like on your device that further gives you control over the light settings even more than say your phone or your computer screen normally would allow you to so that you can like play with that that stuff even more i gotta get that i love that i love finding new tools from friends it's so fun yeah but um yeah but i should just do an episode on sleep hygiene that's what i should do i was thinking that and i was thinking i i love like loops into this concept of value as well like reframing value sleep when i was growing up when i was a weekend 35 years ago we took sleep for granted it was just something you did right it was like you're really tired and then you sleep and then you wake up but you're not doing anything you're not productive while you're sleeping so unless you've you know submitted yourself to some medical test or something you're probably not making money while you're sleeping um and therefore it's not really useful it's like almost a burden right we gotta have energy drinks and coffee and we'll stay awake all the time be super productive oh my god you do you remember the movie empire records i only saw it once i don't have a great memory of it sorry fair enough i feel like those were my friends for a long time i watched that movie like multiple times a day for a hot minute there oh the vhs days these kids today with their streaming they don't know what it's like to only own like three videos and not have cable you know but there's a scene where the character is really excited she's sort of the shiny good girl she gets the best grades and you know she's just always the top student and it turns out she's like popping diet pills to stay awake and the line is there's 24 usable hours in every day oh my god

and i remember not understanding that irony until i was like well into probably my 20s and i'm like oh that's a joke that's sarcasm like in no way was i supposed to try to be awake 24 hours every day so that i could that be valued that's insane like that's what they're parroting yeah that's not sustainable yeah as soon as you have a term like sleep hygiene put hygiene with it now people understand that like sleep is a complex system that can become muddied or polluted and and requires a little bit of mindfulness like i love that i love that yeah no definitely i am yeah going to art school i definitely interacted with like some really uh unhealthy uh beliefs about sleeper ways to interact with with sleep as uh as a need a human need um and uh and it really it was uh yeah the value was placed on sleep deprivation where if you were sleeping less it was almost like a competition it really was it was like a competition like a conversational competition where it's just sort of like i've been awake for like such and such many hours i've been i've been awake for like 18 hours i've been awake for like 24 hours i've been awake for 48 hours and it's you know and and everyone just like one up in each other like it makes our art better it's just like it [ __ ] doesn't it doesn't and it doesn't make you okay to be around and your spine is like slowly like starting to grind on itself like go the [ __ ] to sleep yeah right um yeah not great i don't miss those days and and the older i've gotten the less i'm i'm even capable of doing it like pulling uh pulling an all-nighter at a certain point um i mean it it happens every so often but usually is tightened with like mental health stuff and will involve me just like laying there and binging like binge watching something on netflix um and that usually means that like that i'm like processing like a mental health crisis that's either on the way or i'm in the middle of it um but like just me pulling all-nighters to be productive or like just work my body just won't do it anymore my body and my brain now just get together to send the message just like it's not worth it don't do it go [ __ ] go to sleep we refuse we're in our 30s and we won't do it anymore you you like you had like a certain number of these in your life you didn't know it at the time but there was like a limited amount of these that you could play and you played them all and we're not doing it anymore so just doesn't doesn't happen voluntarily at this point i feel you i have had this that exact experience like the last two nights actually where yeah i'm like here's my punch card and there's like no card left my body's like we're not doing it we're not doing it like i uh like i was saying earlier i've been playing a lot of mmos and i'm on a north american server and video game culture tends to happen more at night you may know me i'm a bit more of a country bumpkin if you will more of a fama i like to wake up with the sun i do wake up with the sun whether i like it or not it just happens um so i tend to fall asleep early and normally i've just like listened to my body but now i have internet and games and friends so i keep trying to like push myself to stay engaged and i realized last night around 10 what happens is i start to i stop making sense around 10 pm i've usually been up since 5 or 6 at that point a.m and now i'm just like losing my mind and i don't make sense and it's really hard for me to understand what other people are saying like processing functions just kind of crash and by midnight i have legit turned into a angry child like i am not nice to people anymore i'm like i wanna go to bed and they're like well we're just gonna do this thing i'm like i can't no

why do you like this and at first i was like that's embarrassing and then i'm like this is probably a good sign of like integrating an inner child that knows it needs sleep with my physical body that knows it needs sleep to my brain and saying okay brain we know you could override this and pretend to stay awake like go make yourself a green tea or something and caffeine power through but like in fact you're gonna have a meltdown and then a tantrum and then we're just gonna put you down [Laughter]

so i feel you on that like i was not like this in my teens and 20s oh god an art school definitely like oh my god it's it's the finals i've got four projects and three of them are an oil paint i've got eight crits and i haven't got the work done and it's just sort of like it's oil paint it's not gonna be it's gonna be wet on the wall and it's gonna suck and there at this point if you haven't done it it's just like you can try but it's just i don't know what to tell you yeah like oh my god i made it was awful oh my god those days oh my gosh no i totally just had a flashback to some horrible moment where i was oh god i was very inebriated it was like that push and i lived in a house with a bunch of artists and we all had our midterm critiques coming up like the same day so we decided we're just going to get like you know wasted and stay up for like a week and finish our projects and in this like crazy chaos of energy apparently i decided to finish one of my paintings with a new style of oil painting one of my roommates was using and blacked out the entire background of a painting with black oil paint like a really thick layer and i guess i fell asleep later that night and woke up in the morning and was like what happened and my roommates had to be like yeah we kind of tried to tell you like that's impossible to do in the time that you have but you were like thinking you could varnish it it was just insane it was a horrible hard horrible move and luckily i knew at that moment that i was not going to make it very far through art school so i was like we're just going to let this go like yeah this is this is bad oh god i'm so sorry it happens and to all my other artist friends like we've all been there you may have been this girl at some point and that's okay

i just i like have this this like urge to reach through [ __ ] time and space to like reach out towards your hands with the [ __ ] brush and just be like no [Music] seriously i still want to go back in time to that morning and like try to give myself a few more tools to fix it or work with it like scrape it down use some um you know thinner let's like remove layers maybe we can make it look like some other artsy piece fill it in with acrylic you know and [ __ ] spray acrylic the whole thing and we'll call it good like i but i was just again so fried from weeks of abusing myself and and there was also at that time i don't know if this is a thing for everybody but in our niche it really felt like the more tortured and tormented you were the better your art would be so lean into that misery like oh develop a drinking problem you don't have a drinking problem yet we should get you one of those yeah exactly interesting the torture oh my god the tortured artist as an archetype is so outdated and unnecessary and i mean and then you tied that you tie that in with like mental health stuff and it's just this giant where it's like are you not mentally ill then like are you even an artist and you know like connecting um substance abuse issues and uh and like trauma and mental illness and all tying that to the idea of genius or creative genius specifically is like a whole [ __ ] thing and i and i'm fully aware that i take off like most of those things as an artist and so i'm like this is [ __ ] also there's some interesting correlations and i don't really know what to say but i i object i don't think this is healthy but it might be true i might be right but also maybe not can we take a bigger pole sample yeah i just i don't think it has to be anymore like and i and i have to say like i and yeah for for me also it's just sort of like i fully believe that i can recover and be stable and healthy like in all these things that that if i take away my trauma if i address my trauma fully and heal from my trauma i object to the idea that i will be less of a creative human being that's [ __ ] and i don't like that we have these connections because that might make people less inclined to seek help or healing or believe that they deserve it or that it would be good for them in their life same thing with like addressing addiction issues where it's like but if if i deal with the substance use uh you know issues that i have will i still be able to write will i still be able to paint you know like whatever whatever creative thing you do like all that [ __ ] [ __ ] it just i'm so done right and again there's that pressure of like did you sell out like oh you recovered you quit smoking oh my god i say is a totally you know someone who would probably and benefit immensely from quitting smoking

but i also love that you mentioned them i always get into the social issues right like real human betters all about social issues and social permaculture and i've been coming into contact a lot with um identity politics being uh like artillery for weaponized shame and i think it's interesting especially when we were talking about things like mental illness right which has a negative connotation like we're working on and doing this that stigma but i think frankly illness right ill at ease disease is not at ease so illness is always going to have a negative and the idea that i can identify as mentally ill person versus like i'm having a hard time today or i'm having a hard time with a condition that i believe is not my identity right like that subtle shift i'm so looking forward to us getting there and i think we are i think the linguistics are beginning to like catch up with that but for anyone listening i want you to know if you're human i'm pretty sure you have quote unquote a mental illness like it's okay it doesn't make you less valuable it doesn't make you more special or anything like that um but there's a group of people who are taking the term and beginning to like delve into that and the more we can lean into that kind of idea of like what is my mental health level am i feeling help mentally healthy today am i feeling a little under my mental weather or am i like not i'm mentally having a sick day and knowing it changes all the time and it's not like who you are it's literally every [ __ ] person and each individual person it's gonna show up completely differently as well so but that's yeah i don't know sorry this ramble no i like it and it leads it leads into the pandemic pretty perfectly because you you had people who maybe didn't identify uh or really consider like their mental health or uh or or even like think they had like mental illnesses and all of a sudden uh heading into having to be isolated and then interacting with like anxiety depression maybe some issues that they hadn't really realized they had maybe maybe didn't even have before that's possible like i like i i have a hard time like imagining just sort of like a completely mentally healthy person i guess the dalai lama but like i uh but you know they exist you know they're like unicorns to me but like they exist um and uh and i think it's within the moment you know it can change any moment if you ask me someone like the dalai lama probably still gets sick right but the recovery is so much stronger like the emotional immune system is so nourished in charge that yeah it's not as um oh man that's so cool i love the idea of unicorn people too

but i noticed that i was getting a very um like activated i'd even say straight up triggered by this thing with parents saying their kids reducing their children now my kid's depressed now because of the pandemic and i really wanted to be i just want to like yell from a mountaintop like every person is capable of this level of sadness like this is not your child isn't broken this is a totally remediable thing like this is not the world against your baby but this is a state that happens all the time to a lot of different people and as a group as a society we can recognize it and help alleviate that pain but not if we say oh it's because you're this other person you're not actually like us you're in a different identity that's not going to help us really find our group healing i don't think

no identity politics it's a wild world it is but um yeah that that works that works pretty well like since we're talking about the pandemic to just like roll into kind of some of the stuff that that we wanted to talk about and um and for me

no we are but i'm just gonna i'm just gonna like hit the nail on the head we've we've been like revolving around it and i just wanna just be like ding here's why why you know we wanted to do this episode is as i noticed when like and this happened specifically like a number of times uh and it was really just uh and and also i just want to acknowledge that um that a part of it is uh is coming from i think both of us being willing to just like be really honest and i think a lot of beautiful things come from honesty and and it was us uh connecting talking to each other and um and we realized through honesty with each other that both of us were holding the other up as like this is a person that was productive during the pandemic somebody who in quarantine and in social isolation did something productive whereas i am [ __ ] and have not been productive or done anything of use or substance or value with my time in the pandemics so devaluing ourselves and holding the other person up where i'm like oh elliot like she started like real human better she was productive like during the pandemic and you were like yeah but you did the podcast and like i did you know like and then would like [ __ ] on whatever you did and so we were we realized that we were both doing this with each other and so like wanted to create this episode as two people who did things during the fantastic should we just like be honest about like what it's like to be a person that did something productive during the pandemic like supposedly and the fact that like to just be honest about what that feels like and that it doesn't actually feel that way at all no kind of have this weird conversation every now and then i talk to someone who feels like really productive during the pandemic and i'm like you scare me i don't know what's going on in your life like um but it was so surprising when when we were chatting and you're like i you you've done some i was like i've done anything dude i don't know what i'm doing you've done everything you're here you make these things it's just yeah it is insane to be inside your own head doing your whatever your work is whatever your like soul is called to and you feel like you're not working because it's a soul connection maybe i don't know it doesn't feel like work so much but it's wild to have a perspective from outside telling you like that looks like a lot

yeah or that or that has value right or i view that as productivity or it's something that didn't exist and now exists because of something that you did you're like yeah but like yeah but it doesn't matter you know

like i made it so clearly this has no purpose or meaning um yeah totally totally yeah it's probably how food feels when it grows from a seed and we're all like oh my god it's happening food's growing and the seeds just like i don't know why you're yelling [Laughter] doing what i do here this is what i do um yeah that was an awesome

if any of you grow food or plant babies you know that feeling of like it's germinating new roots new roots

and it's wild how plants just want to do that like on their own with very little very little hard work they make it look so easy

i still don't feel like i've done anything with real human better i made a discord server that was exciting because i it's many many people i think started off with the platforms we were like familiar with when the pandemic began so like instagram facebook twitter god can we just like beep all of those out as if they're swear words and post no just like i don't know we're not i'm getting tired of them yeah like because it's just the only way that we've been connecting with people but um but zoom and using zoom is the platform for the for the meetings that would so there would be uh like weekly zoom um you know like it would be like half lecture and then like half uh connection stuff uh and there would be what how many people would you have in a group i kept it to 12. but before that i was doing free videos live streamed on facebook just like live chats and i was gonna trying to interact with the chats that were coming through and that was really fun i was living alone and i like you know you just sit on facebook and all of a sudden you like come across on your phone it's like your friend and it's their face and they're walking around and they're just talking and then they see you watching and they say hi and i was like oh i could do that too and that was really fun at first and then we started gaining more momentum and frankly i love to talk about social issues and some people felt really threatened and got kind of trolley then i moved it to zoom and decided i wanted you know just like to be able to hold a little safer space not that i didn't want to shut down the conversations that were happening but it didn't want them interrupting the other like students as it were people who were there trying to get to the next point they didn't need to like you know harp about like why we should keep baseball team names that are offensive and [ __ ] like that like no no we're this is not that lane we're not in that lane the person who's there banging pots together what about like chemtrails i know i'm like i can't with your chemtrail thing at this moment we can sidebar later but like right now

yeah yeah goodness but yeah you were saying so then we did we moved to zoom and we did that like once a week meeting that was like a group village meeting and i was trying to loop those concentric circles of support so uh like trying to find ways that as a facilitator i don't like to think of myself as a teacher right i really want to be there to support others and answer questions and be helpful and be accountable to of course everything i'm bringing to the table but i want to facilitate the connections and the learning so we have those concentric circles of support where you could meet without me with a designated buddy or a designated group well and you did that you facilitated the creation of lodges so like the the group the full group would be separated into halves and so the lodges would also have uh weekly meetings with with each other and then each week there would be a um like a a dyad like kind of situation so like the buddy thing so you would have a completely new person that you probably didn't even know and you would hold space for each other um on these phone calls or zoom calls whatever you wanted um but really holding like authentic space with i mean usually a stranger and so doing that like every week and then can i that was a massive amount of connection that you facilitated um that i think was really incredibly important and valuable and uh an incredible learning experience for for people in the midst of a pandemic and then that paired with the um you know the creation of this of the space the facilitation and then also the creation of the curriculum so you know each each week that that being curriculum that you had you know created multiple sources put together expertise that nobody else had so you were teaching a class and then like amidst all of this uh just being like yeah but i didn't really do anything it's so funny like as you're saying it i'm like yes it's a lot but it just feels like what i do you know it's like i get up and i pee and i make sure everybody was able to connect with each other like it's just what i do i don't even meanwhile though i have been unable to um create like steady content that's offered anywhere on a regular basis unlike some people in this interview who have been able to keep up with content creation publishing content creation using all kinds of different um tools and strategies from that tech world to really polish a product that people can revisit again and again are using as a platform to create community because you're facilitating community building at at this point on facebook i know but potentially through patreon maybe i'm not sure not yet that's actually that's actually a goal of mine um is to uh i have i have a break coming up so after march i'm heading into a six-week break because i started to experience a lot of burnout i started to notice that happening in myself so i'm pretty i'm pretty proud of myself um and you've you've put out a really amazing and beautiful body of work in a year like a portfolio we could go through it is it's really impressive uh i just i noticed uh

yeah just just to like mention what that burnout looked like because i because i noticed it and um and it could potentially be helpful but i didn't mention it in the last episode um when i the update episode um when i mentioned like this break is coming up and something i do want to be honest about is like you mentioned like keeping up with content you know creation the truth is no like no um because because i switched to weekly and there have been times where like i had that where you know the the posting would be late and i you know because if it's if it's scheduled beforehand it means i have everything done and then it posts i set it to post automatically at like 6am or something so if it comes out at 6am it means i already had it done you don't know i may have had it done maybe like a few hours before 6am that maybe i like pulled a an all-nighter you know like or you know stayed up late or like [ __ ] up my sleep schedule to like do that um or potentially like the day beforehand was like oh my god it's almost wednesday i have to figure out something to talk about and that maybe there are some episodes that i'm like not happy about having that that i felt like i was winging it and didn't appreciate it in myself and was like this isn't fair but this is what's happening um so this is like maybe you know knowing that like maybe there's somebody who's like i've waited i wait a week and you know for some reason like this this podcast is important to me or this is holding important space for me and and feeling like i was being really shitty by by being like yeah but i'm just winging it this week you know um or something like that or or or realizing you know not not keeping up all of a sudden like a week flies by and being like uh this week's episode shouldn't actually technically be an episode but it is and uh yeah it's like that self-judgment thing and and as somebody i'm just like saying this as someone who sees you from the outside you put out a large body of quality work and you've been doing it for a year i don't i don't know if listeners have any idea of how much work goes into one of your podcasts or to putting together podcasts or just editing sound in general is a massive amount of work and labor um and uh yeah i i just can't imagine there's no way i would have been able to do this for as long as you have i would have been i think yeah i made it like a month or two into the pandemic before i was like yo we gotta shift this format and i can only handle 12 of you at a time like well it's good i just can't i can't be as available um to answer everyone in the world's questions especially when it turned out a lot of people didn't have honest questions and you know there was there's so much trolling that can happen when you're offering self-work basically because trolls know they need it and they want it and they're craving it but they also don't have skill sets or habits that help them get that help they just keep doing whatever that behavior is that that aura boris downward i'll just keep in my safely comfortable miserable space here that i do that's why i'm re-referencing my hand motion because now we have video

sorry i think i think it'll only be available to people on patreon but um well there you go people better get on patreon and see this sweet hand movement yeah i'll do it again for patreon viewers

but yeah i mean i i'm constantly amazed that you've produced so much and i think that break that you're planning for yourself like i hope content creators recognize that that is how you keep going like if you're making a lot of content if you're doing a lot of the stuff and especially when you do great quality work like finding okay you also end up with this high bar where you're like oh my gosh every week it's gonna have to be this awesome like mind-blowing healing process and sometimes weekly content needs to be like a blooper reel i think and if anyone's wondering why i would even mention keeping up with weekly content when it isn't mind blowing or earth shattering but it's because there's a lot of internet content and your search engine optimization plummets as soon as you stop engaging regularly and i couldn't do it i could not do it that's the other thing where you're like you did so much and i'm like for like a little bit but i hadn't i i ran a sprint not a marathon um but why why don't we value sprinting like that's that's the thing is is like you you put so much work into like the these like encapsulated like experiences and then you needed space and rest in between i really appreciate that that's something i started the podcast in 2019 and i haven't taken a break since i launched it and then and then realized like that i was running myself into the ground i wasn't doing weekly posts that whole time i will say in 2020 that's when i went up to weekly but but you know like really i started um i started spacing on time i started like i started missing appointments i started not knowing what day it was what month it was and that was something like that at a certain point like and this was something like while i was actively engaging with calendars and planners like you know and all of a sudden would like not realize and you know like looked at looked at the episodes the other day as i was like creating some content and was like oh right the recent episodes and then like the last four and then like was scrolling through my web page like so that i pulled the right thing being like oh what order were they in and realized that like the one before that one or you know this one i was staring at the at the cover image and and was just like i feel like that was like four months ago did that like just happen like four weeks ago i don't and yeah but like when it when i started spacing on appointments with people that was when i was like this is unacceptable and i can't you know like something's wrong um you know and because that's that's the kind of [ __ ] that would have been happening before the pandemic when i was just burned out from trying to engage in a neurotypical you know situation where it was that constant that constant fear of of doing what all of a sudden i was like oh i'm doing this it's you know that that means that there's a huge amount of pressure now that i've reached that level of like non-function that i had to constantly scramble to maintain back when i was interacting with the world at large and with other neurotypical people like and all of a sudden i'm i'm back you know so it's now that i've reached that level of dysfunction again i'm like that must mean i'm under more pressure than i thought it was i was because because so far like i've been okay um yeah but

uh but able to to maintain like a level of uh a function that is uh surprising for me and i and it i think it had to do with the fact that all of a sudden i didn't have to interact with neurotypical systems right just disengaged from all of that entirely and and you know was like well i'll just do it at my own pace and realize that once i didn't have to deal with all that [ __ ] the pace i was able to maintain was actually quite surprising um and it didn't run at a good clip without all this weight on my back basically um yeah and i but i mean at a certain point like having to recognize that those breaks will still need to occur um even when it's just me at my own pace and i think finally reached that point and was able to recognize here we are we have reached that point break um and uh yeah and i think i i have a lot of respect for the way that you were doing things because it it seemed very healthy and i also loved that you were doing it in in time with the the seasons as well like the the names of things you know synced up with uh with solstices and and so just like that everything has a season and creating space for that experience within a certain amount of time frame um which i think was also really healthy because because it it asked a lot in terms of people with like engagement and uh and thought and self self work you know and growth and that's a lot of a lot of like work and then that people need to break after that and also that people have other responsibilities potentially that might that might you know not be able to to keep up with it it made a lot of sense and it was a very responsible way to to do stuff um i like it yay i mean and i was gonna have the spring ostara series which i think i'll probably still do but i'm really focused on populating this discord server now um if people aren't familiar with discord it's free and there's a lot you can do with it and essentially this should allow us to again do those meetings and classes but a little less with the focus on me as a facilitator like i don't need there to be a class about me or centered about me that's totally not why i i know some people step into that role because that's what they're looking for that makes me uncomfortable it's not why i stepped into this role personally so a system like that where i can have other facilitators helping me or other moderators where i can have more speakers i every student is a teacher kind of a thing and it's a really fun platform so if anyone wants to check out discord you should just for funsies if you're into gaming i'm sure you already know about discord and i'll i'll get some links together to make it easier for people to just find that server and i'm going to include it with episode notes so like literally anything that we mentioned that we want to make available to people it'll just be right in episode notes just take a look yeah thank you yeah and again that should we should still be able to offer the same awesome kind of classwork that we were offering on the zoom where again that same level of moderation we aren't going to be trolled or bullied by people like if we are if that is going to happen it's not going to disrupt the classroom experience for the people who want to learn and and part of my ethics have always been like making things as affordable as possible so we will be able to do more source sharing through this free program rather than zoom for links and videos hopefully to do watch parties together have more social chats with each other just drop in oh who's hanging out let me see i'm lonely this morning i want someone to talk to i don't know i i've always wanted to create a village that felt like a good place to live and i think in 2020 one of the many hard realizations i made was that colonization supremacy spirituality and land access is probably not something i'm going to be able to resolve even for myself within this lifetime let alone socially but i do want to start creating some safe space for conversations to happen around decolonizing ownership of space and i think virtual space is like like discord give us that meeting room give us that meeting space before before the pandemic i would have thought we needed to rent a barn or you know we would have had to buy property we would have had to host at a brick and mortar establishment which meant there would be a landlord or other taxes and there's something so incredible about free discrete virtual spaces for meeting that i hope we can all lean into that medicine that healing because it is healing for us social creatures who want to stay connected and be safe

i'm sorry i got a little soap box there no no that was really exciting i just i think i may have had somebody request uh i just had a notification pop up um and i just need to take a look

did you get something fun i like want to hear about it it looks dishy judging from your face

yeah this will be something we'll leave in for the patreon uh i will absolutely tell you ooh patreon secrets

i'll respond to that later um but i i just like i saw the notification pop up and i was like it did they just um and had to just like click on that to be like yeah so um

this works into boundaries really well and also with the pandemic really well uh and absolutely this is something that i wouldn't put out there in general but i will super include as like a an extra you know for patreon um subscribers but uh so a big part of like boundary work and uh and pandemic stuff uh has been working um and for me like it also uh tied in with a whole lot of other like mental health stuff and personal stuff um because uh to be honest a part of it tied in well i'll just be like really honest about it uh i went off a bunch of uh medication i started medical marijuana uh when i started the medical marijuana i i realized that i felt great and all of a sudden i you know became really stabilized in a completely different way and was realizing i don't need these other medications that's a very personal thing that happened with you know doctors so don't you know just like if you're listening this isn't medical advice this is just my medical you know stuff that happens and you should absolutely talk to your doctor and uh yeah so

disclaimer addendum yeah um i am not a professional speak to your doctor uh but i went off all these dyke meds that i've been on for decades some of them uh and then the last one to come off uh less less because of great you know doctor advice and more because of uh medical issues with like interacting with a clinic that is kind of shitty and has been a huge problem um so had like some kind of uh like medical [Music] just kind of walls uh as far as like accessing being able to access a psychiatrist that was paid for by medicaid and then like once i was there you know the issue was hey so you have seizures uh you know i'm not really comfortable you know with you taking these certain medications like because you because they can cause seizures uh you know like we need to do all this extra stuff i need to discuss this with your neurologist and all of a sudden my neurologist is not available won't return the phone call like will will not make themselves available to my psychiatrist so two doc two professionals can't speak to each other so i can't get my medication that was a huge problem that was literally never resolved so i was cut off of adderall um for the first time in about 20 years and honestly just like and that wasn't that wasn't appropriate that wasn't responsible that wasn't medically responsible and that wasn't in the best interest of the patients however in the patient being me so um uh and it also wasn't exactly my choice however once it happens i will be honest and this again is not the way this should have happened uh but once it happened i was really interested to find that i felt fine um and that while no i couldn't do certain things at the level that i had done them before since we were heading into the into the you know kind of the pandemic um that i didn't need the adderall i wasn't needing to keep up with because i was out of school i was no longer needing to keep up with neurotypical people or engaged with the same systems that i had been needing to you know keep up with for those 20 years those 20 years were me in school i wasn't in school anymore so it was just the question of like okay so if i'm like you know doing things at a slower pace and i don't have the kind of like work uh if i'm not doing the kind of work that that needs me to engage with things in that way do i actually need adderall um and for me the answer was i might be okay being off of it and being off of these psych meds all of a sudden the seizures weren't happening and the migraines started to happen less and less with me keeping up with all these like hygiene things uh you know so like sleep hygiene is what i mean by that not just sort of like i started bathing and i started having seizures last but not least oh god i stopped phasing yeah nothing has happened about it but just so you know it hasn't cured or caused anything but i don't have any other hygiene but sleep hygiene now yeah no i'm right there with you um i am not clean um it's part of my social distancing toolkit actually i smell stay over there

for your own safety on multiple levels or more like you know i want you to be six feet away and if you violate that six foot bubble i'm gonna cost you with some real primal sense all right

pheromones will be involved they won't be gonna be musky we're gonna have some real interesting notes coming through from like day five to day three

sorry i got really into the grossness of that for a minute no i feel you i feel you i'm i'm glad to know that other people are not bathing it makes me relatable you got me friend you got me yeah but you were saying yeah yeah like the sleep hygiene and switching this medication changeover has been yeah but the uh but the the thing with the medication change um uh and another reason that maybe stuff like this should have you know kind of been planned and kind of like drawn out a little bit more um because i came off of those psych meds uh so so quickly um you know a part of that was adderall is an amphetamine and thus is uh an appetite suppressant and so was one of the other meds i was on and once i came off of those i realized that i hadn't been getting hunger cues my natural hunger cues uh for about two decades and also was in my mid-30s and so was already in that space where my metabolism was ready for like a big just shift and so my metabolism just completely did a 180 and i was getting hungry cues for the first time which is great great to have natural hunger cues um but basically what happens uh with that medication shift and also like the point in time that i'm in uh in my my life cycle it basically meant that uh in about a year's time i gained like over 30 pounds uh and for somebody who used to struggle with eating disorders that's been extremely difficult and has been just another reason that i have not wanted to leave the house i don't have clothes that fit me anymore i don't feel comfortable i don't feel comfortable in my own body and so that's been very difficult there's that's a lot of personal work that i'm doing um and that also meant that you know the work that i was doing um you know involved me working at an art school as an artist model and i did mostly nude work so all of a sudden i'm not feeling comfortable in my own body and i'm still continuing to do nude modeling for artists and i started not recognizing this person that they were putting on their canvas um where for me like my experience of that was like i don't know that fat woman that you just drew and that's there's a lot of judgment around that and it's been me also doing a lot of personal work and and involved in like wow i'm actually like i'm all about body positivity and i can't give that love to myself like you know i'm fat phobic towards myself that's really messed up i don't like that you know and so just doing a lot of personal work but really just had to make the decision like hey this is causing a lot of problems for me i need to step back from nude modeling while i you know kind of like figure out my [ __ ] um you know whether that means losing weight whether that means just being more accepting of myself and maybe this is something i'll come back to maybe i won't i don't know but i've been doing this for a long time and also you know doing that work like at that facility i ran into a lot of really uncomfortable situations with uh with like ppe you know mask wearing where i was being pressured by some students to remove my mask or some [ __ ] and it's like absolutely not and also like having to actually for the first time i've been modeling since i was 18 for the first time having the experience of of saying like i will leave this session like having to explain to the teacher like i will walk out of this room and i will not come back like and i won't get paid but your students won't have anybody to draw so just had to be really strict with boundaries and and have like three conversations with him that basically like in were uh like you know three strikes and just kind of be like this person is in the class and they are not wearing their mask correctly and after they were corrected were pulling it down when he would walk away when he wasn't looking and so it you know like really just like had to finally get to the point where it was like either the master worn correctly or our model has made it clear that she will leave and it was like that was really scary and intense for me to have to say that but it was like you value my life or i leave the room [ __ ] you like 100 uh peace yeah hi um and so had a lot of uncomfortable situations but for the most part um have been met with complete support from uh on the surface at least uh from the administration uh about like yes like not only are you allowed to wear a mask but you need to wear a mask like as a model and no one you know should be asking you to take it off all the students need to be wearing masks everyone needs to be social socially distancing there's air filtration units like here's you know all the ways that like i felt i felt supported but then once i was in the situation the admin wasn't there and it was up to the teacher to enforce those things and the teachers weren't properly prepared for the role that they were going to be taking where it's like you need before they come into they just gave the teachers the thermometers and you know during business hours people entering the building there would be somebody outside to do the the thermometer thing uh but once once it was after hours and there were like evening classes that fell to the teachers and the teachers were uncomfortable doing that uh and it was like no but it's up to you like somebody with like a fever could walk in here and not say anything or not no that's up to you and you need to do that to keep literally everybody in the space that's your responsibility alive so do it because why is it my job i'm the model like and i and i was the one like having to to ask um so it put me in a very uncomfortable position um this is why i stopped leaving the house yeah because i was tired of like getting into conflicts with people whereas like this is it's like entirely not my job to make you a decent person which is hilarious because my company is called real human better but it's it's a suggestion you know like that's on you to do that i'm i can't do it for you and uh bless you bless you for being the person who was you know able to keep some semblance of safety in that space but again no [ __ ] but a new responsibility it wasn't but um but so there were some uncomfortable situations but then at the point that i that i asserted that personal boundary where like and i didn't explain why because they're not entitled to they're not entitled to that for me they don't need to know but basically i you know i sent them an email maybe like eight months ago or something like that and i said like i won't i will no longer be accepting nude work i'm still available for portrait sessions and i'm still available for clothes sessions uh and at that point i didn't get any more work at all they stopped having they stopped sending me modeling requests so basically i've been employed for uh most of the pandemic i had i had maybe like a couple sessions of work like um you know after lockdown stopped uh and then it was just done uh and i haven't i didn't hear from them again up until you know this this last uh this last week where i got an emergency request um they've asked me to nude model twice since i said that i don't need not model the first time i just said no unfortunately i can't because i used to be the person that they called because they're really nearby and so if somebody cancelled i was able to be there in like five minutes um that was great um but basically uh

yeah uh you know so so they said are you able to nude model and i said actually you know unfortunately i still don't do that thing i said i don't do um holding that boundary and uh and they said well can you know they were really desperate so you know they said could you wear shorts and a tank top and and you know i didn't say this but the answer was i don't own what it what you're asking for like i got i got too big i don't have clothes like that that fit me and so it was basically i just said like i am able to do loose men's gym shorts and a t-shirt and they were like well will the t-shirt be fitted or loose and like i could have done fitted but at that point i was just so annoyed i was like the t-shirt will be loose so the t-shirt's gonna be loose whether you want it or not and it was like and you know when i'm sorry but like that's that's what i got um or that's what i'm comfortable with and it was just basically like i'm not i'm not willing to make myself uncomfortable or you know damage my mental health in order you know to to fix whatever unfortunate problem you have with scheduling um so i had a super super weird modeling experience last week and it was my first one in a while i won't get into why it was weird but it was weird and um and then today you know got a a request for hey we have like a portrait a sculpture portrait thing um you know are you available for that and because it's a you know like a bust uh i've i felt like you know they've been really great about this but i feel like i should check and i i just checked and i was like you know will i be allowed to wear a mask if so i'm absolutely available and so the notification and my whole face situation uh that you saw was was actually me reading them saying like actually we were hoping you wouldn't be wearing a mask but everyone would be far away and there would be air filtration and it's just me being like um you want me to what now no um so that was my no face uh and i'm just like blown away that i was just asked to do that um or expected to do that um i'm just i'm just kind of like over [ __ ] that was like a whole thing um that won't be in the the audio episode but i i think a lot of it is probably relatable on at least some level to people

thanks thanks for listening friends thanks for sharing it looked it looked juicy and i was like what's going down i feel you though a lot of people because and part of it like i've even had clap back from certain folks i know in like the midwest and things where their cultural attitude towards cope it's been like a little different and it's like i don't want to live in fear why are you living in fear and i'm like i am not living in fear i am i'm not scared because i'm not doing anything that's gonna expose me to the virus like it's just like wait a minute i feel like yeah it it it feels like watching somebody like walk up to a grizzly bear to give it a hug and being like why are you living in fear like if you don't hug the bear you're living in fear and it's like it's reasonable caution for me to not try to hug that bear why are you doing this this is completely unnecessary family members like friends friends of the family everybody a lot of people have given me a hard time and been like why don't you want to come out why don't you want to come visit why don't you want to come hang and i'm like

i do you want me to explain this to you do you want me to explain how um what's going on like have you been sleeping for a year i don't understand don't make me do that work that's emotional labor and you know well why i don't want to do that yeah all you want me to say is that i don't feel safe so that you can say that i'm wrong and you're right and like keep trying to tell me that i'm safe so that you feel safe but like yo you're not safe either dude you're just lying to yourself yeah you're trying to lie to me and i'm like really not appreciating it it's just

yeah that's that's me that's how i get about it so good for you for handling it um without clapping back i probably would have clapped back well i have i have to respond to it and you know and it's just gonna look something like unfortunately i'm you know and until you know vaccinations are you know are available and have been taken by you know like i'll phrase it but basically just like unfortunately considering vaccinations aren't available to everyone yet um i you know i will not be able to take any jobs that require me to not wear a mask

i like i i don't you know and and that's i'll just leave it at that but it's just sort of like you know i explained to you at the beginning of the pandemic like my mother is a healthcare worker she works with babies you want to kill babies what's wrong with you [ __ ] you just i'm so tired oh man and that's just it's sea lioning it's real life sea lion that's what i'm sick of for people don't know thank you sea lion if you don't know what sea lioning is this is a tactic that's commonly used on the internet by people i may have referenced it a few times already in this episode but like you show up and pretend that you're asking an innocent question but you don't ever listen to the answer you keep asking questions that sound naive and ignorant but essentially you're just trying to wear somebody down and make them tired and make them exhausted so they stop speaking up and they it's a way of beating someone into submission and when i see it i get so fired up because like it's sea lion hunting season like come at me bro comment one of my friends come at anybody i know and i will i will destroy you i don't do it anymore and i see it happening in like real life now like again like somebody's showing up in my world however that looks and giving me a hard time that i don't want to go out in public

or asking me again and again why don't i feel safe

[Laughter] yo bro why do you feel safe

cause his name's cal rittenhouse i'm just kidding i'm sorry i'm not kyle i hate you i don't know if you know this but i i use your name as a slur and i i will until the day i die i'll never let people forget that shame i actually get shitty people confused can you remind me which one is kyle rittenhouse oh yeah kyle rittenhouse was the proud boy the like 17 year old proud boy who took his rifle out shot people tried to like go to the cop car that was going to the shooting area and like turn himself in but he's like a white dude holding a rifle so they just didn't care they probably thought he was one of the boys in blue

yeah so anyway so he ended up having like turn himself in days later and then i love that they call themselves the conservatives so then the fanatics decided to have get this was it um i was gonna call it an only fans which is not far from it only fans would have been cuter but no they had a um

fun gofundme to pay for kyle's bail so kyle could get home to his family clearly had done a great job of raising this young man [Laughter] kyle you suck you've always sucked you're gonna continue to suck i just i don't know i don't know if this is trolling or if this is just yelling into the either you can edit this all out but

that's what we call little boys with no backbone little boys with no social skills we call them kyle's now they're kyle written houses

don't get me started on the brock turners y'all patreon people there's a head slide over brock turner [Laughter] another horrible person that we can always remember to make fun of never forget

these people have gotten away with rape and murder like legitimately literally it's not about oh i feel like they murdered somebody i feel like they raped somebody like yo you got caught you admitted it

you are a murderer you are a rapist just because everyone likes you about it doesn't [ __ ] change that you're that thing talk about political identities i'm sorry but i do feel like that's a little bit different like this is like i've made a choice to take an action and murder somebody is a far cry from them having a hard mental health day and and yet people are trying to conflate that a lot and it's um it's weak again i'm just going to say it's a really weak cop-out kind of a approach and i'm i'm really sick of that yeah we're all mentally ill it's not a [ __ ] excuse man like you don't get to go murder someone about it i don't think yeah well and i mean i think a stat a step that uh people really ignore is that um i mean first of all they're almost there are so few um there are so few conditions like mental you know illnesses that are actually associated with violent behavior at all um and uh and very loose association by associated i mean that there are slightly higher incidences of violent tendencies within those conditions uh extremely few um and uh and still like it would still not really be like valuable or helpful to say that if you have this that you are more likely to be violent because that is still not even like statistically really true what is statistically true is that if you are if you suffer with a health a mental health condition sorry

if you struggle with a mental illness you are statistically more likely to be a victim of violence than a perpetrator of violence that is the statistical truth and that is something that most people don't know even if they do have a mental health condition they still you know even if you do have a mental health condition you still are fed that stigma that like you're more likely to be violent it's not [ __ ] true it's the opposite of true yes we're it's a way of getting it's a way of utilizing leveraging identity politics to keep people from being accountable for their actions because we don't see this coming up in court cases for women people of color black people indigenous people trans people like it only shows up for white men you mad about it whatever bro i don't really care oh my god yeah continue so problematic and and that is that's identity politic appropriation and this is not to say because i do believe if you've gone off and you've shot somebody like yo you have issues like you have wounding you are wounded and the way that you're processing your wounding because it's undiagnosed is to keep wounding because it's all you know and that's the cycle we want to stop in our transgenerational healing of humanity is stopping the cycle where wounding is all we know and we have alternatives because good lord a lot of that stuff i bet you kyle rittenhouse is trying to do that um you know the white white kid death by cop thing where you think oh i'll show up and shoot people and the cops will just take me down in glory and i'll have my manifesto read by people later and i'll be this i don't know incel superstar anywho it doesn't work out that way they will take you down non-lethally they're gonna put you in a bulletproof vest they're gonna take you to burger king they're gonna take you to burger king yeah like that's not what happens to white shooters largely and not i'm not saying the police should go and shoot every shooter i think maybe we need to look at some serious issues with our gun lobbies the institution of the second amendment and how it's being like forwarded who's touting the oh god oh god i'm sorry it's a whole thing but like one thing i want to mention like since we got into this area is uh is just connecting like you know we we like skipped one thing in there and it's something that i want to just say is that i don't believe that white cis male anger is a mental illness i don't and we just sort of started saying like it was i don't think you know no no no because my white cis female anger isn't a mental illness it's a part of my humanity like a human exactly just like i'm sure every other person identifying with all their identifier prefixes feels angry yeah enraged even sometimes yeah and i think like and i wasn't saying that you had said it was i'm just saying that that's like a that that's a point that people like miss because when when a white cis male goes out and commits an act of violence um especially against like marginalized people um all of a sudden which is all they ever do have you ever noticed that why can't you all just get onto that like killing each other off thing like keep coming for the rest of us leave us alone anyway sorry but um but yeah like there's the uh the shift like that happens in in the media and in personal conversations really quickly just skips over into yeah but mental illness and nobody actually and it's like well they must be mentally ill and just have an undiagnosed uh mental illness and it's like actually [ __ ] you like maybe they do maybe they don't there's no real statistical link up like between like the mental illness you know stuff and violence anyway and what we're not looking at is that they were an angry man that you know yes like they needed help they needed support they needed that let's do that happen but like yeah i didn't have to use it yeah let's let's not excuse it and just all of a sudden shift this onto mentally ill people and make it just about like stigmatizing mentally ill people because [ __ ] you this isn't about us this is about like angry white cis men stop making that leap acknowledge that gap right and i would say that stop it i stop it and i would say part of um part of the conflation issue that we hit with it too is um like it does matter and we should have compassion for people who are wounded but like not everybody has that capacity just like not everybody can [ __ ] publish a podcast every week not everybody can facilitate like a community connecting throughout a week not everybody can do that hold space for somebody who's that wounded and asking us all to like [ __ ] hold the hand of the abuser is is in a wild a wild suggestion i just to those in the community who i feel like i'm hearing it from a republican party that wants unity now but their version of unity is that they still get to be in charge right like that's the framework of their unity and i do see that coming up in a lot of our issues with mental health for white men which is again privileged and oh just confusing conversation it confuses people the way it's constructed i do want to say like i don't want to i don't want to devalue like mental health care for uh for men or or white men like that's not you know like because the suicide rates are atrocious and and also there's a whole bunch of [ __ ] like that that they deal with especially like you know like you might be listening and you might be a you know a white man and that's fine just don't shoot a bunch of people like yeah you know i feel like i do want to mention there are resources i'm not a male body person but i was really um i really like okay i don't i'm really sexually attracted to male-bodied people so i've spent a lot of time with them and it's in my best interest for them to feel healthier and more whole and complete so i hate that i pr i probably sounded very reductionist it's been a rough morning in the gaming community but um i think i'm so funny anyway um uh but there are there are groups like the mankind project where you remember fight club y'all remember fight club where men could get together and do manly things but it was like beating each other up because it turns out it's an unhealthy fantasy from someone's fragmented psyche yeah okay so the mankind project is like the healthy version of fight club where men can actually get together and support one another about emotional issues and with emotional support there are chapters throughout the world i believe it's founded on jungian psychology and archetypes there's a lot of depth and richness there and they're probably virtual communities popping up as well so again if you are feeling like a man who is never able to cry or express your feelings and all you know is a cycle of wounding and you're looking for role models who look like you look they're out there like that those resources are there for you and just because me and my homie here are being funny and like laughing through our trauma it's uh i don't we're not trying to make your trauma harder on you i know it's not easy but um also whatever bro you mad bro

try not to go kyle about it you know yeah kyle yeah i just i would i would love us to um thank you for that for that resource and i'll i'll drop that link in in episode notes but um

but what i'm really interested in is creating the societal shift that needs to take place in in order for like whatever fractured like disenfranchisement like whatever is happening that's creating that anger or like not allowing men to express their feelings you know to the point where they have to go shoot a bunch of people about it i would love us to as a society create the spaces that deal with those feelings

and don't even allow them to get to that place uh and and actually take care of everybody and create emotional space for everybody and we're all actually like working on our mental health right everybody

where we don't even have that happening i don't know about the guns i like that's that's like that's like a next level like then there's like the guns are like a whole different conversation we don't have to have um you know right i mean as a society we absolutely have to have it when i'm what i'm saying is right now in this space you and me we don't have to have that conversation necessarily about gun laws different episodes yeah different episode but um but as as far as like you know even even before like i think like there's a big problem that like we as a society aren't dealing with before somebody even like picks up a gun whether you know or gets the point where it's like is the gun available or not or anything like that totally where it's just like their feelings and then guns and how about we deal with things while they're at the feeling level you know while we're you know how did you get that angry why did you get that angry and we've talked and we're talking kind of in the kyle rittenhouse frame of like angry and being a murderer but i i also have um lots of beautiful mothers in my life who are mothers of young men and of course want to raise like healthy men who were respectful but also love themselves and you know we want healthy people in our world so and one of the big things that's been present for me that i'm so grateful now is to recognize that we do not allow young men to have not platonic physical affection like you hit a certain age as a young man and you are no longer a baby and you don't get hugs and you don't get kisses and you can't hold hands with your boyfriends your male friends you know you can't get in a cuddle puddle or give your big a big hug to your male friend suddenly there is like a strict gender role and refusal imposed upon you where you now have to think of yourself as a sexual person which you probably aren't like i feel like this happens in america before puberty gets hit so it's it could be very confusing to that child having this social construct of sexuality imposed upon someone who is not actually a sexual being yet you know or maybe even ever you know um so yeah like i try i've been trying more and more to reach into lean into physical touch as a love language noticing how often that shows up for my male-bodied friends and recognizing there is a disconnect where they had like a decade or maybe more of their life where there wasn't a lot of holding and feeling physically held when they really could have used it so 100 where we get our brock turners from as opposed to our kyles who are so desperate for affection they take it violently from others and it's not affection right i feel like there's probably still a deep dark pit in brock turner's soul where he feels unloved because he wasn't actually receiving affection from somebody he was just trying as best he could to have the physical content that he or contact that he had been craving so as a society working with our mankind projects and things i hope we all can learn to um allow men more space for platonic touch both as our friends as our brothers as our children our cousins as our you know whatever like yeah and sometimes you back to boundaries have to reestablish that for yourself you know like hey i know you may not be used to platonic touch i'm hugging you not because i want anything from this other than for you to feel hugged i hope this doesn't send you the wrong message and you can have that conversation too like what's your level of comfort with touch maybe a hand on the shoulder is more than enough you know just things to talk about with your friends i love that you mentioned that because as i imagined myself in a situation like that i immediately bumped up against the thing like but if i touch him he's going to think it means something and then you know like so talking about having that discussion um yeah that's incredibly important i love that you talked about that and there's some great articles on that cultural phenomenon uh that i will absolutely drop in episode notes but like the the rise in homophobia and that being tied into uh to just that like just nixing all um all platonic male touch and uh she's weird it's super [ __ ] weird and it's not like this in other countries either right like that's something like americans are very much like insular so like if you haven't traveled and you haven't like witnessed other cultures interacting like you might not know this but other countries are not [ __ ] like this you can walk down the street in india and i saw like men holding hands with other men not gay their arms around each other around each other taking naps snuggling with each other spooning like you know like just you know and that would that be happening like on a break like you know near the vegetable stands or something like you know like naps happen in public also so you know if they're like why did you see this i'm like no it's like literally like right there and just like hanging out draped across each other like you know and just i've been to so many places in the world and seen men be affectionate with each other and it doesn't mean that they're gay me maybe some of them are closeted but who knows but like right that's not about but it's not about sex at all yes like no one's popping a tent about it i think is the thing to keep in mind and as as a female-bodied person who's uh processing and recovering from my own like sexual traumas i'll just want to present that for women too that platonic touch and affection can be really healing for those of us who are recovering from sexual trauma that's happened in our bodies i know for me i got to a place where it felt like any time there was physical touch trauma was coming you know like i was reopening a wound and being able to lean into spaces of social spaces where platonic touch was encouraged and like suddenly you could be cuddled up with your girlfriend or your boyfriend and it was just that you were just friends at no point were you going to be violated at no point was someone going to want something from you that you didn't want to give them like that um allows our us to reconnect with our physical bodies in an incredibly powerful way so just it's not just physical touch not just for men

we all benefit from platonic physical touch occasionally and again we're all different with touch so bird bird people who don't want to be touched much still benefit from yeah like a nice little and you can ask them and people can tell you like i'm okay with that like i'm just gonna reach out and then i'm done okay that's good for me but that feels good for them and yeah dog people like i would actually i would love if you could run through the uh like cat dog bird thing oh sure so my understanding of it is it's not the type of animal you own it is the way that you embody your body and interacting with other animals so if you think of a bird birds are not like cozy and cuddly with each other very much or with people they like a little space they do get into their nests of course and cuddle down but they don't want to be touched very much they'll come to you they'll fly and land on you when they're ready and then they'll fly away when they're ready cat people like a cat are maybe a little bit more into touch maybe they're really into touch and then maybe suddenly they're going to change their mind and they do not want to be touched anymore and they will again let you know and that's a common thing for a lot of people i think and then there's dog people which means you love being touched it's very hard to find um physical touch that is uncomfortable i now consider myself a dog person because reconnecting with my body i'm like oh i love the sensation of being touched or tickled to me that feels good feels very good for me um but it took me a long time to be comfortable with it and recognize that it wasn't associated with other trauma in my body so it's okay to change to identify as one type of person or to say i'm a dog and then be like you know what maybe i don't want to be touched so much maybe i'm a cat maybe i need to have a few more boundaries for myself so that's a thank you for giving me a moment to share that little system of ways to ways to ask or talk about our comfortability with touch i think i think that's really important and especially because so many people who have experienced drama have a a lot of them have like this this changed uh you know relationship with with touch or with physical affection and uh you know and also just like you know whether you're traumatized or not i think like i think that's just very important for human beings and we're all just so so different in that in that respect and i think having having language to uh to articulate it in our own minds as well as potentially share discuss it or have that conversation with other people is really valuable and i i really i love that that metaphor system and definitely relate to it um definitely a bird person where i you know like honest and and i i mean like as soon as i clarify my touch preferences it's very easy to kind of see it as like that sounds like it's tied to trauma and maybe it is um but but definitely like the only really person that i'm physically affectionate with is actually my partner um and other than that i don't like to be touched like at all like i don't want to shake hands i don't want to like you know i hug friends but that's something i had to work on uh personally for like years to get to the point where like i would hug friends obviously that's not happening right now but um yeah but i love the nature metaphor because it's in no way i i mean i i realize i presenced it on a linear or hierarchical scale of touch but it really isn't hierarchical like birds are not better than dogs they're not better than cats right there's nothing wrong with you because you don't like physical touch it may or may not be connected to healing trauma history whatever you know but the point is it's totally valid like we don't have to judge ourselves about it we can just say oh yeah that's not really my thing thanks though you know i i really appreciated that about the metaphor like when it was shared to just be able to say i'm a bird person because that that felt uh a lot less judgmental it was just a statement of preferences and every every time that i had had to just say um in like public spaces and and the more i said it the more i got comfortable and kind of started to acknowledge that and just accept it about myself but there was still a level of judgment or feeling like i was stating that there was something wrong with me every time i said like i don't like i don't like to be touched and i started to like make a kind of joke to just kind of the way i said it to just say it kind of like quirky like just sort of like i don't like to be touched i hate being touched don't touch me maybe i'd sing a little song like the um i don't even know what it's from but like [Music]

don't touch me like that i'd sing that for people sometimes but um but yeah for the most part just kind of felt like it was a statement of there's something wrong with me right and people will frame it that way like i hope it didn't when i said um touch is good for all of us you know what i mean i meant the touch that you like is good for you like that's the key part my kind of touch may not be your kind of touch and that's not it's not about one of us being right or wrong it's about you finding what works for you yeah um yeah totally and i'm so glad that i ended up i was gonna cut it out of the virtual program because i'm like we're not physically near each other what does it matter but it matters because it's like again a framework for us for our whole lives and how we deal with one another and yeah like you we still share space with other humans in in respects of housing or finding resources like it's common there is fuzz i'm sorry if that hand gesture was inappropriate it was not fuzz happens especially with pets

pets but um yeah um

i think uh i think the lack of touch during the pandemic has probably been very difficult for for other people it hasn't it hasn't been for me not only because i i live with my partner um but also because i wasn't really you know craving touch with other people yo i have a sneaky sneaky suspicious feeling that this freakout that we're having in the united states where people are like we're gonna just stop doing anything everyone wants to reopen their state even though like no one's half like no one's really ready to reopen we could wait another month and we'd be like 100 further along in vaccination and safety protocol but people want to do it like next week so whatever but i think that is a whole bunch of people desperately craving touch who don't touch the people that they live with because we again as a as an american culture which has this crazy heavy like puritan uh history regarding sexuality is the devil so we just i vilified the human body and don't touch it anymore we have a lot of trauma puritan trauma we're working out of our collective body but i think that's what's happening i think a bunch of people who miss hugs are taking to the streets with guns and trump flags and it's like [ __ ] can you people learn how to hug one another at home give a foot rub that isn't like gonna be sexual you know it's okay to just

touch one another you know yeah and again i think about even as like birds in the nest right even like a bird person tends to find somebody or another bird that they're comfortable getting that touch from so if we can find that connection and then touch it when it consents in consent maybe maybe everyone wouldn't want to freak out so hard maybe people would be able to feel a little more patient like i don't know i'm rational i i really um

i really kind of uh i i keep coming back to

an article that i read and it was fairly early on in the pandemic when other countries were doing things that we just could not wrap our heads around at all um we still can't no and it was uh and i think i want to say it was like a new york times article but it was talking about the just the

the cultural uh placeholder that like rugged individualism has within our culture and that part of it was a cultural lack of emphasis on making sacrifices for the collective um country or for other people you know those those nebulous other people and that that's something that does have emphasis in other cultures so say uh you know like more more traditions for like working towards collective good or collective well-being that exist within certain asian cultures um and that you know you were seeing literally in those countries that they were able to make those sacrifices as individuals for the collective good for the communal good uh and then when it came to america that we just like without any cultural framework for that whatsoever we just refused and saw it as an infringement of our individual freedom um because i me myself and more important than the community and always have been therefore being all of a sudden asked to make any individual sacrifice for that community is beyond anything that i've been asked to do therefore it must be a violation um and you know that just being something that has has you know culminated in us handling this pandemic the worst we are number one we have a need to be number one we are still number one we are the worst at this pantomime

or the best i mean we are definitely the best at getting sick and dying from coven it's awful despite all the odds despite having so many resources we're just like [ __ ] yes the worst not following the elderly the worst and not valuing valuing the disabled we are well i think it roots back again into like an american a psychological problem or a spiritual problem in this country where our like motto is it's me against the world and i felt that myself um i i remember being a very reactive teenager who felt uh you know marginalized as queer or female bodied or you know mentally ill which again i don't like i was sad i was [ __ ] really sad all right sad for a while i'm still pretty sad not gonna lie like this world is a really hard place to live mostly because it is completely set up for cooperation and no one wants to cooperate i don't know why i don't like get if there's a mini game y'all are playing but it makes no sense to me i'm lost and uh yeah i'm sorry i got really hyphy about that i liked it i liked it but yeah this the whole thing is set up for cooperation the whole dang shebanger and for some reason i guess it's that man versus nature that colonizer i'm gonna just i'm gonna fix this i'm gonna put in some straight lines here okay so where do we want to go from here should we should we loop back around to productivity and uh and judgments we could we might need to wrap it up quickly we can do it um i might need to boogie soon but was there anything [Music] that you wanted to rehash or focus on again or bring up for the first time before we wrap it up basically i just i just kind of wanted to have like a real conversation with you um and just acknowledge that uh that we both did things uh in the pandemic and that go team so just like demystify like you know like people who were supposedly productive um and to just say like it doesn't that they're not necessarily feeling that way and that there's no right way for us to be feeling there's no right way for us to be acting that this is like a totally cra i mean and right in terms of right way for us to be acting i mean within our own spaces with our time and our experiences especially if you leave your house there are right ways for you to be acting such as social distancing and math squaring those are right ways to be acting i don't want to pretend like that isn't a reality um and i will fight you if on this like we will tag team you on it actually like uh yeah um yeah i yeah i will yeah there's there's little that will get me to it's not often that i'm just like i'll fight you but like i'll fight you i know i say that all the time so no one believes me but i'll still do it

but as far as like within the pandemic and your own space uh and interacting with this time in our lives there's no right thing to be doing with that time that you have to yourself um and in your own head uh there's there's no right way to there's no way you're supposed to be feeling there's no way you should be feeling there's nothing that you like should be doing what you can do great if you can't also find like this is insane and this is like ev just normal goes out the window goodbye and and it was a lie anyway yeah even before the pandemic some of the best advice i got was to remove should from my vocabulary and it's really i still do it um but it's been really helpful when i recognize it especially like in my journal right i see it and i'm like oh there's that [ __ ] again using the word could i could do this i have that option but should has embedded shame right and guilt and judgment so thank you for mentioning that yeah no i think i think that's a great place to be with it and and just in terms of um

yeah but there's no no one is winning no pandemic like it's just [Laughter] like there's a few people who are winning the pandemic and none of us know them because they're so rich they're terrified of everybody like trust me you don't know the people who are winning the pandemic none of us do my partner might but he doesn't know them he just has to work for them occasionally right

sorry yeah it's lonely being the one percent from what i hear but you know not trying to offer him pity i'm just a single a single sapphire tear is just it's trickling down my cheek get it that was a reaganomics joke about trickle-down economics

[Music] but yeah no and thank you for being a reminder for me that that you have found um value in what i've done with my time in the last year even though i feel like i've just been myself and i really haven't been doing anything um you know well and sorry have reflection it's just nice you're just so nice thank you here it is you're neat but um i also question like uh with some of that i wonder if it's it's could also partially be because we were doing things that resonated more fully with who we actually are as people and that uh feeling like you've done something productive is so often in our society linked to oh i did things that were soul-sucking and then received money for it and that's what productivity is like that's what accomplishment feels like i don't know what your financial situation looks like but i've been so dedicated to accessibility that i'm like i got no [ __ ] money i haven't made any money like i don't i am living on hopes and prayers which are just about as useful as you would imagine like yeah and yeah and it again kind of goes into that judgment of like i didn't do anything because there isn't like a number attached to these hours of labor exactly no i i don't i don't make any money there you know there was a an influx of some donations that covered like a few months um and that was that was amazing um my supporters pretty much thank you and thank you everyone who donated it made a huge difference um but for the most part this is you know the pandemic has also been super weird and in terms of like throwing me into like kind of a weird um uh uncomfortable like gender identity kind of thing and also uh just um just extremely uncomfortable in terms of being with a a cis male partner um being assigned female at birth and finding myself in a situation where i was all of a sudden he was thrust into the position of provider which neither one of us has ever been interested in him being the provider um and uh and that's what's happened where he is the the main bread earner um uh and i am making no money whatsoever i'm unemployed and i'm asking him for uh for checks periodically to cover my bills um and uh and my my personal projects and uh and that is incredibly uncomfortable on like so many levels on both a personal front and also like a social uh you know and like gender front and also like you know being home all day and feeling like the you know like being thrust into the role of you know and and i'm non-binary so being thrust into the role of like little woman uh is something that i uh have just been freaking out about um oh my gosh i just want to acknowledge that we were also babies of the 80s which was a time when women i i feel like we were thrust into like the nine to five world if you haven't seen that movie it's a really good commentary on like workplace and gender and like what is what is going on and um yeah so our various parents and guardians also kind of conveyed a lot of that i remember my mother telling me and my grandmother you always have to have your own money and it was like such it was drilled into me that i was like un grateful and dishonoring my matriarchal line if i ever was like not making my own money which of course has then created so much stress for me in relationships um in partnerships with male-bodied people who have that i need to be the provider and i'm like i can't let you be the provider i don't think you understand i can't yeah and that's attention that's a whole other oh it's such a you guys are doing really good work yeah it's messy it's gross it's me it's how they make the sausage i think it's like no one wants to see that [ __ ]

but here we are and and i think you guys are doing a really awesome job of like confronting it and looking at it in again a time that it is really hard to do that work because we don't get breaks from our partners that we're in house with a lot these days like you're isolating together you're quarantined together it's maybe the only human you see other than yourself and it's all the more imperative to do that work in those moments and all the more difficult you know double edge

you can tell i'm really enjoying the video today [Laughter] sorry i just so much love for you so much love for you so much love for you friend i'm so glad to connect thank you yes no thank you so much for doing this this is awesome yeah it is my pleasure my friend yeah my pleasure

oh all right well we should draw this to the close um and uh yeah are there are there any finishing thoughts that you have i'm i'm just really grateful that i'm i'm lucky to have support like you and also i know that for listeners there's a really good chance you actually have a support just like i do that you didn't know about like it took us a minute of chatting and talking about the vulnerable stuff that we wouldn't normally feel that comfortable chatting about to discover we both were having the same judgments and just in that openness you're gonna find more friends than you'll ever find being ruggedly individual and never opening up to anyone like you're gonna get out of these relationships which you put in and a little vulnerability can really make you feel a lot more resilient so i don't know i think that's that's great it's my fortune cookie for the day yeah no i i think that's that's great is like the the strength and vulnerability isn't is incredibly important to recognize and uh you know like taking a look at uh what whatever masks you're wearing and just really like asking yourself is this is this actually necessary and uh and a lot of the time it might not be um you know and yeah they're they're we're we're all humans and we're all having this totally bizarre experience of existence together and and it's weird for every single one of us yeah anyone telling you they're fine it just doesn't want to explain to you what's happening okay they just don't have the spoons to tell you what's happening that's what's going on yeah 100 percent yeah well said well said like don't misunderstand that to mean they're okay it just means they don't want to talk about it

thank you so much friends thank you thank you and uh yeah and and check out yeah exactly like virtual hug virtual hack

oh my god we should come up with a jazzercise video about like virtual hugs and virtual messaging picture i don't know i'll figure it out i like i like your your quarantine like jazzercise idea i'm i'm on board all of it would take place in onesies and pajamas oh yes we could do it on the discord server oh there i'm there for it i'm there for it onesie party get on discord people also i should get a onesie but yeah we should get you a discord channel too that should probably happen because that's yeah people keep asking like since i started the twitch they're like oh do you have a discord or i keep getting invited to people's like discord channels and i'm just sort of like accept invite no i don't know what to do

i don't know how to interact with it so i gotta learn so fun yeah well i mean happy to happy to do with you anytime it's a really cool system and i can i can see your your followers your fans people who have been tuning in and like chiming in on facebook uh still being able to support one another and share resources in an even more dynamic way so yay yay fans helping fans healers helping healers survivors helping survivors like laughing through our trauma we're healing in lots of ways it's just one of them [Laughter] the dark humor is important and and i i place a healthy emphasis on that i think i think we both do so all right yeah

yup all right i gotta go eat something eat something i'm gonna go cleanse myself a little because i am feeling really gross now you've inspired me you mentioned it so i might go take a shower yeah maybe

all right thank you friend love you love you cheers