Tara Haelle on Surge Capacity
Season 1, Episode 32
Summary:
Hey, Type A, high achievers! Get ready to learn new coping tools for enduring stress in today’s episode. Tara Haelle is the author of the article “Your Surge Capacity is Depleted - It’s Why You Feel Awful”. She is a science and health journalist who sought out to understand why she coped with COVID, remote learning, social unrest, and isolation for the first several months…and then crashed. Turns out there many reasons why so many of us have yo-yo’d between fine and down the last six months…and there are ways to revamp, rebound, and feel revitalized once again.
Links:
www.michaelwkithcart.com/podcast
“Your Surge Capacity is Depleted - It’s Why You Feel Awful”
Tara Haelle on Twitter @tarahaelle
Transcript:
Michael Kithcart:
Have you ever read or listened to someone and thought, wow, they are speaking to me, they get me? That's how I felt after reading an article from today's guest, my friend Paula had sent it to me because someone had sent it to her. And I started to figure out like, we're all having similar conversations about how we're coping and navigating through COVID. But the author explained what I hadn't yet been able to put into words around the way that I was feeling. And then she explained to me why I was feeling that way and help me figure out some things. So it made me realize that if we're all feeling this way, it'd be helpful to have a wider conversation, especially with all of you the listeners of the Champions of RISK podcast, so I predict there's going to be some head-nodding while you listen to today's episode. Hi, everyone. I'm Michael Kithcart. Welcome to the Champions of RISK Podcast, where we examine the many aspects of risk so we can all face uncertainty with more courage and resilience together. Today's guest is Tara Haelle. She's a freelance science and health journalist who specializes in writing about vaccines, infectious diseases, pediatrics, women's health, mental health, and other medical research. Her work appears in The New York Times NPR, Forbes, Scientific American, O Magazine, HuffPost, Politico, Washington Post, and elsewhere, including in her evidence-based parenting blog, Red Wine & Apple Sauce. And just by the title, I'm going to start reading that blog. She has authored a young adult nonfiction book, spoke at TEDx Oslo on why parents fear vaccines, is a medical studies core topic leader for the Association of healthcare journalists, and is a photojournalist where photography has appeared in regional and national publications. This is a busy woman. The article that caught my attention, and is the focus of our conversation today appeared in Elemental, and it's called Your Surge Capacity Is Depleted Is Why You Feel Awful. So Tara, thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate having this conversation.
Tara Haelle:
Hi, thanks for having me. It was weird hearing you list the very biography that I already know. Because it doesn't seem like I'm the person who can do all that stuff. Right? Like, wait, who is she describing? That's not me.
Michael Kithcart:
It is you. And we're going-
Tara Haelle:
It doesn't feel like me right now-
Michael Kithcart:
Just saying that you know, is, is helpful, right? Because I think lots of people would be surprised by like, Oh, my gosh, I do all that. But I think we're having some out-of-body experiences with COVID. Yes, yes. So I'm looking forward to digging into surge capacity a little bit more. But give us a little bit of context with your background, and how did you end up getting into the science and health field?
Tara Haelle:
Oh, goodness, that's we can do a whole podcast on just that. It's kind of a long story. I mean, think of the easiest way to summarize it. I went back to grad school after teaching high school. And I went back for photojournalism and I was wanting to specialize in photography, but a confluence of different factors. When you look back on my path, in retrospect, it looks as though I was always planning to go into science and health journalism. And it was obvious. But that's not actually how it played out. There were a series of things that happened one another after another after another, mostly coincidental type things. And they all had to do with science and health reporting in some form, including having my child which was not coincidental that was planned. But having my child was a big part of that, too. So it's, it's honestly too much to summarize, but I it was just a series of different experiences that happened. I got a job in the aerospace department, I was volunteering at the National Association of Science writers conference, and I was getting articles for the school paper related to science and health, and it says a whole bunch of different things that happened in a short period.
Michael Kithcart:
And so and now here we are, I love that.
Tara Haelle:
If you told me like 12 years ago that I would be, you know, like writing about infectious diseases and one of the top vaccine reporters in the nation, I would not have believed you, because that was I mean, the last science class I took was in my freshman year of college and like, I don't know, what was that 96 or 97. You know, so I never majored in science or anything like that.
Michael Kithcart:
I love that though, that it's just a great testament to that you can be interested in lots of things and make a life around it. That there are a lot of different ways to gain expertise. It's not just in the classroom, so yay, you love that. So let's dig into this article that kind of just blew my mind. The article helps explain why we are feeling awful or have moments of feeling that way. And It leads with surge capacity. So let's start there. What is surge capacity? Because I had never heard of it before.
Tara Haelle:
Well, it's usually I mean, it's an industrial, corporate kind of term. It refers to hospitals and companies ability to deal with a sudden overflow. So if you were a company, and you've had a sudden influx of orders, for some reason, what is your company's plan for being able to manage that at the last minute, you know, in a hospital, the ability to manage a sudden influx of patients coming in. So that's what surge capacity refers to sort of formally. And this is a term that Ann Masten just adapted for humans to suggest that humans also have their version of search capacity. And we've all experienced it, whether we've had, you know, there's an emergency that happens, and you kind of some people freak out immediately. But many of us go right into problem-solving mode, we sort of skipped over the freakout, because something in our brains, you know, clicks and says, You can't afford to freak out right now you must do ABC 123. And then you can freak out later. And that's, you know, that's the short term version, like if you're in a car accident, you immediately get out of the car, you assess the damage, you assess your own, you know, how are you feeling to get the insurance, you know, you do all the things that need to be done, and then you go home and cry.
Michael Kithcart:
Right!
Tara Haelle:
That's essentially search capacity. But we have it for, you know, long short term meaning not just the sudden car accident, but you know, a period, like when there's a tornado or a hurricane, or in different kinds of short term disasters, where you need to kick into high gear where things are imploding. And you need to do what you need to do to get through that period. You know, we have these sorts of mental and emotional and physical capacities to do that. The problem is, it doesn't last indefinitely, you run out, and you can't just keep going at high speed. It's almost as though if you think about if you were in a car, and you were encountering a situation where you had no choice, but to lay on the gas, like you had to just gun it to get past something that was happening. Okay, you can do that. But what happens if you keep gunning it, you're gonna run out of gas, like three times faster than you would have, if you had been able to slow down more gradually and get to a, you know, appropriate, speeding level.
Michael Kithcart:
Yeah, but yet, I know from personal experience, and in talking to other people, too, we somehow have this expectation that we can keep the gas going, you know?
Tara Haelle:
Part of that is because a lot of us have never had to test that before. We've never been in a situation where the emergency just keeps going. The people who are most resilient right now are the ones who have been there done that survived to tell the tale. And it's not to say that we haven't worked hard or been through difficult things, or had to build resilience we all have, but not necessarily in one of those, like one after another after another after another. And it just kept coming. I mean, it's I think of 2020. And in addition it's not just the pandemic, it's the pandemic, it's the stress of the election and the politics, it's the polarization. It's the race demonstrations that are entirely justified. It's the fires. It's I mean, it just doesn't stop.
Michael Kithcart:
Yeah, it's so true. There are things that we can do. But we're going to dig into this more so that we have a better understanding. I did just want to you mentioned Dr. Ann Masten. And it was interesting, because I'm in Minneapolis, and it ended up that all the medical experts that you had in your article were from the University of Minnesota, and our own you know, Dr. Michael Osterholm has had lots of airplay with COVID and everything. How did that happen? How did you end up with all Minnesota doctors?
Tara Haelle:
Um, you can probably blame my editor and Ann Masten for that. I got Ann's name from my editor because my editor had interviewed her for a different story she had done talking about the need mental health needs, we're gonna have, you know, in the course of this, and when I interviewed Dr. Masten, I asked her if there were other people she recommended I speak to, and she's the one who recommended Pauline Boss and Michael Maddaus. And I didn't know much about them. But I liked what she mentioned. She mentioned the ambiguous loss that Pauline Boss has, you know, is well known for developing and she told me about the resilience bank account idea that Dr. Maddaus had come up with. So when I spoke to each of them, I realized that they formed sort of this perfect little triangle, the surge capacity running out. The ambiguous loss, that's this background grief that prevents us from being able to replenish it, and then what we can do about it, and it was just sort of the perfect triumvirate and the fact that they all came from the University of Minnesota, it was just by having asked Dr. Masten and her referring them. So it wasn't intentional.
Michael Kithcart:
Okay. Okay, great. Well, it's nice to know that we have them close by. So let's talk about what caused some of us to worry, fear, and be overly concerned when the pandemic hit first. So some people felt it right off the bat, and others, and I related this to this in your article like you and me, had a delayed reaction to it. So what is the difference? Like? why did why are some did some feel it right away and others had the delayed part?
Tara Haelle:
Well, I mean, just the most basic answer is that we're all individuals. So we all react to things in different ways. But if I try and dig deeper into that, I suspect it has to do with our histories of what we've dealt with in the past. And that is people who, okay, I have an anxiety disorder, and I have ADHD, I am used to a background level of anxiety, that is how I live my life. So when something that there is truly something genuinely worth being anxious about comes along, I already know how to deal with it, because I'm already kind of living that. And I had joked with friends of mine who also had anxiety disorders, and a friend of mine, who's a widow, and talked about Oh, yeah, we got this. We've been through this before. And so we were able to manage it because we had been through things like that we had developed that sort of short-term resilience, other people do not say that they haven't been through things, but they just, you know, maybe it was like I felt more comfortable because I had a lot of knowledge about infectious disease. And so I was able to accept a lot of what was going to be coming and what was going to happen. And I understood things, it's natural to be very anxious when you don't have information or when you don't know who to trust for good information. So I suspect a lot of people's anxiety stemmed out of just not knowing where to get good information and feel as though they didn't have a handle on what was happening. And then there are probably some people who get the freakout over with and then they start building on their resilience ahead of time. I mean, there are the people who freak out about the car accident and then try to calm down. I mean, it's just different reactions, that one's not better or worse than another, I suspect that high functioning, I shouldn't say high functioning, that that super, like type a Go Go Go types of people, people who are entrepreneurs and problem solvers and high achievers, and I suspect that we're the type who goes into immediate problem-solving mode and deal with the emergency kind of mode first. And then we you know, it hits us later. And I think that's just a part I suspect that those are linked. And I don't have any research to back that up. That's just my suspicion based on, you know, my experiences.
Michael Kithcart:
Yeah, yeah, it sounds familiar. And so you have all the access to the information, right? You kind of understood, and you had some internal coping mechanisms, you know, that, as you mentioned with the anxiety is like you're kind of used to operating at a certain level, you even had the understanding that eventually you were going to crash.
Tara Haelle:
I did. I mean, I had, I had been in situations before where I burned out or I'd gone, you know, go, go go. And then the crash happens later. So I did expect I would crash. I didn't appreciate how far I'd fall maybe? It was a different crash than I was used to. And I think it's because, in the past, I crashed when it was safe to crash. That is the emergency had passed, I was able to crash and then get up because when I got up, there was no emergency around me anymore. But I couldn't do that this time, because the emergency was still there. It was getting more dire by the day. Not only was it still there, it was just getting worse and worse. There was no end in sight.
Michael Kithcart:
Right? That is exactly true. And that's kind of like what we're in right now. Right? Because now it's like coming in waves we keep getting different information. And it has to do with whether or not kids are going back to school or when they might or in what condition or can you go to a restaurant or and now the elections coming up? And so all these things keep going on in waves. Like how can we kind of level that out because like what you're saying is there, there isn't an end in sight. And we still have to navigate through this.
Tara Haelle:
That's actually where I got the analogy that I wrote at the very end where I talked about standing in a dinghy. I got that when I thought back to the earthquake that I allude to in the story that I had been through in 2007 with my then-boyfriend now husband, and I remember trying to describe to people what an earthquake felt like of that magnitude. It was an 8.0. And I said it felt like standing on a mattress in a swimming pool, just the way that it was moving. That was my best description of what it felt like. And I realized that it felt very similar in a mental way. And so I had that idea. It felt like I was in this tiny little boat on rough seas. It wasn't that I was scared of falling overboard, it, I couldn't worry about falling overboard, because I was too focused on just trying to keep my balance and standing up and just trying to stay standing. And I think that's one of the things that's difficult right now, we don't know when this will end, we don't know how it will change and uncertainty can be a positive thing and a negative thing. Right now, the uncertainty is preventing us from being able to make any solid plans, you know, think of people who are trying to plan weddings, or people who have milestone birthdays coming up, or people who wanted to do things with their kids, you know, put their kids into lessons or planning vacations, we can't do any of that right now. So the normal way of planning, is at a standstill. And at the same time, we can't even plan two weeks from now, we don't know what's gonna happen unless we just plan to be home, which is what most of us are doing. But the inability to have any kind of certainty there. Normally, when we talk about humans adapting they adapt to a new situation. But we don't have a new situation, we have a new situation every week. And that's not something that you can't adapt to every week because you're in this constant state of adaptation until you adapt to the lack of security around you. And we're not wired for that. That's not how we're designed.
Michael Kithcart:
Yeah, our brain likes predictability. And we don't have that. And so that's some of the things that I work with my clients on. And my coaching business is that everything you say is true. And that uncertainty is going to remain, but so how do we continue to move forward? And I think a lot of us by nature, then are like, Okay, so what's the answer? what's the solution to it? Right? And I and I love Dr. Ann Masten's quote that you have in the article and I've used that in conversations, and it's around like, why do you think that we would be used to this by now? You know, we're all beginners. Now, all of this, nobody's ever-
Tara Haelle:
On the phone, I remember when, because I said those exact words where I said, I feel like I should be used to this by now. And she just instantly said, Why do you think you should use this by now we're all beginners at this. And I thought, oh, like that had never occurred to me, it had not even crossed my mind. And I also, you know, it's not just the state of emergency, but we have two things going on. At the same time, we have a state of emergency around us. But we also have lost this entire way of life. That's the ambiguous loss that Pauline Boss talks about. And so, at the same time that we're having to manage this uncertainty, and changing situations and fear and anxiety, we still have the whole grieving process going on at the same time. So we have two completely separate but interrelated traumatic experiences, are happening simultaneously, with no potential end in sight, because the ambiguous loss is connected to the fact that we don't know when we'll get to go to our coffee shops again. We don't know when we'll get to go visit our family on the other side of the country again, you know, we don't know when any of that's going to happen again. So we're grieving that at the same time that we're having to manage the inability to make real solid plans.
Michael Kithcart:
And let's dig into that ambiguous loss a little bit deeper, because I connected with that one, especially around ritual. So just share a little bit more about the extent of what that covers.
Tara Haelle:
Well, I'll give a couple of personal examples. I do almost all of my writing at coffee shops and bars, or I did, and when I say I used to do my work at coffee shops, I'm talking going back to eighth grade. I met my husband in a coffee shop, I spent my entire college years in a coffee shop. So when I had my son and when he was a newborn, I went out to the local coffee shop with him every single day. So when I say that I practically grew up and lived in coffee shops, I did. And now I couldn't happen anymore. And it wasn't just the coffee, it was the whole experience for me. So that was a huge loss. I also travel a great deal. I would travel to a good eight to 12 conferences a year to cover for journalism. And you know, I didn't like the flying part. But I loved being in these different places and traveling and our family would take one overseas trip each year. Well, I don't know when and any place that we want to visit is going to be taking Americans anytime soon. I don't blame them for that. And then a little thing like just two days ago, I was thinking oh, you know, I really should look into seeing if I can get some better swimming lessons for the kids even if they're indoor swimming lessons. And then I thought, Wait a minute. I can't get them indoor swimming lessons anytime soon. I can't know if these little things that you take for granted you forget about. Have every Friday movie night in our house. And sometimes we'd watch a movie at home but we would also go out to the theater at least twice a month. We haven't been out to the theater now since you know March or February. We haven't been able to go. Just before all of this happened the last time we went to the movie theater. It happens to be next to Dave and Busters. Dave and Busters had this special going on where if you bring in your movie stuff, you can buy $20 for the cards and get $20 free. So I went in there with our three movie stubs and went ahead and loaded up on them because I knew they get used eventually. Well, guess what I still have? What is that 260 dollars worth of credits for Dave and Busters sitting in my car that have been there since March? So I don't know when that's gonna get used, you know, so little things like that. And then the bigger ones are all little rituals, right? But there's also the bigger rituals, the birthday parties, you know, both of my kids have had, you know, socially distanced birthday party things. We have Halloween coming up, that's always been my favorite holiday. You know, I've already you know, tried to figure out what we're gonna do for Halloween, I have some ideas, but, you know, all these things that we've taken for granted all these years, are just a part of life, and they're not right now. They're all lost, and then our homes become our homes are the safe place, right? It's where we cannot get COVID. But they're also a prison because we're trapped there. And that's a weird experience, you know, that double existence?
Michael Kithcart:
Yeah, it is. And I think you bring up a great point is like, there are some ideas and just the way that we think about things still, that is so ingrained in our brain that we have to stop down and go, Oh, yeah, we don't, we aren't doing that right now. Like the swimming lessons, you know, or, you know, the wellness industry, if you own a car, you used to go to a gym and everything and just getting out of those things. Because we're saying it's so important right now to around self-care like you've got to do, what are the things that help you feel better? Well, even some of those things-
Tara Haelle:
That if you would ask me what my self-care is, I'm gonna list all the things that I do for self-care, I go get a massage. Okay, guess what I can't do right now? I go get a pedicure, and guess what I can't do right now, I go to a coffee shop, or I go look for a new coffee shop or a new cafe or bar-like hole-in-the-wall place that I've never been to before. Okay, I can't do that, you know, all the all these little things that I do for self-care are not possible. I was in a kickboxing gym, and I had to cancel my membership, they did reopen. But I live in Texas and I don't trust this area, it's I have my I have a medical history, which means I'm at higher risk. So even though they had reopened their classes, I didn't trust the ability to go back. So I've lost that and had to figure out ways to be, you know, physically active without having access to that. So the things that I would do most often or, you know, just calling a friend and hanging out, you know, going and having coffee with a friend, those. And I can do a little bit of that. I mean, I can meet up with some friends in a socially distanced way. But you know, it's just not the same when you can't walk up to your friend to hug them.
Michael Kithcart:
Yeah, yeah, that's true. And that's the hugging part that is so ingrained, like, I have to stop myself when I do see people. So and the, you know, the positive part of all this is like we're identifying it so that people can acknowledge if they haven't fully acknowledged yet, because I know I was one of those people, you know.
Tara Haelle:
And also acknowledging things that we don't even realize. A friend of mine said the other day, he told me that he a friend came over, and she hugged him. And he said, If she's already hugged me, is there anything I can do about it? And I said, No, you know, if, if she was infected, she's infected. And he says, okay, but I don't regret it. He said That's the first time I've been touched by somebody in six months. Yeah. And I was like, Oh, my God. I mean, I, you know, I have my husband and my kids, but just not having a human touch. That's huge. You know, and we don't think about how important that is, but that is biologically important to us.
Michael Kithcart:
Yeah, that's, that's so true. So true. The article talks about how this period has been particularly even harder for high achievers, which I will just say is the podcast audience. You know, so and you alluded to it a little bit earlier. So you know, high achievers, type A people that are equipped to figure things out, it's probably part of their daily practice, and you know, their roles and responsibilities. We make things happen when we're told that things aren't possible. It's like, Oh, yeah, watch us. We'll make it. We're problem solvers. Yeah. So what's going on with us?
Tara Haelle:
Well, it reminds me I remember when I was in junior high, I had this button that I was oh so proud of typical little Junior High button that said, I do the difficult immediately, the impossible takes me a little longer. And that was kind of, you know, that was sort of my personality, and it still is I do the things that people say I won't do. And I know that many people listening to this are also they're the ones who heard the naysayers and said okay, fine, whatever, then they go and do it anyway. Well, we can't wish away or butt heads away, or, you know, a virus, like, you know, we, we, this is an enemy we cannot conquer. You know, I mean, if we try and conquer it by going out and saying if you were going to go do this, we might get sick and die. This is not a problem that we can solve on our own. It is a solvable problem, but we can't do it. The best we can do is vote for someone who will do it. But and that in a broad sense, you know, not necessarily at one office just across the board voting for officials across the board, who will do what needs to be done. But we cannot solve that problem on our own. And not only that, we cannot change the attitudes and behaviors of people around us, which may make it worse. And that's also frustrating, I think, you know, the strange relationships that I think are occurring, we all know, some people who aren't taking things seriously or don't recognize the real risks that exist or are willing to take those risks on themselves, without recognizing that they could then pass it on to someone else. You know, if someone wanted to go out to a bar, and then they wanted to stay home for two weeks by themselves, okay, I'm not going to blame them for that, if they want to have one night out. The problem is when they go and spread the love to someone else. So we can't stop any of that on our own. And we're not used to that we're not used to being told no or coming up against something that we can't work hard to overcome. Right? You know, there's nothing that we can do here to work hard to overcome it, you know, and the people who are who can do things, they feel the same way. The epidemiologists, the infectious disease doctors, and they are the ones on the front lines doing everything they can. But this is a monumental, unfolding cascading disaster, a global disaster, it's massive, it's bigger than any one person, anyone, city, state country, you know, continent. And I think the scale of it is hard for us to wrap our heads around because we haven't encountered something like this before.
Michael Kithcart:
It's very true. From your scientific background, what would you say are some of the things that it's going to take like, what aren't we talking about that we need to be talking about?
Tara Haelle:
Well, right now we have a really difficult situation. And I don't want to get too much into the politics. But we do have a problem when a substantial proportion of the country refuses to accept what the science is and shows, and
Michael Kithcart:
With a billion people. take the threat seriously, that's part of the problem. I understand quarantine fatigue. And I think people don't realize that the goal in that lockdown that we had in March and into April, the goal was not just to flatten the curve. That was one goal. One goal was to flatten the curve so that hospitals weren't overrun. But there was another goal and that one got lost entirely. It was to buy time to train and implement and fund contact tracers and testing sites and ramp them all up so that we could do what other countries did, like South Korea, and you know, other countries where they had testing available for anyone who wanted it for free on every corner. And they had contact tracers, and we never did that. And that's a failure of multiple different agencies from the local up o high. Some local places were able to do it. But we need a coordinated federal response from the top down as well, even if we had things going bo tom up. And we did not have that. And we still don't and there's no excuse for that. I just read a story earlier today ab ut a study in India in two Indian states. One was Tamil Nadu and I forget what the other one was. They were talking about prevalent e studies that they had done to see how common it was, and how you know who, who was super sp leaders, and how frequently super spreaders spread an long the disease and such. And as I'm reading it, it occurs t me, India, okay, India, which is what we kind of think of as, as the, you know, very und developed country with lots of public health problems and hygiene issues and all kinds of public health infrastructure issues. hey, have more contact tracers and testing going on than we o.
Tara Haelle:
There's no excuse for that. There's zero. And what's, well, I was in India in January, that's the last trip I took before all this happened. And it was for public health it was it was related to the polio vaccine. The idea is that India can mobilize and train all these contact tracers, and get these testing sites up. And we have not, is the only answer to that is a failure of leadership. So there's, I mean, it's not even I'm not trying to be political, it's kind of one of those you need a process of elimination, it's a fact you can't look at it any other way.
Michael Kithcart:
Well, and again, I stress to like you have that science and medical background, you're sharing that from a deeply informed area. So I mean, I appreciate it.
Tara Haelle:
You know, to do, there are plans for this, and we have not been following those plans.
Michael Kithcart:
So let's get back to our stuff, right? Because, you know, I have to admit, I want solutions. I want us to get to solutions. That's how I operate in life. I get that that makes this it can make things harder, right? It's part of the depletion when we think like that. So how do we start going about replenishing our surge capacities?
Tara Haelle:
The first thing you have to do is name what's going on, you have to acknowledge it. If you try to pretend as though you're gonna be fine when you're not fine. Nobody is fine right now, then you're you're fighting two things at once you're fighting the situation, and you're fighting your ability to accept the situation. So you have to name and acknowledge what's happening, and that it's affecting, and accept that as a reality. You can't deny that it's happening, I think. And that's the number one step everything I'll say after this, there's not steps after this, they can go in any order. But other things we can do. One of them and this is I think, I'll emphasize this one the most because I think it's the hardest for your audience to, accept, we have to lower our expectations, we have to embrace, we have to say that doing something good enough, is okay, that doing something poorly is better than not doing it at all, which is the exact opposite. You know, it's like if you can't do it, right, don't do it. Well, guess what? Now, on the other side of that, we've got to say, you know what, I'm not gonna do a good job at this, but I got to do something. So I'm just gonna do a half-assed job. And that's the best I can do right now. And we're not used to that. That is not our normal M.O. So I think that's the biggest adjustment. I think one thing recently to that where I said, my new normal now is I try to get two things done each day. And if I get three in, I'm a rock star. And if I get one in, I'm doing all right. I used to do 10 things in a day without thinking!
Michael Kithcart:
I know. So and I gotta tell you, this is what I talk about all the time. This is a number one topic of conversation with clients it is around that product, because we are used to getting a lot done. And I just like full transparency, I am spending time in my days talking with people about how they re-evaluate what productivity looks like for them. And to your point, like getting one or two things done, it's progress, progress will build momentum. And so I sing it from the top of the rafters, I help bring people along with that, and I suck at it for myself. I still have that expectation of myself.
Tara Haelle:
It's hard. And I mean, I don't have a great, you just got to do it. In a way, you can almost challenge yourself to do it. Maybe if you reframe it as a challenge, you know, if I can do anything, you know, let's say I'm capable of doing anything, I know I can do anything, well, then I challenge myself to do less. I mean, if you frame it in that way, it might be easier to swallow because it is hard for people like us, we're used to doing all these different things. And I think another thing you can do is redefine what accomplishments are. So instead of it being, for example, in my world in the line of work, an accomplishment would be finishing a story or coming up with a story idea or pitching something that gets done or working on a book idea, or you know, those are all- but instead, I hate cooking with a passion I get very, very anxious about it has more to do with the planning part in the shopping. I think it's a waste of time, I can't stand it.
Michael Kithcart:
You are my people, Tara, thank you! I hate it.
Tara Haelle:
I don't have this whole idea of getting into Zen while cooking, that's foreign to me, you might as well be talking to me into an alien. But I will say I miss my restaurants, and I wanted good food. So I started ordering Hellofresh, which I had done several years ago and promised my husband I would never do again because they kept building up in the fridge, and we'd have to throw them away. But I wanted different food. And you know, than our usual fare. But I don't have the patience or the time or the wherewithal to go online and look for recipes. I am not the recipe Looker, you know, and I don't even know how to make sense of it. So instead, we did the Hellofresh. And I started making several dishes. And I only did maybe two a week. But what it did was I had this sense of accomplishment because I was learning things about cooking while doing it. I felt less like I was wasting time It used to be that I didn't one of the big reasons I didn't like cooking is when I was cooking, I could be doing a story instead, when I was cooking, I could be reading a book instead I could be doing things that I felt were more worthy of my time than cooking. Well, that wasn't true anymore. Because if I wasn't cooking, I'd be sitting on my butt watching Netflix. I wasn't gonna be doing any work. So now all of a sudden cooking a meal was a form of accomplishment. There wasn't something better I could be doing instead. And it still had value I was eroding the anxiety I have associated with cooking. I was ending up with this nice tasty dish that I would not be able to have otherwise. So you know that's redefining a form of accomplishment and a form of success.
Michael Kithcart:
Yeah, I appreciate that. The beautiful piece about that is like in my mind, I also can reframe that as like Hey, anything is possible. So I'm redirecting it, instead of like, you know, maybe it's not always from a business standpoint, but we can find new things that we enjoy. We can relook at things like your example of cooking, and find some joy in that in a different way. There was a phrase of the Both/And Thinking approach in the article on that, yeah, that felt new to me and interesting. So help us how that can get applied and support our coping.
Tara Haelle:
Well, let me I have to give a little bit of background on that, which I wasn't able to get into in the story that came from Ann Masten. And she got her start in research or one of her starts, I don't know if it was the start with studying families that had lost soldiers that were missing in action in Vietnam. And that was a form of ambiguous loss, this loss, instead of it being okay, this person is dead for a fact. And we know that and now we must work on closure. It was we don't know if he was dead or alive. We don't know if we'll ever get his body back. It's this sort of ambiguous loss. They're not here. So it's a loss. But you don't know. You know, is that loss ever going to be fully resolved or not? And one of the things, that she discovered people had come to do that was useful to them, was to create this Both/And way of thinking, where they would say, Well, he is probably dead, and he also might be alive. And she described some outlandish-sounding examples. That sounds outlandish to us. But you have to bear with me, she described one woman who lived in I don't know which country but a country in Africa that was war-torn, where young men were often pressed into service and abducted. And she was a mom who had a son, and the two of them were caring for her husband, who was very ill. Well, he got abducted, and she never saw him again. And she was just full of grief, both for the fact that she lost her son and the fact that she didn't have the help that she desperately needed for caring for her husband. And when they went back to this woman, several months later to check on her, she was doing fine. And what happened was, the government hadn't begun sending money as compensation for his loss. And what she did was took his jacket, her son's jacket, and hung it on the wall, and put the money that came in from the government into the pocket of the jacket. And whenever she needed the money to pay for something for caring for her husband, she went and got the money out of the jacket, as though her son was just out for a bit and had left it for her. So she was able to think of it as I do not have my son here, but he is still helping me. And that way of thinking sort of it kind of blew my mind. She talked about women after the tsunami in Japan who had babies ripped out of their arms, who would say maybe my baby is dead, or Maybe my baby floated on something and landed on an island or some other mother is taking care of her and raising her. And that sounds outlandish on one side. But it's also a coping mechanism. And you can bring that those are sort of global examples. But you can bring that down to, okay, I'm a highly competent person who has accomplished a lot of things in my life and can accomplish many more. And right now, I am not functioning at full capacity, and I will not be for some time. And those are both true at the same time. So it's having to accept that it can be true without one of them overtaking the other.
Michael Kithcart:
I thought that was powerful.
Tara Haelle:
I had never heard of that concept before. Until she described it, I loved what she said. She said it sounds irrational. But when the world around you is irrational, then you know, you have to do something to deal with that sometimes you need an irrational solution for an irrational situation.
Michael Kithcart:
You also mentioned that there are different aspects of grief and that we're actually kind of going through those stages, you know, in different ways. And again, it's very individualized and some people are going through it because lives are being lost. So from the standpoint of building back that resilience and finding new ways to find, you know, the positives and to still move forward. Like how do those going through understand those aspects of grief? How can that be helpful for us?
Tara Haelle:
Well again, it gives you a chance to name what's happening. I think one of the reasons this article struck such a chord, I've never, I've been writing as a journalist off and on for more than 20 years. And I've written other viral articles. I've never had a response like I have to this article. And I think there are a couple of reasons for that. But I think the biggest reason is that I put names on things that people didn't have names for. When you're going through an experience and you can't name it. You feel like you're the one going crazy. Because you don't if you don't have a name for it, then maybe it doesn't exist and maybe it's all in your head, and of course it's all in your head but if it's all in your head, are you just making it up? Are you just crazy? You get into these sort of, you know, whirlpool thoughts, you know, you're sort of in the spiral, if you can name what's happening, that at least that feels as though it's a real thing that exists independent of you and you happen to be going through it, you no longer feel alone, and you no longer feel as though you're the crazy one. Because if there's a name for it, then enough other people have experienced it to say that there are other people out there with these feelings. And I think that's what happened with this article. So understanding the stages of grief enables you to recognize in yourself, oh, I'm bargaining today. That's why I've been thinking so much about this vaccine. Or, you know, I'm in the depression stage right now, or I'm vacillating between anger and depression, which is a really weird place to be. Okay, I, I'm accepting it today, I accept this is just the way things are. And I'm going to get some stuff done today, and I'm able to do it. And then the next day, I don't want to see the war, I'm just gonna stay in bed all day, I mean, being able to understand that those are all normal responses and that they don't occur to special order and can bounce all over the place and feed each other that enables you to acknowledge this is real. Other people experienced this, too. I'm not the crazy one.
Michael Kithcart:
Okay, that helps a lot. You've given a lot of great tips and ways for us to relook at, you know, what we're going through right now. Both to understand it. And also, like after I read that article, it's like, okay, I I'm better equipped now I can, and I, you know, I want to share that with clients, I want to share this audience. So I appreciate you taking the time, we're gonna put the link to the article in the show notes for the podcast, what are ways that people can find you, Tara?
Tara Haelle:
I'm on Twitter, and I'm pretty opinionated. So it's not hard to find me, it's just my name, TaraHaelle is my handle, I write at Forbes, kind of off and on. So , when you mentioned my Red Wine & Apple Sauce blog, I forgot. I haven't updated that in a very long time. So I don't know when I'll be able to update that. So Forbes is another place you can find me. Those are probably the two main places. I have a Facebook page, but I don't update that as much as I'm on Twitter so those are probably the best places to find me. And then if anyone is a parent out there or has questions about vaccines, I have the books The Informed Parent I wrote with Emily Willingham, and Vaccination Investigation about vaccines. Those are books people can check out on Amazon or your preferred place. You don't have to order from Amazon, goodness, they're raking it in right now as it is.
Michael Kithcart:
Well, Tara Haelle, thank you so much for being on the Champions of Risk podcast. You've given us lots of things to digest. And thanks for having me. That was fun. And hey, if you enjoyed this episode of the Champions of RISK podcast, we'd love for you to rate it on your favorite streaming service. You can give us a five-star rating if you would like to write a review. All of that is greatly appreciated. And we'll see you in the next episode.
Click the button below if you would like a chance to be featured on the Champions of RISK Podcast.
Recent Posts
