Katelyn
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[00:00:00] Welcome to Permission to be Human, the podcast. I'm your host, Mel Findlater mother, coach, and curator of Permission to be Human, the company and community. If you're a mum, know a mum, or want to be a mum, and you crave getting out in the world to make a difference, then you're in the right place. This is a space for mums like you to connect with yourself, your purpose, and your big, audacious dreams.
Because when you feel your best, you can better you, your family, and the wider world. Let's do this.
/ Get ready folks, because this episode is exactly what I was hoping would happen on this podcast. We have Katelyn Carey with us today. And not only is she super, super experienced years of being a nurse in various capacity, teaching the science of wellbeing in a variety of ways, especially to do with. [00:01:00] How we manage our stress and how do we react to that? And how do we manage being in situations that are going to put us into stress mode? Such as nursing. Or, you know, motherhood. So Kaitlyn shares a bunch of her story today. I'm going to give a heads up of a trigger warning here. We do speak of breast cancer in this, and we also talk a little bit. About miscarriage and medical abortion. So if that is something that is your trigger, please only listen to this when you're in a safe space and able to. Manage your own emotions that are bound to come up as a human because of it. The nice thing is that's exactly what Katelyn talks to us about is how do we. How do we be this human with all of these emotions and how do we. Do something with them. Right. How do we take care of ourselves within them?
How can we be nurturing [00:02:00] while still having self care? And stick around because at the end of the episode, we'll be talking about.
Katelyn self care first aid kits and give the link for that and check the notes for that as well.
And just stick around because Katelyn is stinking. Amazing. Here's how she describes herself. And I would say so so much more, but please have a listen. So Katelyn says I'm helping people in stressful situations, which is sometimes all of us. To shift perspectives in a way that connects us more strongly to ourselves and to each other. I do this by combining complex science from cognitive and trauma fields with humor and stories. I teach the science of compassion. Hopefully helping all of us to move to a brighter and more hopeful place.
Isn't that just so beautiful and the examples of what she has done. When she has seen [00:03:00] something that is not working and gone and fixed it. Is just beautiful. So. Stick around.
Mel: Okay. Hi, Katelyn. Welcome. Welcome.
Katelyn: Thank you so much.
Mel: I am so excited to have you here in our brief conversations that we've had in the past. I love your story and how it really taps into the humanness of all of us. We'll hear more about it in a second, but this idea that you see something that needs to be done, and you, you're like, I gotta go, I gotta go and make this right in the world as well as the very science backed stuff that you are interested in.
So I'm excited to have you here to share your story, as well as share your expertise in this world of science and well being.
Katelyn: Favorite playground.
Mel: Playground being the best word for it actually. Play is such an important part of all of this very serious [00:04:00] self development stuff. Yeah. Agreed. So tell us about, who's Caitlin?
Katelyn: I am a nurse, a clinical educator, a mama of two, boys now 11 and 14, and I am a teacher. And, of course, a lifelong student, because I think we all should be. That's
Mel: awesome. And that is an incredible list of labels. And who's Katelyn?
Katelyn: Well, I've been trained to give the short answer, you see. I know. One of my favorite quotes out there is the, If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter.
Really? My business coach gave me that one, and I don't remember where it came from, but oh my goodness. So, so, so very true. Yeah. So I, I am a passion fueled person who, as you said, saw a bit of darkness and felt the need to create a light there. [00:05:00] And when I was younger, I still remember my mom sitting on the stairs with me when I was a teenager and didn't know enough to absorb the conversation, but fortunately knew enough to remember it.
And what I remember is while I was still trying to figure out who I was and what I was and what my path in the world was, is that she told me if you want to have a happy and satisfying life, she said, pick something to do with yourself that leaves the world a better place behind you. She said it can be a beautiful piece of art or a healthy child.
She didn't, she didn't set the bar so high that I'm like, Oh yeah, never. Uh, she just said, pick something to do that leaves the world a better place behind you. And certainly she had exemplified that as I was growing up, my mom was a hospice chaplain and she would drag us around to different nursing homes where she had patients and make us sing Christmas carols and such.
Partly I think just to expose us to that part [00:06:00] of things, that part of what it means to be a healer and a caregiver and just a loving member of the community. And partly because she couldn't hold a tune in a bucket by herself.
Mel: That's really beautiful. I love that description and completely agree with your mom and You know not setting the bar like go change the world, but instead just like leave the world a better place that's what we're all here to do and I love that so much my my big belief that I can now finally put words on is that I think mothers, the mothering instinct is what's going to change the world, whether that be a mother or someone with that mothering instinct.
And that's exactly what your mom just said there, right? Uh, both in her being as well as her words. So I, I love that that defines you
Katelyn: and what you could use more nurturing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I love that.
Mel: So, so what does, what does life [00:07:00] look like right now?
Katelyn: So right now, I work as a hospice case manager, and so part of my job is in the evenings taking care of urgent and emergent needs for hospice patients around New Hampshire.
And then during, that frees me up for my days, which has actually been fantastic in terms of a work life balance. It allows me to be a little more focused on my pivot time with my kids. Even though they're older now, uh, and so the way that I've supported them has changed. I love kind of having that, that flexibility of scheduling, having that access.
And then I'm looking forward to pulling them into the passion projects that I do. They know all about those. They've been hearing about them for years. , I'd say they know quite a bit more about breast cancer and any other given health issue than, than. your average teenager out there. These, these were the kids who, you know, I, once, once I had a, I had a mastectomy and I had [00:08:00] my, My implants removed at a certain point, and the kids were still very young when that happened, and I was not particularly caring anymore about what I looked like.
And so these are the kids who would go out in public and be on to the fact that the camisole I was wearing was actually just like an empty pocket. And so they would collapse my boobs in public. So they've been an interesting part of my adventure all along. And they are, they are kind of now an audience, but I hope to later have them as more of an active part to the conference speaking and things that I do now where I reach out in educational fields, clinical education fields, especially, and teach resiliency strategies and also, , science based communication tactics for high stress situations.
My whole background was 20 years in acute care nursing specifically. [00:09:00] And so I've been having hard conversations with people for a really long time. Yeah,
Mel: I bet. I can't, I honestly can't even imagine how, how that goes every single day. And I love that you're out there training. You're combining this, this hard conversation work with the, the work of Taking care of yourself and enabling other practitioners to take care of themself while they take care of others.
And I think having you on this podcast is such a brilliant opportunity because as mothers, whether we're nurses or not, we are nursing. And I don't mean breastfeeding, though there might be some of that happening, but it's more we are, we are nursing people around or we are taking care of people all the time.
And so often we forget about the part that is take care of ourselves, right?
Katelyn: There are definitely crossover hats. Nurses are part moms, whether you're a mom of kids or not. And parents are part nurses, whether you're a medical [00:10:00] person or not. Yes, to both. Yeah, yeah, for
Mel: sure. So I'm really looking forward to digging into that a little bit more.
But I'm curious about your story a little bit more first. In that, you know, you mentioned this time in your life with breast cancer and having the vasectomy and and your young children at that time. And if my memory serves correctly, that was maybe the start of something, a little inkling of an idea and something
Katelyn: bigger?
That was definitely the start of a, of a small couple pebbles that turned into a landslide. Yeah. So yeah, I, my entire family history was very significant for breast cancer. By that, I mean that one whole line of my family had basically died from breast cancer by the time that I became an adult. So my grandma, great grandmother died at 27, my aunt at 32, my mom at 50.
And I made the decision that if I hadn't had kids by the time I was 30. Uh, that I was going to have a preventative [00:11:00] mastectomy and not continue to run that risk. And I was a brand new nurse at the time. And indeed I did not have kids. I almost married the wrong guy because I was trying to have kids before I was 30.
Fortunately, I caught myself in time and dropped the guy and signed up for surgery. Yeah. Had a bilateral mastectomy, woke up with a profound. I had no idea how scared I was of dying until I finished that surgery. But as soon as I made the physical recovery, I realized how much the mental recovery is a bigger stumbling point.
Yeah. And as a patient, I had made this decision for myself that I had time to make. I was making this a preventative surgery, so I wasn't being rushed into it by a, by a cancer diagnosis right on my horizon. Yeah. And I was a nurse. So I knew the medical language, I knew what to ask and who to [00:12:00] go to, and I was still so confused and overwhelmed by the information that I received.
And I thought, if I can't figure this out, if I'm intimidated by this, if I'm freaked out by these surgical pictures as a nurse, then how is anybody else navigating this successfully? And of course, the answer is, most of them aren't. Yeah. And I just became so outraged. I'm like, I want to do something about this.
I want to fix this. And then there came the time period in which I met the man who later became my husband. And he took these really just gorgeous photos of me. He's like, here, put this on, put this on. He could feel my self consciousness about my body. And so instead of trying to convince me that I was beautiful to him, he simply found a way to show me.
He showed me myself through his eyes with these pictures, and that was the part where I'm like, Oh my gosh, the power of photography is, is such [00:13:00] an amazing tool here. And I would just, I would wish I could give anyone who was feeling insecure in their body, you know, one of those photo sessions in which you get to show up as beautiful.
Because it's really hard when you're looking at a picture and you're saying, Wow, she's pretty. Wow, she's me. To then argue yourself out of the idea of, Wow, I guess I'm pretty. And that idea turned first into a tri fold brochure that I tried to give to the American Cancer Society. It was a lot of pictures and very personal stories with a little bit of humor about breast cancer surgery and recovery.
I tried to give it to the American Cancer Society. They said, no, thanks. It's just one person's story and that's not relevant enough. I have passive aggressive issues with the word no. So, I got all uppity. I'm like, fine, one person's story not enough. We'll see how many people's stories it takes. Turns out, 38.
[00:14:00] My tri film brochure turned into a 168 page medical resource book featuring 38 breast cancer patients with their shirts off telling their stories about how they stepped back into a strong sense of self after breast cancer. Kinds of things along the way they found most meaningful. And then each of the pictures were these bare chested present in life beyond cancer photos that also just happened to show what different surgery results looked like on real people.
And this book, Beauty After Breast Cancer became this three year long, incredibly insane project in which I show up with my kids in the pictures. And then I got to the end of this project and I went, Oh! I'm there! We did it! Crap! Nobody knows about it! And I realized it was only halfway done. And I'm so glad I didn't know what I was getting into when I started.
Because I'm not sure that I could have Kept that [00:15:00] same kind of motor behind everything. I'm not sure that I could have kept going had I realized at the beginning exactly how many hurdles there would be. But so, so, so worth it. Yeah. And since then that book has turned into not just a resource that has been shipped even to Reykjavik, Iceland and Africa and Germany and Ireland and all over in the U.
S. But it's also turned into most recently an example of a trauma informed resource and therefore helping medical people understand how do we create resources that people can process when they're stressed. Yeah.
Mel: Oh, that. I almost don't have words. I think, no, I don't have words. What you have done there in taking something, taking your own journey and all of [00:16:00] the emotion and rollercoaster that that had and then Using that energy to drive you forward to say, no, I see this is wrong, we need to be sharing this with people in this situation so that they can so that they can recover better than they maybe are in our current system, right?
And I just think it's so freaking beautiful. Like, and when you shared that story about your now husband, I, like, my tears, like, my eyes were welling up. I'm like, that is so beautiful. That's like every romantic story that doesn't usually get
Katelyn: told. Like, no, it was an amazing, amazing gift. He is an amazing man.
And, you know, and I wish that everybody had somebody like him because I've heard such horror stories and such fears from women like, you know, I wonder how many women, how many men leave their. Wives after breast cancer because they're no longer beautiful anymore. [00:17:00] And here's this man that as soon as I started dating him, the first moment of intimacy we had, he took time to specifically pay attention to my chest before he touched me almost anywhere else.
Just to demonstrate to me how okay this was. He asked questions about, you know, nerve endings. Did I have numb spots? What still felt nice? What didn't? I'm just like, holy cow. Yeah. You know, it's such a, such a fantastic gift to, you know, give a 29 year old single woman who just, you know, went from an F cup to, to a reconstruction that honestly for, for several years did not feel like it was a part of my body.
I referred to my breasts as them. Because it's like, they're not breasts. They're not even boobs. And it was very funny. One gal told me later, she's like, of course not. That's because they're foobs. Like foobs. She's like, yeah, fake boobs. I'm like, Oh my God, you're right. They're totally foobs.
Yeah. [00:18:00] And now my confidence is such that it's just like, I get up in the morning, I put on my jewelry, I pick out my outfit, I pick out my boobs and we're good for the day. You know, some outfits look better with smaller boobs. I'm like, let me pick her boobs. You just kind of match them up. It's fun.
Mel: That's awesome. Yeah. Oh, that's so good. And it's such a good. I. example also of how it's not, like, these things aren't easy. So I would describe, maybe you didn't even know the words you had for it at the time, but that was a big audacious dream. You're like, I gotta fix this. I gotta, I gotta make this better.
Right. Yeah. And as you said, like, if you knew the ins and out of what, what it would take at the beginning, you might not have had the energy and oomph to be able to like, Push through. Right. Because it's not easy doing this stuff. It's really not. There's easy parts. There were a lot
Katelyn: of, a lot of [00:19:00] tears, a lot of stress points.
There's a lot of great lessons learned, like, you know, how much it matters to us to have success stories of other people going through the same struggles we're going through. How much that helps us hold onto the lifeline while we're being pulled into the rescue boat. Yeah. But then there were other lessons like chocolate chip cookie dough goes really well with whiskey.
Absolutely.
Mel: Interesting. I would not have known that, to be fair. I didn't know that until I
Katelyn: did this project, then I found out. Tears, chocolate chip cookie dough, and whiskey. Trifecta. Brilliant. Brilliant. Okay, so,
Mel: so you had this journey through creating this beautiful resource, which I would love to see, by the way, at some point in time.
And. And that led you on to, as you, I'm not sure, I can't remember the exact words you said, but it led you on to where you are now, where you can use this as an [00:20:00] example of the type of resource that can be used and in this place of trauma that is our medical system. Right? Where, usually when you're going to the hospital, there's some sort of trauma involved.
Right? Or in another part of our, uh, medical system. I say our, I'm in Canada, you're in the U. S., so they're slightly different, but it's still all medicine. Right? Yeah. And something's wrong, so you're going in to, to try to fix it, and. And
Katelyn: trauma brain is trauma brain, no matter where you live. Trauma brain is trauma
Mel: brain.
Exactly. So, let's talk a little bit about that, and where you're at with that now, and where your interests lie with it, and. Wherever you want to take that. Yeah.
Katelyn: Okay. So part of it was just learning to understand the science of stress that for human beings, the most stressful situation that we can possibly be in is one that is high emotional [00:21:00] context and low control, you know, and when we are in a traumatic situation, really what, what that means is that we're in a situation that has overwhelmed our coping mechanisms.
That is trauma in a nutshell, just something that overwhelms our coping mechanisms. And when we flip into that higher stress brain, then, and it doesn't take much, you know, it can be three days of your kid crying. And suddenly, you know what, you're in survival brain, you're in trauma mode, you have overwhelmed your coping mechanisms.
And when we're in survival brain, we we process differently. We were chemically different and we're mentally different. We we pay much more attention to the things that are sensory than we do any kind of in depth thought process, which is not a Not a surprise when I say it like that but it matters in the outcomes.
Uh, so for somebody, for example, who just walked into the office and I'll, I'll [00:22:00] give one example. That's a mama example. Uh, she said that she had been pregnant. I'll just call her Ann. And said she was on her first pregnancy and she went in for the first ultrasound where you're supposed to be, you know, get your kind of mini gender reveal, maybe and hear about the health of your baby.
And they said, you know, why don't you go talk to the doctor in his office after you get dressed? And they didn't tell her anything and she knew there was something wrong and she walked into the doctor's office where she was told basically that her, her fetus, her hopefully soon to be infant had a medical condition that was incompatible with life and that they were going to need to plan you know, medical abortion for her.
And she said, all she remembers was the 1st sentence that the doctor gave her. And then she remembers the smell of the hallway and the arch that was on the doctor's desk. It's like, of course you do. Of course, that's all that remembers. Because as soon as you switch to [00:23:00] survival brain, your body's, your body's looking for the bear.
You know, where's the bear who's attacking you in the room? Because this is a fight or flight type of situation. And until that. emotional need for safety is addressed. We don't process anything more. Now, interesting things that come with that is when you're in that brain mindset, one of the best things that you can do for yourself is a, take the time for the emotional reassurance to happen before you ask more complex things.
If we were really doing a good job in the medical field, that doctor would have said, you know, here's what's happening. We need to schedule an appointment. I'm going to give you this one piece of paper with a little bit more information, and I'm going to call you in 24 hours for us to talk about what needs to happen next.
I mean, the conversation should just end after the first sentence. Here's a little bit more information if you're ready to read it. And if you're not look at it when you're [00:24:00] ready, we're going to call you back in 24 hours and we'll go from there and then maybe you come back and we give you a little bit more information about what this means.
You have a chance to answer questions and you bring your support person with you. You know, that would be a functional trauma trauma based system. Yeah. But for us as human beings. When we're flipped over into what's, what's sometimes referred to as amygdala hijack, which is really anytime the, the high emotion brain takes over or the I'm so overwhelmed, I'm losing it and can no longer think critically.
A lot of it is about just coming back into our bodies again. When you hear about how beneficial, for example, mindfulness. Or meditation. Now you're talking to somebody who, in the span of one small meditation, can redesign a hospital triage area and finish her grocery list. . Okay. Meditation is not my cup of tea, really.
But [00:25:00] meditation doesn't have to be about the really intensive. Sit down, visualize your happy place and spend 20 minutes in a state of being. Meditation can be, I'll give you mine. Okay. My cheater meditation is called Tea in Three. It is this. Make a cup of tea. Sit down with a cup of tea. Sit back down.
You're not done with a cup of tea. Feel the heat of the cup. Sniff the aroma. Feel the sit back down. You're not done with the tea. You're getting the idea here, aren't you? And during the six or seven times that I make myself sit back down because I tried to get up and go do something, I give myself permission to come up with a list of three things.
Two of those things are things that I can check off On my to do list in totality, so it can't be like a part of [00:26:00] something. It can't be, you know, if I'm painting the kitchen that day, it can't be paint the kitchen. I'm not going to get from start to finish. It has to be go by the paint. It has to be just one step of it.
So two things that I can check off in totality and one self care item that I'm going to accomplish that day. And then I sit the heck down and I finished the dang cup of tea. Because I cannot tell you how many cups of tea have been left around my house that I just never even remembered that I didn't finish.
And so, just being able to sit still and do that, and enjoy that, and make myself be present in the moment with it, was huge. And giving myself something that I felt like I could make progress on? In totality, and one little self care thing that I was going to do that day was a complete reset. So that kind of mini, mini mindset, mini meditation type of exercise or mindfulness exercise in and of itself is hugely helpful because it just [00:27:00] reminds us how to check in with our bodies and go, Oh my gosh, I'm in distress right now.
What can I do about that? Because there's nothing you're going to do about it if you, if you don't even have the wherewithal to realize when you're becoming distressed.
Mel: I love, I love, love, love that example, because it's a really practical way to, that, that is mindfulness, that is a form of meditation, a hundred percent, because You know, so often we think of it as you need to sit down and not think, which is literally impossible, right?
Like your brain will think because that's what it's designed to do. And the way you're discussing that, describing that is like you physically want to and do sometimes stand up because you're on to the next thing. And mindfulness is about bringing yourself back into the moment. Over. And over, and over, and over again.
Because you want to stand up or you want to think about the grocery list or you want to whatever, right? So that is [00:28:00] such a, a beautiful example of a habit that, that one could create in the morning to set yourself up for the day.
Katelyn: So yeah. It would be one of the examples of what I call real life resiliency hacks.
Yeah. It's the stuff, not that you know you're supposed to do, but you still haven't gotten around to it in the years that you've known you're supposed to do it, but the stuff that you can actually make yourself do. Right.
Mel: Mm hmm. Yeah. I love that. And that's, you know, that's the important part about this because so often we can, we can read, you know, the bookshelf full of books behind me that teaches us some very big broad ideas about things and then feel like so overwhelmed.
By what you could do without knowing a specific example that don't do anything,
Katelyn: to be honest. Well, what you could do and what you should do. Because by the time you finish the list of what you should do, you're so wracked by guilt and the guilt is taking up so much bandwidth. There's no energy left for [00:29:00] anything else.
Mel: Exactly. Yeah, that's true. Like, mum guilt is real in so many ways. Oh my gosh, yeah. Right? Whether about being mom or not, the guilt is, the guilt is certainly, certainly there. And and I really like how you described how, you know, our brains can't think when we are in that stress mode. They cannot, like they shut down, they're looking for the bear, the tiger, whatever it is, the threat that's in the room.
And I think that's a really important one to point out, not only for us as moms. So if we're triggered by something in life, whether that be our child or. getting rejected for the three fold flyer you just put out there or, you know, whatever it might be, then, you know, we're not going to be able to think right away.
And, you know, I think that applies to our everyday lives too. So if our kid triggers me, so my kid completely ignoring me and not even responding [00:30:00] or looking at me is my trigger, right? Which happens every day, a million times a day. Oh yeah,
Katelyn: that's a thing.
Mel: So, where I'm going with this is that as parents and as humans, because we are human, hence the name of the podcast, Permission to be Human, it's okay to just not be able to think in that moment.
And instead of trying to fix it, or have someone fix it for us, just finding some way of retreating, essentially, until we can think again. And ideally have doing some things which I'm sure you have lots of great ideas of what exactly we could do in that moment. And then before we jump right into what that could be, the other thing that's coming to my mind is the fact it's a nice little reminder that our kids also can't think when they're in stress mode.
And it's so common, all of us do it, to, you know, they're freaking out about something and we're [00:31:00] trying to teach them a lesson,
Katelyn: but they have no idea what we're saying. None of it's going in.
Mel: Like, absolutely none, like, they were rude, for example, because they were so overwhelmed by something. Yeah, that
Katelyn: we want to correct them in that moment.
Exactly! And,
Mel: you know, we need to sit down and we need to talk about how we talk to each other. And it's like, no, none of it means anything. Yeah. All it does is put shame, but it doesn't actually help anybody learn. So,
Katelyn: so the question is It's like we mixed up our dog, cat, dog parent, cat parent brain with our kid parent brain where they're like, you know, if you don't do it right away, then the dog won't associate it with the action you're correcting.
I'm like, okay, that might be true for the dog. It's less true for my toddler or my teenager.
Mel: Totally. And honestly, I'd argue it doesn't, isn't really even true for our dogs. I have a very highly anxious dog sitting right, well, she's laying very comfortably on the floor right now, but like, if I go into stress mode with her, she, she doesn't listen either.
But
Katelyn: So, [00:32:00]
Mel: so what would you say in those moments, either one of those situations or both, what can we do when we're in, either us or our child or someone we're talking to is in stress mode? What can we do instead?
Katelyn: Well, I love that you brought up in that question, even though you didn't wrap it into the question itself, you brought up, oh, and this is my trigger.
So that's, that's actually one of the first things that we do. When I put together emotional first aid kits for nurses, the very first piece of that is identifying what are your triggers, what are your common push buttons, and what happens to your body or your behavior when you're starting to get close to your wall.
Think of this like, think of this like if you've ever done CPR class. If you've ever gone through CPR training they teach you over and over again, ABC, ABC, airway, breathing, circulation. This is the first things you do. [00:33:00] And they tell you over and over and over and over again, you know, why the repetition?
And then you have to recertify every two years. Why that much repetition on such a simple concept? Well, cause when, when we're in amygdala hijack, we need simple steps. We can't process complex, you know, we, we need something that our brain can just totally autopilot to. And so just like we learn, you know, Hey, if your left arm is starting to go numb, if pain is radiating into your jaw, if your heart is starting to, you know, your chest is starting to hurt and you're short of breath, you know, these are distress symptoms.
These are, these are warning flags. That something is about to go wrong. And then if something does go wrong, you know, here's what you, here's what you do. ABC. It's the same thing for our emotional status, knowing what our triggers are and what our danger signs are. You know, do you, does the shoulder start to get tight?
Do you talk more? Do you talk less? Did your voice start to get a little bit, you know, do you start to enunciate a little more clearly? Or, you know, [00:34:00] do you get really quiet? What, how do you know when your body's tipping over? And in the same way, in terms of what do you notice in your body when you're getting there, you do the same thing in reverse.
So from a science hack, one of the best things that can take us from amygdala processing back into prefrontal cortex processing, uh, goes back to that body awareness thing. And it's simply a matter of using words inside your own head to go, I can feel my shoulders are tight. I can feel how tense I am. I'm noticing that I'm getting incredibly frustrated right now.
And really what you're doing by putting words to what you're experiencing is you are poking holes in this barrier that goes down between amygdala and prefrontal cortex. Language is a process of the prefrontal cortex. But the emotional center and the body response, the sensory stuff, that's amygdala, that's amygdala processing.
So you tie the two [00:35:00] together by using language to describe the sensations. And in that way, you kind of creep your own way forward back into that, I'm able to think a little bit more critically space. And then just knowing, you know, what kind of things can you do in that moment? You heard me talk about the TN three, feeling the sensation of T if I'm in the ER and I'm losing it, you know, if I can take a break and go into the break room and just concentrate on pouring, you know, a very hot or a very cold cup of something where I can concentrate on the sensations of that, you know, take a couple of sips of whatever that is.
Sometimes that's enough as I'm describing what I'm going through. I can feel the cold. You know, I can feel this slide down my throat. I can take a couple of sips of this. Okay, here's what the cup feels like in my hand. That little language use can help you climb back to your thinking brain a lot faster.
So that's one really fun little tiny hack right there of use the language. And the funny part is as parents, we know this cause we do it with our kids. [00:36:00] You know, when we see them start to lose it. You know, what do we say? Hey, take a deep breath, you know, you're, and we start using words to label their emotion, you know, you're screaming, or you're, you're looking really tense right now, take a deep breath.
So when we have those instincts to kind of label what our kids are going through, oh, I see you're really frustrated right now, we're actually giving them those words to poke holes in their own barrier. And kind of step back into their prefrontal cortex doing, doing that intentionally is a fantastic way for us to help our kids when they're in distress and a fantastic way to help ourselves out.
But the second part is going to be being okay to step away and come back to the conversation when we're not. Yeah. Well, and that piece right there. Is, is something that you know that I also enjoy playgrounds in, which is empathy versus compassion. [00:37:00]
Mel: Yeah. Tell us. Tell us. Now, firstly to say that Caitlin, you have a TEDx talk, which what's the title of it?
Katelyn: The problem with empathy.
Mel: Okay The Problem With Empathy, TEDxTalk, go and listen to it because we'll only be able to tap into it here, but it was absolutely fascinating. And I have to say, watching it, I can't remember if I told you this or not after I watched it. So, I've always considered empathy my superpower.
Right? I feel big. I internalize a lot of it, but I feel big. And I've described it that way to my kids, so the title of your talk, I was like, What are you talking about? Right? Like, I was like, I had to be careful. I knew I was
Katelyn: going to make people a little bit edgy.
Mel: Totally. And then you wait and I wait and wait.
I'm listening and listening. And then you got to the point of empathy versus compassion. And that's when it really hit and has me exploring. and being really curious about this difference. And while I [00:38:00] don't necessarily use, uh, the same words in my past, I am 100 percent on board with what, what you're about to share with us.
So tell me about empathy versus compassion.
Katelyn: I have a really big soapbox that I carry around on this one because I think that we've been sold empathy as a universal fix all. And empathy totally does have an appropriate place. But there's also times when empathy is more detrimental. Then it is helpful. So empathy is great.
If we just, uh, had someone, let's say I'm, I'm working at a counter at a cafe and somebody comes up and they're just incredibly rude with their order. And I think, you know, maybe they just lost their job. Maybe they just got bad news from a family member and I excuse the behavior and I allow that, that moment of potential empathy of [00:39:00] picturing what they might be going through to, to raise a, a.
Act or feeling of kindness in myself. Empathy is fantastic for that. The reason empathy is fantastic for that is because it doesn't matter if I'm right. I imagined myself in that other person's shoes, thought what might make them behave that way, and I used it to prompt kindness. Doesn't matter if they got fired or if they got bad news or if they're really just a jerk.
Either way, I didn't allow myself to be sucked into the situation. And I acted in the way that I want to act. But then there's situations that are either really high emotion or really high complexity. And I'll use this one as a parent example too. Think about the brand new parent who every single time The baby cries.
It's just like, Oh God. Oh, you know, she's, is she, is she in pain? Is she hungry? You know, what's going on? And they get anxious and they get worked up and their anxiety often will kind of [00:40:00] cycle that baby's anxiety. As a, as a pediatric neonatal intensive care nurse for her for many months, I was around so many nurses that were just like, Oh, yep, she's gone.
Yeah. And we would, we would be so casual almost with these kids that we were frequently alarming to parents. Yeah, but by not jumping into their emotional distress, we were far more effective in our ability to resolve their emotional distress because, as you mentioned, we get into that hijack mode and we're not able to think critically of solutions and we're, Oh, my God, what am I doing wrong?
You know, why isn't she stopping? What's going on? Why isn't this working? And yeah. The way I describe it most often metaphorically is it's, it's seeing somebody in distress in the water and either going, Oh my gosh, what would I want if I was them? Oh my God, they're drowning. If I were drowning, I want you to come and get me.[00:41:00]
Okay, technically I want Jason Momoa to come and get me, but close enough. So I jumped in the water and I go get the person or I try to. Any, any lifeguard out there will tell you that is, that is risky. Whereas if I take a step back and go, okay, it's not my distress. It's their distress. I still care. I still want to help.
It's not my distress. It's their distress. What can it, what is the situation, what skills or knowledge do I possess that can help? Now maybe instead of jumping in the water, I reach for the life preserver and I toss that to the person. And I call for help. And just in case those things don't work, I'm still able to think critically about the next step.
So in actuality, my being a little bit of a step back and not emotionally jumping into the other person's shoes allows me to protect that space for them, allows me to be the one that makes their distress safe. Because I'm working on a solution. So maybe they don't [00:42:00] have to be. And That, that difference, I think, is especially important for people who are, as you described yourself, you know, very empathy based, very feeling based, and we automatically jump in emotionally to other people's distress, and we want so badly to help, but sometimes we want so badly to help that we're actually less able to do that.
To be of support. Yeah. And I'll, I'll throw one other really quick example in, which is I was on my way to teach about this to a group of oncology nurses and the woman in the plane next to me who I was describing it to, she's like, Oh my gosh, I know exactly what you're talking about. She said, we had to put my dog to sleep and we went in and the vet had been working with us for years and the vet was tearing up and it was the worst possible thing.
She said, because I didn't want to dive into my emotions right then. And the fact that the vet was tearing up was making it harder for me not to crash and burn right there in a place. I didn't feel safe [00:43:00] to be in with my emotions. And she said, what's more is it wasn't what I needed from them. They're just, they're distress and their resonance with me in that emotional moment.
Wasn't what I needed. She said, what I needed was that vet to say, you're making the right decision. You really have done everything that is reasonable to do. And we're out of options. And so she needed them home. She needed that professional voice there and not that empathetic resonance. And there are situations where that's true for us too, and part of it is letting go of the guilt that it's okay not to be in the emotion with the other person.
And part of it is understanding that we can even be more effective sometimes if we're not in the emotion with the person. Yeah,
Mel: because we can think, right? And that's such a good example, and also a fascinating one. Uh, just a little side. Personal note on the vet front, I love, [00:44:00] love animals, and my dad as a child was like, Mel, you just like, you can talk to animals, you can like, you should be a vet.
And I was like, I knew right away, I was like, nope, I can't be a vet, because I would be that vet. I was welling up when you were telling that story, right? Because I can't separate myself from the emotions of pets. I'm much better with people than I am with pets. And I think it's, it's knowing those situations when you won't.
necessarily be able to, or that you need a lot more practice to go into, as you say, compassion and step away from diving in to empathy.
Katelyn: And sometimes it is about practicing. It's about practicing and giving yourself permission. And yeah. And then also recognizing that those moments when you weren't able to effectively not jump in, at least partway, recognizing at the end of that day, you know what, that took a really big scoop out of my bucket.[00:45:00]
What am I going to do of that TN3 self care third item? What am I going to do to put that scoop back in? Because too often we just take scoops out. We know we took scoops out of our bucket. We know we're running dry. And yet, we just carry on. It's like, oh, it'll be fine. It's like, how do you figure? If you take water out of a bucket and you've only got one bucket, how do you figure it's going to be okay if you never do anything to put water back in again?
I encourage people, it's like, have a list. Yeah. Have a list of things that you can do in five minutes or less to put a little bit of water back in. You know, I used to take a shortcut around the hospital in which I went out the East door and back in the West by just walking around the hospital to get back in the other side.
Cause I just needed to go outside and be part of a reality that wasn't part of the drama. So that was a five minutes or less thing. And then at the end of the day, when you have a safe place, What does it mean to put a scoop back in your bucket? You know, maybe it does mean [00:46:00] whiskey and chocolate chip cookie dough.
Or maybe it does mean, as you and I discussed, a bath. And that one's a big one for me too. Bath and a book. Yeah. That's a put a scoop back in thing for me. But recognizing that we have to.
Mel: That's amazing. Thank you. So we need to start pulling things to a close. And I always finish on this question of any top tips that you've given us plenty already, but any top tips for the moms who are listening and where my mind leads is actually some maybe some examples of how do we fill that bucket back up when we.
are still learning how to do this, which is a lifelong lesson, I might add.
Katelyn: Absolutely. It's a practicing thing, right? Like,
Mel: like, I'm guessing you're sitting here telling us about all of this, and you're, you know, a fair few steps ahead of myself and some listening, but you're not there, right? Like, you still are practicing.
[00:47:00] Nobody's 100 percent
Katelyn: there. Every day. Nobody's human. So, yeah,
Mel: tell me, tell us. And I think that's maybe something else that we could do that would be that five minute or less, fill your bucket. Well,
Katelyn: I will, I will definitely give you a link to the tool, which is just. A place to fill out. You know, what are my triggers?
How do I know I'm coming close to hitting my wall? And then what are my five minutes or less? And then what are my, when I'm in a safe place, uh, because certainly it is, it is individual for all of us, but there are some, there are some ones that are big hitters that are worth mentioning. Uh, the mindfulness is absolutely one.
My mindfulness really is the TN three because I stink at meditation, but it could be meditation. Uh, that is actually a powerhouse one. Thank you. Another one is outside, going outside and in any capacity, uh, whether it's a [00:48:00] walk around the neighborhood or whether it's, here's a cool one they did this whole complex study of emotions and they found out that from a immune system standpoint, uh, the emotion that is Most healthy for us in bolstering our immunity and kind of returning us to a natural state of health.
The emotion that is most heavily associated with that is awe. And for most people, 75 percent of the folks in the study, they found awe in nature. So one of my cheats for people is if, if you have like, just you're at your limit and you're like, Oh my God, I just, I don't, I can't, I can't do, no, none of it is doable right now.
Take your cell phone camera, go outside, and find three things to take a picture of that, that somehow capture you in, in their beauty, in their complexity, in something. And just come back inside, start forming yourself a little photo album [00:49:00] in your phone for these things. Uh, biophilia is this entire field that talks about our resonance with nature and how much impact it has.
It's really cool. Uh, I won't, I won't dive into it. I've, uh, I've complicated the, uh, conversation enough with science, but that's a great one. Another powerhouse item too that I'll mention is Monitoring our own internal scripting, making sure that we're being kind to ourselves in the way we talk to each other, or the way we talk to ourselves in the same way that we would be kind to the way that we talk to each other, you know, be your own friend.
And if you need to practice or write yourself a new script. And another great big one is that we become a lot more positive and naturally when we focus on gratitude. So just thinking through a couple of things in that day, it's like, you know what, that really stunk, but I'm grateful, you know, that I at least have X, Y, Z.[00:50:00]
You know, finding those little silver lining moments helps our brains to just turn more positive in general.
Mel: Those are such good examples I could go on and I think we should have you back to geek out on the nature thing because that's like one of my favorite topics. Oh, yeah. And I can think of a dozen times that I have been in almost panic attack mode. And gone outside and just stared at a tree to like notice what was on it and what is it teaching me right now and what is it just what is it like how is a tree in existence and you just it's that distraction yeah so many other things so and
Katelyn: you're totally using that language language description to kind prefrontal cortex.
By using nature, the trigger. So you combined the powerhouses. That's amazing.
Mel: Exactly. And that's what noticing nature is. So like I said, we can talk for an hour about that and perhaps we should. But [00:51:00] I, I love those examples. I love the tools you've given us there. And yes, please do give us a link and I will share it out with everybody, both on our social media posts, as well as in the description to this particular episode.
And, uh, Thank you. Thank you for sharing your story and just being human and real about it all and
Katelyn: that,
Mel: you know, that, that's, that's so, so important and You know, it's not every day that you get someone who's down to earth whilst talking about some pretty You know, big topics in the well being space.
So, thank you for, thank you
Katelyn: for doing that. Oh, such a pleasure. No, I'm so glad that you, uh, that you invited me and thank you for that and hoping that the, that the tips and bits shared along the way were, are gonna be helpful for folks. Excellent.
Mel: And where [00:52:00] can they find you? What's the best way to find you and the work you're doing?
Perhaps, you know, there might be some listeners here that are in that nursing field or in that professional space that may be interested in your talks or your, your work that you're doing in that space. As well as obviously the incredible detail that you've given us just as mothers as well.
Katelyn: You can get to all my stuff through, , katelyncarrie.
com which is K A T E L Y N C A R E Y dot com. And that'll take you both to the beautyafterbreastcancer. com page where the book is and you can see pictures and hear some of the excerpts from the book, , that will take you to some of the other articles. That have been posted about these types of topics that I've written.
It'll take you to a link to the TED talk, , and I will definitely post some of the other resources there as well. , LinkedIn is also just under Katelyn Carey and you can also [00:53:00] get to that through my website too.
Mel: That's awesome. Thank you so much.
Katelyn: Absolutely. Thanks
/ See wasn't that worth sticking around for a Katelyn is so freaking amazing. And I just love how specific her. Tips are we can really go out and do all those things right now. So if you'd like to feel free to Check out her self care first aid toolkit. And it is at katelyn carey.com/free-tools. I know I will be looking through it and putting it into practice in my own life because I can always deal with a little more self-care. And. Honestly, I think you probably can too.
So thanks for sticking around.
that is it, folks. This has been Mel Findlater on Permission to Be Human, the podcast, and I am so glad that you have joined us here today and hope that you have taken away [00:54:00] some tidbits that will help you go away, connect with your big audacious dream, and make that massive impact in the world that you are dying to make.
If you liked today's episode, please, please, please like it, share it, find Think of one person, think of one person that you think would also like it and send it on over to them. Let's get this out there and more moms feeling like themselves. Inspired, dreaming big, and out there being them. Please do head on over to find me on Facebook with permission to be human or Instagram or you can even pop me an email and say hello.
at permission to be human, always, at gmail. com. Say hello and let me know that you listened. What did you like about it? I would love to hear. If you didn't like it, I don't really want to know. Just kidding, you can share that if you want. [00:55:00] I would love to know, however. who you are. Let's connect. Let's find out what you want more of.
I want to hear from you and I want to make it what would be useful to you. As always, remember that you have permission to dream big, permission to feel big, and permission to be you. You have complete and full permission to be human. For real. You do.
