The news broke me. The murder shows stopped working. So I watched a month of college basketball I do not care about, and it was the only thing keeping my nervous system upright.

In this episode I'm unpacking three things:

→ Why "distraction" is an actual mental health strategy, and why sportsball was the weirdly perfect antidote to doomscrolling.

→ A very clear message for anyone whose job is chewing them up: You are an asset, not a liability. Burnout culture is not only cruel, it's bad business. The math on replacing good employees is brutal, and your workplace being too short-sighted to see that has nothing to do with your value.

→ Small Talk Frank from Scranton wants to know why he can't relax into stability.

If you needed to hear "this isn't you, it's them" today — hi, it's them.

Chapters

00:00 Cold open: You are an asset, not a liability

00:38 Hi, I'm L2 — welcome back to Different, Not Broken

01:05 Why I always have something on in the background (blame childhood chaos)

02:04 When the murder shows stopped working

03:00 The news broke me

03:43 Basketball as my zero-stakes sanity reset

04:48 Accidentally Pavlov'd by March Madness

05:54 The women's games are better, argue with the wall

06:35 Gratitude for dumb distractions

08:12 Workplaces are getting worse (and it's bad business)

08:54 The actual math on turnover and institutional knowledge

09:37 Short-term thinking is stealing your future

10:13 "It's not personal, it's just business" is an excuse

11:16 You are an asset, not a liability

12:26 You are not the problem for having boundaries

13:32 AI outsourcing and the coming pay cut

14:10 You deserve safety, accommodations, and a workplace built for humans

14:59 Small Talk with Alison: a question from Frank in Scranton

15:13 Hypervigilance, trauma, or just being realistic?

16:09 Why I can't let myself get excited about good things

16:44 Chaotic families and why I hate my birthday

17:45 Two trophies and a dead dog (and then, open-heart surgery)

18:42 Some of us are just wired this way

19:31 When it might be time to talk to a professional

20:22 Olympics tangent: how does anyone end up doing the luge?

Resources & Links

• Got a question for Small Talk? Send it in: https://differentnotbrokenpodcast.com/voicemail

Mentioned in this episode:

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Not only is it bad for humans, but it's actually

bad for business. It is really horrible business

to have to keep retraining people because you

treat them so poorly that they burn out and leave.

When we hit a stride where things are going well, I have anxiety waiting

for whatever awful stuff is coming next because

things can't just go well for a while, right? Like there's gotta be something around

the corner waiting for us. You did not do

anything wrong. You are an asset. You are not a liability.

Hi everybody, I'm Lauren Howard. I go by L2. Yes,

you can call me L2. Everybody does. It's a long story. It's actually not that

long a story, but we'll save it for another time. Welcome to Different

Not Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that,

that there are a lot of people in this world walking around feeling broken. And

the reality is you're just different and that's fine.

We've talked about the fact that I actually quite enjoy sportsball before and

I use sports as the catch all term for all of the

sports. Cause I will watch any sport, but it's not like something I seek out.

I will say when I need something to put on in the background, which is

all the time, I always have something running in the background and I'm very rarely

actively paying attention to it. It's either the byproduct of my brain being very

noisy all the time and learning to counteract it with

television or with noise, or the fact that my house was loud

all the time. When I was a kid, there was no quiet ever because there

were just a whole lot of kids with a whole lot of trauma.

I always want to have on in the background, even though I don't care that

much about the topics. I actually really like watching sports documentaries and so I'll watch

things about all sorts of different sports teams all the time.

I know lots of things about like 1970s

sports that I don't know about current sports. I learn it

from watching documentaries and docu series and things like that. But the reason I bring

this up is because I watched the entire March Madness this year every

night instead of turning on what I normally turn on, which is shows about murder.

Because of course, because who doesn't love a good show about murder? Listen, when I'm

stressed, I want to go decompress and watch shows about murder. That's how I get

my relief. But things have been so intensely

stressful lately that even like the dark

themes, like even just the idea of the kind of

creepy music that they play under murder shows or the suspenseful music

or the horror type music that you often hear on Dateline

or 48 Hours or one of the various shows

on Oxygen, True Crime that are all basically the same show just

packaged into slightly different packages, literally all about murder. I

was not able to overcome the

anxiety in my brain because it was compounding it. The idea of

these very stressful, really horrific themes that should tell

you how far gone I've been. Thanks

to the state of the universe right now. I will drop everything for Keith

Morrison if he calls. I'm running. And the fact that I've been like,

I just can't right now. That's what I've been like with the news for the

last year. Which is also shocking because I was a news junkie all

the time. I would turn on a news channel, leave it on, know what's happening

all over the world. But now that our news is

permeated by a giant orange jackass with

zero capacity for governance and just

rampant corruption and terrible things happening all the time,

Every time I watch the news, I would get angry. I would get so sick

to my stomach, I would feel physically sick that I was like, I just can't

do this anymore. Which is when I switched to murder shows full time. Well, we

have now reached the part of the timeline where the murder shows are

now causing their own version of stress. And so I have been watching

sportsball. I don't actually care what's happening in the games, and I certainly don't care

who wins. But it is so nice to have something on the

television that has zero stakes for me. None whatsoever.

There is no anxiety. I don't care. If you make a basket, good for you.

If you do make a pretty one, I like watching it. That's fun. But if

you lose the game, if you win the game, I don't care. I like

watching Charles Barkley be a jerk. That's

fun all the time. I, in general, like the commentators. I

like to pretend like I know what's going on. Like, I said something to my

husband about the Final Four, and I was like, well, it's so and so and

so and so versus so and so and so and so. Final Four is not

even over and I've forgotten who's in it. Clearly, that shows you how far in

my brain I'm actually retaining this stuff. It's not far, but I know

Michigan's in it because I had a teacher in high school who I'm still close

with, who was a huge Michigan fan. And I can sing the entire Michigan fight

song because of her. And my kids the other day asked me why I know

the Michigan song. They didn't know what the Michigan song was. And I was like,

that is a very long story. And they're like, do you like Michigan?

I was like, no, I hate Michigan. I have no affection for Michigan whatsoever. I've

been Pavlov. I watched all of March Madness,

which I've never done before. I've never filled out a bracket. I've never cared.

The only time I ever cared were the couple of years when LSU was in

the finals for two reasons. One, LSU is my favorite team, and two, because I

grew up there and my best friend was the team manager when they were in

the finals. The two times I cared that time since I graduated, probably

college. I don't care about the sports ball, but, man, the relief that

I've gotten from the sports ball. They're doing what they love and they're so good

at it. And it's really nice to watch other people do what they love

and be good at it, even if it's something that you have no interest

in. I can watch other people be good at stuff all day.

I can watch other people get joy from something all day.

So do I care about the basketball scores?

No. Am I ever gonna fill out a bracket and have any

opinion on who wins March Madness? Absolutely

not. But am I so grateful that March Madness was on

the television for a full month? And also, the women's games are

better than the men's games. I'm just saying, full stop, no question. I

don't care. Argue with the wall. I do know the names of people

on the women's side. Dawn Staley is a freaking hero. Bite me.

And then I'm blanking on her name right now, and it's really bothering me. I

think it's Kim something. She's the LSU coach. Aside from the fact that she's the

LSU coach, which means I love her by nature of existence. She coached Angel

Reese, who I really, really love, and she has the greatest blazers in the history

of humanity. I never knew you could put that many sequins on a

blazer. And good for her. I'm so impressed with the number of sequins

that she puts on her blazers. Anyway, I pay attention to women's sports apparently a

little bit more than I pay attention to men's sports. I could not name a

single person on any of the men's teams because I don't care. But I do

care about the women's teams and the women's games are better. They're better. I am

so grateful for March Madness, which I can't believe I'm saying out loud because I

have literally never cared before. But it has been the reprieve that my brain

needed from murder shows, I guess, which were the

reprieve that my brain needed from the news. Because that's the world we live in

in 2026. I'm kind of sad that it's going to be over. I'm gonna have

to find something else to watch. I don't know what sports ball seasons are next.

I think baseball starts. Unless it's the Savannah Bananas, I'm not gonna watch baseball.

So that's a no go. But I'm sure there's other sports balls that I can

watch that will offset some of the horror and nightmare

that is happening. Things that I have learned. I

really like watching people be good at stuff, even if it's stuff that I don't

care about at all. Sportsball is a really, really good

distraction. Especially when you don't give a shit about the

outcome. Zero shits about the outcome. Amazing

distraction. And then you can pretend like you know things. I'm like, look, he hit

that three. Oh, that was a foul. He's gonna get to go to the foul

line. Well, that was a one on one. Okay. I did play basketball in high

school, so like I at least know the rules of the game. It is kind

of fun to like act like you know things even though the impact of knowing

things is just because my brain needed a break from reality.

And the only break from reality that I could get is 7 foot

tall men running up and down a court. Which is fine.

Highly recommend putting the sports ball on in the background and

forgetting that life exists for a minute. You don't have to engage with it,

but there's nothing going on except for people running up and down a court.

And they're not focused on anything that is going on in the world aside from

putting that ball in a hoop. And that is the level

of distraction that I need right now. Thank you. Sportsball

workplaces, I guess they're changing. I feel that it

is becoming more the norm. The standard for workplace

performance should be use them up until they're burned out.

Often it's turned them over for someone else cheaper. Or an AI

bot that doesn't have set hours. But that's so

common now. Not only is it bad for humans, but

it's actually bad for business. It is really

horrible business to have to keep retraining people

because you treat them so poorly that they burn out

and leave or can't do the job or go on disability or

whatever like it's bad business. It costs a business money

to have people leave when they have institutional knowledge. It

takes something like between 18 months and

three years to replace someone who left with all

the institutional knowledge. And knowledge transfer only happens to

a certain extent. Regardless how well documented your SOPs

are. The humans who are performing those jobs

know it better than any book. And your perfectly

documented manual on how to do this job isn't

going to tell the whole story. I don't care if the companies lose

a bunch of money because they ran off their employees. That is not

my point. It both feels

bad and it is bad business because losing

good employees costs the organization money. So there's no

justification for doing it except for short term thinking

rather than long term plan. They are worried about the

payroll this year. They are worried about output this year rather

than thinking about how. Man, if we have a healthy,

engaged, happy to be here group of employees

that this company will be easier to run in 10 years or five years or

even two years. They don't think about that. Happy employees lead to better

businesses. They lead to more profitable businesses. They lead to more successful

businesses. They lead to businesses that are less prone to

risk because the employees work to protect them. Again, I don't actually

care about the businesses. That's not the point that I'm making for the conversation we're

about to have. There is fully no justification for it

because it's not even good business to do things this way. So what I want

to say is there is a reality that your job

can't see the forest for the trees. They are incapable

of seeing how treating you like a

valuable human who deserves to be there, who they

are appreciate having there, who does their job well

is better for business. And that has nothing

to do with you. That is not a shortcoming from your performance.

That does not reflect on how you've done your job. It does not

reflect on how important you are to the organization. It reflects on the

fact that they are prioritizing the company

over every individual. And that is not something that you should

internalize. And I understand how hard it is to not.

I understand how it feels personal when they do things like that. When

people say it's not personal, it's just business. That's an excuse that they're making

to not take accountability for the shitty thing they're about to do. It's always

personal when someone treats you poorly. It is always

personal. No business decision justifies

treating someone poorly. That doesn't mean that there aren't

business decisions that end up with really negative outcomes for

people who deserve better. And sometimes that happens. Even

in the best scenario, sometimes that happens. But that

has nothing to do with you. That has

nothing to do with your performance. It has nothing to do with your capability. It

has nothing to do with your ability to get another job.

That is the place that you are working.

Not understanding, caring about your employees is better business.

Their hyper corporate, likely abusive approach,

despite the fact that you have the honor of absorbing it or

being at least the receptacle for it, has absolutely nothing to

do with you. You did not do anything wrong. You are an

asset. You are not a liability. You are not the problem who is

creating this inhospitable environment that was designed to

burn you out. It's got nothing to do with you. You are not a problem

for having boundaries. You are not a problem for expecting better.

You are not a problem for wanting the accommodations that you deserve. None

of that is you. None of that makes you a problem.

Psychological safety at work or the ability to be treated

like a human, not a cog in a machine, that is not a

fringe benefit. That is something that should be available to everyone. And

if you're in a situation where you're not treated well, where

you feel disposable because that's the vibe that your employer

gives off, that you would do anything to jump ship right now, whether

that's a possibility for you or not. I'm sorry, that sucks.

I'm sorry that so much of our corporate world has turned into that. In

my experience, it's been that for a long time, but I definitely see it getting

worse. Especially now that there's this looming threat that will just outsource your job

to a robot which will never work. They think that they can turn all of

these hyper expertise driven roles into

computerized programs. Basically, they're firing people as a result of it, and

they're just going to have to hire all those people back or a lot of

those people back. My fear though is that they're going to hire those people back

at like a quarter of the salary because the beatings will continue

until morale improves. But none of that

has anything to do with your performance,

your capacity, your intelligence, your expertise. You

are in a shitty situation that is not built to be

compatible with human existence. I wish I could

snap my fingers and fix that, but I don't know that anybody can. And

so if you're in that situation. I'm sorry. You deserve better.

You deserve more. You should not be the

byproduct of trying to strip humanity

out of the workplace. And it should not reflect on you as

how you feel about yourself. You could be a thousand years

more experienced and 10 times less expensive

and they would still do it. It has nothing to do with you. You deserve

safety in the workplace. You. You deserve accommodations in the workplace. You're

legally required to get accommodations in the workplace as long as they

are reasonable and affiliated with an actual disability. You shouldn't feel

like your job is to work until you can't work anymore, and then they'll just

give the job to someone else. That's not how it's supposed to work. And if

that's how it's working for you currently, I'm sorry.

And now we'll go to Alison, who has this week's

small talk. We have a question from

Frank in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I'm

constantly bracing for things to go wrong. Even when things are fine,

I don't know how to relax into stability. Is that

hypervigilance, trauma, or just being realistic?

I can't say exactly what that is because I'm not a

clinician. However, I will say that I am exactly the same.

I don't know if that makes it better or worse, but I am so much

the same. When we hit a stride where things are going well, I

have anxiety waiting for whatever awful stuff is

coming next because things can't just go well for a while, right? Like, there's

gotta be something around the corner waiting for us. And that has been a

challenge my entire life. I remember being like that when I was a little kid.

Sometimes I just don't feel excited about things that maybe could be really

exciting because I either don't want to invest too much

emotional energy in it in the event that it doesn't work out, or

I've had a lot of disappointment about things I was excited about not going

well or not turning out to be what I thought it was. And so, like,

it makes it really hard to enjoy things. I used

to watch a ton of college football, and, like, six weeks before

the end of the season, I would get, like, really melancholy because it was going

to end. And I love it so much, and I don't want it to end.

Not enjoying maybe potentially the most exciting part of the season

because I'm so worried that it's going to end. I remember feeling like that when

my kids were little, too. I mean, they still are little. Like early newborn

phase. Feeling really sad all the time that this phase is going to end and

I won't have spent enough time enjoying it or I won't get to do

it with them again. But you're in it now. Why aren't you enjoying it now?

And it's just not how I'm wired. I think some of that is

probably a trauma response, especially if you grew up. And again, I say

this not as a clinician, but just somebody who has personal experience with this. If

you grow up in a chaotic family that pulls a lot of attention

every time something good happens for someone else, it makes you

really nervous when good things do happen because you're waiting

for somebody to do the next wild and outlandish thing, to pull

focus. I'm convinced that's why I hate my

birthday, because I can name a number of different

things that as a child

on my birthday, created conflict or

stress or whatever. And so it makes me feel

uncomfortable when I'm supposed to be asking for time and

attention because there was always a shoe that dropped. There was always a thing.

Somebody always created a situation. And

so in my own personal

exploration, that's where I feel like

it comes from. Just this sense memory that if this is

something you're happy about, there's going to be something negative right behind it. When I

was in high school, I was on the speech and debate team and we went

to our first big state tournament for the year where

one of the people on the team with me had done really, really well the

prior year. This was several years in, so at this point, I was already kind

of established and had had some success. I

ended up doing really well at the tournament. I brought home two different

trophies because I was in two events and I got to finals, both of them.

And it was so exciting. And. And that wasn't something I usually got to do.

And I came home and walked in the house and I've got

my two trophies. I'm like, look, I did really well.

And my parents are like, that's amazing. Your dog died.

Oh, okay. So I'm going to put these

to the side. I came home and my dad was like, hey,

I'm having open heart surgery in two days. Some of us are just wired that

way. And I think to some extent, I would be wired that way regardless, because

I'm a worrier and I'm naturally

concerned that something bad is going to happen. I'm always looking around the corner. I'm

always trying to figure out what 50 different outcomes there could be from a

situation. But also Some of it's learned. Some of it

is from the environments that we grew up in, the people who

have maybe acted like energy vampires, whether we realize it or not.

Some of the things that have tempered our ability to feel excited about things. I

certainly don't know if that's the situation in your case, but I know that a

lot of people who struggle with this

idea of letting yourself feel excited about

something or look forward to something, or be present in the moment of

whatever that is. That comes from the fact that there

is just always something new to worry about. And that is

exhausting and overwhelming and comes from any

number of places. It can be hard to shake. And that might be a great

thing to talk to a professional about. It might also just be something to start

looking at. In your history, has somebody always rained on your parade

every time something great has happened for you? Or have you felt like

you couldn't share when something good happened because it might be

perceived as negative by somebody who you care about or not received well by somebody

who you care about? Because that can change how you personally feel about those

things, too.

The Olympics get me every time, and I always think I'm never going to watch

them, and then I end up watching them the whole time. Because in the US

you go to school and you could play basketball all the way through school, and

then you can play basketball in college, and then you can graduate college and go

to a professional. Like, there's like a whole trajectory there. How do you end

up learning to do the luge? Like, there's these little

niche sports that I'm like, how do you end up

in this sport? I must no.