Where are my burnout buddies at? We've really got to stop meeting like this. I'm on a mission to identify the cause of my persistent burnout in every job I've ever had. I use a chain analysis (spoiler, that's NOT the effective skill here), switch over to a missing-link analysis (spoiler, that IS the effective skill here), and dive into my shame around setting boundaries. This is a very messy episode and it takes me a while to find my way. Join me as I meander along and set up future episodes!

Helpful resources from this episode:

DBT references

DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets – online pdf version

DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets – buy the manual from a Black-owned book store!

DBT handouts used in this episode

General Handout 6 – Overview: Analyzing Behavior;

General Handout 7 – Chain Analysis;

General Handout 8 – Missing-Links Analysis;

Mindfulness Handout 5 – Taking Hold of Your Mind: “How” Skills;

Distress Tolerance Handout 11 – Radical Acceptance;

Emotion Regulation Handout 5 – Model for Describing Emotions (alternate version: E Wheel);

Emotion Regulation Handout 6 – Ways to Describe Emotions;

• Shame;
• Anger;

Emotion Regulation Handout 8 – Check the Facts;

Emotion Regulation Handout 7 – Overview: Changing Emotional Responses;

Emotion Regulation Handout 10 – Opposite Action;

Emotion Regulation Handout 21 – Overview: Managing Really Difficult Emotions;

Emotion Regulation Handout 22 – Mindfulness of Current Emotions: Letting Go of Emotional Suffering;

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More resources are available at https://therapize.joygerhard.com/

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Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

You've got shit. I've got shit. We've all got shit. So, let's therapize that shit, with your host, me, Joy Gerhard.

Please note: I am not a therapist. I cannot and do not diagnose anyone, or prescribe anything. This is just me – someone who struggles with my emotions and with intrusive thoughts – sharing what skills I've used and how I've used them.

Also, a trigger warning: in this podcast, I talk about sensitive topics including: mental illness, suicidal ideation, self-harm, rape, childhood sexual assault, trauma, and more. I also swear here and there, so listener discretion is advised.

Welcome, welcome. Oh my God, guys. This episode has been an absolute slog to put together. The bulk of what you're about to hear was filmed – filmed! – was recorded on December 30th, 2021.

And then I did my intro and my outro for it on January 19th, 2022. And sat with it for a couple days and realized I was completely off base. So, I am re-recording the intro and the outro to put the bulk of the recording into context that I think is more effective.

Let me tell you what happened. So, for the recording you're about to hear, I'm looking at burnout. I'm trying to determine how it is that I consistently end up getting burnt out in every job I've ever had.

To do this, I use a skill called a Chain Analysis. In DBT, dialectic behavioral therapy, there are two main ways to analyze behavior...

“...to figure out its cause and plan for problem solving.”

And this is from General Handout 6. The way that I'm using in this episode is called a Chain Analysis,

“Which is for when you engage in ineffective behavior.”

So, you're doing a thing and it's not effective. It's not getting you to your goal, what you're trying to achieve.

A chain analysis basically looks at the last domino that fell and then identifies the domino before that and the one before that and the one before that until you get to the first domino, and can identify what caused that one to fall. And problem solve around it.

So, I'm like, “Great, let's do a chain analysis, and the last domino is going to be burnout.” Because that was what I thought was the last domino that fell. Turns out burnout is not a behavior. It is an experience, a suite of emotions and thoughts and urges.

So, it's where I started my analysis, and in the process of working through the chain analysis, I realized what the actual last domino was. I'm not going to spoil it for you.

It still doesn't end up where I ultimately need to end up. So, in my outro, I will actually kind of re-summarize and re-contextualize that whole process.

And I'm bringing this up here and now so that if you're yelling at your phone – or whatever medium you're using to listen to this – and going, “That's not it, Joy! Can't you tell what it is?!”

Understand that I hear you. I also know that it's not it. So, I will come back in at the end and we will take the useful parts and recontextualize the rest. So that's where we're going to start.

Feel free to yell at me as I start off ineffectively and we'll go from there. I'll see you at the end.

Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

This started because of a quote I saw, and I'm actually really annoyed about it. “Burnout happens when you have a really high understanding of what the problem is and really low power to do anything about it.”

I felt that in my teeth. I was talking to a friend of mine ages ago about the power of a diagnosis, and that it comes with a lot of feelings, especially after a chronic illness...

...dealing with symptoms for a long time, and finally somebody being able to say, “Ah, here is the thing. And now that we know the cause, we can cure it or make it chronic, treat it, something.”

There's something soothing about a diagnosis, I think. Depends on the diagnosis probably, but being able to put words to something. And yeah, burnout is having a high understanding of the problem and low power to do anything about it.

That feels like somebody drew a picture of me without ever having met me, 'cause that's been my experience at every single job I've ever had. There's a lot of grief that came up from that, partially because... So, I've talked about this before, I have pelvic floor spasm, chronic condition.

And it's a muscle spasm, like a back spasm or another muscle spasm, but it's in my pelvic floor, and it feels like being stabbed with a red hot ice pick, like in my vagina. And it took over nine months to diagnose having it with some regularity.

And I was watching myself react to the diagnosis and there was relief. It's like, “Oh my God, there's a name for it.” And having a name for it felt like having a translator along with me.

It's like, I don't have to figure out everything I need to say. I don't have to remember all the details of every symptom. I can just say, “I have this.” And it's such beautiful shorthand.

So, there was such relief. And then shortly following the relief, almost immediately following it, was judgment. Why did it take this long? Why couldn't we figure it out sooner?

Did I really need to be in pain this whole time? Why didn't we figure it out on my first appointment? Did I not articulate my symptoms adequately? Did my doctor not order the right tests?

As with all things, all behavior is caused. So there's a reason. There's a reason I articulated what I articulated, I shared the symptoms that I shared. There's a reason my doctor ordered the test that she ordered. There's a reason it took as long as it did. And there was still an impact in the interim.

I had a different experience with my PTSD diagnosis. I was having symptoms for over a year before I was diagnosed. I was having symptoms for nine months before I even went to a therapist.

The reason she diagnosed me is because I had a panic attack at work and my boss kicked me out of the office for two weeks and said, “Go take a vacation, get your head right.”

And when I came back, my therapist pulled out the DSM... the DMS? Hold on, I'm looking it up. Yeah, the DSM: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And she just started reading the PTSD description and we just started checking boxes.

There's a bunch of different criteria: sections A through H. And I have symptoms in every single one of them. Some of them, I have multiple. And I still didn't believe my therapist. I argued with her a lot.

I mean, the specific diagnosis is chronic delayed-onset dissociative PTSD, but it's also complex PTSD, which is fun. And depersonalization. So, I fought with my therapist about it. I think it took about six months before I finally was like, “okay, fine, I've got it.”

Because I had all these judgments about what it meant about me. I couldn't possibly have it because that's what soldiers have. I haven't actually experienced trauma. Rape doesn't count. That was hardly traumatic. It was barely a thing.

My body is overreacting. This whole thing is an overreaction. I am being hysterical, dramatic, a whole host of stuff. So, that was an example of a diagnosis that I got that I fought and I was angry about.

This one – well, not a technical medical diagnosis, but just pulling back the curtain and seeing the strings and mixing all my metaphors. Having a high understanding of the problem and a low ability to solve it.

So, what's coming up right away is that judgment of like, “if I had known that that's what the mechanism was, I could have had boundaries. I could have used a skill, I could have used acceptance. I could have chosen not to continue to stay in that environment, you know.”

And of course, there is a reason why I didn't know that yet. And hell, even if I had known it 10 years ago, I can't guarantee that I would have understood what to do with it. I mean, I didn't have any therapy skills 10 years ago.

And I started therapy in 2015, and my burnout pattern started, let's say, 2007, 2008. I'm just, I'm embarrassed. I should have known. I should have done something about it. I should have left.

I shouldn't have stayed for as long as I stayed. Three years seems to be the length of time that it takes me to realize and to get out. Persistently three years, actually, in all four big ones, big work situations where I stayed for three years and then had a breakdown and had to leave.

It's a long time, especially when the symptoms showed up a lot sooner than that. And I stuck with it because I think I have judgments about quitting or something.

The judgments that I'm having, that I should have known this sooner comes, from having asked the question or being asked the question: what would you do if you accepted that this was the cause of your burnout?

If I accepted that I was getting burnt out because I had a very high understanding of a problem and very low power to solve it, if I accepted that was what was so, I would leave.

I would stop being in situations like that where I was powerless and I would go do something else. And that's where my self-judgment is coming from. I should have left. I should have hightailed it the fuck out of there.

So, there's a lot of self-judgment around not having left. There's a lot of judgment that I'm having around all of the reasons that I chose to stay. It was my behavior. It wasn't a gun to my head.

So, let's get into some specifics for a second so I stop talking vagaries. The first big one was grad school. I was in grad school for four years. And after the first year, knew I didn't actually want to pursue that as a career anymore, and then stayed for three more years.

And my advisor was a very, very tough man to work with – not just for me, but really for anybody who worked with him.

And then I worked as an office manager for three years for a small business. I started off working 20 hours a week, helping organize receipts and putting stuff into the accounting software.

And the only week I worked 20 hours was the first week. The next week I worked 40, the next week after that, 50. And for the rest of my time there, 50 hours was standard. Within two months, I was the office manager.

The existing office manager quit. And I don't know that my boss and I ever had a formal conversation about me taking over the role or what all of that would entail. And I certainly didn't get a pay increase commensurate with that.

And I founded a business with my former business partner and that's the one I knew within the first week that it was not a great fit. And I stayed. I think part of it's ego, the sense of like, “if I leave, everything will fall apart.”

So far, none of the things I have left have fallen apart. They're all still around and functioning. I don't know how well, but they're functioning. I think when I put that much time and effort into something, I want to believe that I'm irreplaceable, that my time and effort mattered.

So, what would I do if I accepted that my burnout is caused by having a high, very high understanding of a problem and zero power to solve it, or low power to solve it? I would leave. I would leave.

It's really just a lot of grief. Like, “it didn't have to be this way.” Part of my therapy homework is to basically do a Chain Analysis. This is General Handout 6 – Overview: Analyzing Behavior.

“Chain Analysis is for when you engage in ineffective behavior. A Chain Analysis examines the chain of events that led to ineffective behaviors, as well as the consequences of those behaviors, that may be making it hard to change them. It also helps you figure out how to repair the damage.”

So, a Chain Analysis is when you've engaged in ineffective behavior. So, you've actually done a thing and it was ineffective. I've been doing a Chain Analysis of my former jobs.

And basically a Chain Analysis... you can get into the details of it on General Handout 7 in the DBT manual. Step one is:

“Describe the problem behavior.”

So, my problem was burnout at work. Consistently leaving a workplace after three years, after experiencing extreme mental health issues. Anxiety, extreme fatigue, hopelessness, depression, and then the subsequent despair at ever being able to find a future job. So that's the problem behavior. Step two is:

“Describe the prompting event that started the chain of events leading to the problem behavior.”

So, step one is: where did you end up? Step two is: what started it. So, kind of bookending it. Step three:

“Describe the factors happening before the event,” before the prompting event, “that made you vulnerable to starting down the chain of events toward the problem behavior.

“Step 4: Describe in excruciating detail the chain of events that led to the problem behavior. Step 5: Describe the consequences of the problem behavior.”

Going back over that again. Step one is: describe the problem behavior (where did you end up?) Step 2 is: describe the prompting event (where did you start?). Step 3 is: what were your vulnerability factors?

(So, what was everything surrounding the prompting event that made the prompting event, if that's the first domino, what made it so easy for that domino to tip?) Step four: describe the chain of events.

So, that's basically: describe all of the events that went from the prompting event to the problem behavior. Prompting event is domino one, problem behavior is the last domino.

And then step 5 is: describe the consequences of the problem behavior (what happened as a result of all of those dominoes falling?).

What I hadn't been considering while I've been doing this chain analysis of previous jobs is the vulnerability factors that made that first domino fall. And I really don't want to look at this because it all has to do with me.

At the small business where I was the office manager, I started working 20 hours a week, organizing receipts, taking cash receipts and putting them into the accounting software. Now, one of my greatest pleasures in life is making organization from chaos.

I love jigsaw puzzles. One of my favorite puzzles is 5,000 pieces, and it's just a gradient rainbow from white at the top to black at the bottom, and then from green to green, left to right. But it goes through the whole rainbow.

And I love opening up that huge-ass box and sorting, pulling out all the edges and turning over every single piece and sorting them into piles loosely by color.

Here's all the blues, here's all the reds. And then just going... It takes me 3 days. That's all. I'm very fast at it. I have another puzzle that I do that's just a gray circle. Literally, there's no change in gradient and color and lightness, nothing. It's just a uniform gray circle. It's great.

I have another one that's just a bunch of Reese's Pieces. But I love taking chaos and organizing it. When I see chaos – like I did when I walked into this office – I was like, “Oh my god, all of the things I can do!”

I was like a kid in a candy shop, which is why only the first week did I work 20 hours. Every week after that, it was significantly higher because it was so satisfying. It's very satisfying. Here was a mess; look how neat it is now.

This is consistent. I've worked for some nonprofits, and for small businesses, and in academia, but I keep coming into messes and seeing all of the ways that I can add organization.

There are also places where there isn't anyone else who is adding organization, which is why it's a mess. So, I relate to myself as the linchpin. Like, no one else is doing it; I will be the only one to do it. If I don't do it, it won't get done.

I'm going to say that again and identify those thoughts as thoughts. I'm having the thought that I'm the linchpin. I'm having the thought that no one else is doing it. I'm having the thought that I will be the only one to do it. I'm having the thought that if I don't do it, it won't get done.

And it gives me pleasure to organize, not just like physical spaces (like to organize pantries and closets and desks and stuff), but to also organize files, to organize data, to create systems, to create checklists and instruction manuals and training materials.

All of that stuff is very satisfying. And it's not necessarily the activity itself so much as taking something that was chaotic...

Even something like a company's messaging in their marketing materials and being able to distill it and make it super clear and boil it down and put it on a website and be like, “Here's three steps for how you work with us. Here's what it will take for you to become our client.”

Make a roadmap. All of that's super satisfying. So it makes sense that I would consistently be hired or being asked to work with organizations that have those needs. So, there's a high need, that's one vulnerability factor, but that's not the one I'm responsible for.

The one I'm responsible for is that I don't sit well with other people's chaos. I wanna clean it up. I wanna make it pretty and neat and organized. So, I start taking on more and... It kind of balloons.

I start with task A – A is what I was hired to do. Now A is touched by B, C, D, and E – those are tasks that no one else is doing. And those tasks – B, C, D, and E – not getting done make task A much harder for me to do.

So in the interest of making task A easier for me, I take on doing B, C, D, and E. Well, B is touched by F, G, H, and I, and C is touched by J, K, L, M, N. So, it's like this branching tree.

And I keep taking on more and more and more because as I go down the layers of this huge root system, everything keeps touching other things and none of it's getting done. And because I consistently work for small businesses and nonprofits, there's not the resources to hire somebody else.

So again, burnout is caused by having a high understanding of the problem and very little power to do anything about it. So, getting back to the vulnerability factors, one of the big vulnerability factors is my inability to sit with chaos.

I see the chaos and it's a compulsion, an urge. “Please let me fix this.” I'm organizing the home of some friends that I've talked about before, the couple with the toddler. There are areas of their home that I'm just like, “Please let me touch this. Please let me organize this. I'm begging you.”

Their junk drawer is one. The game closet was another. The master closet is the next one that I'm just itching to sink my teeth into. Because I see the chaos and I'm like, “it could be another way. I can organize this, I can do something about this.”

And the reason working with them is not contributing to burnout is because I have tremendous power to do something about it. They've given me almost carte blanche to be like, “hey, you see a need, do something, like go for it.” Like that's super, super satisfying to be able to see a need and then to be able to fill it.

And I'm assuming that with large companies, that's not the case, that oftentimes you see a need and somebody else is going to fill it because you have departments, and you have people who are super, super specialized, and there's a chain of hierarchy and everything else.

It's one of the reasons why I gravitate towards small businesses and nonprofits, because typically the person who designs a solution also gets to implement it. And I like being responsible for that full process.

And I have a very hard time sitting with chaos and just letting it be. Let it be chaotic, let it be inefficient. This vulnerability factor thing sucks. There's also the ego. I like making a difference and being acknowledged for it.

Like it's one of my favorite parts of helping my friends with their home is just seeing their reaction when I organize a space. It's really satisfying. Is that a problem that I like acknowledgement? I don't know.

That was one of the issues with the job where I was the office manager is my boss didn't believe in acknowledgements. He thought it made people lazy if you told them they were doing a good job.

So, there's a striving, I think, in these jobs where I don't experience acknowledgement, where I just keep at it, hoping. And I do get little tiny nibbles, like I get crumbs.

The business I had to leave in the middle of the pandemic for mental health reasons, my business partner, there were moments, there were glimmers, where he would go, “Oh my god, I totally see the value of what you've just done.”

And we've had conversations since I left where he'll call up to ask where something is, or need five minutes to figure out how I did a thing. And he'll acknowledge, he's like, “Oh, I totally get now why you built those instructions that way, why you set up the website like this, why you set up events like this.”

But, while we were working together, it was just constant pushback with little tiny glimmers of acknowledgement. Like bone deep acknowledgement, not just, “hey, yes, I saw you did this thing,” but, “oh my God, I see what it took, how you had to show up, all of the problems you had to solve, all of the creativity, the stick-to-itiveness, all of the dead ends that didn't pan out, and then you pivoted and tried it a different way.”

Because typically what I end up doing in whatever job I'm in is I build systems, organization. I set up Google Drives, I set up emails and calendars and get everything to talk to each other.

I set up social media accounts, have the website with links to everything, and I set up payment and bank accounts and accounting and a whole host of things. Typically, the reason I'm hired to do that is because there isn't anybody there who knows how to do that.

It's a tall order to ask people who aren't skilled at a thing to acknowledge me for something they don't actually fully understand. Which is why working for my friends has been really, really nice, because they do actually understand.

They're like, “Yes, this is our closet. We understand what a mess it is.” And because I'm there every week, they see my progress. They're around while I'm sitting in the closet under the stairs, installing shelves and stuff.

They see the progress. They know what it took to make it look the way it looks. And so, they're able to acknowledge in a much more profound, like all the way down to the bone sort of way.

And they trust me. They trust that when I say, “Hey, I think if we move this piece of furniture upstairs out of your pantry, we could install shelving that would be much more effective for organization.”

So, the trust factor is also lovely because I don't have to constantly justify my choices. And that's been a persistent, consistent issue at previous jobs: that I have to explain why I've chosen to implement a system the way I've chosen. Which is infuriating to have to justify my existence.

But getting back to vulnerability factors here for a second, this one came up while I was talking to my sister, and I have some feelings about it. I have the belief – this is a thought that I have – that me just being myself is not enough, that I am a burden on people.

I mean, I remember talking to – when I was the office manager – talking to my boss and telling him that I felt like I was a liability. And he said, “Yeah, employees are liabilities.”

I was like, “Okay.” I was having the thought that I had to somehow make it up to him that he had to work with me, that I was a burden, that I was an unnecessary challenge.

Where did that thought start? It's weird because I actually have two thoughts that are seemingly opposing. One is that if I'm in a group project, I'm being used.

I love that the tweet that went around that “when I die, I want the people who I did group projects with to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time.”

So I have that experience, that if people want to work with me it’s so that they can take advantage of me. But also that I'm so profoundly uncool that I have to kind of make myself as small as possible so as not to embarrass them.

I'm, on the one hand, thankful that they're letting me be part of their group because I'm so uncool and they're lowering themselves by associating with me.

And also resentful that they want me to be part of their group because I know they just want to use me for my skills so that they can slack off. Those are weird thoughts to have at the same time.

And yet I watch myself have that thought a lot. And not just in work situations, but also in friendships. I've mentioned this before – I think in the episode about interpretations – that I had a friend that I used to drive places because they didn't have a car, and then they got a car.

And I watched myself become concerned that I wouldn't be a good friend because I lost this way of supporting them, contributing to them.

When I moved in with my former partner – even before we moved in, when I was just spending a lot of time in his apartment – I was contributing compulsively. It's like, “Oh, well, he's letting me stay here a couple nights a week, most nights a week, actually.

“And he's buying groceries, so I should do the laundry and the dishes and tidy up and do all of these things to make up for taking up space in his apartment.”

I'm having a lot of sadness come up right now. My friends – the couple with the toddler – he was saying (not the toddler, the husband) my friend was saying that he didn't want our friendship to be transactional, and I kind of blew him off.

He's not wrong. I watch myself contribute to them as a way of making up for the fact that I'm spending time with them.

It's like, “No, I'll do all of your dishes and tidy up the kitchen and tidy up the living space and, you know, help around the house and do all of this stuff because I feel bad about taking up space.”

Like my experience of myself for the last six months specifically, but last year and a half more generally, is I’m kind of just like a mess.

In the last year and a half, I – in the middle of a pandemic – left the company I founded and have been unemployed since. I've been doing odd jobs and stuff and like making minor amounts of money here and there, but like formally I've been unemployed.

Had two different stints in mental hospitals. Had my partner break up with me, moved back in with my parents. Been experiencing a lot of grief, a lot of depression, a lot of ideation around self-harm.

I don't feel like I'm really doing anything. I'm having the thought that I'm not really doing anything with my life. And so, I'm having the thought that I'm a burden, that I need to apologize for interacting with people.

I think I need to make up for it because I waste so much. And it feels bad to ask people for anything. Which I know I talked about this in the episode about urges around contribution and the compulsion to contribute to make up for being myself.

I guess I just don't fundamentally have the belief that I am valuable, just me as a human being. Part of this is capitalism, right? You're only valuable if you're contributing to society and contribution looks a certain way.

Like it needs to be a tactile product, something you're making, or service you're rendering. And a lot of these more relational or nature-based, even spiritual or energetic contributions aren't valued.

Yeah, I have the belief that I'm not valuable just on my own. And if anything, that I'm a sink, I suck energy. I take. I am... there's the word for this, right? I'm a taker, I guess.

Now, if I Check the Facts... Check the Facts is Emotion Regulation Handout 8 in the DBT manual. If I Check the Facts around the belief that I am a taker, that overall I take, even if I give some things, there's a net negative when people interact with me.

I think the emotion there is shame. That's the first question.

“How to Check the Facts.” Question number one is: “Ask: what is the emotion I want to change?”

I think it's shame. Let's double check. We're going to look at Emotion Regulation Handout 6. You're going to hear me flipping the pages here. Shame. Some synonyms for shame include:

“Contrition, culpability, discomposure, embarrassment, humiliation, mortification, self-consciousness, shyness.”

For those who are not as familiar, the difference between shame and guilt can feel a little academic, theoretical I guess. Shame is around fear of rejection. It has to do with how you are seen by others.

Guilt has to do with a fear of violating your own values. So, it has more to do with how you perceive yourself.

Some prompting events for feeling shame include: being rejected by people you care about; having others find out that you have done something wrong; doing or feeling or thinking something that people you admire believe is wrong or immoral;

“Comparing some aspect of yourself or your behavior to a standard and feeling as if you do not live up to that standard; being betrayed by a person you love; being laughed at or made fun of; being criticized in public or in front of someone else, or remembering public criticism;

“Having others attack your integrity; being reminded of something wrong, immoral, or shameful that you did in the past; being rejected or criticized for something you expected praise for; having emotions or experiences that have been invalidated.”

We're going to come back to that one.

“Exposure of a very private aspect of yourself or your life; exposure of a physical characteristic you dislike; failing at something you feel you are or should be competent to do.”

So those are events – things that happen – as distinct from interpretations. Interpretations are our thoughts about what happened.

“Having emotions or experiences that have been invalidated.”

I thought it was pretty good at breaking down shame and I realized I haven't read this in a while. Okay, we're going to have to talk about shame for a second. This is not what I planned for this episode, but here we are.

On the Urges episode, I did talk about interpretations of events that prompt feelings of shame. I'm going to read them really quick here, but these are not the point. Because I really want to get back to “having emotions or experiences that have been invalidated.”

And that is a prompting event for feeling shame. Okay, so...

“Interpretations of events that prompt feelings of shame.”

These are thoughts we have about an event, not what actually happened, but our thoughts about what happened.

“Believing that others will reject you or have rejected you; judging yourself to be inferior, not good enough, not as good as others, or self-invalidation; comparing yourself to others and thinking you're a loser;

“Believing yourself unlovable; thinking you're bad, immoral, or wrong; thinking that you're defective; thinking you're a bad person or a failure; believing your body or body part is too big, too small, or ugly;

“Thinking you have not lived up to others' expectations of you; thinking that your behavior, thoughts, or feelings are silly or stupid.”

“Some biological changes or experiences of shame...”

So, this is how it feels in my body when I experience shame.

“Pain in the pit of the stomach; a sense of dread; wanting to shrink down and or disappear; wanting to hide or cover your face and body.”

Okay. I'm having some moments here. Okay. I'm having some thoughts here. I have experienced tremendous amount of invalidation.

My parents – I've mentioned this before – are very poor validators. They really don't have that skill, and it is a skill. It is something that is learned.

You don't come out of the womb knowing how to do it, and it's something that, when practiced, you can get better at. I've asked my parents a couple months back what they thought their skill level was out of 10.

My mom put herself at about a 3, and my dad said he was a 1.5, which was actually really validating, ironically enough, because they rated themselves at exactly the level that I would rate them.

So that's a great degree of self-awareness. But for the majority of my life, when my dad would ask me how I was feeling, I would tell him how I was feeling and he would say, “Oh, you'll be fine. Don't worry about it. You'll be okay.

“You studied hard. Don't worry about that test. You'll be fine. Your partner won't break up with you. He loves you. You'll be fine. You'll talk it out. It's okay.”

And on the surface, that seems really, really small. But almost 4 decades of that over and over and over and over again had me not believe any of my feelings.

If I was feeling a thing, I didn't have the thought, “Oh, my body's trying to tell me something.” My experience of my emotions was that they were completely random, that I was hysterical, dramatic, over-exaggerating.

There was no rhyme or reason. I was going to have emotions at the drop of a hat that were nonsensical. Because a lifetime of being told, “Hey, don't have that feeling,” I just stopped paying attention to my feelings.

And when my very first DBT skills group instructor was going over the very introduction to DBT, one of the central pillars of DBT is that all behavior is caused.

I laughed at him – in the middle of class with a bunch of other people there. I was like, “No, they're not. Behavior isn't caused. Emotions aren't caused. They come from nowhere. They just spontaneously erupt.”

And he just kind of stared at me. At which point I realized, “Oh, okay, maybe this messaging that I've been getting my entire life is not accurate.”

And I'm just now realizing, reading the prompting events for feeling shame, one of them is, as I just said, “having emotions or experiences that have been invalidated,” that will trigger shame.

And one of the biological changes and experiences of shame is “wanting to shrink down and or disappear.”

So, me wanting to make up for other people having to hang out with me, like I have to compensate them in some way for taking up space. That doesn't feel great.

“Expressions and Actions of Shame” is the next section on the emotion regulation handout 6 page for shame. So these are – if somebody is on the outside of you, like standing in the corner watching you – these are what they would see if you're experiencing shame.

“Hiding a behavior or a characteristic from other people; avoiding the person you've harmed” (if you've harmed someone); “avoiding persons who have criticized you; avoiding yourself; distracting or ignoring;

“Withdrawing; covering the face; bowing your head; groveling; appeasing; saying you're sorry over and over; looking down and away from others; sinking back; slumped and rigid posture; halting speech; lowered volume while talking.”

I think the echoes are where the payoff's going to be here, when all of this will kind of make sense. Because the expressions and actions of shame are... Well, expressions and actions are in the thick of the emotion.

The echoes and aftereffects are – as the name would suggest – kind of the more long-term repercussions of how that emotion echoes and persists over time. So, some:

“Echoes and aftereffects of shame include avoiding thinking about your transgression; shutting down;” (Fuck!) blocking all emotions;” (Fuck! Fuuuck!)

“Engaging in distracting impulsive behaviors to divert your mind or attention; high amount of self-focus; preoccupation with yourself; depersonalization; disassociative experiences; numbness or shock; attacking or blaming others; conflicts with other people; isolation; feeling alienated; impairment in problem-solving ability.”

As with the episode about urges, “engaging in distracting or impulsive behaviors to divert your mind or attention...” Self-destruction is definitely an aftereffect or an echo of feeling shame.

And I watch myself... god, I've been watching myself a lot the last couple of weeks. My self-harm urges are really high right now. And like the urge to just say “fuck it” and throw out the skills book and be like, “I'm just going to self-destruct. I'm going to choose to be ineffective and not give a fuck about the consequences.”

It's been really high the last couple of weeks. God, it's been a long time since I've read this full sheet and I should do this much more often. And after effect of shame, “depersonalization, disassociative experiences, numbness or shock.”

Also, “avoid thinking about your transgression, shutting down, blocking all emotions.” I've mentioned this before, that I wasn't able to articulate what emotion I was feeling until I did DBT.

So I was, let's see, that would have been, I was 33 years old when I was able to actually say, “I feel sad, I feel anxious, I feel angry.” And that's caused some frustration for my older sister who will ask me how I'm feeling and I'll say I'm feeling fine.

And her experience of that is that I'm lying to her, when really my experience is that I think I am fine. So, I tell her that I'm fine because up until very recently – and again, it's pretty spotty, my emotion Wi-Fi reception – up until recently, I wasn't able to actually articulate how I was feeling.

I was checked out. What was the point? Why did it matter knowing how I was feeling? Because even if I told people how I was feeling, they would invalidate it.

Like my dad, because he's a cheerleader (not professionally), he cheerleads. He wants to encourage me. And the way he does it is invalidating. He doesn't acknowledge how I'm actually feeling. He tells me I should feel a different way.

And I'm just putting pieces together. I've been blocking my emotions for decades. Fuck. “Isolation and feeling alienated,” another echo. I haven't wanted to talk to my friends.

I'm using all of this... Like when I go over to my friend's home, I use organization as a way of avoiding talking about how I'm doing. Busy, busy, busy, you know? I got to do something because I don't want to.

I don't want to sit with this. And he's picking up on it – my friend, he knows. I've been avoiding because I feel a tremendous amount of shame for where I am – just being unemployed and being with my parents and all of this other stuff.

But I also just kind of have this pervasive shame around just existing, that I need to compensate people for taking up their space. And that's been going on for much, much, much, much longer.

And I hadn't put that together until I started doing this chain analysis for my job. That even when I'm doing a job and somebody is paying me to do that job, I still feel like I need to apologize for taking up space.

And this all started – this recent shame digression – because I wanted to go Check the Facts. Here we go, Checking the Facts on Emotion Regulation Handout 8 – How to Check the Facts.

“Step one is ask: what is the emotion I want to change?”

That's as far as we got, because I was trying to figure out what emotion this was that was having me feel the need to apologize for taking up space. And that is what sent us down into shame here.

Because initially, the reason I wanted to go Check the Facts is because I was assuming, I was like, “am I just a horror to work with? Like, do people hate working with me?”

And in Checking the Facts, my friends that I organize their home, they are over the moon and constantly telling me that they don't pay me enough. And I've had clients who call me a miracle worker, say that I'm like a robot.

I just keep chugging no matter what, getting stuff done in record time that nobody else could have gotten done (that's hyperbole). There's gratitude. And I don't think I make it miserable to work with me.

Actually, I can't think of any data that would suggest that. I'm not getting feedback from the people that I've worked with that I'm hard to work with. I'm going into these situations with that assumption that I'm hard to work with.

It’s not even that. It's not that I'm hard to work with. My assumption is that I'm a hard human to be around. My dad, when I was in middle school and high school, would call me “stubbornly negative,” because I would be in a bad mood, angry or frustrated or scared about something.

And he would try to cheer me up and I would dig my heels in. And both my parents have said that I can be like a black cloud. And they're not wrong.

I mean, If I take out all the judgment – if a black cloud is a judgment – if I just stick to the facts here: I can have emotions whose expressions impact the people around me in a way that is unpleasant for them. How about that?

Because an expression is how an emotion looks like to somebody on the outside. Is that right? Did I get that right? Yes, an expression is what it looks like to somebody standing on the outside.

An experience is what it feels like on the inside. And I'm getting this from the Emotion Wheel, which is an alternative to Emotion Regulation Handout 5. There's a link in the description.

Experience is what it feels like inside my body, expression is what it looks like to somebody outside, and an echo is “how that emotion influences my attention, mood, thinking, and actions as the day goes on,” or weeks or years as the case may be.

I'm realizing it really is the echoes and aftereffects of shame that are influencing my behavior around jobs and just working with other people, relating with other people.

Because it's not shame in the moment, it's the echo of it. It's decades of experiencing shame, and not checking the facts about it, not doing opposite action to it, but just kind of letting it fester, I guess, persist.

And that has an impact on my beliefs about myself, because let's look at those again. Aftereffects or echoes of shame include:

“Avoiding thinking about your transgression; shutting down; blocking all emotions,” ding, ding, ding, “engaging in distracting or impulsive behaviors to divert your mind or attention; depersonalization; dissociative experiences; numbness or shock;

“Conflicts with other people; Isolation or feeling alienated.”

Feeling alienated. Like I have felt “other” my entire life, actually – that I don't fit in. I'm an undesirable friend. Like I'm unwanted. But yes, I'm seeing some trends here.

I struggle in actually talking about this in an effective way because I don't want to be like the person who blames their parents for everything. Because I don't. I just... There is a cause and effect. There was an impact.

And I honest to god think that they were doing the best they could. And my parents did a great job. And my parents are awesome. A couple weeks ago, my dad and I had a big project in the kitchen, moving some cabinets and running some new plumbing and stuff.

And we had a great old time together. Like, I really enjoy doing household projects with him. And my mom and I have a great relationship. Like, we tease each other.

And like, the reason I love camping is because my parents packed up their three daughters several times a summer and we'd go camping. And they were intentional about that.

My love of music comes from my mom. I can identify different classical composers when their music is used in movie soundtracks because my mom listened to Beethoven and Mozart and Bach and Rachmaninoff and Dvořák a lot.

Everything I know about how to do carpentry or assemble stuff or household improvement, kind of DIY stuff, I learned from my dad. Much of my engineering mindset, my problem-solving abilities come from him.

And the other day, we watched a movie together, “Underwater.” We didn't watch it underwater. We watched the movie that is called “Underwater.” And I told him I really wanted to watch it with him because he's an engineer.

And I wanted to basically watch it with him and roast it the whole time. Be like, “That doesn't work! And that's inaccurate! And that wouldn't happen that way!” And like, I was super excited about it.

There's a lot of things I really enjoy about my parents, and they were super intentional in how they raised us. They made a lot of against-the-grain parenting choices that were on purpose. So they did a really good job.

And there are areas where their lack of skill had some pretty significant consequences. And it makes sense that they were not skillful in those areas. Both of them were raised by the silent generation.

My dad's dad fought in World War II, never talked about it. There was a lot of things he couldn't talk about. My mom's dad was a very quiet, withdrawn guy, highly introverted, didn't talk about his feelings.

So, there are a lot of reasons why they weren't skilled in being able to validate and it had an impact. And I realize I have a lot of shame around existing, taking up space. Like what they said, that I was a black cloud.

I already said it once without judgment. I'll say it in a different way this time: that I had emotions that they were not equipped to support me around. And that had an impact.

And I watch myself put up with a lot of harmful behavior, both in workplaces and in romantic relationships. I put up with a lot of behavior that's harmful because I guess it's the least I could do given that they're putting up with me, I guess is kind of the flavor of that thought.

It's not effective. Ever since I put a lock on my door, my mom has not come in. She hasn't even tried to turn the doorknob. It took me 11 years to put a lock on my door.

And I'm wondering all of these times that I have allowed people to treat me how they want to treat me, with me not asserting boundaries, I'm having the thought that I'm enabling. By allowing it, I am enabling.

For those who weren't here for the entire mom-door-lock saga, I moved back in with my parents 11 years ago and lived with them for 10 years, and then moved out to be with my partner, former partner, for eight months.

And then he broke up with me and I had to move back in with my parents. But my mom has a habit of just walking in without knocking, or talking at me through the door. And I finally got a lock and she didn't talk to me for two days afterwards.

She couldn't even look at me, she was so mad. And then she had a conversation with my sister, and then she and I had many more conversations, and I think something clicked.

And as I was discussing earlier about this diagnosis phenomenon, I instantly had a lot of judgment towards myself, judgment towards her, remorse, I think, this sense of like, “Oh, well, if this was going to be the thing that had you get it, why didn't I do this 10 years ago?”

This whole thing could have been avoided. A decade of frustration, a decade of my heart rate going up when I could hear her coming down the hall because I'm anticipating her just coming in.

And there's reasons why I didn't do it 10 years ago. There's 2 big reasons. One is being aware of, communicating, and then enforcing boundaries. All of that is a skill. It takes something to learn that. Those are skills.

And I did not have the skill of setting boundaries. I don't even know that I knew the word “boundary.” I mean, I knew it in a geographical sense, but not in an interpersonal one 10 years ago. So that's item number one.

Item number 2 that kept me from putting a lock on my door 10 years ago was that I was judging my mom for not being able to listen to me when I said, “don't come in my room.” And I spent all this time judging her for not listening to me.

And the thing that finally had me put a lock on the door was going, “What if I accepted that my mom is never going to listen to me?” That's fortune telling, that's future-based. “What if I accepted that my mom is not currently listening to me?”

How about that? It’s not future-based. If I accepted that my mom does not listen to me around my boundaries and coming into my room, what would I do? I'm like, “Well, I would put a lock on the door. I would take it out of her hands.” So I got a lock on my door.

So, non-judgment is a skill, by the way, and acceptance is a skill. So, I was judging my mom that she wasn't listening to me, and I did not accept that she wasn't listening to me.

Those are, I guess those are three things, not two things. Those are three skills that I didn't have 10 years ago. I didn't have the skill of being able to identify my boundary and then communicate it effectively.

Or not even that: identify the boundary, communicate it... because I think I actually did do those things. I identified that I wasn't okay with her coming in, and I communicated to her that was my boundary. I didn't have the skill of enforcing it, which is a skill, apparently.

And then I also didn't have the skill of non-judgment and I didn't have the skill of acceptance. So given that I didn't have those three skills, it makes perfect sense that I couldn't have done it any differently than how I did.

And I still am experiencing remorse. Like I really wish it had gone differently.

And so identifying my lack of skill at work and kind of the persistent vulnerability factors in these jobs that has me show up in this way, and the same patterns repeat over and over and over again, being able to see those, I'm experiencing a lot of remorse.

One of my favorite movies is “Spotlight,” the one about the Boston Globe's research into the Catholic Church. Every time I mention to somebody that this is one of my favorite movies, they give me a look because I'm a sexual assault survivor.

And this movie is very much about sexual assault. But I think it's a great movie. And there's a quote... the character is Marty Baron, the guy who plays him is Lee Schreiber. He says, “Sometimes it's easy to forget that we spend most of our time stumbling around to the dark. Suddenly a light gets turned on and there's a fair share of blame to go around.”

The context in the movie is they're basically asking the question, “Why didn't we report the story years ago?” Because they had all the evidence – all the pieces – years ago. And I like that he says it this way. When you turn a light on, everything becomes clear, like you can see everything.

But that is not how we experience life, I don't think. He says, “Sometimes it's easy to forget we spend most of our time stumbling around the dark.”

One of the nice things about hanging out with a toddler is it is actually reminding me of things that are skills. Because when I'm skillful at something, I judge past-me through the lens of that skill. Why wasn't I more validating? Why wasn't I more accepting?

Was I so judgmental? Why, all of these things? The answer is because I didn't have the skill and I now, having the skill, wonder, “well, why didn't I have it then? It's such an easy skill.” First off, none of these skills are “unquote.”

I think there are some that come a little bit more naturally than others to different people for different reasons, depending on your history and socialization and how you were raised and a bunch of other factors.

And – I don't know that I've actually mentioned this on this podcast yet – this is fucking work. The DBT skills group is a year commitment, 2 1/2 hours a week. You do the whole thing in six months and then you do it again immediately following.

And it's not just the 2 1/2 hours of time in class. There's also homework, like intentional practice. And then there's also a diary card. And you track your skills use every day. What skills did you use that day?

And one of the lovely things about the diary card is when we get good at something, we stop thinking of it as a skill. If I asked you what you're good at, you probably wouldn't say, “brushing your teeth,: even though you're probably good at brushing your teeth or tying your shoe or, hey, you're good at holding a fork.

This toddler that I hang out with... I don't want to say he's bad at holding a fork or a spoon or really any cutlery. He's creative, I guess, with holding his cutlery and how he chooses to use it. But what's clear is that holding a fork is a skill. He has to learn that skill. He doesn't have it yet.

All of us – any of us who can hold forks – at one point, did not know how to hold a fork. And it's hard to remember that. It's hard to remember through this lens of having this skill that there was a time when I didn't have it, and to validate why I didn't have it.

Because when the light turns on, per this quote from Spotlight, everything seems really obvious. It's why hindsight is 20/20. It's like, “Oh, of course everything should go together in exactly this way. Of course that's how you cook an egg.”

But there was a time... There had to be the first person who watched a chicken expel an egg – “lay,” the word is “lay,” Joy. Somebody watched a chicken lay an egg and went, “Hey, I bet you if we crush that thing, we could eat what's inside it.”

And then somebody had the thought, “Hey, once we've cracked that thing open, let's put it over a fire and see what happens.” And that is true for literally every fucking thing that's ever been cooked, every single recipe that's ever been made.

There was a time when that recipe didn't exist, and somebody had to figure it out so that some modern day asshole can go, “Oh, well, of course that's how you boil an egg.”

All of this is a process of figuring it out. And I didn't have the skill earlier. I didn't have the skill to identify my boundaries at work. I didn't have the skill of communicating them. And I didn't have the skill of enforcing them. What's interesting is my body knew something was wrong.

So, my first DBT instructor said that emotions are the original Wi-Fi. They're wordless communication. It's not just that we communicate from one person to another. Emotions are also how we communicate with ourselves.

And I know I was getting angry at work early on, very early on. And let's look up what a prompting event for anger is, shall we? I bet you one of them has something to do with boundaries. Let's see here.

“Prompting events for feeling anger: having an important goal blocked; you or someone you care about being attacked or threatened by others; losing power, status, or respect; not having things turn out as expected; physical or emotional pain.”

Yeah, “having an important goal blocked” – I think having somebody step over your boundaries falls into that category. “Losing power, status, or respect” – I think having somebody cross boundaries also falls into that category. Here's some...

“Interpretations of events that prompt feelings of anger.” This is on Emotion Regulation Handout 6, again. “Believing that you've been treated unfairly; believing that important goals are being blocked or stopped; believing that things should be different than they are.”

Yeah. So clearly my body knew something was going on and was like, “Hey, we're trying to tell you something.” And it makes sense that I didn't listen. Why does it make sense that I didn't listen? Because I didn't have the skill of actually being able to be aware of my emotions.

Mindfulness of Emotion is a skill. And I watch this with the toddler that I hang out with. He doesn't know when he's sad that he's sad. He doesn't have the ability to say, “I'm feeling sad.” He doesn't have the ability to say, “I'm feeling angry.”

He doesn't know that what he feels is a thing called anger, or what he feels is a thing called sadness. So it's his parents and his preschool teacher and me, periodically, pointing it out.

You know, like actually kind of walking him through, “Are you having this experience? That's called anger. Are you having that experience? That's called sadness.” Like we had to learn those things. That's a skill.

And I didn't have the skill of identifying my emotions or even like checking in with my emotions. Mindfulness of Emotion is a skill. Let's see, where is this skill? Mindfulness. Mindfulness of Current Emotion, and this is on the overview on Emotion Regulation Handout 21.

“Suppressing emotion increases suffering, and mindfulness of current emotions is the path to emotional freedom.”

Fuck. I also wrote down a quote from my instructor who says, “there's no such thing as an overreaction. There are reactions that seem disproportionate to the situation, but the context is invisible.”

There's invisible context that actually makes the emotion make sense. Yeah. Okay. Well, here we are. This has been a lot and I'm kind of zonked out now. I think the next thing to do is do Opposite Action to shame.

And I don't want to get into that right now because I'm tired. It is 0 dark 30. Literally, it's 12.30 at night right now. So now is not a great time to be going over opposite action to shame. But if you're curious and you want to know what it is, Opposite Action to shame is on Emotion Regulation Handout 11.

And Emotion Regulation Handouts 6 and 11 both are really, really long because there's a page per emotion. So, you'd have to flip through and actually find the emotion. But if you're interested in knowing what the opposite actions to shame are, there you go.

Handout 11 in the DPT manual. There's a link to the manual, the PDF, and to a physical copy in the description.

Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

Okay folks, welcome back to the future. I realized as I was listening back to this that I got a couple things wrong. I was doing this Chain Analysis which, per General Handout 6 in the DBT manual is:

“For when you engage in ineffective behavior. A Chain Analysis examines the chain of events that leads to ineffective behaviors, as well as the consequences of those behaviors that may be making it hard to change them. It also helps you figure out how to repair the damage.”

So that's all great, right? The steps of the Chain Analysis, which are spelled out on General Handout 7 in the DBT manual, start with step one:

“Describe the problem behavior.”

I started off the recording you just heard by describing the problem behavior as burnout. And, as I said at the beginning of the episode, burnout is not a behavior. It's an experience. So my emotions, thoughts, urges. So I kept digging.

And eventually, at the end of the recording you just heard, landed on the problematic behavior being: not identifying, communicating, and enforcing boundaries.

And there's something that struck me wrong about this in listening to it back and editing it and everything. Being unskillful is not a behavior. What it is a missing skill. This didn't occur to me until I went to upload this podcast.

And as I said, I'd already recorded an outro and was all ready to go when I realized this. So now I'm redoing my outro. Being unskillful around boundaries is not a behavior. It's a skill I'm missing.

And there's a way to address that. So, if you remember at the beginning of the episode, I said that in DBT, there's two main ways of analyzing behavior. And this is on General Handout 6.

“The Chain Analysis is for when you engage in ineffective behavior. A Missing Links Analysis helps you identify what got in the way of doing things you needed or hoped to do, things you agreed to do, or things others expected of you. It also helps you problem solve for the future.”

And oddly enough, I ended up kind of doing a Missing Links Analysis by accident as I was making the recording that you just heard. Here is how a Missing Links Analysis goes (and this is in General Handout 8 in the DBT manual):

“Ask the following questions to understand how and why effective behavior that is needed or expected did not occur.”

So, why did I not do the behavior that would have had me be effective? And this is kind of like a choose-your-own adventure, this analysis. Each step is a yes or no question. And the next step will depend on how you answer. So step one:

“Did you know what effective behavior was needed or expected?”

At the time – because this was over multiple years, this burnout pattern – the example I gave where I was an office manager, I did not know what effective behavior was needed. And as I said in the recording you just heard, I don't know that I was even aware of what a boundary was interpersonally at that time.

That's a relatively new thing that I know exists. So for my earliest jobs, I didn't know how to not get burnt out. In my last couple jobs, though, I knew that having boundaries was the thing to do. And more specifically, I knew that I needed to identify, communicate, and reinforce my boundaries. So question one is:

“Did you know what effective behavior was needed?”

And let's say “yes,” because now I know and I still haven't set that boundary. So let's move on to step 2.

“If ‘yes’ to question one, ask: were you willing to do the needed or expected effective behavior?”

Aha, here's the kicker. The answer is no. Here's where it broke down for me. I was not willing to do this skill. I talked about some of the whys in the recording you just heard. The main huge elephant in the room is shame.

I didn't believe that it was okay for me to set boundaries. I had the thought that I owed it to my employers or my business partner to say yes to things, to take on more work, to justify my existence and my income. Oh, capitalism.

So, “if no to question two” – and question two was “were you willing to do it?” And no, I was not –

“Ask what got in the way of willingness to do the effective behavior. Ideas might include willfulness, feeling inadequate, or feeling demoralized. Problem solve what got in the way of willingness. For example, you might practice radical acceptance, do pros and cons, practice opposite action, and so on.”

Okay, so right away I can see one big thing here. I resent when someone asks me to take on more. I was annoyed by that in my last job. I had the thought that they shouldn't be asking me to take on more, that they should know that I already had enough.

And clearly, if I don't accept that someone is asking me to take on more, and I'm judging the hell out of that person, I'm not going to be effective at actually addressing the issue and putting boundaries in place.

I was having the thought, “I shouldn't have to have boundaries in the first place.” So obviously, that is a lack of acceptance, which implies that what's needed here is for me to use the skill of Radical Acceptance around people asking me to take on more. Because that's what people do.

They can't read my mind. They don't know every single thing that I've got going on. And even if they did, how would they know what my capacity is? Because my capacity changes all the time, depending on vulnerability factors like how rested I am, how much self-care I'm doing, other stressors that are going on, how much skill I have to actually do the things I'm working on.

I'm the one who needs to pay attention to when I'm feeling maxed out (which is a Mindfulness skill right there), and then communicate my boundary (which would be probably saying no to things, and that would be an Interpersonal Effectiveness skill)...

... and then enforce that boundary by continuing to say no, and letting the other person have whatever reaction they have to that. And there's clearly a lot more to say about this because there's also some power dynamics at play around saying no to a boss.

And that's definitely something I will need to address in a future episode. Another thing I noticed getting in the way of my using a boundary is the shame that I mentioned. Having the thought that I don't deserve to have boundaries, I have the thought that I need to make up for taking up space.

I have the thought that it's not okay for me to have boundaries. And in doing all of the digging in the recording you just heard, that was actually super useful. I was doing it for a Chain Analysis.

Turns out it's actually very, very useful for this Missing Links Analysis, because that's how I identified that I was having shame. And that shame is really ineffective. It keeps me from setting boundaries. And not setting boundaries causes burnout.

So I really don't want to keep having shame around setting boundaries. Which means that it's time for some Opposite Action. Oh lordy, this is an entire episode on its own. Opposite Action is a way to change our emotional responses, per the Emotional Regulation Handout 7 in the DBT manual.

“When your emotions don't fit the facts, or when acting on your emotions is not effective, acting opposite will change your emotional reactions.”

Opposite Action is the crown jewel of DBT. Like I said, it really deserves its own episode, and it will get its own episode. It will get multiple episodes.

I'm not going to do it right here because it would add several more hours to an already very long episode. So, I just want to do a quick summary. As I've mentioned when talking about the E-Wheel, there's a link in the description. It's an alternative to Emotion Regulation Handout 5.

The E-Wheel describes an emotion as an experience (which is how it feels in our body), an expression (which is what it looks like to other people), and echoes (so how that emotion impacts us over time).

So, that wheel is spinning and spinning and spinning, and there are ways to essentially short-circuit it and get it to stop: by using a skill that changes our experience, using a skill that changes our expression, or using a skill that changes the echoes.

Doing any of that will short-circuit the emotion once it has already started spinning. Opposite Action is the skill to use in changing the expression, so how it looks on the outside.

I really need to do an entire episode just around Opposite Action for my shame of setting boundaries. So this is going to be part one. This episode is part one of this whole burnout and shame inquiry, if you will.

I've addressed, in going through all of this, kind of what the Missing Links are in this burnout. I mentioned that I need to pay attention to when I'm feeling maxed out and overextended, which is a Mindfulness skill – paying attention to my needs, listening to my body.

I mentioned that I need to be able to communicate my boundary to other people. So there will be Interpersonal Effectiveness skills to use there. And then, I need to use a skill to enforce that boundary.

So those are skills I will need in order to set and maintain a boundary. Opposite Action is a skill that I will need to use to address the shame that I have around setting a boundary.

I wanted to acknowledge I'm basically going to do some self-validation here. It took a long time to dig down to this. Clearly you just listened to a recording of me doing a Chain Analysis.

I did this entire analysis and then realized that's the wrong skill to use, Joy. And doing that was still useful because that's how I identified that I have all this shame. But I bring all of this up because like this shit ain't easy.

I'm struggling right now. I haven't talked about this yet. You're going to hear several episodes in a row about this. January is my trauma anniversary month. I have 4 sexual assault and rape anniversaries within a two-week period over multiple years.

So January is a challenging month for me, just emotion regulation-wise. And I'm also really fucking annoyed at this. One of the things I notice come up as I'm doing this analysis of like, “Oh, I could have used a skill there. I could have used a skill there. Oh, here's a place I could have used a skill.”

And I have all this judgment around it. And like I mentioned in the recording you just heard, that line from Spotlight, you spend all this time fumbling around in the dark. And then when you turn on the light, everything seems really, really obvious.

And I'm having that experience that, “Oh, it was, it's all so simple, Joy. You just need to learn these four skills and go do this thing. Easy peasy, burnout solved.”

And I understand why I have that thought, that it's all so simple. Why didn't you do it earlier? Why did you make it this hard?

And a couple things, I'm going to use some validation here. Clearly, it is not enough to know the skill. Because, I mean, the Missing Links Analysis basically goes like this. I only did the first two steps. I'm going to walk you through the whole thing really, really fast.

And I'm going to summarize it so this is not verbatim what it says. The 4 steps are: did you know what skill to use? If you did, were you willing to use the skill? If you were, did the thought come into your head? And if it did, what got in the way of doing it?

We kind of assume that if a person's not doing a thing, it's because they're either incompetent or they're lazy or what have you.

There's a lot of actual legitimate missing links and having judgment around any of them kind of short-circuits our ability to get curious and actually ask, “well, why DID it happen that way?” not, “WHY did it happen that way?”

So, bringing it back around, it's not enough to know a skill. I actually have to be willing to use it. I have to remember to use it. There are a lot of things that can get in the way of using a skill, even if I'm really good at that skill. And certainly shame is one of those.

I hate to leave this here. I don't want to be like, “So now that we've hit rock bottom, we'll have to wait until next week.” Or it's not going to be next week, because next week I'm going to be talking about trauma anniversaries.

I will do a part 2 of this that will look at Opposite Action, because there is a way forward. I know there is a way forward, and I've done this way forward.

And it actually really, really works. Opposite Action essentially trains your brain that this thing that you think is horrible and scary is not as horrible and scary as you think it's going to be.

I wouldn't say it's complicated, because it's not. It's actually remarkably simple and straightforward. What it is is: it’s really easy to do it half-assed, and half-assing it actually ends up reinforcing the emotion rather than addressing it.

So, we're going to talk about that in a lot more detail, just not today. Because I'm tired and discouraged and dealing with an invalidation hangover, which we also need to talk about.

But we'll get there. So, I'm going to leave you here. I'm sorry to leave you on a downer, but I hope at least some part of this inquiry was useful to you, if for no other reason than to validate, “Oh yes, other people have a challenging time getting to the root cause of their behaviors too.”

Yeah, I would love to hear your questions, thoughts, concerns. If there's things that need clarification, I'm here for it, like 1000 times over. Definitely here for it. So I'm going to go now and I am going to just end this the way I normally do, which is super abrupt-

Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

This has been “Let's Therapist That Shit!!!” with your host, me, Joy Gerhard, if you like what you heard, please rate, review, subscribe and tell your friends about it. I'll see you next time.

Intro and outro music is Swan Lake Opus 20 by Tchaikovsky, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Anatole Fistoulari, released on LP by Richmond High Fidelity / London Records in nineteen fifty-two.