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Emotional Processing Through Reading with Megan Fritz | The Eye Believe Podcast · The Eye Believe Podcast

• 0:03
  Welcome back.
• 0:04
  I'm joined today with my guest, Megan.
• 0:06
  And you guys have seen her before.
• 0:08
  We talked about books last time and hate to break it to you.
• 0:11
  We're gonna talk about books again.
• 0:12
  We have some kind of deeper dives to talk about emotional regulation through story.
• 0:18
  And we're going to cover that.
• 0:19
  But I want to just kind of lead this off.
• 0:21
  I'm in the middle of what I'm calling my trauma response to news from my diagnosis.
• 0:26
  Right?
• 0:27
  So like we get diagnosed in our eye or you get scan results that are not what you hoped, you get news of metastatic spread, like whatever it is.
• 0:35
  Those all like we kind of talked about this last time, right?
• 0:37
  Megan, those are trauma response moments or our brain and our bodies kind of go into that response to the trauma.
• 0:44
  It's really like a new occurrence or like a re traumatization in and of itself.
• 0:49
  When we get that surprise news that we're, you know, no matter how much we prepare for it, the reality of receiving that news can really present, you know, as a new and separate trauma in and of itself.
• 1:00
  So I'm just gonna kind of summarize some of the things from our last episode that I've been using because I've been absolutely using the escape of like stories in this last month rereading some books that I was really excited for.
• 1:12
  And then there was a new book that came out that I was really excited for this new book to come out.
• 1:17
  And so that's been a healthy distraction, right?
• 1:20
  It's been a healthy distraction for my brain.
• 1:22
  What I didn't realize until I was like reading this new book that I was starting called Onyx Storm, was that the emotional journey that this character was going on so strongly parallel.
• 1:32
  What I'm feeling right now and what I feel a lot because I think that in a cancer diagnosis, we go through a lot of the grieving cycle.
• 1:41
  We're grieving what we thought life was gonna look like.
• 1:43
  We're grieving what, you know, what we, what we were expecting.
• 1:46
  There's a lot of that periods of, you know, the UPS and downs of acceptance and denial and bargaining and like just all of these things.
• 1:54
  And so for me, like kind of looking back, cause I'm deeply analyzing this book that I just read because there's nothing I can do after this cliffhanger.
• 2:01
  I'm like, excuse me, what do I do now?
• 2:04
  I'm like realizing just how much this book parallels what I'm going through right now.
• 2:09
  In like, just feeling the denial about my diagnosis of like, it's not as bad as it looks.
• 2:13
  And it's like, no, no, it's actually really just not great.
• 2:15
  The denial is a healthy place for me to live, to try to cope with it.
• 2:19
  And then just kind of other themes throughout the book that came up of this idea of just like, never giving up.
• 2:23
  And I love like you know, we talked about quotes.
• 2:25
  There's a new quote that I've now latched on to and it's every possible path.
• 2:29
  Like that we will go and we will explore every possible path to solve the problem in this story.
• 2:34
  And I was like, oh my god, I love it.
• 2:36
  So that has been helpful to me like while I've been dealing with this new retramatization to my brain that just keeps going, yeah, oh my gosh.
• 2:44
  And what an amazing quote for cancer survivors and people who are on their cancer journey as we're going through like figuring out different treatments, different plans, different protocols that can feel so overwhelming.
• 2:55
  And that quote, every possible path, I feel like as one that really will resonate with a lot of us on this journey because we really have to explore so many options.
• 3:04
  And it's helpful to even just have that knowledge that there are multiple paths, like there are multiple things that will have to explore.
• 3:11
  And hopefully that can give folks a little bit of hope.
• 3:14
  We talked about the idea that we respond emotionally and reactively to new circumstances.
• 3:20
  And so what does that mean like when you have a new circumstance, like let's use me as an example, I got metastatic recurrence, like so I have new cancer.
• 3:29
  I'm already metastatic, but I got news that I have more cancer in like basically January 1st of 2025.
• 3:35
  Happy New Year.
• 3:38
  So what happens when that happens?
• 3:41
  You know, for our emotions, almost like a psychological standpoint, you're already in your cancer journey, right?
• 3:47
  Like you've sort of like been along this journey and you've had such highs and such lows.
• 3:51
  And so when you come into an experience where you're receiving news, there's sort of a lot of history and like emotional context, psychological context that you bring with you just by sheer virtue of having been on this journey for so long.
• 4:06
  And so when you go into that situation where you're about to receive news, there's a lot of that emotion that's like embodied, that's sort of built up over time, even as you've like processed and worked through it.
• 4:18
  The whole journey is brought about when you're about to receive this news and then receiving it can put you in a really emotionally heightened or emotionally sensitive place where there's information that you're receiving, there are emotions that you're thinking about, there's worry and anxiety and fear, there's anger, there's frustration, there's all of these things that come up.
• 4:41
  Meanwhile, you're also trying to like navigate systems, you know, insurance systems, hospital systems, like the amount of like cognitive load is just, you know, it's absurd, yeah, yeah, and really like counter productive to like, counter productive outcome for sure.
• 4:59
  And I had somebody else tell me like, it's cruel, it's absolutely cruel that we have this diagnosis to deal with.
• 5:06
  And that because of the sheer rareness of it and because of all of the extra work we have to do behind the scenes to even navigate our diagnosis and advocate for the care we need, it's cruel that we also go through so much in our brains to like have to overcome as well.
• 5:21
  Like it just feels so frustrating sometimes.
• 5:24
  Yes, the work that you should be doing is focusing on your health, your emotions, or processing your coping, all of that.
• 5:32
  And then we have all of these external, you know, made up things that need to happen, like health insurance in all of that made up things.
• 5:39
  Yeah, like that insurance is just a made up thing.
• 5:42
  It's fine.
• 5:43
  It's been made.
• 5:43
  It doesn't mean life we can.
• 5:45
  Oh, I get it.
• 6:18
  But like it feels very out of control.
• 6:20
  Like just kind of to go back to the beginning of the year.
• 6:22
  I felt like I started January 1st and it was like, okay, like I feel very disregulated.
• 6:28
  I feel like I don't have any control right now.
• 6:30
  And it's been literally a month of me just kind of re learning or reminding myself that, okay, here's what I can control.
• 6:38
  Just kind of building that again because I like that you reference like past traumas, right?
• 6:43
  Like that if you've had past things happen, you've got history with your diagnosis, you've handled news before, that is a leg up in some ways.
• 6:51
  But at the end of the day, when you're getting that brand new news, again, repetitive news or, you know, it's a new layer to your diagnosis that you're having to deal with, that initial reaction is so valid for one, very normal and also like it feels very out of control because at that moment when your brain is in that fighter flight and I need to find a picture of it or something.
• 7:01
  But at the end of the day, when you're getting that brand new news, again, repetitive news or, you know, it's a new layer to your diagnosis that you're having to deal with, that initial reaction is so valid for one, very normal and also like it feels very out of control because at that moment when your brain is in that fighter flight and I need to find a picture of it or something.
• 7:14
  But my sister showed me this difference between the tiger brain, the owl brain, and the turtle brain.
• 7:20
  And I was like, oh, I've never actually heard about it this way, but the tiger brain is your fighter flight.
• 7:25
  The owl is like your centered, your calm, your calm collected, like grounded.
• 7:30
  I kind of can make logical decisions.
• 7:32
  Think of the owl and then the turtle is like, I'm gonna hide in my shell because I don't want to deal with any of this.
• 7:38
  And I can tell you I start the day in Tiger and I end the day in turtle and there's very little owl right now.
• 7:46
  Yeah, yeah, totally.
• 7:48
  And anything that gets you just like even a few minutes of your owl brain, I feel like is an activity that, you know, is worth doing.
• 7:55
  Because yes, that's such a priority.
• 7:57
  And maybe that's why I love the reading so much.
• 8:00
  Because reading these stories really like, I get to fully engage my owl brain while watching characters that are not real engaged in their.
• 8:08
  Their trauma and their crazy and they're dealing with all these things.
• 8:11
  So let's talk about the emotional regulation through story.
• 8:14
  Because I really think that I was able to regulate my emotions by reading books, especially this month.
• 8:19
  Yeah.
• 8:20
  I mean, there's a couple dimensions to this, right?
• 8:22
  One dimension is just straight up distraction.
• 8:25
  We talked a little bit about this last time, but it is so helpful to be able to disconnect your brain from what's actively happening in your life.
• 8:32
  To put down all of these thoughts about health insurance companies and whatever the case might be, pre approvals.
• 8:38
  And like put yourself in a completely different context, a completely different story.
• 8:43
  Another piece of this that is super helpful about reading books or engaging in any sort of activity, you know, audiobooks, crafts like any sort of activity that you can really get absorbed in is this idea of flow.
• 8:57
  Flow is a psychological state, and a positive psychologist have studied for a long time, it's basically when you get caught up in something that's enjoyable and you like sort of lose sense of time, you like lose this focus on yourself.
• 9:08
  You really get caught up and whatever it is that you're creating, it's often creative work, reading or creating art or whatever the case may be.
• 9:16
  Research has shown that in periods of heightened uncertainty, such as waiting for medical news, when there's a lot of a feeling of powerlessness, a lot of lack of a plan or direction, being in flow, like being in that state of flow actually helps us cope with that uncertainty.
• 9:35
  And so it helps that waiting period go by more quickly.
• 9:38
  It helps us feel like we're doing something, we can take our minds off of it.
• 9:43
  There's really cool research about how flow helps us deal with uncertainty.
• 9:47
  I absolutely love that because that helps explain why when I'm, I don't know, planning a kid's birthday party and I'm completely absorbed and doing that.
• 9:56
  Or when I'm reading a book that I've never read before, which that was this book.
• 10:00
  It was a brand new release.
• 10:01
  I've never seen these stories, like never, never experienced it before.
• 10:05
  And I, on the one hand, I like that it gives me this chance to kind of have a lower stakes, low stress to my life.
• 10:12
  Way to kind of process something that is very distressing, right?
• 10:15
  Because what's happening to these characters that I love is actually not great.
• 10:19
  Like it's pretty rough.
• 10:21
  Yeah it's pretty rough.
• 10:22
  But also it's removed from my life.
• 10:26
  It doesn't have anything to do with, you know, the current political climate.
• 10:29
  It doesn't have to do with cancer.
• 10:31
  And I think that, I don't know if this is a thing that you jive with, but I think maybe that's why I love fantasy so much.
• 10:37
  It's because in fantasy, cancer doesn't exist.
• 10:40
  Yeah.
• 10:40
  Like at least not in the same way.
• 10:42
  And it has different solutions that are better solutions to, you know, than I have, right?
• 10:48
  Like especially in a rare disease when we don't have a concrete cure, we don't have concrete direction on what should we even do when we are presented with metastatic disease, like there's just so much uncertainty around it.
• 11:00
  And when you have a magical world, there's, there's no rules around cancer.
• 11:04
  And cancer likely doesn't exist in the same way, or even exist at all.
• 11:08
  So it's a very, it's a non triggering space for me to kind of involve myself in.
• 11:12
  And I love that.
• 11:13
  And I still feel some of the feelings like because these characters are going through really hard things, or they do have.
• 11:18
  Like in this book series, the Imperian by Rebecca Yaros, the main character has like, I think it's Eller Dano syndrome or Eller Danner syndrome.
• 11:26
  She has a disability.
• 11:28
  And it's incredible, like how inclusive this author has been and just how intricate her world building is.
• 11:35
  But like, I think that's part of the reason I love fantasy so much.
• 11:38
  It's because it is added, you know, stress for some.
• 11:43
  I know it's stress for my brain to like have to, you know, figure these out, but it's also an enjoyable stress.
• 11:48
  It's when I'm choosing, and it's one that has nothing to do with cancer.
• 11:52
  You've just hit the nail on the head in so many ways.
• 11:54
  So yes, reading books is stressful, right?
• 11:57
  We get really attached to these characters and they go through some horrible circumstances.
• 12:02
  Especially for like 30 minutes when I finish this book, like crying.
• 12:06
  And then the next day, every time I would talk about it, I would cry again.
• 12:09
  Like, oh, we get so attached.
• 12:11
  And the benefit of that, though, is that you get to choose how you're opting into like feeling these emotions, right?
• 12:18
  You're choosing that.
• 12:19
  And so you're like, if I'm gonna feel sad, frustrated, grieving, angry, in general, anyway, because there's so much in my life that's causing me.
• 12:28
  That let me choose to channel that through a story where I'm not even in this world.
• 12:34
  I'm in another world.
• 12:35
  There's magic.
• 12:35
  There's dragons.
• 12:36
  You know.
• 12:36
  4th Wing is such a great story for this because you really get sucked into a completely different world, where I know that I can experience this emotions.
• 12:45
  I can have some outlet for what I'm feeling in my life.
• 12:49
  And it's in a safe container.
• 12:51
  It's in this contained experience where I know the characters are going to go through some horrible things.
• 12:57
  And I know at the end, there will be some sort of resolution.
• 13:00
  I know the characters are going to have the worst time of their life, and I know at the end there will be some triumph.
• 13:06
  There will be some conclusion.
• 13:08
  I know this is like an ongoing series.
• 13:10
  So, I'm sure this book ends in the wild cliffhanger, but in general, the arc of stories is always that way.
• 13:18
  It's like they're in their life, all of the things.
• 13:21
  And you have the buildup to the climax, and then you have some level of resolution.
• 13:25
  And that resolution may not be everything you want, but it is some resolution.
• 13:30
  And I think there's an important, you know, emotional learning for us in that too, right?
• 13:34
  It doesn't always look how we think it's going to look.
• 13:36
  We often can't predict how the book is going to end.
• 13:38
  But we know that these emotions that we are experiencing, which have this natural arc to them, like as the sort of like curve of emotions is always like there's a little onset, they peak, whether it's joy or fear or whatever the case may be, and then they naturally come down.
• 13:56
  Emotions are on a wave.
• 13:57
  And with books, with our stories, we can experience that wave in a controlled setting or sort of like an outlet for these emotions that were already experiencing.
• 14:05
  Anyway, I feel like this is a reason why we sometimes hear, you know, in movies or whatever, or even like referenced in stories like you hear about oh, I'm in an emotional place.
• 14:16
  Like I'm sad.
• 14:17
  And so like, I'm gonna go watch a sad movie.
• 14:19
  And it's to trigger that emotional response in a controlled environment.
• 14:22
  Like it makes sense now.
• 14:24
  It does.
• 14:24
  And it's also to give us the opportunity to experience that and then put the book down, put the, turn the movie off like we're experiencing it in a place where we have total control and we know that the circumstances are fictional.
• 14:37
  This is not like we're not reading sad headlines about what's actually happening in the world.
• 14:41
  We're in a fictional story.
• 14:44
  Or if you're reading nonfiction, we're in something that's already happened in the past, hopefully, so that we're not reading about like actively scary things in our environment.
• 14:51
  I do have to say as a psychologist, if you're reading a book or a movie or something where you're feeling like it's too heightened, it's too much, it's too out of your ability to be in that space right now.
• 15:02
  Like, you know, put the book down.
• 15:03
  You don't need to go through heightened stress.
• 15:05
  If it's not going to make you feel better, you know, you know yourself.
• 15:09
  But for many of us who are drawn to material that contains traumatic and triggering content, part of that is because we get to opt in and choose the experiences that we're having.
• 15:21
  And I think, like you've said around fantasy, one of the reasons that that's so powerful is because fantasy stories explore these like very human conditions, these very human emotions, these trials and struggles.
• 15:38
  They don't always look like what we go through.
• 15:40
  Like I'm not trying to like ride a dragon, but I am in my own way trying to conquer something that is like insurmountable.
• 15:47
  And like no one has done it before.
• 15:49
  You know what I mean?
• 15:50
  Yeah.
• 15:50
  No, that makes total sense.
• 15:52
  Yes.
• 15:52
  It feels like I'm trying to ride a freaking dragon.
• 15:55
  You know.
• 15:55
  It feels like I'm trying to ride a dragon down a mountain with lightning.
• 15:58
  I feel like I'm just trying to do something that everyone keeps telling me is impossible.
• 16:02
  Yes.
• 16:02
  And in fantasy stories, sometimes the protagonists do have magical powers, but often the thing that enables their success is like a very human characteristic.
• 16:14
  It's their bravery.
• 16:15
  It's their courage.
• 16:16
  It's their resilience.
• 16:17
  It's their ability to connect others, bridge others together.
• 16:21
  It's their compassion.
• 16:23
  It's these qualities that we already have in ourselves.
• 16:25
  And so I think fantasy is an amazing medium for the kind of thing that we're talking about, because it allows us to like really break from our world while learning about how, you know, all of these really important qualities of being a human can enable success against all odds.
• 16:42
  Yes.
• 16:43
  No, I love that.
• 16:44
  Oh, I love that you talked about the wave of emotions to that, it's this controlled place for experiencing the wave of emotions because we experienced those waves.
• 16:53
  We experience a lot of.
• 16:56
  I mean, I think we've had people on for the Eye On Mental Health seminars as well as the podcast talk about like the grieving cycle that we go through as cancer patients and how it's not linear.
• 17:05
  It's not a straight line.
• 17:07
  Like, you know, you see behind me here, it's not a straight line, you guys, like this is messy.
• 17:12
  It's all over the place.
• 17:13
  It sometimes looks like scribbles.
• 17:15
  It doesn't even have a wave.
• 17:16
  It is messy and it's okay that it's messy.
• 17:19
  Oh yeah, it's so messy.
• 17:21
  Those emotions, like we need, you know we need them.
• 17:23
  Like we can't exist without them.
• 17:25
  I think they're a very important part of the human experience.
• 17:28
  Yeah, I mean, emotions serve a function.
• 17:30
  You know, as difficult as it can be in our world to cope with them, emotions do serve a function.
• 17:36
  They tune us into what's important.
• 17:38
  You know, that grief and that rage that you feel means that you're more motivated in some ways to fight.
• 17:44
  Sometimes it can feel really overwhelming.
• 17:45
  And that's why, you know, people have many different ways to cope with these emotions.
• 17:50
  But emotions that their most basic form serve a psychological and social function.
• 17:55
  Some of their function is around connecting us to the people around us, asking for help.
• 18:00
  Some of their function is tuning our attention to, you know, the acute dangers in our immediate environment and making us focus on what we need to get done.
• 18:09
  Now we live in a world where we have a lot of supports and like, you know, maybe my rage or my grief or my anger might be a little overwhelming and I need to channel it into something productive.
• 18:20
  But that's sort of like, you know, the purpose of emotions and that's why they're sort of on this curve is because they don't last forever, no matter what's going on.
• 18:28
  They're time bound.
• 18:49
  Yeah, that's so important.
• 18:50
  Okay.
• 18:50
  So I'm gonna kind of play devil's advocate for just a second because I know that we've talked a lot about kind of the stress that these characters are going through when you're reading a story.
• 18:58
  And you mentioned though if this is too stressful for you as a reader, as a person reading this, if whatever you're reading is two triggering while you're trying to distract yourself, I would say if I were to go watch a movie about, I don't know, like a cancer journey, that would probably be a little too triggering for me.
• 19:13
  I don't know that that's the wisest place to involve myself even if it would allow me a controlled environment to process emotions.
• 19:20
  However, what do you have to say to the idea that stress is, is somehow bad if we feel that, that distress, right?
• 19:28
  Because I think that we do feel it.
• 19:29
  And I think that sometimes we get really caught up in our heads as patients.
• 19:33
  Like, I don't know if you guys feel this, but I know sometimes when I feel really anxious, I then start getting anxious about how I'm anxious and how that's gonna somehow hurt me, right?
• 19:42
  That it's gonna hurt my body, that it's gonna be energetically be bad for me.
• 19:45
  I cannot tell you how many times I talk to somebody who's older and I say this gently, but like just different generations who have maybe different beliefs around mindset and they tell me like, oh yeah, like just, just reduce your stress, reduce your stress.
• 19:58
  I'm like I can't make stress in my life not exist.
• 20:03
  That's impossible.
• 20:04
  Stress will always exist.
• 20:06
  So anyway, what do you have to say about the idea that the emotion of feeling stressed or being in distress is somehow this bad thing for your health?
• 20:15
  Yeah, I mean, I think what you've said is really important, right?
• 20:17
  Which is that by trying to actively focusing on trying to like tamp down and reduce stress, we can inadvertently cause more stress because then we're stressing about the stress.
• 20:29
  And so some psychologists, they really focus on learning to live and accept that we're like living under a certain amount of stress inevitably as cancer patients, as people who are on this journey.
• 20:41
  And so really learning how to make it work for you and have stress be, almost like a little push or motivation, finding the ways where you can alleviate stress that is overwhelming and finding the ways where stress can channel your energy into something that is going to be helpful for you in some way.
• 21:00
  And I think trying to pretend like we can just say, don't be stressed when we're, you know, we're cancer patients, we are busy working moms, we are juggling finances and care teams and research and, you know, news in an uncertain world and just all of these things, there is going to be stress.
• 21:22
  So knowing that how can we sort of channel that stress in a productive way?
• 21:26
  What stress can we eliminate and what stress can we make work for us?
• 21:31
  I can't remember if we talked about this or if I just wrote this down, but did we talk at all about Kelly Mcgonagall who wrote the book The Upside of stress and she's got like a Ted talk, yes, like reframing stress.
• 21:43
  Yeah.
• 21:43
  Okay.
• 21:44
  So tell us a little about that because I think you started to, but let's just kind of really break it down because I know this is different, like this is maybe separate from book stuff, but I also feel like this is something we can use the example of what we see in a story to show that it is possible.
• 21:58
  Kelly Mcgonagall is a psychologist who has some really amazing research on the stress versus challenge mindset.
• 22:05
  And so she has some really cool work about reframing stressful situations as challenging situations.
• 22:12
  And by using that cognitive reframing, we can really sort of set ourselves up in a way to think about how we might rise to the challenge, rise above the challenge, and have stress really be something that propels us into our next level.
• 22:26
  And I think that's sort of why characters we see these situations that we go through, they see it as a challenge, right?
• 22:32
  And so they're able to sort of rise above yeah.
• 22:36
  And they're like, oh, I am in this situation.
• 22:39
  What can I do to overcome the obstacles that are in front of me?
• 22:43
  Oh my gosh.
• 22:43
  Yes.
• 22:44
  Because when you have a character who's going through what seems impossible, they're not sitting here going in their shell like, oh my gosh, I'm too stressed to handle this.
• 22:53
  That's not at all what the character ever says.
• 22:55
  They're presented with the challenge and they're overcoming it.
• 22:58
  Oh my gosh.
• 22:59
  I just feel like I just had like this huge lightning bolt moment of like, what happened in this book, and especially this book that I just read, and how it started, it literally started out within the first couple of pages, the character saying every possible path like that we are going to approach this challenge that we're dealing with.
• 23:15
  The main problem in the entire book that ended, book 2, ended on a big problem.
• 23:20
  And then book 3 was like, we're focused on trying to find ways to solve this problem despite all obstacles.
• 23:27
  We are going to explore every possible path.
• 23:30
  And they didn't approach it from this place of shutdown of like, oh no, this is too stressful.
• 23:35
  I can't handle it.
• 23:35
  But it's also like, you know, that there's there's some memes out there.
• 23:39
  There's, oh, you're so tough on Instagram.
• 23:41
  She's fantastic.
• 23:42
  And she validates this idea that sometimes people tell you things about your cancer journey that are well meaning, right?
• 23:48
  You, maybe you get told that like, you're such a warrior, you're so strong, any of those kinds of phrases.
• 23:54
  And I think that one of the things that comes up for a lot of us is, I didn't have a choice I didn't have a choice and I think that when you parallel that to like a fantasy character who's thrust into the situation in some ways, they don't really have a choice either.
• 24:07
  So we can relate on that level, we can relate to the fact that they don't have a choice.
• 24:11
  They, they just have to keep trying because that's how they can solve the challenge, that's how they can solve the problem.
• 24:17
  And it's a problem worth solving.
• 24:20
  I love what you just said.
• 24:22
  In stories, there's this, you know, the idea of the hero's journey where the situation is always thrust upon the hero, right?
• 24:29
  The hero is like going about their life and then like something out of the ordinary, something crazy, something massive, often terrible, happens.
• 24:37
  And then the heroes choice is like, you have to rise to this challenge or, you know, give up which if they give up, there's no story, right?
• 24:45
  Right.
• 24:46
  Exactly.
• 24:47
  We're often like, you know, it's like die or rise to the challenge, you know?
• 24:51
  And like that's what it is in Fantasy Books.
• 24:53
  And I feel like that's why I feel so, so passionate about fantasy as a medium for this like hero's journey.
• 24:59
  Because each of us is on our own hero's journey.
• 25:02
  We have been thrust into situations that we did not ask for.
• 25:05
  We do have to rise to the challenge and find some way to overcome insurmountable obstacles and challenges.
• 25:12
  We have to reframe stress as a challenge or else we will just curl up and not be able to function.
• 25:18
  We'll stay in the turtle brain we'll stay yes we'll stay in the turtle brain and you need the turtle brain for like a little bit.
• 25:24
  The turtle brain is there to give your tiger brain like a little bit of a rest to balance that out a little bit.
• 25:30
  But we can't stay in Turtle Brain, you know, forever.
• 25:34
  Yeah no for sure.
• 25:35
  Well, Megan, this has been so much fun and I have absolutely loved chatting about this.
• 25:40
  Can we just remind our listeners if they want to connect to you on Instagram and they want to see some of your content because you share some really awesome content on your Instagram and I don't know if you do it on TikTok too.
• 25:51
  Is it just Instagram?
• 25:52
  It's just Instagram.
• 25:53
  I really haven't gotten into TikTok yet.
• 25:55
  But you can find me on Instagram at book babe PhD to share a lot of content related to like emotional processing in fantasy and romance stories related to like, you know, grief and rage and anger.
• 26:08
  So I'd love to connect with some more of the community there too.
• 26:11
  Yeah.
• 26:11
  It's so incredible.
• 26:13
  She's got some awesome content.
• 26:14
  She's related to her own journey, which she talked about in the last episode.
• 26:18
  We'll also link that in the description just so that you guys know.
• 26:20
  Megan is also an ocular melanoma cancer patient.
• 26:22
  She's literally living and walking the past that all of us are walking.
• 26:27
  All of you guys listening.
• 26:28
  And even if you're a caregiver, like this can apply to you if you're somebody who's helping someone through their cancer diagnosis.
• 26:33
  But Megan also shares really great book recommendations.
• 26:36
  So if you want to get into reading these books, she's got some really awesome ideas and just good suggestions of places to start.
• 26:43
  So I hope you guys can connect with her.
• 26:45
  Megan, is anything else you want to say before we close out.
• 26:48
  Just thank you so much for having me on Danet.
• 26:51
  And, you know, to anybody who might be listening, I just appreciate the journey that you're all going through and I would love to connect with more of the community online.
• 26:59
  Awesome.
• 26:59
  Okay, guys, we'll see you next time.
• 27:01
  Thanks for having me.