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Burnout: The Unpaid Overtime of Special Needs Parenting with Cait Donovan · Inchstones with Sarah | Autism Advocacy & Caregiver Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Hi, y'all. We got Kate Donovan here today on the Inchtones podcast. Meeting Tate is like one of those moments where you go, yep, supposed to be in my life, and we don't, on paper, live similar lives. But Kate Donovan, she is a keynote speaker and the host of Fried the Burnout podcast and speaks to everything related to whether it's work, culture, life culture, the progression of burnout, and how to not only recover, but to become hyper aware of what we are conditioned to believe is to be true. Kate, talk to me about this beautiful intersection of caregiving for special needs parents and burnout.
• 0:47
  Speaker B: This is such a big space because when, even if you just take the word special needs parents, that is everything from someone who has a highly functioning son or daughter with down syndrome or autism or whatever else, to somebody who is in full need of full support, feeding tube, everything, Right?
• 1:15
  Speaker A: We have medical needs, medical needs, huge medical needs.
• 1:17
  Speaker B: Right. So we have this huge spectrum. And the first thing that I want to say to people is, it's not a competition.
• 1:26
  Speaker A: Yes. No, it's not. My pain, my exhaustion is no bigger or smaller than anyone else's at all.
• 1:35
  Speaker B: And if you are diminishing your experience because, quote, unquote, other people have it worse, you are adding to your own burnout culture. And we have to be aware of places that we own privilege and we have to be. Both of those things are true at the same time.
• 1:55
  Speaker A: Yes, yes, and yes.
• 1:57
  Speaker B: And so I want to start with that. Give yourself permission to actually feel the experience that you are experiencing. Because by learning to feel the experience that you are experiencing, you will find a way through.
• 2:11
  Speaker A: Right?
• 2:12
  Speaker B: You cannot find a way through if you don't feel anything. That's number one. Number two, nobody is prepared for this. I don't care what your background is. I don't care if you had a brother or a sister. That I don't care. I am not even a parent, never mind not a special needs parent. And even I understand that no one has ever been prepared for this. So Space for Grace is your number one best friend. Because you are going to mess up, you are going to overdo, you are going to underdo, you are going to miss an appointment, you are going to make a bad dietary decision, you are going to react poorly some days, choose.
• 2:54
  Speaker A: The wrong therapist, go to the wrong doctor, start over again, rinse, repeat.
• 2:58
  Speaker B: It's all of it's going to happen. That's normal.
• 3:01
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 3:02
  Speaker B: Because you don't have any experience in this.
• 3:06
  Speaker A: Right. I mean, I like, I, I always say when I'm you know, in my, in my talks, you know, my life was so painfully typical up until Millie's diagnoses. And no one at 29 and 20 weeks pregnant with their, you know, third goes, you know what? I want two kids with not speaking autism.
• 3:28
  Speaker B: You don't think people.
• 3:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think people. I don't think sorority girl from Penn State who's a pharmaceutical rep in Brooklyn was like, you are.
• 3:35
  Speaker B: I didn't know you were a Penn Stater.
• 3:38
  Speaker A: Oh, you are too.
• 3:40
  Speaker B: I only.
• 3:41
  Speaker A: Where.
• 3:42
  Speaker B: I only did.
• 3:44
  Speaker A: Oh, don't say only once. You're in the fold. You're in the fold.
• 3:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, I'm a. I'm an online all in.
• 3:50
  Speaker A: But still knew I was gravitated towards many reasons.
• 3:53
  Speaker B: We are Penn State. We love each other.
• 3:55
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 3:56
  Speaker B: And so understanding that there was no way you could have been prepared and there's no way you can do this correctly from the get go should be a way to buy yourself some grace.
• 4:10
  Speaker A: Right?
• 4:10
  Speaker B: Right.
• 4:11
  Speaker A: Just that phrase alone, you're holding space for yourself.
• 4:17
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 4:18
  Speaker A: I think grace is actually holding space for oneself.
• 4:20
  Speaker B: I agree.
• 4:21
  Speaker A: And that is not something that is taught through anything, but an experience that you wouldn't choose. It's hard earned. You don't get grace by going to get a blowout dry bar.
• 4:33
  Speaker B: No. And you don't typically offer it either. So I think this is a huge issue in the world at large, the idea of grace for each other. Because we don't offer it, because none of us have time to offer it.
• 4:49
  Speaker A: Right.
• 4:50
  Speaker B: I remember driving. I was living in San Diego. I did my master's degree in California. And I was driving down the highway and the highways are, you know, six lanes on each side. So it's like a 12 lane highway. And I have a lead foot. Like I'm. I'm probably cruising at 80 or above. Probably the chances are high. And somebody flew right past me. And I was thinking, you know, my initial reaction was, what a jerk. I didn't use the word jerk. I was more harsh than that. And my second reaction, because at the time I was interning, I'm an acupuncturist. My master's degree is in acupuncture. So I've been practicing acupuncturist for over 15 years. And at the time I was doing an internship at Rady's Children's Hospital. And I was working with families whose children are undergoing cancer treatments. And I was treating both the child for side effects of chemo and the parent or caregiver for stress at the same time. So we were going into their rooms and treating them both at the same time. So my first thought was, oh my God, what a jerk. My second thought was, what if they just found out that their kid is in the hospital and they're. And they're flying 120 because the only thing they can think about is getting to the hospital to be with their family.
• 6:09
  Speaker A: The. The. The. I just had a conversation about a relative example from Brene Brown, some interview she gave where she said something similar like this happened. And she said, I need to learn to give the most generous reaction. What's the most generous thought about that person speeding by? That their child just got diagnosed, that someone's deep in the hospital, that they're in labor, that their partner's in labor, that something catastrophic happened and time is their only commodity, that they can change and get there quicker.
• 6:42
  Speaker B: And that's it.
• 6:43
  Speaker A: And that's it.
• 6:44
  Speaker B: And so there was a post that went fairly viral recently. The woman's name is Ryan Brazil and she's a fourth grade teacher.
• 6:53
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 6:53
  Speaker B: And what she. She refers to this as your first thought. And she said it's okay if your first thought isn't kind. You have to decide then what you're gonna do with your second thought and your third thought and your fourth thought. And I think when I watched this video and then I watched it again, and then I watched it again and I thought, I could write a whole book about this.
• 7:14
  Speaker A: Right.
• 7:15
  Speaker B: This is a whole book. Because when you are giving yourself grace, your first thought about yourself is likely to not be kind.
• 7:22
  Speaker A: Right. Pull yourself together.
• 7:24
  Speaker B: Yeah. What's wrong with you?
• 7:26
  Speaker A: What's wrong with you?
• 7:27
  Speaker B: Sarah, do this again.
• 7:29
  Speaker A: Come on. Right. Yeah.
• 7:32
  Speaker B: Your first thought is likely to be unkind. And I think that oftentimes we stop there because we get into that unkindness sends us into a spiral of self judgment.
• 7:44
  Speaker A: What could I have done differently? I should have. It's passed.
• 7:47
  Speaker B: It's all past all of those things. And then the guilt of not following all the popular, like Instagrammers in the world and giving yourself that grace automatically. I should be kinder to myself. I should be nicer to. I should do that. Listen, everybody. Brains have a negativity bias. It is normal for all of us to go non graceful first.
• 8:11
  Speaker A: It's like primal wiring.
• 8:13
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 8:14
  Speaker A: Yeah. It's the mismatch. We think XYZ was supposed to happen. It didn't happen. So the mismatch is because of me. I caused that mismatch. And I'm gonna focus on the thing that didn't happen versus what rent. Right. Or what I can do. Right.
• 8:30
  Speaker B: Next. And so it's okay. So the grace that I'm asking you to have is about the action that you're judging. And the first thought I want to.
• 8:40
  Speaker A: Give an example for people and parents that might be listening when a diagnosis hits specifically in the autism parenting community. The first thought is my life will never be the same and I feel bad for myself. I feel bad that my life and what I envisioned no longer exists.
• 9:00
  Speaker B: That might be the first thought. The first thought might also be maybe I'm one of the lucky ones that gets a high functioning exactly right. The first thought might be I'm glad it's not something else. It could be.
• 9:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, right, right.
• 9:16
  Speaker B: The first thought might be I wonder if my child will ever be be.
• 9:20
  Speaker A: Capable of being on their own, living independently.
• 9:24
  Speaker B: Living independently. Right. Like the first thought could be a whole slew of different things. Any of different things. So the grace that I'm asking people to have is that that first thought is probably gonna not be great. And you're allowed to continue the thoughts until you get to one to one that actually feels supportive and nourishing and nurturing to you. And so these three words, supportive and nourishing and nurturing these are the things that I think are missing most from the special needs parents lives.
• 10:03
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's a colleague, friend, fellow autism mom named Kate Swenson shares beautifully about. She has four children and her son Cooper is severely autistic. Her oldest and her charity is called More than a Caregiver. And it's one of the hashtags that I love so much because it allows for you to give yourself grace in that it's going to be messy and dirty and not anything like you expected. But you are more than that. You are the feelings that make you your individual and your own desires, wishes, wants for your life are also allowed to take up space too. I I that mother, that father to continue to live and be their own person too. And that's a really, really tough whenever you are changing, you know, pull ups of a 10 year old still and it's really hard at the end of the day to continue to give to yourself and find that grace for you to be your your own person as well because you can get so siloed into the caregiving role.
• 11:09
  Speaker B: And I think that the overlap of new parenthood and diagnosis because sometimes it happens early.
• 11:17
  Speaker A: Right?
• 11:18
  Speaker B: New parenthood you are already so according to the nervous system, you and your child are sharing a nervous system pretty much until they are sometime between the age of six and nine, if you are the birthing parent.
• 11:32
  Speaker A: Right.
• 11:33
  Speaker B: So as the birthing parent, you are sharing a nervous system with your child. You are interacting on a level that most people never understand is really happening. Physical, actually physical, like physiological, really, truly interacting. And it is at the tip, at a normal neurotypical development between the ages of six and nine, that child creates sort of their own Persona. And there's this time for those parents where that is really difficult because they're pulling away and they don't understand what's happening. Right. But your, your child is becoming their own. This might not be the experience. Parents that don't have neurotypical healthy children.
• 12:23
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's true.
• 12:26
  Speaker B: So the fact that you are enmeshed with them might not just be, you haven't figured out how to still hold your own identity. You might literally still be sharing. Yes, yes.
• 12:41
  Speaker A: Like actually physically still feeling it.
• 12:43
  Speaker B: Literally actually physically feeling it. And some people might never not have because the development doesn't happen the same way. They don't go through that process. They might, they might not. They might. Everybody's different, right?
• 13:00
  Speaker A: I, I, I think about my cellular fatigue, and I want to go back to this and about your experience treating children in the hospital and their parents with acupuncture and the burnout. The cellular fatigue that I have felt many, many times in this journey as a special needs parent, they're acute, but I feel it on a cellular level. And I didn't label it then as a burnout, but I know now that it was, it was my body giving me cues. And I do believe that the body keeps score. Talk to me more maybe about your work in that capacity for parents and the effects of burnout.
• 13:39
  Speaker B: I think I have a question first. When you say cellular fatigue, what does that mean to you?
• 13:44
  Speaker A: I have many moments where it was either the morning after a very rigorous and emotional evaluational cycle or after a major holiday where a lot of things in the way that we experience holidays and birthdays and major life events is so different. Where I would either wake up in the morning or I'd go to, or I'd crash in bed at night and I would lay there and I would feel all my cells trying to relax. Like, literally I would feel my cells going, you need to take a deep breath. Like you need to rest. Like it, and it would stem, it was just my whole body. And I remember feeling it after maybe the first Christmas. It was like a December 20th of the year that Mac was diagnosed. Millie was in the throes of early intervention, and Christmas morning did not look like any sort of typical Christmas morning. And waking up that next day and being like, I am so wiped in a way that I've never been wiped before. And I felt. I. Like I always say I felt it on myself. I felt every bit of my cells, like. Like, just. Sarah, just be still, be still, because I need to heal.
• 14:56
  Speaker B: So there's a couple different ways we can talk about this from a burnout perspective. One of them is your mitochondria probably very likely did not produce enough ATP for you to feel like you're at the cell, right? Like that. It just did not happen.
• 15:14
  Speaker A: Right?
• 15:14
  Speaker B: And that could be because of a few different things that it's interfered with because of stress, it's interfered with because of nutrition changes, it's interfered with because of sleep or lack of sleep. It's interfered with for all sorts of reasons. So literally, physically, at a cellular level, you could have actually less energy. And then from a Chinese medicine perspective, that. That sensation, I find a lot of people when I ask them, you know, is it within the first inch of your skin or is it deeper than that? Like, a lot of people talk about it being that buzz is sort of closer to the surface, and that need for that to subside is, like, on the surface. And in Chinese medicine, there's a. A concept called Wei qi. And wei qi is the qi that is at the surface of our. Just underneath our skin and just above our skin that protects us from what's known as pathogens, which. Which are outside influences that can make us sick. We would call them bacteria and virus now, but 3,000 years ago, they did not call them that. Right? So your Wei qi is your protective. It's your protective qi, your protective qi after a day like that is totally worn out because you have been protecting yourself, you have been protecting your children, you have been protecting. Right? So this layer, literal, physical layer of protection that has been overused needs some rebuilding. The interesting thing about this is that Wei Qi is related to the lungs in Chinese medicine, which what you said before was, I need to breathe. And quite literally, yes, be still and breathe. Right? So quite literally, one of the only things that will help rebuild the Wei Qi is sleep, stillness and breathing. And when we breathe at night, while we sleep, our respiratory rate is lower. So if your normal respiratory rate during the day is 15 or 16, which would be pretty typical at night, it's gonna be 10 or 12 if you are dropping into the proper sleep cycle, the proper stress hormone cycle, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So we. You actually physically do need to stop and breathe because your lung capacity to maintain that wei qi is diminished. So for me, if I was treating somebody or if somebody came in that I would support them with acupuncture. I would give them a breathing exercise. I might give them a yoga nidra meditation if they had the time for it. But breathing exercises are easier because they can be three minutes or under.
• 17:45
  Speaker A: Mm.
• 17:46
  Speaker B: Right?
• 17:46
  Speaker A: Mm.
• 17:47
  Speaker B: And I might give them some sort of nutritional support that would work for the lungs in Chinese medicine. So, you know, one of the things that is really good for lungs is mulberries or blackberries. I might give them something like that. One of the things that supports the lungs is Asian pears. Right. We chop them up, cook them in some water, add some honey, and eat them. Like simple things.
• 18:11
  Speaker A: Is that my doordash at the door right now? For me?
• 18:13
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 18:14
  Speaker A: Is that what it is? Yes.
• 18:15
  Speaker B: Just check it exactly. Right. So there's all these little things that we can do to support the particular types of fatigue that we are feeling. So some people would not say that they feel it in the surface of their skin. They'd say they feel it in their eyes. Right. Like my eyes. Like, I can't. My eyes are so tired, I can't even look at anything anymore.
• 18:36
  Speaker A: I can't. I never felt that. But tell me more about that. Right. So this is. That's fascinating to me because I have never once ever been like, my eyes are fatigued. Ever.
• 18:45
  Speaker B: But people do get that way. So.
• 18:47
  Speaker A: So yes.
• 18:47
  Speaker B: So how is that Chinese medicine, the eyes are related to the liver organ. And so for everybody out there, that's like the lungs, the liver. What's happening? I'm. When I say lung and liver in Chinese medicine, I'm talking about an energetic system related to an organ, not just the organ itself. So it's a bigger picture.
• 19:04
  Speaker A: Right.
• 19:05
  Speaker B: So the eye is related to the liver, and the liver in Chinese medicine is what processes our emotions. So when the emotions get overloaded, sometimes the eyes can get red, they can get fatigued, they can get right. Some people process faster than others naturally. This is both genetic, constitutional, and cultural. So different people with different cultural backgrounds will have different experiences in their bodies because of what they're told is normal, natural, and not normal and natural. So it could be eyes. Some people will come in and say, I just can't think. My brain is tired. Like the fog. The fog, the decision, fatigue, the task, the caretaking.
• 19:51
  Speaker A: Always something, never being in the train that off.
• 19:54
  Speaker B: So my brain is tired. In Chinese medicine, the brain is related to the kidneys. So then we would work on all the things that support kidneys, which are, you know, sleep is number one. And then dark foods. So if you had dark grapes and eggplant and black lentils and a lot of seafoods are beneficial for the kidneys, Clams and oysters and things like that. So we might do stuff like that. And the qigong or the energetic exercise that would help the kidneys is grounding, rooting into the earth, making sure you either put your feet in grass or imagine your feet in grass. I don't even care. But the kidneys in Chinese medicine, so we can go on and on and on. Right?
• 20:34
  Speaker A: Like, I mean, talk about the grounding. That is a word that comes up so much in the special needs parenting community. I just want to feel grounded in my reality. I want to feel grounded in this. And I was talking to someone who said, maybe that's why my children, when they come home, my child, when they come home, takes off their shoes right away. It's not just sensory, it's that connection. And I've looked at it so differently now in terms of taking their shoes off when they get inside. Because then when they run outside barefoot, I think, oh, this is wonderful. They're grounding. They're grounding.
• 21:10
  Speaker B: I have taken my shoes off everywhere I have ever gone since I was a baby.
• 21:14
  Speaker A: Good on your parents.
• 21:16
  Speaker B: No, they were made absolutely mental by it. Wow. It drove them crazy.
• 21:22
  Speaker A: So this was innately part of you. I love that you have that as who you are. That's so cool.
• 21:29
  Speaker B: I think that if I had been born in today's day and age, it's likely that I would have gotten an autistic diagnosis.
• 21:37
  Speaker A: Interesting. Tell me more about that.
• 21:40
  Speaker B: I'm very hypersensitive. I will still to this day, if there's a tag in my clothing and I'm out somewhere, that I will go to a store, a restaurant, anywhere to get a pair of scissors, I will ask 18 people for a pair of scissors to get it out of here.
• 21:53
  Speaker A: Right, Right.
• 21:54
  Speaker B: I will. I cannot put on sho if they're not set properly with my socks, I will take them off and do it again. I don't care. I'm in the middle of a wedding. It does not matter to me. I have to get it fixed. I used to come home from school and my mom would say, how was your day? And I would say, lunch was too loud. I couldn't sit in. I Never enjoyed lunch. I couldn't enjoy lunch. Could not manage it.
• 22:20
  Speaker A: Do you remember cupping at all or did you feel exhausted? I've actually gone through the process of late stage diagnosis with for an autism diagnosed as well and did not. Did not receive it. I received an ADHD late ADHD diagnosis confirmed twice.
• 22:33
  Speaker B: Could also be in my case. Right.
• 22:36
  Speaker A: But I do believe that there that I guess I could confirmation bias find someone to give me a diagnosis. But it doesn't really change what I feel and what I experience. But that sense of overwhelming and the exhaustion I think about that a lot is that the exhaustion of those inputs and the sensory experience is why the behaviors are also displayed. Right?
• 22:55
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 22:56
  Speaker A: Behavior is a form of communication.
• 22:58
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 22:59
  Speaker A: When do you feel like you are able to recognize it and maybe self soothe? Were you self soothing with the taking of the shoes? Were you?
• 23:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think I was self soothing taking off the shoes. I have mostly self soothed with sugar. Yeah, same most of my life.
• 23:15
  Speaker A: Dopamine hit.
• 23:16
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yep. It's been sugar. And I think that a lot of what I learned to do over time. I mean when I was in college, I drank.
• 23:25
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 23:26
  Speaker B: Same to tamper it. And I used to think I was an extrovert.
• 23:31
  Speaker A: Silly. Yes, so silly.
• 23:34
  Speaker B: I wasn't an extrovert. I was just drunk.
• 23:36
  Speaker A: Right, right.
• 23:38
  Speaker B: And it worked for a long time until I stopped liking the feeling of alcohol. And then I was like, well now. And so I also like really dislike being at dinner with more than three other people. I don't like groups bigger than four. I think it's too many. I can't manage the conversations. I don't know who to pay attention to. I. It's awful. So a lot of things that I've learned to do are more preventative. Like I try to avoid those things. And then I'm a professional speaker who speaks to 500 or a thousand people at a time.
• 24:08
  Speaker A: Right, right.
• 24:11
  Speaker B: So how do I balance that? That kind of. That part for me, that is about first knowing that I really do love speaking. I really do love being in that environment. And typically the day after a big event, I take off.
• 24:28
  Speaker A: Talk to me about that experience because of knowing the energy levels that it does take. Do you still find that you gain energy from an experience like public speaking on a. On a big stage?
• 24:41
  Speaker B: Energy that I get from it is the individual people after.
• 24:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, totally.
• 24:45
  Speaker B: When people come up to you and they're like this is what you know? Yeah, this changed my life. This is. This gives me energy. And I know that the next Day I'm going to need something. So I have a, I have a system that I teach for burnt out parents, for burnt out people, and for myself, it's called the pay yourself back system. So when you know you're going to be overspending, when there's a holiday coming, when there's a birthday party coming, when there's a new environment that you have to go into that you can't fully prepare for because you don't know all the factors. Right. You have to plan ahead of time to know that you are going to in some way. And this goes back to what I said earlier. Find a way to nurture yourself, to nourish yourself, and to have grace for yourself. You have to find a way to get the support, the nourishment and the nurture. So that means that you have to know yourself well enough to know what nourishes and nurtures you. I love a massage. A lot of the things that I do are free. This is not one of them that's free. I love a massage. I don't know how I love a massage with all of the other things that bother me, but I do love a massage.
• 25:50
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 25:51
  Speaker B: And so that's one of the things that I know. And not just massage, actually almost anything. Anything where someone else is in charge of taking care of me.
• 26:00
  Speaker A: Grooming, grooming.
• 26:01
  Speaker B: Anyway, Acupuncture, Reiki.
• 26:03
  Speaker A: Right. Massage, reflexology.
• 26:05
  Speaker B: Any of it.
• 26:06
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 26:07
  Speaker B: Any time where someone else is responsible for caring for me is nourishment for me because I don't have to be in charge. And I am in charge all the time of everything.
• 26:17
  Speaker A: I love that mindset shift because I think a lot of social media is trying to defy or reframe that. Self care doesn't mean a pedicure. Self care doesn't mean getting your hair done.
• 26:29
  Speaker B: Sometimes it does.
• 26:30
  Speaker A: Sometimes it does. Some. Sometimes it really does. And it's not about the act or what I get at the end of it, it's that someone else is taking care of me.
• 26:39
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 26:39
  Speaker A: And as someone who is a, who is a caregiver, first and foremost, gosh, it feels really good to be taken care of.
• 26:46
  Speaker B: Yes. And so this is what I, this is why I said, I think you have to do the work of knowing yourself really well to know what nourishes you. And for some people, that's going to be a massage. For some people it's going to be a blowout. For some people it's going to be a journal. Yeah, fine. Yeah, whatever.
• 27:03
  Speaker A: Buying a new Journal and sitting at a new bench.
• 27:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, you know, Absolutely. So you have to know what it is that works for you. And to me, there's a lot of. In the burnout world, like self care isn't the cure for burnout. And it makes me want to bang my head against the wall.
• 27:17
  Speaker A: Right?
• 27:17
  Speaker B: Because if you are standing here waiting for the world to change, to get out of your burnout, you're going to be standing burnt out for a very long time, sister. You can't do it that way. So in my practice, in my business, we call what the base level of self care that we ask people to do, we call foundational self care. And foundational self care is summed up by my unofficial hashtag that keeps spreading. And I never planned for this to be my thing, but we're gonna go with it.
• 27:47
  Speaker A: Here we are.
• 27:48
  Speaker B: Pee when you need to pee.
• 27:50
  Speaker A: Say it again.
• 27:51
  Speaker B: Pee when you need to pee. Don't write two more emails. And of course, sometimes you can't. Sometimes you're in the middle of. I get it. But pay attention. The idea is, pay attention to your body's natural signals that require your attention. And those are using the bathroom, drinking, eating, resting, feeling, like that. That's it, right? Pee when you need to pee, taking care of your basic bodily functions, having, having a sensation in your body that lets you know that you have a need and then meeting that need is the basic form of self care that all of us need to do. And that involves going to the bathroom, number one. And number two, folks, it involves eating when you're hungry. It involves drinking when you're thirsty, which means being at your desk and saying, I'm going to get up and go downstairs and get a cup of water for myself because I am thirsty and I need to drink it. And taking that 32 seconds, that might be the most important thing you do all day.
• 28:57
  Speaker A: Exactly right.
• 28:58
  Speaker B: Feeling your emotions and responding to them is part of it. All of these things that require your simple attention. This is what I call foundational self care. And what I learned when I was. I did another when I did my. My next degree at Penn State. One of the things that I learned was that so many of us that grew up either maybe slightly not neuro, not neuronormative, or had some sort of trauma that interfered with our development. There's a part of our brain called the insula that maybe didn't develop as well as it could have. And when that part of the brain doesn't develop as well as it could have, you have a Diminished sense of what's known as interoception. And interoception is your ability to say, oh, I have to go to the bathroom, right. I'm having an emotion. I'm whatever it is. And if you have a lowered sense of interoception, you are more likely to burn out because you don't respond to your needs, you don't notice that you have needs, and you're often more clued into other people's needs. And this is a caregiver thing too, right? You're so focused on what their needs are that you self neglect just by association. And so you're more likely to burn out in that scenario. But the interesting thing is when you work on those things intentionally, that part of your brain starts to innervate again. The neural connections improve. And when they do, when your levels of interoception improve because you're actually working on them, you know what else happens which is like, like, so this should, this is mind boggling and like so magical. And this is why I love the human body. You automatically get better at emotional regulation without talking to a therapist, without doing anything else. If you focus for the next 30 days on peeing when you need to pee to pee, your emotional regulation will improve.
• 30:56
  Speaker A: Your emotional regulation will pay you back in spades. That is like I hope, I really, I hope you make your billion dollars on pee when you need to pee.
• 31:03
  Speaker B: I've been trying to get a TED Talk and nobody will take me.
• 31:06
  Speaker A: Well, we're going to make something like that happen. I'm not kidding you. Because that is so powerful, because of what it gives you in return. So many things, the input doesn't equal the output or it doesn't give you what you need. And this, what you're saying is that acknowledging and being present to what your basic need is is actually going to pay you back in an emotionally greater capacity.
• 31:30
  Speaker B: And health wise. And health wise, yeah, it's not good.
• 31:34
  Speaker A: Hold your pee.
• 31:35
  Speaker B: Yeah. And it's not good to not drink when you're thirsty and ignore your hunger. Right. Like all of those things. So health wise you're going to, physically you're going to get better, but emotionally you're going to get better too. And the trick about it is you're not likely to notice that you're improving because as your emotional regulation improves, you don't realize how crappy it was two months ago.
• 31:53
  Speaker A: You don't realize that you're less stressed. You don't realize you're less reactionary to things.
• 31:57
  Speaker B: No, you feel a little Better and you move on.
• 31:59
  Speaker A: Right.
• 32:00
  Speaker B: You're not clued into that and you're not supposed to be.
• 32:03
  Speaker A: Right, right, right.
• 32:05
  Speaker B: Like you're supposed to just be able to enjoy being in a better state without analyzing everything all the time. So you just go with it.
• 32:13
  Speaker A: Pee when you need to pee. Times the instant mentality.
• 32:16
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 32:17
  Speaker A: Do the one thing.
• 32:18
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 32:19
  Speaker A: Get up and pee.
• 32:20
  Speaker B: There's literally nothing more important. So this, I think you have to. This, this foundational self care is part of everything. It's part of being a parent. It's part of being a special needs parent. It's part of being burnt out. It's part of being everything. Like everyone. I don't know anybody that doesn't need to do this.
• 32:35
  Speaker A: Right, right.
• 32:38
  Speaker B: And once you do those things, you'll be able to clue into more easily which other things you would find nourishing. Because if you try to find nourishment when your baseline is self neglect. Your bucket has too many holes in it. What was the song from when we were younger? There's a Hole in the Bucket.
• 33:01
  Speaker A: Great song. I need to incorporate that song.
• 33:03
  Speaker B: Like there was a hole. There's a hole in your bucket. So you can pour all of the blowouts into it that you want. And of course that's not going to work. And I think this is the nuance that's missing from the conversation online. Like you're correct that if the, the whole. The bucket has holes in it. You can get 87 massages a week. It won't change anything. Yeah, but you don't. You don't. You fill the holes by doing this super simple, basic thing.
• 33:34
  Speaker A: It's the deep breath. One deep breath is amazingly. Yeah.
• 33:39
  Speaker B: When you notice that your chest is tight and you're holding your breath, that's your interoception. Your jaw is clenched. Then you take the breath. That's an appropriate response. Now you're building your emotional resilience.
• 33:55
  Speaker A: If you were to give three directives, three very basic directives to a special needs mom whose day to day is chock full of therapies and appointments and consultations and IEPs, and their stress is so focused on the development of their child and they don't know when those pangs of exhaustion and burnout are going to come. What are the three things that they can use in the moment that would take less than 30 seconds to do?
• 34:31
  Speaker B: Pee when you need to pee is number one. The next one. I'm going to break your rule a little bit because it takes less than 30 seconds. Eventually it doesn't take less than 30 seconds. In the beginning we didn't talk about this, but this is a huge key to most of my work, which is make sure you are keeping track of. You're repeating resentments because those resentments will tell you every single time that you have self neglected and crossed your own boundary. So this is really less than 30 seconds when you're in the flow and you feel it pop up and then you can say, oh, I need to pay myself back. Oh, I need to do this differently next time.
• 35:11
  Speaker A: The muscle has been trained. Yeah.
• 35:13
  Speaker B: So it can't. It is quick later, but it's not quick in the beginning. So pee when you need to pee. Pay attention to resentment and give your and find a way, whatever way that is for you to create grace. That could be one deep breath. That could be closing your eyes for 10 seconds. That could be turning your body away from the situation just to create a barrier. That could be. There's a lot of different ways to do it, but P. Resentment and grace.
• 35:41
  Speaker A: I love it. P. Resentment and Grace is now the title of our episode.
• 35:46
  Speaker B: It's me in a nutshell.
• 35:47
  Speaker A: Love it. I love it, I love it. And get yourself a good pair of glasses too. Where are mine?
• 35:54
  Speaker B: I was going to.
• 35:55
  Speaker A: I was going to try to. I was going to try to be with you today. But you know. Yes. Makes me so happy. It makes me so happy. You know what? Not to be, not to add humor, but maybe you are on the spectrum because you're collecting things. Mine are coffee mugs. You know, people like.
• 36:16
  Speaker B: Oh, I collect coffee mugs too.
• 36:17
  Speaker A: Why, Sarah? I don't know. It makes me feel really good.
• 36:21
  Speaker B: And you know why I collect coffee mugs? Honestly? Because on different days I want a different sensation in my hand and I have to have an arrangement of mugs so that I can't have all the same mug. Because I want a different feeling in my hand on a different day. And I don't know when I wake up in the morning what feeling I'm going to want in my hand until I am pouring the coffee and I'm choosing a mug and I'm thinking, oh, this is how I want my hands to feel today.
• 36:42
  Speaker A: What are your favorite three coffee mugs?
• 36:45
  Speaker B: I have one that we got in Prince Edward island that is like an older style, like a short fat with like a big fat handle. I have one that's taller that my all four fingers fit through. So that feels comforting to me. And I have one that looks like, like a plastic cup that had hot liquid poured into it and like kind of crinkled, you know, and your. Your hand fits in the crinkle. So it's just. It's when I want just like a half a coffee and it's. It doesn't have a handle. It's just a little crinkle where your fingers go. But sometimes I want that one. So those are my top three.
• 37:25
  Speaker A: I love that yours. You had nothing about what was on them. It was about the structure of the mug.
• 37:31
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 37:32
  Speaker A: Mine are more visual. And what this they say. My one is, you're doing a great job, sweetie. That my boyfriend got me. That feels like a warm hug, you know?
• 37:45
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 37:46
  Speaker A: The other one is life is better in Maine. Yes. Because I love coastal summers.
• 37:50
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 37:51
  Speaker A: And the. In one of my. And my last one is for the moment, where I know the day is going to be rough. And it says jag off on it. Which jag off is Pittsburgh Ease for like, don't be a jag off. Like, don't be a jerk today. And, you know, those are the three that I gravitate to so much. Thank you, Kate Donovan, for this incredibly vulnerable, amazing conversation that your way to help others and your. The audience that you serve permeates beyond special needs parenting and special needs motherhood and the population of parents in general. This is for individuals. It's a lens of life. And I appreciate you and your work so much. So very much.
• 38:32
  Speaker B: Right.
• 38:33
  Speaker A: Thank you, Kate. Jonathan.
• 38:34
  Speaker B: Thank you, Sarah.
• 38:35
  Speaker A: Next time on Instagram.