Latest / Outside Issues / Trump’s “FFF”: Austerity and Trauma

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Trump’s “FFF”: Austerity and Trauma · Outside Issues

• 0:02
  Speaker A: I really want to keep hitting this theme of, on cultural and interpersonal levels like that. Thinking much more frankly about being more compassionate, more appealing, you know, getting rid of all the toxic and the endless bifurcation. And then on the flip side, when we're thinking about power and politics, really getting much more ruthless. Welcome to outside issues with Audrey and Patrick. The big news in America at the moment is Trump's big beautiful bill. Yep, that trouble B Before we started, I heard a quote by Grover Norquist, who's this big conservative firebrand, and I think the quote was, all I need is a president who can hold a pen. I don't think many of Trump's ideas are his own. I think that he's just rubber stamping would have been longtime Republican priorities. And the clawing back of support from government for the working poor, for the elderly, for children, basically just upward transfer of wealth in its most complete and savage form. That's what this bill represents.
• 1:10
  Speaker B: It's another lethal hit to our society.
• 1:14
  Speaker A: I believe there was a tax cut bill in Trump's first term and it was his signature legislative accomplishment, but opposed to the big beautiful bill. It had no major spending cuts, the tax cuts, but it wasn't really like there wasn't subtracting that money as severely from the public coffers as this one is. I complain loudly and often about Biden, but when you look at his bills, the signature bills from his administration, the American rescue plan, which was the first big one after Covid, and then there was the Chips and Science act and the inflation Reduction Act. Those had some investment in human infrastructure, as they call it. It may not have gone as far as we would have liked into some of the public spending and investing in people and lifting people up out of, out of misery. But these bills and all of their insufficiencies is like a much different thing than this Republican bill, which is just, it's going to help private prisons out a lot. It's going to help policing as institution and ICE and the military, it's going to help out billionaires and the millionaires. But like very, the amount of people that this legislation will benefit is vanishingly small amount compared to like the amount of people that it'll immiserate. So yeah, it's, it's a 13 times increase to the annual budget for ICE. 13 times. So giving them more latitude to do the detentions essentially. I mean, what we've been seeing, kidnapping people on the streets, racially pro racial profiling determined by mass gunmen and throw people into vans, it's essentially Trump's Gestapo. And at the same time, more than 13 million people are going to be thrown off their health care as a result of the Medicaid cuts. So at the same time, you're taking away people's health care, you're taking where their food stamps, otherwise known as snap. You're also using ICE basically to kind of get around constitutional limitations that other kind of law enforcement divisions have to operate under. The Medicaid cuts will lead to hospital closures and many of those in rural, rural areas. I've heard it described as a hospital apocalypse, which is ominous. I really want to get more into your neck of the woods and some of your, the ways that you try to ameliorate one day at a time with different people, one on one. Some of the wreckage caused by the public policy we're discussing here. It's this absolute wrecking ball to millions and millions of people living in America depending on government to help to sustain them. There's going to be a lot of death and there's going to be a lot of immiseration of human beings as a result of this. And when the elections arrive, I suppose we'll be able to, able to exercise some agency there on the show. We're going to keep encouraging people towards, towards protest and towards mutual aid and towards using the bully pulpit, using your voice as much as you can, and in collaboration with other people to at the very least educate others. So none of this happens in the dark. This is a time for anger and indignation and moaning and groaning.
• 4:14
  Speaker B: So last time I was speaking about neutrality and how it does have its place in, in this situation and in like all political situations. But when it comes to this, when it comes to life and death of marginalized folks and even some, like, upper middle class folks, I'm sorry, middle class folks, it still is. I, I cannot be neutral on this. I actually have a, I have a coach that I work with. Like, I have a therapist and then I have a coach. So to me, I don't know, therapists, we get a little bit judgy when we say coach, like life coach. But I do have like a coach who helps me with emotional stuff and then I also have my therapist who helps me with my mental illness, which I don't remember mentioning on last week, last week's show, which was bipolar one with psychotic features. So I deal more with that with her.
• 5:24
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 5:25
  Speaker B: But with my coach, he is very all about becoming neutral to things. And that way, if we become neutral, that means we can be Unconditional love. And you know, who, who, who doesn't want unconditional love in the world, Right?
• 5:45
  Speaker A: But it would be nice.
• 5:47
  Speaker B: It would be nice, but. And it's achievable, I think, but in this type of climate, we cannot have neutrality because people think neutral. Okay? I, I don't get into this stuff. I don't get into politics, yada, yada, yada. And like I was saying before, like, therapists will help their clients just, you know, hide under the blanket, turn the TV off. I think that's harmful. And I think that using an angry voice and really calling it out, what it is, which is lethal, horrendous. All of the curse words like fucking, fuck, fuck. Right?
• 6:33
  Speaker A: Fuckity, fuck, fuck.
• 6:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, Just complete. Like the big beautiful bill is actually fuck, fuck, fuck.
• 6:39
  Speaker A: One of my friends on Twitter, she said, talk to a guy standing outside the grocery store just now who said no one had said anything or given anything to him all day, except one person who asked him how he had money to paint his nails but not to buy food. This country makes me sick. I had an interaction with a woman at an intersection out here in LA last week. She said that her Social Security never came, which we're hearing about now, and she was out there just asking for grocery cards. The chain of events, right, is that there is the powerlessness that we feel and that we're taught, right? It kind of morphs into apathy because we can't really, like, stand in the presence of how little we can help others for too long without finding some way to, like, naturalize that into the unjust way that things are. It's the natural state, and I'm just going to kind of accommodate myself to that rather than to stay in struggle and to really try and. And help people out. And I just kind of threw those out there because, like, there's a lot of other news and we'll recommend a lot of it that can kind of get people plugged in to kind of like, what's happening in politics and in the day to day. But I think if we could just kind of paint a picture, like a psychic picture, what these events are kind of doing to people and what they're doing to the heart and the soul. And, like, these are the things that through recovery and better mental health, that's where I think these worlds kind of intersect, because people are all kinds of fucked up because they're broke and because we live under a system that prioritizes profit over human beings.
• 8:08
  Speaker B: That makes me think, when you're working with kids under 18. The Adverse Childhood experiences test that you take as an adult. When you're working with teens or with children, you have to be very attuned to the experiences that they're having at home. One of which I think is really important is you didn't have adequate housing or food or water, et cetera, et cetera, or clothing. That's a big one. Then Kaiser Permanente came out with, like I just mentioned, the ACEs test, which you take after you're 18 years old. And it's a 10 question, sort of like yes or no. So the more points, the more yeses that you get, the more susceptible you'll be to trauma, addiction, mental illness, what have you in the future as an adult. I've done this test with multiple clients of mine, even clients, because the clientele I have are not the ones that I'm used to. I suppose coming from la, I work with a lot of Amazon and Microsoft employees, as you can probably guess, because it's a big hub here.
• 9:35
  Speaker A: Right. It's like if you were working in San Francisco, it'd be similar. You'd be working all the tech people.
• 9:40
  Speaker B: Exactly. But still, some, some children, like adult children of folks who worked at those companies, maybe when they first started out or when everything, the corporate, the corporate taste started to get into the taste buds or whatever you have it, they have high scores and they have severe mental illnesses there. And one in particular that is caused by severe childhood trauma is borderline Personality Disorder. And that disorder is very stigmatized, is the, probably the most stigmatized disorder out there. But aside from schizophrenia and schizo, Schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder, because it's not, it's not a disorder where, oh, okay, that this person has lost their mind. They're in psychosis, they can't help it.
• 10:42
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 10:42
  Speaker B: Borderline Personality disorder is something that you have to treat yourself because of your own behavior. It has things to do with relationships, like going completely distant from a relationship or clinging on to a relationship. And this is because their parents never gave them specific, like love or attention or they were in, in a, in a situation of less means and therefore their parents weren't able to give them the love and attention and emotional regulation that they have. So we have adults and now who have this disorder and they're, they're suffering. They're very. It's, it's. I, I read somewhere on Reddit, but I don't know if Reddit's a good thing, because whenever I post, Reddit is kind of an to me.
• 11:39
  Speaker A: Oh really? It's. Well, it's not nothing. None of these things are inherently bad, I don't think, for the most part.
• 11:44
  Speaker B: Right. Yeah. Like, I don't know. I. So.
• 11:46
  Speaker A: And what you do with it.
• 11:48
  Speaker B: Right, yeah. On Reddit I saw like to a question, what's the most painful mental disorder could, that you could have? And somebody said borderline personality disorder because it's all emotion all of the time. So it's a lot of mood swings, it's a lot of anger outbursts, and it's all stemming from fear of abandonment because also a parent could have been incarcerated. That's another question that the ACE score asks. Has person in your family been incarcerated? Have, have you not had means to live? And of course, all of those sort of physical entities can lead up to the, the, the actions that are really traumatic, such as sexual abuse, domestic violence, all of that. And so I do see a lot of trauma in adult children of folks who have means. But you know, I am used to working with folks who have, who are low on the economic status scale. And so it's been really interesting trying to navigate what type of trauma adults of means have and trying to teach them that, you know, you deserved nurturing, you deserved attention, you deserve to express your emotions, but you weren't taught to or you were told that, you know, you getting angry is bad or being sad is like not masculine. Just don't be a. Somebody said to me, a client said to me that his dad said to him if he started to cry and he was 5.
• 13:40
  Speaker A: So it's probably learned it from his dad.
• 13:44
  Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Intergenerational. I don't know if this is a, this is actually kind of a fun. Well, not fun, but interesting fact about trauma, intergenerational trauma, is that you have, say you have a woman who's pregnant and she goes through a traumatic event and she's pregnant with a girl, and then the girl who has developing eggs is going to be the next daughter, is going to be the next woman in the generation. And so physically that trauma will be passed down to that granddaughter. And that's where you see a lot of, a lot of intergenerational trauma. Sometimes inherited bipolar disorder, inherited schizophrenia.
• 14:37
  Speaker A: It's, it's a body keeps the score type thing.
• 14:40
  Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah, we call, we call the body keeps the score of the Bible. At least I do.
• 14:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. I haven't read it, but I hear about it from all kinds of people.
• 14:50
  Speaker B: I recommend it to every single one of my clients and every. Luckily, every single one of my clients has read it and they have this revelation and they're like, oh my God, this is, this is exactly how I feel. How did I not know this before? And I'm like, well, you know, the body keeps a score.
• 15:10
  Speaker A: So you had trauma of your own and probably your career and your fascination with the underlying mechanisms of trauma. It all came from a very personal place. Right.
• 15:20
  Speaker B: As I've shared with you. But it's kind of niche in the Seattle area. This radio station called C895. I was talking about Ted and dating violence which I experienced. It has a lot to do with isolation as, as a teen and telling you that your friends are stupid or that your friends don't like you. It's a thing that people don't really understand. And for me, I was in a teen dating, violent dating, violent relationship myself. And this is where I developed an eating disorder at the time. When I was in high school, my ex boyfriend told me that if I didn't stay at a hundred pounds then he would dump me. So I obeyed. I didn't know any better because quite frankly, I was taught that if you don't do what you are asked to do, then you're, then you're going to get abandoned or you're going to get punished or whatever. So I did that. And it lasted, you know, the effects lasted very, very, very long, up until my adult life. Then I want to say in 2014, I remember specifically well, I graduated from UCLA with my bachelor's in art history of all things in 2010. And then I went into it, the job market, which was not, not very good.
• 16:58
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 17:00
  Speaker B: So I ended up working at hotels essentially. And I wasn't interested in art at all. I clearly, I just really wanted the BA for music, which is valid.
• 17:12
  Speaker A: I went to a state school. I like yours better than mine. I'll trade if you want.
• 17:17
  Speaker B: Mine was hard. So I, you know, I graduated into this horrible recession working in hotels. At some point I ramped up my drug use and my alcohol use. My drug and alcohol use started in 2008 actually when I contracted mono.
• 17:37
  Speaker A: I got that recently, like a couple years ago. It sucks.
• 17:40
  Speaker B: It sucks so bad.
• 17:42
  Speaker A: I don't know how I got it, by the way, because it wasn't. I was in a monogamous relationship.
• 17:45
  Speaker B: So, so, so was I. I know exactly how I got it and it's because of my boyfriend's roommates hummus. He had it like, like my boyfriend's roommate had hummus. And then I ate some of it and then I Got mono. And apparently my. My boyfriend. My college boyfriend at the time, he didn't. He had already had it, so he wasn't affected. But since I have sort of like, an underlying kidney situation that's. Yeah, I said inherited. They were very worried that I would develop something serious. And I was in a lot of pain. And so this was 2009, and they prescribed me Vicoprofen, which I don't know exists anymore, like Vicodin and ibuprofen together.
• 18:34
  Speaker A: I've never had the pleasure, but.
• 18:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, right, right, right. Hydrocodone, oxycodone, and codeine. So they prescribed all of those to me, and as soon as I took that first oxycodone, I was like, I'm in love. Not with anything else, but this pill.
• 18:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. It really did seem to fix everything at first.
• 18:58
  Speaker B: Didn't I like to say that my reality was enhanced? Like, as opposed to hallucinogenics, where you change your reality? I just like my reality to be enhanced. So I, like, my reality was enhanced. And I was like, oh, I love this feeling. It's. I feel. I feel everything I've always wanted to feel. I feel beautiful, I feel fun. I feel exciting. I feel smart. And, of course, it just went downhill from there up until, you know, 20. I'm now forgetting the 2016.
• 19:37
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:38
  Speaker B: For a second, I forgot my sober date.
• 19:40
  Speaker A: So you always. I can always tie that to Trump, because that was around the time that you got sober. So maybe I can foresee a time when I'll forget your year, but I'll never forget the era.
• 19:51
  Speaker B: God. Yeah. Thank God. I mean. I mean, I can. I can say that Obama was president when I got sober, just for a very brief time around 2014. Well, specifically Christmas Day of 2014. I have a friend who was like, hey, I heard of a party going on in Hermosa Beach, California, as you know, at this guy's house. Why don't you come on over? And I was like, I'm having a bad day. I just want to stay home. And she's like, there's coke. And I was like, okay, I'm there.
• 20:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, Actually, my schedule just cleared up.
• 20:31
  Speaker B: Yeah, I was like, yeah, never mind. I'm right there. So I go to this house. There's this man, and he's 15 years older than me. And since I have trauma around my father, I could go into full, you know, like, Freud mode right now.
• 20:49
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 20:50
  Speaker B: I'm not. I. I was very, like, enticed by this guy. And so we did A line of coke, but the coke turned out not to be coke, turned out to be meth, and. Oh, yeah. And so then after that, the meth pipes came out. And I don't know if you've. You're familiar with a meth pipe. It's like a.
• 21:15
  Speaker A: No, I never really explored that much, but I hear it's. Yeah. Intense.
• 21:19
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's like a. It's like a little circle. It's like a ball. Like a ball.
• 21:22
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I have seen Breaking Bad, though, so. Yeah.
• 21:25
  Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So if you watch Breaking Bad, you'll see everything that has to do with meth. That was my life for two years was Breaking Bad drugs and meth specifically. It ruins lives. You know, I. I often. I often make the comparison that, like, opiates are. Are angels dressed as. Or the devil dressed as angels, and then meth is just the devil. Yeah.
• 21:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. It's unadorned. Just the. The. The raw scariness of it.
• 22:01
  Speaker B: Oh, it's terrifying. And. But it feels so good because you can do anything. You feel superhuman. And this guy was like, hey, if you keep seeing me, I'll keep getting you drugs. And my addicted ass was like, oh, of course. Like, let's keep doing this together. And plus, you're 15 years older than me, and I think you're attractive. So, like, let's. Let's date. So we dated. We did method. The most unfortunate part is that he had a son who was nine years old at the time. And I remember seeing his son walk through the. The room that everybody was doing drugs in, and I. I. I was just, like, saddened by that. In. In hindsight, a lot of that, I can maybe go into a different episode on. But there. Yeah. That. That child was very important to me.
• 22:59
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 23:01
  Speaker B: So I got addicted to meth. I got into a relationship with this person. And like I said, with teen dating violence, it's the same thing. You've. The first. There's a cycle, there's the honeymoon period, the tension period, and then the. Then the explosive period I was first showered with. The honeymoon period. You're so beautiful. You're so perfect. I'm not. For some reason, he said, I'm not getting any younger, so I want you to have my children. And I was, like, enticed by that. Of course.
• 23:39
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 23:41
  Speaker B: And everything seemed perfect until one day, we. He. And he had lost his housing because he got. He tested positive for meth at his job at Shell. Yeah. I think he was an engineer or something. That. He's a very smart guy. But very stupid on. On the surface, which he continues to be, I hear.
• 24:07
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 24:09
  Speaker B: So he. He and I were kind of moving around in motels, you know, kind of the. Like. Like on Breaking Bad. Like the kind of housing situations that you find yourself into when. When you're.
• 24:23
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because you had to. To sustain the other thing. Yeah.
• 24:25
  Speaker B: Yeah. And there was one. There was one moment that. That I remember clearly. He was on his computer trying to find a job or something, and I was taking a shower, and I couldn't reach the conditioner, and the. In the shower, and I was like, hey, can you help me reach the conditioner? And he turned bright red. He started screaming at me and said, how could you be so selfish? I'm trying to find a job so we can live, and you're asking me get some conditioner? How selfish you are. You're a. And so from then on, I obeyed him as much as I could. And of course, the. The cycle would go on and on, on and on, however he was. And maybe we can talk about this different on a different time, but he was a malignant narcissist, and so he rarely did the honeymoon period with me. He would never say he was sorry for, you know, physical, emotional, mental abuse. He abused me financially as well, and he abused me sexually. And that relationship was completely. It was the trauma of my life, and it's what made me come into this field because I was so terrorized. And I think on my. My C89.5 interview, I said that one day a social worker came by to check, I think, on him or his kid or something like that. But she saw me, and I was kind of in this. This, like, state of, like, my. My. My pupils were dilated as.
• 26:18
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 26:19
  Speaker B: And I was like, help me, help me. Like, she. She couldn't do anything because, you know, there was no child in time. And, you know, when you're a mandated reporter, you can only report, like, if a child is in danger or an elder person over 65 is in danger. So. But it was just me, and I was 27. Another thing that ties to what we're talking about with the Trump administration is that I got pregnant by this man, and in this situation, I really wanted to have this child because I felt like in this chaos and this horrible chaos, I would have just somebody, something that was mine that. That would love me unconditionally because I wasn't getting anything unconditional. But he forced me to get an abortion. And, you know, his. His line was, you're too stupid to have children. And so sort of like reverse. It was a white man telling me what to do with my body, what to do with my pregnancy. So kind of backwards. In hindsight, I'm definitely glad that I went through with that abortion, but at the time it was, it was devastating because I wanted to have that child because I was so terrified and I.
• 27:52
  Speaker A: You just wanted some, some redeeming development to come out of all that, right?
• 27:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 27:58
  Speaker A: That incident with the conditioner to when you finally were able to let go of him for good. About how long was that window?
• 28:06
  Speaker B: About two years.
• 28:07
  Speaker A: Probably felt like an eternity, huh?
• 28:09
  Speaker B: It was an eternity. I left him a couple of times. And a statistic about domestic violence that I always, always try to promote is that it takes seven on average, seven times for somebody to leave their partner before they leave for good. So I left him three times. I left to my parents house, I left to a friend's house. I would just, just go somewhere. But in the back of my mind I was like, I love him. He. He loves me. We're a family. And you know, that's just what you think when you're manipulated into a domestic violence relationship and they have control over you, they've got your, their hooks in you. So I eventually left in 2016 and I, I think I mentioned that the death of my, my ex boyfriend, Adam is what got me out of that relationship. Because I wanted to go to a place which was a rehab that we had met in. I somehow was able to convince the intake team to take me on. I was like, I'm addicted to meth and I, you know, I need to, I need, I need help and I have ptsd and they're like, oh, okay, like, we'll take you today. And so I, I called my dad really quick and my dad just flew me down to this rehab, to this inpatient facility. And from then I remember, and something about this relationship too was that I was not allowed to talk to other people. If I was, if I was talking to somebody else, that means I was attracted to them and I would cheat on him. So I couldn't. Like anytime a, a male like was walking by us, I had to look down really.
• 30:04
  Speaker A: In the, in the long term relationship you were in? Yeah.
• 30:06
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 30:07
  Speaker A: That, that was the rule. You couldn't associate with.
• 30:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, I couldn't associate with anybod. Even women. Oh, you're attracted to women. Which, which I am now that I figured out. But in that, in that case, it was just like I couldn't talk to people. I was isolated from people and that's isolation. Isolation is a big thing with domestic violence.
• 30:29
  Speaker A: That's what I hear. Yeah. It's part of the MO Is that you just kind of close them off from everybody. Except.
• 30:36
  Speaker B: I remember getting into this inpatient facility sitting. Sitting in this. On this, like. In this table, like, situation with a ton of people. And I remember feeling this. This feeling like I hadn't felt in years. Like I can talk to people.
• 30:52
  Speaker A: Yeah. Must have been nice, huh?
• 30:54
  Speaker B: It was the most bizarrely nice thing that I've ever experienced. Like, I can talk to somebody. I can talk to somebody who's a man. Oh, my God. And from then on, that's when I got sober, and that's when the recovery started. But it, you know, meth had me hooked pretty bad.
• 31:14
  Speaker A: I'm so glad you survived. Are you. Do you get along with your parents these days or how's. How are things?
• 31:19
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 31:20
  Speaker A: Because, I mean, your dad, I'm. That's just amazing. He did do that solid and flee out there. And I get so happy when I hear about, like, parents coming through for their kids when in their addiction struggles. That's not guaranteed. Some parents, they just don't deal with it. It's a lot to ask, but it.
• 31:35
  Speaker B: Is a lot to ask. So I. I mean. I mean, I'm on good dorms with my parents. I go down to California like a couple times a year. I talk to my mom quite a bit. We're just sort of.
• 31:49
  Speaker A: You must have not completely disappeared, even despite all of that. That's what drugs do is they become totalizing. I don't know. The people who survive their addictions somehow managed to not be completely claimed by that.
• 32:01
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 32:02
  Speaker A: And. Yeah. And you're here and you're helping other people too.
• 32:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, I late. I later learned that once a week, I feel there was like a summit between four of my close girlfriends of Is Audrey alive? Like, let's. Let's search online or let's drive by the apartment she's been taken hostage in.
• 32:26
  Speaker A: To see the Is Audrey Alive Summit.
• 32:29
  Speaker B: Audrey Alive Summit. Yeah. Yeah. Not to be confused with the beer summit with Obama, but completely.
• 32:39
  Speaker A: They're on the same day. But that's just a coincidence.
• 32:41
  Speaker B: Exactly. So there's a summit to see if I was alive or not. Like, that's some serious shit.
• 32:49
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 32:51
  Speaker B: So that's. That's my story of trauma. And from then on, I decided I wanted to be a social worker that works with primarily folks who have trauma. Ptsd. There's something, you know, ptsd, obviously, post traumatic stress disorder. And then there's complex Post Traumatic Stress disorder, which a lot of people have, and that is not in the dsm. And complex, complex PTSD is a series of traumatic events going on for years and years and years, such as child abuse or even, you know, connecting it to this bill, childhood trauma from not being able to get means or medical care or shelter.
• 33:35
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, the. I, I heard a stat in regards to this bill that like more than 10 million. And I'm just, I'm sure it's a low ball figure. I mean, it's, it's insane. Like, when I first heard, tens of millions of people are going to just lose their health insurance. And the vast majority of those who will lose their Medicaid as a result of the cuts in this bill, they can't afford to go private. So it's not a question of, well, their options will just narrow. It's like, no, their options will evaporate. And people need health care. People need health care. It's not. People are definitely trying to kind of use poultices and eat the right things, go carnivore or whatever, go buy some Ivermectin. But the truth is that this is really gonna kill a lot of people. And if we're about nothing else on the show, keeping people alive, keeping people in the game long enough so that they can attend to their emotional problems.
• 34:27
  Speaker B: Right. Yeah. And here we accept Medicaid, and I'm sure that some of our clientele are going to have to stop seeing us. And when you have a relationship with a therapist, you're able to be vulnerable and talk about what's going on and get some advice, sometimes just even sit there and say nothing. Be there. And a lot of people are going to be losing that. And from what now you're telling me Medicare as well? We have some Medicare. We're taking, we're taking on some Medicare cases even though we're in a. An affluent sort of situation where, like corporation, which I'm not the proudest of, but, you know, I'm just proud to help who I can. And I'm heartbroken to hear that some of our Medicaid patients and our Medicare patients will not be able to see us anymore.
• 35:29
  Speaker A: The best I've been able to come up with in light of all this is until such time as we can collectively act to change the system to be more humane and to kind of like put some of Humpty Dumpty back together again. Just. And every day, we just need to be looking for opportunities to step in and to kind of help people out. And, like, I don't have a ton of money, but when I do have extra, I give. And I think that that just needs to be like, a regular practice for anybody who learned about this bill and just felt that pang in their heart that I can tell this is just going to be ruinous, and there's going to be a lot of. A lot more sick and suffering people out there until such time as we can act collectively. Collectively act individually and just do. Even if it's the smallest thing, just give people rides, get people's Venmo, send them a few bucks, buy people groceries. Just do whatever you can. Positive action makes a ripple outwards.
• 36:24
  Speaker B: Right.
• 36:25
  Speaker A: And I think that over time, and if enough people do it, things do change or things do move just because. And the reason I know that is because the negative has a tendency to do that as well.
• 36:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, and there's one day, there was. I was driving home from work in Seattle, and there's a guy asking for. I think he was just asking for anything. And for some reason, I had a box of donuts. I just gave him the donuts, and I was like, I. I'm so sorry. I don't have any money, but I have this box of donuts. Is this okay? And he was so happy. And I was like, cool. All right. I made somebody stay with some donuts.
• 37:04
  Speaker A: I really, honestly, I really do feel like there's more people out there like you than there are the people that just voted for this bill. Our government represents some people, but it doesn't represent most people. And I think that's, like, the inherent problem. And it was what gives me hope. Right. Because if. If. If what we're seeing right now is just a reflection, I wouldn't be even trying with this podcast. I would just draw into myself or, I don't know, go. Go hard into hedonism or whatever it is. But. But I do feel. I do feel like there is something here really worth redeeming. And there's something here that's just. It's an error that can be fixed. It's not. This is not the natural state that we're witnessing. This is. Something is wrong in the matrix.
• 37:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, this is a huge glitch.
• 37:47
  Speaker A: Rugged individualism taken to its logical conclusion. To the extent that the people supportive of this kind of thing aren't sadists and that the outcome isn't something that they're specifically gunning for. Because there are a few of those rattling around, I think others just operate under the assumption that, well, hey, I got mine and I figured it out and it's incumbent on each person to kind of figure it out for themselves. And if they don't, then that's a reflection of their personal failings and it's not my problem. And I think that's what it is. I don't see the world that way.
• 38:17
  Speaker B: So, yeah, I think a lot of. I'm seeing a lot of stuff relating to voters for Trump who are now regretting it. I mean, I don't want to be mean or anything, but if you voted for people to lose their. Any type of privilege, any type of human right, then. And sometimes you happen. You happen to be one of those people. Look what happened. Yeah, it's sad.
• 38:49
  Speaker A: Yeah. If we don't just kind of sullenly accept this is the natural state, that there will be some knitting together, and I hope I'm alive to see it. What we're looking at now is like kind of a generational tide shift.
• 39:02
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 39:02
  Speaker A: I'm going to be very old and we're still going to be hearing about it. That's not a signal for us to do nothing or to just lie down and take it. I mean, you just. We just got to be in movement towards the positive. But to make that positive moment, we need to recognize where we are and name it, to claim it.
• 39:17
  Speaker B: Right. And I've always sort of held the. Held the belief that as soon as the boomers sort of dinosaur off, then people of our age, like, you know, elder millennials first will come in Gen X. Will come in Gen X. I can't even pinpoint what they feel because some of them, like, we're, like, listening and rage against the machine, and then suddenly they're Trump voters. So I don't really know. And even Gen Z will start getting into office and we'll start seeing more progression. Even though this election showed that it was maybe something different than we thought. I'm thinking that, you know, by the time we are old, that we'll have a more progressive government than we do now.
• 40:06
  Speaker A: To that point, before we sign off, we should give a shout out to Zoran Mamdani, who. Which is the splash of good news that shouldn't go unremarked in the context of all this. Last time we talked about ICE and some of these, like, really troubling immigration crackdowns. We're talking about the Triple B in this episode. But, yeah, between both of those things, this socialist, Muslim, brilliant young politician won the primary in New York City against Andrew Cuomo. Who's kind of like, couldn't be more representative of like a rotten establishment, you know, multiple sexual assault allegations and killing, you know, or obfuscating the death of elderly people in nursing homes during COVID and, you know, just a bad news guy, but one who, I think he had the endorsement of Bill Clinton and you know, all the kind of like machine conservative Democrats in the city. But anyway, he was able to pull out a win by a significant margin. And of course, this is New York City, this isn't Arkansas or, you know, whatever, you know, it's not Deep Red. So maybe it's not as surprising to some extent. But like, I feel like what, what I keep hearing from a lot of people smarter than me is that this is a blueprint for and a sign of life for kind of like a more human centered politics that doesn't talk down to people and that really has the ability to address people's material needs in a way that like a lot of representatives on the ostensible other side from Trump and the Republicans just haven't been able to get going. Mamdani's win reminds us that we're not crazy. You know, this is actually quite popular and it's all a question of how to implement.
• 41:54
  Speaker B: I'm so excited for him.
• 41:55
  Speaker A: Give us a tease for like, maybe what we might be talking about in the weeks ahead.
• 42:00
  Speaker B: So we might be talking to a fellow clinician of mine, a fellow associate clinician of mine named Ryan Padilla. He is, he is disabled physically and he's a very big advocate for disability rights. And, and just folks who have invisible disabilities or visible disabilities, like, and July is disability awareness Month, and technically I am disabled because I have the mental illness that I have. Just like talking about accommodations and work and school and like honoring those who have, like I said, not only physical disabilities, but invisible disabilities, too.
• 42:50
  Speaker A: Great to see you, Audrey. I'm really glad we're doing this.
• 42:52
  Speaker B: Me too, Patrick.