Healing Trauma through Expressive Writing with Dr. Stacey Hettes

No matter how much we cognitively “know” about how trauma works, none of us are immune from the grip it can have on our capacity to deal with life. Thankfully, there are ways out, and writing is one of them.

Dr. Stacey Hettes knows this firsthand. In spite of her PhD in neuroscience and decades of teaching it to undergraduate students, a tense campus event in 2019 triggered a debilitating post-traumatic stress response tracing all the way back to her childhood experiences of sexual abuse. With the help of her therapist (and eventually a coach), Stacey was able to write her way out of the pit via a gorgeous, heartbreaking, and riveting memoir that was just published this month.

In this lovely conversation, Stacey and I talk about her experiences of writing her way to healing, the neuroscience of trauma, and the value of finding meaning and purpose on the other side of surviving terrible shit.

Listen on Spotify

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Find the episode wherever you listen to podcasts!

Connect with Stacey:

Buy her book! Dispatches from the Couch: A Neuroscientist and Her Therapist Conspire to Reboot Her Brain

Visit her website

Follow her on Instagram @staceyhetteswrites 

Resources, References, and Links

Note: book recommendations include affiliate links. If you buy a copy, I’ll get a tiny commission, and that would be super cool.

Book a free chemistry call with me!

Questions Stacey offers as reflection prompts for reflecting on therapy sessions:

• What were the emotions I was feeling?
• What were the reasons behind those emotions?
• What are the experiences? What are the memories?
• What do I think this is all about?

Excellent book on expressive writing and the science of its benefits: Opening Up by Writing It Down by James W. Pennebaker and Joshua M. Smyth

Great Huberman Lab episode on journaling protocols for healing trauma.

Melissa Walker – Heydey Coaching.

Julie Day, spiritual counselor and podcast guest on episode #33.

Julie Valentine Center for sexual assault and child abuse recovery in Greenville, SC.

CPTSD – Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Here is a great episode about it on Trauma Rewired:

Transcript

Note: this transcript was generated by AI. Please forgive any malapropisms and misspellings. It’s the robot’s fault!

[00:00] Stacey Hettes: So one of the things that was helping me to find my way out of the depression was trying to. To just be a better writer. And I remember the day my therapist said, after I read a piece to her, she just said, would you think about sharing this? I know it’s personal, but what’d you think about it? And I said, who would want to read this? You know, why would anybody want to read this horror story? And she looked me in the eye and she said, Stacey, there are millions. And that was the day I kind of knew that this book had the possibility of having a purpose beyond helping me.

[00:44] Cate Blouke: Welcome to Settling is Bullshit, a sweary podcast about claiming your joy. If you are craving healthier boundaries, a greater sense of purpose, or an increased capacity to feel at ease in your own skin, then you are in the right place, my friend. I’m your host, Cate Blouke, joy activist and life coach to smart and sensitive humans. I’m here to offer you practical tools and playful encouragement to step forward and be your most awesome self. My hope is that each episode will leave you feeling a bit more empowered to make brave choices and claim your joy. 

Hello, my dear. We have got another episode about trauma today. Yay! But no, seriously, it’s so good. I’m having a conversation with Dr. Stacey Hettes, one of my former colleagues at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Stacey teaches neuroscience and biology and has just written a memoir about her experience of going through the therapeutic process as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. And man, y’ all, I don’t normally reach for this kind of book, but it is so good. It’s such a good book. I highly recommend it. It’s called Dispatches from the Couch: A Neuroscientist and Her Therapist Conspire to Reboot Her Brain. 

And what I love about the book and about this conversation that you’re about to listen to with Stacey and I is the way it normalizes the inner critic and the shitty things that can happen in our head when we have traumatic experiences early in life. And Stacey’s talking to us as a survivor, as an author who used writing to get to the other side. And you’ll hear us talk about how valuable and helpful it is to just understand that our trauma responses are biological mechanisms that are happening and they’re beyond our control, that it doesn’t matter if you have a PhD in neuroscience like Stacey does. Like, knowing the things doesn’t protect us from the trauma responses that can occur. 

So the book is beautiful. This conversation is beautiful. Stacey also shares a lot about how helpful it was to her to have both therapy and a coach to then help her turn this book into a reality. 

And so she’s going to talk to us a little bit about the neuroscience of trauma. Because, you know, I had a neuroscientist in the room. You knew I was going to ask. But really, this is about the ways in which writing and therapy and doing the work can heal the shit that we think might never heal, right, that it does get better. We might not get perfect, we might not get all the way to the other side, but there’s so much power in sharing our stories and sharing our experiences. 

And I really hope that if you have experience of trauma in your life, that you can get some comfort and validation and normalization out of this conversation. 

And again, I cannot recommend the book highly enough. It’s absolutely beautifully written and provides this kind of magical, to me, insight into, like, what it is like to walk into therapy with something really big and heavy that you need to work through and just what that looks like. 

So if you’re curious about the neuroscience of trauma, if you’re curious about therapy, if you’re curious about coaching, if you just want to hear somebody talk about what it’s like to have gone through really tough stuff and then done the work of healing, then this episode is for you. 

And before we get into it, I also just want to put in a plug that if you are curious about coaching and if you are curious about what it would be like to work with me, specifically because I am a life coach, I’m a fulfillment coach, you can visit my website at http://www.joywalking.life and book a free chemistry call. We can hop on the call for 30 minutes and talk about what’s going on in your life and whether we’d be a good fit. I’d also be super duper grateful if you listen to this episode and like it, if you could share it and leave a review wherever you’re listening to podcasts. So thanks, friends, and I hope you enjoy.

[transition music]

[05:16] Stacey Hettes: Who would have thought. Who would have thought I would ever write a book like this?

[05:19] Cate Blouke: Well, I mean, I’m guessing you didn’t think you would write a book like this. No.

[05:23] Stacey Hettes: No, I did not. I. I never aspired to have a lot of writing in my career.

[05:28] Cate Blouke: So when you were writing this book that you have written, published, did you? How did it start?

[05:37] Stacey Hettes: That’s a. A great question. And out of desperation, I was absolutely flailing. I had started with a therapist in 2019, and so we were Doing, you know, rolling along and really had established ourselves by the pandemic.

[05:56] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[05:57] Stacey Hettes: And so even though we did have to switch to virtual for a while, it didn’t feel necessary. To the book.

[06:03] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[06:04] Stacey Hettes: But what really happened was the book started in 2021.

[06:08] Cate Blouke: Okay.

[06:09] Stacey Hettes: I was on sabbatical and losing my entire structure of, you know, 18 years of academia. And you know what that means. Yeah, just, you know, 10 hour days were normal. And even in the summer, you know, for the. The past few summers, I had been associate provost, so I had really gone to a at least 11 month contract. And so hit my sabbatical in spring of 21 and fell apart. And I was not doing well enough really to make it from one weekly therapy session to the next. My therapist, who I’m gonna call Piper for a conversation. Cause that’s how she’s known in the book. But it still is weird, you know, to call her that. So she hinted several times, you know, Stacey, we could meet more than once a week. And I just refused. Like, that was part of my shame and self loathing. I didn’t think I deserved it. I didn’t deserve more than once a week. I was lucky to have that. And so the one day I was sitting at my desk trying to work on my actual sabbatical project, and I just thought, I really need to see her. I can’t see her for three more days. Why don’t you write as if you’re talking to her?

[07:23] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[07:24] Stacey Hettes: And that was the moment that changed everything. Because those of us who know what it’s like to deal with trauma know that processing it takes repetition. You’ve got to talk about it again and again and again. And those of us who are good friends to the people we care about will listen again and again and again. But when you don’t allow yourself to have that resource or allow your friends to be that resource, you can become that resource for yourself. If you write ugh.

[08:00] Cate Blouke: My whole body just relaxed, like, hearing when we say that. I mean, I had this. I mean, I, I made the little like, ugh noise because I, you know, I know this. I have done a lot of trauma work in my own therapeutic journey. But like, when you, when I hear you say, like, yeah, it just takes a lot of repetition. I’m like, no, I just want to say it once and be done.

[08:25] Stacey Hettes: And your brain in that traumatic state, you know, that sort of limbic system driving the bus state, tends to say, you’re lucky if you give yourself once. Yeah, you have to work up the ability to say, this is worth somebody’s time to hear even once, let alone hear in repetition. And so I started writing dialogues, and it immediately gave me a new tool. And I knew even before the end of that sort of first time sitting and writing, that this was gonna be something that was gonna be useful to me. And so over the next couple days, I started really trying to remember past therapy sessions. And this is a year and a half in at least.

[09:11] Cate Blouke: Okay. That was gonna be one of my questions. So to intro a little bit more to folks who are listening, Stinksy’s book takes the form of, I guess, how would you describe it in terms like, is it dialogue? But basically, you walk through the whole, like, therapeutic process kind of from the early sessions into the later sessions. And that was one of the things when I was reading it, I was like, oh, my God, was she, like, taking notes from session one? This is amazing because it really does this beautiful job of capturing, like, what it is like to crack open the can of worms of trauma for you. It was not by choice that it got cracked open for you, but, like, walking into therapy a mess and, like, just that, like, painful and slow unfolding of the experience of. Of doing the work.

[10:07] Stacey Hettes: Yes. And this is so Piper. I have to be really careful about saying the right name. Cate, Piper is my sixth therapist. So this was not my first time at the rodeo, so to speak. And so then when I started writing, I didn’t realize it was gonna become a book. That was months later. But I realized going back to the beginning could be really helpful. And so I started thinking about what was it like when we were first starting? What did it sound like? What did it feel like? And to be honest, I. I’m blessed and cursed with a pretty good memory. Yeah, I really can remember a lot, even without doing a lot of journaling or diary keeping around therapy and things. And so I didn’t write it sequentially in any way, shape, or form.

[11:00] Cate Blouke: Okay.

[11:01] Stacey Hettes: But as things came up, as I wanted to process something, as I remembered something from, you know, months or weeks or days ago in therapy, I would sit down and try and write it out. And so what you see in the book are chapters organized around sessions, and there’s a lot of dialogue, but those dialogues are not in any way transcripts. So there was no recording going on in the sessions. And I was never taking notes in any way. But I realized as I was writing that it didn’t matter exactly the words most of the time. Every once in a while, the words really mattered. And I worked really hard to sort of get those right. And I would even talk to Piper about, you know, does this sound like the way you would have asked this question? Do you remember asking this question? But what I did was try and find the truth and the lessons and the discoveries of those sessions. And that’s the beauty of what this book did for me, is it reinforced. Just like my students who just graduated and are now getting ready to study for the MCAT or the GREs are going to go back and revisit all those lessons from the classes with me and their other professors. I went back and revisited the lessons we were trying to discover and teach me. And it’s an almost magical outcome.

[12:27] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[12:28] Stacey Hettes: Because it’s so different than any of my other experiences with therapy.

[12:32] Cate Blouke: Yeah. I. I do journal a lot. I have. I have been a journaler for a long time, but this is inspiring me to get a little more intentional about the kind of processing work, you know, so I’m. I’m a life coach. One of the ways that I show up with my clients is I. Is I take notes that I offer to my clients, because I am. Yeah. And it’s really interesting because in the. In the coaching community, there’s, like, a lot of feelings about whether we should be doing that. But if I’m going to write something down, why wouldn’t I share it with my clients?

[13:10] Stacey Hettes: Yeah.

[13:10] Cate Blouke: And because of all of my years of grad school and as a, like, neurodivergent coping mechanism, I am very good at taking notes and staying present.

[13:19] Stacey Hettes: Good.

[13:19] Cate Blouke: And like, when we’re in the moment, in the session, like, we say things that are just amazing, and it’s like, it’s really helpful to. To. To capture that. But, you know, that’s not my experience of therapy. But I’m about to go into another round of kind of doing some trauma work and really thinking about, like, the. The stuff that happens after the session.

[13:47] Stacey Hettes: Yes.

[13:49] Cate Blouke: And not just, like, leaving it behind the, you know, virtual door or literal door. And I’ve been reading a lot lately about the actual kind of scientific study that has. Studies, many, myriad, that have been done about expressive writing and kind of the psychological and physiological benefits of that. And so this is just, like, really timely for me and Juicy. And I’m curious, you know, did you know about that kind of body of research going into this?

[14:23] Stacey Hettes: No, I didn’t really know anything about it. I knew journaling, you know, journaling has been a part of, I mean, the human condition for as long as we could, you know, make marks in Clay tablets. Right. And some of that, I think, was very personal. You know, the archeologist and anthropologists can tell us about that. But what I found with journaling was it was a way for me to get emotions out, and I think that’s important. And I also think that’s why it would not be good for me to be trying to take notes, you know, in a therapy session. Because my academic brain would be like, okay, I’ve got to get this right. And I might be having cognitive thoughts, you know, ideas about this. Don’t want to get sidetracked. 

Because, you know, one of the things we all know that can be hard is tapping into the emotions in the safe space while we have those 50 minutes and really focusing on them. And so the expressive writing after the fact, I think if you can find a way to put that in your structure and your timeframe of the week between, it might be good to have a time where you feel like, okay, I’m asking myself to sort of reflect on the emotions that I was feeling. I’m asking myself to now reflect on what were the reasons behind those emotions, what were the experiences, what are the memories? And then, you know, a third layer to that, I think would be something like, what do I think this is all about? You know, that sort of integrative, putting it all together. 

And that’s where writing the way I did and what eventually became a book really was healing. Because I’m a slow processor. I’m a. Well, I’m a scientist. We like to look over our data again and again and again. Right. And I’m a teacher. I’m really invested in, you know, having this. I’ll go through something with the students until they get it. You know, come to my office, have study sessions, whatever we need.

[16:17] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[16:18] Stacey Hettes: And I found that trying to write with clarity and write so that somebody else could understand what I was reading was actually helping me find the truth.

[16:29] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[16:29] Stacey Hettes: And that was the probably two to three years in. the gift that writing gave me. Because once I had. I mean, I probably had a hundred thousand words. Before I knew it, you know, this all just sort of came pouring out. I had this outlet that I could give myself that didn’t bother anybody else because I was so in that, you know, PTS state of I don’t want anybody to know. I’m ashamed. I’m dealing with this depression I don’t deserve. You know, we all know those horrible messages that our limbic system sends to us when our amygdala takes over.

[17:04] Cate Blouke: Ooh, well, can I pause you there?

[17:07] Stacey Hettes: I figured I should probably have said something before I said that, but, yeah, it’s perfect.

[17:13] Cate Blouke: This is like a nice little, like, we’ll just interrupt and give all of us the, like, intro level rundown on, like, what happens in the brain when we get trauma triggered.

[17:27] Stacey Hettes: So I will first say this is not my area of research expertise.

[17:31] Cate Blouke: Right.

[17:32] Stacey Hettes: But I did get a PhD in neuroscience. I do teach neurobiology, and so I’ve spent a little more time in these waters than most people. And so if we think about our brain kind of in three parts, our basic keep us alive parts, our brain stem, our hypothalamus, are the areas where we get the breathing done. We get the triggers for I’m hungry. Done. We get the triggers for I’m thirsty.

[17:57] Cate Blouke: Done.

[17:57] Stacey Hettes: We monitor our blood pressure, all that good stuff. The middle area of the brain, the limbic system, is the area that really is trying to keep us safe.

[18:08] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Okay. So this is where fight, flight, freeze.

[18:11] Stacey Hettes: Is where the fight flight, freeze fawn comes in.

[18:13] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[18:14] Stacey Hettes: And we keep adding to that list of Fs because we’ve realized how unique we are in our trauma responses. But the fight or flight really comes in, in this collection of brain areas that work together. But what also it does in trying to keep us safe is trying to learn. And so a lot of us have heard of the hippocampus as the area that really has to be intact for us to learn new things.

[18:39] Cate Blouke: Okay.

[18:40] Stacey Hettes: But fear is a great way of keeping us safe. If you’re afraid of something, you’re going to avoid it. And if you come into a dangerous situation and realize you’re in a dangerous situation and you learn to be afraid, then you’re even that much more likely to survive. Because that’s what the whole ball game is, Right. Survive to reproduce what we’re here for, at least according to Darwin, and the evolutionary role that our genes.

[19:11] Cate Blouke: Yeah. And, like, I don’t know. Okay, so. So if I’m off track with this, let me know. But what I feel like I just heard in that is that one of the sort of initial learnings that happens in our brain is fear.

[19:25] Stacey Hettes: Yes.

[19:26] Cate Blouke: And it therefore probably gets stuck there pretty easily.

[19:30] Stacey Hettes: Oh, yeah.

[19:31] Cate Blouke: Because, like, that’s what it’s like. It’s like, oh, what do I need to be afraid of? Let me burn that into your little brain pretty, pretty deeply.

[19:41] Stacey Hettes: And it’s actually your very little brain, because your amygdala is typically online and fully functioning and goes under a period of rapid growth around age 4 to 5.

[19:54] Cate Blouke: Oh, geez.

[19:55] Stacey Hettes: So think about what it’s like to be a 4 to 5 year old and how little you know about the world. And yet your brain has learned to be able to acknowledge when it’s afraid of something. And you don’t have those rational parts of your brain, that upper part of your brain, that’s the picture that we all see. 

Whenever we see a picture of a brain, your cerebral cortex fully functioning until well into your 20s. So different parts, of course, are going to be developing at different times. So we put that amygdala between our rational, thinking brain, which isn’t even there for the only part of our life, between the hypothalamus, where we’re sort of controlling everything, keeping all of our functions going, controlling our hormones as well. And you basically have a system that’s set up to respond to dangerous things in a way that’s gonna hopefully help you avoid those dangerous things. Unless you can’t.

[20:58] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[20:59] Stacey Hettes: Because you are a child in a world where you are not in control of anything. And that’s where childhood trauma becomes a thing that is. Oh, it’s just so unfair. Right? It’s just so unfair. And, you know, it’s also unfair to our parents because they’re, I hope, as many like mine were, trying their damnedest to keep us safe and let us have a happy childhood and let us think they’ve got everything under control. And they’re afraid too, because they know they don’t. And then when they find out they didn’t, that’s a really tough thing too. Yeah. But back to the amygdala. The thing that it has going for it in terms of doing its job, is it has those direct connections in both directions.

[21:49] Cate Blouke: Okay.

[21:49] Stacey Hettes: Directly can connect to the hypothalamus and directly can connect to the upper cerebral areas. But the thing that happens to the amygdala and trauma is it grows bigger.

[21:59] Cate Blouke: Okay.

[22:00] Stacey Hettes: And so it physically gets bigger. Oh, yeah. So people who are diagnosed with PTS will, on average. And everybody’s different, you know, so we can’t say it’s for everybody, but on average will have a larger amygdala than. Than the average sort of normative size.

[22:18] Cate Blouke: Interesting.

[22:19] Stacey Hettes: Yeah. Other thing that happens, and I don’t know how familiar you are with the term neuroplasticity, but I’m guessing that’s a term you’re pretty familiar with.

[22:28] Cate Blouke: I mean, I. But we’re just recording this podcast for.

[22:32] Stacey Hettes: Anyone who dropped in who’s not familiar with that term. It just means changeable. Right. The Brain can change just like anything else can change on the body. We know that our body can swell in response to an injury. You know, our bodies are changing constantly all the time. Our muscles can get bigger with training, but our brain can change as well. And it can change on the order of anatomy, the size of the structure itself, but it’s also changing on a very micro scale at the level of the connections. So a term we use is synapse is where the two neurons that are connecting in a circuit come together. And the way that they strengthen is to get closer together.

[23:17] Cate Blouke: Okay.

[23:18] Stacey Hettes: Or you can get them farther apart. Just like if I want to talk to you, I’m gonna get in and get closer to you, and I might even whisper in your ear so you can hear me. You’re gonna hear me better than if I stand back. Well, synapses do the same thing, and acute stress, times of traumatic stress, can strengthen those synapses.

[23:39] Cate Blouke: The, like, stress response in your brain gets closer together and louder.

[23:43] Stacey Hettes: Exactly. Louder is a great way to say it, because. And that happens almost instantaneously because these little. These little synapses are only micrometers apart to begin with.

[23:54] Cate Blouke: Right.

[23:54] Stacey Hettes: So when I think about my experience with. If people read the book, they’ll find out I had an experience at work that was tense and traumatic, and I woke up the next morning and felt like my entire brain had changed. And I think it had. Not my entire brain, but my amygdala had changed. And so if I fall into that category of the people with pts whose amygdalas did get bigger, and it wouldn’t be surprising because my earliest traumas are in that sort of four to five year old range when the brain’s growing rapidly anyway, particularly the amygdala is growing rapidly, then it’s very reasonable that what happened was an overnight brain change. And what then I had to do was calm that amygdala down again. And I know I have done that because I feel safe again. I can come to work, I can be with my family, and I’m not listening to intrusive thoughts that my amygdala is sending out to try and get me to avoid anything that might possibly be unsafe, which, you know, can be everything if. If you live in the world we live in. So.

[25:00] Cate Blouke: Yeah, so those kind of inner critic or intrusive thoughts come from the amygdala. And mean and awful and horrible as they can be, they’re actually trying to keep us safe.

[25:13] Stacey Hettes: Yeah, I don’t want to overstate that, because the limbic system. There’s a lot of brain areas that work together. We wouldn’t be able to say the amygdala is sending those thoughts out, but it’s driving the fear, which those thoughts are a manifestation of. Your inner critic is trying to keep you safe. And even though as a neuroscientist, I can say that I needed my coach to remind me of that, when I was writing and getting really afraid, when I would say things like, I don’t think I’m a good enough writer to write this book. I don’t know if this is ever gonna become something that anybody else would read. And she would say, just remember, that’s your inner critic trying to keep you safe. Because putting this story out there is a vulnerable thing to do. And you can decide when you wanna stop. But coaches are good at helping us to not just put it in a drawer and walk away. So, yes, we are.

[26:13] Cate Blouke: Okay. I love. Since you brought that forward, I’d love to hear your take. Cause, I mean, I am a coach, so I have feelings about all this. But, you know, the kind of balance and working with both a therapist and a coach to bring this to life and how those things ended up working in tandem for you and what you see as kind of the benefits of that kind of partnership.

[26:37] Stacey Hettes: It was really, really fortunate to have both. And I know it was a privilege to have both. And I appreciate having the resources to have both. And that’s. That can be challenging. But I had a therapist long before I had a coach.

[26:48] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[26:49] Stacey Hettes: And I had worked with therapists, you know, pretty much my whole life. And therapists are there to help you be you. Coaches, at least in my experience, are there to help you do what you want to do.

[27:05] Cate Blouke: Ooh, I like that.

[27:06] Stacey Hettes: And that was a really good way of dividing my time with them, because when I first started writing, and we all love praise. I talk about being very happy to get gold stars.

[27:19] Cate Blouke: Yeah. I talk all the time on the podcast about gold stars and, you know, the empowerment of being able to give ourselves gold stars.

[27:29] Stacey Hettes: I knew that would. That would resonate. And so as I was writing and it was. I think my therapist could immediately see how helpful this was. She had to balance keeping it focused on, okay, what is this writing doing to help you process this re. Traumatization and pts flare up that you’re feeling versus what is this writing for writing’s sake like? And so I would come in, and I was waiting for her to tell me how great the writing was, and she wanted to tell me that. But she also needed to tell me, let’s talk about what this is bringing up. Let’s talk about what insights into you and what your experiences did to you. How are we going to work on that? And so, as I said, I had about 100,000 words before I ever started working with a coach. But I had worked with my coach. Is it okay to say her name and give her a little plug?

[28:25] Cate Blouke: Absolutely. Please do. I am a big fan of There’s a good fit for everyone, and there’s enough for everyone. And so. Absolutely. I want you to, like, throw down some props for your coach. I will, because she is hugely connected to this beautiful book. Being out in the world and I.

[28:42] Stacey Hettes: Got to read it, is essential to this book being out in the world. Her name is Melissa Walker. She’s a former professor, and her coaching is heyday coaching. And so I can send you the link.

[28:56] Cate Blouke: Yeah. And I’ll put it in the show notes.

[28:57] Stacey Hettes: Show notes, yeah. But I had worked with her on a couple of things when I was doing the administrative job I did at Wofford. So I had a relationship with her that was very professional. But to show up with this sort of pile of dialogue with my therapist, that could maybe be a book, but I don’t even know if it’s, you know, in chronological order in any way, shape or form. But I said, you know, I have this, and I’d like to think about, even if it never gets published, sort of writing this story, because I think it could help me.

[29:30] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[29:30] Stacey Hettes: And that was also a safety mechanism of sort of going into this, going, I can stop anytime I want. I don’t have to keep doing this, because it can become something that becomes a job or a mandate or you feel like now you’re supposed to. Because you started something, you gotta finish it. But at least at first, I needed the safety of just saying, I’m gonna, you know, see where this goes. And she was terrific. She met me right where I was, which is also what I think coaches get to do. And sometimes therapists have to do the job of pushing us to where they, you know, know, we need to get. Yeah.

[30:05] Cate Blouke: I. So my. Just to interject, like, my own experience with kind of therapy and coaching was just. That was. Was very similar to what you’re describing is that I was really struggling with relationship stuff specifically. And my therapist was doing a wonderful job of helping me, like, work through my trauma and get to a place of like. Like, a therapist’s job is to. Is to get me to a place of being. Okay. Whether or not I have a partner. Right. And that is a therapist’s job. 

And I really wanted someone to cheerlead me and tell me that like the univers on my side and like, it’s all gonna work out. And so I, I sought out what ended up not quite being coaching, but spiritual counseling with one of my, one of the people I’ve had on the podcast, Julie Day. 

But I realized that I really wanted to be able to be the person that like handed out gold stars and, and cheered people on like that. That is the role of a coach is to help you, you know, take action towards what you want for yourself. But like, I get to have much more of an opinion and, and be more of a, of a cheerleading role. And I love it so much. It’s a, it’s a. Because I did think about like, should I be a therapist? What do I, what do I really want to do? And I, I’ve definitely found my role and I just think it’s so beautiful when you can have, when you can have both experiences.

[31:32] Stacey Hettes: Yes. I’m so glad you found that, Kate. I’m just so thrilled to see the joy. I wish everyone could see the joy on your face right now when you say I’ve found my role. And we all deserve that.

[31:46] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[31:47] Stacey Hettes: We all need to know that takes hard work.

[31:49] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[31:50] Stacey Hettes: And part of that hard work is realizing how we get in our own way and what our life experiences have done to tell us that we aren’t going to be able to do that. There’s no way we could do that. We don’t deserve to do that. And doing it anyway is the best.

[32:12] Cate Blouke: Yeah. I mean, and that’s, you know, like you are on the side of having the like, published book in your hand. Crazy, you know?

[32:20] Stacey Hettes: Yeah.

[32:21] Cate Blouke: Yeah. And beautiful and wonderful. And so it’s just really lovely for me to be sitting here talking to you and hearing you say all that because, you know, I’m. I’m in the midst kind of like I’m showing up and doing it anyway. I’m doing these episodes. I’m. This started as a blog. I’m in the sort of first full year of really trying to make this entrepreneurship and coaching business work and, and like those voices still show up.

[32:44] Stacey Hettes: Uh huh.

[32:45] Cate Blouke: You know, like, there’s still days when I’m like, can I do this? Like, nobody’s gonna care. Why even bother? And then I do it anyway. And then somebody like sends me a note saying like, thank you for that episode. I needed to hear that, you know? Yeah.

[32:59] Stacey Hettes: Hang on. Those notes.

[33:00] Cate Blouke: I do. I have taken to writing them down and on little pieces of origami paper and putting them in a little jar that I can, like. Yeah. Pull out. So if you’re one of the people that ever sent me one of those notes like, you’re. It’s recorded for posterity and I pull it out of the jar when I’m having a bad day. So thank you.

[33:19] Stacey Hettes: I talk in my book about going to my box of mostly thank you cards from my student. And I mean, it is. It is a 20 years deep and really more than one box at this point. But that’s something we can all do for each other. And it’s. It means so much more than we ever think it might at the time that we’re just jotting down a note. But when we can’t do that for ourselves, having somebody do it for us is just such a blessing. I was thinking, too, as you were saying, that one of the best lessons that Melissa taught me, and I sort of have it written in a lot of different places, is when your inner critic is really dialing it up. Just thank her or him or them. Mine is a her. Her voice is definitely a strong female voice. Thank you for trying to keep me safe, but I’ve got this. 

And it is amazing how just saying that to yourself can, again, dial that down. And when I sort of think about the brain activity, that message of thank you, I’ve got, this is coming from those cortical areas, those rational, thinking brain areas, and it disrupts that cycle of the limbic system, just trying to send that message of, you’re not safe, you’re not safe, you’re not safe. And if you say, I maybe am not safe, but I’m going to try it anyway, and I’ve got this. 

It really made a difference because there were some times that I didn’t think I could get the. The thing I was trying to communicate out, and we’d be stuck. And there’d be times that we would say. She’d say, yeah, I don’t know how to fix this either. Try it again. And I’d come back and she’d say, no, not yet. And then I’d come back and I’d think, I have it. And I could tell from her reaction that I got it right that time. And so it’s a wonderful thing when coaches can reinforce sort of what you’ve already figured out for yourself. That’s another thing I think coaches do really well for us.

[35:22] Cate Blouke: Oh, yeah. Like, it’s our job to just, like, ask you questions so that, like, you’re like, oh, I actually do have the answer. Oh, I actually do know what I want. I just need a space to say it out loud and someone to like, be like, yay, you found it.

[35:38] Stacey Hettes: Yep. The funny thing is with my therapist, when we have that sort of same interaction.

[35:43] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[35:45] Stacey Hettes: When we get to that point where she gets me to admit something I haven’t wanted to admit to, it feels more like, you know, she’s got that smile on her face that I knew you could get their face. And I’m just like, oh, shut up. I knew you were waiting for me to get there. You know, so it’s fun to have those different relationships too.

[36:01] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[36:02] Stacey Hettes: But I think you have that with that different level of intimacy that you get with a therapist. Like, they know, they really know the depth of the struggle and so they can also know when you’ve made your way out of that.

[36:16] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[36:17] Stacey Hettes: Which is great.

[36:18] Cate Blouke: So.

[36:18] Stacey Hettes: Yeah, there’s, I think, very different roles that could get confused among people who don’t have experience with both.

[36:26] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[36:27] Stacey Hettes: To have experience with both.

[36:29] Cate Blouke: Yeah. And one of the analogies I like to use is that when I’m trying to explain the difference between therapy and coaching. Because. Because my coaching is very heart centered. It’s very. We’re going to talk about your feelings and what you genuinely want for yourself. But like, one of the distinctions for me is that therapist is like going to the doctor or a surgeon. Like, something is like broken, ill, in need of like fixing. And then going to a coach is more like maybe physical therapy or really a personal trainer of like, okay, like I’m, I’ve got, like, I can function, but I need help getting where I actually want to go. And like, that is where I thrive. And. And we need both.

[37:10] Stacey Hettes: Yep. That is a great analogy. I really like that. I’m gonna borrow that for sure too. I imagine people will be asking me these questions again and I think that’s a perfect way to describe it. And we also know that that trainer can be there when we really don’t wanna do the work, but we know we should. Yeah, we want the goal, but we don’t want the discipline and the struggle and the pain that it takes to get there.

[37:36] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[37:37] Stacey Hettes: That is a really valuable thing and makes that sense of a return on the investment. But, you know, you’re making an investment in yourself.

[37:46] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things I’ve been. Been getting better at like, foregrounding to my clients is like, if I’m doing my job, you are going to be uncomfortable at times.. Like, the, the magic is outside the comfort zone.

[38:02] Stacey Hettes: Yes.

[38:02] Cate Blouke: Right. Um, to. So to bring it back to your book, you know, like, what was the process of, like, being like, okay, like, I’m actually gonna try to do something with this and let other people read it? What was that like?

[38:19] Stacey Hettes: It was slow, and it was progressive, but there was also a very definable moment. So the slow progression was sharing with trusted friends and especially trusted friends who knew I was struggling and who were able to break through those walls I had put up and say, I’m worried about you. I want you to know I care. And I was able to say, okay, I know you care, and this is the way I can kind of help you see what’s going on with me. And so I would sometimes share pieces that I had written, and then thinking about, you know, really having it be a book, became more regularly sharing pieces with my therapist as a way to sort of. I got to the point in writing where I had almost sort of caught up to where we were.

[39:11] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[39:11] Stacey Hettes: And so it was a way to process in real time then. So that was different. And I also was taking a lot more energy from trying to write well. So one of the things that was helping me to find my way out of the depression was I can imagine it being like somebody who was a runner who decided to do a 5K or something. Right. Like, I’m gonna take my running to this next level where I’m gonna try and, you know, do this thing that has a measurable outcome. And so I was trying to just be a better writer. 

And I remember the day my therapist said, after I read a piece to her, she just said, would you think about sharing this? I know it’s personal, but would you think about it? And I said, who would want to read this? You know, why would anybody want to read this horror story? And she looked me in the eye and she said, Stacey, there are millions. 

And that is the truth. We all know the statistics. And that was the day I kind of knew that this. This book had the possibility of having a purpose beyond helping me. And then it became more about writing it well enough to get it published. And that, too, became its own validation for myself that it was worth putting the time into writing it well, but that it might be worth. It might be a story that might be helpful to other people. And so it’s been a lot of. Lot of different stages of this journey, and I’m just grateful to have been on it. Thus far. And we’ll see where it goes from here.

[40:51] Cate Blouke: Yeah, yeah. And I just, I mean, I’m deeply grateful that you wrote it and shared it. You know, my childhood drama is vastly different. It was much more emotional and bullying, you know, but like, man, I, I really felt so I won’t speak for everybody. I wanted to use the sort of collective we of, of all of us who’ve had, you know, shitty childhood experiences. But like, it really was so powerful to just hear someone else’s inner critic in a, like, raw and honest way of like, oh, yeah, like, I can relate to the like, viciousness of that. And one of the things that I’m taking away from this conversation is just that awareness that like, those thoughts and those messages and that like, mean part isn’t like in my cognitive control.

[41:48] Stacey Hettes: Right.

[41:49] Cate Blouke: Like, it’s not coming from the part of the brain that I’m in charge of. That my like, higher self that my like, rational and evolved and like emotionally mature self. It like it’s coming from behind the curtain. Right.

[42:02] Stacey Hettes: It’s a great way to describe it.

[42:03] Cate Blouke: Yeah. So like, I just want, really want to hold on to that of like, oh, like, this isn’t something I can control. It’s not something that’s my fault. It’s not, you know, because I can get stuck, stuck in those loops of like, why am I being so mean to myself? Like, oh, because it’s the wicked witch behind the curtain. Like, it’s not the wizard, it’s the wicked witch behind the curtain right now. And you know, so I’m, I’m in 12 step recovery. Have been for almost 15 years now, which is crazy. And there’s just how that works is through just sharing our experiences of like, you’re not alone and getting to hear other people talk about experiences that are similar to mine and having similar thoughts. Like, there’s so much healing in that and so much power.

[42:50] Stacey Hettes: And that healing goes both ways. It helps the person who’s putting it out there to heal. And it’s wonderful when we have the, the feedback that tells us, you know, that it helped. I hope. And one of my earliest motivations was really realizing that there are still so many people who feel a stigma around therapy.

[43:13] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[43:14] Stacey Hettes: And I think especially for marginalized communities of any type, I think for men it can still be very much a stigma. Socioeconomically, it can be just absolutely a non starter because we don’t support mental health even as poorly as we support physical health in this country. And so there was a part of me that Said I want to share what I’ve had the privilege to have thanks to, first and foremost, parents who spared no expense on therapy when I asked for it. But also just having the privilege of a good job with a good salary that allows me to pay my co pays to my good insurance. 

And so it can’t take the place of therapy, but it might be a starting point for people. And I really am appreciative of being in that position. And I also feel like the idea that we’re not alone is a big part of this. So I appreciate you saying that as well, because it is the most isolating feeling to think you went through something that nobody could understand and you’ve had that reawakened at a time in your life where the response would be, my God, that was 40 years ago, Stacey. Why are you bringing this up now? Why are you just not getting over this? 

And I know the brain science, right? And it’s still, you know, that still those intrusive thoughts were taking over and were pervasive. And the flashbacks and the, you know, visuals. When I would close my eyes, I felt like there was somebody who had a projector on the inside of my eyelids. And I would close my eyes and I would just, you know, see these horrible flashes of times in my life that no child should have to go through and nobody should have to re. Experience through remembering. But it was through doing the work and asking for help and accepting that help and believing I was worthy of that help. That I can have this conversation today and feel like I can say, you know, it’s not all better, but it’s a lot better and I’m really grateful for that.

[45:35] Cate Blouke: Yeah. There’s a line in 12 step recovery. There’s sort of a portion of the literature that we call the Promises. And one of the lines is like, no matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will come to see how our experience can benefit others.

[45:49] Stacey Hettes: Oh.

[45:50] Cate Blouke: Oh, that’s beautiful.

[45:52] Stacey Hettes: Oh.

[45:53] Cate Blouke: And I’m like, tearing up because that’s been so true for me. And I feel like that’s what’s true in your book is just that, like, when we can share, like, okay, this fucked up shit happened to me. Yeah, it was terrible. I’m still, like, dealing with the consequences, but, like, when we share it and somebody can be like, oh, it’s not just me. I’m not alone. Like, there’s just so much power in that. Yes, right. Of just taking back our, like, okay, this was fucked up. I wish it didn’t happen, but it did. And here we are. And here’s. Here’s how I can, like leverage that for my good and for the good of, like, other people. And it’s so beautiful.

[46:39] Stacey Hettes: Absolutely, 100%. Thank you for saying that. And the other piece of that, that I think my little knowledge of 12 step recovery programs is the keep coming back piece. Just keep coming back and keep showing up. And one of my friends who read it, like the piece that she walked away with was, you were gonna do this for as long as it took. And I’m still doing. Takes longer than. I don’t know how many sessions. I think I ended in the sessions, like in 150 land at the end of the book, but they’re still going on. But yeah, that piece. 

And I think what’s so important about what you said is we can do this work and we can even tell ourselves it’s to help others, and it should be, because that’s how we can be of service. But it’s also to help ourselves and to not leave ourselves out of that because that people pleasing side of what trauma can do to us is the side where we leave ourselves out.

[47:43] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[47:43] Stacey Hettes: And I did not put the people pleasing part of trauma response and pts into my equation until I went to a workshop by our local women’s resource center, the Julie Valentine center in Greenville, S.C. and the chaplain of their center said, you know, the people pleasing that people do, that’s a trauma response. And Kate, I almost hit the floor because people pleasing is the secret to my success. You know, my life as a child, as a student, as a professor, I was the ultimate people pleaser. And I think that’s because inherently I am a person who wants to help, who wants to be a helper. 

But there’s a difference between a helper and a people pleaser. And that’s part of the work I have to do. Now, that’s the epilogue of the book and beyond is how to balance and be aware of when I’m doing the work I can to make contributions to my community. And when I’m living in a space where I feel like the only way to be accepted or to be worthy is to give everything I’ve got. And that’s a tough. That’s probably the PhD level of this type of work. Um, and so that’s just people sometimes ask me, like, what are you doing now? What’s going on now? And those are the kinds of questions I’m asking myself and the kind of growth I’m trying to chart for myself.

[49:24] Cate Blouke: Yeah, yeah. That’s such a helpful distinction. When am I being of service and when am I people pleasing?

[49:31] Stacey Hettes: Yeah.

[49:32] Cate Blouke: Oh, man. So one thing I’ve noticed that I would love to touch on a little bit is that you’ve been saying PTS as opposed to ptsd. And I’m into it. I’m super into it. But I’d love to hear you share a little bit about that.

[49:47] Stacey Hettes: I think that still, if you, you know, look at the diagnostic manuals, and I’m not a psychologist, so I don’t have to look at those. So that’s not my term. I’ve heard that said in the world. And I think the distinction helps people realize that we’re not broken, but we’re having an experience. And so back to the amygdala. Even if my amygdala is bigger than other people’s, and even if it always was, it might be that I just have a big amygdala, or if I’m in that time of neuroplasticity where those connections in my amygdala are just rapid firing like crazy, that that’s a condition that I can work to resolve. Whereas if we put a label on something like ptsd, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I feel marked, I feel labeled in a way that I’m not sure I sit very comfortably with, because is that gonna tell me I can’t get better? Is it gonna tell me I’m broken? When my amygdala is trying to take over and send all those intrusive thoughts, putting that disorder label on there is only playing into that, into that intrusion. And so I wish I could refer to whom or where I first heard the transition to pts, Post Traumatic Stress. But it was a good label change for me. And so I’m gonna use that for. For how I describe what I’m going through.

[51:22] Cate Blouke: Yeah, Like, I’ve. I’ve heard, you know, it’s. It’s not the first time I’ve ever heard it, but, you know, as someone who I have in recent years identified as having cptsd, um, since for me, it wasn’t kind of isolated incidents or, you know, it was more the, like, ongoing developmental trauma. But I. I’m gonna try on the, like, CPTs.

[51:50] Stacey Hettes: Yeah.

[51:51] Cate Blouke: Like. Cause. Cause for me, it’s about emotional flashbacks. Like, so that’s one of the key characteristics of complex. Complex post traumatic stress is emotional flashbacks. And that was the insight for me that I was like, oh, this is true for me, because something will happen and I will have an emotional reaction that I can cognitively Know is not related to what is actually happening right now and I can’t stop it. And finding that language was sort of my door into then doing a bunch of reading about CPTSD and being like, oh, this describes what happens for me in my experience. And I do find that, you know, having the words for things helps us then work with them. Absolutely. But I have really felt like, oh, I have CPTSD and this is just something I’m always gonna have and I’m gonna be stuck with. And. And so I’m taking another. One of the things I’m taking away from this conversation is an invitation to drop the D for myself and see how that shifts things for me.

[52:52] Stacey Hettes: Yeah, I think that’s a great way to think about it is we get to decide what we do with the information given to us by professionals. And I think this can be true of the words we use as well. And I don’t think it matters to anybody else whether I call it PTSD or pts, but to me it matters. And so that’s how I’m going to think about it. Especially now. I might have needed that D in the label in the early stages of, of this now, years long episode to feel like a validation because I don’t want to belittle things either. Right. Minimalize it for somebody else who says, look, I am in crisis. I am in a situation where this thing is impacting me in a way that I feel disordered. Then claim that and utilize that to help you find your way through. Just like if I had an injury, right. I’m not gonna say, oh, it’s just a sprain when you can see the fracture on the X ray. Right. And so finding out what the truth is with physical ailments is a lot easier than finding out the truth for us when it’s, you know, something that’s emotional and psychological. And so I think we just have to be willing to give each other grace and be willing to accept that some of us need it to be described one way and some of us need it to be described another. And that’s okay.

[54:28] Cate Blouke: Yeah, absolutely. And what I like, I really agree is not the right word. I really feel in alignment with that more progressive, time wise approach to it of like, yeah, I mean, when I was first going in for CPTSD symptoms, right, Like, I was like losing my shit and going to therapy and feeling like I’m broken right now. I need help. Help. And what, what has happened over time is a, like, things have gotten a lot better for me. It’s been a lot of EMDR has been really, really helpful for me. And. And there’s like a radical shift, but then I can get kind of stuck in this. Like if I have a flare up or an experience of like, oh, I’m never gonna get better. But I don’t think that’s true. Cuz I. I’m like 80% of the time better now. Right. And so I don’t know, I’m gonna play with this, like, for me, like. Oh, yeah. I have complex post traumatic stress sometimes.

[55:32] Stacey Hettes: Yeah.

[55:33] Cate Blouke: Right. That. It’s not. It’s not present for me in my life these days.

[55:37] Stacey Hettes: Right.

[55:38] Cate Blouke: In a way that I want to call it a disorder. So I’m. I don’t know, I’m feeling very empowered and I. And I do really like that idea of we get to claim our labels to a degree, but when it the ones that matter to us and how we get to experience our own lives, there’s a lot of power in making choices about the terms we use.

[56:01] Stacey Hettes: Absolutely. I love what you said and the way you described sort of how we have these ebbs and flows in experiences is kind of like remission. Right. We can know that people can have cancer and they can have a cancer diagnosis and it can be terrible and challenging and the chemotherapy can feel worse than the sickness. And that can be true for therapy as well. But you can have times of remission. But we never stop describing that person as a cancer survivor, and we never stop checking in and monitoring that condition for the rest of that person’s life. Because now we know there’s the potential for something that might come around again, might show up again, and might need more attention again. And I like when we can draw those parallels, to recognize these experiences we have with our emotions and with our mental health are also based in our physiology. Right. We can identify the parts of our. Our bodies that are. Are responsible for these experiences, even if we don’t understand them as well as we understand something like our kidney or our heart or our liver. Right.

[57:14] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[57:14] Stacey Hettes: But we’re working on it and hopefully someday we’ll get there.

[57:17] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Yeah. And like, you know, the brain and the body are not separate.

[57:22] Stacey Hettes: Nope. Not even a little bit. It’s all one thing. We only have tried to live that way because we’re trying to understand something so complicated that we’ve had to put it in boxes and compartmentalize it. But living requires that we integrate it all back together.

[57:43] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Stacey, this has been such a lovely conversation.

[57:49] Stacey Hettes: Kate. I’m so happy we have this Time together. It’s just great to reconnect with you and to have you be so interested in the neuroscience side because.

[58:00] Cate Blouke: Absolutely.

[58:00] Stacey Hettes: Yeah. I really wanted the book to be accessible, and I wanted it to be a book that was written by a person who went through this experience who happened to be a neuroscientist rather than the other way around. And I really. I wanted to claim who I am. I am a neuroscientist. But that subtitle of my book, A Neuroscientist and her Therapist Conspired to Reboot her Brain. I don’t want it to have anybody feel like, oh, this is going to be dry or too technical. And so if you’re concerned about that, I hope you’ll give it a chance, because it really is the story of a human being.

[58:40] Cate Blouke: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I. I would say that you succeeded in that. And as someone who, I don’t know, like, science just goes in one ear and out the other. Like, I mean, we say words like parasympathetic. I mean, I do. I, like, feel, finally, after I’ve recorded a few episodes with people talking about the nervous system. Like, it’s the sympathetic nervous system that’s the fight or flight, and it’s the parasympathetic that’s rest and digest. But my little brain, that took a long time because it doesn’t make sense, because it seems like the sympathetic one should be the nice one.

[59:16] Stacey Hettes: You might think so, but here’s how you remember it. Parasympathetic. Rest and digest. Parasympathetic. Parasol. If you are walking around with your parasol, everything’s calm and nice. Or maybe you even have a little parasol in your cocktail. You know, those little drink umbrellas.

[59:33] Cate Blouke: Thank you for that. I, like, wish I’d gotten that two years ago. But the point more is that even though I often struggle, I get lost in the terminology of the science. It’s so helpful for me to, like, understand that this is, like, a biological reaction, right? That it’s, like, stuff that is not in my cognitive control. Like, I really need the reminder that, like, the stuff that’s going on in my brain is not me running the show all the time. Like, my conscious awareness is hugely impacted by all of the, like, chemicals and the little synapse firings and all of the different complicated stuff that I. And getting. I’ve heard. Like, I’m getting the repetition enough that I’m starting to, like, actually understand how brains work. But the point being that it’s so helpful to Me, and hopefully to anybody else that’s listening, is to just get that like, basic rundown of like, this is stuff that is happening on a biological level, not a conscious level.

[01:00:37] Stacey Hettes: It is. And so much of our brain mass is there to do the work that leaves our conscious area free to pay attention to just the smallest things.

[01:00:49] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[01:00:50] Stacey Hettes: So even just thinking about breathing, imagine if you had to remember to breathe all day, every day, you’d get nothing else done and you’d never be able to go to sleep because you’d not be breathing. And there’s so much that our brain is doing to get us to pay attention to the things that it thinks matters. And that’s what our limbic system is there to do too, because it’s trying to keep us safe while we do that. But what we can also realize is even somebody who devoted their entire career to studying this brain could go through a time where her brain was turning up the dial on those messages so loudly that she forgot or couldn’t focus on the fact that she knew her brain was just trying to keep her safe.

[01:01:37] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[01:01:37] Stacey Hettes: And I was hook lining sea sinker in that abyss. And if that can happen to somebody who has all this awareness of these brain areas, it can happen to anybody. And so we can give ourselves the grace that we need to say it’s okay to ask for help. There are people who care about us. We can find those people. And if we can’t find those people who we trust to do it just because they might love us, we can find the people whose job it is to walk with us. And I just hope for everybody who is in a state like that that they can find somebody to help their way out because it certainly would have been impossible for me to try and do that alone.

[01:02:18] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I hit a pretty grim period of neurodivergent burnout in January. And like, I have the tools, I know the things and I still need help. It still happens to me. My brain still gets hijacked. The, like, stress and overwhelm adds up and like. Yeah. Similarly, just really believe in, in kind of one of the core messages of my work in the world is that we’re not supposed to do all of this alone. No, like, we need help. We are. You know, I’m not the biologist in this room, but like, what I do know is that we evolved as tribal people. We were not like, wandering around it on our own, trying to survive the tigers by ourselves. Like, it’s not how it’s supposed to work.

[01:03:04] Stacey Hettes: No, no, that’s a whole other podcast.

[01:03:06] Cate Blouke: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:03:07] Stacey Hettes: That would be so much fun. You know, that we are social primates is a whole other conversation. But a hundred percent true. We know one of the. The worst punishments we can render on someone is. Is solitary confinement.

[01:03:23] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[01:03:24] Stacey Hettes: And our brains can try and do that to us on our own. You know, it can try and get us to isolate when people become the thing that’s unsafe. And isn’t that sad?

[01:03:33] Cate Blouke: But it’s so sad. I was just like, holding the silence around that. Cause I was like, oh my God, that’s so true. Okay, Stacey, this has been so great to wrap it up. I love to end on my favorite question. What brings you joy?

[01:03:51] Stacey Hettes: Oh, conversations like this really do, Kate. I’m just as happy as can be that we got to chat. But I have to say, my dogs, my chili, and my pepper. When people weren’t safe for me, my dogs were. And they were there with me, sleeping on my feet under my desk as I wrote this. And so just show some gratitude and joy for the dogs or cats or chinchillas or whatever creatures we share our home with. Yeah.

[01:04:21] Cate Blouke: Beautiful. And Stacey, where can people find you?

[01:04:25] Stacey Hettes: So I am at Stacey Hettes. H E T T ES (Hettes like lettuce) .com and you can find my book wherever you shop for books, it’s. It’s everywhere. But I’ll put in a plug for bookshop.org or your independent bookstore.

[01:04:41] Cate Blouke: Absolutely. And I always provide bookshop.org links in the show notes for you to purchase books when I reference them, and I will provide links. Great.

[01:04:53] Stacey Hettes: Sounds good.

[01:04:54] Cate Blouke: Awesome. 

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