Porter: 0:05

Welcome to Transacting Value, where we talk about practical applications for personal values when dealing with each other and even within ourselves. Where we foster a podcast listening experience that lets you hear the power of a value system for managing burnout, establishing boundaries and finding belonging. My name is Josh Porthouse, I'm your host and we are your people. This is why values still hold value. This is Transacting Value.

Dr. Eliza Collins: 0:32

Many of us say burnout is not your fault, but addressing it is your responsibility, and people like myself and my colleagues exist to be able to help you do that. That's not something you should do on your own, because if you had the resources to do it, you'd be doing it.

Porter: 0:49

Alrighty, folks, welcome back to Transacting Value, where we're encouraging dialogue from different perspectives to unite over shared values. Our theme for season four is intrinsic values, so what your character is doing when you look yourself in the mirror. Now, if you're new to the podcast, welcome, and if you're a continuing listener, welcome back. Today we're talking our October core values of creativity, simplicity and giving, with the burnout which herself Dr Eliza Collins. So, folks, without further ado, on Porter, I'm your host and this is Transacting Value. Eliza, what's going on? How you doing? I'm good, porter, how are you? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I appreciate you taking some time. I know you've got a lot, but you've got a life right. So thanks for taking a break just to come out and talk for a little bit. I appreciate it.

Dr. Eliza Collins: 1:32

Oh, absolutely, it's my pleasure. I really like your podcast and I really like what you're doing with it. It's very much aligned with my values, so I'm happy to be here.

Porter: 1:39

You're just saying that because of the show.

Dr. Eliza Collins: 1:41

No, I don't BS people. That's also one of my values. That's what's up. It's honesty, transparency core values.

Porter: 1:48

Alright. Well, we'll get to some of that here in just a second, and you bring up a good point, though People may not know who you are and, frankly, as far as my audience is concerned, since this is audio only, they can't see you, so let's just start here for a couple of minutes. I'll give you the floor, but who are you actually? Where are you from? What sort of things have shaped your perspective on life? Take that, however you will.

Dr. Eliza Collins: 2:10

Yeah, sure, so I'm originally from Western New York. I grew up south of Rochester and, in terms of some of the big stuff that has shaped me, I lost my biological mom when I was 13 months old. So you know, kind of digging right into sort of what shaped us and where our values came from, that really had a huge impact on me in ways that I didn't understand until I was in my 20s and 30s Because, aside from that, I had a very well adjusted childhood. I had a family, my dad and my mom well, my stepmom we just call her mom, but it gets very confusing. So as I started doing podcasts and things like that, I have to differentiate my brother. Everybody really loved me and they were great and they were supportive. So the loss of my mom kind of resulted in me internalizing, without anybody telling me, this feeling of I need to earn love, I need to earn my place in the world, because that could just go away at a moment's notice, and I didn't know that that wasn't something I was conscious of. So I really internalized hard work and perfectionism and you know it came from this place of not enoughness. So that was really a lot of the core of what shaped me when I was younger, but it was also really useful at that time because I was interested in music and dance and the arts and so hard work and ambition which is what that was sort of couched as when I was younger was really useful then. So it's been an interesting journey to see how what has shaped me and what my values are evolve and change as I evolve and change and heal.

Porter: 3:45

Man, what a loaded background to start a conversation with. Okay.

Dr. Eliza Collins: 3:49

You know, it's not like the lightest, just like we're diving right in.

Porter: 3:53

Yeah, all right. Well, let's do it. That's fine, dude. So your moniker, your brand, let's just start there. What is it? What is the burnout? Obviously you focus on burnout, I'm assuming. Yeah, okay, and so what is this?

Dr. Eliza Collins: 4:07

about those values of perfectionism and hard work and ambition. Those are really useful. Right when I was younger, they were not as useful as I got older and I started taking on more responsibility and still feeling like I had to be a perfectionist. So when I started my business which the first branch of my business was an acupuncture practice, and I still practice it I was the acupuncturist but I was the biller and the insurance specialist and the website designer and the receptionist. I had to be perfect at all of those and it was really tough to sustain that over time and so those values that I had held for such a long time literally burnt me out. And so I ended up reaching out to a colleague of mine who had in some ways a similar approach to her practice. When she got out of acupuncture school, she ended up going someplace where she didn't know anybody. I had relocated after my acupuncture practice or after my acupuncture school. So we both started businesses in places where we didn't have connection and roots, and she had it harder because she was doing it in a different country where she didn't speak the language, but she had become very successful. So I reached out to her and I said, hey, I'm really struggling with my business right now. I'm just kind of looking for the secret sauce. What did you do? And she said I burned out and you're burnt out and I'm not going to help you make a successful acupuncture practice based on what they told us. I'm going to help you address your burnout and readjust your values at this point in your life and use that to figure out what your business should look like. And as I started to do that and I started to work with her and also utilize some of the other techniques that I had from my background that were helpful in that recovery process that I didn't know I needed until she pointed it out, she and I kind of talked a year or two after I had gotten into my burnout recovery, where I was pretty well into it, and she said I think you know, if you're interested in working in the burnout recovery space, you've got a really unique constellation of skills with functional medicine and hypnosis and mindset work that I think would work really nicely with people, and so that's really we would joke around that that's my magic. And so being able to utilize some of this more esoteric stuff in a way that people understand and can wrap their heads around became sort of the cornerstone of what I was doing and in the process of continuing to heal my childhood trauma, which I had done years of in years of therapy with I was very familiar with it I ended up utilizing psychedelic mushrooms as a part of that process. And getting into that space and integrating that into what I was doing became something that, with a background in chemistry and biomedicine and Eastern medicine, was the next sort of logical thing that I could bring to people, as I teased that out and made it accessible for myself, mostly through micro dosing and we don't have a lot of structure for micro dosing right now. So with my background and my expertise I've been able to sort of craft that and help people do that in a way that really brings harm reduction to the forefront of it. So that's the two minute elevator speech of the burnout which which is pretty substantial right, like even looking at your website.

Porter: 7:20

I mean there's, there's some tarot isms and graphics right, but from what you're saying it's not all. I don't know incense and crystal balls, if any it's very much not incense and crystal balls.

Dr. Eliza Collins: 7:32

The tarot piece of that has been a really interesting element to it, because I don't use it as a divination tool, so I don't lay out a bunch of cards and tell you your future, and that's one of the things that I've never really liked about tarot. I find it really interesting for people who can do that, and if I end up doing that's really fascinating. I don't know how it works, but it's cool. But what I use it as is a clarity tool. So I'll shuffle the cards up and pull a bunch of cards and say, okay, this is what these cards mean in this sequence. This is kind of what it's telling me. How does that apply to you? How does that apply to your life? What does that look like? Because tarot cards each card represents an archetypal figure or a life situation that we all experience. So you can go to any tarot reader and they can lay out a bunch of cards and in some way, shape or form, it's probably going to apply to your life. So I use it more as a thought exercise and say, okay, we know that this is going to apply to your life in some way, shape or form. How does it apply? Where does it apply? What does it make you think of that wasn't at the forefront of your mind? Or, if you actually look at your circumstances, you say, oh my gosh, that totally relates to what's going on with me right now and I didn't even realize it.

Porter: 8:43

More as a prompt.

Dr. Eliza Collins: 8:44

Absolutely.

Porter: 8:45

Yeah, okay, well, so I mean it makes a lot of sense, right? Like, if you figure, I don't know 80, some odd, 90%, some odd as far as statistics go into. Whatever fact this is, I don't know, maybe it's totally false, the point being, if the majority of people are visual learners and you're trying to walk somebody through a mindset, you got to have something visual to stand on. So, yeah, you know, it even makes some sense to destigmatize, let's just say, tarot specifically, but any of these things that aren't, as I guess you could say, more westernized sciences or mainstream mainstream better, yeah, to be able to ground them. It's still an opportunity to prompt introspection, self-awareness, recovery. And there's a thing you mentioned earlier too that, as you were working your own sort of journey through these things growing up through therapy or your own introspection you have mentioned about your values too. Obviously, I'm a little biased. Then we can talk about it a little bit more later, but I'd like to start there specifically from your perspective. So this is a segment of the show called Developing Character. Now for anybody who's new Eliza you included to the show. This is two questions, but it's sort of meant to showcase as a foundation for how values are impacting the practicality of your life and your perspective and what you've done with them. So we're just going to start the conversation here too. So my first question is as you were growing up attribute that to whatever ages you want what were some values that you were exposed to or that you sort of felt you were aligning more with?

Dr. Eliza Collins: 10:17

Hard work was a big one. Again, I come from a family of people who put in effort and have ambition and that sort of, combined with my perfectionism and not enoughness. But I think there are ways in which ambition can be a good thing and there are ways in which ambition can really drain you and burn you out. So it's understanding that ambition does not equate to never failing, and that was something that I also didn't internalize. I had this massive fear of failure and in many ways it would hold me back. There are things that I wouldn't try. There are things that I wouldn't do A lot of times. What ended up happening? If I did something and people were like, oh my God, that's so brave, I can't believe you did that. You moved to a different city and you started an acupuncture practice where you didn't know anybody. I did that because I didn't realize that other people didn't do that. Very often they don't just pick up roots and leave and sit down and say, ok, here I am and I'm going to do this thing and I'm going to go and I have all of the confidence in the world that it's going to work out. It didn't occur to me to not be like that. So that, I think, was something that I also got from my family and some of the people around me. It's like, yeah, you want to do the thing, just go do the thing. That's a totally doable thing. If I didn't think that it was a doable thing, it was very hard for me to overcome that, and hard work, ambition, were definitely things that I internalized. Honesty I come from a line of teachers and civil servants and people who dedicate themselves to lifting others up, and so service was also a really big one, and that kind of became problematic for me when I got older too, because I went into a career of service without taking care of myself throughout that process. So there are all of these sort of double-edged swords to a lot of the values that I internalized. I didn't internalize them in a way that resulted in a healthy expression of them as an adult, when I started taking on more responsibility.

Porter: 12:18

Did you know better? Like, did you have a pretty good idea that if I push down this path, I'm making a conscious effort to negate my own well-being? Like I'm just going to do this at the behest and sacrifice for everybody else?

Dr. Eliza Collins: 12:32

No, and that was something that I learned through my burnout recovery. There are times where, yes, I have to push through, I've got to get some stuff done. There's no easy way to do it or it's the uncomfortable thing and it's got to be done. But largely I was operating that way, thinking that everybody operated that way, and that was something that I got, not just from, like, a family perspective where like, yeah, sometimes life is hard and you have to do this thing. That was something that I got culturally, particularly in the West, particularly in America, we love a good pull yourself up by the bootstraps story and you did it yourself. And so much of the time I didn't realize that successful people get to where they are, a because of luck and the way that they have sort of just interacted in the world, where they got something at the right time, and, b, the amount of support that they get, whether it's from a partner or a community or their family. I wasn't looking for that kind of support because I had the idea that you have to do it yourself. I have a great magnet that was a gift from a friend of mine that says behind every great woman is another great woman replying to her frantic texts in the middle of the night. Yeah, that's amazing and I love that because it's like yep, that's actually probably more accurate in terms of how we make it in the world. We rely on our community, but I didn't want to do that.

Porter: 13:53

Well, that's sort of interesting too when you phrase it that way, because what we see in I don't know Hollywood or I guess now Netflix, or if they're even one and the same anymore I don't know. But what we see in shows, what we see in entertainment, is a lot of the extremes of our what was the word you said of our archetypes, of our character traits, of our qualities, of our social norms. Right, it's the extremes, because that's more entertaining and also it gives the widest or generally broadest amount of people the ability to gain resonance from whatever they're watching or listening to. The problem with that and I think we're going to see this in the next 20 years I'm not a tarot reader, but let's say 20 years is that our kids now, like this youngest generation, let's say I don't know 12 and under, is thriving on social media. But social media is still just the extremities of our I don't know what you would call it illusions, delusions, illusions, whatever right Like, it's still the extreme.

Dr. Eliza Collins: 14:53

A little bit of all of them.

Porter: 14:54

Maybe so. So you know, having these images and things to chase and definitions of what we should be like and what things are actually like, and what does that actually mean and, for that matter, so what? What do we do with any of it, those interpretations and that critical thought, that's not going to get ratings, that's not going to give views and likes and subscribes and support. So if that's not there as a backdrop when all the other stuff is, I don't really think you're that far off the mark from the common sort of more average adjustment phase of. Well, this is how I thought things were and I just didn't know any better. I didn't even think to ask the questions. You know, you said pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, and I think that is something that is a little bit more Western, based on just my deployments alone, but saying that what we see in shows is the success story of the main character, not the supporting roles, and I think it's a disservice to that definition too. So you know what? Let me ask you this from all that being said, you know hard work and ambition, and you had even alluded to earlier that you sort of grown away from a few of these things. You grew up with. My second question is so then, what are some of your values now?

Dr. Eliza Collins: 16:05

Riosity is a huge one. That is probably my primary core value because it creates so much space and opportunity and it really turns the volume down on the stakes of any situation. So if you're having an argument with your partner or your sibling or your parent and things are getting kind of agitated, can you be curious, instead of jumping in with the next remark, instead of the reaction, can you take a moment and take a breath and say, okay, they're responding this way, why I do this with kids all the time, instead of getting upset like I don't have my own kids, but being around kids, my partner has kids. Okay, you're really acting up right now. Why? What need is not being met or what pattern is running? What program is executing itself that is making you feel like you have to raise your voice or set a boundary or withdraw, whatever the case may be. However, this person, creature shows up in the world. I do it with my cats, you know, cat goes out of the litter box or something like that. I don't get mad. I ask why.

Porter: 17:17

Does the cat answer back? Or is that the mushrooms?

Dr. Eliza Collins: 17:20

They do. That was mostly during the pandemic, when I wasn't actually talking to them, so they don't answer back with words. But it's completely changed the way that I interact with them, because if they're behaving in a way that is not in alignment with their normal functionality or their quote unquote sort of best self, there's a reason. Does that mean that I have to take you to the vet? Are you sick? Is something going on? That's telling me something. So, instead of looking at my animal and saying like, oh my God, just go in the litter box, why aren't you going in the litter box? That's information instead of just something that's there and present to piss me off at the end of the day. And so curiosity has really become the cornerstone of how I try and function in the world, and I forget all the time, because I'm human. But it's the light, it's my lighthouse, it's what I come back to, it's that beacon that I come back to when I can put two feet on the ground and center myself. That's probably my core value, and I've always been a curious person, but not to the extent that I am now where I apply it everywhere in my life, if given the opportunity to do so, or if I take the opportunity and slow down enough to be able to do.

Porter: 18:34

All right, folks, sit tight, we'll be right back on Transacting Value. Alrighty folks, here at Transacting Value, we write and produce all the material for our podcast in-house game perspective alongside you, our listeners, and exchange vulnerability and dialogue with our contributors every Monday morning. But for distribution, buzzsprout's a platform to use. You want to know how popular you are in Europe or how Apple is a preferred platform to stream your interviews? Buzzsprout can do that. You want to stream on multiple players through an RSS or custom feed, or even have references and resources to take your podcast's professionalism, authenticity and presence to a wider audience. Buzzsprout can do that too. Here's how. Start with some gear that you already have in a quiet space. If you want to upgrade, buzzsprout has tons of guides to help you find the right equipment at the right price. Buzzsprout gets your show listed in every major podcast platform. You'll get a great looking podcast website, audio players that you can drop into other websites, detailed analytics to see how people are listening, tools to promote your episodes and more. Podcasting isn't hard when you have the right partners. The team at Buzzsprout is passionate about helping you succeed. Join over 100,000 podcasters already using Buzzsprout to get their message out to the world Plus following the link in the show notes lets Buzzsprout know we sent you. Gets you a $20 credit if you sign up for a paid plan and helps support our show. You want more value for your values. How can you do that too?

Dr. Eliza Collins: 20:06

I've always been a curious person, but not to the extent that I am now, where I apply it everywhere in my life if given the opportunity to do so, or if I take the opportunity and slow down enough to be able to do.

Porter: 20:20

That's a benefit too. I think when you're talking about pattern recognition, by default it's going to be whatever we see. That's what we're grown into, right? Well geez, that's what we're born into. For that matter, that's just the baseline. Using that perspective a little bit where pattern recognition becomes more critically. But what is the more accurate interpretation of these patterns? What am I actually seeing? A lot of what I do in the Marine Corps now. I spend the majority of my career in the infantry for anybody who's new to the show and a lot of what I do now is I work with Marines and sailors prior to their deployments to help them gain clarity on how to better communicate, more effectively, or what they bring to the table and who they are as people, before they get themselves into a situation that maybe isn't as culturally appropriate, for example. In that vein is where I'm bringing this point from, and I'm curious how well it aligns with what you're describing. What we're talking about pattern recognition and identifying things that cause burnout, identifying things that cause us to respond certain ways, for example, in more of a tactical environment. A lot of the stressors that are at play are outside our control and we're responsive. Let's just say 24-7 for a baseline because it's a foreign area of operations, it's not something that we're normally accustomed to, it's not our normal baseline and pattern To be able to show up there and say, okay, well, based on the stereotypes I've seen on the news, this is how this culture responds, or these people portray themselves or whatever, which isn't the case nine times out of 10, maybe 10 times out of 10 in some cases. Giving ourselves an opportunity to realign to that baseline also helps manage some stressors and keep things in perspective. That's, let's say, overseas, that's on deployments, that's Department of Defense-isms. Have you seen any of that stuff align at all in your practices and in your experience as well?

Dr. Eliza Collins: 22:17

but domestically and in our own personal lives, yeah, sure, I mean, if you think of, the buzzword now is late-stage capitalism, where rent is getting higher. There's a bigger divide between the haves and the have-nots. If you look at and I don't know a ton about this, again, I know what I know, which is very limited because I don't study cultures who have gone through late-stage capitalism. That's not my area of expertise. Where I'm living and I think throughout a lot of the country, there's rent crises, cost of living is increasing but wages aren't increasing. You're getting these circumstances where a lot of this stuff is out of somebody's control. If their job that they work at that has largely been secure, is not raising to meet the cost of increased food, increased housing, increased travel, all of these things that we saw particularly go up so extensively throughout and during the pandemic, that's something that's out of someone's control. They're saying now do I have to get a second job? Does a family who's had one stay-at-home parent, who's a two-parent household and has one primary earner, does the other parent now have to go to work? That results in childcare costs. What's going to happen? There are a lot of things that are out of people's control and sometimes it does become that what is within my locus of control. How much can I manage? How much can I do? That has gotten a lot harder. When we talk about burnout, we talk about burnout as a systemic issue. Corporate organization saying we're going to host a yoga retreat. It's like, okay, well, your employees are working 60 hours a week. One yoga retreat isn't going to fix the stress associated with working 60 hours a week. Even in places who have the best of intentions, they're not operating from a systemic way that's sustainable for everybody in the organization. One of my colleagues I don't work in systems burnout, but she does she does a lot of corporate outreach and corporate education for organizations to actually show up for their employees in a way that's more sustainable for the whole organization from a perspective of recovering from and preventing burnout.

Porter: 24:36

We have a similar term as far as I guess a way to address it. We have a similar term in the DOD that I'm sure plenty of veterans are going to be familiar with, regardless of branch. They're called mandatory fund days. It's more of a campy sort of adopted term. It's not the publicized term, but it's essentially. We've got a lot of stressors Colloquial's where I was looking for. Yeah, we have a lot of stressors and a lot of things going on. I understand everybody's working hard and training for this mission and blah, blah, blah, blah. Everybody. Show up Saturday morning, bring your families, we're going to cook hamburgers or we're going to do whatever. Yeah, no, I'm good. We spend all this time at work or training or 30 days out in the field or out in an area training, and I don't want to be there, no, but everybody better show up because they're spending money and there's some sort of objective driver for the command as well, but a lot of the time. I think that's what falls into what you're describing, where there may be a systemic issue. Maybe not, it's just industrial and it is what it is as part of the mechanism, but maybe there is a systemic issue where boundaries aren't necessarily real well enforced at a unit perspective, and so we'll put a bandaid on this gaping wound, but I'm sure it'll be fine. Yeah, all right, if folks sit tight, we'll be right back on transacting value, tired of bringing your work life home or your home life to work. Burn out over endless hours of effort in life but not feeling like you're seeing the results you'd expect self-induced feelings of futility and anxiety driving your day or, worse, your daily mood. Consider instead breaking the unhealthy patterns and coping mechanisms. Reconnect your brain and body, live with a greater sense of ease and flow, bespoke wellness, no BS. Get to know yourself just by listening. Let your mind casually wander and explore your sense of self, or take a guided tour with Dr Eliza Collins, the burnout witch. She's a psychedelic and micro dosing educator and facilitator who's passionate about helping you find your own inspirations. Plus, if you're between the ages of 30 and 50 and you're struggling with surviving the daily grind or just feel like you've lost sight of you, dispel the myths. Get help from an individual who has lived through burnout to make a career of educating others how to navigate their own journeys. Follow an open mindset to your personal values. See how a renewed sense of empathy, authenticity, curiosity and community will restore you like magic. Check her out on Instagram, tiktok or online at theburnoutwitchcom today. But maybe there is a systemic issue where boundaries aren't necessarily real well enforced at a unit perspective, and so we'll put a bandaid on this gaping wound. But I'm sure it'll be fine. And that may be the systemic Problems. But I think even within that, whether or not that gets addressed in any four to twenty-year term, I think is irrelevant, because as individuals which I'm pretty sure is more your specialty we can still do something about that, like for us in the DOD department defense. We can't say no nine times out of ten if we're told to do something, assuming it's a lawful order. But we can question and I think we're seeing it a little bit more now, it's a generational shift on how can we do this more effectively, how can we be more efficient with the orders we're giving? Or is it even necessary to say these things? Can we cut the guys out at you know, four o'clock in the afternoon to go spend time with their families? Do they really need to be here cleaning for another five hours, which isn't necessarily far from the truth in some places. But so within that, within those parameters, as Individuals I think what we can do is say, okay, well, that is out of my control because I have to do it whatever I'm told. Let's just say that's our baseline, I have to do it. Well. So what of it is Perspective mindset, how we respond to those stressors. What of those stressors we take home with us?

Dr. Eliza Collins: 28:23

What was that tradition to? I mean tradition. It's what we've always done and so we're always continuing to do it because it seems to have worked fine since then or, you know, up until this time. You're absolutely right. We say that burnout is a systemic issue, but healing it starts with the individual, the person knowing that they're burnt out and saying I'm burnt out, I'm not going to function like this anymore, and asking those questions and saying, you know, if they come from corporate, can I take medical leave? How much medical leave can I take? What can I do to address this? And then bring that back to the table if they're able to do so, if they're in an organization that's open to having that conversation. That starts with the individual Having a sense of agency and taking control of what they can in order to heal that. So Many of us say. Burnout is not your fault, but addressing it is your responsibility, and people like myself and my colleagues exist to be able to help you do that. That's not something you should do on your own, because if you have the resources to do it, you'd be doing it, but it is the responsibility of individuals and those of us who have the resources and the agency to get out into the world and talk about these problems and bring them to light for people who struggle to be able to do that.

Porter: 29:34

Okay, maybe that's an important point of distinction we probably should have opened with in hindsight, but based on your experience then, how do you qualify burnout? What are some of these symptoms? What are we what? Like I'm just tired, it's an off day, or well, it's an off week. I mean, what do you what? How do you qualify this? What are we looking for?

Dr. Eliza Collins: 29:53

One of the best kind of working definitions of burnout and that's really largely what it is, because it's not something that's sort of qualified and Diagnosed from like a medical perspective is that burnout is a state of sustained, chronic stress that over time reduces someone's ability to handle day-to-day stressors with ease. So if you manage your stress pretty well and you go through, it can be a week, it can be a month, it could be a year, but you eventually kind of crawl out of that and you're like, okay, I've got my bearings, I'll take care of myself, I'll do some vacation, I'll do some self-care, I'll get back into some of my routines that helped me and that actually works. That's not really burnout, that's stress, and it can be sustained and it can be chronic, but it doesn't reduce your ability to handle your day-to-day stressors with ease. When you've been in stress long enough that you blow up at everyone who talks to you over the most minor things. One of the things from my burnout that I remember was I was trying to get into my house. I'd had a long day at work and I couldn't get into my house for like too long like 30 seconds and I realized I was standing at my door with my car keys, with the button that locks and unlocks my car, hitting the unlock button on my car, trying to get into my house. Hmm and when I realized what was happening, I dropped my keys and I started crying. That shouldn't happen. That should be a. Oh my god, I'm so silly. It was a really long day, ha ha, ha, ha ha. What a goofball I am. But I didn't. I just burst into tears because I was so wrong out that Simply trying to open my house door with my car key is Literally uncorked me, and so that can be one of the things that we see with people who are burnt out versus stressed. If you are somebody who has always relied on like exercise to give you energy and it's not giving you energy anymore, or you're injuring yourself, or you're dealing with chronic injuries that never heal, that can be an indicator that your body doesn't necessarily have the resources to be able to engage in that level of physical activity and recover from it. So it's really this sort of a lack of what my colleague wrote a book on, which is called bounce back ability. Your body does not have the ability to bounce back from emotional stress, from physical stress, the way that it can and should as a human machine that is operating appropriately.

Porter: 32:15

Man. Okay, I mean, a lot of this is unavoidable, right and again, I'm only coming from a perspective of Enlisting in the Marine Corps to this particular point, but I enlisted later compared to a lot of other guys, so I guess you could say I had a little life experience. Ironically, I had zero Emotional intelligence as a result of that life experience. I just had more common than we all realized. Yeah, yeah, I'm just working through that myself. It was so crazy now that you're saying it that way that I'd say probably my first contract, maybe then some four to six years. I didn't know why, and I until this conversation I didn't know why. But a lot of the conversations my ex-wife and I had sounded an awful lot like arguments to anybody that heard them, and I think in hindsight they were right. But it was just normal, right Like. I didn't see it any differently. Alrighty, folks, stay tight and we'll be right back on Transacting Value, the growth of each generation, no matter the temptation at Huff and Cluck or Farm. That's just another Tuesday. Want to learn how to homestead or just more effectively develop your character for an unknown future? Follow or direct message on Instagram at Huff and Cluck or Farm. Watch it happen in real time. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others. A foolish man learns from his own. A lot of the conversations my ex-wife and I had sounded an awful lot like arguments to anybody that heard them and I think in hindsight they were right. But it was just normal, right Like. I didn't see it any differently because what you said as day-to-day stressors and what did you call it? Not unbalanced back ability or something?

Dr. Eliza Collins: 34:25

A lack of bounce back ability.

Porter: 34:27

A lack of bounce back ability. Yeah, these day-to-day stressors and this chronic increased stress to me was normal. I thought I had adjusted to it, but I think in hindsight got to such a point that I had adjusted, I hadn't adapted and so I didn't have the depth or, like I said, the emotional intelligence to actually see some of the damage I was causing. Now, ultimately, you know, we got divorced because maybe that, maybe because not that or both.

Dr. Eliza Collins: 34:56

But like I said a lot of Usually a combo platter of all sorts of things.

Porter: 34:59

I'm a big buffet guy. Yeah, I think there was a lot of that repeatedly actually as far as combo plates go, and it didn't help. And neither one of us I don't think I guess I'll never know, but neither one of us I don't think actually had the skill sets are where with all to communicate effectively, to be able to work through them, at least not at the time. So you know, as we're working in our relationships in a corporate environment interpersonal relationships, romantic relationships, professional whatever parents to kids, peers, whatever you want to qualify this how do we increase awareness? How do we start like I'm making excuses for this, I need to pay more attention or be more critical advice. I'm actually just making excuses for this and it's really not that big of a deal. How do we establish that threshold?

Dr. Eliza Collins: 35:46

I'm a huge fan of therapy and coaching. Different specialties, different people need different things depending on your history and your background and what you're dealing with. So myself, I've used a variety of different therapies and worked with different people over the course of my life, getting benefit from certain things for certain times and then, if that sort of wears itself out or I'm not finding benefit from that, I find the next thing. I have the very good fortune of having been in healthcare and integrative healthcare for almost 20 years 15, 20 years, something like that. So, yeah, I have a lot of agency and self advocacy for myself because I know what to look for. So if you're just starting out or you're listening to this and you're like, I think it's me, but I don't know, getting to know yourself is a really great start. I think oftentimes we're not encouraged to do that and we tend to inherit the patterns of our families and sort of. Another buzzword that we hear a lot is generational trauma. You talk about what you and your ex-partner didn't have. You didn't have that because you didn't see that that wasn't modeled for you, and that's not because the people in your life were terrible or abused you. It's because they didn't have it and it wasn't modeled for them, and so it's this sort of just really awful trickle down economics kind of scenario where it's like eventually it'll make its way down. So a lot of people who are getting into therapy and coaching right now are trying to address some of those generational patterns and being able to look at their families at some point and say, okay, you didn't do this on purpose, but I don't want to keep perpetuating this with the people in my life. So, if you're literally just starting out, there's a really great book that I love called the Body Keeps the Score, and it's by a guy named Bessel Vander Kolk. It's about the way we internalize trauma and the way our body holds on to trauma. And even if you don't feel like you have trauma or you had a really well adjusted childhood, maybe you know somebody in your life. Maybe your partner had trauma or your parents had trauma that you didn't understand, or you've got coworkers. Whatever the case may be. It's a really incredibly useful book for starting to understand how we hold trauma and emotions and how these things come up, how they show up, how they interact with other people, because when we talk about learning to love ourselves, we get that from other people. Self love our template for that comes from our parents and our families. So, again, if we didn't get that, we don't know how to love ourselves and we go looking for that in other people and we don't know how to interact in a meaningful, healthy way. So that book is a really fantastic foundation in how we interact with ourselves, in how we interact with the world around us and the impact that trauma has and methodologies to start addressing it. That's a really good place to start. The other book that I really love honestly is called Atlas of the Heart and it's by Brene Brown and I know a lot of people are familiar with her work. It breaks down, I think, 88 different emotions, something in that area, and it differentiates between things like anger and resentment and sorrow and joy and fear and all of these other things, and it even as somebody who's done a lot of self work. When I read that I was like, oh, that's a distinction that I wasn't making.

Porter: 39:17

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Dr. Eliza Collins: 40:20

Even as somebody who's done a lot of self-work. When I read that, I was like oh, that's a distinction that I wasn't making. That's really useful for how I talk to my partner or my family about my emotions. It allowed me to communicate more effectively and more accurately my experience, which, in turn, helps those people understand where I'm coming from, and it makes those conversations more productive.

Porter: 40:45

Yeah, it's like the gift that keeps on that you don't want it to keep on giving trauma.

Dr. Eliza Collins: 40:51

The gift we shouldn't keep giving.

Porter: 40:53

Yeah, that's a better way to put it, but I mean, that's also what's kind of cool, I think. Anyways, to deviate a little bit, that's also what's cool about podcasting. I think it gives us an opportunity to put some of these dots together for the people that don't learn as well visually, that maybe learn better auditorily, audibly, and so to be able to talk about these topics, whether it's on a podcast, frankly, which clearly I'm partial to as well, but even if it's just conversations with our friends or with our family, just having these intentional conversations, I think makes a big difference Because, again, people learn differently, and putting some of those topics together. Also, I appreciate your recommendations, because I was going to ask you about that. You beat me to it, not really offended, not a big deal, but thank you for bringing them up. There's a lot of things when we're talking about burnout that I think we could keep diving into, and coping mechanisms and different stressors and obviously how they affect different people differently and what we can do about those things, or at least options to better manage some of those stressors. But for the sake of time, I really only have one other question, since we're about out of it, as you've been working through a lot of your career to this point. You've mentioned acupuncture, you mentioned micro dosing and you mentioned some things that really aren't as well more westernized or mainstream and adopted to our culture. So how do people start considering some of these other outlets, resources, references, maybe just a mindset shift, perspective shift, but how do people start considering some of these other things, or from which lenses, especially if they're unfamiliar?

Dr. Eliza Collins: 42:25

I think it's one of those things we're not encouraged to because we don't know. You don't know what you don't know. I didn't know about acupuncture until I went to a terror reader. I'd heard about it and I thought that it was something that was Eastern. I didn't think that we had much of it in the United States. It's growing. We don't have as much of it in the West. One of the things that I usually tell people is if you feel like everything you've tried isn't working or isn't working as effectively, it's time to look for something new and different. You can talk to a medical professional if you've heard this podcast and say I want to try acupuncture. Honestly, a lot of insurance companies are starting to cover it now. Check your insurer if you've got health insurance and look at your benefits and see if acupuncture is a covered benefit. If you just want to learn more about the research or effectiveness, there's a website called PubMed PUBMED. It has research studies on acupuncture, on psychedelics I don't think on microdosing. Most of the psychedelic research is large dose at this point. But Wikipedia is not always the best place to go because that can be edited and things like that. Look up research studies. That's how to do with what you're dealing with. Most of acupuncture is things like back pain and migraines, but it's also really useful for things like fertility and stress management. They're getting more research about that every day. There is a level of effort that, unfortunately, is the burden of the person seeking these things, because sometimes there's just not resources for it. You got to go out and find it. Hopefully, if you're listening to this podcast, that's something that is of value to you. That's what I usually encourage people to do is Google acupuncture near me. See what comes up. You may be surprised that there are practitioners in your area. There are a lot of us about.

Porter: 44:29

Okay, what about you If people listening to this say you know what I really like, what Dr Liza's talking about? I really want to find out more about the burnout which and figure out all these other things and resources and just get in touch with you specifically. How do they do it? Where?

Dr. Eliza Collins: 44:41

do they go? Absolutely. You can go to my website, wwwtheburnoutwitchcom. I do have a contact me section there. You can also just DM me on Instagram. I'm a total millennial. I love Instagram. I have not gotten into. I have TikTok, but I'm not into it. I'm not into Snapchat. That's a really great place to find me as well. If you are not local to Rhode Island, which is where I'm based, if you want acupuncture, reach out to me. I've got a ton of colleagues in different cities and different networks that I can check into that I would be happy to refer you to. As much as I'm a clinician and a practitioner, I'm also a connector. I'm happy to bridge those gaps for you and make those connections.

Porter: 45:23

Nice If everybody listening again. If you're new to the show, click See More. You can click Show More, depending on the streaming platform you're using to listen to this. You'll be able to see links to Eliza's website and Instagram and social. On there. You can just click and it'll redirect you to there as well, If that's easier for you. Obviously, also on our website, just scroll down under the player and you'll see it there as well. Eliza, I really appreciate the opportunity. We don't have a lot of time left right now. If you want to come back on, I'm all about it. I'd love to have you back on.

Dr. Eliza Collins: 45:51

Absolutely. I would love to.

Porter: 45:53

Great. Yeah, I'd love to have you back on and cover some of these topics, breaking down burnout and talking through some of the managing these stressors. And again, I really appreciate the recommendations also. Also, I wrote them down, but for our listeners too. So this was good. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for coming on.

Dr. Eliza Collins: 46:08

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, Porter.

Porter: 46:10

Thank you to our show partners and folks. Thank you for tuning in and appreciating our value as we all grow through life together. To check out our other conversations, merchandise or even to contribute through feedback. Follows time, money or talent, and let us know what you think of the show. Please reach out on our website, transactingvaluepodcastcom. We stream new episodes every Monday at 9am Eastern Standard Time through all of your favorite podcasting platforms and we'll meet you there. Until next time, that was Transacting Value.