The Problem With Hope

Summary

Feminist Survival Project: The Problem With Hope Hosted by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski
Release Date: March 6, 2025

---

Introduction to the Episode

In this poignant episode of Feminist Survival Project, sisters Emily and Amelia Nagoski delve deep into the complexities of hope, burnout, and mental health. Drawing from their personal experiences and professional insights, they explore why hope, while often touted as essential, can sometimes be problematic, especially when facing overwhelming societal and personal challenges.

Understanding the Role of Hope

[01:31]
Amelia introduces a critical perspective:
"You're convinced that hope is one of those tools. And I kind of feel like hope is a reason that people feel like it's okay just to stay in the fire. It'll be fine. That's what hope feels like to me."

Emily expands on this, highlighting the duality of hope as both a sustaining force and a potential delusion:
"If hope is your reason to do nothing, that's delusion." [01:56]

Academic Perspectives on Hope

The sisters critique the dominant academic definitions of hope, emphasizing its measurement through pathways and agency. Emily points out the flaws in these definitions, especially when applied to large-scale issues like climate change or political crises:
"The problems that we are faced with when we watch the news are too big for any individual to think their way out of." [06:00]

They argue that academia often overlooks the importance of scale, making hope seem more accessible than it truly is in dire situations. Emily underscores the lack of research that differentiates between personal, manageable challenges and systemic, overwhelming crises.

Personal Journeys Through Hopelessness

Emily shares a deeply personal story about the 2004 U.S. election, where her hope in individual agency was shattered:
"That's the day my little bird died. Why? Because I had agency and I had pathways." [25:14]

Amelia contrasts her own experience, expressing a lifelong struggle with neurophysiological access to hope:
"I never have [a thing with feathers]. I have always hated Emily Dickinson." [10:13]

Coping Mechanisms and Healing

The conversation shifts to strategies for coping with hopelessness. Emily advocates for creating an environment conducive to healing, emphasizing rest and gradual energy reallocation:
"Healing takes time. Emotional healing takes time just as much as physical healing." [28:00]

Amelia discusses the importance of self-awareness and medical intervention, recounting her struggles with accessing psychiatric care:
"I was laid out on the couch... I needed to find a medical professional who would put me back on my meds. And he did that." [68:33]

The Intersection of Hope, Meaning, and Something Larger

Emily introduces the concept of "something larger" as a substitute for hope, a notion explored in their book BURNOUT:
"I replaced it [hope] with connection to something larger than myself that made me know for sure that my life matters." [30:39]

Amelia adds to this by highlighting the characteristics that produce meaning, such as leaving a legacy, a call to service, and participating in loving connections:
"Participating in loving connections... that's the least autistic of the three, but probably by far the most relatable for the general population." [34:13]

Addressing Mental Health and Seeking Help

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to the imperative of seeking help when experiencing hopelessness. Emily and Amelia share their own battles with depression, emphasizing the importance of reaching out despite systemic barriers:
"Step one, ask for help. At least three people should be on your list. One of them should be a professional." [55:10]

They candidly discuss the challenges of accessing quality mental health care, advocating for harm reduction and adaptive coping mechanisms:
"Shitty help is better than no help." [76:27]

Transformative Practices and Support Systems

The sisters explore various practices that aid in healing, such as decluttering as a form of self-compassion and engaging with media that both numbs and releases emotional pain:
"Decluttering is compassion. It's forgiveness for mistakes." [85:34]

Emily shares her humorous approach to personifying her darkest thoughts, turning them into manageable parts of herself:
"I have this hilarious personification of the part of me that wants me dead. It's a zombie leprechaun." [62:24]

Conclusion: Embracing a Non-Rosy Reality

As the episode concludes, Emily and Amelia reaffirm that while hope can be a valuable sustaining force, it is not the only path to resilience. They encourage listeners to focus on healing, seeking meaning, and building supportive connections:
"Your emotional pain is not inherently dangerous and it will always end when you feel like it's a lot." [80:36]

Amelia adds a final note on the importance of accepting one's journey:
"It's gonna be so hard. It's gonna be that hard." [83:25]

Key Takeaways

• Hope vs. Something Larger: While hope can sustain individuals, it may become a delusion when it prevents action against systemic issues. Connecting to something larger provides a more robust sense of purpose.

• Personal Agency and Systemic Barriers: Individual efforts are often insufficient against large-scale problems, necessitating collective action and support.

• Mental Health as a Disease: Hopelessness and suicidal ideation are tied to neurophysiological states that require medical intervention, not just personal resilience.

• Coping Mechanisms: Healing involves both numbing intolerable pain and actively releasing emotions through compassionate practices.

• Importance of Support Systems: Building a network of supportive individuals, including professionals, is crucial in overcoming despair.

Notable Quotes

• "Hope is your reason to do nothing, that's delusion." — Emily (01:56)

• "Healing takes time. Emotional healing takes time just as much as physical healing." — Emily (28:00)

• "Shitty help is better than no help." — Amelia (76:27)

• "Decluttering is compassion. It's forgiveness for mistakes." — Amelia (85:34)

• "Your emotional pain is not inherently dangerous and it will always end when you feel like it's a lot." — Emily (80:36)

---

Resources Mentioned:

• Books by Emily and Amelia Nagoski:

  • BURNOUT: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

• Mental Health Resources:

  • National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
  • Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741

---

Closing Remarks

Emily and Amelia Nagoski offer a candid and compassionate exploration of hope and hopelessness, encouraging listeners to seek help, find meaning beyond traditional notions of hope, and embrace the complexity of their emotional landscapes. Their shared experiences serve as a beacon for those navigating similar struggles, emphasizing that healing is both possible and supported through connection and self-compassion.

Transcript

[Amelia]

Hi, everybody. This is Amelia. I wanted to let you know that I'm going to be trying something new on Fridays at 4. I'm going to be going live on our YouTube channel. That's YouTube.com feministsurvivalproject. I'll be going live Fridays at 4 Eastern Time. And from February 21st through the end of March, we'll be answering questions, singing songs, and generally just having a nice time. I hope you'll join me.

[Emily]

Hope. Let's let the people know that you have Covid.

[Amelia]

I got the COVID Fifth time.

[Emily]

Fifth time. Still contracted from a loved one who got it at a medical appointment. Yeah, so that's. That's how infectious diseases work. Mask indoors, my friends. But hope, we have talked about how the building is burning and the function that we have is to help people get out and to help as many people survive as possible.

[Amelia]

You're convinced that hope is one of those tools. And I kind of feel like hope is a reason that people feel like it's okay just to stay in the fire. It'll be fine. That's what hope feels like to me.

[Emily]

Right. So that's why we need to talk about the title of this episode, the Problem with hope. If hope is your reason to do nothing, that's delusion. Like, I'm not. I'm not gonna, like, mince words about this. Like, we're now the bad guys. We are on the side of Russia and China and the bad guys. We're the bad guys now. And it is like, yeah, we as a nation are on the axis now. We have abandoned the allies, and we're the bad guys nationally. And if you perceive us as being in any other situation, go to. Is this a coup Dot com.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And you'll see that this is a coup.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Like, bad. It's bad. It's. I had pessimistic ideas about how it would go, and it's going worse than I thought it would.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So, like, bad. And yet hope is a sustaining energy. The function of hope is to give you energy to keep going in the fight against the fire. What makes us stronger than the fire? Part of what makes us stronger is hope. But I made a video that I put on YouTube about how I don't have a hope. My hope is broken. I have a hope. My hope is broken because if I say I don't have any hope, that makes people think that I feel, like, hopeless or that I've given up or that I'm not going to try anymore.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

Like, because this is the question does hope mean you're not going to try because you're like, I have hope. That what I want to do, I want to disaggregate. I want to separate the ideas of trying and experiencing hope. And the way I'm going to do that is by talking about how wrong the primary academic way of addressing hope is. Are you ready?

[Amelia]

I really want that because I need those words defined for me because I still have a rough time understanding them.

[Emily]

So the problem with how we think about hope is in the dominant academic way that we think about hope. So hope is measured in terms of two variables, pathways and agency. Pathways and agency. So in the little survey instrument that gets you the questionnaire that's used to assess people's hope, there are the pathway items, and those pathway items are things like, I can think of many ways to get the things in life pathways. Right. And agency is, I meet the goals I set for myself. So here's the thing. I'm good for both of those things for a lot of situations, like when I have both been fundamentally successful in our lives. We have made good things happen in our lives.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Our needs are met.

[Emily]

How much of that was us and how much of that was privilege? Yeah, yeah. Opportunity and, like, being white and being like, you know, all the things. Anyway, so the survey instrument that assesses pathways is in particular, the pathways part is flawed. So let's look at a different. A different one of the items from the pathways.

[Amelia]

Okay.

[Emily]

The first one was, I can think of many ways to get the things that are important to me. Right. To get the things that are. I can move toward a goal. Another one is I can think of many ways to get out of a jam. I can move away from a bad situation. I'm like, sure, I can think of many ways. Will any of them work? So, but what's a jam, though? Is it the ability?

[Amelia]

Yeah. A jam does not feel like what we're in now.

[Emily]

Does jam describe climate change?

[Amelia]

Yeah. No.

[Emily]

Or rising autocracy? Like, is that. Can I think of my. Of ways to get out of this.

[Amelia]

Jam of constitutional crisis? Yeah.

[Emily]

So this. The problems that we are faced with when we watch the news are too big for any individual to think their way out of.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

It's going to take collaboration.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

At a massive scale.

[Amelia]

There's no individual who has the agency to change what's happening now, except for maybe four people in the world.

[Emily]

Right. And those four people are the actual problem.

[Amelia]

They are the actual problem right now.

[Emily]

Yeah. So to save our species from the damage we're inflicting on our one and only home. Each individual one of us doing our best to get out of this jam. Like us in our wish, cycling us in our, like, you know, reducing the temperature in our homes when it's cold outside. Us increasing the temperature in our homes when it's hot outside. Like that. That's not irrelevant and it's not the solution. Right. So one of the problems with the academic way that hope is measured is that it doesn't take into account scale.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So on the one hand there's like, can you in your individual day to day life think of a way to scrape together enough money to buy groceries for your family today?

[Amelia]

Right, right.

[Emily]

And then there's climate change and the constitutional crisis.

[Amelia]

Right. Is there any research that, that parses out these differences?

[Emily]

No, because this is, this is the dominant way that, that researchers talk about hope and they are not questioning it because this measure is effectively correlated with like mental health.

[Amelia]

Yeah, I know.

[Emily]

Because the people who. Because according to this measure, I'm doing fine, like with my hope. Because like, yeah, I can think my way out of a gym and yeah, I jam.

[Amelia]

Sure.

[Emily]

Yeah, sure. Yeah. So this is, this is the reason why there's this like misunderstanding of what hope is. It's because having hope, what is it that you have hope in? Is it yourself? Is it your community? Is it humanity? Ah, that's the thing.

[Amelia]

I think sort of casually, people colloquially feel the difference between faith and hope is that hope is just a general sense of positivity and possibility for positive outcome. And faith is more of a hope in something. This belief that there is a thing. I feel like faith is more specific.

[Emily]

Yeah. People for sure think that hope is something very general. So where this started is that in 2024, YA author and tuberculosis hater down green took a break from YouTube because, because of depression. And he said in the video saying he was taking a break because depression, he said a thing. He says a lot, which is a quote from an. Which is that hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all, which is this very general sense that like, yeah, there's a thing perched in your soul that sings the tune and there's no words to the tune, but it gives you a feel. You have a feel. You have a little bird perching your soul singing a tune without the words. And people are like, yeah, yes, I needed this. I needed to be reminded of this. Thank you so much. Because I'm so struggling and for someone like me, and also apparently for someone like you. Like, I remember a time that I had a thing with feathers perched in my soul singing a song.

[Amelia]

I don't.

[Emily]

And you never did.

[Amelia]

I never have. I have always hated Emily Dickinson. There's nothing about her poetry that appeals to me. And now I wonder if she's just too neurotypical to be.

[Emily]

I mean, relatable. As a person who struggled with mental health. She's could. She had the opportunity to. To have a different view of the world, but that is not what happened. So if you have a thing with feathers, and if you're listening to this and you're like, yeah, I have that feeling. I have like a thing that perches in my soul and sings little tune. And I have a sense of hope. And it sure is hard to hear that sometimes in the midst of all the noise about the bad things that are happening. And I want you to know, if you're a person who can hear, do that, do that. It is good for you. It is correlated with all sorts of positive health outcomes. Physical health, mental health, social health. Having a thing with feathers purse in your soul, singing the tune without the words is so good for you. If you have one. If you have one, keep it. And this is an episode to come back to if you ever feel like that goes away or like you can't hear it anymore or like your hope breaks. Like, my bird perched in my soul is an ex parrot. It is.

[Amelia]

It's pining for the fjords.

[Emily]

Yes. It's singing the choir invisible.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

It's doable. It's the parrot sketch. And so if you are a person who's like, I'm really struggling to hear the little bird, maybe the bird's not there. And maybe the reason for that is because a sustaining energy, which is what hope is, hope is a sustaining energy. That's what hope is for, is to keep you motivated to keep going when things are not going well.

[Amelia]

Right. Yeah, I guess so. I don't know.

[Emily]

Which I think is why you and I so much value criterion velocity and the discrepancy reducing, increasing feedback loop, which is the technical name that makes everyone fall asleep. Which is why we call it the little monitor.

[Amelia]

Right? Yeah.

[Emily]

Which is like. And it has a sense. It's keeping track of how much progress you're making toward the goal and how much effort you're making toward the goal. So it's keeping this ratio of effort to progress.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And it has a really strong opinion about what that ratio is supposed to be.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

So hope becomes difficult when it feels like you are putting in a whole lot of effort and making not enough progress for how much effort you're putting in.

[Amelia]

And when there's a problem where no amount of effort will make any progress, such as constitutional crisis.

[Emily]

Right. Wish cycling. It's not gonna. Yeah, it's. How do you.

[Amelia]

Hopelessness.

[Emily]

How do you keep the sustaining. To keep on trying when literally nothing you do is going to make any sort of measurable difference in terms of polyvagal.

[Amelia]

I just want to say, like, sustaining energy is never a thing. I've had.

[Emily]

I have.

[Amelia]

I'm made of shutdown. I am made of. No, I'm made of. Of.

[Emily]

You're made of no.

[Amelia]

Parasympathetic. What's the polyvagal term?

[Emily]

Dorsal.

[Amelia]

Dorsal. I'm made of dorsal. Like, the first thing that happened when I existed as an individual entity in the world was I stopped breathing. Right. I came out. Birth trauma, did not breathe. Like, my body shut down. Was its very first response to the world and not to life was.

[Emily]

Nope, nope.

[Amelia]

And not much has changed. Like, my body shuts down.

[Emily]

My name is no. My number is no.

[Amelia]

No.

[Emily]

You need to let it go.

[Amelia]

So polyvagally speaking, sustaining energy is ventral. Right. It's connectedness and playfulness and, you know, positivity and ease.

[Emily]

Joy. Yeah.

[Amelia]

And sustaining. Even fight is sustaining.

[Emily]

At some level, fight is a sustaining energy. Yes.

[Amelia]

And I just. That's just not my default state. And that might be why I have just so little experience with hope.

[Emily]

Yeah. Because you struggle with neurophysiological access to the experience of hope in your brain. Yeah.

[Amelia]

Right. Which is not to say that I don't fight for things or believe in things or strive for things. I just don't do it out of a sense of.

[Emily]

What did you say? A sustaining energy. Well, when you fight for things, that is a sustaining energy of rage. That's anger.

[Amelia]

Yes.

[Emily]

Fight is anger.

[Amelia]

Yeah. I also have desires. Things I want, so I work for them because I want them.

[Emily]

Yeah. And because you have so little access to ventral stimulation, that means that you mostly work for the things that you want from a place of sympathetic activation. Yeah. It is the case with people whose home away from home, whose default state is dorsal. Like, you have to go up the chain. You have to go from dorsal through sympathetic, which is fight or flight to get to ventral. Right. My home away from home is sympathetic. So my default state is. And my mask is a blend. You know, we talk about voices being chest, voice, head, voiced and blend.

[Amelia]

Yeah, sure.

[Emily]

My Mask is. Which we're going to. We're going to talk about autism related masking in more detail later. But my mask is a blend of ventral and sympathetic. It is playful, it's intense, but it's appealing because it's fun.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Your mask has like a little bit of ventral blended that. Your mask is more straight sympathetic. Yeah.

[Amelia]

Oh, you're true. Yeah.

[Emily]

Yeah. Which is why part of your mask is more than mine is about being in control and being a leader.

[Amelia]

Oh, yeah. And it always has been.

[Emily]

And it always has been.

[Amelia]

It's not conducting training. I've always been more of a control freak than you.

[Emily]

Not that I have not been a control freak.

[Amelia]

Right, right, right. Yeah.

[Emily]

Like the number of stories going through my mind right now of the times when I, like, made a fool of myself because I felt like I needed to be in control of something.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And that, that was. That was sympathetic activation. That was fight or flight.

[Amelia]

Yeah. When you feel like you need to.

[Emily]

Be in control and like being in control is actually related to hope because that agency piece of it. Right. So there's pathways feeling like you see a way forward and then there's agency. I feel like I can meet my own needs and these other motherfuckers are in my way. And if those other motherfuckers would just quit it, then, like, I'd be able to do this. And so I need to be in control of things so that I can get my way. Does that make sense? Yes. Sustaining energy, feeling like you need to be in control is a sympathetic fight or flight way of experiencing what some people might call hope. Like, if I'm not in control, this is a hopeless situation. I need to be in control so that this situation isn't hopeless because I see the way forward and y'all just need to let me be in charge.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

One of the things that happened with COVID I hope this feels like a funny story for people to look back on 2020, when every Silicon Valley social media successful person decided they were smart, therefore they understood how to end a pandemic. And so they were all like, pitching their ideas and they were all saying, are experts in global health or public health or infectious disease or epidemiology. None of them have specialized training in what it actually takes to know how to do this. And we just watched all these smart people believe that they knew what to do, feel totally sure that if only they could be in control, they could do it. Elon Musk was like, key among these idiots, these assholes who were like, I mean, like, this is a. This is not a complicated pro. And it, like, truly, it's not a complicated problem, but it is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. Ending diseases is difficult. My PhD is in how ending diseases is difficult. Yeah. And I, with that specialized knowledge, was like, buckshit, I don't know how to do this. I hope there's somebody who knows how to do this.

[Amelia]

Because Dunning Kruger is a thing.

[Emily]

Yeah. Because I had enough knowledge to know that I didn't know how to do this.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And they didn't have enough knowledge, but did have enough, like, success.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

In other domains to feel like they knew how to do it. Right.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Yeah. Dunning Kruger, for those who don't know. Hopefully people know by now, but it's.

[Amelia]

Everybody knows, I think people.

[Emily]

You don't know anything about something, and so you're like, I have no idea. And you learn a little bit and you're like, I am now a master of this. And then you continue learning and you're like, oh, shit. I don't. There's a whole lot I don't know. So that the more you learn, like, you become genuinely competent at something and will never again return to a state of feeling like you're sure you know how to do something.

[Amelia]

Yeah. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous. Officially documented.

[Emily]

Yes. Formally proven.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So hope is in that way, delusion. Like I said, like, it's delusional. We are. We are the bad guys. Globally speaking. As a nation now, we have joined the axis of evil. That's what George fucking W. Bush called it. On their side now as a nation. And Marco Rubio's soul is already in hell and he knows it, which is slightly gratifying to see. Okay, so I want to talk about people. So this in particular, I hope that this next part I talk about is going to be helpful for people who are comparatively young. We are approaching 48. We were full in 2000 and 2004 during the George W. Bush years. I, as a sex educator, had obvious reasons in 2004 for really wanting George W. Bush out of office. And John Kerry was the alternative. And so I invested hard in supporting John Kerry. In the spring of that year, I went and got trained in how elections work. That's where I learned time get more of. And then in the week leading up to the election In November of 2004, I volunteered in the, at that time crucial swing state of Ohio. Oh, how things have changed. Right. So I sat in a room with other people with computers, managing spreadsheets of volunteers and doors that got knocked on. And we all know how that election turned out. But I had hope, I had agency. I believe that if I put my nose to the grindstone, I could make good things happen. I was told that if all of us just do everything we can, then, like, we're going to get this done. I could think of my way out of a jam because I went and got trained in how to make it happen. And then I went absentee because I was out of state for election day. But, man, that night I drove home from Ohio back to Indiana, where I was a grad student listening to the returns. And it was like, anybody who is there, like, you know that the returns early on we were all, like, looking good. And I went to bed and when I woke up in the morning, George W. Bush had been reelected. So I drove to my best friend's house and I walked in, he was already, like, sitting on the couch watching tv. And I was just like, is it true? And he went, yeah. And I, ugly cock cried. The, like, fluids dripping out of every orifice, out of, like, tears and snot and drool dripping out of my. Just, like, couldn't breathe. Like somebody had, like, socked me in the diaphragm and like I was a wind. Like I could like that kind of, like, hard, like desperate, despairing, sobbing. And why, why was I crying that hard? Because that was the day my little bird died. Why? Because I had agency and I had pathways. Right? And that's the day I learned that that is not how change happens at a large scale. Individuals doing their best. That's not actually the thing. I mean, it is the thing.

[Amelia]

It's the only thing.

[Emily]

And it's also not the thing.

[Amelia]

It's not enough.

[Emily]

Yep, yep. And so, you know, it was at the time, as they always are, the most important election of my lifetime. I knew for sure that lots of people were going to die who didn't have to very much like this election. And so, yeah, little bird broke. Little bird broke. And so I never had a little.

[Amelia]

Bird because I was born without agency or a pathway.

[Emily]

If you are a person who is reacting to this second the Trump regime, as we might as well call it the Musk regime, if you are reacting to it like, what the fuck? Everything is broken. How can I ever hope again? What I would like to say to welcome. It's been over 20 years. I was real depressed for a big chunk of time. And I gradually picked myself up and put the pieces back together differently so that I could continue to do the thing that I do. So here are some things that I did. One of the most important was that I figured out my something larger. This is the thing we talk about in burnout is chapter three. Like, that's how important. So chapter two is a little monitor of, like, I'm putting all this effort. So this is my little monitor. I'm like, I'm putting in all this effort, and it leads up to election day when we find out whether or not we actually did the thing. And it turned out we didn't do the thing in my little monitor pushed me off a cliff into a pit of despair. And I hit the ground badly and broke most of my bones and bruised many of my internal organs. And it takes time to heal from that. And that's like, okay, if you are currently splattered on the ground and your bones are broken and your internal organs are bruised, Healing takes time. Emotional healing takes time just as much as physical healing. What promotes physical healing, of course, is an environment of holding a cast, being still, stillness and time and rest. Right. So if now is the time for you emotionally to create an environment of holding stillness, rest, and time, that's. That is correct. That is what is absolutely necessary. If you're, like, broken in pieces, Even.

[Amelia]

If right now it feels like it's so urgent that you be doing things.

[Emily]

Yeah. The thing is, you literally can't. You literally. You literally. You literally. You literally can't. If you try to get up, if many of your bones are broken and many of your internal organs are bruised, if you're like, I need to get up and keep going, what will happen?

[Amelia]

You going to fall apart?

[Emily]

Yeah. You're going to actually kill yourself. Like, you're going to actually, like, make your body worse.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And I want people to know that that's literally true. When you're emotionally in that state.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

You're only going to make yourself sicker. You're only going to make it even harder. Like, you have to heal. You have to begin your healing before you begin working again. There is a point where you transition, like, energy. Think about it as, like, the amount of energy that's being invested when you are broken, splattered on the ground. All of your energy has to go to simple healing of your organs. Gradually you have enough healing that your body can begin to allocate some of its energy to rebuilding strength. And so you can get up and start doing things, but you have to get up. You can't get up and start immediately returning to the world and your activity level. As you knew it, you have to increase gradually, little bit by little bit as more of your energy transitions from healing to growth. That makes sense, right?

[Amelia]

Yeah, of course. The first thing I think of is that I always have a hard time being able to tell. Like, oh, I have energy for growth. That much mean, that must mean I'm fine now. But no, it's. It happens little by little.

[Emily]

Little by little, right? Yeah. And if you have a hard time telling, like, my body will not shut up telling me, yeah, you don't have enough energy for growth, lie down and heal, or like, you've grown enough, get up and fucking do something. Like, my body will not stop telling me. Your body will not start telling you.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And for anybody who's more like Emelia than like me, always err on the side of healing. Do 50% of what you sort of intuitively are like. Do less.

[Amelia]

Yeah, that's good advice.

[Emily]

Heal more. More healing.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So. So these are people who. Whose hope is broken. Like. Like, mine is. My hope never has come back. It's been 20 years. That doesn't mean that I believe it's gone forever. And in that time, I have written three New York Times bestselling self help books. I feel like I figured something out.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And most of that figuring happened in 2005, which is a time when I was raw, depressed, close to the most depressed I've ever been in my life. So what did I do? What did I do? How did I. What did I get? Instead of having hope, what I had was meaning I had my something larger. And we talk about those in chapter three. So your something larger is a thing that you connect to, that fills you with a sense of purpose that makes you feel like your life matters. So I was sitting in the Lib, the public library on Main street in Bloomington, Indiana, reading a book about personal branding of all fucking things. And I was like, having to write sentences about, like, what I do and what I'm for and what I contribute to an organization. If I'm at a job interview, what do I say? That is my contribution. And it was sitting in that library. Library has really mattered to me that I was like, oh, I'm here to teach women to live with confidence and joy in their bodies. Okay, now I have a touchstone. I have a North Star. I have a thing that, like, if I'm feeling lost or exhausted or unsure if I'm making the right choice, I think, does this help me to connect with my something larger? And my something larger is teaching women to live with Confidence and joy in their bodies. Is. Is this a. A that helps me do that? Yes. Do I have the energy for it? Yes. Then it's a yes. And if it's a no, then it's a no. So one of the most important things I do, when I lost hope, I replaced it with connection to something larger than myself that made me know for sure that my life matters, that I'm contributing something valuable. For a lot of people, their work is not their something larger. It's actually very strange that my work is my something larger. I currently. My therapist pointed out that, like, it's very odd and probably part of my autism, that my work is part of my something larger.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Because for a lot of people, it's the stuff they do outside. It is the volunteer organizations. It is their crafting and their artistry, which they do not get paid for. It is their hobbies. It's. That's the stuff that makes them feel like they're connected to something larger than themselves. And look, you don't have to do it every day. Do something that feels connected to your something larger, but, like, do it every month or every couple of weeks, and it will help. It's a sustaining energy connecting with your something larger.

[Amelia]

In the research about meaning, there are three identified characteristics of things that produce meaning. One is things that leave a legacy. So, like, you know, making the world a better place or getting your name on a building or whatever. Another one is a call to service. And the third is participation in loving connections. And obviously that is the least autistic of the three, but probably by far the most relatable for the general population.

[Emily]

Yeah. And like, let us emphasize, as Amelia often does, love can be enough. Love is enough. Love is purpose enough. And what a lot of people have been saying and what I think it's really important to reiterate, is that addressing the needs of your immediate community, the people with whom you share a home, the people with whom you share a neighborhood, the people who live in your town. Like, if you only contribute positively at. At the. At the. If you're. The scale at which you contribute extends no further than your city limits, that is still powerful and meaningful and plenty. You. You don't actually have to feel a connection with something larger than yourself. Go. I have a friend during the. The first Trump administration. This is before I was diagnosed and before I had long Covid. So I wasn't disabled as far as I knew, but she was like, yeah, you want to feel like you're really doing something, go get arrested and I was like, I am not going to do that.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

No, like, that is not for me. That was absolutely for her. She was like, get arrested. Oh, I got arrested. And I feel so good. She spent a day like, she's got two kids, two small kids. And she was like, spouse, you're going to take care of the kids. I'm going to go get arrested in D.C. and I was like, that's awesome. And if that is the person listening to this is like, yes, go do that. Because not everybody can.

[Amelia]

No.

[Emily]

Disabled people are enormously underrepresented at protests and rallies because, like, physically can't. Physically can't. Some of them aren't accessible to people. For example, in wheelchairs, people who have energy limitations like us, like, can't. People who are autistic and crowd just. It's not. That is not a thing that I could tolerate.

[Amelia]

That's a no for me dog.

[Emily]

That's going to be a no for me dog. And for some people, it's really important.

[Amelia]

So, yeah, for most people, it is enlivening. And for a lot of people, yeah, powerful.

[Emily]

And if that's you, man, go do it. It's so important that people put their bodies on the line. It is so important. And then, like, I want to make sure for the people for whom that is a no, you do not need to feel guilty or bad or ashamed like, that people contribute something different. Does that make sense?

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

You're something larger. Can be no larger than your home. That is why we have done two episodes.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Make your home a ventral haven. I felt super personally attacked by Sonya Rita Taylor not long ago because she made a what's up y'all? Video that was like. I was meditating. I received this download and wanted to share with you a thing that you and I say all the goddamn fucking time. And I was like, she said, you have to heal your.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Sometimes your job, Your job is not to go do somebody else's work. Your job is to heal your own. So you should not take your out on somebody else.

[Amelia]

Hurt people. Hurt people.

[Emily]

Hurt people. Hurt people. Heal, heal. In fact, do like 50 of the growth that you. If you are not. Than you are inclined to do. Because healing, healing. Do mostly healing. Yeah, do like 95% healing, which means home is a ventral haven.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Spend time in connection with the people who feel safe with you.

[Amelia]

And if you don't feel like you have hope, then that's fine because you don't need it.

[Emily]

Hope is. It's a. It's very loudly touted Unnecessary from the rooftops.

[Amelia]

Oh. Hope is what's gonna sustain it. Like, I mean, hope's a sustaining energy.

[Emily]

Okay.

[Amelia]

We got that definition. But, like, it is by no means necessary.

[Emily]

You know what? So Kate Manne, not long ago, wrote a newsletter about her relationship with her own okayness. That she basically, like, felt bad for the extent to which her body had returned to its baseline. And she was. And rage.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And as a moral philosopher, she was imposing morality on what she felt and what she should feel. That there is a moral impetus to stay enraged. And if we learn anything from the polyvagal theory, it's that rage can absolutely be a sustaining energy. But it is a degrading, sustaining energy. It literally wears out your organ systems. It wears out your cardiovascular system. It wears out your muscles. It wears out all of your tissues. It wears out your.

[Amelia]

Sustaining intentionally, temporarily.

[Emily]

Short term. Yes. So like little spikes of anger periodically sustaining. Yes. For.

[Amelia]

For a few minutes. Literally minutes.

[Emily]

Literally minutes at a time. Anything beyond that, like, that's when it becomes dangerous. You have to heal from the time that your body spent in rage.

[Amelia]

Yes.

[Emily]

And you heal best when you have access to ventral, which is peace and ease and joy. Which is why joy is the fundamental emotion of resistance.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Which the black people of America have known for 400 years.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Which is why rest is resistance is trans forming, revolutionary text.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Joy is the ultimate emotion of resistance because it allows your body to heal from the rage and hopelessness that is deliberately imposed. They keep. The reason they flood the zone with shit is so that they can keep you in an activated, enraged, degrading state, physiologically degrading state all the time. So that you do not have the emotional and physical wherewithal to fight. Yeah. To show up when you need to. Hope is better than rage because it is ventral. Because it's joyful, because it is positive. It is warm. It is connected. It can be easeful.

[Amelia]

It is nourishing.

[Emily]

Absolutely. If you have access to hope, which neither of us does and not everybody does. And if you're broken on the floor in a million pieces and all your organs are bruised and, like, every breath is a struggle, hashtag been there, then healing. Healing is the thing you need to do. Heal your shit. Connect with your something larger. Figure out what your something larger is. And remember your continued existence is an act of defiance.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Staying alive until you have an opportunity to make change, to contribute in some way.

[Emily]

Healing to the point that you have energy to grow.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So we're a chunk of time in. We have talked about the problem with hope, which is it's a problem of scale and it's not a necessary sustaining energy. It's a wonderful sustaining energy if you have access to it. And if you don't. Yeah, yeah. I am literal, living, breathing evidence that it is 100% possible to make contributions to the world and live a good life in the total absence of hope.

[Amelia]

Right, Yeah. I mean, yeah, I did, too.

[Emily]

So I would like to, like, call that a complete episode and then shift into an addendum. People who do not want to hear about an impulse in your brain that says maybe how about not being alive can be done. Now you did sustaining energy that is as warm and connected and joyful and easeful as you have access to. You're going to invest as much energy in healing as your body calls for. And. And you're doing it, you're not doing it wrong just because you don't have hope. Hope is a scam.

[Amelia]

Well, hope is. Yeah, yeah, hope is a scam.

[Emily]

If you have.

[Amelia]

Home ownership is a scam. It's great if you have access to it, but if you don't, exactly, don't worry, fine. There's a whole bunch of other options that are very, very, very good.

[Emily]

Very good. Yes. And you can stop listening now if your emotional hope version of I'll never be able to own a home is I am living in my car and it doesn't start. This next section is for you. Because what people fear when they lose access to hope is that they become what people call hopeless, which means that they think there are no other ways through the jams of their lives. They do not feel that they have either agency or pathways. They feel stuck, trapped, isolated. And the trapped and isolated are some of the most dangerous emotional experiences that a human can have.

[Amelia]

And we're talking about a difference here between what we were talking about before. Because the fact, the objective information, that we don't have any individual agency to change like climate change or to resolve the current. That's information. That's true. The feeling that you have no agency over anything at all is not to do with the truth of circumstances. That's a state in your mind. Yeah, that is probably not true.

[Emily]

So there's the piece of information. For example, I, as an individual, can do statistically literally nothing to impact climate change or the constitutional crisis. That is. That is a statement of reality. And then there is a feeling you may or may not have about it, like, I have no feeling about that. That's just a statement of fact. Like, you know, the sun comes up in the morning, like. Yep.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And here's the thing. There comes a time when your brain may or may not get to a place where like, yeah, the sun came up this morning, and it's going to go down again, and there's nothing I can do to stop it going down again. And your brain, because it's. Because there's something happening in it that is a disease state, your brain says, then you are worthless and you. To continue breathing or this is. It's too hard to live in a world where the sun goes down every single day? Every day the day ends, the sun goes down. Is it really worth continuing to breathe when every day the sun goes down? Isn't that too hard? Doesn't it hurt too much?

[Amelia]

And this is not information. This is not objective.

[Emily]

This is your brain having a disease.

[Amelia]

State of your brain. Yeah. This is your. Just your brain being stuck, regardless of the context. Yes.

[Emily]

So, and I. The reason I want to talk about it is because when people get hopeless, it's so easy. When you feel trapped and isolated, when you're like, it is too difficult. I have no path forward. I'm. My brain pushed me off an emotional cliff into a pit of despair.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And I feel this thing that I'm going to label hopelessness, but that is actually my brain deciding that because I can't change these things, I can't change anything.

[Amelia]

Yes.

[Emily]

And there are so many things you can do. The most important thing to do. Do you know, like, statistically, like, according to the research, the most important thing to do. Wouldn't being dead be better than this? Do you know what the most important.

[Amelia]

Seek help.

[Emily]

Yeah. Tell somebody. Yeah, tell somebody. Say it out loud to another human.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

It is nothing to be ashamed of. It's not even really something to be afraid of. It is, like, it's scary. Like, it has happened to me multiple times. It has happened to you multiple times. And it's.

[Amelia]

Yep.

[Emily]

Like, it's scary when it comes.

[Amelia]

Oh, yes.

[Emily]

Because you're like, there is a part of my brain that wants me to be dead.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

That is scary. Which is why it is so important that you tell somebody that this, like, disease state is happening in your brain.

[Amelia]

I'm not afraid of it anymore because it's been around so long, and I worked so hard. I was so afraid of it for so long. And then my therapist was like, do you think it has information for you or something to teach you? And I was like, you know.

[Emily]

It'S.

[Amelia]

Trying to hurt me.

[Emily]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Amelia]

Why would I Listen to it.

[Emily]

Yeah. It's trying to hurt me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Amelia]

And. And there was a first. It was the first appointment I had with her. And when I came back the next week, she's like, I didn't think I'd see you again.

[Emily]

Yeah, that's the great thing about being autistic.

[Amelia]

I was like, I don't quit things. I don't quit things. Once I started a thing, I finished a thing, even if it's, like, confronting and difficult. And I was like, okay, you're gonna tell me why depression has something to teach me. Like, that's clearly bullshit. But then I spent, like, you know, another four years listening to depression and just letting it teach me things.

[Emily]

Yeah. I experience my depression as distinct from the part of me that wants me dead.

[Amelia]

Oh, yeah.

[Emily]

Because I can be depressed. I can be very depressed without having a part of me that wants me dead coming. Oh, to the surface. Oh, they're the same thing for you. Wow, that must. That must be exhausting. Yeah.

[Amelia]

The. The moment I started having, like, thoughts about being in a coffin and stuff, I increase my.

[Emily]

You're like, oh, I'm depressed. That's the thing. So this is another, like, your, like, threshold of awareness is like. You get to the. Like. I'm aware I'm depressed when I start thinking about being in a coffin.

[Amelia]

No, no, no, no, no, no. I increase my dose. I become aware that. I become aware that depression is a problem for me right here, right now. With a lot of things, it's. I sleep more and I'm more tired, and I don't want to do things that I used to enjoy. Like, all the things that they say.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

But, like, I know that I need. This is like. It used to be that I would get sort of, like, freaked out by how much I thought about death, but now I just. I'm like, oh, that's information that I need to. This is. This is now. This is now not a thoughts issue. This is a broken brain issue. This is a medication. Yeah. Broken brain intervention time. Yeah.

[Emily]

Yeah. That's what.

[Amelia]

That's what the coffin imagery is for me. It's not, oh, now I'm depressed. It's. And now we. And now we seek medical intervention.

[Emily]

Yeah. Yeah. You seek medical intervention, you tell the people who can help you. I tell the last time it happened for me, like, I told Rich, and we had to, like, change a whole lot of plans, like, immediately. And the reason I told him I was because I was looking at what we had planned, and I was like, that is that is not available to me because there's a part of my brain that wants me to be dead. And I cannot do those things while I have that. So let me. Can I talk about that part of me? Yeah. Because I used internal family systems to change my relationship with the part of me that wants me dead. Because it's not my whole brain.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Which is why, like, there's a part of me that's afraid of the part that wants me dead. Because it's like, oh, no, there's something that's. That's no bueno. So when I. You can tell we've had, like, so much therapy and I've done so much work because we're like, part of me.

[Amelia]

That wants me dead is no bueno.

[Emily]

No bueno. But. So when I. So what you do in internal family systems is you unblend from the part, which means you create some observational distance between you and. And you personify it. And you may or may not have, like, a visual representation of the part, but you have a sense that you can, like, witness it or listen to it or experience it without it being you. Like, I don't want me dead. This part of me wants me dead. And like your therapist said, it probably has something it wants to communicate to me. It is in some way trying to me. Because these parts of ourselves, these difficult parts of ourselves, were created by our brains to protect us from something. And the part of me that, like, creeps like a gremlin into my brain is like, you know, it would be better than this not being alive, you know, be better. It is my zombie leprechaun. It is a zombie leprechaun, which looks exactly. I literally, like, I went to Etsy and I searched for zombie leprechaun, and I found a little statue of a zombie leprechaun. And I bought lives in my house as this, like, external representation of the part of me. And a wonderful thing that I learned when I could separate myself from the part of me that wants me dead. No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz is sort of like the text ish type thing. And the reason it's called no Bad Parts is because even the most difficult part, and I would describe this as one of my most difficult parts, they're all there because they're trying to help, even if they're doing it in a way that's kind of unhelpful. A really important thing I learned from my zombie leprechaun is that even though it was like, I am the part of you that. That wants you to be dead. I'm encouraging you to be dead. What I learned is it didn't want to kill me. There is no part of me. I mean, there are multiple parts of me that can think about ways, but there is no part of me that wants to do those things. Which was very empowering. That, like, he could. He could want the outcome, but not be. Not want to be the one who did it. That was very helpful for me.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So step number one, ask for help.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So when. When I notice that the zombie leprechaun is doing a good job of convincing me that, like, I might want to be dead, my brain will then start exploring ideas for how to make that happen. And it's valuable to know that the zombie leprechaun himself is. Is not the one who's doing that. And so I can just like, stop that part. And if. If you have a part of you that's also thinking about, like, that's like, really fascinated at researching ways. Like, that's a part you need to also listening relationship with because, like, what is it that your brain, that part of you gets out of thinking about ways? So step number one, ask for help. Insert. They came to help because of sadness. Here you should have a list of people, three at minimum, one of whom should be a professional.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily]

Is it embarrassing sometimes? Yeah. My. To be like, I have all of this privilege, I have all of this success, and my brain is still doing this thing to me. Step number one, ask for help.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Well, that's the thing, is that this is the difference between, like, burnout and depression.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Like, is that burnout is because of your circumstances. You change your circumstances, you'll change.

[Emily]

Change how you feel.

[Amelia]

Mental illness, it doesn't matter your circumstances.

[Emily]

Because it's happening in your brain, not in your.

[Amelia]

Yeah, it's happening in your brain.

[Emily]

Circumstances.

[Amelia]

So it doesn't. Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily]

So after you ask for help and access help, do whatever it takes to heal. And in the early phases of all healing we talked about, like, if you have hit the ground and broken all your bones and bruised most of your organs, if taking. It's okay to numb intolerable pain. When people are in the hospital in intolerable pain, what does the hospital do? Hopefully, unless you're a black woman, they give you painkillers. They numb the pain. Right?

[Amelia]

Yeah. As long as they believe that you're actually.

[Emily]

As long as they believe that you're in pain. And we don't need to get into a conversation right now about the ways that there is Injustice and pain management in hospitals and in all medical care, numbing the pain is acceptable. Pain is not a measure of your valor. It is not a measure of your worth as a human being. Pain can actually keep you so in an activated, stressed, fearful, sympathetic state that it becomes more difficult to heal. Numb intolerable pain in whatever way helps. Whatever rest, television, whatever delicious fucking food, whatever. Anything that like, makes. Lowers the pain to a tolerable level. Great.

[Amelia]

But Emily, illicit drugs.

[Emily]

Yes. The way Kate Bornstein puts it is you have permission to do whatever it takes to make your life worth living. Just don't be mean. You can do whatever it takes to make your life worth living. Just don't be mean. If that's illicit drugs, whatever it takes to get through.

[Amelia]

But let's talk about, you know, harm reduction and maladaptive versus adaptive coping and. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]

That's what we're doing. Yeah. What we're doing here is harm reduction because the ultimate.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Instead of not alive.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

You do whatever it takes to make your life tolerable.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Until. Because the thing is like, we've both been through this so many times and it always ends. It always feels like it's never gonna end.

[Amelia]

And it always, always feels like it's never gonna change because that's the primary symptom is stuckness.

[Emily]

Yeah. Yeah. So step one, ask for help. Step two, numb the pain. I was gonna say don't be a hero, but it's fucking heroic to numb the pain. To be like, I have this Costco size bag of gluten free ramen and I'm gonna need as many of these as it takes for me to fall asleep. To you, friend. Whatever it takes. And, and when it is possible, do things that help you to release the pain. Because in addition to numbing the pain, we also need to clean the wound. Compassion. Ray McDaniel, who's a sex and gender therapist, they run a whole practice for folks and the way they describe it is that compassion is antiseptic. That cleans emotional wounds. It can sting. Part of why you ask for help is so that you can receive compassion from someone who isn't you. And it may sting, it may feel like, is this the right choice? Antiseptic cleans the wounds, the emotional wounds, so that you can heal.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So having stuff that releases the junk, like the garbage that gets stuck inside us is necessary. There's going to be some media that you consume that numbs the pain. There's going to be some media you consume that releases the pain.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Like you have some music you listen. No, you have, like, books you listen to that, like, numb the pain, then probably for you, I would say listening to music.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Releases the pain.

[Amelia]

Feelings. Yeah.

[Emily]

Feelings. Yeah, yeah. That's often the case for me. Sometimes there's media or books that release the pain. A lot of them are numbing. And I, like. There are specific go to's of, like, if I need to cry.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Emily]

What's. What's a thing you listen to that's like, this is to help me cry.

[Amelia]

The second movement of the Brahms Requiem.

[Emily]

Well, yeah, yeah, that's. That's a little too fancy for me.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

But what's it called? Chichester Psalms. Yeah, like, totally nothing. Like a boy.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Holy shit. A boy soprano will just, like, get me every time. Which is why I include it in one of my romance novels. At the end. Someone in a tree from Pacific Overtures. There's the, like. Just thinking about the lyrics.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Without someone in a tree, nothing happened here. It's the pebble, not the stream, not the building, but the beam. So find a thing that helps be an outlet. I had a student a long time ago who. Who was like, so, like, if I have a TV show that lets. That lets me, like, feel better, feel calm, that's healing, right? And I was like, no, does it help you feel calm or does it help you cry? And that's important. And you know how there are some things that, like, make you cry? And she was like, yes. Those might be things that help to release the pain, unlike physical pain. Like, there is. Well, so, like, there's healthy pain that comes with growth. Like.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Stretching. A lot of yoga instructors use language like, that's a lot of sensation. That's a really intense sensation. So pigeon pose. That's a. There's a lot of intense sensation in your hips in this posture. They'll say, instead of framing it as pain, they're like, this is a really intense sensation. And so if you have media that produces a lot of intense sensation that isn't pain, but it's like. That's like. It's. Cleansing is good. Those are. Those are important things to do. Okay, so so far we've got one. Ask for help. Most important thing. Single most important thing. Ask for help. At least three people should be on your list. One of them should be a professional. Two, numb the intolerable pain, plus do things that help to release the pain. Cleansing. Good. Antiseptic compassion.

[Amelia]

Participating in media that help you feel your feelings.

[Emily]

Yes. In a way that doesn't Activate a whole bunch of like. This is intolerable. I would rather be not alive than experiencing this. If you can unblend from the part. Do you have, like, a personification? Do you have an unblending. Do you have a. You have cues, like, thoughts?

[Amelia]

Yeah. No. Yeah, I have cues, like, thoughts of, like, oh, this is depression. This is. That's what's happening to me. I do have a sense that it's not me. I am not depressed.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

I definitely have unblended it to that.

[Emily]

Degree, but that's valuable.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Yeah. And unblending. And, like, that's a different. Like, I have a different relationship with different diagnoses. So I have depression, but I am autistic. Right.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So if you can separate yourself in some way from the experience that you're having, creating observational distance so that you can know that it is happening without being. Your whole identity is what's happening. And if you get to a point where you are well enough, it can be useful to inquire into, like, what are the dynamics of life that activate this part of me which is not active all the time. So what were the circumstances that convened to make this happen? The last time for me, it was a combination of, like, a surgical strike of a work conflict. Plus, a famous person who brought joy to my life died by suicide. And that was like, ych. And the insight was valuable. Insight is neither necessary nor, like, it's not enough. And it also, like, you can get through this whole thing without. Without ever having insight. You just get through it. Yeah. And that's.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Expose yourself finally to stories of hope.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Amelia and I are both stories of hope. Like, I do. Like, I hope you experience stuff. And when I say hope, like, this is an episode of hope. My happily ever after is that I have this hilarious personification of the part of me that wants me dead. It's a zombie leprechaun. It's funny. It's funny.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Right. And I will probably always have. I, like, I accept that this is, like, a thing that lives in my brain, and occasionally it sticks its head out when. When circumstances convene to. But I go long periods of life without it, and then every now and then it goes.

[Amelia]

Right.

[Emily]

And that's like. That's a. That's a good outcome.

[Amelia]

Yeah, 100%.

[Emily]

You have a similar kind of outcome, right.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

I chug along and I take the minimum amount of medication I can to, you know, preserve my liver function and. And not be depressed. And then when I start thinking about myself in A coffin. I up my meds.

[Emily]

Yeah. That is a story of hope.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Right.

[Amelia]

Yeah. It. I couldn't always do it. There was one time when I was laid out on the couch.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Not actively crying, just like.

[Emily]

Oh, no. Because when it's at its worst, you can cry.

[Amelia]

You can't just, like, on the couch, my eyes leaking, but not crying.

[Emily]

Like, just very familiar. Yeah. I don't have the energy to cry, but I also don't have the energy to, like, stop myself from crying.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So it's just, like, a thing happening to my face.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And my poor, at the time, boyfriend, now husband, like, what can I do? And, like, the. The thing that had to be done was I needed to find a medical professional who would put me back on my meds. And he did that. He made phone calls, and he found I didn't have any insurance, and he found a practitioner where I could go without insurance and get a prescription. Like, that's what I needed is someone just to do that. And he was looking at me on the couch like.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Clearly not myself, to say the least. Like, he'd known me then for five years already. So he knew, like, this is not how Amelia acts. This is not Amelia's personality. This is not normal.

[Emily]

Something is wrong.

[Amelia]

Something is wrong. And I was like, I don't know. I just can't. But I bet I should get back. But I've called some psychiatrists, and I don't have insurance, so they won't see me. And I asked my primary care physician, and he said he won't prescribe psych meds.

[Emily]

Wow. You tried?

[Amelia]

I tried.

[Emily]

Talk about feeling helpless and trapped. Like, you tried things and just, like, got doors closed in your face.

[Amelia]

When my primary care provider said he doesn't prescribe psych meds, I was like, just give me a month so I have enough.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Energy to find a real psychiatrist. I don't prescribe psych meds. I thought, that's it. This is not going to happen.

[Emily]

I'm going to die like this, Mom. I couldn't believe it.

[Amelia]

I was like, wow, he doesn't want to save my life. Is this a doctor who doesn't care if I live or die?

[Emily]

Did you say that?

[Amelia]

No. I had told him that I was thinking about suicide because I 100% was, and he said, I don't prescribe psych meds.

[Emily]

That is.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

That's enraging.

[Amelia]

I mean, it was. It was 20 years ago now, and it still feels so intense.

[Emily]

Oh, yeah. You ask for help, and the person is just like, you're like, I'm afraid I'm not going to live through the next month.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And they're like, I'm not going to prescribe a medication that would help you live through the next month.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

My equivalent. When I also lost my insurance and therefore lost my medication, I was. If you're ready for me to talk about my story. Yeah. Do it. Yeah. I. I was, I was living with our mom. Living with. I was in the attic and I spent all my time in the attic. And I was not, I was young enough that I was not yet aware of the patterns that happened. Maybe third. No, it was the third. And two of them had happened while I was living in that attic. And I didn't realize how bad it was. And I certainly didn't realize that anyone could tell that there was anything wrong with me. I was super sure that I seemed fine because I was masking hard. And then one day, mom came up to the attic and handed me a piece of paper and started crying and said, this is a prescription for your medication. She had gotten a nurse practitioner in her. In her choir. Mom was a church musician and there was a nurse practitioner in her choir who could. It's illegal for a medical provider to write a prescription for someone they have not seen and are not the provider for. And my mom asked this np to break the law to write this prescription because she knew that it would save my life. And she said, we will pay for this month. Take it so that you are well enough to get on Medicaid and can have a provider and a prescription. And. And I did. I went to the drugstore and I got that filled and I got on it and I had enough energy to recognize how depressed I had been and how close to the edge I had been and got on Medicaid. I went to the Medicaid office and I went and got a Medicaid psychiatrist and got the lowest quality psychiatric treatment I've ever gotten in my life. But, oh, boy, was it enough to have a prescription for the medication that saved my life. Yeah.

[Amelia]

That's what I ended up doing too. Is going to like a state sponsored Medicaid type situation.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Amelia]

Saved my life.

[Emily]

Yep. Saved my life.

[Amelia]

Yep.

[Emily]

State provided medical care. Saved my life. So when I see the cuts potentially being made to Medicaid like our. We would, we would not be here if it weren't for medication and for, and in my case, for someone around me noticing that I was worse than I knew I was. Yeah. And somebody else being like Hearing mom being worried that her daughter was going to die and being willing to write a prescription that your medical provider wasn't willing to write. And these were happening around the same time.

[Amelia]

Yes. 2005. Yep.

[Emily]

Right around the same time. So.

[Amelia]

Might have been 2006 for me.

[Emily]

It was January of 2007 for me.

[Amelia]

It was definitely. It was definitely 2006 for me.

[Emily]

Yeah. Yeah. Right around the same time. Right around the same time.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

It's like there was a genetic clock in our brains that was like, you might be done. You might be done.

[Amelia]

I definitely think that's part of it. I definitely think that's part of it.

[Emily]

Since it happened for both of us at, like, very similar times, and our life circumstances were totally different from each other's.

[Amelia]

Completely different.

[Emily]

Completely different.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So, like, part of me feels like there was a genetic clock in our brain that was like, I think so.

[Amelia]

That might be enough. That might be it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you live long enough to reproduce. You didn't do it. Time's up.

[Emily]

And. And our medication got us through that, and here we are.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And we are for sure not the only ones.

[Emily]

Yeah. So the first half of this episode was hope for people who are. Who are, like, trying to find a sustaining energy. And the second half of the episode was for people who were like, does hopelessness mean I am trapped and alone forever? And the answer is 100% not.

[Amelia]

No. Yeah.

[Emily]

100% not. And definitely talk to a professional. And we have just both shared stories about we know how hard it is to find a helping professional, but as Maria Bamford says, some of that help is really shitty. You go get that shitty help. Go get that shitty help. Go get that shitty help. Go get that shitty help. Shitty help is better than no help. Yeah.

[Amelia]

I literally refer to my psychiatric providers as drug dealers.

[Emily]

Yeah. For years.

[Amelia]

Yeah. Pretty much all they do is they write my prescriptions. I see a therapist who actually helps, and I see a psychiatrist who just writes my scripts.

[Emily]

Yeah. I only now. And so I have. I have an actual psychiatrist now who knows more than I do, which is, like, that's my threshold. Somebody who I don't just, like, tell them what I need and they give it to me. Yeah. And he does not accept insurance. Yeah. So it is only because I can afford to pay cash that I have psychiatric care now. That is more than. Just, please write me this prescription to supplement the therapy that actually is helping me.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Oh, man, it's rough. This is. This is times.

[Amelia]

Well, the good news is that, like, people have been studying depression. And to be sure, once you feel like maybe death is the all is the appropriate alternative, like, that is a sign of disease, that is illness. That is not a healthy response to anything. That's not a realistic way of perceiving the world.

[Emily]

And it's not actually about your life circumstances. It is your brain. Sometimes as a result of life circumstances, your brain breaks.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

But it is the broken brain that is like, that's a disease that it can be treated.

[Amelia]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So once you're feeling like that, it's a disease that can be treated and it's very well researched. There are therapies that are very well established. Once you ask for help, help is available and real. And, you know, and that doesn't mean.

[Emily]

The first time you ask, you're going to find somebody good.

[Amelia]

Yeah, but. But, you know, accept that shitty help.

[Emily]

Yeah, accept that shitty help. Shitty help is better than no help. There's so many books, there's so many podcasts now that you can listen to. We should probably at some point make a like, how to help somebody who's the only. If you're a person who's like, I know somebody who's in this place and I've been waiting for you to tell me how to help somebody who's in this place, and I cannot get a prescription written for them, the number one thing to know is that you can ask, hey, have you been thinking about hurting yourself? Have you been thinking about being dead? And be open to the conversation and know that the conversation, your compassion and willingness to see this thing that they may feel afraid of, they may feel ashamed of, like, that is an incredibly valuable thing. It's not the only thing that a person needs in that state. But it really important that there be somebody else in their life who knows, and they can talk to you about it and you can get their insurance booklet and start looking for providers who are accepting patients.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Because that process of, like, finding a provider when you're depressed is onerous.

[Amelia]

It's almost an issue.

[Emily]

It's a joke.

[Amelia]

Yeah. And. And if anybody's like, well, I'm not sure I want to be on medication, I'll tell you what my psychiatrist, my first psychiatrist said was, you'd rather drink and cry.

[Emily]

Personally attacked. And was there a part of your brain that was like, yeah, I mean.

[Amelia]

Yeah, that's what I've been doing.

[Emily]

I haven't actually, like, gone to school drunk yet.

[Amelia]

So, no, I had actually been to school drunk. I mean, not drunk, but like a couple of Shots, not sober.

[Emily]

That's bad.

[Amelia]

100.

[Emily]

Yeah. My I, I when my, when I first got prescribed anxiety medication I was like, I just really want to like not use it. And he's like, so you're drinking instead of using prescribed medication? And I was like, yeah, okay, okay. Yeah. That's enough of that, sir.

[Amelia]

Yeah. You may already be self medicating and that is not.

[Emily]

We should have an alcohol. I know a lot about alcohol because I was a college health educator.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

For a long time and just directly.

[Amelia]

Descended from an alcoholic.

[Emily]

Right. Yes. I know many, many things. Okay. So in summary, your emotional pain is not inherently dangerous and it will always, always end when you feel like it's a lot. First step is to tell someone. Second step is to manage the pain as cleanse the wound with compassion as you would cleanse any physical wound with antiseptics. And sometimes if you have the wherewithal, look for insight to help you understand why little fucker got activated again and know for sure. This is both of us having been through it multiple times. We know lots of people who have been through it multiple times.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

We also both know people who didn't make it.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And what I would want them to know is that. Yeah, it's very fucking hard. It is so uncomfortable. It's so hard. I get always ends. And it's never true that you are isolated. It is never true that you are trapped. You and you can get free. Step one is telling someone three someones, one of whom has to be a professional. We should definitely include in the show notes all the information about the suicide hotline. Specific information for trans non binary folks. So you'll find like if you need to talk to somebody right away, you'll find that and I hope you believe us. And I hope that if you know someone who's struggling in this way that this has offered some insight into what their experience is and what you can do to be there for them. And I hope that most people stopped listening at the end of the first half.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Because most people don't need this. This is, this is for the, this.

[Amelia]

Is a non standard degree of not everybody explication.

[Emily]

Yeah. Not everybody goes. This has this intensity of experience. But like for the people who need it, I feel like we're people who can talk about it and we there therefore we should talk about it.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And I think we have not painted like a rosy picture of like you can do it.

[Amelia]

Oh yeah. I mean you can but.

[Emily]

And it's gonna be so hard.

[Amelia]

Gonna be that hard.

[Emily]

But it's also gonna be kind of funny. It's gonna be kind of funny, like, fluids are just gonna leak out of your face while you do nothing. You're just, like, lying there and, like, fluids leaking out of your face, and a person who loves you is gonna be like, what? What?

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

What? Rich hates the Lord of the Rings because the very first winter we were together. So I have seasonal effective situation that makes winters especially hard. And so that first one, my comfort watch, was Lord of the Rings, and I would just, like, numb out to, like, a dozen hours of hobbits and elves and dwarves and.

[Amelia]

Really?

[Emily]

Yeah. And Rich now hates the Lord of the Rings because he associates it like, we had only been together for, like, six months, so I was new to him. He didn't have five years of, like, who is Emily, actually?

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

So he's, like, watching me, like, lie there with fluids leaking out of my face, just, like, staring at a screen where the Lord of the Rings was happening.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And when I.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

He's like, what is this? Poor guy. I will take the ring to Mordor, though I do not know the way.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Wow. Me too.

[Amelia]

Wow.

[Emily]

So. Yeah.

[Amelia]

Oh. Oh, boy.

[Emily]

So I decided we would talk about the problems with Hope, and that is what we did. And we can. We can stop doing this now, and next time we'll talk about autism. We'll start to talk about autism. Okay.

[Amelia]

I want to say a thing that you don't have to include if you don't want to, Rich, But I discovered that decluttering is compassion.

[Emily]

Ooh.

[Amelia]

It's forgiveness for mistakes.

[Emily]

Is that why it's so hard for so many people?

[Amelia]

I think maybe because you have to.

[Emily]

Turn toward your bad decisions with kindness and compassion. And some of those mistakes are money mistakes.

[Amelia]

Almost all of them are money mistakes.

[Emily]

And they're also, like, body feelings.

[Amelia]

Body feelings. Yeah. Oh. I was like, oh, this is forgiveness for this mistake I made.

[Emily]

So thank you for your service.

[Amelia]

Is I'm forgiven.

[Emily]

I forgive myself for.

[Amelia]

For thinking that I was this person who would wear this article of clothing or whatever.

[Emily]

Yeah. I grieve the fact that it turns out I never was the person who was gonna wear this.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Or I am no longer the person who was gonna wear this or eat this. I think that's important. I know. We should do. We should do just, like, alternate decluttering episodes with everything else. Yeah. Because it turns out, like, that's just going to be, like, the key to 2025 is all this stuff. Every item in your home. Every item in your home. Including, in my case, the garden statue of a zombie leprechaun. On.

[Amelia]

Is it a garden? Oh, is that what the garden statue is?

[Emily]

Yes. Oh, it's in the. We have a clear glass case, like a display case.

[Amelia]

Oh, I'm familiar.

[Emily]

One of the things in there is a garden statuette of a zombie leprechaun that I bought on Etsy.

[Amelia]

Nice.

[Emily]

Sparks. Joy.

[Amelia]

Because it feels your.

[Emily]

Yeah, because it's. It. It reminds me that that part of myself is just a part of myself.

[Amelia]

Yeah.

[Emily]

And it's very funny. It's funny.

[Amelia]

Come on.

[Emily]

And that's all for this week. Feminist Survival Project, Zombie Apocalypse Edition. Turns out one of the zombies is a leprechaun that wants me dead. Hi, diddly dee. It's not alive. You'll be. Yeah, we can make those jokes. We are mostly Irish. Thank you so much for listening. And we'll be back next week with something equally uplifting. No, it'll be. It'll be more fun, hopefully. But as Maria Bamford says, some of that help is really shitty. You go get that shitty help. Go get that shitty help.