SPEAKER_00 0:00

On this episode, we know that struggles with mental health are a huge problem, and it is something that everyone needs help with at some point. But who is taking care of those providing the help? Those in the trenches doing the hard work? The social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, all of those in the helping professions, teachers, police officers, the list goes on. Today, I talk with someone whose mission is to provide a framework and a program to do just that. Chad Angelotti is a licensed clinical social worker, mental performance coach, and founder of Flow State Sports and Mental Performance Coaching. For over 15 years, he's helped people navigate stress, anxiety, burnout, and high-pressure environments. Today, he combines clinical psychology, breath work, and performance science to help athletes, professionals, and teams unlock flow state and perform at their best. Chad is the creator of the Prescribing Safety Framework, an original model for understanding burnout and professional resilience. And he serves as the senior mental performance coach for the TUNY ONIATA Women's Soccer Program. His work focuses on one central idea. When people feel safe, they perform better. I'm Jake Panasevich, and this is the Yoga with Jake podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

I'm just getting my afternoon beverage here settled. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

No, I've never not even heard of it. Oh, it's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Make all your own carbonated stuff. I was never a big fan of carbonation, but my wife got me onto it. And it's just a nice it makes the afternoon exciting. Is it energy energy drink or is it you can get different like different ninja flavorings? Okay. Some with caffeine, some without.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Wonderful. I've uh I've been hooked on um protein iced coffee.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Oh yeah. Did you do uh overnight oats has a good protein coffee?

SPEAKER_00 2:41

This is uh chick, c h I k e it was it was on sale at Wegmans, and that's why the Wegmans. Yeah, Danny Wegman. I give him all the credit.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

We only have a Wegman's uh well, I'm sure you know. I mean, closest to us is is Binghamton. So anytime there's a Binghamton trip, it's okay, we gotta make a trip at Wegmans.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Yeah, nice. Now, how long how long have you had your podcast? So I've had my podcast since the beginning of COVID. No kidding. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

And I've looked through, I mean, you've you've you've interviewed some some big names.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Yeah, yeah. So I'm very lucky. I mean, this is an arm of my work with U.S. News and World Report. So a lot of times I'll connect with folks through that, and um oftentimes they'll let me put in like a tiny little paragraph or a tiny little quote from a two-hour-long conversation with an Olympic gold medalist or a professor or a doctor. And so this is kind of a way to provide folks with a longer format value added um resource. So yeah, yeah, I'm very lucky that people have been saying yes. What kind of what kind of listenership do you have right now? Uh it's a little all over the map. It's not cr, it's not crazy. It's not, you know, it's like a couple thousand, you know, and that's I'm thrilled with that. Yeah, it's not bad. Um, certain ones perform better than others. You know, I don't really at this stage kind of hang my hat on those numbers. I just want to talk with folks who are people I'm interested to talk to and I think are doing great work. You know, it goes ranges from anywhere from like I said, pro athletes that tend to get a ton of numbers to, you know, high school teachers to, you know. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Yeah, yeah. I think that's where the real juice is, man.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

I mean, those are the everyday people. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. And it's just a nice way for me to selfishly network and just prov as someone who works for themselves, it's just a good way to surround myself with like-minded people who are doing um meaningful work. And so that's that's kind of what this is kind of stemmed from. So yeah, I mean, in uh in the spirit of that, let's go. Let's do it, man. I'm I'm pumped that you're uh that you're pumped to do it. I I'm thrilled to to have you on, Chad. And I was wondering if we could start to just get to know a little bit about yourself and your background.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Yeah. Um so uh my name is Chad Angelati. I'm a licensed clinical social worker. Uh I've been in community mental health for almost 20 years now. Um, this was my first job right out of college. Um, you know, I did I did two master's degrees. I did one in applied social science at Binghamton University, which doesn't really qualify me to do much of anything. Um, and I figured that out. And then I went back and I got my master's in social work after I had been in uh direct care human service work, probably since I was like 13 years old as a as a uh camp counselor. Um but my mom was a uh second grade teacher growing up, so I've always been around the helping professions for quite some time. Um, and so you know, fast forward, I graduate from Binghamton and I think I graduated in what? We graduate in May, and by September 1st, I was a baby therapist in community mental health, and I had no idea what I was doing. Um, and I kind of self-taught. Uh, you know, I came from a generalist program. You know, a lot of clinicians will come from programs that have a clinical track or a macro track. Um, mine is generalist, so you make it what you want. And um, you know, I started in community mental health, and both internships that I had hadn't even really touched that deeply on serious and persistent mental illness. Um, they were in school-based health in one, and I was at uh Fox Hospital here locally. Um and uh I just had really great supervisors along the way. I had really great people who just kind of supported me and said, you know, you'll you'll figure it out. You'll figure it out. And um started here, and I have been at Otsego County Mental Health for um I will be September 1st. I will be going in my 18th year. Um I also uh am a avid soccer player as well as a fan of of the sport. Um I have uh one natural child who is a a little little performer, he's a little actor. Um, and then I have two bonus children um who are very much into sports. And through my relationship with them, um this passion for mental performance kind of was born. Um now I am a huge advocate for youth sports, and but also having a separation between this competitive, I don't want to say it's a disease, but we all have seen the articles, we've all had the conversations about competition has infiltrated youth sports and really taken something away from what sport was meant to do for for kids. You know, you go all the way back to, you know, Joe Naismith or whatever the guy's name that created basketball, and that was he did that because they needed something to do in the wintertime. I mean, you know, they're in the Northeast in Worcester, Massachusetts, and it wasn't even a thing, right? So he creates the sport just so that young men had a place to exercise. Um, men obviously we do a lot better when we are doing something in parallel. Um, so we need to be doing an activity for us to connect. Um so you know, sport uh it just has this long history of bringing people together. And so it really suits a social worker. Um and so back to my point about you know, competition kind of infiltrating youth sports and recreation youth sports. Um, you know, I'm just a a huge advocate for I run the the local um rec soccer league for my town. Um, and I've done a a lot of work to try to weed out any sort of you know competitive nature that was that was unhealthy and taking things away from kids. Um, you know, you talk about you know keeping score, you know, in soccer in in other countries, they don't even start keeping score until they're 12 years old, right? It it it's not it doesn't need to be about that. You know, kids need the opportunity to be creative, they need the ability to figure out problems, um, to learn how to communicate, to to um diffuse arguments, to handle conflict, to handle adversity. And you know, we've all seen the research about that that's the thing that kids are missing a lot of these days, and they just need more opportunity to do that. And sport really does give them that.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Wonderful. Um, yeah, there's so many things that uh I feel sport is um great for. And I um, you know, I was wondering if you could explain the difference between, as someone who's coming at mental performance from uh LCSW, right? Is that licensed social worker? Licensed clinical social worker. Yeah, right. And so what is the difference between uh mental mental health and mental performance? And when do they overlap and when do they what are how are they different?

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Excellent question. Thank you for asking that. You know, mental health and mental performance, they are related, but they're clearly not the same thing. Um, you know, mental health asks, how are you doing as a human being? And mental performance asks, how do you access what you already have when the demand increases? And sometimes an athlete needs therapy. Um, sometimes they need a mental performance skill. Um, sometimes they need both. Um, and so I think my background as a social worker helps me to really know the difference when I have a person in front of me to know do I need to tend to this athlete as a human being? And really, you know, where is their suffering happening? Um, what are they, what, what's showing up from their past? Um, are they struggling with depression? Are they struggling with suicidal ideation? Um, versus, you know, are they not showing up in their sport the way that they would like to? And what's that about?

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Okay. That's it's interesting. Um, and there's seems to be uh big focus now on pushing uh children to join club sport. It feels a little bit like pay-to-play at some point in a child's progression in their sport, and less of a focus on the community aspect, like what it sounds like you're doing with uh soccer and recreational soccer. Um what have you noticed around that? Is that in fact the case? And do you what are the effects of that?

SPEAKER_01 12:55

I I have seen the conversation go both ways. And I definitely don't want to be the definitive answer that says it it's one or the other, but I think both can exist at the same time. Um, speaking of a true therapist uh answer to your question. Um, certainly both can be true. Um, you know, again, going back to the original um idea around sport, that it it gives us something that we are not able to get in maybe our everyday life of being productive. So in that case, is it accessible to everyone? Right. And from a social workers' point of view, we're certainly thinking about things like um like equity, like uh fairness. Um uh we're thinking about access, right? How do we take away barriers? Um and so from a recreation point of view, there should be little to no barrier to any child wanting to do any sport. Um now, are there environmental constrictions there? Totally. You know, here in the Northeast, we don't get a lot of outside time. I mean, we we get outside time, but then but the weather shifts, and then you have to kind of be prepared to deal with with the outside. But you know, major a lot of our sports, once uh once it drops below a certain temperature, everybody wants to do things inside. You know, one of the struggles that we have here in the Northeast is covered indoor space. Um, and that's for you know, for a lot of these, you know, here's here's the other bugaboo about specialization early on and and kids playing sports year round, playing the same sport. Um I have you know my thoughts and opinions about that. Um, you know, when I'm growing up in in the 80s and and 90s, right, every sport had its own season, right? And there was a beginning and there was an end, and then you went on to the next thing. And now those lines have totally been eliminated. And you can play a sport all year round if you want, but that requires you being a part of an organization that has access to a covered space during months of the year where we can't be doing those things outside. Um, so I think that in that sense, there certainly is a pay-to-play model, and um you know, I think for for some kids, you know, they are going to naturally demonstrate some level of um proficiency early on. Now, that could be based on when in the year were they born? How are they physically compared to their kids? You know, it's very easy to look at a young kid and be like, oh, they're amazing. But from a calendar point of view, they're amazing because they have four or five months on their peer group, right? So developmentally, yeah, they're four or five months ahead. And for for those younger ages, that makes a big difference. Um, but then you know, we all know that as as you start to progress up, the difference in level of mastery starts shrinking. And so then it really comes down to at those higher levels, physically, you know, obviously there are your aberrations, but a majority of people are on the same, like physically, I can do what you can do, right? Cardiovascularly, I can do what you can do, but mentally that is what is going to set apart one person from another, one athlete from another athlete.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

And what sort of tools do you suggest or provide athletes to develop that mental side?

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Yeah, I mean, I there are so many. I think some of the most effective tools I think that we can offer athletes are are the things that we can offer everyday human beings. Um, I think that when we are looking at what are things that really set people up for success. And, you know, as a mental performance coach, as a sports social worker, as a therapist, you know, I've kind of taken this concept of performance and really broaden it to encompass whenever you're showing up and doing what you're doing, I think we can call that performance. And if you are showing up in a way in which, wow, I feel like my performance is limited here, okay, then it's up to me to try to help you figure out what it is that we're gonna do to help you make that make that less than or make these other things greater than. Um, so I think when it comes to something like um, you know, performance anxiety or something like uh um low self-esteem or or confidence. Again, we could look at a at a an eighth grader or a ninth grader or even a seven-year-old, and we could still see some of the same things. So base level skills. Um, one of the things I talk to a lot of people about when I'm talking about mental performance as a professional is we need to tend to the floor before we look at the ceiling. And what I mean when I say that is there's a lot of talk um for professionals about really helping people get to the top, right? Helping people become elite, get to the top of your game, um, shoot for the stars, touch the moon. I am not in any way, shape, or form saying we shouldn't be doing that. However, it's really tough to touch the moon when you don't have a solid earth to stand on. And so can we really start paying more attention to does this individual even have a floor? Right. And when we talk about floor, some of those skills look like are we are we teaching people how to emotionally regulate? Are we teaching people how to breathe in a way that promotes um clearer thinking and increased mental performance? And if you're always operating from a state of um disafety, well then your nervous system is turned up just enough that you may be getting some performance out of it, but you're gonna burn through that very quickly. And mentally, you're gonna start to see things in a in a way that is not going to add to your your performance. You're gonna start taking feedback as um a condemnation of yourself. You're you're not gonna be open to you know, coaches giving you feedback or your friends giving you feedback, or your parents, right? If if all of that looks big, bad, and scary, then you can't possibly become any better. So I think one of the most foundational skills is doing breath work. Um, I'm an oxygen advantage coach as well. Um, so I I've done a lot of um uh studying and education on how to coach people to effectively breathe through your nose, right? Mouth breathing, we were never meant to breathe through our mouth. Um, so you know, I think some of these things that are so fundamental and basic, if we just paid a little more attention to that, we'd probably get better performance and people would probably be touching the moon more often.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Yeah, I love I love that. And it's something that's accessible to them at any point. Yeah. Um do you so and the and this is something that you're working on through the lens of your the flow state sports and performance lens, right? Okay. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

That's well, I I would say I I mean, I incorporate, you know, I I think that's the beauty of my work is that there's so much that I have been able to blend, right? Especially because, you know, as a social worker, I'm certainly not I'm not so concerned about the diagnosis that's showing up in front of me. And or when that athlete is in front of me, I I I'm really trying to help them refocus on um, you know, what uh what I call my my pillars of mental performance, but one of those being to control your controllables. And and that's something we use in in the sports world, but that's something that we use in our everyday life as well, right? How much energy are you putting into something that you have zero control over? What what are the other pillars? Um, if we want to get into it, yeah. Um so uh we always start with if you want to be a better athlete or take out athlete and put in whatever whatever you want to put in there. You want to put in parent, brother, sister, employee, doctor, therapist, whatever. If you want to be a better whatever. Ever start by just being a better person, right? Um, so that is something I really drive home with a lot of my athletes. Um, number two, uh, control your controllables, right? And and that really, I think for a lot of people, that really changes so much for them. Um somebody giving them permission to say, you're right, I can't control that. Why am I putting so much energy into that? Right. Um, number three, play for something bigger than yourself. Right. And so this really speaks to our this more existential framework. Um, why am I doing this? Right. Uh many times a lot of the athletes that show up in front of me, the first question I always ask them is why do you play your sport? Right. Or when I'm working in the world of professional resiliency, which you know, I want to get to. Um why, why do you want to be a therapist? Why do you want to be a doctor? Why, why, let's start with your why and let's work from there. Because somewhere along the way, you probably had to like turn that off in order to continue in whatever you're doing. And that's when we start to see people get burned out. That's when we start to see people lose themselves in their profession or whatever it is they're doing because they forgot their why, right? They forgot why they're doing that. Um, so we have uh if you want to be a better whatever, be a better person, control your controllables, um, play for something bigger than yourself. Um, and then you know, that fourth pillar being this idea of what am I gonna do next? Whatever happens, whatever it is, you know, the the a lot of the work in the mental performance world, um, and I guess even in our everyday life is like it's the that thing is gonna show up, but what you do in the next 10 minutes, 20 minutes is gonna dictate how this goes from here going forward. So this real next mentality, um, not getting stuck on what has happened right now.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Yeah, I love that. And you're um utilizing these pillars with which age range? It sounds like you work on a very broad range.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Um, but is it primarily with youth athletes that you're um yeah, I I you know I like I said, I I run the rec soccer program, but I also coach rec soccer. Um, I run a program uh for kids uh two to six years old, teaching them fundamentals of soccer. I try to weave mental performance in there, um, all the way up to, you know, I have uh professionals who are in their 30s and 40s working in their fields, and we work it into there as well. So yeah, I mean, I I pretty much cover the the entire spectrum there.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Uh that's so heartening to hear that someone's out there instilling this in uh youth athletes, because I feel like looking back, I could have so benefited from some of this in my athletic career, um, starting at five years old um even. And I uh I'm curious how it's received. I imagine, at least at in the younger age range, that you've got to have parents on board. And I'm sure you work with folks. Um I don't do you work primarily locally or all over the country with with the internet or because I'm thinking when I grew up was very rural and I'm not so dissimilar from like upstate New York here, but um, I think there was this old school mentality of push through everything, put your nose down and focus in on grinding away. And there was no talk on um how you're feeling and why are you such a wreck today at practice, or why are we having difficulty kicking the penalty kick at the end of the district title game? Um, mentally, there was no conversation. And so I do think like if the parents had been invested or knew, maybe they didn't even know that there was a side of this that they needed to push forward, like mental performance. I think if the parents and the coaches, the adults in the room were on board or were aware that uh it could have been a huge game changer. Do you find that um people, the adults are receptive? Do you need to have them on board in other in order to resonate with the kid the kids that you're working with? Or how has that been?

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Yeah, so when I started um with uh Sununiana as their um uh assistant coach for the women's soccer team there, um, big shout out to to Mara Primer for bringing on somebody who had a crazy idea to provide mental performance. Um and I think that that speaks to another issue here about you know volunteerism, I would say is down. Meaning when we get volunteer coaches, they're just parents that want their kid to be able to play. They don't know about you know how to coach a kick or how to work with a kid who's struggling, or they're just they want their kid to play and nobody else is doing it, so they're stepping into that role. So talking about, you know, how do we how do we get better? Well, more people have to get involved. That's number one. But also, I learned a long time ago that there's a big difference between a coach and a trainer. Many coaches, and not to not to their fault, but just because of the education they have or the lack of education they have and how they're being pushed into this role, it's very easy to know how to train, right? Anyone can can go and I can teach you that and I'll just do what they were doing in the video and I'll be the facilitator. That's a trainer, right? Trainers have a very that that's a that's a very important job, and we need trainers too. A coach has to has to know about the mental side just as much as they have to know the physical side as well as the tactical side. They have to be able to manage emotions, they have to be able to inspire teams, they have to be able to give the pep talk, they have to work with the parent. I mean, that's a lot, that's a lot, and not everybody's equipped to do that, right? I'm just gonna train this team, and I guess I'm just a struggle, and then they don't know what they're doing. So, so back to the idea about more professionals showing up in this space, more sports social workers showing up in this space, more mental health people showing up in this space, um, people who specialize in culture, people who specialize in all these things, if we want to really promote good mental well-being in sport, but also if we want to promote good mental well-being in direct care professions, right? This this bridge that I have with professional resiliency, if we want better social workers, better doctors, better nurses, better counselors, better whoever, right? People who work with developmental disabilities, why can't why can't there be some overlap there? Because they're doing just as hard of a job and probably have way less resources.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

Yeah, that's helpful. I was wondering if you could tell me more about your what's your professional resiliency all about?

SPEAKER_01 30:04

Yeah, so you know, obviously being in in social work now for close to 20 years. Um, you know, nobody, nobody talked to me about burnout in grad school. Nobody mentioned those things. And I get that that was probably intentional. Why are you gonna start somebody who is just starting out in their program? You're gonna tell them about here's the occupational hazard here, right? Because obviously we want people scared away from it. But we don't have to be scared of it if we understand it. One of the things that I I learned um was that in the world of professional resiliency, one of the uh one of the main talking points is like we have to make the the intrinsic extrinsic. Somebody's gotta say the thing so that we can start these conversations. Somebody has to go first, right? And there have been many people who have gone first in this space. I am certainly not one of them, but I do feel like it is my responsibility at this point in my career um to start to really speak to the uh the thought process, the zeitgeist of what does it mean to be in a direct care field? Who was looking out for me? And for a long time in our history the I guess the thought process is like you look after yourself. Like you chose the job you're in, so you do it. And that's that's not that's not what's going to help because what's gonna happen is people are going to adapt to their environment. That's what we're built to do as human beings. We are built to adapt. But we are gonna adapt to an environment in a way that continues to promote unhealthy behavior, burnout, mental collapse. A term I I have coined recently is called professional bracing. Um, some people might recognize that as the Sunday night scaries, right? When professionals on Sunday night they can't sleep, they're having anxiety, like they had a great weekend, and all of a sudden Sunday at five o'clock shows up, and I'm dreading going to work tomorrow. That's called professional bracing, right? You're preparing for you're preparing because you know that you have to show up tomorrow in a way in which you have to turn off the parts of yourself that probably just had a beautiful weekend. But those parts can't come into your work. And so that switching that has to happen it takes its toll. And we are already seeing in our field, as well as others, right, that people are not staying in the field, right? Whether it's compensation-wise, whether it's overload, whether it's just not understanding, agencies not understanding. Like you have to take care of your people. Um, I recently got to uh bring uh a guy by the name of Stephen Graham. Uh he uh wrote, produced, directed um the movie Sheepdog, uh, which is uh a beautiful movie. I don't know if he got to see it, but uh it's a beautiful movie about a military veteran who comes back, it's 10 years later, and he struggles with some behaviors. And uh it's his it's a it's a story about his work with not only his family, but uh um the therapist uh that um uh that he works with. And um it's it's a beautiful movie that gets its name from the idea of the sheepdog. And and this was written about um Dr. Or not Doctor, um, I want to give him credit. Um I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but the sheepdog mentality is right, like the sheepdog takes care of the flock, right? But who's taking care of the sheepdog? And so that's where that's where I believe my work is super important. Um my goal is to take care of the people who take care of the people. Um, and so I'm starting to develop this model, this model, it's called prescribing safety. Um, and it really just starts with this idea that you know what what kind of safety emotionally, physically, environmentally, um, can we provide professionals like myself? Because if you do that, then how easy it is for me to get into flow. And again, crossover between you want to be an athlete, you want to be a therapist. Well, either way, if I'm able to be in flow, you're gonna get the best out of me.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

It's so true, and it's true in my profession as well, that uh I see yoga teachers often um are the probably the person in the room that could use the most support mentally because the compensation, I think it stems from that being a big part of it. And um, a lot of times, I'm sure it's similar with um in mental health. I mean, you take on a lot of stuff and a lot of other folks' emotions. Um, and it's it just feels like it takes a lot of your own energy um to take it all in and and listen actively and and help. Um so that sounds incredible and very impactful work. I um do you find have is that's just are you just kicking that off or or how long have you been working on that project?

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Yeah, so you know, it started with this question about like, so why are helping professionals not more resilient? Right? You we get trained in everything, but we don't get trained in how to be resilient in our field. Um, so you know, this started probably for me about a year and a half ago. I started kicking this idea around. Um, I've done a couple of trainings uh up until then. I trained with a guy by the name of Dr. Eric Gentry, who has a model called Forward Facing, um, that's all about professional resiliency. Um, and it actually kind of came about because of my struggles as a parent. You know, I mean, who needs to be more resilient than than an everyday parent, right, to deal with the struggles that we deal with? Um but yeah, so now I'm I'm kind of in phase one of my research where I'm doing, you know, these interviews with people who are in direct care fields and really understanding from their perspective, like what does professional resiliency mean to you? Um do you, you know, kind of gauging like these themes that I'm hearing from some of these interviews, they're universal. And so I'm collecting a lot of that data. I hope that that potentially a book comes out of it, um, but also that I really can create a model that I can deliver to anybody that's willing to listen and really create change for our human service professionals.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Yeah, I'm shaking my head because I believe that I could benefit from something like this. And like so many people I know could benefit um from this. I know so many folks who are considering career changes a way out because they've hit maybe 20 years in their career or so, and they just feel either fed up or so stressed that if they continue the same path, they see a dark path. Um do you have you what has been the reception? I gotta think that a lot of people must be thrilled that there's something like this on the horizon and and being worked on. Is has that been your feedback?

SPEAKER_01 38:08

Yeah, I I I have about I probably have about 10 interviews under my belt right now. Um, everything from law enforcement to therapists to teachers. Um I have more scheduled, uh, the education world. Um and number one, I think the the question that you're asking is interesting because the reception has been kind of oh, I've got a story to tell. Right? People want to people want to say what their experience is, but nobody has asked them. And number two, again, pulling these themes out of what I'm hearing from people, you know, the professional bracing, professional hardening, um, understanding compassion fatigue, um, uh putting some words around burnout. What does burnout really mean? Um, you know, giving voice to these things, I just get so many, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or, or the stories that I hear, um, you know, not only can I empathize with, but also just giving the the person the ability to express something that they have held inside for so long. You know, one of the things that I think that doesn't happen enough, and part of the part of the prescribing safety model is having community around yourself as a protective factor, but also as a um a mitigating factor that I have an agreement with a coworker that at any point in time that coworker can come to me and say, you you kind of seem a little crispy. You you seem a little on edge. Um I just I I'm I'm saying this as a as a loving, caring coworker. I I care about you and um, you know, how do I support you at this time? And sometimes having that recognition that we it's okay for me to say, I'm not okay, right? Because so many of us are expected to be okay all the time. And that is, well, then I guess you don't want me to be a human being. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

Do you feel as if that we um maybe it's our social media culture that we worry that clearing the air or speaking how we feel will get us canceled, will get us fired. Oh, you know, we found out Rick is this supportive of this political party. So guess what? We're gonna get him fired. Like, do you think it's all part of the bigger culture in our country, basically? And I don't know why, but social media comes front of mind because it's because that is kind of generally the bulletin board in which we express ourselves anymore. But um, do you think part of this has to do with the fact that we're afraid of kind of communicating or uh opening up in fear of what the repercussions will be?

SPEAKER_01 41:29

Well, I I I would definitely say that every professional who holds any kind of license is always fearful of if my license goes away, so does my livelihood. I think that it's it's not okay for us as people in the healing arts to not be okay ourselves when in reality the best healers are probably the people who were broken. Right? Um so I think social media probably plays a role there in just presenting us what we want to see when the ugly truth is really what we need to see, which is to say your doctor has to go home and they have to take care of their 90-year-old mother. So they haven't had a chance to not be a caretaker today. And so, you know, day in and day out, what do you think happens to them? You know, um the show the pit. Um, Noah Wiley, if you see this, uh, I want to interview you for my for my research. But that show, I believe, nailed what we as people in the healing professions, any direct care profession, I don't even say healing, because I don't want to exclude everyone. There is room under the tap for all of us. Um, but the the mental load that we are under in this in this place and time in our history, lack of resources, lack of compensation, um, really focusing on on the wrong things, not creating environments that, you know, if you're the doctor on the pit um and you and you are struggling, the resources that are accessible to you, and I and I say this with with love and admiration, but we don't want pizza parties and we don't want more paid time off. That's not the solution. The solution is we have to start feeling safer in our environments. You know, when you saw coming out of COVID, when you saw patients like rallying against their medical providers, whether that was because of what they were watching on social media or because they too were frustrated and um You know, so if our environments aren't safe enough for me to be able to be my elite self, which you want probably is my patient, you want me to be at my best. For me to have to like suppress and numb um parts of myself that essentially probably are going to add to the beautiful work I'm going to do with you. I recently had a uh an interview with a law enforcement um person who essentially said to me, um, it was a female, and she essentially said to me, you know, you have to turn those parts off because you won't survive. Now, I've heard that before, and that probably is like the thinking. However, what I would say is my follow-up to this person was, so do you feel less human in those moments? Because I certainly don't want law enforcement who doesn't feel human, right? I don't think that's their job. Now, you want to talk about higher levels, you want to talk about the military and places like that. Yes, there are very inhumane things that you have to do, and I totally respect you for that. Um, you know, my my brother was in the armed forces. Um, so I understand that, and that's a that's a different level, a different conversation. But everyday law enforcement in my community, I I need them to be human. I want them to be human, especially when we're asking them to do way more than they're supposed to be doing, right? I mean, one of the things that she said to me was, you know, we have to be a social worker, we have to be a doctor, we have to be law enforcement, we have to be a counselor, we have to be all of these things. But that's not what we intended in the first place. So either we got to provide more resources or more people to do the other parts, or we have to really beef up how this person experiences their work. We have to provide more psychological safety in their environment for them to be able to go to their captain or their sergeant or whoever and be like, I'm not okay. I got to take a mental health day and I want to go see the social worker we have on staff for a debriefing. That's what's going to keep people in the field because they're going to feel cared about. They're going to feel like, okay, I can have a bad day and not fear losing my job.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

Yeah, it's so true. I I think about that a lot with law enforcement, especially how we are so quick to want to take away resources from them and take away money and defund. And but, you know, it I think, especially in that profession, it something like what you're explaining continuously seems like necessary. It seems it ought to be mandatory to have a continual psychological uh help and mental health help, especially if they're going to try to, like you said, show up in a human level in the community and uh deal with all these other maybe more life-threatening issues, but also be able to show up um for uh the rest of the community in a way that's supportive, that we're not uh showing up with PTSD. And it's it's shocking to me that that's not part of uh their actual daily work existence is to have those resources available to them. So commend you for developing a uh at least a path for this potentially to connect those those dots. Um yeah, so that's how now what are the next steps? Or do you just will you just continue to build the program and and do more outreach and and reach different communities? And or how how does what's next?

SPEAKER_01 48:09

Yeah, so um I'm I'm kind of building the plane as I fly it, as they say. Um phase one really feels like I just want to listen. I just want to go out there. Um, I learned this from Stephen Graham um when he was writing the the movie Sheepdog. Um he spent years just going around, just listening to veterans. Um, and so I just want to listen. I just want to be in front of people who have either experienced burnout, think they're experiencing burnout, are in a helping profession. And I just want to hear what your experience is so that I can start to gain a real sense of understanding and mastery around these are the essential themes. Here's how it's gonna fit into my prescribing safety model. And then, you know, write the book and then just start, you know, delivering the model. Um, I will be delivering a a variation of my model as I'm starting to create it. Um uh it's gonna be called uh uh uh do more with less. It's not what you think, uh, which is kind of clever because we're in the helping professions, we're always being asked to do more with less. But when I when I say that, the the undertone there is um do less bracing, do less muscle tension, do less um perseverating, do less um I don't want to say expect less of your employer. So there's a there's a part of the model called um perceptual maturation, which I will give credit to Dr. Eric Gentry uh for coming up with, but it's really this idea that at this moment in our history, we cannot expect our agencies to be looking after our mental health. They should, but we can't expect that. If I expect that of my employer, if I expect that they should be doing this, that, or the other for me, I'm going to suffer because I'm not gonna be getting what I want. So to release them from that, right? Speaking on control your controllables, you can't control what your employer is providing you. There is a maturation of your perspective as a helping professional that we get to where we accept what is in front of us. We accept the state of things. There is even things we do not accept. And then I exercise what control I have, um, which starts at the very at the self-level, right? I can control this, I can control how I breathe every day, I can control if I'm choosing to tense my muscles or relax my muscles every day. Um, these are my controllables. And so when I start to alter that perception, I start moving through the work a little differently, right? The things that were impacting me in ways that were very unhealthy before, you know, they're they're not impacting me in those ways anymore because I'm not seeing them as a threat. And when it comes down to, you know, nervous system regulation, not seeing things as a threat is certainly much better for the work.

SPEAKER_00 51:27

Yeah, it's um so many themes have come up there through uh my a really great philosophy teacher I have that um often says that like sometimes your leverage lies in realizing you don't have leverage. Sometimes you, you know, you're never not without leverage, but sometimes that is uh realization that, you know, you've got to work with what you've got here and be clear-eyed and honest. Um and that's sometimes the toughest part, but I feel like requires some letting go of what you uh what you might have uh can preconceived the the situation is like. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:14

Yeah. You know, I I like to say, you know, safety precedes sustainable resilience, physical safety, emotional safety, relational safety, professional safety, moral safety. You can't gratitude journal your way out of a workplace where you feel professionally or morally unsafe. Again, it goes back to we have to fix the floor. If we want people touching the moon, you gotta fix it.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

That's interesting. Yeah, it's full circle from the athletic side of your work to the professional side. They both, I mean, it's sounds how they interweave, they they uh complement themselves beautifully there.

SPEAKER_01 52:56

Yeah. And you know, the other bridge there that I guess I would like to make for you is you know, part of the prescribing safety model is transition. How do you transition into your work and how do you transition out of your work? Many helping professionals, you know, they take their work home with them, right? And we know that that is something that clearly is going to burn you out. So when we think about athletes, right? Athletes have cooldowns. The girls, the the young women that I work with, after every game, we still cool down. Whether we won or lost, it doesn't matter. You still go through your cooldown because that's what's good for your body, right? Musicians, they have rituals, right? They assemble their instrument, they clean it, they put it away. Um yoga, right? Has uh savasana, right?

SPEAKER_00 53:48

Is that responsible? Yes, yes, right?

SPEAKER_01 53:52

Helping professionals, um, so helping professionals, you know, they can finish emotionally super intense interactions, close a laptop, drive to 12 minutes, and walk into their house. Expected to instantly become a spouse, a parent, a caregiver in some other way, shape, or form. We need intentional professional role deactivation. So that our question is what version of them is gonna walk through the door?

SPEAKER_00 54:34

Yeah, I'm thinking, because I'm an entrepreneur and or just work for myself, how I see I see professions, almost all of them push on that lever of entrepreneurship. You've got to kind of stand out, you've got to, and it's I'll say as an entrepreneur, somebody who works for themselves, it feels like it's never off, like ever. And unless you practice what you're saying, of push pulling on that lever of maybe going for a walk or rolling up the yoga mat as uh putting it to the side and saying, I'm not uh I'm not working right now. I'm I'm I'm in the role of dad or son or friend. And I do think um intentionally working on that, like you're saying, is something that's gotta be done, I feel.

SPEAKER_01 55:35

Yeah. And so, you know, the again, the bridge between the two is I I think that my work as both a mental performance coach, as a licensed clinical social worker is increasingly about helping humans move between their states. You know, anxiety to action, mistake to next mentality, internal to the external, work to home, bracing to engagement, dysregulation to choice, mental performance and professional resilience may look like different areas, but underneath I'm increasingly convinced that I'm studying the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 56:17

I love that. I love that someone out there, there's a chat out there in the world doing this work. Um, I'm just shaking my head throughout this whole conversation, like, yes, where's this been? Um it's awesome to hear that you're doing this great work, Chad. I uh is there anything else you want to put out there for folks? Or could we, if someone wants to either work with you? I know throughout this conversation, like I've been eyes lit up, like, oh yeah, this is something I know so many people that I talk to would love to dig into or start to work on themselves and work on this. Where could they find you or how could they work with you? Or where can we point folks?

SPEAKER_01 57:03

Yeah, please just uh you can send me an email at uh getintheflow state at gmail.com. Um it's the best way to get a hold of me. Uh, you know, I I I really am a big believer in positive intention and putting things out in the world and then kind of seeing what happens. And uh, you know, I I think it is uh rather curious of the universe that kind of you showed up when you did. Um, you know, my work with Dr. Ashley Kircher, who uh recommended me for this, you know, I I started working with her like years ago um when I when I first started, and you know, she talks about resiliency um and her reset protocol. And um, you know, who'd have thought that it would have led to this moment now? Um, so I'm really excited to see where potentially maybe we are in in a couple more years and maybe we can follow back up with that.

SPEAKER_00 57:55

Yes, please do. I I'd love to have you back on. It is funny how the world works, the universe works. I um feel very grateful to have this time with you, Chad, and and want to thank you for taking the time to share uh what you're up to and and this really impactful program you've got. And I'd love to come circle back and talk to you again sometime in the future. The honor was truly mine. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 58:21

All right, take care. All right, take care.

SPEAKER_00 58:23

Thanks for tuning in. If you found my conversation with Chad to be informative, helpful, if it got you thinking, please give the podcast a like, subscribe, and share it with a friend. You can find me on all social media platforms, especially Instagram at Yoga with Jake, and on my website, yogawithjake.com. Until next time, take care of the money.