Good morning. My name is Danie Eagleton. And I am a licensed mental health counselor, a behavioral health consultant working with the BHI, and the VP for Quality, Innovation and Health for Plymouth Housing Group. I am facilitating today's webinar-- "Burnout at the Intersections, Race, Justice, and Behavioral Health." 

Our call to action series is spearheaded by the U-Dub Medicine Behavioral Health Institute or BHI at Harborview. The Call To Action, CTA series, is a cornerstone of the Behavioral Health Institute's mission to confront race, equity, and social justice, our ESJ, within Washington State's behavioral health care system. 

We sincerely thank the Washington legislature for their generous funding, making this initiative possible. During today's webinar, please utilize the Q&A function to type your questions for the presenters. If you encounter any technical difficulties, please notify us in the chat. The recording of today's webinar will be available on the BHI website past events page within the next week. 

Just to give you some context for this morning's webinar, we wanted to discuss the important topic of burnout in community behavioral health and social services. Conversations about burnout tend to be followed by discussions and training about the importance of self-care. 

The lens that we will be applying to today's conversation includes the weight and impact of underfunded systems, racial inequities, trauma exposure, and moral distress, especially for providers of historically marginalized communities. Today's webinar creates a space to name these realities, shared lived experiences, and explore pathways for healing and collective care. 

All right, I would now like to introduce our panel. All right, it is my pleasure to introduce Tanzania Zenzali-Marshall. Tanzania is a dedicated public health professional and US Army veteran, bringing a decade of experience to her social services work. 

A certified peer counselor, postpartum doula, and trauma specialist, Tanzania prioritizes holistic wellness and faith-centered care. As a mother, wife, and doctoral student in theocentric psychology, she champions women's empowerment through her role at the Washington State Women's Commission. Her expertise bridges research, direct service, and community advocacy, fostering inclusive support for women and girls statewide. Welcome, Tanzania Zenzali-Marshall. 

Rita Molestina is a licensed clinical social worker and clinical supervisor in Washington State and has worked in the intersections of community wellness education and health care equity for 20 years. As a mental health therapist, group facilitator, and consultant, she strives to uphold a healing justice framework, recognizing and addressing the impact of individual, collective, and systemic trauma on our bodies, minds, and hearts. 

From the San Francisco Bay Area to Minneapolis, Seattle, and back to California, over the years, Rita has cultivated accessible practices frameworks that bring us towards right relationship with our bodies, allowing us to better move with integrity and in alignment with our bodies. Currently, Rita runs her own private practice, volunteers, helping individuals and families apply for asylum. Welcome, Rita Molestina. 

Tanzania and Rita will share their wisdom, insight, and concerns as we explore burnout. We have some questions for our panel. And after that, we will have some time for questions from the audience. Please utilize the Q&A function to submit your questions for Rita and Tanzania. 

I also will be jumping into the mix, just to let you know. All right, here we go. Rita, I'm going to start with you for this first question, all right? From your vantage point, what's distinct about burnout when we look at clinical demands and racialized experiences together? What do we miss if we only assess for one or the other? 

Thank you for that. I first want to say hello and good morning to all the people here, and maybe afternoon. I saw Ohio in the house, Kansas in the house. Welcome, and thank you for having me. It is such a pleasure being with you all here this morning. 

This topic is near and dear to me. And especially given the increase in stress that I think many of us are experiencing with the rise in state violence, state repression, perhaps this is particularly timely that we're all here. To any of my people in Minneapolis or Minnesota who might be here on the call today, my heart is so with you. My heart is with all of us who are living with this fear and uncertainty around safety. 

I lived in Minneapolis for six years after finishing grad school. And it has been heart-wrenching to witness what's been happening there and all over our country in the US these last few weeks. And it's been heart-wrenching to hear from my people and hold with them this immense fear and deep grief and loss. 

And so may today be a time where we can make space to metabolize some of the overwhelm that we might be holding and realign ourselves with our intentions and our deepest longings with this heartful work that we do. 

And for my people in Washington, I want to shout out all of you. And then, especially any of my people in Valley Cities on the call, even if we haven't worked together or haven't worked together in a long time, my heart's always with you all and wishing you well. So thank you for indulging a little greeting. 

With that being said, the question on what is distinct about burnout when we look at racialized experiences. And I'd like to start by talking about some of the things that I think these two have in common and then share some of my thinking about the value of addressing burnout and racialized experiences together. 

Burnout overall is an individual experience with systems-based routes. You don't have the level of burnout that we're seeing. So many people reporting and showing intense emotional, spiritual, physical exhaustion without there being something larger in the ecosystem going on. 

And we could think of the institutions of health care and behavioral health care specifically as one system, and then we also have the system of racism. And I want to be specific about this here because to name race as a factor is so important. And I love that we're talking about this here, uplifting that. 

And it's also critical that we continue to uplift the reality that back in the day, the idea of race straight up came into existence specifically to embed inequity in larger culture and society and in our institutions and so that every facet of our lives positions us with less or more power than others. 

And just as a little recap, we can think of power as the unearned access to or control over resources or over the behaviors and decisions of others. And this continues to be the lived experience of people of color since, as a broader society, we haven't really reckoned with historical racialized harms in the ways that are needed. 

And so for BIPOC folks, folks of color, we're often moving around knowing the odds are stacked against us in big and small ways. And for those of us with multiple marginalized identity, including race, this means that we may find ourselves at the point of burnout, perhaps even sooner. 

However, because of racism, people of color are often disincentivized to speak out about this experience. There are material consequences for practicing that vulnerability in speaking out about capacity concerns, especially with the existing racist perceptions that people of color somehow possess less skill or intelligence already. How am I going to come forward and be like, I'm struggling? What's this going to mean for my job security? How might this limit my opportunities? 

So speaking out about racialized harm often leads us to be labeled as troublemakers or too sensitive. And then on top of that, it can reveal the emotional fragility of our leaders or our peers who we try to seek support from. I know I'm not the only one who has experienced a racialized harm and then attempted to invite in into dialogue or called in a manager or colleague about this issue, only to be met with tears, emotional and physical collapse perhaps, and then sadly, inaction in that moment where I'm trying to seek support and find solutions. 

And while that reaction of that colleague or manager is understandable, truly, and I've told them to their face, I get that, this is understandable in a culture where we do not equip our people to have conversations and pursue accountability and healing from identity-based harm and trauma. However, it does leave people of color further burdened with the emotional labor of navigating those scenarios, only to still not have our concerns be addressed. 

And so, as people of color, we may find ourselves in a state of being overburdened sooner in the work context, due to the fact that we already move around in the world and the bodies that we do facing racial inequity, but then it's often costly and risky to share our concerns about burnout and capacity and racism. 

However, I think by having an eye towards the intersections of these two experiences and the systems-based nature, I think it's harder to continue to point the finger at the individual and provide Band-Aid solutions. And I hope that by making space for understanding the nuanced experience of BIPOC providers, we can create more systems-based solutions to shift the burden away from the people who are already holding so much to the power of the collective, right? We can hold each other and do better. 

Yeah, thank you, Rita. My goodness, that is amazing, all of the different things that you've said. Tanzania, I'm wondering if you have anything to add to that. 

I don't know how much more I could add to that. It was just beautifully said. No, truly, Rita, thank you so much for that. I'm just so humbled to be here with you today. Your experience and your perspective is just-- my heart posture is just today, right now, truly. You really just set the pace for just such an amazing conversation and a discussion that's hopefully positively impactful for the people here today. 

I think the only thing that I would add is that-- or that I would even just speak to because you actually spoke to it a little bit is that the complexity in the nuance of clinical demands when you have a racialized identity or experience, it's often either only understood from lived experience or if you have in-depth expertise around it. 

So we find that many, many, many of our therapists and providers, whether it's a counselor or just anybody that is providing behavioral or mental health help within the capacity of having patients or having clients, a lot of those people, well-intended, well-educated, but do not have that in-depth expertise or that lived experience to understand how those things just naturally intersect for some of us. Like you talked about, Rita, we're walking around already carrying so much. 

And so what I would say in terms of how to assess a distinct attribute, something that I find very specifically in BIPOC women like within my community, Black women, but I see this across the board, I work with so many wonderful, dynamic women and girls across the state, I find that we tend to overperform as a coping mechanism, right? It's interesting. 

And I want to speak to just some of the observations that I've made for the homogeneous majority versus our BIPOC folks. In a homogeneous majority environment, especially amongst femme or females identifying, there tends to be this idea that it's kind of OK to fall apart. And that actually should be OK, right? 

You should be able to process extreme trauma or just personal difficulties like if you're mourning the death of someone or et cetera, all of these things that many of us are just experiencing naturally in the course of our lives. 

But with BIPOC women, especially in corporate or professional settings, there is no such thing as falling apart because there's already a lot of stigmatism and stereotypes that come with our personhood that's put on us that it is impossible for me to fall apart, even if I'm dealing with a death or a toxic work environment or just my own trauma that's genuinely affecting my ability to function at my most optimal self. 

And so I think that's a very distinct attribute of burnout that you find intersecting with clinical or professional case management and having a racialized background, specifically folks of BIPOC and a bit more specifically women. 

What comes to mind and what's interesting, I'm not going to touch too much more on what you all have said, but I think about how we don't have the space in our environments to be all of who we are and to show up or even have these conversations because that, in and of itself, would be healing. 

That, in and of itself, would also reduce the amount of pressure that people feel in terms of keeping that mask, if you will, having the mask and the pressure of that and the idea of how you are serving populations that are vulnerable and need quite a bit from us. 

This is starting off really well. Tanzania, this question, I'm going to start with you. Can you share a moment that made you feel seen or unseen around burnout? And then tell me a little bit about, what did genuine validation look like from peers or leaders? And what felt performative or minimizing? 

So I'm going to offer a positive anecdote, as this is actually very recent. I've been involved in several leadership academies and different high-level work groups for the state. And to be honest with you, working for the state of Washington has been an incredible experience, but it has also been very trying regarding the subject matter that we're talking about today. 

So I was experiencing a very toxic work environment. And there was a lot of microaggressions and racialized issues happening. And unfortunately, I have many members of people that are on my team that are women of color, that are women from marginalized communities that were not seeing me. 

It was almost kind of like experiencing being in a gaslit conversation, like this cyclical gaslighting. Because we talk so much about the framework of DEI. We talk about being relational leaders. We talk about-- especially women, especially women of color, we have these rally cries for each other when it comes to success, the aspect of climbing the ladder or finally reaching a certain pay gap. 

And the research tells us, you know what I mean? The research is just so robust and so relevant to the truth of the experience. However, none of that is applied when you're viewing something that an individual on your team may be going through. It just immediately goes back to that corporate jargon mindset of, oh, poor performance and things of that nature and so even though you're a workhorse, even though you're always volunteering for X, Y, and Z. 

And so I was experiencing some very difficult, just difficult terrain to navigate, especially in a highly political, polarized environment where you have to be really on and you have to be really neutral, et cetera. And so I will never forget it. And he is truly one of my mentors to this day. He saw me. 

It was a Latino male educator, a consultant at a very, very high-level. And I had worked with him kind of adjacent to each other, really didn't know each other but recognized names and had shared the same space when training and consulting others. And he had known my rigor within my work, my expertise to be very high-level. 

And he was doing some consulting for our team directly. And I was very withdrawn. I was very quiet. I was having some difficulty making decisions. I was experiencing a lot of cognitive fog. And everyone else on my team was just kind of dismissive, disregarding. I was starting to become that Black sheep on the team, like, oh, that type of thing. 

And I will never forget him stopping in the middle of consulting our team. He had no context, mind you, really, no context of the dynamics that were happening behind the scenes with our team. He just knew me and how he had seen me perform for so long in other very high-level environments. 

And he said, something's off here. Something is not quite right. And he began to talk about team dynamics. And it's very easy to assume that it's poor performance or et cetera. But if we're going to talk about the framework, we need to apply it, not just to these small, compartmentalized corporate spaces, but we need to actually live it because it is kind of about heart posture, at the end of the day. 

How is your heart positioned to be open to different ideas? The general ways in which to support someone's career development and them as a person. I can't develop a career if I'm unable to develop my personhood and my positionality within what I do. And so it's just been so recent. 

And I bring that up because I had not felt seen in a very, very long time. And it was incredible. And it actually took someone that was from a completely different space, positionality, completely different perspective, completely different type of work to come in and to really see this dynamic that was happening. And I am very appreciative. 

I would say some of the negative things that I experienced were-- I mean, it really is so unfortunate because these are textbook microaggressions. These are things that we do the trainings on. We're the ones writing the trainings. We're giving the trainings. We have this lived experience. There is a lot of academic rigor behind pushing forward these ideas and these concepts so we can all do better. 

And then not all the time, but in many regards, especially in some of these corporate spaces, clinical spaces, high-performing spaces, you will find that all of that practice of the framework goes out the window when actually addressing an individual who is experiencing those things. 

So yeah, I really wanted to share something positive because it can get so downtrodden regarding this. But that has been a recent very positive experience of mine. And I'm deeply, deeply grateful for that. 

Oh, Tanzania. Let me just say and reflect on one of the things that you said that makes me think about this idea of heart posture. It makes me think a lot about the idea of we have so many things that we are trying to work towards when you talk about the different frameworks. But the question always is, how do you show up? And then how do you also honor, right? How do you reflect that back? Amazing. Rita, what are your thoughts? 

Yeah, thank you, Tanzania, for that. I just so appreciate those moments when we are feeling underwater, and there's an interaction that can just buoy us and give us a little bit of that air that we need in those times, yeah. I think for me, when my supervisors actually follow up with me on issues I've raised around racism or burnout or inequities, that has meant a lot to me. 

Even if my manager didn't have a good answer yet or a solution, I just really appreciate feeling like I'm not the only one having to carry this or hold this, and that someone with more power and who's getting paid more dollars to manage more of the tough stuff in the org, that they're doing what they can, while also, of course, understanding nobody is all powerful in an organization. 

They'll do what they can. But I think that transparency has been key for me, that follow up. I don't want my supervisors to be afraid to follow up with me just because they don't have an answer yet. 

Given that the cultural norm is that issues of equity and burnout are often dismissed, not followed up with, it's just easy to conclude in those kinds of situations that oh, it's not a priority. And so being clued in to what my supervisor is doing to be a leader in these areas and push my concerns or the concerns of my colleagues forward is a pretty easy way, I think, for me to feel seen. 

It feels like a, let me just pluck that. Let me just follow up. Let me be a human with you. I feel seen. I can feel taken seriously. It's also been super validating to raise an issue in a public setting and to have my manager or a colleague publicly back me as well. 

Although appreciation and support and debrief after the fact can be helpful too, I like a good debrief, for some, and sometimes, it might feel like the heavy lifting was left to the person speaking. And those in silence can, in some ways, remain complicit in the toxic dynamics that play out when advocating for equity to power. 

Those moments where it feels especially performative is like when I've had folks hit me up after I've said something in a meeting and they're like, yeah, thank you for saying that. Totally agree. Or like in a side chat even in the moment, like oh, thank you. Nobody else sees this, like on the side to me. And sometimes, I'm like, thanks. Feel free to share with the team. Your voice matters too. 

And they'll be like, I'm just afraid to get it wrong. And that fear is real. I get that. And I just gave you the words. I just said the thing. All you have to do is be like, what she said. I'm with it. Let's do it, and boom. So like that type of gesture can feel performative. That can hurt. 

It's like, come on, are we together? Are we not? Because you're telling me we're together, but I don't feel like we are. So that silence I think can contribute us to not feel seen, to feeling isolated and alone. I think it contributes to burnout to have those interactions. 

And speaking of complicity, I want to just share an analogy that might be helpful. Some of you might know Beverly Tatum, who wrote, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" It's a book from a little while back but has an analogy for systemic racism that continues to be so useful in conversations, I think. 

She talks about systemic racism as a moving walkway like you see at the airport. And in this analogy, you got active racists actively walking along the moving walkway, getting to their destination super quick, and now you have those kind of oblivious to the walkway who are still getting to their destination, even if they stand in the same place. 

They're not active racists. They might even comment about the system, but they're still walking along. The system is maintained by their silence or inaction. And it takes someone actively turning around on the walkway and making a concerted effort to move in the opposite direction to have an impact on where you stand and where you're going. 

And when more of us do so, we are much less of an individual target, so that's great and when you have more people vocalizing the same concerns and backing up the just causes that are being advocated for. But yeah, it's a risk. And I think that has to be considered too. It's a risk bringing up certain issues and potentially being labeled a troublemaker. 

This is how I often felt at an organization I was at for a long while. And I'd always wondered, like, to what extent would it have been more sustainable for me there if more people had said in meetings what they said to me afterwards individually? But again, yeah, it's harder to be seen as that bad egg when we're taking collective action. 

And so all that to say, let's be in good relationship with each other, following up. Even when we don't got the answers, we can feel together in the cause. Even when we're not able to make direct progress in the moment and don't have good solutions, let's follow up. And then let's align our actions with our values. It can mean a whole lot when folks make themselves known and then turn around on that walkway, especially when we're trying to shift pretty entrenched systems. 

Yes, absolutely. It is interesting to me about when particularly for women of color who are in spaces and the minimizing that happens. So you are being seen. You are being seen, but it's just not in a positive way. The idea of not being able to share your voice not being able to add, not being able to also live to the expectation of whatever you're there for in terms of your job, in terms of even your education, when that is not brought to the table or honored, the difficulty with that. 

But the complicity piece is very valuable to talk about and to bring up because what I also think is people will say a lot about how they believe this or that, I'm for the cause, but won't say it out loud, as Rita was talking about. But it also creates this piece around when we talk about burnout, you also are creating a toxic environment because you've got two different things. You've got this dichotomy going. 

And you're giving fuel to the dichotomy, even though you're supposedly behind someone. And when we talk about being seen, the importance of being seen and known for who you are and what it is that you bring, just doing that, in and of itself, can help to make an environment where you want to retain, where you want to stay. 

I think that what is something to keep in mind with this particular question and this particular conversation, part of the reason we wanted to have this conversation is about how this particular burnout or part of burnout connects to the behavioral health workforce in terms of when we are trying-- we were talking about we have a workforce that people are leaving. This is part of it. 

All right, let's go to the third question. This is so good I can't even-- it's excellent. Some have identified the concept of invisible labor or an equity tax-- and this question actually is for Rita first-- such as cultural brokering, translation, code switching, DEI work, mentoring and responding to microaggressions. 

Here are the questions. Does this hidden workload contribute to burnout or impact career mobility? And secondly, are there concrete policies, norms or strategies that organizations can implement to recognize, resource, and reduce this burden? 

Yeah, I think this can show up in a lot of different ways. And I think it certainly contributes to burnout and impacts career mobility, from having every single person who seems to share our cultural background being assigned to our caseload, regardless of goodness of fit or match, which can often leave our caseloads much higher than our peers, or being asked to dedicate additional hours beyond our official responsibilities like joining work groups or committees sometimes, and then sometimes specifically to give our perspective as people of color, which can be a lot already. 

But then sometimes-- I don't know if anybody's had this experience. But sometimes, it can happen where you join that workgroup, give your perspective, only for the organization to not implement the feedback that was asked for and can leave folks feeling pretty tokenized so that the organization could save face, like, oh, we got diverse perspectives before moving ahead with this solution or initiative. 

So these are all pressures beyond the existing challenges that contribute to burnout. Just some examples of more racialized ones that create disproportionate burden and then burnout. And much of the invisible work named here is invisible because they're not formally recognized duties and not formally compensated-- and there aren't formally compensated paths to get this work done, right? Yet the translations need to get done, right? And BIPOC staff are engaging in much needed microaggression repair for the sake of the work. 

And if an organization will allow, BIPOC staff will often, out of the goodness of their heart, spearhead DEI work for the organization and move forward, hopefully, like organizational healing and change. And while many of us do this work skillfully and perhaps enjoy it, that uncompensated burden shouldn't necessarily be on us. 

Especially when it comes to culture change work and addressing racialized harm in the workplace, organizations just should be budgeting for this and treat it as labor. It needs to be meaningful. If it's meaningful, if it's in the value, we got to show our values in the budget. 

And this may mean like pay differentials for people who speak another language and use it on the job, I know some orgs do that, love it, resourcing mentorship programs with dedicated protected time, and then, of course, like we were saying earlier, just considering what preferences the clinician has during assignments, not just the shared identity. 

If organizations are not doing this already, I think it's important we get on the same page-- excuse me-- that if they're not doing this already, I think it needs to be clear that this is like de facto exploitation of their BIPOC staff because, again, this is real labor. It is a necessary part of quality clinical work, and it's necessary to be up to-- I'm just going to clear my throat real-- 

All right, got it. It's a necessary part of the clinical work. It's necessary to be in compliance with industry standards. And truly, it benefits the organization, this labor. And it's beyond the scope of work that we do. And so I think changing the ways that we talk about these issues to be on the terms of labor, rather than nonprofit speak, which can often embody the characteristics of white supremacy culture anyway, is an important step towards changing the normalized dismissal of this kind of request, the request for funding for culture change work. 

And I initially thought about this question. As I initially thought about it, a couple other things came up like would it be less likely that this work would be invisible or hidden if there were more BIPOC staff and leadership? But even then, the culture doesn't really transform without organizational buy-in. 

A few more BIPOC folks in leadership can help maybe buffer staff a bit more, got a little more advocacy on top, and that can help distribute the burden across more people a little bit. But to change the norms that can create such a cultural divide and that create the expectation that BIPOC staff will do all the extra work to mold to the status quo, we need senior leadership of the organization as a whole to become and stay well-versed in the principles of cultural humility and trauma-informed leadership. 

And these concepts need to be embedded throughout all the levels of the organization. And so without genuine concern for and understanding about these dynamics of burnout and racism, this reality, the reality of racialized burnout is unlikely to change without their buy-in. 

I definitely agree with that. I also think that there is value in providing transparency to frameworks that operate within organizations because until you understand what that framework is or what people are doing within the work, it makes it difficult for people to even be able to see that they are marginalizing people in the work. And that is everything. 

Being able to see that and be able to talk about it, to bring it back to what it is that you say are your values and your mission, how does that connect? More discussion around that, I think, would be very helpful. Tanzania, what do you think? 

You two just put it so beautifully and so blatantly. Absolutely, transparency, 100%. Show me the money, 100%. When we talk about this being a labor, because our heart postures are so turned toward others and helping others, we tend to do this naturally. But at the end of the day, it does become a labor. 

If you're asking me to create infographics, if you are asking me to write out policy-related things to present this framework to our partners, if you are asking me to do any type of equity-based work with external or internal partners, right? And that's taking time, I'm having to create things, I'm creating curriculum, I'm doing research, I'm doing public speaking, I'm presenting, that is labor, period. 

Now, because they decided to give me that labor based upon my identity or how I present, that's neither here nor there. You hired me for expertise. And if you happen to have hired me specifically based on aspects of my identity, then it sounds like that's something that you need to pay me for. 

So when we talk about the budget, I love that because we're experiencing such a difficulty within our budget state-wise. And we are currently in about 50 different lawsuits with the federal administration based on things like budget. 

And the reason why we're fighting so hard and the AG is fighting so hard around this and some of the small pier commissions like the Women's Commission, the Commission of African-American Affairs, the Commission of Hispanic Affairs as well, we are fighting so hard for these things because what they're cutting is the very funding that we need to be able to serve the populations that need it the most. 

And so when we come to a place where we are underfunded, then becomes this aspect of laborous work around equity and around identity. And that just is like you're going 150 miles an hour toward burnout. And so when we talk about that fueling the problem, it is the fuel of the car that is driving us straight off the bridge of burnout. 

And so I think some things that can be done-- and this is going to take a genuine practice of relational leadership. When you have a positionality as an executive director or chief of something. There's this aspect that you have a lot of responsibility. And from the people that work underneath you, it seems like you have a lot of autonomy because you have this high-level aspect of leadership, and you're in this certain position, but you still have people that are looking over your work and looking over your thing. 

And so when it comes to budget and things, we can't retell you, you specifically said-- everybody essentially has a boss or some type of oversight. And we can't always completely make those decisions. But I think it's so, so important for if you are at, especially at a high level of leadership, you need to practice relational leadership. 

You need to understand that you were that little guy. You were that new person. You were that. You have no idea what you're doing. You were that oh, I earned a degree, but I have not actually applied this to a professional job yet. So everybody has been there. The only reason that you could be or the only reason you should be in that position is because you've been at the ones prior to. 

And so when we practice relational leadership and we understand that we were there, we understand that we are dealing with humans and not machines, it doesn't matter how much AI we use, even though it can be beneficial in certain ways, we are not machines. We are human beings. And we are all showing up to work from different pathways and different cultures and different backgrounds and different things going on. Just life. 

And so being a relational leader is going to be really, really important. That is where you have to start to be able to implement any of these things because you have to have a hard posture and a growth mindset with people that you're dealing with so that you can remember to humanize the humans that you're working with. 

And so some of the things that I have used with teams that I've worked with are bi-monthly portfolio check-ins to see if someone is performing either out of their scope, right? Sometimes we have to do that because of budget or because of a time frame, et cetera. 

And I say bi-monthly just to give people time. Monthly might be too much for people. We all have a lot of meetings. We all have a lot of things going on. But a bi-monthly portfolio check-in to see if somebody's working outside of their scope, if they're doing well and reasonably getting things done within their current work, the work that they have or if they are overburdened. 

And if you actually are sitting down checking in with people, we see that, OK, you've got a couple projects going on. Wow, you are on four different work groups. And you have three or four different projects for our team. How can we redistribute work to make this more equitable, to make this more reasonable? 

And that also looks like being empowered within that positionality at a high-level leader. Like as a high-level-- sorry-- as a high-level leader, you have to be able to say, we're not going to do this, right? 

If it's not a requirement, if it's not coming from a grant that has a specific KPI or these metrics that you have to reach within 12 months or something like that, you've got to be able to redistribute or even freeze work that is not necessary because that is another driver of good, hard working, well-positioned subject matter experts becoming burnt out even in the work that they love to do because it's just too much. We just keep piling on people. 

So I think genuinely having a relational leader mindset and regularly checking in with people to see where they're at and whether or not their performance is reasonable based on their current workload. And I think that even little things, things that might be able to be done more consistently are like team agreements. 

If you are having team meetings weekly or you're having one on ones weekly with a leader, there has to be some level of agreement where you feel like even in those maybe 30-minute conversations, that you can speak up. Like, hey, I'm struggling with something, or hey, this is too much, or hey, it's unlikely that I'm going to be able to get this task done, based on the fact that I have all these other things going on. So what are your recommendations about how to redistribute? 

We have to be able to create a space, even in those short meetings or even in those consistent meetings that we're having weekly or what have you for people to be able to say that this is not working and for leaders to be relational enough to realize you're right, it's not. So let's find a solution together. 

I absolutely love that. And I'm going to do a little bit of a switch because everybody is in love with the idea of heart posture. And I'm wondering if you both can just speak a little bit to that and what that means. I think there was a definition that was put in. And I think as we talk about this area and the idea of leadership and what that means, and leadership at all areas, I mean, what does that look like on all levels, heart posture? 

I would love to speak to that. I know Rita you're like, oh maybe I-- I think, well, first of all, Rita, whether you realize it or not, you embody heart posture. Just the way that you speak, your expertise, every aspect of what you've shared today is a representation of approaching work with your heart posture turned toward people. 

And so it actually, for me, it comes from a sort of a faith-based type of aspect. But even leaving out faith, to be respectful for people who are more science-based or who don't necessarily practice or believe, I think heart posture in leadership positions can look like where-- so if you think about your heart as being another type of brain, right? 

This is where the aspect of emotional intelligence comes from. This is where the aspect of empathy comes from, these other things that are very right-brained dominant and things that tend to be better metrics than getting straight A's. There's so much research out there for you are going to be more successful if you're emotionally intelligent than you are if you're necessarily well-versed in linear sciences like math and things like that. 

There's just a ton of research out there that talks about this. So if you're able to, with a growth mindset, view your heart as another type of brain, and there's all of these aspects of practice, humanistic, human-based humane practices that come from how you approach people, and if you take bigotry, for example, if you are practicing racism, if you're practicing bigotry, your heart posture is turned away from people, point blank, period. 

That's where hatred starts to resonate. That's where confusion. That's where not even having all the information, but simply because you chose to turn your heart away because of your own beliefs or because of how you vote, then you are already in a losing position. 

So when you turn your heart posture toward people, even when it's scary, even when it's hard, even when like we've talked about here today many times, you don't always have to have the right answer. But if you allow your heart to be open to people, it actually influences the mind. It influences how you make decisions. 

And something, Rita, that I love that you spoke about. It was actually before we jumped on. You talked about how your body has a physiological response to things. That is, right, when you have a dysregulated nervous system, that's where a lot of anxiety comes from. And being anxiety all the time and going, going, going, that's where you can become depressed. 

When you are calm and you feel good, right, those things sit and resonate within the posture of your heart. So that is what heart posture means to me. And I really, genuinely try to apply that to my professional life. That is how I apply things to my children that I'm raising. That is how I try to implement things in my relationship with my husband and the commitment that we have. You really have to make a conscious choice to turn your heart toward other people and see how that will positively infect [AUDIO OUT] 

Rita, do you want to add anything to that? 

I am not very familiar with the term, although it automatically resonates, I feel that. I tend to think of the things that-- I think that we know how to do this, like we're born knowing how to be heart-facing. And I think about the things that layer on us that block that. 

And maybe we'll get a chance to talk a little later about how valuable it can be to turn to the body that physiological piece you were echoing to help guide us back to that heart-facing posture and to be able to begin to peel back the layers that have been imposed on us, blocking us from connection. 

I also want to uplift something that was said in the chat that I think is very important. We all know what happened to the Grinch. Oh no, where did it go? His heart grew when it faced forward. So thank you, Murph Brown, for that. 

I love it. I guess we all love it. I think that what's also interesting is that being clear about the lens that you take in your work and how you approach, of course, relationship, but you're leading an organization or you're providing some type of management, leadership, supervision, the lens that you take towards the work makes the biggest difference. 

I am somebody who believes in a recovery lens. I believe in the idea of being strength-based and designing and doing the work in that framework. And being aware of that also is very helpful. Being able to speak to that and pointing it out is also very helpful. 

All right, now I'm trying to get back to my DLE. Here we go. Tanzania, I think maybe I'm with you. Is that right, for my next question first? Maybe. What indicators or qualitative signals should leaders focus on to understand burnout among clinicians and staff? That's a good question. Are there any special considerations for BIPOC staff? 

I think I'm going to rest on the laurel of that relational leadership aspect. Again, we've talked about it so many times here, the consistency of dedication to building rapport, building trust, showing up for people in the smallest ways by asking questions. 

Or something I love that Rita said earlier in the conversation is when you're in a public setting or you're taking a group training kind of required kind of thing, and something is said or you speak out, to just even have a colleague absolutely be like, hey, I want to echo that, or I want to uplift what she just said that really resonates with me, even these small things. So the consistency, I think, in building trust and rapport is the key to relational leadership. And I think that's just the way in which we should be doing things. 

Yeah, Rita. 

Yeah, I think it's not uncommon to see folks, including people of color, perhaps like keeping more to themselves when approaching burnout, isolating more, especially compared to how we've known them to be, being a little less communicative, more cautious in communication, maybe some emails left unanswered when that's like not their norm, given the racist stereotypes about people of color. 

I think for some, though, it can be easy to attribute these behaviors to character flaws rather than a response to circumstance, especially because communication is a relational piece. Leaders might personalize this and then move towards more punitive responses versus seeing this as an opportunity for support and connect to that relational piece, Tanzania. 

I will say, though, that this question did feel a little hard for me to think through a bit because in addition to what I shared previously, what we've been talking about, about the challenges for BIPOC staff being forthcoming about capacity or concerns about racism, I think operating at the bounds of our limits is actually really, really normalized. We can't falter, oftentimes. It doesn't feel like an option. 

And yeah, I think it can feel real normal to operate on the edge of exhaustion or to have more expected of us than others. And so leaders may not be able to really rely on standards or external signs that BIPOC staff are approaching burnout. I do think that having conversations with your staff about how they individually hold stress and learning from them and with them about their indicators for when they're pushing beyond their limits could provide a more accurate assessment. 

It could increase the likelihood that they might be able to come to you for help, if and when that's the case. Again, like we've been talking about, that relational approach I think is so critical. What we need in the face of racism and the extractive pull of capitalism, even in nonprofits, is right relationship, an approach that thoroughly humanizes us. And that can be supportive of morale, overall. 

I think the challenges here that I'm naming with identifying individual signs of burnout can be all the more reason to have our focus be much more on a macro agency-wide approach to addressing racialized burnout. How are we addressing the ways that white supremacy culture shows up in organizational practices? How are these characteristics showing up in how we run meetings, how we set expectations in our individual interactions? 

And when I say white supremacy culture, I'm not just talking about Nazis because one, like the US has-- we have our own domestic history of institutionalized white supremacy that has never been fully reckoned with. We don't need to look across waters. And two, white supremacy isn't just about explicit hate. It's about the ways of being that are normalized and that serve to maintain existing racialized power structures. 

So, if you haven't heard about it already, there's a whole website dedicated to calling out some of these ways of being that I think can be really helpful to reflect on on how white supremacy cultural norms live in us and in our organization. 

For example, we have the belief in our right to comfort or fear of conflict, the idea that progress is bigger and more, a.k.a, quantity over quality. We have the myth of objectivity, right? There's one right viewpoint. And then relatedly, either/or thinking, right? Lacking nuance, no gray area, erasing alternative pathways, experiences, or ways of being. Not cool, right? And then there's more. 

And so in a moment or two, I'll share some links here where you can read more from Tema Okun and some of her people who flesh this out with a lot more detail than we can get into today here. But what's cool is that they not only name the characters of white supremacy culture but also the antidotes. What can we do about this in the face of these pervasive ways of being that are harmful? 

So they've assembled like a web page with lots of resources. And folks kind of like took the original resource and ran with it, creating guides for organizations, as well as for individual reflection around these characteristics. Super cool. You could spend like a day looking through all the things. 

But I'm going to go ahead and just put in the chat three things, one, the link to the actual page that goes over the characteristics. You could scroll down. It's towards the bottom. Then the next link will be the printable document of that and then a guide for organizations and then a reflection guide for the individual. And that's it. 

I appreciate, appreciate, appreciate those resources. I do think that, again, it goes back to identifying framework. Also, again, for leaders, particularly, I will speak from being a Black woman who is a leader. It's important for me to check in with my folks of color, regardless if they directly report to me or not. 

The idea of how people will withdraw is important. And they need to understand it's like you can show up, it's safe to show up, but we can also start right here with the conversation, right? So it also comes to the point of can we think about how we bring people to the table? 

And how do we make sure that people have a space at the table to share who they are and what is happening for them? Or any of the great things that they have to bring, is there even a seat for them? And can we acknowledge that? 

I'm moving us along because this is good, and we're running out of time. So here we go. Fun one. Rita, this is for you. How can clinical supervisors use reflective supervision to acknowledge and address racialized dynamics in the room without placing the burden on staff from marginalized communities to educate others? In a real world setting, what does good reflective supervision look like in a 30-minute session? 

In a 30-minute session. Let's get it all in. Well, I do think everybody's got to cultivate their own style and then be adaptive to the unique experiences and needs of our staff. It is heartening when leaders come prepared with some sort of footing and frameworks around racial inequity and systemic oppression. 

So finding a level of confidence in your ability to understand and speak on racial dynamics and the stressors of your BIPOC staff, I think, is going to make it all the more possible for you to have that tailored conversation approach around racialized burnout and not like a one-size-fits-all. 

For those of us who feel like we're starting super fresh and need some grounding with language on power and privilege and oppression and how that shows up day to day as well systemically, I'll share another resource that supports with this and also uplifts intersectionality so that it's actually supportive with a lot of diverse staff. 

Leticia Nieto and her colleagues have a pretty inviting approach and share a framework in their book, Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment, and a lot of examples of how identity-based power dynamics show up in our everyday lives. So I'll link that in a minute. 

And then, of course, there's the resources I shared already about white supremacy culture that I think can be very helpful to get versed in before supervision or as you improve your supervision skills like quality supervision, asks us to create a safe space for supervisees to practice vulnerability, to get the necessary vulnerability to grow our skills. 

And if the person in power in that supervision relationship doesn't demonstrate comfort in discussing issues of race or they're enacting some of these white supremacy culture characteristics in the dynamic, that's not only going to take away from that BIPOC staff learning experience, meaning they don't get an equal opportunity to hone their skills, which then impacts the BIPOC community who is likely to go work with them, but it also demonstrates to the supervisee that this is not a place where this intersection of burnout and race can be explored, and therefore not a space where we can co-create solutions. 

And so getting rooted in some of the basics of language and frameworks I think is good. And I mean, not to use in a performative way, right? We're not trying to word salad solidarity at our staff. Even if you're not using specific terms, the additional confidence in navigating related issues and supervision and otherwise, I think, will come through in your sense of groundedness as a supervisor. 

I think it can increase the overall ease that your staff feel when they're with you. Our rootedness in this content comes through in the non-verbals, that stuff that helps us co-regulate with each other, unlike that physical level. So I'll go ahead and put that link into that book and leave it at that. 

Thanks. Tanzania, what are you thinking as you listen? 

No, I really needed to listen on this one as my behavioral health experience is more based in behavioral intervention with children in clinical settings and school environments and then peer counseling with folks for mental health and some behavioral or substance-related things. 

And so just being able to piggyback off of Rita's experience as a clinician and then certain things that I heard, Rita, I heard you saying, it was interesting because you were utilizing this terminology regarding how we can show up for each other and essentially just be respectful, reflective, acknowledging, and then trying to be fluid in how we accept one another. And then that drives openness. That drives that heart posture to be turning toward people. 

But when I heard the terms language and culture, that just resonated with me so much regarding this because it really sometimes is as simple as acknowledging that we all have culture. Some of us do speak different languages and multiple languages. And I think that what's so difficult for the majority population of America today is that there's such a disconnect with that origin of ethnicity. 

And then because there's a disconnect, that means that there is a disparity. There's an emptiness there. And so there may be projection of negativity or stereotypes upon others who are directly entrenched in their culture. And that tends to make some people very confused or upset or even offended by it. And it's really just an acknowledgment. 

I like to talk about the world being like a city. Like if Earth is a city, a really big cosmic city, we are all citizens of that city. So it doesn't matter where someone is positioned geographically. It doesn't really matter if somebody is speaking a language that I can't totally understand or really understand. My heart posture being turned toward them allows me to step into my relational leadership and just to simply acknowledge that you have a difference. 

And the way I approach you, the way you learn, the way we work and collaborate in moving tasks and things like that forward may have to look different than how I relate with Sarah or Austin or Juan. And again, it's so important for leaders to just be reflective about that because it doesn't necessarily have to be this deep dive of work all the time. 

We're asking to not have to be the people that educate those on culture and ethnicity and cultural competency and things of that nature. And we're not necessarily asking you to get a degree in it either by reading a book or reading an article. It's sometimes just that human aspect of recognizing and acknowledging that this person comes from a different background than me. 

And the way in which I collaborate with them or the way in which I understand what they need to be successful in their work and to feel seen, to feel supported, may look different than these five other employees. And that requires a leader to have awareness, just like a heart posture-based awareness around folks. 

I think what I will add, in clinical supervision as well as when you're doing clinical work, there is this idea notion of the importance of bringing race into the room or difference into the room. So that really should start within supervision where you are making a space for people to talk about the people that they are working with, their clients, and to be able to talk about themselves. 

We live in a dimensional society and world. And so everybody has various paths to them. I have worked with folks who don't ever talk to their clients, other than what is presented to them. They don't ask them about all of who they are. And the idea of what we do in supervision should be that we are talking about those kinds of things. 

We're helping people learn the language of being able to raise issues around difference with their residents, but they need to be able to have opportunity to talk about that in supervision. The other part of that is being able to recognize when that is not happening by a clinician with the person that they are working with. It's important being able to learn about those things and having a space for those things, again, extremely important. 

All right, I am going to answer start the next question. Here's the question. Are there any ways to distribute complex cases, crisis coverage, and committee work so we don't systemically overassign indivisible or-- I'm sorry-- invisible labor to staff? What metrics keep us honest? 

I think the conversation about understanding, as we are assigning cases, there's always the easy part of thinking, I have this person who is Black. So I'm going to assign all the cases to the Black person. Now, it could be there's a conversation and a like upon that clinician wanting to have that caseload, but more times than not, there's no conversation. So then people are weighed down. 

At the same time, people are also weighed down anytime a person of color, someone of difference comes in. As a client, it's that one person who is answering those questions. And being able to be thoughtful about that, I think, makes a big difference. We think about that also in times of crisis when we think about that as an acute caseload. How are we creating balance? Because that is also equity. All right, I will go with Tanzania to add a little flavor to that. 

Yes, no, I really just love hearing. And I learned so much just from hearing both you and Rita talk about this with you guys' background, having patience, and being able to supervise in these environments. And I think just from the behavioral interventionist background that I do have, when I hear about-- again, it's just this idea of distribution and how to properly do that in a way that is equitable and that's considerate of people's work performances, et cetera, and how we tend to base things solely on the way that somebody looks. 

So if I appear to be an African woman, and you want to give me all the Black people, not recognizing that I may be Afro-Latino or Afro-Latina. And I can actually speak Spanish. And I can actually be helpful to people who may be Spanish-speaking as well. Or that, to be honest with you, not necessarily all Spanish-speaking people are of a darker skin or brown skin. There are many Spanish-speaking people who are very light skinned and appear to be what Americans or Western folks would call white. 

So when I think about that, I think about there is-- I wouldn't necessarily call it a burden, but I would say that it is a heavy responsibility when you're in a position of supervising folks. People are relying on your expertise. People are relying on you to practice these things, to keep things equitable, and again, those portfolio check-ins with people. Is this reasonable? 

And I don't know if that's something that can happen. And I would love to hear Rita talk about that a little bit from her perspective or her positionality. But I'm curious if that's appropriate. Is that an appropriate approach that clinicians with expertise or with supervisory responsibilities to be able to approach things in that manner? Can you not give all the Hispanic people to the Hispanic person? Can you not? Is it reasonable? 

Because I know, just from the peer counseling as well, a lot of folks will directly say, I will only talk to a Black person. I will only talk to a Latina. They are looking for somebody that looks like them, and they feel like that's going to be the way that makes them feel better or allows them to open up. And so what does that look like on the supervisory or clinician side when you're on an internal team that may have one or two and to be able to meet the mark for clients or patients as well? 

That's great. 

Yeah, I think this one can be a tough one to try to standardize. I do, because it's like it's unfair to overburden our BIPOC staff with all of the clients who culturally align, and then to also make the assumption that that's what the client wants. I've had clients who don't want to see somebody of their own cultural background, honestly. 

Some of us have trauma experiences. Some of us have a lot of internalized racism. Can't say that's the norm, but we just got to be case by case with a lot of these things. I think having a standardized rule can be tricky. Overall, I think it might be best in a lot of cases to crowdsource from the team who's doing the assignments, right? 

Each team has different strengths and needs. And what's fair top-down may not actually be fair when implemented on the ground. And then with any new process or even like ongoing protocols, a periodic review of how useful it is. Is it still functional? Is this still best practice I think can be so important. 

We're not an Easy-Bake Oven. We don't need to set it and forget it and then it burns down. This approach is too risky. So yeah, yeah, I think let's just be a little tender with it and hold it with a lightness in that sense and crowdsource some practices. 

Yeah, I love that so much. We could just talk about this and talk about this and talk about this. But we are getting to our last question. And I want to be able to have time to get to questions in Q&A. But this, in and of itself, I think will be a long conversation. 

If leadership-- and Tanzania, I'm going with you. If leadership could only do three things in the next 90 days to reduce burnout, what would each of you pick? What would both of you pick? There are strategies specific to racialized experience. Should that happen? How should we measure success so it doesn't become a performative checklist? 

So I could not come off of mute fast enough specifically with these three things in 90 days because, again, I have experienced something recently that it's really professionally and personally made me have to step back and really reevaluate what kind of leader I want to be. 

Sometimes you can learn a lot of what not to do from people as well. So I try to, again, with that growth mindset. So I think what comes to mind for me is to freeze or delay any non-essential initiatives. We can't say this just point blank period. It's a way to protect your staff. It's a way to be reasonable when it comes to spending. 

And it really just comes down to it's a buffer. It's like this beautiful buffer for burnout. It protects people from doing things that you don't necessarily need to be doing. Would this be nice? Is this a part of some greater aspect of our vision or our mission? These questions really need to be internally asked. And leaders need to be open to what their employees are saying. So freezing and delaying any non-essential initiatives is going to be number one for me. 

Clarifying the top three organizational priorities and communicating them repeatedly. So this is where strategic planning and forecasting are so, so important. And I'm finding more and more that people just kind of-- I love the Easy-Bake Oven reference earlier, Rita, thank you, because people really do. Let's set it and forget it. 

This is not an '80s commercial. This is not a '90s commercial. We are doing more because we have more. So the idea of just creating a strategic plan and then that strategic plan being 10 years old along with it's the same age as the organization, that's a problem. 

We need to be reviewing that every six months, every year, right, to really make sure that it's still in line with the work that we're doing. It still makes sense for the staff that we currently have. It still makes sense for the funding that we currently have to move forward. 

So strategic planning and forecasting is going to be number one in referencing what is important. And that's where we put our focus. Especially when you have a small staff or especially when you're underfunded, especially when you already have this aspect of dealing with low capacity, you have to be strategic, and you have to have that heart posture to be thinking about your people first because those are the people who are going to do the work, right? 

And then auditing workloads and redistribute tasks where inequities are obvious. Again, so we have somebody-- if you have a legislation and policy manager and then you have a communications manager, the communications manager is overseeing social media and creating press releases and things of that nature. And the leg manager might not be too busy when it's not legislative session. 

So it's like, how are you distributing work throughout certain times of the year? Are you paying attention to when people's busy times are going to be somebody over here who has consistent work tasks and things of that nature to do, whereas someone else has a busy season? Just paying attention to things like that are going to be massive. 

As far as strategies that are specific to racialized experiences, I think this can be used in any environment. I want to be clear. When we're talking about white supremacy, and when we're talking about BIPOC individuals, I recognize that these words can feel like buzzwords to some people, or it could just make people feel uncomfortable. 

But if you're viewing it, again, from a heart posture, a relational leader, a relational leadership mindset, a growth mindset, and you're acknowledging and recognizing that these are just realities that we all have to navigate, it feels less racialized pressure on you, maybe as a more homogeneous person or a white person, to just recognize that you are a part of this community. We look different. We might sound different. We're all a part of the same community. So we need to do better within that community with each other. 

And so I think that while this can be applied to any environment, it's especially empowering to Black and BIPOC people when you allow them the space and grace to have relational leadership, to practice a heart posture type of strategy as a team. And so, again, it can be beneficial anywhere, but it really can make a difference with that burnout aspect for the BIPOC people that we're trying to genuinely protect from that. 

And then there's one more part of the question, the performative checklist. So this is something that I have used professionally for the last 10 years. And it has been extremely beneficial for me because people love to forget. And so documentation is massive. If you are feeling like you are in a toxic work environment, if you are feeling burnt out and unseen in your burnout, it is very important for you. 

Whether it's you jotting down notes, you know what I mean, pencil and paper in every meeting or if you have permission or if there's any kind of open policy around you utilizing an AI note taker or something, or if you guys possibly Zoom or Teams, you can record those meetings and reference back to what managers said in those meetings, reference back to oh, it's now November. But back in September, we said that our priorities were going to be X, Y, and Z. Has that changed or did I miss-- you know what I mean? 

There is this level of accountability and strength that you have and direct accountability when you are documenting things for yourself because it's a great reference and it's, again, just a really kind of blanket way to keep people accountable in those decision-making processes. 

Fantastic. Rita, what do you got? 

It's all good. It's all good. Thank you, Tanzania. I so appreciate the reprioritisation. Can we really be real about what needs to be done now? The sense of urgency is a white supremacy culture characteristic. So can we break that down? Love it. So thank you for that. 

I'll try to be quick because I know we are short on time. One, learn how burnout and racism and white supremacy culture is an organizational level phenomenon, commit to acknowledging that, understand what senior leadership's role is in setting the tone organizationally, and then create an action plan and broadcast it to staff so that the org can be held accountable for any inaction or ideally like praised and appreciated for genuine attention to this issue, so that accountability piece you were naming. 

I mean, you could even use one of the resources I shared and start a reading group, maybe explore two to three white supremacy culture characteristics a month from that guide and do that for three months or so and then check in and perhaps yeah, a designated time to see what's working, what needs tweaking. 

You don't have to succeed. You don't. You just have to practice and measure growth because this is never going to end. If we turn things around, and BIPOC folks, we're not experiencing the same inequities. So there's going to be some other tweak to our culture. It's dialectics. 

There's going to be some other tweak to the culture. And we got to keep on understanding how we continue to hold all of us together. And so aside from that one, two, three deal I just shared, I also think, a little pie in the sky, I think distributing to all staff, Tricia Hersey's book, Rest Is Resistance, could be like a loving gesture to the people. 

She's the founder of The Nap Ministry, if you've heard of it. And in her book, she shares that rest and balance are our birthright. Yet this embodied understanding has been strategically chipped away by exploitative structures and in a variety of ways. I'll share the link in a sec, but I just think it's so critical that we have ways to remind ourselves that we are more than the work we do for pay. We are more than our license, like so much more. 

And it's important to find meaningful ways to nurture ourselves in other domains of our lives, creatively, spiritually, socially, health-wise. Many of us are dealing with our own health things. That's just so real, right? Find nourishment where you can. And I think Tricia Hersey's book is a great way to begin to challenge our notions of who we are and decenter our work. 

And for many of us here in the healing profession, right, our work means so much to us. And that's good. And again, it just can't be all of who we are, not if we're going to advocate for others wellness and be well ourselves. And I'll just say, our bodies know how to do this naturally. I think in big and small ways, we can begin to show up more for ourselves, even if the structures around us won't. 

And personally, I'll just give a little plug for the types of skills and practices that I think can really bolster our self attunement in this area. I think embodied awareness practices, mindfulness practices that honor our whole selves, not about detaching, not about suppressing what's coming up, but genuinely holding our wholeness, the hard and the beautiful, those can help us connect with our deepest longings for collective wellness and help us find ways to take collective action in line with our values related to our work and also related to our relationship with ourselves. So I'll go ahead and put that link in there. 

Yep, yep. OK, two minutes. I am going to ask one question from the chat. But I will say really quickly, I think that what leadership can do in 90 days is to figure out their priorities and understand the framework around like, if we have burnout, what is it that we need to be doing? 

Priorities are essential, clear as kind, right? Clear as kind. But when I also think about the idea of budget, you need to invest in your staff. So do we need to invest in having someone come in to provide case consult related to working with a variety of different people with different backgrounds? Instead of putting it on someone else, should we pay to have someone come in and be able to do that? 

So those are just a couple of things. I'm going to say a question really quick because I only have a minute, a minute. So how does one cope with gaslighting, micromanagement continuous loop? I have heard overperform as coping. Is it a coping mechanism or a survival tool? Especially in these times, the blowback is real. And I've heard that in this chat, there has been a few conversations around gaslight. So, Rita. 

How do we deal with gaslighting? 

Well, yeah, I mean, I will say this, is that the realization of that is everything. And so if you don't realize that, if you don't even know that, you have a difficult time being able to figure out a strategy to be able to heal. 

Yeah, no, that's real. I mean, I think it's in line with what I was saying about turning to our body. So I also wanted to say that I think we can think of that type of practice like embodied awareness practices as a version of a generative refusal, a liberation tactic that Leanne Betasamosake Simpson describes in her book on Indigenous resistance philosophy as we have always done. 

She talks about generative refusals being like a shift from fighting against settler colonialism on the terms of the colonizer to fighting for something that embodies the values we want to see in the world, something nourishing and connecting, and something bringing us more into right relationship with ourselves and each other. 

And that's the opposite of what systems of dominance want. All systems of dominance would have us detach from ourselves. They would have us neglect our own physiological instinct towards balance and safety and connection, our instinct towards recognizing gaslighting, that's what they want to do. 

They want to dominate. And they supplant our own instincts for wellness with what serves them. But the body is the site of knowing our truth, of distinguishing what's mine from what dominant culture has instilled in me and continues to layer on my spirit. 

And so when I'm thinking of gaslighting and burnout, like burnout is a sign that we're not in right relationship with our bodies. But sensing inward, we know that the body is asking for help. And if we're using the centering of the body as a generative refusal, we're leaning into a belief that many experiential somatic body-based therapies rely on, right? EMDR, IFS, somatic experiencing. It's the idea of organicity. 

And it refers to the fact that living organisms like people and bodies, they're creative and self-organizing and self-directed. And if given the necessary resources, we will move towards wellness and balance and homeostasis. That first needed resource we need is our compassionate attention. What is my body telling me? What nervous system state am I in this moment of potential gaslighting? And how is this serving me or not? 

And so when we shift our loving attention to the body, we refuse to play by the rules or on the playing field of exploitative systems, that one is disconnected and to just go along, that one is in a power over relationship with the body. But we can make that generative refusal and create space for relationship and connection. And in doing so, we are so much more equipped to exercise agency and intentionality and then transform our circumstances and our communities for the better in micro and macro ways. So I'll just say that. 

Yeah, Tanzania, do you have time for a word or two words or three words because we're over time. 

Three words? Three words, all right. Let me get this. All right, so-- 

Three sentences. 

--what I would say about gaslighting because I did speak about this earlier and I've experienced it quite a lot, and you already said it, Danie, too, when you said just being able to recognize that, having an awareness that somebody is trying to say something to you and consistently trying to drive that this is a belief, and this is the thing. And you're like, wait a minute. No, it's not at all. That's not what's happening. That's not what happened at all. 

So what I would say is being able to name it. Do not claim it because then you're internalizing that. And everything that Rita said about holistic wellness and somatic practices and mindfulness and coming back in connection with our true selves and that heart posture, you cannot allow that to be an internal aspect of yourself. So you can name it, do not claim it, and then reframe it. And you reframe it by practicing everything that we talked about today. 

I know it looks like we're out of time. I am so blessed and so grateful to have been on this panel with you all to share these things. Dr. Danie Eagleton, you are amazing. Thank you to your staff and your team. Rita, you're literally my favorite person right now. Thank you so much. I appreciate all of you. And I really hope that this was positively impactful and that we provided you tools today to take back and be empowered in your professional and even your personal spaces. 

And I just echo whatever beautifulness Tanzania just said. It has just been such an honor. There's so much wisdom here. I am fortunate to be in your presence. Yeah, and thank you to the team for making this happen. Thank you to everybody who joined for today for however long you were able to. Your presence is why we're here. We do this for the community. I'm here for it. 

Thank you both so much. This has been amazing, an amazing space, an amazing conversation. I want to thank my panelists, Tanzania, Rita, thank Washington legislators for their funding and support, and thank all of you who stayed after and wanted to hear more. We hope to see you again back in May. We'll gather again May 7 to talk about reentry. So, again, we look forward to seeing you in May. And thank you so much for being a part of today's webinar.