The jon kiper show

Jon: What's happening, folks? My name's Jon Kiper. Welcome to the Jon Kiper Show. 

Emily: I'm Emily Butzer. 

Jon: This is my life partner and live-in therapist, Emily Butzer, and she's gonna be my co-host today, my co-host in life, my co-host in podcasting, so I'm 

Emily: not as live-in therapist. 

Jon: I know that's not true. That would be highly unethical 

Emily: and boring.

Jon: earlier this week we took a drive up to Claremont. 

Jon: And we went to attend a school board meeting. 

Emily: Beautiful drive. 

Jon: It was leaves peeping, the leaves are, starting to pop. it was a really, it was really a lovely drive and we're headed up there. We were invited by my friend Matt Beam. Beam, who's, been involved in the school system there.

Jon: He is, been a special ed. educator for many years. He hasn't worked there now, but he's still heavily involved in the community, coaches football and, was really concerned because if you haven't heard, Claremont is facing a between one and $5 million budget deficit, and they almost didn't have enough money to open the school, and they've, their superintendent quit.

Jon: they've lost some other employees who have quit. Some member, a member of the school board or a couple have, stepped down and have, had to be replaced because they really don't. Really know yet where all this money went or exactly what the issue was. 

Jon: And 

Emily: huge amount of money.

Jon: It's a huge amount. Money, clearly massive mistake was made, oversight was, not there. And they're auditing the situation and they're trying to figure out, but as of right now, we really don't know what the actual cause was. 

Emily: But the actual baseline problem is 

Jon: the school, 

Jon: doesn't have enough money.

Jon: And it's funny if, it's not funny, it's if this had happened in any other area, in any other. town or city, you might say, "Okay, this is, fiscal mismanagement or whatever." And, that may be the case as well. But the problem is that Claremont has sued the state of New Hampshire going far back as 1991.

Jon: They initiated their first lawsuit. And why did they sue? Because they. Are a poorer city, less affluent than some of the other cities, closer to the Massachusetts border, which have a lot of people coming up from Massachusetts to spend money, or the Sea Coast area, which is pretty, off.

Jon: And so they just don't have as much. Their property's not worth as much. And what that means is, because the property taxes are used to fund the school system, it means that they don't have as much money as other towns do or other cities do. And so they sued the state of New Hampshire, and their argument was.

Jon: It is the state's responsibility to fund public education, not the towns or cities. And the judges have reaffirmed that multiple times. So they've won these court cases, a number of them, and. But they have not seen any change to the funding for their school from the state on a, bigger level.

Jon: Initially, what the legislature decided to do in, response to this lawsuit was in the mid-two thousands, they instituted what was called SWEPT, Statewide Education Property Tax. And the idea was pretty simple: we have a small property tax that covers the whole state and everyone puts the money into one pool, and out of that pool we fund.

Jon: These poor schools. Now, what happened was a couple years after that was enacted, the towns and cities that were paying into this, that had more money, basically, and more expensive properties, said, "Hey, we don't wanna do this. We're, donor towns. Why are we donating this money to other, towns?"

Jon: And so they objected, and so the legislature ended up and the governor said, "Okay." You guys can just keep the swept, just keep it. Don't give it to us. You just keep it. So we have the statewide education property tax that every town and city collects, and they're supposed to give it to the state, or they, that was the point of it.

Jon: And they don't, they keep it. 

Emily: I'm confused by that. 

Jon: It doesn't make any sense at all. And, 

Emily: if there was a tax in the state of New Hampshire. Talk me through it. 

Jon: What do you mean? 

Emily: if there's this, so the governor made it so that there's this tax who, I don't know when this tax started. 

Jon: This was under, Lynch that ended up being repealed.

Emily: Okay. And then, so this, or not 

Jon: repealed, but 

Emily: a tax is being taken like from people? Yeah, from the people of the, town of, the state. And then that's not being used. Per, what it's being taken out for. So it's, if I looked at my paycheck and I saw that money was being taken out, 

Jon: no, it's being so basically it's being the town you're paying it, right?

Jon: Yeah. But rather than it going to the state, it's just staying in your town. 

Emily: Okay. 

Jon: So it's still being used for your town, but the problem is that, 

Emily: but doesn't it 

Jon: say that it's don't need more money 

Emily: and isn't, it's supposed to be taken out for education. Like in my mind, if 

Jon: I thought, it still is, it is being used in education.

Jon: But what they're doing is they're taking the statewide education property taxes and just lowering, other taxes. Yeah. To replace it. It just so it's not the solution that it should be. It's, not a solution to funding towns like Claremont. So Claremont sued again, and this was more recently and they've won again.

Jon: And this time the judge said, okay, the state has been giving each town, $4,000 per student. Per pupil. And the judge basically said he did this big calculation and said, oh, we're going to, the state needs to double that, but understand that's only $8,000. It actually costs way more to educate a kid.

Jon: It costs between 15 and 20,000. Wow. Because you've got buses and you've got, just the, infrastructure, the school, some of which they did not add into the calculation. So here we are with Claremont and, we go up to the school board meeting and. there was these three principals that basically were working on a plan, 'cause they had to, they, had to close one of the elementary schools.

Jon: It 

Emily: was such a thoughtful plan too. 

Jon: Yeah. They had really thought out how they were gonna move it and the move the kids from one school to another and they were trying to keep them as. One classroom and keep their teachers the same, and the special education, paraprofessionals the same, so that there was no little disruption for the kids.

Emily: And being honest, being I've gone to a few stu different school board meetings from different districts and it's not as common to have people in the schools actually making the planning, like admin. it feels That's, it was just like a really thoughtful plan, 'cause they had the kids and the stu and the teachers in mind rather than, the, just the money and the big, picture.

Jon: Yeah. the, kind of wild thing was that it, that they, knew they had to close this school because they just don't have as many kids as, because 

Emily: they have the three, I don't know if people know that they 

Jon: have other element schools that they could move the kids to. But the wild thing was that it wasn't just finance finances, it was also the fact they just did not have enough educators.

Jon: They couldn't find enough, Substitute teachers, they couldn't find enough special ed, teachers. 

Emily: Those felt like the two big ones. They were talking about special 

Jon: ed. Special ed was a big one. Yeah. And that's, those are mandated by the federal government. and of course they're losing teachers 'cause teachers are saying, hey, if you don't have, you don't know what this $5 million is.

Jon: I don't even know if I'm gonna get, a paycheck come October and November. So they're, so people are leaving and obviously people aren't looking to go there, as to work there because. it's just not a, it's just too, the, situation's too crazy too. It's too messed up. this one principal got up there and it was just really interesting 'cause she said, Claremont educators are special people because they have just been through this for decades and decades begging the state for money, winning lawsuits and not getting any relief from those lawsuits.

Jon: And that's what's the crazy part is, the judges have basically said, we can't make the legislature do their job. But they need to fund schools and education better. And it's just really, it's, really an been an ongoing problem. And it's one of the reasons why I'm running for governor is because we need to address the situation because it's, this is the reality.

Jon: Okay. This, that they proved in these lawsuits is that it is the state's responsibility to fund, public education. And I'm just gonna read you really quick, from the Constitution. The, and 

Emily: this is the New Hampshire Constitution. 

Jon: This is the New Hampshire Constitution. It's really important to understand this.

Jon: New Hampshire Constitution is Part Two, Article 83. It shall be the duty of the legislators and magistrates in all future periods of this government to cherish the interest of literature and the sciences and all seminaries and public schools. 

Jon: So it says right there, this, it's the duty of the legislators and magistrates.

Jon: So that's the state's responsibility. And, they're talking about this in, kind of lovely language, like cherish. they're talking about cherishing, the science education in science. And clearly the founders of this state wanted public, the public to be educated. and, why would they want the public to be educated? Let's think about that for a second. 

Emily: What would happen if we weren't educated? 

Jon: because democracy, and this is something that I always heard in school, is democracy requires an educated population to participate. If we're gonna let everyone vote, everyone needs to be on the same level of common sense and able to, discern, discern good ideas from bad ideas and have some level of ability to, make judgments 

Emily: and have a healthy dose of empathy and for other people and marginalized people.

Jon: Yeah. And. So that is why education is so important and why I think it's so important in the state, 'cause what's happening now is it's really, increasing inequality because you've got towns that are poor, that are, the kids are getting, worse outcomes with the education system. So it's just reinforcing this inequality, and the rich get richer, the poor get poor.

Jon: And our funding of education has been, exacerbating this. And I, think it's just really important for people to understand. The bigger picture in Claremont, that it's not just about this one school. And, their budget deficits, but that it's a statewide problem 

Emily: because if it can happen to one community, it can happen to any community.

Jon: And there are some other schools that are also having financial problems. Sure. And this is what's really important to understand. So one of the reasons that I've heard that, that in, Again, this is still, we won't know until the audits are done, but one of the suggestions I heard as to why Claremont is missing this money is that they were using COVID money and all the schools and your town and this city, and this entire state, this entire country has been running since 2020 off of millions and millions, even billions of dollars of COVID funding that came from the federal government.

Jon: It's really important for you to understand that. Okay, and that money really papered over. It covered up a lot of. Fiscal, deficits that were happening. Management 

Emily: in general. 

Jon: Yeah. And, just there was all this money getting dumped in. So Chris Sununu, the governor, he had all this money that he could dole out and, for housing and, various, projects around the state.

Jon: But that money was, just getting printed. That's, 

Emily: and I, for a good example, I don't know anything about, COVID money or, so I just had it in my head that Sununu did an okay job financially. 

Jon: Yeah. 

Emily: When really it, there was, it was just a ton of money that no other governor would've received.

Emily: Yeah. So it just looked like he did a really fantastic job financially. 

Jon: Yeah. And, that's it. And, that's how this whole, How we got through COVID was printing all this money, which is led, which exacerbated inflation. And, it's just really important to understand that, that this we're still suffering under the, causes or the, effects issues.

Jon: Issues and effects that happened because of COVID. And I wanna pivot for a little bit and just talk about COVID and the schools. Sure. Emily was working, in a school. Last year. Do you wanna talk a little bit about your experiences? 

Emily: Yeah. but what you're saying is the, how COVID has affected all of us.

Emily: we don't really talk about that piece of it. and not just like kids, but I think for adults as well. we're really not, we didn't have a chance to process that. that's something that you and I have talked about a lot is, the effects of a, a collective trauma, like a, that kind of experience can have lasting effects, and not just for us like day to day, oh my, I don't have good social skills anymore.

Emily: But I think about, like you were asking, as how it's affected our kids. and it's not just, oh, they don't have good social skills. Oh, they don't have a lot of friends. But, we're seeing an uptick in, depression symptoms, anxiety symptoms. I worked at a. Elementary, elementary, middle school, primarily the middle school where I was working with, kids who needed therapy per their IEP.

Emily: So I was a contracted, I was working under a grant. 

Jon: What's IEP? 

Emily: An individualized education plan. so those were identified children with either, A learning disability and if another diagnosis that would affect their, them accessing the, curriculum is like the, yeah, means of finding an IE, someone needing an IEP.

Emily: so some kids need, have therapy in their IEP, so that would be like usually once or twice a week for 30 to minutes to an hour, of therapeutic services. Yeah. And then in the effects of COVID, just long term have been, the imminence of it. when I was in the school when they're wearing masks and they couldn't be close to people and we had to, of course, that affected kids.

Emily: They were extremely anxious. And the immediacy of that was palpable. But also, the effects of that, like also working in the emergency room. kids are different now. and I think we've heard that from teachers too, not just, Yeah. And, I hear that from teachers all the time. their classrooms are totally different than before COVID.

Emily: and these kids don't know how to socialize properly. They don't know. and it's not. Because there's, something wrong with them, but they were never, they never had exposure. 

Jon: Yeah. 

Emily: and not only in the, that age child, but I, we've talked about we both have, I have a sister and you have a niece that's in college and thinking about how different their experiences are because they had COVID during such hugely formidable, chunks of time.

Jon: And I think this is really important. A lot of people don't realize this, but I was talking to this couple. This was maybe May or April of 2024, and they were, they went to University of New Hampshire, which was right next door. And they were in the restaurant, and they were talking about how they, they'd been a couple since high school, so they went to college together.

Jon: And that, that the apartment that they were living in, they chose it specifically because it had a communal, area. And they're like, oh, this will be cool. People will be hanging out here and we'll meet our neighbors and we'll have more friends. And they said that no one ever hung out there. They didn't meet any of their neighbors the whole year.

Jon: And that they really didn't know that many people, and they were. The girl, the, girl was just telling me like, our generation is just so anxious and antisocial, so antisocial. Yeah. And just not good at making friends. And I think people really, especially Democrats, need to take this message on board and think about the decisions that we made during the pandemic.

Jon: I was on the town council, I voted for these mask mandates, 

Emily: and we did that the best we could. 

Jon: We did what we could with the knowledge that we had, but 

Emily: right. 

Jon: But I was talking to a, a young guy. This was sometime last year before the election, and he was 19. He said, "A lot of my friends are gonna vote for Donald Trump in November."

Jon: And I, and he and I was like, "Why?" He's "Oh, these, kids are 18, 19, 20." I said, "Why would they do that?" He said, they hold the Democratic Party responsible for the fact that they missed, their prom. They missed graduation. They missed all these milestones in a young person's life that you see on the movies, and they didn't get any of that, and they're angry about it."

Jon: And we saw that borne out in the election, young people voted for Donald Trump in, in numbers that I think should scare Democrats. And 

Emily: I would've never put that together with that being a Democratic issue, the Democrat issue. 

Jon: and even though, the pandemic has began under Trump, I think we could, I, would like to argue that the outcomes under Biden were, 

Emily: as a 

Jon: Democrat myself, it feels like it was Trump harder.

Jon: Trump did not help Biden out at all with his handling of the pandemic, and it was really a mess. And I felt it as a restaurant owner. so I was on the town council, and I, and, we're having these meetings about mask mandates and stuff. And it was so funny because we had this one meeting and there was three people that were there to speak.

Jon: Two of them were regulars at my restaurant, and they were there to talk about how they didn't want the mask mandate. And at the time, I honestly thought, I'm like, what are these guys thinking? this one guy was talking about how the kids wearing masks is not good because they can't. See people's faces.

Jon: And at the time I was like, oh, that's stupid. what does it matter? But it turns out it's a big deal. It's a really big deal for people, to see expressions and to recognize, especially in those formative years, the first five years, to see people's faces and know what that means and what a smile is and what their, the emotional connection between the faces.

Jon: It's just very primal and very 

Emily: important. That's so interesting, 'cause I just had a situation where I was talking to an older person about this generation of, when I say this generation, Kids in their early, adulthood. And saying they aren't friendly. They don't smile, they don't, 

Jon: the Gen Z, what do they call 

Emily: it?

Emily: The Gen Z glare or whatever. Oh yeah. Yeah. And thinking about, in talking to, I have a lot of exposure with that generation, that like early adulthood. That's a big piece of my clientele. And it's a very common. It is. It's true. They don't. They have this natural, they don't have a lot of connecting facial expression.

Emily: Yeah. Or things that like a lot of other generations do. I try to make eye contact with them and they try to connect. They don't have any of that. And it's always been really interesting. And it wasn't until recently that we really started connecting. Oh. Their faces were covered up when they were growing up.

Jon: Yeah. 

Emily: And they had, they didn't have to make rapport with their faces. 

Jon: Yeah. That's really interesting. I never actually thought about that. can you remember we were trying to bring, my son who was so sad was in kindergarten at the time, we got this little mask on and, this is the reality that like, if Democrats are the, party of science and, doing things based on.

Jon: Science. as it turns out, a lot of those little masks your grandmother was sewing that kind of hung right here were useless. N95s were good if you put 'em on But a lot of those masks were completely performative, and a lot of that action that we did during the pandemic was completely performative, 

Emily: and it was, it brought our community in, in a lot, some ways. Together. 'Cause we were in it together. We were all buying masks together. We were making sure other people had masks. I remember, at the beginning we were like hoarding masks and handing them out, and there was this element of like togetherness.

Emily: but yeah, you know better when you, do better when you know better. And we didn't know better. 

Jon: But I remember and this was the beginning, I think, of the division in this country, and it was so apparent. Yeah, for sure. going back to when I was on the Town Council.

Jon: I decided in my restaurant, I said, "All right." I thought it would not take that long to get everyone vaccinated, right? So I said, "I'm not gonna open inside. We're gonna just do takeout until everyone is vaccinated." That took almost two years. It was wild, and it frankly crushed my business because everyone went and started just getting takeout.

Jon: No one was eating inside. Even after we opened inside again, they were just in this pattern of eating out, and it's when I learned, and if you own a restaurant, it's just so important to never. Disrupts people's patterns. If they come in and eat every Tuesday, or they come in and eat every Friday, if you mess that up, if you change your hours or do anything like that, you will kill your restaurant because that, it's that pattern that took me five years to build up, from 2015 to 2020.

Jon: And then I, and I killed it and I, it was my first restaurant, first pandemic. I didn't know, But part of the reason I did that was because I was on the town council. I wanted to be a good, example for my community. And frankly, and you 

Emily: had a pregnant person that was working. I 

Jon: had a pregnant lady that was worried about.

Jon: Sure. it ended up being. just more tribalism, I'm gonna be the best pandemic guy, restaurant Democrat ever, and do everything by the book. And I remember seeing like Facebook posts where this, I remember this one lady posted this Facebook post about seeing an old man in a grocery store not wearing a mask.

Jon: And she went up to him and she filmed the whole thing. She's like yelling at this 85-year-old man for not wearing a mask. And I'm like. He's the one that should, be worried about it. can we just mind our own business for a little bit and stop using this like moralistic, I'm superior to you because like I have worn a mask and it just, the more division.

Jon: It just sowed a lot more division. And I think we're reaping that now. 

Emily: and that, that was the time where there was so much divisiveness, not just because we were in our homes alone, but we were behind screens that was creating way more divisiveness. And then there was movements at the exact same time, like BLM, Black Lives Matter movement and other things like that were just, it really was this shine shining a light on divisiveness in our country.

Jon: and the screen time's a good example too, of what happened with the kids, you're trying to do, think of in hindsight, it's so silly trying to do kindergarten or preschool with a kid in front of a tablet for six to eight hours. It was, crazy. and then like I had friends that are paying for daycare and they were like, they're still making us pay, even though the kid's not going there and we have to be home with them anyway, and they're just in front of an iPad.

Jon: And then, a couple years later it's like. Why are all the kids addicted to screens? we did this to them. Okay. And I think, it, would just be nice if we had some, 'cause normally when you have a group trauma like this, it should bring, it should have brought us close together.

Jon: we should be closer as Americans, but we're not, we're farther away. And I think that's the most disappointing part that. A million people died, a million. And we 

Emily: never, I'm too like, I'm timid to always bring it back to like other traumas that we've had as a, community. But it's like 9/11.

Emily: We honor every, single year. Every year. And we really do. It was like known September 12th, like we all came together. Yeah. Like it didn't matter what you believed in or what, or if you're a Democrat, Republican, like everyone came together and we had the opposite in COVID, which is just cuckoo to me.

Jon: and, just the fact that. there was never a, day of sort of silence or a memorial or anything like that to honor the people that died. And then, here we are and it's, when did COVID end? It's comes up every once in a while. People are still getting shots. People are still 

Emily: getting it.

Emily: Yeah. 

Jon: People are still getting it. 

Emily: Still very real. 

Jon: But at the same time it's, a, distant memory in, many ways. And I don't know about you, but I would say. That since 2020, things have just gotten harder and worse and worse 

Emily: because 2019 was just the best. 

Jon: 2019 was a great year for me.

Jon: That was, the best year for the restaurant. It was, I was getting ready to open another restaurant or do something else, and then COVID happened and it, and I was never able to get out of that sort of spiral. 

Emily: 2019 is when we met too. 

Jon: Oh, That's true. Yeah. That was a great year, 2019.

Jon: Such a special time. But yeah, I think, I think it's just important for us to all take a moment and just reflect on the fact that we survived this crazy pandemic, and no one gave you a high five or a slap on the back or a good job. I'm saying it now: good job, you survived the pandemic.

Jon: Okay. And now we're gonna survive. The fascist takeover of the United States. 

Emily: Will we? and, I think what brings us into the fascist takeover, thinking about what collective trauma actually does to our physical brains. a lot of us therapists are talking about these, the majority of us are now way more trauma informed than we used to have to be.

Emily: because of the level 

Jon: of, can you explain what that means? Trauma informed. 

Emily: Sure. just using therapeutic style or modality in a more trauma-focused way. so what does that 

Jon: mean? 

Emily: I'm gonna get into it. What does 

Jon: modality mean? 

Emily: it's different ways of doing therapy, like CBT, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or DBT, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, or, you've probably heard of EMDR, or, all these different modalities of, Ways to do therapy, and a lot of them now have a T in front of them, like TCBT, which is trauma-informed CBT. Oh, okay. Or, and so a lot of these different, ways of doing therapy, individualized therapy, or group is more trauma-focused now, because there is such a high level of trauma in our culture, whether it be.

Emily: COVID or exposure to what we are experiencing every single day. but there's this like very common belief like that. It's, and I see it a lot from the more, leaning people, that they minimize our experience of trauma because it's considered, leftist or liberal or snowflakey to experience hardship 

Jon: and to recognize your emotions and say, this is.

Jon: I'm feeling away, anything. And there's this sense of it's a masculine 

Jon: desire to not admit that we are struggling, or that we are hurting. And, I definitely, found that therapy was good for me. and I, I wish, that's why I really think that having you as a therapist in school.

Jon: It's so crucial and that every, child needs access to, should have access to a therapist. But obviously a 

Emily: therapeutic person in general, for 

Jon: sure. Not every child, but like when in stress and, in, in difficult times. There should be someone that they can reach out to. I think that would prevent a lot of issues.

Jon: how do you, as a therapist, I, this is a little bit, tangent, but I think it, it makes sense. How do you as a therapist, when somebody comes in and they say. Hey, I'm watching the news and, global warming and microplastics and PFOAs and nuclear war and Russia and Ukraine and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Jon: we are living in a crazy world, and it's not just crazy, but it's, just all the time. Just intense, an intense news cycle for sure. 

Emily: Yeah. 

Jon: And it's, and it, seems to be happening faster and faster and it's almost hard to. Anyone that's doing right now, I'm like, anybody that's, 

Emily: they're not trustworthy.

Jon: Yeah. When people are like, oh, things are great, I'm like, wow, you're not watching the news. You've completely tuned out. But how does it, as a therapist, how do you deal with the fact that. When somebody walks in, they're like, "Oh, I think the world's going crazy." And you're like, "Yep, 

Emily: yeah, we talk at like, all my friends are therapists and we talk about it all the time.

Emily: it's hard, really hard to be a therapist right now. I actually took a break from my outpatient. I closed my outpatient practice because it's just such a hard time to be 

Jon: an outpatient. is what, 

Emily: outpatient therapy is just what you identify, what you'd imagine in therapy. When you go on the sit on couch.

Emily: Sit on my couch. You sit in the office. "

Jon: How does that make you feel?" Therapy. 

Emily: Whatever. But no, it's, a really hard time to be a therapist. And I think something, this is gonna be a little bit of a tangent, but what makes, a. Therapy. Like the weird, I think one of the weirdest jobs in the world is that it's based in connection.

Emily: Based in, there's a level of intimacy in being a therapist. Yeah. That you're connecting as two people. There's this element of it's funny that therapists have to exist because we should just have communities that know how to talk to each other and yeah, have a more enmeshed community that way to talk about feelings and work through traumas together.

Emily: Yeah. Rather than having you to meet a stranger. But, 

Jon: in a perfect world, I guess we wouldn't need therapists. We would just have. More trustworthy friends. 

Emily: Yeah. And it certainly, it's, there's a lot of skill that goes into being a therapist and I, my, my college is really hard. and I feel really grateful that I did it.

Emily: But, one common theme that we talk about as therapists a lot is how funny it is, 'cause it's like being in a room and connecting with someone. And I'm a person too, and I'm experiencing the same exact things that they are. Yeah. So when someone walks in the room and they goes. Oh my God, Trump's ruining everything, and I go in my head as a human, no, no kidding.

Emily: Yeah, like I am, cried in my car on the way to this office this morning, for the same reasons. But it's a service, and so there's this element of Acknowledging and validating and saying, and just being there for whatever the feeling is. really highlight just what the feeling is.

Jon: Yeah. 

Emily: and experiencing like what it is. we really are just highlighting coping skill at this point. 

Jon: Highlighting coping skill. 

Emily: Yeah. I think that the biggest piece in therapy right now, especially when it comes to just. Being, really dysregulated. and that's a feeling that a lot of people are feeling is just dysregulation.

Emily: Like they can't, it's scary. You're scared all the time. 

Jon: Yeah. 

Emily: and, one piece of what we call psychoeducation, which is like educating people just like on psych, psychiatric things, or different modalities of the brain. Ways of doing therapy, is this one, theory that's called Polyvagal Theory, which talks about like the vagus nerve, and it's trauma focused, so it's specified on trauma, but also there's a lot of science which you can look up and it's, I think it's really helpful to those who don't necessarily believe in some of the things that therapy does.

Emily: but it's that your amygdala, like a piece of your brain at the. Space of your brainstem. It actually deforms. it has, it changes shape when you experience a trauma. so once you've experienced a trauma, you actually do have a physical, there's 

Jon: a physical aspect to it. So it's not just like in your head.

Emily: It's literally, 

Jon: in your head. 

Emily: Yeah. Yeah. But it's like they take, you take a lot of the people take cancer really seriously, but they don't take trauma seriously because it's, and it's helpful to know that there is actually a physical physiological change. 

Jon: Yeah. 

Emily: Yeah. 

Jon: that's all the time we have for you today, folks.

Emily: wow. Ending it really nice. 

Jon: Sorry. why don't you give the people, as a therapist, what is one just good coping mechanism that everyone should know and use in their daily life? 

Emily: Yeah, I don't have a good answer. I have the, my better answer is everyone's different and I would never tell someone to journal who doesn't like to journal.

Emily: I'd never tell someone to walk in the woods who didn't really like to do that. But you gotta find your own. 

Jon: I will tell you to walk in the woods and I'll tell you, this is my therapy recommendations. 

Emily: Oh, no, 

Jon: eat enough. When do not eat. That will be bad. 

Emily: Nice. 

Jon: Drink plenty of water. That can be troubling if you don't walk in the woods or walk somewhere outside, just outside in the 

Emily: sun, outside.

Jon: Yeah, for at least a little bit every week. 

Jon: And perform some activity. That is creative, which you are not doing for money or for any gain. for me, I play music. And I don't perform out. I don't, some, I, it's not a serious thing. I just do it. I fiddle around. And it's a release, and everyone needs that, even if it's something like, literally, as an adult.

Jon: Go buy a brand new box of crayons. Yeah. And buy one of those big, pads of just thick paper. that's $20 therapy. 

Emily: Even an adult coloring book. Those are big in office. 

Jon: Buy a coloring book, get a ukulele. You can buy a ukulele for $25. 

Emily: I think what you're identifying are like really simple joys, like 

Jon: Yeah.

Jon: Finding 

Emily: simple joy. 

Jon: Really simple joy. one of the things that this is. This is probably, just one of the lessons I took from COVID was And, this is obviously so cliche, it's almost stupid for me to say, but I do try to live every day like it's the last day, I do. And, I, every morning I wake up, the first thing I say to my son is, I love you, buddy.

Jon: And when he comes home in and from school, the first thing I say is, love you buddy. And when I, say goodnight, I say, I love you, buddy. And, it's just, it's really important for me to really, I, don't. I don't live my life for something that's gonna be happening in 20 years. I live my life for today.

Jon: So that's my advice to you: live life for today. Go walk in the woods, learn, play, go be in the sun, play ukulele and eat a nice burger. Bye.