Amy: trauma is really defined as someone's experience with an event. There is no Big T and little t trauma, it simply is. That if someone tells us that something is traumatic for them, that's their experience with that event, that to us, if we defined as a small t or little t trauma, it feels minimizing to that person potentially.
Chrissie: we have yet to find standard operating procedures to care for our people in medicine who in fact need recalibration as part of our simple maintenance.
Amy: What I love about primary care it's a hundred small doses of meaningful connection across somebody's lifetime. And really what we're doing every time is just giving them a little dose of relational health. I see you, I'm here with you, I celebrate your wins, I carry your losses, I think of you, I want only health for you.
Chrissie: you're listening to Solving for Joy. I'm your host, Dr. Chrissie Ott.
Hello, and welcome to today's episode of the Solving for Joy Podcast. I am honored to be joined today by my guest, Dr. Amy King. Uh, Dr. King is a licensed psychologist in Portland, Oregon, and her current work involves promoting resilience for families, health care entities, like medical practices, schools, businesses, and individuals. She is a keynote speaker, consultant, coach, and mentor to families, healthcare leaders, teachers, and businesses. I'm so grateful for our paths having crossed. Um, just a few of the other highlights, Dr. King also has a book, The Trauma Informed Pediatric Practice, available through the AAP or Amazon, and a curriculum called Cards for Connection, created especially for professionals that work with children and families.
So I am just so excited to get to talk to you about your joy, our Venn diagram of joy, and other things that our listeners are going to find fascinating, rewarding, and educational today. Welcome, Amy. Thanks for being here.
Amy: Oh, thanks for having me, Chrissie. I'm so happy to be here.
Chrissie: So I will start by asking you about your journey in solving for joy. And I love the construct of thinking, where have we located some variables that we once thought were constants? What kinds of interesting twists and turns have helped you arrive here, where you are solving for joy in these particular ways?
Amy: Yeah, I love this question so much. Um, you know, an interesting fact about me is that I actually went into my training to be a physician and I really thought that the constant, right, was that if you, if I wanted to, uh, get out of poverty and I was, I grew up very poor and rural Midwest, um, that I had to do something like become a physician or a lawyer or something at the time that I thought was, you know, a high earning, long term profession that I could really have some stability in. And then I went into the field of psychology as a, you know, major for my pre med degree and found that the constant for me that actually spoke to me best was mental health. Um, but the variable right? Of what being a psychologist could be actually led me back into medicine. And, you know, Training physicians and creating curricula and being in health care spaces and becoming a behavioral health consultant in health care spaces.
And so it's just interesting to me that it was actually a constant for so long in my growing up years that I thought I was going to be a physician and then shifted into being a psychologist. And finding that has been the most rewarding part of my career, just how people think and learn and how people behave and, um, the importance of relational health really, which is where I ended up, you know, have ended up spending most of my career in now. So, um, yeah, I think, I think that fits your formula.
Chrissie: That is so interesting. So from pre med to teaching medical professionals with the constant of behavioral health, and I love thinking about how behavior, we think behavioral health and you just said relational health, um, which is not a phrase I hear very often, but excites my brain.
Amy: Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of people, um, aren't familiar with what relational health is and it's our ability to create and maintain and foster healthy close relationships. And as adults, we might kind of have a. implicit understanding of that, right? Maybe it's our friends, maybe it's work colleagues, maybe it's our partner or our children, that's our relational health, if you will. But if you've never experienced close relationships, or you grew up with traumas that disconnected you from those, it becomes really important to make what's implicit to some of us explicit to others, which is that the ability to maintain and create those healthy relationships isn't implicit to everyone. And what could be a really healing process has created a lot of harm for some people. And so we actually can teach about relational health. Um, and the reason I love working with littles in pediatrics or in, um, other early childhood spaces is the hope that remains there. That if we can teach about relational health and ways to enhance relational health, then really we're focused then on early relational health, which are those really early caregiving years that create even who we are today as adults.
Chrissie: That is so true. I am thinking how that ties in with the very appropriate emphasis on social emotional learning for our youngest learners in elementary school and beyond. I'm also really responding to how the element of surprise, um, veered you into your current trajectory. I find that when I surprise myself is some of my most delighted times. Some of the time I feel the most alive or like, Oh, just did not know that was going to happen. I had no idea I was going to do that and here I am doing it feeling so aligned and like yes, this is the next move. I had no idea that it was going to be, but it clearly is.
Amy: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I think the first time that I declared myself as psychology as my major, not psychology as a major for pre med, I was talking to the dean of the medical school, and it's the first time I really felt seen, and he said, by, by a professional, I should say. Um, and he said, well, The world of medicine may have lost a physician, the world of psychology gained an incredible clinician today. And I thought, wow, thank you for seeing that. And that was a surprise to me. And it was a surprise to me that after years and years of growing up, my really foundational thoughts about who I am and myself shifted as I became more interested in human behavior and cognition and mental health.
Chrissie: That touched me. So deeply, that story, I felt it just chills through my body. What an important formative moment. Right? To have those, those crystalline, um, moments of being seen. I have similar exchanges with people who were very much leaders to me, influencers and educators that I looked up to. Um, one of them was Scott Basinger. Hi, Scott. If you're out there who like interviewed me for medical school and, and saw different things. Um, or my organic chemistry professor, Dr. Bye, who implied more than implied his opinion that I was too smart, quote unquote, to stay with a nutrition degree that I needed to go to medical school. And he opened an entire world to me that manifested itself in an instant.
Amy: Wow.
Chrissie: So what a powerful and beautiful story. Thank you for sharing that.
Amy: Yeah. If we're lucky, we have many people like that in our lives that see us and honor our most genuine selves.
Chrissie: More of that, please, for all healing. Much of your work is about addressing trauma. And holding space for, um, well, holding trauma informed spaces for care. And then I remember in our first conversation, we talked about how the penetrance of trauma is 100%. That means there are no people that are not impacted somehow by trauma. Trauma, whether it is a quote unquote, little T or big T trauma, I don't know how you feel about this designations, but you mentioned just, you know, in your first sentences that you grew up with poverty as a trauma. I grew up also with, uh, quite a bit of poverty in my family. And, I just would love to benefit from, you know, some of the pearls of wisdom that you've collected in being a consultant and a trainer for trauma informed spaces.
Amy: Yeah, there's so much I could share. Um, a couple of things that you brought up, that big T versus little t trauma, um, the way I try to just course correct professionals to think about this is that trauma is really defined as someone's experience with an event. And if that's the case, then there is no Big T and little t trauma, it simply is. That if someone tells us that something is traumatic for them, that's their experience with that event, that to us, if we defined as a small t or little t trauma, it feels minimizing to that person potentially.
And the example I often give when, when I'm training is if, if somebody comes into work, um, my workspace and they're really flustered because they had what we might consider a fender bender, um, on their way to work and they're really rattled by it. And they're not sure if they can work the rest of the day. And they're not sure if they can kind of go on and regulate in a way that they can engage in a professional capacity. Uh, and we minimize that by saying, what, I don't know why you're so upset. Like this is, you know, like you just barely bumped each other. No, nobody was hurt. If I minimize that, what somebody else is saying to, to me is dysregulating and created lack of felt safety and felt traumatic to them. What I'm not recognizing is a greater context for that person, which is their experience. And what I don't know is what if they had a car accident five years ago, 10 years ago, where someone they love died, um, or they were seriously injured and they're bringing that into the experience and to be trauma responsive and, and, and aware means that we hold that with us. And we're aware that there is a whole bunch of context in someone's life that we may know nothing about and that it's not on them to share that, or have to share that, but it is upon us to be aware. That's truly what it means to be trauma aware and then trauma responsive, is recognizing there's a larger context.
Chrissie: Trauma aware and trauma responsive are, of course, slightly different words than trauma informed. So am I right in meaning that that's a, a purposeful designation, and that it might be useful for more people to know your perspective on trauma responsive and aware versus trauma informed?
Amy: Absolutely. So if you think about it, just on a continuum of awareness, right? Moving from, I'm aware that trauma is 100 percent penetrative, that it exists everywhere. Nobody goes untouched by trauma in their lives, to being more sensitive that how trauma manifests, what it might look like, how it can look different in you than it does in me. Then we're moving along that continuum from awareness to being more sensitive and then being responsive in a way that doesn't do more harm to individuals that tries to actually prevent further harm.
So that we might really create holistic practices that are trauma informed. And what I would love to see, often when you see the models of what it means to be trauma informed, you see this kind of continuum. And I guess I should restate and say that it's more of like an iterative circle, right, that once you become aware of trauma and sensitive and more responsive, then you become more informed in your ideas and practices. And then you kind of go back and you learn more. And you learn what you don't know. And you try to become more sensitive to people or groups or individuals. So it's this continuous cycle where we're learning and then hopefully unlearning practices and biases and then learning again.
Chrissie: And becoming more attuned. Um, when I hear you describe that, these holistic practices of care, it feels like it's a form of living, loving kindness.
Amy: Mm hmm. Yeah. In fact, I don't love the term trauma informed Chrissie, . Yeah. I think organizations feel like it's this checkbox, right? Like we should become trauma informed and have someone like Amy come and do an hour long lunch workshop, and then we'll be trauma informed and.
Chrissie: It loses its meaning.
Amy: Yes, 100%. And so there was a group of providers that I worked with years ago that decided that their trainings that were much more holistic, much more comprehensive, that they would call those compassion informed care moments, because they felt like trauma informed was something that they should know, but compassionate was something they would do and feel. And I just really appreciate that sentiment. I think it's more accurate and more actionable and something we hold, um, but it is what it is now in the, in the, in the world, right? It's, it's out there as trauma informed. And so all we can do is kind of, um, massage it a bit and do a good job of being curious and explaining it when we're out in the world.
Chrissie: Yeah. And I'm curious if. You know, when we use the phrase trauma informed, we're focusing on the, insult and the reverberations of the experience, right? Whereas when we use the word compassion, like this group did, we're really talking about what it evokes. And there is no end to compassion, right? It's, it's one of the four immeasurables in Buddhist philosophy. Um, there is no end to the amount of compassion one can cultivate.
Amy: I actually appreciate that, Chrissie, i, I did not know that that was one of the four immeasurables. And so that speaks just to everything I believe in about creating these compassionate practices. So thanks for sharing that. It's beautiful.
Chrissie: Yes. The four immeasurables are love, compassion, joy, and equanimity. Amazing. Yeah. I had a thought about, um, you know, when you said trauma is really someone's experience and it's theirs to claim, I had a tiny flashback to, uh, an experience with my own therapist in years past, where my own therapist was bridging me to an understanding that my story did include trauma in a way that I had not been naming as trauma and in fact had really been in some ways invalidating and like anything, I'm sure I'm not 100 percent alone in that experience. Um, but when it's someone's to claim, but their temperament or their conditioning causes them to conclude, What I experienced was okay, or yeah, it was hard, but I wouldn't classify it as trauma that's for other people. That's for bigger things. Um, help us with your thoughts about that.
Amy: That's such a wonderful question. And when I think about the professionals that you and I both work with, Chrissie, I think that there is an unwritten curriculum, especially in health care, that we are these consummate professionals, and stoic, and boundaryless. And what it creates is this feeling of being unpenetrable. Right? That you don't experience trauma, and you will compartmentalize the humanity, the human side of you, that would feel distraught, that would feel distressed, that would be overwhelmed or overcome by something, that that's something for someone else at another time to experience. You need to get on with the business of being you know, a medical provider in whatever capacity that you are practicing, but especially true for physicians.
And so what happens, I think is a disconnect from who we are. And it's a disconnect from an experience. And it creates actually an othering that can be really unhealthy for professionals. And when we reconnect to that, and when we name it, witnessing a death, experiencing, uh, resuscitation, uh, watching as somebody else mourns the traumatic loss of a loved one, that those things are in fact traumatic and that our nervous system deserves to have that named because otherwise what happens is this disconnect between what our body kind of semantically gets and what we're thinking this should be, or we're being told that this should be. And eventually what you have is a whole bunch of, you know, autobots who are completely disconnected from self.
And then once we name it, they're like, no, not me. I haven't experienced this trauma. I'm fine. Right. And they're so disconnected, right? From from that, that that's why we see a huge uptake or uptick rather in depression, substance use, divorce, suicidality, etc. Because how are we going to cope otherwise?
Chrissie: We have compartmentalized ourself in some ways to death, or at least to deadness inside. And that self othering, that self alienation is truly, in my opinion, one of the primary underlying wounds that caregivers actually must heal from in order to be whole and to remain functional resources to their patients and to their communities. It is the primary aspect of this work.
Amy: I 100 percent agree and I, I think in fact it is a must do in order for us to remain in a professional capacity. In fact, that I would say our, our patients are dependent on us doing that.
Chrissie: Truly. And I just, I feel it. In my heart so much, this, this topic, I feel so passionately about this truth. And what you said about, you know, our need to tell ourselves the truth, our nervous systems somatically know what happened anyway, they know it already. And so the more that knowing is divorced from our awareness, the distance between those two things becoming greater over time. As a physician becomes more experienced or another or a nurse or, you know, name the caregiver um, it is very unhealthy. It is the opposite of wellness and medicine. And yet there are so few spaces for physicians and other caregiving health care professionals to sit and reconcile, to grieve to acknowledge deeply and to acknowledge in the presence of a close other where they can be attuned to and seen in a way that is not societally ordained to be a pathologization of their emotional response to truly, compelling suffering.
Amy: You know, I would absolutely agree and add to that, Chrissie, not only are there not spaces, but when they find spaces, they are punished for using them, and so many healthcare professionals and caregivers in the world, time and time again, have recountances of losing licenses, not being hired, not being able to transfer to hospitals, clinics, other states, other countries, because of how much we pathologize asking for help and asking for all of the things that you just mentioned to feel seen and attuned to our bodies and spirits and minds and to have someone walk along that path with us so that there's less aloneness in this world.
But yeah, I think it's a tragedy that the message is asking for help, needing help, wanting a guide on any journey that you're on would be punished in any capacity.
Chrissie: Thank you for bringing that up. It is, it is really, um, such an important missing of the mark in medicine. It is important injustice in medicine and luckily there are many people working on this at a policy level, uh, and it is moving slowly, but not in time for many, many people who have lost the ability to practice their art and craft. Um, there was an article and I, I'll put it in the show notes eventually, but, um, You know, the, the title was caring for the most important tool in medicine. This is about caring for the most important tool or piece of equipment in medicine, which is our humanness, our humanity, the humans that are the caregivers, right? If we were a piece of actual equipment in an OR and re required recalibration, every 18 procedures, Say, um, there would be a standard operating protocol to recalibrate that very expensive, highly invested in piece of durable medical equipment, right? Those, those longterm goods. And yet we have yet to find standard operating procedures to care for our people in medicine who in fact need recalibration as part of our simple maintenance. To make us last longer.
Amy: Absolutely. And I love and appreciate the analogy. And actually, I think it's an analogy that so many people can relate to and go, Oh, yeah, well, that makes sense. Why wouldn't we operationalize this like we would any other device, right? Non human device. Um, but when you were mentioning, uh, the most important part, I'm reminded of a retreat that I had out here at my farm and I was talking to a group of providers about the importance of connection and that they are often the first model of connection between themselves and the patient and then that way the patient or caregiver for their partner or for their child or whatnot and, uh, talking about the, these dyads that we exist in. And, um, one of the physicians raised his hand and he said, wait, this is the most important medicine that I've learned. And I just kind of sat there for a minute and, and thought, wow. And another physician quickly raised her hand and she said, you're actually asking us to unlearn medicine and relearn it in a different way. And I said, yes. Yes, I absolutely am. And I want us to put at the forefront of that, the relationship you have with yourself, and the relationship you have with other, and that that, in fact, is the most important medicine.
And I don't think there was a dry eye in the room, including mine, just this powerful realization that the most important medicine that any of us Is working in, is on ourselves and in our connected relationships with one another.
Chrissie: I am so touched by that. You know, it, it will be familiar to anyone who has spent time in the healthcare space that, you know, where the other person is when they walk in the room, like, you know, if they have vacated their body. Do you know what I mean by that? Like you can feel their deep presence, or they're very minimal, shallow, just enough to get the job done presence, which is a trauma response, right? I don't know that we have it as one of our four Fs, but that that sense of retracting, our offered self, you know, it might be a version of flight that we can't see, but I'm going to, I'm going to pause it today, improvisationally that when you interact with a healthcare provider and you sense their absence more than your presence, it's a sign it's a sign.
Amy: Here, here's what I might offer. I think our brains are incredibly complex and beautiful and protective. Yes. And if I sense that either my provider is absent or if I'm the provider and I notice my patient is not fully present. Yes. One thing I might note or notice is that that is a highly developed protective mechanism, and that our, our, we, there's this incredible idea of neuroception that we are constantly scanning the world for what's safe and what's not safe. And when I see someone in that space of, of almost self preservation to the point where they're not fully available, in my most compassionate spaces, which I'm not always in, where none of us are always there, but when I can be what I offer to that fellow human being is a knowing of, Oh, you're in a protective space for you today. That must be where you need to be for today.
And if I'm the, the clinician or the provider, The only thing I can hope for, for the person that is not experiencing being fully present is, can I behave in a way that would create some type of safety for that person so that they might be more present in their body today?
Chrissie: That's so beautiful, Amy. Um, thank you for the word neuroception. Thank you so much. It is something I deeply recognize in myself and now have a language for. And also you have just modeled how to be trauma responsive or compassionate, you know, compassion responsive, how to be compassionate in the face of being aware of someone else's likely traumatized state, right? Um, instead of just calling people out, calling them in with your own presence, which is such a high skill level.
I recognize that, um, you know, I'm, I'm quite an empath. I'm very sensitive. And my neuroception has been highly developed since I was a child, which I, I mean, that's probably true for all of us, but I know that having highly attuned reading of rooms can be a safety and trauma response as well. And I remember being a teenage server in a restaurant and noting that I am able to read and attune to quite a variety, quite a spectrum of random strangers in a restaurant. And that, that skill immediately carried over into my career as a massage therapist and Pilates instructor and as a doctor. Because when you're in the ER or any place that you're going to be interacting with folks you've not met before, you're faced with a lot of unknown variables about them. And yet connecting to them is part of the healing journey and experience.
Amy: Yeah, you know, it's, as you were saying those things, I can't help but step into my, my therapist's brain for just a moment, and I'm hearing, like, as a server in a restaurant, as a massage therapist, as a Pilates instructor, and I just kept in my brain saying aloud, Thank you, brain. Thank you, trauma. Thank you, brain. Thank you, experience. Right? Because so much of how we're built is because of what we have gone through. And so then I feel like the parsing out as adults is to figure out, okay, Thank you so much. I can go into a room of healthcare providers or into a restaurant, and I'm so highly attuned because of this incredible neuroception that I developed, likely due to hurt and harm when I was little.
Chrissie: Unintentional hurt and harm.
Amy: Unintentional. And so now, how do I parse out when to allow myself to set that down for a moment and not be the one that's always attuned? To allow myself to be more present in the moment and to also feel taken care of in addition to taking care of others, but being taken care of. And I think that that's a hard thing for so many of us that have experienced trauma and then gone into helping professions because naturally, that's just what we want to do is to continue to help and and it takes a lot of work to sort through what is a response that is going to help me have some positive outcomes here? And what is a response that I can set down for a moment that won't necessarily get my needs met in a way that's the most authentic for me or in a way that I really need to have my needs met? Which are also okay to have.
Chrissie: It's evoking for me a question of almost a daily hygiene practice for our nervous systems. I think you have some actionable, um, practices in your, in your line of work that would help people know when is the time that I can practice some self care or some momentary decompartmentalization. When do we peek into those shoe boxes that are up on the shelf in the closet?
Amy: Mm hmm. Um, First of all, I love actionable tools and I have lots of them. One of the first ones that comes to mind is this little exercise I do with even the youngest of people, um, called screens versus sponges. And so I asked them to imagine, right, what is the function of a sponge? And so I'll ask you, Chrissie, what's the function of a sponge?
Chrissie: Well, the first thing is to clean things. And the second thing is to absorb things. That's the first thing. To absorb things, right?
Amy: And so if we put that sponge on a puddle of water, the sponge will absorb. absorb. Mm hmm. And if we put the sponge on a puddle of orange juice or milk, it will also absorb. Yes. In fact, if we put the sponge on top of like a yucky, oily, moldy, whatever, salmony, whatever smell that might be aversive, it will still absorb because that is the function of a sponge.
Chrissie: That is the nature. Yes.
Amy: And I want us to begin thinking about the difference between a sponge and a screen that's like on a window, right? So what's the function of a screen?
Chrissie: To keep large particles out but let air through.
Amy: Right, right. So to filter. It's filtering.
Chrissie: That would be the simpler thing to say. Yeah.
Amy: That's it. We're, we're filtering. And so I want all of us to, and, and really, if we think about, uh, screens in a joyous, you know, capacity, it's to let all the good stuff in, right? The fresh air and sunshine and warmth and to keep bugs and stuff out. Right. And so when I think about, you know, our capacity to like, like you said, this kind of nervous system, uh, cleaning, if you will. I think about, could we engage in a daily practice or even in a moment to moment practice of, am I being spongy right now? Or am I being a screen? And I think just differentiating that sometimes helps people feel a little bit stickier.
And, and I think about, Chrissie this young boy that I was working with who's such a big feeler, right? And he came into my office one day and he'd been practicing being more of a screen and less spongy at times and he said, Oh, Dr. Amy, I was at school today, and my teacher was just yelling at our whole class about how disappointed she was in us, and our homework hadn't been turned in, and we were going to lose recess, and why didn't you all, like, work harder? And he said, and I was just soaking it up, soaking it up. I was like this little sponge. He said, and then I remembered, oh, I could screen this out. I don't think she's talking about me. I know I turned my homework in. She's not disappointed in me. She's disappointed in my classmates. She's disappointed in other kids that didn't get it done, but I get to be a screen with that comment, and he was so proud of himself that he had practiced this.
And I always tell adults, if, if my six year old, eight year old, seven year old clients can do this, then there's hope for us as adults, because that's a, that's one of those practices that we just, we get better at if we do it.
Chrissie: That's such a beautiful practice. I can think of. Several instances just this week in my adult life, I'm like, Oh, that was a sponge moment. I probably needed it to be a screen moment. Um, and I will absolutely be talking to my deeply feeling kid about this skill over dinner tonight.
Amy: Good. Good. That's amazing. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And, and your question about self care, right, and kind of having a practice, I, I recently heard from a friend of mine, um, that it would serve us better if we scratched the word self care and instead use the phrase self preservation. And for some reason, Chrissie, I don't know how that feels to you, but it felt like, oh, I, I better get to that. Whereas self care feels kind of like capitalistic and performative and, right, like, Extra. Yeah, like, stuff we can do over here when we have time and like,
Chrissie: The candles and the bath bubbles.
Amy: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Versus like self preservation is like, I'm, I must get busy doing this. And it feels like, something we owe, owe it to ourselves to spend time doing.
Chrissie: Yeah self care and even self compassion, I think, have lost a little bit of their potency as uh, phrases because of you know, popularization and, and well meaning, you know, widespread distribution, but also as soon as they become part of the capitalist model, uh, they also lose a little bit of their sacred resonance that, um, like, Oh, this is a special wisdom for me to imbibe and embody. Um, I really liked that self preservation, uh, idea. And it really, it goes along with, um, a conversation I had with Dawson Church a few weeks back, how we were talking about, you know, a meditation practice, however that looks for a person. I think of it as a very broadly applied idea because I don't. I don't want anybody to feel limited in their expression, but that introspective time where you shift your brain waves a bit becomes actually like an act of hygiene. I begin to think of it as very akin to brushing my teeth or taking a shower. You know, or any of the other routine hygiene things that we do on a daily basis, um, because it has that function of preserving our function, preserving our happiness and our access to joy.
Amy: Oh, 100%. When you said it like that, our access to joy, right? It's like joy shouldn't be for our leftover parts.
Chrissie: Joy is a quality of life mediator for me. I don't think I knew that, um, explicitly until, you know, these last few years. I sensed it, but I do think that joy is absolutely a quality of life mediator. And for me, joy is meaning alignment and delight. And so much of that is about learning, discovering, and connecting.
Amy: Yeah. It's interesting that you said delight, Chrissie, because when I talk to parents about how to create secure, connected attachments with their children, um, there's a model called the circle of security that talks about what children need as they go out to explore the world and what children need when they come back into us as their caregivers. And, um, there's only one factor that's on both the going out and the coming in, it is to be delighted in. I delight in you as you explore the world. Go try it. You're going to be amazing. And when you come in, I'm so glad to see you. Oh my gosh, look at your face. I just missed you so much. It's the delighting in that is the constant.
And when you said it like that, I was like, yes, that is, that is joy. That delighting in.
Chrissie: This joy. And that is something that I hope to, you know, to spread more of like in our relationships of all types, in our colleague relationships, in our partnered relationships and in our relationships to our patients, like when as a pediatrician, we get to delight in our young patients. There is a very, um, it is, it is quite accessible. Um, but it's kind of the fuel, like it's the secret of primary care, y'all like when you are in relationship, even if it's a shorter term relationship, when you're in relationship centered care with your patient, you kind of know it because there's so much delight in their progress. There's so much delight in their wins.
Amy: Yeah. I tell primary care doctors often what I love about primary care is it's a hundred small doses of meaningful connection across somebody's lifetime. And really what we're doing every time is just giving them a little dose of relational health. I see you, I'm here with you, I celebrate your wins, I carry your losses, I think of you, I want only health for you. It's these 100 small doses, and that's why primary care, family practice, internal medicine, peds are such important people in families lives because they're often the first responder to concerns, whether it be, you know, medical health or mental health.
Chrissie: I would like to look at the transcript and write down all of the words you just said and work them into a primary care prayer, like a prayer for primary care, like, those words were so powerful and beautiful. I want to share them.
Amy: Thank you. I love the idea of a primary care prayer. They deserve that.
Chrissie: Yeah. Yes, they do.
Amy: Yeah. When I train my own team of consultants, one of the things we spend a lot of time on is the concept of human beingness and vulnerability. And that I think doing this work for me means first and foremost, we are fully human and we recognize each other's humanity and that we take vulnerability risks when possible, because that's really what allows other people to feel connected to us.
And so we can't, with my work around trauma and relational health and connection, I can't do that if someone doesn't feel first seen by me. And so any of the trainings that, that I do starts first with just filling up the cup of the professional, and we spend time talking about burnout prevention techniques and self preservation techniques and, and often by the time we're done with, like, the Cards for Connection training, um, people come up to me and they're like, I know that I was learning this thing to provide for the people that I work with, it felt healing to me as a parent, as a person. And I think to myself, then, then that is, the good work that has been done, right? Because I feel like what we're owed as helpers and healers is spaces to learn where we can also be healed.
Chrissie: Yes. So much that. Amy, as we wrap up today, I am so struck by just how many moments in this conversation I have felt inspired and just really accompanied, uh, on this journey of serving healing to our healers. And I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing in the world. It is obviously and truly your work.
Amy: Thank you so much. I'm so glad that our paths have crossed. I don't think there are enough people like you in the world who can hold space for a colleague to feel less alone. And truly, that's what I think professionals need right now is less aloneness and feeling fully seen. So I appreciate the work that you're doing as well.
Chrissie: Thank you for that. It is truly my most meaningful pleasure to do that. It is the thing that feels the most important with whatever time I have left on this planet. So I am here to do it and to do it hard and to spread, spread the ripple. Are there last thoughts? Um, I'm sure that after listening, there may be people who are interested in finding you for either speaking engagements or other consultant arrangements. So maybe you want to share a little bit about how to find you and what work you are most delighted to connect with right now.
Amy: Oh, Thanks for asking that. Uh, the easiest way to find me is on my website, doctoramyllc.com and that's the easiest way to find out about my work and reach me and reach my team. In terms of working with me, I do a lot of keynotes around Wellness and hope and being in trauma responsive spaces and what that truly means and how we can prevent burnout in spaces. And then when I'm not doing that, I'm training on Cards for Connection, which is a certification program that helps professionals understand the importance of relational health as a way to heal stress and trauma through brief interventions that truly build relational health and resilience and bridge gaps for professionals so that they feel more competent and confident in how they're talking to children and families about really tough topics in really meaningful ways.
Chrissie: What great work. Thank you for sharing that. And thank you so much for being with me today. Thank you all for tuning in and we will see you next time on Solving for Joy.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
I want to take a quick moment to acknowledge our incredible team. This podcast is produced by the amazing Kelsey Vaughn, post production and more handled by Alyssa Wilkes, and my steadfast friend and director of operations, Denise Crain. Our theme music is by Denys Kyshchuk cover photography by the talented Shelby Brakken and a special appreciation to my loyal champion and number one fan, Suzanne Sanchez. Thanks again for tuning in everyone. May we continue caring for ourselves, caring for others, and may we continue solving for joy. Take care. We'll see you next time.
