June 3, 2025 • 46 mins
In this episode of Ditch the Suits, host Travis Maus sits down with Dr. Paul Gould, PhD, LICSW, a licensed clinical social worker and expert in anxiety and trauma, to unpack the mounting stress experienced by federal employees amid sudden funding cuts and workforce changes.
With nearly 35% of all U.S. jobs tied in some way to federal funding, these shifts are rippling across the economy—impacting individuals, families, and financial futures. Travis and Dr. Gould dive into the differences between stress, anxiety, and trauma, and explore the real emotional toll these changes are taking on people. They discuss why common reactions like “toughen up” may be more harmful than helpful, and how political polarization and media overload are intensifying people's sense of fear and uncertainty.
Most importantly, Dr. Gould offers practical, thoughtful advice on how to recognize and manage anxiety, maintain emotional well-being, and support others through challenging transitions. Whether you're directly affected or simply trying to make sense of the current climate, this episode delivers insights that are both grounding and empowering.
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About Your Host:
Travis Maus has been in financial services for over fifteen years. He is a Senior Wealth Manager and Chief Executive Officer at S.E.E.D. Planning Group. Travis also hosts the Unleashing Leadership Podcast, where he dissects some of his favorite books on leadership and how you can apply it to your business or life.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Foreign.
Welcome to Ditch the Suitspodcast, where we share insights
nobody in the financialservices industry wants you to know
about.
We're here to help you get themost from your money in life.
So buckle up and welcome toDitch the Suits.
(00:20):
All right, so there are 3million or so federal workers or
federal employees, and itseems like most of them are stressed
out, according to USAFacts.orgsome website.
I haven't vetted the website,but this is their studies that they've
put together.
About 3 million people makethe federal government the nation's
(00:44):
15th largest workforce.
So not necessarily employer,but kind of workforce, think industry.
And this number is varied.
And I found this very interesting.
In 2014, there were 2.7million, and then in 1990, there
was actually 3.4 million.
So there's been a fluctuationof federal workers kind of throughout
(01:06):
history.
It's pretty common for ashrinkage of the federal workforce
and an expansion.
If you search how many jobsare at least partially paid for by
the federal government, Googlewill actually spit back at you.
This is one of those thingswhere AI gets in the way, and it
doesn't actually let you,like, look yourself, but Google will
(01:27):
spit back.
Well, we have a study thatfound that 35% of all jobs are funded
in some way by the government,which includes state and local governments
and private contractors.
And this is kind of where thisis really affecting people, because
it doesn't necessarily matterif you're just a federal worker,
you could be affected byfederal funding cuts.
And kind of how that is kindof matriculating on through the economy
(01:51):
is an interesting thing.
So I think there's a goodchance that if 35% of all jobs in
the United States are somehowaffected by federal funding, that
pretty much every single oneof our clients and anybody listening
to this podcast knows at leastone person or maybe even has a family
member that's going to beimpacted by changes that are triggered
(02:13):
by the Trump administration.
And one of the things I wantto make sure that we don't do is
I don't want to turn this intoany kind of a political, like, who's
right and who's wrong.
That's not our job on this podcast.
But what I do want to do is,aside from whether it's valid or
fair or if there's a real needfor change, I want to recognize the
(02:36):
fact that change is a realthing and.
And it impacts real people.
And today's episode is focusedon understanding what these folks
and their families, becausemost people don't go through this
alone, they're stressed,they're anxious, they're feeling
a lot of pressure.
And so it's impacting their families.
(02:57):
What these folks are goingthrough and what we can actually
do to help them.
And I think that how this tiesinto finance is this is your career,
this is your job field, thisis your financial future.
Should you retire, should youstay working?
Is your identity beingchallenged because you're thinking,
this is who I am, but I'mlosing this job or something like
(03:18):
that.
So our guest to help us unpackall this today is Paul Gould, Ph.D.
l I CSW.
So we'll have to ask him whatthat means.
Also the owner of KindredSpirits Counseling and Wellness.
And before we get to anything,we're going to do our little intro.
(03:38):
For anybody who doesn't know,this is Ditch the Suits.
I'm Travis Moss, CEO of SeedPlanning Group.
Seed Planning Group is a feeonly wealth management firm.
And this show is all about howwe share our experience and collective
professional knowledge so thatwe can help our listeners and our
clients get more out of theirmoney in life.
Do you want more of Ditch the Suits?
(04:00):
Well, let's take a break totell you about our Patreon channel.
If you're wanting moreannouncements, notifications, even
access to prior seasons, youcan head to patreon.com search ditch
the suits and subscribe to our channel.
You'll get notifications ofall episodes right in your inbox.
So visit patreon.com searchditch the suits or head to our show
(04:20):
Notes where we got links toour channel.
So without further ado, Paul,it's great to have you with us today.
Thank you, Travis.
Glad to be here.
All right, so right off thebat, before we even get to like who
you actually are, I gotta, Igotta understand, what is this credential?
That's after your name.
Oh.
So every state, you know,professional licensing is done at
(04:43):
the state level in each state.
So where you'll see likepeople with md do you know different
credentials?
So in Massachusetts, which isone of the states I'm licensed, and
it is the licensed independentclinical social worker.
So that's the highest tier ofcredentialing in social work profession.
(05:07):
In New York state, I also havea credential that is simply lcsw.
It's the equivalent, but eachstate gets to use its own letters.
Okay.
And then you've got a PhD there.
Yep.
And your PhD is in what?
It's in human Development andClinical Social work.
Okay.
Yeah.
So needless to say, this isyour profession, your Area of expertise.
(05:29):
Yep.
Love this.
I've been at this about 30years now, so absolutely love what
I do.
You're aging both of usbecause we.
Yeah, unfortunately.
Yeah, we didn't talk about that.
We cut that out.
That's right.
That's a whole other episode.
But we, we had been talking.
We have a lot of clients thatare stressed out.
(05:53):
We've had people call in andthey're stressed out about, hey,
I'm a federal worker, I'mafraid of losing my job, or maybe
I want to make some changesbefore funding changes where it's
going and I just want out.
We've also had people who havefamily members who are calling.
They're very upset becausethey're concerned about my family
member is losing their job orlosing the funding behind their program
(06:14):
or they're concerned about it.
Maybe nothing's happened yet,but they're concerned it's going
to happen.
And that's being conflatedwith kind of the political extremism
that we have with.
I don't care because I'm onthe right or the right is ruining
my life because I'm on the left.
And it's really at a reallyunhealthy level and I think it's
(06:38):
causing a lot of trauma.
And one of the things I'mtrying to figure out is how do we
actually help people from astandpoint of we've got to get the
temperature down and the firstplace that we can work on is ourselves
and how we're kind of feelingthe world around us.
So you and I had had somefascinating conversations, so I wanted
to have you come and kind ofshare some of the stuff that you
(07:02):
do on a day to day basis.
So I guess that kind of teesoff kind of who are you and what
do you do?
You know, Now I'm a full timetherapist, so I do mental health
therapy.
Full.
I work with people inMassachusetts and I work with people
in New York and soon I'madding Florida because I'm relocating
(07:25):
personally.
And so I do generallyindividual counseling and people
come to me for a wide varietyof reasons.
But one of the key conditionsor symptoms that people reach out
to me for and that I, that Imarket myself around is anxiety.
(07:47):
Okay.
So I do a lot of work aroundtrauma, anxiety, depression, and
you know, with, with clients.
I spend some time early ondebunking a lot of the pop psychology,
pop culture definitions thatfloat around out there, around, around
trauma because we've reallyoverused that word and watered down
(08:12):
what, what trauma actually Is right.
You know, pop psychology, it'sthrows around a lot of these clinical
terms and all of a sudden,like, everyone has a, has a condition.
And so I spent a lot of timewith people, educating them about,
like, you know, what'sactually happening for you.
And you know, as you saidearlier, we're in a, in a state very
(08:36):
quickly here in the lasthundred days.
Today, I think, is actuallythe 100th, 100th day of the, of the
current administration.
And we, we've seen some veryfast changes in people's employment
or concerns about employmentthat are working for the federal
government and even some that are.
They may not be employees ofthe federal government, but they
(08:57):
have federal funding.
Yeah.
And, you know, we've reallyseen that this very quick change
and that's produced a lot ofstress and anxiety.
And when I talk with people,one of the things I try to do is
differentiate stress from anxiety.
And because we respond tothose two things differently.
(09:20):
And I think this is a littlebit of a conversation you and I had
previously around, you know, Italked to people about stress is.
Stress is tangible.
We can point our finger andsay, oh, this is what's causing the
stress.
It's, there's containmentaround it.
It's everything from like, oh,I have this upcoming test, or I have
(09:40):
this big project at work, orwe know changes are coming.
Yeah, maybe people are gettingmarried or divorced or they're having
a child or whatever it is.
You know, they can lay theirfinger on it.
It's finite.
We know where it begins and it ends.
Some of them are time limited,some are not.
And so we can look and say,like, this is a stressor and let's
(10:02):
talk about how to respond tothat, to that stress and manage that.
Anxiety is something thatcreeps in and builds on top of stressors.
And this is where we get into,like, you hear the word trigger everywhere.
What is what has triggered someone?
And this is where we reallystart to talk about, like, what is
a trigger and what is anxiety?
(10:23):
And anxiety is usually amagnification or some sort of distortion
in and around what I like tocall little nuggets of truth.
So as people share theirnarrative, what is happening to them?
You know, I always kind oflisten for that little nugget of
truth, like, yeah, this is,this is the stressor, or this is
(10:45):
what's really going on, orthis has happened to you, but it's
being magnified, distorted, orwe're getting into.
And because thosemagnifications or distortions can
include what ifs you know,know, what if this happens?
What if this happens?
And I think that's part ofwhat we're probably discuss as part
(11:06):
of today is how do we respondto those what ifs, how do we manage
that when we find ourselvesgetting into.
You were talking about peoplecalling, worried about losing their
job or a family member whomight lose their job.
And how do we really start tomanage that?
You know, how do we take careof ourselves?
How do we support our friends,family members that are legitimately
(11:28):
going through the unknown?
You mentioned trauma in thebeginning and kind of this idea,
what I took from that is thisidea that people can.
People are maybe using thevernacular too loosely and they're.
Which I think is part of this.
(11:49):
I think it's very easy to kindof self diagnose and feed your own
stress or anxiety by saying,you know, I'm in pain or I'm in trauma
because of this triggeringevent or something like that.
You want to, you want to.
I mean, I'm probably doing a disservice.
So do you want to talk alittle bit more?
What you mean about how we'reusing the word trauma?
(12:12):
Yeah.
You know, trauma itself is,you know, there are some criteria
around it and we really lookat trauma as an experience where
our well being, our safetysuddenly became out of, out of our
own control.
Okay.
This is why we range frompeople with domestic violence histories,
(12:38):
child abuse, other forms ofsexual abuse, people in car accidents,
you know, airplane accidents.
Those are all situations that,that they experienced very genuine
threat to their well being.
Very well, you know, verylikely their, their life.
And it was beyond theircontrol, you know, and they didn't
(13:01):
have the means to protectthemselves, remove themselves.
You know, in the case ofaccidents, you know, those things
happen.
We have that surreal feeling,somebody hit.
You, you're crossing thestreet and somebody runs a red light.
And.
Absolutely right.
That is something where youcan't, you have no control over the
fact that that happened.
Your right safety was takenaway from you.
(13:22):
Absolutely.
Didn't matter what you did.
You could have gone to theleft or the right, but it happened
so fast.
Right.
No choice, no control, no control.
So when we look at, you know,trauma from that lens, we're looking
at times that the body goes.
The body and the brain gothrough a series of automatic responses
and the brain can lay down aseries of experiential memories that
(13:48):
can be triggered by different situations.
Seeing a crosswalk, hearing acar, maybe the color of that car,
a tire screech, Any of thosecan become triggers years Ago, I
was walking with a friend, acolleague, and we were out on just
(14:08):
a walk and a car backfiredjust somewhere down the street.
And he dropped into this, thissafety position, got down.
And it was in that instantthat I remembered he was a Vietnam
vet.
And this was an automaticresponse, you know, that probably
(14:32):
saved his life at varioustimes or was intended to save his
life to drop at the sound of that.
And, you know, it's a.
Just a quick example of, youknow, the impact and the automatic
nature of trauma.
You know, that, that, that wasa very legitimate trigger for him,
that sound.
Bam.
His body responded before heprobably even, you know, could have
(14:56):
said, like, oh, that was a carbackfiring or, oh, that has, that
sounds like a shot.
So trauma literally changesbrain structure.
Your, your instinctual, yourreactions to things like, like there's
a, there's a material changeto how you react to the environment
(15:17):
around you due to trauma thatin an uncontrollable way.
In an uncontrollable way.
So it's an automatic response.
It's a program safety response.
You know, it keeps us alive.
We'll be talking about anxiety today.
And you know, we, you hearpeople talk about the fight flight
(15:37):
freeze response and anxiety,and I always tell people, like, that's
a survival mechanism.
It keeps us safe.
You know, if I'm walkingacross the street and I look out
the corner of my eye andthere's something there, my body
is going to ideally react.
I'm going to move very quicklyand cortisol and adrenaline is going
to pump through my body instantly.
(15:59):
And because my body is readyto move, because maybe there's a
car coming, there's an owlcoming at me, I don't know what it
is, but my brain registered athreat or a potential threat to my
safety.
Okay?
And that keeps us alive.
Anxiety is when that mechanismbecomes distorted.
Okay, now this is helpfulbecause I think that there's a category
(16:25):
of people who are untrained,which is most of us, who, when we
have somebody who's facingsome of the issues that we're going
to talk about, the responseis, well, toughen up, buttercup.
You know, like, hey, you know,just, yeah, you don't like it, but
you guys lost, so this is howit is.
(16:46):
Or, hey, everybody's likethis, so we need to be like, you
know, do something different.
Or the responses that we tendto have when we're trying to help
somebody normally, especiallywhen we're untrained, I think are
not.
A lot of times they're not helpful.
They kind of provoke the wrongkind of escalation of whatever the
(17:09):
issue is.
So just understanding thattrauma, anxiety, stress are three
different things I think ishelping us to kind of frame up the
fact that, you know, there'speople dealing with things, but what
category of things are theydealing with?
So we've got a good idea nowwhat trauma is.
(17:30):
Can you tell us a little bitmore how you would separate so stress
and anxiety?
Anxiety, you said again was more.
So the distortion of what ishappening around us and then stress.
Can we put a nice little boxaround stress?
Yeah.
(17:51):
Help explain that.
I like to say that stress is tangible.
We can name it, we know whereit's coming from, person, place,
thing.
And you know, it hascontainment around it, meaning like
there's a start and a finish.
Maybe it's time wise, youknow, it can also include things
like chronic health conditionsand so forth.
(18:13):
But again, we can name it andsay like, you know, know this is,
you know, this is related tomy cancer diagnosis or this is related
to my bursitis or whatever itis that they're, they're experiencing.
They can say I'm pain, I'm uncomfortable.
We can put a finger on it andidentify it.
Okay.
Anxiety, a lot of times we,you know, we may not be so quick
to identify the source of it,you know, okay.
(18:36):
And people know that they'rehaving feelings and you know, maybe
they're becoming reactive.
And I think to your point,around, like, you know, people are
very well intentioned andthey're trying to engage someone
in a conversation or mayberespond to something they're saying
and not realizing that there'sa, maybe a latent trigger or something
(18:59):
that's not obvious or youknow, in social media, tv, movies,
trauma, anxiety, evendepression are dramatized because
it makes it interesting.
And you know, we're, we'retrying to sell a show and we're trying
to tell a story and engageviewers and a lot of times it's actually
(19:21):
very subtle or it's not theobvious, it's not the obvious symptom
that maybe we, we saw in, in a show.
I'm going to date us again.
If you go back to remember LALaw and there was a, I'm thinking.
(19:43):
About that just because that,that wouldn't have been the type
of show that I would have watched.
Okay.
I, you know, I didn't see anykind of show like that until there
was a time period there whereI didn't have any cable at all.
And then one day and the firstthing I saw was 24 with Kiefer Sutherland.
(20:04):
My mind was blown that thatwas TV at that point.
I went straight from, like,original Superman movies to.
To 24.
To 24.
Yeah.
And everything in between I missed.
Right.
So the 80s to somewhere in the2000s, I auto skipped.
Wow.
So that's wild.
I did not know that about you.
(20:27):
LA Law was, you know, one ofthose law dramas, and they had a
character one season who hadTourette's syndrome.
Okay.
But the way they portrayed itwas he kept swearing, and that was
his nervous tick, was he wouldjust say these really offensive swear
words.
And.
And so.
(20:48):
But what happened in.
In, you know, pop culture wasthat's what people thought Tourette's
syndrome was.
They're like, oh.
And people would walk around,they're like, oh, I want Tourette
Syndrome.
I want to say what I was thinking.
And, you know, it was adramatization of what a tick can
look like.
And.
(21:09):
But that's how pop culturewill oftentimes misinterpret a lot
of the things that we'retalking about here.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
Or why they misinterpret them.
So in the case of federalworkers, and I got a feel for them,
I mean, they're under a lot ofpressure, and there's a lot of people,
you know, who I would say areprobably apolitical or there can
(21:33):
be, you know, just becauseit's well known that a large percentage
of government workers voteDemocrat ticket.
And there's a kind of apolitical battle going on with that.
But at the same time, there'sa lot of people that aren't that
involved politically that justhappen to work for the federal government
or be funded somehow by thefederal government or even on the
(21:55):
other side of the aisle thatare getting impacted.
And one of the things I see is.
Aha.
I see it.
He's hurting you, too.
Or there's this kind.
There's this incredible stressabout the boogeyman coming and getting
you, and that's manifestinginto almost this.
Well, it's just a reallyextreme scenario with people across
(22:18):
all spectrums.
And so how do.
How does trauma, stress,anxiety, you know, now that we kind
of understand what thesethings are, how do those relate to
what people are going throughthat are federal workers right now
or somehow impacted by fundingor the potential funding cuts or
real funding cuts and kind ofwhat they're going through?
(22:40):
Right.
I think legitimately, a lot ofwhat we're really seeing is stress
and anxiety.
Okay.
And where, you know, theunknown and the reason A lot of this
is unknown.
And talking to federal workersand you know, kind of tracking what's,
(23:00):
what's appearing in variousmedia venues and is a lot of the
stress is coming from thesuddenness and that a lot of this
has been out of process.
And you know, we knowgovernment likes its rules, it likes
its processes.
That's.
Yeah.
You know, so much of itsfunction is to provide that.
(23:23):
And you know, of course, youknow, when we're talking about employment,
you know, in government, we'realso talking.
A lot of, a number ofpositions are unionized, obviously
not all of them.
There's, I think the federalworkforce, there's something like
30, 36% of people who areexempt employees, so they're not
represented in unions.
(23:45):
But, you know, there's processand a lot of what's happened in the
last hundred days has reallybeen out of the normal process.
Gotcha.
And you know, an email coming,you know, from a outside source saying,
you know, there are changescoming, you should consider resigning.
(24:08):
This is the date you need toresign from or make a change.
And even some of the languagethat we've seen reported in the media,
where they've gotten hold ofsome of those emails is the language
is also somewhat inflammatory.
And you know, talking aboutlike, you know, you should move on
to something more productive,you know, right.
(24:30):
You're making an accusationnow and.
Right.
Self worth and there's allkinds of issues that you're bringing
up there.
Right.
You know, so there's, there'ssome, some emotional poking there.
Right.
Okay.
And you know, folks that I'vespoken with that are in those positions,
(24:50):
they haven't so muchpersonalized it necessarily.
Like, that's not what I'mhearing them talk about, but they're
talking about the process andnot even the suddenness, but just
the, like, this is not theprocess to talk about retirement
or, you know, talk about leading.
You know, this.
And they are going to the hierarchy.
(25:12):
They're going to like the HRrepresentatives and so forth.
And, and what they're hearingacross the board is like, we don't
have answers.
They're like, we don't know.
Like, okay, is this an earlyretirement incentive?
This is how much time you have.
I read an interesting statlast night that did strike me that
(25:33):
a large percentage of thefederal workforce as of 2024 was
55 and older.
And I think that that numberwas somewhere around 37 to 40% of
the federal workforce is age55 and older.
So, you know, these are peoplewho are starting to think about Retirement.
(25:54):
Right.
You know, or should bethinking about retirement.
Yeah.
And I think that that's alsopart of what's going on here is I'm
hearing from people that aresaying, like, I have a year left
or I have three years left,or, you know, this is, this is what
I was working toward andthere's just a lot of uncertainty.
(26:16):
And this is.
So we're taking the stress ofwhat's happening, you know, that
there are, you know, emailscoming out, you know, that there
are, you know, discussion ofincentives or, you know, okay, you
can, you know, decide, decideto work from home to this date and
then you'll leave in September.
So there are stressors, thereare tangible things going on.
(26:38):
But now people are gettinginto that space of like, well, what
does this mean for me?
And they're getting into someof the what ifs and the unknowns,
and I think that's where we'reseeing that intersection between
stress and anxiety.
Yeah.
And I.
That question was important tome because I.
(27:00):
My first reaction to this isthis is very common to normal economic
cycles in the private sector.
So it's very normal to beworking at a tech company and come
in next Monday and they justsay, yeah, we're pulling back, the
numbers aren't where they'resupposed to be, or we're going in
a different direction and theychop the jobs just like that.
(27:21):
And it's a very normal happenstance.
But what you're saying is two things.
I think.
Number one is it's not normalin that, if you wanted to call it
an industry in that industryto have those, you know, aggressive
job cuts coming out of the blue.
(27:41):
Right.
Number one.
Number two, normally when youdo that with a company, HR is there
with a packet and says, youknow, we put this together for you
and the attorneys have alreadygone over it at all and everything.
And you know what you'resigning and you know what you're
getting, you know where you'regoing and you know, if you can get
a job back there next, next,next year, if they're hiring again.
In this case, what you'resaying is, is it doesn't appear that
(28:05):
it seems like people aredealing with it.
It's coming out of the blue.
So you could say, okay, well,that's not, you know, that's a new
thing for them to deal with.
Right.
Whether it's fair or not,that's a different discussion.
But then also they're notbeing given enough answers to understand.
And because of thepersonalization of it, it's probably
Amplifying the reaction.
(28:26):
Because the typical reaction Ithink you would get from that is,
I've been disrespected.
You know, I, maybe I amworking really hard and trying and
I just happen to be in a groupof people that maybe the department's
not functioning correctly.
But maybe that's not me, maybethat's management, maybe it's somebody
(28:48):
else.
And here you are going to puta mark on my resume that I was, you
know, I mean, unproductive or ineffective.
And I'm being terminated inthese things.
So.
And that's the hard partbecause it is real people.
These are, these are, and Ialways say this going the other way
too.
Be careful when you broadbrush paint people and say all those
people on that side of theaisle are bad because these are your
(29:10):
brothers and your sisters andyour neighbors, your aunts and your
uncles, your children, yourfriends, kids, you know, whatever.
There's a lot of them.
You know, if we're talking 35%of the potential jobs out there,
you're talking a lot of peoplewho are going through this to some
extent, right?
The question is, is how arethey dealing with it and are there
(29:30):
healthy ways to deal with itor are there unhealthy ways to deal
with it?
And, you know, kind of how dowe get through that?
Because I gotta imagine, and Ihad talked to you ahead of time and
I was using the term stressfor this, but I think it's more than
stress.
(29:52):
There's got to be impacts fromprolonged anxiety.
And we already know there'simpacts from stress.
Everybody knows that if you'reat a high level of stress, higher
potential for heart diseaseand all kinds of other things, right?
So like, there's no questionthat the stress has an impact on
your body and mind, but what'sthe long term impacts of uncontrolled
(30:13):
anxiety on the body and mind?
You know, anxiety is a reallyinteresting condition because it
can do a lot of differentthings in the body.
We have seen examples from,you know, it can compromise immune
health, it can compromise,people start to have gastrointestinal
(30:36):
issues, issues we generallyassociate like irritable bowel syndrome
with anxiety.
We see disruptions to sleep,to eating patterns, we see changes
in overall health conditionand, you know, in my role.
And a lot of people may notrealize this, like when they come
(30:58):
to a, to a mental healththerapist and say, like, oh, you
know, this is what's going on.
We actually, before we cangive an diagnosis, before we can
give any mental healthdiagnosis, we're actually supposed
to Rule out medical conditions.
And that's okay.
Yeah.
It's really supposed to be acriteria of a mental health diagnosis
is that I send people back tosee their.
(31:20):
Usually their pcp, and I'mlike, you know, these are just something
that I want you to rule out.
You know, have the.
Have the blood work talkingabout this.
Yeah, let's make sure thatwe're not dealing with a medical
condition, you know, before wecome back to.
A lot of people get veryfrustrated sometimes with their physicians
unfairly, because maybethey've been seeing their physician
(31:42):
about some heart palpitationsor headaches or, you know, something.
They know something's notfunctioning right.
And the providers have run thegambit of.
Of tests, and everything hascome back in the normal range.
And then the provider,sometimes they incorrectly say, oh,
(32:03):
yeah, this is really in yourhead, which can be really offensive
to a patient.
But if they come back and sayit's anxiety, some people will say,
like, okay, I've heard this before.
Yeah.
And that's when they come backto us.
And I spend not a lot of time,but I certainly have conversations
with primary care providersand some specialists where we do
(32:25):
coordinate services, andthey're ruling out something.
I'm ruling in, you know,mental health.
And, you know, I say thatbecause anxiety has such a wide impact,
there's actually been really extreme.
Let me be clear.
This is a very extremeexample, but where people have lost
their vision as a.
In response to.
(32:46):
Oh, wow, right.
You know, so it can reallyhave a very significant, detrimental
physical impact on us.
Now, short of that, I say toclients, sometimes when they're living
with chronic anxiety and we'retrying to manage it better, and I
(33:07):
talk with people about three goals.
Reducing the frequency of thesymptoms, reducing the intensity
of the symptoms, and reducingthe duration of them.
And we can use specificstrategies to target any of those.
Those three goals.
(33:27):
And so when we're looking atthat and we're dealing with.
With chronic anxiety, youknow, there's the empathy piece that
you're hinting at, like, youknow, really sitting and hearing.
Hearing them.
And, you know, sometimes theyjust need to genuinely hear, like,
yeah, this is hard, and it isharder for you.
And I'm like, people who livewith chronic anxiety, you know, sometimes
(33:52):
they feel like they've beenthrough the paper shredder to get
to a decision or to getthrough an event, and they do look
around and they see other people.
And, you know, we're focusingon federal workers today.
Federal workers, you know, areresponding in different ways.
What I think is reallyinteresting and says something, says
(34:14):
something about them isthey're all still showing up to work.
You know, we're not hearingreports of mass call outs and so
forth, that they're showing upand they're still, still doing their
jobs.
And.
One of the things that, thatyou just made me think of because
we, the, the goal of this wasto try to help people going through
(34:37):
this change.
Right.
You know, people say normal,new normal.
What's normal?
Normal is whatever happensconsistently going forward, not what
used to be.
So it's like, you know, numberone, you've got to be comfortable
that the world is always goingto be changing and it doesn't care
if you're ready for change or not.
(34:58):
But the other thing that thismade me realize too, while you were
talking about that I can I,off the top of my head can name a
number of people that I knowclients and people that we've worked
with over the years.
They have uncontrollableanxiety over the investments and
the way the politics areintertwined with investments anymore,
(35:19):
which is a game from the media.
It's not real, but it's, youknow, it's a way to get eyeballs
and get people.
You vote with your pocketbook.
So I'm going to tie everyissue to your pocketbook.
Right.
Type of thing.
Right.
And, and being able to set.
I always say you need toseparate from the, the emotion and
(35:41):
the social issues from the financials.
But there's an awful lot ofpeople who probably need to hear
this conversation becausethey're reacting to the news the
same way that a federalemployee or somebody who's got federal
funding for their job maybe isanxious about, you know, what policy
Trump is rolling out next weekor somebody in his cabinets rolling
(36:04):
out because they're readingthe news and saying, oh, we're headed
for the Great Depression or,you know, the next great recession
because of things that, youknow, unfortunately when they get
it wrong in the news, younever hear about it.
They don't come back and go,yeah, we got that wrong.
And we caused people to quittheir jobs and commit suicide and
(36:24):
do like, you know, and havedivorces because they were panicking
and, you know, do these, allthese crazy activities.
But, you know, we were kind ofmaking it up because we were just
guesstimating what mighthappen because, you know, we, we,
we kind of failed to explainhow terrorists really actually work,
you know, or something like that.
You know what I mean?
It's just kind of like I thinkpeople really, really need to hear
(36:46):
this, who are reacting to,like, who are aggressive to me, aggressively
reacting when they readsomething or they just, they just
know.
They know scary, scary thingsare going to happen.
You and I were joking a littlebit before this.
It's like, you know, I alwaysshow people kind of their projections
(37:06):
and, you know, if you'd run aMonte Carlo scenario, which is just
a stress test on sequence ofreturn, you're going to get the percentage
that's in the really bad output.
Right.
This is the 20% where yourlife can't happen the way you want
it to happen.
But if you're controlling yourvariables and you're really realistic
as to how you're modeling, youcan say, well, what you have to understand
(37:28):
about that bottom 20% is we'reall in that together.
If you're doing what you'redoing and the results are that bad,
chances are it's that bad for everybody.
So that new normal is kind of reset.
You know, it's kind of like we're.
And that means you can't doanything about it that's out of your
control.
Right.
And so we can sit here and wecan worry about doomsday happening.
(37:52):
And by the way, they've beensaying doomsday was going to happen
as long as you and yourparents and your grandparents can
think about it.
Right?
Right.
And it hasn't happened yet.
We can, we can sit here and wecan dwell on it and panic about it,
or we can realize if doomsdaydoes happen, like if they, you know,
if an asteroid hits the Earth,I guess we're done worrying about
global warming and we don'tneed to be right.
(38:15):
Variable change.
Whether or not it was going tohappen or not it happened, it's done.
Right?
It's done.
And, you know, if you're onthe wrong side of the bat, who cares?
It's done.
It doesn't matter if you wereright or wrong.
It's done.
So real quick, before we wrapup this episode and then we're going
to bring you back for our nextepisode, are there things that we
(38:35):
can do to address the anxiety?
Absolutely.
And I'm actually going to usewhat we were just saying saying to
segue a little bit.
One of the first things that,you know, like, when we're talking
about variables and we'retalking about the, the media and
some of the influence, itdoesn't matter, you know, which media
we're, we're talking about,you know, media has changed so much
(39:00):
in, in certainly our lifetime.
And, you know, as you weretalking about the retractions, I
was reminded like I was apaper boy.
And so I used to get up everyday and deliver the paper, you know,
through the neighborhood.
And those retractions were inthe lower left hand corner.
Yeah, that were printed like,you know, but that was an era that,
(39:21):
you know, you got thenewspaper, you got your information
from that and there was, youknow, like the morning news, the
new news, 6pm news and 11 o'clock news.
So we had very clear periodsof time and mechanisms that we were
exposed to that when we wentto a 24 hour news cycle and then
(39:41):
we went to, you know, thesensationalization of some of the
stories.
And we've seen a lot of changein the way that the media, you know,
we've shifted in some of thesemedia platforms from objective and
neutral to, you know,inflammatory and getting people to
watch.
(40:01):
And they're meant to evoke emotion.
So you know, what that does,and the research has been really
clear about this for at least15 years, probably longer than that
now is we want to moderate theamount of, you know, news exposure
that we take.
Meaning we want to, I'm, youknow, we want to set aside time to
(40:27):
look at current events, what'shappening in the world, because people
are always like, you know,well, I have to know what's going
on.
And you can, but you want todo it at a time that like you feel
your strongest during the day.
You have a lot of mental clarity.
People do what we call doom scrolling.
Just when we get on thatmagic, that little magic box that
we all have and just startgoing and it starts feeding us stuff
(40:50):
that promotes anxiety, itevokes strong emotion.
And you know, so if you'redoing that at 9, 10, 11 o' clock,
2 o' clock in the morning,you're feeding that anxiety.
So those are some thingscontrolling that media exposure.
And not just to news media,but to TikTok and Reddit and all
(41:15):
the different things that areout there that feed us stuff very
quickly and that are designedto evoke emotion.
We want to have better controlabout when do I expose myself to
that?
We want to think about on avery general level around anxiety.
(41:35):
You know, one, learning torecognize it.
You know, am I someone that Ihave a low level of anxiety?
Do I experience moderate?
Has anxiety been a partnerthroughout my life for a variety
of reasons and you know, do Ifind myself very reactive?
And in those cases I say like,that's when you want to seek out
(41:57):
some professional assistanceand somebody that can teach you skills.
There's A lot.
There's a lot of skills thatwe can use.
There's different approachesto anxiety management.
Exercise, you know, just dailymoving our body, Our bodies are designed
to move.
We're not supposed to besedentary, you know, making sure
(42:18):
that we have daily movement, asufficient amount of cardiovascular
or.
Yeah, cardiovascular exerciseor cardio.
Yeah, cardiovascular exercise.
I'm saying that, right, thatwe're getting enough, you know, exercise
and that can just be walking,you know, it doesn't have to be to
the gym.
You don't have to swim, youknow, Olympic pool laps.
(42:38):
Right.
You know, paying attention toour nutrition and, you know, giving
our body the energy that it needs.
Doing that, doing that properly.
There's, there's, I've seen astudy before that says, you know,
one of the problems thatpeople have with diets is, you know,
in the morning, you wake up,you're fresh, you're strong, and
(43:00):
you go to work and, and youfight all the battles.
You fight at work, right?
And then you come home and youtake care of the kids and you fight
all the battles of taking careof the kids.
And then, you know, it's 8 o'clock and you hit the couch and you're
like, you know, if, if youhave something sweet in the house,
like ice cream or somethinglike that, it's just like, I need
something from me.
And so either you're rewardingyourself or you walk by the counter
(43:24):
and there's a cupcake on thecounter and it's like, you know,
your guard is down.
So if normally, if normallyyou would be telling yourself, you
don't need this, you'restrong, you can do this.
By the end of the day, you'reworn out and, and, and the energy
to tell yourself you don'tneed that as kind of gone.
(43:45):
And so if you take the newsand you put the news in the place
of the cupcake or the news inthe place of the ice cream, it's
like if, if you're doomscrolling before you go to bed, when
you're least able to fight,you know, the, the narratives and
kind of think about it critically.
And then, you know, Imentioned, I, you know, I woke up
(44:07):
one day and I started watching 24.
So I'm watching 24, I'mwatching Criminal Minds, watching
all this like, serial killer,end of the world type of stuff, listening
to Hard Rock on the way homefrom work and, you know, all that
kind of stuff, what you put inyour brain starts to come out in
(44:28):
your, the way that you kind ofsee life I noticed, I don't think
it was depression, but Inoticed a, I had a much darker mood
most of the time because I'mwatching those shows.
I'm like, yeah, there's peoplethat really do that.
Yeah, this kind of sickness is real.
Right.
And, and you just start going,I'm sad for humanity.
(44:49):
Why is humanity like this?
Then you start thinking aboutwhy is all the entertainment out
there seem to be about the endof the world and people being tortured
and horrible things happeningto people Instead of like whatever
happened under the Tuscan sunor something like that.
You give me, give me somethingthat happens positive at the end.
Yes, yes.
(45:11):
You know, I don't think youknow this about me.
My undergrad is know a lot about.
You, but I may not know this.
I'll tell you if I know or not.
Yes.
You know, my undergrad is in journalism.
I did not know that about you.
Yeah.
Yep.
And you know, again, it was,it was, you know, the 80s into the
(45:31):
90s and you know, again, therewere formulas back then and if you
remember the old newscasts,you know, the newscast always finished
on what was called a colorstory, something that was bright
and uplifting.
You know, that was when yousaw things from the zoo or from,
you know, elementary schools.
It was always positive and itwas meant to finish on this uplift.
(45:54):
And we've lost that again inthe 24 hour news cycle.
And now that, you know,whatever search engines you know
are feeding, feeding our newsfeed, they don't do that.
Thanks for checking out Ditchthe Suits.
Be sure to write a review ordrop a comment about this episode.
And if you want more likethis, head over to ditchesuits.com
(46:15):
you can send us a message andget in touch.
Let's let us know how we canhelp and be sure to share any topics
you'd be interested in havingus cover on the show.
We're here to help you get themost from your money in life.
Thanks for being our guest andchecking out Ditch the Suits.
Foreign.
Welcome to Ditch the Suitspodcast, where we share insights
nobody in the financialservices industry wants you to know
about.
We're here to help you get themost from your money in life.
So buckle up and welcome toDitch the Suits.
(00:20):
All right, so there are 3million or so federal workers or
federal employees, and itseems like most of them are stressed
out, according to USAFacts.orgsome website.
I haven't vetted the website,but this is their studies that they've
put together.
About 3 million people makethe federal government the nation's
(00:44):
15th largest workforce.
So not necessarily employer,but kind of workforce, think industry.
And this number is varied.
And I found this very interesting.
In 2014, there were 2.7million, and then in 1990, there
was actually 3.4 million.
So there's been a fluctuationof federal workers kind of throughout
(01:06):
history.
It's pretty common for ashrinkage of the federal workforce
and an expansion.
If you search how many jobsare at least partially paid for by
the federal government, Googlewill actually spit back at you.
This is one of those thingswhere AI gets in the way, and it
doesn't actually let you,like, look yourself, but Google will
(01:27):
spit back.
Well, we have a study thatfound that 35% of all jobs are funded
in some way by the government,which includes state and local governments
and private contractors.
And this is kind of where thisis really affecting people, because
it doesn't necessarily matterif you're just a federal worker,
you could be affected byfederal funding cuts.
And kind of how that is kindof matriculating on through the economy
(01:51):
is an interesting thing.
So I think there's a goodchance that if 35% of all jobs in
the United States are somehowaffected by federal funding, that
pretty much every single oneof our clients and anybody listening
to this podcast knows at leastone person or maybe even has a family
member that's going to beimpacted by changes that are triggered
(02:13):
by the Trump administration.
And one of the things I wantto make sure that we don't do is
I don't want to turn this intoany kind of a political, like, who's
right and who's wrong.
That's not our job on this podcast.
But what I do want to do is,aside from whether it's valid or
fair or if there's a real needfor change, I want to recognize the
(02:36):
fact that change is a realthing and.
And it impacts real people.
And today's episode is focusedon understanding what these folks
and their families, becausemost people don't go through this
alone, they're stressed,they're anxious, they're feeling
a lot of pressure.
And so it's impacting their families.
(02:57):
What these folks are goingthrough and what we can actually
do to help them.
And I think that how this tiesinto finance is this is your career,
this is your job field, thisis your financial future.
Should you retire, should youstay working?
Is your identity beingchallenged because you're thinking,
this is who I am, but I'mlosing this job or something like
(03:18):
that.
So our guest to help us unpackall this today is Paul Gould, Ph.D.
l I CSW.
So we'll have to ask him whatthat means.
Also the owner of KindredSpirits Counseling and Wellness.
And before we get to anything,we're going to do our little intro.
(03:38):
For anybody who doesn't know,this is Ditch the Suits.
I'm Travis Moss, CEO of SeedPlanning Group.
Seed Planning Group is a feeonly wealth management firm.
And this show is all about howwe share our experience and collective
professional knowledge so thatwe can help our listeners and our
clients get more out of theirmoney in life.
Do you want more of Ditch the Suits?
(04:00):
Well, let's take a break totell you about our Patreon channel.
If you're wanting moreannouncements, notifications, even
access to prior seasons, youcan head to patreon.com search ditch
the suits and subscribe to our channel.
You'll get notifications ofall episodes right in your inbox.
So visit patreon.com searchditch the suits or head to our show
(04:20):
Notes where we got links toour channel.
So without further ado, Paul,it's great to have you with us today.
Thank you, Travis.
Glad to be here.
All right, so right off thebat, before we even get to like who
you actually are, I gotta, Igotta understand, what is this credential?
That's after your name.
Oh.
So every state, you know,professional licensing is done at
(04:43):
the state level in each state.
So where you'll see likepeople with md do you know different
credentials?
So in Massachusetts, which isone of the states I'm licensed, and
it is the licensed independentclinical social worker.
So that's the highest tier ofcredentialing in social work profession.
(05:07):
In New York state, I also havea credential that is simply lcsw.
It's the equivalent, but eachstate gets to use its own letters.
Okay.
And then you've got a PhD there.
Yep.
And your PhD is in what?
It's in human Development andClinical Social work.
Okay.
Yeah.
So needless to say, this isyour profession, your Area of expertise.
(05:29):
Yep.
Love this.
I've been at this about 30years now, so absolutely love what
I do.
You're aging both of usbecause we.
Yeah, unfortunately.
Yeah, we didn't talk about that.
We cut that out.
That's right.
That's a whole other episode.
But we, we had been talking.
We have a lot of clients thatare stressed out.
(05:53):
We've had people call in andthey're stressed out about, hey,
I'm a federal worker, I'mafraid of losing my job, or maybe
I want to make some changesbefore funding changes where it's
going and I just want out.
We've also had people who havefamily members who are calling.
They're very upset becausethey're concerned about my family
member is losing their job orlosing the funding behind their program
(06:14):
or they're concerned about it.
Maybe nothing's happened yet,but they're concerned it's going
to happen.
And that's being conflatedwith kind of the political extremism
that we have with.
I don't care because I'm onthe right or the right is ruining
my life because I'm on the left.
And it's really at a reallyunhealthy level and I think it's
(06:38):
causing a lot of trauma.
And one of the things I'mtrying to figure out is how do we
actually help people from astandpoint of we've got to get the
temperature down and the firstplace that we can work on is ourselves
and how we're kind of feelingthe world around us.
So you and I had had somefascinating conversations, so I wanted
to have you come and kind ofshare some of the stuff that you
(07:02):
do on a day to day basis.
So I guess that kind of teesoff kind of who are you and what
do you do?
You know, Now I'm a full timetherapist, so I do mental health
therapy.
Full.
I work with people inMassachusetts and I work with people
in New York and soon I'madding Florida because I'm relocating
(07:25):
personally.
And so I do generallyindividual counseling and people
come to me for a wide varietyof reasons.
But one of the key conditionsor symptoms that people reach out
to me for and that I, that Imarket myself around is anxiety.
(07:47):
Okay.
So I do a lot of work aroundtrauma, anxiety, depression, and
you know, with, with clients.
I spend some time early ondebunking a lot of the pop psychology,
pop culture definitions thatfloat around out there, around, around
trauma because we've reallyoverused that word and watered down
(08:12):
what, what trauma actually Is right.
You know, pop psychology, it'sthrows around a lot of these clinical
terms and all of a sudden,like, everyone has a, has a condition.
And so I spent a lot of timewith people, educating them about,
like, you know, what'sactually happening for you.
And you know, as you saidearlier, we're in a, in a state very
(08:36):
quickly here in the lasthundred days.
Today, I think, is actuallythe 100th, 100th day of the, of the
current administration.
And we, we've seen some veryfast changes in people's employment
or concerns about employmentthat are working for the federal
government and even some that are.
They may not be employees ofthe federal government, but they
(08:57):
have federal funding.
Yeah.
And, you know, we've reallyseen that this very quick change
and that's produced a lot ofstress and anxiety.
And when I talk with people,one of the things I try to do is
differentiate stress from anxiety.
And because we respond tothose two things differently.
(09:20):
And I think this is a littlebit of a conversation you and I had
previously around, you know, Italked to people about stress is.
Stress is tangible.
We can point our finger andsay, oh, this is what's causing the
stress.
It's, there's containmentaround it.
It's everything from like, oh,I have this upcoming test, or I have
(09:40):
this big project at work, orwe know changes are coming.
Yeah, maybe people are gettingmarried or divorced or they're having
a child or whatever it is.
You know, they can lay theirfinger on it.
It's finite.
We know where it begins and it ends.
Some of them are time limited,some are not.
And so we can look and say,like, this is a stressor and let's
(10:02):
talk about how to respond tothat, to that stress and manage that.
Anxiety is something thatcreeps in and builds on top of stressors.
And this is where we get into,like, you hear the word trigger everywhere.
What is what has triggered someone?
And this is where we reallystart to talk about, like, what is
a trigger and what is anxiety?
(10:23):
And anxiety is usually amagnification or some sort of distortion
in and around what I like tocall little nuggets of truth.
So as people share theirnarrative, what is happening to them?
You know, I always kind oflisten for that little nugget of
truth, like, yeah, this is,this is the stressor, or this is
(10:45):
what's really going on, orthis has happened to you, but it's
being magnified, distorted, orwe're getting into.
And because thosemagnifications or distortions can
include what ifs you know,know, what if this happens?
What if this happens?
And I think that's part ofwhat we're probably discuss as part
(11:06):
of today is how do we respondto those what ifs, how do we manage
that when we find ourselvesgetting into.
You were talking about peoplecalling, worried about losing their
job or a family member whomight lose their job.
And how do we really start tomanage that?
You know, how do we take careof ourselves?
How do we support our friends,family members that are legitimately
(11:28):
going through the unknown?
You mentioned trauma in thebeginning and kind of this idea,
what I took from that is thisidea that people can.
People are maybe using thevernacular too loosely and they're.
Which I think is part of this.
(11:49):
I think it's very easy to kindof self diagnose and feed your own
stress or anxiety by saying,you know, I'm in pain or I'm in trauma
because of this triggeringevent or something like that.
You want to, you want to.
I mean, I'm probably doing a disservice.
So do you want to talk alittle bit more?
What you mean about how we'reusing the word trauma?
(12:12):
Yeah.
You know, trauma itself is,you know, there are some criteria
around it and we really lookat trauma as an experience where
our well being, our safetysuddenly became out of, out of our
own control.
Okay.
This is why we range frompeople with domestic violence histories,
(12:38):
child abuse, other forms ofsexual abuse, people in car accidents,
you know, airplane accidents.
Those are all situations that,that they experienced very genuine
threat to their well being.
Very well, you know, verylikely their, their life.
And it was beyond theircontrol, you know, and they didn't
(13:01):
have the means to protectthemselves, remove themselves.
You know, in the case ofaccidents, you know, those things
happen.
We have that surreal feeling,somebody hit.
You, you're crossing thestreet and somebody runs a red light.
And.
Absolutely right.
That is something where youcan't, you have no control over the
fact that that happened.
Your right safety was takenaway from you.
(13:22):
Absolutely.
Didn't matter what you did.
You could have gone to theleft or the right, but it happened
so fast.
Right.
No choice, no control, no control.
So when we look at, you know,trauma from that lens, we're looking
at times that the body goes.
The body and the brain gothrough a series of automatic responses
and the brain can lay down aseries of experiential memories that
(13:48):
can be triggered by different situations.
Seeing a crosswalk, hearing acar, maybe the color of that car,
a tire screech, Any of thosecan become triggers years Ago, I
was walking with a friend, acolleague, and we were out on just
(14:08):
a walk and a car backfiredjust somewhere down the street.
And he dropped into this, thissafety position, got down.
And it was in that instantthat I remembered he was a Vietnam
vet.
And this was an automaticresponse, you know, that probably
(14:32):
saved his life at varioustimes or was intended to save his
life to drop at the sound of that.
And, you know, it's a.
Just a quick example of, youknow, the impact and the automatic
nature of trauma.
You know, that, that, that wasa very legitimate trigger for him,
that sound.
Bam.
His body responded before heprobably even, you know, could have
(14:56):
said, like, oh, that was a carbackfiring or, oh, that has, that
sounds like a shot.
So trauma literally changesbrain structure.
Your, your instinctual, yourreactions to things like, like there's
a, there's a material changeto how you react to the environment
(15:17):
around you due to trauma thatin an uncontrollable way.
In an uncontrollable way.
So it's an automatic response.
It's a program safety response.
You know, it keeps us alive.
We'll be talking about anxiety today.
And you know, we, you hearpeople talk about the fight flight
(15:37):
freeze response and anxiety,and I always tell people, like, that's
a survival mechanism.
It keeps us safe.
You know, if I'm walkingacross the street and I look out
the corner of my eye andthere's something there, my body
is going to ideally react.
I'm going to move very quicklyand cortisol and adrenaline is going
to pump through my body instantly.
(15:59):
And because my body is readyto move, because maybe there's a
car coming, there's an owlcoming at me, I don't know what it
is, but my brain registered athreat or a potential threat to my
safety.
Okay?
And that keeps us alive.
Anxiety is when that mechanismbecomes distorted.
Okay, now this is helpfulbecause I think that there's a category
(16:25):
of people who are untrained,which is most of us, who, when we
have somebody who's facingsome of the issues that we're going
to talk about, the responseis, well, toughen up, buttercup.
You know, like, hey, you know,just, yeah, you don't like it, but
you guys lost, so this is howit is.
(16:46):
Or, hey, everybody's likethis, so we need to be like, you
know, do something different.
Or the responses that we tendto have when we're trying to help
somebody normally, especiallywhen we're untrained, I think are
not.
A lot of times they're not helpful.
They kind of provoke the wrongkind of escalation of whatever the
(17:09):
issue is.
So just understanding thattrauma, anxiety, stress are three
different things I think ishelping us to kind of frame up the
fact that, you know, there'speople dealing with things, but what
category of things are theydealing with?
So we've got a good idea nowwhat trauma is.
(17:30):
Can you tell us a little bitmore how you would separate so stress
and anxiety?
Anxiety, you said again was more.
So the distortion of what ishappening around us and then stress.
Can we put a nice little boxaround stress?
Yeah.
(17:51):
Help explain that.
I like to say that stress is tangible.
We can name it, we know whereit's coming from, person, place,
thing.
And you know, it hascontainment around it, meaning like
there's a start and a finish.
Maybe it's time wise, youknow, it can also include things
like chronic health conditionsand so forth.
(18:13):
But again, we can name it andsay like, you know, know this is,
you know, this is related tomy cancer diagnosis or this is related
to my bursitis or whatever itis that they're, they're experiencing.
They can say I'm pain, I'm uncomfortable.
We can put a finger on it andidentify it.
Okay.
Anxiety, a lot of times we,you know, we may not be so quick
to identify the source of it,you know, okay.
(18:36):
And people know that they'rehaving feelings and you know, maybe
they're becoming reactive.
And I think to your point,around, like, you know, people are
very well intentioned andthey're trying to engage someone
in a conversation or mayberespond to something they're saying
and not realizing that there'sa, maybe a latent trigger or something
(18:59):
that's not obvious or youknow, in social media, tv, movies,
trauma, anxiety, evendepression are dramatized because
it makes it interesting.
And you know, we're, we'retrying to sell a show and we're trying
to tell a story and engageviewers and a lot of times it's actually
(19:21):
very subtle or it's not theobvious, it's not the obvious symptom
that maybe we, we saw in, in a show.
I'm going to date us again.
If you go back to remember LALaw and there was a, I'm thinking.
(19:43):
About that just because that,that wouldn't have been the type
of show that I would have watched.
Okay.
I, you know, I didn't see anykind of show like that until there
was a time period there whereI didn't have any cable at all.
And then one day and the firstthing I saw was 24 with Kiefer Sutherland.
(20:04):
My mind was blown that thatwas TV at that point.
I went straight from, like,original Superman movies to.
To 24.
To 24.
Yeah.
And everything in between I missed.
Right.
So the 80s to somewhere in the2000s, I auto skipped.
Wow.
So that's wild.
I did not know that about you.
(20:27):
LA Law was, you know, one ofthose law dramas, and they had a
character one season who hadTourette's syndrome.
Okay.
But the way they portrayed itwas he kept swearing, and that was
his nervous tick, was he wouldjust say these really offensive swear
words.
And.
And so.
(20:48):
But what happened in.
In, you know, pop culture wasthat's what people thought Tourette's
syndrome was.
They're like, oh.
And people would walk around,they're like, oh, I want Tourette
Syndrome.
I want to say what I was thinking.
And, you know, it was adramatization of what a tick can
look like.
And.
(21:09):
But that's how pop culturewill oftentimes misinterpret a lot
of the things that we'retalking about here.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
Or why they misinterpret them.
So in the case of federalworkers, and I got a feel for them,
I mean, they're under a lot ofpressure, and there's a lot of people,
you know, who I would say areprobably apolitical or there can
(21:33):
be, you know, just becauseit's well known that a large percentage
of government workers voteDemocrat ticket.
And there's a kind of apolitical battle going on with that.
But at the same time, there'sa lot of people that aren't that
involved politically that justhappen to work for the federal government
or be funded somehow by thefederal government or even on the
(21:55):
other side of the aisle thatare getting impacted.
And one of the things I see is.
Aha.
I see it.
He's hurting you, too.
Or there's this kind.
There's this incredible stressabout the boogeyman coming and getting
you, and that's manifestinginto almost this.
Well, it's just a reallyextreme scenario with people across
(22:18):
all spectrums.
And so how do.
How does trauma, stress,anxiety, you know, now that we kind
of understand what thesethings are, how do those relate to
what people are going throughthat are federal workers right now
or somehow impacted by fundingor the potential funding cuts or
real funding cuts and kind ofwhat they're going through?
(22:40):
Right.
I think legitimately, a lot ofwhat we're really seeing is stress
and anxiety.
Okay.
And where, you know, theunknown and the reason A lot of this
is unknown.
And talking to federal workersand you know, kind of tracking what's,
(23:00):
what's appearing in variousmedia venues and is a lot of the
stress is coming from thesuddenness and that a lot of this
has been out of process.
And you know, we knowgovernment likes its rules, it likes
its processes.
That's.
Yeah.
You know, so much of itsfunction is to provide that.
(23:23):
And you know, of course, youknow, when we're talking about employment,
you know, in government, we'realso talking.
A lot of, a number ofpositions are unionized, obviously
not all of them.
There's, I think the federalworkforce, there's something like
30, 36% of people who areexempt employees, so they're not
represented in unions.
(23:45):
But, you know, there's processand a lot of what's happened in the
last hundred days has reallybeen out of the normal process.
Gotcha.
And you know, an email coming,you know, from a outside source saying,
you know, there are changescoming, you should consider resigning.
(24:08):
This is the date you need toresign from or make a change.
And even some of the languagethat we've seen reported in the media,
where they've gotten hold ofsome of those emails is the language
is also somewhat inflammatory.
And you know, talking aboutlike, you know, you should move on
to something more productive,you know, right.
(24:30):
You're making an accusationnow and.
Right.
Self worth and there's allkinds of issues that you're bringing
up there.
Right.
You know, so there's, there'ssome, some emotional poking there.
Right.
Okay.
And you know, folks that I'vespoken with that are in those positions,
(24:50):
they haven't so muchpersonalized it necessarily.
Like, that's not what I'mhearing them talk about, but they're
talking about the process andnot even the suddenness, but just
the, like, this is not theprocess to talk about retirement
or, you know, talk about leading.
You know, this.
And they are going to the hierarchy.
(25:12):
They're going to like the HRrepresentatives and so forth.
And, and what they're hearingacross the board is like, we don't
have answers.
They're like, we don't know.
Like, okay, is this an earlyretirement incentive?
This is how much time you have.
I read an interesting statlast night that did strike me that
(25:33):
a large percentage of thefederal workforce as of 2024 was
55 and older.
And I think that that numberwas somewhere around 37 to 40% of
the federal workforce is age55 and older.
So, you know, these are peoplewho are starting to think about Retirement.
(25:54):
Right.
You know, or should bethinking about retirement.
Yeah.
And I think that that's alsopart of what's going on here is I'm
hearing from people that aresaying, like, I have a year left
or I have three years left,or, you know, this is, this is what
I was working toward andthere's just a lot of uncertainty.
(26:16):
And this is.
So we're taking the stress ofwhat's happening, you know, that
there are, you know, emailscoming out, you know, that there
are, you know, discussion ofincentives or, you know, okay, you
can, you know, decide, decideto work from home to this date and
then you'll leave in September.
So there are stressors, thereare tangible things going on.
(26:38):
But now people are gettinginto that space of like, well, what
does this mean for me?
And they're getting into someof the what ifs and the unknowns,
and I think that's where we'reseeing that intersection between
stress and anxiety.
Yeah.
And I.
That question was important tome because I.
(27:00):
My first reaction to this isthis is very common to normal economic
cycles in the private sector.
So it's very normal to beworking at a tech company and come
in next Monday and they justsay, yeah, we're pulling back, the
numbers aren't where they'resupposed to be, or we're going in
a different direction and theychop the jobs just like that.
(27:21):
And it's a very normal happenstance.
But what you're saying is two things.
I think.
Number one is it's not normalin that, if you wanted to call it
an industry in that industryto have those, you know, aggressive
job cuts coming out of the blue.
(27:41):
Right.
Number one.
Number two, normally when youdo that with a company, HR is there
with a packet and says, youknow, we put this together for you
and the attorneys have alreadygone over it at all and everything.
And you know what you'resigning and you know what you're
getting, you know where you'regoing and you know, if you can get
a job back there next, next,next year, if they're hiring again.
In this case, what you'resaying is, is it doesn't appear that
(28:05):
it seems like people aredealing with it.
It's coming out of the blue.
So you could say, okay, well,that's not, you know, that's a new
thing for them to deal with.
Right.
Whether it's fair or not,that's a different discussion.
But then also they're notbeing given enough answers to understand.
And because of thepersonalization of it, it's probably
Amplifying the reaction.
(28:26):
Because the typical reaction Ithink you would get from that is,
I've been disrespected.
You know, I, maybe I amworking really hard and trying and
I just happen to be in a groupof people that maybe the department's
not functioning correctly.
But maybe that's not me, maybethat's management, maybe it's somebody
(28:48):
else.
And here you are going to puta mark on my resume that I was, you
know, I mean, unproductive or ineffective.
And I'm being terminated inthese things.
So.
And that's the hard partbecause it is real people.
These are, these are, and Ialways say this going the other way
too.
Be careful when you broadbrush paint people and say all those
people on that side of theaisle are bad because these are your
(29:10):
brothers and your sisters andyour neighbors, your aunts and your
uncles, your children, yourfriends, kids, you know, whatever.
There's a lot of them.
You know, if we're talking 35%of the potential jobs out there,
you're talking a lot of peoplewho are going through this to some
extent, right?
The question is, is how arethey dealing with it and are there
(29:30):
healthy ways to deal with itor are there unhealthy ways to deal
with it?
And, you know, kind of how dowe get through that?
Because I gotta imagine, and Ihad talked to you ahead of time and
I was using the term stressfor this, but I think it's more than
stress.
(29:52):
There's got to be impacts fromprolonged anxiety.
And we already know there'simpacts from stress.
Everybody knows that if you'reat a high level of stress, higher
potential for heart diseaseand all kinds of other things, right?
So like, there's no questionthat the stress has an impact on
your body and mind, but what'sthe long term impacts of uncontrolled
(30:13):
anxiety on the body and mind?
You know, anxiety is a reallyinteresting condition because it
can do a lot of differentthings in the body.
We have seen examples from,you know, it can compromise immune
health, it can compromise,people start to have gastrointestinal
(30:36):
issues, issues we generallyassociate like irritable bowel syndrome
with anxiety.
We see disruptions to sleep,to eating patterns, we see changes
in overall health conditionand, you know, in my role.
And a lot of people may notrealize this, like when they come
(30:58):
to a, to a mental healththerapist and say, like, oh, you
know, this is what's going on.
We actually, before we cangive an diagnosis, before we can
give any mental healthdiagnosis, we're actually supposed
to Rule out medical conditions.
And that's okay.
Yeah.
It's really supposed to be acriteria of a mental health diagnosis
is that I send people back tosee their.
(31:20):
Usually their pcp, and I'mlike, you know, these are just something
that I want you to rule out.
You know, have the.
Have the blood work talkingabout this.
Yeah, let's make sure thatwe're not dealing with a medical
condition, you know, before wecome back to.
A lot of people get veryfrustrated sometimes with their physicians
unfairly, because maybethey've been seeing their physician
(31:42):
about some heart palpitationsor headaches or, you know, something.
They know something's notfunctioning right.
And the providers have run thegambit of.
Of tests, and everything hascome back in the normal range.
And then the provider,sometimes they incorrectly say, oh,
(32:03):
yeah, this is really in yourhead, which can be really offensive
to a patient.
But if they come back and sayit's anxiety, some people will say,
like, okay, I've heard this before.
Yeah.
And that's when they come backto us.
And I spend not a lot of time,but I certainly have conversations
with primary care providersand some specialists where we do
(32:25):
coordinate services, andthey're ruling out something.
I'm ruling in, you know,mental health.
And, you know, I say thatbecause anxiety has such a wide impact,
there's actually been really extreme.
Let me be clear.
This is a very extremeexample, but where people have lost
their vision as a.
In response to.
(32:46):
Oh, wow, right.
You know, so it can reallyhave a very significant, detrimental
physical impact on us.
Now, short of that, I say toclients, sometimes when they're living
with chronic anxiety and we'retrying to manage it better, and I
(33:07):
talk with people about three goals.
Reducing the frequency of thesymptoms, reducing the intensity
of the symptoms, and reducingthe duration of them.
And we can use specificstrategies to target any of those.
Those three goals.
(33:27):
And so when we're looking atthat and we're dealing with.
With chronic anxiety, youknow, there's the empathy piece that
you're hinting at, like, youknow, really sitting and hearing.
Hearing them.
And, you know, sometimes theyjust need to genuinely hear, like,
yeah, this is hard, and it isharder for you.
And I'm like, people who livewith chronic anxiety, you know, sometimes
(33:52):
they feel like they've beenthrough the paper shredder to get
to a decision or to getthrough an event, and they do look
around and they see other people.
And, you know, we're focusingon federal workers today.
Federal workers, you know, areresponding in different ways.
What I think is reallyinteresting and says something, says
(34:14):
something about them isthey're all still showing up to work.
You know, we're not hearingreports of mass call outs and so
forth, that they're showing upand they're still, still doing their
jobs.
And.
One of the things that, thatyou just made me think of because
we, the, the goal of this wasto try to help people going through
(34:37):
this change.
Right.
You know, people say normal,new normal.
What's normal?
Normal is whatever happensconsistently going forward, not what
used to be.
So it's like, you know, numberone, you've got to be comfortable
that the world is always goingto be changing and it doesn't care
if you're ready for change or not.
(34:58):
But the other thing that thismade me realize too, while you were
talking about that I can I,off the top of my head can name a
number of people that I knowclients and people that we've worked
with over the years.
They have uncontrollableanxiety over the investments and
the way the politics areintertwined with investments anymore,
(35:19):
which is a game from the media.
It's not real, but it's, youknow, it's a way to get eyeballs
and get people.
You vote with your pocketbook.
So I'm going to tie everyissue to your pocketbook.
Right.
Type of thing.
Right.
And, and being able to set.
I always say you need toseparate from the, the emotion and
(35:41):
the social issues from the financials.
But there's an awful lot ofpeople who probably need to hear
this conversation becausethey're reacting to the news the
same way that a federalemployee or somebody who's got federal
funding for their job maybe isanxious about, you know, what policy
Trump is rolling out next weekor somebody in his cabinets rolling
(36:04):
out because they're readingthe news and saying, oh, we're headed
for the Great Depression or,you know, the next great recession
because of things that, youknow, unfortunately when they get
it wrong in the news, younever hear about it.
They don't come back and go,yeah, we got that wrong.
And we caused people to quittheir jobs and commit suicide and
(36:24):
do like, you know, and havedivorces because they were panicking
and, you know, do these, allthese crazy activities.
But, you know, we were kind ofmaking it up because we were just
guesstimating what mighthappen because, you know, we, we,
we kind of failed to explainhow terrorists really actually work,
you know, or something like that.
You know what I mean?
It's just kind of like I thinkpeople really, really need to hear
(36:46):
this, who are reacting to,like, who are aggressive to me, aggressively
reacting when they readsomething or they just, they just
know.
They know scary, scary thingsare going to happen.
You and I were joking a littlebit before this.
It's like, you know, I alwaysshow people kind of their projections
(37:06):
and, you know, if you'd run aMonte Carlo scenario, which is just
a stress test on sequence ofreturn, you're going to get the percentage
that's in the really bad output.
Right.
This is the 20% where yourlife can't happen the way you want
it to happen.
But if you're controlling yourvariables and you're really realistic
as to how you're modeling, youcan say, well, what you have to understand
(37:28):
about that bottom 20% is we'reall in that together.
If you're doing what you'redoing and the results are that bad,
chances are it's that bad for everybody.
So that new normal is kind of reset.
You know, it's kind of like we're.
And that means you can't doanything about it that's out of your
control.
Right.
And so we can sit here and wecan worry about doomsday happening.
(37:52):
And by the way, they've beensaying doomsday was going to happen
as long as you and yourparents and your grandparents can
think about it.
Right?
Right.
And it hasn't happened yet.
We can, we can sit here and wecan dwell on it and panic about it,
or we can realize if doomsdaydoes happen, like if they, you know,
if an asteroid hits the Earth,I guess we're done worrying about
global warming and we don'tneed to be right.
(38:15):
Variable change.
Whether or not it was going tohappen or not it happened, it's done.
Right?
It's done.
And, you know, if you're onthe wrong side of the bat, who cares?
It's done.
It doesn't matter if you wereright or wrong.
It's done.
So real quick, before we wrapup this episode and then we're going
to bring you back for our nextepisode, are there things that we
(38:35):
can do to address the anxiety?
Absolutely.
And I'm actually going to usewhat we were just saying saying to
segue a little bit.
One of the first things that,you know, like, when we're talking
about variables and we'retalking about the, the media and
some of the influence, itdoesn't matter, you know, which media
we're, we're talking about,you know, media has changed so much
(39:00):
in, in certainly our lifetime.
And, you know, as you weretalking about the retractions, I
was reminded like I was apaper boy.
And so I used to get up everyday and deliver the paper, you know,
through the neighborhood.
And those retractions were inthe lower left hand corner.
Yeah, that were printed like,you know, but that was an era that,
(39:21):
you know, you got thenewspaper, you got your information
from that and there was, youknow, like the morning news, the
new news, 6pm news and 11 o'clock news.
So we had very clear periodsof time and mechanisms that we were
exposed to that when we wentto a 24 hour news cycle and then
(39:41):
we went to, you know, thesensationalization of some of the
stories.
And we've seen a lot of changein the way that the media, you know,
we've shifted in some of thesemedia platforms from objective and
neutral to, you know,inflammatory and getting people to
watch.
(40:01):
And they're meant to evoke emotion.
So you know, what that does,and the research has been really
clear about this for at least15 years, probably longer than that
now is we want to moderate theamount of, you know, news exposure
that we take.
Meaning we want to, I'm, youknow, we want to set aside time to
(40:27):
look at current events, what'shappening in the world, because people
are always like, you know,well, I have to know what's going
on.
And you can, but you want todo it at a time that like you feel
your strongest during the day.
You have a lot of mental clarity.
People do what we call doom scrolling.
Just when we get on thatmagic, that little magic box that
we all have and just startgoing and it starts feeding us stuff
(40:50):
that promotes anxiety, itevokes strong emotion.
And you know, so if you'redoing that at 9, 10, 11 o' clock,
2 o' clock in the morning,you're feeding that anxiety.
So those are some thingscontrolling that media exposure.
And not just to news media,but to TikTok and Reddit and all
(41:15):
the different things that areout there that feed us stuff very
quickly and that are designedto evoke emotion.
We want to have better controlabout when do I expose myself to
that?
We want to think about on avery general level around anxiety.
(41:35):
You know, one, learning torecognize it.
You know, am I someone that Ihave a low level of anxiety?
Do I experience moderate?
Has anxiety been a partnerthroughout my life for a variety
of reasons and you know, do Ifind myself very reactive?
And in those cases I say like,that's when you want to seek out
(41:57):
some professional assistanceand somebody that can teach you skills.
There's A lot.
There's a lot of skills thatwe can use.
There's different approachesto anxiety management.
Exercise, you know, just dailymoving our body, Our bodies are designed
to move.
We're not supposed to besedentary, you know, making sure
(42:18):
that we have daily movement, asufficient amount of cardiovascular
or.
Yeah, cardiovascular exerciseor cardio.
Yeah, cardiovascular exercise.
I'm saying that, right, thatwe're getting enough, you know, exercise
and that can just be walking,you know, it doesn't have to be to
the gym.
You don't have to swim, youknow, Olympic pool laps.
(42:38):
Right.
You know, paying attention toour nutrition and, you know, giving
our body the energy that it needs.
Doing that, doing that properly.
There's, there's, I've seen astudy before that says, you know,
one of the problems thatpeople have with diets is, you know,
in the morning, you wake up,you're fresh, you're strong, and
(43:00):
you go to work and, and youfight all the battles.
You fight at work, right?
And then you come home and youtake care of the kids and you fight
all the battles of taking careof the kids.
And then, you know, it's 8 o'clock and you hit the couch and you're
like, you know, if, if youhave something sweet in the house,
like ice cream or somethinglike that, it's just like, I need
something from me.
And so either you're rewardingyourself or you walk by the counter
(43:24):
and there's a cupcake on thecounter and it's like, you know,
your guard is down.
So if normally, if normallyyou would be telling yourself, you
don't need this, you'restrong, you can do this.
By the end of the day, you'reworn out and, and, and the energy
to tell yourself you don'tneed that as kind of gone.
(43:45):
And so if you take the newsand you put the news in the place
of the cupcake or the news inthe place of the ice cream, it's
like if, if you're doomscrolling before you go to bed, when
you're least able to fight,you know, the, the narratives and
kind of think about it critically.
And then, you know, Imentioned, I, you know, I woke up
(44:07):
one day and I started watching 24.
So I'm watching 24, I'mwatching Criminal Minds, watching
all this like, serial killer,end of the world type of stuff, listening
to Hard Rock on the way homefrom work and, you know, all that
kind of stuff, what you put inyour brain starts to come out in
(44:28):
your, the way that you kind ofsee life I noticed, I don't think
it was depression, but Inoticed a, I had a much darker mood
most of the time because I'mwatching those shows.
I'm like, yeah, there's peoplethat really do that.
Yeah, this kind of sickness is real.
Right.
And, and you just start going,I'm sad for humanity.
(44:49):
Why is humanity like this?
Then you start thinking aboutwhy is all the entertainment out
there seem to be about the endof the world and people being tortured
and horrible things happeningto people Instead of like whatever
happened under the Tuscan sunor something like that.
You give me, give me somethingthat happens positive at the end.
Yes, yes.
(45:11):
You know, I don't think youknow this about me.
My undergrad is know a lot about.
You, but I may not know this.
I'll tell you if I know or not.
Yes.
You know, my undergrad is in journalism.
I did not know that about you.
Yeah.
Yep.
And you know, again, it was,it was, you know, the 80s into the
(45:31):
90s and you know, again, therewere formulas back then and if you
remember the old newscasts,you know, the newscast always finished
on what was called a colorstory, something that was bright
and uplifting.
You know, that was when yousaw things from the zoo or from,
you know, elementary schools.
It was always positive and itwas meant to finish on this uplift.
(45:54):
And we've lost that again inthe 24 hour news cycle.
And now that, you know,whatever search engines you know
are feeding, feeding our newsfeed, they don't do that.
Thanks for checking out Ditchthe Suits.
Be sure to write a review ordrop a comment about this episode.
And if you want more likethis, head over to ditchesuits.com
(46:15):
you can send us a message andget in touch.
Let's let us know how we canhelp and be sure to share any topics
you'd be interested in havingus cover on the show.
We're here to help you get themost from your money in life.
Thanks for being our guest andchecking out Ditch the Suits.
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