Download Otter for your meeting notes

Margaret Lamar - 1:30:22, 10.13 AM | Otter.ai

Margaret Lamar - 1:30:22, 10.13 AM

Amber Watkins45min

Speaker 1

00:50

Hi, and welcome to the thoughtful counselor podcast. We are on today with Dr. Margaret Lamar who is, in my opinion very this is very exciting news is coming on as our brand new contributor. Dr. Lamar, you've been on the show before you you interviewed with Mike shook, didn't you?

Speaker 1

01:09

Yes, way back in the day, way. When was that?

Speaker 2

01:13

Oh, gosh, um, I, it may have been 2017.

Speaker 1

01:18

Okay, so enough time has passed that we're just going to get all new, exciting information from you. And really, the purpose of today is to introduce our listeners to you and your research your background, and kind of what's led you to the show and what you are hoping to bring to the thoughtful counselor. And I think a really good way to start with that is really just to learn a little bit more about you, and what has kind of gotten you to this place and your career as a counselor and a counselor educator.

Speaker 2

01:50

Yeah. It feels like a long, long journey, especially, I mean, even the last, I don't know, 818 months feels like it's been a long time. So thinking back, it's just been kind of a wild journey. So I grew up in Texas, I had no aspirations around working in mental health, I was the theater music kid. And that's actually what I did my undergraduate work and and that worked at a theater in Houston for a couple of years, and developed a lot of really great relationships and learned a lot about myself. And I think through that, I realized that that was not the field for me, and that I found more fulfillment and meaning out of my conversations with folks in that space. And so I sort of unrelated to that, actually, I ended up back in I got married, and I ended up back in the town where I had done my undergraduate work and sort of thought, Well, I'm here I should do. My partner was doing an undergraduate degree. And I thought, wow, I mean, I should do that, too. What else am I going to do? While I'm here? I might as well and so I, I mean, I feel like it's one of those things where I is not I'm not dramatizing this, I literally opened up the catalog. And the first page that I landed on was the counseling department. And I, you know, I was really just looking through the catalog of like, what could I do, I'm working for the universities, so I get a pretty good deal on tuition, it would be silly of me to not take advantage of that. So I was just looking for ideas. And that's the first place I landed, and I read a, you know, about the description of the program. And I thought, Well, that just seems a lot like what I was doing at my previous work. I was talking to people and learning about people. And, you know, I, like many counselors went in with a lot of naivete about what counseling actually is. And so, you know, I had all these ideas of like, well, I'm kind of like the advice giver and my friend group. And that's probably what counseling is, so I'll just do it. And I, you know, I, I probably went in even more with, you know, more naively than many. I remember sitting in my first series class, and all these people like, had, you know, they had done psychology undergraduate degrees, and so they knew all this lingo, and I felt so out of place. And I thought, wow, what have I done, I really have a lot to learn here. And I did, I learned a lot I really just jumped in and I loved that experience so much. I have a lot of really fond memories of that and a lot of growing and stretching and learning and so much so that I got to the end of that experience. And I thought why don't feel done yet. I don't. Again, you know, I think looking back now this is pretty typical of counselors at the end of their program, you know, their development, they don't feel ready to kind of jump out into the world and see clients all on their own, I was definitely there. But there was just something that I thought I, I feel like I need more, I want to do more. I had no long term aspirations of being a counselor, educator or being a certainly not a faculty member, I have a history and my family of educators and education has always been a pretty strong thread. You know, even when I worked in theater, I was in the education department. So I was like, during the day going out and teaching classes and, and then, you know, doing theater at night. And so, you know, my grandparents were both educators, both of them have a pH, PhDs in education, and have spent a lot of time in that world. And so it just felt very important to me. So I thought, Well, okay, great. You know, my, I was finishing my degree, my partner finished his degree, and he was gonna do was considering doing another graduate degree in Colorado, we both knew we wanted to leave Texas and, and so I was just kind of looking around and talking to faculty and saying, you know, what should I do, and there was one counselor education program in Colorado. And I, we went there and fell in love with it. And it was, again, a great experience, I walked into that completely unaware of what I was doing, or what I was getting myself into. And then it was one of those things that it just clicked for me everything about it, I loved, I loved diving into research and supervision and teaching, it just really hit all my buttons. And even though

Speaker 2

06:45

it was challenging a lot of the times and, and you know, very much a learning experience, I learned a lot about myself, I learned a lot about the profession in a way that I hadn't really accessed as a master student. And so it was, you know, it was a really great time. And I learned so much and was so appreciative of that experience. While I was in there, I, my first research interest was really looking at how people develop as researchers, and that was my interest for a long time, I still do work around that. And from there, I ended up in California, where we have family and Palo Alto University kind of popped up on my radar and was thrilled to be one of the early faculty here and have watched this program just grow and grow and grow and gotten to work with lots of great students. And yeah, I just again, it feels like such a surprise for me to be here. Because I had no, no idea I would, I would end up here, but I could not be more happy to have, you know, be working in this position at this university, where I'm at in California, and just getting to learn a lot about educating masters level counselors and clinicians and kind of, I don't know, still learning, I

Speaker 1

08:11

guess, oh, well, our listeners don't know this. But I have known you professionally for over six years now. If you can believe that, Margaret, and I've never heard the story of how you landed in counseling. And I have to be honest, I'm very, I'm shocked by this news. Because you are who you are, as a counselor and counselor, educator, you strike me as the as the person that was like, you know, from a child, you were like, This is who I'm going to be. And this is what I'm going to do because you have such a clear professional identity you're so involved in, you know, regional and national leadership. And, you know, yes, you you've been educating counselors now for for 10, nine, 910 years. Yeah. So you're so immersed in the field now that it's so hard for me to think about you just skimming through a catalogue and shoving your finger on a page.

Speaker 2

09:14

I know it was me serious happenstance. Like, you know, it really was it's kind of a funny thing. But yeah,

Speaker 1

09:20

I think that's what is really remarkable about the counseling profession is that some of our most incredible counselors, some of our most notable voices in the field, started their careers in a completely different field and had intentions to do so many different things. And I think that, you know, having that background and those like really pivotal years of experience in theatre, and music and that kind of artistic background, probably equipped you to be a better therapist than my psychology four year degree. Too

Speaker 2

10:02

funny, right? I mean, we have those experiences with our students of people that are coming from all kinds of different backgrounds. And it is so fascinating to see how your lens just can be applied in the field and what a unique experience and and and lens I guess it brings to you and how you can work with clients in so many different ways. So, it's always exciting to me to hear about where people come from, I think probably because I do come from that, you know, like, left field a bit. And so I was to sort of find kindred spirits and students that come from non traditional mental health. Yeah, you know, just different pathways.

Speaker 1

10:38

I think maybe that's one of the things that I love about the podcast, and is that we do try to, you know, be intentional in our, in our kind of inclusivity, to topics related to mental health. You know, we've had episodes around dance and physical movement and mental health, we've had episodes related to like psychodrama in integrating theater into mental health, and your previous episode was on mothering and parenting and mental health. And it sounds like we tried to pull just the elements of human existence and and tie it back to its impact on mental and emotional and relational health. And I think that's why I've been so excited to have you on the show, because you do have just a breadth of research interests and specializations, that that I think you're just gonna bring so many unique episodes to the show. I am wondering just if there's something that you would be excited to bring to the podcast, just some thoughts, ideas or inspirations that you're excited to share with folks?

Speaker 2

11:51

Yes. So you know, I've just been tinkering around with this a bit, you know, you and I had this conversation about me joining and then it was the end of the quarter and, and then

Unknown Speaker

12:03

during a pandemic.

Speaker 2

12:06

And as we were talking about before we came on, this is really my first, like, official thing to do, since the holiday break. And our holiday break, is quite long. It's a long brain break, I guess, I should say. And so trying to, you know, think about that. i There's so many possibilities, you know, some of the things that have been floating through my mind are, you know, I do have this interest in women's mental health I have interests in, especially parenting and moms. But But women in general. And so I've been sort of brainstorming about what topics are of interest in our things, especially that we don't cover as much in our education, right, because there's so many basics that we're trying to cover for, you know, folks entering the field. And there are all these sort of deep dives into the human experience that we just visit, like, we just can't get to it. All right, as much as we want to. And so, really wanting to understand different aspects of that and talk to people, you know, as we're talking about, you know, learning about talking to people from different paths is just thinking about folks that are not in the mental health field that are working with women or working with moms. Those are some things I've been brainstorming about and trying to think about. So hopefully more on that later. I am excited. We've got some I've got some folks on the, on my schedule, to talk to looking at some different ways of thinking about human development and how we develop in our lives. So excited to dive into that a bit and bring us to this audience.

Speaker 1

13:50

I'm excited. And that that leads us really perfectly to this kind of second part of this get to know you episode is the topic, your research topic, parent mental health. And also our listeners don't know this, but you and I have worked together as co researchers on a more recent project. But you've been doing this for years now, pre pre pandemic, as I was prepping for today's interview, I was thinking about, you know, just possible titles, the things that we would call this episode and saying parent mental health and a pandemic is very actually limiting to I think what you can share with us today because you have been you've had an eye on parent mental health throughout the seasons, I should say. And I would love I think that's that's probably the the burning question that I have to start us off with this today is, you know, thinking about the research that you first started with Lisa Forbes in 2017 Yeah.

Speaker 2

15:00

For maybe I think we were working on it as we were talking to Mike. However, many years ago, that was four or five years ago. Yeah,

Speaker 1

15:08

yes, exactly. And, and so so

Unknown Speaker

15:11

you, you, maybe you could

Speaker 1

15:14

describe a little bit about that project. And then the projects that have kind of seen you through the pandemic, and we can talk about some trends that we're seeing in terms of what are the issues that parents are facing, typically, and then now with this extra layer of stress in uncertainty and illness, and fear? And so yeah, if you want to start, yeah,

Speaker 2

15:41

yeah. So Lisa and I have been working together for a while. And we were in the middle of this project. When we spoke with Mike. The first time Well, the first and only time I guess, and I was very pregnant with my second and young, my baby. And still my baby. He's four years old now. And so it has like this. That's why I can remember the date Actually, everything for me kind of ties to that date, if it's, you know, been a while. So we were working on this, trying to understand more about the intensive mothering

Unknown Speaker

16:20

ideology. That was Yeah, say more about that.

Speaker 2

16:22

Yeah, that exists. And I would say the US but the more that I talked to international parents, the more I hear that this is a pretty widespread phenomenon, it might have a different application. And it may look somewhat different here. But that it, we do see it in different ways and other cultures, that's not something I'm an expert on. But I would love to read more about that and see that kind of work being done. But intensive mothering is this idea, coined by Hayes back in the 90s, I think has the concept has existed for a long, long time. But it's this idea that we place pretty unrealistic expectations on mothers. And that we, you know, think that mothers should be the primary and preferred caregiver. If, you know, if I can't be there, as a mom, the the next best person to take care of my children is another parent, not my another mother, I guess I should say, not my male partner, but a grandma or an aunt, because women are prime should be the primary and preferred caregivers. We want moms to be experts in child development. And we really want them to invest a lot of time and energy and resourcing, to make sure that their children are mentally, emotionally and physically thriving, and socially thriving, you know, kind of in isolation from everyone else doesn't really matter what my partner does, what's most important is I am doing those things. We asked mothers to D prioritize their own personal or professional pursuits. And really focus only on mothering tasks. You know, she said that, or Susan Hayes said that parenting should be mothering should be child centered, expert guided emotionally absorbing labor intensive and financially expensive. Ooh, yeah. So it's a lot, right. Yeah. And I think, you know, when I, most moms that I've talked to identify with these in certain ways, you may not identify with all of it, but even if you have a super supportive partner, you know, I would say my partner and I are often as equal as we can be about, you know, our household sort of tasks are divided pretty equitably. But even with that, I, you know, there is this, this pressure that I feel to sort of do things that he doesn't, if he doesn't experience in the same way, you know, to make sure that, you know, the lunch that gets sent to school is, you know, I don't know, doesn't have too much of this or that or the other, right, that birthday parties are planned by me or that, you know, I'm sort of the I call it the mental calendar. But the other sort of more professional word is mental load, that all of the you know, who needs to be where, and who takes what and what, who needs to be dressed in what clothes for today, and, you know, whose medicine or who likes this and doesn't like that kind of food? Like, that's all stuff that really gets housed in my brain, the home manager? That's right, really the home and the family manager really often falls on moms. And so we really set up this very high expectation that that we also don't really expect mothers to meet and then when they don't mean it We have some judgment around it. So it's really challenging. And for Lisa and I were really curious, because we were both working moms. And so we said, well, how does this impact working moms because, you know, here we are, like, here's this list of things that we should be doing as moms and ways that we will never measure up. But we also have full time jobs. And we have expectations over here at this at this job that says, you know, you need to be doing x y&z and a lot of times and what we found in our studies that a lot of moms feel like they're expected to, when they are at work, be working, and pretending like they don't have children. And when they're moms, they're supposed to pretend like they don't have jobs that need them. And so there's this real catch 22 for mothers, especially working mothers, that is, is, is mentally exhausting, emotionally exhausting, physically exhausting. And I should, I want to say that it doesn't mean that that's not also physically, emotionally and mentally exhausting for moms that do not work full time.

Speaker 2

21:10

Or at all, you know, they work within their homes, right. And it's just there's a different sort of challenge for moms that are also working to, to manage to juggle all of those things. So so that's a little bit about of intensive mothering. And it's really been our lens for all of our research, certainly this early qualitative research that we did around working moms. But it really has been sort of a thread through everything, it's a way that we think about moms, and you know why I think that intensive mothering really, you can sort of look back and see it very rooted in this idea of, you know, if we think about like, the the the Leave It to Beaver, like June Cleaver and like, you know, this kind of 1950s Mom, who was a full time stay at home mom, and you know, did all of these things, right? That's very rooted in a white upper class structure. And yet, now we see that as become so ingrained in our social ideology, that it really impacts mothers of all socioeconomic status, all races. To some extent, this, we haven't done our research hasn't done a lot with this, but we've read about, you know, that is impacting impacts mothers in the LGBTQ community. So it really has sort of established itself and taken hold, and we see it kind of with mothers of all kinds. So,

Speaker 1

22:48

so one of the things that I hear you saying, that really stood out to me, is it even you know, even in a what, how would you describe and you know, very equitable, very aware, heterosexual relationship, the social ideology of intensive mothering of this, like ideal Mom, is impacts impacts women, and even even when we like, know better, right, like even right, know that you're being subjected to this external system of unrealistic expectations that are rooted in patriarchy, and maybe, you know, heterosexism, and racism and all of the things that you mentioned, even knowing that those are unreasonable, you still feel the weight of them on your shoulders as you make day to day decisions related to your personal and professional lives. I imagine that this has a profound impact on mother's mental health. Yeah, I know, you guys did some qualitative research and actually got to talk to moms, about their experiences, kind of juggling this ideology and what it means for them. What were some of the things that that you learned, I guess, from those women that you spoke to?

Speaker 2

24:07

Yeah. A lot. And again, these were moms who were also working, mostly working full time in full time positions. And I will say that it impacted them in everything, right? Even the choice to work. You know, there was a lot of questioning about am I doing the right thing? Am I making the right decision for my you know, my baby, if I go back to work or for my kids, if they're in a, you know, at a level developmental level where they really need me more, you know, that does tend to happen more when kids are younger as they become more independent. We saw mothers having less of that concern. But that choice to work was really prevalent for women on a regular basis in a way that I don't think I hear men say Oh, isn't the right thing for me to do to go back to work when my baby is, you know, eight weeks old, or you don't hear that same challenge, because that's basically a task that's been assigned to women to worry about, right. And, you know, even for participants in our study, who said, you know, I was happy was not hard at all, it was not hard to make the choice, I think there was still a, but I have to explain it to other people. And I have to justify the decision, or I have to deal with the guilt of doing that. Or just some external pressure around that, that again, I don't think fathers deal with in quite the same way. But you know, because of that, I think a lot of those women found a lot of meaning in their work. They really, you know, constructed a lot of meetings around, it's really good for me as a mom to get out, and to go be around adults and have adult conversations, or it's good for my kids to see the working and for them to see me as a mom working and dad working and US managing and sharing tasks together. You know, certainly financial finances were considered a consideration of that. But you know, then along with that decision, there becomes this host of other things that then moms have to worry about. So like childcare was a really big thing for parents of like, how do I piece together, you know, childcare in a way that works for my family that is, you know, financially viable. And again, a lot of that we saw really falling on moms to navigate into figure that out,

Speaker 1

26:47

which also really presents What you and I've talked about this presents this interesting challenge of you knowing that in heterosexual relationships, women tend to not be the primary earner, how to balance the exorbitant cost of childcare with a lower income, right, and potentially having pressure from your partner saying, well, we could be saving so much money if you just stayed at home. Right? Yeah, if if you were the sole sole caretaker, then it would eliminate these extra costs related to child care. Yeah, and, you know, I don't want to move forward too quickly. But this is also just making me think about those conversations that were coming up around the start of the pandemic, when we were seeing in a national and global level that, you know, women, women's careers tended to be the first one to put go on hold to do at home schooling during during shutdowns and lockdowns with kids, so men, you know, men were expected to keep their jobs as long as they could that were not impacted by the shutdown, while women were just kind of slated into that will, okay, now you're going to be a full time educator with the children.

Speaker 2

28:05

Yeah, and I think, you know, another challenge that we saw there is even for women who didn't have a choice to leave their jobs, or chose not to leave their jobs, because they didn't want to give them up. Still, we saw such a reliance on moms to do their jobs and also run everything. I mean, I can't tell you how many think pieces or you know, all kinds of writing and, and work out work that was done about, you know, dads who would work like just shut themselves in their office, and it was like, Don't talk to me Go ask your mom, if you have a question, right? Those kinds of things we saw really prevalent and so after a little history, so after Lisa and I did that qualitative study, we said let's focus on intensive mothering and mental health a bit more. So we did a study in 2019 looking at I think it's 2019 losing track of my dates, but looking at just moms and intensive mothering mental health and things like that. And then we were like, Oh, this is so this is such interesting data, we saw a lot of endorsement of intensive mothering ideology. And we thought, well, let's compare to dads. And so we put this study together, we looking at moms and dads and we want to just you know, understand what their parenting beliefs were. And around intensive parenting, we wanted to understand their their mental health, their stress, their anxiety, depression levels. We also wanted to know what their alcohol use was, we've seen a lot of that conversation happening around parenting, especially motherhood, sort of the, the, the intersection between alcohol use and, and motherhood. So we wanted to look at some alcohol use and substance use stuff. And so you know, we asked you to join in on us because that's you have some expertise in these areas. And we got our IRB approved. I don't know what like five days before we went into shutdown. Yeah. And, or stay at home, whatever it was called at that time quarantine kind of thing in the Bay Area. And so our whole little research team was having all these memes about what do we do. And I think even at the time, we had the sense that, you know, we had some funding that we had was gonna run out. So we needed to do something by the summer. And I think even then we had the sense of like, this is going to impact people for a really long time, because we were just in those early early weeks where people, I mean, we still thought, like, oh, we'll be back to school in two weeks, no problem. No big deal. We're just gonna all stay at home, flatten the curve, and then we'll be back at it. And even at that time, I think we have the sense like, this is going to impact data for a while. So why don't we just go ahead and collect the data. So we collected data in March and April of 2020, looking at all those things, mental health, parenting substance use alcohol use. And, you know, what we found was just actually everyone was not okay, it was a really rough time, it's hard to kind of think back actually, because it felt so long, you know, it felt like this very specific point in time.

Speaker 2

31:16

Where, you know, you couldn't even go to the grocery store without it being a whole ordeal. And, you know, and if there was even food there, right. Everything became such a, an ordeal. I you know, I don't know, it was just a really challenging time, access to health care, mental health care, food, you know, Mama to everything. Yeah. You know, so many people lost their jobs, schools were gone, daycares. I mean, our, you know, our daycare was closed, and our school was closed. So we had both of our kids at home, and it was just, but my job kept going, like, you know, like, we kept rolling. And it was just such a just such a challenging time for parents. And, in fact, there was a lot of, you know, data that got turned around pretty quickly at that time that, you know, parents were some of the most stressed people in the US at that point, because of all of the extra challenges they were facing, with having their kids at home. And, you know, I don't know if it makes it easier to have a kid at different developmental stages, because high schoolers were having just as hard of a time, as you know, my, I guess he was three at the time, my three year old, you know, so it was a challenge at all levels for parents. And we definitely saw that hitting moms more our study, as you know, we didn't see as much of a difference between mothers and fathers in terms of mental health, because everyone's mental health was so bad. That was all in the very extreme category. And so there wasn't a lot of differentiation showing up just because of the time period where we collected that data, we did see differences in substance use and alcohol use. But that mental health stuff kind of flattened out, because everyone was just so stressed and having, you know, severe mental health concerns at the time. So

Speaker 1

33:20

it's worth noting, The the difference we saw around substance use was that men were tending to report higher levels of substance use than than women in the sample, which is consistent with research outside of a pandemic as well. Men just tend to, to use at higher rates than women. But you had seeing that data come in and seeing everyone that the scale that we use to measure depression, anxiety and stress, and there are what five categories of severity and the highest level was severe. And we just severe across all three of those factors for everyone in our sample across demographics. It was just kind of like a moment of us looking at each other like, Oh, good. I'm not the only one. Yeah, right. Not the only one, like, you know, sitting at the what is the meme here sitting at the table with the room on fire? Does? I'm fine. I'm fine. Yeah, really, I mean, what I think in, in retrospect, I don't want to I don't want to diminish our work at all, but like this common sense, like da ever we were just, we were all really struggling and that the research really confirmed that and, I mean, to me, it begs the question, you know, what, what are we seeing now as the pandemic really has become the new normal at two years, you know, we're about to hit the two year mark. Or globally, many folks have already added the trainer mark. You know, what, what are how are we trending with mental health and what is our future look like for apparent mental health.

Speaker 2

35:02

Yeah, you know, it's so funny because I remember you and I have this conversation that we started putting out feelers for this research just to some different editors in our field to say like, Hey, are you interested in some COVID Research or COVID, and we're gonna do a COVID special topic or special issue, and everyone was kind of like, I don't know, I think once the vaccine is here, it's everything's gonna go back to normal, and we'll be fine. And here we are a year later from vaccine. And, you know, we're still dealing with this, and I think we're seeing that impact on parents especially. Be pretty great. I mean, it's a pretty, you know, we're still seeing parents pretty greatly impacted by it. You know, and I think I want to just put this caveat out there that I think it does depend on where you live, I know, some folks have had their kids back in school for a while. I know, in California, it's just for most parts of California, it's just been since the fall that they've been back full time. And so there's been a lot of transitions. So there's a lot of concerns, you know, about kids transitioning back and sort of the academic issues that they're facing in terms of being behind having to catch up a lot of just social anxiety for kids coming back into the world. And, you know, having to figure out, like their friend groups, and just kind of get back into things socially has been challenging. And then, you know, the impact of that on parents is also great of worrying about their kids, you know, having to advocate for their kids, if they have that resource within themselves. You know, there's a lot of parents that don't, that aren't able to advocate for their kids, because they're working multiple jobs, and they're, you know, or they don't speak the same language as their kids teacher. And that can be really challenging. But for those who are having to do a lot of work for their kids, you know, a lot of that does tend to fall on moms more. And so that's, again, something to think about as counselors when we're working with parents is paying attention to what those differences in terms of responsibilities are, even now of around that. And I think parents, you know, whereas we saw in those early weeks, that's really extreme depression, anxiety and stress, which matched I think, most, you know, anecdotally what I was seeing with parents and my friends and family, I think what we're seeing now is this sort of more of this burnout, I'm interested to see, you know, where if the research starts moving towards that, I am interested in that as well. But just kind of hitting this wall, you know, we hear about the pandemic wall, I think parents have been at that wall for a while now. And, you know, it's challenging, and it can create a lot of different types of mental health challenges. You know, for me, I think one of the Silver Linings potentially to come out of the pandemic is that for folks who maybe had some anxiety or depression, but it was pretty manageable. And they, you know, thought they could manage on their own fine, I think the pandemic brought out that maybe they can't actually cope with it as well. And so we saw a lot of people reaching out to mental health providers, and I know, in our area, you know, there's still waitlist for counselors and, and folks working in the mental health profession. And, you know, that's why we saw a huge numbers of people signing up for talkspace, and, you know, various mental health apps, both those that connect you with a therapist or a counselor, and those that are, you know, like meditation apps and other things to help people manage their stress.

Speaker 1

38:56

It really has thrust, the, the conversation of mental health into a spotlight, like we've never seen before, out of necessity. So it's, you know, it's, sadly, we've come to this place where people are talking about mental health, but I have hopes for that, right, that that will be one of the lasting silver linings, as you said to the pandemic is that we've now we're all out in the open, we've all come out and we've said we're struggling and the stigma is really being chipped away around accessing therapy and accessing, you know, different types of self help resources, because we know now that this isn't just a I guess that that feeling of isolation, that particular isolation that you're feeling, it's not just you, it's it's at this point it's it's a shared collective experience. It always has been but now we we actually acknowledge and see that.

Speaker 2

39:48

Yeah, I think I've never had as many people in my social group, talk about reaching, you know, finding a counselor or talking about their work with their counselor or talking about it. You know, getting medication and things like that, I think it really has kind of broken open that need and D stigmatize it a lot. And I especially hear that with, I mean, because most of my people in my social group tend to be a lot of parents, I do think there is something about that long term burn out, we're dealing with just kind of being in the, in this particular trench for so long. You know, it's one thing we talk about parent, you know, being in the parenting trenches. But this is like a COVID Parenting trench that feels particularly gruesome at times. You know, there's things like just, you know, again, this might depend on where you live, but I can speak to my experience living here, you know, you know, my son's been out of school, for most of the month of September, he was in for a week in December, he was because you can't go to a can't go to a daycare or school was a tiny little cold anymore, right. And so that has a huge impact on our life and my work, and, you know, just kind of throws off our game, you know, we kind of mind this, this equilibrium, where we're kind of floating along, and everything's good. And then sort of all of a sudden, you have one thing fall out of place, and it feels like everything, just kind of the dominoes fall. And so I think that that, you know, we're going to deal with that for a while, I think the magic bullet, we thought the vaccine would be did not kind of have to, you know, didn't deal with that quite the same way as I think we all had hoped for. And so that especially affects parents. And, and so again, I think this, you know, I worry about for, for moms, especially, but for parents about that, you know, how long can can we all live and function with the level of burnout, that we're dealing with the level of exhaustion? You know, I think we're seeing that kind of across the board. So

Speaker 1

41:56

well, I personally believe that, you know, the, the weight, the weight being carried by parents right now is made more manageable simply by talking about the weight by acknowledging that the weight is there, and having, you know, a collective sense of like, we're in this together. And I think, for that, I'm so thankful that you're going to be coming on board to the thoughtful counselor, because your voice your experiences, and ultimately the folks that you choose to interview and be on the show, no doubt are going to speak to that, that kind of collective we're here. We're in this together and there's nothing to be ashamed of. So for that, I'm just Yep. Super excited for you and starting your new term with a thoughtful counselor. And you know, I will be sharing you kind of your professional pages in the Episode Notes of this. But I always say to to listeners, if you're listening to Margaret, Dr. Lamar, speak right now thinking that you have an idea or some research that you would love to share with us on the show and you'd love to talk to Dr. Lamar about it, please send us those emails, those suggestions, those that those research papers that you've written, because, yeah, we are always looking for new people to bring on board and and share their expertise with our audience. So but, Margaret, thank you so much for being here today.

Unknown Speaker

43:32

Thank you

Speaker 1

43:33

any parting words before we before we take off?

Speaker 2

43:37

Oh, I don't know. I would just say Take care of yourselves. I think that's one of the things I always think about and I talk about with my students too, is, you know, we talk about these populations, but if you are a parent, you know how you can advocate for yourself and assess your own relationship and responsibilities within your own home. And if you can help your students and your supervisor, your supervisees do that. I think we can at least make our profession a really healthy and happy place for parents to exist. So yes, yes, take care of yourself.

Speaker 1

44:10

Thank you so much Margaret.

Speaker 1

44:39

The Thoughtful Counselor is Desa Daniel, Raissa Miller, Aaron Smith, Jessica Tyler, Stacey Diane Arañez Litam, and me, Megan Speciale find us online at the thoughtful counselor calm. Our funding is provided by Palo Alto University's Division of Continuing and Professional Studies. Learn more about them at concept.paloaltou.edu. The views and opinions expressed on The Thoughtful Counselor are those of the individual authors and contributors and don't necessarily represent the views of other authors and contributors, nor of our sponsor, Palo Alto University. So, if you have an idea for an episode, general feedback about the podcast, or just want to reach out to us, please drop us a line at thethoughtfulcounselor@gmail.com Thanks for tuning in and we hope to hear from you soon.

00:0000:00