Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (00:00)
Welcome to the NOCE Dose brought to you by the Nevada Opioid Center of Excellence at nvopioidcoe.org. I'm your host with the NOCE, Bianca D. McCall, asking you to subscribe, to like, and to comment to keep these conversations going. We are Nevada strong in saying no, no, no to silence as we fight the good fight to prevent the tragedies experienced by our loved ones, our families, our friends.

and communities impacted by the opioid epidemic. And we're back for season three. Help you, help me. During our last listening session, we addressed the emotional, the cognitive, and the overall professional impacts of the opioid-related crises on the working professionals in this field. And what I love about the NOCE platform and the subject matter experts that we are fortunate enough to work with is that

We beautifully integrate evidence-based frameworks with powerful and profound lived experience. And to kick off our Help the Helper series, we discussed the invisible injuries of care work, and we added some language, some perspective to compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, and moral injuries. So today we are joined by Altamit Lewis, ⁓ licensed clinical professional counselor with over 15 years of experience in behavioral health.

and crisis response and workforce wellness through EAP. And Altamit supports first responders and healthcare providers and large systems navigating the aftermath of the impacts of injuries that more commonly are experienced by helpers and healers in this space. She's a CEO of Source Energy Consultant Services and provides critical incident support in Nevada and abroad. And I can't wait to talk about that.

So please help me welcome to the safe space called the NOCE Dose, Altamit Lewis. Altamit, thank you so much for joining me today. What's been going on in your golden girl's era since the listening session? And I wanna know, inquiring minds wanna know which golden girl are you?

Altamit Lewis (02:10)
mix of Blanche and probably Sophia.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (02:15)
Okay, okay. So Blanche, for those that maybe aren't familiar with Golden Girls, she was like that man hungry, Southern belle Blanche, right? So Blanche and then Sophia was the outspoken, very witty, which I would agree with you. ⁓ Sophia was the matriarch of the family and of the group. So I love that, your leadership, your wit, and perhaps a little hungry for some Southern lovin'.

Altamit Lewis (02:34)
Yeah.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (02:44)
some Southern Ben 11.

Altamit Lewis (02:44)
I just feel like Blanche

is Samantha from Sex and the City in her golden years, right? So I definitely would identify as Samantha. ⁓ naturally just become Blanche and like, listen, I age like fine wine. You know what I mean? It's just cause I'm older, doesn't mean nothing is stopping the show. Yes. And Sophia is just direct and letting you know in tongue and cheek and you know, not having it.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (02:49)
⁓ Mm-hmm.

nothing stops the show.

I love it. You know what? And this is when you describe it in that way, absolutely, I agree 100%. And nothing is stopping the show. Nothing is stopping this show. Ultimately, I also loved this. When you talked about during the listening session, you talked about functional distress, right? People showing up, doing the job, but internally they're struggling and how overwork.

Altamit Lewis (03:25)
Mm-hmm.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (03:31)
gets normalized. Man, I felt like you were speaking to me. You saw me, you saw me directly through me to my soul when you were talking about this. So I want to know from your perspective, just taking a little bit of a deeper dive, how do we start to recognize that earlier, especially in these high performing environments where burnout is often rewarded?

Altamit Lewis (03:38)
with

I do think that sometimes it's hard to recognize it because you are living it, right? However, I think it starts with acknowledgement, right? It's okay to not be okay. But when we feel like we have to always be okay, we have to always be on, we have to always push through, right? Like sometimes it takes, like if you don't take the break, the break will be afforded to you. Your health will fail. And what I don't think people realize is,

the mental and the physical go hand in hand, right? So if you're not acknowledging something, essentially that something can turn into high blood pressure, diabetes, and I bet you'll acknowledge that. Everything just wants to be addressed. So we have to listen to our body or our body is gonna break down and force, force the break. And that is what I don't think people appreciate is forced break. But then when there is a forced break, they realize,

That's right. I could have dissed that in the third.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (04:47)
Yeah, I know I can't tell you how many times even throughout my career and how many times I've seen it in the community and throughout our network, our professional networks, ⁓ these force breaks. This isn't just this abstract theme of something that could happen, but it's happening all of the time. And again, for people that know me personally, they know that I'm a huge Back to the Future fan.

And I always think about Back to the Future 3, which does not get enough credit, by the way, for its strength in reinforcing the trilogy and the franchise, okay? But Back to the Future 3, they're on a train and they have these steam releases and it's colored by how close they're getting to the ravine, you know, before the train falls into the ravine and it goes green and then it goes yellow when you're getting a little bit closer. And then red means you got to get off.

the train, you've got to go 88 miles per hour and get back to the future ultimate. But anyway, so I digress. But what I will say is that this is kind of like our bodies, you know, our bodies and our minds and, and, those nudges, you know, from our essence and our spirit, you know, that are, that are warning us that, Hey, we're getting closer to that ravine. We're getting closer to burnout. We're getting closer to, to wanting to walk away. And so we've got to pay attention to those signs. I love that. Uh, it's okay to not be okay.

I've heard that so many times, you know, to the point where it's, it's almost cliche at this point, right? Because is it really okay to not be okay? I know for you, ultimate, it's okay if you're not okay. For me though, for me, I don't know if it's okay that I'm not okay. And to kind of tie this into a point that another point that you brought up during the listening sessions, you said, ⁓ you know, who gets labeled difficult versus who gets heard?

and supported through those not okay times and through conflicts, it's different, right? And so back to that, it's okay for some people to not be okay and not okay for others. ⁓ In your experience, what patterns do you see and how power and culture shape whose distress is taken seriously and how do we interrupt that in real time?

Altamit Lewis (07:05)
Okay, first, you asked two questions and I'm not going to smooth over that. Listen, do I think it's cliche? Not really, because I really think it's okay to not be okay, started during COVID. People were not okay. And as you know, as a mental health therapist and what I try to educate the public about is that we might've been maintaining 80, 75 % caseload and we're doing real good. COVID happens.

And we are inundated. We're at 120 % with a wait list. And essentially, right? Cause everybody's going through it, right? You're, you're, you're looking at people you don't have to look at all the time, right? You get a break to go to school and work. And now that break is not happening. Right? So when things were bad, they got even worse. And then, you know, young, well, I don't want to say young people, but I just noticed it a lot with young people, but coping skills, right? If your coping skills were social, that is out the window. So.

And I tell people, it's still COVID. I feel like it's still COVID for mental health therapists, right? Because the caseload and the demand never declined, right? It's like gas prices went up and they never went back down, even though they was telling you it was going to come back down. It's not like we still have wait lists. We still have like, ain't taking new clients, right? Because it's a lot. So it is okay to not be okay because really the reality is that's the truth, right? Just because you don't want to acknowledge you're hoarding doesn't mean you're not hoarding.

Just because you don't want to acknowledge your anxiety doesn't mean you're not anxious, right? So the it's okay to not be okay is giving you permission to say, I'm burnt out. I'm tired. I'm dragging. I don't want to do this. But prior to that, in certain cultures, and I'm going to transition to your second question, like it was never, things have to be modeled, right? As a therapist, you know that sometimes all we do is normalize. People are going through stuff.

And we're like, that's a normal reaction to this event, to this situation. I would feel like that too. And they're kind of like, ⁓ because they think they're the only ones or why am I feeling like this? Right? So normalizing and just being like, Hey, that's fine that you feel that way. Cause we, start to question things. And when certain things aren't modeled, right? Like let's say therapy, no one in my family has ever been to therapy. No one's ever been depressed. ⁓ really? You know, uncle Frank.

The one you said had a drinking problem, Uncle Frank was probably depressed. Right? But when you don't see it, you feel like, what's wrong with me? How come I'm not handling it very well? So I get it. You don't want to be OK with not being OK. But the reality is we have to acknowledge what is really happening. And right now, I'm kind of not feeling OK.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (09:38)
It's okay to not be okay. If we go back to kind of that as the of our

⁓ experience and this activity of healing, right? Embracing this opportunity to be able to become empowered and to heal and healing in terms of helpers healing ⁓ helpers and healing themselves, right? It's okay to not be okay. That is one of those things that it's hard for us to accept and it's hard for us to adopt as our own, right? Because it's a lot of times depending upon how you're looking at culture, if you're looking at it through race and ethnicity,

through gender, through economics, through neurodivergence, through sex and sex orientation, through religiosity. I mean, all of these different lenses, that one statement, it's okay to not be okay. It looks differently, it means something different, and it's truly okay depending upon where you are within that continuum of culture,

Well, and what I really appreciate about this, the conversation and kind of how we just dove into the deep end. We just dove into the deep end, y'all. What I appreciate about the conversation is that kind of what I hear you saying is if we are striving for workplace wellness, right? And healthy helpers, know, helping people and helping heal, ⁓ you know, then we really have to, I think, ⁓ honor the culture and

honor the complete, the holistic identity of our professionals out there, you know, fighting the good fight ⁓ in order to support their wellness. That's kind of what I, it's kind of what I'm taking from the conversation. And I also, you know, I'm tying in some other things that you brought up during the listening session. I really appreciated how you brought in this notion of collective care and interdependence and the idea that we're not meant to do this alone.

Altamit Lewis (11:30)
Mm-hmm.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (11:35)
So we have to address this as a systemic issue so that we can improve and empower our collective care. So I'm wondering, ultimate, what does that actually look like in practice for professionals who are used to being the ones that everyone depends on? How do you then, you know, what about boundaries? What about these things to prevent from, again, being overworked?

Right? And sacrificing yourself. If everybody's depending on you and you need to now be a part of this collective care unit, what does that look like in practice?

Altamit Lewis (12:09)
do feel like clinicians are really hard to, you know, really adopt this, right? But it kind of, you have to practice what you preach. You have to do the things that you're telling people to do because number one, you believe they work or you should, right? And so, you know, sometimes it's hard for us to do that. ⁓ I just think all answers with all the problems in the world, the answer is not separatism.

It's not isolation. It's not solo. We need each other. We are part of a system, right? And we need each other. when we try to do things on our own, independently, know, extreme independence is a trauma response, right? So at first, and I can only speak for my life and the generation that I've, I just feel like a lot of us in this generation of Gen Xs or elder millennials, but don't you dare call me that. ⁓

We go from being independent, doing the things, right? Because what society has told us, and then we land at this place, and it's like we go back to ancestral knowledge. We go back to collective, right? Because we realize, ⁓ I can do this all on my own. However, it's not feasible or sustainable. So let me gather a group of people, whether it's, you know, close knit friends or whatever. So I feel like it's a journey.

You start doing it all independently because that's what you're socialized to do and then you realize I need people. Like it's better because we're mammals and mammals thrive in community. So I think that collective turnaround is obviously individual but we go back to doing the things, right? ⁓ You first have to be open to it, right? And I think that's the hardest part with clinicians and helpers is we're not open to it. We, you know, as a therapist,

the most difficult clients I've ever had are clinicians.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (14:03)
Right. Yeah, we're the hardest parts.

Altamit Lewis (14:03)
Because you know all

the answers. So what would you tell your client? Then why aren't you doing what you would tell your client? Well, and then all these other things, right? So I appreciate that clinicians sometimes withhold that that's their profession when they come to see me, because it allows me to relax and they're relaxed because the minute you I'm like, okay, well, you know all the answers. But so I think we have to first be open. ⁓ And then sometimes it just looks like whether it's girls trips or

this, whatever you build community, you Zoombling, you doing this, like you start to build community and hang out and have conversations. I mean, I think that's what the beauty shop is all about and the barber shop, right? You get advice there, somebody's in your head and we have these conversations and it gets emotional and you get support and people show up for you. And so I just think extreme independence where there was a time people didn't show up, right? And so then we start to think that our needs are not.

something's wrong with our needs and really it's not the ask, it's who you're asking. And when we learn that we ask the right people, then we get support and we get follow-up and follow-through and people raise your crown when it's falling down.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (15:07)
Sure. So what it looks like, what collective care looks like in interdependence as opposed to the ⁓ extreme isolation or the extreme independence as you put it, ⁓ it sounds like it's seeking and identifying ⁓ your community and perhaps outside of the work of the job ⁓ is extremely important. I'm wondering how can

Altamit Lewis (15:31)
Mm-hmm.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (15:36)
know, employers and agencies and how can we establish this collective culture within the workforce? You know, how can we support people perhaps ⁓ exploring, know, embracing this process of self discovery and exploring their talents and their hobbies and their likes and dislikes as a person, again, looking at kind of the holistic view of self and identity. How can we support that?

⁓ in our agencies and in our workforces ⁓ if a lot of that work is being done outside of the job, if that makes sense.

Altamit Lewis (16:14)
Yeah, I just think it's a total shift. Like you do have some companies ⁓ that invest in their employees. So, okay, I will say it like this. Social determinants of health, right? These are things that affect people's lives. And let's take a managed care organization, right? You're managing people's health through health, you're the health insurance agency and you want to save money, right? And so,

you've got people who constantly need the medical services and maybe not the appropriate medical services, right? Like they're constantly going to the ER or urgent care, but they're not following up on the outpatient, right? So health insurance companies, the bottom line is to save a dollar. And they realize all of these things are happening, which is making costs extra exuberant. So what they start doing is looking at social determinants of health and realize, right, if we look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs,

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (17:02)
Sure.

Altamit Lewis (17:09)
The basic is safety and security, right? So a homeless person who may also have diabetes is not going to be concerned about taking their medication or attending doctor's appointments if they don't know where they're going to be laying their head at or when the next time they're going to eat. They're going to eat what's available and not be like, okay, this might raise my blood sugar, right? So health insurance companies have been looking

to invest in non-traditional things to address social determinants of health. So sometimes they do deal with transitional housing. Like when you think of health insurance, you don't think of housing. You don't think of Boys and Girls Club memberships. You don't think of these things. But hey, if I have support, then I can focus on other things. And so I do think in the workforce, there are some companies who I think, when Google first started, ⁓

they were invested in people. if you need a non-traditional work schedule because that's what works for you, go ahead and have it. We just need you to do the job. And so when you invest in people, you get a bigger return on investment. So people don't come to work for logos or labels or whatever. They go to work for their manager. So if they feel like their manager is invested in them, what's going on? What do you need? Outside of workplace stuff, you know,

Then when I need you to go the extra mile or work overtime or do something, you're more inclined to do that because you feel like I've invested in you. And right now jobs just have this fake, we're a family. We're a family until you leave the job, then nobody's going to talk to you and whatever, right? So you really have to invest in the people. It's a long game, but

If you really care about what someone got, what they have going on and how to help them, even if it's just a conversation, like if my, was going through a divorce and my manager was aware of that. So she would sometimes have discussions with me and what do you need? Like I noticed you're coming in late. Like, do you need to just start an hour later? Or do you, you know, things are changing. Now you've got to pick up your kid and you're doing all the things. So how can I help and support you? Do you need to work?

from home one day a week, right? These accommodations that we gotta have a damn diagnosis and disability to get when really that can move the needle. So I just think it's really investing in people. It's like happy wife, happy life. You make her happy, she's gonna make you happy. If she's not happy, you're not gonna be happy. So in order to invest in my happiness, I need to make you happy. And so it's the same thing.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (19:40)
Yeah, no, definitely investing in your people. ⁓ Again, looking at kind of their holistic needs, identity. ⁓ I love it. I'm thinking about ⁓ collective care is really, it's born from collectivist culture, right? Collectivist culture and merging that with workplace culture, ⁓ it looks like things like emphasizing the

the group harmony and like you said, that family, that sense of family that isn't fake, you know, within the context of the term in which you're working there, right? You stop working or you stop producing and then all of a sudden you're the, you know, the Cinderella of the family or the stepchild of the family, you know, without that sense of connection, care and harmony, right? Social cohesion and so having...

⁓ activities and things that are, are, you know, bonding a team and, and, and empowering ⁓ management, like, as you mentioned, you know, going to work for your manager, for your leadership, because you believe in the vision of your leader, ⁓ prioritizing what's the greater good, you know, prioritizing the group goals over individual accolades, individual desires and preferences, right? ⁓ And it's, so funny.

that we're talking about collectivist culture, especially because, you know, in this next part of the conversation, I want you to talk a little bit more about what you're working on right now, where your practice is headed in the near future, and how people can find you. By the time that they're listening to this podcast episode, you're not going to be ⁓ here local in Nevada. And where you'll be is actually an example of a collectivist culture.

Right? Exactly what we're talking about. So, so ultimate, can you, can you share a little bit more about, you know, what you're working on, where your practice is headed and how do we, how do we find you?

Altamit Lewis (21:40)
Well, we can find me at my website, www.sourceenergyconsultant.com. ⁓ I am gonna be transitioning to maybe doing more virtual environments because I will be moving to Japan May 2. so, yeah. And so what am I doing? In the past, I've done this before, clinicians may or may not be aware of a program called Military and Family Life Consultant. It's pretty much...

EAP, but they don't call it EAP, they call it non-medical counseling, right? Because there's no diagnosis. So it's doing non-medical counseling for individuals on military bases. And as you know, we have military bases worldwide. So in the past, I did this and was living in Germany and on some army bases doing this. ⁓ Nevertheless, my life changed because this was more a contractual, contract position and

⁓ Being a parent, need health insurance is important and it's mandated and so I don't know but you know for our solopreneurs Self-employment health insurance is a joke like you might as well just pay cash and work with your doctor because it's a joke So I just needed some stability so I kind of needed to have just full-time consecutive consistent work anyway fast forward the contract is a little different and

everything and so I've been looking to get back overseas. ⁓ My parents were military. I was raised in Asia. ⁓ I had an ROTC scholarship, So the military has always been something close to heart and so I never joined. I didn't never serve. ⁓ But my biggest clientele is military folks with Military OneSource, which is non-medical counseling for military folks. So anyway, as my kid is now about to be 20 and I'm no longer

ball and chain.

So I can now kind of live my life, right? It's been on hold as I've been a parent. And so it just happened to be some positions in Korea and Japan opened up and I applied and here we are. I got about 30 more days in country before I'll be providing some great non-medical counseling to those on the military base in Japan.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (23:55)
what I do love about what you're saying, so a lot of us in the field that are parents, going through the transitions with our children and with our families, right? The evolution of the family system definitely has an impact

on how we handle stress and pressure and workplace conflicts and things like that. And this is such an interesting period of life, know, and congratulations, first of all, because the way that you describe it is a sense of freedom in this, right? A sense of freedom to be able to pursue, ⁓ know, continue to pursue what you're passionate about, what feels like home, what feels familiar.

Altamit Lewis (24:24)
Thanks.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (24:39)
And again, as we're talking about collectivist culture and collective care, this is right in line. And I fully anticipate you coming back to the States and being even more of an expert in how do we come together and how do we make that, ⁓ you know, how do we align our workplace culture with, you know, what we see, ⁓ not only in the system of a collectivist culture like Japan, but then you're also talking about military systems, very fraternal.

very much ⁓ greater good and sacrifice and service before self, right? And so, on this newfound freedom. And I think that how we can all relate, especially those that are parents, that are ⁓ experiencing transitions and they're involving family systems. Some parents are experiencing kind of like this emptiness, right? Like our kids are growing up, they're leaving the home, they're going to college, they're moving out.

And there's a sense of, okay, what is my identity? Who am I going to take care of? Who am I lacing up the boots for and pushing through? And who am I going ⁓ to kind of externalize and say, this is my reason for ignoring myself? Like when we don't have anybody to help us ignore our own self and our own healing, then what do we've got to do? We've got to heal ourselves, right? And so I love... ⁓

how you're embracing this opportunity again to seek out this freedom and to ⁓ reshape your identity as someone ⁓ that again is increasing that expertise. It's amazing work what you do and I'm so excited for you. I want to kind of ask another kind of this is going to be like kind of lighthearted question because if you miss the listening session with Altamint

Altamit did this incredible, she gave this incredible account of wellness depicted across popular culture and throughout social and digital media, where you listed the characters and the actors and things like that that represented wellness or represented maybe a little bit of avoidance to the healing and to the health and wellness piece. Altamit, I wanna know, the listeners that join the listening session wanna know ⁓ which...

characters and the ones that you named? Which ones did you relate to specifically and if Altamit Lewis was played by an actor or a character that you mentioned, which one would it be and why?

Altamit Lewis (27:07)
Okay, do we kind of like want to do a little run through of who I listed or no, you just want me to pick?

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (27:12)
Yeah, no, let's talk about who you listed for those that maybe missed the listening session.

Altamit Lewis (27:16)
Sure. Okay. So the question was, you know, like if I could use examples from digital media, ⁓ who would I say represented wellness and who maybe doesn't represent wellness, right? So I started with the characters who don't necessarily represent wellness. ⁓ Olivia Pope from Scandal, right? She manages everything. She's the queen of composure. However,

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (27:32)
Right.

Altamit Lewis (27:45)
It's an example of how systems reward the appearance of control while punishing emotional honesty. Her strength is a mask, right?

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (27:52)
Right.

Altamit Lewis (27:52)
Then I listed Miranda Bailey from Grey's Anatomy, right? She is the leader that keeps on doing things and showing up for everyone, ⁓ even while she's unraveling on the inside. Vulnerability costs, right? Then I said Batman. Batman has unresolved grief, unhealed grief, and he made it a full-time job. He's not healing, he's just busying himself, right? Trying to feel better. And vengeance is not closure. Then I listed Harley Quinn, who is a former mental health

a professional who spirals with toxic attachment and she's confusing chaos for love and how unprocessed trauma makes us lose ourselves by trying to fix others, right? That's major. And then Anakin Skywalker, right? His vulnerability was weaponized. And I think that his downfall is what happens when sensitivity in men are shamed out of existence.

⁓ So I will say that I've played every one of those characters and I can understand I'm tired I'm tired and so that I list characters who are well, my favorite is Issa Dee from insecure She has these mirror talks. She's talking to herself and herself is talking back and she's working and processing right so I equate that to journaling and I've done some some more is array stuff. I journal I talk to self

I recognize that I'm a verbal processor. I literally have to say out loud to someone or something what is in my mind because I can then, when I hear it out loud, I'm like, okay, that doesn't make any sense, but it was making all kinds of sense when it was in my head. ⁓ It's just the ability to see my emotions, right? Like, I am feeling, ⁓

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (29:29)
right.

Altamit Lewis (29:37)
imposter syndrome or undeserving. I didn't realize that's what it was when it was in my head, but now that I've said it, I've acknowledged it, right? So when you bring the things from internal, external, when you shed light on it, it exists, but it doesn't get heavy. If you don't ever say anything, this imposter syndrome can grow and start whispering in your ear, my precious, telling you, you ain't it. So, you know, we've got, I just need to verbally process. So that is definitely me. Then I listed Moana, who listens to intuition.

I am starting to do that so much more now, right? Listening to self

Right? Some people call it spirit. Some people call it soul, whatever you want to call it. It's still connected.

And then there's Maribel from Encanto, right? She's calling things out. She's calling out dysfunctions.

She's saying, hey, this doesn't make any sense, even though it's been traditional. And I feel like as a collective, we're doing that, right? And then it's the Golden Girls. And that is about just showing up.

collectively healing. And so I think I've just tried to touch on all of those.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (30:35)
Yeah. Well, and it sounds too, and I think this is great, is you can't pick just one, right? Like if you settle on just one character to identify and to say, hey, this represents ⁓ me or my identity is represented through this one channel, the singular channel, that doesn't give you an opportunity to grow and to learn and to pivot when you need to adjust. And in the ways that you beautifully articulated is that

you know, it's adopting strengths from multiple characters. It's being able to kind of ⁓ find a baseline or reference point, you know, for somebody and you may see some unhealthy behaviors, ⁓ things that you identify that you may want to improve on, approve upon and learn and grow from. ⁓ But let's not, you know, limit ourselves to one character reference or to one representation because

understanding how life is, the human condition is adapting and pivoting and changing and growing and moving ⁓ in the space where, you know, there's trauma, there's tons of attacks to our identities. You know, it has to be more fluid than that. We have to be able to reshape. And so I appreciate, ⁓ you know, your answer of it's not just one. It's like Lay's chips. You can't have just one.

Let's look at multiple characters. I also appreciate you bringing up ⁓ the professional lived experience of working with historically intentionally marginalized groups, which is such important work. Thank you so much for the work that you do. ⁓ And I kind of ⁓ want to key in on this special population, right? And if you were speaking to...

the one person out there that may be listening to your podcast episode and saying, hey, you know what? This is representing all the different sides of me or of all of what I'm going through right now. So the one person that you hope hears this conversation and you hope is able to take something from this conversation and hold on to in their healing journeys and their healing practices, what do you want to resonate with that one person? And this is your mic drop moment.

Altamit Lewis (32:52)
Listen, go to therapy. Go to therapy. Therapy is great. And I know there's a stigma. Listen, if your car broke down today, you couldn't just manifest the knowledge on how to fix the car.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (32:53)
Go to there.

Altamit Lewis (33:07)
You have to take the car to the professional who's versed in working on the car, or you've got to learn how to work on a car. So when we go through things internally or relationally, we say we could just figure it out. You don't know what you don't know. And if you could just figure it out, you would have never let it get to this point. So it's OK to seek the services of the professional that's versed.

it's okay to learn how to do something different because one of my most favorite authors, Louise Hay, in the book, You Can Heal Yourself, says we're all victims of victims. Sometimes the dysfunctional pattern of our parents became our normal. And so if we didn't, if it wasn't modeled how to communicate effectively, how to resolve conflict, if we weren't modeled that, then we're either duplicating what we've seen and sometimes we're not seeing the most healthiest things.

So it's okay to go to therapy, even if that's where you you just, you get big upped. You get told, that's great. You're doing a great job, you know, because sometimes establishing boundaries sucks. It hurts. We're afraid. And someone to tell you, no, you did the right thing. And this is, you're gonna benefit from that. So I think everyone should go to therapy. I think everyone, listen, New Yorkers have no problem in mid-sentence being like, oh, my therapist told me, da, da, da, da, da.

Because it's a normal thing. And I can't wait for it to be normal, to be like, yeah, my therapist told me about that. But you know what I learned from my therapist? Like go to therapy. Even therapists go to therapy. you can't manage it all on your own. Cause if you could have, you would have, but it's here and it needs to be managed. And so let's manage it.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (34:45)
Yeah. Altamit, thank you so much for that. Yes, don't be out there with your cars broken down and trying to do the Flintstones and get somewhere, right? We don't know what we don't know. And it's okay to not know something. It's okay to say, you know what, I'm going to go and I'm going to learn today and I'll be right back. Right. So ultimate, thank you so much for carving out the time today to vibe with me today. It's, always a vibe, always a vibe.

Altamit Lewis (35:12)
It's

always fun.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (35:13)
And to those that are listening, please be sure to connect with Altamit Lewis and remember that when you're hearing this podcast episode, she's going to be 17 hours ahead. 17 hours ahead. So it'll be in the future. So, so, ⁓ back to the future. I love it. I love it. so be, be sure to, to, connect with Altamit Lewis and Altamit, will you say your email one more time for the listeners?

Altamit Lewis (35:23)
Mm-hmm. I'm being the future. We'll be in the future.

So yeah, my

handles on social on Instagram and TikTok are alew702 and then my website is www.sourceenergyconsultant.com.

Bianca D. McCall, LMFT (35:51)
There you have it, there you have it. Altamit thanks again and thank you for tuning in. This conversation is a reminder that the people doing the work also need the support and that sustainability, it must be built into the systems, not left up to individuals, right? We're talking systems and collective care. I'm your host with the NOCE Bianca D. McCall. And if this episode connected with you, share it with your teams.

your colleagues and your leadership, whoever's responsible for how care is delivered and supported. Subscribe, leave a review and stay engaged. We will see you next time. Take great care, Nevada. And that is all.