Dorothy: [00:00:00] What does one woman’s fight against breast cancer have to do with the beginning of the self care movement? Dr. Sean Fitzpatrick is here to explain during this episode, but this isn’t a history lesson. As the executive director of The Jung Center, he gave me and all of the family hope during the darkest times of COVID.
He’s done that for countless others in the Houston area. Dr. Fitzpatrick and I talk about how the pandemic continues to take a toll on the breast cancer community. You’ll hear about the need for caregivers to embrace self care. He encourages breast cancer patients to engage in self acceptance and much more.
Learn more about Dr. Fitzpatrick’s work and the Jung Center by clicking on the link in our show notes. When you subscribe to our show, you help us grow. Someone you know may need to hear this story, so please share with your family and friends. And consider [00:01:00] supporting our mission. Your donation can help save the life of an uninsured woman.
Let’s Talk About Your Breast. A different kind of podcast presented to you by The Rose, the Breast Center of Excellence and a Texas treasure. You’re going to hear frank discussions about tough topics. And you’re going to learn why knowing about your breast could save your life.
So Sean, you’re a, an accomplished photographer, you’re an author, you’re the executive of the Jung Center. But you know, when I think about you, I think most often about you being the champion for people who are facing tough times.
Sean: Oh, thank you.
Dorothy: Yeah. And even though you’ve had an affiliation with The Rose for quite a while, through Melanie and uh, she, she was our favorite person to find interns for us when she was with the uh, University of Houston.
Sean: Yeah, she was, she was ran the non profit leadership alliance.
Dorothy: Right. Oh, that [00:02:00] was, yeah, that was such a fun time. But what I appreciated about you most was during COVID. Do you know, I remember you, you started talking to us and maybe I’ve got this wrong, but you were like in your garage.
Sean: That’s right.
Dorothy: And you had lights on you and you were trying to just help us have, oh, it was so, it was so important to me to know I could just.
Turn you on and have that voice telling me we’re going to get through this time and let’s explore what we’re feeling And let’s don’t stuff it down. And you know, so thank you for that.
Sean: Thank you. I’m so touched I’m so glad that was meaning that was meaningful.
Dorothy: Oh, it was it wasn’t and continues to be with your other your other talks In fact, you did one not too long ago.
I think where you were going through What it takes for us to get through times about being present and, um, you know, really paying attention, having [00:03:00] people around us, you know, that support has become so important.
Sean: And something that is not, um. Um, you know, when we, uh, it’s something that’s become in a sense more, more difficult to access.
Um, so when, when I, I’ve been talking in different contexts for some time about the needs about self care and about the needs of people who are doing work with those who are suffering, so we were touching human suffering in some way. You know, there’s the healthcare professionals, social workers, psychotherapists, teachers, nurses, attorneys and others. And, um, I, at the beginning of the pandemic, I realized that the kind of luxuries we had about, taking time to talk [00:04:00] about the dimensions of self care and so on that they were, uh, we just didn’t have that time anymore.
So many, particularly health care providers, were working, um, really kind of superhuman hours , and seeing much more human suffering than they had before. And so we’ve really kind of boiled it down rather than having five dimensions of self care and three questions you ask yourself over time. And, um, that we didn’t have to feel like we had the luxury for that.
So we boiled it down to three simple steps. And the first is to just allow ourselves to be present. It is so difficult in this world. Um, to be in our bodies and to not have our attention anywhere, but on our, on our experience, like what’s actually happening within us, between, you know, technology has been. It’s just transformed our lives. You know, we carry cell phones around [00:05:00] with us, and we have computers, and we have, we have all these devices talking to us, and actually really demanding our attention. There’s so many people, um, forces in the world that want our attention so that they can monetize it.
Among other things. And, uh, so just being separated from those demands on our attention and being present with our actual experience is rare.
Dorothy: Right. Now take us through how we get in touch with our bodies.
Sean: Yeah. You know, uh, I think that infants, newborns, right, children have this instinctively and over time we lose it. For us. It is a matter of, if we can, um, we can do this anywhere, uh, just allow ourselves to notice, uh, four things that we’re hearing. Uh, in the environment, what are three or four things that I’m hearing? And even in a quiet [00:06:00] space like the studio space, I can hear multiple things. I can hear a little, just a little bit of noise from the team off camera.
And I can hear the HVAC system quietly running in the background and kind of hear my own voice and your voice. And so that those moments are taking, say, what are three things I see? They bring us to this moment. And out of our inboxes and the things we’re imagining that are going to happen or maybe the things we were doom-scrolling on our, you know, on our phone.
Um, so it’s not, it, it’s not, uh, complicated. It’s simple. It doesn’t mean it’s easy. Um, but beginning with that, then we can begin to pay attention to what is actually happening in our bodies. So, if the first step is to get present, the second step is really so that we can feel what we’re feeling.
And one way, you [00:07:00] know, you may be used to us talking about emotion, right, and kind of sort of comparing thought to emotion or saying they’re two different ways of, they’re, they’re two different things. They’re actually, um, uh, Jonathan Haidt, who is a great, uh, psychologist, who’s up at, um, I think he’s at NYU currently, talks about emotion and thinking is just two different kinds of cognition. So it’s emotion is non rational cognition and, and thought is rational cognition. Well, so it’s all valuable for us in navigating the world, but emotion is the label that we put on physical experiences that we have. So for instance, like I, I’ve spent my life struggling with anxiety and living with anxiety and learning from anxiety.
And I don’t feel anxiety. What I feel is my gut going. You know, um, what I feel is sweat, you [00:08:00] know, or during the pandemic I got a new manifestation of it, which is that my chest started to feel really tight because of course I was constantly checking to see, Oh, has the virus taken hold, you know? So if, when we take that, when we’re able to, when we have the space in our life, space in our schedule, maybe even physical space, to just bring our attention to what’s happening in our bodies, we, it, it brings us out of.
anxious states and into our, um, natural systems that help us regulate, um, regulate our experience. So if we can begin to just feel what we’re feeling, notice those sensations like of the way that my, my feet feel on the floor right now, they’re in my shoes and the shoes are on the carpet and the carpet we’re sitting on the first floor.
And so the carpet is likely on top of on some sub flooring and then the concrete and then the earth. And you know, I can feel the, The chair beneath, you know, the back of my [00:09:00] thighs and my lower back. And then I can also start to pay attention to my breath and what my breath is doing. So, we have natural systems that help us respond to change and threat in the environment.
We call that our sympathetic nervous system. And so when that kicks on, our breath becomes, breathing becomes shallower and our eyes, uh, dilate a little bit so we can let in more light. Our digestive system kind of shuts down and our heart rate goes up, our blood pressure can go up. Those are all, below the level of our awareness and largely below the level of our control.
Those things kick on as a way of helping us respond to crises when we’re paying attention. To that, I think a lot, a lot of us, certainly I do live in a state of perpetual, like heightened arousal, particularly if you’ve struggled with anxiety, waiting for the next thing to, to go wrong or the next thing you have to anticipate.
And, but if, if I can do the simple act of just paying [00:10:00] attention to what’s happening in my body and notice, am I breathing shallowly or, or am I breathing from my belly that moment? When I notice that I’m breathing shallowly and can actually have a little, I have a little bit of control there. And I can start to allow myself to breathe more deeply into my belly.
Something really remarkable happens when I do that, which is that it activates what’s called the parasympathetic nervous system. And that’s, that’s Uh, allows us to come out of that state of heightened arousal and back into a state of equanimity and normal functioning, which for me means the end of my guts going, you know, and the tightness and so on and so forth.
So just allowing ourselves to feel what we’re feeling then makes it possible for us to maybe change our experience again, very simply through noticing how we’re breathing and starting to change that.
Dorothy: It’s almost too simple. [00:11:00]
Sean: Yeah, well, and again, simple is not easy.
Dorothy: No, no, that’s true, that’s true.
Sean: And I think there are a lot of forces that keep us— they keep us in heightened states of arousal, like they’re, we, we experience threats around us all the time, naturally. They may not be real in the way that others watching it would say, Oh, that’s a tiger clearly, you know, clearly marching towards you. Right. It’s, that doesn’t matter. It’s more about what our bodies perceive, like, what’s happening below the surface of our awareness.
And if we’ve lived a life that has included a lot of threat, right, so those of us who’ve experienced trauma, uh, in our childhood or the course of, course of our lives, it becomes more difficult because our bodies are really attuned to looking for threats in the environment. Looking for threats.
Dorothy: Yeah. You know, I’m always surprised when I’m doing yoga and my teacher says, “put your shoulders down,” you know, cause I, I go around like this all the time.
I mean, and that’s what she was trying to explain to me. You, you got to relax a little [00:12:00] bit into this or you’re not going to get the benefits of it.
Sean: But we just automatically—
Dorothy: we’re just automatically like that. So tell me a little more about, you’ve been a psychotherapist for a long time.
Sean: Yeah, it would be, I guess, about 15 years since I graduated from UH Clear Lake, which is where I did my training as a clinical psychology degree.
And it’s just remained such a privilege, you know, to do this work.
Dorothy: And then you’ve been at the Jung Center almost all your life.
Sean: Yeah, yeah. It started when I was, um, well, I started in 97. I don’t remember how old I was then. 24, 25, something like that and, uh, and have been really privileged to kind of grow up professionally at the Jung Center.
Uh, they had roles for me and, you know, I’m a, I am a psychotherapist professional. My role at the Jung Center is not to provide psychotherapy. My role is as an educator and as a leader, [00:13:00] right, administrator. And also I seek, I seek clients. I have a small private practice, uh, which is. Which has been a privilege and also really important, I think, for my experience of meaning and for my well being in the world because I get to Do the work that you know well, which involves spreadsheets and talking and, and being a public face for the organization, talking to people and, uh, but then I also get to have conversations of profound immediacy and intimacy, uh, with people about what really matters in our lives, you know, uh, and that is, it just, you know, fills my cup.
Dorothy: So this se— this uh, season your spring session, is that what you call it?
Sean: Yeah, it’s a semester. Yeah.
Dorothy: Yeah, semester. And, uh, the whole focus [00:14:00] as I was reading the, the brochure was towards wellbeing.
Sean: Yeah.
Dorothy: And as I went down each of the topics, I went, what does it have to do with wellbeing? Oh, well that makes sense. You know?
Sean: Yeah.
Dorothy: So tell us what in your mind is wellbeing?
Sean: So the very first thing I’m going to tell you is that you need to interrupt me at any point. Because I’ll talk at length. Get on my soapbox and go.
Dorothy: No, no, no. We will, we will stop you. But, you know, I, I just heard some things. As much as I think I know all this stuff that I really hadn’t paid attention to.
So, yeah.
Sean: Well, so, uh, there are probably as many definitions of well being as there are people. And, but I’ll, I’ll start with the definition that the American Psychological Association uses. And I’m paraphrasing, um, but they, what they say is that Well being is a state of happiness or contentment and it’s one that involves, uh, not experiencing low levels of [00:15:00] distress and high levels of psychological and mental functioning, you know, or, and having generally a good outlook on life.
So If well being is, I think, aspirational, like it’s a, it’s a, it’s an experience that we want to have or a state that we want to be in, then self care is one of the tools or one of the paths toward that, toward, toward that experience of well being. And, uh, You know, one way of thinking about well being, I think, has to do with relationship.
It has to do with, first of all, the relationship I have to my own experience. One of the things that, in my psychological training, sort of the tradition that I’m a part of, which is the Jungian psychological tradition, uh, one of the insights has been that we actually are not, We, we imagine that we are singular.
Like I am, I am [00:16:00] me and nothing else. But actually we are multiple, each of us. It’s like we are a community. There are different parts of ourselves. And neuroscience has borne this out in some really interesting ways. So David Eagleman, who is a relatively famous neuroscientist, who was here in town for a long time and has left to Stanford.
He talks about, uh, Are from a, from a brain standpoint, from a neural standpoint that we’re actually like a team of rivals, uh, or an inner parliament, like there, there’s so many different voices within us and they, they’re jostling all the time to get control of the wheel, you know, or the mic, you know, my mouth, you know, and they build coalitions, you know, um, so, uh, I—, If we’re thinking about wellbeing as a series of relationships, the first one is noticing the part, like noticing the community within myself and having relationship to those different parts of myself.
And the part that some of those parts may be, I don’t want to have a relationship with, [00:17:00] right. And that’s the tough work. Um, there may be things that are, you know, other people have told us are wrong, right. Or they may be impulses or desires we have that, uh, we’re ashamed of, or, but all of the parts matter.
They may not all be able to be expressed in the ways they want to be expressed, but all the parts matter because they’re here to help us navigate through the world in a whole way and in a way that’s connected to meaning. The second relationship then is for the relationship that we end up experiencing to others in our communities, right?
Those kinds of relationships. Crucially, I think that’s been the most impacted during the pandemic, right? So our ability to connect with other people is essential for our well being, right? And at a time when we most needed support, we most needed the, um, stability and care of others, we were cut off from it. [00:18:00] Um.
Dorothy: So what were some of the fallout from that. Do you think we’re still in it?
Sean: Oh, yeah. I, you know, loneliness. And, uh, isolation are, um, are their own pandemic and the Surgeon General have, has done a wonderful job recently of spotlighting that. So this is a, this is a, the core threat to the mental wellbeing of our country is loneliness.
And it really, yes, it really was exacerbated by the pandemic, both from the initial effects of the, you know, of the isolation that we were, we imposed on ourselves to protect ourselves, but then from the patterns that emerged from that, right? So we got out of the habit. Well, you can see it in, uh, some really material ways, right?
So I love the movies and the movie industry has been on the verge of falling [00:19:00] apart. Over the course of the last three or four years because people don’t go to theaters anymore, so like, you know, and that’s I think a symbol of the communal, the way it’s affected our community across the board. We’ve gotten out of the habit, we’ve adapted to life without being in public spaces together and breathing the same air, which was so threatening for so long, but we’ve lost so much along the way.
believe that we can get some of those needs met in their fullness using Zoom, right, or using technology. And I am a huge, um, fan of what these video technologies have allowed us to do, how they’ve allowed us to maintain connection and grow connection. But it’s also, it’s also cut out a huge part of what it means to be a human being in relationship.
Dorothy: So are we going to have a whole new Um, field of psychology that has to do with living with Zoom for the rest of our life. I mean, you know, I [00:20:00] can’t tell you how many people, uh, have said, I go from one meeting to the other. I used to have 15 minutes between so I could even go to the restroom. Or we used to have a travel time that at least broke some of that constant being in a meeting type thing.
Sean: Right. So, so it’s, it’s interesting that you talk about the, the travel time. So to be here today, I, you drove a half an hour from, from our offices down in the, in the museum district. And I love that time in a way that I didn’t appreciate before the pandemic. You know, the, our word commute. Uh, in its Latin roots means, uh, to change with, it’s a really about transforming.
And I, in the most practical way, like when I leave my office, I’m pretty introverted person. So spending my day in relationship with people and also sometimes in group, big groups with people and as a therapist in a, maybe some real [00:21:00] intensity with people, like at the end of the day, my energy is, my tank is empty.
Dorothy: I understand.
Sean: Yeah. And. And that time when I am not. Um, the director of the Jung Center, a therapist, and I’m not yet a dad and a husband. That time in the car ends up being really precious, you know, and we have lost that, right? That, that, that commuting time, that time to transform, uh, from one social way of being to another social way of being and to be in myself is, you know, is something that has, we have lost a lot.
Because I, because you’re right. I can just go from one meeting to the next. I have a client pop up on the screen after that, right?
Dorothy: But, you know, something you just mentioned, I never thought about it. Even that going from being the CEO to being the wife or the husband. You know, if you walk [00:22:00] through a door, And that’s the only time you have that chance to move from that.
You don’t move.
Sean: That’s right. Yeah.
Dorothy: You know, Patrick always talks about, You have that CEO voice. And then I go, What does that mean? And he says, He says it’s an entirely different level. And, and I realize what you’re saying is because we don’t trans— transition from one to the other. Oh, wow. I had not thought of that.
Sean: It’s these small things that are simple and that really do change how we experience the world. When, uh, during the pandemic, I had the privilege of working with a lot of public health workers. So I worked closely with the leadership of the, uh, county of Harris County Public Health Department. And, um, and you could really see the cumulative effect of being in those roles that were acutely [00:23:00] heightened over time on the— on the public health workers well being because it was them against them against the enormity of the virus and, uh, and, and in a system that was, had been wildly and systematically defunded for decades, right?
Prior to, to that, that there was nothing left, but them, uh, and, and not nothing left, but them between us and, and, and mass, much more mass loss than we had. Um, and, but it was hard for them to then get out of the roles and that state of, um, heightened arousal and attention that comes with it.
Dorothy: Right. Right.
Sean: Um, and for some of them, I think it’s still very much a work in progress, leaving, leaving that state.
Dorothy: So you, you touched upon loneliness. What, what do you think is our biggest issue [00:24:00] today? Is it learning to communicate again? Is it readjusting to this new world? Is it—
Sean: you know, I, I probably, if you asked me this question at 10 minutes from now, I’d have a different answer tomorrow. So, you know, in this moment, what I would say, and I want to circle back to the notion of self care and its relationship with wellness.
So self care is, Uh, something I, as I said, I spend a lot of time teaching about and showing up in different spaces, um, primarily with people who are in, in human service of some sort. And self care is fascinating. It has a connection. The origin of self care has a Uh, a, a direct connection to breast cancer, uh, and the experience, the lived experience of breast cancer.
So, uh, it’s a very new, uh, idea, not an experience. Of course, [00:25:00] throughout, throughout human history, people have taken intentional steps to attend to the, their needs, right? That’s, that’s not new. That’s part of being human. But the concept of self care itself comes from, um, an extraordinary, um, Uh, leader. She’s not with us anymore.
She died in the nineties. She was an extraordinary poet and teacher and activist, uh, really an organizer on behalf of black women. Her name is Audre Lorde. And so Audre Lorde was, um, in the, the 1980s, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. And as I say, she was a really influential writer. So not, not just her poetry, but also her essays.
And she was working. She, she, she was faced with this decision early 80s, she was, um, a black woman, single mother, uninsured, uh, trying to make the difficult decision of whether she was going to just live out what life she had left, uh, serving her values, which really was serving the needs of black women [00:26:00] and the, and the, the consciousness raising work that she was doing, um, helping with, um, uh, women’s groups that were forming in the, you know, in the 1970s and the 1980s, whether she was going to live her life out.
According to serving those values or if she was going to take the step back to seek treatment And this is again the early 1980s and a difficult treatment path.
Dorothy: Yes, absolutely
Sean: And if she was struggling with this she wrote in her journal caring for myself is not self indulgence it is self preservation and that is an act of political warfare because she understood for herself as a black woman that keeping her voice in the world, keeping her body in the world, and her psyche in the world, her soul in the world, didn’t just affect her children or her partner, it affected all of those people on whose behalf she was [00:27:00] speaking and working.
And so, in order for her to, in order for those values that she had to continue to be served, for those people on whose behalf she was working, to continue to, um, um, be helped and to grow in strength and power. She needed to stay in the world and so it was essential for her to pay attention what her needs were and I can and do— That’s why I told you stop me because I’ll talk for an hour about that sentence What happened linguistically is that that sentence in her journal then got circulated among the communities of activists and people women who were inspired by her. And they recognize themselves in it because they recognize that they were spending so much time caring for other people and caring for the cause that they lost themselves. Right. That there were divorces and there were addictions and there were heart attacks, right?
And just exits from the work because it was overwhelming. [00:28:00] Over time, that passage got shortened to self-care.
Dorothy: Interesting.
Sean: Yeah.
Dorothy: But you know, what you’re describing, I hear from our patients even now.
Sean: Do you?
Dorothy: You know, it’s, it has to do with, I put myself last. I, I was taking care of everybody in the household. I, my husband was ill, my child was ill.
Sean: Right.
Dorothy: And all the time knowing that something was going on, you know, so.
Sean: All the time knowing that something was going on with them. Something was wrong with them.
Dorothy: We, we, uh, we hear that way too often. So there, there’s still a lot of work to be done there.
Sean: And so much of it is social. So, self care, I think one of the One of the stories that I take from that sentence that Audre Lorde wrote is that self care emerged as a way of dealing with the failure of community to care for us and So I am ambivalent about self [00:29:00] care. It is absolutely essential. We’ve lost the capacity, Particularly caregivers, right. And women are tend to be the caregivers. We’ve lost the capacity to attend to our own bodies and our own experience in because other people need it more because socially we’ve decided that other people are more important right and So the and this gets back around to the notion of what we actually need right now. You were talking about loneliness We were talking about loneliness that. You know, there’s a reason that we’re lonely, and that is because the structures of recognizing and growing, growing our understanding of our interdependence have been really eroded over time. So, we, the answer to that, I think in this, moment is really recognizing it and beginning [00:30:00] to address it by consciously reaching out for relationship consciously Working with others to create spaces where we do come together and talk about our experiences Where we can have we can Relax the one sided way in which this culture expects us to be independent.
Uh, and recognize that that is part of the story but not the whole of it. That fundamentally we are inextricably bound to each other.
Dorothy: To each other.
Sean: Um, and to your story, the woman with breast cancer who is the caregiver is making It’s possible for others to experience what they imagine is independence, right?
When really what they’re doing is, is, is, is dependent on that sacrifice of the caregiver, right?
Dorothy: Sean, we’re [00:31:00] going to have to close this up. Do you have one last word of wisdom? I think we’re going to have to have you back.
Sean: I would love to.
Dorothy: We’ve got to talk about community and what that means in our own self care.
The one last Thought for our audience.
Sean: For your for your audience. Ah— I I would just say that the journey that for those who are experiencing a diagnosis and are moving through breast cancer diagnosis right now. I can’t can’t say enough as I know you and your team do that you have to pay attention to what your needs are right now. You have and that may be the hardest work of all is pushing back against those in your life who— would, or just unconsciously have depended on you and expect you to be certain things right now. You are what’s important, and that’s important for the whole system.
Dorothy: So true.
Sean: If you don’t take care of yourself, the system will fall [00:32:00] apart. So you have to preserve yourself, as Audre Lorde tells us.
Dorothy: Excellent. Thank you so much for being with us today.
Sean: My, really my joy and my privilege and my pleasure. You are a hero to me and to this community. Dorothy, thank you for all you do, and thank you for all The Rose represents in the world.
Dorothy: Oh, Sean, so sweet of you.
All right. Till next time.
Post-Credits: Thank you for joining us today on Let’s Talk About Your Breasts. This podcast is produced by Speke Podcasting and brought to you by The Rose. Visit therose.org to learn more about our organization, subscribe to our podcast, share episodes with friends, and join the conversation on social media using #Let’sTalkAboutYourBreasts.
We welcome your feedback and suggestions. Consider supporting The Rose. Your gift can make the difference to a person in need. Remember, self care is not selfish. It’s essential.
