TUP EP 064

Voiceover: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Alexis Helfman, and an uplifter to me is someone who inspires and creates inspiration for [00:00:15] someone else. So someone who's supportive and caring and curious and uplifts.

Nomination: Hi, my name is Katie o' Dunn, and I am so excited to nominate Dr. [00:00:30] Emily Bailey. She is an amazing clinician specializing in OCD and anxiety disorders, but she also is just an incredible, incredible human who has navigated so much in her life and who continues [00:00:45] to step forward and bring joy. And laughter and compassion to every single person that she comes into contact with.

And I can't wait for you to meet her.

Aransas: Welcome to the Uplifters podcast. I'm Miranda Savas. Today I'm joined by Dr. Emily [00:01:00] Bailey, who was nominated for our show by the wonderful Reverend Katie O'Donnell, who you hopefully heard on an earlier episode. Emily is here today to share the story of How she became [00:01:15] this version of Emily Bailey.

thank you so much for [00:01:30] being here.

Emily: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited. I've been looking forward to this and I'm ready to answer the questions and maybe even discover a part of myself along the way that I didn't realize was really important.

Aransas: Oh, what a beautiful [00:01:45] perspective to have on conversation. So maybe we just Begin with the root question, Emily. How did you end up, Dr. Emily [00:02:30] Bailey, working in the space of OCD and anxiety specifically?

Emily: It all started way back when, and I guess if I was to think about my root, it actually probably would start with my dad.

My [00:02:45] dad was an emergency room physician, so I grew up in a very medical family in the sense that, you know, at dinner we would be talking about cases, he would bring psychology into it. So I think he actually really [00:03:00] started instilling this passion in me for understanding people, understanding humans, and while he understood it in a completely different context, he also saw people at their worst.

And I [00:03:15] think sometimes I receive a snapshot of someone initially, and that's at their worst. My goal is to start rolling the film and make them, hopefully help them at least, have some better snapshots, help them learn to [00:03:30] cope more, but I have to say my root is just my dad introducing this to me. He used to buy me psychology journals.

And we'd read them together, a little bit nerdy, but I embrace my nerd, so I will always do that. [00:03:45] I think that's where it all started, and from there, I had quite a few opportunities to work at practicums, and I realized that I really like anxiety. I really like OCD and I think I have a knack for it. I had an awesome [00:04:00] opportunity to work for Virtually Better where I learned how to integrate virtual reality into anxiety treatment.

Aransas: one of my favorite times that I use virtual reality [00:04:30] with a patient, he actually had a phobia of butterflies.

And I found this VR program where you were surrounded by butterflies in a field and it would interact with you, where if you put your hand out, the butterflies would move. And it was [00:04:45] just the coolest experience. And you know, I couldn't bring all the butterflies in the world into my room, unfortunately, the therapy room, just, I don't know what I would do with them out there, but that off offered a really good stepping stone.

Before we did real life in vivo [00:05:00] exposures. So I fell in love pretty quickly with anxiety and OCD Aransas: Wow. What is it your dad was seeing in you that made him bring you psychology books and not [00:05:15] surgery books?

Emily: Oh, well, I definitely couldn't handle blood. I definitely couldn't handle throwing up.

So I think at a very young age, he's like, she is not going to be a physician. I did not like the hospital. I did not like going in there. You know, before there was all [00:05:30] these different laws, my dad would be able to bring me to work and I would just wander around the ER while he did his job. I don't know how good that is.

But Definitely was not my area, but I always asked him about other [00:05:45] people. Why do they do that? I just showed a lot of inquisitiveness about what made people do certain things. And he also just brought up a lot of, you know, this person's really sick. This is what [00:06:00] happened. And I would think, well, why were they speeding?

Why did they get in that car accident? Why weren't they paying attention? He also minored in psychology, so it may have been his interest too, just trying to get me to read something other than Harry Potter.

Aransas: It's [00:06:15] interesting to me because all I want to talk about is human behavior and Why people do what they do, And so naturally,\I wonder what that is about my life that made me so interested in the human wiring and how people respond. So I'm curious how you would answer that question.

Emily: I just was very much a daddy's girl when I was younger, and I still kind of am, but that's a lie. I'm still a [00:08:00] dad's girl,. And I had a relationship with my mom that I didn't fully understand. That was pretty tumultuous. I think that's probably a big component as well.

Aransas: Yeah. I wonder how prevalent that is. I'm sure there's studies that have been done on that, that people who, it's like, if you talked about being immersed in the world of [00:08:30] psychology early on through books, and it's almost as if people who were around complicated personalities o began their study. of human behavior early on.

Emily: Yeah, it's almost like preparation. Like, how can I engage with this person in a way that's meaningful, respectful, but also establishes my boundaries. Even as a kid was [00:09:00] really important to me. Like, I need to establish boundaries with this person who seems boundary less.

And, I think that played a huge role and my dad guided me through that process at a pretty young age of how do we say no and just leave it at no.

Aransas: [00:09:15] Wow, it's hard.

Emily: Yeah, it's hard today to just say no and walk away. How do you do that? Parent to child and child to parent, it makes it a lot harder. So I think I was always immersed in understanding [00:09:30] family dynamics.

My whole study that I did for my dissertation was on fathers, their role in children, psychological disorders, and the maintenance of those disorders. And fathers play such an important role in [00:09:45] understanding the world around us in a different way than mothers do. Mothers are the caretakers, they're nurturing.

On the other hand, fathers, they're the rough housers, right? They put you in the real world, they put you in situations where you have to figure things [00:10:00] out. Not that mothers don't, but I think their role is so different and essential that we forget. We learn from our fathers. Just like our mothers, how we react and respond to people in our environment.

Aransas: Oh, that is so interesting [00:10:15] I have two daughters and my husband's not a roughhouser per se, but he is when compared to me, who is definitively not roughhousy. And, that's a new word, roughhousy. [00:10:30] Yes. And he is more likely to push the envelope on our girls expanding their wings and I am more likely to be more protective.

And I am so [00:10:45] grateful for that because otherwise I'm afraid my poor children would be wrapped in bubble wrap. Right. But he's really been essential in preparing them for the world and maybe I'm a little bit more essential for giving them the safe [00:11:00] place to come back home to and recover from the exposure.

Emily:. And like process what happened and work through that with them and I think both are essential when you have parents and it's like that yin and yang, they balance each other out but both are essential. We have to go out in the world [00:11:15] just like an anxiety. treatment. We have to go do things that are uncomfortable and then come back and either be like, that was a success. I did something bigger than I thought I could, or [00:11:30] maybe even just say I have an area of growth that I just discovered. And. How am I going to work on that?

Aransas: That's such a great way to describe it, right?

Because it puts us in a constant state of learning and normalizes the discomfort of learning. [00:11:45]

Emily: Yeah.

Aransas: Learning's uncomfortable. It really is. Yeah.

Emily: Failing is too. But it's necessary. [00:12:00] And when we face these really hard times, we have to be able to withstand stressors so we can not only just bounce back but be like, whoa, I did more than ever expected.

[00:12:15] Whoa, I'm a better person because of that. I would hope that people start seeing their failures and their weaknesses not as this thing to be ashamed of or shy away from, but something that actually made them who they are and stronger.

Aransas: [00:12:30] Hmm. Yeah. Give me an example of that.

Emily: Yeah. For social anxiety disorder, for example, you may be staying in your home, avoiding social contact.

When we face something that's really hard, maybe going to a party. Making a new friend, they're [00:12:45] now doing something that they've never done before. Maybe they've never been to a party before and that isn't just building resilience because resilience is bouncing back to where you were. That's going to a different level of almost like anti fragility where you are [00:13:00] becoming stronger than you were before.

You're becoming more capable and able to do new things. And that's what treatment is. A more personal example, licensure isn't quite the process. In clinical psychology, there's [00:13:15] definitely some stigma. There's three or four times that I recall very clearly having all the qualifications and was told that there was concerns because of something I experienced when I was a child.

And [00:13:30] something that You know, really shook me and was something that was tragic and it was used to justify why I can't do my job. Wow. I was hurt. I started questioning and doubting like any person would. And then I showed myself up in a way that I didn't think and opened my own practice.

and I'm stronger because of it. I became more [00:14:00] confident in myself despite other people having doubt.

Aransas: Wow. That's really incredible and extraordinary. And forgive me for saying, but

Emily: you're

Aransas: young.

Emily: I think I'm young. Yeah. I like to, I'm young at heart too. So I think

Aransas: [00:14:15] that sort of grittiness, it's something that many women talk about growing into.

In the very first episode of this podcast, I talked to the first Black female [00:14:30] and openly gay commercial pilot in the U. S. and I asked her this question, how did you do this thing that nobody had ever done in a room full of people who said it wasn't possible and you certainly couldn't be the one to do it?

And she was like, I just worked really [00:14:45] hard and I got it done. And I was so blown away by her lack of self doubt. That is a very rare quality, especially in someone so young. What [00:15:00] helped you find the courage and the grittiness to go up against those other voices?

Emily: There were still nights where I was like, uh, I'm too nervous or I'm [00:15:15] scared and I need to take this leap of faith for myself. So number one, I think I had a very strong role model. I think my dad was probably my strongest role model. I saw him in dirt quite a bit throughout his life as well, but he was faced with tragedy after tragedy within the [00:15:30] emergency room.

And so I always looked up to him. I always looked up to his ambition and hard work and he always told me I could do it. He never once doubted me

The other part is that YingYing, I had someone who's very [00:16:15] stable and strong, and I had somebody who struggled in my life too, and that was my mom. And throughout my childhood, I was having to figure out how to, you know, navigate life with my mom. She was very impulsive as a person.

[00:16:30] And we had a very tumultuous relationship. And when I was 17 years old, she died by suicide. And I was put into this world where nothing really made sense to me anymore. I had to pull myself out of one of the darkest moments that I didn't even put myself in.

And I think once you face something as serious and as just gut wrenching as that, I [00:17:00] think you learn to trust that you can get through other things that are really hard.

Aransas:I'm so sorry that. You had to have that experience. I'll tell you the other thing, that really came up for [00:17:30] me as you were talking, and this is something I've thought about a lot of my life at a really choppy, messy, early childhood, and my life really could have gone in a very different direction easily, but I had one person just [00:17:45] like you, who was stable and loving and told me I was amazing and lovable, and And I'm a big believer that one person is all it takes to transform a child's life.

[00:18:00] And I, I would be remiss to not point that out because I think we are all in that position to be that one person for children. A we can be that one person for anyone. It doesn't matter if you're a therapist. It doesn't [00:18:15] matter what profession you're in. You're capable of being that one person that someone that helps someone through a dark time.

And what I was also faced was, was this. Unrelenting stigma [00:18:30] of being the daughter of someone who died by suicide and not, people not understanding or people misjudging and having to try to navigate standing up for my mom and also [00:18:45] have her not be defined by her death. And the amount of support I got was incredible.

I learned that building a support system early on is absolutely essential in your life to get through even just a day that's hard to do laundry. I think the [00:19:00] thing that actually helped the most was there was like a mentorship program.through the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and they pair you with somebody who's experienced a similar loss Emily:

Aransas: One of the common responses is for a child to say,, how am I a player?

in this outcome. And so I'm curious how you [00:21:30] found your way through understanding that and, and understanding your mom with compassion.

Emily: Yeah, it was rough. I was told it was my mom's decision from the beginning. Emily: This was my mom. This was her deci sion. This had nothing to do with you.

I could see that, but then she's gone. And so that doesn't add up in my mind. How can someone love me and care about me be gone? [00:22:00] How can they not see me as enough to stay? And it took a lot of therapy, to be honest, a lot of therapy and a lot of recognizing that I never am going to fully understand [00:22:15] my mom.

I had to sit with that uncertainty of I'll never know why. I'll never know. What is it? The straw that broke the camel's back. Right. But what I did know is that my mom would have never wanted me to live a life [00:22:30] where my decisions were dictated by what she did. And I started thinking what's going to make me, I was a little selfish.

What is going to make me better? And that was [00:22:45] recognizing that My mom had problems that she didn't face adequately. I was a survivor of her suicide. And now what next? I needed to build my own life. \ I think the blame piece came probably way later, and it still flares up sometimes.

Like, oh, if I had just called her, if I had just slept at her house that night, if I had, you know, done X, Y, and Z, and the, [00:23:15] the truth of the matter is, like, I can't save someone unless they want to save themselves. And I had to save myself.I took everything that there was in me and tried to give myself peace of mind.[00:23:30]

That meant laying in bed some days. I think my self compassion was living my life even though she was gone, and that's this piece of self compassion and understanding that a lot of people don't think about. Self compassion is often seen as comfort, empathy, and [00:23:45] I had all of that for myself. I had had a huge loss.

The other part of self compassion is picking yourself up and realizing you don't want your life to be this. And so I kind of had to give myself tough love too, of, [00:24:00] okay, the thing that I never wanted to happen did. Now what am I going to do to make the most of my life? Yeah.

Aransas: And I love that you describe it as self compassion, because wherever we are in our lives, whatever it is we face, [00:24:15] That is the essential skill.

it's the judgment and the self criticism and the self doubt that stop us. [00:24:30] It's not the external forces.

Emily: If we pause and engage in the belief or the thought or the idea that we're not able to do something, we're expending our energy on.

Not moving forward on staying in the same [00:24:45] place we were before. I didn't want to stay in the same place in my life and not grow. And so part of that is let's get out of the comfort zone. Let's be super compassionate with ourselves that we're going to make mistakes along the way, but embrace the [00:25:00] fact that we're human.

And the face of doubt and not being sure if you can do the hard thing, whatever the hard thing is, you are so much more capable than you think you are. And we have to test that hypothesis. We can't just [00:25:15] say that we're capable and then hope that that positive affirmation is a magic trick. We have to say it and then do it.

Even when there's that ounce of doubt that maybe this [00:25:30] won't work out. There's a step that we have to take when we say I'm capable. And if my patients don't believe that they're capable, I'm going to do it for them. I will be the person that holds that capability, that hope, that belief that things can get better if [00:25:45] they can't hold it.

Because I have learned how to hold that for myself. And I'm hopefully going to teach how, my patients, how to hold that for themselves too.

Aransas: What does that look like?

Emily: How to just like hold hope,. [00:26:00] I think it's expanding beyond like this outcome could be good or bad. It's really exploring all the outcomes that could be, embracing them and knowing that even if the outcome is negative.

Well, I trust [00:26:15] myself enough that I could probably handle it or figure out someone else who could handle it with me. We all have to learn at some points that we can trust ourselves more than we trust our criticisms about ourselves. Because those are two different things. The critical part of [00:26:30] us is different than who we are.

We can have this critical part of us that's like, you suck, you can't do this. And then there's us. Those are two different things. I can have critical thoughts about me and not attend to them and choose to believe that I [00:26:45] can, I'm capable, and that I'm more than that. And I think it just takes practice.

Aransas: Yeah, I think it takes collecting evidence.

Emily: Why are we collecting evidence for all the negative outcomes? What if we like paused for a [00:27:00] minute and collected the evidence that maybe something good's going to happen? And that doesn't mean for sure that it will, but why not like start like a little jar of all these things that you've been through and remind yourself, wow, I went through that, [00:27:15] and in this moment, I'm doubting my ability to go through this new stressor, but look at this jar of things that I've overcome.

I think it's reminding ourselves that we're way stronger than we ever think.

Aransas: We are, [00:27:30] and We need people around us who can help us see that no matter where we are in life. So Emily, like so many uplifters, you pour a ton of your personal purpose, your energy, [00:27:45] your time into others. How do you take care of yourself?

Emily: I listen to my body and that sounds like the most standard response. I think there's [00:28:00] days that my body needs to get out and run and really be physical. And I think there's days that my body says, Emily, you need to curl up with a good book under your heated blanket and drink some hot chocolate.

I pause and ask myself, what do I need? And it can sound silly and that's okay. I'm going to embrace the silly. It's so easy to get wrapped up in life and not realize that you're running yourself ragged.

So having those safety nets. [00:28:45] Right? Where they're like, Huh, I noticed that you didn't leave the office the whole week to do anything. What's going on? Or my dad's favorite. You haven't [00:29:00] done your workout yet When's that happening, Emily?

Right? You're allowed to be a human outside of being a psychologist. So those nudges are helpful too.

Aransas: They are. And having [00:29:15] people you trust enough to give you those nudges, because sometimes those nudges can feel awful, but then there are people who you know are on your team.

Aransas: right?

your dad is an awesome coach and teammate it sounds like. And I think there are so few stories of dads out there. [00:30:00] You know, I think it's really beautiful. I'm so glad to meet you, Emily.

Emily: I am. I'm so glad that I got to speak with you and we got to explore my life in a way that I haven't really examined before.

It was very helpful and you're just such an encouraging presence. [00:30:15]

Aransas: Oh, thank you for being here. Thank you for listening to the Uplifters podcast. If you're getting a boost from these episodes, please share them with the Uplifters in your life. And [00:30:30] then. Join us in conversation over at TheUpliftersPodcast.

com. Head over to Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast, and like, follow, and rate our show. It'll really help [00:30:45] us connect with more uplifters, and it'll ensure you never miss one of these beautiful stories. Mmm. Ah,

Musoc: big love painted water, sunshine with rosemary. And I'm [00:31:00] dwelling the perplexing, though you find it flexing.

Toss a star in half for be around best love for relish in a new prime land, a dream in springtime dance. With that, all [00:31:15] hindsight, bring the sun to twilight. Lift you up Woah,

Music: lift you up Woah, lift you up [00:31:30] Woah,

lift you up

Lift you up.

Lift you[00:31:45]

lift.

[00:32:00] Beautiful. I cried. It's that little thing you did with your voice. Right, in the pre chorus, right? Uh huh. I was like Mommy, stop crying. Mommy, stop crying. You're disturbing the peace.