There is this idea that women have to compete against each other to be

successful. This idea of difficult wraps into this

idea of competition. Fine, if that makes us

difficult. I'm difficult. Let's start Team Difficult. All right, here

we go. I'm going to pretend I'm pushing record, because that feels right. Okay, I'm

pressing record. Boop. Hi, everybody.

I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different Not

Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that. That there

are a lot of people in this world walking around feel broken, and the reality

is you're just different, and that's fine. If you've known of my

existence for any period of time, you might be familiar with this

thing that is on a lot of our shirts that is actually trademarked.

By the way, I have a us trademark on this, which is something that I

have not said out loud yet, but I did receive my us trademark on this

and several other things. This one is Team Difficult,

which came from something. This is going to shock you. This

is going to shock you. It came from something stupid I said on the Internet,

but it stuck. I know, I know. You don't believe

that I would ever say anything stupid on the Internet.

Apparently L2 said something stupid on the Internet, like

jaw droppingly stupid. It's everywhere. Wow. What did they even say?

As if that is not what my entire brand is built on or what I'm

doing right this very minute. But we were having

a conversation at one point, or I was responding to a conversation at one point

about this kind of thing that gets hurled at women as, like, an invective

where a woman doesn't just say, yes, sir,

whatever you want, sir. And then all of a sudden, they're difficult. And

so I started saying, fine, if that makes us difficult, I'm difficult.

Let's start Team Difficult. And I put a hashtag on it, and I thought it

was funny. It was really the reason I did it. And then people started calling

themselves Team Difficult. Yes, we're Team Difficult. Stronger than the toughest

storm. We rise, we fight, we transform

together. Ever bold and putting it in their bios. And I was like, oh, well,

this is a thing that is happening. So, of course, being me, I made shirts

and I sent everybody shirts that say Team Difficult. Because of course I did. Because

of course I did. And people stop me all the time and ask me about

my Team Difficult shirt. So, like, what does that mean? It's usually women.

And I'm like, oh, well, have you ever been called difficult at work? And they're

like, oh, yes, I have. Almost universally. Absolutely. I

have. And I was like, if they're going to call us difficult, we're going to

be difficult. We were up in New Hampshire once, and I had dropped the dog

off a daycare. Mind you, my children never went to daycare, but

my dog went to daycare. Just if you want to know what the hierarchy of

living things in our house is. Anyway, so I was driving back from

dropping my dog off at daycare, and I, of course, had to stop at this

gas station that has the crispiest Cokes. And

I was wearing my Team Difficult shirt, and I walked up to this woman behind

the counter, and she said, what's Team Difficult? And

I explained this to her, and she looked at me, and she goes, oh, my

God. Oh, my God. That happened to me at my last job. Somebody was stealing,

and I told them that the person was stealing, and instead of

listening to me, they told me I was being difficult. They fired

me. They kept him, and now he's in jail. And I

was like, are you in jail? And she was like, no, I just work at

a gas station. And I was like, that sounds better than jail to me. Good

for you. I'm proud of you. When I went to drop off the dog the

next day, I stopped at the same gas station. I brought her a shirt and

a mug that said team Difficult. And I was like, you're one of us, baby.

She was like, this is so nice. And I was like, we're forever friends now.

But anyway, I mean, it came from my own experience and feeling like if I

said anything in this meeting or if I responded to the way that somebody responded,

that they were going to think it was just me being a problem and not

that there was an actual issue that they needed to resolve. And it got so

bad that at one point, I was having a

male colleague go share my ideas in

meetings. I know you already have a stack of proposals, but these are the ones

I think will move the needle. All right, let's hear him. Because they would accept

it from him with no problem. But if it came from me or one of

the other women on my team, it always represented conflict. Always.

But if he brought it to them, they were fine with it. If we convinced

our boss it was his idea that would work. I made myself

so insanely small because I was so

scared they were gonna hurl this word at me again. And I will never forget

the first time I heard it in that context. I had a friend who I

worked with. She was actually the person who got me hired. And our boss

had come up with a spectacularly stupid

idea. Like the kind of idea that could cost us clients and make us

look so wildly unprofessional and unprepared.

And we were talking about it, and I was like, well, let me just call

him and tell him that this is a bad idea. And she was like, I

don't know. I wouldn't do that. And I was like, why not? This is a

bad idea. This is gonna cost us clients. And she goes, you might just have

to let him do it. And I was like, but why would we do that?

It's gonna cost us clients. And she goes, listen, they.

They think you're difficult. It was like I had been stabbed in

the heart. I had no idea what she could possibly be talking about,

because in my estimation, all I had ever tried to do

was make sure that they didn't do the stupid things like he wanted to do

that was gonna create a massive problem. Somehow that got me

branded as difficult. I went from being

so secure in not so secure. It had taken me a while to get

secure, but secure that they trusted my

expertise. They knew that I knew what I was doing, that they had faith in

me to worrying about every single

word that came out of my mouth. I stopped speaking up in

meetings. They made a couple of really, really bad hires that I just let them

make that I normally would have said something about. One of

them lasted, like, all of three weeks. And I remember one of my bosses

saying, like, I can't believe you didn't call this one out during the hiring process.

And I just was like, oh, I must have missed it. And I'm thinking, like,

would you have listened? Of course I knew this person was going to suck. But

you've hired other people who sucked. You've had lawsuits on your

plate because of other people you hired who sucked that people told you

not to hire. Now you're wondering why I didn't catch it. Of course

I caught it. I'm not going to give you that information. You misuse it.

So she said this to me, and first I was mad at her. She was

not the person to be mad at, even though I

think we both had a lot to learn about what was actually

happening in that workplace. To this day, I think she still plays the

game a whole lot more than I am capable of, and I have never been

capable of it. Never. I can play it, but I'm miserable the

whole time. She's not miserable when she plays the game. This idea of the

difficult woman at work creates two kind of workplace Archetypes. And I think

we are evolving beyond this in some environments, but in some environments

not. There's like two women in the

workplace. Two stereotypical women in the workplace. There's the one who shrinks to

fit. She keeps her mouth shut and she stays out of trouble and she stays

out of the middle of conflict and she doesn't speak up unless it's

something that she's very confident in. And she just kind of lets things happen.

She shrinks to fit. She makes herself small to fit the environment so that she's

not disruptive, so that she doesn't get labeled something so that she can survive in

that environment. And then there's the other side of

the woman who like strikes to kill. This woman will

eat anything in her path so that she can be

considered one of the boys or have the same consideration that

some men get in the workplace. And those seem

like two very different things. And I think they're exactly the same. I

think those are both survival mechanisms. Now, are

some women really just awful to work for and with? I'm sure.

But is so much of it probably learned behavior? Because

so many of us were taught as we were coming up that there can't be

two women in leadership. So you better eat everybody for

dinner or you aren't going to succeed or you aren't going to get to progress.

There is this idea that women have to compete against each other

to be successful, to be individually successful.

Competition is a myth that exists to stamp out community.

Because community is a problem for them. If you and I support each other

and have each other's backs and don't let them divide us.

And this is more than just in workplaces. This is in kind of every

fraction of humanity. But if we let them, let us believe

competition is the only way to succeed, that we

have to compete against each other and be better than each other, then

we'll never have community. So our ability to grow is

greatly stamped out. It's greatly

reduced. Whereas if we stop looking at each other

as competition and look at each other as a resource

and start lifting as we climb, then we aren't looking

at one leadership position for five women. We're looking

at replacing the whole board with women or women and non binary individuals

and non white men and whatever of people who have

not historically been there. This idea of difficult

wraps into this idea of competition. It's all

the same thing. Make you small, make you quiet,

make you distrustful of the people in your environment.

So that you don't form bonds strong enough that they can't break

them. That's what they're designed to do.

I support the woman who strikes to kill just as

much as I support the woman who shrinks to fit because it comes from the

same thing. One of them seems more harmful.

One of them is like aggressively more harmful. But they are both the

same thing. They keep other women small either by setting the example

or shutting them up. And I say women in this environment, but that is

really. It's not unique to women. That is my experience. It is not unique to

women or it is unique to everybody who is not a 45 year

old white male who the workplace was built for. You are

not difficult. You are not a

problem. You are not too much. They're not enough.

You are not difficult. You are team difficult. And those are

two separate things. Last weekend my husband

and I did something we don't do very often.

There's this club in town and we are very old

people. So even saying those

words in any order is just terrifying. But it's one of those

clubs where there's like a long

line to get in and it's members only. Like you have to have like a.

I don't know, there's like some. I don't even actually know how that works. People

actually ask us if we're members all the time, which is kind of weird. I

don't know why it comes up so often. I also can't believe that we can

say we're members. But that's. That's like a whole nother thing that came

from like a whole nother thing. But like there's a line to get in.

You have to go at specific times. It's a

little hit or miss. It's even wild to say this.

People go there literally to get drugs.

There's actually a line to get out, which is also weird.

Especially if you're like me and don't like being around a lot of people.

They do have like specials and stuff inside, which I sometimes have

to get acclimated to. We certainly don't go on weekends very often.

I feel like he probably goes more often than I do. Like a lot of

our life is built around this. And that is

very midlife of us. Like very midlife of

us. Like exclusive club built around this. Don't go on

weekends anyway. It's Costco. And we

went last weekend and

I regretted it so much

that I was literally willing to take an entire day off this

week if we needed something. So I would never have

to go on a weekend again to be Clear. That is the

only club that you are catching my husband and I in 100%.

My husband was a much cooler person in his youth than I was at

the same age. Even though, to be clear, he is ancient

compared to me. He is like 150 years older than me. Not

exactly, but close. When he was enjoying his

misbegone youth, I was in middle school.

There's a story that his family tells about a time

that there was this giant family disagreement over a Christmas tree. Because

that's apparently something the gentiles argue about. I don't fucking know.

We're getting to the part of the year where I have to have the conversation

with fellow Jews about the fact that Christmas trees have backs.

To this day, I've been married to a Gentile for 15

years, and I still cannot wrap my brain around the idea that Christmas trees

have backs. That cannot be true. It can't be

true. Anyway, I forgot where that was going

because I got distracted by the world's most confusing

principle, which is that Christmas trees have backs.

But I was very willing to take, like, an entire

day off work if we needed to go to Costco because

there wasn't parking. The parking lot was

full. Not like we had to park in the back, which

is fine because we park in the back anyway. Because if anybody touches my husband's

car, I have to bail him out of jail, and I don't want to do

that. So we park in the back. That's fine. There was no parking

in the back. There was an overflow lot.

That had no parking. So, listen, I

get that they have a $50 hot dog and

soda. I am

deeply, deeply appreciative of an inexpensive hot dog

and soda. Deeply appreciative of it.

But I should not have to park in an overflow lot

to go to Costco. And that, to me, seems like

a strong indication that you need another

Costco. And to be clear,

Sam's is not Costco. Sam's will do in a pinch,

but Sam's is not Costco. I think if you wanted to really,

really make me, like, endlessly happy for at

least a couple hours, because that's about as much

unabashed happiness you're probably gonna get outta me. I am Jewish, by the way. But

that's. It's just not. We're not effusive people, but if you could clear out a

Costco and just have it be me walking

around with the little snack ladies and not be

judged for eating all the samples as I walk around my

very Quiet, very giant Costco. That would make

me really happy. So I'm just saying those are my goals.

Is enough Costcos that I don't have to park in the

overflow, overflow lot or a completely empty Costco

just for me with like a parade of snack ladies.

Snack men are fine too. Snack. They's are fine. I'll take them

all the she's, they's gays of the snacks. I'm

here for them. Bring me all the snacks on

little toothpicks. Anyway, that is the only club that you are going to catch. My

husband and I ate and even that is becoming too raucous

for me in my old age. It's too much.

So this is kind of a new experience. But I was at an event a

couple weeks ago and somebody came up to me with basically a live small

talk. I had just gotten done speaking at the conference

and she cornered me. Seems aggressive. She was very nice.

She was not aggressive at all. But she found me, I guess is a better

way to put it afterward. And she was like, I follow you on LinkedIn and

I need to ask you a question. And I was like, go for it. And

so she basically looked at me in the face and was like, what do

I do if I'm buried under burnout and there's no way for me to get

out of it? I was like, that is a big

question, but a really good question.

She basically asked, you know, what does she do

to get herself back after being in burnout for so long? That's really what

she was asking. So we started talking

and she did a thing that a lot of women do when I talk to

them. She basically recounted a

horrific several years, including

having a new child under really horrible circumstances, where she got personally

ill, where she had long term complications from it being the breadwinner for her

family, having some interpersonal issues within her family that are a problem

and a challenge. I mean, the things that she recounted

were in no way shocking because I hear about them all the time,

but they certainly weren't okay.

She works at a job that she really likes, but it's a small company

and so they can't give her all the benefits that she would have at a

bigger company, but she's worked at bigger companies before and that was really awful too.

And she has a partner, but she's the breadwinner and her

partner hasn't been able to move up in his job and. And she

still does the lion's share of the stuff at home, even though she has a

partner who has more free time than she does, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah. And she was like, well, how do I get through it?

And I was like, I mean, is anything going to change?

And this is not an unreasonable question. She was asking,

how can I make this life that I'm living more

manageable without changing anything? Not because she doesn't want to change anything,

but, like, what are her options? She doesn't have that many options in front

of her. I don't want to set an expectation that that was an unreasonable

question. She should want better. She is buried in a whole lot of shit.

But also this expectation

that there's something that she can change to

undo all of the things around her. That's not how

it works. And so I said to her, if you weren't

burned out, I would be really concerned.

That is an unsustainable amount of stuff that is piled on you,

and you're asking how to not be burned out instead of how to get more

support. I was like, do you have any help?

And she has a partner who is helpful. And first off, her partner shouldn't

be helpful to her. Her partner should be doing his fair share. I'm not saying

that he's not, but I'm saying that language and of itself, and you see how

quickly IG faulted to it, that language is harmful in and of itself.

That's not the babysitter. That's her partner. That's the

person who is responsible for 50% of their burden

and depending on the time, sometimes more. And

so, you know, she rattles off the list of support, quote, unquote, support that she

has, but it's clear that she either isn't maximizing it, doesn't feel like she can

maximize it, or it's support in name only.

She makes a bunch of excuses for the job. You know, we don't have a

lot of funding, we don't have a lot of money. And so they can't give

me more support at work. They can't promote me, they can't pay me more. They

can't do this so that I can afford more at home. They can't, they can't,

they can't, they can't, they can't. And all of that boils down to

what does she have to do to fix it. She's responsible

for fixing all of these things where people around her are just abjectly failing

her. I literally asked her, I was like, so who are you failing? And she

was like, no one that I know of. And I was like, Bingo. What's

the point? So I didn't really have any

super advice for her except to say,

you are taking on a whole lot of onus for being in a really shit

situation and not expecting

anybody else to do anything to help.

You're not asking more from your job, you're not asking more from your partner, you're

not asking for support from your community, you're not trying to build a bigger community,

you're not looking for additional childcare, you're not, you're not, you're not that. And again,

that's not putting the blame on her for those things. She's putting the blame

on herself that she can't make this completely untenable situation work.

It's untenable for a reason.

She looked at me and she said, sorry, are you basically saying like that this

is the way it's supposed to be? And I was like, no, it's definitely not

the way it's supposed to be, but it's that way for a reason.

You're not gonna wake up one day and be able to juggle 47 things

better. That's not the way we were supposed to exist.

Reminder that this person is the primary breadwinner

and primary caretaker for a human

with all of the responsibilities that she has to take care of outside of work.

She also works a more than full time job. She also is not

probably compensated as she should be for that full time

job. And when I say compensation, I don't mean necessarily her take

home pay. What support does she have through work? What benefits does she have

through work? Are there caregivers, supports, Are there additional time off? Does she

have the ability to take paid time off? My recollection is that she said she

wasn't even paid for maternity leave, so like going out on another leave is not

an option. And so not only does she have this

historic backlog of deeply difficult things that happened,

but now she's trying to exist in a more day to day world,

carrying that where she has done no recovery

from that or insufficient recovery from that, and

piling more on top of it as she tries to exist through this very difficult

situation currently. And the only answer I had was

this isn't sustainable. You're looking for you to

fix a situation that is not sustainable in the

current incarnation. It's not fixable unless you're just going to keep existing in

it. And that's not even fixing it, that's just muddling along.

Burnout is often related to a set of circumstances

that are completely out of our Control, meaning

a work situation that's really bad, a personal situation

that's really bad, a caregiver situation that's really bad, sometimes many of

those things all at once. And

yes, we should turn inward to see if there's things that we can change to

fix them. But if you look at me

and say I need to take time off, but I don't

have that ability through my work because it's a small startup and we don't get

that benefit, that's not on you.

That's a bad situation, that's a shitty situation that you were put in by your

employer. And I get it. I run a small startup, I know how hard it

can be. But looking for a

solution to a whole bunch of external things

internally. First off, that's the thing that a lot of women and femmes do, where

we think that we're the problem when we've really been thrown into the deep end

of just a terribly shitty situation. She was nothing

that she said to me sounded like she had control over any

of the situations that were burning her out. And the first thing to

do was recognize that was the reality.

Burnout is a reasonable response to the sheer

number of stressors that were punching her in the head daily. And to stop

feeling guilty for not being able to do it all. None of

us are superhuman. And also, there's no medal.

You don't get a medal for shouldering the burden of everything and not

asking for help, and worse, not getting help if you

do ask. The only victory that you get at the end of that is

feeling disconnected from your whole life because it feels like everybody is taking

from you and no one's putting back in. It's just something to keep in

mind as you are working through burnout is that if you are put in

a bunch of really bad situations, sometimes the

solution for burnout does not come from inside. It comes from

fixing a bunch of things that are happening externally, getting out of

situations, changing living arrangements, getting additional help,

finding a new job, whatever. Because

you are in an environment that if you weren't burned out, I would be

concerned. Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love

you. Mean it.

I have been waiting for that reaction since this occurred to

me last night. I loved

it. That is great. I was like, this one might actually break him.

This one might actually break him.