Podcast | Ready To Be Strong Ep.18

Transcript

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Tania Israel: Welcome to Ready to be Strong. I’m Tania Israel.

Elizabeth Scharf: and I’m Elizabeth Scharf.

Tania Israel: Together we are broadening our minds, opening our hearts.

Elizabeth Scharf: And strengthening connections to face the challenges of living in a divided world.

Tania Israel: In this episode, we are dealing with overwhelm.

Elizabeth Scharf: Phew.

Tania Israel: In the first two weeks in office, Donald Trump signed 52 executive orders. There are moves to shut down USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and over two million government employees received a memo offering them deferred resignation. How are you dealing with things in this new world, Elizabeth?

Elizabeth Scharf: Well, Tania, it’s been a lot. When you put it that way, 52 executive orders in what, 10 business days? Seems quite efficient. And I think the first week of Trump being back in office was just a, gosh, just executive order after executive order showing up on the news and

almost I think I was in disbelief almost for all the things that were coming out. Like how could he be so efficient this time around? And I didn’t think that they were huge things at first, but then the second week I felt like with the USAID announcement with the federal employee messaging. These are huge, huge things that will have a ripple effect around the world and not only our national security, but our domestic policies, our research, just so much that will have decades-long effects too.

Tania Israel: Yeah, so what’s this looking like in your world? Because I know you do this kind of development work. And so what are you seeing?

Elizabeth Scharf: So I say I’m an urgent optimist because I and my peers have been working in lot of challenging countries and communities around the world for the past 20 years. And I woke up last week with a barrage of WhatsApp messages from all over the world, a lot of my former classmates checking in on each other and sharing notes on what’s going on with USAID funding and how that’s going to impact them and their communities and their projects that they’re working on. And it was overwhelming. Friends that are working in Jamaica, Lisa got an email that said her funding has been shut off immediately and that she should send back any formerly received funds for what she was working on. And that was working with small businesses in Jamaica, helping them grow and helping the economy thrive.

And I think that what people may not realize is that this is really our version of national security, but with an extended hand. And it was started in the 60s, USAID, by President Kennedy around the same time that he started the Peace Corps.

And it was in that ideology and that philosophy that we’re not gonna go in as Americans with an iron fist, but we’re gonna go in with a helping hand, providing food, providing ways to get clean water, providing technical assistance in growing businesses. This is going to have massive ripple effects on not only the organizations that they’re funding, but also the employees that USAID has, but also the all the local staff in different countries that have been really running the show on behalf of the United States.

Tania Israel: Yeah. I have a friend who has often said we should not be dropping bombs. We should be dropping Sears catalogs. You know, it’s just like the goodwill that providing resources and technical assistance offers is really, really stands out. And what I’m hearing from you is like, it’s people you know, it’s projects that you know how beneficial they are.

And it’s also that there’s some fear there, like, this actually affects our national security. We are more vulnerable if we do not engender this kind of goodwill around the world.

Elizabeth Scharf:  Absolutely. In fact, I recently heard a statistic that USAID will only have 10 people working on the continent of Africa. 

Tania Israel: Wow. 

Elizabeth Scharf: In terms of their projects, etcetera. I just think, gosh, we’ve made such great inroads in Africa, the continent of Africa with…many different countries and I’ve worked in a few of them, one being Mozambique, another one being Rwanda. These are places that have had civil war, mass genocide, and essentially proxy wars have played out in these countries, I learned over time, the Cold War. So when we take a step back from what’s going on, in a humanitarian way, let’s just say that by not having a presence on the continent as we did, it leaves a vacuum for others to step in, in potentially less humanitarian ways, let’s just put it.

Tania Israel: Mm hmm. Yeah. So and you trust USAID to to really be bringing the positive impact, you know, that we want to have. And it’s like, no, wait, if some if some other countries in the world come, you know, step in, you don’t trust not only what they’re going to do locally, it sounds like, but then how that plays out in the world landscape.

Elizabeth Scharf: Absolutely. I mean, my friends that have worked for USAID have been public health practitioners. They’ve been economic development practitioners, democracy practitioners. So these are folks that have expertise in helping society build institutions and things that will last for a country to grow.

Tania Israel: So it sounds like one aspect of overwhelm is just the amount, the quantity of executive orders, the quantity of WhatsApp messages you’re getting, the number of workers of projects. There’s just like a numbers game here that’s just too much to take in. But then there’s also the meaning that that has in terms of things that you care about and you’ve worked hard on. But then there’s also a safety piece. Like there’s a number of different things that each one of those has its own type of overwhelm then

Elizabeth Scharf: How about in your world? Have you felt overwhelmed? You have folks in one ear and the other ear talking about how it’s impacted them.

Tania Israel: Yes, I mean, I’m in the DEI world. I’m an associate dean for DEI. So I’m in this world, particularly with people in higher education. And so I am, one, hearing from those people and how it’s affecting them. And I also am going out in the world and doing programming. And some places, they’re like, let’s take this information, this description. Let’s change it a little bit so that we’re not on anybody’s radar in the federal government in terms of what we’re doing. mean, these are private institutions and things, but it’s just sort of everybody, know, like, what does it say in the end zone? What does it say in the end zone at the Super Bowl? You know, that there’s all these things that people are like, let’s not be targeted. there’s a lot of sort of trying to just stay out of the fray. But then there’s also organizations that are saying, you know what, like, we are going to show some leadership and we’re going to, you know, be litigating this. So I’m seeing a lot of that happening too. Like who’s stepping up to actually challenge the legality of some of what’s going on? And that’s on the local level in terms of, you know, immigration. It’s on the national level in terms of, you know, some of these policies and dismantling of things. I’m also seeing as a researcher what’s happening within NIH, the National Institutes of Health, and NSF, the National Science Foundation, in terms of particular aspects of those organizations being dismantled, particularly ones that focused on LGBTQ issues and that I have been very engaged with over my career, and also just specific terms being targeted. So if there are…

grants that have, you I saw a list of words posted there like these are the words that they’re looking for to say, maybe this isn’t aligned with federal priorities. And it’s like this one really stood out to me, which is that females and female is on that list, but male and males is not on that list. And I’m like, totally fine if you just want to study men, but if you’re going to study women also, we’re going to notice that. And I just thought that was really striking. So, yes, I am one noticing it among my people. I mean, certainly, you know, when ICE came into Santa Barbara and that just struck such a nerve through all of the individuals and organizations that I’m connected to. And so it’s affecting real people’s lives.

It’s affecting my community. It’s affecting my professional networks of LGBTQ and DEI work.

There’s so much that I do also in this realm of how to navigate political division. And it’s making it very difficult to do that because it’s such an activating and overwhelming moment that people are like, well, I can’t possibly imagine having a conversation with somebody who is on the other side of this. And so I feel like it’s it’s gotten so much more amped up in terms of people’s walls that they’re wanting to put up between themselves and other folks.

Elizabeth Scharf: OK. I was hoping that maybe it would create some bridges because we’re actually seeing executive orders and how that might play out in affecting people’s lives. I was hoping to get a call from my brothers or my mom this week about USAID, knowing that I come from and I work in the sector. And it’s not really covered too much in the headlines or by Trump. And I was hoping to have a conversation about the importance of the work that not only USAID does, but other international development practitioners around the world. And I would hope that they would understand that this is a really smart foreign policy national security move to keep USAID and other organizations like it. And maybe I need to make that phone call myself. Because I think they value me and the work that I’ve done and if I can take USAID and international development as a black box that a lot of people I didn’t know this didn’t even understand what they were doing and now there’s all this misinformation by Musk, etc. That maybe people can make a bridge with folks because all these things are coming or happening now not only what he’s saying but actually happening and they know people that it know people that will be affected by this. We’ll see, I guess that’s why I’m the urgent optimist.

Tania Israel: And I think that that is a possibility. The challenge is that it’s become so tribal in terms of our politics. It’s not even because I hear people say, well, you if they deport all these people, then the farmers aren’t going to have workers and that’s going to affect their, you know, their business. And they were people who supported Trump. But now maybe they’ll, you know, see the light.

But I don’t think that that’s the way humans work necessarily. I mean, the price of eggs is such a ridiculous thing to talk about now. leading up to the election, was like, the price of eggs is really important. Well, the price of eggs is through the roof now. But it’s something where it was never technically about the price of eggs. We’re not all taking our lives and we have a spreadsheet of some sort where we say, okay, here are the things that are important. This is how we evaluate these things on a financial level or we balance, there’s a balance sheet of some sort of, is this better or worse for us? That there’s so much of it that’s about what group we identify with and what keeps our group cohesive and what keeps us within that group that is protective for us. So I don’t know, that’s a, that went off a little bit down, down a road, but I think that’s why we might not necessarily see this as a moment for everybody to come together. Cause there are some people who are saying these things are blatantly illegal and that should be something that brings us together. Cause we all care about the constitution. And there are other people who are like, oh good. This is actually reducing government, which is what I think is the best thing for our country. So, yeah, it’s still very different agendas.

Elizabeth Scharf: How do you deal with overwhelm?

Tania Israel: Well, I’ve been sort of trying to just defer my emotions, knowing that, yes, there are all these executive orders, but I heard this lawyer describe executive orders as a wish list. It’s like the president’s wish list, and then some of those things will happen right away, but many of those things have to go through a longer process, and some of those things then get stopped or at least paused in the courts. So I was like, great, maybe I will just defer my emotions.

until we see how things play out. And then I just cry in the shower every so often. So I can defer my emotions somewhat, but they sort of creep through at the same time. And I’m always just trying to figure out how can I be useful? So can we do a podcast episode about overwhelm? I’ve been making a little worksheet that then I’ll post soon, hopefully, that’s trying to help people really think about, what are the things I’m gonna do to stay healthy? What are the things, who can I go to for support? Who can I go to for a new perspective? What actions can I take that will support the causes that I believe in? So just really breaking it down on a very concrete level for people. So that’s my jam is like, how can I be helpful? What about you?

Elizabeth Scharf: Well, something that really struck me by what you were saying was basically you take your own agency or you create your own agency about things. So it reminds me of, my emails, which are notorious on my phone. So I have something like 32,167 unread emails on my phone. That’s not even including my first email, yahoo.com account.

I don’t know, 310 probably unread messages, text messages. And some people are horrified and overwhelmed by that. And I say to them, actually, this is me creating my own agency to decide what I’m going to allow in terms of information or messages to land in my head. And so it’s being not passively receiving information, but actively deciding who I’m going to let in. So it’s similar in the way of you deferring. You’re deferring. It’s like you archived. You archived a lot. And I think that’s probably just how we can cope and keep it measured, the amount of stuff and feelings that come into our orbit.

Because how can anyone take it all? I have some friends that are activists and practitioners. And I heard from a bunch of them phone calls, actually I haven’t heard from them in years, and working on important things like democracy and racial justice and equity. And I got phone calls from a few of them last week. And I think it was their way of getting out of their overwhelm, was connecting with folks that have been on the same path for

I’ve known them for over 15, 20 years. Human connection is another one as well.

Tania Israel: So really being able to decide how much of this am I going to take in? And it sounds like you and I have both been doing that in different ways, or you do that with your email in a way that I’m not very good at with email. So I’m so excited that you’ve got a way to it. I feel like I’m actually retiring in part so I don’t have to deal with all the emails that I haven’t answered.

Because I feel some obligation. I’m like, I got an email. I have to do something with it, you know, and maybe that’s part of this is like every news story, every new piece of information that we’re hearing. Do you feel like you have to do something with it? And if we feel like we have to process each of these things as they come in at the same level, we will absolutely get overloaded in a way that, I mean, some people are trying to deal with all of it, but I feel like that isn’t sustainable. So a lot of people are just like, I’m out. I can’t deal with this. I can’t pay attention to any of it. And I think that’s not necessarily the, know, either one of those extremes is not necessarily going to get us individually and collectively where we want to go.

Elizabeth Scharf: So keeping the inflow or input to a moderate place, to having human connection, and perhaps activating but not feeling like you have to activate on everything.

Tania Israel:  Well, and I do think about, know, when you said thinking about like what my agency is and I’m like, yes, where can I make a difference? I do not feel like I have any influence at all over President Trump. Like, I just don’t have that access or ability. And frankly, none of this is surprising to me. I don’t care how bad it gets. I won’t be surprised. You know, I feel like this can go very deep and dark and I will be like, yep, that’s kind of what I would have expected was gonna happen from this. And I also feel like there are things that I can do. There are things that I can do in terms of like, who do I wanna support? What organizations are actually going to be able to set up the guardrails or maintain the guardrails to keep things from being unconstitutional. That’s one of my main things. I’m like, OK, we’ve got the constitution. We’ve got rules in our government. Who’s going to be maintaining those? And how do I support them? And then how do I support my people, my community, people who are either being touched directly by these things or people who are being upset by these things, you know, what kinds of resources and tools can I give them? And in order to do any of that, I’ve got to maintain some sense of stability and health.

You know, one of the things that keeps me optimistic in these times is recognizing that we have made tremendous strides in all of these areas. You know, USAID didn’t used to exist. The Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office in NIH didn’t used to exist. There’s a lot of things that weren’t there that came into being because of our very strong efforts and we’ve built things and they’re being dismantled now. And that is, that feels so tragic and I suspect it will have very detrimental consequences in ways that we care about. And if we build, we can rebuild. If we can at least maintain our government for the next four years, and even during that time, there are opportunities to rebuild things. There are opportunities to rebuild within ourselves, within our communities, and when we have opportunity within our government.

Elizabeth Scharf: Right on. I like that. Urgent. Optimistic.

Tania Israel:  Yeah, are there things that give you hope these days?

Elizabeth Scharf: Well, I love the idea of building back and building better. I think that we can hopefully do that in international development. I don’t think USAID was perfect. I personally never applied for grant funding from them because it was so bureaucratic and a lot of paperwork. So maybe we can build a better USAID going forward. We can build better

processes for research. 

Tania Israel:  So I appreciate you recognizing what the limitations have been within, for example, USAID, because I also recognize I do DEI work and I think diversity, equity, and inclusion are very important. And I also think not all the DEI work that’s been going on out there is done very well. You know, some of it is done really amazingly well and supports those goals of diversity, equity and inclusion. But, you know, I have been to DEI trainings that are just shaming and annoying. And I’m like, really, do I have to sit through this? But it’s mandated, you know, so I can understand why people are frustrated with what they see as DEI. I think a lot of the best DEI work happens in ways that aren’t necessarily on people’s radar. So they don’t necessarily see what’s going on. But what they’re experiencing of some of that, yeah, some of that’s not good. But I’ve also been to some amazingly good DEI trainings that provided lots of insight and understanding and tools. so I feel like there are ways that, sure, things haven’t always necessarily been done well.

And maybe if there’s a place that we can connect with other people, it’s here. If we can say it. I mean, frankly, I’ve always been a little reluctant to kind of point out the flaws with the way I see DEI operating or things operating. Because I’m like ok, I don’t want to undermine the efforts overall. And that’s one of the challenges. But I’m like, ok, If this is one of the things that drives people to want to dismantle all DEI, is there a place we can connect in terms of saying, okay, like, what is it that you’re seeing that isn’t working well? And here’s what I’m seeing that isn’t working well. And yeah, I love your idea of build back better.

Elizabeth Scharf: Yeah, no, it totally resonates what you said. I’ve actually written op-eds about the aid world not being great and not being sustainable. So I think if we can listen, also reflect and empathize where people are coming from and trying to dismantle to a certain extent, and then think about, we are experts in our own fields. Think about the things that have worked really well and build back better with those as the foundation.

Tania Israel: Yeah, well, okay. So what else is going to help you to manage the overwhelm?

Elizabeth Scharf: I haven’t figured out the plan yet, but it’s got to be the way I intake news. And I know that’s whole nother episode or 10, but I, I, if I am going to not read all my emails, not read all, not read any, I’m very limited on my social media now. And I really, I read the New York Times as my I religiously read the New York Times and the print version on Sundays on purpose to connect with the paper. I need a better plan on what are the five outlets I’m going to let in. And they can’t all be saying the same information. And then I also have a plan to reconnect with different folks that are experiencing this firsthand, the impact of the executive orders both the people that are experiencing them and maybe withdrawing or shutting down for a little bit, but also the people that are activating on this. And I have some friends, especially lawyers, it seems like the lawyers are really activating these days, to connect with them and to be inspired, to lend a hand, whatever is needed. And I think those things will help me during the overwhelm.

Tania Israel: Yeah, I think that’s really good. I’ve been also limiting my news intake. I usually love waking up on the weekends and lounging around and listening to weekend edition on NPR. And I’m like, I am going to pick and choose which stories I’m going to listen to when I’m in a loungy mode. I will. focus on things that I want to keep up on. But I’m much more selective about how long I’m spending and and and just thinking about, oh am I kind of in a I just want to relax with my team mode or am I in it? OK, let’s bring it, what’s going on out there and trying to fine tune that a little bit so that I have a space where I am taking it in and then I have some limitations on how much I’m taking it at any given time.

Elizabeth Scharf: I hear you. The only thing to add to that would be I started reading fiction and gotta have a great playlist in the car if you’re not gonna listen to NPR in the news. So get that Pink Pony Club going and other good tunes to put a smile on your face while you’re going from one place to another.

Tania Israel: Yeah, there’s a new thing on Apple Music, which is like based on how you’re feeling, like there’s the feel good list. And so I was like, I actually do feel good when I. Well named Apple Music. So, yeah, so I think that’s great. I also love to listen to books because I feel like I just finished listening to Team of Rivals, which was about Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet. And that was fascinating and learned a lot about the United States, but not necessarily what’s going on this week. Right. But it puts things in some context. I went to hear a speaker who was talked about geopolitics, and that was like just some longer form learning. I find to be helpful. And here’s one of the main things. If I am listening to or watching some kind of news intake, I’m very interested in what the tone of that is, because when things are like this, I can feel physically my stress rising. And so I’m like, OK, it’s one of the things I like about NPR. They’re like, because they’ve all got their NPR voices where they just talk like this so I can and I can take it in that way. And so that’s where also sometimes listening to books and things is helpful. I’m listening to a book right now called Outraged, which is about why we are so outraged and emotionally activated by all this. Maybe we can talk about that more on another episode. But I am finding ways of taking in things that aren’t the, you know, the current news and things that will inform me, but in a different kind of way.

Elizabeth Scharf: Right.

Tania Israel: How are you feeling now?

Elizabeth Scharf: I’m feeling better. Yeah, I can breathe a little better. At first I was a little bit more overwhelmed, but then we started talking about ways to get out of the forest and I’m feeling pretty good. Yeah. Ready for my ride home with the good tunes.

Tania Israel: That’s fantastic. I love it. Well, thank you for and didn’t mention earlier in the episode, we are here in my closet today. And so this is our first time having one of these in-person recording sessions. And it’s great to be with you because I also feel like this is something that helps me with overwhelm is just connection with three dimensional human beings who I care about. So just actually being present with each other. So thanks for this.

Elizabeth Scharf: You’re welcome. Thank you.

Tania Israel: I’m Tania Israel, professor, psychologist, and author of Facing the Fracture.

Elizabeth Scharf: And I’m Elizabeth Scharf, social entrepreneur and urgent optimist. Make your choice.
Tania Israel: Are you ready to be strong?