The Emotional Work No One Trains You For, with Betsy Burris Artwork

The Brave and Balanced Fundraiser

The Brave and Balanced Fundraiser is the podcast I wish had existed during my 15 years in fundraising. It’s a love offering to the people behind the mission—the professional fundraisers who give their hearts and energy every day to make the world better.

This show isn’t about strategy, metrics, or money. It’s about you—the human being doing the work. Each episode offers real tools and soulful conversations to help you regulate your nervous system, reconnect with your purpose, and renew your energy so you can lead with clarity, compassion, and courage.

If you’ve ever felt stretched thin, overworked, or caught in the constant pressure to perform, this podcast is your invitation to return home to yourself. Join me to learn how to cultivate balance, resilience, and authentic impact—from the inside out.

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The Brave and Balanced Fundraiser

The Emotional Work No One Trains You For, with Betsy Burris

July 14, 2026 • Erin McQuade-Wright

0:00 | 1:24:15

What Teachers and Fundraisers Can Teach Each Other About Burnout, Boundaries, and Being Human

Teachers and fundraisers may seem worlds apart—but underneath the surface, they're doing remarkably similar emotional work.

In this special podcast swap episode, Erin joins Betsy Burris, host of Teaching Through Emotions, for a wide-ranging conversation about the invisible emotional labor that comes with helping professions.

Together they explore burnout, people-pleasing, nervous system regulation, somatic awareness, the Enneagram, and why so many caring professionals end up sacrificing themselves in the name of serving others.

Whether you spend your days in classrooms, nonprofit organizations, hospitals, coaching practices, or any profession centered on helping people, this conversation offers a powerful reminder: the relationship you have with yourself shapes every relationship you have with others.

In this episode, we discuss:

Why teaching and fundraising attract many of the same kinds of people.
How people-pleasing can become an unconscious survival strategy.
The difference between compassion and self-abandonment.
Why burnout is often rooted in emotional patterns—not just workload.
How somatic awareness helps us access wisdom beyond our thinking minds.
The hidden cost of tying your worth to your performance.
Why learning to feel your emotions creates more capacity to support others.
A simple 90-second daily practice to begin reconnecting with yourself.

Connect with Betsy Burris

If this conversation resonated with you, be sure to check out Teaching Through Emotions, where Betsy helps teachers understand the emotional and relational dynamics that shape life in the classroom. Even if you're not an educator, you'll find practical wisdom for navigating relationships, emotions, and leadership with greater awareness.

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I'd also love to hear what stood out to you from this conversation. Leave a review, share this episode with a colleague, or send it to someone in a helping profession who needs the reminder that taking care of themselves isn't selfish—it's essential.

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Erin McQuade-Wright 1:33

Welcome to The Brave and Balanced Fundraiser, the podcast I wish I'd had during my 15 years as a professional fundraiser. I'm your host, Erin McQuade Wright. This is your space to breathe, realign, and reconnect with the part of you that chose this work for a reason. Together, we'll explore tools and practices that help you show up less stressed and spread thin and more grounded, brave, and on purpose. I'm so glad you're here. Let's get started. If you're lucky enough to have a friend who is a teacher, you might have noticed there's some overlap between the people who decide to go into teaching and the people who could decide to go into fundraising. And today's episode is a treat for me to bring to you, and I really hope you enjoy it. It's a conversation I had with Betsy Burris, whose podcast is called Teaching Through Emotions, and she weaves together emotional mastery and teaching, just like I attempt to do in my podcast here with emotional mastery, nervous system regulation, and fundraising. Every so often, I have a conversation that I feel like deserves to live in both places, on that podcast and on this podcast, and this is one of those conversations. We go deep. I share stories that I haven't shared on this podcast before, and I'm excited to bring that conversation to you, so I hope you enjoy it. Here's my conversation with Betsy Burris

Betsy Burris 3:18

my guest today is Erin McQuade- Wright, a fundraiser turned coach and podcaster. The name of Erin's company is Vitalist Coaching, and the name of her podcast is The Brave and Balanced Fundraiser. I started listening to Erin's podcast a couple months ago and really liked her calm demeanor and very direct embrace of super smart psychodynamic tools. I was actually amazed to hear this stuff coming out of your mouth. It was very familiar to me, and yet you were saying it to fundraisers. Now, I'm not a fundraiser. God knows this podcast raises very few funds but And most teachers aren't fundraisers, although, you know, there's always the bake sale and the trivia night and the holiday wrapping paper sales that go on throughout the school years. But that's not why I invited Erin onto my pod. I'm excited to talk with Erin because she brings the same type of psychodynamic awareness to her specialized audience as I do to mine, and she shares really practical ideas for managing stress and anxiety that are just as useful for teachers and school leaders as it is for fundraisers. So Erin, welcome to Teaching Through Emotions. Thank you, Betsy. It's a pleasure to be here. All right. I begin every conversation with the same bell ringer question, like, brring, the beginning of the school period, although that sounded like a phone call. But here's a bell ringer question: What's one memory you have as a student from the classroom when a strong emotion changed your relationship with teaching? You're not a teacher, but maybe changed your relationship with education, 'cause you are a teacher, actually. You're a coach.

Erin McQuade-Wright 4:51

I remember being in fourth grade and having a, I think it was third grade, actually, and having a really new experience, and that experience was very unique and troubling to me. It was a puzzle. I had the first teacher that didn't like me. And I really was so confused about what I needed to do to get on this person's good side. And I had a Pretty well-worn practice that I learned at home about how to be pleasing in a way that got my needs met. It was very effective. It was something I definitely needed to drop as an adult- because that people-pleasing approach had a lot of downside to it in my career. But this was before all of that, and I was just a student trying to learn and trying to figure out why this teacher was exhibiting behaviors that I thought meant I was unwanted, I was a problem, I was maybe even a disruptor. It was a completely new situation for me because I had fallen very easily into the sort of good girl stereotype and was having success with that, you know? But this teacher was not at all impressed. Whenever I w- all my bag of tricks were falling short And this person was brusque with me, was snappish, and I kept on thinking, "What am I doing wrong? My usual stuff isn't working." And I remembered talking with my mom about it, and my mom had a really good bag of tricks herself. And one of her go-tos was, "Maybe they're having a bad day." She would bring the other person's perceived point of view in. Have you thought about this? Have you thought about..." If it was another kid, you know, what might be going on at home for them. She would urge me toward grace. And for the most part, that worked too. But here's this teacher that holds my, what it feels like at the time, holds my future in her hands, and she is just not wanting to see my face. We ran into her years and years later when I was home from college, I think, for Thanksgiving. My mom and I were grabbing some things at a grocery store, and I remembered running into this teacher and being so glad to see her, genuinely glad to see her. I hadn't seen her since I was in third grade, you know? That was a long time. And I, by then, had become a pretty good student of people, and I picked up pretty quickly on a deep, deep sadness with this person. She did not look well. She did not look like she had been taking good care of herself. And when I very spontaneously invited her to Thanksgiving with us, probably due to, you know, wasn't Hallmark movies back then, but, you know, a lot of different stories of people coming together around the holidays. And I felt generous in that moment, and I invited her to come to Thanksgiving, and she was very quickly said no I walked away with more of a sense of, "That wasn't about me," than I could- Yeah access as a little child. And I remember- Mm how destabilizing it was in the moment- Mm to try to figure out what I was doing wrong so I could correct it, and not being able to correct it. And yeah, that hurt, and it was, you know, it was like a big puzzle for me. Ah. And I never did figure it out.

Betsy Burris 9:00

Well, it sounds like you did. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like a very compassionate diagnosis based on, I would say, the feelings that she induced in you when you were near her. And you, even in college it sounds like, were very empathic and probably picked up on what was real about her, which you couldn't have done as a kid because we're not supposed to be empathic as kid. Yeah. I mean, we can be, but, like, we're not supposed to be empathic for adults. Like, they're supposed to be taking care of us. It's a really moving story, Erin, and I think it's so great for teachers to hear it, that it just reinforces a belief that I have about teaching, which is we teachers, we adults, we bring our shit with us. It comes clanging into the classroom behind us, and our kids pick up on it, even if we're trying really hard to hide it. So not getting that work done on ourselves, not owning it, I call it owning your shit. Mm. Teachers who don't own their shit, they're broadcasting stuff to their most astute students, not to mention acting out on other students, you know, who are getting the- Yeah full brunt of their disdain or whatever, frustration. It's really important. What a great story for teachers to hear. There is this unknown impact on sensitive kids who are trying desperately to do the right thing and don't know how to do it for you- Yeah because they're picking up on the fact that it's act- kind of impossible.

Erin McQuade-Wright 10:12

Yeah. And there's the thing that happens And then there's the meaning we make of it.

Betsy Burris 10:17

Exactly.

Erin McQuade-Wright 10:17

And I was responsible for the meaning I made of it, and it wasn't until years later that I could see that I'd really made a lot of that.

Betsy Burris 10:26

Yeah.

Erin McQuade-Wright 10:26

Yeah. That I was falling short, that I was... You know, we fill in the- Yeah gaps with stories- Yeah about ourselves as kids, and so that's- Yeah.

Betsy Burris 10:32

Exactly

Erin McQuade-Wright 10:33

very normal as well, but- Mm it's like a giant tiptoeing across the land. They're tiptoeing. They're doing their best to keep a low profile, but they're a giant. They're

Betsy Burris 10:47

still

Erin McQuade-Wright 10:49

They're crushing homes underneath their feet. Right. You know? Right. Underneath their tiptoes. Right. They're doing so much damage- Yeah because they don't realize how big they are- Exactly and how large of a shadow they cast- Mm onto their students as well. So yeah, I think of teachers as having that much power, and- Yeah how wonderful, and oh, my goodness, what a responsibility.

Betsy Burris 11:08

Yes. Amazing. So here's what I wanna do next. Because my podcast is aimed at teachers, yours is aimed at fundraisers, I would love to play for a minute around the question of, how might what you have to say to fundraisers relate to teachers? Because you guys out there listening to this, you're probably thinking, "Why fundraising?" Fair enough. Let's handle that one immediately. What might be some similarities between fundraisers and teachers in your mind?

Erin McQuade-Wright 11:35

They tend to both be helpers.

Betsy Burris 11:38

Huh.

Erin McQuade-Wright 11:38

They tend to be the type of person that says, "I think I can really do some good here, and I see a way that I can offer my gifts in a way that helps somebody learn something, helps somebody come along with a thing that's working." You know, we all wanna be part of a winning team, and Seth Godin, the marketing guru, says, "People like us do things- Uh-huh like this." Yeah. And so there can be a real sense that I'm a helper, this is what I do. I help children, or I help a mission that's raising money. You know, often the beneficiaries of nonprofit fundraising are children, right? Mm. Yes. A mission is we help kids do X, Y, and Z. Yeah. So I would think that both careers tend to attract somebody who's got an idea of how they can help, and they're okay with using their physical body, their mind, and their big heart. To lead the way in how they're doing their work every day.

Betsy Burris 12:45

Mm.

Erin McQuade-Wright 12:46

One of the tools I use in my coaching practice, I don't just coach fundraisers. I have a podcast for fundraisers- Mm-hmm because that's the career that I came out of. Mm-hmm. And I have a sense that I can help, and I wanna offer some tools to the person I used to be- Mm in fundraising, so that's why I have the podcast. But my coaching comes down to helping people negotiate themselves. 'Cause no matter what we're trying to do out in the world, we first have to come up against our stories of lack and limitation, how good we allow it to be in our life, our past patterns, attitudes, and behaviors, and guess what? That's all an inside job. Mm. So 80% of what anyone's trying to do, whether they're trying to find love or start a business or do whatever they wanna do in their life, they have to come up against their habits, their patterns, their fears, and their behaviors, and so I help people navigate that with my coaching.

Betsy Burris 13:53

Yeah. And I think you help, in your podcast, do that as well. That's what struck me. I'm not even sure it's about fundraising so much as, as you say, overcoming your blocks, overcoming relational blocks, overcoming fears, overcoming insecurities, overcoming your maladaptive interpretations of what just happened to you, right? Overcoming your expectations- Yeah that you fulfill for yourself. It's really great. In fact, the latest episode I listened to was one on Enneagrams.

Erin McQuade-Wright 14:18

Yeah.

Betsy Burris 14:19

Right? And Enneagrams, those of you out there who don't know what they are, I don't even know what they are, but it's like a personality type. Yeah. And you go through every single type, and you talk about what kinds of qualities come with those types and how they might manifest in you, and that's relevant for everybody. That's not relevant just for fundraisers.

Erin McQuade-Wright 14:34

Right, and that's what I was meaning to say earlier. Thank you for getting me back to Enneagram. The Enneagram 2 is a common type in fundraising, and you're right when you say it's a tool. It's like a personality tool, and it describes who you learned you had to be early on- Mm-hmm in life to get your needs met. And often the 2 is the helper. The 2 is the type that is like, "Whatever you need, I'm here for you. I take care of others. I feel most comfortable if I've got somebody to take care of." I was just reading about an Enneagram 2 yesterday, and she was very good at her household and anticipating the needs of her parents and her family members. She got to school, and she didn't have her family around her, and she found herself at recess, and she was absolutely falling apart because she did not know who she was within this dynamic of just kids. And she looked across the playground, and she saw a kid that had either been injured or, you know, something had happened. And this little kid was sitting and weeping, and she went to that kid to take care of them. And she used her gift of caretaking that, you know, an Enneagram 2 has right out in front, that big heart, I wanna help. But also the other thing that happened was being able to caretake in that moment, to have a person that she could focus on, was a huge relief to her. Hmm. And she felt like, "Oh, thank God. I don't have to deal with myself. I can just focus- Yeah on this person."

Betsy Burris 16:22

Yeah.

Erin McQuade-Wright 16:22

That was a need that she had. You know, she had learned that focusing on herself was wrong or bad or not what was gonna get her what she needed in this life. Yeah. And so that outward focus of I just focus on other people, that outward focus of sometimes it comes with a shadow or a belief like nobody can actually love me as well as I love them Tends to show up in people who are in helping professions like teachers, like fundraisers, like my husband, who's a nurse, right? Yes. So it's this idea- Or therapists or, yep yeah, this idea of- Social workers I am loved and okay as long as I am giving to someone else. Yeah. And of course, the work, the medicine, for an Enneagram 2 is learning how to connect with this idea that I am worthy of love just by- Yeah being here in this human body, right? Setting aside the actions that I do for others. The real medicine is, oh, this is what it's like to just be worthy for being alive, right? That's the growth edge.

Betsy Burris 17:34

So that you can be deliberate about your care. I totally feel that. The energy flow to someone who's in distress, very, very natural for me, and I'm sure a lot of teachers, a lot of others, of course, as you say, the 2s. But my feeling at this point in my life, as I've developed strong boundaries and worked with a lot of people on this too, is that you've got to be able to make the choice and know when you're actually... See, I see the shadow side is when you're a savior, and you don't care whether or not that person that you're helping can actually help themselves. Mm. But if you believe that you're the one who can do it best, and your need to be needed is more important than that person's need to actually grow and develop the skills on their own. I think there are lots of shadow sides to probably every- Yeah type of, every Enneagram, or every type of personality. But that one, for the 2s, and I think for teachers in particular, the fine line between doing what feels right to you and being a savior, which is not right for the other person that you're trying to work with. Especially as a teacher, when your job is to help someone who is possibly in distress or is needy, to actually develop the skills to grow themselves. This is true for coaches. Yeah. You do the same thing with your clients, I do the same thing with mine. That's the danger. And as you say, being unable to be with yourself, being unable to know who you are independent of other people's needs is also, as you say, a growth edge, really important for all of us, and also for teachers.

18:55

Yeah. And if you're not careful, you can also drag in this feeling of How dare you not appreciate me, right? Resentment. I'm doing all this and nobody appreciates me. I am- Yep underappreciated, I'm underpaid, I'm... That's another thread that falls through- Yeah fundraising and teaching. It's like, uh, how can I not be taken seriously and really felt to be an asset here?

Betsy Burris 19:26

Right. Exactly. I'm not being appreciated enough. I'm being taken for granted. Yeah, all those things. I know. I'm a resentment queen. I feel it all the time. I'm working on it all the time. But it's that same early, early training, that early teaching, that this is how to see the world and this is what your role is in it, and to question that role is not your job until, you know, you get to be in your 50s and start questioning it. And then by then, those neuronal patterns are really entrenched. Really worthwhile work to be working on resentment, but you're so right. We're just talking about one Enneagram, one slice of the whole thing, and there's so much to say about it, right?

Erin McQuade-Wright 20:01

Just so people know, in general, there are nine types. This personality assessment goes back, some say, as early as the second century. It is very, very old. It is not a determinant of who you have to be in this lifetime. It just takes a snapshot of what personality you had to put on to get your needs met, often early in life. And then those things we want to be able to assess as adults. Oh, is it- Yeah still helping me? That in order to get my needs met, I need to not have any needs of my own, right? Exactly. So I need to make sure that everybody else's needs are taken care of. I'm a type 9 in the Enneagram, and that's the diplomat, right? I can see things from all different points of view without judging people. And sometimes when you can see things from all the different points of view as valid, you can get stuck in freeze mode. Right. It's not great for moving forward and making a decision and taking action. So there can be this, "Well, let me think about it more. Let me see all of the sides," and you can get lost forever in that. Yeah. And so-

Betsy Burris 21:14

Right

Erin McQuade-Wright 21:14

the medicine for the 9 is being able to take action and have faith that if I hurt somebody's feelings, I actually have the tools to be able to navigate that tough conversation rather than just thinking, "I need to not do anything that's gonna offend anybody ever, and so let me just fade into the background and not have anybody see me." That is a strategy that doesn't actually work 'cause it, similar to the 2, also brings resentment that I'm not seen for my gifts and talents here at all.

Betsy Burris 21:45

Exactly, and we all need to be seen. So this is interesting. Enneagrams, those of you out there, check 'em out. Very interesting. Not prescriptive, not determinative, but possibly familiar and recognizable. Allows you... It's kinda like, you know, are you an introvert? Are you an extrovert? Well, we're both in different circumstances. Yeah. As you say, you know, we can be all of these different Enneagrams at different places, and probably should. The idea would be being able to kinda move around, move among them deliberately and strategically, and develop the skills required to be good at all of them so that you can actually figure out in this particular moment, I should probably pull out my, I don't know, my 4. I don't even know what the 4 is, but I should be more assertive here rather than fade into background. I should be thinking about whether or not I'm gonna hurt somebody and be as diplomatic as possible, but be really honest with them about what my decision rules are or what my assumptions are. All kinds of good stuff in there. But that's not really what I wanted to talk about. It just so happens that we started with that. I wanted to ask you, you kinda told us what you do in Vitalist Coaching. Do you work with teachers at all?

Erin McQuade-Wright 22:47

I haven't worked with teachers per se, but this might sound kind of jarring to say, but I truly was trained to be able to coach anyone on any topic. Because what I am doing through my coaching is never being an expert in their business.

Betsy Burris 23:07

Right.

Erin McQuade-Wright 23:07

What I am an expert in is facilitating them home to themselves and who they actually are, to live the life- Hmm they actually wanna live. Hmm. And so I work with humans.

Betsy Burris 23:17

Yeah. That's great. Yeah. All right. So now I wanna ask you about some specifics. You mentioned in one of the podcasts, the most recent ones I listened to, that you do somatic work with clients. Can you talk about what somatic work is, and then of course, because I really want teachers to hear how this might help them, how might somatic work help teachers?

Erin McQuade-Wright 23:39

We are really keyed in in our society to what you know in your brain. We reward people for what they know in their brain, what they can recall, the facts and figures they have at their disposal. That has been our approach in recent centuries, right? What do you know? How quickly can you recall it? That shows up in the classroom. That shows up in the job market. And what somatic awareness is offering is that the mind is one way of knowing That there is actually a well of information that happens inside the body- Mm that the mind is not aware of. I was an example of this when I fell in love. I knew the man who would become my husband for about a year, and we were talking, and we were both looking for a house, to buy our house in the same town at the same time. So we would catch up on the job work, on the housing market and everything. And one day he bought a house, and he showed me his house. The challenge that I had with this man was that I was used to dating unavailable men- Ah because that was what I felt comfortable with, keeping energy at an arm's length. So it was even better if the guy lived out of state. So I had a really, really, really tricky ability to receive. And what I found with this guy was that he just saw me, and his energy was so strong, and it was like right in my face, and I was very uncomfortable about that.

Betsy Burris 25:29

Hmm.

Erin McQuade-Wright 25:30

He had all kinds of curiosities about me, and what did I think about this, and how did I feel about that? He had an emotional ability. On our first date, he cried telling me about his son, and I took that as he's trying to manipulate me. He's trying to force a closeness that doesn't exist, and I was like, "Forget this guy," right? So I was super triggered.

Betsy Burris 25:52

Wow.

Erin McQuade-Wright 25:53

And he was super open-hearted. And so we were friends for a year after that, and one day he said, "Hey, my house is, you know, the renovations are mostly done. You wanna come see my house?" And I said, "Okay, I'll see what you had done." I had given up my search for a home at that time You got to doing a first time home buyer program and they shuttered the program. This was in New Orleans post-Katrina. Oh. So the money went away. The incentive money went away, and I was like, "Forget it. I'm not gonna buy a house." So anyway, he bought a house, and I went to see his house, and it was an energetic shift where his energy was focused outward- On the house on renovations, on here's where I've decided to put this. There was a hole in the ceiling here, and I decided to do that. And in that space where he wasn't so focused on me, I could see him for the first time. Hmm. There wasn't so much energy flying at me, and I was able to say, "Oh, this is who this person is." And I got into my car, and I called my best friend, and I was like, "I don't know what is happening, but I know that I could love this man." And Betsy, when I tell you, it took me two weeks for my brain to catch up with that feeling that I had in my heart. I could not explain it. It was absolutely confusing because I was used to going to my brain for information. I was not used to going to my body for information. So when I learned about somatic awareness, and specifically the work of HeartMath Institute-

Betsy Burris 27:32

Hmm

Erin McQuade-Wright 27:32

which HeartMath did a study of what's the electrical activity happening in the brain? What's the- Oh, wow electrical activity happening in heart and in the gut? They measured these three places. The experiment was that they would show images on a screen in front of the study participant. Those images were meant to evoke either joy or pain, right? And so these images would come fast, and they would measure where in the body the person registered these images, a feeling associated with these images. And what they found was the heart knew first. Wow. And then sometimes even in the case where the image had not come up on the screen yet, the heart knew what was coming So this is an example- Love it that they were able to replicate to show that there is wisdom that exists in the body that the brain is not aware of. Wow. There is a whole world of experience that exists in the body, in the gut, in the heart, that we are not picking up on when we're just going to our brain for information. So the Enneagram 1 type tends to be very perfectionistic. They tend to be very detail-oriented. That's the one you want on your team when you're launching a website, and you wanna see if there are typos or whatever it is.

Betsy Burris 28:59

Mm-hmm.

Erin McQuade-Wright 28:59

And this type of person can be really good at going to their brain for information, and find it such a relief to be able to go to the body for information- Yeah as well. Yeah. So what we find in all of the Enneagram types is that when we have some curiosity about what's going on in the body- That that can open up our world and our- Yeah healing and our ability to understand who we are. And I like to say, if you've ever been a person who's told a story that wasn't a sad story, uh, in the telling of it, you noticed a tear running down your cheek, and you went, "Wait, why am I crying? It's not a sad story. I don't know why." That means your body knows something that your brain doesn't know. It's just feedback, and it's about the wisdom of what's held in the body, and I think that is a really cool thing about our bodies.

Betsy Burris 29:53

And so you work on that. And so we're the same this way, because I'm always suggesting to my client, "Let's get in your body. What's happening in your body? Let's make sure we understand what's..." You know, it's so funny. I was just listening to a podcast this morning between Ezra Klein and Michael Pollan, you know, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and his most recent book is about consciousness, which is a very strong interest of mine. And they cited a study that said... This study was not looking at the heart and the gut. They was only looking at the mind. Yeah. It was an MRI machine, and they wanted meditators to... Meditators pushed on a button to let the researcher know when they noticed a thought coming up in their brain. And what they found out was there's activity in the brain four seconds before it, it became conscious to the meditator.

Erin McQuade-Wright 30:36

Yeah.

Betsy Burris 30:37

That there's lag even between the brain activity and our consciousness, but what you're suggesting is there's even more lag between our body's knowing and our brain's knowing. So that means that there could be an eight-second lag or, you know, a two-week lag between what our hearts know and what our brains finally pick up on. So interesting what you just said. But, you know, it's interesting to think that if we're not used to listening to our bodies, that lag is gonna be even longer if we even ever notice that there's something happening in our body. So I think the practice of getting your heart and your gut to be speaking to you through meditation, through yoga, through body scans, through somatic therapy, through somatic work, is really valuable.

Erin McQuade-Wright 31:19

Yeah. And depending on how we were raised- Yeah we might have ideas like, "Don't trust yourself. Trust your teacher-" Right trust your parent more, trust your pastor more," that you are the last person you should be listening to. And when we teach children this, we break their- Connection to what is happening in their body. And we can get that back, but it takes some practice. Like you said- Yes, it does with resentment, this idea of what my body knows is valid, and I can visit that place in a way- Yes that is like, my coach talks about letting a little bit of the steam out of the tea kettle at a time. Uh-huh. Right? Because we can have this idea that if I allow myself to touch into the grief that I feel in my heart, that I will start crying and I will never stop.

Betsy Burris 32:10

Never stop.

Erin McQuade-Wright 32:12

That if I allow myself to feel the anger in my gut, that it will burn the world down. Like, we can believe these kinds of things. And what neuroscience tells us is that an emotion fully experienced, if we give it our full attention, it takes about 90 seconds for it to pass through and be integrated through our nervous system. But if we don't know how to do that, it can be really scary to kind of- Yeah hold ourselves through a somatic experience, and sometimes people work with a coach for that to be able to- Yeah work in a way that is gradual, it's bite-sized, and it's also, you're held by someone else.

Betsy Burris 32:55

Yes, absolutely. And same with a therapist, right? And same with a teacher, I would say, holding your students as they experience emotion, holding yourself as you experience it with them. There's so much emotion in our lives, and if we are afraid and don't have the skills to, or even just the experience to know that we'll survive them, and actually, in my experience, that they teach us a lot. I teach my clients and my teachers emotions are signals. They are meaningful. They're gonna tell you shit that your brain is, as you're saying, your brain is not picking up on. Emotions are gonna tell you what's really going on if you know how to listen to them and trust them, and just even notice that they're there.

Erin McQuade-Wright 33:32

And that's a great thing for teachers, Bessie, to ponder, is really how much emotion is allowed.

Betsy Burris 33:39

Yeah.

Erin McQuade-Wright 33:39

And, you know, back in the '70s and '80s when I was going to school, your emotion was not welcome, and it was definitely problematic, right? Yeah. That was at school, that was at home, that was in all the places, in Girl Scouts. Wherever you were, emotions were not welcome here, right? And I witnessed a family member of mine holding their child through a temper tantrum, and I was so amazed. This happened about two years ago, and I was so amazed at how the child had a very specific thing that they wanted that they couldn't have, right? It was a tech moment, that they were done, they were tapped out on tech, and they wanted their tech. And I saw the mother say, "I know you're feeling a lot right now. Yeah. Would you like a hug?" And he said, "No, I don't want a hug." And she was like, "Okay." And she just stood with him. She didn't shut it down, and I was like, what a gift to even get to witness that. Ah. This place that, yeah, you can have your big emotions. It's not gonna stop the world. You're not gonna get hit, you're not gonna get yelled at, you're not gonna get... He didn't even get put in his room. He worked it out in the room. Oh, that's fantastic. But because she didn't try to shut down his emotion, it was pretty short-lived. Yeah. And I felt like I had witnessed a miracle, Betsy.

Betsy Burris 35:04

That is miraculous. She taught him, "You're not gonna kill me, either. I can be..." And she was showing him that these emotions could be survived. And not even survived, but thrived. Like, she was fine. That is really miraculous. What an amazing woman. Yeah. How did she figure that out?

Erin McQuade-Wright 35:19

I don't know, but I feel like this is the future. I feel like this is what younger parents are more apt to do, and it's just so much less punitive- Yeah than, you know- Yeah my experience coming up and my peers, and it's a sheer delight to witness. Now, think teachers have it a little bit more of a challenge because- Oh, yeah there's a classroom, there's other kids there, right? There's, learning is communal. But I think teachers play an incredible role also- Oh, yes in signaling these ideas, that- Yes your emotions are a thing that you can work through, and you don't have to just stuff them in a closet and then have them come out sideways when you get home, or later on- Exactly when you're learning to drive and you're road raging, right? Because you never learned to deal with your emotions.

Betsy Burris 36:05

Yeah. One of the things that I marvel at with teachers is that not only do they have a lot of students in their classroom, all of whom are feeling something most of the time, but they have other people's children in their classroom so they're not even, like, you know, you got a student in your class tantruming, it's much harder to be tolerant and not panicked and terrified when that kid isn't your own. There's no umbilical connection. I mean, it's amazing. In this day and age, the emotions that kids bring with them into the classrooms, or the emotions that teachers bring with them into the classrooms- Yeah they're still like your old third-grade teacher. We are still human beings here, but with more reason to be dysregulated and burned out, right, because of what students are bringing in. There's a lot going on, and these are not the teacher's kids.

Erin McQuade-Wright 36:51

Yeah.

Betsy Burris 36:51

Like, talk about resentment. Take care of your kids at home so they don't bring this shit to my classroom, right?

Erin McQuade-Wright 36:57

Yeah, yeah. Uh, when I first was learning yoga, I went to a teacher training, and I really had to fight with the teacher to be in the teacher training. When I say fight with the teacher, it might be different than what you would think. He was trying to get me in, and I was trying to get out and say like- "Who am I to do this? Who am I to say that I'm anybody's teacher?" And he said, "What I think of it as is you're standing there, you're looking at a fire in front of you, and you look down, and in your hand is a bucket of water. And what if you're just bringing the water- Mm that you already have to the fire? And what if- Mm that's all yoga is? And maybe you'll be a teacher and maybe you won't, but this idea of I have to save everyone is a really- Right big thing to be able to live up to. But if you're just simply bringing water in that moment where a fire is happening, that in itself is worth the whole thing. And I think when teachers have a role to play with that, offering the child some water, even if it's not the whole class stops for you to have your big emotions. But there's some water there that could be offered by the teacher. And I think in the fundraising aspect, it felt like a, a math problem that I was constantly trying to solve. How do I take myself- Mm out of it so that the mission can shine? Right. Yes. How do I take myself out of it so the donor can shine? And so I'm constantly putting myself on the back burner, back burner. Yeah. Well, guess what? It was my job in my off time to be filling my cup back up again so that I could come in and put myself on that back burner in the donor conversation without resentment, put myself on the back burner- Mm and allow the mission to shine, but not break because I was so brittle from always- Yeah doing this, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So we talk about how are we doing this nourishing? And yes, it is, I think, on the parent ultimately to be nourishing their child and their emotions if they're able to do that at home.

Betsy Burris 39:12

If they're able, right.

Erin McQuade-Wright 39:13

And the teacher has a role to play, and the fundraiser has a role to play in filling themselves back up so that they can come and hold the emotions of others in the course of doing their work, because that's a very human thing, to have emotions.

Betsy Burris 39:30

It is. And when you are what I call a developmental partner, that is a parent or a teacher, I don't know about a fundraiser, but definitely a parent, a teacher, where your job is to help people grow and develop, certainly a coach and a therapist, that is part of the job. You know? When people bring emotions to you, to developmental partners, it's our job to help them, help our charges figure out what to do with that lived experience. Whether it's an emotion, whether it's a thought, whether it's hunger, we are there to actually take what our charges bring us as a whole person. It's all of it. And I think teachers, as you say, back in the '70s and '80s when I was in school too, it was all about the content. You know, it was all about the subject matter, and still teaching wants it to be about the subject matter. We just wanna teach physics. We just wanna teach English. We don't wanna have to teach, as they say, kids. Yeah. But kids are making it impossible now to teach the subject matter in fact. It's really hard. I think unless you're a super good instructional designer, and there are plenty of those out there, but a lot of teachers are thrown off by their students' behaviors and their students', what I call, emotional bedrock needs. They're coming in with emotional needs and relational needs. And, you know, content, I can look at my phone and get the content, but what I need is to figure out how to be human and how to be in relationship with people and exchanging ions rather than just texting, right? The whole purpose of education, and of development I would say, has really shifted, and I'm not sure that the teaching profession, again, that's my specific specialty, I'm not sure that profession has caught up. I think teachers are just blown away now, and I think administrators are running like crazy trying to keep up with the needs of their students, thinking that the old model of teaching content still applies. I don't know that it does, actually. Not saying that content isn't important, but I feel as though the whole notion of design and teaching and helping people grow and develop, which you do as a coach, I do as a coach and a therapist, and teachers do, and parents do. The process, it's not the same thing anymore, I think. Yeah.

Erin McQuade-Wright 41:29

The key is what are you bringing with you into your work? What are you bringing with you into the room as you are doing your job? And that's why work like the somatic work that I described earlier is the edge for people who are having to, what I call, hold for others. Yes. Right? If you come to me and you have a need, and I am wound tight because I haven't taken time for myself, I'm gonna have very little capacity. My receptacle to hold what you're bringing is very small. It's a thimble.

Betsy Burris 42:05

Yeah.

Erin McQuade-Wright 42:06

And when the thimble is full, I'm gonna maybe snap at you, or I'm gonna feel put upon, I'm gonna feel victimized because who do they think they are? I only have a thimble's worth to hold for them.

Betsy Burris 42:16

Exactly.

Erin McQuade-Wright 42:16

And when I am dedicated to doing my own work of clearing my blocks, of feeling what is mine to feel, feeling my feelings, phoning-

Betsy Burris 42:28

Erin McQuade-Wright 42:29

and I do that thing that I described of taking 90 seconds and they integrate through my nervous system, what it does is it frees up more space. So I have an increased sense of spaciousness within myself. So you know what that means? It means it costs me less when you come to me and you ask me to hold something, right? Because I don't- Yeah just have a thimble. I have a greater vessel to be able to hold. I don't need to make it mean anything about me that you're asking me to hold a lot. I have more capacity to hold. Yeah. And that- Yep is why a person who does this work For themselves, whether they do it in partnership with a coach or therapists or anyone else or not, that person has more ability to hold and to bend without breaking. And that is the value that we bring when we take care of ourselves. We're gonna be able to be in our career longer. We're gonna be able to help more people. We're gonna be able to be more present at home with our spouse, with our family, because we're not so tightly wound just walking around with this thimble of the amount that we can hold for others. Yeah.

Betsy Burris 43:43

And no hope that we're ever gonna get that space. I just wanna say, I mean, this is one must, I guess, take advantage of these moments. This is what teacher support groups are. What I do is offer teachers teacher support groups, which are opportunities, weekly opportunities for teachers to get together and talk about their emotions, share them, share the stories that brought up the emotions. We go right into them. We see emotions as data. We work with the emotions. We ask questions about the emotions. We ask questions about what happened, the antecedents, the, the responses, the behaviors, and eventually come up with a plan of action that, that is based on what I would say a data-based formulation of what might've been happening psychodynamically in that moment. And psychodynamically, of course, is important because it's about emotions and it's about relationship. That's what was causing the difficulty in the classroom, even if it was something that on the surface seemed to be just that kid was being a brat, that kid was breaking a rule. No, there's something going on in that kid's body, in the teacher's body, in other students' bodies, that if you have an opportunity to work through and acknowledge and, like, put names to, like anger, frustration, you know, words that- Yeah are taboo for so many teachers. But spending time with those emotions and those experiences, the teachers I work with find relief. Not only relief, they feel better after, at the end of these meetings, but they also go back into the classroom and try their plans. They align differently with their students so that those relationships shift. They change. They become stronger. The kids stop acting out in these ways, or if they act out in these old ways, the teacher and the kid know how to manage it, right? It's the same thing you're talking about that teachers can do by joining what I call a TSG, a teacher support group. And I can tell you, Erin, not many do that because they are so overwhelmed, so overburdened, overscheduled, overcommitted, that when someone says, "An hour a week," they say, "I don't have that time." Which is understandable because they're spending all of their time giving, giving, giving, giving, and pouring themselves out. But even burned out teachers won't take up the opportunity to join a teacher support group, spend time being watched, being seen, being heard, being attended to, being held- Yeah so that you can actually tell us what it's like to be you and get the support, not just from me, but from the other teachers in the group. Very loving, very caring, and very focused. Not on bitching, but on actually trying to make sense of what the experience means, what your body is telling you, what your mind is telling you.

Erin McQuade-Wright 46:08

Yeah, and that quotient, that real... I hear what you're saying about not having the time to do this, and what I would suggest is that you're not seeing the true cost of what it- Exactly costs you to not have that time.

Betsy Burris 46:23

Yes.

Erin McQuade-Wright 46:24

Because what it- add up the minutes that you are unable to wind down at the end of your day, that you are just trying to scroll so that you can distract yourself to not think about the thing that happened that day, that you are awake at 3:00 in the morning and going through the argument of the side that you should have said, the things that you should have said that really would've, you know, like, whatever. If you're in a conversation with a principal or the supervisor, these things- Yeah that's the fully loaded cost of how you're doing things right now. And taking an hour a week for yourself so that you can have this release valve is such a beautiful investment, and it is a savings because- Yes if it can take away even an hour a week of ruminating in the middle of the night, baby, that's worth it. Take

Betsy Burris 47:16

it. Yeah. There's a wash. It's worth it, right? Better to do it in an organized, structured, collective space where everyone is nice to each other than to do it in the middle of the night all by yourself. You just heard a lot of words. You probably knew the meaning of every single one of them, but might still be reeling at the unfamiliar combinations or the rapid-fire delivery. As I often say to the teachers I work with, "I'm a fricking tsunami. Sometimes the best thing you can do is wait for my tidal wave to crash over you, then stand there and see what's stuck. A starfish? A bit of kelp. A cute little crab." Please, if something stuck, share it in a comment or on the TTE hotline, 413-239-4158, or in a review. Great way to recommend the podcast. Or what didn't quite stick? Is that cute little crab crawling away just out of reach and you wanna grab it? If you're still confused about something, please let me know. Again, leave a comment on my Substack. Definitely leave a message on the TTE hotline, 413-239-4158. You might hear your comment on the podcast. And if there's something you need more information about or you need to hear me talk about more, we'll include that at some point. We love to help. We love to talk about this stuff You know what? Thank you for that, Erin. We've just done a little advertisement for TSGs. Please, teachers, contact me if you wanna join one. But it is, I totally agree with you. I think it's a risk. It's a risk, and it's not the kind of risk that maybe number twos take. They would much rather care for, take care of, flow into someone else's need than satisfy their own. It might feel very scary for many teachers to actually spend time on themselves, and understandable, totally understandable. But boy, come and join, practice. You can be silent for as long as you want. Practice what it's like to just be in a space where you are with colleagues who care about you, and you get to care for them, too. It's really quite remarkably reciprocal and enlightening.

Erin McQuade-Wright 49:20

Yeah, and what I would say to the Enneagram 2 types is that idea that I am me when I'm focusing on others, so therefore it doesn't make sense for me to take an hour for myself, that is a pattern, not a fact.

Betsy Burris 49:36

Nice.

Erin McQuade-Wright 49:37

And what I find often with women clients is that their patterns that got them through childhood will work- Yes up until a certain point in adulthood, and then they, it's like they're hitting a brick wall. Yes. Where is all this emotion coming from? Why am I going off on people? Why am I suddenly road raging or yelling at my students or my children or something like that? It's because there is this emotional constipation that's been happening, and you gotta get the clog out. Yeah. You gotta be able to do things in a different way than you did them before, and so that old pattern- I'm messing

Betsy Burris 50:13

up shit all over everyone,

Erin McQuade-Wright 50:14

right? Yeah, yeah. It comes out in ways that you are not anticipating and don't necessarily want, and you're just like, "Oh, gosh."

Betsy Burris 50:22

Yeah.

Erin McQuade-Wright 50:22

Am I going crazy? Am I falling apart? You're not. You just need to tend to yourself. You need to tend to yourself. Yes.

Betsy Burris 50:27

Beautiful. Okay, here's an interesting one. What about fusion? Again, in one of your recent podcasts, I think, you were talking about fundraisers who take no personally, who take rejection personally, because they have a hard time distinguishing between themselves and the organization. How do you understand fusion or merging, you know, and that breakdown of the wall between yourself and the organization? And why doesn't it work? And then if you can talk about that in terms of teaching it, whatever you can think of in terms of teaching, or we can apply it together. But fusion.

Erin McQuade-Wright 51:00

It can be really easy to measure the impact of a fundraiser It can be really clean to see- It's dollars the measured dollars in the door, right? More easy than it is to evaluate whether a teacher is being successful, right? Right. You're gonna need some time. You're gonna need a lot of data. You're gonna need some trends over time. I don't know all of the ins and outs of measuring teachers' effectiveness, but if we reduce the effectiveness of a fundraiser to the dollars coming in the door, we really miss a lot.

Betsy Burris 51:36

Hmm.

Erin McQuade-Wright 51:37

And there can be a really entrancing belief in the fundraising field that I need to just catch as many dollars as possible, and it can feel like that's what I am to this organization. Hmm. Is the rainmaker. That's who I am to the organization. That's what I provide, and therefore, put myself on the back burner. And because our organizations, our nonprofits, are governed by boards of directors who are representatives of the community, there's often a lack of knowledge about what effective fundraising is. Huh. And without getting into the weeds of it, there used to be a lot more tolerance for fundraising taking time, especially when you get into major gifts, especially- Yeah when you get into legacy gifts. Like, for most of us, the biggest gift we leave will come at the end of our lifetime.

Betsy Burris 52:35

Yep.

Erin McQuade-Wright 52:36

And so those take legal structures. That's a nuanced type of fundraising that I used to do toward the end of my career. And if you were employing a fundraiser like that, and if you're maybe a board member, you can look at that person and say, "Where are the dollars? Come on. Come on. Where are the dollars?" When in actuality, it takes multiple meetings to work with someone on their plans for the end of life. It's so much more challenging and textured and layered than asking someone to make a gift to the annual campaign, which is gonna be about $20, $100, $1,000. Asking someone to give their end-of-life gift is monumental because it inherently includes the idea that they're gonna die. Yeah. And you want a person having that conversation with them to be really emotionally attuned, to be really diplomatic and able to, you know, not press them to be able to come to a decision on this thing, because guess what? They're just gonna give to another organization instead, you know? Yep, yep. So there's a lot of nuance that comes with it. And I think for me, in that field, it was easy to be on a roller coaster of I'm good if the dollars just came in for that ask I made. I'm bad if we didn't get the grant. And when you're on this up and down rollercoaster ride based on your productivity, it's setting yourself up for failure because you don't trust the highs and you believe too much in the lows. And what results is kind of a nourishment barrier where, oh, that one came in? Okay, onto the next one. Yeah. Not even celebrating a gift. And I'll never forget, I was interviewing someone for a position and I asked, "Do you have any questions for me?" And she said, "Yeah. How do you celebrate wins?" And I was like, "Oh,

Betsy Burris 54:37

she caught me off guard with that one." You know, we send around a little email to the team and say, "Hey, this came in. Great job. Great job." That wasn't a good answer. Because there are so many no's, and there are so many challenges that really celebrating the win, which felt like a luxury to me- Wow is one of those pieces where you're bringing water to a fire, and you're saying, "There's this. Here's this gift." Yes. Like, let's enjoy the fact that there's water- Yeah in this moment. Yeah. You know? Life is too short, and that's an example of a pattern that I had, thinking I was my actions, I was my success with the organization. Feeling good one day, feeling bad the next. Completely just, like, tanking my adrenals for all of the... You know, not able to just hold my own space. Yeah. That wasn't the work, and it really pushed me to raise a lot of money and get a lot of gold stars and get a lot of acclaim, including one year when the major source of our funding fell out, and fundraising needed to make up the difference, and it did, and we exceeded that gap. Wow.

Erin McQuade-Wright 55:45

And then I was stuck with that gap going forward, like, "Oh, this is how much you can raise?" Wow. "So keep doing it."

Betsy Burris 55:50

Yeah. Yeah.

Erin McQuade-Wright 55:51

But it also really harmed my relationship with myself, 'cause to do that kind of pushing through, which is really great for women in their 20s and 30s- Mm-hmm and not beyond, it necessitates you turning off that signal from the body to the brain. Like- Mm-hmm "Hey, we could use some rest here." No. Mm. We steamroll right over that. That's what we do with that. Mm-hmm. We don't listen to that. Yeah.

Betsy Burris 56:18

Right.

Erin McQuade-Wright 56:19

And it causes a world of trouble, because the body starts talking, and you start getting- Yeah. It does autoimmune. You start getting these symptoms coming up where like, "Oh, I learned really well how to not listen to my body." Exactly. That is not sustainable.

Betsy Burris 56:33

Right.

Erin McQuade-Wright 56:34

And it's not sustainable whether you are a fundraiser, whether you are a teacher, right? So this idea- Correct of I show up and I serve others while also holding this dialogue within myself. I listen to what comes up, right? And I attend to what is asking for my attention on the inside, allows me to do this outer job in a more balanced way, in a more brave way, in a way that is more sustainable for me to be able to keep doing it and not burn myself out.

Betsy Burris 57:09

You know, it makes me think that the merging is I am the organization. Without me, the organization will die. I'm thinking about teachers, and I would love to hear from teachers if they think this is accurate, but in a way there is a similarity that one big way teachers now are evaluated is through test scores. Yeah. It is the quantifiable thing, even though I would say what it quantifies is probably not that important. Yeah. It's the kind of thing you were talking about earlier. It's declarative knowledge that is pulled up quickly in a test situation with multiple choice. So not super valuable given that you can get most of that information probably off a phone, but that is how teachers tend to be evaluated. And so they are responsible, especially since No Child Left Behind, I don't know if this is so true now, but they are responsible for getting their students to produce those numbers.

Erin McQuade-Wright 57:56

Yeah.

Betsy Burris 57:56

Right? And so there's this weird triangulation between teachers having to get students to perform so that the administrators or whoever is evaluating the school supports the teachers and actually approves of the teachers. There's this kind of thing that might be true for fundraisers too, although, you know, you've got the fundraiser, you've got the organization, you've got the donor, this triangle, where if, you know, you're fused with the organization, you don't get to be a human being. You have to be someone who's just generating the dollars. Teachers don't get to be human beings. They have to generate the test scores. Yeah. They have to control those students. They have to make them behave. They have to make them, whatever, do their job, whether they do it well or not. And in the meantime, so many teachers do lose sight of their own needs, and not to mention the fact that there are all these asks by the school. You know, can you coach? Can you do, you know, in-school suspension? I don't know, you know, can you do lunch duty? Can you, whatever, can you do this field trip? So teachers are constantly saying yes to more and more and more, taking up their weekends, taking up their evenings. It's almost like self-care is kryptonite. But what happens is that they burn out. I mean, burnout is the word they use. I know a lot of teachers out there listening right now are burned out or burning out because they throw themselves, I call it throwing themselves on the rocks, on the students' rocks, on the administrators' rocks, on the parents' rocks, 'cause they've also got parents after them, right? Which is not so much the case with fundraisers. You have your board and you have maybe the people, you, you know, your bosses or whatever, but there's always someone who's got something to say about the quality of your work And that's maybe another way that teachers and fundraisers are similar, because there's a lot put on your shoulders, a lot of expectation that you can control people, when that is not something any human being can do. That's right. You can't control a donor. I can't control a student. We can't control our clients. We can barely control ourselves, but we are the people that we must control, right? Yeah. But that's not at all the setup. That's not the paradigm for teachers, certainly for education, and it sounds like it's not the paradigm for m- much fundraising either.

59:55

Yeah, I think there's a real opportunity there to find a way to check in with ourself and let some of the steam out of the kettle. And that can be- Yeah 90 seconds on the toilet-

Speaker 4 1:00:10

Mm-hmm

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:00:11

of seeing what's here and acknowledging what's here, feeling that feeling, and then taking a deep breath and getting back to the day. Because I promise this add it to the stack, add it to the stack approach is just a recipe for disaster. It is. And I think, you know, the women that I have coached, I don't coach exclusively women, but I have coached women who are feeling this very acutely. Yeah. And coming to this point, you know, approaching their 40s and 50s, where they're saying, "I need to pull back my energy and do this in a different way." And I think that is a self-preservation tactic- Huzzah that is so beautiful and so needed.

Betsy Burris 1:01:00

Yes, absolutely. And that is true of teachers as well. I- It hurts me to know that there are teachers out there who are burning out, not just because it's so, so desperately terrible for them, but it's really bad for their students. It's just bad for everybody. All right, here's one. I recently listened to another episode where you shared the story of a board member who told you to put on your big girl pants. Do you remember that story?

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:01:22

Yeah, that was actually not a board member. That was a colleague. Yeah, that was a colleague. And-

Betsy Burris 1:01:28

Can you tell the story? And because you described yourself as being someone who's a peacemaker, a diplomat- Yeah you want everyone to be happy, you fade into the background, and this person said, "Put on your big girl pants," and you actually showed up in a big girl way. So I wanna hear what you did, and then tell us how you did that, how you pulled that off.

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:01:46

There was nuance that the donor was asking for, and this was a large donation. There was nuance that the donor was asking for that this colleague- Mm-hmm of mine held. And I asked if he wanted to be on the call with me so that he could share information that the donor was asking for that was outside of my wheelhouse, and he must have just been having a bad day. Here's my mom. Here's your mom. Uh,

Betsy Burris 1:02:11

she- Nah, he might've been an asshole

Speaker 4 1:02:13

but

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:02:13

yeah, he left the organization not long after, so I do believe that he had some stuff that was- Mm wearing him thin. But yeah, he said, "You know, just put on your big girl pants and do it." And- Wow nobody had ever said that to me in my life, and I just sort of, like, froze, then went away and talked about him behind his back.

Speaker 4 1:02:40

How

Betsy Burris 1:02:40

dare he?

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:02:40

Because I had a very strong victim story that people were doing things to me, and that was a feeling of powerlessness, and when I was feeling powerless, it felt like strength to be able to get somebody on my side agreeing- Yes that he was terrible. Mm-hmm. It wasn't strength. It was a cheap substitute for strength, but in that moment, it felt like strength to go to another colleague and have them say, "He said what?" Yeah. "How dare he?" Right. Right? And I think it was the next morning I went to him, and I said, "You said this, and I'm here to let you know that that can never happen again. You can never say that to me ever again, anything like that. I wanna be clear about what I, my position in this." And he, to his credit, said, "Yes, you're absolutely right," and he seemed to have regretted it, and he apologized, and we moved on, and he left the organization. I don't think that had anything to do with me. Maybe. That was a particular organization where the entirety of the staff turned over within- Really? three or four years of a new leader coming in. So- Wow it was part of a bigger storm of people hating what was going on in the organization. Yeah. I eventually got there.

Betsy Burris 1:04:02

And what I'll tell you- How'd

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:04:03

you do it? Well, my victim story partially helped me, was the big wave that I was surfing into that confrontation was like- Mm you can't talk to me like that. And when I'm saying that, you know, yeah, I felt like I was standing up to a bully, and I needed him to be the bully in that conversation. What I can see years later, looking back on that situation, is I would never condone what he said, but I think he was right, that there was an unwillingness to be in a conversation with a donor where the donor was asking me questions that I didn't know the answer to. And I felt like that was so uncomfortable that I wanted to pull my colleague in for those answers, because I didn't feel comfortable saying, "That's a really great question. Let me find out for you and let you know." Yeah, yeah. I didn't feel comfortable with that. I felt inadequate. I felt like that was going to expose me as- Yes someone who didn't know what she was doing. Exactly.

Betsy Burris 1:05:09

I don't know.

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:05:10

And that was my work to do That was my insecurity that I needed to handle, and he was in a way saying, "Don't barf your insecurity all over me. Get it off me." Yeah. Yeah. "That's yours." You know? And in that way, he was right. Didn't like the delivery. Right. Didn't like that, but-

Betsy Burris 1:05:33

Right

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:05:33

he was flagging something for me that I was afraid to look at at the time. Oh.

Betsy Burris 1:05:38

This is so fantastic. This is what I call emotion work, which is when you actually do the work of figuring out what your emotions, what your emotional response to an experience is teaching you, not just about the other person, but about yourself, right? Owning your shit. And what I love about this story is that usually when I'm talking to people about what happens to them, I have to get them down to the emotional bedrock level. They're focusing on the content. Like, "They said this, they said that, and that was so da-da-da." And so we have to get down to what you got to pretty quickly, which was he was probably having a bad day. If that's what your mom- Yeah you know, it's your mom speaking, and that can be a, kind of a blow-off. But in a way, you learned that he was having a bad day. He was having actually a bad life at that job. He eventually quit. Yeah. But you kinda got the emotional bedrock and understood your anger, your legitimate anger at being talked to that way. But what you n- are now saying is, but it was worth listening to the content as well. Yeah. I mean, I agree with you. His delivery was unacceptable. It was unacceptable. He was being an asshole. But you, in figuring out he was being an asshole because his delivery sucked, like whatever was coming out of his emotional bedrock, whatever was coming out of him emotionally was unacceptable and had to be addressed. Yeah. But the content had to be owned by you, and you did it. So just such a beautiful story of how, you know, our worst experiences, yeah, can throw us into a victim narrative. It can make us feel terrible, and we want people to make us feel better about ourselves. But if we do the work, we can actually acknowledge, yeah, I have reason to be angry, and I do have every right to go back and talk to this guy and tell him, "Don't ever speak to me that way again. Unacceptable." But I also have reason to listen to what he was telling me and what he was teaching me about me. Yeah. He was teaching you about him, and he was teaching you about you, and you got all of it. You picked up on all of it and did what you needed to do- Well, yeah in both respects.

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:07:26

If you don't count the years gap between- Oh it happening and me, you know- Oh, okay I was only at the time able to- And interested in focusing on the part where he messed up.

Betsy Burris 1:07:38

Got it. Got it. Yeah.

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:07:40

Beautiful. At the time, that was all I could hold. Yeah. I felt like I was doing myself a service- Yes by not feeling that deeper thing of insecurity on my part. Yeah. By not acknowledging that and not feeling it, I was doing myself a service by looking in the other direction to what he- Yeah did wrong. Yes. But I was missing an opportunity, and this is what I teach people to do in fundraising and wherever they tend to put their focus in life, and I think the same is for teachers. We can use what's coming up for us in our relationships, in our jobs, in our careers as a mirror For our healing and our growth. And use it as, okay, this is a thing that happened. The 1.0 version is I focus on what he did and how terrible he was, and the 2.0 version is I see what's here for me to learn and grow- Yes into the person that I'm trying to become. Yeah. And that doing the 2.0 version, I really believed for a long time that that would be too painful to endure. Oh. And I'm here to say- Yeah that that is where the freedom comes in.

Betsy Burris 1:08:54

Yes.

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:08:55

That is where the gold is. Yes. The ability to look at it, feel the emotions, and transmute them into open space where you can feel free and you can take a deeper breath, and you can go forward in your life, and you don't have to have this albatross hanging around your neck- Yeah about this thing that somebody said to you once, and you keep going back to it- Yeah like you're Precious in, you know, Lord of the Rings, to keep shining that ring. Why? Why are you shining that ring? I promise you- Yeah your freedom is not there. It is in on the other side of feeling the thing that you've been trying not to feel.

Betsy Burris 1:09:30

Yeah. And what you're describing is, of course, righting yourself, getting yourself right with your emotion and with the lessons from the world that you might not want to learn. You're also talking about getting your relationship right with that person who I would say was an asshole. And I just wanna say, message to assholes, it would be so much more effective for you to, you know, contain your disdain or your frustration or impatience and just say it. Just say what needs to be said. Something like, "You know what? You know the answers to those questions. You might be afraid of owning those answers. But you can do this." Yeah. "So you know what? I'm not gonna go on that call with you, because you can do what you think you can't do, and I'm just gonna call out the challenge. Go for it, and then come back and report and tell me how it happened." He didn't have to be an asshole. He could've just- Yeah told you what you needed to hear, and you probably would've been able to hear it.

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:10:22

Yeah. Right? He could've said he believed in me.

Betsy Burris 1:10:24

Right? Would've been so much more effective. But what he chose to do, this is why he was an asshole, and it was good for you to go and tell him never again. He chose, or it's never really a choice with assholes, what bubbled up, what burbled out of him, was his need to slam you, right? Not a relational need, which was to teach you something you needed to learn. And I call it corrective experience, to offer you corrective experience. No, he chose not to do that. He couldn't do that. Instead, he had to spew all over you. He, he spewed his shit on you. Yeah. And it took you years, and thank God you did it- Yeah because so many of us don't figure this out And so, all right, it took you years. Forgiven. Take whatever time you need to figure out, oh, that was the lesson that he was unable to teach me or that he masked by his nastiness.

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:11:09

Yeah.

Betsy Burris 1:11:09

Right? By his condescension. He masked the lesson, and I had to work especially hard to learn the lesson because I was, like every other human being, I fit with him in a way that allowed me to focus on his nastiness rather than whatever lesson he was masking. It's really hard to figure out what's being masked by people's meanness.

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:11:27

Yeah.

Betsy Burris 1:11:28

Right? But it's the work. It's the work, and it's incredibly valuable and productive. It's really enlightening to do what you did.

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:11:35

Mm. Thank you.

Betsy Burris 1:11:36

What a great story. I just love it. Okay, so we've kind of addressed this, but I wanna give you a chance to talk about this directly. I- it sounds like you do work with people who have burned out. What would you say about working with burnout in particular? Anyone who's burned out, teachers, fundraisers, people that you coach.

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:11:53

I would say that this is something you can come back from.

Betsy Burris 1:11:56

Mm.

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:11:57

That your body is talking, and you have the opportunity to listen to what it's saying or not And if what got you here is not working going forward, then it's worth trying something else, right? Trying something different. And I think that's a real thing that we can do for ourselves. I was in burnout to the point where I changed careers.

Betsy Burris 1:12:27

Yeah.

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:12:27

And I've realized that I had been recreating a dynamic that kept me frustrated, under somebody else's thumb, unappreciated. That theme kept coming up, and I was like, "Hmm, what's the common denominator in this theme? Oh, it's me."

Betsy Burris 1:12:47

Ah.

Erin McQuade-Wright 1:12:48

Why do I need so much to be under somebody's thumb who doesn't appreciate me and doesn't respect me? Because I keep- Oh finding it everywhere I go. Yeah. And I think of it like a little fish at the bottom of the ocean underneath a rock, and that fish might be like, "Ugh, this rock is so oppressive and big and over me," like shaking its little fin fist. You know? Like, "Why are you so rock-ish?" And then like something comes down, a hand comes down and moves the rock, and the fish goes, "Whoop. I was hiding that." "I'm movement. My hiding place is gone." And so that was for me, like, the act of getting kicked out of the nest of an organization that I had co-founded. Oh. And it was like, oh, the rock is suddenly gone. And I realized that I was using that dynamic. I was using that rock to hide. What I was hiding from was the idea, the big question of what do I wanna bring to the world? What's my contribution that is uniquely mine to bring? Because it felt safer to find a wagon to hitch myself to- Yes and like find a mission that already existed, find a leader that was already looking for somebody, find a wheel that I could be a cog in, and that- Yes was how I did my career. And in doing so, I never had to grapple with the question of what my unique gifts were, what my offerings were for me to bring to the world. It felt too scary to do that, so I used and then recreated the situation where I'm the little guy that's doing all this and not appreciated and blah, blah, blah. So tiring to look back on it now. Yeah. But that was the deni- dynamic that I needed- Yes at the time. I needed both the protection of the rock, and I needed the rock to be able to be just infuriating enough that I- Yes could focus all my energy on, "How dare they? Why don't they see me? Why am I so blah, blah, blah, stymied and frustrated?" I needed both- Yes of those things at the same time.

Betsy Burris 1:14:54

You know, it makes me think of your visiting your soon-to-be husband's home, that the pattern for you was, "I need something to distract me from me."