Episode 3: How do challenging times affect our Mental Health? And what can we do to support our workplace to develop our individual and organizational resilience?

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to this episode of Steps to Change, the podcast where we explore learning and development topics, organizational behavior change, and practical ways to inspire people to act differently. On this episode we are discussing the question, how can our mental health be affected during challenging times? And how can we maintain our resilience to support positive mental health? Our guest for this episode is Laura Rosenthal, owner of MAPS Training, which specializes in mental health training and resilience training. Welcome Laura. How are you today?

Speaker B: I'm very well, thank you Alan. Lovely to be here. How are you?

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm doing pretty good, thank you. Uh, for the listeners out there who may not know about you, Laura, uh, tell us about yourself, uh, and your background in the mental health space.

Speaker B: Uh, well, so I've worked in the pharmaceutical industry for about 25 years. I used to work as a trainer. I used to train the salesforce, uh, that used to go out and sell to the doctors. So uh, I used to train in a lot of therapy areas whilst I was there. One of the therapy areas, uh, was, well, was around mental health. Uh, I used to work in the areas of depression and in alcohol induced brain damage and schizophrenia as well. So I've got a lot of interest and background in terms of medical health, uh, but also I have lived experience, uh, both myself, uh, and I've had experiences uh, of depression and I have a lot of lived uh, experience in my family. So I am really passionate about making sure that people that need the support can get it, uh, and that everyone should be able to talk, uh, kindly and well to people in mental distress. So, uh, I now run an independent training company, as he said, maps, uh, and uh, I do mainly mental health, ah, training and resilience training as you said. So that's me.

Speaker A: And thank you Laura for sharing not only the professional experience but the personal experience. All right, well, uh, let's jump into it, shall we? So I think one of the things that I'm really curious around, uh, with mental health, you know, as we know, over the last several years it's been brought to the forefront of conversations not only for, you know, individuals to look after their mental well being, but also from a workplace perspective. You know, given all of the stuff that's happening from the political landscape in the world around us through the last several years of, you know, either people returning to work or trying to work remotely and hybrid, you know, all the milieu of things happening in the world, it can be pretty challenging for people. So I guess I'm really curious, you know, how do challenging times, uh, you know affect people's mental health.

Speaker B: Well, it goes without saying really, doesn't it? Of course, uh, it impacts it in a negative way when we. I think mental health is a strange thing because people aren't really familiar with what the term mental health means. But ultimately it's our psychological, social and emotional well being. That's how I'd normally describe it. Essentially how we view our lives, our futures, how we interact and engage with others, how we just generally feel. So essentially everyone has their own personal size stress bucket that collects all the stress and angst that falls into someone's world on a daily basis. And you can imagine that stress and angst fills it, it reaches critical fill levels, which is when you start, when you start displaying uh, stress signatures. And then if you don't do anything to let the stress drain out by putting in a valve or a tap or something along those lines, uh, what will happen is that bucket will eventually overflow. And uh, it manifests when that happens as significant ment health challenges and issues. We call that emotional snapping. So when we consider now the fact of how much stress and challenge there is during these current times, everyone's bucket's already super full. Uh, so nowadays it's not surprising that the smallest of triggers, like a little bit of extra responsibility at work, a surprise bill potentially, uh, uh, road rage could do it. Someone drives you mad in the car and suddenly it's a catalyst to a complete tailspin in a person's ability to cope. It's straw that breaks the camel's back so their bucket overflows and their ability then to feel positive, fully function socially or at work can all totally decline. So it's the pressure pot really that's, that's happening.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that image. And then the analogy of the stress bucket, you started to mention the things that can happen, but what are those triggers that people can look out for currently that might be showing up so that we can just be more self aware of, you know, why we're all maybe a little bit more snappier.

Speaker B: Well, I mean the thing is, if you just asked for triggers, where would we start? There are so many. So you can sort of put them into uh, like little compartments. You've got those that go on in your personal and your home life. The cost of living crisis, for example, and financial pressures that are on people are huge. Then you've got relationships of loved ones, health of loved ones, your own health, bereavement. Uh, I often think nowadays the sandwich generation, now that I am of that age, um, Is huge thing where you're tied in the middle between trying to look after those that need your support, that are younger than you and over the older than you, your parents. You've got social media that comes into everywhere and the peer pressure for being able to perform. And, and if we just now think about work in its own right. Wow. I mean, uh, the World Health Organization have numerous categorized risks to mental health at work. And they can be anything around your work relationships and your workload. Too little or too much work hours, job security, mergers. You yourself mentioned m remote working a little while ago, which, uh, in some ways is a positive, but brings with it its own challenges of isolation and extra pressure, of less easy communication, I think. And then as you mentioned, these, these social triggers, world events. It's just you can't turn the news on nowadays without just being absolutely appalled by everything that's going on in the world. And that does have a lot of impact on so many people, even if you don't not directly connect with anyone in the world with these terrible stories. So you got menopause. Oh my goodness. And even nice things like having a baby or moving house or getting a promotion can land up being a trigger. So, yeah, you have to stop me at some stage, otherwise, you know, I'll be here all night just saying, where did the pressure come from?

Speaker A: But actually it's a really important thing for listeners out there just to remember that, you know, there are a lot of things that can set us off. And as you start to kind of understand your personal triggers or your workplace triggers or your family triggers, whatever they might be, being aware of those triggers can really help you start to pinpoint those signs when your mental health isn't maybe doing so well or you're having those snappy moments so that you can take a little bit of, if you're in a place, take a little ownership of going, okay, I recognize those triggers. I recognize they're kind of setting me off. Um, and you know, start to take, uh, get on top of it, if you will. If you're in a place where you're able to do so that's not always, you know, uh, not everybody's always in a place where they can get on top of it in that way.

Speaker B: That's absolutely right. Recognizing them in the first place and also not feeling alone with them. You know, especially things like menopause now, uh, yeah, as I, as I am party of that, um, knowing that everybody else is going through the same stuff is actually comfort.

Speaker A: So, you know, picking up on that Spotting the signs. I'm curious, Laura, in your experience, you know what, why do people maybe not recognize that they're going into a place of declining mental health or maybe even believe they don't suffer from it, right? Going back to that stigma piece, like, oh, no, I don't have bad mental health, I'm not depressed, right? What's going on for people when they kind of maybe show up in that space?

Speaker B: I think you've sort of answered your own question there in terms of it. Either they genuinely don't understand the signs and signals, so it's just lack of knowledge. You sit there and say, I'm just not sleeping well at the moment, or I'm just a bit run down. What's really interesting is that when you have poor mental health, it will absolutely impact on your physical health. Uh, your cortisol levels leave you open to infection. So what happens then is that you either get more infections because you've got compromised immune system, or if you've got an autoimmune disease like psoriasis or Crohn's, you'll get flare up. When you are getting all those infections, it is because your immune system is compromised because of your high stress levels. But your high stress levels will also affect your cardiovascular system. So suddenly your blood pressure increases. Or it could also impact your musculoskeletal system. You land up getting tension headaches because we're all hunched up all the time because we're so stressed. Bad backs. So they don't understand. Sometimes the signs like physical illness are due to the fact that they are potentially, uh, having mental health issues or too much stress and so they don't recognise it that way. We also know that sleeping is totally affected when you're stressed. Either you can't fall asleep or you can't stay asleep. What happens is you start becoming tired, you drop the ball at work. So when people say they don't have mental health issues, perhaps they're just putting normal events and not realizing what's caused the problem in the first place. Uh, these subtle sort of signs. But also, you're quite right in terms of what you say, why don't they recognize? The fact is, they don't want to recognise it. They don't want to admit they have mental issues because of the stigma, sadly still attached to it. So they go, I'll just push through it. And then what will happen is they'll turn up for work and there's something called presenteeism, which means that people aren't off work because of Mental health issues and stress, they'll turn up, but they're completely incapable of doing their jobs the way they used to because their head's just not in the game. So that's a real problem as well. Um, in terms of why people aren't recognizing, they're either deliberately not recognizing or genuinely not recognizing because the signs are so subtle.

Speaker A: M. Yeah. And what really jumps out for me there, Laura, Ah, um, that I don't often I forget when we have conversations around mental health is the physiological aspect of it. So, you know, a really, uh, good sense of an awareness of where you are with your mental health will actually have a really positive impact on maybe helping you with, you know, your. With your physicality. So I really love that you brought that up, uh, as part of this conversation. So, okay, so in your experience, Laura, you know, how is mental health connected to resilience? And what are ways people can start to kind of, uh, rebuild that resilience, if you will?

Speaker B: So it's a great question. And just thinking about it, there are some lucky people who are naturally very resilient. Coming from positive environment and upbringing and positive role models, they are really lucky. But you're right, it can be learned. When I think about resilience, the formal definition of resilience is be able to recover quickly from difficulties, bounce back from adversity, that side of things. So when we relate that to mental health, what will happen in life, as we know, is the fact that life will throw us curveballs. And, um, someone. It doesn't matter how privileged you are, you're still going to get a curveball. And someone who has good mental health, two things will happen. The first thing is the fact that when they receive one of these curveballs, they recognize they're not in a good space. So they'll see it first of all. And the second thing they'll do is they'll put in their own coping mechanisms to ride out the. And come out the other side. So a resilient person will recognize and be able to do something about it. And, um, resilient people have huge stress buckets. You know, that stress bucket I mentioned earlier, They've got a capacity to handle loads and loads of stuff. They've got swimming pools, if you like, rather than buckets. And so as a result, they have very, very good, uh, mental health because their curveballs are dealt with so adeptly. Now, when we look at why it is that people can naturally have very big stress bucke. So there's a model in science called the stress vulnerability model. And it just explains why, uh, someone, person A can take loads of stress and have no problems and person B can only take a tiny amount of stress. And it's related around lots of things, but it's around their environment that they're in. But essentially what's really important, their coping skills and their thinking skills are the real key things here. So that's where resilience training comes in. Because you can actually train in better ways to cope and think around what you're doing with self care and essentially what you're doing with self talk. That's a really important thing. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a big thing for helping people with mental health issues. I'm a true lover of it. I think it's an amazing therapy. So a lot of resilience training is about, um, challenging the way that people think as well as putting in the right self care and as well as staying in a positive environment or leaving a negative environment.

Speaker A: M. Okay, so lots of, lots to unpack here. So one thing I want to, um, one thing I want to jump in on, obviously, steps. We're a training company, you're a training company at Maps as well. So this idea that resilience isn't just this static kind of, uh, set amount that we can, we can in our stress bucket, right? Relating it to the stress bucket, that resilience isn't just this. Like you only have so much and you can never change it. So I want to talk a little bit more about, like how do we go about developing more resilience? So we can all have those swimming pools that you talk about, right? Those um, stress swimming pools, stress bucket swimming pools. What are some of the things people can do to kind of help them, you know, uh, grow their resilience capabilities?

Speaker B: Well, the resilience side of things, as I mentioned, the key, uh, self care is essential. Self care is always going to keep your bucket at a more manageable level. So that is keeping yourself physically healthy, making sure that you're eating the right foods, drinking lots of water, getting good quality sleep, cutting out blue light and stimulants and stuff before you go to bed, making sure you exercise regularly, reaching out for help. I mean there are all these things automatically go into self care. But the resilience for me when I think about it in terms of the self talk, it's a case of having to be very, very strict with your thinking. It takes a lot of training in and you really do need to be strict with how you are processing your thoughts. Because one of the key things I always say is the fact not all your thoughts are true. Just because it's been generated from your own head does not necessarily make it true. You've only got yourself to argue with. And um, it's negative thinking patterns that are a problem. So when I think about qualities of resilient people, they contain their thinking. They will use positive reframing. And when something bad happens, they won't say, oh my God, I'm never doing that again. Uh, they'll say, what can I learn from it so that it doesn't happen again. It's controlling. Controlling, controllables. They also keep events in perspective. They don't blow them out of anywhere and they stay in the present. That is a really huge important thing that resilient people do. So if you imagine, uh, an event has occurred. Yeah. And no, it wasn't a good event. What a resilient person will do will stay in the present and handle what is there as opposed to ruminating over, oh God, why didn't I do that and why didn't they do this and why didn't that happen, why didn't. Or catastrophizing about the future. Now that's happened, that's going to happen and that's going to happen. They literally stay in the present. And this requires discipline. It's like if anyone's ever been um, on a physical health kick before, it's really hard, you know, you can't eat certain things. You know, you need to do lots of exercise. Uh, and it takes a lot of discipline. And that is the same with trying to get your bucket size to grow. It requires real time, thought and effort from you and expert guidance. You know, that's why cbt, uh, um, and training courses and so on are so valuable because you've got to be able to know where you're going wrong and what you can do to correct it. So that's sort of where I'm going with there. But in terms of a resilience plan, what goes into a resilience plan is sort of maintenance of making sure that you are doing the right things with self care and self talk, being aware of the warning symptoms when you are and signs that you're going wrong and having a crisis plan. These are ah, essential things to resilience really.

Speaker A: I love, I think you said, uh, control the controllables. Is that the statement you use?

Speaker B: It's my favorite mantra, Alan. I live by it all the time. My friends and family will say, oh, she's saying it again. But it's literally what I live by.

Speaker A: Well, it's really jumped out at me because with that control, the controllables, that's a really empowering thing where you can go, okay, so I'm feeling low, I'm feeling down. Let me just be cognizant of why I'm feeling that way. What are the things that have been happening that are making me feel this way and, you know, identify the things that are out of my control so outside, you know, triggers, and then the things that are within my control. And by doing that, that allows people to really start to kind of maybe get on top of that decline and recharge that resilience bucket and, um, either, uh, address the things that are the challenging or kind of let it go.

Speaker B: That's absolutely right. You know, you've reminded me of something that I always say with, uh, my training courses is the fact that you have all these thoughts, but you don't need to absorb and change a thought into an emotion all the time. I relate it to, um, you know, yo sushi, you know, where you've got food coming past you. All the conveyor belt of sushi, Conveyor belt. And you. And you can't control what the chef is chucking out on that conveyor belt, but you can decide whether or not you want to pick it up and eat it and process it into something. And I always say the same with the thoughts. You can't stop the thoughts from coming, but you can just go, right, okay, well, I've thought that, but. But just. It has to go. It has to go past. I'm not going to believe it. Yeah, you thought it, but you don't need to believe it or eat it.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, and also I think something just to acknowledge in that wonderful way, uh, of thinking about how we can maintain our resilience, right? Like getting sleep, eating well, you know, exercising. We all go through times in our lives when we're super busy and those things aren't always in tune or we're able to stay on top of. Of, um, so don't be nice to yourself, people, as you're listening to this, right? We're not always going to be able to do that bit of exercise. We're not always going to sleep well. But don't like, you know, don't overthink it, I guess, and just be kind to yourself and go, okay, so I'm just going through this pattern right now. It will pass, uh, and find that way to either just sit and have a quiet five minutes, if that's possible, or you Know, have that cup of tea or whatever it may be that can kind of give you that rebalancing, if you will, during really stressful times.

Speaker B: That's absolutely right. You hit the nail on the head in terms of being kind. I think that's the most important thing. Resilient people are very kind to themselves. They're not beating themselves up all the time going, you should have done that, and you look terrible and all of that. When you're nice to yourself, you will genuinely, uh, be in a better headspace for sure.

Speaker A: I want to move on to how we start to apply this to workplace, uh, culture. But I think also it's important to recognize that sometimes we think our coping, our coping mechanisms are actually harmful to us. Right. You're like, oh, I'll just have that glass of wine, or, you know, whatever, right? So just recognize that maybe sometimes those coping mechanisms can actually have, you know, a compounding impact on our mental health. So just be aware of that too, I would say.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Tap blockers, we call them in mental health.

Speaker A: Okay, tell us a little bit more. What does that mean? Tap?

Speaker B: Well, in your stress bucket, uh, you can imagine if it gets too full, you need to have a tap that you can open and let some of the stress drain out. So a good coping mechanism are things like exercise and eating healthily opens the tap up. You've just mentioned a tap blocker, like turning to alcohol, bottling things up. You think you're helping yourself, but actually it's a poor coping mechanism. So that's exactly what that is.

Speaker A: So the pipe gets clogged, if you will. Right?

Speaker B: Absolutely. Almost feeds back in and makes it worse a lot of the time.

Speaker A: So, yeah, so lots to think about there. Now. I want to kind of funnel this into thinking about mental health in the workplace. Um, and, you know, we know, uh, mental health, poor mental health has a massive impact on business, bottom line, on workplace culture, on our ability to, you know, output the work that we do, and just how we show up. So, you know, what are some of the ways organizations can, uh, you know, start to support a good workplace culture of positive mental health, you know, to make sure that we're, um, being the best we can for our people?

Speaker B: I think before you try and explore that a little bit, I guess we want to understand why there is stigma attached to mental health anywhere but mental health in the workplace. Because in order to fix the problem, you've got to know what caused it in the first place. And, um, for me, I think that I believe that the stigma is due to lack of understanding when it comes to mental health issues. And the lack of understanding forms two roots. Either it misinformation to start with, from media and TV and negative stereotypes, then you've also got lack of understanding coming absolutely from lack of knowledge, uh, and lack of knowledge on the impact of a person and how disabling someone with a mental health issue, um, it can be for them because that's where you get the labels. And once you've got the labels, you've got labels of dangerous or you've got labels of lazy, selfish, incompetent, unprofessional. So when it comes to workplace, of course, if you've got labels like that attached, then of course employees are going to hide their struggles because they just don't want to be judged. And that puts them under even more pressure to perform. So what will happen then? Is it because the peer, the stigma that goes there is either from a well meaning place, they get stuck in a job because they're sidelined by someone who thinks they can't cope. I don't want to put them in that position, you know, I just don't want to put them under that pressure. So they get sidelined from out of a good place or there's active discrimination where they're absolutely pushed out because they don't want it. So when I think about what the organization needs to do to fix the problem of stigma, they need to address and consider what caused it in the first place, which is education. And then that's leading me into that very large answer, I guess, in terms of how do you educate before we

Speaker A: jump into the educational piece, you know, from things that we do at Steps, one of the things we're really keen on in terms of that education piece is several things. So one, it's about how do you spot the signs not only in yourself, but in others that you might be working with when poor mental health might be showing up or in decline. But then really crucially, how can we create a learning environment where people are able to have a start to have the conversation about those things? Right? How do you get into the conversation so that it can be helpful not only for the person who's, you know, maybe dealing with some poor mental health, but actually for the person on the other side who might have a bias towards it or you know, be leading with the stigma so that you can start to, uh, you know, break down those barriers for success, if you will. And I'd love to hear more about kind of from an educational purpose, how you suggest approaching that in the workplace.

Speaker B: So, uh, it is a great question. And I think that when I, when I think that, uh, you know, we know that we need to educate in order to get rid of the stigma. And so it starts from the top down. You've really got to create a cultural change and a genuine authentic cultural change as opposed to just sort of ticking the box. So it starts at the top, as I said. It starts with making sure that certainly leaders and managers are given mental health awareness training, mental health first aid training. And when I think, I think, uh, in terms of how important a manager is, the data from Workforce institute at uh, UKG has shown that for 70% of people, their manager has a greater impact on their mental health than their therapist or their doctor and it's equivalent to their partner. So if the manager is not supportive, is not being able to help someone feel better and is leading a bad example, then, wow, is that going to have a big impact. So starting with the managers and leaders with all of the educational side of things. But as well, it's a language shift. You mentioned language earlier and we need to be really careful to have a zero, a zero tolerance on, on people that are using terminology that is negative. You know, like, you know, oh, they've had a, they've had a complete meltdown and um, they're a bit psycho, they've gone a bit psycho, they're manic. Um, all of this is starting language changes is, is essential. But also peer support networks, I work with a lot of companies now that really, really good infrastructure, as I like to call it in terms of internal communication with one another. And peer support networks are just groups of people that are struggling with the same issues or having the same things. You know, you could be a rainbow network or a disability network or uh, even a gender network, whatever it may be. And just having people of like that work in your world and understand your world and are going through your same issues are huge. Uh, in terms of being able to make people feel accepted and understood, I guess. So there's the education piece, there's also the cultural piece in terms of the peer support networks, policy changes. We know now that actually remote working is essential. You have to offer remote working up in order to remain flexible. And with it is a great thing. But with it also comes the downside of this isolation that people feel and then too worried to come to work because they're just not used to engaging again face to face. So you've got to be able to get policy changes and infrastructure in place that Supports a culture of connection amongst people that are working remotely. Very many organizations still do tick box exercises of three line whips of doing this and you've got to attend this fun, this fun jolly, you know, this forced fun is awful. Um, especially for people that are nervous anyway, as opposed to an authentic, genuine culture, if you like, of we're connected, we understand, we support well being wellbeing hubs, especially EAP programs and financial assistance and legal. All sorts of things are there. Sometimes people are overwhelmed. The bigger organizations that have done so well at putting these things together, then there's so much there that people don't even know where to go. So very often having people in place that understand all of the resources, even if they're not experts in anything else, just to be able to say there is so much here, what is it you think you need having those around the place? Yeah. And the other thing I really do feel that I must mention is having the proper diversity, equity and inclusion type of, uh, best practices in place because that is a huge part of mental health challenges for many groups. So making sure they're protected and that it's correct from that point of view is essential. Yeah.

Speaker A: Mental health challenges and resilience is a spectrum. Right. And as you said earlier, some people, just because of their lived experience might have a more higher resilience, while other people who have different lived experiences who come up against more challenges, maybe have a lower resilience. And you know, we need to recognize that we are all not coming from the same starting point. From a steps perspective, all of the things that you talked about, um, just there, Laura, is it's really crucial for us to start to look at that from a behavioral, uh, through a behavioral lens. Right. So when we're playing out, because we, you know, of course, for the listeners know now that we use drama in all our, in all of our programming. If, you know, if you were to ask people before you play it out and hold up that mirror, you say, okay, what are the things that maybe pinpoint somebody's having, you know, declining mental health, they can probably kind of give a good, a pretty good list, right? Um, but when you then play it out and you see how it manifests and body language and, you know, having snappier conversations with people, then you bring that emotional element into it. Right? And when they can see that happening from a manager's perspective who's trying to do their best to create a culture where we, where we talk about mental health, where we, you know, give space for that, actually it, it can start to show that just because we're prepared doesn't mean we're always going to be able to react in the best way when it happens. And so I think that kind of training is a really crucial part of all the things that you said. Where we can go, okay, well what, when it shows up, how are you going to react? How are you going to be able to be the best that you can be, knowing that we're all human and that we're all, you know, you know, having our different resilience days. And so it's, it's a really dynamic way of learning. I think that's a, that's a crucial part of that puzzle.

Speaker B: It really is. I run a variety of different types of uh, training courses for mental health and resilience and of course I have worked in partnership uh, with Steps and I certainly know that seeing it come alive, seeing the theory of mental health come alive with the uh, with the drama and you can really see pennies dropping in the mental health training that occurs that way. It definitely couldn't agree with you more.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, well, listen Laura, we could continue this conversation all day long, I'm sure, but as we round this out, any final words of wisdom for people that you'd like to share in your experience? Uh, in this topic you've touched on

Speaker B: the control, the controllables, which is one of my living mantras because I think that is so important. But, but I always say that mental health support is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes a, uh, really slow, slow loads and loads of different interactions in order to get someone to a better headspace and build that trust relationship behind it. It's not many people will not, will not assist in mental health support because they're scared of saying the wrong thing. And I just want to say it's not like packing a parachute. If you get it wrong and you say the wrong thing, uh, so long as you're doing everything through a genuinely kind filter and that you are really being kind, patient and non judgmental, you can't go that far wrong. So don't. The worst thing you can do is just not try and help. I think would be my final words of wisdom. Just be kind to everyone.

Speaker A: Very great words of wisdom there, Laura. I couldn't said it better myself, so. Well, thank you so much for joining on this episode, Laura. Uh, that's about all the time we have left for. It's been a really good, engaging and thought provoking discussion. Um, do you want to let the listeners know where they can find out more about you and Maps. They can connect with you maybe on socials.

Speaker B: Sure. I'm on LinkedIn, uh, just under my name, Laura Rosenthal and I have a website which is www.maps-training.co.uk so if anyone want to reach me through that, they could do that too.

Speaker A: Uh, Laura is a great partner to work with as we've alluded to. We partnered with her at Steps before on many things. So do reach out to her and ah, we'll put all that information in the show notes for to connect with her if you'd like to. So thank you listeners for joining us on this episode. If you'd like to know more about Steps and Steps to Change, make sure you visit our website, find us on LinkedIn or sign up to our newsletter. All those links will be available in the show Notes. If you're interested in how Steps could partner with you or your organization to support your needs, uh, send us an email or fill out the form online at www.stepsdrama.com. is there a subject area you'd like to to hear us explore? If so, reach out to us and let us know. As always, thank you to our production team. We couldn't do this without you. I'm your host, Alan Liedtke and we look forward to you joining us on the next episode. Until then, thank you and remember, you too can see it, own it, change it and live it.