Episode 3: Slouching Towards Mindfulness

Mindfulness hasn’t come easy to Justine, so she was keen to talk to her mindful and socially intelligent friend and sister-in-law Katie. Turns out mindfulness and self-advocacy hasn’t come easily to Katie either, but she’s walking that walk now. Katie shares stories from her journey, including having a stroke when she was in her 20’s , the biggest emotional release of her life, holding space for tough conversations, and how a meet-cute with her spouse was divinely timed.

Katie Uhlenbrock, as known as Katie Unicorn at her own business she’s starting, is a landscape architect, entrepreneur, and an unabashed lover of whimsy and joy, organization, her spouse Eisaiah, her dog Maci, and living in Texas. She is a master social engineer, one of the most uninhibited extroverts I’ve ever met; Katie knows how to read a room. You can follow her entrepreneurial journey at her Insta, @katieunicornofficial.

What I didn’t tell you in the podcast was that Katie is also a great sport. She once came to visit us in Boston when we were hosting a holiday party. Inexplicably, two hours before the party I decided to go upstairs and attempt to dye my own hair for the first time ever. When I finally realized I was not going to have time to assemble the party food, I came down with my goopy hair and gave Katie the instructions for what I wanted, including handing her raw bacon and other ingredients for a Barefoot Contessa recipe I had never attempted. The result was party food that people are still talking about five years later.

Show Notes:

Not wanting kids is a choice women can make and needs to be normalized
Stroke:
- Signs and symptoms of stroke:
  - Although the traditional symptoms of ischemic stroke–one-sided drooping of the face or an arm–are most common, be aware of the other symptoms Katie experienced, which include slurred speech, confusion, dizziness, vision problems, and severe headache.
- In the emergency department, Katie had a CT when she should have had a MRI; studies show that use of MRI vs. CT for early ischemic stroke detection catches over 80% of early stroke, versus only around half of early stroke with CT
- Case study of a patient with a full-body dermatitis reaction to a nickel-alloy stent in a limb and another study for a patient with a PFO occluder; note that the latter study was published nearly a decade prior to Katie’s cardiologist recommending the same product for her
- You can’t always trust the medical system to do what’s right for your particular body [8:00]
- Misdiagnosis of Katie’s stroke as benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, or BPPV
- Impulsivity and emotional changes after stroke
  - See more at Stroke Onward, a nonprofit focused on helping people recover emotionally after stroke
Yoga, meditation, and acupuncture [11:30]
Transgender rights in Texas [17:00]
- Texas Monthly: Is it illegal to have a transgender child in Texas?
- How to have difficult conversations about topics of disagreement; e.g., ask questions to understand their perspective better
Intimacy feels intense and nice because it involves a deeper connection [21:00}
- Relationship Venn diagram: Holding space for the interaction of two individual people
- Why you can’t run your friend’s relationships
Boundaries: [24:30]
- Using a personal development coach to help draw boundaries
- Honoring yourself first: Boundaries look like disappointing others before yourself
- “It’s not shutting the door, it’s showing the other person where the door is”
Starting your own business: [29:30]
- involves learning about yourself
- Slow down to appreciate and get through the small finish lines and victories
- “It’s been a difficult learning experience for me to be able to pause and say, ‘Yeah, I did enough today.’”
Organizing small spaces, especially during the pandemic, is essential to bring joy and whimsy and people’s personalities in a fun, authentic, and approachable way
Emotions are powerful [27:00]

Conclusion:

What are the components of an intimate conversation?
1. Build intensity through honesty, vulnerability, trust, affinity, and rapport
2. Confidence: being able to know and articulate your own identity and values, express different points of view, and be comfortable with disapproval
3. Boundaries and safety: safe to express your opinion, socialize, and meet others where they are
What skills do I need to have social intelligence?
1. Communication: develop active listening skills
2. Empathy and compassion: Acknowledge others’ points of view
3. Reframe conflict as an opportunity to understand better how deeply someone can think about their own view as reasonable
4. Connect with others; when someone expresses an opinion that is in direct opposition of yours, but does not exploit, shame, or diminish others, remember they have a right to think and feel the way they do
5. Help everyone feel needed, valued, and acknowledged
Mindfulness Strategies:
1. Build interoceptive awareness (mind-body-behavior connection):
  1. Keep a journal of how you’re feeling (e.g., calm app) to strengthen internal signals
  2. Meditation and breathwork
  3. Body movement: Yoga, dance, Improv/theater or other artistic expressions
  4. Acupuncture, which like the activities above, stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, or the “rest and digest” function of the body
2. Introduce flow:
  1. Develop a hobby that keeps you occupied in the present; for Katie, that’s watering her plants and taking long walks in which she purposefully engages with small details in her surroundings
  2. Set aside time for ‘play,’ or what Katie refers to as introducing whimsy in your life

Some Nerve is a weekly podcast for people who have the nerve to show up, talk about hard things that matter, and share our secrets. On Some Nerve, we discuss all the stuff your grandmother wouldn’t have wanted you to talk about at her bridge party. Topics will include whatever makes us feel human, like mental health, grief, trust, boundaries, and joy. We hope that understanding each other better will help us build deeper connections in our lives.

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