The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 154 - Camp Syndrome

Transcript:

Jen: Hey there, Pete.

Pete: Hey there, Jen.

Jen: I would like to talk to you about something that I have coined a name for.

Pete: Okay.

Jen: I'm calling it "Camp Syndrome."

Pete: Camp Syndrome. Okay, I'm super curious. I haven't been to camp recently. So, I'd love to hear more. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: So, "What is Camp Syndrome," you might be asking, as I'm preparing to send my daughter to sleepaway camp for the first time. Camp Syndrome is something that I have noticed a lot of my clients are wrestling with, and it is this. You go away to sleepaway camp (or you enter a global pandemic), you have all sorts of life altering experiences. You have your first kiss. You sneak out of your cabin and get caught, and they threaten to send you home to your parents, but you cry and so they let you stay. You win Camper of the Year. You learn that you love archery. You learn that you don't love the thing you thought you loved. Like, so much changes. There's so much growth in this very concentrated period of time. And then camp ends and you go home, and you re-enter your life with your family and your friends or colleagues and nobody knows how different you are, except you. And I have been noticing my clients having some serious bouts with Camp Syndrome as they re-enter their in-person lives. They had these epic, creatively explosive ideas happen during the shutdown. They met so many new people in these online communities. They've changed the things they care about. The things they stand for have changed. And now they're returning to work, and nobody knows that they're any different. And they've been experiencing these serious growing pains with their Camp Syndrome. In some cases, bringing them to tears because they really don't know how to handle being so different and not knowing how to explain it to people. So, I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Pete: Oh my goodness, I feel this so deep in my bones. So firstly, fun fact, I don't think we have camps in the same way that North America has camps.

Jen: Oh, okay. Cool, cool, cool.

Pete: In terms of, we have school camps growing up. Definitely. You go away, there's a camp. But the like summer camp program that I know is very popular in North America, where you go away for like the summer...

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: ...at least in my childhood, in my experience, in my circle here in Australia, didn't exist. Wasn't a thing.

Jen: Interesting. Okay. Cool.

Pete: However, the syndrome, my gosh. What you just described, I feel that in my bones. And I think about it as it relates to travel. I think about it as it relates to taking like an online workshop or an online course. And I think about it definitely, to your point, as it relates to something like a global pandemic. And I even think about it in relation to...you know that feeling? I'm sure you've had this feeling, especially with a fiction book, where you are so wrapped up in this world (this happened to me recently with the incredible book Where the Crawdads Sing), and you finish this book and you're like, your whole world is altered. And you're like, "Oh my god, I can't believe it." And you just look around, and everyone's just going about their business. And you're like, "None you were aware of what just happened."

Jen: "Don't you understand?"

Pete: "Don't you understand?" So all these examples, I just feel like...I just, oh gosh. I got butterflies as you were sharing it, because it's like, "Oh my god." When I've traveled through Vietnam, or when I've been across to Central America, or when I went to Sri Lanka, and you come back, and everyone's still at work. Everyone's still like getting on the train. Everyone's still doing their thing, going about the business, and you're like, "Do you not understand what I've just, you know, done?" So, yeah. Anyway, I'm ranting now. I'm just like, I feel this in my bones and I want to help myself and I want to help others navigate this tension.

Jen: Well, the thing that I've been thinking about in terms of my clients and like watching them writhing in discomfort as they explain this feeling is that maybe...unlike your trip to Vietnam, for example, where you were traveling but other people were staying home, but the other people in your circle were staying home, everybody just went through a global pandemic. Everybody is experiencing Camp Syndrome. There is nobody coming out of this pandemic the way they went in. Period. End of story. Goodbye. Like, nobody is the same person. And so, you talk about this all the time, I feel like your catchphrase is, "Ask questions and hold space." This is how we're going to get through Camp Syndrome right now. Is like, we have to re-meet each other. We have to reintroduce ourselves, even the people we think we know really, really well. We've got to ask questions and hold space, and give people permission to have evolved.

Pete: Yeah. Wow. Okay, this is good. So it's like we've all been to camp, but no one's talking about what change happened during camp.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: We're just kind of like, "Oh, we're back to non-camp world now. So I'm not a camp anymore, so let's just go about our business." And it's like, can we acknowledge what just happened? Can we talk about the change? Can we talk about what I'm now working on? Yeah. Okay.

Jen: Yeah. You know what's really funny is I'm tossing this around in my mind right now, and I don't even know what to make of the aha moment I'm currently experiencing. The people have evolved, and they're operating within systems that are the same.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: Like I've noticed this very acutely within the theatre industry, as people have changed so much and need different things and want to express different things in, for example, a rehearsal room context. But rehearsal systems are in place, and we're just kind of going back to the way they were run before. It takes so much effort to change the system to accommodate the evolved people within it. And, gosh, it makes me sick to my stomach to think about a world where the system wins and the people lose.

Pete: Mmm. Ooh. Yeah, I think about that as it relates to companies "going back" to an office, maybe to a centralized office, and certain leaders or certain organizations, you know, encouraging/mandating that everyone goes back to the office. And I know of very few rare examples where this is actually the case. Where they're like, "We're going back five days a week." And I just, when I hear that I'm like, "Have we not learned anything? Have we not learned anything? Surely we can now empower our people to have more flexibility." It doesn't have to be, "You can work wherever you want," I get that. You could do one day a week of a collaboration day, or three days a week, whatever it is, but just this acknowledgment of the fact that we've clearly shown that we can function with more flexibility in a corporate setting. Or we can still do our auditions in a different way, as evidenced by the last eighteen months. Like just, can we not acknowledge that? It just feels so dismissive. And so I don't know if this is the right term, but it's almost like a version of gaslighting.

Jen: Yes. I agree with you.

Pete: Where you're like, "Am I crazy? Did that eighteen months just happen? Like, didn't things change?"

Jen: Yeah. You know, a couple weeks ago, I had my first in-person acting coaching sessions. And it was absolutely magical. It was so exciting. But one of the things I consciously made the decision to do at the start of each person's coaching was to ask them, "Have you been in-person singing anytime recently?" And almost every single person said, "No." And I was like, "Okay. Let's just take a moment and acknowledge that you are about to sing for me. And it's going to feel different than it's ever felt because you are different than you've ever been before. You're going to feel nerves that you didn't know were there. You're going to feel strengths that you didn't know were there. It is not going to be the way it was. And like, let's just acknowledge that. Let's everybody in this space right now acknowledge that we're doing this as if for the first time." And I think it gave people a lot of permission. But in addition to trying to ease them into it, I was trying to remind myself to manage my expectations.

Pete: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I have two thoughts off the back of that. One is, this is just like an aside but my mum of all people (shout out, mum) sent me this incredible video of The Lion King cast singing-

Jen: I know.

Pete: Have you seen it? Singing.

Jen: Put it in the Box O' Goodies, Pete. It's so good.

Pete: It's going in the Box O' Goodies. They were singing for the first time in the same room together. And it's like, people are crying. People are like having these visceral reactions because it's the first time we've done this since all of that change. I just, that was an aside, I thought that was a really powerful video. And even though I'm not, you know, singing Circle of Life, when I saw it, I was like, "I can relate to that feeling of, 'Wow. What a moment, when you get to go back in-person and do the thing that you used to do together, but like with such different contexts that we're all coming with.'"

Jen: I actually think that video is worth unpacking.

Pete: Okay.

Jen: So listeners, maybe head over to your Box O' Goodies and watch this real quick, and then come on back to us. Because it is such an incredible display of leadership by the actor playing Rifiki. That she is overwhelmed with emotion before she even opens her mouth to sing, so she pauses and she looks at everyone while experiencing this emotion, to show them where she's at. And she gives them a chance to encourage her. She was going to sing it anyway, it's her job. She's going to sing the song. But she wanted to find that connection point...this is me reading into what was happening. She wanted to find the connection point where it was like, "I feel things. You are all feeling things too." And then, she had to really ground herself. And that first sound that came out of her mouth, maybe it was imperfect but my goodness, was it full of humanity. And it was like, "We are going to sing this with every ounce of sound that we have." And then as people joined in, you could feel...I mean, it's like leaping off the screen at you. You could feel the connectivity in the room, the humanity, the (dare I say it) circle of life that was present. But I think it's such a brilliant example of leadership. Because people are going to be looking in their various organizations to whoever is supposed to sing the first note, the first note equivalent for, "How are you going to handle this? Are you going to pretend like nothing's happening? Or are you going to let us see how awkward you are, how unsure of yourself you are, and then move forward anyway so that we can all move forward with you?" Like, there's just so much gold in that video.

Pete: I totally agree. I'm glad I brought it up. The other point that I think relates to this and I was mentioning earlier is, to me, this is a similar rhyme...I guess it rhymes with why I am always thinking about, talking about, unpacking a little bit, this idea of Imposter Syndrome. Or, you know, you and I have joked about the Fear Onion, and talking about that. Because I've seen it literally hundreds of times at this point, that moment where someone shares, "This is what my imposter says to me," and like ten other people in the room are like, "Oh my god, you too."

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: "Oh my god. Like, I'm not crazy. I'm not being gaslit. I'm not alone. Other people have those doubts, those insecurities." Or if it's the fear of what other people think of us, back up to the Fear Onion episode (which is probably the most referenced episode) where it's like, "Oh wait, you're afraid of what other people think too. Me too." So there's just, like...I just think there's so much power in us, to your point, acknowledging the humanity in all this.

Jen: Yes. And down there at the center of the Fear Onion of Camp Syndrome is the fear that people who accepted and loved the version of you that existed before, won't be able to find the love and acceptance of the version of you that exists now. And it's so epic. Like it feels like it, you know, requires twenty hours as opposed to twenty minutes to unpack it. But I think, to your point, the people you are worrying about are very likely having the exact same thoughts about you. "Well, they love and accept me for who I am now." So there's just, there's so much like coming out of hiding and sharing with each other that has got to happen in order for us to overcome this Camp Syndrome and figure out how we are going to continue to move forward together, rather than pretending that nothing happened.

Pete: Yeah. It strikes me as now more than ever, we need to seek sonder with one another.

Jen: Mmm. Yes. Explain sonder for those who are like, "What is that word?"

Pete: "Who is this, and what's he talking about?" So sonder if you're in North America, or sonder for those south of the equator, s-o-n-d-e-r. It's a word. And it was invented by someone who creates words for things that he thinks should have words, and the online resource is called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. (I will pop it in the Box O' Goodies.) We've done a whole episode on it. However, it's basically that profound realization or that moment where you remember that everybody else is living a life as rich and complex as your own. That everybody else has a noise in their head. Everybody else has dreams, and hopes, and fears, and aspirations. Everybody else...I think about it especially as we talk to each other on Zoom. That behind that Zoom screen that you see, there is context, there is stories, there is all of these experiences that we just have absolutely no insight into. And so, I think sonder is the precursor to empathy. Is just, can we remember that every single one of us, especially over the last fifteen months, eighteen months, has lived a life (and then some, during a pandemic) that is unique to them, that has allowed them to change and grow and take a step back in some capacities, to take a step forward in others. And so just acknowledging that, I think, is all part of this idea of acknowledging the humanity in the room

Jen: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.