Hello, Psych2Go viewers. Today we have a very special guest, the amazing Katie Morton. As you guys probably already know, Katie is a licensed therapist, author and public speaker who is well-known for her YouTube channel. Katie is a passionate advocate for mental health and our channel is dedicated to discussing a wide range of topics including anxiety, depression, stress, eating disorders, psychological disorders and trauma. Katie is the author of two best-selling books. Are you okay? A guide to caring for your mental health. Can you see it? And traumatized, identify, understand and cope with PTSD and emotional stress. Katie has become a leading voice in the mental health community and has inspired and uplifted so many viewers with their content which is why we're so honored to have her as a guest today. Thank you for joining me, Katie. Of course, thanks for having me. Of course, I'm so excited to discuss these topics, especially since May is Mental Health Awareness Month. It's important to spread the message that mental health matters to eliminate the stigma around it. So the topic for today is self-care and mental health. The definition of self-care varies depending on who you ask, but the official definition from the World Health Organization defines it as the ability of individuals, families and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, cope with illness, disability with or without the support of a health worker. So I wanted to start out with this question for you.  Yeah, self-care, I kind of hate that it's become such a buzzword because I think it's kind of got this bad rep that it has to be expensive or you have to spend a lot of time, but self-care overall, I like to think of it as like basic things. I always talk about the halt acronym, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Those are things to check in on. And the reason that this is so important is, I mean, just imagine like the word hangry exists for a reason. If I haven't eaten in like four hours, you're not gonna get the best Katie. I'm gonna be more irritable and be more short tempered. I'm gonna be impatient, right? There's a lot of ways that just our basic self-care can affect how we interact with the world, therefore our mental health overall. If I'm not eating well day after day or I'm not getting enough sleep day after day, any new parent, anybody in school will tell you that that lack of sleep can really affect how you feel and how you're able to engage with other people. And so overall, think of instead of self-care being like I have to go on vacation, I have to get a massage, wear face mask, things like that. You can do that stuff, that's great. But on the daily more like, did I drink enough water? Did I get enough sleep? Am I eating regularly? All of that is gonna be key. And that can, what we call therapy, the window of tolerance or it's your resilience, your ability to weather life storms. If we're doing that self-care, then that level of resilience is gonna get higher and we'll be able to manage the things that we can't control, like life. Exactly, and a lot of people, they feel like self-care is synonymous with luxury when in reality, self-care should be and is accessible. It's just relaxing.  It's not a luxury vacation to the Bahamas, right?  That's not very sustainable, right? I can only take application every, I don't know, 10 years or something, but every day I make sure that I drink water, go for a 15 minute walk, something like that. Yeah, and self-care isn't twice a year, right? It should be like, at least, you know, guess it depends on maybe once a month, something like that.  You know, there should be small things we do for ourselves. Like, are you taking your medication as prescribed? That's self-care. Yes. It gives yourself a nice meal. That's self-care. Looking at it from that standpoint can be kind of eye-opening and allow you to feel, at least for me, instead of judging yourself, I mean, like, oh, I never put my, I don't do this, whoa, whoa, whoa, instead seeing like, no, I do do a lot of things to take care of myself and I am, you know, offering myself some self-care. Exactly. And so you kind of just mentioned this, but what are helpful forms of self-care and how do they manage stress effectively? Yeah, I think helpful forms can be anything like I just mentioned, but also it could be venting to a friend. I think that's effective too, right? I talk about body shakes a lot, but when we feel kind of queued up energy, it could be anxiety, stress, just feeling dysregulated. We can shake it out, stomp your feet, move around. That can help you feel better. There's a lot of like small, easy ways that we can improve our overall mental health by acknowledging things aren't quite right or maybe I need to step away from my desk for a little bit, get outside. You know, if we can do those small things for ourselves overall, it's almost like we're building a savings account, right? And so every time you do something kind for yourself, you're like, you know what, I'm really stressed. I'm gonna step away from my desk. I'm gonna go make myself a new coffee or a new tea or whatever, take a breath. All of that is just again, building up that resilience. I think of it like throwing coins in a savings account so that when we have those days where we maybe can't step away or things are extra stressful, we can pull from that savings account and we can weather that storm. We can be okay. And so think of it in small ways that make you feel good. Maybe it's taking in a little extra long shower. Maybe it's petting your dog. Maybe it's going for a walk. Maybe it's, I call it doing things for future Katie. Like future Katie might not have time to fold those towels. I'm just gonna do it now because I do have the time now. And then future Katie is like, yeah, cause I don't have to do it. So thank you in those ways. Yeah. And you know, a severe lack of self-care causes burnout and so WebMD defines burnout as a form of exhaustion caused by constantly feeling swamped. It's a result of excessive and prolonged emotional, physical and mental stress. And it's usually related to different stressors such as work, school or personal issues. So how does one identify burnout after not really taking care of themselves for a while? Yeah, burnout, it can appear a lot like depression or anxiety. When it goes untreated, it shows up like that. And really the reason burnout happens just so people kind of understand is when the reward that we get for something isn't at least commensurate, meaning equal with the effort we put in. So that can shift over time, right? Maybe the money we were being compensated used to feel like a lot and now because inflation things are expensive, it's harder. Or maybe we used to feel more fulfilled cause we connected with people and now we're not seeing as many people. And so that reward goes down and while we still sustain that effort. And that's why burnout looks like irritability, resentment. A lot of people feel like they resent their job or their place in school or whatever volunteer work, anything you're doing. Being a stay at home parent, that's a full-time job. And we can start to be agitated and irritated that we have that job. And so just notice if you are extra agitated, extra irritable, find yourself just like you get an email and you go, ugh, like it's just too much. Those, I call them overreactions, not to judge them. Overreactions are helpful cause it tells us something's wrong. So if you find yourself putting things off not wanting to get out of bed, struggling to stay focused, getting agitated, irritated, resentful, those are some things to look out for. And if they happen more days than not, I would call it burnout because we can all have a bad day or maybe a couple of days cause it's leading up to this big project or this big presentation. But if you find it happening with more regularity, it's something to look into. Yeah, exactly. And sometimes it's common for people to push themselves despite feeling burned out.  Yeah, we've all done it. I'm just as guilty. Even though I know I'm burnt out, right? You can feel like deadlines don't go away. And that's why self-care is important. Finding small ways that you can fit it into your schedule. But when we continue to ignore it, it does turn into depression or anxiety. It can turn into a mental illness and meaning that it's gone from like what I'd call a situational issue, meaning things are happening. I'm not taking care of myself. I'm working harder. The reward is less. And now it's become an actual diagnosable and treatable mental illness. And now that's not to say that burnout doesn't feel terrible and depressions way worse. There's no way in measuring here. It's all not comfortable. But what's happening is then it's gonna take us longer to essentially dig ourselves out of that hole. We're gonna most likely need professional help at that point versus, oh, I need to take a break and recharge. Exactly. And I just wanted you to maybe emphasize this or explain it a little bit further. How does burnout exacerbate or even cause depression and anxiety? Yeah, so not to get too nerdy, but what happens in our brain when we're burnt out is that our body can start to go into fight, flight freeze, which is otherwise known as our stress response and aptly named, right? Stress response for stress, we're maxed out. What happens when that stress response is triggered is that our amygdala and part of our limbic system is ignited, okay? So it's active. Now that pulls our prefrontal cortex, which I would call kind of like the organized part of our brain or adult in our brain. It pulls it offline. And when this happens for really prolonged period of time, it makes it even more difficult for us to concentrate on things or to plan out things in the future, have organized thought. And it makes us extremely reactive because they find the amygdala gets enlarged, okay? Cause it's essentially overactive. Again, not to get too nerdy, but it's important to know because then if we aren't treating our burnout and it's just happening and happening and now we find ourselves falling into depression, anxiety, I actually find my burnout patients usually fall more anxious than depressed at first. I think it's part of that fight, flight response. But again, it's gonna take us longer for that amygdala, cause it can shrink back down, but it's gonna take longer essentially to undo that damage or that hyperactivity of that region in our brain and it will take us a little bit longer to come back online. And so overall, I'll just know that though in general when it comes to our mental health, the longer we allow ourselves to feel bad, the longer it's gonna take to dig ourselves out, just like a cold, like your mental health is no different than your physical health. And if I have strep throat, which I used to get a ton as a kid, terrible, and I don't go to the doctor for longer, I'll feel worse longer, right?  The longer I don't talk about it, get treated for it, get some coping skills, the longer I'm gonna feel bad. Exactly. And I mean, so I think preventing it as much as possible helps because treat, I mean, obviously you should try to take care of yourself if you experience burnout, but if you can prevent it, it's better. So what strategies can help prevent burnout and how does burnout deteriorate a person's physical health?  I know sleep can be difficult. That's a whole other conversation, but make sure you're in bed for at least seven and a half hours, okay? So those are some of the basic things we can do to prepare. Also another thing that I would encourage everybody to do is when you notice yourself, because this happens to me, like I'll be like at my computer and I'm focused and I'm trying to put together this video and it's just not coming to me. And I feel like I'm like pushing myself and forcing myself to work through it. What if instead I took a step away and I did something I love? Like I played with my dog, I went for a quick walk, I listened to some funny music and danced around the house or I called a friend. Those are all things that we can do instead of pushing through kind of that feeling that we're already having, of feeling stuck, feeling agitated, taking some action then is going to prevent it from prolonging. It'd be like when my throat first starts to hurt, I call the doctor and I get in more quickly, right? We just start enacting some of these tools and these techniques that can help us feel better more quickly. Now, when it comes to physical health, the way that burnout can affect that is essentially what we would call symptoms of depression or anxiety, right? It can affect my appetite. So I can feel extra hungry, I can find myself binge eating at night. I can also find myself not hungry, like I have no appetite. It's just, we call it changes in appetite because everybody's different. We can also find ourselves to be, and this is not physical, but it's important to mention is really impulsive. So when we're feeling burnt out, we can find ourselves wanting to like spend, like shop, like Amazon orders coming in hot for no reason, things we don't even need, spending more money than we probably should. And we can also make impulsive decisions in other parts of our life. Maybe, I don't know, deciding to go out with that person again when we really don't like them or, yeah, I'll take that trip, I'll buy that thing or whatever. We can just be more quick and not put, again, prefrontal cortex is offline. We're not very organized. But then physical health stuff, sleep can become more difficult. So it's essentially like, if we aren't taking care of it upfront, it gets harder and harder to take care of it, right? Aptite changes, sleep disturbances, body aches. We can actually be more predisposed to catch a cold and get sick because our immune system gets depleted when we're not taking care of ourselves. Essentially our mental health and our physical health are like inextricably linked. And if we're not paying attention to how we feel, we're gonna feel it in our bodies. And that's honestly why a lot of my depressed patients will show up at their doctor's office first thinking they've caught the flu or something because they're like, I just can't concentrate. I feel super tired, I ache, it's hard to get out of bed. I don't have an appetite. All those things we might think could be a cold but it could also be a sign of depression or anxiety. Exactly, so do you feel like in a lot of ways, severe burnout could lead to like a mental breakdown? Yes, I've seen it happen in a couple of instances. Luckily, it's not as incredibly common as I think it could be. But if we don't take care of ourselves slowly, like for instance, a good example would be, I forget the exact amount of days, I think it's three or four, but the Navy SEALs, they put the people trying to become a Navy SEAL through these rigorous studies and challenges. And one of them is like to not sleep, sleep deprivation. And they actually start to show signs of psychosis. So that means is after like three or four days, I'd have to look up the exact, they haven't an hours, but it's like seven, let's say 78 hours or something. And that just goes to show you how important those, like, you know, what we call like basic self-care is if we're not eating regular, if we're not getting enough sleep, we can start to get derailed and think of that resilience I was talking about or that window of tolerance, that ability to weather life storms, if it's getting thinner and thinner, then we can be on our way to work and someone cuts us off in traffic and we cannot manage that upset. We could start screaming, we could start crying, we'd have to pull the car over, we could get into an accident, you know, things, I know that sounds really extreme, but it's not that far off. If we're not taking care of ourselves, we can't weather that. We think of all the things that can happen in our life, they get our order wrong at the coffee shop or we wake up and we're late already, we didn't realize our alarm has been going off. There's a million, the hot water is out. You know, there's a million things that can happen between getting up and getting to work or school. And in that time, if we don't have any ability to weather that, we can, what I would just say is like become completely dysregulated, meaning tearful, angry, essentially being like run by these wild ups and downs of our emotions because we don't have that bank account to pull from to be like, it's going to be okay, we got this. Yeah, exactly. It's like that person in like what you mentioned in the coffee shop was going crazy about their wrong order. And it's usually never about the coffee. It's like- No, it has nothing to do- It's just so much deeper. That's like the straw that broke the camel's back, you know, there's like 55 other things that happened and they just can't handle it. Exactly. And so I wanted to jump to this, what are some misconceptions about mental health and self-care that perpetuate stigmas around mental health treatment? I think anything that, first of all for self-care, anything that tells you it has to cost, it's a great marketing ploy, but anything tells you it has to cost a lot of money, I think just perpetuates the like lack of accessibility to proper self-care.  It should be easy. It should be something that you can do. Like I said, just fill up your water glass and think this is part of my self-care. I'm going to take a minute. I'm going to breathe and drink this. That's all. It doesn't have to cost a lot. And when it comes to mental health in general, I think talking about mental health issues as if they mean that something's wrong with you that you're like broken and unfixable, I think that perpetuates stigma. I think false information. I know there's gaslighting is like this new term that everybody's using and it's been around for ages, but it's very popular right now. And narcissism, everybody's a narcissist. Everybody's loved one. And I think sometimes it's good because then we're talking about it and acknowledging that these things will be painful and abusive. And I'm not saying that people aren't harmed by narcissists. I'm just saying that when we disagree with someone about the way something took place, that isn't necessarily gaslighting and that doesn't mean they're a narcissist. Usually this is done with malicious intent. And so I bring up that example to say that if we're not sharing correct information, then we are perpetuating misinformation and potentially stigmas, assuming that depression always looks like a person that can't get out of bed. When I'm here to tell you that the person next to you at work could be depressed, but they get up and they're able to get to work, but they're just barely hanging on. We just don't know. They're really good at masking. And to make these assumptions and to perpetuate that, I think does a disservice and is stigmatizing to mental health overall. Exactly like that notion that you have to pretend that everything's okay when you're not. Exactly.  You mentioned that one in six adults is affected by a mental illness and yet only 50% seek mental health treatment.  Yeah, I think there's like two parts. First is the cost. The fact that not a lot of, even personally my mental health care ICU therapist, she's not covered by my insurance. They don't cover my, I have a copay like $7,000. It's like, when am I gonna meet that? So I think coverage needs to improve as well in that it's like goes with this accessibility, right? One of the silver linings of COVID is that online therapy is available and it's usually a little bit cheaper. And there are tiers or levels depending on what you can pay. So I think that's kind of its own piece to it. And I think we need to improve the way that we can afford it and make it more accessible to people. But then on the flip side, if you find yourself like in, you have the ability to see somebody, you have the ability to afford it, whether it's through insurance or on your own, people don't really know what to look for, right? I think sometimes we assume, unfortunately, that when we see a professional of any kind, a dentist, a doctor, a therapist, we automatically assume that because they have the degree that they're always right.  And so make sure that your reaction, your gut response to this person is a good one. You know how we meet people and the first time you're like, I don't know why, but I like them, right? We can just get that vibe. You know, I just like that person. You know, later we'll be like, that new friend, I really liked him or her. You know, we can have that kind of feeling. You should have that with your therapist. It's not a comfortable situation. So to say you should feel comfortable is not true. It's weird to talk and cry to a stranger. I'll admit it. I do it too. But I know it's like such a bizarre thing. But if you find someone you connect with, we find that that is actually the key ingredient to therapy working. It's not about, I mean, part of it could be like my specialty, but that's actually not as important as the fact that you feel seen and heard and connected with your therapist. So make sure you trust that gut reaction. Do a phone consultation. If they do in-person consultations, do that first too. I went through I think 10 before I picked the therapist I'm with now. So don't feel like you have to settle. This is your treatment. You should feel comfortable. And in my book, are you okay? And even on my channel, I have videos with more details about how to know if you're seeing a good therapist or a bad therapist. There are things we should be aware of. But in short, just make sure you feel comfortable and you feel like they hear you. They see you. Thank you so much for that. And now we're gonna move to audience questions. There's a lot in here. We have almost 300 people in here. So someone asked, how should, what signs indicate that I should receive therapy? If honestly, the number one and the one that I've always all say over and over again is difficulty and functionality. And what I mean by that is, are you struggling to do what you used to do with ease? Is it hard to show up for your friends or your family? Is it hard to concentrate at work or school? Like for me, I'll tell you how I know I need to get back in therapy because I've been in and out since I was 15 and I'll be 40 this year. So it's been a long, long haul. Is I'll be extra tearful. I can like just cry watching the commercial or something. I'm just like extra emotional. So just notice, if things in life are more difficult, it's harder to sleep.  If any of that is difficult for you, I think it's time to reach out for help. And I honestly believe we should all be in therapy. I think for whatever reason, we've always assumed that something must be like quote unquote wrong with us for us to seek help. And the sooner, the better.  Exactly. And Drew asked, so this is another question, Drew asked, is it important for men to talk about their mental health? Yes, I'd argue, I mean, not even more than women, but yes, because I think there's an increased stigma. At least, so I was raised in a really small town, very country small town. And my papa would have said that like, men are stoic and don't show emotion. And that there's still generational, like it's like these, I don't know if it's just like a societal belief or if it's generational trauma that we're kind of sharing, but either way I feel like there's some of this pressure on men and women alike sometimes to like put up a tough front and pretend that things don't upset us. We're all human, we're all in this world and we can all struggle. Mental illnesses don't care what you look like where you're from, any of that, that affects us all at the same rate. So yes, please speak up. I think if you feel comfortable speaking publicly even, I would love to see more men talking about mental health so that other men know, it's like leading by example, so others know that it's okay too. Exactly, it's always okay doesn't matter what your pronouns are, right? Exactly. And so someone asked, and this is more of a personal question, but I think some people kind of have specific questions like this and it's helpful. So this person asked, I have been diagnosed with ADHD and ever since I started taking my ADHD medications, I've realized I've been feeling so lazy, burnt out and depressed. Do you think this is because of the medication? I would talk to your psychiatrist about that. It's interesting. Okay, so I'm not a doctor, but I'll tell you what I know. I have a lot of patients with ADHD who have been put on a stimulant. Now I don't know what type of medication you've been put on for your ADHD, but this would be something like a Ritalin. Now they've been put on a Ritalin type of medication and it's helped with their depressive symptoms. Now I know that's awful, they call it off label use, but we do find sometimes when we're treating the ADHD it also treats underlying symptoms like depression. So the fact that your symptoms are getting worse with this type of treatment, let your psychiatrist know because on the therapist side, I would always wanna say, hey, maybe we're misdiagnosed or maybe this medication just does not sit well with me.  Let them know that this is making things worse so they can change your medication or shift and find something that makes you feel better because that's what medication should do. We should start to slowly but surely feel the symptoms lift. Exactly, what you just mentioned is mental health empowerment. Like if something isn't working, speak up. Like don't just sit there idly and just allow that to happen because your mental health is important and the therapist and the doctors are there to help you. So you shouldn't feel bad about it. 100% and no one will advocate for you as much as you will. I know it sucks and it's hard sometimes to speak up, but they're there to help you and that's your time and your payment also. So your next appointment or if you can call right now or email, make sure you get your questions answered and if you get nervous, because I even just like my mind goes blank, put notes in on your phone and just read through them and you can even ask if you can record their answer. Some doctors will let you do that too so that you don't have to remember it if you find yourself feeling overwhelmed. Exactly, and then Brian asked, what do you do when you have two therapists and you don't feel like you're getting better, just staying stuck in the same place and your depression just continues? A couple of thoughts. We might wanna try, so random, I learned this when I was researching for my book Traumatized, that in this is specific to trauma, but I would argue it applies to all mental illnesses that only 40% of people are helped by talk therapy alone. Now what I mean by talk therapy is that I'm listening to you, I'm offering maybe tools and techniques and we're just talking it out. Other types of therapy that are not talk based would be things like somatic based therapy, which is like movement. Remember I talked about that body shake? Well, if we are holding anxiety or trauma in our bodies to think about the instance that has brought that about and move can be really healing. We can also do EMDR, which is like without getting into it too much, stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing and we kind of cause what's called bilateral stimulation. It can be through tapping, it can be through following something. We're trying to stimulate the parts of our brain again to allow our brain another opportunity to process the upset. Those are just two of many examples. And so it might behoove you to look into those other options because maybe the therapies you're getting, just even if you love your therapist, it just might not be the right fit in what you need. Another thought that I had is that if you're not a medication, you might wanna look into that. I know that some people can be very adverse to even considering medication, but I'm here to tell you it's there for a reason and it's like a life raft. I like to think of it that if we're drowning in our symptoms, like you said, I'm still feeling bad and I'm going into therapy and I'm trying all this stuff. If I can't participate fully and I'm not feeling any improvement, allow medication to be that life raft, that float that pulls you up and helps you better maybe do the homework that your therapist is giving you or be able to better communicate about what's really going on so that you can feel better overall. Exactly. And then so Zanz asked, how should we treat intrusive thoughts due to burnout? Yeah, intrusive thoughts are interesting. We used to think that if you just like said, stop, stop, stop, stop or tried to fight them that they got better, that's actually research shows that doesn't make it better. So I'm sorry, I probably gave that advice like six, seven years ago before this research came out. But we find that the best way to manage intrusive thoughts is to actually acknowledge them. Okay, just hang with me. I know you're like, but they're uncomfortable and they're really mean and they're like bullies. I hear you acknowledge it, call it what it is. This is an intrusive thought. It's not helpful and then check your facts. If that's not enough, check your facts. This actually isn't how I feel or this isn't supported with the evidence I have.    I know, that's why they're so uncomfortable. But allow yourself to just acknowledge it and it will go away, that's the magic. The more we fight it, the worse it gets. Another trick that I use if it's like, intrusive thoughts just keep coming up and it's almost like, if I don't feel like anything I'm doing is helping I'll force myself to think of a good memory. Pick a memory that's like really like palpable. Like you can still feel it. You can still smell wherever you were. And then imagine that you're telling me or someone who doesn't know anything about it all about that memory. Where were you? What were you wearing? What did you do? What do you use all your senses? Would you smell? What did you taste? Did you feel your clothing on your back was the sun on your face? Like tell me all about that memory in that practice of like pulling our brain into something that's really emotionally charged. It usually lets go of that kind of anxiety-based intrusive thought. It's a really good strategy actually like visualizing something positive and then it can help the intrusive thoughts go away. And so Will'd ask, how do you know if your burnout is caused by repressed trauma? If we find the symptoms that we're experiencing coming up, like if we can identify a pattern of triggers because when something is trauma based and I'll tell you this but then I'll tell you if you can't even get to this point what we can do too because I know I might be already ahead of some people if they're like, I don't even know where it's coming from but just hang with me. If we are able to identify the triggers and let's say we find our symptoms of burnout coming up whenever we are reprimanded by our boss. And then I want you to consider, did this happen when I was younger? Is there a way that I was like bullied or abused from someone who was in a position of power? This could be a parent, teacher, coach, like I said, bully, a kid at school, any number of things. Can we attach the triggers now to potential past upsets? Cause we might not identify them as traumas yet even though they were. So just consider and see if you can draw that correlation. Now, if you're in the camp cause a lot of my community is as well where they're like, I don't even know I just feel really overwhelmed all the time. Then the best way to actually figure this out is to see a therapist who specializes in trauma. Now, when a therapist says they specialize in trauma that doesn't mean that if you don't end up having a trauma that you wanna work on that they can't help you. This just means that if you do they understand how to get you there. So I would reach out and talk to someone because they're gonna have to work with you to help you better identify those triggers and realize where this could be connected to because they'll be able to guide you through it more slowly without overwhelming you. Cause the one thing we don't wanna do when we're thinking about trauma is feel like we have to understand it all and talk to it really quickly cause that can actually re-traumatize us. And so we might just wanna go more slowly. If that makes sense. If that makes sense. And so then Kat asked how can we deal with persistent sleeping problems due to burnout? Ooh, yeah. Create a ritual around your bed and sleep. And there's a lot of cognitive behavioral techniques or CBT techniques that can help with this. First is cleaning up your sleep hygiene. And my audience hated this but I'm just gonna tell you no pets in your bed at least for a while. I know. Controversial. And I love my dog, also I hear you. But they move around. They disrupt us whether we realize it or not, okay? So no animals in the bed, no extra stimuli, no phone in bed.  But that's part of sleep hygiene and then creating a ritual. So what do we wanna do at what time leading up to sleep? And this doesn't matter if it's weekday or weekend. We need to keep roughly the same schedule. Does that mean that at 10.30 we start this process?  And let's say you're like, but I do like being on my phone. Okay, maybe we go back in the living room, we're on our phone for a little bit. Then we make our way to bed and we start unwinding. And we need to have this ritual or this routine every day leading up to it because, and it sounds silly but we do it with kids and then we stop as adults. Rituals prepare our brain and body for what's about to happen.  This is time for sleep. Your brain starts to release melatonin. You start to kind of relax. You start to maybe feel cold because your body's like slowing down things. And then we're able to sleep better. And so start that ritual and start like cleaning up your sleep hygiene. And regardless of even if it's burnout, created or regular sleep issues, it will improve. And I have an old video too, if you want to look up on my channel, just look up Sleep Katie Morton, it'll come up. I think it's like four or five years old but it still rings true. Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, you can also let your phone charge while you're sleeping and that helps. And I think your sleep is obviously enhanced when you have your phone away from you.  But I'm just very excited for our sleep. Or psych to go. Yes, exactly. Watching the binge watching psych to go videos. Binge watch on a playlist, a very long playlist. Exactly. So I think his name is Dak. Okay, he asked, what are some non-medicinal products we can take to control anxiety symptoms due to burnout? If you had any recommendations? Yeah, I'll tell you what I use personally because I'm not a doctor. So talk to your doctor before adding any supplements. I find at night I take magnesium to help me calm down and go to sleep. Now I am more of the anxious type of person.  And it makes it really hard to go to sleep. And magnesium has been really calming and helpful. We actually find, I talked to one of my friends who's a neuroscientist at Stanford, Dr. Ben Rine. Melatonin's not good for us. And it actually impairs our sleep. When we add it, it has to be naturally derived.  Are you, wait, I was literally about to ask that. So you don't recommend melatonin? And I used to, because I've used it, but it's a hormone that our body produces. And essentially we shouldn't be forcing more into it. It's not good and it can impair the quality of our sleep. We might fall asleep really quickly, but it can cause very strange dreams and make us wake up periodically. And then we wake up groggy because our brain has way more than it needed. And so yeah, I learned that too. That was probably like last year. So it's new to me, but melatonin's not good. L-theanine is what he recommended, as well as magnesium and even apogen. Those are all, again, talk to your doctor because these are over-the-counter supplements. But I personally found magnesium. There's calm tea I get on Amazon that's been really helpful for me. For me, lemon and ginger tea helps. Yeah, like a chamomile tea, right? Like an herbal non-caffeinated. Yeah. I'm not sure if you've heard of this and I'm just like asking for myself. Have you heard of rescue remedy? It's like these little drops. I have. I have to remember what is in them. But I think as long as it's not melatonin, I would say if it works for you, give it a try. I've seen that little like tincture, like the little dropper, right? Yeah, I've seen it at homeopathic stores and stuff. So yeah, as long as there's not melatonin in it, I don't think there's any harm. Obviously, if you're on medication, check with your doctor. A good app to download is drugs.com. I know it sounds very hardcore, but essentially put in any medication that you're on even over the counter medication because then you'll find out if anything like works against or together so that we can kind of mitigate any side effects. Like I had a member of my community who didn't think about the fact that she was on an SSRI like an antidepressant and she was taking cold medicine because she was sick and she had to work and she was taking so much of it.  But she didn't know and because obviously your doctor didn't know oh, you're taking this type of medicine. So just be careful and look up that stuff. That's why we always say ask a doctor. It's not just to cover our own butts. It's also because we wanna make sure you're okay. Exactly. And then this is gonna be the last question by Sora. He asks, how do you deal with procrastination that's caused by burnout? To be truthful, the more we fight it, the worse it's gonna get. So my best advice is to structure your time in a way that feels better. And what I mean by that is we need to set breaks, sizable breaks, like every 45 minutes of work you need about 20, 30 minutes of downtime. And I'd encourage you to, this is gonna sound really silly, but just hang with me.  I know you might not like that. I'm just throwing that out there. Maybe that means that we color, maybe we watch a silly cartoon we used to love as a kid. I know that this sounds kind of weird, but we find when we're super burnt out and we just almost can't anymore, the procrastination is really heavy, the motivation is low, that we need to let, it's gonna sound woo-woo, but just there is science to back it up. We need to let that inner child of us kind of play a little because we kind of like stuffed them down and forced them to do work, which is, if you think about it, it's kind of why the symptoms of burnout are almost like child tantruming, right? We're like agitated and we're irred and we're like, no, we just don't want it. It's like we're stomping our feet and we're throwing a fit. And so allow for some of that joy and that goofiness, something that feels like totally irresponsible in some ways. We're like, I'm an adult, adults don't do this. That's what we want you to do. As long as it doesn't hurt anybody, have some fun, put on something goofy, do something funny, and it's weird, but you'll see it happen. After doing this a couple of times, you'll start to feel that procrastination just wane. And you'll be able to get what you need to get done because we've let ourselves kind of be irresponsible for a little bit. Like a release kind of. Yeah, it is like a release versus like white knuckling, like forcing ourselves into a situation. They say that when you force something, it just kind of makes it worse, right? It doesn't. It is not our best work either because we're not thinking our best. So thank you for that, Katie. These are awesome questions. So thank you to the audience as well. And so I just wanted to ask a few questions that pertain to Mental Health Awareness Month. And so how can we empower others to seek help when needed? Yeah, the best thing we can do when it comes to someone else that we love is to support and check in. I know we want them to get help and we want them to get better. We can't make anybody do anything. All we can do is we could share our own story. Hey, I've been in therapy and I found that really helpful. You know, if they're coming to you again with like, oh, I feel so depressed or I'm feeling this way or that way. We can say, you know, I know you're not really keen on therapy, but it was helpful for me. And you're going to share your story. We can support positive actions. If they're like, I think I'm going to look into a therapist. Be like, if you want any help with that, I'm here. Right? We just, we just offer our support. And then just checking in. I've heard time and time again from my patients and my viewers alike that when people come and try to fix it, it feels worse. It's better when someone just says, hey, what if I picked up pizza and came over? I've been wanting to watch this movie. It's on Netflix, you know, and we just do that. We're just there. That that's actually the most helpful. And so those are really the ways you can support. I know it sucks to feel like you can't do anything, but this is the way that you can help. Yeah, exactly. And then what is your best self-care advice for someone struggling with mental health issues to top it off? Yeah, my best self-care advice, take a shower. I know that sounds crazy, but it's a life changer.  And let's just, it's like a reset.  If you can take a bath, take a bath. If you have the luxury of having a bath. Yeah, I just feel like something about it is like rebirthed anew. So take a shower and you tell me, does it help? Because I think it can change your life sometimes. So helps, a hot shower, right? Exactly, exactly. Well, thank you so much, Katie. We really appreciate you being here. So you guys want to check out, if you guys want to check out Katie Moore's YouTube channel, it's in the description, her website and her book. It's an amazing read. I really recommend it. And thank you all for joining us today. Yeah, thank you so much. Of course. Have a good day, guys.


Hello, I'm Dr. Steven Pomerance from ProScan Imaging. We have a neuro and orthopedic MRI course beginning June 6 in Vancouver. And we're here today to give you a sneak peek at this exciting educational program, a course where each radiologist will work at their own individual workstation as if you are in your own practice reviewing cases. Let's take a look at a neuro case from this combined neuro and ortho review. This is a 10 year old with eye twitching. Let's have a look at the MRI, which includes a coronal T2 weighted or water weighted image, an axial fluid or water suppressed inversion recovery image or flare, and on the far right a T1 weighted image with intravenous contrast administration. Let's turn our attention to the questions. Question one. The most likely diagnosis is A, oligodendroglioma, B, D net, C, lermiduclose lesion, or D, astroblastoma. Question number two, astroblastoma, A, often calcifies with large bulky calcification, B, often presents with catastrophic bleeding, C, has high and low grade histologic types, or D is associated with fecomatoses. Question number three. All the following are true of astroblastoma except A may have punctate calcification, B occurs in 50 to 70 year olds, C, almost exclusively supertentorial, D, natural history is that of intermediate aggressive behavior. Let's go back and look at our imaging. A coronal T2 MRI shows a bubbly lesion. Some of the bubbles are actually in the solid component of the lesion. It's a peripheral lesion. There is modest or mild to modest edema, but the edema and the lesion combined produce very little mass effect. There's very little shift of the midline, and on the axial flare there's very little mass effect on the ventricular system and no obstructive hydrocephalus. Fluid attenuated inversion recovery image which suppresses the CSF also suppresses the signal of the cystic bubbly component inside our lesion. The axial T1 contrast enhanced image shows contrast enhancement of our bubbly mass. Let's go back now and answer our questions. Question one. The most likely diagnosis is correct answer, D astroblastoma. Oligodendroglioma is an adult lesion. They wouldn't occur in a 10-year-old. Oligodendroglioma is seen in the frontotemporal centrum, semi ovale, and it calcifies in almost every case. D net. This is a lesion that has a proclivity to the temporal region. It is usually not this large. It is usually not associated with this much edema. That would be the main differential diagnostic consideration. Question number two. Astroblastoma, and the correct answer is has low and high-grade histologic types. That's a super difficult advanced question as is the case. Astroblastoma does calcify, but the calcifications are not large and bulky. They're punctate microcalcification. In oligodendroglioma, the calcifications are frequently somewhat finger-like and branching. Oligodendroglioma has a much higher incidence of calcification than astroblastoma. Astroblastoma does not often present with bleeding catastrophically. In fact, it doesn't really bleed that often at all. And finally, fecomatoses may be associated with schwannoma, NF2, appendemoma, NF2, meningioma, NF2, neurofibromas, NF1, and giant cell astrocytoma in tuberous sclerosis or Bornville-Pringles syndrome. But not astroblastoma, so D is false. The correct answer by process of elimination is C. Question number three on this advanced case. All the following are true of astroblastoma except, and the correct answer is, it is not a lesion of older or middle-aged adults, 50 to 70 years of age. It is a lesion of children and adolescents. But the other choices are true. As stated previously, it may have punctate calcification. It is almost exclusively supertentorial. You'll never get shown one of these inferentorial. I've never seen one. And the natural history is that of an intermediate aggressive lesion. And while it may have edema, the edema is modest or mild, and the degree of mass effect is mild, as in this case. Astroblastoma is a rare glial neoplasm presenting in children and young adults. And characteristically, lesions are large, lobulated, supertentorial, peripheral. And they have solid and cystic bubbly components. Some of those cystic foci are inside the solid component of the lesion. We talked about edema being modest. We talked about the calcifications being small or punctate, and not uncommon. We said that they could have high and low grade variations, and they are treated often successfully with surgical excision. Appendimomas, which when supertentorial may be parenchymal, are usually in children inferentorial. And they are often intraventricular, but when they are parenchymal, they may make cystic components, which are much larger than the bubbly, smaller cysts seen in astroblastoma. D-Net is a bubbly lesion and can occur anywhere, although the mesial temporal location is most common. And if you're going to get shown one, that is likely where it's going to be. These are peripheral, but non-enhancing, wedge-shaped lesions that point towards the ventricle. It can be large, but on the average, astroblastomas are bigger. But the main differential feature of our lesion versus D-Net is the enhancement. That's key. D-Net is also a tumor of children and young adults. Oligodendrogliomas, as mentioned, have a tremendously high incidence of calcification, close to 90%, and they have a very high incidence of hemorrhage. Oligodendrogliomas present in the fourth and fifth decades, and they like, as mentioned before, the frontotemporal centrum, semio valley. So that concludes our discussion of the rare glial neoplasm, astroblastoma. We've given you some pearls to differentiate it from the look-alikes. This is an advanced case. Have a great day. Thanks. The great thing is that at the course, each participant will have their own workstation, which means they can follow the images on their workstation, while Dr. Pomeranz is demonstrating them for the audience. So for that reason, it makes it a great educational experience. And we look forward to seeing you in Vancouver.


Hello everyone, welcome back to another text to video AI video in this one We're gonna talk about text to video and not only that we're gonna talk about Decoherence you can go to their website Decoherence.co. I'll put a link in the description and you could make some pretty wild videos Let me show you what you can make then I'm gonna show you the app itself So if I hit this button here, I made three videos using it and here's what I got Basically what I did and this is kind of cool, right? I got three bulldog I got bulldogs playing poker kind of thing where they play in their cards Then I've got some synthwave punk type thing going on here where a guy's reading his book doing his thing Maybe I'll make it a little bigger here for you so you can see it pretty cool stuff Ah ha type video if you remember the 80s And then I got a cool zoomie video or Shakespeare's reading a book and stuff. Anyways, here we go guys It's deep it's Decoherence.co You can join the wait list as you can see here and what it basically allows you to do is write some prompts And it will create videos. Let's go to the app now. So here's the app. I'm using the Mac version There is a PC version as well and when you open it you basically create Creations for lack of a better word so you get to create creations when I click on this you'll see here I've got a few finished testing zooming etc So let's create one I'll show you the steps first off you click on the AI style You can select one of four different styles at the moment keep in mind This is still a relatively new tool and it's in betas So it's going to have more and more things added to it and their developers are very responsive So the AI style there's one of four different styles as you can see here on the left side You can also change the duration and the frames per second so 24 frames per second is basically The equivalent of like film so at 12 frames per second this one It's basically you get to see every second frame so it gives it that sort of stop motion jerky motion But again, you guys can adjust this as you see fit as well as the duration I've selected 10 seconds, but I believe it defaults to 20 also you can change the zoom level So if you want it to be zoomed in or zoomed out You can go ahead and do that here and let's go a little further in terms of other things while I got you here Might as well show you quickly right now You can the number of steps the number of steps of course increases the more steps the more quality, but it takes a lot longer to To render and then of course guidance for those you that are familiar with stable diffusion and mid-journey and stuff like that It's basically how close to the prompt does do you need to be like how much how much latitude do you give the program?  Oops three dogs playing poker and Presto, that's it Then I would just go ahead and then go ahead and click on send to queue if I wanted to do that You could of course name this I'll go I'll call this three dogs and then I would just click on this send to queue button Unfortunately, I've used up all of my plans So unfortunately, I don't have anything there one of the things that I think in future Interactions, hopefully they take a look at adding in, you know A preview option as well as like a demo or a beta or a watermark version. They don't have that at the moment It's pay-to-play right out of the gate. So hopefully they look at that in the future But there you go and again guys you make videos just like this and if I hit play presto, you know These are pretty cool videos and again awesome stuff. It's coming along guys. Thanks for watching ton more stuff coming up Stay tuned


Hi there, I'm Anthony Chung and I'm the head of market analysis here at Amplify Trading. Every weekday morning I'll deliver a fundamental rundown ahead of the European Open, but if you subscribe to the channel, you'll also get content from the rest of the team. So let's begin. All right, very good morning and thank you to everyone who joined us on Amplify Live last night for the masterclass and also for the live coverage of the FMC. Hopefully it helps and you've got good value out of those sessions and talking about this morning it very much is a continuation, a bit of a summation of what the FMC did yesterday. I'll try and wrap that up in a bit of short form. There's something much more extensive I've put together, which is available on Amplify Live or if you just go to my Twitter account, which you'll see here, then you can see the full notes that I put out every morning. But just keeping things nice and simple, definitely the morning after the night before, which is then digestion of what the Fed have done, which in a sense was a two-part move. If you were part of it last night, as you remember, we had an initial more hawkish type reaction, which was yield and dollar strength, equity weakness, and a lot of that came on the back of the fact that the kind of dovish expectations and thus positioning of the market meant that the somewhat micro-easing, as I would call it, which is the nuanced, more soft change to their wording around their commitment to their bond buying program and literally moving it to seeing substantial further progress in employment and inflation, scrapping that previous raising of over the coming months. That was very much expected. The other thing that markets were potentially looking for, though, was something called WAM, which is not not the famous Christmas hit by that famous band, but something slightly different, which is weighted average maturity. And that's moving out then trying to pin down yields in the long end by moving out then that that average maturity. And they didn't do that. Some hints, though, of course, came in the press conference, which ultimately then created a reversal in that move and has kind of led to the sentiment of where we're at at the moment, which is this kind of re-emphasis that reiteration inflation risks to the downside is going to take some time for those inflationary pressures to even out, even with high levels of accommodation and then essentially power coming out and being cautious about the economic momentum. Things remain highly uncertain. Also as well, jobless rate was still elevated while participation is still well below pandemic levels. So there was a lot of wording there to suggest that Powell by no means is in this kind of bullish mindset. He's still very much in a similar fashion to what the incoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was famous for, which is this cautious, more gradual approach. And so as such, and pretty much as we were anticipating in our pre-FMC kind of previews we were putting out, we were looking for a potential initial dollar strengthening move to then fade only for the then resumption of dollar weakness. That's exactly what we've seen. And again, the first part of that move, the dollar strength being born just purely out of the way the market was positioned with its expectations for last night. Net net, I think the Fed has done exactly what they should have done at this point in time. Still a lot of things obviously to play out, which we'll talk about in the moment, like stimulus and so on. And obviously the ongoing COVID situation vaccines for them to really get their more clarity about the economic future. So at the moment, the dollar is down again. So the game last night was very short lived, was taken back pretty much by the conclusion of the presser. And equities are on the front foot. We're back to record high territory again in the Nasdaq and the S&P, gold on the Ascent and WTI crude following suit. This idea then of demand picking up in the economy supported by an ever more kind of a competitive central bank in form of the U.S. has meant that then crude through 48, targeting 49 now, and certainly on the higher time frame charts here for WTI crude, just to have a look at one, we're at quite an interesting level here. We're back up to the highs that we printed back in the second of March. So as per the kind of desks view at Amplify, we've always been quite bullish with this move. And this is kind of one of the first targets here, but 50 bucks is kind of the next stop on the upside. Otherwise, a couple of other things to be aware of, and that is U.S. stimulus. So what's the latest there? Well, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that talks about fresh aid are still ongoing. He thinks we're going to get there. So that's his part. U.S. House Majority Leader Hoyer is hopeful that a relief deal can be done in the next 72 hours. And was hoping to have an agreement or government spending last night. It hasn't materialized as yet. But then later commented that another stopgap bill might be necessary. And it's interesting at the moment, I think market psychology from a behavioral perspective right now is that a deal is going to be forthcoming. And as I'm going to show you in a moment, the COVID situation I think is being massively underplayed. I think everyone's got so sidetracked by record high equities and sky high IPO valuations and so on. People have forgotten about COVID in America. And I'm not calling the top and markets are going to reverse today. I'm just saying that when I show you, I think it's going to have very important implications for not just North America, but also the likes of mainland Europe and then also particularly the UK in the new year, which I'll discuss. So they're stimulus at the moment. It's still looking hopeful. But if they were, remember, they only did a stopgap to this Friday. So they need to do another one to then take it through for another week or so until the end of the year. Going through historical sake, I remember many years ago, actually being abroad in holiday, I was in Hong Kong. I got the phone call for my boss at the time. This was many years ago. I think it must have been like 2010 or 2011. And the government shut down. And that was quite a big deal at that point because there was lots of apprehension about the sovereignty of the US's kind of triple A and credit rating. And lo and behold, they push it all the way up to literally New Year's Eve and then they cut a deal. So could the same thing happen again here? Could do. You would like to think though, that with the worsening COVID situation, that would force and sharpen the minds of these both sides of the changes in Congress to get it together, to get a deal done. But this is the nature of politics. So the longer that goes on, the more, I guess, markets could be sensitive to the potential or potentiality of actually a government shut down and the implications of that. At the moment, I don't think we're quite there yet and things will still remain quite hopeful. A deal coming is what the markets are reflecting at the moment. Talking of something else then, we're gonna flip over briefly to Brexit. What's the latest going on here? Well, UK and EU negotiators are believed to be in the final stretch at the moment, as these headlines would suggest, predicting a deal in the coming days, potentially at the weekend. The focus is on fisheries. So we've kind of gone back to fisheries now. And it's said to be a sign the two sides have largely settled their difference over the other major obstacles to the accord, the level of competitive playing field for businesses. Negotiations are stuck over how long the transition period should be before any new rules or quotas apply and the UK has pushed for three years, the EU wants longer. The two sides are also longer heads at how frequently access would be renegotiated. The UK wants to do it annually. The EU wants a longer term arrangement. Now, I know these points seem quite boring and very specific, but I think if you were gonna be seriously effective at trading headline news, which is a very difficult thing to do, this is the level of depth of understanding the finite points of the pivot of the negotiation. For me then, understanding fisheries, but specifically within that, the areas of which they are haggling over and their current stances. If I understand that, as we've just mentioned, then that makes it a little bit more binary on how probably markets will react when inevitably there's gonna be a comment or a tweet or a rumor that comes out on that specific point, you will know then what action to take pretty much immediately. So again, just check out the kind of morning prep in the outfire live chat. Otherwise then it leads us into the Bank of England. We've got the next kind of central bank decision. This certainly is quite a bit less interesting, I would say, from what we were looking at with the Federal Reserve last night, but there are some things to be aware of. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg. They all predict interest rates to remain on hold at 0.1% and the QE program to be maintained at 895 billion pounds. Now, they increased that just last month. You'll remember the kind of economic forecasts that come out in the BOE is a little bit different to the more calendar fixed quarterly structure of the ECB and the Fed. So the BOE released theirs in November. They increased QE by a slightly larger amount than what some were anticipating, so 150 billion. So right now, given the fact that we don't know yet how Brexit is gonna play out, really the state of players, they just need to sit on their hands and wait. So we're not expecting too much here actually from the Bank of England today. On that point though, and I wanna talk a little bit about COVID and then I'm gonna wrap it back in then to implications for the UK economy and potentially then something to think about for the pound as well going forward. And that is what's happening with COVID. Gonna start with the US at the moment. This actually hasn't updated yet. This is from the New York Times in their tracker to reflect yesterday's numbers. And yesterday's numbers were quite eye-catching because in a negative way that is fatalities in the US. If I go down to by day, deaths in the US hit another record daily high yesterday. 3,835 deaths were reported on Wednesday. So again, this chart hasn't updated. That puts the latest bar somewhere up here. California alone, as far as cases were concerned, this is the national picture, that California alone had 53,711 cases yesterday. I believe that's almost double what it had the prior day. And the reason why I think this is quite interesting, these particular charts is, if you look at hospitalizations, there was quite a lot of talk at the time when it got to 100,000 because this is when we start talking about the nearing of capacity, which of course would be hugely problematic, not just for the treatment of COVID, but for all other treatments that still need to be conducted. And so here that number has just continued to go up over the seven-day average, hasn't really hesitated. Perhaps it's got a tiny bit more shallow, but it's still a fairly rapid increase. Here then is something what's interesting, I think as a perhaps a precursor for the UK. And that is this little kink in these charts here where happened pretty much the base of this kink was around November 26th in that period. Same thing reflected in the deaths. And you remember, this was November 26th, Thanksgiving in the US. Now, given the fact that as we know for actual, I guess signs that you've contracted coronavirus to materialize and therefore if you have symptoms, that takes anything between five to 14 days. If you actually look then over the period post Thanksgiving, this is what happened. And actually if you look at the nationwide acceleration of cases, and there's obviously an argument for more large-scale testing, but that could be said that we were already having large-scale testing through recent months anyway, so that argument is probably lesser extent now. I'm xing out the left-hand side of the chart more looking at the last three months. But the acceleration of cases is the steepest it ever was post Thanksgiving. Subsequently deaths also as steep, if not steeper than what we saw in the initial outbreak. And with this latest number, putting us off this chart up here near a 4,000 as of numbers yesterday, putting ever-increasing more pressure on the infrastructure for hospitals in the US. Now, the thing I'm tying this into then is in the UK, there's been a lot of political pressure on the Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his government at the moment in regard to what they should do with the plan loosening of restrictions over the Christmas period. Now they've tried to enforce certain type of rules around it in terms of the number of households that you can mix within your bubble and so on. But it looks at this point, at least they're gonna stick to that plan. And given that this is what happened with Thanksgiving, well, one of the things is, this is what's already happening in the UK prior to the loosening of restrictions. And that is over the course of the last week, case numbers in the UK have gone up over 50%. And that has meant then that a increasing larger proportion as we saw on Wednesday of the country has moved from tier two to tier three. So COVID is getting worse right now in Great Britain. And what this is gonna mean then is that what I'm slightly apprehensive about is if this Christmas plan goes ahead with the government, then what does it look like in terms of those graphics when it comes to the UK in here? What does that look like when it comes to the first week of January? Given that again, incubation period of the virus. And so that then leads to kind of this chart, I guess, which is quite an interesting one. It's just one metric, but it serves to make the point I'm trying to express here, which is how the pound could react under different kind of macro scenarios. And this would be then a deal, a no deal Brexit. And this, let's take that as our first kind of example. So looking at these lines here, you can see the blue one, what would the unemployment situation look like over the period of then, I guess, going into Q1 of 2021, which is where it would be most disruptive. And as you can see there, the rate or number of joblessness basically doubles over that period. Throw in then the fact of downside virus developments. Cause one of the things here is that at the moment, we're in this tiering system that's been adopted by the government. And even at its third level, it's still not as strict as what we initially had enforced back in spring to get the first outbreak under control. So this then leads to a few interesting potential projections for sterling, I think, going into the coming weeks and into January, because if you have, and this is not the base case scenario, which is for a deal Brexit to happen. But if no Brexit happens, and let's say it is a disruptive, disorderly, acrimonious breakup of talks, the worst case scenario, plus then you start to see that sharp acceleration of COVID in early January. Then this is when we start looking then at forecasting for the pound. And it was an interesting conversation we were having with some of the guys yesterday. And this was kind of thinking it through about the short-term limited upside relief on a deal being secured and a push up to 140, perhaps capped in the near term by further worsening of the COVID situation. But that aside, implementation successfully of a rollout of vaccine means that then we might potentially then going up to 144 and beyond into the second half of 2021. On the flip side, we're breaking higher at the moment in cable. And it's quite a key level where we close on the week actually at the moment. But this is all on hopes of a deal is going to be force coming. We seem to be arm making progress and the persistent nature of the dollar weakness. If we get through down to the end of December and we're sitting here on the 28th, 29th and there's still no deal, the pound weakness then on that prevention of the possibility of a no deal would probably outweigh then the more consistent dollar weakness over that period. And therefore we might start to edge back down below 135, below 134 and perhaps even lower. If then there is a no deal and it is that worst case scenario, a disorderly one, the reopening of markets be expecting a decent gap down the reopening of markets into the new year with then overlaid the compounding impact of what a worsening virus situation would have mainly because it's already worsening whether or not that's down to the new variant of coronavirus or not. But that then is going to mean tighter restrictions that obviously will have subsequently an impact on economic activity, increased job loss, lower confidence and that's going to be feed through into more negative for the pound. If that happens, then the Bank of England who are sitting on the sidelines today are going to have to throw more QE at it. The negative rate conversation will come back and I think at that point then the target on the first two things on the disorderly Brexit and the worsening COVID, I think we go 120 and if then the Bank of England have to start moving in that way, we go down to 115. I guess the counteracting force of that is some of that weakness offset by the fact that the dollar is particularly weak at the moment which might slow down its descent but yeah, just a few things to think about there from a bigger medium-term perspective just outside of the intraday kind of set up at the moment that I just wanted to share. The other places with COVID to be aware of is that Germany also reported over 45,000 cases this morning, that is the biggest jump in infections and over twice the number from the day before. So we're certainly not out of the woods here yet but as I say as the market, so responding at the moment seemingly just happy with the status quo from the central banks, accommodative maneuvers that we've seen is enough for now but definitely tracking through and post-Christmas I think it's gonna be interesting start to the new year. All right, a few things though obviously what is important is vaccines and there's actually some fairly good news on that from European authorities are pushing for a compressed approval time for the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech according to people familiar with the plan which could enable a rollout on the continent before Christmas and obviously with this, it couldn't come soon. I think at the moment in terms of the UK it's been roughly a week or so now and I think it's around 140,000 people have received those shots and the European Commission, their oversight committee is meeting on Monday and that's where they'll plan to sign off as soon as the same day in order to get this through as quickly as possible. So timing-wise, that's where the vaccine sits on the EU side. The other thing that's quite positive is UK expects its medicines regulator to decide whether to approve the coronavirus vaccine from AstraZeneca and Oxford University within weeks, potentially early January British officials expect the Astra shot to give a major boost to the inoculation program even or if it is approved because it would be much easier to roll out. I've already read a couple of articles last night talking about there's been a few issues with the Pfizer shot in the storage, the ultra cold temperatures that's required to store it. Sometimes then I think the most common one has been it's got too cold because a lot of the it's quite an unusual thing to have such cool temperatures that trying to work around that has been a little bit problematic as most people were foreseeing. So the main thing here is that as we go further forward into 2021 and as some of these other companies like Astra or J&J and so on come forward with perhaps then cheaper, more better infrastructure to manufacture especially compared to someone like Moderna for example then this is all going to help build out the inoculation programs and then the phasing in process and more greater scale of vaccinations but obviously that's going to take some time. So it's just something to be aware of. And then the final thing I just wanted to mention was overnight the Aussie well bid dollar weakness of course but you also had some good employment data coming out for Australia for November employment number was at 90,000 above the expected 50,000 unemployment rate dropped to 6.8 against expected 7%. What I'll do, I haven't got time to share all of the charts but definitely given the nature of the Dixie below 90 now we're at some very interesting kind of higher time frame and if you put your charts on a daily for much of the dollar based currency pairs there's some really interesting technical levels around pretty much across the board at the moment. Obviously US stock futures are at record highs currently and worlds at quite key level and gold just continues the reversal for now. So definitely a lot of things to get your teeth into for the session ahead. But I'm going to leave it at that. I think we've covered enough and then if there's any questions at all I'll see you on the live streaming app FireLive. Okay guys, have a good day. Take care. I'll see you tomorrow.


My name is McKenna and I'm going to show you how to make an awesome gift for your friends. It's a phone case for any type of phone you have. The person I'm making it for is Charlotte and it's her birthday in three days. I have my phone, a phone case, a Sharpie Lego Brick to level out the case, some tweezers, a paint brush, a spreader, some gems that I'll be using on the phone case, some gloves, painter's tape, and then a measuring cup to stir all of the arisen together. So first I'm going to take my phone case and put it upside down like this on my phone so I can trace out the apple sign and these lines. Next I'm going to organize my gems because when you put the arisen on the phone case you don't want to mess it all up and then have to take it off so when you brainstorm it then you can just pick it up and put it where you want. You don't want the resin to drip into the phone case so then I'm going to tape the camera hole and then you're going to tape the plug-in and the speaker and the headphone hole. After you taped everything, now we are going to mix the arisen together. I poured equal amounts of resin and hardener so now I have to stir for three minutes. You have to scrape the sides and the bottom. What do you think Charlotte's reaction is going to be? Now I'm just going to put a thin coat on the phone case. Now I'm going to use my tweezers to place the gems that I organized here onto the phone case. Just wait 24 hours until it's dry and then after that we would just pour some more resin on top to seal it. I'm very excited because I want to give this gift to Charlotte. So it's the next day and we are going to reveal the phone case. Oh wow it looks awesome. So next we are going to put a thin layer of arisen on top of the phone case just to seal everything. Just a thin coat will do. Ask an adult for help to torch it so all the bubbles will disappear. Now we are going to wait 24 hours so the resin can dry. After we're done we're going to cut out the holes with an exacto knife. That's it. The phone case is all done so here it is. I love it. And I hope Charlotte loves it too. I like to give gifts to my friends because it makes them happy and I want them to know that I appreciate them. I have nothing else to say.