103.You’re Not Broken-Release Mental Health Challenges Shame

Everyone experiences mental health challenges. Yet, wading through these difficult times can feel isolating or as if there is something wrong with you. The truth is, you’re not alone; many people struggle in the exact same way. In this mini episode of Spiritually Hungry, Monica and Michael lift the shame of mental health issues and discuss how to reframe your assumptions in order to overcome shame and hopelessness.

Transcript

I think we need to embrace a messy life.

And a messy life means there's no room for perfection.

That word is not even in your lexicon.

And it's really going about life.

And each day you can have a plan.

If it happens,

Great.

If it doesn't,

Then just embrace it.

And it's probably going to be better than the one that you had anticipated.

And just to live life like that because there's a true freedom and joy in that.

Welcome to Spiritually Hungry Summer Series.

Shortened summer editions.

Yeah,

So much shortened.

Are you familiar with Melissa Bernstein?

I don't think I am.

I think you are.

I am or am I not?

I know Bernstein's.

I don't know Melissa Bernstein.

You are familiar with her.

Once I start telling her story,

You'll be the guest.

It's a scary story though,

Isn't it?

Summer,

We don't want scary stories.

Oh,

I don't like sad stories.

Sometimes sadness is necessary.

I guess.

I don't think I would choose it though.

I wouldn't choose it,

Right?

That's why I don't watch sad movies or movies.

Well,

You're missing out on some really great epic ones.

I always say there's enough sadness in life.

We've all experienced sadness and we will experience sadness.

I don't know why I would choose to go out of my way to experience sadness.

I'll tell you why.

Okay.

Because sometimes when you see things that are really sad,

It awakens an appreciation for all the blessings.

I totally agree.

I just think that I have appreciation.

You know what else I like to do?

If I'm fasting,

Which is usually just twice a year,

I'd like to,

Um,

Speak about food,

Which I hate.

I like to watch movies about people suffering.

I'm not hungry anymore.

I'm not sure you want to share that publicly.

Why not?

No.

Like I once watched,

What was the movie?

I think it was called Alive.

And that wasn't what it was,

They got the plane crash on a mountain and a snowy like top mountain top and they ended up eating each other.

Oh,

You mean the true story?

Yes,

True story.

The football team.

Yeah.

What was it called?

I don't know the movie,

I just know the story.

I lost my complete appetite.

So basically what you're saying,

What you're recommending to our listeners to watch cannibalism movies when you're fasting.

Exactly,

When you're fasting.

There you go.

You can still be.

Again,

Another thing I'm not sure you should want to share with everybody.

I'm here to help.

Yes.

I remember when I went to when I was in camp.

This is so not what we're talking about.

Exactly.

Yeah,

Go ahead.

When we were in camp and there's always a fast,

That'd be fast in the middle of the summer and while you're laughing.

It sounds like you went to like a Holocaust camp kind of camp.

I know why you fasted,

But the way you're telling the story.

Well the point there.

What kind of camp would have children this day you're not going to eat?

It's actually more than a day,

But it's a night and a day,

But they would,

So they would actually show us Holocaust movies during the day.

Oh my God.

Really?

Yes.

I guess it's today you're supposed to be not,

Not,

You're not supposed to be happy.

That's a whole other conversation.

Anyway,

Back to your cannibalism movies.

I'm not sure you should have shared that.

All right,

Back to Melissa Bernstein.

So she's brought joy to millions of children with her designs of the iconic Melissa and Doug children's toys.

They're opening.

Oh,

Melissa and Doug right now,

Of course.

With her husband Doug and although,

And I love her toys.

I've always bought them for her.

Can I share a story that has nothing to do with this?

Sure.

So we were out in Connecticut and we wanted,

It was a Sunday.

We wanted to do something with,

You were probably remember the story with Abigail with our daughter.

And so I looked up Melissa and Doug on Google maps.

Melissa and Doug came up very close to where we live.

So we drive 15,

20 minutes and we get to Melissa and Doug.

Unbeknownst to me and to us at the time,

This was not a Melissa and Doug store.

It was actually their manufacturing facility.

And so obviously Abigail was very disappointed.

But the good part of the story is that you were driving ahead actually maybe finish the story.

Honey.

Yeah,

I saw.

And the man came out with a huge stuffed animal and just gave it to her because she came by there and was,

He didn't want her to be disappointed.

It's a great company.

They actually live in Connecticut and that's why they're,

I think that's why they're manufacturers there,

But as joyful and happy.

So the lesson there is just be careful what comes up on Google maps.

Oh my God.

Are you going to take us on every side tangent?

I think that's the end of the episode.

We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode.

Maybe I should have a conversation about nothingness.

Should we just talk?

I think we touched on very important topics.

I think it would be a really interesting podcast where we just have,

You know.

Absolutely.

But I think we touched on very important topics,

Cannibalism,

Sadness,

Holocaust.

And that you were starting a camp.

Yes,

Exactly.

And you don't want to,

You started this.

You don't want to talk about sadness.

But joy for Melissa was an emotion that she had little experience with actually until she was in her fifties.

And here are some excerpts from an interview she did with People Magazine and there was another article as well that she did for a magazine in Connecticut.

But she explains that when she was younger,

She said,

My mother said I screamed 24 seven for the first year of my life.

And she said the screams were horrifying.

And I think she did this article a few years ago.

She played now in her late fifties before I could actually voice what I was questioning.

It came out in those screams.

It was the sense of not quite rightness.

I was forever asking the question,

Why?

Why am I here?

What am I meant to do while I'm here?

What is the point of life if we ultimately just all perish?

Those were the questions that plagued me.

And they persisted until one year old.

Yes,

It started them.

And they persisted for her until she stumbled across the name for her feelings called existential depression.

It's defined as the state of hopeless doubt that life has any purpose or value.

And that was actually her eureka moment,

Because finally she understood that there was a name and an official diagnosis for severe anxiety and depressive disorders.

And she finally got treatment.

And she'd been searching for this answer her whole life.

She goes on to say that when she was a child,

She longed to be just like her Barbie doll,

Beautiful and happy all the time,

Which she's plastic.

I can tell,

I'm sure you won't say that Barbie is beautiful,

But how do you know she's happy?

By the way,

She's always smiling.

She's like the antithesis of what's wrong with the world,

Because that is an impossibility.

I mean,

I think every little girl then wanted to be like Barbie.

At least Barbie now comes in many different shapes and sizes and ethnicities.

But then it was just like Barbie and Ken and nobody,

You know,

Very few fit that.

Anyway,

Why are you like going on?

I don't want to talk about Barbie,

But anyway.

So she said Barbie was really the antithesis of who I was.

I was an isolated,

Miserable misfit.

And then she ended up having,

Because then she pursued perfectionism.

She ended up having a severe eating disorder and thoughts of suicide when she attended Duke University.

She said,

I went to college and I decided I couldn't be less than perfect at college.

I had to get an A plus in every single class.

Most of who had stopped playing the guitar,

Even though she dreamed of becoming a professional musician,

I dropped all my lifelines,

All my creativity,

Which was my salvation and focused everything on my academic performance.

That's when things started to go downhill because you can't get 100 percent on everything.

When her grades slipped and she was rejected by the popular girls sorority,

She didn't want to live any longer.

I carried around a bottle of pills in my pocket for over a year knowing that that could be my way out.

Can you imagine?

Doug helped bring her back from the edge of despair.

By the time the two met through their parents in 1986,

Melissa was about to start her senior year at Duke and weighed just 82 pounds.

He forced me to eat,

Melissa recalls of their early courtship.

I was attracted to his strength and the fact that he made me feel safe and protected.

It kind of reminded me of us a little bit.

Two years into the relationship,

Doug proposed and it's interesting to they have six kids.

They live in a 38,

000 square foot home and it sounds like a really fun place.

There's like an arcade and a full court gym and a pool and a tennis court,

Et cetera.

But she said that on the outside things looked perfect,

Right?

And she was suffering miserably inside.

Even then,

Even after she was married?

Well,

She goes on to talk about how when she was a parent,

She was terrified that if her kids were ever upset,

Like she would just say,

Yes,

That's okay.

Don't wallow in your feelings.

So she thought if they felt too much,

They would end up like her.

So,

Yeah,

She hit it only into her 50s.

Did she really understand where this had come from?

She read a book that that described and she was like,

Wow,

I understand now for the first time.

And I think that this is so important to talk about today because mental health and we've talked about this recently.

It's not something that has been given a lot of attention until now.

Last couple of years,

I'd say we know we focused on our body,

Our weight,

Our cholesterol,

Our heart health,

Right?

Every pretty much every organ we focused on disease.

But we didn't talk about mental health and the importance of taking care of ourselves,

Not having stress,

Not thinking negative thoughts,

Not having shame about not feeling like everybody else.

And so I did want to bring attention to this.

And I do feel like it's very important.

And everybody struggles,

Right?

That if people saw the true me,

For instance,

I'd be received poorly.

I'm not speaking firsthand here.

I'm just giving a list of how mental illness or mental health or lack of mental health rather can come in many different forms or that I might need help,

But that makes me feel ashamed or I feel powerless over my own mind and it makes me feel hopelessly imperfect.

It's so funny.

I did two other interviews this morning and a podcast also.

And it was all about mistakes,

Failure,

Perfection.

So I don't know.

I didn't intend on actually going in this direction,

But I think it is timely.

And it's interesting.

I mean,

One of the things,

This is a little bit off topic,

But.

.

.

No,

You off topic today.

Come on.

Kids don't get any education around this.

It's maybe one of the most important parts of education that should be certainly in curriculum and in focus.

Actually,

I know one of the things.

.

.

You feel very isolated.

You think it's only you and you look around and you're seeing a version of somebody's life.

It's either you or not anyway.

And for kids,

It's very confusing.

And researchers and doctors are saying really this next generation really into the future,

The number one issue in society from kids all the way up is going to be mental health.

I mean,

The numbers on anxiety and suicidal thoughts are amongst children is crazy.

I know you and I have started to put a lot of effort into that,

But I think it's really important.

.

.

Into helping kids.

Into helping kids.

But I think at a minimum,

What I'd like our listeners to take from today is an awakening of the importance of these conversations to be having with your kids,

With your spouse,

With yourself.

And let's take the stigma out of mental health.

It's not scary.

It doesn't mean somebody is going to be at the bottom,

Bottom.

Nobody wanted to talk about schizophrenia or any of that because it's scary to face things that are scary.

I get that.

But we need to take out all of,

Just bring it out to the open because there's many levels and variations of this.

I think children have this thought very often.

I believe my thoughts were unique to me,

That there was something deeply wrong with me.

And if you walk around like that,

Can you imagine the shame and that you have to hide this?

Of course it's going to become very.

.

.

So it's literally doubling the issue.

One is the actual issue,

Which should be spoken about.

The second is the fear about the fact that this is just me.

And certainly many people we've spoken to,

I think one of the greatest gifts even before solving and bringing assistance to those who are going through these issues,

Children as well,

Is making it clear that most of the world is struggling or challenged by these type of issues.

And imagine if people knew that they weren't the only one wrestling with this.

So I think that it's not just.

.

.

I remember I used to walk around the world thinking that everybody was completely normal and healthy in all aspects,

Mentally especially.

And then as I got older and I saw some really weird behavior in some people,

I was like,

Oh,

They look like everybody else on the outside,

But actually there's so much else going on.

And how naive of us to assume that everybody is normal or to some extent just like you or just like me.

Or nobody's normal.

Nobody is normal.

Right.

And some of the hangups we have beyond just anxiety and depression are things like hero syndrome,

Being a control freak,

Moments of irrational fear.

I know I have a very good friend that lays in bed awake thinking of every embarrassing thing or awkward social interaction she has ever had.

Ever?

On nights when she has.

.

.

Well,

She has a good memory.

She doesn't have to worry about that.

Comparison,

Envy,

Jealousy,

Being not enough,

Unworthy and imposter syndrome.

I had that one for quite some time until I realized it's just really ridiculous.

But everybody,

Everybody suffers with this to some extent or another.

So I think we need to embrace a messy life.

And a messy life means there's no room for perfection.

That word is not even in your lexicon.

And it's really going about life.

And each day you can have a plan,

If it happens,

Great.

If it doesn't,

Then just embrace it.

And it's probably going to be better than the one that you had anticipated.

And just to live life like that because there's true freedom and joy in that.

It's really being the creator of your life.

Not everything has to fit into this ideal of what it should be,

What it should look like.

And then I thought this other part that she said was interesting.

How has your depression influenced your creativity?

Because we talk a lot about how we want to just remove any negative feelings we have.

If I could just be happy or if I could just or if this,

That,

Then,

Right?

And I really like that she is speaking so openly and candidly about how depression has actually helped her be creative.

So I can create out of joy,

But I create more out of pain.

And the truth is I do too.

Every time I've written something that I think is really good,

It's come from some source of pain where I had this epiphany or a transformation or understanding and then seeing it,

Right?

And because that's the thing when people and I've read people have suffered with depression and even been suicidal.

They're so consumed.

They're thinking all the time,

But they're just thinking about dark things,

Right?

And once they're able to either write or to create something from it,

It actually has a purpose in a way.

She said the first medium I used was notes.

I wrote music.

When my head started tormenting me,

I started writing.

Now that I've merged my head and my heart,

I've started writing music again.

Many days I'm just feeling in the middle and I'm flowing,

But I was living a lie for my entire life.

I was only showing the shiny side of who I was.

All my creativity was born out of despair.

I had a deep,

Dark,

Soulful questioning side that no one ever saw.

When I went public for the first time,

I went on a podcast and I started thinking,

You're not alone.

There are people who have exactly what you have.

And that's why she wrote her memoir called Lifelines,

Which I suggest you guys check out.

Interesting.

Beautiful.

So I guess a few points to recap and have our listeners think about.

One is the fact that almost everybody goes through mental health challenges.

No one's normal.

That's,

That's a,

Yeah,

It's funny.

I remember I was actually watching an interview with John Mulaney,

A comedian,

And he was saying that one of the biggest realizations he had in life is that when he was a kid,

He thought the adults had everything figured out.

Right?

And then we're devastated when we're like,

Oh my God.

Nobody knows what they're doing.

Or many people don't.

But,

But that,

That,

That's the point.

I remember that moment in my life.

Really?

What was it?

I was just like,

Oh my God,

Who's going to help me here?

I got to get out.

Like I was not personal,

But I was just like,

It became just very apparent because nobody was happy and everybody was like worried or nervous and it was like chaos.

And I just remember like one day I think.

I was probably not even a teenager at,

I was like nine or 10 and it just became really clear that I'm going to have to figure out like,

I'm going to have to figure this out.

That's very funny.

It was like a thought that passed.

Right.

But then kept coming back.

So right.

So first one to,

To,

To understand that everybody is struggling with this and,

And I think it's important to take the time to have these conversations either with your spouse,

With yourself,

With your children.

And second,

Once you understand that everybody is going through this,

It relieves some of the anxiety,

Fear around it.

And I think often in speaking with other people,

You can very much help alleviate if not,

You know,

I don't know if the word is not cure,

But,

But really find your way through it.

And then to the idea of the fact that yes,

Even those moments of sadness,

Depression,

Challenge,

They are,

They have their purpose.

Right.

And I think it's important.

We've shared this before.

This idea that life is supposed to be on the upswing all the time,

Or I'm supposed to be happy all the time.

That's not reality.

There is a purpose to every,

Every moment in life.

And yes,

When there are times of challenge or sadness or anxiety,

Do the work to find out what is this either teaching me or what is the good that I can extract from it.

And then life is complete.

And in reality,

I might've shared this in a previous podcast is that one of the beautiful spiritual teachings is that when we look back at our life,

Of course,

We'll appreciate the moments of joy and happiness,

But we'll actually realize that the most important moments of our lives were the ones that were challenging,

But that nevertheless,

From within that challenge,

We will be able to extract a little bit of light or a little bit of goodness or a little bit of creativity.

And I would just add everybody has a story and you don't have to wait for it to be a great story or that it has to be a happy story.

Everybody's a story and don't be afraid to share it because you never know who you're going to touch or how you can help them.

I really applaud Melissa Bernstein for being so open and shedding light on darkness that she went through with it and being very frank and honest about her struggles and sometimes the struggles she still has.

Absolutely.

And whenever we go to dinner with people and maybe once in a while there's that moment,

Certainly if it's somebody we were meeting for the first few times,

Where they're about to open up and they're like,

Well,

There's going to be too much.

And we're like,

We've heard everything.

There's only one way out.

Number one.

And number two,

We actually enjoy the times with people when people are being real and honest rather than the time where sort of,

You know,

We're putting on that facade and everything is great,

But when people go deep and people go honest,

It's really,

And I'm sure we're not unique in that.

You will find that your friends,

Family,

Whoever it is will actually get more out of a real conversation than from anything else.

Warts and all.

So I'm going to go on another tangent.

Remember that time we went to dinner?

It was somebody that I was acquainted with and it was the first time we were meeting her husband and you hadn't met either one of them.

So we're at this dinner.

I know her kind of,

And the rest of us are just meeting each other for the first time.

And she had a bit too much to drink.

So towards the end of dinner,

Her husband was speaking and he said something and she's like,

You know,

When you say that you sound just like your mother and I hate your mother.

I think that was the most uncomfortable I've ever been.

But that was years ago.

I'm not sure I'd be as uncomfortable now.

But yeah,

We've seen and heard quite a few things since then.

So we hope we all take this opportunity in the summer.

Maybe we have some more time with friends and family to really open up,

To really open up and know that we're not alone.

And that in speaking of this,

And certainly if there's others who are going through their room,

And everybody is going through their challenges,

Speaking about it really alleviates so much of the pain and the challenge that comes with it.

And the shame.

Yes.

You don't have to be spiritually hungry.