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Episode 147: Let’s Talk about Mental Health with Taya and Reinhardt
154 Plays3 years ago
CW: Mental Health
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! May is Mental Health Awareness Month and the plan is for all the episodes this month to relate to important topics within Mental Health. We are also participating (along with other excellent creators) in #MentalHealthMtG and attempting to raise money for MH Organizations!!
For today's episode Alex and Hobbes are joined by returning guests Taya and Reinhardt! We wanted more perspectives to tackle the topic of how to start conversations about Mental Health. With Stigma still being a significant barrier (even for our Planeswalkers) we felt it was important to put this out there. For story today we look to Elspeth and her Lost Confession and we also learn that there is fanfic out there about a therapist to the Planeswalkers!
Again we would like to state that Black Lives Matter (with a link to where you can offer support both monetary and not).
We also are proud to have partnered with Grinding Coffee Co a black, LGBT+ affiliated and owned, coffee business that is aimed at providing coffee to gamers. You can read more about their mission here. You can use our partner code for discounted coffee!
This episode is sponsored by Zencastr. They provide a crystal clear sound and allows for recording separate audio and video tracks for the guests and the hosts. Plus, there is a secured cloud backup, so you never lose your interviews. It is super easy to use, and there is nothing to download. My guests just click on the link, and we start recording. Click here to get 30% off your first three months with a PRO account.
On another new note we continue our partnership with The Fireside Alliance. From their main page: "An independent media network and a progressive community of progressive communities". Please check them out!
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As promised, we plan to keep these Mental Health Links available moving forward too. For general Mental Health the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has great resources for people struggling with mental health concerns as well as their families. We also want to draw attention to this article on stigma from NAMI's site.
If you’re thinking about suicide or just need someone to talk to right now, you can get support from any of the resources below.
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
- Veteran's can Press 1 at anytime to be taken to the Veteran's Line
- Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741-741
- International suicide hotlines: A comprehensive resource list for people outside the US.
- IMAlive: Click Chat Now to access a live online network of volunteers throug
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Transcript
Introduction to Mental Health Awareness
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. It's currently May, which means it is National Mental Health Awareness Month here in the US. So this episode, like every episode we post in May, will be a mental health topic. And I'm really excited about this one. We've got two wonderful guests returning to the show today to help lend us more varied perspectives on this topic. But before we get into that, first we've got a couple sponsor shout outs to do. Hobbs, you wanna?
Acknowledgements of Sponsors
00:01:00
Speaker
Yes, so this episode is continued to be sponsored by zencaster the lovely software that we are recording on right now We like zencaster because it allows us to record all of our remote guests audio on their end So if there are any hiccups with internet, we don't worry about losing anything So the rote runner episode that was just out recently with ear fan that happened
00:01:22
Speaker
We had some issues with kind of his audio, but I didn't have to worry about it. I still was able to use all the files and it continued recording without us losing anything else. It also allows you to record, especially at the pro level in video. So if people do like video, you can do that. And with guests, I think you can have like up to 10 guests recording. I mean, and that's just, I don't, I can't imagine us ever needing that. I would, that would be,
00:01:48
Speaker
that would be a goblin lore episode of goblin lore episodes. Yeah, very goblin. Yeah, like somebody had a good storm turn if that happened. Like it tangents into tangents, like it would just be I think we would have to find like our 10 top 10 like all star guests, but make sure that they're all slightly different.
00:02:09
Speaker
just like approaches and personality and then just like, let it go wild in the warrens. Yeah, we know that regardless of the topic, it's just called MP the Warrens. That's the episode name. Now we need to do this. That's a mistake, Hobbs. Why did we start down this hypothetical? We've already started down this in trying to thank Zencaster for having that ability. And now we're already like, okay, but what can we do with it? But that's a simple fact, like they do allow for kind of a lot of flexibility. And then the post production, I think is the thing that we always talk about is just the most helpful for us.
00:02:39
Speaker
So if you go to zen.ai forward slash goblin lore pod or use goblin lore pod at checkout, you can get up to, I think it's a three months, you can get 30% off. Um, so that's just a great deal. And then we want to say thank you to the grinding coffee company. Uh, one of the things that we're going to be talking about today is, is mental health. And they're a podcast that is LGBT and, um, minority ran and led.
00:03:03
Speaker
And they are committed to mental health. They've been just so willing to jump up and offer us charity giveaways, offer to talk about this, you know, really supported us in the mission of mental health. It was one of the reasons I think that they were willing to kind of partner with us. And we just want to say thank you to them kind of as as we always do at the beginning.
00:03:25
Speaker
All right. So then let's, uh, do some introductions. We have an opening question and then we can have an opening question. This just blows my mind. It's been a while. We even dropped the ball. We had Ryan on who I think would have been perfect. And he didn't do one. No, he totally forgot. So what, since I started and I'm talking right now, I'll just keep that rolling and introduce myself.
Magic Cards and Mental Health
00:03:48
Speaker
So I'm Alex Newman phone on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler. My pronouns are he, him.
00:03:53
Speaker
And the question we're going to go with is, what's a magic card that describes your current mental health? And I had to stretch on this one because I had a different question that I wanted to answer. And so rather than come up with a new answer for this new question, I found a way to use my old answer for this new question. And I found an aura from Lorwyn, I believe. Now I just realized this image I'm looking at is from a dual deck called Daily Regiment, which
00:04:24
Speaker
It's or puts plus one plus encounters on enchanted creature. It's fine. But I just today fine. In a few weeks, I got back to lifting today. So every it's a thing I've been doing for most of the last year. I used to walk to work so a few miles away, which is really nice. So I would I would walk a few miles every day go to work. That was a nice
00:04:49
Speaker
way to get some activity and get out and move around but then i had to move and now i live substantially further away from work i can't walk anymore um fortunately though i i'm living close to a good friend of mine who has kind of set up a home gym in his garage so i was
00:05:08
Speaker
weekly going and lifting with him for a while, but then stuff's been going on with him. So it's been a while since he and I have lifted, but I got some some dumbbells and I've just been doing stuff at home. But the last couple of weeks have kind of been tired. The weeks have been weird. Things have been going on.
Personal Mental Health Routines
00:05:21
Speaker
My dad was in town. And so I kind of just I'll pass up past.
00:05:25
Speaker
And so finally today, I skipped it the last two weeks, but it was really nice to get back into it today, despite the fact that it was raining a little bit. So like for me, part of my whole, my whole routine with this, it's become a ritual that's for me, it's, it's a very good, it hits a bunch of things. So I use, it gets me out of my apartment because it starts with me leaving, walking to Duncan to get donuts because I love donuts, but also.
00:05:48
Speaker
I have a lot of internalized fat phobia from society where it makes it hard for me to eat things that I enjoy sometimes without feeling bad. But this is, it's like, I'm gonna eat, I'm gonna get two donuts, I'm gonna get a diet coke, because that's why I like to start, it gives me some carbs, then I lift.
00:06:05
Speaker
soon as i'm done lifting i go to subway and get a sandwich with you know nice protein carbs in the bread a lot of veggies just a good kind of meal after that but again it gets me out of my apartment twice it gets me active and kind of moving and
00:06:19
Speaker
I missed it because it's easy in the moment sometimes to just, and sometimes it's fine to skip those things. It was fine, but it was really nice for me to get back to that today. It just helps me feel better just in general. It's a good thing for my mental health. I really like this one in pointing me to this card name because one of the things that I got off with this week, which my card will make sense when we get to me.
00:06:44
Speaker
has been in my daily regimen and specifically with you know I've been talking about how well I've been doing with keeping a planner I fell off this week and so daily regimen and making it like just what I'm
00:06:57
Speaker
doing for that. That's a, this is a great find. And also, it's funny, what good art in the art, the it's a giant doing an isolation curl. I think that I have no idea if that's the actual term for it. But that is literally one of the dumbbell exercises I do where you put your elbow up against your inner leg, and use that to keep your elbow from moving and then just do curls with that like for bicep curls. And like the giant is doing literally part of my lifting routine.
00:07:25
Speaker
So it was pretty appropriate all the way around. So Hobbs, how about yourself? Yeah, so I'm Hobbs Q. I can be found on Twitter at Hobbs Q. And my pronouns are he him. So I was excited about this because I get to use an uncard. And getting to use uncard is always one of my favorite things in the world to begin with. But mine is frazzled editor.
00:07:53
Speaker
So this is a basically this is encompassing just kind of what may and then going into June and July tends to mean for me every year. May is always my busiest month with the cast and then my job. It just there's a lot that goes on with my work. It's also mental health awareness. So there's a lot going on with the podcast and then two weeks from now we're doing
00:08:16
Speaker
the mental health charity event so may 14th and 15th it'll actually be right after this episode comes out we'll be doing that event so i basically have been feeling like i am just frazzled in a lot of ways i was saying kinda before we all signed on that i messed up my knee
00:08:35
Speaker
running. So I'm very fortunate we have actually have orthopedic urgent care in Minneapolis with sports medicine. I literally was able to get in to see a sports medicine doctor and do a first session of physical therapy on a Saturday morning in less than two hours. But
00:08:53
Speaker
You know, we're going on vacation and the vacations to the mountains and it's to see my family for the first time since the pandemic began in California, like they've been here, but we haven't gone to see them. Like I said, my.
00:09:06
Speaker
My wife was on call this weekend. We had birthday parties. I had a daughter who didn't sleep and then didn't want to nap all weekend. It just feels like I've been running from one thing to another. And that doesn't even get into the fact that the actual like editing for this week's episode is still to be done. So frazzled, I think, is just a general state right now. But I also when I went to go bring up the card to look at it, I forgot that this was, you know, being unhinged in the time that it was meant that we got like a lot of really
00:09:36
Speaker
Juvenile humor and one of them is that we have the pen is mightier than the sword is the flavor text But there is like a line because the card actually reads the penis mightier than the sword which just makes me think of the celebrity Jeopardy sketch You're sitting on a goldmine Trebek, but we actually have a magic card with the penis mightier as a joke and Yeah
00:10:04
Speaker
Lee Sharp just pointed out when I just happened to off-handedly say that on Twitter that, no, no, no, the editor saved us by saying that there needed to be a space. Sure. Sure. So, Taya, I hear your voice. Let's pass it over to you with that way for me to leave.
00:10:21
Speaker
Hi, I'm Taya Steer. I can be found on Twitter at TayaTranscend. My pronouns are she, her, or they, them. My card is cursed of exhaustion because I'm just tired, y'all. It's been a rough few months if you're a trans person in this country and just the amount of hate that's targeted towards us from every angle.
00:10:48
Speaker
It's, it's been a lot. I'm tired of dealing with pandemic deniers. I'm tired of dealing with all the issues that I face. And I'm just exhausted. One spell a turn is about all I can manage right now. Oh yeah. I mean, I, I, uh, yeah. I would love to also force my opponents to always only get that many. All right. And Reinhardt about your stuff.
00:11:17
Speaker
My name is Reinhardt Suarez. I am a... Gosh, I guess I'm a writer. I write things. I guess most notably for this audience, I have written for Magic the Gathering. I've written three stories, three of the side stories for some of the characters for Strixhaven and for
00:11:48
Speaker
Oh my God, what was it? It was Crimson Vow, Innistrad Crimson Vow. And I'm really happy to be here again. This is always great fun. I love just chilling and talking about whatever, honestly. My card that I grabbed hastily,
00:12:12
Speaker
was really just because I, okay, I went to Scryfall, and for some reason, Garak has been on my mind. So I just put in the lore search. All right, let's look up some Garak cards and see what happens. And I found OG, kind of, OG Giant Spider, 2-4 with Reach, solid, you're so glad to have it every time, from M12. And the reason I picked it was because of Garak's
00:12:42
Speaker
flavor text and it says the wild is always changing but it does have a few constants and I feel that you know dealing with one's own mental state how one perceives the world at any one time it's you know catch me five minutes from now I'm gonna think something completely different but you're always going to have a constant of you and that's kind of like that's how I in general kind of
00:13:11
Speaker
think about it philosophically. So yeah, so I thought it was an appropriate card for her to select. Well, cool.
Breaking Down Mental Health Stigma
00:13:22
Speaker
So then for our topic, which I guess we haven't actually talked about, but whatever Hobbs picks for the title means that the listeners will know it. So I don't know why I'm talking in circles still. So what we wanted to talk about today is
00:13:36
Speaker
And I'm sorry, I'm still kind of trying to boil this down into. It's actually, so it's kind of funny, the way you're, the sense that you're talking around it, right? Yeah, around the topic, because the topic itself is how to talk about mental health. And yes, one of the things that I, you know, my plan, one of the things I know I specifically will be talking about is that idea of,
00:13:58
Speaker
Actually, it's just talking about it, right? Like not beating around the bush around it, which is something we attempt to do on the show. There's times when the tougher topics that we definitely still end up fumbling. In general, though, I think our M.O. and what we're known for is that we're directly saying the words. We're directly saying grief. We talk about suicide. We talk about trauma, whatever it is. And part of this is to break down stigma. And to me, when you came with the idea
00:14:25
Speaker
that was kind of what I envisioned. So I thought it was really funny when you kind of started talking around it, because that's, I think, is what is common. Yeah, that feels appropriate. Yeah. And so like, the impetus for this, like the kernel that I started with, I realized trying to think about topics for this month, kind of come up with with shows that we could do about mental health for May, I realized one of the things we talk about a lot,
00:14:50
Speaker
is, as Hobbs just said, we try to be very open about these topics. We try to be direct when we were going to say, we're going to talk about grief. We're going to talk about suicidal ideation. Any of these topics, we're going to talk about it. And we try to just move in to the topic and talk about it. We try to do it respectfully, and we try to, as we can. But these are important things to talk about. So we kind of just, if we want to do it, we kind of just have to do it.
00:15:17
Speaker
But I realized, like, we say that and we have these conversations. And I do this in my personal life. I have frank conversations with my family and my friends. I talk to my coworkers when I'm having bad mental health stuff. I have spoken to, I mentioned it in the podcast in the past episodes and within the last month or so. But there was a point where I had a
00:15:41
Speaker
was talking to my whole department, so about 30 or so people, and I just talked about the podcast. And I said, I have social anxiety. And this is why mental health is such an important topic to me. And so I try to be open about this in lots of places. But I realized we say, hey, we do this. And this is a good thing to do if you're in a position to do it. But we don't really ever talk about kind of how to get there or how to start that. And so that's kind of what I was hoping to talk about today.
00:16:10
Speaker
was to talk about, and that's part of why we wanted to bring on other people, and I'm so glad Reinhardt and Taya that you guys came on, that you two came on to join us, because then, as I said at the very beginning, this gives us extra perspectives to help flesh out what we're giving, because at least for myself, I can really only talk about
00:16:31
Speaker
my own experiences and that's not going to be representative for everybody. So by having multiple people on here, by having the four of us, I'm hoping we can give this wider breadth of experience that helps more people and gives better perspectives.
00:16:47
Speaker
Before we dig into that, I think for the mental health stuff, I mean in general, we like to have some magic lore and some story tie-ins, but particularly this month trying to keep those ties and have that kind of extra dimension to talk about magic stories.
00:17:06
Speaker
I do have a story tie in this for this episode. Taya found this for us, and I really appreciate you digging this up to bring. Do you mind opening that up, talking about that? I don't mind.
Magic: The Gathering and Mental Health
00:17:22
Speaker
When you all came to me with the topic,
00:17:28
Speaker
this week and you know it was really it's an important topic to me but what came to mind lore wise was the Lost Confession by Jenna Helen which I couldn't believe is you know almost nine years old at this point I don't know where that time has gone but this was the story at the beginning of the Theros block of Elspeth's
00:17:51
Speaker
pretty much right after she first landed on Theros and she's recovering from all the horrors that she had just experienced on Mirrodin and suffered all this physical and mental trauma and she's you know barely made it out of there alive and she's landed in this recovery camp run by
00:18:15
Speaker
an acolytes of Frika. And she doesn't know what to do with herself at the time. She's been from one trauma to another her entire life. And she just feels like another world fell out from underneath her. And she writes this letter to a Johnny knowing that he'll never actually receive it. She says as soon as she's done writing it, she's going to sink it into the swamp.
00:18:39
Speaker
And this letter is really all about all the pain and trauma she experienced while she was on Mirrodin as the Phraxians took over and just how much she's torturing herself, how tortured she is inside, how
00:18:56
Speaker
Much is gone on and is really tearing her apart and she can't. Actually bring herself to reach out and ask for that help she's doing it in a message she knows will never be heard or answered in.
00:19:11
Speaker
And she's really turning it on to herself rather than bringing herself to seek out one of the people that she knows she can rely on, Johnny, which has been a treasured friend of hers for a long time. And she really needs to reach out and talk to somebody she knows rather than sinking this message into the swamp.
00:19:35
Speaker
easy to do with someone dealing with mental health issues and severe trauma is absolutely a mental health issue. She's been experiencing it her whole life from being held captive as a child by the phrexians through the destruction of most of man and then mirrored in being an absolute hellscape
00:20:01
Speaker
That's pretty much been one terrible thing after another for Elspeth and what she really needs is help and she doesn't know how to ask for that. She doesn't know how to reach out and there's not a whole lot of support out there for planeswalkers who are constantly doing this. I do have to call out to a friend who has some
00:20:25
Speaker
some fan uh fic that their their character or their original character they created as a therapist for planeswalkers because they really needed what yeah they really do that is i need the link to like is this available is this it is yeah it's on uh
00:20:42
Speaker
It's on the AOC day or three. I can dig up the link. Yeah, so there will be a link to this in the show notes now. Because that's just absolutely fantastic. Their OC is a therapist for planeswalkers. I love it. Shout out to Alex, Wizard of Docks on Twitter.
00:21:00
Speaker
And that's something that planeswalkers really need. And I always feel so bad for Elspeth. I'm glad that the story for this set started out with her talking with Johnny. And I think this kind of goes full circle from where she was at the end of Mirrodin to
00:21:23
Speaker
You know, finally being able to reach out and like say, you know, I need this help. You know, I just came back from the dead. Where do I go from here? Who has experience of planeswalkers coming back from the underworld?
00:21:37
Speaker
Yeah. That's such a great parallel though, to talk about the idea that she's in pain from both the physical and the mental traumas of the things that she's been going through and kind of describes the immediate, the most recent stuff on Phyrexia in this article, but has no one in there where she's at to help her and rather being able to reach out to Ajani, she writes this letter.
00:22:08
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to be honest, when I had the idea for this topic, I'm like, this is something I think would be great for us to talk about, but I wasn't sure we'd find a good story tie in it. So I'm so glad that we know folks like, well, like both yourself and Reinhardt, who have helped us find story tie ins for things that I was not sure we would find tie ins for.
00:22:29
Speaker
And just straight off the name, the lost confession. I mean, that's, that's the idea behind a lot of times what people feel like with mental illness is that it's a confession. It's it, you know, and confession carries with it that connotation of either being wrong or being weak or, you know, just that you're, you're getting something off that needs to, but in a way that, I don't know, the lost piece to it really stuck with me. And as you said, the very opening sentences is about like, yep, as soon as I'm done with this, I'm just going to roll it up and like,
00:22:55
Speaker
slide into a vial and you'll never see it. Like I'm writing it to you because I need to get something down, but I'm not actually, you know, I still don't know what to do. She even says her decision to come to Theros is in because she didn't know what else to do. And then, yeah, the, um, I think one, one of the interesting things is that, um, you know, she'll, she writes the confession or she, she writes it in a way
00:23:25
Speaker
that she's almost ashamed of the things that she's experienced, even though she, in all senses, is a hero, right? But it has to be relegated, this pain has to be relegated to the shadows, has to be something that's sunk into a swamp because she can't show that vulnerable side of her.
00:23:53
Speaker
for whatever reason, maybe it's because in her in her past, so she was a knight on band, right? She, she looked up to figures like Rafik, and other like Asha, the angel, right? These are like legendary heroes that are presented as like, you know, Asha's gone, but she's still a paragon of virtue. And she has
00:24:21
Speaker
The fact that Elspeth feels pain and it really hurts her to the core, this article really makes you think that she feels ashamed of it. That's a really great analog to someone who encourages things, who has something going on with mental health.
00:24:50
Speaker
Never assumed, at least it's this convention of society. It's not assumed that this is something that happens. It's assumed that something's wrong with you. You could see that that in itself hurts Elspeth. She doesn't know how to deal with it, if that makes sense.
00:25:12
Speaker
Yeah. And I'd say, I agree. That makes total sense.
Open Conversations on Mental Health
00:25:17
Speaker
And you're right, that's a really good analog. A lot of folks, and this is part of why the conversation, talking about mental health, being open about mental illness is so important. Because so many people who are dealing with these things don't always even know what it is.
00:25:34
Speaker
I'd say for myself, before my social anxiety was diagnosed, I hadn't heard conversations and I didn't know that that was a thing. And so I didn't question why it made me feel physically ill, physically sick to my stomach if somebody, some random person I didn't know approached me to bus stop and tried to talk to me. It didn't register that that
00:26:02
Speaker
Maybe I go talk to someone and we can kind of work through some things and figure out what's going on because I had no concept that social anxiety was a thing and that this could be a symptom of that and that I could talk to someone and start working through these things. That took a few years for me from that point.
00:26:23
Speaker
And so often folks who are going through that will feel like it's something wrong with them or that this is just how things work or whatever. Different people have different impressions of it.
00:26:37
Speaker
having these conversations helps to break that down and helps people to realize this isn't something to be ashamed about. This isn't something that they're suffering by themselves. If there is a name for this thing and you can go find treatment like any other physical illness that someone suffers, mental illness can be treated. I wanted to ask, so, you know, you said before, you've been able to be honest at your workplace and open
00:27:05
Speaker
Do you find, and I think you would say that has helped you, do you find that it's helped others that you've talked to in your workspace?
00:27:16
Speaker
I think so. I certainly hope so. I'll say being as open as I have been, as widely as I have been, has been a fairly recent thing, like talking to my entire department. But I've talked to my team about it. I know the, so just as a really quick recap of what I was talking about there, my team, since the last two years, since we've been mostly remote and most of us haven't seen each other since then,
00:27:41
Speaker
We have a weekly meeting that we've always done that we've always had. But now during that weekly meeting, we do the actual business stuff. And then after the meeting, there's just some personal stuff. And so it's like, maybe a okay, the state fair, you know, is coming up for the Minnesota State Fair is the end of August.
00:27:58
Speaker
what's one thing you love to do there or are you not really a fair person and then someone will draw names and everyone will kind of give their answer over the course of a couple of weeks. Well recently they decided to kind of bring back what they did the first time how this started was to do a little more focus on like one person and have each person who wants to participate it's fully voluntary if you'd rather not you don't have to.
00:28:19
Speaker
which is an important aspect of some of these things too. But you bring five things about yourself, just any things you want to share. And so for myself, I just knew, I'm like, I'm going to talk about the podcast, which means I'm going to talk about mental health because this is important to me. And it's something that I want to kind of use this platform to share with my team.
00:28:45
Speaker
but I talked to my co-worker Sharon who's the one who kind of builds the
00:28:51
Speaker
power points for all of these slides. And she puts this together. She coordinates the whole thing. And so I told her, I'm like, I'm just going to let you know, I'm going to have as part of mine, I'm going to talk about mental health. I'm going to talk about my social anxiety and brief just as a quick thing. But it's a topic that I know not everyone's always comfortable with. That's kind of the point of having these conversations to help normalize this stuff and help make people more comfortable with the topic.
00:29:20
Speaker
I'm like, but so because of that, I want you to be aware and also know if there's multiple people that we maybe put me at the end so that no one else has to try to follow that. And so I talked to, and she's like, oh, that's great. I'm really glad you're going to talk about this. So we did the thing. I talked, I went through all my slides. I mean, just talking about random things. And then we get to the last slide. I talk about the podcast. I talk about my mental health, kind of the focus of the podcast.
00:29:46
Speaker
And then it was kind of silence, which I mean, to be honest, isn't unusual for these. We kind of get to the end to ask if there's questions every now and then someone will have a question that's not super common. And then we kind of ended the meeting and then it was done and I kind of like, there was a little bit of,
00:30:02
Speaker
over rushed, just kind of, this is a tense thing sometimes. And so I asked my coworker sometimes, did I sound okay? Because I went through and read my slides. Most people, she'll just do it. And I'm like, if I'm going to talk about this stuff, I'm going to talk about it myself. But she was so happy that I did it. She was very thankful. She's like, this is a good thing. This is an important thing. She talked to me about some stuff that she has had going on. And she's like, I'm glad that
00:30:31
Speaker
you're willing to be open about this, and hopefully that helps other people be more comfortable. So we'll see if it's a wider thing, but I do know, at least for her, she was very happy to hear me talk about this. And I know in a smaller context, though, within my team, like my supervisor, the last couple of years, I've always talked to her. I've been open with her and my team, and I know
00:30:55
Speaker
I mean, that's been helpful. I don't know if it's helped them talk more about their own mental health stuff, but at least it's been helpful for the team for me to just be open and say, hey, I need to take this day off for Mental Health Day. Things are kind of stressed right now. Or even if I don't need to take time off, just be like, all right.
00:31:14
Speaker
There's a lot of stress and a lot of things going on. I'm going to take care of X, Y, and Z because these have to be done, but then I might leave early just to get out. Then my team is like, okay, cool. We'll take it from there. Because one thing that I thought about, Alex, when you pitched this episode, I know all the stuff that you've talked about on here and the things that you and I have done over the course of now four years.
00:31:38
Speaker
We seem to just take for granted that we know that it is important. I don't know if we take it for granted as much as we have it as a stated mission. It's important to have the conversations. It's important to be open. I don't know. My personality on Twitter at this point is the person who's saying, talk about it. Why I liked this topic in particular was those thinking to, well, how do you get started?
00:32:06
Speaker
is, you know, where you're at right now is somewhere where you've been able to do this to the point where you would talk about it in a work setting. And I don't think most people are there. I will say, you know, I am very comfortable about it in pretty much every sphere of my life. And there still is part of me at the work setting where it becomes
00:32:26
Speaker
kind of difficult just because of the different pressures that I have, especially as someone working in the field. So I was kind of wondering, you know, for kind of with the reason we asked kind of Tay and Reinhardt to be on here is people have heard Alex and I talk a lot about our journeys. And I'm just curious if, you know, people could talk about what the experience has been like to start talking about it, right? Like, did it go well? Did it not? I mean, is it new to you to talk about it? Just that idea of like, how do we start this conversation? Because you have to start somewhere.
00:32:56
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's, it's been different depending on where I've worked. Um, my previous employer was a startup is much smaller. They didn't have, you know, they had the general disability employee work group, but they didn't have anything specifically for mental health disability. And that is something that, um, quite a few of us, you know, worked on together, uh, you know, covered really mental health and neurodiversity.
00:33:25
Speaker
And it's just, it requires people that are willing to be out there and open about their own issues to, I think, get that ball rolling. I currently work for a much larger company and we have an entire employee resource group dedicated to these topics.
Employer Support for Mental Health
00:33:43
Speaker
So we just had an amazing month for Autism Awareness and Acceptance Month, where they brought in a lot of external public speakers to talk about these things.
00:33:53
Speaker
encourage sharing among internal employees as well as a lot of just sessions on these topics in general. And we're doing the same thing for the National Mental Health Awareness Month. Those talks start up on Monday and I'm excited to see who they bring in this month for that. It's nice to be in a place that supports employees taking this time out
00:34:21
Speaker
of their work schedule to do these types of activities. And it also just helps with destigmatizing, having this discussion in the workplace. I'm very open online about I, you know, I'm bipolar, I have social anxiety, I have ADHD, I'm autistic. I've got the whole list covered on a lot of these things quite well.
00:34:47
Speaker
I do think that it takes people, you know, like the people on the show and people like me that are willing to be open about these struggles to get it to be seen as more commonplace and let people know that this is out here. And you know, Ted, kind of knowing you for as long as I have, has this been, you know, like, I mean, just because my memory is absolute garbage at times, but I mean,
00:35:10
Speaker
I don't remember when we were first all kind of starting on Twitter, especially people who have been around for a long time, that this was something that was like magic players would openly be discussing. No, I don't think it was super common. And I do think like podcasts like Goblin Lore have done a lot to help with that. And just I think society in a general in the last five years has changed a lot when it comes to this.
00:35:33
Speaker
Maybe part of it's because of the pandemic and people are being more willing to be open and saying, yeah, I've got these problems too. And part of it was just how accepted neurodiversity has become, which is so intertwined with other health issues, mental health issues especially. And people are much more willing to talk about their ADHD or that they're on the autism spectrum and just the other mental health
00:36:02
Speaker
challenges that come with that? I was thinking, you know, the pandemic piece, it made me kind of think about that idea that I think there's a lot of people who had more of a shared experience, you know, even if it's not something that's quote unquote diagnostic, there maybe is a little bit more understanding. I like to be the optimist at times that, you know, like, maybe that's something that has come out of this. But I do think that there's been a shift in the last five years, I would say.
00:36:30
Speaker
But I know that even for me, in the last five years, and I'm somebody who I will say, like, I'll just throw this out there. I initially tried to talk about mental health when I, in the most emo way possible, because I got diagnosed when I was 18 years of age. And people on here who know me, that was 24 years ago, right? Like, we're talking the late 90s. And I had to do a presentation for some high school class. And I know I did research in,
00:36:58
Speaker
introduce stuff on major depressive disorder and teenagers and all of this, but I'm fairly certain. I'm not even going to say fairly certain. That would be like me trying to cover up for the fact that I know for a fact that what I did was like sat down and played sound gardens the day I tried to live and then like just started talking about like depression and probably like I said a very typical high school emo way like knowing myself at that age.
00:37:25
Speaker
But people thought it was a joke, people didn't even take it seriously. I think I've seen just multiple iterations through the years just because of being somebody who has been kind of like, I don't know, my undergrad thesis was literally on representations of mental illness in film and in pop culture, right? There's a reason that this podcast was attractive to me.
00:37:53
Speaker
it does feel like there is a difference or a shift in the last five years. And yet I was still very afraid to do it. As openly as I have, I feel like in the last four or five. Yeah, and I guess I have been, well, say more open in the last four or five, but also for me, my diagnosis wasn't until
00:38:18
Speaker
Oh, how old am I now? It was about 10 years ago. It was a little less. I think it was probably nine years ago. So yeah, being more open in the last five years makes sense with the first couple of years still going through, spending time with my therapist, just kind of learning and figuring out even
00:38:35
Speaker
what's going on in my head and kind of working through things and stuff. And so that takes some time to even figure out kind of what you have going on. Like I got the diagnosis, I have a title for it, but that doesn't necessarily mean I understand what that means kind of to me and how my version of this works within my life. So that took a little while to kind of work through that stuff and then to kind of figure out where
00:39:00
Speaker
this works and how I'm going to be moving forward and doing stuff and different things. And so it took me a little while to kind of get to that point, which would probably have brought me there maybe more coincidentally within around that five years or so to start being more open and talking about it though. Now that I think about it, at least for me, for how I kind of started these conversations, at least the initial ones, unfortunately I have very supportive friends and family.
00:39:28
Speaker
And so I started talking to my parents and my closest friend, who was my roommate at the time, like then, like almost right away, they were the closest part of my social network. And as that was kind of happening, I talked to them about it. And that helped me a lot was to have them to talk to, though, they didn't have a lot of experience. They didn't have a lot of understanding of this. But
00:39:54
Speaker
being people who love me, they were there to kind of talk through things with me, to at least give me someone who I could kind of bounce stuff off of, even if they didn't have specific advice and things to help me. At least they gave me a kind of a forum to sound stuff out. And that was very helpful for me. And then moving forward, like with work,
00:40:15
Speaker
It's been helpful that I work at a place that makes a very strong emphasis of supporting employees. I'd say mental health is a thing that they're starting to do more recently, but they were in the corporate sense trying to do the mental health thing for a long time talking about like the work-life balance thing has been a conversation for a while, which isn't bad. It is not a bad thing, but it is
00:40:40
Speaker
And that's why I specifically have talked to a few, gave some feedback to a few people and also in a few surveys and things. And it's like, this is good and helpful, but there's a lot more to it than this, that mental health is a deeper topic that has other things going on. And by trying to have some conversations that go deeper, you could really help support the employees. And then my work did it last year.
00:41:04
Speaker
They actually did stuff for National Mental Health Awareness Month. They did a bunch of stuff during May. And to kind of give you some time travel slash behind the scenes thing, today is the first of May, and it's a Sunday, so while we're recording. So I don't really know if I was going to do stuff for that this year. I would hope so. I would expect so. I think it went well last year, but I can't speak to that right now. I'll find out tomorrow.
00:41:32
Speaker
But that helps. Then I know that on a corporate level, this is a thing that they are cognizant about, that they want to be open about. But then you have to, it still comes to you have to be comfortable talking to the individual people like your supervisor for me has been the most important. That's the person who if I say, Hey, I need this day off, they're kind of the one who goes, Yeah, okay, you can have this day off.
00:41:55
Speaker
And again, I've kind of been fortunate. My previous supervisor had a child who was neurobivergent. So she has kind of had a, I don't know how to say it, but she has a better understanding of how
00:42:13
Speaker
at people's brains all work a different way. And so she actually approached me at one point, I can't remember what the thing was, but there was some point where I was uncomfortable in the situation. It was not bad enough that I needed to like, call things out. But I just kind of removed myself from the situation. And I was okay doing that. But she saw that and approached me afterwards and said, Hey, can we talk a second?
00:42:32
Speaker
I just noticed you kind of pulled yourself out of this. Is everything okay? What's going on? And that let me know that she is a person who was not only like a safe person I could talk to, but is willing to have these conversations. And so that allowed me to open up more and open up more and have a really good relationship with her where I'm talking about my mental health, very frankly, about things going on. So that was very helpful for me at work.
00:43:01
Speaker
You know, I was really struck kind of by the comment that Reinhardt made, you know, the kind of that you asked Alex that downstream effect, like, has he noticed any of that?
Listening Without Judgment
00:43:10
Speaker
Because I mean, I think that is the reason that we want to do this, at least for me, right? Like the reason I want to do it is so that then other people will do it and it downstreams. I was curious because you kind of asked that and I was like, that's that's a really interesting question. It's because we're both we both have
00:43:30
Speaker
You know, we both have mental health and affect it, you know, and I, I definitely learned how important it is to be receptive to the issues that people want to bring up. Um, but it's not only receptive, right? It's you, you want to, at least in my experience, you want to be able to listen without judging. And, you know, I learned.
00:44:01
Speaker
I learned that both in non-painful ways and painful ways, you know, like where maybe there was a, there definitely were times when I was far younger where I just didn't understand and I didn't, I, I'm always someone who was like, present me a problem and I'm going to solve it. I always want to solve it. And, uh, when I can't solve something, it like bothers me and I don't know what to do with myself. You know what I mean?
00:44:30
Speaker
Yep. And and so it took my wife to be like, she's like, hey, stop talking. Stop trying to solve my problem. I just need you to listen to me. And I'm like, oh, OK. OK, OK. So I and so it's about just like taking it in.
00:44:56
Speaker
and being able to kind of talk through things, feel that conversation out. And, you know, sometimes it's about you detect like, oh, you know, this person doesn't necessarily want to talk about so much about the issue, but it's like helping to bridge off the issue to something more fun. Or we do want to talk about the issue, but let's talk about it in a way that
00:45:24
Speaker
we could be constructive instead of spiral where that's very easy to spiral. I've been in situations where I don't think I was the best at listening. In fact, I think it was very bad at listening. It's like, oh my gosh, did I contribute to things getting worse? And it really made me step back and say, oh gosh, I can't let that happen again.
00:45:54
Speaker
We have to be cognizant of the effect that we have to everyone around us to be able to be receptive, but also like Alex's boss saying she didn't have to do that. She, you know, she could have noticed in her head, Oh, Alex is, you know, he removed himself. I hope he's okay and be done with it. But she went out, she said, Hey, is there an issue? Like one talk about it. That's like that act.
00:46:23
Speaker
is something all of us can do to help each other. And Alex, how you said, I think your current supervisor or the person putting on the showcase can find it in you like, oh, there are things that I've been going through too. All of us have something. Not all of us, I can say that not all of us have something that is being clinically diagnosed.
00:46:53
Speaker
But we at least can have the empathy to know that, man, some people are dealing with a lot more than we do, that some of us do. And to be open to that, receptive to that, be able to lend a helping hand, things like that.
00:47:29
Speaker
We can get into the whole discussion on language or not language, but at the same time, we're talking about universal experiences. Diagnoses are important in certain situations, I guess. I mean, they can be. And if people identify with them, that's where I find it to be a lot more important to discuss.
00:47:37
Speaker
That's where that question came from.
00:47:46
Speaker
These are just experiences that people have. We all have mental health. It is part of who we are. It's just the same as our physical health. There's a lot in the field of positive psychology, and it is to look at the effects of good mental health.
00:48:07
Speaker
habits of healthy people whatever you want to call it but part of this comes back to just this idea that just talking about it lets us say what our narrative is um and narrative to me is an important piece because it is kind of just saying how we see ourselves and this is where i kind of think of with planeswalkers and i like i said after this i'm reading that fanfic of planeswalkers going to therapists because
00:48:31
Speaker
To me, that is really kind of this idea of like that is planeswalkers are in a unique situation within the game, right? Like they have abilities and powers that others don't have and they have experiences that others might not.
00:48:44
Speaker
So who do they talk to, right? Can they talk to just anybody? What is the narrative that Elspeth is telling herself by writing this letter? And to me, this is why you start the conversation so that Elspeth could actually feel like, hey, if I saw Johnny, I could have this conversation versus I'm almost doing it by proxy. And I think that to me, a lot of this has been by proxy. Yeah. Sorry, Taya. No, I'm just saying, you know, I'm agreeing with you that it's
00:49:12
Speaker
I do think especially early on, and this is one of the first lines in that story is maybe those words will make things worse for me where she doesn't have that feeling like she can even express these words. It's expressing a weakness. Saying it out loud makes it real. Yeah.
00:49:36
Speaker
And that's, I do think that's one of the big things that's changed in the last few years is that more people are willing to say it out loud. And, you know, everyone has mental health. It's not.
00:49:50
Speaker
unique to anybody. It's something we all have to deal with. And it's just a matter of, are you going to keep that to yourself? Or are you going to seek, you know, seek out help when you need it? If somebody breaks their arm, no one judges them for going to the hospital to get a cast put on it. But we still have a lot of ways for getting treatment for mental health issues. Yep. Yeah.
00:50:19
Speaker
And I think that one of my favorite web comics that I've seen, but I don't know where it is unfortunately comes from, I need to find it again, but it's basically a whole thing of like showing people with physical health presenting to their doctor and being treated as if they were mental health. So, you know, like they come in and like their arms broken and the doctor's like, well, have you just tried like thinking that it's okay? Or have you like? Yeah, I've seen that.
00:50:48
Speaker
What about your sleep? Just asking people questions that you just wouldn't ask them if they came in with these health complaints.
00:50:58
Speaker
I mean and I think it's interesting because thinking of generations and kind of how we're seeing this play out you know I even had my mom the other day kind of be like whoa you know yeah I mean like why don't people get help it's not like they're still kind of stigma and I'm like I think it's kind of it's interesting to see because of her experience with having somebody like me and I think some others in her life has really changed that perception right so she doesn't necessarily see a wider world thing to realize that
00:51:26
Speaker
that there still is so much stigma about it. And, you know, within the world that she has, and that's why it's important to have more of these experiences. So I think that more worlds can become like that, that it's not seen like there's a stigma because stigma is probably the number one thing that stops people from asking for help. Yeah, I'm sure story before it kind of made me laugh because your story before it kind of made me laugh because, uh, uh,
00:51:56
Speaker
I was like, oh my gosh, you were just hit by the 90s freight train with Soundgarden and everyone not taking you seriously. I feel that we're in a much better position today than teens were in the 90s. Yeah, I was diagnosed with depression at 14 in the 90s, so I definitely absolutely feel
00:52:25
Speaker
Yeah, team old school, too. Right. So I don't know. I have any other full topics, just a few, few random things I want to throw out. So I mean, just kind of alluded to this. Just like, I don't know, a soundbite is the right term for this, but it's just like you said. Actionable advice, Alex. Actionable advice, maybe. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. We have a plan and we follow that plan. We don't, we don't.
00:52:53
Speaker
We have a general direction and we oftentimes end up there. We oftentimes manage to follow it despite ourselves. But so a few things, like you talked about, I just want to put very specific words on, this is something we've already covered, like Hobbes and more than just Hobbes, we've covered this.
00:53:12
Speaker
Mental health is physical health. You would treat it just like you treat physical health. It is an important part of the body. The old, oh, it's just in your head, is just kind of nonsensical. I mean, like, yeah, it is. It is exactly in my head. But so is something like brain cancer, and you'd get that treated too. It's, yeah, that just makes sense. But I want to just put that you treat mental health like you would physical health. And so,
00:53:37
Speaker
If you happen to be in the position where you're a manager or a supervisor and people need time off for mental health, people need things for mental health, think about it like it was the same thing. When I broke my leg, my supervisor was like, all right, what can we do to help? What do you need? Same thing as if I go to her and say, hey, I'm having trouble with stress or my mental health's not a great place. Okay, well, what do you need? What can we do to help? It's the same thing.
00:54:08
Speaker
I don't know, I thought I had something more, but I think I lost it and get going. So does anyone else have actionable advice this weekend to the end here? Well, kind of round back for what kind of where you began, Alex.
Routines and Sharing for Mental Health
00:54:25
Speaker
I'm a huge proponent of routines. You know, when you're talking about working out and your walk before
00:54:34
Speaker
Like those kinds of things get you in that right head space, I think, at least in my experience, it really does color your day. If you can start with a routine or you can look forward to a routine at lunchtime or even in the evening, it gives you this baseline. And I don't know, I think it can really help center. And it could be a routine. It could be a walk. It could be just a lunchtime walk. So if you work in an office.
00:55:03
Speaker
It could be, for me, it was lifting weights just like Alex. I really loved doing that. And since the pandemic, I have not. So I really need to get back to it, but like actionable, actionable advice. That's some sort of routine is super, super helpful. Yeah, for me, it's just, you know,
00:55:28
Speaker
be willing to talk about it because finding other people who share these struggles is, um, it's been life changing for me. It's, you know, whether it's through Twitter disability communities or employee resource groups at work, it's just talking to other people who have these experiences and can just either listen to you vent or give advice or, you know, commiserate with you.
00:55:58
Speaker
is a great way just to start dealing with the problem.
00:56:03
Speaker
And that isn't what I was thinking before, but that is great. And that reminded me something I used to talk about, but I don't think I brought up a lot recently, but when I first started, when I first got my diagnosis and I first started working on this, I found for me that the two most helpful things were to talk to someone about what I was going through. But the second was to listen to other people talk about their own, because
00:56:33
Speaker
It's just, it's kind of what we do, why, why we brought, you know, much people on today, you get those extra perspectives. And sometimes there's some great specific advice that applies right to what you're doing. And sometimes it isn't. And honestly, for me, both were helpful, because it was like, Oh, yep, my brain isn't like that. And it helps me to map out the map of my brain and how it works by just saying, Nope, doesn't quite do this. And that was great, too.
00:57:00
Speaker
So yeah, finding those communities and finding those folks you can talk to. I kind of really loved what Reinhardt kind of talked about with the guy, you know, I went into a field because I like to solve problems and then quickly learned that most of what I do is not because that's not what I'm, I mean, I can't fix a ton of stuff, right? There's things that are just like the whole basis of acceptance and mindfulness is there's things that cannot be changed. And I've had to come to grips with that. It's also affected how I then talk with even the people in my life
00:57:29
Speaker
where i will try to be a little bit clearer because i know that i need to then i used to if asking them if they want help or if they want me to listen and this is not in my professional life this is in my personal life recognizing that benefit of those things are both
00:57:45
Speaker
useful. And I always had a tendency to jump to fix and that might not be what was wanted. And if I at least know that, then I'm not finding that it helps me with that pool. So I think for me, if you have people in your life, maybe that are starting to talk about mental health, or you yourself are starting to talk about it, just think about kind of what what it is that you're hoping to do. And if you need something fixed, great. If you don't just being able to be honest about that piece is something that I find to be beneficial for myself.
00:58:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was just very eye-opening. And especially like, Hobbs, you're a professional. I'm not. And what was I saying to fix anything? It was so much more important just to listen. It really was.
00:58:35
Speaker
Well, so I want to, once again, before we end, I want to thank our guests for coming on. I mean, there's a reason that both Reinhardt and Taya are people that we have on the show as kind of frequently as they're willing to in some ways. They're both just fantastic guests with insights that I find are important. And, you know, I just want to thank you both.
00:58:56
Speaker
And then I also wanted to just remind people that next, or well, if you're listening to this, hopefully on the week of the 14th through the 15th of May, we will be streaming. There'll be information on my personal Twitter, HobSkew, that'll give you the information of the breakdown of streams.
00:59:15
Speaker
planning at this point. We have a mental health panel with myself and Chase. They have agreed to come on kind of talking about their perspective as another person with a mental health training and background. And they and I are going to be running a panel of some sort. We don't fully know what that looks like. But this is one of those things of like, we wanted to add in
00:59:39
Speaker
newer things to just gameplay and stream and part of that was this idea of having mental health professionals and also hopefully for future events be able to have people talk about their journey so to actually just have a panel where we're trying to raise money at the same time as somebody just telling their story because of how important those stories are. So if you're able to come out we are going to be raising money for NAMI the National Alliance on Mental Illness. We have a ton of cool stuff that we're giving away
01:00:05
Speaker
everything from rote runners. I'm going to say it again. We didn't get the sweet, sweet Yankee candle sponsorship. Alex, I know it's still a bit disappointing. Yeah, I sent him an email. They haven't responded to me.
01:00:19
Speaker
But we have that. We tried to get some stuff that wasn't magic related, but we also have a lot of magic related, just decks and cards. And I actually think my favorite random one is that gal Carolyn is doing. So she's a cosplayer. She has done Tiana in the past, who is she's an actual mechanic and has done some amazing like cosplays in that are in that realm. She also did. Did she do the Elvis Jace? Taya, do you remember that?
01:00:44
Speaker
I think she did. Okay. I think she did too. Um, but she is, she does cross stitching as one of her hobbies and is cross stitching something for somebody's house that says, did you pay the one? Um, so like we're trying to find like just some cool things to give away. Uh, we're really hoping to raise a lot and just also have those conversations during our games about mental health.
01:01:10
Speaker
And that's our show for today. You can find the host on Twitter. HotzPew can be found at HotzPew. And Alex Newman can be found at Mel.com. Send any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to at goblinlordpod on Twitter or email us at goblinlordpodcast at email.com.
01:01:28
Speaker
If you want to support your friendly neighborhood gospel, the task can be found at patreon.com. Opening and closing music by Vindergotten, who can be found on twitter at Vindergotten, or online at vindergotten.bandcamp.com. Logo art by Steven Raffaele, who can be found on twitter at Steve Raffaele.
01:01:51
Speaker
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing Vorthos content as well as magic content of all kinds. Check them out on Twitter at hipstersmtg or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you all for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.