Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 73: We're All in Recovery
85 Plays4 years ago
Welcome back to the Goblin Lore Podcast. Today we have a solo episode with HobbesQ discussing Mental Health Recovery and Asking for Help. We had originally planned to discuss Stigma this week but that topic ended up being bigger than our prep time and also fitting for the end of #MentalHealthAwareness Month! Hobbes also tried out his fancy new microphone sound booth and realized that it works... almost too well... his very inhalations could be heard. He apologizes and we have decided not to eat him...
____________________________________________
Also May is Mental Health Awareness Month. All month we will be focusing on this and additionally want to provide resources for anyone who needs to reach out and talk to someone or to learn more about Mental Health in general. 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.
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 through instant messaging.
- TrevorLifeline, TrevorChat, and TrevorText (LGBTQ+ crisis support): 1-866-488-7386, or text “Trevor” to 1-202-304-1200
- Trans Lifeline (US): (877) 565-8860
____________________________________________
You can find the hosts on Twitter: Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at @Mel_Chronicler. Send questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to @GoblinLorePod on Twitter or GoblinLorePodcast@gmail.com.
Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle).
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast, and a part of their growing Vorthos content – as well as Magic content of all kinds. Check them out at hipstersofthecoast.com.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Mental Health Awareness Month
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. This is an episode in our continuing series for the month of May for Mental Health Awareness Month. I am your host, Hobbs Q. Today is going to be just me. I'm kind of doing a PSA on general mental health.
00:00:47
Speaker
So this episode is not really going to focus as much on Magic the Gathering or really kind of tie into lore or anything specific in that way.
Hobbs' Personal Journey with Mental Health
00:00:55
Speaker
I just thought that it would be a good chance to kind of talk about the ideas of kind of what it means to me to be a psychologist, my views on mental health, kind of people seeking therapy, all of those kind of just general mental health questions that I definitely get a lot of on Twitter.
00:01:11
Speaker
So my disclaimer for this episode is the fact that yes, I am a psychologist. I am not offering clinical advice to anybody out there. If you have further questions, I always think that you need to kind of speak to somebody that is a professional that you can have that relationship with. Today is really just more of kind of education and kind of talking about my own experiences, both as somebody who
00:01:35
Speaker
practices mental health treatment but also as somebody who has been diagnosed with mental health since the age of 18 or well with what we'll call mental illness or disorder since the age of 18. I was diagnosed in high school with major depressive disorder and
00:01:51
Speaker
It's kind of an interesting story in the sense of I really knew nothing about mental health at all at that age. At the age of 18, I was a high school senior. I was a runner. That was the main thing that I did with my time. And I was having very erratic races. I would race really well one week, really poorly the next week. And I really didn't understand why. My sleep was off. I was having kind of difficulty, but I've always had with my life with just kind of falling asleep. This was just never anything I had thought of.
00:02:20
Speaker
And I went to see my just family doctor and, you know, I was thinking, I'll maybe have low iron, I'm going to need some blood work, I have to find out kind of what's going on. And at the end of that appointment, the doctor that I met with, you know, asked me kind of questions about depression and had me fill out what I have learned was a depression inventory. And I scored very highly on it in terms of being with
00:02:45
Speaker
pretty moderate to severe level of depression just by symptoms of the things that I would never have thought about. And that kind of started my, you know, just journey with mental health and kind of my own experiences with it. I started with medications, I've done therapy, I kind of have been through the whole gamut.
00:03:05
Speaker
In grad school, I realized that I had kind of a comorbid anxiety disorder. And at that point, I was already knowing that this was the field that I was going to go into. And I will tell
The Recovery Model and Michael Phelps
00:03:16
Speaker
you one thing. I actually did take a break from my graduate school program. I took a year off a leave of absence due to my mental health. I had developed pretty severe panic attacks. I was in a long distance relationship. I had
00:03:30
Speaker
gone out there to visit my significant other, had really kind of my first experience with having a panic attack, we had broken up, came home, and I didn't make it through the, I mean, I made it through the rest of that semester, and I've completed the one after by taking some incompletes. And in grad school, I will tell you, I was in a mental health program, and I was nervous to tell anybody that that is the reason that
00:03:58
Speaker
I was struggling so much. I knew then that there was stigma even among my field of kind of mental health practitioners that have mental health concerns. And I think that it is if we look at all the numbers for mental health, it is a lot more common than what people are willing to discuss.
00:04:14
Speaker
But there is a belief that you can't be effective at your job or that you're not going to be the best that you can be. And that's true for anything that we do. If any job that I have chosen to do, I would struggle with it when my mental health has increased or my mental health problems are worse.
00:04:33
Speaker
And grad school was the same way. I took a year off. There was definitely, you know, I could see that stigma even from the, you know, the people in charge, the program directors. I literally had people say that they didn't think I was going to return. They didn't think that I would ever complete.
00:04:49
Speaker
And I just, it really stuck with me kind of how pervasive mental health can be. There was a great Michael Phelps article out this week. If you haven't checked it out, I did post it on my feed. He was being interviewing with ESPN and talking about kind of the quarantine and talking about social isolation and about how that has affected his depression and kind of his anger issues that he can develop secondary to his depression.
00:05:19
Speaker
It's a fascinating article and a look at kind of this idea that just because you have money, just because you have all the resources that are available, you can even know what your coping strategies are. It doesn't mean that you are going to kind of never have these problems again.
00:05:35
Speaker
He does a very good job of discussing this idea that you know after Rio people kind of he opened up about his mental health and the treatment in the programs he had gone to and He said that the belief by a lot of people was wow look at how well he did in Rio. He's cured
00:05:52
Speaker
And he speaks in this article on ESPN this week about the fact that like mental health is really not something that we ever kind of talk about having a cure for. He talks about the fact that it is something that he is going to be living with for the rest of his life. And I wanted to use that as a jumping off point today to kind of talk about this idea of what we call the recovery model of mental health.
00:06:17
Speaker
So this is just kind of this basic
Understanding Normal Functioning and Stress
00:06:20
Speaker
idea that everybody is on their own pathway or journey of recovery from something. And we use this a lot to really kind of try to take the stigma and the illness part away, because it used to be that you have this idea that medicine in this is mostly Western medicine is
00:06:39
Speaker
The goal for anything is to cure it the goal for you know, if you have a broken bone you fix the broken bone it is healed if you have Kind of a pneumonia you kind of hopefully take it and you get your antibiotics and you're healed
00:06:56
Speaker
Now, we know all of those things can have lingering effects, but the same kind of beliefs people have held in the past about mental illness or mental health, that there's a lot of people who really want to be cured. And I would say the prevailing view, at least with the recovery model and more kind of
00:07:16
Speaker
Newer beliefs about mental health is that these are kind of long-term issues that you are that just like anything is good They're gonna have you're gonna have periods of good times and you're gonna have periods that times might not be so good
00:07:32
Speaker
I wish that I could draw for you all because this is usually one of my favorite things to do is to kind of draw this idea of your mental health. So I'm hoping that I can get you to visualize it. I want you to close your eyes if you feel comfortable and to kind of just picture a wavy line kind of going along.
00:07:50
Speaker
This line goes up, it goes down, it doesn't have sharp peaks and valleys, it's just kind of going along, looking kind of like you would see on a heart rate monitor, a steady kind of up and down and up and down.
00:08:06
Speaker
I call this basically your overall baseline functioning. This is what I actually is probably only time I will use the word normal, because what I am deferring here to is normal functioning. And by normal, I mean normal for you is you're going to see as we talk about the recovery model, everything that we're talking about with recovery is normal
00:08:28
Speaker
only relates to ourselves. And this is always a thing that is difficult. And it's a word that gets thrown around a lot. We get a lot of people that come in and they say they want to feel normal again. And I know what they mean. I know that most people are meaning they want to be typical or feel like they're like other people or not to have symptoms in some way.
00:08:49
Speaker
And I am the smart aleck who always says, I don't know what normal means. And that's because normal is subjective and normal really is based on each of us and is really kind of personal to ourselves and our own journey.
00:09:06
Speaker
So the idea behind this is your mental health is this kind of up and down line. And I always tell people it's an up and down line. It is not a flat line because flat lines are bad. Flat lines would be the idea that you never have any changes in your emotions or you never have any changes in your mood.
00:09:22
Speaker
And that's just not realistic or kind of what we experience when it comes to just our day to day functioning. And we would want ups and downs. We expect ups and downs and those don't really tend to be the issues. What starts to become issues is when we start noticing
00:09:40
Speaker
changes in our normal day to day functioning. Now this could be over
Identifying Stressors and Warning Signs
00:09:44
Speaker
small things. So little things that build up, we kind of talk about them as you know, I'm going to use this word trigger. But what we really are talking about is kind of anything that is a catalyst for our symptoms or our normal day to day functioning, kind of shifting, where we're kind of starting to experience these
00:10:05
Speaker
a deeper valley that we're not able to just kind of wake up the next morning and we're back on track. Now, little things can build up. And I think that this is something that's important that gets lost when talking about stress. When we talk about stress, a lot of times people can very easily identify stressors as big events. So loss of a job, getting married, death in the family, a breakup, a relationship, a baby, a whole host of things.
00:10:34
Speaker
Those stressors are actually things that we usually can see anniversary dates of things. We know that they are there. They're so big. The other type of a stressor is your day to day just hassles. The alarm doesn't go off. You wake up late. You are getting ready for work. You spill coffee on yourself. You rush to get to work. You get stuck in traffic. And these little things kind of build up and they really are additive. And it's very easy for us to kind of
00:11:03
Speaker
blow them off or to not notice them until they kind of have basically snowballed to the point where it is much harder for us to deal with it. The reason that it's important to be able to identify these things is we can plan for them. So for the big events, if we know that there's something that's coming up, we can make a very concrete plan for ways that we're going to cope with it, ways that we're going to deal with it.
00:11:27
Speaker
If it's the little day to day things, we can look at how do we build stress relief into our life, whether it's through mindfulness activities or exercise or, you know, regular social interactions, which is something that you might build in to kind of mitigate some of that stress that you're going to feel.
00:11:44
Speaker
But the fact of the matter is with everything that I'm talking about today, actually, awareness is going to be a huge part of that. One of the things that is very true and may sound cliche is you don't know what you don't know. And I would say that when it comes to our mental health,
00:11:59
Speaker
This actually is probably the thing that, while cliched, it is very true in my experience. People come in and it's because they never really realized all of the things that they were experiencing that might be symptoms of depression.
00:12:15
Speaker
I've met with people that said, you know, after doing therapy for a while that they look back and they can see all these little subtle signs that over the years that they just discounted or pushed through. And part of the goal of using something like the recovery model is to start realizing that we're on a journey.
00:12:32
Speaker
And our goal is that we're heading on a pathway and we're going to get derailed from that pathway at times. We're going to have setbacks. And one of the things that's going to help us get back on track is if we're able to notice things earlier when they're going wrong.
00:12:48
Speaker
We actually tie and talk about this concept of warning signs. Warning signs are when you start noticing symptoms that are different than your normal day to day. So we're all going to have symptoms of whatever it is that we experience. You know, once again, I'm talking about this as generally as mental health because mental health is just something that we all have.
00:13:12
Speaker
Now, we all have different levels of this and we all have different levels of vulnerability to kind of what is going to cause functional problems or really be distressing to us. And when we're talking
Mental Health as a Journey
00:13:24
Speaker
about this, we are not talking specifically about disorders. So we've talked on the show before about social anxiety and PTSD and major depressive disorders. And these are categories and these are things that do have diagnostic criteria to them.
00:13:38
Speaker
However, what I'm talking about today is just general well-being and that's why I like the focus on this being on mental well-being or mental health and not just on the illness piece because I'm going to be honest with you. I have trouble with sleep all the time.
00:13:57
Speaker
It is a sign, when it starts changing, it is definitely something that can clue me into the fact that I am not doing well. But in general, one or two nights a week, I have pretty poor sleep. I wake up, I have trouble falling back asleep. It takes me an extra hour to get to sleep some nights. This is kind of what I live with on a day-to-day basis. That's kind of what a week looks like for me.
00:14:19
Speaker
recently with everything that's been going on and kind of with the COVID-19 and what we are doing with this kind of new world in this quarantine and me working in healthcare and my wife working in healthcare and having a kid at home. These things are piling up to the fact of this is happening more frequently. It's happening more infrequently and it's happening more intensely. And I had to be aware a couple of weeks ago that this was a warning sign that I needed to do something.
00:14:48
Speaker
So warning signs are really either our body or mind's way of telling us that we are struggling, that things are not going as normal for us. We're not kind of having our daily ups and downs. We are starting to kind of head down. So if you kind of think of that, that
00:15:06
Speaker
drawing in your mind that I was giving you of the waving line, you're actually starting to drop down and not having that wave back up. It is kind of starting to head on a slope downward. And this is why it's important to be able to recognize warning signs. There are two types of these that I want to talk about. The first is early warning signs. Early warning signs are the ones that are going to take a lot longer for you to be able to figure out and to be aware of for yourself.
00:15:31
Speaker
But they kind of make up this they are the first cue or first things that first sign that things are not going as well as you would like them to. I often say that these are the ones that other people in your life may notice before you do.
00:15:47
Speaker
So, my wife may notice that I'm having poor sleep before I am or she may notice that I'm a little more irritable or snappy and might be able to clue me into that before I'm really aware of it. Whereas if I start having kind of intrusive thinking or just really anxious worrisome thoughts about death because that's something that I've always had is this idea of just
00:16:12
Speaker
my brain moves to start thinking about the afterlife and what that is. And that's been something that to me is a pretty clear sign that I am not doing well. Those I'm going to be able to tell those I'm actually pretty aware of. But by the time I reach that, it's a lot harder for me to start pulling myself back up. The last thing that kind of goes into your little wellness model about yourself is basically this concept of rock bottom or really crisis.
00:16:39
Speaker
If you're still following your slope, it would be the point where your slope reaches its bottom. And hopefully it is the point where no matter what, you would start pulling yourself back
The Recovery Model and Personal Values
00:16:49
Speaker
up. But this is the point where people talk about things like suicide. This is a period of hospitalization. This might be a relapse for somebody if they're trying to recover from drugs and alcohol.
00:17:00
Speaker
It might be loss of a relationship. It is the point where kind of it is a crisis point. It is a point where you normally you may be getting help or that you don't want or unfortunately for some people this is the point where they do not come back from.
00:17:17
Speaker
And our goal always when I'm doing this and teaching this to people is we want to keep people from reaching that crisis point. I mean, even if you end up right in front of it, it is a big difference than if you kind of hit your bottom. It is way harder to pull yourself out. So.
00:17:36
Speaker
Just quick overview, just recap for kind of the things that I've talked about so far. We're talking about mental health recovery today, and we're talking really about this idea of a recovery model or a wellness model for yourself. It's being able to identify what your day-to-day looks like. It's being able to tell what is a normal variation for you in your mood. What are those kind of typical things that you're able to cope with overall?
00:18:02
Speaker
not that everything's great, not everything is rosy, doesn't mean you're not having symptoms. But overall, you're kind of functioning well. All of psychology and this is a big huge just secret that I'm about to give away here, symptoms in and of themselves, at least from a perspective of how I practice, do not matter. Hearing voices, seeing things, paranoia,
00:18:25
Speaker
suicidal thoughts, depression, even things like PTSD anxiety, those in and of themselves are not really a problem. I mean, honestly, they're there, they're they might be those Q and the things are
00:18:42
Speaker
Where we look at when we're talking about this in terms of therapy is what is this stuff getting in the way of? Is this causing problems? There's a whole group in England of voice hearers. It is kind of a big movement, actually. It's partly to de-stigmatize this concept of auditory or visual hallucinations. The voice hearer group is obviously specifically for auditory.
00:19:06
Speaker
But it's that idea that there are people that hear voices and it does not impact their lives in a negative way. It doesn't keep them from doing their job. It doesn't keep them from kind of being able to be there for their family. It doesn't get in the way of what they enjoy.
00:19:26
Speaker
those type of symptoms are things that people still will stigmatize and will still kind of tell people you have to get help for all of us most of us I mean the DSM the diagnostic manual you have to have a functional impairment to get a diagnosis of a disorder so
00:19:44
Speaker
That is just something that I think is really important to keep in mind Because it's not having symptoms that is a concern. It's what are those things getting in the way of? The recovery model is actually kind of a newer way to approach Psychology from a holistic standpoint. It's not theory. It's not a technical theoretical model like cognitive behavioral therapy or psychodynamic or in acceptance and commitment therapy or any of those and
00:20:14
Speaker
Because it's not, you know, it's more to do with how do you approach the
Finding the Right Therapist
00:20:20
Speaker
person. It's actually this belief that you look at the person holistically and you are going to work with them and meet them where they are to work on the things that they want to do. It's also this idea that everybody's definition of recovery is different. Everybody's vision of what recovery looks like and what that journey might be is different.
00:20:42
Speaker
Some people might see recovery as a you go from point A, you do some work on yourself in therapy, you get to point B, and you're done. Others might see it as this just mess of a line where you make some progress, you drop back, you make some more progress. It's just really is the idea is to me, recovery is a journey. It is a pathway that we are all on.
00:21:09
Speaker
because of that there is you know for me in my definition you can never i would say you can never be recovered and i mean that because for me recovery means i'm always working on something and if i've met where i wanted to go or goals that i want to work on i'm still working towards my values and my values
00:21:29
Speaker
while they might shift or the priorities of them might change, values are not the same thing as goals. Values are directions. They're where I'm heading to. They're where I want to get to. They're kind of what I strive to do or be. So for instance, value of being a good father to Gwen or being a good husband to Jen, these are values.
00:21:50
Speaker
I'm not going to do one thing, reach a goal and be like, did it, nailed it, don't need to do anything else. These are things that, you know, we often kind of talk about this idea of looking back on your life and what do you want to be remembered for? So if I was to talk about this, I'm getting a lifetime achievement award, what are the things I want to be remembered for? It's a long term horizon type situation.
00:22:16
Speaker
to differentiate a little bit because I think this is something that can get lost. Goals are really kind of the stepping stones or the milestones. The value is the direction that you're heading. And the reason that this can become important is being able to recognize your value means that every time you kind of come to a juncture in your life or a pathway in your life, you have a decision to make. You have a choice point of do I want to head towards my value or do I want to head away from my value?
00:22:46
Speaker
Being able to recognize these choice points is similar to being able to recognize those warning signs and everything else that we were talking about with your model of recovery.
00:22:56
Speaker
You have choices and they're not always good choices, they're not always ideal choices, they're not always even choosing between a right and a wrong thing, or they can be choosing between two things that are poor. But it's realizing that there are choices and thinking about how those choices might take you towards or away from your values.
00:23:18
Speaker
Value identification is something that is very key to a to good therapy and when I say this I am coming from a biased perspective I will tell you that this is kind of how I practice therapy and I know that people have had very bad experiences with therapists and you know, this is why I tell people my Part PSA today if you are looking for therapists
00:23:44
Speaker
You really I would say at the end of the day, there are a couple things that are important. Your fit with the therapist is actually probably more important than any theoretical orientation, or type of therapy, or anything else it's really is it has to be a good fit.
00:24:03
Speaker
I practice from primarily a cognitive behavioral standpoint, I bring in a lot of these concepts with values and mindfulness that I think inform my treatment or working with people. But my style is not for everybody. I'm probably a lot more casual than what maybe, you know, if you're if people are looking for somebody that maybe is a little more serious or
00:24:23
Speaker
is going to talk in a certain way, I tend to be different than that. I'm different than
Stigma and Seeking Help
00:24:28
Speaker
a lot of my colleagues in that way, and it's sign that gets commented on. And I will tell people, I might not be a good fit for you. And I think that that is why hopefully the beginning of therapy should really be more than just coming in, filling out some measures,
00:24:45
Speaker
asking about your symptoms, it should be getting to know a person and building that therapeutic alliance or that relationship because it's a collaborative situation. I am not a fan of therapy that's either all directive where the therapist tells you what to do, or the opposite where they just sit there and they echo back at you what you say. And those are extremes. And there are people that practice those ways. So I think that
00:25:11
Speaker
If that works for you, great. And that is why you need to know a little bit about yourself. If you're looking into going into therapy for the first time, you may meet with a couple of people. It may not work right away.
00:25:25
Speaker
Hopefully you have options. And I would say that one of the things I will tell people all the time, if you're in a community, so when I get asked by people on Twitter about, you know, how do I find a therapist in my area? If you have barriers looking at things like 311, so that is a website that should be in most people's areas that will be able to kind of tell you what your local resources are. A lot of times they'll have sliding scale clinics or lower cost clinics.
00:25:55
Speaker
If you have a college in your area that has a graduate school program, those times, those students run clinics. I am a big fan of student trainees doing therapy. They're always supervised. I am a big fan of training and trainees in general. In some ways, they're more up to date than people that have been practicing for 20 years. I mean, obviously there's a lot to be said for experience. You're going to get people that usually are pretty passionate. Even then, the key thing is going to be
00:26:25
Speaker
figuring out if you have a relationship with that person and if you're able to kind of have trust with them because all of therapy is a relationship and it's learning kind of about, you know, I am skill-based, I'm gonna try to work with people on coping skills and communication skills, but therapy is also a place to kind of, you know, see how those relationships go and to actually get the practice and you have to be comfortable with the person that you are meeting with.
00:26:53
Speaker
So with that being said, because this episode is basically me tangentially speaking and I'm hoping that it's clear enough to be followed. Um, I tend to speak pretty free form anyway, but
00:27:07
Speaker
And this is why I try to check in with you all sometimes and just say like, hey, recap. But I was talking a little bit about values. And to me, that is what is really important to establish with somebody early on. If I understand what a person values and why they are in front of me and why they're there in the room, and the reason that they're there,
00:27:29
Speaker
that is just as important as what they want to do, what their goals are, what their symptoms are. And I think that that is an element that is becoming more and more popular within psychology. But this recovery model really brings it in. It brings in kind of how do I engage the person and their family and their spiritual network and their employment and their hobbies,
00:27:53
Speaker
It's kind of that idea that every element that goes into a person is going to be important. They're not going to be equally important, but most of them are going to have some degree of importance to it.
00:28:06
Speaker
And that's why it's really good to spend that time upfront assessing what a person's value system is what they believe in being able to ask them those things and not shy away from it. Being comfortable with as a therapist asking for feedback about what is and isn't working, because it could be that I'm unconsciously aware of assumptions I'm making or things that I'm doing. And
00:28:35
Speaker
It is important and it's difficult sometimes to kind of be honest with a therapist, I would say. One of the myths I try to dispel, and like I said, it's hard for me to talk about this because I know that there's a range out there. Just like with any profession, there are people that are good at their job. There are people that are less good at their jobs, let's just say.
00:29:02
Speaker
I always get very frustrated and it's one of the areas where I kind of have my righteous anger or my emotions get really built up is when I hear kind of about poor therapy experiences and you know things like not being open to feedback or even ever soliciting it because I'm not going to be right and we're all not going to be right sometimes and being able to have that conversation
00:29:26
Speaker
is the only way that we're going to grow as therapists, but also that we're going to make sure that we're able to help somebody because at the end of the day, my ethical duty, my, well, I mean, it goes beyond that, because this is something that I believe in. And it's something that I chose for a career for a reason is to help people.
Personal Challenges and Overcoming Stigma
00:29:45
Speaker
That's what I want to do. And it's
00:29:51
Speaker
Yeah, so sorry, this is really just something that I'm very passionate about. It's something that I think is very difficult to talk about because I think about the fact going back to the very beginning of this episode that most people that I work with, they know I have a podcast. I don't necessarily share what the title is because there is part of me that worries about somebody listening and saying like, wow, you know, like,
00:30:17
Speaker
he talks about his depression and Hobbes is talking about his anxiety and he's you know like you know like is he effective at his job and I you know these are the things that go in my head as a professional that does this and the stigma is there stigma is very real um there's a reason that we saved it for the end of the month stigma is a topic that probably
00:30:43
Speaker
is the most damaging when it comes to people seeking help, asking for help. And I would say that this is people I get asked sometimes why I work in the VA, this is probably one of the reasons stigma has always been one of the things that's been most important to me to study and to think about and to have conversations about. And the VA and veterans is a population that I think that that stigma can get hyper activated.
00:31:13
Speaker
on top of the amount of stigma that already exists in our society about asking for help, about being vulnerable, about kind of, I mean, yeah, being willing and willingness is a huge part of it. Getting into the front door at your first therapy session is a win. And
00:31:36
Speaker
I don't I I'm a big fan of celebrating that and I don't ever hope that it comes across as being like I said that people think that I'm mocking them more because I do get excited if somebody that I know has been having trouble engaging shows up and they come to appointments.
00:31:53
Speaker
My number one goal in therapy for session one is to get you to come back to session two and I believe that kind of my framework and how I approach this is based on this idea of I want to help people live the life that they want to leave.
00:32:11
Speaker
It's really more of a focus on purpose and meaning and all of mental health awareness month I really think I've seen a nice transition especially over the last couple of years to way more of a focus on Well-being and health rather than illness and I do think that this is a very
00:32:33
Speaker
sad statement that it's taken this long to kind of switch that framework to talk about resiliency, to talk about positive psychology, to talk about kind of some of the stuff that we talk about on this show all the time to do with self care. And, you know, the things that make people who do well, like studying
00:32:56
Speaker
For people who are high achievers or people that do well and people who succeed studying the what they do and how they work on their problems is actually. A very it was for a very long time and unexplored area. I work primarily as people may know and this is actually a topic that I have been.
00:33:18
Speaker
hesitant to even discuss on here because it's so important to me that I this is a great example of I've talked about brains lying to us and brains just not really being the great is I don't want to fuck it up and I have a fair amount of confidence when it comes to
00:33:37
Speaker
my area of expertise and I still am just scared shitless of kind of trying to present it to the magic community and doing it in a poor manner. But anyway, I work primarily with people with what we call serious mental illness.
00:33:55
Speaker
It historically has been bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, which is kind of a hybrid of mood disorders and schizophrenia, and then schizophrenia. And schizophrenia and psychosis is really kind of my area that I am the most passionate about and the area that I have the most experience with. And a lot of this recovery model stuff that we're talking about today came out of that field because
00:34:22
Speaker
In the time of institutionalization in the United States, people with schizophrenia in particular were basically told that they would never work again. They were given the message that they have no chance at recovery, that they are going to have to be on medications for the rest of their life, that they basically will never be a functional human being in society.
00:34:49
Speaker
And we know that that's not true. However, that attitude that was in from medical professionals all the way to the public is still there. And it still is something that
00:35:03
Speaker
I think it's the thing that drew me to this cast when Joe first brought it up was kind of this idea of I wanted to kind of find a way to tie this into the mental health and the magic community because I think that it's so important to just have these conversations, to be blunt about them, to be open about them, to talk about them.
Recap on Recovery and Personal Values
00:35:24
Speaker
And it's what's kept me doing this cast even through the struggles that we have had in the periods where we've been less productive and when things come up and the thoughts that I have about myself whenever that happens. And so I really just wanted to use this week of Mental Health Awareness Month because our schedule got thrown off. I mean, that's what happened, right?
00:35:49
Speaker
It's where I will speak for me because I don't have my co host here. My mental health has been difficult during this time period and I have support. I have family. I have kind of everything that I can think of. And I know just like that article from Michael Phelps and I really, really do. It's a longer read.
00:36:08
Speaker
There is elements of his life that is privileged, but I do think that what is interesting is it talks about that have how pervasive and how invasive mental health problems are because Having privilege while it may help you does not make you immune from experiencing these difficulties
00:36:32
Speaker
And there's a whole discussion to kind of have about access to care and access to services. And even then, we know that the mental health problems can be kind of experienced by everybody. I will say that I struggle sometimes to talk about mine. And I know maybe it doesn't look like that because I am open.
00:36:51
Speaker
and I am willing to and I do find a way to, but there are times when I don't want to post because I do feel that I don't have a right to because I am in a position where I feel that I shouldn't. And if you've listened recently to the Davriel episode where we talk about cognitive distortions, that shouldn't is a huge one. That shoulds and should nots is a cognitive distortion that I struggle with all the time. And I realize that I'm kind of rambling at this point, but
00:37:20
Speaker
I really want to do quite of a quick recap before I end. And that is just this episode was meant to be a precursor to kind of the stigma episode because both Alex and I realized how important that conversation is and realizing even after this is the reason I kind of crowdsourced or sent out to everybody on Twitter yesterday, that being so Monday of this past week. Um,
00:37:51
Speaker
about lore tie-ins and I got so many good responses and I think it shows that stigma and understanding stigma is something that it's not going to be done in one episode and because of that we really want to set up that kind of groundwork so that we can follow it up in true goblin lore fashion with follow-up episodes and kind of a more in-depth dive into
00:38:14
Speaker
What is probably the cornerstone of what is the biggest barrier for people to get mental health treatment? So kind of as a recap Yeah, I'm Hobbs Q I've been somebody that's experienced depression Since I was 18 years of age. I've been on and off medications throughout my life and
00:38:41
Speaker
Thought that I had been in a period and this is why I talk about this with being the cyclical nature sometimes of mental health You know, I had I had gotten to the point where I was completely off of all medications and thought that you know I was like great I don't have to deal with this anymore I can just be aware of my warning signs and I can be prepared for them and I got blindsided again and it's why I
00:39:06
Speaker
don't have my formal wellness plan written, which I actually have been tempted to do, but it's why I talk to my wife and she knows what to look for. And so I think that it's this, this idea is this asking for help. We reviewed kind of the wellness model and for a lot of people, that wellness model I was talking about, people use that to create their own wellness plan, which is as simple as it sounds. It's a list of how they can tell what their warning signs are. What's the early warning signs?
00:39:35
Speaker
What are the ones that are a little bit more severe? What are the ones that are the signs that they're heading to that crisis? What are the life stressors that they know are
00:39:47
Speaker
triggers for mental health symptoms and in the past have led to kind of that downward spiral or that downward slope. What are your experiences, the symptoms that you experience on a day to day basis, just so that you're aware of them? You know, I sleep like shit. I mean, I know it. I try things. I mean, I, overall, I'm able to deal with it. It still is a fact.
00:40:10
Speaker
So I don't worry about it until it starts hitting those warning signs. Being able to tell the difference between those is going to be very important.
00:40:19
Speaker
starting to be able to do some value identification for yourself, what gives your life purpose and meaning, and if you don't feel that you have that right now, what would you like to strive for? For values, you may not have it, so it may be that you're seeking purpose and meaning, so can you identify what are the values? Is it family? Is it a sense of justice? Is it a sense of right and wrong? Is it family, friends? Is it helping others? Is it nature?
00:40:48
Speaker
figuring out what those are. And then I always kind of lead people with the idea that goals are important. Goals are probably the number one thing that I use to kind of guide and inform treatment. It's, well, I've got tools, I've got skills, I've got things that'll help you cope.
Conclusion and Encouragement
00:41:06
Speaker
I've got thought challenging, we can do mind, body, we can do guided meditation. There's tons of things that we work and will help for. We can do exposure therapy.
00:41:19
Speaker
There needs to be a purpose to it. There needs to be something that you aren't doing that you want to be doing. So yeah, this has been Mental Health Awareness Month is coming to an end. Start the conversation. Realizing that asking for help is not a sign of weakness. I mean, I do know that probably most of the people listening to this cast are people that
00:41:45
Speaker
have that idea or know that but I just want you guys to always hear it it's over and over again I don't think I can state it enough it's okay to ask for help I'm even and I'm laughing at myself right now because I suck at doing it myself and I'm giving you permission
00:42:03
Speaker
And if you don't think that I'm doing it, call me out on it. I'm really excited when people start calling me out on these things because I think it shows that they realize that it's important to me and they care enough. But asking for help is not a sign of weakness.
00:42:19
Speaker
I'm really excited about next week and I'm hoping that you'll join me and Alex when we sit down and talk about stigma. We're actually going to be revisiting Slow Bad and GLSSA, which is, gosh, it was one of our earlier episodes where we talked about Slow Bad and GLSSA's relationship and friendship.
00:42:36
Speaker
And it was our second goblin profile. We're going to be revisiting these characters because they actually came up multiple times when people talked about stigma. And we're going to be able to look at an old episode through a new way, which is just something that I'm incredibly excited for.
00:42:52
Speaker
So that's it. That's my show for the day. I managed to talk for almost 45 minutes and rambled and I hope that it was coherent and I would love to continue to have these conversations with you. It doesn't need to be May. It doesn't have to be Mental Health Awareness Month. I am always willing to have these conversations with anybody.
00:43:12
Speaker
And I will be dropping links as I have been all month for kind of resources if you do need help do need places to look out for And it that's that's it. That's my show. Thank you for sitting here and listening to me today and Alex will be back with me next week and We look forward to kind of continuing to do this as we come up on our two-year anniversary
00:43:37
Speaker
And that's our show for today. You can find the host on Twitter. HobbsQ can be found at HobbsQ and Alex Newman can be found at Mel underscore. Send any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to at goblin more pod on Twitter or email us at goblin more podcast.
00:43:55
Speaker
If you want to support your friendly neighborhood gobs life, 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 Raphael, who can be found on twitter at steve raffle.
00:44:18
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 hipsters MTG or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you all for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.