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One Year Later
82 Plays4 years ago
It's been about a year of everyone's first time dealing with the challenges we've faced this past year. While we may be seeing light at the end of the tunnel physically, we must acknowledge the mental and emotional toll the past year has had and continues to have on us. Here's how we are processing this and an exercise that can help you help yourself.
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Transcript
Podcast Setup and Enhancements
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello. Hello. Take two. Take two. Did we figure it out? I don't know. We got a new setup going on. And we're sort of experimenting on this first. And you like to have it be perfect, which is good. But when you don't know what perfect is and you keep tinkering, that's just shooting in the dark.
00:00:32
Speaker
Here we are. We have headphones. We have a new setup and we've invested and are taking the podcast to the next level, which is exciting. Where did this come from? Like why did we, so, so we have a road caster sort of
00:00:51
Speaker
That means nothing. Computer. It looks like, it looks like the person on in Star Wars that controls like the laser that destroys planets. Kind of like one of those things. And then we have headphones. Like we're commenting at the NFL. What's the NFL? Yeah, this came about because, so I've, I've returned to listening to podcasts more regularly. I made a little shift. I stopped posting to my personal Instagram page.
00:01:22
Speaker
which has been great. And I've been, so I took away something that I think was not healthy and I have added something that I think is healthy and that's selective podcasts.
Influence of Other Podcasts
00:01:34
Speaker
So we've been listening both of us to Rich Roll quite a bit. And I think for me, it was like a reminder of how valuable
00:01:43
Speaker
those like a podcast can be. I mean, and some are informative and there's different reasons to listen to different podcasts, but in our sphere of like self-help, self-discovery, sharing with people, you know, our own struggles like sharing in that human experience.
00:02:05
Speaker
It just was such a reminder of like how powerful that is and how much it made an impact on my day, my week. So for me, I do feel like people have that experience listening to our podcast. And we had sort of wondered like, does it matter? Is this helping anybody? Is this just a waste of everybody's time? But I think what we realized is like, no, it's not.
Guest Plans for Enrichment
00:02:30
Speaker
And if that answer is that it's valuable, then let's really make it valuable. And how can we add more value? Well, we can have guests that expand on the experiences we're talking about, that expand on the topics. And so that to me was like a natural next step, because we can only do so much. But facilitating some conversations, people that have had their own experiences with between the ears and mindset, physical, mental, emotional health, I think that
00:02:59
Speaker
seemed like a great we have so many great people that have had such powerful experiences that it seemed like a natural progression to start having them part of this. Yes, that's your when you asked why I know. Yeah. And that's good. Because that's like, but I would say generally, that's much more external based, like, from as it relates to the podcast.
00:03:26
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I see the podcast as a vehicle for the business of between the ears and help like our mission of helping people,
Mission and Structure of Podcast
00:03:34
Speaker
providing value. I see it in that way of like, let's build this arm. Let's not just have it be sort of like, like, let's, let's really solidify it. Well, let's, let's, yeah. My.
00:03:51
Speaker
my approach to the podcast and needing to approach it is much more from the internal piece. So I needed to, I needed to really be honest about
00:04:06
Speaker
how I was showing up to the podcast, why I was doing it. And frankly, what the past, we'll say like a year and a half or so of it stirred up within me. And there's, you know, the perfection, there's the self-deprecation of no one's listening. It doesn't matter. A lot of that stems to measuring it and
00:04:29
Speaker
You mean like how many listeners do we have? Yeah, all of that kind of stuff. But the thing is that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy when you don't try.
00:04:42
Speaker
And so really I was hiding behind, uh, we just plug in the thing and press record and that's it. And it was kind of that, you know what it was like? It was like that kid in school who doesn't try because then when they like, cause if they try and they fail, cause there's exposure. And so I think,
00:05:06
Speaker
wanting, I think investing goodness into the podcast, seeking wholesome goodness, service sharing, putting a voice to our pursuits, involving others, like having that be a wholesome pursuit. The Rich Roll podcast has certainly helped provide inspiration for that as well. And while the past, I don't know, a bunch of the episodes echo the sentiments of between the ears,
00:05:36
Speaker
And some of the things we share about, it's like, yeah, these voices, they need to be set, they need to be heard. And I think providing that in our own right is the return to the authenticity and the intent of the podcast.
Mental Health Post-Lockdown
00:05:56
Speaker
So here we are. So here we are. So this is, um, I would like to make it also, if your people are still listening six minutes and hopefully so, but you always say that like, it's sort of a joke, but seriously, like, um,
00:06:10
Speaker
we're figuring out the new year situation. So if it doesn't, if it's sound, if there's volume issues or if you're like, Hey, you know, it's too low, it's too high, like some technical feedback, let us know because honestly we don't listen to our own podcast. So.
00:06:30
Speaker
Yeah. So that is our first guest. We're not going to reveal any details, but we do have a guest. And so that first episode with a guest will be the next one after this. So that's exciting. Um, but today we thought it would be a good sort of relaunching the explaining kind of where we're going with the podcast, but also it's a year ago, really this week that we were going into
00:06:59
Speaker
the whole lockdown shut down, at least in this area. And now a year later, almost to the date, there is a feeling of coming out of it. So there's people getting vaccines, there's loosening of some things, some of the restrictions. And those are all great. That's a positive for sure. We want to acknowledge that. But as it relates to mental health,
00:07:25
Speaker
I think we wanted to just address, you know, the awareness of there being a tail on this thing. It's not just you lock the box up, good, done, bury it, moving on. It's really not going to be that simple and not to be a Debbie Downer or be on negative, just I think the awareness piece is just really important for people.
00:07:47
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's so all things we always talk about really boil down to physical, mental and emotional fitness and or health. And in looking at the where we are and where we're going, I think we could probably agree
00:08:06
Speaker
that the physical piece of that vaccines, death rate, case count, whatever. And I'm not, we're not going to get into like the, the, the, those types of metrics are going in the right direction. Things are returning, whatever. That's only one leg of the tripod, the mental and the emotional part of the past year plus.
00:08:33
Speaker
We're not like, that's not the thing. It's like a wave that has not had a crest yet. Arguably, it's not really, would you even say it's really just beginning because there's been this focus on the external focus on, we've had something to focus on and point the finger at.
00:08:51
Speaker
And now when in the absence of that, it's going to be like, well, why are, why don't I not feel good? I'm back to normal. Well, I think some of it is, you know, at the beginning. So one year ago it was, I'm going to limit my exposure to other humans so that I don't contract this alien virus that's killing everybody. Now it's like, Hey,
00:09:12
Speaker
It's safe outside, generally speaking. It's more safe. We have vaccines. You can get vaccines. There's this, there's that. Come on back to life. And now it's, I'm going to live at my exposure to this way of living that six months ago, everybody was wanting to return to normal and the mental and emotional blockage
00:09:33
Speaker
that's preventing people from physically engaging in life. That's what we're starting to see. People saying, I don't want to go back to work. I don't want to go back to the office. I don't want to go back to the road. Whether that be for convenience of life in a good way, like a good way, like, Hey, I get to spend more time with my family. Yeah. Why would you? Or
00:09:55
Speaker
dealing with the, the fear of what being in a fear based environment has been for the past year.
Pandemic Stress and Recovery
00:10:04
Speaker
And so I think that's, that's one of the things now where the other part is the cumulative effect of this thing has not come to a head yet. And you're going to be influenced by the past year, maybe,
00:10:24
Speaker
So you look at what happens over the course of one year and you deal with things every now and then, you know? Yeah. Okay. And, and anybody that's been through any long drawn out fight knows that shit's tiring. We've been in this thing for a full on year in some, in some parts of the world longer, some parts of the country longer.
00:10:48
Speaker
And you've just been in a year long fight. Yeah. The result of that is most people who go through something like that, then there's like a very established, Oh, I need a recovery. I need time to whatever that follows it. And usually a one-to-one, but I just feel like nobody's talking about that. Nobody's saying, wow, we're going to need a year to like heal, to come to recover.
00:11:17
Speaker
it's just on to the next and especially not to pick on this area, but in the Northeast, it's just move on and forget it. Like move on, just keep, keep pressing on. And one of the things we've talked about that we've experienced with people is this like paralysis. So like, what do you think that's about? Like people saying, I feel really stuck. I just can't, whether it's people gaining weight, people going to like, just not, I can't get moving. I just don't feel motivated. This,
00:11:47
Speaker
this like shutdown, like, what do you think that's about? And how do you think it's gonna like, okay, you're free. Now what? I think it's, I think it's survival. And I think it's you, you, you've been in a fight. You've been in a fight that you it's, it's been an endless fight after it was two weeks to flatten the curve. Then it was, ah, we could, you know, we could hold our breath for a month.
00:12:10
Speaker
Then it was like, oh, we need to, and then it was like, Jesus Christ, this thing is never going to go away. And so right now, feeling stuck, feeling like you don't have energy to do things, feeling like you lost the interest, right? It used to be, can't wait for restaurants to go out. Now it's like, I don't even care. And the apathy comes about, in my opinion, as a result of your energy stores being burned, being spent, look at
00:12:42
Speaker
Nothing, this is no fault of the individual, but how did you build yourself up from an energy standpoint over the past year? Was there any type of reload? Okay. And not to make it about the military stuff, but like you just shot an entire magazine and you never, you never reload. You didn't reload when there was five rounds left. You just emptied out the whole thing and you just did that. And then it's like, Hey, I've got nothing left.
00:13:11
Speaker
You've gone on a cross country trip and you filled your gas tank once, or you didn't even fill it, you just hopped in, whatever was in the driveway, and then started driving. And some people had a full tank, some people had a quarter tank. And now it's like, where are we at? And so I think that when you look at, you have had to survive, there's been, and that's simply pandemic. That's not socioeconomic.
00:13:38
Speaker
clashes. Yeah, all the other things, the family, the Yeah, all of that. So I think that that's what we're seeing now. And so if you So what's, it was not funny, it's not funny at all. But like, I do think there was a general feeling of like, I'll worry about it later, kind of one day at a time, which is what you're talking about, like surviving, like when you're surviving, you're not planning ahead, being proactive, you're just like, holding on for dear life. And
00:14:05
Speaker
I'm not judging people either, and we had this experience as well. In my observation, not a judgment, there wasn't this tremendous influx of people saying, I know I need to refuel. I need to do the work. I need to meet this thing where it's at by bolstering my own mental health. It wasn't that. Nobody did anything. In fact, there was less done.
00:14:36
Speaker
So what makes us think now, are people going to do anything? That's the scary part. So that's the part. So now they're in a total hole and they never did it before. And so, and then I think just like, you know, when people get overwhelmed with like, if they have a lot of weight to lose, of course, 20, 30, 40 pounds ago, man, it would have, I would have had 20, 30, 40 pounds or less to have to lose at this point. And now I'm in so much deeper.
00:15:07
Speaker
but you can still start. But my fear is that people are just going to be so overwhelmed that instead of going in towards, okay, let me take a step. Let me, let me start. It's just like, what's the fucking point? It's too much. Yeah. And that's obviously a major concern.
00:15:23
Speaker
Because there's, you know, one of our friends, there was a recent suicide, a young girl in a school and it's like, okay, well, how do you explain that? The kids are having hope to go back to
Mental Health Statistics
00:15:35
Speaker
school. So by that, right? It's like, well, why we're not in the depth of the pandemic. Well, right. I mean, but that's, that's ridiculous. If we think that like, that's it, like we're coming out of it.
00:15:49
Speaker
That should be less unfortunately. And it's really sad. And I don't want to say like, we're predicting this, but like, would you think that this death toll might be going down, but do you think mental health is going to start declining more? Okay. So I was, so for my master's degree, I'm also interning and I'm interning in a college's mental health department, mental health and counseling. Right.
00:16:19
Speaker
And so I've been on various webinars and trainings and stuff like that. Right. Did I talk about this on the last episode? No. All right. So mental health of America has done seven and a half million screens, online screens, where people go to their website and they basically self assess and they click in like where they're at seven and a half million from since 2014. Okay. All right. So they've been at it what seven years. So they do about a million.
00:16:48
Speaker
million and a half a year it obviously the first few years wasn't as much but either way in 2020 they did two and a half million screens so that's like nearly 10 times what they've been doing according to their numbers the numbers are staggering and are dangerous and this was in young people
00:17:11
Speaker
This was across the board. Okay. But you had some statistics for the younger population. Yeah. I want to say over 90%. It's like 91% of young people, 11 to 17. This is 11 and 17. I was going to a website and entering into it. Like basically what they feel is wrong with them.
00:17:36
Speaker
over 90% of them moderate to severe anxiety and depression and or depression. Yeah. Over half those screened 11 to 17 suicidal ideations. That's that, that, that amounted to over 155,000, 11 to 17 year olds, right? Yeah. So that's,
00:18:03
Speaker
Compare that to our death of 20% of it. It's the number one reason.
00:18:12
Speaker
why people were like, Hey, this is, this is sort of what's bothering me. And this is what's going on was isolation, loneliness. Well, it's just like, we can't, that's not a human, you know, one of the guys was coronavirus by the way. So 70% said, I'm like, I said, are alone coronavirus year of the virus was 25%. Yeah. Like, like it was the lowest of that, which they collected data on.
00:18:39
Speaker
Well, so someone was making the point that all these, when you listen to the words associated with this past year, lockdown, isolation, all these things that there, you could easily put those on a list and it's describing like what it's like to be in prison.
00:18:55
Speaker
you know, like they're the same, they're the same set of conditions. And, you know, we know people who have friends who haven't left their house, one of our friends hasn't, she knows someone that hasn't left her house in a year. And that's not, there's people that have, maybe that's an extreme, but people who have severely restricted any kind of contact and
00:19:21
Speaker
you know, even the physical, I mean, my mom, you know, she hasn't hugged, really had a physical embrace from her family in a year. And there's, there's an impact and not that some of that's avoidable. It may not have been, but the awareness of the impact it's going to have. That's what we're saying is opening our eyes to what's happening, how you're feeling, are you thinking and the challenges that we know that takes practice. So it's not just today I decide,
00:19:51
Speaker
Oh, I listened to this podcast. I do want to be aware of how I'm feeling thinking. So now it's just a light switch that takes work and people should absolutely start the work. But just being realistic about it's not just you decide and the next thing you know, you're just super in touch with, Oh, wow. Yeah, that's because of this and that. And this is what I'm feeling.
00:20:13
Speaker
It's a practice. You know, when this is, so man search for meaning is, should be required reading for everybody. It's, it's, it's the, it's the first book we said in between years, fitness book club read. If you haven't read it, read it. If you read it, read it again. It's that good and it's quick. And the guy who wrote it, Dr. Victor, Victor Frankel was a,
00:20:43
Speaker
scientists or some sort of wizard in pre Nazi Germany kind of era. He got rolled up and spent however many years in a variety of concentration camps to include Auschwitz. And he writes about it. And it's like, I get it. It's not exactly fun reading and all that, but it's real reading. He tells the story of
00:21:12
Speaker
when they get liberated, how this dream comes true. This is what they've literally held on for dear life to occur. And then they walk out of the gates of Auschwitz or Dachau or whatever they were in.
00:21:32
Speaker
And it wasn't exactly this Jubilee celebration. It was like, there was anger. There was, there was a, there was a whole gamut of emotions. And you, and, and, and so thankfully I never obviously spent real experience in captivity. One, it wouldn't happen like that. I mean, you'd be on YouTube in a terrible video, but in Seer,
00:22:00
Speaker
The training. The training, which is that prisoner of war torture sort of situation. Everybody who's gone through that knows what I'm talking about at the end. And that's a moment I'll never forget. That's a moment that I'll never experience again either.
00:22:22
Speaker
And while it was thankfully training, the emotions were real. The thoughts were real. The physical hardship was real. And there's a reason why they take your knives. There's a reason why they send the cadre. Right, the people that were inflicting the torture away.
00:22:47
Speaker
away first. There's a reason why they give you a couple days before you go back to base to return to life to see your families. There's also a reason why they give you a printout like you're in fifth grade to say, okay, take this home to mommy and daddy and show them like blah, blah, blah. Like you can't do anything. You can't drive. Yeah. It was like, look, you just went through this thing.
00:23:09
Speaker
Expect the whole gamut of emotion or of things like don't buy a car don't like like don't make any decisions don't expect to be like, you know full of full of love if you know what I mean and Because you just went through this. Okay, and that was a month While that was maybe more physically intensive and targeted psychologically
00:23:37
Speaker
When you also look at the past year of what was being, what the environment that we have operated and lived in and tried to survive in.
00:23:49
Speaker
It reminds me of the same thing. And so the game, you know, Oh, it's, we're on the up and up and we're returning and let's do this. And there's a new president and there's a, you know, multiple vaccines and we're returning this net. It's like, that doesn't erase what the fuck just happened for the past.
00:24:08
Speaker
year. And you we all need to heal. And that means something different for everybody. But at a minimum, it starts with acknowledging the fact that you just got your shit stuffed in for the past year, you just got destroyed. And it wasn't because you did it to yourself or whatever. Yeah, if you were alive during 2020, you were on the receiving end of some some pretty hard blows. Yeah. And acknowledging that, because that's acknowledging your very
00:24:38
Speaker
Yeah. The essence of being a human. And that is that, I mean, you can also be grateful and positive about these changes that are coming, of course. Of course. But while also having that awareness of what you've been through. And
00:24:56
Speaker
Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, I guess that's the, I guess I've noticed and what's interesting is it's been more recently and I don't know if that's because of my awareness or P my interactions or whatever, but like people are just pissed off for like no reason or they're there. They've such a short fuse. I was pulling in here to, um, to the gym the other morning and it was at five 40 in the morning.
00:25:25
Speaker
And when I come down that early, I do see these people walking around like on this main sidewalk. Um, and, and I'm aware, I wasn't doing
Behavior Changes Post-Lockdown
00:25:36
Speaker
anything. I was driving. So I, but I see them coming and they weren't right about to step off into the driveway part. They were a few feet to go, but I thought I'll just slow down. I have no rush. I don't need to zip in there. So I slow down. I'm the only car. It's five 40 in the morning. It's pitch black. And we had one of those interactions where like,
00:25:54
Speaker
I stopped. They kind of were like trying to have me go, but then we both kind of went at the same time, went to go. So I stopped again. I always feel like yield to the pedestrian. I was like, Oh no, no. And this guy was so pissed off shaking his head at me. And I'm thinking now if I had like cut them off, yeah, of course, like have that reaction. But I'm thinking, do you have no patience? Like we had this little exchange, totally normal.
00:26:20
Speaker
And you're so mad. And I've had that type of silly, and I get it, it's a silly interaction, that type of silly zero tolerance. I guess that's what I'll call it. No tolerance for like anything. And it's like, it's so unnecessary. And so now you have that. And then you're, so what I see is this like continuing to, to have stress that's, you don't need to have that. It's excess.
00:26:50
Speaker
and just anger towards every other human. It's like, what just happened? I agree.
00:26:59
Speaker
but not, but I agree. And to add another nuance to it, when you are in a state of perpetual survival slash threat, right? If you're surviving because there's a threat, every type of interaction, you're, you don't have the ability to gauge it. It's just like, okay, everything, everything is a threat. When everything is a threat, you're,
00:27:25
Speaker
your more primitive self is going to respond in a way that tries to prioritize your chance of survival. And while that might not be people running around zombie apocalypse style, being aware of how we respond, we don't respond, actually, we react to things. And when we when we react, we need the reaction in a
00:27:50
Speaker
in a threat environment because it's fast. It's the fast thinking. Yeah. So it's the fast thinking and it's prioritizing your survival. But now it's like the breathing. It's the same thing with breathing. We need breath, like panic breathing when you're literally panicking, but
00:28:14
Speaker
now we've gone to, and this is just humans in general, we've gone to this, like, that's how we breathe all the time, because everything's a panic. And it's like, no, it's not. Yeah, I was gonna, I had a thought and then I just lost it. But yeah, you know, I think that's the that's the piece that's the awareness. And you know, when you a couple weekends ago, I took like three days to really
Regaining Balance and Reducing Threat State
00:28:44
Speaker
I don't I hate the word reset. I think that's sort of like a weird thing, really to like, regain some awareness. And I'll say like, I have been doing the work. But I do think I had to sort of stop and regain some awareness about like, my own self care, things I know I need to do. And that was really where I stopped some of the, you know, stopping the Instagram
00:29:12
Speaker
adding the podcast, doing walks. And it's hard. It is hard to some of the actions that accompany the self-care. But I did feel like after those three days or whatever, some of that, what we're talking about, that reactionary state, that threat state, it did start to come down.
00:29:32
Speaker
And it was amazing, because it wasn't even a weekend away. I walked the dogs. I did journaling. And I'm not saying these are fix-alls. And everybody has their own. And we talk about that. But something, just re-establishing those things to reconnect with myself, feel safe. Feel like, OK, I don't have to be in this. How can I feel integrated and safe? And what's scary about that is,
00:30:01
Speaker
we've done a lot of work and I, I don't mean it like this. I still needed that reminder. So people who are, this is foreign to them. It might be a small step, but you gotta take some kind of step. Well, I think the thing with that is yes, you're perhaps your threat state kind of came down a little bit, right? But I would also maybe say, and who knows for sure, I would say that not only did your threat state,
00:30:30
Speaker
go down maybe. But I would actually say what, in my opinion, what happened? Your energy went up. You refueled. You recharged. I did the reload. You did the reload. And you can look at that and say, where's my energy? What brings me energy? What gives me energy? Where do I use energy and where do I gain energy?
00:30:53
Speaker
Yeah, what gives me energy, what depletes my energy. And that's not to say what's good, what's bad. It is fundamentally different and good or bad, not a thing. For example, doing a hard workout depletes.
00:31:06
Speaker
But it's still valuable. It can give you some. It'll give you some energy, for sure. But it'll deplete far more than it gives you. And that's because it has to. So that's where, when we look at that, OK, so social media, yeah, that was a energy depletion. Now, was it a physical energy? No. Mental and emotional, psychological? Oh, you bet. And so, for example, for me,
00:31:33
Speaker
There's between years, there's school, there's internship. Those are all full time, pretty much full time things. Those are all great. I have blessings, not burdens in those, but those are still an energy span. And so for ourselves, if we look at that and say,
00:31:55
Speaker
There's only so much you can do from the threat environment as well. You can't control Corona, you can't control economic restrictions. You can't control any of that stuff. That threat arguably didn't go anywhere. You just had more energy. Yeah. To, to, to deal
Energy Audit and Conclusion
00:32:10
Speaker
with it. Or at a minimum you stop some bleeding. Yeah. And, and, and it wasn't, you know, like when we stop hemorrhaging mental and emotional energy,
00:32:23
Speaker
We give ourselves a fighting chance. And that's where people are like, I'm stuck. It's like, okay, plug those holes, put those tourniquets on, stop hemorrhaging some mental emotional energy. That's first. And could that be, oh, I need to journal more. I need to work out more. Yeah, those are all possibilities. But first it's, let's do an assessment. Let's triage this thing. And we'll start with emotional. We'll start
00:32:53
Speaker
Well, we'll start with mental and emotional. We'll say that. Everything else, the tactics and the strategies. Well, yeah. And what I think most people do is they go to those tactics and strategies first, but they didn't really adjust the other. And then it just becomes doing more shit and doing it in a way that's just bleeding out energy. Yeah. So do that audit. And that was something that last month or a couple of weeks ago at a club, you know, a private client do. And it was like,
00:33:19
Speaker
Wow. And it was a big thing. And it's, that's not a revolutionary thing. Anybody who's in, who's done an accounting before knows it's a T account, you know, what's going out, what's coming in, where's it going out? So you conduct that and be honest with yourself and take the time for it. And again, suspend the judgment of
00:33:40
Speaker
Well, this is in the gives me account because it's a good thing and I like it. Like look at that from a different perspective. And then we can, then you, I think can also in doing that you, you, you, I think you connect to your intuition a little bit better and you kind of catch yourselves where then you're like, I know what the right answer is. You know, like, like you don't have to read a book on the perils of social media. Right.
00:34:08
Speaker
to know, right? You're not convincing yourself of that. So, you know, I think that's a that's, that's, that's obviously a big thing. Yeah. I like that the audit. Well, short podcast today, just kind of update and yeah, little sort of pinning putting a pin and flag and kind of putting a pin in a flag. No, I just mean, like,
00:34:33
Speaker
I don't know what I mean. OK. We'll edit this out. We'll have the sound engineer repurpose that clip for the blooper reel. So let us know how the audio was. And we'll be excited to bring a guest next week. So if you're tired of hearing us, tune back in. Bye.