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Episode 187: How I Sparked: A Conversation about Mental Health Recovery Journeys
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Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! Today is an episode that we are still in aw over. It is the audio (it's a little rough) from our Panel at Magic Con Minneapolis. It features all of the hosts (and this means Chase and Michelle)!
It is MH Awareness Month and we want to link some episodes talked about on the panel (Content Warning (Mental Health, Suicidal Ideation, Substance Use, Trauma):
https://zencastr.com/z/x8mCMput
https://zencastr.com/z/S2temOlq
https://zencastr.com/z/BZW-G9eB
https://zencastr.com/z/01GMNM9l
https://zencastr.com/z/l24Dc5nV
https://zencastr.com/z/bNskwaFt
We also finally have a Linktree with all of our discounts/resources
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As promised, we keep Mental Health Links available every episode. But 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: 988
- 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
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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
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Transcript
Episode Introduction at Magic Con Minneapolis
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast. This is HobbsQ just introducing this week's episode, so as people may know, this past week was Magic Con Minneapolis, and
00:00:42
Speaker
We had a panel with our dear friends Chase, Manacurves, and Kiel and Dean Potter, Michelle Rapp. So Taya, myself, Alex, Chase, and Michelle talked about mental health as part of Mental Health Awareness Month. We revisited a topic we've talked about on the show before, how I sparked basically a planeswalker journey and mental health recovery.
00:01:04
Speaker
So what we have for you all right now, we're able to get recording. So this is audio recording from inside. Now this was just us being able to take the audio recording for basically very rudimentary recording equipment. So some of the audio might be a little rough. There might be some sound kind of issues in terms of volume. We just wanted to get this out to people as soon as we could. We did also record video. We are hoping to find a way to do some production with both video and audio.
Overcoming Audio Challenges and Accessibility Efforts
00:01:32
Speaker
there's also a video of the day so queen of cardboard beth was amazing and actually live streamed the panel for us and with that also has the well has the video of the day we will also have that available we want to just make sure that people are able to see this wherever they are the panel went
00:01:52
Speaker
absolutely fantastically. I don't think I can say enough for just the amount of work and effort that everybody on this panel put into this and just how smoothly and Goblin Lore-like episode it really
Acknowledgements and Partnerships
00:02:05
Speaker
went. We ran this as if it was one. So one thing we did not do during the panel is we did not give a shout out to the Grinding Coffee Company. There was a time period you'll hear in the middle where I almost did switch in and
00:02:16
Speaker
Also, other panelists even joked that they almost made remarks about it. But we want to thank Grinding Coffee Company as we're coming up on our fifth anniversary, as we're coming up on mental health. We're in Mental Health Awareness Month. We just want to always give a shout out to them. They've just been so supportive and so great. And we love being able to offer their coffee at a discount and to be able to partner with them on just giveaways and everything else. So sit back and we hope you enjoy the panel.
00:02:43
Speaker
Once again, we know there are some audio issues. We just wanted to become the best experience that we could make it. So thank you.
Panelist Introductions and Topic Overview
00:02:49
Speaker
And anybody that we didn't get a chance to see in Minneapolis, we were glad to have you in our town. We got to meet so many wonderful people and people that weren't able to come. We wanted to make sure there was something like this available because this panel was something that is for you all.
00:03:04
Speaker
So we're going to go ahead and get started. So people may be coming in, but we just want to thank you all for being here. So this is a panel we proposed called How I Sparked, a mental health recovery journey. So if people don't know us, we're basically the Goblin Lore podcast and friends. And by friends, I mean two people who have been on the show multiple times that are just such amazing great guests and have a lot of background in this information.
00:03:27
Speaker
Our plan today is really to just kind of take you guys through discussion of planeswalkers. What is a planeswalker? What does sparking kind of mean? To use that as an analogy to talk about our own mental health recovery and the concept this is really a specific concept of recovery model for mental health.
00:03:43
Speaker
So we're going to be kind of going through that. We're going to do this. If people have ever listened to the show, we're actually running this basically as if we're running one of our shows. So we're going to start off doing our introductions. We have a burning inquiry where we actually are going to make everybody answer a very fun question. And we're going to then just get into kind of our story. Just do trigger warnings? And yes, we do have content warnings that we are going to be talking about in mental health.
00:04:04
Speaker
We all will be talking at least somewhat about some of our journeys, so there is potential for anything from us across this to be talking substance use, things that could be related to trauma, things that could be related to suicidal ideation. So we just want people to be very aware of that upfront.
Mundane Spark Stories from Panelists
00:04:20
Speaker
So we do appreciate that and for you all being here.
00:04:24
Speaker
So to get started, we're going to give our names, we're going to start out, and our question is what mundane way did you spark? We always like this kind of question to just start us off with, you know, not the cool stuff, not the, you know, like I was partying with Xenogos and I sparked. No, we want to know the mundane ways. So my name is Hobbs Q or Thomas Quinlan, Dr. Thomas Quinlan. I decided to go full professor mode today with you all. I have my moles horns, I got my kiki-jiki.
00:04:49
Speaker
My pronouns are he him I can be found on Twitter at Hobbs Q or you can follow the cast at the Goblin Lore pod and my Monday way that I sparked is Basically, I'm gonna go with this very classic tripping over things that my kids have left around We're not quite to the Lego stage yet, but there's just stuff everywhere So my mundane way is basically I was mildly inconvenienced bark my shin up against something Sparked and ended up somehow away from my family, which is really crappy
00:05:19
Speaker
So I'm going to pass it off and go down to our lovely friend, Chase. Hello, everybody. My name is Chase. I'm a content creator. But before I was content creator, I was trained to be a therapist. I have a master's in social work, did a lot of work with trauma-informed therapy before I decided to play
00:05:45
Speaker
My pronouns are they them, and if I had to say what caused my spark, it would be splitting the sleeve while I shuffle it down. A little too much now. It's starting to really hurt. No, I was going to say, do you have an extra one with you? No. OK, that's what I wanted to say. So then you can't even play anymore. No. Yeah. Thank you. Taya. Hey, I'm Taya Steer. I'm at Taya Transcents on Twitter. Pronouns are she, her, or they, them.
00:06:15
Speaker
And to mine, one day we'll get a spark post. Ooh, my back. I think that was the oldest person on this panel. I can definitely say that that would be what happened to me. The ones where you don't even know how it happened this time. I stood up and poked my back.
00:06:37
Speaker
And then you won her bio. And I guess you were back around to me. I didn't mention, I make a lot of assumptions at times since my brain jumped in. I'm a clinical psychologist, so that is my primary kind of background. My life is I work with veterans. I work at the VA here in Minneapolis. I am outing myself in some ways nationally by doing this today because I have been under the moniker of Hobb's Q, kind of separated from my name for a long time.
00:07:03
Speaker
But between this and some other just things I've been doing in the last year related to mental health, I've kind of let those lines blur. I will deal with it if it comes up that a veteran recognizes me as now somebody that does a podcast of magic. But I just thought that it's a very important thing. So that's a little bit of just who I am. I really didn't say. Hey, Alex. Hey, Alex Neumann found Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler. My pronouns are he him.
00:07:30
Speaker
And I think my mandated way to spark is definitely doing something in Excel. A lot of stuff I'm going on in work right now. I'm going to just do a pivot table one day and it's going to be so smooth and perfect. I'm just going to spark and then go somewhere else. So I love the fact that that's the spark of joy, right? Yeah. I figured that, you know, get that sum equation or some goofy thing that just does the perfect thing that I needed. Yeah. And then gone. And where do you think you would spark to at this point? I'm afraid I would end up in a spreadsheet somewhere.
00:08:02
Speaker
I think we didn't talk about playing so much. I realized I was probably in a fun Segovia just because of being five foot four. I'd be the largest goblin they have ever seen on Segovia. I opened a sword just for you last night. The sword is so cool. It's so great.
00:08:22
Speaker
Hi, I'm Michelle Rapp. I can be found yelling on the internet at Kiln Fiend Potter on Twitter. You can also find me on Instagram where I do mostly art stuff at Kiln Fiend Pottery on Instagram. I am here mostly because I've been through a lot of therapy and worked through a lot of things and find a lot of value in doing this work and talking about it and sharing the experience.
00:08:44
Speaker
In terms of my spark, I would say opening my daughter's onesie. Because that happened. She had made like a little poopy noise. I'm like, oh, you're kind of stinky. Oh, you're so cute though.
00:09:04
Speaker
get down the changing table, open that. I literally just recoil. I literally step back. My husband was passing through. He's like, what happened? What happened? I'm like. And then I ended up on ultra thought. I guess we could throw back the entire case. Is there claims that you may have ended up on?
00:09:28
Speaker
The back gate was what I really wanted. Oh, yeah. I'm pretty sure that would send me straight into a stroke. I feel like the anguish would just send me into the blind eternity. Great thing blowing up or... Okay, just letting me make sure since we all know that's going on. So yeah, so welcome everybody. Again, we're very glad people coming in. We're the goblin lore pod and friends, but I really do consider this to be the goblin lore pod, honestly.
00:09:58
Speaker
We're going to pass it over to kind of talk about what sparks are. So we're going to kind of go through a little bit of the history of sparks, kind of how they've been represented in magic.
Exploring the Spark Metaphor and Mental Health
00:10:06
Speaker
It's a really cool metaphysical concept. Joe Redman, who was the one who kind of started the Goblin Lord pod with Alex and I originally, had written an article of this. And we will be putting this up as a show for this week. And I will have links to a lot of this stuff in our show notes. His article on sparks, our previous episodes on sparks, will be something that we're putting up, as well as our mental health ones.
00:10:27
Speaker
So we're going to pass it off. I don't know who wants to take off to start with, but we're going to talk about what sparks are. They're a very cool concept. Sure. I'll, I'll start it. So, um, the idea is generally that sparks are something attached to the soul of a Satan creature that can through some action ignite and cause the person to become a planeswalker. Um, we just recently saw the kind of amending 2.0 where the,
00:10:55
Speaker
nature of the Spark change, but we're going to focus more on the traditional aspect for this talk because there are still planeswalkers. We don't know the ramifications of what has changed in the Spark process at this point. So, yeah, there's basically part of the soul that occurs in a number of people that can be triggered. Some will never trigger and
00:11:19
Speaker
A lot of times this triggers because of trauma. Most of the cases we've seen have triggered this way. You know, we have, looking at some of the original Planeswalkers, we have Jayce triggering from wiping his own memory while fighting Elhamran, wiping his memory, and that's obviously very traumatic. That's the sort of thing that, you know, really screws a person up.
00:11:49
Speaker
You know, a lot of, uh, and we'll talk about this kind of, we get some recovery aspect, but plane walkers need a lot of therapy. We need, we need more therapists for plane walkers. And I think after the, uh, correct. Same war, we're going to need even more therapy.
00:12:02
Speaker
So, uh, if, if anybody wants to get into the therapy business and the multiverse opportunity right now to, uh, do it. We will say new dependent is covered. So Bean has got that stuff just on lockdown. She is very good. We, you know, they may have made some mob implications, like a Sopranos type thing, but no, we're good. So Bean, so Bean's got new components. So beyond that. Yeah. There's a lot of openings right now for mental health professionals across the multiverse.
00:12:30
Speaker
But at a high level, that's kind of what the spark is. And when you look at the lower beach, Planeswalker has a unique story of how they spark. And you could have some positive cases, like Narset spark, essentially by obtaining
00:12:43
Speaker
you know, knowledge and enlightenment and learning about the nature of the multiverse through study. We have, like, Samut sparked on Aminket from, you know, Euphoria being blessed by the gods. Hezret. Hezret, thank you.
00:13:01
Speaker
And we had Xenagos, who we were saying earlier, this is party lifestyle actually led to him sparking during like the giant party, which is just one of them. I mean, that's my one of my favorite. But as he was saying, you know, trauma is usually what we've been dealing with. Yeah, it is predominantly trauma in some way.
00:13:15
Speaker
And nothing better to deal with that trauma than immediately leaving into a completely different world. Isn't it? That's the thing. It basically takes you away. Teo is a very good example of that from more recent. The story that will not be named, Teo was at least part of that. So we have to at least recognize.
00:13:33
Speaker
You know, Teo just sparked because he was about to die. I mean, I believe that... So yeah, Alex, anything on sparks, we talked a lot about this. Yeah, I may mean, you know, like Teo mentioned, we had a very, very recent change to the nature of sparks that we don't know a whole lot about now, but this did happen in the past too. There was a large change with the mending from Time Spiral Block.
00:13:53
Speaker
where initially the planeswalkers with sparks had access to god-like powers now it's more like they're normal people who can just go to other places which tends to allow them to accumulate more power but doesn't by its nature make them more power god-like powers like somebody that may have wanted those back at some point yeah we were gods once bullets they'll bring them out of mouth balls at some point and pop
00:14:18
Speaker
I don't know. I always go back to the Twilight Zone episode with Bolas being like, there's finally time to read. But to be fair, he may have broken his glasses in the meditation route. So that could be what gets him out of there is just like, he can't read anymore. Because that's all he wanted. He wanted to retire. Right? That was the whole elders poll. Is Luca Bolas farsighted or nearsighted? Ooh. I would say he's future sighted. And that is the panel. Thank you for coming.
00:14:51
Speaker
wanted to add or just kind of talk about? I just find sparks to be a very interesting metaphor for mental health. I mean, you've already touched on it so beautifully about it encompasses more than just trauma. It encompasses joy and fear and panic, but also
00:15:09
Speaker
Intensity. Intensity. Intensity. It is intensity. And like the thing is, is mental health isn't always going to be intense feelings of negativity. There are instances where there are intense feelings of positivity or intense feelings of euphoria that can also be attributed to mental health as well. And I just find it to be really fascinating.
00:15:28
Speaker
Yeah, the whole concept, and this is where the panel kind of came from, is just this idea that there's so much that is encompassed with the spark as we know it so far. But this is what planeswalkers are. They are people traveling the multiverse, and a lot of times they are on their own journey. I mean, this is what we really wanted to use as our example.
Gideon's Journey and Psychological Dynamics
00:15:43
Speaker
Our framework for this is they are on a journey. That is what planeswalkers are doing.
00:15:49
Speaker
As we've seen through the stories, we have somebody like Gideon the entire time. Gideon is such a good example for lore. I mean, there's a reason we have done so many episodes on the show from him. And we have talked about Gideon in the sense of trauma, getting the people around him killed, the irregulars that were basically with him when he was Kaityan. He was responsible because of his own
00:16:13
Speaker
I don't know his own boastfulness, his own hubris. Well, his hubris, yeah. He was like, I don't want this spirit. Arrow goes, Mares was like, yeah, nah. Yeah. What are you? Who are you? Who are you? But even from there, we see the Gideon Gideon story up until we find him is basically trying to make up for that the entire time. Yeah. We've talked sometimes in very unhealthy ways. Yeah. Yeah. Cushing himself way too hard.
00:16:36
Speaker
Yeah, he's kind of he kind of created this over functioning like very protective almost like who dependency where he's constantly putting myself situations where
00:16:44
Speaker
he is essentially one man saving everyone, which led to the formation of the Gatewatch. And it was, I wrote an article about Gideon Stromach for Card Kingdom a few years back, and it was- Oh, that might've been the basis of one of our episodes. Yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh. Where I really wanted to delve into just the sort of the
00:17:09
Speaker
And so the essence of psychology of such an incredibly strong, physically fit, very masculine presenting character and kind of delving into that PTSD that kind of just informs so much of who he is and so much of
00:17:25
Speaker
one aspect of the spark as well that I just want to touch on is the fact that it is so definitive to the characters that we see throughout the multiverse as they because it is their reason it becomes their catharsis to start their journey so it in many ways the relationship with their spark is like they're either fleeing from it they're trying to heal from it and in Gideon's case
00:17:49
Speaker
He just never, I feel like, had the opportunity to come to terms with that decision to forgive himself for the choice that he made when he was younger. And we see it all the way through, you know, this is the first episode we ever had chase on was to talk about suicidal ideation.
00:18:07
Speaker
with Gideon because this is one of the clearer examples that we have in Magic Story where at least the concept of passive suicidal ideation, so kind of as we're getting into this mental health stuff, this isn't necessarily that Gideon was making a plan, Gideon wanted to die and kill himself, but he also didn't necessarily at times care. No, Gideon put himself into situations where passive ideation is less active in the sense that
00:18:31
Speaker
you're not making an intent or a plan. It's more, you know, if something happens than it happens, it's kind of like letting fate sort of decide it in a sense. And you may put yourself in like a risky situation or just more, you don't care. And we see that. And I think that, you know, I'm going to have to
00:18:49
Speaker
Oh man, I got to be a little mean to Bolas for a second. But Bolas, Bolas like flat out calls him out about this. When he sees him on Amonkhetni faces him alone, he basically tells him like, I don't think you would care if I killed you right now. And he is very direct about it. And I think it's just one of the things that's been so strong.
00:19:09
Speaker
most stark points of that moment, too, is after Bolas said that, he's just like, yeah, you can leave if you want, or I'll kill you. You get to choose. And then Gideon had to make that choice and feel the consequences of that. I also think it's interesting on the other end of the spectrum, you have someone like Karn, who...
Karn's Isolation and Need for Support
00:19:28
Speaker
The saddest of robots.
00:19:32
Speaker
put themselves into isolation and we had that episode where we talked about, you know, depression in Karn. It was a very fascinating episode about, you know, guilt, shame, and just isolation and just a lack. There's someone who needs a therapist now more than ever. Oh, yeah. Karn is also a wonderful example of generational trauma. Yes. Yes, we worked in Ursa is the worst of the panel. We got it.
00:20:00
Speaker
Sometimes you see writer threads where they're like, oh, Marisa was just so cool. And they're like, oh, really though? Really? He made a being feel pain because people like, well, he won't hurt because he feels pain. He was like, hey, eugenics, let's do that. Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:16
Speaker
Because Phyrexians, really though? But Karn, another wonderful character who just not only has to deal with the isolation and just the grief and the guilt of what happened on Meriden, but also just understanding and utilizing the legacy of his dad, essentially. His dad who didn't even give him a name. Someone else named him.
00:20:38
Speaker
And unfortunately, Shovelhead was his name for a while because of Taferi. He was mean to him back in the day. I mean, that was one of the moments of the march on the machines that I would think to get this coming back together of Taferi. Taferi was a jerk, but he got better. Being a dad kind of helped.
00:20:56
Speaker
I did. Yeah, it did. But yeah, there's just this, but the spark absolutely becomes this impetus, this locus of like where all of these characters are founded upon. And I feel like when it comes to mental health, when we realize that moment, like when we start to reach out and we understand as individuals, hey, I need help.
00:21:19
Speaker
I need someone to figure out how to help me operate this person who is me. That becomes a really important focus and important flashpoint for us.
00:21:32
Speaker
So before we move on real quick to kind of the real world connection of this, I do want to bring up like one more, which is Liliana because she harmed those that she loved with mistaken pride.
Liliana's Avoidance and Facing Past
00:21:42
Speaker
I mean, and then, you know, the whole situation of her brother and she really had that trauma response, right? Like it is completely a trauma response. It is avoidance and it is bleeding. Yep.
00:21:53
Speaker
And just the horror of seeing what you've done, and then the following back, coming back to Dominaria and having to kill Joseph again. Yes. After running from it for 300 years. Yes, and he was still there. Hey, so is Squee, and we didn't get to hear anything about that. To be fair, yes. Dominaria, things live very long. We're looking at you, Jonah.
00:22:19
Speaker
But, or Unlong, Unlife, Unlong, I don't know Josu, but anyway. But yeah, the experience of not basically killing her brother who was like the only person in her life who truly supported her, despite all of like her actions as a kid, having to kill him twice, that is, and seeing the emotional fallout during Dominaria's story, that was really, really powerful.
00:22:47
Speaker
In a lot of ways, I felt like I should have really united Liliana and Gideon a lot more, and if you want to see more of my Liliana and Gideon fanfic... Where can we find that? AO3. Don't we have to have a fanfic of somebody who writes Planeswalker therapists? Yeah, I have a friend who, there's some of that on AO3 as well. Yeah, so there's like Planeswalker therapy. Yeah. Go check it out.
00:23:12
Speaker
So we're going to move in a little bit to talking about this concept of I brought up mental health recovery. So mental health recovery is kind of a movement that came out of the serious mental illness
Understanding Mental Health Recovery
00:23:22
Speaker
world. And so when I'm talking about that, I'm really talking about things like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder.
00:23:28
Speaker
the mental health diagnoses and symptoms that are oftentimes the ones that were so stigmatized. I mean mental health in general is stigmatized. That's why we're here trying to talk about it. One thing that we're now, this is so goblin like it's mental health awareness month y'all. That's why we're here too. It's May. This is mental health awareness.
00:23:55
Speaker
But this this concept of mental health recovery came out of a
00:24:01
Speaker
fighting against the medical model, especially when it came to things like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which really was institutionalized. I mean, we have kind of this situation where we have people that were basically told, you will never work again. You have this diagnosis.
00:24:17
Speaker
You don't have options. You will need to be on disability. You will need to be on medications. You likely will be hospitalized at points in your life. And that is what was told. The recovery model was born out of that. It is something that is general for mental health. What it is is the idea that recovery is possible. You'll see a lot of parallels here with the substance use disorder world where there is that concept of recovery, one day at a time, that it's a journey. It's not a destination.
00:24:41
Speaker
To me, we do a lot in my groups with recovery where we actually start off the group with everybody coming up with what their own personal definition is of recovery. That's the concept. It's not a linear point A to point B.
00:24:56
Speaker
that's what you do. It is oftentimes very messy. If I had a whiteboard behind me as I tend to do, I will be drawn all over the place and drawing these lines that are just completely squiggly because that is what mental health recovery is. It is not, it is a process. It is a journey. It literally is. That is what I kind of teach with it. And there are some concepts to go with that. And I'll chase, you want to jump in with some of those? Yes. So there's a handful
00:25:21
Speaker
concepts that come into with the recovery model. Kind of going down the list, sort of being the concept of hope, person driven, there being many pathways, a holistic aspect to it, peer support, relational issues of culture, and reducing the trauma as well as highlighting strengths and responsibilities.
00:25:46
Speaker
respect Yeah, so like these are the main concepts that are really meant to go into Care that people are receiving with mental health and we're all on our own journey And this is where I really love the work that I do as a therapist. I still have those nice great boundaries I am very good about that, but I am not the type of person that's not gonna self-disclose the fact that like my sleep sucks It has since I was like in high school I'm not gonna talk about the fact that like I don't get under stress and I may share some of this about myself Because that is what this is about
00:26:16
Speaker
You know, you mentioned hope. The whole concept of this to me comes back to hope. It is that idea that recovery is possible. It's something that we don't instill enough of in people. And I think even in traditional therapy, it is, for a lot of people, traditional therapy of people, you know, and everybody's experiences are different.
Critiquing Traditional Therapy Models
00:26:34
Speaker
But the old model is basically you address symptoms. You come in, you say you're depressed, and then you, like, you address that. You hear voices, we address that. You say you have trauma, we address that. But it's symptom focused.
00:26:45
Speaker
Well, and a lot of people too go in with the expectation of what society thinks therapy is as like, we're going to, I'm going to get fixed. You know, this is going to be, I'm going to get cured. It's going to be done. It's going to be over. And that might not necessarily happen. And that's why it's, it's cyclical. It's, it's not exactly like a 0.8 point B sort of thing. And I think that the language within that too is also very problematic when you say, I want to go get like, you know, treat, I don't want to get fixed. I want to like,
00:27:13
Speaker
heal that implies that you are broken or unhealthy, which is not the case. It's just your path is very different than other people's path. Yeah. And I think about, right, like this model really emphasizes if somebody comes in and say they don't want to be more, they don't want to be depressed. I want to be less depressed. My whole thing to start off and say was like, no, I don't want to get into this language of less of something. What are you doing instead?
00:27:36
Speaker
like i want to know exactly what that is so if you weren't depressed or if you didn't have that what does that life look like it really is a purpose and meaning driven what are you doing instead if i'm going to make goals and set goals with you it's things i want you doing not things you're not doing yes when when working with clients a lot of the time i would say what do you want to achieve
00:27:56
Speaker
You know as kind of a good way to like make it you know kind of a goal for that and often is that I want to be less depressed or I want to Like myself more and you know, those aren't very measurable. How can you measure that? What does that look like for you? So going into that being like, you know What is something that you want to do that you feel like you might not be able to do? Currently like I want to be able to go to the mall or go to a movie or go to a party or something like that
00:28:23
Speaker
As someone who has been treated through the recovery model due to my past trauma because of childhood abuse, I ended up having this exact conversation with my therapist and one of the first things I said was, I would love not to flinch every time I spill a cup of water.
00:28:42
Speaker
And that was, and I've gotten finally decades later, I have now finally gotten to the point where if I spill a glass of water or a drink, it's fine.
Achieving Goals and Incremental Recovery Steps
00:28:51
Speaker
It's fine. We can just clean that up and it's okay. And I don't necessarily feel my heart start racing and my worry that someone is going to yell at me. I can now start to focus on
00:29:03
Speaker
hey it's okay let's see the problem for what it is and we can clean that this is fixable and it's those incremental steps that dictate the progress that i'm making it's not i mean i'm probably going to have to deal with aspects of this experience for the rest of my life but making those small little steps forward is so worth it it's um i don't know i identify very much as a blue mage
00:29:29
Speaker
So, hi. So hi. If anybody needs to leave. Hi, I'm Michelle, I identify as Blumé. But the idea of like perfection is nice, but I also understand rationally I'm never going to achieve it. However, knowing that there is a future, envisioning a future in which I can
00:29:52
Speaker
maybe get close to that ideal is still worth that journey and it's still worth that effort. So that's kind of how I like to integrate color apply into like sort of my philosophy towards therapy. Just from the blue perspective, I'm sure we can have a great conversation about the other colors. We can be, I mean, let's be honest, this panel being an hour kind of sucks because we could, yeah, we can just keep it going. Yeah, I can say red mage approach is it's hard to visualize where I'm going to be in five minutes better yet where I'm going to try to get
00:30:21
Speaker
in two months after therapy so setting objective goals isn't necessarily the easiest. But that red mage approach really has that kind of in the moment mindfulness type base where you're trying to live in this moment.
00:30:36
Speaker
I also really appreciate using the word journey when talking about mental health. The concept of it being in narrative is also very, I think very important when talking about any mental health journey, be it your own or just a regular one, because I feel like a lot of times when we're talking about mental health, and especially from a clinician's point of view, it's taken a lot of time to change the language from being very like
00:31:01
Speaker
medical like this is the even moving from schizophrenic to versus his friend or what communities identify with because there's a reclaiming and that's why I work with people individually to ask like Autistic is oftentimes more preferred at this point and it's knowing what communities want in a table. Sorry. Oh, I was just gonna say
00:31:26
Speaker
Yeah. Right. And it is very different and personal, but that's why we got to have those conversations, right? Before we move on, because we want to get to our journeys, I want to just hit two last things, which is respect. We really think of this as being the therapist
00:31:43
Speaker
patient, therapist, practitioner, or the client relationship is a relationship. We are not in charge of the walk alongside. And this is what I tell people flat out, not every therapist is going to be a good fit for you. And you have a right to ask the questions that you need to ask at the beginning of your therapy to make sure that that fit is there. But I also acknowledge that the mental health system in the US sucks.
00:32:06
Speaker
So even getting into a therapist is such a challenge. I do a mental health MTG discussion on a regular basis, usually Tuesdays because I have a day when I'm working from home. And one of the things that we always talk about is access is the number one issue and I recognize that. It is also recognizing though that you need to have a therapist that you do connect with.
00:32:27
Speaker
It might sound a little bit weird, but I promise you any good therapist would not be upset if you went, this isn't a good fit for me. Yeah, I don't want to go through it. It's not good. No, I mean, currently I have a therapist right now where I'm like, I don't want to vibe and want this so much. I'm seeing another therapist who I, we're testing the waters, but it was crazy.
00:32:53
Speaker
and because you know not one therapist size fits all there's so many different modalities under the Sun that could work for so many other people under the five sons
00:33:09
Speaker
With the recent change in sparks, we're just gonna hit it real quick as we're transitioning because we don't know what's gonna be happening at this point with that, is that idea that there is something, though, that, like sparks, maybe trauma doesn't stay with us forever. This could be, you know, this thing of thinking of, you know, maybe wood to fairy. This is like a big change for them. But also thinking of the idea that without their sparks, the planeswalkers that we've seen afterwards are still incredibly powerful. We don't know what it means, so we're acknowledging that we hit this panel at like the most
00:33:38
Speaker
Awkward time, which is perfect for us. We released a social anxiety episode a week into the pandemic. We're really good at timing. Just like, have us talk about something and we're going to probably crush the world in a not great way. So we're going to talk about our recovery journeys. We want to talk about how we sparked. Give everybody on the panel a chance to kind of share a little bit of what our journeys are. We realize we don't have time for a Q&A.
00:34:03
Speaker
If we're going to be, they want us to go in over and talk to some people for a couple of minutes after this, but I will be around. I know some of us will be around. If people want to talk, have questions, want to do anything, please find me. I am giving you like that me out there. I won't speak for everybody, obviously on the panel. But yeah, we're going to talk about how we sparked. Michelle, I know you already have started to talk a little bit about yours. If you want to kind of continue your journey and then we'll go to Alex.
00:34:27
Speaker
Yeah, sure, we can do that. So I grew up as the child of immigrants, Vietnamese immigrants who came in 1975.
Personal Therapy Journeys and Empowerment
00:34:36
Speaker
And as you can imagine, fleeing from a war, that kind of does a lot to you. And so already being part of that generational trauma and then having that manifested into abuse was, as a result, not great for a kid, me. And so it was decades before I could figure out
00:34:57
Speaker
What was okay? Like why and I think this sort of happened to me in high school where I realized Oh once I get into my school, I become a confident assured human being who enjoys learning loves to talk with your friends loves to be loves to read and loves to debate and when I go home, I become someone completely different I become afraid and
00:35:22
Speaker
terrified and anxious at all times. And it was understanding this duality that made me realize I need to choose. I need to choose who I want to be at this point because life cannot continue in this binary. And so making that mental step in choosing to be that competent person
00:35:45
Speaker
and starting to push back on my parents, starting to integrate that into my home was really tough, especially as a teenager. I didn't actually end up seeking therapy until I was in college and I just happened to walk into... I was getting paid for it because, you know, grad students, they hate that. And I'm like, yeah, I'm a poor student. I'll get money for talking about myself for sure.
00:36:09
Speaker
And at the time, I ended up chatting about how much I felt so disempowered and so weak for everything I've done in my life. And the student who I was talking to looked at me with this expression of complete astonishment and told me, I don't think that's true at all. I think you're incredibly strong. And no one had ever said that to me before. So I walked away from that experience with, again, another understanding of
00:36:39
Speaker
I can, this is a thing I have. And eventually when I began actual therapy, it was able to afford it through my work once I'd left school. It just, the resources that came to mind and came to hand, my ability to be able to verbalize and express not only what I was feeling, but the, what was happening to me, creating and finding language
00:37:02
Speaker
to describe those circumstances helped establish just context help in an important way helped me to find control over my circumstances and to use that information to improve myself and my relationship with my parents.
00:37:23
Speaker
So that is an ongoing journey as I mentioned before. It's never going to go away, the feelings of a little flutter of fear, a little bit of anxiety here or there. But I'm very lucky that I have built an incredible support group. I have peers who understand my journey, who understand my challenges. And in a weird way, I also have my parents who fully understand now
00:37:51
Speaker
why their behavior was not okay and are now on their own journeys to figure out who they are and what they've done and to come to terms with everything that they are in their entirety. That's sort of this interesting cascading effect of going on your mental journey because
00:38:14
Speaker
You just never know how it might affect others, even people who you've never had a really great relationship with. But suddenly, maybe they can become better people too. And that's a wonderful part of this whole process, that hope.
00:38:28
Speaker
Michelle, before we move on, I just want to highlight the concept of choice is such an important one. I actually use it a ton with talking about this idea of choice points, that every time we have a decision to make, we have a choice to make towards moving towards our values or away from our values. And I tell people, I think it's powerful to know that you have a choice. Even if you end up having to choose or you choose to move away from your value, it doesn't mean you never can, or it doesn't mean you can't go back towards your value. It's just a recognition that even you might have competing values.
00:38:57
Speaker
And this is an important thing for people to think about when you have a value system. You may have values that come into conflict, so you're having to make choice. To me, it's very powerful to think that you have choice. So I just really wanted to highlight that. Thank you. Yeah, no, it was a definite weird reckoning at 16. Like, I don't like who I am at home. I like who I am here. I want to be this person all the time. I'm going to fight for myself now. And that was incredibly
00:39:26
Speaker
life changing, just and like muddling through, not understanding how to do any of it without any knowledge, just pushing back. That was monumental. And in many ways, it's one of the reasons why I love magic stories so much. I love reading and fantasy and genre fiction. Just these characters who echo a lot of my own struggles and my own experiences and seeing them thrive.
00:39:51
Speaker
allows me to envision the world again. Envision the world in a perfect image that I can strive towards at all times.
00:40:02
Speaker
Yeah, so for myself, my mental health attorney, I've talked about this some, but like I have to actually talk about this a lot. It's an important one. I mean, it comes up. Yes. So I have social anxiety. It wasn't diagnosed until my late 20s. So I spent a lot of years in high school, my couple of years in college and early working life with this narrowing of my life that I didn't really understand was happening until I woke up one day and had a panic attack that I couldn't breathe. So I went to the hospital.
00:40:32
Speaker
I was fine physically, there was nothing wrong, but that was the day I made an appointment to see a therapist. And that started me on this journey to working through that, getting the diagnosis and understanding what it was. And for me having that label, and I know this isn't always for everybody, but for me having that specific label was helpful to know what it is that I was working on, to know what it is that was
00:40:56
Speaker
Yeah. Diagnosis can be powerful for people. The DSM-5 stocks, once again, we'll just acknowledge the DSM is not the best. But the idea that there is a commonality even that other people have experienced this, that there can be a lot of power in getting that. Yeah, and especially different mental health conditions. I know for myself, it was fairly isolating because it felt weird. I learned a little bit before the diagnosis that it was strange
00:41:24
Speaker
Not everybody would feel sick to their stomach if a random person walked up to them at a bus stop and tried to have a conversation before the bus showed up. And that's what was happening to me. It was hard for me to talk to people outside of very specific circumstances. I go to work, I'm fine because I know how to handle that situation. I go to a store or a restaurant, that's fine. I know how to handle those situations. But anything that wasn't sort of prescribed
00:41:46
Speaker
I would start to feel sick. I would start to panic. I didn't know how to deal with that. Here we are today. And now here we are today. Honestly, I joke that in a lot of ways magic helped me learn how to talk to people, but it's true. Shortly after I started going to therapy was when the return to Ravnica block came out. I loved Ravnica the first time around, but I had quit magic, decided to come back for Ravnica, and I started playing and I realized
00:42:12
Speaker
like six months into this being helpful for me that it was helpful because it gave me specific prescribed interactions with people that also had the option to hey I'm feeling good tonight I'm having fun playing with you know this opponent we're done with the round let's just sit and chat if I wasn't feeling I was you know a little anxious whatever I could stand up and walk away and no one would care it was fine and so that was a big thing for me and
00:42:36
Speaker
Now, being here today, for years, convention sounded like the coolest thing that I could possibly imagine, and I knew I couldn't go to them. I just, I didn't. Again, this is well before the diagnosis. I just knew that was something I couldn't do. And now I'm on a panel with some great friends who have been recording a podcast or two years.
00:43:02
Speaker
irony that there is a local con called for no convergence convergence that we was doing a theme of legendary was the theme for their con it's just a general con and we had proposed a panel on the concept of legends and then the pandemic it again yes we were we were going to do that in 2020 yeah July of 2020
00:43:24
Speaker
So many things, 2020. We're here now. That's the continuing journey. And if you say something, stick around. I'll be honest, this morning, I was pretty anxious before the panel. There was some, my stomach was a little, you know, some butterflies or whatever. But here, it's great and I'm glad to be here. Yeah? You're going to skip yourself. I'm going to leave my, yeah, I feel like I've talked too much. As general, but.
00:43:54
Speaker
Yeah, I could go on probably for a full hour covering all of my issues. But I'd really start from childhood as an undiagnosed autistic, constant bullying, dealing with a pretty dysfunctional family. Started therapy when I was about 12. Not very useful therapy, I'd say then, because it was definitely focused on the fixing your issue problem and not
00:44:24
Speaker
any kind of recovery. It's like, oh, you know, you're just not doing good at school and you need to apply yourself and you're a gifted student and you're not doing what you should be doing. All that wonderful stuff, which is kind of added to all the other problems. So struggled through school a lot, struggle with friends, all that sort of thing and kind of
00:44:52
Speaker
got into college, which helped because then I was doing something that I enjoyed doing, which helps with the autism because doing things you enjoy doing is a lot easier than not. Also, that's when I got into playing Magic more seriously in college and took a really long break, but kind of went through my whole life. Also, you know, not young, other things, being young and
00:45:20
Speaker
when I grew up not really realizing what being tramps was other than being a joke in the 90s, especially it was basically just played as being either a joke or some awful thing. And so carried that with me too. And knowing that I was some kind of queer, but not having any idea of what. So did the whole, you know, sis hat straight thing for 20 years kind of bearing
00:45:50
Speaker
you know, my own identity and got through that, but always carried suicidal ideation, you know, dealt with that. Eventually it was diagnosed bipolar, you know, made a lot of bad decisions when I'd go through math episodes, at least I wasn't treated, which, you know, took a while. We got a mostly bad financial decision because I'd go on spending sprees by a lot of magic stuff, especially
00:46:18
Speaker
which some of those have paid off. This is the wrong message. We're going to cut that, OK? It's true. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah, it turned out buying a set of Birds of Saga for $300 a piece. It was great. But as you said, it's fine. I couldn't afford it, though, when they bought it.
00:46:47
Speaker
So it was a bad decision at the time. But yeah, so kind of got here, really started going through therapy more, found a much better therapist. What I really have to think though is kind of like the magic Twitter community and meeting trans people through there and kind of working through my identity, finding a good therapist who was familiar with the queer community and those concepts and working through my identity issues.
00:47:17
Speaker
having, you know, there's not a whole lot of support for autistic things. But, you know, I got an official diagnosis after my son was diagnosed. And then just, you know, these labels are important and being able to understand your thought process and being able to compensate for that even if you're not getting official accommodations. But, you know, for a while I was getting official accommodations at work where I was able to before the pandemic worked from home a couple of days a week.
00:47:45
Speaker
because I didn't deal well with open office space. So taking advantage of those options where they were to help deal with my issues helped offset some of those problems. And getting to the point of talking about how it's worked, and I would say turning around those issues and dealing with
00:48:15
Speaker
Learning what gender euphoria felt like for the first time and it's kind of It's in a really hard spot right now because just being trans in America at this point is kind of a constant state of trauma You know your every day wake up. It's there's something negative in the news You know things are you're being attacked by people you have an entire political party dedicated to eliminating your existence and
00:48:40
Speaker
It's rough to be just who you are. And that's the constant drag on your mental health on top of everything else. So just getting through the day on top of dealing with being autistic, being bipolar. And like you said earlier, Hobbs is at some point in the past.
00:49:01
Speaker
having those conditions, what it just might be, you would be institutionalized or not have a career or anything. But still managing to maintain a career and support a family and keep all that going, have friends, be part of the magic community. I think I'm able to do that because of practicing these mental health practices
00:49:32
Speaker
Sadly, I lost. I had a really great therapist. I lost them because our insurance system sucks. And when I changed jobs, I lost insurance coverage for that therapist. So I'm between therapists right now. But yeah, our system sucks, as I already mentioned. Yeah. That's it for me. French Ace. Yes. Hi. Hi. So my mental health journey is currently ongoing.
00:50:01
Speaker
dabbled with therapy. I sound like it's a hobby. I dabbled with therapy in college and that didn't really work out with me because my therapist wasn't a good fit. She kind of did the whole, well it sounds like you're, she's with your roommate. Do they connect back with your relationship with your father? Oh my god. I was like, no.
00:50:28
Speaker
For a while, mental health was a kind of a mystical thing for me. When I went into the field to study and to eventually practice,
00:50:40
Speaker
kind of had this adopted sort of mentality of do as I say, not as I do thing. I felt for some reason that I was the only person exempt from the rules that I was learning and the things that I was practicing. And it was kind of an interesting thing for me because it all sort of sounds so cliche, it started in child.
00:51:05
Speaker
But there's a lot of issues with my family where there was this concept of perfection that unfortunately has extended into you know, my adult life
00:51:17
Speaker
pressure to be good at what I do, be good at everything, be good at school. Anything less than an A was definitely an F. So it's a bit of a rough childhood. When I would visit my friends' homes, I would see a loving, relaxed environment. And I was like, that's what this is like. And it was kind of eye-opening for me. But even for an adult, I still would find myself to be exempt from these sort of things.
00:51:47
Speaker
And eventually, the job was very fulfilling, but it also took a major toll on me mentally. You have to have a toolkit. You have to kind of leave everything at the door when you go in and pick it back up on your way out. But that can be very challenging. You're still human. Yes, especially when you haven't tackled your own stuff. And your own stuff gets brought up in session. And how do you handle that? And it can be very rough. And so when I started thinking,
00:52:16
Speaker
content full-time. It was a dream, but then it also became kind of a nightmare because I had this continuous line of perfection. You have to be the best at what you do, and you have to not be better than anybody else, but you have to be the best version of you that you can be, and even then it's still not good enough.
00:52:36
Speaker
you always have to be on. Every stream has to be high energy. The initial idea I've seen, you know, like not canceling a stream. Right? Even though. I feel so bad. I'm like, wow. And you need to. Right? Yeah. And sometimes I need those nights. Sometimes I need nights to edit a video or, you know, take a break. You know, eventually I started seeing a therapist. And for me, that journey was unfortunately talking to friends and my friends being like,
00:53:05
Speaker
think you need a therapist and like those moments hurt but they're not meant to be hurtful they're meant to try and help you and so that was when I finally was like okay I should probably start seeing a therapist and so my journey with mental health is currently ongoing I'm currently trying to work through my anxiety and trying to work through my depression and it's it's a very difficult process
00:53:33
Speaker
But even then, I've been struggling with that work-life separation, with that perceived perfection and comparison to others, catastrophizing, future thinking, making up things that haven't even happened in the future, but I still end up worrying about them even though they're not.
00:53:53
Speaker
or they might not be real ever. And so with my current journey now, I am in the process of possibly seeing a new therapist, which is very exciting for me.
00:54:05
Speaker
because I kind of did the no-no thing where I picked up a therapist and I went, okay, this is it, I saw one therapist and this is the therapist I'm keeping and I didn't shop around. Even though I would tell people to shop around. And so currently I am in the process of trying to find a therapist that fits my needs, you know, getting that higher level of care that, not that I need, but the higher level of care that I know that I deserve.
00:54:32
Speaker
You know which you know you you want to make sure that you find like the best like you know Dermatologist or like you know the best like OBG you know you want to find like the best therapist for you And so that's what I'm currently working towards right now
00:54:44
Speaker
the best OBGYN is my wife so I'll just shout her out here in the family because she's not here today but you know I will say honestly too sorry but she will take questions if anybody ever needs them I swear to god she is she loved magic and loves the magic community and is straight up just had conversations with people to help so she is great on a panel sorry
00:55:12
Speaker
you know, everybody here on this panel is in different stages of their journey. They might be closer to the end, they might be at the beginning, they might be at the middle, and that's normal. There's no age cap on understanding your inner world, your mental health. I think that's really important for us to kind of emphasize here since we're getting towards the end is that
00:55:34
Speaker
There, it's going to be a constant journey throughout your life. You know, whether you seek out therapy, whether you are, you know, searching for a diagnosis or simply you're just researching just because you're interested. It's a never-ending journey. It's cyclical and I think that's something that we should kind of emphasize.
00:55:56
Speaker
Yeah, the journey aspect to me, it's a pathway that we're on. I mean, that's why the planeswalker experience makes so much sense to me. I oftentimes think of things as being on a pathway. I'm a very big nature person depending on what I do for photography and what I enjoy. It's nature. So the concept of a pathway or a trail that I am on has always been like my go-to. We have a couple minutes. I will still get to share some. So my mental health journey is actually, I am 43, my mental health journey is
00:56:23
Speaker
over 25 year journey of actually having a diagnosis and being Well aware of what's been going on with me how I found out though was completely you just said childhood, right? Like I get the grades I go to school the gifted label. I went to school I didn't have to put in a ton of energy or effort and I did well You know people commented on it and what they didn't realize is like that was depression like yeah sure But I wasn't applying myself for doing anything. I was getting there and
00:56:51
Speaker
But I didn't know that. I was a big runner in high school. I ended up seeing a doctor because I was running inconsistently. I would have a good run, I'd have a bad run, I was tired, I wasn't sleeping. My brain at 17, 18 years of age was I must have an iron deficiency, some sort of vitamin is bad. The doctor gave me what I later found out to be a depression inventory. And I'm like filling this thing out and it's asking me all these questions. And he comes back and he goes,
00:57:16
Speaker
Yeah, we need to have a conversation. And it turned out that I scored very highly on measures of depression at 17 years of age. I was seen as the outgoing person, even having conversations about this with people, because I've always been an open person. I started antidepressants at 17 or 18 years of age.
00:57:37
Speaker
Told friends about it, and it was the husk whispers. I mean we're talking like the late 90s, and it was oh my gosh You have to be on medications like there was a backing away over depression And I mean I think of that as just you know I don't know I'm kind of a cynical person depression is a normal state of being And it has been for for 25 years. It's I've always been on my journey. I am the worst therapy patient in the world I
00:57:59
Speaker
Even before I became a therapist. I'm just not great at it and it part of the I didn't know the shop I saw a therapist that was really this concept of like what is called a rogeri and they repeat back to you It's a very reflective. I like the concept But the person was really bad at it. And so all I did was like try to make him say ridiculous stuff
00:58:23
Speaker
I was like in college, I'm like, you know, just everything is fucked up and shitty. And you'd be like, how is it fucked up and shitty? And I'm just like, internally I'm laughing. Like, I didn't even want to use the language. Like, I'm just like, come on, dude. Like, give me something. But I, you know, I've been, I talk, I did an episode, I think a solo one, of how I sparked. And I did a profile with Andy Zuppke about myself. And I actually, my sparking moment was grad school. So I was depressed throughout grad school. I was anxious throughout grad school.
00:58:52
Speaker
I took a year off and I almost quit. And there was the expectation that I wasn't coming back from my program. I literally was told this. And my sparking moment was the head of my program literally saying, I do not think you will ever get a PhD or a degree from our university. So I was told this because I had fallen behind in my research work. I had fallen behind on the charts that needed to be done. I had fallen behind because I was depressed and I was anxious. And I
00:59:18
Speaker
They talk about fight or flight. We talk about that with our planeswalkers. I'm the one that would never spark or move because I freeze. I am just a shutdown person. And that's what was happening during grad school. And it's amazing to me because I'm not at a point in my life where I can laugh about this because I'm now 10 years of having a career as a licensed psychologist working in a strong program. And I get to do what I love. I get to do
00:59:43
Speaker
We piloted a D&D therapy group that's going on at the VA here in Minneapolis that I'm stepping away from because I'm trying to find other ways to get to be innovative, and the VA lets me do that. Nobody asks me about my degree. Nobody asks me about this stuff, but yet my brain still thinks back to that person telling me, you will never get a degree from our program.
01:00:02
Speaker
And I think about my field that we don't talk about mental health. I have practitioners that like, hey, I hope you're all listening to this, because I'm going to be showing it. I said I would share it. We don't talk about the fact that we have diagnoses. And I go for a fact that my coworkers do. I mean, I'm sorry. But it is stigmatized. If I take a day off for mental health, because I am having a panic attack or near it, I can't say it. Because what is a coworker going to think? I can't do my job. And this is people who want to literally
01:00:33
Speaker
try to focus from this recovery perspective and I see how it cannot work. I could go in for hours. We all could. I mean, I think that's it. We want to.
01:00:42
Speaker
kind of wrap up with the fact that we want to have these conversations. The whole point of this panel was to have these conversations. Try to de-stigmatize talking about mental health. Try to de-stigmatize the concept of getting help or asking for it or even recognizing that you need it and that we're all on our own journey and it's messy.
De-stigmatizing Mental Health Conversations
01:01:00
Speaker
It is not an end point. Our planeswalkers are not going through clean journeys. They are
01:01:06
Speaker
We don't know. At this point we don't know, but we know they're going on something. Something going on.
01:01:14
Speaker
But I mean, if Liliana started from an old walker to warlock to bolas general person to now goth Mary Poppins. I mean, I figure I figure we've all got some hope. Yeah. And if there's anybody in this room that wants to be on an episode talking about Liliana, I guess we could have you. Sorry, it'll be soon enough. We will schedule with you because
01:01:39
Speaker
We've been talking. I have to say that because Lily is actually one that we haven't hit yet. It's kind of a crime that we haven't. It will happen. If we want to go through, I would love for everybody to just do a quick shout out of who they are as we're wrapping up. Like I said, we didn't have enough time. We were never going to have enough time. Chase. Hi. Hi.
01:02:03
Speaker
If y'all don't know me, my name is Chase. I do a lot of content creation. I also write articles for Star Sea Games. I have a podcast, but who doesn't nowadays? You can just type that in and you'll find me. Thank you. Taya, Taya Transcents. And you'll mostly find me either posting about magic or
01:02:35
Speaker
I'm on the Goblin Lore podcast and on Twitter at mill underscore kronfkler.
01:02:41
Speaker
I'm Michelle Rapp, you can find me on Twitter at kilnfiendpotter for as long as that health site is up. And like some of you find on Instagram at kilnfiendpottery. And if you want to hang out for like another half hour, we have a really fantastic panel on diversity in our gathering on the community, which I will be moderating. So yeah, just letting you know, it's there. You don't have to move. Stay here.
01:03:09
Speaker
And I'm HobSkew. I can be found on Twitter at HobSkew. And everywhere on the internet, since 1998, I have had that handled. So if somebody else has seen it, let me know because I don't like imposters. Unless it's me, which is the imposter syndrome. But we want to thank you all for being here. God in the Lord Pod loves to just have these conversations. And we are so thankful that we were given this opportunity to talk to you all today.
01:03:49
Speaker
And that's our show for today. You can find all of the hosts on Twitter for now. Hobbs can be found at HobbsQ, Tay can be found at Tayatransends, and Alex can be found at Mel underscore chronicler. Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to the Goblin Lord pod on Twitter, or email us at goblinlordpodcast at gmail.com.
01:04:10
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood Gob's Hugs, our link tree can be found on our Twitter account and in the description of today's show. This has everything from various discount codes to the link for our Patreon. The music for today's show was by Wintergotten, who can be found at vintergotten at bandcamp.com. The art was done by Steven Raphael, who can be found at stevereffel on Twitter. Gob and Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing forthos content.
01:04:38
Speaker
Check them out on Twitter at hipsters MTG or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.