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Episode 224: Mental Health Month 2024!
123 Plays7 months ago
Hello Podwalkers, and welcome back to the Goblin Lore Podcast! All three hosts are back for the third week in a row (will wonders never cease). Today the hosts discuss about Mental Health Awareness Month, the plan for the show to highlight topics related to this all month on, and share a little about why it's so important for us to talk openly about Mental Health.
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)
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Transcript
Introduction to Mental Health Awareness Month
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. We are coming to you in May, which is a very special month for us. If you've been listening to Cass for a while, you're aware of that. If you listened last week when we talked about this, you're aware of it. But if you're new, this May is Mental Health Awareness Month. It's just a national thing here in the US. I guess I don't know how
00:00:54
Speaker
widely. It's recognized outside of that, but it's a big thing a lot of folks do in the US. And as our cast is very mental health focused, it's a very special month for us.
Mental Health as a Recurring Theme
00:01:03
Speaker
Our goal is to have every every week, every episode that comes out in month, in the month of May, will be mental health focused. Obviously, we do that outside of May. We have other but we have other topics we talk about too, and things and in May, we want to focus specifically on mental health stuff. And so that is the plan tonight. And that is the plan this month.
00:01:25
Speaker
So welcome to Mental Health Awareness Month. And in other good news, we have everyone here again tonight. We have all the hosts. So we're very excited. Three in a row. Three in a row. Holy cow. Yes, it's exciting. So as I started talking, I will do my introductions first, and then all the hosts can introduce themselves, and then we'll get into our topic.
Personal Self-Care Plans
00:01:46
Speaker
So I'm Alex. I've been found on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler. My pronouns are he, him.
00:01:53
Speaker
And for this episode, we wanted to just, as our opening question, do something about what's something you're going to do for yourself this month, particularly for mental health. And for me, something that is kind of timely for both Mental Health Awareness Month, I am almost, almost out of candles.
00:02:13
Speaker
And oh, wow. So I've got candles, sponsorship, sponsorship, Alex, I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, no, no sponsorship yet. But I absolutely they're listening right now. Oh, yeah, we would we would definitely jump at that.
00:02:28
Speaker
But I, so that's gonna be something that I'm doing. And actually it worked out well. There's a whole little program we have at my work where you can like send little thank yous to people and recognize people and stuff, which is nice. But also what makes it really cool, what I really like about it is managers have the ability
00:02:48
Speaker
to do little boosts is what they call it. And that gives you points in our little system, which are basically gash equivalent because you can spend them on they have a little shop has a bunch of weird little things. But they also just have like straight up gift cards for places. So I have bought in Domino's gift cards, Amazon gift cards, GameStop,
00:03:08
Speaker
or yankee candle so i have actually just in the last month or so we've had nothing really large but a little bit of tumultuous stuff going on at work and so i've gotten a couple little boosts and a couple little recognitions and so it's kind of i might i might cash those in for some yankee candle and see what i can find
00:03:26
Speaker
on sale. We're also coming into spring and so the the the little tip that I have at least for for myself when doing Yankee Candle because they can be expensive is if you wait till the season changes all of the previous season stuff goes on sale so I can get some gift cards from work grab everything on sale and probably buy stock up on candles for pretty cheap. So I think that's my goal probably this week I'm going to look to do that. So I think that's what I'm going to say for myself to kind of
00:03:55
Speaker
my mental health in the month of May. All right. Well, I guess I'll go next.
Breaking the Cycle of Depression
00:04:01
Speaker
I'm Taya, pronouns are she, her, they, them. Taya transcends on blue sky. And I think my goal for this month is going to be get out and enjoy things when I can. I've got a few things planned this weekend that are going to be
00:04:21
Speaker
getting out of the house, getting out of my comfort zone, attending a few meetups, just trying to get out of that depressive cycle I talked about a lot last weekend. And I'm hoping that that'll help.
00:04:38
Speaker
get through things, my sister's coming to visit later in the month, then we'll be getting out of the house to do some touristy things, I'm sure. And I've got a lot of plans for the month. One of my partners is getting married to their fiance, so I'll be going to a wedding later in the month.
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's just I've got a pretty busy month planned and I'm hoping that getting out of the house more will help with my depression and that's Hopefully I can just keep myself going to get through all of that. That's my big worry and That's what I need to deal with to get just got to keep pushing myself to survive it but
00:05:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I'm hoping to do to get through the month is just get out more and do things that don't involve just sitting around the house.
Community Involvement and Fundraising
00:05:45
Speaker
I am HobSkew. I can be found everywhere on the internet at HobSkew, even though I forget where half my accounts are.
00:05:52
Speaker
Yeah, so I actually am helping organize. So we just announced this week the official dates, May 18th and 19th of this year's mental health charity fundraiser for NAMI, the National Alliance for Mental Illness, who we always have links to in this.
00:06:11
Speaker
Taya is going to be in a pod playing and she also donated prizes already. So I am really excited. We're going to be doing a panel is part of that. And then more importantly, it means I get to do one of my favorite events of all time that I only get to do once a year. Which is four person Quark Sakashima event.
00:06:38
Speaker
Yeah, we got seven games in in one two hour block one year. So we I'm really looking forward to that. It's we're still looking for our fourth our normal fourth isn't going to be able to join. So we're looking for one but it's a bunch of people who have played Karkashima play kind of it at the CDH level have done very well with it. And I always say the problem is not
00:07:03
Speaker
It's not people who know how to play Krakashima that really was concerns when it comes to time. It's people who don't. The people who do know how to like, you know, they have like, they use cards to denote the number of triggers. So you just need to figure it out. There's even apps that will give you how many flips, you know, like what your odds are of like,
00:07:21
Speaker
not getting to both make copies and return to your hand. I mean, it's there if you can play it quick enough. And we tend to be people who play it quick enough to also then be like, yep, we all lost, like time to scoop it up and restart. And so we tend to be a little bit ridiculous with that. And it's just it's a ton of fun. I feel like the crowd of people who like Karkashima really tend to come out and like to throw money at the charity event. And so it's just it's a pretty silly time because it is just
00:07:50
Speaker
triggers upon triggers upon triggers and just it's also being four player you're playing cards that don't even get played in the main deck like there's the one that's ad red for each goblin in play right stone ritual but because everybody's playing at least some version of karkat sakashima and want multiple copies of kark out it's legit like a one man of five like make five it's like it is literally a ritual that can just win the game
00:08:16
Speaker
Um, so there's a very specific meta to the Quarka Shima, Mir, Mir, Mir, Mir, Mir, Mir. Yeah, the Quarka Shima, Mir, Mir, Mir, Mir. There is, there's, there's cards that the joke is, you know, like which cards we may slot in that we know will only be good because we know everybody is playing the same basic deck.
00:08:33
Speaker
Yeah. So that the charity event in general is just, you know, that's, that's probably one of the biggest things I enjoy in terms of being able to play anymore. And so that's what I'm going to be doing during this, this month. All right.
00:08:49
Speaker
So next week, we have topic already.
Upcoming Episode on Cognitive Distortions
00:08:52
Speaker
That's as far as we've gotten so far. So this is pretty good. We got this week. This week, we just wanted to kind of come on, talk about Mental Health Awareness Month, give a little bit of our history with it. And even maybe just let people know if you want to go back and look, we if you look at any of our episodes from the month of May for basically, geez, I think the last three or four years,
00:09:13
Speaker
Solid. They are mental health. So that's an easy way to find some of them. A lot of them we talk about past episodes too. So if you're interested in that, we have a lot in our back catalog and we'll try to highlight some of those episodes I think throughout the month as well. And also we just wanted to kind of come on tonight and mention that this was coming.
00:09:35
Speaker
Mention that this was our plan for those that maybe are new to the show or don't know that this is one of, I think, our pillars of the show or missions. And next week, we are going to be returning to one of my favorite topics, unhealthy thinking and cognitive distortions and common mistakes in thinking, because I make all of them all the time. I mean, yeah, Hobbs, it's like I am probably going to be all over that one.
00:10:05
Speaker
Does anybody who reads my blue sky on a regular basis or is Facebook friends with me and reads any of the memes that I share can probably be like, yep, there goes. Hey, again. Yeah.
00:10:20
Speaker
It's a topic I love to revisit, too. This is one hub. This is where it's, you definitely brought this to the cast. And I was like, this I love to talk about. And then I talked about it with you. And I was like, I also love to talk about it. And I'm excited to have another episode talking about this topic with Taya involved now, too, also getting to add her voice to this topic.
00:10:42
Speaker
It's a great one for us to be revisiting. We're not going to go too deep down this rabbit hole, but it really is this idea to me that there is kind of a shared humanity in a lot of ways because these types of traps that we fall into with our thinking are just – they're called common and they're called like – if you look them up, they're called like common mistakes in thinking is how they're oftentimes set up and there's a reason.
00:11:06
Speaker
they are very, very common. And to me, that's actually a little bit reassuring. It's kind of like one of the things that we talked about when so a lot of the other work that I love doing is what's called self compassion work. And one of the main tenants of that is really this idea that like, everybody has stuff that sucks, right? Like, part of being a human is that things suck. And I actually really, I mean, it's sad, but I that actually helps me a ton. I
00:11:34
Speaker
So yeah, and I guess we didn't talk about this beforehand. So if we don't want to go into this too much, that's
Sharing Personal Mental Health Experiences
00:11:40
Speaker
that's fair. But does it make sense to talk a little bit about our history with mental health and why this is so important to us? I mean, I think so. Yeah, I think so. Is at least for you know, I is it's my idea, I guess I can go first. So for myself, like I, I talked about it on the show, but it's like I try to come back to and I try to remember myself. Any given episode can be someone's first episode, but I have social anxiety.
00:12:04
Speaker
This is a thing that just slowly built for my life for a while and then somewhere 15-ish years ago, can't remember, whatever gay crash was, thereabouts, return to Ravnica thereabouts. I had a panic attack, went to the hospital. I thought I couldn't breathe.
00:12:25
Speaker
I was physically, physiologically, I was fine. Breathing was fine. There was no issues there, but I realized maybe an anxiety attack is the proper term for it. But that finally got me to go talk to somebody. And that sort of journey led me to a lot of great things and then started recording the podcast and Hobbs, as you'll talk about it.
00:12:48
Speaker
At some point when I'm done yammering, this is an important thing for you. And that just became one of the topics we talked about.
00:12:55
Speaker
And then, especially when Joe left, there was a lot of other topics that he wanted to talk about. We did a lot of other things too. But particularly when he left, you and I were like, well, what's in that Venn diagram between the two of us that is really important to us that we want to come back to more? Mental health was still there. And so that became a more regular topic. You and I'm looking in our planning doc, I think 2020 is when we started to do
00:13:20
Speaker
Mental Health Awareness Month specifically, which feels super appropriate for everything that was going on. Because May 2019 doesn't look like these were all mental health. But then you were like, well, let's do this. Let's have maybe Mental Health Awareness Month for the podcast as well. And I'm so glad that we've been doing this ever since.
00:13:42
Speaker
So that's kind of, kind of my history, like having work still always working on things. But I found one of the things that I found very early on for me, at least what helped me, the two most important, the two most helpful things was one talking about what I was just talking about my own anxiety or just my own thinking patterns. And I like, this is where the cognitive distortions is a topic that I love to talk about because that just helps me to
00:14:11
Speaker
get a better idea of what's going on. It's very difficult to see the lens that you are looking at everything through because that's the filter. That's what everything comes through. And so trying to examine that filter itself can be very difficult. So then the other thing that helped the most was having conversations where other people had talked about the same stuff, me just even just listening to podcasts where people talked about their own journeys.
00:14:38
Speaker
helped me even if what they were going through and what they were dealing with and what was working for them had no applicability to me. That still gave me some, I thought of it as like mapping out my own mental landscape in the negative space where I go, nope, this doesn't seem like this is applicable to me. That was super helpful too. And so that's why I loved talking mental health on the podcast. And I love doing stuff for Mental Health Awareness Month in May.
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, and I, you know, I will say so if people don't know this one of the things that I often do talk about on here. So
00:15:13
Speaker
in my big boy life, my outside life, I don't know. In my day job, I am a psychologist. And one of the things that's always been tough for me is, you know, I work with veterans, I think that's something that I've been very clear about, you know, I work within kind of a hospital setting. And one of the things that I don't get to do as much of that I would really like to do is I don't get to talk about this stuff, like on a daily basis, I don't really get to talk about how to marry my
00:15:43
Speaker
my love and nerd them really that just is not.
00:15:49
Speaker
what I get to do. And so being able to do that has been something that has been very important for me. And so this has been a great way for me to do that. And I think that doing the show, as you said, Alex, once Joe kind of left, that was one of the things that was very difficult is, you know, we were trying to figure out what it is that we wanted to do, what was important to us, what the show was going to look like. We had done a lot. And even in our episodes that were more about kind of
00:16:18
Speaker
I would say social justice things. But we also did a lot with kind of like metaphysics and some on just storytelling and stuff like that. But it was a focus and mental health was present. Like, yeah, episode two was literally PTSD and in in Gideon. So it's not like, you know, Joe was holding that was press. It's just an interesting I don't know. I think it's it's an interesting way to think about things sort of.
00:16:43
Speaker
The how-to things-are-made thing is a topic I always find fascinating, but when you have multiple people working together to shape something like this, like a creative outlet, you're going to find those matches. And so when one person leaves, the formula changes a little bit because it's the stuff that they're bringing. They're not bringing that anymore. And so Joe had a lot of the story stuff. Hobbs and I stopped doing stories often.
00:17:09
Speaker
Yeah, we're doing it a lot more because Tay is back and brings a lot of that strong story connections.
00:17:15
Speaker
Yep. But yeah, I mean, it's it is it is true. So that's, you know, that is something that was, you know, but for me, it was. Wow. Now I get to talk about the nerdy stuff that I love and I get to talk about the mental health stuff that I love. And, you know, it was just it was such a good, just amazing natural connection for me. And so I would say it's been a way for me to talk through my own depression over the years, because that's one thing I think it doesn't happen in my field a lot. I find that people are not
00:17:45
Speaker
Always willing to talk about their own mental health struggles. You know, if anything, I think that it's something that is kind of. It's funny, but I feel like within the field, it is still something that people are like, well, maybe we shouldn't talk about that or.
00:18:00
Speaker
you know, we don't talk about our own issues, because then people won't think that we're effective at being therapists. And it's like, you know what, like, I, I've had depression since I was 18 years of age, long before I ever considered going into mental health. I mean, and it wasn't that I was always joking, I'm not one of those people that decided to go into mental health, because I also have mental health concerns, necessarily, but it didn't hurt. Like, I, I
00:18:25
Speaker
basically was going to go to school for chemistry and for everything else. And I was going to do all this stuff that I never did in my life. And I realized that that was because there was other areas I was a lot more passionate about. So yeah, I mean, I think that that is the
00:18:43
Speaker
long and short of why I have always wanted to talk about it. And it's mainly I just want to cut down on stigma. I think there's just way too much stigma when it comes to to mental health and discussing mental health. So I think that that's always been my my thing is that I want people to have open and honest conversations. Yeah. So I've got a whole laundry list of issues.
Taya's Personal Story and Podcasting Benefits
00:19:10
Speaker
You know, I've
00:19:12
Speaker
talked about it all on the show before. I'm autistic. I have bipolar two. I have ADHD, severe depression, anxiety. You can pretty much throw the DSM five at me and it'll probably open up and hit a diagnosis somewhere. This is where we go back to the, this character creation sheet shocks sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah.
00:19:42
Speaker
a meme I've shared in the Discord at least once is, you know, I created my character to the player manual and which manual did you use, the DSM-5? So, but yeah, so I have a lot of, you know, a lot of overlapping issues that really
00:20:11
Speaker
you know, play out to me. I'm kind of surprised that I function as well as I do, to be honest, given everything that I have going on. And somehow I'm still a somewhat functional adult. I managed to get through, but it's important or it's, you know, it's great that I get to be on a podcast like this and talk about it and be able to talk about these issues and, you know, and then can, you know, express what
00:20:43
Speaker
you know, my viewpoint is based on, you know, my life experiences going through these and other problems that I've dealt with, you know, and being trans and what that's brought with me. So when we talk about these real life issues, I have a lot of perspective that I can bring to that. Um, I think maze is a chance where we spend a lot of time talking about these issues. Um,
00:21:09
Speaker
I think last year, if I remember correctly, we only had two episodes in May because Hobbs was just, Hobbs was a little overbooked in May last year. Did we get two and our panel or two, including our panel? We had two and the panel and there was one with the Trevor project technically that was in May that I think was less mental health focused. Yeah, that really was two plus the panel.
00:21:38
Speaker
Yeah, it was the it was the rest of the month, especially after we did the panel, it was just the panel was amazing and and yes, that's a definite and phrase where it definitely felt that it was getting to be, you know, just exhausted. Yes, but that is in the podcast feed Episode 187. For anyone who's interested in listening to that, that's
00:22:01
Speaker
The three of us, plus Chase and Michelle, who are frequent guests on the podcast. And it was an amazing conversation.
Reflecting on Past Episodes
00:22:10
Speaker
It was so much fun. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah.
00:22:14
Speaker
Our plan to, uh, conscript Michelle doesn't seem to have worked. Yeah. Alex, I don't know if you heard, but when Michelle was on the show, we basically were like, Oh, Hey, so Michelle, you're now, you're now one of the hosts that I, you know, I was so excited because that was the parent episode, right? Yeah. I was so excited that I wasn't on it. Cause I was like, no, I get to like listen to a new episode of the show and I downloaded it and then I totally forgot it. So I will be like,
00:22:50
Speaker
You know, that's fair. That's fair. Yeah. But I mean, that's, it is one of these things that it's just it is a great opportunity for us to just, I don't know, to me, it's the starting conversations. I mean, this was everything from how we talked about, you know, our the how we smart for the panel that we went through, right? Like, that was a huge part of it was just,
00:23:13
Speaker
talking about that. Yeah, so. Yeah, I, one other I want to shout out because I just, I don't know, this is one of my favorite episodes we've ever done. I guess it's a two parter. Technically, I have weird cheeky names for things in the document. So we did two hubs and I did two episodes with chase about corn and depression.
00:23:35
Speaker
And one of the reasons, one of the reasons I love it is because Karn is one of the few, like, we can talk about character struggles and things in mental health, but like, Karn is one of the few characters where it actually is in the text where it says, Karn was depressed. Yeah. I mean, he has, and he has the pacifism card where it's illustrated. Yeah, like, dude is depressed. But that the first episode, oh, and now I've lost these.
00:24:05
Speaker
So the first episode, which was episode 85, Caught in Depression part one, we did not intend it to be a part one. The note I have in here was recording cut short due to act of nature.
00:24:20
Speaker
Hobbs, do you remember when massive storms came through and you and I that we stopped recording so that you and I could like shelter? Yeah, we had to shelter in place. Yeah. And then it ended up being like, car in the I named it car in the time of cholera, because I really liked that title. And it ended up being like, three different versions or takes on it.
00:24:40
Speaker
Yeah. See, and then it took us almost 10 episodes to get back with chase to record the next one. So that was episode 94. And in our, our little planner, which these are the names I put in, which are rarely the names that make it because I do names that are just silly. Um, and mostly jokes for myself, but this one I put carne and depression part three, the joke being it took us so long to reschedule it part two just never happened. And this is part three.
00:25:09
Speaker
And then I put a note, our guest was Chase, and the recording was not cut short due to an active feature. That was very fun. Like Hop said, there's more, I mean, we got our panel up there from last year.
00:25:25
Speaker
Everything may for the last four years are mental health, and a lot of these are gonna be in the names too. If you're looking for stuff, we talk about social anxiety and going to conventions, ironically, sometimes right when pandemics are starting. That's a topic that we've talked about a few times. We talked about imposter syndrome a few times, which is a fun topic too. So there's stuff in the back catalog if you're looking for more of that.
Encouraging Future Conversations
00:25:52
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot. We've got plenty, but we've got a lot of good stuff coming up this month once we figure out what it is.
00:26:02
Speaker
we know it's good stuff coming because we are good people and that is how it works right like that yeah that makes sense to me so yeah so come along join us like i said this was more of a teaser as we're getting ready and we will be bringing you all mental health discussions basically all all month long and and like i said i also really want to highlight that the
00:26:28
Speaker
mental health charity event that we have, because that's going to be a huge, that's going to be a huge thing, I think. Absolutely. And I want to shout out our Discord. Just on a charity event, please tune in, you know, Sunday to watch me do, I'm going to bring some kind of weird deck and do some kind of weird stipulation like I always do on these streams. So make sure you tune in for my stream, especially to see what kind of weird crap I'm up to, like,
00:26:59
Speaker
Last time I did a charity stream, I played my Miri equipment deck and donated $5 for every cat token I created. So let's see what kind of weird crap I get up to this time. Yes, yes, you did. Yeah, yeah, our Discord. If you're looking for a place to hang out on the internet, there's some great supportive folks in there.
00:27:27
Speaker
also probably could come up with some episode recommendations if that's something you care to investigate. So see you all next week.
00:27:50
Speaker
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.
00:28:00
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 from 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 Steve Ruffle on Twitter. Gob and Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing forthos content.
00:28:28
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.