- Personally even though I'm the guy talking about mental health
and I'm the guy who talks about it several times a week
to colleges all over the US and Canada, in a way--
in some ways, I'm struggling myself.
And I think what that is is allowing myself to grieve
and allowing myself to move through this without judgment.
And I say that because I know personally,
there's some things that I'm worried about,
and nervous about, and anxious about.
And in part, I sometimes I think well, I don't have it as bad
as so-and-so, or these people, or those people,
or my neighbors.
And that's not really productive or useful for me
in my experience because it totally diminishes
what I'm going through.
So I'm allowed to have my experience, whatever
I'm going through, even if it isn't as deep or as dark
as somebody else.
And so, I say that because I want
to let you know that whatever you're going through,
you're allowed to have that experience.
You can certainly say I don't have it as bad as so-and-so,
or it's not as bad as this or that.
And that could be a source of gratitude, for sure.
I'm grateful I don't have it like that.
But you can still also own that and allow yourself
to cry, or grieve, or to be still,
or to move, or to be of service, or whatever
it is that you need to do for yourself in this moment
in a healthy way.
You're allowed to have that.
Men, women, brown, black, white.
I know it's not always quote unquote
acceptable to feel certain feelings,
express certain emotions depending on any category
that you might fall into under life.
And I just want to let you know--
and just let you know you don't need that validation from me
for sure.
But as someone who's a guy, who's
a male who presents relatively well,
I don't always feel like I'm allowed to cry
and I'm allowed to have certain emotions.
So I'm learning through this process
that I need to give myself that grace.
And so, I want to extend that to you if you've never
heard that before.
The other thing that I want to share
before we get into the nitty gritty
is just almost like a preface to so what I want to talk about.
And it's a preface to the story that I want to tell you.
And so, in my life-- and one of the reasons
why I got into this work into mental health,
suicide prevention, social justice really,
is because I've been through a lot of crises and traumas
in my life.
I lived in a very abusive household from one of the two
parents that I had growing up.
And I lost my dad to suicide at 25
and I've been through my father-in-law's homicide,
and a divorce, and taking care of a former partner
with cancer.
And so, 11 years ago when I lost my dad to suicide,
it was the first time I had a major awareness of the trauma
that I was going through.
And so, it took me about two years
to work through that in the major parts of what
I had to deal with.
And when I did, I went through that whole process
kicking and screaming.
I was really upset.
And I was talking to a friend almost two years
after I lost my dad.
And I said man--
Because there was some subsequent trauma
that happened as a result of my dad's passing--
and I was like, why is this happening to me?
This is so unfair.
This sucks.
This is terrible.
Why me?
And my friend totally was cool and sat with me,
and honored the experience that I was having and let me mourn,
and be angry, and all that.
But then, he said this to me.
This is something that changed my life.
And I pass this idea to you.
I don't tell you that you have to take on this mindset.
I don't tell you you have to do anything.
But if it's something that you can wrap your head around
and own and learn from and use in your life,
I hope it does use a service and a bit of good.
My friend said this.
He said, what if you changed the idea
why is this happening to me to the following.
Everything is happening for me and not to me.
Let me repeat that.
Everything is happening for me and not to me.
What that means is that now, I have a choice
to choose that mindset and that outlook.
So if I get to choose that everything is happening
for me and not to me, then with my dad's passing,
I could choose to use that as a learning experience.
I could choose to use that to learn more about myself,
how to prevent suicide, how to help other people,
how to be of service, how to take care of my mental health.
And those are choices that I made because we can't
choose what life throws at us.
We can't choose to have the COVID virus or the coronavirus
come into the United States in January, December, February,
whenever it came in.
We can't necessarily choose that.
What we can choose is how we react
and how we manage all the circumstances that
arise from that.
Is it easy?
No way.
It is not easy.
Even somebody who knows this who is working really, really hard.
And so, what I'm learning--
I'm learning about the disconnect.
So I'll tell you briefly and then we'll dive in.
But so because I'm choosing to see
that everything is happening for me and not to me,
now it's like OK.
I learned a little bit more about my body
and sometimes there's a disconnect
between my body and my brain.
And my body is feeling a certain way
because it's responding to past crises and traumas,
and it doesn't know that my brain can rationalize something
different.
Say, oh they don't mean it that way.
Well, my body feels like the way that I
was spoken to by a friend or family member,
it feels like they're attacking me.
But my brain can tell me something different.
Like oh, they're just upset or angry
because of what's happening right now.
It has nothing to do with you.
I get to learn how to be more still.
I get to learn how to be creative.
I get to learn how to do Zoom in the middle of this crisis
and switch my work to being online.
I get to learn how to be in community in a different way.
So these are things that I'm learning right now because I've
chosen that mindset.
Everything is happening for me and not to me.
So I hope on some level that that serves you well.
And if it doesn't, maybe it'll lead you
to a bigger and better idea.
So what I want to do, I definitely
want to talk about mental health and wellness.
But to do that properly, I think I need to tell you a story.
It is my story and I'm not telling you for my benefit.
The reason I tell stories, especially the reason
I tell my story especially when it involves mental health
is because whenever we tell stories,
it's certainly-- especially around social justice
issues or anything that's difficult.
Cancer, AIDS, any sort of rights movements,
this person's rights or that group's rights.
Stories are so very important because it
helps bring the point home that what's happening
is either unjust or it's unnecessarily taboo.
And so when we share our stories,
it's no longer-- people connect to us
and connect to connect to the things that would serve them
well in their life.
And so, it's no longer they and them.
It's now we and us.
So a lot of people think mental health
is other people's problems.
In fact, I was on my way to the Los Angeles airport, LAX,
about six months ago.
And my Uber driver asked me what do you do for a living.
I was like oh, I talk about mental health.
And he was like, that's going around.
I'm like, sir?
And I didn't say it exactly like this to him,
but I wanted to say sir, it's not the flu.
Mental health isn't going around.
And so, I started to tell me a little of my story
so I can explain to him what mental health actually
is so that would hit home and it wouldn't just
be a bunch of stats, and figures, and facts,
and stuff like that.
So that's why I wanted to tell my story is so that I can
relate some of these things that I think
we all need to know and learn.
And the way that I want to do that
is first to share my story.
And then, I'll do some slide shares
and I'll share a PowerPoint and stuff like that.
And we might have time towards the end for a little Q&A.
So we can do that through the chat feature.
And I and Umberto will we'll do our best to sift through that
and make sure that we honor everyone's
questions, and comments, and things of that nature.
So let me share that story.
So my name is Josh Rivedal.
I grew up in New Jersey.
It's not my fault. Please don't hold it against me.
I'm 36 years old at this point, so we'll start
from basically the beginning.
I was the middle kid of three.
Two parents were together.
And for all intents and purposes,
people thought we as a family had it all together.
We were very ensconced in poverty.
However, just because we were ensconced in poverty,
we had a lot-- we did have a lot going on.
We were my family--
where I come from and the way I grew up--
and this is no longer important to me before anymore.
But as a child and a teenager we were very, very, very involved
in church.
My dad was a deacon.
He and my mom sang in church all the time.
They were in choirs.
We went to three or--
we went to five services a week.
That's how many services we went to.
And they were involved in all these committees
and different things and they were also
involved in the community marches, rallies,
and different things like that.
And so, people looked at us and they were like, wow.
This is the model family.
These are some good people, And I think many of us,
if not all of us, have heard this concept.
It's a metaphor.
But sometimes, people will look at another person
and they'll say wow.
That person has the white picket fence.
They've got it all.
And what they mean is that's their idea of perfection
projected onto somebody else.
You might see somebody and say wow, they're the jock.
They've got the girl, and the house, and the 2.5 kids.
That's the white picket fence that I want.
Or they got the PhD, or the degree, or the job.
So it's a little different for all of us.
But what we don't always take into account when
we project that white picket fence on somebody else is we
don't necessarily take a moment, always or often--
we don't always take that time to take into account what
that person is looking at on the other side
of the fence, their viewpoint.
So when I was a kid, my perspective,
my white picket fence was cracked, and chipped,
and broken.
And it was not--
things were not going well in my life in some very major ways.
We had two big secrets in my home.
One was that my father, even though he was a deacon,
involved in church and community, he was an abuser.
He was emotionally abusive with his three kids and his wife,
my mother, and he was physically abusive with me.
And when we talk about mental health--
and I can't cover this in full.
This is a completely different presentation.
And it's worthwhile, but we just don't have time.
I want to cover some broader concepts.
But when we talk about any form of abuse or trauma,
it can certainly have an effect on a person's mental health
and wellness, especially as your brain is forming.
Your brain isn't done forming until around age 27.
The front part is the last thing that forms,
which has higher level reasoning abilities and things like that.
So when your brain is wrapping itself and forming itself
around trauma, it will respond and do different things.
Sometimes helpful, sometimes harmful, but to protect you.
And so in my life, that's certainly
affected my mental health and wellness for a very long time
and I would say in a very negative way.
The abuse that I experienced as a child--
So we'll just put a push pin in that
and maybe we can cover some of it in chat
or the Q&A later, if possible.
So that certainly-- that abuse affected my mental health
and wellness, especially as a little person.
Second big secret that we had was
that my father's father, my grandfather,
died by suicide in the 1960s.
My dad at the time was 17.
His dad was almost 50 at the time
and it was a very traumatic experience for my dad.
So much so that he was very ashamed about that experience.
He never talked about it.
My mother confirmed with me recently
that he only talked to her about it very, very briefly twice.
And in fact, in one of those conversations--
and I've known this for a long time
that he forbade my mother from telling his three
kids because he just didn't want to deal with it.
He didn't want to talk about it and he kept the secret.
So when I was 12 and my sister was 13--
and my brother is a bit younger than us, so my mom I guess
didn't feel like he could handle information at the time.
But she basically pulled me and my sister aside
and said this is why your dad is the way he is.
And I think she's trying to explain away
his abusive nature in a way and just put it into context.
And she explained briefly that my grandfather, my dad's dad,
died by suicide and we cannot tell my dad or else he'd get
angry and we knew what that meant.
So we kept it a secret.
And so, I learned something that day
and it's something that's a bit detrimental.
And it's not my mom's fault that I learned that.
I think she was doing the best she could
at the time, given the information that she had.
But I learned something that day and that
is that when something bad in life
happens and you feel like you can't handle it,
keep it a secret.
Now, that's not the lesson you want to learn.
That's not the last thing that you
want to employ in your life.
And that's certainly-- but that's what happened with me.
That for some reason in my little brain,
in my 12-year-old brain, I thought
that confirmed it for me.
I can't talk about stuff.
And I didn't for a very, very, very long time.
In fact, there were two things in my life
that I needed to talk about that I didn't understand.
And there were two health conditions.
And I can remember symptoms of them as young as eight.
And I look back now-- and I didn't
get diagnosed until age 28 with these two health conditions.
And the reason I didn't talk about them
was because I didn't know anybody else
talking about them.
I was like, I'm a boy and boys--
I had this erroneous thought process
that boys are supposed to handle and deal
with things in a different way.
Keep it quiet.
Don't talk about it.
And so, in fact that was very detrimental to me
and it started to wreak havoc here and there in my life,
especially as a young person, all the way really to age 28.
And we know that whenever you don't manage or deal
with health conditions, it could harm your body.
It can harm you short term.
It harm you long term.
In some very extreme cases depending
on what you're dealing with, it can become fatal.
Now let me tell you what these two--
I've already actually told me what these health conditions
are and this is where I want to take a well-placed tangent.
The two health conditions that I still
live with that I can manage, but not control,
just like basically almost any other health condition,
I live with generalized anxiety disorder
and clinical depression.
And you're like Josh, I thought you said health condition.
I did say health condition and that's what they are.
I mean, your heart is an organ.
Your pancreas is an organ and your brain is an organ.
We talk about this thing, the brain,
so much differently than we do our bodies below the neck
as it were.
And so, it's time that we change that.
It's time because there's not some line here
and this is your body and this is
some magical thing we can't talk about above the neck.
You've got a machine up there.
A Maserati, a Rolls Royce.
And you've got to tune it up every
3,000 miles because if the brain isn't going well,
the rest is not going to go so great.
And I'll tell you prior to stay at home and COVID and all
that, anxiety really wasn't very much of a big issue.
So I want to just briefly explain to you the depression
side of things for a moment because it looks
different on different people.
There's a lot of misconception around what it means.
And for me-- and it does.
It looks different on different people.
So for me, if my mood-- and if you could see my camera,
if you can see the feed.
If my mood is here at this line, I would say almost often,
my mood is just a little below that on a consistent basis.
So it's not enough really to like harm my day,
but it's enough to sort of need to whip myself into shape
in a healthy and kind way.
So I do things to manage my symptoms
and to mitigate my symptoms.
So I do see--
I do talk to a counselor once a month.
I exercise.
I eat differently.
I have a house plant.
I talk to friends.
I have to work on my thought processes.
I try to be of service as much as I
can where I can when I can.
There's a lot of different things that I do
and those are just a few things.
But I tell you this because I want
to let you know that having depression, having
anxiety, having any mental health condition
what some people call mental illness,
it's not a death sentence.
They're manageable.
You can manage kidney disease.
You can manage heart disease.
You can manage any brain condition.
You can't control it, but you can manage it.
In fact, I've known about it.
So I said I've known about this since about 28 and I'm 36.
I've known about this for eight years and my process
with managing and dealing with depression has gotten
better, and better, and better, and better.
And so, it's sometimes--
so I know my triggers for the most part.
I don't always.
I can't always see a depressive episode coming.
But for the most part, I know my triggers.
And so, if you could think about it
like sparring with a boxing partner--
and so, my depression is my boxing partner.
And so, it'll throw jabs at times
or it'll try to throw a nice little uppercut.
And so, often I can see the jab coming
and the depression is trying to break my nose.
It's trying to hit me in the nose
and I'm able to see it coming, so I can dodge it.
And it grazes me on the cheek instead.
So I'm able to mitigate my symptoms and any of us
can do that in a variety of different ways.
So it's not a death sentence.
It's manageable.
And in fact, I'm able to at times take my depression,
take my anxiety and turn those enemies into a friend
by using them as tools.
And this is just my own choice and this is my own process.
Using them as tools first, yes to know more about me
and to have a healthier, happier more fulfilled life for sure.
But also, to be able to use them to be of service
to other people to let people know
that they don't have to suffer and not be able to get help
and not be able to manage.
Like, you can get help.
You can manage.
And I want to have these big deep meaningful conversations
all over the country and the world to prevent suffering
and to help people live more happy, healthy, and fulfilled.
So I'm able to take that enemy and turn it into a friend.
We hear this phrase everything happens for a reason.
And I'm not so sure about that.
I can't prove that.
And I don't love that phrase either for a variety
of reasons.
But I'll change it to everything happens for a reason
if we choose it.
So I get to choose to make meaning of my dad's loss.
I get to choose to make meaning of my depression and anxiety.
I get to choose to make meaning of COVID as best I can
and as much as I can.
So those are choices.
So I just wanted to toss that out there.
Now, back to the story.
At age 12 having discovered about my grandfather's
dying by suicide in the late 1960s long before I was born,
fast forward to age 19.
I had to leave my home because I just
felt there's too much chaos and abuse happening.
And so, I decided I wanted--
and I've been doing this for a number of years--
to be a professional actor in New York City.
And then, I started doing playwriting
and I was doing it professionally.
And I got to act in a Broadway production and regionally.
And I was singing and doing some cool stuff.
And got to write some shows some plays
that played all over the US, and in Miami, and New York.
So that was really, really fun and really cool.
Age 24, fast forward a little bit more.
Still doing all that stuff.
My parents finally broke up.
They were together for 30 years and I'm happy for probably
all but maybe 10 minutes of that marriage.
And so, my mom left my dad.
And you probably should have seen
that coming for a long time.
My brother finally left home, so my mom's like, all right.
All my kids are gone.
It's time for me to go.
And so, we thought my dad was going
to take that in a different way that he took it.
But it turned out that he took a downward spiral pretty quickly.
And on March 31, 2009 six months to the day where
they were going to finalize their divorce,
my dad died by suicide.
And that threw me into a bunch of trauma and chaos.
And I didn't like my dad, but I loved
him and I didn't want to see him die.
And so over the course of the next, I'd say 20 months,
my professional life was taking off once again.
There was a really cool stuff happening,
but my personal life was taking a nosedive.
So my dad is gone, of course.
And then, my mom who was the decent, normal, kind parent
more or less sued me and my brother and sister
for the inheritance that my father
left the three of us, his kids.
And I just felt betrayed and lost.
And at the time, I took it really, really hard
and I stopped talking to my mom for about six months.
And in retrospect, I mean I see that as a very unhealthy way
of her dealing with grief.
But I couldn't really disassociate the two,
so I just took it very personally.
And there were some other things that surrounded that,
and so that led to about a six month
dissolution of my relationship with my mother, which
is really, really hard for me.
And then my girlfriend of six years
who I live with for 5 and 1/2, she broke up
with me as well because I just wasn't
a great partner at the time and I was very traumatized.
I was having a difficult time living life.
And so, I lost three major people all at one time
and I just felt scared, and lost,
and nobody loved me or cared about me.
And in the beginning of 2011, I was about six weeks
from my 27th birthday.
It was back in college.
I went back late.
I was having a hard time getting to class.
I was having a hard time doing my work, like my job
work, my employment.
And the symptoms of the depression and anxiety,
which I still didn't know that I had,
were a bit out of control where I couldn't eat or sleep.
And I would cry all the time and I couldn't really
go anywhere or do anything.
And I had no vocabulary around mental health and wellness.
And so, I started thinking about suicide pretty frequently,
to the point right I nearly attempted
in the middle of February 2011.
And I'll cut this.
I'll make the story a little bit briefer than usual
for a good reason.
But basically, I realized that I needed to get help.
In that moment where I nearly ended my life,
I was like wait a minute.
Something isn't right here.
I don't think I want to die.
I just don't think I want to feel the way I'm feeling.
And that was confirmed.
And actually, just a little side note.
I connect to people who identify as suicide attempt survivors.
And not all of them speak English.
Brown, black, white.
Speak different languages, have different abilities.
And the one thing-- as diverse as that group is all over
the world--
as diverse as that group is, there's
one thing that we have in common and that is that none of us
wanted to die.
We just didn't want to feel that way we were feeling.
And so for me and for many of us who identify that way,
I needed to get help and I needed
to learn how to cope and live and move
through life differently than what I had been accustomed to.
And so first, I reached out for help
from my mom who became my mom again.
Very fortunate that that happened.
I called her on the phone and she helped me.
And that was an amazing conversation
and she just really affirmed that my life was
important to her, and that she was there for me.
And then, I took note of different crisis hotlines
just in case I needed them.
And from there, I was regularly--
I started checking in.
I had to de-isolate.
You are the-- and I had to reach out
to the good people, kind, healthy, compassionate.
Ditched the negative ones because you
are the company that you keep.
I had to get creative.
I just started tapping into my creativity.
I got into counseling therapy through my university.
I was very, very lucky that I vibed with that counselor
from jump, from the beginning.
Very, very fortunate.
I started researching neuroscience
and how to develop new neural pathways.
And I discovered that helping people in the very little ways
that I could at the time was something
that would help keep me buoyant and was a very healthy
and useful coping skill.
By helping other people, I'd be helping myself in a way
as well.
And spirituality and a variety of other things.
And so, this is where we jump off of the back of the truck
here on the story and we enter into a little bit more
of the educational side of things.
And so, I want to do a little screen share in a minute.
But this is really where I learned
for myself and for all of us that mental health is so very
important.
And I needed to pay attention to my mental health
to be vigilant over my mental health
to be able to live happy, healthily,
fulfilled because I never really paid attention
to my mental health and wellness prior to that.
And if I were to continue on living and living
healthy and well and make it through
any other difficult times that may have come my way--
And this was my mindset in 2011 and it still is.
But I was like, I needed to pay attention to my mental health.
Well, here's the thing.
So I talk about mental health, and wellness,
and suicide prevention 50 to 60 times per year
all over the world.
And it's interesting when I get a chance to do a talk
or and a breakout session or whatever
at a middle school or a high school,
I'll do this very brief exercise towards the beginning.
And I'll say all right, everyone.
By a raise of hands, how many people in a room
have mental health?
And about half the room raises their hands.
There's a couple of peer pressure hands raised.
And most people look kind of confused.
And I say you know what?
It's a trick question.
Everybody has mental health.
And so, this is where we move to the screen share.
Because mental health is a person's
psychological and emotional well-being.
It's how we handle the ups and downs of life.
That's it.
Think about it as nourishment even, if you'd like.
Mental nutrition.
And I don't just mean food, but how we manage and nourish
our brains.
And so, if mental health is not what we think
it is, what is it?
Well, let me tell you what real quick what it's not.
It's not necessarily a mental illness and that's one
of the big issues that I run into is a lot of folks
think that because the word mental is
in both mental health and mental illness,
that they're one of the same and they're not.
Mental illness can affect your mental health,
but mental illness is not necessarily
mental health in and of itself.
Mental health is not necessarily debilitating.
In fact, it can be very positive.
We talk so often when we talk mental health about how screwed
up or what the bad thing is.
And we talk about the struggle versus the hustle.
And the healthy side of things--
So I want to dive into that in a few,
but it's not your mental health.
Whatever the state of it is in, whether healthy or unhealthy
or somewhere in between, it's not
a character flaw or weakness.
Neither are my mental illnesses character flaws or weakness.
In fact, I would call them a strength.
First of all, I did nothing to get these things.
I did nothing to bring depression or anxiety
into my life.
These are things that either I was born with
or that have been put upon me.
So either genetic or they are results of life experiences,
or both.
And so either way, I did nothing to get these things.
And so I'd call them points of strength
because I have to work so hard at times to manage life
and to move through these things.
And so, I would call them points of strength, in fact.
So I just want to let people know
that whatever you're dealing with,
I truly believe that we're all doing the best we can
at any given point with the information that we have.
And so, we're all--
all of us have points of strength
and have some tremendous abilities.
And we don't always know that they're inside of us.
What is it?
It affects everybody.
Everybody has mental health, as I mentioned.
It's a little different for everyone, for sure.
Like what?
Some people have music.
Music can contribute to a positive healthy mental health,
a state of mental.
But I might want to listen to anything.
Kanye or James Taylor.
And you might prefer death metal or you might prefer opera.
Fine.
Do you.
I'm not going to tell you got to listen to Kanye or James Taylor
to have positive and a healthy state of mental health.
You do what works best for you, as long
as it's on the healthier side of things.
So it is.
It's a little different everybody.
It certainly takes time and energy to develop.
As I mentioned at the top, even in the past three weeks,
I've learned about the disconnect
between my brain and my body and how to bridge that gap more
effectively.
So I'm still learning myself on an experiential level
and that's exciting for me because I
get to find new ways to find my wellness, and find my health,
and to live happier and healthier more fulfilled.
So you might think of it as being something
that's a little daunting.
But once you get cooking in certain ways,
it can be it can get really exciting to be
able to develop new skills to effect
positive health and wellness.
It certainly has to do with biology, life experience,
family history.
There's a history on the mental illness side which
affects your mental health.
As I mentioned, I have my--
turned out, I found out my grandfather, my dad's dad,
was diagnosed-- and I only found this out with the past two
years that he was diagnosed with late schizophrenia
and post-traumatic stress.
And so, I have a history of mental illness and also
my aunt, my dad's sister who's no longer with us
either due to cancer not because of anything else,
but she also lived with mental illness.
So I have that history on that side of my family.
And so, that certainly affects me for sure.
Life experience, absolutely.
And family history.
I told you I grew up in an abusive household
due to my father.
So all these things certainly have different effects person
to person.
I want to dive into-- and I'm going
to explain what this means, this mental health
meter, for a minute, because I think we often do not
know how to measure our mental health and wellness
and what state we're in.
And we don't always know how to describe it.
And it just takes time to learn about it
and to do differently to better for our individual selves.
But I hear some misnomers and I hear different things
enough to where I think it's important to address this.
First of all, there's two ways I want to unwrap this.
And then, I'll explain what this meter is.
First, I hear people say things like,
oh the weather is so bipolar.
And my cat's so schizophrenic.
And I'm OCD because I like to have three erasers on my desk.
And I'm totally willing to unwrap the OECD
piece, for sure.
Chances are you, you don't have OCD
with needing to have three erasers on your desk.
The OCD manifests itself much differently
than that more often than not.
And in some turns, it can be very debilitating
depending on how it manifests and how you're managing.
And then as far as your cat being schizophrenic
and the weather being bipolar, it's not.
Your cat's not schizophrenic.
Let's not front here.
The important thing to know with that
is first of all, if we're calling the cat schizophrenic
and the weather bipolar, then we don't actually
know what bipolar or schizophrenia actually means.
In a way-- not on purpose, necessarily--
but we are marginalizing the experience of someone
who is going through-- who does live
with schizophrenia or bipolar.
And so, we need to be a little more mindful about what they're
going through what they're dealing with
and not make light of it, per se.
And then, the other way I want to unwrap this for a moment
is I'll hear people say things like, the Dodgers lost the NLCS
and I got a C on my quiz today, and my girlfriend
yelled at me this morning, and I'm so depressed.
Now, I'm totally going to sit with you
and I'm going to unwrap that.
And I'm going to ask questions and I'm
going to listen and see if you truly
are feeling a depressed state, a state of depression.
But chances are you're probably having
a bad day, more than likely.
So you can certainly be experiencing a bad day.
You could be experiencing something situational.
Situational crisis or trauma having had to move,
a breakup, COVID-19, things like that.
So it's situational or you can be experienced
something a little more chronic, like an illness
or condition, depression, bipolar, fibromyalgia,
kidney disease, heart disease, stuff like that.
So you can experience any of these at one time.
You can experience all of these or all
of these at any given point.
So if you see on the left hand side,
it's a little more yellow if you're
seeing the same color as I am.
And on the right hand side of each meter,
it's a little more orange.
And so, I'd like to think that the yellow is
a little more calm and the orange is a little more danger,
I guess or the feeling of crisis perhaps.
And so, it's really important to know like where you are feeling
and what you're experiencing on any one of these meters
or all of them at any given point.
And just to start asking yourself questions
and start checking in with your body and your brain to know.
Because when we know what we're dealing with, then we can then
we can then we can provide the appropriate tool
to help manage that situation, or manage that mindset,
or manage those emotions.
If we don't know what we're dealing with,
then we're going to--
we're going to always--
all we're going to have maybe is a hammer
and we think that when we have a hammer
that everything is a nail.
And it turns out we might need a screwdriver.
You might need a saw.
You might need a wrench.
So we might need different tools depending on the situation.
So it's important to know what we're dealing with
and what we're managing.
And then, we can find the appropriate resource
or the appropriate way to help ourselves.
So moving forward, that's really, really
why it's so important to talk about coping mechanisms
and skills next, and how we cope and how we manage.
And coping skills are simply a combination of different tools
to help you manage the things that life throws your way.
And all of us have coping mechanisms and skills,
whether we are intentional about them or a lot of times,
I think we can be unintentional about how we cope.
Certain coping mechanisms can be healthy
and some can be unhealthy.
And so, it's important to know which side of that spectrum
we're sitting on when we're using a coping mechanism
or skill.
And if anyone is a gamer-- and I used to be a gamer as a kid
and I can't really anymore because I get too involved
and you might not see me for a couple weeks.
When I was a kid, we had--
I had a Super Nintendo, and a Sega, and a Nintendo 64
at varying points.
And so, at certain games we had these cheat codes.
And so, it could be whatever.
Up, up, down.
B, Y. Left, right.
Whatever that means or whatever the code was.
And so, that code would let you beat the level faster,
would you maybe let you go to the boss
to beat the boss at the end quicker.
It might make you invincible for 15 seconds
and might make you bigger, stronger, faster or whatever.
And to me, that's what coping mechanisms and skills are.
When I employ-- when I learn coping mechanisms and skills
and I'm able to employ them, I'm able to skip certain levels.
I'm able to move through things faster, healthier,
more efficiently.
And so for me, coping mechanisms and skills
are cheat codes for my life in a good way and in a healthy way.
Some things to know about healthy coping skills.
They're different for everybody.
I'm not going to tell you you have
to do one thing or another.
I mean, for sure, we need a support system.
We need to be as active as we can to get our blood moving
in different ways.
That doesn't mean you have to run a marathon.
It could just be going for a walk.
So we need to be active.
We need to have a support system and we
need to talk about our stuff.
And then, there's a variety of other things
that fall in between.
And I'm always going to give a template, rather than a paint
by numbers way to do things.
There's no one size fits all, as I mentioned.
It can be modified and changed at any given time.
Many of the things that I do now for my coping mechanisms
and skills I've been doing since age 28, when I first
learned about how to manage life and I
learned about mental health and I learned about mine.
But there's new things that I do.
I'm growing plants now in my house and that's pretty cool.
I have new people in my life who I consider
part of my support system.
I have a pet guinea pig called Harriet because I can
and because it's really healthy for me.
So there's a variety of different things that I do
and that I've done for a long time.
And there's new things that I do now
that are very helpful and useful.
And here are some categories.
Healthy support system.
That's huge.
We all need a support system and there's
different ways to unwrap that.
And I'll tell you this.
I do believe that your support systems should
be largely human, for sure.
But your pets can be a part of your support system.
Your primary care physician can be part of your support system.
Your school community on whatever level.
And at this point, it's going to be on Zoom or on FaceTime even.
So that's going to be part of your support system, as well.
But your healthy support system can
be comprised of a lot of different things
healthy distractions, for sure.
For me, that involves--
one of my healthy distractions actually
is practicing gratitude.
And let me briefly explain what that means.
And there's a lot of different ways
that we can practice gratitude.
But for me, practicing gratitude means
it's part of my morning routine and it helps distract me
from the negative noise and the anxiety and depression,
especially when I first wake up.
And so, what I do is I take note in my journal of the things
that I'm grateful for.
And that could be something big and it
could be something small.
Coffee, the babies in my life.
I have some nieces and nephews who are babies.
I'm able to blink.
I'm able to walk.
I'm able to talk.
Even things that seem super mundane
because it's easy for the negative side of things
and things that we feel like we're lacking in
and we're deficient in, for me and my conditions especially,
it can be very easy for me to focus on that.
And instead, I can't necessarily focus on that all the time
because it's not healthy for me.
And so, what it does is actually allows me to be grateful,
but it actually puts things in perspective
and allows me to realize that things are not
as bad as maybe what they seem to be,
especially when I'm only focusing on the bad.
And in fact actually, there's been some--
I've read some research recently that states
that consistent practicing gratitude actually
boosts chemicals in your brain.
Looked like serotonin, dopamine, and neuro epinephrine.
And those-- just long story short.
I'm not going to dive into all that too much.
But just to say that those in part help boost your mood.
And so, I know that I and my mood
needs some boosting on the daily,
especially with what's happening right now.
So if I can get ahead by doing stuff like that, for sure.
Relaxation, self care.
Gotta do that.
There's been a couple days in the past couple weeks
where my anxiety has washed over me tremendously so.
And I'm type A and I like to be really, really productive.
And I've got a book coming out and I've got this happening.
And I want to do more online events.
I want to be helpful and I want to do this and that.
And those few days where the anxiety is washed over me,
I've had to pull out all my bag of tricks
and really just work on managing those feelings
and managing my health and wellness.
And instead of really focusing on being super productive,
I just got to pay attention to my health on those days.
And so, I'm doing jumping jacks and sit ups and push ups
to boost my mood.
And I'm going for a walk and I'm calling in with friends
to get some help, but also to be of help if they need it
or want it.
So there's certain days where self care is going
to be tremendously important.
And I know, too, that if I'm running on empty,
there's no way that I can possibly
hope to try to fill someone else's cup.
If my cup is running low or on empty,
I can't be of best service to other people.
So I really do need to focus on refilling my cup.
Service based activities, amazing.
This idea of helping other people, but doing so in part
to help yourself.
I've read enough research on this as well
and it almost seems counterintuitive.
Like, why would I help somebody when I need help?
Well, you can go after both in a way, but being of service
is one of the quickest ways to find self-confidence,
self-esteem, self-worth.
And in fact, it does help you boost your mood.
Not forever.
It has a finite period of time, but that's pretty incredible
that can have that effect on your brain and on your body.
Energetic activities or exercises,
lots of ways to unwrap that.
I know personally, most of my energetic activities
involves going for a walk, going for several walks in the day.
I also know I want to get my heart rate moving,
but my body isn't always ready to do
that every day because of the anxiety and depression I'm
living with.
Things you consume, reducing your workload,
setting boundaries.
Things like that.
So I want to dive into this for a moment and it really just--
This could read how to help a person, in general,
like somebody is having a hard time.
But this is important because I think all of us
know somebody who's having a hard time in a variety of ways,
whether they're in crisis, whether they're
in suicidal crisis, or whether they're having a mental health
breakdown, or whether they're having a bad day.
And so, this is important.
I like to call this help offering behavior
and how to unwrap this.
And this will translate to a variety
of different ways, a variety of different scenarios.
Interpersonal relationships-- for the basis--
when somebody comes to me, first of all,
and they say I'm having a hard time and I need to talk to you,
I'm like OK.
So time out.
I'm here for you.
I got you, but would you like me to listen?
Would you like advice?
Would you like me to scream, yell, hold you?
What is it and how can I be of best service
to you in this moment?
And then that way, I'm not presupposing
what that person needs and dishonoring their dignity
and their personhood.
A lot of times when people come to others and ask for--
they say I need to come to you for this
or that, the other person is like well,
I now am in fix it mode.
And nobody can fix another person.
It's impossible.
You can't do it.
It's never happened in the history of the universe.
And I've tried to do that in the past
and it's had very, very poor results.
And so, the best thing that we can do beyond that
is to listen, listen, listen, and listen some more.
Just because somebody is coming to you and having a hard time,
doesn't mean you have to know everything.
Doesn't mean that there's a power imbalance.
Because at some point, the tables might turn
and you might be the person who needs help.
And so, you wouldn't want somebody
intentionally or unintentionally lauding that over you and being
a know it all or whatever you perceive that to be.
So listen, listen, listen, and listen some more.
You're listening for clues, also.
It's active listening.
That might keep them grounded.
That might make them feel important, that they matter.
So you want to validate their experience and just say hey,
I just hear you.
And that sucks.
That's awful.
Whatever the words are.
So validating that whatever they're going through
is really, really difficult. And then
also, validating them from a strength based place,
like I just want to applaud you for just reaching
out and trusting me with that information,
for honoring me with your trust, for suiting up and showing up
and continuing to show up for our friendship,
for our relationship, whatever.
Just come in from a strength based place
because it will allow that person to feel seen and heard
and somewhat understood.
And that's just massive.
All of us want to feel that.
And so of course, no judgment.
I don't even know if that needs to be said,
but it's important to put that up.
Empathy versus sympathy.
Sympathy is a little more like I feel so bad for you,
which kind of feels like pity.
Whereas empathy is more like I feel you.
I'm with you.
So I much prefer empathy over sympathy,
and it's you putting yourself in their shoes for a moment.
Be explicit on some level how important they are to you,
whether it's their life or just who they are.
And not is shaming way per se, but just
like you're incredible and amazing.
And this is just my perception of you
and this is how I see you.
And it doesn't mean that they have
to see themselves in the same way that you see them,
but just to let them know that somebody in this world
sees them as the incredible human being that they are.
I think that can go a long way.
It plants the seed.
Making sure that they're safe, for sure,
that there is nothing that they can harm themselves
with if they're in that deep of a crisis.
And then of course, assisting or referring to professional help.
You can't keep it a secret if that's
you know if they ask you to.
Or if that's your impetus, you have to tell somebody.
It's important that you as the helper also have support.
So we need multi-tiered layers of support.
What happens if that person relies on you seven days
a week, but you're away from your phone on a Thursday?
So that person needs multi-tiered layers of support
and so do you.
So I just want to put a couple of Cerritos College resources
up on the screen.
And there's mental health counseling services
up here for sure.
Monday through Thursday 8:00 to 4:30, Friday 8:00 to 1:00.
You've got some stuff.
Varied supports.
They have a COVID-19 page, which has
some really amazing academic resources, mental health
resources, and variety of things.
Just some nice words from the college.
National suicide prevention hotline
is not a Cerritos College resource.
It's national, but they do filter in locally.
And the reason that I put this up there
is because I recently got word-- and I
know people who work in the national side of this hotline.
And they know that people are struggling
and having a difficult time.
And so, they've basically extended their resource
to people who are not necessarily suicidal,
but who are having a hard time.
And I think that's beautiful that they--
you can call for yourself.
You can call for a friend.
You can call if you need additional resources
if you don't know what to say or to do.
So that's a pretty great resource.
Crisis text line is up there, as well.
Trevor Project is on there as well and that's LGBT.
But if you call them and you happen to be heterosexual,
cisgender, they're not going to hang up on you.
They'll be helpful to you.
So I want to wine down briefly.
And then, I'll see what we have as far as the Q&A.
And oh, I wanted to mention that extension 2321 is
to reach student health.
So I'm going to put that on the slide.
2321.
I'm going to put this--
I'm going to screen share this one more
time so that it will be as part of the recording.
And so, you can go back and annotate this or do whatever
it is you need for that.
But winding down, I want to offer two challenges.
And I like these challenges because I also get
to take them along with you.
And I need to hear them, and hear them, and hear them again.
And the first piece is a quote.
It's a Mahatma Gandhi quote.
He's often regarded as the father of modern India.
And I love this quote and we don't often get context.
You've heard this before, but it's
be the change you wish to see in the world.
And I love that because to me, my context
it says if you don't like something, change it.
If you think it has always been this way, it has not.
Why can't I, why can't you, why can any of us
be the spark that lights the fire to change this world?
And so to me, that also means don't let anyone ever tell you
that you're not big enough, brown enough, talented
enough, short enough, tall enough, anything enough.
You're more than enough to be the change
that you wish to see in the world,
whether that's state government, local government, student
government, personal relationships, whatever
the nature of the thing is that you want to see change in.
You have the opportunity.
Oh, well Josh, I'll be the change.
I'll be somebody when I graduate.
No, you're somebody now.
You're somebody now.
We need you now.
We need your lived experience, and your
lived expertise, and what you've been through, and who you are,
and your unique sets of talents and abilities now.
You are the person you've been looking for your entire life.
The second piece, the second challenge,
is to tell your story.
Speak up, speak out, and speak often.
We don't always know how much our story can effect
positive change, save a life.
We don't always know, but our words and our experiences
have so much power.
And there's so much in our story.
And you might think-- and I've heard this before.
And I'll speak in a metaphor, but I've heard people--
I've heard somebody say to me at one of our presentations Josh
man, you've been through all this wild stuff in your life
and you've had these wild experiences.
And it almost feels like you've been
through this bloody open wound whereas I,
the person who's speaking to me, whereas I only have this
hang nail.
That's all I'm dealing with.
It feels silly to even bring it up and talk about.
I'm like, I feel you.
I feel you, like the hangnail thing.
You might feel awkward or weird because it
doesn't feel big enough, but here's the thing.
There might be other people in this room
or on the Zoom call right now who have a hangnail
and they might feel weird talking about or describing it,
and they might feel silly.
But you bring it up and all of a sudden,
now there's this opportunity for connection,
or for loyalty, or for trust, or to share resources.
And you had no idea previously.
And now, you do.
And so, there's this incredible opportunity
to have all these different things
and for you to change and save a life, and maybe perhaps
your own.
And I'll tell you this, as well.
Hangnail, when I was eight years old,
my depression was a bit of a hangnail.
It wasn't super serious.
But because I waited 20 years to get a diagnosis,
it became a bloody open wound.
So tell your story and speak up, and speak out, and speak often
because your story is important and it matters and so do you.
So thank you so very much, Cerritos College, everyone
on this Zoom experience, on this chat.
Really, really, really appreciate it.
And I want to see if we have anyone asking questions.
Umberto is back.
- It's me.
- Playing the host, very well I might add.
- Thank you, Josh.
Yeah.
And thank you again for your story for sharing it.
I think that's something to be said
that we help can happen when people make contact and come
into contact with each other and empathize.
So I really liked a lot of what you shared with us today.
And just just wanted to open it up for those in the crowd.
If you have anything to ask, it could be Josh.
Could be myself.
Please feel free to leave a question in the chat and we
can open it up.
- So this one of the-- one thing that I get sometimes that
I'll dive in on that I'm seeing here is what do I do
if a friend doesn't want to get help.
And I think that's an important question.
And so, there's a couple of things around that
that I think can be very important.
And here's a few.
First of all, somebody comes to you and--
actually, you go to somebody else
and you go to another person.
You recognize they might need help.
And so, you express that to them.
Well first of all, I think it's important to start off
with a conversation rather than starting to ask questions
and talking about what you're noticing,
rather than immediately making a statement like, I've seen this
and this is what you need because their version--
what they might need for help could be a little bit different
than what you're prescribing.
And so, that can be that can be difficult. The other one,
not everybody wants to talk.
What if they don't want to talk to you?
Well, then I'll ask them OK.
Is there somebody who you might feel
comfortable-- somebody else who you might feel comfortable
talking to?
So if you don't feel comfortable talking to me,
is there somebody else you might feel comfortable talking to?
And so then, we get to have that more--
even if they don't say a name or a person,
that gives us another direction to take the conversation
and you get to ask new and different questions.
Sometimes, people feel more comfortable being on the move
and doing an activity before they're ready to open up.
And I found this and this is not a hard and fast rule.
But I've seen sometimes where, especially young men,
they don't want to talk.
But then, they might--
it might be let's just go play basketball.
Let's go play cards.
Let's go.
And then, they'll say one thing or they'll do something.
And that'll give you that opening to then open up
the conversation.
Also, there's sometimes people will say,
well Josh I want my friend to get into therapy
or I want them to go to a professional in one way, shape,
or form.
And I'm like, that's cool.
That's amazing that you can recognize that.
So let me ask you this question, talking to the person.
And I say, have you ever been to therapy?
No, I've never been to counseling therapy.
Maybe you should go to counseling therapy,
even if you don't necessarily feel like you need it.
But if you do that, then you can express
the merits of counseling and what it does
and what it looks like and what it sounds like.
Because how could you recommend something
with full trust from the other person
if you've never necessarily gone through it yourself?
That's not a hard and fast rule either,
but I feel like sometimes people more so appreciate
when you can speak about something
from a position of authority.
And that is just having that lived experience of I've
been to a counselor.
And let me tell you.
The first half an hour first time you go,
you got to fill out all this paperwork which sucks.
So want to let you know that that's possible.
And then, talk to this person but not that person
because they might have a preference about that.
Who knows?
So I think it's important often that if we
want to see somebody display a specific behavior--
whether that's speaking, whether that's being vulnerable,
whether it's going to a counselor--
we need to display the behavior ourself first.
So I hope that's a little bit helpful
in terms of helping somebody who may not necessarily
want to receive help initially.
- Yeah.
That's great.
And I also want to add that it's sometimes
it is a matter of planting the seed.
And sometimes, that change isn't going to happen right away.
And something that's a powerful saying I am here for you.
And that is something that my wife,
who's also a psychologist, often recommends as well.
And she's actually technically in attendance right now.
But we're here for you and I think
that's especially true now.
We may be practicing physical distancing, not necessarily
social distancing.
But there is always an opportunity to connect.
Connect and plant the seed.
And I thought that was a good point, Josh,
about what you had said earlier about making people change.
That's an uphill battle.
But planting the seed and showing you care, that isn't.
- For sure.
Good point.
Just making sure I'm--
I think that was it for our questions.
But certainly, I know Umberto is available.
I'm a resource.
I'm happy to be a resource.
My information was on some of those slides.
So I'm always happy to be a resource.
Umberto through the college, for sure,
is a pretty wonderful resource as well.
So I think you can reach out to either one of us
on the appropriate channels.
Yeah.
Thank you, again.