Transcript of The Hidden Struggles of Overachievers: High-Functioning Depression Explained! | Mel Robbins

I would love to have you walk me through a day in the life of somebody that struggles with high functioning depression. What does this person look like at work?

At work, this person may be delivering, but they may not necessarily derive joy from the work. They may be someone who feels that, You know what? This work can't be done right by anyone but me. They are highly controlling, right? No one else can do it. One of the things I see is that they're tied, Their identities are tied to their work, so they may not even know what they really enjoy anymore. Maybe years ago, they were into photography, maybe they were into art. Now, they don't even want to do those things because right now, they're focused on their roles. It's not just people in the workplace. This is for caretakers at home, people taking care of young kids who may not have to leave the house to work because their work is at home. They may be so tied into what they're doing for others that they don't know that they lack joy. They may have with sleep, so their sleep isn't as rich. They don't feel refreshed. They may not find joy in food. Either they're eating too much or eating too little. They may have problems with focusing, so their concentration really is a challenge for them.

They may have low energy. You have all these symptoms of something that looks like a depression, but you don't identify as having low functioning. You're actually delivering, maybe overdelivering. You may not even identify with the distress because you don't deal with those feelings It's something that you don't process, you don't validate yourself. You're not someone who will meet criteria. If a doctor sees you, they're going to say, Well, you don't really meet criteria. Here's the thing about medicine. It's a bit controversial, but I think that a lot of doctors and nurses and healthcare workers struggle with this thing called high function depression. I think it's hard for them to diagnose something in someone because it looks like them. They're going to be like, Well, I don't want to diagnose you because that's pathologizing me. There's this There's a projection that happens that, Hey, if you're functioning and you're delivering, come back to me when you're not. I think that's a broken model because I think that we're missing these people that we could catch before they go into crisis mode, before they develop poor coping skills, before they have physical breakdowns because the body is going to give somewhere or before they have mental breakdowns.

How do you discern, though? Because if somebody has that schedule, I would think the schedule is what's making them have terrible sleep and poor eating habits and a lack of hobbies and a feeling of disconnection. It seems like this has been very easily missed because you think the work habits are the cause when actually the work habits are a symptom of this. Is that what you're saying?

That's why the biopsychosocial model is so important. The social component of that model is what is the society doing? What's happening in our society that's driving this? It's not all It's logical because the biopsychosocial model is real. A lot of components feed into the symptom. They feed into the condition. We have to look at it from that holistic picture or else we're going to miss the mark.

What should you never do if you are struggling with high functioning depression?

Never think that you're a burden. I hear this all the time. Because we'll get to a point where you feel like, I can't It's not going to go anymore. Something's got to give. Don't think that you're a burden. You may think that your identity, all you have is what you do, how you perform, what you deliver for others. People love you. They don't want you to think that you're a burden. They want you to ask for help. They want you to say, Listen, I know I'm always there for you, but I really need to tell you something. They're just waiting for you. But if you don't allow yourself to share, if you don't allow yourself to feel worthy of that, of being heard, if you don't validate yourself, then no one can help you, no one can be there for you. I hear this a lot like, Oh, I just felt like I was a burden. I tell my patients, Let's think of another time in your life where you were feeling this. I call it high functioning IAF. Let's look back.

That sounds sexier than depression. I think we have a branding problem with depression. I think you should call it high functioning IAF. Okay, I like that.

I call it that on my social media. But look at a time in your life where you were high functioning AF. We'll pull out the smartphones and we'll go back and I'll say, Okay, show me that picture. If the people in your life, because there'll be pictures of them being around others, do you think that if you had opened up to them then, that they would have said you were a bird Because it looks like you just met up with them the week after. Do you think you were burdening them? You're challenging that core belief that if you're not perfect, if you don't deliver, if you ask for help, that you're not lovable. You're challenging that. I I ask them to challenge that thought. I also ask them to try and process the trauma because I find that, again, the word trauma, it's a word that people are, Oh, trauma, again. But there are big traumas and little traumas, and there are little traumas that we just don't acknowledge. For example, a lot of the questionnaires for trauma, like the aces and the modified aces, they don't capture things like, Well, when I was a little boy or a little girl, people teased me because they said I was gay.

Things like that are not there. But those are traumas because you couldn't be your full self. Of course. Or things like, When I came to this country without anything, clothes or anything, and I was hungry. People don't think about those things, the scarcity traumas. They just don't process it. They're like, Well, I'm just lucky to be here. No, these are traumas. We have to allow ourselves to look back in our past and acknowledge these emotional experiences that impacted the way that we see ourselves and the way that we approach the world and others. When we If we do acknowledge that and we validate that, then we can start to do something about it.

I'm just taking this all in. I feel empowered by everything that you're sharing with us, Dr. Joseph. Let's take a quick pause and give you a chance to hear a word from our sponsors that are bringing you the amazing Dr. Judith Joseph at zero cost. Don't go anywhere. We'll be waiting for you after a short break. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. You and I are here with the Dr. Judith Joseph. Dr. Joseph, Talk to us about scarcity trauma. What is it? Can you explain how it impacts somebody through the generations?

Absolutely. People don't realize that the little things they do could be rooted in scarcity trauma. It's when you have a history of a lack of resources. You may not have realized that how this impacted you. Maybe you were very little, but your parents still behaved in a way that any day now, resources could run out. You may do things that are illogical, like not wearing things that you just bought. They're just hanging out in the closet with the tag on. Or holding on to expired food that clutter your life and caused distress. You're like, Why are my cabinets full of all this? Or having a hard time getting rid of clothes that doesn't really... You don't wear them anymore. You hold on to these things because on an unconscious, unprocess level, you're afraid that any minute things will be lost. You'll lose it all. People engage in these behaviors with a scarcity mindset out of trauma of not having resources. It's not just immigrants. I see it in people whose parents or grandparents, there's generational trauma. If their grandparents were refugees or survivors of war, or if personally, maybe they had resources, but they went through a really bad business period where they went bankrupt or a divorce, and they're afraid of losing it all.

They behave in these irrational ways that are Some are responses, so they hoard. Some people do the opposite. They spend too much. I've seen this a lot where it's like, I'm not accustomed to having abundance, so I'll just spend. So you're like, Wait, you have all this money, and then you just lost it. Well, I'm not accustomed to having it. There are all these odd symptoms that don't really impact a person's life in the way they want it to, so they really hurt them and cause the stress. Another thing I see is emotional scarcity. In a lot of these families where they're just focused on survival, There's not a lot of talking about emotions. What's that?

Or warmth. Anybody grew up in a very cold family.

There's emotional scarcity. You see all these ways that a lack of resources impacts a family, a generation, and it gets passed on. If you're someone who's like, Wait, I have those things, look back at your family. It could have been coming from generations where they didn't have much or they fled war. There was something that led to that mindset, or it could be something present day, like a divorce or a hard financial Then it's like, wait, you come from scarcity. You have these unconscious fears that you haven't processed. Let's start to challenge it. What's the worst thing that'll happen if you start decluttering your purse? Let's throw away some of those receipts. Let's start to give some of that clothes to charity They actually want to do these things, but they need help. Exposure therapy, it's a form of cognitive behavioral therapy where you slowly challenge the fares, and so we slowly start to give things away. People feel very anxious sometimes a lot of times about it, but they have to understand that these behaviors are rooted in these unwarranted fears due to a history of scarcity. If you know where it comes from, then you're going to be like, Okay, I can actually challenge this a bit more.

I can live for today. We talk a lot about happiness and the idea of happiness. People are living for the future, a future that's not promised. So how do you be happier today?

Well, what I love about this topic is I think it's very relatable. I also, whether you're talking about it on the physical side of things that you're holding on to from this lack of resources or whether it is an inability to talk about feelings or express feelings or express warmth and be affection with each other because of the scarcity of that in your family, I can see how that pattern gets passed down and passed down and passed down and passed down. One of One of the things that I really like about what you're saying and giving it a name is that you realize, Oh, this isn't me. This is a pattern from history that I am now reenacting that is not mine to own. It's mine to complete for this family, so I don't pass it on, and I don't cause myself the distress. I come from a long line of farmers, and my grandmother, I would open up her fridge when we would visit in the summer, and it was always really dimly lit. You want to talk about expired food? When you have a farm and you're taking care of all these animals and you're growing produce, you do not throw anything away.

I couldn't understand why until I worked with a therapist and realized, Oh, this is like, I can't throw anything out. It means I'm bad. It means I'm not a good person, if you're wasteful, if you're this. And then I've now gone in the other direction, which is I barely have anything in my fridge. Those light bulbs are always brand new, so I can see everything in there. And I really relate to what you're talking about. And I think we're going to get a lot of questions about this. So if you're somebody who is listening to this, and they're shaking their head, they're going, I do that. I do that. Yeah, I don't wear my nice clothes ever because I I'm afraid something's going to happen. I'm afraid to go out to dinner because I'm afraid I'm going to lose my money again. I'm afraid to celebrate. It's all going to go away. What is one step that somebody can take other than recognizing that this is a very real thing to start to take control of their life again.

I love that example of the farmers because farmers have such rich history. They go through so much and they don't process because the animals depend on them. The community depends on them. But their livelihood is so fragile because if they have a bad storm, if it's not a good season, guess what? It's all gone. So that scarcity mindset, that trauma is real.

Yeah. It's also where the emotional scarcity comes from because there's no dinner together until the chores are done. When you got 500 head of cattle to take care of and you're worried about the crops and everything else, there's no time for feelings.

A lot of eating behaviors around scarcity, if you can remember a family member They're saying, eat that food off the plate, and you're like, I'm not even hungry, but I'm just going to eat it. Many of us still do it. I can't see food waste. But that can lead to really unhealthy behaviors and unhealthy physiology. We want to think about all these ways that it's impacting us. It's not just being frugal or cheap. It's, is it causing distress? Being able to free yourself of it because you're able to name it, then you can do something about it. I want people to approach it in a very systematic way. You don't have to go and purge your entire home, but start to challenge that thought, that core belief that you're bad because you're wasteful. You're not wasteful. What's the evidence that you're wasteful? You used to be an attorney. Put that thought on the stand and really cross-examine that thought. What's the evidence that you're wasteful? What's the evidence that you're a bad person? It's It's not there. So slowly challenge it. Give away one thing. Throw away that one expired can. You're not going to eat it.

Start to see how that feels, and you can do it, but you have to be able to name it first.

I love that. I never even heard that term until I knew you were coming on and I started looking at your social media. I'm like, Scarcity? That's a thing. Then as I was watching your reels, I'm like, Oh, my God, that's a thing. There is a term for it. What is the term for why actually calling out what something is empowers you to change- It's called affect labeling.

Affect labeling.

This is not about diagnosing anything or anyone. It's about bringing the issues that are bothering you in your life, the issues that are bothering you in your life from the back of your subconscious mind out into the world and looking at it separately from yourself so that you can see it as a problem.

It's powerful to name name it because affect labeling, naming the feeling allows your body to be less afraid, less anxious. It's like if you were in a dark room and something fell and you didn't know what was there and you just started swinging because you're like, Oh, my gosh, Then you turn the light on, you're like a book fell. You're not going to be swinging because you know what it is. As someone who treats children and adults, we see how important it is to name the feeling with children. You have the feelings chart, and you spend all this time teaching them sad, happy. You want to be able to name the feelings for children because it allows them to control the outcome. But we somehow forget that along the way. Adults need that help, too. We need to name the feeling because when we know what we're dealing with, we're less anxious, we're less afraid. When you're afraid, you don't make good decisions, you make poor decisions.

One thing I just want to go on the record and say is that it is no joke to do things differently than your family does things. Not having a Tupperware drawer full of takeouts stuff, not having a fridge that is jam-pack, sitting at a family table and not eating everything on the plate because you're just are not hungry, it can feel like a gigantic act of defiance to your entire lineage. I think for some of us, when you're doing it in the privacy of your own space, it's one thing. But when you get inside the ecosystem, I just want to acknowledge it for me personally, People in my family feel offended if I'm doing something slightly different. Is that something that you see a lot, too?

I do. I see a lot of that, and I see a lot of, Well, I'm just doing it to be friendly to the Earth. It's very different to recycle versus to create clutter. You're not doing anyone a good when you do that. You're just passing on your trauma to someone else. To really be real with it and challenge it, if it makes you feel better that someone else is getting use out of it, give it if it's usable. But a lot of times, these are items that are just holds. Nobody wants that. It's just a really hard time letting go of certain things because of this unfounded fear that you could lose it all.

How would you describe the difference between therapy and spirituality and the work that you need to do in both areas?

That's right. Unfortunately, many people who are in the mental health field did not get trained to incorporate spirituality. Spirituality. There's research that shows on average, mental health professionals endorse a lower level of spirituality or religiosity than the general public. Really? Yes.

Why do you think that is?

Well, I think a part of that can go with higher levels of education that a lot of times people can disconnect as with education can feel like they need to prove everything. And spirituality is beyond our proving or our being able to manipulate it. It's not concrete. In the field of psychology, the founders in the field were often people of faith. But then there was this move in the field where we wanted to prove we're a science. If we want to prove that we're a science, then we can't talk about anything people find spooky or soft or in some other realm. Then there has been a neglect from it from that area. Then I think the other part of it has been the recognition that some people have been harmed in spiritual spaces. Then some therapists will over generalize and think that it is all harmful, as opposed to whenever you get people together together, you're going to have some good and some bad, some things that are healthy or unhealthy.

What is your definition of spirituality?

It is an awareness of the sacred beyond what we can see.

I love that definition. Now that we're on this topic, it occurs to me, how could you possibly heal without pulling faith and a belief that something that you have not experienced is possible?

That's it. 100 %. Because I even say to be a therapist, social worker, life coach, any of these things, you have to have faith. And for people to show up, there has to be a faith that there can be more than what I have seen and what I have experienced. It's like when I'm counseling people who have only had unhealthy relationships, and I have to say, just because this one is better doesn't mean it's good, right? If you're just used to bad treatment, if people call you back, you're like, Oh, they call me back. It's like, That was nice, but there's more, right? There's more.

Yes. We've started stepping toward this awareness. How do you combine the spiritual practice and the belief in something that you may have never experienced or seen with the work to start to heal, or as you say, reparent yourself in the physical That's right.

A part of it is what gives us the motivation to do the work because a lot of times we're operating based on evidence, which is what we've seen. If I've only had bad experiences, my parents abandoned me, this person left me, this person mistreated me. If I believe that is all that exists, then the conclusion would be, I am unworthy. That's the only possible conclusion because Because this idea, this victim blaming, self blaming of, If I deserved better, I would have received better. You will hear people blaming other people for being mistreated. They'll say, Oh, well, you must have allowed it. And so in order for me to come to a different conclusion that I am worthy of what I have not yet experienced, I have to have the belief of the more.

How the heck do you do that? When your whole life, you have experienced either abuse or mistreatment or discrimination or violence, how do you, when you have evidence that does make you feel unworthy because I'm sure you get these DMs and these emails all day long, so do we, of people who so want to believe that they are worthy, that something is better, that they can change your life for the better. And you and I can sit where we are and go, of course you can. I have just wait. I have so much evidence that it's possible. It's both spiritual and I could argue the case. Yes. But for somebody who is sitting in the disbelief, how do you cross over to believe?

It's a couple of levels. One of them is to get people to reflect on what do they believe all human beings deserve.

Well, I believe I'm a chicken, and all I see are chickens, and I believe I'm on the... You know what I'm saying? We go back to this. How do you possibly convince yourself that you could be an eagle if you've never seen one?

Yes. What What we connect with is disrupting what we call the cognitive distortions. That's a big word.

What is cognitive distortion?

So your false thought, the lies. The lies you told yourself and the lies other people told you.

What if If...

Let me give you an example of the lies. Okay, please. For people who were molested, they either were told directly or indirectly that that is their fault. That it's because they developed early, or it's because they shouldn't have been over there, or whatever it is, that somehow that's on you. We have to demonstrate that that is a lie. So how do I demonstrate that that is a lie? Does every girl who develops breast early deserve to be molested?

Of course not.

You You're not an exception to that rule.

Oh, I see. I can see another lie because I'm a survivor of that abuse. It's Shh. Don't tell anyone, or you'll get in trouble.

Yeah. What I learned about that, I say, for my own journey is I was taught that keeping quiet kept the peace until I realized, whose peace is it keeping?

Oh. Oh.

Right. The offender's at peace, the people who don't want to deal with it at peace, and I, in this little body, am holding all of the war. So I don't want to hold it anymore.

Wow. Yeah.

You know, this is what we're taught. You're going to upset things. You're going to upset people. Nobody wants to hear that. And yeah, there's no peace.

Whose peace are you keeping? Yeah. Yeah. You're making it easy for everybody else as it's slowly destroying you.

Absolutely. And often then they're doing it to multiple people. Over the course of years, the silence gives freedom for it to continue.

How do you counsel people who, in the process of starting to come back home to themselves, to learn to fly, to stop holding the peace for other people around you? How do you counsel people to then go back into their life? Let's just say it's a relationship where you have somebody that you're dating or in relationship with, and there's alcohol or drugs. You've had the conversation, you've gone around and around and around, and you're the one that's not saying anything, so you're keeping the peace for them. Right. How do you handle that disruption in your life now that you're starting to... Because it's scary. Yes, it is. The homecoming process can also be scary because you're going to have to confront things.

And it's going to require some losses. And some people are not going to be happy with the new you. People like the silent you. They like the compliant you. They like the doormat you. Who wouldn't like that? So when you start getting opinions and start getting your voice and not wanting to do some of the unhealthy things you've been doing, not everyone is going to celebrate. And that will be important for you to see who wants me whole and who prefers me broken. And then I will have to start making some adjustments. And there are a range of ways we can do it. So in the work chapter, we say there's one path for if I want to stay on this job and how do I restore myself, and there's another path where I need to leave this job. And in relationship with people, whether romantic or otherwise, some I will have to end, and some it will have to be different because I'm different, and there can be a grieving there.

Wow. In your new role, you are really wanting to bring access to therapy, to mental health support, to the process of a homecoming for people, to as many people as possible. What is therapy and why is it important?

Therapy is when you have a trained, licensed facilitator who understands how to journey with you from where you are back home to yourself without judgment and with compassion and without needing you to take care of them.

Oh, that last part was the big one.

That's the big one. That's why your friend is not the same thing. Your family member is not the same thing.

Wow. Yeah. I had always said objective and licensed, but the fact that you just said, you don't to take care of them.

That's right. Wow. Yeah. That's the huge part, especially for those of us who have tendencies toward taking care of people. Then in your other relationships, you'll say, I don't want to burden people, or I know they have a lot going on, so let me just pour into them. Well, this is the space where you don't have to give, you don't have to be on, you don't have to do that. I tell my clients, I'm good. I have space spaces outside of here that are for me, so you don't have to worry. I have the capacity to hold it, and that's what we need.

You also have the tools to help us recognize and call ourselves out where we're being a chicken, where we could be an eagle, and how to take flight.

And I will say it is so important to have the tools and the understanding because people who don't will often, let's say if you have a child who's depressed and their parents just call them lazy. Yes. They don't understand what they're looking at. That's a part of what's important as well is perspective and insight into what I'm seeing.

If somebody in your life is struggling, I'm just going to send my husband to therapy. Just going to send my kid to therapy. Does that work?

There It is a benefit of individual and family. Because I'll say, especially with children, what I saw when I first started was people would drop off their child, and I would spend an hour building this kid up, and then they pick them up, and in the parking lot, they're custing the kid out. They didn't even make it home. Are we just going to do this every week? Now I'm seeing what the real dynamic is. You With couples, I will say there is a part of our work that is individual. Let's say if I'm working with a sexual trauma survivor, there's a part that is that person's journey. But then there's a part for the couple to say, what will the intimacy be like for us given the history and how do we support each other and have patience with each other? I want to name as we're talking about people is not only self-care, but community care.

Let's talk about that. What does that even mean?

We heal in relationship to other people. There is something very liberating and healing in being known, like you reveal yourself and people still love you, that people still choose you, that you feel seen and heard and supported. There's emotional social support, which is like someone I can cry with, someone I can share my good news with, someone who I can vent to. But then there's also instrumental social support. Are there people who can help me in concrete, practical ways? It's important that we know which friend or family member is good at what. You may have a relative who's not touchy feely, right? They're not good with the tears, but they can help you find a job. That's another type of support.

I'm surprised and saddened by the number of people that will reach out when they hear you say that and say, I have no one. When you have somebody that you are working with who is telling themselves the story that I have no one, what are the rituals or the tools or the tactics? Because you give homework in this group. Every chapter has homework. I would imagine every counseling session that you do as a therapist has homework. So what would the homework be if you're somebody who says, I have no one?

Then one of our goals Our goals will be to make friends and to first get their buy-in. Can we say that that's a goal for you is to make friends? Then we have to think about, where are we going to get these friends? Sometimes it's brand new people. It may be you sign up for a cooking class or you join a book club, or you join a political organization, or your yoga group. Then sometimes you have people, but you have kept it very surface. Then I want to deep in my relationships. The surgeon general has been talking recently and issued the advisory about loneliness. What I like to tell people is loneliness is nothing to be ashamed of. Some people, when they hear you say you're lonely, they just say you need to love yourself. I like to say that's not the same thing. You can love yourself and still desire a connection to other people. That is not an automatic absence of self I have. And so then if I have acquaintances that are all very surface, then to deepen it, am I willing to go deeper? Because again, I can start to shift the tide when I talk about deeper things, then other people will often meet me there.

Great question from Ashley, very important one. She wants to know my thoughts on depression, healing, and personal struggle. Here are my thoughts. First of all, you guys know that I have suffered with anxiety my entire life. Chris and I have two children that have suffered with significant anxiety, too. I had serious postpartum depression when Sawyer, our daughter, who's now 17, was born. When I say serious, I mean hardcore meds, no nursing, around-the-clock supervision, serious. When it comes to any depression or mental health issue, what do I think about it? I think they're real. I don't think that we do enough in this country to remove the stigmatism. I don't think there's anything wrong with having a mental health issue, either with yourself or with somebody that you love. I think about mental health a lot like I think about diabetes. People that have diabetes have an inefficient physical system for processing insulin, which is why you need to inject yourself with more of it. When you have a mental health issue, part of your wiring is insufficient to help you process day-to-day life. That's it. And there are certain chemicals that are helping you. They'll have certain therapies that will help you.

So here's the deal. The way I feel about it is this. This is not something to ignore. If you have depression, if you have anxiety, if you have post-traumatic stress disorder, if you have any mental health condition, it's nothing to be ashamed of, and it's nothing to hide, and it's something to hit head-on with. There's one thing, one thing, that if you did every single day, no joke, it would make an extraordinary difference in whatever mental health issue you're struggling with, and that is exercise. The reason why I say this is not It's based on my own personal experience. It's based on the fact that the... I think it's the American Psychiatric Association. This is coming from Dr. John Rady, a friend of mine who has written a ton of books about not only ADHD PhD, but also the benefits of exercise and what it has on your brain. But he's also a professor at Harvard and a practicing clinician. This is his area of expertise. One of the things that they now mandate as a diagnosis for anybody with depression or anxiety or any mental illness, frankly, is you've got to exercise every day.

The reason you've got to exercise every day is because what we know about human beings is that when you physically move, your physiology changes, and that changes your brain. Getting your heart rate up, getting outside, breathing, feeling connected, getting out of your house, which may make you feel depressed and trapped. Doing that every day, that physical push. You don't have to run. You don't have to go to an aerobics class. Get outside with your dog in the woods. Walk with a good friend for two or three miles. Doing that every single day not only moves your body, which changes your mind, it gets you out of your physical environment, which is one of the things that people with depression tend to have a hard time doing. It also creates a bit of momentum and a bit of a routine in your life. You take on just that single thing. Get outside and exercise every single day as if your life depends upon it, because you know what? It does. Your brain needs it, your body needs it, your mental health needs it. In closing, be open, don't be ashamed. Get the help that you need.

If you want to start doing something today that you can manage every single day, you can't go wrong with forcing yourself to exercise. By the way, what can you use to get your butt out the door? You guessed it. The five-second rule, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Give yourself a push, and you're going to feel a lot better. Can you share a little bit about how you're able to keep it together as a mom? You think I can keep it together as a mom? I love you. I don't even know how to answer that question, honestly. I guess... You know And then looking back, because there have been... Look, one of the reasons why I know so much about anxiety is because I fucking struggled with it for 30 years. One of the reasons why I know so much about kids in anxiety is because I have kids that have struggled with it, and I have made every mistake in the book because their anxiety triggered my anxiety. So my whole brand of personal empowerment involves Mel Robbins or somebody she loves falling into a hole or digging one. And then I got to manufacture a ladder somehow.

And so I feel like I'm always falling forward. And I feel like your life is like an up and down roller coaster. And the whole point of it is to ride the thing. And to experience the highs and the lows. And I think one of the most amazing things that I love about the family life that Chris and I have co-created is that we deeply care about what our kids are feeling. And for better or for worse, for force them to talk about that. And so we are aware when our kids are hurting, and we are aware when they are doing okay. And mostly, you know your kids are okay when they're ignoring you. I haven't heard from our 16-year-old son in probably five days. And that's a good thing. He's good. It means he's happy. It would be weird if he were 16 years old and attached to his mother at the hip. You want them to be happy and independent in their lives, and you want them to come to you when things are hard. And you do that by giving them space. And you do that by realizing that your job as a parent is not to put them in some mold and shape them.

It's to help them discover who the hell they are, and how to make a decision and how to feel the consequences of bad decisions. And I love the fact that you are able to really hone in on how people are feeling, because I feel like feelings and asking children partners, friends, how do you feel? I have an alert in my phone every single day at noon, and it asks me, How do you feel and what do you need? So can you dive in a little bit on-I need to do that. Yes. I highly recommend it because we go so fast in life that we don't even tap in. Are you thirsty? Do you need some water? Do you need a nap? Do you need a hug? Do you need a high five? And so when you just stop in the middle of it, especially as an ambitious, most people are listening. They're entrepreneurs. Ambitious. Just go, go, go, go, go. You're in the middle of the day. You haven't even eaten. So it's so important not only to ask yourself, how are you feeling? But I think also, and to your point, ask your children, ask your partner, How are you feeling?

That's like bringing them back to that connection with self. I'll tell you, though, here's the thing. Unless you can stand with the person in the mirror and look them in the eye, and and see and encourage and support them exactly where they are, and most importantly, where they're not, most people either don't know how they actually feel or they won't tell you. And I learned this in a very painful way because it's only recently that I have learned that my husband Chris has been struggling with a very profound and long term form of depression. And I think he was afraid to admit it to himself because he felt that it meant that there was something broken and it scared him. And so I just want to explain just how, I think, disconnected so many of us are. I have stood next to the love of my life in my bathroom. His sink is right next to mine for 10 years. It's been more acute in the last seven years. But for 10 years, I have stood shoulder to shoulder with him, and I had no idea just how depressed he was. And I don't think he did either.

Right. And thankfully, he meditates. Thankfully, he exercises. Thankfully, he watches what he drinks. Thankfully, he journals. Thankfully, he has created a men's retreat called Soul that gives his life a lot of meaning. Yeah. But depression is a disease that impacts you chemically, physiologically. It is a cloud and a weight and a fog that impacts you. And so it, ironically, and he has been doing the work, whether it is the meditating or therapy or guided MDMA, trauma treatment. And what's interesting is it was the high five that really, I think in many ways broke a lot of things open. Because you can sit in a therapist's chair and talk and talk and talk about all the things that you wish you could change and talk about how you feel about yourself. But it's very hard to change the way you treat yourself. Yeah. Because you're moving from a space of what you're talking about or what you're doing to a new space of how you're being with yourself. And that's a really difficult bridge because it feels like an intellectual bridge. And so when I first started doing this high five in April of 2020 to support myself through an incredibly difficult moment in my life where I felt overwhelmed by my life and unable to face it.

And so the high five became something I started doing just instinctually because I needed something. And I said to Chris, I think you might want to, and we hadn't even started talking about the word depression yet. I think you might want to try this. And he's like, That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I'm not high fiving myself. Please. We know you're positive, Mel. You go high five yourself. And so for the first month, I'd high five. He'd be standing there brushing his teeth. I'd be finished, put my toothbrush down. I'd high-five myself. He would not do it. Then the depression diagnosis came up, and I started hammering him. I really think you should do this. I'm actually feeling something change within me. And He started doing it, and it gave him this personal experience of realizing, and this is the way he said it, I thought it was stupid because for a decade, I've looked in the mirror and see a person who's failed. My restaurant business failed. And as proud as I am of you, your success has magnified the fact that I always believed it was my job to be the one providing and to be successful.

And so it has magnified my sense of being lost. Yeah. And I look in the mirror and for a decade, I see a person who doesn't deserve a high five. That's why it would feel stupid to give myself one. And through the process of raising his hand and high-fiving himself exactly where he is, dealing with depression, accepting himself for who he is, forgiving himself for the stuff that... This is where we all are, by the way. I'm using Chris with his permission as an example because I think it's a very relatable one. Until I'm through this hole, then I'll high five myself. Until I'm making some money, I'll high-five myself. Until I actually... No, you got to high five yourself now because the high-five is a, Yeah, I'm off. The high five is, I see you. And I know you did some stuff and you feel some stuff that you're having a hard time forgiving your sofa. I'm still going to love you. I'm still going to believe in you. I'm still going to support you. It's how you heal. It's how you give yourself permission to turn the page and start a new chapter. It's how you start to create a new relationship with yourself.

And It's extraordinary. It is. And I will say, as a person who experiences depression, is that sometimes you don't know until you're out of it, or you don't know until you listen to something like this podcast and you start crying or you don't know until something happens. And that's what happens, especially with very high function of people who also experience depression. It's like sometimes there's no like, Hey, you're depressed until you feel it. And I feel like it's important. And that's why I love that you say it's a habit. And it's not about what you're doing, it's about who you're being. I wanted to come back to that phrase because I think, especially right now, we think, What can I do right now? Everything's uncertain. What can I do? But I feel like the high five brings people back to, who are you being? Are you being in love with yourself? Are you validating yourself? Are you connecting with yourself no matter what you're doing? Yeah. And let's go back to the basketball analogy. We would never start a basketball game together by me going, Koya, I think there's no way you're going to do okay in this game.

You really blew it in the last game. I've seen how you played. Some coaches do that. I got that past you. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? That's not how you start a game you want to win. No. For those of you that are barely able to get out of bed, the reason why this is important is because the high five gives you a drip of dopamine that changes your mood. When your When your food lifts a little, you can focus better and you feel a little more encouraged. When you give yourself a high five, your nervous system gives you a jolt. And that little bit of positive energy is like fuel in tank. It's not that the high five in the mirror is going to change all the circumstances of your life. It doesn't change that. It changes you, and it changes your ability to face them. How do you actually know if you're stressed? The reason why I say that is because I had this experience with our son, Oakley, where I had no idea how sad and lonely he was in middle school. I I knew, but I didn't know the extent of it until we moved to Southern Vermont, and he started high school there, and I saw him happy.

I asked that question, how do you know if you're truly stressed or whether you just throw the word around? Because I think sometimes you get so used to the feeling of of being on edge or running on empty or being overwhelmed or constantly overth, that you don't realize the bigger issue. Does that make sense?

It makes perfect sense. If you are feeling, if you are wondering, Am I stressed? Am I burned out? Based on the data, the data shows that 70% of people, seven out of 10 people, are feeling a sense of stress and burnout at this very moment. In a room of 30 people, that's like saying 21 people stress and burnout. That is a vast number. If you are feeling like, Could I be stressed? Could this be me? The answer is likely to be yes. Stress and burnout currently are not the exception. They are the rule. Think back to how you were back in maybe 2016. So 2020 onwards, it's a wash. Most likely, you have had some form of stress, and you've been dealing with it in your own way. But think back, and are you different now than you were back then? Now, of Of course, most of us will say, Yeah, most of you will say, Of course, I'm different because I've lived through things that I have never lived through before, 2020, 2021. It was a very difficult time for many people. But if you are different from your baseline, that means if you're sleep is affected, if you are having some difficulty with socialization, if you are having challenges with productivity, with your mood, with energy, if you are having bodily changes that are different.

Think about how you were at your baseline in 2016. If you think about how different you are now. Chances are you will say, yes, I'm vastly different, and it's most likely because of stress and burnout.

Wow. I think I just had this epiphany. So I've always thought about stress as a byproduct of a super busy life, right? Or of challenges, or of thinking too much, or whatever it may be, okay? But as I listen to you and I think back to 2016, and as you're listening to us and taking us on a walk or you're listening in the car, I want you to think back because I'm going, okay, our daughter was still in high school. I mean, how many years? Was that like 10? I can't do the math. Is it nine years? I also can't do the math. Okay, eight years ago. So my daughter's just graduating from high school. I'm definitely not feeling... I was more in my body back then in terms of feeling more present. I didn't feel this constant sense that something was looming. As you think back and you notice this difference, I'm having this epiphany where I'm realizing, Oh, I think we're about to learn from you that we think about stress as a byproduct of a ton of things that we can't control. And you're about to flip the paradigm on us and say that actually the singular most important thing that you could do for your health, for your happiness, for everything, is to manage how you are feeling and to try these five resets and truly get your stress level under control because that is impacting everything.

It impacts everything. In fact, stress and burnout, I want to use both of those interchangeably for this particular. How are they different? Under normal conditions, back in 2016, 17, 18, 19. If you don't want to go back into 2016, think about how you were in 2019. Most likely your brain was being led by the prefrontal cortex, which is this area right behind your forehead, and it governs... It's like adulting. It governs things like planning, organization, memory. Many of you living your lives in 2016, '17, '18, '19, were living through and using the prefrontal cortex to guide your decision making and your day-to-day life. Stress is governed by another part of your brain, the amygdala. It is a small, almond-shaped structure deep in your brain. I can't show you, but it's deep inside between your ears, lower down where your head and your neck meet. This almond-shaped structure, the amygdala, is what houses your stress response. In scientific terms, we call the stress response the fight or flight response. Under periods of normal functioning, when you are thriving and moving through the world, you are governed, your brain is governed by the prefrontal cortex. Then during periods of stress, your brain is governed by the amygdala.

The The amygdala is focused purely on survival and self-preservation. It is cave-person mode. You can function for short periods of time in cave-person mode, but when it becomes chronic, that is when burnout sets in. What has happened is your brain and your body need a reset and some respite and recovery time.

So does the amygdala not reset itself? You know what I'm saying? Because I'm sitting here thinking, well, every single human being on the planet has been under chronic stress for the last four years. That's right. You need help your brain get back to the baseline. And if you don't, it's almost as if you might have these periods where you go on vacation or you have a little bit of time off of work, or it's really sunny for a couple of days, and you're like, Oh, this is amazing. But you are easily, I'm sure, triggered if you have not reset yourself to go back into being chronically stressed or burnt out. So is that also why this is really important?

Evolution Generally, your amygdala has focused on the fight or flight response. You saw a tiger in the forest, your pupils dilate, your heart starts racing, your lungs start breathing quicker, blood is shunted away from the vital organs to your muscle so you can fight or you can flee. That physiological response takes seconds. And once that acute threat is over, that tiger in the forest, then it comes back to baseline. The problem is that in modern times, that metaphorical tiger is ongoing. We have so many tigers around us. We have financial stress, marital stress. We have stress with engaging in the world with news headlines and all of these other things.

Traffic, twerk deadlines, kids that are upset, people that you're worried about. Endless, endless, endless.

It never ends. And so that amygdala is on in the background at a low hum constantly. Over time, we're not resetting our stress if you just are on autopilot because of that low hum in the constant background, which then over time leads to burnout. When you think about someone who has chronic stress and burnout, they're apathetic, they're disengaged, they're not very motivated. In one study, 60% of people with burnout had, as their distinguishing feature, an inability to disconnect from work. So they showed these manifestations of atypical burnout. And that is the real challenge. When we're walking around the world today, you might think, Hey, I'm not stressed. I'm not burnt out. I'm engaging in the world. I'm going to work. I'm spending time with friends and spending time with family. But how do you feel? Do you feel that sense of thriving and flourishing, or are you running on fumes and just trying to make it through the day? Hands up for that one. I feel like I'm very much in that second camp. Even though I know all of the science about stress and burnout, it's inescapable. Yeah.

Well, what you're making me realize, and I want to just highlight this, is I've never thought about stress and the fact that you are going to have good and bad stress, you are going to have stressful days, you are going to have periods where you feel a lot of pressure. What you're offering is a solution that we can use on a daily basis to recognize when your amygdala is activated. So now I'm thinking, oh, I'm not going to stop saying I'm stressed. I'm going to start saying to myself, oh, my amygdala amygdala is on fire. I'm in fight, flight, or freeze right now. I need to do a quick reset and bring my body and my prefrontal cortex back online. Because if I don't do a reset, that amygdala is going to keep on firing because it's been firing nonstop for at least four years, and so I got to help it out. What are some of the surprising signs or symptoms of stress? Because you just started talking about irritability and this and this and this. What are things that might surprise someone that are signs of stress.

If you have that inner critic of that voice in your head that is berating you, that happens to me, too. When I'm feeling a sense of stress, it's like, You should have known better. How come you didn't do this? Or, What if I can't do this? And what if I can't So that inner critic in your ear that is constantly going and telling you all the ways that you are wrong or that you are dumb or you don't have what it takes or you're not enough. It's almost like you other yourself with that inner critic. And that inner critic gets a megaphone. When you feel a sense of stress, we can talk about that. It's because your inner critic is governed and powered by your amygdala, which is your fight or flight response. This makes so much sense. It's a way to keep you safe. It's to keep you in your comfort zone, out of danger. You talk about this a lot in your work. You have to do things that are uncomfortable initially if you want to get out of that constant state of feeling low or down or stressed. Same thing. Understand Understanding that if you are having that voice in your head, you are most likely stressed.

If you are doomscrolling, knowing that it doesn't make you feel good, and yet you are unable to stop, whether it be- Why do we doomscroll when we're stressed? The reason we doomscroll when we are stressed is because it is a primal urge to scroll.

To do what? To scroll?

Evolutionarily, when you and I and all of the other humans were living in tribes, there was a night watchman who would keep tabs and look out throughout the night while the tribe slept. And now we are all our own night watchmen. We scroll and scan for danger. It is a way for us to feel safe. The reason we do this is because when you are feeling a sense of stress, you are governed by your amygdala. It is what's moving your brain forward. And so when your brain is driven by the amygdala, you are thinking only about survival and self-preservation. And scanning for danger is a way you feel safe. So what do we do in our modern times? We don't have a night watchman. We scroll. It's a way for us to scan for danger, to make sure that we are safe, that nothing is happening. And then, unfortunately, what happens is as we are scrolling, we see the headlines and the news and social media, and these are not benign entities. They have a direct impact on our brain chemistry. Clickbait works on the biology of stress. And news consumption and media consumption has a direct impact on our brain circuitry.

And so doomscrolling, I have had countless people say, I can't help myself, Doc. I just I don't know. I remember several years ago during an election year, and we are currently in an election year, but I remember during that election year, I had a patient who told me, and I've written about this in the five resets. I had a patient who told me, I watch TV day and night. I watched the news day and night, and I thought, I laughed like, Oh, that's a hyperbole. That can't be possible. In fact, when I dug into his daily habits, his routine, he truly had his TV on day and night. It wasn't his fault. So if You, maybe you hear this and you think, I don't watch the news. Of course, right? A lot of young people don't actually watch TV. They watch on their phones. But why is it that you are scrolling and consuming news until 2: 00, 3: 00 in the morning? Why? I don't know. We all do it. And it's because it is your stress response. Your amygdala is driving that behavior. Not you, it's your amygdala. When you reset your stress, get your prefrontal cortex back in control, decrease the volume of your amygdala, then you don't doomscroll as much.

And we can talk about We can talk about digital boundaries and a couple of other things. Another way that you may... A sneaky way that stress can come up on you is that you may have emotional eating. We all have that food that My favorite food, that comfort food. For me, it's chocolate cake. It's usually high fat, high sugar foods. It's that 11: 00 PM. I'm just going to grab a quick snack, a bedtime snack. We know what that does to your glucose. But the reason you feel that sense of compulsion, you've had dinner, and then at like 9: 30 or 10: 00, you want to reach for that snack, there's a reason. It's called emotional eating or stress eating.

Because the amygdala is driving it. That's right. Why does your fight or flight or freeze response drive you to eat? How is that tied? Because it makes perfect sense to me that doomscrolling is the same thing as being on the night watch. Because if you think about your job, if you're the one that's protecting the tribe or your family, is you're standing there and you're scanning. You're looking for anything that seems out of place. You're looking for anything that's surprising, which is the exact same thing that you do when you doomscroll.

That's right. You're hyper vigilant.

Yeah. And here's the other thing that happens is because you are constantly met with a new post or something surprising. Here you are. It's like hearing the branch snap outside the tent. What was that? And then there's another one, and then there's another one, and then there's another one. And so you're not going to go back to sleep because you keep hearing things that are keeping you in a state of needing to watch out for the tribe. Now you're sitting in modern life and you are doing that same evolutionary behavior, only you're now staring at the phone and all the branches cracking or every single little thing that's going by which keeps you awake. Because I've often wondered, why the hell did I look at my phone at 8: 30 last And next thing you know, I look up, it's 10: 45. I've bought three things off of Instagram that I did not need. I have just mindlessly scrolled, and now I'm pissed off at myself because I should have gone to bed and wanted to have been in bed well over two hours ago, and I've spent money on things that I don't need that I now don't even remember buying.

And it is this constant loop. But the way you're explaining it as your amygdala is activated, that's what's going on, and that's That's what's having you fall prey to this behavior. And so the solution is to reset. The solution is to deactivate the amygdala because it is chronically screwing you up. Wow.

Turn down that volume. The reason you, from 8: 45 till 10: 45, you were experiencing something called revenge, bedtime procrastination. It's something that all of us do. What is it? Particularly women. When your day is not your own and you are moving in a million different directions, competing priorities, parenting and work and all of the things that we have to do to manage our homes. It happens to all people, not just women, just parents and students. It happens to so many people when you, again, a patient story in the Five Resets is about a student who experienced revenge, bedtime procrastination. I talked to my sleep medicine colleague, and I said, What is the number one tip you can give people for better sleep? And he told me, Ask every single patient that you see or every single A person you see who is struggling with sleep, what are you doing 2 hours before bedtime? Let's say you want to go to bed at 9: 00 PM, and you're up till midnight or 1: 00, what are you doing 2 hours before? And case in point, you just describe what people do. You are on your screen.

Revenge Huge bedtime procrastination is a manifestation, a toxic manifestation of hustle culture. When your days are not your own, the children finally fall asleep, everything is calm, your work emails have calmed down, it is 8: 30 at night and you You finally have some me time. So you procrastinate bedtime. It's like a rebellious teenager. You have that sense of like, I'm not going to bed at 9: 00. I haven't even had any time for myself. I'm going to stay up. And then you stay up and you make bad choices and you buy different things or you binge watch TV. Again, a little bit of this is healthy. It's called hedonic happiness. We can talk about that later. A little bit of this is healthy. But when it becomes chronic and ongoing, and then you notice that you're going to bed every night at one o'clock or two o'clock in the morning and you're unable to get good rest and you wake up tired, and the next day you say, You know what? I am going to go to bed early. And then the same thing happens night after frustrating night. There was a study that found that it's not about knowledge and action.

Every single person who was engaging in this revenge, bedtime, procrastinating knew that they should go to bed early. That wasn't the issue. It's not that behaviors change because you know better. It's behaviors only change when you do better. You talk about this all the time, but the actual science showed that this is not a gap in knowledge. Everyone knows that early bedtime is important. It's a manifestation of hustle culture because even in spite of knowing that, Hey, an early night would do me well, you still say, No, I'm not going to because I have had a crappy day and I'm not going to have a crappy day. Go into my night, I'm going to have a little bit of me time.

Motivation is complete fucking garbage because it's not there when you need it. Yeah, you're going to feel motivated if you listen to Dr. Hyman or Mel Robbins, but that's extrinsic motivation. In terms In terms of the intrinsic motivation that you need to motivate yourself, you're going to have to push yourself because you're not designed to like change. You're designed to stop yourself from changing. And that's the problem.

I find that if you can actually master your mind and get out of your own way and deal with this crazy inner dialog that most of us have, that you can get free. What I figured out at 63 years old is that the purpose of life is to get your soul free, like Joni Mitchell saying in that Woodstock song, Let's get your soul free. It's not easy because most of us don't learn how to do that. Just because we don't learn how to take care of our bodies, we don't learn how to take care of our minds. We know maybe how to do exercise, but how do we do intersize?

Inner size. Is that a word you made up? Kind of. I think Dr. Hyman just discovered a word for his next book. The InnerSize program, the ultimate wellness solution. I can already see this. You talk a lot about how to heal from the neck down, and I agree with you. I personally have come to believe after 54 years of torturing myself, unnecessarily in many cases, that it does begin with the neck down, that if you follow a lot of the protocols that you talk about, whether it is toning the vagus nerve, or it's getting your diet right, or it is resetting your hormones, or it's cold exposure, or the habits that settle you and free your soul. But you also have to develop habits around your own mind. Yeah. That's an area where, like you and like everybody listening, I have struggled profoundly. There are a couple key insights that have really helped me me, change the default setting that is in my mind. The way that I would get into this is that self-love is the goal. You talked about the fact that you've come to realize that it's really a journey, your adult life, of setting your soul free.

And I look at it like it is a journey of coming back home to yourself and learning how to love your sofa exactly who you are and exactly who you aren't. And you have a opinion, medically, that our bodies have this intelligent design, and that our bodies have this intelligent design that if you have the proper inputs, your body can heal itself. Your body is designed to grow. It is designed to help you. It is designed to be vibrant. I believe the same is true about your experience mentally, and that if you stop and think about the fact that when you are born into this world, you come into this world needing, of course, other human beings in order to survive. I mean, we as a species, we cannot just pop out like a deer and get up on our hind legs and start running around and figuring things out, we need human connection. But at our core, when you think about the intelligent design of a human being, we are curious, we're loving, we are seeking connection. We are self-expressed. A baby, you as a baby, you would laugh, you'd smile, you would crawl towards a mirror if you saw your own reflection.

You would crawl towards things that were interesting to you. You were not editing yourself. You were not questioning what people around you would think about you juggling your booty or smashing your face into a plate of spaghetti. At your core, you are a loving, curious, confident human being. That's who you are. And that's why we miss feeling that way, because you can only miss something that you know. And so what happens to all of us, and this is no fault, this is just part of the human journey, is that we now know, and you talk about this on your show, that part of your core memories and your imprint, mentally, in terms of your mental patterns, happened between zero and five when your brain is in a theta state and you are largely nonverbal, and your little brain is absorbing everything at hyper speed. And what it absorbs are the speaking patterns and the emotional patterns and the emotional tone of the household that you grew up in.

That's a scary thought. Well, it's true.

It's true. And so by the time that you start to be able to attach words to your reality, you have adults correcting you, and you also have a biological demand, which is, I need food. I need to be part of this family in order to survive. I need love. And so you start to figure out how to survive or thrive in the environment you grew up in. And so these core coping skills start to develop. You don't even realize what's happening. These opinions that you have about yourself that are largely coming from other people. Most of us did not receive the love that we needed in the way that we could really process it as love. And it's not necessarily not necessarily a function of abuse or trauma or any of this other stuff. There's this term that I love called parental mismatch.

Yeah.

Parental mismatch. Yeah. Your parents may have been absolutely awesome human beings, but when it comes to what you needed, there was a mismatch. And what happens in human design is that when you, as a child, don't get what you need, or you get yelled at, or something bad happens to you, which happens to everybody, we're not wired in a way to say, My parents are fucking screwed up. We're not wired that way.

You know what parents are? What? Parents are people who have kids. Yes. They have no training, no experience.

And they're just repeating the patterns that were repeated on them, largely, without even realizing it. And so if you get bullied at school, if you experience racism, if you experience some abuse or neglect or emotional whatever in your home, you don't go, Those people have a problem. You go, There must be something wrong with me. And that's where it begins, Dr. Hyman. And it happens to everybody, where you prioritize the need to fit in.

Or survive in any way in your family if it's screwed up, which most of our families are not perfect.

Yeah. Or to keep the peace, or to not get hurt, or to please the people around you, you figure out how to adapt very quickly based on the environment that you're in. And for almost all of us, that means I got to put other people's expectations, other people's opinions about what's going on, everybody else's emotional reactions above what I need. Because remember who you are at your core. You are a loving, self-expressed, curious person who wants to connect with people and wants to share yourself. That's who you are at your core. At some point during your childhood, it happens to all of us, we internalize a message that there's something wrong with who we are. And in order to fit in or survive or be accepted or get the love or the praise that we are seeking, we have to be somebody other than who we are. That's where the mindset shit goes sideways, because you start to actively tell yourself, I don't fit in there. That person's pissed at me. I got to be like this. There must be something wrong with me if nobody's asking me out on a date. My mom's always criticizing the way that I look.

Why do I look different than other people? Why am I the only black kid in the class? Why am I... My family immigrated here, and there's nobody else in it. And you start to see all the places that you're not a part of. And all of these things compound, and it traps us in a narrative in our own minds, where we beat the shit out of ourselves. We pick apart the things that are wrong. We're constantly, relentlessly just focused on what we're not doing. It's a very dark place that most people live in.

Yeah, it's really true. Often people don't realize it. I thought I was in my shit together.

When did you realize you didn't?

Over the years, I realized I needed work to do because I understood that my family origin was problematic, that my stepfather was a rageaholic, that my father was absent, abandoned us, that my mother was depressed. I had to navigate a very unsafe environment and be a people pleaser and take care of broken people. All these habits and patterns, be around people who were failures and wanted to not be a failure. I had all these things that were driving me unconsciously or consciously. But when I really woke up was when I realized that I struggled with love. I'd been married three times, divorced three times. I'm like, Wait a minute, what is going on in there? In many areas of my life, I have success and things are great and I have a great community and great friends, and so much is great. But in this one area, I was like, What the fuck? Why is this such a problem? And I really, until I took the time to investigate, I call it soul archeology, to investigate what was going on and to unpack my inner dialog and to write it down. I literally wrote down all the stupid shit my head was saying every minute.

What were you saying to yourself?

Oh, my God, I'm very sad.

That's why I want you to say it. What is the stuff you were saying?

Wait, is this me interviewing you? Basically, I had this belief that I think that was underlying it, that I wasn't worthy, that I didn't really deserve to have love, and I had this needy inner dialog that was feeling a lack in scarcity, that I felt this impuniness in this hole that I was trying to fill, and that I wasn't ever going to be able to fill it. I was constantly doing that. I realized it was because... Again, these sins of our fathers are visited upon their children. It's like my mother was the child of deaf parents, and she had to take care of them from a very early age, and she took care of them. They were beautiful people and very loving. But she thought that love was taking care of somebody broken. Then my mom was depressed, and she used me as her therapist as a little kid. Then I thought love was taking care of broken people or people pleasing and doing all these things that really weren't serving me. Once I began to realize that, I began to call in my higher self, whatever that you want to call it is. But there's some part of your soul being that knows what the truth is.

Well, I think it's the part of you when you're born. It's actually who you are.

But most of that is not what's running our inner dialog. Correct. That was not running my inner dialog. I began to do this practice where I would write down all this stupid shit my head would say, and then I would write back myself from my higher self. It was really effective. I did this for months and months and months, and I was able to really unpack some of this stuff. Once I realized also what this wounding was as a kid and why I felt empty in this, and It actually was in part because of this movie called Coda that was about this young girl who was tearing and grew up in a deaf family, just like my mother. That just broke me open. I was literally on the floor sobbing for days. I got to release a lot of it. Then it reset my nervous system. It was almost like a real reset. But I struggled with some of that. Going through that process, I realized each of us has to be on our own journey, and each of us has to look at where are the areas where we don't love ourselves. I thought, Oh, I love myself.

I'm good. I feel good about myself. I'm successful, blah, blah, blah. But the truth was, it was a part that I really didn't. I didn't really fully accept and love myself. That's what was creating this constant pattern of choosing the wrong people. A friend said, I had a broken picker. It wasn't the problem of the people I was with. It was me.

You had a broken pattern of belief in your head, and that made you feel broken. The good news is when you can identify what the broken pattern of thinking or behavior is, you can replace it with something else. See, the good news is at any moment in your life, you can decide who you want to become. It's never too early or too late to decide that you want to become a different you. You want to go back to who you know you truly are, a loving, curious, confident, connected, self-expressed person. Yeah. What I want to just add to your story is that that wasn't a lie you were telling yourself, because your experience was one where you did not get the love of you needed as a child. That happened. That did. That happened. It was because of this mismatch. Nobody intentionally set out to damage you.

No, my parents are good people. They just got screwed up themselves.

Yes. But so I think one of the mistakes that we make when we start to do this work to reclaim our lives and to change our mindsets and to become a different version of ourselves is that we We shy away from telling the truth to ourselves. Like, that should happen. The reason why I believe that is because my lived experience was everybody else's needs came first. I did not get the love that I needed. And in order to even get the attention that I needed from the adults around me, I had to twist myself in knots. I literally had to forget about myself, and that was real. My husband, for example, we've been married 26 years and have been in really awesome, intense therapy for the last two years. And one of the things that has come out of it is that Chris has a lot of trauma from his childhood. Had an absent father. His mom was always working. He was a latchkey kid. He had no physical abuse, but nobody was He's never there.

Neglect is a form of abuse.

Yes. But you feel... But he has forever... They were great. We were all... But the truth is, no, they weren't.

And that's okay.

When you When you claim for real that you didn't get what you needed, and that created years, decades of an experience, where that was your lived experience. But what you're talking about by writing that down, and writing it down is critical because part of the issue is we try to change the default patterns of thinking that come from your lived experience. So they may have been true in the past because the way you got treated or what people said to you, that is your It's your lived experience, just like trauma is your lived experience. When we don't really call that out for what it is, we unconsciously carry it forward. And so when you start to write down, these are the crazy-ass things that I think because this is how I fucking felt. Based on my lived experience, this makes a lot of sense. But here's where consciousness alignment choice, the wake up call, I call it, comes into play. You get to choose if you want to keep thinking this shit moving forward. Now, when it comes to mindset, what is profoundly complicated about it, and what I got wrong for years, is that I thought that changing your mindset began with changing your thoughts.

It does not. It It does not. You change your mindset the same way you change the health of your body from the neck down, from the outside in. Let me give you what I'm talking about. The act of writing things down, that is not doing the internal work of your thinking. That is getting that shit out of your head and in daylight and on paper and in the real world so you can look at it objectively. That is doing work outside of your mind. The second thing is everything that you talk about, Dr. Hyman, from, especially the stuff related to nervous system regulation, cold exposure, warm baths at night, the five breaths that you talk about, learning how to tone your vagus nerve so that you flip off the fight or flight, which continues all of those thoughts from your past to spin on repeat. Your thinking has so much to do with your nervous system state, that learning how to regulate your nervous system using all of the tools that Dr. Hyman or that I write about or all the amazing... Put that it into place because a calm nervous system facilitates calm thinking.

The third thing is-I just want to stop you there because that's such an important point is you can change your physiologic state with practices that don't involve your thinking that change your mind and change the way you feel and change your mood.

That is such a powerful insight that most people have no idea about. People feel stuck in the state that they're in, and they don't know there's a pattern break. For example, yesterday, I podcast all day preparing for my book, and I had one that I didn't record. I was like, I didn't hit the record button. Long story. I was like, and I was just tired. My partner, Fianca, she basically set the alarm stupid early and forgot to turn it off, and I didn't get up to sleep. I was feeling a little bit fried. I could tell myself, My body, my mind was just doing bad stuff. I said, I'm going to meditate. I meditated for 20 minutes, and I have a steam shower. I put that on. When the steam, hot as it could be for 20 minutes, went on an ice bath, because it was winter, very cold in the Berkshire's, for two, three minutes. I got on the mat and literally We felt completely different. My mood, my energy, my focus, my brain. We have these doorways into our mind and our mood that are not internal, they're external. If you could summarize the things that are the most powerful to help us come back to self-love and self-acceptance, which really is the key to everything in life.

It's the key to healthy relationships. It's the key to being successful in life. It's the key to taking care of your own body, of eating the right thing, of exercising, everything you can think you want to do or want to get in your life. It starts there.

Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.