Deep Dive
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Hello, my beautiful people. Welcome back to the Moments Podcast. I want to warn you that I've already had to record this intro for this episode at least four times. I'm not sure what's going on with my brain today. It has been a really great day. I'm really excited to do this episode. And I think because I'm so excited, my thoughts, my brain is moving faster than my words. So half the things I say, I'm like ahead of my own mind. Anyways,
Today's episode is all about mental health. But before I get into that, I'm going to just straight up say I am so proud of myself. And the reason I'm so proud of myself is because if you've been listening to the podcast for the past few weeks, I have been not in this depressive state, but just in this state of emptiness. I have felt... Last week, Red Flags episode, I was super into that episode, so I was in a great mood, but...
Besides that in my life, I've been feeling this sort of emptiness and it's weird because I've been successful in my career. I've been successful in my friendships, relationships. I've had balance in almost every aspect of my life, but I've still just felt so, I don't know, lost. And I had an epiphany and that epiphany was that I miss getting involved in the community in different ways. Like I love what I do on social media.
I have a podcast where I talk about mental health and I know that I'm able to reach so many people and help so many people just understand that they're not alone and understand the things they feel and how to get through them and how to get better. But all that being said,
It's not as fulfilling as going out in the community and doing things hands-on. So I started volunteering at the animal rescue center that's near my house and also a couple other places and doing a bunch of other different things that I'm really looking forward to. A lot of things are like postponed because it's the holidays.
Oh my gosh, my cat is... So I used my cat's toy. What are those called? Trees? To use as a tripod for the camera and he's up on the top of it right now. So I'm really hoping the camera doesn't fall over. Anyways, back to what I was saying. Sorry, like I said, brain is moving in a million different directions today, as usual, and...
Honestly, that's something I'm gonna talk about today. But all that stuff to be said, I'm getting involved in the community and I'm volunteering and if you've been feeling any sort of like emptiness as humans, we are conditioned to feel better when we make other people feel better as well. So go get involved. Go help people feel better and if people aren't your thing, you can volunteer at all sorts of places. You can go volunteer at horse stables, which is something that I actually really want to do and I
You can volunteer at animal shelters and you can volunteer at after school programs and you can volunteer at your church. You can volunteer at your temple, wherever it is. It's going to make you feel good and it's going to give you a sense of purpose if that is something that you have been lacking in your life. And,
I just highly encourage it because it's something I used to spend a lot of my time doing and I was always a really happy person. And I'm not to say that like all of my sadness came after I stopped volunteering, but I can tell you that I was a lot happier when I spent more of my time volunteering than I did spending my time on TikTok. So that's something I'm trying to incorporate back into my life. I'm also getting older. My brain is changing. My life is different. There's a lot of factors. I have a feeling that that's one of them.
Anyways, I also am taking a class right now. It's not a real class. I don't get any credits and it's not towards a degree of any sort, but it's Intro to Psychology and I took AP Psychology in high school, so it's very similar. But I'm relearning a lot of the things I kind of remember and had an idea of since high school, but it's something I've been wanting to do and I don't know what happened, but I finally did it. I just want to be more knowledgeable and...
This is deep and honestly, since this is a whole episode just on mental health, I'm going to dive deeper into the struggles that go on in my brain. But this one, for example, is that since I'm not in school, I feel really dumb around everyone my age, around everyone older. And this is something that's like self-inflicted. No one tells me, Lexi, you're so dumb because you don't go to college.
Personally, I tell myself that. Like I, in my head, think people look at me and think, "Oh, she's so dumb." And that's something that we all do when we struggle because we're humans anyways.
I've wanted to learn because I want to feel smart again. And it's just something that I've been craving is like knowledge. And I also love to know things. I am obsessed with the brain. I have no idea how it works, but I sure as hell want to know how it works. I am obsessed with how we interact with people in society. And I don't know any of that information yet, but one day I plan to. And I'm taking baby steps to do that. I'm not putting all this pressure on myself to
fully go back to school because I know that if I were to do that, the way that my brain works and the way that my ADHD works, I wouldn't be able to do it. I wouldn't be as interested in learning if I had certain due dates and I had to do certain things certain ways. I don't know how to explain it, but some of my ADHD friends out there, I'm sure you get it. When I'm forced to do something a certain way, it's a lot less enjoyable for me. And
In my heart, learning, even though it's not towards a degree, is just as valuable as learning if it were to be towards a degree. And I'm going to do a whole episode when I can deep dive on this and look at an outline and put things into different perspectives because...
I want to talk about college and I want to give you my hot take and also why I think college is the greatest thing ever and also can be, for other people, the worst thing ever. If you saw my TikTok, if you've been listening for a while, you know a lot about this, but we'll save that for another episode. Let me know if you guys want it and let me know what you want to talk about in regards to college. But this whole episode, I want to talk about mental health.
This is a podcast on mental health, and I'm sure we all at this point know what mental health is, which as we should, but I want to kind of deep dive on what some of the numbers look like and what some of the percentages look like and what different mental illnesses are and why it's so important and why we need to actually pay attention. First of all, the mental health crisis that we are in right now is beyond...
I don't even have words to explain how scary it is. Like how many people are hurting and how many people are terrified and how much worse it's getting. Like we, I can't comprehend it. But before we get into all that, mental health is the same as your physical health. They are both just as important. Your physical health is like, okay, are you sick? Do you have a broken bone? Do you need to go to the doctor for a sore throat?
That's physical health. Mental health has to do with your thoughts and your moods and your feelings. And again, I'm sure you all know this, but when your thoughts are negative, that means you should probably take care of your mental health. Like I know you guys have heard me do better help ads before. And I talk about how your mental health is just as important as your physical health. And we all say that, but rarely do we actually act on it, which I just think is very, very interesting. But fun fact, 43.8 million people
Millions. Okay, I don't know how to speak. I get really stressed out when I have to talk about numbers and statistics. But I also get really excited about it. 43.8 million adults experience mental illness each year. And that is the statistic from three years ago, which means I can pinky promise you that it's increased. I don't know if you guys listened to the episode I did last
Not too long ago, but I don't remember what it was or how I mentioned it, but I had just listened to a podcast on the current mental health crisis as of 2022. I don't have those statistics in front of me. I don't remember what they are, but all I do remember is that the percentage of depression rates that have increased and suicidal rates that have increased are beyond measure. Like, I'm pretty confident that depression rates are up 135%.
And all that to be said, a lot of it's because more of us are talking about it now and we're kind of all realizing that we're all struggling and it's not just a few of us. Like, did you guys know that one in five people struggle with mental illness? Like, if you were in a classroom of 20 people, there's a solid chance that at least four or five other people in that class are going through the same things or similar things to you. And the thing is, we just don't talk about it enough or don't.
We talk about it, but it's not always in a positive manner. We talk about it like so negative and without even realizing it we judge people who are struggling and we give people these stereotypes and we just stigmatize it so much. And by giving these stereotypes we make people feel so isolated. And I say we because we are all part of the problem.
We are also the victims of the problem. That's the thing about today's society that just gets so strange and confusing and difficult. Like this whole mental health crisis, I don't even know the first step in starting to fix it besides spreading awareness and talking about it, which is why I'm doing this. But I am working hard every day to brainstorm a way that we can make things better. But when I think about it, like so many causes, there's so many things that cause us to struggle with our mental health.
Like down to biological things or environmental situations and social situations or past trauma. Some mental illnesses are from genetics. But all that being said, we also live in 2020-22. So many of us are facing trauma that we don't even recognize like that no one else had to face. We have had to deal with school shootings. We have had to deal with
All sorts of shootings. We have had to deal with extreme polarization and we have to deal with this little box that can do virtually anything. We have little robots in our hands at all times. We are addicted to our phones. We are constantly forced to scroll. The media is just this terrifying, terrifying thing. We just have a lot of factors to take into account. And with everything that's going on in the world, it makes sense that we are struggling the way that we are.
And how we fix that, I don't know. But me and you are going to do our best to do it together. This episode of the Moments podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp.
Quick little intermission, you guys. We all know how important it is to prioritize the right things in our life. And maybe for you, that's prioritizing doing leg day at the gym or making sure you go for your hot girl walk. But how often are you prioritizing your mental health and making sure that therapy is a part of your weekly routine? If it's something that you've been open to, if it's something that you've been considering, I highly recommend BetterHelp. And thank you so much to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. And I'll see you in the next one.
I absolutely love BetterHelp. I love therapy. I have talked about it over and over and over again. And that is for a reason. It is the greatest thing ever. Having an outlet and a person to talk to about what you're going through and getting unbiased opinions and advice is so, so beneficial.
So if you're thinking about starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online. It's designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. You just have to fill out a brief questionnaire and you'll get matched with a licensed therapist and you can switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash moments today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash moments.
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It's important to take into account the amount of people who don't get help and don't get treatment. It is...
just now becoming a little bit more normalized to go to therapy or to talk to someone or to get medicated or to work through your mental problems for so long people were forced to just deal with everything that they were going through and I think that this is why it is so hard to explain to the older generation why mental health is so important and why it's such a serious issue because all these grandparents and older parents and parents in general
who had to repress all of their mental issues and deal with them their whole life don't want to see people getting help for what they're going through because they never had that help. And for some reason, people are just like that. We don't want to see each other feel good. We don't want to see each other win. We're just like these nasty people sometimes.
But it's also really hard to explain to the older generation what this younger generation is facing. Because I know for a fact that my grandparents didn't scroll through TikTok for five hours a day and have to compare themselves to every single person that they saw on the app. And I also know that my grandparents didn't have to hear about a school shooting basically once a month.
Those things are going to give us issues. Like, I would be concerned if they didn't. I would be concerned if knowing that there were shootings happening in my state multiple times a month wasn't making me a little bit fearful and a little bit more overwhelmed and a little bit anxious.
Because of course I'm gonna be scared. Of course you're gonna be scared. And when we're sucked into these little apps on our phone all day long, of course we're gonna compare ourselves. We're not supposed to, not that we're not supposed to, humans are not put on this earth to be able to do everything at once. And I've touched on this in other episodes. We're also not put on this earth to be comparing ourselves to everyone in the world. And
to be given so many options and I think it's a beautiful thing that we have all these options now and we can see all these different opportunities that life has to offer and we can truly decide like what we want to do and figure out what we love but with that also comes this constant comparison and this constant pressure to make the right decisions and there's just too much choice I watched a TikTok not a Tid Talk can I speak a TED Talk on the paradox of choice that was from like
I want to say 2005, one of the first recorded TED Talks or something like that. And it was fascinating. It was talking about how we have too many choices. And when we have so many choices, we physically cannot decide because we're worried that we'll pick the wrong thing. And I think that taking all these things into account,
I think our brains are overwhelmed. I think that our brains are so overwhelmed that it's just bound to deal with some struggles. Like there's no way my brain can comprehend every single thing that I am viewing every single day. It can't take it. But we can dive into technology another time. Honestly, don't listen to my info on this. Actually, just go watch The Social Dilemma because then you'll be like, oh, dang, that's how much my brain is consuming every single day. No wonder I feel the way that I feel.
Technology is trained to mentally screw us up and to mentally consume us and just like take over the world basically. But you know, that's a story for another time. Moving on. What I meant to talk about earlier, I don't even remember if I did now because my brain's all over the place today, is that so many of us don't get treatment. I already did say that, I think. See you guys, doing this podcast is such a, this is something deep again, a
Such a challenge for me sometimes because of the way that my brain is like when I really need to sit down and focus My adhd decides that that's the time that it's going to act up and obviously there's different factors like there's different times when I record and I can be so locked into what i'm talking about that Not a single other thought goes through my brain and then other times i'll be recording and every minor detail
Every teeny tiny thought that goes through my brain just totally takes me away from what I'm even talking about and it makes it a lot harder but I'm here to challenge myself and I believe that we should all challenge ourselves a little bit every single day and I don't know I guess I'm just telling you that because I know that I'm not the only one that feels it and that struggles with it and I just want to explain that that's why sometimes I'm all over the place in these episodes. Let's just dive right into mental illnesses. I guess I should probably start with ADHD but I'm not going to.
Basically, mental illness is a condition, I have this written down, that affects a person's thinking, feeling, or mood for a sustained period of time that negatively impacts them. So, feeling like shit for a really long time is usually associated with some kind of mental illness, and a lot of us are struggling with one of them. And honestly, we've all probably struggled with one of these things for at least a short period of time. But first we'll talk about anxiety disorders, because...
18, well, I read two different statistics. One of them said 18.1% of us in the U.S. and another one said 19.1%. So just pick anywhere in the middle. But basically, I've been saying basically a lot today, around 40 million people struggle with different anxiety disorders. And only 36% of those people actually get help for those disorders and seek treatment and talk to someone or go to therapy or get prescribed medicine, which is a crazy statistic to think about.
That's like less than half the people who are struggling getting help. Imagine if 100 people had the flu and only 36 of them went and got antibiotics. I don't know. It's just weird for me to compare those things. Like when I take physical, how much people care about their physical health and compare it to how much people care about their mental health, it's absurd to think about. But I also learned that anxiety disorders aren't usually diagnosed alone.
They're often co-diagnosed with another disorder. Like depression is a huge common diagnosis of anxiety. Like people who struggle with depression struggle with anxiety and vice versa. But there's also four different kinds of anxiety disorders. These are the things I'm learning.
in not only my psychology class but I also was just reading a bunch of articles because I told myself if I'm going to be sitting here and talking about mental health so constantly yeah my own experience is great to talk about but it's also important to know the numbers and know the stats and know what I'm talking about and share more about it because so many of us probably don't know but there's
But there's four different kinds of anxiety disorders. There's generalized anxiety, which we've all struggled with. If you think about any time you're super nervous or fearful, you're probably feeling a little bit of anxiety. Panic disorder, social anxiety, that's the one I struggle with the most. Or obsessive compulsive disorder is also an anxiety disorder, which I didn't even know. And the thing is with anxiety disorders is you basically...
Dude, me, if I say basically again, turn this podcast off, DM me and say you're done. I'm not going to say it again, I promise. But anxiety is uncontrollable worry. You just have all of these thoughts and you overthink pretty much everything and you're just worried and you can't seem to turn off the worry. And there's a lot of different ways to treat anxiety. You can do it through therapy, which did you know? There's so many different kinds of therapy. I thought there was one, maybe two different types of therapy.
at least 5 to 10 and that's just from what I learned from one video but we'll dive into that another time too. Moving on to personality disorders. 9.1% of us in the US. Personality disorders can cause distress, they can cause impulse control, they can also cause inappropriate emotional responses but a personality disorder refers to behavioral, emotional, or thought patterns that deviate greatly from the expectations of an individual's culture.
So anything that makes a person feel extremely different. And I'm sure we've all felt a little bit different. Just because you feel a little bit different doesn't mean you're struggling from a personality disorder. But when it gets serious to where you're in constant distress or you don't have any impulse control and you have really inappropriate or extreme responses to like emotional things, that's when it becomes a little bit more of an illness and something serious. The next one I wrote about was ADHD, which...
Again, fun fact, there's different kinds of ADHD. In my head, there was just one kind of ADHD, the ADHD where I can't accomplish any single task and I can't sit still for more than five minutes. But there is so much more to it, which all made sense the more I read about it. But a bunch of the things or symptoms of it, I guess you could say, is the inability to concentrate, forgetfulness, inability to sit still, restlessness, losing things,
And so many more. I would love to do an episode on each of these mental illnesses because I just think it would be really interesting, but I need to do, obviously, a lot more research on that. But two different kinds of ADHD can be impulsive and hyperactive or inattentive and distractible. And then you can have the ADHD that combines the two of those. And I'm like, yeah, I think that that's the one I struggle with because I feel all the feels. I go through each one of those motions.
The next mental illness that this video I was watching talked about talked about was PTSD, which is post-traumatic stress disorder. And this is something that's very common in veterans or people who have gone through a seriously traumatic event, which could be abuse, it could be natural disaster, it could be an assault, it could be childhood neglect. But PTSD is this constant feeling of flight or flight, fight or flight response. So when your body's in that panic mode,
Imagine feeling that, but constantly. So you face nightmares, you have this extreme fear, it's extreme anxiety, and you're always just freaking out a little bit. And it never really goes away, even after that traumatic event has passed. But the statistic for this is that about 6.8% of people in the U.S. face this, which is almost 19 million people. Crazy to think about. And again, these stats are from a few years ago. I think these stats were 2018.
And the mental health crisis has only increased, which means, I assume, all of these statistics have also increased. The next one is depression. And depression rates are up 135% since 2013. The way depression was described in this video is that it's low moods and severe depression.
low moods and sadness for longer than six weeks. And I also learned that depression shows itself differently in women than it does in men. Women feel sadness, they feel worthlessness, they feel shame, and they feel guilt for feeling this sadness. And then it's just this constant cycle of feeling really, really bad and worthless. And then for men, it's
They feel it as fatigue and they just get a lot more easily irritated. But again, all of these illnesses and disorders and mental health in general, we all face it differently. Like there's tons of different symptoms. And just because you feel one thing or you struggle with one thing, say you struggle with depression and you feel sadness. There may be someone else who struggles with depression who constantly struggles
works and and stays busy to fill that void of sadness and other people who struggle with that same sadness who just can't even get out of bed like all of these disorders manifest differently in each of us and obviously we all have to do different things to pull ourselves out of these situations but moving on depression is a whole topic we could dive into another time too
I just want to tell you each of these little disorders, not little, I just want to tell you about each of these, a little bit about each of these and then we can all have a little bit more of an understanding of what people around us might be feeling or going through and how to have a little bit more compassion. But the next one the video talked about was bipolar disorder, which has always had the stereotype where, oh, you just, she's so hot and cold, she has such mood swings, like she's so bipolar.
But bipolar is actually a very, very scary mental illness and it can lead people through all these different extreme mood swings. It's not just like one minute she's happy, one minute she's sad. It's going from being happy, impulsive, feeling invincible and spontaneous and ready to take on the world to this deep, dark depression that makes you not able to get out of bed or to do anything or to accomplish any simple tasks.
And in 2018, 2.8 Americans struggled with bipolar disorder. And that's just those who were diagnosed. But again, so many people don't receive treatment for bipolar.
these illnesses or tell anyone that they're struggling with these illnesses and just try to get through them without talking to anyone about it and that's where things get worse and that's where if we start talking about these things and making people feel okay about feeling them we can make a difference and we can make people want to get help and just make people feel better in general moving on eating disorders in 2018 this percentage was 2.7 americans
I can pinky promise you, knowing however many people it is that I know in my life, have known so many people who have struggled with eating disorders, that I am 100% confident in the fact that that percentage is way higher. And I have, this is not, I'm sure this is a statistic somewhere. This is like a personal observation of mine. I think that all of us have struggled with an eating disorder.
Or an unhealthy relationship with food. Or just a struggle with like body image at some point in our lives. Whether that is something that lasted a long time. Or if it was something that was short term. Or it was something that only crossed your mind because you watched a TikTok of someone who you wish you looked like. We've all struggled with something like that. And I applaud you if you haven't. Because...
It's hard out there. I will do a whole episode on body image and eating disorders. I just want to genuinely do my research and make sure I know what I'm talking about and be able to give a proper, I guess you could say like trigger warning for the episode and dive deep into it because there is a lot of baggage when it comes to us and struggling with our bodies and what we look like and different beauty standards and learning to love ourselves in a world that teaches us to hate ourselves. But
Back to what I was saying. An eating disorder is when we totally focus on our physical flaws. We are in constant body distress and disgust, or we've been in a cycle of binge and purge and restrict, and there's a lot of different eating disorders. Two of the very common ones are anorexia and bulimia, but there's others. And the video didn't go into all the others, so I didn't honestly do too much research on the others yet, but I plan to. And we will deep dive into them when I get to that episode. But...
I do just want to say when it comes to eating disorders, I want you to remember that you deserve to eat food and you don't have to do anything to deserve it either. It's just something that your body needs and it's what fuels you. And I know that I give you this reminder in a lot of different episodes, but I'm constantly getting DMs and I'm seeing comments about and seeing TikToks about how people are struggling with their body and struggling to eat food and struggling to feel that they deserve to eat food or constantly worrying about what they're putting into their body.
I just want to tell you that you are deserving and you are beautiful and you should never ever restrict yourself from the things that you enjoy to look a certain way. I feel very strongly and passionate about this one if you can't tell and I think the reason I feel that way is because I've been there. I've never struggled thankfully very seriously but I have had an unhealthy relationship with my body image. I look in the mirror and I'm like you look like super fat and ugly today and
That is not healthy. And that is what I'm working on changing. And that is what we all need to work on changing because do any of us love ourselves right now? Like not to get super serious and deep, but I think that the world has taught us all to hate ourselves. And goes back to that whole comparison of each other. Like just always in competition with someone or ourselves. Actually, you know what? Now's a good time to read you the poem that I wrote. It's not a poem. It's a piece that I wrote in my notes. I call them poems, but I don't really know what they are.
Let me read it. I wrote this after I had talked to my therapist about how I am just like in constant competition with myself and in constant conflict with myself and all sorts of things, but I'm just gonna read it to you. It's called Me and the Girl in the Mirror.
Other days, she's a bit less kind. She tells me no one will ever love my morning face after I eat too much sodium. And she tells me to go to the gym where people will notice the way my stomach looks a little bit bigger and wider than it did last year. She says all sorts of things and I'm not sure where they come from. Maybe she spends hours scrolling mindlessly on an app comparing herself to the girls with teeny tiny bodies, perfect relationships, and the motivation to wake up at 5 a.m. every day. I guess when she sees all those things, what I do isn't good enough for her.
The girl in the mirror always makes an argument, and apparently the only way she wins is making sure I like myself a little bit less than I did yesterday.
I wish she would just understand that there's a lot more to me than what she can see. I wish she noticed how big my heart was instead of how big my legs looked, or how curious I am about the world instead of how curious boys were about me, or if she'd pay attention to all the powerful worlds I've read instead of all the carbs I've eaten, or if she'd credit all the knowledge I've learned instead of complaining that I don't have a diploma to hang on the wall. I think she'd love me more if she noticed those things instead.
I want the girl in the mirror to be my best friend. People say that'll make me happier, and I believe them. No one enjoys being bullied every day. I used to think it was tough love, but the more I age, the more it hurts. The girl in the mirror deserves to be loved, and so does the one looking back at her. Maybe I should spend more time with her. Maybe she's still learning to love herself too, just like we all are.
No point in fighting fire with fire, so I'll kill her with kindness. And I'll tell the girl looking back at me that she's already good enough, and that she doesn't need to be everything at once, and that she's beautiful exactly the way that she was made. Because we're all on the same team after all.
So that's what I wrote. And the moral of that, the takeaway from that, is that if you are the one who's bullying yourself, you need to just start treating yourself with love. Because you and the girl in the mirror and the girl inside your head, you're all on the same team. You all deserve to feel loved. So you just have to start killing yourself with kindness.
This podcast is supported by FX's English Teacher, a new comedy from executive producers of What We Do in the Shadows and Baskets. English Teacher follows Evan, a teacher in Austin, Texas, who learns if it's really possible to be your full self at your job, while often finding himself at the intersection of the personal, professional, and political aspects of working at a high school. FX's English Teacher premieres September 2nd on FX. Stream on Hulu.
Moving on, because I've been talking for longer than I thought, I didn't want to make this episode super long, but the next one is OCD. And OCD is another thing that's so stereotyped that people will just say, oh, I'm just OCD because they have to have their house clean or their bed made at all times. That is not really okay to say when people who truly struggle with OCD are feeling like they're going a little bit crazy every day. True OCD is someone who has to wash their hands constantly
18 times specifically after they go to the bathroom or they think that someone is going to come in and kill them and these are uncontrollable thoughts like they just give people with OCD a great deal of anxiety and there's just like these reoccurring of thoughts which are what the obsession comes from and OCD can lead to different types of isolation and like hoarding and different organ
organization problems, and all sorts of things. And 2.3% of the population is known to struggle with OCD in 2018. The next one is autism spectrum disorder, which is 1 in 59 people. And this was, again, from 2018, so I don't know how much this has changed. I will do some research on it, but...
Autism spectrum disorder is when someone is significantly impaired with social interactions. Like they learn differently and communicate differently and often have like very repetitive thoughts and a difficulty communicating. And autism spectrum is a spectrum. So there are people who are very low functioning autistic and very high functioning. And that is again something I need to do more research on and I'm not totally sure.
knowledgeable on but the last one that I read a little bit about was schizophrenia or psychotic disorders and there's actually a lot of different psychotic disorders schizophrenia is just one that's very talked about and about 1% of the population struggles with this and a psychotic disorder comes when you handle or have to deal with psychosis for a period of longer than six months and psychosis is when you have like a disruption in reality so you hallucinate you have paranoia where you basically are just out of body and
Have no control over it. And honestly, a lot of us are going to have like a psychotic break at some point in our lives. Like scary to think about, but it's true. 100,000 people each year have some kind of break, whether it's from an event or like a traumatic event or a loss.
the only time it becomes a psychotic disorder is when those symptoms stay put for over six months. But those are 10 of the mental illnesses that I did a little bit of research on and just thought the statistics were very interesting to think about and the numbers were
way higher than I ever recognize that they are. Like we really are all going through it. And I think that the best way to make a difference is to just start living with compassion and start being there for one another. I don't know when society decided to switch up and start teaching us that like it was a constant competition and that we had to be constantly chasing things like wealth and popularity and success and materialistic things.
That's not what we're here to do. We're here to love one another and to be happy and to feel joy and to just live, not constantly be running. Nobody can run forever. And I think that we're all getting to the point where we have been running for a really long time and we just need to sit down and take a freaking breather. But...
If you are someone who has been struggling with some kind of issues in your mental health, I want to explain to you some signs that you might need to start taking care of yourself. And this isn't to say if you feel these things, you have a problem or you need to seriously get help. It just means you need to sit back and evaluate what you're doing with your time and if you're truly taking care of yourself. Because...
In a dream world, we would all just be able to be happy all the time, but we don't live in a dream world. We live in USA in 2020-22. We are going to have struggles, but we just need to be aware of them and we just need to work a little bit harder to take care of ourselves. So some signs that you may need to talk to someone or focus on self-care are mood swings. And again, these are just a few signs.
prolonged anger like if you're really really irritable and you're angry at people that you shouldn't be angry at this is how I know that I'm struggling with my mental health is when I get like Really angry for no reason and I'm just irritable and I face a lot of mood swings like a lot of up-and-down That's what I know. I'm struggling and I need to take a step back but again it manifests itself differently in every single person and every situation is different and
Okay, next one. If you're facing extreme sadness or decreased ability to handle stress, if you feel a little bit delusional or you're super paranoid or you're having a really hard time sleeping, you're having a hard time focusing, you've been isolating. This is another one that I do when I'm going through it. Isolating or avoiding social groups or inability to perceive changes in personal feelings. Like if you've just been feeling off but you can't really pinpoint why, that's a sign.
If you've been abusing substances like drinking a lot or doing drugs to avoid what you're feeling, that's a clear sign. Changes in your appetite, worry about physical appearance, and just prolonged depression. All of these are things that you should talk to someone about. And I'm not saying you need to go to therapy. I'm always going to be an advocate for therapy. I don't care how happy you are. I think that it's something valuable for all of us, but...
If that's not something you're ready to do or can do or can afford to do, talk to your friends. Talk to your family. Make it okay to talk about because it is okay to talk about. I know that when I sit here and I come on this podcast and I tell you guys, here's what I'm struggling with today. Your first thought, I would hope, isn't to judge me and be like, what? She's freaking crazy. If it was, you probably wouldn't still be listening.
Your response to that is like, oh my gosh, you know, I felt that too. We're all feeling different things and we're all going through different things and it makes you feel better, right? So you saying that you're going through something to your friend might just make her feel a little bit less alone and then you guys can understand that you're both going through things and you can help each other feel better. You don't have to feel great all the time. You don't have to feel perfect all the time. And there's so many other things that we can do to take care of our mental health, but
What I want us all to do first is to talk about it and to write about it and to get your journal out and just write about what you're feeling. Because I promise you, you'll discover a lot of things going on in your mind when you take out a pen and a paper and you just start writing. And I don't know. I just wanted to do this episode to just...
touch on mental health a little bit deeper and mental illness a little bit deeper and just remind you that we're all struggling and you're not alone. And I know I've told you that 10 million thousand times, but there's no such thing as hearing it too many times because I always feel a little bit better when I hear someone else going through the same struggles that I'm going through or anything along those lines. So I want you to make it a mission. I'm
No, I'm trying to think of like a moving on. I can't think of anything. We're just going to call it homework for now. This week, I want you to check in on three of your friends or one of your friends. You can start with one of your friends and check in on their mental health and see if they're okay. And if they are just quick to be like, yeah, I'm great. Dive a little bit deeper. Maybe tell them what you've been struggling with because when you open up to people, it makes them feel like they can open up to you.
Being vulnerable with one another is how we get the world to be a little bit more vulnerable and compassionate. So please talk to someone and make it your goal to make someone feel better. And watch, it's going to make you feel better as well. Like that's the mission. That's the moment's mission of the week. Go make someone feel better because it's going to help you. That's all I got for this week's episode. There's also some...
Moments. Sweatshirts still available. We're down to like the last few. So if you want to get them, get them now. I'm working on the next collection. It's going to be freaking sick. But I love you guys. And I am sorry if my brain was all over the place today. It usually is. But that's just me being vulnerable and open with you guys. I love you. And I will talk to you next Monday. I have big goals and big dreams. And we're going to make all of them happen. I've been really trying to get back into that mindset. The I'm capable mindset. Because...
Lately, I've just been living with all this self-doubt and we're fixing it. We're turning it around slowly but surely. So I love you guys. I care about you and I'm so glad that you're here because I couldn't do any of this without you. You're my best friends and you know that. I'll talk to you next Monday. Bye.