00:06:06.780Little did I know I was going to be experiencing those on and off for the next 30 years.
00:06:12.020and that's kind of what's been going on since is is typically there's no rhyme or reason to it and
00:06:16.620this is how it is for most people with uh with a cyclical mood disorder so like major depressive
00:06:20.800disorder bipolar disorder it means we experience these things in in episodes or in waves and so
00:06:26.860you'll have periods of time where your symptoms hit you very hard they don't have to be triggered
00:06:31.960by anything that's a common misconception because people will say like what are you depressed about
00:06:36.280and there's not always an answer to that question but as an individual who does deal with chronic
00:06:41.260depression. There are simply periods of time in my life where I become pretty much unable to feel
00:06:47.360good about anything. And for most of my life, I would be very non-functional during those periods,
00:06:53.380disabled by them, basically, until I started to learn some tricks to stay functional and to
00:06:58.960navigate them, basically. And yeah, as you mentioned in the intro, that's the main reason I
00:07:03.400got interested in the field that I did. I thought, now that I know, okay, this is a mental illness,0.55
00:07:08.360I should probably study this. And if I can also do that for a living, hey, win-win, I can fix my
00:07:12.280own problems and help other people. And every time I'd get started in undergrad, getting my bachelor's,
00:07:17.360master's, doctorate, started working in the field. And I kept waiting for the moment when I was going
00:07:22.380to start to hear stuff that would help me, because that's always been my barometer. Would this skill,
00:07:28.920knowledge, piece of information, whatever it is, would this have helped me at my lowest?
00:07:33.840and about 90% probably of what I learned in my professional education and my training
00:07:39.620did not pass that litmus test. And then I was done. I was fully licensed. I was independent.
00:07:45.020And I still felt like I wouldn't know how to help me if I walked, if, you know, 15 year old me
00:07:50.880walked through my doors right now, I wouldn't know what to do with that guy. So I've sought out a lot
00:07:55.300of other just information and strategies since that time, because I realized the field I work
00:08:01.200in does not have the answers to my questions, not all of them anyway. And that's when I started
00:08:05.720working on things like, you know, researching and writing and creating social media content,
00:08:10.200because I figured maybe I'm not the only person who feels this way. And that's kind of the brief
00:08:15.320summary of my journey with depression and how it relates to my career. Well, there's a lot to
00:08:20.380unpack there. The first thing I want to unpack and point out is this idea that your depression
00:08:25.240wasn't caused by something. Like you said, I think it's a common misconception people have
00:08:28.720about depression. It's like, well, if you're depressed, did you lose your job or did you
00:08:33.520have a traumatic childhood? And you talk about your childhood was pretty happy, like no abuse
00:08:39.860or anything like that, but you nonetheless still had these depressive episodes. Do we know what
00:08:46.780causes that? Why are some people prone to depression like you experienced? Yeah, that's a
00:08:52.720fantastic question. And really quick, I want to mention what you said about people asking why
00:08:57.200you're depressed. It's our terminology in, in psychology or in mental health, I honestly think
00:09:02.640probably needs a revamp. The same thing happens with anxiety, by the way. So, you know, depression
00:09:07.860and anxiety are diagnoses, right? Major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder. However,
00:09:14.740they're also emotions and they're emotions that every human being is acquainted with. Everyone
00:09:20.620knows what it feels like to be depressed or to be anxious. It's just that people who don't have
00:09:26.180a chronic mood disorder or chronic anxiety disorder only experience those emotions when
00:09:30.100they're triggered by an event or a stressor or a problem. And so I think what that results in is a
00:09:35.700lot of people think they understand these things better than they do. Because yeah, they think
00:09:39.220about like, man, yeah, I lost a job and I was horribly depressed for a while. And then I got
00:09:44.020another job and it got better. And so then they conclude if depressed people would just get jobs,
00:09:49.560they wouldn't be depressed anymore because that's what cured my depression. And I don't think there's
00:09:53.400any malicious intent there. I think this is just a person not realizing that the same word is being
00:09:58.320used to describe two very different things and thinking that what worked for them would also
00:10:02.940work for someone who is chronically depressed. And unfortunately, while employment can be one of
00:10:07.780many, many things that can help with depression, it is most certainly not a cure-all. But your
00:10:12.720question then was like, basically, then what is this? Why does this happen to people? And that's
00:10:17.320been one of my big disappointments in my field, honestly, is that we don't really know. We know
00:10:23.360some of the cause some of the time. There definitely appears to be some, you know, chemical
00:10:29.500or biological component to it. There are two neurotransmitters or brain chemicals that
00:10:36.320facilitate communication between your neurons or your brain cells. Actually, three really that
00:10:41.400seem to be implicated in many people's depression. And they are dopamine. And that's sort of like
00:10:47.020your reward chemical. So dopamine is the neurotransmitter that is used to produce feelings
00:10:52.580of like joy or achievement or accomplishment. So you build something or you get a good grade
00:10:59.600on a test and you look at what you've done and you say, yeah, I did a good job at that. And you
00:11:03.360get that good feeling, right? That's dopamine. Serotonin is usually a little bit more associated
00:11:09.560with anxiety, but it has some implications with depression as well. And serotonin is a
00:11:13.300neurotransmitter that makes you feel calm, relaxed, peaceful, at ease. It gives you that
00:11:17.100kind of just, you know, life is good. I'm pretty content kind of feeling. And then norepinephrine
00:11:21.800is more about regulating your physical functioning. So it helps you with energy. It helps you have an
00:11:26.060appetite. It helps you fall asleep at night, wake up in the morning. And we do appear to see some
00:11:31.660disruptions in the functioning of these neurotransmitters in many individuals with
00:11:36.580depression. And that's where psychiatric medication often plays a role in managing
00:11:40.380these conditions. But the exact functioning and makeup of those neurotransmitters seems to vary
00:11:46.820a lot from person to person. And there seem to be some individuals with depression who don't
00:11:52.400really respond well to any medication, which kind of makes people think, is it not chemical in this
00:11:58.040person's case? So it's really, really difficult to pin down, unfortunately. And that's why we still
00:12:03.400to this day don't have a foolproof, you know, like blueprint. We don't have a treatment protocol that
00:12:10.080has, you know, like a 95% success rate the way a surgical procedure might have. Our most effective
00:12:16.640treatments for depression, and I would say there's three, by the way, therapy, medication, and
00:12:21.500physical activity, they're about equal in terms of efficacy. But all three of those, generally
00:12:27.200speaking, have efficacy rates of about 60%. So there's a large number of people, a large proportion
00:12:34.980of the treatment-seeking population that for one reason or another don't respond to one of those
00:12:39.560treatments. And my theory, well, I have multiple theories on that. But what I think that means as
00:12:44.800far as the causes of depression is I don't think there is one. I think that at the risk of
00:12:51.300overcomplicating matters, what we currently call depression probably is more than one thing.
00:12:56.640If we really fully understood it, I think we would see this as a cluster of similar
00:13:00.760looking conditions that we've lumped together. But that's purely a theory. I have no data to
00:13:07.000back that up. Yeah. So it sounds like there might be a genetic component to this. Essentially the
00:13:11.060wiring you were born with makes you predisposed to that. Like in my life, I've had a couple of
00:13:17.060those more traditional depressive episodes and they were precipitated by stressful events. But
00:13:22.980sometimes I just get into these funks for no reason at all. And I think it's because I just
00:13:28.240have this ingrained tendency to focus on the negative. And I've gotten a good handle on it
00:13:32.620over the years. But I think I'll always have a disposition that's more melancholic than average.
00:13:38.640And so I don't think of myself as someone who struggles with depression, but it's like I'm
00:13:41.420part of that cluster of similar things. Well, and to your point there, you know,
00:13:45.340another factor that a lot of people, including myself, think play a role is just simply a
00:13:49.320person's personality. Some of us are just more prone to maybe bigger feelings in general. You
00:13:55.120know, like we know that emotional intensity varies from person to person. Some people just feel all
00:13:59.980feelings, you know, pleasant and unpleasant, more strongly than others. Some of us are obviously
00:14:05.400more pessimistic and more cynical than others. And that's just kind of the way we're built or
00:14:10.000the way we're wired. Some of us are more social than others. And while that's not inherently a
00:14:14.400good or a bad thing, something else I see a lot, and I would very much say this has been a piece
00:14:18.980of my story, is some of us are just our natural personality types that we're born with that don't
00:14:25.000really change, at least at their core throughout our lives. Some of us are just a better fit for
00:14:30.100the world than others. And I seem to have a personality type that just doesn't gel real well
00:14:36.300with society, or at least most of mainstream society. And that's an experience I had a lot
00:14:41.660growing up, especially when you know, you're you're with people your own age, the vast majority
00:14:46.340of your day, if you're kind of an introverted, quiet, pessimistic, cynical, you know, naturally
00:14:53.980kind of moody type person a lot of times people aren't real excited to be around you and you have
00:15:00.640a hard time maybe you know especially in like k through 12 years maybe seeing the purpose of what
00:15:05.280you're doing not necessarily seeing how the things you're spending the majority of your time on play
00:15:09.400in with uh you know bigger picture life goals or just anything that feels good or fulfills you
00:15:13.620you get pretty jaded and burnt out pretty fast and so that's that's i feel like another piece
00:15:18.920of it for me it's like yeah as you said in the intro i would not lay claim to have had an unusually
00:15:23.560difficult life. I think that would be dishonest for me to say that, at least in terms of events,
00:15:28.600like things that have happened in my life. But I've just never really felt like I belonged here
00:15:35.040in a super easy, natural way. And it frankly takes me a lot of mental effort to do things that I
00:15:43.540think come naturally for most people. Things like going to school, holding down a job, keeping
00:15:48.460friends. I have to work really, really hard at these things. And I have to reframe a lot of my
00:15:54.240natural thoughts and reactions because they tend to skew very, very, very quickly towards nihilism,
00:16:00.380honestly, like, why am I even doing any of this? What does any of this even matter? And I've learned
00:16:04.700that if I don't keep those in check, I pretty quickly just stop doing stuff. And that gets
00:16:08.680dark pretty quickly. So I think there very much is just a personality component to it as well.
00:16:14.140And in particular, how does that personality interact with the world and with the way society
00:16:18.900is built? Because I think I think most of us probably see that some people just have a
00:16:22.860personality that's naturally a better fit for sort of the norms of society and the expectations that
00:16:27.680get placed upon you. And for some of us, it just takes a lot more mental and sometimes physical
00:16:33.400effort to achieve those same outcomes. So you mentioned you spent 10 years getting
00:16:38.600in education. I mean, you got your master's, your doctorate in psychology, and then you didn't find
00:16:44.380the answers that you were hoping you'd find. What do you think is going on? Is it the way that
00:16:49.240traditional psychotherapy approaches treating people with depression that's causing the problem?
00:16:54.660Or is it just like what you talked about? Depression is caused by a whole bunch of
00:16:57.860different stuff, so no one really knows, and you're just kind of like throwing spaghetti on the wall?
00:17:01.820Yeah, I think there's a lot. I'll give you kind of a broad overview here because I have a few
00:17:06.280different theories. One is definitely what you just said. And this is not unique to depression,
00:17:10.220by the way. I think this is many mental health conditions, but I think they're far more varied
00:17:13.940and complicated than we currently recognize them to be. You know, we see these clusters of symptoms
00:17:19.440and we say these people have really similar symptoms, so they probably have the same thing.
00:17:22.740I'm just not convinced that that's the case. What I describe as depression, you know, I've done real
00:17:27.900deep dives on like my YouTube channel, for example, explaining all my symptoms. And there'll be people
00:17:31.880that are like, I also have depression, but this doesn't sound like me. So then is that even really
00:17:35.520the same thing? Are we calling some relatively similar things the same thing? And if so,
00:17:39.960treating them the same and possibly doing people a disservice. So that's one is I don't think we
00:17:43.540fully understand what we're dealing with. I think probably the biggest issue, though,
00:17:48.420is professional mental health is kind of at an odd crossroads where, you know, we're a young
00:17:52.700field, right? I mean, really 100 years old, that's nothing for a scientific discipline.
00:17:57.320And we're at this odd place where we're trying to respect the work of people,
00:18:02.120pioneers in the field, people like Sigmund Freud, Carl Rogers. And then we're also trying
00:18:07.260to become a more hard science through empirical research and double blind studies. And our history
00:18:13.880and our data, I don't think they sync up real well. So to give you an example, a really, really
00:18:19.540popular form of therapy or like therapeutic orientation is what's called person-centered
00:18:24.260or humanistic therapy. And there's going to be people who are mad at me when I explain it this
00:18:27.560way. This is a super, super quick overview. But a large part of a person-centered therapy practice
00:18:33.200is the idea that the client, the person seeking therapy, basically knows what they need to do,
00:18:39.540that they have the ability to kind of self-actualize and like basically solve their
00:18:44.020own problems through having time and focus and support and reflection from the therapist to
00:18:51.320essentially just enable them to kind of think out loud in the therapy session. That would never have
00:18:57.380worked for me. I very much did not have the answers. No amount of me sharing how I felt
00:19:04.100was going to accomplish anything. That's all I did. I spent 10 years basically wallowing and
00:19:09.520ruminating and telling anyone who would listen how I felt. Obviously, they weren't trained
00:19:14.000therapists, but I don't think that was the limiting factor. I needed help. I needed direction. I needed
00:19:21.320strategy. I needed guidance. And these are things that we are somewhat discouraged from providing
00:19:29.100as professional therapists. And there's a degree of wisdom in that. I don't know what job a person
00:19:35.660should do. I don't know what house they should live in. I don't necessarily know which of these
00:19:38.840people they're dating should they commit to. But there are things we know about mental health. And
00:19:43.900I get very frustrated when therapists refuse to acknowledge that. We know roughly how a person
00:19:50.440needs to sleep. More or less, there's a little bit of individual variation in that. But we know
00:19:54.680on average, a person who's getting about eight hours of pretty high quality sleep at around the
00:19:59.940same time every night is going to enjoy better mental health than a, you know, a comparative
00:20:04.440person who isn't doing that. We know, we know, no, no, this is critical, that regular physical
00:20:11.840activity is literally equivalent in reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety to regular
00:20:19.020weekly therapy or psychiatric medication. Like top of the line treatments, exercise matches it
00:20:24.340and in some areas beats it. And yet there are so few therapists who will even ask a depressed
00:20:30.580person, what's your physical activity level like? And obviously, I know that's a little bit of a
00:20:35.380chicken or the egg thing. It's hard to get anyone to work out regularly. It's really hard to get a
00:20:38.980depressed person to work out regularly. I do understand that. But we're not even having those
00:20:42.660conversations. We're not even planting those seeds. We're not even asking those questions.
00:20:46.540it's this very client-led process in so many cases. And that fundamental idea that this client
00:20:54.320has the ability to self-regulate and self-actualize and figure out their own answers,
00:21:00.020I'm sure it is true for some people. I can tell you it wasn't true for me. And it's not true for
00:21:05.420the majority of the people I serve. These are people who are on the bottom of life looking up
00:21:11.780at everybody else. And they are lost and they are miserable and they are stuck and they don't know
00:21:16.480what to do. And they need way, way more than a sounding board in order to help them move forward.
00:21:23.140That's what I think is probably the biggest issue in my field.
00:21:27.920One question I had for you, and I've had to grapple with this as well. So this idea of
00:21:32.520depression might not necessarily be caused by something. You just have, you're predisposed to
00:21:36.400it. I mean, understanding that I can see can help you. Okay, well, this is how I am. And now there's
00:21:41.560things I have to do to manage it, mitigate that. And we're going to talk about some of those things
00:21:45.380that, that people can do, um, like exercise. I want to dive deeper into that for sure.
00:21:49.940But also I've experienced that when I think like, man, this is just who I am,
00:21:54.060that even gets more depressing, you know, where you're just like, ah, you kind of go in this
00:21:59.480desperate. I was like, why do I have to do all this stuff just to be functional? So how do you
00:22:05.340avoid that? Do you think? That's a really good question. I, for me, a big part of it has been
00:22:12.240prioritizing because really there's only two reasons a mammal does anything. They're engaging
00:22:18.440in an activity because they're either trying to move towards a desired outcome or away from an
00:22:24.140undesired outcome. That's motivation. That's all of human motivation can be boiled down into one
00:22:28.680of those two categories. And I think this answer might expand a little bit even beyond mental
00:22:34.740illness, but it has a lot of implications for chronic mental illness. If we accept that premise
00:22:39.300and say, basically, everything worthwhile that I can do either makes me feel more good or less bad.
00:22:45.020Then it simply becomes a question of, you know, well, then what are my, what are my highest
00:22:50.360conviction actions? What are the things I can do that are going to move the needle the most?
00:22:55.540And I think it's really critical to think of that, not just in the present moment,
00:22:59.760but as more of a, you know, a cumulative outcome throughout your life. What got me stuck for a long
00:23:06.480time is, is I tried to cope with depression by doing things that felt good in the moment.
00:23:11.920Some of those were, you know, blatantly unhealthy things like, uh, impulsive spending or, or
00:23:17.740substance abuse. Some were things that don't necessarily appear unhealthy on the surface.
00:23:22.220Like I used to play a lot of video games. I don't really believe there's any direct harm
00:23:26.580in doing so. The problem is most of the things that feel best when you do them,
00:23:32.720do nothing beyond that moment. They give you this big rush of acute pleasure and then they're over
00:23:39.640and you're back to square one. And so for a long time, I was trying to, you know, treat air quotes,
00:23:45.320my depression by just doing lots of things that felt good. And I was just felt like I was chasing
00:23:52.300something I could never hold on to. And a big perspective shift for me was thinking of how I
00:23:59.420allocate my time and my energy and my attention, not just what would feel best right now, but
00:24:05.760trying to measure those things in terms of cumulative impact. So like this morning when I
00:24:10.980woke up, well, I don't, I don't work out instantly when I wake up, but I work out in the mornings,
00:24:14.240right? So, you know, I have a decision to make. I could spend 30 minutes playing a game on my phone
00:24:19.880or 30 minutes exercising. Now I like exercise more than most people. And yet even I will not
00:24:27.000make the claim that those 30 minutes of my life will feel better if I'm working out than if I'm
00:24:31.460playing a video game. At least not from a like a mental or emotional stimulation perspective. No,
00:24:36.080the game wins. But the exercise pays off again and again and again. I will feel good all day long
00:24:43.040from getting a workout in the morning. I will not feel good all day long from playing a video game
00:24:47.700for 30 minutes in the morning. In fact, I probably won't even remember that I did it. It's just a
00:24:50.800it's just a downtime activity. And when I started thinking of my life in that way, when I started
00:24:55.860thinking of cumulative impact, that completely changed my framework. And once I realized these
00:25:02.720are high value activities, because they produce not only some amount of joy right now, but future
00:25:08.840joy, I started to see everything in that realm, taking care of my nutrition, taking care of my
00:25:13.520sleep, taking care of my of my physical health, investing in relationships that matter to me,
00:25:19.520I really started to view all these things as almost like the equivalent of a financial investment.
00:25:23.560And, you know, metaphorically, if I, if I somehow came into $5,000 today, the most pleasurable thing I can do with that $5,000 today is spend it, but I'd spend it on a bunch of stupid stuff I don't even need. Whereas if I invested it, I get money for the rest of my life from that, you know, from compound interest. And I think that the activities or the strategies that help manage a chronic mental illness, I think of those as the equivalent of investments.
00:25:48.560investments. And once you realize that that thing you're doing isn't just going to make you feel
00:25:53.760good right now, it's going to make you feel good over and over and over again, you start to
00:26:00.600anticipate that reward. You start to anticipate that outcome and it actually becomes a more
00:26:06.740pleasurable experience. It becomes more enjoyable because you see the value in it. And so at this
00:26:13.200phase of my life where I'm at, my goal that the thing that feels best to me is basically to just
00:26:20.180keep my system as close to 100% as possible, as close to 100% of the time as possible. And being
00:26:30.240near that benchmark feels better to me than anything I can do just as an acute activity.
00:26:38.020In other words, I find it more enjoyable to do things that make it feel good to be me than to do things that feel good.
00:26:48.200Because, again, I'm inclined in that same direction you are.
00:26:51.200I'm not the guy who opens his eyes and hears birds chirping and says, God, I'm happy to be alive.
00:27:37.540it's like, this is what I need to do to feel my best. And that is my goal. And so there's really
00:27:42.200not much else to think about once you get to that point. We're going to take a quick break
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00:30:17.120And now back to the show. So in this book, The Light Between the Leaves, it's called that because
00:30:21.620what you do to figure out strategies or philosophies to help you manage your depression is that you
00:30:28.180look back at your life when you're the happiest. And a lot of the time, you're either at your
00:30:32.680family's cabin in northern Minnesota or your grandparents' farm. And you started thinking
00:30:37.180about those experiences and what they taught you, some metaphors that you observed from them that
00:30:42.320gave you insight on life. In the first lesson you talk about, you got from your family's cabin in
00:30:47.800Minnesota. What insight did you get from the isolation of your family's cabin about how the
00:30:53.260mind works when we're depressed? Yeah, that's, that's interesting because so this cabin was on
00:30:59.140a peninsula between two lakes. And so there's only one road in and out. And it ended a few
00:31:05.140houses beyond ours. And being in very rural northern Minnesota, this is like a poorly
00:31:10.180maintained is like a forest road, basically. And so there were there were quite a few times when
00:31:15.360we were there that we were stuck because if there were, you know, snow, mud, a fallen tree,
00:31:21.000like you can't get anywhere if this road is blocked. And every time that would happen,
00:31:26.240like the whole vibe would just change because even a very, very pleasant and wonderful place
00:31:33.300can feel like a prison if you're trapped inside of it, especially if you can't access anything
00:31:38.540that you need. And I remember that those vibe shifts when we were like kind of stranded there
00:31:44.500growing up. And I remember looking back on that first depressive episode that I mentioned earlier,
00:31:49.980it had a very similar feeling where it's like, I felt trapped inside of my own mind. And I knew
00:31:56.180that there were good things out there. Like I said, I was swimming, which I loved with my
00:32:00.560friends who I really liked. Like there was good stuff right there in front of me, but it felt
00:32:05.100like there was some kind of gap or barrier between me and all that stuff. And even though I knew it
00:32:10.340still existed, I couldn't access it. And that was the exact same thing that would happen when that
00:32:16.380road was blocked. Like the hospital still existed, the grocery store still existed, but we can't get
00:32:21.620there. We can't access them. And I noticed that especially in my worst depressive episodes,
00:32:28.300I would feel further and further away from the world. I could feel myself withdrawing inside of
00:32:36.100myself, if that makes sense. And I don't always find that an unpleasant place to be. I like
00:32:42.200thinking. I often enjoy being, you know, in conversation with myself. Again, I'm a more
00:32:46.180introverted person. So that's kind of my comfort zone, but not when I'm depressed. When I'm
00:32:50.200depressed, it becomes a dark, abusive, scary place to be, but I can't get out. I find it hard to
00:32:56.560engage with people. I find it hard to do things. And that I think was the biggest lesson there
00:33:01.940is that if you can't access anything else, if you're trapped within yourself, you cannot fix
00:33:08.780that problem by having good things outside of you. And that goes back to our earlier point,
00:33:13.100like you don't fix depression by just having a really good life. And if you could, you know,
00:33:18.180I don't think these aren't people I claim to know. So, you know, I'm kind of speaking out
00:33:21.600of ignorance here, but you know, you see celebrities, you see famous people who would
00:33:25.960appear, you know, at least to a naive observer like me on the outside looking in to have all of
00:33:32.140the things in life that most people want. You know, they have respect and they have financial
00:33:36.720security and they have time and freedom to chase their goals. And yet these people, some of them
00:33:41.740struggle with depression and addiction and even suicide in some cases. And without knowing them,
00:33:48.340I can only conclude, yeah, they had those things, but maybe they weren't really able to feel them.
00:33:53.880Maybe they were trapped inside of their own minds, trapped inside of themselves and not able to access any of that goodness that they theoretically, you know, could touch in their own lives.
00:34:06.360And maybe that's just me self-inserting into their story.
00:34:09.160But I know that's how I felt during those episodes.
00:34:13.140And that's why, I mean, this kind of goes basically that my proposed solution to that problem is what I just said before you asked this question, which is that self-care.
00:34:20.980which I mentioned as being analogous to maintaining that road your ability to care for your own mind
00:34:27.880that's the road connecting you to the rest of the world and if that road gets blocked if that road
00:34:32.740falls into disrepair it doesn't matter who or what you have because if you can't feel any of it
00:34:39.520it won't be able to touch your depression and you will be miserable and so yeah the things you can
00:34:44.820do to maintain that road to the cabin of your mind like you said self-care stuff getting enough sleep
00:34:50.000is a good one not too much sleep sometimes when you're depressed you want to do a sleep so
00:34:54.560you know seven to eight hours of sleep eating right and then we talk about exercise i want to
00:35:00.120talk about this because this is something you talk a lot about and you're a big proponent of
00:35:02.920exercise as a we'll call it a treatment for depression what is it about exercise that makes
00:35:10.340it such an effective way to alleviate or keep your depression in check yeah i i think it's so
00:35:16.560effective because it is multifactorial. And, you know, that goes back to our conversation earlier
00:35:21.500that depression in and of itself is likely multifactorial. And therefore, you know, just
00:35:26.460any one thing is probably not going to be the answer for a person. But exercise really is more
00:35:32.920than one thing if you break it down to its core elements. So we know that there are neurochemical
00:35:38.960changes that occur when a person gets regular physical activity that are very, very similar
00:35:45.700to the changes that occur when a person is taking like an antidepressant medication,
00:35:50.000for example. So there very much is a chemical component with exercise. But there's also an
00:35:55.780achievement component. We know that if a person sets goals and then achieves those goals or even
00:36:02.460works toward those goals, that facilitates the release of dopamine. Now, sometimes depression
00:36:07.360blocks that. But if you if you have tangible proof, that's one of the things I love about
00:36:12.000exercises. You can track it. You can have data. You can have metrics because your depression can
00:36:16.400make you say, well, am I really doing a good job? But if you can prove like, no, I am getting
00:36:20.020stronger. I'm getting faster. My endurance is going up. My flexibility is going up. Whatever
00:36:23.440your goals are. If you have data that says, no, I have demonstrable evidence that I am in fact
00:36:29.500achieving my goals. It's pretty hard for your depression to argue against that. In many cases,
00:36:35.100physical activity is often something we do with other people, right? You take a class,
00:36:38.980you maybe play a sport or even just joining a gym even even if you don't talk to them like just
00:36:44.060depression is so isolating and this is one thing i emphasize to people is even just being in a place
00:36:49.980where people are can help with those feelings of isolation even if you don't talk to them just
00:36:55.060doing something and then looking around your environment and seeing there are other people
00:36:59.540here doing what i am doing gives you a little bit of a sense of connection to other people and to
00:37:04.720the world in general, that depression can often take away from us. Many forms of physical activity
00:37:10.100can become hobbies. And so they are inherently pleasurable activities in and of themselves. You
00:37:15.260know, when I say exercise, I'm not saying you don't have to run or do weight training. Certainly
00:37:19.840you can, those things count. You know, you could take up hunting, which might involve a lot of
00:37:24.420walking or fly fishing in a stream where you have to walk a mile against a current. There's no reason
00:37:30.180it has to be an isolated thing that isn't also fun or enjoyable. So I don't believe in any magic
00:37:37.700bullets, but I would say if you ask me, what is the single most impactful thing you have ever done
00:37:44.760for your own mental health? Easy answer. It is getting into regular physical activity, which I
00:37:49.580really didn't start doing until I was in my early 20s. That was the single biggest shift I experienced
00:37:56.800in my mental health. It did not fix everything. It was not the cure. But that was a huge turning
00:38:02.880point for me where I did start to feel like I think I am actually turning the tide and winning
00:38:09.120this battle and maybe feeling okay more often than I feel miserable. And so it would be my highest
00:38:16.260conviction recommendation for anyone struggling with their mental health. It also one more thing
00:38:20.420because I can't even there's so much good it does. It's hard to even remember it all.
00:38:23.920It also improves cognitive performance. So if you think like executive functioning, focus, concentration, memory, organization, time management, it literally makes your brain work better because your brain uses blood and oxygen to do its job. And improving your cardiovascular fitness increases the amount of blood and oxygen that are available to your brain.
00:38:44.260And we know that depression and many mental health conditions, you know, they kind of give you that brain fog. They make you feel slower, dumber. Frankly, you get more forgetful. You need to take breaks more often. So it can help you get some of your efficacy back, some of your edge back. It makes you more effective at work, at school, in social situations.
00:39:01.320it's hard to even give a full overview of everything physical activity does for your
00:39:07.500brain and your mood but it is it is one of if not the most powerful tools in our toolbox in my
00:39:13.320opinion and so underutilized in therapy yeah i agree with you exercise has been a game changer
00:39:17.800for me and with all these self-care things with the sleep the eating right exercising you talk
00:39:23.640about this one of the things they do is they help your prefrontal cortex and your prefrontal cortex
00:39:28.100i'm sure people have heard this sort of like the manager of your brain it's executive function
00:39:32.320and one of the problems i notice whenever i get into my funks is my prefrontal cortex is basically
00:39:38.240checked out and my brain does whatever it wants to do and so like i'll go down this you know sort
00:39:43.600of negativity spiral but when i'm living right right i'm exercising getting enough sleep not
00:39:48.300stressed out that prefrontal cortex is there whenever i notice myself slipping into like a
00:39:53.800funk, it can kick in and be like, oh, hey, we're going to stop this now. We're not going down that
00:39:58.380path. I've noticed that as well. Yeah, it's exactly that. So one of the most important jobs
00:40:03.140of your prefrontal cortex is emotion regulation. So your emotions are generated in your midbrain
00:40:09.360and they're managed in your prefrontal cortex. So there's a little bit of a communication process
00:40:13.480that happens there. So your brain makes a feeling, then tries to figure out what to do with the
00:40:17.940feeling. And so your ability to regulate your own emotions, which is to, you know, put them into
00:40:23.040context, figure out, you know, this feels like a catastrophe. Is it? Am I overreacting? What would
00:40:28.060be a skillful response to this thing I'm feeling that will help me feel it less and not screw up
00:40:32.840my life? These are all prefrontal cortex tasks. And when your prefrontal cortex is functioning
00:40:38.860properly, sometimes you won't even notice that you're managing your emotions. I've made the
00:40:44.880metaphor as a big former gamer. Anyone who's played any real-time strategies games will get
00:40:50.860this. It's kind of like having like anti-air turrets in your base. Like it will defend you
00:40:56.280from attacks that you don't even know you're under because it will just work and it will
00:41:00.720take the edge off those big, scary feelings. Sometimes it'll make you, you know, irritated
00:41:05.920instead of angry, stressed instead of anxious, moody instead of depressed. Like it takes some
00:41:11.480of the edge off. It kind of repackages things into a more manageable, more palatable form.
00:41:16.580And that's why taking care of that road, taking care of your brain is so important because
00:41:20.720you will start to win some of your battles without even realizing you are fighting them.
00:41:26.000Some of your problems will seem as if they have magically disappeared and you won't even know
00:41:30.820where they've gone. And the truth is they haven't actually disappeared. Your brain is just finally
00:41:35.240managing them the way it's able to when it is properly cared for. And then your emotions don't
00:41:40.960require constant babysitting from you to deal with them, which is I think a place we'd all like to
00:41:44.920get to. Yeah. And going back to exercise, like you said earlier, about as effective as psychotherapy
00:41:50.840and medication, but it's not that expensive. You can go out and take a walk or jog. That's free.
00:41:58.380And unlike with medication where there can be negative side effects like loss of libido,
00:42:02.800the side effects of exercise are all positive. That's true. And there's two other areas where
00:42:07.720exercise actually wins out over therapy and medication. One is the onset of relief. So if
00:42:14.880you look at therapy and medication, average amount of time it takes to start feeling better
00:42:19.960in either of those treatment conditions is four to six weeks. And so those first few weeks of
00:42:24.820trying a new, you know, maybe get a placebo effect of like, oh, I'm feeling better because I'm in
00:42:29.460therapy or because I'm on this medication, but they haven't actually really started to do anything
00:42:33.060yet. Whereas with exercise, it's two to four weeks. And so you potentially feel better more
00:42:38.740quickly with exercise than with therapy or medication. The other area where exercise wins
00:42:44.060is lower symptom relapse rates. So now that might be a little bit misleading because that might
00:42:50.940simply be because it's easier to maintain. But you know, if you get on an antidepressant medication,
00:42:56.380and by the way, I'm just going to give a brief aside here, I'm in no way against medication.
00:42:59.680This is not an anti-medication conversation, but this is just the truth.
00:43:03.480If a person's on a medication and the medication makes them feel better, they basically have
00:43:07.520two choices, get off the medication later and feel the way they used to feel or stay
00:43:21.260Like it's a beneficial thing to maintain.
00:43:23.940And so we see lower symptom relapse rates with exercise than with therapy or medication, probably because people keep doing it. It's not like it's magically, I don't want to overstate my case, it's not like fixing your brain structure or anything. It's continuing to work because ideally, you're continuing to do it.
00:43:41.620And it's most people don't want to be on medication for the rest of their life. Most people probably also don't want to be in therapy for the rest of their life. That's not necessarily feasible. But we can stay physically active for our entire lives. And in fact, we should. And there are other reasons. You know, I'm only approaching this from the mental health angle. Obviously, it goes without saying that there are tremendous physical health benefits for staying physically active as well.
00:44:03.960But I'm saying even if you only looked at the mental health side of things, it's still
00:44:23.640All right, let's talk about another lesson that stood out to me.
00:44:25.420And it's the idea that envy is ignorance.
00:44:28.280And you got this lesson while you were fishing in the lake by your family's cabin.
00:44:32.280and you and your sister had only caught little fish, but one day you caught this big monster
00:44:37.140fish. And that got you thinking about what else might be lying in the dark depths that you couldn't
00:44:42.560see at the bottom of the lake. And you compare that to how people, especially people with
00:44:47.060depression, because they have that stronger than average negativity bias, they feel like they're
00:44:51.880just, you know, they're more screwed up than everyone else. And they envy that other people
00:44:55.480seem to have better lives. And that just puts them into more of a funk, but they can't see
00:44:59.880to the bottom of other people's lives like you couldn't see to the bottom of the lake.
00:45:04.160Yeah, that's kind of a metaphor I've used to understand other people's lives. Now,
00:45:08.300especially as a therapist, I often obviously am privy to some of those deep, dark secrets. And
00:45:12.680that's just reinforced the idea that everybody has them because many of the people I work with,
00:45:18.300you would never think there's anything going on based on their family, their careers, their
00:45:23.640attire, their appearance. And so it's just an important reminder for me that everybody's got
00:45:28.480stuff. Everybody's got darkness you can't see. And you may not ever know what it is, but don't
00:45:34.280ever let yourself think it's not there because that's going to draw you to some really problematic
00:45:40.160conclusions about your own life. And this is not the most eloquent way to say it, but I said it
00:45:45.320this way in the book. You know everything that sucks about being you, but you don't know what
00:45:49.500sucks about being somebody else. But something does. I guarantee you something does. You just
00:45:53.680don't know what it is. And you got to remember that there is something so that you don't end up
00:45:58.660just feeling despair and hopelessness about your own life just because you know everything that
00:46:02.320sucks about being you. And so, I mean, any tactics that you found? I mean, you talk about this idea
00:46:06.680of identify, locate, and pursue to overcome this tendency. Can you walk through that?
00:46:12.560Yeah. So that's about recognizing like, what do you have in your own life that is already good?
00:46:19.680Because with that negativity bias, it is so easy for us to fixate on what we don't have and on what we see in other people's lives and identify, locate and pursue, which is kind of a kind of a blueprint I use to help us really see and appreciate what we do already have.
00:46:36.120Like all of my therapy clients want something that another one of my therapy clients has
00:46:50.380And she's like, I just wish I had time to think and could just, you know, go on a vacation
00:46:55.180whenever I want and didn't have to arrange all these things.
00:46:58.840And then I have a client who can't have kids and she has all of that.1.00
00:47:02.880She has the freedom and the time and the money, but she just wants more people to share it with.
00:47:07.860And it's like so often I see that where I'll have two people thinking that the solution to all their problems is a thing that somebody else I know has and isn't happy with.
00:47:17.740And what that has led me to believe is there's no certain configuration of life that's going to make you happy or not happy.
00:47:25.380And the biggest dividing line is the extent to which people are able to appreciate what they do have and accept what they don't.
00:47:34.240Because there's no way to put a life together where you get all the stuff.
00:47:49.500Some people, I guess, have careers where they can make a great amount of money not working a ton.
00:47:53.420But for most of us, we either got to pick, do I want to, you know, be able to achieve my financial dreams by working more and or harder than most people?
00:48:02.240Or do I want to appreciate the fact that while money is tight, I have more free time, I have more autonomy, I have more flexibility.
00:48:09.760And so that I think is the biggest difference is not, you know, do you have all the stuff, but are you able to pull the joy out of what you do have and practice some acceptance of the fact that like the things you don't have,
00:48:21.960if you were to pursue them, you'd lose some of what you do have. And ultimately,
00:48:26.180once we get to adulthood, we're all busy. We all have limited resources. Almost every move you can
00:48:31.700make is a lateral move. Very rarely can you do something that just makes every part of your life
00:48:37.280better. And it's usually, I could trade a little bit of this for a little bit of that. And that
00:48:42.360makes one thing better and one thing worse, which is actually better. And I see people just
00:48:46.860constantly doing that, just trading and then being like, oh, I didn't like that. I should go back.
00:48:50.520kind of reminds me of people. I know someone who kept moving back and forth from the city to the
00:48:54.580country. They'd live out in the country and they'd be like, I love the space. I love the nature,
00:48:58.720but I feel isolated. Then they move in the city and they're like, this is cool. You know,
00:49:02.360I got people around me. This is vibrant. This is exciting, but I feel confined. I feel trapped.
00:49:06.540My space is too small. And they just go back and forth for like decades. And it's like,
00:49:11.520how do you not see what this is? Like, there's no perfect solution here. There's pros and cons
00:49:16.920to each and you got to just pick one. And I think that's how most things in our life work to be
00:49:20.380honest. And it's so easy to end up chasing something that just doesn't exist. Some perfect
00:49:24.500idealized solution. This reminds me, we've had Rick Hansen on the podcast talk about this idea
00:49:29.820of hardwiring happiness. And the big takeaway I got from him was when you do experience those
00:49:34.480good things, first off, like recognize, be open to those good things in your life. And they can
00:49:38.620be small things like time with your kids, a good morning, like just even you have a house, you're
00:49:44.200alive and like really focus on that and soak it in and think, yeah, things are actually good.
00:49:49.980they're not as bad as I think they are. I think that's a useful practice. It's basically counting
00:49:53.660your blessings, essentially. And it sounds cliche, but it's cliche because it works if you do it.
00:49:59.660So let's talk about another lesson. And this lesson that stood out to me was called Pull the
00:50:04.240Weeds. And this is about an invasive species of plant and also some mussels that were in the lake
00:50:11.520near your family's cabin that you got a lesson. I think we talked about this a little bit earlier
00:50:15.840about how things that look pretty or good and may not be that bad can actually crowd out the things
00:50:24.640that are better for you to manage your depression. Yeah, exactly. The mussels in particular is a
00:50:30.120perfect example because, yeah, so they're an invasive species. They're not supposed to be
00:50:33.680in that lake. This is the same lake we were talking about before. But what's interesting
00:50:36.820about them is they have a filtering effect on the water. And so they actually make the water
00:50:41.020more clear. And I loved how clear, I remember when I was a kid, there weren't mussels in there. And
00:50:45.420I actually wished, I was like, I wish, I hope we get zebra mussels because then the water will be
00:50:48.620even more clear. It'll look like the ocean. And my dad was a big environmentalist and he was always
00:50:53.200like, no, you don't want invasive species. I never understood. Like I get it if they're like
00:50:56.860poisonous or carnivorous, like if there's direct harm. Yeah, I get we don't want that. But if all
00:51:01.680it does is make the water clearer, if it's a flower that grows in a field and looks beautiful,
00:51:05.540like what's the harm in that? But what I eventually came to understand is there's direct
00:51:10.220harm and there's indirect harm and and the reason that a lot of invasive species are are undesirable
00:51:16.280even if they don't do anything even if they're not like killing other other you know native species
00:51:22.040is they take up space they take up resources a flower that's not supposed to be in a certain
00:51:27.680ecosystem still requires soil still requires water and it's taking that from something that
00:51:34.040does need to be there and that flower while it may be beautiful doesn't necessarily provide any
00:51:38.160value to that ecosystem because it's not part of the food chain there. The animals might not eat
00:51:42.580it. It's just a pretty waste of space, basically. And I think there are so many things in our lives
00:51:50.120that essentially function that way, that are invasive species and that are basically
00:51:54.120pretty wastes of space. The biggest one for me personally was video games. I really enjoyed
00:52:01.140video games and I think that they can be a great hobby for a lot of people. But what I noticed in
00:52:06.520my own life is that I enjoyed video games so much that everything else in my life kind of came
00:52:13.260second. And all these fundamental, you know, pro mental health behaviors that we're talking about
00:52:19.000here today, those are things that I had to kind of try to grudgingly jam into my day because I
00:52:25.640wanted to have several hours a day available for leisure time. Now, again, for me, that was gaming
00:52:30.180for some people. That's going to be, you know, binge watching your favorite shows, doing whatever
00:52:33.620on social media, you know, this could be anything. But I think it's really, really important for us
00:52:38.420to all keep an eye out for what are the things in our lives that aren't actually providing value to
00:52:44.060our ecosystem. They might be, you know, metaphorically beautiful, meaning this feels really
00:52:47.880good when you do it. And that's fine. I'm not saying you shouldn't have those things. But you
00:52:53.200want to be mindful of how much space they're taking up. Because as a therapist and a coach,
00:52:59.600one of the biggest things I hear from people when I try to give them guidance is like,
00:53:04.280I don't have time. And don't get me wrong. I know we're all busy. I know that this life requires a
00:53:09.640lot out of us. If you really look at even just the amount of time most of us have to work to
00:53:13.880make a living, it's a lot. And so I'm not trying to push back on that as in, you have 10 hours of
00:53:21.720free time a day. But the people who tell me they don't have time to work out or to get eight hours
00:53:26.760of sleep, when we really look at their day, there's usually several hours a day for most of
00:53:32.520them where they're doing something that just produces acute pleasure. And again, it's okay
00:53:38.860to have a little bit of that. But if that becomes a cornerstone of your routine, if that becomes a
00:53:45.020thing you need, if that becomes a thing you prioritize over actual health necessary behaviors
00:53:52.480and becomes a reason why you don't do them, then your ecosystem is out of balance and your life
00:53:59.300has started to, or maybe has been taken over by an invasive species, by a thing that is growing
00:54:06.680unchecked and uncontained, and that can eventually take over your life. Even if it's not something
00:54:12.760with a physiological addictive element to it, like drugs, for example. I personally, I identify as a
00:54:21.320video game addict. I believe that was an addiction to me. And even once I got to a point in life where
00:54:27.420I had a career and a family, obviously I wasn't playing games eight hours a day. It wasn't
00:54:32.440physically possible. But even when it was something that was only a couple hours, it was the only
00:54:37.720thing I really looked forward to because it felt so much better to me than everything else I did.
00:54:44.500And so work and taking care of myself and even family to a degree, they started to feel
00:54:49.680obligatory. They started to feel like the things I had to get through to get to the part of my life
00:54:55.620that I really wanted to get to. And I hated that. I found that to be a miserable and unacceptable
00:55:02.020perspective. For me, it's like a full removal. I play games with my son and that's it.
00:55:08.040It was something I had to really pull out by the weeds. And a short while after doing that,
00:55:13.980I realized that I was starting to rediscover the joy that used to only come from games in the other parts of my life, in my work, in my family, in my relationships, even in things like working out and going to bed on time.
00:55:28.040Those started to feel good to me because they weren't constantly being compared to this artificial source of stimulation and joy that provided me with, you know, this incredible audio visual experience that nothing consistent in a person's regular day to day life can really replicate.
00:55:41.860and so it was basically addition by subtraction my life got better by taking away something that
00:55:48.100i loved because it raised the average enjoyment of everything else that i did by comparison
00:55:53.460all right this last lesson i want to talk about and it's keep the water flowing and you got this
00:55:57.900lesson from some backwater what lesson did this backwater in the river teach you about depression
00:56:03.600so that one yeah that one was a stream by my parents house and it was a pretty small stream
00:56:09.520So there are places where there was no water flowing.
00:56:12.480And it's interesting because like a stream that has water flowing usually is very beautiful.
00:56:16.660It's this clean, clear, like pristine looking water.
00:56:20.740But then you'll see these little pools where the water doesn't flow.