Speaker 1: It's funny because I met my husband and I told
Speaker 1: him it was going to be five years before we
Speaker 1: slept together, and it was like the second night. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think
Speaker 1: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Our guest today is Cheres Porchard, author of Beyond Blue
Speaker 1: and The Pocket Therapist. She blogs for Everyday Health and
Speaker 1: is an associate editor and regular contributor to psych Central.
Speaker 1: She writes about her own struggles with depression. Here's the show. Hi, Teres,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker 1: We are happy to have you on. You've done a
Speaker 1: lot of writing about depression, which is something that we
Speaker 1: talk about on the show a fair amount. You had
Speaker 1: a pretty popular blog on belief neet for a long time,
Speaker 1: and you've got a book called Beyond Blue, which I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed. So we will dive into a lot of
Speaker 1: that stuff. But let's start with the parable, like we
Speaker 1: always do. So there is a grandfather who's talking with
Speaker 1: his grandson and he says, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, grandfather, well,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Well, let me say I
Speaker 1: love that parable. The first time I heard it was
Speaker 1: about four years ago at church. Ironically, because the sermons
Speaker 1: usually aren't that good, but this one. It made an
Speaker 1: impact on me, and I've remembered that, and I've had
Speaker 1: that in the back of my mind as I go
Speaker 1: forth with trying to find ways of living around what
Speaker 1: I call my treatment resistant depression. I think you always
Speaker 1: have to be cognizant of those two wolves, because when
Speaker 1: you are trying so hard to feed one, you don't
Speaker 1: realize how sneaky the other is, and before you know it,
Speaker 1: you're feeding the wrong wolf and you're back to where
Speaker 1: you started. So so having in mind those two, I
Speaker 1: try to make a conscious effort on doing the things
Speaker 1: that are going to result in more love and compassion.
Speaker 1: It's the same message I think that Victor Frankel has
Speaker 1: with his book Demand Search for Meeting. That also was
Speaker 1: very a very important book for me to read because
Speaker 1: I had kind of hit rock bottom and I had tried,
Speaker 1: you know, to fifty different medication combinations. I've tried mindfulness, meditation, acupuncture,
Speaker 1: every kind of alternative therapy out there, and I still
Speaker 1: had these horrible death thoughts. And when I read that book,
Speaker 1: I realized that he, you know, in the Auschwitz and
Speaker 1: the concentration camps, he was there with wolves all around
Speaker 1: him just trying to eat from his very being that
Speaker 1: he was just attacked all the time, and yet he
Speaker 1: found a way to find that wolf of love and
Speaker 1: compassion and turn that horrible time into just a blessing
Speaker 1: and to a lesson for each of us. And so
Speaker 1: I've tried to do that into turning my suffering into service,
Speaker 1: and when I do that, I do feel more compassion
Speaker 1: and peace and serenity. So why don't you tell the
Speaker 1: listeners just a brief overview of your story that's in
Speaker 1: the book about your battles with depression. And I would
Speaker 1: be interested in also where things pick up, because the
Speaker 1: book was was several years ago, right, so i'd be
Speaker 1: interested in kind of after the book also how you're
Speaker 1: ongoing challenges have been with depression. Sure, well, I really
Speaker 1: feel like I have been depressed from the time that
Speaker 1: I was born. I was a colloquy infant, and when
Speaker 1: I was a child had I was very Catholic, and
Speaker 1: so I had a scrupulosity, you know, couldn't say enough prayers,
Speaker 1: couldn't go enough masses to I was afraid I was
Speaker 1: going to hell. That kind of morphed into an eating
Speaker 1: disorder when I was an adolescent girl, I was wanted
Speaker 1: to be a professional ballerina, and that's kind of the culture.
Speaker 1: There is a little dangerous towards the body, and so
Speaker 1: I got carried away with that. But when I got
Speaker 1: into high school, I started to drink, and so went
Speaker 1: downhill fast with the drinking. But I always I call
Speaker 1: liquor the quiet car in my brain. You know when
Speaker 1: you're on amtrakt and you're looking for the quiet car
Speaker 1: because everyone's on the phone. The quiet car for me
Speaker 1: was liquor. It was the first time that I was
Speaker 1: able to relax in my own brain, and I still
Speaker 1: remember the feeling of being able to do that. But
Speaker 1: you know, as in all alcoholic stories, it took me,
Speaker 1: took me down. So once I got sober, I started
Speaker 1: to really I was in therapy in college and she
Speaker 1: thought I was depressed and wanted to put me on
Speaker 1: an antipressant, and I was very opposed because my aunt,
Speaker 1: my godmother, was bipolar and took her life, and I
Speaker 1: just remember being so scared that I was like her.
Speaker 1: And so when she said, you know, I think you're depressed,
Speaker 1: my defenses went up. And it took about a year
Speaker 1: and a half for me to come around and to
Speaker 1: really acknowledge that and start the road to recovery. So
Speaker 1: I was good for a while until I had my kids.
Speaker 1: And I think from what I've read, childbirth can just
Speaker 1: do a real number on a woman's body as far
Speaker 1: as hormonally. A lot of people who had depression prior
Speaker 1: to childbirth end up with bipolar disorder after child books,
Speaker 1: not a lot, but some do. And so that's what
Speaker 1: happened to me. After I stopped nursing my second child,
Speaker 1: I hit a bottom that that had been lower than
Speaker 1: anything I had ever done. And so I went from
Speaker 1: psychiatrists to psychiatrists, seven in all, and one of them
Speaker 1: was a very aggressive guy who worked for some pharmaceuticals,
Speaker 1: and he was just given me a very dangerous combinations
Speaker 1: of of of medication. And so I basically fell into
Speaker 1: my serial bowl one morning and was hospitalized, and was
Speaker 1: hospitalized twice. Actually the last time was at Johns Hopkins,
Speaker 1: and I met a wonderful physician who guided me from
Speaker 1: that point to I think where I wrote the book.
Speaker 1: I had gone through a period where I really tried
Speaker 1: the alternative ways acupuncture. I had to go off my
Speaker 1: medication and ended up in a ball in my bedroom closet,
Speaker 1: and my husband said, you know, please do this for me,
Speaker 1: but with the help of the psychiatrist and with an entroprenologist,
Speaker 1: because it was also a matter of having a pituitary
Speaker 1: tumor and addressing that as well. I had two very
Speaker 1: good years. That's when I wrote the book. Since then,
Speaker 1: since two thousand and eight, I've been struggling again. And
Speaker 1: this time, I, you know, again, tried many different combinations,
Speaker 1: and when I hit like number fifty, I just didn't
Speaker 1: think that it was that. It just felt like I
Speaker 1: was beating a dead horse with a toilet plunger something
Speaker 1: that was not working. And so I have a great
Speaker 1: deal of respect for my psychiatrist, but I just started
Speaker 1: to kind of wonder about the field of psychiatry itself,
Speaker 1: and so I began to see a holistic doctor and
Speaker 1: acquire more about my diet and see someone who could
Speaker 1: really concentrate on my endoprint system because my pituitary tumor
Speaker 1: was still so out of whack, and my thyroid is
Speaker 1: also kind of out of whack. So that journey has
Speaker 1: been the last year, and I in the last two
Speaker 1: or three months, I feel like I finally. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm still on medication and I still go to my psychiatrist,
Speaker 1: but with those pieces in place, I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: really starting to regain health. And I've had to make
Speaker 1: some very difficult changes in my diet, given up gluten, dairy, alcohol, caffeine, sugar,
Speaker 1: and take enough supplements that it takes me about a
Speaker 1: half hour each week to fill them up in those
Speaker 1: one of those granny size containers. But I think it's
Speaker 1: it's finally starting to pay off. If I do absolutely
Speaker 1: everything that I can to to work towards good mental health.
Speaker 1: I can't just go to a psychiatrist and a counsel or.
Speaker 1: For me, it has to be the whole body, the
Speaker 1: whole everything. I found that to be one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things about your your story is that in your
Speaker 1: book there's a lot of concern because you've got a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are pointing you to holistic sources
Speaker 1: of healing, as you mentioned acupuncture, or if you just
Speaker 1: meditate right or go to enough yoga. And I found
Speaker 1: it interesting in the book that you were you were
Speaker 1: realizing that those things were not sufficient, and that they
Speaker 1: still aren't, but now you find you found a way
Speaker 1: to pair the more traditional medical treatment, the antidepressant medicine
Speaker 1: and traditional therapy with some of those more holistic approaches. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think for me, I need both. And that's it's
Speaker 1: been frustrating because those worlds are so different, and if
Speaker 1: I go to a holistic doctor, most of them are
Speaker 1: going to say, we don't believe in mental diagnoses. We
Speaker 1: don't believe in mental illnesses because everything comes from toxins,
Speaker 1: everything comes from you know, they don't believe in that
Speaker 1: in itself. And then but most of psychiatry really doesn't
Speaker 1: pay a lot of attention to diet, which I think
Speaker 1: is huge, and so I've been trying to address that
Speaker 1: on my blog a lot to inform people because I
Speaker 1: don't think I got well, and I feel confident right
Speaker 1: now that I'll probably stay well because I have all
Speaker 1: of these pieces in place. My husband has been really great.
Speaker 1: He when I first just wanted to take the holistic
Speaker 1: route and go off all my medication, I was he
Speaker 1: has we we have a lot of people in our
Speaker 1: community who are new age and they he remembers when
Speaker 1: he was a kid watching this documentary on Uri Geller,
Speaker 1: the guy who bend the spoon with his with his thoughts,
Speaker 1: and finally, when I was so so desperate and but
Speaker 1: was so stubborn to really accept the health of traditional medicine,
Speaker 1: he said, I think you've been staring at that spoon
Speaker 1: for too long. You know, I've been trying to fix
Speaker 1: my brain with my thoughts themselves, and that it didn't
Speaker 1: work for me. It it might work for other people,
Speaker 1: but it didn't work for me. Well, I think it's
Speaker 1: a very much a matter of degree of depression. I
Speaker 1: think I talk a lot on the show about the
Speaker 1: depression that I deal with, and it's never been as
Speaker 1: crippling as what you describe or other people have. It's
Speaker 1: more of a consistent, you know, longer term, you know,
Speaker 1: lower legs, chronic condition, and so it does respond better
Speaker 1: to certain things. But I've come to the same conclusion
Speaker 1: that you have, which is that I don't think that
Speaker 1: either of those camps is really sufficient, and I think
Speaker 1: that the way that we treat depression as a whole
Speaker 1: in this country is woefully inadequate. And the only thing
Speaker 1: that I've found for me, it sounds very similar to
Speaker 1: your experience, is to sort of treat all parts of
Speaker 1: myself exactly, the physical, the emotional, the mental, all those things.
Speaker 1: If I've got If I'm working on all those things,
Speaker 1: then I end up in a much better place than
Speaker 1: if I'm working on any one of those in particular.
Speaker 1: So just medicine is helpful, but not enough. Obviously, just
Speaker 1: meditation doesn't get it done. I found I have to
Speaker 1: sort of a stack all that stuff together, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you find that you don't? It just seems like
Speaker 1: most of the people are in one camp or another.
Speaker 1: Though I agree, I think most people are in one
Speaker 1: camp or the other, which is I'm always suspicious of
Speaker 1: anybody who's in one particular camp because I don't think
Speaker 1: any I think any issue in life that people have
Speaker 1: wrestled with for a long time is an easy has
Speaker 1: an easy answer to it, or it would have been solved. Right.
Speaker 1: If there was an easy answer for depression, it would
Speaker 1: be solved by now. If there was an easy answer
Speaker 1: for how to have healthcare in the US, it would
Speaker 1: have been solved by now. Right. These are complex challenges,
Speaker 1: and that's why anybody who proposes, like all you have
Speaker 1: to do is this one little thing I'm always skeptical of. Right, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: good for you for having a venue where you can
Speaker 1: really explore this because I don't think there's enough of
Speaker 1: this information out there. So yeah, I agree. It's one
Speaker 1: of the things we try and focus on. And you
Speaker 1: a couple things that you talk about in your book
Speaker 1: and your blog I'm really interested in, and one of
Speaker 1: them is the idea of our thoughts. You talk about
Speaker 1: a couple of schools of thought out there. There's one
Speaker 1: if you take it to to it's extreme or the general,
Speaker 1: which is that you know, what we think about doesn't
Speaker 1: have much to do with what goes on in our body, right,
Speaker 1: these things are fairly disconnected. The other school thought, going
Speaker 1: to the other extreme, is that everything that happens to
Speaker 1: us is a result of what we think. And I've
Speaker 1: seen you write in your blog before about how we
Speaker 1: can get so stuck on thinking that every little thing
Speaker 1: that we think or do is the cause of what's
Speaker 1: wrong with us. Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned that.
Speaker 1: I love neuroscience for that because it gives you hope
Speaker 1: that the brain is plastic and you can carve those
Speaker 1: neuro passageways or the neural passageways. But when I am
Speaker 1: very depressed, it works against me because I'm constantly beating
Speaker 1: myself up as soon as I have a thought, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I just carved that passageway, right, you know, and then
Speaker 1: that will you know, go compile against itself and it's nightmare.
Speaker 1: But and that's why someone asked me the other day
Speaker 1: what I thought of cognitive behavioral therapy. And I think
Speaker 1: it's very very helpful, like Doctor Burne's stuff and all
Speaker 1: that stuff has been very helpful, but I I can't
Speaker 1: do it when I'm severely depressed. When I'm severely depressed,
Speaker 1: I just have to distract myself because the more I
Speaker 1: try to think of, you know, and and carve the
Speaker 1: right quote positive passageways, then the more I'm just kind
Speaker 1: of digging myself a hole because I'm feeling responsible then
Speaker 1: for my depressure, which is making me, you know, feel
Speaker 1: even more depressed, which is, you know, it's a down
Speaker 1: hill spiral. But on the other hand, I don't think
Speaker 1: that it's healthy for people to think that they can
Speaker 1: that they can you know, stay in a in a
Speaker 1: resentment or a stoop or you know, can entertain a
Speaker 1: thought that's kind of hurtful and not have their body
Speaker 1: be affected by that. I do these many episodes where
Speaker 1: I talk for you know, four or five minutes about
Speaker 1: just thoughts I have on different things. It's uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's the usual. Let me turn this off now for
Speaker 1: our for our listeners. But it's a I'm kidding mostly.
Speaker 1: But I did one on rumination, and the idea was
Speaker 1: simply that sometimes I can't think my way out of
Speaker 1: that situation. I simply just have to give my brain
Speaker 1: something else to focus on. And I think there are
Speaker 1: I found some positive technique for doing that. You know,
Speaker 1: one would be like one of the things I do
Speaker 1: is I call it the alphabet gratitude game, where I
Speaker 1: have to go through the alphabet and think of something
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for for each letter, and it's it's mainly
Speaker 1: the thinking of something for each letter. That's the really
Speaker 1: helpful part because it gives my brain something to hang
Speaker 1: on to. But it's got the side benefit of me
Speaker 1: thinking about things that I think are positive. So but
Speaker 1: I'm with you one hundred percent on that inability when
Speaker 1: I'm really stuck to think my way out of it.
Speaker 1: And another analogy that I think is useful in that sense,
Speaker 1: or another way to think of it is it's sort
Speaker 1: of when people are fighting and once you get to
Speaker 1: a certain point of being angry, there is nothing positive
Speaker 1: that is going to happen until you calm down. It
Speaker 1: just simply doesn't matter what you try and do. It's
Speaker 1: to a certain extent a matter of time, and you know,
Speaker 1: no exposure to the thing you're angry at before you're
Speaker 1: able to think in any kind of positive way. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very true. It's like someone told me that you
Speaker 1: never say anything important to your spouse before asking yourself
Speaker 1: if you're hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. You know the
Speaker 1: twelve step halt. And and I've added one more is
Speaker 1: if you're in the car, because I are worst argument
Speaker 1: on when we're in the car because I'm very nervous.
Speaker 1: I'm a nervous front seat driver. And so that's a
Speaker 1: that's a very good one. I've had a lot of
Speaker 1: really bad fights in the car too. So you wrote
Speaker 1: an article recently that was about things you wish people
Speaker 1: knew about depression, and I was wondering if you could
Speaker 1: maybe share a few of those that if you if
Speaker 1: you could tell people about depression, what are some of
Speaker 1: the things you wish that everyone knew. I wish people
Speaker 1: knew that you could be grateful and oppressed at the
Speaker 1: same time. You know, I keep on hearing that if
Speaker 1: you're grateful, then you can't be depressed. And while I've
Speaker 1: read that research, I agree with it because I've been
Speaker 1: physiologically depressed but grateful at the same time. I think
Speaker 1: it's incorrect to say that people who are depressed don't
Speaker 1: know what blessings they have in their life. I think
Speaker 1: they do. I mean, I know that most of the
Speaker 1: people who I know that are severely depressed do, and
Speaker 1: that's part of the reason that they feel so bad
Speaker 1: is they can't celebrate those but they are intrinsically and
Speaker 1: authentically grateful for that. That's one of the things. And
Speaker 1: again it's that it's the holistic versus medical world issue.
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, I was really hopeful when
Speaker 1: I was reading all these diet and nutrition books that
Speaker 1: if I eliminated gluten, wheat or wat as, glutent, dairy, sugar,
Speaker 1: caffeine that all, you know, these books say in six weeks,
Speaker 1: you just you're like a different person and you've never
Speaker 1: had a bad thought in your life. And that's I
Speaker 1: think very scary for I think it's unfair for people
Speaker 1: to expect someone to just change their diet and not
Speaker 1: be depressed. I mean, I changed my diet and I
Speaker 1: still was very, very suicidal. So to know that that's
Speaker 1: not it's not as easy as that. It's not as
Speaker 1: easy as going to yoga. Yoga. Actually, when I back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five, I had to stop going
Speaker 1: to yoga because my worst suicidal rumination has happened in yoga.
Speaker 1: It gave me the room to think, you know, during
Speaker 1: that hour and a half, and that's dangerous for someone
Speaker 1: who's you know, that low. So again, it's not and
Speaker 1: it's it's just not black and white. It's not do yoga,
Speaker 1: drink it kale smoothie in the morning and you're fine, Well,
Speaker 1: guess what I've done those things. What if you put
Speaker 1: the vodka in you're kale smoothie. Well maybe that's true,
Speaker 1: green quiet car. Yeah, that's that's very good point. And
Speaker 1: then on the other end, you know, people who I
Speaker 1: think think that medication is the reason why you get well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it certainly can be part of
Speaker 1: the equation, but I don't think it's fair to say
Speaker 1: that just because you're you know, you're on medication and
Speaker 1: you're seeing a counselor that means that you aren't going
Speaker 1: to be depressed. There's so much more work that you
Speaker 1: have to go into it. So it's I guess it's
Speaker 1: again that that double whammy that you're hit by between
Speaker 1: the holistic world and the pharmaceutical world that I wanted
Speaker 1: to discuss, and also just the just the amount of trying.
Speaker 1: I had six years between two thousand and eight until
Speaker 1: very recently that I had these very loud death thoughts
Speaker 1: and I would have to go to dinner with people
Speaker 1: and laugh and you know, fake, and then come home
Speaker 1: and google how to get cancer. I mean, people don't
Speaker 1: realize that we're used to it, you know, people who
Speaker 1: have been severely depressed for so long. I'm used to
Speaker 1: I'm used to a good act, and so that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean I'm not that that pain isn't any more real.
Speaker 1: How have you found because you are the leader of
Speaker 1: a maybe leaders the wrong word, but you founded a
Speaker 1: Facebook group called Beyond Blue that you're a key part of.
Speaker 1: How has the interaction with that group been different from
Speaker 1: when you were doing better and when you were struggling again.
Speaker 1: How did you approach that? Well? I actually started it
Speaker 1: in May. I had been, you know, eating that made
Speaker 1: the diet restrictions about five months before, and I still
Speaker 1: didn't notice anything. And I was on the fiftieth medication,
Speaker 1: and I basically thought that I was going to have
Speaker 1: to live with these death thoughts for the rest of
Speaker 1: my life, and so I better, I better connect with
Speaker 1: some people and learn how to do it. So I
Speaker 1: started that, and I think that that's partly Also why
Speaker 1: I'm better today is because I don't feel I'm as
Speaker 1: unique as I thought I was before. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know anyone in my friend's circle or in my
Speaker 1: family circle who deals with what I do. But man,
Speaker 1: there are tons of people online who, you know, have
Speaker 1: to deal with these same thoughts every single day. And
Speaker 1: to see them, I mean, some of them are so
Speaker 1: heroic in the way that they do and and they
Speaker 1: offer help and they you know, it's it's again, it's
Speaker 1: Victor Frankel's turning to service. I think has really helped them,
Speaker 1: and I'm learning from them that it helps me, So
Speaker 1: I try to. I try to get on there and
Speaker 1: help people for like at least an hour a day,
Speaker 1: because it's it's kind of like that one story where
Speaker 1: the two people are gonna or the one person who's
Speaker 1: going to jump off a cliff and commit suicide, and
Speaker 1: then another person comes up and is going to do
Speaker 1: the same, and she turns around and tries to save
Speaker 1: the one. You know, you forget about your pain when
Speaker 1: you're trying to sort of do emergency calls there. But
Speaker 1: the group has really it's been good for me in
Speaker 1: that In that way, I do have to I do
Speaker 1: have have to watch the compassion fatigue because there's some
Speaker 1: people that you know, we're not a suicide hotline, and
Speaker 1: so when you get to the space where you're just
Speaker 1: really in danger, it's not not I don't think a
Speaker 1: good a good place to be our site because I'm
Speaker 1: not a mental health professional, thank god, because if I was,
Speaker 1: I'd probably be responsible for all these people. And I'm
Speaker 1: a theology major, so thank god i'm not. But I
Speaker 1: do have to watch that line of getting compassion fatigue
Speaker 1: and watching watching you know, just being good to myself.
Speaker 1: But some of the people just really blow me away
Speaker 1: with their compassion and the resolve and the way they
Speaker 1: just trudge through every day and just you know, put
Speaker 1: one foot in front of the other. It's good for
Speaker 1: me to see that I'm not alone. Yeah, I had
Speaker 1: no idea the group was that new, and it's a
Speaker 1: really interesting group, you're My reaction to it is I
Speaker 1: usually have a couple of reactions. One is it can
Speaker 1: be a heartbreaking place to spend and much time because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people struggling, and yet you're right,
Speaker 1: there's so much beautiful compassion between those people that is there.
Speaker 1: And I think when you think about a holistic approach
Speaker 1: to depression or really mental health in general, whether that
Speaker 1: be improving your mental health from where it is to
Speaker 1: better or you know, moving out of depression, that another
Speaker 1: one that I think is frequently overlooked is exactly what
Speaker 1: you just said is the connection to people, but very importantly,
Speaker 1: connection to people who can understand you. Yeah, exactly. I
Speaker 1: think all of us have in common that loneliness. I
Speaker 1: think that's the worst part of this depression, is that
Speaker 1: loneliness of no one really getting you. And so that
Speaker 1: I mean, it's been really really cool to see people
Speaker 1: come in who were suicidal and now posting funny videos
Speaker 1: and you know, a woman who now has the energy
Speaker 1: to take care of her grandkids, and to see that
Speaker 1: progress just from nothing's changed except that she's communicating with
Speaker 1: other people who understand her. It's amazing. So I'm in
Speaker 1: the process right now of building a site for that,
Speaker 1: so it's not on Facebook because Facebook has its limitations. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: every once in a while somebody will post something they
Speaker 1: mean for the group on the main part of Facebook
Speaker 1: and be mortified. I have a question for you, though,
Speaker 1: this is similar because I've wondered about this for a
Speaker 1: long time, and you come from a twelve step culture,
Speaker 1: so you're familiar with what all that is. Like. I've
Speaker 1: always been curious why there is no such thing as
Speaker 1: depression support groups in real life, or let me rephrase that,
Speaker 1: because I know there are some, but there's very few
Speaker 1: of them. They're not well marketed in any way. I
Speaker 1: kind of wonder is it just by the nature of
Speaker 1: depression that people don't You know, part of that is
Speaker 1: an isolation thing. But I've just been curious because if
Speaker 1: you think about the power that comes from being online
Speaker 1: in that group, if you could translate that into the
Speaker 1: face to face power that you get in other recovery programs,
Speaker 1: it would be really helpful. Yeah, that's funny that you
Speaker 1: asked that, because I actually am putting together a foundation
Speaker 1: right now, it's called Beyond Blue Foundation to get funding
Speaker 1: for the new site. But also one of the programs
Speaker 1: that I really want is called find Your Tribe, and
Speaker 1: it's based on that quote that when you find people
Speaker 1: who don't think that you're weird, but react and joy
Speaker 1: and say me too, you have found your tribe. And
Speaker 1: I love that because I feel like that's what we
Speaker 1: are on Tribe GBB or group Beyond Blue. So I
Speaker 1: want to be able to do that, and I think
Speaker 1: if the site gets big enough, then you know, we'll
Speaker 1: have people in different cities and can kind of form
Speaker 1: have the online community actually become a real community outside.
Speaker 1: I've been to NOAMI meetings, and while I'm a big
Speaker 1: supporter of NAMI, the meetings have not really been I
Speaker 1: think it's more for support for parents and family members
Speaker 1: of people who are depressed. I haven't received that much
Speaker 1: support for, like you said, people who are going through it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's anonymity or you know, the
Speaker 1: twelve step culture clashes a little bit with mental health culture.
Speaker 1: Let me lead us into that discussion by reading something
Speaker 1: you wrote because I thought it was really really good,
Speaker 1: and I'll read it and then we can kind of
Speaker 1: go into it a little bit more. You said the
Speaker 1: difference between sobriety culture, there's a difference between sobriety culture
Speaker 1: and mental illness culture. In the substance abuse culture, the
Speaker 1: person is generally viewed as the agent of the problem,
Speaker 1: and they are held accountable and have consequences for the relapse.
Speaker 1: In the mental illness culture, the person is often viewed
Speaker 1: not as the agent and the problem, but is the
Speaker 1: victim of their illness, and we tend to hold people
Speaker 1: a little less accountable for biochemical processes. Yeah, I got
Speaker 1: into trouble with that when I first got sober and
Speaker 1: was I was in college and I was struggling with
Speaker 1: my depression at the same time. And whenever I tried
Speaker 1: to voice my desperation that, you know, I had these
Speaker 1: horrible suicidal thoughts, death thoughts, they'll be like, you know,
Speaker 1: poor me, poor me, Pour me a drink. You know,
Speaker 1: I write your gratitude lists, right, you're And it was
Speaker 1: I learned that I can't talk about my depression in
Speaker 1: AA or else. It's it's something that I've done to myself,
Speaker 1: which may be more depressed. So I actually stopped going
Speaker 1: to the support group meetings because I just didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: some and my sponsor said that if I take antidepressants,
Speaker 1: those are happy pills that are going to compromise my sobriety.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, there's there's a big clash there. And
Speaker 1: maybe that's the reason why the twelve step movement has
Speaker 1: never taken off with the mental health because it is
Speaker 1: it's almost more like a cancer survivals group than it
Speaker 1: is like an AA group. Yeah, so that is It's
Speaker 1: something that I really want to work on because I
Speaker 1: have a few people who I met through the actually
Speaker 1: group Beyond Blue. We get together every once in a while,
Speaker 1: and just the human connection, that in person connection does
Speaker 1: lend itself to so much more So who knows, maybe
Speaker 1: you and I can start that movement. Yeah, I'm certainly
Speaker 1: I am. I'm very interested in that idea. I do
Speaker 1: think that the overall recovery or sobriety culture has changed
Speaker 1: a fair amount from probably when you were in college.
Speaker 1: Not that I'm insinuating that that was a long time ago.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that I got somewhere twenty five years ago.
Speaker 1: It is when I I mean I first became exposed
Speaker 1: to recovery culture about twenty years ago, and I heard
Speaker 1: a lot more of that sort of stuff than I
Speaker 1: ever hear these days. I'm not nearly as involved, but
Speaker 1: I think it has softened to some degree. But I
Speaker 1: think very similarly to what we were talking about before.
Speaker 1: I think either side of that camp is wrong. It's
Speaker 1: not all your fault, and it's yet still whether whatever
Speaker 1: causes it, if it's mental illness, or you still are
Speaker 1: responsible for your own path to getting better. And so
Speaker 1: it's neither. It's both. Those camps again seem to me
Speaker 1: to be on the extreme. Yeah, no, I agree with you.
Speaker 1: I agree with you one hundred percent. Yeah, we run
Speaker 1: into that in the group a little bit. You know,
Speaker 1: you got to people are there to support each other,
Speaker 1: but you also have to want to get well yourself,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure that that's there for everyone. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that discussion. I don't remember where it was
Speaker 1: you had about So you're on the group beyond Blue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh huh, I am that's so cool. I don't post
Speaker 1: very much. I mainly just am kind of hanging out,
Speaker 1: watching and reading and liking some things here and there,
Speaker 1: with the occasional comment. But I'm I'm fairly not too
Speaker 1: not too involved. I didn't make the connection between the
Speaker 1: Eric Zimmer of the show and that. Yeah, okay, now
Speaker 1: that I think I have seen, that's great. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm in disguise in there. I've got a uh it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a clown suit that I picture you
Speaker 1: see me in, or I just put I put Chris's
Speaker 1: picture in for anything that I'm I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: nervous about being involved in. Yeah. Yeah, the guidelines, the
Speaker 1: rules have been kind of difficult to uphold. And that's
Speaker 1: you know, AA is really good about that about you know,
Speaker 1: your responsible for yourself. So yeah, there's a lot to
Speaker 1: learn in any sort of group dynamic from AA because
Speaker 1: they got a lot of things really right. Derived as
Speaker 1: long as it has right and to the scale it has, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of amazing. But I think I have I
Speaker 1: have plenty of challenges with it. I think the same
Speaker 1: as a lot of people do. But so one of
Speaker 1: the things that I wanted to we're kind of coming
Speaker 1: to the near the end of our time, but one
Speaker 1: of the things I wanted to ask you about is
Speaker 1: you have a quote in your book that's one of
Speaker 1: my favorite quotes and it's from Rilka Oh yeah, about
Speaker 1: loving the questions. So can you tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit about that quote and what it means to you.
Speaker 1: I love that quote because I grew up as being
Speaker 1: so black and white, and I think if I had
Speaker 1: to say what I've learned through my journey, it's to
Speaker 1: appreciate the gray. That quote is similar to Pama Kodron,
Speaker 1: the Buddhist nun, and she talks about you know, you
Speaker 1: think you're always going to fix things, but then they
Speaker 1: fall apart again, and then you fix them, and then
Speaker 1: they fall apart, and you have to learn to exist
Speaker 1: where there's room for misery and room for joy. And that,
Speaker 1: to me is what I try to aim for because
Speaker 1: with the mental health, when I'm trying to fix it
Speaker 1: so that I don't have a symptom, then I'm setting
Speaker 1: myself up because you know, the way I made my biochemistry,
Speaker 1: I'm going to have this stuff for the rest of
Speaker 1: my life. But if I can learn to live with
Speaker 1: my symptoms and live with the questions and address all
Speaker 1: that gray matter as it comes, then there's going to
Speaker 1: be a lot less frustration, and I might be able
Speaker 1: to help a person or two along the way instead
Speaker 1: of power and a quarter in a temperatantrum for not
Speaker 1: you know, getting it perfect. So it's funny. I was
Speaker 1: a theology major and when I was writing a paper,
Speaker 1: I was so black and white that I wrote this
Speaker 1: paper on still can't believe this paper on why everybody
Speaker 1: who had premiumerble sex would burn in Hell? And I
Speaker 1: mean I was so like, like off the charts, you know,
Speaker 1: black and white. And so my teacher, my teacher wrote
Speaker 1: wrote in the in the bottom, she said, I hope
Speaker 1: you learn a little nuance in your life. And five
Speaker 1: years later, my dad had died and it was just
Speaker 1: a mess. And you know, I started to know that
Speaker 1: things are just messy. They're just messy. So I came
Speaker 1: back and knocked on her door and I said, yeah, thanks.
Speaker 1: Although I've always believed in premarital sex. So well, then
Speaker 1: it's funny because I met my husband and I told
Speaker 1: him it was going to be five years before we
Speaker 1: slept together, and it was like the second night, you know,
Speaker 1: So on our first one of our first dates, he said,
Speaker 1: where do you see yourself in five years? And I said,
Speaker 1: as a missionary a noun in a third world country.
Speaker 1: And he's like, oh, interesting. He was like, we better
Speaker 1: get this done quickly. Then. Yes, things are messy. Things
Speaker 1: are messy, and and being okay with that is a
Speaker 1: big it's a big help. It's we talk on the
Speaker 1: show a lot about feeling bad about feeling bad or
Speaker 1: this idea of just all this stuff that we layer
Speaker 1: on top of the pain that's already there. And I
Speaker 1: think that's another way of doing it, which is is
Speaker 1: this believing that things should be really different than they are.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to want them to be different, it's
Speaker 1: a different thing to think that they should be different,
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, Well, thank you so much. I do
Speaker 1: think you're doing a lot of great work and helping
Speaker 1: a lot of people out there with your your blog
Speaker 1: in your book, and it's clear the group is helping
Speaker 1: a ton of people. Well, thank you you too with
Speaker 1: with this great podcast series. Yes, well, thank you so
Speaker 1: much and thanks for coming on the show and we'll
Speaker 1: talk again soon. Okay, thank you, all right, bye bye.
Speaker 1: You can learn more about Teres Orchard and this podcast
Speaker 1: at one new feed dot net slash terse that's t
Speaker 1: H E r E s E