Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, I am here with John Mills, who was
Speaker 1: on a previous episode we did about trauma, and I
Speaker 1: heard great things from a good number of you about
Speaker 1: the subject and about John. So we've got him back.
Speaker 1: Last time we did this remote via Skype, he was
Speaker 1: in North Carolina. I was at my house in Columbus,
Speaker 1: and now we are both at my house in Columbus.
Speaker 1: For any of you who are trying to keep track
Speaker 1: of where John is, now, you know nobody cares no,
Speaker 1: not by and large. This week we are going to
Speaker 1: talk about an article called self stigma and the y
Speaker 1: TRY effect impact on life goals and evidence based practices. John,
Speaker 1: let you give us a brief overview of what this
Speaker 1: one is about. Sure, So that is a very long
Speaker 1: title with a lot of mumbo jumbo nonsense in there,
Speaker 1: so let's cut right to the chase. So what this
Speaker 1: is really talking about is that these stigmatization of mental
Speaker 1: illness that has existed in society ends up trickling down
Speaker 1: into a personal level of someone that does have mental
Speaker 1: illness or struggles with it. They internalize the stereotypes that
Speaker 1: society has built around mental illness, and that in turn
Speaker 1: leads to a negative impact on someone's sense of self
Speaker 1: worth or what they self esteem, and that also impacts
Speaker 1: something called self efficacy, which is the belief that if
Speaker 1: you try something or make an effort, that it's really
Speaker 1: going to matter. And then finally, if that's been negatively
Speaker 1: impacted you don't have that belief, you come to the
Speaker 1: inclusion why do you even want to try to make
Speaker 1: an effort to change? And at underlying that, the assumption
Speaker 1: is that you have agreed with and applied those stereotypes
Speaker 1: from that society has made about people with mental illness,
Speaker 1: and there you go. So basically this is I don't
Speaker 1: believe I can, so I don't try. It's similar you
Speaker 1: and I talked about this earlier, and we don't need
Speaker 1: to go down the same rabbit hole, but similar to
Speaker 1: Martin Seligman's Learned Helplessness, which basically says that at a
Speaker 1: certain point doesn't seem that your efforts are going to
Speaker 1: make any difference, so you don't take them. So I think,
Speaker 1: why try? Can happen for a lot of different reasons,
Speaker 1: and maybe we'll explore those, but let's talk about it
Speaker 1: in this self stigma way. So if I believe things
Speaker 1: about mental illness, and those caused me to feel bad
Speaker 1: about myself. Those caused me to think like, I'll always
Speaker 1: be this way. There's nothing I can do and I
Speaker 1: don't try. So what are some of the things that
Speaker 1: we can do to work with this in a way
Speaker 1: that is useful. Well, I guess it depends on where
Speaker 1: you're at and what type of mental illness you have, Eric,
Speaker 1: So it's the the seriousness in the level that you're experiencing.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I do is I try
Speaker 1: to make sure that I connect with other people and
Speaker 1: talk about the struggles that I'm having. A lot of
Speaker 1: times I need some external validation that what I am
Speaker 1: doing is making a difference, that I am making progress
Speaker 1: in my life, even though I might not see it,
Speaker 1: and I can kind of build upon that to keep
Speaker 1: going and hopefully at some point then once I start
Speaker 1: to see that there's some progress in my life, I
Speaker 1: can start to develop my own kind of internal sense
Speaker 1: of self efficacy, not you know, to overcome the lack
Speaker 1: of it. It occurs to me, is we're talking about this,
Speaker 1: this is a little bit of an argument. Eric Maizella
Speaker 1: guest we had on recently talked about one of the
Speaker 1: problems with labeling mental illness is that it's a label
Speaker 1: we put on ourselves that limits who we are. People
Speaker 1: often say that about admitting their alcoholic I don't want
Speaker 1: to if I'm just an alcoholic, I'm putting a label
Speaker 1: on myself. And for some reason, those labels for me
Speaker 1: haven't translated into I don't think, at least not on
Speaker 1: a conscious level, into a sense of limitation. But I
Speaker 1: do it points in life I have had. I think
Speaker 1: I'm beyond them, at least for now. You never know
Speaker 1: what's going to come. But I do believe that I
Speaker 1: can affect my depression and I do work with it
Speaker 1: a lot. But talk to me about self stigma in
Speaker 1: your own case. So as you were talking, what I
Speaker 1: was thinking about was who is the author? You were
Speaker 1: just saying something about if we label us, if we
Speaker 1: label ourselves, that's limiting. And so the underlying kind of
Speaker 1: implication there is labeling yourself as mentally ill as limiting. Okay,
Speaker 1: So here's first of all, what I think about that.
Speaker 1: Um So one, I don't like I'm bipolar. I'm not bipolar,
Speaker 1: But the statement is making that a part of your
Speaker 1: identity rather than I have bipolar disorder. Same with I'm
Speaker 1: an alcoholic. Okay, that is identifying and labeling yourself. But
Speaker 1: if you have a condition, then even if that's labeling you,
Speaker 1: if you don't say I have alcoholism or I have
Speaker 1: mental illness of some sort depression, you don't have the
Speaker 1: ability to address it. So I think there's important distinction there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's like diabe, I'm a diabetic. Now you have diabetes.
Speaker 1: We need to we need to label it. But it's
Speaker 1: one thing about internalizing I have depression. I can't do
Speaker 1: anything about my depression. You know, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: be able to have a job. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: be able to be successful. People aren't gonna want to
Speaker 1: be around me. And there it is. Yeah, I see
Speaker 1: a version of this in people I work with who
Speaker 1: have ride throughout their life to build better habits. I'm
Speaker 1: going to exercise, I'm gonna eat right, I'm going to
Speaker 1: write my journal, I'm gonna work on my book. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do whatever it is. And there's a lot of
Speaker 1: this is why try not from a self stigma but
Speaker 1: from a I've tried it so many times before and
Speaker 1: I've gotten better, and then I just stop again, and
Speaker 1: I've gotten worse, So talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 1: Let's move away from just self stigma. But I think
Speaker 1: why try is a is a great overall topic. Where
Speaker 1: are the areas in your life that why try comes
Speaker 1: into effect? When it comes on, it wipes away any
Speaker 1: hope of the future. It also wipes away, likewise, any
Speaker 1: ability to connect with successes from the past. That makes
Speaker 1: it very easy to conclude that there's no reason to try.
Speaker 1: I never had any success in the past, because when
Speaker 1: I look at it, it was only just a temporary
Speaker 1: bunch of crap. You're back in the place it starts.
Speaker 1: And then at the other side, if I'm looking forward,
Speaker 1: if I'm not going to really get anywhere, why try?
Speaker 1: So it is both sides. You know, you're getting it
Speaker 1: from the future, your perception of the future and the
Speaker 1: perception of your past. So that's a pretty sticky place
Speaker 1: to be, and getting out of that has at that
Speaker 1: point for me, has always required some level of medical intervention.
Speaker 1: But I guess I always have kept at some point,
Speaker 1: some at some level, some belief, you know, I've not
Speaker 1: completely fallen victim to the wide try effect when it
Speaker 1: comes to treatment. At some level, I must have always
Speaker 1: kept some belief to actually go see the doctor when
Speaker 1: I was really really bad. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: more out of desperation and hoping they can just give
Speaker 1: me something to alleviate the pain. It reminds me of
Speaker 1: one of the darkest points for me of my addiction
Speaker 1: was after I had gone to treatment, after I had
Speaker 1: gone to some AA meetings, and then I used again,
Speaker 1: and I had a period of time where I really
Speaker 1: thought like there's no fix for this, Like I did
Speaker 1: what was suggested and I'm still doing it. So once
Speaker 1: a junkie, always a junkie, and looking back on it's
Speaker 1: so preposterous to me that I would have thought that
Speaker 1: the first time I really tried to go into treatment
Speaker 1: that it should take and it should be permanent. Um.
Speaker 1: I now know, looking at it over a lot of
Speaker 1: years and a lot of people, that a lot of
Speaker 1: us have a stop start stop start over time. But
Speaker 1: I remember that being sort of a a y try effect,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a dark place to be. Luckily,
Speaker 1: since then, I think I seem to have maybe similar
Speaker 1: to you with treatment. But even when I'm really down,
Speaker 1: I have some optimism that something can fix, something can
Speaker 1: make it better. I may not know what it is,
Speaker 1: I may not have access to it, but I keep trying.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I think that is one of the most
Speaker 1: important things with mental illness or any problem in life,
Speaker 1: is to just key trying, keep trying different things, even
Speaker 1: though and that's you know, directly opposite the why try,
Speaker 1: The why I try is because life is different. You
Speaker 1: can try something different, You're different than you were last
Speaker 1: time you tried it, etcetera, etcetera. I'm sorry, Chris always
Speaker 1: gets mad, etcetera, etcetera. So you're suggesting that a good
Speaker 1: way to continue why try is to remain naive I
Speaker 1: don't think though. I don't think that's because what wasn't that? What? What?
Speaker 1: What did you have the first time you went to
Speaker 1: treatment that gave you that ability to have that hope
Speaker 1: you don't believe about, Yeah, but after that I didn't
Speaker 1: have it. My point is if you then that's my point,
Speaker 1: if you kept the naivete, then you would continue to
Speaker 1: try as if you had that hope. But I don't
Speaker 1: think nai naivete, however, you say that word is what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, because that's sort of almost starts to
Speaker 1: sound like I just keep trying the same thing over
Speaker 1: and over and don't get any different results. I'm suggesting
Speaker 1: that when we try again, we have learned things from
Speaker 1: the last time we tried that we can bring into
Speaker 1: the try attempt that we're doing now, whatever those might be.
Speaker 1: Whereas if we think why bother to try it's always
Speaker 1: been this way before. My counter to that in my
Speaker 1: own mind and when I'm talking to other people is yeah,
Speaker 1: but you're not the person you were. Then you've learned things.
Speaker 1: You're a different person. Like if you relapse I did.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, eight nine years sober, and I relapsed,
Speaker 1: right because I'm a loser, will get two years here
Speaker 1: in a minute. When I came back. It's not like
Speaker 1: I hadn't had eight years of sobriety under me. I
Speaker 1: still had that. I may not have had the continuous days, right,
Speaker 1: but I had a foundation that was different than the
Speaker 1: first time I went in. And so yeah, I'm just
Speaker 1: saying that a counter to y try is to be
Speaker 1: more open minded that says, you know what, I did
Speaker 1: try this before, but now I'm a different person. I
Speaker 1: could try it differently, I could try it better. I
Speaker 1: could I could modify it this way. I could learn
Speaker 1: this thing. Yeah, Actually that kind of makes me think
Speaker 1: about the article again, and it talks about identifying with
Speaker 1: the group to kind of find some empowerment to get
Speaker 1: over that. So, yes, I did relapse. Thank you for
Speaker 1: bringing that back up Eric years ago. And when I
Speaker 1: went back to what I was doing before in recovery community,
Speaker 1: I was met with a lot of Well, it wasn't
Speaker 1: so much that I got the idea that everything you
Speaker 1: learned isn't good anymore. You know, you have to start over,
Speaker 1: but it was too well, just keep doing it, keep
Speaker 1: doing it, keep doing it. You know these things, these
Speaker 1: principles just will not fail you. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: just look around. And the underlying that was also then
Speaker 1: this idea I felt. I internalized it because I realized
Speaker 1: my anger was really myself. I thought I failed, I
Speaker 1: didn't do good enough, I didn't work the steps hard enough.
Speaker 1: And it's taken me a long time to get past
Speaker 1: that to find something new that I could believe and
Speaker 1: grab onto because that was the biggest thing that I
Speaker 1: found to be producing hope for me and not like
Speaker 1: why try, but you know, why not try? When I
Speaker 1: first got sober and went to meetings, there was this
Speaker 1: whole new, unknown, kind of thing that I had never
Speaker 1: tried before, and it seemed like there was so much
Speaker 1: hope and I could just get into it, need it up,
Speaker 1: and it would just last forever. Well that wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: There wasn't something that existed that was an elixir of
Speaker 1: all life. So now I had to when that when
Speaker 1: I fell off, I had to find a new way,
Speaker 1: something that I could believe in. Yep, And that is
Speaker 1: a boy, that's a deep subject that we're going to
Speaker 1: steer off of. We could do another episode on that
Speaker 1: because coming back to something like recovery, and there's there's
Speaker 1: so many challenges there, but circling back to what you
Speaker 1: started with, which one of the things the article suggests
Speaker 1: is one way to limit self stigma is to find
Speaker 1: other people that have the same condition or the same thing.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason I think that I do
Speaker 1: this show are one of the things that I do
Speaker 1: and I think it helps a lot of people is
Speaker 1: it's just so powerful. There's something so powerful in realizing
Speaker 1: like I am not alone in this, Like the way
Speaker 1: I am feeling is perfectly normal in a certain context,
Speaker 1: Like there's lots of people who have felt this do
Speaker 1: feel this. I just think that is such a powerful way.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things I think it's so important
Speaker 1: in feeling better, getting better, and not stigmatizing ourselves. I
Speaker 1: think what I've struggle with often and identifying at groups
Speaker 1: is the idea where I start to feel left alone
Speaker 1: and not a part of the power of what you're
Speaker 1: talking about is I just want somebodies sometimes to say,
Speaker 1: you know, you're right, there isn't a real good cell
Speaker 1: on trying right now the way you're feeling a lot
Speaker 1: of times that somebody just says that, then I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: somebody hears me, they get it, And then I might
Speaker 1: decide on my own, Okay, there's somebody out there that
Speaker 1: feels the same way I do, Like it's just not
Speaker 1: really worth it. I would agree with you, you know,
Speaker 1: And sometimes that spurs on that desire to actually try.
Speaker 1: My therapist is all you're a contrary bastard. I am
Speaker 1: my therapist. One time, when I was first starting back
Speaker 1: with him, he's like telling me, you know, going through
Speaker 1: this whole thing, and he's like, it's a hard sell, John,
Speaker 1: it's a hard sell getting sober. Let's just be real.
Speaker 1: He's like, because there's a thing that drugs do for
Speaker 1: people that sobriety in life doesn't do, and nobody wants
Speaker 1: to admit that. But you get opportunities for better life,
Speaker 1: but you are not guaranteed. I agree with that, and
Speaker 1: that's why I say so often like getting sober sucks,
Speaker 1: like you just like there's an acceptance of like if
Speaker 1: you think, because you hear everybody's saying it's so great,
Speaker 1: it's so great, and then you do it and you
Speaker 1: don't feel great. I think it's important to be like,
Speaker 1: you may not feel great for for a good period time,
Speaker 1: like this is going to be really hard. So it's
Speaker 1: a slightly different context, but it's a similar thing in
Speaker 1: saying it's a setting of an expectation. Well, I guess
Speaker 1: getting back to the point was sometimes for me I
Speaker 1: find strength and knowing that other people will just say,
Speaker 1: you know, it makes sense that you feel that way,
Speaker 1: right and and and then not in line and not
Speaker 1: follow it up with giving me a little pat on
Speaker 1: the butt. Okay, but it's still going to do that
Speaker 1: these days in this culture. Yeah, but to say you
Speaker 1: know what, you're right, I you make a good point
Speaker 1: of not trying and just leave it at that, I
Speaker 1: don't need to encourage me after that. I will generally
Speaker 1: in my life, if you've looked at it as much
Speaker 1: as I've struggled and complained and been very cantankerous in
Speaker 1: my times of pain, I find a way through it
Speaker 1: and I get back up and I'm pretty resilient. What
Speaker 1: I get frustrated most with are the people that I've
Speaker 1: come upon in my life both and there are people
Speaker 1: that are therapists, people that are in their own sense
Speaker 1: of recovery, where this constant like, yeah, but have you
Speaker 1: tried this? Have you tried that? Just let me be
Speaker 1: fatalistic for a little bit. It provides I'll find my
Speaker 1: way out of it. Yeah. I think it's interesting. We
Speaker 1: talked about this earlier. That gets so important to say
Speaker 1: is that, like, what you need is not necessarily what
Speaker 1: somebody else needs, is not necessarily what a different person needs.
Speaker 1: And that's part of what can be so challenging about
Speaker 1: trying to have a one size fits all thing. And
Speaker 1: I think this leads us into our next conversation. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna wrap this one up, which this next one
Speaker 1: will be a good one about agency. How much control
Speaker 1: do we really have? How much power do we really
Speaker 1: have in what we do in getting better and fighting
Speaker 1: depression and dealing with alcoholism. And that should be a
Speaker 1: fun one. Should bring out your contanker aside, for sure.
Speaker 1: And with that we're going to wrap it up. John,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for taking the time to come back
Speaker 1: on this show. I don't know what it is so
Speaker 1: funny about this, you said, wrap it up? Okay, I
Speaker 1: can't go on the air, all right, We're good on
Speaker 1: everything else, right, Okay, with that, we're gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and wrap it up. John, Thanks so much for taking
Speaker 1: the time to come back on, and we'll have another
Speaker 1: episode with you in the future. Thank you. Eric. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's good to be here and as always, I'm really
Speaker 1: enjoyed doing this, so I look forward to talking about
Speaker 1: the agency topic with you in the next time we
Speaker 1: do this. Excellent. I'm gonna put a hurt and on
Speaker 1: your ass, all right, everybody, Another episode out on Tuesday
Speaker 1: is always. Thanks for listening. Bye.