Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 757: The Courage To Be Together Alone with Dorith Mous

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Episode 757: The Courage To Be Together Alone with Dorith Mous · The Trauma Therapist

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Or welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is guyming Person.
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My mission is to help trauma therapists be their incredible cells, to be human,
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to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in
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who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
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authenticity, genuineness and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more about
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my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com. That's
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the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started. So five four,
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three, two and one, our folks, welcome back to the podcast.
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I'm very excited to have us. My guest today, Doreth Mouse Doth welcome,
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Thank you, thanks for having me. You are welcome. So.
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Multiple award winning dultch Dutch multi hyphen it Mouse was seemingly borne into her art,
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gaining beautiful knowledge of physical form and capturing depth from a subject through her
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own nomadic experience as a fashion model for two decades. Having moved fluidly from
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a storage career in front of the lens to one behind it as a photographer
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and filmmaker, Doroth elicits an artful finesse of the soul, one in which
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her subjects both exude and challenge the archetypes of beauty while provoking ideas, ideals,
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and ideologies. With her successful anti discriminatory exhibition in New York City entitled
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I Am You, and her ongoing cinematic series Together Alone, which focuses on
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destigmatizing mental health, Dorth continues to create awareness by means of harvesting the honesty
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that permeates through her portraiture of subjects. Wow, okay, awesome, awesome,
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thanks so much for being here. Before we get going to earth,
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share with the listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently well after
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that mouseful, that's a very easy one. I was born and raised in
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Amsterdam, where I currently am as well. In between that you just landed
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on, I was in a whole lot of countries around the globe for modeling,
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so I was basically not living here from like eighteen to thirty three or
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so, and then came back and then it was COVID. So actually I
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have no idea what it feels like to live here as an adult. So
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let's get into this. How did you get into destigmatizing mental health? It's
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something I discuss a lot, and also something that I am actually still investigating
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why and how it exactly happened. But I walked a long path of having
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a lot of challenges mentally from not knowing how to deal with certain family dynamics
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or dealing with bullies in school, getting not knowing if I had ADHD,
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not getting the right testing, but feeling like I did and having people tell
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me all the time like, oh, yeah, dorat, she talks all
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the time, she's so busy and like this. That was already quite stigmatizing.
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And that was all like early on, like childhood stuff. But then
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in high school I felt like I was always on a certain level of depth.
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I always really enjoyed layers and humanity, what moves us, what scares
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us, what brings us joy, and all that type of stuff, and
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I didn't really know where to put that. And then as a model,
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I came into a world where there's like a gigantic spectrum of age, nationality,
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you know, background dynamics like I just said, or you know,
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whatever type of person someone is, And this became such a large spectrum that
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I started kind of like filling in the blanks of who I was, and
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I couldn't really find that. And I noticed that that was because I didn't
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really talk about the things that moved me, bring me joy, bring me
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fear. And I was dealing with a lot of things by trying to cope
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with a lot of things by myself, which would you know, get me
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a bit insomnious and having a lot of nightmares and stuff. And I was
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living in New York City at the time, and I was like, well,
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if this is how I'm feeling and it's not so good, then maybe
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I should start talking about it. And I started while you were modeling.
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No, not at all. No, No, I got scouted. I
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got scouted. And that's just something I rolled into. It's not something that
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I ever really identified with the industry itself, but the realm that it gave
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me, like the world that it kind of opened for me, allowed me
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to develop myself in all sorts of ways. And when I started talking about
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the that that very humanity that fascinated me, I also started talking about my
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own anxieties and my depression. And I noticed that I'd say nine out of
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ten, I'd say ninety nine out of one hundred people were reflecting and echoing
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back a lot of the feelings that I was having, and it made me
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feel so much less alone, and I was like, well, this is
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what I've been missing, the reflection of just honest, were you talking about
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this? Were I started looking for people that I felt comfortable with. And
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this could be kind of like someone on set that I was in makeup with
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or someone on a train could be perfect stranger, actually more so strangers than
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people in my surroundings, and that brings an interesting scope I think of reflected
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emotions because you don't know one another, and so what connects you is actually
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just mere humanity and how to deal with certain things. And so I got
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into such layered conversation with so many different people that I started to be really
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interested to tell stories, you know, to tell human stories. And uh,
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my question was, while during your modeling career this was going on.
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It wasn't why I think you misinterpreted, I said, or mishurting. I
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said, what, Yeah, so during your modeling this was going on.
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Yeah? Was was the modeling profession? Did it somehow exacerbate this feeling of
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anxiety or how did it? I mean? I think, uh, like
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I just said, I didn't really identify with the industry itself, but there
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were a whole lot of things that did emphasize certain feelings. So, like
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a loneness is different than loneliness, but I was always traveling by myself,
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for example, or like you know, coming on set with strangers and like
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never really knowing anybody, and then you know, trying to give people what
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they expect from you, and you know, trying to fit in and then
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maybe trying masks on. You know, is this me? Is this me?
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Is this me? So? Yeah, I mean, modeling definitely underlined
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a lot of the things that I ran into, like the hurdles that I
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ran into at some point. We're definitely kind of emphasized by the world that
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I was in. Yeah, So you start engaging with strangers, which I
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mean seems really cool to me. What happens when you start doing that?
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What do you discover? I mean, I think that with anything in life,
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conversing with somebody's all about the way you you come into it, right,
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with what kind of intention and what kind of you know, are you
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listening to the other person or do you just want to talk about your feelings?
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Is it like a two way street, you know? And where is
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the other person standing? Is what you're going to say, welcome. You
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know, there could be a lot of things kind of obstructing that two way
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street, but when you're going into it really openly and actually not expect them
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to think anything specific of you or of the things that you're going to say,
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it becomes that two way street really really easily. So I actually really
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enjoyed speaking with people about things that aren't on the surface because you get to
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know someone quite quickly without actually knowing much about them, knowing them long,
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knowing how they're going to respond to certain things you have no idea thinks it
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really example, like if you, for example, know that someone in your
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family right a family member, you know them for so long that you know
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that how they respond to things, they might respond really aggressive or non interested,
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or you know, religion comes in between or knowing the same type of
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people and the effect that that has makes you hold back from saying certain things,
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Whereas when it's a stranger they don't know you, you don't know them,
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and the honesty that kind of permeates through the conversation then is incredible because
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you don't you kind of go into it. And again this is only if
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you go into it openly, so without judgment, because if you go into
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it thinking all sorts of things already and have a prejudice, that's not going
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to work. So, okay, you start doing this, what do you
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start experiencing for yourself? Alleviation of feelings that felt dark? A lot of
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lights started shining in different perspectives of people, their efforts to get out of
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something, their stories of certain suffering, a lot of kind of relativized material.
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Because you say something and someone either comes back with, oh my god,
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I had that too, like ten years ago, and this and this
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you should do, or they actually look at you and go, holy shit,
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I think you just made me realize that I have that too, right,
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so I and and all sorts of other reactions. So I don't know.
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I think I think through conversing and through being interested and curious, curiosity
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is very important to me. You start finding things out about yourself. You
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know, it kind of starts being like a circle because you start thinking and
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reflecting back on what somebody says, and if a conversation rolls well and it
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flows well, it can kind of pick all these things that you never thought
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about. You know, someone can can give you a quote or say hey,
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I read this book or something, and like all of a sudden you're
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like, oh, you know, you have these Eureka moments or you look
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at them and you go, well, I don't think they're dealing with it,
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so well I'm actually doing okay. You know, it's all about like
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the relative, It's all relative. Everything is relative. So were you during
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this time were you doing your own for photography? I was photographing a lot
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of things that I, uh, during my travels. Yeah. I was
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always taking a thirty five millimeter camera on me and uh yeah, I mean
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if you travel the world and you and you run into certain situations that are
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worth photos, yeah, I was definitely taking those. So it was very
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documentary style things, you know, people in the street and yeah, awesome,
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awesome. So how did how did it unfold such that you're like,
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okay, I want to start maybe uh packaging or managing this stigmatization. I
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want to I want to do something. I want to help. What did
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that look like for you? First and foremost, the amount of people that
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were reflecting a loneness. I was like, oh no, we gotta definitely
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make people more connected and share their story. And you know what, I
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was just saying about the connection and it rolling back. I really wanted to
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give that to other people. I wanted for other people to maybe be able
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to relate to someone's story, whether that be mine or a story that I'm
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telling for somebody else, and then you know, reflect on that and then
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release whatever negative feeling they had before. So my interest in telling those stories
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was basically purely to connect people and help people that are looking for an out
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of the feelings that they're experiencing, because it can be hard being human,
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you know. I find being human really hard. It's really challenging, and
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at the same time it's the it's the biggest privilege to be able to be
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human and not like a cat in the forest who has to be afraid that
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there's like, you know something, I mean, a big cat is already
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a predator. But you know, if you're if you're in nature, you
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will you will notice that life is like this, you know, and as
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a human we actually have the privilege to experience all these things and actually live
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and and and reflect and relate. So I thought that was really really important.
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M Yeah, I mean, I totally agree, it is really hard
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to be a human, and I think it even takes a certain amount of
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courage just to say that, you know, because as soon as you say
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that, I mean, you can hear people say, well, yes,
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of course it's hard, but but but and then of course you go online
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and you look at everyone sipping margot rechas on the beach and everything seems so
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easy. But from my experience too, I mean, I think I relate
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to what you're saying in at that human connection is so profound, and there's
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something so assuring about it when you're talking to someone like you're explaining or describing.
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There's a certain amount of I think, courage and opening up to someone
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and that magic that happens when you realize you don't know each other. There
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isn't all this story and baggage in a sense behind both of you in that
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moment, and you can be open and honest, And that authenticity is to
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me. I love that. You know, when you were going through this,
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were you to what degree? Were you struggling? I mean, was
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your anxiety still ever presided? It get in your How did it get in
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your way? Did it get in your way? It definitely got in my
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way. I was struggling a lot. I think there were certain phases,
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or several phases. The phase where I didn't realize how much I was struggling,
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the phase I realized how much I was struggling and needed an out,
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and the phase where I realized how bad it was kind of in hindsight,
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and what it can do to be to kind of blind yourself almost like you
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know, what are called blinders, literally, I think to you know,
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blind yourself by certain things that are very accepted in society. I think I
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just quickly said masking. I think, you know, it's a big masquerade.
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And if you aren't brave enough or they're enough or ready enough to admit
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that you're human and that you are struggling with certain aspects of that, it's
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quite easy to lose yourself in one of those masks, you know, and
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especially I think in the big city, and especially if you're in a in
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a work field where a lot is expected, or where a lot of people
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know you or think to know you and put you on a pedestal. You
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know, people in the public eye have this, you know, like it
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becomes hard to admit. So I was definitely struggling, But like I said,
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in phases, I didn't really realize how much. So, and once
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I did, once that quarter kind of like trickled down and dropped, I
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was like, okay, wait, I have nothing else to lose but my
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mind, because I thought I was going crazy and my biggest fear in life
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actually not anymore, but was for a long time that I would be locked
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up. I thought, Oh, but if I really start talking about my
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feelings for real, like if I really tell people how I feel, they'll
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think I'm crazy, and so yeah, then obviously you don't want to talk
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about it. So for a long time I knew that I was struggling,
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but didn't know what to do about it until I hit that point where I
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was like, well, this is kind of mental rock bottom. I wasn't
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rock bottom in life. I had very nice people around me. I love
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my family. You know, my parents are still together. I have two
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very supportive parents in what I do and who I am, and so that
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was actually not hard. But mentally I was just like hitting this point of
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okay, well there's either stopping everything or talk about it, and I chose
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the ladder. At any time, did you kind of quote unquote seek help,
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did you see a therapist or how did that work out for you.
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Yeah, my first therapist I started seeing at nineteen years old, I think,
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but because I was traveling so much, there was no and this was
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pre internet. I mean it wasn't pre Internet, but it was pre you
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know, online anything, smartphones and all that wasn't there. So to be
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there in physical form, I'd had to be here. And you know,
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I was living in New York at some point, where therapy is extremely expensive,
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so it became a financial boundary or barrier. Sorry to to do that,
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but I must say I've tried a whole lot of different things self help
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things I've tried, you know, I someone would recommend me a certain type
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of herb and I would start drinking a tea from that. My mother is
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very into you know, Eastern medicine and like alternative medicine. She would always
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give me tips of things to try. But I think if you know,
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you try something, it might help a little bit, or it might be
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placeba you might think that it's helping just because you're actually trying to make something
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help. It can give that effect. And then if you notice that that
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starts kind of edging off again and kind of fading, then at some point
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you hit a point where you're like, well, I tried everything, and
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you haven't. You haven't tried everything. You maybe have tried three four things,
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but mentally it feels like you've tried a million things and you've gone through
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the loop a million times in your head, you know. And that's the
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thing I think that's really important to also mention it is a lot of these
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things are happening in our head. They're actually not really happening. You know.
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You have these graphs where you see the two circles and you see how
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much of your problems are actually in your head and how much of it is
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actually happening in reality, And like, you know, eighty percent of the
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circle is in your head. This doesn't mean that you're making it up.
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And I think that's the discrepancy. Yes it is in your head, but
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yes it's also real. It's real. You know, depression is real,
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anxiety is real, fear of dying is real, Insomnia as real, bipolarity
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is real. You know those things are real and they're a real struggle.
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Let's just pause here for a second to thank our sponsors. All right,
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we are back. So you started putting together what a program, A show?
20:32
I it's such a funny story. Every time I tell it, I
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kind of giggle at myself. I wasn't a filmmaker, and I had made
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a film, but it was very autobiographical. It was a black and white
20:45
short film and I had made it in one night. I had no idea
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what I would be doing, but I had this idea of making a documentary
20:52
about people that are going through mental health challenges. And so I just started
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doing a lot of research and I kind of you know, talking about and
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writing a lot of things down and reading books and da da da. And
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then I put on my Instagram a story or a post where I said,
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would anyone want to talk about their mental issues? You know, why not?
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Here's my email address. And it fed back like forty emails overnight,
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and I was quite shocked that people actually wanted to share these things with me.
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And the biggest feedback of all these people was that they found it so
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inspiring that I was so open about my own issues that they actually really wanted
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to talk about their own issues. And yeah, just made me realize how
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important it is to reflect to you know, open up about these things and
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and and bring them out into the world because they're real. And one of
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the stories really stood out to me. It was a ballerina and she was
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in that email very very like impeccably well describing her first panic attack and and
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it resonated because I felt exactly the same things, like the physical symptoms that
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she was feeling and the mental aftermath. And I reached out to her and
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I said, look, I read your email and it really inspired me.
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And I would love to actually have this on camera, would you? Would
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you tell this story on camera? And she was like, well, yeah,
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I live in Hanover. Why don't you come over. And a while
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before that, a cinematographer had reached out to me, I think through LinkedIn
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or something and had said, oh, I saw your first film. I
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really liked it. If you ever want to make something together, reach out.
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Okay, we'll hang on. This is amazing. So the film you
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made? How long ago? Was that my first film? Yeah? Twenty
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fifteen? Okay twenty fifteen? And how how did you make it? Well?
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What did you use? So I this was all in new. I
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worked as a model with a guy for a video and we got to talking
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and we really got along also very on a human level, and I had
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an idea. I had a diary where I wrote like a lot of things
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like feelings and quotes and poetry and stuff. And then I had this idea
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for a story. And I called him and I said, why don't we
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have dinner And he said, oh, this is a great story. We
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should just film that. And he said, I'll just I'll just borrow a
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camera. But he was actually a very good a good cinematographer. So I
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was really lucky because he showed up with like, you know, amazing set
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of lights and stuff. We actually snuck it into a hotel. I booked
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a hotel room and we snuck it in and we told the hotel that we
23:48
were filming the next day. We needed this stuff there, and we actually
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made a film in the hotel room and one night and that and that then
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was seen by the guy who had reached out me, and I was like,
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Okay, now I have different stories to tell. I'm going to reach
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out to this guy. Wow, that whole like Domino thing is so cool.
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Yeah, So when you put it out on Instagram, you know who
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would be willing to share what specifically were you did you want or were you
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hoping to get or were you inviting people to share with you. It was
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actually it was actually mere curiosity. I yes, I had the intention of
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doing something with it, but I didn't know in what form. I really
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wanted to do that. In my head it was a documentary, but I
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didn't even know how to go about that. So it was more about accumulating
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stories. I think it was more so of finding people that were like minded
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and just seeing how many people I could kind of collect to tell stories so
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that it would kind of lay a foundation of not it just being me,
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and to tell stories of their struggles their Yeah, yeah, I mean their
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their mental journey, I guess, their psychological journey. And to me at
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that point, I already figured out that the mental journey, the spiritual journey,
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the physical journey, they're all one and the same, only different aspects.
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That's like a diamond, They're just different, you know, facets of
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it. And that's what I kind of wanted to investigate how people like feel
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these things, because some people will have a mental struggle in a certain way
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and deal with it very differently than another person having the exact same thing.
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And on another note, someone might have something completely different but deal with it
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the same as that person, you know, and we all we all have
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our path and I think it's extremely inspiring if we can kind of, you
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know, collectively have that information and those experiences and see what resonates with us.
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You know, this is what we do when we watch a film,
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where we read a book, we remember whatever inspired us or warned us how
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we don't want it or you know. So, yeah, I was it
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was mere curiosity. I wanted to know all these stories and what brought them
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to yeah, certain mental challenges, what took them out, how they shared
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it, to whom they shared it. So you contact this ballerina? Do
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you go over there and film her? Yeah? So I got into the
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van with the cinematographer. I reached out to him and I said, would
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you want to do this story with me? And he was like, heck,
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yeah, let's go. And we drove to hunt over and we stayed
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for two nights I think, and we filmed her in the schatz Oper,
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which is like the the theater in which they do all their ballets. And
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we had no idea if we were able to actually film in there because we
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didn't have a permit yet. But then we got there and we filmed some
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things kind of just some little movement things where she practices. And then we
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showed it to the director of the theater and he was like, yeah,
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yeah, yeah, come come film and like kind of doors opened. I
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think from that very first message on my Instagram or actually from the very first
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time that I started talking about it, because it's it's a it's a domino,
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like you just said, doors just kind of kept opening because you can't
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you can't fake that. Nope, nobody would tell that story to fake something.
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They'll only share that story because it's important to them and that authenticity you
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can tell, right, So like doors open because people can see like,
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yeah, this is real, this is important. You know, what did
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you want to get from this ballerina? What did you an interurn? What
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did you want to share with you? She shared everything my great delight because
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we did. We filmed her dancing, We filmed her in the audience because
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her first panic attack actually happened watching a ballet and so she is a ballerina,
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but she kind of had this deep personalization while she was in the audience
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and it was her first panic attack, and as she described that, we
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thought we'd put that on film, so we actually filmed her sitting in an
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audience and kind of depicting her first panic attack, and then we did a
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interview at her house. I don't ever expect anybody to tell me anything.
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I don't point to a certain line because it's not my path. So whatever
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they want to share, they want to share. But I do notice that
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with that freedom comes actually their will to share it. I think when you
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give someone a platform and everything is equal, because we were all equal in
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that room. We were all, like I just said, we were all
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just human. We all have our own issues, and we were all willing
29:07
to share it and to you know, investigate one another's psyche. So I
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was very lucky with her as my first subject because she was extremely open and
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didn't give me any stop signs of like, okay, this I don't want
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to talk about. She was very, very, very honest and vulnerable,
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and she showed us emotion. And this is it's actually amazing because we left
29:33
her in a room. It's the only film with which I did that.
29:37
But we left her in a room with a camera, and I was sitting
29:41
in another room with a screen and kind of just like shouting questions into the
29:45
other room. So that she would kind of be isolated, and I think
29:52
that really worked for her because it it put a safety bubble around her,
29:57
but it also put like a a self consciousness there. They're like, Okay,
30:02
I'm sitting here in this room alone and there's a gigantic camera on my
30:04
face and miss director who was not even a filmmaker shouting questions of me from
30:11
another room, dazing part of the together alone. Yeah, it was.
30:18
It became the very first episode, which I didn't know back then. Okay,
30:23
so how do things unfold after this Ballerina? Well, I got home
30:29
with footage, still not being a filmmaker and not knowing how to reach out
30:32
to anybody to do anything with that. Also was independently funded, and filmmaking
30:37
is a very expensive hobby, so it kind of sat on the shelf for
30:41
a little bit. And then I started being in Holland a little bit more
30:47
so my network started growing a little bit because you know, it's tiny here,
30:51
so everybody knows each other. And I was telling this story to someone
30:55
and they said, oh, maybe I should. I should link you to
30:56
this production company that I know they might be interested. And I had a
31:00
meeting there and they were like Okay, let's do this. We have an
31:03
in house editor, will throw it in like pro bono and do something with
31:08
it. And still not really knowing what this should be, I thought,
31:15
okay, well, maybe we'll make her footage like a like a proof of
31:18
concept, like a teaser, so that we can maybe fund making more.
31:22
But then during editing, her story unfolded and we were like, okay,
31:26
no, wait, this should be episodical and this should be episode one.
31:30
However short it will be because this is a proper story on its own and
31:33
not just a teaser. So we put a lot of effort in like rounding
31:38
that up, started finding people to make music for it, licensing some songs
31:45
that I really liked, and yeah, finding a titlist and a greater you
31:53
know, a colorist, and yeah, it became. It became the first
32:00
episode, and it's like still I think my favorite because it feels like,
32:06
I mean, I don't have any children, but it was like the first
32:08
child. Right, It's like this special moment of like doing something plus very
32:15
important to mention. It made me actually realize how badly I wanted to tell
32:20
stories on film. So the filmmaker in me completely unfolded within this process.
32:25
Wow, yeah, really cool. Let me remind everyone I'm speaking with Doroth
32:30
Mouse. Now can people still or still? But can people watch this series
32:37
still? Yes? Absolutely. It's on a platform called Argo. Okay,
32:43
it's a streaming platform for short film only, and episode one through six are
32:51
on there, and we've actually just also finished episode seven, so that'll be
32:57
on there by the end of the year. Okay. Well that linked up
33:00
here at the showutes page at the Traumas podcast dot com. Now, as
33:02
you've moved through this series, Doroth, how has your overall vision purpose mission
33:13
shifted or evolved. It hasn't shifted the I think the the direction of the
33:24
road that I started heading in is still the same. I want to connect
33:30
people and tell stories. Only I grew as a professional now in this field
33:38
and met incredibly inspiring people who were able to elevate it to a certain level
33:45
of storytelling, which then also led to meeting people that are doing things in
33:51
the same field that aren't filmmaking. But there are you know, forums and
33:57
psychologists and people that have websites that sell merchandise to raise money for mental health.
34:04
And like all these people, and from all those people, there's some
34:08
that I have now kind of joined forces with to see if we can actually
34:14
build this out to also make sure that people receive the right type of support,
34:20
because the films are my way of telling the story and it's a vessel
34:25
to bring a certain message into the world. And that message, again is
34:30
what that we're all human. Then that's okay if you feel these things,
34:36
and that if you're struggling with mental health that or ill mental health, that
34:43
there's help and that there's other people feeling these things, and that you're not
34:45
alone. And you know, there's without resources, without information, without education,
34:54
without connection, without like a whole school hope of things, one gets
35:01
isolated. This can be geographical, this can be familial, This can be
35:07
relational, This can be any any of the above or all. And so
35:14
different places need different type of support. So we in the West, who
35:17
have you know, streaming platforms that we can get onto people that can afford
35:25
to watch certain films or go to the cinema or whatever. And I'm not
35:29
talking about my own films with other films or my self help books or go
35:31
to therapy. You know, that's all also an economical thing. And I
35:37
think there's a lot of places in this world where mental health is not yet
35:42
broken open, because it's it's a luxury to be able to unfold yourself.
35:50
And so my outside of the films, my my big west now is to
36:00
be able to develop educational programs and make sure that there's suicide prevention methods put
36:07
in place in areas where it isn't so easy to reach out or to connect
36:14
to someone who might have the same m damn inspiring Dora. It's awesome.
36:22
Yeah, I mean, I'm just I'm just thinking to myself, it's you
36:27
know, I mean, I can really identify with what you're saying, this
36:30
this passion to connect, not just to connect with people, but to support
36:37
them in that connection. And excuse me to say, to announce that it's
36:44
okay if you're going through this, because most of us are, whether we
36:49
want, you know, and a lot of us don't have the guts to
36:52
do what you're doing to you know, raise your hand and say you know
36:57
what I'm struggling, and even and even to even go further and to sit
37:01
next to someone in the train and to open up that conversation that is so
37:06
cool. So well, it was my it was my It saved me,
37:10
It was my Uh, it was. It was the only way for me.
37:16
So that's I think that's also a thing I think when we struggle,
37:20
whatever type of struggling that is, that doesn't have to be only mental.
37:22
But you know, I mean, if someone is in a in a war
37:24
zone, for example, that is the situation at hand. They can't change
37:29
it. It's out of their control and dealing with it. If you see
37:32
people that come out of a war zone and have just lost family members,
37:36
you know, or their own kids, like terrible, terrible things, I
37:40
always find them so extremely resilient and they're always like, you know, I
37:45
meet people that had come from these areas and they're like so extremely friendly and
37:49
compassionate on all that. And I'm like, well that is because they're they've
37:52
been through that mud so deeply that they wouldn't want to cause any trouble to
37:57
anybody else, you know. So it's also like what do you do when
38:00
you don't have another choice? To me talking about it was literally like that
38:05
was my saving grace. If I wouldn't have opened up, I don't know
38:10
what would have happened. I might have lost myself. You know. Was
38:16
it that which gave you the courage to open up that kind of you said
38:22
you would. Didn't hit rock bottom, but you kind of hit a point.
38:24
Was at that point we said I got to do something. I don't
38:27
know what to do. Let me just start doing this. Yeah, I
38:30
mean, this is an honest conversation, and I'll be very honest. I
38:35
have never been suicidal in a way that I tried or that I thought about
38:39
how I would do that. But I had suicidal ideation. And for anyone
38:44
who doesn't know what that is, it's when you kind of always or in
38:47
a lot of moments in a day, imagine how that could happen. So
38:52
I at some point, for example, didn't dare to go, you know,
38:57
by subway anymore, because standing on a platform would make me fantasize jumping.
39:02
Not because I wanted to die. Only later I found out this wasn't
39:07
because I wanted to die. It's because I didn't know how to continue living.
39:10
I didn't know how to get out of the feelings that I was having.
39:15
And this is so intrusive. When you're having thoughts that just fly on
39:20
the go, like the whole time, you drive yourself insane. And for
39:24
me talking about it, stop that because it taught me through through people that
39:34
really inspired me with their story. It taught me that a thought is just
39:37
a thought. It's not it can't kill you. It's also not out to
39:40
get you. It might be there to teach you something, but it's just
39:44
a thought. And just as that train that I may have fantasized jumping in
39:47
front of, the thought is also just a train. It just you know,
39:52
unless you make it stop at a certain station, it will go past.
39:57
You know, it will go So yeah, for me, I mean
40:06
thank you. I see it as a big compliment that you say that it's
40:07
brave, because bravery is a is a wonderful compliment. But I don't even
40:12
know if it came out of bravery, or that it came out of mirror
40:16
hopelessness or like, you know, desperation. Yeah, that's actually the world
40:22
I was looking for. Wow, I'd love to have you back to follow,
40:29
uh, not just to follow what you're doing, but to have you
40:32
share your inspiration with with our listeners here. What's what are you working on?
40:38
Currently? So? Yeah, so episode seven of Together Alone will be
40:45
coming out and we've partnered with some amazing people in that episode and we're trying
40:50
to roll out what I just said, roll out some some programs, one
40:57
of which the subject of episodes as Gabriella. Right, she's an amazing woman
41:02
and she's partnered with the back Chopra with his foundation. They have a nonprofit
41:09
called Never Alone, and they have an AI chat bot called Peewee and she's
41:16
being translated in different different languages right now, so that people can actually speak
41:22
to someone. And it's yes, it's AI, but I think the anonymity
41:28
and the way to if you just want to put something out there in the
41:31
world, it's a great way. And they had they supported over three hundred
41:37
thousand people already. They had twenty three million messages exchanged in the first year,
41:44
and so these numbers don't lie. And so yeah, I'm I'm I'm
41:50
joining forces with them to see, you know, what we can do for
41:54
each other. I mean, she was my subject in my film and I
41:58
want to return the favor and be able to you know, grow the platforms
42:02
that we have and it's always better together. Yeah, awesome. What's the
42:07
best way for people to get in contact with you? Doroth? Many ways
42:13
Instagram, I'm on my DM so I actually also personally respond, which is
42:17
at Doroth Mouse just my full name. If anyone wants to send me an
42:22
email, they can do at dorthmouse dot com. Awesome. Well, like
42:28
I said, love to have you back. You are doing it. I'm
42:31
like, damn, we are doing it. We are doing it because without
42:37
you, I'm just sitting here with a limp on my face in my living
42:39
room. Look really awesome to meet you. So inspired by what you're doing
42:45
and I appreciate it. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you
42:49
really from the bottom of Mount Hurt. Thank you. I'll talk to you
42:51
soon, all right, well, bye bye.