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From TV News to Mental Health Advocate: Special Guest Cassidy Quinn · Millennial Mental Health Channel

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Then as I started talking about some of these harder things mental health struggles with
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myself and other people, realizing like, oh, there can also be a
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lot of joy that can be found in talking about this and sharing it with
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each other, and then sharing like, how do we find some joy when
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we're feeling like this? This is Millennial Mental Health Channel. I'm doctor Justin
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Romano, a child adolescent psychiatry fellow, and I'm Eddie Creo, a licensed
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clinical therapist. Our podcast is here because we wanted to start a much needed
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conversation about mental health. Our goal is to teach you as much as we
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can by sharing our own experiences and interviewing experts in the mental health field.
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We will discuss topics like mood disorders, psychotic disorders, substance use, personality
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disorders, and many more. Millennial Mental Health Channel buy Millennials for everyone.
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We hope you enjoyed today's episode. M MHC is a production of Spreaker from
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iHeartMedia Arena. Hello and welcome back to Millennial Mental Health Channel. We got
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a big shout out for today. You want to kick us off with that?
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Did we talk about it already? With the shout out is gonna be
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Are we perfect? Yeah? Yes? Shout out to a friend of the
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show, Emily Burris. She recommended today's guest, Justin will do the bio.
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If you haven't realized at this point, Justin does every single bio for
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every guest because even if I practice it, I'm gonna fumble it. So
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thank you to Emily forgetting us connected with Cassidy. I'll let Justin do the
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intro for Casside, but before we start, I might be taking down the
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mood a little bit, but only just because I want to just mention it.
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Yesterday, the actor of Fezco from Euphoria Angus Cloud passed away and I
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was talking to Justin about it. He texted me, I think because he
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saw I posted it on our Instagram, and yes, I like the show,
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like that's why it was like sad, but it's also just really hard
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to think about. Like nothing of Fisher has come out about his death,
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but just the things that his parents or his mom had mentioned him struggling with
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his mental health recently his dad had passed away, makes it sound like it
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was something related to his mental health. So I just want to mention,
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like it's really tough when when anyone has a mental health struggle and they pass
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away shortly after, I think as mental health professionals, it like hurts a
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little more, especially if you're like a fan of like an actor, just
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a person in general. So I guess I just wanted to acknowledge it because
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I was I was pretty sad yesterday and I I was just telling myself,
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like, you didn't know this person, like they're an actor, they're a
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famous person. But like, I think it's still okay to like have those
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emotions and have those feelings towards people even if we don't personally know them.
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So I mentioned it on our on our Instagram story yesterday. There's there's a
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lifeline nine to eight eight. They have a website like please if you can
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reach out and get help and support. I also want to acknowledge like it's
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not perfect, it's not always the best unfortunately, but our biggest hope is
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that if you do reach out for help, that you're able to get the
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help that you need and you deserve. Yeah, Vegas was only twenty five,
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so that just that hurts when we lose them, and that young well
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shifting gears completely. Today. We have a very special guest. Miss Cassidy
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Quinn is a content creator, an adventurer, a mental health advocate, and
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an Anxious Human with ADHD. If you live in Portland, you might remember
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her from her days on TV the television as the host of Tonight with Cassidy
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on KGW or on the radio on ninety eight point seven The Bull. Now,
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she's the director of Youth and Family program at NAMI, which stands for
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the National Alliance of Mental Health in Washington County, and she's the host and
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creator of the Mentally Together podcast. She also teaches mindfulness and meditation as a
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trained mindfulness based stress reduction teacher. And I did practice saying that because it's
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a bit of a tongue twister. So please welcome to the show, Miss
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Cassidy Quinn. Yay, thanks for being a Casidy. I'm now feeling bad
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for how many so thank you, thank you, and you got a tongue
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twister, you did it. I am still also practicing how to say mindfulness
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based stress reduction and um yeah, so again, Well, in your most
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recent podcast, you said you usually just abbreviated to MBSR. Right, yes,
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but of course then you have to like explain it ahead of time.
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You gotta like talk to people about it so many times before they'll understand the
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random acron and they're throwing out at them. But yes, MBSR. And
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just so you know, like right as I hopped into like the recording online
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portal studio that we have, we don't have an actual recording studio. Justin
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didn't realize that I joined, and he was like going through the bio practicing.
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So he's not bullshitting when he said he was practicing. Yes, it
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was literally like mindfulness based stress reduction teacher based Sally sells Seashells by the seashore.
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You can add it to your you know, regular preshow vocal warm up
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if you want, you know, ye, mind from bass stress reduction teacher.
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That is tough, goddamn every day. Yeah. Well, Cassidy,
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we have so much that we want to talk about because you have done so
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much, and you're doing so much, and you're you're transitioning in your career
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and you have your own walk with mental health and we're going to kind of
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talk over a lot of these a lot of these different things. But tell
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us start off a little bit with your journey in TV and radio because We're
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always fascinated by that. Thanks for shouting out the wonderful Emily Burris was just
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listening to her episode with You Guys, which is an excellent one, of
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course. And yeah, So I was at KGW, which is the NBC
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affiliate in Portland, for about eight years, and I started there as a
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early morning traffic reporter, Like I'd be the one at like five am telling
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you, oh, it's going to take you an hour to get from Vancouver
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to downtown right now, just given everyone the good news of the morning.
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You know, every once in a while it's like, oh, no traffic
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today. Great. But I oh, I got into that. That was
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kind of my way of getting my foot in the door, hoping that I
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would be able to morph into something that I could use my skills and my
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personality more so, eventually got into doing more like feature reporting, which is
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going going around town and covering, you know, it was Portland, so
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beer festivals or new restaurants opening or live music things like that, all the
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fun stuff happening in Portland. Then eventually, as justin so beautifully and dramatically
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said Tonight with Cassidy, eventually that was my show. It was a seven
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o'clock lifestyle show about all the fun things happening around Portland and Oregon and Southwest
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Washington whatever. And then you know, the pandemic thing happened, and all
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of a sudden none of the fun things were happening in Portland. I mean,
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props to the people of Portland for like making fun things still happen virtually,
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of course, but the normal stuff. You couldn't really do a live
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television show with people in studio. It was COVID, so the show got
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put on quote hiatus, and I already was kind of planning, Like in
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TV a lot of times, you have a contract so that the station can
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say, we know you're going to be here for three years, so we
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can put our marketing money into you or whatever. And so October twenty twenty,
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my contract was going to be up, and I kind of had the
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thought that I wanted just some kind of change. I didn't really know what
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that was, whether I wanted to go somewhere else in TV or wanted to
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do my own freelance content or morph into something else. And as the pandemic
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hit, and I, you know, like a lot of people was at
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home spending more time by myself spending more time in my brain. I thought
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I would be really sad that my show was not happening, but it kind
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of felt like this big deep breath, like, oh, this is kind
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of a relief. I get to just be myself and not have to worry
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about being in front of people all the time, and and like the image
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that I'm putting out, and I just and like, when have I ever
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actually spent time just being by myself in my own little bubble, paying attention
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to my mental health? And that kind of is inspired. Oh maybe I
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can use these same skills that I've been using in TV and social media,
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but how could I use them to help my own brain and other people's brains?
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So then I started the podcast and then eventually got working at NAMI and
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doing all those other things. Is it just a given that the tunnel on
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Highway twenty six is just always going to have traffic there? Not traffic?
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I mean, if there ever was, I probably like started on the calendar,
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like, oh my gosh, this was the day, and that just
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but like the one of the biggest, like standout memories of my time and
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TV was not like one of the fun feature stories that I was covering.
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There were lots of those that I had so much fun doing. But one
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day when it was like the big snowstorm of twenty seventeen, I know exactly
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talk about ye and I ended up reporting in that tunnel, like literally walking
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through the tunnel because it was shut down. They had blocked off the highway
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and people were just stuck in their cars. They'd been stuck there for like
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five hours before I got there, and I was normally you're live on TV
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for like a minute, two minutes, maybe five minutes, like if they're
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if you're doing something really interesting, and we were live for eleven minutes straight
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because that was like this is what is happening? And I was literally just
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walking in the storm. There was like three inches of snow building up on
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my hood of my jacket. I was like walking up to people in their
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cars like what do you do? You have any food in there? Like
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what are you doing? Have you gone to the bathroom? There was a
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guy walking around letting people use his apartment bathroom. It was, yeah,
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just this bizarre felt like the apocalypse, like walking in that tunnel. But
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like you said, is always yeaked with cars. Well we'll get into like
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the specifics in a little bit of like your shift, but like if you
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look back on TV radio, being in like the public eye, like being
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on like uh yeah, being on TV and radio, Like do you miss
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parts of your previous life? Are there anything there? Any pieces you miss
9:56
is or anything where you're just like you talked about like feeling relieved, but
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yeah, what are some things that you miss or what are some things that
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you definitely don't miss. That's a good question, and I'm glad you asked,
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because yeah, I don't want it to seem like, oh, it
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was just I was so happy I was done with it, ripped it off.
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Things were great, because it also was really hard and there are still
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definitely things I miss. And so it's also interesting because like I finally got
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diagnosed with ADHD once I left TV and started working for myself and realizing that
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and we can get more into that anytime, of course, but like trying
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to set my own schedule and I thought like, oh, all those live
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TV deadlines, they're weighing me down, you know, And then I left
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it and realized, oh, they are like holding me down. They are
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keeping me here and keeping me moving along and like keeping me accountable, and
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so I started to realize like or like my job at the TV station doing
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my show was all different every day, Like one day I'd be going indoor
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skydiving and one day I'd be learning how to make donut set blue star or
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something, you know, and so it was always always something different. And
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so then I got diagnosed with ADHD. Was like, oh, that makes
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sense why I loved it so much. And so it's definitely something I still
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try to keep in my life, is like how can I keep things different?
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And I like still have one foot in the TV world or just like
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reporting and producing kind of world. Like in a couple of weeks in towards
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the end of August, I'm flying to Budapest to work at the World Athletics
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Championships. And when the Olympics come around, like I got super lucky and
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when I worked in TV, I got to cover the Olympics a couple of
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times. And so that kind of just is so addicting, you know,
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as I imagine it is if you're like, you know, competing in the
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Olympics. But I'm not at that level. So I can go and talk
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to the people and help produce and put it together, and so I like
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keeping that I can still have that exciting like we're on this mission and we're
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making this live content and it's really exciting. But we do it for a
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few weeks and then I go back to the regular life and then I could
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do that like you know, once or twice a year, and it kind
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of keeps that switch up a little bit and keeps me connected to it.
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We'll describe a little bit what you do for NAMI and what your role is
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there. Well, I just got promoted like a month ago. So you
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read my title and as you were saying, and I was like, well,
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that is what I wrote, and I don't actually like we haven't you
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know, I haven't gotten new business cards printed yet. But so I started
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there in June twenty twenty two. Yeah, so title up for editing,
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you know, in the future. But I started there last year as the
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director of Community Outreach, and so I was and still I'm doing all of
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our It's NAMI of Washington County, so like Beaverton, Aloa, Tiger twallat
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in Sherwood, depending how much people listening know all the different counties in Oregon.
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It's like just west of Portland doing all of our social media for NAMI
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Washington County, also writing our newsletters and facilitating some support groups. So when
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I first started there, I got certified as a peer support Specialist, which
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I did not even know existed before, but it basically just means you are
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a person that has some kind of lived experience with your own mental health and
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are now at a place in your quote recovery where you're ready to support others.
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And so I will facilitate full groups like I get to facilitate the ADHD
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group and the anxiety group since that's the lived experience that I have in my
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brain. And then I'll also sometimes do like one on one peer support.
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So if someone reaches out and says, hey, I just really need to
13:33
talk to somebody today, then I talk to them kind of help them,
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like not doing anything for them, but helping connect them to resources, maybe
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talking through some of the conversations they might want to have with their therapists or
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their doctor or their caseworker or whatever comes up. And now I have transitioned
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into being the director of our as you mentioned, Youth and Family program,
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so all the different namies because NAMI the National Alliance on Mental Illness it is
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a national organization. It's the biggest grassroots mental health organization in the country.
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Then it breaks down into the state organizations, so NAMI organ and then into
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the smaller ones by county. All the different affiliates have different kind of focuses,
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like specialties. So what we want to focus on right now is youth
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mental health. It's a big youth mental health crisis. Obviously, you guys
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know all about this, and we at NAMI technically are supposed to work with
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people over eighteen. And so how we are reaching the youth is talking to
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parents and putting on free support groups and mental health education workshops and presentations to
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kind of teach parents and caregivers what is mental health, what's it like to
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take care of your mental health, how to have these conversations, warning signs
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to look out for in your kids, what to do if you see this
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or this or this, How to support your kids friends, how to be
14:52
that safe adult. And so now I am in charge of the program,
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so working on setting up we do present tents in schools or for parents or
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teachers and all kinds of things. You were either at it or you helped
15:05
put it together. But I know Sherwood had one in April. We're gonna
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have it in February, but then we got snow, which was dope because
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at a snow day. But so I know that was positive. And I
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swear I'm not lying just because you're in front of me on the camera.
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If I wasn't out of town that weekend, I would have gone. But
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I know you had one for Shorewood, So that's really cool. Yes,
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and you're right, we had to reschedule, and we are glad that people
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showed up because you never know. We're like, we had all these people
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signed up and then we had to move it because of the snow. Yeah,
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we're planning more for the fall, so you still have a chance.
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I can intend. I can do that. You mentioned it, you know,
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Covid. I think with anyone we've talked to over the last three years,
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Covid, I think it's brought up every single time in some way,
15:54
shape or form. And you mentioned how that kind of impacted you wanting to
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shift away from TV and radio. Was there anything else that got you to
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shift careers that maybe made it feel like this was a better thing for you,
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either mentally, personally, professionally, emotionally, any all of the above,
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what helped you get to that shift? All of the above and kind
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of just felt like, you know, at first, it was my own
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struggles with anxiety and depression, which I think I had had anxiety and probably
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ADHD forever and ever, but couldn't figure it out. Tried all kinds of
16:30
things. Oh, am I allergic to food? Am I is there something
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going on with you know, my physical body, which, yes, our
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brain is part of our physical body. Of course, it's all connected.
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Sometimes I forget that or my body forgets that. So it started with my
16:44
own struggles and kind of learning, oh yeah, I do have anxiety and
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depression and maybe getting medication is something that would be helpful for me. Ended
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up being very helpful. I've now switched meds a couple of times in the
16:59
last few years, but so far helping a lot. And once I finally
17:04
got to the point where I was ready to talk about that, like,
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I put out a YouTube video. I used to make YouTube videos all the
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time, don't now it's like just my podcast home. But used to be
17:12
obsessed with all the vlogging and it was so fun. But I put out
17:18
a video saying, like how I figured out that I had anxiety and depression
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and kind of telling a little bit of my story. And I was so
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nervous to put that out there. And then once I did, I started
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getting so many responses from people on the internet saying I can relate, I
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get it, like thanks for talking about it. And then also a lot
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of people in real life, Like I was working at the TV station and
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I remember the wonderful man that sat next to me at my desk, like
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came up to me and was like, hey, my son's really going through
17:48
something, Like I didn't know how to talk about it, and it really
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just started It just meant a lot to me and really just started like putting
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more light bulbs in my mind of like what else can I do? Like
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I am not the person that has struggled the most, and I'm not the
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person then knows the most and has all the answers or has all the mental
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health training, but like what can I do? And it just started feeling
18:15
really good to me to have those conversations because obviously in my job, like
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I'd been talking to people all the time, and in my mind, like
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it was always super genuine and authentic, like they were real conversations and at
18:27
the same time, like, what I loved about my show was we got
18:32
to be like the fun show, the half hour of your day where you
18:34
don't have to be sad, like we're just showing you the fun stuff.
18:37
And I loved bringing people that joy. And then as I started talking about
18:44
some of these harder things mental health struggles with myself and other people, realizing
18:48
like, oh, there can also be a lot of joy that can be
18:52
found in talking about this and sharing it with each other and then sharing like
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how do we find some joy when we're feeling like this or when we how
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do we get through that. When I got diagnosed and got my antidepressants,
19:07
I remember I have a some super close some of my closest friends are my
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cousins, so like we you know, we've got shared blood. And I
19:15
remember texting them like, hey, guess who you know just got ssryes and
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they were like, hey, welcome to the club. Welcome to the club.
19:23
Like, turns out that's part of being in the family. And you
19:27
actually have like made it their ten years before we did, so good job.
19:30
You're ahead of the game. And to me it felt like, oh,
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it took so long to figure this out. But it was like,
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oh, actually, you know, maybe I can think of it as being
19:40
ahead of the game because I'm ten years ahead of where my cousins were in
19:44
figuring that out. Then started realizing also like, yeah, but we hadn't
19:48
talked about it, Like turns out many of the women in my family,
19:51
especially like had struggled with their mental health and we just didn't talk about it
19:55
very much. And so then Yeah, then COVID hits. Then in summer
20:00
of twenty twenty one, my mom had been struggling with her mental health for
20:04
years, and I don't even like, didn't even know the full extent of
20:11
it, because as we've talked about, it's really hard to talk about.
20:14
And I can imagine, like when you're you're a parent, you want to
20:18
protect your kids and you don't want you're you think you're supposed to take care
20:22
of them. I think if I can put myself in my mom's shoes,
20:26
like she wanted to take care of her kids. She didn't want us worrying
20:29
about her. So I didn't know the extent of how much she was struggling,
20:33
and in the summer of twenty one, she took her life. Yeah,
20:38
it was like I knew she was struggling, but it was the biggest
20:44
shock. And still some days it's like, yeah, that happened, and
20:48
other days like holy shit, what like wait what Like as I'm trying to
20:52
tell it to you, it's like, wait, that's that's really what happened.
20:56
And I'm like talking about this now and not like sobbing, obviously definitely
21:03
getting emotional about it, but that like, in some ways it kind of
21:08
put me in this space of like I can't do anything about this, like
21:11
I can't help anybody. I couldn't help my mom, you know, And
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then in other ways put me in this place of like I gotta do something,
21:19
like I don't know what. I thought about going back to school to
21:22
become a therapist for a little while, maybe do that someday. But then
21:26
it was like what's the quickest, Like how can I get into this mental
21:30
health world and just feel like I'm doing something to get me out of this
21:36
hole of like everything's just bad. And you know, you were mentioning Angus
21:42
and of course I forgot his last name, Cloud, Angus Cloud, and
21:48
reading about him and how he was struggling so much with the loss of his
21:55
dad, and how it sounds like that put him in a really deep mental
22:00
whole. Like you said, like not all the informations out there, and
22:03
it's hard for us all to try to like read between the words that are
22:07
said. But I kind of related in like when I lost my mom that
22:11
is, and I've struggled with anxiety and depression before, but that was the
22:15
deepest hole because it just felt like maybe my mom was right, like the
22:18
world is screwed, like everything's bad, Like maybe I should just go Maybe
22:23
my mom had the right idea, like maybe I should just go hang out
22:26
with my mom. And that's like the only time that that's been a thought
22:30
that like ever crossed my mind, and it was never to the point of
22:34
like actually doing something, Like I talked to my therapist about it, and
22:38
yeah, like I can relate to just feeling hopeless and after a loss you
22:45
had mentioned, and oh my gosh, then thank you so much for talking
22:48
about this, telling us about this. What a terrible thing to have to
22:52
go through that you had mentioned that, yeah, at first you didn't want
22:56
to tell people that it was a suicide, and then eventually you did take
23:02
us through your thought process there. Because I absolutely understand what you were going
23:06
through or yeah, wrong way to say that, sorry, but I understand
23:10
why you did that. But yeah, I'm curious to see your thoughts.
23:11
There's no right way to say any of it, like really, and like
23:15
going through my own grieving process, I'm like, now I should know all
23:18
the right things to say when someone is talking about grief or suicide, like
23:22
and I don't. It's like it's still I try to take that pressure off
23:27
of myself because I'm like, I should know how to talk about all this.
23:30
I should be the expert. No, like nobody's an expert. Yeah,
23:33
it's weird coming from like, you know, I want to be one
23:37
of the people breaking down the stigma and making it easier to talk about things
23:41
like mental health and suicide. And then it happened to me, to my
23:47
mom, to my family, and all of a sudden, we were in
23:52
this weird place of like, first, it took me a few weeks just
23:55
to tell everybody. You know, I still remember the day that I posted
24:00
on social media that my mom had passed away, and I kind of wanted
24:03
to just like put it all out there, but of course it's my mom's
24:07
story first and foremost and then it's our family's story and it's not just not
24:11
just me. It's not just me the one with the mental health podcast that
24:14
wants to tell everybody immediately. And so we had a lot of talks as
24:18
a family and kind of just thinking like, Okay, let's take some time
24:21
to process on our own and wrap our heads around this. And at the
24:27
time, I didn't love that, Like I it kind of for a while
24:30
felt like I have this secret that, like, you know, I'm interviewing
24:34
people on my podcast, Yeah, let's talk about suicide. And then I'm
24:38
sitting there like not saying the thing, like the biggest thing in my whole
24:45
brain and life. But also kept reminding myself that like, unfortunately this is
24:52
something I now have to live with forever. There is all the time in
24:56
the world to figure out how to talk about it and to try to be
24:59
the person that's brea can down the stigma, like I don't have to do
25:02
it on day one. And then just this May, it was Mental Health
25:07
Awareness Month and I was putting out an episode of my podcast with this wonderful
25:11
man, Ivan Maizelle, who's a sportswriter and he lost his son to suicide
25:17
when his son was in college, and I was like, you know what,
25:21
I think this is just the time to say it, and like not
25:25
make it a it is a big thing. It's obviously a big thing,
25:27
but not make it like this big thing that changes everything, Like my mom.
25:33
Everybody already knew she passed away, and this is how she died,
25:36
like it's not her whole story, and it is a big story obviously.
25:41
But then I was like nervous, how do I say it? Did I
25:44
say it right? Did I say enough things? Did I Now? People
25:47
are gonna think why didn't she mention it earlier? So lots of thoughts involved
25:52
justsin mentioned it earlier, like saying thank you, and we could spend the
25:55
next thirty minutes saying thank you and it probably still wouldn't be enough. So
25:59
they gave cassidy. At least on my end, I will say it one
26:00
more time. Just thank you for being open and honest and I think you
26:04
touched on it a little bit. Thank you for asking me about it too.
26:07
It was like, of course I have, yet it hasn't been something
26:11
that I've talked like publicly a lot yet. And it's terrifying but also nice
26:15
to just be like, yeah, cool, ask me about it and see
26:19
how it feels. So thanks, I'm like sweating, though I don't think
26:23
it tells we're here to support you through the wedding. I think one of
26:33
our hopes with anything we talk about this show is just you sharing that can
26:37
make someone's situation hopefully a little easier. The other piece that I was thinking
26:41
about was you were talking about, you know, shifting careers and finding a
26:45
joy in like talking about difficult topics and helping people understand that they're not by
26:51
themselves. And like, also the word that came up for me as you
26:53
were sharing that was like feeling fulfilled and feeling like an additional purpose like with
26:59
the work that you get to do. And I feel like that also comes
27:02
out with your life podcasts, like getting to have like another platform where you
27:06
get to talk about those things. So I want to give you an opportunity
27:08
to tell us about your podcast, tell our listeners about it, tell us
27:12
where we can find it and where we can listen to it. Oh thanks.
27:15
My podcast is called mentally Together and you can find it all the places
27:21
Spotify, Apple podcasts, Google Podcasts. Just mentally Together has a picture of
27:26
my face on it. So if you're listening to this podcast, you don't
27:30
know what my face looks like, should say Cassidy Quinn somewhere on there and
27:37
see I'm too used to TV, you know, like you can see my
27:40
face and on Instagram mentally together pod I interview different people kind of like you
27:47
guys do, about their good days, they're bad days, everything in between.
27:51
Sometimes it's somebody that comes on who has experienced with a specific mental health
27:55
challenge like schizophrenia or ADHD or bipolar disorder. And then other times someone that
28:00
might not even have any diagnosis but is just open to being vulnerable. And
28:06
we all have bad days. We all have days where getting out of bed
28:08
sucks, some worse than others. Some that lasts for a really long time,
28:15
and that's when it becomes a really big problem, you know. But
28:18
everyone knows what it feels like to just not have a good day, and
28:21
so I think there's always things we can talk about to give ideas like,
28:23
hey, what do you do when you have a bad day? Oh,
28:26
that's not going to work for me, but maybe this other thing that Eddie
28:29
mentioned that might actually maybe I'll try that and maybe that actually helps me feel
28:33
better. On my day and so just being able to talk about it and
28:38
in a way that still feels lighthearted and fun as much as it can,
28:42
just like chatting with you guys, like, Yeah, we're gonna go into
28:45
like a deep hole for a minute and then we're gonna laugh about it because
28:48
I'm sweating and I don't know why I keep saying that. So, yeah,
28:56
being able to being able to have these talks like in a lighthearted way
29:00
feels really good to me. And coming from the TV world where, like
29:04
I said, interviews were super short, like three minutes. Now it's like,
29:07
ah, I can talk for an hour and like, really talk to
29:11
this person. This is the best. Yeah. So that's mentally together.
29:15
That's mentally together. And you made such a good point that when people think
29:18
mental health podcast, they think it's going to be serious. It's going to
29:22
be really That's one of the some of the feedback we've gotten about our show
29:26
is that they just like the laughter. Like Eddie and I are, we're
29:30
happy people, we're laughing and we're talking about this stuff. It's it's not
29:33
such a downer. So we love your approach to it. We think you're
29:37
doing a great job with this you're involved in so many things like the podcast
29:41
Namie, You've you've made this big transition in your career, and I'm gonna
29:48
do a little bit of a synthesis here do you get a therapy term?
29:51
But it sounds like so many things had happened in your life and you lost
29:56
your mom and you were looking for a way to sublimate those bad feeling,
30:00
so like putting that energy into something that was going to give you make you
30:04
feel better, make this world a better place. And so you shifted your
30:08
focus to mental health, and in a way, it almost seems like you're
30:12
doing the things that you would have wished your family would have had growing up,
30:18
because you mentioned you guys had really poor communication about mental health, that
30:22
a lot of this stuff was genetic for your family too, and so you
30:26
guys didn't know how to talk about it. You guys didn't know how to
30:27
process it. You didn't know how to tell each other that you were suffering.
30:32
And this is a long way of asking, like what do you wish
30:37
would have been different in your life? Not that anyone did anything wrong,
30:41
but what information, what diagnoses of communication skills do you wish you would have
30:47
had growing up? A tough question because you're totally right, and like,
30:51
you know, I don't want to make it sound like, you know,
30:52
we didn't share emotions and we didn't talk about anything, because we did,
30:56
but it was never from this like from a mental health lens. Like when
30:59
I was in high school, I had headaches all the time. I was
31:03
dizzy all the time. I was tired all the time, and so I
31:07
was going to the doctor and they're like, why do you have headaches?
31:10
What's this? Maybe you have mono, maybe you have this, maybe you
31:12
have this test to me for you know, like send me to a cat
31:15
scan, like maybe you've got a brain tumor nothing. The only thing they
31:19
could figure out. They were like, I think you're stressed, so get
31:22
some acupuncture. And acupuncture is great, it's great, but like could some
31:29
and it did, it did help for a time, but like, could
31:33
someone have said maybe we should talk to a therapist, like if this seventeen
31:37
year old is so stressed that she's not really functioning except for like still working
31:45
my butt off to get good grades, because that's the like overachiever ADHD kid
31:48
in me, and why it often goes missed in girls and women because we
31:55
don't look like the typical what we think is the typical ADHD kid um.
32:00
Yeah, I wish that maybe somebody had said, let's go talk to a
32:05
therapist, like let's come at it from a different angle instead of like all
32:07
these physical tests, Let's talk to somebody. I guess that I just wish
32:13
that stuff was like part of the conversation because like, at the same time,
32:15
like now I know a lot of my family members were on antidepressants and
32:22
maybe going to therapy, I think, and just but it like just wasn't
32:27
a thing that we talked about. As you're sharing that, I'm like,
32:38
I feel like I relate to it so much of like, you know,
32:42
I love my family a ton, and like even though I live you know,
32:45
seven hundred miles away from them now they're in California, mere in Oregon,
32:49
like they're still extremely important to me and part of like what what makes
32:52
me me. But I think back to it of like, you know,
32:55
it really would have been nice if we talked about mental at any point.
33:00
I think back to, you know, random times when I was like in
33:02
elementary or middle school, and it would be like, you know, there's
33:07
like the Sunday Scaries, right and you still have them like as a little
33:09
kid where you like don't want to go to school the next day. But
33:12
I think back to specific times where I'm like I would feel like really sad
33:15
for no reason or like really out of it, and I would like say
33:19
something but and it's not that like my parents did a poor job or anything.
33:23
They would just like they did the best they could, and like they
33:27
are support people, supporters in the way that they know how to and if
33:30
they don't know how to talk about certain things, like we can't necessarily expect
33:34
it. But I just think back now of like there's definitely times where I
33:37
have kids in my office weekly that are just like I don't know what's wrong.
33:42
I just don't feel the greatest, and like being able to tell them
33:45
like that part is okay, like you don't have to have a reason to
33:46
be sad, and seeing them be like, oh, well, that I
33:50
feel a little better. Like same same as you kind of mentioned, like
33:53
I just kind of wish we would have talked about it, and like it's
33:55
just we talk about on the show, like why different populations and groups of
34:00
people don't talk about it. There's a big cultural piece to it. But
34:04
now My just biggest hope is like as this this virtual room full of mental
34:08
health advocates, like we can just kind of continue that of like knowing that
34:12
it's okay to talk about these things and being able to have those conversations so
34:15
that moving forward, like kids and other like generations know that, like it's
34:20
okay to talk about these things because I wasn't. I was a little kid,
34:23
like not that I don't know, I'm thirty now, but like it
34:27
wasn't that long ago, like when I was, like that was the times,
34:31
Like I feel like I'm talking about seven years ago, like no,
34:37
well, and you Edie talking about like yep, you know people can support
34:40
us how they knew how and you talking about that and kids being being stressed
34:45
and not feeling good or whatever. Having the Sunday Scaries as a kid just
34:50
reminded me that, like, and I talk about this in because sometimes I'll
34:53
share part of my story as a NAMI presentation. And there's one thing I
34:57
always mentioned that was so wonderful that my mom did was that when I was
35:00
in high school and I would get so specifically history classes, those were like
35:06
my nemesis and I would try so hard, but my ADHD brain would not
35:12
hold onto the information, and so when it was time for a test,
35:15
I was cramming, I had been studying, I was doing all the things,
35:17
but still in the middle of the night, I was having a total
35:21
breakdown, panic, crying, And there was one time where my mom was
35:25
like, you know what, I'm gonna call you out sick tomorrow and you
35:29
can take the test on a different day. And like we still never got
35:32
to like, hm, why is this so overwhelming to me? But we
35:37
took the first step of like it's okay, let's just take that pressure off
35:40
of you for twenty four hours and like maybe that will help, and it
35:44
did so even just like little things like that are now feel like it felt
35:51
like a little thing, but it also feels like a huge thing. Yeah,
35:53
you look back and like we're so close A lot of the times of
35:57
like being able to make the connection of like here, let me give you
36:00
a break because you're obviously stressed, but maybe we should think about why are
36:05
you stressed? Or like why is this hidding you so hard? Like it
36:07
was so close back in the day, and I think now like because of
36:10
the conversations we can have and the shift in like a societal understanding of mental
36:16
health. Like I think we're that that much closer being able to like connect
36:20
dots more frequently, which I think is a good thing. Yeah, I
36:22
wanted to ask a quick question too your ADHD journey, because it sounds like
36:27
you were diagnosed later in life. And I'm always so curious because as a
36:31
psychiatrist, I hear psychiatrists complaining all the time about people coming in. We're
36:38
saying they have adult ADHD, which there are so many people who had ADHD
36:44
as a kid and then only really start realizing it, but like, oh
36:46
my gosh, now that I'm an adult and I'm piecing it all together,
36:50
like I have ADHD, And a lot of psychiatrists are really resistant to giving
36:53
out medicines for that because they say, if you weren't diagnosed as a child,
36:57
I don't believe it. So it's like, how was your journey with
37:00
it? If you don't mind to answer in personal questions, did you try
37:04
any ADHD meds? That kind of thing. It's so interesting to hear it
37:07
from the psychiatrist perspective because yeah, also like now we're in I think we're
37:10
getting out of it. But the whole ADHD med shortage because so many people
37:16
have gotten diagnosed in the last few years, and so it's like I could
37:21
see out from a psychiatrist perspective, it's like, we got to stop giving
37:22
this stuff out. Yeah, being on TikTok during the pandemic, and that's
37:28
probably also psychiatrists might hate that too, because everybody I fell into ADHD talk
37:34
right, and like everyone's talking about what is ADHD and what it feels like
37:38
and all their struggles, and I'm sitting there like, oh, yep,
37:43
that's me, that's me, that's me, that's also me. Oh my
37:45
gosh, okay, maybe it's time. And then doing more research, you
37:49
know, not just on TikTok, and then finally found a doctor that did
37:54
do ADHD assessments. And I feel like I got super lucky because as I
38:00
hear so many stories of people who try to go get accessed for ADHD,
38:04
and it takes so long and it is a huge hassle and it's like having
38:08
to prove all of your struggles, which also like my brain doesn't remember a
38:15
lot of things, so like if you ask me how my ADHD was when
38:17
I was a child, I have I can't tell you that that was thirty
38:21
years ago, like I have no idea, and so those kind of questions
38:24
are like really hard if the doctor's like, well when you were seven,
38:28
like do you remember whatever? And luckily, in my case, the doctor
38:32
I found we talked for a few minutes and she was like, I'm gonna
38:37
need you to like not talk as much. She's like she might have said
38:44
it a nicer way, but it was something like, Okay, we gotta
38:45
get through all my questions, like you're talking too much, which is probably
38:49
how you guys are feeling right now. And and after a few minutes she
38:53
was like, Okay, I still have to ask you the rest of these
38:55
questions, but like I'm pretty sure that I'm pretty sure we've come to a
38:59
conclusion here, like you got ADHD. So that was nice. I feel
39:04
super lucky that it wasn't like this whole rigama roll of like oh is it
39:08
going to happen? Um? It just felt like, oh, she sees
39:12
me, and she and she gets it, and I did get a prescription
39:16
for some meds. So I got prescribed a stimulant medication for the ADHD,
39:21
and it was it was this I remember this moment feeling so weird because I
39:24
didn't go into it wanting medication. I just went into it wanting answers and
39:34
validation and then maybe being able to make the decision about trying a medication later
39:43
or at some point and like see what the doctor thought, you know,
39:45
like see what treatment would look like, and but immediately like sent me out
39:50
of there with a prescription, and which maybe did seem a little too easy,
39:55
but I was in a good mindset of like, Okay, I want
39:59
to be careful abou this, and I don't want to just immediately jump into
40:01
it. That also, the day that I got diagnosed and got the meds
40:06
was the night of the twenty twenty election, so I also was like,
40:10
nope, not the day, not the date of this my brain, we
40:15
are gonna just call it here and try the meds. In a few days,
40:21
I called my dad telling him that I got diagnosed with ADHD, and
40:25
I was like sobbing, and my dad was like, it's okay, Like
40:29
you know, why are you sad? It's okay, And I was like,
40:30
I'm not even sad. It's just like this overwhelming. I feel like
40:35
I have all these answers, but now also at the same time, like
40:37
looking back on everything with a new lens and going like, oh my gosh,
40:44
that makes sense and that was my ADHD and like what if I had
40:46
figured it out at that point, Like would that have been easier? And
40:52
yeah, just a whole rush of emotions. It had been like a less
40:55
than a year and my mom passed away and I stopped taking them because I
41:02
got to that point where I was like, I know that it's not the
41:06
meds aren't just to like make me productive, like it's to function and to
41:09
feel good, and at that point I wanted to just be able to grieve.
41:15
Thanks for sharing that too, because I think a lot of times people
41:19
are afraid to admit that they've been on those medicines, but I've seen how
41:22
they really help a lot of people will be happier and healthier. And it
41:24
sounds like you benefited from them two for sure, And it definitely definitely like
41:30
all of a sudden, was like, oh, I'm a like awake,
41:34
Like I have been tired all the time and that hasn't that's not normal,
41:38
but I just thought that was normal. And I think it's just like my
41:44
brain was so tired that I was just tired and like, oh, I
41:49
can be motivated and I can choose what I want to focus on instead of
41:52
just like letting my brain pick something and sit there for hours doing it.
41:57
Then I switched. I did. Also in the last year, antidepressant that
42:00
I switched to has been more of a like helping me with my energy too,
42:06
So I think that has helped like not need the stimulant medication as well.
42:12
So still always figuring it out. Meds are fun nearly it's a lot
42:16
of trial and error. Did you switch to well beutrin be appropria, No,
42:22
No, Maybe that's that's one that's like two birds of fun Stone helps
42:28
a little bit with ADHD and also depression, but it can make anxiety worse
42:30
too, So I'm doing the doing the prozac. So I don't know what's
42:37
your thoughts on that one. This is not my medical advice. PROCs a
42:43
good one. Yeah, it's it can give you a little bit more energy.
42:45
It doesn't specifically help with the ADHD, but can help get you going
42:50
a little bit more. Yeah, that makes sense. They's of ADHD medicines
42:53
that are more of the calming effect because anxiety and ADHD go hand in hand.
43:00
They're really common together and if you think about it, it makes sense
43:04
like from an evolutionary or biological standpoint, where essentially, what are we giving
43:08
people with ADHD. We're giving them adrenaline and pillform so that they can focus.
43:14
How does your body naturally increase adrenaline through anxiety, through being scared through
43:21
that anxiety, So it helps people focus with ADHD. So it can be
43:24
kind of a useful thing. But they also have some calming ADHD medicines that
43:30
we call like the alpha two agonists. Typically an adult to use something like
43:35
clonidine which can help lower anxiety and also help just lower that speed and frenetic
43:42
mind that sometimes the companies with ADHDS. So there's lots of different treatment options.
43:45
You don't always have to go with the stimulant. Like you said,
43:49
there are antidepressants that also treat ADHD. There are calming ADHD medicines to help
43:53
with more of the anxiety, so that there's lots of different things that you
43:57
can that you can do. Thank you. That's good information. I wish
44:01
it was easy to like just try all the meds, like try this one
44:06
for a week, see how I feel. Try this one for a week,
44:07
see how I feel. But you can't do that, because that's not
44:13
how they work. Unfortunately, you just really mess with your brain. I
44:16
think we're getting to the end of today's episode, Cassidy, we want to
44:20
give you another thousand thank you before we let you go. When we finish
44:24
up a lot of our episodes, we like to do like some type of
44:27
like take home point. So we're gonna go down the line, We're gonna
44:30
ask you, then we'll let justin and then I'll try my best to give
44:32
a take home point, and then we'll just wrap today's episode up with a
44:37
nice pretty bow, and then we'll kind of leave it as having a new
44:40
friend of the show. We've really appreciated you being on too, the Cassidy,
44:45
but we'll let you take it away. What take home point do you
44:47
have for us? Oh man, I gotta go first. Also, fun
44:57
thing about my ADHD is sometimes you ask me a question and therefore the answer
45:00
falls. It's like I think of it as like a bookshelf, and when
45:02
you ask the question, the book with the information falls off the back and
45:07
it's gone. Like I used to talk about restaurants on TV all the time,
45:15
and then someone would ask me for like a restaurant recommendation. Nope,
45:20
didn't. No restaurants existed anymore. They were all gone. Portland has no
45:23
restaurants, So what are you talking about? I think if anybody, like
45:29
if you're listening and you're struggling, just it's hard. But as much as
45:35
you can just try to talk to one person, like you don't have to
45:38
talk to the whole internet. And that's something I have to remind myself of,
45:43
Like I can still process the loss of my mom without like I was
45:47
still doing it those almost two years before I said it on the internet,
45:52
you know, like that's still real. Um, But it would have been
45:55
a lot harder if I didn't have a few close people in my life that
45:59
I could just real about it with. And that's been the case with whatever
46:05
I'm struggling with, And I think what has what helps the most specifically is
46:08
sometimes like finding people that I've struggled but the same thing, you know,
46:13
like the now, the friendships I most appreciate are the ones who you know,
46:17
Like you talked about Emily, you guys had her on the pod.
46:20
Like when I can actually talk to Emily about my mental health, it's like,
46:23
yeah, we can go off fun and we can also have this this
46:27
connection because we know what it feels like and with our grief too. I
46:30
really admire the fact that in the grieving process with your mom, you didn't
46:37
run away from anything. You figured out something that would help you overcome that
46:43
grief and turn it into something really special in helping other people. And I
46:46
think that's really admirable. Well, thanks, that's really really nice. I
46:52
think the one thing that popped up for me as we were recording today is
46:54
just to remind people that it's okay to not be okay and some to what
47:00
you said, Cassidy, of like reaching out for help when you can.
47:02
And I'll acknowledge that the help isn't perfect and it's not going to fix everything,
47:07
but our hope is that you are able to find whatever help you need
47:12
when you need it the most. Again, Cassidy, thank you so much
47:15
for being on today's episode. I will close this out or remind everybody where
47:19
they can find the podcast, even though if they've listened to the episode,
47:22
they probably know where to find the podcast. I'll also put the ownership on
47:27
Justin. He'll add the link to Cassidy's podcast on our show notes for today.
47:31
You can find her podcast as well. As our podcast on Apple Podcasts,
47:35
Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. If you're on Apple
47:38
Podcasts, feel free to leave us a five star. If you leave Cassidy
47:42
one two and on Spotify, do the same thing for both of us.
47:45
You can find us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, threads, YouTube already.
47:53
I'm over it already, but that's fine. We're on there, all
47:58
of us at Millennial MHC Cassidy. Thank you so much again and as always,
48:02
remember take care of your mentors.