Latest / Voices for Voices® / Asking for Help Doesn't Make You Weak | We Push Back on Stigma | Episode 527

Transcript

Asking for Help Doesn't Make You Weak | We Push Back on Stigma | Episode 527 · Voices for Voices®

• 0:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Hi everyone, it's Justin here, Voices for Voices.
• 0:05
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you so much for joining us, whether you're watching, whether you're listening, whether you're here in the United States or you are abroad.
• 0:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We are grateful to have you with us.
• 0:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: If you can do us a quick favor, give us a thumbs up, like, follow, subscribe, share, repost, reshare, even maybe pull out your phone and uh share the voices for voices TV show and podcast with 25 or 50 or 100 of your contacts.
• 0:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh that would greatly help us.
• 0:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's free to do, and it again helps us get closer and closer to our um ultimate goal of reaching and helping at least 3 billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond.
• 0:58
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And that's all because of you.
• 1:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You're the reason we have the show, you're the reason we continue, you're the reason why we have over at this point 525 episodes at least.
• 1:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Um and we're you know it any type of any type of show, you know, needs a needs an audience, and if there's no audience, then there's no reason to have the show.
• 1:29
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh, but you have you know given us that uh that love and support back at us, and we're sending that same love and support your way as well.
• 1:42
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Um you know talk about a few different topics today.
• 1:47
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Um, you know, mentally it's uh uh course you know who I'm looking at.
• 1:57
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Looking at Lucy, she hears she knows that there's a show going on, as we've mentioned a lot.
• 2:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Um mentally going through uh what anybody would deem a very stressful, um high anxiety, high stress.
• 2:26
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh at this time, I yeah, you'll see her.
• 2:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: There you go.
• 2:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: There you are, Lucy.
• 2:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You're on TV.
• 2:35
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Yeah.
• 2:38
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Her nails have gone super long.
• 2:41
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So even when she's not she's not trying to scratch.
• 2:47
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: At least I that's what I believe.
• 2:50
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I believe that she's not trying to scratch me or anybody.
• 2:54
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh yeah, so in in this season of kind of mental uh I guess mental turbulence, if that's if that's a word, or two words, I guess.
• 3:08
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Um maybe they're hyphenated, but you know, it this mental turbulence, I think, comes and goes for all of us.
• 3:19
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Just it it's maybe easier for some of us, and maybe a little bit harder for some of us.
• 3:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Um and luckily uh I I do have my mental health team, and uh that that's really a big deal.
• 3:45
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That and then coping mechanisms, those are kind of what's keeping me afloat right now, uh, because they're you know, there's some there's some things going on, uh family-wise, and it's hard to hard to think about and hard to see.
• 4:15
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You know, it's one thing to hear, right?
• 4:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Like we hear a story, hear a story uh of how a particular person or whoever uh is behaving, and if that's out of the ordinary for them, uh it like I said it's one thing to hear about it, it's another one, it's another thing to see it.
• 4:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh and it is it's just it's just crushing.
• 4:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And this is probably one of the biggest.
• 5:20
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Nobody's perfect, I'm not perfect.
• 5:22
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Don't try to say I'm perfect, I just share my experiences.
• 5:26
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So I'd be in a hard, hard place if again, if I didn't have my psychiatrist, my therapist, medication, previous therapy, uh coping mechanisms, grounding, and all those things you can you can look up.
• 5:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You can use chat GPT or whoever you use um to find out like what what exactly I'm talking about there.
• 5:55
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh and so I'm getting help, and I have been getting help for a long time.
• 6:07
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: There were a lot of years before that again that I wasn't and I needed it.
• 6:19
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: This time it's not a it's not me, it's another another part of the family.
• 6:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Um, someone that really, really just needs evaluated and needs needs some help.
• 6:45
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You know, we rallied around this person, friends, I mean, friends, people we grow grew up with all over the United States.
• 7:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: They're all calling, all texting, trying to trying to help move move this forward to get the help.
• 7:15
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And this individual at the current time doesn't want it, and it's it's hard.
• 7:21
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's hard to hard to see, hard to hear.
• 7:28
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And so life throws us so many curveballs, you know, so many obstacles, so many different hurdles that we have to find a way to get over the hurdle, get through an obstacle, around an obstacle, whatever that may be.
• 7:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I mean, I think of yeah, these shows where uh they're like very athletic shows.
• 8:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I'm not gonna say the name because then it's gonna give them credit, but you know, where you know they're jumping and then they're hanging, then they're uh spinning around, and they're and so there's just so many obstacles they gotta get through, and then if they fall, then they fall into like you know, just water maybe use food coloring to make it a certain color.
• 8:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh there might be foam or different things, but that's kind of how life is, where we think we have things figured out a little bit, and and then it's kind of at those times where for me as a believer that God's like, all right, you think you got it all figured out?
• 9:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: How about this?
• 9:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And it's hard, it's hard for everybody.
• 9:08
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I don't I don't know what you're you're going through.
• 9:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I don't know what people close to you are going through.
• 9:19
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Um the best advice I can give is just to be just to be there, just to support.
• 9:33
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And I'm and again, it's people here support people, some people think it's all about money.
• 9:42
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Like, well, I have been supporting this person, I have been supporting you.
• 9:47
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Okay, like we're not talking about money here, we're we're talking about a life, you know, trying to help save, you know, a family help save may or may not be kids involved trying to save their childhood.
• 10:09
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: What's left of it?
• 10:17
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So it's it's it's really tough and so the appointments I have, like with my psychiatrist and therapist.
• 10:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I'm sure I've mentioned this before.
• 10:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: They all the the appointments seem to always be right after something tough has occurred.
• 10:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: A curveball, an obstacle.
• 10:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And that's where I think as I'm talking, speaking, trying to the best that I can think what if I didn't have a psychiatrist and therapist to talk to What if I didn't have the medication that kind of checkups?
• 11:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I'd be in a not in a great place.
• 11:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And so these appointments, I mean, it's gotta be, you know, divine intervention where God is like, all right, Justin, you're gonna have your appointments scheduled, and then there's gonna be something that's going to happen where it's very close to those appointment dates.
• 12:12
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And so luckily for me, I was able to I had those appointments the day after this uh difficult time going through to the to the individuals out there going through it.
• 12:45
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Sometimes you know you were going through a tough time, sometimes you don't.
• 12:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I know for me when I first started medication and that there's always I say always at least the medications I've been on, there's there's usually a it's not a honeymoon phase because it's not not a honeymoon by any stretch, but there's there's a stretch of time at the beginning, might be a week or two weeks or three weeks or four weeks that it takes for the medication to start fully working, right?
• 13:35
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So it's starting to starting to work from day one.
• 13:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Um, but I know for a fact for me it's those those times that are very difficult, especially at the beginning.
• 13:58
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: For me, it's one thing because I'm already taking medication, so if there's an adjustment up or down, it doesn't.
• 14:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I don't get the drastic swings of the medication, whether it's going up in the dose or down in a dose, like milligrams, like maybe 25, now it's at 30, maybe it was 25, now it's at 20.
• 14:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Are you working away one way or another?
• 14:38
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And that can play a big role for a period of time for somebody who's never been on medication like this because it's affecting the brain, and it's starting to kind of hopefully help the rewire as much as possible the brain to be able to function at a somewhat normal as normal can be a normal way.
• 15:26
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And so if you're going through that, if you've just for the first time going through having um, I mean, there's medication anxiety.
• 15:45
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, what how's it gonna make me feel?
• 15:48
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And it been there, done that I know what it's like doesn't mean I know what it's like for every single person because I don't, and that's why I say for loved ones and in that if somebody has just started or they're in that less than a month phase of starting a medication, it very well could be causing you know more uh I don't want to say more problems.
• 16:38
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's just causing the brain to like boot up, you know, in certain areas or boot down if it's you know trying to you know regulate whatever whatever the reason that and whatever whatever the things that the medication does.
• 17:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Again, I didn't want to be on medication, and now I'm like, all right, because I had thought it, I was like, well, if I'm if I start something like this, you know, we're we're gonna be affecting the brain.
• 17:19
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And yeah, I mean it'd be great if I didn't have to take any medication and I could feel somewhat close to where I'm at, but that just for me, I I don't I don't know that that's gonna happen.
• 17:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I saw a um, you know, one of the big things for me was alcohol, you know, binge drinking on weekends and and all that.
• 17:57
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I just saw a how was it, TikTok or it's it it was a social media post by Holly Strana.
• 18:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh she's a meteorologist here, kind of in that area, and I don't know how long it's been, but there was something alcohol related.
• 18:22
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I don't know if she got like a DUI or something, and and then the news station basically moved her off the news station, and and so now she's from what I've seen, she's she's trying to empower people too, like I am, and the the one thing said it was like a picture or video of her walking or something, and then there were a couple different quotes, and but I think I now that I think about it, it might have been something she she may have been speaking to, uh, but it was about not having another drink of alcohol, not wanting to, she doesn't feel the need.
• 19:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Uh and that's kind of where I'm at.
• 19:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I mean, I I go to places, I'll say like all the time.
• 19:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I mean, if you go to a restaurant, even just in a house, there may be things in there may be bottles of alcohol in that in a home.
• 19:55
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And so we have to make we have to make a conscious effort to just keep walking by.
• 20:05
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Let it go.
• 20:07
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Let that part go.
• 20:10
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I mean, we know alcohol is a poison.
• 20:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Still didn't stop me for many years.
• 20:23
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But Holly was basically sharing that in this this video about not wanting to have a drink.
• 20:40
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But that's her and that's me and others.
• 20:48
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I'm not here to say you gotta be as clean as a whistle and you know, just don't do this, do that.
• 20:59
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: All again, it comes back to I'm sharing my experiences with the world.
• 21:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Wherever you may be, whether you're traveling, whether you're at home, no matter where you're at, we're all human beings.
• 21:21
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We've all we all go through some tough stuff.
• 21:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And it's okay to ask for help.
• 21:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That's another stigma here in society is asking for help is or asking for help makes a person less of a person.
• 21:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I don't know if I said that right.
• 21:55
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Because then the person's like, Oh, I'm not living up to whatever.
• 22:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Whatever standard where I was at.
• 22:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But don't let that stop you from getting getting some help.
• 22:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I didn't know what help looked like.
• 22:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Going on nine years and four months in four months it'll be nine years.
• 22:37
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Just about to the day of when this is filmed.
• 22:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's it just had me as going back memory lane.
• 23:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But yeah, I I I didn't know what to expect.
• 23:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I I didn't.
• 23:10
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: A lot of what I expected was wrong.
• 23:15
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: What I thought it was gonna be was wrong.
• 23:25
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I mean, the roughest night was probably the first.
• 23:28
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Well, all the nights are pretty rough.
• 23:32
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I used to remember the one night, I think it might have been the first night.
• 23:38
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Where I was just so cold.
• 23:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: And I was just walking up and down the halls because I couldn't sleep.
• 23:50
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I wasn't I hadn't been sleeping in a sleeping well.
• 23:58
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Maybe I got an hour or two, I don't know.
• 24:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But I hadn't been sleep sleeping well.
• 24:17
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But don't again, don't take it for me.
• 24:20
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You gotta find out what works for you, or if you're part of a care team, or part of the friend group, or family that has somebody in it that needs some help.
• 24:39
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That's all you can do is try to do the best you can.
• 24:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But there's not really a one size fits all.
• 24:57
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Just like a you know, about babies when they're born, and you know, there's different milestones.
• 25:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Doesn't mean that my child or your child is gonna fit within, you know, these ranges.
• 25:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Like, oh my gosh, you know, my my baby should be doing this, my infant should be doing this, and they're not.
• 25:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: There's no there's no manual.
• 25:34
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: No manual on that.
• 25:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You just do the best you can.
• 25:39
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Just like everything in in life, you just do the best you can.
• 25:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: If you need help, big deal.
• 25:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Get get some help.
• 25:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I was so worried about people judging me, still I am.
• 26:06
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: But I think the so is not there now.
• 26:11
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Like, oh, I I know people are judging me.
• 26:15
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: People are judging everybody all the time, just the way it is, and that's just where you gotta do things for you, your loved ones, they gotta do things for them.
• 26:35
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That's what they gotta do, because what I'm saying is for me, every day's not like this.
• 26:49
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Where you know, I have we we do the shows.
• 26:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Every day's not like this.
• 26:56
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Where I'm able to articulate a little bit at least in life, you know, we we want to help people.
• 27:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I think the United States is one of the correct me if I'm wrong, the United States is one of the most giving countries in the world, like to different charities and donating and that.
• 27:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You know, a person's life, you can't replace that, can't replace a person's life, you can replace the things like a couch or clothes or a pair of shoes, or I don't know, you name it.
• 28:14
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We can get new ones, but with individuals like us and others all across the world.
• 28:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Nearly eight billion of us living human beings on earth, man.
• 28:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We need help.
• 28:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I don't know, maybe we should maybe we should call it something else.
• 28:52
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Help might be the stigma, the actual word help.
• 29:02
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Like, let's go to the hospital and get you some help.
• 29:07
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Sounds much different than hey, let's go, let's go talk to a friend, or I don't know.
• 29:18
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You're probably much better at wordsmithing than I am.
• 29:22
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You see what I'm saying?
• 29:24
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: When we say help, it automatically, I think, puts up like this barrier where it's like, uh, no way.
• 29:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I don't need help, I don't want help.
• 29:41
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So if we were able to find a way to help without saying the word help, maybe that would help a little bit.
• 30:04
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Maybe that would make things a little more smooth.
• 30:19
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Yeah, and lastly, you know, we're all not guaranteed another breath in life.
• 30:27
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: There's no guarantees.
• 30:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Just just lost another extended family member passed away.
• 30:44
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Aid the age doesn't matter.
• 30:53
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's hard.
• 31:01
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Like I'm like even like I'm not gonna have an opportunity to see my dad again on earth.
• 31:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: I hope to see him in heaven.
• 31:28
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So that's why when we talk about giving a person options that to make make them feel a little bit better.
• 31:45
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: There's a lot of bad things that happen in the world.
• 31:48
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Yeah, the last thing we want to do is to come home to a situation that we hear about on the news.
• 31:58
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Well, that happens somewhere else.
• 32:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: That doesn't happen where I live.
• 32:03
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: No, things happen everywhere.
• 32:10
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: It's not it's not great, but bad things happen, doesn't matter the zip code, a demographic, you name it.
• 32:30
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: So let's just extend the hand.
• 32:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Let's be there for our fellow humans.
• 32:46
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you for joining us on this episode of the show.
• 32:51
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Give us a big thumbs up, like, follow, subscribe, share, reshare, repost.
• 33:00
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Get into your phone, and please share the voices for voices podcast and TV show with maybe 25 or 50 contacts in your phone.
• 33:16
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: You can find us everywhere wherever you get your podcast, wherever your contacts get their podcast, they can find the Voices for Voices podcast.
• 33:28
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you very much.
• 33:31
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: We will see you very soon.
• 33:34
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Have a wonderful day.
• 33:36
  Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: Bye bye for now.