Latest / feel your feelings with Ethan Jewell / mental health awareness isn't enough

Transcript

mental health awareness isn't enough · feel your feelings with Ethan Jewell

• 0:00
  At the peak of my mental illness, I would listen to
• 0:03
  people talk about mental health, either on social media or in
• 0:07
  real life. They would talk about how we
• 0:09
  just need more mental health awareness.
• 0:11
  And in response, I thought, well, I'm plenty aware of the
• 0:15
  fact that I'm mentally ill What else can I do?
• 0:21
  My name is Ethan Jewell and welcome back to Feel Your
• 0:25
  Feelings. The frustration that I had when
• 0:29
  I was really, really struggling with mental health was the
• 0:33
  modern approach to mental illness.
• 0:36
  Now don't get me wrong, it's probably the best that it's ever
• 0:40
  been. I mean, the fact that there is
• 0:42
  mental health awareness is amazing.
• 0:43
  The fact that we're talking about it and starting the
• 0:45
  conversation is incredible. I mean, that's the whole reason
• 0:49
  that I started this podcast. I wanted to spread mental health
• 0:52
  awareness. However, I also try to offer
• 0:56
  real, tangible solutions that you can take into your life
• 0:59
  every day because it is so frustrating as somebody who is
• 1:02
  struggling, as somebody with with real depression, to see
• 1:06
  people posting online just saying you need to journal and
• 1:09
  you need to talk it out. Because that's not enough.
• 1:13
  I actually look back to a poem that I wrote a couple of years
• 1:16
  ago called Why Am I Not better? And it goes like this.
• 1:20
  This illness isn't cute. It's not for writing beautiful
• 1:23
  poetry. It's not for singing pretty
• 1:25
  chords. It's not for you to be there for
• 1:27
  me. It's not for me to be
• 1:29
  understood. Don't post positive quotes.
• 1:32
  This isn't helping. And that was coming from a place
• 1:36
  of real frustration, trying to get better.
• 1:39
  Somebody who was trying to take the first step.
• 1:41
  And all of this talk of awareness was making it worse.
• 1:45
  Because I would try these things.
• 1:47
  I would journal, I would talk to a friend and I would keep being
• 1:49
  depressed and I felt worse. I would think, am I so messed up
• 1:53
  that what works for everybody else doesn't work for me?
• 1:58
  The truth is, what does work in mental health recovery is an
• 2:02
  immense amount of time and effort.
• 2:06
  A lot of people say that the first step is coming to terms
• 2:08
  with the fact that you have problems to work through.
• 2:10
  I would agree. But I think the second step,
• 2:13
  which is maybe more important, is coming to terms with how long
• 2:16
  it will take to recover. So let's talk about this process
• 2:20
  a little bit outside of the realms of awareness and discuss
• 2:23
  why it takes so, so long. So when you are wondering why am
• 2:28
  I not better, you'll have an answer.
• 2:32
  So what actually happens when we're trying to recover?
• 2:35
  It's not just accepting that we have mental illness issues and
• 2:38
  moving on. No, it requires active work and
• 2:42
  active effort in order to rewire our brains, and that's exactly
• 2:46
  what we're doing. Rewiring.
• 2:47
  The most common way that mental illness can be worked through is
• 2:51
  by rewiring. We see this in cognitive
• 2:54
  behavioral therapy or CBT, which is a very common form of
• 2:57
  therapy. Essentially, within this
• 2:59
  practice, you and a professional identify behaviors, thoughts,
• 3:04
  actions, or patterns that are harming you and are caused by
• 3:06
  some sort of negative thinking, chemical imbalance, or just
• 3:10
  general mental illness. Then you work to break that down
• 3:14
  to its core and set new habits in its place.
• 3:17
  You break a big problem into little pieces and then deal with
• 3:20
  them one at a time. This is much harder than it
• 3:24
  sounds. Imagine if you built an entire
• 3:27
  Lego set, but a few pieces in the middle were wrong, or a few
• 3:31
  pieces at the bottom were wrong and it ruined the entire set.
• 3:34
  You can't just reach and take out those pieces in the middle
• 3:36
  and go from there. You have to start from scratch.
• 3:39
  You have to take the Lego set apart and rebuild.
• 3:42
  And that's exactly how mental health recovery works.
• 3:45
  You can't expect to be able to rewire your entire mindset, your
• 3:48
  entire brain, in a few easy steps.
• 3:51
  It isn't just about awareness. It isn't just about journaling.
• 3:54
  You have to be prepared to go piece by piece, bit by bit, and
• 3:57
  put yourself back together. This is a job that nobody can do
• 4:01
  for you, nobody lives inside your mind, and nobody is able to
• 4:05
  fix these thought patterns for you.
• 4:07
  It comes down to you. So if you're asking the question
• 4:12
  why am I not better yet, I have to ask you Are you ready to be
• 4:17
  better? Are you ready to put in the work
• 4:20
  and time that it takes to get better?
• 4:23
  You need to accept the fact that it will take time.
• 4:26
  You will likely not magically feel better in a month.
• 4:30
  I don't want that to sound discouraging.
• 4:33
  I hope that you take it as the opposite.
• 4:35
  If you've been trying for weeks, months or even years to get
• 4:39
  better and you haven't seen tangible results, I want to tell
• 4:44
  you it will happen eventually. I promise you.
• 4:48
  It just takes time. And I know this first hand.
• 4:52
  I mindlessly went to therapy for a long time.
• 4:56
  I would go to the sessions, talk about my days, talk about the
• 4:58
  little things that were upsetting me, but I never opened
• 5:01
  up to anything deeper and unsurprisingly I didn't see very
• 5:05
  much progress. After a while of doing this, I
• 5:07
  started wondering when I would get better.
• 5:10
  I complained that I simply wasn't built for therapy.
• 5:13
  I wasn't supposed to be better and eventually I stopped going
• 5:16
  altogether and all I had to show for it were coping techniques
• 5:21
  and self reflection methods. But that ended up being enough.
• 5:25
  All it took was a mindset shift in me accepting the time that it
• 5:28
  would take and the active effort that it would take to get
• 5:31
  better. I used these coping techniques.
• 5:33
  I used that self reflection and slowly worked through
• 5:36
  insecurities, worries, fears and pains that were rooted deep
• 5:40
  within me from my mental illness.
• 5:42
  I tried to get to the root and break it down piece by piece.
• 5:46
  I want to remind you I'm not a professional.
• 5:48
  I don't have any certifications, but I've done this work myself.
• 5:53
  It takes acceptance, determination, and willingness
• 5:57
  to do the work. There's no easy way through it.
• 6:02
  There's no amount of quotes online that you can read, and
• 6:05
  journaling will help, but you need to put in active work over
• 6:09
  time in order to improve. I recommend doing some research,
• 6:13
  doing some trial and error and finding coping mechanisms and
• 6:16
  self reflection techniques that work for you.
• 6:19
  It took a lot of trial and error for me.
• 6:21
  I tried different things. I tried various things that I
• 6:23
  read online, and some of them didn't work, but some of them
• 6:26
  finally did. Figure out what's hurting and do
• 6:29
  your best to repair it. Seek professional help if
• 6:32
  necessary. There are options.
• 6:35
  Talk to friends and family. It takes time.
• 6:38
  Nobody deserves to feel like they'll never get better,
• 6:41
  especially you. But that's an unfortunate
• 6:44
  reality of mental illness. You need to be willing to accept
• 6:47
  the time it will take and move forward.
• 6:50
  Regardless, you are enough and you are capable.
• 6:56
  That's going to wrap it up for today's episode.
• 6:58
  If you need help feeling your feelings, check out my music on
• 7:01
  all platforms under the name of Ethan Jewel and I almost
• 7:04
  guarantee it'll make you cry. I'm coming out with a new album
• 7:07
  April 19th and you can pre save it on my website ethanjewel.com
• 7:11
  right now. Also please shoot me a message
• 7:14
  on my Instagram at Jewel Boy with an I under score and let me
• 7:18
  know what you thought about today's episode.
• 7:20
  So thank you so much for being here.
• 7:22
  Thank you for understanding that mental illness is different than
• 7:25
  social media portrays it. And as always, thank you for
• 7:28
  feeling your feelings. I'll see you next time.