Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 777: Where (neuro)science Meets Humanity with Pernille Bülow

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Episode 777: Where (neuro)science Meets Humanity with Pernille Bülow · The Trauma Therapist

0:10
Right. Welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gamiferson.
0:14
My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible selves, to be human,
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to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in
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who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
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authenticity, genuinists, and vulnerability and that requires intention. Can learn more about
0:33
my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com. That's
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the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started. Okay, here we
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go. So five or three, two and one, our folks, welcome
0:47
back to the podcast. Very excited to have his my guest today, Vanilla
0:51
ju Yo Vanilla welcome. Thank you. So. As a blue collar daughter,
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Vanila defeated the odds by being a first generation college and PhD graduate.
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She moved across the world to pursue neuroscience at the best research universities in the
1:06
world and left little undone in her pursuit of knowledge. Because of her determination,
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she can now call herself an award winning scientist. Through this scientific journey,
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she could also finally start her own trauma healing process as she mastered the
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skills of researcher. She realized that communication and self insight were cornerstones of not
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only her professional success, but also her personal well being. Panil realized that
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her drive for research was rooted in people's mental health. She now focuses her
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energy on helping people thrive. Awesome, Welcome to the podcast. Thank you
1:44
so much. It's a pleasure being here. Appreciate that. So before we
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get going here, Panila, please share with the listeners where you're from originally
1:52
and where you are now. So I'm originally from Denmark. That's where I
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was born and I lived there for twenty one years, and then I moved
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to the US to finish my college work. And then after ten years of
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moving around different places in the US for educational purposes, I ended up in
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Boston and that's where I live now. Okay, awesome, So how the
2:15
heck did all this start? For you? Go share the story? Okay.
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So I started in the field of psychology and then moved my way into
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neuroscience and my motivation and my drive to even start asking those big questions of
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how do we become who we are? Why do we become the way we
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are? Why is it some people develop mental illnesses and some people don't.
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It's all inspired by having personal experiences meeting people, living with people where you
2:50
keep wondering, why are you behaving like that? You know, and so
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to me, it was very much a personal development, coming of age type
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of pursuit of trying to understand the people around me, and in doing so,
3:06
I ended up in psychology and wanting to understand, you know, what
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is it that defines one person from another? Why is it that I'm so
3:14
different from some of my family members, and yet I have other family members
3:16
where I'm so similar to Right, So we're quickly diving into this topic of
3:21
nature versus nurture where science starts playing a role, and that's how I ended
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up in the field of neuroscience because I really wanted to disentangle what is it
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that differentiates, you know, one person with one mental illness from a person
3:36
with another mental illness. Why is it that sometimes they're so similar and why
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is it that they were sometimes so different? Okay, so that's the foundation.
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Let's get specific here. What were some of those early experiences where you
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were like, what is going on here? What's going on with this person?
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What's going on with me? Share those insights. Yeah, So for
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me, it started all very very early on in life, and I think
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I was probably one of those kids that always were very reflective and had a
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lot more questions than I had answers, which is a good thing, but
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sometimes also can drive you into becoming a little bit more vulnerable to mental illness
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because you ask so many questions and you feel hopeless because you can't necessarily know
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the answers yet, and if you don't have the people around you. So
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for me, it was growing up in a household where there was pretty limited
4:29
access to education. So as you mentioned to begin with, I'm the first
4:33
one to get a college degree and obviously the first one to get a PhD.
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So there there was a lack of resources at the educational level, and
4:44
then also growing up among parents that had mental illnesses and parents that were divorced.
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And whenever I mean the statistic now, I love looking at it from
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the outside now right where you're seeing, well, the kids that are actually
4:56
coming from divorced households and coming from households where the main caregiver has a mental
5:01
illness, these are these kids so much more likely to develop their own mental
5:06
illnesses in the future, and so that's what was happening to me, and
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I was dealing with the mother that was having a lot of different challenges of
5:15
various sorts that now have actually meant that we're no longer in touch. And
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that's so now we're getting into the conversation of estrangement and how do you deal
5:24
with that, which is also a huge conversation right and address Well, okay,
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so how did you deal with that? How did you deal with these
5:33
issues that were going on? Yeah, so for me at the time,
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I can give you a whole scientific explanation of it. So please stop me
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if I'm using too much Leno here, But this has been one of the
5:47
big passions for me and or you know, like diving into the psychology and
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neuroscience trying to understand myself better was honestly one of the main purposes even starting
5:56
the journey, and then the passion kind of came out of that as well.
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So I started out being more of a pleaser. So the child that
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wanted constant validation and was really scared of being left behind. So you're dealing
6:09
with some attachment styles here that are very strong in the abandonment sense of you
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know, year of abandonment, and then unfortunately, when I was around eleven,
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it kind of collapsed into a very deep depression. And in kids,
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the depression looks different than in adults. So for me at the time,
6:30
being that age, it looked like losing my appetite, not being able to
6:34
sleep appropriately, just very withdrawn pleasing, like really just needing validation. Obviously
6:43
they're huge overlaps with adults as well, but your resources as a child are
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much more limited, and so one of the things that escalated and became very
6:51
defining for me was that during two years of having a depression as a child,
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my appetite really decreased, and it ended up being the precursor of an
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eating disorder that then later on came into that really manifested as a true intense
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eating disorder, even though I actually already had it as a child. From
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nine to eleven or eleven to sorry, Yeah, so a hell of a
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lot going on. I mean, really, did you Were you able to
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get any kind of help at all during this time? Yeah? No,
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so I was not, is the short answer. People were Some people were
7:34
really trying. I had some great teachers that really tried to step in,
7:39
especially when I think a year in when people started noticing that I had lost
7:42
some weight, then there was more of a drive from the teachers sides to
7:49
step in and have some conversations, checking in what's going on at home,
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all these really really good things, and then challenges of course that they don't
7:57
really have much they can do. So they can bring a parent in,
7:59
they can talk to them, but if the parent is not willing to do
8:01
anything, then you're you have a huge barrier. And that's something I'm very
8:05
very passionate about now. I actually just a few months ago founded a nonprofit
8:09
organization after several years of prepping, and the whole mission there is to try
8:16
to address mental illness not just among students, but also among teachers and parents
8:20
and try to break down the barriers that are holding back any of these different
8:26
groups in getting the help and resources that they need. So that's really inspired
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by my own personal experiences at that point. Yeah, of course you started
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a non profit. It's incredible. Okay, so how do things unfold you
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moving through this process? You're not really getting how are you managing follows?
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I was very sick, like I was a child, trying myself to sleep
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most nights and you know, being just losing weight. You know, I
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was eating. I was not focusing on not eating because I wanted to be
9:03
skinny. I just really did not want to eat, and I only ate
9:07
when I was happy, which was limited amount of times. I think what
9:11
really carried me through the day during that period of time was that I had
9:15
access to horses. So animals became a huge part of my life, and
9:18
I was in the barn every day. Now, I do not come from
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a family that knows anything about horses or is interested in horses. In fact,
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now, they did start supporting me later on, but they definitely encouraged
9:31
me to try to figure out if I could do something else that was cheaper
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and easier. But the horses became a big part of my life, and
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I will definitely say that they played a big role in keeping me sane and
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keeping me motivated to keep going forward. So what age are we talking at?
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So this, yeah, so this is the period of eleven to thirteen.
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And then I had a defining moment when I was thirteen that actually kickstarted
9:58
me and got out of the depression and eating disorder pretty quickly. And that's
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when there was a change in my family structure where my mother divorced my stepdad
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at the time, and that for me looked like a moment of opportunity,
10:15
like now things are going to get better, we can start having a great
10:18
life again. But unfortunately, as I was getting out of my own mental
10:22
illness, my mother was diving into hers much more intensely. So she got
10:26
a very intense depression. And these are things that, of course you can
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see from the outside. And even though I'm thirteen so now we're talking about
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it a mini grown up, at that time, you're still a child.
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It's still very much need to be taken care of. But that was not
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the role that I helped in that family. I was holding a role of
10:45
someone who was very independent and taking care of yourself. And then now I
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was also dealing with a parent that had a much more intense mental illness than
10:54
what she had previously. So let's jump ahead to wait. When you got
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to a point where you were like, okay, I want to start studying
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this, how do things unfold from there? Yeah? So that happened.
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Oh man, So I'm the type of person that always have a plan,
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and I think that role oriented always having something to work towards is also something
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that really carried me through those very, very difficult years. I always knew
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I wanted to move away from Denmark, and I'm pretty sure that a big
11:26
role of that was escapism. Literally, I just want to get away from
11:30
here because I felt like whatever is helped within the bounds of this country will
11:35
always be there to haunt me. So it was important for me to get
11:39
away. And so I always knew that, and then what I wanted to
11:43
do varied widely. I had a long period of time where I wanted to
11:46
do professional core stuff, and then I started moving more into academia. Now,
11:54
granted I did not know what it meant university. I didn't know what
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a scientist was until I was seventeen, right, and so I knew what
12:03
a medical doctor was, but the idea of doing science was like, I
12:07
just didn't understand the concept. So these were some of the things that I
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learned slowly, and so it wasn't until I was eighteen where I thought I
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want to study psychology. Well, ideally I wanted to study neuroscience, but
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you couldn't do that in Denmark. We didn't at the time have a program
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for that. My choice between medicine and psychology. And then you know,
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I looked into the medicine schedule and realized I had to learn about all the
12:33
bones in the urinary system. I realized, I think psychology is just more
12:37
fruitful for me. Now. Was that interest in science and neuroscience and psychology
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was that driven subconsciously? Do you feel by what? Yeah? Yeah?
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Yeah. At the time when I was making those decisions, I did not
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do it of a deliberate choice to try to understand myself better, honestly.
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And so when I started in a psychology program again and again, we would
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hear from the professors there, I bet fifty percent of you guys are here
13:13
just because you want to figure out yourself, right, And I did not
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identify as being part of that group. And it wasn't until much later where
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I started realizing I keep returning to the topics that relate to myself. And
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there was a long period of time where I tried to force myself away from
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that because I thought, no, there's more to it. I don't want
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to be hung up on the things that I went through and just focused on
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that. But then I embraced it and realized, you know what the fact
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that I have gone through those things makes me much more capable of studying them,
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of addressing them as you know, whichever capacity. And in terms of
13:54
understanding, well, what are the types of companies that we meet out there
13:56
and the types of interventions that we can implement, try to really understand.
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I got to a point where I really understood, you know, where are
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my strengths in having had those experiences? And I think that that's really important.
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Right, Remind everyone that I'm speaking with Panila Bullo, and again I
14:15
apologize for mis pronouncing your name, but it's a beautiful name. But all
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right, let's just pause here for a second to thank our sponsors. All
14:26
Right, we are back. Okay, So you in terms of pursuing an
14:33
education, where do you go? What do you do? Yes, I
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started out at the University of Copenhagen in their psychology program, which was one
14:41
of the most top three competitive programs to get into. So in Denmark,
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the way it works is that everything is based on grades. Does not You're
14:50
not taking any types of SAT tests or anything like that. So whatever grades
14:54
you have from secondary school three years basically high school, that's all that matters.
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They don't care about who you are as a person, how well you
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can write anything. All they care about are the grades, thankfully, And
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this is because I kept falling back into my eating disorder habits. I had
15:09
very very strong perfectionism tendencies. So my perfectionism drove a straight a record,
15:16
right yeah, and which is awesome, but was coming from a very unhealthy
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state. And while I am someone who likes to perform and achieve, I'm
15:26
also someone who actually likes to relax a little bit sometimes. But I didn't
15:31
back then because I was so driven or so scared. You know, having
15:35
an eating disorder is it didvolves so much more than just not eating. There
15:39
are so many thoughts, there's so many rituals that you have. You typically
15:43
are comorbid with depression anxiety, you know, which I did have at all
15:48
these times too. So I started the University of Copenhagen, got in there
15:54
and quickly realized that that program was so clinical that even at the time I
16:00
was not interested in being a therapist or in any way interacting with people that
16:04
would be clients. The reason for that being was that I stereotyped people that
16:12
went to therapy. I had only been to a therapist myself like three times
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at that point, right, I started seeing a therapist. But then my
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mother pulled me away from therapy because she thought it made me more sick.
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So that's a whole all the story. But so I stereotyped the people that
16:29
went to therapy. I kind of equated them to people like my mother,
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where I thought, well, I don't want to talk to people like my
16:33
mother all day. I want to be a scientist. I want to understand
16:37
why people become who they are. And so then I ended up transferring over
16:40
to University of California at Berkeley, and I stayed there for two years.
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I finished my bachelor degree, did research while there, and then moved into
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my PhD in neuroscience. Okay, where did you do that? Just out
16:56
of curiosity? Emri University at Emory every university awesome. So as you were
17:04
going through this, what was your motivation for studying neuroscience understanding why people do
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what they do? It was definitely, I mean we were really talking a
17:15
subconscious driver, like understanding myself and everybody around me, which was not something
17:19
that really I understood until much later on. But during that period of time,
17:25
I just I was so curious and understanding why do people come who they
17:29
are and ultimately how can we also how can we predict how people become who
17:33
they are? And that sense of wanting to predict things is now what's It's
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very much fueling me. I want to try to predict and I want to
17:41
try to treat, and I want to do that in the most pragmatic way
17:45
possible so that we can reach as many people as possible, as fast as
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possible. So what do you do now? How are you working with people?
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How are you manifesting those ideas? Yeah, so my work is really
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varied. I have held several hats in the past, and I currently hold
18:07
several hats. Some of the roles that I currently hold are in tech,
18:12
where I'm working as a research consultant and I'm working with researchers that are doing
18:18
really incredible research in mental illness. Those are the ones I specialize in.
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But I work very broadly and work with anybody, in particular researchers that want
18:29
to implement different types of what we call biosensors to try to identify biomarkers of
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what qualifies a person with a particular illness and how can we also treat them.
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So these could be things like trying to extract your voice and figuring out
18:45
what are the different features that are going on here. And I work as
18:48
a research consultant privately to also advise different companies that are developing actual intervention platforms
18:56
to try to create places where we can treat many people for mental illnesses.
19:02
As you're speaking, I'm thinking this sounds applical for a lot of apps that
19:06
are being created. Yeah. One of the companies I'm working with is developing
19:11
an app where it's literally trying to reach the patients and where it's a monitoring
19:15
system so you can capture people before they try to commit suicide or before they
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have It's really powerful and I am so thrilled to be a part of that
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work. So that's me on the technology side, That's where I'm having my
19:30
research on. And then when I'm outside of that and I'm trying to interact
19:33
with more with people. It comes out in a couple of different ways.
19:37
One of them is that I have served for several years as a mentor for
19:40
people with mental illnesses, in particular people with eating disorders. That has over
19:45
the years developed into more of a life coach type of thing. I do
19:51
all this pro bono all of my life, coaching, mentoring. This is
19:55
free, and that comes from wanting to make it to friends, like wanting
20:00
to try to help people using the skills and the insights that I have and
20:07
help as many as possible. Concern How did that start for you? You
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started mentoring people promote? How did that start? That started as I recovered
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and so I did not fully recover from my eating disorder until twenty six seven
20:27
something like that, twenty seven probably, and then I had a few years
20:32
of being very very stable weight and healthy mindset, actually starting to live my
20:38
life. And that's when I felt ready to play a role in other people's
20:44
lives, where I felt like, Okay, i am not in denial about
20:48
my own condition. I'm not trying to lie to myself or others. I'm
20:53
not intentionally hiding habits that I have. So that's when I felt like I
21:00
was physically and mentally ready to be there for others. What were some of
21:04
the things that helped you on your healing journey for that? Yeah, oh
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my god, I could write a book about that. So my full healing
21:15
journey did not actually start until I started my PhD. The reason for that
21:21
was because I had never before had really true access to healthcare. So I
21:26
know, we all understand Denmark as being one of the best countries in the
21:29
world because it has all these healthcare resources. Now when it comes to therapy,
21:33
there is zero. There is no support, at least back when I
21:34
lived there. So yes, you pay for everything yourself, and if you're
21:40
not from a family that has the money, well you're kind of stuck.
21:44
I was lucky to have a side job where I had a private insurance.
21:48
I could take a few some therapy lessons, like eight. But obviously this
21:52
is when I'm nineteen. I'm getting eight lessons and I have a backlock of
21:57
ten year of trauma. Ten years of trauma, right, Like, eight
22:00
sessions are not going to be enough. We all know that as therapists and
22:04
coaches and whatever profession you have out there, you probably know eight sessions is
22:08
never going to be enough. So when I started my PhD, I was
22:14
lucky to have a really solid insurance and I started seeing a therapist, and
22:21
I started seeing an attritionist, and as I really started diving into my problems,
22:26
I also started seeing a psychiatrist, and I started seeing a cognitive sleep
22:30
therapist. The reason for that was because I have struggled with insomnia, which
22:34
was anxiety induced. And so I'm having like five doctors and therapists that I'm
22:41
seeing at one point, you know, on a regular basis. So but
22:45
that was absolutely a foundation that was necessary. Now on top of that,
22:49
on top of having all of these fantastic all of them women, just like
22:52
all these incredible women that were supporting me, I also started riding horses again,
23:00
which I had put on the shelf for a while, and I started
23:03
building a community. I build a community among the horse people, and I
23:07
build a community among my fellow students at Emory University. So during my perio,
23:14
okay, and building that community, having the horses coming back into the
23:18
picture was a very big addition to my recovery journey. And then when I
23:26
started having a stable weight, like what was really left and I think so
23:30
I'm very in touch with the eating to sort of feel both in terms of
23:34
talking to clinicians on a regular basis as well as patients. And one of
23:40
the things I hear again and again and that I personally experienced is the body
23:44
dysmorphia. The body dysmorphia hangs on to you. It is you might be
23:48
healthy and you're eating right, but you still just think your body does not
23:52
look okay, and that is so difficult to live with. That did not
23:59
recover from me until I was around twenty seven or so. And what really
24:04
helped me get through that was doing art therapy and doing more mindfulness and meditation
24:12
and starting to exercise in a more healthy and mindful way. And so those
24:18
are I would absolutely recommend everybody to do that. Journaling obviously is great too.
24:23
Getting everything, getting the emotions out of the body instead of holding onto
24:26
them was important for me. Can you talk just a little bit about the
24:33
body just more for you? When did that start for you? When did
24:34
you realize that was going on for you? Yeah, so this is back
24:38
So now we're going back in time again. So this was when I was
24:42
around sixteen. This is when I fell back into my first real, very
24:49
serious about of anorexia and I got very very skinny. It was very unhealthy,
24:56
and it all was spurred. I mean, it's always buried by a
25:00
bunch of different factors, right, So I had a lot of backlog of
25:03
trauma. Then I had a surgery that just basically meant that I couldn't eat
25:07
properly for a bit of time, and that kind of fueled this motivation for
25:12
oh maybe I never have to eat, you know. And then I started
25:15
having much more again. I had a rise in problems in the home life
25:19
and the family life, and so the body dysmorphia kicked in and was really
25:23
a maintenance factor. I recovered from my first bout of the anorexia when I
25:30
was eighteen nineteen probably, and then I fell back into it when I was
25:36
twenty. And you just saw these periods like cyclically, and that is so
25:44
common among people with anorexia. I mean, over fifty percent of the people
25:48
that recover will relapse. It's just the statistics are staggering. Only twenty percent
25:56
will recover with outer relapse. These are based on the statists. We have
26:00
a lot of this goes goes unreported, so we don't actually know the true
26:03
statistics, right, Yeah. So you're providing a lot of pro bone to
26:11
work for people who have experiencing issues with eating and erexia. And is your
26:22
so is your day job as an EU host scientist, is that where you're
26:27
supporting yourself? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's yeah. That
26:33
and then I do a lot of writing, so I am a writer at
26:36
psychology today. I'm also I write for different types of magazines, so I
26:41
also get some some side money from that, and I have some side gigs.
26:45
I'm very active, you know, whenever I say it out loud,
26:48
I always realized, holy moly, like I'm doing a lot of things,
26:52
and on top of that, I have a ton of hoppies. So I
26:56
do think for me, I was not a happy person from most of my
27:00
life, which hopefully has come across by now. But I am a very
27:03
happy person now. And that was something that fundamentally changed, Like as I
27:07
recovered from my eating disorder, that my mindset totally changed. It was like
27:12
I was ready to grab life by the horns. And it's fun because I
27:18
didn't have a proper childhood where I actually had fun. I didn't have a
27:22
proper teenage time where I actually had fun. My twenties sucked, you know,
27:29
my early twenties at least sucked. So now I'm there late twenties,
27:33
I'm like, holy moly, like I have missed out on so many things.
27:37
I barely have any good memories to report, and I know that's a
27:41
bit dramatic and maybe I'm sure there are people that will disagree with me,
27:45
But from a subjective perspective of what I would record as the happiest moments in
27:49
my life, they would all be the recent years where I have collected those
27:53
moments. Yes, And if there's anybody sitting out there having an eating just
28:00
order, or in any sense, you know, dealing with something like this,
28:04
I would really just like to let you know that you will get better,
28:08
and it will be so much better on the other side, and you
28:11
will have so much fun. You'll be laughing so much you won't even care
28:15
about your body at that point. It's crazy, It's totally it's not even
28:19
It's as if it's a different world to live in, which is very powerful.
28:25
You've mentioned a lot of instances where it sounds like you were debilitated by
28:30
a lot of these things you were going through. And what were some of
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those things that got you over the edge that brought the sunlight of hope into
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those moments? Yeah? Was it someone? Was it a horse? What
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was it? Yeah? I don't know if I can narrow it down like
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that. I think, going back to a point I mentioned earlier about always
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being super goal oriented. I always had something I was working towards, and
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actually it was one of the last things I had to deal with in terms
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of I have to stop doing that because I was constantly working towards something and
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that's not always healthy. Sometimes you need to just take a chill, and
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that works so much, right, But I actually think that that obsession was
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constantly having a goal, was what kept it gave me something to live for.
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I was very suicidal as a child from eleven to thirteen. If you
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go back into my diary, you'll see how I'm contemplating suicide many many times,
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making plans about how to do it. Did you ever try? No?
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Yeah, thankfully. When you work with people who are going through who
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are experiencing having eating disorders, what's your perspective? Obviously people are different,
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Every case is different, But how do you approach that with someone? Yeah,
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that's a great question. And if there are therapists out I know they're
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therapists out there, and they might disagree with me, and that's totally cool.
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I understand my role whenever I talk to people with eating disorders or any
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other time of particular types of mental illnesses is to try to figure out what
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is it they want to live for? What are they maybe already living for,
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and trying to help them nourish that and trying to give them back that
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energy for life, wanting to get you know, how do you what about
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some hobbies? What are some hobbies you dropped and that you would like to
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take up, or what are some hobbies that you know you you have never
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done, but you're super curious about. What are some friends that you haven't
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reconnected with for a long time. So it's basically giving them the support system.
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I had one person she's now a friend of mine, where she was
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a well educated woman, very accomplished in many ways, but stuck at home
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with her parents in a job that didn't pay enough to make her live independently.
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And so the first thing there was, well, here is a huge
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barrier, which is that you're not happy where you're living. This is a
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structural factor that we can fix. You're not happy with your job, you're
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not happy with where you live. So I sat down and helped her with
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her resume, her cover letters, identifying jobs, practicing interviews. Lo and
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behold, she gets a job, she can move away from her parents,
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she can start living a more independent life. And sure there's still going to
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be a lot of issues. She still needs to see a therapist that can
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keep in touch with her. I kept in touch with her, kept talking
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about these things. But what has happened in this period of time is that
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one, we have broken down some of the structural barriers that have kept her
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in her eating disorder. And two, we've given her a level of confidence
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and independence that is very, very difficult to achieve for people with mental illnesses
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because they feel incapacitated many times. So we have broken down some of the
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habits that she has built up where she's telling herself, Oh I can't do
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that, Oh no, it's better. Why should I even try to do
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this other thing? Right? We've given her the confidence and the hope of
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living life differently, and so that's really where I'm at. I'm trying to
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focus on how can we make you like life again? And what is it
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that when you wake up in the morning, Like, what is it that
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makes you smile? Let's make sure you have a lot of that. And
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I really do, regardless of like you should always there's a lot of great
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therapies out there, keep doing them, but I really think that these fundamental
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things in terms of like how you live your life day to day are foundational
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for your mental health. As we kind of get down towards the end here
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and closing out, you know, as you've talked and shared about your life,
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Neil, it's there's an obvious, seeming contradiction dichotomy right in your life.
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I mean, you've had this traumatic, very difficult, challenging childhood with
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not a lot of happy memories, and yet you where you can contrast that
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with a lot of amazing success, and how do you square that in a
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sense? Has one driven the other? No? I think that's a great
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question and a little bit of a difficult question to answer, and something that
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you should be very serious about actually, because you don't want to think that
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suddenly it's a good thing to have mental illnesses because it's going to make you
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a super person, right. I think I learned a lot from everything.
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I learned a lot from all the mental illnesses that I had to navigate during
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my time and the different types of people I had to navigate. Who knows,
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I probably would not have ended up in this place where I'm at now
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if it wasn't because of all of that. But chances are very high that
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I would have ended up in a different type of very happy situation. And
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so while I am happy with where I'm at currently, I also think I
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would have been equally, if not more happy, if I had grown up
34:07
in a happy childhood. Right and now we're starting to talk about things like
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resilience and susceptibility, and I'm probably one of the children that came out slightly
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more resilient than the average, which meant that I kept going and didn't give
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up, and you know, and that has carried me through. But I
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don't think we should ever look at mental illness as something that will inherently make
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a person better. But it's something that has shaped me and make me very,
34:36
very very passionate about advocating for others and advocating for a systemic change and
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structural change. Awesome. You know what's the best way for people to get
34:45
in contact with you? I have a website. It is my name.
34:51
I'll spell it out it out pe r N I L L E b U
34:55
E l o W dot com and you can contact there. There's a little
35:00
contact contact me saying you can also read about what I do, get the
35:05
links to everything that I have just mentioned and bombarded you with, Yeah,
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awesome, what was it? Pleasure having you on here? So inspiring,
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My god, I'd love to have you back at a later date. Yes,
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I appreciate that. Thank you so much for being here, my pleasure.
35:23
Thank you,