Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 66 Walking Through Anxiety with Your Partner

Episode Date: May 19, 2021

This week, we are continuing our series for Mental Health Awareness Month and we are talking about Andrew's story and his journey while facing anxiety. Here are a few topics that we covered: Andrew��s football backstory Losing confidence Struggling with balance in life Shawn and Andrew’s life apart Coming face to face with anxiety Not being able to turn it off How anxiety affected Andrew's lifestyle Pulling yourself out of a dark place Finding balance in life Shawn's Olympic experience Getting help If you are struggling, you are human. And there are resources to find help. Online Therapy with Betterhelp ▶ https://www.betterhelp.com/ Eating Disorder Helpline ▶ https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.o... More resources with To Write Love on Her Arms ▶ https://twloha.com/find-help/ You are loved. You have a purpose. Thank you for being here. If you haven’t yet, please rate Couple Things and subscribe to hear more. Follow us on Instagram to keep the conversation going at https://www.instagram.com/couplething... And if you have suggestions/recommendations for the show, send us your ideas in a video format – we might just choose yours! Email us at [e-mail]. We're supported by the following companies that we love! Check them out below: Best Fiends ▶ Simply download Best Fiends for FREE today on the Apple App Store or Google Play. That’s FRIENDS without the R – Best Fiends! Beekeeper's Naturals ▶ We’re excited to offer an exclusive deal for Couple Things listeners. Receive 15% off your first order. Simply go to https://BEEKEEPERSNATURALS.com/EASTFAM or use code EASTFAM at checkout to claim this deal. Athletic Greens ▶ They are offering our audience a FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase if you visit our link today...you’ll basically never have to buy Vitamin D again! Simply visit https://athleticgreens.com/EASTFAM. FAN MAIL ADDRESS: Shawn and Andrew East 750 N San Vicente Blvd., East Tower, 11th Floor, Los Angles, CA 90069 Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson... Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson​... Follow My Twitter ▶ http://www.twitter.com/ShawnJohnson​​... Snapchat! ▶ @ShawneyJ Follow AndrewsTwitter ▶ http://www.twitter.com/AndrewDEast​​​​​​ Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast​... Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast​​... Snapchat! ▶ @AndrewDEast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I think if you are struggling with anything, it could be as little as just like a doubt in life, like a tiny little negative thought. Tell us someone about it. It's just the practice of asking for help and Having someone to lean on. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to a couple things. What's Sean and Andrew? A podcast all about couples. And the things they go through.

I just woke up for a nap and it was amazing. You earned it. I feel like I was in a different world for a second. Seven months pregnant. You know what? You can take a nap every now and then if you want. I think we're eight, babe. Huh?

I think we're eight. I don't know. I guess is pregnancy 10 months technically? pregnancy is 10 months nobody tells you yeah we are in the last eight weeks of it you're crushing it that sounds weird it's wild anyways uh we just did an episode that we weren't really sure how it's going to go but you guys seemed to like it which was about mental health addiction and addiction within relationships and how to deal with it i gave my personal story about eating disorders and identity and just kind of self-consciousness and all the baggage that came with myself going into

the relationship with Andrew. And then last week we had the Baldonis join us who spoke on a similar issue. And today we are continuing the mental health discussion because it is Mental Health Awareness Month. Yes, which is very important. And this goes without saying if you are struggling with anything, you are just like all of us. And it is a beautiful thing to ask for help. So we will list some resources and places you can find help in the description below. Yes. Yeah, we don't confront this topic lightly, but we want to share our experiences with this.

So actually, I'm going to be talking about my difficulties with mental health. and we do want to be clear before we start we're trying to use accurate language as we go through this so if we ever overstep or if you're like a trained you know a therapist and you know that we're discussing this incorrectly please let us know that yes please we because we are doing this in you know good faith and and really just trying to have an open discussion so anyway before we jump in if you haven't subscribed to the show and given a rating please do so we love this community we've built here. This is the only channel that we have comments on YouTube with.

So please keep that coming. And shall we begin? We shall. So, baby, I gave my story of very general oversight of how I saw kind of the struggles that I dealt with with eating disorders and body image, how they crept on, why they crept on, and how I dealt with them. If you could, would you mind? sharing the first time you felt, I don't want to say compromised, but vulnerable to your mental

health. Yeah. So first of all, I got to say I feel very fortunate in the sense that this realm isn't something that has been like a wild, you know, presence in my life. But it is humbling to think that when I look at my family line and my relatives, mental health, is uh and struggles with mental health is like a you know common thing so anyway i would say the one aspect that i have struggled with personally is uh when i made it to the pros for the first time signed with kansas city chiefs i was like obviously i felt like the man i felt so pumped it was like confident uh until about the third day of practice and then i that was the beginning of what I classify as anxiety.

And I know Sean and I have had a lot of discussions about this, again, trying to use accurate descriptors. But that is the closest thing that I can relate it to. And yeah, it started this really four year long experience with that. And I struggle with it and we could dig into the details, but anxiety has been my thing. Is it hard for you to look back on? and put a name to it and like and say I struggled with anxiety like for me to sell no because no I think when I was playing football and I had like this pride of you know I guess there's a stereotype of football players being physically you know fit and just mentally solid I think I when I was in

that moment would have shunned from calling it anxiety but now I look back and I was like, dang, I was pretty fragile back then. I distinctly remember, I feel like I could get emotional talking about it, which is funny. I also just woke up. And I'm pregnant, so that's probably why. But I remember you going through that whole process and we weren't actually together. Like we were in a relationship, but we weren't together in the same city.

Well, let's talk about this because I thought we were engaged. So I kind of classified that as together to some degree. I didn't mean it like that. We can kind of dig into the weeds there. We were long distance and engaged. But I was getting ready for the Olympics. I was traveling the country and you were at camp and we couldn't be together and we were talking a lot every night.

And I remember listening to you and watching you over FaceTime and like having conversations about how you were feeling and your nerves. And I don't know if you remember this, but there was one night where it just seemed to all come to a head. and you and me both were just crying. And I felt for you so much because it was so, I don't want to say heavy for you, but you were dealing with things

that you had never dealt with before. And you weren't sure how to sort through it. So going back to camp with the chiefs, how did your anxiety, like, show itself? How did you, were you feeling at the time i know back then you didn't you didn't know how to put a word to what you're feeling but what what were you feeling and how did it show so let me pause and and kind of paint the picture here before we maybe talk more specifics but i played football uh played at vanderbilt

which is in the cc which is you know we're talking stadiums of 100 000 people and then i went on to play professional i was in and out for five years uh bouncing around a a different team. So I, you know, the position I played in football was called a long snapper and it's a specialized position. It's similar to like a kicker punter where you get a handful of plays a game, but you need to be really precise and the margin for error is very low. And I'd been doing this ever since I was like eight years old. So I was used to like the pressure, especially having played in like large college uh stadiums i it would obviously i got nervous and things like that you know to the point where i would shake but it was never what i would classify as unhealthy right like

you're just used to that feeling of nervousness as an athlete but i came out of college i was the number one ranked long snapper uh at in the country in my class for whatever that is worth and i signed with Kansas City Chiefs and free agency. And I was literally classified as a blue chip prospect. The coached there, Dave Tob, he's still there as a special team's coach, had me as a blue chip prospect. They cut, which means top, like solid. Which means you come in, you do your job, they're planning to keep you for good.

Yes. So I was thinking, okay, I'm going to be with the Chiefs for 10 years. They released their previous long snapper to bring me in. But since I was young, they brought in like a competition for me so that I had to, you know, earn the job and in case anything went wrong, which it ended up going wrong. And I, as I mentioned earlier, like pretty quickly lost that confidence. And it was like, it was almost like I was just sinking in quicksand is the feeling I felt. But I started essentially changing my process and how I would do my job, like perform. Imagine like Sean doing balance beam with shoes on. I went from

doing balance beam like a normal person with this is an analogy by the way with no shoes on barefoot to uh like doing something wild and weird like wearing shoes on a balance beam for me it was like wearing gloves while long snapping it's like a quarterback usually doesn't really wear gloves anyway it was all like this this process of me losing that what i had done for 16 years literally I'd done this for 16 years and I was performing at the professional level as if I was like middle school caliber because mentally I was just absolutely destroyed and I remember walking around the facility. I actually did a episode on this on redirected my podcast, but I couldn't make eye contact with anybody just because I was like super self-conscious. I would go home after practice and literally just laying my bed with the lights off and for hours.

I would go to practice for two hours a day and then be in the hotel room for the rest of the time. I would call Sean. We would cry. I remember we've talked about this. It's funny now to a certain degree. But we would have these team meetings, right? And the whole team's in there.

So it's like 100 guys, 20 coaches. is we're all grown adults like whatever Andy Reid the head coach of the chiefs would get up in front of the room he'd walk in the door and immediately I had this sensation which I'd never had before of like wanting to yell out stand up and yell out the F word which is like wild I don't have like that's never been a thing I cuss if I had to put a number to it maybe like once a week I don't know it's like rare and then here we are in like this you know very professional i don't know like it's it's almost like this uh holy place of the nfl meeting room where it's quiet and like just pure respect and i wanted to stand up and cuss like i literally

had to bite my tongue anyway needless to say it was a spiraling circle that didn't help my performance i like relationally i felt isolated and weak and then in camp which is like two days it just all came to a head and like Sean and I would have these discussions where it was it was just terrible I just felt like a this big I felt like this big tiny I feel like and again back to our conversations way back then just kind of diving into it I I feel like one of the biggest differences and one of the challenges you you're sorting through in dealing with the urge to like cuss and not being able like wearing the gloves and not being all to look people in the eye which like if you know Andrew is very not characteristic I felt like when you

went to Kansas City and you were faced with this challenge of proving yourself you almost felt like you lost control over you so let me put it this way and I just connected this dot thank you for the tee up. In, I think I had never struggled with the mental side of this because I'd always had a balanced life per se where I would have to go to school and then I'd have to, you know, you're in a dorm so you have a social life and then you're in college. So there's just whatever activity to do. And it was, it was way more than just football for me, always.

But in when I made it to the pro level, there was nothing that balanced out. It was football and that was it. Like, that was it. Mm-hmm. It was just football. And so it was this hyper-focused, hyper-awareness of just that one thing that I ultimately undermined the performance of it. Do that make sense? So, yeah.

And then question, if you were to zoom out from the chiefs at that time, what had happened in our lives is we had just gotten engaged. You had graduated college. and it was your first year as a rookie in the NFL. Do you feel like that, like, major life transition right there added to the stress of football? I think the, I think not having you by my side

because you're, I think you're filming Celebrity Apprentice and you were going on tour. So it was really just me. Mm-hmm. Was the biggest factor. Like, it was all good things. Engagement was pumped about.

We were getting to do so much. many fun things when we saw each other but that was we only saw each other like once a month so then other than that it was me in a dark hotel room so at some point within your journey within the NFL um after the chiefs after honestly a few years you had pinpointed a word of anxiety yeah and that's what you would feel within football and that's what you would struggle with and you would you weren't sure how to like battle with that where how did you come to that so i i should say i never got a professionally diagnosed but i think i came to that because of my previous lack of experience with anything like this so i i remember like i was just coming up with excuses for how can i get off of

this team like remember that was when i said my hip was hurting and oh my gosh i think i tore x It was so weird. And I also, for the first time my life, was like literally considering taking a drug to have me me me mellow out. So I was like looking into how can I get like what's the doctor I need to go see that will prescribe me Xanax? Because I was this ball of it wigs me out even just thinking about it. It's so crazy. Now that we're in this phase of life and I'm, I don't want to say I'm past it because I'm clearly still vulnerable to it. but just having been through that and experience with it.

Like, it's just wild. I think those, like, indicators like that, like me considering taking drugs, which, you know, is not usually my first, second, third, fourth, or tenth option. And then I'm curious to hear your perspective on this, but I don't, I don't really think that that was, Andrew to a certain extent, right? That was like a different iteration of me somehow. So that's why I, again, cautiously use the word anxiety.

I remember going through this with you for, I think the hardest part of it was that first year. I feel like you lost a lot of yourself that first year, struggling with trying to make sense of it all. But I would witness it from. the outside end and whether we are together or not not in a relationship i just mean like physically together um i would see it consume you and i remember and i would have these conversations all the time after practices and we would face time before we went to bed and it just it would almost break my

heart because to a certain extent i knew exactly what he was going through because for so many years we had been together and I had tried to talk to him through or I had tried to talk to Andrew and explain eating disorder and how it consumed me and how I couldn't I couldn't fight it off and it felt like I was fighting the devil and it like it was just it was something that consumed my soul and I couldn't turn it off and that's a very very hard concept for a lot of people to understand if you've never experienced something like that because it's so easy for someone to say well just stop just stop thinking that way just do it the way you've always done it choose not to do path a but go down path like just turn it off and i remember witnessing you start to go through this

and start to see it magnify and consume you and i knew at the time just like anybody's struggling with any mental health issue, I guess, is I couldn't fix it for you. Yeah. There was nothing I could say. There was nothing the coach that could say. There was nothing that I could do to just fix it. And I remember talking to you as if, one, I was your wife and then two as a coach of like, okay, let's look at it as something we can practice.

Oh, man. Let's practice visualizing. Let's practice positive thoughts. Let's practice. be honest though yeah all of your efforts to help me like in some ways made it worse psyched you out i remember you had me read the book mind gym and like literally and oh you you put me up with a sports psychologist you were by the way so generous and helpful uh and yeah you would all like nothing but encouragement but we'd always have the conversations like hey how are you doing and all it did was

made me think about it more for sure like so i would be just wigging myself out even more It is worth noting that Sean is like this stone cold fox. Like I, it literally gets me hyped up to think about Sean in performance mode. I don't want to say that you weren't nervous, but like hot dang, she is just a beast. When it's game time, like you watch these videos of her about to hit the beam. I'm assuming this. I'm sure you're nervous. But like never had any of this performance related anxiety.

Oh, I did. but okay so maybe you did we never talked about that but you know even though you're secure to some degree there you had this other side that was vulnerable and that's the eating disorder the insecure like that whole thing we had previously spoken about and so again it's humbling just to think that like because just because you don't have x y or z problem doesn't mean you you don't have the other problem. So never, you know, I guess take that for granted. I think we said it the first time we, during the eating disorder episode, which is I truly

believe we all have a massive weakness somewhere when it comes to mental health. And some of us are very lucky that you will never find it, which is great. That you will never come have an encounter to where it's triggered or you're like that. button is pushed you find the blind spot but for both you and i it takes experiencing something and it takes being triggered to a certain extent for that to come to light and i love i hate that we both went through it but i love that we did because we made it through it each of us individually i would on the as far as like a if you're going to view it as a spectrum were at a better place right now in this moment of time.

That doesn't mean that we're just like over it, right? No, no, I'm saying we're aware of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I see as not tackling it, not succeeding in the, you know, getting rid of it. But to be aware of it and to find those, those buttons, those weaknesses, those blind spots is really hard for people to do. and I think for you going through that first year it was kind of it was a major reality check for you and me just knowing that okay going into our second year going into our third year or fourth year however long you wanted to pursue the NFL we have to figure out how to handle this and how to

deal with it so which leads me to the next question how did your anxiety and those feelings feelings of like lack of control of yourself and the consuming nature of it, how did that affect when you came home? And then how did that affect still continuing to pursue the NFL? Yeah. So we actually never talked about this at all. So I'm just going to like try to put it all out there really for the sake of us being able to reference this at a future date. But that's, you know, I've shared many times that after I got cut from the chiefs, I was moping around on the couch, I didn't feel like I had a purpose in life, and that's how we started YouTube. So it affected, are you talking about after I got cut home or like my relationships?

Go for both. How did it affect you? How did it affect your lifestyle? How did it affect how you approached me, how you came home after you were cut? How did it everything? So it pushed me more towards isolation when I was still in the context. And when I got released, it was like I had two days of just tears. You remember that?

Gosh, we've been through some stuff, man. So far even. And we got a lot more to go through. It was like two days of tears. And then I feel like it was a huge relief, like a weight taken off my shoulder. Because it was like, oh, my, I don't have to do that anymore. I don't have to. go to the practice facility literally my job so a long snapper at a two hour practice you stand

around for like an hour one hour and 50 minutes of it and then 10 minutes is like you get five plays and i would be just brought to my knees trembling about thinking about what is that going to yeah what is that going to look like i got five opportunities don't blow it and that's what i spent 24 hours anyway so it was like a relief to not be in that spot anymore um and so i think while I was in the situation, I pushed me towards isolation and I really just didn't want to interact with anybody because I was, why? Why didn't I want to interact with anybody? It wasn't fun. Like I just, I was always distracted, preoccupied and it felt like everyone else, especially because our main social group was football players, like first round, second round draft picks

where it was like, oh, I would look at them, be like, you don't have anything to worry about. You have a job secured and you're not going to get. cut like i'm going to get cut tomorrow i'm sure i'm going to get cut tomorrow like that's i was just always have these thoughts and uh man i don't know so that's one aspect of it and then when i got home is it was even it was still tough like after i got cut because the side effect of you know being in a highly advertised uh sport like in the NFL is people are always asking you oh hey so how's the NFL going or you got any calls lately or whatever and so again it kind of pulls you back to only thinking about that only talking about that and um well that was the year that

you went to uh on tour and i locked myself in the house and i would uber eat i i saw one friend that was ryan lemon and that's pretty much it i was by myself for like three months so it took me a while to get over it uh but i would say that that would be the effect It took me a while to come out of that show. And I got, yeah, I gained weight, didn't have any confidence. It was weird, weird. It's not weird, though. It's normal.

Correct. Correct. Let me say this. I only say that because I get the same way talking about, like, everything that I went through. It's so easy to start explaining it and start almost, feeling mad at yourself like what the frick yeah like how could i have let that happen how could i have become that person how could i have but it's so easy to let something like that happen and it's so normal and it's just learning how so i feel like this is kind of a live therapy session yeah just

because forgive me if i've overstepped and used words like weird which i'm glad you called me out on but since this is like we really haven't talked we have these leading questions that we prepared for this episode and like we've never had these discussions so I think it's almost like a self-defense mechanism or whatever you know trying to protect myself by saying oh that was weird so I appreciate you correct me no it was it was a really hard year for you it was a really hard year for us it was a really hard year for me I was back in gymnastics dealing with eating disorders and addiction on tour feeling like isolating myself andrew was going through all of this with football we weren't actually able to like spend time together we are going through

all of this isolated and having those insecurities within ourselves we are isolating each other isolating ourselves from each other even more and i remember i remember i would get to come home and visit or you would visit and you'd say oh i'm gonna you know sign up to be an uber driver today because i'm not i'm not capable of doing anything else in my life and you would say i don't know you would just say things where you would have no confidence in yourself pretty self-deprecating in like a serious way yeah and it was really hard to see because again It's a mental journey every day of our life is and we're going to go through ups and downs and you're not just going to overcome something once and never have to deal with it again.

It's going to be a roller coaster. But to see you struggle with that and to see basically your first year of football do that to you and bring that out in you and me not know how to help you was really difficult. On a lighter note, I don't know if you're going to ask this. But the way I ultimately feel like I was able to pull myself out of the hole or out of the spiral and regain some degree of footing. And I feel like, I feel like the words I'm using hopefully relate to people who have experienced something similar. But like was really just four more years of getting signed, getting cut, going to practice with different teams, having experiences, going through. going through that process and over that time fortunately by the way I can't believe that

teams kept signing me and cut in me because my performance was still bad but uh hey okay fair I'm sorry self deprecating you know I apologize but self deprecating but the way I found how to cope with it was distraction like literally just living a more balanced life for me is what helped me so essentially the way my NFL career came to a close was the perfect way for me to actually playing a game and not perform terribly and then a week later I was have a baby well a great distraction well yeah so you and I again because I got cut by the chief so we started YouTube we started this whole thing together there was a blast and that became like the thing that I was most excited about, most looking forward to, the thing I put most of my

thought to. And then we were also buying this house, which we did that whole series on it. Anyway, so we're in New York on a friend's trip, and I get a call from the Redskins at the time, now the Washington football team. And they said, hey, it's Friday. We need you to play on Sunday. Are you free? And so I said, yeah, I'll go down there. We played a game. And because it was such a tight timeline I didn't have time to think about it and it's perfect like it was almost a joke how perfect it panned out anyway it's wild I witnessed that with you year after year after year it was almost like you went into your first year letting every ounce of your being be consumed by the thought of failure and that drove you to anxiety and like I don't want to say depression but

depression um and then the second year it was like okay I don't really care as much this year like a little bit of you turned turned off the football faucet and you were like I don't care as much anymore yeah and then you got to your third year and you turned it off a little more and fourth year and fifth year and by the time you got to your last two years of football someone would call and you'd be like okay I'm just going to go snap some balls or we would have I love you you would just say like I love my life so much that if this works great if it doesn't great I don't care. At the very end,

they got to the point where I was like, Sean, should I go try out for his team? Should I go try out for an NFL team? Like, well, let's look at the schedule. Does it work? Okay, sure. Let's go.

But I say that because early on this interview, you said you had a lack of balance going into your first year that you felt you had in college. And I feel like a lot of times when our scales get tipped too far in one direction, bad things happen. Whether it's mental illness, whether it's whatever it's whatever. might be just broken relationships or yeah and without that balance without having someone like a

community by your side or sanity within hobbies or um just a way to to distract yourself from consuming thoughts you have to have your scales somewhat equal and for so many years you would tip it so far to I have to make this team in order to provide for my family in order to be that NFL player that all my friends and my family want me to be to live up to my father's expectations like there were so many different things that consumed your brain that your scale was tipped so far in one direction that when it didn't work out you would have nothing left yeah and year after year you would learn that yeah i i i remember it was like your fifth year it was the first time you ever said to me since vanderbilt i actually am

enjoying playing football right now. Yeah. Because I get to go play. And that was me at the Olympics. It was, I went through my ups and downs and I would struggle with bad years and good years where it's like, this is work and I hate it. And then this is not work and I am enjoying it. You're such a stone cold fox, dude.

Oh gosh. Dang. I'm like thinking about, you're a dog, dude. I want to put an asterisk by that, though, because something that I would, was very fortunate with one of the reasons i got asked this question today in an interview why do gymnasts retire so early you usually see this gap you see a gymnast succeed in gymnastics at a very young age usually they take some time off and they come back older for me i was very fortunate that i was still a child when i succeeded so yeah i was stone cold but i didn't have life slapping me in the

face. I did not have the brain development yet to understand the magnitude of my situation. I was still a kid and I had someone thinking for me. Yeah. If I were to go to the Olympics now, the NFL, I don't know how I would handle it. You'd still be a freaking dog, dude. I don't know because in all honesty, the reason I quit my sport when I tried to come back was because my brain was no longer there.

I overthought it. I would get up on the beam and I would see what could go wrong instead of what could go right. I broke more bones. I sprained more ligaments. I had more surgeries than I ever had my entire career because I doubted my ability. Yeah. Isn't that crazy how that happens? Yeah.

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I hear so many people talking about this on their podcast, like Dach Shepherd and people like this. It's awesome. Yeah, try it out. We're going to link it down below. Let us know what you think. Let's get back to it. I remember you talking about you not understanding, or you were young and all the almost benefits that come with that when you're competing. I remember, like, for football, we do practice, and then we'd have these rookie meetings where they'd,

teach us about financial responsibility and talk to us about all the benefits of what happens when you make an NFL team you get this sick 401k retirement plan you get all these whatever like the health insurance the dental whatever and so that's another thing that like would psych me out because it would be like oh my gosh what a dope opportunity like a retirement plan I never thought about in my life but now I got to make a team so I can make sure I get that retirement plan and it was just like all these different things would just layer up. Well, and I remember in New York when you got the call for the Washington team, and we had found out we were pregnant.

And it was kind of, I remember you thinking and saying, I want to do this so we can have health insurance for when we have a baby. Yeah. And we did, by the way. We did. But I remember us having a conversation, and I was like, we can get health insurance. Like, that's not a determining factor here. nor should it be any pressure and I think I had no idea how to do that by the way no

no just figured that out like two months ago but side now I just think it's so easy with anything in life to put too much weight into it to make it too much of a big deal and honestly even as we raised Drew we've had people comment and be like dang you guys are so chill with this or laid back with that or said that whatever I'm sorry but I think we approach a lot of things in life pretty relaxed but I also think it's because we've done the opposite yeah and failed at it that way and ended up in bad places in life because we didn't just say you know what it's all going to be okay let me present a I feel like a common situation that all of us are

familiar with that's on the same note of when you want when you're like white knuckling something and you want it so badly that it ultimately actually uh prevents you from having that thing it reminds me of like girls or boys men or women who want a spouse wanting to get married so badly that then they'll like go into a first date and take it way too seriously or have like whatever i'm not saying there's i mean we are our first date we hit it pretty hard but like there's definitely uh you could tell when someone And I was like, whoa, this feels like you're desperate. You know what I'm saying?

And anyway, that made me think about just that sometimes when you're so obsessively pursuing something, it cannibalizes and undermines your chances of getting it. I have two things I want to say real quick. I want to backtrack. It's just a thought I had. Talking about myself at the Olympics and how I was fortunate to be young. And I had someone else thinking for me, I don't want anyone to listen to this episode and think that a child is not capable of overthinking or being subjected to mental illness.

Children are probably more susceptible than anything. And yes, I was able. From a performance perspective. From any perspective. Your age. But no, from a performance perspective, your age provided a benefit. At the time for my, for my particular case, I, at the time where I was, was able to focus within my sports so well that I could win the Olympics. But outside of the Olympics as a child, I was dealing with depression, identity issues, eating disorders that I didn't know how to take care of.

So I just want to be very careful when I share that story that nobody brushes off. oh they're just a kid they couldn't possibly deal with anxiety they couldn't possibly be dealing with depression or no they can and you always need to be aware of that for a child good looking out i'm curious does it like undermine things the fact that i never got my situation diagnosed well that's what's interesting about mental health is like if you see someone with the like a broken leg or no leg it's like okay yeah i see that there's something going on there but with mental health it's like and that's why I'm trying to be very accurate in describing my experience and just using anxiety as a term even though I never officially got a diagnosed but it's like you know what I'm

saying like does it does it detract I don't know I don't know um I guess I could argue that I never was diagnosed as an eating disorder but like I never went to a doctor's office and had a doctor say to me yes you struggle from anorexia or you struggle from whatever it might be. But I think we have both worked with enough professionals in whatever field that might be, marriage therapists, sports psychologists, professional coaches, trainers, nutritionists, to understand that though some psychologist might define it as something different, we struggled at a certain point in our life and still do.

with these feelings and you can lay out your feelings and struggles in a certain way but that's what's just so hard about the whole thing though it's because it's so ambiguous and like uh uh relative you know almost yeah as far i i'm yeah i'm more asking for myself but i i think because it's not concrete it's tough and i want to be sure as we talk about it we're just doing people who are like diagnosed with anxiety justice by not you know saying oh you know like flippantly saying oh i struggled with anxiety okay i think the way we could easily solve that is let's bring a psychologist in the show okay i'm actually came for that yeah i'm curious if they would just unveil all these oh Andrew you have a long list of yeah anyway i do want to share um

The fact that I am very thankful for the idea that through my situation, there was always some degree of hope, I feel like, at least in the sense of positive communities, a friend that was there for me. And ultimately, when I look back on my NFL career, I'm thankful that I went through all that. I'm thankful, don't get me wrong. I'm thankful for where I am now. But I wouldn't have learned things I did, you know, had I not struggled through that. So, yeah, I guess moral of the story being there's always hope and you can, you can see a better day.

Just get there, you know, in whatever way is right for you. I don't feel like I really hit that, you know, closing as a home run, at least based off your reaction. that might be a hard episode to follow just kind of like the eating disorder one again we aren't professionals in this field but we have both been through some stuff and still continue to struggle day in and day out to make sure that we um take every precaution we can to make sure we don't get to the places that we were at these times at our worst at our worst and I want to be realistic and saying we probably will we probably will but we have each other we're not afraid to lean on each other and we aren't afraid to ask for help which took both of us

a while to come to but I think that's very important so I say that because I think if you are struggling with anything as i mean it could be as little as just like a doubt in life just like a tiny doubt like a tiny little negative thought tell someone about it make sure you have someone that you can say i i feel a little unsure whether if i should wear this skirt or these shorts it's just the practice of acknowledging it, asking for help, and having someone to lean on. Yeah, let me preface that, though, by saying, ask someone who cares and is a loving presence in your life, to be honest with you. And there's a right and a wrong person to do it and a right and a wrong way to do it.

So keep that in mind. Yeah. But, okay. Well, that's my story. We'd love to hear yours. Maybe you're an athlete. maybe you're not but we'd love to hear them so if you're able to leave a comment on the YouTube channel or in the rating please do so and subscribe to the show while you're over there

whatever you're listening and we will see you next week we have a great episode planned that's all we got for you today though I'm Andrew I'm Sean we are the East fan