LadyGang - LG QUICKIE: Mental Health Break with Dr. Chris

Episode Date: June 16, 2022

As the inspiration of inspirations, Dr. Chris Bjorndal is sharing her natural approach to mental health through her own life journey. Find out how she turned her life around to help people and her advice to those struggling. Check out our amazing sponsors!!! Brooklinen: Go to Brooklinen.com and use promo code LADY20 to get $20 off your purchase of $100 or more! Starbucks Baya Energy Drink: It’s energy that’s good! STARBUCKS BAYA Energy drink is available online, at grocery stores, convenience stores, and gas stations nationwide! Hyundai: Learn more about the 2022 TUCSON and SANTA FE Plug-in Hybrid EVs at HyundaiUSA.com Progressive: Quote today at Progressive.com to try the Name Your Price® tool for yourself!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Calling all Tampa Lady Gangers or really anyone who wants to fly into Tampa to see us live at the Tampa Improv on June 26 at 3 p.m. We're going to have a grand old time and head over to theladygang.com to get your tickets now. See you there. Today's episode of Lady Gang is brought to you by the new Starbucks Bioenergy drink with caffeine naturally found in coffee fruit. It's energy that's good. Starbucks Bioenergy drink is available online at grocery stores, convenience stores and gas stations nationwide everything is better electrified and hyundai has the widest range of electrified vehicles on the market including the first ever tucson and santa fe plug-in hybrid evs visit your nearest hyundai dealer or learn more at hyundaiusa.com

podcast one presents the lady gang the hollywood girl posse with lady gang quickie here's kelty Knight, Becca Tobin, and Jack Vanek. Let's make this quick. Our guest today on Lady Gang, this is a special episode, is the inspiration of inspirations. While she was doing her undergrad at the University of BC, she had an episode of psychotic mania. And in 1994, after surviving a suicide attempt, which left her in a coma, she decided to drastically change her life. She quit her corporate job and she devoted her life to becoming a nutritional based naturalistic and holistic doctor. She has a, um, she, she deals with the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual world. And she wrote a book that gave me a ton of comfort.

That is amazing that we will link in our name called beyond the label. Um, one of the things that I found within my own journey and my own family to find help at times is kind of difficult because you need to deal with like insurance companies and private practices and American in Canada are both terrible for their own reasons. And there's such a long wait for mental health help. And a lot of people can't afford it. And so I wanted to invite Dr. Chris here today to share her thoughts on what we can all be doing when we're feeling the feels, releasing some of the guilt and the shame of our own struggles. And I'm so excited to have her today. Please welcome to the podcast, Dr. Chris Bajoranel. Thank you. Hi, Dr. Chris.

Hi, Kelty. So good to be here with you. I'm so excited to see you. And obviously, I want to put out a little trigger warning here. And we're going to talk about some heavy stuff. So if you're not feeling the best, go back and listen to a fart joke on a different episode of Lady Gang. But talk to me about this big moment in your life where you sort of changed.

And it's hard to believe, knowing you and meeting you, that you ever struggled with mental illness because you seem just so on point well thank you for that yeah so basically in a nutshell I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder type 1 and based when I was given that diagnosis I pretty much wasn't having anything to do with it and so I then walked around in the world wearing this mask that hey you know what I'm good but I'm not actually on the inside and I had this inner critic that was just like brutally beating me up every step of the way you're not good enough you're not smart enough you're not bright enough you're not doing that right you know just on and on right really didn't know how to quiet that voice so my solution to do so was to commit

suicide and uh and because i felt so terrible and then and at that time i was taking five psychotropic medications to you know manage my mental health and it really wasn't being managed and so when I came out of that coma I first of all I was not happy right like I didn't want to survive and I know that that might sound horrible and but but the reality is nothing had changed from before the attempt to coming out of the attempt nothing had changed um so I had to figure out another way to navigate my life. And my friend, my best friend, she gave me this book to read called A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson. So I'm in this, you know, I'm in the hospital for several months. And so I'm, I have nothing to do with time. So I read and there was

a quote on surrender in this book, which goes along these lines. Surrender is not about breaking out of anything. It's a gentle melting into who you really are. So you let down your armor and realize that all God needs is just one sincere surrendered moment where love matters more than anything and nothing else matters at all. Yeah. So the key word for me and that whole phrase was love I was the furthest from love for myself than you could possibly be and so that's really been the journey that I've been on for the last 28 years is well you know longer than that but since the suicide attempt it's been 28 years so actually almost to this day to tell you the truth a couple days ago last week wow and then you you know you were kind of

functioning, like you had a job and all these things, and then you just decide, I'm going to give it all up and I'm going to follow this passion and mostly to help yourself or at that, like at that time, was it first out of a need for yourself to sort of change the way you're treating yourself or how? No, no, it was more so. So I eventually made it to a naturopathic doctor and to a nutritionally oriented psychiatrist and that best friend of mine, Lisa, she's also a nutritionist. It was always harping at me about nutrition, nutrition, nutrition. And, you know, we could probably do a whole hour on that alone but um to answer your question it was when I became well after struggling for so long that I was like wow like gosh this took me so long to get here and

it took me like the fellow I went to see Kelty was 80 years old and I'm like my god this can't be the only guy in the country and so then I've got me thinking I know there's a lot of people struggling. So I, that's when I decided to go back. Yeah. And so and so now you have this fabulous practice and my family, we have your cookbook and we, we, we use it as much as we can force everyone to eat perfectly. But but I think it's really interesting. And, and, and so if you could explain sort of the difference between, you know, in our late again group, we have so many girls that are on, you know, different medications and different things. And you go into your doctor and you're like, I'm feeling sad. And they give you a little Prozac or whatever that is

to kind of what your mindset is. So first of all, I'm not anti-medication, but I do feel that it should be minimum dose for maximum benefit for the shortest duration of time. And I think the problem with medication is a lot of people get put on something and then not really told how to navigate that or how long to stay on it or they get told and in my case the belief system collectively in the consciousness is that you cannot do bipolar disorder without medication that's the standard party line but i have you know i'm here to tell you that's not the truth so um we want to understand that there's four aspects to you physical mental emotional spiritual western system is focused on the physical level only and i think if that's all you're going to

look at, you're going to miss 75% of the puzzle here. As I mentioned, for me, a lot of it was this voice, right? This inner critic, this ego, if you will, that was driving me to not great places. So, but still the physical level is important. And I also had to work on that. So with that, we want to understand there's three macro systems in your body, your neurotransmitters, your neuroendocrine or hormonal system, your organs and detoxification in your immune system And mental health issues, anxiety, depression, eating issues, bipolar disorder, sleep issues, addiction, they all can have any one of those three as a root. So it's a matter of my job is to figure out which of those three, if not all, do I have to support in you? And so what are some of the ways, like, when someone comes to you, I know it's hard to do, like, an overall thing.

but you're kind of looking at nutrition and you're looking at exercise and your book, like, you know, what are some of the things that like the pillars of, of health that we may not think of when we think, can you prescribe it to me at the pharmacy? Like what are the other, what are the Dr. Chris, uh, like prescriptions if you will? Yeah. Yeah. So the first big, like humongous thing is the nutrition is nutrition. And I know people sometimes roll their eyes and they think, Oh, you know, nutrition, but you know what? I got to tell you, most of the neurotransmitters are derived from essential amino acids, which means you can't make them. You got to get those from the outside. And if you don't, you're not going to make serotonin and you're not going to make

dopamine. I can make that like, there's just so many hormones that are derived and neurotransmitters that are derived from essential amino acids so i i harp on the nutrition because your body can't make these things if you don't give it the right gas so to speak right if you're not giving it the the building blocks how do you expect yourself to make these things right and it's not a slam dunk that your body's gonna make serotonin so i can go into that more if you want after, but basically, yeah, the nutrition piece, there's so many essential things that we need. And then exercise, like the movement. I know we, we all sort of, again, we sort of throw, you know, roll our eyes at that too, but it's super important. Like, gosh, I've seen you do

videos. Like the other day you did one that said like, you know, this, these endorphins, like exercise is what gives me endorphins and that makes me feel good. And you're so right. Yeah. And I know how hard it is though. You know, it's a really interesting thing. I think, especially as women. And as like, I grew up a child of born in the eighties, but a child of the nineties and diet culture was like at an all high time, all high, all time high. Um, and, and I think like in my brain, we really got told that what we ate was to be thin and working out was to be thin. So all of those things were, you know, if, if you wanted to be thin, you just, you ate your vegetables because that's was no weight watchers points on a vegetable. You know

what I mean? And working out was so that you could burn calories and no one it's, it's such a disservice because no one ever educated us and said, Hey, you got to work out because it's going to fuel this, this, this, this, and it's going to make you happy. And when you're happy, you're gonna make better choices in your life. And you're going to be able to choose to not, you know, drink a 900 diet Coke, which I don't even want to talk about this month for me and my bad eating, But, you know, it's like it's all a circle. But I think we were told so much. And I know for our girls, like it's just about what you eat and what you work out so that you're thin and you're healthy and you look good in a bikini. And I love your book and your whole mindset, because it really is like food is this fuel and exercise as your antidepressant. press it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a bit of a, you know, this culture that we

have this North American culture about paying more attention to what's on the outside versus what's on the inside is, is a bit messed up. Right. And I think that, I mean, I've had an eating disorder, so I know that whole, that whole game. Right. And then I, when I was dealing with that, I overexercised. So, you know, you kind of have to watch for that. Like, but the exercise piece we just as a clinician where we're looking for you know making sure that someone's not masking and eating disorder or disordered eating with that and are you just you know really doing it for your health right that's what we want to be doing it for but I got to tell you for me and whether it feeds back to my eating disorder days it still has been is still a really important

piece for me the exercise piece I'm not as yang in my exercise as I used to be but I still think it's such a important tool that like Michael Pollan is a really great author and has written lots of books and one of them he or I heard him talking in one of the in this interview he said we've given up two hours a day for screen time in the last 40 years 20 years but what have we replaced right so we've replaced or we've given up exercise for our screens and we've given up cooking for our sweets. Right. So it's, it's so interesting. So when we come back, I'm going to ask Dr. Chris to give us, you know, a couple of pillars of, of what she wants to have all the lady gangers think moving into the summer. Uh, and we'll be right back. Is your dad tired of

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New moms, old moms. We've got, you know, we've got girls dating on apps. We've got girls vacationing. we've got girls, workaholic girls, we've got every kind of lady out there. But if you were to say, you know, these are some of the things that I want you to think about, about your life and about how you take care of yourself and your mental health, what would you say? So I think the very first thing that's important is answering the question of whether you're a people pleaser or not, because a lot of us are saying yes, when we really mean no. And when we say yes, when we

really need no what do we end up doing we end up sacrificing our soul for the sake of another's and so whether and this is tough with moms like i i'm a mom and um gosh i you know i used to be a gym rat before i went before i gave birth and i sort of you know jokingly blame my my child because i haven't been to the gym for 16 years basically because my priority has shifted from from my body to his body to making him my priority so I get it as moms sometimes it's difficult to say to say no but really learn to pause then for all the people pleasers out there learn to pause learn to say thank you so much for asking me can I get back to you and if the other person is really demanding and says no you can't you know or has a little hissy fit whose issue is that right it's not your

issue so then hopefully you realize that might be a no yeah for you right so but I I know I'm still working on this so it's but it's helped me so much to just create that space and a little bit of awareness to make my yeses come from a yes and if I say yes and I really mean no to then really pay attention okay so what's going on for me why am I not able to step into that right so that's one thing i think it's really important and the other thing to really understand is is to differentiate between the voice of your heart and the voice of your head right again most of us are leading our lives right living from the neck up and leading it from an ego-centered place and there's a great two great quotes i'll share with you by joseph campbell one is the heart must

usher the mind into the zone of revelation so we want to learn to live our lives and lead our lives from a heart-centered place not an ego-centered place the ego is going to keep you stuck in fear like an example of that was when i quit my job or i was going to quit my job the voice of the heart or the soul or the intuition was like you know do that but then immediately the ego fear no you can't all the reasons why i can't right and i think sometimes this is an out there view of mine about depression i think sometimes depression comes i know for me because i feel like i have two masters right this voice from the heart or the soul intuition and the head and i don't know who to listen to because one's going north and the other is going south

right i need to sort of stay stuck and then the other second quote by joseph campbell is the psychotic drowns in the same water, the mystic swims. So for me, that one's pretty powerful because as a psychotic, I, you know, I've been drowned in medication, right. Versus allowed to be on a very close to psychotic is a genius. Yes. Right. And they're allowed to swim and are revered in society. Yeah. Anyway, I probably want to change it there. Sorry. No, no, no. I love this. I think there's a really interesting thing. And I really believe this, that with all kinds of, you know, not just mental illness, but, you know, all kinds of mental things at play, I always have believed that like, you're just one step away from like the genius. and it's really interesting because, you know, I've been open on this podcast about how these different things run in my family. And, um, it's so funny because I was feeling kind of crappy and

I went to go get my, my iron checked and all this stuff done in LA. And I was talking about it with my doctor and I was like, well, I have a little bit of this mania, but I was like, I use mine, like I can control mine. And it's like, it's my, actually my superpower, um, because I can be so laser focused and i can sit for 10 hours and look at something and you know decide and so i do think there's like for me the two things that i'm like focusing on with mental health is is is one we need to give ourselves grace like grace that you know with everything in life like you think okay once i get married i'll be happy once i have this baby i'll be happy once i get this handbag i'll be happy and then as we grow and we continue our lives we just realize that that's all a bunch of

of bullshit. And like, there's never a point where you're like, check, I'm happy. And then it lasts forever. Like it's just a constant wave. So it's like, I want to give myself the grace that on my good days, I'm good. And on my bad days, I'm bad. And then I also like my big word. Um, and a little bit like my brother's word too, is like freedom. Like I, I, I really believe in the word freedom because it's like, I want the freedom to live the life that I dream for myself. So it's like what that means as far as freedom to have energy, freedom to make good choices, freedom to be able to travel, freedom to be able to be happy in my happy moments, like the freedom of not being so bogged down with your mental shit that you can like experience your life and not have these like

regrets later on in life that you didn't go and do life. But it can be really difficult. And I think there's like this over overwhelming sense of overwhelm. Like so many times in our Facebook group, we get these messages from girls and they're just like, Hey, I'm just feeling like I'm at my wits end. And like, is there, that's going to be my last question. So we get these messages that girls are like, I'm at my wits end. I can't, I can't go on. Someone talk me out of this dark place. What's happening in our bodies when we reach that like adrenal burn where you're just like, I'm done. Right. And what can we do to sort of help ourselves is my question. Yeah. So, you know, that, and you touched on it at the important point is because when you're

at that overwhelmed with overwhelm and at that point where you feel like you can't go on what are we what are we looking at is it that you have fried out your adrenals in that sense that you've just used up so much cortisol that there's no gas in the tank and you literally can't go on so then my solution for that would actually be to tell you then don't go on because you need to rest right depressed is deep rest so sometimes that is the solution we're not just these you know wind up energetic bunnies that just you know you you know those dolls right that they for the energizer buddy we just don't go forever and ever and ever right we're designed to rest so we want to take a look at your life and see again where are you saying who are you saying yes to or what

are you saying yes to that maybe we need to say no to there's a lot of um i don't this is such not really a nice thing to say but there are toxic people perhaps right is there somebody that's really bringing you down are you struggling with relationships we're all struggling a lot of people are struggling in in relation to another and so looking at your relationships looking at your life but mostly going within because happiness is not an outside job right they say there's two ways to um to be and to how i just said this in a lecture recently it's like you want to be happy and so you you know you put all these things on the outside thinking that that's what's going to fuel you but really you can be you know when you get what you want how happy are you how happy how

long does that happiness last and just like you said it's kind of like it doesn't last always right but just know that no matter who's listening whether you're struggling in any way shape or form first and foremost i want you to look to me as an example that you can get well number one number two hold yourself you can hold the wave that rises within you whether it's a wave of anxiety wave of depression you're the ocean you're the ocean the wave is going to fall back within you but the problem with western society is we're always trying to get people out of the state in which they're in oh my god god forbid you should be depressed oh my god god forbid you should be anxious anxious right and so we give you medication to interrupt the moment versus complete the moment

okay well we could talk for hours but we can't because dr chris has many patients she needs to see today. She's very packed schedule. Um, I want to invite everyone to check out your Instagram cause I think it's kind of the hub of everything. Um, and I'll put, we'll post it on lady game, but it's Dr. D R Chris Bajorno, B J O R N D A L. Um, and on there, she has a link tree that you can link to her site and her books and her speaking. And she does some Instagram lives. Um, and, uh, and we'll link to the book, uh, and you're just incredible. And, um, I'm so thankful to have you and i hope everyone felt a little comfort today um and we'll do this again so let us know listeners if you loved hearing from dr chris because we can really go in um this was

just a light dusting and um and we're not here for a long time but we're here for a good time thank you thank you thanks for listening the lady gang is produced by alex ingber steve delameter and jared monaco make sure you subscribe rate and review our podcast and if you love it share it with your friends on social media like, oh my god, I just listened to Lady Gang. This episode's so great. Swipe up to listen. And if you really want to, which we know you do, please follow us on social at Kelty, at Becca, at Jack Vanek, and at the Lady Gang. Sign up for our newsletter at theladygang.com and join our secret Facebook group. It's super fun. See you next Tuesday. Everything is better electrified and Hyundai has the widest range of electrified vehicles

on the market, including the first ever Tucson and Santa Fe plug-in hybrid EVs. Visit your nearest Hyundai dealer or learn more at HyundaiUSA.com.