Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Summer Edition - Mental Health Hacks Feat. Mandy Teefey

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

Join us for our first special Summer Edition of Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown! The format is a bit different from our usual episodes, but we think you'll enjoy them nonetheless!   Mandy Teefey (Co-founder and Co-CEO of Wondermind, Producer of 13 Reasons Why, Selena Gomez’ mom) stops by to discuss the origin of her mental health platform, Wondermind, and its mission to destigmatize and democratize mental health. Mayim and Jonathan break down their “overt” and “covert” mental health hacks, from practicing good sleep hygiene and being in touch with sensory sensitivities, to hitting the social reset button and re-examining our relationships with social media. Link to Wondermind: https://www.wondermind.com/ BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I wanted to just spend a heartbeat, though, on social media in particular and kind of the culture of consuming. We just fill all of the space every moment. I am totally guilty of this. You're the worst. Do you know how many Instagram videos of golden retrievers I watch? And they make me happy. I love when you watch your golden retrievers. Hi, I'm Myambiolic, and welcome to my breakdown. This is the place where we break things down so you don't have to. It's MyMyolic's Breakdown.

She's going to break it down for you Because you know she knows a thing or two So now she's going to break down We're doing something a little different Little summertime fun We're in different locations From each other And I'm in a different location

From where I normally am Let's say hello To my favorite summertime fun Jonathan Cohen Best Beach body in town right here Jonathan is someone who When he takes off his shirt he could also be used in local photo shoots to reflect the sun.

He's like one of those silver reflectors. He's very, very pale under there, in case you couldn't guess that. Now I'm just turning. From a reddy turn. Now I'm just turning red. No, I don't go in the sun well. That's true.

You and sun do not mix. I burn. And also, you burn. And you burn in a way that a lot of Eastern Europeans burn. You've got lots of adorable like freckles and moles places, but then you just burn. Look, we're later going to dive in to mental health hacks, and this is not one of them. I went on this sort of research trail on what it takes to naturally not get burnt. And it's a very, very strange set of recommendations.

So in today's episode, we are going to be talking about, I don't want to call them mental health hacks. We're calling them, we're calling them covert and overt mental health secrets that Jonathan is going to share with us. I'm curious, actually, for people to hit us up on the Instagram app, Yallelik breakdown on Instagram. And let us know if actually, if you're a longtime listener to the pod and you're like, I'm up on all the apps, have we covered this? Is this known or is this like only, like, because I feel like we've covered most of this stuff in different episodes. Okay. I'm actually wondering if this is like stuff that you're bringing out is like just in our

conversations that we have off air or if it's like all there and available. Okay. Well, okay, let's let me let me talk about the impetus for this episode because we're mixing it up a little bit in the summer like you do. And we have a special guest that's going to be kicking off this episode. and it's Mandy Teefe. And a lot of people know Mandy because she's Selena Gomez's mom.

But she also is her own person and has a really interesting story. And she's going to be visiting with us at the top of the episode to talk about Wondermind, which is this project of hers and Salinas and Danielle Pearson. She's going to be talking about

how they are in the process of creating a space where you can kind of get free information about ways to improve your mental health. So it got me thinking, that we should do this entire episode about this because, yes, Jonathan, there are so many things that guests have brought up that we have pulled together that are things.

But one of the things that I really love is that so many of the things that people have come on to talk about, you've been bothering me about for years. But it's true. Unless someone else says it, I don't listen. This entire podcast is just proving the things that I've already told my name. with other experts so that she'll listen to me. Check out the Lauren Rogan podcast because that... I was going to say, the Lauren Seth Rogan episode is one of them.

David Sinclair, this stuff comes up a lot. But what I wanted to narrow it down to is, given all of that, if I had to sum up in a non-judgmental way, things that are revealed, able to be accessed, the top five that I chose that I thought Jonathan would say, they're all free. Like, they're not... It's not like, go to this person, you know, hire this trainer, buy this medicine.

They're all just like things that are very, very clear. And we're going to tell them to you in this episode. But then we're going to do the covert mental health hacks that Jonathan secretly is trying to get into my brain. Many of them are funny. But many of them do also have actual scientific value and merit. They're just a little more elaborate and things you need to dig a little bit more, do a little more research. or be in a position where you can invest a little time and money into figuring out kind of those. So we're going to be talking kind of all things mental health tool-wise.

We're going to be talking all the tools that we think you could just listen to this episode and be in better shape mentally than you were before. If you listen to the things that I'm saying are Jonathan's mental health tools. But yes, he's not the only one with them. Before we get into the Jonathan things that I also agree with, the tools of mental health that Jonathan has browbeaten me into believing in by literally starting this podcast and having us have people on to confirm the things he's been trying to tell me. This is a very, very elaborate and expensive way to get me to agree with you, Jonathan, to start a podcast.

So you could bring on guests. This is how difficult it is to convince you of things. Mandy is the co-founder and co-CEO of Wondermind and also kick. to the curb productions. She's the person and they are the people behind the Netflix series 13 reasons why. She's a very active voice in the field of mental health and obviously with her experiences and those of Selena Gomez, which some people may know because she's been really, really public and honest about them. They're creating a space where you can practice mental fitness. They're developing tools and opening up conversations about mental health.

Let's start by talking to Mandy Teefe. And then, then we will get into our mental health tools, both overt and covert. Mandy Teefe, welcome to the breakdown. Break it down. It's really nice to get to meet you and have you on. I'm thrilled to be here. I am so thrilled to be here. Tell us a little bit about sort of the genesis of Wondermind and what it is.

Yeah. So Wondermind, what we wanted to do with it was build a ecosystem for mental fitness. So there's different ways like you could, you can work on your like mental fitness with apps and different things, but there's no one system that can connect together. So we have three different content pillars. It is media, which will be film, television, and podcasts. We have editorial, which we will eventually have daily content. Right now we have a tri-weekly newsletter that goes out. And then we're creating tangible product.

So it won't be on the phone or any, any apps or anything. Not that we're anti those. But it's just like what would the first mental fitness aisle look like in a target, for example. And so we're hoping to build those products and not really based on like diagnosis, more based on, you know, I feel, you know, anxiety. I feel sad or I feel it's more of a feelings base kind of product. So anybody can use it. and you don't have to, you know, we're not here to diagnose people.

We are, we like to call ourselves the in between of, like, when you're doing physical fitness, you see a trainer once a week, then what you need to do the work in between. So if you're seeing a therapist once a week, we are hoping to help provide those ongoing tools for you to keep practicing. So what are, what does some of those tools look like? Because obviously when I think of like, you know, when I, when I started kind of looking into Wondermind, like, there's things that we know. know you're supposed to do like, let's say for Alzheimer's, like do crossword puzzles, you know,

like keep your brain fit. And, you know, there are obviously things that that I think about that kind of maintain, you know, my mental health fitness. But I guess I'm curious sort of how do you, how do you scale that, you know, to a way that it becomes something that, you know, a lot of people can access from whatever point they're coming from. Yeah. So we are developing some of those right now. But what I can give you is, like, for example, ADHD. They have these big, gaudy timers. And, you know, and they're on these desks. And people don't really want to use them.

So we would create those and make those more cool, like a set of dice, something that fits in the kid's pocket or the adult who's using it. And it won't be as questionable or as out there in your face. And, you know, because I have ADHD. So I know how big those things. Wait. So hold on one second. What, what, do I not know about timers and ADHD?

Oh, yeah, there, there's timers for ADHD. So you don't like, when, when the time runs out, I no longer have ADHD. No, I wish. Wait, so hold on. I really feel like I'm missing out. What do you do with these timers? It's when, you know, when sometimes when you hyperfocus in ADHD, oh, got it.

They have it so you'll change, do, like, jobs or if you're able to help, help breaking the hyperfocus. I didn't know. I do like your idea better. No, I'm like, you have three more minutes of annoying everyone, and then you can go back to just annoying yourself. Yes. MyNBialx breakdown is supported by Superpower.

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I'm kind of curious what, you know, I know that mental health is something that's been, you know, a part of your life or important, you know, in your life for a long time. There are so many different ways to kind of go about being a part of this community in terms of the content you produce. That's something that already has a tremendous amount of, you know, traction and success. One of the reasons Jonathan and I started this podcast was because we wanted to be able to kind of reach people and really help people have a vocabulary who might not have any. access, you know, to kind of even knowing the basics about mental health, you know, the way we tell it, it's like people started describing what they were experiencing when the lockdown, the pandemic started. And I was like, oh, for people with anxiety, like, we live in this space all the time, you know, like constant fear and worry. Like, yes, I get it. And so we were just realizing,

like, how many people, like, for the first time, you know, during the last several years, we're experiencing things that, unfortunately, you know, I'm joking about it, but unfortunately, some of us have dealt with for, you know, our whole lives. So I'm sort of curious, like, how, you know, how you decide to kind of get at it this way in terms of creating this community. Are you looking to find people who have no idea, you know, where they're at? Or, again, people who have been kind of given a diagnosis and don't know how to do it. What's your, I guess, what's your kind of like target audience?

Well, we're really wanting to destigmatize and democratize. So what we would do is love to reach the audience that isn't aware of the tools that they can use and offer them, like as a call to action, like offer them on our websites, offer them during the podcast. So we're hoping to reach different audiences that, you know, they that might not like want to go in and explore that. May just like, oh, this is all made up and this is all like, you know, in their heads and you can control that. And, you know, I myself and my daughter, where like when I hear that, it's very disheartening to me that they could be letting down someone that they love because I know without medication and without therapy, I hands down wouldn't be here. I wouldn't have made it. Like I really don't think I would still be on this earth. So it saved me.

So for me, it's very real. And I do come from a community that is we weren't. broke. I always had what I needed, but they were either just crazy and then on drugs or normal. And I never felt like I was either. So I know what it was like growing up not having, you know, the support system. So fortunately, I went through it myself. So I was able to support my daughter whenever it was happening to her. And, you know, and I have a younger daughter. And so I felt how needed 13 reasons why was for the demo. And I kept waiting for the next step and how I could utilize, you know, our platform in a way to kind of continue this conversation.

And whenever I met with Daniela Pearson, me and Selena did an interview with her on her newsletter. She's just like, I really would love to create something bigger with you guys. And so we sat on it. It was during the pandemic. And we knew, you know, we needed to reach people that are suffering, you know, like having five people in a one-bedroom apartment. I couldn't imagine. You know, it's like I'm already claustrophobic. Like, I don't know what I would have done.

But, you know, it's just we really want to be able to, you know, hit that, knock that door, knock on that door and kind of be there for them. What was your introduction kind of into the world of mental health? I don't know if it was a good thing or a hard thing, you know, to interact with a psychiatrist. You know, for some of us, it's there's a lot of relief, you know, in speaking to someone who, has a different level, you know, of understanding and expertise. And also there's a lot of misunderstanding and often misdiagnosis that goes on. So how did you, and also, we're about the same age. And, you know, for me growing up, it was like a psychiatrist was like next to like a monarch.

It was like this like, you know, like holy person who like, oh, they're a doctor. And also they specialize in things that can like put you in hospitals. And you know, there was this real like, this fear and kind of respect and reverence for this profession of psychiatry. And a lot of people's experience with psychiatry was that they kind of just like numbed you down in those days, you know? So how did you end up? How did you end up? Like, how old were you when you first, you know, kind of started working on mental health issues for yourself? It was quite an adventure, I will say. I started at 19. And the first doctor I saw, I remember, you know, she's like, well, do you see things? And I go, I saw a black butterfly and then she put me on medication for it.

And I was like, maybe it was just a fucking black butter. Like, I mean, I don't think I'm hallucinating. You know, it's just I'd never seen one before. So I had to change doctors from there. I probably went through like 10 or 10 or 11 before I found the one that was like, no, you're bipolar. And so for decades, I was like, you know, bipolar taking different medications and, you know, the trials and tribulations of figuring out what,

your, what your program is. And then when I hit my 40s and I went into early menopause, all my medication like was causing like back, it was like going backwards. So like I was on an anti-seizure medication and I started having seizures. And so I'm like, what's happening? You know, my hormones were all changing. And then I literally, um, I took a handful of anti-seizure. high anxiety medicine just to go to sleep. And I was wide awake and I looked at my husband. I'm like, something's wrong here. Like, this medicine's not doing anything for me.

And I got on a plane, dropped everything. It was table read for second season was the next day. And I called the showrunner and like, look, I got to practice what I preach. And I went and I got into a facility. And it was very interesting and saved me hands down. I learned a lot. I am one of those people, though, that when if I'm in group therapy, I'm like, oh, I start taking on other people's problems.

And I think it's to deflect that I don't have to focus on my own. But I'm just like, oh, girl, let's like when we're out walking, I need to talk for you. And like I, you know, so I, it just when I went there and it was the hardest thing being away from my youngest child. How old was she at the time? She was sick. Wow. And she was going to be like.

like going into kindergarten and I was going to miss the first day. And so I, but I knew I needed to be there. I just, they put me in, in that, that room and detoxed me from those anti-anxiety medications and then put me out into the world of, of, uh, therapy here and there. And I, I just have just as many questions as I think they have to me, I have for them. So for me, I like to create a dialogue with a therapist. And then they're just like, you're not bipolar. You're ADHD with trauma. You have a lot of trauma. And so I had to like relearn at my 40s like how my brain operates because I've been

functioning under the guise that I was bipolar. It oddly felt embarrassing. I don't know why I think because ADHD is like considered a, like a learning disorder. And then then I got really obsessed with Post-it notes and just like bipolar. Posted note color coded everything. And now it now it all makes sense to me. But I really do just dive into what they tell me and try to figure out, you know, my decisions of like how it's affected me, how it affected me.

Why would I lash out now I know that it's part of frustration? So yeah, it was the best thing I've ever, I ever did. How long were you in that facility, as it were? 30 days. Wow. Yeah, it was 30 days. Wow. They won in 90 because I was adopted and they thought that was a world to explore.

But I was just like, I'll come back if I need to. I want to see my little one. I'm curious, what are those 30 days like? It's like we'd wake up at 5 a.m. and then we would go do breakfast and then we would do an art class or we'd do group therapy or we would do one-on-one therapy. and then you would have free time to go exercise. They would make you exercise, which I'm not, you know,

one of those people. I'm like, look, I'm walking from class to class. Isn't that enough? But they're like, no. So I,

then what else do you? Yeah, like in at night, we'd have kind of a creative fun show where anybody with talent wanted to get up and sing or read poetry or anything. And there was a really special,

special thing for me, are 10 o'clock, like free play. I would sit outside because mine was in, in Arizona. So it was like a lot of dirt and desert. And I would sit outside with a young man and an older man. And they would just play the guitar and sing just like the oldest songs. And I would just have my bedtime snack.

And then that's the only time we talked, which was fascinating. You know, it was just like we met up every time. And it was just. it was just like the most empowering moment to like see all of these people on the same journey and support each other. And then when I came out of the facility, I just looked at my husband and I was like, gosh, if everybody was like people in a facility there to support each other, we might be a better way of life, you know? And, you know, so I guess you could say that was also

a part of why I was like encouraged to make something like this happen. For sure. Did people know who your other daughter is? Well, when Family Week happened. It was funny. You will enjoy this story. So when Family Week was coming up, I asked the guy who heads it up. I said, look, there's a bunch of people here in their 20s and they might know who my daughter

is and it's going to mess up what we're doing. doing. I'm not trying to be special. I just want to know if we have an alternative of because she needs to be there. And he goes, oh, dear, who's your daughter? And I said, I go, Selena Gomez. And he goes, oh, Selena Gomez is your daughter. And I said, yeah. And they go, okay, well, we'll talk to your therapist. And he called her and the therapist was laughing. She goes, he said, so this girl thinks Selena Gomez is her daughter. And then there's just like, and they're like, you had to fill out paperwork. were you in the news the other day? And I was like, yeah.

They also have solution. I get the same thing when I say Miami-M-B-L-X, my friend. They all try to commit me. That's really funny. No, I was just thinking about, you know, my mom's experience. She and I have the same last name.

And so it, you know, I have an unusual last name. And so she gets, obviously, asked a lot. And I think she probably offers a lot of details that communicate to people that indeed she is my mother. She'll take out a picture, you know, of me looking like this in her living room or something. Is there anything in particular that we can, you know, kind of support or tell people more about? Yeah. No, right now they could go to wondermind.com and sign up for our tri-weekly. It's eventually going to be daily. So I don't. want to mislead anybody and I keep one to say that newsletter and then the podcast will be coming out.

Can you give us sort of the summary of sort of what you want to tackle with the podcast? Yes, we call it the podcast, Dear Wondermind. And we are just going to have like our first guest is the angry therapist. Check look him up. He's fabulous. And we just really want to have regular conversations about like daily mental health kind of like yeah just like daily conversations nothing like medicinal there will be no kind of diagnosing it will just be kind of supporting to show people that everybody goes through the same thing and then on um every friday we will have another dear wondermind where the um guests or not the guest the audience can write letters or record them and bring it to it and how that episode affected

them. Oh, that's really nice. It'll just be dedicated to them and only them for the Friday. And one more question. If you had to tell us kind of your favorite five mental health things, either that you do or that you wish people would do, what would those be? I do love popping balloons. I know that sounds really cheesy. Like drawing or writing, the issue it's going on, blowing it up and popping it. Sometimes I have to blow it up a little bit more many times. I do believe in meditation. I know that's more of a wellness and not kind of a mental health kind of thing, but I do believe in taking that time for yourself and just like calming down your senses. And I had to do that this weekend, you know, and it's just like doing that.

I really think it's interesting to do a timeline. And I think that's very helpful to draw out a timeline. And I only suggest this if you have a therapist. I wouldn't suggest you do this on your own. And you write like either major accomplishments or, you know, something that might have happened to you and you kind of like play it back, you know, and like different times it comes up to me. So I've had an ongoing timeline that like when I write it down, just makes it feel like it's been

released a little bit. And then I know something that I can talk to my therapist about next. I enjoy going out in nature. I really think it's so important. I go to, I glamp, not camp, but so I got to be glamping. But I love that. I love going to nature by myself and just, you know, walking through and clear. my head and just definitely love that. And you can't really do this by yourself, but I'm really

dig in EMDR, which I know there's some conflict for it. But for me, with a lot of the trauma, it's been a few times I've done it. It's been amazing. That's really incredible. Those are wonderful. And Jonathan and I have some of our own. So we will, we will share those and we won't bore you with them. Thank you so much. It's been really great talking to you. And we really, we appreciate and want to continue to support what you do however we can. So we're glad to be partners with you in this space. Thank you so much. It was such an honor to be on here and to meet you, Jonathan. And to meet you, I've been watching you for years. Oh, well, thank you. And we will continue to wish you well, both on your personal journey and your professional one as well. And thank you for all the work that

you do. Thank you. So kind of building on what we were talking about with Mandy. And, And obviously, you know, she has a platform where they are working on and, you know, planning on all these sort of like, more like daily exercises, which I think is great. But one of the things that I've been thinking about is with all of the episodes, let's just call it close to 100 episodes. And we've spoken to a broad variety of different people. We've spoken to, you know, therapists. We've spoken to EBDs and to PhDs and to SIDEs and to holistic people.

like we've spoken to a lot of different people, if we had to sort of narrow it down to what are the things, and I'm not really looking at like mental health like hacks because those are, you know, kind of like life hacks is sort of a different thing. But I've isolated six things that I predict you will say are things that a lot of people don't even assume are like mental health helpful, but they are. So this is both me quizzing myself. and you correct it where it's needed. And then I have some bonus mental health things that I think you'd be ashamed to admit our mental health things. But I want everyone to know about them. So Jonathan, let's start. I have six things. And I would say these six things, most of them have been mentioned many times by a variety of different guests we've had on, both practitioners and just regular people. Go.

We're going to miss some because both of us have forgotten in 80 episodes. I'm just saying we've forgotten some. So you're telling the goal now is for me to say what I think is on your list or what you think is on my list. And I'm now saying to you what you put on your list that you think I will say correct. No one, no one is following you. What I would like you to tell me, name one thing that you think impacts mental health. that some people don't always put in the category of mental health?

Sleeping really well. Okay, that's number one. I thought you would say that. Number one. Now, this is something that is so annoying to me because I am like an unsupervised teenager when it comes to sleep. Jonathan... I often say to you, it seems like you're a 16-year-old

who has been left home alone with a credit card to feed yourself and zero supervision. Jonathan, tell us in as concise a way as possible. What's the sleep thing? And this is one of those things, correct me if I'm wrong, that many people who have experts who have been on this podcast and humans, experts in their own experience, have said that this is one of those things that you don't realize how much your mental health, your outlook on life, your optimism, your capacity for things, you don't know how much it can change

based on sleep. What are some of the principles, Jonathan? You're asking me, you're the scientist. Why is it that our brain needs sleep? No, no, I'm not, I'm not asking why. Name some of the things people need to be mindful about sleep. Oh, to get more sleep. Well, maybe it's that, maybe I'm getting too much sleep. I mean, you're supposed to get a minimum of eight hours of sleep. Okay, so we're looking at eight hours. And sometimes you need to be in bed longer than eight hours in order to get eight hours sleep. It's actual eight hours of actual sleep, not just I was in my bed for eight hours. So if I want to have good sleep as part of my mental health regimen, what I'm hearing is I need to quit my job and stop eating.

You should not eat in your sleep because that impacts sleep negatively. So eight hours of sleep, what else? Here's the thing most people don't appreciate. I mean, I didn't for years. You're young or you're in your career and you're hustling and you're like, I can do all the things. And you know what? After I get done work, I do something, some obligation. I run to a grocery store or I eat some dinner and then I answer more emails and I'm doing that till nine o'clock at night.

without some transition time between dealing with your life, whether that be work or your family or whatever it is that you do that is the doing in your life, and I'm sort of using air quotes around doing. If you don't transition into some being, allowing your mental inbox to be unpacked, you are not going to likely have a successful night of sleep because your body and your mind are going to process that at night and you're not going to be rested. Some healthy, non-stimulating transition into those eight hours of sleep. Anything else about the sleep we should know about? Like, does it need to be a certain temperature?

Do you have to wake up at the same time? Do you have to go to the bed? Is that a thing too? Yes. There are many articles on sleep hygiene. I will not do them justice. Did you just say sleep hygiene? Sleep hygiene is a real thing.

the notion of transitioning into sleep. Falling asleep in front of the TV, one of the worst things you can do. Falling asleep in front of your screen, one of the worst things you can do. This is number two on my list of things Jonathan was going to say about mental health. No screens how long before bedtime?

Minimum half an hour, but ideally more. If you want to be an absolutist about it, you should go to sleep when the sunsets. That's not practical in everyday reality. Because I need to pretend like there's not electricity. That's what you'd like me to go back to a time when there was no electricity. There's lots of research that shows that dimming overhead lights and having warmer yellow or orange light during the hour and a half before you go to bed signals to the brain that it's time to shut down. Lots of people have no concept that if you're in your house and all the lights are fully blue lights and they're super bright.

and it's right before you go to bed and you're not doing any sort of transitionary time between the doing and the being going to sleep. You're basically not sending your body the signals that they require to go to bed. We were designed to be in connection to nature. And yes, of course, there is electricity, but you can do something that's very simple, which is that change your overhead light to lamps that are on your table, and that changes how your brain is processing the light. So you've already collapsed my Jonathan's top mental health things into five, because you are basically turning sleep into a general category called sleep hygiene. So things like a regular bedtime, a regular wake-up time, eight hours of sleep.

meaning not being in your bed for eight hours, but trying to clock eight hours of sleep, having some transition time, both kind of mentally and also in terms of some of the physiological cues that we can get. And that can be things with screens, with light, you know, there's an entire universe, which I don't want to get into

because I want to get into the other things on our mental health list. But in general, heads up, even if you are not going to therapy or don't want to, even if you're not on medication or don't want to be, what seems to be clear, everybody needs to admit it, is that sleep itself and regulating sleep in this way actually does have a significant impact on,

I'm not going to say it's going to cure your schizophrenia. I'm not going to say it's going to give you no symptoms if you're someone who's bipolar. Like that's not what we're talking about. we're talking about things that are essentially free, right, and accessible to everyone that absolutely can have an impact. I do want to add that, you know, once you start kind of chipping into your evening and saying, I'm not going to work for these hours, I'm not going to do anything that requires that kind of screen contact, you're automatically, you're like automatically improving your mental health because you're are not forcing yourself to be in a mental state where you're constantly working, right?

You're constantly needing to do and be every second of the day. So I also want to say that it's not just the sleep hygiene. It's the structure and the dedication that we give to the hours that we spend not in a conscious state. So we've added to sleep this general concept of sleep hygiene. It includes many, many things. number two on my list of things that I think Jonathan's going to talk about. There's something else related to light that you've been really into bothering me about lately.

Tell us what that is. Morning light. Getting light not through a window. It has to be direct sunlight. It can be through clouds. It's okay if you have glasses on, preferably not sunglasses. But it has to be going outside as close to when you. you wake up as possible, and there is a certain quality of light that happens in the morning

that helps tell our brain to be awake. And getting exposed directly in your eyes to outside has a huge benefit in helping you sink your circadian rhythms and will help you at night realize and get the right messages that your body's synced up to the natural rhythms. Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and say, Jonathan is not making this science up. There's there's actual research and it does have to do with the eye is, it is the sensory system that you have that leads directly to the brain. There is no, it does not pass go. It does not collect 200. So the, um, the other senses that you have have to be processed through the thalamus. It's a, it's a region of your brain that does a lot of sensory and information

processing before it gets further processed. It's kind of a relay station. But with the eye, it basically goes into your eyeball. And, you know, if you remember any even basic anatomy of the eye, it is part of the nervous system. And it does connect. Jonathan's not making this up. It's all true and good. And so one of the kind of this is, this is like a hack, you know, like this is a way to kind of hack the system. So sleep being the number one thing on Jonathan's list. Number two is making sure that your day leads to a successful night. and these are also things that a lot of people in, I don't want to say the elite mental health space, but in the kind of more sophisticated academic kind of circles of talking about ways to optimize, you know, our mental health, this is one of those things.

And if anyone's ever heard this, like when you, if you're trying to get over jet lag or minimize jet lag, it is a thing that light shine usually on the back of the knees, I think. It's a place where it easily is absorbed. This is not, I promise, this is science, I promise. So we already know that light is already a code because we're, you know, we're animals. And we are animals that, as Jonathan said, do, you know, we are used to living in a state of nature. And you cannot take tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of years of evolution and say that we go to sleep when we want and we wake up when we want and everything's fine. So this is kind of one of those things that, you know, if you know any people like Jonathan, you know that they do this thing where they get up and like first thing they basically go outside.

Like before you even process kind of the light of where you're living, you get outside. This is also therapy that's often done for people with very, very severe depression, especially seasonal depression. Many people do have lights in your home that you can do light therapy with. they're often very, very expensive, but there are also hopefully more programs that are going to start either subsidizing or having ways that people can have access to light therapy. This is another category of things that like when, quote, the hippies talk about like light therapy and like going into a tube, like there actually is science to this, folks. So this is another one of Jonathan's sort of favorite mental health things that he's been, that's really what we should call this

episode. Mental health things Jonathan keeps bothering me about. So morning light. I want to clarify that I'm not making any of this up. It's hard to even say they're Jonathan's. There's Jonathan's in that I read articles and listen to podcasts. It's yours now. You're a doctor. We made you a doctor. There's a lot of people talking about this that are not me. All right. So I was right so far about two things. You collapsed three of them. So we've got sleep. No screens before bed goes with sleep. falls under sleep hygiene. Number two, light in the morning, morning light. Which is funny because in Hebrew, when you say good morning to someone, you say Bocair Tov, which means good morning. And the response is, it can be Bocair Tov, but a lot of times we say Bocair or morning light. Little optimism in the

morning. Little optimism from the Hebrew language. Okay, Jonathan, hit us with number three. Don't eat so close to bedtime. Okay, so great. Number three, I had, and this, You guys, we did not talk before. Like, this is, I have my list here. Show them your list. Let them see that you have not written. We have not cut away. They can't see that.

No, no, no. This is my list. So I put diet, just like general eating. I don't mean diet like dieting. I mean nutrition. What are the things that you are shoving into your face that are then being processed by your body? Many of us were not really introduced to this concept if we were raised. in any year before the year today. So, you know, I will say I had a concept as a child of like the foods

that my parents were happy when I ate and the foods they were not happy when I ate. So for me, food was more related to my parents' mental health state because certain foods, if I didn't eat them, like, would make everybody cry because I couldn't get dessert or whatever it was. You know, finish what's on your plate. You're eating like crap. Don't. eat that, whatever it was. Another place that many of us learned about diet and either behavior came in a very complicated discussion that people started having around autism. There was a huge increase in diagnoses of autism and that can be for many reasons, but it could be because there's more people becoming autistic and there was a huge investigation which, you know, is well known about

like, is it vaccines that's making that way? Is it plastics? Is it whatever? Or it could simply be that more people knew what autism was and were seeking help. And so you have all these increase of numbers. This was happening in the 90s is kind of when we saw. And what we saw is that certain people were reporting. Not that you can cure autism because autism, as we know, it is not, it's not something that you cure and get over. But that there were certain foods that seemed to shift children's, children in particular, seem to shift children's behavior.

And this then expanded into a conversation of certain kids who were being diagnosed hyperactive. People started saying, like, well, are they eating a lot of sugar? And we kind of all know about like, oh, sugar high, sugar low. But it seemed that this conversation kept evolving where what we learned is that there are some children who seem to be, and likely adults. but in particular, there are some children who seem to be very, very sensitive, and yes, more sensitive than any of us would like, especially if we are the parents of those children, to things like dies, to things like preservatives, to things like excessive amounts of sugar. And, you know, what we forget is that there's this huge range.

There's a huge spectrum. We are not like, you know, when I think of like the 1950s and the, the 1940s that a lot of our parents or in some case grandparents were raised in, there was kind of one person to be. And if you weren't that person, you were put in special ed, or they called you weird. I'm serious. Like this happened. They sent my mother to a therapist because she liked to draw and was a lefty because in that generation, there was something wrong. So imagine kids who learn differently, behave differently, react differently to foods that everybody else seems fine with, right? So that conversation has evolved to the point that people like Jonathan, who spend

a lot of time and energy and research, looking into food and looking at the science, what Jonathan has taught me is that there really are, even for adults, there are certain foods that do not mix with certain people's chemistry. And that does not matter if you also go to therapy or if you're on medication, it's completely separate from that. And for some people, you know, I used to hear people talk about nightshades. My friend Allison, the first person who ever introduced me to the concept of homebirth and breastfeeding, I'm forever indebted to this woman. Allison, at a certain point, was not eating nightshades. And I was like, she's lost it. What is a nightshade? You're telling me there are certain foods that make you feel different. I mean, I was probably such an arrogant

person. No doubt. So with that introduction in place, Jonathan, can you please talk a little bit about aspects of the diet that you have, as this would be number three on your list, of things that impact your mental health that even without going to therapy, without being put on medication, without reading a million books, without all those things, you may actually be able to shift some of the baseline with which you operate in the world? I have a lot of sympathy for this topic because I think this is a very overwhelming space. There's a lot of contradictory information. I'm by no means an expert, so I'm only going to share my personal experience, which is that know what you're putting in your body and

try to get a better understanding of if you're going to have reactions to that. It's very different than food allergies. It's very allergic to a different than an allergic reaction. But if you are having trouble mentally, emotionally or physically, and you haven't explored a deeper relationship to your food when you're eating, how you're eating, are you eating on the run? Are you eating a ton of fast food, processed food, takeout food, which has a ton of stabilizers and other ingredients? We don't appreciate that anything basically that is not. a vegetable that we are getting in its raw form, cooking ourselves, any sauces, the amount of stabilizers, fillers, even in health food, even in gluten-free crackers. When you read the

ingredients, I mean, people are like, oh, I'm going to go gluten-free. That's going to solve things. Like, it's really quite a bit more complicated than that. We know that eating things in their most unprocessed form is the best. And getting as much that as possible. But like our Dr. B episode said, many people have very messed up guts from stress, from bad diet. Overdiagnosis of antibiotics. It's a thing, people. Different types of medication and antibiotics. So spending time doing a couple things. One, knowing what you're eating, two, doing elimination diets, which is not forever. It's to pare back the number of things you're eating and then reintroduce them because there are so many variables unless you do that, you don't know

if it's the red pepper that you ate or the potato that you ate in order that's giving you a reaction. I think lots of people are having reactions to things that they're eating and don't know it. So trying to identify what those are because if the fuel that you're putting in your body is having a reaction, then you're spending a lot of energy responding to that reaction and not resting in digestion. And then the other last piece that I'll share is that when and how we eat is extremely important. If you work all day long, eat a massive bowl of pasta and then go right to bed. Sounds great. Yeah, you're going to be in a massive glucose state.

You're going to fall asleep. You're going to pass out, but you're not going to sleep well. And you're going to have a lot of your energy that's supposed to go into your sleeping and to your recovery focused on your digestion. So I don't know exactly how many hours you're supposed to not eat before bed, but a couple hours before bed to not eat. and to really like, and you know, this sounds so basic, but to slow down and chew your food.

Well, having mindfulness around meals. From my own experience, I would eat on the run. Like I would pick something up and I'd literally walk and eat it going into a meeting. And when you're doing that and when I was doing that, I'm not chewing my food. I'm just trying to get it in so that I don't feel hungry. That's a very different experience than I'm sitting down. I'm either going to listen to music or I'm going to have a podcast or I'm going to talk to someone and I'm going to take however many minutes.

It doesn't have to be. I'm taking an hour for lunch, but I'm going to sit and I'm going to know for the next 15 minutes or 10 minutes. I'm not responding to email. I'm not doing something else. I'm literally eating. And making eating an activity allows us to chew. There's a lot of people who have digestive problems who don't chew their food. And the beginning of our digestion is in our mouths and we have to create enough breakdown of our food in our mouths for our guts to be successful. Okay. So you've just said a lot of things. And because I'm trying to be a better human and not interrupt, I also feel like we've thrown out some concepts that I just want to, I want to kind highlight. When Jonathan talks about having the energy, he's not speaking on a crystal hippie level. So what happens in your body when you put food in it, there is a mastication process

by which, yes, I know it sounds like why are they talking about chewing? But if you think about the number of people in this country, the amount of money that all of your hard-earned tax money goes towards supporting in terms of medical taxes, all the things that like the economy needs to keep things going and support hospital systems and pay out insurance and the reason levels are high and blah, blah, blah, blah. We are all part of this system. The number of people that have stomach issues is enormous. And by stomach issues, I mean everything from, yes, things like irritable bowel syndrome, colitis, Crohn's disease, while those may have genetic components, there are aspects of how we eat and what we eat and the culture in which we frame food that absolutely changes the way people react to food.

And one of the things is simply the way that we chew, the way that we eat, and the amount of literally body energy that we allow to dedicate to breaking down food. So I named some of the stomach things also like upset tummy, not having regular bowel movements, having too many bowel movements, having not enough bowel movements. also the medicines that we so routinely are told to take for stomach problems, they are not benign. And this is not for them to be like, for people listening to say like, my ambialic doesn't want me to take peptobysmal. I have no idea what any individual human being should take. I'm not a doctor. I'm not your doctor. But the notion that it is so normal, right, to like, I mean, if you grew up in my family, like,

Everyone's like, pop in a tums, taking a pepto. It's like that was normal. It's like, oh, we're eating chopped liver and meat constantly. And we're wondering why seltzer is necessary. Or if you eat and you constantly have heartburn or your food is repeating on you, that is a sign that it's not normal. Something's wrong. Here's the thing.

If you are Eastern European, if you are Italian, if you are really anything from the Mediterranean. and also possibly most places in the world, I would guess. If when you eat, it doesn't feel good in your heart after, that's heartburn. It doesn't need to be acidic. You know when you like, do you know when you taste a little bit of throw up and it freaks you the F out? That's not a good sign if it's happening a lot. The amount of reflux that people experience, my reflux went away when I stopped reading the news,

people. This is an interconnection between your mind and your emotions and your body. And yes, Jonathan is big on this and now you know why. So it is about the way we eat. I mean, eating standing up, if you're a parent and you haven't eaten standing up, I would like to know how you achieved that because much of my life of my kids' early years was standing over the trash can eating whatever they did. didn't eat, throwing out the rest, and that was dinner, and then wine in a sippy cup. And then someone was crying and you had to go immediately. Right. So you're also eating while someone is screaming your name and saying, I hate you.

Anyway, try eating like that. So simple things like I remember, I'm going to name all my friends that I laughed at, my friend Jasmine, who lived at the Tasahara Zen Center for quite some time in the Bay Area in San Francisco. When we would eat. eat. It would take her forever. And people always comment that I scarf my food. And I'm like, of course I do. And I fight the Cossacks. I don't know what I was running to do. Jasmine would eat so freaking slow. And what it was was that she was raised with a consciousness of patience and mindfulness around food. And this is actually a meditation that my mom did in her meditation class. They make you eat one grape. And it sounds silly. But again,

this is a, this is, we're giving you a free way to slow your body down both in general and specifically around food. Religious traditions, what do they do before you eat? You pray. And it's not because you feel the need to have God intrude on every aspect of your life. If you want to look at it like that, you can. But the notion is, and I'm speaking from the experience of Jewish prayer, is that you say, you stop and you breathe and you say, I didn't make this, meaning I did not create the earth, feed it the nutrient. I had, I have help in how I eat. And in traditional Judaism, you actually bless the different categories of food that you eat. There's foods that grow from the earth. There's foods that grow from the tree. And then there's anything that has

grain or like bread in it. And there's a whole hierarchy of food and which foods take precedence based on, I mean, honestly, the amount of energy also that it does take. And what do we do after a meal? You pray. And you say, thank you, whoever in the universe, whatever in the universe, allowed me to eat that food and then to be able to move on to what's next. Judaism also has a prayer, by the way, for going to the bathroom. Every time you go to the bathroom, people make a blessing. And it's a prayer that thanks you for the openings and closings that open and close when they're supposed to, right? So this is what we talk about with mindfulness in eating. And yes, that's why religious traditions do it. Is it also to shove God down your throat if you

don't like religion? Yes, that's why. But it originated in the concept of mindfulness. This slowing down, and I'm not a religious person, I never connected widely with it, but the practice of slowing down in that way and having an appreciation, showing some form of gratitude. We know gratitude maybe that will be on the list that that's coming up. We won't ruin that surprise. But for a while, I would, you know, when I started to learn about energy work and hands-on work, I would just hold my hands beside my meal and just take a moment and it shifts your mind and body to, again, go out of doing and into being.

the other thing that is also equally connected and are probably things on the list, but I'll just tease them here, it impacts breathing and it impacts stress. Let's just go into number four. Jonathan, what do you think is number four on my list? There's two more on my list of things that Jonathan does for mental health.

Breathing. And actually didn't make the list and now I feel like a horrible person. Well, I actually have four things left on my list. I have, so I don't know which one it's going to be. Should I just pick one? Move movement. There it is. Exercise.

Preferably with weird equipment. Again, this is not coming from me. It is the most fundamental way to help yourself is to move your body. Mental health. There is no mind without the body. When we talk about moving your body and mental health, there are chemicals released in your body when you exercise that absolutely promote mental. wellness. And it's also part of the discipline and the routine of moving your body. And often, if you can, you know, getting out into a space, you know, often we walk or we run and things

like that that you can do or biking, you know, in nature. But there's very, very little reason to not believe that for all of us, we really need to move our bodies. I mean, I try and move my body every day. And that doesn't mean that I necessarily hit a yoga class or like get to do a taekwondo or whatever it is. Even just getting out from what I'm doing, harder yet, don't take your phone with you. Just walk. Walk for 20 minutes. Yes, walking until or running until your heart is elevated or doing exercise that elevates your heart. Jonathan, there's like some formula. The orange, what is it? The phase two cardio. The phase two cardio is supposed to be such that if you were trying to carry on a conversation,

You could do it, but it would be difficult. You could do it, but you'd be huffing and puffing and breathing. So it's kind of like if you're running, if you've ever like run stairs, at that point, you do not want to talk to someone while you're running stairs. If you're doing a lighter jog and you can sustain that, I've seen people jogging and talking or my older son and his dad, you know, they will take jogs and they talk. But if you're like sprinting, that's beyond level two cardio. And that's a different kind of exercise that usually should be done as, you know, more of a formal training and with certain dietary restrictions.

But for most kind of normal people, here's a really quick heads up, folks. Your mental health will improve if you move your body more, period. That's it. Like, we don't even need to say more. Yes, Jonathan has lots of weird equipment that he likes to use. But you don't even need that. There's stages to this. Basic level, move your body, try and stretch.

learn about some fundamentals of stretching. And here's the, like, I have had a lot of physical pain in my life. I have injured things. I've pulled things. I've played sports. I have had a Canadian. They make you do all those sports. I've had accidents, sports accidents.

I've had a hip replacement. There was years before my hip replacement where I was very debilitated and refusing to admit it. He's writing his dating profile, folks. Unless you have something that requires serious. medical intervention, which some people do, and that's why they don't end up moving their body very much. Often when something hurts, it may be uncomfortable to start moving it, but actually movement is the thing that will help it the most. And what happens, and this is a metaphor for life, something hurts, we move away from the pain, we try and limit the movement so that we don't experience

the pain and ultimately... Or we pop a pill. We pop a pill. Or we pop a pill or we do something to distract us and ultimately our life gets smaller and smaller and smaller to avoid the thing that's bothering us versus, I mean, I have a chronic bad shoulder and the only thing that will help it is stretching into it, feeling the discomfort, increasing my range of motion. If I stop moving and pushing the range of motion, it feels better, but I don't get to use it. Well, and this is also something, and then we can move on to our fifth item. This is something that also is very, very connected with mental health because, and I'm not speaking to your shoulder, although I have in the past, and for that, I'm very sorry. There are many things that hurt in our bodies that heads up people

have a strong component of stress. And, you know, I will sing the praises of Alan Gordon and his book, The Way Out, that we talked about, you know, if you haven't seen that episode, check out the back catalog. Yeah, I've been very transparent that I have chronic pain that moves around my body. Alan Gordon was the therapist I went to who specializes in what is now known as mind-body syndrome. It's the school of Dr. John Sarno's research. And many times the fear I have of having injury causes more injury than actually doing an activity. So we're just going to call number four movement. And within that, there are so many things that can be healed.

Again, we've not listed one thing yet that involves equipment. signing up for a therapist, these are all things that you can start doing on your own. This idea of limiting, because it may be stressed, because it may hurt, whatever it is, it is such a parallel to what Dr. B talked about with food, which is that something irritates us instead of working on fixing it, we just eliminated and then our microbiome gets smaller. And another parallel is in our emotional worlds. Someone bothers us. We have a reaction.

and we say, I'm not going to talk to that person anymore instead of what's going on with me, how am I contributing to that relationship? Should I speak to my therapist before I decide not to speak to them anymore? Whatever it might be the simple exclusion of that activity is not always the way to resolve it and to grow. I'm not saying stay in an abusive relationship, but we have to look at it, we have to evaluate it, we have to move it before we understand what it actually is. All right. What's the last thing? Number five.

So we've done, let's just, okay, sleep hygiene, morning light, nutrition, movement. What's the fifth one? I'm going to list three and you tell me what it is, okay? Because I don't know. I can't, I can't, I can't. I said breathing. You said it wasn't going to be breathing. No.

I was going to say stress, nature, gratitude, or like, really learning about yourself, like self-discovery? No. No, I'm trying, no, in the category of things that we're trying to encourage people to do that don't involve, let's say intervention, you know, breathing is important, yes. I'm going to take stress, which is a very large concept, but one of the main things you and I have talked about that is something that is directly related to stress is, reexamining your relationship with social media?

I would say definitely reexamine your relationship with social media, but with also just generalized digital technology. What is your media diet entail? Okay, great. I wanted to just spend a heartbeat, though, on social media in particular and kind of the culture of comparison and the culture of consuming. And there are so many great things about social media. We're using social media to promote this episode and to talk about our podcast and all sorts of other things. I do not have a fundamental problem with social media. That's not what we're talking about.

What I see happened for me, what I see happening with my children, what I see happening with so many people. And I'm a victim of it too. We get completely, I mean, for a lot of interesting neuroscience reasons, we get caught in a loop where we now kind of accept that it is normal to at any given point in the day, when you have any downtime or you feel uncomfortable, we start that scrolling. And yes, sometimes we're checking email or sometimes we're checking weather. So yes, reexamine your relationship with anything digital. I promise you, we are animals still in a state of nature. But in particular, I really think that the amount of consumerism that often is the thrust of even the most

innocent and benign accounts that you follow and the notion that you are really for hours of our day, we are exposing ourselves to, for the most part, a polished, packaged, packaged version of reality. And even, I mean, I've seen the celebrities without makeup. They are women who look exceptional without makeup. It's not the average lady without makeup, which is a very different story. So I'm saying even when they're selling you, it's natural. Even when they're selling you, love your cellulite. When they're telling you, love your tiger stripes, which most of us just call shitty stretch marks,

you're still seeing a very, very polished view of reality. It's fun, it's interesting. There are certain things that are very important, but this is one of the mental health things that Jonathan and I talk about a lot that is eroding for so many of us who are vulnerable. It is eroding our sense of self and confidence. And it impacts everything else about my mental health

when I'm locked in there. The other problem is that it erodes any amount of downtime we have. We just fill all of the space every moment. I am totally guilty of this. I have not. You're the worst. Do you know how many Instagram videos of golden retrievers I watch? And they make me happy.

I love when you watch your golden retrievers. It's an empty happiness. You know, I should probably have five videos of golden retrievers a day. And really what happens is that I go on there to be distracted and it becomes this endless thing. And I can take 15 minutes and then all of a sudden, and I'm like, where did that 15 minutes go? I don't feel better afterwards. Well, here's the thing.

What I've noticed, and this is like one of my really favorite things about you that is so sweet, there is a real kind of childlike wonder about certain things about you. And when I see you engaging in your Golden Retriever videos, I do see that as it's very, there's a thing. therapeutic aspect because I can tell when you're doing it and kind of why. What I'm more thinking about is, you know, kind of the, like, this is like me attacking what Instagram stories I look at over your shoulder. It's like lots of attractive people working out. I watch those two. Exactly. And that, I think, look, I also know that my perspective is as a woman in a culture that has, you know, for as long as I can remember, told me I'm never going to matter. I'm never going to look right. I mean, I didn't see anyone who looked even remotely like me,

you know, in the media for most of my life, except like Bet Midler and Barbara Streisand and everybody's like, who are that? You know, all the kids were like, you look like them. Who cares? So, you know, I think it's also, it's different for, it's different for men. It's different for women. I, there's, there's variety there. But yes, it's more of the like when I look at people's lives and when I start saying, why did she, I mean, you can tell what it's like when I go on Instagram. Why is he, Why is Martha Stewart advertising catlet or does she even have a cat? I'll go off on that for 30 minutes. Nobody wants to hear me talk about that.

Jonathan, those five mental health categories are very, very important. So just to recap, sleep hygiene, morning light, nutrition, movement, digital limitations, right? So here are my fun ones. Do you know how many fun ones I have? One, two, three, four, five, six. I have eight. Ready? What are you looking at right now?

Are you distracted? No. Okay, wait for it, ready? Are you going to do it through interpretive dance? One second. Take a second. I need to. I hope people are watching this.

I need to get some water. For those who are not watching, Myam is literally drinking out of a five gallon jug. This water is delicious. Jonathan believes that his entire emotional state is based on buying this water. That is slanderous. Again, I object. And I also, these eight things are not to tease you, but I think it's important also for people to realize there are things outside of the box that many people do feel makes a significant difference. and these are things that you can absolutely find science to talk about alkaline water.

You can find science to support different pH levels for water. It's a thing, but I had never been to one of these water stores. Getting the chlorine out of your water? Get the chlorine out of your water. I had never been to one of these water stores. And there's like an entire universe of people like Jonathan. I mean, there's like six choices of water and you take your bottle and you put it on this thing. It's crazy.

They have glass bottles in case you don't want these. There was a long time where I was only getting living water, which was unfiltered water that was tested regularly from underground springs that went through a natural filtration process. And hold on, there is science to this. We again, going back to animals, it has not been very long that we've had only chemically treated water. We are totally removed from our natural elements. And if we want to go to natural elements, get your feet in the dirt and get some grounding. Take your socks and shoes off at any park. Hopefully they haven't sprayed the fields with pesticides to kill the weeds and get yourself grounding.

So this is the portion of myambiolics breakdown that we send to Gwyneth Paltrow to show that we deserve a segment on her show. Okay, great. Water. Here's another mental health rule of Jonathan's, no scary movies. I love scary movies and documentaries, and Jonathan had this theory, which I completely poo-poohed. I think he might be right. Jonathan, tell us, tell us what it is. How does scary movies impact mental health? This goes to your media diet. What is your media diet? How is it contributing? Look, I personally do not like scary movies. Some people do. And I think in moderation. People relate to that. Some people actually have, we've heard people say that they only feel safe in a scary movie because the parameters are there. They know the scary is coming.

But I'm talking about crime documentaries is what we're talking about specifically. Like really brutal, gory things. I hope it's okay to say, but my name had an addiction to crime documentaries. It's okay to say. You would watch them before bed. They were my bedtime stories. So my gut reaction to that was holy goodness, that might not be a good thing to watch every night before bed. Why do you have to micromanage my life? Stop telling me what to do. You don't know anything.

Is your life perfect? That's what I said. That sounds about right. And the media that we consume viscerally impacts us. We cannot tell the difference between real and imagined fear. When we're seeing violent images over and over and over again, we cannot help but take that on our body. and that's part of the reason we like storytelling is our body empathizes and we have mirror neurons, which Mayam can speak about. And we experience aspects of the media that we're watching.

So we will feel fear. We will feel scared. It will go into our subconscious. We'll process that at night. Okay, you lost me at subconscious. What do you say to people who say, and I want you to give the honest answer. And if you don't give the honest answer, I will give your honest answer. What do you say for people who are like, It doesn't bother me. Shut up. I will say it's affecting you in ways that you're not aware of. There we go. That's it. You're right. I mean, look, also, I'll be honest. You know, I took a hit during COVID emotionally. And a lot of my anxiety, you know, comes up at that witching hour, you know, the hour when a lot of people will, and when I used to binge eat,

you know, that's when a lot of people will drink or smoke weed. Like, it's the witching hour. And it's those, especially, you know, not to make it sad. I don't have a partner in my house. so I'm alone a lot and my kids are also now older. So my evening responsibilities are much less. So I have loneliness, you know. I just made myself sad. But for me, like, that was my activity. And, you know, while I didn't consider myself an addict of any sort,

what I have noticed is that when a new, when I will see a new documentary come up, I get this rush of like, I really want it. and I have not. It has been, I can tell you exactly when it was, it's been since October. We get caught in the cycle of that rush because we know it gives us this emotional rush, even if we think it's, you know, positive, even if we think it's negative, we're like, it's just a flood of information and we get caught up in that. What I kind of think about is that, you know, even for people who are like,

my parents hit me and I'm fine, it never makes sense, you know, to a young brain to feel pain. and to feel terror from the people who are supposed to protect and love them, it never feels fine to your brain to take in the kind of, especially with crime documentaries, the level of intricate detail. All right, these next ones are going to move

a little bit quicker. So number three, if things get too deep, just make a joke. This is the technique of Jonathan's that I don't know that he realized he was doing. When anything feels tense, intimate, or emotional, make a joke the more inappropriate, the better, because it completely removes any conversation of the thing that

you were talking about. The matter you make the other person, the more the conversation ends quickly. I will own the fact that I've used the tactic if you don't laugh, you cry, but sometimes you have to cry and having a joke every time is not appropriate. So I, I have to I've re-examined my relationship to that tactic. Okay, good. Mental Health, Jonathan Mental Health, secret hack. If you just eliminate people when they bother you, they won't bother you anymore. I think I spoke to the fact that that is not a good strategy earlier in this episode.

No, but I will say that I have noticed isolation tendencies, not just for you, but for a lot of us, that when things feel out of control or hard or stress, it sometimes does feel like, I just need to go away. And sometimes that can be a good reset, but in general, we do need to have interactions with people. And we learn so much about ourselves when we continue to engage with people. Sometimes not speaking anymore about something requires, is required because it's a reset. And people can get into a cycle of debating it to death. And when there is tension, when something is going awry, sometimes you just need to reset. Okay, number five of Jonathan's secret mental health hacks. You have to, if you are a person who is sensory sensitive,

you have to have soft clothing, soft sheets, and soft towels. Don't wear your shoes on the wrong feet. This is something I learned from Jonathan. I'm saying this, like, partly jokingly. You know, a lot of people talk about when they get into, like, Alonon, which Alononon is the organization for people who love an alcoholic or an addict. And a lot of people, when they come into Alon, like, the kind of expression is like, they didn't even know what their favorite color was. Because whatever his favorite color is, whatever her favorite color, like, I'm always taking care of other people. I have no time to think about myself. And I was always like, I'm not that person. I know I love black, which is also like kind of a weird answer, right? Like, I like no colors, just black. But I was always like, I'm very confident. I know the things I like. Like people would describe. me as like a confident person who speaks her mind. I didn't even know. I didn't even know to tune in enough to what my body felt like when I put on clothing or when I laid my head down. And this,

the idea is not that like I wear cashmere. I don't because it's made of animals. But the notion that you can have an awareness of what things feel like and that certain things, feel good. This is like one of the strangest, most beautiful things, Jonathan, you have taught me because it's not about money. But to me, that's like a rich person thing because I wasn't raised with money. So it was like, who cares what it feels like, as long as you have clothing? Like, you know, that's really. But what you taught me is that, like, I'm a person who is so touch sensitive, meaning I'm a very tactile person. I seek movement and I seek comfort. I'm very touchy. Like I I am. I'm a very touchy person when people make me laugh. I hit them like playfully, but sometimes it hurts them. Like, I'm a very tactile person. But this was a place that like I had not even thought about what anything felt like. And like it's, I mean, I have chills because like it's so profound that like when you introduced me to soft cotton, it's like it's not even expensive stuff. Like, oh, that feels nice. And like I hadn't even live.

with a consciousness that that matters. And it does, it changes how you feel. It goes back to that there are a lot of things happening just outside of our awareness bubble that are impacting us all the time. It could be the fact that we ate something and we're getting irritated or that our fabric is irritating us and we're not even tuned into it. Or that there's a more optimal fabric. It doesn't even have to be that like, oh, I mean, obviously if it's itching me, I know. And like, you know, like Fred, my younger one is like every label like he doesn't want anything he doesn't want right no but for me it wasn't even like anything was bothering me but the notion that there might be something that was nicer for me for me and even like a very soft um synthetic fabric i'll choose a natural cotton because

over the course of while the synthetic fabric feels softer immediately over the course of a day the cotton breathes better and it's just bringing an awareness to how things impact us Number six, I said this kind of as a joke. You do pay a lot of attention to gadgets and like, like, like trends of gadgets. Like what? And like, like whether it's like fitness equipment or like a supplement. And I don't mean this to sound negative because I think this is one of those like secret Jonathan things that. I don't mean it to sound negative, but.

No, no, no. What I'd like to turn it into is that, you know, a. next level mental health thing that you do is you do stay up on trends in kind of mental wellness. Meaning if people are talking about cold plunge, like, you look into it. If they're talking about this gadget that can help with your sleep, like you buy it. Like you are. That's something that you do. You choose to spend money and energy on figuring these things out.

It's not something I would say is like an easy one that like everyone should follow trends. But for you, that is something, if you hear that like, oh, everybody's taking this like hyluronic acid or everybody's taking this, you do the research because those are things that absolutely we had David Sinclair on. There are a lot of things out there in the kind of what a lot of us would say is like, oh, what's the trend this week? You know, what's Jonathan going to, what supplement is he going to talk about this week? But a lot of those things have significant, they do, they have significant impact on a larger profile of wellness. I just was reading about broccoli seed extract the other day. Exactly. Broccoli seed extract.

I'm going to, you don't eat it. You put it on your left earlobe while you're in the infrared sauna that Jonathan would like me to rent so we could try it out before we go into our cryogenic whatever chamber. I mean, there's a lot of information out there. A lot of it is overwhelming. But it's overwhelming to cipher through it. I think that so many people are giving free health information out there. And if you can cipher through the noise, there's a lot that can be learned. I'm definitely not a scientist.

So I feel a lot of the time ill-equipped to figure it all out. But we live in an age where there's never been more information available if people are able to cipher through it. And that actually leads to number seven. We're almost done. There's only eight. Number seven is a deeper dive. Again, these are the things that, again, is kind of like next. level of exploring sort of your body wellness and how it relates to mental health,

many of us do have food sensitivities that we do not know about and that may be impacting us. So it relates to the nutrition from our top five category, but this would be kind of doing a deeper dive and being open to more of an alternative kind of understanding of how our bodies processed food. The last one, Jonathan, is one that might be controversial. You want to make a joke about what you think the last one is. I'm not sure it's this, but the one that I would add is exploring intergenerational trauma patterns and stories that may be impacting you. Just a little light reading.

No, that was that was not number eight. Number eight was be skeptical about a lot of what Western medicine has offered us up till here. That doesn't mean that Western medicine is not important, that it does not have a place. but Jonathan has taught me that there is a tremendous value in listening to your body, listening to your emotional state, listening to your physiological state before you rush to pop a pill. And even if the pill is something that we are told is completely fine, take it all you want, even something like ibuprofen, even something like Tylenol, it does not affect everybody the same way. And it shifts our psychological structuring of what we believe we can handle and not when we

automatically assume there's a pill for every ill. And for me, for example, if I get a migraine and I'm working and I'm in front of a camera, I cannot be throwing up. I cannot be in a debilitated state where I cannot look at lights or interact with people. I don't get sick days, right for my job. If I feel a migraine coming on, I hit it with narcotics. No, I hit it with ibuprofen as soon as possible. And I, for me, drinking a caffeinated beverage that also has sugar, the sugar actually can help and the caffeine can help. I do. I drink a soda pop that has caffeine and sugar and that often will at least let me get through that. But when I have a migraine, otherwise. What I need to know is, even if there are hormonal things going on, I try and picture

what would it look like 5,000 years ago, right? I would say, someone take care of my babies. I need to go lie down. I'm not going to be picking berries right now. I'm not going to be hunting for bison because I think I might have been the kind of woman who did that. It is a message that my body is giving me based on physiologically what's happening, emotionally what's happening, my body's constantly talking to me. And so is yours. And so that is number eight of Jonathan's secret mental health hacks. Be skeptical, be wary of Western medicine. Examine it, learn about it. Do not assume your body does not have healing power and that you cannot change your circumstances so as to positively affect your physical state. Yes. And that's,

extremely easy for people to misinterpret. We are pro-Western medicine. We are pro-scientific evolution in terms of advancement. I should say we are pro-scientific advancement. And also, we are the most over-medicated society that has ever existed in the world. Even comparable to other wealthy Western countries. Yeah, there is no way to avoid the previous six things mentioned plus some and take a pill to fix yourself. The biggest fallacy in Western medicine is that you go to a doctor to be fixed.

Now, I got a hip replacement. It was fixed by Western medicine. That's why this is a juxtaposition. I learned so much from watching what happened when you had your Western medicine experience because we did a lot of other. you know, holistic things. I mean, I literally had like a little crystal altar in the waiting room. Like people thought I was nuts. But the way, I might cry, the way that your body reacted even to minimal medication was completely confirmed by every doctor in that place. You have a body that is very, very pure. That means it is not used to the level of medication that you.

you had to be given. And of course, most people are not routinely anesthetized or have their hips replaced. However, it made me so sad to think of my body, everybody else's body, who who routinely are dosing ourselves with medication to the point that we need more and more for it to actually work. The smallest amount of a little bit of a medicine to make you go night, made you very, very ill. And it's not because you just, quote, have a bad reaction. They said, this is a body that is not familiar with, it's a toxin. I mean, it's a toxin you have to take. And you were very, very sick.

The last thing I'll add is make room for your emotions. They don't always need to be managed. They don't always need to be responded to. Sometimes they need to just exist and work themselves through something I've been learning, something I have not always done, but that goes hand in hand with the explore alternatives. You know, there may be supplements, there may be exercise, there may be movement, there may be time that allows you to heal, and there also may be emotional and stress factors that are impacting whatever you're going through.

I want to thank Mandy Teefe for joining us for the top of this episode and springboarding us into a conversation about tools for mental health. I have to say, Jonathan, I really enjoyed compiling this list just for myself. I did this on my own. I'm grateful that I guessed most of the right things. And in terms of your secret eight mental health things, you know, everything from the crazy water that my children tease you for drinking to the soft clothing. that I'm currently wearing. I appreciate how much you have impacted my mental health and also what a nice addition it is for our breakdown community

that we have a resident, we have a resident expert in his own mental health, even if he doesn't always do it the way I would like him to. I have to add one more thing. Actually, I always have to add... Because it got too intimate, you have to make a joke. I always have to add more things. Gratitude practice, it changes a lot.

And the most important, find someone who makes you laugh. Jonathan also is acting like this is the last time he's ever going to podcast. He wants to put all the things out there. Thank you, Jonathan, for your both overt and covert mental health hacks. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next. It's my ambialics breakdown. She's going to break it down for you.

She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction. And now she's going to. Break down