The One You Feed - Bonus: The Why Try Effect with Dr. Jon Mills

Episode Date: December 18, 2017

Dr. Jon Mills is back and in this episode we discuss a paper that talks about self stigmatization and the "why try" effect.Self-stigma and the “why try” effect: impact on life goals and evidence-based practiceshttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2694098/Many individuals with mental illnesses are troubled by self-stigma and the subsequent processes that accompany this stigma: low self-esteem and self-efficacy. “Why try” is the overarching phenomenon of interest here, encompassing self-stigma, mediating processes, and their effect on goal-related behavior. In this paper, the literature that explains “why try” is reviewed, with special focus on social psychological models. Self-stigma comprises three steps: awareness of the stereotype, agreement with it, and applying it to one’s self. As a result of these processes, people suffer reduced self-esteem and self-efficacy. People are dissuaded from pursuing the kind of opportunities that are fundamental to achieving life goals because of diminished self-esteem and self-efficacy. People may also avoid accessing and using evidence-based practices that help achieve these goals. The effects of self-stigma and the “why try” effect can be diminished by services that promote consumer empowerment.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, I am here with John Mills, who was on a previous episode we did about trauma, and I heard great things from a good number of you about the subject and about John, so we've got him back. Last time we did this remote via Skype,

he was in North Carolina, I was at my house in Columbus, and now we are both at my house in Columbus. For any of you who are trying to keep track of where John is, now you know. Nobody cares. No, by and large. This week, we are going to talk about an article called Self-Stigma and the Why Try Effect? Impact on Life Goals and Evidence-Based Practices. John, why don't you give us a brief overview of what this one is about? Sure. So, that is a very long title with a lot of mumbo-jumbo nonsense in there, so let's cut right to the chase. So, what this is really talking about is that the stigmatization of mental illness that has existed in society ends up trickling down into a personal level of someone that does have mental illness. And that in turn leads to a negative impact on someone's sense of self-worth

or what they would self-esteem. And that also impacts something called self-efficacy, which is the belief that if you try something or make an effort that it's really gonna matter. And then finally, if that's been negatively impacted, you don't have that belief, you come to the conclusion, why do

you even want to try to make an effort to change? And underlying that, the assumption is that you have agreed with and applied those stereotypes from that society has made about people with mental illness. And there you go. So, basically, this is, I don't believe I can, so I don't try. Similar, you and I talked about this earlier, and we don't need to go down the same rabbit hole, but similar to Martin Seligman's learned helplessness, which basically says that at a certain point, doesn't seem that your efforts are going to make any difference, so you don't take them. So I think why try can happen for a lot of different reasons, and maybe we'll explore those. But let's talk about it in this self-stigma way. So

if I believe things about mental illness, and those cause me to feel bad about myself, those cause me to think like, I'll always be this way, there's nothing I can do, and I don't try. So what are some of the things that we can do to work with this in a way that is useful? Well, I guess it depends on where you're at and what type of mental illness you have, Eric. So it's the seriousness and the level that you're experiencing. So one of the things I do is I try to make sure that I connect with other people and talk about the struggles that I'm having. A lot of times I need some external validation that what I am doing is making a difference, that I am making progress in my life, even though I might not see it.

And I can kind of build upon that to keep going. And hopefully at at some point then once I start to see that there's some progress in my life I can start to develop my own kind of internal sense of self-efficacy not you know to overcome the lack of it. It occurs to me as we're talking about this this is a little bit of an argument Eric Mizell a guest we had on recently talked about one of the problems with labeling mental illness is that it's a label we put on ourselves that limits who we are. People often say that about admitting they're alcoholic. I don't want to, if I'm just an alcoholic, I'm putting a label on myself. And for some reason, those labels for me haven't translated into, I don't think, at least not on a conscious level, into a sense of limitation. But I do at points in life I have had, I think I'm beyond them, at least for now. You never know what's going to come.

But I do believe that I can affect my depression and I do work with it a lot. But talk to me about self-stigma in your own case. So, as you were talking, what I was thinking about was, who was the author you were just saying something about if we label ourselves, that's limiting, and so the underlying kind of implication there is labeling yourself as mentally ill is limiting. Okay, so here's, first of of all what I think about that. So, one, I don't like, I'm bipolar. I'm not bipolar, but the statement is making that a part of your identity rather than I have bipolar disorder. Same with I'm an alcoholic. Okay, that is identifying and labeling yourself.

But if you have a condition, then even if that's labeling you, if you don't say I have alcoholism or I have mental illness of some sort, depression, you don't have the ability to address it. some sort depression. You don't have the ability to address it. So, I think there's important distinction there. Yeah, so it's like, I'm a diabetic. No, you have diabetes. We need to label it, but it's one thing about internalizing, I have depression, I can't do anything about my depression. You know, I'm not going to be able to have a job, I'm not going to be able to be successful, people aren't going to want to be around me, and there it is. I'm not going to be able to be successful. People aren't going to want to be around me.

And there it is. Yep. I see a version of this in people I work with who have tried throughout their life to build better habits. I'm going to exercise. I'm going to eat right. I'm going to write in my journal. I'm going to work on my book. I'm going to do whatever it is.

And there's a lot of, this is why try, not from a self-stigma, but from a, I've tried it so many times before, and I've gotten better, and then I just stop again, and I've gotten worse. So, talk a little bit about that. Let's move away from just self-stigma, but I think why try is a great overall topic. Where are the areas in your life that why try comes into effect? When it comes on, it wipes away any hope of the future. It also wipes away, likewise, any ability to connect with successes from the past. That makes it very easy to conclude that there's no reason to try. I never had any success in the

past because when I look at it, it was only just a temporary bunch of crap. You're back in the place you started. Yeah, so why try? And then at the other side, if I'm looking forward, if I'm not going to really get anywhere, why try? So it is both sides. You're getting it from your perception of the future and the perception of your past. So that's a pretty sticky place to be. And getting out of that has, at that point for me, has always required some level of

medical intervention. But I guess I always have kept at some point, at some level, some belief. You know, I've not completely fallen victim to the Y-tri effect when it comes to treatment at some level. I must have always kept some belief to actually go see the doctor when I was really, really bad. I don't know if it's more out of desperation and hoping they can just give me something to alleviate the pain. It reminds me of one of the darkest points for me of my addiction was after I had gone to treatment, after I had gone to some AA meetings, and then I used again. And I had a period of time where I really thought like, there's no fix for this. Like I did what was suggested and I'm still doing it.

So once a junkie, always a junkie. And looking back on it, it's so preposterous to me that I would have thought that the first time I really tried to go into treatment that it should take and it should be permanent. I now know looking at it over a lot of years and a lot of people that a lot of us have a stop, start, stop, start over time. But I remember that being sort of a why try effect. And it's a dark place to be. Luckily, since then, I think I seem to have maybe similar to you with treatment. But

even when I'm really down, I have some optimism that something can fix it. Something can make it better. I may not know what it is. I may not have access to it. But I keep trying. And sometimes I think that is one of the most important things with mental illness or any problem in life is to just keep trying. Keep trying different things, even though, and that's directly opposite the why try. The why try is because life is different. You can try something different. You're different than you were last time you tried it, et cetera, et cetera. I'm sorry, Chris always gets mad, et cetera, et cetera. So you're suggesting that a good way to continue why try is to remain naive?

I don't think, no, I don't think that's what I was saying. Because what wasn't that, what did you have the first time you went to treatment that gave you that ability to have that hope you were naive about? Yeah, but after that, I didn't have it my point is i know if you then that's my point if you kept the naivete then you would continue to try as if you had that hope but i don't think naivete however you say that word is what i'm talking about because that sort of almost starts to sound like i just keep trying the same thing over and over and don't get any different results. I'm suggesting that when we try again, we have learned things from the last time we tried that we can bring into the try attempt that we're doing now, whatever those might be.

Whereas if we think, why bother to try? It's always been this way before. My counter to that in my own mind and when I'm talking to other people is, yeah, but you're not the person you were then. You've learned things. You're a different person. Like if you relapse, I did. I was, you know, eight, nine years sober and I relapsed, right? Because you're a loser.

Because I'm a loser. We'll get to yours here in a minute. When I came back, it's not like I hadn't had eight years of sobriety under me. I still had that. I may not have had the continuous days, right? But I had a foundation that was different than the first time I went in. And so, yeah, I'm just saying that a counter to why try is to be more open-minded that says, you know what? I did try this before, but now I'm a different person.

I could try it differently. I could try it better. I could modify it this way. I could learn this thing. Yeah, actually, that kind of makes me think about the article again. And it talks about identifying with the group to kind of find some empowerment to get over that. So, yes, I did relapse. Thank you for bringing that back up, Eric, years ago. And when I went back to what I was doing before in recovery community, I was met

with a lot of, well, it wasn't so much that I got the idea that everything you learned isn't good anymore. You know, you have to start over, but it was to, well, just keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it. You know, these things, these principles just will not fail you. And I'm like, well, just look around. And the underlying that was also then this idea I felt, I internalized it because I realized my anger was really, myself, I thought I failed. I didn't do good enough. I didn't work the steps hard enough. And it's taken me a long time to get past that, to find something new that I could believe in and grab onto, because that was the biggest thing that I found to be producing hope for me. And not like, why try, but why not try? When I first got sober and went to meetings, there was this whole new unknown kind of thing

that I had never tried before. And it seemed like there was so much hope and I could just get into it and eat it up and it would just last forever. Well, that wasn't the case. There wasn't something that existed that was an elixir of all life. So now I had to, when I fell off, I had to find a new way,

something that I could believe in. Pete Yep. And that is a, boy, that's a deep subject that we're going to steer off of. We could do another episode on that, because coming back to something like recovery, there's so many challenges there. But circling back to what you started with, which one of the things the article suggests is one way to limit self stigma is to find other people that have the same condition or the same thing. And part of the reason I think that I do this show, or one of the things that I do, and I think it helps a lot of people is it's just so powerful. There's something so powerful in realizing like, I am not alone in this. Like, the way I am feeling is perfectly normal in a certain context. Like, there's lots of people who have felt this, do feel this. I just think that is such a powerful way. It's one of the things I think is so important in feeling better, getting better, and not stigmatizing ourselves. I think what I've struggled with often in

identifying at groups is the idea where I start to feel left alone and not a part of the power of what you're talking about is I just want somebody sometimes to say, you know, you're right. There isn't a real good sell on trying right now the way you're feeling. A lot of times if somebody just says that, then I'm like, oh, somebody hears me. They get it. And then I might decide on my own, okay, there's somebody out there that feels the same way I do.

Like, it's just not really worth it. I would agree with you, you know? And sometimes that spurs on that desire to actually try. Because you're a contrary bastard. I am. And my therapist one time, when I was first starting back with him, he's telling me, going through this whole thing, and he's like, it's a hard sell, John. It's a hard sell getting sober. Let's just be real.

hard sell john it's a hard sell getting sober let's just be real yeah he's like because there is a thing that drugs do for people that sobriety in life doesn't do and nobody wants to admit that but you get opportunities for better life but you are not guaranteed i agree with that and that's why i say so often like getting sober sucks like you just like there's an acceptance of like if you think because you hear everybody saying it's so great it's so great and then you do it and you don't feel great i think it's important to be like you may not feel great for for a good period of time like this is going to be really hard i so it's a slightly different context but it's a similar thing in saying it's a setting of an expectation well i guess getting back to the point was sometimes for me, I find strength in knowing that other people will just say, you know, it makes sense that you feel that way.

Right. And that's the bottom line. And not follow it up with giving me a little pat on the butt. Okay, but it's still important. We don't do that these days in this culture. okay but it's still important to do that these days in this culture yeah but to say you know what you're right i you make a good point of not trying and just leave it at that don't need to encourage me after that i will generally in my life if you've looked at it as much as i've struggled and complained and been very cantankerous in my times of pain, I find a way through it and I get back up and I'm pretty resilient. What I get frustrated most with are the people that I've come upon in my life, both in

there are people that are therapists, people that are in their own sense of recovery where this constant like, yeah, but have you tried this? Have you tried that? Just let me be fatalistic for a little bit. It provides, I'll find my way out of it. Yeah. I think it's interesting. We talked about this earlier. I think it's so important to say is that like what you need is not necessarily what somebody else needs is not necessarily what a different person needs. And that's part of what can be so challenging about trying to have a one size fits all thing. And I think this leads us into our next conversation. So we're going to wrap this one up, which this next one will be a good one about agency. How much control do we really have? How much power do we really have in what we do in

getting better and fighting depression and dealing with alcoholism? And that should be a fun one, should bring out your cantankerous side for sure. And with that, we're going to wrap it up. John, thanks so much for taking the time to come back on the show. I don't know what is so funny about this. You said wrap it up. Okay. That can't go on the air.

All right. We're good on everything else, right? Yeah. Okay. So just chill. And with that, we're going to go ahead and wrap it up. John, thanks so much for taking the time to come back on. And we'll have another episode with you in the future.

Thank you, Eric. Actually, it's good to be here. And as always, I really enjoy doing this. So I look forward to talking about the agency topic with you in the next time we do this. Excellent. I'm going to put a hurtin' on your ass. All right, everybody. Another episode out on Tuesday, as always. Thanks for this. Excellent. I'm going to put a hurtin' on your ass. Alright, everybody. Another episode out on Tuesday, as always.

Thanks for listening. Bye. you