The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Zak Williams On How To Address & Understand Mental Health, Remove Stigmas, Find Community, & Embrace Your Identity

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

#364: On today's episode we are joined by Zak Williams is an entrepreneur and mental health advocate. He is also the son of late great Robin Williams. On today's show we discuss mental health, how to remove stigmas, and how we can find community.  To connect with Zak Williams click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential  The Hot Mess Ice Roller is here to help you contour, tighten, and de-puff your facial skin and It's paired alongside the Ice Queen Facial Oil which is packed with anti-oxidants that penetrates quickly to help hydrate, firm, and reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, leaving skin soft and supple. To check them out visit www.shopskinnyconfidential.com now.  This episode is brought to you by Olive & June The Olive & June Mani system is the secret behind salon-perfect at home, all-in-one, no guessing, no messy nails, no salon price tag. All TSC Him & Her listeners can no get 20% off your first mani system with our code SKINNY. Visit www.oliveandjune.com and use promo code SKINNY at checkout for 20% off your first mani system.  This episode is brought to you by RITUAL Forget everything you thought you knew about vitamins. Ritual is the brand that’s reinventing the experience with 9 essential nutrients women lack the most. If you’re ready to invest in your health, do what I did and go to www.ritual.com/skinny  Your future self will thank you for taking Ritual: Consider it your ‘Lifelong-Health-401k’. Why put anything but clean ingredients (backed by real science) in your body? This episode is brought to you by Rothy's Rothy's comfortable, washable and sustainable shoes and bags make getting dressed easy. Rothy's shoes are incredibly comfortable with zero break-in period thanks to their seemlessly knit-to-shape design. With many styles to choose from, Rothy's shoes are the perfect way to add some comfort and style to your closet. Check out all the amazing shoes, bags and masks available right now at www.rothys.com/skinny  Produced by Dear Media 

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so snatched, my God. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her. Ah-ha! That term had all the stigma associated with it, and therefore people didn't really understand or prioritize mental health as something that they need to take care of. It was just either you're fine or you're mentally ill.

That's the world I grew up in. And I don't appreciate the term mental illness because there's such nuance to the emotional dysregulation, the mental dysregulation that people deal with. You need specificity associated with it. Hello, hello, hello. Happy Thursday. I am all jazzed up because I just had a shot of my liquid Adderall. It's not really liquid Adderall. It's Beekeeper's Natural. I'm obsessed with it. It's those little bee shots. That shit really fires you up. It's so good. It makes you have so much clarity. I honestly am addicted. I have one a day. Anyways, today is a really, really important episode. Zach Williams is the founder of PIM,

which is really geared towards mental health. He is also Robin Williams' son. He's a father. He's a husband. And this episode was really important personally to me. I mean, it's important, I think, collectively as a society. But I think that to me, I felt a personal connection because everything I have experienced with my own family, which we kind of get into a little bit in this episode, I haven't opened up too much about my family life, and I'm a little bit hesitant just because it's not my story to tell, but depression and anxiety do run in my family. And now that I have a daughter, I think about this all the time, how important it is to stop with the taboo around suicide. I think when I was 18 years old and my sister was 13, we lost our mother to suicide. And I remember at 18,

it was such a taboo subject. And I really didn't have anyone to talk to about it. It was so dark that people didn't know how to approach it. And I remember being 18 and not even having really adults to talk to because they were uncomfortable. And there was all these people around me that just didn't know what to say. And now I feel like years later that it is something that's being talked about. And I wish I had the tools and the resources and the conversations that I would be able to have now at 18. So to see us moving forward as a society and making this topic of suicide less taboo is, like I said, very important to me. Well, not just suicide, but mental health awareness in general. Yes. Mental health awareness in general. I mean, I think it's so cool how Zach is so open on this issue. He himself fell into a deep depression and was

self-medicating with alcohol. He talks a little bit about the program and how that saved his life. And he just realized his drinking was getting out of hand. So he now is sober and he has his company. They recently launched these original mood chews, which support for overwhelming anxiety and stress. And he is just out there advocating for people who need mental health resources. Before we get into this episode, I want to say, if you are struggling with any kind of mental health issue, you can text strength to the crisis text line. And that is at 7474 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor. So I do want to preface that before we get into the episode. And with that, I am so excited about this interview. Let's welcome Zach Williams, the founder of PIM. He is a husband,

he is a father, and he is the son of the late, great Robin Williams. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her. Zach Williams is in the studio today. I am so excited. Can you give our audience a little background on you? Sure. I'm an Irish-Italian Jew. I'm

a mental health advocate. I have been for about five years now. I started a company focused on mental health advocacy. It's called PIM, stands for Prepare Your Mind. And at this point in my life, outside of being a dad to my son, who's almost two, and we're expecting another child in two weeks. So I'm very excited for that. Most roads in my life lead to mental health, mental health advocacy. I care deeply about creating opportunities for access, parity, and quality because everybody deserves the mental health care that they deserve. When did you start seeing that there was a gap in our system with mental health? And it could be even something that you saw when you were five years old. Is there things that you can pinpoint

of why you're on this journey with mental health that happened when you were younger? Well, so I was a child of divorce. And as part of that divorce agreement, I started therapy really, really early on in life, around four years old. And your parents put you in? you know, clicked. I didn't understand why I was doing it. I just thought it was an opportunity to play games, kind of hang out. Ultimately that for young people in therapy, for kids in therapy, it's an opportunity to find safe places and deal with all these conflicting feelings and things like that. But for me, I didn't really understand the point of therapy or the idea of what mental health meant until a lot later. Because for me, it was just the notion of mental illness and then everything else. And it's become very apparent to me that the term mental illness is something that ultimately was thrown around a lot earlier in my life.

And not necessarily for me, I'm just saying, there was just mental illness and then everything else. And what became clear was that term had all the stigma associated with it. And therefore people didn't really understand or prioritize mental health as something that they need to take care of. It was just either you're fine or you're mentally ill. That's the world I grew up in. And I don't appreciate the term mental illness because there's such nuance to the

emotional dysregulation, the mental dysregulation that people deal with, that you need specificity associated with it. You're bipolar. You're schizophrenic. You're dealing with issues associated with addiction. You're anxious from time to time. It's just you need that specificity so people can really understand what it is you're going through. And so for me, it was a long road to get to where I am today, in which I developed a deeper understanding of why the mental health system is broken for most people. And from my end, I had to experience a lot of things happening, trauma, my life spiraling out of control because of addiction, specifically to drugs and alcohol. And for me, that was all means of coping,

just dealing with life and the anxiety and trauma that I had accrued over time. I started understanding that from my end, early on, I had access to care. I had access to things like therapy. And it became very clear that most people don't have the type of access that they need at all. Therapy is not accessible for most people. And there's not an awesome insurance environment to reimburse therapy as there should be for a number of people. And there's not an awesome insurance environment to reimburse therapy as there should be for a number of reasons. And I think there's an openness and willingness to invest more resources, whether it comes from the public sector or communities or companies around mental health care. But it just became so clear that 90% of people don't have the access to the quality care they need

to just deal with life. Modern life is really challenging. When did you start to notice that you were getting addicted to something? Is this when you're really young? Is it like a year ago? When did you start to notice your own journey with addiction? Oh, man. Well, so I had a lot of trouble sleeping as a kid. When I hit my teens and I discovered things like weed and alcohol, I found opportunities to kind of shut my brain down and rest.

Periodically, the alcohol abuse started early on in my life, my teens, but primarily as a way to find opportunities to just shut my brain down because I was an anxious kid and I had obsessive thinking and things like that. And it was a way to just turn the signal off. Through my teens and 20s, it was something that I managed through, not in a way that I would appreciate, not in a way that was enabled me to thrive. It was just something that I thought was part of my life. And I would keep on telling myself, oh, you're getting through this and you're doing what you need to do to get through it,

whether it's drinking or whatever, what have you. And that's not a way to live one's life at all. It didn't really become apparent that the extent to which alcoholism could impact my life until my dad, who was the entertainer Robin Williams, died by suicide. At which point, the self-medicating to manage anxiety and to sleep and things like that, suddenly became drinking to get through the day, became extreme emotional dysregulation to the point where I couldn't really focus on anything for longer than a minute or so. I just, there was this energy that was burning me out

and I felt myself burning out. Speaking of your dad, my producer Taylor's yelling at us because we're hitting the table and you're animated like your dad. It's tripping me out here because I'd be remiss to not say how big of fans we were. We grew up watching your father, right? It's just weird for me to look at you and say I look like Christian Bale in The Machinist, but I'm sitting there looking like this is like a spitting image. Having a father like that, at that level of fame, notoriety, so animated. Like what, as a kid, do you recognize like who that is?

Or you're just like, that's my dad. It's not, you don't just like, you like, when you think back, like, do you think like, well, my dad. Were you watching Hook? Yeah. Like, well, so yes, I was watching Hook. I was on the set of Hook a good deal, which was amazing. First off, you don't look like Christian Bale on The Machinist. I would say more of Batman Christian Bale.

I'll take it. Today he was acting like Christian Bale on the set when he was caught screaming at the crew. Oh, really? Yeah. Listen, my producer back there, Taylor, we've known him since we were 12 years old. And Bane in my existence, that guy. I love him. He's a gentleman. And scholar to be determined.

So the thing from my end was growing up with my dad being who he was, you know, I remember being, you know, the highlights of being in his world when he was on set and things like that were like, was like meeting Tony Danza at a Hollywood party. And like, for me, that's, that was super out of the ordinary and unusual because the life that I experienced growing up in the Bay Area in San Francisco was one where I had my dad. We would spend time together as one would between parent and child. But I would then go out and see him on set in this exceptional environment. People forget. I mean, a lot of us forget he was an exceptional stand-up comedian. I think that a lot of people don't realize it because they see him from the movies. But he was something else on stage. Yeah.

I mean, this was his reason. He lived to entertain. And as part of that, it was something that was very sustaining for him. And when he had downtime, he needed to find ways to release that excess energy. So he was very focused on things like running and cycling and also collecting. He was a big collector, many, many toys. So, you know, that energy, that outlet where he would go

out and he would entertain was his, I think, the most satisfying thing for him personally. I think a lot of people don't realize how many people with such big personalities go home and have a dark side, like Jim Carrey, for instance. He's someone that comes to mind. Is that something that you see a lot in the mental health space? People with these huge personalities that put it on and they entertain, but then they go home and it's almost like they have to recharge their batteries by going to a different side of them. Does that make sense? Yeah. Here we are again, talking about the multivitamin of your dreams ritual of my dreams,

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Not a lot of job security. Right. No, there's not a lot of job security. You're going out and exposing yourself. You're being extremely vulnerable exposing yourself. You're being extremely vulnerable to a crowd that is literally judging you night after night on end. There's no money in it for most people initially for a long period of time. When I say a long period of time, it's not like four years, five years. There's comics that don't hit until 10 years, 15 years in. Some never hit.

And it's freaking brutal. It's brutal. You develop these defense mechanisms in order to get through the day. I see amongst my friends and community who are comics and the like, depression is rampant. Addiction is rampant because you're going out and you're seeking validation from a crowd constantly. You don't always get that validation and you're out on the road, meaning you're probably alone or you're with a small isolated group of people and you're going out and you're in the middle of nowhere and you get up on stage and you're performing and you might get heckled.

And at the end of the day, you finish your set and you're alone, whether you're connecting with people. You're not in a band or what we're doing here. You have something to fall back on. It's you. It's you. And you're going out and being judged constantly, consistently, and that takes its toll. So when you're growing up and you talk about trauma, like going to you personally, like, and it sounds like it's at a young age, like, did you realize there was trauma or was there something that like, was there an event that triggered something or like, what was like defining that trauma a little bit so that we can understand like what led you down the path

of addiction? Sure. I think I'm predisposed to having an addictive personality. It kind of runs in my family. I certainly experienced it with, you know, my dad, my parents, and extended family through the generations. You know, there were traumatic events that helped catalyze other things. You know, my first week of college as a freshman in New York University, September of 2001. You know, but you experience this event and you're 18 years old and you think this is just what happens when you go to college, right? And so you don't, you think something of it, you're exposed to these things and these events accrue.

You know, if you don't take care of it, you don't unwind and kind of get rid of the plaque that builds up. Well, I think it's good that, I mean, I think it's important to talk about being predisposed because, you know, I think people like will look at someone who is, you know, classified as an addict and they think like, oh, like they chose, like not some people, like I can, fortunately, personally, I can go out and I can have a couple of drinks and then stop and like not have, you know, anything for two weeks. But I know there's some people in my family and Lauren's family that cannot do that, right? Like they're just like, they can't, they don't have that thing where they can, Hey, I'm just

going to stop and take it easy. Yeah. For, for the, for anyone listening in the audience, if you're the type of person who has one drink or two drinks and then to stop is excruciating. Like it's challenging because- Just wired differently. It's just how you are. That was my experience. But I also acclimated to it as being part of,

you know, my lifestyle very early on. I thought that someone who didn't drink, someone who didn't use drugs and alcohol was boring and not fun or engaging. I thought it was my dad who was sober for a good chunk of his life and my experiencing him. But that was an exception. Everything else was, to live was to be the life of the party. To live was to be out and engaging with people. And you suddenly take alcohol, you take drugs out of the equation, and then you're depriving yourself from actually being

interesting. That's part of your identity at that point. It's like, if I don't do this, people may not like me. It might not be as fun. And all of a sudden you're like, I might not be worth or I'm worthless now without it. It's just like becomes part of something. Yeah. It turns out people don't give a damn when you're in the middle of it and when you're

young and you're living in New York or wherever, and you're seeking validation, you want to be seen, you want to be seen as someone that people want to be around. That's what you do. I mean, in my case. But I was very insecure, you know? And so I think that insecurity compounds the need to kind of numb and to get rid of that anxiety and the like. I find that suicide is so taboo. My mom committed suicide when I was 18. My sister was 12. In this interview, I knew it was going to be difficult for me to do because of the topic. I didn't have anyone to talk to when I was 18.

I don't feel like it's changed that much. What advice would you give someone like me? Or do you even not have any advice? I have some advice and it primarily relates to an organization I work with called Bring Change to Mind, which develops and delivers or deploys peer-to-peer mental health support communities in high schools throughout the United States. And it's find communities that get what you're going through. Yeah, we have not done that, my sister and I, at all. There are suicide survivor communities. Is it depressing?

No, it doesn't need to be your life. I mean, it can be if you't need to be your life. I mean, it can be if you want it to be. Some people really find these type of interest groups. I say interest groups, meaning, you know, there's a community focused around a specific topic. And for mental health, this is really important. It can be an aspect of it. For me, personally, because of the advocacy work I do,

I end up connecting with suicide survivor communities pretty often. I need to hear stories. I need to hear what people go through because it's a shared experience. And often, you know, with your core community, your group of friends and the like, they have empathy, but they might not really get like get what you're going through. Yeah, because it's been made into such a taboo, uncomfortable topic that people don't want to talk about. They don't bring it up, which I understand it's such a heavy topic.

But at the same time, when my sister who's 12 years old and I'm 18, and I know you were young too, when you don't have any resources or anyone to talk to i think that's important to talk about the resources it's extremely important to talk about the resources when i was i mean this is years and years ago there was nothing i don't remember anything besides like the yellow maybe there was like yellow ribbon or something not just that i feel like people that don't know like if you haven't experienced something like that like you also don't know what to say to

someone that you care about that's happened to yeah Yeah, it's hard. And I'm sorry for your loss. It's really, really challenging, especially in the formative years. From my lens, there are communities focused on grief. And really what that comes down to is kind of the grief, but also suicide survivors and things like that. And finding opportunities to engage can be challenging, but I encourage people who go through traumatic experiences or deal with things like addiction to explore. I'm active in 12-step. I love it. It's important. It's an important part of my life because otherwise I'd be really, really resentful because it's frustrating sometimes when you're doing everything you need to do to take care of yourself and things aren't necessarily getting better. Yeah. It's a different way to experience death because there's other emotions than if someone dies of cancer, it's like you can pinpoint and be like, oh, but then with suicide, there's all these questions like, could I have done something? What was the last conversation? It goes on and on. Yeah. So the shared experience I would have being a young person and dealing with

suicide specifically actually related to my cousin dying by suicide. Oh, so sorry. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I was 12 years old and he was 13. Oh. And this is when I was first exposed to the notion of suicide contagion because Kurt Cobain was his idol. Oh, wow. Can you talk about that? I've heard about

this, but I'd like to know more. Yeah. It's a challenging subject to talk about. The idea of suicide contagion is seeing whether it's in movies or TV or experiencing a celebrity dying by suicide, it, experiencing that encourages suicidal ideation in certain people. And as a result of that, it might lead to a boost in suicides because of bringing up the topic or showing ease of access or just affinity, you know, as like a, I don't want to say a cool thing to do. That's not the best way to frame it, but just seeing as someone whom you admired not being able to manage or handle a situation or life. And as a result, that person dies by suicide. That's why it's so hard to talk about though, because you tell me something like that

and it's like, oh, then do you want to talk about it? But I think what you're also saying is sometimes it can glamorize it almost. In some ways, yeah. We are back talking about Olive and June. And you guys, I'm telling you, their Manny system is the answer. I did my nails at home. They're black right now. I'm going to try to post them on Instagram story.

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Bear with me for a second. What I think is happening is there's a segment of people that will see someone perform a mass shooting, and there's somebody that'll see that and say, oh, this person got attention or they got this notoriety, and all of a sudden someone that was unknown is known. And maybe in some ways, this is not a pun but trigger somebody to go and act in the same way and it's almost like at what point does the media need to sensationalize something like that or share it and let people know what's going on compared to also ample and same thing with suicide like if you're you're taking somebody that has a group

of people that idolize them and then you're putting that on like i think you get into a dangerous spot here it's like what should we see a nazi you know and i think in mass media and films and tv and the like there is sometimes these the topic is is glamorized and to be perfectly frank i don't have an issue in the topic being brought up and even potentially glamorized. I do have an issue if there's not an opportunity to share resources or provide an audience with tools to manage this. That's in everything, even honestly in the pandemic. It's like we can see everything that's going on, but what are the tools and resources for people to protect themselves learn more have more aware like i

think what lauren and i like to do here is shed light on topics that people don't necessarily shed light on you know regularly and also say hey if this is an issue there's also potentially a solution because i do believe there's a not to everything but but most things there's a solution if you look hard enough for it yeah and the main thing for me is it's not about censure or potentially glossing things over because people will find a way to access information. What is important is to educate and provide opportunities to either develop

or share resources and engage in meaningful dialogue. It's those interactions that generate connections and healing and things like that, things that are helpful for people who go through very traumatic times. As I mentioned earlier, modern life is very challenging. Sure. But you are someone that has a, you know, we all have a unique experience, but a very unique experience in the sense that like, take someone like a Britney Spears or your father, there's so much attention from the media. And it's almost like people forget at the end of the day that these people are humans. And that's got to be challenging at some level, both for the

individual that has that amount of attention and also the people around it. Because, you know, if Lauren and I have a family issue, we deal with it privately. But like- Or a step further, I think the child. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But like for you, if you're, you know, as a child, you're seeing all this, you're seeing someone like your dad that's on every platform. People are talking about all the time.

Same like if you look at what's going on with Britney Spears right now, people forget that these are humans at the end of the day. You know, with Britney, it's, I feel so bad for her because she's been in an extended state of isolation, like at times, solitary confinement. Yeah, it's scary. For years, I feel for her. But people think, oh, you're a celebrity, like that comes with the territory. But I'm like, is that really what comes with the territory? There's the documentary that just came out and there's this clip

and I cannot get it out of my head where she's five months pregnant and she gets out of the car and there's obviously thousands of paparazzi around and she's holding her two-year-old in her hands and she trips and falls and she drops the two-year-old a little bit because there's thousands of people around her

and lights flashing. It was an accident because there's so many people around and and lights flashing. It was an accident because there's so many people around. And then people are snapping her, dropping it, which looks like she's being a bad mom, even though it was because of the paparazzi. And she goes into a little diner in New York City, and she's alone, holding her two-year-old, five months pregnant. And she's bawling, crying into her two-year-old's shoulder.

And everyone around her is taking pictures and laughing and pointing. The diners, not the paparazzi, the diners. So I think it's our responsibility as human beings to be more humane with all of this. It's gotten out of control, in my opinion. It is. Celebrity culture has now disseminated to social media. And I worry for people who find careers, find a living through being an influencer or the like, because that same type of isolation can certainly occur. And this is, I don't know whether you call it micro celebrity or any number

of things. I worry for people who see an opportunity to make a living and to receive accolades, but potentially be famous and don't see the downside of it because it's not often shared. Well, that's why we asked you because I'm sure you've seen a lot of it firsthand, right? And it's, there's a, there's a glamorous side. And then there's like, I think all the time, and listen, we're grateful for any kind of like listener attention. It's not, that's not to say we're not so happy where people pay attention to what we're doing, but it is a little scary sometimes if you're out somewhere, you know, you think you're just with your family and all of a sudden people pop in to take your pictures and this and that. And it doesn't happen

frequently, but I can see on a mass scale, like that's got to be unnerving at some point. It's hard to live a normal life. Yeah. Yeah. I can't speak for myself because I'm in my day to day, I'm pretty anonymous. The experiencing it as a son with a very famous parent who couldn't go anywhere without being recognized. But in a large part, my dad decided to make home the Bay Area, San Francisco. He got away a little bit. Yeah. And in San Francisco, you just see people on the street. It's not a thing. LA, New York, Tokyo, that's a whole different ballgame. I think there was an opportunity to be

afforded some privacy. And I think that's challenging in this day and age when we're hyper-connected with the world through social media and the like. And if our public lives and our private lives are undifferentiated, it can create all these major issues. I really, really worry about the wellbeing and mental health of Gen Z, who grew up wired into their mobile phones, grew up just wired, just Instagram mainlined into their systems from the minute they get phones, TikTok, what have you. It's challenging because there's not a lot of resources to say, hey, yeah, it's too new. Hey, find ways to develop healthy mental health hygiene associated with

using these platforms. I think that there's going to be a rehab for addiction to social media soon. I think we're going to see rehabs opening for that. I wouldn't be surprised if it happened this year, maybe next year. Yeah. Especially with the pandemic, there is a huge influencer that posted something that a lot of people found inappropriate. It was inappropriate, but the amount of hate that she got was so disgusting. It was almost like she was a robot and didn't exist. And I was talking to Michael and I said, this influencer is probably in her room in the dark, curled up, not eating or answering her phone. She's probably so depressed because of all this hate. And we both said it's going to take someone like her doing something horrible

to herself for people to wake up and realize that what you say through a screen has impact on people. Well, yeah. I mean, absolutely. And there's a cyberbullying consideration. I think that's a very real thing. I never experienced it because I wasn't really that active on social media and the like until, I'm still not that active, but you know, until recently. For me, it's very advocacy focused, but I think I see my family, my siblings, my cousins who have dealt with cyber bullying firsthand. And, you know, is this barrier where I can say and do whatever I want. And like, you would never like some of these comments you see people making, you know, they would never say this to someone's face in person, right? Because they're so obscene and just like, so out there, you know, honestly, it might get hit in the mouth, who knows. But I think like, you also are someone similar to us that probably contextualize because I didn't get a smartphone. I had a Blackberry

until I was like 22. So I went through all my adolescence, all school, like just like the normal, you know, flip phone. You were paging me 143. Yeah, yeah. But to your point on Gen Z, we look at our sisters

and younger friends and siblings. It's like since they were eight, nine, 10 years old, they've been plugged in and they don't really necessarily have this context of like just how to have a interaction without technology. Even my baby, when she was born, I'm not joking,

the week I brought her home, she knew that there was a phone in my hand. Yeah. They reach for it. I mean, you've probably seen it with a two-year-old. Yeah. I always wear white shoes. I've worn them since I was little. I'm obsessed with them. And so when I started talking about Rothy's years ago, I knew I wanted to continue the partnership because they're just a shoe that I wear all the time. First of all, the ones I have slip on, they're kind of like a boat shoe moment and they look cute with anything. These are my go-to shoes, especially as a mom now. Get the white ones. They're all white. They're like a boat shoe, like I said. Rothy's, they are insane. So not only am I obsessed, a lot of influencers and

celebrities are too. PopSugar named Rothy's one of the most comfortable and cute flats you'll never tire of wearing. They also have other colors, so you don't have to get white. I just like the white. And they're a best-selling shoe. Everyone is obsessed. They have 5,000 near-perfect reviews. I think the Skinny Confidential is such a resource where people come to really get the best of each category for the most efficient, affordable price. And that is Rothy's. You guys got to check it out. Upgrade your closet with washable, sustainable, stylish shoes and bags from Rothy's. Plus, lucky Michael, they also launched men's shoes. So make sure to check them out for the guy in your life or for yourself. Like I said, I wear them with everything. You're

going to head to rothys.com slash skinny to find your new favorites today. That's R-O-T-H-Y-S.com slash skinny. Check out the white shoes. My two-year-old, he sees my phone, he sees a computer, and he's just like, business. And he just sees us on it. There's this whole idea, premise of attention and how parents apply attention. And if we're on our phones all the time, he'll assume that that's an object of affection. My son will assume that's an object of affection. My son will assume that's an object of affection. This has been the only thing he knows, right? Versus older generations.

For me, I'm 38 years old. Pager until 16. Cell phone at 16. And like the shitty cell phone, right? Yeah, the flip phone. The one they use in movies now with drug dealers. Yeah, yeah. The burners. exactly so so the thing that i worry about is how people's identity how their entire being is tied to a social media presence b to these devices because you i would love to see

more data and science scientific studies around this. When you deprive people of social media or their phones, they go through withdrawal. I go through withdrawal. But I'm curious to understand what's actually happening from a neuroscience perspective to see how the brain responds to going through that disconnection withdrawal. I know there's issues associated with your endocrine system. How your body develops, processes serotonin, dopamine, things like that. Because these products, these digital products are engineered.

Because my background is in consumer tech and media. But being on the corporate side of media and when it comes to building a product you talk about dopamine hits you talk about engineering loops engagement loops what that is what that actually means you're engineering. Because that's how you create more, that's how you generate more eyes on ads. That's how you generate opportunities to keep people engaged with a product over a period of time. The pandemic's made it worse. I noticed the online bullying's worse. I noticed when the influencer I was talking about earlier got called out for something,

the comments are worse. I noticed people are on their phone more now. I think this pandemic has made it so much worse. We talked off air before this about what you're seeing in the pandemic. And I think if you could speak on some tools or resources that people can utilize to get back into the real world to feel, I don't want to say normal, but just to feel comfortable. I would love to hear that. Yeah. Thank you for asking. I think the thing I want to mention as being the core priority, at least for myself and for the people I care about, is

finding mental health hygiene as being part of your daily life. Because it's not about everybody going out and seeing a therapist, right? If people can do that, that's great. But just think of it as kind of finding your rituals that are part of your mental health hygiene. For me, I'm very keen on gratitude exercises. I wake up in the morning and I run through what I'm grateful for. It's so helpful for me to start the day off on the right foot. I don't drink. That's helpful for me. Has been for several years now. I've really identified diet as being a core

driver in terms of how I'm feeling in a given situation, meaning eating generally healthy, not eating too much sugar, connecting with friends and being out in nature, super helpful for me. I'm also wired in a certain way where I need to add a certain regimen, a supplemental regimen into my diet, which has been a life changer for me. I found I had a specific gene called MTHFR.

Are you familiar with that? No. Okay. So it just relates to the gene, makes it more difficult to process folate and some B vitamins. How did you find this out? Was it you just... Well, you can do 23andMe. Okay. And it'll point stuff like that. And then you have to plug it into a third-party service. At the time, I plugged it into a third-party service called Promethease. I think you can still do that.

And I found that I had this MTHFR gene. And as a result... And folate affects the way the brain thinks and everything. Well, you deal with serotonin synthesis, right? You're not getting the serotonin synthesis right you're not getting the serotonin you need just through your diet right and so the minute i i started taking methylated vitamins specifically methylated folate methylated b vitamins it takes a few days but and you you go through a bit of a you feel crappy for bit. But then suddenly it's just like clicks and it's just like,

wow, I didn't realize I could do something that was so minor, but completely was a game changer for me personally, right? My mental health hygiene ritual has included things like that, but also 12 step and spending quality time with family and sharing appreciation, meditation, certain things that just have absolutely altered my quality of life. Aside from dealing with acute stress associated with running a company and managing through pandemic and all these different things, like my life is materially better than it was just because I prioritize mental health hygiene. In your field of work, I think like, obviously with this pandemic, there's been a ton of focus on COVID and people being sick and obviously having complications from the virus. But another

thing, and sometimes people get mad at me for this. I always think like everything's cause and effect, right? Like you can, it's in it. You have to always, you have to be careful in life that you're not playing whack-a-mole where you're like hitting one, one thing and solving an issue there. And then like having something else pop up. And I imagine in the world of mental health awareness, under these circumstances, we're probably seeing a rise in people having much more difficulty. I don't, and maybe I'm wrong, but could you- No, you're not wrong at all. Some of my personal frustrations with some of the coverage this year has been so singularly focused on this one area with very little focus on other segments of the population that could be experiencing severe traumas during something like this.

And maybe you could highlight that a little bit. Yeah. Well, I mean, over the pandemic, drug and alcohol sales skyrocketed, isolation skyrocketed, people saying they were dealing with some sort of mental health dysregulation prior to the pandemic was around 25%. During the pandemic, people dealing with some sort of chronic consideration at some point went up to 40%. And people dealing with some sort of anxiety or stress-related situation

during the pandemic went to 80%. And young people, and I'm going to cite a Project Healthy Minds study, an organization that I work with, they did a study that showed that 96% of college students dealt with some sort of mental health consideration over the course of the pandemic. Can you tell us about what your company does and how it can help people, anyone who's listening in our audience who's struggling with any kind of mental health? Sure. Yeah. I started my company PIM because I found a certain formulation to be really helpful for my mental health, specifically to help me manage stress and anxiety during a really challenging time in my life. And those formulations were GABA, L-theanine specifically. Then I found Rhodiola, a couple other compounds to be very

helpful. So I create a product that helped with the formulation that helped me to share with people to also raise money for mental health initiatives. Currently, our partner is Bring Change to Mind. So we help raise money for building out mental health support communities in high schools throughout the US. And where we want to go is establishing a mood management platform. So we want to provide an opportunity for people to have their optimal mood available to them through a combination of digital and physical experiences. So that's what we're orienting towards right now. And that's super exciting.

It's complex, but it's doable. We have an incredible team that is super passionate about what we do and is motivated to try to really change the narrative associated with mental health, be an advocacy-focused brand, and to stand for mental health support like Starbucks stands for coffee or Red Bull stands for energy. That's who we want to be. Your dad would be so proud of you. I think that you should write a book too on all this. I really do. Really? Yeah, I do.

I think you should write a book. Well. I think you could help a lot of people. Well, thank you. But the first step is you're out podcasting. I mean, this is amazing. Telling your story. It's fun.

I love doing this. I appreciate this dynamic. I mean, listen, I'm super happy we did this. We got to do it again sometime. But how did we even... You just start. you're like, hey, I want to start getting on some podcasts. And I mean, super grateful you came here. Yeah, I was part of our advocacy mission is I really want to share my experience because

I think when people hear it, they say, okay, hey, this is either similar to my experience or not similar to my experience, but I think it's important to prioritize my mental health. That's my life's mission. It's just get people into prioritizing their mental health. Well, this is one of the best, I mean, what I love about this medium and not just this show,

but this medium in particular is I think you can really start to kind of like have deep conversations and really get to know someone and the people that are, you know, you go on a today show segment or something like that. It's like, boom, boom, you know, we've been on boom, boom, boom, like go, go, go. And it's like, you don't really get to do this and under like peel back the layers and kind of understand the nuances between people and what's going on and their thoughts. And like you're sandwiched between the news segment and, you

know, a cat that does awesome tricks. Well, I mean, listen, let's not bash the cat. The cat might have mental health issues with this pandemic. Well, I mean, the cat was dealing with a lot of issues associated with fame. Listen, he fucks up that trick. He's off. I'm going to be watching Hook tonight and following your Instagram. Where can everyone find you? Pimp yourself out.

Where can they find your company? Can you share any resources for mental health? In particular, I would love to know some resources for people who have experienced someone who I know you shared earlier, but just maybe ended off with this, someone who's lost someone from suicide. Yeah, there's many things. So first off, you can find my company's website, youcanpim.com. Pim is P-Y-M.

And we link out to some resources there. And you can find me, Zach Pym, Z-A-K-P-Y-M on Instagram, Zach Williams on Twitter. Not quite building out a following on TikTok yet, but you can still find me at Zach Pym there too. And in terms of mental health resources, if you're a young person or you are related to a young person and want to find opportunities to have peer-to-peer support mental health communities in high schools, check out bringchangetomind.org. are doing important work are Inseparable, which is a policy-focused organization that is keen on bringing high-quality access and parity around mental health programs and services throughout the U.S. by engaging the public sector. And also Project Healthy Minds, an organization I'm affiliated with that's focused on precision-oriented mental health support through developing digital resources

and also launching anti-stigma campaigns. In terms of resources for people who have experienced loss, there are the NAMI chapters and there are local chapters likely near you. And I believe you can go to nami.org. There's the AAS Foundation. I think I got the acronym. It's the American Association of Suicidology, but I'm not sure. They have a list of resources that are very helpful. There's also fantastic organizations like the Jed Foundation that are focused around mental health support for communities and have a list of resources. Trevor Project. There's some great organizations out there. I could go on and on, but, um, you know, the key thing is, is

searching for, uh, the community that's, that you want to connect with and you can, they're out there. Well, I'm glad you highlighted all of them. Cause I think there's a lot of people that just, they don't realize how many of these communities exist, right? You just, you feel like you're isolated. You feel like it's only you. I mean, it sounds like, and just the ones you just rattled off, like that's an extent. I mean, even in a short period, that's an extensive list, which highlights like there are resources for people that are seeking them. There are, there certainly are resources. The main thing is, is not being shut down or feeling disconnected if you engage with one of the resources or communities and it's not

for you. That's okay. The good thing is, is there is likely a community out there for you. Yeah. That's probably the same with rehab. There's probably a rehab that doesn't work, but there probably is one that does work if you're an addict. You can come back anytime and talk about mental health. You're incredible. Thank you so much for coming on, Zach. Thank you.

It's such a pleasure to be on. I really, really enjoyed speaking. You popped the cherry of the new studio. Hey, amazing. You saying that you popped, you got your cherry popped is too much for me. Zach Williams popped the cherry? There we go.

Thank you. Do you want to win a bookmark? It is the cutest bookmark. It says, get the fuck out of the sun for your copy of the book. All you have to do is tell us your favorite part, the most impactful part of this episode on my latest post at Lauren Bostick, and we will slide into your inbox and send a bunch of you bookmarks. So fun.

With that, we'll see you next time.