“A MENTAL HEALTH DEEP DIVE” from Rich Roll
“A MENTAL HEALTH DEEP DIVE”
Source: The Rich Roll Podcast (Listen 1 hr, 21 min)
Contributor: Selena Garcia
DISCLAIMER: This is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website.
“The accelerated pace with which culture, society, is advancing, is changing, is evolving, is so outpacing our evolutionary ability to adapt.” — Guru Singh
There could be a phrase you've heard a million times before, without any care or second thought, until one day it clicks, resonating differently than ever before. It can change the way you see the world. The way you see yourself.
While we don't know when we'll turn a corner and gain a new perspective, or where that path will lead, there tends to be divine timing in it all.
In this "Mental Health Deep Dive" from Rich Roll, you’ll hear personal and professional stories. The intention is that you'll find some comfort, healing, and hope even if you’re asking the question, "how do you solve a problem of the mind when that same mind created the problem in the first place?"
Description: “Shame prevents confronting our struggles. The pressure of our daily lives exacerbates the problem. Compound that with society’s lack of mental health education and you create an epidemic of mental health disorders ranging from chronic stress and anxiety to loneliness and depression. PTSD. And of course, suicide.”
“The solution to these problems is complicated. But it always begins with talking about them.”
“Today we do just that. Introducing a masterclass on all things mental health…”
“The conversations excerpted for this episode feature some of the best, most inspiring exchanges Rich Roll had on the topic of mental health, with practical takeaways and bite-size chunks of advice that you can apply in your life today.”
Guests include:
1. Lori Gottlieb: Stories From A Therapist In Therapy
2. Johann Hari: On Lost Connections
3. Alexi Pappas Is Bravey
4. Quelling Stress With Rangan Chatterjee, MD
5. Caroline Burckle On The Power Of Vulnerability
6. Steven Pressfield On The War of Art
7. Drs. Dean & Ayesha Sherzai
8. Guru Singh On Disrupting Depression
9. Sarah Lee On The War Inside
10. Hakim Tafari On Reinvention
Note: There's adult language, talk of suicide, Alzheimer's Disease, the impact of war, passion, resistance, and a mass shooting.
The excerpts below are slivers of what is offered. Rich Roll put a lot of care into this piece, and you'll want to listen to it from top to bottom.
If you’re having thoughts of suicide, please reach out to the Suicide Prevention Crisis Line at 1 (800) 273-8255. They’re truly here to help.
“When you hit a certain level of suffering and you think there’s nothing else, you can look back at these times in that darkness and be like, ‘man, if I didn’t know the depths and the levels of darkness, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy this moment right now.’” — Hakim Tafari
**Time stamps may be slightly off, but are close enough to reference.
LORI GOTTLIEB
(6:33) LORI: "I think that so many times, people come to therapy later than they should, meaning that we think about our physical wellbeing different from our emotional wellbeing…”
(7:31) LORI: "And so, people then, don't come to therapy until they're having some kind of crisis. And it's like they're having an emotional heart attack."
(7:55) LORI: "It's like, 'If I go to therapy, I might need to do something different in my life. I might need to be uncomfortable, and I don't want to be uncomfortable. So, I'd rather just keep things the way they are.'"
JOHAN HARI
(13:00) RICH: "I'm excited to share this clip with you, because it moves the way we think about our mental health journey away from being self-focused and instead, places it within the context of community as Johann shares the stories of a woman in pain, a boy with ADHD, a man in custody, and the neighbors who saved their lives.”
ALEXI PAPPAS
(18:51) RICH: "Alexi Pappas… is an Olympic athlete, she's also a poet, a writer, a film maker, and an author.”
(19:15) RICH: "Alexi shares her experience of focusing on the physical side of mental health and the way that subtle shift in perspective changed her life and put her on the path towards healing.”
DR. RANGAN CHATTERJEE
(27:11) RICH: "Dr. Rangan Chatterjee is a pioneer in the field of progressive functional medicine. Widely regarded as one of the most influential doctors in the UK, Rangan is double-board certified in internal medicine and family medicine and holds an honors degree in immunology…”
(27:50) RICH: "In his practice, Dr. Chatterjee has found himself increasingly treating patients on the daily who suffer the downstream implications of living with chronic stress and other mental health disorders. This has given him the opportunity to treat his patients in unconventional ways, including a surprising approach you'll hear more about right now."
CAROLINE BURCKLE
(38:03) RICH: "My next guest is Caroline Burckle. Caroline is a 2012 Olympian. She's a 23-time all-American swimmer, an NCAA champion, and an NCAA record holder… today, she speaks about accepting our emotions, vulnerability, mentorship, honest communication, and the potency latent in rest. She has an amazing and powerful perspective.”
STEVEN PRESSFIELD
(45:28) RICH: "This is from one of the most influential people in my life, perhaps more than any other single person beyond my wife and my kids. He has had, without knowing it, an unbelievably profound impact on my journey, on my career, and how I think about and pursue self-expression. His name is Steven Pressfield. He's a novelist, he's a screenwriter, and the guy behind some of the most important nonfiction books on creativity that I've ever read, including, of course, the War of Art."
(46:07) RICH: "But chief among his many messages on creativity is a concept he calls 'resistance'. Negative self-talk is such a prevalent part of our mental lives and can often lead to shame spirals of anxiety, depression, self-sabotage, and ultimately self-harm or suicidal ideation. And Steven shares his experience of how to suit up and win this war against the negative force of resistance."
AYESGA + DEAN SHERZAI
(52:26) RICH: "We transition now to another kind of self-sabotage. What happens when we lose complete control over our ability to reason, to register our surroundings, to recognize our loved ones, or even to comprehend the distinction between memory and reality. I'm of course, talking about dementia and more specifically, Alzheimer's Disease. No deep dive into mental health would be complete without discussing one of the most prevalent and devastating mental health disorders - a disease that currently afflicts over 47 million people worldwide and is predicted to triple by 2050."
GURU SINGH
(59:37) GURU: “The pace, the accelerated pace with which culture, society is advancing, is changing, is evolving, is so outpacing our evolutionary ability to adapt. Evolutionary, built into our GNA, into our genetic code, is a life that looks like whatever’s going on in the indigenous tribes of Africa. You go to those places, you always hear these stories…people who spent time with cultures that are relatively immunized from the way that we live realize how much happier they are, how much more connected they are, how much mor communal they are, and content. They have all of these things that we’re trying so desperately to build into our own lives, but which continue to elude us. Because the very things that contribute to that which we seek, we’ve decided are either optional or not important.”
SARAH LEE
(1:05:09) RICH: “Our steward for this exchange is Iraq war combat veteran Sarah Lee. Sarah is a former army sergeant who served eight years in the military, including a fourteen-month deployment to Iraq in 2004…her story is heartbreaking. Upon returning home from deployment, Sarah basically endured one thing after another, until she found herself 100 lbs overweight, and descending into this very dark depression that became so bleak, that in April, 2017, she very nearly took her own life.”
HAKIM TAFARI
(1:14:17) RICH: “Hakim Tafari is an ambassador of running culture and mindfulness. He’s a master of many a martial art from kung-fu to tai chi. He’s also an herbalist, massage therapist, a vegan, a father, and a practitioner of many a spiritual path from Buddhism to Daoism, and everything in-between.”
(1:16:18) HAKIM: “There’s so much beauty in suffering. So much beauty in suffering. And I know it sounds so—it’s not cliché, but people are like scratching their head ‘how can there be beauty in suffering?’ When you go through… such a darkness, such a bottom feeder exposure, you learn to have gratitude for the smallest thing. The smallest thing. And when I think about the times, I didn’t think that I was really going to make it out of that space. There were times, Rich, when I would be in the car park of Whole Foods like crying, crying my heart out, screaming at the top of my lungs looking around like ‘how the fxxk did I end up in this situation?’…When you hit a certain level of suffering and you think there is nothing else, you can look back at these times in that darkness and be like, ‘man, if I didn’t know the depths and the levels of darkness, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy this moment right now.”
LISTEN HERE (1 hr, 10 min)
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