#808 Perfectly Hidden Depression - Dr Margaret Rutherford

Welcome to episode 808 with my guest Dr. Margaret Rutherford. I'm Paul, last name Gilmarton. Welcome. If you're new I hope you find this to be a place for honesty. I do. That's when I try to, that's when I try to make this place to be. I'm trying to make it to, to feel comfortable for people to, to open up about whatever's fucking with them, whether it was in the past or the present or their future trip. I really am excited for you guys to listen to this conversation with Dr. Margaret Rutherford. I really enjoyed talking to her and since then I've been on her podcast and she's just just a kindred spirit and I always love when I have somebody on who's a metal health professional and they open up about their life and then the you know the icing on the cake is that we get to also get their professional insight about their clients and themselves and all that other good stuff. But yeah really really like her. Those either regular listeners know that I have been struggling mentally and emotionally lately mostly with feelings of flatness, depression, et cetera, et cetera. It is still here. It is still a lot of days in bed and that's where I'm at man. That's where I'm at and the appalling of support continues to touch me and I just really really appreciate it. The one thing if I can claim victory for is I'm still going to my support groups. You know when when my alarm goes off because I'm taking my second nap and excuse me and I think oh my god there's no way I can get out of bed and get in the car and drive 15 minutes and sit through a meeting. A little voice in my head is like this is more important than exercise. This is more important than food even for today at least. You can go without eating but you should really get to a meeting and at least be social for an hour and a half. So I certainly haven't been perfect with it but if I can pat myself on the back about that I've been good about that. Actually better better than I was when I was feeling good. Any of you that that struggled with depression, addiction, anxiety can probably relate to this but sometimes it's harder to get to a support group meeting when you're feeling good than it is when you're feeling bad and many people will say like the most dangerous time for them wanting to drink or get high or whatever is when they're feeling good and things are going good in their life and it's because they want that. It's almost like the car is going fast but you want to you want to kick in the turbo because you're getting a rush from it going fast and going well and when I was on the opposite side of where I'm feeling right now which was in the woodshop you know 10 hours a day, ideas flowing just absolutely loving couldn't wait to get out there every day and do it. It was a struggle to get to meetings because I'd be like I don't want to interrupt the flow with this piece of furniture I'm working on and so I would be like you know making half of the meetings that I then I normally should and I don't know it's just interesting the brain is never never ceases to amaze me something I wanted to share I was talking to one of my support group friends on the on the phone the other night and we were just talking about how difficult it can be to care in this world because there's so many things out of our control that to really consciously stop and care about them is to experience pain because there is nothing that we can do it's there are so many things in this life that feel like you are just watching a puppy walk on to train tracks and and it is you know I said to my friend I don't know about you but I need something bigger than myself to try to be a caring person in the world that that we live in because it's it's just really hard to not go to a place of cynicism and put the blinders on and to stick our head in the ground and say I'm not gonna give a shit about anything and just numb out and I think that I think that might be the metaphysical crisis of the 21st century probably the 20th century as well I'm doing a deep deep dive into I think I shared with you guys maybe I did it on an interview that I haven't aired yet but it's with a guy named George Saunders who is I'd never heard of him before and apparently a towering literary figure in American literature and also a teacher I believe he teaches Cornell or Syracuse teaches writing but I stumbled upon his writing I was reading anthology of American humor and one of his stories was in there and it had been laughing out loud and I was like why have I never heard of this guy before and well one because I don't know much about literature I do read a lot but a lot of them tend to be you know autobiographies and stuff like that so definitely not to somebody you're gonna see walking around with a tweed jacket with arm patches and then ask God but I started just researching more about him and reading more of his books and his he is such an inventive writer he has such a if you're a fan or were a fan of the comedy of Richard prior or George Carlin I think you would enjoy the tone of George Saunders because he can be reverently dark and funny and paint these pictures of the human condition particularly American society and consumerism and the 1% ruling the 99% in a way that isn't cynical and I always find that to be such an accomplishment is if your your anger can keep a focus on who it's at without kind of becoming pedantic I think a lot of times when artists are young it's just this broad paintbrush where they shit on everything and nothing matters in this and that but you don't get that feeling at all you get the sense that he's a deeply caring person whose whose heart aches to be awake but his humor will just come sweeping in at these moments I guess in a lot of ways they're kind of like a perfect support group meeting for me and that I've had support group meetings in the past where I laughed really hard and cried really hard in the same meeting and his books kind of have that that vibe I don't think I've cried out loud reading his books but they're very touching and the one in particular I'm thinking of is a book that he wrote and they're so inventive it sounds like I'm doing an ad for George Saunders I swear to God I'm not but I know many of you are avid book readers and so I'd love to turn you on to whatever oh another book that I read because I heard great things about it is and it's been out for 15 years is Andre Agassi's autobiography so well written so brutally honest and oh my God is that guy a talented writer I was blown away I suppose the the bar of expected when it's an athlete, an athlete is that you don't expect the writing to be super impressive. You're really there for the story, but he has a way with words and stories and insight that is really impressive and entertaining and compelling. So I loved reading his autobiography, but back to George Saunders, the book that I just finished of his is called Lincoln in the Bardot. And I don't even know what a Bardot is, but the book is about the afterlife. And it is about the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and his young son who died when he was president. And it's about a lot more than that. That's just kind of the skeleton, no pun intended, that runs through the story, but incredibly imaginative, touching moments of humor. So if you're looking for a new author to get into, that might be one to start with. Definitely not one of his more humorous books, but anyway, I digress. How are you doing? It's funny, my mood always picks up when I turn the microphone on. And I don't know if it's because I feel obligated to lift my mood so that you, the listener, don't get bummed out, or if just knowing that this is going to go to ears around the planet that my mood lifts, maybe it's a combination of both. But I always feel a little weird saying how I've been in the last week. When in the moment that I'm saying it, I'm not feeling that way. Just another octopus arm of self obsession. Just another thing for me to think about myself and anticipate being judged by this interview with Dr. Rutherford is fairly brief. It's only about 50 minutes long. So today's episode is going to be on the shorter side. And I still do not have the internal battery to dive back into the surveys for those of you that are not regular listeners. Usually the podcast up until the last couple of months has been about two thirds to one half interview. And then the other one third to one half is anonymous surveys that listeners fill out online. I select from certain ones and read them on the podcast. And they can get pretty heavy, pretty beautiful, pretty soul-crushing, all of the above. Anyway, if you're finding it difficult to care in today's world, I get it, man. It is fucking hard. And maybe this next 50 minutes will help you just a tiny bit. I just want to hit my head hard enough to go to sleep for a few weeks. I live alone with a bird. We do not occupy that much space than doing on a car in other people's heads. I never sort of knew I might turn around and hit you. I had rage inside of me. Exhausting. Until I became a parent. It's traumatizing to watch someone you love so much. And I'm glad I got to the other side of it. In so much pain, you are not as fragile as you fear you are. And he's yelling he's going to kill her. You don't have to go through pain. It's so nice to be reminded to find purpose of how much love. First time I was suicidal and now I'm homicidal. In goodness, there is any civil that's good. That's an improvement in the world. Because you're not thinking about yourself. I'm not great. I'm here with Dr. Margaret Rutherford. Thanks for coming. I'm just honored to be here. It's so much fun to finally meet you. You're a friend of Kimberly Quinlan. Shout out to Kimberly. You are a practicing clinical psychologist therapist. Working out of Fayetteville, Arkansas. That's right. Thank you for making the trip. Oh, listen, it was it was grabbed as I said before we started. I was hoping to get here seven or eight years ago and that didn't happen. So I'm really glad to be here now. So lots of stuff to talk about. But before we dive into that, you were kind of honest with me before we started recording about struggles that you've had in your life. Which one would you like me to choose? I got nothing but time. Oh, yeah. I was anorexic in college. I can remember it. I'm old enough to remember these Seago drinks that were a diet drink that I would freeze them. So I could use a spoon. So it would take me 30 minutes to eat them, but you know that I'd be full. So I had anorexia and still have that kind of thinking that, you know, my first thing I look at in a picture is does my muffin top show or not? So that's still a part of I think I do have don't have anorexic behavior anymore. Thank God. And then my twenties were a decade or more of chaos, which I created myself mostly. And Mary, a couple of guys that, let's just say it didn't work out. Yeah, it didn't work out. Give me some snapshots of what the chaos looked like if you're comfortable sharing that. You betcha. My first husband was 20 years my senior. And, you know, daddy issues, I guess. But what most people would say and it was just a mismatch from the beginning. He was looking for a wife who I think he could contribute to her career. And I wanted someone who, I mean, I think I married him because he believed in me being a musician because I was a professional musician at the time. And he was also that of a very good one. And so it was just, you know, we didn't have enough time together. Because I was a student, he was rushing to make it, you know, make it formality. And it was just a wrong move. The second one was a seven year relationship I had. And it was abusive. So both verbally and physically. And I just, from the get go thought, well, you know, I'm just as much a part of this chaos I created it. Of course, he, you know, that was part of the game of narcissistic people to say, I wouldn't treat you this way. If you weren't acting the way you were acting. And unfortunately, I bought it, I hooked on it. I hooked on it and sink her. And it wasn't until really I started. Yeah, hold that thought. Sure. Where you are. For people listening, um, differentiate between your partner and being physically and verbally abused. Yes, because I didn't stop it. I didn't say, don't ever do that to me. If you do it again, I'm out of here. Right. And I just, and so what happens is you begin to feel just as much a part of creating the problem as the person who is doing the abusing and wasn't my nature, I had never been that way before. And I didn't act well. I mean, I acted badly sometimes. Like how? Like some drug use, overuse of alcohol. It was a world I was living in. And, but I certainly take responsibility for consuming those things. And so it was a real, also, it's interesting, Paul, because when you're in a roller coaster relationship like that, it's very good. You know, it's like you're on cloud nine. And when it's not, you're wondering where in the world, you're going to, you know, what's a new cream to get. So the bruises don't show that kind of thing. And, and yet you get addicted to the roller coaster. You get addicted. I was addicted to the ups and downs and the very dramatic kind of relationship we had. What would your body feel during the. High addiction. You know, I know what certain addictions are like in the feeling of adrenalized vitality that you can intellectually know. This is not a good choice for me. No. But in that moment, you're out of your skin and you're into some type of oblivion that you feel alive. Kind of living on the edge. I think I had grown up in Southern Arkansas, a beautiful family. My mother was very much a perfectionist and an anorexic and very, very anxious. She actually was a prescription drug addiction, had a prescription drug addiction herself. And so, but it was a very safe family. It was very, we didn't do bad feelings and it was a loving family. And so, I had come out of that and I was spoiled rotten. I was a sick kid and they thought I was going to die. So, you know, they. They were so glad I didn't, I guess, whatever, I guess that's a good thing. And so I went out into the world thinking, okay, this is good, I'm going to, you know, but I also grew up in the 1950s and '60s, I'm '71. And so I thought I was supposed to get married and yet I didn't want to get married and I was burning my bra and I was doing all this other stuff. So there was a real struggle between doing the thing that I was supposed to do and fludging and wanting to live a more riskier life, a more exciting life. And so what that did to me was using really sexual means to do that as well. And you know, growing up, I had learned that I could use my, you know, whatever attractiveness I had and certainly sexuality and sexuality to be powerful, that's the only way women were told they could be powerful back then. And so I, but I gradually also realized that I wasn't living at my values, my true values. And actually, when I was, my mother got me voted into the Dallas Junior League. I promised you I was the only professional singer there, you know, I was it and, but that led me to volunteering at the battered women's shelter there in Dallas and I was in an abusive relationship that I wasn't calling abusive, but I realized I volunteered there for about three years. Not only did I love helping people or trying to help people, but I also really realized the depth and the severity of the situation I was in, but of course I married him. And it was, by the time I married him, I had gotten, I started my PhD program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and I was beginning to get these messages from people that I actually was likable, I had some good ideas, I didn't have to be sensual or sexual to be valuable and he left, he got mad one day and left and I just, well, we worked on it because that was my value, but we never burnt back together after that. I sound now like, oh well, you know, I can remember being crushed on the floor and sobbing and thinking my life was over here, I was 33 and twice divorced completely, complete failure except for this degree I was going to get so I could help other people not completely screw up their lives, hopefully. And so, you know, along came my husband now and it was like, whoa, I don't know. I mean, that song from sound of music, you know, I must have been something childhood, I must have done something good in my childhood for something good really happened and he came along and you know, it wasn't dramatic, it wasn't a roller coaster, it was just the real thing and I was so lucky to have met him. Was there a part of you that felt bored or like something's missing? Oh, my husband tells me now that he could see that I was trying to push him to see if he would get mad and be abusive. I did recognize that at the time I looked back on it now and realized I was definitely testing him. I don't think I realized that the, that roller coaster aspect of it until I had been in practice for a while and had treated people like that, I thought, well, I was like that. That kind of, that kind of understanding and insight came later. I wish it had come earlier, but I did not. What consciously or subconsciously did you think that you were getting from the testing him? What was the payoff or what did make sure I was safe, I think. And I, and probably, probably was some remnants of, can we spice this up a little bit? Let's have a really bad fight and yet I was so much happier and you know, with content now I will tell you something else that kind of, but we immediately started fertility treatment because I couldn't get pregnant and so that was a roller coaster enough itself. So that was a lot of estrogen and up and down and up and down, but anyway, it was, it's certainly I don't have a panacea of a marriage. I mean, it has its issues just like every marriage does or a partnership, but it's lasted 35 years now, so we were lucky enough to have a son so that, and then, you know, doing what I do for a living, you know, sometimes you feel like you're only a page ahead in the book of the person you're trying to help. And that's a very humbling kind of thing to realize. And yet at the same time, there's sort of this sense of, okay, some, some power sent me this person so that I can show them how to get down this trail when I'm not exactly sure how to get down it myself and, and so I have, I have loved what I do for a living. I have absolutely loved it. Music was a passion and, but the lifestyle that went along with it and all of that was just not something I could handle very well. So, and I found being a therapist, very exciting, so it's a, I mean, I laugh a lot in therapy with people, I get to know them, I, it is, it is a profession that I am, I had no idea that I would, the road would leave me there, but I'm damn glad it did. So, you seem like you would be a very comfortable therapist for somebody to have because you're, you're engaged and humble and you can see the light in somebody's eyes when they're talking about things, they're demeanor, you know, I often say, for me, therapists, it's been as much what's in their eyes as it is anything they're saying. Their body language, because I am constantly much more, when I was younger, searching their eyes for rejection or judgment. Of course, of course. And a case comes to my case, a person, a woman comes to mind who I saw early on in Arkansas, and she came in trigger warning for anybody listening, I'm gonna talk about sexual abuse. That podcast is one gigantic trigger warning, so. Gotcha. Just wanna make sure. Yeah, but I appreciate it. Sure. So, she came in to talk about how she'd been abused by her father. That was the first thing she talked about. She came in in a second session and she told me what her father had had her due to her brother. And she said exactly the same thing you said in the next session. She said, "I thought I knew what I would see in someone's eyes when I told them what I'd done to my brother." And I didn't see that in your eyes. And I just felt, you know, I learned so much from her. And I think a gift, if I could say that, living through it wasn't a gift, but a gift of those years was that I just understand how you can get, you can deceive yourself, and you can be living a life that you never intended to live. And yet, you can also very slowly turn that boat around if you have the support of the right kind of people. But, you know, in my mind, scientifically, there are benevolent, atoms, energy in the universe. I don't know what to call it, but for me, that's where I feel my, you know, for me, spirituality is something that lifts your spirit, that helps you embody the higher version of yourself that you aspire to. Well, I'm very direct in therapy, I tell people all the time, I'm going to tell you, I'm not going to sit over here and be thinking something that I'm not going to say to you. I may not be right, or it may not fit for you, but I'm going to be, because frankly, I would get bored if I was just trying to reflect all the time what somebody else was saying, and I didn't add in my own perspective. So I had a young client one time, come in, and she was telling me about this other woman that she had worked with, and she said, "Oh, she was kind of a rogerian therapist, she really believed in that unconditional positive regard," she goes, "I've heard you don't do that." Oh my god. Well, I hope I'm kind and compassionate and that kind of thing. She said, "I heard you have more to say." So I said, "Okay. All right." So we were talking about the, you know, the roller coaster, the kind of the addictive and the testing. Let's switch gears and talk about one of the things that you are an advocate for and you speak out, speak a lot about it, which is hidden depression. Perfectly hidden depression. Yes, perfectly hidden depression. And you have a TED Talk that's gotten like over half million views. Over two million. Wow. Yeah. And the comments will break your heart. Yes. And I'll tell you how I got that gig. I was, I had written perfectly depression and it was published in 2019 in 2020. A woman I did not know reached out to me, via LinkedIn and said, "I need to know more about this perfectly hidden depression stuff." And so we set up a meeting and I met with her and a friend of hers who are now friends. And she said, "One of our best friends killed herself quite unexpectedly and on Valentine's Day." And it was, she fits the rubric. She fits the, you know, very successful, well-loved, happy family supposedly seemingly. No one would have guessed she was struggling at all. But when at the funeral, her husband came up to me and he said, "I found this on her bedside table." And it was my book, which brought tears to my eyes at the time. Kind of choked up. And she said, "I want to know more about this." Well, come to find out. Paul, she was a co-organizer of the TEDx spoke of a ton. And I never thought about doing a TEDx. I didn't, I never think about writing a book. I love just being a therapist, a mother, a friend, and a wife. But this topic kind of found me. And so I auditioned for the TEDx and I didn't get it the first year, but I did get it the second year. And then, so yeah, it has been astounding, the feedback that's been given. And don't worry about that. I don't have the memorized. No, no, but don't worry about tooting your own horn, to the way. All right. Well, there are over 100,000 people that have liked it. And I guess when you like, you know, we all know what that means. Over 2,000 comments. Most of some of which are people who say, "This is me exactly. You would never know that I was depressed." Some people that have made fun of the fact that there's a black background, a black background, and I was wearing a black sweater, so it kind of looks like all you could see is my head and my face or my head. Some people who say, "Thank God someone is standing up to the middle health profession and the DSM, who believed depression is these seven or eight or nine criteria and nothing else." Because I am challenging the middle health profession to say, "You've got to go out of the box to understand these people. They are not going to tell you they're hopeless. They're not going to tell you they feel bad." And oftentimes they don't even know their hopelessness. Exactly. They have worn this camouflage for so long that it's just who they are. And you think, "I'm not sad." Yeah, I don't. I never cry. Everybody counts on me. In fact, people walk up to me and say, "I wish I had the life you had. How do you get done? Everything you get done." But what's going on is that -- and I used the term strategy in the first book, which was not a good term to use, because that sounds like it's a conscious decision. In the second -- in the workbook, I have used the term camouflage. And why do you wear camouflage? You wear camouflage so you could hide something you're doing from anyone who's around you, right? That might tip off what you're doing. And you wear it for protection. You wear it -- so, like I said, for to kind of lose your identity in the environment. That's what these folks -- for some reason, and it could vary. The families that grew up in, the cultures that grew up in, have taught them or demanded of them, that they not express their more painful feelings, their fear, their anger, their desperation, their whatever. And so, they began investing in this camouflage, this persona. My friend, Keterina calls it "performing happiness." Perfect. Perfect. Love that. But love to meet her. Talk with her. And it's very performative, and it's a way of functioning in the world that works very well on many levels. Yes, on the outside. It's great. I mean, you would never have known in graduate school that I was in an abusive relationship or that I even got a divorce. In fact, at the end of the year, someone was kidding me about getting divorced. And one of my professors said, "You got divorced or in graduate school?" I mean, I had that camouflage down pat. I never really struggled with perfectly hidden depression, but I was performing happiness. So, the comments are more about, this should be more talked about. This should be, and then there are some people who are just talking about how depressed they are, and it's not really a fit with perfectly hidden depression, but they need a place to talk about it, and they get a lot of support. So, it has really, I'm not surprised because I realized, maybe I'll tell a little bit of the story that how I got into this. I had started the podcast because I was writing the book on perfectly hidden depression because I got a lot of feedback from some posts I was writing about it. I interviewed over 60 people from all over the United States who said, "Yes, this is me." So, what happened was, my agent was going to publishing houses and they'd say, "No one knows who Margaret Rutherford is. Nobody cares who Margaret Rutherford is." So, I started the podcast to say, "Well, I'm comfortable in front of a microphone. It doesn't necessarily make me nervous, although I have performance anxiety." So, I started the podcast, and then what I learned was that I had to come up with a topic every week, and so I started writing it for my website about perfectly hidden depression, and what happened was, I wrote this post called the perfectly hidden depression, "Are you one?" And I, it went viral, and I never had anything go viral before, and then when it was put on the hoof post because I was writing for them at the time, that a friend got me that gig was very nice. I had hundreds of emails in 24 hours. This is me, how do you know about this? It's like you're in my head. Actually, I got my story confused a little bit because that came first, and then the podcast came later. And so, I got curious, Paul. I said, "What is this?" Then I started thinking about the people that I'd seen. One, I told her pretty dramatic story in the first book about how I had actually gone to her house in the stories. I've been attacked for that because I've been called unethical for that, but anyway, it was a gut choice, and I'm glad I made it. And she was trying to kill herself, and I found her, and I was just stunned because I had diagnosed her with panic disorder. I didn't think she was depressed, made little, you know, that kind of thing. So, I started writing about those people, and the more I wrote about it, the more people wrote in to say, "I'd like to talk to you," and then that's what led me to the podcast, and that's what led me to the book, which led me to the TEDx. I feel like I've been following breadcrumbs, you know, for now, eight, nine, ten years. We're going to take a quick break and see if we have any sponsors. This episode is sponsored by Quince. It is pretty rare the day that I am not wearing something made by Quince. I got t-shirts, I got a cashmere sweater, I got underwear, I got linen pants. I think all I have left is to get a tuxedo. Quince is an amazing combination of quality and value. Their stuff is so affordable because they cut out the middleman. They work directly with ethical factories, and that saves you money, right? I'm not a mathematician, but I think that's how it works. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order in 365 day returns, now available on Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was mental illness happy hour. the best way to support the show, and as always, we'll put the links to that in the show notes. This episode is sponsored by Timeline and their mitopure products. In particular, they're gummies. If you're not familiar with the term mitocondria, it is the little part of yourself that produces energy and helps you feel vital and healthy. The health of your mitocondria affects your body, your mind, your spirit, you name it. It affects everything. If you want to feel better in all areas of your life, take control of your life. Try something new. You bump into a friend, they ask how you've been, what you've been up to, and you say, "You know, really just revitalizing my mitocondria," and then they stare at you and you drop the mic and walk away. So support yourselves and how you age with mitopure gummies from Timeline. Visit timeline.com/mental for up to 20% off your mitopure gummies. That's timeline.com/mental. And as always, we put the links to this stuff in the show notes. I think one of the gifts of being older and having experience is spending less time looking into the crystal ball and remembering it's the breadcrumbs. It's the next right-indicated action and just trying to adhere to our moral compass, which I find keeps me in that positive flow of energy in the universe. What a great way of putting it, yeah. That is what I've found, and so that kind of is my higher power, the belief that there is in energy that I can tap into if I choose to, and that the universe will bring things to me, never on my schedule, never in the form that I want them to be. But in hindsight, I look back and I was like, "Oh, I was able to grow. I was able to learn from this, and I was able to share that with somebody else and comfort them when they were in the darkness." You know, you're bringing up something that's a story that I tell and it's absolutely true. When I first moved to Fable, which was in 1993, 1992 from Dallas, I tell them I've been therapist that I didn't want to move back to a small southern town, you know? Everybody knows everybody's business. So I told him, I said, "Well, I'm going to move there, but I'm just not going to be open about having been divorced twice. I'm afraid of judgment." And he in his very Larry way looked at me and said, "Well, you know, that's an option." So I didn't, I didn't lie. If someone had said, "Have you been divorced?" I would say, "Yes, I wouldn't say twice," because of my own shame about it. I wasn't ready to open up. And then I read a book called, by Maya Angelo, "Wouldn't take nothing from my journey now." It's a little book of essays she wrote, which is what this comes to mind because I was definitely led to read this book somehow. And in that book of essays, she tells a story about that she'd been nominated or or she got this award for like New York person of the week or month or year. I don't know what it was. And she went to a bar with a lot of her friends and she just got smashed out of her mind. And sat down with a table of guys and very sloppily said, "Well, you know, what's wrong with me? Why doesn't anybody want to make love with me?" And she just made a fool of herself. She said, "It's one of those things that you want to change your name and move to Canada," as she said. And I thought, "Here's this poet laureate, this person that I so admire, giving away her secrets," you know, talking about a huge mistake she made or how she was embarrassed. And I said, "That's the person I want to be." But it took me a few years to get there. But I remember this young woman and came in and sat down on my couch and she was almost immediately started crying. And she said, "I'm about to get my second divorce." And my life wasn't supposed to turn out this way. And I feel so bad about it. And she looked down and paused. She looked right up back up and she said, "But you wouldn't know what that was like." Oh, okay, okay, up there. And I looked at her. I remember the exact words I said. I said, "You're about to be a member of a club that I've been a member of a long time." I can't imagine how comforting that was to her. Yeah, sure. I was kind of like this. And I didn't talk anymore about it. It's not my story that I needed to tell with her. But I wanted to reassure her. And that's when I thought, "Okay, just did it." And then when I started podcasting and writing, I was just very honest about all that stuff. So that's really, that's how I've grown from doing what you and I do. I've grown by just being okay with me. What moments in your life, if you're comfortable sharing them, would be your Maya Angelou moment of her at that table, you know, drunkenly saying. Oh, gosh. The ones that are hard to say, those are the ones that, I don't know, I find the most freeing to let go of and to say it's sitting across, having somebody sit across from me, looking me in the eyes. I mean, to me, it doesn't get anymore intimate with the human being. Then like, here's this part of me. Here is what I feel is the ugly part of me. Yeah. And I hope I'm not putting you on the spot, but you're such an open person. No, I've never been asked that question before. So I'm running through the roster of things that come to mind. Probably, let me see, I'm a hedging here and I don't want to hedge. Is it difficult for you as a therapist to do this because I don't, I don't want to know. I think the thing about it is that it's easier to talk about things you figured out where mistakes, a mistake that you could still be making or mistake that you're still struggling with is just harder to reveal. I think my struggles with any kind of addictions, probably, with food. I had a addiction to restrict. I don't do that anymore. I use drugs. You know, I would say not as much as most of my friends, but they were a problem. And alcohol has been something that has run in and out of my life. There have certainly been times during menopause. It was a huge problem. And I have done things that I wish I hadn't done, embarrassed myself. And yet it's also something I have not totally given up. And so sometimes I think they haven't given up what alcohol. Okay. Sometimes I think I just don't want to. Other times I think I would that it's not a problem anymore. But it has power for me. That when I come home that I want to have a drink and whether it's glass wine or whatever it is. And I think that that I wish that weren't true. If I could find enough self-discipline or self-compassion or whatever it is that I would I would I would not add that into my day. But I have not yet found I mean other some days it's not as it's not a problem at all. But most days, you know, and that is not something a lot of people. My friends don't know about me. My friends know that it's something that I wish I could make go away. Thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate that. And I'm imagining all the people you know Arkansas they're going well I'm not going to see her anymore. But that's the same same thing actually that happened when I started talking about my panic disorder when I talked about my marriages. I thought I would you know it would be horrible because of shame. And so you're welcome. It's like I was sitting here going am I going to talk about this or not? One of the things that I have found is it's so much easier to grow. And I'm speaking about myself personally and I know there are other people who feel the same way but it is so much easier to grow when I stop viewing things as a mistake or a I fucked up or I did this and that and rather saying I didn't reach for the ideal tool to soothe myself. And again in the lecture Actually, it's easy sometimes to know I should be picking up the phone, calling somebody, I should be journaling, I should be going for a walk but no, I want to do such and such. And framing things that way, I find is just more self-compassionate and just more practical because then you don't go into that spiral and you're able to say to yourself, or at least look at yourself in a way where you can go, I wasn't being weak, I needed soothing. Yes, yeah, yeah. So as you were talking, I was thinking about this client years ago who told me, because her addiction was food and she said, you know, when she would have a door dash or whatever, but it was somebody who she'd actually see, I think it was used to be when they knocked on the door. But anyway, she'd said she would order two meals and as she was opening the door, she'd look behind her and say, they're here, honey. Just so the dash person wouldn't know or wouldn't suspect. So the things we do to cover up, I shift from overwork and because I love my work, I really do love my work and love writing and I love trying to figure things out and trying to help other people do the same. But I kind of have an on/off switch. And so when that off switch turns off, it's like I'm still a little wanting that roller coaster, you know, talk more about the hidden depression. As I say, I got all this feedback from this Huff Post thing and that led me to write more about it. And actually, I literally remember putting down names of clients, past clients, saying, what all these people have in common? How would you know this was going on in somebody's life because it doesn't, it's not going to look like depression. So what is it going to look like? It's going to look like being Uber responsible. It's going to look like always having your hand up in the air, I'll do it. It's going to look like when you get an extra task that you decide to take on, you don't take anything off your plate. It's going to look like toxic positivity. I'm just so grateful for my blessings I have, you know, I can't have any problems. It's going to look like you don't know how to express pain. You can say you feel it. Oh yeah, I'm really sad about that. Can you express that sadness? No. It's going to look like a lot of caring for other people very sincerely, but no one knows you. You know, you have that friend, those friends that say, you know, do you know anything about Paul's childhood? I never heard anything about it, has he ever said anything about it? No, you're sort of a digmo. It's going to look like a definitely a little like discounting pain or any kind of problems now. Those are the things that I call them the 10 characteristics of perfectly in depression. They're not characteristics of depression, they're characteristics of perfectly in depression. And so, and that I don't have any empirical evidence for this, although I have read a lot of the research on perfectionism, and certainly it, it seems like they would agree there's something called socially prescribed perfectionism that the researchers call really is the worst kind you can have. They're self-oriented, other-oriented, and socially prescribed, meaning that if you say, if you had told me before this interview, well, I'm going to ask you this question about what is the one thing that has been, you know, that's still a current struggle for you. I wouldn't feel like I wanted to answer it. I would say to myself, it's his expectation for me to answer this, so I must. Or else I won't be the best person he's ever interviewed to that happen. No, because I don't have perfectly in depression. Okay. So, I have anxiety, but I do not count myself. I'm perfectionistic, but I think I'm more constructively perfectionistic. I easily talk about my emotions. I easily talk about, you know, stuff that's I cry a lot. I mean, you know, I've got a lot of access to that stuff. So what happened was as I began pulling together these traits, that's when a friend of mine said, "You are right, a book." And I went, "What?" But I did. I got curious. I read all the research. I found Brunei Brown. I must have been hiding under a rock that I didn't know who Brunei Brown was. And then I found a book, which is an excellent book called, "I don't want to talk about it by Terry Real, Terence Real, about what he called covert depression in men. It's still on the best-seller list. It still does very, very well. Smart, smart book, and really fascinating to read." So I guess I believe in, if you believe it should exist and it doesn't then try a hand at creating it, you know, why not. And so I did. And sure enough that friend I told you about, she worked for an agent, a literary agent. She was an acquisition editor. She probably told me that. I didn't even know what an acquisition editor was, which she said. I had no idea. She said, "I think my agent would like, so I didn't have to go through all that looking for an agent's stuff. One of those breadcrumbs." One of those breadcrumbs. One of those breadcrumbs. And so I, he liked it. He'd never been an agent for a middle-health book. Again, that's when he was going to the publishing companies they were going, "Oh, you don't think, we don't think perfectionistic people will buy a book on depression, which has been proven not true." And nobody knows who you are, hence the podcast. So what happened is I got, the book was published in 2019. It's done very well for a book by, you know, nobody knows who I am. And it's been translated into 13 or 14 different languages, so it's done very well. And there's a workbook that will be out when this airs. A book of first, yes, yes. I actually went to them several years ago and said, "I'd like to talk about it." I'd like to do a workbook and they, I don't know, they just said no. And I was really, I, you know, maybe I was trying to drop my own breadcrumbs, I don't know. And then they came back to me about a year and a half ago and said, "We would like to do this." So, and what I did with this book, the criticism of the first book has been, I included like 60 exercises in the book, one of the reviews on Amazon says, "The first third of the book was really good, but then it started feeling like a therapy session." And I thought, "Yes, that's what it's supposed to feel like." So anyway, but I think I have been a therapist for so long that I may have made it too difficult especially to do on your own, settle the reviews, say, it took me a year and I have to get through this book. I'm glad I did. It's changed my life, blah, blah, blah. But it was probably kind of a deeper way to go about it. And so I approached it this time quite differently and looked at those 10 traits that you and I were talking about. And I just went into, "Okay, what's hard about this trait? What do you want to hold on about this that really works for you and is an expression of who you are and what needs to go? You know, what is about shame? What is about fear? What is about lack of self-compassion? What is about not being, you know, not accepting yourself?" So I think it is a more accessible book. It's a more approachable book. And at the end, we even go back and rewrite the traits in the way that now fits with what your understanding is. And it's a true workbook where you work in the book and New Harbinger does a great job of providing you all this online stuff that you can get. You write in the book and you want to write again, you can get extra stuff for that. I put in some meditations for it. And so I loved writing this for it. I had to get over my irritation with them for not, you know, 70 years seems like a long time between books to me, but anyway, I got over that and got excited about it. So I think it's, and I actually tell the story of my mother in it because I think she probably, my brother, who's now deceased, used to ask me, was I writing the book about him, and he was somewhat like my mother, so maybe I was. But anyway, yeah, when she died, no one, I mean, well, when she got off the prescription drug, she was no longer who she was because those were the, those were how she was functioning. And so, but she always looked beautiful and she always, but she didn't know she was beautiful. and she didn't know she was smart and she didn't know she was the person she was, the values she had, she just didn't know, she had it, she had it no sense of her own worth. When was the first time a light bulb popped on in your head about patriarchy and especially in the south and what did you feel and think? What a great question. Was it just kind of a slowly evolving thing? Or was there? There was such a dichotomy. I'm sorry. Go ahead and get us a question. No, no. How men retreated, how my brothers were treated and how I was treated was so very different. My parents had expectations of my brothers. They were going to send them to college, but they said after college, you need to have a job. They never said this to me, but basically it was after college, you need to be married. There were things that boys did that girls didn't do and I was sick as a kid. I think I mentioned that before and so I couldn't do a lot of things. I'm fine now, but it began to, I remember my very first therapy appointment and why I went to therapy, I don't know because it certainly wasn't, nobody said it was a good idea, but she worked a lot with me about this small version of myself that I had envisioned and that's all I had envisioned and she began having me write a lot of mantras about who I was and what my value was and that kind of thing. I think the chaos that I described before was mostly about looking for other people who were going to control me like I'd been controlled. My parents' control was not meant to hurt me, it was meant to guide me, but it was a prison of sorts and so I was, that was familiar to me, so I married people who also wanted to control me and yet I rebelled. My husband, if he were in here, would go, "Will you have a little bit of controlling stuff yourself?" Where he's completely correct about that. I think that I have recognized those messages, one of the ways that came across most strongly with my mother and dad was, for example, when I had a child and I was in my early 40s, so I was 39 when I had Rob and I was doing music and mother would say, "And I was in plays," and she said, "But you're a mother now." And I'd say, "Yes." And I'd love to see, and I'm not bad at it, and I'm getting these parts. Now, once my son said, "Mom, I really missed you," I'd scrape it up, and he's like, "Okay, we're not going to do that anymore," but not for those reasons, not because I was doing too much or I was too much. She's using air quartz. Yes. Yes. And so, I think my husband and I have modeled a much more even egalitarian kind of model of what a relationship can be. My dad could show the purse strings and my mother got an allowance and all that stuff, so I didn't want to be like that. What do you think now, having been around for, I don't know, would it be considered the second wave of the feminist movement, the first wave being the suffragette movement? Well, the second movement that has also been damaged so much recently. I mean, it's really, it's alarming some of the rights and things that we fought for that are in danger. So, yeah, I'm very concerned about that. And what do you think is you look at the world around you, does the topic of equal rights, does it depress you, does it, are there any pockets of sunshine in it, or I just wonder what it feels like to be somebody who has your lived experience and sees the world through eyes that I will never be able to see them through? The normal, I'll be able to see them through years. So, that's just limits of perspective. I know that's a very general question that I'm asking. Well, I came to my mind. I mean, I see both men and women, but the women I see, I mean, they're drawn to therapy. So, you know, I also live in a red state that's, you know, very far to the right, but we're this sort of little blue button in the North West corner of the state. So, they're already in therapy, but I see them fighting this fight. I see them being more vocal, running for office, doing things that, you know, are things that need to become glorious? Dynam was great. I mean, she was fantastic, but at the same time, she was so, you know, a lot of people thought she was so liberal, too liberal, you know, and so what I'm seeing is this beginning, understanding of women in a lot of different walks of life, a lot of different religious beliefs, a lot of different who are saying, I don't want to go back to, you know, getting an allowance and being told, you know, what to do and that I don't have a mind of my own. And it's a little more grassroots. I think maybe, you know, that movement was more ethereal. And certainly not meant to be a ethereal, probably, but a little harder for me, but I do believe that women are doing that. And so we shall see. We shall see. Thank you so much for coming and sharing all this. Is there anything you'd like to share with the listener or share with us before we wrap up? I just want to tell you and not, you know, to curry favor necessarily, or maybe I do, I don't know, but your interview style is really very unique. And I heard it, because I listened to a couple, because I didn't want to come unprepared, but it's just very unique. And it's like, oh, he don't want me to just talk about the book. He wants to know me. And he wants me to share me. And so it's been refreshing and I appreciate very much. Thank you. Sure. Was I wrong? Or was she delightful? D-E-E-E. Lightful. If you feel like supporting the podcast, we could really use your help either financially or non-financially. We have a Patreon page. It's patreon.com/mentalpod. And you can become a monthly donor. You can actually be a free monthly donor, but you get rewards if you do a monthly donation from anywhere from a dollar to however much you want to give. There are different tiers. And that's a cool stuff. I could list them all, but I don't feel like it. I am the worst. I am the worst self-promoter. You can also do one-time donations via PayPal. Is that even a word? Monthly donor via PayPal, but you don't qualify for any rewards like you do via Patreon. Because you don't have that on the PayPal interface. You can also help us non-financially by making sure you subscribe. Did download every episode, because then that increases our downloads. And then that's more attractive for advertisers to advertise with us. And you can also help us by writing good reviews. Spreading the word on social media. Spreading the word among your friends. Friends that you don't mind knowing that you're crazy, but then again, if they're friends of yours, they already know your fucking bananas. So the cat is out of the bag on that one. Anyway, I hope you got something out of this week's episode. And if you're out there and you're feeling stuck, I know I am. I never forget that you're you're not alone. And thanks for listening. Everybody I know is bizarrely beautiful. Everybody I know weird ways. bizarrely beautiful fuck up and some weird ways.