Dr. Julie Basler

Hey everybody, WinCleba here and welcome to another master's podcast with WinCleba again 30 years. This is my 30th year anniversary in doing this and just from my heart to all of you my listeners I never take this for granted that you listen month after month. Maybe some of you are brand new, some of you maybe have been listening for 30 years, but I'm so grateful that you give me this opportunity and it's funny before we started recording my editor was saying you know gosh if you would just record less time here it would make it an easier edit and I said well if I invited some idiots on to record them maybe they wouldn't have much to say but that's never the case. I actually put a lot of thought and a lot of energy and it's using amazing people that I know that you're going to benefit from and that's what today is going to be all about. So I'm sitting here with Dr. Julie Basler, so Dr. Julie or Julie however you want me to call you. First of all welcome to master's podcast with WinCleba. Thanks Win and yes please call me Julie and your listeners if they refer to me it's just Julie. I think we're all close friends here and and truthfully the topic I'm going to speak about today. If we're not close friends we're certainly going to be a lot more close friends than we were before we started listening to the podcast. Thanks for having me and really thanks for putting a spotlight on a topic that still I think today and today stigma and in our culture still catches heat for being something that's sort of a shhhh don't ask don't tell talk about it and that's people's mental health and well-being. You know what are they say it's in any kind of a mental health struggle or crises. They say it's a disease that people get mad at you for having they don't necessarily get mad at you for having cancer but they get mad at you for having a mental health struggle. Do you sometimes hear or experience the same thing? Yeah Dave you know it's funny I like to use the analogy if in Colorado where I live if we see somebody in a cast or a sling on their arm a cast on their leg you know we want to hear that story we want to go up to somebody in in the middle of a Walmart or a store and say hey what you do to your leg because we pretty much think it's going to be a gruesome ski story we can tell our families that night but we don't really look closely at people to see if if they're having a mental health crisis. I think what's interesting if you stopped in the same let's say Walmart target wherever you're at if you truly looked around at the people in line you would see a plethora of people some on their phones some staring off into space I like to give it a story behind it I was at Denver International Airport I do a lot of flying and I was standing waiting to put my luggage on the the conveyor belt and I look over to my right there seems to be nothing going on I heard a dog bark I looked I looked to my left and I see a woman and her hands are shaking and I become hyper focused on her and she's waiting on her luggage and I notice that tears are streaming down her face and my husband has gotten his luggage he's continued to walk on he's waiting on me and I leave my luggage and I just walk up to her and I put my arms out and I say I don't know what's going on for you at this very moment but I feel like you might could use a hug do you want to wrap your arms into mine and just let me hold you for a second what's the danger there all she can do is say no and she wrapped her arms into mine and she sobbed and I said whatever is going on for you today you are not absolutely not the root cause of something it's okay to be not okay it's okay to cry at a halt you should never shame yourself and I told her the gate I was going to be at I said if you just want to sit down for a few minutes before your flight let's have a cup of coffee I'm here for you well okay so you already got me a little cheerioid we haven't even jumped into this yet I'm just shared with our listeners about who you are so let me do that let me get my housekeeping done and obviously I'm going to read this because there's a lot so Dr. Julie Bassler has served as president for plaque college in Colorado as the dean of fine arts and associate professor of English and speech communications at Columbia State Community College in middle Tennessee Dr. Bassler was awarded the president of the United States Volunteer Service Award under President Obama and Trump which recognizes celebrates and holds up as role models Americans who make a positive impact as engaged in deeply committed volunteers well Dr. Bassler earned three U.S. gold medals for her service to career and technical education she is a recipient of the Colorado Council of Medical Librarians Library Champion Award an award presented for outstanding support of health sciences in December of 2022 Dr. Bassler was named one of the top 20 people changing career education in Canada and in the United States Dr. Bassler has been speaking at national conferences regarding mental health struggles among college administrators openly talking about her struggle with mental health well-being and discuss how as a sector we could do more for ourselves which in turn does more for our students she is also currently the chair of the Colorado Commission for the deaf part of hearing and deaf blind appointed by Colorado governor in this role she represents heart of hearing adults and a child of a deaf parent in the state of Colorado and reviews legal auxiliary services rules corresponding policies and procedures and help in oversee in the state's grant money in 2023 Dr. Bassler was named the University of Tennessee outstanding alumnus of the year and in July 2025 Concordia University Saint Paul honor Dr. Bassler by dedicating the student center at the Denver campus in her name you have a building named after you a student center that's a building wow congratulations on all of that oh and by the way I think I edited about 50% or more of your bio as I shared that with our listeners and you know because there's a lot of degrees in there and a lot of educational accomplishments and from the little that I know of you in today's context I think you would agree that maybe that stuff isn't all that important what it does do is it gives you credibility and I think that I read that or I heard you say that that these degrees and your business accomplishments what that did was gave you a stage it gave you a platform it gave you credibility to talk about what you're now truly passionate about and that is again this conversation and telling your personal story of mental health and wellness is that pretty accurate it is and thank you thanks for reading through all of that I don't even know that my own mother would sit through that she might oh but I really do appreciate it and I appreciate all the blessings in my life that I've been given I think probably when people hear my bio I hope what they think he is oh she's strongest steel she's somebody that's not one of us she's not obtainable and then I hope after hearing my story they realize I'm just a gal from a population town of 5,000 people 60 miles south of Nashville who puts her pants on the same way everybody else does I am somebody that's just as broken and in mental health and found myself in a mental crisis that's no different from a homeless individual that we would normally assign that visual role to I think in America we think people with mental illness oh you know they're the homeless guy on the street the homeless lady on the street appear at the 16th street mall when I look at people on the street I think about our mental health it may not be different our life conditions and how we got to that point in our life are right and so I hope that when people hear my story that what they remember are not the awards the titles somehow I navigated my life using high functioning anxiety to earn a lot of awards and to do a lot of great work and I did it with a team of extraordinary people it wasn't a solo act but what I hope that people hear and what resonates when with your listeners is the fact that at the end of the day I'm just a normal human being trying to get the life trying to love the good pieces of me and trying to bring light to darkness in in a world where I think we need more light well I recently hired you to come and speak to my group so it was a group of about 300 leaders we come together annually and we have been for 25 years and of course I always bring in what I consider to be the best of the best of the best guest speakers my gosh we've had everybody from Dr. Daniel Aiman to Tony Robbins to Magic Johnson to just incredible people and I want to share this with our listeners during your 90-minute presentation so you're on that stage for 90 minutes all you did the entire time was tell your story now I say this all the time I think that the best teachers and mentors and parents and heroes are storytellers you're a phenomenal storyteller I mean I tell stories but in in between my story is on stage I'll say okay now everybody here's what you need to learn here's what you need to do here's step one here's step two you never did that and I've only known maybe three or four other people who have been able to do that you know father Greg who found in homeboy industries was like that all he did was tell a story we had Diana in the ad and that same thing all she did 90 minutes all she did was just tell her story and that's a gift that's such a gift where you weren't so concerned about okay I want the audience to learn this and this and this you just put it out there from your heart from your life experience shared a story and I'm sure that every person in that audience was taking notes and they were making notes of not only what you said but what they need to do with the information that you shared but again I'm just amazed that it all you did was tell your story well thank you thanks for saying that and again thanks for having me your culture at your schools is phenomenal I had known that going into it but oh my gosh and I knew a lot about you with your being nice principal your book the whole nine yards but I was so glad that you recognized that you know a lot of the teachings and a lot of what we say to school executives are about students student mental health and you know after the pandemic and trying to get a single mother through a program trying to get a student who's lost or working with their aging parents through a program and these types of obstacles but you were able to see that in order to be able to do that you have to have what I like to call a glass that's half full not half empty you know you can't pour from an empty glass so I've always found that if I'm truthful and transparent in who I am and I wish I could tell you that that was an easy lunge an easy step for me to take by no means was it easy because I had kept that part of my life private I shamed myself and to tell him my story there was a time where I didn't even want my own sister who's one of my closest friends in the world to know that I was going through such a mental health crisis and so by being able to be totally upfront and open I'm able to be myself it's it's not only I feel like storytelling and to help others but every time I do it and I'm on that stage it chips away at that mask and it chips away at that facade that I've tried to live and so it's very therapeutic for me to be able to stand up and to hear other people say you know I might be in the same boat or I can relate to what you're saying I hear you you're resonating with me I always say if I can leave a conference or a speaking engagement and just one person comes up and says you helped me I hear what you're saying and I think it's time I get help then it's worth it I would travel 900 million miles by foot if I thought that person would stand up and come to me and and that's what I felt your audience was made it easy for me to be able to tell that story to love me through it to support me through it and I felt that all the way through the conference too um and we're we are going to get into your story based on what you were just sharing I think by telling a personal story what that does is it gives people hope that's what we sell that's what we offer and so when people are sitting in your audience and maybe they can't relate oh my god she has this degree she she's got two beautiful kids she's got a beautiful home and a beautiful husband and she's got all of these incredible things that she's accomplished and her resume is two miles long I I can't relate to that but then when you tell your story oh I can relate to that and by telling that story wait she went through that she somehow made it through all of that maybe there's hope for me and that's what it does is it gives people hope yeah I would agree and and that may be the highest compliment that somebody can say every morning I wake up and I always say this meditation in my mind regardless of what people believe in in a god or a spiritual being what whatever their beliefs are and that is always to say help me be the light in the darker world oh can you repeat that again so we can all hear it one more time sure you know I think the important part that I wake up every day and think to myself is and and my own meditative prayer is to say let me be a light in someone's dark world well let me bring peace to someone who has lost hope let me be the vessel the voice not necessarily to be that therapist to be that counselor but to be the conduit for someone to seek that help and that is what all the degrees the titles the awards really gave me was the platform to be known to say I want to go way beyond what I'm doing in my own professional life to actually bring my personal life to the forefront you talk about me in that that conduit and that's what you were in the airport with that woman that total stranger you didn't show up saying okay well I have the answer I know exactly what you need to do I know the book you need to read I know the medicine you need to take you didn't do any of that all you did was become a conduit for her to maybe seek out some hope for herself right I try to put the situation always back to my children I know you and I have a very shared love to talk about our daughters you know so we're a girl dad and a girl mom and I have two daughters and so we share that and I always think about if that girl standing or lady woman it's standing in the airport were my own daughter I would hope someone would put their hand out to her would offer to wrap their arms around her that's what every parent would want and and put yourself in that too there have been times I have been on an airplane I remember a flight from Washington DC I had ran the commission meeting for five days I was the chair of the commission I got on a flight flying home to Denver and cried nearly the entire flight home and an airline attended came up to me and said I don't know what's wrong and it's okay but if there's something I can do to help you do you want to come sit beside me for a while and I just thought what a kind thing to do she didn't need to know what was going on she didn't try to put her own well let me tell you what you need to do right now it was simply an olive branch and what if we packed instead of of packing our backpacks every day with the what I call rocks the rocks of burden we think we carry what if we dump the rocks out and put olive branches what kind of world would we have if we traded a rock for an olive branch well that's a great analogy and again before we get into your story you you did mention that mask and I've heard you speak before and you you mentioned the theory of living behind a mask what do you mean by this theory I think when you are an executive when you reach that level I mean I didn't have aspirations honestly to be an executive I thought I'd be a great community college professor I loved my students I was lucky I had mentors who saw something in me and they felt like I needed to do more and my husband's career took us to Colorado when I was able to get into more of an administrative role as a vice president and president but I think when you get to that level you're already coming into an office situation in meeting with other people other presidents you're on committees you're working you know usually for a governor you're you're doing good work in the community and I think what happens is is somehow for me personally I just became farther away from who I like to say I had been born and raised to be I got a little farther away of trying to table my anxiety all the time you know high functioning anxiety causes a mask to go on us and it tires us out I think what happens is in high functioning anxiety we have to be on time we have to be perfect we have to be perfectly dressed we have to be seen by other people and we're so self-absorbed and consumed by what does my team think what do other people think of me am I smart enough am I good enough am I this am I that and it becomes this exhausting pattern and you crash at night you wake up and the mask is right back on and even in my own personal life I had daughters in dance I was trying to be a what I like to call a palms dance mom I was trying to be a really good wife I was trying to support my husband in his own career and at some point the switch flips and it just becomes autopilot it's almost like an off-on switch and I got so good at turning the off-on switch that the ugly parts were only seen by the people who lived with me and I had gotten sort of masterful at hiding it from them too maybe that's the part that's important that you you just said that your loved ones your family at home are the ones who experience the ugly side of that because otherwise as you're sharing this people are thinking wait a minute isn't that what we're taught to do that we don't show up in a really bad mood and tell everybody I'm in a bad mood this is really who I am it's you're told to fake it you know you you leave that at the door I mean that's all good advice that we have learned that we have practice how do you fit that into the story that you're telling us now well I think attitude has a lot to do with that so the having the right attitude and being able to recognize coming to work in a good mood is your personal responsibility not because you're going to work just actually saying to yourself you're working through your whole mission in life is really to work through life and to better your own life and other people's lives that's what I believe we're doing here on earth I think we're put on earth to make a difference in other people's lives some people do it better than others some people don't even realize they do it it's seamless for them and some people do it through their career by becoming a career where they touch the lives of people some people do it through their own personal life but I think what happens and when we talk about the dark ugly parts I was so exhausted from being somebody all day that my family got the exhausted version of me they're going to bed at sometimes eight o'clock eight thirty you know I'm 52 now when I was going through a lot of this in my thirties and forties you know I'm exhausted and I it's like my tank is so empty I've got nothing left and so my kids and husband paid the price of that they got the empty tank Julie not the full tank I didn't know how when the best way I could put it is to regulate that tank we wake up every day with a full refresh tank unless we've had a bad night we've been sick blah blah blah but the tank shouldn't be exhausted in being someone you're not got it so I was burning through think of it like a battery on your cell phone my cell phone battery and my tank battery being the same my tank battery would be at 20 percent low battery on the drive home consistently every day and then it took the weekends from a just to recover to get right back into the low battery mode I never felt good enough and when you don't feel good enough and strong enough to be who you are people can mistake that for humility when sometimes humility is part of it but it's also a cry for help to say I'm not good enough to be your leader I'm maybe I'm not good enough to be your parent maybe I'm not good enough to be your daughter your spouse your sibling and until I woke up and realized that I needed to get back to the roots of who I was and what my purpose in life was to be it was just a cyclical turn it was it was constantly just cyclical I was in this circle of up and down up and down up and down and maybe people can relate to that the people at work that you work with or go to school with you know they see that fun playful side of you but the people that we love and care about the most rarely see that side of us and I'm sure people listening to this can relate to that like oh okay now I get it I get it that's those are the people who should experience the best of me and what you're sharing with us is that's not what was happening so let's get into your stories so you know I'd like to tell you that I had this idea in my life that I've always had mental health issues you know I grew up as I mentioned earlier in a town of 5,000 people we weren't growing up in a town where there were a lot of resources my father was the town pharmacist my mother was a nurse and our family practitioner when I was a younger child would only come you know on Wednesdays down to our town from the bigger town so there was a lot of before scope of practice a lot of people would come into my mom and pops you know dad's drugstore and say hey I don't feel well should I go to the hospital my father was the decision maker up the town and so when you grow up and your parents are well known and you grow up with parents who were in medicine people in medicine are not always great about recognizing if they need help I had always probably looking back was obsessive compulsive about things my parents met in the military my mother was a nurse first lieutenant in the military and met my father and put him through pharmacy school and their love story bled over into they had high expectations and that's not a bad thing I don't want to tell you that I grew up in some type of dramatic traumatic home I didn't we were for the day what you would say in the 70s and 80s we were middle class to upper class economically so money didn't seem to be an issue travel wasn't an issue so overall my sister and I had a good life what I do remember is I had a tendency to have this in eight ability to be very well liked and to be perfect and I learned that through humor people like humor and that I was able to use that as a way to get a message across to be very well like I became very in love with people I told your team at Palmage or I love people I do it if someone said what's the biggest fault you have when I meet somebody I fall hard like my friendships I love my acquaintances I love it you know my own husband I love people deeply and I want to solve all of their problems if I can stop someone else from having an ounce of pain that's what I want to do but sometimes that can be taken the wrong way too as I want to be a suck up I want to be the favorite and that really wasn't where I was going or intending to do I talk about a moment that happened and incidentally I want you to know at the conference that was the first time I ever had the courage to tell this story your stage was the first time I've ever mentioned this and so this is very telling about how I think mental health was seen in our household so when I was a senior in high school my boyfriend my first true boyfriend love was a freshman in a local community college the community college I taught at and in October of my senior year he was working nights he had stayed up and studied it was midterms he drove to go take the midterm he drove a dangerous road that's known to have accidents he hit a tree fell asleep at the wheel hit a tree and it killed him instantly what was life altering about that for me is and it's such a bizarre story and that's why I've always been somewhat fearful to tell people because again practice what you preach I'm always sort of afraid what people will think about this story like oh she's way out there she's my canoe but I felt so comfortable telling your team this and this was the story the night before that happened my mother came into my bedroom and she was changing my bedsheets a weekly normal thing you know you do in your house and I came home from practice high school practice and she was changing my sheets and that was when malls and black was really popular you know and houses and you know my mother had like mall walls and we had black border and it was really in style and trendy and so my mother was putting black sheets on my bed and I had a weird feeling about it now I don't know what the feeling was I I believe in higher power I believe you know in messages I believe in in these types of things but I don't know that I've recognized anything significant about it I just knew I said to her I don't like these sheets I don't know if it was because they were black or what I said I have a weird feeling about these bedsheets I don't like them I don't change them you should change the sheets and she said don't we ridiculous that's absolutely ridiculous we're you know she was done making the bed I got in I talked to my boyfriend one last time on the phone got in bed woke up the next morning about 10 o'clock in the morning he passes away what's interesting about that when I got home that day from knowing you know my parents came to the high school to pick me up it was a very traumatic day for me when we finally got home to our our residents that night back to our house I had you know was hysterical sobbing as any teenage girl would be I went to get in my bed my mother and started to take my pillows off and those black sheets were not on my bed the sheets were changed and they were white with pink flowers on it or something what was so interesting about that story that I think back on still to this day that I didn't quite connect the dots was we never talked about it no one my mom didn't say you know I change the sheets it wasn't like your boyfriend died in the car accident because you had these sheets on your bed it was nothing like that it was there was it was apparent to me in my 50s now when I look back on that that was a pretty good indicative sign this happened life happens it's tough you're about to be an adult you'll be 18 soon in two months suck it up buttercup I mean I don't know what else to say about it my parents never said that they didn't really offer to give me help but quite honestly in a town of 5,000 people and in 1990 where are you going for help you know it wasn't on every corner so that was so probably telling to me of maybe subconsciously of where I could have used help then I struggled not even knowing that I needed help what's interesting about that when is that carried over into my adult life so when I graduated graduate school college all the way through school college graduate school my adult life I would go to strip my bed and make the bed and if the sheets weren't right I would sometimes make my bed over and over again 10, 15, 20 times and my husband didn't even realize it because again put a mask on wait until they leave Steve would take the girls out for lunch or you know somewhere the park and so I would pick that time to strip everyone's bed because they might be gone to hours but it might take me two hours to strip everybody's bed for the week it's such a small memory but it's so telling of how my first traumatic event in life became this underlying event for the rest of my life that developed into a fear even in my forties of when my husband would travel and wouldn't answer the phone you know what I hope tell or he didn't answer his cell phone my first indication was he had died I'm widowed he's dead now I've got to suck it up buttercup I've got to figure out what I'm going to do it was always jumping to the worst case scenario not well I'm on the east time zone he's in Pacific he's not even up you know I logical I lost all ability to be rational that's the best way I can put it so when you so your husband leaves the house with your daughters they're gone for a couple of hours and you're strip at all the beds and remaking them over and over and over again what was going through your mind what were you saying to yourself what was the the dialogue the inner dialogue that you were having of why you were stripping the beds and remaking them over and over again I would tell myself they have to be perfect it's something doesn't feel right about the way the sheets are on the bed right now and if it's not perfect probably subconsciously in my mind I believe I was thinking I won't be able to stop something bad from happening for some reason I associated that with death and we associate a lot of things with death it could be you know a last conversation we had with somebody or you know to I told my grandmother it was fine she could let go I caused it I think we do a lot of that it wasn't until years later in my 40s I happened to mention that story to my counselor and I mentioned it went to her so flippantly like as if I was telling her oh yeah and one time in my life I won an award for running a marathon you know like like as if I was telling you something that I just thought was normal for everybody and she was like I'm sorry what and it wasn't until she said do you understand what happened and what that has caused you and she helped me to see that it was in doing that it was a subconscious cry for help and I thought why if I can't get help and I can't let people know I need help then this one thing of making a perfect bed will be a step toward the right direction when you say it out loud it sounds just mind boggling so that's what I want your listeners to know is yes this person who's one presidential awards yes this person who has all these degrees is making her bed 15 and 20 times I'm no different I'm broken and I don't have the courage at that point in my life to say it it wasn't until a panic attack and an airport that caused me to seek help tell us that story and by the way before you tell us that story at what point were you in your life when that panic attack happened was it before the degrees was it before the marriage was it after all the degrees and accolades and president awards I mean give us a context there yeah it's a great question it was both so I remember having probably what I think my first panic attack would have been a senior in high school I kept it quiet it was after the death of my boyfriend and I just thought it was emotion you know I think as women we're very good at I don't want a stereotype every woman but but especially for me I think as women we tell ourselves oh we're conditioned to believe it's hormonal you know your menstrual cycles coming we tell ourselves in a younger age oh you're so emotional it's your menstrual cycle and then when you hit your you know late 40s and 50s oh it's pre-menopause oh it's menopause oh it's perimenopause and we're great at finding excuses that make excuses for our emotions but what I realized is is in that my panic attack would be crying all night long for no reason I didn't have the panic attacks where I lost breath and felt like the room was spinning until I was in graduate school I felt overwhelmed I was the youngest person in my doctoral program I was in my 20s everyone else was in their late 50s and 60s and I felt like the life experience that they had in graduate school and my life experience couldn't have been farther they were like parents to me not not like colleagues and I was standing in the airport I always like to say it was December 2019 because it was before the pandemic we didn't know the pandemic was coming I had gone from being vice president of my college to president in September and that didn't trigger it I had been doing a lot of presidential work I had been trained up to be the president it wasn't a secret that I was going to take over and but my parents were flying in it was graduation day for our students and they were going to come hear my first commencement address as president of a college and they text me and they say they're on their way to the baggage claim and the everything in the airport just starts spinning and I thought gosh am I hypoglycemic have I not eaten what is going on but deep down even then I knew I was starting to panic and I couldn't figure out why I had this immense dread for them to come to the baggage claim that's terrible it to me it I mean I had parents that were good people you know I didn't have abusive parents I had parents that paid all for all of my education and they were coming to see their granddaughters and I dreaded them coming to that baggage claim because all I could think was am I going to be good enough today it is the commencement going to be good enough am I going to make them proud are they going to think wow she really made something of herself I was so concerned about what they might think that I just sort of lost control I never mentioned it to Steve I never mentioned it to anybody and incidentally it was the last time both my parents ever came to Colorado now my mother's too old she's 86 it's hard for her to come to a high altitude and my father passed away so they never came back out to Colorado so that's I don't feel sad about that anymore I feel like that was a needed to happen it was the push in the wake up call I needed and in January of 2020 I said to Steve I need help I need help I need to find a therapist and I can't do this anymore tell us about that conversation I mean it was was Steve like well duh I've known this for a long time or was he blindsided was he like shocked or how could you or tell us what that conversation was like because I know people listening to this right now like oh my gosh I need to have that conversation I need to tell somebody that they're just so fearful of what that is going to turn into yeah that's a great point you know I would tell you no I do not think Steve was shocked I think he was surprised that it had gotten to that point maybe because I think in some sense I had him I don't say fooled that's not the right word I think wearing that mask I was able to look like I could keep it all together I could come home and at the last minute you know having a daughter I've got to have two dozen cupcakes for third period class tomorrow and you're like what you know that shouldn't throw you over the edge Steve's personality is completely the polar opposite for me which I said God did that purposefully because he knew I was too uptight and Steve as a go with the flow if he forgets a suitcase in an airport we can pick up another suitcase if he decides to travel that he might come home tonight and say what are you doing tomorrow and I'm always that's a loaded question with Steve I'm like I don't know why I've learned to answer that way and Steve says so I have this crazy idea we should get on a plane we should fly so so Steve's a live by the moment and what I realized is Steve's philosophy has always been um work to live and I talked about this at your conference not live to work and I had always believed I should live to work give my best live to work and he's like no you work to live he had he had it good he had the the right frame of mind so when I told him I needed help he said okay he said what can I do what do you need for me and the therapist actually when I started therapy wanted to meet him and have a talk with him and also wanted to have a very candid talk with my sister so my sister flew in as well and it was very helpful to hear both of their perspectives in therapy talking about me how they both these two people that are extremely close to me and have lived with me had very similar takes on what they saw in me overdoing everything trying to be perfect over apologizing for every mistake I would make never feeling good enough never being perfect enough always striving to do more be more do better if I made a mistake my reaction was always I'll be better and here's what I want your listeners to know because I bet this would resonate with somebody who truly loves their partner or their spouse or their boyfriend or girlfriend when Stephen Howard now this is deep I've never really shared this either but I think this will help your listeners when Stephen Howard getting an argument like couples do over stupid stuff that were benign by any man you know when we would get in a disagreement about something I would become this person afterwards who would just fall apart and beg for forgiveness like like over something just totally mind you a disagreement and I would catch myself saying I'll be better I'll do more I'll be stronger just don't leave me and Steve struggled to understand why I would become so far on the spectrum irrational like you think I'm gonna leave you over a disagreement about forgetting to turn the I don't know fill in the blank keep forgetting to turn the gas grill off I mean you know fill in something just stupid and benign of anything that you could hypothetically make an argument about he's like what are you talking about why would I leave you but this became that pattern of I will do better give me another chance I can prove it I can be better can ask a question so when they were such your sister and your husband are sharing their perception of you or they're sharing with the therapist were you in the room when they were sharing that I was okay so so they're saying she's an overachiever she's it's never good enough I mean were you in agreement with that or were you hurt or maybe even offended by them saying that level well of course I'm supposed to be better like what was your reaction towards them sharing that with the therapist I wasn't surprised by it I I believed it my sister did say something that caught me off guard and after she said it it hurt but at the same time it totally makes sense here's what my sister said she always does over the top things to get attention oh so that that probably stung a bit right right stung and I was like like like you were doing it for the wrong reason right and I was like what I said that's why you think I do it and she had associated that in her mind with being like overattention seeking but actually in that session it was so powerful for me and her to have that conversation she realized and I said to her I'm doing it because I want people to like me like I want people to not only like me but I want people to think I'm good enough to be their friend I'm good enough to be their sibling I'm good enough she always saw it as growing up as she did it to be the teacher's pet she did it to be mom's favorite she did it to make my friends because she's almost five years older to make my friends as teenagers like her more than me when I had never seen it that way it had never crossed my mind that my sister would see it as an act of being attention seeking and the counselor thought that was really powerful between us and I remember saying to her I'm so sorry you thought that like that wasn't what I intended and it was um I think really helpful for my sister and I as adult women to have that open conversation and and I appreciated her being feeling safe enough to say it she'd never said it in her entire life but had thought it for 40 something years you know that it was a way of trying to be my parents favorite and that's not my sister's personality my sister is a different personality from that so it was an interesting take to see that she thought that was the reason and didn't connect that to a brokenness in me that I needed to feel I like to say the broken pieces of your body they're like like Swiss cheese I needed to feel that by if I can surround myself with a thousand people who I love and who love me back more people the better then if I lose somebody I've still got people in the tank does that make sense yeah you know I'm curious about the timing of when you had this mental health crisis and the panic attack and you finally seek out hope with with the counselor and you're at your husband and your sister are aware and now they're involved in the healing process of figuring this out I'm curious about the timing of all of this because it came later in your career where you already had the accolades you already had the awards and I'm asking the question because people listening to this might be thinking well I don't have those awards yet I don't have those accolades I need to continue faking it I need to continue keeping that mask on so that I can get somewhere in life before I then have this breakdown so to speak do you have any any thoughts on that yeah no it happened way after awards in fact you would think the awards would build your confidence would give you that you're good enough you know like can't you see you're good enough can't you see you're enough but what's so funny is it's not about awards that failing is not it's about that you're good enough to be loved because what I've learned from it when was I didn't love myself I kept trying to find myself I used that as a mechanism to want to find more about me that I could love when really what I needed to be focusing on is who am I and who do I want to be who am I at my grassroots and I loved one of the things that my therapist said to me in a session she said what is one thing that you do every day that you hate but you do it because you have a mask on and I thought for a second and I said oh I can tell you right now I hate the dress code it work that was actually one of my questions that I was going to ask you I hate the dress code why tell us or why to change the dress code at work and she said why and I said I am very uncomfortable being in dress clothes I am not somebody who likes them I will wear them obviously I'm not going to go you know to a governor's reception or something and not be dressed but it's not who I am I love to be comfortable I don't like to be sloppy but I like to be comfortable I like to wear athletic style clothing I love tennis shoes I'm obsessed with tennis shoes I have a lot of pairs of tennis shoes you don't want to know but I love to be comfortable and one of the reasons why my mother cried when I cut my hair off so I cut my hair off when I was young and I did it without permission and I had long hair and I cut it all off and I never went back and I've just kept really short hair but I like short hair I like who I am in it and my mother's like you know people don't get hard it was short hair you know people don't get hard if they look sloppy and I just finally decided I am who I am and then you you couple that with the fact of all this therapy's going on COVID starts and people go in mask and all of a sudden it's like the whole world goes nearly silent to me I can't hear and I'm like well this is interesting I can't hear what people are saying so I go and have I think something's wrong I think I have an audio tube clogged I go do a hearing test the audiologist says you have 30% death in one ear 40% hearing loss in the other I'm a child of a death parent it's hereditary and now I've inherited so during this time I am fitted for hearing aids I'm like can we add one more thing to my plate so the therapist says to me well you can feel sorry for yourself and you can say I'm in hearing aids or you can what we're trying to do here is make a platform what are you going to do about it I said I'm going to put myself on a committee to help other people who are late in adults that are going into hearing aids she said make something good out of it stop making it be another reason not to love yourself and so when I stopped wearing fancy thick makeup and I became myself I was able to sit with students in the floor Chris Cross applesauce while it's I like to call it when a student finds out that they just filled an examination in nursing and they think they're going to be out of the program it allowed me to be myself it also allowed me to wear t-shirt that students would bring me back from every walk of life it got to be the running thing Dr. Bosler you know she's wearing my t-shirt and I I love it and did everybody see the t-shirts she had on today I had it made for so it became kind of a fancy topic so that was one of the things of getting back to the route of myself was to stop feeling pressured to dress the way I thought people wanted me to look as a college president or to be as a college president now at one point as you start to share your mental health struggles in your journey there was an article written about you and in the title of the article was something along the lines of face of mental illness and there's your picture is that is that accurate yeah it's very accurate were you ready for that was that like okay this is part of the process were you offended by that was that like okay well this is happening for a reason it's just giving me that platform that as you talk about yeah you know it's so funny so that came out the picture came out and it was a picture of me and it says and it's focused on my face and it says the face of mental illness and I saw the word illness I was like whoa let's all back up here for a second and I thought about it and the more I thought about it I thought why do I feel the need to be shameful about the word illness if I called you you know when tomorrow and said hey you know I don't feel well I'm sorry when we haven't talked in a couple weeks just wanted to let you know I've been out of pocket I've been going through a little gastro illness you wouldn't think twice about it or you know I've been going through you know a little issue that I've had you know a little blood illness they're working it out my blood pressure is high you know our cardio illness we wouldn't think you think about it but there was something about putting the mental illness was like people gonna think I'm this or people gonna think I'm that but here's what's interesting about it let them sew what because here's if you truly let go and say you can't worry about what people think why are we trying to say that well the mental illness or the mental condition I have is less than this mental condition it's like saying well mental illness should only be reserved for someone who's going through bipolar or schizophrenia or you know it's saying mental illness is not mental illness it's all mental illness it's all meant to be an illness that we work through the same way addiction what if you're addicted to heroin versus nicotine does the addiction factor change no not really the consequences of the addiction might be different but the actual addiction is the same whether you're addicted to gambling you're addicted to nicotine you're addicted to alcohol you're addicted to drugs it's the same with mental illness it doesn't change the fact that you have a mental issue going on it's just the fact that we get caught up in the stigma so I fell myself kind of trickle and back into the old Julie worried about what people would think and I thought that's not who I am I got to go 100% gangbusters toward this and say no and you did and that's the you changed your belief system and perhaps your husband and your daughters and your sister and those who love and care about you probably changed their belief system but that stigma is still there do you feel like that stigma of mental illness is less today than it was when you jumped onto that platform in that stage and we're honest and open about it no I wish I could say yes well then that's the message then that's what people want to know okay well yeah but the stigma is still there so Julie I need to not share this I need to still wear that mask and hide it because there's still the stigma what do you say to those people power becomes within mass power becomes in the people see damn you're good and that's what I would say you know one voice can make a crack a thousand voices together makes a difference you know you think about in higher education there were times where plat college tiny nursing school you know in Greenwood Village if I wanted to change a major policy was I going to be able to change it you know probably not when I called four other colleagues from University of Colorado University of Denver University of Northern Colorado you get the mass in people doesn't matter how you get to the finish line you get more people behind it with voices that are heard collective voices this is what makes the difference and the only way we can create a collective voice is for people at the individual level to come out and say it is mellow on this and yes I did have it and no I don't think my parents were thrilled that I came out I don't think it thrilled them I think if anything it worried them I expected when that article came out that top educator award you talked about it was printed in magazine it came out I sent it to my parents I said oh I'm sending you a magazine I want you to read it and they never called so I call you know I'm able to talk to my mom through cochlear and and so I I call and my mom says I said did you read the magazine and she says yeah yeah okay I said do you have a thought about it well you weren't really going through that when you lived here and I suddenly realized that my parents take was it that somebody had to be the blame and that somebody if this is happening with me as a child they internalized it as did we not see it why didn't we help her could we have done more so they needed to wash their hands of that I'm not upset about that in fact I think that's a normal behavior I think in that generation it's normal don't ask don't tell should be quiet about it let's not rock the apple cart it's probably one of the reasons why those bed sheets were changed all those years ago it wasn't that they didn't care they wanted to make it better I don't think they knew how even as medical professionals without stepping outside of that big box that we call boundaries of what we think other people might think right and when you give up worrying about what other people might think then suddenly the door opens for the freedom for you to be able to be your authentic self you know generationally my parents didn't shame me about mental health in fact I think as medical professionals they probably knew I needed help I think we thought in the 80s 70s 80s early 90s if you were suicidal that's when you got help right but there was no tune up it's like if the car is completely broken and the car won't start that's the point of where we got to take the car to the shop not for a tune up of the tires or the radiator or the the belts or the hose so that generational thought carries on to the next generation which is what happened to me I was and I get emotional when I talk about this I was in the car with my two daughters my oldest was in the front seat the youngest was in the back they were about at that age my oldest was where she could kind of drive that she was like on a permit and so I was still doing the you know this kid's got to be picked up from dance this kid's got to be picked up and I had gone they were in dance and I had gone to a therapy appointment and my youngest daughter said something like in the backseat which she's the carbon copy of me you know blah blah blah talk people's ear off their head makes friends loves people and my oldest is like my husband level-headed always rational and the youngest says how was your therapy session you know and she's she's young and I said oh it was good she's like you got details and I was like no you know it was good it was good you know I I go in there and I talk mom talks and I said but you know we don't need to say anything to anybody you don't need to let your friends know or your teachers or anything and my daughter in the back seat said um don't worry mom your secret safe with us oh gosh man I went home I'm I can't even tell it without crying I went home and I was devastated and I told Steve um I just shamed our children into every seeking help from in oils and I said I have to go I have to come out I've I've got to use this platform now's the time he's like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa maybe start your therapist I'm like no I've got to do this it's like I instantly wanted to fix it if I could add a microphone that would have gone into every house in America I would have said is this on can everybody listen to me because I needed to fix it instantaneously and Steve was like slow down let's just think this out we don't have to solve this today and I was like you don't understand I've got to solve this right now and that's when I decided to go public so I sat down at my computer my work computer and I wrote a long email to every person that worked at the college and I put in the subject line this is an email I've waited a long l o n g g g g g g time to tell you and I wrote five paragraphs and it was paragraph saying I am broken I've been lying to you I've been going to therapy I need to tell you I need to come clean I can still be your leader and I hope you can trust me to lead you in the right way but I'm not asking for empathy I'm just asking for a little bit of grace and boy when you hit that send button you think it frees you it's a jerry McGuire moment but it terrifies you because once it's out cats out of the bag my husband said well that's done so I got to work the next morning and people were looking at me and I loved some people clapped when I walked by others came out of their office and hugged me one employee came to me and said boy I thought you were perfect this whole time thank god you've got flaws and another employee said I need help can you can you tell me with our insurance plan how I can get help I was like absolutely and then I decided to push the envelope a little harder and I sent it to all the students I felt it was important as nursing students that they understood that their idea of the perfect leader the perfect director of nursing the perfect hospital CEO whoever they thought was their candidate to be their ideal life I want to be just like filling the blank I wanted them to know that at the end of the day they are no different than anybody else they're just at a different stage in their life can I ask you a question yeah so you write the email you hit send and the next day you share that the positive responses some people clapped some people hugged you some people saw that as an opportunity to be honest with you and share with you their struggles and ask for help but that's not the whole story is it were there those people that did then think less of you that did think oh well she's not as capable as I thought she was like yeah back to that stigma yeah no I agree there were to answer that question not said to my face but there were people who ignored it right and sometimes silence is a response of course and sometimes silence can be a response of I don't know what to say so it doesn't always have to be negative but I love what my therapist has helped me come to and I say this all the time and it's very powerful it's none of my business what people think of me right as long as I'm living my life in ethics and integrity and to help others not everybody's going to love me and I've learned that I had an incident where one of my daughters was on a team and I I would always come to team events I wouldn't sit with all the other moms it wasn't that I didn't want to I just was usually coming straight from work I'm tired I don't really you know I love people but I would slip in with Steve sometimes we'd have to meet there one of us would have to go get another kid you know it was always all this moving around it really had nothing to do with the people the other moms and another mom came up to me at the picnic and said oh I heard another mom talking about you and they were saying some things and do you want to know what they said and I said no I said no it's none of my business what people think about me and right now I feel very neutral about all the moms and I like them so I don't want to have a negative take on any one person but I appreciate you trying to let me know but no thanks I'm good and it was so freeing to me because at the end of the day it's okay that everyone doesn't like me now I don't want to hurt somebody and not rectify a hurt you know if I make a mistake or you know or someone's misunderstood something I've said and I hurt their feelings I don't ever want that but I also don't need to get caught up in what people think that don't fully know me you know I use that example I like being on Facebook to see what people in my town are doing but I don't need eight thousand Facebook friends I just need one or two close friends that I can call when my dad died you know like this sucks my dad just died you know that's the people you want to surround yourself with because those are the people that don't care that you're in a hoodie on an interview or address jacket at a governor's dinner just don't care right you had brought that up earlier again you say it's the advice from the therapist is none of I've missed is what people think about me and you brought it up earlier don't worry about what other people think and that would be advice that you would give to your daughter that would be advice that you maybe gave to a student attending your nursing school is certainly the advice that maybe on a nightly basis we have to share with our 13-year-old daughter and you know my gosh little 13-year-old school drama oh my gosh yeah and of course sweetheart doesn't matter and we say that so what's your advice or what's your heart say to these people so maybe talk to me as as though I am a seasoned boss and I got that mask on I've got to show up I got to maintain that people believe that I'm completely qualified where maybe I feel a bit that I'm a fraud and I'm worried about that so talk to me as though I am that person and then I'll ask the same question talk to me as though I'm a little kid so so here's exactly how I would dress that I would say to that individual bias you are going to have to fight for the rest of your life as an executive putting the loud useless noise behind you it doesn't go away it doesn't mean that I still don't get worried about what someone thinks but where people's talking about another individual comes out of is their own self-esteem let me say that again it comes out of their own self-esteem so when someone finds fault in another person even if it's us and I have to fight it as well when we tend to be judgmental of people it's either because they have something we don't or we perceive they have something we don't or it's rooted in our own low self-esteem when it all circles back to loving yourself now loving yourself can't be the hubris kind of love that's prideful then you become a narcissist the love has to be that you see a you're not perfect b mistakes are going to be made but you have the power to apologize for the mistakes you've truly made and not be irrational about things and mistakes or apologies to make people like you I hear a lot of people and I would tell this to you as well I hear a lot of people say excuse me I'm sorry and I will stop people and say I had a server that did this in the airport at Burbank great example I called a quick meal before I left Burbank and the food came out way late I wasn't in a hurry and the server was so I am so sorry just way and I said well what are you sorry for and what your food wasn't on time and I said well what could you've done differently about it and she she sat there for a minute she's like well I guess nothing and I was like what's not your fault I said look you've got three people back there you've had 10 people walk in in the last 30 minutes as I've been here you're a little overloaded that's life I said only be sorry for a mistake you've made stop over apologizing I would also say that in our culture we tend to find the negative in people first when our self-esteem is the lowest right I always say when if you are talking negatively or you are laughing at a group with not at with a group of people who are talking negatively about somebody and it's you should ask yourself right then what is it about my self-esteem that allows me to act this crappy get yourself a steam and check yourself a steam needs a good tune up I'd say daily this is the way to that's why to put it and this is the way I'd put it to a student sometimes what is it about you that feels so low right now that makes you feel so great when you mock that person and when you weren't it that way you're like well I don't know that I was mocking no it's exactly what you were doing to a younger child to let's say your daughter when I would say saying it's none of my business what people think doesn't radiate for a 13 year old no everything is wrapped in what people think right I think the key to surviving and to being true to yourself at 13 is to seek the one person that you're peer you know definitely it can be her dads because they adore her and they're going to be your best friends but all we need is one good friend one I say I call it the one wing man the one wing woman and that person doesn't always stay the same person throughout your life that person at 13 might be your seventh grade classmate and somehow at 10th grade y'all kind of find other pockets of people that one true friend shifts in your lifetime it's not really until you I think you get to adulthood where you kind of settle in like in your 30s with that one true friend if you're lucky enough it happens in your 20s but at a younger age it becomes about what your interest are and so all you need is one wing man one wing woman to know your true value that's great advice and I think in our youth today we don't always have a wing man I think sometimes there's not a wing man and a wing woman for every person and it's because we don't know we don't have a sign that says hey I'm at school today but and I know I'm in school and not a rule part but a pretty well-to-do part of Colorado but my mom scared that we might not have dinner tonight and I notice my mom's not eating very much to make sure my brothers and I can eat we just we just don't know and so we tend to be so judgmental on things we can't define or understand that's the light in a dark world you know as we start to wrap this up can you believe that we've already been chatting for almost 90 minutes here oh my gosh I could stay with you all day I swear you and I can never be in a coffee shop together because we open it and shut it down right the thing I love about this conversation and similar conversations and more conversations like this that I want to that I want to have is you know there was a time in my life where I thought with my struggles of self-esteem and happiness and confidence that well if I read enough books if I go to enough retreats if I have enough mentors if I listen to enough podcasts I will overcome all of this and I'll never have to worry about it again I'll never have to have those days ever again and I'm 66 years old now and I'm thinking oh this is how it's supposed to be that life is a struggle life is fabulous life is incredible I love it all but but this is life and I recently heard a therapist say in talking about mental struggle or nowadays I guess the the common thing is to say I'm so overwhelmed I'm so overwhelmed and she said you know you're not overwhelmed you're underdeveloped that's right and I just want to continue developing by having these kinds of conversations by meeting wonderful teachers and mentors and friends such as you and that's exactly what you have been for me in the last couple of months as I've gotten to know you especially hearing you speak live last week and then in having this conversation you know just bring this back to that beautiful incredible word hope it just brings me a lot of hope well I appreciate that and I want you to know that it takes you know when I say more people to stand up you being very well-known in our sector but also very well-known nationally and internationally for you to put a face to this you know for your people it's huge I have so much admiration for you for doing that and so much love for you and I know it was interesting when we first met I don't always have an instant connection to everybody on me but I knew I could always tell people that have a light and I instantly I was like this guy's going to bright light if he wants me to travel to Timbuktu I'm going to go to Timbuktu wherever he wants me to go I'm going to show up because that's I think we need more friends like that in the world you know we just and so I feel very blessed and thank you for giving me both a podcast platform and a stage platform to help others it means the world to me well to wrap things up in it this is a an interesting question I don't think that I've ever really wrapped up a podcast with this but someday when you pass what do you hope people will remember about you I hope that they will remember me for being authentic forcing the value in them and I hope they'll know that I felt valued by them I don't need 10 billion people at my funeral I just feel like my funeral will be for to comfort and love my survivors and if somebody truly loved me and valued me and I made them feel valued I hope that they would come forward to love my children through their grief wow wow and my husband so beautiful well Julie thank you so much like truly thank you so much well thank you and many blessings to your family and I look so forward when until our past closet oh yeah we're not done yet we're just in started baby thank you sweetheart I appreciate you so much I love you love you big