The Suburban Women Problem - Season 3, Episode 5

Amanda Weinstein: Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'm Amanda Weinstein.  

Jasmine Clark: I'm Jasmine Clark. 

Rachel Vindman: I’m Rachel Vindman. 

Amanda: And you're listening to the Suburban Women Problem.

We've been talking about Gen Z this month, how they use social media, how they aren't waiting for permission to take action, but it can't be easy for kids to feel all this weight on their shoulders. And as moms, it's also stressful for us to think about our kids dealing with school shootings and covid and college costs and climate change and everything else that gets put on them.

So I was really grateful to talk to Dr. Andrea Bonior this week about some mental health strategies. And before that we'll get to talk to Debby Paris, a child therapist and the mother-in-law of Red Wine and Blue founder Katie Paris. We're talking to all of our favorite therapists this week! Man. I think we need it.

So speaking of needing to talk through some things, it's great to be back here with you. What's been going on? 

Rachel: I mean, there's a lot going on, and I just think it's really appropriate that we're having a mental health chat today. I personally have been extremely stressed, we're in the process of a move. But there's, there's just so much. We talk about it all the time, you know, there's always so many things going on, and we really have to kind of pick and choose what we can devote our time to. Like for instance, in our group chat, you know, we were talking about the train derailment in Ohio. And I, I think my response was, “I don't have time for this right now. Like I can't devote time to this.” And then of course I did because I decided to read about it. But sometimes it's… 

Jasmine: It's a lot. It's a lot happening all at once. It's like drinking from a fire hose. It really can be overwhelming at times. I know today, as of about two minutes before we started recording, I was in the gym cause I was feeling the weight of so much stress and I was like, I feel like I need to move and put the stress in a different place. And so I put the stress on the treadmill. 

It's interesting that we're talking about how we are dealing with stress while also today talking about how kids are dealing with stress because, I mean, I just can't imagine being a child and having to deal with all of the things that they're having to deal with. It's like the world is on their shoulders right now. 

Rachel: Well, it is. 

Jasmine: Yeah. Literally.  

Rachel: They should be changing the world, but they should be propelling us forward, not dealing with things that we really should have fixed a long time ago. Like why they still have to do lockdown drills? Why isn't there a really effective way for them to pay for college? Et cetera, et cetera. You know? You know this and it just, it's really frustrating to me and I think it's frustrating for them also. Clearly. 

Amanda: I think we're stressed too because we are taught that everything is on us, right? A very, like, “we are an island,” “bootstraps,” kind of thing, but that is not how human beings work. We work as a society and we really should have better social systems and a better government that provides these social systems so that it's not all on us. From childcare and paid leave through K-12, all of this stuff. 

And so we have not talked about the President’s State of the Union, and I was waiting, I was like, “come on, please talk about childcare.” And he did eventually talk about childcare and brought in, you know, the first lady, you know, who said that for us to be competitive, we have to have the best educated workforce and how we do that is that it starts young. It starts when they are before kindergarten. So I was really happy that he brought that up. 

But stuff like that, these are things that other developed nations have and they don't feel as stressed. Their kids don't feel as stressed, their parents don't feel as stressed cause they're not made to feel like it's all on them when we don't have the systems in place for it not to be all on us.

Jasmine: I think we have a prime example of when you underfund or ignore social programs that are meant to be for the good of all when the pandemic happened. I mean, we, like for a second we all kind of fell apart because we realized that the systems that should have been in place were so inadequate that we really weren't prepared for something of that nature. 

As you listen to leaders talk about how we need to cut this program and that program, as if all of these things just exist just to exist and don't exist because there is a purpose for them, I think that we have to be mindful that we need these. And you don't think you need them in the good times, but then in the bad times when we do need them, you know, we want them to be there.

But also another thing Amanda you talked about is the students and the things that they're having to deal with today. We had a press conference today and it was all about gun safety. And I know in the state of Georgia, democrats are asking for some of the... I would say the simplest measures of gun responsibility, and we can't even get things like that passed. 

For example, we're asking for things like, if you have a child in your home, you need to secure your gun. To me, that is very common sense. I think most people would say “Yes, I don't want my child getting access to this gun, taking it to school or using it to hurt someone else or hurt themselves, whether on purpose or by accident.” And you know, people are like, “Oh, well, it's your right and we shouldn't be doing any laws about guns.” And someone brought up a good point. Today we basically have to jump through a million hoops to register to vote, and it is our right to vote. Why won't we do that with guns? Both of them are constitutional rights. 

Rachel: I was just gonna say that. Both are constitutional rights and yet… The teacher who was shot in Virginia by a student at the beginning of January, the parents kept saying “We had a trigger lock on our gun.” I'm like, “Okay, guess what? It didn't work. I mean, you can say that all day long, but the teacher was still shot.”

Jasmine: Right. 

Rachel: I don't understand. I mean, it's, it's just so illogical, like to the point of... Are you punking me? I mean, you know, what's going on here?

Amanda: I mean, so we've also got a lot going on in a number of states. So Ohio, apparently there's, you know, toxic plumes of stuff being burned off from the train derailment. So that's fun. 

Rachel: Just don't go outside. 

Amanda: No, we should not go outside. Chickens, I guess that's an issue for you.

Jasmine: I'd be scared to be like, “Hey, maybe people should, like, wear masks or something to not inhale aerosolized vinyl chloride?”

Rachel: Masks, Jasmine? Masks??

Jasmine: I know! 

Amanda: But it's also part of what Rachel said. There's so much going on. It happened at the same time as the earthquake around Turkey and then it's like overload, where we're like, “Okay, I'm concerned about so many things right now. Yeah, this is probably really bad, but I can't find the concern in me because everything feels really bad right now.”

Jasmine: And I think that the effects will be long term. It won't be something that'll happen tomorrow, which is why it’s so alarming to me, but again, I don't, I don't study vinyl chlorides specifically, so I don't have a whole lot to add.

Amanda: But it's not good.

Jasmine: Oh no, it’s definitely bad. Definitely carcinogenic. 

Amanda: This is not something in your Gatorade we're talking about here. But then that's another issue with our country! Like, we're talking about all the support systems. So what happens if they find out in 10 years that they have a cancer diagnosis? Who's gonna be paying that? We don't have universal healthcare in this country. So all of these costs that accrue from, whether it is a trained derailment or whatever kind of negative externalities we say in econ, from pollution or whatever... there's no one there to pay for that. That's on us. Individually. 

Rachel: Can one of you explain what's going on with the Wisconsin Supreme Court?

Amanda: Oh, I know that is a big deal because they are one of the 13 states who have banned all abortions. No exception for rape or incest or fetal abnormalities. There is an exception for life of the mother which, as we know, just means they have literal death panels to decide whether the mother's life is close enough to death or not. And whether she deserves to be saved or not. And so that could put a lot of women's lives literally in the hands of the Supreme Court in Wisconsin. 

Jasmine: It's so barbaric. I just can't believe we live in a country where there are states that are proudly wearing this like a badge of honor. That they are like, “We have completely stripped women in our state of their humanity and right to bodily autonomy. Proudly. Like, we're happy about this. We don't hide it. We think this is great. We're telling everybody else to do it.” Like I just, it… it blows my mind. 

Amanda: I mean, and this is something that is stressing out young people, right? Because high schoolers are watching all of this happen. They know that, right, if they're not sexually active now, like at some point they will be, and this is going to affect them. So they're seeing what is coming their way. It's what's already their way. I can't imagine how scary it is. You get pregnant by rape at the age of 16 and you're in Wisconsin, like this is stuff kids are dealing with and their friends are dealing with it. We just have not prepared them to deal with all of this stuff that seems to get put on our kids, right? 

So I think it's a good time, you know, when we're talking about this, whether it's older kids like Gen Z activists or younger children, that we really need to be talking about their mental health and also pointing out that these culture wars are targeting them and it's really not fair on all of them. 

I am so excited to welcome our next guest back to the podcast. Debby Paris is a child therapist and one of our favorite mother-in-laws in the world. Debby, welcome back to the podcast. 

Deb Paris: I'm so happy to be here. 

Amanda: So we are talking about mental health today, both for us as moms and for kids. How can we talk to our kids about what they might be seeing and hearing in the news? And as we just talked about, there is a lot they are seeing and hearing in the news. 

Deb: I think actually you sort of nailed part of the problem. We're on a 24 hour news cycle. We have social media. We don't have a lot of control necessarily over what the input is for our children, and that means that we're maybe one step behind sometimes. So that's one part to think about. 

The other part to think about is we can't just say children with a capital C and be talking about the same kids across the board because we're talking about child development. And what an elementary school kid will hear or be exposed to might be taken in differently from the same thing that a junior high or a high school kid is taking in. So there isn't a simple answer to say, “this is how you handle it, this is the cookbook, this is the recipe.” 

But I'd say just for starting the conversation, for any kid, no matter their age, the first thing we wanna know is what have they heard and what do they think. 

Amanda: So I remember, I remember when Uvalde shootings happened, they had our schools locked down. And I think about it now and like, I don't know that I asked the questions of, you know, “How did that make you feel? Did you notice the lockdown?” And they might not have noticed it, but you know, I know I noticed when I, you know, happened to go to school that day. There was a whole other level of security. And do they think about, you know, what's going on? Or do they even overhear teachers mentioning things that, you know, “This is why we're doing this”? And sounds like a lot of questions, starting with questions.

Deb: And I think kids have antennae out for change. A change in your expression, a change in a rhythm, a change in anything. Whether they understand it or not is another piece of it. 

But I think the question is… it's always hard when you start by asking a kid “how do you feel,” because usually you get a wall. You know, they don't always just– 

Amanda: Yeah, when I ask what happened today in school, they’re like, “I dunno.”

Deb: Right. And I've always said, a dialogue with a kid isn't a three minute dialogue, it's a three week dialogue. You say something and then you get a response, often not in words, in behavior, in an action. But over time it opens up. So part of the question to start with is not necessarily “what do you feel,” but “what have you heard? What have you noticed? What are you thinking?” And like the change in the school, you can say, “Did you notice anything different at school?”

Now the reason parents don't wanna do that is, my God, are you going to implant an idea in them, something they hadn't noticed? In general, they'll just say, “what?” if there's nothing. Or they'll say, “Well, you know, we weren't allowed to walk down certain halls.” And then you get to say, “Well, did you have an idea of why that was? What were other kids talking about? What did you hear about things?” 

Jasmine: What do you do when they have an answer for that, but you don't really know how to answer their next question? So I'll give you a perfect example. We were talking about active shooter drills, and so, you know, I don't know how the conversation came up but my daughter brought it up, she said, “X school had an active shooter drill today, but ended up being a false alarm. But I think that active shooter drills are stupid.” And I was like, “Well, why do you think that?” And she was like, “Well, the whole idea is for us to hide, but the person who's coming into the school is not stupid. They know we're in there. Why are we focused on hiding inside the building instead of having a plan to get out of the building like you would if there was a fire?” 

Deb: Good for her. 

Jasmine: Exactly. And I'm like, I don't actually have the answer. I mean, I think it's intuitive, but to her, I mean, she's like–

Amanda: I think she's right though. I think that our kids know a lot, like they're living it. 

Deb: Yeah. I think they know a lot. But here where I said talk about the experience, now I'm gonna move to the feeling piece because what kids wanna feel, no matter what their age is, they wanna feel safe. Right? And our job as parents has always been to help them feel safe. And here we are in situations where we're helpless to make them feel safe, and yet we wanna communicate to them that that's our goal.

So your daughter was saying is, “What they're telling us is not keeping us safe.” Right? So I would say the answer to that is to say, “You know, I can't believe we're talking about this. This is terrifying, isn't it? You know, the idea that you have to figure, is it better to hide? Is it better to have an exit strategy? This is really terrible.” So I think there, I'm contradicting myself, but I'm actually just expanding the conversation, I hope, is to acknowledge… if you speak to the feeling and if you speak to the reality, then you have a conversation. Cause of course we don't know the answer. You know, the answer is perhaps gun control, but–

Jasmine: I was gonna say, the answer is to keep the gun out of the school in the first place.

Deb: Right. Now that actually tells you… You know, we're trying to make kids feel safe by our protecting them. And then in development, kids feel safest when they know how to protect themselves. So you might say, you know, “I think you should write that up and maybe take it to the principal or take it to your counselor and maybe they'll have research, but I think this is something to explore.” So that gives her both activity and, more than anything, you heard her. 

You know, I think when we're anxious, we often dismiss what comes back from our children. “No, no, no. They know what they're doing. They've studied it. This is right.” Which I have been known to say myself. But I think children want to hear that they've been heard, and particularly when they're making a good point and something that is about their experience. How old's your daughter? 

Jasmine: She is 14. She's turning 15 this year, but she's in eighth grade. And I think she looks at the world in a lot of different ways. I mean, she is the kid that will say, “Wouldn't it be better to not have guns everywhere so the guns don't end up in our schools?” She really can't understand why partisanship would stop a good thing from happening. That part hasn't really clicked for her yet. I mean, it hasn't clicked for me either. I'm an adult and I feel the same way.

Deb: Right. Well, you have so many things going on there, but you should feel very good about your daughter in that, you know, she's an adolescent struggling with the issues of… the adult world is not what she imagined, but you know, it's so nice that she could articulate all these things. 

And to say, and this is hard with an adolescent, you know, “The solution to this is long term, not short term.” And that's what's so hard. Because the solution to this is voting. The solution to this is having voices like yours in government, and for a kid that always feels good to hear, but it also makes them feel helpless if they're an adolescent where a day can feel like a long time, let alone five years.

Jasmine: And they can't vote.

Deb: No, she can't vote, but she can envision a world where her vote would make a difference. In a way, the adolescents are taking it on the chin between the pandemic and all of this horrible news and classroom things that are going on. 

But talking with adolescents is one thing where you can have a conversation like that. And I don't know if anybody listening to this podcast has younger children, but that's another set of difficulties because they hear things where developmentally it's above their pay grade, but they're hearing it. So it needs to be addressed. And there we offer more of this sort of parental protection, even if we're not feeling it so much, you know, to somehow make the world feel safe enough.

I think the problem for all of us as parents, for any age, is we wanna say we can make the world safe. And we're feeling like we can’t. It's a hard thing and another thing to think about is that as parents, we're always the filters, we're always the ones that are processing the information and letting through what we think is helpful and appropriate for our kids. Not to bowdlerize it. Not to censor it. But to understand what information they can hear and take in and master. 

Amanda: So a lot of the books that have been banned specifically are about either race or LGBTQ issues. And I think my sense is, you know, seeing how the parents are responding and asking for these book bans, I think they do feel scared and I think they feel angry about what they're seeing in schools and they don't wanna expose their children to something, you know, too soon. How do we have talks with our kids about LGBTQ issues in an age appropriate way? And when should we be having these conversations? 

Deb: This is a complicated issue. I'll do my best. First of all, in terms of what they're exposed to at school, I really trust educators to know what books are good for kids when. All right? So that's just sort of my global thing about it. 

But in terms of the sort of gender identity issues that have been coming up and have been made of political football, I just wanna say something very general about child development, which is non-specific. The general is that sexual identification takes a very long time to figure out and kids can go through a lot of ups and downs, which doesn't mean that a kid that identifies himself as a boy when she's been a girl is, you know, making it up or that's not who she or he is going to be. Look, we don't wanna judge anybody about that kind of thing. This is people's business, private business, and it's not about right and wrong. This is “people get to be who they are.” We believe in that.

But for children dealing with it, they're struggling with… who are they? Not, not the other person, who is the kid for themselves? You know, I'll just say this in general, we start out as bisexual creatures. The arc of human development is in different phases, and often it isn't fully understood until young adulthood. 

But I think in this era where there's been so much sexualization of things and so much concern about it, what we wanna say to a kid is, “Boy, that must be so confusing. But this is a personal thing that people figure out, and it's about feelings and it's about figuring out who they are. And we respect people getting to figure it out for themselves. But do you have questions?” And then you get it to be about them. Not about the politics, not even about, you know, “we don't treat people differently or badly because they're different from us,” but in terms of the psychology and the insecurity of kids, it's like, you know, “Am I a boy? Am I a girl? I have feelings this way. I have feelings that way.” And to say those are normal things to be dealing with and you have lots of time to figure it out. I'm an old grandmother and I'm still figuring myself out! But I think to give kids the idea that there's a wide range of Okay. 

Jasmine: Yeah, I think it's a big world and there's a lot of things happening in this really, really big world, and if it feels big to me as an adult, I know it probably feels just astronomical to a child. And so as they're trying to navigate these things, I think they're looking to us, especially their parents, to guide them. I think if you have a parent that is empathetic, or if you have a parent who leads with “we treat everyone with dignity and love and respect,” then you know that child will get one set of information. But to be honest, not all parents are that way and children don't get to choose their parents. 

Deb: Yeah. I think one of the problems with the book banning, with the control, is the idea that if you don't expose children to disturbing or upsetting thoughts, they'll be fine and happy and, you know, safe and wonderful in the world. First of all, it leaves out the reality of the world. 

Amanda: Right? They can see the reality of the world. Yes. 

Deb: But more than anything, it leaves out that kids are complex. You know, it isn't like they come into the world tabula rasa, and if you are kind to them, you'll have a… I remember my pediatrician when my kids were little, he had a hanging in his office. “If you're kind to your child, you’ll have a kind child. If you're happy with your child, you'll have a happy child.” All the way down. I felt like the worst parent in the world after looking at this thinking, what have I done? Look at my kids! 

The fact is, kids have an internal life of their own and they have their own experiences and they also… there's nurture, but there's also nature. It's complex, so you're not going to have mind control over your children. Even if you want. One thing we can do is really work on supporting not just educators, but supporting the view of educators and education as important. Not just for teaching about history or English literature or whatever, but teaching how to think and teaching how to be in the world. So, I'm on my education kick, but I think it's important.

Amanda: Oh, no argument here. Like we are definitely pro education, educating our children from the earliest level til, I guess, never stopping right? So Debby, thank you so much for educating us a little bit about all of these really complex topics. 

Deb: I love talking with you guys. It's so much fun, and you are such good thinkers yourself. 

Amanda: Thank you. Now we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back we'll have my interview with Dr. Andrea Bonior.

BREAK

Amanda: Our guest today is a clinical psychologist, an author of Detox Your Thoughts. She's been a frequent contributor to CNN and The Washington Post, and she recently launched her own podcast called Baggage Check. Dr. Andrea Bonior, welcome back to the Suburban Women Problem. 

Andrea: Thank you so much for having me! 

Amanda: So you were actually on the pod once before, all the way back in Season One, and you had an amazing chat with Rachel, which we were a little jealous of cause it felt like, you know, some free therapy session that Rachel got. So I'm excited that I get to talk to you today. 

Andrea: Yes, well I'm thrilled to be back. I can't believe it's been that long. 

Amanda: I know. Time flies, especially when you have kids, I feel. All right, so as women we often feel like we need a PhD in something before we can discuss it with anyone.

This is probably why I got a PhD, I'm sure there's some psychological reasoning there. But consuming too much news can make us feel overwhelmed and helpless and you get down those internet rabbit holes we all find ourselves in sometimes. Do you have any advice on how we can stay informed while still prioritizing our mental health?

Andrea: It's really tough and it's something that I work with so many people on, and I think the individual balance really varies depending on who you are and depending on what else is going on in your life. So, for instance, if you are taking care of a sick relative or you're facing a health diagnosis, or you're worried really about one of your kid's behavior and it's making you catastrophize, during that period of time, you really might not be able to tolerate as much world news because you need to protect yourself a little bit better because your baseline stress is so much higher.

Whereas there might be other times where staying informed really activates you and it energizes you to take a stand and it makes you feel connected to other people. So I think a good rule of thumb is to start with just observing yourself to say, you know, what are my patterns? Cause a lot of people think that maybe they scroll for like 45 minutes on their phone and then when they actually observe it…

Amanda: Yeah, I know, it’s longer!

Andrea: Yeah. So being honest and observing. I think all of us, you know, when we actually chart our behavior or we use the screen time apps that will tell us, it can be a day of reckoning. But you need that. There doesn't need to be shame or judgment, but you need to know what you're dealing with because if you think that you just tend to scroll for like 15 minutes before bed, and it turns out you lay in bed for an hour and a half each night scrolling and doom scrolling, you really need to know that so that you can start to set limits.

And then the next thing is to really observe yourself. So there's probably a spectrum for all of us from being informed and bearing witness and feeling like we're engaged with the world all the way, on the other end of the spectrum to being weakened and exhausted and burnt out. So at the end of each given day, or at the end of, you know, this, kind of reckoning with looking at it, think about… what are the activities that I'm noticing that I did that actually made me feel more like I could help more, like I could make a difference? 

So maybe, you know, you talk to friends about world events, maybe there are certain sites that really help you feel informed and clarify. Maybe there are certain aspects of social media where you're with like-minded folks and you're making plans how to protest or how to have letter writing campaigns or things like that. That can tell you, “okay, yeah, I actually feel more autonomous. I feel stronger. I feel energized.” 

Versus, “Okay, what do I notice on this random Tuesday night? I sat on my couch and I felt guilty for just spending a couple hours scrolling, but I couldn't get off of the couch. And then I felt despondent because I was looking at the same things over and over again. And it didn't make me feel energized. It made me ruminate, it made me catastrophize, like the world is a really hopeless place. It made me so sad that I was no longer just bearing witness to somebody else's suffering, but I was actually trying to curl up into a ball because I started to feel helpless and hopeless.”

And I think we can't shy away from some of the atrocities going on. I really do believe in bearing witness, but if it's going to burn us out to the point where we give up and we no longer want to act to be part of the change, that's where the problem comes in. 

Amanda: Oh, that's such a good point to check in with yourself. I remember I watched an ASPCA video, you can imagine, with an animal. And I cried for hours, hours after it. And so I don't watch those. I know what it is. I can't handle it. I also don't watch any movies with animals in them. My husband knows this and he's like, “It's a cartoon movie.” Like, I don't care. There's animals in there. I don't handle it well, and I know that. I just, I don't, it gets me feeling like the world is awful and will always be awful. And I was like, okay, that's just not my type of movie I can do.

But I notice sometimes with my Twitter feed, I get the opposite where I'm like, ooh, people are misunderstanding this, let me find the data and I can show them and explain about what’s going on. And then I, you know, depending, sometimes I have Twitter doom-scrolling , but I notice when I get into the data, it's more exciting. So I think that's a really good point to really check in with how it's making you feel, and is it making you do more or curl up in a ball and cry in a bathtub for two hours as I did one day?

Andrea: Yeah. Yeah. 

Amanda: So this month we are focusing on young people. Gen Z is more engaged in politics than young people of previous generations, but unfortunately the reason is that they're dealing with a lot of huge issues: school shootings, college costs, climate change, right. So you teach college students and so do I. What do you hear from your students about their mental health? 

Andrea: Whew. It's not good. You know, I mean, I'm not gonna sugarcoat anything. I think the numbers bear this out. Anecdotally what I see with my students bears this out. Anxiety and depression symptoms and just subjective feelings of being overwhelmed have really gone up for the past few years. And we might have expected that during the pandemic, but it really hasn't started to come down in the way that we would hope.

And I think part of it is there's less stigma in speaking out, which is great. So maybe more people are actually talking about it and being counted than before. But I do think there's an enormous amount of pressure. I think young people don't have the support of really true communities that maybe they used to have before. I think a lot of them feel really lonely online. Even though they're connected in so many ways, they're not truly feeling nourished by those connections. 

I think there's so much pressure on them to not fail. To do everything right. And meanwhile, they're coming out of a few years that might have been really formative for them, where their whole lives were disrupted. You know, maybe they used to love sports and they didn't get to play sports for two years. Maybe they used to love hanging out, you know, in huge groups. But now some of their friends can't do that anymore because their parents are still averse to it, understandably, with Covid. Maybe they had a great relationship with their grandparents and they've spent two years really, really worrying that “uh-oh, if I give my grandma a hug, am I gonna make her sick? And might she die?” You know, I think there's so much disruption from the pandemic that it really made an impact. 

And I think what we really need to do is to go beyond just normalizing speaking out about mental health struggles, but also to really help connect these folks to help. I mean, I teach psychology, so my students are perhaps less afraid to ask me.

I realize I might have a skewed sample, right, by seeing my students who are really, really vocal about this stuff, cause that's exactly what we're talking about in class. But I think we really need to help people get connected to help because they're really struggling out there and it's gonna take a toll. And anxiety is just really high. And it doesn't show many signs of going down unless we can give them the support that they need. 

Amanda: That's such a good point. So I was thinking that you are starting with the assumption, one, that you believe them. That they truly are more stressed. I think sometimes we discount the feelings we hear from young people. If you know the story, like, “Well, you didn't have to walk uphill both, you know, uphill both ways in the snow to the bus stop, right?” And it's silly, but I think that can be true sometimes, where if they say things like, “I'm more stressed,” sometimes we can discount it and we can say, “Well, you're not more stressed. You don't have to deal with, you know, rent or something.” Fill in the blank. But I think it starts from a point of one, believing them that they are more stressed and as you point out, there's some data points that back them up when they say they're more stressed. Just having social media and all the stuff they're inundated with is stressful.

But you know, listen to the issues they're dealing with. So I know I've even had students who, so we're an urban campus, and we've had some issues with shootings. And I've had students who, it was someone they knew who was shot. And they're coming to me saying, “I'm really struggling right now.” But I am not a psychologist. So I'm like, “One, I believe you. Two, I'm really not qualified for this, so who can I put you in touch with?” Which was kind of, you know, I guess a humbling of like, “Wow, that's really tough and I know it is, and I don't know if I'm the appropriate person, but I can put you in contact with the appropriate person.”

Andrea: Yeah. It is really hard. And I think the other sort of dirty underbelly of this that we don't talk about enough is that even if somebody's ready to get help, the help can be really hard to find. I mean, the shortages of availability for mental healthcare providers, including university counseling centers… You know, I hear all kinds of stories, people come to me as friends, you know, “Hey, you can probably help me find a therapist,” right? Seems simple. And we call people who have waiting lists for the waiting list, you know. Or somebody has to wait three months. You know, there are all these teenagers that are spending time in the ER for suicide risk and they can't even find a bed in a psychiatric institution.

So I think that's part of a larger issue where we really need to focus on training and helping more people enter the field, helping create good providers who can provide really strong care. And also changing our society and that insurance will cover more and that, you know, people actually will wanna go into the field. They're not gonna be so overburdened by student debt that it doesn't make sense for them to go to graduate school in psychology, for instance. You know, I know a lot of people would love to enter the field, but it's not as accessible as it should be. So it's really a whole systemic problem.

Amanda: Wow, that's a good point. And we hear, I mean, you know, mental health is related to our physical health. They're not different things, but we do treat them differently. We tend to treat them as separate things in separate categories. And often when we talk about healthcare, I think people don't even put mental healthcare within that, you know, umbrella.

We often hear, you know, from… it tends to be Republicans… when you know, something terrible happens. “It's really a mental health issue.” But we don't see the resources that back up what they're saying and we don't see them putting those resources there.

Andrea: Yes. That is really one of my most frustrating moments in terms of when I hear gridlock in the legislative process is the people spouting off that, for instance, our gun violence problem is a mental health problem. And these are the exact same people who do nothing to address the mental health problem and who actually are sabotaging our ability to give resources to the mental health problem. And make no mistake, it is very clear that America's gun violence problem has much more to do with other factors, including the availability of guns than just mental health issues. And yet I think there's so much unwillingness out there to truly look at this problem as being fundamental. 

I mean, as you said, mental health is health. Full stop. Right? I mean, we know that depression cuts down your lifespan. We know that all kinds of mental health and stress and anxiety related disorders really do affect your immune system. We know that loneliness can be considered a physical health epidemic because it raises your risk so much in terms of early death, in terms of chronic disease. And so I think we really need to take this seriously and it's really gonna need to be a cultural shift in the way that we talk about mental health, because there's, I think, some good signs that the stigma is diminishing, but that's different than truly thinking that for every one of us, we deserve to think about mental health just as we would our physical health.

Amanda: So when we think about our own mental health, how do we send our kids, you know, off to school or out into the world and not worry about them constantly? How do we balance those things? 

Andrea: It's really hard. 

Amanda: Darnit, where's your easy answer? 

Andrea: Well, I have this pill you can buy for $9.99…

Amanda: Sold!

Andrea: Haha. No. It's really hard. But I think part of what we need to remember is that when we can help our kids have a sense of confidence and that some risks are worth it and important, we're really helping them be better off in the long run. So I think it's really easy to kind of let our fears dictate what we let our kids do or not do, and we kind of transfer our anxiety to our kids. And we know from the data that, for instance, if a kid has a phobia and the parent spends five years just letting the kid completely avoid whatever they're afraid of, the kid's phobia ends up being far, far, far worse, and harder to treat later on.

So I think it's important to recognize that part of parenting is feeling like your heart is torn out of your chest, and we don't have to pathologize that anxiety, but we need to also reframe it a bit and think about it as part of our love for our children. That it can be normal to be really nervous when your kid goes off to school for the first time, or when your kid starts to drive, or when your kid's hanging out with a new group of friends and you don't know the parents as well. All of that anxiety and stress is really normal. 

Or if you hear something horrible on the news about something that happened in a school. I know right now in my county, fentanyl is such a concern. There are so frequent overdoses that it's becoming truly tragic and frightening. But I also think that this is what should get us back in touch with our values. How do we talk to our kids about these things? How do we talk to about our kids in age appropriate ways about the fact that, you know, I am a little bit nervous for you to go off to this high school where I know there's already been an overdose? Or where I am a little bit, you know, sad and miss you when you go off during the day, cause I'm used to being around you and now you're in kindergarten. How can we talk about that? 

How can we reframe this as part of parenting that teaches our kids? That you can do things that are a little bit scary, but we'll also be there to support you and that there's nothing wrong with being a little bit afraid. There's nothing wrong with being anxious. We can talk about it, we can get you help if you need it, but some of the smaller risks are really worth it, and we wanna sort of give our kids that message that even grownups get afraid sometimes. But when you talk about it and you calculate the risk and you make good decisions and you live in accordance to your values, like, yeah, of course you're gonna go to school because it's important and we're curious and we wanna learn, and that's part of our values. Then you actually can embrace some of the anxiety as part of the growth process.

That's how I see it. Of course, easier said than done at times, but I do think it's important that we model being honest about our anxiety to a point, but also having that lesson there: “look how I'm coping, look how I'm handling it,” and not sort of creating the scenario for our kids where they think there's something to be so afraid of.

Amanda: Oh, that's a great point. So we don't have to put on a face of… nothing scares us, everything's okay. That we can let them know, like, “Okay, I'm a little nervous about you going off in the neighborhood for the first time. But we're still gonna do it and it's okay for me to be a little nervous.”

And so I was also thinking that like, man, you were talking about the importance of community for kids, but as you were saying that, I was also thinking about how much I rely on my community to make me feel better about things. Right? So I know I have a very good relationship with my teachers at school. They're great, they're fabulous teachers. I trust them so much that that kind of like, I'm not scared about kindergarten, like this teacher is fabulous. It's gonna be a fabulous first day. 

And even, we've had a neighbor who would call us and be like, “I saw one of your daughters without a helmet on her bicycle.” And I was like, “Thanks for letting me know!” She didn't say it in a judgey way at all. It was just like, “I wanna give you a little tip.” And so now my daughter kind of thinks I can see her wherever she is! And I was like, it's not that bad. I'll take that. 

Andrea: Yes. That's the beauty of the village, right? And I think unfortunately that's diminished a little bit, but we can still try to cultivate it. There's an element of other people watching out for your kids and there's an element of support for you. You know, having coffee with another mom and crying together. Literally, I and a group of friends who were parents of kids in my middle daughter's preschool had coffee together every first day of school through like 8th grade. Just as a little tradition. We weren't even like the super closest to friends the rest of the year, but it became our thing and it started with the kindergarten year, like, “Hey, we're all gonna be in tears. Let's have coffee afterwards.” And it continued all the way up until there was a critical mass of people who had moved away and that kind of thing. And we're still in touch, sort of at the beginning of the year… “Hey, how's everybody doing?” That was meaningful and that social support is what we don't get enough of and I think we should always be striving to get, because social support is so key to our longevity, it's so key to our mental health. 

Amanda: Oh, I agree. I've even seen some schools now having tables in front of the school, so you can drop your kid off and it's a place for the parents to sit and chat and have that cup of coffee. 

Andrea: I love that. I love that sense of community.

Amanda: Yeah, it's nice. So you launched your own podcast, Baggage Check, a few months ago. What inspired you to start a podcast and what's it been like so far? 

Andrea: Oh, it's been so fun so far, I have to admit. It's also fun being on the other side! But yeah, so essentially, Baggage Check was the mental health brand that I kind of started at the Washington Post for 15 years. Iit was an advice column and a live chat and it got such a great response and I really wanted to be able to create a space where nothing was off limits. Where we could have the real conversations, without censoring, without editing, without– we are not explicit, I should say that, so safe for little ears in the back seat– but without censoring in terms of, “Well, I don't think people wanna talk about this.” 

And it has been wonderful so far. We have all kinds of conversations about things that people typically don't talk about in terms of mental health. We talk about the science, so we really blend science and compassion. We've got actionable tools. I've had all kinds of conversations, from classic stories of mental health struggles to, you know, really interesting folks that you wouldn't expect. Like I just had comedian Angelina Spicer on to talk about postpartum depression and she's hilarious. And also talking about being hospitalized for depression. So we have all kinds of really fascinating conversations and it's been such a pleasure because it's gotten such a good response that it's another way to build community, I think. And it's another way to break down the stigma.

Amanda: Oh, I agree. So thank you for all your words of wisdom today. But before we let you go, we have to ask you our rapid fire questions. Are you ready? 

Andrea: I think so! 

Amanda: All right. Okay. What piece of pop psychology or advice annoys you every time you see it?

Andrea: That's probably gotta be “just think positive.” “Oh, just think positive!” As if negative thoughts are just gonna completely disappear if you tell yourself not to think them. And there's an entirely different way to manage negative thoughts that involves just changing your relationship with them. That's what I wrote about in Detox Your Thoughts. So when I hear, you know, “Oh, just think positive, just banish those negative thoughts,” I think, you know, we actually have data that that's not gonna work at all. . 

Amanda: Oh yeah. If you had to change careers and be something other than a therapist, what job would you want? 

Andrea: Oh, let's see. In theory, I would say something involving making people happy in a different way. So I would say party planner, but I'm terrible with actual planning logistics, so… party idea generator? 

Amanda: Oh, I love that. I could do that. Yeah. Sometimes details I'm not good at. Alright. What's your favorite thing to do with your kids on a cold winter day? 

Andrea: Oh, I love, I'm, I'm such a hygge person. You know, that whole concept, that Scandinavian concept of the cozy? I love jigsaw puzzles. So I guess I’d say probably cooking with them. All three of my kids love to cook, love to bake, love to eat. So when it's freezing outside, doing that together just makes me so happy.  

Amanda: Oh, I love that. Alright, that is the end of our rapid fire questions. Where can our listeners find more about you and your work? 

Andrea: Yes, I would love to keep in touch with listeners. So my website is detoxyourthoughts.com. That'll take you to my website. The podcast is the Baggage Check Mental Health Talk and Advice podcast, that's got an Instagram @baggagecheckpodcast. I'm also on social media just as me, Dr. Andrea Bonior. I'm on Instagram and Twitter as well. 

Amanda: All the places. Thank you again for sharing your wisdom with us on the Suburban Women Problem. 

Andrea: Thank you again for having me.

BREAK

Jasmine: Welcome back everyone. Rachel had to jump off our call to handle some mom stuff, so Amanda and I are going to be wrapping things up with our Toast to Joy. 

Amanda: We'll just have to have extra joy and extra toast to make up for Rachel. 

Jasmine: Yes. A third Toast specifically for Rachel. But before our Toast to Joy, Amanda, I just wanna say that I loved your interview with Dr. Andrea. I think that the topic is timely and it actually makes me sad that the topic is timely, because I feel like our students are dealing with enough as it is without feeling safe in places where they should feel safe. But I am so glad that you all were able to kind of, you know, really talk through that.

Amanda: It was such a great conversation. I really love hearing from therapists that like, it's okay to have the feelings, right? It's how you respond to those feelings. Like it's okay to be worried. It's okay to be scared. It's okay to be concerned about all this stuff that is legitimately concerning in our world, and we don't have to think positive about it. We don't have to say, “well, let's think of the good in this toxic crazy train thing.” That's not a solution. And it's okay to be like, “You know what? I'm upset that this is happening right now.” So that was really good. It's always good to hear that. 

Alright, so now we're gonna have to do our Toast to Joy and it's gonna have to be extra joy without Rachel. Jasmine. What is your Toast to Joy today? 

Jasmine: Okay, so my Toast to Joy. I will do a double toast since Rachel is not here. My first Toast to Joy is to me putting together the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus's first ever retreat. To be clear, I had two weeks to put this together. It turned out absolutely amazing. It really reminded me of like the reasons why I got into politics in the first place. One of those reasons was to really talk through what we as legislators wanna do for people in Georgia. So it was amazing. I just, I'm giving myself a little pat on the back and that's just because normally I don't give myself a pat on the back when I do cool things.

And then my second Toast to Joy is to Valentine's Day. I got some flowers from a secret admirer and I thought that was really cute. 

Amanda: I was noticing that! Are those the ones behind you? 

Jasmine: Yes! 

Amanda: They're are gorgeous. 

Jasmine: I think it's actually two dozen roses, and so I thought that was really sweet. I have an idea of a couple of people it could be, but honestly, I mean, I think it's really cute. So it's very cute. It's whatever. I just think it was really nice that someone thought enough to get me some flowers for Valentine's Day. So I'm excited. So that's my toast, to whomever you are, secret admirer. Thank you for the beautiful flowers.

Amanda: That is awesome. So my Toast to Joy…. It's gonna be, cause we just had the SuperBowl, and I don't know how much football I actually watched , but–

Jasmine: I actually watched the game this year! 

Amanda: I had a lot of fun but they also had the first all female flyover, which I thought was really cool, to celebrate 50 years of women aviators in the Navy. So that was awesome. Also, the first two quarterbacks who are Black. I did not realize this was our first Super Bowl for that. 

Jasmine: You know, it took a really long time for Black people to be accepted as quarterbacks. Because quarterbacks have always traditionally been seen as the, the brain or the smart person on the team. And there was a school of thought that Black people were not smart enough to be quarterbacks for a very long time. So this really truly is history for a lot of reasons. 

Also because you brought up the Super Bowl, I just wanna say that the halftime show with Rihanna and the fact that she performed like in the freaking air, suspended in the air, well, I guess she was on a platform suspended in the air… pregnant!

Amanda: Amazing. 

Jasmine: I'm pretty sure she made history as the first pregnant person to do a halftime show. 12 songs. Amazing. 

Amanda: Such a superwoman. Amazing. We are all in awe of Rihanna. 

Alright. Thanks so much to everyone for joining us today. If you're enjoying the show, please share it with a friend and we'll see you next week on another episode of The Suburban Women Problem.