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Exploring Financial Strains and Mental Health Access

• Dr. Roldan • Season 4 • Episode 3

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Ever wondered why mental health care remains inaccessible to so many and why therapists are burning out at alarming rates? In this enlightening episode, Karen Green and Dr. Roldan shed light on the systemic barriers that prevent lower-income individuals from accessing essential mental health services. We delve into the financial and logistical challenges faced by both patients and clinicians, revealing how low reimbursement rates and delayed insurance payments contribute to a cycle of burnout and financial strain. Our discussion also touches on the unique hurdles older women encounter, pushing them towards alternative forms of support like coaching.

Navigating the emotional and logistical minefield of being a therapist is no small feat. Discover the hidden pressures therapists face, from managing crises to unpaid hours spent on necessary tasks like charting and dealing with insurance companies. We examine generational differences in work-life balance attitudes and highlight the extensive training and continuing education that therapists must undertake to remain licensed. This episode paints a vivid picture of the dedication and unseen labor required in the therapeutic profession, emphasizing the importance of maintaining boundaries to prevent burnout.

San Diego's soaring cost of living and the broader financial struggles impacting different generations are also front and center in our conversation. Learn about the predatory nature of student loans, the lack of financial education, and the economic pressures making it increasingly difficult for younger generations to achieve financial stability. We explore the struggles of single-parent households and the elderly, discussing innovative solutions like intergenerational living arrangements. Tune in for practical advice and resources designed to help you navigate these complex issues, fostering a more supportive and understanding community.

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Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm Karen Green. I'm an adjunct instructor at a local community college here, as well as an administrative professional in the mental health business, so I'm super happy to be here with you, dr Roldan, on our Oasis podcast.

Speaker 2:

Hello, beautiful souls, and welcome to Oroasis Community Podcast. I am Dr Roldan, your host. I am a doctor in clinical psychology, a BIPOC therapist professor and a mindful somatic coach. While I am a therapist, remember I'm not your therapist. This podcast is not a substitute for professional mental health care, but we have resources in our website and Instagram to support you in that search. Join us for a cozy, felt conversation about mental health, personal growth and mindfulness. We explore tools to care for your mind, your body and your soul. Check the footnotes for disclaimer, trigger warnings and additional resources for each one of the episodes.

Speaker 2:

So grab your favorite cup of tea, coffee or hot chocolate, wrap yourself in a warm blanket and find a coffee spot here with us to be kind, to be brave, loud and strong in your search of mental health wellness. Welcome to your Oasis. Thank you so much, karen and welcome everybody. I want you guys to grab your cup of coffee, your cup of tea or ice water or whatever beverage you have that warms and fuzzes your heart. So cheers to everybody and welcome to another awesome episode of Oroasis Community Podcast.

Speaker 2:

Here we have our amazing professor, karen. Because I'm a professor too, I'm able to call her by her name If you're a student, tip for the day, please call your professors by their last name. I know in high school we're used to talk to our professors or teachers just first name basis, but, as a professor, just to let you know, call them by their last name. So today we have a special topic. We're going to talk about two important topics for September, or yellow September, that is, society awareness month and those two topics are menopause and access to mental health, two important topics that Karen knows so much about, not only for life experiences but also because she works in the field. So, karen, tell us what is your experience about access? Do you because people always think that access is for everybody, that everybody can go to therapy, that therapy is not hard to find a therapist, that insurance will pay for it? Oh, my favorite, that they always say, oh, why therapists are so expensive if they go private pay.

Speaker 1:

So can you talk?

Speaker 2:

about it? What is your experience about that, either personal or professional.

Speaker 1:

Well, in a past life I was also a consultant for several local nonprofits in health and human services. So I can tell you with all seriousness, there is an immense barrier to care for people who are in the lower socioeconomic levels, so people who maybe don't make as much money, people who are currently insured through Medicaid or Medi-Cal. There's a lot of barriers to access because not a lot of providers take those insurances. And if you don't take those insurances, all you can offer the patient is a self-pay access kind of thing, and those patients can't afford those. It really doesn't even matter how cheap your rates are If you work on a sliding scale or if you you know a lot of patients hear that, oh, sliding scale, okay, great, I'm going to be able to get in there and afford care, and the fact of the matter is they can't afford that care, no matter how low it is, because they're busy trying to meet some basic needs like shelter and food.

Speaker 1:

So it's important to remember, both as a provider and as a patient, that we might need to put a lot of time into exploring how to access those resources and if you're a person who maybe doesn't have as much knowledge about the field, doesn't have as much knowledge about the field, doesn't have as much knowledge or experience in advocating for yourself, it might be really difficult to find someone to actually help you.

Speaker 2:

Right and just to let people know, as a clinician, a lot of the things that I hear is oh, why you guys don't have space or why you don't take my insurance.

Speaker 2:

And the scary part that people don't know is, like clinicians, we are tied to whatever the insurance company said. For example, I have in the past I used to work for nonprofits that they pay really low for hourly rate but you get a stable income, versus if you go to either private practice or some other companies, you don't get paid until like nine, six months. The insurance meaning the insurance pay, and sometimes the insurance is like we don't want to pay, we deny the claim, and this was like six months. So I had one of my classmates that they were in private practice and they were taking insurance and a year later $60,000 were not paid and she had to declare bankruptcy and now she doesn't even do therapy anymore because she got burned out, which, in this industry, one thing that people don't see is, like a lot of us, we cannot work or we cannot do our internships and why not and work at the same time.

Speaker 2:

So we have rippling student loans, which it creates, the loop over and over and over right Also creates burnout for clinicians. So if you see a clinician that needs a little more love, please just give them a little bit of love, because it is hard. It is hard to be in this kind of industry because you have to, like, see like nine, 10 clients a day and, to be honest, that is not healthy even for the clinician or the client right? And the other thing is access to therapy, believe it or not, therapists, we have to have therapy because we deal with a lot of things and you will be surprised how difficult it is to find a therapist for us. And you will say but you are right, there, right, it's your industry and it doesn't. And then when you think about older women that are like in their 40s, 50s or you're a senior citizen, forget it. Finding an appropriate care is impossible and that's why some people go with coaches, because they're more accessible and less expensive.

Speaker 2:

Granted, they don't have the training that we have, but it's almost like sometimes therapy feels elitist Meaning if you don't have the money, you don't have the care, and then the people that need it the most is the people that doesn't get it that have the hardest time accessing it. A hundred percent, a hundred percent, a hundred percent, and what has been your experience working in this industry about burnout for therapists?

Speaker 1:

Oh my goodness, it's rampant. Because of these sort of things that you were just speaking on, I think patients don't understand a lot of times that mental health care is structured very differently than medical health care and a lot of times patients think that it works the same. It doesn't work the same. When you go to see a doctor, your doctor schedules 15 minutes for you. They can see four patients an hour, so they could see 30, 40, sometimes more patients a day, depending on how they structure their schedule.

Speaker 1:

For therapists that is not the case. You get an hour with that therapist, so if you don't show up, they can't squeeze someone else in. They can't double book somebody the way that a medical health professional might do. So it's a very different kind of scenario, not to mention the issues that therapists, clinical psychologists, marriage and family therapists, social workers are tackling can potentially be much more serious and much less stable. So you're looking at a patient that may or may not be in crisis, may or may not have a safety plan, may or may not know what to do next, and you have to sit down with that patient and take care of them until they're ready to be done.

Speaker 1:

You can't just stop because the time is up. So a lot of times I think therapists take that on. You know, as you know, it's very easy to get emotionally involved with your patients. We have ways that we limit that and tools that we use to hold those boundaries, but you still carry it with you and at the end of the day, if you've had six, seven, eight hard clients, you're going to go home and you're going to feel that in your body and in your mind.

Speaker 1:

So it's really important for therapists to have a safe place where they can go to unload that, to learn coping skills, to learn ways to maintain those boundaries so that they can prevent burnout. And I mean especially it's the same in every industry really Turn off your phone, set your boundaries as far as what your work hours are and don't work outside those hours. I think that's a really important thing for people to remember your time is your time Right? And if it's not the scheduled time you're supposed to be working, don't work, don't do it. Sometimes it's difficult, but you got to hold that boundary.

Speaker 2:

It's super important for your mental health and I'm glad that you bring that up, because your generation and my generation we see that very differently. Right, your generation is like what do you mean? You're not going to work after work, that you have to. And in my generation is like in the middle, and then the new generation is like peace out, I'm not doing that, right.

Speaker 2:

But the thing is like, for example, in the medical profession, right, like you say, the doctor can see multiples because they only see it for 15 minutes.

Speaker 2:

They can double book. If I say I'm going to see you at 9 am, I have to see you at 9 am, not 9.30, 9.15. Sure, emergency happens because we have to take care of the patient before you, but hardly ever we move it or we let you know, right. But the other part that they don't know is that medical professionals, they have a transcriber, meaning somebody that writes the notes for them. The other one that they don't know is that you have to sometimes depending if you have somebody that is a specialist like you, or therapists that just go by themselves you have to call the insurance companies to see if they're going to take this thing and if they approve this treatment, et cetera, et cetera, and it's hours in the phone that we don't get paid, and then the hours of doing notes and your notes are not like tiny notes at all or like templates, because a lot of the medical professionals they have templates.

Speaker 2:

I'm not criticizing or anything. They have a very systematic kind of I call it puppy meal of a system that they can go really fast, really quick, but you miss a lot of things like that. And then as therapists, we spend an hour with our client and then we have to spend another 30 minutes doing notes and finding things for them and doing worksheets or workbooks or resources or sending them to hospitals, outpatient, inpatient. You know, like there is more behind the scenes.

Speaker 1:

It's a lot like being a teacher. Like you get paid for the hours you're lecturing but you don't get paid for the hours that you're grading, that you're researching, that you're writing lesson plans. That's all folded into that hourly rate that you're getting for that lecture hour. So it's very similar for therapists you don't get paid for the time you're charting, for the time that you're researching, for the time that you're finding tools and developing treatment plans. You're only getting paid for that hour that you're face-to-face with the patient, that specific encounter. So I think a lot of people feel like maybe that rate is inflated or it's not fair and why, do you charge so much?

Speaker 1:

but they don't realize what goes into that hour. It's not just that hour, it might be five hours that go into that one hour. So it's really difficult to explain to people.

Speaker 2:

Right. And then the other one that is like the difference between a counselor MFD, msw versus a PhD, psyd, and then the treatment plans right. A CBT versus a trauma specialist totally different plans, right. A CBT versus a trauma specialist is totally different and people don't know this. But we have to get training after we're trained.

Speaker 1:

Every year we have to make a lot of trainers in order to keep up with the current things and with your licensing requirements you can't remain licensed unless you take a certain number of hours of continuing education Right.

Speaker 2:

And those hours of continuing education are not cheap either. So that's what, when you're a baby therapist like me like I call it baby therapist we're like, see the world, like, oh my God, I'm going to be so happy after I finish. Now you have to pay exponentially like scary numbers of tests and ECUs, and why not and I say this not to scare anybody that's going to the field, but I feel like a lot of grad students, a lot of college students, get burned now because we enter careers that we don't have the same value that we put in out.

Speaker 1:

We have emotion.

Speaker 2:

You know we have. I always say we get paid in souls and we get paid in knowing that we did a good job. That's it In fulfillment, yeah, in fulfillment, but sometimes that's not enough, and when you have a cranky yeah, you can't pay your rent with fulfillment. That's for sure. No.

Speaker 2:

Especially not in San Diego, Right? So for everybody that is hearing us international here in the United States we live in California and in California we live in San Diego, one of the most expensive cities in the United States. So the average income to make it here you have to make $150,000 a year by yourself, by yourself, and that's the low bracket. That's not like you're living the life, which creates another problem and depression for the older generation.

Speaker 1:

Oh, for sure, Because in your years it was like $100,000.

Speaker 2:

That's like I'm living the life.

Speaker 1:

But you could buy a house with that Right Like full cash out here. Give me a house now.

Speaker 2:

Right now. I have seen, not only in clients but in friends, and why not? Because the discrepancy in understanding money right, because that's the main thing understanding money and inflation. Oh, absolutely, what has been your experience, not only as your personal experience, but I've seen in the profession and in other people that they don't have a clue about how much things cost One and two. They keep saying, oh, in my time, I used to this in my time. So we live a lot in the past and then we become very depressed, and then we become very insulated and then we become just not good.

Speaker 1:

Yes, 100 percent. You know, I could easily say in my day I mean back back when I first moved out of my mother's home I was renting a one bedroom apartment for four hundred dollars a month. I mean in San Diego. Now you can't get a one-bedroom apartment for $2,400 a month.

Speaker 1:

So it is surprising to someone like me, someone who's an older individual, someone who's been around for a while, it is surprising to find this kind of inflation when it comes to the cost of living, when it comes to buying cars, homes, renting apartments, buying any kind of daily good. It is extremely surprising and it's really sad to see our kids, who are now adults, not being afforded the same kind of freedoms that we had when we were kids. You know they can't afford to move out on their own. They can't afford to do the things that we had when we were kids. You know they can't afford to move out on their own. They can't afford to do the things that we did.

Speaker 1:

And it makes sense when you read in the news that you know fewer millennials, fewer Gen Zs, are having kids. Well, no wonder they can't even afford to raise themselves, let alone raise a child, or afford to have a family. Well, at least not here in Southern California. Maybe it's a little different in other parts of the country, but from everything that I've learned, it's not Because you have to remember when you live here in Southern California. Yes, it's $150,000 to have a livable annual wage, and that might be lower in other parts of the country, but the cost of living is different as well.

Speaker 2:

So, you.

Speaker 1:

You might only need $50,000 to live in Mississippi, but what's the cost of living there? Is that, proportionally, it's still not enough money, right? Things are still too expensive. They're gas, food, homes. So it's creating a nation of people that are living under an enormous amount of stress on a daily basis because they can't. They're being told that they need to achieve certain things to be successful, and they are. It is impossible to achieve those things unless you've been born with an enormous advantage financially.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and that's the other thing that back in the in your days being a high schooler, it gave me a good job, Absolutely. Now, if you go to college and get your BA, not enough, that is like less than high school now. And not only that, the amount of money that you get into, because people say like, you have financial aid, you have student loans. And for people that doesn't know about student loans, I feel that it's criminal that we give 18, 19 year olds 10,000, 20,000, 50,000, 60,000 dead without educating them. One and two, you know you cannot get a credit card when you are like that age, so that tells you something.

Speaker 1:

Do not, do not mistake that for financial freedom. It is not financial freedom, it is predatory. The only one who's getting any kind of freedom is the institution that's giving you that money, because they're earning money on the money that they gave you. So just don't don't mistake that for financial freedom. It's really a pair of handcuffs and it's the thing that needs to be associated with making those kinds of decisions is critical thought.

Speaker 1:

18 years old, first of all, that person's brain isn't even completely developed. Second of all, they haven't even been through college yet, so they haven't even developed the idea of how to have critical thought, of the ways to think about things, to make healthy decisions. So it is extremely predatory, extremely predatory. I'm not talking about federal student loans like Stafford loans, loans that are low interest rate, that are just strictly for school supplies, books, things like that. I'm talking about these private loans where you're getting $35,000, $50,000, $75,000, to quote unquote. Live on while you're in school not realizing that when you pay that back, that loan rate is 19%, 20%, 25%, sometimes 30%, and you're paying back three times the amount of money that you actually borrowed.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and one thing that I always tell my students they get shocked is that when you get your student loans, the interest rate is daily, not monthly like because people always think, oh, it's monthly, no, and that's why I hear apr they hear annual percentage rate right, but it's that doesn't mean that you're only paying it annual, that it's only accruing annual right.

Speaker 1:

It's accruing every single day on the amount that's owed. So unless you pay it back right away in full, you're paying a lot of money in interest, a lot of money.

Speaker 2:

And I say this because there is the middle generation between you and me right that they did this, they didn't know, and now they're in crippling debt. They have destroyed their credit scores and I hate when people tell them oh, if you work harder, or you shouldn't know when you went to school that getting a liberal arts degree was not going to give you. They did everything that they were told to do by society, right, and now they are just struggling. And that is the ripple effect of how we don't have enough professionals. We don't have enough mental health professionals to help that thousands of thousands of people. That is hurting. And then you have professionals like me that then we live. Well, I'm still a therapist, but like a lot of my classmates, they just stop. They went and did coaching, they went to the entrepreneurship, one because they didn't have so many restrictions, but two because they can help more people, because they were not so restricted to things.

Speaker 2:

Not saying go be a coach, because that is a different story that you can hear in the other episodes. But I believe that everybody deserves to heal, Everybody deserves a path to healing, but first we need to know what we are healing for. And the part that people don't talk about is the systematic problem that we have because they always blame the person. They don't see the system Exactly Because they say, oh, it's the person's fault and I'm like no, if I didn't have, if I'm already minus negative 20, how is it going to be my fault? Exactly the favorite that they like to say oh, they're playing the victim. No, we don't have the same resources that you do we didn't start in the same place.

Speaker 1:

So you can't call the system fair. If you started out from a position of generational wealth, you have an advantage over someone who has started out with a beginning of generational poverty. There's no doubt about it. It's not an equal playing field here. In. The only way to solve the problem is to dismantle the system and rebuild it in a way that provides advantages to people who are less advantage, which levels the playing field, and then we have everybody starting at the same point and then we can talk about making it fair for everybody from that point on. But as long as we're saying that we have a young person here who's got two parents in prison and is living with a grandmother with a drug problem, and then we've got a young person over here whose parents are, you know, trust fund babies and they've never had to work, are, you know, trust fund babies and they've never had to work, those two people don't have an equal opportunity, no matter what anyone says. It's glaringly obvious. And if anyone says it's different, they're wrong, right.

Speaker 2:

And the funny thing is that statistics show that when we are born in poverty, it takes eight generations to get out of it. Eight If you get out of it when you are born in wealth, it takes one to two generations to duplicate it or triple. So just right there, you have a stats right. And when both Karen and I do, we teach right. We teach college students. She teaches in community college, I teach in the university level and the pressures that everybody has when they start college, especially community college, when you have people that is coming back to college, or they didn't have the opportunity to go right out of high school college or they didn't have the opportunity to go right out of high school.

Speaker 2:

I have, just in the universities, not that many older students. I was myself an older student because I immigrated here as an adult and the system is not created for us to study at all. Like it was so difficult. I did a lot of tip for everybody out there. I did my three years in college, in community college because one they have different times to go to school. I will go to night classes and work like a meal during the day. I have three jobs. I will go full time to school and then I was beat every day but I did it right. And then I have some my classmate when I transferred to the university. It was like they were throwing their MacBook away because they were like, oh, it's a year old, I don't want it anymore. And I'm like, can we donate it, can you? Can you donate?

Speaker 1:

it to me yeah.

Speaker 2:

So this is not people, because people think like mental health is only for people. That quote unquote I'm sorry you're crazy which that is not a term or like you're not trying hard enough, and I use this to examples because the two want to get better yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, you have to know that you're not better. Right For somebody like me that we were growing as immigrants here in like poverty is against us all the time because we're starting from scratch. Remember that we're starting from scratch. Remember that we're starting from scratch zero, everything right, regardless of what you think. And then you have somebody else that has a lot of things. We both have the same pressure to succeed, to be this, to be that right. And when we entered the colleges thank goodness now the new generations don't have so much that we didn't have Like 741-741 text line to talk to somebody when you're dealing with your mental health. We have care for them and so many things, but still it's not enough. Why? Because as a society, we don't talk about the discrepancies that we have, about the lack of monetary literacy that we have Absolutely so can you talk about that? The monetary literacy or society lack, from your perspective?

Speaker 1:

Sure, you know, back when I was growing up, when I was in high school, a million billion years ago, we had a class called home economics and in home economics you learned how to start a bank account, balance a checkbook, pay your bills. You learned how to quote, unquote, run your home, learn how to cook, learned how to sew, learn how to do a lot of things. We don't. We don't have that class in school anymore. Because of school anymore, because of different kinds of budget cuts in education, we lost that kind of elective class along with a lot of our arts and music classes, so nobody was there to pick up the slack when we lost that class.

Speaker 1:

My generation was the first generation that really had two working parents or maybe came from a single family home. I came from a single family home and had a mom who had to work multiple jobs just to keep a roof over our heads, so she didn't have a whole lot of time to dedicate to teaching us about basic things like that. You know she was too busy trying to keep us afloat, and now I think it's getting. I do think it's getting better. There are more resources for young people to learn those things, but they do need to know where to find them.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

And they do need to know how to access them. So, once somebody has that ability, there's a lot of great information out there. There's a lot of books out there, there's a lot of courses online that you can take to help you become financially literate. But what does someone do who, even though they may be financially literate, they don't have the financial resources to even take advantage of those things. So you know, it's all. It's all well and good to say, oh, get yourself a high yield savings account, save, you know, six months of expenses, or. But when someone is living paycheck to paycheck and they can't even afford to put any money into a regular savings account, they can't afford to have anything left over, then where does that person go? And that's what I think that, as a society, we need to focus on is what do we do for those people whose barrier to access is life?

Speaker 2:

Right In essence. And how do we treat that Right? I love the course I teach because my course that I teach, one of my kiddos told me I teach freshmen. That's why I call it kiddos. It's like kindergartner, because everybody comes from different groups and different schools and everything Right. So it's so many different levels and belief systems and my class is about teach you how to live life, how to love yourself, how to navigate college and life. And they freaked out so much because my class doesn't have that.

Speaker 2:

You know I don't. No, don't worry about the zero, it's okay. They're like what do you mean? Don't worry about the zero? Why do I have a zero? Blah, blah, blah. And because they are so used to work for a point, to work for something, and when they cannot get it they just freak out. And my class I started with. So you start with a zero and you start piling up your points. Apparently that's not how they do it in the other classes, so they were freaking out the first two weeks. Apparently that's not how they do it in the other classes, so they were freaking out the first two weeks.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh Like literally breakdowns, which I love in the sense of, like I make all my students to grab 741, 741 text, that way they can have it in their phone. The safety phone apps, too, for their schools. Everybody in your school you have a safety app. The reason I say this? Because either if you choose to go to college or you choose to go just to life, it's very, very hard the world that we live in right now.

Speaker 2:

And the first two months that you're out of high school, or either in college or the work, is what we call the red zone, when people commit suicide and where people also have uh addiction and etc.

Speaker 2:

Etc, etc really really high risk right, so we already have negative in there, right, and I only mentioned this because a lot of people say, oh, our new generation is lazy, or new generation I. I was like, they were born in anxiety, they were born in the middle of pandemics, in the middle of things that people say, oh well, I was born when the World War II was happening, you know the recession, yeah, but we have economic freedom, which we don't have now. Now think about that when we talk about seniors or retiring people. People cannot retire, people Absolutely. People cannot retire anymore.

Speaker 1:

No, I have an 85-year-old mother who just stopped working. Right, because Social Security is not enough. Right, right.

Speaker 2:

Yes, people always say, oh, your parents didn't work. My mom, she worked really hard, but her Social Security was like only $900. What are you going to do with that? And then, if, for example, if you need memory care or you need something that is specialized because welcome to having Alzheimer's and any other kind of Any kind of chronic disease Right, you're one check away from homelessness and then, absolutely, um, you, you're too what you're one check away from homelessness and then, or or disability system keeps you broke because, um, people that doesn't know this from outside of the united states, we pay for our, for our insurance, for our health insurance, and we pay obscene amounts of money for it, just to go-.

Speaker 1:

Obscene amounts of money.

Speaker 2:

Obscene. Just to give you an example, this called the cheap rate $1,000 for a single 20, 30 something $1,000. That's the cheapest one. And then you have Every month, every month, and you make $3,000 a month, and then your have every month, every month, and you make 3000 a month, and then your house costs 2000. And that's why everybody has roommates here in San Diego, because you cannot afford it.

Speaker 2:

You can't even afford a studio, right. But now think about that as a person that worked really hard. And now you want to retire your 50, 60, well, here's 65, 67, and you can't. And then I have a lot of my. There's a program in my university that for college students because you know we're broke you get to live with an older person and both help each other.

Speaker 1:

I love that.

Speaker 2:

You know. But the downside of that is also like the autonomy of somebody that is, in their senior years they start losing. Not the autonomy that we think when you get older, it's the autonomy to be free, yes, and be okay. And that brings me to menopause. So menopause starts at three-ish. Three-ish meaning you are pre-permanent, and why I did this dip by is because you need to learn first about the educational system, the oppression system, and then the medical system to talk about.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to gaslighting, because you're a woman and you have things oh my gosh, that's so true, right, I mean so true, I um, I just appalled or how we are treated as women and ignore like, for example, I have opiates and I had for years a horrendous, horrendous endometriosis and and I will go to the doctor and say this and this and this and I'm very anxious, or this and that, and I was like you're being overdramatic. Or just take a Tylenol and you're talking about excruciating pain that was in the floor crying like for seven days, like this is not normal, right?

Speaker 1:

And depending on this, I'm going to give you a psychiatric referral.

Speaker 2:

Right, like I think you are hysterical.

Speaker 1:

I can't find anything physically wrong with you, so I'm going to give you a referral to a psychiatrist. Right, right. And you're like wait what? And then we go. I'm going to give you a sock in the nose, buddy.

Speaker 2:

And then we go because we want to feel better, absolutely and, and, and then we go, and then it happens that chronic illnesses are not a thing here, in the united states, meaning if you have it, they don't let you have it.

Speaker 2:

Um, right, for a lot of people trigger warning uh, that went to the pandemic and have long covet. They develop chronic illnesses like POTS, like vertigo cuckoo pops that came out of that. And you go to the doctors and it's not their fault either. That's what I'm trying to say. You say why my doctor is such an right and we're like because they only have 15 minutes.

Speaker 2:

And they didn't learn about this in medical school, so they're flying blind Right right and we're not going to enter too much into, like the terrifying thing of certain states in our country that are not teaching about medical care. Certain medical care, right. But as a woman, the first thing, like for endometriosis, you have to like you know, uh, sometimes you have to just take all your lady beats out right In my Eric's meal to this day the first thing that the doctors will ask is like did your husband know? Are you sure?

Speaker 1:

Like like you, have no autonomy as a woman. That that this mindset still exists today to me is not only baffling but infuriating.

Speaker 2:

Right, and can you tell us about your not your story, but like your experience about navigating menopause, pre-menopause and or medical system as a person that's educated, Because the worst I was saying, the worst thing that can happen to somebody is like that you're so educated that you understand, like what they're doing to you and you are like no.

Speaker 1:

I don't.

Speaker 2:

Excuse me, what Right? And after your story I will give you guys a tip that you're going to laugh.

Speaker 1:

But go ahead, Tell us how was your experience you know it was a real shock for me, because now we all know as women that menopause will happen, right, we don't know when it's. It's a little bit of a medical mystery. It happens on its own time and for some women it can take. It can be a decades long process, for some women it's overnight. But without fail, it comes with hormonal shifts, it comes with physiological shifts, it comes with a whole host of things that, even though you might know about them, you are not prepared for them.

Speaker 1:

I know I wasn't was terrifying, if I'm being honest, I was not. I literally thought I was going crazy. I was having the worst panic attacks, still having a lot of trouble sleeping. The hot flashes, the weight gain, the sort of redistribution of things in your body it's all really unexpected, even though it's expected.

Speaker 1:

And the fact of the matter is doctors don't know a lot about female physiology. So you know the decades and decades and decades the century, if you will, of medical knowledge that we've garnered has mostly been about men, drug studies, any kind of anatomical studies. All of it was done on men. So what young doctors are being taught in medical school is based on male anatomy, male brain chemistry, male physiology. So there's not a lot of doctors that know how to deal with this thing. There's not a lot of doctors yet I do believe that's changing that are prepared to deal with the repercussions of not only the female body but the changing female body, not just our anatomy but the brain chemistry and everything that is associated with that, just our anatomy but the brain chemistry and everything that is associated with that. So it's confusing, it's scary and it's kind of infuriating, because all you're looking for is answers and when you go to the person that you think is supposed to be the one who has the answers, and they have no answers for you.

Speaker 1:

You really are at a loss and as a person who is educated, who's been in the field for almost 40 years, who is able to advocate for myself, for me it was almost unreal. I was like, am I living in bizarro world here? Like what is happening? That nobody knows how to help me with these, these issues and these problems? Nobody can advise me, nobody can tell me what to do next, how to help this, what, where to go. So it's, it's really challenging. As an older woman, you know a lot of freedoms come with getting older as a woman in this society, but there's a lot of challenges that are associated with it as well. So that's definitely one of them.

Speaker 2:

Right, and one like having a chronic illness or having just your menopause and pre-menopause. My recommendation and this is what I was laughing, because I always come with a binder when I go to the doctor because I know they're only going to have 15 minutes. I already know that. So I'm like let me save you some time because sometimes they're very repetitive with the same test. I'm like I already did that like a year ago. So I help them, you know, and say, oh, we're going to do your thyroid. Wait, this is my thyroid thing.

Speaker 2:

This is my most recent thyroid test and I'm like, oh, I didn't saw that. I'm not trying to put them down or anything. I'm trying to save their time and save my life, right, exactly. So that's one thing that we can do as a society to help each other to. This is what I need. But also, don't go to Google doctor. That doesn't help that much either. That just terrifies you more.

Speaker 1:

But if you don't self-diagnose, if you are not a medical student, if you are not a medical doctor, please stay away from WebMD.

Speaker 2:

Yes, to wrap it up, what is? Three little nuggets that you can give somebody that is in your age group and is trying to want to survive, and the other one to strive I think a very important thing that women, especially my age, need to remember is we need community.

Speaker 1:

So let's find other women our age. We grew up in a generation that was very kind of pick me, you know. We didn't have a community of like-minded women around us to lean on, to rely on, for support, to help support, and we need each other as women. Only we can understand what we're going through, and I think it's very important to have that community, to find that community and to rely on that community. We're not built as humans to take all of this on by ourselves. We're meant to live communally at the heart of it. Our brains have not evolved past that yet.

Speaker 1:

Top thing that you can do to help keep yourself sane and healthy is find a group of people that you can rely on and that you can talk to on the regular, because being isolated just makes everything worse. The second thing I think you can do is see your doctor every year, make sure you're staying on top of your health, do all the preventative health things that you need to do and catch things early so that it is easier to solve those problems as they come along. And lastly, I think, utilizing the things that come along with new technology. There's lots of like apps on your phone, meditation apps, things that you can use to help keep track of your health, and I'm a data nerd, so I love stuff like that. Anything that can tell me more about myself is like super exciting for me.

Speaker 1:

Maybe a little conceited, but there we go. But I think that those kinds of things especially, you know, as we grow older, it helps to not have to leave your house, you know. It helps to not have to make extra special time for that when we already lead such stressful and busy lives. You can just hit that app, you can lay down in a quiet room, you can meditate for five or 10 minutes and come back with maybe a little bit of refreshed, a little bit calmer, a little bit healthier than you were before you started. So those are three things that I would really recommend.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for that and for everybody that's listening. That's why we create our Oasis community a community because we cannot human alone. We are mammals and we are not meant to do human alone. What do I mean? The Oasis slogan is be kind, be loud, be proud of you. Sometimes we can't, so we go and grab somebody that will do it for us too, and we can go through life and after we take a break and reassess right, I love that.

Speaker 2:

The other part that I love is self-advocacy is a way to save yourself, but sometimes we don't know what to advocate for it, and that's why podcasts, youtube, you know the Red Square and other ones are very good, but be mindful that not everything that you hear is true. But us in between generations I think that's the part that we're missing the most Talk to each other because, believe it or not, all of us, no matter who you are, no matter where you are, no matter what economic or status you are, we have struggled with our mental health. We have been in that dark place and some of us make it out, some of us didn't, and because of that, no matter where you are, community can save you in multiple things. So I'm going to put all resources there under the footnotes. I'm also going to give you guys and girls and my senior lovings. I'm going to give you a free journaling. So you're going to learn five different types of journaling with that journal. So just go to the footnotes that it will be the link there Super important.

Speaker 2:

Get it all out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, get it all out, and there is different types right there is like the one that you draw, so you will learn so many awesome things. But finally, I just want to, if you notice, we talk, and I talk to anybody, any age, and probably we stay more in tune with what is happening in the world because we teach, because we have the youngsters talking to us Like I learn so much from my students all the time, 100% 100% and the resiliency that they have right All the time 100% 100%, and the resiliency that they have.

Speaker 2:

Right and the same with my senior citizens. I learned so much of what life has to offer and how easy it is to lose it too. Oh gosh, yeah, for everybody out there, please go talk to one of your senior citizens. Just go, just go learn something. We are curious humans, so just go learn something. Just, we are curious humans, so just go learn something new from them. And for everybody else listen, remember, grab your cup of coffee, tea or beverage, take a warm sip and let that be your reminder that connecting to your body is the solution for a lot of your problems. And I also will post a meditation for you. That is one of the episodes to help you to just send yourself. Karen, thank you so very much for having the time to come to talk to our audience, and if you are in the community college that Ms Karen is teaching, you are a lucky one.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much, doc. Doc, I appreciate you. This has been so much fun. Thank you so much for inviting me of course.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much and until next time. As we conclude today's episode, take a moment to reflect. Be proud of the journey, for every step that brings you closer to who you truly are. Embrace the kindness towards yourself as you did to each one of our guests. Honor the bravery in your actions and celebrate the importance of mental wellness with us. And remember it's an exercise that we practice daily. Continue to grow and flourish, knowing that we are in this training for our mental wellness together.

Speaker 2:

We are so proud to have you as part of our community, so join us on Instagram at Oasis Community Podcast for more inspiring conversations, valuable resources and supported content, including journals, worksheets and content in Spanish. Exciting things are in the horizon. Our Oasis Community break rooms are coming soon to grab tools and take a break for your mental health are coming soon to grab tools and take a break for your mental health. Also, we are featuring our six-month training ethical mental health coaching program designed for new and experienced coaches, as well as holistic and healing professionals. Enroll to create a safe and transformative experience to your clients. Links in the bio. Until next time, take care, stay connected and welcome to our Oasis community.