A Proactive Approach to Mental Health

What if we could equip young people—and ourselves—with the tools to handle mental health challenges before they happen? Erin Harris, founder of Undo Mindset, shares her powerful journey from surviving a school shooting to creating a nonprofit dedicated to reshaping mental health care. Erin’s experience as a teacher in a traumatic crisis sparked a mission to make mental health skills as essential as reading and math in schools, giving students the resilience to face life’s ups and downs. Through Undo Mindset, Erin’s proactive approach targets underserved communities, first responders, and transient populations, ensuring that everyone has access to the tools they need to thrive.

In this conversation, Erin explores why our traditional, reactive mental health systems aren’t enough to address today’s crisis—and why building resilience early on is crucial. For parents, she offers practical strategies to keep mental health discussions open, honest, and meaningful in a tech-driven world that often complicates emotional wellbeing. Don’t miss this inspiring episode to learn how proactive mental health care can empower individuals and create a stronger foundation for future generations. Tune in to discover how a proactive approach can be a game-changer for all of us.

BIO: 

Erin Harris has proudly worked as an educator in 9 different schools in her 15 year educational career. These opportunities allowed her to work in neighborhood schools, charter schools, turn-around schools, start-up schools, schools in more economically struggling communities, and schools in more affluent areas.  These differing experiences gave Erin the opportunity to truly see a wide range of schools, systems, programs, what was working, and where our gaps are within the educational system. Erin brings her diverse teaching background to each class taught, providing each student with supports needed to meet their diverse needs.

​One of the greatest gaps Erin has observed in her career is the need to support students with making their thought process a productive and positive experience.  She has observed how kids are being exposed to so much adult information and knowledge but don't have the mindset skills needed to support the thought process that goes with that exposure.  She is passionate about teaching kids the skills needed to efficiently bridge this gap within their own thought patterns.

After being in a school shooting, our founder, Erin, sought trauma recovery assistance. Through this process, she learned an immense amount of mental health skills. The problem was that the program she attended was for adults only. Sick of seeing our country's reactive approach to mental health, the idea for Un/do was born - teaching proactive mindset skills so our youth have these tools in their back pockets prior to experiencing crisis. 

When not pursuing her dreams or working in the education world, Erin can be found exploring the mountains with her family.  Originally from DC, Erin, her husband, Jeremy, and her two children, Logan and Emi, have been calling Colorado home for a decade. They love to snowboard, ski, hike, mountain bike, raft, camp, SUP, and just about every other fun activity the beautiful mountains have to offer us.

Transcript

Hello everyone! I am so thrilled to be here today with Erin. Um, she is just a ball of energy and a ton of fun. Erin, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me here today. Um, I am a former educator, but currently I am the founder and executive director of Undo Mindset. Um, I spent 15 years in the classroom and actually ended my educational career in a school shooting. Um, it was gang related, no fatalities. One student was shot. Um, but you know, it was super traumatic for me. So I checked myself after that happened. I checked myself into a mental health facility where I learned really amazing skills and tools. Um, And just recognize a couple of things in that experience. One is that we are absolutely not teaching this in our schools and we should be. Um, two is that, you know, mental health is truly a privilege and, and we do it in such a proactive, I mean reactive, excuse me, reactive

way in our country. So it's a privilege and it's after the fact. Um, you know, I had to be an adult and crisis have insurance and 1600 cash. Um, I don't think that that is how our mental health systems should work in our country. Uh, so we are on a mission to really change that and make our curriculum, which is a computer based curriculum, um, equitable and accessible and really get it out there to marginalized communities, communities that haven't otherwise had the financial means to potentially access some of these resources. Um, we are a fairly new nonprofit, but we are also a huge nonprofit and that we have, oh, my gosh, I think over 110 volunteers are working on

this project now. So,

How long ago did this start?

well, we only just became a nonprofit about two months ago. Not even.

Oh, congratulations.

you. But we started, uh, you know, kind of gathering board members about a year ago.

It's

been about a year that we've been really working on this project. And yeah, we have people coast to coast internationally. I mean, in a world that feels like it is on fire. It's a really beautiful thing to see all these people come together to try to be part of

a solution and really, you know, fix this narrative.

What an incredible movement 

Yeah. You know, I love that you said movement. My marketing director said that to me last

Oh, look at that.

And she said, Erin, I don't know if you were meaning to start a movement, but I think you are. And I

was like, I don't, I mean, it wasn't necessarily my intention, but I am absolutely here for it because it is the right kind of movement that we absolutely need. So yeah, if we can do it, let's do it.

You know, one of the things you said that just resonates with me is that we are such a reactive society to mental health. And I think that's one of the biggest reasons we're where we are today.

A thousand percent.

I 

I even think about it in the smallest nuances of it, right? So, like, I always come from the educator perspective,

and I think about, like, what are our systems around mental health, even for our young kids, where it should be proactive because the trauma hasn't really impacted their lives quite yet.

And we, like, you know, a kid becomes dysregulated, we kind of take them out of the classroom. We do a lot of reactive, trying to put a bandaid back on it. Um, but we aren't really doing any of the things that we need to, to like build them with the tools and skills prior to the hard things so that when hard things happen, we are able to really navigate them correctly. Um, so yeah, I mean, truly from like the little kids all the way up to our greater world, all of our mental health stuff is really trying to. Figure out what was our previous trauma and

how did we navigate it? And how can we refile that filing that paper in our filing cabinet of a brain? And how can we react or retroactively go back and fix the things?

But if we could get skills and tools in our beings prior

to that, we would come out such in a much better place in a healthier society.

Okay, so I'm having a flood of thoughts right now and they're actually conflict, they're conflicting. So I'm going to say one and then you're going to say are, is this, you know, my, my, does this person have like two personalities because she's going to be coming from the complete opposite side. But the first one is, Is I even look back, I've got a 19 and 21 year old and now that I'm a lot deeper in all of this, I look back and think, Oh my gosh, if I would have known this, if I would have known this, um, and you know, we do the best with what we know at the time, right?

But instead of maybe worrying about whether or not I was nursing correctly, it sure would have also been nice. I think to have a, uh, provider at some point be teaching me about young, you know, child psychology, how to, you know, early on when they were two and they were having a meltdown, how to help them manage those feelings and learn how, what those feelings are.

I mean, we didn't know that 

Well, and I. And I can speak to that because, you know, I was an educator prior to having my own Children,

and, um, it absolutely helped me in so many ways. And, you know, my husband, who's not an educator, he was, you know, he could see the benefits of my knowledge and my experiences and my education, and he would oftentimes be like, I, you know, trust you and we'll,

you know, Rely on your opinion for how we solve this and yada yada.

Yeah. Um, and it's definitely hard for me. I think sometimes as a educator to look at people who are not educators. I'm like, ah, why are you

doing that? I know what the outcome of that is.

I've seen that on repeat in my journey. Um, and I have to just constantly remind myself like, oh, they're just parents.

It's doing

parenting things because they didn't have the privilege of being an educator and learning the research and, you know, understanding the development.

So a hundred percent, I agree that, um, the more we can know in that portion of that journey, the better we are really helping them when, when they become teenagers, when it gets really hard.

Okay. What's the conflicting view though? 

okay, well, I need to, I 

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. 

But the really hard thing is, is worst, at least me, we're so stressed out also as a young parent, not knowing everything. So then all of that is just like this big soup of dysfunction. And I'm not going to say I, my kids are, you know, I think actually, I'm just going to brag.

I think I did a really good job, but I 

But I think that stage of any, any, that stage is challenging. It is a hot mess of a stage when you

have little kids and toddlers.

Once they kind of reach like third grade and they become a little more independent.

It's, it's a lot easier for

sure. But Yeah. I agree when your kids are little and it feels really chaotic. Excuse me. How do you get the capacity and the time and the energy and all this stuff to also do that homework

when, you know, I think like partnerships, I look at partnerships in that stage of family hood, and

they're always struggling because it's really hard to have the time and space to process your emotions and then voice your emotions and then discuss and resolve and all the things.

I mean, it's

the same thing within our own beings as parents. We are so like, um, and it's an emotional journey because you're constantly doubting yourself

and trying to pick yourself back up and you're trying to give yourself grace and then you're screwing up and you're trying to learn from your mistakes.

And I mean, it's just, it's a journey. And then on top of that, you have the guilt and then you're trying to say, well, I should have done this and

I should have learned to that. And

it's, it's a lot. Yeah. Mm

as I'm looking back now. It's so important. Also from the sense of being able to detect things. So like, I look back now. And I say, huh, my 

all the flags were there. 

My daughter was struggling with anxiety early on and she was doing one heck of a job at coping skills at a young age.

She was pulling herself away and I never, never just picked up on that until later and I looked back and I was like, this makes sense. Okay, now my conflicting side.

Okay. Mm-Hmm?

So, it appears that we have. Mental health is a lot more prevalent these days. Whether or not it is, I don't know.

Mm-Hmm.

Now, 30 years ago, 50 years ago, nobody was talking about trauma, no one was talking about feelings, and none of this.

Mm-Hmm. 

And it didn't appear that there was a mental health crisis. So how in the world Is it that we just all stuffed our emotions back then? Or what has happened 

The answer is yes, and I think that there's a lot to it. Okay, so there's, that's a super complex question to answer.

I think that we didn't know a lot about the brain because technological advancements hadn't caught up with us yet. I think the more we know, the more We can diagnose, right?

I think the other thing, too, that I am on a mission to do is de stigmatize the human experience.

I love the verbiage of neurodiversity,

and I love that everybody's kind of like, oh, yeah, I'm neurodivergent. It's just like this blanket name for humanity, in my opinion, because

we are all neurodivergent. I think the other thing that we should also always recognize is that trauma is very much part of the human experience.

Like, I don't think there is a single human on this planet that gets to leave and exit this planet without trauma. So I do think that like in the earlier days, we're just trying to move away from like that narrative of like, dudes can't have emotions. And,

you know, I think even in the, the females world, that narrative trickled into us. To where we feel like we are always being judged being dramatic or something. If we do have emotions, we're trying to figure out how to stifle our emotions and whatnot. But I think as science progresses, as technology progresses, as we learn more about what it means to be a human in general and how our brains work. We are understanding more and more, and we are realizing that this is all just part of being a human. This is how we tick, and having emotions is actually, um, something we need. I always say it's a human right to have emotions and to understand your emotions deeply. It is just like oxygen and food and shelter and all these other things, in my opinion.

I think it was really, really, really important. Really inhumane of us to tell men to not have emotions because to know your emotions and the broad spectrum of your emotions and then how to responsibly navigate your emotions is something all humans deserve to feel and understand. But you know, the other thing, I mean, I always just say, like, the three parts of our body that I equate to, like, the Marianas Trenches is our brain, our guts, and our hormones.

I suspect, I mean, just in the last decade, we have seen so much progression on the

understanding and research around these areas, but I still feel like we just don't know nearly enough about how they all tie together, too.

Um, And I think then, I'm hopeful in the next couple of decades, we'll really have a greater understanding of those links. Um, but again, I think that when we think about history of understanding humanity, we're really just getting to the starting point. And so like, yeah, maybe 50 years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years ago, we really weren't paying attention to it that much. But that doesn't mean it didn't exist. Um, it's like I said to my mom during, we go to therapy together, and I said to her, I said, just because you refuse to acknowledge that you have mental health stuff going on, because you're human, not because I'm

shaming her, but like we all do, doesn't mean the rest of us don't have to deal with it. Like, you can acknowledge it exists, or you can not acknowledge it exists, but we are all still kind of, you know, navigating it, you know. And I think it's important

that we 

nothing to be ashamed of.

No, it's human.

It's so human. We need to destigmatize the human experience. We all have self doubt. We all go through these cycles. Um, and the other thing I want to mention too, just talking about like our history. I'm reading a really amazing book right now, um, and it's super informative. I'm going to pull up the title because I would never remember otherwise. It's called The Anxious Generation and How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic. Of mental illness and it's by Jonathan. I'm not sure if I'm pronounced his last name correctly. Hyatt H. A. I. D. T. Um, but it's a very, very, very recently published book, so it has very, very current, uh, status. statistical data for us. And he, um, in his data, you can see like a huge link between when he and he has charted like, when did facebook start?

And here

is our mental health trends. And when did facebook by instagram? And here is the mental health trends. When did we go from flip phones to smartphones?

When did we go from this? To that, you know, and it's so and then also he he looks at it, not just even from like a U. S. Perspective, but a global perspective and then he compares like the trends of previous mental health stuff like prior to our this technological, um, stage that we're in or

whatever. And he said, you know, like some people are saying, Oh, mental health is on the rise because we have so much like historical things happening in our world right now.

But then he looks back on the research of every time we've had historical stuff and he, you know, they've determined that there is no correlation or causation between historical things and mental health, that there can be like some increased anxiety or fluctuation, but like over the broader Um, timeline of things. It doesn't actually put us on the trajectory of mental health issues that we are on currently.

Um, 

going back to your point, which is trauma is part of the human experience. And any major issue we've had throughout, I mean, as a matter of fact, we've had probably less than so many generations. So we're learning how to deal with that.

But this generation, like, uh,

um, I don't even know. He called it something else after Gen Z called it something else. But he was like, basically doesn't even matter because until we can solve like we will call Gen Z Gen Z until we are able to figure out how to, like, rope in our technological issues because they're all going to be in that same bucket of just whatever. And I say this all the time. My work. I say this to my junior board members, which are our middle schoolers, high schoolers, college

I love that you have those, by the 

They are my bosses. I adore those, those humans. But um, I say to them all the time, like, you, they're being raised in a vastly different, uh, time frame than anything any previous generation can even try to empathize or support them in, which is why I call them my bosses, because ultimately we want to help the next gen.

Um, but like, You know, my husband is a police officer in the town we live in, and he always says to me when I do ride alongs, he's always like, Aaron, do you really want to come? Because once you see something like you can't unsee something, and I've seen it, I've seen people on alive themselves, and I've seen death.

I'm like, whatever. I'm not phased by in the same way because it's not personal to me. And I think that being married to a police officer, you kind of get to this place of not being immune to it, but like, you just see it on a repeated pattern. It's On the flip side, though, our Children are in that same exact place, but they don't have the developed brains because your brain doesn't stop developing until at least 25. They don't have people around them who actually know how to do this work and support them and necessarily, like, process things,

but we are giving them access to all the world's knowledge. They are seeing other kids

like explode in the Ukraine. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Um, and this is truly the generation of worry because they have so much trauma.

And we have to, at some point as the adult world, like name and identify the traumas that they have experienced in their very small lives

so that we can start fixing it. But I don't feel like adults are really like The kids are screaming about it, but the adults are not paying attention.

But like, we have, the kids are, mm hmm. 

realize, right, it was almost like a light, you know, a light switch just was flipped up, right? It wasn't that we had this progression. I mean, it may seem like it was a gradual progression from MySpace to Facebook 

There was actually a switch. So the

book that I'm reading, there, The book that I'm reading is talking about there is actually a defined moment when

there was like a light switch and what it was was on the internet. God I wish I could remember what year this was like past or whatever but you know when you go on like the internet if I want to go on to uh, rhymes with corn but starts with p I don't know if I can talk about this on your show or not.

Yeah, it's fine. We'll mark it. But yeah, I oh, yes, you can. Please do. I mean, not really, but 

Yes. Got it. Yes. Um, so if we have, you know, when you go to those sites, um, there was a defined date in history when we went from like, you couldn't access to now you can say, yes. Oh yeah. I am 18 and

above and I can put in my own date. I actually remember when this happened, there was a swit, uh, a shift where I was like, whoa, Now we just have literally unlimited access to the

things. And even my son was saying that last night. He was like, Oh, I made a LinkedIn profile so I could, could follow you mom on LinkedIn. I said, but you don't have a job, dude. He's like,

Oh yeah

no, I just made it all up.

I was like, 

that's true, right? 

tell me, don't tell me. But truly they're doing that to all of the, you know, not LinkedIn necessarily.

And it's interesting. I would be curious to know what that year was because I bet you probably, if I could. Pull that year up, you'd probably be like, Oh yeah,

that is when my memory, that light switch went off.

Mm hmm. No, and it does so with a light switch right because it's so immediate 

hmm. Mm

we haven't had the opportunity to evaluate it or it doesn't sit present on top of mind. So like, right. And so like when your kids are out there and they're being exposed to maybe not even corn with a P, um, they're still being exposed to.

Situations that we never processed as a, as a kid, and we as adults may not look as at as being. So traumatic because we've had 30, 40, 50 years of processing 

Mm hmm. 

and So I think as parents Back to we do the best with what we know is that maybe this is something that we really I mean at 19 and 21 I'm I'm past that but as younger parents is really understanding your kids are being exposed to this I'm sorry, it is You Now, how do we help them manage it with the little brains that they have?

this author talks about, um, how this great rewiring of society, um, we have seen a shift in parenting and it's basically like, you know, we as parents, um, what is, God, I wish I could word it the exact same way he did, but basically like we are, um, becoming, you know, more and more of helicopter parents in the real world. But we are becoming more and more disengaged in the reality world

and it needs to be the exact opposite. We need to parent less in the real world

and parent more in the reality world. And which is

Wow. Okay. Repeat that again because that is huge, I think.

yeah, I mean we have to parent less in the real world. We have to allow our kids to go get hurt.

We have to allow our kids to have agency in problem solving and how to navigate all things real world in the real world. We need to parent more in the, in the remote world, online, in understanding what they're watching on YouTube. We're not giving them access to YouTube. Who are they playing with on video games? How are they talking in those video game worlds? Um, and again, it has to be like the very nuance. It's not even just like, Oh, you can't follow Andrew Tate on social media. It has to be the hard parenting of like, who was that you were just talking to? Do you know their name? Do you know where they live? Do you know how old they are?

What were you talking about? Like, really, did you tell them you're home alone? Did you tell them this, that, or the other thing? Like, the nuance of those, um, experiences. Like, Because Children are basically at this point, raising each other. Children are very much turning to their peers instead of

their adults and how to find that guidance. Um, and there's another book. I can never remember the title of it for you that talks about it so deeply. Um, and honestly, after 15 years in the classroom, I could not agree more that. Parents and adults don't understand their kids and their,

their lived experience is so vastly different and we have to turn the guidance to them and it feels hard because we're the adults, they're the kids.

We don't want them guiding us in this work, but we have to listen to them because they, they know they're way smarter than we ever were at their age, you know,

Oh, yeah. 

and, and they're knowing what they need and what guidance they need and they can tell us.

Sorry, go ahead. 

no, no, no, we had a therapist on, um, on our first season and he basically was talking about how he even parents his adult child now. And he was saying that exact thing, which was, I don't understand the world that you're in. I try to, but you're living very differently than I am. Talk to me about it.

and educate me on it. 

mhm, 

Second point was we had another guest on who was against it. She, she, you know, she's talking about technology and how severely detrimental it is to our kids. And there is a philosophy that you just don't expose your kids to it, right? You take it away from your kids. 

mhm, 

I see a problem with that in the fact that it's not going away.

Can I, can I tell you what I just wrote down?

Yes, 

Age of overexposure because something I talk about all the time, parents come to me a lot for parenting guidance. And I didn't

mean to interrupt you. 

No, no, please.

but between my involvement in the education system and my nonprofit and my husband's work and being in the mental health world, when I say a lot, I mean multiple people a day will constantly be like, this is what happened.

What do I do? And I constantly come back to this main point. We are in the age of overexposure and we can't do anything about it. You can try to shelter your kids but what's going to happen is that's going to bite you in the butt because your kids are going to be exposed period. They're going to be exposed by their peers, they're going to be exposed by other kids, even if your kids are like isolated in their homes, they will be exposed.

There is absolutely no way to not not like to not have that happen. I believe we are no longer in the A stage of like keeping our kids in these bubbles,

but rather we need to pop those bubbles and we need to help them navigate it. We need to, instead of being the keepers of the information ourselves, we need to be the people who are helping them process that information.

What is real versus what is not. Like my kids, my kids are 8 and 12, almost 13, and I am very transparent about them all the time. So again, talking about corn with a P. I tell my kids, even at 8 and 12, like, if you want to know what this is,

let's talk about it. I want to talk to you about that, but if I don't talk to you about it, you're still gonna figure it out.

Like, there's no way to avoid that. And then you're gonna have a really unhealthy relationship with all things corn with a p.

absolutely.

with a P, you know, involves. And, and then where are we, right? We are

like 12 steps behind the curve and where we need to be.

I would rather be the person that I can have very, you know, I don't want to be friends with my kids, but I want to be friends with my kids.

It's a fine line.

Like I want them to know, 

My daughter will say to me often, she's like, I don't know why I'm sharing this with you. She's like, but, and then she'll share it. And it's not like gossip, but it's like stuff that, you know, that I am so, I feel so privileged that I can have those conversations with my kids about because of what you just said, 

Well, there's people who will shame you for that, though.

There are people on this planet who will be like, Oh, you just want to be best friends with your

kids? And it's like, it's not that, though. Like, it's different than that. Because

my kids, if I say no, and I give them the

look, my kids don't push back.

Like,

they know mom means business,

and I am absolutely respected and taken seriously as the authoritarian parent or whatever. Not that I strive to be, but like, I want my kids to come to me if they're unsure what is real versus what is not. I want my kids to come to me before they make stupid decisions, like

eating Tide Pods because the internet told them that they should do that. Like, you know.

Well, and I think that is the difference. I don't think that when I see or I think of parents that try to be friends with their kids, that is 

That's like mean girls. 

Yeah.

Mean girls. I'm the cool mom. Mm

it. But I want to have real conversations with my kids and I don't want my kids to be afraid to come and say, what is this? Or I'm thinking about this or in worst case scenario, I did this. Let's talk about it because I'm not going to shame you, but you, but we need to work through, you know, what, what all this means.

I love that you use the word shame. I talk about shame a lot. I actually don't feel shame in my life. I personally have done a lot of work around shame because it's not purposeful.

And I think we live in such a shame based society.

I mean, shame is literally what is here. the hands on the clock that make us tick at this point in society. Um, and I think that previous generations very much relied on shame in order to parent their kiddos.

And it's, we're trying to change that society slow. But, um, I think that, you know, like I, my son recently had his first kids and he texted me literally four minutes later and

I, you know, as a mom, I'm like, that to me tells me I am not. In a space where my Children feel shame to be

human, you know, and I that is to me like I don't want to, you know, pat my own shoulder. But to me, that tells me I am on the right track

to be a guiding light for my Children as they continue to go through the struggles of teen hood and life. You know, I want them to know they can always turn to me even if it's hard stuff about like kissing like I I didn't have that relationship with my parents. Like when I wanted to shave my legs, I had to be like, To my sister, Kate. 

 I was like, can you get me a razor? I want to just try shaving my legs. Cause I was so embarrassed

versus now with my like eight year olds. I'm like, if you want to shave your legs, I don't care if you don't want to shave your

legs.

I don't care. Like, you

know, let's just be open about it.

all. Yeah. Mm

to the word shame, that is a big reason we're in a mental health crisis as well because 

hmm. 

historically,

Yep.

If you had something going on where you were struggling with some sort of mental health issue or even not, not even considered an illness, just anxiety for a period of time, you had, you felt shame about it because it meant something was wrong with you, which is like the worst message.

We are also very people, not we all of us, because I don't, but there's a lot of people who are very intentionally trying to shame people for mental health stuff per our political environment. Like, oh, you think that well, you must be crazy or meant

you need mental health issues. And I think that's a really slippery slope.

And I think it's really dangerous. And I think it's honestly degrading because. Everybody has trauma and without, like, trauma creates literally differences in our brains. So we all have mental health stuff. It is what it is. And I think that we're just gonna make it even more political and polarized if we continue down this road.

Well, and I think right now we're in a situation where it's also getting kind of this muddy soup of what is, what is a mental health issue? issue versus what are some natural human responses to things. And I think that also is very detrimental to kids that are now going through saying, I'm depressed, I have ADHD, I have OCD, all of these 

I don't think it has to be dangerous, though. Like, I think it, it can be done in a productive way. I mean, so my daughter, for example, she's, she has ADHD and she just recently started medication. Um, and my friend was over and my daughter was around and my friend whispered to me, like, how's it going on her medication?

And I was

like, you don't need to whisper because

there's nothing wrong with it.

Like she was yeah. 

dangerous where there's kids that are not understanding. Exactly, like, they're like, all of a sudden they've got anxiety and you and I both know there is clinical anxiety where you're taking medication and you're taking, um, you know, you're going to therapy and you're really trying to work on it because it's something that's happening, uh, you know, physiologically to you versus the anxiety of, 

I get what you're saying. 

That's where I'm saying it's dangerous because there's got to be some framework and education to kids about like, yep, that's, that's anxiety too, but it's not out of control.

That's just normal anxiety.

100%. And I think that we're seeing this muddling of verbiage period, like these extreme ideologies.

We have like. I don't know because we have no expertise anymore in society. Like all expertise has been thrown out the door because, well, podcasting to everybody has a voice to you can find other people with similar opinions now to

all the things. And so like, you know, you think about, um, I don't know, both sides of the political spectrum are like, you're a bigot. You're a bigot. And it's like, but there's actually a clearly defined definition,

Oh, right.

we're just like throwing it everywhere that it's just feels like now there's no meaning behind any of the

words.

Um, but yeah, absolutely. There was something else I was going to say about what you were saying before, and I lost my train of thought.

It's probably because I interrupted.

It's probably because I have ADHD. 100%.

so, I mean, we are so much more educated in it today than even 20 years ago when I had my kids. And I feel so hopeful and I just think that what we're seeing is kind of this place of where, you know, what direction do we need to be going?

And people like you are now also trying to bring it to the masses. Right? I mean, I think you and I talked about how I feel so fortunate that I was able to take the time and had the resources to be able to focus on my kids when they struggled. And there's so many that don't have that opportunity. And where do they go?

What do they do? Tell us a little bit about what you're doing with Undo and, um, trying to bring it to the schools. What, what, what does it 

I just want to speak really

quickly. I think with what you were saying before, bringing this conversation to a greater scale is really going to be the best thing we can do to combat that shame, you know, is to really change that narrative. People who were feeling shame, you know, like kids, younger kids, they're very quick to be like, Oh yeah, that's my ADHD.

And like, they're so like flippant about it because they've been de stigmatized and they

don't see anything wrong with it. Um, and so I do think like the progression is I myself am like, I thought we were all understanding this stuff. So the lack of progression now feels sometimes a little jarring. But I do think that as a society, we are slowly progressing in the right direction.

And we are understanding that mental health is super important, not just for our kids. our brains and our, our head space, but for our whole bodies, it's

connected and it's so relevant. We cannot be healthy human beings if we are not mentally taking care of ourselves. Okay. Thank you for asking me about undo.

yeah, so we have quite a few initiatives that we're working on. Um, we have, like I said, our junior board, our junior board is doing amazing work and, uh, they feed 175 transient folks every week here in the Denver Metro area.

Um, and they're working currently on a system to bring, again, our Curriculum is online. So bringing our curriculum to our K 12. I mean, I'm sorry to our transient population here in the Denver metro area in a way that is free, accessible and equitable. And then kind of copying pasting that all over, not just the country, but we have junior board members in other countries. Um, so, and I've promised them, we will always Um, in, in addition to that, we have recognized that a lot of transient folks have cell phones, but they don't necessarily have internet access. So we are working on, um, creating a committee of folks. So if anybody's listening and wants to join us in this work, we're trying to gather people to, uh, try to get our curriculum on every single library computer in our country free of charge, because we know that people who are usually using those computers are people who don't have the financial means to necessarily.

necessarily access mental health resources. Um, we have a men's group where we really talk about destigmatizing all things male

emotional needs. Um, like I said before, what we've done as a society, uh, is awful. And I think that, you know, I wrote down earlier, men and shame. Um, I think it's important when we address this male issue.

Challenge that we're seeing in society that we recognize it's not their fault.

Um, I think that when we shame people, and I think men have felt a lot of shame because for a very long time, for decades, because they're either too male, manly or they're not manly enough. They're, you know, there's always somebody who's blaming them for this

shooting and this school shooting and yada, yada, yada, yada.

And you guys. You know, especially white men, you guys did slavery back in the day. And so that's your fault. And they're like, I didn't do any of these things. And I think that the male society, the community is feeling maybe insecure and maybe, um, like almost like a corner dog, right?

Like if you corner me and blame me for all the things I'm going to bite back and bark.

Right. And I think it's super important for society to not necessarily blame them. Educate them and

help them understand how to navigate and shift so we can get into a healthier headspace. Um, but our men's group is really a bunch of dudes who Talk about like, you know, how do we make sure that men are in our society are doing that external work, but also doing the internal work. Um, we, let's see. We, like I said before, my goal is always and will always be to get into our K twelves free of charge. Um, we wanna be accessible not just to our kiddos, but also their home support networks. We

wanna give it to them free of charge. 'cause like I said, we all need to play catch up and bubble wrap our kiddos in this work. Um, and then our educators as well. I think there's a lot of educators in our society that don't. truly understand trauma themselves, and so they're not necessarily supporting our trauma kids in a way that is, you know, scientifically, um, Fact, we have a vision of being able to get into our higher education system.

So like a freshman year required course, we are working on becoming government contractors so that we can support our active duty and vets in this way. We have a partnership with an addiction recovery center, but we would love to expand that work to make sure we're accessible to all folks in the community. doing that really incredible work. Um, we have a pre postpartum mom and dad's group, um, mom and dads, because, you know, that journey of trying to get ready for bringing a human into your life to then bringing a human into your life is really jarring for all people.

Um, I don't think any partnerships are really solid in those stages because it's, Hard to communicate and really problem solve and do any of that work.

So we want to make sure that we're helping and supporting that community during that transition. Um, we're working on a partnership with a place that is incarcerating Children at 12.

Um, they are, I know, right? My son's almost 13. I'm like, I can't even

I almost have tears in my eyes because I 

I know. 

imagine.

every time I say that I

get chills.

It's

They're 

They're babies.

babies. But they're incarcerating 12 year olds. So that is our first incarceration location that we are trying to get into. But we are looking to be accessible to, you know, all of our prisons and jail systems in our country. And last but not least, I promise I'm almost done with all of our initiatives. Um, but like I said before, my husband is a police officer here, um, and he actually about two weeks ago watched a man unalive a life himself.

Um, and he has been struggling really hard since then.

Um, and so I woke up the next day and said, you know what? I'm the boss of this. We're going to start with first responders because

it was supposed to be phase two or phase three. Um, but you know, uh, normal humans, they say experience trauma about four to eight times in their lives. First responders, it's 300 to 800 times in their lives. So

if they're enduring trauma every day, we need to be doing something else because we literally as a society have just not. So

that's what we're on a journey to do. 

Okay. First of all, I don't know how you sleep at night. That is a lot and I love it all. I, I think there is a place for a volunteer in, in any aspect of that. I 

Well, and you know 

of volunteering, that would be, 

If you are interested in getting resources, mental health resources out to anyone, reach out, because we have literally, um, not that you should put humanity into buckets, but we've identified like 8, 000 different buckets of humanity that we haven't supported in this way that we probably should.

Um, and so we truly have a vision of being able to get out there in every single, every single market and infiltrate every single system that hasn't otherwise been supported.

Um, so even if these, these are our core initiatives that we're working on now in phase one of our development,

but in we have several phases, but, You know, in the next 3 to 5 years, ideally, we would love for it to be completely opened to every person, no matter your trauma, no matter your lived experience, we want to make sure that you're getting your needs met through our online curriculum.

Mm hmm. 100

children or caregiving children that, um, have mental health conditions. What I heard from you though, even every single bucket that you had trickles down to the kids. Whether it's the educator or the, the first responders, most of them are parents. The educator, they're a parent and they're touching your own kid.

You know, there's just, it all trickles down,

I also I also think that it's important. Um, My I don't even know what her actual position is called. We call her the nonprofit doctor. But she's basically, you know, if our nonprofit is a living, breathing entity, she's making sure that it stays alive and healthy and can grow up from this baby to toddlerhood to so on. Um, I was telling she was like, Aaron, what initiative is like if nothing else happened but this What is your initiative? I said, well, that's easy. It's K 12s. And she was like, because you're an educator. I said, no, because that is proactive.

Everything else is reactive, and that is what is wrong with our system, is that we continue to try to put band aids on things after the fact. And this is literally like our health system, to our government system, to our police system, to our education system. I mean like literally, that's just how we function in society, in our country. And we want to change that, and the only way we're going to change that is if we actually get out to the kids. We have to be accessible to our K 12 kids if we want to be reactive. I mean pro, oh my god, I always do that. If you want to be proactive instead of reactive, that is

literally the only way we can, and equitable, right? Like, I can try to market to every single bucket, but if we can get into every K 12, then we know every kid in the next gen who's We'll get the skills and tools they need to make sure that when trauma happens, they are more equipped and ready to actually handle it in a way where they don't have to later in life, take that paper out of that filing cabinet

and try to, you know, fix the paper and shuffle it back into the right place.

Like I had to do.

right, right. Good for you. I am so impressed and I am excited to see where this ends up going 

Thank you. Me too. 

you've thought about it correctly. You really 

I hope, I hope we're able to break generational trauma, generational cycles. Um, really, you know, it's, It's hard for me to hand this planet off to my children, so I can't fix it all, but I'm hoping this does a drop in the bucket for us in

some way. 

Yeah. Well, thank you on behalf of all parents out there. Thank you. We need it.