Isolation (Episode 41)

🎧 From lonely and isolated to confidently connected - Brian Sachetta's powerful journey will transform how you think about making real friendships! In this deeply relatable episode, Brian gets honest about the hidden struggles of teen isolation and shares exactly how to break free from feeling alone.

Through real talk and zero judgment, Brian reveals the truth about isolation that most teens experience but rarely talk about.

This breakthrough episode explores:

• The different types of loneliness that teens face (even when surrounded by people)
• How social media makes us feel more disconnected than ever
• The secret reasons why making friends feels so hard sometimes
• Real strategies for building genuine connections in high school and beyond
• The journey from feeling invisible to finding your people
• How to reach out when you're feeling isolated (and actually get the support you need)

Perfect for: Teens feeling alone even in crowded hallways, students struggling to find their friend group, anyone experiencing social anxiety or isolation, and the parents, teachers, and counselors supporting young people through connection challenges. Plus: Essential insights for understanding teen isolation in the digital age and building authentic relationships both online and offline.

To learn more about Brian, please click on the link below.

https://getoutofyourhead.com/

Transcript

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Welcome to Mindshift Power podcast, a show for teenagers and the adults who work with them, where we have raw and honest conversations. I'm your host, Fatima Bey, the mind shifter. And welcome, everyone. Today, we have with us Brian Sacheta. He is from Boston, Massachusetts area, and he's the he's an author and a mental health advocate.

He's also the owner of Get Out of Your Head. It's a book, it's a brand, and it's a community. As he says, it has a no bullshit approach to mental health. Today, we're gonna focus on isolation. How are you doing today, Brian?

I'm doing pretty good. Thanks, Fatima, and I hope you're doing well too. I I am. I'm looking forward to this conversation. One of the reasons I, that I noticed you, was the no bullshit approach to mental health.

That phrase actually made me pay attention to you, because I absolutely love it. That's cool. Good marketing. Of the reas I'm sorry. Go ahead.

I was just saying that that's great. It's, effective marketing then. Yeah. It is. It attracts, I I think, the right people, because I have the same mentality.

So we're gonna talk about isolation, what that is, what it isn't, why it matters. But, one of the things that you say on your website, and I've heard others say that there's a mental health crisis. And to that, I say, what mental health crisis with our youth? Yeah. There's there's none.

There's clearly none. Right? We're all perfect. Yeah. Yeah.

Pretty pretty interesting. I there's a a newsletter that I read every day that kinda encapsulates or sums down all the news that about the markets and finance and just stories that you might wanna know about. Right? And so there was a story in it this week about this new book by Jonathan Haidt. He wrote a previous book called The Coddling of the American Mind, and this new book is called The Anxious Generation.

And the book and then also the article are focused on the fact that we have a a youth mental health crisis. Right? And his book, which I actually just finished, was centered around the idea that kids used to grow up in a play based society. Right? Where it was like, they had a childhood where they were in front of kids all the time playing and figuring out how to interact with different kids and grow up and learn, relationships and all that.

And now they are being put through what is called what I guess Haidt would call a a phone based childhood. And the difficulty with something like that, right, is it leads to a lot of isolation, but then it also doesn't necessarily allow kids the development they need in terms of having face to face conversations with people, like learning and understanding what, you know, tone of voice is and and body, you know, body movements and and posture and all those sorts of subtle cues in conversations that help us figure out what the other person is expressing, right? And so his whole book is looking at the youth mental health crisis, from a broad lens and then also offering some ideas as to what parents and educators might be able to do to help, mitigate this new crisis. So I I thought the book was really interesting. I thought it was effective and great, and it also just feeds into the conversation that we're having where there is a serious crisis and it's not just affecting, you know, people who live in cities that are a little bit older and single.

Right? It's like it's now across the board and and it's it's affecting kids as well. And I have a niece and a nephew, and I'm reading this book and I'm like, it's kinda terrifying to think about they are the fact that they will be going through this process soon of, you know, what Hite says is the phone based childhood. And, you know, the wheels in my mind start turning and thinking about, like, how do I help mitigate some of some of that crisis for them as they grow up. You know?

But why is it a crisis? I mean, phones are great. We can look at stuff, and we can learn more stuff, and we can do stuff on the phone. I mean, we don't need to talk to other people. Right?

So, I mean, obviously, it's a bit of a, you know, a a tongue in cheek question. Right? And Mhmm. You know, you go back to how we evolved as a species. Right?

And then, you know, I I I don't have all the answers. I don't I don't know if anybody necessarily does, but even if you went back a few thousand years. Right? And you said, okay. Humans for a long time have lived in small tribes.

They have you know, technology is a brand new invention in in the context of of human history. Right? Mhmm. And so the way that our brains evolved and the way that we are wired, centers around face to face interaction, the same sorts of things I mentioned a minute ago where it's like we, you know, there are so many things that get lost. When we send a text message, right, you don't hear tone of voice, you know, you can't pick up on the the body language that I have and whatnot, and so the sort of, I don't know if it's trite, but the so the the, sort of the example that might be given at, say, a comedy show or something, right, is somebody reading out a transcript of a text conversation in a courtroom.

Right? And the person, you know, somebody saying, like, yes, no, whatever, right, and there's just so much loss when you boil down a conversation to just the text, right, just what is spoken. When you actually think about all those subtle cues, if somebody's, like, playing with you, right, and they're saying, like, no, No. Right? You know, and you think about that and you're, like, that person is communicating something under the words themselves.

And so getting back to the question that you asked of, you know, phones are great and all that. Right? They there are things that phones are great for. However, they've become a big, big part of our lives. Right?

And I think that as we sit at home on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and whatnot, we see a lot of things that scare us. Right? There's the notion of doom scrolling. There's also the idea of comparing ourselves to other people on social media and the idea that on social media, right, we are projecting images of ourselves that are not fully accurate. Right?

We are putting highlight reels into the world and then it's kind of fascinating and terrifying at the same time. I talked about this in one of my blog posts where if you think about it, like, let's say I post a bunch of doctored photos on Instagram, then you do the same. Or or may maybe a better example might be, like, you know, two boys or two two girls, right, who are friends. Let's say the girl, you know, is looking at, her friend's pictures and being like, she might see these pictures and say, oh my goodness. My friend is so attractive and having so much fun.

Why is my life not like that? And that makes that person feel terrible. Right? On the other side of the fence, the girl who's posting those pictures and getting that reaction may feel the same way about her friend. And so in theory, we might be creating a lot of agony for ourselves that is, like, not only it's undue agony, but it also, like, it's just this weird debacle of, like, we're we might all be making ourselves miserable in an attempt to stand out when I think the net effect of all of that might be pretty bad.

Those are some great examples. I'm gonna, pull out from what you said is one of the go back to one of the things you said a little earlier in that that statement. Humans need each other. We are built for that. And so with that, I wanna go into what is explain to the audience, primarily the adults.

What is isolation, and why why does it, like, why does it matter? Sure. I think there's a couple ways to answer that or look at it. Right? So I think what most of us jump to in our minds is isolation being, and I'll I'll I'll come back to a better definition in a second, but being physically isolated from other people.

Right? Ostracized or separated from other people. Try not to use the definition of the word in the or try not to use the word in the definition of the word itself, but anyway, I digress. So, you know, we think about, okay, if I am isolated it means I'm not surrounded by other people, I'm not connected with other people. There is certainly a physical aspect to isolation, right, but I think probably the more important piece is the emotional aspect, right, because you could Bingo.

There's also there's also an idea of being, you know, lost in a crowd, right, if if you go downtown or into the city or whatever and you're at a parade, just because you are surrounded by other people doesn't mean that you are necessarily connected with those people. Isolation in terms of how it makes us feel. Right? The the feeling piece is the most important part. And so, you know, you may go out to dinner with one friend and you might be in a forest.

And in theory or, you know, you could argue that the two of you are isolated. However, emotionally, if you're having a good conversation and connecting with this person, you're not isolated from one another. Right? And so the important piece when looking at isolation is asking ourselves, are we physically isolated? Because that is something.

But more importantly, are we emotionally isolated? Because when we hold emotions inside, they tend to they tend to grow and fester. Right? And that's not a good place to be. But then also just the fact that you said, right, we all need each other.

That is how we are wired. And so even if, you know, it's not like every time you get together with people, you need to have the most spiritual or emotional conversation. Sometimes just getting together with the guys or the gals and shooting the breeze can be a really effective thing for our minds and our psyches, you know. So, I definitely think about all of those different topics when it comes to isolation. And I guess the last piece, you know, just just talking about the effect of it.

There's definitely some research that has come out in the last few years saying that isolation is reportedly as dangerous to our health as smoking cigarettes. And, you know, I think about that where I live by myself. I'm single. I try to get out there and socialize with people, but there are times where it's easier than others. And I I look at research like that, and and it scares me, you know, and it makes me want to change my habits a little bit and and get more involved in my community and whatnot.

I think also to add to pick up on a little bit of what you just said, when we are too isolated, it is very easy to go down a mental rabbit hole that is basically a booby trap that you just can't get out of by yourself. It's very easy, to go down a rabbit hole of, oh my god. I'm the only one going through this. And that is almost never true. A lot of times, one of the reasons we suffer so much is because we don't open up to one another to say, hey.

I'm suffering with this. And then someone turns around and go, wait a minute. I'm suffering with that too. It's not just me. I mean, I just think about imposter syndrome as an example.

And that's something I absolutely suffered from, especially in my bridal business held me back from growing my business, like I could have and should have at the time. I eventually got over it later. But, you know, but it it's the isolation of keeping it all to yourself. And I also wanna point out you and reiterate something you said. You talked about the mental isolation because that's really what we're talking about.

Physical isolation, that's easy, and I think we all can understand that. But I think most people don't even recognize, and not just teens, when they themselves are in a mental mentally isolated place. And I'm gonna just say this, if you for to to listeners, if you're in a place where everything inside your head stays there and no one else knows about it, you're probably and I mean everything. You are probably, isolated in a bad way. And I don't mean that everybody needs to know your business and you don't use any wisdom.

You tell everybody everything. That's bad too. But what I'm saying is that that's one way to look at yourself because I think a lot of people don't recognize when they themselves are in isolation. And I've been a lone ranger thinker most of my life, so I really, really get that. It's difficult to trust people, and sometimes you're just like, you're on a different level than most people around you.

It's very difficult to to talk to people, you know, and open up until you find someone else who's actually on your level. And, and I know that I'm not just talking about myself when I say that because I I I just I know it's not just me. But I think the the mental isolation piece is critical and recognizing that when we're in that. So with that, I wanna ask, let's discuss why do we think that this generation is is, in a in an isolated space? Because you can be and I've seen this because I work with teenagers all the time, go to high schools and speak to them and do workshops, etcetera.

When you see a group of teenagers in a room, they could all be there could be 20 people in the room, yet they're all alone. That happens more often than most of the time, actually, more often than not. You go to a networking event. You're all supposed to be talking and networking for adults. Right?

And it could be a hundred people in the room, but there's really only about five because everybody's isolated themselves, and they're only giving plastic answers and, you know, not having real conversations. They're just having plastic conversations as I like to call it. How do we I'm sorry. I asked you a question, then I went on. So let me go back to that question.

We get I'm very passionate about this subject so as you could probably tell. So, go ahead and and answer the question before I go on to the next one. Yeah. So let me just restate the question. I think it was, why is, you know, the the the current generation or the the young generation at the moment, why do they find themselves falling prey to isolation maybe more often?

Is that kind of a good way to put it? Yeah. That's another way to put it. Yep. Okay.

So I think it I think the example you gave of networking and whatnot, I I think that was actually important because I feel like there are two pieces here. So there's the human nature of we are scared to talk to one another and connect with one another, right, especially if you are introverted. Some extroverts that I know, they will go into a room full of people they've never seen before and just shoot the breeze with everybody. I think that's a a bad expectation to set for listeners. Right?

Because that personality type is is relatively rare. I think most people, are a little bit self conscious and they question themselves and their ability to talk to people and they think, oh, what what'll happen if I go up to this person and I ask the wrong question or I look like a fool or I they don't wanna talk to me. Right? So there is that aspect of human nature that is just indelible. Right?

All of us deal with that, not only me and you, but also, let's say, kids who are in middle school right now, kids who are in high school. And one of the other difficulties, right, when you are young, not that every age and generation doesn't have its own challenges, but when you are young, like, you just don't know a lot. Right? And so kids are mean, and you think about bullies in in grade school and whatnot in the fact that, like, there are so many things that for myself, right, I I dealt with mental health issues throughout grade school. I would have never and I never spoke about them about those issues to anybody at the time.

And that is really just a product of, like, being a kid and being scared. Right? And so Mhmm. As you get older and you learn more information, maybe you say to yourself, hey. I have actually learned that, for example, you know, one out of five people in The US deals with a mental health condition every year.

You start to pile that compile that information and then say to yourself, hey, you know what? Maybe it's not so weird or different or Right. Obscure to deal with some of these things. And then with a conclusion like that on your side, maybe you're more willing to confront your anxiety or take that anxiety and say, you know what? I might be nervous right now, but I'm gonna go have a conversation with somebody or I'm going to talk about this difficult topic to somebody.

Right? You just open up more, you become a little bit more willing to discuss things as you get older, I think, especially as you gain more information. So there's the piece of being a kid, being a human, and it being difficult to open up to other people, you know, being scared that you might get rejected or whatever it may be. I think to answer the next part of the the I I said there was two parts. Right?

So the first part is just human nature in general. The second part is the fact that, like, if you look at the technology that is being given to kids these days, right, It's a new phenomenon in the sense that, like, when I went to middle school and high school, we had AOL Instant Messenger. Right? And we had Yeah. Nintendo sixty four.

It was a very different kind of technology. And I'm sure the seeds were being planted, but it was a different kind of technology than exists today. And if you look at the the technology that is that is now in kids' hands, it's iPhones, it's mobile apps, it's social media, it's online gaming, and those and and also, I mean, I hate to say it, but, you know, pornography. There are a lot of things out there that are, you know, dangerous for kids. Right?

And I'm not not trying to sound like the, the unhip, you know, old guy or whatever. Right? But you like, if if I go back to being in sixth grade and I'm like, somebody gave me a cell phone with Instagram on it and I played, you know, shooter games online with my friends and I, you know, had access to all these, illicit no. Maybe not illicit, but, like, questionable websites. Right?

It's it's sort of like giving, a potent substance to somebody who, like, has no experience with that yet. Right? Their brain has not yet developed. Their frontal lobe is far from, completion of its development. And so I think going back to Jonathan Hite's point of, you know, kids are their entire lives, right, their their childhood is becoming phone based or phone primary rather than play primary or connection primary.

That's a difficult thing. And then also you just think about the fact that, okay, so if you are in middle school and you get access to a phone and social media and all that, this stuff is engineered, right? I'm a software developer, I can tell you firsthand that we engineer mobile apps, and I'm sure other software, it's the same, you know, you could say the same thing. We engineer these programs to either be addictive or, at the very least, we engineer them so that way we can find what the the most engaging or interesting experience will be. And then we serve that up to to our users.

Right? And so you take that to its to its extreme and you say, okay, on a, you know, on a social media app, we're gonna send you information that gets your emotions going and makes you wanna share content and whatnot. And sure, like, these platforms have businesses to run, and I get that. But you put that technology in the hands of an 11 year old, and all of a sudden we're talking scary territory here. So I will stop there, but I think those are the two main things, right, the human nature in general and gen and then just the fact that we're giving very powerful technologies to young kids and I would argue that they're probably not ready for them and that's no slight on them, it's like I don't even know if if necessarily every adult is ready for this stuff, and it's it's powerful.

So I'll pause there. I think you said that perfectly. The technology piece is not a minor detail. But I I wanna back up and say something to everyone listening. We, as adults, constantly use the term social media.

But if you're a teenager growing up today, there's no such thing as social media. It's just media. And I say that because those of us who are 30 and above, we grew we grew up when social media was just budding. So to us, it was separate media. But to but to the teenager, they've only known social media is everything.

There is no other anything. Social media is the world. It is all of existence to a teenage mind who's growing up in today's society. And I'm saying that because I think most of us don't understand that as adult most of us adults rather don't understand that our thinking on that is very different than theirs. There is no social media.

Social media is a part of the existing world, period. They don't watch the local news. They don't even know who the no local news anchors are. They don't watch CNN unless they're watching it a clip of it on YouTube shorts or somebody's, you know, using it on TikTok or Instagram. They're there to them.

That is the world. What we used to consider television, what we used to consider go you know, the main source of getting our information about the world and our culture, that's not their source anymore. And it's around them twenty four seven. Information, information, information, but more than just information, infiltration. You know, here's here's our here's the stuff we want you to learn.

Here's how we want you to think. And this is what is they're constantly bombarded with as human beings across this Earth. We've always been bombarded with. Here's how we want you to think. I don't care what culture you're from.

What what country you're from. You know, what race you're from, blah blah blah. Every culture does that because that's part of human nature. But never in time before the past twenty years has it been the case where you're inundated with it literally twenty four seven. If you have any sort of electronic, you know, any sort of digital anything around you.

So I for and again, I'm mostly saying that to the adults listening. When you say social media, that's your term. That's not theirs. There is no social media to them. It's just media.

It's just, it's everything. Think about it. A two year old nowadays is growing up with a phone in their hand. I have literally watched two year olds scroll through social media, scroll through a phone better than a 30 year old. And I am not exaggerating.

I have physically seen that with my eyes. And I know it's not just as that, just that child. That's how we're growing up with. And I'm saying that because I really think it's extremely important to emphasize these facts to the adults listening. Because if they don't understand, I think many of them and and this is one of the reasons I started this podcast is there's a such a large disconnect between adults and our youth.

And, yes, they're growing up in a different world, but I think we we tend not to really fully recognize what a big freaking deal that is. And that plays into this conversation of why they're feeling so isolated because all they know is social media. And if they're not getting attention on that, oh, we're we're supposed to get attention from other humans around us. Believe it or not, that's actually foreign to a lot of them. The younger they are, the more foreign that is to them.

So having said all of that, Brian, what do you think is the solution? Now I'm talking about our youth. For those who are growing up in this era, this is all they know, and it's not their fault. This is all they know. It's our fault who are older than them because we shove this crap in their face.

So for those teenagers who are who maybe are listening to this and starting to recognize, maybe I am too isolated. What can they do from where they are? It's a good question, and I I will say I agree with everything that you just mentioned. It's a hard question to answer because there's a lot of different levels at which we could look at this. Right?

So first level being, what can an individual do? Next level being, maybe, what can a parent do? Next level being a school board or a district, and then next level being a state, a country, whatever. Right? I think starting at the lowest level, it's gonna it's gonna be kind of hard.

Right? Because as an 11 year old, and I'm making I'm just kinda pulling that number out of thin air. Mhmm. Could be 13, could be seven, whatever. The all consuming, all con all encompassing nature of social media as you so eloquently put a minute ago, that tends to blind you from other things that are going on in your world.

Right? So if if all you know is Snapchat and Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and I don't even know some of the apps that kids are on these days. If that is your life, then it might, you know, you kind of only know what you know and almost be people sometimes refer to, like, Plato's allegory of the cave. Right? And it's like, I guess I won't get into it all the way, but if people wanna look that up online, it's basically the notion of, like, what your reality looks like may not always be as it appears.

Right? And so for kids, their reality may be that social media is reality. It is the world, it is everything. The difficulty with that is that if all they're doing is, you know, air I'm gonna say air quotes, connecting with friends online, posting things online, watching videos, they might just be watching videos and consuming content of stuff that they enjoy or they care about, or maybe it scares them, but it, you know, grips them in some way. Mhmm.

It might be hard for them to break out of that bubble, right, to break out of that cave and say, oh, I now have awareness that social media is not everything, and I need to get off social media once in a while. So it's hard to answer this question specifically because every situation will be different, and it's gonna take some, you know, penetration of that reality either from a parent or from maybe we get lucky and a kid watches a video that wakes them up a little bit or whatever. Right? But at some point, there has to be some awareness to say, like, to have that that child or kid say, look, the way that I'm living is is maybe harmful. Right?

I maybe I should not be on these apps all the time. And so I think the first thing would be, right, it would the first recommendation I would give is, like, for somebody who is let's say they're listening to this podcast and that is sort of the the penetration of the reality, right, of somebody saying, hey, I have been woken up, so to speak, to this new reality and and the dangers of social media, then my recommendation to somebody who might be listening would be to say, hey, you might be on your device all day, outside of school, or maybe even in school a little bit. Give yourself one hour, two hour, three hours Yes. Every day to do something that has nothing to do with technology. Maybe that's play with your siblings, maybe that's, you know, go to your neighbor's house and, like, if you know that a classmate lives there, knock on the door and be like, hey, do you wanna ride bikes?

Do you want to, you know, shoot hoops in the driveway? Whatever it may be. Going back to that point I made at the beginning of the conversation of, like, the importance of play, the importance of developing an ability to read people's body language and understand, you know, the nuances of conversation, that only comes through real in person, real world conversations and relationships. And so we need kids who are listening, to reconnect to the real world, right, and, find ways to cultivate real relationships in the real world. The next levels that I would say would be, like, if parents are listening, right, there are a few things that you could do.

You could maybe put on so there is on some of the mobile devices, right, there are parental controls. So you can I I don't use them because I don't have kids, but you can you can specify what kids can and can't do on the device and maybe set, you know, timers and limits and stuff like that? Consider maybe using those controls so that way, hey. If your kid wants to go online and you're okay with it and all his friends are online and he feels like if he won't go if he doesn't go online, he'll be bullied, then then maybe there's an argument for that. But make sure that it doesn't become all consuming where, you know, you send him to his room and you think he's going to bed and he's on his iPad for like four hours.

Right. And doing things that, yeah, that's true. You wouldn't want him to do so. Parental controls and then also like get involved right at the school board level where, you know, talk to your teachers, see what's happening in the classroom, and try to instill, you know, an an understanding with some of the administrators that, like, there's a problem here and we need to figure this out. I think about it because I'm like, I don't have kids.

I would like to have kids at some point in my life, but I I am a little bit nervous of, like, how does this all shake out and what would I do as a parent? I don't know. Right? Because the argument is alright. You may say, my kid is not gonna get a cell phone until 16.

Right now that sounds like a decent idea because you're like, well, then they will not be subjected to all these scary forces online and they will build relationships and know what the real world is like. However, in practice, when you get down to it, things are not always that simple, right? Maybe the kid comes home at 13 or 11 and says, mom, dad, everybody picks on me because everybody else is online and I'm not online. And they started a group chat called, like, everybody in the classroom except for Brian, and they're all making fun of Brian in in the group chat. Right?

So there's a lot of nuances here and there's a lot of difficulty. What I would say is, like, it's a balance of, like, implementing some strategies on your own, but then also thinking about the culture and kind of reading that. Right? Where, like, you don't if the goal like, the goal is to have healthy, happy kids, whether they're your own or just the generation in general. And so if we like, that if that is the goal, then we really need to make sure that we are kinda getting a lay of the land and not just implementing certain things.

For example, to say, like, hey. My kid's not gonna get a cell phone till sixteen eighteen. That could have unintended unintended negative consequences. So we gotta think about all those possible ramifications and then just make the best decisions we can knowing that it's it's a really difficult subject. I wanna add to that.

I think that, to summarize a lot of what you said would be the keyword of balance, which is something I'm always talking about. And that is that you don't you wanna make sure that you're giving them freedom, but you don't wanna give them so much freedom that they're falling over a cliff with their phone in their hand. And you don't wanna be so strict that they just end up going crazy anyway, because that's what happens when we're too strict with our kids. They've always find ways around it because where there's a will, there's a way. And you can restrict whatever you want on their phone, but that's okay.

They're gonna borrow Kendra's phone, and she'll let her do it. You know? There's just ways around it. They'll they'll there's just so so so so many ways around it. So I think the key thing is, is, to the teenagers listening.

You it's you were talking about and you were the one that has to decide your future. Because no matter what we do, you're the one who's got to live it, not us. And if you really wanna be better than your peers, one up from your peers, and I said it just like that. If you wanna be one up from your peers, then you are the one that's gonna have to make the decision right now that you want to be better connected to humanity than they are. And so what that looks like is you have to make a make a decision that, you know what?

Tuesday from three to four. I'm turning my phone off and I'm taking my little brother to the park. We're going to play ball or Saturdays from six to seven. I'm going to play Uno with my little sister and everything gets turned off. So the problem isn't that you don't take your little brother to the park or play Uno with your sister.

The problem is that you don't turn your phone off and it rules you while you're doing everything else. So if you really as a youth want to make that decision that you want to be one up from the rest of your peers where you actually have human connection, which also means you're likely to get further than them in certain areas, especially professionally. You have to make that decision that, you know what? I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna just take a break for a little bit. I will tell you, I see people do this all the time.

Adults adults do this, but this is not an age thing. So you could do the same thing as a teenager and get the exact same results. It it it really doesn't matter. So I've seen adults who are like, you know what? I'm staying off social media for a day, for three days, whatever their time frame is.

100% of the time, they come back and say, oh my god. I feel refreshed. It's like taking a good shower. You know, you you get cleansed from all the crap that's on all around you at all time. There's a lot of great things on on media.

There really is, but there's just as much garbage. There's just as many things making you feel insecure. There's just as many things making you feel unaccomplished, making you feel less than, etcetera, etcetera. So if you're a teenager, listen, I really want to emphasize it really at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what of, what us adults do, what we try to do. It's up to you.

If you really want to be better than your peers, you want to be one up. And I'm I'm wording it like that because I know that's that's the wording that'll reach you. Then you've got to make a change and do something different than everybody else is doing. Stop falling in line and just be another piece of cattle like everybody else because you're gonna end up a robot like them too. If you wanna be one up, hey.

Start making differences and changes now. Doesn't matter what everybody else does or doesn't accept or doesn't doesn't like it. I promise you they'll start to respect you for it after a while because they don't have the guts to do it. And that ends my speech there. Now I just had I just had to say that.

Now, Brian, I wanna start wrapping this up, and I want I want the audience to understand a little bit more about you and what you do, because I think you're very good at, you know, the things that you focus on. Brian focuses on a lot of a lot of other subjects. We, wanted to talk about isolation today, but if you could tell the audience a little bit more about what you do and how they could find you. For sure. So I am a mental health advocate, an author, a blogger, all those good things.

Right? My work focuses on anxiety and depression. So I have a book on anxiety, a book on depression, talking about managing both diseases or conditions, possibly overcoming them. And one of the reasons why I was so intrigued by this conversation topic of isolation is that depression and isolation can go hand in hand. And so I've done some research and some writing, into both of those topics, and it's something that's important and near and dear to my heart.

If folks want to get in touch with me or find some of my work, you can go to getoutofyourhead.com. So there's no dashes, no spaces in that, it's all kind of one word, getoutofyourhead.com. The place where I'm active most on social media or media would be Instagram at the moment. So the account there for the, the writing is get out of your head as the as the the handle, if you will, all all one word as well, no dashes, no spaces there. You know, it's it's always great even though it's great to have these conversations even though the topics are scary and unsettling and have, you know, real world and possibly large ramifications, but, you know, I have these conversations with folks like yourself and I like talking about this stuff because mental health is really important to me.

It is something that I have struggled with in my life. And after making some progress with my own mental health, I felt like I was so passionate about the topic that I wanted to share what I had learned with others. And so that's why I continue to have conversations like this because I know there's a lot of people out there that struggle with this stuff. And I want to just put the message out there that it is it's okay to struggle and to be honest, it's pretty normal, pretty natural. It's a it's a part of, you know, the human condition.

And so Mhmm. I'm just getting out there, trying to spread the word in any which way I can, and, yeah, hope to hear from some folks that are listening. Well, Brian, thank you much thank you very much for coming on. And and to the audience listening, I hope that you can hear his sincerity. And I will tell you just from the off air conversations that we have.

This man is very sincere. It's one of the reasons I had him on. I don't like people that can talk about concepts, but that's all they can do is talk about a concept, and don't come a place from a place of actually really understanding it, and and you do. So, if you wanna talk to somebody who's genuinely sincere about helping other people and helping you, Brian's one of those. And I and, unfortunately, I think that they're more rare than they should be, but, the sincerity is something that I really appreciate about you.

And thank you once again for coming on and having this conversation. And thanks for having me, Fatima. It was a pleasure. And now for a mind shifting moment. I'm looking to talk to a particular person out there today.

Are you feeling lonely? Did it ever occur to you that maybe one of the reasons you're feeling lonely is because you keep yourself too isolated? Sometimes we can be have all these people around us, yet we feel so alone. And we're not physically alone, but we are alone because we have chosen to mentally isolate ourselves. Is that you?

Do you feel totally alone amongst all these humans? I want you to know you don't have to be. What you need to do is find the right person or people to actually begin to open up to and allow somebody in so that you don't have to feel so alone anymore. That loneliness is the foundation for depression. It is the gateway to so many, many, many other things.

I just want you to think about that. Thank you for listening to mind shift power podcast. Please like, and subscribe to my YouTube channel at the mind shifter. If you have any comments, topic suggestions, or would like to be a guest on the show, please visit FatimaBay.com/podcast. Remember, there's power in shifting your thinking.

Tune in for next week.