Ep. 36: A Candid Conversation on Mental Health and Emotional Well-Being today

In this episode, we engage in a heartfelt and important discussion about mental health, suicide, and the impact of grief. Sami shares her personal story of losing her brother to suicide at a young age and reflects on how that experience has shaped her perspective as both an individual and a parent.

Trigger Warning: In this episode, we engage in a candid conversation about suicide and mental health. We acknowledge that these topics can be triggering for some individuals. If you or someone you know is struggling, please seek help from a mental health professional or reach out to a crisis hotline.

Key Topics Discussed:
✔️ The importance of addressing mental health and suicide openly.
✔️ Understanding the emotional struggles and complexities faced by individuals dealing with loss.
✔️ The role of family and community support during times of crisis.
✔️ Strategies for fostering open communication about feelings and struggles among youth.
✔️ Insights into how labels and diagnoses affect perceptions and treatment.

Takeaways:
✔️ Mental health is a critical topic that deserves attention and discussion.
✔️ Everyone has their own story and unique challenges; empathy and understanding are key.
✔️ Encouraging individuals to seek help and communicate their feelings is essential.
✔️ The impact of grief and mental health extends beyond individuals to families and communities.

Resources:
✔️ National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
✔️ Mental Health America
✔️ NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness

Join the Conversation: We invite our listeners to share their thoughts, experiences, and insights on this important topic. Remember, you are not alone, and there are people who care and want to help.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Misfit Behaviorist podcast for more insightful discussions on behavior support and mental health.

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Transcript

Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Misfit Behaviorist Podcast Part 2. Join your hosts, Audra Jensen and Sami Brown, here to bring you fun and functional advice for behavior support professionals and special education teachers. Let's get started. 

Audra: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Misfit Behaviorist podcast. Very excited to be here.

A couple of weeks ago I had a fun little bonus episode where my daughter came on and talked about being a sibling of an autism kiddo And I really enjoyed that and so after last week we went back to the FBA stuff. And today I thought we would talk a little bit with Sami herself, because she has a really interesting life story.

And I think it would be fun to share and kind of hear her perspective on some stuff, some heavy stuff. So if you're ready for a little bit of a heavy discussion, I think it's really, really important that we have these discussions today in particular. Today's world and kind of the mental health of our students and our children and what it's at today.

And so I thought maybe [00:01:00] i'd open it up for Sami to kind of First just tell us the story And you'll see what it is And then I have some kind of questions that we might discuss as we talk about what it means for us today 

Sami: I gotta be really honest, I hope you put a trigger warning on this, because 

Audra: Ooh, yes, trigger warning!

Sami: It's a little heavy to talk about and, you know, as we learn through life, everyone has a story, and Even though my story is a different story, everyone has overcome some specific challenge in their lifetime. And so for me, one of the biggest and earliest challenges that I faced I was 16 years old but my older brother committed suicide.

Wow, it's so heavy even just saying it. But my brother was 19 years old when he passed that's the hardest thing about suicide, just in transparency, is it leaves more questions than it does answers.

I don't believe that my brother intended to take his own life. I believe that he had some [00:02:00] emotional regulation issues. And I think when he was, you know, had a high, he was high, and when he was low, he was low.

And I think in those low periods, as we've learned in, you know, in teaching and in our field people aren't using their rational, logical mind. They're using that lizard brain, so to speak. And so, I think that he set up a scenario That was an intricate call for help. 

 I will just say that it was a very traumatic thing for 16 for me, who I believe wasn't mature enough to really understand the gravity, so to speak of the situation. And he didn't die right away either. He was in the hospital for five days and it was a really difficult road because speaking from the hospital piece, you know, early on, I was really like enraged and angry.

Sami: And I came from this angry place of, I was mad [00:03:00] at everybody. You know, he obviously was hurting, and nobody saw it, and no one cared enough. And then, as the days while he was in the hospital progressed, more people from the high school started showing up to sit in the lobby to show their sense of support.

And I was still angry. You know, if you had showed this support when he was here, he'd still be here. And I think that's just a natural evolution, so to speak, of, you know, grieving and understanding a situation. If you want to say that there's a light in a story, he did save seven people's lives. 

I think that Our world is significantly different now than it was in 1996 and, you know, we can talk about some of those, changes and how it's, you know, impacted our field and, situations like I'm sharing and, and I'm not an anomaly.

There are many people that know of someone or have lost a loved one. And unfortunately my opinion, just from going through the experience myself, I see a lot more of this on our, on the horizon for, [00:04:00] for us as a society. 

Audra: How do you think that his death shaped who you are today, both kind of personally and professionally in your life now?

Sami: I think that all of us as human beings, are impacted by our life experiences and it shapes and changes who we are and we reflect on those experiences sometimes it changes us for the good where we want to strive for more in life and we want to be kind to all people. I think that my strength is the gift that my brother gave me. 

But it kind of might be like when I asked a similar question to Junior a couple weeks ago. She was like, well, I didn't know anything different in life. So, I don't know how having an autistic brother Is different because I didn't know anything else. That was just always how it was. And so for you, you, you can't really tell if you today would be different. I'm sure you are, but there's no way to say in what way, other than you just sort of take your experiences in life and you move forward with them, whatever they [00:05:00] are good, bad, ugly, all of them. You just take them and you move forward.

I think that one thing that, you know, really sticks out in my mind is how lonely navigating these challenges at 16 was for me, and I think that if I could go back and speak really loud to anyone that was in my circles back then, and anyone that's listening now that maybe is, you know, knows of a situation that's occurring around them, is people don't know what to say.

People don't know what to do in circumstances like this, and what happens is they don't do really anything. I was a sophomore. That's a hard, hard situation to go through at my age, but people in high school, I mean, they were looking, they were staring at me. They were whispering. They were whispering behind my back, they were talking about me, they were talking about my family and it didn't feel, and I, again, it's my own perspective, it didn't [00:06:00] feel like it was coming from a good, kind, we care about her place, and that I think is the biggest thing that impacted me as an individual, is feeling like no one cared and what I would have liked is someone to have come up and just said I don't know what you're going through and I can't begin to understand it But I want you to know that I'm here and if you want to sit and talk if you want to sit and not talk If you need something if you want to cry if you just want to get out of your house if you want to talk I'm not gonna If you just need someone to walk this path with you for a period of time, I'm here. I'll do it for you. 

Audra: That's interesting, because you remember one of the things that Junior said in her chat was we had moved into a place and we had given Isaak a space because he had all this therapy and it really impacted her and her little self and she said, I felt like you didn't care about me. And I'm like, I had no idea she even felt that way. I never [00:07:00] broached any sort of conversation about this thing that I didn't think was a thing. I didn't even understand her perspective because there was just this sort of assumption that things were fine. And I think that we as a society need to be better about communicating that when things aren't fine, even from the littlest kids that we work with, teach them to say, hey, I am mad. I am not feeling good. I'm dysregulated. You don't have to use that word with them, but they need to learn how to verbalize this stuff so that the people, the support system around them can support in whatever way. And then that support system can say exactly like you're saying, be able to say I may not know everything, but I'm here to be with you and that's really the most important thing.

I think if in her tiny little brain, if she had just said, Hey, this, this makes me feel bad. We would have gone out of our way to support her, to help her understand what was happening and to bring her into that discussion where I didn't even think about it. And that's a great regret of mine now. Cause I had no idea.[00:08:00] 

Sami: Well, and you think about like, even our society and, you know, we've got, the plethora of social media, you know, accounts that we can have access to, and if you really just strip it all away, all anyone wants is to be heard and to be cared for. That's why they're sharing things with their life, because they want people to comment, they want people to see, they want a little bit of attention and, and, and love and caring, and they want to feel that they're important to anyone and so they've got a platform now on social media to be able to present themselves so to speak I mean we can get into... 

Audra: a little bit too much of that, but yes 

Sami: And if people are fully transparent, it isn't Fakebook, it's Facebook. It's supposed to be, this is who we are as an individual. But people do the cliff noted, highlighted, the sunshine and rainbows stuff is what they're posting. 

But I think that we all just want to feel important and it doesn't take a lot and it didn't have to be that long drawn out explanation. It could just be like a, Hey, I'm sorry for what you're going through right now. And I'm here for you if you want to talk [00:09:00] and mean it when you say it. 

Audra: Well, shifting a little bit, you've mentioned before. I don't know how much you're comfortable with talking about, but you've mentioned some similarities you've seen with your brother and some symptoms of your son and his difficulties as well. So are you willing to talk about that and kind of the emotions that that brings up to you?

Sami: It comes from a couple different angles. One i'm a parent now I wasn't a parent then and I didn't have a parent hat on to understand what it felt like for my mom and dad to be navigating that challenge and as you can imagine there's a lot of blame the blame game and blaming themselves and blaming each other for How they, you know, raised him and and did they miss something and did they not do this and we naturally as humans are trying to find How did we get to where we are?

And so now that I am a parent, I try to use that experience and that reflection to make sure that I'm not missing something. I experienced at firsthand. It impacted my [00:10:00] family. It changed my family. And so I think in some ways it's, I parent a little bit from fear. I think that you know, you look at people as they grow and change and develop, and I look at my own son or even my daughter, and I want to make sure that their emotional needs come first.

And so I think that, you know, when I see, I'm, I'm the parent that's like, they need a mental health day, they're going to take it. It is more important to me as a parent and as a human that they are in a good place every day that they set forward.

I mean, we're at the verge now of people really trying to embrace that it's okay to talk about your struggles but we've used a lot of, you know, joking in the past of like, oh, I don't need a therapist. Like, and you know what? You need someone to talk to, don't, yes, it's a therapist, that's their title, but everyone needs somebody to talk to, whether it be a friend or a licensed professional, so to speak, and so I feel like we're trying to strip away the negative [00:11:00] connotation that comes with mental health and, you know, I think that even kids today they want to blend in with their peers, and so they hide their struggles, and it's really up to those that are around them, and hopefully the adults around them, to kind of have a keen, observing eye, to make sure that they're at a ready state for themselves, every day.

We talk a lot about, you know, the DSM and diagnostic codes and criteria and what your labels so to speak are, but all of that aside emotional regulation and how someone can manage the highs and lows that is life, regardless of what label you have, there are going to be highs and there are going to be lows. That's just. I guess one of the exciting things that we get, you know, when we're on this, 

Audra: on this earth. 

Sami: Exactly. With my kids specifically, it's just making sure that I'm checking in with them and being aware of what seems kind of within a typical range [00:12:00] and what is kind of looking a little bit more startling and might need a little bit of a closer lens.

Audra: And your kids are about the age that I remember very clearly, that shift from, I'm doing everything for you, I'm advocating for everything, to now, 14, 15, 16, he now has to start to take ownership of that stuff, and he has to advocate for himself, and that's a really hard transition and bridge to make as a parent to be able to step back and go, okay, he is struggling, but I can't sweep in and fix the situation. It wouldn't be good for him. It wouldn't be good for me as a parent and it wouldn't be good for the people that are supporting him. It's a slow transition of kind of stepping back and letting him figure it out and watching that mental health and seeing what skill sets he has. It's really important for him to learn that because then he goes off and he has to do that in another state where I can't be there. And so it can't be, he grows up and he graduates at 18 and he goes off and Up until that point, I've done everything and now I don't do anything. It has to be this sort of [00:13:00] slow transition from the time that they're able to, to start to take over those reins for themselves in life. 

Sami: I'm at that section, at least with my son who is 15, where I've lost my cool. Mom is no longer cool. Now I would like to beg to differ. I'm kind of, you know, kind of a badass, but he is in this state right now where mom, that lawn mowing, helicoptering, snow shoveling the way ahead of him, he doesn't want that. He wants to be able to stand on his own, and I think that that's the hardest part, even as educators and parents and people, is What is doing too much?

And, you know, we talk a lot about prompt dependency and people that kind of fall into that, waiting for people to do it for them cause they've always done it versus the, you know, it's time that you learn a little bit of this on your own and us, especially in education, I see it with teachers is taking that restraint and that pause when you want to go in and you want to fix and show and do, but [00:14:00] you got to stumble a little you know calves that are born, their legs wobble a bit before they can stand up straight. And so the wobble, we gotta get comfortable with that to a degree. 

Audra: When Isaak finally did move out and was kind of on his own, there were some of, there were some of that wobbling, you know, there was some of that calling and text, mostly texting, no calling, texting for support that I knew he could do, but he hadn't really had an opportunity to do and things that he didn't know he was capable of doing and it took time. And so now when I don't hear from him very often, it's very minimal. I'm like, he's successful now. He's figured these things out. So sometimes now I'll text him. Hey, how's it been going? He's like, I kind of had a rough week or something. Like I had no idea because he wasn't asking me to fix it for him. So those were great benefits. While he had a crappy week, I'm like, yeah, but he figured it out and now he's doing it on his own. 

Sami: What you just said, I think is really the the highlight is developmentally we get to a stage where they don't want other people to do it for them anymore. They [00:15:00] want to do it on their own and that means they're also going to struggle in silence.

Audra: That's kind of and that's kind of the last thing I want to ask you really is, you know How do you balance that? Your own emotions, your life experience, what happened with your brother, now having a parenting a child with unique needs as well, how do you balance that to move forward so that he can be the most successful that he can be?

Sami: As a parent, we're all going to make mistakes. There's not a manual that comes along with how we do the things that we're doing, and if there is, I didn't check it out, 

Audra: I think it was out at the time. 

Sami: It was. Okay. It's one of those, like, what to expect when you're expecting a teenager, 

Audra: You open it up. It says give up. 

Sami: Yeah. Don't read the book. Just close it. 

Audra: There is no book. 

Sami: There is no book. Throw away the book. We went to the advocacy level of you know, pursuing, you know, doctor support and medical evaluation intervention. And my husband and I had said, well, we don't want a label on him. And the doctor said something that was really wise and she said to me, [00:16:00] she said, you know, if you don't go through this process of getting him the label, to get him the supports that he needs, then other people are going to give him a label and it's not going to be so kind.

Audra: That's a really good. 

Sami: And it was in that moment that we said, okay, regardless of the labels, he gets to choose as an individual, especially with mom kind of backing off, who gets to know the private information that he chooses to share it with.

And so I think that I need to remind myself that he is an individual and he is very different than my brother or my past experience. He is not defined by any diagnosis, any label, any emotional state at one moment that he's in and that life is gonna ebb and flow for him as it does everyone else. But I have to let him learn to survive those wobbles so that he at one point can stand on his own. 

We're all going through hard things and, and I think that it's really important that we, you know, take a moment for [00:17:00] ourselves and always make sure that we're in check, so that we can put our best forward for those that we serve. 

Audra: Well, thank you so much for being willing to share and be vulnerable. I know that that can be challenging. So, but there's, I think the more we talk about it openly, the better it is for everybody. And I think just like you said, when we talk about labels and stuff, it's just a dumb word, you know, whether you're using it or not using it, it's just something that everybody has labels, you know, and so whether you're using them or not using them, I like the idea of, you know, he now is at the age and my kids at the age where they can choose what label they want to use for whatever purpose they need. And so I think that's the way we should go forward and just be open about it. We will see everybody again next week as we go back to talking about data collection, which is absolutely our favorite thing to talk about, let's talk about data.

So we will see you then. 

Outro: Thanks for listening to The Misfit Behaviorists, and be sure to tune in next week for more tips and tricks. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.