Mental Health Final Part

Rocky continues her hot topic of mental health with special guest Jennifer Sims.  The conversation continues about how mental health has created a level of concern for everyone, and the different careers Jennifer has completed.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome to a new episode of Rocky Unfiltered. Today we have a special guest who has been a very dear friend of mine. Her name is uh Jennifer Sims, and she comes with a lot of career expertise in mental health. And I feel like this is a huge topic for everyone. It's very hot, and there's a lot of challenges that we face. And I thought it would be a great idea for her to come in and have a discussion with me about some of the challenges that have been back in the day faced, and then now where we are with mental health now. So hi Jen, thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Hi, I'm Jen. I am, I guess yes, I've known Rocky for her 20 plus years. She's probably one of the best friends I've ever had and um stuck with me through the good and bad and ugly and all that. That's great for my mental health because I need you, everybody needs that one consistent person that just shows up for you. So I am an adult, very active, very fun, loving. I love life, I like to do things. I'm energetic and maybe a big kid at heart.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Yes, she is definitely a big kid at heart, which keeps people motivated and going. So, Jen, um, thank you for being here. Um, I this is a new aspect of um this podcast, so I'm really happy to have somebody come on. And so not everybody just has to hear my stupid ass voice, but it's very raw, it's very unfiltered. Jen is very good about using, you know, cuss words just like Rocky is. Um, but anyways, so I wanted to ask Jen um what she thought in general about what mental health means.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

What mental health means. That's a tough question. Um, for a long time, I didn't really think much about my mental health or what because I just was I'm like a I guess what you call an energizer bunny. I just go. And I didn't realize how things affect me in life and how important it was until having kids and then also having time in my life realizing that my mental health was not good. And so what it means to me is is having a balance of myself, you know, balancing my my my my my thoughts, my my feelings and everything all together and and and being able to, you know, function in your world that you live in, and um and you have to find that for yourself, you know.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

So when did you decide that self-care was something that was super important and actually a necessity in your life? And how did you discover that?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

I've learned self-care is I didn't I've never been a self-care person. I didn't know what that meant. I care for other people, so I just never took care of myself until the last couple of years. I realized how important it was to for my mental health. Because like I said, most of the time I just I was told I grew up in a time that mental health wasn't was taboo. Yeah. You didn't talk about it, you didn't have it, you weren't depressed, you're just you just need to We're Gen Xers, by the way. You need to suck it up and deal with it and move on. So I never was treated with anything until my adult years, and when I realized that I was really struggling.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

How did you know you were struggling? What did that look like for you? Was it something specific, or do you think that there was like a multitude of things that kind of just compiled all in one?

SPEAKER_00 3:27

So until my daughter started struggling with hers, I made aware how important I needed to take care of mine to be able to be able to take care of other people too. But but importance was how important was mine. Um, I guess about six years ago, I really hit rock bottom.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

So like what did that look like for you? Like, did you feel it in your body? Did you feel it mentally, or was there a combination? And the reason why I asked is because I just dropped my latest episode and it talks about the physiological and the psychological components of how we hold shit in our body, but we don't actually realize it until like we're out of steam. Our gas tank is empty, and you know, we don't ever have time, like I mentioned in my episode. Go to the doctor, we have to do this for ourselves, you know. So, what did that feel like to you?

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Physically, that it affected everything in my body. I literally could felt like I couldn't do anything. And this was coming for somebody who you say, you want to go do something, I say, Let's go. Uh I literally didn't want to go do anything, I didn't have the desire to do anything. But also, I went into the hot the doctor because I thought I was having a heart attack in this time period, and I was convinced I was having a heart attack. I had all the symptoms that women would have for a heart attack. And then when I got in there, they're doing all the tests, they said, No, your chest plate is inflamed, which is uncom was common for women when they hold in their stress and hold in their feelings that you it it causes that that that plate to inflame, which looks like a heart attack. And that's she said, and she said, You literally have stressed yourself so much that that that you allowed that to inflame and make you feel like you're having a heart attack, which she goes, I'm glad it does because it gets you in here to go, I need to take care of myself.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Okay, so you talked about the doctor talking about how your um what'd you call it? Oh, your sternum. Yeah, that it was very tight and that it mimics essentially a heart attack. Did that lead into anything else that you didn't know was going on inside of your body, like physically, or was it just a mental? In other words, did you end up moving forward with some sort of mental health evaluation or psychoval that kind of puts you in a upscale position to, you know, determine that there's other things that are that were working hand in hand?

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Um, yes. We so from that time, the doctor, she basically encouraged me to um seek out a mental health evaluation for just as just to see. She said, I can't tell you. I'm not I'm not licensed to tell you you're you know, but it doesn't never hurt. So of course I went, I I was reluctant because I grew, like I said, my mother, I grew up, we just we just didn't it, you know, I was ADHD all my life. I never was even diagnosed with it. I know it was, I could talk the I'm off the chain all the time. I was moved everywhere in my room. You possibly could move me, and I still talked. I told the teacher one time, you can move me beside you. I'm gonna talk to you two. Um, so basically when I went into this to get the evaluation, I was reluctant because I I don't know, I still I didn't know what to think. So when I got in there after doing it, the doctor sent me down and said, Um, you've probably suffered depression all your life, and you probably have suffered from ADHD, probably more ADD now than you are ADHD, but you still have the hyperactivity. Um, and have you ever been why have you never been diagnosed? And I said, 'Cause my mother said, just go run it out. And I would go run it out. And they kept me involved in sports and stuff, which which did help. But as you're getting your teen years is when it was really hard to struggle with it. But I just I just dealt with it. So when she told me, he told me that, he said, You probably should you need to be on meds, you probably be on, you know, maybe you'll be on it for a while, maybe you'll be on it all your life. You don't you don't even know. And uh at first he asked me how I felt about it, and I said, Can I think about it? He said, Sure. So about a week later, I'll end up back in there and I said, Okay, I'll do it. And from doing that, honestly, I tell people meds are not a be-all end-all, but they do help you.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

So when you ask the doctor to think about it, what exactly were you thinking? Like the pros and the cons. What exactly changed your mind to start taking the medication?

SPEAKER_00 7:37

And when I started taking them, I realized, wow. And I've I have just like everybody else, go, oh, I'm feeling good, I'll stop taking them, and then go, oh god, I need to take them again. Because it just gives me that clarity I need when I'm feeling like you know, like the winter months are really hard. Um, because I really thrive in the summer um because of the amount of the sun we get and melatonin and stuff from that. But um, you know, and so they put me on those meds. And I've gone up and down in different ranges, just depends on the time of my life. But but I have been not I'm more receptive of walking in the office and saying, hey, I'm not doing right, let's look into it than I ever was before because I realized the balance that helped me do, you know, it helps me maintain my life and and and and still be me. And a lot of people think it, you know, it takes away from no, I feel like it, you know, we're all have chemical imbalances and that something happens in our body. And but you know, like I said, it was hard because I grew up at that time that it like I said, it's taboo to be depressed or be anything else, you know. And so I just try to overcome by doing just keep doing what I do. But eventually my body said, enough's enough.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

So, what advice do you think that you would give others about even possibly being apprehensive about taking medication or the right medications, how you can combine that with maybe possibly the counseling you were talking about? What kind of advice would you give others if they are questioning it?

SPEAKER_00 9:02

But I think it helps me help other people because I have been through that not, you know, not being, you know, not being diagnosed and not knowing what's going on and knowing just feeling like I was sometimes crazy. And there's and you know, and it also helped me realize there's no magical light switch to depression or any kind of mental health. It's it's maintaining and and doing things, whether it's self-care, you're you're going to a psychiatrist, going to counselor. I that's something I also do too, uh have hard time with because we're I work in the mental health field. So I feel like when I go to counselor, gosh, I'm but I'm here, I'm helping people every day. Why do I get, you know, how how how can I go to a counselor? But my counselor's realized that you you have to have a counselor to be a counselor sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Yes, definitely. Well, I have a quick question about that because I've been very open about my anxiety and how and when it started. As a child, I was never fearful of anything. But in one of my episodes, I talk about when my father had his quadruple bypass. For whatever reason, it it ignited the anxiety. And I do take medication and I talk, I definitely talk openly about it. I think it's important. Now, you're gonna have people who are gonna come at me and debate me and fuck that shit. Let's go, because there is anxiety. I also understand the emotional side of it, but I also understand the scientific side of it. So, in order for me to be able to do what I need to do with my anxiety, like Jen mentioned, taking medication, my anxiety has changed since it ignited 15 years ago to where I am now. And it isn't, if she's right, there it's not an all-for-one, one for all. We're both in the mental health, which I'll get into in a few minutes, because I really would like for us to talk about the typical job that we do now. So, with all of that, thank you for sharing all of that. That's you know, being vulnerable. And by the way, we're both Tauruses. So being vulnerable is not something we feel super comfortable about, but here we are. And so I kind of want to lead into the next part, which is now that you know as a child that it wasn't something that you could label. It was more of if you know you cry about something, I'm gonna, you know, stop crying, I'm gonna give you something to cry about, go run it off, go do this, go do that. There was no stopping life to be able to figure out what the complications were. It was just keep going. Now that you're an adult and you have been diagnosed with certain things, how does that play into you having your own child? Seeing some of the things that were you actually experienced and your mom and or your parents regardless, you just didn't never have time to stop. How does that relate to you being a mom now, being diagnosed as an adult and caring for yourself differently, now having a child that you see some different things going on? How do you do that?

SPEAKER_00 11:46

I just think that made me more open because I'm not I don't see it as a taboo. I don't see it as a something that I just see there's a our body needs something that we don't have, and and sometimes we need to do certain things to to help your body balance. So as for me as an adult parent with a child, I don't I'm open to it. I'm open to, you know, you know, looking at seeing a psychiatrist, you know, looking at med options, changing up med options, being willing to look at different ways to do your mental health. Like for me, even um, I don't know if many of you heard uh brain mapping, but uh uh I'm very, very, very much if I'd really like to get her my daughter back into it. It was one of the things I I saw it's a it's out of the box for right now for for um medically, and nobody wants to jump on board and think because you know, you know, everybody does feel that medicine, there's there's a medicine out there.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

I have used that, by the way. Didn't mean to interrupt you, but uh when I have because you did that with your daughter, I have brought that up to some of the in the job that we do now. Um, but I have brought that up to a few of our clients that have called in as a suggestion, being, you know, something a little bit more in depth because nothing else is working. Sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

But I just brain mapping that that's the thing, because it's because I think doctors, I think that there's always a medicine, there's always a this that they can fix it. Um honestly, we that was the worst thing when we went off of it because when she was on it, and she even if she was on it just a one month, once a month, she'd go in. She went from a bunch of medicines to no medicine on break because it it it is just basically training your brain to open you newer pathways. And and but but but science is not caught up with it, and so doctors are you know not on board with it. So it's not you know a lot of insurance up, you know, you don't pay. So it's it's a it's a difficult treatment to get, but it's an amazing thing to see it happen and and see it work. So I because of of what I went through, I've I'm open to see not just the typical medical stuff that's out there. We say that there are out of the box stuff that's out there that's working, like the brain mapping that's not yet been caught on by the medical field. And I, you know, and that's sad because there are many, you know, and so and I'm not I I actually in my job too, like Rocky said, is not afraid to tell other people about that too, because there are other options, you know, that you can be you can be medicine. Medicine, what's it there's a word term for it? I don't can't think of where it really doesn't even work for some people. You can try it out.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Your body's not absorbing the right medication and just kind of add on to what Jen was saying. The other spectrum to that is yes, there's brain mapping, which it's not all about just paying the pharmaceuticals fucking Fiji vacations, because that's exactly what we're doing by you know, throwing medication down someone's throat and calling it a day. It's more about the beginning stages of how the developmental issues occurred. And so another part is which insurance I don't think covers it. Somebody will probably ping me on this one, but and that's fine if you do because I need to be corrected or keep me honest. But you can take a blood test that tells you that the different types of medications, class, you know, class one, two, three, you know, schedules, all the different types of gene site tests is what it's called. Oh, gene site test, yes. So you can take that to kind of determine if there's a specific, say, SSRI, long-term versus short term. It just depends on, like for me, I take a short term. So it doesn't stay in my system, but I have a hard time getting off of it because of the withdrawals. Long term is not something that you can just stop because then you actually have to detox from something to that extent, which is a whole nother episode in its own. But just to kind of clarify a little bit about the outside of what mental health is missing, other than just your standard doctor's appointments, psychiatry appointments. You're just a you're a fucking number.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

And well, yeah, that part of the being the fact that I have a parent, being in fact, I've also had my own, and then working in the field and seeing the need of our mental health is a broken system in our country. It's not recognized, it's not, it's not even, you know, until it becomes a problem, until something happens, until somebody does something or somebody blows up something, then we go, oh, we better do something, we better filter into you know mental health again. And but there it's the first thing they're they're ready to pull away from and and and take money from and funding from when they don't realize if our people in the world and the country are unbalanced and mentally health is not good, there's gonna be a lot of problems. And and and it's such sad. I think I've become trying to be an advocate of mental health because of my own child and because of what I've seen with other people like my child and myself, and then the the clients that we work with on a daily basis. It's it's tough because and so in that way that I looked at I'm open to more unconventional, sorry, unconventional um ways of treatment, and that's that brain mapping is one of them.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Hey y'all, that's the end of today's episode. There is gonna be another part of the awesome conversation that Jen and I uh have been having today. So I will drop that as soon as possible. So until next time, stay unapologetically. You stand your ground and keep your bullshit meter on high alert.