Have you ever explored the healing potential of writing?
Join us as we navigate this profound topic with Jen Perry, a former client and participant of our Nutrigenomics program.
Jen, author of Staring at Walls: How to Look at Your Depression and Trauma through the Lens of Compassion and Humor, shares her raw and honest journey through depression and the transformation she experienced through writing.
This episode is a treasure trove of practical tools for managing emotional health. Find out how Jen created her personal "depression protocol" and used humor as a weapon against depression. Jen's book is more than just a memoir, it's a buffet of information, offering diverse strategies to help you navigate your own mental health journey. Jen's hope is that her book becomes a beacon of light for those who feel alone in their struggle. By sharing her own experiences, she aims to empower you and make you feel understood.
Grab a FREE copy of her book HERE!
interested in SHIFT? Want a free call with EMYLEE? Grab a spot for a free call here
Find more information and Free resources HERE:
https://hernextstep.limitlessfemalecoaching.com/landing-page-her-next-step
Have a question about the program or something you want answered on the podcast? Come chat with me on instagram!
@Limitlessfemale
Have you ever explored the healing potential of writing?
Join us as we navigate this profound topic with Jen Perry, a former client and participant of our Nutrigenomics program.
Jen, author of Staring at Walls: How to Look at Your Depression and Trauma through the Lens of Compassion and Humor, shares her raw and honest journey through depression and the transformation she experienced through writing.
This episode is a treasure trove of practical tools for managing emotional health. Find out how Jen created her personal "depression protocol" and used humor as a weapon against depression. Jen's book is more than just a memoir, it's a buffet of information, offering diverse strategies to help you navigate your own mental health journey. Jen's hope is that her book becomes a beacon of light for those who feel alone in their struggle. By sharing her own experiences, she aims to empower you and make you feel understood.
Grab a FREE copy of her book HERE!
interested in SHIFT? Want a free call with EMYLEE? Grab a spot for a free call here
Find more information and Free resources HERE:
https://hernextstep.limitlessfemalecoaching.com/landing-page-her-next-step
Have a question about the program or something you want answered on the podcast? Come chat with me on instagram!
@Limitlessfemale
Hi, I'm Emily with the Limitless Female Podcast. You were listening to episode 123,. My client wrote a book, staring at Walls, by Jen Perry. Woman, welcome. If you're a mama who is feeling all the feels of motherhood the ups and downs of hormones and maybe even depression then you are in the right place. Limitless Female is your confident inner voice, helping you master your mood and create the epic life that calls you. My goal is to show you just how enough you are so you can show up limitless in your own life. Let's get started.
Speaker 1:Hi everyone, welcome to the podcast. I'm excited to be here with you today and to get to give a little shout out and share something special that one of my clients did. I get to introduce you guys to Jen Perry, who has been a one-on-one client with me, I believe, as well as did the NutriGynomics program that I did with Ryan Overcash of Habit Method Health. Jen Perry wrote a book called Staring at Walls how to Look at your Depression and Trauma through the Lens of Compassion and Humor. If you guys know anything about me, you know that there is a lot of humor and a lot of compassion here at Limitless Female Coaching as well as in the shift membership. Of course we had to bring her on the podcast and have her talk about this book, talk about what inspired the book and kind of give you guys a little sneak peek into what you guys can learn if you pick up this book. I know there's a lot of relatable stories and Jen is just a very down-to-earth, kind person who's been through what I think the majority of us have been through. I mean, surprisingly, maybe not specifically your story, but definitely a lot of the emotions that you've experienced, if you've experienced any depression and, of course for sure, any trauma. So after you guys listen to the podcast, feel free to click the link below in the show notes and click on Jen's book called Staring at Walls.
Speaker 1:Okay, here's Jen Perry, awesome. Well, I'm so excited to have you today, I'm so excited to talk about your book and I'm really excited to hear about the origins of the book, because we haven't gotten to chat about this. I'm just so impressed. It's always. I always really appreciate when people put their story out there and I totally understand people not sharing it in the moment because you know it's a lot right and we're going through it, but when you can share it after it, man, it releases so much shame for other people who think that they're the only one, and in fact there are so many people who, I mean, it's not even odd or different or unique anymore, right, that struggle with any kind of mood disorder or mental health like it's just not unique anymore. So tell me what led you to write a book and then go back further and tell me kind of what stories or experiences you drew from for the book.
Speaker 2:The name of my book is Staring at Walls how to Look at your Dramatronics, the Lens of Compassion and Humor. And I thought about writing this book last summer when I was reading another book and she had. She was talking about some other mental health issues and but she didn't really land on depression. And that was something that I always thought about when I was going through the very first stages of trying to process depression, trying to figure out how to thrive in my life instead of just kind of surviving day by day. And when I read that I thought you know what I want? To have a resource for people like me who didn't have a community around them to process through that kind of mental health issues. So I decided to write the book and I decided to be very honest and raw and blunt about how I felt when I was going through a depressive episode, because that's what I needed, wanted to hear when I was in the middle of the very beginning, which is the trying to heal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that, that you remember what you needed. I think that sharing your story is like the first step to community, because how can we like connect if we don't get real with people a little bit instead of being like, how are you? I'm good, I try different questions now, like at church and around different people, because how are you? Just doesn't get enough out of people. And I love this idea of a Moai. It's like this thing in Okinawa where they basically come together like a co-op, but like a co-op for taking care of each other, like older people. And I think where we lack, especially in the US, is community. And this documentary I watched the other day said that we lose about 15 years off the longevity of our life because of loneliness. And I can't help but reference documentaries because I'm such a documentary nerd. But what did you want somebody to tell you when you were going through what you were going through? That they've been there, that it gets better. What specifically did you feel like you wish someone wouldn't said to you?
Speaker 2:This is normal.
Speaker 2:This is experienced by many, many women in particular, but also men, but many people across the world what you're feeling right now. It does not make you crazy or weak or anything like that. It makes you a human going through emotions, going through a mental illness and trying to make your life better. And that was actually something that coaching really helped in creating that thought process of even being able to put to words what I was thinking at the time, because coaching came in and said hey, you're a human experiencing emotions, processing emotions. Everything you experience is okay because it's part of the human experience. So coaching was definitely a huge part in me even getting to the place of being able to write the book and even going through your program and since your focus obviously is depression and so even going through that program was one huge step that I was able to take in order to get to the place of writing my book.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I'm so impressed. One of my favorite things about coaching is that it gets people to the place where they can also then advocate for themselves in whatever way they need to, and one of the ways that your healing is writing, I mean, or even maybe like post-healing right, looking back and kind of analyzing it, right. So I just love it that it offers the opportunity, and for me, too, it made it very clear. It made it feel very. It took out all the drama that I had in my mind about how I was feeling and I realized that I could be wrong about all of it. I could be wrong that I was weird or unique or that my kids would turn out, you know, messed up because their mom had depression or that they were. I was letting people down in my life. Like I realized I could be wrong about all of that, and maybe everybody is going through the human experience and maybe even my experience looks a lot like so many people's experience.
Speaker 1:That was my experience in just even building the coaching practice was I had this idea like, hey, if I have this thought or this idea or this thing to post, I imagine there's somebody out there who would agree with me Like, even if I'm like this is a really unique thought or this might bother people, it turns out there's always a ton of people who agree with you. I guarantee you right, and also talking about finding your mission from depression or healing your depression or working on your depression, or that your normal can also really bother people Sometimes. I found right, and that's okay. I think people want to be angry about it, and that's okay. But you got to keep offering it right, this idea that you could feel better if you're ready or want to, or here's some ways that I did.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and that's something that I have definitely experienced as I've been healing, as I've been. You know, practicing coaching and applying that to my own life is people don't like that People. They don't agree with it, and that scares them. And so, yes, you're going to probably experience some pushback from people who don't agree with you, and yet people need to hear what you have to say, what I have to say, because, like you said, so many people can relate to it and those people probably do not have a community and so they need people like you, like me, to say hey, guys, you're accepted the way you are and it's okay to take baby steps.
Speaker 2:What some people might consider oh, that's just, that's not enough. I'm like that's absolutely enough, we can walk through. Okay, we're now, we're going to have a big glass of water, because that hydrates us, it makes us feel better, it wakes us up, it's a huge step for people and for people who don't experience depression. That's not a big deal to them, but that's okay, because we're not speaking to this people. That is not our audience.
Speaker 1:Right, Right and it's like and yet so many people do agree with what we say. They are glad we say it, so we'll just keep saying it's okay. So tell me a little bit about the book. I love that you put in there with compassion and humor and I I did feel like there was so much of your personality in there. You wrote with like so much of your personal style and you wrote like you talk. I got this thought was so fun. So tell me about that part. How did humor and compassion help you through depression?
Speaker 2:So compassion is, in my mind, the opposite of judgment. So if I'm judging myself and I'm not experiencing compassion, then things seem heavier, things seem more difficult to process and to work through and to have an amazing life. So I really wanted to put that aspect of compassion to my book to let people know that when you have compassion, set of judgment, when you make that swap, it opens up so many possibilities in your life and it just it frees you. It really does. And then the humor part. That's something that I've always used in my life to make things a bit lighter, because sometimes the situation calls for it, and especially when, when we experience depression and we have that heaviness and we have everything that feels so instructing, that humor, just that a little, just a little bit but can make that, that move towards a better day.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, amen. Sister, I'm like you know me, you know I love humor and oftentimes I, when I told people that I like took medication for depression or I had depression, like kind of. You know, the first like five years that I had depression, I had several good friends who were like no, you don't, because I always laughing, I'm always smile, I'm very silly and very goofy. You know what I mean, and so it looks different on everybody. And also I find a lot of joy in life.
Speaker 1:In fact, I think depression helps me find a really high level of joy, because the comparison to the lows is so I'm so grateful, right, when you walk out and the clouds apart and you feel like you just know something's different inside your body and you're like, oh, today feels light and easy and fun, you're so grateful, right, it's so awesome. So I love that and I love compassion part, because that's the part in my coaching practice where we start, because, even though we know that our thoughts create our feelings, my first thing I always want to teach people is that, no matter where your feelings came from, you're still experiencing them, right, whether somebody else tells you it's valid or not, it's still an emotion you're going through and it's hard, so I love that idea of just having compassion for yourself instead of judgment. That is where you always start. We can't get any kind of like grasp on what's happening to us or how we feel when we're like believing that we're in the wrong place or we should be feeling better by now.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So tell me, was there any experiences that you talked about in your book that you pulled from in your past to help, maybe share with people? Or did you keep it kind of general and talk about general principles or tools, what? How is your book set up?
Speaker 2:So I I do pull a little bit from my past, mostly to give my audience some background and to kind of for them to get an idea of where I'm coming from, and but I also set it up to be very open. So I present some ideas. I present some here's some things you can try, here's some things you can do. But I always end the you know advice giving sections with choose what you want and you don't have to do anything with this information. This is kind of a buffet of information. You can want what works for you, what's helpful for you. You can adjust my ideas, you can discard them and choose another thought. Whatever is is helpful, most helpful for you to live an amazing day and live amazing life.
Speaker 1:I love it. Are you comfortable sharing an experience with us that maybe when you are in depression or the spur depression, or that's in your book?
Speaker 2:So one kind of one experience that comes to mind is when I feel a depressive episode coming on. And I'm actually in that depressive episode. I just feel very, very heavy and sometimes like the time I'm thinking of, nothing happened. You know, it wasn't like something really awful happened the night before and I woke up in a depressive episode. I was just going about my life. I woke up and it was there and everything felt so heavy and it felt like such a challenge to even sit up in bed. And so in those moments, that's the time that you say, ok, what we're going to do is we're just going to sit up, that's it, that's all we're going to do. Ok, now we're going to put our feet on the floor. Ok, now we're going to stand up. Now we're going to grab the glass of water from our bedstand that we put there the night before and drink it and talk myself through.
Speaker 2:The very next step, and something I talk about in the book, is putting together a depression protocol and I provide an example for that, for people to kind of get their minds moving and say, ok, will this work, will this not work? And they can build off of it from there. But going through that list and once that's done and you're still because sometimes sometimes you can get that that brain moving, that depressive episode kind of shifted and you can go about your day as normal as possible. And sometimes that won't happen Sometimes you'll get done with your protocol and think I'm still where I was when I woke up this morning and that's the day for rest and compassion and it's OK.
Speaker 1:I love that. It's like compassion in action, not just in thought, and we do that in the shift program as well. We do a you know, anxiety, worry, depression protocol right, whatever you need to do. I love that that is so helpful because the hardest part I feel like anxiety is like depression's best friend, and the hardest part about getting moving when you have, when you feel depressed, is that your lower brain coming into play and saying everything feels too hard.
Speaker 1:I don't know where to start, but if you kind of have a plan, it's like oh, today is one of those depression days. Let's look at what my plan is today. And it really helps to be like, you know, call a friend, cancel any activities you have going on, or maybe for you it's create, you know, make a plan with a friend. Maybe you need to be with people. So it helps when you're just like I'm not going to even think, I'm not going to tell my whatever is on my protocol. No, because I know I made this when I was feeling really good and I know these are the things that really helped me. So I love a protocol. It really takes that, that lower brain, out of the equation and lets us just do what we know helps a lot. So good. I love that.
Speaker 2:And I love the phrase that use compassion and action. That's a great phrase. I really like that.
Speaker 1:I got all. I got all kinds of them just popping out of my head. Sometimes I have to go back and listen to like old things I've said about. I know I said good stuff, Let me find where it is, and I was like I should write a book and then it's like I'm going to have to really gather up some of this knowledge I've put down. My son always says I'm putting down facts everywhere, I'm just dropping facts. So that's what I'm doing today I'm just dropping, dropping word bombs here for inspiration.
Speaker 2:Amazing if you wrote a book. If you do, please tell me. I'd love to read it.
Speaker 1:I just can't decide what to write it on. I mean, I know what generally, but you know what direction, you know. So someday, someday.
Speaker 2:I totally get that.
Speaker 1:Well, I love that. What is the main thing you want readers to take away from your book after they read it? What was your purpose in writing it? What did you hope that you could give to the world?
Speaker 2:Well, the first thing, definitely I know I mentioned this before, but I'll say it again that you are not alone and there's nothing wrong with you. You are not broken. I love it, Life. And the second thing is you're going to make it. I know it doesn't seem like it. Sometimes in the middle of those episodes it feels horrible and I don't need to describe to you how horrible it feels because you know Right. But you can do it, just taking it at one glass of water at a time that sitting outside in a fresh air and sunshine, five minutes, that's all, and building on things. And you're going to make it.
Speaker 1:And that makes me think, what if we let depression be the reason we're struggling? Because I think oftentimes we're having a really hard day and we're like nothing happens. There's no reason Like this is so frustrating. I mean, we know it's depression if we've been diagnosed or we've kind of we're onto ourself, but we don't let that be the reason we're like I can find no reason. And this is so frustrating.
Speaker 1:And I think about times when I'm like when I discover like oh, I'm on my period or like I'll get like achy joints and I'm having like a flare up for my autoimmune disease and like, oh, and that always includes some lower moods. So all of a sudden the discomfort of the depression is still there and the pain in my knees, and yet I feel almost like so much relief and comfort. Kind of like when you're sick and your mom's like it's OK, you're just having a hard day, come, let me get you some soup. It's like, ok, you're kind of like it's kind of nice to be sick, because I kind of did need a break from life. Why can't we let just depression be the reason to be like, oh, I'm not doing anything today, I'm depressed, like I wish I could just say it out to people like, oh, I'm depressed, I'm sorry I can't be there, like this is the reason it's fine. It's fine, it's a great reason. Just because you're feeling it's a great reason. We don't need anything behind that.
Speaker 1:And actually that makes me think of my son. He's just been like so emotional at night. It's first two weeks back at school. It's a lot. He's in a Spanish immersion class and they don't speak almost any English. He loves it. So we can't articulate why he's sad every night, just all night. I don't get to go to school. All he says is mom, I just want to be by you. I just don't feel like we get to spend a time together. I'm like buddy, we're together the whole time. You're home Like 24, 7, glued at the hip. He's like I just, I just.
Speaker 1:And then he starts crying. So I just don't know why I feel like that and said you know what? It's OK, you don't have to know why, you can just be sad. And literally right then I saw him be like OK, like everything lifted, like he was like, oh, like I don't even have to know why. It's just OK that I'm just like. I feel like this because he just felt so troubled, like I don't even know why. I just I can't, I don't still feel like I can be with you enough. I'm like that's OK, you can just feel like that.
Speaker 1:So sometimes we just need to give ourselves permission to feel how we feel, and your book will do that for a lot of people. You know, just giving them permission and giving them permission to laugh through it. It's OK if you're crying one second and you're laughing the next, right, like let it come. Sometimes I'm an argument, my husband and I feel like a laugh coming on and I think to myself he will think he'll get mad if I laugh right now. But maybe we should just let it come, let it come out, be like let's just forget this whole thing. Let's just let's just laugh right now, in this moment. So it's OK to be, you know, a crazy mess, hot, you know, up and down, laughing, crying. It's OK, right, if it's normal. For you it's normal. So thank you, jen. Where can they find your book? And give us the title again, at where they can find it, how they can get their hands on it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. It is called Staring at Walls how to Look at your Depression and Trauma through the Lens of Compassion and Humor, and you can find it on Amazon.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Yes, it's so awesome. Thank you so convenient. All right, Jen, thank you so much for coming.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I appreciate talking to you and this has been a blast, I know always right Anytime.
Speaker 1:girl, if you have questions about anything you've learned here on the podcast or want help with something going on in your own life, hop on a free coaching call with me. In just 30 minutes you'll have real tools for your unique situation. Go to limitlessfemalecoachingcom. Forward slash work with me or you can find a link in the show notes below. Spots are limited, so grab one before you miss it. Thank you.