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Speaker 2welcome
Speaker 1to the Jasmine star show friends. This podcast is still very new. We are just about two months old y'all. And something I didn't expect when I started podcasting was how freeing it was. I feel so darn free to be 100% of myself a hundred percent of the time and I believe you and I are just sitting here having a conversation. It's just us having a cuppa. Like, did you know that that was a thing? I was actually watching the BBC and they had a show. It's like, Oh , I'm just enjoying a cuppa. Like CU PPA cuppa and they say cup of like a cup of tea. The way that we say it out here. So let's just pretend you and I are in an episode of a BBC show and you and I are having a cup of , I'm using an accent to kind of get me through what I'm about to talk about right now because sometimes I don't really talk about stuff. And one of those things that I don't normally talk about is that I have suffered from depression for years and I used to be ashamed. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I've come a long way and I know it's not that kind of like dog petting book reading, coffee, drinking, JD loving life that many people see on social media and it may be hard to believe that depression can be found in one of the most seemingly happy people, you know? But it is, I don't want you get me wrong though . Life is beautiful. I do love my dog. I do have a great relationship. Thank God I do live in California where it's always sunny and I don't even own an umbrella like to be honest, if it rains in California, I just don't go out. So there's that. Now I also recognize that my life is one that I wouldn't have dared to dream of as a child. I can also recognize however, that there isn't a rainbow if it doesn't rain and not every day is filled with sunshine despite what the Newport beach forecast me tell you. Now I'm know that this probably sounds a little bit like afterschool special, like did you walk through a hallmarks card store and see like there can't be a rainbow if it doesn't rain? You know what I'm saying? But like at the end of the day it's still kind of true. I know for many people the holiday season can be a really tough time. Maybe you've had a loved one that has passed and Christmas just isn't the same now, or maybe there are a really a lot of high expectations on you during the season or perhaps there's just a lack of in winter and that is getting you down. That is why I wanted to share with you one of the hardest yet most necessary podcast interviews I have ever done in this episode with my dear friend Amy Porterfield. I get real with you about depression and she gets real about her journey as well. In this conversation we had on her podcast, her podcast is called online marketing made easy. We discuss what it means to have depression as an entrepreneur, how to find a support system if you need it, and why you should not be ashamed in sharing your story and so much more and Amy's words. There are three goals we wish to accomplish in this episode. Goal number one, if you're struggling with depression or anxiety or anything around mental health issues, I want you to know that you are not alone. We may not talk about it, but we are out there and we are starting this conversation to let people know that you are not alone because for so long we both felt totally and completely alone. Goal number two is to get the conversation started. Mental health issues can be uncomfortable to talk about, but that needs to change. It is time for us to start speaking open about it and for us to start the conversations we wished we had. We need to have hard conversations and I'm hoping you will learn some tools in this episode to be more vocal about what you're going through as well. And goal number three, you can still and you will be successful in spite of, or in addition to your depression or any other mental health challenges you are going through right now. Let's listen to the show and I will meet you back here afterward. I know hard conversations may make you want to run and hide, but if I did it, so can you. So are you ready? Let's do this.
Speaker 3And so with that, like I said, I didn't want to do this episode alone because I wanted it to be a conversation. And so I invited my good friend Jasmine star to come over to my house. We're sitting in my studio right now and to have a conversation about depression. So Jasmine, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here. I know you're having me to be here, but I also know you have some feelings about this episode. All the feelings, all of them were both a little bit nervous. We actually talked about it before. We should've just started recording right from the get go, right? Because we were talking about a lot of great things, but here's how this came about. A while ago, Jasmine and I were having a conversation around depression and also anxiety and just a lot of feelings that come up and we said, we should take this offline conversation and put it online. And so not too long ago I called her and I said, Hey, remember that conversation we had? What do you think about putting it on a podcast? So my first question to you, Jasmine, is when I called you and said, let's talk about depression on my podcast, what you think, what did you feel? What went through your head?
Speaker 1Well, you and I both know, and I've said this a thousand times before, whenever you ask me to do something, it's always yes. Like when Amy asks anything, I'm like, yeah, of course. Duh. Like why? Why are we asking? Let's, let's move forward. And so when she's like, Hey, I have a question. My, my knee jerk grants , my knee jerk reaction and answer was like, well, yes, of course. Then all of a sudden she finished sentence and I was like, Whoa, what were there ? Um , what are we talking about and how is this going to look? And I started feeling a lot of resistance. And whenever I feel resistance, the thing that I always have to do is take a step back and ask myself, why am I feeling this way? What are the stories that I'm telling myself and then make a decision based on number one, if it will get me closer to my purpose. And number two, if it will help people. And regardless of how I feel about it emotionally, if the answers are both affirmative in that, then I know that I have my answer regardless of how it makes me feel. And then also I had just before that conversation had read a quote by Allie weasel. I swore never to be silent. Whenever and wherever humans endured suffering, we must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor never the tormented. And when I read that, it was like I automatically knew that my silence was going to impede progress and that my silence was going to encourage people to wear a mask or to not talk about really difficult things in their lives. And I just felt, well Amy and I talk about it openly, why can't we invite other people who might be interested in the conversation to have a healthy, positive, open, non stigmatized conversation about what it means to run a business, to do it with other people even when the days are hard.
Speaker 3Ah , so good. So true. And so this is exactly why I wanted Jasmine on the show. I knew that she'd be really open and honest about this. One thing she said while we were talking about it before I started recording and she said I have to be 100% open and a hundred percent honest about this topic. And of course I would expect nothing less of Jasmine. But I love that she like made the declaration. So that's what today is about, an open, honest conversation. So I wanted to kind of start and just share with all of you that I have definitely definitely struggled with depression throughout most of my college years and then into starting this online business. So a lot of, lot of it came up in my corporate years and then it really moved its way into the years that I started this business. And for me what depression has looked like is that there have been mornings that I have not wanted to get out of bed and felt like almost like I couldn't get out of bed. That the , the sadness and the the black cloud, that's how I've always explained it has just been lingering over me. And when would tell my mom, I'd say, mom, I feel I would confide in her a lot about this. I feel like there is a black cloud over me. But the problem that I really struggle with is there's no reason why it should be there. I would look at my family and my home and my, my son, Cade and everything about our lives and think everything is so good. I have a beautiful husband, a beautiful life, and I am sad all the time. And so I felt a lot of shame around it, a lot of embarrassment around it and it really came up a lot in my first few years of starting this business. That's where I felt it most, but it didn't start there. Like I said, it started mostly in college. I got on meds because of it. So my doctor prescribed medication for my depression and that really helped a lot. But then I thought I shouldn't take medication, so I got off of it. There's a stigma with it and I know Jasmine's going to talk about her story with that and I love what she talks about in terms of looking at medication and depression. And so I got off and on of medication for many, many years up until a few years ago. And I told Jasmine that now I don't struggle with it nearly as much. Of course everybody has depression here and there depending on what's happening in their life. But I don't have those moments anymore of I can't get out of bed or those moments of everything feels like despair and sadness. And so I've worked on it throughout the years, but I also wanted to talk to somebody that still has to deal with this more often than I do. So I wanted to, I wanted you to hear from a few different people. And so Jasmine, I want , I want you to talk about your experience with depression.
Speaker 1Well, I should probably start by just really reaffirming, affirming and explaining, clarifying that everybody struggles with depression. However, there is a situational depression. You know, everybody has bad days or a series of bad things that happen and there's clinical depression and clinical depression has to do more with the chemistry makeup of one's brain. And I have to clarify, I am not a trained medical professional. I will not be giving any medical advice. All I can do is speak my truth. And if there is a kernel that resonates with you or your journey that the hope that the reason why I want to stand up is that other people say I hear her, I identify with that and it's giving me hope in spite of maybe not having all of the answers. So my, I guess story, my journey with depression, I feel like I had a really great childhood, really wonderful, amazing, supportive parents who did their absolute best and for a myriad of unexplainable reasons or explainable reasons, I kind of struggled my first bout of depression when I was around 25 years old. I was in law school and I think I kept on pushing it aside. Like, my mom has brain cancer, I'm in law school. There's a lot of pressure on myself. It's okay to feel this way, and I kind of pushing it off and pushing it off, pushing off, which I think is a pattern in a story in my life. I just continued to push through things instead of giving myself the permission to take a step back and really analyze what's going on. But I'm getting to the end. I'm getting to progress, so put a little pin in that notion of taking a step back and saying, what am I feeling and why am I feeling this way? Instead of just saying, well, I'm going to continue pushing forward, so put a pin there, 25 years old and I realized that I am so sad. I am not sleeping. I'm wildly stressed out. I am working out like a mad woman because when my life is spinning out of control that I control the things I can't control. I started controlling excessively what I ate, how much I exercised, how much I studied and I think it manifested in like really a deterioration of a health. Like my hair was falling out. I wasn't sleeping, I didn't feel like I was in like a really good Headspace and so I was at UCLA law school and part of being a student is you get access to UCLA medical center, which is pretty incredible. I made an appointment, I walked into the doctor's office and I didn't walk in saying I had depression. I don't think I can even like articulate those words. I just kept on saying like I'm really sad. I'm really, really, really sad. And when I listed all the reasons why I was a sad, which is the reasons I just listed, the doctor said, okay, this is indicative of something a little bit more, my first suggestion would be medication and so prescribed medication got it filled and I have a very open relationship with my family. I talked to my dad and I kind of explained to like this is what's going on. And I think in retrospect, which is what he would probably say and admit now was that we both didn't handle the conversation the way that we should have. Only because maybe, maybe, and I don't want to put any words in his mouth, but maybe the conversation around depression, it was a little stigmatized perhaps it's not something that we really spoke about specifically like in Latino culture in first generation American culture coming, we're like really poor. So it was this whole kind of like new navigation of what it meant. And my father and mother both expressed their desires that their daughter wouldn't be on medication. And for me to try to do my best coping and understanding that there were certain things that everybody goes through, phonics and stuff like that. And we ended the conversation there and probably a few months into the medication I realized that it wasn't having an effect that I was still really, really sad and I felt like that gray cloud that Amy described so apropos, like that's the perfect description. And in addition to me feeling that way, I felt cloudy. I felt so much more sleepy. I didn't feel like I was who I was. I felt like I was a different person and as a result of that I stopped taking the medication. But that led to like a cycle of beating myself up. Like come on, like who doesn't medication work for like [inaudible] who are you like really like, are you that much of a mess that this medication is not going to work for you? And so again, it just led to another cycle of beating myself up. And when I look back at that situation, I realize in retrospect, years after it's been over a decade since kind of had that first kind of like reckoning with what it meant. And what it means is that what I did in that moment was a pattern that I had created for myself starting distinctly when I was 13 years old. And that pattern was to beat myself up. And what I didn't know then, which is what I know now, is the way that we speak to ourselves has the possibility to amplify and or not and or diminish emotionally how we feel about something. And so I think that the biggest takeaway years later, giving myself the permission to talk openly about it with my friends and my family was that when we have the ability to come out and ask for help, when we have the ability to admit we don't have the answers and we have the ability to say I feel very alone, it becomes a very different conversation. And I think that's why I really knew that I had to like step up and talk openly about it. Although the resistance did come, there is this, I told Amy, I was like, I feel all these emotions and I'm like, on the way here, I had a conversation with my husband and my business partner JD , and he noticed that when I left the house, I just wasn't myself. I woke up this morning and I did all my, I love patterns. Now patterns have become a game changer for me. Like I do the same thing every morning. I pray, I meditate, I take a hot bath. Basically I'm 87 years old. I do , I do , I do. I know I , I sent Amy text messages like early in the morning, I'm in the bath, got this idea. Um, so anyway, he, I did all the things to prepare me for what I felt could be a lot of resistance around this conversation. And on the five freeway driving up here, he said, let's take a step back. And that's been one of the first things. So before we actually get into what , how I'm working through this. The thing I wanted to lead with was I did not want to give anybody the opportunity to label me as, Oh, she's like the depressed entrepreneur. And I felt like if I came out and admitted that that that would become a title. And I have to remember that I write my own story. That even people can call me anything. They can make X, they can my why they call me depressed , I , I'll be happy. I get to define that story and wanna encourage other people to say that there could be labels, but there's no stigma around it because what we identify and how we want our labels to be are we are the ones who determine what that actually is and how we manifest it out. Ah , so good
Speaker 3that when we are thinking about talking about a topic that is sensitive to us, we come up with all these stories because when my team said, why don't we talk about mental health, I knew that I don't experience depression like I used to. So then I thought, well, who am I to talk about it? My audience will think that I don't know enough about it or I have a strong enough story. But then I realize , especially after talking to Jasmine that everyone has their own story and it shows up in so many different ways. And here's the thing that also comes with that. When I did have depression on a daily basis, there was so much shame and embarrassment around it. And so I talked to Jasmine about that and I said, one of the reasons why this episode makes me nervous is because I remember all that shame. I don't want to bring it all up again. The shame I felt of feeling depressed and it's really hard to talk to people about it if they've never experienced before. So experienced the depression before. So a lot of the times, many people do not talk about it or they sweep it under the rug or they keep it a secret. And remember when I talked about the goals of this episode, Jasmine and I wanted it to become part of a conversation for you and whoever you need to have that conversation with, we want you to start talking about it. If it's something that you struggle with because Jasmine would you agree that once you start talking about it, it starts to slowly take that stigma off of it? Oh absolutely.
Speaker 1And one thing I don't think I mentioned to you is I'm actually super excited that you are having a conversation because what you're saying like who am I? Who am I? And I think to myself, who are you not how amazing that you can look back and say I no longer struggle with that. I think that that in and of itself is so hopeful. So I think it's really great to offer different perspectives, people who have gone through it successfully, people who are working their way through it, and then just actually opening the doors , having a conversation.
Speaker 3So very true. So one thing I wanted to talk about a lot was, are like really get into is how we got here. So both of us have wildly successful businesses. You would agree, right? Come on. Well, it's not a hoarder field size, but yeah, it's climbing up there. Yeah, I mean, and we both have amazing marriages. That's one thing that we really bond over is that we have amazing husbands who support us. We're very lucky married out of our league. Me , let's be serious. So we have these great businesses, we have these great lives and we are at different places and this is where I want to show each of our own sides. I have been able to move past the depression again. When I talked to Jasmine about this, she pointed out, cause I said, well, it's not totally gone. It comes up when I'm struggling with stuff. She's like, yeah, that is, what'd you call it? Situational. But I don't have clinical. That would be the other one. Right. So I don't have clinical depression. But anyway, my point is that I've been able to move past it and I'm never really took the time to realize I had until I really started to dive in into this topic for this episode. And Jasmine. I asked her and when I said, do you Jasmine , do you feel that it looks different now than it did back then? What did you say? I said, it does, it absolutely does. In what way? And it looks different in that when I made, when I became aware that I needed help and when I became aware that there was people who wanted me to become who I was destined to be. And the minute I gave myself the permission to ask for help and have very open conversations and that for me, I kind of feel like I've , it's like this, the metamorphosis probably happened about three, two and a half to three years ago. And that's to me when I started making like such cognitive decisions about all of those things I had just mentioned and who I am today. And so I'm a nerd. Like I already said, I'm 87 years old. So I get in a journal and not like long, it's just a few sentences and is a 365 day journal and I can go back two days and just see my emotional maturity, my progress, where I needed help, like the pitfalls I noticed cycles in my emotions and why I was feeling a certain way. That right there has been a game changer. Okay. So I'm so glad you brought all of that up because I wanted to talk about how we got here and give them specific specifics of our lives and what we've done. And so I'll go first in the sense that number one, and I know some of this is going to overlap Jasmine, but I still want her to tell her story. Number one is I definitely went to therapy and I've done a lot of different types of therapy. So although the depression hasn't been around for a few years now, I'm still very aware of my anxiety and when things come up for me. And so just not too long ago, I don't know, maybe a year ago I went to EMDR training and this was amazing and you can look it up to learn more about it. I'll link to some details about this training, but it was training that I went through or therapy I should say therapy I went through to deal with some childhood issues that just kept coming up for me. When things got hard, these issues from childhood would come up and rear their ugly heads and I think, why are you here? Like I thought I , I got past this but I hadn't an EMDR therapy. Literally helped me immensely move past some childhood issues and trauma that I had dealt with and so I recently did that, but back in the day I went through a lot of therapy. I , I've had numerous therapists that have helped me deal with the depression. And I think to me that was the number one thing that helped more than anything else. And I'm going to give you guys some resources at the end of where you could find a really good therapist, even if you're on a tight budget. So we're going to share that at the end. The other thing that I did is that I made sure that I was always fueling my brain with resources and resourceful, valuable information that would help me see things in a different light. And so of course I worked for Tony Robbins and yes, I had depression while I was there. Doesn't mean just because you learn from Tony Robbins doesn't mean that it's not going to be there. But I will say much of what I learned from Tony, I was able to use and start moving past the depression. So a lot of what Tony teaches helped me move through the depression. And also I listened to podcasts, I read books. I am always into self-help and making my mind stronger in terms of what I think, how I feel. Also, just recently, you all know that I've been working with a weight loss coach. I've talked about this on my Insta stories and working with my weight loss coach. We don't even talk about food and we don't get into what the diet looks like. We talk about how my thoughts turn into feelings and how my feelings turns into actions. And so with that, if I change my thoughts, I change my feelings and I changed my actions. So literally once a week I meet with the coach where we are drilling down on what kind of thoughts am I having and what am I making them mean? So I work on myself every single day, even after the depression I feel has kind of taken a back seat in my life. So constantly fueling my mind, going to therapy. And here's my last one. And that is that the relationships in my life have changed everything. So marrying Hoby , I will say that that definitely made a huge impact on the depression because Jasmine's smiling, he's great. He's great. And he was just somebody in my life that was able to not judge the depression, not put a label on it, not make it mean something that it didn't mean he just sat with it with me and he listened when he needed to and then he offered advice when I wanted it. And to have that kind of support system means everything when you are feeling depressed and you can't get out of bed in the morning. And so I know that some of you are surrounded by people that are not helping you with the depression, that they don't know what to do or what to say, but your support system means everything. And so I've gotten people out of my life because of it and I've invited new people into my life. And I know this is cheesy Jasmine, but you are one of those people in my life that if I called you and said that black cloud is back and , and here's why, you would sit there for hours with me and talk to me about that. So I would sit there for hours and then I would drive. I would try your way . We're going to sit here . It's so true. A little rain dance . So you need the friends who will do the rain dance with you to make the clouds go away. I mean how perfect is that? It is true. And so those are some of the tools that I used. I wanted to share them with you because I told Jasmine I want to talk about how we got to a better place. We're not perfect, it's not totally gone, but we are both in better places than we were with the depression. So I wanted to talk about how we got there. So I want you to actually love that you brought that up because I feel like it's just encouragement for what I am currently working through. So all of
Speaker 1those four main points that you articulated or things that I am still doing. So in light of full disclosure, I have come a very long way and I look forward to the day that I can be just like Amy and say it has been a thing that I have worked through and it is a thing of my past. I am not quite there yet. I do struggle with it. I have come a long, long, long way, a first steps and this and I just want to be, make sure that I'm very open and super respectful. I have to understand that my parents are immigrants. America is different. How we navigate conversations is different. And so I don't think of the ever stigmatize the idea of speaking to a therapist, but they made it very, very upper-class. And so for people who aren't from California, Calvin is very segmented and it's segmented by County. And so my parents LA through and through like go to Azures . That's my dad. Okay. So when I told my parents , um, uh , okay. So when I told my dad that I really wanted that I was going to start seeing a therapist and he says, holds up his pinky finger boy . Orange County. Huh? You're Sarge County and it was a joke. Or as my dad says, well York. Okay. So it was a joke. It was a joke. But I think that it was a difficult conversation to have. Like what does it mean? Because my whole childhood, we had groceries donated on the porch and we rode the bus to church. And so this idea of paying somebody to hear you talk was this foreign is like literally a flying pig. And so I D I felt like what I realized and I had to make a hard decision was that I cannot expect anybody in my life to accept the responsibility to walk me through a very difficult path. So if you feel like you don't have that person, that's okay. Your next objective would be to take the responsibility to find people in your life. Now I will say that my husband is my best friend and my just foundation and he is so good and he is so kind and he listens. However, I also don't think that my husband should be a therapist. That's a great point. And if you have the , if you have the luxury, I think that's phenomenal. But I also do think that I really wanted to have like a clear distinction and I'm just like type a and very pigheaded . And I'm like, well, do you have a degree? No you don't like , um, so that was the first step. So hearing that you found a great therapist and it's a big difference and there was a really, really, really dark time in my life. And that was around , uh , 2015 where I knew that I had nowhere to go. Like I was just rock bottom and I said I have nobody to talk to. I am just, I'm strung out like my heart. Like my, my soul feels broken. And so the minute I found a therapist, initially I didn't think he was all that great, but I told myself, and like this is what I tell friends, people who are looking for therapists is to be fair to yourself and to be fair to them. And that would them at least three opportunities. Cause I feel like every therapist I've ever been to, I did not love them right out of the bat. Well it's like you're literally going on a blind date and you know, therapist websites are terrible. Like they basically need to go through one of our trainings to be like, guys, you've got to brand yourself a little better student that he helps therapists with websites because they're so God bless him. Like they're terrible. Like they literally say nothing. So as you kind of go on , it's like literally a blind date. And so I didn't really like vibe with him all that much in the first time, but I said, Hey, my rule of three, the second time he came around and the third time was when he's just started, kind of just like itemizing, asking questions after the notes that he takes . He's like, I'm seeing a pattern in the stories that you're telling, the way that you're talking. And I was like, huh, okay, let's go for meeting number four. And then I had stayed with him for about three years in , throughout that time when I was in a really, really bad place that I felt that as a business expense, I needed to get help. I couldn't keep running at that pace. And so I met with him once a week for about six months. And then from there started meeting every other week, every three weeks, once a month. And that was like the first step. And then I just started taking the time in my life and my business to start doing research like I needed to understand. So I , I once heard this analogy, like when you break a bone, you get an X Ray and they find out what's wrong with your bone . Then if you have a tumor, they have an MRI or a scan and they understand it . But if you go into your doctor and you say, I'm , I'm sad, like something's wrong in my head. What is done with that? And I started doing research and I came across a doctor here actually and sent you dr Aman and he wrote a book . And I think it's like a change your brain, change your life and love him. Oh, you know, I thought it was amen. Well, here's the thing. If you're religious, it's amen. Because to me he's like, Hey man , yes, this man. Amen. And then other people who are like, you know, agnostic. It's amen . I'm just kidding. I don't actually don't know the exact pronounces , right ? Right. Kind of just like so brilliant. So his book was like, his book was scientific proof after years and years and years of studying the brain, it's like the thoughts we have impact our brain . They literally have a physical manifestation. If you think negative thoughts, your brain reacts to the negative thoughts and gives out physical manifestations of your thoughts. It is no longer speculative. It is just the truth. And so he had said that every morning he starts the day and he says, today's going to be a great day. And our brains are hardwired to listen. So we didn't make, create a distinction. The mind and the brain are two different things, right ? This is, you lost me. What do you mean? So the mind is in control and the brain is an Oregon. Okay? So when you understand your mind, you can control your organ . So when you say, your mind says, I'm going to have a great day, your brain then says, yes sir. Right away, captain, we're going to make that happen. We'd be , it's , it's hardwired to listen, so if we have control of our mind, and this is not like a feel good, everything's going to be happy, hunky Dory. No , this is literally the very first step that you can do. I also heard that when Einstein woke up, he would say thank you a hundred times before he got into bed. That is so good. That actually makes me emotional because , because a cue and all you do in every morning I put my hand on my heart and I say thank you. Thank you. Okay. I know it's just because when you wake up and you think you just see the gratitude and gosh dang it, there are some really hard days, but when you say, Oh, I have a roof over my head. Oh, I have something in my refrigerator. I have gas, my car. We are literally the 1% when we say those three things, we are the 1% of the world. And I think it even on the dark days, you realize that we are just so, so, so lucky to be where we are . And if we could find a glimmer of that silver lining, we're already taking a step forward. So real quick, am I just making this like the , is this just happy hour Jackman like basically
Speaker 3you and I and LaCroix. I mean we're getting drunk on sparkling water. Y'all, I forgot to tell you, she's also in a bathing suit. Oh my God. Are we going there? Are we going there? You know did not come at me. I'm Puerto Rican. I will throw you under a big yellow bus in 2.5 seconds. I am. I actually am an example . It's California. Get over it. Listen, I'm in a bathing suit right now. Don't judge me. I said, that's really picturing like you standing in my house in a bikini and that's actually not going to make any sense. I was three years old. Okay, so we need to get that right. Oh girl, I hailed from the school of one pieces. Don't get it, don't get it twisted. But , so she comes in jeans with a bathing suit and a little cover up, but she's going to a pool party. Of course she is. She's fancy like that fancy. Really. It's actually a beach party for a 12 year old at Bolsa Chica. Fancy is not that. I will girl get it right. Come at me and I will come at you forgot it was a 12 year old. So yeah , in a bathing suit, which I, I'm cracking up but this is, this is happy hour, which is so appropriate when we're talking about depression . So yes, I do love this, but I love all these tools. I wanted this to be a conversation about like what did we do? We, I love to
Speaker 1people that are just a little bit or a lot ahead of me. Like they've kind of figured something out and there's a lot of stuff we have not figured out. But with this I feel like we've worked really hard on making ourselves better and healing ourselves around the depression. So I thought we have to talk about what we've done. So you talked about the therapy, but there's other stuff, like when we were chatting in my office, you talked about the mastermind we're in and what that's done for . Oh absolutely. And I think that people listening could say, well, I don't have a supportive family, or I don't have a supportive spouse where I don't have support of children. And that could be true. And let's back up one tiny second, dr amen. Since we're, since you're being religious, dr amen has a series of questions. If I have applied them, and I think it has had the most profound change in my perspective, this in addition to other few things. But if anybody's listening and be like, I'm tired of hearing these girls talk, I want something practical. Let's get into the practicality before we actually talk about the decisions we made as a result of the practicality. Right? So when you are having a negative or overwhelming thought, first things first, write it down. Ooh , there's something about writing the act of stopping and writing it down. It's as if it's like I'm an exorcism, it comes out of you and then you see it , it forces you to look at it. And doctor , he's very specific about that. So you write it down. Okay. So you write it down and then you ask yourself, so let's use you as an example. Okay? So if you would write something down, you're to get up out of it . What would be one thing that you're struggling with? Okay, since we're being a hundred we're being 100 we're being 100 so I would say that there's a lot. I'm trying to think of one. If I want to do personal or business, if I did business, I'd say I can't get it all done fast enough. And if I don't, I'm going to be irrelevant. Okay. That's what you read on your paper. Okay. And then the second question is, is this true? Ah , I love that question. And instantly I know it is not true. Now there could be people listening and saying , well it could be. Yeah . Cause there's some times I have deep dark thoughts that feel very true, such as my body will not release this weight. So if we got personal, we talked about my weight loss, there's days I get on the scale and it hasn't moved for days and days or a week. And I think my body wants to be fat like it will. It will not. I cannot lose weight. And that feels true some days for me. Okay, if we were looking at both of those situations, I don't move fast enough, I'm going to be irrelevant. Yeah. I am destined to remain this weight. Yes. And if we were to ask ourselves, is this true? And in even if you responded, maybe then the third question you have to ask yourself is, am I a hundred percent certain of my response? Oh my gosh. So right away, right away , right away, yes . It's no, because we are not fortune tellers. We don't know with certainty if we are destined to be irrelevant over destined to be overweight, we don't know that. Right. And then once we answer that, then we know how does it make me feel? How does, let's just focus on business right now. Okay. How does being irrelevant feel to you? It makes me feel small. It makes me feel scared. It makes me feel like I'm not enough. I'm less than or I'm not good enough. And once you, and this is all written and once you see that, do you think that those feelings will keep you from the purpose you have been said here on the world? Yes and yes. Last question. What would feeling the opposite of this? Like what if you were to look at that day , I am going to be irrelevant. I'm not moving fast enough. And you feel these negative emotions. What if you were to say, I am moving at the right pace. I will always be relevant for a group of people. It would make me feel grounded and secure and confident and excited to work on the projects I'm working on. Oh, these questions are good. We will
Speaker 3certainly be listing them in the show notes.
Speaker 1Okay, so now this is something that I learned from our mastermind organizer, mentor, unicorn James. We are not our thoughts. He reminds me of that all the time, that the things that we think are not us, they are just our thoughts. So if we were to look at a piece of paper based on this, like walking through for , from dr amen, we can choose to feel irrelevant and lost and like things are passing or we can choose to feel grounded and hopeful, insecure. The choice is ours. It takes just as much energy to feel fearful as it does to say I choose faith instead of anxiety in this .
Speaker 3Okay, this is exactly what I work on every single week with my weight loss coach and I think this is what has moved me. So I love that we both are on the same page. I didn't even know that you were diving into questions like that, but I just realized this is exactly why I've been feeling so good lately is because I examine that like every day, every day.
Speaker 1And what happens is people are like, I don't have time. Like I'm in the carpool line. I'm at the grocery store, I have two jobs, I have a side hustle. When might you just going to walk around with a diary and like writing my issues down seems like a luxury. Listen booboo, you do not take care of yourself. There are a line of people who need you so if you're in that carpool line you need to pull on over it and you say, baby, you're going to wait 30 seconds cause mom's just got to do this real quick. If you're at the grocery line, you bring out your phone, you write it all down and then you ask yourself, in this moment I choose to feel what that is been the most profound difference in how I look at everything. Now, do I think that I have the capacity to move through depression as a result of this process? No. Do I believe with all of my heart that I have the capacity to change and expedite the process as a result of this? Hell yes.
Speaker 3Hell yes is right. I want to point out, you just reminded me of this when we were talking about it earlier. You brought up Brenae Brown's gold plated grit, big old lady grit. Now with , first of all with the gold plated grit, if bursts came up for me when I called you to tell you I wanted to do an episode about my weight, but I was too scared to do so and I thought that was a little bit mean to you where you're like, ah, you're doing it and you're telling a story about how you ate a lot of cupcakes that were your signs for his birthday. That was probably the hardest part of that. You do push me in love. So with that though, I told Jasmine, I said, I don't want to do this episode about my weight. And for those of you who haven't heard it, it was a while ago. I can link to it in the show notes, but I didn't want to do it because at the time I hadn't started losing weight. I wasn't on a weight loss journey. I didn't have any tools to help me at the time. So I had nothing to give in that moment except the truth that I don't like doing video because I am overweight and that is embarrassing to me. That's all I had to give in that episode. And you said that's enough. And you brought
Speaker 1up this gold plated grit. So first of all, will you tell people what that means? Cause I don't do a good job explaining it. But second, it came up when I asked you to talk about some of this. So Renee Brown, she is like basically our best friend. She doesn't know and love her . Here's the thing, I want to it , or your house, not mine, your house. It's like way more. Show ready. Let's be like, I was like, Bernie , welcome to my , my house. Come into my closet. Her love her voice. She has an amazing voice and she's from Texas. She's like y'all . And she could say just so like a lot of bad words and I love that. Coming from her, they're almost like sacrosanct , right? You're like, Oh, look at how sweet. Bless her heart. Okay. So she talks about gold plated grit and gold plated grit is our ability to talk about things after we've already accomplished them. So how easy it is for us just to diminish how hard his situation was. And we can just say, Oh guys, I went on this journey, I lost a hundred pounds and this is how I did it. What we do by keeping our story to ourselves is inadvertently protecting ourselves, protecting our ego. We do not want to be vulnerable because the minute you say, I'm on a weight loss journey, all of a sudden you give people the permission to watch you when you're out eating dinner, when you decide to have a glass of wine. And so gold plated grit is talking about something in retrospect. And the thing that I encouraged Amy to do, which would come back to haunt me all the way back to today, cause I said, you gotta show up. You don't have to have the solution. You just have to first admit it. And so when you invited me to come to this show, I was just like, Oh no, I'm not past it. I cannot talk about it. And then I thought to myself, Oh good God woman, the advice you give is the advice you need to listen to. And so this is me talking through it and now it's on tape. And I hope that if not next year in 18 even if it takes me 10 years, that I can look at this and say this was the first time that it was very public and open about what the journey looks like from the inside. I truly hope so and I love that you shared it even though you might be still going through it and different ways and I'm so very glad Jasmine, that you have come on the show and talked to all of us about it because this is exactly what I wanted. I wanted a conversation around it and I think that's exactly what we got. Now. I also want to wrap things up with some resources and some tools to help anybody listening right now to find the support that they need. But also Jasmine, you have something really cool that you actually wrote about this on Instagram. I did, I did. And I was kind of debating whether or not I would bring it up, but I think, you know, we can always edit it out if it doesn't work. Um , okay. So I think that, I want to make sure in standards a Testament that when you ask for help, you actually get it. And when you talk to people, they actually arrive in ways that you don't expect. So this was a poster that I wrote on June 9th and this was shortly after the passing of Kate spade and Anthony Bourdain. And I just knew that I was in a funk and I knew that I felt like if I was feeling this way, there are probably other people that were feeling this way. And unbeknownst to me that when I opened myself up, people not only showed up to support and help, they started reaching out and connecting with others, but it also opened the opportunity for Amy to invite me onto this show. So whenever you feel like you are not enough, you are. And whenever you feel like you need help, you can always ask for it. So do ninth .
Speaker 3Okay.
Speaker 1He called me when he heard of Kate spades passing. My dad said he was just checking in but we both understood it was more when the news of Anthony Bourdain's passing broke, J D spoke soothing , leaned to the phone as he drove home and cooed until I stopped crying at two different times. The most powerful men in my life reached out to ensure that I was okay and it wasn't bearing myself into a dark corner. Depression is something I battled for years. I used to be ashamed, embarrassed to admit this. Perhaps there's a part of me that still is but the same way my loved ones reached out. I want to make sure that I do the same. If you're reading this, you're not alone. I am standing with you wobbly knees and all the clouds slowly lifted when I meet with my therapist when I pray I want to ask for help. I encourage you to join me today. JD and I spent the afternoon in LA going to museums, shopping from street vendors in sweating our way through tikka masala self care, self love and self Dick sentence of things I'm working on and I invite you on this journey with me. If you're reading this, reach out to those who might be hurting. If you're hurting, I'm here for you . Perhaps we can pull together and ensure we take care of each other. So my question is, are you in much level ? Okay, you're gonna kill me, right?
Speaker 3That is beautiful. And that's exactly is exactly who you are. Like you make people feel like they are not alone in this because you join them in the journey. So thank you for sharing that. You're going to mess up the end of my podcast because I got to get it together. So with that, I'm so glad Jasmine read that cause that's exactly kind of like what this episode is all about and we want to remind you that there are tools and there are resources out there and you, my sweet, sweet friend are not alone. And so with that we've talked about starting the conversation with somebody and, and not having that shame and embarrassment stop you from, from talking about it because that is hugely therapeutic. And so with that, also getting a support system and if you can have people around you that will build you up and just listen and cry with you and give you what you need in those moments. That is incredibly important and I love that. Jasmine said, maybe you don't have that and if you don't have that, then I want to encourage you to look for a therapist, get the counseling that you need. I think that was probably the biggest thing that ran through both of our stories was the support in the therapy and also medication. We're not advocating it, we're not judging it. We're not saying it's right or wrong and we're definitely not giving advice around it, but it is something you might want to explore. It helped me, it didn't help Jasmine as much. This is just an individual thing and I think that you should explore that as well. Now also with that, I wanted to let you know that we did a little research and we found this E counseling website called better help.com it's a convenient private, affordable online counseling site and they have over 2000 therapists. You do not need insurance or anything to get started, so better help.com I'll put it in the show notes and to take a little bit more of a serious note. If you do feel you are in a crisis and you need help immediately, remember that you can call the national suicide prevention lifeline. It's 1-800-273-TALK or better yet you can even text them. You can text, talk to seven four one seven four one so you, my friend are not alone. And Jasmine, I love that we did this together so we didn't have to do it alone. Thank you so very much. I love you dearly and thank you so much for coming on the show,
Speaker 1man. Oh man. That conversation was one of the most raw conversations I have ever had with a friend and let alone have that conversation recorded. But Amy and I opened up because we are so passionate about making sure that if you are suffering with depression this holiday season or anytime of the year, you are not alone, you are stronger than you think and there is nothing that can stop you from chasing your dreams. Please. That's the one thing you take. Take that from us. If you would like to have the conversation with me and Amy about this episode, you can reach out to us at Jasmine star and at any Porterfield on Instagram. We would love to connect with you and hear how you may have related to this episode and also maybe it helped on your journey. If you feel like somebody else could find this just as valuable, please feel free to share it and tag us so that we can support and join that conversation. Until next time, friend, I will catch you on Instagram and please remember if you're listening to this, you're not alone. I'm standing with you. Wobbly knees, shaky voice and all that good stuff.
Speaker 2[inaudible] .