In this Episode, I am thrilled to be speaking with Melinda Schneider, who many will know from her success as an award-winning singer-songwriter or her iconic theatre show (Doris Day: so much more than the girl next door).
Some may have seen her competing on the TV show, Dancing with the Stars, or even heard her keynote speeches to empower women across Australia.
Melinda caught my attention when I saw a newspaper article, in which he was mentioned as the new ambassador for the New South Wales Rural Adversity Mental Health Program.
Melinda and I enjoyed a long conversation, talking about depression, our inner critic, perfectionism and how we all tend to wear 'masks' in our lives to some degree or another.
In fact, we talked for so long, I've divided our conversation into 4 seperate podcast episodes!
Enjoy Part 1!
In this Episode, I am thrilled to be speaking with Melinda Schneider, who many will know from her success as an award-winning singer-songwriter or her iconic theatre show (Doris Day: so much more than the girl next door).
Some may have seen her competing on the TV show, Dancing with the Stars, or even heard her keynote speeches to empower women across Australia.
Melinda caught my attention when I saw a newspaper article, in which he was mentioned as the new ambassador for the New South Wales Rural Adversity Mental Health Program.
Melinda and I enjoyed a long conversation, talking about depression, our inner critic, perfectionism and how we all tend to wear 'masks' in our lives to some degree or another.
In fact, we talked for so long, I've divided our conversation into 4 seperate podcast episodes!
Enjoy Part 1!
Melinda Schneider:
If my little boy had depression, I would want him to be able to talk openly about it. So I had to really set a good example and do the same thing. It was very difficult - it took a long time for me to get the courage. But I'll tell you what - since I've done it and come out publicly, it's a massive relief. The shame has gone. I don't feel any shame at all now. And I've received so much love and support from people that it's just filled me up and, you know, really given me so much faith that people are there for you when you do show your vulnerability. People are there for you. They love you even more.
Introduction:
Hi there. It's great to have you join us for the Psychological Safety Works Podcast, where we bring you concrete strategies and inspiring ideas about how to confidently have important but tough conversations. Do you know businesses required by law to provide mental or psychological safety for their employees as well as physical safety? Are you aware of the risk factors that can lead to mentally unhealthy work environments? Do you feel confident your team is working at their best and being fully productive at work? We're here to help business men and women with all this and much more. Listen in to discover how you can build greater psychological safety in your workplace and reap the benefits of reduced business costs and increased employee productivity. And now, here's your host, Sandi Givens.
Sandi Givens:
I am so thrilled to be speaking with Melinda Schneider in this podcast, who many of you will know from her success as an award winning singer songwriter, her iconic theatre show, 'Doris Day is so much more than the girl next door'. Perhaps you saw her competing on the show Dancing with the Stars, or even her keynote speeches to empowered women across Australia. Now in the context of this podcast, Melinda caught my attention when I saw a newspaper article, in which he was mentioned as the new ambassador for the New South Wales Rural Adversity Mental Health Program. So welcome, Melinda, I know we're going to share a fascinating and valuable conversation with our listeners.
Melinda Schneider:
Oh, thanks for having me, Sandi. It's lovely to be chatting with you.
Sandi Givens:
It's lovely to connect with you. And I like so many other people know of you through your music. And then when I discovered this part of your life. You and I are, I think, on a similar mission, you know, to raise awareness and reduce stigma around mental health conditions. So perhaps if we could start in talking about how you became connected with RAMHP (the Rural Adversity Mental Health Program), and what are some of the things you'd like to achieve in being their Ambassador?
Melinda Schneider:
Yeah, well, back in May 2018, I had my first bout of depression, and spent six weeks pretty much in bed unable to really function. And as I started to slowly recover from that, I started doing keynote speaking because I felt it would really help me with my challenges that I was trying to overcome. Although I wasn't speaking about depression, at that point, because I really wasn't ready to share my depression story yet. But I was talking about empowerment, authenticity, finding yourself, and you know, breaking the cycles, perhaps from your childhood or your parenting cycles. And one day, I was down at Dalgety , which is a couple of hours out of Canberra, speaking to a beautiful bunch of CWA women. And in the audience, there was one of the coordinators from RAMHP (the Rural Adversity Mental Health Program), and she saw me speak and it was a wonderful day, I got a big standing ovation, and I perform some of my songs, and include those in my keynotes as well.
Sandi Givens:
Wow. Now I am I'm really jealous that I haven't seen one.
Melinda Schneider:
So it was it was a lot of fun and i really very strongly connected with those women. So she came up to me at the end and said, "Melinda, I would love you to be an ambassador for the Rural Adversity Mental Health Program." And I said, "oh, wow, you know, thank you so much. And I would love to be involved. But I don't think I'm quite ready to talk about mental health because I've actually had two bouts of depression in the last two years." And she went, "Oh, really?" And I said, "I know I didn't even talk about that today." So I called one of the head coordinators and she was absolutely beautiful. very patient and said, "Look, Melinda, we'd love to work with you. And we'll be totally patient and ready for when you're ready."
I'd been through over a year of really prepping myself, going to therapy, working through the fears that I had around coming out publicly with my story because my public image has been one of the girl next door - a happy, smiling, pretty thing. And, you know, I don't think I was feeling that my audience wouldn't even believe that I could have had depression because of my public image. It's just I've never told a story of struggle publicly. I've always told nothing but positive stories of success and light and beauty and all of that. So it was absolutely terrifying for me to come out with my story. Absolutely debilitating. Terrifying. Panic attacks. You know, shame. As Brene Brown would call them, a shame shit show. Yeah, I felt terrified that people would see me as a disappointment or I'd disappoint people. I'd somehow be letting them down. There's more to me than just that public persona, you know, yeah. And all of those sorts of feelings really came from childhood for me, where I always had to be a really wonderful reflection on my parents.
So there was some very deep seated sort of beliefs that I had, that I always had to be a success. I had a lot of stuff to work through. And as I work through all of that shame, and accepted that, you know, one in four people have depression, it's not just me, I'm not the rarity, I'm actually more the norm. And there's nothing to be ashamed of. If my little boy had depression, I would want him to be able to talk openly about it. So I had to really set a good example and do the same thing. It was very difficult took a long time for me to get the courage but I'll tell you what - since I've done it and come out publicly, it's a massive relief. The shame has gone. I don't feel any shame at all now. And I've received so much love and support from people that it's just filled me up and, you know, really given me so much faith that people are there for you when you do show your vulnerability. Yeah, people are there for you. They love you even more.
Sandi Givens:
Yeah. And I think I know for me, Melinda, there's something very liberating about being the whole of me. That it's not like, 'Okay, I've got the public me, and then I've got my, dirty linen closet over here, and I'm not gonna let anybody see all that.' It's like, This Is Me. You know, that wonderful song from The Greatest Showman? And if you are uncomfortable with it, I'm sorry you are. I need to be the whole of me. I'd love to see if we could unpick that shame factor a little bit in that.
When I felt myself slipping into a major depression this year, the year of COVID, I remember thinking, 'Oh, why? Why is this getting to me - the isolation and the loss of income and everything. Because I know all this stuff. I know Mental Health First Aid. I'm a speaker for Beyond Blue. I talk about psychological safety in workplaces and how we should look after ourselves. And gee, what what kind of shame am I if I can know all this stuff, and yet still get this sick?'
My lovely psychiatrist who treated me in the hospital, when I was sharing this with him one day, he said to me, "You know, Sandi, you can be a bone surgeon specialist - you can know everything about mending broken bones and fractures. But knowing that stuff isn't necessarily going to stop you from breaking a bone somewhere in your body." That helped me lift some of that shame that I felt. What do you think about why people who go through mental health conditions experience this level of shame?
Melinda Schneider:
Well, I think it's the shame of being imperfect. It's the shame of being flawed. And when you've been like I was putting on a public image - everyone wears a mask. It doesn't matter whether you're in the public eye or not, everyone wears a mask to some degree, some more than others. But for me, from the age of eight, I was on stage and recording in the studio. So when your that age, you don't even know who your true self is. So I was putting on a front and a mask of this happy little pretty thing from the age of eight. And I never really was able to change that public persona until now, you know, until I had these two bouts of depression, and they sort of ripped me apart and I had to pick myself up and rebuild myself again. And it's been a massive relief to actually accept. I knew I wasn't perfect, of course, I'd beat myself up so much internally about, you know, not being good enough, not being enough - that was my go to thing is I've got a critical inner voice. But it was just managing people's perception of me, and the relief to not have to do that anymore. It's a massive. I feel so free, because I don't have to do that anymore. Because I've owned my story. The ending is yours, too, right? You've got to be ready to own it. And accept it. They can even write a brave new ending to it, of not being afraid of it.
Sandi Givens:
I think it would be particularly challenging, growing up as you did in the public eye. And feeling like you had this thing, this image you had to live up to.
I was talking to a retired professional elite athlete recently about their experience of anxiety and depression. And they made the comment to me about performance anxiety, and the feeling that once they became elite in what they were doing, then they had to maintain that all the time. And this person just brought tears to my eyes, when they said to me, 'I even tried to get injured, so that I could back away from having to perform all the time.' I hear something like that, and it's similar to what you're expressing there, too. I think, wow, I've never had to go through that in my childhood or in my adulthood, - living up to, I mean, it was self created in my own head. The standards that I wanted - the Superwoman I wanted to be or expected myself to be, but nobody in the public was kind of watching me and I wasn't feeling that kind of pressure you mentioned. You mentioned masks. And I know the other day when we spoke, I think one of your health professionals that has helped you made a comment to you about being too strong for too long.
Melinda Schneider:
Yeah, well, that's right. She was my GP, the first who first sort of diagnosed me with depression two years ago, and suggested I go on to medication. I was totally anti-medication. I was like, 'No, I'm not doing. medication. Don't even talk to me about it.' I had a stigma around it initially. But she said "Melinda, look, be strong, but not too strong." And I didn't really see myself as strong because, as I said, internally, I beat myself up self up all the time for not being good enough, strong enough, successful enough, whatever enough. And so, then I sort of thought about that a lot. And I thought, yes, I think I have been too stoic. I have been too strong for too long, pushing myself, pushing myself, pushing myself. Even when I had my little boy at 40 and breastfeeding him for four years, nearly five years. That's just so hard. And my psychiatrist said to me, "Melinda, he's gonna be the healthiest kid on the block. But that's a lot of giving, you know." And, again, everything I do, I have to do it perfectly. I wanted to be the perfect Earth Mother. That's been a negative for me for a long time.
Sandi Givens:
Talking about feeling like we're not enough ... you know, there's a lot of programming in our society, advertising and even TV shows and movies showing us you have this image of a perfect life or a perfect wife or a perfect mother or whatever. And I know that you have mentioned to me about being in that striving for perfection, that you were addicted to achieving stuff. And at one stage you talked about you only had this standard to achieve - this almost impossibly high standard. But there were only two options for you. There was incredible, or there was crap. So I think a lot of people - that will resonate with people. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that? You know, how we ended up putting all these huge expectations on ourselves?
Melinda Schneider:
Well, I think in my line of work, as you said, you've got to perform, you know, when I'm selling out the Opera House with my Doris Day show or whatever, selling gold records, you feel that pressure to do that again, and again, and again. And once you get to that point ... I understand that how that athlete feels. Because there's a lot of shame attached to not achieving that. Because there is judgment, there's judgment from other people. But the harshest judge, of course, is is myself. So, yeah, I think I have suffered, and I'm trying to remedy this. It's a lot of binary thinking whether you know ... I'm incredible or crap, good or bad, right? That's wrong, you know - life is gray, it's not black and white. So I'm learning that. I'm learning to drop my expectations, because I just can't really live like that - I can't get into that high stress levle. Those, you know, unrelenting standards, high performance thing. I mean, I'll always be a perfectionist, when I get on stage, I'll always want to do a wonderful show. But I'm starting to learn how to drop - no, lower my expectations, not drop them altogether, but lower them.
Sandi Givens:
Probably Melinda, your good is other people's excellent! There are two things that that's brought to mind. I was just talking with a group of people this morning online about what Beyond Blue promotes as the mental health continuum. Because a lot of people can think about mental health as 'I'm okay, or I'm not okay.' You know, the two choices and like you say, that binary kind of thinking. Whereas the mental health continuum suggests that on one end, we've got the green zone, which is a highly functioning, healthy mental state ... moving through to yellow, which is I'm experiencing a few bumps along the way ... moving through to orange, which is while this is feeling really challenging for me now ... and then red is where we're really finding it hard to function at all. So I love that idea about encouraging people to think about their mental health along that kind of continuum. The other thing I've found - and I'm interested in your thoughts on this - and especially with what you've noticed in rural areas of Australia ... is that people almost feel like they have to be really bad, you know, really burnt out before they phone Beyond Blue, or before they go to their GP. What have you noticed in that area?
Conclusion:
This has been another valuable episode of the Psychological Safety Works Podcast with Sandi Givens. If you know others like yourself who want to build more psychologically safe workplaces, please share this and other episodes via your podcast, app, email, or social media channels. And remember, you can find show notes, resources and subscribe to this podcast at PsychologicalSafetyWorks.com.au We truly believe collectively we can all contribute to building happier, healthier and more harmonious workplaces for everyone. This Psychological Safety Works Podcast is proudly part of the Experts on Air Network. Until next time ... look after yourselves and each other.