*Season 5 NEW!* Jewel: Child Abuse & Shoplifting Addiction Recovery with Therapist Ryan Dusick (Maroon 5)

Welcome to the premiere episode of our fifth season of CHECK YOUR HEAD Podcast, the podcast where notable musicians and experts share their stories and solutions for mental help and addiction recovery. I’m your host, Mari Fong, and today I’ve chosen to spotlight our partner MTV for “Mental Health Action Day” which is today, May 15th. Our mental health action was to create and premiere this very special episode that I’m incredibly excited about. So I ask you, what action will you take today, and everyday, to improve your mental health?

But now to our featured guests. Today we have a musician who has sold over 30 million albums with hits like “you were meant for me” and “standing still,” and dropped her 13th studio album entitled “freewheelin woman” in 2022. she was a winner on the popular show, The Masked Singer. Yes,today’s featured guest is singer/songwriter and mental health advocate, JEWEL. And in honor of May being Mental Health Awareness Month, “Jewel’s Lullaby Club,” was announced, which is a special four-week series inspired by Jewel’s iconic album Lullaby, originally created to manage her own stress and also to soothe her son to sleep. Next, paired with Jewel, is an expert who was also a touring musician as the former drummer for Maroon 5, but now he’s a licensed therapist, a speaker and author of the book and podcast called, “harder to breathe,” today’s expert is RYAN DUSICK. But first, let’s hear the ever-talented Jewel, share her story.

For more information on Jewel, visit jeweljk.com where you’ll find information on “Jewel’s Lullaby Club” in partnership with Inspiring Children’s Foundation.org, also visit jewelneverbroken.com for mental health fitness tools, education, and more, and for more information Ryan Dusick, as a therapist, coach, speaker and author of the book and podcast “Harder to Breathe” visit ryandusick.com. And, on checkheadpodcast.com, you’ll find the largest online list of free and affordable mental health and addiction recovery solutions along with everything you’d ever want to know about the CHECK YOUR HEAD Podcast. 

“Be brave, ask for help, and be persistent in finding the mental help that you need.” *THANK YOU for supporting our podcast through www.checkyourheadpodcast.com and through our patreon.com page. Every dollar is appreciated, every listener is appreciated <3

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The information shared during this interview is for general informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider for any individualized medical concerns

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome to the premiere episode of our fifth season of Check Your Head podcast, the podcast where notable musicians and experts share their stories and solutions for mental health and addiction recovery. I'm your host, Mari Fong, and today I've chosen to spotlight our partner MTV for Mental Health Action Day, which is today, May 15th. Our mental health action was to create and premiere this very special episode that I'm incredibly excited about. So I ask you, what action will you take today and every day to improve your mental health? But now to our featured guests. Today we have a musician who has sold over 30 million albums with hits like You Were Meant For Me and Standing Still and dropped her 13th studio album entitled Free Willin' Woman. She was a winner on the popular show The Masked Singer, and yes, today's featured guest is singer-songwriter and mental health advocate, Jewel. And in honor of May being Mental Health Awareness Month, Jewel's Lullaby Club was announced, which is a special four-week series inspired by Jewel's iconic album, Lullaby, originally created to manage her own stress and also to soothe her son to sleep. Next, paired with Jewel, is an expert who was also a touring musician as a former drummer for Maroon 5, but now he's a licensed therapist, a speaker and author of the book and podcast called Harder to Breathe. Today's expert is Ryan Dusick. But first, let's hear the ever-talented Jewel share her story. I

SPEAKER_02: 1:48

moved out when I was 15. My dad was abusive. His dad was abusive, I'm sure. His dad was abusive. When I moved out at 15, I knew that it was a really risky proposition. You know, statistically, kids like me don't make it. And obviously, I didn't want to feel like at 15 my life was over, that my life was predestined to fail, basically. I didn't want to be a statistic. The problem is, how do you change that? You know, there was nothing written about any of this at the time. I was able to see, though, that And this is where writing came in really handy. I'd been a strong journaler up to then, and so I thought about these kinds of things. But this idea of nature versus nurture, you know, if I received bad nurture, would I ever get to know my nature? The word trauma didn't exist, I don't think, or if it did, it certainly wasn't in my realm. Basically, what I was wondering is if my trauma has altered my personality, right? If it's become this emotional, psychological skin that I interface with the world through, Could I lift that psychological skin and get to know my nature authentically before it was altered, you know? So that's kind of what I set off to do. I realized happiness was a side effect. You couldn't just be happy. Happiness was the side effect of things. So you actually had to look at more root causes, behaviors. I saw that I had a genetic inheritance that might predispose me to diabetes. I could also see I had an emotional inheritance. And it was that language that was what I needed to figure out how to get a new education in. You know, it's like if you grew up speaking Spanish, if you want to learn French, you better go to school. Otherwise, you're going to speak Spanish. Your emotional language is the same. You don't get to just speak a new one. You have to learn a new one. And we're talking about millions of data points of emotionally relating to the world. So it was obviously really daunting, a daunting thing to think about. But it was also really exciting because I felt like I had a mission. You know, it felt like a worthy challenge and at least a way. You know, something that made it feel like, well, maybe if I can learn how to do this, I won't just end up a statistic. And so that really set me off on my life's goal. It's why I wrote the types of songs I was writing. Who Will Save Your Soul was me as a 16-year-old wondering, if I don't do this, who's gonna? And how the heck do I do it? Hands was about being homeless and shoplifting and being a victim and realizing that what I did with my hands was up to me. And what could I do if nobody was coming for me? What if I was coming for me? And what if the buck stopped with me? What if nobody owed me anything? What was kindness worth? You know, all my songs were always just me grappling with these concepts of is happiness a learnable skill? And, you know, not knowing what panic attacks were. I started having panic attacks when I was 15 and I hadn't even ever heard of one. I didn't hear of one until I was in my 30s. I just was having something, you know, intense happening to me. They just happened so often, I started to experiment and start going, does this work? Does that work? Does this change the outcome? Does this make me feel better? That doesn't make me feel better. Would this make me feel better? So I started to develop tools. And that ended up being a second career is what's the weirdest thing of all this. Songs ended up being a career, which was a trip at the time. And now all of these tools that I developed for myself out of my experimentation has become an entire job. It's been wild.

SPEAKER_01: 5:17

Well, I also love how you kind of done the research for it on a personal basis and also that you've accepted there's trial and error. And one thing you mentioned is the shoplifting. So I wanted to see and for you to give me examples of some ways that were unhealthy ways to deal with pain and now the healthy ways that you have incorporated in your life to deal with pain. We

SPEAKER_02: 5:46

always pick the pain we can tolerate. That's what leads to a coping mechanism. We pick the pain we can tolerate. Even hitting a child, right? My dad was hit as a child. He ended up hitting me. Rage and even the regret. He suffered a tense regret, right? He didn't enjoy hitting us. He always felt like shit afterwards. That was a pain he knew how to handle more than the vulnerability of the shame that he felt. Doesn't make hitting me okay. but it humanizes it. It shows you how we make our choices and it can help us build a little bit of compassion around our choices. We're always trying our best. We're always trying the pain that we believe we can survive the most. That gives us some kind of relief when we're not taught another way to get relief. You know, our minds process emotional pain in the same center that it processes physical pain. So your brain cannot tell the difference between a broken heart and a broken leg. It's that psychologically scary. That's why it's so real, right? That's why emotional pain is so intense. It's that same part of our brain. It's as real as a broken leg. And you can't live with unmitigated pain like that, right? So we're trying to find ways in our infinite wisdom and our infinite brilliance, actually. Coping mechanisms are amazing. I call it brilliant resilience. We find these ways of surviving, of coping. At some point they quit working, right? At some point it's a diminished return. Shoplifting, for example. I never drank. I never did drugs. I was so proud I avoided that. Ran headlong into stealing. It's an addiction. It was just a different addiction. It made me feel powerful. It made me feel empowered. It distracted me from my anxiety because it was so challenging to steal something and get away with it. It made me feel cared for. It was the most loving thing I knew how to do for myself. I remember stealing Christmas presents for myself and wrapping them and putting them under a little houseplant that I would decorate. Obviously, at some point, you start to realize like, wow, this is actually a problem. This isn't something loving. This isn't something kind. There's not some faceless, the man. I didn't think I was hurting anyone, right? It was the man. And, you know, it wasn't until for me, I was in San Diego and I was stealing a dress. I was shoving it down my pants and I saw my reflection in the mirror and it was just unavoidable. I was a statistic. My lofty goal of not being a statistic I was homeless and I was stealing. Like, I was going to end up in jail or dead. I didn't avoid it. Even though I avoided some things, right? I didn't become a stripper. I didn't do drugs. I didn't drink. Lots of good wins. But at the end of the day, I was still a statistic. And that's where, again, I just learned to be really observant and really curious. I had remembered a quote when I was looking in the mirror with that dress. It was attributed to Buddha. Something like happiness doesn't depend on who you are or what you have. It depends on what you think. And so I decided to double down on trying to figure out what I think. How is what I'm thinking affecting what I'm doing? And how is what I'm doing affecting how I'm feeling and what I'm experiencing? But I was so, I didn't know the word disassociative, but I was so disassociative at the time, I couldn't even figure out a thought in real time. I was not present. It was the opposite of present. And again, that word didn't exist. That wasn't even a concept yet. What I decided to do was watch my hands because your hands are the servants of your thought. If you want to see what you're thinking, watch what your hands are doing. And so I thought I could maybe reverse engineer into my thoughts by chronicling every single thing my hands did for two weeks. So that's what I did. I didn't stop stealing. I didn't even know how to yet. Like that type of compulsion was so overwhelming. Will doesn't work, right? It's a much deeper thing you're trying to get at. But I would just write it down. I just learned how to observe. Like I just stole something. A banana, you know, I just washed my hands. I just opened a door. I had no idea what I was looking for, what I was doing. It was a silly experiment. But a really interesting side effect happened. My anxiety virtually disappeared for two weeks of doing that. That was like a drug trial where you're looking to cure glaucoma, but you grow eyelashes. You're like, let's call it Latisse. It was like a weird side effect of an experiment. And it wasn't a side effect I expected. Why did my anxiety disappear? It made me so curious. And so basically what I stumbled onto is mindfulness, right? I figured out how to be consciously present because chronicling in real time what my hands were doing forced me to be in the moment. And being in the moment caused my anxiety to lessen. And so I started to write that down. Why was that? What is it that did it? Can I make it happen again? What was it about that? And zeroing in on what it was. I really learned that fear is a thief and it takes the past and it projects it into a future that hasn't happened. And you were robbed of the only opportunity you have to actually keep yourself safe, right? I was very occupied with keeping myself safe. I was neglected as a child. I was on my own too young. Safety was a big issue. You think you're worrying to keep yourself safe, but that's like leaving your house to go protect it from burglars. You should probably stay in your house. Being present is staying in your house, and it makes you less anxious because you're present. And so I started realizing things like the anatomy of addiction. I saw this triad. It was this triangle, like a before, a during, and an after. And I realized I couldn't change my before always, but I could change my during. Basically, my response, right? Stimulus was making me scared that I was homeless, and it was scary. I responded by stealing, which made me feel in control. My reward was that control, that feeling of empowerment. And so I realized I could start affecting the middle one, my behavior. And so I started replacing stealing with writing. And I had to will myself, right? I had to will myself to write. And it wasn't a quick process. That's something I really want people to know is if they start working on habits like this, if they look at a pain point, let's say you're angry, you start just bringing awareness around it. You might not have awareness till after, right? You went off on your spouse and you don't notice till after. You're like, holy F, I did it again. I went off on my spouse. Building awareness takes time. I often woke up after I stole and be like, holy shit, I did it again. And then I started waking up with practice during it, but I couldn't stop. Then I started to be able to notice the signs before that I was urged. I had an urge to steal, but I still couldn't stop it. Changing the behavior was last. Being able to notice the stimulation, the desire to steal, and then put a new tool in was the very last thing that took time to give and get me to that point. And writing didn't feel good. It was so boring. And I was like, that's interesting. Why doesn't it just feel like a reward? I know I like writing. So that's a really interesting thing. Like, why don't I feel rewarded? And so I really got curious and I started noticing my body felt differently. So I started trying to put adjectives to it. Well, how do I feel when I write? It was calming. which actually felt boring because I was addicted to intensity, right? Trauma isn't intensity. It gives you an intensity addiction. So my neurological system liked intensity. It liked deregulation. It liked, you know, the sympathetic nervous system to be engaged. When I was in my parasympathetic system, it didn't feel fun. It didn't feel rewarding. It even felt kind of depressing. And God forbid it made a feeling come up, right? It's the problem with dilated states. But through continued experimentation, I realized there's only two basic states of being. There's dilated and contracted. And I realized that every single thought, feeling, or action leads you to one of these two states. And that dilation is where we can relax. It's where we can sleep. It's where we can unwind. It's where we can process feelings. And so I started journaling. In part of my notebook, I had dilated. In the back of the notebook, I had contracted. And then I had subcategories of thinking, feeling, doing. So every time I was relaxed, I started to write, what was I thinking, feeling, doing? Every time I was contracted, tight, anxious, I would write down thinking, feeling, doing. At the end of the month, I basically had a map of my neurological systems and thoughts, feelings, and actions that got me in and out of neurological systems. And you can't be in two at once. When I realized that, I was like, I can maybe hack my way out of a contracted state by forcing myself to participate in off of something on my dilated list. And I remember the first time I got it to work, I was beginning to have a panic attack, which again, that was months of work to get to where I could notice one coming on, much less intervene. But I noticed it coming on. I looked at my list. I looked at gratitude. Gratitude is not some light, fluffy thing. Gratitude should move your whole body. It should move you to tears. It has a weight to it. It's a heftiness. So you have to find something you're grateful for that stimulates your system in that way. It can't just be like, hashtag grateful. Like, that's not going to work for you for what I'm talking about. So I was trying to find something to be grateful for. I was on the street corner. I was homeless. I was feeling very sorry for myself. I couldn't find a thing to be grateful for, which might have been part of the problem in the first place. So I became observant and curious. That's the best hack into being present. Just get observant and curious about what's happening in your environment. And I saw the sunlight filtering through these trees and it made this lacy pattern on me and it was beautiful. And it kind of transported me to being a kid in Alaska and laying on the meadows. And I just suddenly started thinking about how far I'd come and how much I'd been through. And then I was suddenly, shockingly overwhelmed with a really spontaneous feeling of gratitude for myself, which was so unexpected. I was so proud I hadn't killed myself. I was just so proud I was standing there on the street corner. It moves me to tears right now. I

SPEAKER_01: 15:39

was so

SPEAKER_02: 15:39

proud. But I didn't give in yet. I was standing there on a dumb street corner thinking about gratitude because I refused to kill myself. And I just started weeping with gratitude for myself, which I didn't like myself a lot at the time. And the next thing I knew, I think 40 minutes had passed. I did not have a panic attack. I managed to subvert a panic attack by forcing myself to dilate. So it was experiments like that that now is actually what I've built curriculums around and helped teach other people.

SPEAKER_01: 16:14

Well, you mentioned something that I think is so important that we really don't do as much as we should, which is to give ourselves credit for the things that we've done and the things that we've gone through and being persistent. And it seems like you had this grit in you that really just wanted to work through all your situations. Having suicidal thoughts, though, I think can happen when you're depressed or anxious, especially when you're going through panic attacks. And I've never gone through panic attacks. But you've done a great job explaining why mindfulness is so important. Because I think those words are tossed around, mindfulness and meditation. But they're kind of like ethereal thoughts that people may not understand why that's so helpful.

SPEAKER_02: 17:00

Yeah, I think mindfulness gets thrown around in a way that we don't even know what we're talking about, what is a definition. So I have a definition. I'll trademark it. No, I'm kidding. But my definition is consciously present. Being mindful just means being consciously present. So there's skills to build the muscle of being consciously present for longer and longer periods of time. Meditation builds a muscle. Literally, it helps you train your brain to be consciously present. It's just two minutes of practice of being here, noticing your thoughts. I'm here. I'm noticing I'm anxious. I think a lot of people drop out of meditation because they think they should have no thoughts or they think that they should feel good when they're present. Being present just means you're present for whatever you're feeling. If you're anxious, you're just going to be present while you're anxious. So it doesn't mean you're failing. It just means you showed up and that's good. You're building the muscle of showing up. Showing up is the most important step to changing. but it won't change your life. And that's the thing I think people aren't talking about enough in the mindfulness movement. There's a lot of focus on building the muscle of presence, but not how to put that muscle to work. Meditation won't change your life. It's not going to get you to euphoria unless you go live in a cave and you don't have to deal with all your triggers and you're going to live in a monastery. Maybe then, you know, by removing your problems and learning to be present, maybe you'd have a shot. That's not us, right? I live in the real world. We all live here. And so we actually have to figure out how to change. So the way I describe mindfulness is if your body is a car, your brain is not the driver. It's the steering wheel. But it can be autopilot, right? If you're not present, you're going to be on a neurological autopilot. Your brain will drive the car for you. But if you can observe you're sad, you're something other than sad, you're the observer of it. That's pretty interesting. Descartes said, I think, therefore I am. I believe it's I perceive what I think, therefore I am. We're the perceiver. We're the observer. Whatever you call the observer is up to you. But everybody realizes like, oh, I'm noticing my thoughts. So when you can start to build a little bit of a gap between your thoughts and your actions, in that space is where you can start to have change. So I'll use an example. I'm getting angry and triggered and I'm angry. I use presence to notice in real time. Oh, I'm really angry and I'm really upset. I'm going to pause. I'm going to stop and I'm going to observe the situation. And now in this gap is where I can insert a new tool. When we're reacting neurologically on autopilot, we're going to do the same old shit we've always done. So to have a changed outcome, you have to insert a new tool. And that's where I think therapists are really Being called to get better, frankly. Talking is not enough. We need behavioral changes. We need things that we can practice to have different outcomes because nothing's more depressing than going to a therapist for a year and not seeing your life change. Your takeaway is that you're broken and the expert can't fix you. And that's wildly depressing. I think that the mental health community has to do more in terms of how to be more behaviorally focused. And so that's what we do in our foundation, all my work, is we focus on the behavioral tools. People have to build the muscle, right, of being consciously present. But then we have to give them tools of what do you do with that gap? Now that you created a pause, can you insert a new tool to get a new outcome? Because then it gets exciting. When you start seeing your life change, you're like, this is hard work, but at least it's worth it.

SPEAKER_01: 20:46

Right. There's a lot of payback, a better life, more happiness and contentment with your life. But it does take work. And You know, one thing you mentioned was journaling, which is something that anyone can do to put those feelings on paper. And also, like you said, to be in the present moment. And you're talking about addictions, like you're shoplifting. And a lot of people have different addictions to try to soothe the emotion that they're feeling. So it's like, what are these activities that are healthy, that can better you, that can also distract you or soothe those emotions, but doesn't cause you to be an alcoholic or a drug addict or a shoplifter, you know, these things. And I'm so excited that you're working with young people because that's where it all starts, right? I think I'd read that you had started getting anxiety as young as eight or nine years old. Can you tell me more about your Jewels Inspiring Children's Foundation? Yeah, I think

SPEAKER_02: 21:46

writing is one of the things we give our kids. Not every thought and feeling is a fact. You know, you need to start questioning, is that thought true? Journaling is really helpful because we start to encourage all of our kids and the adults that we consult. When you get upset and you get really anxious, the tendency is to want to disassociate. We want to remove ourselves from a feeling. And so we'll distract ourselves with alcohol or drugs or pills, or we'll distract ourselves with shopping, shoplifting, social media, whatever it is. You actually want to train yourself to move toward it. And that's really antithetical to a lot of people. What taught me it was anxiety. I had a lot of anxiety. That made me think something was broken, right? If I'm having anxious feelings, something must be wrong with me. One day I just decided to say, well, what would it be like if I thought that meant something was right with me? And it's because I saw a car alarm going off and nobody got mad at the car alarm. I mean, it was annoying. but the car alarm was doing its job. It's doing what it's built to do, warning you that somebody was breaking in. What if my anxiety didn't mean something was wrong with me? What if it meant something was right with me? And what if it meant somebody was trying to break in? It's like food poisoning, right? If you eat bad fish, you're going to throw up. You don't want to eat bad fish again. Don't get mad at throwing up. Get focused on the behavioral change. So what if anxiety was the side effect of the fact that I was consuming something that didn't agree with me. And it was making me ill, right? My anxiety was my body's way of saying, don't consume that again. So if you can start looking at your anxiety as an ally, not something to move away from, but something to move toward, to get really curious about, like, thank you. I literally would sit down, pretend my anxiety was a person. I would have a conversation with it. What was I just thinking, feeling, or doing? Because it didn't agree with me. If I was supposed to be doing it, it wouldn't make me anxious. God didn't fuck up that bad. Like if we have anxiety, there must be a reason we're capable of being anxious. What if 99% of us are engaging in stuff that doesn't actually agree with us? We're having thoughts that don't agree with us, right? We're hating on ourselves. We're saying we're ugly. We're despicable. We're unlovable. No kidding. You get anxious. You can't consume that thought without it making you sick. When we tolerate the intolerable, we get ill. And so if we can move toward the discomfort, toward the pain, and get curious, we can start to help it change. What's in isolation can't change. So as long as we're medicating, as long as we're moving away, as long as we're distracting ourselves, we're not going to change. We're just going to suppress, which only works for so long, right? It doesn't work. So you have to train yourself to move toward, get curious, and then figure out how to put it in relationship to something else. Because through relationship, we change, right? So putting my anxiety in relationship to my curiosity, helped me transform it. When I felt vulnerable, instead of distracting, I would attach that feeling of vulnerability to connection, right? Call a friend who's safe. Then I could get that feeling to change. It wasn't suppression. It was actually change.

SPEAKER_01: 25:03

And I think one thing that I got from what you said is that our emotions do signal us that something is wrong. Although sometimes they can lie to us, right? With depression and anxiety, but something is wrong, either physically or mentally. It's signaling you to find out what is going on. And you've done just a wonderful job to do that on a personal level. You know, the lifestyle of a musician is very different. Can you think of ways that the industry can help improve the conditions for mental health for musicians?

SPEAKER_02: 25:35

I think that any high performing public facing job is tremendously stressful. I think CEOs face a lot of the same pressures that musicians do. Musicians have a particular job because of the travel, you're sleeping at the wrong times, all of that. But, you know, I just lost my friend Tony Hsieh, who was the CEO of Zappos. I think CEOs live under a particular type of pressure, bottleneck pressure that celebrities often do as well and musicians. I think that first and foremost, you have to be willing to make that your number one responsibility as the individual. You know, the reason when I got signed that I said my number one job was to be a happy person, my number two job was to be a musician, was because I knew I had so much emotional trauma and baggage. That the odds of me, God forbid, you make someone like me famous, that's every movie you've ever seen about every musician. And again, I didn't want to be that statistic. But it meant making radical choices. You know, it meant at the height of my fame, I took two years off. People were so mad at me. There was no word like mental health at the time. There wasn't like, I'm taking a mental health break. Oh my God, the label was upset. Managers are upset. But I couldn't psychologically handle the level of fame I achieved. And I knew I couldn't. And so I stopped until I could figure out how to do it. That's just your responsibility. You know, that's you saying, I care about my happiness more than I care about any other thing. And every person owes that to themselves. All the kids in our foundation, all the adults that I work with. Until you're willing to say like, my happiness is the most important thing. I am not willing to tolerate the intolerable. I'm unwilling to compromise my well-being. That doesn't mean you get more precious. It means you figure out how to say no to the things that really harm you. And for me, that meant saying no to my job for multiple years. It meant turning down money multiple times. And so I think we each have to feel that commitment in our body individually. Yeah, I mean, the music business is just famous for leveraging basically really ill, vulnerable people and keeping them propped up on the road. It's inconscionable. The business does a lot of inconscionable things. I think managers and labels, just out of greed, you know, if there's no other motivation, they should figure out how to protect their investment. You know, let's say you sign a band and you pay a million dollars to sign them, and then you invest to another two million to help them make a record and tour. You're at least three to five million in on breaking a new act, and let's say they become successful. Great. You're maybe starting to make some money back. And then think of this person who had a 20 year career. It's a lot of income you're going to be earning. If that band kills themselves, it was a really dumb thing, right? It was a bad investment. So if nothing else, out of greed, I feel like boards of companies and record labels and managers should start to help protect their investment. And it's not by supporting them in their job. It's actually by supporting them as a human. What we need is human skills. You know, if I had a band, I would be getting them in therapy while they're making their record. And I would make the band do weekly therapy calls because how many bands break up because the singer doesn't feel as loved as their, whatever. There's personal squabbles that cause the band to break up. Not to mention if they're abusing drugs to try and sleep, you know, on a tour bus or things like that. So I do think that we need to start thinking of, you know, sustainable solutions to help support the human. You know, what can we do to support our human force? It's a really interesting topic.

SPEAKER_01: 29:08

Yeah, I agree. And I'm working on that as well because I think there does need to be some effective change. Jewel, thank you so much for being on the Check Your Head podcast. Everything that you've said has been so worthwhile and something that we can incorporate into our lives. Is there anything else that you want to say about mental health or about your music? I have a new album. called

SPEAKER_02: 29:30

Freewheeling Woman. It took me seven years to make this one. I wrote 200 songs to get to the 12 I like. And yeah, I think Long Way Around especially is about that. Sometimes you take the long way around. Sometimes life is full of twists and turns, but you get there. And so the record's really sort of a celebration of getting there. For me, the album's about an accumulation of really fighting to be the type of human I wanted to be. Because you don't get to choose how life changes, you just get to choose how it changes you. And to be a female in this industry, it's not a kind industry to women, especially women as we age. And I was really excited to write a record that I'm really proud of who I am. I'm proud of who I am at 47. I'm proud of my writing. I'm proud of my singing. I'm proud of my parenting and trying. So I tried to reflect all of that in the music.

SPEAKER_01: 30:18

Well, thank you so much, Jewel. You are a superhero in the greatest sense of the word. And thank you so much for being inspiring with both your music and your advocacy. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02: 30:30

Thanks. If anybody's interested in the tools that I've talked about, you can find several of them on a free mental health website. It's called JewelNeverBroken.com.

SPEAKER_01: 30:41

Yes, and I joined today. Nice. Next up, we have licensed marriage and family therapist Ryan Dusick, formerly the drummer for Maroon 5, who'll speak on Jewel's interview to give his best professional solutions and insights. By the way, did I tell you that Check Your Head Podcast won a People's Choice Podcast Award in 2024? With over 20,000 anonymous podcast listeners voting, we won our second podcast award, which made me feel so good knowing that we're on the right track for doing good in this world. So a big thank you to all of our superhero listeners of the podcast. But now, let's hear from therapist Ryan Dusick, He'll share his knowledge and advice. How can a therapist help to break the cycle of abuse for a client?

SPEAKER_00: 31:36

Well, it's daunting, but it's not impossible to overcome or to rewire those circuits because it is a conditioned experience of trauma. It's in your nervous system, it's in your body, it's in your mind. But once you change your relationship with yourself, which starts with self-compassion, understanding this wasn't my fault, I was an innocent victim of abuse and forgiving yourself for the ways in which you may be taking that responsibility on. A lot of times we experience shame as a result of abuse and trauma, which for an objective person doesn't make a whole lot of sense because why would somebody whose fault it wasn't feel shame for that thing? But it's a natural outgrowth because as a child, we don't know how to process these things. We internalize them as being our fault. And so beginning with that self-compassion, which develops into self-love and self-awareness, self-understanding, we begin to give ourselves the kind of love and care that maybe we weren't given as a child by our caregivers. And that's the work of a therapist. Just giving unconditional positive regard or even love to a client is the way that they learn how to do that for themselves, right? So that's the starting point. But then it's also just unwiring those conditioned responses. We may have learned you know, unhealthy ways of coping, ways of trying to deal with the pain of that and the shame of that. And so you have to develop new skills to replace those. The best way to unlearn an old behavior is to learn a new behavior. So instead of the ways that we might be self-destructive or coping in a way that actually makes things worse in the long run, we learn ways that are going to foster that self-compassion, foster that self-love, foster calm and relaxation and tools for living a life that's gonna be healthier in the long run and conducive to the healing that's important to overcome those traumas.

SPEAKER_01: 33:34

You said a lot there that I'm really fascinated about. One thing was healthy ways to express the emotions that we have. We all know about addictions, which is something that people grab onto to cope with those feelings. And then there are healthy ways with Jewel, she found journaling to be something that was helpful for her. I'm sure songwriting was probably something a lot of musicians, you know, bent that way, feel much more comfortable venting through songwriting and lyrics versus let's say one-on-one conversations. So what do you do if you find that somebody is using something dangerous? And in Jewel's case, it was shoplifting. What do you suggest as far as changing those behaviors and focusing on something that's positive?

SPEAKER_00: 34:29

Well, these are conditioned responses to pain, right? These are ways that we try to cope. And of course, if you weren't given the skillset to cope with pain in a productive way and you find something that alleviates the pain immediately, you're going to do that again, right? Whether it's taking a drink of alcohol or it's a behavior like shoplifting or sexual behaviors that feel good in the moment and may get you out of the experience of that shame or vulnerability or pain, you're going to identify that as a way to cope. And then you do that more and more and it becomes a conditioned response. Every time you feel the pain, you think about doing that thing. You have an urge to do that thing. So it's about Unconditioning that response by conditioning a new response. And that's hard to do. That's really hard to do. That's why addiction can be such a difficult thing to overcome because whenever we have that pain, we immediately go to that thing that we think is going to solve the problem. We forget that the thing that's solving the problem is actually causing more problems for us in the long run, because in the moment, When it's overwhelming, when you have this feeling that you feel like you can't deal with, you want something that's going to get rid of it immediately. So it takes time. It's just like unlearning any habit and starting a new habit. It's repetition and reinstating that thing over and over and over again until it becomes the new conditioned response. That's sort of the cognitive behavioral approach to it is when you have that thing that causes the pain, instead of going right to the old solution, Replacing that with something that's going to be more healthy and productive, that may be meditation, that may be journaling, that might be going for a hike, that might be calling a friend, that might be going to an AA meeting. Whatever it is that helps you in that moment, get to the next moment so that that craving passes. And if you do that enough over a matter of weeks and months, eventually, just like the original conditioned response, that thing becomes the conditioned response to the pain. But I wish it were that simple for everyone, but concurrently, a lot of other things kind of need to be happening, which is why it's so difficult. The importance of community, support, having the feeling that you're not alone in this, working on the shame, because these are unconscious things that happen. It's not all just cognitive, right? So that's why therapy can be so important and helpful, is working through the source of the pain and understanding your relationship to it. giving yourself that self-compassion, not just dealing with the behavioral aspect of it and the cognitive aspect of it, but the deep-rooted, unconscious, emotional, and somatic elements of it, how you experience it in your body, how you deal with those feelings in your body, how you sit with those feelings and process them. That's what therapy is for. That's what meditation is for, you know, getting a better understanding and then learning new skills to cope. That's why those things all are important. You have to look at it sort of holistically. Every element is a part of the experience. The thoughts, the feelings, the behaviors, the relationships are patterns in the way that we go about living our lives.

SPEAKER_01: 37:48

Yeah, you know, I feel like a lot of people look at therapy or counseling as somebody talking and the other person listening.

SPEAKER_00: 37:57

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 37:59

And I think that we need to look at therapy more as you are the leader with all these tools and you can guide us to learn different skills so that we can live better lives, healthier lives. Joel was talking about being disassociated from her feelings. And to me, it sort of explains, let's say, being mindful versus being on autopilot. And I find a lot of people just automatically do what they know instead of consciously thinking, you know, is there a better way? I mean, how would you explain being dissociated from your feelings?

SPEAKER_00: 38:41

Well, dissociation is a clinical term that refers to the experience of being disconnected either from yourself or from your surroundings. I think that we can all relate to dissociation For instance, as daydreaming, which is a way in which we might not be present, might not be connected to our surroundings. We might be just sort of fantasizing about something else in our mind. That's one way that we could be disconnected from our surroundings or from being in our bodies in the present. Most of us have had the experience at one point of driving and you get to your destination and you think to yourself, I don't remember driving for the last 20 minutes, right? That's essentially dissociation. It shows that your body can go on autopilot and can function fine without your thoughts being connected, your perceptions being connected to what's going on and what is the task that it's trying to complete. So that just shows you that we have the ability to be somewhere else in our mind and our body still can react and respond to things in real time to what's going on. Now that's functional, right? That's a way in which we function well while dissociating. However, on the other end of the spectrum, we do hear about dissociative identity disorder, which is a condition in which people create sort of alter egos, different parts of themselves that take over at different times. That's a way of escaping the pain of a trauma that was intolerable. So you just literally step into a whole other identity that's not feeling that pain, that's having a different experience completely. You learn that very early on because a child has a very active fantasy world. in their mind. That's the way they cope with the world by creating fantasies in their imagination. So there's a whole spectrum in between. And most of us to a certain extent can relate to the idea of checking out at certain times or just being, as you said, on autopilot. So how does that relate to what Jewel is describing and what people are experiencing when they go into therapy? A lot of us are disconnected from our feelings. We may bury our feelings. We might compartmentalize them. We just don't really experience them fully. because we at least perceive them to be too painful to deal with. So rather not deal with it, just kind of push them down, right? The other way in which a lot of people experience dissociation is disconnect from their bodies. If you had physical or sexual trauma, your body might not be a safe place to exist. To feel things deeply in your body is scary because it's connected to something scary and painful. Or just confusing, you know, there might be good feelings that go along with that and that's not tolerable because it brings up shame or other feelings that are really uncomfortable associated with that trauma. So whatever the experience may have been, whatever the pain that we're experiencing emotionally or psychologically, the work is growing the tolerance to sit with those feelings more presently, to actually experience our emotions and process them. to actually be present with our surroundings and to actually be present in our bodies and to feel that fully. Because whatever is occurring in this present moment, it's usually not as scary as what happened that created that disconnect in the first place, right? Just perceiving things as they are, accepting the present moment for what it is, learning to tolerate just the feeling of breathing and paying attention to our breath, learning to tolerate the fact that I'm sitting in a room All that I hear is the sound of the air conditioner or the sound of cars driving by in the background. And that's it. That's all that's happening in this moment. And now I can tell and actually be present that that's all that's happening. There's no bad man in the room with me that's going to get me. So it's a learned and developed skill, but it takes practice. You're going to be more present throughout your day the more you do it.

SPEAKER_01: 42:38

Right. So it's almost like going to the gym, doing something consistently in preparation for those moments that are stressful, that are overwhelming, having that as something that you can do on a daily basis as part of your routine. One thing that you mentioned, which I thought was interesting, is that people, I mean, as children, you go into a fantasy world when things are too overwhelming. Let's say when we talk about drugs and alcohol, you have that feeling, whatever it is that you don't like, and you immediately grab something to make you feel better. And if it's drugs and alcohol, you can go so down that road that you do become a different person and you don't remember the things that you've said and that you've done. And I think it's even harder in the music industry because I'm finding that, you know, having a drink, doing drugs, that might be more acceptable than let's say I'm going to talk to my therapist, right? Or I'm going to take my antidepressant today, you know? And it always kind of baffled me that people have no problem, let's say, doing Coke or heroin or whatever it is, even weed on a consistent basis. And they're like, oh my God, I'm not going to take this medication. This medication that's been tried and studied and is shown to be effective for this amount of people. I would rather just do this coke, which we all know can take you down a bad road. What are some things that could be changed in the music industry with that whole idea? Well,

SPEAKER_00: 44:23

I think that things are starting to change, certainly from where it was 20 years ago when I was on the road. There was no public dialogue about mental health and how to cope with things in a healthy way. And even then, it was probably better than it was 20 years before that. I mean, I think in the 70s and 80s, the idea was that if you're not strung out on cocaine or heroin, you're not doing your job as a rock star. That was the expectation that people were going to be pretty messed up. At least when I was doing it 20 years ago, the people that I saw that were having a lot of success had figured out how to be relatively healthy and sustainable in the way they were going about their careers, the people that were at the highest level. But I think that a lot has changed for the better in terms of the dialogue that we have and the resources that are available that weren't at that time. It's no different than the rest of our culture. A lot of times we think, ah, you just need to blow off some steam, go out on the weekend, go have some beers, go do something crazy, and then you'll be ready on Monday morning again. Doesn't always work that way. Sometimes that's fine for some people, as long as it's within the range of a healthy lifestyle and it's just having a little fun and letting some of the stress of your life out. But that's not a sustainable way of dealing with deep seated pain or heavy stress in your life. And for performers and artists, those two things oftentimes go hand in hand with getting to the place of success because art often comes from pain. You know, there's a reason why why people reach for expression when they've had trauma. And it's a very healthy way of coping with something that is overwhelming. And so, you know, pain can create good art. I don't think that you need to stay in that pain forever in order to continue to make good art. I think actually quite the contrary. To be sustainable in what you do as an artist, at a certain point, you need to develop healthier coping skills and start to heal and begin to find ways to overcome the traumas of the past. And so if you're essentially out there just doing drugs and drinking and then writing songs and singing them, you know, you have one good outlet and probably three or four bad ones that are better. I'm not knocking anyone for doing that. I did the same thing. I'm just saying if you develop that self-compassion that I talked about earlier, you're actually not helping yourself or being compassionate by putting more stress on yourself. You might feel better in a moment, but the next day you're actually more anxious and you have more shame. You're more depressed. And so the cycle just continues and continues to get worse. I think that young people entering the business today are hearing a lot more messages around mental health, how important it is, what you can do to foster and sustain good mental health. And to value yourself and value a healthy lifestyle, that being a performer or an artist is not synonymous with being fucked up. Those two things don't have to go hand in hand. They do for some good reason. And there is a permissiveness about that lifestyle oftentimes where it is insidious. It's like, how many jobs do you show up to every night? And somebody is like, hey, you want to do a shot? It's a little different in that regard, but it doesn't have to be that way. And I liken it to performing every night is like being a professional athlete. You know, it's essentially the same. You're asking a lot of your body, of your mind, of your emotions, because you're having to get up there and bare your soul when you sing a song and perform in that way. So in terms of the lifestyle, in terms of behavior, it's challenging on your relationships. It's challenging to every element of your being. And so you really have to be compassionate for yourself and understand that we all have limits. We're testing them daily when you're living that lifestyle. And so the onus is on me to be really loving towards myself and give myself the things I need in order to be healthy and to live this life in a sustainable way.

SPEAKER_01: 48:36

You know, one thing that Joel mentioned, just going back into ways that we can vent our emotions, she would use shoplifting. She said she felt that sense of control. You know, she was able to get something for herself. She felt empowered. There's a rush that could happen when you do these things. And I'm trying to think of healthy ways that people could feel that rush, but have it be positive and productive. The one thing that I'm trying to establish and do myself because I talk about it is to kind of have a wolf pack where it's family and friends that you trust. And when you come across a difficult emotion, you know, anger or sadness, whatever it could be, you call that person. And they know that, you know, when you call, it's because they need to vent or they need, you know, that emotional support. And I find that it works for me. It's just getting people on the phone because people are not used to talking on the phone as much as they were before. And now everybody texts. But what do you think about that idea, let's say, of a wolf pack or like a mentor? But I feel like one is not enough. I feel like a pack, maybe like four or five people might be good.

SPEAKER_00: 49:59

Yeah, well, what you're describing is essentially the model of a lot of support groups and why they exist and why they're helpful. My sobriety began with rehab, and that's a very intense experience of that, where you have a lot of people in one place together. going through early recovery together. And ideally, what I experienced was that sense of community that you're describing, where you really are supportive of one another. You have people around you who are going to be there when you're having a moment of real insecurity, anxiety, depression, and you have people to share that with and that will give you support. And that, you know, look, you can't be in rehab forever. That's a good experience to have for a month or two. But there's a reason why support groups exist like the 12 Steps, AA, NA, SLAW, Sex and Love Addiction Anonymous, many different forms of recovery. But that's one essential element. The reason why that's a part of all of the different kinds of recovery is that community is so important. That sense of having people around you that you know can understand what you're going through, that will at the very least give you some empathy, compassion, and support. Or maybe even give you some advice that's going to be helpful because they understand it in a way that nobody else in your life will. Like if you, if you are the one person in your family that had an addiction to opioids and you're having a craving for opioids, you know, and you call your cousin who has no experience or understanding of that, they might not have the right reaction. They might have judgment. They might have, understandably, that's not a knock on them. They don't have any personal experience with it. They may not have the education of what addiction to a certain substance looks like. So the relationship that you have specifically with people in the community of recovery, those are very important relationships that are different sometimes than the ones with your loved ones who may not have the same experience. And there's a reason why they're sponsors. You described some kind of coach or some kind of mentor. And that's their only role in your life. They're not your father. They're not your therapist. They're not your brother or sister. There's somebody who specifically has worked this program before and are now working it with you as a way that they stay sober and help you get and stay sober. And it just is that act of service that is so important to that stage of recovery. But I think it does exist beyond the walls of AA, the 12 step or other support groups. Because you described having four or five friends that are kind of a wolf pack. I had that in my early recovery where I met people in different environments, whether it was in rehab or in AA meetings or otherwise, but we became friends. And then we made plans to go on hikes together, you know, and we'd go on hikes and talk about sometimes recovery related, sometimes totally unrelated things, you know, just about life and about where we're at and where we're going. But we had that shared familiarity of the experience of addiction that bonded us and allowed us to feel and know, if I'm having a rough day, I can talk to this person and they're going to understand. And that's a really important thing to feel because a lot of times in addiction, whatever the form of addiction that you may have, and a lot of mental health disorders as well, it's very isolating. You know, the overwhelming feeling is that I'm alone in this and nobody will understand what I'm experiencing. And some of that is reality. But some of it is just the insidious nature of the disease where you become more and more isolated over time and start turning to a substance more and more or a behavior more and more to try to get our needs met to the exclusion of the important relationships in our lives. So, yeah, I mean, overcoming that requires stepping back into the world, stepping back into life and fostering relationships. And that may mean family. It may take some time to mend some of those relationships. Can't always expect that the damage and the wreckage that's been done in your addiction is going to be fixed immediately. Sometimes it takes years for loved ones to forgive if they ever do, depending on the level of dysfunction and things you've had in your life in the time that you were addicted. But we can choose new family as well. We can find new support. We can find new community. It's not a lifetime sentence. The wreckage of our past does not define our future. There's always a way to foster new connection and new meaning in our lives. There's no one way. There's no one road to accomplish and achieve all the things that are necessary to be healthy and happy and thriving. We all need the same things. We need the acceptance, the first step of being humbled and recognizing that our way of doing things has not been working. We all need to find connection and purpose in our lives. And a lot of times that connection comes through community. We all need a lot of things that are offered in some of those support groups, but it's not the only way. There's a lot of different roads that lead to happiness and fulfillment.

SPEAKER_01: 55:00

A big thank you to our musical guest, Jewel, and our mental health expert, Ryan Dusick. For more information on Jewel, visit JewelJK.com where you'll find information on Jewel's Lullaby Club in partnership with InspiringChildrensFoundation.org and also visit JewelNeverBroken.com For mental health fitness tools, education, and more, and for information on Ryan Dusick as a therapist, coach, speaker, and author of the book and podcast, Harder to Breathe, visit ryandusick.com. And on checkyourheadpodcast.com, you'll find the largest online list of free and affordable mental health and addiction recovery solutions, along with everything you've ever wanted to know about the Check Your Head podcast. So until next time, be brave, ask for help, and be persistent in finding the mental health and addiction recovery you need. Check Your Head Podcast is kindly supported and partnered with Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, DBSA San Gabriel Valley, Earshot Media, and Lemon Tree Studios in Los Angeles. Visit checkyourheadpodcast.com where we have over 100 solutions for mental health and addiction recovery. Thank you for your support, and thank you for listening.

UNKNOWN: 56:41

Music