Video Transcript: Modalities of Wellness

Welcome back to mental health integration. This is part one of Section five, and  we're going to be talking about modalities. We're going to be talking about how  to get well. We're going to talk about therapists and drugs and self care and all  

the fun stuff. I'm excited to really share you with you on this stuff. I get really  excited about these things. So anyway, we're going to jump straight in and we're going to start talking about therapy. Now I know what you're thinking. Do you  actually need a therapist? Are therapists really necessary? I mean, we have  community, we have all of these other things going on. Why do we need a  therapist, too? And my response to that is a therapist is specifically trained to  help you unwind the things that really get your soul in a mess. In my own case, I see a therapist about once a month. Right now, I would love to see her more. I  have seen therapists on a regular basis for the last, I don't know, 14 years, and  I've saw them on an irregular basis before that it's a priority for me to know that I can take care of myself and that I can be my best me, and regardless of what  you're going through, a therapist can help out with getting to the bottom of some  of those issues. So we talk about therapy, is it necessary? The answer is, a lot  of the time, yeah. The second question, though, is, who needs a therapist? And  that is a much more complicated question, because most of the time we're  asking, Well, if you're normal, do you really need a therapist? I mean, I assume  that if you're at a detriment, you need a therapist, because we want to bring you  back up to normal. But what if you're already normal, do you still need a  therapist? And the answer, I think, is yes. And the answer is yes for the same  reason that people go to the gym. Generally, people don't go to the gym  because they're incredibly strong and powerful. They go to the gym because  they want to be more strong and powerful, regardless of how strong they are.  And the same is true of a counselor. You don't go see a counselor because you  want to fix yourself a little bit. You go to a counselor to get better, and if there's  any headroom to get better, it's a good time to see a counselor, because the role and the hope is improvement. We want to get better. We want to do better than  we are right now. We want to be able to act better, be more freely ourselves. We don't want to be controlled by our trauma or our past. We don't want to have our  memories dictate what we're going to do in the future if they aren't actually  beneficial. We want to be able to move forward free. And the role of the therapist is to help you unwind all your stuff so that you can start moving forward free.  Now, how does that work with mental health issues? Well, in the case of mental  health issues, I would always recommend seeing a therapist, because while  your psychiatrist might be working with you on some things, they're not going to  be working through on unwinding trauma or triggers or what has gotten you into  this place. They'll be unwinding your physicality. They'll be unwinding your  mental brain chemistry. They'll be doing all sorts of work there, but they're not  going to be doing work asking questions like, I hear something that happened in  your childhood, and you're defining yourself by that. Is that really accurate? 

Mostly because that's just not their role. In my own case, I have had all sorts of  phrases that got stuck in my youth that defined me, whether or not they were  true. The phrase Brandon I'm so disappointed you in you got lodged in my  memory, and it became a key cornerstone in how I saw myself and how I  worked and believed in myself. Is that beneficial? No, it's horribly unbeneficial.  It's terrible. Why would anybody want to think that they're constantly a  disappointment? That's awful. But it had lodged itself as a cornerstone of my  own mental image of myself, my own self perception, and because of that, it  dictated the ways that I grew out of that. Does that have to do with bipolar  disorder? No, but it makes going through bipolar disorder harder, because  naturally, as I'm spinning around different parts of my own emotional  consciousness, this piece, this brain, and I'm so disappointed in you get stuck,  and I tend to circle around and orbit that, instead of being able to free myself of  that and continue working on other things. So when you have a mental health  condition, should you see a counselor? Yeah, we've got to get these problems  pulled out so that you don't have to worry about those. But is that the only work  that you should do? No and as someone who doesn't have a mental illness,  should you probably also see a counselor? Yeah, you've got stuff. My stuff that  I've worked through with my counselors is not because of bipolar disorder, it's  because of family trauma issues or trust issues or things that I'm growing  through. Now, I would say that I am a pretty well established, pretty secure  person, and I still see a counselor, because I want to get better and improve,  and there's still some place to do that. So please go see a counselor. They're  fantastic. That said, if you go see a counselor, what makes a good one? There  are a lot of counselors. Where I'm at in the Denver Metro area. There are 1000s  and 1000s of counselors, but there are also a lot of counselors who aren't that  beneficial, and there's a lot of counselors who are so beneficial, it's just  incredible. So what makes a good counselor? Well, in some work, Dan Siegel  did, he said that the relationship that you have with your counselor actually  makes up the majority of the benefit that you will get from a counselor. Can you  form a really tight, solid relationships, that is trusting, that you know that you can walk through with this person that's going to go a long way. That doesn't mean  that that's the only thing you should focus on, but that's a really big point. Is this  someone that you can trust? Is this someone that you feel like you can trust?  Because if you can't open yourself up and be perfectly yourself. There are parts  of you that are wounded that need to be worked on, that will not be worked on  because they're not safe, and the only way to work on those is if you have  someone safe to work on them with. Having someone safe to work on them with means you need to trust your counselor with anything, absolutely anything. In  my case, I had a rule when I went to see a counselor, which is, none of my  entire life is off limits. I will tell my counselor anything, because we need to be  able to drill down and get to the bottom of things, which means a phenomenal 

level of trust, to be able to say, I can trust you with anything now they're bound  by confidentiality laws and by all sorts of governing principles around their  licensure, but you still need to be the person who trusts them. Being trustworthy  and you trusting are two different things, and your counselor needs to be  someone that you can trust. Now, beyond that, you also want a counselor who is really competent and really good at what they do. In my own case, I've worked  with so many counselors, and I've done so much personal work that I don't think I can go see a counselor unless they had gone through some serious work,  unless they were really, really, really good, and I knew they were really good,  just because I've had so much exposure to mental health practice professionals  and so much exposure to mental health work, I kind of know what, what the  work I'm going to have to do. It's going to be complicated, and it's going to be  hard, and I'm going to be a great client, but I need, I need you to be really good.  You may not need the best counselor in the world, but you need someone who's competent. And you need someone who's competent, not just as a counselor,  but in the areas that you need them to be competent. For example, one of my  counselors was one of the most competent people in the world when it came to  identity work, when it came to understanding how our identity flows, and how we break off from an identity, and how addictions form, and how we form  dependencies on things, whether it is, you know, media or video games or  substances or anything it was, it was all about, how does your identity form  these things. He was not an expert in bipolar disorder. I didn't talk to him about  bipolar disorder, though. I was talking to him about identity, so it was perfect. My  counselor now is an expert on trauma, and I'm working through various issues  that come up. She's not an expert on, say, autism. That's great. She doesn't  need to be. She needs to be really, really, really competent in the places that I  need a competent therapist. And just like that, you also need a competent  therapist in the areas that you need a competent therapist. If this is your first go  with therapy, I would say, find someone who's competent as a generalist, unless  you know exactly what you need if you know you're struggling with addictions,  find an addiction therapist. If you know you're struggling with something else,  find somebody who's really, really, really good in that space. And you can ask for recommendations. You can ask what's going on, but in general, competence  and presence. You can also make sure. That your therapist is somebody who is  when they sit down with you, you feel heard. You might trust them, but they  might talk a lot like this relationship. Unfortunately, you've had to deal with me  talking a lot at you, but the role of a counselor is not to talk at you. It's to be with  you, to reflect, to help pull out what's actually happening inside you and bring  that to the surface so that we can work on those issues. So find somebody  who's really, really good at listening, who's present, who's comfortable with the  heaviest things, and what you'll find is that a lot of those counselors have had  their own journeys and have worked through their own stuff. They don't just 

understand what you're going through. A lot of them have history with what  you're going through, and because of that, they have this deep, deep  knowledge. It's not just conscious. I can understand what's going on, it's I know  exactly what's going on, and because I know it, I know the next steps. I know the hard points, I know the trigger points. I know what we're going to have to walk  through and what it's going to take to get you there, and we can do it together. If  you can find a therapist like that do it. In my case, being a big market like  Denver, it's really easy to find really, really great therapists, just because there's  so many in smaller markets, still a little bit harder, but with the introductions of  telehealth and how big that has gotten, especially after covid, there's a lot more  opportunity than there used to be to meet with really, really competent  professionals. So please find a really good therapist. This may not be in  network. A lot of really great therapists do not take insurance where I'm at, and  that might be the same where you're at too. So you might have to do some extra work. You might have to pay extra but whatever you do, do what you need to do, to find somebody who's really great, and then make it a priority to do that as  much as you need to in order to continue to improve and move forward. Next,  we need to talk about medications, because the first question with something  like bipolar or depression is, do I need medication? There's a lot of mistrust of  medications, and some of those are well earned. A good friend of mine is a  psychiatrist who went through her own mental health journey, and she said she  was trained in med school to be a great psychiatrist, but not to be a really, really  great psychiatrist for her patients. And the difference being that from other  doctors, they had a perception of what made a great psychiatrist, because  having been a patient, she had a different idea of what a really good psychiatrist, and so she became the latter instead of the former. So that said, a lot of people  had bad experiences with medication. Maybe they took medication and had  horrible side effects. Maybe they were prescribed too many medications. Maybe  they're afraid that if they're prescribed medications, they're going to have a bad  time. Maybe they believe that there's medications. They're going to have toxic  reactions with their body. There's a lot of reasons that people have hesitancies  towards medications, but in the cases of especially acute mental illness, this is  something that we just have to deal with, that it's a reality that for someone like  me, I cannot get better without pills. There's just no way pills are my lifeline and  to the rest of my life. If I want relationships with my wife and my family and my  kids, I get to take pills. If I want to be sane and hold a job, I get to take pills if I  want to own the house that I do and have a good life, I have to go through extra  steps to do that, and the first one of those steps for me is pills. So that said, are  pills necessary? Well, in the cases of severe mental illnesses, almost always  yes. In the cases of other mental illness, a lot of the times, yes, and that's  something to talk specifically with a psychiatrist about. Your primary care doctor  is trained to be everything, right? They're praying. They're trained to work with 

broken bones. They're trained to see everything. They're trying to see coughs  and colds and know the difference. And as part of their job, they also work with  mental illness, and there are some primary care doctors who are incredible.  Greg Knoph, who we heard about earlier, is a primary care doctor, and he is  incredible. But trying to do so much lends not knowing quite as much about  what's actually going on inside the brain, which means go see a psychiatrist, if  possible, because their whole job is to figure out what's going on inside your  brain. And they're really, really good at it, because they do it all the time. They  know what might work and what might not work. So as a general rule of thumb,  see. A psychiatrist. If you need pills, there's no shame in that. I need pills, no  shame in that. If you need to see a nurse practitioner or another person besides  a psychiatrist, go ahead and do it. Do what you need. As an additional note, if  you go through a hard season because some things like depression are  episodic. Bipolar can be episodic as well. If you need pills for a duration of time,  there is no shame in needing pills for a duration of time to get through  something difficult. Make sure that you do exactly what your doctor says. Make  sure you follow their advice and make sure that you are checking in on a regular basis if they're not working communicate, but get on what you need to get on if  you have friends or loved ones and they are taking a turn for the worse. It's also  okay to destigmatize that if you are not on pills, it's okay to say pills are fine. If  you are on pills, it's a great time to share your story and talk about how it has  been beneficial for you and how it can affect somebody else. Now, this is great  to say, you know, take your pills, go see your therapist, but there is another side  of this that is incredibly important, and that is what makes a good client. The  reason this is so important is because a psychiatrist and a therapist are there to  read your body and read your cues and act accordingly. They're there to work  with you, to try and get the most out of you. They're there to support you, but  you, as their clients, dictate what they see, what they hear, how they get their  information and what information they get. You as their client also have the  ability to dictate whether or not those treatments and those modalities are going  to work. As we mentioned before, if you get on pills, but you decide not to get off drugs like, you know, an opioid or something like that, where you're struggling, if  you decide not to get help with the addiction, it's really, really doubtful the  medications are going to work to their full potential. If you're struggling with  alcoholism and you don't want to tell your doctor, it could be that your  medications don't work to their full potential. It could be that there are side  effects or drug interactions that could kill you. So please tell your doctor  everything. No matter what it is, their job is to help you get well, and they can't  play chemistry set in your head if they don't know what other chemicals are in  there. So tell them everything. Furthermore, if your doctor says, in order for this  to work well, you need to sleep regularly. Do your best to do that. If they say you need to make sure that you're not doing various activities, do your best not to do

that. But in general, with both your therapy and your psychiatry, you need to do  a few things. You need to be regular, show up every time, ready and  communicate. This means you don't miss appointments. This means you make  every appointment. This means when you make your appointment, you show  up. And if you need notes, you bring notes. You communicate everything that  you need to with your psychiatrist or your therapist, and you give them all the  tools that they need in order to help you. In some cases, you may need even to  bring a friend or a family member or a spouse, because you know that you are  not the best and most reliable, credible source about what's going on in your  own life. This is what happened to me when I was diagnosed with bipolar. I  always brought one of my parents with me. They didn't need to come into the  room with my psychiatrist, but I knew that I wasn't stable enough to give good  feedback, and he needed good feedback. So if you need to bring someone else  in the room with you. Bring them into the room with you. If you need to take  notes every day about what's going on and whether or not the medications are  working and whether or not you're making progress, take notes and bring them  into the office. If you need to look and keep a calendar of exactly how your  moods have been. Keep a mood calendar whatever you need to do to give good information and feedback. You are the only source of information and feedback  that your psychiatrist is going to get. So get the best feedback you can to them  so that they can make the best possible recommendations next. Make sure you  do the same with your therapist and be open and genuine. We can't work on  problems in mental health without you being honest. So be just painfully honest,  because if you're honest, those problems can come to the surface, and there's  no problem that's too scary. There are just problems that are hidden and  problems that are hidden we can't fix, they just continue to get worse down  there. Next we told you to be regular with your visits. Also be regular with your  work. If you need to take your medications twice a day at specific times, take  them twice a day at those specific times, do whatever you need to do to make  sure that happens. If you need to set alarms, set alarms. If you need to tell your  boss so that you can get a few minutes off, tell your boss if you need to find a  way to eat them with food, find a way to eat them with food. Whatever you need  to do, make sure you do it. This is your permission to live your life again. Do not  play around with this. Take it seriously and get it done. That means taking your  pills, taking care of yourself, doing what it takes, whatever your doctor says, Just do it. It also means communicating. If you're feeling super nauseous because of  a drug and you don't know if you can take it because you're throwing up, you  need to tell your doctor as soon as you possibly can, if you are feeling like you  might be allergic to a drug, tell your doctor as soon as you can. If you are feeling like this amount isn't the right dosage, tell your doctor as soon as you can you  are not your doctor. Don't just go and change what your dosages are and what  you're doing with your pills. Tell your doctor so that they're filled in all the time. 

And then, if they say, Hey, let's try this. Let's ramp this up. But if you reach a  point where it gets to be too much, then stop. Then follow your doctor's advice. If they say, Hey, I got to a point it was too much, I ramped down, back to where  you said, Write that down. Show them what you need, or just bring evidence of  that. Bring a spouse, or just tell them yourself, if you have a really great memory and you're still doing really well, I have not had that great of a memory and been doing that well when I was in that position. So I always had to bring notes, or  had to bring someone with me. But bring feedback, follow your schedules, do  the work. The last thing, final note on therapy as well, it's not enough. Just to be  authentic, you have to be willing to do the work, which is, it's going to be hard  and it's going to be scary. Sometimes, when you start looking and taking off  masks that you've worn, and you start looking at who you are as a person now  that you're separate from identity that you've given yourself, it's going to be  scary, and being vulnerable is going to be scary. But all the best work is through  that. It's not you can't skirt around it. It's not somehow you get past it. You have  to go straight through it. So do your best to do the hard work. If you get  homework from your therapist that you need to do a mental map or that you  need to do a map of your age progress, whatever you need to do, do your  homework. Right? Take your healing as seriously as you can. They're taking  your healing as seriously as they can, but they can't outwork you. Your Progress and your work depend on your progress and your work, so just do it now.  There's another side of being a good client that's really, really important, and  that is self care. Self care is so important because how you take care of yourself is going to dictate how well you do with all this other stuff, right? I will be the first  to say if there's a TV on, I am I'm just mesmerized. I turn into a zombie. So I  can't I can't leave the TV on when I'm working. I can't be around TVs if I want to  get anything done, and if I want to be in good relationships with people. I meet  them at coffee shops and stuff that don't have TVs, because I just know I just  disappear into a zombie. All of us have different self care things that turn into  distractions. But we're going to start with some of the simplest ones. Some of  the simplest ones are things like, Do you sleep? I can't tell you the number of  people that I've met with over the years that have said I'm struggling with my  mental health. And I said, Okay, are you doing medications, therapy? And  they're like, yes, and nothing's helping. When do you go to bed? I go to bed at  like, three. Really, when you wake up, I have to wake up for work at six. Oh, so  you're getting three hours of sleep and trying to do therapy and medications and wondering why this isn't working for you. I wonder why this isn't working for you.  And I'd go, ah. Ah, yeah, I don't think I can change that. Well, then you can't get  better. I can't help you decide that your healing is important, but you need to  make that decision. So there are certain things that you can do to take care of  yourself. The first is sleep. And I used to joke around that I treat myself like a  glorified eight year old. You know, I still have a bedtime I still do best when I go 

to bed at that bedtime. My wife is a night person. I'm a morning person. So if I  go to bed at bedtime, and then wake up really early, I tend to be a lot healthier  and do better. But it does mean that, you know, I'm not hanging out with my wife  as much because she would gladly be up until two in the morning every night.  That's just how she functions, which is fantastic, but it's not me, and I need to do the things to take care of me next to things like diet. Do you eat? What works for your body? I have to eat a lot of vegetables to feel good, like an absurd number  of vegetables, and I've watched it and tracked it over the years, and I know that.  So I eat a lot of vegetables. My wife jokes around that I'm part rabbit, but if it  makes me feel good and it gives me the results that I'm looking for long term.  I'm good with that. I use the general rule of thumb with my diet that I eat now,  what's going to make me feel best tomorrow, not just what's going to taste best,  and that has served me really, really well. Just take care of yourself in that way.  You know, if your meds are not working great, but you drink six cups of coffee a  day, talk to your psychiatrist. It could be that there's an interaction there that's  preventing your meds from working the way they could. If you are having a few  drinks every night, talk to your therapist or your psychiatrist about that. You  know, see if there's something going on that's preventing your meds from  working as well as they could if you are not eating regularly, if I don't keep my  blood sugar levels fairly stable, my meds don't work as well as they should. So I  have to take a I have to take account of that and do my best to make sure that I  stabilize my own blood sugar levels by eating regularly and eating the right kinds of foods. If I don't drink enough water, my meds don't work as well as they could. If I don't exercise, my meds don't work quite as well as they could. There are all  sorts of things that can play a part in your medications and your therapy  methods being as effective as possible. Those things all make up self care and  it's important to practice. So now that we've talked about a few of those, I want  to touch on a few others. We've talked about sleep, we've talked about diet,  we've talked a little bit about exercise, but another note on exercise, exercise is  shown to be as effective as an antidepressant in mild to moderate depression  over six to nine months and over longer periods of time, sometimes even more  effective in mild to moderate depress. Depression is an antidepressant. Some of these things aren't just taking care of yourself to make your meds work. Some of them actually like improve your moods and help create a better state. That's  really good. The other things are, your body naturally cleanses and works  through things. When you do things like exercise, they're really important. You  are made to move. You are made to do stuff. When God put Adam in the garden and said, Go take authority over this thing, he did not say, sit on your butt and  just hang out. He said, Take care of it. And anyone who's ever been a farmer  knows that is a lot of work. There's not a small amount of work to take care of  horticulture. It's a lot of work. And Adam gets to do a lot of work. That's what  you're made for. You are made to do a lot. So do stuff, move, create space, all of

that. That's where this next slide comes in. Sleep, exercise, diet. These are key  things if you want to make sure that you feel better. Now, there's a lot of other  things that also come up around mental health issues, and they get tagged as  good self care. These things like media, natural remedies, just feel better, oils,  prayer, community, engaging, spirituality, I want to knock through each of these.  So let's knock through each one of these, one at a time. Media. Let's start out  there. Since the invention of the iPhone, there have been numerous studies  done that show anxiety has gone up in direct relation to. Smartphone use, it  seems that when we plug in, it actually dramatically affects us and it hurts us.  So, you know, a lot of us have jobs where we have to stay plugged in in some  way to social media. You know, I've run companies for the last goodness, long  time, and we have to be on social media to promote our companies. There are  engagements you just have to make. So do that. But if you can try to stay off  Instagram for 16 hours, you know, don't watch Tik Tok videos for 22 hours. You  have to disengage to be able to fully engage yourself. So disengage with the  media. It's taking up that space so that you can engage with other things, natural remedies. Are they helpful? Sometimes, you know, having the right vitamins and nutrients in your body can be really beneficial. That said for you, is it going to be  the only thing that you need? I have no idea. Meet with your psychiatrist. Meet  with your doctor. Talk to them if they have some things, and they say, Hey, we're  going to try some medications. We're also going to supplement these with these  other things. Great. Do it? Take care of yourself. Make sure that things are  moving that right direction, but always run this by your doctors too. Don't just try  and say, I'm going to just do my own thing and I won't need any additional help.  What I've seen personally working with mental health is that there aren't silver  bullets with this stuff. You can't say one modality is going to work and another  isn't going to work instead, what we often find is that it takes a combination of  things. So if you need to increase your nutrient density and stuff, great, do it.  You might need to do that along with a number of other different factors, like self care, medication, sleep, diet, exercise. You might have to do it all. I have to do  pretty much all of it, and when I do that, I get permission to live. What about the  just feel better approach? Does that actually help? Can you just feel better about your mental health issues? Generally, no. Generally, it doesn't work. Most of us  try that right away. Most of us will tell you that we're having problems after we've tried that and exhausted all of our options. So in general, yeah, should you try  and stay positive? Yes, have you probably tried that? Probably, so I don't think  it's really great help. A lot of people around the United States have said, Hey,  have you tried essential oils. My wife and I actually like enjoy essential oils for a  couple things. It's great, but I am not using them as my only modality towards  health, right? These are not these are not the silver bullet. If you want to add  them to something you're doing great, but please do not treat anything like the  one thing, the one thing that you're looking for is to get healthy, and that might 

take a lot of stuff, so please don't treat it like the only thing. What about prayer?  Does prayer work? Absolutely. Studies have even shown that prayer specifically  works in some ways the same way as exercise does in relieving mild and  moderate depression. It's amazing on top of what you believe God can do in the  midst of it. So I mean, there's studies about just the act of prayer, and then  there's what God can do on top of that, pray a lot. But it's important to note that  when Jesus was walking through healing people in the New Testament, not  everybody got healed. And then we see descriptions of how Jesus did His  ministries. Those are not prescriptions on how you need to act. Those are  descriptions of what Jesus did. So if you're speaking with God, and he says you  need to pray for healing, pray for healing. But know that some of us, like me,  have wanted that for a long time, and God has said no, and that's okay. How  about community? Community has got to be the answer. Get around people,  right? Yes. Community helps alone. These issues fester and grow, and they get  bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. But when you're around other people,  you have opportunities to be around other people and to enjoy their company.  And if you're an extrovert like me, that's great. Go be around other people. Go  get in community. My wife is an introvert who needs, like, two to three people in  her life to feel really great. Does she need people? Yeah, but not like I do. She  needs just a few people on a regular basis that she can touch in life. And then  she's fine do what you need to do with community. And I want to give you the  permission to release the expectations of what that needs to look like for me, I  have like, extrovert problems. I need to meet with a lot of people, and I do best  when I do so during the pandemic, my wife's mental health has been  phenomenal. She's loved it, and I am lonely. So now that the pandemic is  coming to a place where things are starting to open up, I'm starting to do better,  but she's still in a space where she's doing great, because she's had the  opportunities to take the space that she needs. She doesn't need the  expectation that she needs 100 people in her life. She needs the few that she  has, and she needs to go deep with them. I also needed to release the  expectation that I could be fine with just a couple people in my life that I could  touch base with on a regular basis. That's not me. I do better in crowds. And so  for me, what community looks like is very important. The one thing I would say  about community is community needs to be deep enough that you actually  benefit from it. You can't just talk about surface level things all the time. You do  need community that will touch on deeper topics with you. I do not have the  capacity not to talk about deeper subjects. Small talk is great, but we're going to  talk about hard stuff. That's just me as a person. But if you can just talk small  talk all the time, know that you need to go deeper. You need to touch on where  you're at and you need to have community around you that supports you, that  might be a small community behind that as well. Finally, what about engaging  spirituality? Engaging spirituality is really interesting because studies have 

basically shown that if your spirituality points you to a position where you believe God is benevolent towards you, you will improve so much. Studies have also  shown that general church membership helps people with depression and  anxiety, but that in really judgmental or toxic environments, it can actually make  things worse. So in general, this is really good. It's phenomenal, in fact, but  there are certain situations where it's not going to be helpful, and in those  certain situations, it's important to give yourself a little bit of leniency and a little  bit of credit and just engage how you can we'll talk a lot more about engaging  spirituality in the next few weeks, because we'll talk a lot more about this  integration between spirituality and mental health, and that is really where this  comes together. Because your spirituality can't just exist on its own apart from  your life. It has to integrate with your life and so engaging that process is  incredibly healing and beneficial. It's also hard work. But what's really beneficial  that's not hard work. So finally, I want to give you one of the greatest tools in the  world for working with self care. This is it halts. Are you hungry, angry, lonely,  tired or stressed? Now, usually when I teach in classrooms, as students raise  their hands and say, Okay, how many of these are you right now? Are you  hungry? Are you angry? Are you lonely? Are you tired? Are you stressed? And I  have students raise their hands. I hold up the number of fingers that they're up  right then. And usually everyone I have closed their eyes. They're sitting there  with their eyes closed, hold their hand up. And almost always, the majority of  them are three or four, and sometimes even five. Now this tool actually comes  from Alcoholics Anonymous. The s was an addition that I heard from a counselor and I loved but normally the rule of thumb is halt, H, A, L, T. Are you hungry,  Angry, Lonely or Tired? Because these are physical cues that you are in a  compromised state, and you may relapse with alcoholism, but when you add s  and add stress in there, it's just, I use it as a signaling light of how well I'm doing  and what's going on in my life and what I need to do to take care of myself  physically. So as a general rule of thumb, you can treat it one, zero or one is like a green light, two is like a yellow light, three is like a red light, and then four and  five is just like extra red of what you should do to take care of yourself. So if at  zero or one, the right answer might be, you're doing fine right now. You don't  need to do anything extra. Just notice, if you're two of those things, say you are  hungry and tired, then it might be a good thing to fix one of those two things, or  both of those things. If you are three of those things, go. Fix them, because  you're going to have a harder time if you know that you're hungry and you're  tired and you're, you know, lonely, it's going to be hard to do to deal with that. So go ahead and fix something. I have noticed there have been entire periods of  my life where I have been one or two of those. The pandemic has made so  many people, lonely and stressed at the same time, that any time, that at any  point in time, there are two of them, and then they can add those others.  Additionally, I've also noticed in my life that if I am hungry, I am also angry, 

lonely, tired and stressed, because I just don't do well when I'm hungry. I've also  notice that when I'm tired, I think that I'm hungry, because it's a general cue for  me, and I'm also often lonely and stressed or angry. So know where your cues  are, how they line up, and the best way to do that is just by paying attention and  by seeing it. It's also one of the greatest tools ever if you have kids, if your kid is  acting up like mine do on occasion, you can ask the question, are they hungry?  Because I can, I can, I can feed it and it might start acting like my son or  daughter again. Is it angry? Do I need to find out why, before it seems like it  turns back into my son or daughter again? Is it lonely? Just need some time with me. Is it tired? Does any nap that's stressed? I use the word it because  sometimes my kids act like little monsters instead of like my kids, and normally  it's because they're hungry, angry, lonely, tired or stressed. So you can use that  anytime free of charge on those relationships. I've noticed as well with  medications. If my meds don't feel like they're working right, often, it's because  these things are off. Often. It's because I haven't eaten so my blood sugar levels aren't great. It's because I'm tired and I haven't rested well. It's because I've got  a lot going on, so I'm thinking and turning through so much anger or so much  stress, or I'm feeling lonely, so I'm just not at a place where I'm present and I'm  ready to give my 100% and in any of those cases, it seems to compromise  what's going on with me physically and what's going on with me emotionally. So  if you see that you're not feeling 100% this is a great place to start, and then you can move on to have I taken my meds? Have I gone to therapy? All of that.  Right. From there, these are great tools. If you follow these tools, there is a  much, much greater likelihood that you will experience stability with mental  health issues. If you do not use these tools, there is much less probability that  you will experience stability with your mental health issues. This is just the tools  that you need to get by. It's a lot easier to build a wall with a hammer and nails  than it is to build it without and these are your hammers and nails in this mental  health journey. So frame it up, start building. And this may be a hard and, you  know, harrowing journey through this, but if you do this, it can actually be pretty  fun. You know, when you start realizing that hungry, and alone is tired, stressed,  that these things can these are the things that your spouse can call out. These  are things that you can both rely on, that you can work on your therapist, and  you can talk about your psychiatrist. And these things they can you can start  laughing about them, because you can say, yeah, I really was kind of crazy.  Yeah, I really was kind of not in my right mind at all. Then those things that you  did in your right mind, they become a little bit humorous, and you can have a  little more fun with them. Little more fun with them. Now we've learned through a lot in this section, we are going to continue going through additional things in the next section like this. So hold on, get your notepads ready, and we'll get ready  for the next section. In Section five, part two,