The Patterns Behind Our Invisible Wounds: Exploring the Truth Behind Mental Health | 001

Welcome to the first episode of why we feel and how we heal. Let's dive in. Let's start at the very beginning, because I really want to establish a solid foundation around why we feel and like, what are feelings? What is emotion? So in the fun world of Jody, feelings are simply patterns, right? They're the way that we've learned how emotions flow. They show the exposure that we've had and the depth and the complexity with which we can experience those spaces. And so feelings reveal our past experiences. They reveal what we think is possible. They reveal our ability to process things and what potential outcomes we can find in different spaces. Feelings are connected to the way that we see the world. They're connected to the way that we experience the world, and they're connected to where we find resource. And so when things make us happy, sad, angry, upset, helpless, victimish, powerful, powerless, angry, all the different things, right? But that's all rooted in previous patterns. And so it's rooted in the way that we learned how to experience our emotions. So I share that in saying the the only access that we have to our emotions is dependent upon how much of them we've ever been allowed to explore, either on our own or with the people that were in the communities that raised us. So whether that that was your familial community, whether that was your educational community or societal communities, whatever I feel like, we all come from lots of different communities, and so understanding how we learned to engage with our emotions is really dependent upon what we learned from those spaces. And let me give you a little metaphor and just share that much in the same that we would not really expect a kindergartner to be able to read a Harry Potter book from front to back, because Harry Potter books are pretty intense. They're pretty long, and most kindergarteners are just learning how to read right and so emotions are kind of the same. And I'm not saying that we handle our emotions like kindergarteners. I'm sharing in the idea that oftentimes there's big, huge, complex emotions that we're expecting people to handle that have a kindergarten education on feelings. So I just wanted to preface that and say I would much rather give you guys an analogy or a metaphor to learn from than to expect you to learn it from theory. So go with me on my my journey here. Imagine that you walked into an ER with your teenager, whether that was your niece, your nephew, your child, your neighbor, your child's friend, whoever that is to you, you're entering the ER with a teenager who has a presumably broken arm, and the origin of that broken arm is unknown, meaning you're not sure if they were playing with their friends, if they fell off their bike, if they fell off their bed, it happened somewhere in their very normalized environment, and something in that environment contributed to this injury. So from the beginning, most ER visits start in triage, right? So you go back to triage, they're establishing relationships. They're saying, Do you have insurance? They might be taking your temperature, your vitals, all the things, right? And they're kind of asking about the origin of the injury. And then from that place, we're usually tucked back in a little room or off to the side and triage. And then we're invited back into the ER, we're often taken for an x ray, right? They X ray the child's arm and then send you back to the the fun little room that you're waiting in. And in that room you're waiting for a nurse or a doctor to come in. And eventually the doctor comes in and puts the X ray up and turns the light on, and at this point is when myself, personally passes out. I've had both of my kids break their arms, and there's something about seeing your own child's bone broken that just throws you for a loop, or at least it throws me. But as soon as I see the evidence of the injury, I pass out, and so I digress. Let's go back to this. The doctor puts the X ray up, and he shows you, or she shows you, hey, here's where it's broken. Here's what we think is going on. This is what it looks like. And then the doc or the nurse shares a treatment plan, right? They walk you through what happens from there, and they say, you know, we're going to throw a cast on it. And depending upon the level of injury and the age or the activity level of the child, they may also say, You know what, we're also going to put it in a sling. We we really want to immobilize this injury while it heals. And he shares that the cast and the sling may stay on. On for four to six weeks, depending upon healing time. And usually, OT and PT are both called in. And so OT is going to come in and say, Are there any accommodations that this child needs at home? Can they get in the shower? Can they get out of the shower? Can they get in their bed? Can they put their clothes on? Right? They're going to say, Are there any accommodations this child needs at school, like, is this the hand that you write with? Do you need help doing X, Y, Z, the the next thing is they may say, hey, are there any accommodations this kid needs for sports, right, or for work, or for whatever these things are? They're there to make accommodations and to keep the injury immobilized so that the healing can take place, and the goal really is to protect the injury and to immobilize it, so that the longer it's immobilized, we're allowing the injury to heal from every angle. And so imagine that four to six weeks pass, and the cast comes off, and maybe the child shifts into a brace, or maybe temporarily. Where's the sling, here or there, and PT is involved. And I know what you guys are thinking. You're probably thinking, What the hell does this have to do with feelings? But stay with me, right? So PT is involved, and PT is now teaching the child how to reintegrate this newly rehabbed arm back into all the spaces that it used to function normally. So it's saying, Hey, we're going to go back and we're going to try and toss a ball. We're going to try and use it to pick something up heavy. We're going to try and write sentences with it. We're going to do all kinds of things with this arm to make sure that it healed properly and that they can re acclimate the world as they knew it before, with a fully functioning arm, makes sense, right? Let's pause for a second and shift into a little bit of an edit to the story. So imagine that we are in the same ER with the same child, yet the injury this time is invisible. The injury is a mental health challenge. So whether it's an anxiety attack, a depressive moment, an uncontrolled behavioral outburst, this child is experiencing big, huge emotions that are outside their realm or their capacity to handle the emotion, and they feel very much out of control. They feel out of control themselves, the parent, the teacher, the aunt, the uncle, the grandparent, whoever's with the child, also feels very much out of control because they're not sure how the kid got here or how to help them. And so let's walk through the same things you're in triage. Same info is gained, same questions are asked, and instead of an x ray, most oftentimes, you'll gain a visit from a social worker. The social worker then makes a handful of determinations, and then maybe orders a psych eval. And so with the psych eval, in walks either a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a psychotherapist, maybe even a counselor, depending on where you are, for medical services. And after a conversation ensues, with or without the adult present, there's usually then a meeting between the doctor, the nurse, the social worker and the mental health professional, and one of them comes in to give their opinion, and they then share their opinion with the adult and the child, and they make a plan. And the plan usually involves a phone number, right? So the plan says, Hey, here's a referral to a licensed mental health professional, and we want you to call and make an appointment with one of those people I named. Right? Is it a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a psychotherapist, a counselor, a social worker, whoever that is, right? School psychologist. And they're going to say, then we want you to follow up with your GP. And let me pause here and say, there's no cast, there's no sling, there's no ot there's no immobilizing the injury, yet, there may be a pain med involved that they offer, but there's no accommodations. There's no accommodations made at home, at school, at work. There's not enough that's done for this invisible injury,

and maybe we could say that PT is maybe PT is involved, and in place of PT, we have talk therapy, right? So maybe one of those licensed mental health professionals is included and is the talk therapy portion of this child's treatment plan talk therapy often involves and shifts into a quick diagnosis, and oftentimes the quick diagnosis also has a prescriptive solution behind it, meaning a medication, and whether that med comes from a psychiatrist or your GP. Oftentimes we're leaning into medications as a solution. So let me just pause and say, Can you imagine leaving the ER with air, quoting a broken arm or an invisible injury with no cast, no sling and zero protective measures, yet a handful of pain meds. My question is, what have we normalized, knowingly or unknowingly, that's contributing to the way that our kids are having to function in this world? What are we allowing ourselves to overlook that hinders their ability to feel their own emotion? What access do we have to our own emotions? And or maybe we were that kid. Maybe we were the kid that never learned how to feel our feelings, and now we have kids that can't feel them right. How were emotions and feelings modeled to us, and what did we learn as kids about our own emotions. Were feelings off limits in our household, or were they discussed, or were they bottled up, or were they shouted, right? What did it look like for you? Did you have to walk on eggshells around certain people? Were you always protecting other people? Or were you the scapegoat, the rescuer, or the bad apple, right? Or what are all the other crazy labels that we placed on kids, right? Or how many of us have placed that label on our own kid and said, Well, he's just a jerk, or he just doesn't want to go to school, or he never listens, or he doesn't want to behave, or he's all over the board. Or she right, I don't know why I was just on the heat Bender, but, or she right, maybe one of your daughters has experienced or earned one of these labels, and I just share this in saying, however we're allowing kids to experience their emotions is how they're going to experience their emotions, and however we were taught to experience our own emotions and our own feelings is the only access we still have to them, and however we're modeling that to our children is who they're becoming. So if we're drinking our feelings or eating our feelings, or shopping to decorate our feelings, or completely disconnecting and ignoring our feelings, it doesn't mean they're not there, and the evidence of how we currently process our emotions is advertised by our lifestyle. I just want to say that it's noted that the things that we've normalized and the words that we use to describe things and the communities that we engage in, and the stances that we take and the people that we connect with and the choices that we make are all evidence of the way that we feel, and they're all evidence of the way that we've learned to feel. So let me circle back to the ER story. If you leave without a cast, without a sling or with zero protective measures, how do we allow injuries to heal if we don't protect them, or, more importantly, how do we allow injuries to heal if we don't understand their origin? Can you imagine taking a medication as a long term or a short term solution to something that's not being protected as it heals friends. We as a society, have completely normalized this approach, and it's where we are present day. And to make matters even worse, we've normalized this for kids, for teens and for young adults, that medicating the symptom is the answer, and just keep it moving. So when a kid shows up in the ER with a mental health challenge and leaves with the same access to their very big emotions, the pattern is simply going to repeat itself. The anxiety attack is going to get bigger, the depressive symptoms are going to get deeper, and the meds are going to get stronger. And often time the behavior simply worsens. The kid is labeled, the kid is stigmatized, and they're often left to their own devices because nothing is working, which leaves parents, teachers, coaches and mental health professionals scrambling for answers, frustrated and often also left to their own resources. So I just want to surface this and say, How aware are you of these patterns, and where do these Where do these patterns currently live and show up in your families? Where do they show up in your relationships? Where might they show up in your community? And how curious are you about how to shift them, how to help make a couple of edits so that people start healing, including yourself. How have we allowed these patterns to overtake our professional spaces in our current approach to mental health, without asking questions? I. And what do we need to do to start learning new patterns and start inviting some emotional awareness, and start leaning in so that we can model to our kids how to handle healthy emotions and how to handle emotions that feel really big. I'm going to pause there because I feel like I've shared a ton of content, and I don't want to overwhelm you guys yet. I do want to invite you into the next episode. In the next episode, we're going to dive further into patterns, we're going to dive further into emotions, and we're going to talk about healing. Let me share this with you. From Teen Mom to doctoral student, I know I've walked a road that most people will never and I share that in saying I've had the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I've been invited to some really cool conversation. I've sat at tables and been part of teams with incredible humans. I've been honored, I've been awarded. I've been part of historical changes, and I've been privy to witness people's exponential growth, including my own. Yet I've also been a part of systems and products, of systems that didn't work for me. I've been a part of and product of things that hindered my growth, that crushed my spirit and that paralyzed me, dead in my tracks. Yet the totality of all of those different experiences has created the today version of me, and I refuse to sit down. I refuse to sit back, I feel like I know too much, and I've come too far to stop asking questions and to start being part of the change. So I share that saying I've walked roads that have created some really cool insight on how systems work, where cultures emanate from, why patterns repeat, and what needs to change, and what I'd love to share with each and every one of you is how all of those things are connected, and in my humble opinion, maintaining a current dysfunctional society and the role that we both can play in this is easier than we think. So if this piques your interest, please head over to Jody gibson.com and submit a question. If it piques your interest, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, follow me on Instagram. My handle on every social media platform is Jody Gibson. It's the at symbol, J, O, D, E, G, i, b, s, O N. It's really simple, and I'm just going to say this too. I'm toying around with an idea of creating an inner circle where we can take this conversation offline and go all the way deeper. If that speaks to you, and that's something you might want to take part in DM me on Instagram and say, Jody I'm in. So as we wrap up, remember, healing is about creating awareness and taking intentional action. And in my famous words, it doesn't matter where you started. What matters is what you're willing to learn in order to heal. Thanks, friend. Stay amazing. You.