ASM231 I Feel Sad

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welcome to another episode of ask science mike this is a weekly podcast where we believe that every sincere question deserves an honest and non-judgmental response i'm the host of the program mike mccarg the science mic of the title and most of the time the way the show works is a few questions get picked uh to be responded to by me and i do my best to respond just as sincerely as i can with an evidence-based research answer to the given question sometimes questions are sent in that i can't answer or perhaps that no one can answer and in those cases we just try to hold space for questions but the work that i've been doing you know i've been doing ask science mike now for over five years and you know i've been doing work in public media and by public media i mean publicly consumed media not publicly funded media but i've been doing that now for um eight or nine years this has been the work i've been doing for some time and it's an interesting thing for me to be a media person or a public figure as i'm shy and i'm pretty withdrawn and i'm a very sensitive person and a lot of the things that people get into media work for horrify me i don't particularly enjoy being the center of attention um i'm kind of anti-fame so it's always been a wild experience for me and the reason i've done this work for so long now is because i care for people and that i've believed that there is some fundamental unhealth in our society that in a small way i could address so if you look at the pattern of my work over the years i have tended to work in response to some source of human suffering my work started around faith transitions around religious fundamentalists whose face faith was changing and in a way that estranged them in their communities and marginalized them among their friends and families and i felt drawn to that suffering and um needed to respond by offering solidarity that's uh from the soil soil at least is where my first book finding god in the waves came from as well as my work on the liturgist podcast [Music] but i've always as a person who has suffered been aware of human suffering and when i become more aware of more human suffering i tend to want to respond to it i want to offer help and aid how i started to move into conversations around gender identity and sexuality around disability around race and racism and sexism and all these topics that we often lump together under the category social justice a term that is almost meaningless to me um for me it's always been a question of do we or do we not recognize when people are hurting and do we or do we not recognize when our actions contribute to that hurt and when we recognize that are we willing to do something about it and that's been the animating energy behind my work all these years and that has meant i am not a terribly good performer i have a talent for being sincere and earnest and honest with all of you and that also means that i do my best to be careful i try to share from places of resilience i try to share from places that i feel strong or places where i've learned through time and through reflection something that gave me hope and that means my friends that when i feel down and when i feel sad and when i don't see a way out of that sadness when i feel especially hopeless i don't really know what to do because human psychology is complex in our relationship i mean you and i me a podcaster and you a podcast listener we have a complicated relationship i am aware that so many of you listening to my voice right now feel a tremendous affection for me and solidarity for me with me and i feel the same for you and that means i often feel stuck between being honest and taking care of you and your feelings now it's not my job to take care of you and your feelings and a lot of work i've been doing in my life is about addressing my patterns of codependency including in my work in media but what i mean is if i tell you that i'm feeling depressed that can have a significant impact on some of your mental health and it can um be activating and elevating and so what i tend to do is just get quiet and think and reflect but because of my patterns as a person and some of my mental health challenges i don't just withdraw from the creation of public media i withdraw from everything i withdraw from my friends i withdraw from my family and i just wanted to start today by telling you that is the space i have been in now for several weeks i finished my book tour and i took a week's vacation and i have just felt so sad and so hopeless most of the time i have felt really sad and really hopeless so it's almost like doing my book tour although it exhausted me in a lot of ways and if you were in the book tour don't don't take any ownership of how tired i felt i enjoyed each and every event i can enjoy things and they can make me tired and that's what happened here but all the work of trying to launch my book in the middle of a pandemic and handle the book tour it was at least a distraction and once that distraction was gone i was stuck with reality and and what's that reality we're in a pandemic that is getting worse that our global response has been mediocre at best and uh the national response in the united states has been truly terrible truly terrible so we are facing this public health crisis that's creating a mental health crisis which i am a part of and an economic crisis which i'm also a part of most of my income [Music] comes from doing events and selling tickets to those events and i mean the vast majority of my income comes from the sources and that's that's just gone now and so i've been trying to figure out how to be a part of your life every week in a way that's useful and meaningful and helpful to you that allows me to work out of the places of strength that i have in my life not hiding weaknesses i don't mean in a performative way i mean how do i figure out how to do things that help you and help me and also figure out how to make a living doing all of that and you know we've been in a increasingly financially precarious position as a family for a couple of years now so we didn't enter into the pandemic area era in the strongest shape financially and it's just um it is wiped out my family we are in a pretty continuous conversation about how to pay rent and eat in my home and i don't want to over share here i don't say this to burden you and i certainly do not say this as a fundraising mechanism so there there is this is not a telethon there is no 800 number to call i just thought that this week i just need to be honest with all of you about where i am and what i'm trying to do a simple reflection and here's why because i've started to get messages from people kind supportive wonderful messages from people this is people that i know that are friends these are people that i know that also are media creators this is members of the public who are sending me cards and letters and basically the theme of these messages was hey mike are you okay you are awfully quiet and those people who know me well know that often when i'm quiet that can be a warning sign that i'm in a challenging place with my mental health and so i tweeted sunday morning as i kind of became aware i was getting so many of these messages i needed to say something i thought about what can i say that is honest but doesn't activate people and so i tweeted i have been posting a lot because i've been depressed my concerns about our collective response to covet 19 as well as my feelings of hopelessness around making a living have put me in a difficult space emotionally in this time when so much important and substantive work is happening around white supremacy and police brutality is happening i said happening twice i just realized that i know my silence has been noticed friends i have been struggling to make it through each day now my goal in sharing that was not to burden anyone certainly was just to kind of check in let everybody know i'm struggling but i'm okay and of course me tweeting that has generated an overwhelming response publicly and privately overwhelming response um i am well loved by the public and by so many folks and um you know i think the work that i do about providing solidarity and support and um non-judgmental support for people it generates tremendous goodwill and so when i am honest about my difficulties there does tend to be an overwhelming response now why am i sharing all this number one i have been quiet i don't want you to worry i have been quiet and i don't want you to worry in my life i have always had to deal with episodes of depression this is well-worn territory for me and i won't get into the different types of depression or what is or is not depression uh that was originally my idea was to do a podcast about depression today but i thought ah maybe maybe don't teach about depression while in the middle of it so i thought instead i just share with you honestly and reflect on the difficulty i'm facing because number two i know it's not just me i'm not the only person who's having a hard time trying to figure out how to pay bills right now or find work right now i'm not the only person whose personal and family system mental health situation is challenging right now i'm not the only person who feels despair that common sense strategies like wearing a mask has become politicized and polarized at the exact moment wearing masks would save lives none of these things are unique to me and what i've learned in my time doing media work is that when i'm feeling something i'm not the only person who is feeling it and if i'm not the only person who is feeling it maybe one of the people feeling some of these things is you and maybe you have felt lonely maybe you have felt like a failure because other people seem to be working things out during covet 19 but you are having trouble so what i want you to know is if you're having a hard time figuring out how to pay your bills how to relate to your family members including the ones you live with how to be a parent caregiver or spouse right now or even how to get out of bed in the morning i feel those things too it is not just you yesterday was father's day and i cried for two hours i cried for two hours yesterday not all at once i snuck away for three different crying sessions but i had a lot of sadness to work through yesterday and here's what i know about me i am worthy of love i have value and i am important and because i am worthy of love and i have value and i'm important there is room in the world for my sadness there is room for me to have a crisis of confidence while trying to figure out how to create new kinds of media in a pandemic and that must mean that the same is true about you because i know that you have value and you have worth and you're important and that means if there's room for my sadness there must be room for your sadness too it's okay to be sad right now it's okay to look at things that we need to accomplish and get done and not know how we could get them done i think maybe sadness and difficulty in the face of all these challenges well that might be the most unifying thing in the world right now my dear friends who are involved in justice work around race and disability and gender and gender identity and sexual orientation so many of them feel such sadness right now so many of the people that you respect and admire his work is changing the world are in the middle of very very very challenging mental health conditions and crises related to this moment in history so i just wanted to go first and say i'm not sure how we're going to do this i'm just not sure and i'm not giving up i'm not giving up on myself i'm not giving up on my family i'm not giving up on our society and friends i'm certainly not giving up on you and i am very sad i am very very sad right now and and a very unrehearsed segway unplanned this episode is brought to you by better help which is an online mental health counseling service that i personally use and better help can match you with one of over 9 000 licensed therapists which aren't we glad they have 9 000 therapists right now my wife jenny has been seeing a better help counselor as well recently and having a good experience with that it's nice to just be able to talk to a professional without leaving your home to be able to do that on a voice chat or a video call to be able to text them on an ongoing basis and just get the support that we all need right now of course better help as well suited to this moment they offer their fee base on a sliding scale so people with uh income uncertainty or income challenges uh do have an opportunity to participate with their service um so you can go to betterhelp.com sciencemike and figure out how convenient and effective it is to work with betterhelp.com you'll get 10 off your first month's service by going to betterhelp.com sciencemike they really are wonderful so here's what i'm up to at the same time i'm trying to find the energy [Music] to just do my daily tasks we are working on a new show format we being me and the folks that i work with the wonderful team that surrounds me all the time you've heard a lot of their names andrew golucky greg nordine kaitlyn hermstad victory palmisano tanner hearn brent cradle just a wonderful wonderful team of folks um who do so much work and then i get all the accolades for it which is very unfair we are working on a new program part of what uh i've been struggling with was we are trying new things [Music] and new things are always hard for me but when i'm having some sadness and a lack of self-confidence those things are even harder so one of the reasons i've been quiet is because i'm trying to make a lot of new stuff and i'm hoping really soon to be able to share with you some of these new things which are genuinely exciting um you know i care a lot about continuing to have really open conversations about life and feelings and mental health and science and i'm really interested in in exploring the the connection between an evidence-based world view but also a a deep empathetic and sensitive posture towards people i just so rarely see those things combined and i think they're both so important so we've been trying to think about how especially right now when no one can really make media ways that we can help fill that gap and i can offer you what i'm good at that kind of supportive voice in your ears who offers you what i offer you which is what i don't know i literally don't know i'm pretty nice i'm kind actually i'm a kind voice and i think just kindness alone has kind of created this little space for me in the world to do what i do and uh so we're gonna keep working on that i'm really excited about it at the same time i'm sad just taking a moment right now um i just can literally feel it right in my chest that just almost like a a balloon full of warm water that's the way sadness feels to me and um i'm doing my best friends and i know there's no pressure i know that you are all so patient and so supportive um and i just want you to know that i am trying to do everything i can do to be well to do the things i need to do to support better mental health in my life and to make sure that the work i'm doing is not coming from a place that's maladaptive and i have a lot of work to do i have a lot of work to do um especially in patterns of codependency very significant now but also just simple things like how to collaborate with other people and how to reach out when i need help and support you know i'm very good at supporting people i am not necessarily good at accepting or receiving support from other people thanks to that aforementioned codependency so i will you know what i was about to tell you what was going to come next here's what i'm going to tell you i'm going to be honest i don't know what come next comes next for me and my work and this podcast i really don't um what i can tell you is whatever i make next i will make it from a place of profound love and respect and affirmation for myself and for you but i won't make anything unless i can make it in that way so i hope that in the middle of everything that's happening right now friends that you are finding moments of peace and moments of joy and moments where you can savor this thing called life even when it is often so challenging thank you for listening my friends and i will talk to you again very soon