Hey, hey va fam.
All right, this is our last episode of twenty twenty one.
I cannot believe it. This has been a year of so many ups and downs, twist and turns, and especially these last few weeks, as we have been throwing our love and our support and our condolences to our beloved Tiffany in her time of need after such an unimaginable loss, it just got me thinking how grateful I am for this space that we have created, this community that we have created these past six and a half years, And I just wanted to say thank you to each and
every one of you who has listened to the show, supported our show for so long. Thank you for your patience as we give Tiffany the time that she needs to heal, and we look forward to seeing you again in twenty twenty two. Now, to close out the year, what better way than by sharing the very first episode of Brown Ambition. For a long time, I thought this episode was lost forever. I thought the Internet had gobbled
it up and it is just gone. But thanks to a beloved member of the BA team I'm talking to you, Dennis, we managed to dig up this old original episode of BA. And when I tell you these babies. The way that we talked about everything from love and money to work and family. It honestly gives me chills when I look back and listen to this first episode, and I hope you guys enjoy it. After the show, stick around to hear one of our favorite guest interviews with doctor Imani Walker.
If you guys haven't had a chance to listen to our interview with doctor Imani Walker, this is one, especially after another year where the forbidden Panini continues to rage on. We've all been through so much highs and lows, twist and turns. As I've said, doctor Emani has some really useful advice on how we can protect our mental health heading into the new year. Thank you again for always listening, and we'll see you next year.
Y'all. Hey everyone, I'm Mandy.
Hey, it's Tiphany and this is Brown Ambition.
I've been a reporter in New York City for five years. Right now, I'm a writer at Yahoo Finance. I write about money, business career, basically anything to do with the world and.
How it impacts your wallet.
And I am Tiffany but much better known as the Budget Lista and I'm a financial educator, bestselling author, speaker, teacher, all things personal finance.
Basically, on this podcast.
We're going to be talking about career, relationships, life and living in this brown skin.
We work, we start businesses, we help one another. We do everything we can to make a better life for ourselves. And that's what Brown Ambition.
Is all about.
So here are some topics you might hear us talk about on the podcast.
How to deal with office bullies and microaggressions.
Coping with being the only one in the.
Office, Yes, how to get money for a new business even when you have no idea what you're doing. Should you care if people think you have resting bitch base guilty?
What to do when bee earns less.
Than you guilty guilty, Whether or not we should use the word bae in everyday conversation.
I have a lot of thoughts about this. Well, thank you so much for joining us.
Guys. We're going to start off the podcast by talking about some buzzworthy headlines that are cropping up in our lives, and we want to talk.
More about this week's buzzworthy.
Yes, I'm excited about this one.
I think I know. I'm excited to have a lot of opinions about this, and.
So does the rest of America.
Yes, so many opinions on how a young woman today decides the right time to step into motherhood.
Yes, baby limbo, baby.
Limbo, it's this, you know.
I kind of came up with this terminology for a story I did on young people millennials eighteen up to their mid thirties who are stuck between do I have this college debt or do you know, pay that off and focus on my career, or do I also have a baby or you know, what should come first? And honestly, it's such a difficult question because mother nature doesn't wait for you to pay off your student linked debt. And
I think that women have to recognize that fact. And it's maybe not so comfortable because you know, obviously we want to talk about how much control we should have over our own bodies, which is absolutely true. You should, you know, be your own body's boss. But at the end of the day, like that clock is ticking.
Yeah, it's true.
So I'm thirty five and I turned thirty six in October, which is not far away, and I mean, I've been thinking about it a lot because I am in a serious relationship me and my boyfriend Superman, he already has a daughter.
She's eight.
She's great daytaking a man with a daughter. That's some grown up dating.
Yeah, but I love it, honestly, because one, I'm at an age now and because I work for myself, I realize I don't necessarily want a huge family. I came from a family there was five girls. My mom and dad raised all five of us. And I don't know that I want a big family, but I at least think I'm pretty sure I want at least one kid of my own. I mean, according to my mom, I really need to get on it. And I kind of
feel like that too. My best friend just had a baby, and my sister just had a baby, and so their babies are all under a year.
Old, and so I've been like, yeah, a little bit, But sometimes you're overt.
More so than I'm like, Oh, I'm gonna be thirty six, so when are you gonna make a choice. A friend of mine had she made her choice at thirty six and had her baby at thirty seven, and she said, I wish I would have started sooner.
That's what I hear.
I'm afraid, yeah, sooner would be I'm twenty eight right now, and I feel like, am I going to regret not having a baby now? I don't know, but it seems like I just don't want to do it.
Her reason for saying she wish she would have started sooner is that she wished She really wants to have a second, and she doesn't know if she can. Yeah, she can. So that's why I don't know that I want to have a second. I mean, I would want to have two kids, but between his one and my one, I'm like, well, there it goes one plus one.
Max two for free.
Yes, she's the bonus kid and so and plus I do so much work and I really want to and I know this might sound a little selfish, but I want to maintain my individual personality and maintain okay, you know, as long as you know. I mean, I think selfish would be more so having ten kids and still wanting to fly around.
The country and speak and teach. And you don't have enough time for your children. So I don't want to spread myself super thin.
Right m h, Well, hopefully you just have one kid to start.
I know, Well, my boyfriends are twins, so.
He is, Oh jesus, I'm like yo, he told me. I already Like, so I'm aiming for this.
Does that gene come from the male line or that is more likely.
To go somebody, somebody email us.
At Brown Ambition Podcast, yes.
And tell us how exactly are twins formulated? Does that come from the male line, the female line? Is that? Yeah?
Is it hereditary or is that like some sort of random I do.
Think it skips a generation. So you might be good. Okay, maybe you're If you have a daughter, then she's got to worry.
But you're good. So so you say.
And so I come back to the next podcast and I'm like, so, y'all, I'm having twins.
Thanks Manny, I can talk well.
You know, I'm twenty eight, and I don't necessarily feel pressure to have a baby, Okay, but I feel I guess that's not true. I don't feel pressure from myself, Okay, I don't. I look at puppies and I feel my my ovaries twins, like I really want a puppy very badly. Babies not so much, but they're cute. What I do feel is intense pressure from you know, I'm dating. I've
been dating my partner boyfriend for through over three years. Now, which is my longest relationship, and you know, we live together and we're kind of we're kind of playing it as we you know by ear. His family, however, is not waiting, especially his mother. He comes from a very traditional, close knit community and family. I guess it's not giving away too much if I says Dominican. So I'm in a mixed race relationship. And his mother is very Catholic and very old school and she is like the mother
of mothers. She lives to nurture her son's two sons. They are schooled rotten. But you know, I feel her looking at me and wondering. Not just feel, but I hear it because she tells me, Mandy, Amanda, why why no baby? Why? Her English isn't very good, but she can she gets her point across.
Where's the baby yet?
Where it's been three years?
I asked her, you know, uh, don't she want us to get married first and get married and do all that and you know, the right order of events.
And she's like, no, just have a baby.
Wow?
Would this be her first grandchild?
This will be her first grandchild.
There's so much pressure.
I know, what how about you come from a family of five girls, and no one has kids. My mother every day on the phone, so my my Nigerian name is Adoci.
My mother would call me and say, it's so adult.
She's still not married, still no baby, and I'm like, good oldest, no second oldest, Okay.
So they're just like so somebody that the oldest.
Is married and she's working on it, and I'm the second. The third is not married, the fourth is married and she just had a baby, so we're like whoo, and but just watching her. She's literally like the milk machine. So she's only allowed to take ten paces away from the baby before the milk machine has to return and dispense milk.
You mean, it's not glamorous, and she's not like Blake Lively taking selfies of herself, you know, breastfeeding in a field of sunflowers.
That is a straight because honestly, she's like, I'm so tired. Her feet are swollen, and she's just like, how can I My mom is like, my mom is a nurse, and her my mom was telling her you need to put your feet up.
She's like, oh, when when I'm beeting the milk machine.
I work for a company and obviously y'allhoo has very generous maternity and paternity benefit programs, which isn't the norm nationwide. It's actually America is one of the only developing nations that doesn't have a federally mandated and paid maternity or paternity leading law. But I'm lucky enough to work for
y'allhoo and we have sixteen weeks off. That's awesome, And dads get eight weeks off, and at least I know I have that, Yeah, sort of if I'm still working, you're gonna have a baby, have that kind of cushion. But can you talk about, like I'm curious as an entrepreneur's self, you know, you own your own business, how are you going to plan your leave?
So I've been like, honestly like kind of like planning now because I'm going to be thirty six, like I said, and I mentioned, and my boyfriend and I have been talking about marriage and kids. So right now, the way my business is is that I start off at zero basically like every month, meaning like my income, I never know what's going to come in. People would just email me and call me and say we want you to speak or teach or whatever, and so as a month
rolls on I make money. I cannot do that and the kid because one, you know, I'm gonna have to be home. I do a lot of speaking around the country, you know, so that's a worry for me. So I thought, well, how am I going to make this work? So one of the things I'm implementing is I'm looking for other ways to make passive income. So I have two books that do fear really well. I'm coming out with a
children's book hopefully that will boost up my income. In two I'm launching this academy called the Live Richer Academy, where it's going to be like a monthly fee and you can take classes on investing and business and all this kind of stuff. And so the Live Richer Academy will definitely help to put regular income into my stream without me having to leave the house because I'm not going to be able to, at least not for a while. So I'd love to hear what the BA audience has
to say. Tweet us at the BA Podcast. You can find us on Facebook at Brown Ambition, and you can email us at Brownambitionpodcast at gmail dot com.
Let us know are you and baby Limbo? What is your story.
We'd love to hear it, maybe share it next time we're on. So next up, this is one of my favorite segments. It is brown break.
Brown bread, some music.
Yes, it's like break.
Man's gonna really how about you share? Like what what is a brown bakman?
A brown break is just something in your life that you are tired of having to deal with or explain as a.
Person of color. And this week, my brown.
Break is white feminism. This is a very uncomfortable issue. I know, we like to keep things light and fun as much as we can, but white feminism is something that I'm starting to learn a little bit more about and just to give some background on what brought me to this necessary break in my life. So two of my favorite authors for very different reasons. These authors couldn't be more different. Erica Jong amazing author, very popular in the seventies and popular even now. She's a new book
coming out. She was seen as sort of like one of the first female writers to really embrace women's sexuality, writing about a woman who's had sex and saying curse words and sleeping around with no apology. And she did a talk recently at the Decatur Book Festival shout out to Atlanta, my hometown with Rox Sane Gay, another one of my favorite authors. She's the author of Bad Feminist.
And someone asks Erica Jong how she feels about white feminism and the concept of white women generally speaking about feminists in a way that can sometimes exclude women of color. And this is not a new issue. It's been around since the seventies, when the first or not even the seventies, but you know, when women were trying to get the
right to vote. Cut to the seventies, when women were fighting for equal pay and things like that, and generally white women would speak of feminism as if it only applied from their point of view, and we weren't hearing so much from black and brown women. So this is something that I care a lot about. And I have to say as someone who really respects Erica John, Erica John from like the bottom of my heart, and I love her writing.
The way that she.
Handled that wasn't I think the best way she could have handled things. She got really defensive, and I can understand why you'd be defensive because if you identify as a feminist. And I give her so much respect, she has done so much for the cause for feminism in America and supported so many women, but she immediately was discounting the whole white feminism thing.
Oh no, of course not.
You know, Oh, We've done so much for all women of color, all women of color. You know, everything I've done has been through this lens of you know, all women, all women, And it just seemed like a second iteration
of the whole all lives matter thing. And you know, we kind of saw this play out with the whole Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift beef on Twitter where Nikki's trying to make a statement about how black women are treated in the music industry, and then Taylor comes in and talks about, why are you.
Trying to make it about you?
All women in music industry are marginalized and you know, sexualized in different ways and disenfranchised. But no, Taylor, No, Black women and women of color are way more likely to be marginalized in the music industry and not just there. Let's talk about in terms of like the wage gap. That's a huge cornerstone of the feminist movement today is the fact that women are still earning less than eight eighty cents on the dollar for a man. What gets
lost when you stop the conversation. There is the fact that Latina and black women are much more likely to make less than that. And yeah, I'm just over I'm over people stopping the conversation. At here's what it looks like for all women, because all women don't have the same story exactly.
So you need a brown break from white.
So my brown break is this whole debate of perm versus natural rap.
So I am sitting with my fed up like my half perm, half relaxed awkward transition face.
So many's half and half right, And here I am fully natural. I have locks for the last like seven years. But honestly, I've been natural since I want to say, two thousand and one. I don't Matt good so I know how many years.
I fifteen years.
Yeah, I was honestly natural for the majority of my life. I had a perm. Yeah, I was like totally like the natural girl before it became cool when I went natural. At first, I had honestly, here's where I went natural. So all throughout high school I had I had a natural hair. I had braids, the Brandy braids for those of you who can remember Brandy Norwood.
Mm hmm. I want to be damn.
So so I had the braids because I played sports. I played tennis, and so it didn't make sense for me to have a perm and have palms hair and played sports, and so I was natural mostly all my life.
And then when I went away to college, I was like, oh, I want a PERM.
I felt like perm was like the next level of like womanhood for black women, and so I got a PERM and two years in my hair.
Started to fall out, like I had alopecia. So alopecia is really.
Wet putting a very toxic chemical and your hair wasn't.
Good for it, I know, And so my styl of was like, you know what, Tiffany, your texture of hair. It's just like I have really really tightly coiled hair and it just was not blending well with the perm.
So literally the side started good go first, and then the back and the front, and then finally she was like, you're just gonna have to let the perm go, and so I cut off all of the perm and I was left with this spiky fro, and I realized it was too short to get braided, so I was kind of forced to walk around with spike fro, and I had, so it started to grow out, and I kind of liked the fro.
It was cute.
It was a cute little afro mini afro. But women and older black women started stopping me in the street and literally saying, why would you do that to yourself? My my wasn't my mother and my father either one of them. One of them said to me, so you don't plan to Maddy, I'll translate, so you never want.
To get married.
I was like, excuse me, So you don't want to, Mattie, that's what this hair is seen, that's what this is what my so.
You're putting out there.
Yes, so this is what I was told. So I couldn't believe how. I don't know, just like how politicized my hair was. I literally just stopped getting a perm because I was going bald. I wasn't trying to make a statement. I wasn't trying to, I don't know, trying to like prove my blackness. It was, hey, I'd like not to be bald. Let me go back to the where my hair was.
Yeah, very practical.
But what I found was with time, as time went on, I found that people were politicizing it.
For me. I would go to like Harlem or New York, and people.
Would say hey, sister, like they would treat me differently than my friends who I was walking with who had a perm. You know, I wasn't when men even would approach me, it wasn't the same like hey, shorty, what up? You know?
It was like Hi, I just want to tell you that you're so beautiful.
And it was different, and I thought that was so yeah, so strange, and but now what's happened. At first it was like I was so happy to see that people were embracing their natural hair, and I was like, yeah, yeah, yay, But now what's happened. It's like there's two camps. There's the perm camp and there's their natural camp. And sometimes I find that each camp is like looking down on each other, right, And I'm like, to me, it's just hair.
It's just a choice, like a dress or pants or shoes, and you should be able to make your choice, and you shouldn't be shamed for having a perm. You shouldn't be shamed for being natural. When to me, it should just be an expression of like just how you want to look today, you know, or even if you want to make it, if you want to make it politici.
That's fine, but that's just not me.
And we're here and we're back, and we are going to give you some tips brown ambition tips for today.
So what are your tips for today? Tips?
So my main tip for today really is for those of you who are starting a business. If this is a very first kind of stage of your business, you have to make a decision of whether or not you want to be.
A business or look like a business. Right, so this is a business.
There's a fourteen year old girl on your block who babysits and she gets paid to. She has a business, no very informal, but a business nonetheless, because a business is just when you have a product or service that somebody wants to buy and they do. Now, if you look like a business, looks all fancy. You have your business cards and pens and everything, but haven't made a sale.
The fourteen year old has a business. You do not.
So here's how I can help you get to a place where you can actually make money on your business. First, you want to make sure that that your return on there's a direct return on investments in the things that you buy. So what that means is this that anything that you're buying in the beginning stages of your business should directly make you money.
So let's just say you want to be a baker. If you want to be a baker.
Getting a bakery is not going to directly make you money. Having business cards is not going to directly make you money. That looks like a business. That's not a business. Eggs, flour, sugar shortening, vanilla seasoning, whatever, those things will directly make you money because you can bake them, to make bake goods and sell them. So in the beginning, I really urge new entrepreneurs to really only put your money into things that you can directly repackage and make you money.
You're speaking to my dad right now, I think, Hey, Manny fat big Al, who also does photography, find at Alton Windriff dot com.
Excellent. Thank you, that's a great tip. Thanks.
So I want to talk about how to save on rent and make rent more affordable. And these are tried and true tips that I've actually done to lower my rent. In fact, I moved into a new place about a year and a half ago and I managed to save It will be twelve It'll be two four hundred dollars once we hit our two year mark because I got them to shave one hundred bucks off their asking price for the rent, which I was really proud of. And again it's just like I said, those little asks. Just
ask for the little stuff. You never know what they're going to say. My first tip to save on rent is obviously, don't be afraid to negotiate, especially if you know that maybe you're moving to a place where there's not as much demand for rental places.
Ask your landlord.
You know, let's say you know, for example, your rent is sixteen hundred dollars a month, you have excellent credit, you have references, you come correct with references, and you're ready to show your landlord what a responsible tenant you are. If you can show them how responsible you are, then ask them for one hundred dollars or ten percent deduction in the rent. It can work, but again you have to come prepared with those references and with that good credit.
A tenant of mine did that once. Oh really, yeah, she was twenty six years old.
I remember.
I was like, I don't know, but because she came so prepared with everything, and she actually pre wrote the checks a year in advance to me so when she asked for less, I was ahead, but she was like, amazing, No, But that works because I used to be a landlord and her coming so prepared, I was willing to offer her less just to have a good tenant in there.
Offering months in advance rent payments, that's a good tip, a good strategy, And I don't know if it's so common outside of New York, but a lot of landlords asked for first and last month's rent plus security deposit, which I know is hard to come up with. But if you can, if you can offer to pay two or three months, maybe even half a year's rent in advance upfront, they'll be willing to shave money off your rent if you ask them.
They might be.
At the end of the day, a landlord has a product that he's trying to sell and he wants someone who's going to be living there and be responsible to be and not going to move out, you know, and break your lease early. And if you show that kind of commitment, paying in advance can really help you. Another strategy that I've used is picking a good time of
year to rent. Studies show and my experience shows that the winter, winter and early spring are some of the more dry seasons, and as a landlord, there's less competition out there, which means that they're more desperate to rent their place out. And I think that's probably a lot of the reason why I was able to negotiate my rent. On top of having when was it you good credit? I moved in. We were looking for an apartment in February. Moved in March first, so it was a great time.
It's way more difficult to negotiate a rent because there's so many people looking for places in May and in September, end of college and begin in the school year exactly, definitely, So think about your timing and if you can time it around winter time. It sucks to move in the cold, but money keeps me way.
I was gonna say that what I'll wear a money jacket, And my last tip would be protect your belongings.
This is like, please eat your vinom, meet your vitamins, and like eat your vegetables and stuff. But seriously, Renters insurance is no joke. You need to have it. It costs like ten to fifteen dollars a month. You can easily get a policy. If you have car insurance, call your I'm sure your insurance company probably offers a renter's insurance policy. You can go through your bank. You can go to just random bank and ask them like USAA
has a great renter's policy and get renter's insurance. Here is why if something were to happen to your apartments, they a fire, or a flood or the spring. You know, someone's bathtub overflows up above, which has happened to people before that I know, and it drips down and ruins all your furniture. Your landlord is going to definitely pay to repair this structure, sure, and to repair the floor in the ceiling. But he has or she has no obligation to take care of your stuff, which is why
you have to have renter's insurance. And one of the perks of renters insurance is that it won't even it won't just cover the stuff in your apartment. If you take your laptop computer, you leave it at a friend's place or in your car and it gets stolen, really it'll still cover it.
Thatll be awesome. Yeah, And it's not even all that expensive.
It's literally ten to twelve dollars. You can do estimates online. You can go to Traveler's insurance. They have a cool tool that you can use. Bank Rate has a cool I think retros insurance calculator you can use.
Just call and get a quote.
All you have to do is go through your apartments, start with your closet and work you through each room and get a rough estimate of how much you think. Like I think for our place, I have a policy for fifteen thousand dollars. Okay, you know, just something that'll cover your stuff. Yeah, in the event of an accident. Insurance hip excellent return on investment.
Yes, I like that tip.
So hopefully if you like our tips, you will let us know. Tweet us the BA podcast at the BA Podcast at the BA Podcast, Facebook, Brown Ambition and email.
Podcast at GAI. We should be a singing.
Great So we are closing out this week's podcast with our winds.
All I do is win, win, win, no matter what.
But you like that one, right, Gonna save that for every every single segment we do of the winds.
Oh, we should let me practice my notes first, but you know what's good? So this wind is near and dear to my heart. We talked about baby Limbo. I am a first time auntie and we have a little boy and a family full of women who are ready to spoil.
She told me, she told me before the baby came.
You know, I'm not buying anything, right, and true to form, she didn't have to, not with four aunties who are just doting on this little baby. He's the cutest and I love my little peanut, that's my nickname for him.
And yeah, so that's my win for the week.
Good for her, Good for you. New babies are great.
Yes, if you're ready for that, yes, Okay, my win of the week. I need to call out a I would say this associate to mine. We went to college together, and you know how you go to school with someone you know them well, and then you leave school and then you kind of drift apart and you go do your own thing, and but you still follow each other on social media. Like I still kind of social media stock her, and I've been following her career and I'm
really proud of her. I think she's doing our school proud. Her name is Macy Peterson, and she has this app which is pretty genius. It's called on Second Thought. It's for Android users, and this is going.
To solve one.
It pretty much solves the problem all of us have faith with our texting. It allows you to take back a text. Really yeah, not take it back in the sense that you send it and you can get it back. But I think how it works is that you send a text through the app and then you have like an hour delay or a twenty four hour delay, like if you think you might regret sending it in the morning. Okay, let's say you had a couple glasses of wine. You're
not toasted, but like you're just needing anything. Maybe I'll send it to a second and have like a five second delay. Nice. Nice, and you feel like you feel some kind of way about what your mom said to you about you know, your hair last week, and you want to let her know how you feel. You can send it you on second on second thought the app and have a day or an hour delay before the
app the text actually gets sent. Okay, pretty smart idea is So she presented this at I think it started at south By Southwest last year, and in just a year's time she's raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and she's moving the app and her startup from DC to Silicon Valley. She's like living the entrepreneur's dream. She's a brown girl, and she's a brown girl in tech, which is so rare and so necessary, and it's awesome to see her doing so well.
So I just want to give Macy a shout out.
Yes, Macey Virtual Color. Yeah right, maybe.
I'll stop just stalking her, let her know.
How I really feel. No, that's awesome, Macy.
We should have her on Monday. I'm sure she has lots of tips to share.
Yeah, I'd love to hear that. So hope you enjoyed this week. Show Me and Mandy enjoyed being here with you. If you'd like to find us, where can they find us?
You can find us on Twitter at the BA podcast, on Facebook at Brown Ambition, or please send us emails, compliments, complaints, send us your wins of the weeks, your brown breaks. So email us at Brown Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com.
See you soon, and we're back and browner.
We have the amazing, the beautiful, the intelligent, and the real doctor Emiani.
Okay, now I like that hire everybody and hire to you guys. I like that, though, Yes, it is browner just because I'm here, uh so, so yeah, I'm totally like I'm so highed to like meet you guys virtually because new normal. But yeah, like this is this is great. I'm super happy to be here.
So doctormani, you have been a practicing psychiatrist for how long?
Now, let's see my I'm like looking at one of my degrees on the wall in my office. Yeah, okay, that's all right. Sorry, yeah, like that really wasn't a flex. But I realize now it sounds like one of my degrees, one of my four things on.
The wall, you pay for them. Let's let's respect. Well, okay, I will.
I will admit, like, honestly, I didn't pay for them. My parents did, right, So so I actually spoke about my mom. I spoke to my mom about this because we have a YouTube show actually that we usually do it every Monday, so I have to do that in a couple hours. But I never let anyone know in school that I didn't receive financial aid or that I
had a scholarship. So I would always memorize where the financial aid office was because at the end of the year, apparently you have to do like your financial aid wrap up, and I don't know anything about like I've heard of loans like stafford loans and stuff, but that didn't apply to me, so I would just memorize where the financial aid office was because I didn't want people to know, you know that my basically my parents saved up for it. And I did have a scholarship. My alma maters is
Xavier University in New Orleans, and I had an academic scholarship. Yes, yes, but yeah, I never My mother told me when I was a senior in high school. She was like, well, you know, if you want to go to a school in the Northeast, and I'd gotten into like Wesleyan and Vassar, which is my mom's alma mater, she was like, you can do that. But she like she was really really adamant about me going to Xavier because I wanted to be a doctor and it's basically a black doctor factory
and has been for decades. So she was like, here's the thing. We can pay for your college because it's significantly cheaper, like it was much much cheaper than Northeast like Ivy League suition. She was like, I can pay for you college. You can get a car, you know, basically, like you can be out here. But when but if you go to a school in the Northeast, You're gonna have to take out loans. And I was like, well then no, I was like, I'm not doing that, so
my my. So basically that's what happened. So when I would be at a college, like I said, at Xavier, and then when I was in med school, I knew, I mean, the majority of people that I knew who were my med school class were on scholarship or you know, received financial aid. But and I knew where the office was, I knew the building, but I had just never been in the office because it didn't apply to me.
So it's amazing.
I love that story.
And also how odd that you were ashamed of something that was so amazing.
Yes, it was. I mean honestly, it wasn't that I was fearful of anyone shaming me, and I wasn't. I wasn't ashamed of having like my friends, know, like the brown and black, you know friends that I had. It was more so like I was like, I don't want these white people to know because then like it's like, oh so, because the assumption is you're on financial aid when we all know that white women benefit the most from you know, affirmative action, and in those types of scholarships, right,
or those types of situations. I just didn't want to have the conversation of like, Okay, you know, my parents are very they're they're very what's the word I'm looking for. They're very austere. And that's what they taught me, and that's what they taught like, you know, my cousins and everybody else in my family. So I always saw money as a tool and not something to just be spent. And I guess I didn't want anybody to think that, like, oh,
so you think you're all that. So I actually I haven't admitted this to anybody outside of my circle of friends. I don't think until like this year, because I just didn't. I just didn't want. I just didn't want people to know. I'm like, if that's my personal business. And then also the way I grew up, it was like, you know, you keep your financial business to yourself. So we always I guess, I mean, like we were solidly middle class. Then we became middle upper class, but we still you know,
went to Sam's Club, went to Costco. Like my mom grew up on welfare. My dad wasn't on welfare, but he he you know, just had two hard working parents that weren't getting a lot of money in the Jim Crow South. So I was just taught to you know, like yes, money but like it you know, it ain't for you like you, Oh you want outfit, that's that's cute, Go get a job. So I've been working since I was fourteen ever since you could have get your working papers in New York.
Yes, I remember that.
Yeah, work, go to the high school and get your market papers working this summer.
Yeah, I used. I went to this. There was a school. I went to Calhoun on eighty first in West and Manhattan and there was like a I don't know if it was like a special needs school or something similar. It was like a block away. And I remember when I was fourteen, I went over there and got my working papers. And I've been working. So if I'm forty four now, I've been working for thirty years. Wow. Yeah.
So anyway, I'm sorry how to answer your question because I just did I even ask a question this story. I have so many follow ups I have, like I can go on Tannis, so just like you know, be like Emani okay, tap.
Out you do from your own podcast? Can we just say Imani's state of Mind.
Check it out. I love it.
I listened to the one of the most recent episodes yesterday. Oh nice, nice, iocast on today. It's super fun. I've been So I've been a practicing physician since two thousand and nine.
That's all right, that was my question.
Yeah, but no, I love it.
No ten years. Wait, two thousand and five, so fifteen years, No, two thousand and nine. So two thousand and nine, I've finished my fellowship in forensic psychiatry. So since then pretty much I've been treating psychiatric patients.
So you are well, so business must be booming.
Yes, business is booming, I would say. I mean, like straight up, when this when all this happened, like I freaked out like everybody else, because it was basically it was like Friday, and I'm out here in LA so it was like I think it was March thirteenth or something like that. Friday, it was like, okay, so we're probably gonna be on quarantine and I was like, okay, well, I don't really know what that means, like as it
pertains to me. And then Monday we were all on lockdown, and I was like, oh my god, like, do I have a job, Stille, what am I gonna do? So I've pretty much been exclusively seeing patients via telehealth, so either by video conferencing or by the via telephone. And is business booming? Yes? I work at a hospital. I am the medical director and also the chief medical officer at a mental health hospital out here in Los Angeles
called Gateways Hospital. And the patients that I see, because I have a forensic psychiatry background, these are patients who came from jail or came from the state mental hospital. They might have committed some really like really egregious crimes, but it was due to their symptoms from mental illness. So I basically get them stable and keep them stable.
So it hasn't it hasn't necessarily increased for me. It's it just I had to change the mode with I had to change the mode of how I was seeing my patients, which honestly, I really I really like being at home. Honestly. I mean, I think we've both talked about how we were introverts.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
The intersection between mental health and what's happening right now, I mean, everything happening in the world is just a lot, right now, and I feel like it is the exact right moment to have you on because we're like five or six months into this thing, and I was telling Tiffl, like, we really haven't taken a step back to pause and examine sort of how has this affected us all?
So, I mean, what would you say.
I know that your you know your patients have like you were saying, you know, severe mental illness, But what are sort of like, can you break down, like mentally sort of what it is, what's happening to us, what's going on?
Why?
Why anxiety is up? It feels like people who had maybe low grade depression before probably more prone to having it pop up now. I mean, like, tif, how's it been for you? Like, I feel like we just need someone to explain to us what's happening and how we can like cope, Yes.
It's been.
There were especially in the beginning. At first I was like, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. I'm not good, you know, And then so there's just been this wave of good not good, good not good. And I remember last night I was scrolling through social and I literally had to say no. My husband wanted to show me one of those videos we all know what I mean, what we mean by like, you know, black dead, black beaten bodies.
And I said, honestly, babe, I refuse, I refuse. I'm not looking at any more of those videos.
I'm not.
It's too much, it's too much, And yeah, that's how I'm feeling that, I'm feeling that, I'm feeling in a place where I feel like I'm striving hard to protect my peace because it's just all too much.
Yeah, I.
Have always known that, Like I'm not good with seeing people in the act of being hurt or being tortured, Like, don't. I don't want to invite that into my Space'm loud. I'm fine with, you know, picking up the pieces and helping someone after the fact. But for me, all I need to know is like, okay, so tell me what happened. Okay, great, those are the facts, all right, now, how do we get it better? I haven't watched one video, probably since I'm not even lying, probably since Rodney King. I'm like,
I'm not watching this shit, like I'm not. I don't need to invite that into my space. So, you know, I'll look at the news, like not look at it, but I'll read the news from my news app on my phone for like fifteen minutes and a day and then that's it because everything else is like speculative and conjecture and things that you know. I don't know if you guys have been noticing this, but like the news that bubbles up through the COVID cracks, if you will, is some wild shit.
Yeah, because it has to take away the headlines from COVID's wild.
I saw us like apparently there's like I mean, it's summertime, but you know, kids in cars overheating and dying and some there was some woman who like kills her grandparents. Like it's just it's so much weird ness that's going on. So I purposefully don't like if there's a video, I'm like, I'm watching that, like I'm not trying.
It's not just that pandemic. It's also it's this reckoning we're happening. We're happening, Yeah, I can talk. We're having with the reality of what it's like to be black in America, black and brown in America, and that is happening at the same time where like everyone's lives are at risk and the world's on fire and the pandemic's happening. I mean, so you mentioned killer Locus.
I'm just kidding. There's no killer Locus. There's killer wasps or something, right, Like.
There's aliens on Venus today, I was.
There's aliens on Venus. Can we join them? They like, you know, you know, can I apply for admission?
I don't know.
I saw that, but I was like, and this is the nerd in me. I'm like, is that possible? Because I think Venus is like a gaseous planet. But whatever, whatever, again, let's not even focus on that because I'm super nerd. I'll nerd out.
So let's my knowledge of Venus is like sailor Moon from you know, high school. That's where as it goes. But so okay, But but fifteen minutes so limiting news. I think that's something that I need to do that because I am obsessed with telling my Google. Like I'm like, hey, Google, tell me the news just whenever I have downtime or I'm cooking or like walking the dog.
I just ime kind of obsessed with listening tones.
But you're right, like it doesn't really change, but something about that has become like a tick for me to want to consume it just to see if something new has happened, or if there's new information.
There's something I was told last week I was doing this. I was being recorded for this document about millennials and mental health, and my topic was anxiety. And there was an interesting term the producer used, which was what do you call it? Doom scrolling? And I was like, I was like, what's doing scy app? But it sounded like, I mean again, I'm a nerd. It sounded I was like, is that like Ninja scroll? Like the anime movie from
back in the day. He was like, Now, I was like, okay, sorry, but it was but he so who What he explained was doom scrolling is the act of basically like what you what you explained, like you're in your in your news app, or you know, you ask you your nearest AI, you know, machine, alexis, Siri, whoever, like, oh, tell me the news because it's it's everything is so out of our control, and just being able to at least, you know, ask and ask your phone or ask your device, hey,
can you tell me the news is somehow comforting because it's something we can control. But then when we start to actually read or it's we're told the news, we consume the news. We are trying to gain more control of our lives. But the problem is that, like I said before, there are certain things that are factual in
the news. There are a lot of things in the news that are factual, but there's a lot that there's a lot of a lot of news stories that are very speculative, like we think Biden might win, Oh, but we think Trump might win. We might think that, and
it's and it's it's not doing us any good. I understand that these news outlets need content, but it's not doing us the public, any favors because it's just creating this this creating this mood of like I don't give a fuck, but then I'm mad anxious all the time. It's like, you know, it's like, well, I'm anxious because I don't know what's going to happen day to day. But then at the same time, it's like, well, okay, well what do you want to do? Like I don't
know what can I do? Like I can't go outside, I can't go do hood rashit with my friends. I can't like you know, like like I can't like I can't like be me so to answer your question from like five minutes ago, my bad. I think what's been happening as far as let's you know, let's use doom scrolling as an example, is very similar to what happened in the beginning of the pandemic with the toilet paper, right, So, why did everyone suddenly want toilet paper? Why did everyone
suddenly want bottled water? Like, it's not like, oh, we have a pandemic now the water is the water is poisoned. It's not poisoned. It's just that we wanted to be able to have control of something when everything else was completely chaotic, like our world's turned upside down. I went from you know, being a work on a Friday and now I'm home on a Monday, like, oh, what am
I supposed to do now? And that was really that's that was really scary to a lot of us because we maintained schedules and our mind our minds were maintaining routines that even if the routine we're annoying, like sitting in traffic or you know, having to go to work and talk to your coworker who you don't like, they
were still things that your mind could count on. So humans are first of all, social creatures, and we're also creatures of habit, and when you take away both, you're gonna have what we now have, which is probably the largest global mental health crisis that we've ever encountered. So if we're going to talk about, you know, why do people feel this way? Even why do I feel this way? Sometimes because again, we're used to habit and we're used
to structure, and it's gone. It's gone. Like we're trying to, you know, six seven months in, I can honestly say that I have a better structure, but it's still not what the what I'm used to for the majority of my life. So we're kind of just looking for things to you know, gain control over. I think for you know, honestly, for people who are anti masks wearers, Yes, it's silly to me as a physician, like why would you not
wear a mask? Like I respect myself and even if you don't respect me, like you should respect yourself and not want to get sick potentially for me. But I think a lot of it is that they're like, Okay, I can this is something I can control. I can control whether I want to wear my mask or not. Even though you know, maybe I'll get a ticket depending on the town or the city, or you know, maybe somebody will yell at me, you know, depending upon the
business they answer. But it's I mean, it's become, unfortunately and overwhelmingly very political. But it just reminds me a lot of like we have to hold toilet paper and water because you know, what's like, what's going to happen. I'm like, I have no idea what was up with the toilet paper thing, but I actually have like obsessive compulsive personality disorder, so I have a habit of hoarding cleaning products. Anyway, So I was actually pretty good, you said.
I do feel like theirs, the Survivalists, they really came out on top. Oh listen, but they were life and like second their can beans for months.
Yes, they're like I told you. And someone like my mom who's a nurse and who.
Was like I've been told y'alln't watched him filthy.
And exactly like yeah that daybody. I mean, as a physician, I've been around a lot of sticky, you know, nasty kind of situations, but it really was until this pandemic that I was like, damn, Like, people are nasty, like y'all like collectively, like y'all do not wash your hands like it used to be, you know, like I would go out to the movies and then you know, I would you know, go use the bathroom and go wash my hands in the in the restroom, and then if
there would always be like somebody in there who wouldn't and we would all be like, oh, like she's nasty. But you know it was because of you know, like people like that are people who you know, oh, let me drink after you, let me be all up in your face. I mean that's you know, unfortunately, how you know some of us got sick.
Well, let's talk about healthy ways of coping. I mean you mentioned sort of like you want to control something, So like, what are the things we can do to bring back some sense of normalcy and control in our lives when everything feels like it's batshit crazy?
Right? So, I think the first thing to do is, and this is kind of the hard the hardest thing to do is to admit that your stress. Admit that you're anxious, Admit you're depressed, Admit that you can't sleep, Admit to yourself that you know, even though we've been in this for a long time. We're now at the point where we're quote unquote used to it. We're not on like a fundamental level, but it's like, Okay, today's Monday, I'm going to do this. I look at my schedule,
I'm going to do that. But it's not an ideal situation. So admitting that you have an issue, admitting that you are not comfortable, like things are not right to the point where it might be interfering with your day to day and interfering with your mental well being is key. After that, I would think that the best thing to do is for someone to talk to someone they trust, because you'd be surprised. And I'm speaking as somebody who has a history of depression and anxiety, you'd be surprised.
Or I was really surprised at how helpful it was to get my feelings out of my body. And when you're dealing with depression and anxiety, a lot of it is guilt driven. It's like, well, I don't want to burden this person, you know, with my personal issues because they're going through all this stuff too. And you know what, if that person is a real, real friend to you and they really care about you, and love you. They'll listen to you and they'll you know, kind of help
you through it. And that person might also be going through things and you could also serve as an inspiration but that you know, for your friend the loved one to be like you know what, like I you know, like, let's talk about this. I think the third thing to do is to really set a routine. And Mandy, you and I spoke yesterday and I definitely agreed with you
at the time. Like I like routine versus schedule. Like a schedule sounds like, oh, this is my class schedule for the day, like these are things that like I have to do, but I don't really want to do. Versus a routine, which is like, oh, I'm gonna wake up at this time because that's when I want to wake up or that's when I might need to wake up. It's a routine to me sounds I mean, it's semantics, but it sounds like it's more it's something that I
can control. It's more manageable, so you know, depending upon you know, the person's you know, lifestyle or what they need to do. I mean, I remember in the beginning of the pandemic, I actually was trying to schedule like cocktail hour during during the early evening, like I can maybe not yeah, like maybe not even drinks, but like cannopis like something like I was just like I need something to just make my day feel like, oh, look
at this, we're having a good time. And then I think, you know, the other thing that people really need to consider. And as terrible as this pandemic has been for a lot of people, the one thing that has really been great about it is that there are actually it's actually easier to get hooked up with mental health services because most mental health clinics aren't open, but they do see patients or you know, or referrals or clients via apps,
via video chat, via telephone. Even so, it really has at least in psychiatry and psychology, whereas telemedicine or telehealth was something that some of us were into, Like now we all have to be into it because if that's if we don't get used to it, we don't get acclimated to it, we're not going to have patients. We're not going to be able to treat people and have and help people feel better the way that we need to right now. And you know, I think the I
think the last thing. And this is going to sound, you know, kind of obvious, like Captain obvious. But you know, I tell people. I tell my patients like, you know, if you if you don't have a pre existing medical condition that's preventing you from going outside, like go outside, like go outside. Because I'm as an introvert, I love being in the house. I'll stay in the house all
day long. But when I finally am like, okay, we got to go outside, I'm like, oh my god, it's so nice out here, like look look at this, like look at these trees. Like I can feel the air now right now in La and in California, like the whole state's on fire. So that sometimes there's like, yeah, maybe don't bring you deeply out there. Yeah, like yeah, I mean I've been in the house for the past like four or five days, so I'm starting to feel
a little bit antsy. But you know, I think exercise is important, like you like, we really need to find what we can do to increase our levels of serotonin in our brains so that we don't end up dipping into depression anxiety, but unfortunately a lot of us have.
It almost brings up another important point you mentioned, like guilt and shame, And I feel like there was this something that happened with the pandemic where people who were at home. It wasn't just like let's go outside. It's like, Oh, I'm gonna this is what I'm going to train for a marathon, or I'm going to learn how I'm going to start the triathlon. I always wanted to do myself personally. I got a peloton and I'm now it's something that I'm like, oh, why am I not on the peloton?
Why do I don't have a hundred rides yet? And it's almost like, you know, you can take these little things that maybe make you feel better, but then that becomes the stick that you beat yourself with a little bit when it comes to like guilt and shame.
So how do we like talk, How can we.
Just give ourselves a break for not going so over the top of this extra time that we perceive that we have. And you know, like there's this idea that you can win quarantine by learning.
A new hobby or a language. Why are we doing that to ourselves? We're doing that to ourselves because we were so go, go go before the shutdown. So I remember distinctly, I'd wake up, I'd go work out at six am. I'd come home, help my son with his lunch and make him breakfast, take him school, come back home, run four miles, check my schedule, seem you know, Like I was like, the amount of things I was cramming
into a day was absurd. It was absurd. And it wasn't until you know, I was as we all were forced to take a step back that I was like, what why are you doing this? Like like are you gonna win something at the end? Like no. So once I was able to slow down, it really afforded me the opportunity. I mean, it was hard, but once I was able to slow down, I was able to really just take stock up, you know, like what do you want? Like what do you want out of life? Not out
of Wednesday, not out of this job? Like what do you want? And I was like, honestly, I'm like, I'm I've been grinding since two thousand. I had a med school in two thousand. I'm like a bit is tired. I'm tired. I'm tired, you know, Like I still want to, you know, see patients and make a difference, but you know, I don't need to, you know, start training for the for you know, a bodybuilding competition or whatever, like these
goals I had beforehand. It's it again, is is that it's that desire to have control of your life, but by distracting yourself. So there were a lot of things that I was doing just distract myself because I had to realize that I wasn't happy. And when I was able to do all of those things during the day and just pack my day with stuff, did I feel better?
Maybe?
Superficially, like did I feel like I'd accomplished something? Yes? And I think I equated accomplishing whatever it was quote unquote with feeling good about myself. And once that, once this pandemic pulled the rug out from under us, we were searching for things to do. Like like I saw some some meme on Instagram that was going around like if you don't come out of this pandemic with the skill, then you wasted your time. I'm like, first of all,
don't tell me what to do. Okay, That's that's number one. Number two is number two is everybody should be allowed and everybody is allowed to live their own life as they see fit and you know, do I do I want to learn how to knit? Do I want to
learn how to you know, do needle? Point of course I do, But this may not be the right time because I'm not able to full I don't have Like honestly, we're at a point where we don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow, Like I like, I legit, don't know whereas before the shutdown, like you know, people would say metaphorically like, well, you know, tomorrow's not promised, so live for today, and
you would feel it on like a certain level. But now I feel it and I know that on a cellular level, like I do not know what's going to happen tomorrow. I don't. Yeah, I don't know what's gonna happen. Politically, I don't know what's gonna happen, you know, news wise, I don't know what's gonna happen regarding COVID, Like you know, are we due for the killer locuswarm that you know we should be experienced? What's the point of it all about it?
Like why this is I'm like playing Devil's advocate, but this is like a small part of me inside my brain that I'm constantly trying to talk down off the ledge is like, what's the point in saving?
Why don't you just blow your money now? Like I mean on what really?
But you know, I feel like financially people are and you and I talked about this too, like the sense of the structure that you have with your budget, Like even something as simple as a household budget seems to feel so silly or like doesn't really compute with today's world. So how can you adjust, like mentally, how you look at your finances and your financial planning. So much of that has to do with the future, which none of
us can predict right now. A lot of it, like when we were talking before, a lot of for me, budgeting is very tied into my self worth because budgeting involves money and I have you know, we're in a capitalistic we're in a capitalist society, so I have oftentimes equated more money equals you know, better better self worth, which is really terrible in hindsight for me to have even thought that, But that's really what we're taught, right I would say that I'm sorry I asked me that question.
Again because I totally forgot you are so much likely I'm like doctor money.
Are we like, uh no, it's cod yesterday. I'm like this may like I'll be like yeah, and then I'm like, wait, what the future? The future?
How do we like make decisions today when it's so hard for us to like remind like Wanda, we were talking, Tiffany imagines herself in the future as Wanda, and everything she does is for Wanda, so Wanda can be happy and you mean, like.
Love Wanda, Like I got you.
Right, because Wanda sounds like the sassy old lady dad, because I just see Wanda custoder I made.
I mean, I've always I've always I've always contended my spirit animal. Yes, because honestly, I mean, and that's that's kind of a good point to make right now. Shannane was is I'm guessing she's still alive in our consciousness. Shnane is a small business owner. She does very well with her salon. She has support. She had key Lo Lo and her other friend and every you know, and she every so often she got to, you know, have fun. But for the most part, Shannane was a hard worker.
So I think, you know, if I imadgine it myself as Bartin's character art Lawren's character on Shanne like that that actually, I mean real talk, That honestly is probably what I'm gonna do when I get off this phone call, because I do need to like work on my budget, but I think that that's a good thing to do. Like what like imagining yourself as Wanda, Yes it's you. Yes, I mean we're kind of used to in this day and age with social media, imagining ourselves as an avatar.
But there's something in psychiatry psychology that we call like like you. When I'm talking to somebody, let's say, who's experiencing depression or has in the past, and I will sometimes ask questions to determine if their goal oriented or future oriented. Right A lot of us are not goal or future oriented right now because we don't know what's going to happen from day to day. But if we can kind of imagine ourselves not as our Oh, I'm going to be my best self. I'm going to run
this marathon. I'm gonna have like a thousand rides on peloton this month. Like it's not that it's not it's not like a goal oriented like I hit this goal. It's more so needs to be about imagining yourself in a happy place despite what's going on, because we are we're in a new normal. It's not going to be the same way as it was before. It isn't. I mean, I don't know anybody personally who would feel comfortable walking around without a mask, like in the airport, in a
rest and you like anything like that. So I think it is. I think it's good to focus on what do I like. I want to be someone who is at peace. I want to be someone who definitely feels confident. And when it comes to budgeting, I know that I was having a hard time last month because I actually was starting to slip back into having some anxiety and depression. And so I was telling Mandy this yesterday. I was like, you know, I like there were some bills that they
were like, Amie, are you gonna pay these bills? Or like what's up? Cause you usually do and now you're not. And it was because I was just so cloudy with my thoughts because some of my depressive and my depression and anxiety symptoms came back. And honestly, I would say over the past two weeks, as I had my medication adjusted, like I had an increased I have been more go
with the flow, like water off a ducts back. But I was, I mean seriously, like stressing in bed, like damn you didn't pay you at and T cell phone bill, like look at you like like you like you really fucking up right now. And it's not that serious. It's not. It's just that I needed to get to a better
place where I felt better. So I think that when it comes to budgeting, it's it's important, but I'm I'm gonna have to change my budget to reflect the fact that like I don't go nowhere, I don't have to I don't have to include my restaurant the restaurant portion of my budget where I that I would usually use. Now. I will say this last month, when I wasn't feeling that great, I was, I was like, oh, nobody's on Postmates word okay, like and then it's like, oh, well,
that's going to cover it up. But then I ended up like feeling bad about it later because I was like, you don't need to do that. So I think we need to really look at the at a budget or this this new normal budget as things that we need not necessarily to feel happy and great because I bought a lot of dumb shit, and I'm like, where are you gonna go with them? Sneakers? Nowhere? Like you don't need these things? But I think we really need to just just look at you know, how can we make
things easier for us? How? You know, do we need to outsource certain things? Does our budget allow for that? Because it wasn't really until like maybe last year that I was like, Oh, I really need to like outsource these things, like there are things that I can afford to outsource, or you know, there were even things that I would barter for other with other people with for
other people with. So you know, I think we need to get to a point, or people hopefully can get to a point where they feel they feel better about themselves. And that really might involve someone talking to a mental health therapist or a mental health clinician or a psychiatrist, psychologists, what have you, but also talking about like what are
the things that make me me? What are the and maybe what are the negative coping strategies that I was using before the pandit, before COVID that I've carried with me into this pandemic.
Snacks, Yes, I was just looking all of that in to have you've been quiet, what are you thinking over there?
I've just been thinking that, Like one of the what I love, Well, I guess if there is any bright side to all of this darkness is how comfortable people have gotten talking about therapy and suggesting therapy to each other. And when I mean people, I mean black folks. That never was a thing. It was like, gree you better pray. No one talked about therapy, and it's just become like I just said it to someone the other day.
I was like, yeah, well, you know, have you considered therapy? They're like yeah, yeah, even.
Like my churchy friends, which is like, I mean, you know, that was never a thing. Like when I have a super churchy friend and she was like, oh I talk to my therapist today, so great. And I just thought, you know, if there is a bright side, it's the fact that people are understanding that you need help and that going to therapy is not a replacement for God in prayer, and that they can work in tandem together.
Thank you, you know.
And I'm loving because people like you know, like Sarah Jake's Robert, she says that all the time, which I love because so many people look up to her TJ's daughter, and so, yeah, So I guess I was just thinking about that because quite honestly, I've been dragging my feet. I've been needing a therapist. I want a black woman for the longest, just to there are what I do.
I have several companies that I want. It could be really stressful, and sometimes I won't even know that I'm stressed until I'm like, yeah, so, what's the last time you slept fully? You know, So just having a place to because I'm like the go to for everyone. There's literally times when I feel like I'm everyone's pulling a finger a toe. Yes, I'm just like like what people are like I text you, I'm like, I have fifty unread text text is a new email?
I mean?
So yeah, So, I mean I just think that if if anything else is just is like tiven AAA to find a therapist. I don't know why I've been dragging my I guess I'm just like, ugh, I don't feel like interviewing people and figuring out the right person and how am I going to make time for them? I don't even have time for myself.
True, But then you know it's funny, there was something there there was like this work. It was like busy work that I had to complete for my job, and I finally got around to like finishing it today and I was like, it's gonna say so long and I don't feel like doing it. It literally was data entry like this, It was not a big deal. And then today when I was doing it now that like, I'm not you know, my motivation is better because I'm not depressed. I was like, eman, you could have been done that,
But I didn't get on myself about it. I was like, you know what, we're going to use this as a you know, a learning point, Like you didn't do it before because you weren't feeling right and you got some help and now you feel better and that's okay, so
I will. But something that you said just now reminded me of the fact that a lot of people, and I think, especially like I'm Generation X because I'm I'm almost forty five, so but general X, the baby boomers, they always get on millennials and Gen Z like, oh, you are so lazy and youing your cell phones and this,
that and the third. But honestly, I think, not think, I definitely know just by following social media trends and whatnot that if it weren't for the black millennials, we would not be talking about therapy like it's nothing like oh yeah, like because they'll legit be like, oh, I got a therapist, I got an individual therapist, I got a group therapist. Then I have a therapist that I check in with like every two months. Like they're very
pro therapy. And as much as they were maligned and for I guess for being like the quote unquote adderall generation, they are really taking up the charge to just make it very normal. And I really appreciate that. You're welcome.
Than millennial and I'm I'm generating next as well. I'm forty doctor money, so I'm generation LM as well. So Mandi's are a local millennial. I'm almost like, what did the millennials say? Even though sometimes Mandy's like an old lady, I'm like, girl, get with it.
I'm a layered and complex individual like everyone else. I guess it's just like, don't feel it's the it's the negative thought spiral, which is and this is for me and food because listen, my coping mechanism is food. And I am really appalled at how much weight I put on in this pandemic. But it's almost like the shame of the eating habits that have plagued me for my entire life stops me from doing the things that I know I can do to make myself feel better, and
then I feel bad. So then I just layered on with more food. And it's this like self fulfilling negative prophecy that man, I'm just like and I start beating myself up because I'm like Jesus Christ, like, you're thirty something years old, shouldn't you be over this by now?
This isn't cute, but again that we're just we're so hard, hard on ourselves, and I this conversation right now is just reminding me like we just as much as as much as I say it, I know intellectually I need to be nicer to myself and just like one day after the next, but it's it's really hard to like be a human today, a black human, a woman, human, age, location, whatever, just a human in your specific part of the world.
Well, it's interesting that you mentioned like like you're trying to intellectualize your your desire to want to make yourself feel better by eating, right, So not that I mean I'm using an eating disorder as an example. I'm not saying you have a eating disorder, but yeah, but probably I do go ahead when but when people are when people let's say, have binge eating disorder or even anorexia nervosa or bulimia where they binge and then they purge.
I used to actually work at a hospital, an inpatient hospital, with with a page who had really really severe eating disorders, and the one thing that they all told me, whether they were binging, they're binging food or restricting their food or purging their food, is that they would get high from the maladaptive behavior. So anorexics get high when they're not like when I guess when they're blood sugar drops.
I don't know, because I'm not innarexic, but they do feel this state of euphoria, and it's kind of similar when you know. I would say most of us, myself included, have gained weight during this pandemic because it's like like last month, I was like, donuts are amazing, and that's really it. So I'd like six and I'm gonna eat them every day. I'm gonna eat six donuts every day and that's that. Because it is boosting your serotonin in your brain, and that's making you feel better, but temporarily,
and then the guilts and the shame sets in. So it's interesting that you know, you, even me, we like we're we're creatures that we can't human beings are creatures that can you know, intellectualize anything. So it's like, oh, well, why do I keep doing this? I've been doing this since I was a kid. It's not something that you can really, it's not something that you woke up one
day and decided to do. It's something that your brain decided, well, is your serotonin lo, then let's eat everything and then and then we'll feel better for maybe like thirty minutes. So again, like what you just said in terms of, you know, we need to stop beating beating each other up so much. It's that's really what it is. And I know it's easier said than done, but I've really been trying to on the daily, like just think about things like you know what, like oh, you had to
pay that parking ticket. You know what it happens pay the parking ticket. Like whereas before I would just look at it and then just get mad and then I flip it over and then you know, I'm like a day before I'm gonna get you know, I have to owe the city double. Like, there's so many things that I have personally guilted myself over that comple deletely make no sense, but that was a function of me having symptoms of mental illness.
I feel like we could keep talking and talking and talking talking, Doctor Money. It's been really amazing you having amazing you. It's been so amazing having you on the show today. I just mean, it's been amazing you both. Thank you, Thank you, thank you. Where can people find out more about you and what you have going on?
Now? Okay? Sure, So I'm doctor Emani. I have all social media pretty much, but I would say the place that I'm most active is Instagram. So I can be found on Instagram at doctor d O C T O R dot Imani. I also have a website of the same name. It's but it's doctor Hyphenemani dot com. People can find me on YouTube just search for my name again,
it's doctor the word spelled out Imani. And I have a podcast which is called emanis State of Mind, and it's pretty much everywhere there are streaming there's a streaming podcast platform. A mini State of Mind is essentially me and one of my best friends, and we talk about mental health and mental illness and wellness, but we talk about it in a very casual, pop culture based situation. So it's it's not it's not it's not a sad podcast. Like we're definitely giggling the whole time and just like
just acting silly. But you know, I'm someone who that's my personality. I'm just kind of goofy by nature, and that's how I am with my patients and my friends, and so I wanted to at least show people that mental health doesn't have to be dour and sad and scary. It actually can be a lot of fun. So that's that's really kind of like my baby, So that's why I spent so much time explaining that. But but yeah,
Emani state of Mind, YouTube, Instagram, my website. I guess if you want to see me, you could always go to Bravo dot com, Sorry, BravoTV dot com. I'm one of the cast members of Married to Medicine Los Angeles. Yeah, and I think I pretty much exhausted all of my oh my avenues, what's your address?
I know, right, okay, so I'm just kidding. Well, thank you so so much. This was illuminating. I mean, I feel like if every therapist was like you, people would not be afraid to go to therapies.
Yeah that's so nice. Yeah, I'm an open book because I'm like, I mean, the patients that I see, I have clients, so because people are going to ask us the I'm sorry, what'd you say?
I said?
People are going to ask us. Yeah, how can I get an appointment with doctor Amani?
So okay, I have been I have been considering reopening my private practice because that actually has been occurring more. But the patients that I see are actually their referrals through the hospital I work for, so I would I would say probably the best way to get at a quote unquote appointment with me is to listen to my podcast. It's really good, y'all.
Listen to the most recent when the New Normal, and it felt like your friend on the other end of it was like everybody else just like, don't tell me it's the new normal.
I refuse to believe it. Yeah, Cam as well, but yeah, we had we have a really good time. But yeah, I just wanted to have somebody on my podcast. That would be the common person as opposed to me who you know, if if, if you you know, keeps talking to me, I'm gonna start sounding like, you know, a professor, and I don't want to do that. You went to Xavier.
True yeah true the doctor Fay true true true true.
All right, Well y'all go check out Doctor and Money everywhere, and thank you again Doctor Money for coming on Brown Ambition.
Of course, thank you.
This was super fun. I'm glad I got to meet you guys,