Wake that ass up in the morning.
The Breakfast Club Morning, everybody is dj n V Jess Hilarious, Charlamage the guy. We are the Breakfast Club. We got a special guest in the building. Yes, indeed we have to. We have doctor Judith Joseph.
Welcome, Thank you so great to be here. Yes, Happy Mental Health Awareness Month.
Do you have a new book out now called high Functioning Overcome your Hidden Depression and Reclaim Your Joy?
What does hidden depression look like?
Ooh, so hidden depression is not like the typical depression. When people think of depression, they think is someone crying?
I get out of bed?
But hidden depression hides behind a mask of pathologically being pathologically productive. So imagine you know a single mom working to take care of her kids, working at her job, and she cannot sow down. People depend on her, So what does she do. She shows up to work with a smile on her face. She's showing up for others, but she feels no joy. And it's something called anne hendonia. It's a scientific term that I study in live People
don't even know it exists. So hidden depression doesn't necessarily look sad, but it doesn't feel joy.
It feels empty, and.
I actually, I have a friend who just experienced that, right, And he called me with like like he had just hit the lottery. Though it was so it was it was unusual. I don't like to say weird.
It's so unusual.
He called me and say, yo, I just figured something out. I'm like what He was like, I've been depressed all this time.
I'm depressed.
And I'm like, why you why why you you want a stay or a cookie?
Like why are you so excited about it? Like this is not good news?
He was like, no, no, na, like I'm not suicidal or anything. I've just been burying myself in my work and I am the most productive, but I'm not happy. My wife she gets no attention from me. I'm not like mentally there for my kids. And I just found out. I was talking to my therapist and we you know, and he got he was diagnosed and he has uh
he he's depressed. And it was so crazy because I wh when you think of depression, you know, you think of you know, the suicidal thoughts and you say, damn, you can't get out of bed.
He was the opposite, but he was still depressed. So I just I just found that out.
Wow. Yeah, you know why he was happy. It was because there's a term in psychology called affect labeling. When you know what you're dealing with, the uncertainty of not knowing how you feel just makes you feel so stressed. You feel like, Okay, maybe there's something wrong with me, what I have to complain about. Maybe it's my fault. But when someone tells you no, what you're experiencing is a hadonia, it's actually a scientific symptom. Many people struggle
with it. Then you feel as if, Okay, it's not my fault. There's a term for this. I know what I'm working with hare so I can do something about it. And as human beings, our birthright is joy. Like joy is literally built into our DNA, and if we can't access that joy, that's a problem. So just because someone's not getting out, not you know, in bed and crying all day, doesn't mean that it's not a problem. We have to address this lack of joy.
How do you get out of it? Right?
So, let's say you work with somebody who bullies you all the time, says you're Spanish when you're black. You know somebody who has a bad wig and you have to see it all the time. How do you get out of that place of working with them? Because you got to go to work looking at me like that.
You gotta make money, So how do you get out of that? Because the people that don't want to work with how do you get out of that?
But you know what he's doing right now, He's accessing joy, being playful, being comical. He is finding a way through a difficult situation by accessing joy.
Right.
But many of us just go to work and.
We do serious.
If you work with somebody that you don't like, but you still need to get money. I'm not talking about Sheelamane or just a Lauren, but when people that you know don't like their job. But how do you continue to go through that? Because you still need money? You still got to pay for the food on the table, You still gotta pay for rent, you still gotta pay for your car, you still gotta pay.
For your kids. How do you get through that? What do you tell people to do?
There's actually a term in my book called the biopsychosocial model. Right, So what you're talking about and what you so eloquently said, it's actually a model used by every single medical student in the world. Right, the biopsychosocial is like a fingerprint. We all have our fingerprints, but it's all unique. So we each have a biopsychosocial. So, for example, the person you're talking about, the biopsychosocial for that person, socially, what's
happening is that they're in this stressful situation. They're not supported, they're actually being you know, there's microaggressions, maybe macroaggressions at work, but that's just one part of why they're no longer happy. It's one of the things that's draining the science of their happiness.
Right.
The other parts of that model are the biological. So maybe this person also has a medical condition like I don't know, diabetes, or psychologically they have past trauma. So all of those things play into what's taking away from their points of joy. So understanding where the stressors are and what's causing you to be unhappy is important.
But even within.
Stressful situations, because I've traveled the world over thirty countries looking at joy, even when people don't have running water, even when they're in war zones, they can still access.
Joy, something that makes you happy.
With those of decisue.
Because joy is a survival technique. We have to access joy in order to survive, not just to thrive, but to survive. So you can find ways at work to connect with someone else. Maybe someone else is going through it with you, so you're sharing your venting. You know, maybe you can use a candle at work or something fragrant to stimulate the senses, or make sure that you're leaving work and having lunch like a human being instead
of being in front of a screen. Right, there are things ways that you can access joy because it's a survival technique.
I believe that. I believe joy is survival technique. We actually had liz on we were talking about that. But I also feel like some people fake happy and they fake joy, So what does the real joy look like?
That's why I say, understand the science of your happiness. There's only one Leonard, There's only one Judith, you know, ever in the history of the universe, in the future. So what is it about you that makes you joyful? And in my research lab, when we're studying joy, we're actually adding up points. For example, if you took a rest and you woke up, did you feel refreshed? That's a point if you were hungry and you savored your meal, that's a point. If you were lonely you connected with someone,
that's a point. But the rest of the world is so busy chasing this idea of happy. Right, I will be happy when I get the perfect partner. I'll be happy when a pay up on debt, I'll be happy when I have a house. The science shows us that even when those things happen, we're still not happy. So we have to access the points of joy that really feed into our unique sense of happiness. For me, it's connection. If I'm busy, if I'm speaking at places, if I'm on TV all the time and I'm not connecting with
my family, I'm gonna be unhappy. But for you it could be something else.
What are the signs of hidden depression and high functioning depression.
Yes, so many people confuse high function depression with burnout. The difference is that, you know, for burnout, let's say you go to a party and you say I'm burnt out, people are like, oh, me too, me three right. But if you walk into a party and you say I'm depressed, people are like, oh, you should do something about that, right, Like like your friend right.
Living.
So when you think about burnout, right, burnout by definition is an occupational hazard when though who the World Health Organization classified it, it's the workplace causing the symptoms. So technically, you take the person out of the workplace, they should get better. With high functioning folks, even when you take them out of the workplace, they're not better. What are they doing. They're busying themselves on a side hustler too.
They're taking on somebody's problems. They can't sit still, they're cleaning out their house or the garage, right, because it's not the workplace. It's not something on the outside, it's something inside that's unresolved. So this hidden trauma, this unresolved pain. So they're trying to outrun it by busying themselves. So when they sit still, they feel empty. When they're not working, they feel restless.
Let me ask you a question. I feel like and this is a good thing, but I also feel like it's a bad thing. I feel like in the last ten years, so many people have been talking about all these mental health issues and terms. Does it Sometimes I feel like it's an overload because it's like, you know, you get a pain, right, you google it and it is thirty things that's wrong with you.
Now you're even more confused.
Right, is that the same thing with a lot of sometimes with a lot of these terms, like when you hear certain things, is now I'm depressed, Now I'm a high function in depressed. Now I have anxiety. Now I have this like do you feel like it's too much for people? And how can people really break that all down and realize what they really have and which really bought them because everything sounds the same at sometimes.
I mean, it's a great question. But the term effect labeling in psychology shows us that when you can name it appropriately right, it decreases the anxiety. Think about if you were in a room you know it's pitch black, and you heard a loud crash. Some of us would start swinging, someone start screaming, someone start running. But if you turn that light on and you saw what it was, a osfel or some inotimant object, you feel relaxed. Why Because you know what you're doing, you know what it is.
Right.
It's the not knowing and not naming appropriately that creates a lot of anxiety. So people end up just drinking a lot right to soothe that thing because they don't know what it is, or they end up gambling or spending a lot of money or doing things busying themselves to outrun this pain they don't understand.
And it's interesting too because you know, I think what is speaking to to me anyway is the fact that there was a time when nobody used to talk about their mental health issues. So we went from saying we don't speak about this at all. In order to eradicate the stigma, we got to tell our story. So now people are not just going out there to get help and understanding what they're dealing with.
They're telling their stories.
They're telling their story. But still the older generations are not as open, right, the younger ones they want to talk about it. They want to feel seen, they want to feel connected, and many of them do sometimes inappropriately use a label to connect. Right, But there's still a lot of stigma. You know, the places I go, the corporations I go to, it's still more accepted to say
burnt out than depressed. But we have to name what it is because the supports are going to look very different, the resources look very different.
Now, how do you know the different between somebody who's staying busy as a response to trauma to somebody who's actually really.
Busy, yes, great question. It's antedonia. You know, when you ask someone who's busy but they're actually pathologically productive, they're not getting joy. You know. They end up at my office in Manhattan and they're like, I don't know what's wrong. Everything looks good on the outside, but I just don't feel joyful. Whereas someone who's actually engaged in what they're doing,
they got the pep in their step. They're engaged and they're connected, and they're feeling as if they're getting a sense of purpose Versus when you keep doing over time without actually tapping into purpose, you do feel numb. You're like, why am I doing this? But you cannot stop because you're trying to outrun something that you don't even know is there.
Now.
You talked about, you know, working and being at rest, So how do you know when you're at rest and being okay with being at rest.
One of the points of joy that we measure in my research lab is actually that it's called psychomorgoric at agitation. It's a terrible scientific term, but what it means is that you can't sit still. You just on edge. And when you add a points of joy, being able to be calm and not stressed is actually a point that many many of us leave on the table. We often think, oh, that's anxiety and not depression. But no, it's almost like a different side of the same coin. Right, You can't
be joyful if you're stressed. Do you know anyone who's been really stressed out who is like also joyful? No? Then, and look at the monks and other countries and the gurus. They may have just a mat to sleep on and bread and water, but they are joyful because they're at peace. So if you're not feeling that sense of peace and you have that inner restlessness, it's really difficult to be joyful.
What does everybody's piece the same piece?
Though?
It's not? And that's why I said to understand the science of your happiness. In my book, I actually have that model so that I democratize this information. Why are just the doctors and medical students holding onto this. Every patient that comes to my lab draws their own biopsychosocial right, So you want to figure out what are the things that are taking away from my happiness?
Right?
If you don't understand what's taking away their points of joy. How can you understand the science of your happiness? So in some cases, you're going to look at the social factors, Right, someone who is partner with somebody who's toxic. I mean, they could eat all the care they want, They're still going to be unhappy, right, Versus somebody who, let's say psychologically they dealt with a lot of trauma in their childhood, neglected, abused.
We need to address that first because it's really hard to act as story when you're in fight or flight. And then biologically, let's say, if someone who has an autoimmune condition, right, if you're constantly in a state of high inflammation, your brain's not going to be happy. So everyone's so unique, but we're chasing things that work for other people without understanding our own science.
And going back to what you said just a minute ago, when you were saying, people bury themselves in work and they have to be doing something all the time.
They're always at their busiest. How do you I don't know, how did I see?
Like?
How are you supposed to feel when you do nothing? Yes? Like, how are you know what I'm saying? Like, how are you supposed to feel? And you just do nothing.
My clients ask me that all the time, because high functioning folks have something called all or nothing thinking. When you tell them that you need to slow down, they're like, well, I can't stop, and I'm like, hold on a second. Stopping is not equivalent to slowing down. But their role, their sense of their worth is so tied closely to what they do. They feel like without their role, they are unlovable, that they are lazy. Yeah, right, So we have to
challenge a lot of that. And in the PTSD, the post traumatic stress research that I do with combat veterans, what we see is that, you know, people who are triggered by things like let's say a situation, a person, a place, you know, they avoid those things, right, But those of us who are pathologically productive with high function depression, we avoid dealing with the pain by working. So a lot of it is unpacking what are you running from? Right?
You think you're chasing this gold is happiness, but what are you actually running from?
Right?
And the trauma response of I don't feel worthy without my role, you know, that is exactly it. They don't even realize it's tied to some past unprocessed pain. So a lot of times we spend going back in the past. I'll ask them to, you know, open up their phones or bring in old pictures so we can trace back to a time when they actually were feeling purposeful and tapping into joy, and we try to figure out and unpack what was that trauma. And then we spend a lot of time in grounding.
Right.
Grounding techniques help you to calm that fight or flight because that busyness is you trying to outrun this past.
Right.
So it doesn't like flashback, it doesn't like nightmares, but it's this busyness because you're trying to outrun your in fight or flight. But we spend a lot of time with grounding, and I talk about the techniques of my book, so they feel at ease when they sit still.
We're talking to doctor Joseph Judith Joseph Us. She has a new book out, High Functioning, Overcome your Hidden Depression and Reclaim Your Joy.
Which you gonna say, just uh, what you like live here in Manhattan.
You can't ground out there actually can.
Great question, you know, I actually talk. That's a good one. And I taught this course, the same one I'm teaching about at the White House.
Right.
Talk about people who are in high stress situations at work.
Right.
I taught them how they can actually ground at their desk. And there's a technique called the five four three two one.
Right.
You can do it with a beverage.
Like a coffee or a tea.
But what you do is you sit and for five minutes every day you practice this, you hold onto that tee and you list five things you can see, so you describe the cup, describe the liquid, You describe your hand, the table, like you're really describing. Five things that you see, the color. Four things that you feel, so you feel the cup, you feel the warmth, you feel the chair,
You feel the ground under your feet. Three things that you can hear, so you may hear some wind outside, you may hear music, you may hear the sound of the beverage. Two things that you can smell. You smell the fragrances in the cup and on you. One thing you can taste, you sip it. If you're doing five for three two one in that way, you're not thinking about your past pay, you're not getting trigger, you're not
thinking about you know what's happening around you. You're so present and you're teaching your brain that you have the capacity to sit still and to be present, because when we don't process that fight or flight, we feel disconnected from our bodies. But the grounding techniques allows us to sit still and just do nothing.
You need to rest to find be.
I think so it's one of the points of joy, you know. Excuse me, it's really difficult to access joy when you are restless. It's really difficult to access that feeling of happiness and pleasure when you have when you're in fight or flight. Right, So it's important to practice these peaceful methods.
I think. I keep I'm hung up on this.
One question you asked earlier was like, can you feel joy when you're stressed?
It's very, very difficult. It's super difficult, you know, Like imagine when you're stressed and you're sitting eating your food. Many times we'll like finish the bowl and we don't even know we finished our plate, right, because our brain was somewhere else. So we missed out on a point of joy, right, We weren't tasting the crunchy salad or the dressings.
Right.
That's crazy, Yeah, like mostly.
Not even everything's not trying to sound like a client here or anything like that. But a lot of things that you're saying, like I like live this every day, Like I'll heat something up and then do something else and if forget that I'm even forget that I'm hungry and then do it because I'm trying to keep myself busy. Like I wake up every morning at four, being here at six, we get done at a certain time, I go home, then I work.
On other businesses and I do and then I have an.
Eight month old baby, and I have a thirteen year old son, and I'm married, and it's so many different things, right, and the drugs and the drugs, so so yeah, he does not have to put it all the day late day. But yes, what I find for me, speaking of drugs, at the end of the night a good like pre roll Like for me, we that calms me down. I'm able to relax and just like take a breath. But by the time that is, that's like twelve one o'clock in the morning, I.
Got to be back up at four.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's like, but I don't think I'm stressed all the prices. It's like, what the hell is going on?
Then maybe I'm not your doctor, but a lot of people like you who have busy careers, families, a lot of responsibilities.
They're caretakers.
Right in my stof the first ever published in the world on high function depression, a lot of caretakers, a lot of caregivers, they experience that lack of joy. Why because they're so busy in their minds, they're so restless that they're missing out the precious baby's face in front of them, who wants to snuggle with you? Right, you lost the point right there, because when you snuggle, you're
getting oxytocin, right, You're getting that attachment hormone. And you know, many times I hear a lot of people saying they're intimate with their partners and they just can't wait to get over what because they just want to You know, they're not they're missing out. That's a point of joy for human beings, right, Sleep is a point of joy. But many of us are spending our times on our phones before we go to bed, so that's disrupting our sleep.
So we are losing so many points because we cannot sit still.
What about the water too, what about the the five's? Can you break down the concept of healing with the five's.
Well, the reason I the reason I came up with the fives, I got a point of joy there. My thirst is because when I travel the world, the number or five comes up in a lot of countries. Right, So I want people to envision their hand and say to themselves, like, I am built with the DNA for joy. It is my birthright as a human I want to reclaim it, right and.
Joy tell me how to do.
It and envision that. You know you were built with the DNA for joy. It is your birthright as a human being, but sometimes you forget how to access it. So I want you to reclaim your joy tapping into one of the five y's every day, right, just one. Don't do more than one or two because that's too much. And the first one is validation. So validation is acknowledging
and accepting how you feel good or bad without judgment. Right, And you know how I said that when you don't know what you're dealing with, validation is like turn the light onto that room, so you know what you're working with. You're naming the emotion good or bad, and you're accepting it and you can self validate right to yourself. But you know sometimes with my assessments, I validate through the quizzes. You know the quiz online that I have on my website.
If you take take the Antedonia quiz and you see you have a high Antedonia score, You're like, wow, I'm lacking joy. That is why I feel this way, right. And the second is venting. Venting is expressing emotion. So you could vent verbally like we are right now, or you could write in a journal, or pray or dance or sing or cry. All are ways to express emotion.
And in my lab when people come in, I'll fill up a red balloon and every person would take a turn trying to put that balloon underwater, and one hundred percent of the time it pops up. You cannot escape physics.
Right.
So venting is imagine if you're letting the air out of that balloon slowly over time.
Right.
What happens if you don't let that air out is that that balloon that's stress, that emotion will pop up in areas of your life that you don't want it to pop about, work, in your relationships, in your family.
Right.
So when you let the air out over time, you're able to have that balloon glad on the word you know, it's you're more peaceful. And then the third V is values. Right, So I brought in those candles for you because I value you know, giving back to my community. So right now I'm wearing a design from a black designer who's a close friend of mine, Carl Kushny, And I brought candles from Harlem Candle Company, right because I like to give and pour back into my community. And so tap
into what gives you meaning and purpose. Think priceless versus price tags. Many of us chase the things, right, we chase the cloud, we chase the money. I was like that too, But you're not doing things that give you meaning and purpose, so you're missing out, right. So now I won't take a speaking engagement if it's if I'm missing out on my time with my daughter, Yeah, because honestly, I I co parent, so I'm only going to see her for like you know how they do the math
on on socials. I'm going to miss out on my time with her. It's that's priceless. Why would I do that? No amount of money can give me that time back, right, So really tap into things that matter. And the fourth ve as vitals, what nourishes your mind, your brain, your body. Right, you only get one. I tell my daughter, since she was too how many bodies did God give you? And she always says one, mommy, And I said, what do you got to do with it? Take care of it?
And she's known that since she was too. Right. But we treat our bodies so poorly, you know, we criticize what we look. But it's like, I have strong legs that get me to places, right. A lot of people don't have that. So be kind to your body. Eat nourishing foods, not processed foods. Get movement in, you know, protect your brain from too much screen time. You know, the way that we look at our faces all the time, it's very unhealthy, you know, when we're looking at our
face on FaceTime, we're looking on zoom, super unhealthy. It's causing a lot of stress. We weren't meant to look at our face that much, right, really, we weren't. There's a termins psychiatry called the otoscopic phenomenon. So people who are psychotic with schizophrenia, they'll see images of themselves across the room and it creates a lot of anxiety for them and depression we're doing that to ourselves.
And that's why filters exist, because that's the better way to look at yourself. And a lot of women and men cannot take a picture on the regular camera now because oh okay, I get it, I'm putting it together.
Yes, yes, it's really unhealthy for us. If I were to see my face next year's right now, I'd be so distracted I wouldn't even be listening to you. We were made to look at each other, to interact with each other, to get feedback, not to look at ourselves. So really protect your brain and the other parts of idols are our relationships. We neglect it. We have to pour into healthy relationships because the unhealthy ones will drain our life source. And then the last fee is vision.
How do you plan join in the future so you keep moving forward instead of getting stuck in the past. So this could be small, you know, like I plan joy every day. After I get my kid to school on time, on the days I have her, I'll sit in my living room and I have my Caribbean coffee and I enjoy it. You know, I savor it because that's my time. But for someone else it could be something else. Right, So plan the joy. Celebrate your wins. When you meet a major milestone, right, celebrate it as
a team. You know you don't get that time back. So plan joy in the future.
What people walk away with after reading High Functioning, I.
Really hope that they understand that joy is a priority, It is a necessity. It is part of our survival, especially in our community. Without joy, what would have happened to us? You know, So prioritize joy and understand the science of your happiness. You know there is only one you, and there will only ever be one you. So take the time to know yourself, understand what's taking away from your joy so you know where to add back to it. And joy has the power to change people and their communities.
So you know, we all probably have interacted with people who are not joyful. They can change the tone of a room, right, So if we take the time to invest in joy, we can literally change not just ourselves, but our families, our communities, and I think the world.
How do they find you, Doctor Judith.
Doctor Judith Joseph dot com and follow me on all the socials, Doctor Judith Joseph, and pick up my book High Functioning.
Overcome your Hidden depression and reclaim your joy. Thank you for joining.
Thank you so much.
That's Judith Joseph is Thereakfast Club, good morning, thank you.
Wake that ass up early in the morning. Breakfast Club
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