Welcome back to the Mental Plateau podcast. My name is Shreyas Girotra, and I'm a junior at Heazel Federal High School in Illinois. Today, I'm on a mission to highlight the importance of mental health, and we have a guest who's been sharing his learnings from his experiences and his journeys from health. Mark, a musician, mental health advocate, and YouTuber, has reached over 35,000 views online and makes it impact society every single day. With that said, I welcome Mark Elholt.
Let's get right into it. ["Mental Health"] So Mark, please tell us about yourself. Yes, thank you very much, Shreyas, for having me here because very happy for what you're doing. Mental health is a very big passion of mine because, mark my words, mental health awareness saved my life.
I'm somebody who, growing up the majority of my life and my youth, I was struggling with my mental illness quite a bit, but I didn't know how to acknowledge and be aware of it, mostly because of the society and everything, the stigma that it has. I didn't know how to talk about my mental illness. And growing up in my youth, struggling with my mental illness and never addressing it, apart from various sexual traumas in my life, at age 19, I did actually attempt a suicide.
I had a suicide attempt that I was not successful with, grateful that I survived my suicide attempt. And after that, I've never attempted again and never will. And I've actually realized and accepted my mental illness and my post-traumatic stress disorder. And ever since, I've been actually going to therapy and treating my mental illness, and I've learned how to love myself and be happy and prosperous and live a really well-balanced life.
That's why I wanna share my history with people so anyone else can struggling, can be able to find those resources and help themselves. I love to hear that. And I'm happy to see how you were able to get over those obstacles of yours and excel from that. And one thing that you mentioned that I really like, it's like during the pandemic, that idea of the stigma of mental health, we really worked on that as a society.
Before that, during like the early 2000s, even during the 2010s, there was a lot of stigma around mental health, but that pandemic gave us time to think and really balance it all. But clearly, you've been on quite a journey. In my mind, it's the perfect example of resiliency and having a broke mind. Can you share with our listeners on how this story has made you stronger? Yeah, I really think it made me stronger because I eventually was able to realize, I'm not doing well.
I'm struggling with some things and I'm not happy. And so far, society hasn't been able to actually help me. I haven't been able to find a way to talk to friends or people about it. I was worried the way people would judge me. I was able to actually get over that. I was able to stop worrying about what society and friends and people would think about me. I was able to dig into myself, dig in and realize something's not right. This is not good and I'm not happy. I need to figure this out.
And then being able to address it and basically accept the fact that I do have mental illness, it made me stronger because once I had a label to it, know what it was, I was able to actually find ways to address it and help it.
I was able to find ways to medicate myself, to do things to help it, which actually once, I see for a long time I was afraid about getting a label, but once I got the label, it actually helped me be able to stay stronger and know how to fix the problems because I knew what it was. I could actually know what the problem was.
I could find the root of it, the cause and how to address it to help make it better, which actually made me stronger knowing I could investigate what I wanted and I could give myself what I wanted. I love that idea. And one thing that kind of relates to that is the idea of having support. No matter what situation is in, or whatever, no matter what situation you're in, it's important to have people who you talk to on a common basis, get your mind out and be able to spread your own idea.
And throughout our lives, there's always a variety of challenges in space, it might that be physical, like, oh, saying you're gonna come out to work, just being able to find the right people or getting over your own mental obstacles. So throughout everyone's life, there's been many challenges to overcome. And for you, despite that being mental, physical, what's been that biggest hill for you to climb?
So the biggest hill, it all comes down to mental because even though I had, so after my suicide attempt, to be completely honest, my suicide attempt resulted in a traumatic brain injury that also resulted in total blindness for the rest of my life. And going from 20-20 vision to total blindness, it was difficult for me to learn how to physically do everything over again. And also going from 20-20 vision to total blindness, it was much more difficult for me to learn how to operate in society.
I had to completely relearn how to do everything and how to function in society. And so socially, that was a much different feature. But the one thing that it all came down to, again, was the mental health, that was the most important because losing my vision, it was difficult, but all I had to do was just have to learn how to do things a different way. The physical manner of it wasn't too difficult. It was more the mental.
It was actually trying to find the resources and the way to learn these new ways to do things and just questioning, am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong? Is there a better way to do it? And when I was struggling finding those ways, it was easy to beat myself up and be hard on myself and just be wondering why it's being so difficult. Even though physically it was a struggle with the mental strain, that the physical, it affected me even more.
And same thing with learning how to operate in society. It was difficult, but when I'd come home from doing things or being social, it made me mentally just really wonder how I operated, how I acted, how people judged me and how they watched me, or if I did things the right way or not. So even with all the changes, it all actually mostly came down to the mental.
The mental was the thing that actually affected me the most, which is why over years I eventually realized I needed to address my mental health because it was really deteriorating for a period of time. I really agree with the idea because it's important to have a strong mental foundation in order for us to focus on things outside of ourselves. And one thing that I noticed in yourself is how you're so adaptive.
No matter the issue that's presented to you, you were always able to bounce back and excel from that. So considering that you've faced a variety of challenges and you're always adaptive, how has that concept of acceptance influenced your life and how have you tackled the obstacles you've encountered and what's your take on speaking up? So acceptance is a really, really big thing.
When my mental illness, or when my suicide attempt first happened and my vision loss happened and everything, I really didn't want to accept everything that came with it. I didn't want to accept I attempted suicide. I clearly have some mental illness going on. I didn't want to accept my vision loss. I just pretended like it was another day. When I got out of the hospital, I just acted like it was the same thing.
And when I wasn't accepting my mental illness, I was doing a lot of the same patterns. I was actually acting and doing things a lot of the same way and having the same results and just not getting it. I was still feeling really depressed and not happy with a lot of things. And then basically that's how, yeah, with a long time, it took me to finally accept it. When I accepted the illness and learned how to treat it, then I was able to find medications and find ways to help myself.
And same thing with losing my vision. When I first lost my vision, I tried to do everything the same way that I used to. And when I would not be successful, when I was failing at things and not getting far and doing well with it, it was easier for me to just be like, what's wrong with you? Why can't I do this right? And then I had to like, whoa, no. Except the fact that you're blind and that you have to do things a different way.
When I accepted I had to do it a different way, I found a new way to do it and I actually was able to be successful. When I was just trying to, when I wouldn't accept my blindness and wouldn't accept my mental illness, I tried to do things the same way, it just, it would put me back even farther. So accepting it helped me learn new ways to do it that would actually be helpful and I'd have success in the end.
I really agree with that idea of acceptance and as a high school student, I'm able to see those ideas obviously on a scale because with that transition from e-learning to in-person learning, we just had to be really adaptive. And I think that the idea of school, it really develops those necessary skills of being adaptive and resilient and having that problem solving mindset. And that's definitely things that we use definitely later in life and that plays a monumental role.
So what was one pivotal moment that marked that turning point in your journey that was kind of funded from your growth mindset and your ability to be adaptive? So the one thing, the big pivoting point was basically that my mental health is about me. I don't have to worry about my family, my friends. I don't have to worry about society and the way they judge me. I don't have to worry if I'm right or I'm wrong. If my friends are right and wrong, my mental health is about me. I am the person.
So like when you go to get your physical health, when your ankle is broken, you know exactly what you need. You can say, doctor, my ankle is broken. You take care of yourself. So with my mental health, I realized my mental health is about me. My mental health is about me. There was a period of time that I was actually working with a therapist that was detrimental to my mental health. It was very unhelpful. The therapist, they disagreed with me about a lot of things.
They even refused to talk to me about one of my traumas. There was something that happened at one point in my life that was very traumatizing. And they actually, they disagreed with me and they personally supported the person who traumatized and did these bad things to me. They were personally friends with them and they would take their side. So they would refuse to talk to me about some of my personal trauma. So it made me think I was wrong. It made me not wanna go to therapy.
It made me feel just uneasy. I didn't like it. I felt like I was being basically told that I was wrong and that even though it was about my mental health, I was being told to think a certain way and do things a certain way. And I realized at one point, this is my therapy. This is about me. This is what I need. I chose to go to therapy because I need to talk about stuff I need to talk about.
And my therapist refusing to talk to me about things and having a biased opinion, I didn't think that was fair. It wasn't fair to me as the client. So that's when I realized, you know what? I love myself and mental health is about me. I was able to cut ties with that therapist and basically tell them I no longer needed their help. And I personally did some digging around and found my own therapist.
And once I found them and we connected well, is when I actually grew the most and was able to utilize therapy in a good way. Because for a couple of years, I hated therapy. I didn't wanna go to it just because someone else had a biased opinion. They wanted to argue with me about things. And I didn't wanna be told I was wrong in therapy, be told what I can and can't talk about. So I was able to know my mental health is about me and I did this for myself.
That's great to hear and I'm happy to see that you've been able to develop such a beneficial relationship with therapy. And that really highlights that other idea that you shouldn't really let people suppress you no matter what stage of life you're in. It's always necessary that you leave no stone unturned when you're mentally or not yourself. It's important to have a clear mindset so you can process things the right way.
And processing things is really important when you're trying to understand the highlights of your life or also points where you need to work on yourself personally. So what's been those highlights of your life or what's been that one achievement or single thing that you've been most proud of for yourself? The one thing that I'm most proud of is that I was able to accept the fact that I have mental illness. I have codependency and abandonment rejection issues because of my youth growing up.
Basically with my biological mom, when I was five years old, she walked out of my life and my family wouldn't ever talk to me or tell me who or where my mom was. And they wouldn't talk to me about the abuse that happened in my childhood. So I was already traumatized as a kid. And so I just, I felt like the whole world just didn't love me.
I basically felt unloved and I just really, all I ever wanted to do was just make other people happy so they would just come back and actually show me that they did love and care. But the thing I'm most proud of is I accepted the fact that that was a mental illness, that it was codependency and abandonment rejection issues. I'm most proud of the fact that I was able to learn how to love myself and know that I don't need other people in my life.
Nine years ago, I found out about some things about my life and about my background I didn't know about. And I was able to actually cut ties with some people that were very narcissistic and abusing me and taking advantage of my kindness. And I was able to cut ties and basically move into this apartment right here by myself. I cut ties with my family, basically, and moved into this apartment and been able to survive and live on my own just because I learned to accept the fact that I love myself.
I just, all I needed to do was just learn how to love myself and do the things that make me happy. And after doing that, that's when I've been the most happy and proud in my life actually, the things I'm doing. So I'm sorry to hear that you have to go through that, but I really liked how you were able to bounce on that and focus on that idea of self love. And especially during such moments, it's hard to find yourself.
It's hard to see through all that darkness, where's the light and understand where to start. But definitely, as you mentioned, there was a lot of things that you were able to use to help yourself like therapy, making bonds, cutting out the wrong people, cutting out specific people, also expanding your support groups in North Shore that you also have a variety of good people as well.
So going off that idea of having people to talk to or just trying to get through your own problems, what role has therapy played in shaping your learnings or your personality? Therapy is basically somebody that's really just helped save me. It's been the most, it helped me learn so much about myself because for a while I didn't really want to know about myself. I was afraid about the things I was going to learn. I was worried about people judging me. I just, I was kind of insecure.
I just didn't really trust myself. So I was like, I didn't want to learn things about myself. So I didn't really ever explore things or talk about things. I just, I would shut things off and just not want to think about it. But that's when going to therapy helped me so much because at least once a week for an hour, it lets me be able to just process the stuff rattling around in my head.
Cause I would always have a lot of thoughts circling around in my head and I just didn't know how to process or what I felt about it. I would just bury those thoughts. And it really had an effect on me. It would come up in different places, but it's good for me to be in therapy, for me to talk about that stuff. So it's not rattling around in my head, driving me crazy and keeping me up at night. It helped me be able to learn how I think and how I feel about things.
So I can not just be questioning, like what am I feeling? What am I thinking? Cause as a man, I didn't really do well with my emotions before. I used to just run away from emotions and didn't know how to deal with them and want to deal with them. So when they came up, they would weird me out and I didn't know how to deal with them. So I would avoid that kind of stuff.
But in therapy, it helped me be able to learn how to process my emotions and know what they are, what I'm thinking and how I'm feeling and how the behavior can affect me. When I'm thinking a certain way, how I act a certain way. And if I don't like that, I can realize to act a different way. So it really helped me learn so much about myself, what I needed and what I don't need and just how my background shaped me and who I am. I completely agree with that.
And those ideas really resonate with what I see everyday life too. Because on technology, even on our phones, we see these apps coming up like Better Home in which you can just like reach a counselor at any time of the day or you can just phone a friend, you know? And we even see those resources in academic settings too because now in schools they're implementing such things like social counselors, which are available for every student.
So these forms of therapy are starting to spread every part of our life. And that's really beneficial for all of us because as we said, as you said, we're definitely against avoidance. Confrontation is the main solution. Sometimes it may feel better on the inside to avoid things temporarily. By the end of the day, that thing's gonna keep on nuts. So as you said, for you, therapy is definitely a large goal and helping you work on yourself and understanding your feelings and emotions.
And that same thing is something that we see on the outside world as well. And it's definitely a beneficial thing. Also moving away from this in terms of hobbies, knowing that you're quite a music fanatic yourself, how do you view the significance of engaging in such small hobbies or large hobbies? Hobbies are really important because in mental health we call that self-care. So I like to call it self-care because it is really just caring for yourself.
When you call it a hobby, it's just kinda eh, doesn't seem very appeasing, but self-care is awesome. Because basically, even when you call it a hobby, it is, but those hobbies just make you feel like you have reason, like you have purpose, they give you happiness and enjoyment, they give you some fulfillment in life. It's like when I go and play some drums or do the things that I love, it gives me a good high energy.
It gives me like an energy of things that I'm doing that I enjoy and it's easier for me to wanna go do more of that. It makes me feel good, it gives me my feel good juice. So I wanna refill my feel good juice, I wanna keep doing that. When you don't have hobbies and you don't have things to do, all you wanna do is refill your juice, but you don't know how to. Basically, you're just sitting on the couch, you're like, I wanna feel better, but I don't know how.
You're like, I can go do this, but what's the point? When you don't have hobbies, you have low energy and you feel like there's no reason to go do anything. And then when you're not doing things, it gives you even more of a reason for that habit to keep perpetuating. It's easy for you to just say, there's no point, I don't care enough. When you feel like you don't have hobbies, then you'll tell yourself you don't have reasons and you don't care enough and you'll just keep doing the same thing.
When you find hobbies and things that you enjoy, you'll keep doing them and you'll keep finding more hobbies and things to keep you busy that you do enjoy. When you're not actively engaged in hobbies, it's kind of depriving yourself. It's almost telling yourself, you know what? I'm not happy, I'm not gonna do anything because I don't feel like being happy. You'll stay in the same place of not being happy because you're choosing not to. I completely agree.
And that idea of self-care, it's really important. And I like how you mentioned that it's not really a hobby, it's self-care because that goes to that base of motivation. You're not having that motivation, then you're not really feeling yourself. And if those small things are big things in my mind, like just doing simple things like sports or just enjoying music or talking with friends or socializing, that really influences your motivation or as you call them that, feel good juice.
And I really liked the idea that you mentioned of how it's important to do what you enjoy. Throughout life, we always have these people who are influencing our ideas of what we should be doing or what other people are doing. And we always feel that we should be somewhat following the flow. But clearly, as you demonstrated, as I agree with, it's important to kind of follow your own path and do what you enjoy, what refills that motivation.
So how has mental health impacted your overall well-being, happiness, self-care, or even daily routine? It's changed me so much. I'm basically a completely different person. I've learned to be able to accept my illness and what it is. I noticed when I have extra little episodes of things, I can acknowledge and know what they are. And I can know what's causing it. And I know how to be able to treat it and help it.
I've been able to find the things that actually make me happy, that help me just be able to have a good sleep schedule, to actually have a good schedule for the day. Because I used to just basically wake up and be like, what am I gonna do? I don't care. And not really have much of a schedule. I would just wherever the day brings me. But therapy helped me just know what's good for me to have a schedule, to have things that I enjoy and that I like doing, as well as just a purpose.
I really like that idea. And throughout our lives, while we may have school, but during the summer, students may feel that they have a lack of routine. And as you mentioned, that leaves you feeling blank. And it's important to fill that in, small things I enjoy, and test yourself out in different areas. If you have a free weekend here and there, try to drive some advice from online on fixing yourself in terms of mental health or just communicating with friends.
And as a student myself in junior year, sleep schedule is very important. And often we find that being taken away from lessons because of the variety of homework assignments we have, or how we're just academically overloaded. So I definitely agree with the idea of feeding this stuff or like feeding yourself or like fulfilling yourself to achieve such ideas of wellbeing and happiness. And that's all built together by the ideas of having self-care and a daily routine.
So personally, what questions do you find most meaningful about your mission to promote mental health awareness? And what inquiries have others approached you with? So a good question that comes up a lot when people are talking to me, they basically, they will ask me if I regret my choice 19 years ago for my attempt at suicide. And it goes both ways. Actually, I regretted it quite a bit because that day suicide was not what I was trying to do.
I didn't make the mental conscious actual choice that I'm trying to die. I didn't realize what I was doing. I didn't realize the day it happened, this is suicide. I'm trying to kill myself. I didn't think I'm trying to go. I basically thought I'm trying to do something that actually to show people that I'm hurting and that I need help. I wanna do something to show people that I wanna be loved. I wanna do something to show people that I want them to care about me.
And I want people to feel guilty and have regret. So basically doing a, I have a lot of regret for what I did because I didn't make the realization that what I was gonna do was gonna change my life forever. But at the same time, I don't have regret because if my attempts never happened, then maybe I would have never realized how much I was struggling. Maybe it's possible for the rest of my life I would have been struggling with my mental illness and never treated it.
It's very possible as a suicide attempt or something else could have happened down the line. So I go back and forth about it. I have regrets because I never wanted to do that ever. I didn't wanna change my family or my life or anything about myself, but it actually helped. It helped me realize something and help be able to do something to change myself for the better. It helped me be able to treat my mental illness and be able to help myself.
Happy to hear that you were able to help yourself that every day. And I kind of agree, I really agree with that because everything happens for a reason in life. Everything happens for a reason and that doesn't mean you can't change it. At the end of the day, all things are supposed to work towards your own path. Everything is supposed to somewhat benefit everyone, but especially you. It's supposed to make sure that you're enjoying yourself.
And while there may be down points, just know that at the end of the route, there's also gonna be a high point. And there's a lot of A's that come with that. Communication can help you get those low points for computation or just getting help. So with those ideas of having those A's help you get those low points, what value do you place on communication and computation in your life? Communication is really important because that actually had a lot to do with my attempt at suicide at age 19.
Because communication and confrontation, they were tied in together. I had a hard time communicating to people what my needs and wants and desires were because I felt unloved. I didn't feel important. I didn't feel good about myself. So I had a hard time speaking up about things. And just when I wanted to speak up about something and say something, I would assume it was confrontation. It's because I just assumed people didn't like me. I assumed people didn't wanna hear what I was gonna say.
I assumed people weren't gonna care about my needs and wants and that they would get shut down. I would just automatically assume there was gonna be confrontation when I wanted to say something I needed to. So I didn't say it, I would avoid it. I would avoid communicating because I automatically assumed confrontation. Because I assumed people didn't love me and they weren't gonna wanna hear what I had to say. And then they were gonna react in a way that I wasn't gonna like.
I was worried about them responding to me and just basically telling me they don't care. So I didn't do well with confrontation and I got a lot better about that through therapy, realizing communication is important because I had a hard time communicating things to people and that's why my suicide attempt happened. I eventually learned how to communicate with people and I learned how to communicate with words rather than body language and trying to do things.
Because that's a very, very common thing for people who are struggling with things who don't know how to communicate. They try to do it all through their body language and all through self harm. And yeah, I knew a lot of my communication issues were problematic because of my childhood growing up. I didn't come from a very nurturing background. My parents didn't show a lot of love and caring and support. So it wasn't easy for me to ask questions to my family.
It was always easy for me to just, this is how it is and just bury thoughts and feelings. Yeah, it's important that we move away from the idea of assuming and that we make sure that people know that we want to be confronted and that we take that first step towards confrontation. We can truly share our thoughts. And that's why we see in the community today, inside people are moving towards being more open. We go on and stuff. There's new apps like these days as well, like Be Real.
We see that as an app that's trying to ensure that people are really showing their true self because on other social media apps like Instagram or even Facebook, we see people somewhat fabricating their life. Like they're just showing the highlight of that, which makes people think that, oh, it's just me who's facing the issue and not others who really relate to me. And I really liked your idea of how we should not really assume that people don't want to listen to our ideas.
Everyone can really work on themselves by listening to others. And when you tell others about your own issues, they feel that you are really opening up to them. And that's something they like to hear because that means that they understand that you guys have a strong bond and that's a beneficial relationship for both the people. So given that, what's some final advice or takeaways that you have for our listeners today?
My take or what I want people to take away from this is don't worry about the judgment. See, when I was growing up, basically I thought mental illness basically meant that you're insane. Like you're completely crazy. I heard like a mental illness terms loosely used like anxiety and depression and stuff, but I never knew what they were. I just heard those terms loosely used and they had a really bad connotation because of society and the stigma.
But everyone, I want you to know, don't bundle all of those terms into one group and call it crazy because it's not. It's far from it. I have complex post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorder, insomnia, post-traumatic stress. I have abandonment rejection issues, insecurities. I got a lot of issues, but I don't call myself crazy. I just, I have issues. I learned what they are. I know what they are.
I found ways to medicate myself and to go to therapy and be exceptionally happy and prosperous. I don't call myself crazy because I'm not. I'm completely sane and I'm doing wonderful. That's why if anyone's struggling out there with anything, don't think that if you're gonna talk to someone, you're gonna get labeled crazy, because you're not. It's literally, having anxiety is the same as actually having acid reflux or indigestion.
When people have physical problems, they approach it all the time. Don't ignore your mental health. Mental health is just as important as physical health. So yeah, if you're noticing some things and you don't know what it is, it doesn't hurt to talk about it and ask what it is because I never knew what mental illness was and that's why eventually I never treated it. I should have asked around a long time ago when I noticed I was struggling with my sleep and the way I thought about things.
If you notice you're struggling with things and you want to know if there's a way to help yourself, ask about it because you don't have to be struggling and hurting like that. And just if you have a mental illness, it doesn't mean you're crazy because you can be able to be better and happier. So don't be afraid to treat your mental health the same way you're gonna treat your physical body, everyone. It's very, very important.
And I've learned to accept it and love myself and be happy and prosperous. I want you to know you can too. I don't want you to be struggling. I love that idea that I truly think that's amazing advice that we just need to love ourselves and we need to ensure that we can be open with everyone.
But yeah, I think you really framed that whole entire idea of mental health quite well and how we should really communicate and that's the key to self growth, that's the key to self care, that's the key to having a balanced life. But overall, Mark, I truly cannot thank you enough for not only sharing your time with me, but also with the rest of the audience.
Sharing your story here today allows for people all around the world understand that they're not alone in the obstacles they encounter and that there truly is support in every single corner.
I really enjoyed discussing with you and I was inspired by your ideas of self care and confrontation and voicing messages like yours words towards the mission of not only the best of us all, but also a bigger non-profit organization about community rights as we change the world through service in every single way. Once again, Mark, thank you so much for your time and the message you gave. And overall, remember stay healthy as a whole and mental wellness plays a role. Thank you. My story.