Hey, everybody, I am here with John Mills, who was on a previous episode we did about trauma, and I heard great things from a good number of you about the subject and about John. So we've got him back. Last time we did this remote via Skype, he was in North Carolina. I was at my house in Columbus, and now we are both at my house in Columbus. For any of you who are trying to keep track of where John is, now, you know nobody cares no,
not by and large. This week we are going to talk about an article called self stigma and the y TRY effect impact on life goals and evidence based practices. John, let you give us a brief overview of what this one is about. Sure, So that is a very long title with a lot of mumbo jumbo nonsense in there,
so let's cut right to the chase. So what this is really talking about is that these stigmatization of mental illness that has existed in society ends up trickling down into a personal level of someone that does have mental
illness or struggles with it. They internalize the stereotypes that society has built around mental illness, and that in turn leads to a negative impact on someone's sense of self worth or what they self esteem, and that also impacts something called self efficacy, which is the belief that if you try something or make an effort, that it's really
going to matter. And then finally, if that's been negatively impacted you don't have that belief, you come to the inclusion why do you even want to try to make an effort to change? And at underlying that, the assumption is that you have agreed with and applied those stereotypes from that society has made about people with mental illness, and there you go. So basically this is I don't
believe I can, so I don't try. It's similar you and I talked about this earlier, and we don't need to go down the same rabbit hole, but similar to Martin Seligman's Learned Helplessness, which basically says that at a certain point doesn't seem that your efforts are going to make any difference, so you don't take them. So I think, why try? Can happen for a lot of different reasons, and maybe we'll explore those, but let's talk about it
in this self stigma way. So if I believe things about mental illness, and those caused me to feel bad about myself. Those caused me to think like, I'll always be this way. There's nothing I can do and I don't try. So what are some of the things that we can do to work with this in a way that is useful. Well, I guess it depends on where you're at and what type of mental illness you have, Eric, So it's the the seriousness in the level that you're experiencing.
So one of the things I do is I try to make sure that I connect with other people and
talk about the struggles that I'm having. A lot of times I need some external validation that what I am doing is making a difference, that I am making progress in my life, even though I might not see it, and I can kind of build upon that to keep going and hopefully at some point then once I start to see that there's some progress in my life, I can start to develop my own kind of internal sense of self efficacy, not you know, to overcome the lack
of it. It occurs to me, is we're talking about this, this is a little bit of an argument. Eric Maizella guest we had on recently talked about one of the problems with labeling mental illness is that it's a label we put on ourselves that limits who we are. People often say that about admitting their alcoholic I don't want to if I'm just an alcoholic, I'm putting a label on myself. And for some reason, those labels for me haven't translated into I don't think, at least not on
a conscious level, into a sense of limitation. But I do it points in life I have had. I think I'm beyond them, at least for now. You never know what's going to come. But I do believe that I can affect my depression and I do work with it a lot. But talk to me about self stigma in your own case. So as you were talking, what I was thinking about was who is the author? You were just saying something about if we label us, if we label ourselves, that's limiting. And so the underlying kind of
implication there is labeling yourself as mentally ill as limiting. Okay, So here's first of all, what I think about that. Um So one, I don't like I'm bipolar. I'm not bipolar, But the statement is making that a part of your identity rather than I have bipolar disorder. Same with I'm
an alcoholic. Okay, that is identifying and labeling yourself. But if you have a condition, then even if that's labeling you, if you don't say I have alcoholism or I have mental illness of some sort depression, you don't have the ability to address it. So I think there's important distinction there. Yeah, so it's like diabe, I'm a diabetic. Now you have diabetes. We need to we need to label it. But it's one thing about internalizing I have depression. I can't do
anything about my depression. You know, I'm not going to be able to have a job. I'm not going to be able to be successful. People aren't gonna want to be around me. And there it is. Yeah, I see a version of this in people I work with who have ride throughout their life to build better habits. I'm going to exercise, I'm gonna eat right, I'm going to write my journal, I'm gonna work on my book. I'm
gonna do whatever it is. And there's a lot of this is why try not from a self stigma but from a I've tried it so many times before and I've gotten better, and then I just stop again, and I've gotten worse, So talk a little bit about that. Let's move away from just self stigma. But I think why try is a is a great overall topic. Where are the areas in your life that why try comes into effect? When it comes on, it wipes away any hope of the future. It also wipes away, likewise, any
ability to connect with successes from the past. That makes it very easy to conclude that there's no reason to try. I never had any success in the past, because when I look at it, it was only just a temporary bunch of crap. You're back in the place it starts. And then at the other side, if I'm looking forward, if I'm not going to really get anywhere, why try? So it is both sides. You know, you're getting it from the future, your perception of the future and the
perception of your past. So that's a pretty sticky place to be, and getting out of that has at that point for me, has always required some level of medical intervention. But I guess I always have kept at some point, some at some level, some belief, you know, I've not completely fallen victim to the wide try effect when it comes to treatment. At some level, I must have always kept some belief to actually go see the doctor when
I was really really bad. I don't know if it's more out of desperation and hoping they can just give me something to alleviate the pain. It reminds me of one of the darkest points for me of my addiction was after I had gone to treatment, after I had gone to some AA meetings, and then I used again, and I had a period of time where I really thought like there's no fix for this, Like I did
what was suggested and I'm still doing it. So once a junkie, always a junkie, and looking back on it's so preposterous to me that I would have thought that the first time I really tried to go into treatment that it should take and it should be permanent. Um. I now know, looking at it over a lot of years and a lot of people, that a lot of us have a stop start stop start over time. But I remember that being sort of a a y try effect,
and it's a it's a dark place to be. Luckily, since then, I think I seem to have maybe similar to you with treatment. But even when I'm really down, I have some optimism that something can fix, something can make it better. I may not know what it is, I may not have access to it, but I keep trying.
And sometimes I think that is one of the most important things with mental illness or any problem in life, is to just key trying, keep trying different things, even though and that's you know, directly opposite the why try, The why I try is because life is different. You can try something different, You're different than you were last time you tried it, etcetera, etcetera. I'm sorry, Chris always
gets mad, etcetera, etcetera. So you're suggesting that a good way to continue why try is to remain naive I don't think though. I don't think that's because what wasn't that? What? What? What did you have the first time you went to treatment that gave you that ability to have that hope you don't believe about, Yeah, but after that I didn't have it. My point is if you then that's my point, if you kept the naivete, then you would continue to
try as if you had that hope. But I don't think nai naivete, however, you say that word is what I'm talking about, because that's sort of almost starts to sound like I just keep trying the same thing over and over and don't get any different results. I'm suggesting that when we try again, we have learned things from the last time we tried that we can bring into the try attempt that we're doing now, whatever those might be. Whereas if we think why bother to try it's always
been this way before. My counter to that in my own mind and when I'm talking to other people is yeah, but you're not the person you were. Then you've learned things. You're a different person. Like if you relapse I did. I was, you know, eight nine years sober, and I relapsed, right because I'm a loser, will get two years here in a minute. When I came back. It's not like I hadn't had eight years of sobriety under me. I
still had that. I may not have had the continuous days, right, but I had a foundation that was different than the first time I went in. And so yeah, I'm just saying that a counter to y try is to be more open minded that says, you know what, I did try this before, but now I'm a different person. I could try it differently, I could try it better. I could I could modify it this way. I could learn
this thing. Yeah, Actually that kind of makes me think about the article again, and it talks about identifying with the group to kind of find some empowerment to get over that. So, yes, I did relapse. Thank you for bringing that back up Eric years ago. And when I went back to what I was doing before in recovery community, I was met with a lot of Well, it wasn't so much that I got the idea that everything you
learned isn't good anymore. You know, you have to start over, but it was too well, just keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it. You know these things, these principles just will not fail you. And I'm like, well, just look around. And the underlying that was also then this idea I felt. I internalized it because I realized my anger was really myself. I thought I failed, I didn't do good enough, I didn't work the steps hard enough.
And it's taken me a long time to get past that to find something new that I could believe and grab onto because that was the biggest thing that I found to be producing hope for me and not like why try, but you know, why not try? When I first got sober and went to meetings, there was this whole new, unknown, kind of thing that I had never tried before, and it seemed like there was so much hope and I could just get into it, need it up, and it would just last forever. Well that wasn't the case.
There wasn't something that existed that was an elixir of all life. So now I had to when that when I fell off, I had to find a new way, something that I could believe in. Yep, And that is a boy, that's a deep subject that we're going to
steer off of. We could do another episode on that because coming back to something like recovery, and there's there's so many challenges there, but circling back to what you started with, which one of the things the article suggests is one way to limit self stigma is to find other people that have the same condition or the same thing. And part of the reason I think that I do this show are one of the things that I do and I think it helps a lot of people is
it's just so powerful. There's something so powerful in realizing like I am not alone in this, Like the way I am feeling is perfectly normal in a certain context, Like there's lots of people who have felt this do feel this. I just think that is such a powerful way. It's one of the things I think it's so important
in feeling better, getting better, and not stigmatizing ourselves. I think what I've struggle with often and identifying at groups is the idea where I start to feel left alone and not a part of the power of what you're talking about is I just want somebodies sometimes to say, you know, you're right, there isn't a real good cell on trying right now the way you're feeling a lot of times that somebody just says that, then I'm like, oh, somebody hears me, they get it, And then I might
decide on my own, Okay, there's somebody out there that feels the same way I do, Like it's just not really worth it. I would agree with you, you know, And sometimes that spurs on that desire to actually try. My therapist is all you're a contrary bastard. I am my therapist. One time, when I was first starting back with him, he's like telling me, you know, going through this whole thing, and he's like, it's a hard sell, John, it's a hard sell getting sober. Let's just be real.
He's like, because there's a thing that drugs do for people that sobriety in life doesn't do, and nobody wants to admit that. But you get opportunities for better life, but you are not guaranteed. I agree with that, and that's why I say so often like getting sober sucks, like you just like there's an acceptance of like if you think, because you hear everybody's saying it's so great, it's so great, and then you do it and you
don't feel great. I think it's important to be like, you may not feel great for for a good period time, like this is going to be really hard. So it's a slightly different context, but it's a similar thing in
saying it's a setting of an expectation. Well, I guess getting back to the point was sometimes for me I find strength and knowing that other people will just say, you know, it makes sense that you feel that way, right and and and then not in line and not follow it up with giving me a little pat on the butt. Okay, but it's still going to do that these days in this culture. Yeah, but to say you know what, you're right, I you make a good point of not trying and just leave it at that, I
don't need to encourage me after that. I will generally in my life, if you've looked at it as much as I've struggled and complained and been very cantankerous in my times of pain, I find a way through it and I get back up and I'm pretty resilient. What I get frustrated most with are the people that I've come upon in my life both and there are people that are therapists, people that are in their own sense of recovery, where this constant like, yeah, but have you
tried this? Have you tried that? Just let me be fatalistic for a little bit. It provides I'll find my way out of it. Yeah. I think it's interesting. We talked about this earlier. That gets so important to say is that, like, what you need is not necessarily what somebody else needs, is not necessarily what a different person needs. And that's part of what can be so challenging about trying to have a one size fits all thing. And
I think this leads us into our next conversation. So we're gonna wrap this one up, which this next one will be a good one about agency. How much control do we really have? How much power do we really have in what we do in getting better and fighting depression and dealing with alcoholism. And that should be a fun one. Should bring out your contanker aside, for sure. And with that we're going to wrap it up. John, thanks so much for taking the time to come back
on this show. I don't know what it is so funny about this, you said, wrap it up? Okay, I can't go on the air, all right, We're good on everything else, right, Okay, with that, we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up. John, Thanks so much for taking the time to come back on, and we'll have another episode with you in the future. Thank you. Eric. Actually, it's good to be here and as always, I'm really enjoyed doing this, so I look forward to talking about the agency topic with you in the next time we
do this. Excellent. I'm gonna put a hurt and on your ass, all right, everybody, Another episode out on Tuesday is always. Thanks for listening. Bye.