Brent Williams on Recovering from Depression - podcast episode cover

Brent Williams on Recovering from Depression

Sep 03, 201938 minEp. 296
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Episode description

Brent Williams suffered for a long time from depression and anxiety and during that time he kept a journal about his thoughts, feelings, and experiences. That journal has now been turned in to a beautiful graphic novel called, Out Of The Woods: A Journey Through Depression and Anxiety. In this episode, Brent and Eric use his story as a jumping-off point to discuss how depression can show up in your life and how you can realistically, practically, and effectively find your way out of it.

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In This Interview, Brent Williams and I Discuss…

  • His book, Out Of The Woods: A Journey Through Depression and Anxiety
  • How subtle depression can be in your life – permeating everything 
  • All the things he went to as a diagnosis before he admitted it was depression he was suffering from
  • His resistance to taking depression medication
  • How he watched his father take medication for anxiety and how it changed him
  • His resistance to taking help from others
  • His experience in therapy
  • The metaphor of depression medication being a life preserver but you still have to swim back to shore
  • The components of self-care: eat well, exercise, be with people, be outside, get support, stop ruminating, proper sleep
  • How fundamental good nutrition is when it comes to mental well being
  • Doing small and manageable things when you’re depressed
  • How the reward mechanism in your brain isn’t working properly when you’re depressed
  • How it took him a while to find the right therapist 
  • The potential danger of meditating when depressed
  • That mindfulness meditation was the form of meditating that helped him most
  • The impact of keeping a mood chart – seeing a pattern that you can’t see at the time
  • That sometimes you just have to push yourself over the hurdle of doing things that are good for you when you don’t feel like doing them
  • Looking at your activities to assess your mental wellbeing
  • Depression showing up as irritability in men

Brent Williams Links:

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Transcript

Speaker 1

Today's episode is brought to you by our newest Patreon members Mick, Patricia, Christine and Connor, and all the rest of our members who support the show. If you'd like to become a member of our Patreon community and enjoy the many benefits of membership, go to One You Feed dot net slash join. Whose life are you loving? Is it the one is right for you? Or is it what your parents want? You stuck in some place which

is really destructive? Welcome to the One you Feed. Throughout time, great tinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and upon our spirit. But it's not

just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us our guest on this episode is Brent Williams. As someone who had long suffered from depression and anxiety. Brent kept a journal throughout his experience, which has now been turned into a beautiful graphic novel called Out of

the Woods, A Journey through Depression and Anxiety. Hi, Brent, welcome to the show. Nice to be here. It's a pleasure to have you on. Your book is called out of the Woods, A Journey through Depression and Anxiety, and it is a graphic novel about, as it says, your journey through depression and anxiety. And we'll get to that in a second, but let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of

us that are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed, So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work

that you do. Well. I think it's it was really ampt It's a it's a really parable for me, And in my book, I actually created a character. It was sort of the best way I could see depression and and anxiety in the form of dogs or wolves in my book. So I think when you're depressed, you don't see what is going on. You don't really see depression. It's sort of such a subtle influence in your life,

even though it's very significant. Um And by seeing it, you actually can start to see how it's effect in your life, and you can decide whether you feed it or not. It's a complicated process, and I'm sure we'll talk about that, but at one level, the parable is really effective way that you can actually confront your depression, see how it's influencing your life, and make that decision about about whether you really want to continue down depression

path or whether you want to get well. I agree, and I think that that parable speaks to me and my depression to some extent. I know that there are things that I do that are helpful for my depression and I know there are things I do that are not helpful for it. So, you know, one of the things that struck me in the book was all the things that you tried before you would would admit it was depression. You were willing to think it was lots

of other things before you actually said, oh, I have depression. Absolutely. I mean I tried everything over a long period of time. And because depression comes out and a whole lot of depression reveals itself or manifests itself, and with a whole lot of physical symptoms, so it's very easy to say it's you know, it's my neck, it's my it's my stomach pain, it's my back pain, it's my neck pain,

it's my insomnia. Since all these things, and if you go to a doctor, as I did, I went to many, they'll treat the symptom that you appear you appear with. It was it was remarkable how none of the people that I went to said, let's look at the sum total of your life, let's look at the sum total of the symptoms. And very quickly somebody would have said, hey, you're depressed. You need to do something about the depression,

not just the symptoms. Yeah, I mean, you said, you know, you thought you were willing to admit it could be a dream, or fatigue, burnout, vitamin deficiency, chronic fatigue, all these different things instead of admitting it was depression. So what was it about depression that you were so reticent to think that this could be well. At the time, I wasn't aware that I didn't want to face depression. There wasn't even enough awareness to get to that point.

But when I started to people started to tell me I was depressed. When I went to my general practition, you said, you've got depression, then it was more obvious that I was running from that diagnosis. That I did not want to be depressed. I did not want to be the depressed person. I had spent my life being the strong person, helping others, raising kids, you know, doing good things in the community. And I wasn't the one that was going to get depressed. I was strong. I

would not succumb to something like depression. I would just getting myself through it, push overcome it. All those things were in my psyche making me believe I couldn't be depressed, or if I did something else, surely it's not there's something else I can sold it through some other through some other action. It took many years of running, and of course you know that made things were just getting

more depressed and run out of options. Really, it is that internal belief that is still so prevalent today, and people, even though there's more awareness and you know, some of the stigma has been exposed and there's perhaps reducing by still come across people who won't face the fact that they are suffering from depression. Yeah, I find it interesting. I feel like we seem to, at least here in the U S. We we have one of two approaches, right.

One is that we don't really acknowledge that it's depression and we go on trying all these other things, or we are very quickly diagnosed as having depression, we are given a medicine and then that's kind of the end of the story. And I found both those things and in my own life to be lacking, right, Like I needed to know what I was dealing with. I needed to know I had depression, right, and medicine was a big part of my recovery, but it wasn't sufficient, it

wasn't enough. And so know, I also found that while there's been a lot of benefit to say, your average general practitioner saying, hey, you might have depression. Again, I think a lot of benefits better than suffering unacknowledged. But I also find that the tendency then tends to be in a lot of cases, here's your antidepressant, go on about your life. And in your case, it really was both. It was the it was it was medicine, and it

was all these lifestyle changes. And I thought the book did a really good job of walking through how you did so many different things. So I thought i'd start by asking you, just, you know, tell me a little bit about your resistance to taking any medicine for depression. It was the same issue of believing that I was needed to use not except help. I think that was the big thing, you know. I didn't want help from

somebody else, even though I was a helper. I was a helper and helped others, and it was made my living out of helping others. But yet I wasn't prepared to accept help from others, which was crazy. And in the same way, I wasn't prepared to take medication. I didn't I didn't want something artificial to try and get

me over this that was at one level. I think at a more sensible level, um, there was something in me which knew that my life was was not right, that I was and I needed something more than just a quick fix. I look back and think, if there was a quick fix, I would I should have and would have would have would have taken it. So but I took this. I took a tougher path, which I

wouldn't recommend people. But in my case, I think if I had been put back on my feet and put back into the workplace, back into my role in society, I would have just able have just happened again, because in a way, that's what did happen. I got a bit better, and then I went back and then I crashed again, and I picked myself up, and this carried on for quite a while. I needed to really get

to a point where I needed to change my life. Changed, changed the way I was thinking, the way I was acting, and that required quite a major restructuring of of myself in a way which was through therapy, committed and long period of therapy, and that support and that process was probably the most significant thing about changing, along with a whole lot of other things I was doing but by this stage I knew that I had depression, and I really embarked on the on a very good path of

trying to get well. That that took a long time. The other thing is a very personal thing in my family. My father had severe anxiety and this mental illness in my family and this drug abuse in my family, and I it's sort of seeing my father taking handfuls, literally handfuls of drugs and send as personality affected by that, zodiazepines and things like this city was just downing to stay awake, it's just to go to sleep and everything in between. And you know, something deep in me, I

didn't want to go down that path. You know, my father is a big influence in my life, and I wanted to live a different life to him and not going down that path. But the drugs medication was part of it as well. So it's quite a complex thing for me. So I'm soon of anti medication. I think it works brilliantly for some people, it works horribly for others, and somewhere in the middle there is a group that it sort of works for. I think for any of those all groups though, they need to do more than

just take medication. Like, definitely think medications there's a way to get you up to a point where you can really start helping yourself when perhaps without medication you're not capable of doing that. You use the analogy in the book antidepressants sort of like a life jacket if your float and but you've still got a swim to shore. You know, you've still got to get there and find

your way home. And so, you know, your book really is illustrative of something that I often say about me and my depression is that I just kind of through the and sync at it right, like I threw everything that you know, I continue to just try as many different things as I can. And the word holistic is a little bit of a cliche in some ways these days, but it really turns out in my case to be true, like I need all of those different things. So we've mentioned,

you know, antidepressants, you've mentioned therapy. Tell me about some of the other things that you had to do that you learned would be useful for you in dealing with your depression. We want to look at it about all the things we need to do and to live well and other basic things in life, which is to beat well. Nutrition is really important to see the sun, to get out and exercise, move our bodies, to be with with people, not to isolate yourself, which depression does so well, but

to have good relationships with people. And it's a very difficult thing when your depressed and have anxiety to have good relationships. It's hard enough with friends, little owner intimate partner to have. When you've got depression and anxiety, you are not a very pleasant person. You're actually a really annoying for yourself and for others to be around. So you've got some big, some basic things, and they're really big things, and they have to be sort of worked at.

And I think there are the key things for me getting support and I did that in the form of therapy. That was my main support because I was re isolated at that time. Stopping your mind ruminate and that's because that's a really big thing and depression, and I think mindfulness is a really good tool for me. And it was getting my sleep right, moving my body at the right time and in the right way. And there's lots of little things that came sort of later, and I

added a lot of them fall out of therapy. Working at how you want to live your life. Whose life are you living? Is it the one you really is right for you, or is it what your parents want, or is it what you've good Scott's you know, you stuck in some place which is really destructive in your life. Alcohol and drugs is another big one. You know, often people who are depression abusing ourcohol and drugs, and that's

another issue that has to be dealt with you. And you're not going to recover easily in the issue deal all those addiction issues, right, Yeah, I mean, I think so many of those things are are so true. More and more I am becoming aware of how important nutrition is. You know, there are more and more studies that are really linking diet and proper nutrition to depression and overall psychological well being. So that's certainly been one that has been a little bit of a later arrival on the

scene for me. I wouldn't say it's been like just now, but I think I continue to grow into seeing that link now. I think it's fun to meental and what we put in our mouths is what our brain needs to to think, to grow to function, is what our

body needs. It's just so it's so fundamental. We we think now came across a person who said they woke up, they went to their desk and they had a cup of coffee in a cigarette, and then they sat at their desk in the computer and didn't get up to about three in the afternoon, and wonder why they're feeling so depressed, and they're just it's just so. It's sit still in a dark room in front of a computer screen and try and survive on a coffee and a cigarette. Well,

it's a recipe for the disaster. You're not going to recover from depression if that's your lifestyle. You do have to sort out nutrition. That's very important. But I think it's sorry, but it's also important not to get absisted about. It can easily start socially if you've got anxiety and worry about foods and what you're eating and what you're not eating and being a little too obsissed. I think it's really good to just to eat healthily and a

wide variety of food and not stress about food. The book does a really good job of of talking about breaking the downward spiler depression by doing lots of small and manageable things. So oftentimes if we are in the midst depression, and we hear a conversation like this one and we think, oh my goodness, well, I've got to overhaul my diet and I need to start, you know, doing a ton of exercise, and I need to be

going to therapy and I should be. And you know, there's all this stuff that we take, and in the book you really do a good job of sort of breaking down how for you it was lots of small but manageable things like take the nutrition one early in the book, what's the first thing? I opened the cover because I wasn't eating. I lost ten kilos when I was depressed and I thought I was eating. I wasn't aware that I was actually just missing meals and not

eating much. And it's just things that you're not even aware of at the time. Open the cup and put out a tin of baked beans and sit there and eat them out of the can. Well done, You've actually eaten some food. Okay, it's not brilliant food, but it's fine. It's something in your stomach, and well done. And now now I can sort of build from there. When you're depressed, you haven't got the energy with the motivation where you

can't see the benefits. There's no sort of reward mechanism have in your brain which says I need to go and shop, I need to buy good food, I need to cook a meal. It's just like where do you begin? Too hard? Just sit down, give up, don't eat. So starting small for me is like, just have something and in the cupboards that is really simple and you can just grab an open and meat that without even eating it.

So I have some fruit, you know, have an avocado, have some crackers, Have just simple simple food that you don't have to have to prepare because you've got no energy when you're really depressed and you just basically sit around and the world just passes you by. In the book, throughout there is a character who is sort of guiding you through how to get better. Who is this character? What does that represent to you or was it an

actual person? The character came about because when I was writing the book, by the stage, I had made a lot of progress. I was I was recovering and I accepted my depression, and I was quite a different mode. I was investigating, I was researched, and I was I

was looking at a lot of stuff. I was doing it everything over my book I was sort of road testing and assessing and making diary notes and keeping a new chart and what was working, what wasn't, and the person that was doing that it was a lot wiser than the person that was depressed. And so that the helper is the wisdom that was in me that came later looking back on my life and seeing okay, well

what do they do but worked, what don't? And then it became quite a really helpful character in the book that could easily have been my therapist or a good supportive friend. And I like the fact it was left open so people could bring their own helper into their story, into their own story. One of the things that's interesting is you now talk about therapy as being such an important part of your recovery, but your initial attempts at therapy did not go real Well, no, no they didn't.

I mean, first I didn't want to. I vow not to go to a therapist. I'm never going to go to a therapist. I'm not going to sit in front of somebody else, even though I probably sent many other clients off the therapists. So again it was that shame denial. It took me a while before I found therapist that was right for me, and many were going down paths which really was not and was not helpful. So you're

not necessarily going to strike the right person immediately. And the other thing I learned was that there it's not necessarily who's right for you is not necessarily the one that is the easiest road either. In some ways, your therapist is not there to be your friend that had been your therapist. Are there to believe in your as minded believe in my ability to get well. That was the thing that she never lost sight of. So sometimes it needs to. It's it's going to be a bit tough,

it's going to uncover stuff. But it was always even though it was tough, it always felt that I was making progress and I wanted to go back and I formed a very good relationship and it was Yeah, I think for me it was I would not be in the position name today unless I had really done that and committed to it. I'm very lucky I eventually found somebody. So it's really not working. You've got to ask yourself, I'm I just running away from therapy or was just not right for me? And it could be it could

be both. Yeah, I thought it was interesting that you sounds like a couple of therapists legitimately weren't a good fit, but that you didn't give up on going. You tried someone else, and then you tried someone else's But then, you know, I'd see myself just slowly sliding back, sliding back. I think, no, I need to give it another guy, And I'm so pleased I did that. Yeah, eventually I

did find somebody that was very good. One of the things that we hear a lot about in this this show talks about it a pair amount is meditation, and um. It was interesting to me that early on meditation wasn't necessarily that helpful for you. It wasn't. It sounds like later mindfulness became a bigger part of what you were doing, But it sounds like very early on that was a tool that you were going to that wasn't very helpful. No, it wasn't. There's some research out there that supports that.

It's not just my personal view. I think people have got to be very careful because meditation is so easily thrown out. There is the thing you've got to do. You do yoga, meditate, and you get out of depression. I think it's it's simplastic, and it's in fact a little bit dangerous because if you think what is meditation, it's mostly sitting quietly on your own with your eyes closed,

doing something quite concentrated, been night on your technique. And if you're if you're in the middle of depression and your mind is ruminating badly, which it does, just going over and over and over again. Um. The last thing year I needed to do was to go into um, a place where I was isolated and just sitting with my mind. I actually needed something which took me out of myself, out of my situation, to engage with other people.

And that's where mindfulness was a very different aile of meditation and drew me out to connecting with people in the world and my senses, and that was a very that was a far more productive form of meditation. So yeah, I think meditation can mean many things, many practices, and not all necessarily going to work for you, And it

depends to on which stage you know. Maybe suggestion is now that meditation is actually better to stop people relapsing back into depression, but is questionable whether it's good to get out of you when when you're in the pits of depression, and so you found mindfulness to be more helpful.

And by mindfulness you mean being more present to what was happening to you as you were out in the world it was and both both that and also be mindfuls as to what was happening to my body, what was working, what was happening to my mind, being more aware of myself generally and aware of what was working

and what wasn't working in terms of my recovery. But one of the things that did work was to use mindfulness to actually engage to the world, particularly nature, to get out and you can go for a walk in the woods, which you know I did a lot of, and you can go through the woods and you can just get through a long period of time where you don't just see anything. You're just stuck in your mind and your mind is going over a whole lot of

really negative, unproductive or crazy nonsense thoughts. And you get to the end of your walk and you think, what did I see, what did I feel? What did I notice? And pretty much you notice nothing. You're just consumed by

your thoughts. So practice of mindfulness actually means you actually see what's going on, you engage with the colors, the shapes, the wind, the sun, the light, what your feet are doing on the ground, what you're hearing, the wind, people, children playing dogs, And it's a totally different experience, and

it's a very healthy experience. You give your mind a break, You actually focus on what's real, rather than this pantomime that's going on in your head which just keeps you depressed, which just turns and turns and turns and just just

keeps you trapped and depression and anxiety. I think that's a really useful idea, this one of like, Okay, I go for a walk in the woods, but the entire time, all I'm doing is being in my brain and mindfulness, being paying attention to what's real, what's actually real here, instead of what is potentially not real, which is all these thoughts about what may or may not happen. They're real and that they're happening, but they're not real, as in,

they don't exist outside your mind. And I would do things which really really prompted me to pull me out of my mind quite strongly. I would go to botanical gardens and and I would go into the fragrant garden and smell all the different smells, or the herb gardens, smell the herbs. Rub some herbs on my fingers and smell them. And if you know, if you rub a nice lemoning time on your for doesn't smell them. You can't ruminate at the same time as you're doing that.

It's almost impossible. So you come out of your ruminating mind and you smell this beautiful smell. It's a different experience. You give your brain a holiday. You give other parts of your brain, which are healthy, a chance to sort of come alive. And and that's so important, and you

need to you need to build that. By building that, you actually strengthen they healthy parts of your brain that have all this ability to see beauty and to engage, to be mindful, and inevitably other things start building on that ability to find self, to find compassion and kindness towards yourself, Because if you're ruminating about a whole lot of negative things, things you've done, your regrets in life, that's inevitably you're you're beating yourself up, and it's it's

really just making you feel bad, making you more depressed, keeping you trapped. Whereas you use your sense us through mindfulness to see to snow to feel you're having quite a different experience. One of the things about depression is that we tend to think of healing and I guess from depression or any number of things, we tend to think of it as sort of a linear thing. We just sort of get better, get better, get better, right, And in your case, that was not the way it worked.

There was up there, down, there was up, there was down. The overall trend line over a long period of time might have appeared to be upwards, but in the midst of it, there was lots of up and down. There was a real roller coaster. And that's why it was really helpful for me to keep a mood chart. It's

just no one told me to. I just had this idea that I wanted to know what was going on, what was what was behind these what was I doing when I feel a bit better, and what the doing I didn't, So I plot a little mood chat of how I felt during the day, and then I would write notes and it was really interesting to go back and see those. You see a pattern that you can't see at the time, and you think, oh, it's a

consistent thing. When I'm with good people, good friends that actually made me, support me, listen to me, or just do something I don't know, watch a fun movie with me, or going to walk with me. I'm feeling better. And when I'm on my own, when I'm isolated, or when I'm saying no to people because I'm feeling too an you sort of lethargic and depressed, I'm feeling worse. So

you suddenly get the pattern. Okay, it's really important too to get out and be with people and then you so you see that reflected back to you, and then you can build on that and build that into your life and make that more of your routine. So it's a very good way of monitoring, working out what's what's working, what's not, and strengthening those good things. And it's a process and the more you do them, the more your brain adapts to them in good ways, and the more

you find your behaviors changing. And it's it's the upward spiral out of depression. Just little things like that make the difference. And so for you, what's it like now? You know, would you consider yourself as somebody who has recovered from depression? Is it still something that makes periodic appearances in your life, like what's your relationship to it now? I definitely feel like recovered from depression. I would never say that I won't get depressed again. I think they

would be foolish. It doesn't worry me, it doesn't keep me up at night, but it's it's there. I mean, that was such a shake up of my life. It's now. I won't forget it, and it sits. There's a reminder whenever I just just start to forget. Now if I go through better forgetting to look after myself in the middle ways or something of its saying okay, get back

on track. Anxiety is different. Anxiety store still is more present for me and can rear itself more quickly, and because the tour so connected, I focus more on looking after myself in the anxiety area arena, if you like, because I know that if that gets out of hand, then the depression is perhaps more likely to come back into my life. So the same things what got me out of depression are the certain very same things that helped me live life without anxiety. Well that anxiety that

is intolerable. I'm always trying to figure out, like, what's my relationship to depression now? I don't have it like I used to have it by any stretch. I am not incapacitated by it. However, I still have what I would consider you know, sometimes I just think of it more as like low mood, and I never know like, is that just sort of kind of my sort of where my happiness level happens to be, or is it

just sort of my temperament? Right? People used to talk about like a melancholic temperament, and so I I am. I find it a very interesting relationship looking at my own life like kind of what what's happening here is? You know, does depression still come to visit or do I just sometimes have low mood because that's sort of my temperament? Um, But I know it's not what it

once was. And I also know that for me that the things that I have learned to do to help me with um depression are things that I continue to do today. I have found that it is a program of my recovery is contingent upon my continuing to take good care of myself. Yes, And I think the question to ask yourself, as are you, because sometimes you know, it can creep burn and you can start to change your life without knowing really how whether depression is creeping back,

and are you saying no to people? You are you turning down requests to be with people? Are you are you saying no, I prefer not to exercise. Are you tending to withdraw more? Just be aware of those things, and if you are, then you might say, Okay, this isn't so good. I need to do something about it. I need to get some help. I need to just

turn those little things around. And I think that's an important way to see it, because depression can can easily just slip back into people's lives without before they know they are back in that back in that place. Um so, so that's perhaps aren't how I would see it? And when I can can have periods where I feel really thethargic and I prefer not to get out and do things, but I push myself and whenever I do, I say, okay, how is if you're an out way better? I'm so pleased.

I got out, I got some exercise, and that was a really good thing to do. And it proves to me that sometimes you do have to just push yourself a little bit. I find I have to push myself over the hurdle often I guess when I say push, it's there's you can you know, there's there's an unhealthy pushing, and then there's just sort of what I would consider a sort of a healthy like okay, come on, get out there. But I like that idea of looking at it less from only a mood perspective, but looking at

from a activity in life perspective. What is my life look like? What are the activities that I'm doing? Do I appear to still be engaged and read it right in the heart of my life? Or am I am I slowly withdrawing? I think that's an interesting way to look at it. Relationships are often, you know, as I

see it, they're challenging. And how your relationships are you've been open a mindful relationship where you're listening and giving and taking and as it will balanced, Or are you you know, finding that no one's right for people around you, whether it's work relationships or personal relationships. You know you're always you know, there's always a problem with somebody you're worth.

I mean, that type of thing can be a good reality check to say, Okay, well maybe it's me, Maybe I'm behaving in ways that it's not right because depression comes out in so many ways. It doesn't just you know, it's not just the archetypal you're sitting there, your head down, your slump, you've got manager you can come out. And people can be an agitated form of depression that can be very grumpy. Aggressive, can show up as irritability for sure.

That is a common manifestation, particularly among men. Short temper, exploding quickly, all those things. So it's such a complex illness. I mean it's got so many and sometimes that polar opposites that um you can Yeah, it's just it's quite a fascinating thing. And that's why we go to a doctor who has got I don't know in New Zealand fifteen minute slots, and the doctor is going to diagnose you and prescribe you in a fifteen minute slot. It's

just absurd. I mean, you need fifteen minutes just to talk about sleep, how's your sleep going, and how to sort the sleep out because sleep is such an important thing with depression. If you're constantly tired and not sleeping. I mean I could speak to somebody for half an hour about good sleep methods and how they can slowly change those and improve them. And and it's a complex thing. And then there's nutrition, and there's exercise and all those things,

and then there's the medication thing. I mean, more and more we find out that the medication is not a one size fits all. People respond differently to two different medications. And yeah, that's becoming a very interesting science now how we're the diagnostic tools have become so much more complex and and going to make I think in the future that would make these the main medication far more useful. It won't just be a trial and era, well let's

just try this one and let's try this one. They'll be be far more accurate and will be far more effective. So there will be a good thing, as long as we don't get stuck on that thinking that's one day there's going to be a silver bullet for depression. I don't believe there will be. It's a lifestylelish it's how you live your life, and it's way more complex than to be solved at the bottom of the cliff with

any form of medication. The term illness almost makes it sound like it is a thing that you can put your finger on, like, oh, this cell is growing out of control, Like you can find in cancer or there's this virus. Right, it's really more, in my mind, it's more of a it's more of a syndrome, right, because there are so many contributing factors and and they they

layer on and interweave with each other in incredibly complex ways. Um. That said, there does appear to be some protocol holes that make sense, right, I think the vast majority of our lifestyle based Well, Brett, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show, for sharing your experience, for writing the book. You're going to give an offer to our listeners for your book that I wanted to give you a chance to mention because you told me about it before the show. Yeah, thanks sir.

I have a website for the book. It's available through the usual channels, but I also sell it directly through my website out of the Woods, dot code, dot m Z. And what I'd like to do for your listeners is offer them a deal where if they buy one book at the normal price, they get a additional book for free, which they can give away to friends or family members or to local community center or whatever they feel is appropriate. And so, will you just go to that website, whether

it be a code they use or how will that work? Yes, so if they use a code wolf, they can access that and it will be seem to them through my distributor in the US. All right, and I will put a link in the show notes to that. So um, thank you so much Brent for taking the time to come on. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you it's been to talk to you. Take care bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast.

Head over to one you Feed dot net slash support. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.

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