Therese Borchard

what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen 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. Welcome to the show. Our guest today is Cheres Porchard, author of Beyond Blue

and The Pocket Therapist. She blogs for Everyday Health and is an associate editor and regular contributor to psych Central. She writes about her own struggles with depression. Here's the show. Hi, Teres, Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me on. We are happy to have you on. You've done a lot of writing about depression, which is something that we

talk about on the show a fair amount. You had a pretty popular blog on belief neet for a long time, and you've got a book called Beyond Blue, which I really enjoyed. So we will dive into a lot of that stuff. But let's start with the parable, like we always do. So there is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two

wolves inside of us that are always at 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 he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, grandfather, well, 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, let me say I love that parable. The first time I heard it was about four years ago at church. Ironically, because the sermons usually aren't that good, but this one. It made an impact on me, and I've remembered that, and I've had that in the back of my mind as I go forth with trying to find ways of living around what

I call my treatment resistant depression. I think you always have to be cognizant of those two wolves, because when you are trying so hard to feed one, you don't realize how sneaky the other is, and before you know it, you're feeding the wrong wolf and you're back to where you started. So so having in mind those two, I try to make a conscious effort on doing the things that are going to result in more love and compassion. It's the same message I think that Victor Frankel has

with his book Demand Search for Meeting. That also was very a very important book for me to read because I had kind of hit rock bottom and I had tried, you know, to fifty different medication combinations. I've tried mindfulness, meditation, acupuncture, every kind of alternative therapy out there, and I still

had these horrible death thoughts. And when I read that book, I realized that he, you know, in the Auschwitz and the concentration camps, he was there with wolves all around him just trying to eat from his very being that he was just attacked all the time, and yet he found a way to find that wolf of love and compassion and turn that horrible time into just a blessing

and to a lesson for each of us. And so I've tried to do that into turning my suffering into service, and when I do that, I do feel more compassion and peace and serenity. So why don't you tell the listeners just a brief overview of your story that's in the book about your battles with depression. And I would be interested in also where things pick up, because the book was was several years ago, right, so i'd be interested in kind of after the book also how you're

ongoing challenges have been with depression. Sure, well, I really feel like I have been depressed from the time that I was born. I was a colloquy infant, and when I was a child had I was very Catholic, and so I had a scrupulosity, you know, couldn't say enough prayers, couldn't go enough masses to I was afraid I was going to hell. That kind of morphed into an eating disorder when I was an adolescent girl, I was wanted to be a professional ballerina, and that's kind of the culture.

There is a little dangerous towards the body, and so I got carried away with that. But when I got into high school, I started to drink, and so went downhill fast with the drinking. But I always I call liquor the quiet car in my brain. You know when you're on amtrakt and you're looking for the quiet car because everyone's on the phone. The quiet car for me was liquor. It was the first time that I was able to relax in my own brain, and I still

remember the feeling of being able to do that. But you know, as in all alcoholic stories, it took me, took me down. So once I got sober, I started to really I was in therapy in college and she thought I was depressed and wanted to put me on an antipressant, and I was very opposed because my aunt, my godmother, was bipolar and took her life, and I just remember being so scared that I was like her. And so when she said, you know, I think you're depressed,

my defenses went up. And it took about a year and a half for me to come around and to really acknowledge that and start the road to recovery. So I was good for a while until I had my kids. And I think from what I've read, childbirth can just do a real number on a woman's body as far as hormonally. A lot of people who had depression prior to childbirth end up with bipolar disorder after child books, not a lot, but some do. And so that's what

happened to me. After I stopped nursing my second child, I hit a bottom that that had been lower than anything I had ever done. And so I went from psychiatrists to psychiatrists, seven in all, and one of them was a very aggressive guy who worked for some pharmaceuticals, and he was just given me a very dangerous combinations of of of medication. And so I basically fell into my serial bowl one morning and was hospitalized, and was

hospitalized twice. Actually the last time was at Johns Hopkins, and I met a wonderful physician who guided me from that point to I think where I wrote the book. I had gone through a period where I really tried the alternative ways acupuncture. I had to go off my medication and ended up in a ball in my bedroom closet, and my husband said, you know, please do this for me, but with the help of the psychiatrist and with an entroprenologist, because it was also a matter of having a pituitary

tumor and addressing that as well. I had two very good years. That's when I wrote the book. Since then, since two thousand and eight, I've been struggling again. And this time, I, you know, again, tried many different combinations, and when I hit like number fifty, I just didn't think that it was that. It just felt like I was beating a dead horse with a toilet plunger something

that was not working. And so I have a great deal of respect for my psychiatrist, but I just started to kind of wonder about the field of psychiatry itself, and so I began to see a holistic doctor and acquire more about my diet and see someone who could really concentrate on my endoprint system because my pituitary tumor was still so out of whack, and my thyroid is also kind of out of whack. So that journey has been the last year, and I in the last two

or three months, I feel like I finally. You know, I'm still on medication and I still go to my psychiatrist, but with those pieces in place, I feel like I'm really starting to regain health. And I've had to make some very difficult changes in my diet, given up gluten, dairy, alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and take enough supplements that it takes me about a half hour each week to fill them up in those one of those granny size containers. But I think it's

it's finally starting to pay off. If I do absolutely everything that I can to to work towards good mental health. I can't just go to a psychiatrist and a counsel or. For me, it has to be the whole body, the whole everything. I found that to be one of the interesting things about your your story is that in your book there's a lot of concern because you've got a lot of people who are pointing you to holistic sources of healing, as you mentioned acupuncture, or if you just

meditate right or go to enough yoga. And I found it interesting in the book that you were you were realizing that those things were not sufficient, and that they still aren't, but now you find you found a way to pair the more traditional medical treatment, the antidepressant medicine and traditional therapy with some of those more holistic approaches. Yeah,

I think for me, I need both. And that's it's been frustrating because those worlds are so different, and if I go to a holistic doctor, most of them are going to say, we don't believe in mental diagnoses. We don't believe in mental illnesses because everything comes from toxins, everything comes from you know, they don't believe in that

in itself. And then but most of psychiatry really doesn't pay a lot of attention to diet, which I think is huge, and so I've been trying to address that on my blog a lot to inform people because I don't think I got well, and I feel confident right now that I'll probably stay well because I have all of these pieces in place. My husband has been really great.

He when I first just wanted to take the holistic route and go off all my medication, I was he has we we have a lot of people in our community who are new age and they he remembers when he was a kid watching this documentary on Uri Geller, the guy who bend the spoon with his with his thoughts, and finally, when I was so so desperate and but was so stubborn to really accept the health of traditional medicine, he said, I think you've been staring at that spoon

for too long. You know, I've been trying to fix my brain with my thoughts themselves, and that it didn't work for me. It it might work for other people, but it didn't work for me. Well, I think it's a very much a matter of degree of depression. I think I talk a lot on the show about the depression that I deal with, and it's never been as

crippling as what you describe or other people have. It's more of a consistent, you know, longer term, you know, lower legs, chronic condition, and so it does respond better to certain things. But I've come to the same conclusion that you have, which is that I don't think that either of those camps is really sufficient, and I think that the way that we treat depression as a whole

in this country is woefully inadequate. And the only thing that I've found for me, it sounds very similar to your experience, is to sort of treat all parts of myself exactly, the physical, the emotional, the mental, all those things. If I've got If I'm working on all those things, then I end up in a much better place than if I'm working on any one of those in particular. So just medicine is helpful, but not enough. Obviously, just

meditation doesn't get it done. I found I have to sort of a stack all that stuff together, right, Yeah, do you find that you don't? It just seems like most of the people are in one camp or another. Though I agree, I think most people are in one camp or the other, which is I'm always suspicious of anybody who's in one particular camp because I don't think any I think any issue in life that people have wrestled with for a long time is an easy has

an easy answer to it, or it would have been solved. Right. If there was an easy answer for depression, it would be solved by now. If there was an easy answer for how to have healthcare in the US, it would have been solved by now. Right. These are complex challenges, and that's why anybody who proposes, like all you have

to do is this one little thing I'm always skeptical of. Right, Yeah, Well, good for you for having a venue where you can really explore this because I don't think there's enough of this information out there. So yeah, I agree. It's one of the things we try and focus on. And you a couple things that you talk about in your book and your blog I'm really interested in, and one of them is the idea of our thoughts. You talk about

a couple of schools of thought out there. There's one if you take it to to it's extreme or the general, which is that you know, what we think about doesn't have much to do with what goes on in our body, right, these things are fairly disconnected. The other school thought, going to the other extreme, is that everything that happens to

us is a result of what we think. And I've seen you write in your blog before about how we can get so stuck on thinking that every little thing that we think or do is the cause of what's wrong with us. Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned that. I love neuroscience for that because it gives you hope that the brain is plastic and you can carve those

neuro passageways or the neural passageways. But when I am very depressed, it works against me because I'm constantly beating myself up as soon as I have a thought, I'm like, oh, I just carved that passageway, right, you know, and then that will you know, go compile against itself and it's nightmare. But and that's why someone asked me the other day

what I thought of cognitive behavioral therapy. And I think it's very very helpful, like Doctor Burne's stuff and all that stuff has been very helpful, but I I can't

do it when I'm severely depressed. When I'm severely depressed, I just have to distract myself because the more I try to think of, you know, and and carve the right quote positive passageways, then the more I'm just kind of digging myself a hole because I'm feeling responsible then for my depressure, which is making me, you know, feel even more depressed, which is, you know, it's a down

hill spiral. But on the other hand, I don't think that it's healthy for people to think that they can that they can you know, stay in a in a resentment or a stoop or you know, can entertain a thought that's kind of hurtful and not have their body be affected by that. I do these many episodes where I talk for you know, four or five minutes about just thoughts I have on different things. It's uh, it's it's the usual. Let me turn this off now for

our for our listeners. But it's a I'm kidding mostly. But I did one on rumination, and the idea was simply that sometimes I can't think my way out of that situation. I simply just have to give my brain something else to focus on. And I think there are

I found some positive technique for doing that. You know, one would be like one of the things I do is I call it the alphabet gratitude game, where I have to go through the alphabet and think of something I'm grateful for for each letter, and it's it's mainly the thinking of something for each letter. That's the really helpful part because it gives my brain something to hang on to. But it's got the side benefit of me

thinking about things that I think are positive. So but I'm with you one hundred percent on that inability when I'm really stuck to think my way out of it. And another analogy that I think is useful in that sense, or another way to think of it is it's sort of when people are fighting and once you get to a certain point of being angry, there is nothing positive that is going to happen until you calm down. It

just simply doesn't matter what you try and do. It's to a certain extent a matter of time, and you know, no exposure to the thing you're angry at before you're able to think in any kind of positive way. Right, Yeah, that's very true. It's like someone told me that you never say anything important to your spouse before asking yourself if you're hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. You know the

twelve step halt. And and I've added one more is if you're in the car, because I are worst argument on when we're in the car because I'm very nervous. I'm a nervous front seat driver. And so that's a that's a very good one. I've had a lot of

really bad fights in the car too. So you wrote an article recently that was about things you wish people knew about depression, and I was wondering if you could maybe share a few of those that if you if you could tell people about depression, what are some of the things you wish that everyone knew. I wish people knew that you could be grateful and oppressed at the same time. You know, I keep on hearing that if

you're grateful, then you can't be depressed. And while I've read that research, I agree with it because I've been physiologically depressed but grateful at the same time. I think it's incorrect to say that people who are depressed don't know what blessings they have in their life. I think they do. I mean, I know that most of the people who I know that are severely depressed do, and that's part of the reason that they feel so bad is they can't celebrate those but they are intrinsically and

authentically grateful for that. That's one of the things. And again it's that it's the holistic versus medical world issue. I feel like, you know, I was really hopeful when I was reading all these diet and nutrition books that if I eliminated gluten, wheat or wat as, glutent, dairy, sugar, caffeine that all, you know, these books say in six weeks, you just you're like a different person and you've never

had a bad thought in your life. And that's I think very scary for I think it's unfair for people to expect someone to just change their diet and not be depressed. I mean, I changed my diet and I still was very, very suicidal. So to know that that's not it's not as easy as that. It's not as easy as going to yoga. Yoga. Actually, when I back in two thousand and five, I had to stop going to yoga because my worst suicidal rumination has happened in yoga.

It gave me the room to think, you know, during that hour and a half, and that's dangerous for someone who's you know, that low. So again, it's not and it's it's just not black and white. It's not do yoga, drink it kale smoothie in the morning and you're fine, Well, guess what I've done those things. What if you put the vodka in you're kale smoothie. Well maybe that's true,

green quiet car. Yeah, that's that's very good point. And then on the other end, you know, people who I think think that medication is the reason why you get well, I mean, I think it certainly can be part of the equation, but I don't think it's fair to say that just because you're you know, you're on medication and you're seeing a counselor that means that you aren't going to be depressed. There's so much more work that you

have to go into it. So it's I guess it's again that that double whammy that you're hit by between the holistic world and the pharmaceutical world that I wanted to discuss, and also just the just the amount of trying. I had six years between two thousand and eight until very recently that I had these very loud death thoughts and I would have to go to dinner with people and laugh and you know, fake, and then come home

and google how to get cancer. I mean, people don't realize that we're used to it, you know, people who have been severely depressed for so long. I'm used to I'm used to a good act, and so that doesn't mean I'm not that that pain isn't any more real. How have you found because you are the leader of a maybe leaders the wrong word, but you founded a Facebook group called Beyond Blue that you're a key part of.

How has the interaction with that group been different from when you were doing better and when you were struggling again. How did you approach that? Well? I actually started it in May. I had been, you know, eating that made the diet restrictions about five months before, and I still didn't notice anything. And I was on the fiftieth medication, and I basically thought that I was going to have to live with these death thoughts for the rest of my life, and so I better, I better connect with

some people and learn how to do it. So I started that, and I think that that's partly Also why I'm better today is because I don't feel I'm as unique as I thought I was before. I mean, I don't know anyone in my friend's circle or in my family circle who deals with what I do. But man, there are tons of people online who, you know, have

to deal with these same thoughts every single day. And to see them, I mean, some of them are so heroic in the way that they do and and they offer help and they you know, it's it's again, it's Victor Frankel's turning to service. I think has really helped them, and I'm learning from them that it helps me, So

I try to. I try to get on there and help people for like at least an hour a day, because it's it's kind of like that one story where the two people are gonna or the one person who's going to jump off a cliff and commit suicide, and then another person comes up and is going to do the same, and she turns around and tries to save the one. You know, you forget about your pain when

you're trying to sort of do emergency calls there. But the group has really it's been good for me in that In that way, I do have to I do have have to watch the compassion fatigue because there's some people that you know, we're not a suicide hotline, and so when you get to the space where you're just really in danger, it's not not I don't think a good a good place to be our site because I'm not a mental health professional, thank god, because if I was,

I'd probably be responsible for all these people. And I'm a theology major, so thank god i'm not. But I do have to watch that line of getting compassion fatigue and watching watching you know, just being good to myself. But some of the people just really blow me away with their compassion and the resolve and the way they just trudge through every day and just you know, put one foot in front of the other. It's good for

me to see that I'm not alone. Yeah, I had no idea the group was that new, and it's a really interesting group, you're My reaction to it is I usually have a couple of reactions. One is it can be a heartbreaking place to spend and much time because there's a lot of people struggling, and yet you're right, there's so much beautiful compassion between those people that is there.

And I think when you think about a holistic approach to depression or really mental health in general, whether that be improving your mental health from where it is to better or you know, moving out of depression, that another one that I think is frequently overlooked is exactly what you just said is the connection to people, but very importantly, connection to people who can understand you. Yeah, exactly. I

think all of us have in common that loneliness. I think that's the worst part of this depression, is that loneliness of no one really getting you. And so that I mean, it's been really really cool to see people come in who were suicidal and now posting funny videos and you know, a woman who now has the energy to take care of her grandkids, and to see that progress just from nothing's changed except that she's communicating with

other people who understand her. It's amazing. So I'm in the process right now of building a site for that, so it's not on Facebook because Facebook has its limitations. Yeah. Yeah, every once in a while somebody will post something they mean for the group on the main part of Facebook and be mortified. I have a question for you, though, this is similar because I've wondered about this for a long time, and you come from a twelve step culture,

so you're familiar with what all that is. Like. I've always been curious why there is no such thing as depression support groups in real life, or let me rephrase that, because I know there are some, but there's very few of them. They're not well marketed in any way. I kind of wonder is it just by the nature of depression that people don't You know, part of that is

an isolation thing. But I've just been curious because if you think about the power that comes from being online in that group, if you could translate that into the face to face power that you get in other recovery programs, it would be really helpful. Yeah, that's funny that you asked that, because I actually am putting together a foundation right now, it's called Beyond Blue Foundation to get funding

for the new site. But also one of the programs that I really want is called find Your Tribe, and it's based on that quote that when you find people who don't think that you're weird, but react and joy and say me too, you have found your tribe. And I love that because I feel like that's what we

are on Tribe GBB or group Beyond Blue. So I want to be able to do that, and I think if the site gets big enough, then you know, we'll have people in different cities and can kind of form have the online community actually become a real community outside. I've been to NOAMI meetings, and while I'm a big supporter of NAMI, the meetings have not really been I think it's more for support for parents and family members

of people who are depressed. I haven't received that much support for, like you said, people who are going through it. I don't know if it's anonymity or you know, the twelve step culture clashes a little bit with mental health culture. Let me lead us into that discussion by reading something you wrote because I thought it was really really good, and I'll read it and then we can kind of

go into it a little bit more. You said the difference between sobriety culture, there's a difference between sobriety culture and mental illness culture. In the substance abuse culture, the person is generally viewed as the agent of the problem, and they are held accountable and have consequences for the relapse. In the mental illness culture, the person is often viewed not as the agent and the problem, but is the victim of their illness, and we tend to hold people

a little less accountable for biochemical processes. Yeah, I got into trouble with that when I first got sober and was I was in college and I was struggling with my depression at the same time. And whenever I tried to voice my desperation that, you know, I had these horrible suicidal thoughts, death thoughts, they'll be like, you know, poor me, poor me, Pour me a drink. You know, I write your gratitude lists, right, you're And it was I learned that I can't talk about my depression in

AA or else. It's it's something that I've done to myself, which may be more depressed. So I actually stopped going to the support group meetings because I just didn't, you know, some and my sponsor said that if I take antidepressants, those are happy pills that are going to compromise my sobriety.

And so yeah, there's there's a big clash there. And maybe that's the reason why the twelve step movement has never taken off with the mental health because it is it's almost more like a cancer survivals group than it is like an AA group. Yeah, so that is It's something that I really want to work on because I have a few people who I met through the actually

group Beyond Blue. We get together every once in a while, and just the human connection, that in person connection does lend itself to so much more So who knows, maybe you and I can start that movement. Yeah, I'm certainly I am. I'm very interested in that idea. I do think that the overall recovery or sobriety culture has changed a fair amount from probably when you were in college. Not that I'm insinuating that that was a long time ago.

I'm just saying that I got somewhere twenty five years ago. It is when I I mean I first became exposed to recovery culture about twenty years ago, and I heard a lot more of that sort of stuff than I ever hear these days. I'm not nearly as involved, but I think it has softened to some degree. But I think very similarly to what we were talking about before.

I think either side of that camp is wrong. It's not all your fault, and it's yet still whether whatever causes it, if it's mental illness, or you still are responsible for your own path to getting better. And so it's neither. It's both. Those camps again seem to me to be on the extreme. Yeah, no, I agree with you. I agree with you one hundred percent. Yeah, we run

into that in the group a little bit. You know, you got to people are there to support each other, but you also have to want to get well yourself, and I'm not sure that that's there for everyone. So, yeah, I saw that discussion. I don't remember where it was you had about So you're on the group beyond Blue. Yeah, uh huh, I am that's so cool. I don't post very much. I mainly just am kind of hanging out, watching and reading and liking some things here and there,

with the occasional comment. But I'm I'm fairly not too not too involved. I didn't make the connection between the Eric Zimmer of the show and that. Yeah, okay, now that I think I have seen, that's great. Yeah, I'm I'm in disguise in there. I've got a uh it's it's a it's a clown suit that I picture you see me in, or I just put I put Chris's picture in for anything that I'm I'm a little bit nervous about being involved in. Yeah. Yeah, the guidelines, the

rules have been kind of difficult to uphold. And that's you know, AA is really good about that about you know, your responsible for yourself. So yeah, there's a lot to learn in any sort of group dynamic from AA because they got a lot of things really right. Derived as long as it has right and to the scale it has, Yeah, it's kind of amazing. But I think I have I have plenty of challenges with it. I think the same

as a lot of people do. But so one of the things that I wanted to we're kind of coming to the near the end of our time, but one of the things I wanted to ask you about is you have a quote in your book that's one of my favorite quotes and it's from Rilka Oh yeah, about loving the questions. So can you tell me a little bit about that quote and what it means to you.

I love that quote because I grew up as being so black and white, and I think if I had to say what I've learned through my journey, it's to appreciate the gray. That quote is similar to Pama Kodron, the Buddhist nun, and she talks about you know, you think you're always going to fix things, but then they fall apart again, and then you fix them, and then they fall apart, and you have to learn to exist

where there's room for misery and room for joy. And that, to me is what I try to aim for because with the mental health, when I'm trying to fix it so that I don't have a symptom, then I'm setting myself up because you know, the way I made my biochemistry, I'm going to have this stuff for the rest of

my life. But if I can learn to live with my symptoms and live with the questions and address all that gray matter as it comes, then there's going to be a lot less frustration, and I might be able to help a person or two along the way instead of power and a quarter in a temperatantrum for not you know, getting it perfect. So it's funny. I was a theology major and when I was writing a paper, I was so black and white that I wrote this paper on still can't believe this paper on why everybody

who had premiumerble sex would burn in Hell? And I mean I was so like, like off the charts, you know, black and white. And so my teacher, my teacher wrote wrote in the in the bottom, she said, I hope you learn a little nuance in your life. And five years later, my dad had died and it was just a mess. And you know, I started to know that things are just messy. They're just messy. So I came back and knocked on her door and I said, yeah, thanks.

Although I've always believed in premarital sex. So well, then it's funny because I met my husband and I told him it was going to be five years before we slept together, and it was like the second night, you know, So on our first one of our first dates, he said, where do you see yourself in five years? And I said, as a missionary a noun in a third world country. And he's like, oh, interesting. He was like, we better

get this done quickly. Then. Yes, things are messy. Things are messy, and and being okay with that is a big it's a big help. It's we talk on the show a lot about feeling bad about feeling bad or this idea of just all this stuff that we layer on top of the pain that's already there. And I think that's another way of doing it, which is is this believing that things should be really different than they are.

It's one thing to want them to be different, it's a different thing to think that they should be different, right right, Yeah, Well, thank you so much. I do think you're doing a lot of great work and helping a lot of people out there with your your blog in your book, and it's clear the group is helping a ton of people. Well, thank you you too with with this great podcast series. Yes, well, thank you so much and thanks for coming on the show and we'll

talk again soon. Okay, thank you, all right, bye bye. You can learn more about Teres Orchard and this podcast at one new feed dot net slash terse that's t H E r E s E