Mental Health (with Audra McDonald, Jason Kander, and Allie Brosh)

many during this pandemic and the economic crisis. In fact, one study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that rates of depression have tripled for adults in the US in recent months. I like, I think probably all of you have known someone who has suffered with mental illness, or whose child or loved one has, and you know how painful and difficult it is to

come to terms with that and then defined help. One of the biggest challenges about dealing with mental health issues is the stigma that it too often carries. I think it takes a lot of courage to be open and candid about personal struggles with mental health and I'm honored to talk to three people who have done exactly that.

I'll be talking with Jason Candor, the former Secretary of State of Missouri and a veteran who has publicly shared his struggles with post traumatic stress disorder or pt S. D Ali Brousch, a writer and artists known for her honest and surprisingly funny descriptions of living with anxiety and depression. But first, I'm talking with Audra McDonald. Audra McDonald is

a six time Tony Award winner. In fact, she's won more Tony's for acting than any other performer in history, and she's the first person to win in every performance category. I have followed her career. I'm thrilled watching her on the stage. I'm honored to have gotten to know her as a friend. And in addition to being a phenomenal actor and singer, she is an outspoken advocate for racial justice,

gender equality, and yes, mental health. She has spoken openly about surviving an attempted suicide when she was a student at Juilliard in New York. I am so personally delighted to be talking to someone who I admire and I am the biggest fan of How you doing in the middle of the craziness that we're in with the pandemic and everything. You know, I'm trying to gather the life lessons from this time, because there's got to be some big universal lesson that we as a human race, they're

supposed to learn that. I'm supposed to learn as a mom, as a wife, as a woman, And I'm really trying to look for the big lessons and make sure that I learned them during this time, because otherwise I think I'd be going crazy. You know, Yeah, I think that's a really smart way to think about it. You know, you come, as I understand it, from a family of musicians and singers. I think your father, I read, was

a music teacher. I think you had grandmother's maybe on both sides, who we sides also pianists and piano teachers. How did that influence you as a kid? I mean, do you feel like it's the nature nurture? I mean, you were born into this musical family, But clearly not everybody born into a musical family as the talent that you were born with. So how do you think about that? Well, I think, honestly, a lot of my experienced growing up in such a musical family was that. It was just

a part of our lives. And I don't think it was even something that everybody considered that they were going to do for a living. It's just a part of who we were. You know. My dad had six sisters and they would sing all over California at different churches. They were called the McDonald's sisters, and they would sing gospel music all over and that's not what any of them ended up doing for a living. It's just a part of who they are. It was a part of

our culture. It was a part of what it meant to be a McDonald in a way, to be musical, or even just being an audience member, even as a McDonald The McDonald's that didn't necessarily want to be musical would still sit down on a Sunday afternoon and you know, my aunts would all sing, or my grandmother would sit down and play the piano and everybody would just fellowship. And that that's a part of our culture. But my family in particular, because I was a very specific type

of child. I was a very hyperactive child. I was a very overdram matic child. I was a child that had a lot of emotion and didn't know how to handle it. My family, my mom and my dad especially, figured out quite early that music and performance was going to be away for me to channel and to settle myself and focus this energy that I had. So it absolutely became nurture in that regard, and they looked for ways for me to plug in this energy. I could have seen my life going a different way with a

different set of parents. I could see that that could have happened. That's so interesting. I mean, can you remember when you first knew that you were a performer. There's two things that I remember very specifically, two moments. I remember. One, I sang in the church choir, and I was in church all day long on Sunday because my mom was

Episcopalian and my dad was a Andy. So we would start the morning at St. James Episcopal Church and my mom would sing in the adult choir, and my sister and I sang in the little kid's choir, and then once that church was over, we went over to Carter A and E, where my grandmother played the organ. When we're in church all afternoon, so I was starving by the time we we get home, but my day was filled with the Lord on Sundays at any rate. So at my mom's church, I remember our time as the

little kid's choir. We'd get up, turn around and face the congregation and sing. And I remember my dad always sang to my mom, she's so loud, you know, her voice is so loud it sticks out. And then I remember one early evening after a day of church, where my mom and dad, after hearing them talk about that I was loud, started asking me to match pitches and my dad was playing his organ in the music room and he'd say, sing this note, and I'd sing it

and I could. I remember my mom and dad looking at each other and there and I knew some kind of communication was going on, but I didn't. And those are moments that are still with me in my fifty year old sort of adult brain in this time right now. So they must have been moments that really spoke to me as saying, oh, there's something there, there is something there. Yeah. And when I finally did first get on stage with a little dinner theater that I started in when I

was nine, I remember feeling better settled. You know you were meant to do this, Yes, it was who you are. Yeah, It's almost like sitting here, as I'm sitting here in my closet with all these chords plugged into my computer in this microphone and stuff. It's like when you find the right you know, USB chord for the right port and it fits and all of a sudden everything turns on. That's how it felt for me when I first stepped up. Great description. I love that I got plugged in. Yeah,

you got plugged in. And so then you decided you were going to be professional, and you went to study classical voice at Juilliard right law away from home, across the country. And I don't know about you. I was so homesick when I showed up at college. I was just bereft. I didn't feel like I fit or I should be there. And I remember calling home collect that's what we used to do in those days. Those are my days too. I want to I want to come home.

And you know, my father, who never wanted me to go that far away anyway, he said, okay, great, come home, and my mother, no, no, you're gonna stick it out. But here you are, all the way across the country in a very intense dare I say, competitive environment? What was that it was hard. It was hard because I was this kid from Fresno, California who had gotten accepted to Juilliard, and I had always known, this is what

I want to do. I want to do Broadway. I want to be on Broadway, I want to do musicals. And I knew the Juilliard was a big school and that I should audition. So I thought, I'll audition as a singer because it seem doing my strong suit. But I think I just didn't realize what I was getting into. I didn't realize how intense it would be in terms of a classical education, because singing classically was not what

I was interested in doing. But I had gotten in, and I really didn't research the program enough to understand that if I got into the classical vocal department, I was not going to be able to study the things that I wanted to study, which meant no acting, no dance. It was basically you know, music theory, soul fish, English and Italian and German, French dictions, and music history, which is all great, but that's it wasn't what I was

interested in doing. It didn't feed your no. So the whole time I was there, I was really really frustrated. But I also felt the weight of being, you know, the local girl who had made it to Juilliard, and this is the local girl I wanted to be on Broadway. So I felt the weight of not being able to go home, not being able to admit earlier, not being able to say I've made a mistake. That's a lot to put on, you know, your shoulders, as what were you eighteen nights? I was eighteen. It was a lot

to handle. And because I had always had theater and performing as a way of sort of focusing me and settling me. And I was now in New York, so close to my goal in that I was living in New York, living on Broadway, and I had never felt further away from my dream. Well, you've been very open about this time in your life that you you know, you got really depressed. How did you come to grips

with that? I mean, what did you? I didn't. I was just getting more and more despondent and more and more fearful that I was never gonna get to my goal. And I was having boy trouble, and I'm an emotional person. And so one night, after having my heartbroken by this boy, that was really the straw that broke the camel's back. I I am. I tried to slit my wrists, you know, and uh, I reached out for help and was taken to a mental hospital and that's where I ended up

for a month. You know, when you think about that experience for you, and I have other friends who have had similar experiences, you know, sometimes that cry for help is the only way to get the attention and support, and in your case, you know, time off in a way to get whatever kind of support, help, encouragement you need. So when you came back out, did you feel steadier. Had you made some decisions about yourself, like I don't want to go back to that classical program. That's not me.

I'm not going to force myself. Well, a lot of things went down. I you know, my parents both flew out to see me, and my dad again maybe like you're a dad. My dad had always said, look, Ordery, don't have to do this. You can come home at any time. And what I think in reaching out for help, because that's what the attempt was, it was a cry for help. And what it did was it allowed me to say I'm not happy here to be honest with yourselves and to start to really examine what was going

to bring me happiness. And so at that point when I was really able to sort of vocalize, I don't want to do this. I don't want to be an opera singer. I don't want to sing classical music. And so I knew I had to finish my degree. How I went about finishing it, along with the help of the school at that point, was very, very different. It was one of those things was like, I gotta do what we gotta do to get through this, but we all know this is not what order is going to do.

And I think that alleviated some of the the pressure. And then I got an opportunity to audition for a Broadway tour for something during that time, and the dean of the school said, yeah, go do that, Go do that. Very encouraging that they said that, Yeah, these were things that helped me, you know, get back on track. But I needed that derailment. I guess I don't want to say, because I don't ever want to say, you know, suicide

is the answer, but I needed to reach out for help. Well, you know, I I really appreciate your openness and telling this story because there's a really happy ending. I've kind of been happy ending because it was, like, what too, two and a half years after this happened that you ended up in carouself. Wasn't it that that close in time?

It was that close in time. I think it was ninety one that I had this episode in my life, and it was when I was cast in Carousel, and ninety four when it opened on on Broadway at Lincoln Center, and uh, I won the Tony in June. It's crazy. You can't make this up. Are The reason I open about my experience is because, like you said, Hilary, I want to make sure that the other audres out there, anybody out there, sees that it does get better, It

can get better. It's okay to ask for help. And I make no bones about the fact that I, you know, it's it's one of those things, especially in a time like this, with all this trauma happening and all over the planet, in the country, and everything that's happening with us politically right now, it still can be very triggering. Um and so I still have to find ways to sort of take care of myself. And I understand, I understand the importance of self care now and whatever way

that is that I have to do for myself. But I stay open about this topic because I don't want people to think that they are alone and the only ones who have suffered through this. They are not. We're taking a quick break, stay with us. Do you find that in sort of the you know, the entertainment world, you know, people are more sensitive and therefore shoulder a bigger burden of you know, kind of mental health challenges. Yeah, probably,

I would probably say that it's true. Sometimes it's hard to sort of, you know, be anthropological about your own culture and I'm talking about my entertainment you know culture, and a step back and look at it. But if you think about it that it would it would make sense, right. It certainly scans that, especially when our job is to

you know, literally go inside and go deep down. As Dorri Preven said in a poem where the iguanas play in your soul, You're going all the way down to the bottom to pull it all up and then serve it up on a silver platter for the rest of the world to look at and go, yes, I feel that, or no, that's horrible or whatever it is. So just by nature of what we do um as artists. I imagine that that makes sense. But having said that, um maybe in some ways we're more in touch with it.

It makes sense too. I think it would be great to have you know, theater, games and things like that for like neurosurgeons or people who have to work in combat or or you know, or people on the front lines right now and then these hospitals and it might be good for them to get a lot of this out. I think that's a great idea. I mean, you know, and and think about I mean, there's so many performers artists out of work right now because of the pandemic.

And I almost wish that what you just said could be operationalized, and maybe it could be done virtually, but you you know, you would have actors sort of leading workshops about Okay, here's here's how you can get in touch with your feelings acted out and feel better because

of it. Actually, and having said that, because of what's happening with our industry right now, I am concerned about the people in our industry, and not just the actors and actresses, but there's crews, people who work in the restaurants that serve these theater districts, you know, the musicians,

the wardrobe all. It's a really, really frightening time. It is, right, it is, and so I imagine there's going to be a lot of trauma justin whether or not people are going to see their industry come back at all, and what it will look like when it does come back. I have faith in my heart that we will get it all back some day because we have to. We have to as human beings. I don't think we can

exist without theater. And the Greeks knew it. I mean, this is just this is a part of the human condition that we need to be able to see all of it out there in front of us. You know, a great old dame who I loved so very much, so called well one of the greatest actresses. She's passed away this past year, but she talked about how, you know, with the Greek tragedies, you see all that stuff out on stage, and it helps you to get it out

so you don't go off exactly right. That's how I feel, I mean, you know, I mean I went to the theater after the election for literally therapy, I mean, goodness, the feelings and the despair and and just the incredible worry about what was going to happen to our country, and you know, I would lose myself, you know, going

to the theater. And I loved what you said. Recently you were performing in a Carnegie Hall virtual concert, Yes, and you chose to perform the song sing Happy, Yeah, And I loved it because you said, there's something about sing happy that is so defiant. Yeah. That could be a mantra for life, for performing for this terrible time we're living through, for the common trauma that we are, you know, experiencing. Does it ring true to you in your life that you can be defiant and choose happiness

despite everything? Absolutely? And in that I give myself permission. And I've just started to learn this that when that means that by choosing happiness, it means you need to take time for yourself and choose self care and sit back and take care of yourself so that you can then move forward again. That is a part of it. That is a part of that defiance exactly right now. That is a what is it a revolutionary act? That's

a revolutionary act. That's care so so, and that's also something that I want to model for my kids, or for people who might look up to me, you know, whoever that might be. I want to model that for them as well, and and acknowledge that there are some days that I get up and I fail miserably jail crowd, trying to crow. I mean, yeah, you know, you kind of wander around your house going, I can't believe this, I can't believe this. I don't know what to do right.

But then you get then you take the time, and then you try again the next day. And even when you're in the throes of depression or an anxiety, and even the fact that you woke up that day you're at least sitting up, or even if you're in your bed, at least you're still in your bed. You're there, You're there. That is an act of defiance, the fact that you were living through another day. It's something that you made it through. And that for me, in those dark, dark,

dark dark times in that hospital, that was frightening. And I didn't know what I was I was on all this medication, I didn't know what I was doing. There was a part of each day that I would oak my eyes, I go, okay, well I'm still here. I'm still here. Let's see what this day brings. There is hope even in that. I want to acknowledge that for the people who may be laid out right now, at least they're still here. I just that needs to be said. It needs to be said, and you are such a

great messenger of that. I am so grateful too. I'm just so grateful to you being you. Oh and I you so thank you. To keep up with Audra and all of the fabulous things she's doing. You can find her on Twitter at Audra equality m C. My next guest is Jason Candor, someone who I have watched for

quite a number of years. He served our country in the military, went to Afghanistan, served both in the Missouri State House and then as Secretary of State, and in his book highly recommend called Outside the Wire Ten Lessons I've Learned In Everyday Courage, he recounts in a really compelling way a lot of the lessons that he's learned

in his life. But I really think that one of the most courageous actions that I've seen from anybody is when you publicly announced that you were dropping out of the race for mayor of Kansas City, which you certainly seemed on track to win. In order to take care of your mental health, can you take us back to that fall of eighteen, what you were experiencing and thinking and what led you to make what was a really courageous decision. Jason, Yeah. Sure. First of all, thanks so

much for having me. This is a pleasure and I really appreciate it. Yeah, so interesting. I stand by everything that's in the book except for the stuff that I didn't know wasn't right. Like there's a chapter where I talked about coming home from Afghanistan, and I sort of make the argument to the readers, but really to myself that I hadn't done enough for my problems to actually be post traumatic stress. And I sanitized what I was

going through in the book, you know, no secret. Like when I was writing that book, I think it was very candid for someone who was planning to run for presidents, and so it was a little bit sanitized that part. And so now I look back and I went through about eleven years of living with untreated, undiagnosed post traumatic stress and doing what a lot of veterans do, which is telling myself, well, I didn't do enough to earn

post traumatic stress. I felt like claiming post traumatic stress would be like stolen valor, and I just I couldn't do that. And it just got to the point where, you know, I decided I wasn't gonna run for president. I was going to run for mayor. And it was

a two part plan. It was I'm gonna seek redemption by serving my neighbors, and I'm going to go to the v A. I hadn't admit into myself yet it was PTSD, but I was like, I need some help, and so I did the first part and it was going great, Like you said, we were gonna win, but I didn't do the second part, and it just got worse and worse and worse, and we got to the

point where we were breaking records. I had raised three times as much money as the other nine candidates for mayor combined me we were gonna win probably by a country mile, and I was increasingly thinking about killing myself because I had gone through this decade and it was getting worse and worse of never getting a good night's rest because of violent nightmares, hyper vigilance, emotional numbness, and then depression, because if you just live with that for

long enough, it's depressing, and so I finally I called the Veterans Crisis Hotline, And what really swung me was that the woman on the other end of the phone, her tone of voice was so unexpectedly for me casual, that I realized I wasn't special, I wasn't different than

anybody else would dealt with this. I was just another call and she had many of these and shift and that's when I realized, I, Oh, that's what this is, and I decided to stop everything and go to the v A. You know, it's so important obviously for yourself and your family that you made that call and then you followed up on it, but it's also really important

for people listening to hear you describe that. I've had a lot of experience talking to vets, going to v A hospitals and programs, and hearing much of what you just said being repeated, you know, like, nothing really bad happened to me. But I remember so vividly being at Walter Reid when I was a senator, visiting vet's from New York who had been serving in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

And I was walking down the hallway and this young man came by and he recognized me, and he stopped and he said, Mrs Clinton, can I ask you something? And I said sure, And he said, you know, I got physically injured. They're doing a fine job treating me. And he showed me that, you know, part of his hand and arm had been badly mangled. He said, but where do I go to get my brain back? And I'll never forget that because he almost repeated verbatim what you said. He said, you know, I was on the

fast track. I could do anything. I was physically in great shape. I was mentally, you know, at the top of my game. He said, Now I can't sleep. My wife has to basically write out lists for me about what I need to do, one after another. And if this young man like you had been walking down the street or running for office or working in you know, business somewhere, it would have been really hard to recognize the pain and suffering that he or you were experiencing.

So people hear about, you know, post traumatic stress disorder, but they don't know what it looks like. How did it impact your day to day life. You've said you had violent dreams. Were those like every night they wake you up? Yeah? Now that I had therapy and I've dealt with the underlying trauma. I get these nightmares about once every couple of weeks, and they're not that bad anymore, and I know I know what to do for them.

For about a decade, it was every single night, like I went about a decade without a good night's sleep. And now that I can, man, it's awesome, Like it's like a superpower. And anyway, yeah, I would get these nightmares and it is kind of interesting how the brain works. So when I first came back, for the first few years,

it would replay situations from my deployment. And for context, I was an intelligence officer and my role was to investigate corruption and espionage by Afghan officials, basically figure out which bad guys were pretending to be good guys. And what that meant was I would go out and I'd have meetings with folks, and I'd be just be me and my translator most of the time, and nobody would know where I was, and I'd be gone for a

long periods of time and very vulnerable. And so that's what one of the things I really struggled with when I came back was, you know, I had friends who were a lot of firefights, and here I was. I went to meetings and it took therapy at the v A for somebody to explain to me you were exposed with no possibility of being saved for hours at a time, and it's traumatic. Anyway, my my nightmares would be I'd be in some of those meetings, but in the dreams

they would kidnap me. So that's how it started. And then a few years in I decided I must be getting better because the dreams no longer take place in Afghanistan, which was actually, yeah, I found out later in therapy that that's actually like really bad because what it meant was now the dreams were the same sort of threat, except the environ of the dream was my house, and the people who were under threat were my wife, my son,

you know, people like that. And I remember my therapist the v A really just blew my mind when he was like, no, it's bad when that happens. Because one of your other symptoms is hyper vigilance. You think you're in danger all the time. You think it's really happening in your life because every night, what you're unconscious, it does And one of the things that is really missed is that there's a really important sort of brainwashing that happens when you go into the military. And I don't

even mean this in a derogatory way. For me to keep going into those meetings with people who might want to cut my head off on YouTube over and over again, or for you know, an infantry soldier to keep going on patrols, they have to grind into you from the day you get off the bus at basic that everybody else is doing harder stuff than you, and this is no big deal. It's important you have to do that.

The problem we have is we have not really figured out a way to flip that switch off, which is why people like me spend a decade saying everybody else has it worse. Somebody has to sit you down on your way out and be like, Okay, you need to know that was crazy, Like that's not normal. You're going to need help, But instead you just that switches still on. I think that's absolutely true in the military for the

reasons you've just described. Has to be ingrained in you if you're going to be putting yourself at risk and endanger in all kinds of setting. But I think it's also true more generally for mental health. You know, people need to hear, Hey, wait a minute, that's not normal. The child who was abused to then starts having flashbacks as a young adult. You know, hey, that's to be expected.

We can help you. You know, I think about your being in Afghanistan, and when I was reading the book, I've been in Afghanistan six seven times, maybe long more, several times when I was senator, several times when I was Secretary of State. I might spend the you know,

two nights, three nights there. But I really resonated to what you were describing about the hyper vigilance, because even though you know, I'm there to have conversations with you know, officials, but occasionally, you know, they'd bring in a warlord who we were trying to influence. You sit across from these guys, you knew they were lying to you, you knew that they were personally responsible for murdering a bunch of people,

and you just could feel your body reacting. And when you're in that situation, as a military officer or as a civilian, you have to be a bit hyper vigilant. I mean you are looking around for okay, where is the exit? I remember on my first trip to Cobble

going in. You know, at that time we thought, wow, you know, this is great, We're doing so well, and all the rest of it, going into what was still functioning as a center of commerce and having dinner at a restaurant, going to a clothing store where I you know, I bought a really nice embroidered afghan coat. But next time I went back, I wouldn't have done that. I mean, we were sleeping in containers on the premises of the embassy, and and we were coming in for you know, screw

drive down landings in the airport. I mean, you just begin to feel the danger, and anybody who hasn't been there doesn't maybe understand why all of a sudden you you are looking for where's the nearest exit, And is that guy's finger on the trigger of the automatic weapon just because that's where it rests, or is there something

else about to happen. So, you know, I think when you describe how you lived for ten years basically in that hyper vigilant state, as though you were walking into a warlord's office or driving down the road to another intel meeting, I really got it. Well. So after you've got the response calling into the VA What came next for you? So I went to the v A in Kansas City. So I show up and I'm thinking, Okay, I'm gonna walk in, and it's the same government that

had all my information a few years ago. Like I'm gonna say, hey, Jason Army, you know, here's myself. Can I get in? You know? And I look, I'm somebody who had been around all this stuff. From a policy perspective, maybe I should have known better, but that ain't how it worked. Unfortunately, everybody I've ever encountered at the v A individually has been fantastic. I mean everybody there. They just want to serve vets. But as you know, the bureaucracy and some of the rules that are put in

place from on high are really unhelpful. And in my case, I ran into one which I think they've since gotten rid of, but said that if you come in within five years of your combat deployment, will enroll you in

the system, no questions asked. But if you are beyond that five years, then you have to like prove that you had a traumatic experience and that you need this this treatment, which you know, I just had gone through a decade of trying to tell myself in the world that I was fine, and now I needed to like prove that I wasn't, which was weird and also like for somebody who you know, was in not the best

state of mind. You know. Look, I had a phone full of influential contacts, a Georgetown law degree, and high level government experience, and I was overwhelmed. So anyway, the v A. I saw an emergency psyche resident that day, but I was basically told that will be a few months before I can get into weekly therapy if my claim is accepted. And I was like, that ain't gonna work.

And so I contacted a buddy of mine who had started this organization, Veteran Community Project in Kansas City, and I had toured at Sack sweeks earlier and was blown away. And Veterans Community Project Real Quick does two things. One helps any vet navigate the system or do anything else they need. And to fight's veterans homelessness for the village

of tiny houses. That's been really successful. So six weeks earlier, I'm on a v I P tour is the next mayor And now I call and I tell my buddy what's going on and he's like, come on in, And I walked through the doors of the Outreach Center like any of the other thousands of events who have in

Kansas City. They handled my paperwork in. A week later, I was in weekly therapy at the v A and it made all the difference for me, Like quite literally, Yeah, when somebody is ready to seek help, they need to get that help as soon as possible, like one maybe two chances with him, that's it. Yeah, you know, I want to go back for a minute to your announcement dropping out where you admit it look instead of fundraising. I find myself on the phone with the vas Veterans

Crisis Line, tearfully conceding that I've had suicidal thoughts. It wasn't the first time I've been hiding that from myself. You know, I was trying to convince myself and I wasn't sharing the full picture. I still have nightmares. I'm depressed. You know, that was an incredibly honest letter explaining why you were dropping out of the race. How scary was that to do? It was really scary. It was scary,

and it wasn't scary. It wasn't scary in the sense that I had arrived at the place where I finally no longer cared. I mean I cared, but I had a wife and a son, and I was worried that I was going to hurt myself. And so finally something had come along that had become more important to me than my career. And the reason my career had been so important is because it had been my coping mechanism. I had self medicated with throwing myself into this search

for redemption. I care about my country and I care about service, and I did it for those reasons, but I probably threw myself into it with a wild abandon. I did because it was the thing that took my mind off being inside my own mind. And so finally I was momentarily relieved of that because I knew how important this was. But at the same time, I didn't know anything about post traumatic stress. I didn't have any

idea if I could get better. All I knew was that the one thing in my life that was objectively going really well was my career, and I was hitting the self destruct button on that, and so that was scary. You know. In a October nineteen New York Times article about you, I read something that really made an impact. You know again, it said for more than a decade. Mr Kander said, he refused to acknowledge to himself or anyone else that these might be signs of post traumatic stress.

I didn't feel like I did enough to earn it, he said, looking back. Do you think that still is one of the principal reasons why vets are not seeking help? I mean, do you think that basically summarizes the biggest obstacle they don't feel worthy to seek help? Yeah, now I know it does, because I've heard from so many since my announcement, and I've had so many people tell me that the most important part of what I said

was I didn't feel like I earned it. Uh. In fact, when I was over there, there were two other gentlemen who I worked with who did a very similar job to me, and they were really the only people I knew who were experiencing Afghanistan the way I was, and they were part of what was called the Technical Human

Intelligence Team. Basically, they went out and they met with people, and sometimes we did it together, but a lot of times we all did it separately, and I didn't stay in touch with them afterwards, And that's sort of a lesson for people. If you go through something traumatic, stay in touch with the other people who did because you can learn from each other. So we all went our

separate ways. One of those gentlemen a year after we came back, died in a one vehicle accident, which I've now learned when that happens with combat veterans frequently, it's not an accident, unfortunately. And then the other gentleman, I finally, after I'd gone through treatment, reached out to. This was about eight months ago that I reached out to him, and he was about to retire from active duty, and we had a conversation that led to him finally going

in and getting treatment. And one of the things he told me was he was like, look, Jason, after you left, like I had people who I tried to put into your job. And he told me literally he had somebody who quit the first day because they got back and they had urinated on themselves. Like he was like, what we did was really frightening and it was crazy and

people don't do it anymore. But the thing is is like, what if he and I had talked, because he's had his own struggles and is now on the mend But what if he and I and the other gentleman, what if we had just stayed in touch? And that's what I realized now. Is that why it's so important that I said I had felt like I didn't earn it, because I've just I've heard from not just veterans who say they felt the same way, but I hear from people who, you know, had a bad car accident or

went through cancer treatment or anything like that. And those people often will start with me by feeling like they have to, you know, have a disclaimer and say, you know, I wasn't in a war or anything. And I always stop him and I say, you know, you know, your brain has no idea what I did, and it doesn't care. Like I spent ten years comparing my own trauma to other people's and it was a giant waste of my own time. M That's a really really good point. Can

you describe a little bit about the actual therapy? What was it for you that worked? Yeah? First, I would start with what my biggest misconception about therapy was when I went in, which was I always imagined that it was sort of passive, like getting an I V drip, Like you just go in and you sit down and you talk, and that's supposed to but what I didn't understand until I started is that it's really active. It's a lot of work, not just when you're in there.

And so what it was for me was a combination of a couple of things. One was something called prolonged exposure therapy, which was vocalizing the memories. And the way my therapist at least did it was I would use the voice memo on my phone and I would sit there. He would have me close my eyes and I would just, for about forty five minutes, have to tell him the story of, you know, a traumatic experience, an intrusive or disruptive memory, and he would each time act like he'd

never heard it. And then in between and this is where we get to the homework. In between sessions, I'd have to put in my headphones, closed my eyes, wasn't allowed to multitask or do anything else. Every single day between sessions, I had to listen to the thing, and I listened to myself tell the story, and that would unlock additional details and that sort of thing about it. And then I'd go in and do it again, and

I'd add those. The other homework I had was what he called in vivo therapy, which was just no longer avoiding the stuff I had avoided. War movies, books, articles about Afghanistan, sitting in a restaurant with my back to the door, being in a crowded place with my family, all that kind of stuff. And I'd have to do it again for forty five minutes at the time, and as I did it, I got better and better, and as I listened to the stories more. What would happen

is I remember the first memory we did. We did like four or five sessions with it, and then I came in and I said in my therapist, I was like, you know, I think I'm bored with this one. And I remember he laughed really loud and he was like, great, that's the goal. He was like bored and missed the goal and he was like, he's like, congratulations, we can do a new memory. I like that. That's really sightful.

It was huge because it meant I had gone from it having a grip on me and me sweating and getting emotional in my heart racing when I told it too, I'm just bored with this. We'll be right back. Well, so now you're the national expansion director for the Veterans Community Project, which is a group that provides transitional housing and assistance to homeless veterans. How did you get started with that work? So that's actually that's the organization that

I went to that you walked into. Yeah. And then after about six seven months or so into weekly therapy, where I was starting to do quite a lot better, I started hanging around Veterans Community Project, and I was kind of mentoring the leadership on the fact that they had been asked by communities all over the country to expand because they had eradicated veterans homelessness, street homelessness in Kansas City and just unremarkable things. And so I'm kind

of mentoring them through it. And then finally my buddy Brian, the CEO, he said to me, hey, man, how about you just come here and do this. You've created a national organization before you know, you're not working at the moment and uh, And so that's how I did. So now I'm the president Veterans Community Project, and you know, we are now under construction in Longmont, Colorado, outside Denver. We're about to be under construction at St. Louis, and I expect we will be up and running on that

in about five additional major cities starting next year. That is terrific. It is something that I really really applaud you and your whole team and colleagues for because you're coming up with a model that I hope can be taken to scale because the need is so enormous. So I have to end by asking you, so, what do you think lies in your future? Or are you just

going day by day these days? You know? The funny thing is I um, and you're very familiar with the art as well of dodging the question, which I'm not about to do. I'm just kind of making fun of myself from before, you know, like when people ask me

like you're gonna run for president? I had a really good stock answer which was, well, I'm trying to focus on making sure we still have elections right now, and like that worked really well, but like the answer was yeah, I think I'm probably going to and I just didn't say that. And the thing is, I used to just think all the time about what was next for me

because the present sucked. Now life is I'm really enjoying it and I really love what I'm doing Inventors Community Project, and so to me, it's what's next for me is continuing that. But then the other thing is because the other way I usually get this question, and I appreciate you not asking it this way, one practitioner to another. I greatly appreciate it not doing that. Are you coming back because I think what you and I understand is being on the ballot is not the only way to

be back. Absolutely yes, And so you know, I have my podcast Majority fifty four, where our mission is to help people have conversations with conservatives where they convinced them but without losing the relationships. I love doing that and I feel like I'm part of the conversation. I feel like I have a platform, and I feel like I'm back, and I'm my dog is agreeing with me, Yeah, cheering for you actually yeah. Um so the ups guys here

and that cannot be tolerated. But I'm enjoying this and I feel like I am back, and maybe one day I'll run for something again. I don't know, but I genuinely don't have any plans to do it right now because I'm just having fun. Oh, my friend, that is the single best answer, thank you, And you're making a difference, and isn't that what we all hope for? I mean, that really is at bottom what makes for a purposeful, meaningful life, and you're doing it. Thank you so much

for saying all that, and right back at you. I don't think you need the validation, but but I just here here in our house, we we really appreciate you, and thanks, thank you for having this conversation with me. I have a feeling that will be hearing a lot more from Jason in the meantime. Check out his best selling book Outside the Wire and his podcast Majority fifty four wherever you listen to podcasts. My last guest is

author and artist Ali brush Back. In two thousand and nine, when she was twenty four years old, Ali created the blog Hyperbole and a Half. She quickly became an Internet sensation because people loved her hilarious observations about things like staying up way too late, falling down an online rabbit hole, and trying to figure out what her dogs are thinking. She turned that blog into a best selling book, complete with her signature line drawings. She calls her style a

very precise crudeness. One day after the release, of her first book, Alie's blog posts just stopped, and for nearly seven years, she disappeared from the Internet. For her fans, her silence was concerning, especially because she had written about her battles with depression. But earlier this year, Ali made her return with her second book, Solutions and Other Problems. In it, she delves into everything from growing up as a creative and very quirky kid, to living with depression,

to loss and grief. These days, Ali lives with her husband in a small town outside Bend, Oregon. She's a self described recluse who spends most of her time writing, drawing, playing online games, and reading up on math and science. I was really impressed with how Ali takes the sometimes painful, sometimes funny twists and turns of her inner life and translates that into pictures and stories to share with the

rest of us. Those of you who have already come across her work know how brave and original it is, and I wanted to talk to her about all of that. Part of the reason I was drawn to you is how brave you have have been. You've been really brave about Thank you for saying that, talking about difficult issues. You know, depression most well known of the things you've dealt with, but you also make people laugh. I mean, you try to capture the full range of you, and

then there's something for everybody to connect to. You know, for instance, in hyperbole and a half you write that depression is like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish, to try to help you figure out, you know, why they disappeared. Talking about depression in that way almost giving it not

just a language but a visualization. I think it's part of the reason you produce such an outpouring of response when people read that and read about what you've gone through. Yeah, I feel like it can be difficult to be in those negative spaces because it's like we don't really, as like a culture, know how to be in that uncomfortable place together. We want to move it towards like one of those end points, and I think, like what people really need when they're in that space because it's a

complicated problem. You know, nobody knows the answer to, Like what do you do if you're feeling depressed? What do you do if you're feeling suicidal. I don't know how to fix it, but I think like in those moments, we can show that we're willing to be there, right. I mean, it's definitely something I had to learn. It

definitely isn't obvious. You know. There was a friend I had who was going through something difficult and he said, like, I don't need you to fix it, I just want to tell you about it, or tell you what it is. And that like really really open my eyes to maybe like what my role is as the listener and showed me like where that Oh man, I'm wanting to like move this along faster because I'm feeling uncomfortable because like I see this person I love being in pain, and

I don't want that to be happening. I feel kind of like responsible for stopping it. And so this is about like my insecurity with like I'm not providing a space where they can feel comfortable and like they are being pressured to move faster than they're ready for, faster than than they know how. I don't know, And I feel like when people have offered that sort of support to me, it's been extraordinarily meaningful. Just nice to be able to not have to like fix it right away

and not have to make it okay right now. So many people need to hear that, and so many of the people who are your fans or admirers who have responded online to you, you know, they really felt seen. I certainly hope. So. Yeah, but you're also at the same time drawing. I mean, you're illustrating these thoughts. And you start a drawing when you were relatively young, didn't you. Oh yeah, it was sort of like a babysitting tool. My parents found out that I that I liked it

and it's something that I could be occupied with. And I was a little helly and I was not an easy child. My mom could tell you this if I asked her to describe, She's like, what we wanted to give you back. Well, you know, your new book called Solutions and Other Problems is coming out seven years after your first book, which had another great title, Hyperbole and a half. What does it feel like to work on a book over you know those years, especially when your

first book, you know, got a really great response. So I almost finished the book in we were at the point where we were like finalizing the table of contents, and I scrapped it. I didn't like it. And I was at this point in my life where I was starting to have like new types of thought and become a new person within my own personality. But I hadn't quite gotten like comfortable and settled yet in that person, and so I didn't know how to say the things

I wanted to say with the proper nuance. So the crucial moment in that chain of like learning what I'm trying to do there for me was viewing myself like a wildlife documentary narrator, you know, like David Attenborough. So like if I were following an animal and I were trying to describe what the animal was doing, how would I say it? That seemed like the proper way to talk about my own feelings and a very useful state of mind to be in regard to myself when trying

to describe these since to other people. That's interesting, you know, I've been watching a series of documentaries where little cameras have been attached inside a like stuffed animals, but really sophisticated.

So you know, if it's a muskrat, or it's a baby lion or a fox or a mongoose or whatever, and so they have this little camera in this robotic animal that is very much looking like the real thing, to the point where the other animals come up and examine it and sniff it and try to figure out what it is. It's fascinating though, to see the perspective of how these other animals are relating to it. So you're sort of in the in the perspective of the animal. Yes,

And that's just like what you just said. I'm just kind of thinking of you being the being who is both looking inward and outward and trying to, you know, honestly describe who you are, and not only who you are independently individually, but in connection with, you know, the rest of the species. I find that such interesting, It's infinitely fascinating. Well, one of the other things that I love about what you do is you do have a gift of looking at the ordinary and finding the absurdity

in it. I've been trying to learn, like what my favorite types of visual jokes are, and one thing I found that consistently cracks me up is when there is like a picture of something and then like the name of that thing, just sort of like presenting it, like say, a picture of a bacteria and then the name of the bacteria. If you just look at that information and consider it, it makes the bacteria look ridiculous. It makes it seem like, here is Helico bacter your pylori as

we all know, this is what it looks like. It's squiggly and like like, I imagine myself being this thing, and I would feel really undignified. And so if people were calling attention to me by saying this is ali brush, I would be like, you know, stop looking at me. Well, but I mean, just think about how ridiculous the coronavirus looks. Like. Yeah, I'm actually kind of curious to ask you, what's the last thing like recently that you found super super funny.

I find my grandchildren constantly funny. You know, my my grandson has a view of life that he views I think is very logical. Like the other day, we planted a garden and you know, it's sort of the end of the season, and I said, well, why don't you come help me. We're gonna, you know, pull out all the stuff that is dead and you know, then maybe we can plant some things for the fall. And he goes,

I have just discovered bees can sting. You He said, it really just like that, like that, just like that. And I said, well, yeah, bees can, but you stay away from them, and you know you don't bother them, they don't bother you. He said, well, you don't know every B, so you don't know whether if I stay away from every B, every B will leave me alone. I said, well, you know that is true. I kind of think you're trying to get out of helping me in the garden I relate to your grandson. I couldn't.

I couldn't really tell was this serious or was just just a ploy to say no, I don't want to go out in the garden. Thank you very much, But I just can't tell you how much I have enjoyed talking to you. I've enjoyed talking to you too. Thank you for being brave, and thank you for being you. Thank you for the same thing. Hilary Ali's new book

is called Solutions and Other Problems. If you're having a difficult time managing your mental health right now, or if you're living with someone or know someone who is having a difficult time, please know that you're not alone. If you or someone you know is in distress, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline twenty four hours a day, seven day is a week at one eight hundred two seventh three talk that's one eight hundred two seven three

eight two five five. In the meantime, let's all keep shining a light on mental health and working together to shatter the stigma that has surrounded this issue for far too long and demand that people get help when they are ready to seek it or need it. There is still not enough services and support for people and families who are confronting mental health issues. You and Me Both

is brought to you by I Heart Radio. We're produced by Julie Subran and Kathleen Russo, with help from whom I Aberdeen, Nikki E Tour, Oscar Flores, Brianna Johnson, Nick Merrill, Lauren Peterson, Rob Russo, and Lona Vlmorrow. Our engineer is Zack McNeice, and original music is by Forest Gray. If you like the show, tell someone else about it. You can subscribe to You and Me Both on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us your questions and comments, or even ideas for future episodes to You and Me both pod at gmail dot com. Come back next week when we talk about crime and romance in novels. That is, with mystery writer Louise Penny and romance writer Stacy Abrahams. You won't want to miss listening to both of these amazing women