SHOW NOTES

Visit Tiffany’s website.

Follow Tiffany on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Listen to Tiffany’s podcast Therapy Thoughts.

Follow the Elizabeth Smart Foundation on Instagram and Facebook.

Chat 24/7 with the National Sexual Assault Hotline.

TRANSCRIPT

Elizabeth: You are listening to Smart Talks with the Elizabeth Smart Foundation.

I'm your host, Elizabeth Smart. Smart Talks provides survivors and supporters with tools for healing, a sense of community and empowerment so we can all heal and move forward together.

Hello, and welcome back to Smart Talks by the Elizabeth Smart Foundation. I am the host Elizabeth and I'm really excited because I have Tiffany Roe on with me today. She is a licensed clinical mental health counselor. She's award-winning psychology teacher. She's a speaker, she's the owner of mindful counseling in Orem Utah.

She is on a mission to make mental health accessible and affordable, to dismantle diet culture, to banish the stigma around mental illness, and to create a community that knows therapy is cool.

And quite frankly, I wish I knew that therapy was cool after I got back, because I honestly, I didn't know what therapy was, in all fairness. I had this mental image of some old man wearing glasses, sitting behind this big wooden desk with me lying on like a leather settee in sort of a library atmosphere dissecting every part of my life. And as a 15 year old teenager, I just remember sitting there thinking that sounds so unappealing, I have absolutely zero interest in doing that. And that's basically what you are trying to help educate people on. Am I right?

[00:01:45] Tiffany: Yes, absolutely. Like, let's get a velvet couch. Let's get like a cool neon sign in the back that says "therapy is cool." Like you're exactly right. The stigma and stereotypes of this really dry, clinical, rigid therapist relationship is such a turnoff to people. And I think the modern mental health world, and then my mission as well, is to just take away that gap, take away that, that schism and make it more relatable. We see doctors for physical help. We get massages from massage therapists.

We all have mental health concerns and can work with professional to meet the needs of our mind and emotions and behaviors and affect change. Yeah. I really wanna break that stigma. And I think that stereotype is a really important thing to challenge from the get go. Therapy is cool. It doesn't have to be this weird, rigid, intense, scary thing.

[00:02:39] Elizabeth: I think you're absolutely right. I think even still people are like, "oh, therapy, what's wrong with her? Why is she going to therapy?" Even in my circle of friends, I don't know if a marriage is struggling, I'm like, "oh, you should go, just go talk to someone, go find therapist."

And they're like, "oh, that's a sign that we didn't, we're not successful in our marriage." I'm like, " No, it's not. Stop being that way. Just go." But yeah. What I wanna ask, what is the Tiffany Roe definition of therapy?

[00:03:06] Tiffany: The Tiffany Roe definition. I mean, sometimes that can get weird. So that's a question Elizabeth.

Really, my answer is, hey, it's a professional relationship where you are working with someone to explore thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors. And to reach mental health goals. So it doesn't mean something's wrong with you, doesn't mean you're on the brink of divorce, it doesn't mean you're crazy or weak.

It means you value mental health and you're working with a professional in that training to help you change or reach goals related to all of those factors. Doesn't that make it sound better?

[00:03:47] Elizabeth: Yeah.

[00:03:47] Tiffany: Than this something's wrong with you and you need help or you have an issue there's so much insinuated with like weakness.

And I think my perception is really, actually it means you're strong and brave and courageous to say, hey, I wanna work on my mind and my behaviors and my emotions and my patterns and change those. Isn't that impressive? Isn't it cool when people value those things?

[00:04:12] Elizabeth: And actually I would go so far as to say that really anyone who has honest to goodness done therapy, but like with full conscious intent and belief in it would come back and tell you therapy is not easy and it's more exhausting going to therapy than it is going to the gym. Cuz you, you are trying to break mental habits and mental barriers. And that's a lot harder for me than it is to, go do some squats or some deadlifts and then feel sore the next day.

[00:04:45] Tiffany: Yes. Oh my gosh, Elizabeth, I agree with you. And I think that is like this misunderstanding and myth that it's weak to get help for your mental health, when the opposite is true. It's hard and hard things require bravery and strength, and it is not easy to face trauma. You know this. It is not easy to break.

It's so weird that the stereotype is actually the opposite of what's true. If we're gonna go deal with trauma, for example, and face uncomfortable things that have happened to us or things that have been hard in our life, that is some of the hardest stuff we're ever gonna do. And the outcome is freedom and liberation and healing.

I don't where or how our society turns stigma and weakness into something related to therapy. Cause that's just not reality.

[00:05:33] Elizabeth: I'm not sure either, but something that I'm actually always really curious about, because I think it genuinely does take a special person to be a therapist because you're so trusted, honestly, oftentimes with the worst parts of people's lives or habits that they are just struggling with so much. How, and no matter what I don't want to say the word genre, but I'm not really sure, not discipline, that's not quite right but for lack of a better word in the moment, genre of issue you are working with, it's gotta be hard sometimes coming back day after day. How do you balance all of that in your own life?

[00:06:19] Tiffany: That's such a beautiful question. And there's some nuance here. Like truly all healthcare workers are up against an impossible load. Whether you're a doctor or nurse or you're a therapist, our system is not built to support healthcare workers with the amount of self care we need to offset the emotional, physical, mental burden we carry as healthcare workers. Like I can just say that across the board.

But then for therapy specifically, that is the most common question I get is like, how do you deal with this? And like, how do you cope in self care? So number one, our training is to be able to do that. Our job is to learn how to have emotional boundaries, not take on people's stuff, have good skills to help people work through their own things.

Since we can't change it for folks. So our training supports that, but we are human, right? Like we're not robots. So for me personally, a lot of professionals I train, it's all about learning our threshold. Hey, have I surpassed my ability to cope? Have I disregulated all the time? Am I stressed out? Am I losing sleep? Am I carrying my client's worries and stresses home with me? Is my own personal life, regardless of my career, impacting my functioning, my relationships, my feelings? And then being really honest with, hey, I'm surpassing kind of my limit and I need to do something to reduce that.

So I like to use the visual of like a powder keg. Or it could be like a pitcher of water, anything that we fill up. Right. And if I'm at the surface and I'm about to overflow, I'm too stressed. I'm too burned out, whether that's career or otherwise, like I said, so what do I do to remove some of the stimulus in my life so I can better function? Okay. So I'm gonna do meditation every day to reduce that.

I'm gonna add journaling to discharge. I personally have a life coach and a professional therapist. Seeing both of them to help me manage my own mental health, medication helps reduce the powder in my powder keg these things I do. I have fun. I dance. I have a social life. It's a holistic approach to saying, hey, mental health is the most important thing and it's complex.

And I have to be hitting all these different angles, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social in order to keep myself in a healthy place while I support others in doing the same.

[00:08:35] Elizabeth: A question that I get asked a lot is. Do you feel like you've like you're a hundred percent, do you feel like you've like hit the finish line of your healing? Are you healed?

[00:08:50] Tiffany: Mm.

[00:08:51] Elizabeth: I get asked that question all the time and it's, it's fine. People can ask it. It's fine. But I just want, I'm curious now to ask you as a professional, do you feel like there is such a thing as like finality? As being, and I quote healed?

Or are you there? Does that exist?

[00:09:17] Tiffany: Can I ask you a personal question before I answer that?

[00:09:20] Elizabeth: Go ahead.

[00:09:21] Tiffany: What's it like for you when people ask that, do you feel like you're healed?

[00:09:24] Elizabeth: What does it feel like when people ask me? For me now, I honestly feel like it's just part of the territory because I've been asked it so much. But initially that was not my feeling. Initially, I wanted to be like, I'm doing great. I'm probably doing better than you're doing. Leave me alone.

[00:09:42] Tiffany: Yeah.

[00:09:42] Elizabeth: That does not sound very nice.

[00:09:45] Tiffany: I love that authenticity though. And I'm sure that's evolved at first it's like, yeah, little self protective and like I'm doing great.

[00:09:54] Elizabeth: Yeah, definitely, but my kidnapping, it doesn't bother me. It doesn't haunt me. It doesn't like stop me from living my life or make me scared to leave my house.

Are there like precautions that I take to protect myself to protect my family? Yes, there are. But does it really hold me back in any way? No, it doesn't. And so on one hand, I'm kind of like, well, yeah, I feel like I've moved on from that, but I don't feel like I'm perfect. I think if I was perfect, there'd be no reason left to live life and I'm still alive.

So I hope that I always improve. I hope that I always get better. I mean, I certainly don't know everything and I'm always open to, or I hope I always stay open to learning and growing. So why wouldn't I stay open to improving my healing, if you will, or improving my mental health or my journey through life? Like I hope I'm not in the same spot five years from now.

[00:10:54] Tiffany: Yeah. I love that. I love this conversation. And thanks for letting me ask you a question back.

[00:11:01] Elizabeth: Feel free to ask away.

[00:11:05] Tiffany: I'm like it, I think this is part of the stigma in a way to mental health is like, are you healed?

Are you healed from your kidnapping? Are you healed from your trauma? Are you healed from an eating disorder or your mood disorder or depression? Like we have this misunderstanding or maybe a misconception of expectations with mental health. We are not robots. And even robots don't function a hundred percent of the time.

[00:11:31] Elizabeth: Like, clearly, we only have audio on right now.

[00:11:35] Tiffany: Exactly. So this expectation of are you healed? Like what does healed mean? We are humans with problems and pain is part of life. There is no such thing as this steady, non interrupted, imperfect, pain-free existence as a human. And I think it can almost be kind of spiritual bypassing when we're like "I'm healed" or you see gurus out there who are like, I'm healed, I have all the answers and you can be here too.

I'm not saying people don't improve and overcome. But like a state of I'm levitating, blissful with zero problem or zero pain is not reality. So I think it's important to describe what healing is, and what you said, Elizabeth, of like, hey, my kidnapping's not interfering with my functioning.

It's not causing me personal distress. It's not causing like abnormal behaviors in my life. I'm like, well, that's healing versus what can be so intrusive and distressing after trauma. And you're like, I'm not perfect, but I'm not in this like active suffering because of it. I'm like that is healing. And this it's this ongoing journey and ongoing practice.

So if you do have a trigger with trauma, people listening are like, well am I healed or not. It's not a checkbox. There is no arrival point. There's no pink, fluffy cloud of checkbox healed, but rather how we relate to ourselves. So if we have a trauma reminder or something's hard for us, we beat ourself up or can we meet ourself with self-compassion?

So to me, healing isn't an absence of a trigger or absence of pain, but rather the long term relating to ourselves, how we treat ourselves and what we do with the triggers or with the activation.

So I work with a lot of women deconstructing religion, or deconstructing diet culture, and they're gonna be triggered by something religious or triggered by something with an eating disorder. And I'm like, that doesn't mean you're not healing. Triggers are inevitable, but how do you deal with those and cope with them and stay aligned with your values? So is there a finish line to healing? No. Does that mean we cannot overcome certain things? No. Like we can overcome and evolve, but we're not freaking robots.

[00:13:45] Elizabeth: I think that's so actually important. And that was so perfectly said, you're not gonna have triggers, but it's about how you react to them and your self relationship. I think that was just so succinctly put and I think you're right. I think most people probably don't understand that. I don't think I've ever even thought of it in that way before.

I mean for me, like for instance, my husband and I, we got really ambitious not this past weekend, but the weekend before. And we decided we were gonna move this door out of our basement and it was a big heavy door and it ended up giving me a nice little gash on my arm and I keep looking at it and I can see this scar is puckered up when the scabs about to fall off.

I'm like, oh, is it healed yet? Nope, not yet. Is it healed yet? Nope. Not yet. Tomorrow? Do you think it'll be healed tomorrow? And for me it's like, I think in my mind, I've always been like, oh, healing is no reminder of pain or a complete absence of pain, or just a complete absence of a trigger. It's completely smoothed over no scar, no nothing's left. but I think you're right. That's, I'm gonna have to amend my thought process on what healing means.

[00:14:54] Tiffany: I think, yeah. Even with like cancer, you can be in remission and have healed the thing that's in your body. That doesn't mean other physical health problems won't come or you're free from suffering forever, that it can't come back.

So I think we just need to be nuanced in this related to mental health, which is really complex. Maybe the behavior is quote, unquote healed. Like you're not self-harming or you're not having panic attacks or you're not purging or whatever it is that may be like a behavior related to your mental health, but you still have the thought or belief that shows up.

It's a lot more complicated than some of the black or white things we may think of when it comes to like healing that seems with you.

[00:15:37] Elizabeth: I'm really not sure that anything is black or white anymore. I think everything's just shades of gray.

[00:15:43] Tiffany: Hmm. You love gray. All the shades of gray.

[00:15:47] Elizabeth: It's So in right now, isn't it? Everything's gray.

[00:15:51] Tiffany: We could, we could start talking about interior design easily right now

[00:15:55] Elizabeth: We could. And this is how we segue into our next section Interior Design with Elizabeth Smart. Who would've ever thought. Actually, that would be terrible between you and I, and I guess everyone who's listening, my husband is actually the one that decorates at our house.

[00:16:14] Tiffany: You know, play to our strengths. That's what I always say.

[00:16:18] Elizabeth: Mine's clearly not decorating. So, do you feel like you've noticed a change in culture on how people view therapy? Do you feel like it's becoming more accepted? And my next question, sorry, I'm getting ahead myself, but I'm thinking of it. So I feel like I need to get it out. Do you feel. People ever take it a step too far and maybe use it as a crutch for something they don't want to do.

[00:16:48] Tiffany: Okay. Yeah. Let's answer both of these. So is therapy more accepted? Absolutely. Which is so exciting. And this has been happening over the last few years and we're calling it a mental health boom. And really the pandemic is a catalyst for that because all of us were forced into distress and lost coping skills, lost social support, lost life skills as we know it, and like the world, as we knew, it changed so drastically. Many of our ability to tolerate or where we were used to functioning just shrunk. We had very little windows of tolerance, meaning like, our powder kegs were full. Our relationships were tested. Our mental health was tested. Our coping skills were tested and we saw the need for therapy skyrocket.

And this is simultaneously happening with just more therapists getting on Instagram, more therapists getting on social media, therapy being more in the media just in general. So therapy is more accepted, and part of that is just the crises that we have faced as a collective in the collective trauma, on top of the pandemic, the social justice issues and confronting the racism in our country, confronting violence and all of these different things that are happening on a mass scale. I think trauma's widespread. Therefore, the need for intervention and support is in higher demand. So therapy is more accepted as more of us are getting it. More of us are talking about it, and we're trying to find ways to meet our needs.

Now, what does that mean? Is therapy a crutch? Are people taking it too far? And this could be controversial. But what I wanna say is, I think a lot of us do have a tendency to over pathologize things now. So with more access to mental health information, with more mental health professionals on social media, I'm seeing everything be pathologized, right?

The word narcissist is being thrown around like, is really, really common, or attachment problems or everything kind of can have a label or a diagnosis today. And I think that can kind of be taken too far. Like sometimes humans are just human, like it's okay to be sad after a breakup. And that doesn't mean you have a disorder.

Or it's okay if X, Y, or Z happens, or if things are lasting longer than they think you will, like we don't have to over pathologize or use a crutch with all these labels. So I think there's always that extreme back to that gray area, therapy is more accepted, but with that can come kind of over pathologizing things, or over labeling or overidentifying things when we don't need to necessarily.

[00:19:24] Elizabeth: Do you feel like there's a way to recognize the line between, yeah, you really actually do need to go get help or you're just sad?

[00:19:33] Tiffany: Right. You know what, and maybe I'm contradicting myself, but I think here's what I do know. And here's what I firmly believe. There is no hierarchy that qualifies you for therapy.

You don't have to be in crisis to go to therapy. You don't have to have a diagnosis. And if you're sad, you're allowed to go to therapy cuz therapy isn't only a crisis intervention. You could go to therapy as a preventative measure. Like I go to therapy to make sure I'm resilient, that I'm managing my stress, that I'm dealing with my stuff.

Right. So therapy can be preventative and fit for people, even if you go like once every six months, kind of like a physical or something. So I think therapy is for everyone at every time. Now, when does it become a crutch or when do you know if you really need it? That's up to you.

It's subjective, but here's three things we can consider when it comes to like, hey, should I get therapy if I'm not already doing it for like a preventative nature. Are you experiencing personal distress? That's a good call. Like, hey, maybe I should go to therapy to check this out. Is it interfering, is my life interfering with my functioning or my symptoms interfering with my functioning? Like if you're not sleeping, you're having panic attacks, you're in a depressive episode and that's interfering with your life, go get an intervention. Is this abnormal for me? So let's say you've always, had a pretty stable mood and now you're having really high highs and really low lows, that's abnormal for you, or are abnormal compared to kind of like your peers, that might be a reason to seek out intervention.

And we could argue in the mental health field, like, are you just taking this too long? Are you using it as a crutch? I don't know, maybe if you're not getting anything outta therapy anymore, or you and your therapist are just kind of talking like friends and you're not really making any progress, you're allowed to say like, hey, this isn't working for me and I wanna be getting some kind of return on my investment.

That might be another like sanity check in the therapy world.

[00:21:23] Elizabeth: I think those are excellent points.

[00:21:25] Tiffany: We wanna make it practical. Yeah. We want like, none of us know how to do this. How do we know how to check our mental health? But if we have a couple things where we can say yes or no, that can help us at least make an educated guess, right?

[00:21:37] Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's very helpful. Even for me, I'm just sitting here trying to internalize the self questions that you ask, because I think that is very helpful. Is this interfering with my life? Is this, am I experiencing like out of the ordinary highs and lows?

[00:21:57] Tiffany: I think a good example is marriage, relationships, dating. If you're in a serious relationship, I'm of the opinion that everyone could benefit from like therapy in a couple's dynamic or relationship dynamic. Right.

[00:22:10] Elizabeth: Mm-hmm

[00:22:11] Tiffany: Now that doesn't mean everyone has to, or should be, or you're ashamed if you're not, but I'm also saying, wouldn't it be cool if we don't have to wait to we're on the brink of divorce to get like couples therapy. But some good questions to say, like, if you're in a relationship like, hey, are our relationship dynamics interfering with our functioning?

Are we having so much conflict and we can't resolve it. Are we unable to stay calm? Is this causing me personal distress? Those could be signs of like, yeah, now's a good time to introduce couple's therapies, so you learn communication skills or how to talk about this stuff or interrupt your patterns. So one, you could always be in couple's therapy just because like therapy's cool and can be helpful.

Also, there are signs of when you definitely should get into it. And then there's also signs that it may not be no longer serving you. So there really is this spectrum of it's not necessarily right or wrong relations to therapy, but rather empowering people with information and ideas to choose it or not choose it.

[00:23:04] Elizabeth: I think that's so helpful. I'm just thinking of some people in my life where they've had very mixed emotions on other people in their life who decided to go to therapy and it's been, it's been so interesting to hear what you are saying. And then almost trying to, I wish I could just like come out and be like, it's this person, and then this is the thing going on, but it's not my story to say. So I probably shouldn't.

It is very interesting thinking about that in that, in that context now.

[00:23:36] Tiffany: Yeah. And everyone knows I'm a therapist, my neighbors, friends, and people will come up to me and be, hey, like, there's always a disclaimer with therapy requests. It's so interesting.

Like, hey, like not that anything's wrong, like, we're good. Like we're not getting a divorce or like, I'm not like crazy, but like, do you have like a therapy recommendation? And I'm like, hey, you don't have to qualify or justify it. And if that's where you are at, cool. And if not, and you just wanna be preventative, that's smart.

So I think the more we talk about this and normalize it, like, hey, everyone can be in therapy. Doesn't mean anything about you. It's cool to value your mental health. Here's some things that might help you decide and get over your stigma if you need to. But yeah, I think all of us could look at people and be like, hey, they might benefit. And I think we should all look at ourselves and say, I might benefit you.

[00:24:26] Elizabeth: Totally. I totally agree with you. I think of my own journey. And I think if I understood, if I really understood what therapy was, I would've been a lot more open to it, but I just didn't understand. And so I was like, no, huh, no thank you. I don't want to do that. Yeah. And actually, as an adult, now, now as an adult, I have gone to therapy. But I didn't, I certainly did not as a child or a teenager.

[00:24:52] Tiffany: And how would that have changed your experience or trajectory or your healing from your trauma? We won't know, but I think the more your podcast is a beautiful way to spread this message and destigmatize that and normalize it.

So I'm glad you're having this conversation.

[00:25:06] Elizabeth: I mean, it's hard to speculate, who I would've turned into or what I would've become, but I think that after I came back, I think that it would have helped broaden my perspective a little bit more because I did only see things from my perspective and in my mind it was, well, I was the only one that went through anything, so why do you guys care? Leave me alone.

But now as a parent, I rethink everything now. Cause I'm like, oh my word, who I don't ever wanna compare, like I'm anti comparisons. But as I say, but I'm anti comparisons, but I now that I have children of my own, I mean, I just remember when my first daughter was born and I felt like my heart migrated from my chest and moved up and took up location in my throat.

And I'm not sure that it ever really went back down into my chest, but now I just think I would die if something happened to my children. And so now as an adult and someone who's had a little bit more experience than I did as a 14 year old, I sit and think, not diminishing what I went through, but there really is no " worse" in this situation.

They were just all bad. Everyone had trauma.

[00:26:26] Tiffany: It's so humbling, yeah. To sit with your story and that process, and then you as a mother now and what that means. And everyone listening, right? Like any parent can relate to that feeling. And all of us have like degrees of trauma and it is very humbling being a parent, trying to feel like how do we support our kids through the pains that they're gonna experience while trying to heal our own stuff. I mean, it really is a lot.

[00:26:51] Elizabeth: That is another thing. In high school, why are they teaching us trigonometry? Why are they not teaching us. Honestly, basic communication skills or mental health, or honestly how to change a diaper like or sleep training.

Cause not everyone, I get it, not everyone's gonna have kids. I respect that. I understand that but still I'm guessing the majority of us probably will at one time or another, have a child come into our lives and honestly learning the basics of just keeping a child alive would've been helpful

[00:27:27] Tiffany: Game changer. Okay. Elizabeth Smart, me and you have a mission to make mental health education a thing. Like we have PE, physical education. Why don't we have MHE, mental health education? Like, why am I, a therapist in Utah, giving free education on Instagram, trying to teach us all through my education, how to like have an assertive conversation.

Would've been nice to learn that when I was 16. I'm not even talking about diapers, like that's so outside of my, like skill set, but, but for real you're right. Like these are human skills.

[00:28:03] Elizabeth: These are basic skills that I feel like we are just kind of left to muddle along through our ways. And, and if we honestly don't have proactive parents, then we only learn from parents' examples.

And you know, if they're not actively doing it themselves, or if you are, grown up in a certain generation, then you have a certain mindset and you think, well, my parents never did that. Why should I do that? Or, right, I mean, right. I know not everything can be, not everything can be shoved on the school system and be like, here, teach them this, here, teach 'em that?

Why aren't you doing this? Why aren't doing that very fair. Like, poor teachers, bless their hearts. Anyone who takes on teaching, is a Saint as long as they're, yes as long as they're a good person, if they're a bad person, they should go to jail.

[00:28:47] Tiffany: But , amen that, I mean little, I mean, I'm so grateful for how mental health education is spreading, whether it's in the school system or not like in this podcast, we're talking about destigmatizing therapy and therapy is, is such a intensive custom place to learn specific mental health skills and then, blogs, and different podcasts, or social media.

I teach skills and courses because humans come to me and they're like, I just need to learn coping skills. And I'm like, yeah, I'm sorry. I had to go get a master's in this to learn them myself. Like I'm grateful to share with you, but we just don't have the knowledge. Our parents didn't know, schools don't know.

Our culture is so stigmatized with mental health. It's okay that we don't know. And we're gonna keep learning together as a culture. And it's gonna take time, but we're the generation to change this that's for sure.

[00:29:37] Elizabeth: I hope so. Cuz I'm only hoping that good things happen going forward. No more bad things. Well, I wish I could say no more bad things,

[00:29:46] Tiffany: But we're gonna have the skills to cope with them when they do happen. Learning breathing skills and mindfulness, grounding skills, how to regulate our nervous system. Like a lot of this information is readily available on blogs and podcasts and on social media.

Now I think a lot of practitioners are carrying the weight of this mental health education. So it is improving part of this mental health boom is, hey, the information's out there. If we can dig a little bit, it's, it's more accessible

[00:30:13] Elizabeth: As a professional, what brings you the most edification or satisfaction?

[00:30:19] Tiffany: I love empowering people with mental health skills. That's exactly what we're talking about. I pride myself on being an effective teacher and I love being able to learn and then synthesize and teach people skills and see it affect their life.

So I recently did just an exercise in one of my Instagram videos. I was showing folks how to feel emotion. And so I simply did a video. It's like 30 seconds where I said, okay, pretend like if there's a metal detector that detects emotion going over your body and notice where there's some sensation in your body. And let's focus in on that. How big is it? How small is it?

Is it heavy? Is it light? What shape is it? Does that have a color? Would you say it's stuck or moving? And then just breathe. Tell yourself it's okay to feel this. My body can help me process emotion. It's safe to feel emotion. All of my emotions are valid, big, deep breath at the end. Okay. 30 seconds. And that's a skill and a mental health skill.

And the comments I got, people were like, holy crap. That was so relieving. Or like, why didn't I learn that that was so simple. How did that work? What's going on? That's more powerful than like any therapy session I've had in months.

That's what gives me the most fulfillment and joy is being like, here's a gem. That can actually affect change and help your mental health. Not only you, but you can teach your kids that you could teach your class that, and it just spreads. And I feel like that's my calling and purpose. I love giving the message of mental health in a real way.

[00:31:47] Elizabeth: Yeah, I think it's very helpful when, it's great to have a lot of big words shared and spoken at you, but when you can actually apply it there's that makes all the difference in the world.

I think, at least for me.

[00:31:59] Tiffany: Oh, same. I mean, there's so many things I've gone through as a human myself overcoming a eating disorder. Deconstructing my faith and religion I was raised in. Deconstructing my sexual identity, like all of these big aspects of me. And I felt like I was winging it and didn't have skills.

And once I could learn a hack, like, hey, here's a helpful tip or a way to actually do it. I feel like sometimes that was just the missing piece that made the biggest difference in the world. Like, oh, there's a process or there's a formula or there's some curriculum or some ways to do this. I don't just have to like suffer or wing it.

Same with trauma. Wow, avoidance fuels trauma, so I have to kind of face these things to overcome it. Boom. Brilliant. And so as a human who's navigating my own mental health, that fuels a lot of what I teach and, we're all human. We can all relate to that.

[00:32:51] Elizabeth: That's so true. Do you feel like you see trends in what people as a collective go through?

[00:32:58] Tiffany: I do. And it depends on what's going on. There's collective grief over the last couple years. I feel like no one wants to talk about the pandemic. So that makes me want to not avoid it. But I saw pandemic grief and people think grief is just a response to like the death of a loved one, but grief is really a response to loss, and I saw pandemic grief affect and overtake people, of course, in the loss of other human life, but then just grief as we lost normalcy, predictability, certainty, goals, kids not going to school.

So that was a big trend. And other trends that just go along with what's happening in day to day life, like social media, perfectionism, comparison, depression, the more social media rates we see body image suffer. We see perfectionism skyrocket. We see higher rates of depression and isolation, cause we're not like really connecting.

We're getting like that normal sunshine, air, barbecues outside with people, we're living on our phones, documenting it instead of being in it. So that would be like another trend I've seen. And then always the trend of diet culture just trying to hijack everything and making everything about your worth, your purpose in life is weight loss and that effects, has affected us for generations. So that's just another trend of people trying to find self worth and healing and acceptance outside of like dieting, for example, so there's a lot of trends like that, but those are the first three that come to my mind.

[00:34:36] Elizabeth: You mentioned social media and I have my own opinions about social media. I mean, I can see good and I can see bad and, frankly, I'm not the best at posting. I don't hardly ever post, but I follow you. I enjoy following you. Do you enjoy social media? And do you think it has a more positive or a more harmful effect on society as a whole?

[00:35:02] Tiffany: How honest do you want me to be?

[00:35:04] Elizabeth: I want you to be pretty honest. Well, I want you to feel honest to the point that you're comfortable, cuz you probably won't offend me. It's very unlikely that you'll offend me.

[00:35:17] Tiffany: I tend to keep it real. I tend to be really authentic and that can feel vulnerable on podcasts and things that stick around, but I'll just be honest, I got on social media in 2017 as a professional before therapists were on social media and I took a big risk and said, I'm gonna start sharing my therapy thoughts. And I wanna like change the mental health game and make this more accessible. It was a risk. And I'm glad I did it. I think there's now a really big template of like mental health accessibility and social media, but here's the truth.

Social media singlehandedly destroyed my mental health. Single handedly. The 24 7 access to criticism, the expectation of perfectionism, the hustle grind culture of more and more, put out, more, do more was not good for me. And it's brought so much beauty and positivity into my life. I have a platform where I can speak to a lot of people and share positive messaging.

I've helped a lot of folks. I can employ over 30 people and provide them with a career and stability because of that work. So there's a lot of good that does come from that. I've met a lot of amazing people, some of my best friends through social media. I've learned a ton. It has made me such a more effective clinician, a more educated clinician.

It's opened my mind to social justice issues I would've never known of outside of my neighborhood and world. There's so much good and so much drain. If you don't have strong boundaries, strong self care, if you're not working with a therapist, if you're in the public eye on social media. So that's my real answer.

It can be very destructive and it can cause a lot of good. So I think we all just need to kind of have that pulse check of, is this in my best interest, is this destroying my peace? If it is destroying my peace, what do I do to protect that? What boundaries do I need to set? And always living in line with our why instead of getting sucked into the numbers game or the hustle grind game of more content, more content, it's I think we have to control the social media, so it doesn't control us.

[00:37:19] Elizabeth: I agree completely with that. And actually, I honestly agree with everything that you said. I don't think, I think there'd probably be few people who disagreed with you on it, because I think we've all been victimized or socially shamed on, on Instagram at some point or another. And it's made us feel bad. I know, I certainly have, yes, I have plenty.

We'll just leave it at.

[00:37:43] Tiffany: We, yeah. That's another episode for another day. The dark hole of social.

[00:37:48] Elizabeth: Yeah. But at the same time, you're right. Honestly, the accounts that I follow they're usually accounts. That I find uplifting that help me feel positive or they're about delicious looking food.

Like to follow those accounts, or they're about running, not that I'm a great runner, but I try. And that those are like the accounts that I follow.

[00:38:14] Tiffany: The community is what's so beautiful about it, right? It's social. If we can stay social and connected and find common interest and find connection and belonging like that meets such a need in such an expansive bigger way than we've ever been able to.

So, yeah, I, I love that you're navigating what works for you and what doesn't I think that's wise.

[00:38:36] Elizabeth: Yeah. And I think, I think you're right. It does bring community to many people. And I think that is so important, cuz it is so easy to feel alone and isolated. I think all of us as once again, felt that way.

Like after I came home, after I was rescued, I didn't know anyone who had ever been kidnapped. I didn't know anyone who ever came back from being kidnapped.

[00:38:54] Tiffany: Mm-hmm

[00:38:54] Elizabeth: So, I mean, I did feel alone, which made me even less excited to talk about what happened. Mm-hmm um, but now, now in, in today's world, I can think of five, 10 survivors right off the top of my mind through social media that I know of. I could think of more, but these are actually like names that I could tell you.

[00:39:15] Tiffany: What a gift, what gift to find community. And we can find niche really specific community because of that. Yeah, no one deserves to feel alone, especially after being a survivor.

Right? Like what a powerful connection.

[00:39:31] Elizabeth: Yeah. Well, we are about out of time, but I love talking to you and I wanna ask you one last question, if there's something that we haven't talked about already, what is it and what would you want people who are listening to this to know?

[00:39:49] Tiffany: Hmm. My motto of sorts is feel, deal, heal.

I am a really big believer in us having permission to feel our feelings, like let them be in our body. Let those sensations happen. Allow them, befriend them, get curious about them, and then deal with them. So they move. So that's coping skills. Like we talked about, even that exercise earlier in the podcast, noticing where it is in your body and giving it a color and shape and letting it be there, dealing with it. Having conversations, setting boundaries allows us to heal. Not that healing's a check mark, but the ongoing practice of them, self-compassion, forgiveness, being kind to ourselves, making peace, the feeling dealing healing is available to everyone.

And that, that is how we change the trajectory of mental health. That's how we fight stigma. And that's how we heal ourselves, ongoing is, is feeling, healing.

[00:40:42] Elizabeth: Well, I think that was perfectly put, so I hope everyone who listens to this episode today, um, walks away with at least something. Cause I certainly feel like I'm walking away with quite a lot and I really appreciate it. And if you are struggling, like Tiffany said, don't be afraid to reach out. Therapy is cool.

And you should take care of your mental health like you'd take care of your body or your teeth or anything else in your life. And so don't be afraid to ask for help. It takes strength. It takes courage. It takes bravery to ask for help, to go reach out beyond yourself and open yourself up to vulnerability.

It takes real strength. So don't be afraid. There are qualified people out there who can help you. So don't give up. And if you have enjoyed today, please be sure to like and subscribe and join us next week on our next episode. Thank you so much for taking your time to listen to us today. And thank you Tiffany, for joining me, it's been a real pleasure having you.

[00:41:46] Tiffany: Oh, such a good time. Thank you.