#the fact that i know its gonna take these assholes forever to learn her sign is a disgrace

[july-19th-club]

kimiko my beloved. you are my favorite spice girl

[ladykissingfish]

Under the Mistletoe with the Akatsuki // Part Six // Hidan

Hidan

“Ah; you fucking lucky bastards! I should charge you all for this; to kiss an elite follower of the mighty Jashin is a privilege you assholes don’t deserve. Except you, Konan. In fact if you want to move the mistletoe to my bedroom then — ow! OW!! Kakuzu let go!! I was only kidding; can none of you take a fucking joke?!”

Konan

She sighs before she goes to him. He’s made a big deal all day about kissing her in particular, although she doesn’t get why. She feels nothing other than friendship for him, and, despite his ramblings, she doesn’t think he feels anything stronger either. Nevertheless, it’s her turn. She steps up to him and he reaches out and takes her small hands, giving them a surprisingly gentle squeeze. “You ready for this, gorgeous?” But something about that, about the word “gorgeous”, sets off the normally calm Konan. She yanks her hands out of his and plants them on her hips. “Gorgeous, beautiful, sexy — that’s literally all you ever say to me. I’m more than a pair of tits; I have a fucking brain in this head!” Hidan blinks, startled. “That’s - the first time I ever heard ya curse, Konan.” He grabs her hands again. He speaks in a soft voice and apologizes, and tells her that he has nothing but respect for her. “I only wanna kiss you so bad ‘cuz you’re beautiful INSIDE and out, and you bring lots of light to my shitty darkness.” She blushes and thanks him, and he takes the opportunity to lean in and kiss her lips. Just a soft touch, but both of them are smiling afterwards.

Deidara

Both of them are hesitant to do this, to say the least. Hidan won’t ever admit this, but he’s held a small physical attraction to Deidara since the day they met. Very small, and *purely* physical, but still. He doesn’t like thinking about it, because to do so would be him admitting to himself that his own sexuality isn’t as black and white as he’d thought it to be. He tells himself that if he likes Deidara at all, it’s simply because the guy looks ridiculously similar to a woman. Deidara doesn’t wish to kiss Hidan because, although HE will never admit to it, Hidan scares him. The man’s proven immortality throws a wrench into Deidara’s long-held ideals of what life (and art) are ultimately about: beauty made greater by virtue of being fleeting. But Hidan being able to live forever — could it be that Deidara’s partner Sasori has been right this whole time? That art really is eternal? Still, everyone is watching, so the two shake off their feelings, and Deidara approaches him. “Keep your tongue in your mouth, okay?” “Same goes for you, blondie.” Hidan gives himself very quick peck to the lips, but both men are blushing quite hard regardless. And even as brief as that was — Hidan makes note to ask Deidara what kind of shampoo he used later, because he smelled absolutely incredible.

Kisame

After the last kiss between them, when it was Kisame’s turn, Hidan is hesitant to get close to this guy again. But Kisame is grinning, and appears to be in a good mood. “Ah, come now, Hidan; surely we can let bygones be bygones?” Hidan starts to curse at him, but catches himself just in time: after all, his mouth was what got him into trouble last time. So he merely nods and stands still, while Kisame approaches him. “Are you afraid, Hidan?” “Ah? Why would I be —“ “I can smell the fear coming from you.” Hidan folds his arms in front of his chest and demands to know who wouldn’t be afraid at the thought of possible dismemberment. Kisame just laughs and promises he’ll behave himself. He leans in, locks eyes with Hidan, and flashes his teeth — before giving Hidan a closed-mouth kiss on the forehead. Hidan let’s out a shaky sigh of relief, and Kisame walks away, laughing.

Itachi

Like Deidara, Hidan has a bit of a grudge against the raven-haired Uchiha. He’s fallen victim before to the power of Itachi’s sharingan, and the calm, quiet way that Itachi reacts to Hidan’s jabs and wheedles always serve to irritate. But even so — Hidan has to admit that the guy isn’t all THAT bad (certainly not the hell-spawn that Deidara makes him out to be, anyway). There was a time once when Hidan caught a cold, and Itachi braved going into his room to bring him a cup of sinus-clearing tea. Itachi steps up to him and nods, and Hidan leans forward and kisses him on the cheek. An oddly sweet gesture, and one that Itachi seems to like, as he actually smiles before he leaves. Hidan watches him go, thinking (and not for the first time) that having a talent like the sharingan is completely wasted in someone who isn’t immortal. Maybe he should talk to him later about joining the Jashinist movement ...

Pein (Nagato)

If the Akatsuki is a family, and everybody (save Konan) are Pein’s children, then Hidan is undoubtedly the problem child of the group. The loudest, the most foul-mouthed, definitely the most violent ... but still. When Hidan could find an ounce of maturity, and focus, he was one of the best members of the team. And Nagato finds his regenerative abilities to be amazing, and, if there was ever the time and opportunity for it, would love to study Hidan in-depth. Pein approaches him and Hidan bows his head, an act of respect he gives to the Leader ... and ONLY the Leader. Pein delivers a light kiss to the forehead and walks away. He can hear Hidan mumbling behind him about “those damn piercings could kill somebody” but chooses to ignore it.

Zetsu

Oh, God. Hidan smells like human blood most of the time (thanks to his many gory sacrifices), and Zetsu is attracted to this scent like a bee is to a flower. He’d hang around this guy all day if he could, if not for the smell then to act as clean-up for the bits and pieces of his victims that he leaves behind. But Hidan doesn’t quite care for the plant man, to say the least. He didn’t sign up for the Akatsuki to be made to work alongside non-human freaks of nature. When Zetsu walks up to Hidan, the gray-haired jashin lover is nervous, to say the least. Zetsu puts his hand on Hidan’s face, leans in, and kisses his nose. It should only take a second, but Zetsu lingers over the spot for an abnormal amount of time ... and Hidan realizes it’s because he’s sniffing him, like an animal. “Okay, freak; get the hell away from me!” But Zetsu doesn’t move, in fact tightening his grip on Hidan’s face. Hidan is surprised; Zetsu is quite a bit stronger than he’d realized. His surprise turns to fear when the expression in Zetsu’s eyes shifts, and Hidan hears a very noticeable stomach-growl come from him. Hidan is seconds away from fight or flight (he hasn’t quite decided yet) when Tobi comes into the room, seemingly breaking the trance Zetsu had been in. Hidan breathes out a sigh of relief as zetsu keaves, giving silent thanks to the moron in the mask.

Tobi

After “scaring” Zetsu away, Tobi gleefully announces that its his turn with Hidan. “Ohh boy, Hidan-san! You and Tobi are gonna have fun!” Hidan is actually quite eager for this; not so much for the kiss itself, but for his chance to see this freak up close and unmasked. Tobi looks behind him; nobody else is around. He turns back to Hidan and slides his mash halfway off his face, revealing his pale skin, dark, long-lashed eyes, and full lips, pursed into a grin. Getting closer, Hidan can detect faded, jagged lines extending from the right side of his forehead to the bottom of his mouth. Still, even with them — “Fucking hot”, Hidan mutters, the words slipping out before he can stop them. Tobi grins and cups Hidan’s face, staring into his eyes. “So are you,” he murmurs, and is it Hidan’s imagination or is his voice ... different, somehow? Well, no time to think about it; suddenly Tobi’s (unbelievably soft) lips are on his own, and for the first time since this encounter started, Hidan feels a feather-touch of unease. The way Tobi’s kissing him ... this isn’t how an idiot kisses. What in the name of Jashin — and then just as quickly as it began, it ends. Tobi slides his mask back into place, and skips off to the kitchen. Hidan has to take a few moments to collect himself, and in the way-back of his mind is a small voice urging him to warn Deidara to watch himself around Tobi. About what? Hidan doesn’t know the specifics. All he knows is those two are alone a LOT for missions, and if Tobi really is more than he seems, then — But then again, why should he care what happens with the blonde jerk, anyway?

Sasori

Another person that annoys Hidan. He was in the Akatsuki for almost an entire year before he’d realized that the ugly body that he was in, wasn’t even his own. His surprise when he witnessed a hatch open and a childlike-looking redhead step out was unprecedented. Learning that he was in his 30’s meant that Hidan should have shown him the proper respect, but Hidan just couldn’t take orders from somebody with the face of a young boy. Sasori seems to know this, and therefore avoids interactions with him as much as possible. Now, however, contact is unavoidable. “Can you even reach my face, shorty?” Sasori tilts his head and seems to really be considering Hidan’s question. Suddenly, without warning, Sasori’s wooden arm detaches itself from Sasori’s body, and hits Hidan full-force in the center of his stomach. Hidan curses and doubles over, and while he’s bent Sasori takes the opportunity to go to Hidan and kiss his forehead. “I can reach you just fine, brat,” he murmurs, before leaving. Hidan has a quick recovery time to all forms of pain, and he’s quickly back on his feet, staring after Sasori with anger — and a tiny bit of admiration.

Kakuzu

“Hey old fucker; you’ve been waiting all day to get a taste of this, eh?” Kakuzu just rolls his eyes at Hidan’s comment. He’s not sure what he did, either in this life or another one, to be partnered with a creature as odious as Hidan. Normally with people that Kakuzu finds no value in, he kills, plain and simple. But Hidan is neither plain nor simple; no matter what Kakuzu hits him with, he keeps getting back up, just as loud and irritating as ever. But ... even someone as gruff as Kakuzu has to admit that Hidan isn’t all that bad. It’s actually a bit lovely, to have found another person (besides Sasori, who has made it clear that when everyone else expires, his complete solitude is something he’s looking forward to) to be with to share the blessing (and curse) of immortality. He walks up to Hidan and grabs him by the forearms, forcing him into stillness. “What the hell, old man?! Let go of me before —“ but Kakuzu interrupts him by inclining his neck and kissing his lips. Hidan’s mouth is soft, and he has a taste to him, something akin to cinnamon or pumpkin. Kakuzu let’s go of him and starts to walk away, when suddenly Hidan reaches out grabs him, pulling him into another kiss. Kakuzu is surprised, but he makes no attempt to break Hidan’s hold on him because ... this is nice. This feels good, this feels natural. Almost like — and then a sudden explosion makes them both jump; Tobi comes running past them, with Deidara (and his bombs) on his heels. “Get back here you little shit!!” Kakuzu sighs, and this time when he turns to go, Hidan doesn’t stop him. But Kakuzu can feels Hidan’s eyes on him, following him all the way to his room.

[meremennen]

Wait. You're aroused? Part 3.

A bellarke modern AU. 

[chapter 1] [chapter 2] 

Or read on AO3. 

Rating: M 

All mistakes are mine.

Chapter 3: Hiatus

"Bellamy is looking fine tonight," Raven sings, taking a long sip of her beer, then, for emphasis, nudging Clarke's shoulder with her nose. She is not too subtle about the teasing. (It's been weeks. Not anymore.)

It's Wednesday night. The show is on hiatus so they moved their gatherings from Clarke and Raven's apartment to Eden, their favourite neighbourhood bar. In some way, it is an improvement. They cannot be as loud as usual, but they are still spending Wednesday nights together. Instead of drinking the same bottled beer and munching on popcorn and Jasper ugly crying on their couch (and Miller teasing him for it), they are at the Eden already at 8 p.m. No ugly crying is involved, unless Jasper drinks too much and gets too emotional about his age or the time passing too fast. (Miller teases him for that too. But Miller teases everyone.)

Clarke takes a look at the man in question and shrugs. "He's okay."

But then, because she is a little tipsy she adds, "The glasses are really not doing it for me."

It's a lie.

Raven snorts.

"Whatever you say, babe."

Truth is though, now that Raven has brought up the glasses, she cannot look away. She is fixated on those glasses as if he's grown a second head. But worse than that, she cannot stop the flood of memories that invade her mind.

It was an early summer day when she stopped by his office at the museum wearing her favourite braless, strappy summer dress. That day is forever etched in her mind for many reasons, actually.

For one, that must have been the hottest day in human history. 

Two, as unsuspecting as she had been, she stormed into his office, mindlessly babbling about the heatwave being the sign of an impending apocalypse, only to be overwhelmed by a different kind of heat.

(Three, soon she learned first hand, the chill air in his office and the feel of the cool desk against her thighs, combined with the hot breath of his mouth on her skin was a true godsend.)

So when she found Bellamy Blake in glasses for the first time ever, all it took her to forget about the toasting weather outside was a dark look on his face and Bellamy rasping, "I want you.... Now."

Her nipples hardened on the spot. She nodded and stepped in closer, locking the door behind her. Hardly ten minutes later, she was clutching onto the edge of his table in the middle of his office, panting his name, with him licking rapturously between her legs.

And later, in their haste for scrambling for a condom, Bellamy's mug tumbled to the floor spilling its content – mostly pencils and paper clips and an actual bottle of ink on the floor.

Thanks to the thick carpet of his office the ink bottle remained intact. The ink spilled, though, leaving a mark behind. Last time she heard, that weird gorilla shaped patch was still gracing said carpet.

They did have an actual lunch after, his mussed up hair and his stupid cocky smile a very real reminder of their activities.

Clarke jolts out of her reverie, feeling herself flush.

She finds Bellamy staring at her. A moment ago he seemed to be lost in a heated conversation with Monty and Murphy but somewhere between now and then his eyes found hers and it feels like a magnet pulling on her sides. It is impossible to look away.

He adjusts his glasses as he adds something to their conversation.

No. No no no no no. That look he's giving her is too much.

She thought she was squirming – Squirming? Suffering! – in silence but when Raven leans into her side and mutters, "Jesus Christ, woman, I didn't know you had it this bad," she knows she is utterly busted. This is bad. Really bad.

She shifts in her seat and shakes her head.

"Go, and talk to him," Raven whispers under her nose. “For my sake.”

"I –– I think I just need some air," Clarke gets up to her feet all of a sudden. Raven shoots her a questioning glance, but she heads towards the back door, taking a few calming breaths.

What she hasn't noticed, though, is that Bellamy has excused himself to the bathroom right before her, and she is heading in the same direction.

She stops in her tracks when she finds him leaning against a wall. She actually stares, lips parting a little in surprise.

"See something you want, Clarke?"

The way he calls out her name is infuriatingly sexy. There's a subtle teasing edge to it which has had the opposite effect on her a while back; namely in the early stages of their acquaintance, when they were both stubborn assholes to admit they could be actually good friends.

Two can play this game, though, she thinks.

She takes a predatory step, or at least she hopes it comes across seductive, curling a hand around his bicep.

"Yeahhhh." Her voice is deeper and raspier than usual, giving a sultry feel to it. Goooood. "In fact, I am,” tilting her face upwards, keeping their eye contact.

He's moved closer, she notices, bringing them nose to nose, their breath actually mingling.

"I platonically want to have sex with you. No big deal.”

He huffs out a laugh and takes her hand. "Come on, “ and leads her away to that secluded little corridor only the staff uses when they stock up.

Next thing she knows, she's already shimmied out of her panties, her back hitting the wall, when Bellamy quickly snatches them out of her reach. "You'll get them back later," he breathes onto her neck and gets down to business at once.

It's a small miracle if they don't get caught. Honestly.

But she figures they are too worked up at this point to care or to stop this. Her panties are gone and she’s gasping his name as her fingers dig into his backside. His thrusts are equally urgent, the pull of her fingers and countered with a delicious push, he wants this. He needs this as badly as she does.

***

They don't get caught.

She's catching a glimpse of him as he's tucking his dick back into his pants and she has to turn away to take a steadying breath. He’s still hard, but he promised he was having a good time and not to worry about it.

She's just finished smoothing the wrinkles out of her dress and in the middle of combing her fingers through her hair, half a mind on those missing panties, when, unexpectedly, Bellamy's hot breath hits her skin for a second time that day. "On a second thought, I want to take you against the wall."

"Again?!"

"You feel so good."

And yes, he feels so good too. So so so good. She wants to tell him that, among other, sweeter things, but then he kisses her neck and her mind gets all scrambled, and she's close to combust on the spot anyway if he won't do anything about it.

She has just about enough mind left to ask, "How many condoms do you have exactly?"

"Enough," Bellamy growls, his voice sounds absolutely wrecked, and he proceeds to cage her in until his elbow finds support on the wall.

The next thing she remembers, he is already inside her. His right hand steadying her hip as his thumb is rubbing circles against her skin, soothing, and he’s hitting a particularly good spot inside her.

When he finishes this time, he presses his lips against her hair, lingering, just long enough to slip her underwear into her hands.

***

By the time they stumble back to their friends, with a pitcher of beer each in their hands, Jasper's head is down on the table, Miller patting his back.

"'S okay, bud, I know. I know. We'll get through this."

Murphy takes a contemplative look at them, before he takes the pitcher from her hand, refilling their cups, smiling to himself. Sure, he looks smug, but he doesn't comment and she pretends she didn't notice.

Raven raises an eyebrow. Clarke shrugs.

"Hey, Blake, your glasses are crooked."

Bellamy touches the frame. "They. Are. Not."

"My bad. Looked crooked from here."

***

The night is winding down eventually, it's almost midnight. They ended up sitting next to each other towards the third round of drinks.

Raven stands. "Hey, I'm gonna hit the night with this one here,” sticking out a thumb towards Murphy. "Bellamy, I'd appreciate if you made sure my girl makes it home safe and sound. The streets are dark."

Raven shoots her a text ten minutes later, don’t wait me up bb, im not making it home tonight. xoxo

That's the first night Bellamy kisses her when they almost part. And when he kisses her, he cannot stop at one kiss only, it is followed by another until they completely lose track of time. 

That's the first time he stays the night.

xx

******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

A/N. Any feedback would be nice!

& I have this Detective!Bellamy story I just reposted/edited and would appreciate if you could check it out. I am tempted to write another chapter if anyone is interested?

[mindwideopen]

You know what I gotta do? Learn to lighten up. I hate when people make fun of other people. Yes! I hate it with every fiber of my essence and my being, and guess what? I do it too! Yes! I can rip you a new asshole for your asshole. So why am I so sensitive? Because I’ve been hurt before by parody. We all have. We’ve all been there; the outsider, the asshole that everyone points a finger at laughing. Well, that energy IS ass, but hurt speaks volumes, when you never get over it.

I write a lot. If you think I write a lot on here, you should see how many journals I’ve accumulated with all of my either blather or insights, depending on how you view me as a person. So, when I write in my journal, I cultivate energy. If I’m mad, it shows up in my writing as snark, and mean. Mad is hurt. I feel like I need to defend, and I’ve gotten pretty decent at it. You slam me, and I slam back harder. Truth be told I’m exhausted. I’m not into that way of survival anymore.

I realized this morning, and a little more over my past 46 years, that I have pretty much had this mindset for as long as I can remember. “Oh yeah?!? Well, boom!” I look for it everywhere, so I can be ready. Ready to attack back. Boomstick (1) Keillor destroyer of anyone who comes at her, regardless of whatever their intentions may be. I realize now, that my thoughts due to my feelings and past experiences about people, sometimes fed into my beliefs that people are bad, and hate me for being myself. And I realized that point of view is a bit skewed. I want to love people, but a lot of time, my own hurt from the past gets in the way of my present. And mistrust has set in, hindering any chance for a new relationship, even when its a preexisting one. Old relationships can be made new again, by reinventing them with trust and love. But it’s a 2 way street. Now, that’s not to say that people’s intentions are always cherry, but I do get pretty sensitive a lot of the time, and unrecognize the need for improvement in me.

So how do I choose to love when I feel attacked regardless of people’s intentions toward me? How do I get over my defense, and play offense with the group? I can honestly say, I have never quite figured it out. Love is not fickle, but I sure am. “They hate me. They are making me the ass, and I hate that. I’m out, completely.” My usual go-to. And I have. I have gone, completely. Paranoia, upset, hate, all of these feelings I hold in myself all day, everyday. No one else does it except me, for me. So, my glasses are not usually rose colored in this regard. My glasses are stained with poops. Then I wash them, and the poops come back. That’s how my mind has been conditioned to work subconsciously now, due to my past experiences.

“Why does everyone hate me?! What did I do to garner this reaction over and over again from everyone I meet?! Why?! Why?!??!? Why?!???” Context is important. In what way do they hate me? Do they insult me in front of me or behind my back? Do they ignore my requests, or me in general? You can feel it, if you observe your feelings. Sometimes you don’t have the luxury of a reason why others act the way they do toward you, so you end up creating the context for yourself, depending on how you feel about their behavior, how you have felt in the past, and how you feel about yourself, now. It’s hard not to compare past experiences. It’s also hard, to let the past hurt go. Those are also beliefs to overcome. It’s hard cause I believe it’s hard. Well, I have done some amateur scientific research on myself, and my hypothesis is, because I am the one constant in my life’s equation my point of view of others, may in some cases, be flawed.

When I was 16 my dream was to be just like John Belushi and Gilda Radner. I idolized them. I wanted to be exactly like them. My mom signed me up for an improv class at second city. When I walked in, I felt elated! I looked at all of the pictures on the wall of the alums that had come before me, and I wanted so badly to belong. I saw myself in them. I felt like they were people that I looked up to, and I wanted to walk in their footsteps. Well, that is still the case, only I’m without the platform or the stage, without the lights, and without someone else determining when the scene is over. I am the one who usually yells scene in my relationships now, because in the past, a lot of people called scene on me first, with their treatment of me, or so I thought.

So, back to the class... it was exhilarating. At the time I took it, there were no young people second city classes. To this day I’m not quite sure how I got in, but there I was, and it was sooooo cool! I was among the up and comers! We were the next generation of awesome, just like all the SNL people! Holy cats! I was on my way! I thought, “I’m sure they’ll notice me! I’m gonna be discovered, a star, just like them, and I’ll be picked out of the group, and special because I’m special to them, let’s do this!!!!!” Well, I was singled out, but not in the way I wanted to be. And the person that singled me out first, was me.

“Alright stop.... stop the scene! Kari, what the (sic) are you doing?! The goal of this scene is that the ENTIRE class is creating and forming a machine. One person builds off of the next person. What the hell are you doing?! What are you supposed to be over there, all by yourself?!”

“Well, (teacher that I will not name to keep his anonymity because he’s probably a good person but he won’t be in my story because he reamed out a 16 year old me, and I decided his shit way of expressing his opinion aided in my feeling like shit, OR people will cheer for his bluntness of his truth), I was being the secretary, that was typing out and writing everything that they were doing.” My explanation of my participation to the machine exercise. True story. Well, the reaming of my ass was subsequent and public, in front of the whole class, and I was called out, for being myself, and separating myself from the group. His choice to create a new asshole for me in front of the class, not a loving choice in my opinion. Honesty without love can be a bit harsh. Especially to an impressionable 16 year old. But we’re all human, and I realize that. He also had a point. Being separate when the goal is working in union, not a good idea. So I decided to take that advice, and hide from it, until now.

Well, he wasn’t wrong. I had separated myself from the group. I wasn’t being a team player. I wasn’t in symphony, or sympathy, or support of the whole. I was by myself. I was used to that in my life. I’m used to playing on the fringes, so that’s where I went. I was also trying to stand out as being special. Well, mission accomplished but not in the way I wanted. No one wants to play with a special person who isn’t supportive, or doesn’t want to play with anyone but themselves. Hmmmm... moving on....

And I did. I moved from group to group in my career as an actor, and in relationships in my life. I moved from thing to thing, gig to gig, friend to friend and the result was always the same, “I do NOT fit in. I am not appreciated or valued, or admired. I’m shit.” So that’s what I saw, and experienced over and over and over again. The same shit, different people, until I was so bitter and jaded that there was no one left. “Where are my fucking people?!?! Why can’t I find people like me?!” Well, they’re probably out there, all hiding from humanity in their houses now, like I do.

So I have felt attacked a lot in my life, for just being myself. And I’ve gotten pretty good at pointing out my own faults before other people can. I’m also great at allowing people the comfort of ripping on me, and agreeing that it’s ok. Well, I used to be. But I’ve done a lot of internal love work on myself over the years, and that dynamic in my relationships doesn’t work for me anymore. Also a true story. So sometimes, instead of allowing the behavior to stand and be acceptable, I leave. Forever. Also a great way to be alone, but not happy. So I’m deciding now, to change my definition of myself. I am not shit. I am great, I have value, and I am worthy of love, just like everyone else. So my actions now, are in support of my new definition. And yes! I have done it! I decided it, and now that’s how I will roll, in all of my relationships. But try explaining that to people you are already in these preexisting relationships with, when the old way of relating to you worked for them. Well, that’s a pickle. And it doesn’t always come out cleanly, or without issue. When you try to operate from your new and improved definition of self it can be a little stilted and choppy. It takes practice to live with honesty with love, and it takes a mutual agreement to try it differently. Some people in your life will be willing to change the dynamic of your shared relationship with you, and some won’t. But regardless of the outcome, when you finally stand in solidarity with yourself, you can never lose.

So I feel attacked a lot, by people who either understand or don’t get my intentions. (Feeling that is also a choice that may be based in fact or just my feelings.) And I’m not versed in the ways of sticking up for myself without blowing things out of proportion. Will those people ever understand and accept my honest opinions and beliefs? Maybe, and maybe not. But I have decided to share my love regardless to live the way I want to, with myself. Ok, that was snarky. Again, I call myself out a lot to save others the trouble. But they’re on it and all over my faults, and let me know about it anyway, because I’ve hurt them, because I feel hurt, and the vicious cycle continues.

I’m working on changing my perception of comedy, because I don’t want to live and laugh all alone anymore. The point to all of this is this; love is better shared. Love is more fun, laughing together, and that includes cleaning up my side of the street, and not taking everything so personally. The balance of love is greater, together. Honesty in parody is important to get the parody right. But if there is no love behind the parody, it hurts. If there is no context behind the mocking, it’s painful. Energy is energy and the intention is felt regardless of the words said. We are all humans that share the same basic scientific principles of communication. We feel it first, then draw conclusions, then react. So the vibe thing? Very real. Hate and love is felt according to both the giver and the receiver. So my intention with writing this, is not to put people down for doing parody. It’s to enlighten myself to the fact that not all parody is bad. It’s how I decide to accept it, that determines it. The way we feel, IS real to us. The way I feel is real to me, and the way you feel is real to you. That’s why it’s so important to get real with yourself. Honesty, with love, will yield all of your answers, if you are brave enough to ask the hard questions.

So let’s laugh together! And let’s dance, together, and let’s smile and feel good, together. That’s a lot more fun than questioning yourself, and getting answers. Let’s find a common ground, together! I miss you all, I love you all so let’s be together, because the alternative is the ass that I create solely in my mind all by myself. So, in the immortal words of captain jean luc “General Mills international coffee waiter in France by day, captain of the starship enterprise new generation on his off time” Picard, let’s “make it so!” (That was an reference to an old coffee commercial from the 80s... 🙈🤷‍♀️🤣)

1. Boomstick is a term made popular by Sam raimi and Bruce Campbell in the movie, “army of darkness” referring to a sawed off shotgun.

[brentrogers]

Podcast: What is Mindfulness?

  Is your mind constantly preoccupied with the past or the future? What if you could train your brain to just BE in the present moment? This is the essence of mindfulness — simply being in the here-and-now (not worrying about that stupid thing you said last week), and gently noticing your surroundings and thoughts without judgment. In today’s podcast, Jackie enlightens a skeptical Gabe of the value of practicing mindfulness and how it can be a very useful tool in his mental health tool box. And she’s armed with scientific facts to break him down.

When was the last time you truly listened to the rain, enjoyed a cup of coffee… or stopped to smell the roses? Tune in to hear how mindfulness can help you get rid of the mental static that causes so much anxiety.

(Transcript Available Below)

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About The Not Crazy Podcast Hosts

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from Gabe Howard. To learn more, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

        Jackie Zimmerman has been in the patient advocacy game for over a decade and has established herself as an authority on chronic illness, patient-centric healthcare, and patient community building. She lives with multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis, and depression.

You can find her online at JackieZimmerman.co, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

    Computer Generated Transcript for “Mindfulness” Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to Not Crazy, a Psych Central podcast. And here are your hosts, Jackie Zimmerman and Gabe Howard.

Gabe: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Not Crazy Podcast. I’d like to introduce my co-host, Jackie.

Jackie: And that was my co-host, Gabe.

Gabe: Jackie, we are going to discuss mindfulness. And not surprisingly, I am not a big fan of mindfulness, probably because I’m a Gen Xer and have common sense.

Jackie: Oh. Oh. Shots fired. OK. Well, I guess that’s why this is a good topic, is because we don’t agree probably at all. I think mindfulness is an amazing tool. It’s wonderful. And everybody should be using it, just like therapy.

Gabe: It’s important to point out that just because Gabe Howard doesn’t like mindfulness doesn’t mean that Gabe Howard thinks that mindfulness is bad, should go away, or that people shouldn’t use it. I also don’t understand yoga. I will never do yoga. It’s scary to me. I would get wrapped up like a pretzel. But I’m not on a campaign to eliminate yoga. I’m not on a campaign to end mindfulness. It’s just everywhere. And it seems to be offered up as the solution to every problem until CBD oil came out. And then we sort of forgot about mindfulness for a little bit. But sincerely, it is everywhere.

Jackie: It is everywhere. And it’s not the solution to everything, but it is a solution to a lot of things. Not solution, it will aid a lot of things. Let’s be clear, it’s not going to solve world hunger, but it can make things better. Right? It’s helpful. It’s helpful. And it can. 

Gabe: It’s like taking a hot shower when you’re sick.

Jackie: It can get you to where you want to be, maybe a little bit faster. And let’s rewind for a minute, Gabe. Actually, before we jump into that, let’s talk about what is mindfulness. 

Gabe: Like from a technical definition?

Jackie: Yes.

Gabe: Not its new age bunk that is pointless.

Jackie: No. This is from Berkeley.edu. So.

Gabe: All right. I trust Berkeley.

Jackie: Berkeley. This is a really long definition. I’m just going to read a part of it, which says mindfulness means maintaining a moment by moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and surrounding environment through a gentle nurturing lens. I know you’re gonna say that’s bullshit.

Gabe: But I do struggle with this because it’s not. Who shouldn’t be aware of their body, right? I don’t think it’s bullshit to be aware of your body. I don’t think it’s bullshit to stop and smell the roses. I don’t think it’s bullshit to count to 10. I just think that all of this stuff existed and that people have been doing it for years and we didn’t put a name on it and give it like a culture surrounding it. I think maybe that’s what I have the problem with. Mindfulness used to be called stop and smell the roses. Mindfulness used to be called slow-down. Now all the sudden it’s like a new fangled thing that people think they just discovered. 

Jackie: Wrong. First of all, mindfulness is actually rooted in like Buddhist meditation, right? So it’s not a new fangled thing. It’s a thing that specifically in America we suck at. So yeah. Stop and smell the roses is the same thing. Take a moment. Pause is the same thing. But we didn’t do it. Nobody did it. And they definitely didn’t do it in a way that was long and meaningful. Yes. If you stop literally for a moment and smell the roses. Technically, that’s mindfulness. But do you get any of the benefits from a 0.5 second roses smell? No, you don’t.

Gabe: But don’t you? Now I’m going to defend mindfulness because I kind of disagree. Like when you said, do you get any benefit from a 0.5 second rose smell? Are you kidding? We never stop. First off, we don’t do things one at a time now. We invented multi-tasking, and that’s my generation. You know how I was making fun of your generation? Gen Xers invented, one thing at a time? No, multi-tasking is where it’s at. So we don’t stop and do anything for .05 seconds. So are you kidding? Like 0.5? That’s an improvement. So yeah, in that way, I agree with you. I just don’t think it’s mindfulness. I think it’s stopping to smell the fucking roses. 

Jackie: But it is mindfulness. It doesn’t hurt to put a title on it. Right. OK. Prime example. Have you ever gone to a friend and talked about a problem, Gabe?

Gabe: Yes.

Jackie: And isn’t that similar to what you do in therapy?

Gabe: I mean, except that therapy works on a scientific basis.

Jackie: So does mindfulness.

Gabe: Does it?

Jackie: It does.

Gabe: Does it?

Jackie: It does. Would you like some facts?

Gabe: I would love some facts. The way that it is described, and I know that I’m old and I know that I’m crotchety. I know that I’m set in my ways. But I would love to read any article about mindfulness that doesn’t make it sound like bunk. I am open to the idea, Jackie, that it’s not, but it’s always so hippy dippy and flowery and it doesn’t seem to be based on anything. And I would like to point out that talking to your friends and therapy, while maybe on the same spectrum, are a world of difference. I don’t want everybody to avoid therapy because of, you know, Bob at the bar.

Jackie: No, but you can fit. Talking things out is helpful.

Gabe: Right.

Jackie: It has a name. It’s called therapy. When you’re doing with your friend, it’s not therapy, but like it fits under the idea of talking out your problems.

Gabe: Very true.

Jackie: Similarly in this situation. But here’s a fact. Ready to have your mind blown? Mindfulness changes our brains. This is still from Berkeley. Researchers found that it increases density of gray matter in brain regions linked to learning memory, emotion, regulation and empathy.

Gabe: Give me an example of practicing mindfulness. What are we dealing with? You know, we use the example of stopping to smell the roses. And I know that that that is a mindfulness basis. But I can’t believe that stopping to smell the roses for 0.5 seconds or even five minutes a day, I can’t believe that that is changing gray matter in humans. It doesn’t sound reasonable to me.

Jackie: Well, as you might suspect, I strongly disagree with you again on this. Because you can’t tell me that over time, stopping to relax your brain, release stress, all the positive things that come out of something like mindfulness can’t change the chemistry in your brain. You’re telling me that if you’re on level 10 stress forever that your brain chemistry doesn’t change?

Gabe: I will cave immediately on that one. Because obviously when when I was in a state of perpetual depression, for example, that changed my brain. When I was in a state of perpetual mania, that changed my brain. So sometimes I do feel like I’m stuck in a semantics argument. Like I feel like I’m saying, hey, look, we need to be aware of our surroundings. We need to not live in this stress. We need to understand our limitations and we need to count to ten. We need to focus on our breathing. And I think that’s a good idea. People have heard me say this. And then your side fires back. Well, that’s mindfulness. And I immediately say no. How did we get here? Because one of the things that you said is that mindfulness came from Buddhism, which is which is literally thousands of years old. But I never, ever, ever heard the phrase mindfulness until like ten years ago.

Jackie: So because it didn’t have a name, it means it doesn’t exist and it’s not real?

Gabe: Yeah, I did. I hear the stupidity in that.

Jackie: It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, here’s what I think. Mindfulness is not one thing. It’s not a list of five steps. It’s not clearly defined. It’s a relatively abstract concept. And I think that a lot of people in the world have a hard time wrapping their brain around the idea of mindfulness could really be anything. It’s what works for you. And without clear guidelines and really stringent rules we’re all like, this is scary. I don’t really understand what this is and it must not work. It must be completely rooted in all of the wiggy and the weird hippy dippy shit because I don’t have a clear guide on how to make it work for me.

Gabe: I want people to know that I don’t like have a vendetta against mindfulness. Like I can kind of hear it in myself. Like dude, why do you care? And as I said at the top of the show, I’m not trying to get anybody to stop it. It’s just as a mental health advocate and somebody who lives with bipolar disorder, I face so much misinformation. Pill shamers, they tell me constantly, Gabe, you don’t need antidepressants. You need to go for a walk in the woods. And I’m like, no, stop it. And people tell me, oh, you have bipolar disorder? You can control depression and mania by running on a treadmill. And there’s always this little bit of science. Diet and exercise does help with bipolar disorder. Going for a walk in the woods sounds delightful. You know, on an overcast day when it’s about 70 degrees and not raining, but to cure bipolar disorder? That scares me. And people are looking for reasons to ignore the medical establishment. Have you seen the anti-vax movement? We now have measles for the first time in several generations. It just seems like mindfulness is just the latest new age cure to get us away from doing the hard work that it takes to be well when you’re managing a major mental health issue or living with mental illness. So, Jackie, I’m going to throw the ball back to you and say, do you think that mindfulness is a replacement for therapy? Because I know you’re pro therapy.

Jackie: No, it’s not. I don’t think mindfulness will cure anything. It’s not going to cure bipolar. I don’t think mindfulness is the only treatment option. I don’t think that mindfulness should replace anything else you’re doing. I think it’s an additional tool to use in conjunction with what you’re already doing. Like you can’t tell me that something that lowers stress, increases appreciation in relationships, and helps with your attention skills, or decision making is something that’s not going to help you in your life or handle living with bipolar or handle living with depression. All of those things are just going to make your tool kit bigger.

Gabe: I can get behind the idea that this is a tool in your tool kit. You have a fully functional tool kit and somebody says, dude, you need a mallet. But I have a hammer. And they’re like, no, no. A mallet. I know you’re thinking it’s the same thing, but a mallet is good. So I take the mallet and I put it in with all of my other tools. I can get behind that. You read the same Internet that I read, Jackie. You know that there are people who believe that mindfulness is a cure. You know that there are people that have just elevated mindfulness so far up that they’re like, dude, get rid of your toolbox, you are mallet man now. Now, what do you say to those people and why do they believe it?

Jackie: I don’t agree with that. I can’t say, yeah, that is gonna be the solution. I believe in science. I also believe in modern medicine. I think that science, modern medicine and a little bit of like the wiggy can all live together. That’s why we have holistic health centers and things now. Because there is value in a lot of these things. Can they treat modern disease? I personally don’t think so. I don’t think it’s a replacement for medication or modern medicine. I don’t. But I think that if you are somebody who doesn’t trust medicine, who has issues with medication for whatever reason you do, or somebody who just wants to believe in a holistic approach, you could put all your eggs in the mindfulness basket and be like, this is the thing. I don’t think it is the thing. I think it’s something that not only helps with anxiety, depression and a lot of other just feelings-based things. I will say like when I feel sad or feel really anxious, I think that mindfulness helps me ground myself. Mindfulness is very similar to meditation in that way. We have all kinds of studies on meditation. You’re not telling me meditation is bullshit. Meditation works. We’re teaching it in schools now. It’s all kinds of shit. But mindfulness, because it’s a new term, to you and to a lot of society right now, doesn’t mean it’s a new concept.

Gabe: I feel the desperate need to say that even Berkeley says that mindfulness is not going to fix or cure anything by itself. It’s always an add on tool. Every study is like, yeah, that this helps in a lot of different areas. But yeah, don’t give up your medicine, fire your therapist, fire your psychiatrist. It’s not gonna cure bipolar disorder, however, to your point. While it doesn’t cure anxiety. It’s really been shown to be very effective at lowering anxiety and stress. That did impress me because I am science driven. And maybe that’s the problem that I have with it. Maybe people just took a good thing too far. It reminds me of when I was a kid and my mom got me a bike. Right? The bike got me to and from school faster. That was fantastic. And then me and my dumb ass friends built ramps, and then some of us broke our legs.

Jackie: But how can too much mindfulness be a bad thing?

Gabe: I mean, if you break your legs. 

Jackie: How can too much calming being the moment reconnect with yourself, with your relationships, you know, helping increase the density of gray matter? Actually, one study says that it might be just as effective as antidepressants. How can you say too much of that is a bad thing?

Gabe: There’s a million esoteric ways that I could go. Like, for example, people always make the comment, how can too much money be a bad thing? Well, did we all see Scrooge? That was bad for him. He was going to have to carry a chain and rot in hell forever. But let’s take it another step. If you are a miser that holds on to all of your money and you value your money over your relationships, then too much money becomes a bad thing. Let’s apply it here. If you have decided to ignore your psychiatrist, ignore your psychologist, ignore your general practitioner, stop taking your medication because you read on a website that all you need to do is stare at a flower for a half an hour a day. That’s a bad thing. I think maybe what you mean to say is that if it works for you and there are no ill effects, then it’s a good thing. But what I’m finding is the people that I talk to that say, oh, I’m only using this. There are no ill effects. I’m like, well, did you do it in conjunction with your doctor? I don’t need to. Why are you afraid to have your doctor look at what you’re doing? Are you afraid that they’ll find a flaw in your methodology? Are you afraid that something might happen that they’ll point out? It does seem like sometimes people gravitate to things like mindfulness and they just ignore all of the outside data so that they can say that, listen, mindfulness is working. But in the meantime, in order to actually do mindfulness 24/7, you’re probably unemployed. And that in and of itself is bad.

Jackie: Well, first of all, nobody can do mindfulness 24/7. 

Gabe: Because of sleeping?

Jackie: No, because it’s basically impossible to stay hyper focused on one thing or your breathing or what the air feels like or the birds that are chirping. It is impossible unless you are a Buddhist monk in a mountain somewhere. You cannot do this 24/7. And it sounds like everybody you’re talking to is only doing this. And that’s not what I’m saying. That’s not what this is saying. If somebody said to you, I’m only going to take medication, that’s it. You would say that’s a bad idea.

Gabe: Oh, yeah. I’d say it’s a horrible idea. It’s a terrible idea.

Jackie: One thing is your one and only your hard stop is always a bad idea. All of these things require a combination unique to you, probably very different from somebody else. Dosage, time you’re doing mindfulness, are you going to therapy? All of the things; it all works together. At no point do I think anywhere that’s credible would say only practice mindfulness and that will lead you to a path of no mental illness. One hundred percent no.

Gabe: We’re gonna step away and we’ll be right back after these messages.

Announcer: Interested in learning about psychology and mental health from experts in the field? Give a listen to the Psych Central Podcast, hosted by Gabe Howard. Visit PsychCentral.com/Show or subscribe to The Psych Central Podcast on your favorite podcast player.

Announcer: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com. Secure, convenient, and affordable online counseling. Our counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counseling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Jackie: And we’re back, and I’m proving Gabe wrong about mindfulness.

Gabe: I’ve struggled with my weight for pretty much my entire life and I’ve been on a myriad of diets and eating plans and weight loss plans in the ones that work the best for me is the one that has no forbidden foods. It’s like, look. Eat what you like. And their sort of motto was all things in moderation. Understanding that, yeah, you can have cake on your birthday, but a sheet cake is too much. I know that I come out hard against mindfulness because when it first came out, it just had all of this. It just had all this flowery language and people were excited about it and they elevated it to a point where it didn’t belong to your point. A lot of that has a limited down, and there’s probably a bigger discussion to be why are so many people looking outside of what they currently have? Like, people have been struggling with mental illness and mental health issues for so long that when something new shows up, they’re desperate for it. Which really kind of shows you were not doing a good job with all of the stuff we have now. Because people who are healthy, people like me, you know, therapy is working for me. Medication is working for me. Family supports are working for me. So I sort of have the privilege to ignore this. I really do. Hey, this sounds dumb, I don’t want to do it. Well, that’s congratulations. You’re living well. You can. So it’s impacting a vulnerable group. I struggle with this a lot, Jackie. I really do, because the vulnerable group needs more. But the vulnerable group, they’re also easily taken advantage of. And I don’t know how to balance that.

Jackie: I agree with you that things positioned to a vulnerable group of people, if positioned incorrectly, can be harmful. Right? And I also would agree with you that when we’ll say mindfulness came on the scene, right, it started getting a lot of airtime. People were talking about it. You know, yogis everywhere were like, you must do this. All of that shit. I agree that it got elevated to a level similar to, honestly, you know, the benefits of yoga. The benefits of meditation. All of these sort of holistic things that naysayers and skeptics go like this is all bullshit. We’re not doing this. And as somebody who is rooted in science, loves modern medicine, you know, I am the skeptic. I am this. But there is a tiny part of me that believes in the power of the wiggy, as I call it. And the reason is because I’ve seen its benefits, right? When I am heavily worked up, and I take a minute, literally a minute to meditate, I feel better afterwards. I know that it works. Scientific research will back up why it works. The problem with things that fall under the category of the wiggy, or the hippy dippy, whatever you want to call it is that there is some buy-in required to see the benefit.

Jackie: You have to go into it going, this is going to work. Or even this could work. But if you’re trying to be mindful, you’re focusing on smelling the roses for a minute and the whole time you’re like, this is fucking stupid. Why am I doing this? I don’t want to do this. It’s not gonna work. You’re not going to get the benefits of it. The whole point is to clear your mind. If your mind is perpetually telling you this is really stupid, you’re not going to see the benefit of it. So there are always going to be people who are not going to be able to just clear all their preconceived notions and just see it for what it is. I was one of them for a very, very long time. You have to at least allow yourself to fathom the idea that it could be a useful thing for you.

Gabe: Jackie, I really like the explanation, especially backed by the Berkeley study, that mindfulness is a tool and we don’t all use the same tools. Not everybody needs a mallet, but everybody needs a toolbox. And what you put in that toolbox is different. It really reminds me of my friend Dreama. My friend Dreama is an interior decorator and I thought interior decorators were like rich people bullshit. Maybe it’s because I was raised blue collar. Maybe it’s because I’m poor. I don’t know. But she was like, no, interior design is is beautiful and decoration is beautiful. And it it helps you dream and it opens up pathways. And, you know, being in a beautiful environment will make you happy. And every time she spoke, I was like, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Then one day I get divorced. Here I am. I’m divorced. I’m moving into a six hundred square foot apartment, which I was moving out of a house into a 600 square foot apartment. I had almost no money. I had all kinds of junk shit and Dreama to the rescue. She’s like, listen, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to design your apartment for free. I’m going to decorate it all. I’m going to lay it out largely with all the stuff that you already own. And I’m like, whatever, crazy lady. I don’t even care. I am too depressed to stop you.

Gabe: I. I call this place my pod. It’s probably one of the nicest places I’ve ever lived in my entire life. It was just so organized and beautiful and perfect. And I just couldn’t see what she was saying. And what she was essentially saying is that pretty organized spaces that speak to you make you feel better. I think that’s where we are with mindfulness. I don’t know that it helps me, but as you’ve pointed out, counting to 10, stopping to smell the roses are mindfulness acts. But there’s really no reason to be against it as long as you’re using it for the right thing. Obviously, if I quit my job to stay in my beautifully decorated home, that would be too far. If I paid my friend Dreama one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to design my 600 square foot apartment. Yeah. Maybe I’m abusing interior design. None of that happened. I used it correctly and she proved me wrong. And you have maybe proved me wrong too.

Jackie: Well. 

Gabe: But whatever.

Jackie: So can I get Dreama’s number? Because I could really use some help in that design department.

Gabe: Your house is pretty.

Jackie: This is what I really think about mindfulness. OK. I think it is a really helpful tool. If you believe it can be a helpful tool. The other thing is it’s hard. It actually takes work. If you are somebody who is kind of skeptic on the fence and you sit down and you try to smell the roses, as we have said, and the whole time you find yourself your mind wandering, doing other stuff and you’re like, this is stupid. I can’t do it. You have to stick with it. It is very similar to meditation. You have to retrain your brain to refocus back on what you’re doing. And the best way to do it is to start like really, really small. One of the best suggestions I ever heard for mindfulness was while you’re in the shower. Maybe you’re in the shower five minutes a day. I don’t know how long you take your showers, but while you’re in there, only think about the water hitting your skin, which is kind of easy to do because it is perpetually hitting your skin over and over and over again. But when you start to think about what you have to do that day, go back to thinking about the water. Mindfulness is something that takes work. You have to work at it, which means it’s not a simple fix to everything else in your life, much like all other treatment plans. It’s not an easy thing. It won’t fix it immediately. You have to work for it. And a lot of people who are skeptical aren’t willing to work for it so they won’t see the benefits of it.

Gabe: Jackie, I really like your tip about trying mindfulness in the shower. Especially the part where you can recall it throughout the day. But you’re like a mindfulness like master. You know you’re a master mindfulness-er. So what is your favorite mindfulness activity?

Jackie: That’s really hard to say because honestly, it changes with the seasons because I like to be outside in the summer. And one of the simplest mindfulness things you can do is sit outside and let the sun hit you and just focus on what it feels like when the sun hits you. Like where’s it warming on your body? How does it make you feel? Literally just feeling it. And that’s one of those things when you’re like, don’t we all just count to 10? Don’t we all do whatever? No, we don’t. We don’t make the time to focus on the thing, whatever the thing is. Another thing to do, that was a great suggestion from my therapist, who I love, was to sit in the grass one day and just feel the grass. Feel the wind. Listen to the sounds. Like, just only do that. Most the time we’re sitting in the grass and I’m making a to do list or I’m thinking about how there’s probably a bug crawling on me or if there’s a car driving by, like, what if somebody is walking up behind me right now? You know, you’re not focusing on the thing. The thing is to focus on what you feel, what it sounds like, the senses. The mindfulness is focusing on the senses. And most of us are really, really bad at doing that. So, Gabe, after all of that, after breaking down how small it can be or how it’s not going to change your life immediately, it’s not going be your only treatment option. Would you consider a mindfulness practice?

Gabe: In the interest of honesty, no, I’m not considering it at all. That said, I’m not in a bad way right now. Right? I’m not currently experiencing depression or high anxiety. I gotta tell you, though, I am willing to put the mallet in my toolbox. I just don’t have a need for a mallet right now. And I think that’s maybe what a lot of people should be willing to do with the things that just don’t sound like they are for them. Maybe they should just be willing to put it in their back pocket and consider it maybe for later. And at the beginning of the show, at the beginning of the research for the show, I was positive that we’re going to end in a very different place. So it was really, really mean to go get science and Berkeley involved. Like that. 

Jackie: I’m such a dick.

Gabe: That was my Achilles heel. Jackie, it is always fun hanging out with you. Thanks for being my co-host.

Jackie: I love proving you wrong. It’s great to be your co-host.

Gabe: She wins one argument, ladies and gentlemen. Listen up, listeners, here’s what we need all of you to do. Wherever you downloaded this podcast, please subscribe. Please rate us. Please use your words and review us and tell people what you like about the show. If there’s something that you don’t like about the show, hey, we completely understand. We’re human. Email us at show@PsychCentral.com and tell us about it. Remember after the credits, there’s always outtakes because hey, nobody’s perfect. Including Gabe and Jackie. And we will see you next week.

Jackie: And as always, thank you for listening.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to Not Crazy from Psych Central. For free mental health resources and online support groups, visit PsychCentral.com. Not Crazy’s official website is PsychCentral.com/NotCrazy. To work with Gabe, go to gabehoward.com. To work with Jackie, go to JackieZimmerman.co. Not Crazy travels well. Have Gabe and Jackie record an episode live at your next event. E-mail show@psychcentral.com for details. 

  Podcast: What is Mindfulness? syndicated from

[erraticfairy]

Podcast: Panicked Over Finances? Why Money Influences our Mental Health



  The rent is due tomorrow; but then you’ll be left with only $10 for the week’s groceries. What do you do? Many people panic over money (or the lack of it), but for those of us with mental illness, it can feel like a life or death situation: It can trigger an even greater anxiety attack and/or depression. Or it may mean not being able to afford the medication that keeps you well enough to work. What can be done?

In this Not Crazy episode, Gabe and Jackie discuss how you can gain a sense of control in these situations, and Jackie shares her own big money scare.

(Transcript Available Below)

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

About The Not Crazy Podcast Hosts

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from Gabe Howard. To learn more, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

        Jackie Zimmerman has been in the patient advocacy game for over a decade and has established herself as an authority on chronic illness, patient-centric healthcare, and patient community building. She lives with multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis, and depression.

You can find her online at JackieZimmerman.co, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

    Computer Generated Transcript for “Panicked Over Money” Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to Not Crazy, a Psych Central podcast. And here are your hosts, Jackie Zimmerman and Gabe Howard.

Gabe: Hey, everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of the Not Crazy podcast. I would like to introduce my co-host, Jackie Zimmerman, who lives with major depression and anxiety disorders.

Jackie: And you know this guy, Gabe Howard, who lives with bipolar disorder.

Gabe: Jackie, we’ve been friends for a while now, we’ve been doing this show for several months and I decided that I want to risk all of that by talking about the one subject that causes more fights than any other subject known to man.

Jackie: And what would that be?

Gabe: Money. I want to talk about money.

Jackie: Money, money, money.

Gabe: So in a recent poll, the three things that married couples fight about more than anything else are family, religion and money. And I would argue that money is at the top because nobody is taking people like onto the People’s Court or Judge Judy to sue over political and religious differences. Money is everywhere. If you talk to anybody, literally just go grab a stranger on the street. Be like, hey, you ever lost a friend over $10? Almost everybody will have a story of a friendship that just imploded over what we would consider a small amount of money. Money just creates an intense amount of anxiety in our society.

Jackie: And the thing that I think is unique about money and anxiety is that it’s something that I would assume everybody experiences, not just people who are prone to anxiety, not just people who live with mental illness, but everyone has had some kind of issue with money that has given them anxiety.

Gabe: When I was younger, I used to watch golf with my grandfather and, you know, they always do these expose on the multi-millionaire golfers, and they were interviewing one of them and they said, hey, when you have a putt and if you make the putt, you win $100,000 and if you don’t make it, you lose $100,000, does that cause you anxiety? Does that make you nervous? And the guy said, you know, the most nervous I’ve ever been playing golf is when I bet another golfer a hundred dollars that I could make this putt and I didn’t have the hundred dollars in my pocket. That really spoke to me because it wasn’t the amount of money anymore. It was the awkwardness of discussing the money, finding the money, figuring out the money like this is what gave this guy anxiety. And again, he’s famous. I don’t know, maybe it was just a cute story he was telling, but that makes sense to me. You ever been in line and been a dollar short? Like, how embarrassing is that when you thinking that everybody in the store is like over on register five, there’s a tall, fat redhead that does not have one dollar to pay for his groceries.

Jackie: I can feel that because if you’ve ever had your credit card declined for any reason, your debit card and you want to justify it. I know there’s money on there. That’s so weird. I just used it like I just got paid. I swear I’m not a poor person. There’s this like panic where you just want to justify why it didn’t work. And my assumption is all of this comes from the scarcity model, right? We’re all afraid of not having enough. What happens when we don’t have enough? So how hard do we have to work to get enough? What if we’re working really hard and we still don’t have enough? And the anxiety around all of that of how much do you have? What happens when it’s gone? I think is something that is underlying in our society and in everybody but amplified for those who live with any kind of illness. Because for me specifically, when I worked at a big, fat corporate job and I made all kinds of money, all I thought to myself was, I’m staying here forever. So that way I make so much money that I never have to worry about what happens if I actually can’t work again because I will just bank so much money. I’ll have so much. I’ll always pay my health insurance. I’ll always have all of this stuff. And spoiler alert, I don’t work there anymore. I didn’t bank any money when I did work there. But when you have an illness, whatever kind it is, you’re worried about money not just because of normal reasons, but you’re worried about like, what if I can’t work forever? What if I can’t pay my health insurance? What if I can’t afford to be healthy?

Gabe: There’s a meme that works its way around the Internet that always says that we’re all three bad months away from being homeless. I don’t know if that’s true for all of us, but that really spoke to me because it took about three bad months to really put me in a bad way where I started to need help. On an interesting side note, none of us are three months away from being millionaires. So I think that we need to take that into account when we’re determining how to like maybe, you know, structure our health insurance and things like that. But but wrong. Wrong show. We’ll just put that aside for a moment. But think about this. The whole world is discussing being three bad months away from homelessness. Whether or not that holds up is really irrelevant. I think that does speak to the majority of people. Now, let’s apply that to people living with mental illness, people managing a life long and chronic disorder, because I know that if I couldn’t afford my medication, if I couldn’t afford therapy, if I couldn’t have afforded hospitalizations and on and on and on. Gabe Howard would not be sitting here. That’s just a hard fact. Yes, I worked hard. Yes, I have a loving family. But you know what really saved me? Resources and that resource all boiled down to hundred dollar bills. And that’s sad.

Jackie: The catalyst for this specific episode was from about a week ago, I sent Gabe a text and basically I had a full blown anxiety meltdown because my husband had called me and said, oh my God, our health insurance doubled on my last paycheck. And I said, wait, what do you mean it doubled? They didn’t tell us that. Like, they obviously would communicate that because that’s what normal people think happens in the world. But they didn’t. They just took it out of his check and it was doubled. And I panicked. And I have not had an actual panic attack in, I can’t tell you how long, but I felt it. It was the heart racing, soul crushing. Can’t breathe like, oh, my God, what are we going to do? Because we are people right now who are living pretty paycheck to paycheck. And that is even questionable because I don’t know when my paychecks are coming in, because I work for myself and I don’t have regular paychecks. And my husband took a pay cut a year ago to take the job he’s at now. So all of this is spiraling around my head and I’m like, how are we gonna do this? This is $400 we didn’t know we needed and I could just work harder. But where am I going to find the clients? Just, you know, anxiety spiral talk in your head. And I reached out to Gabe because we were already talking. I said, hey, I know you’re telling me something important right now, but I’m not really listening honestly, because I’m worried about this health insurance thing. And I realized in that moment how money is something that can cause high anxiety. And within a split second, like he sent me that text about our health insurance doubling. And almost immediately I was in a full blown panic about it.

Gabe: There’s so many directions that we can take this, and that makes me excited. I love it when Jackie, says, oh my God, X, and I’m like, Oh my God, we can do y z bat symbol. So we might have to create multiple timelines. And let me ask you multiple questions about this, because the first question that I’m going to ask you is if your health insurance would have doubled and you had a million dollars in the bank, would it have bothered you at all?

Jackie: Me today thinks no, but I also think that people who have a million dollars in the bank are really good about money and any sort of unexpected expense that comes up, they’re upset about it also.

Gabe: I understand what you’re saying because paying attention to our resources is a vital part of money management. But a year ago I was sitting on my couch at like 2:00 in the morning and it was storming and I felt a drop of water on my head. And I looked up and the roof was leaking like leaking a lot. And I saw all of this damage. And I thought, oh, well, that’s a bummer. And I went to bed. I just went to bed. That’s it. There was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t stop the rain. I don’t know how to fix a roof. I don’t know how to fix a ceiling. But the reason that I didn’t freak out and panic is because I had the money. I flat out had the money. I knew that I could afford to fix it. There was nothing I could do. And I slept well. And I think about this because I think about Gabe when he was in the little six hundred square foot apartment living paycheck to paycheck with a thirty five hundred dollar deductible. And anytime my car made a noise, I just white knuckled because I couldn’t afford it. When oil change time came around, I thought, shoot. Where am I gonna get 30 bucks? Because it was hard. It was so hard. And I want to point out and this is where I want to go back to the timeline again. You were perfectly healthy. You weren’t having a medical problem. This was just an expense that rose in price. Right?

Jackie: Correct.

Gabe: So now imagine if the text message you got was from your doctor that you needed to go on a different medication that wasn’t on generic and therefore cost five hundred dollars a month versus the $10 co-pay. Or imagine if you were just diagnosed with bipolar disorder, major depression, schizophrenia, psychosis, and they were recommending an outpatient treatment program where the deductible was thirty five hundred dollars. And I can’t help but notice in all of these scenarios where we get diagnosed with all of these awful things, we all have health insurance. Some of the health insurance are better than others, but health insurance is always present. Now, imagine that you get diagnosed with a serious mental illness or I don’t know, is there such a thing as not a serious mental illness? And you have no health insurance? Because I know that my inpatient hospitalization. What, 17 years ago cost like $80,000. It didn’t cost me because I had health insurance. And I thought that was normal.

Jackie: I think this is a good time to point out, Gabe and I, we both understand our privilege in this conversation. You know, like I can make my bills and I do have health insurance. Gabe, same for him. And I can only imagine what it’s like in this moment where you’re choosing between paying for health insurance and feeding your kids or one of those other really intensely awful choices you have to make in terms of what to do with this small amount of money that you make. Granted, if our health insurance. Rewinding for a minute, our health insurance didn’t double. They just had an error on his paycheck, which is like makes me want to write them a heavily-worded note about how rude and anxiety-causing that was. However, if it did double, we would have to make some really, really difficult changes. Not difficult in which kid to feed? Kind of difficult. But where do we rearrange money? The reality is we probably could have found it, but it would have changed the way we live our lives. It would have changed what we do with our time and our energy. And I would have honestly had to work a lot harder to make up for that money. I would’ve had to find more clients. But it’s not lost on me that that is an option that I have is to go find more work. So I want to be cognizant of that in this conversation that Gabe and I both have the ability to figure it out pretty flawlessly in these situations for the people who don’t have the ability to figure it out or they can’t or they’re already working their ass off so hard that making more money is just not an option right now. Like I see you, I have no advice for you. None whatsoever. But I recognize that money and anxiety is significantly more prominent when you don’t have the ability to just get more money.

Gabe: And this is the multiple time line that I want to reconnect back to the beginning. So Jackie, finds out that her bills go up and she freaks out and things. OK, how am I going to find more money? But ultimately, I can do it. If it happened to me and it went up, I’d be like, well, that sucks. I would rather spend the money on something else. But ultimately, I have excess income. I’m fortunate I have more budget, so I’ll just bitch about it to my friends that, ugh, the cost of health insurance is ridiculous and not lose an iota of sleep. Somebody else is like you have health insurance that can go up top. How lucky are you? I would kill to have health insurance at all, let alone have it doubled. And then other people are just so rich that they’re like, I don’t have health insurance. I just pay for everything in cash, because I’m Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos’ lovechild that gets one hundred and eighty five billion dollars allowance a day. And then there’s people that are I don’t even know what the right word is for it.

Gabe: They have a level of financial insecurity that I can’t even adequately explain. And any explanation that I gave would just make me an asshole. There’s really no other way that I can put it. They don’t have a six month wait for a psychiatrist. They’re not even they don’t even have enough money to make the list. And all of us. And this is the takeaway. We’re all fighting each other. We all have mental illness. We all have mental health problems. We’re all trying to figure out how to make it through. And instead of figuring out how to make resources more abundant and accessible for all of us, we’re all like Jackie, she got health insurance complaining about the price. Or, well, she’s so rich, it doesn’t matter. Oh, well, he said he doesn’t even care if his roof falls and he just goes to bed. And that becomes the talking point. I really think that we need to come together on this one and find out why it is not accessible regardless of your socioeconomic status.

Jackie: I don’t know that I totally agree with you. And that’s because I think that if you’re somebody listening to this podcast and you’re going, wow, that asshole is complaining that their health insurance went up and I don’t even have health insurance. Honestly, I don’t think they’re that worried about me and judging me. I think they’re going. I don’t have fucking health insurance and I don’t know how I’m going to make things happen. I agree that obviously we should find a way to like pool resources or ideas and make things happen together. But my assumption and if you are a if you’re that wealthy listener, please sponsor us. We really could use your help right now. But if you’re not that wealthy person and you’re everybody else listening, I don’t think people are necessarily holding grudges against other people in this space. I think everybody’s just trying to survive.

Gabe: That’s a really good point, Jackie. But what bothers me is that what we all have in common is that we’re all fighting really, really hard to survive. And I do think that we determine how much effort the person is putting into survival based on the resources at their disposal. And that’s what I would like to remove. I don’t know that I worked any harder to survive because I had a lot of resources. I just think I didn’t have to work as hard. And I think that society judges people on the lower end of the socio economic status very, very harshly. They say things like, well, why don’t you have savings? Why didn’t you save for a rainy day? Because that’s not an option. That’s really not an option. They say things like, why won’t you be med compliant or why won’t you go see your doctor? They are trying to see a doctor. They’re on a 12 month waiting list for the free clinic. They can’t afford their medications because medications can cost thousands of dollars a year. And they’re choosing between eating, being homeless. And this goes back to something that we really need to discuss. And I’d really like your opinion on it. Jackie, sincerely if you, Jackie Zimmerman, had a choice between paying for safe housing, a safe place to live and food or your mental health care, which would you choose?

Jackie: I would choose a safe place to live. Hands down.

Gabe: And I think that most people would. And I think that we need to understand that many people are in this position.

Jackie: We’ll be right back after these messages.

Gabe: We’re back discussing money and anxiety.

Jackie: Gabe, you’re not wrong. Right? Like, these are all really good points that we need better access to health care. We need a better support system. We need all of these things. But if you’re somebody who doesn’t have any money right now, today, like, for example, I got a stat for you. We know that I love stats. There was a stat by the Royal College of Physicians, whoever the hell that is, that said that half of people with anxiety also have a problem with debt. So are you predisposed to one or the other? That’s not even talking about medical debt. That’s just talking about debt in general. So how do you get out of this kind of debt? How do you save if you’re not making any money? You can’t even pay your bills. How are you going to save these things?

Gabe: I’m not sure that there is an answer that doesn’t involve like high-level advocacy work and this is where I get stuck, Jackie. It really is where I get stuck. I you know, I don’t know. Marry well?

Jackie: That is one of the crux is of talking, is the plural of crux cruxes? I don’t know. That is a crux, we’ll say, of talking about money in general is that there is no one size fits. All right. Yes. Save more, make more done. Easy. But that is literally not an option for most people.

Gabe: Spend within your means, I love that one.

Jackie: Right? All that bullshit.

Gabe: Live within your means is the phrase that everybody uses, and depending on where you are on the socioeconomic ladder, that might mean to move down. You don’t need four Disney vacations a year. You don’t need a new car every year. Like that’s understandable, right? This could be really good advice for some people. We’re not saying that it’s not.

Jackie: I think it’s bullshit.

Gabe: We can all save a little more and clip another coupon. And we all don’t need to buy the biggest house that we can find. But like you said, it’s bullshit for a lot of people. It’s bullshit for a lot of people. They can’t. There’s no money to save. What do you have to say to those people? How are we going to relieve those folks’ anxiety, Jackie? I am afraid that somebody is going to listen to this and be like Gabe and Jackie said that I’m fucked. Their conclusion was I am fucked and I don’t know what to say to folks. And whenever we talk about money and anxiety and anxiety and money and driving it together, I think that people don’t want to dive deep into this. So they say platitudes like save for a rainy day. You don’t have to get dessert. Clip coupons. I use an app that tells me if Amazon has better prices. I’m not saying that any of these are bad ideas. But does it solve the big problem? For real, what is your coping mechanism for this, therapy guru Jackie.

Jackie: Well, for me personally, I use spreadsheets. I love a good spreadsheet one, because I am terrible with math and the spreadsheet will do math for me. So the way that I handle this is seeing all of the money and I won’t lie. Sometimes when you look at all of the money and all the way it’s being spent and how little money you actually have. It feels worse because you’re like, wow, I really have nothing. But then at least I know what I’m working with. I think in a lot of these situations, people don’t know actually what their overhead is in their life. Right? If you’re living outside your means, how do you know that if you don’t know what your actual means are? So I don’t have any great tips on how to get out of this situation, how to make more money, save more money. If I knew that, I’d be doing it myself. I don’t have that. But what I can say is for me, looking over it does help. Like pretending like it’s not there doesn’t help. Some people, I think, just go. I know that I can’t afford these things, so I just don’t think about it and then pretend it’s gonna go away. And I’m not going to say that’s a bad idea. If that helps you and you can get through your day by just not thinking about it. Maybe that’s the right choice for you.

Gabe: I am going to hardcore disagree with that. I see that as a short term solution.

Jackie: Oh, for sure.

Gabe: It sort of reminds me of, don’t open your bills on the weekends. I dig that. I dig that advice. It was it was advice that my grandmother had. She’s like, look, I don’t bank on the weekends. Weekends are for my family. I don’t open my credit card bills on the weekends. I didn’t want to tell her that, you know, now credit card bills or text messages where they send you every second of every day and maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe there’s a token of good advice in the advice that I just called bad. Which is that you need to have a time and place. Now is the time to manage money and now is the time to be present in other areas.

Jackie: Well, yes, obviously, I didn’t mean ignore it forever. That doesn’t solve anything, but like compartmentalizing what you’re doing with your money.

Gabe: I think that that is really, really good advice. I can get on board with that. Some other hints and tips that I want to give to people are self-advocacy is real advocacy. So often we have this desire to help other people that we don’t help ourselves. And you’re probably thinking, well, how can I help myself? And here’s how. Ask your doctor if they have a sliding scale. Ask your doctor if they have a zero interest payment plan. Google the medicines that you’re being prescribed and see if they have a prescription card that offers a discount. Many of the newer medications do, and it will reduce your co-pay in some cases from $300 all the way down to $10, but almost always by at least 50 percent. And this can make medications more affordable. Google free clinics. You may have to wait longer in the waiting room. In fact, you probably will have to wait longer in the waiting room. And that makes it not available to everybody. But if it is available to you, use it. There are ways that you can lower health care costs or get a payment plan that’s not at 29% interest or 22% interest. Like if you put it on a credit card, you do have to ask. They’re not offering it to people. I believe like Jackie, that taking control lowers anxiety because even if the thing around the corner is bad. I myself am less anxious if I know that it’s around the corner. It’s the things that pop out of the shadow at the last minute and go Boo! Those are the things that scare me the most. And finally, I don’t mean to steal Jackie’s thunder, but I kind of want to. Talk about your money anxiety in therapy. People don’t want to talk about money. Tell the people in your life that you’re anxious about money. Tell your therapist that you’re anxious about money. There is nothing wrong with being anxious about money.

Jackie: Thunder stolen 100%. I did talk about money in therapy last Friday, but I agree wholeheartedly. The idea of asking for help. Nobody is going to help you if you don’t ask for it in terms of reduced rates. I once got a $8,000 MRI for $10 because I asked for help. And then telling people, like Gabe said. I mean Gabe and I got together a couple of weeks ago and had a pretty in-depth conversation about money and he gave me some cool ideas I hadn’t thought about. I probably gave him zero ideas. But it was one of those things where just having a dialogue about money made it less scary to talk about money.

Gabe: We’re taught in our society not to discuss money. I don’t believe in this at all. I discuss money constantly. I discuss money with my family. I discuss money with my friends. And I believe this is why I have a different, and I’m going to say healthier relationship, with my finances. It’s also why I never pay too much for a car, because I know what all of my friends and family paid for their cars. I know the horror. But listen, your family may work differently, but your friends might not. And the Internet absolutely does not. Google the average cost of things. Google places that offer discount cards or lower end solutions. I am as shocked as anybody that I have gotten medical care at Wal-Mart, but I’m not going to lie. I’ve gotten medical care at Wal-Mart. The clinic there is fantastic. And it’s set up for people who need to pay less. And it helped me a lot when I needed help. There are lots and lots of those options. You just have to look around for them because they’re not the popular ones. They’re not the hospitals. They’re not the doctors. They’re not the ones that people commonly think about. All of these things can give you more control. Remember, having more control does not mean that negative consequences aren’t coming your way. It just means that you’re out in front of them. I believe that that’s empowering. I believe that matters. I believe that that will put you in a better position to deal with it. But most importantly, I believe that you’ll feel better when it’s all over. At least the negative thing didn’t get the satisfaction of yelling boo and scaring the shit out of you. And I think I really believe that from a personal empowerment perspective that has just a tremendous amount of value. Yes, the bad thing happened, but at least it didn’t trick you.

Jackie: And I believe circling back to the beginning that this is not going to be the last panic attack I have about money. But to Gabe’s point, I do try to get in front of it. I know what’s happening, which is why the unexpected cost made me lose my shit. But there is something to be said about being in control of it. And much like we’ve said about being a patient in general, nobody is going to advocate for you except for you. So this stands for how you handle your money, how you ask for help when you can’t cover your bills and how you move forward if you’re somebody who is in a position who literally cannot make any more money than they are currently making.

Gabe: Jackie, I couldn’t agree more, did discussing money with me make you anxious?

Jackie: I do not find discussing money with you to be anxiety-causing. And maybe it’s because we’ve developed a rapport based on brutal honesty. But I think this is one of those simple ways to take away the power that money has over us is just to talk about it.

Gabe: Listen up, everybody, we have some favors to ask of you, and don’t worry, it won’t cost you a dime. Wherever you downloaded this podcast, please subscribe, rank and review. Share us on social media. And when you do, tell people why they should listen. And if you have buddies and friends, email it to them. Tell them what to do. You know what? You should make it a full time career promoting the Not Crazy podcast. Jackie and I would love that. Stay tuned after the credits because hey, there’s outtakes and Jackie and I, we mess up a lot and we’ll see everybody next Monday.

Jackie: Have a great week.

from World of Psychology https://ift.tt/2HS0nJq via theshiningmind.com

[brentrogers]

Podcast: Panicked Over Finances? Why Money Influences our Mental Health

 

The rent is due tomorrow; but then you’ll be left with only $10 for the week’s groceries. What do you do? Many people panic over money (or the lack of it), but for those of us with mental illness, it can feel like a life or death situation: It can trigger an even greater anxiety attack and/or depression. Or it may mean not being able to afford the medication that keeps you well enough to work. What can be done?

In this Not Crazy episode, Gabe and Jackie discuss how you can gain a sense of control in these situations, and Jackie shares her own big money scare.

(Transcript Available Below)

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

About The Not Crazy Podcast Hosts

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from Gabe Howard. To learn more, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

        Jackie Zimmerman has been in the patient advocacy game for over a decade and has established herself as an authority on chronic illness, patient-centric healthcare, and patient community building. She lives with multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis, and depression.

You can find her online at JackieZimmerman.co, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

    Computer Generated Transcript for “Panicked Over Money” Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to Not Crazy, a Psych Central podcast. And here are your hosts, Jackie Zimmerman and Gabe Howard.

Gabe: Hey, everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of the Not Crazy podcast. I would like to introduce my co-host, Jackie Zimmerman, who lives with major depression and anxiety disorders.

Jackie: And you know this guy, Gabe Howard, who lives with bipolar disorder.

Gabe: Jackie, we’ve been friends for a while now, we’ve been doing this show for several months and I decided that I want to risk all of that by talking about the one subject that causes more fights than any other subject known to man.

Jackie: And what would that be?

Gabe: Money. I want to talk about money.

Jackie: Money, money, money.

Gabe: So in a recent poll, the three things that married couples fight about more than anything else are family, religion and money. And I would argue that money is at the top because nobody is taking people like onto the People’s Court or Judge Judy to sue over political and religious differences. Money is everywhere. If you talk to anybody, literally just go grab a stranger on the street. Be like, hey, you ever lost a friend over $10? Almost everybody will have a story of a friendship that just imploded over what we would consider a small amount of money. Money just creates an intense amount of anxiety in our society.

Jackie: And the thing that I think is unique about money and anxiety is that it’s something that I would assume everybody experiences, not just people who are prone to anxiety, not just people who live with mental illness, but everyone has had some kind of issue with money that has given them anxiety.

Gabe: When I was younger, I used to watch golf with my grandfather and, you know, they always do these expose on the multi-millionaire golfers, and they were interviewing one of them and they said, hey, when you have a putt and if you make the putt, you win $100,000 and if you don’t make it, you lose $100,000, does that cause you anxiety? Does that make you nervous? And the guy said, you know, the most nervous I’ve ever been playing golf is when I bet another golfer a hundred dollars that I could make this putt and I didn’t have the hundred dollars in my pocket. That really spoke to me because it wasn’t the amount of money anymore. It was the awkwardness of discussing the money, finding the money, figuring out the money like this is what gave this guy anxiety. And again, he’s famous. I don’t know, maybe it was just a cute story he was telling, but that makes sense to me. You ever been in line and been a dollar short? Like, how embarrassing is that when you thinking that everybody in the store is like over on register five, there’s a tall, fat redhead that does not have one dollar to pay for his groceries.

Jackie: I can feel that because if you’ve ever had your credit card declined for any reason, your debit card and you want to justify it. I know there’s money on there. That’s so weird. I just used it like I just got paid. I swear I’m not a poor person. There’s this like panic where you just want to justify why it didn’t work. And my assumption is all of this comes from the scarcity model, right? We’re all afraid of not having enough. What happens when we don’t have enough? So how hard do we have to work to get enough? What if we’re working really hard and we still don’t have enough? And the anxiety around all of that of how much do you have? What happens when it’s gone? I think is something that is underlying in our society and in everybody but amplified for those who live with any kind of illness. Because for me specifically, when I worked at a big, fat corporate job and I made all kinds of money, all I thought to myself was, I’m staying here forever. So that way I make so much money that I never have to worry about what happens if I actually can’t work again because I will just bank so much money. I’ll have so much. I’ll always pay my health insurance. I’ll always have all of this stuff. And spoiler alert, I don’t work there anymore. I didn’t bank any money when I did work there. But when you have an illness, whatever kind it is, you’re worried about money not just because of normal reasons, but you’re worried about like, what if I can’t work forever? What if I can’t pay my health insurance? What if I can’t afford to be healthy?

Gabe: There’s a meme that works its way around the Internet that always says that we’re all three bad months away from being homeless. I don’t know if that’s true for all of us, but that really spoke to me because it took about three bad months to really put me in a bad way where I started to need help. On an interesting side note, none of us are three months away from being millionaires. So I think that we need to take that into account when we’re determining how to like maybe, you know, structure our health insurance and things like that. But but wrong. Wrong show. We’ll just put that aside for a moment. But think about this. The whole world is discussing being three bad months away from homelessness. Whether or not that holds up is really irrelevant. I think that does speak to the majority of people. Now, let’s apply that to people living with mental illness, people managing a life long and chronic disorder, because I know that if I couldn’t afford my medication, if I couldn’t afford therapy, if I couldn’t have afforded hospitalizations and on and on and on. Gabe Howard would not be sitting here. That’s just a hard fact. Yes, I worked hard. Yes, I have a loving family. But you know what really saved me? Resources and that resource all boiled down to hundred dollar bills. And that’s sad.

Jackie: The catalyst for this specific episode was from about a week ago, I sent Gabe a text and basically I had a full blown anxiety meltdown because my husband had called me and said, oh my God, our health insurance doubled on my last paycheck. And I said, wait, what do you mean it doubled? They didn’t tell us that. Like, they obviously would communicate that because that’s what normal people think happens in the world. But they didn’t. They just took it out of his check and it was doubled. And I panicked. And I have not had an actual panic attack in, I can’t tell you how long, but I felt it. It was the heart racing, soul crushing. Can’t breathe like, oh, my God, what are we going to do? Because we are people right now who are living pretty paycheck to paycheck. And that is even questionable because I don’t know when my paychecks are coming in, because I work for myself and I don’t have regular paychecks. And my husband took a pay cut a year ago to take the job he’s at now. So all of this is spiraling around my head and I’m like, how are we gonna do this? This is $400 we didn’t know we needed and I could just work harder. But where am I going to find the clients? Just, you know, anxiety spiral talk in your head. And I reached out to Gabe because we were already talking. I said, hey, I know you’re telling me something important right now, but I’m not really listening honestly, because I’m worried about this health insurance thing. And I realized in that moment how money is something that can cause high anxiety. And within a split second, like he sent me that text about our health insurance doubling. And almost immediately I was in a full blown panic about it.

Gabe: There’s so many directions that we can take this, and that makes me excited. I love it when Jackie, says, oh my God, X, and I’m like, Oh my God, we can do y z bat symbol. So we might have to create multiple timelines. And let me ask you multiple questions about this, because the first question that I’m going to ask you is if your health insurance would have doubled and you had a million dollars in the bank, would it have bothered you at all?

Jackie: Me today thinks no, but I also think that people who have a million dollars in the bank are really good about money and any sort of unexpected expense that comes up, they’re upset about it also.

Gabe: I understand what you’re saying because paying attention to our resources is a vital part of money management. But a year ago I was sitting on my couch at like 2:00 in the morning and it was storming and I felt a drop of water on my head. And I looked up and the roof was leaking like leaking a lot. And I saw all of this damage. And I thought, oh, well, that’s a bummer. And I went to bed. I just went to bed. That’s it. There was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t stop the rain. I don’t know how to fix a roof. I don’t know how to fix a ceiling. But the reason that I didn’t freak out and panic is because I had the money. I flat out had the money. I knew that I could afford to fix it. There was nothing I could do. And I slept well. And I think about this because I think about Gabe when he was in the little six hundred square foot apartment living paycheck to paycheck with a thirty five hundred dollar deductible. And anytime my car made a noise, I just white knuckled because I couldn’t afford it. When oil change time came around, I thought, shoot. Where am I gonna get 30 bucks? Because it was hard. It was so hard. And I want to point out and this is where I want to go back to the timeline again. You were perfectly healthy. You weren’t having a medical problem. This was just an expense that rose in price. Right?

Jackie: Correct.

Gabe: So now imagine if the text message you got was from your doctor that you needed to go on a different medication that wasn’t on generic and therefore cost five hundred dollars a month versus the $10 co-pay. Or imagine if you were just diagnosed with bipolar disorder, major depression, schizophrenia, psychosis, and they were recommending an outpatient treatment program where the deductible was thirty five hundred dollars. And I can’t help but notice in all of these scenarios where we get diagnosed with all of these awful things, we all have health insurance. Some of the health insurance are better than others, but health insurance is always present. Now, imagine that you get diagnosed with a serious mental illness or I don’t know, is there such a thing as not a serious mental illness? And you have no health insurance? Because I know that my inpatient hospitalization. What, 17 years ago cost like $80,000. It didn’t cost me because I had health insurance. And I thought that was normal.

Jackie: I think this is a good time to point out, Gabe and I, we both understand our privilege in this conversation. You know, like I can make my bills and I do have health insurance. Gabe, same for him. And I can only imagine what it’s like in this moment where you’re choosing between paying for health insurance and feeding your kids or one of those other really intensely awful choices you have to make in terms of what to do with this small amount of money that you make. Granted, if our health insurance. Rewinding for a minute, our health insurance didn’t double. They just had an error on his paycheck, which is like makes me want to write them a heavily-worded note about how rude and anxiety-causing that was. However, if it did double, we would have to make some really, really difficult changes. Not difficult in which kid to feed? Kind of difficult. But where do we rearrange money? The reality is we probably could have found it, but it would have changed the way we live our lives. It would have changed what we do with our time and our energy. And I would have honestly had to work a lot harder to make up for that money. I would’ve had to find more clients. But it’s not lost on me that that is an option that I have is to go find more work. So I want to be cognizant of that in this conversation that Gabe and I both have the ability to figure it out pretty flawlessly in these situations for the people who don’t have the ability to figure it out or they can’t or they’re already working their ass off so hard that making more money is just not an option right now. Like I see you, I have no advice for you. None whatsoever. But I recognize that money and anxiety is significantly more prominent when you don’t have the ability to just get more money.

Gabe: And this is the multiple time line that I want to reconnect back to the beginning. So Jackie, finds out that her bills go up and she freaks out and things. OK, how am I going to find more money? But ultimately, I can do it. If it happened to me and it went up, I’d be like, well, that sucks. I would rather spend the money on something else. But ultimately, I have excess income. I’m fortunate I have more budget, so I’ll just bitch about it to my friends that, ugh, the cost of health insurance is ridiculous and not lose an iota of sleep. Somebody else is like you have health insurance that can go up top. How lucky are you? I would kill to have health insurance at all, let alone have it doubled. And then other people are just so rich that they’re like, I don’t have health insurance. I just pay for everything in cash, because I’m Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos’ lovechild that gets one hundred and eighty five billion dollars allowance a day. And then there’s people that are I don’t even know what the right word is for it.

Gabe: They have a level of financial insecurity that I can’t even adequately explain. And any explanation that I gave would just make me an asshole. There’s really no other way that I can put it. They don’t have a six month wait for a psychiatrist. They’re not even they don’t even have enough money to make the list. And all of us. And this is the takeaway. We’re all fighting each other. We all have mental illness. We all have mental health problems. We’re all trying to figure out how to make it through. And instead of figuring out how to make resources more abundant and accessible for all of us, we’re all like Jackie, she got health insurance complaining about the price. Or, well, she’s so rich, it doesn’t matter. Oh, well, he said he doesn’t even care if his roof falls and he just goes to bed. And that becomes the talking point. I really think that we need to come together on this one and find out why it is not accessible regardless of your socioeconomic status.

Jackie: I don’t know that I totally agree with you. And that’s because I think that if you’re somebody listening to this podcast and you’re going, wow, that asshole is complaining that their health insurance went up and I don’t even have health insurance. Honestly, I don’t think they’re that worried about me and judging me. I think they’re going. I don’t have fucking health insurance and I don’t know how I’m going to make things happen. I agree that obviously we should find a way to like pool resources or ideas and make things happen together. But my assumption and if you are a if you’re that wealthy listener, please sponsor us. We really could use your help right now. But if you’re not that wealthy person and you’re everybody else listening, I don’t think people are necessarily holding grudges against other people in this space. I think everybody’s just trying to survive.

Gabe: That’s a really good point, Jackie. But what bothers me is that what we all have in common is that we’re all fighting really, really hard to survive. And I do think that we determine how much effort the person is putting into survival based on the resources at their disposal. And that’s what I would like to remove. I don’t know that I worked any harder to survive because I had a lot of resources. I just think I didn’t have to work as hard. And I think that society judges people on the lower end of the socio economic status very, very harshly. They say things like, well, why don’t you have savings? Why didn’t you save for a rainy day? Because that’s not an option. That’s really not an option. They say things like, why won’t you be med compliant or why won’t you go see your doctor? They are trying to see a doctor. They’re on a 12 month waiting list for the free clinic. They can’t afford their medications because medications can cost thousands of dollars a year. And they’re choosing between eating, being homeless. And this goes back to something that we really need to discuss. And I’d really like your opinion on it. Jackie, sincerely if you, Jackie Zimmerman, had a choice between paying for safe housing, a safe place to live and food or your mental health care, which would you choose?

Jackie: I would choose a safe place to live. Hands down.

Gabe: And I think that most people would. And I think that we need to understand that many people are in this position.

Jackie: We’ll be right back after these messages.

Gabe: We’re back discussing money and anxiety.

Jackie: Gabe, you’re not wrong. Right? Like, these are all really good points that we need better access to health care. We need a better support system. We need all of these things. But if you’re somebody who doesn’t have any money right now, today, like, for example, I got a stat for you. We know that I love stats. There was a stat by the Royal College of Physicians, whoever the hell that is, that said that half of people with anxiety also have a problem with debt. So are you predisposed to one or the other? That’s not even talking about medical debt. That’s just talking about debt in general. So how do you get out of this kind of debt? How do you save if you’re not making any money? You can’t even pay your bills. How are you going to save these things?

Gabe: I’m not sure that there is an answer that doesn’t involve like high-level advocacy work and this is where I get stuck, Jackie. It really is where I get stuck. I you know, I don’t know. Marry well?

Jackie: That is one of the crux is of talking, is the plural of crux cruxes? I don’t know. That is a crux, we’ll say, of talking about money in general is that there is no one size fits. All right. Yes. Save more, make more done. Easy. But that is literally not an option for most people.

Gabe: Spend within your means, I love that one.

Jackie: Right? All that bullshit.

Gabe: Live within your means is the phrase that everybody uses, and depending on where you are on the socioeconomic ladder, that might mean to move down. You don’t need four Disney vacations a year. You don’t need a new car every year. Like that’s understandable, right? This could be really good advice for some people. We’re not saying that it’s not.

Jackie: I think it’s bullshit.

Gabe: We can all save a little more and clip another coupon. And we all don’t need to buy the biggest house that we can find. But like you said, it’s bullshit for a lot of people. It’s bullshit for a lot of people. They can’t. There’s no money to save. What do you have to say to those people? How are we going to relieve those folks’ anxiety, Jackie? I am afraid that somebody is going to listen to this and be like Gabe and Jackie said that I’m fucked. Their conclusion was I am fucked and I don’t know what to say to folks. And whenever we talk about money and anxiety and anxiety and money and driving it together, I think that people don’t want to dive deep into this. So they say platitudes like save for a rainy day. You don’t have to get dessert. Clip coupons. I use an app that tells me if Amazon has better prices. I’m not saying that any of these are bad ideas. But does it solve the big problem? For real, what is your coping mechanism for this, therapy guru Jackie.

Jackie: Well, for me personally, I use spreadsheets. I love a good spreadsheet one, because I am terrible with math and the spreadsheet will do math for me. So the way that I handle this is seeing all of the money and I won’t lie. Sometimes when you look at all of the money and all the way it’s being spent and how little money you actually have. It feels worse because you’re like, wow, I really have nothing. But then at least I know what I’m working with. I think in a lot of these situations, people don’t know actually what their overhead is in their life. Right? If you’re living outside your means, how do you know that if you don’t know what your actual means are? So I don’t have any great tips on how to get out of this situation, how to make more money, save more money. If I knew that, I’d be doing it myself. I don’t have that. But what I can say is for me, looking over it does help. Like pretending like it’s not there doesn’t help. Some people, I think, just go. I know that I can’t afford these things, so I just don’t think about it and then pretend it’s gonna go away. And I’m not going to say that’s a bad idea. If that helps you and you can get through your day by just not thinking about it. Maybe that’s the right choice for you.

Gabe: I am going to hardcore disagree with that. I see that as a short term solution.

Jackie: Oh, for sure.

Gabe: It sort of reminds me of, don’t open your bills on the weekends. I dig that. I dig that advice. It was it was advice that my grandmother had. She’s like, look, I don’t bank on the weekends. Weekends are for my family. I don’t open my credit card bills on the weekends. I didn’t want to tell her that, you know, now credit card bills or text messages where they send you every second of every day and maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe there’s a token of good advice in the advice that I just called bad. Which is that you need to have a time and place. Now is the time to manage money and now is the time to be present in other areas.

Jackie: Well, yes, obviously, I didn’t mean ignore it forever. That doesn’t solve anything, but like compartmentalizing what you’re doing with your money.

Gabe: I think that that is really, really good advice. I can get on board with that. Some other hints and tips that I want to give to people are self-advocacy is real advocacy. So often we have this desire to help other people that we don’t help ourselves. And you’re probably thinking, well, how can I help myself? And here’s how. Ask your doctor if they have a sliding scale. Ask your doctor if they have a zero interest payment plan. Google the medicines that you’re being prescribed and see if they have a prescription card that offers a discount. Many of the newer medications do, and it will reduce your co-pay in some cases from $300 all the way down to $10, but almost always by at least 50 percent. And this can make medications more affordable. Google free clinics. You may have to wait longer in the waiting room. In fact, you probably will have to wait longer in the waiting room. And that makes it not available to everybody. But if it is available to you, use it. There are ways that you can lower health care costs or get a payment plan that’s not at 29% interest or 22% interest. Like if you put it on a credit card, you do have to ask. They’re not offering it to people. I believe like Jackie, that taking control lowers anxiety because even if the thing around the corner is bad. I myself am less anxious if I know that it’s around the corner. It’s the things that pop out of the shadow at the last minute and go Boo! Those are the things that scare me the most. And finally, I don’t mean to steal Jackie’s thunder, but I kind of want to. Talk about your money anxiety in therapy. People don’t want to talk about money. Tell the people in your life that you’re anxious about money. Tell your therapist that you’re anxious about money. There is nothing wrong with being anxious about money.

Jackie: Thunder stolen 100%. I did talk about money in therapy last Friday, but I agree wholeheartedly. The idea of asking for help. Nobody is going to help you if you don’t ask for it in terms of reduced rates. I once got a $8,000 MRI for $10 because I asked for help. And then telling people, like Gabe said. I mean Gabe and I got together a couple of weeks ago and had a pretty in-depth conversation about money and he gave me some cool ideas I hadn’t thought about. I probably gave him zero ideas. But it was one of those things where just having a dialogue about money made it less scary to talk about money.

Gabe: We’re taught in our society not to discuss money. I don’t believe in this at all. I discuss money constantly. I discuss money with my family. I discuss money with my friends. And I believe this is why I have a different, and I’m going to say healthier relationship, with my finances. It’s also why I never pay too much for a car, because I know what all of my friends and family paid for their cars. I know the horror. But listen, your family may work differently, but your friends might not. And the Internet absolutely does not. Google the average cost of things. Google places that offer discount cards or lower end solutions. I am as shocked as anybody that I have gotten medical care at Wal-Mart, but I’m not going to lie. I’ve gotten medical care at Wal-Mart. The clinic there is fantastic. And it’s set up for people who need to pay less. And it helped me a lot when I needed help. There are lots and lots of those options. You just have to look around for them because they’re not the popular ones. They’re not the hospitals. They’re not the doctors. They’re not the ones that people commonly think about. All of these things can give you more control. Remember, having more control does not mean that negative consequences aren’t coming your way. It just means that you’re out in front of them. I believe that that’s empowering. I believe that matters. I believe that that will put you in a better position to deal with it. But most importantly, I believe that you’ll feel better when it’s all over. At least the negative thing didn’t get the satisfaction of yelling boo and scaring the shit out of you. And I think I really believe that from a personal empowerment perspective that has just a tremendous amount of value. Yes, the bad thing happened, but at least it didn’t trick you.

Jackie: And I believe circling back to the beginning that this is not going to be the last panic attack I have about money. But to Gabe’s point, I do try to get in front of it. I know what’s happening, which is why the unexpected cost made me lose my shit. But there is something to be said about being in control of it. And much like we’ve said about being a patient in general, nobody is going to advocate for you except for you. So this stands for how you handle your money, how you ask for help when you can’t cover your bills and how you move forward if you’re somebody who is in a position who literally cannot make any more money than they are currently making.

Gabe: Jackie, I couldn’t agree more, did discussing money with me make you anxious?

Jackie: I do not find discussing money with you to be anxiety-causing. And maybe it’s because we’ve developed a rapport based on brutal honesty. But I think this is one of those simple ways to take away the power that money has over us is just to talk about it.

Gabe: Listen up, everybody, we have some favors to ask of you, and don’t worry, it won’t cost you a dime. Wherever you downloaded this podcast, please subscribe, rank and review. Share us on social media. And when you do, tell people why they should listen. And if you have buddies and friends, email it to them. Tell them what to do. You know what? You should make it a full time career promoting the Not Crazy podcast. Jackie and I would love that. Stay tuned after the credits because hey, there’s outtakes and Jackie and I, we mess up a lot and we’ll see everybody next Monday.

Jackie: Have a great week.

Podcast: Panicked Over Finances? Why Money Influences our Mental Health syndicated from