How to Express Concern About Someone’s Mental Health and When to Shut Up About It (Ep. 22)
Also: Reggie Watts, mermaids, and some options for when your foot comes loose
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Who’s askin’?
Nearly every time I give a talk and there’s a Q&A afterwards, I’m asked a variation on the same question: If I’m worried about someone’s mental health and they’re not doing anything about it, how do I approach them about it and encourage them to get help?
The question comes from people worried about their sibling, parent, child, friend, etc. And when someone close seems to be in distress, you want to help them, because you’re a compassionate human being. Makes sense.
I have never been all that comfortable answering a question like that because every situation is different and because I feel like I could swerve hard into very murky territory quite easily. So I give the same caveat I often give: “I don’t have any training in how to answer a question like that but here’s what I would probably do.” My answer is generally along the lines of talking to that person and modeling on yourself first.
So something along the lines of “I have been having a rough time lately but I started seeing a really great therapist and it’s helping. Ever go through something like that?” That way you’re modeling that it’s okay to get therapy and that you’re open to connecting about it. Then if the person correctly guesses that you’re getting at something there, you can say, “Well, yeah.”
I worry that some people asking me these questions after these talks are looking for a way to guarantee that such a talk will go smoothly, but I can’t offer that. Because mental health is messy. Sometimes relationships are messy. And the way society views mental health problems is, well, messy.
So we set out to ask people who would know better than me. Quanah Walker is director of behavioral health at HealthPartners in Minnesota and a former therapist. Megan Auster-Rosen is a therapist in L.A. It shouldn’t have surprised me, I guess, that the therapist take on this was to answer a question with a series of other questions: What do you know about this person? What do you know about yourself? Why do you think that stepping in could actually solve the problems they’re having? What is your actual motivation for wanting to attempt to help them?
As I type this, it occurs to me that I’ve heard of several actors going on to become therapists. It’s not surprising. A trained actor has asked themselves those questions about every character they play in every scene they’re in. But being a professional actor is a brutal business so maybe just take those skills and apply them to actual people in actual situations.
Anyway okay so listen to the episode.
Almost PARADOX, we’re knocking on heaven’s door
Why does Mike Reno keep coming up in these newsletters?
I was just thinking about how… funny?… odd? … tragic? … back to funny? it is that I find myself relentlessly pushing and promoting a show built around my point of view as a person who has struggled with a condition that says my point of view doesn’t matter and that I’m a big dumb piece of nothing. “Be sure to download my worthless prattle!” kind of thing. “Dislike and subscribe!”
I had forgotten that the song “Almost Paradise” is from Footloose.
For those of you who haven’t seen Footloose, it’s about a rebellious teenager who moves to a small town and all he wants to do is dance but then his foot comes loose and so he can’t. Eventually, the foot comes all the way off and it’s replaced by a little swivel wheel like on an office chair. Then that gets replaced by a roller skate.
Footloose!
Yes. Yes. Goddammit Absolutely Yes.
Cool article in USA Today that I read online instead of at breakfast in a hotel. (That was mean).
The article asks if it’s time to get rid of homework for kids and has mental health professionals weighing in.
For starters, he says he can't grade work on "even playing fields" when students' home environments can be vastly different.
"Even students who go home to a peaceful house, do they really want to spend their time on busy work? Because typically that's what a lot of homework is, it's busy work," he says in the video that has garnered 1.6 million likes. "You only get one year to be 7, you only got one year to be 10, you only get one year to be 16, 18."
I live in the Twin Cities (where I recorded my live album “Intinsity in Twin Cities”) (No I didn’t) and while the public schools are pretty good here, there’s also an atmosphere of intense academic achievement. So there are lots of standardized tests, lots of professional tutors, and just so much homework. And I’ve seen it mess up so many kids. There are plenty of cases of these students going on to prestigious colleges, which might be good or not depending on your point of view. I think a lot of the time, the “successful” kids are the ones who have learned to diminish their own personhood to be a more effective cog in the machine.
"More than half of students say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress can do on our bodies," she says, adding that staying up late to finish assignments also leads to disrupted sleep and exhaustion.
Cynthia Catchings, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist at Talkspace, says heavy workloads can also cause serious mental health problems in the long run, like anxiety and depression.
A lot of what the article talks about is busywork. Those fucking worksheets that don’t really teach anything but… well, I’m not sure what they’re supposed to do. Sometimes my kids would bring home word searches as homework and we had a deal with them: give us parents the word searches. Go do something else. Something fun. If your teachers ask who did the word searches, tell them your parents did because word searches are a waste of your personal time.
Mermaid Bar in, of course, Great Falls
I’m going to be driving through Montana coming up here. When I told a friend about this, he asked if I would be going to the mermaid bar. “The what now?” I asked.
Later, he sent me a link to the Sip n’ Dip Lounge that has a pool and people dressed up as mermaids and also booze and gambling and it’s kind of sexual but mostly just odd. Like if Las Vegas got kicked in the head by a horse. In other words, it’s in Great Falls.
I lived in Montana briefly many years ago and have had occasion to meet many people from that state. And there’s just something about Great Falls. Things there, places there, people from there, they always seem to have added dimensions of creativity and oddness and eccentricity. Maybe it has something to do with being off the freeway. It’s very difficult to accidentally end up in Great Falls, you have to intend to go there, and most people don’t go there. So it’s this weird little bubble.
Reggie Watts is from Great Falls. I love Reggie Watts and Great Falls.
Probably not going to the Sip n’ Dip though.
This has nothing much to do with mental health. Just thought I’d share.
