Let's Become Therapists And Reject BS Workplace Mental Health Programs
And oh yeah, let's visit a huge cow too
Welcome new subscribers!
There sure have been a lot of you in the last couple three days and I’m not… sure… why. But no matter! Glad you’re here!
Let’s explore your feelings about wanting to be a therapist
I don’t know where I got the idea for this week’s show but it was probably from some cordoned off part of my brain. See, I’ve thought about going back to school (yikes) and becoming a therapist. Keeping this show and adding a therapy practice on the other side. I don’t think I’ll actually do it but I considered it enough to look into the process a bit and then RUMINATE a lot.
But I figured if it crossed my mind then it probably also occurred to other people who were interested enough in mental health to listen to my show. So I called up Lori Gottlieb, the author and therapist who left behind a career in television to first go to med school and then later become a therapist. I wanted to find out what it’s like to make that shift. I knew she could talk about it. Then I called up Andrea Kremer from our Preshies group on Facebook, who I knew had also become a therapist fairly recently after a long career in marketing. Andrea said being on a show alongside Lori was like learning to play guitar and then being told right away that you’re performing with Brian May but she did great.
I couldn’t really get into the particulars of exactly how one becomes a therapist because the process tends to vary pretty widely from state to state but I think the conversations give a feel for the realities of doing the job. I was pleased to learn that being a therapist is less about remembering particular lessons you studied in school and more about forming a connection with your client based on the humanity that you already brought into the fern-strewn room.
In my interview with Lori, she mentions that she worked on the tv show Friends and I ask her which Friend needed therapy the most. She pushed back on the question but in my mind it’s totally Ross.
This newsletter is free. But it does take time and effort to provide the world with the newsletter and the Depresh Mode podcast.
If this enterprise can’t raise enough money from listeners/readers, it will stop. Yes, I cut and paste this section from previous newsletters but it’s actually true. I hope it doesn’t come to that.
If you’ve already donated, thank you. If not, go here, pick a level that works for you, then select DEPRESH MODE from the list of shows. And thank you.
Kit Harington figures some things out
I’ll spare you the writing of “we still don’t have a lot of Game of Thrones figured out but at least actor Kit Harington went to a therapist blah blah blah”. Because that’s dumb. What’s interesting here is that the guy who played Jon Snow eventually determined that there were two forces at work and messing with him: a substance use disorder and ADHD.
Then followed some rejections of treatment and a decision to work all this stuff out on his own, which he says is working but still a struggle.
“My head wants to go to every other thing in the room at once,” he continued, adding that he is sometimes “restless” when he plays with his young children.
Harington noted how it is difficult for him at certain times to deal with his acting career as well as being a father.
“The practicality of getting down to my work at the moment [I am] finding quite tricky. I don’t multi-task well,” he said.
The Seventh Son star added: “If there’s more than one thing going on in my head I get overwhelmed. I get incredibly fretty, anxious.”
“My head’s all over the shop,” he said. “I can’t deal with it.”
Your company’s workplace mental health programs are a stupid waste of time
Or so concludes a recent study by a researcher from Oxford University, a place that has smart people who know things.
The study, published this month in Industrial Relations Journal, considered the outcomes of 90 different interventions and found a single notable exception: Workers who were given the opportunity to do charity or volunteer work did seem to have improved well-being.
Across the study’s large population, none of the other offerings — apps, coaching, relaxation classes, courses in time management or financial health — had any positive effect. Trainings on resilience and stress management actually appeared to have a negative effect.
Why it’s almost as if companies are more interested in *appearing* to give a crap about mental health without the hard work and expense of actually doing something meaningful about it.
As long as there’s snow everywhere, let’s get to know them flakes
Among the scientific facts in this short video: snowflakes ain’t white!
via kottke
On Sleeping with Celebrities: ME! I’m the celebrity
And I drive across North Dakota to find an enormous cow.
In this very special episode of Sleeping with Celebrities, the celebrity is the host. John Moe is the host of Depresh Mode, author of The Hilarious World of Depression, and, in fact, host of this very podcast as well. He talks to himself and to you as he travels across North Dakota from Bismarck all the way to New Salem just to see an enormous fake cow. Yep, you’ll doze off to a luxurious sleep and you may even do so before reaching Salem Sue, the 12,000 pound holstein perched high on a hill, gazing out over the prairie. This episode was recorded in a moving car so you’ll forgive the sub-studio quality.
John! Do it! Become a therapist. It's very doable, and I think you'd be great at it. I assure you, going back to school as an adult is a very different experience than it was when most of us did it the first time, before our prefrontal cortices were fully formed.
Plus, as someone who's read your book and remembers your stories about your school experiences, I wonder if grad school might offer you what a therapist would call a "corrective experience." (That's a good thing.)
Thanks so much for having me on the show and letting me tell my story. It was a pleasure finally getting meet you.