You can read this newsletter or listen to the Depresh Mode podcast for free if you so choose. That’s because the whole thing is donation-driven. If enough people donate, we can exist. If they don’t, the whole thing will shut down. Go here, pick a level that works for you, then select DEPRESH MODE from the list of shows. And thank you.
It seems a little weird to apologize for a one-day delay in a free newsletter. Right? I think so.
Nonetheless, I am sorry. And THAT sorriness is something that I need to process and interpret for myself. Guilt is sometimes an old sandwich that you find on the road and you pull over, grab it, and gobble that shit up. Why are you eating that sandwich, dude? That thing is nasty. Is that tuna in that thing? Do you even know? Oh, now you’re sick and full of remorse? Well no wonder.
You could have just left that weird tuna/guilt sandwich on the side of the road. I mean, clearly it was garbage all along, that’s why the litterbug left it there. It’s gross. You could have chosen other things to consume that are healthier. Much healthier.
Oh no, now I’m making you feel guilty about the guilty sandwich. Somehow I’m trying to feed you a second guilt/tuna on rye. That’s not helping. Let’s just quit it with these sandwiches. They have no nutritional content, just poisons. Gross. Ick.
I interviewed Jamie Lee Curtis on Tuesday
So I’ve been asking people questions into microphones for the last 20 years or so now. At least. And then the people answer the questions into their own microphones and it gets recorded and I play these things back for other people. Then money arrives somehow. It’s the damndest thing.
My conversation with Jamie Lee Curtis happened five minutes before I planned for it to start. She was ready to go early, producer Gabe let me know, and we jumped in. Jamie was in a cabin of sorts. Not sure where but it had all the right gear and she said she records all kinds of things there.
It used to be - pretty recently - that my job involved trying to get people to go to a studio and give up basically half a day to be interviewed by me for free.
Anyway, we talked about two important terms that she uses:
SHOW OFF BUSINESS - This is what Jamie consistently calls her industry. It’s kind of a nod to the inherent silliness of it.
DOPE FIEND - This is what Jamie is, according to Jamie. She was addicted to Vicodin for many years and knows that she has a brain that would happily hop back into it if permitted. She calls herself a dope fiend to denude her habit of any status. She wants to put herself in the same categorization as any other addict, whether they’re on the street or in a cabin tricked out for high-quality audio.
Jamie was very nice and I love her.
Mindfulness practices work but only if you do them
Kind of a tricky story coming out of England where researchers took a look at the efficacy of mindfulness practices among young people in reducing stress and improving overall mental health.
How did it go? Mixed:
Those students that did engage improved, he said, but most did not. “On average they only practised once over 10 weeks of the course. And that’s like going to the gym once and hoping you’ll get fit. But why didn’t they practise? Well, because many of them found it boring.”
He went on: “If today’s young people are to be enthused enough to practise mindfulness, then updating training to suit different needs and giving them a say in the approach they prefer are the vital next steps.”
On the other hand…
While evidence for the effectiveness of this approach among pupils was “weak”, researchers found it had a positive impact on the teachers involved, reducing burn-out, and also on the general school climate or culture, though these positive effects were relatively short-lived.
I’m talking to Lola Kirke in about an hour
I sometimes get a little annoyed when people have many talents because I feel like they’re hogging all the talents and not leaving any for the rest of us.
Lola Kirke is an actor. She was Hailey, the lead character in “Mozart in the Jungle”, she was in “Gone Girl” and “Mistress America”, and she was in this really interesting episode of “The Premise”:
This touches on an issue I’ve always found really interesting: the weight and importance we give criticism - especially personal and vitriolic criticism - from strangers in our society. It’s like we seek out negative opinion to resonate with.
Lola is also a musician, singer, songwriter, and she’s good at that too. Darn it.
She made a 39-minute Jane Fonda style work out video for her new album, “Lady for Sale”. I am not… sure… why… but I’ll ask her!
Be nicer, get better results
It is National Minority Mental Health Month and Yale New Haven Health has some best practices for Clinicians to get best results.
Yale New Haven Health has a developed a broad array of learning resources around diversity, equity and inclusion. I believe the most valuable and effective program that has been implemented is the B.R.A.V.E. program. The acronym stands for Bold/Relevant/Authentic/Valuable/Educational. The program was developed with the goal of creating a safe space for conversations around racism, racial equality and racial healing, but the concepts are easily expanded and applied to reducing the stigma of mental health in the cultural and ethnic minority populations. The steps are essentially:
Reinforce the purpose – create a safe space to share concerns and feelings around comments that you hear.
Set agreements to encourage open and respectful dialogue - listen, acknowledge discomfort, be compassionate and avoid negative language. Assume good intent and value the other person’s feelings.
Open the conversation with your personal story and engage others - share how the experience impacted you and invite others to do the same.
Bring the conversation to a close and thank them for the courage to share and listen - encourage people to think about what they can do to impact change and act.