Coping With a Mental Health Crisis

The Estefans reveal their private and deeply personal struggles with mental health issues and how they cope. Performer and social media star Lele Pons candidly shares her extreme challenges of living with severe OCD, and actress Karla Souza talks about how growing up with a bipolar mother led to her own dramatic battle with mental illness.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Venidos Me and the Gloria Stefan. Here you are listening
to Red Table Talk via Stephens Podcast. All your favorite
episodes from our Facebook watch show in audio on this
Red Table Talk via Stephen's. Millions of people are suffering
in silence. We're in a worldwide mental health crisis. I

(00:22):
actually suffer from extreme anxiety. You are not alone. Then
I started freaking out because then the bat thoughts come
in LI bonds, debilitating disorder. I'm a loser. This is embarrassing.
Who's gonna love a person I need? Let's just kill her?
Actress Carlos Sosa's traumatic breakdown. I would see my friends

(00:42):
faces turn into rats and they were gonna eat me it.
Anyone can be affected. I remember thinking, what if I
hang myself and I had even picked out the tree
that I might do it on. Maybe you talk about it.
You can talk someone exactly everything. Three to one. We're

(01:12):
back at our Red Table today is kind of an emergency. Honestly,
what's happened in the country. We are in the biggest
mental health crisis of our time. Over three hundred million
people have a mental illness and may never get the
care they desperately need. This hits home for all of
us in some way, all right. I mean, we as

(01:32):
a family have experienced our own brush with mental health
in a variety of ways, different times, different reason. I'm
gonna be the first one to say I've always felt
very good in my own skin, except when I was
fifteen and my dad had spent a year already at
home that I was taking care of him, and he

(01:53):
was heading downhill fast. Even though my other survived the
Vietnam War, he still became a casualty of combat. His
exposure to agent orange, a poison used for warfare, resulted
in his diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Sadly, millions of soldiers

(02:16):
suffered similar faiths, developing cancers and neurological conditions. He lost
his ability to speak, he couldn't walk, so he would
stand up to try to go to the bathroom and
he would fall and he would soil himself. I would
have to bathe him. He would be crying, embarrassed and

(02:39):
trying to make me feel better. So rough for you
and for him, for him particularly, and that's what would
kill me. And then I didn't want to tell my
mother that I was starting to feel cracks in my armor.
I didn't want to tell my grandmother because I didn't
want to worry her. And my father had left a
gun in my house when he went to war for
supposed protection for my mother. I knew where that gun was,

(03:03):
and I started having desperation thoughts, and I remember going
to the place thinking, Okay, the gun is there, but
what if instead I hang myself because that might be bloody.
And I had even picked out the tree that I
might do it on, and then I thought, okay, hold, hold,

(03:26):
my mom's gonna find me. My sister is gonna I'm
not gonna be here for her. And what got me
through that moment I was thinking of others. Was thinking
of other people that I loved, and I said, Okay,
I need to be here for them. I can't go anywhere. Well.
I knew it was destroying my family, so little by little,

(03:49):
I just focused on school. I took myself through the
whole process. I think it helped for me to imagine
what life was going to be like forever for the
people that I loved. I never spoke to my friends
about what I was going through with my dad, because
it seemed to me like they were they were going

(04:10):
through their teenage years having fun doing the things that
they're supposed to do. Why is it that we never
talked about it? Right? I found a lot of self help,
and your dad came along. I was about to say,
do you think love has something to do with it? Absolutely?
Love and making my life at what I really loved
to do, studying psychology help me. I'm still fascinated with it.
I kind of think once in a while that I

(04:32):
might go back and get a PhD. You heard it
here first they called back queen doctor. Oh god, no, doctor, Stefan.
What I got through it? A lot of people really
don't get through it? And you have some experience with this.
Oh yes, I come from a family that we've struggled
with mental health. My story basically is from my childhood,

(04:57):
my mom when she passed away. I was ten and
a half eleven. For this show, I had to call
my father, call my brother. It's incredible how careful we become,
the three of us when we have to talk about
my mom and her death. Your dad had to have
her hospitalized several times. I would get home from school

(05:19):
and she's unstable again, you know, like I would see it.
I would see her eyes, her body language. She would
change like a different person, a different person. She was depressed,
you know. She would drive me and suddenly she would say, Oh,
the song is coming closer to planet Earth. We're all
going to tie. Look at this song. It's you know,
it's getting closer. It's getting you know. She would have

(05:40):
this bridget yeah totally, or suddenly I would wake up
in the morning and she's like, I'm the virgin Mary,
so I would have to deal with her as a virgin.
I grew up very fast because your mom took her life. Yes,

(06:00):
that day, I remember my father getting there and telling me,
you know, life is not fair. Uh, and sometimes you
don't get exactly what you want and uh. And he
went on to say, your mom, I knew right away.

(06:21):
I know, Fluck. Your mom passed away. She locked herself
in the house nobody could get in. Yeah, right, and
the neighbors realized something was happening, and they took you.
I've never talked about it, first of all, out of
respect everyone that went through the process. And the second,
I'm a public figure. Every time I would try to

(06:42):
talk about it, I couldn't write. I would just like cry.
And I think that was my depression. I would I
would go back and think we could have put something
like you know, she couldn't cope. She didn't have the
family there. It was horrible in Cuba at the time.
She came from a family with a lot of money,

(07:04):
wealthy family, wealthy family. Suddenly Fidel Castro takes over Communism
and my father did everything he could. Was very young.
But I look back now and I'm like, how the
hell did I survive so much? I know, Flaka. For me,
it's been when I finally found peace. I realized that

(07:25):
I was able to talk about it and deal with it.
The word is not normal, but the word is acceptance.
And if maybe you talk about it, you can help
someone exactly because if I did it, believe me, with
everything that I went through, people can do it. When
you go through something so dark in your life, you

(07:49):
learn the best mechanisms to keep on going. We're all
learning a lot about each other. I actually suffered from
extreme anxiety. It's creeped up on me throughout the years.
I felt like a guilt, like, oh my god, all
of my family, everybody around me has struggled so much
and here I am living this charmed life. You guys

(08:11):
are incredible parents, attentive, incredible childhood. And I was already
in my early twenties. I was holding all this thing
about my sexuality inside. I had started my relationship away.
I got sick. When she passed, I stopped eating completely.
That was the beginning of a cycle. The small steps
of anxiety and depression. There are little changes, and it

(08:33):
feels like a wave that just captures you and you
can't get out, you know, like once you notice you're
in it, you're too far in it. You know, here
goes my stomach. I'm not eating now. All of a sudden,
I'm tired all the time. Now, all of a sudden,
I feel a tightness in my chest that I'm thinking
is like, you know, what's going on with me? And
then anxiety. There were moments that I was just I
couldn't even handle myself and I was running in the

(08:55):
street and hurting myself, not noticing, you know. And in
the last three years, I think I've gone through five phones.
It would get to like and then the moment it happens,
it's like, what did I just do? Like? Who is
this person? What's going on? But by the way, I
was freaking out everybody was freaking out. I started taking

(09:18):
medication and like a dog absolutely after after because by
the way, I am worry about medication, but I haven't
seen where you were heading, and I was really worried
that you would go too far into that hole and something. Well,
that's the problem when you get to a place where
you genuinely feel and I'm sure people can relate like

(09:39):
that's a dark place that has no tunnel, no lights,
no ladder, no nothing. You feel like you're sitting in
the bottom of a box and nothing's gonna get you
out of there. That's horrible. The darkest point was when
I was actually on the medication and I was feeling
falsely better. So I woke up the next day and
I stopped taking it. Cold turkey can't do that. When

(10:01):
I stopped the medication, you have thoughts that don't feel
like your own. You start feeling like everything is dark.
I wanted to take my life, and I didn't understand
why you and I understand, but everybody was going through
their thing. I don't want to worry anybody, but then
I felt like, oh my god, if I'm honest, then
they're worried. That makes me more anxious, because then when

(10:21):
your brain starts describing yourself, I'm crazy, Oh my god,
nobody's gonna love me, Oh my god, everybody's gonna worry,
And then you create the story. People need people, but
you have to make the first step to say that
I need help. Can we talk? I don't want to
scare you, but I didn't know that you weren't going
through this. I think that my journey now, which is

(10:42):
the beginning of the true healing process, is realizing that
if you have anxiety depression, these are human. These are
things that come with human everybody. It's a question of
every day fighting the fight, being present and mindful in
every moment. Talking about your struggles is also a Catharsis. Listen,

(11:05):
we're all working it out. COVID and the quarantine has
really awoken a huge problem on a mass scale all
over the world. Everyone is experiencing these things. It's an
everyday battle, and that's what we're doing at this table.
To her billions of fans, lele pons life looks like

(11:28):
a fairy tale. Behind the humor and the glamor of
being a social media superstar, Lilepons have been hiding a deep,
dark secret, hurt, hurt, so she struggled with Tourette syndrome.
I'm just like embarrassing, this is not your fault and battled,

(11:49):
crippling O c D. It all came to a head
in the early days of the pandemic. It's just me
and myself and my alone, and I hate it. No
longer willing to suffer in silence, Le opened up her

(12:09):
life and revealed her truth. I watched your series. It
is very powerful and you were very brave, and I
think you're going to help a lot of people. I
mean shot because I met you a few years ago,
and for me, Lelipons' is like, oh my god, I
had We were to high school together, and honestly, you

(12:33):
were the cool girl. I never would have guessed anything
was going on with you. You were always such a bright,
bubbly presence. I left school for a year just to
work on my mental health because I couldn't function. What
started making you notice that something wasn't right? Well, I
was really young. I was I was nine, so I
didn't notice that. My parents noticed that I couldn't stop

(12:53):
touching the handle of the car. And my mom was
like coming inside the house and I was like cry.
I was like, oh my god, I can't. I don't
know what's going on, Like what is you know, they
didn't know what it was. And then they called a
lot of doctors and I got diagnosed with the c
D and tried, Wow, what is an O c D episode?
I feel like for you, it's like a very strong
urge of doing something that you don't want to do,
but you have to do it because you feel so

(13:14):
uncomfortable and your and you actually some sometimes start itching
because you like your whole bodies and like an anxious
for me, like my O c D is touching, doing
rituals and three because sometimes there's a meaning why people
do things in O c D. You know. It's like
I'm gonna give you an example, like why am I
touching them things in three times? Because I want to
her because I think that if I don't touch it
three times and I go for the Holy Spirit, God

(13:36):
and Jesus, they're gonna punish me. Yeah, there's gonna be
a repercusion, yes, exactly. Something triggers me. It could be
anything a word, maybe you said the word wrong, and
I was just like then I started saying in my
head perfectly then I get stuck with that feeling. Then
I can't even move, I can't really react to people.
Then I start like freaking out because then the thoughts
come in, you know, bad thoughts come in, and then

(13:57):
I don't function. What are the bad thoughts? I'm a loser?
This is so embarrassing. Who's gonna love a person like me?
If I don't do this, my family is gonna die.
I'm not going to have a successful career anymore. You're
never gonna find a man, you're never gonna get married,
you're never gonna be happy, You're never gonna have a baby.
That's it. It's over. Okay, let's just kill it ourselves,
you know yeah, you know, Like then I start freaking out,

(14:18):
and then I don't function. When you start the episode,
is there a beginning in an end. If you don't
manage it, it could go on for days. It's it's
tough something to mind, I can imagine, and everyday test
become really challenging, even for you. Even taking a shower. Yeah,
that's the worst. I've missed so many meetings, so many auditions,
so many things because of the shower. Walk me through

(14:38):
what goes through your mind when you are flipping the
shower handle. It just has to feel right. So I
do it like that three times to do it really, like,
really hard, because sometimes my O c D is about pressed,
like you have to feel the texture, you know sometimes
you know, like when I touch, I touch like this,
like and um, I don't touch like if I touch
like this, it's like, oh my god, I didn't touch
it right, you know. So I do this, so watch

(15:00):
I'm going to break it because I had to feel though.
So there's a perfect way for you, a traffic way
for me in my head to touch it. That gives
you relief, That gives me. Really, I'm like, calm, did
something make it worse? Stress? Whatever triggers you depends on
what the city you have. Why did you keep it
a secret for so long? I was really embarrassed. I
actually spent four years literally be like I don't care

(15:20):
about therapy. I don't need it because I'm so famous
and like, I'm too good for this. I've cured myself.
I said that to myself four years, and I went
through a very low moment. I made so many mistakes,
like personal life, and there's a lot of things that
I can't explain because they're so yeah, exactly like in
mys just like I'll go and get you and convince

(15:41):
you to love me kind of thing, right, and I'll
do everything. I'll buy you a house. I've done that before.
I'll buy you anything you want. Just love me kind
of thing. Okay, who's the guy you put the house? All?
I tried to my house, try to buy the house.
I don't know if you remember Juampa. I was obsessed
with him. In two thousand sixteen, Let It Bones and
One Pasu Does, Displays of affection went viral, garnering them

(16:04):
the hashtag Zooree pounds. Millions of fans thought it was
true love, bringing them more fame and money. We are thriving,
but reality was far from romantic. He's my best friend,
but I was obsessed with him at one point, and
I gave him this seventy dollar party with all his

(16:25):
friends for his twenty second birthday. It's not even that
big of a deal, you know what I mean. It's
a twenty one twenty two did a whole beautiful like ceremony.
I made a dance for him. I told everybody to
take pictures of us, like randomly and say that like
our relationship is real, Like I coordinated like a freak.

(16:46):
Are you in love with him? I wasn't. I was
obsessed with him. And then when the obsession left, when
the obsession lets, I was like, what just happened? So
you think it has something to do with your condition? Yeah?
Like yeah, you want to be like loved in my face?
You knowvalidation. That's actually exactly when my manager said the
hell was that? And I was like, I don't know.
So they like took me to arrange for a month

(17:08):
and I met so many patients that had the same
thing as me, And that's when I was like, I
have a big platform. What did I do with it? Now?
You allowed cameras to capture very personal moments very I
was like, oh my god, here is really in an
intense therapy session, explained to saying why you're having a
hard time right now that he came in. I love

(17:29):
ticks and and un noticeable and I'm ashamed of having ticks. Yeah,
and what is it? What is your job right now?
What do you need to do? Yeah, so we're gonna
show him how your text are. You're gonna actually make it.

(17:53):
You're a brave girl, and that's excellent. You know what,
It's going to help a lot of people. For me,
the hardest C is the R O C D, which
is the relationship, because it's a it's another factor. What
happens in your sexual life. I want to know my
sex life. I'm a beast perfect. This is getting a
little out of control over here. All right, let's all

(18:16):
take a breath. Let's all take a breath. Carla Sosa
started one of my favorite TV shows, How to Get
Away with Murder. I loved her character, Laurel Castillo, but
I had no idea what she has dealt with off screen.
Welcome to the red table. First, let me tell you
what a huge fan I am, all right, And the
fact that the first time I ever heard you speak

(18:39):
Spanish on that show, I was like, she's lat That
was huge her network TV. And then one once they
actually decided to not even put subtitles so to include
Spanish and basically say you gotta learn. After having seen
the show, I was fan girling over you, But I
know now your fanly had some mentally shoes as well.

(19:02):
I grew up with mom who struggles with bipolar disorder.
Multiple family members have had it. My husband's brother's schizophrenic.
I had a psychotic break at one point in my life.
Like my entire family has been affected by this. It
is a family issue growing up. You know, I would
wake up and my mom was putting us in the
car at four am to go and pray on people,

(19:23):
and she was touched by God and she is having
grandiose ideas. And then other points I would wake up
and she was doing a fire in the backyard, and
just things that you know are shocking. And when your
schoolmates find out, LaMaMa loca. It's demonized been a Latine community.
It's like la locaa. Oh, we don't talk about that,

(19:47):
we deny it. So you had mentioned that you had
a mental break of your own. I'm still finding out
what happened because I had no idea what was going on.
But I basically lost the ability to speak. I was
eighteen and studying in London. I was exhausted. I was
doing way too much. It was an anxiety filled, fear

(20:07):
based mutinous. I would have thoughts, but you know, when
you uh what you're looking for the right word, it's
kind of that feeling, but it doesn't go. I couldn't
explain what was happening to me, and it was hell.
It was absolute hell. I struggled with having thoughts of suicide,

(20:30):
and I remember that being the moment of um panic,
all of this trauma of growing up with this and
not knowing how to even talk about it. My parents
took me to talk to the pastor of the church
though pray the pray away. They were doing the best
they could, you know, um And I remember I would

(20:52):
see my friend's faces turned into rats and they were
going to eat me, and people would come into my
house and I was just seeing things. I was in
college with sixty other students and I was like yelling
in the corner talking about people coming at me, and
no one did anything. They signed a petition to have
me kicked out of the school. These are like my

(21:13):
boyfriend at the time, my best friends, like they were scared,
they were terrified. I think people are so yeah, because
they haven't been they haven't been exposed. And I had
panics and literally PTSD after this episode because I thought
it's gonna happen again. When I went to the psychiatrist,
who said, I can't tell you if you haven't what

(21:34):
your mom has, and he just gave me sleeping pills.
He's like, you need to sleep, and I slept for
two weeks. I stopped seeing things. Nothing has ever happened again.
It's been almost fifteen years. Sleep and like is huge.
One of my favorite psychiatrists is Dr Brian White. He
told me, if you spend three days without getting the

(21:56):
minimum amount of sleep, your body literally starts taking down.
Look how it reflected in your in What happened to you?
Do you remember when your mom's were having these manic episodes?
What were you feeling? I remember trying to tell her, no, mom,
the sun is not getting closer. We're okay, And nothing

(22:17):
that I would say or that I would do she
would change her mind. What about you? Anger, resentment like
you're going to ruin our family. You're supposed to be
my mom. Why aren't you taking care of me? Or
terrifying me? I thought that she could help it. It
was only until I was an adult that I started
to find people who were struggling with the same memories

(22:37):
that I had. And there's still like a huge stigma. Um.
I think as well because in the Latin A community,
it's very much like pray harder. If you're not praying
hard enough, then you feel guilty and there's a lot
of shame because it's it's interesting to me that you know,
cancer isn't considered a weakness. Any of the other diseases

(22:58):
are not considered a weakness. And I think you know
as well. My chismo has a huge thing to do
with it, because like my cheesmo for both men and
women is like you are considered weak if you have
any sort of emotional struggle. It's considered so weak for
men to ever be like, hey, I'm having issues with
with this, but knowing that what you have, it's okay,

(23:19):
it's not you. Whatever you have does not define you,
and that's part of who you are, exactly, part of
who you are. You're you're gonna have to manage it.
I have one question. Yeah, I haven't slept to be
honest today. Do you take pills you know to sleep? Ye?
Not anyone? No, right now I do. I can't fall
a sleep, but I took your pills. Just like really
concerning right now, if you have a sleeping pill and

(23:40):
you certainly start feeling things or having thoughts that you
didn't have before, you've got to communicated. People who have
tendencies at all with mental health issues, like when they're young,
I'm just gonna try some drugs. My friends do it.
They're fine drugs for anyone who has any of this
in their family. I just want to be like, just
don't do yourself a favor and don't go there, because

(24:01):
self medicating with that stuff is so dangerous because then
it just prolongs and it makes it even worse, and
you're burying it rather than treating the other problems, colliding
with the other pills. If you do alcohol, that's the
worst you do alcohol or like drugs, it collies with
the other pists. For people who are struggling, the best
thing that I can do is learn about what they have.

(24:23):
My favorite thing is going to group therapy. I love
that because you here's so many testimonies, right, Yeah, they
help you. Even people that don't know you help. That
is so that's that's the best for me. You feel sameness,
you feel connection. You can also see other people who
has had it and like you and who have succeeded.
That's so important exactly for me, the suicidal thoughts came,

(24:45):
but not knowing what to do, and I was just like,
I'm just gonna end it. For y'all. And so when
you're in a group and there's more people talking, you're
just suddenly like on a lifeboine and you're just like, oh,
my goodness, another person grew up the way I did.
Oh can we talk about that? And it's suddenly became
you said, normalize, you connect. That's why I'm married who
I married. Genuinely. I had never spoken about my mom

(25:06):
to any of my boyfriends. Met my husband. He told
me his kids, frank father. I was like, oh really
the first time he met my mom, my mom was
on a manic episode, and he was as calm as day,
knew exactly what we needed to do. There was the most,
the deepest connection in terms of that. It's like the
support system of people talking about it and sharing stories

(25:26):
that I think is super powerful. And I'm just so
happy that we're talking about it. We're doing this because
we want to try to help others here, because there's
a lot of people suffering in silence. For some reason.
Any other illness is cool. People. Mental illness has had
a stigma for many years, and it really shouldn't. Her
brains an important organ that also, you know, things happen,

(25:49):
And they said, I really want to thank you for
really going out there with your stories that I'm sure
people are going to really appreciate and learn from and
hopefully all of us together can make a difference. Thank you,
and thank you very much. Thank you. We love you
for doing what's hard. Thanks for listening. To join the

(26:09):
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(26:29):
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