May 20, 2025 • 50 mins
Madison and Anya have never shied away from talking about mental health — and in past episodes, Anya even shared her initiative to bring a sports psychologist onto the Riveter’s team. Today’s guest is the doctor at the heart of that effort: Dr. Joe Galasso. Together, they explore the powerful intersection of athletics and mental health, and why support systems are essential for athletes navigating public scrutiny, intense competition, and personal identity. Dr. Galasso also discusses the growing destigmatization of mental health, crediting role models like Anya and Madison for helping shift the narrative. Plus, he shares insights from his work with Baker Street Behavioral Health, a practice that supports patients across the lifespan — starting as young as age two.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, everyone, Welcome to these packs puck. I'm Madison Packer.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And I'm Anya Packer. Madison and I are both former
pro hockey players. We met through hockey and fell in love,
and now we're married with two awesome toddlers, ages two
and four.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
These days, we're opening up about the chaos of our
daily lives, between the juggle of being athletes, raising kids.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
And all the messiness in between.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
So buckle the puck up, because there is a lot
to talk about.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Hey man, Hello, how are we doing today? You've been
in your cave all day? How are you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Actually, I have not been well.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I am not well. I'm tired. I'm getting a hump
in the back of my neck from staring at my
computer screen. So we've been better.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
All right, Well, let's get into our hockey hot take
because we are hot to trot today.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Fire it up, Fire it up, hockey hot take.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
So, Anya, my hockey hot take is about something absolutely
atrocious that we experienced the other day. Let me recap
it really quickly. We have been down in Southwest Florida.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Still.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I went to use the women's bathroom. I walked past
three signs that showed me that it was the women's bathroom,
and I can read, so I knew I was going
I read, and I can't in the bathroom. I'm about
to walk into the stall, and the bathroom attendant before
that attempted to get my attention by saying, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir.
I'm not a sir, and people are crazy now, so
I've just made it a practice I don't respond to
(01:23):
I don't respond to sir, and then I can play
silly and say I'm not a sir. I didn't know
you were talking to me. She grabbed me by my
shoulder and pulled me backward and goes, you're in the
wrong bathroom. I said, and I had kind of lost
my voice right. I was sick. I had a daycare cold,
so I was like I was kind of whispering. I'm like,
uh no, I'm not and she's like, no, you're in
the wrong bathroom. I go, I'm a woman, and I
actually I grabbed my boobs because I'm like, I'm a woman,
(01:44):
and I could I like didn't. I couldn't get what
she wasn't getting because also I think I look womanly.
I had to pull out my driver's license and point to.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
The I were going to say, pull out my boobs.
I was stressed I should have done that.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I had to pull out my driver's license and point
to the F next to sex and she just goes, oh.
So then I went into the stall. Didn't go to
the bathroom then, because I'm like, that just happened, and
I went out and got you because I was like
so upset and mind blown. Long story short, they felt
it was perfectly appropriate to require someone to show their
(02:16):
ID in the bathroom while using a closed stall toilet.
You know what's never happened to me in my entire
thirty three years of using a bathroom an altercation with
a trans person. You know what has now happened to
me twice in my thirty three years of life. I've
been forcibly removed from a women's bathroom. You haven't a
man and a woman twice. That's actually the craziest thing.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
And I think the other thing is so you came
up to me and you were very upset, and I
understand why. And I walked in and no one asked
me for my ID to go in.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
I was very upset. I did not handle it well.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
No, you were upset which is fine, and so I
walked in. We had a conversation, and there happened to
be an off duty manager in there fixing her lipstick,
and she let me know that she heard the end
of the conversation and didn't apologized, said that the bathroom
attendant was keeping the bathroom safe, and I said, great,
we've walked by three women's restroom signs. If someone identifies
(03:08):
as a woman and they come into the bathroom, into
their individual stall, they should be left alone. And we
were quite literally fighting with this woman about the policy,
and she was very clear that it is above board
for the person in the bathroom stall or in the
bathroom attendant to ask you for your ID.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
She said that's part of the policy.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
And the manager further defended it by saying, well, she's
not from here, so she just doesn't know, like, because
you're not born in America, because you're not American, you
don't know the difference between Like I didn't even understand
that point, but I just thought it was further insulting.
I'm like, agree, that's just it was crazy.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
So the real problem here is we are now not
only saying that women have to do all of these things,
but they also have to look a certain way. But
the craziest thing is we are now not only attacking
trans people every single day because of their just general existence,
but now women that don't look woman enough to align
(04:06):
with a bathroom of choice?
Speaker 3 (04:07):
What the fuck are we doing?
Speaker 1 (04:09):
The other night I went into the golf thing and
the guy was like, oh, how can I help you, sir?
And then I came home to you know, I'm like,
maybe I'll just grow my hair out.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
No, but that's the craziest thing.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
So that's where and it's not I don't honestly, I
think a lot of it is unintentional. I think people
immediately see someone with short hair and they just mess up,
and then typically they'll fix it. I have to go
out of my way as a woman married to a
masculine presenting woman to say my wife. Yesterday getting out
of the car at Valet, I said, my wife has
the keys, And I do that intentionally to make sure
(04:40):
that people aren't making the error and then you get
your feelings hurt. But why do we have such a
crazy construct of what identity of gender and like femininity is.
That's the craziest thing to me.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
I firmly believe that we are where we are, and
the conversation continues to be what it is because of
fear mongering and a complete and utter lack of information
or a flood of misinformation, the amount of propaganda, the
amount of misinformation, the amount of flat out bullshit that
exists on the Internet and in the world about the
(05:15):
trans community, particularly trans kids.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
But we look at athletes, so like, let's let's go
to what we think the real problem is is the
second you tell an ostracized community that they can't have
something that gives them a sense of belonging.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Right like, sports is the most community.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
It's in the definitely, yes, the most clear form of
community that you and I have both ever known. So
when we look at trans kids who are already a minority,
already confused, already killing themselves at an unbelievable rate, already
feel like they don't belong and then letting them know
that they can't join a team because of some crazy construct,
we're just doing all the wrong things. And then I
(05:53):
think that that grows into this greater fear that women
have to look like women and do womanly things, and
that's what leads to all these problems. So like it
becomes the root of a massive, massive issue.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Well, and you grew up playing boys hockey. Let's call
out the elephant in the room. Right, I grew up
playing boys hockey. I changed in the boy's dressing room.
It didn't become a problem until the boys started the
shower and even still, like I would just go then
and change in the bathroom, but no one cared. So
what is the real issue that we're getting at, and
have we taken the actual time? Ignore the loudest voice
(06:28):
in the room, because it's almost always the most uneducated
on the topic. That's why they're screaming with the microphone.
What is the issue actually, because no one had a
problem with me playing boys hockey or you playing boys
hockey until the girl was better than the boy.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Right, you know what it is?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
It's this false narrative that boys are coming into girls'
sports just to take them over and be a better athlete.
That's insane to me, Like, if anybody could be a
good athlete, they wouldn't then posture to be a different
gender to then beat that league. And that's the fear
mongering that gets us back to this place that at
(07:02):
the root of it, we're telling little children who are
in a crisis for identity that they cannot have a community,
and it just snowballs into this massive issue. And as
we're in Mental Health Awareness Month, we have to talk
about it and we have to recognize that the mental
health of a child should be like paramount if we
(07:23):
care so much about these children, right like we're going
to pro life that we can't even imagine bettering the
life for those children that we have. So while we
could get into one hundred thousand topics, I think the
most important that comes from that story is you are
a woman.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
You look how you look?
Speaker 2 (07:42):
You are beautiful and who cares if you have jeans
and Travis Scott's on and a buzzgut like you should
be allowed into the women's bathroom. That is how you
identify you're going into a private stall by yourself. And Sally,
who wants to play on the girl's volleyball team, should
be allowed. And if some creepy dude wants to look
at her, gen tell you to get her there. That
man should actually go to jail. And Sally should be
(08:03):
on the freaking volleyball team.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
And you know what I've learned, It's why the quote
in my bio that I love to talk about if
I had someone that looked like me when I was
a kid, I would have I would have been like
so much more confident and figured it out so much quicker.
So like, while, yeah, I cry when I get like
removed from the bathroom and prodic it's embarrassing, but like,
I'm not gonna grow my hair out now. I'm not
gonna like actually let you affect me in anyway, because
the actual issue is you like you're uncomfortable by something
(08:29):
that you don't know, or you don't identify with, or
you're just freaking jealous that I'm like living my best
life and happy. Right. So, like, the message in all
of that is that trans kids belong in sports, yes,
but also people in general just deserve to be left
the f alone. And if we could bring a little
more empathy and compassion into everything that we do, the
world will be a whole hell of a lot better
(08:49):
because the fact that we're physically removing people from bathrooms
because we don't understand how they look is just that's
where we are in as my as a near and
dear friend likes to call it the great place on Earth.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
The greatest place on Earth. Well, I.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
That leads us into a really interesting conversation about kind
of the check in, because I think as we talk
about Mental Health Awareness Month, it weighs very heavy on me.
So I want to go into the check in because
I want to touch on something you said, but in
the lens of like how I'm doing.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
I'll send it to you first. You tell me how
you're doing.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
I'm like a ninety two.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
You're great. I'm buzzing'.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
We had a fun date night with my grandparents last night.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
That is a sentence that doesn't typically come out of
anyone's mouth. It was great.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
We went to a really good steak place. We had
good food, good laughs. Uh, you let me sleep in.
I got up, I got to go work out.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
You organized the whole house. Did do that again. So
all's good. I'm buzzing'. I love that.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I'm also doing great. I feel amazing. I literally joked
about me being locked in this dungeon. Work is kicking
my butt for contry. It looks like she's in a
troll right now.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
I am in control hole. It's dark, but I'm doing well.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
I think I would say I'm probably kicking it at
a seventy five right now, work being probably the biggest
dejector there. But something you said is really important to me.
You said, if a kid could see me, right, if
I could have seen myself when I was a kid.
And I always live really closely to that comment because
during Mental Health Awareness Month we talk a lot about
mental health when I was younger. If I saw an
(10:26):
athlete that was open about having mental health issues, I
really firmly believe I wouldn't have taken a couple attempts
at my own life. And I say that with so
much passion because it is so important for people to
feel empowered. But you know, trans kids, mass presenting females,
people with mental health problems, when they see their favorite
(10:48):
athlete deal with those real crises in their little bubble
of like everything is perfect for an athlete.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
We know that's not true, but the concept is that
it is.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yeah, And so I know it's a heavy topic, but
I always appreciate your and my willingness and and all
the other athletes that are now doing so to just
speak very freely on.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Like real, real tough stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
It's a difficult thing to understand unless you're in it,
and like, at the end of the day, we are
all human beings. Like some have more privileged than others,
some have more opportunity than others, like better jobs, whatever, whatever, whatever,
But the grass is not always greener, right, And I
just think that it's it's becoming more common and comfortable
to talk about. We just saw the Katie Meyer story
(11:35):
came out on ESPN Plus, Like that's if you haven't
checked that.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Out, it's it's uh watch it.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Trigger warning on the on the content. But it's an
incredible just educational, you know, understanding things from a different perspective,
and all these pressures and like you're you're going to
school to be a student, but you're you're there because
you're an athlete, right, And there's just all this pressure
that you put on yourself that you feel around you.
It's hard to explain, but it's also hard to like
(12:00):
live in that wait all the time.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
I fully agree.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
That is why I'm so excited for the conversation we're
about to have next. You and I both know and
love doctor Joe Galasso, but for context for everyone else,
he's the founder of Baker Street Behavioral Health. We go
all the way back to when the riveters were trying
to add on mental health resources and I became the
general manager the second we connected with him. He was
a spark plug of let's get these athletes resources. He's
(12:24):
done a massive amount of work with women's teams across
the New Jersey region and further the men's teams. Right like,
he really found and carved out a niche where mental
health becomes accessible. And I could not be more proud
to know him, to love him, and to work with him.
And so we'll get into a conversation with Joe that
was incredibly illuminating.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Hi Joe, Hi guys, Anya Madison is so great to
see your faces again.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
You do I know, we're so excited to have you.
Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
I'm literally so excited to have you on. But before
we get into like all the things I said, Joe,
it's doctor Joe. Give us a little intro how we
know each other, and we can kind of talk a
little bit about what we used to do with the RIVS.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Sure, well, Joe's okay, Joe Glasso. I'm a clinical psychologist.
I've been doing this. I've been practicing for fifteen plus
years at this point. I have a pretty diverse practice,
but my passion has always been working with athletes, and
that's how I got to meet you, two wonderful people
working with the Riveters, which still I talk so fondly about.
I missed that time together very much, but it gave
(13:42):
me such an opportunity as a psychologist, as a person
to learn so much more about sports, life, gender and
differences in sports. It's solidified for me my mission to
really like make sure that healthcare, mental health care in
particular is equitable and people could access it.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
I want you to talk a little bit more about
Baker Street specifically because I visited your guys' facility in
New Jersey. It is maybe the coolest facility I've ever
been into my entire life, no joke. So just tell
us a little bit more about that and like kind
of the groups of people that you work with and
your day to day.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
We have a very unique practice, and the physical environment
is part of it. We service the entire life span.
So I think our youngest client right now is two
and our oldest is in their eighties right And I'm
so fortunate to have such a diverse team of specialists
that work here that we get to work with all
walks of life, all sorts of issues, if you can
(14:36):
believe at the pandemic actually wide in our catchment area.
I always thought we would be a New York, New
Jersey company, but we now provide mental health services in
forty eight states, which is pretty wild.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
It's crazy.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Yeah, And like I said, all walks of life. We
are not generally surprised by what walks through our practice store.
But Madison, to your point, you know, when I started
my private practice, I wanted to be a little different.
So my first office was actually in a gym, and
I would tell people, you know, if you're scared of antidepressants,
if you're scared of taking meds, then we're going to
go downstairs and you're going to walk on the treadmill
(15:09):
and we're going to get active. Right. So, every one
of my facilities has a fitness components open space because
people need to move, people need to walk and talk,
people need to be active. We do a lot of
rehabilitation to traumatic brain injuries, athletes who are rehabbing, you know,
So I want it to be a naturalistic environment. I
don't want it to be a static therapist d office.
(15:31):
We have those, but not every office should be like that.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
To paint like a little bit of backgrounded picture. When
I became the general manager of the Riveters, the first
thing I said was, we need sports sykes like these
women are starting to do this full time. We need
a doctor, We need actual like physical care, and then
what part of the practice can touch the mental care
of the patient and the athlete and really looking at
their whole body, right, because if they bomb a knee, like, yeah,
(15:57):
they're going to go get an ext ray, They're going
to go put something on, going to be on crutches
for a few days. But when the game is falling
flat or they're having a really hard time like capturing
their mental health or being in a sane space, like,
what are we doing for the athlete? And so talk
to us about the kind of professional sports that you
work with, and then kind of flow through the way
we started to work together and what that utilization from
(16:18):
my athletes to you look like.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Sure, well you know, sports like really wasn't a thing.
I think when I was doing my training, I was
an ex athlete. I played in high school, a little
bit in college and then was done right and I
found that my new arena was psychology and graduate school
and that mindset shifted. And while I was in grad school,
I had the opportunity to meet a lot of people
who were pursuing professional careers. And you know me long
(16:43):
enough now to know that I was just pretty blunt
with them and said, let me train with you, let
me stay in shape, and I'll give you what you need, right,
let me practice like this new sports psychology thing. Right.
So I made a lot of really awesome relationships, and
I have always kept athletes like one on one clients
as part of my practice. So I think it was
like twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, the opportunity to work with
(17:04):
the Brooklyn Nets, or that they were still in New
Jersey at the time they had just been purchased, came
up and they asked me to work with the team.
And I was one of two people really working in
the NBA at the time putting mental health programs together
for the men's side. And since twenty fifteen, I really
feel like, I mean, it's been a title wave of
like opportunity for psychologists to get involved with sports. And
(17:24):
you know, so I wound up working with the Nets,
the Red Bulls, and through the Red Bulls, I started
working with Gotham or women's team, and I think there
were some like fundamental differences between the men's side and
the women's side, and one was utilization, right, and what
really kept me interested and when we met, I think
we even talked about it. Right. On the men's side,
I might have five percent utilization, but on the female side,
(17:45):
we had about one hundred percent utilization when we were
working with the teams, and I know, particularly with the ribs,
I mean, it was so well received that I really
started to divert a lot of our practice resources to
the women's sides because it was not available, right. I
think you were probably one, if not the only team
that had this available so directly. But we wanted to
(18:09):
give it to the team in a way that mimicked
what the men's side was getting too, right. So it
wasn't just like you can't pay so you're getting cheap services. No,
we wanted you to have full access to the mental
health and the performance side, right. And to me, that's
where a lot of programs were falling short, is that
they didn't have the clinical acumen to know when somebody
(18:30):
needed like it was really anxiety or depression getting in
the way of their performance versus I really just have
a metal block, right or a little bit of breathing
or a little bit of visualization can fix this. I mean,
I think the time that we spent together was wildly successful.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
And I love that you said that because I always
felt like that was the biggest building block of why
we work so well together is you knew there was
nothing we could do to put the right amount of
investment in the product that we needed, so you took
a massive step into our court. Right, Like Maddie and
I will always kind of like do a measure of
like where we stand to one hundred, and sometimes she's
(19:05):
thirty and I'm seventy, and sometimes we're fifty to fifty,
and sometimes we're both one hundred, right, But you recognize
that we were very much ten and Baker Street was
willing to extend that other ninety percent. And I always
appreciated that about our partnership and you as a visionary
and you as a partner to us. But then we
kind of go from there, which is utilization. It's efforts,
it's bringing coaching in on a daily basis, as you know,
(19:28):
finding team foundations and then having your team come and
start to go through like sessions where my team was
really working well together. And then we started our mental
health game and it actually was born of Madison. Madison
was very passionate about making sure we had a mental
health game, but I wanted to make sure it was
Baker Street focus, make sure it was something that we
were able to communicate and have conversations around and be
(19:48):
really really intentional. And that's now starting to happen, and
athletes are now starting to talk about their mental health.
What does that do for the rest of the world
by way of visibility.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
In mental health? I always think about these things in
terms of like a pollination model, right, you need to
pollinate a group of people with the idea and get
them comfortable with it. And there's no better platform than
the athletes platform to start pollinating people with these ideas,
that these conversations need to be had, that these topics
are important. They're not just happening, you know, behind closed
(20:22):
doors in some suburb right or in an inner city area.
These issues are happening everywhere, right, and nobody is immune
to them, and then people start to get comfortable with it,
and then people start emulating, like everything else that the
athletes are doing, and they'll say, well, if my heroes
are vulnerable enough to talk about what's going on, I'm
going to do that too, right. So for me, it's
(20:42):
always about are you reaching that viewer, that middle school
female that is having identity issues, that you know, that
high school male that's depressed but he's afraid to say
it because he doesn't want to sound like he's lazy
or something preconceived. Right, So just to have their role
models do it right, So it's just the visibility and
(21:03):
then to start to gain some language around what they're
actually asking for you. And I will tell you, since
the pandemic, we have more parents calling four kids because
the kids have asked for the service. That is new
to us. Psych is always reactive, and I think if
people can just understand that, like, if we catch these
things early enough, we could fix.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
A lot of it.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Right. A lot of this may not be curable, but
we could reduce how bad you feel very quickly. And
if we give you those skills early on, they will
carry on throughout your life. I prefer people to get
what they need for me and then be done with me, right,
and just feel better and go live their lives. So yeah,
I think it's important. I mean, the pollination is incredible,
and I'll tell you we just started working with the
(21:43):
New York Gridlock, the ultimate frisbee team. Yeah, and the
first thing that they really brought up was how do
we do a mental health game. We want to do that.
The Wave, the Jersey Shore Wave has also inquired about
doing it. Saint Joe's High School, which is one of
the largest football programs, and New Jersey is going to
do it this year. So I mean, you guys should
be so incredibly proud of what you started. Right we
(22:06):
had these conference calls, are just talking in the hallway
about what we should be doing and how great the
world would be if we could do that, and it's
happening in real time. I kind of love that women's
sports owns it because it's your thing. And I think
if we could just continue to pollinate these leagues and
these teams, it's just going to grow. There's no way
it won't.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Like you said, now, other teams are doing it, people
are talking about it. We're providing opportunities for people to
get ahead of it. But I also want to talk
about the back end of it. I think a big
part of the mental health conversation that we don't talk
about is well, there are amazing doctors and resources like you, like,
there aren't nearly enough for the number of people that
(22:48):
need it, and it's a big, big problem. Overdose is
the number one cause of death in the country right now.
LGBTQ youth are at higher risk than they've ever been
and these are really really important resources that people need
to continue to have access to, and you're a part
of fixing that. But maybe we can talk a little
bit about, like how people can continue to educate themselves
(23:09):
and people can continue to help because I think it's
only going to continue to unfortunately be a problem, and
it's something that we want to stay ahead of. How
do we do that as a community.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Not a big topic at all, Madison, Just a light question.
You know. It's funny, after practicing for as long as
I have and having the opportunity to be in some
of the rooms that I've been in, I've learned one
thing about psychology and mental health, and it's that we
overcomplicate it. I think if we just start by walking
(23:38):
back how complicated it is to me, some of these
solutions are really simple. Honestly, it's a crisis of confidence
for the most part, as I see it, right, feeling
valued enough and confident enough to talk about the things
that are problematic in our lives. Right. I mean that
(24:00):
on the most basic level and the most systemic levels,
we spend so much time trying to fix and solve
these large problems that most of it is. People want
to be seen, people want to be heard, people want
to feel safe, and people want to feel loved, right,
And I think those are simple to fix if we
could create communities that really care about each other, right.
(24:21):
And I think using the Riveters as an example, we
did that as a group of people that didn't know
each other at all. We were able to do it
because we trusted each other and we had a common vision.
We have to unite underneath that kind of common vision
and that that common mission. People want to care about
(24:41):
each other, you know. I was having this conversation with
a colleague this week, and to me, a kindness is simple.
I think being kind to each other is actually a
very simple thing. I think being unkind is actually harder, right, Like,
I think it goes against our nature, and I think
we actually have to there's some volition behind it, right,
We have to want to push in that direction. It's
(25:04):
the opposite I think of the direction that we're typically
wired to do. Our DNA, our survival as biological animals,
is based on unity. It's not based on separateness, right,
It's based on connectedness, and I think we've kind of
gotten away from that, right. So I think if the
more simple we think about this thing, the more common
(25:25):
the banner is that we could unite ourselves under, I think,
the more likely we are to come to a solution.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Well. I think a lot of that too stems from,
at least in my opinion, fear, right, Like you fear
what's different from you, You fear what you don't know.
Just like an interesting story. So my hometown has been
like particularly hard hit by overdose, in suicide, et cetera.
When I went home and tried to talk to the
athletic director about, you know, how can we start talking
(25:52):
about some of this stuff, they wouldn't do it because
they didn't want the liability and the responsibility, right like, oh, well,
well we can't talk about that topic. And so I
just think it's interesting when we talk about you know,
kindness and meeting the world in the middle, et cetera.
We're willing only to do it for the topics that
we think are easy, but then we have this crisis
(26:14):
on our hands where we're trying to bring everyone together
and to now fix it, and it's just it's like
it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
It's completely mind boggling when you think about it in
that context, because what you're saying is people are more
willing to have a conversation about another person who lost
their life to something, but we're not willing to talk
about what the cost was.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
And I think sometimes when we think about people with
mental health disorders, we're like, oh, they're crazy, right, and
or they're this, or they're a danger or they're that.
Where we talk about people who you know, struggle with
addiction and things like that, Oh well they're they're homeless,
or they're like, no, it's an illness the same as
anything else. Cancer, a mental illness is a DSM five
(26:56):
diagnosis that you have no control over. It can be genetic,
I mean, right, And that's what I think is most
important when we talk about normalizing this conversation. To be clear,
we want to normalize the conversation so that people feel
comfortable having the conversation, not the behavior. No one wants
the behavior to continue.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
No, it's exactly right. You know. One of the things
that I found to be helpful. I actually ironically just
did a presentation on this this morning. It's undeniable. You
can't not get caught up in behaviors because you can
see it, right, Yeah, they're palpable. Everything else in medicine
really is invisible. So I was talking to a group
of parents this morning and I say, and the topic
(27:35):
was on challenging behaviors, how do I help my preschool
or behave right? And I said, well, what if we
think about it differently and we talk about where the
behaviors come from, and that's your brain. And if we
really start parenting to the brain and not the behavior,
it's impossible to take it personally. It's impossible to put
a judgment on that behavior. When we realize that the
(27:57):
prefrontal cortex of a three year old doesn't develop until
their twenties. And I always joke, if you're a guy,
probably until your thirties or four probably never, but maybe never. Right, Look,
as the owner of that cortex, I'm with you on that.
But my point is, you know, I think we get
so caught up in the judgment of where these behaviors began,
(28:20):
and it's very easy to have opinions about that. To me,
it just needs to be refocused on where it's actually
coming from. And it's biological, right, and that is out
of their control, right, And maybe they have engaged in
other behaviors that pushed the mental health piece to the surface.
That's not ours to judge. Right, The brain is susceptible
to what the brain is susceptible to. No different than
(28:42):
people who have mental illness after a concussion, right, Oftentimes
I see that you have a head injury. You guys
have seen it in sport, right, people can't recover from
that concussion. They have memory issues, they have headaches, their
mood fluctuates, they can't concentrate. We could label all sorts
of mental health issues on that. So I really try
to take the behavior out of it, because you can't.
(29:04):
You can't judge a brain.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
So then you add on the layer of all this
incredibly complex stuff that we then hand our four year
old and iPad then layer in social media. How much
does that play in your conversations on a daily basis?
How much do you feel like maybe from an athlete
and then elsewhere, like, how much does social media play
into the mental health of the patient?
Speaker 4 (29:40):
Yeah, look, I mean I think the impact is immeasurable.
I couldn't imagine being a teenager right now, me either,
because what they measure themselves against is often not even real, yeah, right,
And it's very hard to distinguish what is reality and
what is fantasy when you're you know, when they're scrolling
through these profiles, right, you talk to kids and they're
(30:02):
living in this world where they think flying on private
jets is like a thing most people do, right, or.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
That's the craziest thing I've ever heard at eighty.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
Thousand dollars porsches. When you graduate, it's a shame that
they don't have the capacity to understand that these curated
images they are seeing are just so bad for them.
On the athlete side, it's very much the same, and
a lot of what we do is teaching them to say, like,
maybe you don't need the heck count right until you
(30:30):
really can use it maturely, and we really work on
what it means like because you know, especially in the
New York, New Jersey market, media is brutal.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
It's like inescapable.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
There's no other profession on the planet outside of like
maybe politics and government where your every move is being scrutinized.
So like in real time, athletes have so much to
compete with, right, So unless you're really there with the
mindset that this is playful and I know how to
deal with that, it's really challenging for young athletes.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
And then we put the lens and I can't ignore it,
specifically in women's sports, that you have to have a
certain number of followers, that you have to monetize it
in a certain way, that it has to look a
certain way, that it has to be morally and ethically
aligned to your values. Like there's such an impetus in
women's sports that we say, yeah, you might not make
any money.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Playing this sport.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
You might make thirty five thousand dollars as your salary,
and that's not enough to pay rent. So go grow
your social media to two hundred and fifty thousand followers
that now are invited in your door. You don't have privacy,
you want to get these nail deals. You have all
of this burden of responsibility, and then you just don't
get any followers, and nobody picks you, and no one
(31:45):
likes your storylines, and no one watches your Get Ready
with Me or whatever bs that we're talking about in
that moment, and then that athlete is got no money,
doesn't have the followers is envious of their counterpart that
is either on their team or on opposing teams for
something that has nothing to do with the reason that
we're there.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
And I'm sure you guys have seen this too in
the locker room. A lot of what we were dealing
with too, was people were trying to see what weighed
more in terms of value to their team, whether it's
me my identity as an athlete and what I actually
bring on the field, ice pitch, whatever I'm on, or
(32:27):
what I bring in terms of my social media following.
You know, I saw it. One of the teams I
worked with, there was a big push to do these
like fashion walks before like walking into the stadium, so
everybody was competing about what they were wearing, and you know,
if you actually made it to the team instagram before,
you know, it got very challenging. And I remember having
(32:47):
to me with the team saying, like, at what point
do we actually talk about the game. We have to play, Like,
where are our priorities right? Because nobody's head was actually
focused on what the mission was.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, the tunnel fit content is so great, but where
is that the most important part of a game day? Because, like, Madison,
I'll throw this over to you, babe, because you always
threw some insane fits and got all that love pre
playing the game, and then you weren't getting appreciated as
the athlete and you weren't getting the ice time, and
like there was frustrations for your own game, So like,
where did that balance? Not that we're gonna therapize you,
(33:21):
but like that balance must have been really hard.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
I think it's gotten harder the bigger the spotlight has gotten.
What people don't recognize is that at the end of
the day, no matter what your job, no matter how
much you get paid, we are all human, and like
we have to do certain things, especially as women, if
we want to get paid. You have to wear that outfit,
(33:45):
you have to put this online. You have to do that,
and like, because that's the opportunity that exists to get fed.
And when you don't have the ability to turn it off,
it's crazy. The best example of that, Dodget Joe. You
probably see it all the time, but Bis pulled out
of the Olympic Games because she's like, I can't do it.
And I actually applaud her for doing that, because no
(34:09):
athlete does that, like they just perform and say, you know,
I can do it. I'm the best, I'm the greatest.
She wanted her team to win like that's that is
the ultimate teammate, but also on the biggest stage in
the world to say the only thing that matters is
my mental health. Everything else can wait, and then we
criticize that person for that. I mean, it's crazy.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
It's group think. Right. As soon as people feel comfortable
being in that echo chamber, it's hard to make it stop. Right.
It solidifies my thinking that this is really a crisis
of confidence and it's unfortunate. But it takes one person
to stand up in that echo chamber it said disagree,
and a lot of times it will dissipate. But it's
(34:49):
as being the guy often that is standing in his
room saying I don't agree. It's challenging, right, you have
to take a lot of lumps along the way, but
if you really believe in it, you know you got
to say it. And I found myself at least to
be fortunately organized that I feel like I have to
say what I have to say and I will stand
up for people when I need to stand up for them.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Well, I think that's the part, right. So we watched
it like right in that year, Simone Bios Naomi Osaka,
like a couple of female athletes really stood up and
they were like time out, like we really need support,
Like I can't do what I'm expected to do at
this level and still prioritize my mental health and so
and I'm sure this is not news, but Baker Street
(35:31):
probably supports athletes through those things. And so what does
that look like, Like, how do you insulate an athlete
that is going through crisis that needs support. What could
someone do to support somebody in that space better than
we are.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
That's a great question. I think for the people not
in the know, we see probably twenty percent of the
people that are actually going through it, right, I think
the other eighty percent we're still covering for them. They're
on the injured reserve list. Teams will still cover a
lot of this because people are not comfortable going out
to the media saying, you know what, I'm depressed, I'm
(36:07):
coming out. You know, I'm the captain of this team
and I have depression, and I don't want to play
in the New York, New Jersey market. That echo chamber
will start immediately about how this person, this player is
soft or incapable of leadership or whatever it is. And
it has nothing to do with that. But in terms
of treatment, I think the first thing we've done, at
least on the medical departments that I work with, we
(36:28):
take a very holistic approach, right, so the player will
at least immediately see that our group, the medical doctor, myself,
maybe even whoever the head trainer is on that organization,
we're aligned and we're going to do whatever we have
to do to get them better. We don't sugarcoat things.
We will name what the issue is, right, So, if
(36:49):
it's depression, if we need more testing, if we need
to figure out what it is, we'll tell them that too,
and then we'll give them a rough timeline, and then
we'll ask them what they actually want communicated to people. Right,
we will honor whether they want people to know or
not know. We will honor if this is a crisis
of you know, I'm sure both of you have seen
this in your careers. There are some players that are
(37:09):
just done playing and they don't know how to tell
people that. Right, So what it looks like is a
mental health crisis, and we have to help them through that.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
Right.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
For the players that want to go back, we have
to give them realistic timelines. You know, I had a
player we just got back. I've never seen anything like this,
but the system was so incredibly well prepared and supportive.
The player knew exactly what they wanted. I mean, profoundly
depressed in the middle of the year, like can't get
(37:40):
out of bed, but expected to perform. And we got
this player back to their job in six weeks. But
it took daily meetings with me. They were uncomfortable with
meds being on board, but we worked through that, right,
and we had to say this, this is what we
need to do if you want to get back, and
(38:01):
to that, you know that was three years ago. This
person's great, right with just maintenance, with just the vitamin supplement,
checks in with their therapist every once in a while,
they're great, and they're they're still playing. But you know that,
that to me is the perfect outcome. Right. It happened quickly.
They got what they needed you know when when we
developed these services in athletics. You know you've seen it
(38:24):
for the physical stuff. Right, you get injured the next day,
that night, you're in an MRI. The next day you're
in surgery. Right, we could prioritize care physically, but we've
never really done it for mental health. So what we've
just been doing, and you guys have seen us do
this is just align the standard with good medical care.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
How much do you feel like the reception of athletes
to take that? I would call it like almost like
a PT right, like a PT schedule for the mind.
Like how much more receptive now versus when you first
got into this world? Are athletes to that concept of
here's our recovery plan for this crisis.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
So honestly, it actually took me longer to get comfortable
with it. I think then players, because players are used
to thinking in that huh you kind of cadence.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
Oh yeah, I said, what I do, here's where I
find wellness.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
So I had to adjust the way that I thought
about things versus like, how do I get this service
to you in an authentic way? If I can't figure
that out, nobody's gonna use it. And nobody's going to
get better. It took me some time to figure out that. Like, honestly,
I call it the bartender model. Right, You guys spend
more time with the trainers than you do with me,
And that's the right way to do it. Right if
(39:37):
if the trainer trusts me, right, if the PT trusts
me and I trust the PT, then we'll just text
each other when stuff comes up, and then is on
the PT to get them to trust me a little
bit more. They will find the right time to say,
you know what, it's a little bit past what I
could handle. Why don't we call Joe right? Or I
could just text him right now, let's do a group text.
(39:58):
Or you know he's going to be in the building
in next week, Like, I'll just make sure he's here
while you're on the table, and then that for me,
is the best time to get him, because then they're stuck, stuck.
You know, I got ten minutes and I'm just gonna
sit next to him. Honestly, the athlete, I don't care, gender,
sport doesn't matter. They just need to know that I'm
a normal person and that they could trust me. And
(40:20):
once that's done, we're off to the races.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
That and you're not trying to label anybody that, and
you're not trying to make prescriptive long term care that
doesn't feel authentic to them. I mean, that's something that
I very much identify with. It's just like we all
can find this wellness and we can find a treatment
plan that works for us. That doesn't mean for the
rest of our lives we're beholden too this six week
intensive recovery period. And that feels so freeing because it's hard,
(40:45):
hard work. Mental health is so hard, And somebody on
our podcast said, mental health is really like feeling the
appropriate emotions at the appropriate times. So like you're gonna
be sad, Like if you're depressed, you're gonna be sad.
That's gonna be okay, because we're going to work through
it and then come up with a long term care plan.
That doesn't mean that you're just clinically depressed for the
(41:06):
rest of your life. And that might be the case,
and that is okay, Like we can put a name
to that and find a pathway through. But it's always
very refreshing when you have somebody, especially as an athlete,
that isn't going to say your shoulder doesn't work anymore,
it's just never going to work again. Right, That's not
the answer we want, right, it's how do we come
to a mutual solution with a go forward strategy? And
I always appreciated who you are in that specific concept
(41:30):
because it doesn't feel like a scarlet letter.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (41:36):
It's taken years of learning how to do that right,
great at it, but I've learned a couple other things.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Right.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
Athletes are unique in that most people don't want to
sit in a room for an hour and talk right.
So again, to do it authentically, you have to learn
how to do therapy over seven days at fifteen minutes
at a time. Yeah, right, and get what you need
from them and them from you, unless it's really a
severe case where you have to say, this is what
we're doing because we need to fix X. The other
(42:06):
thing is, you guys are the biggest fraud detectors I've
ever met. If you think that I'm more fan than doctor, yeah,
you're never talking to me because historically psychologists have people
are paranoid about what they're telling the coaches right, who
they're telling what to, So like, really learning how to
become a trustworthy person that is really just invested in
(42:28):
people feeling better. You have to be really aware of
who you're working with. On the men's side, the families
really needed the support. Yeah, and that was the best
entry point because once the families trusted you that the
players would come. We found that to be different on
the female side, where you guys were welcomed it with
open arms and knew what the resource was. Like, I
think it was just more about like there was no
(42:50):
customer acquisition. You're really aware of what you were getting
and you asked for it and got it right.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
You've signed up with the rooms that we were like,
hold on, wait, let me text Joe right now.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
Call call tech Tech. It's called called tex text.
Speaker 4 (43:01):
That was the best. I love it. I will one
hundred percent of the time work with people that want
to work with me, you know, versus just sitting around
you know me, I don't like to be bored.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Well, we've talked about what you do, some of who
you do it with, some of the good, the bad,
the hard, the easy, and I want to know that.
I want to know what you think is the hardest
part of what you do.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
The hardest part of what I do is still on
the human side, Right, I still have to give people
hard news, sometimes bad news.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Right.
Speaker 4 (43:32):
We could even qualify it as bad news. I tell
them post concussion that some of these symptoms might not
ever go away. We're really dealing with the traumatic brain injury. Right.
I get a lot of people with acquired physical issues, right,
loss of limb, loss of some sort of like life skill,
and that's really challenging. The psychologists have suffered a lot
(43:56):
from vicarious trauma, right. We hear a lot of really
hard things often, you know, and learning how to insulate
yourself from that is really challenging. And I feel badly
for a lot of the young clinicians that are coming
up in this time because there's so many people looking
for services and they're really coming with heavy stuff for
them to learn how to be a therapist with. And
(44:19):
don't get me wrong, I did my training in you know,
state hospitals and saw some like real significant mental health stuff.
But this is on the outpatient level. People are asking
for like once weak therapy for significant traumas, and it's
very difficult. The reality is, I think social media has
sanitized what mental health is. I think there's a large
(44:40):
group of people that just think it's anxiety. And it's
cute that everybody has anxiety, right when there is a
lot of suffering, a lot of life changes that are
tied to mental health issues. Right, especially when we talk
about depression, it's inextricably linked to suicide. Right, we have
to talk about horrible stuff there. Sometimes heavy is heavy,
(45:02):
and I need to take a break. You know, it's
a really hard job.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Every episode we end with this idea of like advice,
and it's usually like mom to mom, what's the advice, Like,
what's the best advice you've ever heard? But I want
to hear yours for parents who are dealing with kids
that are struggling with their mental health.
Speaker 4 (45:18):
Oh, I think for me it's twofold. And again, in
the vein of oversimplifying it, I can't get across even
myself as a parent now, right, I try to do this.
If you notice something with your child, ask them a question,
talk to them about it. Right, there's still so many
(45:38):
people I think regret is the hardest thing to deal with, right,
especially in the wake of suicide, and especially in the
wake of some sort of central event. Nobody has ever
sat in my office and said, I wish I didn't
ask how they were doing. It's the opposite, right, It's
always I wish I'd just said something. I wish I'd
(45:59):
just asked. It won't cure everything, But when it comes
to mental health, I've learned that people are honest for
the most part. If they really believe you are listening,
they will tell you how they feel. It's on us
to be prepared for the answer. It's not on them
to not answer, right. So, especially when it comes to
my kids, I just want them to always feel okay
(46:22):
answering my question. When I ask how they're doing, it's
I'm not asking because it's automatic. I'm asking because I
actually care about them, right, And to me, it's still
the most basic skill. And we just don't do it
with our kids because we're afraid that they'll think we're judgmental,
or we are afraid of the response, right, And I
think that comes with the confidence we just have to ask,
(46:43):
just ask how they're doing.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
I love what you said.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
It's not on the person struggling to be able to
deliver the information in a palatable way. It really is
on us asking the question to just be a listener,
because we say it all the time between each other
when we talk on the pod, like we're not mental
health perfer but we care or give a shit is
like an all time high. So if we just have
a game, if we just wear a jersey that says
(47:07):
talk about it, just talk about it. We might not
know the answer, but you're getting it off your chest
and saying it out loud might make it okay to
then say it to someone else and then we might
be able to call someone in for care, or then
we might be able to do the next step. So
thank you for that. As a as a parent, I
welcome that because there are times where I'm like, for
my four year old, like, first of all, he's going
(47:29):
to say it in gibberish, but I have to really
dial into the answer. So I appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (47:34):
The other part of it. It will also often tell
people most high performers or high performers because they're trying
to do everything the opposite of what people did right.
Somebody told me I was not going to mount to anybody. Well,
I'll show them right. I think for parents, one of
the most powerful things you could do is really picture
your kid, like what if they won the valid dictorian
(47:57):
at their high school?
Speaker 1 (47:58):
Right?
Speaker 4 (47:58):
And they have to give this speech each They're always
asked to thank people. Right, do you want your child
to get up and say thank you, mom and dad.
You gave me the strength of confidence to say whatever
I wanted to do, or I did it in spite
of everything you taught me how to do. Right, So
I think we could do these really simple exercises. I
do that almost nightly. I kind of visualize, like, Wow,
(48:20):
wouldn't be awesome to see my kids get up there
and thank me for this versus how we kind of
grew up, right, Like with this opposite mindset of no,
I have to do things differently. This was the environment
I grew up. I did everything I could to get
out of it. Think about the amount of emotional energy
we have spent throughout our lives doing that versus we
(48:41):
have net. We now have the opportunity to create the
opposite experience for our kids. Right. And it's not that
it's not that hard. You have to be kind and
you have to listen, you have to see them and
you have to love them, right. And it's not saying
that they're going to behave for you.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
We're going won't.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
They won't.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
But I love that it's right versus because of and
I actually just read the other day something on Instagram
and it was like, the relationship you have with your
kids should be driven by connection and not what fills
the connection, right, So like it doesn't matter where you
are or what you're doing, or what they have or
what you give them, like, it's investing in the connection
(49:20):
that they will feel comfortable and that they know that
you're their safe space, you're their safe person. So I
just think that that's awesome advice. I agree wholeheartedly. We
could continue having this conversation. I could talk to you
for days, but before we go, I just, as a
player who benefited firsthand from all the work that you did,
I want to say thank you.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
You helped me and.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
People that I love in tough situations, and so I
want to thank you for that. You are doing the
hard work and you will continue to do it and
we will continue to need it. So thank you for
chatting with us. I love you like family, and we're
so grateful for you.
Speaker 4 (49:54):
Yeah, right back at you, guys. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
Joe.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
It only took fifty five minutes to get Maddie to cry,
so that's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
And we can Talk episode. Yes, that's it for this week.
Thanks for listening, and.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
If you like what you heard, spread the word seriously
right now, take your phone out, text a friend and
tell them to subscribe.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
And be sure to rate and review us on Apple
Podcasts and Spotify if you haven't already. It really really
helps until next week. I'm Madison Packer.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
And I'm Onya Packer and this was These Packs Puck.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
These Packs Puck is a production of iHeart Women's Sports
and Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. It's hosted by us
Madison and Anya Packer. Emily Meronoff is our senior producer
and story editor. We were mixed and mastered by Mary Doo.
Our executive producers are Jennifer Bassett, Jesse Katz, and Ali Perry.
Hi, everyone, Welcome to these packs puck. I'm Madison Packer.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And I'm Anya Packer. Madison and I are both former
pro hockey players. We met through hockey and fell in love,
and now we're married with two awesome toddlers, ages two
and four.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
These days, we're opening up about the chaos of our
daily lives, between the juggle of being athletes, raising kids.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
And all the messiness in between.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
So buckle the puck up, because there is a lot
to talk about.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Hey man, Hello, how are we doing today? You've been
in your cave all day? How are you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Actually, I have not been well.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I am not well. I'm tired. I'm getting a hump
in the back of my neck from staring at my
computer screen. So we've been better.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
All right, Well, let's get into our hockey hot take
because we are hot to trot today.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Fire it up, Fire it up, hockey hot take.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
So, Anya, my hockey hot take is about something absolutely
atrocious that we experienced the other day. Let me recap
it really quickly. We have been down in Southwest Florida.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Still.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
I went to use the women's bathroom. I walked past
three signs that showed me that it was the women's bathroom,
and I can read, so I knew I was going
I read, and I can't in the bathroom. I'm about
to walk into the stall, and the bathroom attendant before
that attempted to get my attention by saying, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir.
I'm not a sir, and people are crazy now, so
I've just made it a practice I don't respond to
(01:23):
I don't respond to sir, and then I can play
silly and say I'm not a sir. I didn't know
you were talking to me. She grabbed me by my
shoulder and pulled me backward and goes, you're in the
wrong bathroom. I said, and I had kind of lost
my voice right. I was sick. I had a daycare cold,
so I was like I was kind of whispering. I'm like,
uh no, I'm not and she's like, no, you're in
the wrong bathroom. I go, I'm a woman, and I
actually I grabbed my boobs because I'm like, I'm a woman,
(01:44):
and I could I like didn't. I couldn't get what
she wasn't getting because also I think I look womanly.
I had to pull out my driver's license and point to.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
The I were going to say, pull out my boobs.
I was stressed I should have done that.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I had to pull out my driver's license and point
to the F next to sex and she just goes, oh.
So then I went into the stall. Didn't go to
the bathroom then, because I'm like, that just happened, and
I went out and got you because I was like
so upset and mind blown. Long story short, they felt
it was perfectly appropriate to require someone to show their
(02:16):
ID in the bathroom while using a closed stall toilet.
You know what's never happened to me in my entire
thirty three years of using a bathroom an altercation with
a trans person. You know what has now happened to
me twice in my thirty three years of life. I've
been forcibly removed from a women's bathroom. You haven't a
man and a woman twice. That's actually the craziest thing.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
And I think the other thing is so you came
up to me and you were very upset, and I
understand why. And I walked in and no one asked
me for my ID to go in.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
I was very upset. I did not handle it well.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
No, you were upset which is fine, and so I
walked in. We had a conversation, and there happened to
be an off duty manager in there fixing her lipstick,
and she let me know that she heard the end
of the conversation and didn't apologized, said that the bathroom
attendant was keeping the bathroom safe, and I said, great,
we've walked by three women's restroom signs. If someone identifies
(03:08):
as a woman and they come into the bathroom, into
their individual stall, they should be left alone. And we
were quite literally fighting with this woman about the policy,
and she was very clear that it is above board
for the person in the bathroom stall or in the
bathroom attendant to ask you for your ID.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
She said that's part of the policy.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
And the manager further defended it by saying, well, she's
not from here, so she just doesn't know, like, because
you're not born in America, because you're not American, you
don't know the difference between Like I didn't even understand
that point, but I just thought it was further insulting.
I'm like, agree, that's just it was crazy.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
So the real problem here is we are now not
only saying that women have to do all of these things,
but they also have to look a certain way. But
the craziest thing is we are now not only attacking
trans people every single day because of their just general existence,
but now women that don't look woman enough to align
(04:06):
with a bathroom of choice?
Speaker 3 (04:07):
What the fuck are we doing?
Speaker 1 (04:09):
The other night I went into the golf thing and
the guy was like, oh, how can I help you, sir?
And then I came home to you know, I'm like,
maybe I'll just grow my hair out.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
No, but that's the craziest thing.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
So that's where and it's not I don't honestly, I
think a lot of it is unintentional. I think people
immediately see someone with short hair and they just mess up,
and then typically they'll fix it. I have to go
out of my way as a woman married to a
masculine presenting woman to say my wife. Yesterday getting out
of the car at Valet, I said, my wife has
the keys, And I do that intentionally to make sure
(04:40):
that people aren't making the error and then you get
your feelings hurt. But why do we have such a
crazy construct of what identity of gender and like femininity is.
That's the craziest thing to me.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
I firmly believe that we are where we are, and
the conversation continues to be what it is because of
fear mongering and a complete and utter lack of information
or a flood of misinformation, the amount of propaganda, the
amount of misinformation, the amount of flat out bullshit that
exists on the Internet and in the world about the
(05:15):
trans community, particularly trans kids.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
But we look at athletes, so like, let's let's go
to what we think the real problem is is the
second you tell an ostracized community that they can't have
something that gives them a sense of belonging.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Right like, sports is the most community.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
It's in the definitely, yes, the most clear form of
community that you and I have both ever known. So
when we look at trans kids who are already a minority,
already confused, already killing themselves at an unbelievable rate, already
feel like they don't belong and then letting them know
that they can't join a team because of some crazy construct,
we're just doing all the wrong things. And then I
(05:53):
think that that grows into this greater fear that women
have to look like women and do womanly things, and
that's what leads to all these problems. So like it
becomes the root of a massive, massive issue.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Well, and you grew up playing boys hockey. Let's call
out the elephant in the room. Right, I grew up
playing boys hockey. I changed in the boy's dressing room.
It didn't become a problem until the boys started the
shower and even still, like I would just go then
and change in the bathroom, but no one cared. So
what is the real issue that we're getting at, and
have we taken the actual time? Ignore the loudest voice
(06:28):
in the room, because it's almost always the most uneducated
on the topic. That's why they're screaming with the microphone.
What is the issue actually, because no one had a
problem with me playing boys hockey or you playing boys
hockey until the girl was better than the boy.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Right, you know what it is?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
It's this false narrative that boys are coming into girls'
sports just to take them over and be a better athlete.
That's insane to me, Like, if anybody could be a
good athlete, they wouldn't then posture to be a different
gender to then beat that league. And that's the fear
mongering that gets us back to this place that at
(07:02):
the root of it, we're telling little children who are
in a crisis for identity that they cannot have a community,
and it just snowballs into this massive issue. And as
we're in Mental Health Awareness Month, we have to talk
about it and we have to recognize that the mental
health of a child should be like paramount if we
(07:23):
care so much about these children, right like we're going
to pro life that we can't even imagine bettering the
life for those children that we have. So while we
could get into one hundred thousand topics, I think the
most important that comes from that story is you are
a woman.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
You look how you look?
Speaker 2 (07:42):
You are beautiful and who cares if you have jeans
and Travis Scott's on and a buzzgut like you should
be allowed into the women's bathroom. That is how you
identify you're going into a private stall by yourself. And Sally,
who wants to play on the girl's volleyball team, should
be allowed. And if some creepy dude wants to look
at her, gen tell you to get her there. That
man should actually go to jail. And Sally should be
(08:03):
on the freaking volleyball team.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
And you know what I've learned, It's why the quote
in my bio that I love to talk about if
I had someone that looked like me when I was
a kid, I would have I would have been like
so much more confident and figured it out so much quicker.
So like, while, yeah, I cry when I get like
removed from the bathroom and prodic it's embarrassing, but like,
I'm not gonna grow my hair out now. I'm not
gonna like actually let you affect me in anyway, because
the actual issue is you like you're uncomfortable by something
(08:29):
that you don't know, or you don't identify with, or
you're just freaking jealous that I'm like living my best
life and happy. Right. So, like, the message in all
of that is that trans kids belong in sports, yes,
but also people in general just deserve to be left
the f alone. And if we could bring a little
more empathy and compassion into everything that we do, the
world will be a whole hell of a lot better
(08:49):
because the fact that we're physically removing people from bathrooms
because we don't understand how they look is just that's
where we are in as my as a near and
dear friend likes to call it the great place on Earth.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
The greatest place on Earth. Well, I.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
That leads us into a really interesting conversation about kind
of the check in, because I think as we talk
about Mental Health Awareness Month, it weighs very heavy on me.
So I want to go into the check in because
I want to touch on something you said, but in
the lens of like how I'm doing.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
I'll send it to you first. You tell me how
you're doing.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
I'm like a ninety two.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
You're great. I'm buzzing'.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
We had a fun date night with my grandparents last night.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
That is a sentence that doesn't typically come out of
anyone's mouth. It was great.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
We went to a really good steak place. We had
good food, good laughs. Uh, you let me sleep in.
I got up, I got to go work out.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
You organized the whole house. Did do that again. So
all's good. I'm buzzing'. I love that.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I'm also doing great. I feel amazing. I literally joked
about me being locked in this dungeon. Work is kicking
my butt for contry. It looks like she's in a
troll right now.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
I am in control hole. It's dark, but I'm doing well.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
I think I would say I'm probably kicking it at
a seventy five right now, work being probably the biggest
dejector there. But something you said is really important to me.
You said, if a kid could see me, right, if
I could have seen myself when I was a kid.
And I always live really closely to that comment because
during Mental Health Awareness Month we talk a lot about
mental health when I was younger. If I saw an
(10:26):
athlete that was open about having mental health issues, I
really firmly believe I wouldn't have taken a couple attempts
at my own life. And I say that with so
much passion because it is so important for people to
feel empowered. But you know, trans kids, mass presenting females,
people with mental health problems, when they see their favorite
(10:48):
athlete deal with those real crises in their little bubble
of like everything is perfect for an athlete.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
We know that's not true, but the concept is that
it is.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yeah, And so I know it's a heavy topic, but
I always appreciate your and my willingness and and all
the other athletes that are now doing so to just
speak very freely on.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Like real, real tough stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
It's a difficult thing to understand unless you're in it,
and like, at the end of the day, we are
all human beings. Like some have more privileged than others,
some have more opportunity than others, like better jobs, whatever, whatever, whatever,
But the grass is not always greener, right, And I
just think that it's it's becoming more common and comfortable
to talk about. We just saw the Katie Meyer story
(11:35):
came out on ESPN Plus, Like that's if you haven't
checked that.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Out, it's it's uh watch it.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Trigger warning on the on the content. But it's an
incredible just educational, you know, understanding things from a different perspective,
and all these pressures and like you're you're going to
school to be a student, but you're you're there because
you're an athlete, right, And there's just all this pressure
that you put on yourself that you feel around you.
It's hard to explain, but it's also hard to like
(12:00):
live in that wait all the time.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
I fully agree.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
That is why I'm so excited for the conversation we're
about to have next. You and I both know and
love doctor Joe Galasso, but for context for everyone else,
he's the founder of Baker Street Behavioral Health. We go
all the way back to when the riveters were trying
to add on mental health resources and I became the
general manager the second we connected with him. He was
a spark plug of let's get these athletes resources. He's
(12:24):
done a massive amount of work with women's teams across
the New Jersey region and further the men's teams. Right like,
he really found and carved out a niche where mental
health becomes accessible. And I could not be more proud
to know him, to love him, and to work with him.
And so we'll get into a conversation with Joe that
was incredibly illuminating.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Hi Joe, Hi guys, Anya Madison is so great to
see your faces again.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
You do I know, we're so excited to have you.
Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
I'm literally so excited to have you on. But before
we get into like all the things I said, Joe,
it's doctor Joe. Give us a little intro how we
know each other, and we can kind of talk a
little bit about what we used to do with the RIVS.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Sure, well, Joe's okay, Joe Glasso. I'm a clinical psychologist.
I've been doing this. I've been practicing for fifteen plus
years at this point. I have a pretty diverse practice,
but my passion has always been working with athletes, and
that's how I got to meet you, two wonderful people
working with the Riveters, which still I talk so fondly about.
I missed that time together very much, but it gave
(13:42):
me such an opportunity as a psychologist, as a person
to learn so much more about sports, life, gender and
differences in sports. It's solidified for me my mission to
really like make sure that healthcare, mental health care in
particular is equitable and people could access it.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
I want you to talk a little bit more about
Baker Street specifically because I visited your guys' facility in
New Jersey. It is maybe the coolest facility I've ever
been into my entire life, no joke. So just tell
us a little bit more about that and like kind
of the groups of people that you work with and
your day to day.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
We have a very unique practice, and the physical environment
is part of it. We service the entire life span.
So I think our youngest client right now is two
and our oldest is in their eighties right And I'm
so fortunate to have such a diverse team of specialists
that work here that we get to work with all
walks of life, all sorts of issues, if you can
(14:36):
believe at the pandemic actually wide in our catchment area.
I always thought we would be a New York, New
Jersey company, but we now provide mental health services in
forty eight states, which is pretty wild.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
It's crazy.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Yeah, And like I said, all walks of life. We
are not generally surprised by what walks through our practice store.
But Madison, to your point, you know, when I started
my private practice, I wanted to be a little different.
So my first office was actually in a gym, and
I would tell people, you know, if you're scared of antidepressants,
if you're scared of taking meds, then we're going to
go downstairs and you're going to walk on the treadmill
(15:09):
and we're going to get active. Right. So, every one
of my facilities has a fitness components open space because
people need to move, people need to walk and talk,
people need to be active. We do a lot of
rehabilitation to traumatic brain injuries, athletes who are rehabbing, you know,
So I want it to be a naturalistic environment. I
don't want it to be a static therapist d office.
(15:31):
We have those, but not every office should be like that.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
To paint like a little bit of backgrounded picture. When
I became the general manager of the Riveters, the first
thing I said was, we need sports sykes like these
women are starting to do this full time. We need
a doctor, We need actual like physical care, and then
what part of the practice can touch the mental care
of the patient and the athlete and really looking at
their whole body, right, because if they bomb a knee, like, yeah,
(15:57):
they're going to go get an ext ray, They're going
to go put something on, going to be on crutches
for a few days. But when the game is falling
flat or they're having a really hard time like capturing
their mental health or being in a sane space, like,
what are we doing for the athlete? And so talk
to us about the kind of professional sports that you
work with, and then kind of flow through the way
we started to work together and what that utilization from
(16:18):
my athletes to you look like.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Sure, well you know, sports like really wasn't a thing.
I think when I was doing my training, I was
an ex athlete. I played in high school, a little
bit in college and then was done right and I
found that my new arena was psychology and graduate school
and that mindset shifted. And while I was in grad school,
I had the opportunity to meet a lot of people
who were pursuing professional careers. And you know me long
(16:43):
enough now to know that I was just pretty blunt
with them and said, let me train with you, let
me stay in shape, and I'll give you what you need, right,
let me practice like this new sports psychology thing. Right.
So I made a lot of really awesome relationships, and
I have always kept athletes like one on one clients
as part of my practice. So I think it was
like twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, the opportunity to work with
(17:04):
the Brooklyn Nets, or that they were still in New
Jersey at the time they had just been purchased, came
up and they asked me to work with the team.
And I was one of two people really working in
the NBA at the time putting mental health programs together
for the men's side. And since twenty fifteen, I really
feel like, I mean, it's been a title wave of
like opportunity for psychologists to get involved with sports. And
(17:24):
you know, so I wound up working with the Nets,
the Red Bulls, and through the Red Bulls, I started
working with Gotham or women's team, and I think there
were some like fundamental differences between the men's side and
the women's side, and one was utilization, right, and what
really kept me interested and when we met, I think
we even talked about it. Right. On the men's side,
I might have five percent utilization, but on the female side,
(17:45):
we had about one hundred percent utilization when we were
working with the teams, and I know, particularly with the ribs,
I mean, it was so well received that I really
started to divert a lot of our practice resources to
the women's sides because it was not available, right. I
think you were probably one, if not the only team
that had this available so directly. But we wanted to
(18:09):
give it to the team in a way that mimicked
what the men's side was getting too, right. So it
wasn't just like you can't pay so you're getting cheap services. No,
we wanted you to have full access to the mental
health and the performance side, right. And to me, that's
where a lot of programs were falling short, is that
they didn't have the clinical acumen to know when somebody
(18:30):
needed like it was really anxiety or depression getting in
the way of their performance versus I really just have
a metal block, right or a little bit of breathing
or a little bit of visualization can fix this. I mean,
I think the time that we spent together was wildly successful.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
And I love that you said that because I always
felt like that was the biggest building block of why
we work so well together is you knew there was
nothing we could do to put the right amount of
investment in the product that we needed, so you took
a massive step into our court. Right, Like Maddie and
I will always kind of like do a measure of
like where we stand to one hundred, and sometimes she's
(19:05):
thirty and I'm seventy, and sometimes we're fifty to fifty,
and sometimes we're both one hundred, right, But you recognize
that we were very much ten and Baker Street was
willing to extend that other ninety percent. And I always
appreciated that about our partnership and you as a visionary
and you as a partner to us. But then we
kind of go from there, which is utilization. It's efforts,
it's bringing coaching in on a daily basis, as you know,
(19:28):
finding team foundations and then having your team come and
start to go through like sessions where my team was
really working well together. And then we started our mental
health game and it actually was born of Madison. Madison
was very passionate about making sure we had a mental
health game, but I wanted to make sure it was
Baker Street focus, make sure it was something that we
were able to communicate and have conversations around and be
(19:48):
really really intentional. And that's now starting to happen, and
athletes are now starting to talk about their mental health.
What does that do for the rest of the world
by way of visibility.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
In mental health? I always think about these things in
terms of like a pollination model, right, you need to
pollinate a group of people with the idea and get
them comfortable with it. And there's no better platform than
the athletes platform to start pollinating people with these ideas,
that these conversations need to be had, that these topics
are important. They're not just happening, you know, behind closed
(20:22):
doors in some suburb right or in an inner city area.
These issues are happening everywhere, right, and nobody is immune
to them, and then people start to get comfortable with it,
and then people start emulating, like everything else that the
athletes are doing, and they'll say, well, if my heroes
are vulnerable enough to talk about what's going on, I'm
going to do that too, right. So for me, it's
(20:42):
always about are you reaching that viewer, that middle school
female that is having identity issues, that you know, that
high school male that's depressed but he's afraid to say
it because he doesn't want to sound like he's lazy
or something preconceived. Right, So just to have their role
models do it right, So it's just the visibility and
(21:03):
then to start to gain some language around what they're
actually asking for you. And I will tell you, since
the pandemic, we have more parents calling four kids because
the kids have asked for the service. That is new
to us. Psych is always reactive, and I think if
people can just understand that, like, if we catch these
things early enough, we could fix.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
A lot of it.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Right. A lot of this may not be curable, but
we could reduce how bad you feel very quickly. And
if we give you those skills early on, they will
carry on throughout your life. I prefer people to get
what they need for me and then be done with me, right,
and just feel better and go live their lives. So yeah,
I think it's important. I mean, the pollination is incredible,
and I'll tell you we just started working with the
(21:43):
New York Gridlock, the ultimate frisbee team. Yeah, and the
first thing that they really brought up was how do
we do a mental health game. We want to do that.
The Wave, the Jersey Shore Wave has also inquired about
doing it. Saint Joe's High School, which is one of
the largest football programs, and New Jersey is going to
do it this year. So I mean, you guys should
be so incredibly proud of what you started. Right we
(22:06):
had these conference calls, are just talking in the hallway
about what we should be doing and how great the
world would be if we could do that, and it's
happening in real time. I kind of love that women's
sports owns it because it's your thing. And I think
if we could just continue to pollinate these leagues and
these teams, it's just going to grow. There's no way
it won't.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Like you said, now, other teams are doing it, people
are talking about it. We're providing opportunities for people to
get ahead of it. But I also want to talk
about the back end of it. I think a big
part of the mental health conversation that we don't talk
about is well, there are amazing doctors and resources like you, like,
there aren't nearly enough for the number of people that
(22:48):
need it, and it's a big, big problem. Overdose is
the number one cause of death in the country right now.
LGBTQ youth are at higher risk than they've ever been
and these are really really important resources that people need
to continue to have access to, and you're a part
of fixing that. But maybe we can talk a little
bit about, like how people can continue to educate themselves
(23:09):
and people can continue to help because I think it's
only going to continue to unfortunately be a problem, and
it's something that we want to stay ahead of. How
do we do that as a community.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
Not a big topic at all, Madison, Just a light question.
You know. It's funny, after practicing for as long as
I have and having the opportunity to be in some
of the rooms that I've been in, I've learned one
thing about psychology and mental health, and it's that we
overcomplicate it. I think if we just start by walking
(23:38):
back how complicated it is to me, some of these
solutions are really simple. Honestly, it's a crisis of confidence
for the most part, as I see it, right, feeling
valued enough and confident enough to talk about the things
that are problematic in our lives. Right. I mean that
(24:00):
on the most basic level and the most systemic levels,
we spend so much time trying to fix and solve
these large problems that most of it is. People want
to be seen, people want to be heard, people want
to feel safe, and people want to feel loved, right,
And I think those are simple to fix if we
could create communities that really care about each other, right.
(24:21):
And I think using the Riveters as an example, we
did that as a group of people that didn't know
each other at all. We were able to do it
because we trusted each other and we had a common vision.
We have to unite underneath that kind of common vision
and that that common mission. People want to care about
(24:41):
each other, you know. I was having this conversation with
a colleague this week, and to me, a kindness is simple.
I think being kind to each other is actually a
very simple thing. I think being unkind is actually harder, right, Like,
I think it goes against our nature, and I think
we actually have to there's some volition behind it, right,
We have to want to push in that direction. It's
(25:04):
the opposite I think of the direction that we're typically
wired to do. Our DNA, our survival as biological animals,
is based on unity. It's not based on separateness, right,
It's based on connectedness, and I think we've kind of
gotten away from that, right. So I think if the
more simple we think about this thing, the more common
(25:25):
the banner is that we could unite ourselves under, I think,
the more likely we are to come to a solution.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Well. I think a lot of that too stems from,
at least in my opinion, fear, right, Like you fear
what's different from you, You fear what you don't know.
Just like an interesting story. So my hometown has been
like particularly hard hit by overdose, in suicide, et cetera.
When I went home and tried to talk to the
athletic director about, you know, how can we start talking
(25:52):
about some of this stuff, they wouldn't do it because
they didn't want the liability and the responsibility, right like, oh, well,
well we can't talk about that topic. And so I
just think it's interesting when we talk about you know,
kindness and meeting the world in the middle, et cetera.
We're willing only to do it for the topics that
we think are easy, but then we have this crisis
(26:14):
on our hands where we're trying to bring everyone together
and to now fix it, and it's just it's like
it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
It's completely mind boggling when you think about it in
that context, because what you're saying is people are more
willing to have a conversation about another person who lost
their life to something, but we're not willing to talk
about what the cost was.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
And I think sometimes when we think about people with
mental health disorders, we're like, oh, they're crazy, right, and
or they're this, or they're a danger or they're that.
Where we talk about people who you know, struggle with
addiction and things like that, Oh well they're they're homeless,
or they're like, no, it's an illness the same as
anything else. Cancer, a mental illness is a DSM five
(26:56):
diagnosis that you have no control over. It can be genetic,
I mean, right, And that's what I think is most
important when we talk about normalizing this conversation. To be clear,
we want to normalize the conversation so that people feel
comfortable having the conversation, not the behavior. No one wants
the behavior to continue.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
No, it's exactly right. You know. One of the things
that I found to be helpful. I actually ironically just
did a presentation on this this morning. It's undeniable. You
can't not get caught up in behaviors because you can
see it, right, Yeah, they're palpable. Everything else in medicine
really is invisible. So I was talking to a group
of parents this morning and I say, and the topic
(27:35):
was on challenging behaviors, how do I help my preschool
or behave right? And I said, well, what if we
think about it differently and we talk about where the
behaviors come from, and that's your brain. And if we
really start parenting to the brain and not the behavior,
it's impossible to take it personally. It's impossible to put
a judgment on that behavior. When we realize that the
(27:57):
prefrontal cortex of a three year old doesn't develop until
their twenties. And I always joke, if you're a guy,
probably until your thirties or four probably never, but maybe never. Right, Look,
as the owner of that cortex, I'm with you on that.
But my point is, you know, I think we get
so caught up in the judgment of where these behaviors began,
(28:20):
and it's very easy to have opinions about that. To me,
it just needs to be refocused on where it's actually
coming from. And it's biological, right, and that is out
of their control, right, And maybe they have engaged in
other behaviors that pushed the mental health piece to the surface.
That's not ours to judge. Right, The brain is susceptible
to what the brain is susceptible to. No different than
(28:42):
people who have mental illness after a concussion, right, Oftentimes
I see that you have a head injury. You guys
have seen it in sport, right, people can't recover from
that concussion. They have memory issues, they have headaches, their
mood fluctuates, they can't concentrate. We could label all sorts
of mental health issues on that. So I really try
to take the behavior out of it, because you can't.
(29:04):
You can't judge a brain.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
So then you add on the layer of all this
incredibly complex stuff that we then hand our four year
old and iPad then layer in social media. How much
does that play in your conversations on a daily basis?
How much do you feel like maybe from an athlete
and then elsewhere, like, how much does social media play
into the mental health of the patient?
Speaker 4 (29:40):
Yeah, look, I mean I think the impact is immeasurable.
I couldn't imagine being a teenager right now, me either,
because what they measure themselves against is often not even real, yeah, right,
And it's very hard to distinguish what is reality and
what is fantasy when you're you know, when they're scrolling
through these profiles, right, you talk to kids and they're
(30:02):
living in this world where they think flying on private
jets is like a thing most people do, right, or.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
That's the craziest thing I've ever heard at eighty.
Speaker 4 (30:10):
Thousand dollars porsches. When you graduate, it's a shame that
they don't have the capacity to understand that these curated
images they are seeing are just so bad for them.
On the athlete side, it's very much the same, and
a lot of what we do is teaching them to say, like,
maybe you don't need the heck count right until you
(30:30):
really can use it maturely, and we really work on
what it means like because you know, especially in the
New York, New Jersey market, media is brutal.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
It's like inescapable.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
There's no other profession on the planet outside of like
maybe politics and government where your every move is being scrutinized.
So like in real time, athletes have so much to
compete with, right, So unless you're really there with the
mindset that this is playful and I know how to
deal with that, it's really challenging for young athletes.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
And then we put the lens and I can't ignore it,
specifically in women's sports, that you have to have a
certain number of followers, that you have to monetize it
in a certain way, that it has to look a
certain way, that it has to be morally and ethically
aligned to your values. Like there's such an impetus in
women's sports that we say, yeah, you might not make
any money.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Playing this sport.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
You might make thirty five thousand dollars as your salary,
and that's not enough to pay rent. So go grow
your social media to two hundred and fifty thousand followers
that now are invited in your door. You don't have privacy,
you want to get these nail deals. You have all
of this burden of responsibility, and then you just don't
get any followers, and nobody picks you, and no one
(31:45):
likes your storylines, and no one watches your Get Ready
with Me or whatever bs that we're talking about in
that moment, and then that athlete is got no money,
doesn't have the followers is envious of their counterpart that
is either on their team or on opposing teams for
something that has nothing to do with the reason that
we're there.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
And I'm sure you guys have seen this too in
the locker room. A lot of what we were dealing
with too, was people were trying to see what weighed
more in terms of value to their team, whether it's
me my identity as an athlete and what I actually
bring on the field, ice pitch, whatever I'm on, or
(32:27):
what I bring in terms of my social media following.
You know, I saw it. One of the teams I
worked with, there was a big push to do these
like fashion walks before like walking into the stadium, so
everybody was competing about what they were wearing, and you know,
if you actually made it to the team instagram before,
you know, it got very challenging. And I remember having
(32:47):
to me with the team saying, like, at what point
do we actually talk about the game. We have to play, Like,
where are our priorities right? Because nobody's head was actually
focused on what the mission was.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, the tunnel fit content is so great, but where
is that the most important part of a game day? Because, like, Madison,
I'll throw this over to you, babe, because you always
threw some insane fits and got all that love pre
playing the game, and then you weren't getting appreciated as
the athlete and you weren't getting the ice time, and
like there was frustrations for your own game, So like,
where did that balance? Not that we're gonna therapize you,
(33:21):
but like that balance must have been really hard.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
I think it's gotten harder the bigger the spotlight has gotten.
What people don't recognize is that at the end of
the day, no matter what your job, no matter how
much you get paid, we are all human, and like
we have to do certain things, especially as women, if
we want to get paid. You have to wear that outfit,
(33:45):
you have to put this online. You have to do that,
and like, because that's the opportunity that exists to get fed.
And when you don't have the ability to turn it off,
it's crazy. The best example of that, Dodget Joe. You
probably see it all the time, but Bis pulled out
of the Olympic Games because she's like, I can't do it.
And I actually applaud her for doing that, because no
(34:09):
athlete does that, like they just perform and say, you know,
I can do it. I'm the best, I'm the greatest.
She wanted her team to win like that's that is
the ultimate teammate, but also on the biggest stage in
the world to say the only thing that matters is
my mental health. Everything else can wait, and then we
criticize that person for that. I mean, it's crazy.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
It's group think. Right. As soon as people feel comfortable
being in that echo chamber, it's hard to make it stop. Right.
It solidifies my thinking that this is really a crisis
of confidence and it's unfortunate. But it takes one person
to stand up in that echo chamber it said disagree,
and a lot of times it will dissipate. But it's
(34:49):
as being the guy often that is standing in his
room saying I don't agree. It's challenging, right, you have
to take a lot of lumps along the way, but
if you really believe in it, you know you got
to say it. And I found myself at least to
be fortunately organized that I feel like I have to
say what I have to say and I will stand
up for people when I need to stand up for them.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Well, I think that's the part, right. So we watched
it like right in that year, Simone Bios Naomi Osaka,
like a couple of female athletes really stood up and
they were like time out, like we really need support,
Like I can't do what I'm expected to do at
this level and still prioritize my mental health and so
and I'm sure this is not news, but Baker Street
(35:31):
probably supports athletes through those things. And so what does
that look like, Like, how do you insulate an athlete
that is going through crisis that needs support. What could
someone do to support somebody in that space better than
we are.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
That's a great question. I think for the people not
in the know, we see probably twenty percent of the
people that are actually going through it, right, I think
the other eighty percent we're still covering for them. They're
on the injured reserve list. Teams will still cover a
lot of this because people are not comfortable going out
to the media saying, you know what, I'm depressed, I'm
(36:07):
coming out. You know, I'm the captain of this team
and I have depression, and I don't want to play
in the New York, New Jersey market. That echo chamber
will start immediately about how this person, this player is
soft or incapable of leadership or whatever it is. And
it has nothing to do with that. But in terms
of treatment, I think the first thing we've done, at
least on the medical departments that I work with, we
(36:28):
take a very holistic approach, right, so the player will
at least immediately see that our group, the medical doctor, myself,
maybe even whoever the head trainer is on that organization,
we're aligned and we're going to do whatever we have
to do to get them better. We don't sugarcoat things.
We will name what the issue is, right, So, if
(36:49):
it's depression, if we need more testing, if we need
to figure out what it is, we'll tell them that too,
and then we'll give them a rough timeline, and then
we'll ask them what they actually want communicated to people. Right,
we will honor whether they want people to know or
not know. We will honor if this is a crisis
of you know, I'm sure both of you have seen
this in your careers. There are some players that are
(37:09):
just done playing and they don't know how to tell
people that. Right, So what it looks like is a
mental health crisis, and we have to help them through that.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
Right.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
For the players that want to go back, we have
to give them realistic timelines. You know, I had a
player we just got back. I've never seen anything like this,
but the system was so incredibly well prepared and supportive.
The player knew exactly what they wanted. I mean, profoundly
depressed in the middle of the year, like can't get
(37:40):
out of bed, but expected to perform. And we got
this player back to their job in six weeks. But
it took daily meetings with me. They were uncomfortable with
meds being on board, but we worked through that, right,
and we had to say this, this is what we
need to do if you want to get back, and
(38:01):
to that, you know that was three years ago. This
person's great, right with just maintenance, with just the vitamin supplement,
checks in with their therapist every once in a while,
they're great, and they're they're still playing. But you know that,
that to me is the perfect outcome. Right. It happened quickly.
They got what they needed you know when when we
developed these services in athletics. You know you've seen it
(38:24):
for the physical stuff. Right, you get injured the next day,
that night, you're in an MRI. The next day you're
in surgery. Right, we could prioritize care physically, but we've
never really done it for mental health. So what we've
just been doing, and you guys have seen us do
this is just align the standard with good medical care.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
How much do you feel like the reception of athletes
to take that? I would call it like almost like
a PT right, like a PT schedule for the mind.
Like how much more receptive now versus when you first
got into this world? Are athletes to that concept of
here's our recovery plan for this crisis.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
So honestly, it actually took me longer to get comfortable
with it. I think then players, because players are used
to thinking in that huh you kind of cadence.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
Oh yeah, I said, what I do, here's where I
find wellness.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
So I had to adjust the way that I thought
about things versus like, how do I get this service
to you in an authentic way? If I can't figure
that out, nobody's gonna use it. And nobody's going to
get better. It took me some time to figure out that. Like, honestly,
I call it the bartender model. Right, You guys spend
more time with the trainers than you do with me,
And that's the right way to do it. Right if
(39:37):
if the trainer trusts me, right, if the PT trusts
me and I trust the PT, then we'll just text
each other when stuff comes up, and then is on
the PT to get them to trust me a little
bit more. They will find the right time to say,
you know what, it's a little bit past what I
could handle. Why don't we call Joe right? Or I
could just text him right now, let's do a group text.
(39:58):
Or you know he's going to be in the building
in next week, Like, I'll just make sure he's here
while you're on the table, and then that for me,
is the best time to get him, because then they're stuck, stuck.
You know, I got ten minutes and I'm just gonna
sit next to him. Honestly, the athlete, I don't care, gender,
sport doesn't matter. They just need to know that I'm
a normal person and that they could trust me. And
(40:20):
once that's done, we're off to the races.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
That and you're not trying to label anybody that, and
you're not trying to make prescriptive long term care that
doesn't feel authentic to them. I mean, that's something that
I very much identify with. It's just like we all
can find this wellness and we can find a treatment
plan that works for us. That doesn't mean for the
rest of our lives we're beholden too this six week
intensive recovery period. And that feels so freeing because it's hard,
(40:45):
hard work. Mental health is so hard, And somebody on
our podcast said, mental health is really like feeling the
appropriate emotions at the appropriate times. So like you're gonna
be sad, Like if you're depressed, you're gonna be sad.
That's gonna be okay, because we're going to work through
it and then come up with a long term care plan.
That doesn't mean that you're just clinically depressed for the
(41:06):
rest of your life. And that might be the case,
and that is okay, Like we can put a name
to that and find a pathway through. But it's always
very refreshing when you have somebody, especially as an athlete,
that isn't going to say your shoulder doesn't work anymore,
it's just never going to work again. Right, That's not
the answer we want, right, it's how do we come
to a mutual solution with a go forward strategy? And
I always appreciated who you are in that specific concept
(41:30):
because it doesn't feel like a scarlet letter.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (41:36):
It's taken years of learning how to do that right,
great at it, but I've learned a couple other things.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Right.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
Athletes are unique in that most people don't want to
sit in a room for an hour and talk right.
So again, to do it authentically, you have to learn
how to do therapy over seven days at fifteen minutes
at a time. Yeah, right, and get what you need
from them and them from you, unless it's really a
severe case where you have to say, this is what
we're doing because we need to fix X. The other
(42:06):
thing is, you guys are the biggest fraud detectors I've
ever met. If you think that I'm more fan than doctor, yeah,
you're never talking to me because historically psychologists have people
are paranoid about what they're telling the coaches right, who
they're telling what to, So like, really learning how to
become a trustworthy person that is really just invested in
(42:28):
people feeling better. You have to be really aware of
who you're working with. On the men's side, the families
really needed the support. Yeah, and that was the best
entry point because once the families trusted you that the
players would come. We found that to be different on
the female side, where you guys were welcomed it with
open arms and knew what the resource was. Like, I
think it was just more about like there was no
(42:50):
customer acquisition. You're really aware of what you were getting
and you asked for it and got it right.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
You've signed up with the rooms that we were like,
hold on, wait, let me text Joe right now.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
Call call tech Tech. It's called called tex text.
Speaker 4 (43:01):
That was the best. I love it. I will one
hundred percent of the time work with people that want
to work with me, you know, versus just sitting around
you know me, I don't like to be bored.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Well, we've talked about what you do, some of who
you do it with, some of the good, the bad,
the hard, the easy, and I want to know that.
I want to know what you think is the hardest
part of what you do.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
The hardest part of what I do is still on
the human side, Right, I still have to give people
hard news, sometimes bad news.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Right.
Speaker 4 (43:32):
We could even qualify it as bad news. I tell
them post concussion that some of these symptoms might not
ever go away. We're really dealing with the traumatic brain injury. Right.
I get a lot of people with acquired physical issues, right,
loss of limb, loss of some sort of like life skill,
and that's really challenging. The psychologists have suffered a lot
(43:56):
from vicarious trauma, right. We hear a lot of really
hard things often, you know, and learning how to insulate
yourself from that is really challenging. And I feel badly
for a lot of the young clinicians that are coming
up in this time because there's so many people looking
for services and they're really coming with heavy stuff for
them to learn how to be a therapist with. And
(44:19):
don't get me wrong, I did my training in you know,
state hospitals and saw some like real significant mental health stuff.
But this is on the outpatient level. People are asking
for like once weak therapy for significant traumas, and it's
very difficult. The reality is, I think social media has
sanitized what mental health is. I think there's a large
(44:40):
group of people that just think it's anxiety. And it's
cute that everybody has anxiety, right when there is a
lot of suffering, a lot of life changes that are
tied to mental health issues. Right, especially when we talk
about depression, it's inextricably linked to suicide. Right, we have
to talk about horrible stuff there. Sometimes heavy is heavy,
(45:02):
and I need to take a break. You know, it's
a really hard job.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Every episode we end with this idea of like advice,
and it's usually like mom to mom, what's the advice, Like,
what's the best advice you've ever heard? But I want
to hear yours for parents who are dealing with kids
that are struggling with their mental health.
Speaker 4 (45:18):
Oh, I think for me it's twofold. And again, in
the vein of oversimplifying it, I can't get across even
myself as a parent now, right, I try to do this.
If you notice something with your child, ask them a question,
talk to them about it. Right, there's still so many
(45:38):
people I think regret is the hardest thing to deal with, right,
especially in the wake of suicide, and especially in the
wake of some sort of central event. Nobody has ever
sat in my office and said, I wish I didn't
ask how they were doing. It's the opposite, right, It's
always I wish I'd just said something. I wish I'd
(45:59):
just asked. It won't cure everything, But when it comes
to mental health, I've learned that people are honest for
the most part. If they really believe you are listening,
they will tell you how they feel. It's on us
to be prepared for the answer. It's not on them
to not answer, right. So, especially when it comes to
my kids, I just want them to always feel okay
(46:22):
answering my question. When I ask how they're doing, it's
I'm not asking because it's automatic. I'm asking because I
actually care about them, right, And to me, it's still
the most basic skill. And we just don't do it
with our kids because we're afraid that they'll think we're judgmental,
or we are afraid of the response, right, And I
think that comes with the confidence we just have to ask,
(46:43):
just ask how they're doing.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
I love what you said.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
It's not on the person struggling to be able to
deliver the information in a palatable way. It really is
on us asking the question to just be a listener,
because we say it all the time between each other
when we talk on the pod, like we're not mental
health perfer but we care or give a shit is
like an all time high. So if we just have
a game, if we just wear a jersey that says
(47:07):
talk about it, just talk about it. We might not
know the answer, but you're getting it off your chest
and saying it out loud might make it okay to
then say it to someone else and then we might
be able to call someone in for care, or then
we might be able to do the next step. So
thank you for that. As a as a parent, I
welcome that because there are times where I'm like, for
my four year old, like, first of all, he's going
(47:29):
to say it in gibberish, but I have to really
dial into the answer. So I appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (47:34):
The other part of it. It will also often tell
people most high performers or high performers because they're trying
to do everything the opposite of what people did right.
Somebody told me I was not going to mount to anybody. Well,
I'll show them right. I think for parents, one of
the most powerful things you could do is really picture
your kid, like what if they won the valid dictorian
(47:57):
at their high school?
Speaker 1 (47:58):
Right?
Speaker 4 (47:58):
And they have to give this speech each They're always
asked to thank people. Right, do you want your child
to get up and say thank you, mom and dad.
You gave me the strength of confidence to say whatever
I wanted to do, or I did it in spite
of everything you taught me how to do. Right, So
I think we could do these really simple exercises. I
do that almost nightly. I kind of visualize, like, Wow,
(48:20):
wouldn't be awesome to see my kids get up there
and thank me for this versus how we kind of
grew up, right, Like with this opposite mindset of no,
I have to do things differently. This was the environment
I grew up. I did everything I could to get
out of it. Think about the amount of emotional energy
we have spent throughout our lives doing that versus we
(48:41):
have net. We now have the opportunity to create the
opposite experience for our kids. Right. And it's not that
it's not that hard. You have to be kind and
you have to listen, you have to see them and
you have to love them, right. And it's not saying
that they're going to behave for you.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
We're going won't.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
They won't.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
But I love that it's right versus because of and
I actually just read the other day something on Instagram
and it was like, the relationship you have with your
kids should be driven by connection and not what fills
the connection, right, So like it doesn't matter where you
are or what you're doing, or what they have or
what you give them, like, it's investing in the connection
(49:20):
that they will feel comfortable and that they know that
you're their safe space, you're their safe person. So I
just think that that's awesome advice. I agree wholeheartedly. We
could continue having this conversation. I could talk to you
for days, but before we go, I just, as a
player who benefited firsthand from all the work that you did,
I want to say thank you.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
You helped me and.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
People that I love in tough situations, and so I
want to thank you for that. You are doing the
hard work and you will continue to do it and
we will continue to need it. So thank you for
chatting with us. I love you like family, and we're
so grateful for you.
Speaker 4 (49:54):
Yeah, right back at you, guys. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
Joe.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
It only took fifty five minutes to get Maddie to cry,
so that's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
And we can Talk episode. Yes, that's it for this week.
Thanks for listening, and.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
If you like what you heard, spread the word seriously
right now, take your phone out, text a friend and
tell them to subscribe.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
And be sure to rate and review us on Apple
Podcasts and Spotify if you haven't already. It really really
helps until next week. I'm Madison Packer.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
And I'm Onya Packer and this was These Packs Puck.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
These Packs Puck is a production of iHeart Women's Sports
and Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. It's hosted by us
Madison and Anya Packer. Emily Meronoff is our senior producer
and story editor. We were mixed and mastered by Mary Doo.
Our executive producers are Jennifer Bassett, Jesse Katz, and Ali Perry.
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