March 2, 2023 • 55 mins
Janet Barrett is an Author and Mental Health Advocate for Mental Health Awareness. She’s also the founder of Cerebral Health, a company dedicated to proactive mental health education and strategy.
Tune in as Janet shares her own struggles with mental health brought on by traumatic events in her journey. She also breaks down the process we must follow to overcome extreme emotions such as anger, depression, and anxiety. We’ll also talk about her new book, “Stop the Break”, and some of its insights based on her life experiences.
To follow Janet, learn more about her great work, and pick up a copy of her book, visit www.stopthebreak.life .
On her website, you can also register to win a signed copy of her book! Every month for the remainder of 2023, two winners will be randomly selected to win a signed copy! Visit her website for more details.
A big audiotag shout-out to Jimmy IV, creator and host of the Sexy Cool Lounge Podcast. Follow Jimmy and subscribe to his podcast at www.sexycoollounge.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Hey, this is Jimmy IV, creator and host of the Sexy Cool Lounge podcast.
And I want you to continue to shine bright and radiate your vibe
because you're now listening to the Road to Rediscovery with Aubrey Johnson.
Our lives are laid out on a road of bumps, turns, struggles and more.
How do we respond?
How do we endure adversity for learning and growth?
(00:22):
I'm Aubrey Johnson and we'll explore these questions and more on the Road to Rediscovery.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Road to Rediscovery.
I'm your host, Aubrey Johnson.
The Road to Rediscovery is about reflecting on life lessons to learn and grow from them.
(00:45):
And of course, pay it forward and uplift others who are struggling through dark times.
Now, a quick reminder that you can get the Road to Rediscovery anywhere you listen
to your podcast on any platform.
If you listen on Apple Podcasts, we ask that you please give us a rate and review.
(01:05):
Otherwise, shoot us an email at Road to Rediscovery podcast at gmail.com.
That's Road to Rediscovery podcast at gmail.com.
And we'll give you a shout out in the future episode.
Now, my special guest is an author and mental health advocate dedicated
to mental health awareness.
(01:26):
In her recently released book, Stop the Break, she chronicles her own journey
of unresolved trauma and the toll it took on her mental health.
She's the founder of Cerebral Health, a company dedicated
to proactive mental health education and strategy.
Ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome Janet Barrett to the show.
(01:48):
Janet, it's so great to have you here.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Thank you so much, Aubrey.
I am so excited to be here with you.
Oh, likewise, likewise.
We're thrilled, as you can hear, we're thrilled that you're here.
So I want to go into your journey, okay?
But before we do that, if you could please, for the benefit of the listeners,
(02:10):
just kind of elaborate and clarify what is meant when you say proactive mental health
or proactive mental care.
So I think one of the easiest ways to think about proactive mental health care
is to think about proactive physical health care, because I think everybody is used
(02:34):
to that concept.
You work out, you exercise, you eat right, and that's being proactive
in taking care of your body.
If you don't do those things, you start to have issues.
If you don't exercise, maybe you lose lung capacity and you can't breathe as well,
or you can't walk as far.
(02:57):
So it's that same concept, but applying it to your mental health.
So it's saying, how do I take care of my mental health before I have a problem?
And what I have found is that most people, myself included, never even thought about
that as something that needed to happen.
(03:17):
Yeah, yeah.
I just went through life thinking, I'm okay, I'm fine.
Maybe not everything's perfect, but it's okay, I'll be fine until I actually broke.
Until I actually broke, and then I realized, oh, maybe had I taken care of myself a little
bit earlier, been proactive, then I wouldn't have actually broken.
(03:43):
That makes a lot of sense.
Thank you for clarifying that.
In fact, that turned the light bulb on for me as you were explaining this, I have to say,
because when I saw the words together, proactive mental health care, I was thinking, okay,
(04:03):
this is what you do, you take action in the event that you hear or feel or sense some
symptomatic type of things that may hint on progressing into, say, anxiety or depression
(04:23):
or something.
But no, you're saying, when there's no problem, like, work it out exercising, you know,
you're a teenager, I mean, you know, you have all of your capacities and functions and
nothing's wrong, you work out, and that's, that's the long term proactivity.
Is that right?
Exactly.
You're playing a long game with that.
(04:45):
And again, we do it very unencumbered when we're thinking about our physical health.
We take our kids to go have their annual physical checkup.
You go to the dentist and you have your six month cleaning.
Those things we just do, it's been ingrained in our society, but nobody takes the time
(05:05):
to say, OK, you know, mentally, how are you doing?
How are you handling all of the things that happen in your life?
And are you doing everything that you can to prevent that from building up?
Because what a lot of people do and what I did was become what I call an emotional
Sherpa. So an emotional Sherpa, if you think about the Sherpas in Nepal, when they're
(05:30):
leading an expedition up a mountain, they actually take on gear from other people in
the expedition. They put it in their backpack and lead people up to the summit and they
get to see these amazing views and these beautiful, beautiful vistas.
Yeah.
And then when they're done, they come back down, they take that gear off and they hand
(05:53):
it back to people.
What an emotional Sherpa does is they take that stress, they help somebody else out,
they do their own thing.
They keep putting that emotional baggage in their backpack, but they never actually
deal with it and take it out at the end of the expedition because our life is never
(06:14):
ending until there is no more life.
And so you don't stop, you don't hit that summit, you never get to the peak.
And so you keep going and going and going and we just don't deal with it until it becomes
that problem.
And so that's that proactive, OK, let's not necessarily just keep that packed in our
(06:37):
backpack. Yeah.
Let's take it out and deal with it.
But it's also making sure that we do that in a safe way.
Yes, 100 percent.
Absolutely. Yeah.
It has to be in an environment where one feels safe, where one feels secure in in in
unpacking this, right, in processing and someone such as yourself who is who is qualified
(07:03):
to assist and and and take on that baggage, you know, for that person as they're going
through this expedition or process.
Is that right?
So I don't want to take on their baggage for them.
Got you.
I simply want to help them unpack it.
I see.
And I tell people that it's more than what you've probably heard thus far in life in
(07:28):
the way to really unpack that, because what we do, what the main recommendation is right
now is therapy and potentially medication, depending on what, you know, your situation
is.
Right.
But it almost always involves talking about it.
Yes.
(07:49):
However, what scientists have discovered is that putting that trauma or that stress, that
anxiety into words is good, but it's actually not enough.
And that not enough is the part that I am trying to help people understand more of and
(08:10):
what you can actually do more on the proactive side.
So the not enough, the more that you need to do is actually physically expressing specifically
negative emotions.
Okay.
And I'll get a little bit more into that.
So if you think about, if somebody tells you a joke or you see a comedian or you watch
(08:33):
a funny film, what is your natural reaction?
To laugh.
You laugh.
Exactly.
That's a physical reaction, right?
You smile, you laugh.
It comes out of your body.
You physically express that happy emotion.
When you win a game that you're playing, you throw your hands up like, yes, absolutely.
I'm so excited.
You do that physical expression of those positive emotions.
(08:58):
And that's acceptable in society.
Smiling, laughing, cheering, being excited, that type of thing is very accepted and expected
from people.
Right.
However, when you get sad, you might show it a little bit.
But chances are you suppress some of that, especially when it's in a public setting.
(09:23):
Yes.
It's not society's way or anything that's acceptable within society today to really
let the full extent of that emotion out.
And the same is true for anger.
However, that emotion, that physical expression, your body naturally has that.
(09:46):
And when you suppress it and you stop it, that is still actually inside your body.
And if you don't ever let it out, it keeps in there and it keeps spinning around and around.
And it actually doesn't release that full emotion from your brain.
(10:08):
So after something happens to you that makes you angry, let's take driving, for instance.
You're out, you're driving along the highway, somebody cuts you off and that makes you so angry.
Right.
You don't want to do road rage.
I mean, we have heard some terrible stories of people.
Oh, yeah.
I was reading one the other day where somebody actually followed this person to a school,
(10:33):
got out, threatened them with a gun and the entire school had to go on lockdown.
Amazing.
Oh my gosh.
That's.
It's terrible.
That is not a safe way to express your anger.
No, it's not.
So you need to find a way to say, OK, I need to physically express that anger.
(10:55):
To get it out.
To get it out.
And it may be something literally just shake your body.
If it's something little that crosses your path, think about that negative emotion and
literally shake it off.
My publisher told me the other day he had read my book and he was out hiking with his dog
(11:17):
and his partner and his dog picked up this stick and he was running with this stick.
He was so happy.
He dropped it.
He picked it up.
He, you know, they would throw it for him.
The dog was having the time of its life and they got to almost the end of the hike and
there was a stream and the dog went over to it and accidentally dropped his stick into
(11:38):
the stream when he was taking a drink and the stream was fairly rapidly moving and the
stick went away.
Yeah.
And the dog looked at the stick and you could tell this dog was a little bit sad that the
stick went and he paused.
And then he literally just shook his body and ran off and was happy again because he let
that sadness out of his body.
(12:01):
Let it go.
And it is a natural thing to have those reactions, but we keep suppressing those reactions and
layering them on in that emotional backpack that we carry.
Yeah.
And we never express them.
And you can do that for a while.
Absolutely.
But that's that proactive.
If you actually don't let it build up.
(12:22):
Yeah.
It doesn't stay in your mind.
I see.
I see.
And when you, when you, when it does build up and it starts to kind of, kind of, I don't
know, take over in residence in your mind, that can be a very bad state.
(12:47):
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
And then it could lead to other things that are unthinkable, I would imagine.
Oh, absolutely.
Wow.
But even if you look at it in a small scale, so it doesn't have to get really bad.
No.
But I used to wake up all the time at night, ruminating about some event that had happened
(13:11):
that, oh, you know, if I just would have said this, ooh, this is the perfect comeback.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it just stayed in my head and I would keep replaying it over and over again, sometimes
for years.
Yeah.
And what I found out is that's actually your body never physically releasing it.
(13:33):
You've already dealt with it mentally.
I even had therapists.
I talked about it, but I was still actually trapped in my body because I had tensed and
kept it suppressed.
Yes.
Yes.
And then I actually released it and it actually let my body relax.
It allows me to sleep so much better now that I'm able to physically express these things.
(13:59):
And it also lets me be much more present in my everyday life because when I started to
release those emotions, I was able to actually focus on what was happening in front of me
and not have my mind be darting away thinking, oh, what about the grocery list?
(14:19):
Oh, what about this?
Because my mind had so many things piled up inside it that it would never really dealt
with that I couldn't just focus and be present in my life.
And I didn't even know that.
I had no idea.
I assumed that's just how life is.
Everybody has that, right?
We've got a million demands on our time.
(14:41):
How could I not have 5 million things running around in my head?
I think about that meme that talks about my brain as like my internet browser.
I have 5,000 tabs going, one's playing music.
I don't know where it's coming from, all of these different things going on.
And until I actually dealt with this, that was my life.
(15:06):
It was a constant push and pull in my brain of thousands and thousands of things going
on from never having dealt with some of those really negative things that happened in my
life.
And we all have them.
You can't get away from having them, but you can actually deal with them.
(15:27):
And then the other thing that I talk with people a lot about is how you parent and help
your kids understand this.
Because we learn to suppress these things from a very early age.
We hear those things, don't be a cry baby.
Act like a man.
Rub some dirt in it.
You'll be fine.
Just ignore it.
(15:48):
It will go away.
And all of those were originally meant to just say, make sure you have perspective on
your reaction.
But that's not what kids hear.
The kids hear is, hey, you're a natural reaction of crying.
I mean, you're a cry baby and that's bad.
So you're like, oh, okay, I won't cry.
(16:12):
Whoever told me, I shouldn't have this reaction.
This reaction is wrong.
So I will suppress that.
We never go back and say, you know what?
That really was rough.
You should cry.
You should be upset.
It's okay to be upset.
It's okay to be disappointed.
It's okay to get mad.
(16:32):
It's not okay to take that out on somebody, but it's okay to have those emotions.
You need to be okay letting them out and feeling them and expressing them.
And if we can teach our kids how to do that, that would be the ultimate proactive mental
health step that when things that are larger happen, your mental space isn't already maxed
(16:56):
out.
It still has capacity to deal with that.
So you can come back down to this equilibrium line that you should reside on where, okay,
if something happens, I can bend and flex with it.
It's not just like, it's not just powering through.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(17:17):
You still have that moving space that is pretty much needed in the ebbs and flows of life.
And that's critically important.
I love what you said about the ultimate proactive strategy is teaching our children, right?
Because there are legacy and they're the future leaders of this world and teaching them at
(17:40):
a very young age by the time we're in the ground and they're running the world.
That's the common mindset that our children will have.
I find that totally, totally fascinating, Janet.
And I know a little while ago, you kind of alluded to some struggles that you've had
(18:02):
where you broke and so forth.
But if you can just kind of share a little bit more for the listeners, what types of
struggles, and it doesn't have to be a lot of detail, but what types of struggles where
you're going through that was so defining that led to inspiring you to be the advocate
(18:30):
you are now?
So I will start at the end.
Okay.
Because that's what started me on this path, which was when I was 49 years old, I found
out that my husband was having an affair and wanted a divorce.
And that's what broke me.
(18:52):
I couldn't eat.
I couldn't sleep.
I had four young kids and I knew I had to function for them.
But I ended up losing over 40 pounds.
I'm only five, six, and I was under 100 pounds.
I went to the doctor and I'm like, I literally couldn't eat.
(19:15):
I could not sleep.
He prescribed some medication, but that took some time.
I went to therapy.
I did yoga.
I meditated.
I tried everything and I could tell I was getting better, but I wasn't there.
And so I am an Olympic quality Googler.
(19:39):
And so I went in a deep dive on what can I do?
How do I recover from this?
What am I missing?
And I tried a ton of things.
And then I came across this book called The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel Van de
Kolk.
(19:59):
Okay.
And in it, he talks, his research is specifically on PTSD victims from the military.
And he went through and basically discovered that a lot of the PTSD is them suppressing
those physical reactions because when you're in a military zone and bombs are going off,
(20:26):
you're being shot at, all of these horrible tragedies are happening around you.
You have to control your reaction.
Or you will die.
It is literally a life or death situation.
But those soldiers never learned to release that.
When it was over or afterwards.
(20:47):
Exactly.
They kept it inside them and they didn't only keep it physical, they also kept the mental
inside them because they were taught to not talk about it.
Do not express emotions.
Do not talk about them.
Don't let anybody see any weakness that you might possibly have.
And through his research, he found that linkage and he helped them start to recover from this.
(21:13):
And he worked in some VA hospitals in the Boston area and he helped reduce some of the
suicide rates from that.
And I was pretty fascinated with it, but I was like, well, I'm not, I don't really
have PTSD.
Like I wasn't in a war zone.
I'm not that bad.
But as I started to think about that physical connection and that physical exploration
(21:36):
of expressing your emotions, I really became intrigued.
And so I went into a lot more research around it and I went back and I ended up getting
my master's in organizational psychology and that is what I wrote my thesis on.
And I was my guinea pig.
I ended up finding someone to help me deal with my negative emotions, specifically my
(22:04):
anger because I had a lot of anger.
I was really, really mad.
Of course, yeah.
And I realized I was still mad about things that happened in my childhood.
I was, I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
My first boyfriend died by completing suicide and he blamed me.
(22:30):
I ended up, I've been married twice in my first marriage.
I should have never been married to the person.
They're fine, but it wasn't a love relationship.
Right, right.
And there's a lot of other things.
They just kept building on and I kept all of that in that emotional backpack and never
(22:51):
dealt with them.
And that's what I had to unpack because the event that broke me only broke me because
I didn't have any flexibility left.
I couldn't push through.
I wasn't actually resilient.
(23:13):
I was that emotional Sherpa that could take a lot of stuff on and did for decades, but
it was that last thing that finally my body and my mind were like, sorry, you can't do
it anymore.
You just can't do it.
And so I started doing this anger therapy, which I found this woman who was a social
(23:41):
worker and had left social work to become a personal trainer.
And we combined those two things and created this program, which was, let's find physical
activities that you can do to get that anger out.
And one of my favorite ones, and you can do almost anything, it's personalized for you,
(24:05):
but one of my personal favorites was boxing.
Love it.
So she would come over, she'd put on the mitts, the mitts that like you punch, I'd put on
the boxing gloves.
And I'd kind of lightly start punching, talking about something that had happened.
And I'd get a little bit more riled up about whatever the specific event was.
(24:26):
Yeah.
And she'd find a catchphrase for me and I'd start yelling it something like, you darn
jerk, although it was never that PG.
Right.
And as I would say it, I would start hitting harder and harder and harder and I would end
up screaming that.
And I could literally feel that emotion coming out with that punch when I would hit that,
(24:49):
her hand with that mitt on it, I would hit it as hard as I could.
And after a couple of minutes, it did not take long, but after a couple of minutes,
I would crumple to the ground and just be crying.
So emotionally depleted.
Right, right.
But I could literally feel that anger had left my body.
(25:12):
And I did the same thing for sadness.
I did it a little bit differently where I actually needed to be completely alone to fully cry.
And I found a time where I happened to be able to be in my car by myself for about an
hour while two of my kids were at basketball practice.
(25:34):
And I sat in a dark corner of the parking lot and I had an event written on a piece of
paper that was sad and I would read it and the emotion would build up.
And I gave myself permission to have the ugliest cry I have ever seen.
I made sure to have a lot of tissues.
Yes, good.
(25:55):
Because it was not pretty.
Yeah.
But it was very cathartic.
And it was a cry that I never let myself have literally from childhood through adulthood.
And I will say the thing that has been so impactful to me since I started this, I thought I would
(26:19):
work with a lot of women.
And I have.
But the ones that have been so inspiring have been the men that have said to me, thank you
for giving me permission to cry.
Yes.
I've never done that before.
And I had one person that sent me a note and said, and I've known them for a very long
(26:42):
time and they're in their fifties and said, I sat down in my chair and just started weeping.
And I spent the evening in tears thinking about so many things that had happened and
just let it come out.
(27:03):
And they were very skeptical of me talking about this until that happened.
And they're like, I cannot tell you how much weight has been taken off of my heart.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And how much more aware I am of everything that's going on around me simply from that
(27:27):
one session that they did.
And it was so beautiful to actually see and hear and know, to know what they have been
through and for them to finally express it was amazing.
On the flip side of that, I had another person send me a note and say, I knew my body was
(27:53):
telling me I need to cry.
But I had these things on my to-do list that I had to get done.
I had to drive this person here.
I had to send this email.
I had to do these things.
And so I wasn't able to sit down and cry.
And four days later, I'm still writing you this note telling you my body still needs
(28:16):
to cry.
And so I wrote back to them and I was like, so why aren't you putting yourself on your
to-do list?
Put it in your schedule.
Find that time.
Just like you would go to the gym and be proactive about your physical health or that doctor's
appointment, it doesn't have to be every day.
(28:37):
Once a week, take that time to say, what do I need to just physically express?
And if you do that, you're going to release so much of that mental stress that you have
been carrying around that, again, I didn't know.
I went five decades and I could power through a lot of stuff.
(28:57):
Right.
Functional, right?
Exactly.
I was functioning.
Yeah.
Was I thriving?
That would be questionable.
I would say now.
I would say no.
But I will also tell you the outside world would say I was thriving.
I had a very successful job.
I had four kids.
I had a beautiful home.
I didn't have to worry about paying bills.
(29:20):
I was, by all accounts, living the American dream.
But I really wasn't.
I really wasn't.
I was pushing through and not really enjoying or embracing the events that were happening
(29:40):
in my life.
And that's where I would love for you to break down and unpack for the listeners the idea
and concept of present.
So present is it was a word that was actually created for business.
(30:05):
So if you are sick and you miss work, that's called being absent or absenteeism.
But present is showing up.
But not really being there.
You're just dialing it in.
And as I was going through and I was writing my thesis, I'm like, I think this word actually
(30:28):
really applies to all of life because the main sources for present ism are stress, anxiety,
and depression.
And I don't know about you, but when I am off the clock at five o'clock in the afternoon
(30:49):
or whatever time it is that you're done with work, stress, anxiety, and depression didn't
just magically go away.
They stayed with me.
Yes.
So if I was dialing it in at work, I was probably dialing it in at home as well.
And so that present ism is being physically there, but not really mentally engaged.
(31:17):
And I found that I was that way in pretty much every part of my life.
And I hate to say this to my kids, but I would dial it in with them.
I would be at their whatever ball game that they were at or hockey game or any event,
a theater performance, a dance performance, cheerleading, I've got all of those, by the
(31:40):
way.
I would be at those events and they would be on stage or on the court or performing in
some sort of way.
And I would only be half paying attention because my mind would be thinking about, oh, the discussion
that I had with that person the other day.
(32:00):
And if I would have said it this way or, oh, maybe I should send an email.
Should I apologize for that?
What do you think about this?
What are we going to have for dinner on Tuesday?
Yes.
Yes.
And I think something else was making me focus on things that were not in front of me, that
I was not being present in my life as fully as I wanted to be.
(32:23):
And now I feel like I can actually be more present because all of the things that I had
been carrying around for so long were gone.
And I still have things going in my head.
It's not like I can focus on one thing all the time and it's perfect.
But the amount has reduced so significantly that when I am present with something and
(32:48):
I notice that I get distracted, I actually notice it.
As opposed to that being my typical state, I actually notice, oh, hey, I should be watching.
This cheer performance is only two minutes and 15 seconds.
I need to focus for that two minutes and 15 seconds.
So I can fully engage, fully experience what is happening and then I can deal with the
(33:13):
other thing.
So it's just being actually involved in your life and not letting presentism take over.
And it's something that it just builds over time.
And it's one of those things that I feel like it's so expected and so natural and it's almost
(33:34):
a badge of honor to be able to show people, I have so much going on that I can't even
focus on this one thing that's right in front of me right now.
There's just so many things that are happening that I can't possibly focus on the thing that
should be most important to me.
I have to engage in a million things that don't really deserve my attention, things that don't
(34:07):
really need me to focus on them.
My kids, absolutely, my clients when I'm with them, here on the podcast, engaging with you,
those are the things that I need to focus on and that I need to be able to fully enjoy
and embrace.
I totally love that term by the way and I apologize, I mispronounced it.
(34:32):
That's okay.
Presenteeism, and with my background in talent development, I present a lot and so that was
the first place I went to.
But presenteeism, almost like absenteeism, but it sounds like you're given the minimum
(34:53):
required presence and without taking in the full experience.
Yes, you're physically there, your body is there, but your mind really isn't.
And there's a lot of things that you can be very successful at just physically being
(35:14):
there and not mentally there.
But I don't want to experience life that way.
I don't want to experience life as a body going through the motions.
I want to be there really enjoying everything that's going on and being aware of what's
(35:36):
happening because if I'm simply going through the motions, why am I doing it?
Yes, thank you.
And sorry, I equate this to, I'm a foodie, I love food, right?
So I equate this to you're eating, you're eating, sometimes people scarf down their
(35:57):
meals so fast, they're like, okay, what's next?
And it's like, well, hang on, wait a minute, time out.
Did you enjoy the food?
Did you take in the flavors?
And I'm a slow eater and so my family and all my friends, they pick on me for eating
slow.
I can't intentionally eat fast.
(36:20):
I just, I haven't all these years.
But I also learned in that I can lessen my portions and I can truly enjoy the experience,
you know, the meal.
And to me, that means a lot, you know?
I could not agree with you more.
(36:42):
Just on the food side, why eat things that you don't enjoy?
Agreed.
Agreed.
And if you are eating things you enjoy, why not make that event last?
Because if I'm enjoying something, I want to be in that moment.
I want that moment to last.
(37:02):
Because the stuff that I don't enjoy, I could probably move on from a little bit more quickly.
Exactly.
Focus on those things that you definitely enjoy, that you want to be a part of and fully
be there.
But if you're in the middle of that and there's too many other things that are taking your
(37:25):
attention, so you're trying to eat that meal and it's a beautiful meal, it's right in front
of you.
But at the same time, you're trying to do your email and your kid is over here saying,
hey, mom, I need 20 bagels in the morning to take to school.
And this kid's like, hey, mom, I need help with this homework.
And you're thinking about, oh gosh, if I didn't buy this at the grocery store, so I'm going
(37:50):
to have to go back and get that.
And oh gosh, I really should not have said that to that person two years ago.
Why did I send that email?
So if you have all those things going on, you can't sit and enjoy that meal.
No.
You need to dedicate the time to enjoy that meal.
(38:11):
And the same thing is true with your mental health.
You need to dedicate that time to say, I'm going to enjoy my mental health.
And to do that, I have to go through and physically release some of that stress and emotion, depression,
anxiety, anger, whatever it is.
(38:32):
Go in, identify it and release it.
Oh, completely.
And I love what you said earlier, Janet, about how you put on the boxing gloves and your
friend had the mitts and you would punch, you would yell something.
And then after all of the punching and yelling, you were really emotionally drained and just
(38:57):
went down on your knees, sat down and just had this big cry.
I'm a firm believer of when it comes to an event, okay, traumatizing event, heart breaking
event, I mean, you know, either of those types of things.
You have to grieve.
You have to have a process.
You have to go through the process so many times in so many different places.
(39:22):
People talk about diversion, right?
Yeah, you're going through this divorce.
Why don't you just, you know, this person cheating on you, you're going into a divorce.
Why don't you go on a vacation, you know, make it a guys weekend or a girls weekend
and just go on a vacation and, you know, just get your mind out of it.
(39:43):
Well, getting my mind out of it, does that really allow me to process, you know, or is
that a distraction?
You know, I mean, I understand when it comes to just, you know, you have to have a reprieve
from something if you're too close to it.
I understand that.
But you also must completely go through the process of what it is you're grieving or struggling
(40:07):
with when it comes to anger, sadness, betrayal, right?
Can you speak to that a little bit on how do we strike that balance where we're getting
the reprieve we want, but we don't want to ignore the fact that we need to process through
these things?
So one of my least favorite phrases is just let it go.
(40:33):
Yeah, yeah.
That makes me, it just makes my blood boil because I can't just let it go.
And then I feel bad that I can't just let it go.
And it doesn't even matter if it's being sung by a Disney princess, I'm still going, no,
I can't just let it go.
So I agree 100%, you need to have a process to go through it.
(40:59):
And so the process that I talk about in my book and with my clients is that you need
to do that first step that I talked about.
You need to get the event into words.
And you don't have to do it in the moment, but you need to do it at some point in time.
I don't think that therapy is the only way to do that.
(41:24):
And I know that not everyone in the world has the ability for whatever reason to have
a therapist on call.
My suggestion and my recommendation for most people is to actually journal.
And I don't mean journaling everyday events.
(41:45):
I mean to journal those life events that are traumatic.
When you can start and to your point, get it out as much as you can.
But if it's triggering and it's too much for you to take on, pause.
Go do something else.
Take that vacation, go on a bike ride, have a wonderful meal, something that takes you
(42:09):
out of that emotional moment and then come back to it.
And that's one of the reasons why I really love journaling is because it allows you to
have that control.
It's a very low investment.
You need a pen and paper or pencil or whatever instrument of writing that you like.
(42:31):
I actually have terrible handwriting.
So do I.
I'm left handed, but I'm still.
And I'm right handed, but just really bad handwriting.
And so I type everything.
I was talking with a friend of my 15 year olds who said, oh, I hate writing.
And then proceeded to talk to me for three hours about the things that were going on
(42:55):
in her life and some events that were happening that she needed to work out.
And I said, do you really hate writing?
Because you clearly have the ability to express yourself, what she hated was the actual act
of handwriting or typing.
Her mind worked so fast that she couldn't get the words out on paper fast enough.
(43:19):
I see.
So I said to her, let's turn on the voice to text feature.
And guess what?
There's your journal right there.
Talk to your phone.
Talk to the computer, whatever it is, and it's a very, very fast way.
And so I actually use that now.
(43:39):
I'll do that.
Oh, yeah.
And if you wake up in the middle of the night and something's going around in your head,
the best thing to do is to put it out on paper somehow.
Yes.
So allow yourself to go back to sleep.
And so what I will do is I will literally lay in bed and voice activate my phone, which
(44:01):
is I know, inappropriately next to my bed.
Actually don't use it.
I have it there because I have four kids and divorced.
So when they're at their dads, if they do need to call, I want to be accessible.
And it allows me to voice activate my phone, say take a note.
I literally say it.
It captures it.
(44:22):
And then I don't have to worry about it anymore.
But if you're able to do this type of journaling of those major events, you can put it on paper.
It starts to shed a little bit of light onto it.
And then that's the information that you can take to these anger or sadness therapy sessions.
(44:43):
And you have it written down.
And so if you can't deal with it right then, when you do have that dedicated safe space,
you can take it, read it, activate that emotion.
And you have to activate the emotion with the physical activity in order to physically
release it.
(45:05):
So if I just go boxing or if I go running or do some sort of crossfit activity or some
other physically exerting activity, that doesn't get my emotions out.
That's really great for my physical health.
But it's the tying the emotion of that event to a physical release.
(45:26):
Yes, yes, that's the key that has to happen.
And planning those times is the way that you need to go through it.
So write it down, document it, identify the emotion that accompanies it.
And this is something that I'm why should I be embarrassed now?
(45:49):
I might as well admit it.
I thought it was really stupid that my kid's school taught my kids the names of emotions.
Really?
Because I was like, come on, we know the emotions.
They're happy, they're sad, they're this, they're that.
Right, right.
This was way before I broke.
And I was kind of like, OK, yeah, we know all of these things.
(46:10):
No, actually, I think we really do need to educate everyone about the number of emotions
that you have.
Yes.
And not just say, here's the name of it.
Here's what it feels like in your body.
And when I started going through all of this and doing my research, I was kind of curious
(46:32):
about how many emotions are out there.
And as I mentioned, I do have kids.
We love the movie Inside Out.
Yeah.
There's five emotions, right?
They clearly put it on screen.
There's five emotions.
Yeah.
There's actually 27 unique emotions.
Wow.
And researchers at Stanford, way smarter than I am, figured that out.
(46:57):
They have 27 unique emotions.
And actually, the writers at Disney Pixar had really long, in-depth discussions about
which five emotions should be included.
And actually, they didn't even know the number.
They came up with five after a lot of discussion because they needed to make the movie accessible.
(47:22):
Yeah.
But they also needed to make it real.
They couldn't have 27 characters on the screen running around.
Right, right.
No, not at all.
Yeah.
So they did.
They got it down to five, which is a very manageable number.
But I think we all need to learn what all 27 of them are because if you write it down
and you read it and you understand the emotion that it actually activates, then you can find,
(47:48):
what is my method for expressing this?
So I told you one of my favorite ones was boxing.
But there's a million options out there.
And I write about a lot of them in my book.
You have to figure out which one works for you.
I happen to have one child who likes to throw a pillow.
(48:09):
So they take a pillow and they just slam it down on the ground.
You can get a lot of velocity with a pillow.
Let me tell you.
You sure can.
But it's also quiet because this person doesn't want attention drawn to them.
So when they are having a moment and they need to get their anger out, they do that in
(48:30):
a way that you're not going to hear them hitting the punching bag in my basement.
No, no.
And that's good for them.
And it's one of those, it doesn't matter.
One size does not fit all.
You need to be able to figure out what works for you.
So writing it down or talking about it, getting that story out so you can think about it,
(48:52):
shed some light on it by identifying the emotion it triggers.
And then having that connection with the physical activity, that's that process.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
To release it.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and putting those two together, right?
The emotion from journaling and the physical activity, channeling that emotion through
(49:17):
that physical activity, that right there, it sounds like is resulting in a huge release.
Right?
That's the gold.
Yeah.
That is the gold nugget.
That channeling it.
Yeah.
Exactly what you said.
Putting those two together.
That's when you actually get the emotional release of taking that pressure and weight
(49:41):
out of your backpack.
Yes.
Because if you just talk about it or think about it, that's one thing.
If you have physical activity, that's great.
But you have to link those two things.
You have to have that channel between them to actually unpack it, take the weight off
of your backpack so that you're not as weighed down by it so you can actually be present
(50:07):
in your life and not have presenteism.
You can fully participate.
You can engage.
You can embrace.
You can really thrive and truly catch fire in life.
Love it.
Love it.
I agree 130 percent, Janet, and I tell you, I mean, your insights have been invaluable.
(50:34):
And I'm truly, truly saying this.
I truly mean this for the listeners.
You've heard it right here from Janet Barrett.
Okay.
Avoid presenteism.
Avoid it by journaling.
Avoid it by channeling your emotions first.
First off, let me make sure I'm clear on this.
(50:56):
After journaling, as you review, you want to pick up on what emotions are evoked from
from what you journal.
Correct.
Okay.
Good.
And put that with a physical activity.
Try to find one that works for you.
Put them together and channel that emotional energy and response through the physical activity.
(51:22):
And that's where this process really, really comes together and yields results.
There's a lot of listeners out there who are struggling through very, very difficult times.
It could be a divorce.
It could be addiction.
It could be homelessness.
It could be extreme financial troubles and hardships, you know, whatever they may be,
(51:45):
maybe a loss of a loved one, a loss of a child, you know, these things are unthinkable.
And you have to find a way to process through them.
Don't distract, but process through them.
And the insights that Janet Barrett shared in this conversation are the exact way to
go.
I can't thank you so much for sharing these insights.
(52:09):
Thank you so much for having me.
I have really enjoyed talking with you about it and sharing this with your listeners.
Oh, thank you.
We appreciate you coming here.
So Janet, how can the listeners learn more about you, the great work you're doing, and
maybe pick up a copy of your book?
So the easiest way to find anything about me is to go to my website, which is stopthebreak.com.
(52:34):
That's also the name of my book.
And if you would like to get a copy of that, you can actually go to my website and sign
up to win a free copy.
I'm giving away two free copies every month for the year of 2023.
So if you go there, just put your name, your email in.
(52:56):
I will never sell anybody's information, but you will be entered to win.
Because actually in four more days, we'll have two more winners.
I had two in January.
We'll have two in February and so on.
So you can sign up to win there.
But if you can't wait to potentially win, there is also a link on my website to purchase.
(53:18):
I am available at all online bookstores under stopthebreak and Janet Barrett.
And that's the best way to get in touch with me.
Oh, fantastic.
Stopthebreak.life.
We will have the link to the website and to the other links as well in the episode show
notes so the listeners can click those links, learn more about your work on your website,
(53:44):
sign the form to enter for a chance of winning a free copy of the book.
Or if they want it right now, purchase the book and just be able to look at the website
and sign up for the book while listening to this great conversation.
Again, Janet, I want to thank you once again for coming on.
(54:05):
Let's please keep in touch.
I really appreciate the insights you've shared with the listeners today.
Thank you so much.
I look forward to it.
Oh, absolutely.
And I want to thank all of you for tuning in and listening.
And look, if you have a loved one, a colleague, a friend, neighbor, who just doesn't seem to
be themselves, they may be going through dark days, tremendous despair, not quite sure where
(54:33):
to go or who to turn to.
I humbly ask that you please share this show with them because on the road to rediscovery,
we want our listeners to know two things.
Number one, you're not alone.
And number two, there is always hope.
The road to rediscovery, it's a movement, revolution.
And guess what, you are now part of it.
(54:56):
We're all roadies on this journey of life, and it sure feels good having you on the road
with me.
Thanks again for listening.
We'll chat again soon.
We really hope you enjoyed this episode of the road to rediscovery.
We'd love to hear from you.
Shoot us an email at roads rediscoverypodcast at gmail.com and leave us any questions or
comments you may have.
(55:17):
The road to rediscovery is an AJ Shark production.
Hey, this is Jimmy IV, creator and host of the Sexy Cool Lounge podcast.
And I want you to continue to shine bright and radiate your vibe
because you're now listening to the Road to Rediscovery with Aubrey Johnson.
Our lives are laid out on a road of bumps, turns, struggles and more.
How do we respond?
How do we endure adversity for learning and growth?
(00:22):
I'm Aubrey Johnson and we'll explore these questions and more on the Road to Rediscovery.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Road to Rediscovery.
I'm your host, Aubrey Johnson.
The Road to Rediscovery is about reflecting on life lessons to learn and grow from them.
(00:45):
And of course, pay it forward and uplift others who are struggling through dark times.
Now, a quick reminder that you can get the Road to Rediscovery anywhere you listen
to your podcast on any platform.
If you listen on Apple Podcasts, we ask that you please give us a rate and review.
(01:05):
Otherwise, shoot us an email at Road to Rediscovery podcast at gmail.com.
That's Road to Rediscovery podcast at gmail.com.
And we'll give you a shout out in the future episode.
Now, my special guest is an author and mental health advocate dedicated
to mental health awareness.
(01:26):
In her recently released book, Stop the Break, she chronicles her own journey
of unresolved trauma and the toll it took on her mental health.
She's the founder of Cerebral Health, a company dedicated
to proactive mental health education and strategy.
Ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome Janet Barrett to the show.
(01:48):
Janet, it's so great to have you here.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Thank you so much, Aubrey.
I am so excited to be here with you.
Oh, likewise, likewise.
We're thrilled, as you can hear, we're thrilled that you're here.
So I want to go into your journey, okay?
But before we do that, if you could please, for the benefit of the listeners,
(02:10):
just kind of elaborate and clarify what is meant when you say proactive mental health
or proactive mental care.
So I think one of the easiest ways to think about proactive mental health care
is to think about proactive physical health care, because I think everybody is used
(02:34):
to that concept.
You work out, you exercise, you eat right, and that's being proactive
in taking care of your body.
If you don't do those things, you start to have issues.
If you don't exercise, maybe you lose lung capacity and you can't breathe as well,
or you can't walk as far.
(02:57):
So it's that same concept, but applying it to your mental health.
So it's saying, how do I take care of my mental health before I have a problem?
And what I have found is that most people, myself included, never even thought about
that as something that needed to happen.
(03:17):
Yeah, yeah.
I just went through life thinking, I'm okay, I'm fine.
Maybe not everything's perfect, but it's okay, I'll be fine until I actually broke.
Until I actually broke, and then I realized, oh, maybe had I taken care of myself a little
bit earlier, been proactive, then I wouldn't have actually broken.
(03:43):
That makes a lot of sense.
Thank you for clarifying that.
In fact, that turned the light bulb on for me as you were explaining this, I have to say,
because when I saw the words together, proactive mental health care, I was thinking, okay,
(04:03):
this is what you do, you take action in the event that you hear or feel or sense some
symptomatic type of things that may hint on progressing into, say, anxiety or depression
(04:23):
or something.
But no, you're saying, when there's no problem, like, work it out exercising, you know,
you're a teenager, I mean, you know, you have all of your capacities and functions and
nothing's wrong, you work out, and that's, that's the long term proactivity.
Is that right?
Exactly.
You're playing a long game with that.
(04:45):
And again, we do it very unencumbered when we're thinking about our physical health.
We take our kids to go have their annual physical checkup.
You go to the dentist and you have your six month cleaning.
Those things we just do, it's been ingrained in our society, but nobody takes the time
(05:05):
to say, OK, you know, mentally, how are you doing?
How are you handling all of the things that happen in your life?
And are you doing everything that you can to prevent that from building up?
Because what a lot of people do and what I did was become what I call an emotional
Sherpa. So an emotional Sherpa, if you think about the Sherpas in Nepal, when they're
(05:30):
leading an expedition up a mountain, they actually take on gear from other people in
the expedition. They put it in their backpack and lead people up to the summit and they
get to see these amazing views and these beautiful, beautiful vistas.
Yeah.
And then when they're done, they come back down, they take that gear off and they hand
(05:53):
it back to people.
What an emotional Sherpa does is they take that stress, they help somebody else out,
they do their own thing.
They keep putting that emotional baggage in their backpack, but they never actually
deal with it and take it out at the end of the expedition because our life is never
(06:14):
ending until there is no more life.
And so you don't stop, you don't hit that summit, you never get to the peak.
And so you keep going and going and going and we just don't deal with it until it becomes
that problem.
And so that's that proactive, OK, let's not necessarily just keep that packed in our
(06:37):
backpack. Yeah.
Let's take it out and deal with it.
But it's also making sure that we do that in a safe way.
Yes, 100 percent.
Absolutely. Yeah.
It has to be in an environment where one feels safe, where one feels secure in in in
unpacking this, right, in processing and someone such as yourself who is who is qualified
(07:03):
to assist and and and take on that baggage, you know, for that person as they're going
through this expedition or process.
Is that right?
So I don't want to take on their baggage for them.
Got you.
I simply want to help them unpack it.
I see.
And I tell people that it's more than what you've probably heard thus far in life in
(07:28):
the way to really unpack that, because what we do, what the main recommendation is right
now is therapy and potentially medication, depending on what, you know, your situation
is.
Right.
But it almost always involves talking about it.
Yes.
(07:49):
However, what scientists have discovered is that putting that trauma or that stress, that
anxiety into words is good, but it's actually not enough.
And that not enough is the part that I am trying to help people understand more of and
(08:10):
what you can actually do more on the proactive side.
So the not enough, the more that you need to do is actually physically expressing specifically
negative emotions.
Okay.
And I'll get a little bit more into that.
So if you think about, if somebody tells you a joke or you see a comedian or you watch
(08:33):
a funny film, what is your natural reaction?
To laugh.
You laugh.
Exactly.
That's a physical reaction, right?
You smile, you laugh.
It comes out of your body.
You physically express that happy emotion.
When you win a game that you're playing, you throw your hands up like, yes, absolutely.
I'm so excited.
You do that physical expression of those positive emotions.
(08:58):
And that's acceptable in society.
Smiling, laughing, cheering, being excited, that type of thing is very accepted and expected
from people.
Right.
However, when you get sad, you might show it a little bit.
But chances are you suppress some of that, especially when it's in a public setting.
(09:23):
Yes.
It's not society's way or anything that's acceptable within society today to really
let the full extent of that emotion out.
And the same is true for anger.
However, that emotion, that physical expression, your body naturally has that.
(09:46):
And when you suppress it and you stop it, that is still actually inside your body.
And if you don't ever let it out, it keeps in there and it keeps spinning around and around.
And it actually doesn't release that full emotion from your brain.
(10:08):
So after something happens to you that makes you angry, let's take driving, for instance.
You're out, you're driving along the highway, somebody cuts you off and that makes you so angry.
Right.
You don't want to do road rage.
I mean, we have heard some terrible stories of people.
Oh, yeah.
I was reading one the other day where somebody actually followed this person to a school,
(10:33):
got out, threatened them with a gun and the entire school had to go on lockdown.
Amazing.
Oh my gosh.
That's.
It's terrible.
That is not a safe way to express your anger.
No, it's not.
So you need to find a way to say, OK, I need to physically express that anger.
(10:55):
To get it out.
To get it out.
And it may be something literally just shake your body.
If it's something little that crosses your path, think about that negative emotion and
literally shake it off.
My publisher told me the other day he had read my book and he was out hiking with his dog
(11:17):
and his partner and his dog picked up this stick and he was running with this stick.
He was so happy.
He dropped it.
He picked it up.
He, you know, they would throw it for him.
The dog was having the time of its life and they got to almost the end of the hike and
there was a stream and the dog went over to it and accidentally dropped his stick into
(11:38):
the stream when he was taking a drink and the stream was fairly rapidly moving and the
stick went away.
Yeah.
And the dog looked at the stick and you could tell this dog was a little bit sad that the
stick went and he paused.
And then he literally just shook his body and ran off and was happy again because he let
that sadness out of his body.
(12:01):
Let it go.
And it is a natural thing to have those reactions, but we keep suppressing those reactions and
layering them on in that emotional backpack that we carry.
Yeah.
And we never express them.
And you can do that for a while.
Absolutely.
But that's that proactive.
If you actually don't let it build up.
(12:22):
Yeah.
It doesn't stay in your mind.
I see.
I see.
And when you, when you, when it does build up and it starts to kind of, kind of, I don't
know, take over in residence in your mind, that can be a very bad state.
(12:47):
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
And then it could lead to other things that are unthinkable, I would imagine.
Oh, absolutely.
Wow.
But even if you look at it in a small scale, so it doesn't have to get really bad.
No.
But I used to wake up all the time at night, ruminating about some event that had happened
(13:11):
that, oh, you know, if I just would have said this, ooh, this is the perfect comeback.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it just stayed in my head and I would keep replaying it over and over again, sometimes
for years.
Yeah.
And what I found out is that's actually your body never physically releasing it.
(13:33):
You've already dealt with it mentally.
I even had therapists.
I talked about it, but I was still actually trapped in my body because I had tensed and
kept it suppressed.
Yes.
Yes.
And then I actually released it and it actually let my body relax.
It allows me to sleep so much better now that I'm able to physically express these things.
(13:59):
And it also lets me be much more present in my everyday life because when I started to
release those emotions, I was able to actually focus on what was happening in front of me
and not have my mind be darting away thinking, oh, what about the grocery list?
(14:19):
Oh, what about this?
Because my mind had so many things piled up inside it that it would never really dealt
with that I couldn't just focus and be present in my life.
And I didn't even know that.
I had no idea.
I assumed that's just how life is.
Everybody has that, right?
We've got a million demands on our time.
(14:41):
How could I not have 5 million things running around in my head?
I think about that meme that talks about my brain as like my internet browser.
I have 5,000 tabs going, one's playing music.
I don't know where it's coming from, all of these different things going on.
And until I actually dealt with this, that was my life.
(15:06):
It was a constant push and pull in my brain of thousands and thousands of things going
on from never having dealt with some of those really negative things that happened in my
life.
And we all have them.
You can't get away from having them, but you can actually deal with them.
(15:27):
And then the other thing that I talk with people a lot about is how you parent and help
your kids understand this.
Because we learn to suppress these things from a very early age.
We hear those things, don't be a cry baby.
Act like a man.
Rub some dirt in it.
You'll be fine.
Just ignore it.
(15:48):
It will go away.
And all of those were originally meant to just say, make sure you have perspective on
your reaction.
But that's not what kids hear.
The kids hear is, hey, you're a natural reaction of crying.
I mean, you're a cry baby and that's bad.
So you're like, oh, okay, I won't cry.
(16:12):
Whoever told me, I shouldn't have this reaction.
This reaction is wrong.
So I will suppress that.
We never go back and say, you know what?
That really was rough.
You should cry.
You should be upset.
It's okay to be upset.
It's okay to be disappointed.
It's okay to get mad.
(16:32):
It's not okay to take that out on somebody, but it's okay to have those emotions.
You need to be okay letting them out and feeling them and expressing them.
And if we can teach our kids how to do that, that would be the ultimate proactive mental
health step that when things that are larger happen, your mental space isn't already maxed
(16:56):
out.
It still has capacity to deal with that.
So you can come back down to this equilibrium line that you should reside on where, okay,
if something happens, I can bend and flex with it.
It's not just like, it's not just powering through.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(17:17):
You still have that moving space that is pretty much needed in the ebbs and flows of life.
And that's critically important.
I love what you said about the ultimate proactive strategy is teaching our children, right?
Because there are legacy and they're the future leaders of this world and teaching them at
(17:40):
a very young age by the time we're in the ground and they're running the world.
That's the common mindset that our children will have.
I find that totally, totally fascinating, Janet.
And I know a little while ago, you kind of alluded to some struggles that you've had
(18:02):
where you broke and so forth.
But if you can just kind of share a little bit more for the listeners, what types of
struggles, and it doesn't have to be a lot of detail, but what types of struggles where
you're going through that was so defining that led to inspiring you to be the advocate
(18:30):
you are now?
So I will start at the end.
Okay.
Because that's what started me on this path, which was when I was 49 years old, I found
out that my husband was having an affair and wanted a divorce.
And that's what broke me.
(18:52):
I couldn't eat.
I couldn't sleep.
I had four young kids and I knew I had to function for them.
But I ended up losing over 40 pounds.
I'm only five, six, and I was under 100 pounds.
I went to the doctor and I'm like, I literally couldn't eat.
(19:15):
I could not sleep.
He prescribed some medication, but that took some time.
I went to therapy.
I did yoga.
I meditated.
I tried everything and I could tell I was getting better, but I wasn't there.
And so I am an Olympic quality Googler.
(19:39):
And so I went in a deep dive on what can I do?
How do I recover from this?
What am I missing?
And I tried a ton of things.
And then I came across this book called The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel Van de
Kolk.
(19:59):
Okay.
And in it, he talks, his research is specifically on PTSD victims from the military.
And he went through and basically discovered that a lot of the PTSD is them suppressing
those physical reactions because when you're in a military zone and bombs are going off,
(20:26):
you're being shot at, all of these horrible tragedies are happening around you.
You have to control your reaction.
Or you will die.
It is literally a life or death situation.
But those soldiers never learned to release that.
When it was over or afterwards.
(20:47):
Exactly.
They kept it inside them and they didn't only keep it physical, they also kept the mental
inside them because they were taught to not talk about it.
Do not express emotions.
Do not talk about them.
Don't let anybody see any weakness that you might possibly have.
And through his research, he found that linkage and he helped them start to recover from this.
(21:13):
And he worked in some VA hospitals in the Boston area and he helped reduce some of the
suicide rates from that.
And I was pretty fascinated with it, but I was like, well, I'm not, I don't really
have PTSD.
Like I wasn't in a war zone.
I'm not that bad.
But as I started to think about that physical connection and that physical exploration
(21:36):
of expressing your emotions, I really became intrigued.
And so I went into a lot more research around it and I went back and I ended up getting
my master's in organizational psychology and that is what I wrote my thesis on.
And I was my guinea pig.
I ended up finding someone to help me deal with my negative emotions, specifically my
(22:04):
anger because I had a lot of anger.
I was really, really mad.
Of course, yeah.
And I realized I was still mad about things that happened in my childhood.
I was, I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
My first boyfriend died by completing suicide and he blamed me.
(22:30):
I ended up, I've been married twice in my first marriage.
I should have never been married to the person.
They're fine, but it wasn't a love relationship.
Right, right.
And there's a lot of other things.
They just kept building on and I kept all of that in that emotional backpack and never
(22:51):
dealt with them.
And that's what I had to unpack because the event that broke me only broke me because
I didn't have any flexibility left.
I couldn't push through.
I wasn't actually resilient.
(23:13):
I was that emotional Sherpa that could take a lot of stuff on and did for decades, but
it was that last thing that finally my body and my mind were like, sorry, you can't do
it anymore.
You just can't do it.
And so I started doing this anger therapy, which I found this woman who was a social
(23:41):
worker and had left social work to become a personal trainer.
And we combined those two things and created this program, which was, let's find physical
activities that you can do to get that anger out.
And one of my favorite ones, and you can do almost anything, it's personalized for you,
(24:05):
but one of my personal favorites was boxing.
Love it.
So she would come over, she'd put on the mitts, the mitts that like you punch, I'd put on
the boxing gloves.
And I'd kind of lightly start punching, talking about something that had happened.
And I'd get a little bit more riled up about whatever the specific event was.
(24:26):
Yeah.
And she'd find a catchphrase for me and I'd start yelling it something like, you darn
jerk, although it was never that PG.
Right.
And as I would say it, I would start hitting harder and harder and harder and I would end
up screaming that.
And I could literally feel that emotion coming out with that punch when I would hit that,
(24:49):
her hand with that mitt on it, I would hit it as hard as I could.
And after a couple of minutes, it did not take long, but after a couple of minutes,
I would crumple to the ground and just be crying.
So emotionally depleted.
Right, right.
But I could literally feel that anger had left my body.
(25:12):
And I did the same thing for sadness.
I did it a little bit differently where I actually needed to be completely alone to fully cry.
And I found a time where I happened to be able to be in my car by myself for about an
hour while two of my kids were at basketball practice.
(25:34):
And I sat in a dark corner of the parking lot and I had an event written on a piece of
paper that was sad and I would read it and the emotion would build up.
And I gave myself permission to have the ugliest cry I have ever seen.
I made sure to have a lot of tissues.
Yes, good.
(25:55):
Because it was not pretty.
Yeah.
But it was very cathartic.
And it was a cry that I never let myself have literally from childhood through adulthood.
And I will say the thing that has been so impactful to me since I started this, I thought I would
(26:19):
work with a lot of women.
And I have.
But the ones that have been so inspiring have been the men that have said to me, thank you
for giving me permission to cry.
Yes.
I've never done that before.
And I had one person that sent me a note and said, and I've known them for a very long
(26:42):
time and they're in their fifties and said, I sat down in my chair and just started weeping.
And I spent the evening in tears thinking about so many things that had happened and
just let it come out.
(27:03):
And they were very skeptical of me talking about this until that happened.
And they're like, I cannot tell you how much weight has been taken off of my heart.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And how much more aware I am of everything that's going on around me simply from that
(27:27):
one session that they did.
And it was so beautiful to actually see and hear and know, to know what they have been
through and for them to finally express it was amazing.
On the flip side of that, I had another person send me a note and say, I knew my body was
(27:53):
telling me I need to cry.
But I had these things on my to-do list that I had to get done.
I had to drive this person here.
I had to send this email.
I had to do these things.
And so I wasn't able to sit down and cry.
And four days later, I'm still writing you this note telling you my body still needs
(28:16):
to cry.
And so I wrote back to them and I was like, so why aren't you putting yourself on your
to-do list?
Put it in your schedule.
Find that time.
Just like you would go to the gym and be proactive about your physical health or that doctor's
appointment, it doesn't have to be every day.
(28:37):
Once a week, take that time to say, what do I need to just physically express?
And if you do that, you're going to release so much of that mental stress that you have
been carrying around that, again, I didn't know.
I went five decades and I could power through a lot of stuff.
(28:57):
Right.
Functional, right?
Exactly.
I was functioning.
Yeah.
Was I thriving?
That would be questionable.
I would say now.
I would say no.
But I will also tell you the outside world would say I was thriving.
I had a very successful job.
I had four kids.
I had a beautiful home.
I didn't have to worry about paying bills.
(29:20):
I was, by all accounts, living the American dream.
But I really wasn't.
I really wasn't.
I was pushing through and not really enjoying or embracing the events that were happening
(29:40):
in my life.
And that's where I would love for you to break down and unpack for the listeners the idea
and concept of present.
So present is it was a word that was actually created for business.
(30:05):
So if you are sick and you miss work, that's called being absent or absenteeism.
But present is showing up.
But not really being there.
You're just dialing it in.
And as I was going through and I was writing my thesis, I'm like, I think this word actually
(30:28):
really applies to all of life because the main sources for present ism are stress, anxiety,
and depression.
And I don't know about you, but when I am off the clock at five o'clock in the afternoon
(30:49):
or whatever time it is that you're done with work, stress, anxiety, and depression didn't
just magically go away.
They stayed with me.
Yes.
So if I was dialing it in at work, I was probably dialing it in at home as well.
And so that present ism is being physically there, but not really mentally engaged.
(31:17):
And I found that I was that way in pretty much every part of my life.
And I hate to say this to my kids, but I would dial it in with them.
I would be at their whatever ball game that they were at or hockey game or any event,
a theater performance, a dance performance, cheerleading, I've got all of those, by the
(31:40):
way.
I would be at those events and they would be on stage or on the court or performing in
some sort of way.
And I would only be half paying attention because my mind would be thinking about, oh, the discussion
that I had with that person the other day.
(32:00):
And if I would have said it this way or, oh, maybe I should send an email.
Should I apologize for that?
What do you think about this?
What are we going to have for dinner on Tuesday?
Yes.
Yes.
And I think something else was making me focus on things that were not in front of me, that
I was not being present in my life as fully as I wanted to be.
(32:23):
And now I feel like I can actually be more present because all of the things that I had
been carrying around for so long were gone.
And I still have things going in my head.
It's not like I can focus on one thing all the time and it's perfect.
But the amount has reduced so significantly that when I am present with something and
(32:48):
I notice that I get distracted, I actually notice it.
As opposed to that being my typical state, I actually notice, oh, hey, I should be watching.
This cheer performance is only two minutes and 15 seconds.
I need to focus for that two minutes and 15 seconds.
So I can fully engage, fully experience what is happening and then I can deal with the
(33:13):
other thing.
So it's just being actually involved in your life and not letting presentism take over.
And it's something that it just builds over time.
And it's one of those things that I feel like it's so expected and so natural and it's almost
(33:34):
a badge of honor to be able to show people, I have so much going on that I can't even
focus on this one thing that's right in front of me right now.
There's just so many things that are happening that I can't possibly focus on the thing that
should be most important to me.
I have to engage in a million things that don't really deserve my attention, things that don't
(34:07):
really need me to focus on them.
My kids, absolutely, my clients when I'm with them, here on the podcast, engaging with you,
those are the things that I need to focus on and that I need to be able to fully enjoy
and embrace.
I totally love that term by the way and I apologize, I mispronounced it.
(34:32):
That's okay.
Presenteeism, and with my background in talent development, I present a lot and so that was
the first place I went to.
But presenteeism, almost like absenteeism, but it sounds like you're given the minimum
(34:53):
required presence and without taking in the full experience.
Yes, you're physically there, your body is there, but your mind really isn't.
And there's a lot of things that you can be very successful at just physically being
(35:14):
there and not mentally there.
But I don't want to experience life that way.
I don't want to experience life as a body going through the motions.
I want to be there really enjoying everything that's going on and being aware of what's
(35:36):
happening because if I'm simply going through the motions, why am I doing it?
Yes, thank you.
And sorry, I equate this to, I'm a foodie, I love food, right?
So I equate this to you're eating, you're eating, sometimes people scarf down their
(35:57):
meals so fast, they're like, okay, what's next?
And it's like, well, hang on, wait a minute, time out.
Did you enjoy the food?
Did you take in the flavors?
And I'm a slow eater and so my family and all my friends, they pick on me for eating
slow.
I can't intentionally eat fast.
(36:20):
I just, I haven't all these years.
But I also learned in that I can lessen my portions and I can truly enjoy the experience,
you know, the meal.
And to me, that means a lot, you know?
I could not agree with you more.
(36:42):
Just on the food side, why eat things that you don't enjoy?
Agreed.
Agreed.
And if you are eating things you enjoy, why not make that event last?
Because if I'm enjoying something, I want to be in that moment.
I want that moment to last.
(37:02):
Because the stuff that I don't enjoy, I could probably move on from a little bit more quickly.
Exactly.
Focus on those things that you definitely enjoy, that you want to be a part of and fully
be there.
But if you're in the middle of that and there's too many other things that are taking your
(37:25):
attention, so you're trying to eat that meal and it's a beautiful meal, it's right in front
of you.
But at the same time, you're trying to do your email and your kid is over here saying,
hey, mom, I need 20 bagels in the morning to take to school.
And this kid's like, hey, mom, I need help with this homework.
And you're thinking about, oh gosh, if I didn't buy this at the grocery store, so I'm going
(37:50):
to have to go back and get that.
And oh gosh, I really should not have said that to that person two years ago.
Why did I send that email?
So if you have all those things going on, you can't sit and enjoy that meal.
No.
You need to dedicate the time to enjoy that meal.
(38:11):
And the same thing is true with your mental health.
You need to dedicate that time to say, I'm going to enjoy my mental health.
And to do that, I have to go through and physically release some of that stress and emotion, depression,
anxiety, anger, whatever it is.
(38:32):
Go in, identify it and release it.
Oh, completely.
And I love what you said earlier, Janet, about how you put on the boxing gloves and your
friend had the mitts and you would punch, you would yell something.
And then after all of the punching and yelling, you were really emotionally drained and just
(38:57):
went down on your knees, sat down and just had this big cry.
I'm a firm believer of when it comes to an event, okay, traumatizing event, heart breaking
event, I mean, you know, either of those types of things.
You have to grieve.
You have to have a process.
You have to go through the process so many times in so many different places.
(39:22):
People talk about diversion, right?
Yeah, you're going through this divorce.
Why don't you just, you know, this person cheating on you, you're going into a divorce.
Why don't you go on a vacation, you know, make it a guys weekend or a girls weekend
and just go on a vacation and, you know, just get your mind out of it.
(39:43):
Well, getting my mind out of it, does that really allow me to process, you know, or is
that a distraction?
You know, I mean, I understand when it comes to just, you know, you have to have a reprieve
from something if you're too close to it.
I understand that.
But you also must completely go through the process of what it is you're grieving or struggling
(40:07):
with when it comes to anger, sadness, betrayal, right?
Can you speak to that a little bit on how do we strike that balance where we're getting
the reprieve we want, but we don't want to ignore the fact that we need to process through
these things?
So one of my least favorite phrases is just let it go.
(40:33):
Yeah, yeah.
That makes me, it just makes my blood boil because I can't just let it go.
And then I feel bad that I can't just let it go.
And it doesn't even matter if it's being sung by a Disney princess, I'm still going, no,
I can't just let it go.
So I agree 100%, you need to have a process to go through it.
(40:59):
And so the process that I talk about in my book and with my clients is that you need
to do that first step that I talked about.
You need to get the event into words.
And you don't have to do it in the moment, but you need to do it at some point in time.
I don't think that therapy is the only way to do that.
(41:24):
And I know that not everyone in the world has the ability for whatever reason to have
a therapist on call.
My suggestion and my recommendation for most people is to actually journal.
And I don't mean journaling everyday events.
(41:45):
I mean to journal those life events that are traumatic.
When you can start and to your point, get it out as much as you can.
But if it's triggering and it's too much for you to take on, pause.
Go do something else.
Take that vacation, go on a bike ride, have a wonderful meal, something that takes you
(42:09):
out of that emotional moment and then come back to it.
And that's one of the reasons why I really love journaling is because it allows you to
have that control.
It's a very low investment.
You need a pen and paper or pencil or whatever instrument of writing that you like.
(42:31):
I actually have terrible handwriting.
So do I.
I'm left handed, but I'm still.
And I'm right handed, but just really bad handwriting.
And so I type everything.
I was talking with a friend of my 15 year olds who said, oh, I hate writing.
And then proceeded to talk to me for three hours about the things that were going on
(42:55):
in her life and some events that were happening that she needed to work out.
And I said, do you really hate writing?
Because you clearly have the ability to express yourself, what she hated was the actual act
of handwriting or typing.
Her mind worked so fast that she couldn't get the words out on paper fast enough.
(43:19):
I see.
So I said to her, let's turn on the voice to text feature.
And guess what?
There's your journal right there.
Talk to your phone.
Talk to the computer, whatever it is, and it's a very, very fast way.
And so I actually use that now.
(43:39):
I'll do that.
Oh, yeah.
And if you wake up in the middle of the night and something's going around in your head,
the best thing to do is to put it out on paper somehow.
Yes.
So allow yourself to go back to sleep.
And so what I will do is I will literally lay in bed and voice activate my phone, which
(44:01):
is I know, inappropriately next to my bed.
Actually don't use it.
I have it there because I have four kids and divorced.
So when they're at their dads, if they do need to call, I want to be accessible.
And it allows me to voice activate my phone, say take a note.
I literally say it.
It captures it.
(44:22):
And then I don't have to worry about it anymore.
But if you're able to do this type of journaling of those major events, you can put it on paper.
It starts to shed a little bit of light onto it.
And then that's the information that you can take to these anger or sadness therapy sessions.
(44:43):
And you have it written down.
And so if you can't deal with it right then, when you do have that dedicated safe space,
you can take it, read it, activate that emotion.
And you have to activate the emotion with the physical activity in order to physically
release it.
(45:05):
So if I just go boxing or if I go running or do some sort of crossfit activity or some
other physically exerting activity, that doesn't get my emotions out.
That's really great for my physical health.
But it's the tying the emotion of that event to a physical release.
(45:26):
Yes, yes, that's the key that has to happen.
And planning those times is the way that you need to go through it.
So write it down, document it, identify the emotion that accompanies it.
And this is something that I'm why should I be embarrassed now?
(45:49):
I might as well admit it.
I thought it was really stupid that my kid's school taught my kids the names of emotions.
Really?
Because I was like, come on, we know the emotions.
They're happy, they're sad, they're this, they're that.
Right, right.
This was way before I broke.
And I was kind of like, OK, yeah, we know all of these things.
(46:10):
No, actually, I think we really do need to educate everyone about the number of emotions
that you have.
Yes.
And not just say, here's the name of it.
Here's what it feels like in your body.
And when I started going through all of this and doing my research, I was kind of curious
(46:32):
about how many emotions are out there.
And as I mentioned, I do have kids.
We love the movie Inside Out.
Yeah.
There's five emotions, right?
They clearly put it on screen.
There's five emotions.
Yeah.
There's actually 27 unique emotions.
Wow.
And researchers at Stanford, way smarter than I am, figured that out.
(46:57):
They have 27 unique emotions.
And actually, the writers at Disney Pixar had really long, in-depth discussions about
which five emotions should be included.
And actually, they didn't even know the number.
They came up with five after a lot of discussion because they needed to make the movie accessible.
(47:22):
Yeah.
But they also needed to make it real.
They couldn't have 27 characters on the screen running around.
Right, right.
No, not at all.
Yeah.
So they did.
They got it down to five, which is a very manageable number.
But I think we all need to learn what all 27 of them are because if you write it down
and you read it and you understand the emotion that it actually activates, then you can find,
(47:48):
what is my method for expressing this?
So I told you one of my favorite ones was boxing.
But there's a million options out there.
And I write about a lot of them in my book.
You have to figure out which one works for you.
I happen to have one child who likes to throw a pillow.
(48:09):
So they take a pillow and they just slam it down on the ground.
You can get a lot of velocity with a pillow.
Let me tell you.
You sure can.
But it's also quiet because this person doesn't want attention drawn to them.
So when they are having a moment and they need to get their anger out, they do that in
(48:30):
a way that you're not going to hear them hitting the punching bag in my basement.
No, no.
And that's good for them.
And it's one of those, it doesn't matter.
One size does not fit all.
You need to be able to figure out what works for you.
So writing it down or talking about it, getting that story out so you can think about it,
(48:52):
shed some light on it by identifying the emotion it triggers.
And then having that connection with the physical activity, that's that process.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
To release it.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and putting those two together, right?
The emotion from journaling and the physical activity, channeling that emotion through
(49:17):
that physical activity, that right there, it sounds like is resulting in a huge release.
Right?
That's the gold.
Yeah.
That is the gold nugget.
That channeling it.
Yeah.
Exactly what you said.
Putting those two together.
That's when you actually get the emotional release of taking that pressure and weight
(49:41):
out of your backpack.
Yes.
Because if you just talk about it or think about it, that's one thing.
If you have physical activity, that's great.
But you have to link those two things.
You have to have that channel between them to actually unpack it, take the weight off
of your backpack so that you're not as weighed down by it so you can actually be present
(50:07):
in your life and not have presenteism.
You can fully participate.
You can engage.
You can embrace.
You can really thrive and truly catch fire in life.
Love it.
Love it.
I agree 130 percent, Janet, and I tell you, I mean, your insights have been invaluable.
(50:34):
And I'm truly, truly saying this.
I truly mean this for the listeners.
You've heard it right here from Janet Barrett.
Okay.
Avoid presenteism.
Avoid it by journaling.
Avoid it by channeling your emotions first.
First off, let me make sure I'm clear on this.
(50:56):
After journaling, as you review, you want to pick up on what emotions are evoked from
from what you journal.
Correct.
Okay.
Good.
And put that with a physical activity.
Try to find one that works for you.
Put them together and channel that emotional energy and response through the physical activity.
(51:22):
And that's where this process really, really comes together and yields results.
There's a lot of listeners out there who are struggling through very, very difficult times.
It could be a divorce.
It could be addiction.
It could be homelessness.
It could be extreme financial troubles and hardships, you know, whatever they may be,
(51:45):
maybe a loss of a loved one, a loss of a child, you know, these things are unthinkable.
And you have to find a way to process through them.
Don't distract, but process through them.
And the insights that Janet Barrett shared in this conversation are the exact way to
go.
I can't thank you so much for sharing these insights.
(52:09):
Thank you so much for having me.
I have really enjoyed talking with you about it and sharing this with your listeners.
Oh, thank you.
We appreciate you coming here.
So Janet, how can the listeners learn more about you, the great work you're doing, and
maybe pick up a copy of your book?
So the easiest way to find anything about me is to go to my website, which is stopthebreak.com.
(52:34):
That's also the name of my book.
And if you would like to get a copy of that, you can actually go to my website and sign
up to win a free copy.
I'm giving away two free copies every month for the year of 2023.
So if you go there, just put your name, your email in.
(52:56):
I will never sell anybody's information, but you will be entered to win.
Because actually in four more days, we'll have two more winners.
I had two in January.
We'll have two in February and so on.
So you can sign up to win there.
But if you can't wait to potentially win, there is also a link on my website to purchase.
(53:18):
I am available at all online bookstores under stopthebreak and Janet Barrett.
And that's the best way to get in touch with me.
Oh, fantastic.
Stopthebreak.life.
We will have the link to the website and to the other links as well in the episode show
notes so the listeners can click those links, learn more about your work on your website,
(53:44):
sign the form to enter for a chance of winning a free copy of the book.
Or if they want it right now, purchase the book and just be able to look at the website
and sign up for the book while listening to this great conversation.
Again, Janet, I want to thank you once again for coming on.
(54:05):
Let's please keep in touch.
I really appreciate the insights you've shared with the listeners today.
Thank you so much.
I look forward to it.
Oh, absolutely.
And I want to thank all of you for tuning in and listening.
And look, if you have a loved one, a colleague, a friend, neighbor, who just doesn't seem to
be themselves, they may be going through dark days, tremendous despair, not quite sure where
(54:33):
to go or who to turn to.
I humbly ask that you please share this show with them because on the road to rediscovery,
we want our listeners to know two things.
Number one, you're not alone.
And number two, there is always hope.
The road to rediscovery, it's a movement, revolution.
And guess what, you are now part of it.
(54:56):
We're all roadies on this journey of life, and it sure feels good having you on the road
with me.
Thanks again for listening.
We'll chat again soon.
We really hope you enjoyed this episode of the road to rediscovery.
We'd love to hear from you.
Shoot us an email at roads rediscoverypodcast at gmail.com and leave us any questions or
comments you may have.
(55:17):
The road to rediscovery is an AJ Shark production.
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