September 30, 2024 • 13 mins
In his new book, SOMETHING IN THE WOODS LOVES YOU, Jarod K. Anderson explores the inherent ways nature can help fight mental illness. Jarod K. Anderson is a writer, poet, and creator of The CryptoNaturalist podcast - a scripted show about real adoration for fictional wildlife. He has built a large audience of social media followers and podcast listeners with his vibrant appreciations of nature. For more, visit jarodkanderson.com.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to get connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on
one oh six point seven light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
More than one in five US adults live with a
mental illness, according to the CDC, from medication to therapy, diet,
lifestyle changes. We know there are a number of ways
to treat this chronic condition, but Jared ky Anderson, a
best selling author and podcast host who lives with mental illness,
says treatment can be found in the woods literally and
(00:33):
gives us the tools to see it all anew. In
his new book, Something in the Woods Loves You, Jared
Anderson explores the inherent ways nature can help fight mental illness. Jared,
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Thank you, It's good to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Jared ky Anderson is a writer, poet, and creator of
The Crypto Naturalist podcast, a scripted show about real adoration
for fictional wildlife. Is built a large audience of social
media followers and podcast listeners for his viber and appreciations
of nature. I love the title of this book, Jared
and So. I grew up in the woods, actually, but
(01:07):
I have lived in the New York area for about
thirty years. And maybe that's the reason why at first
thought upon seeing Something in the Woods Love You, Something
in the Woods Loves You, there's something scary out there
was my first thought. You know, a human alone in
the wilderness. For some that's an extremely vulnerable, even scary thought.
(01:28):
How do you think of wild places?
Speaker 3 (01:31):
So I also grew up in sort of a rural
environment and some of my earliest memories are taking daily
nature walks with my mother. So the book Something in
the Woods Loves You is really the story of kind
of the low point of my depression and finding a
path back to myself and ways to make meaning that
(01:55):
serve me. So the Woods, which was kind of a
return learn to a foundational thought for me, really stood
in to represent.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
That often we have a connection with nature in our
younger years. Again, you know, curiosity about bugs or climbing
trees or a pond, and that wonder and imagination that
we rarely tap into as adults. And this book does
not suggest that nature is going to magically cure you.
But can you talk about noticing the natural world at
(02:24):
that particularly dark point and what did it get you
to think about?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Well, yes, I'm very careful in the book, not to say,
you know, go touch a tree and you'll feel all better.
But one of the main things I've learned is somebody
with chronic major depression is that depression lies to us,
and depression defends itself, and really through the mechanism of shame,
whether tied to societal stigma or you know, masculinity, all
(02:53):
these reasons I had to keep silent. One thing I
really had to do first and foremost was that I
was worth the work, And in returning to nature and
walking beneath the trees, I sort of would feel those
pressures and those external stigmas fall away, you know, under
(03:15):
the trees, I felt more like an animal, somebody connected
to the trees that were making the oxygen. I breathe
the hills where the iron in my blood came from.
And I found that I sort of effortlessly, naturally could
access a love for natural landscapes, and intellectually I understood
(03:35):
that as a human creature, I'm part of those landscapes.
So the connection there was, all right, how can I
start to extend this natural, this instinctual love for nature
to myself, And that really was a key for me
to unlock all of the subsequent healing.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Most of the people who will listen to this show
are in the New York City metro areas, so we don't,
you know, it's harder for us to go out and
sort of have that immediate connection with nature. What we
have is a lot of We have pigeons, and we
have squirrels. So I'm wondering if you could give us
a rethink of maybe something that's in front of us,
like squirrels in particular.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, so I have a whole chapter on gray squirrels.
They're one of my favorite animals. And I think the
danger in modernity is that we're told there's a correct
way to do these things, an authentic way, like you
have to show up to an old growth forest or
a national park, and it just isn't so, I mean,
what we're looking to do is to kindle that realization
(04:38):
that we're a part of nature. And if that is
liken on a sidewalk, if that is a tree in
the landscaping, if that is glimpsing a gray squirrel that
might be at home in a city park the same
way it would have been at home four hundred years
ago in America. I mean, squirrels are one of our
most important forest regenerators. They're just a fascinating creature, and
(05:01):
that is connecting with nature. You know, you don't need
to buy a ticket to do it correctly. It's really
more of a state of mind.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Our guest is Jared kay Anderson. He has three previous
books that are all best sellers, Feel Guide to the
Haunted Forest, Love Notes from a Hollow Tree, and Leaf Litter.
He lives in Ohio, between a forest and a ce
I love the cemetery part. The new book is Something
in the Woods Loves You. His website is Jaredkaanderson dot com.
You're listening to get connected on one oh six point
(05:32):
seven Light FM. I'mina del Riel. As you write in
the book many things I totally agree with. There's this
one phrase. It's amazing the number of mental hurts that
are soothed by simply focusing our senses on our immediate
place and moment. Focusing our senses on what, For example, I.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Think it's it almost doesn't matter so long as it's
anchored to your place in the current moment, because part
of what depression does to me is that it nudges
me out of the present moment. It nudges me into
all of these sort of corrosive abstractions. You know, I'm
not producing enough. I'm not you know, living up to
(06:15):
my potential in some abstract way. I've I messed up
in a conversation two weeks ago. You know, you get
you get shoved into all of these abstract ways to
bully yourself, and sometimes just anchoring in your own physicality
in your space and the moment is a way to
take back the power from those sort of bullying abstractions
(06:36):
that I think haunt a lot of us.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
It's a very hopeful book and a hopeful thing that
you're saying, right, you're getting out of the weight of
mental illness which has hijacked your brain. What does it
mean to allow yourself to have a sliver of hope.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
It's scary at first. It requires a kind of vulnerability
because in the depths of depression, hope can be a
dangerous thing because it feels like it's another avenue to disappointment.
So it's a leap of faith that I'm going to
put out this effort and this depression that is lying
(07:16):
to me and telling me that it's just an objective
view on a broken world or a broken self. I'm
going to take a leap of faith and start doing
these small steps toward wellness with a kind of stubborn
trust that they will get me somewhere.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
You tell the story of your mother's cousin later in
the book, who died by suicide, and hearing your mother
describe her as difficult to love. It is such a
burden when you feel that internally, yet some of us
would choose agony rather than ask for help. Can you
talk a bit about endurance through vulnerability and how you
(07:57):
address that in the book?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, I think vulnerability is such a key aspect peeling,
and I think our culture doesn't value it the way
it should because we think about community, and we think
about resources, and I think a lot of us think
of like, all right, well, I would lend a hand
to my neighbor to carry groceries. But how many of
(08:20):
us are comfortable asking for help or admitting our own
weakness or you know, our own imperfection or fallibility. And
all of these things are scary moves towards vulnerability, but
they're also the only way we can access our key
strength as humans, which is to rely on the strength
(08:41):
of each other. And our connection and our community. You know,
we're not all experts in everything. All of this is
kind of distributed through the human family, and unless we're
willing to take the risk of vulnerability, we can't tap
into this key strength of what makes humanity, you know,
(09:02):
a resilient creature.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Speaking of resiliency, raccoons, we often see them as scavengers
and thieves. A lot of people have a lot of
thoughts about raccoons as animals. What have you learned to
see in them?
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Yeah, raccoons became They became emblematic for me of this
idea that nature isn't always the graceful herons, you know,
or gliding swans. It's sometimes the lesson I need from
nature is raccoons, which are there are things outside my control.
There are seasons and days where I'm going to have
a bad mental health day, and I can choose to
(09:40):
look to the raccoon and say, all right, I'm not
going to be destroyed by this. I'm not going to
shame myself. I'm not going to say my identity is
broken because I'm having a tough day. I'm going to
look to the raccoons and say, look, you know, if
I eat crumbs and stay in sweatpants all day, and
I'm a weird little trash goblin. Some days that's what
(10:00):
success looks like. Some days it's just stacking up the
moments and trusting that because we are natural, our minds
are natural, they relate to seasons and cycles. I'll get
through this, And just getting through this is something the
raccoons are very good at it.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
You say in the book, the nature of depression is
that your own memory is not always a reliable keeper
of important lessons in milestones. How do you find or
how do you balance that, perhaps with something in the outdoors.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Yeah, well, the outdoors is there, and it's not reliant
on our own memories, right, So Yeah, I mean, mental
illness is such a tough disease because the organ that
is the problem, our brains, are also our best tool
to fight it. And when I walk outside, when I
(10:58):
look to natural landscapes for lessons, I feel like one
of the things I'm doing is kind of like using
nature as an extension of my own mind, because it's
there in an inarguable way.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
It kind of goes back to the physicality we were
talking about about, returning to the moment So if I
observe a squirrel or a raccoon or a pigeon and
look at sort of the bare facts of nature and
kind of the dignity and wholeness I feel there, I
can find ways to extend that to myself, even when
(11:36):
I can't trust my own perspective because of the illness,
you know, the shame or the condemnation. Like, if I
can let it fall away and be in the moment
with the nature I'm observing, I just always find that
very medicinal.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
How did writing this book Jared recounting specific and significant,
both dark and hopeful sign posts in your life impact you.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Well, it's it's been four or five years in the making,
and I share a lot of nature poetry and writing
about mental health online, and I get a lot of
messages from folks that want to discuss mental health. And
I started to come up with this concept of the
long talk. You know, I wanted to go on a
three day camping trip with with each of these folks
(12:23):
and have the long talk about what I had learned
in my missteps. And so this book became that. It's
the long talk. It's everything I wanted to share that
I felt like I learned about my own mind in
my own struggles toward toward mental health. So this was
this was an important project for me that one of
(12:45):
the things that always brings me back to the keyboard
is this feeling that I'm doing service that'll make me
write even when I'm struggling with other motivations in light
of my mental health struggles, and this book is that
it's it's trying to do an active service.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
It is a very beautiful book. Something in the Woods
Loves You by Jared kay Anderson. Thank you for being
on the show.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Thanks so much for having me. It's great to talk
to you.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
This has been get connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven light Fm. The views and
opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views
of the station. If you missed any part of our
show or want to share it, visit our website for
downloads and podcasts at one oh six to seven lightfm
dot com. Thanks for listening.
Welcome to get connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on
one oh six point seven light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
More than one in five US adults live with a
mental illness, according to the CDC, from medication to therapy, diet,
lifestyle changes. We know there are a number of ways
to treat this chronic condition, but Jared ky Anderson, a
best selling author and podcast host who lives with mental illness,
says treatment can be found in the woods literally and
(00:33):
gives us the tools to see it all anew. In
his new book, Something in the Woods Loves You, Jared
Anderson explores the inherent ways nature can help fight mental illness. Jared,
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Thank you, It's good to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Jared ky Anderson is a writer, poet, and creator of
The Crypto Naturalist podcast, a scripted show about real adoration
for fictional wildlife. Is built a large audience of social
media followers and podcast listeners for his viber and appreciations
of nature. I love the title of this book, Jared
and So. I grew up in the woods, actually, but
(01:07):
I have lived in the New York area for about
thirty years. And maybe that's the reason why at first
thought upon seeing Something in the Woods Love You, Something
in the Woods Loves You, there's something scary out there
was my first thought. You know, a human alone in
the wilderness. For some that's an extremely vulnerable, even scary thought.
(01:28):
How do you think of wild places?
Speaker 3 (01:31):
So I also grew up in sort of a rural
environment and some of my earliest memories are taking daily
nature walks with my mother. So the book Something in
the Woods Loves You is really the story of kind
of the low point of my depression and finding a
path back to myself and ways to make meaning that
(01:55):
serve me. So the Woods, which was kind of a
return learn to a foundational thought for me, really stood
in to represent.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
That often we have a connection with nature in our
younger years. Again, you know, curiosity about bugs or climbing
trees or a pond, and that wonder and imagination that
we rarely tap into as adults. And this book does
not suggest that nature is going to magically cure you.
But can you talk about noticing the natural world at
(02:24):
that particularly dark point and what did it get you
to think about?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Well, yes, I'm very careful in the book, not to say,
you know, go touch a tree and you'll feel all better.
But one of the main things I've learned is somebody
with chronic major depression is that depression lies to us,
and depression defends itself, and really through the mechanism of shame,
whether tied to societal stigma or you know, masculinity, all
(02:53):
these reasons I had to keep silent. One thing I
really had to do first and foremost was that I
was worth the work, And in returning to nature and
walking beneath the trees, I sort of would feel those
pressures and those external stigmas fall away, you know, under
(03:15):
the trees, I felt more like an animal, somebody connected
to the trees that were making the oxygen. I breathe
the hills where the iron in my blood came from.
And I found that I sort of effortlessly, naturally could
access a love for natural landscapes, and intellectually I understood
(03:35):
that as a human creature, I'm part of those landscapes.
So the connection there was, all right, how can I
start to extend this natural, this instinctual love for nature
to myself, And that really was a key for me
to unlock all of the subsequent healing.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Most of the people who will listen to this show
are in the New York City metro areas, so we don't,
you know, it's harder for us to go out and
sort of have that immediate connection with nature. What we
have is a lot of We have pigeons, and we
have squirrels. So I'm wondering if you could give us
a rethink of maybe something that's in front of us,
like squirrels in particular.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, so I have a whole chapter on gray squirrels.
They're one of my favorite animals. And I think the
danger in modernity is that we're told there's a correct
way to do these things, an authentic way, like you
have to show up to an old growth forest or
a national park, and it just isn't so, I mean,
what we're looking to do is to kindle that realization
(04:38):
that we're a part of nature. And if that is
liken on a sidewalk, if that is a tree in
the landscaping, if that is glimpsing a gray squirrel that
might be at home in a city park the same
way it would have been at home four hundred years
ago in America. I mean, squirrels are one of our
most important forest regenerators. They're just a fascinating creature, and
(05:01):
that is connecting with nature. You know, you don't need
to buy a ticket to do it correctly. It's really
more of a state of mind.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Our guest is Jared kay Anderson. He has three previous
books that are all best sellers, Feel Guide to the
Haunted Forest, Love Notes from a Hollow Tree, and Leaf Litter.
He lives in Ohio, between a forest and a ce
I love the cemetery part. The new book is Something
in the Woods Loves You. His website is Jaredkaanderson dot com.
You're listening to get connected on one oh six point
(05:32):
seven Light FM. I'mina del Riel. As you write in
the book many things I totally agree with. There's this
one phrase. It's amazing the number of mental hurts that
are soothed by simply focusing our senses on our immediate
place and moment. Focusing our senses on what, For example, I.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Think it's it almost doesn't matter so long as it's
anchored to your place in the current moment, because part
of what depression does to me is that it nudges
me out of the present moment. It nudges me into
all of these sort of corrosive abstractions. You know, I'm
not producing enough. I'm not you know, living up to
(06:15):
my potential in some abstract way. I've I messed up
in a conversation two weeks ago. You know, you get
you get shoved into all of these abstract ways to
bully yourself, and sometimes just anchoring in your own physicality
in your space and the moment is a way to
take back the power from those sort of bullying abstractions
(06:36):
that I think haunt a lot of us.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
It's a very hopeful book and a hopeful thing that
you're saying, right, you're getting out of the weight of
mental illness which has hijacked your brain. What does it
mean to allow yourself to have a sliver of hope.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
It's scary at first. It requires a kind of vulnerability
because in the depths of depression, hope can be a
dangerous thing because it feels like it's another avenue to disappointment.
So it's a leap of faith that I'm going to
put out this effort and this depression that is lying
(07:16):
to me and telling me that it's just an objective
view on a broken world or a broken self. I'm
going to take a leap of faith and start doing
these small steps toward wellness with a kind of stubborn
trust that they will get me somewhere.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
You tell the story of your mother's cousin later in
the book, who died by suicide, and hearing your mother
describe her as difficult to love. It is such a
burden when you feel that internally, yet some of us
would choose agony rather than ask for help. Can you
talk a bit about endurance through vulnerability and how you
(07:57):
address that in the book?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Yeah, I think vulnerability is such a key aspect peeling,
and I think our culture doesn't value it the way
it should because we think about community, and we think
about resources, and I think a lot of us think
of like, all right, well, I would lend a hand
to my neighbor to carry groceries. But how many of
(08:20):
us are comfortable asking for help or admitting our own
weakness or you know, our own imperfection or fallibility. And
all of these things are scary moves towards vulnerability, but
they're also the only way we can access our key
strength as humans, which is to rely on the strength
(08:41):
of each other. And our connection and our community. You know,
we're not all experts in everything. All of this is
kind of distributed through the human family, and unless we're
willing to take the risk of vulnerability, we can't tap
into this key strength of what makes humanity, you know,
(09:02):
a resilient creature.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Speaking of resiliency, raccoons, we often see them as scavengers
and thieves. A lot of people have a lot of
thoughts about raccoons as animals. What have you learned to
see in them?
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Yeah, raccoons became They became emblematic for me of this
idea that nature isn't always the graceful herons, you know,
or gliding swans. It's sometimes the lesson I need from
nature is raccoons, which are there are things outside my control.
There are seasons and days where I'm going to have
a bad mental health day, and I can choose to
(09:40):
look to the raccoon and say, all right, I'm not
going to be destroyed by this. I'm not going to
shame myself. I'm not going to say my identity is
broken because I'm having a tough day. I'm going to
look to the raccoons and say, look, you know, if
I eat crumbs and stay in sweatpants all day, and
I'm a weird little trash goblin. Some days that's what
(10:00):
success looks like. Some days it's just stacking up the
moments and trusting that because we are natural, our minds
are natural, they relate to seasons and cycles. I'll get
through this, And just getting through this is something the
raccoons are very good at it.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
You say in the book, the nature of depression is
that your own memory is not always a reliable keeper
of important lessons in milestones. How do you find or
how do you balance that, perhaps with something in the outdoors.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Yeah, well, the outdoors is there, and it's not reliant
on our own memories, right, So Yeah, I mean, mental
illness is such a tough disease because the organ that
is the problem, our brains, are also our best tool
to fight it. And when I walk outside, when I
(10:58):
look to natural landscapes for lessons, I feel like one
of the things I'm doing is kind of like using
nature as an extension of my own mind, because it's
there in an inarguable way.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
It kind of goes back to the physicality we were
talking about about, returning to the moment So if I
observe a squirrel or a raccoon or a pigeon and
look at sort of the bare facts of nature and
kind of the dignity and wholeness I feel there, I
can find ways to extend that to myself, even when
(11:36):
I can't trust my own perspective because of the illness,
you know, the shame or the condemnation. Like, if I
can let it fall away and be in the moment
with the nature I'm observing, I just always find that
very medicinal.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
How did writing this book Jared recounting specific and significant,
both dark and hopeful sign posts in your life impact you.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Well, it's it's been four or five years in the making,
and I share a lot of nature poetry and writing
about mental health online, and I get a lot of
messages from folks that want to discuss mental health. And
I started to come up with this concept of the
long talk. You know, I wanted to go on a
three day camping trip with with each of these folks
(12:23):
and have the long talk about what I had learned
in my missteps. And so this book became that. It's
the long talk. It's everything I wanted to share that
I felt like I learned about my own mind in
my own struggles toward toward mental health. So this was
this was an important project for me that one of
(12:45):
the things that always brings me back to the keyboard
is this feeling that I'm doing service that'll make me
write even when I'm struggling with other motivations in light
of my mental health struggles, and this book is that
it's it's trying to do an active service.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
It is a very beautiful book. Something in the Woods
Loves You by Jared kay Anderson. Thank you for being
on the show.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Thanks so much for having me. It's great to talk
to you.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
This has been get connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven light Fm. The views and
opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views
of the station. If you missed any part of our
show or want to share it, visit our website for
downloads and podcasts at one oh six to seven lightfm
dot com. Thanks for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.