One man's journey - Matty Burke

Matty has a fascinating journey/story around mental health and recovery.
You can learn more about his work:
Mattys Mental Health Podcast - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj9hep6I5s49jbJ8Sfjg3Sw

Matty Burke Coaching profiles - https://www.linkedin.com/in/matty-burke-change-you-re-life-coach-8372a61b3/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/mathias.burke/

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Welcome back to the Heart Podcast.Today's episode, we'll be having a conversation
with Maddie Burke about his podcast andlife in general and the things that he's
seen in his curiosity about mental health. There we are. You know,
it's amazing technology, Like, letsus do this stuff. Oh, it

(00:21):
is crazy, just on the otherside of the continent, just chatting away.
Yeah, you know, your fourfour time zones away and like I
don't know how many thousands of milesand yeah, just like hey this works,
you know, how do you makeHow does this work? That's crazy?
I like it. So in someways we're we're we're parallel because there's

(00:42):
a part of behavior and mental healththat we're both working with. Can you
give, like the Tumann introduction orthrough an introduction or however long you want
to take the reduction about yourself andkind of how you got into this space?
Sure? Uh, somebody names MaddieBurke. I have a podcast called
Maddie's Mental Maddie's Mental Health Podcast.I've been doing that for the last three

(01:03):
years and basically what I do isI have people on who want to share
their story with mental health. Yep, and I've done eighty episodes in the
last three years, and it wasactually really surprising how many people reached out
to want to come on. AndI've had people that have personal experience with
mental health and also you know,mental health professionals come on and yeah,

(01:29):
that's been cool. I learned alot from that. And I'm also a
behavior change coach, so I specializein behavior change. Specifically, I help
people lose weight, so I helppeople change their behaviors around health and fitness,
and I've been doing that last yearand a half. I was a
personal trainer before that, and thenI got more into the psych psychology side
of things behavior change, which Ifind helps people more a lot more,

(01:53):
right, So I'm really enjoying that. But that's kind of like, in
a nutshell, what I do.Two things that I do? Cool?
What guy? You you started downthe whole mental health podcast read right?
People, just like one day youwake up the mental healtht you know,
yeah, yeah, yeah. So, uh so six years ago, almost

(02:13):
seven years ago, the girl Iwas dating at the time committed suicide.
Oh I'm sorry to hear that,thank you. Yeah, so, the
she committed suicide, and you know, I had my own process of that
dealing with with grief and you know, going through that whole thing. But
but after it happened, like immediatelyafter having almost I was like, I

(02:34):
want to do something with this.I don't want to just you know,
have this pain and let it notgo towards something, right, But I
didn't know what that was. Therewas kind of a thought in the back
of my mind, of course,you know, you have to deal with
that stuff. But later on afew years later, I got into podcasts.
I really good into podcast listen tothem all the time, and I
was like, it would be reallycool to have a podcast where I just

(02:58):
bring people on and let them sharetheir story with mental health, because what
I found, you know, evenbefore I met her, and that happened
in my young life, you know, before that, like I just even
experienced some depression myself through teens andseeing it other people. I just I've
seen so much that people just feellike they were alone and they're the only

(03:19):
ones going through it, right,right, And then you know, now
I've done like eighty and everyone saidthat they feel like they were the only
ones at the time, Like,why do I feel like this? No
one else feels like this. I'mthe only one that feels like this.
So that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to create a place where
people who just come on share theirstory and then hopefully, if you know,
if it helped one person, thenone person listened to it like,

(03:39):
oh, I guess I'm not theonly one that feels like this heavs these
thoughts or whatever the case may be. So that was that's why I started
the podcast. It's an excellent reason. Yeah, totally makes sense. What
kind of interesting ahaes have you heardfrom people aside from this common thread of

(04:00):
their alone which I want to lookback to because I'm really curious about that.
Okay, Yeah, it's common,as I think, or even common
ones, you know, ones thatlike one person said something and you were
like, oh, light bulb moment. M h. I think there's a
lot of them. I think,like when you talk to anybody like this,

(04:23):
like there's always like there's always likeI always get a lot out of
it. It's like hearing someone's lifestory almost you know, you just feel
like you just come out of itlike educated. You're like, wow,
I learned a lot just from Andthat's the reason why I actually still love
doing it. But I'm trying tothink the one that really stands out.
I think I think one thing,and this is kind of maybe more macro

(04:45):
than micro, is like there's alwaysa point where and I see this now
with clients, there's always a pointwhere they have like okay, like let's
say, like they get sick orwhatever, they started getting symptoms like things
are going bad, and then theymay go get help, but they don't
really get help. And then they'rekind of in the middle. But there's
always a point and where they decidethat they're going to take getting better serious.

(05:13):
And I've seen that over and overand then and then then they start
like doing the things for themselves.They start taking theory therapy more serious.
They start like going for walks everyday for example. That's been a big
thing that I've That's a very commonstory that I've that I've seen over and
over was people start to take itserious. It's like something clicks. Do

(05:35):
those you know that's interesting? Doyou when you hear those kinds of stories
and you hear about those kind ofclick moments, Is there any is there
any commonality in across the board inthose Is it like, you know,
my relationship sucked or you know,my partner left me or I got fired

(05:58):
or what you know, like,yeah, unfortunately, there is I think
I think it's like a human trait. You know, we got to hit
rock bottom before we start taking ship, start taking ship serious. Yeah,
but it's usually something like that,right, Like you know, maybe it's
like a manic episode for example,and like the fourth one, and like
things got really bad at that time, and then you know you're in the
hospital again and then it's like,okay, not gonna take it serious,

(06:19):
or you know, a relationship startedto fall apart, or you know,
even like maybe a relationship with aparent where a parent is like, you
know, if you don't make somechanges, like I don't know if I
can be around you, right,you know, it's like the reality check
in some way, some form oranother. It's interesting that rock bottom thing

(06:41):
is a really interesting metaphor because yeah, totally makes sense that each person would
have that be different. Yeah,yeah, cool, thank you. When
when when people are are hitting thatplace you mentioned, they take therapy seriously
or they're like, what are thekinds of things that people commonly do too

(07:06):
to get out of rock bottom?Are there any patterns at all? I
guess it is really the question.Yeah, yeah, I would say the
patterns are like like medication, ifthat's something that they do, they're prescribed,
and they you know, that's somethingthat's you know, I don't know,
it's not for everyone, but itis some people like getting gain on

(07:27):
the proper medication. And then likediet, like just consistency with diet,
even if it's not like perfect,and then nutrition, sorry, hydration rather
so hydration is a big one,and then yeah, I would not have
foot. I guess I just takefor granted that I drink a lot of

(07:48):
liquids and I don't think about hydrationor dehydration. It's being contribute to mental
health problems. Interesting, Okay,yeah, it is interesting. A lot
of people said that, and Ithink it's the whole thing of like,
you know, your body doesn't functionproperly when you're dehydrated. But it's also
like a mood thing. I think, like if you're hungry or thirsty,

(08:11):
it's gonna like, you know,let's say that your your baseline is here,
like you know, it's gonna belike everything's gonna be heightened. So
if you're anxious and you're also hungryand you're also thirsty. You know,
it's gonna totally yep yep, yeah, highting everything up. Angry Yeah,
yeah, big time angry. Yeah, and there myself almost Yeah, it's
totally you know, it's totally true. It's yeah, I've definitely been there.

(08:35):
Where I've been, my my moodchanges dramatically because I haven't had food
and too many hours. I haveno idea how people do long term fasting.
Yeah, you know, like andlike, did you ever go to
try or anything? What's that?Did you ever take a swing at us?

(08:56):
I've done well, I've definitely donetwelve hours. That's no big deal.
That's not a big deal because youknow, do that overnight, right,
Yeah, and I've I've probably doneeighteen hours. Yeah, probably at

(09:22):
an eighteen. But I notice thatwhen I start running in calorie deficit,
seriously, you know, like inthe course of a day, my emotions
definitely start to go downhill. Yeah, unless I'm doing something, you know,
it's I'm if I'm if I'm ina place of emotional struggle doing something,
then for whatever reason, that lackof food has an impact on my

(09:50):
emotional well being. Lack of nutrition. I tend to drink a lot of
liquid throughout the day, So Idon't think dehydrations are prob them as much
as my caloric intake is is down. Yeah. Uh yeah, I'd have
to be really like organized around thatif I was going to go you know,

(10:15):
twenty four hours or longer. Igot sick, Like my early twenties,
I had to do a lot offasting. I had to stomach problem.
I did a few forty eight hours. Those were pretty those are pretty
long. Wow, the end ofthat one, Like I did twenty four
good amount of times. But thenwhen you go to like forty eight,
you start like I'd eat like Istarted eating grass, you know what I

(10:39):
mean, I'd started eating anything.Yeah, yeah, that's I don't know
how people you know how they dothat. I'm sure there's you know,
it's like anything else. Everything isa skill as you as you approach it
and figure out how to incrementally getto that place. Yeah, it's not

(11:01):
so hard, but you have tounderstand what's the It's like, do you
want to run a marathon? Yeah, Team and training does a really good
job of getting people from you know, I can walk a mile, that's
their starting point too. Oh Ijust finished a marathon, right, and
it's and it's a bunch of tinysteps. So I can see if I

(11:26):
knew it all the steps were,I could see getting to forty eight hours
after you know, doing whatever theincrements are to get me comfortable out there.
But I definitely would have to bereally really aware of what's going on
in my head as part of thatprocess. For sure. It's an interesting
mental state. I found. Itwas like it's almost like a little bit

(11:46):
meditative in a way where it's justI don't know, it's it's a different
kind of mental state. It's likevery calm. You're also starving, right,
yeah, but I think the starvationmakes you kind of be present in
a weird way. Oh totally,Yeah, that totally makes sense. Yeah,

(12:07):
yeah, Okay, now I'm reallycurious. I have to go do
this is an experiment. Yeah,you have a bunch of research on fasting
and figure out, Okay, what'sthe increments and and what what what that
would look like. Have you haveyou done keto diets? Yeah? I
did in the past, okay fora little for a little bit. Yeah,

(12:33):
I've done that. I've been inthe past, and I noticed,
uh some I noticed a little moremental clarity, it's easier for me to
stay focused. YEA, when Iwas pretty close to zero carbs or zero

(13:00):
zero fast carbs, I should sayyeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I felt the same thing. Andthat's the same kind of thing I think
with like the long, longer fast. So you're not getting that like the
sugar up and downs right right,yeah, yeah, it's just kind of
just a baseline. Yeah. Yeahto the loop back, you made it

(13:22):
comment about everybody feels like they're alonein this problem. With all of the
different kinds of media that people aretalking about mental health, right now,
why do you think that people feellike they're alone despite there's you know,
there's there's stuff on the news orsocial media or something at a minimum every

(13:50):
day about it. Schools have stuffabout it. I just was walking through
my son's high school over the weekendand they have big posters up about mental
health check ins. Right, whydo you think people feel alone about it?
That's a good question. I thoughtabout it a bit. I think

(14:16):
I think, well, maybe likea two part there's a two part thing
to that, where like, wellmaybe even just first of all, I
think it's like it's a lonely thingto be going through in the first place,
like if you're depressed, for example, I think like the first tendency

(14:37):
is to isolate yourself mhm. Andit's like they wouldn't want to hear from
me, and you know, likethe whole suicide audeation thing is all like
they would be better off with meanyway without me rather right, right,
yeah, yeah yeah. And thenanxiety, like social anxiety that's like,
you know, I'm gonna avoid thatbecause that's social. So I think that

(14:58):
like maybe the feeling of alone,it is like a lack of connection,
so it's a personal a loneness notnecessarily nobody else in the world is struggling
like I am kind of a thing. Yeah, I think. So I
think that's like first of all,with the feeling, and I think,
and I've thought about this lot becauseI think it's awesome, like all the

(15:20):
everything that's being promoted, like everythingyou just said, it's it's it's becoming
more and more mainstream, right,But I also think I also think people
relate a lot to like stories andlike the reality of the situation, like
it's one thing to be, likeif you just put something physical, like
it's one thing to be, likecancer is bad. We should try to
save or we should try to curecancer. It's another thing to like have

(15:46):
cancer and have the reality of chemoand all that stuff. Like, I
guess it's almost like it's a layerof separation that most people feel. I
don't know if does making any sense, but it's like people don't necessarily connect,
especially if they're struggling themselves to likea mental health poster. But if

(16:07):
someone like opens up about their story, if someone speaks to the kids about,
like, listen, I was depressed, I felt right right, and
then three kids might like click andbe like, shit, this is how
I feel, and then might tellsomebody, Yeah that makes sense. Yes,
the it's the it's the personal bubble, personal sphere kind of a thing.

(16:30):
Yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah, it's it's definitely a very every
personal kind of thing. And Iknow from my experience when I was struggling,
I didn't recognize I didn't have anydata analytic tools available to recognize that

(16:56):
I was that I was in depression. I guess you know, it wasn't
a I didn't have a pattern matchavailable for that right and to go,
oh, here's what's going on,and I need to go find help.

(17:17):
And I wonder something. I think, like we we work with high school
students a lot, and they theyare able to say, oh, I'm
suffering from depression now because there's somuch awareness in their circles of it seems

(17:38):
like like there's a it's a hugechange in that, at least in this
part of the world. I wouldsay, in the last well, definitely
the last decade. Yeah, right, yeah, interesting. Yeah, and
yet kid, still are they eveneven when they know it, they don't

(18:04):
have a good, easy path togetting the kind of help they need to
get out of that place. Yeah, yeah, mhm. And there's always
that's the other thing. There's alwaysso much fear about about getting help,
right right, Yeah. I remember. I remember when I was in the

(18:26):
ninth grade, which was like fifteenyears ago or something, and maybe English
class or something, they were talkingabout this first time I ever really heard
of depression, because I never reallytalked about it before that, and English
class they were talking about what depressionis. It feels like you're in a

(18:48):
deep hole and you just can't getout. And it clicked from me then
that I was depressed. I didn'tI didn't know before that, but I
remember at that time, like andit's just you know, some of just
feelings I remember was like I shouldgo get help, I should go talk
to accouncil or something, but Ididn't because I was too scared to go
talk to them, right right.Yeah. Now, the at least around

(19:10):
here, there's so much demand fortherapists that there's months of waiting. Really
yeah. Yeah, our our foundersclinical clinical mental health professional and the at

(19:32):
one point in time it took youhad to wait three months to get an
evaluation for their clinical program. Yeah, and that was like a year ago.
That's how long. That's how longthe wait was. She ultimately left
that program, and that's why that'spart of how we've got hard going,
was because she became available full time. But the you know, we hear

(19:59):
all the time people saying, oh, you know, I'm trying to find
I'm trying to find a therapist whohas time available, and wow, one
of, yeah, one of oneof one of her colleagues decided to set
up a therapy business part time justto kind of see what it was like.
And she had so much demand thatshe quit the hospital because uh,

(20:21):
she just you know, there wasmore demand than than she could do part
time and now she's hiring other peopleto fill in also be just because of
demand. So great. Wow,So it's a it's a very interesting and
yeah, the from a macro level, the problem just keeps getting worse.

(20:47):
It's just not it's not improving yet. We haven't we haven't gone over the
top yet of of the of thecurve. Yeah. Interesting, Where where
would you like to take you know, a longer term? What's the kind
of impact that you want to have. That's a good question. You know.

(21:11):
I've been kind of pondering it fora little bit. I took a
little bit of a break for like, you know, a month or two
while back is really busy with businessfrom the podcast, and I thought about
what exactly I want to do withit long term. And now I'm getting
more towards talking to people like yourself, m kind of professionals in this in
this area. It's like I'm moreinterested in, like I talked to a

(21:34):
lot of people about their story.I'm more interested in talking to people about
what's what are the solutions. Butif I'm thinking, like yeah, if
I'm thinking like long term about whatthe impact it I'd like to have,
Like with my coaching business with thepodcasts with them together is like trying to
broadcast some solutions and I'm trying tohelp people kind of in a large scale.

(21:57):
Nice. Yeah, that totally makessense. Yeah. Yeah, It's
funny how people only know how todo what they know how to do.
Yeah, and if they don't know, that's like I have no idea how
to do a forty eight hour fast. Yeah, but I know that there's

(22:18):
enough people who've done it out therethat I can. I can find the
steps to get there right, tobe able to do it. On the
flip side, you know, backwhen I was really struggling, I didn't
know that I didn't know what waspossible, Like I I it was a
complete blind spot, Like it wasa double blinded no idea what was out

(22:41):
there, and so I didn't evenknow to go look for it. And
I I I hypothesize that that isincredibly common because the ways that we see

(23:03):
people struggle are are very consistent,and they're all solvable. And it's not
like, you know, there's yeah, it's all solvable. It's just that
no one's done a good job yetof of bringing that to light and saying,

(23:30):
oh, okay, you know,here's the kind of struggles people have.
Here's why they have those kinds ofstruggles. Here's the skills to learn
that makes that not a struggle anymore. And here's how to practice and build
competency so that that thing becomes easyand you can look back and go,
oh, I remember when this wasreally hard. I remember when this was

(23:51):
impossible. Yeah, I think we'rethe first people to do that. I'm
curious about the way, if youdon't mind me asking, like, what
what are the the comment like youmentioned like people struggle in similar ways.
What are the what are the biggestcommon allergies that you've seen the biggest patterns

(24:18):
so for at a at a kindof a macro level, at self limiting
beliefs. Yeah, so it's youknow, it's all it's self lomiting beliefs,
right, they have they and theythey don't you know, And I
was one of those people. Youknow, every human has self limiting beliefs,
right, otherwise I'd be on abillboard in Times Square right now,

(24:41):
you know. But yeah, I'llbe there today, you can be there
tomorrow. We'll just you know,we'll schedule it right or we'll rotate.
I'll take even days you can havethe odd ones, but it's it's always
some kind of self limiting beliefs aboutwhat, uh, what's acceptable behavior in
a given environment. And because ofconfirmation bias, they people don't notice outlier

(25:08):
data that gives them other possibilities.Like for most of the time that I
worked here in Silicon Valley, bicyclingto work has been one of my primary
transportation modes. And when I youknow, when I've talked to people,

(25:30):
you know, they've been like,wait, how do you bike to work?
I'm like, I get on mybicycle and I ride to work,
and I take a shower and Iyou know, put on a shirt in
a way I go, you know. And they're like, I could never
do that, that that would beAnd I'm like, well why not,
you know, like and it's becausethey don't know that there's a group of
people to bike to work pretty regularly. That they missed the data because they're

(25:56):
in traffic over there on the freewayand all they see is all these other
people going to work in their carsor on a bus, and their mental
models this is the only acceptable solution, and that the difficulty level of biking
to work is too high. Butin my mind, I'm like, biking
to work is super easy because Idon't have to sit in traffic. Number
one because I hate sitting in traffic. Number two is super calming, and

(26:22):
both directions. You know, whenI come home at night, I'm not
stressed about work. I'm like,I said, an awesome bike ride that
was beautiful, you know, andthen I don't have to do cardio if
I go when I go to thegym, you know, I can just
like warm up and jump in straightinto it. But people don't. When
they don't see that kind of thinghappening in the world, they don't recognize

(26:45):
it as possible. That's one that'sawesome. People haven't learned to take initiative
because it's uncomfortable, and and that'sa huge one. I see it all.
I mean, for fifteen years I'vebeen kind of had this side thing

(27:07):
of helping people with their careers,and the lack of initiative is just across
the board. The thing that thatstymies people because and it doesn't matter,
like I've worked with vps at Teslaand Google, and they've got billion dollars

(27:30):
budgets, like they have a tonof responsibility and they still don't know how
to take initiative, and and byinitiative I mean stepping into a place that's
not their perfect comfort zone and experimentingand learning. You know, they very
much know what's in their lane andeverything they do is in their lane,
and they don't know how to stepout of it, and they expect someone

(27:53):
else to tell them what to doif it's if it's you should go do
this to advance your career, orto do whatever they're looking for, and
it said they're looking for someone tospoon feed them rather than to figure it
out on their own. And andonce you can start taking that initiative and

(28:21):
exploring more, there's all these doorssitting there that are unlocked and you can
just open any of them do whateveryou want to. It's just that no
one, no one says these doorsare all unlocked and there and they're available,
and there's not a tiger behind it. You know, you just gotta

(28:41):
you just gotta do it, right, I think I think that's the most
common. And then you know,the kind of the meta one is that
everything you ever want to do inthe world is a skill and and if
you and then that includes emotional resilience, and so if you don't know the
skills, then you're not going todo it. You're not going to be

(29:03):
able to do It's like juggling,right, Juggling is a skill, and
you can read books on juggling,but you're not a juggler until you actually
start throwing things around. Yeah,And it's the same thing with with with
everything else you could possibly do.Yeah, have any of your have any

(29:23):
of your guests talked about dialectical behaviortherapy? A few, if you definitely
have, okay, and I'm assumingthat a bunch of them have talked about
cognitive CBT. Yeah. So whatwe've done is we've taken dialectical or DBT
and we've made it pragmatic everywhere,not just in a mental health construct,

(29:48):
but like so as an example initiative. Right. Reason people don't take initiative
is they don't have distress tolerance andthey don't know how to break down something
into little pieces of how do Istart? And because the distress tolerance is
the first thing they bang into andthey say it's too uncomfortable, they don't

(30:10):
even step up to the place exactly. Yeah. Yeah, and once once
you normalize the distress tolerance all ofa sudden and you start practicing it all
the time in non mental health contexts, then all of a sudden, you're
like, oh, well, thisis uncomfortable, and what's the tiniest discomfort

(30:37):
I can jump into that I cando that's achievable. And I just have
to use radical acceptance and breath andmaybe one of the other distress tolerance skills
to get myself over the hump ofdoing that the first time, and then
okay, how do I how doI do it again and again and again

(31:00):
and again until it's a competency andit's comfortable. That is fascinating. It's
a lot of yeah, it's it'sa lot of I mean I've seen a
lot of those patterns, like withmy clients, you know, like you
know, break down to small thingsgetting over but just with the you know,

(31:22):
those first two things really comes downto comfort zone, right, and
that getting out of our comfort zonethe only way to progress forward. And

(31:44):
I mean you know this from athletics, right, Like a lot of people
it's uncomfortable to go to the gymor to go for a walk, or
to stop eating candy, and soyou have to be you have to be
willing to push that bound to advanceand change your experience of the world.

(32:12):
I think there was a quote Ilike like everything, everything you want is
on the other side of fear exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I
think it's really interesting, like lookingat it kind of like like taking a
step back a little bit, likepeople staying in the conference zones blinders on
wanting to be told what to donext. Yeah. Yeah, it reminds

(32:37):
me a little bit of the educationsystem. I would say that the reason
people are doing what they're doing isbecause the education system has taught them that
most most schools, kids aren't rewardedfor being free thinkers or asking a lot

(33:00):
of questions or wanting to have somethingoperate in a way that gives them motivation.
Yeah, and monestor do you haveDo you have monestory schools? Yeah?
Okay, yeah, So monest storyis the only there's the biggest school

(33:22):
system that I know of that's drivenby student curiosity. So when you're curious
about something, you're naturally motivated youwant to learn about it, and they
they interlace the stuff that you needto learn about, like how to read
and do math and all that stuffwith your curiosity, and so that makes

(33:45):
it a lot more exciting for kidsto learn, and it makes it more
exciting for adults to learn also.Yeah, but the mainstream souls, the
mainstream schools here are haven't done that. They don't they don't have a model

(34:06):
for doing it at scale, orthey don't think they have a model for
doing it at scale. Let's putit that way, because I do want
to bet that somebody's probably figure outa way to do it. It's just
it's not an it's not an imperativefor the schools here to make that happen,
and parents don't know it's even possible, right, So the school system

(34:29):
is doing that, and that's youknow a lot of the a lot of
the people that I've worked with,they're coming out of college with amazing degrees,
but because they don't have initiative,they can't get anywhere m and they
have those self limiting beliefs and sothey're they're stuck. Yeah, it's kind

(34:52):
of like this place, like youknow, you're in that system, then
you're rewarded for being a certain way, which is kind of like just do
your work. Coming too curious,it's like equals b whatever. And then
you know, you finally get outof that, and then the worlds the
world's much different than that once youget out there, right right, Yeah,
Yeah, it's the it's the it'sthe pragmatic side of of of being

(35:21):
successful in life. Yeah, andand figuring out what it is that older
generations took for granted, because oldergenerations tend to have really high distressed tolerance
because they had to, and theythey had a much higher diversity of things

(35:45):
they knew how to do because theyhad to, right, and and and
because because of our of our fuzzypattern recognition. If you know how to
to do I don't know, ifyou know how to replace the radiator in
a car and do the cooling plumberingthe cooling plumbing there, Doing plumbing in

(36:08):
your house isn't that hard. It'snot that that big of a stretch.
And so you can feel more confidentwhen you can go, oh, wait
a minute, I know how todo the plumbing in my car. This
toilet's got a problem. Oh,I can go fix that. Right.
But if you don't know how todo anything in your car, you don't

(36:30):
know how to anything in your houseeither, right or vice versa. You
know, maybe you come about itthe other direction from the house first,
but if you don't know how todo any of that stuff, then you're
just stuck, right. That's interesting. With the distressed tolerance, Oh yeah,

(36:52):
yeah, we do a ton ofwork around that. That's the because
we recognize that and especially you knowour founder Barbara, that was the clinical
stuff that she worked on was whowas all about distress tolerance because all the

(37:13):
people that came in, you know, her big aha early on was the
skills were teaching. These people workreally, really, really well, and
if they had these skills, they'dnever be here. It's kind of like,
if you know how to swim,falling off the boat's not a big
deal. But if you don't knowhow to swim and you fall off a

(37:35):
boat, that's a big deal.Yeah. Yeah, And nobody learns to
swim when they fall off the boat, Like you know, Michael Phelps didn't
get to become Michael Phelps by fallingoff of a boat. And so with
mental health, that's that's not amodel of education that anybody has taken on

(37:59):
you. I like that a lot. Cool. That's really cool. Yeah,
I think that's I think that's itis what's missing. It's part of
what's missing for sure, just educationon how to how to cope with it,
how to deal with it right right, your own tools. Yeah yeah,

(38:22):
yeah, would you say that thatwould be the root cause, uh,
lack of education? Oh totally,yeah. I mean it's it goes
back to you can only do youknow how to do and if your role

(38:42):
models don't know how to do it, you have no idea. Like you
know, we use water and swimmingas an analogy a lot because people understand
it. I grew up around rolemodels that are really comfortable in the water,
and so I saw the water asa playground and learning how to swim
is fun. And then snorkeling,and then diving and surfing and what god,

(39:10):
water skiing and windsurfing and now whitewaterrafting. And you know, I've
played underwater hockey. You know anythingunderwater hockey? Yeah, it's it's like
getting your ass kicked on the bottomof the swimming pool. It's yeah,
it's yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, it is easily the most challenging sport

(39:38):
I've ever done. But they havelike weights on your feet or what do
you oh, you just you wearfins and a mask and a snarkele,
and you know, you're holding yourbreath on the bottom of the pool and
it's six feet deep and you're there'sa puck that you're driving along the bottom
of the pool with a little hockeystick and everybody else is trying to get

(39:59):
it away from you. That's wild. And it is pretty common for people,
uh at the national level to loseteeth because you're forming up behind somebody
and you kicked in the face andand so yeah, it's just I'm gonna
episode on YouTube. Yeah, it'scrazy. Nationals for this, there's nationals

(40:22):
for this. Yeah. Yeah.But it's like, if you want a
really an amazing anaerobic workout, that'sthat. It's the it's the best.
It's the best. Oh yeah,when you're when you're when you're like really
you're you're trying to get the puckdown and you're on the bottom holding your
breath, you're kicking like crazy.Yeah, and really you've got to get

(40:42):
to a pretty deep level of oxygenstarvation, yeah, before you finally stop
and go up and then you're like, oh my god, this air tastes
so good, but you need toget back down to get you know,
to get back into it again tohelp your team. So it's just it's
wild. Yeah, that's crazy.Now you know something you a new sport
to go to go with. Yeah, yeah, but the yeah, if

(41:07):
you, if you, you know, like I didn't know how to do
a bunch of stuff, and andalso the things that I knew how to
do, I didn't know how totalk about or how to abstract into other
contexts and and I didn't understand thevalue of them. And so that's scary

(41:31):
now and when like I've been teachingmy kids these skills as fast as I
can, you know, as I'vebeen learning them, and I've been contextualizing
them for them. And so,uh, when my younger son went back
to school, he had social anxiety, and so I gave him a recipe

(41:58):
to use on campus. And aweek later he his problem was he had
too many friends, and he said, I don't know what to do.
I don't know how to how doI prioritize my time? And I said,
okay, now you have a newkind of problem. Let's go figure
that out. But it's all it'sall a skills based approach, and that

(42:22):
the starting point is being able tohave a little bit of stress tolerance and
then do an activity. In thiscase, it was just going over and
saying hi and talking to strangers.And once he had the recipe, he
was able to do it. Soyeah, back to your point, it's

(42:45):
the root problem is education. Yeah. If nobody knows how to swim,
almost everybody drowns or they just don'tgo in the water. Yeah. Yeah,
I really like that, even likethe kid level, getting them like

(43:05):
to go outside the comfort zone.Yeah, Like that's the kind of thing
that's like, you got like ageneration of kids doing that, right,
Then things are a little different whenthey get older, right, and it's
easier. I think it's easier tostart going outside your comfort zone as a
kid because and you know, theearlier the better, because you haven't been

(43:34):
indoctrinated by the culture to be comfortable. Yeah. And we've got a friend
of ours who grew up there's alittle island in the South Pacific called Saipan.
It's one hundred miles from Guan,which more people know of Guan,
And he grew up in a housewith no electricity. They didn't have electricity

(44:00):
until he was I think a seniorin high school. They had a solar
panels and car batteries, and everythingwas twelve bold. Everything that was electric
big cooked on woodburning stoves. Andthis, by the way, is a
US Trust territory, so there he'sa US citizen. And most of high

(44:22):
school he got really bad grades becausehe was fishing at night to feed his
family and to take fish to thefish market to sell pretty crappy childhood alcoholism
there is really high, and hisdad was one of those people. But

(44:42):
also he has an insanely high workethic, and so he got into college
here and realized immediately that being incollege and getting good grades was way,
way, way easier than and anythinghe'd ever done before. And so he
went from being a pretty shitty highschool student to being a four point o

(45:07):
GPA college student. And he alsostarted doing outreach to college grad research projects
and start doing research projects, helpingpeople with their research projects, and got
sent all over the world to gohelp with research. And when he finished

(45:30):
his undergrad and he was ready tobe a grad student because of his work
ethic, when he applied to Berkeleyto be a researcher, he got accepted
in five minutes because they already knewabout the stuff he'd been doing it even
though even though he'd had a shittychildhood because of his work ethic, he
had an amazing college time and completelytransformed his life. Right, So there's

(45:58):
as you learn things, as yousee things, as you recognize things,
you can go radically different directions.He also uses his DBT. Right.
We met him pretty early in usworking on this, and Barbara taught him
some DBT skills and then hooked himup with a therapist and all the distressed

(46:19):
tolerance has been huge. Wow,that's awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think that like on a anotherlevel as well. It's like going
back to like the limiting beliefs thing, like if people like, oh yeah,
it's a way from where they're inhigh school, they don't have a
good high school experience, Like hecould be easily just took a left turn
and stayed in that island, becamean alcoler or something, you know,

(46:42):
and you know, I don't knowif that's you know, but it's like
it's just a story. It's moreof a story than the individual. It's
like that can happen. It's likepeople do that, like they they the
limiting belief of Like I wasn't agood student in high school, like I
won't be a good student in college. And then all of a sudden,
yeah, or you can take thisway. It's like get clicks. It's
like I just gotta work hard.I can do that. Yeah yeah.
And you know for him, it'snot even that hard work. You know,

(47:07):
That's what what's amazing about it isis he doesn't see it as hard
work, which is which is andit's be kids. He's comparing to something
else he's done, you know,and in his mind that was hard work
and this is not. Yeah,And so he has a skill stack that

(47:34):
allows him to see something as nothard work. And that's the that's the
beauty of it, you know.Yeah, right, that's awesome man.
Yeah. Yeah. It all goesback to skills. Yeah, it's all.
It's all. Once you can wrapyour head around that and you can
start to you know, once youonce you learn all the all the skills

(47:59):
then and you start to learn recipes, which is, how do you put
together these? You know, you'vegot this problem, right, how do
I solve this kind of problem?Like a few years ago, I need
to get over my fear of publicspeaking, right, and so I built
myself a recipe and it took mefour speaking engagements in two months to get
over my fear. And now Ithink it's super fun and it's I just

(48:24):
had to I had to know this. I had to understand the skills and
then build myself a recipe. Andyou know, now I'm like, oh,
okay, I need to do morepublic speaking. Yeah, so kind
I ask what would be like thewhat would be the recipe, like just
for example, like that in particular, would it be like meditation building up

(48:45):
to it or what would it be? No? No, So, so
meditation is is a skill and it'skind of like approaching the world with a
framing hammer. You have one tooland it's good for one particular kind of

(49:06):
thing, but there's a lot ofplaces where it's irrelevant, Like you can't
meditate your way to being a goodspeaker just doesn't want right. So first
thing is to break down what itis about speaking that you have to be
able to do to get up thereand to be comfortable. And for me,
and different people can be different,but for me it was one.
I had to know the material,like I'd actually know the material en have

(49:28):
to be able to speak about it. Right, and so I made sure
that when I was doing my talks, the stuff I was talking about I
knew really well, so that evenif my presentation of my notes all blew
away and I lost my computer,I could do the whole talk and maybe
no big deal. The second partwas I needed to be comfortable that as

(49:51):
part of that that I wouldn't forgetwhat the heck I was the story was
about, right the presentation, andso I had to practice it, And
so I practiced it thirty or fortytimes, and I recorded them so that
I could go back and check myselfright. So the repetition was really helpful
for me. The third thing forme was I really wanted to make sure

(50:13):
that I knew people in the crowd, because for me, it's scary to
talk to a sea of strength,or it was it was scary to talk
to a room full of strangers.But what I noticed was that during my
years in the technology world, Icould give presentations to my software teams pretty
easily because I knew everybody right,and even when other people from the company

(50:36):
came to the meeting, because Iknew my software team really well, that
was my safety net. And sowith doing talks. What I did to
get over that problem was I wentthere early. I helped the organizers set
up, and then I greeted asmany people as I could as when they
came in the door, and gotto know who they were and got to

(50:59):
learn a little bit about them.And you know, the first three people
through the door that were easy wereeasy because they were a head of schedule.
And then as more people were comingin, you know, obviously I
couldn't talk to everybody, but thatway I had some familiar faces in the
crowd, and I felt like Ihad a group of friends that were in
the crowd. And the last thingis that I scheduled my talks for different

(51:23):
lengths, starting with really short andmoving up too much longer. And so
my first talk was only five minutes, and then the next one was a
panel that I was on it wasfifteen minutes. And then I did another
panel that was scheduled for half anhour, but it turned into an hour

(51:43):
and a half. And then Idid a solo that also turned in an
hour and a half. Yeah,but the breaking it down into what's the
what are the challenges? Right?Oh, Also, every time every time
I got up before I would.Before I got up to speak, I

(52:05):
did about five minutes of slow exhalebreath. And slow exhale is a technique
that slow as your heart rate andit changes your neurochemistry and so you're just
physiologically more relaxed when you get upon state right, right, Yeah,

(52:30):
that's that's fascinating. So breaking downwhat the actual fear is for you as
the individual, and then yeah,what can you actually do about those individual
things, like on a practical level, right right, it's super pragmatic.
M When my kid had social anxiety, you know, and was you know,
the what what he wanted really was, what's an opening line to say

(52:54):
to somebody who I don't know?Yeah, and and I always had him
do the slow exhale breath for acouple however long he could before he went
up, and he and I said, just go up and say, you
know, hi, my name isBlake, I'm new here. What's your

(53:14):
name? Will gradio in? Andas simple as that sounds, because he
wasn't hearing other people around him dothat, he didn't have that as something
that was role modeled, and hedidn't have enough background knowledge and data in

(53:34):
his head to be able to buildthat from scratch, right, kind of
like building with Lego. You knowwhen you very first get a Lego and
they're like, oh, here's whatever, twenty pieces you can make a tree.

(53:54):
Right, You've got a pattern inyour head for how Legos work,
and then you you you get another, you do more things, and you
you get other patterns, and allof a sudden Monday, You're like,
wait a minute, now that Iknow this, I could actually build a
car. I've never seen a Legocar before, but now I've got enough
pattern in my head that's all variedthat I can abstract how to go do

(54:16):
that. It's kind of like cookingalso, right, Yeah, you know
you mentioned a recipe. Yeah,you can make up a recipe out of
the ingredients in your house on thefly, after you've been cooking enough.
Like you know, my girlfriend doesthis all the time. She'll be like,
oh, what should I make tonight. I'm like, I don't know,

(54:37):
and she'll look around and go,well, we've got this and this,
Okay, I know what to do. I'm gonna put this together and
and I'm like that's amazing. Yeah. And it's because when she started cooking
as a kid, she had recipesand her mom or her and her grandmother
said here, you know, here'show to make it, here's how to
put it together, and she gotto a certain point where she could abstract

(55:02):
designing her own recipes from scratch.Yeah, it's interesting because it's it's a
lot of the work I do withmy clients in a slightly different way.
But it's like opposed to like,you know, the personal training days where
it's like this is what we're doing. It's more like and just going through

(55:24):
a workout together. But now asa coach, it's like, what's one
change you can make your diet thisweek? And I have like a framework
and outline of things that we gothrough throughout the program, but you know,
what's one change you can make yourdiet this week that would actually work
for you? And then they'll decidewhatever it is. It's like, what
do you want to do for exercisethis week? And they'll pick that.

(55:44):
So it's like building the and thenthat builds up over time and then they're
a place where it's like not evenrecognizable from where they were at the start.
But alls it was was just breakingit down pragmatically, small steps over
time instead of trying to like jumpin and be like, Okay, this
week, you're a new person.This week you're gonna start around the marathons,

(56:05):
bike to work, you're going onkey to forty fast, you're doing
everything right, right, you're rightright? Yeah, that would explode people's
heads. You know. When youdo that, that's the end. And
once you're once you can break itdown pragmatically and help people understand the structure

(56:27):
of the framework and how it andhow it ties into everything. Then I
think for me the big thing wasI suddenly had hope that once I could
understand the problem, I could breakit down and solve it. Yeah.
Yeah, that's that's that's the bigthing. People don't understand the problem.

(56:47):
I've talked to them. Like alot of people, it's like, you
know, in that process of likeseeking help or like there's a three month
wait or whatever, but it's likethey don't even know what the problem is.
They don't even know where to seekhelp or what to do next,
right, Right, there's a lotof confusion sometimes like I don't even know
what the hell is going on withme? Right? And then and then
if you think about like whatever theproblem is, it could be something like
bipolar where it's like there's confusion.Delusion is all part of that, right,

(57:10):
and you know we have this there'ssome interesting things happening in mental health
right now where kind of you know, in the leading edge research and a
lot of it is like root causeanalysis. And if you know, using
the water as an analogy, ifyou start off with role models that see,

(57:36):
the water is fun, and youstart playing in the water, and
then you get comfortable swimming, andthen you start diving or surfing or whatever,
you've got all global playground of stuffyou could do in the water.
It's a huge fun zone. Versussomebody who doesn't learn how to swim ever,

(57:59):
and they're thirty five years old,and every time they go someplace that's
got water around, it's scary becausethey don't know how to have that become
a playground. And and that's avery life experience, narrowing kind of a

(58:19):
thing, and it makes you feelpowerless, and powerless is the starting down
the slide to depression or anxiety.And so when you know that you can
do stuff, you know the stuff'sdoable and you can learn how to do
it. You just got to figureout who knows the recipe. Then you

(58:39):
don't get depressed. You just go, oh, wait a minute, what's
the recipe? What do I needto practice to get there? When I
started whitewater rafting six years ago,the water was easy for me. I
just didn't know how to navigate theboat right, Like, how do I
how do I look at the waterto get the boat to go where we

(59:00):
needed to go. I had noclue, and so I was just in
the middle of the boat paddling wheneverthey told me how to paddle right,
because I had no idea. Butthen because I wasn't afraid of the water,
it allowed me to start to thinkand engage and analyze and oh,
why are we going here? Andwhy are we going there? And why

(59:22):
is the guy doing this? Andthen all of a sudden, I was
the guy up in the nose whoin tandem works with the guide to get
the boat to where you wanted togo. And then I started doing two
person rafts, where you got towork a lot more instinct to get the
boat where you want it. AndI started guiding this last trip that we

(59:43):
did because now I can see itand I'm like, oh, I want
to put the boat there, andI know how to right and that's possible
because I've got the right foundation startingpoint to do it, you know.
And I didn't have the skill ofguiding the boat on day one, but
I knew that it was a skillthat I could learn and I could break

(01:00:07):
down and I could ask people like, oh, how come you want to
put the boat there? Or howcome we all got dumped out over there?
Like what happened that? Had useat it there? Oh that's now
I get the hydrodynamics of what's goingon with the side of the boat and
the water and everything else. Okay, that makes more sense. It's like

(01:00:27):
that with everything. Yeah, it'sit's like that with interviewing companies. It's
like that with how do you presentto executives. It's like that with parenting
your kids, having great relationships,all that stuff. Now you want to
know all these skills, don't you. I find it. I find it

(01:00:53):
so interesting on a big picture ifyou think about like like on a side
of level of comfort zone and thenlike the level of distress tolerance, that's
all comfort zones are higher now.I think in today's society, you know,
they say, like life is easier, things are at a fingertips,
social media, all that stuff,and then so distress is lower it was

(01:01:15):
higher before. Right, So there'sthat all that stuff, and maybe like
disconnection and stuff like we're not asconnected as we used to be, Like
in person attention span as well,it's gonna way down. It's like seven
seconds I think in the seventies itwas like thirty minutes. It's crazy,

(01:01:37):
but it's like all these things.And then on top of that, like
we just don't have the skill andthen the school system as well, right
right, it's like we're all justlike when we want to stay in this
comfort zone, we just don't havethe skills to I guess, get out
of there, get to that situation, right, right, It's really interesting.

(01:01:57):
Yeah, yeah, and again itgoes back to its education problem.
You don't understand the value of gettingout of your comfort zone. Yeah,
you know, if you understand thevalue of getting out of your comfort zone,
then you'll think about ways to getout of your comfort zone. If
you want to run a marathon,it's uncomfortable, right, forty eight hour
fast is uncomfortable. Like you didn'tdo that for the entertainment value, probably,

(01:02:23):
right, You had a motivation driverand so figuring out what's the motivation
driver, Like, you know thehave you ever seen the TV the TV
show Lucifer. I haven't watched it, but I know of it. Okay,

(01:02:45):
you know the basic premises. TheDevil comes to Earth because he's tired
of running hell and and he's reallya nice guy, and he always says
to people, like, what's yourdesire? People will tell him these crazy
desires. It's completely not what peoplethink that character is really wants. Right,
And when people can figure out whattheir desire is, like actually say

(01:03:06):
it out loud, then have aset of skills and a roadmap to achieve
it, it's awesome. But ifyou can't speak your desire number one,
or you don't think that there's away to achieve it that you can learn,
then life sucks. I'm stuck inthis prison where I'm in this comfort
zonn or this job I don't like, or I've stuck in traffic every day

(01:03:29):
and yeah, I have to doX, Y and Z and it's like
school. It's like that's how Ithought of school. It's like this fucking
sucks. I don't I can't payit. Sorry to square, don't now
of swearing heren't matter. I don'tcare, all right, cool, but
like I have a hard time payingattention. I don't really care about the
subject. I'm not interested, I'mnot curious, and now I'm stuck.
And then people like you know,you get stuck in that mode and then

(01:03:49):
you're resentful too, resent being trappedin this place that's not good and that
you don't like and you don't understandthat value of And yeah, yeah,
I think an interesting point with comfortzones. It's like, if you think
about the most exciting time in yourlife, just ask yourself if you were

(01:04:11):
in a comfort zone at that time. Oh yeah, yeah, exactly,
yep, yep. I had hada life coach on my podcast one time.
He wrote a book called Let ItGo. And I think one of
the things you mentioned in that bookwas about it was about comfort zones.
I forget the way you phrased it, but it was like, if you
think about, like all the timesthe things that we look forward to a
life, it's always something new.It's always out of a comfort zone,

(01:04:33):
like vacations, it's literally just somethingnew, Like reading a book it's something
new, or yeah, like anything, it's it's always something new. It's
always getting out of your comfort zone. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We
just don't do enough normalizing that that'sreally an attractive place to go to.

(01:05:00):
Yeah, complaints, it's complacency.Yeah yeah, that's a killer. Yep,
stalks, get me fired up.I'm gonna go good Oh my god,
what yeah yeah, after this,I'm gonna go give a speech in

(01:05:21):
the park. I don't know ifanyone's gonna listen, but well, you
know, you just you know,you can do a live on on YouTube
or on Instagram or even on TikTokfor that matter. You know, that's
a better place than the park.No one's in the park nowadays, or
there might be like three people,but more people will be Yeah, but
but in the park is better oxytocinfor you. Yeah, live people,

(01:05:42):
you know, that's a purely enlightenedself interest neurochemicals. Go do the park,
yeah yeah, and stick your phoneup on a tripod and that way
you can get the live happening.Also yeah, two birds, yeah exactly.
Yeah. Cool. This has beenawesome. Man, that was right.
That's fun conversation. Thank you,it was a lot of fun.
Thank you for having me on.How can people get hold of you.

(01:06:05):
You can find me on all socialmedia's under Mattie Burke Mattie Burke Coaching,
and you can find me on YouTubeand all the listening platforms for the podcast
under Mattie Mattie's Mentalth Podcast Cool andI will put links to all that in
the show notes. All right,thank you so much. That's uh,

(01:06:26):
that's kind of what we need,right, we need to click on the
links. Sweet, this has beenawesome.