EP27 - WW

[00:00:30] John Salak: It's hard living in today's world and not to, at least at times, think it may be broken. On the world stage, there seems to be catastrophe and violence almost everywhere. At home in America, there is anger, extreme political divisiveness, turmoil, and an absolute commitment not to listen to anyone who doesn't agree with your personal beliefs.

Toss in seemingly insurmountable global problems like climate change, pending economic crises, natural disasters, pandemic, and random gun violence and the wave of despair only builds. And these pressures don't begin to include personal factors such as physical health, finances, and family issues that can influence how we see the world and how it impacts our personal well being.

One of the many unfortunate aspects of a broken world, whether it's real, imagined, or something in between, is the toll it takes on people. And the impact can be pretty devastating. Think trauma, anxiety, depression, burnout, and more. Recognizing this toll is the first step to overcoming and lessening its combined impact, but it's only the first.

More can and needs to be done to make sure a broken world doesn't eat you up. Thankfully, our upcoming guest is an authority on the dangers a broken world presents and what can be done to repair its damages and protect yourself going forward. As the author of Life Skills for a Broken World, our guest is in a perfect position to help us put the pieces back together.

We'd like to welcome Dr. Ohana, Guha. we'll speak on some very important issues. This Is not necessarily a super light topic. I don't mean to minimize what we're going to talk about.

We're going to talk about challenges that people have and mental health, wellness, and whatnot in today's world. And we're jumping off on this because of your latest book, which is Life Skills for a Broken World. And in your background, you have dealt with a range of mental health issues, including trauma and abuse, among other things.

People who, this triggers depression, anxiety, obviously a range of emotional challenges. What brought you to this area of work?

[00:02:39] Dr. Guha: So, I'm a clinical and a forensic psychologist, so obviously forensic psychology is where the broader mental health system interacts with the court system, so I work with offenders who are at high risk of doing a range of things. Including stalking, family violence sex offending, general violence, bias setting, and then in my private clinical I do a lot of work with trauma. In terms of what brought me to the work, I've always had a strong interest in the field of psychology. Possibly because I'm trying to understand some of the things that may have happened within my own family. And that was more of an unconscious driver I think, initially.

I was probably looking for ways to heal that which I couldn't heal, but it also matched my curious brain really well. And I've always had a strong interest in working with people. And so when I went back to study after a range of things happened and I talk in my book about my own marriage and divorce at the age of 23, and I was thinking about the way in which I could find meaning and purpose and feel like I was connected to a bigger cause really, than just living selfishly in a Little silo.

Mental health felt like a good fit. Forensic psychology only became an interest a little bit later and it was when I was applying for postgrad programs like the doctorate that I eventually did and it felt interesting and it felt like a good fit but it was a bit of a spur of the moment.

I'm going to pivot away from just the straight clinical psychology and move into this dual role and it's been such a great fit for me.

[00:04:13] John Salak: And your latest work, Life Skills for a Broken World you've done obviously other writing and work before that.

How does this book I'm assuming, it doesn't take a great assumption to say that it's an outgrowth of your earlier work, but where is it outgrowing and how does it sort of differ from some of your earlier writings?

[00:04:28] Dr. Guha: So the first book that I did, Reclaim Understanding Complex Trauma and Those Who Abuse, is a dense, reasonably theoretical work, I think still very accessible for the lay reader. but definitely far more serious in terms of its subject matter. Life Skills is meant to be a short, sharp, punchy introduction.

And it's also and broken up into really small scales. So it's far more of a broader framework that's more introductory framework, whereas Reclaim really jumped into the topic of complex trauma in some detail and also brought forensic psychological work. This is more mental health work for the lay reader.

Right.

[00:05:09] John Salak: It's more accessible certainly to the non professional, non mental health professional area. So this then sort of begs the question, is the world broken?

[00:05:19] Dr. Guha: Well, I, think that the world is not in a great place at this point in time. Obviously here in Australia, we had masses of waves of COVID lockdowns. So I think here in Melbourne, we were on a sixth wave of lockdown and there was a lot of anti vaccination anger that was starting to brew and really split the community.

Cost of living had started to shift a little bit, which is now completely out of control. Geopolitical strife, we obviously have a lot of at this point in time and we didn't really have that then. I don't think Russia had invaded Ukraine. There were a lot of things happening and a lot of distress, a lot of really spiraling rates of mental health, distress, climate change, a lot that made me start to think that, well, we really messed up the world and the phrase that broken world started to percolate and it does feel to me like we've stuffed the world up, whether it's fully broken or whether it's chipped or fractured. I'm going to leave it to your listeners.

[00:06:20] John Salak: Right, and, that may be mincing words and just as an aside, , and I know you're in Australia certainly it's a globally connected world now, but Australia is geographically a little more isolated than other parts of the world. I don't want to say Australia is any more broken than anywhere else.

Do you think there are different degrees of stresses on people? Yes. And it's different in the developed world than the underdeveloped world or other areas, but I think you get what I'm getting at.

[00:06:43] Dr. Guha: I think that we are all on the same rocky ocean, but that the that ships we are in might be slightly different. I know America is facing a range of Political challenges, let's say, that Australia hasn't faced quite the same extent. So I think that the stresses on each different population are probably different, and obviously with similar connected themes around climate change, political disruption, the rise of a strong far right movement I think some of these themes seem to be global from what I'm observing.

And obviously, I'm not the thick of it, so it's hard for me to rise above and notice the themes. But this seems to be what I'm saying.

[00:07:26] John Salak: So there may be different nuances by region, but basically if a lot of us are facing the same issues, the same pressures, they may be little different.

[00:07:33] Dr. Guha: I think same existential angst, the sense of what is gonna happen to me and what is gonna happen to my family. Will I be able to access the things that I always thought that I'd be able to? How is climate change going to change things for me and for my country? What's gonna happen to us as a human race?

This seems to be the question that a lot of people are asking now, and I think that's relatively universal, or at least that's my experience.

[00:08:00] John Salak: No, it's incredibly valid. We talk about outside influences, how it affects our mental wellbeing. When it comes to mental health, is it always. Is outside influences that are affecting us, or is there something internal that affects us? And maybe one without the other it doesn't really matter, they just melt. But is it different?

[00:08:19] Dr. Guha: I think it's a bit of both, or really a bit of all three. So, in the field of mental health, we talk about the broader biopsychosocial framework, which is really the biological, the psychological, and the social. So, when you're thinking about biological, you might have a person's genes and their temperament, and we know that certain types of mental health disorder are quite strongly heritable so passed down through the family line.

We also have a person's basic temperament, but also things like what they would experience or exposed to when their mom was pregnant. Typically

[00:08:54] John Salak: psychologically

[00:08:54] Dr. Guha: we have springing from that initial temperament, just a range of things around how happy a person can be.

So their happiness set point, how they're prone to thinking, how they see the world, how they experience emotion and their own capacity to maybe regulate emotion. And then we've got the external social forces as well. So you can have the biological and the psychological factors down pat. Things can be great, but then if you're exposed to something catastrophic like a war, obviously your mental well being won't be great.

So I think it's really important always to look at all three, and we tend to, I think, discount sometimes the social for the biological and the psychological, especially in the field of clinical psychology. But I think it's really important, especially in my forensic work, to look at all three together, really.

[00:09:43] John Salak: Why do you think that is sort of discounted? The societal impact, communal impact on mental well being ? Mm

[00:09:51] Dr. Guha: Feels like a more challenging space or thing to address. Possibly, if you're talking about things like access to housing and food security, changing the social welfare system, introducing subsidized healthcare for everyone. These are difficult things to introduce and require political will. And I think based on the founding ideology of certain countries, there may not be that political will. I think it's easier maybe to focus on the individual and say, let's just teach you CBT and teach you how to change your thinking with the idea that's going to change who you are. It just feels like it's more accessible possibly. And also mental health has been, very individually focused since it's inception. Thinking about the days of Freud, really.

[00:10:39] John Salak: And you were talking about how societies or communities or countries or cultures, however, we want to identify these groups address mental health, through treatment and all those facilities proactive engagement. But if we talk about or focus on some of the cultural issues that are people are impacting, whether it's the impact of climate change, political movements, economic catastrophes and all of those things those influences seem not only difficult to change, they're politically dynamite.

If you want to have a discussion on climate change, you're going to bring up a whole range of issues.

[00:11:13] Dr. Guha: Exactly, and thinking about the war currently raging in Palestine and the conflict there that's again one of those difficult subjects that really draws in a host of competing ideologies and emotions. It feels like maybe when we can't fix something we forget that's on that which we can control. And that is certainly a good psychological principle. So what I always work with clients on is controlling what you can and just letting the rest go. But I can see how societally that could possibly become iatrogenic when we just give up hope and when we just give up the capacity to push for sustained

change

because it feels like that you're hard and I'm curious about, but that's a form of learned helplessness that no matter what I do. And I think that's where the wheel is

falling down really

[00:12:01] John Salak: You mentioned climate change a lot, and you're not certainly saying that's exclusively one of the cultural or outside influences, but you've mentioned it because it's existential. And that sort of begs the question are these issues, not just climate change, but climate change would be an example, Are they more difficult for younger people who may be more attuned to the impact of climate change than older people?

But then older people have culturally or familiar experience war and other tragedies and economic consequences. So again, it's not one simple answer, but how does age wise affect this, impact?

[00:12:35] Dr. Guha: My experience has been that it's more strongly felt by younger people. It might be because it's their futures that we're talking about. So if I'm older and say 80 or 90, I'd be thinking about my next 10 years and I'd be checking out and so I wouldn't be worried about that. But if you're 1015 now, you know mm hmm. you're thinking about your entire lifespan, you're looking at climate change predictions of the catastrophic fires and floods and massive,, cyclones coming, you'd be understandably worried.

I think my experiences has been that there are older people who are also quite anxious about it, and more when they're thinking about their own families and what life is going to be like for future generations. But maybe I think as we age, there is sometimes a sense of comfort and solidity that can set in possibly and a sense of this is my world and I know how to interact with it.

And maybe we are as open to engaging with new. Information, and I'm by no means saying that's true for all people.

[00:13:38] John Salak: I'm

[00:13:38] Dr. Guha: Curious about whether that gives people a certain sense of ability to manage it because they're not engaging with some of these thoughts as much. Maybe because it's not personally relevant, or because they're not on social media as much,

[00:13:51] John Salak: Mm-Hmm. .

I'm going to paraphrase this what is the saying that give me the power to know what I can change and the understanding to know what I can't change? Wherever anyone is politically they can't necessarily by themselves, stop the political rhetoric on either side or the hatred, or, but they can lessen it around themselves perhaps, or not engage in the same way.

[00:14:13] Dr. Guha: Yeah, I've seen this really nasty polarization, I think, especially coming up around the geopolitical conflict.

It feels like there's infringement and strong anger directed from both sides with no one willing to budge or take a step forward. And when I've suggested a step forward, I've been attacked for being complicit with genocide or, whatever it is, which I absolutely think by the way, is happening, but I just feel like that anger and that hatred directed toward people isn't going to solve the issue..

[00:14:44] John Salak: Right, and I know you're book didn't focus on maybe what generated these causes but where do you think the whole issue of how compromise became a dirty concept I mean, that's what I see is that compromise became something abhorrent when it really shouldn't be. be

[00:15:03] Dr. Guha: I very good question. I like we'd have to dive into political ideology for that, certainly not equipped to hmm.

about that, and thinking about the work I do with clients, I mean, with, relational issues, it's usually about People halfway and really listening to the other person's perspective as well.

So people are looking for that. But you're right. I haven't read a lot of writing about compromise. And I'm curious about whether it's this anger driven self righteousness that maybe everyone has in the sense of I'm right. You are all wrong. That we all prone to have because of course we think that we are right.

We know our brains, we know our history, range of ways of thinking, and I don't think that that kind of thinking's encouraged anymore. Is it that maybe you've got some of the answers, but you don't have them all, and you won't because one person can't hold complete truth.

[00:16:02] John Salak: Yeah, no, no, no, no. I'm also interested in the subtitle of your book. No it's a Practical Guide to Good Psychological Health. So, kind of again begs the question, do you think there's a lot of flawed advice out there? Or are you just saying this is just a layman's take on mental health?

[00:16:19] Dr. Guha: There is so

[00:16:20] John Salak: that's a broad

[00:16:21] Dr. Guha: Yeah, no, there is so much flaky and flawed advice. You just have to jump on TikTok, which I'm too old for, but I, in a second, I'm through. And you just have to see Instagram influencers and therapists and just read a little bit of the self help literature. The crazies that are sweeping the world, so really simplistic understandings of if you fix your attachment style, everything is going to be great, manifest your greatness just some very unkind of research on evidence based thinking, icebox which May help, but certainly aren't going to change the world.

So I wanted this to be really evidence based and very practical and something that people could actually bring in and apply to their own lives. And it provided lots of prompts throughout, but also lots of exercises to try and some extra reading for those who want to go into things in A bit more detail and it was my intention that this be something that people could pick up when they're feeling down and they can flip to the right chapter and find some words and find a way forward, really.

[00:17:24] John Salak: And so this also brings us to another point and I'm not saying that having a practical guide a limiting aspect at all. How do we know when someone needs professional help or is it, should it always be augmented and how would we know.

[00:17:37] Dr. Guha: I absolutely think there is a firm limit to this book set out in the introduction that if you have diagnosable mental health issues or specific strong symptoms then you should special help and this is just an adjunct Hmm. What I would say is that if there's any strong distress, and I'm using a very broad word deliberately because there are people who don't know how to identify and how to explain the distress, so they don't have the vocabulary around saying I feel depressed or I feel anxious.

But if you're depressed Or if there's a lot of emotional distress, or if you're engaging in behaviors that don't quite make sense, that are affecting your quality of life. So thinking of things like binge eating, compulsive substance use or if there are certain things happening that maybe mean that you unable to engage with the world.

So you notice that friends don't stick around, and this is a constant pattern that you've had. Then there may be cause to go and seek professional help just to understand What's happening. And and of course, if you're feeling suicidal, any of that really intense distress, that is absolutely a time when you seek professional help instead of picking up a book, though a book can be a nice adjunct sometimes.

[00:18:54] John Salak: And certainly a book can be a way to enlighten you as to when you may need to get professional help as well.

[00:19:00] Dr. Guha: One of the things that I did when I was learning about my own mental health in my early 20s, and I didn't have much of an emotional vocabulary at all, I mean, I'd go in to see my own psychologist and she'd ask me how I was feeling, and I'd go, I don't know, I mean, I must have been so I and annoyed by it.

I did that for and years until I finally learned to talk about how I felt and built the words around that. But a lot of what I learned was obviously through my own therapy, but also through a lot of reading, lots of learning from other people who'd gone before.

[00:19:32] John Salak: Yeah, and just, what are some of the biggest misconceptions that individuals have when they deal with their own mental health or someone who around them may be challenged?

What should we be thinking about instead of what we are?

[00:19:46] Dr. Guha: I think Understanding that if we're going to live in a world as deeply connected feeling beings, we're going to have bad days is probably a key one. We are going to feel distress. We are going to feel anxiety. None of that's necessarily mental illness unless it's significant enough in terms of how bad you feel and if it continues for long enough, but having the odd day where you feel anxious because you're about to tape a podcast, possibly, or because you're about to To be on TV is really understandable, and that's actually a very adaptive response to how your body flows with the changing states of life.

So I think not pathologizing negative emotion is a really big takeaway, that we're all going to feel this entire range of emotion. We'll be happy, we'll be hopeful, we'll feel awe, we'll feel joy, we'll feel love, we'll feel excited, but we're also going to feel sad. We're also going to feel scared.

We're also going to feel anxious. And good mental health, I think, is being able to experience all of those states when they're evoked by the world around us. Being able to understand why they are coming up and being able to tolerate them for a while, because it's important to sit with discomfort instead of just pushing it away.

And then being able to process and let go and move through.

[00:21:09] John Salak: That's fascinating, and it, again , it begs the question, in episodic form, not something that's obviously continued or chronic distress, does anxiety or depression Is there anything good about it? Is it signaling? Is it something that, okay, it's a cathartic experience that's going to get you to the other side, or is it just like, no, it's really bad for you, but if it isn't extended, it's okay.

[00:21:30] Dr. Guha: I think if you're talking about clinical very serious anxiety and depression, then I'd say that those are harmful, but those are more extreme. Reflections of less kind of serious states that, that actually signal to us that there's something happening here that we need to pay attention to.

So if you think about Anxiety, back in caveman days, people who were looking up at the sky and marveling at the stars and the rainbows, they'd be dead because they stepped on a snake, yeah?

Whereas there was people, maybe more like me, who kind of, skulked around looking in the grass going, there, are there snakes here?

And there was that instinctive anxiety about there might be danger.

But they were the ones that survived, so using anxiety as an

example, it's a skill that we have, it's a way of looking out for danger because that's how we stay alive. Obviously now the things that we feel anxious about are so amorphous, anxious about, Whether you're going to achieve your financial goals or you're anxious about the future of the human race, there's nothing that we can really pin that fight flight response down to, and that's why we stay in chronic states of anxiety.

[00:22:42] John Salak: That's quite a challenge to put on people to have them build a sort of a hopeful environment,

[00:22:50] Dr. Guha: Yeah,

it is.

[00:22:51] John Salak: So.

[00:22:51] Dr. Guha: I think the challenge is learning to use it. So I was very anxious in my teens and my early twenties. And I always looked for the bad things that were going to happen. And over time, the felt sense of anxiety is dropped away. And that's because I think I've worked out that the worst really happens.

I've spent so much time catastrophizing, but like, the worst case has never happened. And if it does, I'm probably able to cope with it. But now I can use the way my brain works, which is looking issues in my work, and I can direct that a little bit more constructively, instead of this. free floating panic.

[00:23:29] John Salak: And that's why people should pick up your book and begin to read it, correct?

[00:23:33] Dr. Guha: absolutely.

[00:23:34] John Salak: Dr. Guha. Thank you very much for your time and your insights. And later on in the podcast, we will make sure they know where to buy your book.

Before we dish out some health hacks, we want to again remind everyone of the hundreds of exclusive discounts members of our WellWellBeing community enjoy. These include everything from fitness and athletic equipment to personal care products, organic foods and beverages, and more.

Joining our WellWellBeing community is easy and free. Just visit WellWellUSA. com, go to Midland's discounts on the pull down menu, and you'll see the sign up sheet. Signing up takes seconds, but the benefits can last for years. Enjoy. Okay, so maybe your world is broken, or perhaps just a couple of pieces are out of whack.

What are your options to prevent it from all crashing down on top of you? First off, it's important to recognize that there's a lot of flawed advice out in the market when it comes to dealing with mental health issues. This includes suggestions for both self help as well as professional support. This doesn't mean sound support and advice aren't available, but it does mean it may require some effort to find out what's right for you.

It's also important to remember that people experience the world differently, based on their age, emotional makeup, and physical health. This in turn can alter the remedies they need to bring more order and stability into their lives. Professional help is always an option, particularly for those with chronic depression or anxiety.

Engaging in binge eating, having suicidal thoughts, or whose behavior changes radically or in alarming ways. But it is also equally important to realize that everyone is going to have bad days. When they are anxious, sad, depressed, or burnt out. These emotions are natural. Recognizing that we are all likely to experience these troubling emotions at times is an important step to not letting them overwhelm you or put you on a destructive path.

Ultimately, this means learning to sit with discomfort and letting it pass naturally for your own good. Well, that's it for this episode of What the Health. We'd like to thank Dr. Guah for her time and insights, and we'd like to recommend everyone think about reading her latest book, Life Skills for a Broken World.

Thanks again for listening, and please come back.