- Hey everybody, I have a wonderful and special guest.
Josh Sundquist is here to talk to us
a little bit about mental health
and how he best cares for his.
- What's up, Kati's channel.
(gentle music)
- Just to give you an idea.
Josh does a lot of motivational speaking,
and that's a lot of what you do in general?
- Yeah, in real life, I'm a motivational speaker
in the same way that you, in real life, are a therapist,
so a lot of my videos are vlogs
that are about things going on in my life
but then kind of what I've learned from them
and probs like what lesson there might be
for viewers in those experiences.
And also, you can't quite tell from this angle,
but I don't but I don't have a leg.
My left leg, specifically.
So a lot of my stories, then, are things
that I think are funny that happened
as a result of having one leg,
so it's a lot of, also, amputee jokes.
- Gotcha.
So the way to kinda--
'Cause humor can be a coping mechanism too.
- Yeah.
Yeah, it's an essential one for me, I think.
Yeah, 'cause I don't know.
'Cause sometimes people will be like,
"How are you able to find humor in your situation?"
But to me it's more like
how would I be able to be in this situation
if I couldn't find humor in it.
- Yeah, and that's the great thing about his channel.
So we did a video over on his channel,
and you have to click over here to check it out
and I'll also push to it at the end so you can find it then.
But as always, when anybody comes on my couch,
we start off by asking,
what does mental health mean to you?
- I love this,
your couch. - I know, I know.
- Do you mean that in like a therapist,
a therapist way?
- Yeah, I'm Kati's couch.
- Kati's couch. - Do, do, do.
(laughs)
Although, we're not in my office, just FYI.
(laughs)
- So what does mental health mean to me?
To me, it's like something that is so essential,
but that there's a lot of stigma attached to it.
And sort of an underappreciation for how significant it is.
Right, that it's, I don't know, for whatever reason
in our, at least this current time and this current place.
It's like we generally--
If a person has an illness or injury
or generally, yeah, that's the minute
you should probably get fixed.
That's pretty essential to your wellbeing
that you get that sewn up.
- Yeah. - If you're bleeding,
but, yeah, depending on who you talk to,
something that is going on in your mind,
may or may not be something that you need to address.
Or may or may not be something
that is appropriate to get help with.
- For me, I started getting interested
in being a motivational speaker when I was really young.
Like when I was like 15.
And so, at that time in my life,
I watched a lot of motivational speakers
who read a lot of really motivational self-help,
and some of it is not,
it's not particularly enlightened
when it comes to mental health.
So a lot of it would be like,
"Oh, here's my chapter on how to deal with depression.
You're depressed?
That's because--"
- "You get out of bed."
- "Because you haven't set high enough goals.
You're aiming too low."
- And so, I naively was like, "Okay, cool.
I'm glad I understand what depression is now.
It's like having low goals in life
and not being motivated enough."
Took me a long time and a lot of conversations with,
fortunately, people who had better ideas,
I think, about mental health than I did
to get to a point where I was ready to see a therapist,
ready to talk to my doctor about an antidepressant.
That was a pretty long process
for me. - Yeah.
- To be like, "Okay.
It doesn't mean I'm doing something wrong.
It means I need to get help."
- Yeah.
I know it takes us all a long time to get there.
And you, actually--
'Cause we met up ahead of time and talked about this,
so that we were prepared (mouth clicks)
and Josh has a whole
tool set and an acronym to go along
with it on how he best manages mental health
and kind of keeps everything in check.
Is that the right way
of introducing it? - Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, sort of trying to maintain a baseline
of mental health on a daily basis.
Yeah, so this is the thing that I do.
It's from my daily mental health routine,
and the acronym, like you said, is J-E-R-M.
So JERM but with the wrong pronunciation
for the J, kind of. - That's fine.
- So JERM.
It's four things, and I will explain them to you guys.
- The first is my favorite. - Yeah.
- I bet you guys can imagine what it is.
- Yeah, if you watch Kati's channel,
you already know what a J is gonna stand for.
So yeah, the first thing is journaling.
(children yell excitedly)
Surprise. - Yay. (laughs)
- Specifically for me,
I try to just do stream of consciousness.
I personally like to type.
Kati talks about this.
There's lots of different types
of journaling. - Yeah.
- There's me, I like to type 'cause I can type a lot faster
than I can write by hand - Same.
- And yeah, it's just generally just like--
literally whatever's on my mind.
Although, sometimes I find that
it will become this downward spiral of like,
"Oh, I'm afraid of this, I'm afraid of this,
and I'm afraid of this."
- Oh, like it builds on itself.
- It kinda swirls. - Yeah, do you ever find that?
- Yeah. - If it literally
just stream of consciousness that's just like,
"Whoa, this is a very--
- 'Cause it's taking a dark turn.
- A very downhill stream,
like kind of going over a waterfall, sort of, a stream.
And so, when that happens,
something my wife actually suggested to me once
that I'll do is I'll make a gratitude list
of 25 things minimum that I'm grateful for.
And they can be really simple things
like, "Oh, it is sunshine today."
Or like-- - I breathe in and out.
- Yeah. - Amazing.
- I'm alive.
That downward spiral is when I'm asking myself a question
like, "What am I afraid of, what am I afraid of?
What am I anxious about, what's going wrong?"
- Versus like-- - But by asking yourself,
"What am I grateful for?"
You're automatically changing what
your brain is searching for.
It's like, "What am I grateful for?"
And then it's like,
"Oh wow, there's actually all these great things."
And then you keep seeing more and more great things,
and then it's like
an upward spiral. - Which is a great tool
to help if you're in a dark place,
like making gratitude lists or
just thinking of like five things before you go to bed
that you are happy about can really just help.
It can brighten your mood so significantly.
Way more than you'd think.
- Okay, so J is journaling.
- Journaling and then E is exercise. (bell dings)
Kati can speak to you the amazing effects
of exercise on your brain, but they are innumerable
and very well documented,
and, I think, experientially, we all find
that if you go exercise, whatever form you like to do.
- Even just walking around the block can help.
- Yeah, and so walking is my main form of exercise.
I walk pretty far.
Most days I walk for probably
like two hours, about five miles.
- We don't have cars.
We both walk a lot.
(laughs) - Yeah.
That's actually something--
- We share them with our spouses.
- Pretty unique in Los Angeles is not having a car.
But it's awesome here 'cause the weather's great.
- So yeah, exercise can be good.
And some of my clients, or some of my clients,
some of my viewers and my clients
struggle with overexercise so just making sure
it's in line with what your doctor says
and what's okay for you and knowing
that it doesn't have to be a ton.
It can just be walking for like 10, 15 minutes.
Even just getting outside sometimes is a big struggle
for a lot of us, and so that's why exercise is so great.
- And then R stands for read.
So there's journal, exercise, and read.
And this is probably the one that is the,
maybe the least intuitive from the word.
It's like the one where in every acronym,
there's one letter where you're like,
"Yeah, that's kind of a stretch.
(laughs)
I feel like you were really trying
to make an acronym there."
So that's this one.
- It's the one stretch.
- Where I was really trying to make it pronouncable,
and so I made an R.
So it's read,
but it doesn't just mean reading text on a page.
Specifically, what I'm looking to do is read something
that is positive for my mental health.
For me, I really like books about mindfullness
and about meditation.
Sometimes it's even like watching videos
where someone is talking about these subjects.
So this doesn't even have to be reading.
It's just some form of
deliberately seeking sort of positive things that I know--
the things that I know I need at that time
to sort of balance out whatever
negative voice are
swelling up in my brain. - Going on.
And I know that some of these tools,
people will be like, "Oh, I don't have time,
or that's really hard,
or what if I don't really like to read?"
You don't have to do it forever.
It's not like you're reading for hours and hours.
Maybe 20 minutes?
- Yeah, yeah.
I look at it as
I don't really do this every single day,
but my goal is to do it every day.
My goal is to do about 15 minutes.
- Okay, so we have journaling.
We have exercise.
We have reading.
- And M is meditation.
I just think meditation, for me, is so, so
essential and important.
And I wouldn't have said that at other times.
I started meditating probably like six years ago,
and I would say for the first year or two I did it,
I was more like, "I don't really know
that this is doing anything." - "Is this really helping?"
- It's like, "There seems to be some good research
on it, so I'm gonna keep trying
just because-- - That's awesome
that you stuck with it.
- Just because I'm really desperate to be
in a better mental place. - Yeah.
- Generally meditation involves concentration,
and it takes a really long time, I think,
to just build up the ability.
It's almost like a muscle, the ability to concentrate.
In meditation, generally, your concentrating
on your breath or a mantra or counting.
So it's these inherently really boring things,
which is kind of the point is to stop concentrating
on all your thoughts that are going sort of wild.
Yeah, I would say it was quite a while before I felt like
meditation was something that I derive benefit from,
and that now I look forward to.
And it's like a really important part of my day.
- I think that everybody is a little different
on how they go about it.
Like I personally really struggle to do it on my own.
I've used the Headspace app a little bit.
We're not sponsored by them or anything,
but I've used it.
And I'm not very good to use it.
- Yeah.
- I do better with just putting in some light music,
and I focus on my nose, feeling the air come in and out.
That's my thing.
But it is really hard,
and I can only do 10 minutes at a time.
So I always like to end Kati's Couch
with a question about what advice you would give
to your younger self.
I know that's kind of a loaded question.
- Yeah, no that's something I think about a lot, actually,
because I think it's a really, really fascinating question.
And also, what I think different times
when I liked the advice I would give,
and then I think about now.
I'm like, "Oh, it's pretty much the same advice
I would still give to myself."
- Oh really?
- Which is maybe good or maybe means I'm not growing
at all as a person. (laughs)
I'm not sure.
- I would think you're growing as a person.
- I guess maybe the positive way would just be like,
"Oh, I'm seeing patterns or something."
- Yeah, totally.
- I think I just always
try too hard.
I would say
the most emblematic example
I could give would be
you don't have to get hundreds.
So at your high school,
93 to 100 at the end of the term is an A.
You're trying to get into a good college.
That's great, I get it.
That'll be useful to you.
But, colleges functionally do not know
whether you got a 100 or whether got a 93,
so when your average is 100 already in the class,
don't do the extra credit.
That is a total waste of time.
(chuckles)
There's no reason to have over 100 average
at the end of a semester.
That's a specific example,
but I would say then take that and apply it generally.
You don't have to get hundreds, not only on tests
but on everything in life.
You don't have to hit 100s in socially and your fitness
and your achievements as an athlete.
Yeah, do your best, but it's fine if you don't hit 100,
whatever you imagine that to be,
which probably an imaginary construct anyway.
- Totally, and I think that's great advice.
And I would tell myself that too.
That's something I struggled with too
is the need for perfection.
- Yeah.
- Which is so exhausting.
But yeah, thank you so much for sharing
all of your wonderful tips and tricks.
And like I said, we did a video over on Josh's channel,
so you can click over here to check that out.
And he has a bunch of wonderful videos
where he shares all of his amazing insights.
So thank you for taking time. - Oh no, thanks for having me.
- And I will see you all next time, bye.