Please welcome, one of American's most well-known,
trusted mental health professionals, Dr. Phil McGraw.
(loud applause)
(upbeat music)
Hey guys.
Well you clapped longer when Demi came out.
(laughs)
Course I look like an old catcher's mitt,
so I understand.
First I really wanna acknowledge, Demi.
We were just talking in the green room.
My dad was a psychologist as well.
And so I grew up around this,
and I remember when he was in private practice,
people would borrow a car to go to their appointment
because they didn't want anyone in town to know
that they were going to get help from a psychologist.
There was that much stigma.
And for someone that is as high-profile as Demi,
a world-wide icon, to step up and say yeah,
I have some issues and problems that I've had to fight
and deal with.
I'm not ashamed of it, I'm gonna use my life in that way.
I'm telling you, that is a game changer,
and that is huge and thank you for doing that.
(applause)
Now I wanna use this time to talk to you guys
about some of the things that I think
Demi has really grabbed by the horns
and made a big issue in her life.
You're here at the forum because you care about something.
For me everything starts with authenticity.
I'm gonna ask you some questions that I want you
to take home with you, and ask yourself.
Are you doing what you're doing today,
because it's what you wanna do?
Or are you doing what you're doing today
because it's what you were doing yesterday?
We all have a personal truth.
What we believe when nobody's lookin'
and nobody's listening.
Now why is that important?
Because we generate the results in life
we believe we deserve.
And here's the mistake that young people make.
And I know this because I did it.
I was raised by an alcoholic father in a violent home.
And when I say alcoholic and violent,
I'm talkin' about you go home,
and they're kickin' the windows out.
And that causes you to have a damaged personal truth.
And here's the mistake young people make.
You compare your personal truth
to the kid sittin' next to you's social mask.
They put their best foot forward.
They're all shiny-faced and they look great.
And that's their social mask.
You compare your personal truths to it.
Do you have a damaged personal truth?
Because if you do, you'll start self-medicating.
If you do, you'll start pulling back and marginalizing
yourself from society.
You'll start generating second-class grades.
You'll start generating results you think you deserve.
And you'll start numbing yourself with alcohol,
cocaine, heroin, whatever.
And what do you do instead?
You repair your personal truth.
I'm a strong believer that a whole lot of mental illness
comes from living an inauthentic life.
Living somebody else's decision
for how you're supposed to be.
(clapping)
Thank you very much.
(cheering)
Okay.
I'll take some questions from the audience, how's that?
Growing up as a kid, did you ever suffer
with any PTSD or depression?
Yes.
Not PTSD, but when I was 14 I was homeless.
Because I mean, my dad and I had to move to Kansas City
and we couldn't afford,
we, he couldn't afford to take the rest of the family.
And we got up there and things went really bad,
and I was living on the street.
And he had gone away.
I got bored depressed.
Now I'm from Texas like Demi here.
And you'll relate to this.
In Texas, if you've ever started to walk across
an asphalt road in August,
barefoot, you don't know hot.
(laughs)
I'm talking about hot where you look out in the backyard
and your dog bursts into flames, okay?
(laughs)
Now, what are you gonna do?
You're either gonna race forward, or race back.
You're not gonna stand in one place and just melt.
You're gonna, pain is gonna cause you to move.
It's gonna cause you to change something.
And that's what happened to me when I was depressed
on the street, it caused me to change something.
It caused me to become an agent for change in my own life.