The JYLP Episode 076 with Singer/Songwriter & Blind Author Heather Hutchison - Seeing More Clearly

[00:00:00] Heather: I think we need to work more preventatively because i think we're so i mean in health care in general but i think especially in mental health care It's such a reactionary system you know You don't really get you're on these Crazy waiting lists for psych supports And you know it can be too late so In my case i remember having a conversation with one of the psych nurses in the hospital and she goes you know this is actually good that you were hospitalized because now you will be shortlisted you'll like you'll be if you need psych supports in the future you'll be at the top of the list and i just like Why is this what it has to come to for That to happen for people to receive the help they need in a reasonable amount of time

[00:00:47] Intro: Knowledge Is power

[00:01:08] Jacob: Ladies and gentlemen Welcome to the Junkyard Love Podcast I'm here with Heather Hutchison um heather i have spent last night and This morning uh reading your book i didn't get to the end of it unfortunately um right now um your I think it was like ex chapter 21 24 you Were in psychiatric care uh where i left Off so i have a little bit left but wow riveting uh your writing is wonderful i'm reading on audible too oh are you yeah so being able to hear your emotion and the vocal tonality and the cadence and um oh man it's really good the audible is very good too like being able to really have your emotion and everything come through in that i really value that so great work on the book so far honestly thank you yeah so um Would you like to give my listeners probably don't know what the heck i'm talking about so Would you like to kind of give your bio kind of give a lowdown of where you're at how we got connected here um what you were thinking

[00:02:06] Heather: Um and kind of kind of little bit of your background Yeah so I'm a singer-songwriter originally i have three albums out And my memoir as you were saying just came out in june and it basically chronicles my life as a Blind person in Canada and Latin America And there's kind of two parallel themes so there's that and then there's my struggles with mental health over the years which culminated in being hospitalized for psychiatric care during the COVID-19 pandemic and sort of You know what that was like mm-hmm yeah it was it seems like quite the journey you know even just so i was reading it thinking it would be you know pretty much just about the

[00:02:51] Jacob: Uh how you had mentioned that you were Um just the difficult difficulties that you had um being hospitalized through coven 19 but then i realized that you have this whole long back story you know And you have this whole long perspective

[00:03:07] Heather: Um it and it was it was interesting reading you know just the simple things like the dorky jokes that people would throw at your way or like the corny typical things that people would say to a blind person and as you were explaining them in the book as i was listening to you on audible um it would be like oh man that would be that would be so dorky to hear i would you know it seems so obvious but apparently to other people it's not so what was your um Let's go back to when you were young so what was it like for you for you growing up you know because these symptoms that the depression this these things kind of started at a young age even yeah so it was pretty normal like my childhood was the early years were really very normal and then you probably read in the book around five people kind of started treating me differently that was kind of the first point that i realized that people thought i was different um because you know kids at school i

[00:04:06] Heather: Started you know you get more self-awareness you start realizing that adults are uncomfortable around you as well and so i just kind of started to withdraw and then there were some family Issues that i think exacerbated everything and i think the anxiety started first i started having Panic attacks when i was about seven and Then i think the depression kind of came after that um in my early teens because You know you're constantly feeling anxious all the time when you get to a point where you're just like i don't want to feel this way anymore Yeah right i mean i think a lot of people um i think i think many people kind of experience depression anxiety a little bit later on i think um i mean of Course not everybody you know many of us deal with it from a young age for me with my spells of depression it wasn't until

[00:05:00] Heather: I mean i had a rougher childhood but i was able to kind of shelf it in a way i feel like i kind of bottled down a lot of these things and then when i was older they started to really come up and yours was from a young age so what was it like being so young and Having you know anxiety attacks and uh

[00:05:18] Jacob: In dealing with depression at such a young age because i'm sure that was hard to voice i'm sure it was difficult for you to kind of even put into words what you were feeling let alone you know have an adult really help you out Yeah because i think when you're so young and hopefully it's getting better now but when i was a kid in the 90s there was

[00:05:37] Heather: Kind of this attitude of like oh she's a nervous kid you know she'll grow out of it's fine we don't really need to do anything about it which obviously you know it just gets it's so much easier to treat the earlier you catch it so but yeah like the anxiety attacks And stuff it was really hard to explain because even when you like if a person Gets a panic attack when they're older if they haven't had one before like they can feel like they're dying so as a kid being like seven years old i had no idea what was happening so i didn't really tell anybody because i didn't really know even what to say about it was just super strange these

[00:06:17] Heather: Things that would just happen and i didn't know why yeah you're like what i so i guess everybody just deals with this seems like a crazy human experience but i guess we're just throwing with it yeah wow that's incredible um so what was it like for you um so as you as you grew older as you started to cope with and learn more about your Anxiety and depression so how what was the process of you kind of learning about it and then being able to voice it I think i was around 14 Well when i the year before that Somebody i was close to died by suicide And everyone was kind of going you know what people say like oh how could she was so selfish Um you know we can't really talk about it no don't talk about it in front of the children sort of thing and i remember hearing that and trying to process it and being like you know what like maybe that's not such a bad idea So i started making plans to kill myself And it was actually kind of divine intervention why it didn't happen

[00:07:31] Heather: Then and then i was called to the count the school counselor's office And she said somebody was worried i Still don't know who or why so then i was my mom took me to a Psychologist because she called home And i guess that's sort of when i started to realize that i guess it's not you know that normal something that everybody thinks about and you know is prepared to act on so it became a little bit easier i guess to talk about at that point Yeah i mean i imagine it was difficult nonetheless especially at that young age i think that mental health is being more and more normalized especially through you know social media in our younger generation is a lot of our younger generation um I'm around i'm 29 so i'm millennial but I feel like a lot of the gen z is you know it's almost a normal thing for many of them to grow up um with some form of Awareness around the depression and anxiety it seems like it's a little less

[00:08:34] Jacob: Hard to talk about although still you know very much a stumbling around conversation for many it's a it's difficult to kind of pinpoint um But yeah so the wow yeah like experiencing that back then and then so were you surrounded by people who there was a couple instances in your book where um you had one friend i Think it was one of your friends from peru had said something that stood out to me um what was the common response around the people that around your loved ones like when they learn about this of course they're worried about you how was the conversation around that was that something you had to kind of tiptoe around was it something you felt that you could fully speak on or how was that It was super varied you know that the Friend that you're talking about was really good and my aunt one of my aunt she's an er doctor so obviously she was you know Really comfortable to talk about those sort of things as well that was about it um i didn't really want to worry people

[00:09:36] Jacob: You know people don't know what to say it's uncomfortable it's scary And then it makes you as the person having these thoughts feel like a bad person like these thoughts are you know terrible you shouldn't be having them and everything because you get that reaction of like oh my god how Could you be thinking that you know somebody you know the very first thing they said was you know you can't do it that would be the most selfish thing you could possibly do which is totally the wrong thing to say

[00:10:08] Heather: Yeah so i've actually heard someone um speak about that before like i actually had a co-worker years ago who was they were going the selfish route like i don't think they really had contemplated very much i'm not sure if they were really aware of how they were sounding when they were saying it but i think we should expand on that a little bit what does that mean to you now that you've had a little bit of retrospect um and you hear someone say something like that like that's a selfish act to want to take your own life what does that mean to you now i think it's a really unfortunate attitude because i think when we're struggling so much already you know We know we know that you know we don't need to Feel worse than we're already feeling about ourselves and that's just you know when you're actually going through it feels like you're doing the right thing it feels like it's altruistic not

[00:10:58] Heather: Selfish at all it feels like you're doing the world a favor so then you know when somebody comes back to you and says no that's selfish it's like you know you already feel so crappy about yourself and that just adds to it

[00:11:12] Jacob: Yeah absolutely i mean and it's you there was one point where you mentioned um basically kind of pulling that warm blanket of it's like a comfort of

[00:11:21] Heather: You know when it comes to depression you kind of pull over that warm blanket and you kind of sink back into it you know it's isn't it so interesting you think that people kind of stop in their tracks a little bit like wow this person would rather die you know than feel what they're feeling that to me seems so profound but a lot of us don't really we don't really intellectualize it because it is a very uncomfortable conversation for a lot of people if they've never really dealt with it and even when it comes back to panic attacks i know multiple people who their first panic attack they would they literally go to the hospital they think they're actually having a heart attack and the doctor says well you know sorry it's this is actually you know anxiety this is a panic attack here's what's going on in your body and they're like no that's panic attacks can't be that bad and sure enough they can you know and certainly the uh this you know suicidal ideation

[00:12:09] Jacob: Um you know intrusive thoughts all these sort of things uh can they're certainly of course when someone describes it's like wow that seems terrible i can't even imagine but then once you experience it's it's this next level Uh um just terrible thing so Um when you let's see where we are i'm taking a glance on my notes here as we're going along um tell me about your so I don't want to i don't want to spoil the whole book i definitely want to um you know leave listeners the chance to read it themselves but i am curious kind of where i left off um

[00:12:51] Heather: So you were in psychiatric care during cover 19. yes um where did You kind of come out on top of it like how are you doing now are you feeling are you feeling pretty solid now did you have um any sort of revelations while you're in there like what's been your journey a little more recently yeah so one night i don't know what part you're at um so maybe you haven't gotten There yet but one night i was in the hospital and i couldn't sleep they were playing around with a lot of different meds and you know that makes things super weird for sleep being asleep and waking up and Stuff and this person was flown in by air ambulance from a smaller hospital to this bigger urban center for treatment And they were you know in critical condition they were dying and they arrived and right after they called A code blue which is you know somebody In cardiac or respiratory arrest And i start i was lying there and i started

[00:13:55] Heather: Thinking about this person's family and being like my god like their loved ones are going through one of the scariest nights they will ever have and i started thinking how can i feel so much compassion and empathy for this person's family while knowing that the decision i want to make is gonna devastate my own loved ones and then i started thinking about this person and i'm like they're fighting to live and i'm fighting to die and would they trade their place with me and i realized that i was being given this choice and in that moment i had to decide am i going to live or am i going to die and if i'm going to live then i need to do something positive i need this story to Be more than you know just another tragedy more than just another statistic and unanswered question so it was actually that night that i decided no i'm gonna write i'm gonna write this book i'm gonna tell this story for the people who can't anymore wow so did that feel like a divine Intervention or anything did that feel like this yeah incredible moment

[00:14:59] Heather: Yeah it was super weird i don't know i think sometimes we're just in the right place at the right time and i think in In the right place emotionally to receive that message because you know if it happened a couple of days earlier or if i just heard the story from somebody else like it would have just kind of been like oh that's sad but you know whatever but clearly i was just in a place where i was ready to receive

[00:15:25] Heather: That message right yeah and you definitely received it because again like i said the book is fantastic the memoir is fantastic um so what was what happened after that so you had this profound um Kind of perception change you know you're kind of picturing yourself you're flipping spaces with this person in the other room who is fighting to live and while you're fighting to die that's a great way to word it too by the way um what so what What happened after that how were you able to like take action you know because a lot of times i feel if we're in kind of a depressive state where we will have these moments of clarity we will have these moments of you know what you know maybe you feel the breeze on your skin um you know you're in a comfortable spot you're around people that you love and you kind of have these moments where the mind's a little quieter okay you know this isn't so bad i did have a rough morning i did have a rough last night whatever um but i'm here so

[00:16:19] Heather: Kind of but a lot of times those moments seem fleeting it seems like you were really able to kind of catch this moment though and really you know kind of ride it out of the of the pit in a sense so how did you do that well it's actually funny because things actually got worse before they got better after that yeah But like in a good way sort of Because i feel like before I was just really going through the motions in the hospital like i didn't go to the hospital to get better i went to the hospital for absolution because when i was dead i wanted my family to be like oh well she went to the hospital you know she tried so i was just kind of in there like fighting my time until they let me go home this you know them keeping me was Not part of the plan um but then this thing happened And before that like i just felt so Shell-shocked and then the next day

[00:17:15] Jacob: Something actually happened in groups somebody said something that affected me so much that it was just like every all the grief i have ever known in my Life just kind of all came together in That moment and I was just like absolutely devastated They ended up sedating me that night And that was kind of the beginning you know like that idea the night before was A beginning of sorts but then this Like it was kind of like this cleansing of just like all the pain and From you know so many years and i Remember like right before I was sedated like my very last thought Was you know like this isn't how my life was supposed to go so yeah i think that was really the First day of because i actually started Trying then you know like i actually had these emotions because i hadn't cried i hadn't you know done anything i was just So shell-shocked being in there and then

[00:18:23] Jacob: And then it all just kind of opened up on that day after having kind of that revelation that night and then i feel like that day was really when i started to heal Wow yeah so that really kind of like you had kind of two moments of different experience like so one the night before that's kind of like your precursor and then the next day it was this you know poking this bag this well of just all these emotions and things that apparently needed to come up so was there a lot of so that day kind of started a trickle effect um were you able to kind of look back at The way you had been thinking before or the thought patterns that had been going on and revamp them or were you Was your brain still kind of feeding you these continuous you know mean unhelpful Negative thoughts and you're kind of combating them differently or what basically i'm asking heather what was kind of the internal dialogue for you um

[00:19:20] Jacob: During this moment yeah i think definitely it takes practice like you don't sweat you don't flip a switch and then everything's great right so i think that was really the beginning of it but it's been a long road and It's it takes constant practice you know i'm still not perfect at it so you know it's just so much repetition of Like cognitive behavioral therapy like okay what is actually going on is this you Know is this my perception or is this reality so you know you walk into a room And you're going like oh my god everybody hates me they think i'm so stupid you know all these things and then you kind of have to stop and reframe that okay what's Actually going on here is that realistic Or are people you know generally good Who want to see the good in other people and want to see people succeed you know which of these two things is more accurate but that takes a lot of practice yeah absolutely i can imagine well so what has been your practices since then what has been the do you have

[00:20:28] Jacob: You know daily rituals do you have different habits now that you put in place to make sure you kind of keep yourself in a positive mindset so me for example um i'm i've just changed my lifestyle

[00:20:40] Heather: In a lot of different ways you know there's different foods that i that i try to avoid there's uh you know i'll try to fast so i don't have inflammation at certain times of the day i do meditation yoga a lot of these things do you have um in anything that you've kind of like learned over that has seemed to help you lately like through the pandemic through the through your healing process that you're still going through yeah Meditation is a big one i think the Biggest thing that helps me personally Is to everyday remind myself What my purpose is because i think when we don't have purpose is really when we get lost so if i can remember that if i Can do one thing every day that makes me feel like i have purpose that i'm doing some good in the world that i need to be here then that is

[00:21:29] Heather: More helpful to me than anything else that i've tried but it's a combination of things of course yeah right no i totally agree i think that purpose is it's something that's almost a bit overlooked as humans we really do have this desire for meaning you know we want our You know it's not so much uh a self-importance as it is we want our life to uh bring value to the rest of The world we wanna um Whatever our talents are whatever are things that only we can bring to the world we want to make sure that we're doing that we want to make sure that we're providing our loved ones with you know the things that only we can provide them with you know um and that and that's incredibly fulfilling so

[00:22:14] Heather: When it comes to your music like so are you working on music almost every day now is that is that a way that you're able to provide meaning um is that something that you can tap into and you feel okay i worked on i wrote a song or i did this for 30 minutes i practiced this thing i played piano for an hour and okay cool i did my work of Because as a musician that is that's a way of providing meaning to other people you can really allow them to feel something internally feel emotions that they didn't know were laying dormant in them by hearing the right lyric within the right key you know like you can really poke that as a musician it's this super power as a musician that you have so do you find meaning through your music heather yeah i'm actually just sort of getting back into it before the pandemic i was really struggling already and i actually Pretty much completely stopped playing music i remember being on stage a couple

[00:23:10] Heather: Months before the pandemic and just really just going through the motions and like playing these songs and just standing up there and being like i hate this i'm not enjoying this and That was the last show i played because i'm like i'm not being fair to the people who are coming to see this and i'm not being fair to myself so and then the pandemic hit obviously And you know live music kind of stopped Everything stopped and you know things are just i think you guys were like way ahead of us in opening up so things are just kind of starting to open up again so actually this week a friend of mine who's a producer drove like 27 hours here and He's like let's um you know spend five days or something write some Songs and record some songs so that's kind of like this year the most serious music i've been involved in recently and it actually feels really good i wasn't sure how it was gonna be but i'm super happy to yeah Be starting down that road again

[00:24:10] Heather: Wow yeah so what's the stuff that you're writing right now does it feel different does it feel like a new evolution from the stuff from before the pandemic yeah i would say so i think I'm actually kind of trying to draw on some of the my lived experience and then kind of the universal experience of like what we all Went through during the pandemic Yeah wow yeah that's i mean yeah it's i I think that is that's a great place to um to like narrow down on though is

[00:24:42] Heather: Is you know what brings you joy and for you to it's interesting to hear you even before the pandemic you could start to hear that you start to feel like i'm disconnected from this it doesn't feel the same because the way that you described um your album like when you when you first put those headphones on and then in the book you described it so greatly you know um it felt very pure to you it seemed like um so for you to go from that to kind of feeling disconnected and wondering and you know you almost wonder if something's poking at your purpose it's like all right well it's time to shift you're going to have to learn something new or you're going to have to um go through some sort of metamorphosis here and then it's very interesting to think of the type of music and what it what you're going to be able to accomplish on the other side you know yeah in a few years what you're going to

[00:25:29] Heather: Have written is going to be i bet it's going to blow the old stuff out of the water in a sense you know yeah i hope so because i think that was that was really it like i was just tired of I wasn't playing really like what i wanted to play it was more you know i'm doing this to just because it's what i'm almost like supposed to be doing if that makes any sense but it wasn't like fulfilling anymore so it was kind of like okay i need to i need to shake things up and i actually started working on a project right before the pandemic that i Was like super excited about and then It all fell apart obviously because of the pandemic so i think that was really Hard too and i just like didn't want to play music because you know even just that like it was just this reminder of how everything was Falling apart and i think some people Really like a lot of my friends and colleagues really drew comfort from music during the pandemic and they would

[00:26:31] Heather: Put on you know like these online shows and stuff i just couldn't be bothered i didn't have the energy it was just trying to make it through the next hour the next day you know all right yeah so i'm actually a dj heather and i have oh yeah okay yeah so i've been a dj for um it's around 10 years now and so i was working um dj and

[00:26:51] Heather: Audio engineer so when the pandemic came around for me as well i'm in the live event industry so it all changed my world as well um and you know it was interesting because you're playing in clubs and bars and in casinos and you know live events and people are having fun people are having drinks we're all like we don't think about our proximity to one another we don't think about you know being close we don't think about singing loud or you know sneezing coughing whatever like we're just we're here we're existing we're listening to music we're dancing we're having a good time um and it really kind of changed a lot for me i did a couple live streams even and uh i'm glad i did them you know i wanted to kind of keep in touch and keep doing a little bit of work but um they all just felt so weird you know

[00:27:35] Heather: Yeah like what am i playing to you know it's what are we gonna disconnect yeah we're gonna you know pretend that we're having just as much fun as we did when it was live you know it's kind of this facade so yeah it has been interesting um i've played a little bit since we've opened up um i haven't really gone full bore i haven't really played any um big events i dj'd a wedding uh back in washington last weekend but Yeah so i'm actually from washington originally um just moved out to austin like um less than like five months ago So i still have some gigs back home that i have been flying back for but um yeah so it has been interesting for musicians and in performers um so what where do you see so as we

[00:28:20] Heather: Begin to open up um have you really thought about your live performances much yet or is that still kind of like a little bit far off maybe after you're done recording this project or what are you thinking for live events i've actually been thinking about them more and more which is kind of exciting i think what i'd like to do and we'll see how it all comes together but i would like to you know take some of this new material and actually tour It around a little bit um while kind of telling my story and incorporating parts of my book kind of into it too so just trying to give You know this sort of like rounded You know sort of performance that will hopefully you know help and educate people as well at the same time yeah i think that would be cool like this entire this moving experience yeah

[00:29:13] Heather: That's because a musician anyway is up there they're the maestro right like yeah they've we have access to if you're the one on stage you kind of have access to the people's heart strings in a way you know they're ready to saying hey poke these right emotions i'm ready to feel them so wow i think that has the potential to be very beautiful heather i think that would be an awesome idea actually yeah i hope it comes together because i think you Know even i don't know you know even schools or community groups or just whoever would you know maybe benefit from hearing the message of you know both mental health but also you know Diversity and inclusion and those sorts of things exactly i mean so as mental health becomes something um you know like i mentioned it seems like you went through it at a younger age Of course you can't speak for everybody it just seems like there's a lot more older people maybe even just in my

[00:30:10] Heather: Group around me of people that i see and people that i knew it seems like a lot of us didn't grow up with the anxiety and you did so do you Where do you see mental health now you know we're coming into 2022. Obviously it's riding off the back of this um this cover 19 pandemic which is going to not only exacerbate people's existing Anxiety has already exacerbated people's existing anxiety and depression um but i Think it's probably going to be it probably was the creation of a lot of the first time people are feeling these sorts of quarrels um so where do you Where do you see the kind of the state of mental health now like where do you think we should be going where do you think we should be looking um how do you think we should be approaching these conversations I think i think that the thing that's a little bit concerning is this sort of attitude

[00:31:05] Heather: I think that some people have that once the pandemic's over you know people who started struggling during the pandemic or people who got much sicker as i did we'll just snap out of it as soon as the pandemic is over and it doesn't work that way so i think we're really gonna need more resources Dedicated to mental health than we have now and i think I think we need to work more preventatively because i think we're so i mean in health care in general but i think especially in mental health care It's such a reactionary system you know You don't really get you're on these Crazy waiting lists for psych supports And you know it can be too late so In my case i remember having a conversation with one of the psych nurses in the hospital and she goes you know this is actually good that you were hospitalized because now you will be shortlisted you'll like you'll be if you need psych supports in the future you'll be at the top of the list and i just like Why is this what it has to come to for

[00:32:13] Heather: That to happen for people to receive the help they need in a reasonable amount of time Yeah seriously i mean it's not it's not that surprising to kind of point out the areas that our health care system is Is kind of busted in some ways it's so great in so many ways but there is other Areas it seems like we're not keeping up to the to the task of improving and Changing and developing um You know what this next stage of our health care system is because i think when it comes to mental health i mean the amount of people who are dealing with depression nowadays is just skyrocketing it's upgrading every year and it seems like kind of the only answer we have is It feels kind of like doctors are a bit helpless you know they're of course going to try their best but they're seeing all these patients every day um what they're told is to prescribe antidepressants um

[00:33:05] Jacob: And it's just this i like how you said preventative it reminds me of um there was a story i think it was I can't remember who told it actually but there's basically this story um Of someone watching it's kind of an analogy someone watching basically like there's kids drowning over here okay and they're okay we need to get those there's a kid right here that he's floating down you can see him floating down the river we need to jump in and get him so they jump in and they save The kid and they pull them to shore and then they look up and there's oh there's another kid that's coming down the river and he's drowning oh wow jump in save him pull him out get to the shore you look up and there's more kids they keep coming down the river and so at some point we need to get someone to walk upstream

[00:33:48] Heather: And wonder what that's going on why are these kids jumping in the river like we can keep saving them like we're down here we've got a net you know we're going to save all that we can we're going to get them all to the shore we want to help them but we need to look at it holistically we need to take a meta view of this whole scenario and look upstream what's going on upstream you know what's what's causing this depression is it is it a mindset is it uh Are our habits is it our food is it our just our culture in general is it a An incorrect thought process is it A chemical response to something you know it's of course there are many people who are trying to attack and solve these problems but um it does seem like it's It really needs to this whole mental health needs to be put at the forefront of what's going on you know as we have these young people who are growing up um You know kind of i don't know i just

[00:34:42] Jacob: I think the state of mental health does need to just like you said it does need to shift from um you know just dealing with it right now here's we'll just throw this at it throw antidepressants at it whatever in into a more preventative um so what In that field if there's anybody listening right now who um you know maybe they're experiencing some level of this maybe it's at the beginning stages maybe they've been experiencing it for many years is there any kind of advice Or gestures that you might say to them like that you've learned keeping in mind that you've been in this position and you may not be maybe you're not always in the position to hear it right you know but uh Yeah go ahead go ahead yeah no totally Um so what do you think like people who are going through right now listeners who are experiencing it maybe they don't know how to handle it maybe they don't know who to talk to how to talk about it um they're going through some level of anxiety depression right

[00:35:41] Jacob: Now is there anything that pops into mind that you think would be valuable advice towards them yeah i think it's tough because the very Nature of some mental illnesses makes it so hard to get help because you're reaching out in your reach and that's you know what uh problem with the system Too is sometimes you have to reach out so many times before you actually get the help you need and It's really unfortunate because how do you keep reaching out when you don't feel that you're worth fighting for But i would say to those people you are worth fighting for and you do need to keep reaching out because eventually you will get the support you need and i'm Not gonna say you know oh tomorrow's a better day it gets better you know it does get better that's true But it's not what you want to hear when you're when you're in the middle of it's kind of an empty platitude but i think what i can promise is that

[00:36:37] Jacob: You know one day you'll stop in a moment and you'll feel such profound joy and you'll think to yourself like thank god i stuck with it because i would have missed this yeah that's beautiful yeah you really don't know you don't know what you don't know you know in that sense you don't you don't understand how much how much joy and beauty and love you may Still be yet to experience yes You have all this future life ahead of you know it's and uh what is the i think you even mentioned in your book the it's a long or it's a long fix for a Temporary um issue or something like that like when they talk about suicidal ideation um you know you're feeling this they want to kind of frame it as here's this temporary feeling and you're trying to have a long-term fix yeah a permanent

[00:37:29] Heather: Solution to a temporary problem that's the way to word it yeah i think i think that is good you know because it's so difficult for us in these moments to really step outside of okay this is an emotion this is a feeling that i'm feeling right now i don't have to necessarily identify with this i don't have to say this is the entirety of my being you know for you for example you're thinking about um you know you're you know being burdensome you're thinking about your negative thoughts um you don't you don't want to fight through it anymore you're just done dealing with it but you're also at that time you're not it seems like you probably didn't have access to these wonderful things that you've done the joy that you've brought to you all of your friends and family the music that you've created the Places in people's hearts that you've that you've poked with your ability to create something and write music um you know at those moments we're not thinking about those things we're not thinking about our accolades right yeah

[00:38:24] Heather: We're kind of caught in the loops of our self-despair you know so um so during those dark moments now that

[00:38:31] Jacob: You've experienced a good amount of them um do you have any um How do you How do you hold on through the dark moments that's that's my question how do you how do you kind of like grip on and just okay i know this is happening but i know that something better is worth like how do you how do you keep the faith and kind of fight through the storm in those dark moments

[00:38:38] Heather: I think all you can do is the best that you can

[00:38:57] Jacob: And if you know if that means you get Out of bed one day and take a shower and that's the best you can do you know that's okay and You know there will come a time when you can do more but you know it's okay to just Need to get through it whatever that Mean you know you need to you need to do what you need to do and you need to know that there is support out there for you and that you can reach out i think what was really beneficial for me and it's kind of funny because at the time i was like this is so stupid but with one of my therapists i made a safety plan so basically it start like it lists it's a piece of Paper a document and it lists the signs Like first signs i'm spiraling And what to you know first steps i can take and then if that doesn't work you know it's the kind of this like hierarchy of steps that i can take And i totally didn't think it would be helpful but on that last day before i

[00:40:03] Jacob: Went to the hospital you know i'm thinking of all these things and i remember this damn

[00:40:10] Heather: Thing that this safety plan that i wrote with my therapist like the year before and the very last step on it was go to the hospital and so i was like no like i can't die with a broken problem and so i actually went to the hospital and i never thought that would be you know helpful but even if it's not like with a therapist if it's with a loved one you know a friend whoever i think having a document like that can actually be really helpful to pull you out of Those kind of spirals those you know negative loops that you can get stuck in Right no i really like that could you give me an example of some of the other steps on there like if someone would maybe want to create their own simplified steps step system that they could write out just to have it just to try it as an experiment yeah so you know it's going to look a little bit different for each person but For me i think the key

[00:41:07] Heather: To really not spiraling is to have enough practice with it to know the very first step or the very first signs so you can pull yourself out because it just gets harder and harder the further down you go so like for me if i can catch it early I can go to the piano i can play music i Can you know call a friend go for a walk those sorts of things if you can catch it you know early enough then you can do you know the things that bring you joy and it kind of brings you back into yourself if you don't catch it in time then you know you may need to take stronger measures you can call somebody you trust and say you know i'm not doing well i need you to you know tuck Up on me or whatever and then obviously the very last step is that you Always do have that option of going to the hospital if you're not safe

[00:42:05] Heather: Yeah i think that's a good example because the spiraling is certainly something that happens and it starts to pick up momentum you know the deeper down you go And then it is you're right it is kind of hard to it's more difficult to grab those um the rungs of the ladder the

[00:42:22] Jacob: Deeper down you get into your in into your you know mental you know negative fortitude that we create for ourselves and again like you had mentioned earlier it is this strange you know Comfort you know you get farther down you're like you have of course i deserve to feel this way and you start justifying your own kind of meanness to yourself you know and you want to sink farther into the cave for whatever reason and if you can just find a way to stop it or you have a list like you said you have kind of some rules that okay well i feel myself thinking these thoughts i feel my body bringing in these emotions instead of spiraling i'm going to go do this or i'm going to call my friend or whatever so for me um physical activity Definitely helps me if i notice that i'm kind of caught in some loops if i'm kind of being you know mean and negative to myself i'll go you know go for a run

[00:43:10] Jacob: I'll go grab my skateboard and i'll go take that around i'll go just do some crazy like 10 minutes of just real fast yoga stretching moving around whatever it is it kind of helps break those thought patterns and one more thing that i wanted to kind of point out too that you mentioned heather is um at the beginning when you're kind of feeling this nihilism this negativity um the when you start trying to think positively or okay i'm feeling i'm Recognizing that i'm doing that depressing thing again i'm doing that anxious thing again and i don't want to do that so i have to do something else it does feel very fickle at that point it feels it feels fake to be like Because so for so for me when i kind of pull myself out of it um i was doing i Was i suddenly stumbled into all this you know motivational like tony robbins Um uh jesus can't even think of anybody else but all these like motivational people Um or affirmations or positivity and it Felt so dorky at first but i started

[00:44:14] Jacob: Doing it and i started saying no i'm gonna sit here i'm gonna not move for 10

[00:44:18] Heather: Minutes i'm going to sit in this room even though it feels uncomfortable even though i feel like a dork whatever i'm gonna make myself deal with it i'm gonna make myself listen this because my thoughts that are looping seem to be negative they seem to be mean they seem to be making me feel bad so i'm gonna listen to someone else's voice for a minute you know so i'd listen to tony robbins or jordan peterson or some somebody doing some positive affirmations and i would really try to let my guard down and i would try to just listen if the if the voice in my Headphones is saying i am love i am one With the universe maybe that's going to sound dorky and corny at the time but i'm going to try to okay what would it feel like if i if that were true i'm going to pretend cool let's actually like get into it let's pretend and let's listen to what this is saying um and basically it does kind of help you pull yourself out of those ruts which Is so important um being able to kind

[00:45:10] Jacob: Of pull yourself out of those moments and kind of break that thought pattern of negativity i think that is So important yeah totally and again Just catching it before you know while you still can do those things to break that yeah exactly and again you're Catching it's not it's not always going to feel natural maybe at the beginning it's going to feel dorky it's going to feel fake it's going to feel like you're if to me it felt like i was faking it what am i doing sitting in my basement telling myself i love myself i don't love myself what am i talking like you know but sure enough it's just enough to kind of give you a little bit of a perspective you know yeah it Gets you gets you out of those thought patterns and gives you a little bit more distance from them and realize that you're not your thoughts you know you're much more so um so okay so how has your and of

[00:46:00] Heather: Course it's ever growing right you know especially when with mental health i think it's something i think it's a lifelong journey of sorts as you as you navigate and you grow from certain things how would you say how would you say your perspective has changed from you know the beginning even when you were young or even right before the pandemic like when you're when your thought patterns were very negative and just not non-optimistic um versus where we're kind of you're sitting now how has it changed what's your preference like now yeah i mean i think we all still go there to some extent i Think you know it is going to be a Lifelong journey but i'm able to pull myself out of it so Much easier now i have So many more tools and you know the actual practice of using them because you can have all these tools but until you really commit to practicing and then using them you know they're not going to help you that much so like i said for me it's just constantly reminding myself doing something every day that makes me feel that i'm contributing

[00:47:10] Heather: To this world that you know i'm Needed here i'm giving something to somebody else um yeah exactly i mean it's yeah there's something else i mentioned rick i think of something that your friend said to you was uh um feeling useful you know a lot of times yeah we Of course want to feel useful so if you So does that kind of check off the boxes for you if you're you know if you know you do one hour a day of this or you know two hours a day of this you kind of do your thing that makes you feel useful it helps it contributes because i'm sure when you were you know writing the book every chapter that you got that you got on page or every chapter that you recorded was probably okay you know and maybe i'm still feeling good maybe this is my healing as i'm going through it but i felt i can put it away i can set that to the side of my desk i did my work for today

[00:47:59] Heather: That's going to make me feel useful it's going to help other people because truly i mean the more people that read this i'm sure it helps everybody in some sort of way anybody who reads it Um so the yeah the is isn't that so interesting feeling useful is something that we're missing out on you know so many people in our society do we just we don't feel useful you know yeah and then you get into that whole you know the world wouldn't miss me kind of you know i'm not contributing i'm not helping anybody i'm hurting people more than i'm helping them so i'm gonna You know not do that anymore yeah so yeah finding that purpose finding that being useful

[00:48:44] Jacob: Yeah i mean that silly thought of you know in In suicidal thoughts when you really Think that your family would be better off without you and you will convince ourselves of that you know and it's just i mean to anybody who has thought that or they are thinking that they do think that i just implore you like have you have you ever thought that about any of your friends or loved ones because probably not that's a really good point Yeah no never if they said that to you what would you say you know you'd be like what are you talking about man i love you like i'm glad you're here i'm glad you're my friend you know what but in those moments we convince ourselves of that you know yeah that's a really good point

[00:49:27] Jacob: Yeah it's a it's we can be so unreasonable so i mean i think reiterating a lot of what we said is just getting yourself out of those loops when you're not feeling useful um if you can try to find something that only you can bring to the bring to the world um or just something that you particularly do well you know being useful it's um you

[00:49:46] Heather: Know a lot of times into the wording of acts of service a lot of times people are fulfilled by stepping out of their own mind um by doing acts of service for other people so that gives them usefulness that gives them meaning and this could even come down to you know instead of closing off and being you know having your hood on when you're in public maybe try to stand with your chest out and open doors and say hello to more people you know maybe you're making someone else's day by just saying hi to them by just being polite to them and that can help you kind of step out of your own neuroses sometimes too i think um so let's see where we are here so we've got i wish i had finished your book i'm excited to get to get back to the end of it the climactic you know the Kind of kind of where you came out on top so um as far as your as far as your everyday thought patterns now um are you

[00:50:44] Heather: Are you doing pretty solid like are you able to stay fairly positive have you felt um that you're able to kind of hold on to that divine moment um when You're in psychiatric care of kind of revamping um and kind of going through that grieving process going through okay i do actually want to live Where are you at with all of that lately you're still pretty positive yeah so it hasn't been a linear process By any means there have been slip ups And moments and things like that but I would say like especially right now like it just passed the one-year anniversary of being hospitalized like the first day that i went in and i was on the beach in like one year later on the beach in a hammock and i was just like thinking to myself because i think you know when we have these anniversaries these markers of time that's because we're seeing ourselves every day so we might not notice you know the positive changes we're making all the time so i'm like laying there in this hammock and thinking one year ago today i was lying in a bed

[00:51:50] Heather: And psych emergency just like totally shell-shocked and now i'm here you know with the people that i love and my like my god i'm doing so much better so it was it was a really cool Kind of experience to have that like one year anniversary and really be able to compare yeah no that is that's wonderful that's very beautiful because in that moment of course you would have never imagined that in one year from now i'm gonna be in a hammock with my loved ones just with a smile on my face no exactly you know one year before i'm thinking in a couple days i'm gonna be dead so no he you never imagined that yeah you truly don't know what you don't know you know we can't predict the future so i think really holding on to that hope and that faith um of Hey i'm going through something right now i'm definitely going through i'm not going to deny it i'm going to try to face it as head-on as i can try to have courage and look at these things that i'm going through um but i'm also going

[00:52:47] Heather: To remember that it's not forever i think i think remembering in Holding on to maybe i don't know exactly how the future looks maybe it's going to Be a little while before i'm you know in where i think i want to be but i'm Gonna hold faith to it and i'm gonna know that i'm gonna i'm gonna weather this storm i'm gonna i'm gonna hold on through this mental health thing one more thing that i did want to mention um i've been trying to find ways to word it because i heard someone else mention it and it really kind of sticks out i think it's a good way to help um to help us all kind of wrap our heads around mental health stuff is um You know we don't choose it for one there's certainly no reason why anybody ever like in it's the same way as you know if someone um someone like you know rips the meniscus in their knee or they have like an injury um or they break their

[00:53:38] Heather: Arm it's like they didn't choose to do that you know it's um you sure it happened through some sort of in these cases physical but it's basically something that happens in our body that we're kind of having to ride out you know it's a response in a lot of ways to um a lot of the internal dialogue and so it's basically you know just as you just said someone with a broken leg you look at them you're like oh of course they didn't choose to break their leg they would prefer it not be broken it's kind of the same way when it comes to mental health and reminding ourselves of that of hey i

[00:54:10] Heather: Don't have to beat myself up i don't have to go the extra mile and say that i suck for having these thoughts you know i don't have to add on a layer of like oh i'm because a lot of times we start having these thoughts and we start labeling ourselves being more mean to ourselves for even having them and so just kind of accepting this is something that humans go through and when you can heal from it or when you can begin to heal from it or even hold it you know sit with it experience It rather than you know suffer just simply suffer from it gives you a little bit of perspective and i think i think our age Our generation too heather is um We're going to have a lot to teach the younger generation because like i mentioned i think you know with all this technology all this social media um Our comparison to one another and you know just all this stuff that keeps adding up that we've all experienced but it does pile on i think that the younger

[00:55:07] Heather: Younger kids are going to be you know looking for some advice and some people to share their experience of how They went through the similar things and how they came out on the other side so yeah what you're doing in the story that you're sharing heather is very important um i commend you for i think It's i think it's wonderful um the book is i mean i recommend audible i read a lot more through audible because i do too yeah i like to be able To move my body and kind of distract myself or use my adhd to my advantage while i there you go get a bunch of stuff done yeah some sort of multitasking But um yeah so it's a great book i invite anybody to check it out

[00:55:50] Heather: We are getting up here in time so if there's anything else that you wanted to mention but i did want to make sure we get your website out here so where can people find you can they find more interviews of you where can they get your book give us the lowdown on all this heather yeah so basically you can find everything on my website which is www. heather. hutchison. com H-u-t-c-h-i-s-o-n everybody always adds in like the extra n then yeah um And then the book is there's links on my website to the book

[00:56:23] Jacob: But as you said you can find it on audible amazon um apple books google play books Pretty much everywhere you buy your books and it's available in print and Uh ebook and audiobook and i also have Facebook instagram twitter Which is all on my website as well Yes wonderful cool well i mean everybody definitely go add heather go check out her book i think you will thoroughly enjoy it i of course recommend the audiobook because you can hear her vocal tonality and oh my gosh heather when you were when you were talking about um what Was it bibi yeah oh man yeah like because i can hear that you know a little bit of the quivering in your voice and i was just shedding a little you know i'm missing my dog didn't pass away but he's back home when i moved away um so it just it Really strikes on the heartstrings um and it's a very relatable um very Relatable reading so you know you did a great job heather um yeah and so yeah everybody definitely go

[00:57:22] Jacob: Check out all of heather's stuff heather thank you so much for not only spending your time but for also just having the bravery and The courage to voice all of these things That you've been through you know you have you have an interesting and beautiful perspective um i think i think That life has been very interesting for you know it's really led you through things but i think that you've been able to keep uh a powerful and very helpful Perspective so the fact that you're willing to you know stand on stage with a mic in your hand and talk about it or you know stand in your office with uh with a pen in your hand and write it you know whatever it is sharing your story uh is Is powerful it's helpful and it's Valuable thank you

[00:58:14] Heather: Thank you so much for having me of course of course well

[00:58:14] Outro: We'll be in touch I'll send you some emails and keep you posted when this has come out you have a good rest your day heather and Listeners you have a good rest of your day as well Remember you're not your thoughts and if you haven't drank any water today if you haven't stretched if you haven't done some physical activity get out there and do it Drink some water stretch Love yourself practice self love Everybody have a good rest of your day take care heather you too better conversations with ourselves Uh Knowledge is power