Wil Wheaton: Trauma, Depression & Self-Discovery

this episode of mind be alex breakdown is brought to you by athletic greens there are so many stressors in life and it can be hard to maintain effective nutritional habits and give our bodies the nutrients that they need to thrive we have busy schedules poor sleep exercise trying to fit everything in the environment stress or simply not eating enough of the right foods this can leave us deficient in key nutrients and that's where athletic greens can help it's a life-changing nutritional habit they have an all-in-one superfood powder that is a nutritional essential it simplifies the logistics of getting optimal nutrition on a daily basis by giving you one thing with all the best things so basically i put a scoop of this in a glass and i start my day with it and that one scoop of athletic greens has 75 vitamins minerals and whole food sourced ingredients there's a multivitamin in there it's all in there a multi-mineral there's a probiotic a green superfood blend you know i love that and more they work together to fill the nutritional gaps in your diet they increase your energy your focus you'll have better digestion it can support a healthy immune system all without the need to take multiple products or pills most nutritional products come to market and they kind of stay the same but athletic greens continues to improve this one holistic formula based on the latest research there have been 53 improvements just over the last decade and still counting they invest in absorbable and natural sources of each ingredient they go above and beyond in third-party testing to make sure their customers are receiving the highest quality best daily nutritional habit on the planet it's lifestyle friendly do you eat keto no problem paleo vegan dairy free gluten free this is for you contains less than one gram of sugar without compromising on taste and right now athletic greens is doubling down on supporting your immune system they're offering my audience a free one-year supply of vitamin d which is so important and five free travel packs with your first purchase if you visit our link today you'll basically never have to buy vitamin d again this is a simple sustainable nutritional habit athletic greens whether you're looking for peak performance or just better health cover your bases with athletic greens it makes investing in your energy immunity and gut health every day simple tasty and efficient simply visit athleticgreens.com breakdown and join health experts athletes and health conscious go-getters around the world who make a daily commitment to their health every day again simply visit athleticgreens.com forward slash breakdown and get your free year supply of vitamin d and five travel packs today i had to really confront the absolute fundamental reality of my life which is my dad doesn't love me and never did and my mom never protected me from his abuse and my mom used me hello my name's will i have imposter syndrome hi i'm i'm bialik and welcome to my breakdown this is the place where we break down the things that make you break down it's mine be alex's breakdown she's gonna break it down for you because you know she knows a thing or two so now she's gonna break down it's a breakdown she's gonna break it down we have a very exciting episode we're gonna be breaking down depression and you might think well that's not exciting but the ability to understand depression which impacts so many millions of people is very very exciting and depression is one of those terms and diagnoses that gets thrown around all the time we have a really fantastic guest with us will wheaton is going to be joining me to talk about his experience with depression his experience with coming from a home of of child abuse and trauma how that contributed to his depression and what works for him and what his optimism looks like even given the fact that he comes from such such a such a darkness you know that he was raised in it's really it's a really interesting it's an interesting way to approach this conversation and and i'm very excited to be talking to will um you may know him as sheldon's nemesis on the big bang theory if you don't know who wil wheaton is most recently i got to work with him on big bang theory but he has um a a long and really beautiful interesting career that began many of us saw him and stand by me but he's a blogger he's a gamer he's a a really interesting internet presence and was really one of the people who helped me start this podcast and start my youtube channel so very very grateful to will and you see these outfits we're wearing today's green day i'd like to introduce my co-pilot it ain't easy being green is it jonathan cohen it is not mime it is definitely not today the listeners are in for a treat the viewers are in for an even bigger treat that is true if they subs are watching on the youtube channel they are going to see time and space melding in front of their very eyes because for reasons that cannot even be explained we are both in the past and the present simultaneously in this episode they will be able to see how long my beard has gotten in just a few months okay let me let me take away the mystery we interviewed will wheaton we talked to him about depression it was an incredible interview but after will started listening to our podcast he loved he loved the humor that a lot of the guests were bringing to it and he felt that he didn't present his full will self in talking about depression so he asked us if we would redo his interview and in the most compassionate loving mental health supportive way we said yes however the introduction which we filmed we liked so much and we don't want to film it again so that's what jonathan's talking about you're going to see us from the original interview with will wheaton doing the intro and then we're going to cut to these outfits for the interview now and finish out the episode that way and one additional piece for people who are watching you will notice that i'm not in the same room as mine for this episode jonathan does not for those of you following along jonathan does not live in los angeles or as he says full-time um he he lives he lives north i live in a cave in the woods he's our caveman uh you will see that he's in a different location but we're having all the same fun i mean it's not as much fun as having you here in person for many reasons but we're all finding a way to cope all right are we ready to bend time in space let's break down depression let's do it okay so let's break down depression i'm gonna limit our conversation today to clinical major depression there are other kinds of depression besides major depression so there's something called seasonal affective disorder which is i mean to super simplify it it's people who get very very depressed when there's not enough sunshine and um many people only learn that they have seasonal affective disorder when they move somewhere that actually has winter and this depression sets in which it can be very very profound and it is specifically seasonal affective disorder this is why canadians don't get excited uh there's also melancholic depression that's a different kind of depression melancholic depression is is the kind that we we poets and artists get um it's that sort of sitting um and almost reveling in the the dismay and and depth of sadness and it can produce a lot of great art some of my best poetries in that state existential philosophy existential philosophy will also it can also produce melancholic depression there's also something called agitated depression and this can look a lot like anxiety but there's usually a deeper underlying current of of depression that is it is motivating kind of a heightened kind of depression it can also look like like immense irritability there's also postpartum depression i'm listing all the different kinds of depression postpartum depression is specifically depression um after you give birth it's different from baby blues and we'll talk more about these distinctions it is very very normal i mean it's in the normal spectrum of of the hormone the hormonal shift that happens when you have a baby to have a depressed mood and by that i mean a mood that is lower than average normal what you're used to but postpartum depression is is very very different there's also a special kind of uh premenstrual disorder which often uh has features of psychotic depression i know what you're thinking no i don't have that no i was thinking this isn't like bingo or you're trying to get all of them right do you have bingo jonathan do you need to yell bingo i i have bingo not a joking matter depression but i did want to just sort of lay out that there are different kinds of depression um but we are talking about major depressive disorder it's sometimes called mdd or unipolar depression just just depression meaning depression without mania and i'll clarify one more thing which is the reason that we're breaking down all these different terms and and listing the different types of depression is because people can feel badly in a lot of different ways correct and while they have a similar classification or similarity between those experiences they are not the same so for almost every syndrome and mental health also clinicians will look to a few things to decide like if you've got the thing again to satisfy the insurance companies so depression is a global umbrella term for a state of mood or a state of mind and the diagnosis is typically arrived at by a set of symptoms or indicators that you satisfy uh doctors will ask things like have you stopped eating are you not eating as much are you have you started eating a lot lately have you had any significant weight changes um and obviously you can have weight change for a lot of different reasons but this is put together with all the other questions they're gonna ask you um they'll ask if you're sleeping more or less than usual both of which can be signs of depression more commonly you'll get sleeping more but that also could be your thyroid it could be a lot of things again this is a you know a collection of symptoms they'll also ask um when assessing for depression if you are experiencing feelings of hopelessness or you might be asked if you've thought about hurting yourself or even if you've considered if there's a point to you existing so those are the kind of questions that they'll ask you know depression's not the kind of thing where they can draw your blood and know that you've got it you can't step on a scale and have them take your temperature and you know um scrape the inside of your mouth and say you've got it um this is a in many cases a self-report you know kind of situation the medical field generally will ask two things to kind of assess whether you actually qualify for this diagnosis and this goes for really any pretty much any mental health challenge how long has it lasted and to what degree is it affecting your life and they'll ask that for anxiety they'll ask it for obsessive-compulsive disorder they'll ask it for depression they'll ask it for mania they'll ask it for alcohol use they'll ask it for for a change in sex patterns or sex behavior this is not an exact science if you if you haven't guessed but you will be asked things like how long has this been going on and if you've felt depressed for a day we don't know what that is as as a medical community we don't know what that is it could be a crummy day it could be a hormonal shift and especially if you're a female between the ages of you know 13 and 93 it could always be something hormonal that no one ever studied because women's health wasn't prioritized in medical school but i think what's sometimes more interesting to me when we break these things down is is not so much do i have depression or not but rather if i don't meet the criteria what is it what is it because it's extremely frustrating for you to feel like there's something wrong and they say sorry that's not it because it's not that simple it's got to be something right and that's really where i think you know mental health becomes the most fascinating there's a difference between feeling sad and being sad you you might feel hopeless for a particular reason you may have just experienced a significant change in your financial um status you may have lost a job you might be experiencing grief that's interesting isn't that depression actually no it it might become depression clinically speaking but those things are actually not the same as depression so what are the biggies when we talk about the big five death divorce moving natural disasters and trauma meaning uh god forbid you know a significant car accident abuse god forbid a sexual assault those kind of things so those are the big five so the brain and the body have a way of saying whoa this hurts this hurts a lot that's a normal reaction it is your brain's job to send chemicals called neurotransmitters throughout your body through your brain through your body when you've experienced something enormous it's a sort of contraction it's you know grief sadness loss overwhelm those are reactions to big things that happen and as animals it is normal to want to retreat and isolate why because if you're constantly spending energy that energy is not used then for healing and and look keeping busy can be a very good distraction um from grief from all these things but as human beings not human doings we are made to heal and your your metabolism gets all of w all out of whack when you're retreating because it's supposed to you're supposed to be sitting in an emotion as a response to those things yes you say when you say the word heal i want to give a little bit of caveat to that it is the slowing down of the body to provide reparative functioning correct well and also there's an element here of you know you're repairing your soul that's not and this is not this isn't there's no unicorn fairy dust here this is that the body has a way to regenerate your your resources and you can call it you can call it you know a metabolic reset you can call it a hypothalamic shift you can call it a return to homeostasis but you know what what we hippies call it is is re-centering you know and resetting in our current society we get hit with events and we can feel sad or down and we can feel flooded and paralyzed and incapacitated but we don't have time for those feelings so when people are like oh people didn't used to be depressed what is it about our culture that's what it is it's our culture we do not have time to process there's no real appreciation even especially in western culture there's really no appreciation for that we got kids to raise we got a job we got a social calendar do we gotta add heart emojis to everything on instagram those heart emojis will not add themselves but seriously there's there is a lot of evidence to support that the more information technology has proliferated the less downtime we've had and that has had a massive negative impact on our absolute well-being so when we have sad feelings and those persist kind of unchecked and when we don't have support from a community which homo sapiens in particular and actually primates we are made to live in communities where like no joke the reason that that primates constantly groom each other is because it releases vasopressin and oxytocin it releases bonding hormones it feels good there's a reason that hugging it can feel healing the chemicals in your brain that are trying to regulate all of these things when big things happen those can become unbalanced and what you have you know the brain is a you can think of it like a computer i much prefer because i'm a million years old like the most complicated intersection of freeways you've ever seen you know the kind that like loop around and they make all those shapes those those are the feedback loops of your brain so what happens is those negative hormones when left unchecked and without input from from hormones that are supposed to make you feel better those you get into a loop and you literally keep going round and round and what happens is those feedback loops can essentially burn out one of your favorite chemicals you you all of you is serotonin serotonin is that happy hormone it's it's it is the feel-good hormone if you've ever heard of an ssri a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor that's a one of the classic antidepressants and what it does is it targets depression by not letting serotonin burn out and not letting it run out so what it's doing with those kinds of drugs which are typically the ones that are best received by the most people with the least side effects i'm doing this it's a lot of air quotes sorry it's a lot of codes i'm doing that though because ssris don't work for everyone they don't work for all kinds of depression they don't work for everybody so every sometimes side effects are horrible and you can't be on them but statistically speaking i'm speaking statistically ssris do tend to work true clinical depression for those who are living it is not just being sad i just want to be really clear it's not like cheer up it's not even like grieving it's a persistent nagging depression of mood where there is a veil of darkness and misery covering everything and even if you have a great job and a loving partner even if your work situation's awesome depression robs you of the ability to feel pleasure and yes depression can be triggered by specific circumstances but the insidious nature of depression is that it will rob you of the lens of hope and and the lens of possibility depression at its most destructive tells you that you don't need to exist that there is nothing beyond this this is that kind of darkness this is i don't see the light at the end of the tunnel that's depression that's clinical depression and we do have an episode specifically on on suicide and suicidal ideation um but for people who have experienced that kind of depression which enters into suicidal thoughts suicidal ideation and even making a plan the decision between killing yourself and not killing yourself doesn't really feel like a decision it feels like a statistical catastrophe that's what it feels like to be depressed like you are the next statistical catastrophe and you are powerless over that so i'm gonna give one example um my father uh bless his memory died uh about five years ago and i was very very close with my father and i was very very sad it was a very very difficult um disease that he had and i often felt disoriented especially in the days and weeks following like not in my body like shouldn't be driving even walking around would forget where i was that was not fun i stopped eating and it's not even like i mean i wasn't hungry but like no concept of time um i i was constantly having nightmares you know like sleep was it was so weird i would wake up crying and it was terrible it really felt like everything was pointless everything bothered me everyone bothered me that's called grief that is grief we are not the only animals that grieve even even lower animals grieve it is the brain's way of saying ouch slow down and begin the healing process now that's a depressed state but that's different than depression that's grief and in our culture we're really not comfortable with grief i think generally speaking we're not comfortable really with any emotion that might make other people uncomfortable so many grieving people are given drugs they're given drugs right away antidepressants and yeah they they help i mean as a as a person who studied neuroscience i'll tell you they raise your tolerance for the normal goings-on of life and they allow you you can i'm not saying it's easy but yeah you are more likely to get back to work quicker if you're on an antidepressant you know generally speaking assuming that you respond to it in our normal state of existence though we need to recalibrate it is a necessary part of our grief being sad grieving having overwhelming feelings even feelings that feel debilitating that's the brain's natural reaction to significant events often of a traumatic nature and that reaction causes changes in in your body and and your brain and that's designed to help us heal and experience feelings and a lot of people don't want to experience feelings and i totally get that but if those feelings persist they often will increase in intensity and it can lead to unipolar depression it can lead to classic clinical depression if you're not moving out of it if the grief doesn't lighten if you're not able to process and move on after a certain period of time so that that will depend and this is also a question like so you go to a doctor's office and you say to the doctor you know doctor says how you feeling and you say well my father died or maybe you say my wife left me maybe you've been evicted maybe you you you lost your job a doctor trained in traditional western medicine will say i can make that feeling go away i can make you feel better it's not that they don't know with all due respect to doctors especially doctors in in underserved communities doctors who you know i was raised at kaiser you know where you just like you got your appointment you didn't even know what doctor you were getting you got in you had 10 minutes like make it happen in those 10 minutes they're not going to say to you oh that's your body's natural response to situations that are out of your control come back in three to six months if it hasn't really shifted and you need therapy you need a support group you need people around you are you exercising are you doing like that's not what happens in most of our experience at the doctor so what they'll say is take this pill and then you stop complaining right and a lot of people have said to me why wouldn't you take that pill or you keep complaining you just do it in a happier way no but but a lot of people would say and look i mean i had two kids without drugs and a lot of people said why wouldn't you and for some of us the answer is the side effects are not worth it the anxiety from the potential side effects are also not worth it i'm not just talking about birth i'm talking about even with these medications but it's the other things that no one is helping us do so what we what do we do what do you do at a funeral or a wait you drink it away right you drink it away you smoke it away you can numb out on on tabloids you can numb out with reality shows um scrolling on your phone just because it feels good not to think about your sad feelings i my thing is real crime documentaries and the thing is with those numbing techniques is it doesn't really change the underlying feeling correct now does that mean you can go on and and and have happiness again absolutely i'm not going to say that like i psychically cosmically know that unless you heal the way i want you to it's not going to work for you but in the absence of therapy in the absence of the kind of support that our ancestors have had and that you know homo sapiens and and other primates have in the absence of all of those things in the absence of just taking the time correct to allow yourself to have the experience to feel badly to have it shift to have it lightened what i've learned over the years as i've managed my depression and and live with depression is that there are simple things that can help us there are things that help us cope better and and feel better and and move through things better but let's talk to will wheaton because we'll he is a wonderful person to talk to about lots of things but specifically about depression let's talk to will let's talk to will break it down my umbilicus breakdown is brought to you by best fiends you ever think about the great mysteries of life like do aliens wonder if we exist will we ever know how many licks it really takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop well when you need a break from contemplating the big questions it's time to take on a puzzle that is meant to be solved like the literally thousands of puzzle solving levels on my favorite game best fiends and unlike mulling over the mysteries of the universe best fiends leaves your brain feeling refreshingly challenged i love this game so much it's inappropriate i am on level let me tell you what level i'm on i'm on level 11 20. when i play it feels like i've just gotten a massage for my soul like i've just stepped out of a sauna in hawaii it's my favorite thing best fiends has tons of fun puzzles to solve and unlike other matching puzzle games i think you know what i mean best fiends has variety and you know strategy the only downside i can't stop playing but there are thousands of levels still waiting which is why i can go to sleep at night with a smile on my face knowing that there are thousands more levels waiting for me with best fiends there's something new to play every day it is endless fun you get cute collectible characters they have adorable names what's not to love i love it so much and they do updates all the time so they're always fixing little bugs or things that like oh i wish i didn't have to wait for this they fix stuff all the time and i love it and they always thank me for updating and i really appreciate it if you're hungry for a near endless supply of fun puzzles the kind you can actually enjoy solving try out best fiends and don't blame me if you can't turn it off download the five star rated puzzle game best fiends free today on the app store or google play that's friends without the r best fiends [Music] this episode of mine be alex breakdown is brought to you by betterhelp online counseling if you're feeling depressed or anxious if you're struggling in your relationships maybe you're having difficulty sleeping maybe you feel like you have goals you want to meet and you can't meet them betterhelp is here to help they offer online professional counselors who can listen and help you betterhelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed therapist you can start communicating in under 48 hours it's not a crisis line it's not self-help it's professional counseling done securely online there's a broad range of expertise available which may not be locally available in many areas you can log into your account anytime and send a message to your counselor you will get timely and thoughtful responses plus you can schedule weekly video or phone sessions you won't ever have to sit in a traditional therapy waiting room again getting therapy is incredibly important getting help it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you it's not a sign of weakness it's a sign of strength therapy has literally saved my life over and over and continues to do so better help is committed to facilitating a great therapeutic match they make it easy and free to change counselors if you need to it is more affordable than traditional counseling offline and financial aid is available so many people have been using better help they've had to recruit additional counselors in all 50 states our listeners get 10 off their first month of online therapy at betterhelp.com break visit betterhelp.com break and join the over 1 million people who have taken charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced better help professional this episode of mayan be alex breakdown is brought to you by hint water mime how much water do you drink a day not 64 ounces heck no you don't but you're supposed to drink 64 ounces every day that's eight eight ounce glasses and for most people it is not easy because let's face it water is kind of boring and not so tasty exactly that's one of the main reasons i don't drink enough water which is why i'm very very excited that this episode is brought to you by hint water because it is water with a touch of true fruit flavor which makes it easy to consume the recommended amount every day hint infuses pure water with fruit essence to create surprisingly accurate fruit flavors without sugar diet sweeteners or calories it's available in count em more than 25 flavors my favorite of the moment watermelon what's your favorite what's your favorite right now i was gonna say pineapple just to see your face but you know that's not true it's water it's watermelon you don't like pineapple makes your face all puckery no you like watermelon you can find hint water at retail stores across the u.s or you can have it delivered directly to your door when you order on hintwater.com get a free case that's 12 16 ounce bottles when you buy two cases of hint water shipping's free that's amazing just enter the code break at checkout [Music] what an immense pleasure it is to welcome will wheaton to my embilix breakdown hi will hi um welcome to us bending space and time always a always a pleasure to bend space and time with anyone but particularly with you um so i'm going to embarrass you wow that's going to be tough i'm going to read your bio because okay i mean i'm gonna talk through your bio so i first saw you as as many did um in stand by me and i'm 45 and how old does that make you uh i'm 48 i'll be 49 in july okay so yeah you're you're a handful but not many years older than me um yeah we're in the same generation right but you were a couple years older than me and when i saw stan by me that was with you in river phoenix and all sorts of other people um it was a you know a very very special kind of coming-of-age story that um touched a lot of people you know i i would say it was the first it was the first of that genre for many of us in particular of this generation to see childhood and brotherhood you know and friendship shown that way it was a very very significant movie for many of us and obviously for your career as well you went on to star in star trek the next generation for how many years uh i was a regular for like three and a half and then i reoccurred for another three wow you're also you're a writer i am you are a blogger back in the days when we were called bloggers i'm one of the original yes you're you are an og blogger um you're also an avid gamer you're a you're a a self-professed um geek as we can see from just the things behind you really yeah i'm coming to you live from my game room live from the geek dungeon yeah um and also our connection and really the reason you were literally the first person on my list of people to speak to for this podcast is that you've been incredibly open and and honest about your mental health experience and in in particular about depression in a way that really was the inspiration for me just starting to be open about it on social media or you know i didn't know that yes so i've worked with nami the national alliance on mental illness literally as um as a client of theirs meaning i use i use their services for support um and so i always you know as many of us did kind of tucked mental health away you know like you kind of tuck it away and you just say like life's hard you know when you're in front of the camera and like well yeah in in in my family mental health was not discussed right all uh and if if you had any mental health struggles it was weakness it was shameful it was embarrassing um and uh and and uh particularly by my mother really downplayed right as as something that like just cheer up you know or or like oh you just worry so much or like everything and honestly i think it really exacerbated my depression right funny how that works being sort of gaslighted by my mother and um really emotionally abused by my father like those things together i think it helped develop this chemical imbalance in my brain right so we'll we'll get to that um and also for for those of you who are watching closely we had years together on the big bang theory which was we sure did really really an enjoyable place to to get to connect with you and get to know you and and also you know um it's where a lot of you know kind of this shared vulnerability i think developed you know not not just between us but for me understanding how you present yourself and and the bravery with which you do that um really has been you know an incredibly huge part of um my journey and also we do share you know we share a lot about our childhood we share a lot about conflict in our families which we'll get into so just so we can sort of frame you where'd you grow up you know what like what's your sibling story what did your parents do you know what's your what's your two minute who's will wheaton before we know who will wheaton is i'm the oldest of three children um my brother's four years younger than me my sister's six years younger than me um uh i grew up in the northeastern san fernando valley uh in a little tiny foothill community called sunland um which was very much the frontier of the valley in the 70s when i lived there i've lived in the 818 so long i was in the two one three before we got the overlay that's a super deep cut that is a deep because listen just like pour one out for brody that is a straight up brody reference that only he would care about um and when i was seven years old my mother made me become a working actor she coached me to go into her agency and sit down with the children's agent who was your agent for a while that's right for my whole childhood yeah my i have no contact with my parents they're not great people my father is an abusive bully my mother um enabled him protected him and really used me to fulfill her need to be famous if she couldn't be famous herself she could be the momager of a famous kid um she was successful with me she tried it with my brother she tried it with my sister it didn't work out with either of them but really with me so anyway so she sort of coached me and i kind of went to the agency and i sat down and actually had lunch with my first agent to get the true story because my my mom just lies about everything like everything is like the way she wanted it to be rather than the way it actually was which i think exacerbated my depression right because it made me feel totally totally crazy um but i sat down from her and i said i want to do what mommy does i'm seven years old i want to do what mommy does okay well read this audition copy okay now you're an actor like it was that fast a year of the coronavirus has made me really question the way we understand and interpret time but you know as a kid that's weird like entire months can feel like an afternoon and you just don't know through memory but um i was over it real fast i did i hated it i hated being in traffic i hated learning lines i hated going in and trying to get other people to like me i couldn't even get my dad to like me like i had to go and get other people to get strangers to like me i hated it and i begged to let me stop over and over and over again i don't want to do this please don't make me do this can i please stop doing this i remember so clearly saying i just want to be a kid can i please just be a kid so when was stand by me how old were you i turned 13 during production so that was a lot of years between i mean five years of childhood is a long time and i worked a lot i was in tons of commercials you could do a commercial in those days and then buy a house off of the commercial right and and and i i my mom had successfully done that had been it had been in a commercial that was one of those buy house commercials and i think just it's a drug man like you touch that and it's just like oh my god it's like winning the lottery and you're like well i have to play again i gotta get everybody to play you could buy two houses that's right yeah um and uh yeah so i did stand by me when i turned 13 during stand by me right and um and at that point i mean it was just like it all blew up like and none of us were ready yeah i mean so beaches came out the week of my bat mitzvah which would have made me 13 at the time and so it's interesting well i hadn't been in the industry that long i'm i'm a later bloomer um and and i initiated it you know in my case i love school plays and i was like i think i'm really good at like i'm not intimidated by our you know stern drama teacher like i thrive on making people who don't like me like me this is what i should do for a living um sorry it tells you a little bit about where i came from yeah anyway um but there's kind of that that moment it sounds like that was that moment where literally everything you knew as your normal shifts you know and that doesn't mean that you move into a world of abnormal or you know i just mean that everything that you thought you understood about your place in the world you know who directs what what money is what is is like that all shifts and it sounds like we had a very similar experience so i mean at that time in our lives so do you remember i mean obviously we both grew up at a time when we didn't call it anything you know i think my grandmother used to say she was feeling blue and what that actually meant was like clinically depressed but do you remember as a child you know do you have a time frame for that like do you remember i mean obviously when you when you come from the kind of house you know that it sounds like you came from a lot of this kind of blends together you know in terms of not feeling right but do you have a distinct moment where you were like i think i'm depressed well i mean when i was a teenager i was i felt really sad a lot of the time uh i felt lonely i felt like an outsider um and i lived with a really intense imposter syndrome because of my father's abuse um he was so emotionally abusive to me um like he adores my brother and is wonderful with my sister and and just clearly made a choice just made just made an effort like one day was just like i just don't like this kid or i'm just gonna bully this kid and and that was just that's just who he is and so much of my mental health struggles i think was born in the crucible of that abuse and i don't recall a day where i was like i think i have depression like i don't i don't recall that at all but i always felt i always felt what was just described as like sad but where it really expressed itself and where my where my depression so i have uh the mayam these are my disorders i have i have a complex post-traumatic stress disorder from my father's abuse i have a generalized anxiety disorder gad as well uh and i have a chronic major depression disorder got it um and i'm not ashamed of any of that none of that is my fault um uh that those are things that i live with and i have learned to manage and and i really work through um i am here to be an example to the world to say like you know i had a [ __ ] awful childhood i have no contact i have no contact with my terrible parents now um i i tried really really hard to reconcile with them i tried really hard to get them to understand what um how they had made me feel i tried really hard to heal together and they just weren't having it they they are narcissist boomers who are just like you're too sensitive um and that was kind of my entire life was just constantly being like nagged by my parents you know and gas lit by them but when i was in my 30s my wife anne after i had a complete like out of control out of body experience meltdown at the airport my wife was like i love you and i'm super worried about you and i see how much you are suffering and after this trip is over i really want you to talk to a doctor to see if we can get you some help okay so hold on first of all there's so many amazing things in what you said when did you meet anne saint anne really it isn't you know this because you know me but your audience probably doesn't um the best part listen i have a great life i have an incredible comfortable super successful life i love my life and anne is the reason i love my life uh ann saved me and made me a whole person the best part of being will wheaton is being married to ann weed i met anne when i was 23 so i'll i'll skip up through the rest of the stuff so stand by me happens i become famous it's weird i don't like it um uh the fame and the attention of fame is incredibly important to my mother um she basically starts pimping me out to teen magazines and i keep saying i don't want to do this but no one hears me ever right until i get to star trek the cast of star trek hears me the cast of star trek becomes my family i experience unconditional love i experience um acceptance and nurturing and kindness and it's amazing the producer is exactly like my father the producer is constantly undermining me constantly nagging me does a thing that is the most unforgivable sabotage of a young actor's career just because he could um and that is why i quit star trek because of what he did to me do you talk about that yeah so i had been cast by milos forman in valmont i was supposed to go to paris and work on this movie and um the movie was going to film during hiatus and they needed me for one week into the first week of production to you know there was just they couldn't make the schedule work out so um i uh uh uh my people the team is like you know we need to to like work something out and he says well listen we're shooting the next season of star trek out of order we're shooting the second episode first and it's a just it's a wesley episode it's all about wesley we can't shoot around him so we don't do the movie we tell them we can't do it i get ready for an episode that's entirely about me i know what's coming yeah i am written out of it a week before production 100 entirely completely written out of it so i quit and i'm in the wilderness for a little bit and i'm really loving it i need to be in the wilderness and it's great and my friend stephanie is having a party on new year's eve in 1995 and is like come to my party and i say i don't want to come to your party i'm staying home alone and going to bed early and i'm a hermit and and i love it it's great i'm 23. and uh and and she's like okay fine i guess about a half an hour later a mutual friend shows up at our house and he says you're coming to stephanie's party let's go so i get in his car and go to stephanie's party meanwhile stephanie has told a bunch of women that she works with hey come to my house i'm having a new year's eve party and her friend ann says i'm not coming to the party um uh i don't want to go to the party it's i'm not interested she's like but just come you'll have fun and ann's like well fine but i'm just wearing a baseball hat and like not doing myself up i don't care i'm wearing jeans i don't care um i'm gonna go i'm gonna go have a good time and be mad about it and uh and and stephanie's like okay whatever now i've been after stephanie for months to like introduce me to her like cute friends from work like so we can hook up like i'm not interested in any kind of relationship i just want you know i just want to hook up um well she's certainly not going to introduce me to anne who has two kids and doesn't do that sort of thing uh i'm at the party one of stephanie's roommates is hitting on me and i don't realize it i absolutely don't get it i think she's talking to me about being an actor and i think we're having a conversation about being drama nerds apparently i'm the only person in the room who doesn't know she's hitting on me and my friends still make fun of me about this this is now almost 25 years ago so um i'm like okay great so i go step out onto the balcony to like catch my breath and here comes and i see this woman and she's walking in she's wearing a baseball hat and jeans and she's not all done up and i'm like huh i'm gonna marry her like that's just the thing that i thought it was weird and you know me miam i do not believe in anything supernatural i am disdainful of the supernatural i'm like aggressively anti-supernatural but that is a thought that i sincerely legitimately genuinely had in my head that i never had that's not like a thing i thought all the time right and uh then i got real nervous and hardly talked to her at all the entire night at one point our friend stephanie went over to anne and said i think my friend will likes you and ed uh and anne's like whatever he's not talking to me at all and um midnight came around and uh neither one of us kissed anybody or anything like that at all about a week later i asked stephanie if she would just invite her friend to ann over so we could hang out together and also just going to insert this ann was not a person who was a happily married parent of two that's right she was a divorced right um i don't want people to be like well wheaton hits on women with children just because he wants to divorced divorced single mother with two kids great just clarifying they had just turned four and six um and we started dating and i fell in love with them very quickly and i remember experiencing unconditional love from somebody that i loved unconditionally for the first time ever in my life she is an exceptional woman she's an exceptional she's a she's a remarkable woman she's made me a whole person she's been with me every step of the way on this really complicated really she goes with you to hockey games i don't even think i would do that well that's why we're not married maya nobody invited me to stephanie's party i also like to stay home alone on new year's all the silly things you hear are 100 true she is my best friend um there is no other person in the world i want us i want to spend being on lockdown with there is no one in this world i wanted to raise children with there's no one on this planet i am more excited about getting really really old with um she's the other half of my heartbeat don't you have her heartbeat on your body i do it's where is it there it is you can't i can't it's not a part of my arms yeah we got it yeah this episode of miami alex breakdown is brought to you by policy genius april the month of april not a person named april april can mean a lot of not so fun things getting fooled getting rained on and getting your taxes done if you need a positive experience to balance april out consider protecting your loved ones by getting life insurance with policy genius i know you've thought about it now's the time policy genius can help you compare top insurers in one place and save 50 or more on life insurance once you find the best option the policy genius team will set up your new policy and answer any questions you have along the way you can feel good knowing your family has financial protection it is so important and getting started is easy go to policygenius.com in minutes you can work out how much coverage you need and compare quotes to find the best price since their licensed agents work for you and not the insurance companies there's zero hassle if you hit any speed bumps during the application process policy genius will take care of everything that kind of service has earned policy genius a five-star rating across thousands of reviews on trustpilot and google the best part all the benefits of policy genius the comparison tool the handling of paperwork the unbiased advice are totally free to use policy genius can promise you won't leave their website feeling like a fool you could save 50 or more by comparing life insurance quotes and feel good knowing that if something happens your loved ones will be taken care of go to policygenius.com to get started policy genius when it comes to insurance it's nice to get it right [Music] this episode is brought to you by rothys i'm obsessed with rothy's tell us so excited tell us about rothy's okay so i've been wearing rothy's for years rothies are well they're they're exceedingly comfortable they they're sustainable like they are from sustainable fabrics and the best thing they're washable you wash the shoes and they come out perfect they're they have zero break-in period they literally are made without seams they're like they're knit there's many they have so many new styles i get so excited when i get to go to the website i used to just have their flats they've got booties they've got like mary janes i'm obsessed rothy's best-selling shoe the point in black i've owned it has over 000 near-perfect reviews these shoes are the perfect way to add comfort and style to your closet they're knit with thread made from plastic water bottles like that's true but they're soft they're so comfortable as soon as you put them on they're comfortable zero break in pier i love these shoes they have transformed over 75 million bottles into beautiful shoes they also make handbags and their face masks are gorgeous another bonus they're completely machine washable did i mention that you put them in the washing machine they come out looking good as new washable durable and flexible rothy's signature thread made from repurposed plastic water bottles minimizes their impact on the planet maximizes comfort for you i love these shoes check out all the amazing shoes bags masks available right now at rothys.com forward slash breakdown that's rothys.com r-o-t-h-y-s dot com slash breakdown style and sustainability meat to create your new favorites head to rothys.com breakdown today and you can be like me and wear raffi's my umbilicus breakdown is brought to you by story worth if there's ever been a year to make the moms in your life feel loved and appreciated on mother's day i think it's this one this has been a really tough year for all of us but especially for the moms in our life or the mother figures in our life it's been a time when we didn't have the freedom to see each other to spend time together that's why i'm honoring my mom with a heartfelt sentimental gift that the whole family can cherish together forever it's called story worth this is so amazing story worth is an online service that helps your mom or your grandmother your mother-in-law any mother figure in your life share stories through thought-provoking questions about their memories and personal thoughts it's a really fun way to engage with them especially if you can't be together in person or if they find it hard to talk about themselves a lot every week story worth emails your mom a different story prompt questions you've never thought to ask like what's some of the best advice your mother gave you or if you could choose any talent to have what would it be after one year this is so cool story worth compiles all your mom's stories including photos into a beautiful keepsake book that is shipped for free i love this so much give your mom the most meaningful gift this mother's day with story worth get started right away with no shipping required by going to storyworth.com breakdown that's storyworth.com breakdown for ten dollars off [Music] ann and i were dating in my 20s and i had i thought i had saved all my money from being a child actor um and my parents had spent most of it so i was i had that 15 cents on the dollar that the state says we have to they have to keep for us um and i use it to buy a house i found myself with way more responsibility than someone in their 20s should have way more responsibility than i was prepared for and i was not emotionally supported by my parents at all they were scandalized that i was dating a woman with children uh sidebar they have never accepted my children and and uh uh in case anyone thinks that i'm being unfair or unreasonable or maybe um i'm too harsh on them uh a real quick story um when my sister was pregnant at her baby shower my mother uh sitting on a chair next to my wife to whom i have been married uh for about 10 years at this point with whom i have raised two children i can feel it my mother my my my mother says with just unbelievable enthusiasm and just unbridled joy i'm so excited i will finally have grandchildren um so i had all this responsibility and i felt like i couldn't say no to anything i had to say yes to every job that came along because who knows which is going to be the one yep right i've had the success as a child and this is where my thinking is at the time i had not yet put together that the man who was my father is just an [ __ ] he's selfish he's cruel he's a bully nothing i was ever gonna do was ever going to be enough for that man ever i know as a father the fact that my kids exist is enough for me like they get all my support even when i think what they're doing is really stupid i love them i'm their dad i don't i honestly don't know why he made the choices he made to treat me the way he treated me until i said you no longer get to do this to me you are no longer part of my life um but it was just like it's weird man like just to make that choice get me back to the airport i get i get i get i get i get sidetracked because i'm so just like it's so weird right so anyway so i'm like i'm in my late 20s and um i have all this responsibility and i've been working really hard but i can i never seem to be able to get ahead anne's working really hard and we're barely surviving so i'm gonna go out on the road and go do this go on this little tour with my friends paul and storm and adam savage we're doing a series of shows called wootstock it's really super fun and i'm starting to think well you know what maybe i'm gonna be like an indie performer now that's cool i like that i've always been into punk rock and diy and like i love that so like maybe i'm gonna go off and i'm gonna go on a small indie tour and instead of having one big swing of the bat uh i'm just gonna put together a bunch of little bass hits that's fine i can totally do that um so uh we go to the airport and i'm just getting really anxious i used to get super anxious about flying and i would go through like i would catastrophize everything i was convinced the plane was going to crash i was convinced that we were going to get hijacked like just the more irrational and unlikely the event was the more i was like absolutely certain was going to happen if i didn't touch the side of the plane before i got in it the plane was gonna crash if i didn't like play the news report in my head of of them saying you know the plane went down like the money's gonna crash like all that kind of [ __ ] so hold on so for those of you listening or watching from home this is not um this is not a strong baseline to be working from when you're entering an airport no like it is absolutely not this is not like this is what recovery looks like this was like you you were not in a great place you're still like working through trauma you're still like in it like this is ptsd stuff this is like all the layers and layers you know this is like what i like to say is like when i wasn't on medication that's a little bit what my experience is right okay the parallel to someone who's like i gotta get sober is like you are on the floor of a lower east side dive bar in 1981 and you roll over and realize how lucky you are you didn't stab yourself on that needle that's all right so that's will wheaton in the airport keep going right i'm just ready to explode because it's like nothing is working everything is off everything is weird and i've learned that like for me things not coming together when i worked really hard for them was super triggering because guess what i worked real hard to convince my dad to love it right right it just it loops right back around so i lost my mind and i was like let's go home [ __ ] this we're not going so wait hold on hold on tell us what it looks like when will we like do you mean you're in an airport and you say to ann yeah we're at the delta counter at lax get real detailed you're at the delta counter you're in this kind of state did something happen or you were just like i want to go home there was something with our luggage there was something with not getting on the plane in time there was something about a delay got it and we had given ourselves an incredible amount of time way more time than a reasonable person should need and it just wasn't enough what does it feel like it's just out of control it's out of control and it's embarrassing but i can't stop yep i'm making a spectacle of myself i don't remember anything specific right i couldn't tell you exactly what happened what i do remember is ann's saying and being really calm and ann saying just sit down here i'm going to go handle it and when this is done i really think we ought to get you some help so what happened next so you go do the trip what does help look like we go on the trip it's awful yeah well i mean i wasn't even gonna ask because i know what those trips look like and i'm and the thing is i'm apologizing to her the whole time i'm apologizing to paul and storm and adam i'm apologizing to everyone all the time then you add shame the acronym should have already mastered everything meaning like so then you have that shame on top of it what i worked through with therapy and what i realized is that the man who was my father gave me two things he gave me his rage and he gave me his shame yeah and what i have worked on as an adult is not carrying that right identifying moments where that starts to bubble up and and actually say to myself that's not me that's that terrible person who i ended contact with and i get a mental picture of wrapping it up so everybody does their own thing right in mine it's like when you wrap something up and lots of plastic you know like that really satisfying plastic that clings to itself yeah so i wrap it all up in that and then i throw it away take me from the delta counter to the plastic meaning what did it look like to get help did anne say let's go to a therapist did she say i'm gonna put you in an institution like you need a pill what did she do we had people in our lives who had done some outpatient therapy at um at like a mental health facility you had not been in therapy up until now i had been in therapy for my entire life this is what people are gonna say see he was in therapy and it still didn't work so tell us why that's not true so listen listen it's not easy to come up with an excuse to not go to therapy and if someone's just not gonna go they're just not gonna go here here's here's the thing it really does help and if you are if you if you are willing to love yourself enough to take a chance to go to someone who went to school for a really long time and worked really really hard to understand the psychological underpinnings of why you're struggling if you're not willing to go have that person help you you're gonna have a really bad time you're gonna continue to suffer that's amazing that's amazing what you just said it's okay to ask for help and this is the thing like if you had a broken leg you wouldn't just walk on it until it stopped hurting if you had a broken leg you wouldn't just stop walking you would like go get help and like get it set and get it healed and maybe work through physical therapy you would do the same thing with mental health so yeah i'm asking what's the difference between the therapy you had been in which in some ways was not everything you needed and what happened when you got help after the delta incident we had been in family therapy anne's ex-husband is a [ __ ] and he was making things real hard for our kids and our oldest son when he was seven said can we go is there somebody who can help my dad be a better dad and we were like yes that person's called a therapist and ryan was like can we all go as a family to the therapist and because the idea came from him that was enough to get his shitty dad into i should say his shitty bio dad i'm his shitty dad um i adopted both kids when they were uh when they hit the age of majority they both asked me to adopt them at different times so i did um and uh the therapy that i'd been had really been like family therapy it had been about like being a good parent it had been about managing his shitty behavior it wasn't really focused on like you are clearly traumatized and need some help got it so it wasn't targeted for you in particular right exactly so what actually happened was i went to a psychiatrist he just said let me help you just let me help you he said i i i want to try an antidepressant and it's just for three weeks and then just come back and we'll see how it's working and one of the very few things my mother expressed an incredibly strong opinion about that didn't seem to waver with circumstance was that medication was bad medication correct it's for weak people who can't figure it out you're [ __ ] with your chemistry you should do it on your own it's going to make you a zombie you're not going to be able to have sex it's going to make you worse and you're weak i'm sorry those are the things yes yeah and and the thing is like and one of the reasons i am so open about this and i speak so unashamedly about it and and and and and i've probably bored a lot of people by talking about this we're bored right now you just can't tell good everything's going according to plan um one of like one of the really big reasons about that is i suffered mayam i suffered for like 15 years longer than i needed to because i was so ashamed he started me on a medication i would say it was probably six or seven days later i've written about this this story's on my blog and i and i and i recounted this in a speech i gave to nami in ohio a few years ago ann and i were on a walk in the neighborhood and for the very first time in my life i could hear the birds singing there it is this is a thing yes i was aware of the beautiful flowers in our neighbor's yards i could feel the crispness of the of the air i could feel the warmth of the sun on my skin i could feel all these things that i had never felt before and i turned to anne and realized and i said to her i have just been existing [Music] this is gone this thing is is gone and the way that i compare the the the comparison i used was like i had been inside this this room where there were no lights and like like swedish death metal like cranked up to 11. all due respect to sweden i had found the door out of the room the like adjusting the medic adjusting the chemical balance of my brain so so i said to her all that's left is the ringing in my ears and i'm aware of it's not there anymore and being aware of it not being there i just started to cry i felt so relieved i felt so good i felt so free um and getting the chemicals in my brain worked out made it possible for me to start working with an individual therapist who could help me through my ptsd and uh and and and really focus on on you know you can't cure mental illness but you can super manage it and you can super heal some of the um if maybe maybe most of the like collateral damage that it that it inflicts on your life thank you you know for for sharing at this level and that's one of the best descriptions i've heard of that that veil lifting the science of it is that in in unipolar depression major depressive disorder in this kind of depression it's essentially like there's a sock over the lens of your camera yeah and you see through the sock like i wouldn't even say it's like a pantyhose you know like it's a sock it's a sock it's a nice wool socket okay warm socks it's a warm cozy comfortable right and i say that i'm using it right it's a comfortable lens because part of the insidiousness of depress this kind of depression in particular is that it tricks you into believing this is it meaning the ability that we have as humans to be able to step outside of that and say wait a second and it's like a little bit of a matrix moment what if everything i've been experiencing is not true meaning true to you know however you want to say it your soul your essence your spirit the way god intended you you know for for people who use that kind of language what you described is you know not that different what i thought of when you described it is when people talk about certain experiences in particular with psychedelics where there's something that's removed that allows you to have access to different things or you know even with like when when people talk about it happens with marijuana you know where your senses feel so sharp and it's like oh it's magic it's actually not magic folks it's just science and what it is is it's the removal of interference and so we do that in a you know in a drug state right to be able to have access to all these different cool fun connections you can make and like oh it's so trippy but as a human being what you're describing is the ability to say i was placed in an environment that created a that created or contributed to a chemical environment that created a haze a complete different lens with which i've been seeing the world and part of that is believing this is just me sucks to be me but how many years did i live white-knuckling it and that's what you're describing like you're literally like i'll do it this way i'll eat this i'll maybe i'm not sleeping right it's the wrong boyfriend you know like i'm gonna fix all the external thing maybe i need a different job i'm gonna change jobs i'm gonna go to school i'm gonna drop out of school right all those things we do and the unfortunates among us sometimes say let's drink it away let's eat it away let's screw it away let's work it away right well i mean this so this is probably a different topic i think john john ross bowie covered this beautifully um but i was an alcohol i am an alcoholic uh uh i'm sober uh i i quit drinking in 2016 but i was 100 self-medicated 100 aggressively enthusiastically self-medicating what did that look like for you were you like a i'm gonna wake up and drink were you like uh every night like i mean no judgment just ask every night yeah no every night every night for sure um like is it five o'clock yet like you know like it's 4 30 i'm looking at my watch every five minutes like it was pretty bad um and that was another another situation where ann was like i'm super worried about you i had two big steps in my life towards getting healthy and and and getting and just like becoming me step one was getting treatment for my mental illness and step two is getting sober without that like escape hatch i had to really confront the absolute fundamental reality of my life which is my dad doesn't love me and never did and my mom never protected me from his abuse and my mom and and and my mom used me right so my mom is using me to make herself happy nothing i can do is good enough for my father hello my name's will i have imposter syndrome well and also for people who may not have experienced specifically what you did what you described is the human condition he didn't love me right she didn't love me the way i needed to be loved he didn't support me like whatever it is and typically it does start with our parents even if we're not at the level let's say of abuse or trauma that you and i let's say know about the notion that we are not always matched with caregivers who can love us the right way is incredibly painful and it impacts people differently depending on their genetic predisposition so you can take you can even take twins i will even go that far you can even take twins and put them in the same situation people are gonna react differentially not just differently but differentially to a mismatch and your mismatch was indeed very very significant but that that is what that's what everyone at some level is is dealing with and some of us deal with it to greater extents than others but that's such an important point i'm going to say it just like one more time to kind of crystallize it even for myself like they didn't love me the way i wanted them to and you could be talking about your parent you could be talking about a friend you could be talking about a lover that mismatch for some of us for those of us with a predisposition right that mismatch can lead to a very very devastating cascade that really is like a snowball heading downhill i mean this has been so um so helpful so interesting the question i have for you and it's completely selfish so i wrote a i wrote a screenplay after my father died and the screenplay i'm just going to say it now because i know my mom's listening the screenplay is not an autobiography it's there are things in there that never happened like it's true fiction there are things that did happen and no one needs to know what those things were so i'm just going to say that so i did the same thing miami i did the same thing i wrote on you wrote a screenplay i wrote a novel right so here's the thing obviously it it's going to have you know an impact on people who know me or my family because they'll say like oh i remember when that happened oh but that's it did that happen and like it's really nobody's i'm just like i'm here to say it really is nobody's business because i'm an artist and i created a work of art that you know all good art has some truth i don't know i just made that up maybe nietzsche said it i don't know there's no way nietzsche cared about art at all he was a nihilist okay sorry that was disdainful of art okay mayam know your audience don't mention nietzsche around will we he literally knows who he is okay so the the question i have and the thing that that's something magritte would say okay enough with you and magritte this is not a pipe did i do it it's not a pirate okay great you did um the thing that is that is very i'm gonna say it and you know that i have tremendous love for you the thing that feels jarring for me that i would like you to help me with is you are a public person i'm a public person europe we are public people yeah who have a very different platform of expressing unhappiness and exposing potentially our families abuse dirty secrets mental health what is it and i'm not saying what is it that gives you the right but where does it come from your sense of of empowerment and i mean let me finish empowerment confidence bravery because some people might say you know what take it to therapy will are you seeking revenge does it feel good to do this i'm asking you because you know that i care about you and i yeah and i know so much about you but i'd like you to explain really what it feels like and how those decisions get made about what you share why you share and the repercussions that it might have on your parents who live in this world right and even your siblings i never dreamed i would ask you that i was like i've been wanting to ask you but i finally figured like let's just do it we're doing it okay so listen that can be summed up really really simply i am doing my very best to be the person i need in the world wow i needed someone to say buddy you're okay you didn't do anything wrong it was always them it was never you you weren't a troubled teenager you were a teenager you were a teenager whose father hated him and bullied him and beat up on him all the time it's not your fault and frankly mayam if they experience negative repercussions for the way they treated me so [ __ ] be it i know my life i know my truth i know my name is stephen like i like 100 percent know who i am i know where i came from i know what happened to me i know what has happened what happened to other people i know what happened to so many of our peers there are kids we grew up with who didn't survive like we did i speak up for those kids i speak up for the younger version of me who needed someone to step up and say to my mother on the set you're going to lose this kid if you keep doing this you're hurting him to answer that person who's like what gives you the right i have a right to my life i have a right to my honest truthful experience nothing i've said is untrue i've thought about that a lot like i am so profoundly hurt by them part of me there's a little part of me he doesn't he doesn't show up a lot he doesn't activate himself and like grab the control stick in my life very often but there is part of me that is so angry at them insulted and outraged are not big enough words right like how dare you how dare you abu use me and then abuse me and then act like my responses to all of that aren't real so there's someone listening to this right now who is at the place i was three or four years ago feeling like i have tried so hard like my first move wasn't [ __ ] you i'm not having you in my life my first move was i am in so much pain and i really need to have a conversation with you about it i did that i sent that email i sent an email to my parents and i said like you can't have a conversation you can't talk to them because they lie and and and they twist things around right and this kind of information is usually better delivered where they have time to read and process as opposed to cut you off and hear what they want so i sent them an email and i and in it i as as non-accusingly as possible i was like these are my memories and i feel like my dad doesn't even like me i want to talk about it they ignored me my mother did not respond to me for four months my father did not respond to me for six months and when my father finally did respond to me the subject of the email line was your mother wants me to email you yeah i didn't even open the i didn't even open it i just deleted it that was all i needed to know right and and like talking about it now i don't feel angry i don't feel resentful i feel sad i know what i have with my son my son ryan and i are super close i adore him i will do anything for him and my daughter-in-law i will do anything for them i love them so much we have such an incredible relationship and friendship and father-son relation my dad has none of that right he is missing all of it he doesn't get any of the coolness that is me now and and honestly i'm like okay that's super sad like what a giant bummer no one in my life made me feel the way my parents made me feel and i don't mean that as a good thing they made me feel terrible about myself they made me feel awful about myself and i ultimately just decided like i deserve better than this it is better for me to have no parents than to have these two terrible people constantly making me feel bad about myself i think it's important to to say that in that moment of acknowledging where you decide not to open that email you're actually accepting them for who they are yeah you're not trying to change them anymore you're not trying to go back to the well and a lot of people are like oh positive mental health is like you have to go bridge those relationships and you have to heal but in some circumstances and i'm not advocating one way or another to anyone but for some people you hit the point where you're like the kindest thing to do to both sides is to recognize i accept you for who you are yeah the this is the reality of the situation and i'm going to make a positive change for myself to set a boundary and protect myself i had i'm glad that you said setting boundaries that's such an incredibly important part of managing mental health and it's such an incredible part of having healthy relationships with with people um regardless of the the the positivity or toxicity of the relationship like just setting up those boundaries and i had tried to establish some boundaries i haven't even talked about how the only time i ever heard from my parents for about 10 years was when they wanted something from me they never called to see how i was doing they never asked about my kids it was never anything like that it was always like will you promote this thing for us will you do free voiceover work for for us will you will you make a video about this thing like it was always like do a thing do a thing do a thing and um when i was like listen i really you're my mom and dad i love you would you just call me to talk to me about me like would you take an interest in in me and then it was no contact just trying to establish boundaries and and that not opening that email was they don't respect me they don't respect my boundaries this is who they are you're absolutely right and it was really hard but i gotta tell you it felt like it was like i left i walked out of the house i was trapped in the house with an abuser and i left i walked out i closed the door behind me and i didn't look back in that moment what you do is you adjust the dynamic you're no longer searching for their approval you're no longer trying to make it right with them and in being stuck in that dynamic we're always waiting are they going to do are they going to show up again are they going to act differently again and when you have a pattern as you've described where it's clear that that's never going to happen you really do free yourself to make a better choice and so it's just a powerful to hear that shift and also in you know you said a line earlier where you have to confront the fundamental reality of your life you mentioned it when you were getting about getting sober yeah in stopping the cycle of trying to go back to them what ends up happening is that you're then left with the hurt and pain that is only yours to deal with and you're not going back to them to help it resolve so in some ways like really that's where the healing takes it to the next level where you're like okay this is what is i i have to hold on to those scars and you have to make amends with them for yourself not in the next let's not use the men's word i don't like that word oh it's a different word like not in the program sense not in the program sense stopping drinking was really important for me it was a really important part of my journey it's a really important component of my um like getting healthy but you are absolutely right once that self-medication was gone and they were gone all that was left was the pain and i had to work through that and it was hard i had to work through it for a cup i had to work through it for a couple of years i'm still working through it the absolute worst hardest like molten lead pouring pain of it i seem to have gotten through that part of it and what's really left is like it's like an injury where if you like i don't know you have like a pulled muscle or something from a really long time ago and you like step funny you're like oh god that hurt every now and then something happens every now and then i get some kind of like uh trigger and and it's like oh there's the molten lead again um but in but in general it is you know it's i don't think i will ever be completely healed completely whole in my entire life i think that little part of me that really wants a mom and dad is always going to be sad and always going gonna miss that um but i am so in charge of my life now that no matter what happens it happens because like i chose for these things to happen and i worked really hard to make these things happen so my last question for you is you know kind of given all that what is you know especially now that you've once you take away you know whatever the addiction is once you take that away or the you know yeah what is your what is your mental health regimen like now like you take your medication what else do you do i take my medication every morning um i take i take two different pills um and i just take them together and then i go along with my day do you go to therapy still i do um i'm i don't need to go on a regular weekly basis anymore um i keep some notes uh when things come up and i've gotten really good at working through stuff on my own because i've spent so much time doing it i do not recommend that for someone who doesn't have 25 years of experience doing it like i do um because because like that's just that's you're not gonna get the help you need um i've been really fortunate i haven't had what i would call like a depressive down downturn um in a while and and the way that i describe that um is like depression manifests itself physically in me um i feel like um you know when you go to the dentist and they take x-rays and they put that lead thing that big lead heavy lead thing over your body to protect your organs from x-rays so like imagine that except it's draped over your entire body so you're like um you're like you're like wearing the charlie brown ghost outfit only it's made entirely out of lead and it just weighs you down that's how i feel i feel it pulled down the corners of my eyes i feel a heaviness in the back of my jaw i remember your last depressive episode yeah it was terrible it was the last really bad one i had was a ptsd flashback brought on by seeing an actor we grew up with who had the most abusive mother i have ever seen in public um i saw him in a movie and it brought back every audition every callback every day that i suffered and it was bad and it was weeks of me spiraling and struggling but when that happens like you name it you know how to name it yeah i i learned this thing so i used to have night terrors um i would be falling asleep and i would have a panic attack every night and i would be abs in absolute terror every single night and i knew and it was one of the reasons i drank so much i was like well if i could just like drink enough i won't feel this and i won't wake up but i would like get this thing and i when i realized i was having panic attacks in my sleep naming it made it stop so i love that thing that's in literature where like if you are confronted with a demon and you name the demon it loses its power over you and i think that that same thing happens with with mental illness demons so i've got my checklist of things that i do right like i when's the last time i ate have i taken a shower today okay be honest have i done any kind of exercise have i like even if it's just walking literally walking across the street and back like that's good that's getting outside like when is the last time i ate when's the last time i drank water i have gotten to a point in my depression now where i can feel it and i go okay i know what's going on i know what's happening i will tell my uh i'll lean into my privilege okay so my privilege is for the most part when i get to choose when i have to work so like if i'm in a if i'm in a place like that i have the privilege of saying okay i'm just gonna self-care as much as i can until i get through this i talk to the therapist i talk to anne and then it works out over do you meditate yeah yes i do meditate um uh i use the calm app this is not an internship i love that i love their ads their ads always come up for me i love their ads yeah i uh calm and headspace are the two that i really like um and then i listen to this weird there's a guy called on uh uh well i don't know if it's a guy there's a person on uh on youtube called uh nemo's dreamscapes and they make these wonderful uh videos of uh just like beautiful 1920s animation wow and then the music and then it they have done this audio processing to the music so it's oldies music from the 20s 30s and 40s but it sounds like it's playing in the other room and you're in a room where the fire is crackling and like the the the rain is raining outside it creates this beautiful background of like a soft gentle blanket of noise i love that yeah it's wonderful i listen to it when i work now um uh it's on pretty much all day long in my office um and and it really helps it really helps it's really soothing um but i don't want to give the impression to anybody listening that this is like oh it's super easy there's nothing tricky about it it's just a little trick like it's not like that it takes a lot it takes a lot of practice a lot of work i know that a lot of people might be listening to this and saying well here's the answer i cut my parents out of my life i'm like it's gonna be fine and what what you are describing is a decades-long journey of also partnering with a woman might get emotional here because i do love anne partnering with a woman who you trust and who you place your sanity in her hands he loves me unconditionally correct so i just want everybody listening at home to not be like i'm cutting them out that's it i figured it out because what you did was you did it in an environment where you were already primed to be ready to do the work and another thing that i love about you you're expressing that you quit drinking like recently like that's recently when you're our age four years ago is recently right five years ago was recently meaning all of the work that you did still brought you to the place where you weren't done growing you weren't done learning and you're still in that place where i remember when we texted like it was bad when you had your last episode but like yeah i'm such a like i'm in such awe of you that what you have now is you have a vocabulary you have tools and you have a sense of gratitude and optimism that i promise you if whatever it is if you cut your parents out if you cut him out her whatever they are if you do that with no other support oh it's not going to work it's not going to work it's going to search i'm just letting people know this is this is part of an entire package that is the unbelievable will wheaton thank you so much will thank you mayam it's always such a pleasure to talk to you this is a good one and and look and let me just say this in public when when i was in real crisis um and really suffering i reached out to you and i reached out to seth green and you were both there for me you were there for me in a way that only other people who were there at the time could be there for me and because you were there for me i probably suffered the least that i needed to [Laughter] and i'm just and i'm just really grateful for it and i appreciate you giving me the opportunity to come back and do this with you a second time i mean there were so many like quotables in that episode i just there's so many things he said that were so powerful but also i think that him describing all the things that he does like he's a rigorous rigorous active participant in his mental health and not just by taking his pills that's not what i'm saying he's in a relationship that is that is constantly open to turning things over together you know um and i know anne and it's really really it's really wonderful to see and they they did meet when he was very young you know he was still growing up and they kind of have grown up together yeah i mean there's there's a lot in there there's a lot in there and i thought the stuff about him being a public person was also really fascinating and i think a lot of people may be like what still um but i just i'm so glad that he was uh that he wanted to share that with us it's so important that he was able to talk like that it's so hard to open those wounds and to share those painful experiences not only from the past but how he holds them now and how they're impacting him one of my points that i was just like really struck by was this idea of the static around us impacting our senses and totally static the noise whatever you want to call it when that clears what we're able to experience the birds the sound the skin no i mean it's it's absolutely that's also science like that's completely chemical our perception of pain is different in a depressed state versus a non-depressed state everything that we experience is is i don't want to say clouded it is colored by the the chemistry going on in terms of our mental health like that's true whatever you've ever experienced with drugs or alcohol your body has the natural ability to do that too you know to to make things more interesting real connected safe you know the safety that you feel when you numb out that safety is yours to own and and if you want to find out why you're using stop using like that's what he's talked about i loved i mean i just loved it also on the trauma impacting our senses it kind of creeps in over time it's cumulative especially when it starts so young and i wanted to have you talk a little bit about why it is that the lack of reciprocity in acknowledging of experience starts to create such turmoil for us he talked about obviously gaslighting is a huge thing i don't remember now if we've addressed it as a word of the day in in an episode no uh i looked at my script notes and i know it's on there and i don't know if it's on there because we did it or it's like you probably were just thinking about it from your life but what's the human need for acknowledgement as because when we're not acknowledged in that way and gaslighting is you know obviously more than just not being acknowledged but the need for us to have a shared experience to come together what is that biochemical impact on us that makes it so detrimental if we don't have it and so amazingly healing if we do because part of the therapeutic process is coming together with someone else to have a shared understanding of whatever we're discussing so remember when you were like let's not talk too much in this conclusion because it's been a really long episode this is opening up something that i think is really for another episode but i will say that in particular the connection between us with our primary caregiver we are primates like we're chimpanzees we're orangutans like picture all of those social structures of animals and while they may not have spoken language that's the most important connection is that kind of community and your caregiver in particular your mother just gonna say it that primate connection and the sense of mismatch that occurs when there is a mismatch is chemically very very upsetting um and cumulative meaning that pattern once laid down is very easy to to trip that wire and that's where we get the notion of organizing principles if your organizing principle is such that i'm too much i'm not seen i'm not heard and i'm not cared for and worse yet i'm i'm hurt i'm abused i'm neglected i'm used that lays down a really really rigorous organizing principle so that every other experience is basically compared to that and it takes a tremendous amount of work which will i think has hopefully made clear it takes a tremendous amount of work you you don't undo that you find ways that you live through it connection is so important we talk about it all the time and here's another example let's do and ask anything ask miami anything today is from alicia lee who submitted a video and if anyone else wants to submit a video they can do so at bialikbreakdown.com that's bia i'm sorry i was thinking about how people are submitting videos dot com and there is a section where you can ask miami anything let's go to the video hi maya my question is this why do some people choose the discomfort of staying in addiction or disordered eating or toxic relationships instead of going through the discomfort of making the change and moving out of it into something healthier and happier i'm fully aware of a lot of people who go to start getting the help and then the discomfort of attempting that drives them back into the behaviors that they were trying to get away from and i'm wondering what the neuroscience behind that is this is a great question i i i my ears kind of like perked up when when our listener uh asked about why people choose and i don't mean to get all like heady about like what is choice do any of us choose anything but the choice to turn away from growth and progress is not so much a choice as a you know it's a kind of compulsion to take the path of least resistance even if it's painful jonathan you want to chime in here i mean you have experience with this like i have experience and you've done we've done a lot of research with other experts and what they talk about is our neuro pathways are like ruts and so when we experience pain we go to the solution and that solution is down either a behavior pattern or a thought pattern and when we reinforce it they those grooves become more instantiated and so to try and recreate a different pathway and build a different system can be extremely uncomfortable and especially until that new pathway gets instantiated it will actually feel almost worse than getting you know the previous behavior or repeating the previous behavior even if the previous behavior leads to negative outcomes that you after doing it realize wait a second i'm here again and i really don't want to be it's so hard to switch that circuitry right and so an another thing that that i would add very very nicely done by the way um i can tell you've been listening to me when i speak it's helpful something else that i'd like to add is that we don't like things that take time tell me a time in your life when you like that something well actually you know what there's some things we like to take time just got weird we don't like hearing do this and next year your life's going to be amazing because we're very very limited as humans and that's the homo sapien sapiens part of us we have an impatience that is in in direct opposition to what we see as fun it's not i don't want to wait i want it now i want what i want when i want it how i want it that's where it's not so much of a choice it's what do we do to get through today i don't like when today hurts and if you don't have a lot of tools if you don't have any tools it's exceptionally hard and if you don't have a lot of tools or i'm just gonna say it if you don't have the right tools you're like there's no wrong tools yeah there are there are wrong tools if you don't have the right tools if you are not seeing that light at the end of the tunnel you're likely not getting the right help or you're not ready to be open to the right kind of help because you need a lot of tools to work through that pain and that pain is physical it's emotional and i'm gonna say it it's spiritual thank you to everyone who submitted a question and please do rate the podcast give us a five star review check out the youtube channel click the little icon to subscribe and come back for more it's a great question and thank you mime for that awesome answer thank you jonathan for being part of it thank you also for um for your patience and to our our producers and everybody working behind the cameras and microphones um to help make this episode really really special as we bend time and space from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have we'll see you next time it's miami's breakdown she's gonna break it down for you she's got a neuroscience phd or two non-fiction and now she's gonna break down it's down she's gonna break it down

Channel: Mayim Bialik

Views: 599,260

Keywords: mayim bialik, big bang theory, amy farrah fowler, mayim, celebrity news, Wil Wheaton

Id: AwvHcWvpibM

Length: 105min 35sec (6335 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 27 2021