WMH 09: The Fundamentals for Optimal Mental Health with Lindsey Paoli

This is a transcript of WMH 09: The Fundamentals for Optimal Mental Health with Lindsey Paoli which you can watch and listen to here:

Katie Waecther: Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Watching Mental Health, and this is going to be a really good one. I've been wanting to get this guest on for a while, and I was just really excited when she graciously accepted, and I'm going to just jump right into her bio because I think that we're going to have a lot of really powerful things to talk about today. And so as the Mind performance coach, Lindsay Paoli is on a mission to disrupt our current mental health habits with education, approachability, and accessibility. Through her signature Mind fundamental formula, she shows clients and organizations how to optimize mental health and become their greatest selves. Lindsay believes that mental health education is non-negotiable, and that is exactly what I believe. And I'm really excited because on this episode of Watching Mental Health, we're going to talk through her journey, but then we're also going to learn more about her formula for optimal mental health and her thoughts on mental health treatment here and how we can make things better. So without further ado, please welcome Lindsay Paoli to the show.

Lindsey Paoli: Thank you so much, Katie. I was so excited to come on. Thank you so much for having me.

Katie: Thank you. I think it's going to be really great. And I just know that your background is, when I first discovered who you were, I immediately resonated with you, and then I read your website and I just really love your background and kind of how you've transitioned through these different career choices really intentionally and to land to where you are today I think is really amazing. So tell me a little bit more in your own words about who you are.

Lindsey: First of all, thank you for thinking that it is intentional, but it's definitely been a very roundabout path to figuring out life. But I say that only because I know that most people also feel like they're kind of flailing forward, and I always say that the dots connect in retrospect. So it has gotten me exactly where I want to be, but in my own words, I am, I would like to say a mental health advocate, but also mental health educator and corporate trainer that truly just believes that mental health was the link that I didn't even know was a link that I needed in my own personal life. And then I started recognizing that it was the missing link in a lot of the companies that I worked with. And now that mental health truly is such a big talked about topic, fortunately I think that there's still lots of opportunity for getting the right education at the forefront. And so my goal is to kind of empower everybody to make mental health theirs instead of feeling that they have no control over it.

Katie: Yeah, definitely. And I think that a lot of us do feel like that. And so I appreciate you saying that it really hasn't been intentional, even though looking back on it, it may seem like it was all on purpose, but you actually started in a totally different place. You started in operations management, I think you went to UNLV, right? I did. Tell me why mental health mattered at that point, why you decided to make such a large transition.

Lindsey: So I don't talk about this a lot, but I'm working on being even more authentic every year. So I originally started school at UCLA as a psych major. My brother had been diagnosed that freshman year that I was a psych major with bipolar disorder. He was my younger brother, and he had always been the problem child in our family. And so there had always been issues around what was going on with him. He was diagnosed with a DHD, I want to say, at four and was medicated as early as five. And then the behavioral issues continued to spiral and impact our family. And so mental health was always something that I was interested in, but just completely separately. And then watching my brother's journey really turned me off from mental health in general. I was really disgusted with the way that he as a child was treated.

I didn't like the medication process, so it was really a roundabout way that I actually landed in Las Vegas by accident and hospitality is what you do in Las Vegas. So I had left UCLA and landed here by accident and was told by my advisor, well, you already have credits and we're the best school in the country for hospitality. All of the jobs you're going to get in this city are going to be hospitality driven, so you may as well do hospitality if you're looking to just graduate sooner. And I was like, okay. And that was true. I ended up doing every potential hospitality gig there is on the strip I did. And then worked my way into management working at the front desk at the Mirage, and then working and opening city center, moving my way through other front service operations and guest service aspects when an encore and Cosmopolitan.

But personally, I was really, really struggling throughout that entire time and I didn't have a name for it, and I certainly knew that I wasn't as bad as my brother was. And so it wasn't necessarily, it couldn't be that bad. And so I just kind of stifled it. Yeah, just keep on going. You're doing great. You have a career and you're making great money and you live in Las Vegas and things are going well. And so it was purely accidental that I ended up really successful in my hotel operations career. And then as things do, everything eventually just became incredibly overwhelming and I suffered a little bit of a mental breakdown and had a lot of issues come to the surface. And it was at age 30 that I finally started going to a therapist and then being like, oh, there is this other entire side of mental health that I didn't see in my brother's experience, and there's potential and opportunity that I'd like to kind of step into. And so I transitioned and got my master's degree to become a therapist. I don't even remember if I'm answering the question. What was the question?

Katie: No, no, that does answer it. And you just kind of walk through the journey a little bit. And it's real that it's authentic. I think that you step into a career and we're in such a mindset of you have to go this constant productivity mode, and yet we struggle with these underlying issues. And eventually you're going to hit a wall eventually something's got to give. And I just think that it's really cool that when you did kind of hit that moment, that you reached out for help, that you got a therapist that worked really well, and then you wound up transitioning your life around that. So I just think that that's a beautiful journey. It's hard for people to reach out for help, and

Lindsey: I want to be totally clear. And it was not that clean cut and dry either. I mean, this included a suicide attempt. This included a lot of really scary, dark, awful things. I went through a divorce, they didn't tell anybody. It was a lot of struggling in silence before I was like, fine, I'm going to give this therapist a try. And I had gone through lots of therapists that I hated and walked out of their offices, and it just took that one therapist to change things. And so I saw it as an opportunity. I could be that one therapist for people like me that can't find the right fit, so there's got to be more like me that needs me.

Katie: Yeah, that's so true. I'm really glad that you said that because yeah, and a lot of people do struggle with finding the right therapist and you want to give up. And here in Las Vegas, it can be especially hard for people to reach out to find somebody and then find out that person, wait six months on their waiting list, find out that person isn't a good fit and feel like they're back at square one. And so it's important that we have as many options as possible, but then you decide to go beyond that and to not just settle for, I'm going to help this individual in front of me, although that's powerful and that's important. You're thinking about the bigger picture. So these days at least, I think so tell me a little bit more about what you're thinking now.

Lindsey: Yeah, so it was actually during covid. I had recently graduated and opened my private practice. And the goal was really to just be a private practice therapist and live out the rest of my career and be happy and that, I mean, I've now learned I have ADHD, and I'll probably never be that person and that works in my favor. But the big idea came during Covid as I realized I'm just as burnt out now as I was in hotel operations. The only difference is I actually like this work, but I'm not even a year in and I can't foresee myself surviving this in the long run. And I see a lot of other therapists struggling in this same way. And I just came from a corporate setting where training, I came from an amazing company where training was a very big part of what they offered, but training around mental health and managing stress and all of the things that I was teaching to my clients was never something that was discussed.

And I tended to draw in a lot of clients who were professionals like me who were on the verge of burnout or who were hiding a lot of their things as leaders or business owners. And so I really started to pivot into needing a lot more corporate training. We need executive coaching. A lot of people have stigmas about therapy. And I mean in Nevada itself, we're 51st in the country for mental health providers and have been consistently for years. So I just feel like we had to do something different. And my going into corporate settings and working with leaders and kind of working towards a top down approach where they're then able to teach some of the things they're learning from me to their teams is my small way of making that difference. And hopefully that'll continue to grow and become a really big thing in the long run.

Katie: Yeah, absolutely. We need to continue, I think, to apply all sorts of creative methods to getting our number up from 51st and it's consistently a problem. So yeah, I really like that you've taken that approach and I just think that it's an all hands on deck situation. And so you coming from that background and then being able to apply those skills along with your skills and mental health and in therapy and your revelations, I think is really powerful. And so with that, tell me more about your formula. Tell me more about the

Lindsey: Mind fundamentals formula. The mind fundamentals another accident. Anybody who goes into mental health goes into mental health, whether they're conscious of it or not, to take care of themselves first and to learn more about themselves or their family. And I was no exception. And so when I started finally understanding the work and then going to grad school and understanding the way that the brain works and just kind of the basics of the mind body connection, I just realized everything I had been taught I felt like had been wrong. And of course I was depressed and anxious and in this terrible position because I had been living in a way that's not in alignment with the way that humans are designed. And so it seemed to me so clear and simple that there was this complete missing link between the breaking point and therapy, which is usually all about your past and your traumas.

There's the lifestyle factor. And so I started coming up with this acronym because I'm a military bratt and we use acronyms for everything, and we know it's the fastest way to start learning things. And so movement was always my go-to in my worst times ever, I knew if I could go outside and go for a run, I would feel somewhat better. I could get through the next day. So movement was my foundation that had to be number one. And then everything else started falling into place. Intention. I knew when I was depressed, setting a goal of getting dressed or taking a shower felt monumental, but if I set the goal and I was such a competitive person, if I could achieve just that minimal goal, then that would make me feel better. And then if I was in a great place and I had something bigger to be working towards, that kept me going in a lot of my depression or anxiety.

And nobody taught me how to dream as a child. Everybody taught me the realistic ways to make it through life. And so I really felt like setting that intention and being able to think bigger and then make tangible skills through the day, there was something to that. Yeah, for sure. Nourishment is nourishing your body. Obviously the foods that you eat impact the way that you feel. And that's something that, again, I learned the hard way. I was definitely an emotional eater. And the more attuned you become to your body, the more you notice the negative impacts of certain foods and the positive impacts of certain foods. And then deep connections.

I had faked my way through life for a really, really long time, and I had a lot of surface friends and a lot of party friends, and I didn't ever let anybody in, which is why it was so devastating to get to a breaking point in my depression because I had nobody to turn to and I had done it myself. And so making the conscious effort on a day-to-day basis to make sure that I'm reaching out to people, not only for me, but when you're checking on other people, whether they're capable of it or not, it just creates a different sense of belonging that I never had growing up. It's a scary thing now that we have social media, that we have a lot more of those surface relationships and a lot fewer of those vulnerable real relationships. And then during Covid is when I started realizing, oh, we need fresh air.

You have to go outside, or your brain literally goes crazy. You need to have sleep habits. So unplugging, making sure that you're able to sleep consistently and have healthy sleep is going to either improve all of these other things in your mental health or detract them. And then learning, because we had to round out the acronym for Mindful and learning is if you're not learning, you're dying. And so making sure that we're constantly creating those new neural pathways is something that I'm always teaching my clients. And the entire end goal is that you're being more mindful, that you're learning more about you, you're not listening to everybody else's rules of life and figuring out what you should or shouldn't be doing from anybody else's perspective. It's all about understanding how your mind and body operates, what feels good for you, what doesn't feel good for you, what you need, and how to start asking for those things.

Katie: Yeah, that's amazing. So what's the acronym? So it's movement, intention, nourishment,

Lindsey: Nourishment, deep connections, fresh air unplugging and learning.

Katie: Perfect. I love that. Thanks. Yeah, I think that's really powerful and it feels like you can utilize that both in a personal setting and then in a training setting where you're really walking through employees and corporations and people don't realize how much corporations and organizations can help and impact their employees mental health and how that helps them in return. Right. There's a huge amount of dollars lost, as I understand, of employees with bad mental health, right?

Lindsey: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, retention rates are at an all time low, I think after the pandemic, and people are recognizing that if they don't feel aligned with their company, they can walk away. And there's different options, and it is important for companies to have an awareness of others' mental health. But I think that something that I've also learned in the couple of years that I've been working with corporations is it's not, mental health has become so much about we need to look to outsider, we need to find somebody to blame, or there needs to be a root to this cause. And my mission that I've learned is that it's not necessarily the company's job to take care of their mental health, but if you empower people to recognize the way they can take care of their own mental health and then support their endeavor in that journey, then that's taking care of them. So companies are obviously created to do business, and part of business is taking care of people, but people also have to be responsible for taking care of themselves. And a lot of people don't have that skillset. And so it's simply providing them that skillset.

Katie: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really good segue to my next question here, and I'm interested in your answer because somebody with your background tos kind of transition from management and all the way up through therapist and then now into really this kind of a bigger, I think somebody much bigger than a therapist. What does treatment look like to you? If somebody's coming up to you and struggling, what kind of treatment are you recommending?

Lindsey: That's a really good question because I think that it's something that I'm trying to figure out honestly for myself. I guess I think of myself, if I get to a point where I recognize that I'm struggling, what are the tools that I am going to use first and foremost? I mean, I've gone to several therapists at this point, so therapy is not out of the question. I think that therapy is important and necessary, though I do think that there's a lot of downfalls like accessibility, and don't get me started on insurance. We don't have enough time for me to talk about why I hate the insurance format for mental health or just health in general, but I do always go to somebody that specifies exactly what I'm struggling with. So I don't stay with one therapist forever, and some people prefer that, but I will go to somebody that specializes only in what I need, and then when I feel like I've created those tools for myself, then I go off.

And the goal is that you're using them on your own without having somebody to rely on when you're struggling. It's that you're building that own inner strength. So I do go to therapy if I start noticing that something traumatic is coming up or something that I can't process or seem to shake or some sort of block is getting in my way, and it's linked to a past memory. I'm personally trained in EMDR, so I'll seek out an EMDR therapist because it's a really quick and fast way to process for me. I use it for performance. So it's the limiting belief. It's not necessarily a traumatic event that's coming up. It's something that's blocking me from getting where I want to go. So I'll seek out an e mdr R therapist to do one or two sessions around that thing that I'm noticing. I've also taken a liking to what it's called RIM therapy, which I think is a really terrible name for it, just because the connotation sounds bad, but it stands for regenerating images in memory.

And it's not a traditional therapeutic practice, even though it was created by a psychotherapist. And it's kind of like I use it for future dreaming, and I don't even have a resource really to recommend you to. I think you can go to rim therapy.com and find out more and find practitioners, and I just have a certain practitioner that I go to. But for me, treatment is not a forever thing. And it doesn't mean that you're broken or it just means that you need to, it means you need new skills. And then it's my responsibility to be building those new skills and to come out of treatment ready to move into my next level because I think you're constantly always growing. Every time you think the work is done, you very quickly learn, oh, now how do I get from this step to this step? And so treatment I think is just a great tool in getting from one phase to the other point, if I were at the very bottom, treatment is therapy, and that was exactly what it was for me, and it included medication. I think a lot of people think that I'm very anti-medication, and I went through a lot of medications that I hated before I committed to my therapist to stay on one antidepressant for six months. And I definitely credit that to allowing me to get to a place where I could start processing the therapy and get out of bed enough to apply the tools. And so sometimes it just depends on where you are and the treatment that you need. But treatment is, I think a temporary tool, building procedure.

Katie: I really like that. I tend to agree with a lot of what you just said. And I think that same thing with medication. If you're at the very rock bottom and you're having suicidal thoughts every day and you're not able to get out of bed, let's maybe talk about medication for a few months while you're able to get yourself up again just a little bit, and then we can wean off of it or whatever that looks like. And I think the journey looks different for everyone, and you've really kind of emphasized that how it can change and evolve.

Lindsey: And my frustration is that there's so little information about it. And so many people think that when I get a lot of clients that'll come in and be like, yeah, so I'm taking this, but I didn't really like it, so I stopped taking it. And I'm like, you can't just stop taking it. Doctors are not giving full informed consent on the risks that come with taking medication. Or a lot of people I see on social media saying I have to take medication because I don't create serotonin, but serotonin is created through lifestyle and applying the mind fundamentals. And very few people are actually serotonin deficient when they're living a healthy lifestyle. So there's just a lot of miseducation about it. And so I don't think that it's a very black and white. So that is usually where my frustration kind of comes through on social media and why people perceive me as disliking medication.

Katie: No, but I think that's why I appreciate that approach, and I've never perceived you as disliking medication because I think that just like what you're saying, it's a lot of miseducation and misinformation and people going around saying that they have enough, yeah, they don't have any serotonin, but not really recognizing where that's coming from and the fact that a lot of people really aren't serotonin deficient. So it's very much a challenge. And then you do feel like sometimes you're stepping on toes because people get really, they take it really personal and everyone has their own journey. So I think that actually leads well into this next question, but I really want to have you back because I want you to talk more about mdr.

I love to top on insurance. Yeah, okay. There have things I want to discuss. Okay. But I want to make sure we talk a little bit about this for the last few minutes of the show. And do you think that a mental health challenge or a diagnosis is something that is a part of you for the rest of your life or something that you can overcome? Is it something that you should just accept and that you need and acknowledge that you need to take treatment, whatever that looks like for the rest of your life? Or is it something that you can get over?

Lindsey: Yeah, so when I first started my personal journey, I guess I came to the acceptance that everybody was telling me this is something you're going to struggle with your entire life. And it's something that I told my brother too. I don't know if I mentioned he was diagnosed as bipolar, bipolar one at the age of 12. And so I really adopted that tagline, this is something you struggle with the rest of your life and you just have to accept it and deal with it and make sure you're taking your medication and precautions. And somebody, I was just talking to somebody that I had recently met the other day and she was thanking me for sharing about my suicide experience. And she's like, I know that I'm going to have these thoughts and this depression for the rest of my life. And it hit me that I was like, hang on, I'm now 12 years out of this. And I don't think that way at all. And I don't even know when I realized that I outgrew that, but I don't identify as being depressed or anxious at all anymore at all. If anything, I struggle to make sure to stay connected to the feeling of being in the depths of depression because it feels so removed from who I was or I feel so removed from who I used to be while I was in that time. My brother also stopped taking medication a long time ago and is doing the best he's ever done.

And so I think that my perspective on that has completely shifted, but I had to give myself the allowance or the accepting or I don't know, the identity to be able to not be the person with depression. Because then it becomes the crutch too. The more you lean on the labels, the less you're able to grow into that. And so one day I just stopped saying that I was depressed or, and just was like, I'm just working on myself. And that really changed a lot of things, so much so that I didn't even realize that I had not been depressed until somebody said that. And it hit me in the gut like, hang on. No, that's not true. So my answer is absolutely. I think that we outgrow those things. Our brain is capable of so much, and this is where that education comes in.

We know that we're able, we're capable of creating new belief systems up until the day that we die. And so we can change and rewire so much of our brain and make ourselves healthier. You just have to have the right tools to do that. So I think that obviously there's a caveat to that because I don't specialize in a lot of other things like schizophrenia or anything. And so I don't want to overstep any research, but I think for the most part with anxiety and depression, you can certainly outgrow it if you allow yourself to.

Katie: Yeah, I mean, I do think that there's a difference in diagnoses, somebody who maybe has psychosis. I don't know. I'm not a professional to say that, but I do think that, yeah, there's also that idea of having a diagnosis and then using that diagnosis maybe as a crutch to continue to identify with and let it hold you back. But it's hard out there. But I think that what you said that I really want to hold onto is that it sounds like both, and it's amazing that your brother is doing well and that he's been medication free. And I think that's wonderful. I have a family member who has also diagnosed with bipolar disorder and who's also been medication free. And so it's lovely to see that growth and it's absolutely possible, but it sounds like it's only possible with continuous use of other tools. And so is that kind of what you've recognized in your life and in your brother's life that you have found other tools, other things to help you progress?

Lindsey: Absolutely. And I can't emphasize lifestyle enough. If I were living the same life that I was living 15 years ago, would I be able to identify as not having anxiety or depression anymore? Absolutely not. But that's because our brains are wired for survival. And I think that that's what it's trying to do when we get to those rock bottom places. And those tools have to be consistent, which is what the mind fundamentals are, is consistent, even if it's a small daily dose of fresh air or movement, it is a constant use of those tools. Your lifestyle has to change to incorporate mental health at the forefront rather than thinking of it as an afterthought when it becomes bothersome.

Katie: Yeah, exactly. And I think that's partially why I like your tools so much because it really is all encompassing and it's consistency, right? It's not like I can work on my mental health all the time, but then wake up one day decide I'm done using the tools, and five years later I'm wondering why I'm not doing well. And it's because I stop. You got to keep that lifestyle. And I think that's an interesting perspective, that our brains are wired for survivability. And maybe that's why a lot of people are struggling with anxiety and depression. These rates have skyrocketed, especially since the pandemic. It's like we're constantly just trying to just survive. And maybe that's our, for many people, maybe that's their brain's way of trying to compensate to

Lindsey: Get their attention, I thinks

Katie: Really interesting. I really like that. So I'll definitely need to have you back, but we're over time, so I got to stop. I got to stop talking, but I just appreciate you so much. This was such a great episode. Thank you. I'm going to have you back soon. Yeah, this was so lovely. And please join us every first and third Wednesday at 3:00 PM Pacific time for watching mental health for another really important conversation around mental health. Thank you so much, Lindsey.

Lindsey: Thank you so much, Katie. I had so much fun. This was such a good talk. I can't wait to come back. Yay.

Katie: Alright, bye everyone.