Mastering The Mind: A Mental Health Deep Dive

For too long, talking about mental health has been a social taboo. Shame prevents confronting our struggles. The pressure of our daily lives exacerbates the problem. Compound that with society’s lack of mental health education and you create an epidemic of mental health disorders ranging from chronic stress and anxiety to loneliness and depression. PTSD. And of course, suicide. The solution to these problems is complicated. But it always begins with talking about them. Today we do just that. Introducing a masterclass on all things mental health, my second in a new ongoing series of compilation-based deep dives. The conversations excerpted for this episode feature some of the best, most inspiring exchanges I’ve had on the topic of mental health, with practical takeaways and bite-size chunks of advice that you can apply in your life today. The full episodes for guests featured in this episode can be enjoyed here: RRP 464: Lori Gottlieb: Stories From A Therapist In Therapy RRP 416: Johann Hari: On Lost Connections RRP 579: Alexi Pappas Is Bravey RRP 468: Quelling Stress With Rangan Chatterjee, MD RRP 565: Caroline Burckle On The Power Of Vulnerability RRP 584: Steven Pressfield On The War of Art RRP 330: Drs. Dean & Ayesha Sherzai RRP 393: Guru Singh On Disrupting Depression RRP 424: Sarah Lee On The War Inside RRP 557: Hakim Tafari On Reinvention FULL BLOG & SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/richroll613 YouTube: bit.ly/mentalhealth613 Note: If you missed our first deep dive, a masterclass on all things microbiome, click here. Final Note: This conversation traverses difficult emotional terrain. If you are struggling, please raise your hand and reach out for help. For a catalog of resources, you can visit the National Alliance on Mental Illness and if you are experiencing suicidal ideation, know you’re not alone. I encourage you to call the Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1(800) 273 – TALK. I sincerely hope you find this experiment helpful, instructive, and inspiring. Peace + Plants, Rich Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:20Speaker 01

  With every change comes loss.

• 1:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  I struggle to motivate myself sometimes.

• 1:25Alexi Pappas?

  That maybe I have to go, because I don't know what else there is.

• 1:28Hakim Tafari?

  How the fuck did I end up in this situation?

• 1:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  Depression. I can't concentrate at work. And grief.

• 1:33Hakim Tafari?

  Screaming at the top of my lungs.

• 1:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  And sadness.

• 1:36Johann Hari?

  Screw you, I don't want any help, I'm gonna kill myself.

• 1:51Rich Roll?

  After eight-plus years and over 600 conversations, I've compiled a fairly massive library of practical information and timeless wisdom that, due to the nature of the internet, often gets lost in the seemingly endless feed of new content released every single day. And so I felt compelled to experiment with a new episode format, one that features a compilation of some of the best guests I've had on the show in the past, and centers around a single theme or subject matter.

• 2:25Rich Roll?

  This is the second deep dive, second masterclass episode we've done. Part one about the microbiome was released back in January, and if you missed it, you can find a link to that in the show notes. But today, we're continuing the experiment with an extremely important subject: mental health. All of the guests featured in this episode are either experts in one of the various mental health fields, or are individuals who have gleaned wisdom about mental health through struggle. These are truly some of the best, most inspiring conversations I've had on this topic, and you can find the full episodes for each guest in the show notes.

• 3:17Rich Roll?

  For too long, talking about mental health has been a social taboo. Many people have historically been too ashamed to admit they need help and seek it out, or our society's lack of mental health awareness and education has led to an epidemic of chronic stress and severe loneliness, as well as a rise in things like suicide, anxiety, depression, and Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. And it is vital that we talk about it. So, to better understand mental health, we begin today's show by talking about therapy with Lori Gottlieb.

• 3:57Rich Roll?

  Lori is a Los Angeles-based psychotherapist, a journalist, and author of the book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. Our conversation was about what happens when a therapist experiences her own personal crisis and seeks help. But it's also a broader conversation about mental well-being in general, which makes it the perfect place to start.

• 4:25Rich Roll?

  Do you think everybody should be in therapy?

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Since the book came out, everybody asked me that.

• 4:29Rich Roll?

  Do they?

• 4:30Speaker 01

  They do, and I think it's interesting. I'm not, you know, I think everybody can benefit from therapy. I don't think everybody needs to be in therapy. But I do think this, I think that so many times people come to therapy later than they should. Meaning that, you know, we, we think about our physical well being different from our emotional well being. So if somebody feels like something is wrong with their body, like you're having chest pain, you'll probably go to the cardiologist before you have a massive heart attack. But if somebody feels like, oh, something doesn't feel right emotionally, we tend to ignore it or minimize it. You know, well, I have a roof over my head and food on the table, so I don't really need help. And what happens is they think that they can just make the feelings go away or not pay attention to them.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  But when you don't pay attention to feelings, they become stronger. And they come out, you know, in a behavior, in an irritability, or in a short temperedness, or in a, you know, self defeating, self sabotaging way of being in the world, whatever it is, or an inability to sleep, whatever. And so people then don't come to therapy until they're having some kind of crisis. And it's like they're having an emotional heart attack.

• 5:36Rich Roll?

  I mean, there's no downside.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Well, time, money, the biggest downside, I think, for people, even though there are logistical problems that are very real, is that a lot of people kind of unconsciously know that if they go to therapy, they might need to make changes.

• 5:51Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  You know, it's like, if I go to therapy,

• 5:54Rich Roll?

  Who wants that?

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Like, I might need to do something different in my life. I might need to be uncomfortable, and I don't want to be uncomfortable. So I'd rather just keep things the way they are.

• 6:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Status quo. In the book, I say insight is the booby prize of therapy. Because you can have all the insight in the world, like, oh, now I understand why I keep picking those guys. But if you don't make changes out in the world, i.e. pick other guys, the insight is useless. So many times people in couples therapy will say like, oh, now I understand why, you know, I get really triggered by that, when you do that, you know, and why I react that way. But then they don't change anything.

• 6:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Well, you're wasting your time if you're not going to change anything. So I think in therapy, you have to be both vulnerable and accountable. So you have to be vulnerable, but you also have to be accountable for what are you going to do with the work that we're doing? How are you going to make some tangible changes in your behavior when you leave here?

• 6:47Rich Roll?

  The change part is so hard.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Right, and people don't realize that. They think, oh, it's positive change, so it should be easy because people want something better to happen. But with every change comes loss.

• 6:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the revelation feels like progress, but it's actually not doing anything. I mean, I've been sober a long time, and you know, the adage in 12th step is self-knowledge will avail you nothing.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:09Rich Roll?

  And when people say to me, like, well, why do you think you were an alcoholic? Like, what happened when you're... And I've learned, like, it's interesting to explore that, but I could spend all of my time trying to deconstruct that, and it actually doesn't help. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't inform how I'm going to make decisions going forward. I have this toolbox now, and I apply these tools to how I make decisions and how I run things by other people that have allowed me to maintain my sobriety and become a more productive member of society. So for me, it's about like the actionable tools, and I think it is like, it's so difficult for people to change. And in my own personal experience, like, I didn't change until I was in, the pain of

• 7:53Rich Roll?

  continuing on the path that I was on exceeded the fear of, you know, the unknown, should I change?

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:00Rich Roll?

  So, you know, what is that like? Like, how do you get people, short of having to have some, you know, cataclysm in their life, to make those adjustments and actually put your information and your insight into forward motion?

• 8:15Speaker 01

  There was something that my therapist said to me that I write about in the book, where he said, you know, where I was like, just feeling trapped by all of these sort of external circumstances, and I wasn't willing to make changes. I wasn't willing to look at what I could do differently. And he said, "You remind me of this cartoon." And it's of this prisoner shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out. But on the right and the left, the bars are open.

• 8:38Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  And it was like, you know, at first I thought, "Oh, that's really cheesy." But, but then I thought, "Wait a minute, he's right." Because so many of us would rather be the prisoner shaking the bars, saying, "I can't do anything about this." We don't want to look that it's open on the right or the left, because then if we walk out and we go into the sunlight and there are no bars and we're free, with freedom comes responsibility. And now we have to take responsibility for our lives. We can't say, "Oh, the problem is, you know, that I'm trapped here."

• 9:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Now, it's like, anything that happens is, "I'm responsible for that." And so, change is hard for that reason. You know, it's easier to feel trapped in the whatever childhood drama, you know, that you're reenacting, than to actually do something different where you might have to be responsible for your choices.

• 9:32Rich Roll?

  Responsibility is key. It can be a hard pill to swallow for the first time, but it's ultimately the only way forward if you want to make positive change in your life. But what do we do when we just can't find the strength within ourselves to work past our fear, take responsibility for our failures, and seek that help? I mean, mental health disorders can literally impede our decision-making processes just by nature of what they are. They deal with the mind. How do you solve a problem of the mind when that same mind created the problem in the first place? Well, this next clip, a section from my conversation with author and journalist Johann Hari, addresses that very question.

• 10:18Rich Roll?

  Johann has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and many other outlets. He is also the author of two quite profound books, Chasing the Scream and his more recent book, Lost Connections, which is a compelling deep dive into the nature of depression and its underlying causes. My original conversation with Johann was a super interesting exploration into the causes, the reasons, the cultural drivers behind addiction and depression and mental health in general, what contributes to their malignancy, what compels so many in this unhealthy direction, and why they are so difficult to overcome. I'm excited to share this clip with you because it moves the way we think about

• 11:02Rich Roll?

  our mental health journey away from being self-focused and instead places it within the context of community, as Johan shares the stories of a woman in pain, a boy with ADHD, a man in custody, and the neighbors who saved their lives.

• 11:22Johann Hari?

  In the summer of 2011, on a big anonymous housing project in Berlin, a woman called Nuriya Chengis climbed out of her wheelchair and she put a sign in her window. She lived in a ground-floor apartment. And the sign said something like, "I got a notice saying I'm going to be evicted from my apartment next Friday, so next Thursday night, I'm going to kill myself."

• 11:45Johann Hari?

  No one knew this woman. People start to knock on her door and they're like, "Do you need any help?" She said, "Screw you, I don't want any help, I'm going to kill myself."

• 11:54Johann Hari?

  And outside the apartment, some of the people who lived there didn't know each other, started chatting. And one of them had this idea. There's a big thoroughfare that goes into the centre of Berlin that runs through this project, it's called Cotti. They had an idea, "If we just block the street for a day, on a Saturday, there'll probably be a fuss, the media will probably come, they'll probably let Nuriya stay in her apartment, maybe there'll be some pressure for us to, you know, our rents to be kept down too, and this disaster to stop." So they decided to do it. They went and built a barricade in the middle of the road, and Nuriya was like, "Well, I'm going to kill myself anyway, I may as well let them wheel me out there."

• 12:31Rich Roll?

  It doesn't matter.

• 12:32Johann Hari?

  They wheel her out there, and the media did come. And they interviewed Nuriya, the other residents, a bit of fuss. And it gets to the end of the day and the police say, "Okay, you've had your fun, take it down." But the people who lived in Cotti said, "Well, hang on a minute, you haven't told Nuriya she gets to stay. And actually, we want a rent freeze for our entire block, this whole housing project. So when you give us that..." We'll take it down. But of course, they knew the minute they left the barricade, the police were just tearing down. So people start to sign up to man the barricade, right? Don't know each other. Um, Tanya, in her tiny little miniskirt, was paired with Nuria in her full hijab, right? And uh, these kind of pairings were happening all over Cotty. And first, I think they had, I think they had the Thursday night shift.

• 13:16Johann Hari?

  Tanya and Nuria are like, we've got nothing to talk about, right? What are we going to talk about? It couldn't be more likely. Um, so they sit there through the night, barely speaking, first few times. As the nights went on, they started to talk. They realised that something incredibly powerful in common.

• 13:33Johann Hari?

  Um, Nuria told Tanya something she'd never told anyone. So she had come to Berlin when she was sixteen, from a village in Turkey, with her two young children. And she was sent to raise enough money to send back her husband who'd come and join her. After she'd been in Berlin for a year, she got word from home that her husband had died. And she told Tanya that she'd always told people that he died of, of a heart attack. Actually, he died of tuberculosis, which was seen as like a disease of poverty. They realised they had both been kind of children with children themselves in this place that they were very, that where they'd been very frightened. They realised there's something really powerful in common. These kind of pairings were happening all over Cotty. There was a young lad called Mehmet.

• 14:13Johann Hari?

  Who kept being, they kept nearly throwing him out of school. They said he had ADHD. He was paired with this grumpy old white guy. Who said he didn't believe in direct action because he loved Stalin, but in this case, he'd make an exception. They did a shift together. The old white guy started helping Mehmet with his homework. Mehmet started doing a lot better. As one of the Muslim women there said to me, we all realised we had to take these small steps to understand each other. After the protest had been going on for about a year, one day, um, a man arrived at Cotty. He was in his early fifties. He was called, he's called Tunkai. And it's um, clear when you meet Tunkai, he's got some cognitive difficulties. He'd been living homeless. But he also has an amazing energy about him. Everyone immediately liked him. Uh, and after he was there for two or three days, that by this time, they'd actually turned their barricade into a permanent structure in the street.

• 14:56Johann Hari?

  And they said with a roof and everything. And they said, you know, you should start living here. We don't want you to be homeless. He started living there. He became a much-loved part of the Cotty protest. Nine months later, one day, the police came to inspect. They'd become an inspector every now and then. And Tungki doesn't like it when people argue. He thought the police were arguing. So he went to try to hug one of the officers. They thought he was attacking them, so they arrested him. That was when it was discovered that Tungki had been shut away in a psychiatric hospital, often in a padded cell, for 20 years. He'd escaped one day, he'd lived on the streets for a few months, and then he found his way to Coty. So the police took him back to the psychiatric hospital, and he's put back in his cell. At which point the entire Coty housing project turned into a kind of free Tungki movement, right? They

• 15:40Johann Hari?

  descend on this psychiatric hospital. But I remember Uli Carltonborne, one of the protesters, saying to them, you know, "You don't love him. He doesn't belong with you. We love him. He belongs with us." I remember thinking, you know, how many of us, if someone carted us away, would have hundreds of people descending, saying, "No, we love this person." The Bosnian writer Alexander Hayman said, "Home is where people notice when you're not there," right? Lots of people are homeless in that sense. And I remember thinking so clearly in Coty, think about how distressed these people were. Nuria was about to kill herself. Mehmet kept being nearly thrown out of school, he had ADHD. Tungki was shut

• 16:22Johann Hari?

  away in a padded cell. Loads of them were depressed and anxious. These people did not need to be drugged, most of them. They needed to be together. They needed to have a sense of meaning and purpose. They needed a home.

• 16:36Rich Roll?

  Those two needed to be together. I love that. Once again, you can find the links to these full conversations in the description below, if you're watching on YouTube, or in the show notes in the episode page at richroll.com. Next up in this mental health deep dive is Alexi Pappas. I adore this woman. She is truly extraordinary. Not only is Alexi an Olympic athlete, she's also a poet, a writer, a filmmaker, and an author. Her book is called Bravie, and it is a beautiful, lovely read. I highly suggest everybody check it out. I think most of us consider mental health to be chiefly an emotional issue or a chemical issue.

• 17:19Rich Roll?

  We know mental disorders have to do with something in our brains, but we think of them as thoughts and feelings gone awry, as opposed to something physically broken, a malady more akin to a scratch or a sprained ankle. But in this next clip, Alexi shares her experience of focusing on the physical side of mental health and the way that subtle shift in perspective changed her life and put her on the path towards healing.

• 17:50Alexi Pappas?

  So I was in total denial that I was sick because I didn't understand that your brain can get injured, just like your knee. I just, I didn't understand that. And so I was of the mindset, as I had always been in my life, that I needed to keep pressing forward and fix all on my own, whatever it was that I was feeling, to the point where I wasn't sleeping, but I tried to force myself to sleep. And, you know, that's, it's called falling asleep for a reason. You have to let it, right? Let it happen.

• 18:22Rich Roll?

  You're being a good type A athlete. You're trying to will everything into existence.

• 18:27Alexi Pappas?

  And then I started to have these even darker thoughts. And that's when I felt like I understood my mom in a way that I never wanted to understand her. Like I, it's, you have these thoughts that like you want to die. And I don't think you really want to want to die, but the thoughts say otherwise. And that's when you're sick. And it was terrifying because I always, I've always been afraid my whole life for the moment that, um, that that might happen to me. And, and then when it did, but before I understood that there was a way to get better, I thought that that was just my fate. That like, that was, it now happened to me.

• 19:11Alexi Pappas?

  And because the narrative I was told about her was, she just had to go. Like she just, she was so sick that she had to go. And I was like, well, I guess I'm so sick that maybe I have to go because what, I don't know what else there is.

• 19:25Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 19:30Alexi Pappas?

  That's so embarrassing, honestly, to share because I don't feel that way anymore. But I didn't understand and I think it's sad that even someone who was susceptible to these things, you know, my family history was public, right? There was no prehab, if you will, if you want to call like, if we want to use this body comparison of the brain is a body part. I had no prehab, I had no preparation to deal with this. And it wasn't until my dad, because of his experience with my mom, made me get help, that I met a doctor, Dr. Arpaia, who told me very simply that I was sick and that my brain had a scratch on it

• 20:11Alexi Pappas?

  and that it could get injured like any other body part, but it could also heal like any other body part. And suddenly, everything, like, it literally turned around in a day. Not, I wasn't happy, but I believed that I could be on a path to healing and that I could commit to it, just like I would an Olympic dream. We are in a place where we can accept, I think, as a world that elite athletes and high achievers can have these mental injuries, these mental illnesses. But I think the most important thing now is like, what do we do about them? And that was something that I found, I find that sometimes, you know, we point fingers

• 20:54Alexi Pappas?

  at the like, the pinnacle institutions that we're chasing, but actually, I truly think that this kind of education or shift has to happen much younger and on a more universal level, not just at those pinnacles.

• 21:10Rich Roll?

  So what would that look like if you were in charge and could put those things in place?

• 21:15Alexi Pappas?

  Well, let's look at body, the way we've approached the body and like how that's progressed over the last, let's say, 10 years. Like 10 years ago, I don't think my dad or my friend's little sister would have seen a PT for their body without having an injury, meaning like regularly take care of their body. And so, just looking at that world, we've come a long way to accepting that our body is something not only elite athletes should take care of, but everybody should take care of. And that we should take care of it before it's a problem, ideally if you are able to have that kind of support. And it's not...

• 21:57Alexi Pappas?

  There's just like, systems and you can always, you can get that kind of help if you can and need it, right? And I think with mental health, the, the comparing it to healing an injury is so simple to me and makes so much sense. So what it would look like to me is accepting honestly that our brain is a body part and it can get injured. And when it gets injured, just like when we break our leg or feel something strange in our leg, we have no shame about sharing that something is off and we get help and we know where to get help. And i- it's either built into the system that we're in, like a team might have a physio, they might have a psychologist too.

• 22:42Alexi Pappas?

  Or someone can refer you to their favorite physio or their favorite psychol- like there's just more accessibility, just like there is in like the PT world. And then we get that help and we are as kind to ourselves as we are hard on ourselves, knowing that it's not going to resolve overnight. Like, nobody is demanding that somebody's broken leg heal tomorrow. And so why are we demanding that somebody's depression heal tomorrow?

• 23:08Rich Roll?

  Because it's uncomfortable for us to talk about, right? We want to pretend that it doesn't exist, or there's shame, or...

• 23:14Alexi Pappas?

  Right, because it's invisible. But if we like, think about it more like an injury, like, no one can see your torn hamstring either, but they know that it's there if you say it and they, they believe it's there. So if we just see it as more of a physical injury, which it is, then I think it becomes a little less, uh, subjective and a little more objective.

• 23:37Rich Roll?

  And in the meantime, just being told like, "You're gonna feel this way," allows you to be in acceptance, rather than beating yourself up because you woke up again and didn't feel good.

• 23:48Alexi Pappas?

  You're less, you don't have the secondary emotion of being offended by the sadness as much. You almost are like, you wake up with the sadness like it's, you know, "I don't have a child," but I think about like... If a baby's crying and you're at the grocery store, the baby's crying, but you've still gotta get the milk, you know? So I think about it in that way sometimes where you almost have a sense of humor about it, or at least some levity to understand that it's there, it will be there for a while, and you're in the process of making it go away. Actions change first, then thoughts, then feelings, and in that order. And that was another life-saving rule, basically, because what I observed from my mom

• 24:33Alexi Pappas?

  was that her caretakers were trying to force the feelings, and she was trying to force the feelings to change. And we can't. They follow our thoughts, which follow our actions.

• 24:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:47Rich Roll?

  Actions, then thoughts, then feelings. Pretty practical advice from somebody who has learned that lesson firsthand. But what kind of actions should we take? Should we sign up for therapy? What about physical therapy? Should we reach out to our neighbors? And how do we know if those actions are the right ones? Well, those questions lead directly to the heart of this next conversation with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. For those unfamiliar, Dr. Chatterjee is a pioneer in the field of progressive functional medicine. Widely regarded as one of the most influential doctors in the UK, Rangan is double-board certified in internal medicine and family medicine, and holds an honors degree in immunology.

• 25:32Rich Roll?

  He also hosts the popular Feel Better Live More podcast, which I've appeared on twice, and has been widely featured on a wide array of prominent media outlets like The New York Times, the BBC, Forbes, The Guardian, Financial Times, and many others. In his practice, Dr. Chatterjee has found himself increasingly treating patients on the daily who suffer from the downstream implications of living with chronic stress and other mental health disorders. This has given him the opportunity to treat his patients in unconventional ways, including a surprising approach you'll hear more about right now.

• 26:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  One of the prescriptions I give people, and I don't particularly like the term prescription, but one of the recommendations I make is to have a daily dose of pleasure, even just for five minutes. Now, again, just to bring this to life, I had a patient, 52-year-old chap, or maybe 53, you know, early 50s chap, CFO of a local plastics company, right? Again, comes in to see me. He's worried, "Doctor, do I have depression? What's going on?" "I struggle to motivate myself sometimes. I can't concentrate at work. I feel quite indifferent about my relationships. You know, what is going on?" So,

• 26:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  as always, I try and unpack different aspects of their life. "So, do you like your job?" "Yeah, not really. You know, it's so-so. I have to do it. You know, I've got a family I need to provide for them." "I said, 'Okay, fine. How's your relationship with your wife?'

• 27:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  "You know what? So-so. You know, I don't really see her that much. It's fine."

• 27:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  "Do you, um, do you have any hobbies?" "Doc, I don't have time for hobbies. I'm busy. I get back late." "So, okay, what about weekends?" "Weekends? I've got to do the household chores. I've got to take the kids to their classes. I don't have time for hobbies." So, the prescription I gave him, the recommendation I made to him at the end of doing this, and again, so that I don't get, not that it matters if I get criticised, but just so people understand, I did do the safety netting that has required of me. I didn't feel he was an active suicide risk. I didn't do all these sort of various things that I have to do as a doctor. I did check. But ultimately, what I felt was that he didn't have any passion in his life, right? And I said, "Look, did, I know you don't do any hobbies now. Did you ever have a hobby?"

• 27:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  "Well, yeah, I guess, you know, when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, I loved playing with train sets." "I said, 'Okay, great. Do you have a train set at home?'

• 28:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  "I've got one at home. It's in my attic. I've not seen it for years." "I said, 'Okay, look, what I would love you to do when you go home tonight is to get your train set out.'" Now, you've got a smirk on your face, right? Yeah. I get it. Hey, I have no judgment on people's hobbies. I had a train set when I was a kid. Well, I thought you were, I thought you were smirking at the fact that the doc, he came in to see me with a, with a problem he was concerned about and my prescription was to get out his train set. No, I'm with you on that. Okay, you're with me on that. Okay, so, so he, again, he agrees to go and do this. So he goes away. I don't see him then. It is not uncommon in general practice in the UK for you not to be able to follow up every single patient. You just simply cannot do that. So I got on with my job, I was, you know, doing my thing.

• 28:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Three months later, I'd finished my morning clinic and then we have something called home visits in the UK where, you know, normally after your morning clinic, you will then have a list from reception of people who are maybe elderly, infirm, who can't get out of the practice and you go and visit them at home to look after them. So I was, I went to the car park to go and do my home visits and I bumped into his wife. And I said, hey, hey, look, um, you know, how's your husband getting on? He said, Doc, it's just, yeah, I feel like I've got the, the guy I married back again. He comes home from work, he's straight onto his train set, he's on eBay all the time trying to buy collector's items and he's, and he's subscribed to this monthly collector's magazine now, right? So she's happy. Wearing his conductor hat at the house.

• 29:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hey, but she's happy, but I still hadn't seen him, right? Again, roughly three months later, I'm just going through my clinic as usual and I see his name pop up and he has had some blood tests, had a well manned check and he's coming in to see me to go through them. Welcoming in and before we go into the blood results, I say, hey, look, how are you getting on? He says, Doc, I feel like a different person. Life is great. I said, my mood's better, I've got energy. I said, okay, cool, you know, how's your job? Job, I love it, really getting a lot out of my job now. How's your relationship with your wife? Really, really good, I feel really close to her. So, just like that case, I don't know how long we've been chatting for, maybe an hour

• 30:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  ago, just like that, uh, story about the kid who was feeling low and who had a friendship deficiency, did this guy have a mental health problem? Sure, I think he had symptoms that would be consistent, I could have made, I could have labelled him and given him a diagnosis, right? Or did this chap really have a deficiency of passion in his life? And the remarkable thing for me is when that passion deficiency gets corrected. Not only does he feel better in himself, but everything else in his life starts to come back online. The job that he couldn't stand before, now he enjoys. The relationship that was a bit tired and he felt a bit indifferent about, now he's feeling closer to his wife.

• 30:52Rich Roll?

  What generally happens is that individual that came into your office would go into, would either not seek help, or in the event that that person has the wherewithal to seek help, would go to a practitioner. And at least in the United States, the system is set up wherein that doctor would only have 15 minutes with that person. And it's a setup rigged to diagnose and prescribe. And that person would leave with some kind of antidepressant medication, most likely, and would then consider themselves depressed or clinically, you know, having some kind of mental malady without that tactile kind of real world, practical solution

• 31:35Rich Roll?

  that you would implement because you had the opportunity to provide that person with a little bit more bandwidth.

• 31:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'm so passionate about this, Rich, because it's not as hard as we think it is. Take small, small steps. Find one thing you heard us talk about today that resonates with you, that you think you want to do. Don't pick something that you don't want to do. Pick something that you do want to do. Figure out how you can introduce a very small change in that area consistently for the next few days and then reassess. And I bet you, more often than not, you're going to feel good about yourself. Your identity is going to change because suddenly what happens then, oh, I'm the kind of person who can make behavior change. I've done that for the last five days. That is the approach I have seen over and over again work for people. Please, if you are struggling, take something from that.

• 32:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  Put that into your practice, not next Monday, right? Maybe put it into practice tomorrow.

• 32:33Rich Roll?

  I love that advice. Put it into practice tomorrow. How about today? Start small. Yes, start today.

• 32:49Rich Roll?

  Does taking action with your mental health always have to be so literal? Is it possible that there are circumstances where the best action you can take is to simply rest? That's the perspective of my next guest, Caroline Burckle. Caroline is a 2012 Olympian, she's a 23-time All-American swimmer, an NCAA champion, and an NCAA record holder. One of my very favorite people, I absolutely adore her. And today, she speaks about accepting our emotions, vulnerability, mentorship, honest communication, and the potency latent in rest. She has an amazing and powerful perspective, and I can't wait for you to hear it.

• 33:33Caroline Burckle?

  Your feelings are valid. They're not right or wrong. They're not measured. But learning how to use them constructively, whether it's through sharing, or understanding it, communicating, and being able to use those and move forward with whatever that is, is the key. So I think we get wrapped up in not saying anything because we're afraid to upset somebody. But if there's somebody that you can share how you feel with, and that feels like a safe space for you, feels safe to validate your feelings, say, "It's okay, you feel that way? Let's get a little more information about that." What is it that's really showing up there? And really, understanding the human's heart first, they're going to be able to perform

• 34:18Caroline Burckle?

  better. They're going to be able to take that and use whatever that is, and turn it into something constructive. Because I think we get stuck in our feelings, and we get stuck just thinking they don't matter, brushing them away, pushing them away. Really, there's so much power in that, there's so much information to be had in that, that's beautiful, regardless of if they're positive or negative. You can take that, remold it, and turn it into an amazing performance, a grade on a test, relationship with somebody, with your family members, extracurricular, whatever it is that that person's wanting to do. So that's something I like to say, because I think...

• 34:58Caroline Burckle?

  We're shameful of our feelings. We're shameful of what that means. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just information. And I wish I would have known that. I wish I would have been okay, knowing that however I felt was okay. And then it wasn't. There was nothing wrong with it. It was just information.

• 35:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's beautiful. I think it's super important. I feel like, at least in the context of sport, there has been a lot of progress and movement in the right direction in terms of better understanding that aspect of it. I mean, I'm two generations older than you, but when I see, you know, the way that young athletes are being coached and mentored now compared to what it was like when I was a kid, I mean, that was a long time ago. But, you know, of course, much more, there's much more to be gleaned and learned.

• 35:42Caroline Burckle?

  Totally. Mental health is at the forefront right now. People are caring about how people feel. And, and, you know, this is an important thing to note is that you can be struggling and also be okay with your performances. You can admit that you're having a hard time, and also you'll, you'll still be okay. You can still be and do great things. I think there's a misunderstanding there that if I, again, back to that, if I share that I'm depressed, or having a hard time, or going through something, then that means I'm not

• 36:27Caroline Burckle?

  gonna compete well.

• 36:29Rich Roll?

  It's gonna impinge on your performance, right? I mean, that's the whole message of the weight of gold, right? It's like kind of a call to action to embrace that aspect of what it means to be vulnerable and, and to have the courage to raise your hand and ask for help.

• 36:42Caroline Burckle?

  Absolutely.

• 36:43Rich Roll?

  The shrouding of it, the hiding of it, because you're supposed to be, you know, this bulletproof individual is not in service to anybody, and certainly not yourself.

• 36:53Caroline Burckle?

  And it's not complaining. It's owning. It's self-ownership.

• 36:58Caroline Burckle?

  You know, I think there's a difference between complaining. I have some athletes say, "Well, I don't want to complain." It's if we can shift it to its self-ownership, then we can take that and use it. Just because you're having a hard time, have asked for help, etc., doesn't mean you're all of a sudden going to perform poorly.

• 37:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 37:18Caroline Burckle?

  It doesn't mean that you're not focusing on your swimming, or your baseball, or whatever. It means that you're doing something for your mental health, which will then help that. So it's a perspective shift.

• 37:28Rich Roll?

  Right. It does require some level of mind-body integration, though, because you have to know when you are copping out. Like, am I just wimping out here? Or am I really in jeopardy where I need some outside help? Like, there is a difference. And if you don't have that kind of intuition, then, you know, you might be just, you know, indulging in your laziness, you know, instead of really being in peril.

• 37:56Caroline Burckle?

  But that's where great coaches and mentors come in. Because if somebody is vulnerable enough to share whatever it is, then they can catch that and be able to change that and turn that into something. Otherwise, they will just sit in their shit, so to speak, and, you know, let it go to shit, and, well, whatever, I'm just copping out, you know? So if they can articulate that, communicate that information to whomever, you know, coach, mentor, and this is where coaches and mentors can hear that, taking that information and being able to help somebody, being able to identify it without shame, and turn it into something better, call them out on what it is, in a nice way, in a beautiful way, like, "Hey, you're tough. Let's make something out of this. Like, we're not going to let

• 38:41Caroline Burckle?

  this happen to you here." That's where things can shift for the positive.

• 38:45Rich Roll?

  This is applicable outside of sport, in the workplace, like a boss-employee relationship, or how management is structured, so that the work staff feels like they can, you know, raise certain issues, and the manager is creating an environment that's conducive to that, I think, you know, ultimately leads to a much more effective, healthy... Place to work or, you know, environment to excel as an athlete.

• 39:10Caroline Burckle?

  Absolutely. And that is one of the most important things that I think any organization can hold. Coaches, teams, USA Swimming, is that if the standard is held there and if people are all believing in whatever leadership there is and the leaders are able to develop these people, athletes, you know, employees, whatever it is, into a space of vulnerability, openness, and action on what it is that we're doing, not just talking about it and sitting around. It's like actually acting on it. Whether that action is let's sit with this for a minute, or that action is let's take action and do something right now. Both of those things are beautiful. That's how things develop. And yeah, those are my greatest

• 39:54Caroline Burckle?

  learnings from Mike DeBoer. He was just very much either like, okay, let's, now that we have that information, let's either go this way and act on it immediately, or I'm gonna let you sit with that for a second. I'm right here, next to you, but I'm gonna let you sit with that for a second. And like, knowing that I was like held in that space, I think, you know, reflecting back, that makes all the difference. Because either way is an action. You're giving, you're empowering them either way.

• 40:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 40:19Caroline Burckle?

  They gotta figure it out on their own either way, but it's the person that's gonna hold steady and sturdy there that's holding a leadership standard.

• 40:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 40:27Rich Roll?

  This next clip is from one of the most influential people in my life, perhaps more than any other single person beyond my wife and my kids. He has had, without knowing it, an unbelievably profound impact on my journey, on my career, and how I think about and pursue self-expression. His name is Steven Pressfield. He's a novelist. He's a screenwriter, and the guy behind some of the most important nonfiction books on creativity that I've ever read, including, of course, The War of Art, which you've likely heard me talk about quite frequently on the podcast because it impacted me so deeply. But chief among his many messages on creativity is a concept he calls resistance.

• 41:10Rich Roll?

  Negative self-talk is such a prevalent part of our mental lives and can often lead to shame spirals of anxiety, depression, self-sabotage, and ultimately self-harm or suicidal ideation. And Stephen shares his experience of how to suit up and win this war against the negative force of resistance. I hold this man and his work in the absolute highest regard. I can't thank him enough for the gift of his many contributions. His books changed my life and I can't wait to share his wisdom with all of you right now.

• 41:48Steven Pressfield?

  Resistance is this negative force of self-sabotage that will work against us anytime we try to move from a lower level to a higher level, ethically, morally, creatively. If you have an idea for a book, if you have an idea for a podcast, if you have an idea for this studio or something that you want to do, and I want to ask you about this, Rich, a voice will come into your head immediately that will say, "Who are you to do, put this thing together?" This has been done a million times and it's been done better than you ever could do or ever would do. You're too old, you're too young, you're too fat, you're too skinny, you don't have enough education, you have too much education, et cetera, et

• 42:30Steven Pressfield?

  cetera. And that negative force is universal. I can tell you from the thousands of emails I've got, and not only is it universal, but it's the same voice in all of our heads. It may be tailored a little bit to you or to me, but it's the same voice. And I was never aware of that. And once I could sort of give a name to it, then I could say, "Okay, now I have something I can deal with. How can I overcome this? Can I develop habits that will help me overcome it? Can I organize my day in such a way? Can I change my mindset in such a way?" And so, anyway, that's kind of my definition of resistance.

• 43:13Rich Roll?

  Well, the first step seems to be disassociating your identity from the resistance itself, because I think what we all kind of do is...

• 43:26Rich Roll?

  Self identify with that. That is part of who we are.

• 43:28Steven Pressfield?

  That's a great way of putting it, Rich. I've never heard that before. That's exactly it.

• 43:31Rich Roll?

  Well, you have talked about, you know, this idea that exists outside of yourself, right? If you're just thinking, "Well, I can't do it." This is me telling myself this as opposed to this external force that we can, you know, define as this pernicious entity working at odds with our, this, our, our, our effort to climb to that, you know, elevated place.

• 43:53Steven Pressfield?

  What you just said, Rich, is exactly right. The, of disassociating this concept of resistance, this fact of resistance, from your own identity. Like, when we hear this voice in our head that says, "You're not good enough. It's all been done, et cetera, et cetera," what makes that so powerful against us is we think it's our own thoughts. We think, "Oh, that's me assessing the situation objectively," but it's not. It's this other siren voice, this, this force that's just out there, that's a fact of nature. And once we can say, "Oh, that's not me," that kind of is the key to the whole thing. And then again, there is

• 44:34Steven Pressfield?

  this force of resistance that when we try to ask that question of ourselves, you know, "Who am I? What do I love? What am I, what is my gift?" This force of resistance will try to stop us from examining it. It'll try to distract us. It'll try to push us off into shadow careers, or shadow activities, or something that's not in that, in that, in that way. That's, that's the war. Going and, and, and fighting that, and you're fighting it against your own self, against your own self-sabotage that's trying to stop you. So that is, to me, that's kind of the, the, coming into who you were already. You already were that, but you just didn't know it. And through these actions, you, you realize it

• 45:17Steven Pressfield?

  and you go, "Wow, I had no idea I was gonna have a podcast. I had no idea I was gonna be talking to 587 people and writing, finding Ultra, and finding Ultra Part 2," you know? I had no, or whatever else is out there.

• 45:29Rich Roll?

  Right. But it's, but, but, but it's in the doing, right? The waging of the war is, is... Is action-based, right?

• 45:37Steven Pressfield?

  Yes.

• 45:38Rich Roll?

  Whereas, I think a lot of people are, maybe they're pursuing some self-inquiry, but it's an intellectual exercise and they're sort of awaiting the epiphany.

• 45:48Steven Pressfield?

  Exactly, and I think for me, I can tell you that I spent many years in that world inside my head, wasting my time. It's like therapy, it's like going there, you know, and you know, I think I've written like 20 books now, which is kind of amazing to me, since my first book came out when I was 55.

• 46:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 46:08Steven Pressfield?

  And it's absolutely true that before I wrote any one of those books, I had no clue that I was gonna write that book. You know, not like, it wasn't like I was sitting, "Oh, I've got this whole magazine of books, like bullets in a magazine, waiting to go." I had no idea at all. But the point of that is that we find out who we are by the works that we produce. But until, until you actually start to, once you start to act, like I'm sure it's the same in ultra fitness or anything like that, once you actually start, then you start to discover things.

• 46:48Rich Roll?

  Right, the path unfolds in front of you.

• 46:50Steven Pressfield?

  It does.

• 46:50Rich Roll?

  Slowly.

• 46:51Steven Pressfield?

  Not easily.

• 46:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the idea being that what paralyzes many is they wanna see what that path looks like, or at least, you know, be able to forecast pretty far down the line before they take the first step, and it just doesn't work that way. You have to take those steps not knowing and trust that, you know, the brick will get laid right, you know, one step in front of you as you go.

• 47:14Steven Pressfield?

  Yeah, and it is scary. I mean, it is the unknown that we're going through, going into, and it's scary, there's no doubt about it.

• 47:22Rich Roll?

  Right. We transition now to another kind of self-sabotage. What happens when we lose complete control over our ability to reason, to register our surroundings, to recognize our loved ones, or even to comprehend the distinction between memory and reality? I'm of course talking about dementia, and more specifically, Alzheimer's disease.

• 47:49Rich Roll?

  No deep dive into mental health would be complete without discussing one of the most prevalent and devastating mental health disorders, a disease that currently afflicts over 47 million people worldwide and is predicted to triple by 2050. But it's especially important to talk about Alzheimer's in light of the work of my next guests, Aisha and Dean Shirze. Aisha and Dean together are a husband and wife neurology team. Together, they co-direct the Alzheimer's Prevention Program at Loma Linda University, where they study all things brain health with a very specific focus on lifestyle interventions that can prevent cognitive decline and neurodegeneration.

• 48:33Rich Roll?

  Their work is proving that Alzheimer's is preventable and even reversible in 90% of cases. This clip is absolutely mind blowing, and I hope that it can serve as life-changing information for you if you or someone you love is affected by this horrible disease.

• 48:54Speaker 08

  I mean, we're talking about every other disease in decline, pretty much every other disease, or death from every other disease in decline. Yet mortality and death from Alzheimer's in just the last 10 years has grown more than 80%. Part of that is because we're aging society. We're doing better with the, yeah, we have more diabetes. We have more obesity. We have more of all these other diseases, but we're surviving them with machines, with surgeries, with these catheters, all these things. We're living past what we would have lived before.

• 49:24Rich Roll?

  We can survive diseases that used to kill us.

• 49:27Speaker 08

  Exactly. But when it comes to what's left behind is our brain. At the end of the day, we're left with our brain. And it's the cumulative problems over 50, 60 years.

• 49:39Speaker 08

  That actually end up in being Alzheimer's at the end, or dementia and general Alzheimer's. And that's where we bring the new kind of conversation.

• 49:47Rich Roll?

  So when you begin this journey 15 some odd years ago, I would imagine, like you alluded to earlier, your colleagues are like, "This is career suicide. What are you doing? You're going to start looking at lifestyle medicine for this." And so I think it would make sense to explain, or at least talk through some of the myths and the misconceptions about this disease, particularly this notion that it's a purely genetic situation. Like, if you have the gene, this is what's going to happen, and there's nothing you can do about it.

• 50:20Ayesha Sherzai?

  Right. That has been the misunderstanding for such a long time. And there are a few genes in Alzheimer's disease, maybe less than 5% of the genes that completely determine whether somebody gets Alzheimer's or not. As a matter of fact, if you have those genes, you're definitely going to get it. But even for those, you can push it off for a very long time. For the rest of them, for the 95-plus percent of the genotypes, it's quite clear that what you do in your life, the type of food that you eat, whether you exercise or not, or the level of stress that you have determine whether you're going to get the disease

• 51:02Ayesha Sherzai?

  in your early 60s or in your late 90s.

• 51:06Rich Roll?

  Right. So the magnitude of how these genes are expressed is contingent upon what you're eating and how you're moving and how you're living your life.

• 51:14Ayesha Sherzai?

  Completely.

• 51:15Speaker 08

  Completely. If you take care of your brain, you've taken care of all the body. Because now, this thing that we're trying to create, Living Mind Kind, it's about the mind, mindful living. And so this affects the totality of your body. For a brain, it's something more than that because here you have emotions as well. You have motivation, you have all this. So one of the elements of our book is not just saying, "This is bad, and this is good." But where we have failed people is we just throw it at them without giving them the tools of how to apply it to their life. So mindful living is the unique thing about our book, more than even the science.

• 51:56Ayesha Sherzai?

  And it's a vicious cycle. If you feel good, based on the good neurochemicals being produced appropriately, if you take care of your brain and if you have a healthy mind. That owning that mindfulness in your life and applying it on a regular basis can help you take better care of yourself. So there you go. You have a healthy brain. You have the tools to take care of your heart and the rest of your body.

• 52:22Rich Roll?

  Right, and everything follows from that, right?

• 52:24Speaker 08

  Depression. Recently, papers came, several, I mean, whenever, as a science, we don't say a paper came. A paper means nothing. It has to be multiple and validated. Lots of papers say that one of the major causes of depression, inflammation.

• 52:39Ayesha Sherzai?

  Yeah.

• 52:40Speaker 08

  So it keeps coming back, yet we keep slipping. I call it logic slip. And a lot of times when you have debates, you keep building these logical sequence and you work past the fallacies and everything, and then it slips again. That's what's happening in nutrition and lifestyle. And you make the case. I mean, the case for diet has been made over and over again, and then all of a sudden slipping again. Now we know inflammation and all these things actually even affect the depression, anxiety, everything, all of these diseases.

• 53:10Rich Roll?

  Right, you can't, you can't extract one thing from the other, right? And it seems like the advent of functional medicine, lifestyle medicine, is, is growing and people are starting to embrace this idea that it's not just one treatment protocol, that we have to kind of look at a person in a holistic way and, you know, treat them all the way down to, you know, how they, how they interact with their family members and at work and what's their relationship with their boss. And, you know, all of that stuff is crucial, right? To kind of solving this problem.

• 53:46Rich Roll?

  We have to look at a person in a holistic way. But can we also look at the totality of our emotions? The joys as well as the sorrows in a holistic way? Is there anything we can learn from negative emotions and mental health struggles? Is there a way to find healing through reframing our perspective on depression, committing to total honesty about our feelings and exercising vulnerability?

• 54:14Rich Roll?

  Well, Kundalini Yoga Master and dear friend Guru Singh addresses all of those questions in the following clip. I encourage you to spend time with this next one and really absorb what he has to say. It's a simple perspective shift, but it is by no means easy to do. Please enjoy and take in the wisdom of Guru Singh.

• 54:39Rich Roll?

  The pace, the accelerated pace with which culture, society is advancing, is changing, is evolving, is so outpacing our evolutionary ability to adapt. You know, we're still, evolutionarily, you know, built into our DNA, into our genetic code, is a life that, that looks like whatever's going on in the, you know, the indigenous tribes of Africa. And if you go to those places, you know, you always hear these stories, "Oh, I went to, I went to India, I went to Peru, I went..."

• 55:19Rich Roll?

  Wherever it is, and people who spend time with cultures that are relatively immunized from the way that we live, realize how much happier they are, how much more connected they are, how much more communal they are, and content. They have all of these things that we're trying so desperately to build into our own lives, but which continue to elude us because the very things that contribute to that which we seek, we've decided are either optional or not important.

• 55:52Guru Singh?

  Think about these. Depression has a value because when you're depressed, you can go into some pretty deep places, some pretty dark places. And when you go into those places with the sense of, "Let me explore," rather than, you know, "Let me feel horrible," those deep places can find character, can find parts of your being that are able to come forward that would never be noticed if you were just giddy and happy all the time. And the same thing with good grief, right? Grieving.

• 56:33Guru Singh?

  Sadness, grief, you know, these are also valuable moments. So depression and grief and sadness are all things that when they come upon us, we should go into fully, but giving ourselves the space. I'm going to take a sick day because I'm feeling really sad. And let me go into this sadness. Let me process this sadness. Let me gain the messaging from this sadness, just as if I was to take a sick day because I've got the flu. These are things that need to be viewed within the individual life.

• 57:15Guru Singh?

  But the fact is, is that diving into that, that depression, diving into that sadness and taking off the mask and admitting it and saying, you know, I'm not looking for anything from you, but I just got to say, you know, what's happening in the world today or what's happening in my world today or what just happened, you know, in my home or whatever, you know, you know, I'm not feeling good. Or you could even say if it's chronic, you know what? I haven't felt good for 10 years. And then all of a sudden, let's go.

• 57:48Rich Roll?

  The cocktail party goes silent.

• 57:51Guru Singh?

  But you know, to heck with the cocktail party. You know, let's be honest.

• 57:55Rich Roll?

  This is the thing. I mean, I think it's terrifying for people. If I admit that I'm not feeling good, you know, what are people going to think of me? And I think that goes right back into this discussion around shame and around vulnerability. You know, we're taught to comport ourself in a certain way, to navigate social circles in a manner that will allow us to maintain that, that trajectory of upward mobility. And to act in contravention of that is to put at risk everything that you've staked your life upon, which provokes fear. And that sense of shame is the ultimate prophylactic against behaving in a way that actually would contribute to greater health.

• 58:38Rich Roll?

  If we're ashamed about something, the most terrifying thing would be to shed light on it, to expose that in a vulnerable way to another human being. The stakes can be very high for people, but ultimately.

• 58:53Rich Roll?

  Placing that into a social setting in which it can be discussed in a mature way is the path to healing.

• 59:04Speaker 08

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:05Rich Roll?

  But it requires us to be vulnerable, and we're not raised to be vulnerable. But I think that vulnerability, that willingness to be vulnerable, is the ultimate courage. And when you can expose that which you're ashamed of, from a place of wanting to heal it, asking for help, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, requires a tremendous amount of courage.

• 59:28Speaker 08

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:32Rich Roll?

  So far in this deep dive, we've covered many facets of mental health, but I would be remiss if we failed to cover PTSD, a very serious affliction that impacts somewhere between 11% and 20% of all Iraq war veterans and 30% of Vietnam vets. Something like 22 veterans take their own lives every single day, which is just horrifically insane. War, of course, takes its toll, but I think it's incumbent upon all of us to better address the undeniably significant psychological effects that we ask our brave men and women to endure. But there is a path to healing. Our steward for this exchange is Iraq war combat veteran Sarah Lee.

• 1:00:16Rich Roll?

  Sarah is a former Army sergeant who served eight years in the military, including a 14-month deployment to Iraq in 2004 for Operation Iraqi Freedom II. Her story is heartbreaking. Upon returning home from deployment, Sarah basically endured one thing after another until she found herself 100 pounds overweight and descending into this very dark depression that became so bleak that in April 2017, she very nearly took her own life. And the absolutely bone-chilling part about our conversation is this: The very same day, in fact, at the exact same time that Sarah and I recorded this conversation, which was

• 1:01:00Rich Roll?

  a fair while ago, just 13 miles away from us, another young military veteran, in a fit of depression and despair, pulled out a .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol with a laser sight and opened fire on a crowd of mostly 20-somethings and ultimately killed 12 people before fatally shooting himself.

• 1:01:23Rich Roll?

  And I think the confluence of these two events really underscores and emphasizes the severe gravity of our mental health epidemic. Sarah thankfully found a way towards healing, which as you'll hear in a moment, all began with a bicycle. So what was the lowest moment?

• 1:01:47Speaker 11

  It was the day right before I bought my bicycle, right before I bought the bicycle. And I just, I knew after the surgery I'd be limited. My, my neck had gotten bad, my knees, I felt like I'd have to start all over. I had no muscle base anymore for, because that's when I'm not really in pain, is when I have the muscle in place. And I just felt like I just didn't even, I'm just not capable of, of anything anymore.

• 1:02:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Was it depression? Was there suicidal ideation? Was there, you know, what was the mindset?

• 1:02:25Speaker 11

  There, yes, I definitely was, I guess I, I can say that I was fantasizing about it. And that evening was probably the, the closest I'd ever come in my head to, to an attempt. I hadn't attempted suicide prior. And I just decided that, that I can't do that to my, I lucked out with very loving family and I couldn't do that to my parents. So.

• 1:02:56Rich Roll?

  But even in that moment, you didn't have friends or family around that had a sense that you were going sideways?

• 1:03:04Speaker 11

  No, no one really knew I was going through any of this until I, I made a Facebook post about it. And basically I said a lot of the things that I've said here. I expressed and explained that since getting out of the military, it feels like I've kind of lived a whole lifetime and there's really nothing left to do. That's kind of where I'd arrived in my mind. I said that I've had these nagging, gnawing thoughts that I'm really only living life to fulfill some sort of obligation to the people that love me. And nothing more. And I felt so guilty about saying that because everybody that cares

• 1:03:45Speaker 11

  for me is probably like, you know, I thought she has a great time with me. I could have done or said something differently. And usually people end up thinking that after it's too late. That's why I decided I need to get this post out there. And the reason I waited is because I, the bike trip was already in motion. I was like, here's what I'm doing about it. So I didn't want to just come out and say

• 1:04:06Rich Roll?

  Oh, right. Okay, gotcha. So you posed, you went public with it after you were already kind of well into the solution?

• 1:04:13Speaker 11

  I made that post and then I described the, the plan for the journey. And the support was unbelievable. It wasn't like I expected it would be like private messages. You know, you're in my thoughts and if there's anything I can do, you know, stuff like that. People were like, this is amazing. I'm sharing this and maybe other veterans will kind of decide to do something about it, or just try to take back some of that purpose for themselves, try to take on a challenge.

• 1:04:45Rich Roll?

  Well, so when you're in that moment, you were in that darkest, you know, that darkest moment, what was it that clicked inside of you to do something about it? Like, take me from that moment to the moment of deciding that you're gonna, you know, get a bike and ride a bike and how this whole ride came together?

• 1:05:06Speaker 11

  Yes, I, I'd been planning the trip with a friend, a friend I met through a mutual friend, a Marine, and we talked about, but I hadn't purchased my bicycle yet. And I was still really struggling and on the fence about, you know, actually going through with it. And I had an evening where I just, I just tend to stare at the wall sometimes for a while and think about big stuff or just anything really. And I get kind of lost in some of that. And I think I just convinced myself that I think people would be okay. And that basically it goes back to coming home without my friend. Just, I don't know if I deserve

• 1:05:51Speaker 11

  to be here. And I'm not even taking advantage of the life that has been gifted to me because of someone else's sacrifice. And it just really gnaws, gnaws at me. It still does. But um,

• 1:06:06Speaker 11

  I I had kind of a a game plan for if I'd gone through with with taking my life and everything and it was a bit elaborate, but it was kind of like the least, one of the, maybe the least shocking kind of ways. I just didn't wanna hurt anyone or scar anybody.

• 1:06:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:27Speaker 11

  You know, so um, that night, I was, I was, I was right there, I'll say, I was like right there and I ended up just falling asleep. And so the next day, I was like, that's it, it's, I can't do one more night like that. I'm not gonna get through it. I'm not gonna get through it. So I literally just woke up and went and purchased my bicycle the next day.

• 1:06:54Rich Roll?

  Went right to the bike store?

• 1:06:55Speaker 11

  Yes.

• 1:06:56Rich Roll?

  And you had had, so the plan was, the, the plan was already in motion to do a ride prior to that. You just hadn't taken any action on it yet?

• 1:07:04Speaker 11

  Right. I purchasing the bicycle was like the, the decis-, like that is decision maker.

• 1:07:11Rich Roll?

  And had you been a cyclist? Like, had you ridden a bike before?

• 1:07:17Speaker 11

  No, not, well, not since ninth grade.

• 1:07:20Rich Roll?

  Other than just being a kid's around the neighborhood.

• 1:07:22Speaker 11

  No, then no. Grade school was the last time I'd ridden a bicycle. So, but it comes right back. It really does. I, I took the bicycle.

• 1:07:31Rich Roll?

  The adage is true. Once you learn how to ride a bike.

• 1:07:33Speaker 11

  Riding a bike and everyone would say it and I'd be like, huh huh. And then I got on it and I'm like, okay, that's why that exists. It, it really does come right back.

• 1:07:40Rich Roll?

  So when you think back on this bike ride, is it the adventure aspect of it? Is it the challenge aspect of doing something that was very difficult and maybe you thought you couldn't do? Was it the connecting with the veterans and just Americans in general? What aspect of that do you think has been the most impactful on your healing process? Or is it just all of those things together?

• 1:08:12Speaker 11

  Well, the, the easy answer would be all of it. And the truest answer would be all of it. But, uh,

• 1:08:20Speaker 11

  I really feel that I wasn't okay. And I'm really no good to anyone unless I'm good to go. And this, the reconnecting, like you said, with your body, with nature and with people, I think it just really takes all three of those things. That's why I want to do this next step. And I felt like my life was changed forever in a really good way, from east to west. I just, I like to relive some of the days randomly throughout my day.

• 1:09:00Speaker 11

  And I just, I want to facilitate like smaller versions of what I like, you know, experienced firsthand, this healing. I want to help other veterans get a sense of that, or at least introduce them to it.

• 1:09:17Rich Roll?

  Okay, well, here we are, the final clip. And I cannot think of a better way to close out this deep dive than with the story of Hakim Tafari. Hakim is quite an extraordinary human. He's an ambassador of running culture and mindfulness. He's a master of many a martial art, from Kung Fu to Tai Chi. He's also an herbalist, a massage therapist, a vegan, a father, and a practitioner of many a spiritual path, from Buddhism to Taoism, and essentially everything in between. He speaks in this final clip about the light at the end of the darkness. And my desire is that if you're listening to this because you're struggling with anxiety

• 1:09:57Rich Roll?

  or depression, or any other mental health malady, that you find comfort, healing, and hope in Hakim's story.

• 1:10:10Hakim Tafari?

  You need something. Come to the temple. At the time, I didn't know what the temple was. She said, "Come to the temple." I was like, "Okay." So I drive up there, and I've got this big Springfield 45 next to me. And at the time, I had just got off the phone with my ex. We had just got into a major argument. I'm literally just like shaking uncontrollably, and I'm like, "Do I just do it right now?"

• 1:10:41Hakim Tafari?

  I'm looking at the gun. I'm in front of the temple. I'm looking at the gun.

• 1:10:50Hakim Tafari?

  And then I'm like, alright, fuck it. I'm gonna go do whatever this fucking thing is. I don't know what I'm gonna get into, but I'm gonna do it. That could have been my last day on the earth. And instead, I chose to sit in front of a wall in silence for an hour and a half.

• 1:11:08Johann Hari?

  Hmm.

• 1:11:10Hakim Tafari?

  When I was literally crawling on the bottom, like, I don't know if I can make it. That was kind of like the ladder that was like, yes, you can.

• 1:11:23Hakim Tafari?

  There's so much beauty in suffering.

• 1:11:25Johann Hari?

  Hmm.

• 1:11:26Hakim Tafari?

  There's so much beauty in suffering. And I, and I know it sounds so... It's not cliche, but it's... People are like scratching their head, how can you suffer? How can there be beauty in suffering? When you go through the suffering that a lot of us have, that have been on the show, that have become successful, is because when you go through that suffering, you go through such a darkness, you go through such a bottom feeder kind of exposure that

• 1:12:05Hakim Tafari?

  you learn to have gratitude for the smallest thing. The smallest thing. And when I, when I think about, um, the times when I didn't think that I was gonna really make it out of that space. There were times, Rich, when I would be in the car park of Whole Foods, like, crying, crying my heart out, screaming at the top of my lungs, looking around, like,

• 1:12:49Hakim Tafari?

  how the fuck did I end up in this situation? Because mental health and suicide is so big. And I know in this day and age, it's being amplified and people are talking about it, but

• 1:13:03Hakim Tafari?

  when you hit a certain level of...

• 1:13:08Hakim Tafari?

  Suffering and you think there is nothing else.

• 1:13:14Hakim Tafari?

  You can look back at these times in that darkness and be like, man, if I didn't know the depths and the levels of darkness, I wouldn't be able to enjoy this moment right now.

• 1:13:37Rich Roll?

  This concludes today's deep dive into mental health. I hope you not only enjoyed it, but found it helpful. In closing, if you find yourself struggling, please, I implore you, raise your hand and reach out for help. For a catalog of Helpline resources, you can visit the National Alliance on Mental Illness website at NAMI.org. And if you're experiencing suicidal ideation, I encourage you to call the Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK. I will, of course, include links to these resources and more in the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. And if you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and

• 1:14:21Rich Roll?

  most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, and leave a review or a comment. Sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and always appreciated. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Dan Drake and Blake Curtis. Graphic elements courtesy of Jessica Miranda. Copyrighting again by Dan Drake, as well as Georgia Whaley. And of course,

• 1:15:06Rich Roll?

  our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis.

• 1:15:12Rich Roll?

  Appreciate the love. Love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Malasday.