Broglie Box: A Conversation About Mental Health | Episode 23

Confluence Financial Partners — Broglie Box: A Conversation About Mental Health | Episode #23

Greg: Hello, and welcome to the, Imagine That podcast. I’m your host, Greg Weimer, founder partner, and wealth manager at Confluence Financial Partners. Each month, we’ll explore new ways to help you maximize your life and your legacy and meet some extraordinary people along the way. So if you’re looking to get more out of your life today and legacy tomorrow, let’s get started. Let’s make a difference. I’m here with Julia Broglie and this is this is fun for me. Interesting. And hopefully rewarding for a lot of people listening. I’ve known Julia since, we were just talking, since, but right, right. When she was going to be a freshman in high school at Peters Township. And so this I’m looking forward to, I’m looking forward to this podcast, please listen.

And, and I mean, what I’m about to say, everyone listening, let’s make a difference together. There’s a problem out there.

It needs our attention. And forward this to other people and let’s spread the word. Let’s create a positive virus and let’s make a difference. I’m gonna share with you a statistic. And if this doesn’t give you chills, I, I don’t even want to tell you, but, but here it is, suicide is the second leading cause of death for people ages, listen to the first age, leading cause of death for people ages 10 to 34. And the number one reason for that is mental health. And my guess, Julia Broglie is working hard to bend the curve on that. And we all need to band together, whether it’s about the stigma, it’s about the treatment, it’s about the reimbursement and it all

starts with a conversation. So today we’re gonna start with my friend, Julia, and I know she thinks of me as Mr. Weimer. What’s my name?

Julia: Hi, Greg.

Greg: Oh, we did it. Yes. So small steps. So Julia, I hate to start so broad. I wish I could give you a, a, a more specific question, but I really want everybody to, to hear big question. Tell everybody your story.

Julia: Sure. How long is this podcast? No, I’m just kidding. I’ll keep it. I’ll keep it brief for the first question, but yeah, first of all, thank you so much for having me it’s conversations like this, very open, vulnerable conversations, real conversations that really drive you know, those statistics to become better. So I appreciate being here and having this conversation. My story, my mental health story really starts around the time that you and I first met, ironically. And when you met me, you probably saw a smiling face and someone that was super with sports and good grades and little did you know that I was actually dealing with a lot of what’s now been diagnosed as depression and anxiety since that young age. And I just struggled with these things in silence, because I was really embarrassed about them. I thought it was a personal weakness.

I thought it was something that I had to deal with on my own. And unfortunately that pattern continued through high school and college and even into my career after college, but what really changed my life? It was that my brother who was 18 months older than me, he also was struggling with the same things. And unfortunately at age 24 in April of 2014, Justin died by suicide. And that experience flipped my world upside down. It opened my eyes to the fact that I like to say it woke me up to the realization that I was most likely on the same path as he was, if I didn’t get some real help for myself. And then because my family was so open about his suicide and I started talking more openly about my own mental health challenges. What I found is that people were coming out of the woodwork, friends, family, like coworkers that were struggling, either struggling themselves too, or they knew someone that was. And so what we found is just, it’s so common for people to, to have these struggles. So that’s why I’ve dedicated my life’s work to helping people find the tools and the resources that I know are out there to help them help themselves.

Greg: I’ll tell you, there’s so much in there and it’s even hard to respond to, to be honest with you. But, and I wish we’d have done this on a video because I think people have this stigma of what mental health looks like, and it is just wrong. And you used the term struggling in silence during high school. You were probably at our house so many times and you’re right. You were the all-A student that came in and very active and, you know, and, and there was just a lot going on. And, and, and unfortunately that’s true of so many people. It’s so widespread. I, I was talking to a friend and he was talking about a high school in Pittsburgh. And he said, they, they polled the students. Two thirds of the students thought about suicide at some point. And, and I, I just couldn’t even believe that. And by the way, I remember where I was when I found out that your brother, boy, it was so unique back then. It was a, it was rare. And it, it, it is unfortunate how often we hear about that today. Unfortunately we hear about it way too often. So what could we have done? What should we have looked for when Julia was coming into our house and how could we have helped? And what should we have said back then?

Julia: Well, I think, you know what you said, first of all, about it being a shock to everybody with my brother, it, it was a shock to us that like, it was a shock to the community, I think because like, hi, you know, like me, he also on the outside, it seemed like he was thriving in life. And, you know, so I always like to say that depression and suicidal ideation doesn’t discriminate. So you could seemingly have it all in the world, but you might be affected by these things. And I think, you know, and the statistic also is that every 40 seconds, someone in the world dies by suicide. So although, you know, you think, oh, this could never happen to me or anyone that I know, the reality is that on that statistic, every single person will, will be affected by this.

Unfortunately, unless we do something about it.

But I think the first step, to answer your later question about ‘what could you have looked for?’ is I, because of stigma, because I thought no one else is going through this, except for me. So I need to just suck it up and I need to just deal with it on my own. And I should be embarrassed about it because I thought no one else was going through it. So if those students were polled at, at your friend’s high school, and there are so many students that were feeling the same way, I think just opening up the conversation about mental health. And it’s like, there’s this graphic that shows two people struggling with the same thing, but they’re both silent about it. But if, if somebody mentioned, oh, I’m struggling about I’m struggling with this. Then the other person is more likely to start talking about it.

And those people are both more likely to get help faster. So I think just, you know, for any like parents out there, you think, oh, this could never be my kid, but just opening up the conversation. And the reality of, Hey, one in five people will be affected by a mental health challenge. And even if you’re never diagnosed with a mental illness or a mental health condition, there are going to be curve balls in everyone’s life and different stressful situations and where your mental health is challenged and your, your state of mind is challenged.

And so just having those conversations, I think will encourage those that are struggling to be more comfortable to speak up and ask for help

Greg: The picture of you having like two people. And they’re struggling with the same thing. I used to have a, a large group of folks that, that would work for me some capacity, and I would learn what’s going on in their lives. And I just thought, now it obviously is very confidential, but I actually thought like, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could put at one table to dinner, everybody that someone in their family committed suicide, another table, everyone that’s dealing with, because, because it wasn’t, it’s not unique, unfortunately. And so so the first thing is what you’re saying is, let’s talk about it. Because like you, the more I’ve been talking about this a lot, the more you talk about it, the more someone’s like, you know what, my son, my daughter, my, my wife, you, you shouldn’t suffer in silence anymore. Let’s talk about it. That’s the first step. Fair.

Julia: Totally agree.

Greg: So that’s big, right? You just talk, you open up the conversation and you eliminate this stigma.

Julia: Yeah. I mean, I remember people in, in our circle after my brother died asking us if people ask us what happened, what do you want us to say? And my parents and I were like, what? Like Justin, my brother had a mental illness and he had his brain had an illness that convinced him that the world would be better off without him.

Greg: Wait, say that right there. Cuz I think you said that to me last week. And first of all, I couldn’t agree more. Like people don’t say that when someone has diabetes or a heart attack and I look at this as like, it’s unfortunate. It was, it was a brain attack. Yeah. Right? So like it’s, it’s a mental, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a mental illness. It’s a, he has a, he has a illness that, by the way, hope is on the way. I promise you hope is on the way for, for this illness.

Julia: People that, that have these suicidal ideations, they feel backed into a corner. They feel like they have no other option.

Greg: Well, you said that to me last week, you said, and, and, and you know, as the sister of, I know you were very, very close with Justin, they convince themself that the, the current state is the permanent state and the world and their loved ones would be better off without them.

Julia: They truly feel like a burden and they feel like they feel like there’s, there’s no other option. They’re backed into a corner when in reality, that is not the case at all. And if I will say, as someone who’s also experienced suicidal ideation that you just feel in the state of hopelessness. And I think that if anyone out there that’s, that’s listening. That feels that way. And I mean, it’s not that you want to die, it’s that you literally just want the mental pain to stop. And you feel like you don’t have a resource to go to. And especially, like eight years ago, when my brother died, it was very stigmatized. And now I think people, you know, are a little bit more open, but I can say with absolute certainty from all the research I’ve done in the last eight years, that suicide is 100 percent preventable.

And it is possible to go feeling like the lowest of the low to feeling like yourself again. And I’m living proof of that because I went from having suicidal ideation all through college, losing my brother to suicide, not knowing how I was ever, ever going to bounce back from that. And you find, I hate to use the word new normal, because with COVID, it’s kind of, you know, become this catchphrase or whatnot, but you, you find, you do find this new normal and you, with the right help and the right professional resources, you can feel like yourself again.

Greg: So Julia, if you could talk right now to someone listening and just with the amount of people that listen, someone is having suicidal thoughts. If you could say one thing to them, or if you could talk to them, what would that be?

Julia: So for me, I think I would tell them that it’s time to unsilence your pain. And there are several reasons for that. One is your pain matters simply because you do and by unsilencing your pain, you have the opportunity to feel like yourself again. And the people around you truly do care about you and they want you to be alive. And I think just reaching out to one person as scary as it might be, you would be surprised at the reaction that you would receive in a positive way. If you tell someone how you’re feeling, your network, your, your community, they’re going to respond, and they’re gonna try to help you. And if you feel like there’s no one in your community that you feel comfortable talking to, please reach out to me and I will get the help that you need.

Greg: Cause Julia, how long ago, if you, if I could be so personal, how long ago has it been that you’ve had those thoughts?

Julia: So the first time I had suicidal thoughts was definitely in high school. When it got really bad for me, it was my senior year of college. And I, only a couple people knew, my friend would, one of my friends would actually like break into my house to make sure I was okay. And I definitely had, after my brother died, it was hard to find hope again. But luckily I had, I immediately got professional help and so through therapy and medication and through my healing journey found all these other tools to help me through the grieving process. So it’s, it’s been, it’s been some time since I’ve had really dark thoughts like that, but I like to say that I’m constantly in recovery. It’s not like when you have, when you’re diagnosed with something like depression or anxiety, it’s not like it, it can just go away immediately. And sometimes it comes back. I still struggle with these things sometimes. But I I’ve built these tools that I have in my toolbox. I like to say to help me so that those periods of time aren’t as intense. And they, they get a little bit shorter. You know, like when I was struggling in college, I remember like six months of my life feeling really, really down. And now when I have these phases of depression, it might last maybe two weeks, which isn’t bad comparatively.

Greg: And now she’s dancing on Instagram, ready to be ready to be married soon. So

Julia: Yes, I’m getting married in like three, three and a half weeks.

Greg: So think about, yeah. So like when you’re in that dark, dark spot, you go from and, and listen, we’re all on a cycle, right. So it’s, it’s not straight up, but you have certainly done a lot of work to cope with your mental health. What are some of the things you’ve done? So I know you have some things you do to, to build some, some resilience in your life. What are those things?

Julia: Resilience, mental resilience is one of those things that you can work on every single day. And I like to say like, don’t wait. And for people, I like to say, don’t wait until a crisis happened. Like I did it to start building mental resilience—

Greg: Because people say, I feel okay now.

Julia: Yeah. But that’s when that’s when you should be working on it.

Greg: So let’s do that again, because people say, I feel okay right now. And so then, right? They stop the good habits.

Julia: Yep. That’s exactly when you should be working on it, because then you’re gonna, you get into this practice. It’s just like anything, you know, when you go to the gym, you don’t wait until your arm is broken and, and weak to start lifting weights. And when you do start lifting weights, you don’t lift the heaviest weight right off the bat. So just like your physical health, we should be treating mental health in the same way. Just like you go to your dentist every six months for cleaning, what is that for? That’s preventative. You don’t wait until you have the really, really awful thing to go to the dentist or hopefully you don’t. So basically when I, when my brother died and I started this healing journey for myself, what I, I was really curious. And I think it’s the engineer in me to like dive into the research.

And so I actually interview and talk to a bunch of mental health professionals and ask them, what are you recommending for people outside of therapy to help build their mental resilience? And then I also spoke to people who were resilient themselves and they’d gone through things and they’d come out on the other side. And what I found is that there were six reoccurring themes, and those are mindfulness, gratitude, relaxation, sleep, nutrition, and fitness. And when people were incorporating either some or all of those six themes into their either daily or weekly routine, they were more likely to be okay. When things, when life threw the, the curve balls as it inevitably will. So the six categories that we recommend to help build mental resilience are mindfulness, gratitude, relaxation, nutrition, sleep, and fitness. And if you incorporate one or all of those six elements into your daily routine or your weekly routine, you’re more likely to build mental resilience over time.

For example, mindfulness has been one that I really, significantly helped me, especially with my anxiety and the definition that I like the most of mindfulness that I think helps understand, people understand it the most, is to be mindful, you are becoming more reflective than reactive. So one simple tool I can give people for mindfulness is to fact check your thoughts. So they say that you have over 6,000 thoughts a day, and if you believed every single one of them, that would be very confusing. So for me personally, with my anxiety disorder, I was having really negative thoughts over and over and over again. And I felt like I was spinning out of control and I had no control over them.

Greg: Do you mean like worst case scenario thoughts? Is that what you mean?

Julia: Yeah. Worst case scenario thoughts, also telling me I wasn’t good enough, telling me I never deserved any help. My situation wasn’t bad enough, that I was so weak. I wasn’t smart enough, you know, all, all over and over again. And so, you know, like I, for, to be mindful is basically when that thought comes in, stop yourself and say, wait a minute, is this a fact, or is this something that I’ve, that maybe isn’t true? And so by just allowing yourself to pause for a second, then you can think about how you choose to react to that thought. Then it, it helps it, it basically just gives you space in between the time that you can say, like, should I believe this or not?

Greg: Because I guess if you’re telling yourself that, all day sooner or later, you do believe it. Right? And there, and, and by the way, this is, this is a very active person that is like, like, doesn’t look like any of the things she just said, it’s the antithesis of that. But, but you can still convince yourself of that. Right? So I think that I, I it’s, I would call it calling bullshit on your thoughts. Right? It’s sort, I mean, it’s sort of what it is. It’s like, but you can convince yourself that, especially at two o’clock in the morning, right. When you’re like, I don’t know why when you wake up at two o’clock, you tend to worry more, but so you, you fact check, you fact check.

Julia: Fact check your thoughts. Yeah. It’s so powerful. And even, I mean, like, even if you’re, if someone says something to you that might make you angry or might stress you out, instead of immediately reacting to it, by practicing mindfulness over time, you’ll find taking a pause and saying like, okay, how do I, how do I want to react to that situation? So it’s an internal exercise, and then you can start to ex, you can start to practice that externally as well. And it’s really super powerful.

Greg: You know, I was at, you mentioned sleep. I was at Western Psych and it is incredible facility in Pittsburgh. And it’s gonna keep getting better. Facilities in Pittsburgh are coming together to make a difference. And I think you’re gonna see Pittsburgh take a leading role. And hopefully the whole, you know, people find out more about that over time. Hopefully soon. I was trying to learn at Western Psych and I’m, I’m on a tour and I’m trying to learn about it. And I said, so tell me the research here, like what’s going on? And they said, we are finding that sleep is so powerful. And, and I’m like, sleep? Do you know what I mean? Like sleep? So talk more about that. Like, is it, is it the amount of sleep? Is it type of sleep and how do you improve your sleep?

Julia: Most people think sleep is this time that you’re not your body’s not doing anything, that you’re resting, right? Because rest is sleep. But actually sleep is the time that your body is almost, I like to say taking out the trash, so it’s restoring itself. And so that, that time that your body is you’re resting, but your body is busy at work. It’s so critical for our mental health and our physical health. I like to say everyone’s different. I mean, most doctors will probably recommend that you get on average seven hours of sleep, somewhere, you know, six to eight hours of sleep a night. But I think what’s even more important when it comes to mental health around sleep is to set a routine. So I find that if I go to bed at a different time every day, and I don’t take time to wind down before bed, so turning off electronics, like blocking out any blue light from screens, having a little nighttime routine.

So like making my tea or doing reading or journaling or something, if I just try to go straight to bed and I’m doing it at a different time every single day, and I’m not getting up at the same time every single day, I feel way off. And so we, we recommend definitely setting a routine and then deciding, you know, to prioritize your sleep and, and fit that in. And also take that time to wind down. Because if you’re waking up in the middle of the night, two o’clock in the morning worried about something, it might be because you didn’t give yourself ample enough time to wind down before you went to bed.

Greg: Yeah. Do you do anything to measure your sleep? Do, do you like the Oura ring or the WHOOP bracelet or anything like that?

Julia: I don’t have any of those tools, but I’ve heard such good things. I’ve been looking into getting an Oura ring actually.

Greg: Yeah. I’ll send you one. Done. So we’ll send you an Oura ring. I, I use an Oura ring and it’s amazing. So if you would drink a glass of wine at night, right? It puts you to sleep. If, by two o’clock, the sugar wakes you up, or pasta, like what you eat it, it really does affect your sleep. Or I go to bed at nine. So I go to bed like at nine o’clock, if it’s not, if I’m not bed at nine, o’clock like, it’s a really powerful, it’s like, we’re, we’re going out hard to 10 or something. I don’t know. But like, I go to bed at , but I go to bed at nine and, and it, it is amazing. And this ring tracks your sleep and I’m telling you when I don’t get the right sleep and my heart rate doesn’t lower, I’m, I’m not as crisp the next day. And for those people that are like, oh, I don’t need sleep. You know, I can only, I’m good with four hours, they are lying to themselves. They are, they’re running a marathon with no end. And they are not as crisp. So, so sleep. I think gratitude’s obvious, but you can’t, you can’t be stressed and be grateful at the same time. If it, like, I’ve read all the stats on that. True?

Julia: Yeah. And I think most people think, oh, well, what if I’m feeling like not grateful one day? What I like to do, I actually have, have a gratitude jar. I can actually show it to you.

Greg: Oh, I do too.

Julia: We sell them on Broglie Box. But yeah, every day, if when you are feeling super grateful, you can put something in the jar and literally watch your cup fill up. And the days where you’re feeling like I have nothing to be grateful for. Like, of course there is something, but we are anti-toxic positivity, so if there’s a day where you just don’t feel like writing anything down, go back to your jar and read what you wrote on the previous days. And it will, I promise you it will help you.

Greg: So I have a friend, he was going to, his family that were gonna write something in the gratitude box every day, and Eric, this is you. So every day they were gonna put something in the, the box and then, or in the jar, and then next year they’re gonna take it out and read it. Every day.

Julia: I love that.

Greg: Yeah. Isn’t that cool. But the, but the gratitude and you guys can watch another video we did on Wake Up to Gratitude. So of the other ones, what would you say, like have had, has had the biggest impact? Is it nutrition? Is it is it fitness? What is it?

Julia: Gosh, it’s hard to pick. I, I honestly weigh them all equally. So for like fitness, most people think, oh, I have to have this intense gym workout for me. Like getting outside and going for a walk is an absolute game changer. I don’t have to do like a 45 minute HIIT workout every day to feel the effects of fitness. It’s really just about moving your body and creating that energy for relaxation. Again, this is all unique to the person it’s like, do you actually schedule time to relax? Because as an entrepreneur, as a CEO of a company, I’m sure, you know, you can relate to this, that it’s hard with family obligations, with work obligations to actually schedule out time for yourself and what, what might be relaxing to you might not be the same for Mrs. Weimer. So sometimes, you know, you have to figure out what’s actually gonna work for you.

And so it’s just so important to take that time, time to relax and, and recharge, and then nutrition. This, this is so I, I almost feel like we should change nutrition to consumption because nutrition, it’s so important. People think you are what you eat in the, in the physical sense, but you also are what you eat in, in the emotional sense. And so there’s several studies and I can send them to you on the effects of like, when I have a lot of caffeine, what it does for my anxiety disorder or when I have a lot of sugar, what it does for my anxiety disorder, also the opposite. So like there are foods that can help you help stabilize those things. So like GABA L-theanine, tryptophan, like all those things have been proven to help with if you’re dealing with anxiety disorder. So it, it is so important. You are what you eat. So consumption from a food perspective, but also from a social media perspective, you know, like if you’re consuming all this negative content all day, it’s gonna affect you emotionally as well.

Greg: So I’m listening to you speak, and there’s so much to learn there. It’s fairly straightforward. And, and there’s a whole debate in the country right now and what we should be teaching our children in school and I’ll read it again. It is it’s the case that suicide is the second leading cause of death for people ages 10 to 34. Right.

And so, like I think about, I have two great teachers that are daughters, Morgan and Elizabeth, they’re both teachers and it’s like: teachers, you just heard Julia, let’s include some of this in your classroom. And if we can help people understand the effects of sugar and sleep and being mindful and making sure you tell your story, you tell yourself a true story and don’t, don’t create facts that are just not true. And wouldn’t it be wonderful for teachers to do that. And, and you know what? I think over time would save some lives.

Julia: Definitely.

Greg: Just with, with better, just better habits. So, Julie, you’ve done a lot more than that. You’ve also created Broglie Box. And I, I, when I first, when I first heard about it, I, I was so impressed. And you really did dedicate your life to making a difference. Do you wanna explain the benefits and what, what, what Broglie Box is and the benefits?

Julia: Sure. Yeah. So Broglie Box is a dedication to my brother. Essentially what we do is we put together mental wellness, boxes and toolkits, and all of the products, tools, and resources stem from those six pillars of mental wellness, which I already mentioned. Our hope is that it’s, the boxes, most, most people send them as a gift to someone else, but we do have a portion of people that send it to themselves. But our hope is that whoever gets this box or gets this kit, or somehow sees box, the resources we have on our website, we want people to feel empowered in their health. We want people to know that they’re not alone and to feel a sense of inner peace. So the box itself, the items are really fun. So when you’re opening it, it feels really fun to get this box of stuff to help you take care of yourself.

But they’re all, it’s all tied back to those six pillars and rooted in, in some sort of connection to taking care of your mental health. So you can either pick from all the boxes on our website, or you can actually go on and build your own and pick the items that you wanna include. And my, my favorite product, we have these magazines, they’re more like resource booklets and they have articles, visual tools app recommendations, book recommendations, all from mental health professionals. And they’re really like an all inclusive little booklet, which is really great.

Greg: The, the products in the boxes, et cetera, are good for what age? Is there an age specific or is it general?

Julia: We have some student options and the student options are really geared towards high school and college age students. And then most of the other products, although some people get them for the family. So yeah, we don’t really have anything for kids just yet. Although nothing is not, it’s not age appropriate, but we keep getting requests to, to make some boxes for kids specifically. So that might be coming down the line as well.

But other than that, you can go on, you can, from one of our pre-packed boxes or you can build your own and choose items that you want on the website.

Greg: What a great idea. So leaders, I mean, business owners, leaders, we’re gonna get a box for everyone in our company. You know, parents, your, your children are, your young adults are in college. Maybe it’s a great way to open up a conversation about where they are in their mental health. And it goes back to how Julia start Julia started with you know, their suffering in silence. So it’s not only gonna help someone, but it also could open up the conversation.

Julia: Yeah. The box, the boxes are really, I mean, they’re helpful for people that are struggling and maybe you don’t know what to say to someone, but you want to show them support, but it’s also for the people who are doing great and you just wanna send them a box of things that will actually, it’s not a box of junk. It’s, it’s a box of things that can actually help people just to take care of themselves and have fun doing it. Like the mindfulness cards, for example, you can pull a mindfulness card every day and, and learn about it. And it comes in like a beautifully packaged box. So yeah, it’s fun.

Greg: You call her Mrs. Weimer, I tend to call her Lori. But she , but, but she got some, I mean, and she loves them. So she, I think it used to, you used to do it monthly or something like that. Right?

Julia: We used to do it on subscription, a quarterly subscription. And then with the pandemic we pivoted and now we have all on-demand boxes. And so like, you know, like you said, we have a lot of companies buying boxes for their employees or their team members and that type of thing, but yeah.

Greg: Okay. And this is Greg pushing Julia to talk about Broglie Box. That’s not why she’s here, but if someone wanted to, because I just think it makes a difference and it could be a small step, but for goodness sakes, as a step, if someone wanted to order a Broglie Box or put together a Broglie Box, I should— Broglie Box, I should say — what’s the website?

Julia: It’s BroglieBox.com, B-R-O-G-L-I-E-B-O-X-dot-com.

Greg: Okay. Let me pivot to, to, to another topic, because you said that you, you went and you found help and you, and you found a therapist and I know that that’s a hard thing, right? You have to find, it’s almost like speed dating. And so like if you went to a therapist, whoever’s listening and it wasn’t the right therapist, find another therapist, but don’t assume you shouldn’t be talking to a therapist. Is that fair?

Julia: Definitely. And I can see from experience that I probably saw four therapists before I found the right one. And it’s a very fr— it can be a very frustrating process, but it’s almost like dating where not every personality is going to click with exactly who you are. So I think just keeping an open mind, another tip is most people think that you have to book a first appointment , for the first time speaking with someone, but most therapists, if you ask them to do a 30 minute free consultation type of thing, so you can get to know them a little bit more, most therapists will do that. There’s also a website called mental health match that helps you get matched to a therapist based on your preferences and your insurance. So if you know that you wanna speak to a woman between a certain age or a certain ethnicity, you can check off all those selections and they’ll help you get you matched to someone that is within your preference. And then I always say, reach out to them and ask, if you can have a 30 minute conversation before you book a first appointment.

Greg: I’m convinced there’s better days ahead. And there’s better treatments and we’re learning more every day. Our country has proven that we’re not very good at handling a problem, but the good news is I think our nation is awesome at handling a crisis. And this has risen to crisis status. And with leaders like you speaking out and showing leadership and, and removing the stigma and with the great medical community coming together, I can tell you they’re coming together in Pittsburgh. I know they’re coming together in other cities. If you feel like you’re suffering in silence, there are better days ahead. There are better days ahead.

Julia: There definitely are. And I also just wanna give one last resource. If you text the keyword HOME to 741741, you can get connected 24 hours a day, seven days a week to a crisis text counselor, and that’s available at any time. So I would recommend saving that number to your phone because even if you might not need it, you might have a friend that will, and then you’re gonna be like, what was that number again? And so just having it in your phone is really helpful.

Greg: Can you, do you mind saying it again?

Julia: Sure. It’s 741741, and you can text the keyword HOME.

Greg: And when that, and when you do that, you have 24 access to?

Julia: A crisis counselor. So you’ll get connected immediately. That’s, it’s called Crisis Text Line. And so you get, you get connected to a trained peer crisis counselor at any time of day.

Greg: So, Julie, I think it’s important because you know, one of the things, and I don’t know that it’s a cause, but it it’s certainly it could help, it could hurt. Let’s talk about the effects of social media on mental health. Let let’s do the good, and let’s be fair. Let’s do the challenges and how we can control this.

Julia: The good news about social media, at least in the mental health world, is that people have been sharing a lot of their stories and there’s has a lot of awareness happening on there where people are sharing and it’s, it’s allowed it to spread faster. There’s this virality that’s happening. When someone shares something super vulnerable and people respond because they say, I feel the same way. So that is a good thing. And you can, you can reach a lot of people really quickly, which is great about social media, the down side is the comparison. There’s always gonna be people that you feel you’re not doing enough. You should be doing this. You should look like this. You should look like that. Or you’re missing out on all your friends are hanging out or there’s this concert that they’re going to, and you’re not there. That can definitely have a negative effect on our mental health.

Greg: Yeah. So my daughter was in, one of my daughters, that was in, when she was in college you know, Instagram, everybody’s having a great time. And she was at a party with some friends and, and they were bored. It was a horrible party. And they all stood up and took like a selfie of them, like, having fun. And she was like, oh my gosh, that’s it. Like, everybody’s gonna look at that thinking they were having a great time. Yeah. Having a horrible time. But if you compare yourself to perfect on social media, that is the negative.

Right. And everybody’s had a boring Friday night. Like it’s just, that’s what life is, but it doesn’t, you don’t, you don’t take pictures of boring Saturday nights.

Julia: Yeah, no one posts the bad for the most part.

Greg: No.

Julia: You know, post the, the, the negative and the boring. And a snapshot of a night, one second in a 24 hour day.  I mean, it’s just, it’s, it’s a false sense of reality, for sure. So just try to keep that in mind. Again, it comes back to that fact checking, you know, like, okay, did the, and then filters like, and face tune. I just learned about face tune and people can actually change the shape of their face and make them look skinnier and take their acne away and all this stuff. It’s like, it’s just, it’s just such a false sense of reality.

Greg: So let’s use it for the good, right. I mean, it’s here. It’s not going away. So let’s use it for the good, let’s use it as a resource. Let’s use it to be honest with each other, but just understand the risks of social media, because the amount of suicides have gone up and, and there can be a lot of reasons for that. But you do worry about the amount of face time children have right now on the screens.

Julia: Absolutely. I say like, you’re never gonna, it’s never gonna work to just take something away from people. And so for, for me, my recommendation is to just fill your feed with content that makes you feel good. Either makes you feel good or you’re learning something. So yeah, definitely, definitely fill your feed, do a feed audit. if you do wanna fill your feed with some more positive content please follow us @TheBroglieBox and we’ll be happy to brighten your day, hopefully.

Greg: Julie, I thought you were pretty special when I watched you grow up through high school, but you know, with the, the information you shared today, you’re even more special. Thank you so much for sharing.

Julia: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Greg: Thank you for listening to the “Imagine That” Podcast. We hope you enjoy this episode and welcome you to reach out to Confluence Financial Partners with your questions and comments. If you’d like to hear more episodes, head over to ConfluenceFP.com/podcasts or find us wherever you get your podcasts.