Episode summary: Jose is a behavioral health clinician and adjunct professor in Maryland who has battled ADHD, Depression, and a false diagnosis of bipolar all of which led him to become a loved husband, father, friend, and recovery peer.
Listen close as we unpack the stories that have shaped him and how he leads himself, his peers, and his clients toward a healthy life.
Guest Name & Bio: José Rosado, LGPC, NCC, MBA
“I’m a male, BIPOC clinician and I work with adults, young adults, couples, as well as families (trained in Functional Family Therapy) both clinically and within the community, specifically with my Peer Recovery Specialist work over the last five years. I have experience in facilitating clinical services in both community services/nonprofit settings as well as private practice, as well as working with families of incarcerated individuals & those reentering the community after incarceration.
Many of my clients experience issues with depression, anxiety, substance abuse, life transitions, work-related stress, grief & loss, along with various other diagnoses.
In addition to my clinical background, I also identify as a mental health peer, along with a MABPCB Registered Peer Supervisor (RPS) & Peer Recovery Specialist (PRS). I serve on the Harford County Mental Health & Addictions Advisory Council, and am also an Adjunct Professor at Towson University in the Psychology Department, teaching Abnormal Psychology, Human Development, Cross-Cultural Psychology, and Industrial & Organizational Psychology.
With regards to education and clinical training, I am a graduate of Northwestern University, with a Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, and am working as a Licensed Graduate Professional Counselor (LGPC) (# LGP11595) here in Maryland. My supervisor is Dr. Janelle Cox, Ed.D, LCPC, NCC, ACS, MD Board Approved Supervisor (#1229).
I speak from personal experience when I say, I know what you’re going through and how isolating it can feel. Please remember, you are not alone, you have self-worth and people who care about you & want to see you happy in life. I am a peer, a parent, and someone who lives with depression, anxiety, and ADHD every day and would love to help you find balance.
With mental health advocacy being a cause that is near to my heart, I founded Creatives Aga;nst Depression—an initiative created to start a larger conversation about mental health awareness in the US to help erase the stigma behind depression, anxiety, & suicide, especially in the arts community. If you’re interested in sharing your story, please reach out via our Contact Form.”
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
0:01
[Music]
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hello and welcome to the mindset and self mastery show i’m your host nick mcgowan and on this show my guest and i
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unpack the stories that shape us and the lives we lead on our path to self-mastery today on the show we have
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jose rosado jose is a behavioral health clinician and an adjunct professor in maryland who’s battled adhd depression
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and even a false diagnosis of bipolar all of which have led him to becoming a loved husband father friend and recovery
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peer to listen close as we unpack the stories that have shaped him and how he leads himself his peers and clients all
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toward a healthy lifestyle so let’s not wait any longer let the games begin
0:47
[Music]
0:57
jose welcome to the show man i’m excited you’re here thank you for being with us
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oh thanks for having me man i’m excited you know me we this is uh something we’ve been talking about for uh
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a while in various iterations so i’m happy to be here thank you yeah you know it’s funny because most times that we
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talk we’re basically having like a podcast episode anyway because we get into like 14 000 different things run
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amok typically your wife will be like get off the damn phone you’re like but i’m talking my friends
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yeah yeah yeah yeah that definitely happens and uh and i i
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i am very talkative so like i recognize that um but what i think is interesting too is just like
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i don’t talk to friends a lot you know so when i do i’m like i’m getting real
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deep and it’s never like a 10 minute conversation you know so i don’t feel bad i make i make no qualms
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isn’t it interesting as we get older our circles get a bit smaller and the conversations we have we expect a higher
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quality of conversation so as we go through stuff i know we do that how we were introduced so to give a
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little bit of context to where jose came from jose and i met a couple years ago through a mutual buddy of ours josh
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you’re probably listening josh and we appreciate you um we had such an awesome night hanging out
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having some drinks and dinner and talking about all the things that we could get into and then we lost touch for a couple of
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years and i just kind of remembered you as the mexican food guy
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josh’s friend who we went and had mexican food and i would think of the queso fondito from the place that we
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went and i just always thought of you and deliciousness so appreciate being here oh that’s fine that’s totally fine
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el camino real in philly that’s it isn’t what it used to be but when i was
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living there it was a great spot that and dos segundos down the street is really good
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um but i really did i remember the margaritas were really good at el camino and then the um
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what was it the uh the fake buff of the seitan wings are really good oh man yeah i just ate before this uh recording but
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uh i could go for some of that right now then again i’m about a thousand eleven hundred miles away yeah and i had just had a mess of
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croutons and cheese before we started cause that’s what every good guest should do when they hop on a podcast it’s crunching their uh hosts here um
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but yeah and i could still i could still go for some satan wings for sure i understand well let’s uh let’s get
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started with all this man i appreciate you being here can you tell us one thing you do for a living and one thing that
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most people don’t know about you uh i guess i’ll start with the latest
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thing um in my career and i am a my official title
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is administrative officer 3 at the behavioral health administration for the state
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so basically i am a grants administrator for
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the state of maryland for all the state opioid response peer
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programming so a lot of like pure workforce stuff so helping peers like myself and others um you know get
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access to trainings um get access to funds to cover their certification costs
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um to get certified and then also um we have a
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one of the grants is is in relation or in partnership with the department of labor
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from maryland that helps with getting job trainings and skills for peers as well so they get access to
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um good paying jobs that are not subsidized and let’s see so one thing people know
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so don’t know about me if you look at my size i mean a lot of people who do know me know this but people don’t um
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i was you wouldn’t tell but i was born at five and a half months and i was one pound and eight ounces when i was born
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wow yeah i think i unofficially held like a guinness record for a while unofficially
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like in your family he was like no no literally like i looked it up like i think like in the
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90s octopus or something came around they beat me but those octopus yeah you
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know size of coke cans um but yeah i fit in a shoe box so there’s that it was funny i
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had a buddy of mine he was like a bean pole and he was the fat like to this day the
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fattest baby i’ve ever seen period like you see pictures of him and he looked like a michelin baby like i kid you not
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every like two inches was a crease and his poor mother he was almost 11
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pounds and his poor mother is like this 4 foot ten dominican woman and then he was really skinny growing up
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so it wasn’t so he joined the marines like years later he kind of filled out a little bit but like we used to joke and be like hey who
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who do you think was the one who has a pound and a half and who do you think was 11 pounds and of course i always got
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you know the 11 pound baby but that’s kind of how it works out like little babies end up being thick people adults
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and then really fat babies end up being pretty trim kind of uh you know adult i don’t know if it’s like maybe
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their uh you know kind of drive gets going sooner what do you call it their uh metabolism
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no no i’m thinking like you’re the mental drive like maybe he’s like i’m gonna [ _ ] get on with this let’s do 6:17 it guys just yeah just burning food and then me i’m just like i’m so excited to be here well so let’s take a little bit 6:24 of a step back sure you’re you said i want to start with what i’m doing now and most recently so yeah give us a little bit of 6:31 your background and what led you to do what you’re doing today so 6:37 um i so i i now as i mentioned earlier i’m up here so i’ve i’ve now when i was 6:43 in my 30s realized i have adhd i’ve had it most of my life and for a long time i’ve lived with 6:49 depression and anxiety and the adhd part was the part they would confuse like clinicians and stuff 6:56 because i would get improper diagnoses so one point i had like a bipolar diagnosis and when i didn’t really agree 7:03 with it but it was what i got so i was like okay i guess i’ll just live with it and figure out what to do and then when 7:09 i met the psychiatrist i have now about six years ago uh he said to me you know hey i i don’t 7:16 i can tell you right now i don’t think you’re bipolar you know i don’t know what it is but i only get bipolar i said okay 7:21 i said well i’ll be honest like i really wasn’t crazy about the diagnosis either but at least like it was something so if 7:27 i’m not bipolar what am i and he was the first doctor in my life that ever said i don’t know 7:34 i’m gonna figure it out i just met you but we’re gonna manage the symptoms and then i don’t really worry about labels 7:40 and diagnoses just yet i respected it i’m still with him to this day 7:45 and it was probably like two years later i completely forgot and i was like hey crazy question about that diagnosis 7:52 and he said uh he jokingly was like well i’m still not ready um but if you want to force me he’s like i would say it’s 7:58 severe depression um anxiety and adhd which if you look at 8:04 the way it manifests many times can mimic bipolar disorder and i was like oh 8:09 okay so one of the things i’ve always noticed about myself is i always need to have 8:15 like a bunch of things to do and it’s not so much um like avoidance like i don’t want to 8:21 deal with being alone and all kind of stuff it was more of just like my brain feels like a browser with a 8:28 thousand tabs open all the time and when i’m able to 8:34 juggle multiple things i’m able to like hyper focus and it just it just keeps me at this like high burning kind of level 8:39 and kind of like that metabolism right for a little fat people babies sorry if you don’t cut that out 8:45 the beginning obviously that’ll make no sense now but um so i’ve always had multiple jobs so right now i have three jobs 8:52 um my main job i mentioned earlier was at the bha and that’s my my job at 1995. 8:58 and then i’m a adjunct faculty so i’m a professor at towson university with a psychology 9:04 department right now i teach abnormal psychology and then my 9:09 third job is uh i’m a clinician so i’m a therapist a licensed therapist so 9:15 and um that’s the new that’s one of the newer ones so in in maryland we’re called um well there’s two levels so you 9:21 have a licensed graduate professional counselor which is what i am and then you have a licensed clinical 9:26 professional counselor so an lg pc and then lcpc uh so then i see clients as well for a 9:33 clinic in baltimore city so which out of that do you feel fulfills you the most 9:40 honestly you know what it is i i love them all and it sounds so funny and i i used to think like which one’s the one 9:47 that just kind of drags a little bit but honestly like i’m so blessed and it it 9:52 i’m like ridiculously grateful because i’ve been i’ve had crappy bosses 9:57 in the past so like i know what it’s like to just feel unfulfilled and be frustrated at your job so my boss now 10:04 it’s actually a really crazy story my direct supervisor now at work 10:09 is a peer mentor of mine that i met six years ago when i 10:15 lost my job i was working for a company in new york city as a digital project manager i got laid 10:20 off and what followed was two year period where i was just basically looking for work all the time and 10:28 uh in that time i decided i wanted to change careers and i didn’t know what it would look like you know when i had the 10:33 i started a podcast at one point i did the hundred episodes called the angry millennial show um and that definitely pushed me towards 10:41 like i want to be a therapist and then i had to stop the show after 100 episodes and go 10:47 well now what does that look like you know like what do i do my first training in baltimore city was 10:53 to become a peer recovery specialist and i was the only person like 30 people not training who didn’t have a job 11:00 and on the break the one of the facilitators asked me to come up and was like hey actually looking for 11:06 work i was like yeah yeah he said all right well i have your information here if i hear anything i’ll let you know i said okay cool like it 11:13 sounded genuine i was happy i go to walk away and he’s like i’m so sorry can you come back and i’m like what’s up and he 11:19 goes i’m sure you’ve heard that [ _ ] a lot the last two years and i was like
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yeah but again you seem genuine like it’s cool i appreciate it he said no no let me let me try and help it let me do
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let me do one better so he takes out his phone calls someone at the local health department in my county
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and and says hey i got this guy here jose rosado you should check him out i’m gonna give him your information he’s
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going to send you his resume um you know you should you should meet with him and try and help him get the
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rest of his training done so become he can become a certified peer recovery specialist and he hung up
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and that was in that moment and since the most kindness
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anyone has ever shown me with regards to looking for work and being a professional and we kept in touch over the years i
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saw him a bunch of trainings and then um a couple years ago i thought it was already my full circle
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moment when i became the executive director of a wellness and recovery center uh here in maryland
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and he was my point of contact at the bha for our reporting because he was part of the our grant that we got to
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operate and i thought to myself how cool is this like you met me when i was unemployed i was frustrated and i was looking to find
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work and now i’m an executive director of a you know of a wellness recovery center
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and i thought it was awesome and it really was it really was uh and then fast forward um you know two
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years from there uh he reaches out to me and says hey uh i have a
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um opening on my team that i think you’ll be a great fit for and i’d love if you’d apply
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and i’ve been working there ever since april of 21 and absolutely loving it and the cool thing is
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again i say the long story short to why this is all really cool is that he knows
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me for so long and knows how i am and how i operate that he gives me all of us really on our
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team but like a ton of autonomy and he says look you can do whatever you want to do
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i don’t care what you do during the day as long as you get your job done and you get your hours in
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i don’t give a [ _ ] so he allows me to see clients during the day so i don’t have to work 15 hour 13:32 days anymore you know he allows me to to teach you know and and and on two days a 13:37 week i go down to campus and teach and then i come home and i work the extra hours again and it’s like i love the 13:43 fact that i get that flexibility and that you know um i’m able to 13:50 just like i like i always do i’m able to balance all these different things spin all these plates and feel totally 13:57 fulfilled because i love my pure work but it’s very macro but i’m glad to be in the pure world 14:03 that got me to start and then i can go to people and say hey i know what you’re going through i’ve been there 14:10 let me help you and then i always knew i still wanted to do the direct client work still so that’s 14:17 why i became a clinician and then the teaching is just i love teaching 14:23 like if you ever have the opportunity to do it it’s just so much fun like it’s purely all 14:29 you know um just just really fulfilling and and it’s fun because it keeps you young and 14:35 grounded people call you on your [ _ ] all the time as they should because they’re college kids
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um and i always knew when i was in school when i was my first time in grad school and undergrad like i loved all my
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adjuncts because they were still working in the field and you knew they cared so
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a lot of times they came in after working all day and they came in and still wanted to teach and they were usually teaching things that they were
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super into which previously i used to teach entrepreneurship at the university of
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baltimore and i’m still super into that you know as we’ve had those conversations and i still i still
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consult and do other things within that space but um for me it was fun to start getting more in the clinical end which
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was the career change i made the last couple years what an interesting story to think how you went through basically
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a two-year drought of trying to find a new job air quotes yeah or some sort of
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direction and being able to get to that point where you know some people may have quit
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some people that went through the craziness of 2020 and lost their job
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may have people that they know that also lost their lives because they quit they gave up they couldn’t see that through
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so the fact that you got through that for two years and then it got to somebody that had a huge heart and actually wanted to care
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and do the right thing look where it set you up now it’s easy for us to get into the
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context of what you do every day and how you love all of that but it’s also easy for us to bypass the
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path that it took you to get there so can you kind of break that down a bit what that looks like
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from your perspective now for people that are going through that sort of situation so for years before that
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for you know 10 plus years before that i was working as a professional photographer so
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i worked as a portrait photographer and um and you know if you tell anyone like
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if you look at jose rosadophoto.com it’s all the lifestyle and and and you know fashion work that i did
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that i loved and i genuinely loved doing but let’s be real i also did automotive racing real estate you know i did
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whatever paid the bills you know what i mean uh um corporate headshots paid really well i did that a lot
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so i did that for you know 10 years and then when around the time i met my wife
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i wanted something more stability and a study check so i started working for a newer company
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and while don’t get me wrong pay i’m still working my way back up to what i used to get paid because that was new
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york city money and that was you know obviously a great a great uh paycheck but i was
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just not in it you know what i mean and and i was at that time trying to do my hand entrepreneurial
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side hustles and things i could do but i was so scared of telling them that that
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like it it just burned me out on both ends of the candle where i was like keeping this secret
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and then trying to do two things at once and like you know using half my ass for both of them neither one of them really
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worked out so um when i got laid off it was because the company was went public and i was a contractor and it was
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like you know last one and first one i was there almost four years um but um i don’t care what anyone says
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i know that the reality is if i was an all-star they would have figured out a way to keep me
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like the performance part of it let’s be real that’s part of the equation it’s a major problem so i knew like i wasn’t in it if
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my heart wasn’t in it and that’s okay too right like i always tell people you don’t have to do what you love it’s
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gonna be honest with yourself very apparent right yeah like if you know but at the same time if you’re miserable
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change something you know and i didn’t know how to do it i was trying to do two things at once and then life was like
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hmm you know and gave me that what happened now the timing was also really difficult if i’m honest because i just
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moved to maryland from philadelphia to go from like fun weekend kind of like
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guy that’s dating my kid’s mom to full-time step-dad
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so now it was like we were a year into living in in maryland we had full custody of the kids and
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then i lost my job so it it was an interesting time because i was
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always very pragmatic and i had two degrees and i had no problem going to planet fitness like
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i’ve done in the past when i was living in philly and working for eight dollars an hour i don’t care i’ll do what i have
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to do but the thing was i was at this point in my career where now i couldn’t even do that because i was older and had too much
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experience and they were like this is like too much of a gap so i couldn’t find anything i mean i’m
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and what’s really great was around that time i was trying everything i could
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to like mailing out tons of applications filling out things every day and it got
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to about eight months in and i had nothing and i was getting like this real kind of breaking point
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and i went to my parents my wife and i said look i’m pretty much running out of money
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but what i want is this give me one month give me one month
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to just do my own thing and then we’ll reassess
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so they agreed and in that time i started going you know what i got to go back to making things for myself
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and feeling some sort of ownership of what i was doing and feeling like i was making progress so i started writing
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and i always loved writing but i never liked blogging in the sense of like uh
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photography because you know a lot of times it was very dry it was like here’s the setup here’s what i shot here’s what it looked
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like with the lights before and after and i hated it i was like this is dumb so i just started writing
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long content about what i was feeling and it really actually started
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resonating with people and that became after that out of that came
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um creatives against depression.com so i was thinking to myself okay i’m
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writing and within two weeks of writing i got hired by a company to write content for their
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website like a photo company and i thought to myself in two weeks of just doing my own thing i made more
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progress in the last eight months of going on interviews at the interviews and all these sorts of things
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so i said all right let me keep going what what’s something else i mean i’m wanting to do and a podcast came in my
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mind so i said all right i got one month i’m gonna have to make it work so i started
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the podcast and literally within the end of the first
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month i went to a um photo or a
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it was a phase one kind of event that our buddy was talking at
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so phase one is like a big medium format camera manufacturer and he was you know sponsored at the time i think he still
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is and he was going to speak so i was just going to support a friend and network
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and whatever so we’re talking to people there uh at the event at phase one who i known over
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the years and i told them about the podcast and they said oh so you’re gonna be at uh you know at a um uh
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blanking out on the name but at uh oh man it’s gonna bug me the it’s the um
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photo plus so literally the large of the year so it’s the it’s the one the end of the year in new york so to one of the
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larger largest uh photo expos in the world so photo
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plus in new york at the javits center i hate crowds
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like i have a huge like borderline phobia of crowds
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so they tell me oh you’re going to photo plus right and i’m thinking to myself you couldn’t catch me dead at the javits
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center what and i said you know what this is the one this is what i need this i need to be my
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like anchor i said it’s next month right i have no idea they’re like yeah yeah it’s in like a
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month i was like of course i’ll be there so i told myself i have a month now to
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finish recording these episodes get the website up and launch the podcast so that we can go to this
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expo and then try and see if we can get people to be on our show and
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we did and it was i’ll send you some photos i mean it was just like long story short some of the
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most surreal stuff that ever happened that you couldn’t even make up you know like the photographers that i’d
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known over the years who were like the rolling stones of the photo world that were on the show
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that you know people were supportive people want to be part of it we went to all these after parties
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i legit i looked in my um my apple watch that time we went up to new york
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slept on couches walked everywhere i walked 23 miles
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in two and a half days most of that was obviously walking around the actual expo but in the city
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but like yeah so at that time i said all right can you
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guys give me until the end of the year then went back to my wife and my you know my parents and i said can you guys
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give me the end of the year and they saw what we were doing they saw how i was suddenly like motivated and i wasn’t deeply depressed
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anymore and frustrated and fast forward a year we did 100 episodes and at the end it
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was three days a week uh of the show and after a hundred episodes
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and then also doing stuff for crazy depression um for me it was a good like stopping point
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you know pausing point and uh and then at that point i said i want to be a therapist but i didn’t know
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what that would look like and that was literally when we paused was like september
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of two thousand i won’t say 15. it might have been 16.
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no it was 16 2016 and that october i met my boss out of
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training i think everyone’s got something that they’re good at and if you just give yourself a time and
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a space to just see what’s possible
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um i think that it’s totally something that can happen you know what i mean like i
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tell people how awesome podcasts were i used to go around for a while after that and i was trying to consult got to get
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people to start their business to have a podcast and when you look at like the the data
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behind it and the metrics and now years later where it’s exploded even then it was on the rise but even the data back
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in 2016 was like all about just it’s a it’s a great medium for any
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business or if you’re just someone who’s just really into legos or
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you know football or motorbikes or whatever car racing you
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can have you know your own little kind of piece of the internet where you can uh talk about stuff that you’re passionate about and eventually
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hopefully figure out how to monetize it and that kind of thing or so that was my big thing was just really trying to say
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invest in yourself you know believe in yourself because that was the toughest thing for me at that point was i knew i was smart i knew
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i’m a hard worker i have you know i had like good education all these things but i couldn’t get a chance
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and it was so frustrating not having the opportunity being given to me that i thought at that point you know with my
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experience i kind of earned you know and i said i used to run six figure campaigns for blue chip companies now i
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can’t even get a job at the mall and it was frustrating and i just went back to just doing stuff
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for yourself whatever that may look like and here i am you know there’s a lot to
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unpack with that the fact that you were frustrated makes total friggin sense i
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mean i’d be frustrated as hell as well a lot of people get to that point where they get frustrated and they fix on the
26:43
mindset of being [ _ ] frustrated and just being upset with being upset 26:49 and then they continue to spiral and go down that path it’s not like you went there with through the depression but 26:55 the fact that you’re able to talk to your wife and your family and say this is what i’m thinking give me a little bit of time is an incredibly smart move 27:02 how did you get to that point where you were like here’s what i’m gonna do next and i need 27:07 you to hold me accountable because that’s what that really is yeah it you know let’s be real i mean i’m 27:14 very fortunate i was in a very fortunate position where you know my parents were able to help float us for a little while 27:19 you know and and that sort of thing and my wife was able to be supportive because she she was pulling in most of the income at that time 27:25 you know if not all of it where so you know at the time i was doing whatever i could you know i was i started teaching 27:30 at a local community college and and the writing was getting me some money and then the podcast started 27:36 making some money so it was like you know i was able to cobble together like you know something you know i mean like more than 27:42 i made my first year in nonprofit actually but it was more just 27:48 like asking for their permission and realizing that i wasn’t doing this just to like you know i we used to joke with 27:55 my wife she’s the when i first when i first told her about it she thought of like this emo llama you know remember that me and 28:01 the emo llama with like the bangs that’s when i’m working with art ma and like that’s what she thought and 28:07 that’s fine that’s totally fine but i said to her i said but i’m i’m 28:12 really giving this a lot of thought i’m still doing what i can to make money and bringing money 28:17 i just i just want to see if i can take this time in this moment 28:23 right now that i may never have again this opportunity that when i’m out of work to to just 28:31 try and believe in myself and see if i can do it and you know my wife eventually became 28:37 one of the producers for the show ended up also co-hosting it with me towards like the middle towards the end 28:43 which was amazingly fun and we still talk about it all the time and those were awesome episodes to do 28:49 together and and i think my parents too were they knew too that i was always that 28:54 entrepreneurial type that self-starter you know and and they were like well you’ve done all the things you’re 29:00 quote-unquote supposed to do you know i didn’t want to go to college originally you know i went to college because that’s what you were supposed to do and 29:06 then i went i did well and ended up doing really well in school and then it was like what do i do next like well you know it’s not a great job market it’s 29:12 2006 in new york city you know and like i was like okay what am i gonna i went for advertising 29:19 which around that time wasn’t hiring because of all the youtube stuff and all this stuff that was going on and then i went back to school and i 29:25 graduated in 08 with an mba in 2008 in new york right around the turn of the 29:32 you know the crisis of you know the um recession so it was like 29:38 like now it’s like now you’re really screwed and you got i’m overeducated i didn’t have 29:43 enough work experience and it just was i was screwed from the jump so it was always very much i was 29:50 thrusted into this entrepreneurial kind of do what you can and that’s where photography came in 29:56 for years and i was very fortunate when i had that so when i look back now i i 30:02 really think that a lot of the things that we’re tied into were just helping people you know i could have done any kind of photography i want to do portrait 30:08 photography you know like i wanted to work with people and i was in high school i was a camp counselor and like 30:14 you know over the summers and stuff and i was a big brother a big sister mentor and i was in college like like it was 30:20 always this like common thread and i mean it to me like you said it was 30:26 communication so that was a big thing was communicating with my family and my loved ones this is what i need 30:32 from you you know i think that’s a huge thing um whereas before i would shut people out 30:38 you know with my depression i would just shut everyone out and they would just worry about me and i would just be irritable and mad and that’s all 30:44 whatever was but what i took out of that was it wasn’t my first bout with depression it 30:50 wasn’t my first time getting laid off but it was my first time with like a ton more responsibility in my life 30:58 and what i realized was that life is gonna just kick you when you’re down sometimes 31:05 you know and it’s the reality is life is hard period 31:11 so if life is difficult can you work towards some goal or 31:18 something you want to do that is going to be difficult but at the very least every day 31:24 when you’re working on it you can tell yourself and i still do this you can tell yourself every day i’m one day 31:30 closer to my big goal so it’s worth it it’s worth the stress 31:36 and the frustration and the headaches and the lack of sleep and all the all the things you go through because even 31:41 if i didn’t have that big big goal life is still stressful in general so it’s like i could just feel like i’m 31:47 stagnant and just surviving or i could go you know what i have this big goal i’m gonna do whatever i can to 31:54 do it and i’m gonna make sure i take my first step this day and every day i’m doing one thing even with a little thing 32:01 to get me closer to that bigger goal and it just made time like i can’t believe it’s been six years 32:08 when i when i say it out loud like that blows my mind and it’s now been six years 32:13 but what’s crazy is like now i can look back you know you can never connect the dots looking forward and i only connect the 32:19 dots looking backwards right and i can look back and say like it’s so serendipitous like all these things that 32:26 i did and went through that made me get towards this goal and i’ve had lots of ups and downs along 32:32 that way that i thought would have broke me and i just kept telling myself okay 32:39 like acknowledge it sit in it now what you know like asking yourself now you’re 32:45 gonna get up what’s the thing you’re gonna do next what’s the thing you know and i just looked at it very pragmatically very like 32:51 um you know like in terms like therapy like almost like cbt i removed the emotion out of it you know i 32:57 acknowledged it i sat in it but then i was like all right what step do i have to do next to keep moving forward 33:03 and that’s what kept me going yeah it boils down to perspective you know the perspective of being in that spot and 33:10 saying okay well i have this and you always have two opportunities in front of you no matter what you can either be 33:16 really positive or really negative and you got to be balanced between them but you’ve got to pick one or the other just 33:22 like your brain can only handle focusing on one thing or the other 33:27 try it you can only be happy or you can only be sad you can’t 33:33 be them both at the same time and i’m not talking about some weird middle ground where you just 33:39 that’s called depression and you actually need to talk to somebody about that but what i’m talking about is that 33:45 dichotomy there and for your perspective to be able to be smart enough 33:51 and aware enough for yourself to say i need to just do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing i think 33:58 some people have a hard time with that so for the people you work with the clients that you work with even other peers 34:05 how do you help them manage their emotions and their mindset when they’re in those spaces 34:11 that’s a good question again i think a lot of it like you mentioned is 34:17 life is hard life is going to happen at you and to you sometimes and 34:23 it’s not going to really kind of follow any kind of pattern 34:28 and it’s going to be chaotic and i think again for me a lot of times we 34:35 do work with like goal setting you know because if you’re if you’re just it’s very easy to get lost 34:41 especially if you deal with depression or anxiety or any other 34:46 kind of diagnosis or even if you don’t just in general it’s easy to feel really untethered 34:52 you know and feel like you’re kind of just floating and uh 34:58 so any way you can ground yourself like that’s a big thing a lot of times working with clients is like work on 35:05 breathing techniques or like little grounding techniques um things to put them in the present 35:11 moment you know and and out of their head but like more in the present moment of the space that they’re in 35:18 and then from there once they can kind of get themselves to a place where 35:23 okay i’m i’m grounded i’m i’m at a baseline okay now let’s let’s have those rational 35:29 conversations of of like you know what what can you do you know like what are some things like 35:35 problem solving and and like you know really trying to um start to take action steps and smart 35:42 goals and all those kinds of things that that can help um because you know when 35:48 you’re struggling you have to realize that emotion every emotion every single emotion that you feel is completely valid it’s completely 35:55 valid period that being said they can also be irrational 36:01 so it’s like you know like you said when people are feeling these kind of emotions sure 36:07 acknowledge them sit with them you know like like like acknowledge the fact i’m angry right now 36:14 and just sit with that for a second and then ask yourself why am i angry you know like like start understanding 36:20 maybe what is this underlying thing and a lot of times like like anger especially we talk a lot about like um 36:27 i just teach his parenting class in jail and one of the things that the i would 36:32 teach like incarcerated individuals we would talk about like secondary emotions and we would talk about like how like 36:37 anger’s a secondary emotion that in reality it’s not really an emotion it’s just like you’re angry because of 36:42 something you know so like there’s something usually what is it you know and and trying to understand your your 36:49 understand your feelings and your emotions and um one of the things that we used to do every in the beginning that i thought 36:55 was kind of hokey but ended up being really really beneficial um was we would 37:00 give them uh we would start every day we would do we would do a guided meditation and a grounding meditation technique 37:07 and we would start the class with that then we would have check-ins and we would use they would have a piece of 37:14 paper with a bunch of cartoon faces on it with the emotion written underneath and say how are we feeling today 37:20 and they would you know kind of point and you know again when i saw that i’m thinking to myself you expect me to walk 37:27 into a jail and just give a cartoon sheet of paper over to people and say let’s talk about our emotions i’m like i 37:33 don’t know about this because it was like years ago is when i first started in non-profit now and i wasn’t a clinician or anything and i 37:39 thought well this skin is going to either go really well really bad and what’s interesting is it was the 37:46 grounding techniques like the meditation and the emotion work were some of the favorite work that everyone had 37:52 and what was really fascinating was one of the guys who was older he was looking at 50s um you know was speaking 37:59 out one day and said he really enjoyed that part because for most of his life from all of his life 38:06 he really only knew two emotions i’m either angry or i’m not angry 38:12 and that’s it and that’s all he knew and when he 38:17 looked at this sheet of paper it blew his mind as to all the things that you could feel and all that and putting 38:23 words to your emotions in the ways you feel and we had tons of success with that program 38:31 um in in the the local detention center here in hartford county in maryland 38:37 and uh like across the board we had correctional officers that bought into it that would tell people about it 38:43 because there were lower incident rates with with incarcerated individuals we had individuals who were 38:49 you know not getting the fights and and were able to de-escalate certain situations because of all things they were learning in the class 38:55 um so it was like people started interacting with each other better people start interacting with staff and correctional seos better um 39:03 you know and and interacting with like their probation and parole officers afterwards better so it was like it was 39:08 tons of really great things and i’ll be honest i really missed that work and i really enjoyed it um it was when covet 39:15 hit obviously they you know shut down all kinds of stuff and hasn’t really kind of kicked them back off just yet 39:21 but um yeah i think a lot of times it’s it’s again it emotions are 39:27 very real you know they they can cause like physiological like changes in your 39:32 body right so if anyone says anxiety is not real but it can make you feel like you’re having a heart attack and that 39:37 that feels pretty real um and and that to me it’s just understanding your emotions 39:44 sitting with your emotions and then what again acknowledging what can you do 39:50 when that comes up so having a game plan for the next time yeah it sounds like there’s a lot of thinking when it comes 39:56 to that and i know based on conversations i have with people conversations on the 40:01 different episodes that there’s a lot of little minuscule pieces that go into all of this and for 40:08 somebody that’s listening that’s going through some craziness and just feels like they’re in a tough spot and they’ll have more 40:13 things that they want to think about or i don’t want to have to do these certain things it’s a matter of taking the moments when 40:19 you’re okay to be able to work through that to prep yourself when you’re in those moments because when you’re in the 40:24 moments it’s game time and you gotta be on you can’t allow your emotions to just 40:29 run you or anything of that sort so with the people that you work with jose how do you help them through that 40:36 uh can you kind of walk us through what that process looks like a bit yeah i think like like you mentioned 40:43 it’s um you know a lot of it is putting that game plan in place you know 40:50 and it’s recognizing what are some triggers or things that activate me 40:57 that you know so understanding kind of what are some things that are going to get you riled up i think one of the big 41:04 things too is understanding your body so physiologically what does it look like when you feel like this is coming on so 41:11 like for me i remember like um i have high blood pressure so like for a long time when i used to get like upset with 41:17 my kids about like chores or whatever i would notice i’d feel like it getting hot like on the back of my neck and my 41:23 ears would feel kind of red and i could start feeling my my heartbeat in my neck and i’m like all right i think i got to 41:29 take you know hit a timeout take a break walk away um and and again it’s 41:34 i think one of the biggest things that you mentioned is is that when i work with clients 41:40 um the biggest thing is always safety so the first thing we we talk 41:47 about is how can we make sure you’re safe so a lot of that is like you said it’s 41:52 it’s you know uh grounding techniques breathing techniques how to bring them back to a 41:58 baseline and then it’s game planning so one of the things that 42:04 is huge in the recovery world and and i i i’m bringing more of that into like my 42:10 clinical work is what they call rap plans so it’s called the wellness recovery action plan um so like a wrap 42:19 you eat i guess so wrap so um one of the things is that you have to make sure you start filling out your 42:25 wrap plan which is like if you ever heard like advanced directives within like a hospital setting or something like that now they’re starting to ask 42:31 people when they come in the er do you have an advanced directive or a wrap plan because it it’s something you work on 42:39 when you’re well that can you can give to someone so let’s just say you’re you’re 42:44 incapacitated whether you’re you can’t you know on verbal or whatever you can give that to someone and they can open 42:51 it and understand your your name what are things that help who are people to contact 42:57 you can even go so far as to put your doctors in there and their numbers the medications you’re on 43:02 there you can look up just look at wrap plans online there’s tons of templates that are very thorough 43:08 but one of the best things is is is how to help what not to do so i think a 43:14 big thing a lot of times that we we take for granted as humans is that when we see someone who’s who’s let’s just say 43:21 um in in a crisis uh the first thing i do is i put like a kind hand on their 43:26 shoulder or something right and like say it’s gonna be okay but the reality is that you could that could activate 43:32 someone and make things worse you know what i mean but unless you knew that 43:38 it’s a very simple common mistake to make but you don’t know what kind of trauma or things that a person has 43:43 experienced so like what you think is like taking an authoritarian kind of voice and saying hey get up come on like 43:48 picking the person up and and trying to talk to them that could again that could backfire and 43:54 escalate so it’s um a lot of times it’s again 43:59 treatment planning and thinking about what does it look like so one of the things that also is in a wrap plan is 44:04 called um what are things you have to do every day to make sure you’re well and then what are things you have to do like 44:10 once a month to make sure you’re well so for some people they think every day is like oh i gotta work out i gotta eat 44:16 right okay that’s great but let’s go even smaller and be more realistic 44:22 like on mine it says get out of bed get dressed brush my teeth 44:29 you know like go to work like those are things i have to do every day because i 44:35 know that when i’m not doing well and i realize maybe i’m not doing those sort of things 44:41 that’s a warning flag for people you know like have i been sleeping anymore have i been late to work have i been 44:47 showing up disheveled you know those are kind of things you can kind of pick out as red flags um 44:53 and then what are things i gotta do every month okay every month yeah maybe maybe go work out 44:59 go for a bike ride go for a walk with my wife and our dog spent time with my kids you know like 45:05 those are the things that again the same thing you know go on a date night with my wife you know like 45:11 those are things that i know i gotta do go to the movies i love going to the movies so like those are things that i 45:16 would put in there that would help me and whenever i feel like i’m out of funk 45:21 and i consult it and look at it if i sat there and go wow those things like i got to do every month 45:27 i don’t remember the last time i did them that might be a good a good indicator like let me go back to it you know let 45:33 me let me try and go back into self-care and and do the things that i want to do for myself and no one else um to help 45:39 keep me managed and that’s really kind of the big thing like you said is managing your mindset and your emotions 45:45 is realizing that while many things may just happen to you that are out of your control 45:51 is realizing that you still have a fair amount of control in your life 45:57 when it comes to well what do you do when that happens how do you react 46:04 or do you not react right like and and then starting that whole process of 46:09 deconstructing what are things that activate or trigger you what are things that are pain points 46:15 in your life what are things that you want to just do better and improve on and i think that’s a big thing like i 46:21 tell people all the time like therapy isn’t just for when your life is is going to [ _ ] and like suddenly you’re
46:27
you’re in crisis like therapy can very much be proactive in maintenance work to where you just i
46:34
think everyone has something they could work on you know or ways they could just be happier or do better um
46:41
feel better you know and and so that’s a big thing is is really just
46:47
understanding where everyone what everyone what their what their kind of thing looks like and
46:52
the biggest thing that came out of recovery work that i
46:58
is a direct link to clinical work is meeting people where they’re at you know is realizing that for some
47:05
people therapy might look like us checking in every week to make sure that
47:10
person bathed that day and they got dressed and they got out of the house and went for a walk
47:16
and if that’s what it has to look like for eight months for them that person to get their job
47:23
their first job in years and suddenly we go from seeing each other twice a
47:28
week or once a week to once a month and they’re doing awesome then that’s what it has to be and then you have
47:34
other people who are on higher functioning end of things who maybe again it might be something as simple as
47:40
generalized anxiety or something like that or just stress about money or or
47:45
you know like relationship issues that’s fine you know just meeting people where they’re at and realizing that
47:53
everyone’s different and everyone’s individual cases are very individualistic and uh and then just
47:59
realizing that when i meet with someone the first thing i ask is what do you want to get out of therapy
48:05
you know what what is your point of of reaching out to me and coming here today so that we can again as always game plan
48:13
and then start with the big thing and work our way backwards and say how do we how are we going to get there
48:19
you’d mention about being in the funk and i think a lot of people are in that
48:24
spot where they know what it’s like when they’re in a funk but it’s post funk
48:32
because they’re like oh [ _ ] i felt terrible and then they look back at it and go 48:37 [ _ ] i felt terrible for weeks months a year or whatever it was
48:43
so i have these little check-ins with myself where i know that my natural state
48:48
is happy even joyous energetic and excited that’s my natural state so
48:57
if i’m slightly off of that i’m not going to see it right off the bat but if i’m
49:02
different and i wake up in the morning and feel different and i don’t have that joy and
49:08
i don’t have that movement i’ve actually conditioned myself to go hold up mcgowan what’s your deal
49:14
what is this and then pull the emotions in and go all right get your asses in here what’s your deal
49:20
well i’m nostalgia well what’s your [ _ ] problem well you know blah blah blah and then being able to deal with that that takes a lot of awareness and 49:27 work i don’t say this to be braggy or boastful but i put in the work to be able to get to that point where i go 49:32 wait hold up so how do you work with people to get to that point where they can say 49:38 hold up i don’t feel right 49:44 like you said that to me um and and and i apologize is too forward 49:50 so you can cut this out if you want but um i know you’re up here as well so i think a lot of times those who are 49:57 in long-term recovery uh a lot of times the biggest thing that 50:02 the commonality is incredible self-awareness because you put in the time 50:09 because it was a matter of life and death to understand yourself to understand 50:15 what your again your your normal baseline is and to recognize when you’re 50:21 out of it and if you’re fortunate enough to have people in your life 50:27 who can keep you accountable have those conversations with them you know who understand you who say like hey 50:34 if you see me kind of like pushing you out or just like pushing you away please like fight through me pushing you 50:42 away and make sure that i’m doing what i have to do to make sure i’m well and for me that was 50:49 talking to my parents my wife my kids you know people my friends people in my 50:55 life even now like my bosses to say hey like i communicate like recently i came 51:02 off of all my medication because of blood pressure issues so that was really scary for me because while 51:08 i’ve gone years without medication i have been on medication in this whole six year period we’ve been talking about 51:13 so for me to come off of it i thought to myself well i haven’t i haven’t years where i’ve been off of it i’ve been okay 51:19 but i feel like this is maybe different you know and i i openly again i know everyone’s cases are 51:26 different but i openly told you know my boss hey you know i’m up here and luckily i work in 51:33 the space we’re all pierced right and i said i’m coming on medication i’m coming off my adhd medication like all these 51:39 things and i might be different i might seem off i might be 51:44 off my game please if you see that a now you know why b 51:50 tell me so i can adjust and course correct instead of just oh he’s going 51:56 through some things right now well no no no like you know keep me accountable you know what i mean 52:02 like i want to make sure i’m not in a place because like i said all these years ago when i got let go from that job in new york 52:08 city i was deeply depressed and i wasn’t telling anyone because i moved to an area where i had no family 52:16 no friends i didn’t know anyone i worked from home so i didn’t like i didn’t have like that normal kind of 52:22 like nucleus of like your work friends and they introduced other people like i had nothing like our kids didn’t have many friends 52:28 so it was like that’s eventually how i made some friends around here was through our friends or kids playing sports and stuff 52:34 but beyond that like it was just i was just it was all internal and that was the issue was i wasn’t i 52:39 wasn’t telling anyone um and i so i think like you had said 52:44 that it’s you know the biggest thing i tell people is understanding yourself 52:50 understanding your own issues and once you have the understanding 52:56 pulling in people who are in your support network and some people look at it like well i 53:01 don’t have any family or i don’t have many friends and it’s like right but you might have 53:06 like a doctor you see that’s a person in in your support network you know like 53:11 they they they want you to be well too so it’s you know just communicating with everyone in your life 53:18 to make sure that they help you be accountable and like you said you do the work to 53:23 understand yourself to then know that a lot of times what we realize is 53:30 for probably 90 people out there we just go through life on autopilot like we’re white knuckling it 53:37 you know and and and that’s just we just figure we’re just getting by because life is 53:42 hard but then you realize that there’s so much more to life 53:48 and and a lot of times unfortunately it has to be something drastic and all life-altering for you to get to that 53:54 mind space right whether it’s an overdose or a car accident or a 54:00 near-death experience or even just like something with your children or your parents or it’s just got to be something 54:06 and and the hope is that for a lot of people um you know because like i said i work with people who are incarcerated i 54:12 work with people who um you know have lots of life trauma and all these sorts of things and and to say to them like 54:19 you know we can we can be more proactive about it and it’s just it’s just a matter of 54:24 putting in the work yeah i think some people are hesitant to put in the work because 54:30 they think of the pain it took to get to where they’re at they’re trying to get out of that pain 54:35 so typically people will look at deep work without understanding that it’s deep work 54:41 but just think like ah i gotta do that stuff and i gotta get into my emotions 54:47 i’ve heard that at different times which just such a surfacy thing to say 54:53 and live at where you go i don’t want to do those things because i don’t think those things work because some of that i 54:59 think comes from the way that we’ve been raised or people that we’ve seen over the course of time 55:04 something that’s popped into my mind every so often is about seeing the parents of friends or friends of friends 55:11 in high school or grade school and there were certain parents that were just shitty people 55:17 and they hated themselves they hated their lives they hated all that stuff and i remember some of those kids being 55:22 like well this is the way life is [ _ ] blows here it is
55:27
i was like well i see why you would think that and it’s all about our perspective and
55:34
being mindful of what our actual perspective is um but it can get really dark so there
55:39
are people that have gone through dark things and that it’s difficult to get into that perspective so how do you
55:46
suggest to the people that are going through that now to start to have that conversation
55:53
i think like like i mentioned earlier the idea that
56:00
life is hard period like just surviving
56:05
and waking up every day is difficult it takes effort
56:11
and if you know that and you accept that as like okay
56:16
life is just hard then like you mentioned like yeah it’s work
56:22
to to learn about yourself to unpack previous experiences in your life and
56:27
traumas and things you’ve had going on it is uncomfortable
56:33
it is painful but again if you can sit there and say
56:38
i’m gonna do the uncomfortable thing i’m gonna sit with the many emotions i’m going to do the painful work
56:45
because your end goal your bigger goal is that you want to grow as an individual and be a happier more
56:52
well-rounded person then that’s worth it we got to know our story
56:59
you know you’ve brought up a couple times life is hard and just the
57:04
thought of that is almost depressing of yeah life can be hard
57:10
but it’s about the stories that we tell ourselves and the way that we sink into those stories if
57:17
we think that life is hard and therefore life sucks then guess what you’re gonna get a bunch
57:23
of [ _ ] because life’s just to suck at that point so if in our heads we understand that yes things are tough 57:31 and that’s what it is and it’s a matter of figuring out what your story is to move forward so i know 57:37 i’ve been in spaces before where i’ve been stuck there where life is tough and 57:42 perpetually seems to be tough so in those cases how do you work with your clients to be able to change that 57:49 story i think a lot of that like some of the things that we starting off like from 57:55 baseline what we’ll do is like if if i’m trying to work with someone who is trying to note patterns 58:02 and things right like you said they don’t really kind of realize that what’s happening is it’s a cyclical 58:09 pattern that kind of thing is i’ll have them work on um like a feelings journal 58:15 you know where every day they’ll just not even you don’t have to write a whole like paragraph of what you went through that day you can just say today i am x 58:24 right and give it a week work on it for a week 58:29 work on it for two weeks and if after two weeks you sit there and you go wow like i 58:35 realized like 10 out of the last 14 days i’ve been angry 58:42 wow like that’s pretty powerful and then you just again starting from 58:47 the beginning why do you think that is why do you think that anger is such a 58:52 huge part of your life you know and again you could sit there and say because i’m not at work or i’m 58:59 underemployed or i have two kids and and a single parent like yes 59:04 life again like we said it can be debilitating if you sit there and think about it have this existential crisis 59:10 but the reality is you’re alive you’re breathing you have two beautiful children 59:17 like you’re all healthy like those are the things that should be your major takeaways 59:23 the other stuff pain pain in every form of it is temporary 59:32 whether it’s a second a week a year a decade 59:37 it doesn’t matter it’s temporary and that’s all i had to keep telling myself was that when my 59:45 lowest of lows and i don’t want to get out of bed and i don’t want to do anything else and i 59:50 don’t want to work on me or work on my career i just thought to myself 59:58 this will pass what i’m feeling what i’m going through 1:00:04 i don’t know if it’s going to take a year or two or more but 1:00:10 if i’m fortunate that time will still pass no matter what 1:00:17 so kind of asking again yourself do you want to just be a passenger in 1:00:23 the things that happened to you and life just kind of just kicks you around and you just deal with it or do you want to 1:00:29 understand certain things about yourself and work on it and work towards bettering yourself 1:00:35 and and again starting off with just recognizing the patterns recognizing the emotions 1:00:42 understanding because you’d be like actually kovid like i can’t believe we’re about to we’re in year three stop 1:00:50 i know he’s like and and i’m i’m fortunate like me and my family like my my media family 1:00:58 we’ve none of us have gotten it up until now which with omicron is apparently a 1:01:05 world unbelievable right and and you know we’ve had jobs the whole 1:01:11 time our kids have transitioned and become homeschooled our son’s about to graduate in may as a junior because of 1:01:18 being homeschooled you know our kids grades because they were very anxious children have gone up 1:01:25 you know ever since switching and so i said all to say we’re very fortunate right because for a lot of people it was 1:01:31 a lot worse but the reality is this whole like fog of two plus years 1:01:40 it’s easy to lose sight of everything and not understand that’s why i think 1:01:45 nowadays especially like i’ve been working a lot with people about logging their emotions 1:01:50 and journaling and stuff because it’s easy when you’re home all day and don’t 1:01:55 leave the house for days at a time to lose track of time sure where every day’s a wednesday 1:02:01 yeah exactly you know so so i think again it goes it goes down to 1:02:06 like you had mentioned what works for me wouldn’t work for you or may not work for you may not work for 1:02:13 someone else so a lot of times it’s meeting people where they’re at 1:02:18 helping them address what do they want to get out of working with a therapist 1:02:24 um and then what’s going on in their life and and and that kind of thing 1:02:29 and um i think one of the biggest things that’s really important that i work with people on 1:02:34 is realizing that you know therapy in itself 1:02:40 i mean it is literally self-care but i think a lot of times especially parents and all kinds of stuff 1:02:45 the idea of like prioritizing yourself is like icky you know like it’s like a 1:02:51 dirty word and and i always think about like when i did the podcast um 1:02:57 chase jarvis one of the guys that i that i admired for years in the photography 1:03:03 world then i actually saw i i saw him for the first time in two years at photo plus and he 1:03:08 was he was on the show and he’s a great two-part episode um 1:03:13 and one of the things he talked about he looked at his phone and he said i’ve been on a plane every 2.2 days 1:03:20 in the last like two years because he was flying back and forth between seattle and san francisco where 1:03:26 his two studios were and um he said one of the things that always stuck out to me was that safety 1:03:32 briefing where they tell you to put on your mask before you put on someone else’s or you help somebody else 1:03:38 and that to me was huge because i remember even when i was younger i used to always go to puerto 1:03:44 rico every summer i think to myself that’s dumb put on your kids and then you put on yours right like 1:03:49 isn’t that what you’re supposed to do and then you realize that if you don’t take care of yourself 1:03:55 and you put other people before you with all the great rationalization that you can do 1:04:01 and the fact that you’re a parent and that’s what you feel like you’re supposed to do and you would die for your child which is very true everyone 1:04:07 here we would die for your child but the point is if you really want to help other people 1:04:14 you have to make sure that you help yourself first otherwise you’re useless to everyone else in your life 1:04:20 if you have a break or if you god forbid have a heart attack or you just pass or 1:04:25 whatever or if you’re just checked out in life 1:04:30 because you aren’t addressing the things that are going on inside you because you think that it’s not a 1:04:37 priority priorities kind of shifted throughout 2020 and 21 1:04:43 and i think a lot of people were exposed of some of the bitterness that they had and they’re 1:04:49 still dealing with it there are certain people that i know 1:04:55 are continuing to fight the fights that started to show themselves in the beginning stages of the pandemic 1:05:03 and they’re still unsure exactly how to make those choices or moves 1:05:08 so there are people that are kind of in just a state of fear that are stuck in jobs stuck in relationships stuck in 1:05:16 just that fixed mindset where it’s on us to be able to move out of that and we’ve covered a lot of stuff today 1:05:23 jose there’s a lot that we can continue to get into and man i just want to say thank you for 1:05:29 being on the show with us and unpacking all of this are there any major 1:05:35 pieces of advice you’d like to give for anybody that’s going through any 1:05:40 tough times right now and really trying to manage their mindset and their emotions 1:05:46 i think the biggest thing is empowerment like again realizing that while many 1:05:54 many many things that happened in your life are out of your control like i always like i’m never i was never 1:06:00 like a a person but you know i i love that you know the the creed right of 1:06:06 you know understanding the things that you can change things you can’t letting go of this so yeah because to me it’s 1:06:11 very true there’s certain things that when you get frustrated and you 1:06:17 feel like you’re stuck in your low point that you just have to let go 1:06:22 that they’re just out of your control but while it can be like you mentioned earlier while that can be very like 1:06:29 you can you can literally just throw yourself into a depressive tizzy and be like oh my god this is the world just 1:06:34 happened to me but the reality is for all the things you get to let go 1:06:40 you still have a ton of control over your own path 1:06:46 over how you react to certain things how you let certain things get to you 1:06:52 and that’s a big piece of eventually working with clients that we work up to 1:06:58 is this this notion that you know you have a ton of say 1:07:04 and power in your everyday life that you may not realize and and some people say well i know i 1:07:10 don’t really have much say no the reality is you do yeah you have a job and you keep your 1:07:15 job sure but you made the choice to go into work that day 1:07:21 you know now granted do you need money do you need to pay rent you need to pay your mortgage not of course but you 1:07:28 chose to go to work that day okay good job you know what i mean like you want to do 1:07:33 something else okay let’s start there there’s assessments you can take to figure out what field 1:07:41 you might excel in you know like if you ever heard of the the myers-briggs type inventory or the 1:07:47 mbti i i make everybody take that at some point because i’m like it’s so 1:07:52 informative i’m an ifnj by the way it’s so informative yeah where 1:07:58 you can literally look up now you have this little tag right it’s a little label if you will and you can say okay 1:08:03 i’m an infj okay so i’m going to look up infj on google and find all these sorts 1:08:09 of things and what was funny was when i looked up my code uh i found out that of like seven careers 1:08:17 that they tell you you’d be good at i’ve already done five of them and i never knew that i thought it was 1:08:23 hysterical i was like wow that’s really kind of wild and if i had known that when i was 16 1:08:31 maybe that would things would have been a little bit different you know who knows but right but to me it was what was really 1:08:38 great what i got out of it was uh i share with everyone now like a pdf 1:08:43 where it breaks down like all these different things about what you are and myers breaks right and there’s sections and this one 1:08:50 section is what really like motivates you boom here’s like five bullet points that are just they just cut straight to 1:08:57 your core like a like a horoscope you know what i mean and then here’s here’s some things that stress you stressors 1:09:03 and i look at that and i’m like yep that’s why i quit that job that’s why i left that you know and i’m like yup that 1:09:08 drove me into drinking okay got it those are my stressors and then and then 1:09:14 has a whole section of like you know what what could it look like career-wise you know um and i i think that’s hugely 1:09:21 powerful for people because while you don’t have to love what you do 1:09:27 you don’t have to be working your passion every day be realistic you can have a job just to 1:09:34 have a job but the biggest thing is finding balance in your life 1:09:39 so if you have just a job as a job that’s great but maybe you go home and play guitar at night 1:09:45 and you make music and that’s how you feel balanced and how you find balance in your life that’s awesome 1:09:52 maybe you’re someone who does very like like for me right like does very 1:09:58 people very pouring out a lot every day with clients with people like when i used to when i 1:10:04 was the executive director every worker was street homeless so like every day i was reminded of and and kind of given 1:10:10 that perspective back of how good i have it even though i could complain every day about certain things i still had a 1:10:16 car i still had a house and i’m playing a family you know so it was a very much 1:10:21 like taxing but also gave me a heavy dose of life perspective 1:10:27 every day to where i really didn’t sweat the small stuff anymore um and and i think 1:10:34 again that’s the big thing is just finding balance for you and what that looks like you know for me it’s the 1:10:39 legos it’s going to the movies it’s reading books you know it’s spending time my wife and 1:10:45 my kids it’s cycling and then of course i genuinely love what i do so i’m fortunate again i’m not 1:10:51 saying everyone should strive for that or it has to necessarily but um 1:10:57 if you do though it’s pretty sweet and if at the very least you can figure out 1:11:03 what’s something i’m just good at right like if you can use these tools and 1:11:08 these things to help figure out something that even if it might not be your passion but you’re good at it and 1:11:14 you can get paid well to do something that you’re just naturally good at then why not you know because i think a 1:11:21 lot of times as people and as individuals we we are 1:11:27 as human beings i should say we’re really good at just dealing with getting [ _ ] on
1:11:33
all day every day you know i always think of that like the little meme with the dog and the fire
1:11:39
this is fine right surrounded by fire this is fine right like that’s how i think a lot of people live their life
1:11:45
this is fine it’s like is it though you know and and sometimes
1:11:51
you can have that person in your life whether it’s a therapist or or a pastor or
1:11:57
you know a friend or a family member who can help keep you a little bit honest and keep you accountable
1:12:03
and kind of hopefully help you call you out on your [ __ ] sometimes too when you need it in a loving way
1:12:09
um to say like hey like you know where are you at you know and and just
1:12:16
can i do better can i be happier or can i be happy you know if you’re in a
1:12:22
really dark place um and again i think the piece of advice i can always give is is you have a lot
1:12:28
more power than you realize over your life over your your mindset
1:12:35
over your you know even even your station in life you know i i always love
1:12:42
hearing those rags of rich’s stories and and all those sorts of things like one of my favorite movies pursuit of
1:12:48
happiness i still cry like a baby when i watch that movie you know because to me it was like if
1:12:54
you put in the work things will pan out it may not be what you expect right it may not be the way
1:13:02
you thought it would but things will work out you know um
1:13:07
like i have a lot of tattoos my wife has a lot of tattoos but she has this one on her on her forearm
1:13:13
very simple it just says this too shall pass
1:13:19
and she’s lived her life and had tons of things happen to her and at her and
1:13:26
and it’s crazy how i can look at that more than she does and just think to myself
1:13:33
this too shall pass like you know like it’s totally true nothing is forever
1:13:39
and i think that once you realize that on every every aspect of the scale
1:13:45
happiness is not forever pain is not forever that you realize you’re a lot more
1:13:51
resilient than you think but you also have to be very grateful for what you do have because you can lose it at any
1:13:56
moment so realizing that you know being present and um and grateful for what you do have is is
1:14:03
also a very important step too it’s a hell of a way to end this episode there’s a lot that’s within that i think
1:14:10
some of our listeners might have to go back and listen to that over and over even some of the stuff that we talked
1:14:15
about a little earlier there’s a lot of really great steps of ways to be able to work within yourself
1:14:20
i think moral the story is probably to be aware and to be mindful of
1:14:26
those little tickers for you that either take you one direction or a different direction you got to find out what your
1:14:33
stasis is and jose again man i really appreciate that you’re on here uh and
1:14:39
being honest and open vulnerable about all this stuff can you share your details where can
1:14:44
people connect with you and find some information on you yeah um this is one thing that i think
1:14:51
is humorous about aging was ordinarily i’d be like yeah find me
1:14:57
on this piece of the internet and on this social media platform and you’ll see everything
1:15:03
um what’s interesting is nowadays i gotta be honest i don’t go on social media much anymore
1:15:11
um you know so i’ll shout out some handles that you can look at and go wow this guy hasn’t posted in four months um
1:15:18
but at least are a way to get in touch so like on instagram it’s jose rosado
1:15:23
photo online it’s jose rosadophoto.com
1:15:28
um i still have my photo website up um thank you millennial show is still up so
1:15:33
you have the angrymillennialshow.com you can check the show out there uh creatives against depression.com that’s
1:15:40
still something i’m still you know still nursing so if anyone has any um ever wants to help write a blog post
1:15:48
or share their story please you know reach out i’d love to you know have you
1:15:53
have you write something on the website and share your story on there um you know i write for e-counseling.com
1:16:01
um you know i would say uh nowadays i’d love to connect uh irl as the kids say
1:16:08
and and tell people hey come come come take a class at towson or
1:16:13
you know um you know come come check out some certain things like there’s a
1:16:20
couple things in the works right now like i’m looking to get my my uh my graduate thesis my capstone
1:16:26
project published so hopefully that’ll be happening some point this year um i just applied
1:16:32
for the mental health association of america their um their annual conference i apply the
1:16:39
present at their annual conference in june so hopefully maybe that goes through um but beyond that i’m just really
1:16:46
nowadays taking breaks from kind of digital interactions and really
1:16:52
just making sure that i’m a lot more present for my kids and my wife and my family and for myself and uh
1:16:59
i still love this stuff though i gotta admit you know it’s still fun to converse and have good discussion and
1:17:05
conversations around topics um and maybe this year at some point
1:17:10
might revisit you know the podcasting thing but for at least for now it’s it’s always fun to guest and and to um
1:17:17
you know to have these kind of conversations because i think they’re very important ones to have and if we’re going to do anything to
1:17:24
uh you know lessen stigma and those sorts of things and normalize these kind of conversations this is one of the best
1:17:30
ways to do it it’s a beautiful way to put it man thank you again for being with us
1:17:36
i wish you the best we’ll talk soon thanks brother
1:17:42
[Music] another great conversation on today’s
1:17:48
episode of the mindset and self-mastery show like i said a little earlier i think the moral of the story is awareness but it’s
1:17:56
also taking risks while leaning on others for love support and accountability as you continue
1:18:01
throughout life but what did you think i’d love to hear your thoughts on the conversation today and if you enjoyed
1:18:07
the episode please jump over to itunes and subscribe rate and leave a five star review
1:18:12
you see those help others benefit from these episodes just like you and i are and if you really enjoyed the show today
1:18:18
go ahead and share it with your friends you can check out the show notes for more info contact info for jose and
1:18:24
check out the other episodes on the mindset and selfmasteryshow.com as well as our
1:18:30
youtube channel just look up the mindset and self mastery show and thank you
1:18:36
again jose for being on the show for being honest raw and real with us and thank you to you for joining the party i
1:18:42
hope you’ve enjoyed yourself and feel encouraged from the conversation today and with that
1:18:47
remember your mindset matters and so do you
1:19:02
you
