Also as the owner of Ascend Health Center, our co-founder Nick joined the Howie Uncensored podcast to discuss how political disagreements, cultural expectations, and the great rat race to achieve wealth and “keep up with the Jones’s” all affect our mental health. We spent the last 10 minutes of the podcast taking a deep dive into the anxiety epidemic gripping us, our kids, and apparently our dogs. Along the way, Nick Angelis, CRNA gives practical tips for managing anxiety and depression and some of the pros and cons of various treatments. The podcast is titled “Howie Uncensored” for a reason, so this informal discussion won’t be appropriate for everyone. Howie surmises:
“A while back I got together with Nick Angelis and had a really great conversation about mental health, depression & anxiety, overall wellness and business. Nick is extremely knowledgeable in his field and is the owner of Ascend Health Center. Be sure to give him a follow and this podcast a listen!”
Why are people from Iceland happy? It’s miserable here. Nick Angelis discusses resiliency, community, and enjoying every season of life. That’s especially important for corporate wellness and deciding whether a new job would change everything or be the same situation with a new badge or Outlook email address.
Our culture drives us to find perpetual summer where everything is great all the time. Entire industries thrive on this, including subsets of mental health. Addiction rates show the devastating consequences of not accepting the natural highs and lows of life. Additionally, the arrests from Matthew Perry’s death by ketamine show a sad story of desperation, dependence, and an inability to stop the quest for happiness at all costs. At Behave Wellness, we often field inquiries asking if different medications could improve job performance or save a career. There aren’t easy solutions, but one step is to plan exit ramps before starting any treatment. Not all costs are financial, but they should all be discussed truthfully, similar to choosing to eat a pizza because it’s bad for you but will taste good right now (instead of pretending it’s a vegetable or that you deserve it for being good).
Since we first published this post, we’ve gotten a surprising amount of feedback about travel to cope with work stress. There are obvious downsides (staying in a terrible job to afford expensive vacations because of the terrible job), but we will start talking about travel deals and options on here as well.
Psychotherapist Amanda Kotsura, LISW, from Carve Your Own Path talks about setting boundaries with family and the hard, important work of getting along. Though originally pertaining to holiday gatherings, the wisdom from this episode of Ascend Health Show with our co-owner Nick Angelis holds for maintaining warmth and trust in all relationships. Like family, work relationships shouldn’t easily be abandoned. It helps to define overused words like “toxic” and determine what hope exists for reconciliation.
We discuss conflict beyond the usual platitudes of “Family is family” or, “Release what doesn’t serve you.” How should we respond, if at all, when Uncle Jim doesn’t believe in COVID and Grandpa Oscar says things that weren’t appropriate in 1954 either?
Why can’t we live free from expectations? Post-COVID, will we be crushed by workplace demands, and is spirituality the answer? We’re all familiar with generic, New-Age wellness programs. Vanilla approaches to truth rarely help those struggling with addiction, serious bullying, and other real issues. Nick talks to Hank the Sonic Shaman about all those uncomfortable topics, from Jesus and prayer to shamanism and mental health.
Is this another blog lauding Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka for prioritizing their mental health over athletic achievement? Nope. What about criticizing the work ethic of millennials whenever anything gets difficult? Also no. The focus and effort to become the best comes with a cost. The more we force-feed life scripts to celebrities we feel can champion our causes and beliefs, the less we can deal with nuance and complex issues that can’t be summarized in a tweet or headline.
Even if all the information is available (it never is), you don’t have to pick sides. Do you know anything about these women–not their accomplishments, but as people? Quickly choosing a side is how content on the Internet works. Algorithms calculate what outrages or motivates you, and feeds you only that, so you will view as many advertisements as possible until you tear yourself away from the screen to live in the real world. Neutral information giving you the space to formulate your own individual conclusions doesn’t have the captivating power of strong emotions. In the early years of the Internet, anonymity allowed people to say despicable things to those they didn’t agree with. Then they would log off the forum board, turn off their computer, and still have polite conversations in real life. It’s much harder to hide behind a screenname now, but instead of encouraging more civil behavior at work, church, and online, we’ve polarized ourselves into tiny tribes seeing every news story or political difference as an opportunity to define Us and Them.
Are Simone and Naomi oppressed women of color taking power back from sport organizations capitalizing on talents until they join the ranks of broken and used up athletes? Are they instead taking advantage of their celebrity when it suits them, but using excuses when it doesn’t? It was a busy July. Most recently, Simone said she was struggling with vertigo (which everyone was ok with), before pulling out of Olympic gymnastic events citing mental health concerns. After failing to appear at mandatory press conferences at the French Open, Naomi cited similar issues in deciding not to compete at all. Struggling with a hyper-extended knee, Giannis Antetokounmpo persevered in the NBA Finals, bringing glory to the Milwaukee Bucks and his home countries of Nigeria and Greece. There are much deeper narratives here, related to the employer/employee issues we’ve dealt with at BEHAVE Wellness for years.
Can we look unflinchingly at all sides of an issue? The above meme doesn’t reflect the reality of organizations and corporations committed to squeezing out every ounce of productivity possible. We try to withstand the pressure, reminding ourselves that we need to perform and earn the degree as an “amateur athlete”, or tenure, or the 401K, or a medal. It’s true that employees are understandably also less loyal in today’s culture. Gender norms still lead to men more often achieving themselves to death–in many anesthesia departments, it’s the male CRNAs offering to stay late and earn more money rather than going home to their families. Although NBA stars often have the power to whine until traded to another team if they wish, if Giannis had skipped the NBA finals because of anxiety or depression, Internet trolls would have a field day.
However, the answers aren’t as important. Simone and Naomi will be heroes or villains for those searching for characters in whatever self-serving story they want to promote. Everything that we stand for at BEHAVE Wellness should take the side of those prioritizing their own wellness above material success, right? But again, we dehumanize complex situations if Simone and Naomi are nothing more than talking points for a cause. The questions are more important–the realization that the issues of exploitation, responsibility, sacrifice and selfishness need addressed by all of us in our personal lives. Our judgment of others is irrelevant, though what offends us reveals us. We are all heroes and villains, because we are all imperfect humans, prone to mistakes and courage and fear and accomplishments woven together in this experience we call life.
Along with other accomplished nurse anesthetists, Nick and Shannon are presenting at a conference live on Instagram. Topics include finances, wellness, bullying, and strategies to accomplish one of our mantras: don’t graduate alone.
Don’t graduate alone has two parts. The first: graduate. All the activism and speaking your truth and resilience won’t matter without actually accomplishing your goal. The second: if you do graduate, but lose all the important relationships in your life in the process, it’s not a win. The whole point of navigating from nurse aide to registered nurse to advanced practice is an increased quality of life. For more on that, here’s a video about mental health strategies and relying on support systems appropriately.
Our topics also apply to entrepreneurship and disciplines where the challenges make traditional views of work-life balance untenable, so you’re more than welcome to join us and get your questions answered. Through the practices Shannon will teach us, students can better become steel snowflakes: intricate, individual, fully present, but with sharp edges that do not melt when faced with adversity. Nick’s steel snowflake theory emphasizes brutal self-reflection coupled with the grace to learn and make mistakes as we live an authentic life of meaning. We’ll also be teaching from the many resources we’ve developed at BEHAVE Wellness as we strike that balance between self-care and serving others. The conference is free, so be sure to invite your friends!
That’s it. That’s the post. I suppose we could talk about racial injustice and police brutality and abducted children and COVID best practice–it has been a while and all of those pressing topics are in our wheelhouse of bullying and oppression. But first, consider this, from the author of “Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better.”
We’ve posted before about nosy coworkers. As the research article (click the first picture) states, social media warps our ability to get to the true intent of what someone is saying. Some languages, like Greek, carry nuance and richness in the written word that give context. English does not, so we often misinterpret or define content in absolutes, without the buffer of tone and body language that allows humans to discuss difficult topics face to face, without exclamation points and canceling each other.
Does that mean we should tolerate racism or accept bullying from our fellow employees? No, but these are discussions best held bravely, in person, rather than an online forum for the entertainment of strangers. Each website has its own culture and context; Facebook and LinkedIn magnify awkwardness, analogous to farting in a cubicle, while Twitter seems to be the best for finding your own tribe believing Exactly the Right Things.
So that’s our advice. What do you think? The comment link is next to the inflammatory hashtags above. Are we all being used by political parties and movements, essentially decreasing their marketing budgets as we do their work for them and unfriend family members in the process? Is bullying worse in quasi-quarantine because the internet is so pervasive? In that case, deleting apps from your phone may be wise. That may also keep you from starting a conversation in your free time that will spill over to work relationships. After all, few people have a change of heart because someone used all caps and an angry emoji on the Internet.
How can you be more productive at work? This is a slight contrast to our regular message of taking care of yourself and opposing bullying, even if that means your boss will make a little less money from you. It’s sad but true that the more valuable of an employee you are, the more likely HR may actually do something. Awkward, I know, but optimizing performance by biohacking your brain is today’s topic.
Alleviant Health Centers of Akron and Delta Performance discuss optimizing health with nootropics, mineral supplements, healthy fats, and other biohacking techniques. More importantly, Nick and Dee investigate the awkward philosophy of self-improvement and emotional stability via chemical dependence.
We’ve partnered with Alleviant Health Centers of Akron and Delta Performance over the last few weeks to livestream important discussions during this pandemic. Many of our clients were hoping toxic corporate culture and bullying would improve now that they don’t have to go into work every day. In some cases, however, it’s simply followed them as they work from home. The best response is staying physically, mentally, and spiritually fit.
Today’s teaching is about losing weight and not losing your mind during quarantine. How can we take ground and use our time wisely to get fit? Can we leverage the quiet to know our bodies and let them teach us how to stay healthy?
Between the two of them, Nick and Dee have decades of experience in anesthesia, physical fitness and wellness, and mental health. Find out more at alleviant.com and deltaperformancetraining.com.
Several days ago, reports surfaced that popular comedian John Crist isn’t as harmless and wholesome as the Christian persona he portrays–although perhaps the above .gif should have been a clue. Allegations of sexual manipulation, harassment and coercion, and what he admits as “destructive and sinful behavior” continue to come from multiple women.
At BEHAVE, we typically focus on bullying rather than sexual harassment. In many of these cases, opposing camps set up their preferred narratives and hashtags in advance, and the individual stories of exploitation become minefields riddled with casualties from the insensitive. But, this issue is especially important as we enter the holiday season. Stress increases, people let their guard down, and holiday parties combine alcohol and power imbalances. Just because you share a cubicle wall with that co-worker all year doesn’t mean you know and should trust them deeply.
That’s what we mean by the “duplicity of intention.” People may have much different goals than the ones they portray publicly. Although they felt weird about what was happening, several of the women involved with John Crist thought he wouldn’t do anything inappropriate. “What is your intention this evening?” might not be the smoothest start to a date, but it’s certainly something to keep in mind. We’re reminded of Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink,” which explains how sometimes we need to trust our gut to analyze a situation and form conclusions different from what our conscious mind can process. (For more about the conscious mind and the sense of self, see our previous post).
No Simple Solutions, But…
The answer is not to stand stiffly with pepper stray in hand at the first sign of an awkward social situation, nor is it to compartmentalize life into Tinder and non-Tinder (or non-Christian Mingle). The John Crist story documents numerous instances over many years. It seems that a majority of the woman expected to harmlessly flirt with a celebrity they admired. Because of the Christian culture shared with John Crist, they anticipated side rails, airbags–whatever metaphor best describes safety systems in place.
Pathetic as it sounds, we have to build our own guardrails, and we’re not speaking to potential victims only. Bosses, pastors, even social media personalities need to implement accountability systems they can’t thwart. What use is an ineffective boundary? If I fall, I want a sturdy nylon net to catch me, not a waffle fry from Chick-Fil-A. As we’ve seen, a false sense of security increases the chance for harm. Start with finding one person you can trust to call you out. There’s much more that we could add for the sake of completeness, but what are your thoughts?
Lastly, if someone has shown destructive patterns, believe them. Is your boss pushy, refusing to take no for an answer at work? Why would they be any different late at night when everyone else has left the office party? Don’t tolerate it. Before you give someone a second chance, wait to see a change in behavior. Otherwise…
B E H A V E Wellness 