B (6:28)

Me, Vinny, Joanna, Vinny.

A (6:30)

Okay, our friends. Our friends, yeah. So like 14, I had my first panic attack. And then once the brain learns how to do that, it gets really good. So I'm awesome at it. What else to say? I think the good news is there are lots of ways to deal with it. I have not experienced a fix or a cure. I'm assuming unless I hit full enlightenment in this lifetime that I'm gonna be dealing with this all the way to the lip of the grave. But, you know, there are so many practices that I found helpful. Another great way to reduce fear and sadness is another thing we are doing today, but more implicitly than explicitly. Although we did just do it explicitly, which is being in the same room with other people without our phones, which is an extraordinarily powerful thing to do. There's an enormous amount of science behind this, and yet very few of us actually do it. I will just say on a personal note, one thing that I've found helpful for me over the years has been medication. Key consonant change from meditation, Although they do share the same linguistic root for a reason. And so when I had a panic attack on television in 2004. You should Google that. It's got 10 million, 20 million views or something. The most successful thing I've ever done online. Yeah. Since that happened, I've been on this one medication and recently my doctor and I have decided to pull me off of it. I'm just kind of like going like fully off of it starting yesterday. And I am so tired. If you see my torso cantilevered over my lap during the meditation, that is why. Okay. That's all I have to say.

B (8:15)

Thank you.

A (8:16)

How about you give us your anxiety and depression resume?

B (8:19)

Yeah.

A (8:19)

Yeah.

B (8:20)

So when we're thinking about this question, I was like, dan, what do you want to talk about? He let's talk about anxiety and depression. I was like, that's a great idea. I am more of like a depression ADHD girl. Depression started, I feel like, right around the time of the first period. Just like a hormonal thing. And depression is just something that has always been a part of my life. There was so much shame around it because I am very, like, outgoing and da da, da. And so my depression was like my dirty little secret. I didn't really tell anybody about it. Hid out. As we try to hide things, they actually get bigger. I would just hide for three days and stay in bed and that's how I would deal then come back. Hey, I'm back, everyone. I'm the party girl. Lots of drugs and alcohol, which covered it up but then actually made it worse in the ADHD thing. I was diagnosed about 30 years ago, which is a very early diagnosis. I was in college and thought I was just a kooky artist type. They actually slapped a diagnosis on me. I was one of those kids that my report card was A through F and no one thought there was something going on. No one ever thought, oh, maybe there's a learning disability. Maybe there's some ADHD going on. This is not what we were doing in the 80s. So I was led to believe that I was just lazy, I wasn't smart enough and all of these things. Academically, my self esteem was really low, so I kind of leaned into more being an artist because I could just really be myself. I was a dancer and worked in the fashion industry. They tried when I was in college. They put me on Ritalin. I learned very soon after that when I was running low on cocaine, I could smash my Ritalin and snort it. I was like, I am getting like prescribed cocaine. This is amazing. But then I was like, I don't want to do this. So I went off of it.

A (10:15)

This is the how to section.

B (10:17)

Yeah.

A (10:19)

We used to smash Adderall and put it in beers and call it cervezas. Especiales.

B (10:29)

I never drank beer. If I drank beer, I would have been doing that too. I didn't do medication. I just had this sort of life for a long time. In 2020, I got a traumatic brain injury. I fell on my head and I had this traumatic brain injury. So I went to a concussion clinic, occupational therapy, medication. It was a whole thing. And that's when I got on antidepressants because I got like, the rage. You hear about athletes who end up murdering people because they've got, like, post concussion syndrome. That's real. I got very rageful, had to go on antidepressants and months of occupational therapy to get me able to work again. Yeah. So it kind of. It exacerbated the ADHD that was already there. The traumatic brain injury actually made it to the point where I now have to be medicated. I have to be on Adderall and antidepressants just to keep this party going. And I'm so grateful. And as a meditation teacher and just naturally, I'm a mover. And as a meditation teacher, when people say, all right, close your eyes, don't move, and meditate in a room full of a hundred strangers, I was like, that is not the right instruction. And so it was really for me in supporting my mind, my body is how I came the kind of teacher that I am. Yeah. Did you grow up with parents who had anxiety? I'm always curious about that. I know you said there was an epigenetic inheritance from being half Jewish, but did you have parents that were actively anxious, actively medicated?

A (12:05)

There was some self medication. My dad was pretty anxious. A lot of pacing around late at night when he couldn't sleep, that type of thing. We would ask him, what are you doing? He would say, worrying. Yeah. How about you?

B (12:20)

Oh, yeah, my mom is anxious. I actually think she has adhd. I've been thinking about that a lot lately. She was on Prozac when I was a kid, and there was like a couple of years where she just wasn't able to, like, really be there, you know, I mean, there but like a lot of fear around driving for a while.

A (12:45)

Does that absence, even though it was absence slash present simultaneously. Are there kind of reverberations for you of that now?

B (12:58)

I think that I learned around that age that I can just do it myself. I can just take care of myself. There's defining some reverberation. As I've gotten older, there's a lot more compassion. As I look back on my childhood, I'm like, wow, she was really struggling. That must have been a tough, tough period for her. It's a lot more compassion around it. Yeah.

A (13:19)

The I can do it myself energy is interesting because sometimes it's like I don't feel worthy of asking for help.

B (13:28)

That is connected to that. I asked for help and it's not going to be available, so I'll just figure it out. The work I did with my teacher, Gina Sharp, founding teacher of New York and sait, and the only other guiding teacher besides myself. So it's huge honor to be in this seat. But for a year, my practice of saying yes, thank you to whatever was offered to me because I also couldn't receive anything. Oh, no, no, I'm good. I got it, I got it. Don't worry about it. I don't want to be a burden on anyone. And so there was. Yeah, that was my practice, to say, yes, thank you for a year. It was real.

A (14:03)

Yeah. And must have been really uncomfortable.

B (14:06)

To this day, receiving compliments. I can feel my body tensing up. Yeah. Back to you. Tell me more about your anxiety.

A (14:15)

I was just thinking about this, not to deflect. And I'm happy to talk about my anxiety, but when you were talking about I'll do it myself. I was interviewing Brene Brown recently and she was talking about how when she's freaking out or when she's dysregulated, she calls it below the line. One of the ways she knows something is glitching for her is when she hears herself say, forget it. I'll just do it myself.

B (14:43)

There's a lot of resonance in the room. Yeah, yeah.

A (14:48)

I'm always reluctant to generalize in this way, but I feel like that might resonate more with the women in the room than the men.

B (14:59)

There are some.

A (15:05)

Yeah.

B (15:05)

I have to say I've always identified with, like, depression, adhd. It wasn't until we did our course that I began to experience anxiety for the first time.

A (15:16)

Really during the filming.

B (15:20)

The whole process of it. Yeah.

A (15:22)

Interesting. What about it was anxiety.

B (15:25)

It was very alive for me in the moment when I was doing it.

A (15:28)

Yeah. What was anxiety provoking?

B (15:30)

You know what it was? I was 6 months post traumatic brain injury.

A (15:33)

Oh, okay.

B (15:34)

Yeah, yeah. And so the way that I'm used to doing, I had to relearn everything. And then also working within a very tight structure of this is how we do was really hard for my brain, just in general, to do this, like a crash course teaching about anxiety. Yeah.

A (15:57)

Yeah. My whole life is just one thing, one project, like that after the next. So maybe I am used to it, or I'm so swimming in the waters of anxiety that I'm not even seeing.

B (16:08)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So before you came to meditation, like, how did. Like. Because you had a very successful career as a journalist and big events were happening in life. And so as a journalist, it's always a big event happening.

A (16:25)

I would get depressed in big moments of transition. Leaving home to go to college, leaving college and looking down the barrel of the rest of my life and not knowing what I was going to do. I didn't, as a grown up, have not dealt with that much depression. It's mostly been anxiety. And the anxiety at work as a journalist was not so much about major events that I was witnessing. It was. And this is more embarrassing, it was kind of like the competition with my peers or the other networks around who's going to advance to what position and when. What's my relationship with my bosses, with the audience at any given time. What are the ratings on my shows? That was. That was really the source of a lot of my anxiety. I wish I could say that it was that I had so much compassion for the state of the world, et cetera, et cetera, but I think especially in my early days, it was. I was much more careerist and was, I think, blocking out a lot of the stuff that I was witnessing and more thinking about it as a game. Not a game in that I didn't take it seriously, but I was thinking about it in terms of career advancement. I still have trouble watching TV because I know that's the way a lot of journalists are feeling about the stories they're covering. And over time, that really went away from me, which made covering the stories much harder because I was actually feeling it more.

B (17:50)

Oh, wow.

A (17:50)

Yes.

B (17:51)

So you're always in strategy mode. How do I do this?

A (17:55)

But I'm working, You know, I arrive in Haiti after an earthquake, and I have to figure out, how am I gonna get on the air? What's the right story? How do I look? Cause I'd have to be on tv, you know, like all these things that are not related to the suffering around you. You really do have to think about it. So it's a lot cognitively. That's a big cognitive load.

B (18:16)

How do you deal with it?

A (18:18)

Cocaine.

B (18:19)

Yeah.

A (18:21)

Nobody's ever high fived me for that. I know. Talk about prom. No, I was not using drugs in the field. I could be really, to use Brene's, and it's actually not hers. She learned it for Somebody else whose name I'm forgetting, but Brene Brown has this thing about above the line. Below the line. Below the line means are you caught in fear, anxiety? And above the line means you have the fear and anxiety because it's often for many of us, it's omnipresent, but you can handle it. I kind of think of it like those tethers when you're water skiing, are you being dragged by your head under the water or are you up on the water ski? Do you handle it or can you not? When I was below the line, even though I didn't have that terminology, often the manifestation was snapping or being unpleasant.

B (19:10)

Yeah.

A (19:11)

I think there were two modes that I can. At least I can remember. One is heads down, shutting everybody out. Just focused on my thing. Or if things weren't going my way, just kind of being an asshole. Yeah. How about you? I don't. When you were anxious and below the line a little bit during the. During the filming of the anxiety course, I didn't notice it at all because.

B (19:34)

I'm like, I'm cool as a cucumber on the outside. And I think with all of these things, you learn to mask it. Right. I think also as a black queer woman, I was explicitly taught as a kid that you have to be better than dominant culture because people are expecting less of me. Like someone's 100%, I have to give 110%. I had already been trained by my military dad to keep my head up and keep going and be the best, which is hard. I learned to mask it a lot. Anxiety is something that stayed. I definitely would say I have some anxiety now. It definitely manifests as perfectionism. Here at New York Insight, there's a perfectionist tendency, but I also know when it's happening. And I try to always be like, listen, I know what's going on right now. I know that I'm being a little too. But can we meet halfway? So being able to, like, recognize it, to name it, has been really helpful. But it's definitely the perfectionism connected to oppression. I find that those of us who have historically been oppressed, there's a lot of anxiety about being oppressed above that, proving that you're not an oppressed person, the anxiety to succeed, to be above it. And I don't think I recognized it as anxiety. It's just like, I had to be there on time. I had to be there early.

A (20:56)

I have a friend who said something to me once that I have, has really stuck with me, and she is quite A prominent. I won't name her because I didn't have permission to do it, but she's quite a prominent executive producer in the broadcast news world. She said, there is a tax that I pay that you don't pay. As a black woman, I have to be better because I am the first and therefore everybody who comes after me. There may be nobody who comes after me if I fuck this up. Talk about a cognitive load, a bandwidth suck that I don't have to deal with.

B (21:30)

Yeah. When I first started teaching retreats, one of my dear friends who is. Anyways, he said that we should ask for hazard pay because there was so much educating and so much that we had to hold. They would hold something in such an unskillful way and create so much harm in the sangha. Then we would have to come in as the assistant, as the trainee, and fix a whole thing. So we had a joke that we should start charging hazard pay. Like Donna. Hazard pay. Yeah.

A (22:02)

I heard on a really practical tip a couple of minutes ago, you say something anybody could operationalize in a moment of anxiety, especially in a work situation, you feel your perfectionism kick in, your mindfulness, at least ideally, at some point kicks in, you know what's happening, and then you propose a compromise. Hey, guys, I know I'm being a little. You didn't use the word. And this is a kind of a loaded word, but, like, maybe let's say crazy or. I don't think that's probably what you're being in that moment, but if I was saying it, I would say to my team, hey, I know I'm being a little crazy or demanding here, but can we meet in the middle?

B (22:38)

Yeah.

A (22:38)

So it's mindfulness plus the willingness to compromise.

B (22:41)

Yeah. And also not shaming ourselves that we're having these experiences either. And I think that's a huge part. I made a very conscious effort when I interviewed for this job to be like, listen, I have adhd. I'm still recovering from a brain injury. This has also been my community for 20 years. I came in on being very direct about, with my team, what I need, the structures I need to be able to be successful in this. And there's something that has just been such a. And I'm curious, too. After, like, writing the book and having the podcast, like, the whole world know, hey, listen, like, I've got anxiety. Is there just such a huge burden off your shoulders?

A (23:20)

I still have the anxiety, though.

B (23:22)

Yes.

A (23:25)

Yeah. It is a yes. But things have really changed. I put out my first book in 2014. And my mom sent me an email. She had read the book and sent me an email a couple weeks before it came out, begging me not to publish it because there was mention of drug abuse and anxiety and panic and all this stuff. The book was printed and sitting in warehouses, so there was nothing I could do. But it definitely didn't help with the anxiety I had about the book. And there were many people in my life, both at work and outside of work, who were very worried about me admitting this stuff. I think we are in a very different time now where it is okay to say this stuff. I think there are downsides to that. One is we are in a world, especially online, where it's great that people can talk about their anxiety and depression, but there's that kind of marinating in it that I don't think is healthy. I think it's important to talk about it and then add, here's what I do, here's what works for me. Otherwise, it's. It's. It's not just. There's the normalization part, then there's the contagion part. That isn't good.

B (24:33)

Yeah.

A (24:34)

So that's one of the downsides. The other downside is the weaponization of therapy speak, which I think is another sort of deleterious impact of this. But overall, I think it's really great in the last 10 years or so that it's become okay to mention that you have anxiety and depression. The fact that we sold this thing out talking about anxiety and depression, I think is great. It's not so great what it says about the culture right now, that this has been on the rise for a long time. But again, I will emphasize that we identified one tool, which is mindfulness, to be able to spot it in yourself and to name it to the people around you, especially if you feel safe, or in this case, if you're the boss.

B (25:17)

We are a shared leadership model here at New York Inside.

A (25:20)

Yeah. All right. One of the bosses. That is really helpful. I do think there is something powerful if you're in a position of leadership, in a family, in an organization, to talk about it. Yeah. Just say, this is something I'm dealing with.

B (25:34)

Yeah. And I appreciate that you brought up the weapon, weaponization of it, because that is real. My ex was the executive director of an organization with a lot of young people. They were, like, straight out of college. It is one of those things like this Gen Xer vs Gen Z or millennials were like Gen Xers. We just plowed through it. We did cocaine apparently is how we got through it. But we just plow through it. Right. Whereas younger generations are really owning it and telling their bosses and taking a lot of mental health days. One person that my ex was the boss of, I was like, when does she work? Yeah, every month, five days for her period. I mean, that's legit. That is legit. That should be standard. Right? But then it was like three days a week were like mental health days. I really appreciate that she's taking care of herself, but what is she doing to not have to take three mental health days every week? I didn't feel like she was wanting to do any reflection. She wasn't wanting to engage with therapy. She wanted to live in that narrative and make everyone else around her pay for it.

A (26:46)

Yes. A couple of thoughts come into my. One is, you know, I think it's overall really positive that we're in a world where it's okay to talk about anxiety and depression freely. The other thing I'd say, but I'm always wary of generational critiques because if the younger generations have quirks, we're the ones who created it for them because they're growing up in the world we invented for them.

B (27:10)

I've heard this a lot. They're like, we saw Gen Xers working for free, working 18 hour days, being abused by their bosses and we're not going to do that. And I'm like, oh, that's legit.

A (27:23)

It's really smart.

B (27:24)

I thought you were supposed to do that.

A (27:25)

Yeah.

B (27:26)

I didn't know I had a choice in the matter. So they are legit?

A (27:30)

Yes. I've learned a ton from my younger staffers about how to be a human being. But let me just give you mentioned in passing having a recent ex did that process, which I'm sure was not easy, did that create any anxiety or depression? No. Is she watching?

B (27:54)

I mean, I mean the relationship did. The decision to leave the relationship in the aftermath, I'm like, you'll learn if you allow yourself to let things be teachable moments. I was realizing that I was walking on eggshells in my home always. And when I needed things to be a certain way, it was like, oh, you're being silly or you're being too specific. I started to do that thing where I made my needs smaller and there's just a lot, especially when you're sharing home with someone. There are so many things that I didn't like. The way that they were organized, placement of certain things that they didn't make sense for me. And I Couldn't really navigate that well. For example, with these really deep cabinets in our kitchen, whenever I needed anything, I'd have to take everything out to get to the one thing in the back. And then because I have adhd, I forget that I had taken everything out and I would walk away from it for days. And then that would be a big fight. And so when she moved out, I was like, what is gonna make my life easier? I went through a phase where I ADHD my home. Instead of these deep cabinets, I got pull out shelves installed in my cabinets. So I pull the whole thing out and I get that thing in the back without removing everything else. I'm learning all these things that would have really supported my self preservation and mental health for years, but I chose not to.

A (29:24)

Why did you choose not to?

B (29:26)

Because it would just turn into a fight.

A (29:27)

I see.

B (29:28)

It was always like there was a judgment. For a lot of people whose brains are a little bit more neurotypical, they don't understand that little tiny things, these little quirks like fabric that doesn't feel good on our skin can like ruin the day. If the grid doesn't look like the grid, I think the way the grid should look. I had to redo the grid so that the grid looks the way that I can see it. So it's just a lot of things like that. Like, I like a very specific font. It helps me to see it more clearly. Every document I create, I change the font on it. So it's easy.

A (30:02)

Don't you think it's commonly the case just to pick up on that, that people with ADHD get treated for anxiety because it's an emergent property of the adhd.

B (30:12)

Yeah. If everything is the way that I need it to be, I am so chilled. I mean, really, like.

A (30:19)

And that's a hilarious statement.

B (30:24)

Actually. That's hilarious.

A (30:26)

I think the Buddha had a few things to say about that.

B (30:31)

But also, I had this thing about coffee tables. When I walk into room and there's a coffee table, I don't know where to go, in front of it, behind it. So when my ex moved out, I just got rid of my coffee table. And when people come into my home, they're like, it feels so spacious and open. So it benefits everyone. Dan is what I'm trying to say.

A (30:54)

It's spacious and open because we removed a human being.

B (31:03)

This was so rich. Thank you all so much. Thank you so much. It was vulnerable to do this at my job, you know, and. Yeah. And so beautiful. And I'm a little emotional this was really stunning. And thank you, Dan, so much for. Yeah, for making it so fun. Lots of opportunities. Join our mailing list. Follow us. Come to New York Insight. There are so many things to do.

A (31:44)

Thank you for having us all here. It's great. Really appreciate New York Insight Meditation center is awesome. And thank you to all the volunteers as well. Thank you. Okay.

B (31:59)

And we do want to dedicate the merit of our practice because we are a Buddhist center. And so marriage is something that we. Marriage is something that is cultivated through the goodness of being with other people, sharing our heart, sharing our practice, sharing our wisdom. And the thing about marriage is that it only grows when we share it out into the world. So dedicate the merit of our time today, our practice today, for all beings in the world who are suffering with anxiety, with depression, with a neuro spicy brain, who don't have the love and support and generosity of a community around them, supporting them and lifting them up. May we take all that we've learned, all that we experienced, all that we have experienced and learned from today, and take it out into the world to be in service to all of those folks. Thank you so much for your practice. Dan, do you want to ring us out?

A (33:02)

No, I'm fine. I'm good.

B (33:05)

Deuces, stay in touch. Do not be a stranger. This is not the last time that we should see each other. All right, thank you all.

A (33:14)

Bye bye. Thanks so much to Booker, AKA Leslie Booker. And thank you to everybody at the New York Insight Meditation center for making that event come together. If you're in the New York area or if you visit New York, you should check out the New York Insight Meditation Center. They do great stuff. Don't forget to sign up. Over@danharris.com we do weekly live meditation and Q and A sessions. The next one is coming up on Tuesday, November 25th and on November 23rd. So a couple days before our next live session, I'm going to do an in person session at Troutbeck, which is a wonderful little hotel in the Hudson Valley. You can sign up at the link in the show notes. Finally, thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

B (34:23)

Life doesn't pause when you're sick. Vaccines against respiratory illnesses can help protect you and give you more playtime with your best friend. Depending on age and health status, vaccinations for flu, COVID 19, RSV or pneumococcal infection may be recommended. Vaccines can help keep you from having a rough time. Learn more@cveep.org Vaccines Protect brought to you by the American Lung association and CBEAP. Fighting infectious respiratory Disease.