Hello, everyone, thank you so much for joining me for another episode of the More Than You See podcast, hosted by me, actor, filmmaker mental health advocate Deborah Lee Smith. Every Monday, I come to you to share some resources, have a conversation, and generally just dive into all sorts of topics around mental health. I am not a licensed practitioner or therapist, but just a woman exploring my own mental health journey and sharing it with you, my listeners. My hope is that this podcast brings you some joy, some understanding, and some tools so that you can build your own mental health toolbox.
Hello, everyone, welcome back, Episode 11. I am so excited to be talking today about hormones and brain chemistry. And I'm especially excited because I have a voice message from a very special guest who is actually going to be talking about medication and how it has impacted her life, because I am not on any sort of medication for depression or anxiety or OCD or anything like that. I have many friends who have been on this before, I have family members who I have witnessed the change in their quality of life and their perspective on things, and so many things like that, because of regulating those brain chemicals. But as I said, I do not have a personal experience with this. And so I felt that it was really, really extra important for me to bring in an outside voice that could actually speak to this. And I hope that this will resonate with you. And maybe it will, you know, open up a new avenue for your own mental health because that is what I hope that this episode, and all of the episodes, will do for you.
Now in the meantime, I want to remind you once again to please subscribe and share and all of those things. If this is the first time that you're joining our podcast. Welcome. And I just want to explain that this is actually the fourth episode and a four part series in which I have been exploring different aspects of mental health. I think that it's really important to have a holistic approach to our mental health, and to look at a lot of different things that affect how we relate to the world, how we relate to others, and how that affects us as people.
And if you want to go check out the previous episode, I strongly recommend it. We discussed your environment, and that is both your social as well as your physical environment. We discussed your spirituality and how being part of a community is so important, and what the rise of capitalism and the culture that we have now - how that has kind of detracted from spirituality and how that can be so damaging, and the importance of really getting back to a community - why that's so important. And then last week, I discussed the physiology and how that impacts our mental health. And what physiology is, is basically how we relate to the world. When we are confronted with things when we are confronted in times of disease, or in times of health and how we react to things are very much dependent upon our family members, our childhood, potentially our DNA, because there's things in our DNA that inform how we react to certain situations. So we really dove into that last week, and today we are going to talk about brain chemistry.
Now, obviously, I am not a scientist, I know very, very little about the brain except for what I have learned through podcasts through books, just through my own knowledge mining. And at a very basic level our brains operate and what they are, are so individual. How my brain operates is completely different from how yours operates. And part of that does have to do with all of those other three elements of our mental health, you know, like how our environment is will affect how our brain is currently feeling and how it's going to currently react to things. But at the most basic level, kind of stripping out everything else. Just at its core. Every single person's brain is different. And that relates to our hormone levels, our brain chemistry, and that is really important because again, how we react in periods of stress or anxiety, or depression, how we react is 100% dependent on your brain chemistry at its base level. Like whatever your foundation is, that affects the rest of the house that you build on that foundation.
And so I think that this is the element of mental health that people kind of look at first. And they also kind of think that this is the only aspect of mental health that is important to be looked at. And I am a huge proponent of medication when it is when it is needed and necessary. And I think one of the problems in mental health in general around the world is that often we only look at this brain chemistry element, and we don't look at all the other things. And so we kind of go, Okay, we've got a chemical imbalance in the brain, which diagnoses you as bipolar, as clinically anxious. There's actual elements of our brain and our brain chemistry that will slot you into different diagnoses. And I think that it is so important to have that knowledge about what your brain is doing, but also look at those other three elements that we've discussed these past weeks.
But again, today's episode is about that diagnosis, basically, and how sometimes you can look at all of those other three elements of mental health, and things still aren't working, it's still hard to get out of bed, you're still struggling with anxiety, or depression, or, you know, whatever. And in those instances, it's so important to also look at this brain chemistry element, at these chemicals, and to not be afraid and not feel that there is a stigma or that there is something wrong because there's not again, it is just your brain Foundation, and you know who you are as a person.
Okay, we are going to listen to a voice message from a very dear friend of mine, Helenna Santos-Levy. She goes into her whole story, so I'm not really gonna give any intro, but I think that it will really kind of succinctly explain what I am trying to get at.
Deb, thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of this podcast. For everybody listening, my name is Helena Santos. Deb is a dear friend of mine, so I'm very honored to be a part of today's episode. I was diagnosed with OCD when I was about 13 years old. And a doctor told me at the time that as long as it was manageable, and it didn't interfere in my daily life, that there was no need for me to be on medication. So for 27 years, I was able to deal with it. It was a struggle. But I gotten very, very good at dealing with the OCD and how it manifested itself in my life.
But, you know, top of this year, with everything going on in the world, the pandemic, just life in general, I started to wonder what it would be like if I didn't have this crazy, heavy albatross around my neck all the time, and something that I was carrying with me on a daily basis that was interfering with sometimes just daily tasks. So I talked to my doctor, and she asked me specific questions about you know, why I thought now's a good time. And had I tried other things like therapy, which obviously, I'd have, and it had been many years of therapy, which has been fantastic. But I still felt like I wanted to see if there was an easier way that I could live life on a daily basis.
I talked to a number of people I know personally, who were on anti-anxiety medications, and I talked about how it gave them their life back and there was an ease to it, that they hadn't experienced before, like an ease to life. So the doctor asked me a number of questions, which is sort of a formulaic Question and Answer thing that they have to go through to determine what it is that you're personally dealing with. And then from that she found, you know, she decided which medication would be best for me to try. And she put me on a very low dose of an anti-anxiety medication that, you know, is primarily used for OCD.
And at first I was really nervous about it. Because as an actor, I was scared that it was somehow change who I was on a daily basis, that it would change how I how I am as a feeling emotive person which is so important because I am an actor. But like a girlfriend of mine said who's also an actor, she said it doesn't - it didn't change anything about who she was. It just made things simpler. It made less fog to wade through and less of a heaviness, and I have found that definitely to be true.
It's been two months now. I'm on a very low dose. And it has really changed things for me for the better. And, you know, the decision to go on medication for everybody is very personal. It's different for everyone, it can take some time to find the right medication, if it's something that you do decide to do. But I found for me, I was lucky to find something that was well diagnosed for me, and or I should say, well prescribed for me, and has worked - has been working. And it has given me a new sort of freedom that I didn't even know that I was lacking.
So for anyone out there who is feeling unsure, I 100%. Understand. But just know that if it's something - if it's a journey you decide to go on - it can definitely be worth it, and it can definitely change things. And, you know, my journey with this is, you know, it's been a long, long haul. And all of the things that I've gone through have made me obviously into the person I am today, and I don't think I would change it. But I am glad that I made the decision when I did. And it has opened up a whole new world of ease, and lightness, I should say.
So thanks, Deb, for having a great podcast and sending lots of love to you and everyone else out there, dealing with any sort of mental health things that they - you know, don't really know where else to go to. I feel like this podcast is opening up a really fantastic conversation. So thank you very much, Deb.
Yay, thank you so much, Helenna, for being such a huge fan of this podcast, for championing me so much. That is a hard word. And for just being so vulnerable and open about your story. I think that it really touched me and I hope that it will impact other people as well.
To wrap up, I just want to look at this in one more way. There was an interview that I heard with an actor the other day, and they were talking about how they had just gone on medicine for depression and for anxiety. And they were talking about the types of medicine and how it was impacting them and whatever. But they had a, an imagery that they use that I think is so incredibly helpful. What they said was basically that they felt like they had been stumbling in the dark. They were meditating, they weren't drinking, they were eating healthy, they were doing everything that they could in order to, you know, address those other three elements of mental health. And yet, they were still in the dark. And they felt like the medication has finally switched the lights on and allow them to kind of climb a chair in their brain and go, "Okay, now I can actually see what the problem is", before it was like it was just dark fog. And they couldn't actually see what they needed to address. But that medication allowed them to switch on their brain allowed them to kind of see things clearly. And now they're able to actually process the things that they need to process.
I thought that that was such incredible imagery and such an important way to look at things. And if you feel like this resonates with you, I strongly encourage you to talk to a therapist, to talk to someone who can help you get the help that you need. And I also want to clarify the fact that when you do get help from a medical doctor, and they prescribe you medication, I mean, they're very careful about it, there is checks and balances to ensure that what you are doing is going to help you. But you still need to be your own advocate. I am such a huge proponent of advocating for yourself and your own mental health. And this is so key in every single aspect of our mental health but especially in this so if you are on medication and it's not making you feel correctly, definitely you know, give it some time, follow your doctor's orders, but speak up if it isn't reacting to you correctly, because again, our brains are all different. We are all unique, and that is most clear in this aspect of mental health.
I want to say thank you again to Helenna for calling in. I'm going to give a call out to anyone if you have a personal story that you want to share. If you have a question that you want me to address on a future episode, please feel free to reach out to me. I always I love getting suggestions and comments from you all, it just makes me feel like I am giving back to the community and this podcast is for you. It is not just for me it is for you as well. And I love when people are participatory.
Just a little heads up, next week is actually going to be the last episode in this little season. So it's gonna be Episode 12, we are going to be talking about how we can process the fact that the world is opening up and holy smokes that's a little bit scary in a lot of different ways. So I'm going to be talking about some tools that we can use in order to process the opening up.
And then we're going to go on a very short hiatus because I have some really exciting new parts of this podcast that I'm going to be introducing. The first episode of this new format is going to be May 3, which is the start of Mental Health Month, which is May.
Again, this podcast is for you. If you have a suggestion. If you have a comment, please share it with me. I hope that this episode resonated with you. And I am really proud of anyone who is continuing to take care of their mental health in these times. It can be difficult, but you prioritizing it is the best thing that you can possibly do for yourself right now. I want to give you a reminder, to be kind to yourself, to give yourself grace and self love to remember that everyone around you is unique and also More Than You See. Thank you so much for listening. I will see you next week.
