The Green Pill Podcast

All right, Hannah Rose, LCPC, Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor. Welcome to Green Pill. First question, will you take the green pill?

Yes. What is in the pill?

The green pill is a world just like the red pill, but the green pill is a world where everyone cares about their health. We're all thriving or okay, and society prioritizes mental, physical, and emotional health.

Yes. Sign me up for all of that.

And also just makes you feel good when you take it. A little green high. Hannah's background is really cool. Rose Wellness, she started in the addiction world and graduated from JHU, Johns Hopkins. She's based in Maryland, so is Rose Wellness. They've got 13 therapists running the gamut from EMDR through traditional talk therapy and some other modalities that you'll hear about. She's an adjunct professor. She's a writer for a few different websites. This will be a good one Hannah, how did you get into, into helping people with their brains and their psychology? Why'd you do that?

What a question. It all began. No, I think going through my own personal life struggles just as a human always geared me towards wanting to know more about what's going on under the surface. And I have a very vivid memory of being 18 years old, a counselor at a sleepaway summer camp, and I was the lacrosse specialist. And with the teenagers, we would just say, okay, we're not playing lacrosse today. We're gonna do lacrosse therapy, which I was not licensed to do. And we would each throw the ball to each other and just talk about what was really going on or what was going on at home. And so this draw to just facilitate counseling or group counseling, it's just, it's been in me for a long time.

It just felt right. And what did you do professionally or non-professionally? What'd you do to make money before? You became a counselor, or what'd you do from 18 till then? Oof.

I had all sorts of jobs, mainly through school. I worked in restaurants, so I was a server. I'm the worst server, just the worst. I just, I was so anxious about making sure everyone got what they needed, and there's only so much you can control as a server. I was a camp counselor during the summers. I was a bar mitzvah dancer, like one of those motivators that is, come on kids, in your awkward 13-year-old stage, let's do the chess slide. I really just did anything I could to make ends meet.

So you're making ends meet. And then when did you go to your, when'd you go to graduate school? Uh, when was that? Was that decision instant after undergrad? How did that work?

No, I, I majored in psychology at Goucher College in Maryland and I took a year off and worked at Texas Roadhouse and realized I gotta go back to school. This, I cannot do this long term again. I was not a great server. And then I applied to graduate schools and when I got into Hopkins, I was stunned and was like, I, I should go here. And so I just followed that path.

And so when you got the acceptance to Hopkins, you were psyched because you were working at Texas Roadhouse and you probably, you were a great server in the sense that you were engaging and you probably therapized a lot of people, but probably the food came late, I imagine.

Yeah, it's the worst. I still wake up from nightmares of getting double or triple sat or forgetting someone's order. And I'm like, it's very stressful. I give so much credit to servers. That's a hard job.

Another hard job is running a business. And now you went, and we'll get there, uh, like you're running this wellness business, but you seem very relaxed about it. What caught your interest? Like when you went to Johns Hopkins, were you like, all right, I'm gonna work on addiction. I'm gonna work in the addiction world. What drew you to therapy and what subjects in therapy and what people? Which people?

Great questions. So I knew I wanted to be a therapist. I didn't know what kind of mode that would take on. I didn't know if I wanted to pursue a PhD or a PsyD, get a master's, social work, counseling, and so I just applied to a bunch of places. And I only really got my master's in clinical mental health counseling 'cause that was the program that Hopkins offered. And I knew that the name, going to the school that is known for being a good school, would serve me, which I think it did. But I definitely, I said from the jump, I never wanted to do addiction work. I'm in recovery myself, I got sober in a 12-step program when I was 20. And I was like, I don't want to do addiction counseling. That's cliché. That's also too close to home. And I ended up doing addiction counseling just because I was placed during my practicum and internship at an outpatient rehab. And I fell in love with it. I really did. And I continued with that for about 5 years.

And so you were in recovery since you were 20. And so you went to school after you were 20, right? For your master's. And So you always said you wouldn't be the addictions counselor, you became it. And may I ask you what was tough in your childhood that— did you, did you fall into addiction? Did you just say— did you fall in? Was it chemical? Was it lifestyle-based? Tell me the story of that.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's actually really— it's a pretty common misconception that like something had to have happened, or I know people who had the most functional, boundary-loving families and still it's— there's no It doesn't matter always. And so for me, great family, grew up cared for, loved, nurtured. And for me, it was just a love affair with alcohol from the very first time I drank. I react bodily and mentally different than my fellows. That's what separates alcoholics and non-alcoholics, where when you start drinking, there's something called a phenomenon of craving and you just want to keep drinking. Now, when you're between 15 and 20 and probably a little older as well, most people drink to get drunk. We don't just enjoy a fine glass of wine with a steak. That's not a thing in high school and in college. And so I couldn't really piece that my drinking was that different than my peers, except I started to experience consequences, physical consequences, emotional consequences of my drinking, ostracizing relationships, basically being like spiritually and emotionally dead inside. And you don't— it's also a misconception that you have to hit some kind of rock bottom to get sober. I believe rock bottom is when you stop digging and I was in a musical at my college at the time and had another giant mishap from my drinking. And there was suicidality. My parents wanted to take me out of school and I just, I really didn't want to leave this play. And I was like, I'll get sober. And I didn't stay sober that time, but it introduced me to this 12-step fellowship. And 6 months later, I ended up actually getting sober the night before my senior year of college started.

Wow. So college, so you did the party college drinking, but you were also probably a pretty good student. You were partying throughout college, doing the normal thing, but for you, alcohol just disrupted your life more than it does for most college students, or?

Yeah, for sure. And again, like those two things that separate an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic, or an alcoholic and a problem drinker or a binge drinker or a college student is this phenomenon of craving and. I don't know where the night's gonna go, and it doesn't matter what happens or how awful it is, I will continue to drink. And so there's this level of powerlessness, and it takes a lot of human or not human intervention to get me to stop. And I was just, I was in so much pain and desperate enough to do anything, and I said, "All right, I gotta do something about this." And I didn't expect to stay sober, but what I found in this, in the 12 Steps, was really friends and young people and a whole world I didn't know about. And I attribute so much of how I am and who I am now to the last 12 years of being in recovery.

Mm-hmm. And for you, it wasn't boring to be in recovery. It wasn't like a loss. You actually found a whole new world.

1000%. I thought my life was over. I grieved alcohol, partying, my life, my identity. Someone said to me, what's Hannah Rose without alcohol? I'll never forget that. I was like, oh, right to the heart. Cause I was, that was my identity. And yeah, I thought my life was over and I would just be boring and depressed forever. And that is so not the case at all. It was difficult at first, but done some pretty cool stuff. And anyone that knows me knows I'm very enthusiastic about life and having fun. And when people say, if you don't drink, what do you do? It's a really simple answer.

It's everything else. Literally everything else. A million, infinity minus one thing. And so when you got clean, if I'm using the nomenclature correctly, you got sober, what did you spend your time doing at night?

So I was still living in my college dorm room on campus at Goucher, and so I just went to a lot of 12-step meetings. I, we like went bowling and went to the diner every night. The friends I made threw me a 21st birthday party, like at a club. I've never had a legal drink. And it really, yeah, it just that fellowship of people was really helpful, especially at first, because I was like, what do I do? Ah, but I was also in college, so I was trying to scrape together my grades because I really didn't do well in school because it wasn't a priority to me.

So senior year when you got clean, that's when you turned it on with school a little bit, enough so that you got into Johns Hopkins later?

Yeah, I, uh, Johns Hopkins didn't require a standardized test, and I think that made a difference. And they also did a group interview, and I don't think I looked very good on paper. I had no extracurriculars. My grades were pretty awful. Um, but I think I showed up as myself and passionate and excited and I was very candid and I think they saw probably what I couldn't see yet, which was like I could grow into someone that had something to offer.

So you did, um, a few years following in, in all kinds of recovery centers and what made you start Rose Wellness, like on the side?

Yeah, so it was 2019 and I had been working at a 28-day inpatient substance use rehab for maybe 4 and a half years, and I just, I was so burnt out. Classic signs of burnout. I was emotionally raw. I felt compassion fatigue. Working in the addiction world and being in recovery myself, there's so much death. There's so much death. Both amongst peers and then patients. And you are— it truly is life and death every single day of work. And it's not, it's not like a metaphor. It's no, this is life and death. Like when someone would complete their 28-day stay, I didn't know they were gonna die. And it— I, I took so much responsibility on, even though as a counselor you can't be responsible for people who stay sober or people who relapse or people who die. We could just provide the tools and whatever they do with the tools is on them, which is a very humbling lesson to learn. And so in 2019, I decided I would dip my toe in private practice and just myself maybe see some people privately on in the evenings and on weekends. And within 4 months, I had a full caseload and a waitlist, and I decided to take that leap. And it was one of the scariest things I ever have done because I didn't— I had so much imposter syndrome and fear and I didn't know if I had clinical acumen outside of relying on my own addiction experience and being an addictions counselor. So much of it was just based on what I had learned in my own recovery. And even though I got my master's in counseling, I had so much fear when a non-alcoholic comes to therapy to deal with other stuff. Do I have the tools? And I took that leap and it was amazing. And this is pre-COVID. And then COVID happened and more people sought therapy. The demand just increased tenfold. And I got so sick of saying I don't have availability or I'm on a waitlist. I, I loathe waitlists because sure, when someone has that window of willingness to go to therapy, it's really important for the clinician to act on it, even if that means refer them elsewhere. And so in 2021, I decided to just maybe take on a therapist or two and rebrand as Rose Wellness. We have merch.

Yay.

It's like such a— I just was excited to make merch, honestly.

That was number one.

Yeah. And that's how the group practice was formed. And I had no idea what I was doing. And I won't take away from what I've learned and say I still have no idea what I'm doing, but it's very learn as you go, make mistakes, figure it out. And it's not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. I'm the least stressed I've ever been in my life.

Yeah. I wanna unpack a few things you said, but that's probably the most interesting one for me when I met you, because we got on a call and you said, oh yeah, I've got these people working for me. Everything's going great. And other people are just, and I think I'm probably looking in the mirror, would be like, all right, I gotta manage this. I gotta make a process chart for this. I gotta email this. So how do you stay so kopasetic and chill managing what seems like a lot?

Great question. It hasn't always been that way. I think there's seasons of more stress and fear. It's almost all fear. And for me, so much of my entrepreneurial business-y journey has been asking for help and outsourcing and reading from other practice owners, reading books about— phenomenal book called Radical Candor about leadership and Dare to Lead by Brené Brown. I'm about to actually start her 8-week training about leadership, and I love Brené Brown. And so for me, a lot of it has been absorbing other people's experiences and insights like a sponge and trying to apply as much as I can. And there's this great website called Practice of the Practice. I'm doing a speaking gig for them in a couple weeks, actually.

I've heard of that one.

Yeah, there's like an ebook, there's free PDFs, there's so many blog posts about— you can't do it all yourself. And even though that control says I have to do billing, I have to do insurance, I have to manage these contractors, I have just leaned into, you know, I don't have anything to offer if I'm burnt out. And so how can I take a step back, offload some tasks where possible, keep the things I truly enjoy doing and find ways to build so that I can delegate the things that I hate doing, like insurance and working with managed care. And it's just been, I feel it's like very opportunistic. I feel like a lot has happened very serendipitously where like running Rose Wellness is easier than when I worked full-time at an agency and was a counselor case manager. I went away, we'll just say that, for a month earlier this year on this very exciting thing that I did that I can't legally talk about yet. And, um, but you could Google it and I was gone. I was in Fiji for a month with no contact with the outside world. And that experience leading up to it really kicked me in the butt to say, I need to make sure Rose Wellness can run itself, right? I can't be running everything because I won't be there for a month. And I did. And when I came home, I was expecting it to be like on fire and just like drowning and stuff. And it was, The clinicians were fine. All the insurance and the billing was fine. Clients were fine. And I was like, oh my God, like that's— I feel like a proud parent. Like this thing that I accidentally created can take care of itself. And so I'm here for support, but I am not in the day-to-day. I'm not micromanaging. I'm not like trying to control all these things. And so I'm always looking at how to pull back and that has been Really amazing.

So self-education, which sounds like a big piece. So it wasn't just this landed on your lap and then you said, oh, I'm gonna just let it run. It was a lot of deliberate knowledge seeking or mentorship seeking, whether formal, informal, through a book, through a talk. And two, outsourcing, right? So both overseas and just to others. So giving up responsibility and trust. So there's a lot of trust there, and maybe you're naturally trusting. Or maybe you just have good people. You, you gave me it for people not watching on video. I do think there's something in a sense, two, two pieces I would pull out and they're related. There's a deadline here, I hear. So with Fiji, you had a deadline, you set everything up towards that deadline. You were freaking out a little bit. When you came back, it was good. But if you didn't have that deadline, there might have been less work done. And then similarly and concurrently in the past, you started getting more clients and you couldn't really handle it unless you outsourced. That's what I'm hearing. How do you manage your own wellness, Hannah, day to day? Like, what do you like to do? What do you not like to do, but you still do? And how do you counsel patients in that, in that regard?

Yeah, so I'm a really big fan of everything that the, the idea or the notion that like everything we're looking for is inside of us already. And it's my task to figure out what's blocking me. Yeah. And if I can identify those blocks and then remove them, it just increases my quality of life. There's a great quote by the Persian poet Rumi, and it says, "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you've built against it." Can you hear my dog barking? Hey, Ralph! Can you not?

Stop it, Ralph.

Ralph!

Ralph, come on.

Oh God. So for me, a lot of it has been therapy, right? Good therapy. My recovery is huge. These are like the foundational pieces. I love reading. And so for me, really being mindful of the media that I'm taking in, like I don't have Instagram. I've had it in the past, but it's just a stress anxiety ball for me. So I just don't do it. I haven't had social media for the majority of the last almost 4 years since COVID I recently reactivated Facebook, but like being mindful of what drains from my cup, like what takes my cup or makes it empty and what pours into it. And then making intentional choices around that. So I read a ton, I like physically read and listen to books. And instead of only listening to or reading nonfiction, informative, educational things, like I love reading fantasy, just like trash, smutty fantasy. I'm like, yes. This is the best. And then I listen to nonfiction and I go back and forth listening to something that's really educational and profound versus listening to a domestic thriller because it's entertaining. And I'm like, yes, this is great. And so for me, it's moderating what media I take in. It's movement. Movement has become huge.

What do you do around movement?

COVID. I've gone through different phases of things. I was very into yoga for a very long time. During COVID I did get a Peloton and it has changed my life. Like, I'm in that cult following. Like, it changed my life. And it's not just cycling. They have strength and stretching and meditation, Pilates, barre yoga. Just like, I want to be a brand ambassador. I'm just like, please, I'm obsessed with you all. You will be.

But you might have to turn social media back on. Yeah.

Oh, I won't do that.

Okay.

But it's changed my life. And so I try to get out of the house every day, you know, spend time with my dog Ralph, spend time with friends, my fiancé. It's the first time I've ever said that. I'm always like, my boyfriend, my partner.

That's my fiancé. I know the feeling. That's my— We're gonna clip that and amplify it 3 times. Amazing. So you've got these support systems from mental, so therapy plus what you love, which is information consumption and synchronizing that information. You've got some physical practice, you've got your recovery, you've got your friends, your fiancé, you've got Ralph. So it sounds like you're well supported in a lot of ways. And you mentioned that your childhood was well supported as well, and you took to recovery and AA really felt right for you. And so a lot of things clicked and it seems like you're attentive to your own needs when you're counseling patients around a holistic lifestyle. What, what are the wins you've seen recently? What trends are you seeing and what are the difficulties you're seeing when you talk about these subjects?

So I will say that as of this week, I'm actually transitioning out the last of my clients, which is very bittersweet. And I have fully stepped into more of an administrative role. So it's so weird. I'm like, not— I'm a therapist at heart, but I'm not really a therapist anymore. However, what I've seen is— and I'm so biased. Nope. We're going to wait.

Ralph!

Sir! I'm sure I have a package. I'm sure that's what it is. Hey, Ralph! Maybe if I close this door, you won't be able to hear it. You probably will though, because I'm in a townhouse. Can you still hear him? So with clients, I'm definitely— I try to be conscientious of my own bias with social media because I know it can be such a tool and a gateway to connection. I have seen so much misinformation about mental health on social media. I see endless scrolling, which can— and multitasking, which our brains can't actually do. And so there's this attention stuff going on. Many people have ADHD, many people do not. It's just the lifestyle of scrolling while paying attention to other things. And so one barrier to wellness that I have seen, not across the board, but it can be, um, our relationship with our phones. And I'm not a Luddite, I'm not anti-technology by any means, but I read a book a few years ago called How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price, and I'm— it's my most watched video on YouTube is me talking about that book, which is interesting because I think— yeah, How to Break Up with Your Phone. And then I also read Digital Minimalism, a different book. And like, oh, and so to me, I just, I see that as in Catherine Price's book, she says, what do you want to pay attention to? And becoming more conscious of a very unconscious or mindless thing we do where, and you can pick up your phone right now and open the screen time part of the settings app and look at how many times you just pick it up a day. And it's alarming. And when I was teaching at Goucher, my poor students, I gave them an extra credit assignment where they would track their screen time. And if they could bring it down by a certain percentage, they would get extra credit in the class. And for some of them, even just being mindful of how often they were using their phones, how many hours they spent on Instagram and TikTok was mind-blowing because we don't even know. So I try not to push my—

But that is your soapbox. That is one of your soapboxes.

I know, I know.

Have you heard, have you heard of One Sec app where it makes you take a deep breath? So it's called One Sec and it, you install it on your phone, you target it to Instagram or Facebook or even your email, and every time you go to open Instagram or whichever, it goes, take a deep inhale, take a deep exhale. So it delays the gratification by about 5 seconds and then it asks you, are you sure you still want to open this app? So my consumption of Instagram was at like 30 minutes and now it's down to 5. And then when you do go into the app, you have to tell it like, are you anxious? Are you procrastinating? Are you doing it for work? Like for me, sometimes it's work. Wow. So it really delays that. I don't know if it's the scientifically correct way, but the dopamine hit. So definitely recommend that one for those out there listening. Okay. So one soapbox is phone time and I'm totally with you on that. What else, what other challenges do you see to overall wellness and what other wins are you seeing come out there? Or have you seen?

Here's my soapbox on my slash Brené Brown, but my view on what keeps most of us feeling stuck is shame and shame narratives. And so just quick overview, if guilt is I feel badly about this, shame is I am bad. It's like taking guilt, swallowing it whole, internalizing it. I hear these narratives often. Oh, that's just who I am. This is just what I do. But it's these very finite narratives. Anything that I am bad at, or I am blank enough, I'm not blank enough, et cetera. It's this culture of scarcity and it's shame keeps us stuck. And the first article I ever wrote that was, I think it was in the Baltimore Sun and like the Denver Post, like it got picked up, which was surprising, but it was called You Can't Shame Yourself Into Growth. 'Cause I think a lot of us, are of that mentality. Oh my God, I'm such a piece of blank. I need to try harder. And that's not actually how we grow through things. Really, it's self-compassion, self-forgiveness, radical self-forgiveness. And so I have seen so many wins with clients tapping into their relationship with themselves. And that's what I branded myself as therapy-wise, was like, this is what I specialize in, is really getting into and unpacking the relationship we have with ourselves. Because from that everything else stems. And looking at what blocks us from self-love. And it's usually one of two things. One is we genuinely don't like ourselves. We've got a lot of shame narratives. We have a lot— like, that's usually one. However, more common than that is that we've been conditioned by society or our parents or messages in the media that self-love is narcissism and is egotism. And so to be proud of yourself or really like certain things about yourself, we've almost conditioned ourselves to shove that down because it's like, I don't want to come across as cocky. And kind of honing in on which one is it for you, and then let's unpack that further. I think, uh, guiding clients towards their own truth and being able to get in touch with their gut and this kind of like compass that can guide us, that's the win, is seeing clients really just wipe away and remove all these things that have blocked them from— that they already know what's good for them. They already know in their gut. One of the YouTube videos is called like, Questions to Ask Yourself If You're Questioning Your Relationship or something like that. But the reality is that I had a therapist say this to me once: if you say I don't know enough times, like, you do know, you just don't want that to be the answer. And I was, yeah, so I love, I just love seeing the resilience of the human spirit. And some of my clients have gone through hell, trauma, hell, and to see them get through it, like against all odds really, and see them pick themselves up, like the therapist isn't doing that for them. And when they try to offload responsibility and say, you did this, and I'm like, no, I didn't. You allowed me to be a part of this, but I've just watched. You've done all the work, right? Like 50 minutes of therapy once a week is not where the growth happens. It's every other minute of every other day.

Totally the same for coaching too. Personal trainer, 1 hour a week, but then the person loses 20 pounds. It's all their behaviors everywhere else. And just real quick on shame, cuz I know it's, you love to talk about, as you told me, I'm glad you brought it up. Sometimes we think about shame as this like really dark thing that we're hiding, like something we're hiding about ourselves that we are, and we're hiding it cuz we don't want anybody to see it. But what you're saying is First of all, you might not be that. And second, you should just accept it if you are, and radical acceptance, and maybe even broadcast of it, get tattoos or post it on social media. And then you quickly segued from shame to like self-manifestation, to listening to the inner voice. And a lot of therapists talk about relationships with others, interpersonal, not intrapersonal. And you're talking about here, number one, and everything flows from there. How do you link those two from shame to then like radical self-love, but also self-accountability? I don't want to ask too complicated of a question, but how do you bridge the two from shame, which seems so dark to then just focusing on your own relationship? Yeah.

Well, I think great. Again, great questions. I think understanding shame is first and foremost, and I would love to be able to package this process and be like, just do these four things. However, if I were to boil it down, it would say I would say first is the awareness. It's the mindfulness. What are my shame narratives? I am blank. Write down every shame narrative that you can think of. I am not skinny enough. I'm not successful enough. I am bad at relationships. I hear this all the time. Oh, I'm bad at boundaries. No, you have a pattern of not setting boundaries for really specific reasons that probably served you at a certain point in your life as survival. And now it no longer serves you. It's not— we are not finite. Our whole human experience is so fluid. When people say you can't teach a new dog, an old dog new tricks, I'm just like, ah, really grinds my gears because like you can. I don't know about dogs, but like humans, you can, and it's never too late. So identify shame, and if you are able to process with a therapist, get in there with them. There's so much good stuff too outside of therapy. Like in 2015, that's when I started reading my first Brené Brown book, which was Daring Greatly. And it was about shame, fear, and vulnerability. And it changed my whole life because I was feeling, like I said, imposter syndrome. I was feeling like, oh, I'm 4 years sober. I shouldn't be experiencing this pain. I should have it all together. I'm this age. I should figure it all out. Those shoulds are so damaging.

Are those shoulds shame?

They can be a manifestation of shame because I should be further along in my life is I am not successful enough or I am a failure, right? Like, it's— can all be branches of shame. So identifying shame, being able to consume and really internalize information about shame. So like, for me, Brené Brown, super helpful. Also processing that shame, finding its roots. I'm a really big fan of EMDR because I'm trained in it, which is a very specific modality for therapy, and it's not just for trauma. That's a misconception. And so really being able to unpack and process shame and then finding opportunities, even if it's one moment every day, to practice radical self-forgiveness or radical acceptance or For me, like, I do a lot of public speaking and if I'm really nervous and uncomfortable, I'll usually start by saying that. I'm like, I'm so nervous right now. Like, I'm sweaty, I'm uncomfortable. And people usually laugh cuz it's, oh, that's the human experience. Like, you're just a person. And for me it's, let me rip off any mask that I thought I need to put on in order to look a certain way to you.

Mm-hmm.

And to me, the end goal is that this foundation of self can't be rocked by anything externally. So what you think of me is not only none of my business, but what you think of me doesn't make or break my relationship with myself. And if I can live authentically without fear of what y'all think of me, which is such a process, it's so freeing. It's so freeing. It's the best.

And those not seeing on video, she's— it is the best. She's like looking at the ceiling like this is core to her being and I think that's an awesome place to wrap it up because people need to take that message home, which is identify the shame, work with an information source, whether it be therapy or a book, process it through something like EMDR or maybe some other mind-altering modality, whether it be meditation, breathwork, yoga, exercise, some other ones you can think of. And then my favorite thing about what you said is practice it day to day. When I couldn't talk to people when I was 17, I just had a panicky fear of talking to anybody who was a female gender, but especially pretty much anybody. At some point I read a book and then I said, you know what, I'm just gonna start talking to the guy at the cafe, talking to the bus driver, talking to the girl down the street, whatever it was. Every day I practiced, and I really like it for shame, and I'm gonna take a lot away there. And I like how you tied shame to these shoulds, to these, oh, I shouldn't be nervous right now going to public speak, I shouldn't be sweating, no, I should keep it all together. Instead, you're like, I'm sweating, I'm nervous, and I'm happy to be here. And it just comes— your energy comes out. It's like you don't need to alchemize the, like, weird feelings inside. You just shout them out, and therefore they don't control you in a way. And you also show people that you don't necessarily care what they think in a respectful way.

Yeah, in a respectful way. Of course I care, I'm human, but I'm not going to trade my authenticity for your approval. I'm gonna be myself, and that's not going to be everyone's cup of tea. And one thing you said about habit and practice, on a purely neurobiological level, that's how we form new neural pathways. It's not just like maybe one day it'll become a habit. It's like the more that I practice something, my brain is quite literally creating a new neural pathway, just like a groove from rain on a mountain. And if it continues to rain in the same spot, that groove will get deeper. And so unlearning habits is so much more difficult than learning new ones, but they go hand in hand. And also we're all having this incredibly intense, sometimes isolating human experience and connection is the antidote to so much of our shit. Can I swear?

Yeah, shit, fuck, bitch. Yeah, it's a connection, is the antidote to the misery that we often feel.

You feel alone in it, and we're not alone at all. And also, like, real recognizes real. So if you are yourself and real and authentic, like, people see that and are drawn to that because there's enough bullshitting, and it's just nice. Yeah.

How do you take someone from If you don't mind, I can continue for just a bit. How do you take someone who's— they're sitting there at the job they don't like, they're pretending, they dress up in the suit every day, they're happy with their partner, their parents think that they're straight edge, but actually they're bi and they go to raves at night, but they didn't tell anybody. You take this person and— by the way, I'm the opposite of that person. I probably could have been that person. And they want to become more authentic, more, this is who I am. So there's a practice, right? But for them, taking the first step feels hard. They feel so far away from that because they're not really showing up as themselves in any part of their life.

Mm-hmm.

What exercises do you give them to do it? And when they're discouraged, like how do you re-encourage them or how do they re-encourage themselves?

Yeah. Great. Okay. Great questions. I think in this case and in many cases, a lot of it comes from, uh, which is Internal Family Systems, and it's therapeutic practice and theory modality of parts work. So I would get curious with them in counseling, and I would encourage them to think about this on their own, about the different parts of self. So what part of you goes out at night and goes to raves? What part of you do you bring to work? What part of you are you with your family? How old is that part? How does that part dress? Like, there's just so many tools for parts work because we all have different parts, and we often shame the parts that we think don't serve us, and that doesn't get us anywhere. And again, starting with just identifying— if someone were to say, I feel so far away from my authentic self and I'm not living the life I want to live, I would first acknowledge, you know how huge it is to just say that out loud? The fact that you came to therapy willingly and said that— there's a part of you that is willing to own that truth, and it may not have manifested in all areas of your life yet, but let's look at that heart. So like in recovery, when people are like, I really don't want to be sober, I really want to drink, etc., whether it's someone that I sponsor or it's someone like a patient, I'd say, what part of you decided to call me? Like, what part of you willingly came to rehab? Oh, you had an intervention. So it was between this and prison. Why wouldn't you choose prison? Why wouldn't you choose homelessness? Like, you don't— you didn't have to be here. There's a part of you that has chosen to do that. And if we can bring more attention to that, the part of self that is actually self-protective and healthier than we think, that's huge because it's there. So even when someone's, I'm miserable and I don't like anything about myself and I don't want to be here, why'd you come here? Not in a passive-aggressive way, but like some part of you that's telling on yourself right now wants to not feel this way. Tell me more about that. Again, a whole lot of steps with that person that's living a very incongruent life with cognitive dissonance. Which is like the human experience. And so I, I'd recommend a lot of books and I would just talk to them about it and piece together where it comes from and why, and if it's serving them and the fear, it's always usually fear. And it's usually fear of how others will react.

Hmm. And I think you hit on a big one with the intervention or like these life events that seemingly draw people to finally change. The person breaks up, the intervention, the get fired, to screw up a presentation, but your girlfriend breaks up with you because you did a bunch of stupid things in the last 60 days, or it was just, you knew it was coming, or it just wasn't meant to be. And the intervention happens cuz you've been binging and the firing at work happens because you've been, probably part of you has been underperforming on purpose to drive that forward. So I like how you take what are seemingly stark, high contrast situations for people and they come in, oh, I don't wanna be here. I'm only here because this thing happened, or it's been a really rough time. I don't even think this is going to work. But you're like, look at the series of actions, or look at just your own actions. You're encouraging. I think your answer to my question is that you're encouraging and you peace out the person and say, like, part of you is doing what you want to do. And the journey might be faster than people think too. And I want to highlight that, like, the acceleration and velocity of becoming more congruent. And we're all on the journey, right? Like, I'm not— I don't think I'm anywhere close to congruent, but it might take less time. It might all happen at once. Hannah Rose, it's been awesome having you on. Thank you. So wide-ranging and inspiring. Anything else you want to close with? Tell the world, share a message.

Yeah, just why, why is part of me like, just be yourself. That is not—

no, no, no, do better.

It's not that easy. Otherwise everyone would just be themselves. But what I would say to to whoever is listening is you're not alone. And all of the things that you might be ashamed of or not like about yourself is what makes you human and what makes you able to connect with everyone else. Imagine if we were all just perfect and had it all together. It'd be so boring.

You're not alone.

Not alone.

And you are unique.

1,000%.

Thank you so much. You took the green pill. Great job. Where can people find you? So No social media, right? But the website is— tell us.

So my website is rosewellnesscounseling.com, and from there are links. There's a whole resources page with some of my favorite, most impactful books. There's also links to— there will be a blog page on the website shortly, and it's all the blogs from psychologytoday.com that I've written. And then I have a YouTube channel, and on it you can see this exciting thing that I'm not allowed to necessarily talk about, but I can post about it cuz I put it on my YouTube channel.

Boom. I can't wait to find out more about that thing. Thank you so much for coming on. We're gonna link all that and we'll talk to you soon.