Episode 061: Embracing the Stigma of Mental Health

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All right. Welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Josh Turley, flying solo today. Excusing my co-hosts, Jeff Jenkins and Steve Saltskiver today. Today is gonna be a fun episode and one that I personally invested in. And this is all about treating mental health just as any other health, right? And one of the things that I found is, is we've talked to fleet managers that are, you know, in the industry, they're in the job. There's a lot of stuff going on right now. I don't know if you've been aware, but there's a lot of people as we're trying to, hire and deal with the technician shortage. You've got people leaving for a dollar an hour. People feel personally responsible for that. I know fuel costs have gone through the absolute roof, and so I know there's a ton of stressors coming into the job from there, is how are you going to make this all work? How do you make the budgets line up? Um, I know I've got several who their funding sources don't really understand the job they do, and so they never get the funding they need. For the job they're doing. And so they're struggling with all of this outside stress going on. And how do you deal with all of those things that you're taking, you know, like you feel personally responsible for? 'Cause I know you guys are great fleet managers and you wanna do that. And then on top of that, you also have things going on at home that are like, oh man, maybe your kids aren't talking to you. You know, I was just talking to a dear friend of mine who his kids, he hasn't spoken to them in probably, 3 or 4 years. You know, it's been 3 or 4 Christmases since he's been able to see his grandkids. I know that adds stress. You know, some of us have that going on at home. Maybe you're not spending as much time at home as you'd like. You know, you're putting so much energy into the job, there's so many fires that you have to put out. How many of you, as you're listening, you say, man, I wish I could spend more time at home? Maybe you're like a bunch of us in fleet and you haven't gotten a raise in the last couple years. And yet you look and the price of bread and the price of milk are going through the roof and you're not sure. You're looking at your paycheck, you're looking at that bank account, you know, and your bankroll is getting a little bit slim. There are a lot of things that go on outside of our world and outside of our job where we are, you know, like we feel a victim, like we feel like we have no power and control. And I will tell you is that one of the biggest things that impacts our mental health is that feeling, right? Is where we start taking on personal responsibility for things that are outside of our control, or when we feel like we can't move on or move through the next thing. There's an author, doctor that I listen to that I think is just fantastic. He spoke at a summit event that Jeff and I went to last year from Entree Leadership, a guy named Dr. John Delony. And he tells a story. You probably actually find this on YouTube, but he tells a story about bricks and how we all kind of carry around. If you could imagine that you have a backpack on right now and in that backpack are cinder blocks. And he says each one of those cinder blocks represents a story. It represents a memory. It represents something that we did, something that we say is true about ourselves. It could be something that happened to us. And he goes on and he tells a story and he talks about the, uh, a couple that he has where, you know, he was running around, 8-year-old kid, and he was playing tag. And, you know, he had this girl that he really liked and he went up and he tagged her in the back. Well, he accidentally pushed her and she went hands first into a brick wall. And, uh, and if you can imagine what happens when you put your hands out to catch yourself against a brick wall, she ended up breaking both of her wrists. And so she comes into school and she's got two casts on and her like hands are stuck out straight so she can't do anything. He felt so bad about that and he was carrying that with him. He was 8 years old, he's now a 40-year-old man and he's carrying that with him still, right? Like he's like, I can still hear her screams. And we all have those. We all have those stories. We all have the times where, you know, maybe our mom or dad, it was the first time that they hit us and they meant it. Maybe it was, you know, like for me personally, I always, I tell my team about this, but when my parents got divorced, like there are so many any negative tapes that I have from that event that influenced me throughout my youth, throughout my childhood, throughout my adult life. And it changed who I was, right? And these are the bricks that we carry with us. And sometimes what happens is that we keep carrying them and what we do is we pass them on to future generations. We pass them on to the people we work with. And we basically give our people a choice. We're like, hey, here's my bricks. You want some of them too? And they have to adopt those bricks and either copy them and put another brick in their thing, because we end up transferring some of that negative energy. He wrote two books, and I think these two books are fantastic. One of them was this idea of Redefining Anxiety, but the second one's called Own Your Past and Change Your Future. And he talked about, you know, as we take these bricks, like, we have to handle them. We've gotta take 'em and we've gotta deal with 'em in a healthy way. So we're, you know, I wanna talk a little bit about how do we deal with that in a healthy way. But what ends up happening is we take these bricks and they create these negative tapes that we play for ourselves. And we play things and we say things to ourselves and you know what they are because you've told them to yourselves. These are the lies you tell yourself or the things that you tell yourself that you would never tell your best friend, right? These are things that if you were to tell, say this about your best friend, like you would be the absolute, terrible, worstest friend in the world. And as we go through life, we kind of like, we just keep reinforcing these negative beliefs and we call these negative tapes and we have them on repeat. What ends up happening is as we relive that trauma, as we relive those emotions, our bodies experience emotions the same way. They experience it with the same intensity they did the first time they felt it. And if you think about emotions, they really are, it's a physical manifestation. Like whenever I say somebody's, well, I'm feeling really angry right now. Really what that is, is there's a physical element to that. You're feeling that in your body somewhere, and it's where you feel anger. For me, it's my neck and my shoulder. Like, I feel that and I know I'm angry. Now, most of the time I can tell that I'm angry about something, but if I flip it around and say, okay, well, what's the part of my body that I feel that in? That's where I can feel it. And so our body, as we experience emotions, our body is feeling pain and anguish and different sensations in the same exact way. As when we first experienced it. It relives the trauma every time, every time that we tell ourselves that negative tape, every time we tell ourselves that we're not good enough, that we're not a good fleet manager, that we're not a good husband, that we're not a good wife. Every time we tell ourselves that, that we're not a good parent, right? It's that, it's those negative tapes that we're just reliving that trauma. And eventually that shame story becomes true. What ends up happening is as much as we try to cover that up, and as much as we try to, you know, as I like to say, we kind of COVID it up with topsoil. We try to do the things and make it seem like everything's okay. And we try to put some good topsoil and mulch on top of our root system. The root system itself isn't getting fed. And what ends up happening is that we end up with what I call emotional leakage. Right? It's that stuff comes out in different ways and it comes out in a bunch of different ways. One, it'll come out in maybe like some hidden anger, right? Like it's really hard for you to go to sleep. Maybe it comes out in the form of emotions like anxiety and depression. You know, and I have anxiety. I've dealt with anxiety. I take pills for some of my anxiety because it's, you know, like you seriously, if you've not gone through a panic attack, I wouldn't wish it on anybody. I've seen depression. I know what that's like. And I wouldn't wish that on anybody. Um, but it's one of those things that you start having this emotional leakage because you're not taking care of the health of the soil underneath the topsoil. Um, the other thing that can start happening is like physical ailments. You know, if you're getting sick all the time, you're dealing with colds, you're dealing with flu, you've got, uh, you know, ankle problems or knee joint issues or back pain. A lot of these things are coming because our body is under the same stress and it's under those same stressors and we constantly keep reliving it instead of handling it. And so John Delony talked about redefining anxiety and this, uh, this concept that we have to recognize that when we see things like mental health, what we really are just talking about is health in a different way. Um, it's, we should be looking at it the same way as we would look at a kidney sprain or a liver issue. It's just a different system that's, that's out of balance or that's not getting the nourishment it needs. In this case, it happens to be our emotional neurological system, right? Versus a cardiovascular or respiratory system, right? But it's still a body system. And we have to kind of get rid of the stigma from that. And Redefining Anxiety, he talks about recognizing anxiety as a cry for help. Like it's a, it's your body trying to tell you that there's something wrong the same way that your back would tell you there's something wrong with back pain, right? Like, hey, if you've got a slipped disc, like that hurts. If you have a rib that's turned, that hurts. And anxiety is your brain's way of saying like, hey, something's out of place here. I'm hurt. You need to help me.

Right?

It's trying to get you to pay attention. One of the quotes that he had when we were listening to the summit talk was around this idea of winning will not make you whole. And I think a lot of us get sucked into this trap. I know this one really hit home for me because I just kept thinking, you know, if I could just go get that next big deal, if I could just go deliver that next feature, if I could just go and help that one fleet, like, that'll make me happy. If I could just go and get that truck that I've always wanted, if I could just go and take this trip, if I could just, just, just. And what we're doing to ourselves is we're justifying and we're trying to tell ourselves that, you know, if I just get this one more thing, that's gonna fill the hole that's inside me. And he said this out loud, and he said, you know, winning will not make you whole. And for me, that really impacted me. And it told me that, you know what, you're right. Like, I'm trying to fill a hole with something that can't be filled. Like, I have to fill this from the inside out. I can't fill this from the outside in. Um, and I recognize that, you know, as I go through a lot of my own mental health issues is that, wow, like my anxiety is actually coming from trying to win and trying to be all things to all people and getting that approval that I didn't have from my mothers whenever I was going through my stuff when I was 7 years old. And it all ties back to something, right? And maybe some of us haven't had childhood trauma, but we've had trauma. We've gone through some stuff. We're human. It's part of the human experience is to go through stuff. But recognizing that these systems are built to handle things in a certain way, and sometimes they don't work the way they were designed. There's a great series on Netflix all about The Mind Explained, and I thought it was fascinating as we talked about, you know, like they talk about memories and they talked about how we remember things and how we kind of fill in the gaps. But one of the things they talked about was this anxiety system itself. And if you've ever had anxiety, if you've ever had a panic attack, it literally feels like you're dying, like you're having a heart attack. I remember there was one week where I actually went to the ER 3 different times that same week because I was convinced that I had blockage in my arteries. I'm not the healthiest guy, I'm overweight, but I had blockage in my arteries. I was convinced and I talked to somebody else and she's like, oh yeah, my husband, he had a 99% blockage in his LAD and he was totally, you know, he had to go in and they had to remove the blockage and he would have died that next week if I hadn't done that. Boy, you want to tell that to somebody who's in the middle of a panic attack? Wow, that just ramped up my volume, like from maybe a 10 or 11, and I was getting close to a 50, to all of a sudden I'm at 100, right? I'm on overdrive. We're cranking the wattage on this anxiety, this panic attack that I'm going through. And so, you know, finally go through there talking to the doctors and like, oh no, what you're feeling is like either you don't have a heart attack, your heart's perfect, your heart is in great shape. We don't see any issue there. Like you are fit as a fiddle. You know, other than just being heavy, which, I mean, that's a good thing to find out, I guess. But what they did find out is like, well, are you stressed about anything? I'm like, well, hell yes, I'm stressed, right? I just took over a company, you know, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm trying to figure this all out on my own. I don't have any help, right? Like, I'm going through a lot of stuff at this point. We were right in the middle of— at this point, we were just right in the middle of doing a flip-over for our web product. We were in the middle of renovating our building, so we were all out of sorts there. There was dust everywhere. There's like, everything was going wrong there. You know, we weren't managing our cash very well. And so, here I am, this young 28, 29-year-old kid, and I was just like, "Yeah, no, I'm definitely stressing. Like, I'm definitely feeling it." And come to find out, well, yeah, what you're feeling is anxiety. It's because you're not handling that stress. You're not dealing with it. What you're doing is stuffing it. You're ignoring it. You're pretending that, you know, I just can get that next thing. If I can just finish this project, I'll be done. And so when he talked about winning won't make you whole, like, I just remember that entire episode and going through there and being like, wow. Prozac is amazing, by the way. I'll just tell you that that was a huge help, just kind of take the edge off the same way that you would take, you know, Excedrin for a headache. You know, like that's the kind of thing that kind of helps is that you don't have to necessarily do it alone. And there's a lot less stigma when you talk about mental health that way. As we talk though about, you know, like, well, where does a lot of this come from? Right, now you look at like my need for approval. And as we go through, we have to really like own our past, right? And if we own our past, we can change our future. And we realize like this doesn't have power over me anymore. We take that brick out. And we say, you know, this story isn't a story that I want to be true about me anymore. Right? And John talked about it with, you know, that girl that he pushed. He's like, I can still hear her screams, but it was an accident. And I was an 8-year-old boy playing tag and I didn't know what I was doing. And he can set that brick down. And what happens is when we have those negative tapes, what you just heard there is you demand evidence. You can say, well, prove to me that that's true. Right? So if the tape that you're telling yourself is, "I'm a terrible person because I hurt an 8-year-old girl," you'd say, "Yes, but..." Right? Play defense. If you're on trial, and that's what these negative tapes are, is they're trying to put you on trial, you play defense and you flip back around and you say, "Okay, well, why is that not true?" And odds are is you're gonna come up with some pretty good ideas about, you know, if you're telling yourself you're a bad parent, yeah, but why isn't that true? Like, what makes that not true? What are some things that you are doing really well? And you flip the script and now all of a sudden what you're playing is some positive tapes and you're selling yourself what you can't, what you are doing well and why you're not the worst parent in the world. Yeah, there's things that you need to clean up, but you're not the worst parent in the world. Don't tell yourself that. You wouldn't tell your best friend that. Don't tell yourself that. And so I like to present counter-evidence. Like, well, yeah, but here's some evidence why it isn't true. And then, you know, really demand evidence about like, well, why is it that, you know, if you're always, I always need approval and my decision-making process is terrible. Yeah, but you still make decisions, right? Well, yeah. Okay, and do you make them as fast as you want? Well, no, I need to go faster. Okay, well then let's focus on the things we can change. And so in all of this, as you're looking at people that are leaving, you know, or you're dealing with rising fuel costs, or you're dealing with things that are just, stressing you out. Maybe you're dealing with stuff at home and your kids want to see more of you, or they just want to play a game with Dad, right? As you're dealing with that, ask yourself, is there something that I could be doing different? And if there is, then focus on making that change. If there's not, then you need to figure out how do I let this thing go? Because I'll tell you what, is that the bricks you carry in your backpack, you're paving the road for your children's lives. And if you don't decide where to pave that road, you're gonna give those bricks to your children, right? And so you need to figure out how do I put this brick down into the ground so that they don't have to carry it, but they can use it to spring step to their next, to their destination. 'Cause I don't think any one of us as parents want to hand our negative tapes, our bricks, like we would not want our children to go through that. So one of the things that I like to do is I'll do that. I'll say, well, what's the responsibility I need to take for this? Is there something I needed to change? Then I need to go change it. If it's something I can't change, then I have to change my attitude towards that thing. I have to change my outlook. So if people leave, right, am I really responsible for that? Probably not, right? Like, did I do everything in my power to create an environment where they would want to stay? Yes. Did I do everything that I could have? Did I pay them as much as I could pay them? Yes. Right now, if there's things that I left on the table and now I have some regrets, well then change it for the next time, right? Because you can't go put the toothpaste back in the tube. So, you know, don't let it sit there and just weigh on you. Um, some of the other things I think about is intentionality. You know, when I talk about things that help me in my mental health, it's being intentional about where I spend my time in the day. And in the time where I was going through my total mental health crisis, I realized I was not being intentional, I was being led. And I was letting, I was just reacting to the world around me. And so one of the things that you have to do is kind of like plan your day out or just think about what is it that I'm needing right now? Where are my personal needs not being met? And that's what's causing my anxiety. Maybe you've gotten yourself addicted to drugs. Maybe you've gotten, you know, you're an alcoholic. All that's doing is telling you that your body needs something, right? That you have a mental need that you're filling or numbing in some other way. And more of the same drug will not help make you whole, right? And so if you find yourself on that train, You've got to find a way to be more intentional. One of the things that I usually look at is, is how am I doing physically? How am I doing emotionally? How are my mental needs, my social needs? You know, do I have friends? Do I have people I can talk to that I feel connected with? Sometimes all you need is just human connection. Sometimes you just need more physical exercise. In fact, I've seen it said that if you just drink more water, you will automatically start feeling better. And so I would ask you that is, you know, if you're stressing right now, how much water are you drinking versus, you know, the Coke Zero or another cup of coffee, right? Like how much just bottled water or pure water are you drinking a day? You know, and just try maybe doubling that, right? Like if you drink 1 bottle a day, maybe try going to 2 or 3. I will tell you is that I usually try to do about 4 or 5 a day, which is still not enough. But it's enough for me. And, but there's a level of intentionality there that I have to look at that and say, oh, when I'm making a decision, I intentionally want to be drinking more water. So I'm not going to choose the Coke Zero, or in my case, the Dr Pepper Zero, because that's fantastic. But I'm going to limit myself to maybe 1 or 2 of those a day because I know I need more water. I don't need more Dr Pepper, right? For my mental health, I need more water. And the other thing that we look at Is, uh, am I taking time? Like, let's talk about physical. Are you exercising? You know, maybe it's something as simple as just going on a 20-minute walk in the morning. If you could get up 20 minutes earlier, which means going to bed 20 minutes earlier, going out on a walk, what does that do for you? Um, we talk about here, I've got a couple of guys that are big cyclists and we talk about the mental difference, like the difference in our mental energy when we ride versus when we don't is astounding. Because it does something. That physical— the physical activity drives a dopamine rush for us, and our mental energy throughout the rest of the day is just— it's through the roof, and it makes us feel so much better because we're taking care of that need. As far as time, you know, if we're not spending enough time at home, if we're not spending enough time with our family, figure out how you dedicate that time. You know, it took me hiring somebody just to get me out the door at 4 PM so I could make sure that I had the afternoons and evenings with my family. Otherwise, I would stay here till 7 or 8. I get home, they were in bed, and they'd never see their dad. And you want to bet one of my negative tapes was, I am a terrible father because my children don't even know who I am, right? And I could, I could show evidence that that was true. I had evidence that it wasn't because I was working really hard and I was doing things to help them. Right. But I had to step back and realize, yeah, but there's something in your control that you can do, which is just leave earlier. Right. There'll still be more work tomorrow. Just leave. Leave and go pay attention to this need. Right. And the need was that I spent time with my family. So balance your time, be intentional. You know, are you making time for exercise, family, meditation? You know, sometimes for exercise, try doing some yoga. We've done it here where we've led everybody through like a group stretch session. And yoga is amazing at, at helping you clear your mind, at relaxing, at finding a way to ground yourself. We talk about grounding and mindfulness, just being aware of your body and where it is in the space around you. That sounds all kind of hippie dippy, but, um, the truth is that it helps center you. It helps bring your mental focus back and helps calm your anxiety. Cuz what's happening with anxiety too is that your amygdala, that whole fight or flight system, is overactive and it doesn't know how to respond to all the different stimulus that are coming at it. And so, you know, if you go back to caveman days, right, like we're totally thinking we're about to get hunted down by a saber-toothed tiger. And so that fight or flight response is kicked in. But now instead of a saber-toothed tiger, it's a boss with a TPMS report. It's the latest fuel surcharges. It's the latest price increase from another vendor, right? Like it's all these things. It's the latest resignation notice. And every time our body is treating those like we're about to die. And really it's not a life or death situation, but our body can't tell the difference. And so we just have to figure out a different way to handle that stress. And a lot of times it just comes down to being intentional and about giving ourself grace and forgiveness and letting ourselves be human. My last thing is just, you know, if you need, And I highly recommend this, as you probably need it even if you don't think you do. Try it out. Just go see someone. Find a licensed practicing counselor. Find a psychologist if you want. Um, find a friend. You know, somebody that knows and can kind of guide you through and just ask the questions and help you process just some of the emotions you're feeling and some of the challenges you're having. A lot of times what'll happen is they can find those negative tapes. They can see them. They can source them. And what they can do is they can help you unravel them and help you find the evidence to bring them, right? And so it creates this whole environment where you can speak your mind and have somebody else kind of help be there with you while you figure out what's going on. Uh, and not all of us are going to have childhood issues or anything like that, you know, like all this trauma, but as we go through it, what what we realize is that, you know, it's not as bad as it seems because we're not there alone and we don't have to run away from the saber-toothed tiger. We just have to handle this resignation or get home at 4:00 PM. Right. And they kind of become a little bit of an accountability partner. If we let go of the stigma around mental health and we let go of, you know, those issues, right. And we realize that, you know, if I would go see somebody for like a kidney problem, or a urologist, if I would go see somebody because I strained my ankle, why wouldn't I go see somebody because I strained my brain? Right? And when you really think about it, that's all emotions and stress and all of that really are. They're just functions of a brain and how the brain handles stimulus and response. Uh, we have to get rid of that mental stigma and find the ability and find the strength to go talk to people. So, uh, that's going to be our episode for today. I would love to hear any of your feedback, any of your stories. Uh, you know, if you're struggling with mental health and you just want talk to somebody, I'm happy to do that. Uh, happy to point you in some direction of some resources if you'd like. You can email us podcast@rtafleet.com. Again, that's podcast@rtafleet.com. Otherwise, if you want to hear more about setting up a, you know, a great company culture where you can deal with some of these stressors and help others deal with these too, where you can create a place— in fact, one of the things that we just did We brought in an LPC, a counselor, as somewhat of a life coach who can just come in and talk to our people. I know not everybody can do that, but I think it's something that's really powerful is they can just go in and they can talk to them about whatever it is they want to talk about, whether it's personal stuff, maybe they just, they're stressing about their job and they need help talking through some of it. We love them to talk to their managers about it, but maybe the problem is the manager, right? And so having this as a resource of like, hey, I just want to go talk to you and have an outlet. If you want to hear more about setting that kind of a program up, again, you can email us podcast@rtfleet.com. If you want to hear about setting up a culture where that kind of thing is okay, you can go grab the Fleet Success Playbook. You can go to fleetsuccessplaybook.com and request a copy there. Otherwise, we will see you guys all next week. Thank you very much.

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