Move a Muscle, Change a Thought

In this episode of Lumen, hosts Christopher Mooney, LCSW and Kenyon Phillips, LMSW explore the powerful connection between movement and mental health. What begins as a conversation about running quickly expands into a deeper look at how physical activity, sleep, hydration, and nutrition shape emotional well-being. Drawing from both clinical experience and insights from Harvard metabolic health advocate Dr. Chris Palmer, they challenge the idea that mental health exists only in the mind—introducing a more integrated view of brain and body. From winter stagnation and “freeze mode” to the cultural pressure to overwork and under-rest, Christopher and Kenyon unpack how disconnection from the body can quietly fuel anxiety, depression, and a loss of motivation. The conversation also explores how neglecting our basic needs can erode confidence, strain relationships, and limit our ability to feel present in our own lives. Rather than offering extreme solutions, Christopher and Kenyon return to something more fundamental: the small, consistent choices that help regulate the nervous system and restore a sense of balance. At its core, this episode is a reminder that we are not machines built for constant output. We are human beings who require movement, rest, and connection to function. Because sometimes the path out of a mental spiral isn’t more thinking. Sometimes it’s as simple, and as difficult, as getting up and moving.

To book a free consultation with Christopher, Kenyon, or the other providers at Lumen Therapy Collective, visit lumentherapycollective.com. 

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Lumen is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, diagnosis, or treatment. If you’re experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact local emergency services or a trusted mental health professional.

Transcript

Tempo: 120.0

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Lumen, a podcast that sheds light on mental health, relationships, and what it means to be human. I'm Christopher Mooney, LCSW.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

And I'm Kenyon Phillips, LMSW. Each episode we unpack psychological patterns that affect our relationships. No jargon, no judgment.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Just thoughtful conversations to help you understand yourself and others a little more clearly.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Something you keep sticking with me. You said that you texted me. You said you went for a 6.5 mile run the other day.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

I did. Sunday.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

You felt a lot better.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

I felt a lot better. Uh physically, about halfway through, I started to hit that that wall. I was like, oh, it's been a while.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Right.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

But mentally, it was it just felt so good to get back out. I was never a runner. I played soccer my whole life, still play. And so I guess running just like secondary to that. But you know, I started running a few years ago after we moved up to Connecticut from New York. And I can't tell you how like mentally clarifying it is. Yeah. And and you, I mean, you have this experience. You you run and exercise and are really active as well, but it's really important to be physically active. I think it helps our mental health so much and stabilizes us. I took up trail running because it was just so much more like out in the environment and and just kind of raw. And I like that. So it was just easier on my old knees, which helps and old shins and ankles and everything else.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

It makes the movement fun. It makes it into like an exhilarating experience. Yeah. Just like being on a treadmill.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

No, no. Which is good if it's like went. So this winter was awful. And I think this is like what you were what I was telling you the other day was that I went for the last two, two and a half months without being able to run outside, really, because it's been in the single digits, if not below zero, right? Windy. And we've had two feet of snow here in Connecticut and northern Connecticut for like since November.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Like we've not seen grass until yesterday. No. And it was amazing. And I'm just like, what is that? Under there. So it's been really hard to get out and do things because it's been so cold. Even in the snow, you can't go out and play because it was like miserable and cold.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Exactly. The lesson I learned a long time ago, decades ago, was if I'm not moving, if I'm not exercising, even in the dead of winter, if I have to just go into the basement and run on a treadmill, if I'm not moving, my mental health just takes a giant shit on my life.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

It does.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

It just it kind of stagnates. I get anxiety, I get anxious, even more anxious than I already am. I get depressed. Right. And then I notice that when I'm not moving, my eating goes to goes down the toilet. I start stop caring about what I'm eating.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

I need to have like pretty regulated eating, and I'm also a vegetarian. So but I've found that if I'm not exercising, I just stop kind of caring. And then if I'm not it, I don't know, it's it like my my confidence goes down. It really kind of leads to a sort of paralysis.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

Yeah. I'm thinking all of a sudden about, you know, when we go over the when we talked to Kat last time, she mentioned she referred to the fight, flight, freezer, fawn as the four Fs. Right. And I I caught it when I was listening to her speak. But I'm just thinking about this this concept now. If we're not moving, we're kind of we're already putting ourselves into, you know, freeze and and just kind of like not being able to move, not being able to like get out anywhere. And I think when we sit stagnant, it gives our our brain time to kind of spiral and fixate on things. And we start to just kind of like fall into a little bit of a hole. Or or this kind of like frozen state. We're not being, we're not living life, we're not engaged, we're not grounding ourselves in when we're when we're doing that.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

We're not connecting. And you know, things go by the wayside, I think. Things are sacrificed, there are casualties when we aren't in motion, when we aren't fit. I know a lot of clients tell me, you know, well, I don't, you know, they they don't want to have intimacy with their partner, they don't want to have sex because they don't feel good about you know the fact that they haven't exercised and they're not eating well. That's you know, one example that's actually pretty meaningful because it's a it's a block, it's an obstacle um when in terms of connection with other people, the relationship we have with ourselves, self-image. How can I feel great about for me? How can I feel great about myself if I'm not eating well, if I'm not going out? I love running, especially as we age. I think we do get a message from society that, like, as you age, well, just kind of let yourself go. Yeah, it's such a fallacy. As we age, as I age, I need to do more.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

So you mean to keep to keep up? I need to feel better.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Absolutely. Well, you and I were talking about that earlier, like the need to keep up as we get older and the fire hose thing. But also just to like ensure that ensure a senior product, and ensure that I am continuing to to stay in the game, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

To remain active, to remain engaged. I have two small children. I have a seven-year-old and a four-year-old. I need to I need to be able to move.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

I need to be able to run after them. I need to be able to let them climb all the way.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Or in just to play and interact. Yeah. I had a colleague a long time ago. He was he was much older when he had his child, and he had told me, he goes, It's so much harder being older and having having kids. And and we see parents now are older and older as they they have or people are older at before they have children. But it is, I think about that, like trying to keep up and do like now that my kids are nine, almost ten, and and twelve, trying to keep up with those levels of activities and like the intensity being in my mid-40s, like it's it's hard. Like it's it's it's draining. I'm sore. I get up the next day. I like it's hard to walk down the stairs. Right. And I'm feeling like, why, why is this? And then they jump up and they're like, Yeah, I'm fine.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

No, I am not fine. But but the more I'm active, the more I run, the more I take care of myself, the more I hydrate, just simply drinking water, which I forget to do.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Let's can we can we shout out water for a second? Absolutely. Well, I never want to drink water because it's so in my mind, it's so boring.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

And I feel like I'm never thirsty. When I have my big old water bottle, it's like the last thing I want to do is drink from it. And yet I tried that experiment, the challenge where you try to drink the actual amount that we're supposed to drink today, which is what eight.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Eight cups. Yeah, it's eight cups of water a day, right? 32 ounces.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

And I tried it the better. After I kind of got used to peeing all the time.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Yeah. Which should level out. That led out. If you hydrate properly, your body will start to level out and you won't have to pee all the time. Yeah, it kind of but also if you're peeing all the time, it's good. You're getting rid of all the other crap that's good.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

It's it's kind of a purge, right? A cleanse. But what I found was way less of those aches and pains that you just described. It's fascinating, isn't it? Yeah. I can get up easier. Yeah. Like on the ground.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Just from water.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Just from water.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Just from drinking water.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Which makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Our bodies are it's almost like medical professionals have been telling us this forever. Like just hydrate, stay hydrated.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

But speaking of medical professionals, I love you know what Chris Palmer at Harvard has done, has sort of like put out there into the world of hey, mental health is metabolic health. Why are we only treating mental disorders with meds instead of looking at the bigger picture and saying, like, hey, how much you exercise, how you eat, is going to affect our mental health. It's going to affect our brains. But I mean, our brains take up 20% of our energy reserves. I mean, that's a really high high-powered organ.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Why wouldn't I treat my brain health the way I would treat my heart health or my liver health?

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Yeah. You wouldn't be, you wouldn't be running your your computer off of like a couple double-A batteries. No. And that's, you know, I just, I'm thinking of that, like just severely underpowered. I really want to use car analogies, but I don't, it just falls flat sometimes. So I'll just go for the car net. You know, it well, it's just the the underpowered thing. You'd put a tiny little like four-cylinder motor in a or really bad gas into a Ferrari. And you wouldn't do that. You wouldn't put crappy, like watered-down gas in a Ferrari. Right. You want to make sure it's it's premium everything. Premium gas. You want to make sure everything's clean and running. You're not dumping a ton of alcohol or drugs into it. Right. Or not eating. Or or just eating a bunch of like chips and bad food. So you you're the fuel. We our brain needs the fuel. Right. And that's going to help regulate mentality. So tell me more about like this idea of metabolic metabolic health and mental health, the connection between.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

I discovered Dr. Palmer, Chris Palmer, on I think the Mel Robbins podcast. He was talking about this breakthrough he'd had years ago where he had a client with schizoaffective disorder, a lot of the same symptoms that we see with schizophrenia. He was paranoid. He was delusional. He was hallucinating. He was just in a in a state of high anxiety and paranoia. Most of the time was really cramping his style. He felt like he couldn't even leave the house. Plus, these medications, he'd been on 17 different medications. They had caused him to gain over 100 pounds. Yeah. And finally, he just got to a point where after eight years of treatment with Dr. Palmer, he said, You know what? Forget, forget the schizoaffective disorder. I just want to lose weight and try to find a girlfriend. And so he said, Okay. So we put him on a keto diet.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

And what he found was remarkable as this client, this patient lost weight and was eating better, his uh symptoms, his mental health symptoms associated with his mental health diagnosis vanished.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

And he thought, oh, well, maybe this is an anomaly. So then he started treating other people who had similar diagnoses and were living with, most importantly, extremely diminished lives. Right. You know, like living with anxiety and depression.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

And yeah, the quality of life was just so awful.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

And a lot of them were overweight. Yeah. Or just not eating well or never moved. There's there are a lot of people who look great on the outside, but they just don't have any sort of exercise regimen. And on the inside, their bodies and emotionally, their emotional lives can just be in tatters. So what he realized was wow, this is not an anomaly. There is absolutely a connection here between overall health and you know, exercise is a big part of it.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Eating well is a big part of it. Getting enough sleep is a big part of it. But how healthy are our brains? And a healthy brain is less likely to have the mental health diagnosis.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Of course. Well, you think about resilience in that way. And what do we need? When we've talked about resilience, it's been this force, I always think of it as this force field around us.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Kind of in this nerdy Star Trek kind of way. You know, we have we're getting kind of all this stuff blasted at us all day. Right. We were talking like we you mentioned the fire hose before, and I was talking with a friend yesterday about this idea of like how much is just like just blasted at us.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

We're trying to block all of that. And if we're typically in and I think we've talked about this before on other other podcasts, how if we're picking away at the inside of that force field, it's not just what we deal with coming from the outside, it's what we deal with with what we project out and how we feel. Totally. And if the insides don't match the outsides, that starts to wear down that resilience force field from the inside too.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

And so it's kind of like the ozone layer. Right. So you have all this radiation from the outside affecting it, and then you have all this like pollution from the inside. And the more toxic stuff we have on the inside now, that can be shame and depression and anxiety and poor eating habits, poor sleep. I love seeing how much focus being put on sleep lately, you know, and it's always been important. Same with hydration. Everybody's like, drink water and go to sleep. Drink water, don't look at your screens at least half an hour before bed.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

You know, it's it's all of these things. So sleep is critical for brain health. And I think that this is spot on. And we in over 25 years, I I can just say anecdotally, like this is what I've seen too. The more balanced our lives are in every domain, the just the better we feel. The less time we spend, maybe. It's not that it's going to totally resolve depression or anxiety or schizoaffective disorder or some organic thing that might be going on, but we can certainly tip the scale in our favor. So maybe we're not anxious as long, or maybe it's not intense, or maybe the depressive states aren't as deep or as long. If we could lessen the impact that those things have on us over time, that's kind of a win. I feel that's kind of what we're looking for. Because there we're going to feel bad about things, we're going to feel anxious about things. So let's look at how we can actually just lessen that impact.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Absolutely. And the trouble, because when you when I hear you say it, it makes so much sense. It sounds so obvious almost. It's like, duh. And the trouble I grapple with, and a lot of people I know grapple with, is we get this message from society that we shouldn't. Like, oh, you know, if you're really reading responsible, you're not going to sleep a full eight hours. You should be up, you know, you should be the fire hose analogy. Burn the candle at both ends. Responsibilities, things to juggle. Right. You don't have time to cook a really nutritious meal because, you know, for yourself, you don't have time to sleep. You don't have time to exercise.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

But you should. It's the bad word again. You should you should be thriving, right? Remember in COVID, everybody was like, dude, if you're not thriving, you're just you're wasting away. You're you're it's like everybody's just trying to survive, dude.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

The toxic thrive terrorist.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

But but I think about that, it's like here's where we're we're shown the ideal, yeah, but then it's well, you need to, you know, stay up, crush all this stuff, work, take care of the kids, cook the dinner, do everything you're supposed to do, exercise, fit it all in. Yeah, make sure you show up 100% for everything, and then by the way, get up at 4 30 every morning or 5 a.m. every morning and start the whole thing again. You should only get three to five hours of sleep. Like these people, I'm like, who are you?

SPEAKER_01 14:47

I remember when I was in many lives ago, I was working at Forbes magazine producing videos and things like that, media. And we interviewed, he was then the CEO of Samsung. His name was Peter Weedfald. And his whole he was a trip. I really liked him. His whole thing was I only need four hours of sleep a night. And he had this sort of like hyper efficiency that was his thing. But he also made time to like play piano and things like that, which ingratiated him to me. But I remember thinking, like, wow, yeah, that's the message, right? Yeah, sleep four hours a night, be hyper, hyper efficient and effective and productive.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Yeah, think about how much you can produce in 20 other hours of the day.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Yeah, and guess what? If I have four hours of sleep, I ain't producing shit. Yeah. Or whatever I am producing looks like shit.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Yeah. That's the thing. You might be able to do it for a little while, and then you're just burning through cortisol and adrenaline. But tell me about cortisol. Cortisol, again, is the stress hormone that we that we have. And that's the one that causes heart disease, it causes hair loss, it causes weight gain, all that like around the middle only weight, that's cortisol.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

And cortisol levels kick up when we don't get enough sleep.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

We don't get enough sleep, we're stressed out, when we don't have enough connection with other human beings. So remember, when we connect with other human beings, we have oxytocin. Just sitting in a room, it can be a stranger.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Oxytocin's a love hormone.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Oxytocin's a love hormone. It's that connection hormone. Just sitting, say you go to a coffee shop and you just sit near another human being, just interacting with somebody at the counter, you get oxytocin. So, and then there's levels of it, right? Like you think about, and we've talked about this before pregnant mothers, the baby's getting oxytocin and like flooded with it.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

But that cuts down, that's the counter to cortisol. And so we want more connection, we want more, more of that to counter the cortisol. But cortisol, the less sleep we get, yeah, the more crappy food we eat. Right. Of course, now on social media we see everybody like, oh, here's the cortisol diet. Here's the this is how you get like how about just eating a balanced diet, yeah, not eating a bunch of garbage, right, hydrating, and getting tons of sleep.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

No screens half an hour before bed. Right. I'm I'm just gonna double down on it today. It's good. No, because I I tried this the other day. I went to go get in bed, and we've talked about I I've I've like I beat this drum all the time, which is like no screens, no screens. And then I get in bed and I was like, gonna I was gonna put my headphones on and just listen to music. It's like, no, I'm going to put my headphones away. I'm just gonna get into bed. I passed out in probably 30 seconds, yeah, and I slept so well. And I woke up like a full like seven and a half hours later. Yeah, I felt amazing. A bet. I didn't wake up, I didn't like roll, I didn't toss and turn. I was like, wow. And I had taken like a break from my screens even before I got into bed. I was like, this is I should really practice what I preach all the time. Totally. It might help.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

And yet we get this message like we need our screens at all times. Check your phone, check your email before you can go to sleep. That's in at least that's the the voice in my head.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Yeah. Am I being productive enough? Do we have any emails, text messages, all this stuff?

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

But you're right. There's there's no reason I have to do that at 11:30 at night.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

No, but the message that I grown up with and that I've internalized is that I need to be this machine, always working. And it's and it's just not healthy. When I'm in machine mode, I'm irritable. I'm unreasonable with people I love. I miss out on the joys that that you know that every day brings. It's not like we talked about this before. It's not like I'm gonna have a good day or a bad day. I think all my days have good and bad in them, but I really want to be present for the good parts. And I'm not if I'm in like machine mode.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Right. So let's look at how to remove ourselves from machine mode, as you're saying. And I think as we kind of get older and as we progress, I think it starts to feel like that. It feels there's just more to do, there's more responsibilities, there's more on us, there's more, there's less time we have because there's a crunch, right? There's the crunch of, hey, life's going to end at some point, you know, if we were gonna get really existential about it. But kids are getting older, family and friends are everybody's aging, moving on. So we start to feel the crunch that and time time speeds up as we get older.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Oh, absolutely. Every year that passes, it's faster. It goes by faster than the year before it for me.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

I remember as a little kid just thinking like a summer was a lifetime. Yeah, and it was great. Right. I just I everything just took forever. Totally. And and even being young and and being able to feel that and acknowledge it, it was a good feeling. Yes. Now I'm like, man, summer's done in like a couple weeks. That's what it feels like, a couple days. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

And oh my God, it's the holidays again.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

I used to, as a kid, I used to be like, oh, when is it gonna be Christmas?

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Oh God, Christmas break was like forever.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

But so if we think about like, so so if we're dealing with this issue that that time is speeding up and there's just tons more to do. We're more responsible. We have to be more on point, we're getting all this messaging. How are we stepping back? And what do we need to do? How do we how do we kind of resolve this? How do we step back and say, can I slow this down? Can I slow the process down? Can I look at things from a different perspective, maybe, to help? Are there things that can make me feel better as I go through it? And now you're talking about move a muscle, change a thought. If you don't like how you feel right now, or you don't like the thoughts that are going through your head right now, get up and move.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

I I think about this all the time. Yeah, I'm sitting here, I don't feel just get up and move. This was the why I run. Yeah, I get so caught up sitting in a chair, talking, listening all day. And I'm like, oh man, I just gotta get up and move. Right. Stuff's still going through my head when I'm out there.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

I don't want to be that therapist who says, you know, you can solve all your problems with exercise, you know.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

It's just omega-3s.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Right, exactly, exactly. But I have seen this again and again. I've lived it myself. I was an overweight kid. I was Grand Kenyan. I I never played sports. You played soccer your whole life? I never played sports. I tried playing soccer when I was six years old. I sucked so hard at it that I was like, forget this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

I didn't say I was any good at it.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

I just played it my whole life. That was enough to like I did not do it. The first sport that I really discovered was cross-country running in high school, yeah, in boarding school. It was trail running as a sport. And you were a team, but you weren't really, you know, it was more of an individual thing.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

So yeah, like your time contributes to the overall, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

And I experienced the runner's high for the first time, you know, the flooding of the endorphins and everything you described earlier, you know, like being outside in really beautiful environs, the feeling of just being in motion, that was transformative for me. And I lost weight and I was more engaged in life as a result. I had my confidence gone up. I felt more comfortable. I was an actor, I felt more comfortable on stage or in front of a camera, I felt more excited about me. Meeting people. And definitely my mood elevated.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

And the depression kind of like went into the background. And that stuck with me. I know that if I am feeling anxious, if I am feeling depressed, as you said, I need to get up and I need to do something. Even in in even if I don't have time because I'm 50 and I have two kids. Right. We have a therapy practice and books that we're writing and all this other stuff. What's good enough? I don't have to do a hard hour of what did you say? Zone five, zone six? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Yeah, uh zone four. Zone four. Zone five. Yeah. Is there a zone six? I think it's zone six is pretty much cardiac arrest.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Cardiac arrest.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

I would think so, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

So but but you I think about you a lot, because you you remind me of that a lot. Like, hey, if you can't do an hour workout, maybe you do 20 minutes.

unknown 22:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

The same with meditation. I get so stuck on, well, I'm a transcendental meditation practitioner. I need to be doing two sessions of 20 minutes a day, 40 minutes a day total. And it's the reality is, I had a great friend who's a meditation instructor. She just, Jessica, she just said, you know what, if you can get a minute in some days, that's better than nothing.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Well, you go back to the diaphragmatic breathing. It goes from fight or flight to rest and digest. That's the easy way to remember. By the quality of breath, just by breathing deep into your belly instead of into your chest. Even if you just do that for a minute, you're already switching off all that that kind of like that intensity and the anxiety and everything else. That's a meditation.

unknown 23:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

You do that walking down the street.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

You do like what you can do it sitting on the subway in the middle of it. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Kegels for your anxiety.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Excellent. I like that. Do them everywhere. And anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

It's so funny. I just did it. I just did not keggles, but uh diaphragmatic breathing. I just took it, and you know what immediately I was I was ready to yawn. So I thought, oh wow, I didn't relax.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Rest and digest.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Here's the thing: I need this reminder, not only daily, but multiple times a day because I forget. I hear it, I practice it when we're having this conversation. I appreciate it deeply. I see, I feel the benefits of slowing down and not being so hard on myself and just being good enough, whether it's food or water or exercise or meditation or sleep. And yet I forget and I go into this overachiever mode where I need to prove to the world and myself that I can somehow be a superhero and that I don't need the basics.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

No, we all because they're so basic. It's because it's rote, because it's just something simple, we we start to disregard it. I think we just we just don't pay enough attention to those things. And when we're looking at stepping back from that kind of like high-functioning machine, kind of like, you know, being that you were talking about, when we're in that state, when we're in that kind of like, oh my god, I gotta get all this stuff done, we're missing very small things in life. I was really reflecting on this a lot last night. I was reading the news and I was just like, this is awful. I had this conversation with a friend who was kind of like talking a lot about this same stuff, and I didn't have an answer. I didn't have any suggestion, and not that I need to give it, I know I don't need to give anybody an answer.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

But man, do I feel all the time that I need to give somebody an answer or have a suggestion? But you know, I was sitting there going like, what do I do? I just stood out on the it was starting to warm up. I stood out on the the back porch and I was like, I don't think I need to do anything, I think I just need to just to take it in for a second and and just pause, just stop, pause, take in the air, and remind myself that my feet were on the cold stone outside, just a little damp from all the snow melt. It's like, you know what? Yeah, there's a lot of chaos going on. I can't really affect any of it. Right. I need to just take care of myself right now. What do I need to do? I can go upstairs, my kids are already asleep, I can go just kiss them on their forehead, and I did, and it was such a it was such a simple task and such a simple kind of thing that brought me back to like, oh, this is okay. There's a ton of chaos around, but it's okay if I just do the smallest thing. Yeah, I can run, I can exercise, I can not drink, I can eat well, and spend time with family, spend time with connect with people who are important.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Absolutely. It's so important. And that's another reminder that's useful. My worst nightmare was having children. I couldn't imagine it. I was just like, oh my god, when we found out about our first one, I was absolutely terrified. I was like, please somebody wake me up. And and now, fast forward to today, he's seven, my daughter's four. They bring me so much joy. And when I remember, you know, they remind me constantly because they're so loud and running around and like, but like uh I was driving up here to to record today. I was stressed out. There was an accident on the highway. The ETA just kept getting further and further away. I was panicking. And then my kids called me on my wife's phone to report that they had found a sizable clump of deer poop now that the snow has melting. And they purposefully didn't clean it up because they wanted to show it to me. Instantly, I was transported to just like laughter and joy. And thank God for that. Thank, thankfully, I was I was able to like key in.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

And step back for a right, you got to step back, and that's just and and there's so much there that you can look at, you know, but but really just to just to recognize how you were able to step back.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Yeah, suddenly it didn't matter that I was in this car, trapped in this car on a highway in gridlock traffic, late to record, screwing up the whole day, wasting your time. It was just like, oh my god, my kids are so funny. And we have deer poop in the yard.

SPEAKER_00 28:11

And they're excited about it. Yeah. So excited that they want to save it to show you.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Lucky you.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

But very lucky you.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

So stepping back and recognizing the small little moments, it sounds like it's it's one of the ways to kind of help reduce some of this stress or focus on that fire hose of information and just overwhelming things we have to deal with every day. And then picking one or two things, small things in your life that are really important. I just keep going back to like the time with people. Yeah. Because we talk about connection being so important. And what is the quality of the time that you do spend? And that's with any human being. What kind of time are you spending with somebody? Is it complaining about things? Is it focusing on negativity? Is it really is it arguing? Is it confrontation? Or do you have connection with other people or time that you spend with other people that supports you know feeling good, feeling seen, feeling heard, feeling maybe it's it's stimulating your brain. Right. We talk about brain health going back to that. You want to have stimulating conversation with people. You want to talk about things, you want to create. We've talked so much about music and and cre in in that process. Think about artwork, anything where you get to create with something, create an idea, create just a moment.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

You can't do it without time.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

No, so taking that moment to pause, really looking at setting an intention of what is important to us.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Small things. And we have in and there's a spectrum for that. There's big things that are important to us that we need to work towards every day or over time, but set small goals, set if things are feeling awful. It's not that they're always, but if things are feeling overwhelming or that it's just too much, look at who's around you. What are you going to spend your time doing today to make those connections? And then how are you taking care of yourself? You know, going back to what you were talking about at the beginning, how are you taking care of your body? How are you showing up? Because you can't show up if you're not taking care of yourself.

SPEAKER_01 30:20

No, you got to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you put it on somebody else, especially as a mental health practitioner. And you're reminding me, yeah. Time. You know what? I make this green smoothie every day. It's got kale, it's got spinach, it's got protein powder, it's got bee pollen.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

It was the best green smoothie I've ever had, I have to tell you. Seriously, and I've had a lot of green smoothies. That was the best one I've ever had.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

Thank you so much. Erin, my wife thinks it's the most disgusting thing she's ever had in her life. But I just love it and I love that you love it. That takes to do that properly, takes, with cleanup and everything, a half hour.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

And there's so many days where I think, like, oh God, I just, I just need to grab something quickly. I need to eat. But the truth is, that's time well spent. That time that I take to make that green smoothie every day is a good investment. The time that I take to, in my case, go down to the basement to exercise. I don't go to a gym anymore, whether it's 20 minutes or the full hour that I like to get, that's time well spent. Yes. And I it does require intentionality.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

It does. And acceptance. And acceptance. Like what I mean, what I'm what I mean by that is you're not looking at that and saying, if I don't put in a full hour, I'm less than or I failed.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

Yes. Which is hard for me.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

It's hard for me too. If I don't run six and a half miles, then did I really actually run? Yeah. And then when I think about it, like I love Strava and like I use a Garmin watch. So, you know, I I can see other people and the percentages of who runs like for my age group, how far did people typically run? I'm fine.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

I'm putting in miles, like more than most. But I have to remember that. So setting that in and setting that intention, knowing that if you put in 20 minutes making a smoothie and not the half hour, or you don't get to do it that day, it's okay. You didn't fail.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

That's important. That's important. And that goes back to the good enough, whether it's good enough parenting or good enough smoothie making.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Good enough exercise.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

Yeah. It's it's so important because, gosh, if I'm looking through social media, comparing and despairing, I'm thinking like, I just don't do enough.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

I saw this whole post this morning. It was this whole thing about what Henry Cavill had to do for his role in Superman. Yeah. He had two scenes where he had a shirt off, and it took him six weeks to prepare for those scenes of only 1,500 calories a day and dehydrating himself to the point of like being ill before he did the shoot. But when you think about the people watch that movie, they're like, God, I wish I could look like that. Right. I wish I could look like that. I wish I could like or even get close to that.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Every day I work on getting a little bit more accepting of my 50-year-old body having grown up with an eating disorder and dysmorphia.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

It's harder to do that than it than it may sound. And the reality is when I'm not thinking about my body, when I'm just in the moment, enjoying my life, or just even if it's something that's challenging and not particularly enjoyable, if I'm just in it and I'm not distracted with these awful thoughts that just, you know, cycle the loop, doom loop. I'm I'm so much better off. And definitely activity gets me there.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

Activity, solid diet, like really just eating well, paying attention, being mindful.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

Oh, absolutely. Thanks for listening to Lumen. If today's conversation resonated with you, we encourage you to follow, review, and share Lumen with anyone you think would appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

We'll be back soon with another conversation designed to bring a little more light to the human condition. I'm Christopher Mooney, LCSW. And I'm Kenyon Phillips, LMSW. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other. Lumen is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, diagnosis, or treatment. If you're experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact Local Emergency Services or a trusted mental health professional.