Ep 34: A Conversation with Gina Nelson, LCSW, CDWF

In this episode, John sits down with therapist Gina Nelson to discuss something musicians don't talk about nearly enough: mental health. Gina is a licensed therapist who specializes in anxiety, trauma, and EMDR therapy, and she also understands the life of a musician because she's a skilled musician who has shared the stage herself.

The pressure to perform, fear of failure, imposter syndrome, loneliness, old emotional wounds, anxiety, depression, and tying your identity to your art are all realities many musicians quietly carry. 

In this honest and practical conversation, John and Gina explore why creatives can be especially vulnerable, whether music can actually help us heal, what EMDR is, and how musicians can begin to find healthier ways to navigate the emotional weight that often comes with the craft.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You are listening to the Gig to Live Podcast. Welcome everyone. I'm John Foles and I'm a full-time working musician. This podcast is about building a music life that holds up over time. It's practical, enjoyable, sometimes uncomfortable, but it's always about helping you stay in the game and actually enjoy the life that you're building. We'll meet some wonderful working musicians from time to time. So whether you're just getting started or you've been doing this for years, you're in the right spot. This podcast is for you. Well, everyone, welcome to the program today. I am excited today. I've been looking forward to this episode. I have a guest in the studio with me today, uh, my friend Gina Nelson. Gina is a therapist who is certified in EMDR and specializes in anxiety and trauma. And this is great. Her spotlight on the Psychology Today website says this, because I read about Gina, you know, as many different places as I could. And it says, uh, have irritability and resentment hijacked your joy. Uh, despite all you've achieved, you still feel unseen and unappreciated. Staying busy with work and activity helps you uh avoid uncomfortable emotions, yet the relationships that matter most are complicated, leaving you disappointed, empty, and lonely. Fear of rejection and failure keep you doubting your worth. Uh rest and asking for what you need feel selfish, so you push everything down to prevent the floodgates from opening. I read that and I thought, well, uh, hmm, that's a lot of musicians that I know. And then, if I'm super dee duper honest, I have either dipped my toe into some of those mental health pools, or I have been swimming in the deep end of some of them. So I met Gina first as a musician. And we have played on stage together. So I had a camaraderie with Gina in the world of music, but I've also seen Gina help individuals over the years as a therapist, and I thought, hey, wouldn't it be great to have a musician therapist on the show talking about things that are specific, you know, not necessarily unique to, but but common with musicians. So please welcome to the show, Gina Nelson. Yay.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Thanks, John. Happy to be here. Excited. This was a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Yeah, meeting here. This will be great. Now you are talking to us from Idaho, correct?

SPEAKER_02 2:50

That's correct. Uh I moved to Idaho about five years ago from California, and uh I still practice remotely in California and then here in Idaho as well.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

That's great. Well, thanks for taking the time to do this. I know that uh I'm sure your schedule is jam-packed, so I appreciate you carving out some time. Yeah, you're welcome. I'm just going to get right into some questions. All right. So this podcast is designed for musicians, especially those who are trying to make a living doing music uh part-time, full-time, but you know, they're they're relying on income from music. But it really I have heard from so many musicians in all different walks of life that this is, you know, they've found some really good information here uh that has been helpful to them as a musician in whatever arena they're in. And as I as I talk to musicians, I know that we have a lot of things in common. And so I've tried to gather some questions for you today that I think I'd love to hear you speak into. And the first thing I want to ask is is there something about creatives, creative people, artists that makes those people, us people, more vulnerable to anxiety and depression?

SPEAKER_02 4:21

That's a that's a great question. Um I I think that what how I'd like to answer that is that I think creatives actually have more access to right brain. And they have access to feeling and through music, we feel at a really deep level. And um when you think about what we'll talk a little bit about polyvagal theory and nervous system, but when we think about safety and what we need to feel safe and connected, um, creativity only happens when we feel safe and connected. And so for musicians to really lean into creativity, they have to really be in a safe place, likely on stage or when they're in their kind of zone playing. They have a little bit of what we call that ventral vagal parasympathetic access to the nervous system where things kind of calm down and they're kind of out of that sympathetic, anxious space. So when they're playing, or when they're in that music state, or they're writing and creating, I think they've got access to that ventral vagal, which I would say from a polyvagal theory is kind of the goal of how to combat anxiety in some ways. But when we're our nervous system is constantly bopping in between safety and then the sympathetic where the anxiety shows up, and then can even get into this dorsal state that we'll talk probably a little bit later about, which is kind of like the possum that curls up and withdraws. And so, you know, depending on how things are going and what what how people are perceiving their success or their performances, I think that's going to have a lot to do with the safety that they're having and and their experience with music.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

You said some big words in there. It rhymed with bagel.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Polybagel.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Can you unpack those words for the muggles? Yeah. Of which I am one.

SPEAKER_02 6:12

So we have a vagus nerve that comes from the back of our, excuse me, back of our brain. It's like it starts with kind of like where the amygdala is and it goes into all of the internal organs. Um and it it manages our autonomic nervous system. And so the autonomic nervous system controls our respiratory rate, you know, the heart rate, it controls our rest and our digestion, it's like basically all the adrenals, everything. And so the amygdala, which is our fight-flight, which is designed to protect us, you know, if if you touch something hot, your hand moves before your brain even goes, ooh, that was hot. And that is protective. But the problem is the amygdala doesn't know the difference between real danger or perceived danger. So if I am scanning for safety and I think, ooh, that person's a better performer than me, that person, you know, plays better, that they didn't like my performance or whatever's going on in the musicians, the story that our brain has to make up has to go with the feeling of the angst that might be happening. And so we fall from safety into this more kind of anxious place. And all of the same things that happen for fight-flight, the, you know, cortisol, the adrenaline, all of that kind of starts shot, you know, shotting out into your body, and you're going, now I'm all amped up and I feel it all, right? But the story my brain told me not might not be true. It's coming from the angst of what we're feeling in that state. And so our brain is wired for a story. It has to make up a story that goes with either that ventrovagal state, which is like safety and connection, where the story is usually pretty positive, or sympathetic, which is fight-flight, and this is where I'm feeling like everybody hates me, the world's out to get me, you know, I've got all the anxiety and uncertainty about what my future looks like. And if I can't resolve that, I fall to this dorsal state, which is like the best I could describe it is like a little possum curling up into like the most primitive state. And that's where all those really deep negative beliefs come out in that state. You know, I'm not good enough, I'm never gonna make it, you know, I can't survive like this. Um, you know, something's wrong with me on the failure. All those big feelings come really from that dorsal state.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Aaron Ross Powell So musicians live in a world where there's a lot of uh stimulus and there's a lot of uh we're constantly having to read the room, read our own feelings, uh imagine how things are being perceived and interpreted. Uh we're dealing with venue owners, we're dealing with other musicians, audience members, um and trying to interpret that all the time. So what I hear you saying, uh maybe not entirely, but part of what I hear you're saying is because we are subjected to so many things, so many areas we are constantly interpreting, and there's a lot of um uh stimuli, then that's different than a job where we're sitting in a cubicle, maybe, and we're just you know copy pasting things all day long and not interacting with other people. So there's there's a bigger chance that things can go awry.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

Well, I think it's it I think it could be equal in all the settings. I mean, we're all we're all just humans with nervous systems, right? So how we perceive sitting at the office, the coworker, the boss, like the same system is online, whether you're a musician or you know, you're just out in any other job. But I think as a musician, you know, if if you got your eyes closed and you're just in the moment and you're feeling it, like you're not paying attention to does is every, you know, what's the feedback? You're not paying attention to the audience. When you open your eyes and you look at that, are they engaged? Are they, because if if they're like all in it and you're just and and everybody's locked in and the musicians are just like, this is so awesome, we're gonna feel that ventral vagal state. But if we look out and people, you know, even see one person that looks like I had a wrong note, or what was that, or you know, and it's gonna cause us to get anxious, right? We're gonna, we're gonna drop out of that ventral vagal state of safety into more of that panic state. Right. And then I guess the the aftermath of a performance, you know, the feedback, the critics, the comments that come on social media, you know, whatever it is that we're experiencing is going to really dictate our perception of what we we thought that experience was like. Right. And and so if we're relying on other people's opinions, it's gonna have a lot to do with how we see ourselves. And so part of our goal as even a musician is to get ourselves back to safety so we can zoom out and recognize that even if we had a bad performance, or even if I had a critic, doesn't mean that everything was bad, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Right. Right. I heard a lot of people talk about how music heals them from their wounds. They hear a song, it heals them, it's healing to hear that. And for uh musicians, as we play, we say, wow, playing music is healing for me. Do you think that music can actually heal people from emotional wounds, or is it just like a band-aid? Does it provide temporary relief, or is music some magic elixir?

SPEAKER_02 11:45

I I might go with the magic uh elixir. I think it it provides access to a place that a lot of people can't access on their own. So when you think about, um, I work with a lot of high achievement-driven, you know, successful individuals. And when we think about how they live, they usually have to have a lot of control in their world. They they have a lot of worth and value that's being masked by external validation, by something that is, you know, how well I do, the job, the career. And if you take away that external, all that worth and value gets really activated. A lot of them have an over sense of responsibility where they take on more responsibility than they should. Um, and so because of that, they don't allow themselves to sit in the state of feeling emotions very often. They're busy, they're constantly trying to fix the anxiety by running from it and being busy doing tasks and all the things to avoid sitting in it. I think music pulls us into that right side of our brain. It pulls us into our body. And I think that's why even people who maybe can't access that or can't have a vulnerable conversation can feel emotion by the words and lyrics of a song or the tempo or whatever it is that moves them.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

I I have a bunch of questions, and they may not even seem connected. It's because I'm a mess, Gina.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

We all are, John. We're all works in progress, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Um a lot of my musician friends uh say something that it sounds very esoteric. They'll say, I I don't play music because I want to. I play music because I have to. And I've heard myself say things like that before, like, man, if I if I couldn't play music, I would cur up and die. Well, from a mental health perspective, what do you think we mean when we're saying by that? And is is that healthy?

SPEAKER_02 13:48

I think it is healthy because you know, when I'm teaching people how to access safety, the first thing I ask them is, what is the thing you could do for hours and just get lost doing? And how often do you actually do that? Right? You know, and and if it's music, and most of the musicians that I would play with, I mean, we could get lost doing that for a long time and be like, oh my gosh, three hours just went by. Right. Yeah. That that is safety, ventral vagal access for us. And so I think that it's a lifeline to manage some of the other stressors, the other states of the nervous system. And we need to be able to keep anchoring to something to be able to tolerate the marathon of life, because we can't just live in ventral vagal. We're gonna have sympathetic energy and we're gonna have some access to dorsal when things don't go so great for us. And so the more we can access that and kind of anchor to that, the the more I think that that's actually a healthy piece. And I and I can understand why if I didn't have access to that, if I couldn't do that for a lot of people, they'd probably feel really lost. Because maybe that's the one time they feel the safest, the most connected to themselves and to others.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we we start touching it maybe the reason I I'm wondering if it's dangerous is because it it starts touching on issues of identity, uh, you know, who we see ourselves at our at our very core, you know, who am I? Who are we? How how do you separate identity from art, or is it even something that's necessary?

SPEAKER_02 15:25

Well, I think it's a part of our identity, but it's not all of our identity. And and so when I am working with individuals, we do kind of a deep dive into values to understand what are all the things that really drive them. Because, you know, being a musician is one piece of that, but that's no different than being, you know, a CEO and being very achievement-driven and saying, all I'm gonna do is achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve. But if I also said that my family's really important, my spirituality is important, getting out and exercising is important, but I never make time for those other things, because all I do is achieve or do music in this case, then you're you're not balanced. Right. So so our identity can't just be in one bucket, if you will. It's it's a you know, a spectrum of all the things that are important to us. And so if we just go all in and that's all we do, and we ignore the other pieces of our values and what makes us really, you know, kind of tick, then we we might get lost. Because if that one situation went away or we lost a job opportunity or something, then who are we? Right? It can't be our only identity.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

I think I have a decent sense of identity outside of music, uh although I don't exercise. You mentioned exercise and I I just kind of chuckled. Uh uh But it is frightening for me to think about what life would be like if you took away my ability to create music. And I I think most musicians that I know feel like that. So what would you tell us?

SPEAKER_02 17:14

Are are you like just let me be clear on kind of the question? Are are you saying because like the opportunities disappeared or because there was a physical, you know, reason why you couldn't? I I mean, because I would say that whatever drives you, if there was, even if like there was some inability to actually perform on stage anymore, that you're still wired to love the music, to be involved in it in some way, and that we would still want to lean into the parts of that identity that are are still important to you. And it might have to modify, it might look a little different, but we can't just ignore that that was important to you as an individual. I don't know if I answered that for you.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Yeah, for sure. And I and I don't know. I mean, I do I I don't I'm not trapped uh in a in a state of fear with this, but I wonder, you know, I'd like to think, you know, if I lost my right arm, I would find a way to still make music. If I lost both my arms, I'd be, you know, kicking things around uh to make music. I'd still have my voice. But I I you know, I I wonder uh if those things were taken from me either physically or yeah, I don't know. The world changes and all of a sudden nobody is hiring musicians anymore. Uh you know, that um you know that's a that's a scary thing, I think, for a lot of musicians, or even just living with, you know, oh my goodness, I live paycheck to paycheck, and what what if this dries up?

SPEAKER_02 18:51

Well, but the what if is actually really an interesting piece because uh anxiety is all about uncertainty, right? Yeah, and anxious people want certainty. And and in the musician world, there's not a lot of certainty. I mean, unless you've really arrived and you're, you know, the top of the top, you know, with your tour bus, you know, traveling all over the place, you might not, you know, that's not what it looks like for the majority of people that are out gigging, right? And so that uncertainty of could this all go away tomorrow, yeah, I think that's what drives anxiety. But anxiety, to combat anxiety, we have to get comfortable with leaning into uncertainty and and recognizing that we're gonna be okay, regardless of what that uncertain thing is that happens. And and in the ENVR world, that's a lot of what we look at because I can't guarantee what tomorrow looks like. I can't guarantee that your job doesn't go away, whether it's a musician or any other place. Right? We're living in a kind of scary world for a lot of people right now. But I like to hope that whatever resilience you've got, because of all the other hard things you've done and the other hard things that you've gotten through that you didn't think you could do, that you would pull off of those resources and be able to do this next hard thing in the in the uncertainty. And that and that's really the work I get to do is kind of stay in that space of the uncertainty for people. Because most of my clients, they don't like it. If I ask them, you lean into the uncertainty of not knowing, and they're gonna go, heck no. No, no, no, no, no. I want to know exactly how it's gonna turn out. Okay. Well, that's why you're anxious and worried about, and you and you're missing the present, because you're worried about something five years, 10 years, tomorrow, whatever it is, and you're missing what's good right now.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

You mentioned EMDR, which sounds like a genre of music. Why don't you tell everybody what EMDR is?

SPEAKER_02 20:46

Yeah. Um it's a trauma modality. Um it's it's an acronym. It stands for eye movement, desensitization, and reprocessing. Big long acronym. Essentially, how I describe that is um we have REM sleep when we sleep, and our eyes kind of go back and forth really fast. And we're when we're dreaming, we're usually processing through something. So you might like get in an argument with a partner, you go to bed. In theory, you should probably have a conversation before you go to bed, but if you didn't, you go to bed. Right? You go to bed and your brain kind of processes it through that night. And you might wake up and go, huh, I'm not as disturbed by it as I was when I went to bed. That's because the eye movements go back and forth and they're kind of accessing left and right hemisphere, and you're actually reprocessing, learning some new information and desensitizing a little bit of the disturbance. So uh what we do with um EMDR for trauma is that it's not just for the big T traumas. It's for what I say, I use it a lot for more relational trauma, which means that everybody has some kind of emotional wound, regardless how good we thought our family of origin was. And all of those. Stem before the age of seven. Okay. So the past is in the present with EMDR. So when we think about kind of themes, EMDR looks at do I have to be in control? What happens if I'm not in control? Right? Do I not feel safe emotionally or physically because of things that have happened to me? Do I take an oversense of responsibility and get resentful and angry that other people, other partners, they don't do their part and therefore I have to keep working harder than everybody else? That's an oversense of responsibility. Um, and then the big category is this kind of defectiveness, which I hate that word, but it basically it's everything from I'm not good enough down to I don't have any worth, value, that real toxic shame, um, where you're gonna see a lot of those, you know, I'm a failure kind of beliefs come in. Okay. And so most of us, just what I'm just saying though is I'm sure you're you're nodding your head with me. We all have a bit of these different pieces, right? And so what EMER does is it it takes that neural network of, let's say, control. And if I I say, you know, I have to be in control or I feel like I'm powerless, I'm gonna ask the client, where do you feel powerless now in your life? And we're gonna, we're gonna get a title for that. Just give it like a like a title of an article. When else did you feel powerless in your life? And we're gonna map that back to the earliest memory they've got of feeling powerless as a little kid. Okay. And a lot of those memories are gonna be like in the two to four, because that's where potty training and control happens for kiddos, right? And so we gotta know what was going on in your family, right? And it again never means that mom and dad are like awful people. It just means that there's a family system going on and somebody has bigger needs, somebody, you know, somebody's a yeller. So, you know, there's all the diamonds, we all play roles, right? So we go back and we take those events and we activate those events with the neural network of that negative cognition. And then we use either eye movements or uh tapping. Um sometimes I use buzzers that go back and forth really fast. And it it mimics what that REM does, but it also not only accesses left and right hemisphere, you know, top-bottom of the brain, but it also brings new insights and new information that they might not have cataloged because we our brain just kind of remembers it as we remembered it as a kid, and we get stuck there. And so new insights, new information comes in, the desensitization of how disturbing that is goes down. And then we look at what would you like to believe instead? And, you know, if it's control, it might be that I can lean into the uncertainty of not knowing, or I can let go of some control. I can accept what happens, regardless, no matter what. Like not that we we put that modifier on it to say regardless, because it's not only if this happens or only if this situation happens. Um and so once we desensitize, we start to move the brain more towards that adaptive network. And um, and then clients will start to believe more of the adaptive and less of the negative until they don't believe the negative at all.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Interesting. So it does it always, is EMDR always looking to access those super early memories, or is it, you know, if I had something traumatic happen 10 years ago and it's affecting me today, are are like are we c trying to connect dots through our entire life for those things? Or like how would it work for like a musician?

SPEAKER_02 25:28

Great question. I mean, there are big things that just happen, right? Like I had a mountain bike accident th almost three years ago, and that was a big trauma, right? I broke my leg in two places. There's trauma in that, right? So when people have accidents or a car accident or something, you know, or some big life event that happens, that, you know, what we still have to do is figure out what core beliefs go with that. Like what what when you think about that event, like you said 10 years ago, what are the negative beliefs that you tell yourself about how you see yourself as a result of that? Either during, you know, if it's a big accident, it could have been like, I'm gonna die, right? On the mountain, I was gonna die. So that belief, my body was still stuck on the mountain, even though I was, you know, in the hospital room. And so our body holds the angst, it holds all the emotions of big traumas like that. It also holds the little T emotions and it gets stuck. And so we chronologically move forward, but our body's still stuck. So that's where EMDR looks at the past is in the present. Because if, like, let's say, like on a mountain bike, if I hadn't gone back and done EMDR on some of that, every time I got on my bike and I'm on the side of a cliff, the angst of falling off this cliff is still with me. Because before I fell, I didn't think I'd ever. I didn't think I didn't think, you know, who falls off a mountain?

unknown 26:49

Right.

SPEAKER_02 26:50

But the reality is my body knows now. So every time I'm, you know, in a car or something on the side, if I don't go back and work through that, I'm gonna feel the same angst that I did when I was on the mountain. And so the same thing is true for all experiences. So where it comes up relationally is let's say you felt like you were not important as a kid. You felt like you were like, I don't know, like the the one that didn't matter. Everybody else got attention, you just kind of flew under the radar. That was kind of the family story. Then you end up in relationship with somebody, and that person, your partner, dismisses you, doesn't listen to you, or you perceive that they're dismissing you. What do you think is getting activated? It's it's not it's it's in the present, but it's it's the little kid who has the feeling from their younger years. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Yeah. Does it work for the same for let's say I grew up um as the teacher's pet and my family absolutely put me on a pedestal and I could do no wrong, and now I find myself as a musician, um, you know, feeling like, oh, the room isn't responding to me. Uh I didn't get that gig I wanted. Does it work the same?

SPEAKER_02 28:07

Absolutely, because the that up the opposite side of what you're describing puts some high expectations for yourself to put the pressure on that like life's always going to look like this, because I got all this great feedback, you know, and and so we kind of feel kind of superhuman in some ways because we've had such great experiences. But then when we get out in the real world, I mean, you'll you'll I'll give you an example. We see that a lot with like um kids going off to college, right? It they might be the top of their class, they're the, you know, the 4.5 GPA, right? And then they get into the universe, not everybody, but like the those that are really high achievers, they get into the university and now they're just like a small potato in the in the midst of like all of these brilliant people, right? Now their worth and value is just in the toilet because everything that they had and knew, now now they're in this competition. And I think the same's true for musicians, right? Because we're always being put up against somebody who's better, who can sing better, who can play better, who, you know, all the things. I mean, I I know the imposter stuff came up for me when I was on stage and they're like, hey, just on the cuff, can't you just play this? And I'm like, no, I can't, right? You know, and then I go back and go, man, I'm not that good of a musician. You know, I've got to practice. I've gotta I've gotta like learn the chords. I I'm not I'm not that person, right? So that imposter shows up.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

When we can wear it, can we talk about imposter syndrome a little bit? Because this it I think for musicians, if you say mental health, uh uh talk to me about musicians' mental health. That it seems to be the one that rises to the surface, the biggest one, imposter syndrome. Um kind of can you, in layman's terms, talk about what that is and maybe how we combat that?

SPEAKER_02 30:02

Yeah. Well, I think the imposter syndrome is really big in the defective category that we were talking about for EMDR. It's that sense of like if I can't do it a hundred percent or the best, then I'm a failure. And so that imposter is like fake it to make it, like I gotta be out there and you know, but we don't really feel like we have it all together or that we deserve to be on the stage or whatever that is, because there's somebody that could have done this better, you know, and so there's like that ache inside that really that fear that I'm gonna be found out. Like somebody is going to learn that I am not as good as they thought I was, right? And and so a mistake, um just not feeling like it was your best performance, any of those things are going to really activate that feeling of impostor. Because if you because here's how a negative belief works. If I carry that belief about myself, I'm gonna look for it to be true in every aspect of my life. And I'm just waiting to have it confirmed. Right. So if I believe that I don't deserve to be out there and I'm really an imposter and I'm faking it to make it, and someone's gonna find me out, and then something happens where somebody gives me critical feedback, or you know, the audience isn't as activated and energized with what we're doing, and I'm gonna go, yeah, it's because they found me out. I'm an imposter. Like I wasn't good enough to be there. Right. And so we're looking for that to be confirmed until we start to get to safety again and zoom out and recognize, wait a minute, you know, this one performance doesn't define all of who I am. Like all the other things I do. Here's all the, you know, here's nine out of 10 times when I really was an imposter and I was top of my game and did, you know, a phenomenal job. But because I hold that belief, this one time's gonna get exacerbated and I'm gonna only focus. It's like shame focuses on that one thing. Um, like Brene Brown says, it's like a camera with a huge zoom lens and it just zooms in and like focuses on that flaw. But when we get to safety in that ventral vague vagal state, we can zoom out, and that camera lens has perspective now. And we can see all the times when we've actually been a success and when we haven't been an imposter, and we tell ourselves a very different story when we can do that.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

That's interesting. I most of the people I talk to who say that they have imposter syndrome, they tell me that they've lived with it their entire life. Uh or, you know, they've felt unworthy their entire life to some degree. For me, I honestly went most of my life probably being pretty cocky, feeling like uh I was untouchable. I was on top of my game, and I was the expert in my field, and then the idea of imposter syndrome was so foreign to me until a couple of years ago. Um do you find that to be true?

SPEAKER_02 33:10

Is it something that you know it can be so ingrained in us from a as a as a child, and then maybe there's some traumatic experience that tilts the scale or how does it be like the scale, but I think if you look at the history, you know, even kind of that more inflated self-esteem that, you know, because it's been validated by positive influence and and you've developed a higher sense of self-esteem, right? So that was great. However, when we experience something that we had no control over, right? Like a business or something that doesn't go well, or we, you know, we were expecting it to go well because everything else has gone so well for us. And then it can really hit us and go, wow, like I didn't expect that to happen. Right. And if if we look at it from the lens of, I'm flawed, it's my fault that this happened, or, you know, and can't zoom out and look at all the other experiences and the variables that play a role, that imposter syndrome is definitely going to be there. It's like, well, maybe I was never good enough to begin with. Maybe that was an inflated self-esteem. I think we all have different variations of self-esteem. And and sometimes those with even more inflated, it can be protective in some ways because either things have gone really well, or it's also can be a protection of, you know, I need to like puff up and and act like everything's gonna go okay because that is more the persona that I've carried. So I mean it can be both of those, I think.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Well, I think everybody is learning that I'm being found out right now because this has become my own personal therapies session. Uh no, I think this is you know something that is very common with uh uh a lot of my friends. So I appreciate you uh speaking into it. Another thing, uh yeah, I was talking to a musician friend of mine recently, and um they were talking about loneliness. And I never I never saw this person as somebody who is a lonely person. Why do you think musicians can feel lonely even when they're surrounded by so many people and people giving them accolades, you know, pats on the back and love what you're doing?

SPEAKER_02 35:34

Yeah, I well I think that's it's there's complexity to that, but I think that when you think about musicians, especially writers. Um I actually I think of uh I never say her name right, is it Sara Sarah Borellis? Um I I listened to a podcast interview with her and she had talked about how she wrote the best music in the darkest time of her life, because that's when the feelings came out in music, right? And it probably felt like a really lonely place to be, because if you're not able to be vulnerable with all those, you might be surrounded by a lot of people, but if you're not able to be vulnerable with the dark side of the shame that you carry, then you're gonna carry that alone. And you're gonna feel like no one, no one, you know, would believe that about me, right? Maybe I show up really outgoing and extroverted in this setting, and then in this other side, you know, I get in this dark room and I hammer out the black keys and, you know, like life, I can feel the loneliness or the sadness. So I think musicians can write amazing music in some of the darkest times of their life that are pretty lonely. And that's where they connect most and even process. And I like to say that's bilateral, by the way, right? When we're when we're playing, when we're like whether it's keys or guitar, we we are accessing bilateral movement, right? So I think we're processing stuff when we're playing, when we're when we're doing that um work. And so I think it can be lonely because there's a dark side when vulnerability isn't safe to be open about that dark side. Yeah. I think maybe I give an example. I I once worked with um, you know, you're a person of faith, but in in like the Christian arena, when you look at people who are like Christian artists, sometimes like a church will say, You've got everything. You should be so happy, right? And then those folks are in therapy and they're, you know, very depressed and very sad. And the persona they put on stage, you would nobody would know that, right? Because that's not how we see them. We see them as somebody who's just like so connected in spirit. And that's true too, but there's a dark side to the pain that maybe brought them to music. And um, and so I think people can be lonely and be surrounded by a lot of fame and a lot of people around them because I think it's the vulnerability that's the connection and not feeling safe to be vulnerable about the like the good, the bad, and the ugly.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Yeah. Well, I I don't know that a lot of people on this podcast know uh my faith background, but that you're actually hitting on something that um was a big uh point of contention for me when I was more involved in the church community because I wanted to be honest, uh from my own perspective, as honest as possible in talking about those things like we're talking about today. Uh and there is a not for every church, but there it's in the groundwater of a lot of churches to I I don't know that they want to be uh practicing toxic positivity or they want to be ignoring things. But I I think a lot of them want to be so hopeful and talk about hope. And uh while they do that, they ignore uh the realities of how frickin' painful life is at times. Uh and you can have faith and still be extremely depressed, and nobody likes to talk about that. Right.

SPEAKER_02 39:19

Right. Well, because I think that that doesn't go with the hope story, right? It's like, well, you know, if you just prayed harder, I mean we're not gonna talk about all the religions, but I get there, there, there's there's messages. There's messages that come, right? And I think that, you know, when I learned Bernays Burke and got trained in in some of her shame resilience work, it was just so fascinating to understand how much we run from vulnerability. And the vulnerability is in the shame. It's in the parts of the story that don't look like the church family that shows up all together, right? And you see families show up on Facebook and look at how wonderful and my amazing husband. And then I'm a therapist and I hear the back ends of those stories and they don't look like they do on Facebook, right? Sure. Right. I mean, it nobody's life does, right? And so the reality is no one's talking about those things. And it it sets people who are more in that sad, depressed state just to even go farther down a spiral and go, man, I just don't have it together. Like, you know, how come their life is so much better and we compare ourselves more to the reality? But I think we're just not hearing the reality of what's what's the dark side of some of those stories. We only hear that positive, and it's like, oh, but you just have faith and just, you know, just believe and everything's gonna be great. But I don't know, I was a medical social worker for years and I I watched a lot of people die that had very strong faith. And I could I can't answer the uncertainty of why some people had miracles and some people didn't. You know, I I can't answer that. But you sit, you sit in the the the darkness of grief and sadness and things that don't turn out the way people want. And and so life is hard. And people will feel more connected to somebody who is authentic. And when I think of values of how I want to show up in today's world, I I live by two really important values, and authenticity is number one, and freedom is the other one. And and when I think of authenticity, it's I can't be this person in this setting and a different person in this setting anymore. I I've got to be the same person every morning that I show up, and and either you like me or you don't like me, but I don't care anymore because I'm not playing that game anymore. I did that for years. So this is who I am. You either like me, you either like my family, you like the structure, you hate it. I don't care. This is this is what's important to me, is to show up as myself every day.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

Yeah. I actually think that's one of the things that's attractive about musicians a lot of times. I think people are attracted to musicians because of the authenticity and the vulnerability and their willingness to say, hey, I'm an open book, and they you know cut themselves open and bleed in front of people all the time, and people go, oh, fantastic. And we f we can really it's really suspect to see a musician that's just bubblegummy, everything's perfect, right? We go, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_02 42:13

Yeah, but we don't relate to that. It's it's the songs that are more heart-wretching that get us because we see ourselves in the story. And if somebody puts that out there and you touch my heart because something in my life mimics that or it's familiar, then you've just connected with me in a way that, you know, you've got you've got me as a fan, right? Like I see that you can be vulnerable and it gives me permission to be vulnerable too.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

Can you just knight all my musician friends here today and tell them they're all therapists?

SPEAKER_01 42:46

There we go.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

We'll do the little Yeah, exactly. Uh it's funny that you mentioned freedom too, because uh the first tattoo I ever got was the word freedom. Yeah. Because I I believe so strongly in the those things that you're talking about. Um I want to touch on something that you said about Sarah Borrellis and and it something that kind of my mind jogged back to the beginning of some things you were saying. And I don't want to misunderstand what you said. I thought I heard you say early on that um to be creative, we needed to feel safety. Yet when you're talking about somebody like Sarah Borellis creating her m best work at the darkest times of her life, which may seem unsafe. Like how does that how does that jive?

SPEAKER_02 43:40

Yeah. Well, I think the safety is in the music, right? Like I'm feeling all these emotions, but you know, I I just remember like writing as a, you know, when I was in high school, I mean, I I grew up with a mom who was a pretty strong alcoholic. And I remember there was a lot of times when I couldn't express what was actually happening in my house, because back then. And we just didn't talk about it, right? Writing music was how I dealt with it. And so when I was playing keys and I was writing the words of like what words I would love to actually say if I could, that was safety. I mean, it was it was healing my heart, it was healing, you know, there was some processing, it was a spiritual experience to do that and to be in that moment. And so I think that was my safety in a dark time. So I think it's a it's kind of a combination of both, where you're you're accessing the thing that that really connects you to yourself and to something bigger than the problem that you're dealing with, and you can actually feel the pain of what's going on there at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

Yeah. If if music uh could speak, if we could personify it here, you know, music had a voice, what do you think it's trying to do for us emotionally?

SPEAKER_02 44:58

Uh such a good question. I think it I think it wants us to get out of our heads. I think it wants us to stop trying to engineer the vulnerability out of uh situations. Because anxiety is all about engineering vulnerability out of things. And I think music says sit in the moment, sit in the feelings, sit with all of the feelings because we're human and to be human is to feel all of it. And if we can in music we feel and we sit in it in a way that we don't when we're trying to hustle and run and perform and do something different. And so I think music says, you know, slow down. Let's access that parasympathetic of safety, that rest, that digest. Sit in the discomfort of the uncertainty of even feeling those feelings, and just know you're gonna be okay on the other side.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

I love it. Gina, thanks for taking the time today. Is there anything uh you want to let us know? Like uh how how do we find you, or are you even taking clients, or like what does that all look like, right?

SPEAKER_02 46:04

Yeah, no, good question. So I I practice in um the the telehealth telehealth laws, you know, you have to be licensed in the state that we're working with people. So both Idaho and California. Um so I work in both those states. And um my website, if anybody wants to check that out, it's um www.authenticgains.com. Got the authentic name in there because that's my my value system. And then I'm on Instagram um at authentic underscore gains.

SPEAKER_00 46:32

I really appreciate this. I think everybody today is going to feel like they had a wonderful therapy session. And uh, you know, maybe this is gonna unearth some things for some people and they're gonna try to find some help, you know, and uh find find a safe spot and a way to move forward. So I appreciate you doing this.

SPEAKER_02 46:54

Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me. This was a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 46:57

Well, peace and love to you, my friend. We'll talk soon.

SPEAKER_02 47:00

You too. Take care.

SPEAKER_03 47:23

Let me live. Let me live.