Michelle Glogovac (00:01.079)
Hello, Dr. Gold. Jesse, I'm so excited to talk to you today.

Jessi Gold (00:03.352)
Hello.

Jessi Gold (00:07.256)
Thanks for having me. I'm excited too.

Michelle Glogovac (00:09.741)
Can you take a moment to introduce yourself to everyone, please?

Jessi Gold (00:12.804)
Sure, I'll give you like the nerdy introduction and then I'll throw in some fun stuff too so people don't think I just went to school my whole life. I'm the Chief Wellness Officer for the University of Tennessee system, which is all five schools of the University of Tennessee, including the ones you probably see on TV for sports and then also the Health Science Center.

Michelle Glogovac (00:20.151)
Well rounded, I like it.

Jessi Gold (00:35.754)
I'm an associate professor of psychiatry at the Health Science Center, which is based in Memphis, Tennessee. And I see primarily faculty, staff, and students. So also a lot of those faculty and staff are obviously health care workers. I went to a bunch of fancy schools to get all my degrees, but importantly studied anthropology and have a master's in anthropology too. I like to say that because I think a lot of people who go into medicine have a pretty like biology, chemistry, medicine path.

Anthropology is pretty central to how I think about things. And then I'm the youngest of four. I have a dog. Her name is Winnie. I watch a lot of really dumb television. I used to write for fun and now I write for part of my job. We have a book that came out, which I'm sure we'll talk about, which is called How Do You Feel? But otherwise, I did start writing as like a coping mechanism in med school, really. And then

recognized that it also was a pretty powerful way to educate around these issues and then started doing a lot of freelancing and then ended up kind of where I am with the book.

Michelle Glogovac (01:45.409)
loved the book. I read it over my holiday break and I felt like I know you even better. there were so many times where I was like, you and I are so much the same.

Jessi Gold (01:51.812)
you

Jessi Gold (01:56.516)
That's the goal, think. think, you know, in not telling like every single thing that's traumatic that's ever happening to me, but also like making it pretty commonplace of the things that we deal with at work, like burnout, for example, or, you know, really talking with my real voice in the way that I write. I wanted people to see themselves in different parts of it instead of being like, that's a really powerful story, but it's like not me, which I think happens a lot with memoir.

not for any bad reason, but that tends to be the memoirs that get out there versus like sort of, I resonate with that or I resonate with that and that happened to me too, or, you know, I kind of am just a conduit to be a voice for your problems and your struggles too.

Michelle Glogovac (02:42.551)
Which is funny that you bring up memoir because honestly reading it, I didn't look at it as, this is a memoir of a part of your life. And obviously it is because, and we'll share a bit about what the book is about, but you discuss how through COVID, you are all by yourself. You're working remotely from home. Your job is to see healthcare professionals, to listen to them and what they're going through while you're doing all of these presentations on burnout.

while you are yourself getting burnt out and not even recognizing it despite that being all you're talking about. And so, yes, it is a memoir per se, but it doesn't come across or didn't at least to me come across as a memoir because we get to also know your patients who, again, I was messaging you like, I want to know what happens to them and are they okay and how do they get through?

Jessi Gold (03:36.6)
I mean, it's kind of fun.

maybe it's its own genre, to be honest. I think they market it as a memoir because they have to pick something. They're like, I guess it's mostly memoir, but I've always kind of described it as part memoir, part patient narrative, part research, because I put citations in it. I don't think everybody who writes self-help books or other sort of mental healthy books is really going deep in their research and putting a ton of citations, but for me, I'm a doctor.

trained as a research background. I've done research on this stuff. So to me, I really wanted to make sure that some of that got in there too, in an accessible way. So I tried to weave like, all those things together in a kind of weird style, I suppose, which is like a little bit different than just being a memoir. But yeah, I love I liked being able to talk about my patients a lot. I actually have not done that a lot either, like in a lot of the writing I've done before.

I would maybe do like an intro paragraph and an end paragraph that mentioned something about a patient encounter or a situation to sort of ground it in story, because I'm a big fan of story. But I've never done like character development and writing a full narrative and writing dialogue and stuff. So I had to learn a lot to do that. But I also think it makes it more tangible and more powerful than if I gave you those research studies on their own, for sure.

Michelle Glogovac (05:02.403)
Definitely, because you feel connected to these people just as you do characters in a novel of, okay, what are they going through? They're coming to you with their problems and there were parts where I was like, yes, I get it. Like, oh my goodness. And I loved getting to know you in the book too as their therapist of...

well, this is what I went through and that you share this with them, but then we get to meet your therapist too and see how you are as the patient or client. And I thoroughly enjoyed it because I felt like we got to know all of these different people, but you especially.

Jessi Gold (05:31.053)
Yes.

Jessi Gold (05:41.784)
Yeah, it's really interesting. mean, in like a meta way, I had to talk to my therapist about including her. And, you know, obviously, I changed her name for lots of reasons, but because I'm primarily I don't really want people to go to her because they read a book and she was in it, but also to protect her privacy. But you know, when you're going to write a book about your therapist, you still your therapist and you happen to know about all the layers of stuff because you were trained in it. I mean, we had a lot of conversations about it. And she said to me, like, I didn't really ever want to be in a book. I'm not ever writing one.

myself, but it seems really incongruent with you and inauthentic for your story to ignore that part, to pretend that somehow you were burnt out and you managed it with self-care and that therapy wasn't a big part of what really helped you and continues to help you.

I see myself as part of that as opposed to just this extra thing that you put in for fluff, but it also normalizes it for people in a way that she said she was fine with. And I wanted through that too.

Michelle Glogovac (06:50.711)
And you bring up such a big topic that many people don't realize or recognize in the healthcare industry of how utterly hard it is to be a healthcare professional, whether during a pandemic or otherwise, starting from med school.

Jessi Gold (07:08.664)
Yeah, and the not recognizing it thing is our fault, like the people who do the work in a lot of ways, because we don't talk about it and we're trained not to talk about it. And so if we don't tell you our job is hard, you just think we must have some kind of amazing coping skills to deal with what we see or somehow they teach us magical skills to deal with the things that we're doing on a daily basis. And I don't blame patients for not recognizing that because really like we don't recognize it in ourselves. And I wouldn't expect you to be thinking

thinking too much about my mental health or what that was like for me, unless like, you know, it's in your face. think COVID, for example, put it in everybody's face because healthcare workers were on TV talking about their experiences and like couldn't hide their emotions and like couldn't hide what they were seeing. And it was much more obvious that like they were going to work when you weren't. And things that just like kind of highlighted these sort of clear cut differences in our job and our sort of mission to serve.

And I think that's part of why I said it in COVID too, besides it being the time that all of this happened for me was like, I do think it sort of said like, this is a topic that has been here, will be here, will continue to be different reasons for being here. But like this threw it into people's faces in a very different way, including our own, because, you know, as someone who works in administrative work around wellness, who kind of got called to do more of that during this time period, you can see how

Michelle Glogovac (08:30.083)
Mm-hmm.

Jessi Gold (08:38.282)
how many organizations like flexed their services, tried to target that and didn't have as much as they should have before and had to sort of catch up and do it during, but it was much more acknowledged, you know, even in coworkers or in the healthcare system that this was like a thing during this time as opposed to what we're trained to talk about and believe in what we mostly deal with, which is like, yeah, like we're fine.

Michelle Glogovac (09:05.729)
Yeah. And then as someone who's listening to other people's problems, like this is all you do. You're like, okay, tell me all of your issues, your problems, what you're going through. And you're absorbing this on a daily basis. So I'm so glad that you had your doctor to go to so she could absorb some of it and she has a doctor to go to. It's that trickle effect. Yes.

Jessi Gold (09:28.726)
Yeah, she calls it like a train, like, you know, someone has some, don't know that there's a master someone where it ends, but.

Michelle Glogovac (09:34.273)
I was just thinking of that in my head. I'm thinking of, you know, with a therapist, therapist, therapist, therapist, like, who's at the top of this and who do they speak to? God? No.

Jessi Gold (09:41.796)
maybe it circles back or something. don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting. I mean, I had seen therapists before. So having a therapist help me wasn't new, but having this kind of relationship with one was and needed so badly in this context. But a lot of times when you do a job like mine, like you kind of go, well, I'm not doing long hours like a surgeon. I am not

doing medicine where I'm cutting people or touching people, I'm just listening and it should be fine. know, like we don't have like the, when people think about psychiatry.

even like therapy in general, I don't know that people are always like, well, that's like a really hard like job. But I think when you stop and think about it, it makes sense that it is because you're like, you know, for me and for so many people, we go into it because we care, you know, like it's a core value of mine to serve others, but also I'm an empath. And if you care, it's impossible to not.

Michelle Glogovac (10:30.465)
Yeah.

Jessi Gold (10:44.164)
hear what people are saying to you. Like you can be there, participate, and kind of remove yourself in some capacity, but you can't do it all day every day with no relief, and you can't do it in the context of your own struggles, which is something I've learned over time that like the more I have going on with me, the harder it is to put up like whatever sort of trained facade I'm able to do to protect myself. You know, there's a time where my previous dog got sick and

was like in the doggie ER or like ICU. And I was seeing patients and like a patient said something to me and then left the room. And then I started crying like uncontrollably. And I was like, the world is a dark place, you know? And I kept saying like to myself, and like my friend came in, she's like, what's going on? Who's also psychiatrist and I was like, the world's bad. And she was like, I mean, yes, Jesse, like the world has been bad. And you listen to the bad stuff in the world. And I was like, something's wrong because I can't

tune it out, you know? And I think it's like somehow that like whatever defense I've earned from doing this over time and watching other people do it and seeing what they do when there's anything going on with me that like slowly cracks or turns down the volume and the other volume goes way, way up. And it's like all of sudden, yeah, like I listened to really bad stuff, you know? And it sometimes takes like times like that to remind me that.

Michelle Glogovac (12:01.965)
Mm-hmm.

Jessi Gold (12:12.29)
there's no way my job's not emotionally challenging. And to pretend that it, like somehow magically I'm not gonna be affected by it, which I think is how most of us are told, like that doesn't make any sense.

Michelle Glogovac (12:25.431)
Yeah. And I know something that we also went back and forth on was how we tend to check on those that we are working with, your doctor, my therapist. I'm like, are you okay? Can I check in with you too? And I know that's something that most people don't, but as empaths…

Jessi Gold (12:42.08)
Yeah, so I didn't even know it wasn't my therapist went through like a family member dying pretty early on in our relationship. And when she mentioned that she was gonna have to take time off and had this going on, she told me I was one of the people she was most concerned to tell.

And I, know, defensively was like, what's wrong with me? Like my mental health isn't that bad. Like, cause to me, I heard like, no, you're gonna crack if I tell you, or you're gonna be concerned I'm gone, or you're gonna get worse, whatever. And she said, no, it's not that. It's just that you can't forget that I told you that. And you like will ask about me and not be able to focus on you. And this is gonna be a thing for us for a while.

And, you know, it was, I mean, I appreciated that she said that because I don't think I really knew that about myself, but I also didn't know it was different. I was like, I don't understand that, like, wouldn't that be hard for everyone? And she's like, I mean, like, people will say, like, I'm sorry to hear that, etc. And they'll go right back to their own stuff. She's like, you just can't.

And even like kind of, you know, I don't think she'd care about me sharing. Like she was around a little bit longer, like because of the family members sort of being on hospice and stuff like that. And every day I'd be like, I do my session and at the end I'd be like, I don't, do you mind me asking how you're doing?

And like one time she was like, you know, you're the only one who's still asking me that. She's like, is there something else that you want to know? And I was like, well, I just feel like it's been a while and I was just worried. And she was like, you she told me kind of honestly how it had been and said, did that make you feel better that I gave you more details? And I was like, I guess so. And I was like, are you concerned that you told me all those details? And she said,

Jessi Gold (14:37.1)
I just worry that you'll then not think I'm like, shouldn't be, you'll think I shouldn't be working, you know? And I said, well, I kind of do respect you as a provider that you wouldn't show up if you couldn't do that. So don't worry about that.

but I'm still like as a human gonna be this person, because I don't know how not to be. And I think it brought us closer in a lot of ways to have a bit more of an in-depth conversation like that, but it also like really did like therapy does in so many ways, call attention to stuff you don't know is different from other people or it calls attention to things like in the way you interact with others that maybe you didn't understand. And I didn't know like checking in on a person whose family member was dying regularly would be something that doesn't happen.

Michelle Glogovac (14:55.032)
Yeah.

Jessi Gold (15:21.378)
very often, you know? Yeah.

Michelle Glogovac (15:23.199)
It shows you care and, you know, unfortunately, I think we live during a time where there's not as much caring for others as there could or should be. But to me, that shows that you care. So I say good on you. It shows who you are.

Jessi Gold (15:38.328)
Yeah, I mean, I'm glad you do that too. I mean, I think in so many ways it's, I envy people who can walk in a room, say, this is my one hour for me and actually feel like that. Like I wish, I really do wish I could do that because it maybe even would make therapy easier and work better for me if I could do that. But it just, it's

you know, as much as I can learn that like others impact my emotional wellbeing in such a way that I have to learn to deal with that. And like that can be modeled even with stuff she's going through, right? Like that can be part of the experience, but it's just so not me to be able to be like, this time is just for me and I don't care about you, right? Like even if like.

Right now, there was something going on globally in the world that I know every one of my patients is talking about, and I know that it's really hard for me. Like, I will also do the same and say, is every one of your patients bringing this up? Like, I'm sorry to also bring this up, you know? Because it's like, I'm just very aware, you know? For better or worse.

Michelle Glogovac (16:38.807)
Right. Yeah.

Michelle Glogovac (16:43.083)
Yeah. And I do the same thing with friends who are therapists. I'm like, has anyone checked on you? Because I know what everyone else is going through and I know what I'm going through, so you're listening to it all, so are you okay too? And has anyone asked you that? No. I have one friend in particular, yeah, she's like, thank you for asking that. No. And we have those conversations, but...

Jessi Gold (16:58.082)
What do they say?

Michelle Glogovac (17:10.85)
You know, I think that there's so many people who don't, whether we're talking about therapy or like driving and they're like, well, I'm going to run the red light because I have to get where I got to go and it doesn't matter. I tell my kids all the time in my next life, I'm coming back as someone who's selfish and doesn't care what anybody else is doing. Yeah, I would love to know what that's like to live guilt free, rent free, you know, just whatever I'm going to do what I want when I want no matter what. But that's not who I am.

Jessi Gold (17:25.412)
Just to see what it's like. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessi Gold (17:40.342)
Yeah, I think it would I don't know that I'd be as successful as I am. But I you know, I do think and it's part of sort of the moral of a lot of the book for me is like the things that make me who I am that probably people tried to shut down because they didn't fit their mold of what medicine should be or whatever is probably what makes me most successful. But I just didn't know that when I was younger, like I really wanted to be what they told me to be because it felt like

You got here, you earned it. If you want to survive in this competition, you better figure out how to become that robot in the same outfit everyone else is wearing and not.

look any different, act any different, talk any differently, you know, like I just had on my mind, like when people would give you feedback that was like basically about my personality, you know, like I'd take it to heart and go, I guess I have to change. And not in a way where like if you fought with a friend and you were kind of trying to figure out something a friend said where you would automatically believe that person was right, but it was so strong because of how much of the culture is so hierarchical and how much of our success is so dependent

and then on other people's opinions and the next step that we're going on and how much people sort of like don't hear you when you say, are you sure? You know, but it's taken me a while to sort of land on like, like that's actually good about me. And so when I think about what you said about kind of coming back as a selfish person, like I think the fun of it would be like to go through life and not have to feel so much.

Michelle Glogovac (18:53.475)
Mm-hmm.

Jessi Gold (19:18.308)
But I don't know that I would get to be doing something I cared about so much. I don't think that I would get to be doing it at the level that I'm doing it at. I don't think I'd have to have as much of an impact. But I suppose I may have different values at that point, and maybe those things wouldn't matter, right? I think my values are, can I get to these places and do these things that are really helping? If I'm selfish, then...

It really just depends on how you get there for you.

Michelle Glogovac (19:48.897)
Yeah. And I think that morally neither of us could actually work that way. it's just, it's my joke. I wish it's not going to happen.

Jessi Gold (19:52.068)
It'd be nice.

Jessi Gold (19:58.464)
I mostly wish like some days I could just not feel as much. Like, and I know that sounds like kind of bonkers too because like ideal in feelings, but also like I'm not great at.

like naming my own feelings and really living in like the clearest sense of the word of like how I would want patients to live with their emotions. Like I don't wanna not feel in a way where I'm just pushing it down and it's gonna come up. I just mean it would be nice sometimes to just not be affected at all.

Michelle Glogovac (20:32.161)
Yeah, I totally get that. I totally get that. But I loved also that you share in the book, we get to go on this journey with you where you're like, you know, should I share this with my patients? Should I not tell them that I've been through this too, or this is what it was like for me? And as you reveal more and more, we see the changes in them and their epic changes. The one who cries.

You guys got to read the book to know what I'm talking about. But the woman didn't cry for like a decade. And then the older woman who comes and she takes her hand and I cried. I totally cried.

Jessi Gold (21:03.46)
you

Jessi Gold (21:14.786)
Yeah, mean, we're taught and probably people listening haven't had a lot of doctors who do that, right? Like, or therapists who have said, like, here's something I dealt with too.

we're taught not to. Like as doctors for sure in med school, it's selfish. In med school, it makes it about you. In med school, it makes like it's distracting. In med school, it is something someone else can beat you on like vulnerability loses in competition. And so it's discouraged. then mental health, it's like, thanks to this guy named Freud is like, I am a person, but I reflect this like mirror

and I'm just here to help you figure out you and my background doesn't matter. And there are definitely people who believe that in mental health, like psychoanalysts would be like the furthest kind of group of folks that kind of have that in their mind, but.

You know, I think it has changed some over time in mental health as so many people go into it with lived experience and and patients like that more it has become easier to to share but you're not trained It's not like a skill that's trained and I think it should be in so many ways because like i've seen it I don't think it should be used all the time Like I don't think with every patient it makes sense for me to talk about myself I don't think in every circumstance it does and some people need more boundaries than

and other people because they haven't had them in their lives. So you being the person who's like, blah, here's me, we're friends now, it doesn't help them, but also doesn't help if like, you know, I mentioned something and I was like, me too. Like it has to have a purpose, I think, and it's more purposeful. And that's why I do think it's a skill in that setting. Like.

Michelle Glogovac (22:56.312)
Mm-hmm.

Jessi Gold (23:01.516)
Obviously people can Google me, they can read the book, they can figure it out externally and that's different but like one-on-one in my office what I'm choosing to share and how I choose to share it feels like it should have been a skill I was taught. I feel like I was taught it more from my therapist than anybody else because she's very good about when she chooses to use it. We're not friends, we would never be friends, there's so many reasons that's weird but like I don't actually feel like we're friends but I feel like I know her well.

because I feel like she does share when it makes sense and does tell me when things would point things out in me by her sharing it. And I saw from her how much that impacted me and was like, I could do that. I see so many people that are like me. I chose to do the specialties that I see for a reason. I'm not seeing, when we train, we do inpatient psych, we do a lot more community psych, and those patients are very different in their experiences.

is very different than mine. Like choosing to see college students or choosing to see healthcare workers is like, I chose to see people based on the times when I most needed help and the people I see every day that I don't think are dealing with their stuff, right? And so choosing to do that, I should recognize that having so many similarities would make a self-disclosure more powerful, right? Like would make it easier than just like,

Michelle Glogovac (24:12.77)
Mm-hmm.

Jessi Gold (24:25.742)
pretending that we don't have the same experience or that I didn't struggle with the same stuff, especially some of the younger folks who are also like.

looking up at you as like in a hierarchical way, like she's made it in medicine and what's that like? And so not only am I their psychiatrist, I'm also this person in like academics that they they look up to for that way. And so if you can say like, hey, like I stink at tests too, like they're actually miserable. Or I literally went to school for emotions and I don't know what I'm feeling and when I'm feeling it because I turned it off to write like these things that

Maybe we just should say out loud more and don't.

I think are really powerful, like little self-disclosures, even in friend groups and even in like colleagues and even in like your school with them, you know? Like the thing that I think would most change like these groups to be safer and more of a culture of caring is honestly like doing that more, not in a therapeutic session, like saying some of the quiet stuff out loud, being like, isn't it super weird that I trained in feelings and I don't know my feelings? Like, you know what I mean? Like, I just feel like it makes

you like, it just makes you less alone. And then if you feel less alone, you're more likely to share yourself. And then it makes it like kind of in that same way that a therapist has a therapist has a therapist, like slowly cracks the surface of this like facade of fine.

Michelle Glogovac (25:58.531)
Yeah. We don't talk enough, like period. We all know that. And then I think that we don't have enough people now. It's like, I'm going to say quote unquote, cool, you know, to have a therapist. Like people are now talking about it openly when less than a decade ago it was like, whoa, you see someone, you talk to someone, yowzers. I mean, that's how I was raised. It was like, what's wrong with you if you're going to go there?

Jessi Gold (26:20.308)
Yeah.

I feel like it's so, would say people might be surprised how slow that has moved in healthcare workers. Like healthcare workers still don't really talk about therapists. So even when I talk about like having a therapist, you can kind of see them be like, really? It's really encouraged in psychiatry training because of what we do. The mental health professionals across the board are pretty encouraged as part of training to do these, like to go to therapy, even just to understand yourself, to understand your patient better. But other specialty is less so. It feels more like, you should go there,

away from us because we don't want to deal with your issues and so it becomes like a more extreme measure in healthcare still and then across the board in sort of culture I would say psychiatry hasn't become cool like

Most people aren't like, my med that I take every day is really important to my needs. It's like a lot easier to say that you just talk to someone. All I needed was somebody to talk to to figure this out. Like, and that's not true for a lot of us. Like I take meds. and I recognize that I thought of it differently, even though I prescribe meds to people every day. And I think that's again, a product of what I was trained in, what magazines I read as a kid, what TV shows, what people around me and my family talked about, just like anyone else.

even though I believe in a sight of patients, know, how it gets in and what it means about me is different. And I think so many people hesitate to even talk to a psychiatrist, hesitate to start medication because of that. Like, what does it mean about me? Like, I'm this sick that I need a medicine, you know, because also, unfortunately, in our culture, like, it's a sick-based healthcare. It's not preventative in so many ways. So it's like, we don't go to doctors unless we absolutely need them. And so,

Michelle Glogovac (27:39.747)
Mm-hmm.

Jessi Gold (28:06.838)
mental health is the same way. Like I don't have to go to a psychiatrist until like I'm really bad and I really need it and it's a last resort and that makes it feel like a bigger decision than it is to say like I tried therapy, it didn't work or I've got my problems are more severe. I need more help or this is genetic and it's just not going to be solved with talking alone or this is a more severe mental illness like bipolar. This needs

Michelle Glogovac (28:31.934)
Mm-hmm.

Jessi Gold (28:36.742)
Like whatever it is, it just those barriers to even those simple sort of like realizations are pretty high still, I think. I don't know what you think when you're like reading stuff or talking to people. I talk to more psychiatrists, so I maybe, but like, you know.

Michelle Glogovac (28:50.869)
No, we have it. It's close to home. There's mental illness. so I do know more. I've been more involved than maybe the average person, per se. So I know, I recognize that there's that stigma. And so we don't talk about it. And I think there's also the, for me, I'm like, well, it's not me personally. So I'm not going to put it out there for that person. But I encourage that person, you should talk about it.

should absolutely talk about it. If you want me to talk about it, I'll talk about it too. We can talk together. But to release that stigma of this is what's going on. I think that with the way that our world is, and I'm not talking just politically, there is so much nonsense that is going on. As we're talking, we've got half the states on fire. We have thousands of people who are now homeless in addition to the regular homelessness that we have.

we've got drug epidemics, we've got wars going on, we have all of these things going on. Mental health is not going to get better, my friends. Like these are not, I don't want to say they're not happy times because we have happy moments, but it's so overwhelming and with social media and the internet and now things aren't regulated and there's no fact checking, it's only going to get worse. Before it gets better.

I fear for the mental health of people. And so if we are going to continue stigmatizing this as something bad, then we're really shit out of luck.

Jessi Gold (30:24.484)
Yeah, we're just not helping people have the tools to survive, right? Like, you know, I say sometimes like, yeah, you might hate your job and want to leave, but you can't because of privilege of what that means. And so you might have to tolerate a job that's hard and to tolerate it, might affect your mental health or.

Michelle Glogovac (30:27.192)
Mm-mm.

Jessi Gold (30:40.492)
You might have no control over something like COVID or a fire or whatever, but you see it everywhere in the news. You see videos, you see posts, you have family worried. Like you can't control any of that, but it's going to impact your mental health. But if you don't deal with it or you worry about it, like you can control it, it will impact you. And so, yeah, I mean, I think there was a time in the pandemic when we were going into an election season and also some other stuff going on in the world where I just was like,

this doesn't get better, does it? And I think so much of the way I had framed dealing with the pandemic for me was like, yeah, and this is all the healthcare workers I talked to too, like two more months, three more months, I just need to get through this. And a lot of folks I think did that to survive at home too, like parenting at home, schooling at home, whatever. Yeah, and so it's gotta be great. And I think I did that.

Michelle Glogovac (31:30.755)
kindergarten on Zoom. It was good.

Jessi Gold (31:37.358)
thinking like, on the other side, it'll be better, even though I knew in my head that it wasn't really better before. I knew all the data too, right? But once it was this time where the election was coming and I could see both sides of the polarization and then I could see everything else that was coming, I was like, gosh, this doesn't get better, does it? And my therapist said something kind of like, was it ever better? Name a time that it was better. And it helped me, again, to sort of go like,

we have these like beliefs that the worst is what we're experiencing and there was probably some bad before and there will be bad after and but I do think like our jobs in particular need to have sustainability to them because you need to know that like when you struggle we exist you know and if we don't actually deal with our own stuff we pretend our jobs don't affect us until they do we're not you know having work-life balance enough we're not

getting compensated well enough, whatever it is that's kicking people out of various professions. Like if you need a nurse, you won't have one. If you need a psychiatrist or a therapist, you won't have one. If you need a doctor who specializes in something in particular, you won't have it, you know? And I think that to me is also such a concern, which is like the reason to care as a person who sits at home about what my mental health is, is that your mental health is bad and you need somebody to help you with it. And if I can't, because I can't deal with my

own stuff or I haven't, you're for lack of a better phrase, shit out of luck, right? Like, I mean, it's just like, I don't know what else to tell you. Like, it's a bad thing to say, I suppose, but it's just like, that's where my brain went is sort of like, that's what happens in these situations. Like, there is no train, right? Like we talked about therapists help therapists, like that.

Michelle Glogovac (33:13.109)
Right. It's going to be the quote or the title of the episode.

Jessi Gold (33:29.176)
doesn't exist if we don't help ourselves and there's no helping patients in that situation. if you sit at home and you go like, gosh, the world is pretty miserable. I could see this impacting me at some point. Like you should worry about you and you should worry about how to get help. But you should also recognize if you're worried about that, that you need to think about the fact that like we need sustainability in our jobs too, to be able to help you.

Michelle Glogovac (33:52.237)
Yes. my gosh, I feel like we could just keep going on and on.

Jessi Gold (33:55.748)
Sometimes I'm like, gosh, I'm such a good Debbie Downer.

Michelle Glogovac (34:02.211)
No, we're laughing and smiling the whole way. We're like y'all are shit out of luck

Jessi Gold (34:06.784)
Yeah, sometimes I give talks. I'm like, here's where we were before bad. Here's where we are now. Worse. Yay. You know, I give I mean, I give skills and stuff, but like I pause and I go now that I've just made everybody in this room very depressed. Yay. I'll try to give you some solutions. But it's like, you know, when you present the information, sometimes it comes a little bit like, what, what, like, but it's true.

Like I don't want to sugarcoat things. I don't think it helps people. I'm a big fan of like radical honesty as much as possible. Like I don't think it helps to be like, of course you're fine from all the stuff you're reading on the news. You're not fine. Like you're not fine. And if you need a break and you recognize that you're not fine, that's also cool. Like take a break. You know, almost every time something happens in the news, I feel compelled to because I don't see it posted. It's posted right now on my Insta stories. Like basically, hey, you can take a break and you're not a bad advocate.

person, bad friend, bad family member, like it's okay that this affects you. Like I feel like that even with journalists, like they do their job and they report and they go see people when they're not even processing their trauma like in the height of their trauma and they're just like, yay we're fine and I'm like no you're not, you just like read about fires for three days and talk to people who dealt with it, like give yourself grace and space you know and and I think that

Michelle Glogovac (35:23.971)
We're even seeing that on the LA TV's. They're showing the journalists who literally live there, who have lived there, who are worried about their homes miles away reporting. Yeah.

Jessi Gold (35:34.212)
Yeah, what are you supposed to do about that?

Like, you know, and their profession is very similar to ours in what they're taught to do and react and, you know, they're even more of like a removed observer, right? Because they just report information. We're not reporting information, but they're very impacted by what they do without recognizing it. And I think a lot of us are because we scroll the same things they're putting out and we think like, ooh, la la la, scrolling, scrolling. It's just information. But most of that information really is our news, which is not

not uplifting. If I was looking at Instagram puppy videos or something all day, like that might be different, but eventually you're going to get in some kind of algorithm or your friends are going to post about the thing that's happening because your friends are informed people and you can't turn that off and it's okay, right? But I think pretending is not the answer and being honest about it is helpful for all of us to be like, well gosh, this is affecting me. Cool. Now what?

Michelle Glogovac (36:33.788)
You're adorable.

I like you. can see why we got along and why you enjoyed your book.

Jessi Gold (36:42.436)
I'm glad you like me.

Michelle Glogovac (36:45.123)
I do like you. I like you. Can you share with everyone where they can find your book, find you, get more of your uplifting?

Jessi Gold (36:50.734)
Sure.

With all my uplifting information, honestly though, I will say like I love pop culture. I use pop culture references wherever I can. try to be like use humor where I can too. It's my favorite defense mechanism. So I don't think like in reading the book, you're going to feel the same that sometimes I feel like people do in lectures, but I use memes and lectures to kind of help with that too. So it's very important to me that there's a emotional balance of the information in what you're taking in, but it's called, How Do You Feel? My name is Jessie Gold. You can find it most places that you get books.

Michelle Glogovac (36:54.551)
Yes.

Jessi Gold (37:22.486)
If you're a local bookstore person cool, if you're not those other places have it too Just you know, check it out if you read it and like it review it because sometimes people are cranky on there otherwise And you know if you want to find me I'm at dr. Jesse gold on most platforms Jesse spelled like Jessica without the CA because Jessica is my actual name And I just was like a snooty kid who was like there's no E and Jessica. So if that helps you remember, that's how you find me

Michelle Glogovac (37:44.696)
Ha

Michelle Glogovac (37:51.203)
Ha

Jessi Gold (37:52.531)
websites there too you can contact me through there for speaking or anything like that as well.

Michelle Glogovac (37:57.611)
You're awesome. Thank you so much.

Jessi Gold (38:00.344)
You got it, thanks for having me.