I bought into the stigmas about the mentally ill, until I became one of them [PODCAST]

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“Bipolar runs in my family, so I knew the harsh realities of this untreated illness. A family member faked his own death after a counterfeiting spending spree. My grandfather told people that I would die in a car accident, and he would take my body up to the mountain and bring me back to life.

When I was younger, surrounded by this family chaos, it was easy to tell myself, ‘They are crazy!’ I bought into many of the stigmas of mental illness — that those with mental illness are unpredictable, incompetent, and have trouble holding down a job.

I thought I was different. I was married to a hospital CEO, attended charity events, lived in a beautiful home, and had three healthy children. Yet, life felt unbearable. The stigmas around mental illness kept me from getting the help I desperately needed, so I continued to suffer in silence.”

Sonja Wasden is a mental health advocate and co-author of An Impossible Life. 

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “I bought into the stigmas about the mentally ill, until I became one of them.”

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Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show we have Sonja Wasden. She is a mental health advocate and co-author of An Impossible Life. She wrote the KevinMD article “I bought into the stigmas about the mentally ill, until I became one of them.” Sonja, welcome to the show.

Sonja Wasden: Thank you for having me.

Kevin Pho: We’ll get into your article in a little bit, but first off, can you share your story and journey to where you are today?

Sonja Wasden: Yes. I have struggled with a mental illness for over 30 years. For 20 years of that, I hid it because of the stigmas that are associated with it. It wasn’t until 2015, when I attempted suicide and was taken to the hospital where my husband was CEO, and a leading psychiatrist there said, “Don’t bring her back to this hospital again. Take her where people don’t know you.” And I remember feeling like I was a dirty little secret. I felt shame. I know his intent was to protect us, because he knew the stigmas firsthand.

And I thought, “I’m going to speak out.” So I came out of hiding with my mental illness and decided to speak out about it, and I wrote the book An Impossible Life about my story. I’ve been traveling across the country. I’ve been interviewed over 50 times on local and national news, including CBS This Morning, and have published articles in the Washington Post, Ms. magazine, The Hill, and with you.

Kevin Pho: Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining. So briefly share the story of your mental illness.

Sonja Wasden: Yeah. Mental illness runs in our family, and I started getting sick probably around 17. It wasn’t talked about a lot back then, so I wasn’t really getting the help that I needed, or I didn’t even really know what was happening to me. And then as I got married and got pregnant and the stresses came, I started getting very depressed. The doctors thought I had depression and started to give me depression medicines, and that wasn’t working.

With my husband’s job, we moved around a lot, and so we would see different doctors and keep going back. I think it was really challenging for the doctors, because they kept seeing me as a new patient every three to four years as my husband moved with his job. And I think, for me, I also was hiding because of the stigmas, and I wasn’t as transparent with the doctors as I needed to be. I think the stigmas really kept me from getting the help that I needed.

And so I was involuntarily committed to the psychiatric hospital by an ER physician, and that’s really my road of getting on medicine, getting diagnosed, and getting help. So these ER doctors are critical in catching people like me who are in hiding, and that’s kind of where I went from there.

My father died from suicide, and about three or four years later, I attempted, and luckily the doctors were able to save my life and got me into a dialectical behavior therapy program and on new medicine. It was the doctors, the therapist, the psychiatrist, all of them, who really saved my life and gave me a life worth living today. I couldn’t be doing what I’m doing without their help, their support, and their showing me and giving me the skills that I have today.

Kevin Pho: And you talk more about your story in your KevinMD article. It’s titled “I bought into the stigmas about the mentally ill, until I became one of them.” Now, for those of you who get a chance to read your article, can you just walk my audience through it and share the story of why you decided to write it?

Sonja Wasden: Yeah. The stigmas are what held me back from getting help, but I think I was stigmatizing the mentally ill. My cousin went on a counterfeit spending spree, faked his own death, and ended up in prison. My grandfather would tell people he had a vision that I was going to die in a car accident, and he’d take my body up and resurrect me. And I would be like, “Oh, they’re crazy. Oh, they’re crazy.” Nobody wants to belong to a group called “crazy” or “psycho.” And so I really resisted it and fought it.

It wasn’t until I got diagnosed that I realized these stigmatizing words held me back from getting help, and they’re very damaging and keep people silent. It became very easy to stop stigmatizing other people, but to stop stigmatizing myself was more of a challenge: to say, you know, that I’m crazy or there’s something wrong with me. It’s not a flaw or an imperfection in myself. It’s actually a mental health condition, which is just like having a physical health condition. It’s the same thing.

And I sometimes think we don’t treat it as the same, and people take it more as a personal flaw, where they wouldn’t take it that way if they had cancer, for example, or diabetes. They wouldn’t think of it as a personal flaw. But I think with mental health challenges, a lot of people take it on personally, that there’s a flaw. And so I wrote this article about how I did stigmatize my family and others until I became one of them.

I also talked about how people look at it negatively, and we need to start having a conversation about mental health in a different way, instead of looking at it as this damaging, horrible thing. When I tell people I’m bipolar, I have OCD, anxiety disorder, the first thing they say is, “I’m sorry.” And I often think, you know, if you’re a marathon runner, and we’re in a marathon with our mental health, you know, you have people cheering you on and saying, “You can do this.” And I think sometimes, with mental health, we’ve got to say, “Hey, is there anything I can do? You can do this. You’ve got this,” and encourage them instead of saying, “I’m sorry.” It’s great to have compassion, but we also need to be cheered on.

Kevin Pho: Now, you mentioned that you hid your mental health diagnosis for about 20 years, and then you decided to share your story. So take us through some of those decision points when making that transition.

Sonja Wasden: You know, I was married to a hospital CEO, attending charity events, three beautiful children, lived in a beautiful home. I held up that facade. And like I said, after my suicide attempt, I decided it was time for me to come forward and to speak out. And so as I started working with therapists and doctors and getting skills, that is when I decided I would start writing my story. So with my daughter, we wrote my story and published it, and then we decided to be mental health advocates.

We went on a 50-state tour of raising mental health awareness, one local library at a time. We started going to each state and donating my book to libraries, because libraries are the heart of the community. We started there, and then the news started following us, with news interviews and articles, and now I’m a keynote speaker. And so it kind of built. People can take hiding some of their most difficult things and turn it around and make it into something positive.

Kevin Pho: Over the years, of course, you’ve had various interactions with the health care community, and on this podcast and my site, of course, the audience is primarily clinicians. What are some of the things your health care professionals did well, and what are some of the things that you felt could be improved?

Sonja Wasden: I think some of the things they did well is they didn’t give up on me. I think we’re a tough crowd, the ones who struggle with mental health challenges, and it can sometimes be very discouraging, but they didn’t give up on me. They gave me hope when I felt hopeless. When I felt like my life didn’t matter and I had no purpose, they gave me encouragement that it did. They gave me skills to deal with my anxiety, to deal with my emotional regulation issues. They gave me skills to deal with the stigmas that are still present even today, and how to have a voice and to be honest and authentic.

I wouldn’t be where I am today without these clinicians. I wouldn’t be alive today without these clinicians. And so I can’t thank them enough for all their hard work and for choosing to go into this field to help people like me. You know, the statistic is that more than 50 percent of people will have a mental illness or a mental health disorder at some point in their life, so these clinicians see a lot of mental health challenges in people.

I would say the one thing that clinicians can improve upon is giving skills. It’s great to listen and to say, “I’m sorry,” and that this is difficult, but give us a skill to use. Give us a tool for our toolbox to handle our mental health challenges, something that we can use and go home and practice with, so we can manage our mental health illnesses, disorders, and struggles and be able to have a life worth living.

One thing that a therapist taught me that I thought was beautiful was that two truths can be true at the same time. You can be in pain, and you can still be having a good time. And I think a lot of times people are like, “I’m in pain. I can’t get out of bed.” But if you get out of bed and do the next thing, and do the next thing, you can start realizing that your life can have moments of joy too, and that it’s not just painful. And I really like that. I thought that was beautiful.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Sonja Wasden. She is a mental health advocate and co-author of An Impossible Life. She wrote the KevinMD article “I bought into the stigmas about the mentally ill, until I became one of them.” Sonja, you mentioned that you’ve been sharing your story and that you’ve been a keynote speaker and author for years now. Share some of your successes and some of the challenges that remain.

Sonja Wasden: I would feel like some of the successes, besides speaking to Fortune 500 companies, are having a job and getting paid. A lot of people say people with mental illnesses can’t hold down jobs. I’m holding down a job, so I think that is a success. One of the other greatest successes that I’ve been able to have is that I’ve been able to go speak to women’s prisons, people struggling with drug addiction, the homeless, veterans, police, and firefighters. That has been part of my advocacy work, where I give back.

And you know, the night that I thought my life was worthless, I had no purpose, and I swallowed over 200 pills to take my life, I would have never thought at that moment, if I could look ahead, that was five and a half years ago, that where I am today, five and a half years later, I would be speaking to people who are struggling and giving them hope. I would have never thought that in a million years, and that has been very, very rewarding.

I think some of my other successes are getting published, like in KevinMD and the Washington Post and The Hill and many other national magazines and newspapers. I feel like that’s been a tremendous success, that I’ve been able to use my voice for other people to read, and also for clinicians and doctors to hear my story as a patient, and also know, when they get discouraged, that their patients can become successful one day. And also that they did save my life, and I wouldn’t have the life I have today without them.

Kevin Pho: What are some of the challenges that remain?

Sonja Wasden: Managing a mental illness, as I still am currently in care. It’s not over. A lot of people think, “Oh, you’re successful now. You have a life worth living. It’s over. Your mental illness is gone.” It’s not. My mental illness has not changed from 30 years ago to today. It’s just that now I have the capacity and the skill set to manage it, and I have my team of care, right? I’ve got my psychiatrist, I have my internist doctor, I’ve got my psychologist, I have my therapist. I have a team of people who are working with me. I’ve got the emergency room when I have panic attacks I cannot control. I have behavioral health outpatient programs that I can start to participate in if I need to touch up on some skills. So I’ve got a network of people to help me.

But the challenge is that, yes, I still have a lot of painful days: my anxiety, my bipolar emotion, and managing my emotions that go super, super high and super, super low. Managing that is very difficult. And like I said, my illness hasn’t changed from 30 years ago, just my ability to handle it.

Kevin Pho: And my final question: What’s your take-home message that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience?

Sonja Wasden: That there is hope. With any patient that they’re seeing, or if they are struggling themselves, there is hope, there is purpose to be had, your life is worth living, there are things to still experience, and there is joy even amid the pain. And the clinicians are so key to helping people who struggle with mental health disorders and illnesses find their way through that, get through it, and get back to lives worth living. Like I said, over 50 percent of people will struggle with a mental illness or mental health disorder at some point in their lives, and these doctors are key in helping them get through that, manage it, and get back their lives.

Kevin Pho: And how can people reach you?

Sonja Wasden: They can reach me at sonjawasden.com, at my website, and they can go in there and find information about me and how to contact me.

Kevin Pho: Sonja, thank you so much for sharing your story, time, and insight, and thanks again for being on the show.

Sonja Wasden: Thank you, Kevin, for all that you do.

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