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For press inquiries, yo contactpress@verywellmind.com.
Verywell / Julie Bang
[INTRO]
Welcome to the Verywell Mind podcast.
Im Amy Morin, editor-in-chief of Verywell Mind.
Im also a psychotherapist and a bestselling author of 5 books on mental strength.
And the fun part is we record the show from a sailboat in the FL Keys.
Now lets dive into todays episode.
[EPISODE STARTS HERE]
Today Im talking to singer/songwriter, actress, and author Jewel.
Shes sold over 30 million records worldwide.
But her life wasnt always great.
As she rose to fame, she was very open about the mental health struggles she experienced.
Shes made it her goal to make mental health help more accessible to everyone, regardless of their income.
Thats why she joined forces with Noah Robinson to create something pretty cool.
In the first part of the episode, youll hear from Jewel.
Then, youll hear from the other co-founder, Noah Robinson.
Hes a clinical psychology doctoral candidate at Vanderbilt University.
I predict tools like this are going to become increasingly popular over the next few years.
verify to stick around until the end of the episode for The Therapists Take.
Interview With Jewel
Amy Morin: Jewel, welcome to the Verywell Mind podcast.
Jewel: Thank you.
Jewel: Yeah, the term mental health wasn’t even around.
For me, mental health has always been the priority in my life.
I didn’t do it lightly.
It wasn’t like, “This is going to work out great.”
The odds of it working out great were incredibly slim.
And so I realized I needed to learn what I called a new emotional language.
Let’s say I grew up speaking English and I don’t like English.
Well, I better go to school to learn Spanish or French or some other language.
And so that was my purpose in life, still is my purpose in life.
What happens to kids like me that don’t have traditional support like psychotherapy and a family?
Do I get to be happy?
Amy Morin:I’m curious.
When you were younger, did you have even just one positive adult in your life?
Jewel: It depends on what age you ask me that.
The answer is no.
I did think I had one.
I mean, it’s a complex issue, but my mom used to … Was this heroic figure.
My mom and dad got divorced when I was eight, and we went to live with my dad.
Nobody told me it’s because my mom didn’t want to be a mom.
She left us, and so my dad took over raising us.
I didn’t know that at the time.
I would hitchhike 500 miles to go see her.
I’d show up on her doorstep.
She was the opposite of my dad.
My dad was this volatile alcoholic that hit me, very easy to identify “bad guy.”
My mom seemed like the opposite.
She was calm, she was soft, she never yelled, obviously never hit me.
And I didn’t realize I was being abused in another way at the time.
That is such an abusive, effed up thing to say, but I felt so loved.
So sometimes the appearance of an attached figure isn’t what it seems.
I had a very terrifying life.
Learning how to remove myself is how I found safety.
And so I had a lot to work on.
I didn’t have a safe figure.
It doesn’t mean they’re broken either.
There’s so many tools and things we can do to help ourselves with a little bit of guidance.
Amy Morin:Yeah.
Oh gosh, I’m glad that you said all of that.
And it’s such a difficult thing for people to work through.
Jewel: Well, it wasn’t like a perfect path.
I didn’t really realize what my mom was until I was 30-something.
For instance, my dad didn’t take us from my mom.
He actually did a good thing and didn’t steal us.
Amy Morin: Can you share something with us of what was helpful?
Jewel: Yes, oh my gosh.
I guess while I’m there at that time in my life, I’d love to share tools.
And I realized that my mind had been messed with.
They cover the statue in mud to obscure its value.
This statue is solid gold, and it’s been sitting in their midst the whole time.
What if it didn’t mean I had to fix myself?
And it’s not true.
I really don’t believe it.
That one concept shift really helped me.
And again, because now I’m coming from this framework, what if nothing’s wrong with me?
What if something’s right with me?
How do I identify the difference between the gold and the mud, as it were?
And point is, don’t eat bad fish.
That’s your behavioral takeaway, right?
It’s not try and suppress my body’s physiological reaction.
Well, most of us get this wrong with anxiety.
Now, I’m talking about your nature.
It can be a thought, a feeling, or an action.
I began to use my own anxiety as this clue.
So I would just write down what was I just thinking?
It was negative, sickening, toxic interactions.
Now, here’s where the rubber meets the road.
What are you going to do about it?
And this is where I learned that to me, affirmative thinking doesn’t really work in my opinion.
I call it the antidote thought.
That one thought could turn me into a full-blown panic attack.
And the way, again, I guess I use my body to tell me the truth.
I have a physiological reaction to that sentence.
Amy Morin: Did you learn those things on your own?
Did you learn them from a therapist?
Jewel: I learned them on my own.
Amy Morin: Impressive.
As a, I’m a therapist, and those are the exact strategies that we all say work.
Replace those thoughts with something that’s more affirming."
And if you don’t truly believe it, it’s not going to change your life.
And then how does it change your behavior?
Amy Morin: Yeah.
Somehow people think like, “I am rich,” and somehow money will come to them.
It’s much more about having an antidote thought.
It’s about putting your body and your psychology into a posture to create change in your life.
Basically, it just takes you out of the game.
Amy Morin: I like that phrase, just don’t bench yourself, right?
Because so often, that’s exactly what we do.
Another really formative time in my life was I was 18, I moved to San Diego.
It’s a crazy story.
My mom had heart disease.
Turns out she didn’t, but I didn’t find this out till I was 30.
Car got stolen, it was just a downward spiral.
You start looking homeless, you stop having an address to put on a job program.
It is a vicious, fast, horrible cycle.
And I’m a hard worker.
We always have these conceptions, people end up homeless because they’re lazy.
I started shoplifting prior.
It really started when I was 15 or 16, when I moved out.
It was always food.
And now it started to escalate into other things, and I clearly had a real addiction.
I didn’t beat the odds.
So, back to the drawing board.
Well, that was exciting for a kid that had nothing.
I had my thoughts.
Maybe I could turn my life around one thought at a time.
What was I thinking?
Well, I was shocked to find out, I had no concept.
I didn’t know the word disassociative at the time, but I was basically so disassociative.
I could not perceive anything in real time, much less my thoughts.
And so if you want to know what you’re thinking, watch what your hands are doing.
And so maybe I could reverse engineer into my thoughts by documenting everything my hands did for two weeks.
I didn’t have a panic attack for this entire two weeks.
Why on earth did I not have a panic attack for two weeks?
And could I make it happen again?
What I had stumbled onto was mindfulness, right?
And I didn’t know the word mindfulness, but I did know that it worked.
‘Cause this is the biggest problem in my life.
I saw what, I call it a triangle.
It was a before, a during and an after.
Now that I know more about behavioral science, this is stimulus response and reward.
I was like, “This is a natural.
This is going to be so easy.”
I hated writing when I wanted to steal.
And that was so curious to me, why wouldn’t I just accept that as a great replacement?
I loved, I get huge rewards out of writing.
Why didn’t I want to write then?
Why was it stealing that did it for me and not writing?
So I would, again, use my body.
Really excited, I think was the way I would describe it.
I began to take notes for a month.
Same thing with dilated.
What I basically learned was how to get into my parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems.
I was able to intervene, look on my list of dilated and choose something.
I chose gratitude, and forced myself to focus on it.
I couldn’t think of a thing.
I was feeling so sorry for myself this day.
I realized observation and curiosity caused me to dilate, so I became just very curious about my environment.
It was a sunny day.
This wasn’t like one of my skills here yet.
And next thing I know, a half hour passes, I didn’t have a panic attack.
First time I was able to intervene and get a panic attack to redirect.
That exercise is kind of, yeah, a behavioral exercise.
It’s very easy for anyone to do, and the truth is what triggers us is so unique.
And then we have this proof of, “Hey, these things actually worked for me.”
So, way to go.
I mean, in the therapy office, this is what we often do.
I want to take a minute to talk about Innerworld, this new thing that you’ve launched.
Can you explain to our listeners a bit about what it is and how it works?
Jewel: Yeah, Innerworld is a mental health platform.
We work in virtual reality or on a computer, just like we’re doing now.
It scales cognitive and dialectical behavioral tools in a peer-to-peer model.
Basically, this isn’t one-on-one therapy with a therapist.
It’s like playing a video game.
It’s that simple.
Might be a class on grief or a group meeting on living with long-term illness or living with PTSD.
There’s hundreds of classes of these group classes and programming.
They’re trained in CBT and DBT.
So I’ll create a scenario.
I come into the community center, I can tell the guide, “My dog just died.”
The guide could say, “Would you like to see the grief cycle?
Which, do you know about it?
Would you like to learn about the grief cycle?”
And it’s really profound, what our outcomes are.
We’re a clinical research platform as well, just to note.
There was somebody else with OCD.
There was somebody else that hadn’t left their home in five years.
She’s now a guide.
Amy Morin: Incredible.
One last question for you, Jewel.
But you give so much back.
My music career was an incredible side journey.
Who would’ve thought that writing would turn into an entire career for me?
Can I retrain behaviors and patterns that set me up for failure?
And my life kept giving me plenty of stuff to heal from.
I mean, being a rockstar is super fun, but this is way more fun.
Helping people want to live is fun.
What else is there in life?
If I can help people get other tools that other people developed, CBT and DBT, great.
We have to make these types of tools more accessible.
It is unacceptable that misery is an equal opportunist.
It is unacceptable that if I want to learn how to not be miserable, that takes learning.
That means education, education means money.
That’s not okay.
Amy Morin: I agree.
Well, thank you so much for being on the Verywell Mind podcast, Jewel.
Jewel: Thanks, and if anybody wants to check out Innerworld, they just go to inner.world.
They can also find it on app stores.
Amy Morin: Wonderful.
We’ll link to it in our show notes and send everybody to go check it out.
It was a pleasure talking with you.
Amy Morin: You as well.
Amy Morin: Noah Robinson, welcome to The Verywell Mind Podcast.
Noah Robinson: Thank you.
But maybe we can start with the fact that it’s based on cognitive behavioral therapy.
How does Innerworld help with that?
You decided to do this alternative metaverse that people would join.
What was the theory behind that?
Noah Robinson: So the idea for Innerworld came from my own personal experience.
When I was 13, I went through my own mental health struggles.
I realized I was gay and became depressed and very anxious about the idea of coming out.
And I escaped into a virtual world.
I define metaverse as any internet connected environment where people can interact as avatars.
And that’s really the key design and idea behind Innerworld.
Noah Robinson: Yeah.
And I was working at a substance use treatment facility doing CBT with the patients, actual therapy.
As you know, I was in training to become a therapist.
They were immersed in this other world.
Amy Morin: So how does it work?
Because you don’t have therapists in the Innerworld, right?
They have crisis training in case someone is in crisis and we can refer them to other resources.
Is there something for me to do the minute I access?
Is there a potential group I could go to in the meantime?
Right now, it’s all scheduled.
So you’re able to consume content.
you could go hang out in some of our worlds after you go through the tutorial.
We collect data for research.
So it’s very exciting.
Amy Morin: What are the most common problems people are coming into Innerworld to address?
If someone has depression, they’re likely to have anxiety.
So yeah, depression and anxiety I would say are the most common.
Noah Robinson: Yes.
I mean, that’s my concern.
That’s what happened to me as a teenager.
I was sucked into this world that was designed.
Psychologists work on these games to get people to play more and more.
They have variable rewards like a casino where you get little popups and dopamine hits, essentially.
So there are psychologists already designing these games to suck you in and avoid reality.
Our goal is to focus on the real world.
What’s leading you to want to escape right now?
What’s leading you to want to do those things?
What’s leading you to be using this so much?"
What’s your ultimate goal with Innerworld?
Noah Robinson: We want every single person who needs mental health help to be able to get it.
That’s our number one goal.
Amy Morin:And as of right now, part of it’s free, right?
But there is something where it’s possible for you to upgrade to pay.
Can you explain a little bit about that?
And we are really excited about that.
We have a lot of people who are deciding to pay and people are really liking it.
I’m going to go try a group."
Amy Morin: Yeah.
Noah Robinson: Yes.
What kind of changes have you made as you’ve been experimenting with it?
Noah Robinson: So I think one of the most important things that we have is troll control.
So basically we’re trying to prevent trolls from coming in.
That accounts for over half of outcomes in therapy.
And we want to build that culture in Innerworld.
It’s like a social internet where we want people to feel warm, empathetic, supported.
So I think that’s actually … Amy Morin: Yeah, that was going to be one of my questions.
Noah Robinson: Yeah.
And actually, one of the things we also have is a kind of tedious onboarding process.
We have the tutorial that takes minutes and we have a screening process that someone has to go through.
So even trolls who want to keep making new accounts and come in, that’s all intentional.
It’s a maladaptive behavior that people are doing to get that social validation.
They could actually use learning healthy ways to connect with other people and things like that.
So, it’s very interesting.
And if they don’t, we weed them out pretty quickly.
Amy Morin: I like that.
And is it available to teenagers or just 18 and over?
Noah Robinson: So, we just launched our adolescent version of Innerworld.
It’s 13 to 17 year olds.
And one thing we’re really proud of is that we can use our technology to protect adolescents.
Amy Morin: I like that too.
Noah Robinson: I think a lot of people could benefit from Innerworld, a lot of adolescents.
And we do think that this is really powerful.
Amy Morin: I could see it being really powerful for teenagers as a therapist.
Noah Robinson: Yeah, and getting that acceptance.
I know they’re listening and I know they care, and it’s just a really beautiful thing.
Amy Morin: Well then let’s shift the focus for a second back to adults.
Amy Morin: That’s the cool thing about CBT.
You don’t have to be experiencing a major mental illness to benefit from it.
Those are the kinds of experiences that a lot of people are having in Innerworld.
And if you’re comfortable enough, it can be worth giving it a shot.
So if you just want to pop in and observe, that’s completely okay too.
Amy Morin: That’s a great point.
Noah Robinson: Right.
And the worst case isn’t too bad.
It’s like maybe you experience some anxiety, but what’s the best case scenario?
You could change your life.
And then the most likely is that you’re not going to have a negative experience, probably.
Noah Robinson: Thanks.
Thanks for having me.
The Therapist’s Take
Welcome to the therapists take.
This is really good advice.
Ive seen a lot of people in my therapy office who viewed themselves as broken or fragile.
Because they had concluded they were broken, it affected their choices and how they interacted with people.
That belief kept them from living their best lives.
When you act as if youre broken, you wont venture to do amazing things.
Youll expect to be treated poorly.
And you might refuse to do hard things.
Changing that belief can shit your entire life.
For Jewel, a story about a golden statue helped her change the story she was telling herself.
But you might find a new way change the story you tell yourself.
#2 - Think of anxiety as an ally.
I was glad Jewel talked about her anxiety as an ally.
Anxiety is meant to keep you safe.
You should have some anxiety.
If you didnt, you wouldnt look both ways before you crossed the road.
But, most of us have faulty anxiety alarms.
They go off and give a shot to warn us of danger even when were completely safe.
I like that Jewel changed the way she looked at anxiety.
But, if you have a faulty anxiety alarm bell, it might not go away.
#3 - Write down your observations about yourself.
Jewel called this dilation and contraction.
She started paying attention to times when she was tense and times when she felt relaxed.
And during each of those themes she wrote down what she was thinking, feeling, and doing.
That helped her recognize patterns in her life that influenced her.
This knowledge helped her find ways to manage her nervous system.
Quite often, a big part of therapy involves helping people discover patterns about themselves.
ensure to check out Innerworld to see what you think.
Its free to try.you’re able to sign up here.
Simply sharing a link to this episode could help someone feel better and grow stronger.
Do you want free access to my online course?
Its called 10 mental strength exercises that will help you reach your greatest potential.
Then, send us a screenshot of your review.
Our email address ispodcast@verywell.comWell reply with your all access pass to the course.
Thank you for hanging out with me today and listening to the VW Mind podcast.
