Ep 84 Therapist Mazi Robinson

“This good, hard life”: Licensed counselor Mazi Robinson on the payoff from the pain that may come with midlife transitions, concrete steps for navigating COVID mental health challenges, and living through a crisis in parallel with her clients.

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“This good, hard life”: Licensed counselor Mazi Robinson on the payoff from the pain that may come with midlife transitions, concrete steps for navigating COVID mental health challenges, and living through a crisis in parallel with her clients.

Cultivate Atlanta – Mazi’s practice
Cultivate on Instagram and Facebook
Ep 37 “Life Reimagined” Author Journalist Barbara Bradley Hagerty
Ep 46 “Happiness Curve” Author Jonathan Rauch
Ep 69 “Why We Can’t Sleep” Author Ada Calhoun

Books recommended by Mazi:

Anything by Harriet Lerner – “She’s a psychologist who specializes in working with women and her books are excellent on women, boundaries, relationships, etc.”
Anything by Brené Brown – “For folks who are new to Brené, I think Gifts of Imperfection is a great one to start with.”
Permission to Feel by Marc Brackett
When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd
Women Rowing North by Mary Pipher
Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life– James Hollis
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
The New Rules of Marriage by Terry Real

I can’t wait until we can say that COVID is all over now. From The Cranberries’ Grammy-nominated final album, “The End”, released after the tragic death of lead singer and all-around beauty Dolores O’Riordan.

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here!

***This is a rough transcription of Episode 84 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. It originally aired on October 13, 2020. Transcripts are created using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and there may be errors in this transcription, but we hope that it provides helpful insight into the conversation. If you have any questions or need clarification, please email [email protected] ***

Mazi Robinson  0:00

The seeds we plant in midlife…they will bear fruit in the later years of our life. And we want to bear good fruit.

0:10

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast.

I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

Nancy Davis Kho  0:35

Hey listeners, we’re in the homestretch of an extraordinarily consequential presidential election. I just want to take a moment to encourage you to be not just voters, but volunteers. In past episodes, I’ve mentioned www.Vote.org as the place to start to figure out your own voting plan. If you’ve already done that…now level up! You may have also checked out www.VoteFwd.org , which is a nonpartisan site that makes it easy to encourage voters in swing states to exercise their right to vote.

And I’m going to give you one more challenge, now that we’re in the homestretch. I want to make sure you’re aware of this site: www.TheLastWeekends.org. The three weeks between October 17 and November 1 are critical in getting out voters, and this site makes it easy for you to make a difference. So check out www.TheLastWeekends.org so you can do more than bite your nails in the last 21 days before November 3.

[MUSIC]

Hey, everybody, thanks for tuning in to this, the 84th episode of The Midlife Mixtape Podcast. I’m Nancy, and I’m really glad to have you here with me today. I want to thank everyone who subscribes to this show, who downloads and listens to every episode, who lets me know what they think about it. I love hearing back from you guys about what you took away from the episodes because I promise you, I take away something from every interview. And I appreciate when you share it with your friends. And when you write reviews. Because I’m just a girl, standing in front of an audience, trying to make you like this podcast that I cook up in my home office. So I’m grateful for any help you can give me in spreading the word!

We’re gonna dive right in today. Maybe your mental health in 2020 is thriving. Maybe you haven’t even noticed there’s a pandemic. I don’t know what kind of mind altering substance you’re on if that’s the case, but please share it around.

For the rest of us…I’ve been itching to have someone on who can help us not just understand the mental health challenges we’re facing, particularly those that accrue to being in midlife, but also give us some practical tips on how to navigate them during a pandemic.

So I’m pleased today to introduce you to Mazi Robinson. Mazi is a licensed professional counselor in Atlanta specializing in helping women discover their true voice as they navigate healthy relationships, self-worth, personal growth and development, life stage transitions and more. She’s also the founder and director of Cultivate. Through its Counseling Center and by monthly gatherings, Cultivate encourages women to cultivate joy, courage and freedom in their lives as they pursue emotional, mental and spiritual health.

Mazi’s specialty may be working with women, but I promise you the advice she’s going to give in this episode applies whoever you are. So everyone kick off your shoes, climb up on the couch, and settle in for my conversation with therapist Mazi Robinson.

Welcome to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast Mazi Robinson! I’m so excited to talk with you today.

Mazi Robinson  3:24

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here today and to get to chat. This is gonna be fun.

Nancy 3:31

Good, good. Well, a therapist or non-therapist, whoever you are, when you come on the show, there’s one really key question to answer and it is: what was your first concert and what were the circumstances?

Mazi  3:43

Yes. I love that question. So my first concert that I consider to be my first “real” concert was in high school. Prior to that I had gone with my parents to see, like, Ronnie Milsap and The Judds, kind of 80s country gold as a little kid. But my first real concert was in high school and I went to see The Cranberries. And I saw them at probably my very favorite concert venue here in Atlanta, which is Chastain Park…it’s this wonderful amphitheater, and I can still remember where we sat…I went with a friend of mine. And yes, it was The Cranberries so I am quite the young adult/adolescent of the 90s.

Nancy 4:29

I always remember that my husband and I lived in DC when we first got married and a friend of mine came to stay with us and I had to work but she was there on vacation. She’s like, “I’m just gonna wander down to the National Mall and see what’s happening,” and it was a free concert by The Cranberries. So while I have never seen them, I’m really happy that my friend Jill got to go see them for free. I was probably wearing pantyhose and my big-shoulder suit. So, big regret.

I love when I read about how music can play a therapeutic role for us. And I wonder what role can a good song, or a good song and dance, do for you when you’re having a low day?

Mazi 5:08

Oh, yes, I think music can be so therapeutically helpful for us. And it’s actually something that I often encourage my clients to lean on. I will talk with my clients about music mantras, choosing a song or creating a playlist that they can listen to over and over again, that has a theme or reinforces the message that they’re trying to digest in their life. I have had a number of music mantras throughout my life and it’s interesting, because now when I hear them on the radio there’s definitely that memory that kicks in of, “Oh, wow, I listened to this all the time during that season…And here’s how I’ve grown.” One of my music mantras that I always like to share, just because it’s so awful and cheesy and hilarious… In 2000, I was going through a really bad breakup and trying to get over this very long term relationship that I’d been in. And so I listened over and over again for, like, a year to the Lara Fabian song, “I Will Love Again”.

Nancy 6:15

I don’t know it, but I can guess from the title that it was a very, you’ll get through…

Mazi 6:21

Yes, yes. I mean, the words are, “I will love again, stronger than before”. And it was just it was my music mantra of, yes, this is hard, but I will love again someday. Yes. So I think music can be very helpful.

Nancy 6:33

So interesting that you say that because actually the episode before yours, Episode 83 with Navy veteran and Episcopal priest Andrew Hybl, he talked with me about the Tupac song “Dear Mama” and how he played it on a loop when his mom had had a severe stroke, and he was 16 years old. And he said it helped him so much just kind of process… You know, at an age when it was too much, really, for a 16 year old to bear. That’s one of the things that he really credits with helping him through that.

For me, I totally hear what you’re saying. I think for me what’s interesting, because I have about 4000 songs on my iPod, I’ll be trying to noodle through some problem or some trouble… and I play on shuffle most of the time. And sometimes a song comes up just when I’m thinking about a problem. I’m like, Oh my God, that’s the universe saying, Yeah, listen to these lyrics. This is what it’s telling you.

Mazi 7:31

Yeah, I love that.

Nancy 7:33

Well, listeners, do you have music mantras?  I’d be curious to know, let me know at [email protected], what songs have you listened to get you through?

When I decided to invite Mazi onto the show, part of it is because I think this whole issue of midlife mental health is crucially important. We’re all in this midlife generation, we’re trying to hold so many things together and the layer of pandemic pain that’s on top of that is just extraordinary. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. First of all, just kind of this whole notion of mental health at midlife, what we can do to to give ourselves the best chance to be okay, and then we’ll talk more about what the pandemic adds on top being on top of that.

Mazi, you specialize in your counseling work on working with people to navigate life stage transition. So let’s talk about midlife and the special challenges that come with this huge transition?

Mazi 8:30

Yes, I think that is such an important question. And the midlife transition is such an important one. It’s actually a long period of time in our life, but it’s one that we can kind of blow off with jokes about red Corvettes, and blowing up our lives and moving to remote places, and we can kind of blow it off, but it’s really, really significant.

And so the way that I like to conceptualize midlife transition, is that it is… one, it’s a process and that process is marked by what I like to call death and rebirth. And in midlife transition, it’s a time in our lives where we begin to stop and we begin to evaluate our lives. We look around at all that is around us. And we begin to ask these questions like, “What is working for me in my life? What is no longer working for me? What relationships have I been holding on to but really, if I’m honest, they’re not healthy? They’re not good, but I’m holding on to them out of history and loyalty. Do I really love my career?  Do I really feel challenged? Do I really feel satisfied? Or am I staying in this career because I’ve done it for 15 or 20 years and what else am I gonna do?”

It’s an opportunity for us to look at our lives and to figure out what needs to die. What do I need to surrender? What do I need to release and let go of so that I can be reborn, if you will, so that I can experience this rebirth into my true self, my real self? So what are the things in my life that, maybe they worked earlier on in my life, people pleasing, over accommodating, stuffing my feelings, soldiering on, living in survival mode… maybe those things worked in my 20s and 30s. But man, now I’m in my 40s and 50s. And there’s some wear and tear on those coping mechanisms. So what do I need to release them? What do I need to surrender, so that I can figure out what I really want to do with my life, the relationships that really do bring me joy and health into my life, the career that challenges me, and that invigorates me so that I can, again, be reborn into who I was really created to be, my true self.

And people often say, “Well, how do you know you’re stepping into midlife transition? How do you know you’re stepping into midlife?” And I think there are several mile markers, if you will, that we can look for. But I think a couple of signs that stand out to me, is if we start to feel life is stale, if we’re feeling kind of bored in life, a little listless in life, or if we have a case of the RIDS. RIDS is an acronym for “restless, irritable, and discontented”.

Nancy 11:22

Wait, that’s everybody in 2020, to be fair! If you’re not restless and irritable and discontented in 2020, you’ve been living under a rock…

Mazi 11:33

That’s right. That’s right. That’s what life and COVID is like, exactly.

But I think those are two things that we can look for. Are we feeling stale? Are we feeling bored in life? Are we feeling restless? Are we feeling irritable and discontented? Basically, where are the pain points in our life? Because pain is uncomfortable, but it’s a wonderful messenger, and the pain points in our life point us to the areas in our life that we need to change, that we need to begin to unpack and go, “okay, I’ve always been a people pleaser, but I’m now in my 40s and 50s. And I recognize I have a lot of resentment towards people. So let me unpack that. I’ve always been one to stuff my feelings and just put a smile on my face and keep on marching. But in my 40s, and 50s, I’m struggling with insomnia and panic attacks and high blood pressure. And maybe my body’s trying to tell me that I actually need to feel my emotions, rather than stuffing them”.

So I think those pain points can be really helpful in directing us to the areas of our life that need that introspection and need that process of, again, this question of, “what do I need to let go of, so that this true self can be reborn?” And I think that’s really what midlife transition is all about.

Nancy 12:54

And what I’m hearing you say is, that’s all normal. It’s a process. Because I think what happens sometimes is when we’re feeling those feelings, when we’re feeling the RIDS and everything else, we think, “it’s just me, everybody else looks happy”. And of course, it doesn’t help that on social media, everything’s perfect all the time. So we think, “it’s just me, I don’t know what’s changed. I don’t know what’s wrong with me”. And so part of why I wanted to talk about this on this show is to do exactly that, normalize it for you guys. Did you ever read The Happiness Curve by Jonathan Rauch?

Mazi 13:30

I haven’t, but I’m familiar with it.

Nancy 13:33

Yeah. So he was a guest on the show. And to me, one of the things that was so interesting about his research was that the roots of midlife discontent are biological. And he looked at the studies that showed it’s interspecies. Monkeys go through midlife depression, whales go through it. And that was so reassuring to me, like, “Oh, it’s just, it’s not just normal among the human species. It can be a global thing.” So I want you listeners to hear what Mazi saying, which is, if you’re feeling that way, that’s cool. That’s a part of the process. And it’s normal. And you’re not weird for feeling that way.

Mazi 14:10

Absolutely. And if anything, I would say you’re really healthy and you’re awake in your life. If you’re feeling that way, you are awake enough to realize, hmm, something isn’t quite right. And so rather than ignoring that, numbing that, trying to stuff that, “I’m going to begin to unpack that”, and that is, man, that’s healthy, that means that we are aware in our life.

And I think these midlife awakenings can happen at different points in the stage of midlife, but I do feel like they happen for everyone. And it’s kind of a choice. You can choose to pay attention to those pain points, to pay attention to those losses and those transitions that we experience in midlife, and you can choose to step into those and unpack them and understand them. Or you can choose to try to keep stuffing them.

But I think the thing that we want to remember about midlife is how we transition in midlife and the work we do on ourselves and the self-awareness we gain and emotional awareness and understanding and self-compassion… All of that is going to bear fruit later in our lives.

And one of the things that I’ve observed, and this is what I like to call Mazi Theory, there’s not actually research to back this up beyond my own observations with clients and talking with people. But I really think, again, how we move through midlife determines what we are like, and how we enjoy those later decades in life, our 70s and 80s. And one of the things that I’ve seen, and this is a huge generalization, and I’m sure lots of people will take umbrage with this. But I specialize in working with women. So if you think about women in their 70s, and 80s, you often have two types of women. And again, I’m making a huge generalization.

But you have those women who, they are at peace with themselves, they know what they like, there is that there is a comfort in their own skin, they are comfortable, if you live a life that is different from theirs, that is fine. There’s just a lot of inner peace.

And then you have the other type of older woman, which is that kind of bitter woman, the stereotype of the bitter, angry old woman who carries a lot of resentment, who carries a lot of judgment for how others are living. And if they are doing things differently, she doesn’t seem very happy within herself.

And what I’ve observed is that if we go through what can be a painful process in midlife of recognizing, “wow, these are the messages that I was buying into in my 20s and 30s. But I realize now, I don’t believe them, or I realize now, they aren’t working for me.” If we go through that process of surrendering and letting go and then rediscovering and allowing this true self to emerge, we have a much better chance of being that peaceful content, older woman.

And it’s my observation that the stereotypical bitter angry woman is the woman who resisted the midlife transition, she resisted doing the work, she resisted letting go of old habits and old patterns, again, like people pleasing and over accommodating and over functioning. And she just kept on, kept on in those mindsets and in those patterns, thinking, well, this will get me what I want. And in the end, it did not get her what she wanted. And she ended up feeling resentful and unappreciated. And that’s what she’s left with.

And so the seeds we plant in midlife, they will bear fruit in the later years of our life. And we want to we want to bear good fruit.

Nancy 18:01

Right. So we do the hard uncomfortable work now in the interest of having a better long term outcome.

Mazi 18:07

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Nancy 18:09

Mazi, do Gen Xers go through this midlife transition differently from other generations? You’re a Dolores O’Riordan fan, may she rest. I know you’re a GenXer. Yes. I mean, are there… because “the story I tell myself” – I know you’re a big fan of Brené Brown – one of her constructs is “the story I tell myself” is that Gen Xres are super cool. We do everything better, a little better, than everybody else. Yeah. So are we weathering this a little differently? A little better? Please make me feel better.

Mazi 18:42

Yes, I think GenX’s, or just our experience of midlife or in midlife, it IS different. It is a little unique. It is different than the Boomer experience of midlife. One of the things that I’ve appreciated during COVID are all of the memes about how Gen Xers have just been living for COVID, like, we have been training for COVID… you know, sit on the couch and watch TV all day. Yes, I can survive! I recently read Why We Can’t Sleep…

Nancy 19:16

Yeah. Ada has been a guest on the show. That’s a terrific book.

Mazi

It is such a good book.

Nancy

Ada Calhoun, for those of you who don’t know, Ada Calhoun wrote a book that came out the beginning of the year called Why We Can’t Sleep…it’s a must read.

Mazi 19:29

It is a must read. It is so accurate and what she names I mean, she just nails it, to the point where it’s kind of depressing. But it’s also valid. But I think Gen Xers, we’ve had an interesting life trajectory, just all the things that we have lived through and she points this out in the book.

So I won’t go through all of them, but all the economic downturns and when they hit in our lives and critical points in our life. As women, we are the first generation to live in the footsteps of the women’s rights movement. And so that put a lot of hope into us as little girls of like, wow, yeah, we can do it all. And we can wear sneakers to work and carry our heels. And, and we can do it all. And I think what GenX women are finding is that, Oh, no, you can’t, you can’t do it all. You can maybe do a lot of things. But you can’t do it all. And it’s exhausting.

And that’s one of the things that I see with women in their 40s and 50s, in my practice, is that we are really tired. And we don’t entirely know how to get off the treadmill of trying to do it all and trying to do it all really, really well. That’s the thing. It’s not just do it all, but it’s do it all really, really well. I think also just the experience that as GenX women, we have had children later in life. And so we are going through midlife with having pretty young kids, for some of us.

And for me personally, I think there is a biological rub there a little bit that I feel within myself.  I had one child in my early 30s, and my second child in my late 30s. And I feel within myself, “I’m too old to go to the park. I’m too old, I shouldn’t be doing this still, you know?” And so I think that creates another level of stress in our lives as Gen X women.

But I think also, and this is one of the things that she pointed out in the book that really stood out to me, is that we are the Challenger generation in that, as little kids, we saw the Challenger explode, and we saw it with our very own eyes in our classrooms. We can all remember where we were. And we watched it on TV. And it was like, oh, okay, and then our teachers turned off the TV. And we started our math lesson.

And I think that experience really kind of summarizes a lot of what we feel as Gen X: bad things do happen, and you hope that they won’t. But things don’t always work out. And I think that has been a lot of our experience. And I think that’s a lot of the anxiety that we feel in midlife is while we thought we hoped it would be easier… Our perception of our parent’s life in midlife seemed to be so much easier.

But life is hard, and life doesn’t always work out. And so now let me figure out who I am in the midst of this good, hard life. Let me figure out how I can be healthy. Let me figure out how my relationships can be healthy. And so I think that that’s an interesting mindset that is unique to genetics is that we have lived through reality that things don’t always work out. And so in midlife, let’s figure out what that’s gonna look like for us long term.

Nancy 23:03

That was always my thesis with Gen X: that if happiness is the difference between expectations and reality, we were raised to have low expectations and so my theory when I started this podcast is that maybe we’re going to be a little bit better at weathering midlife and other generations, just because we never thought it was going to be great in the first place. Like, another disappointment? Lay it on me. I already I’m full of them.

Mazi 23:27

Right. A little bit of cynicism…

Nancy 23:28

A little cynicism goes a long way. So for listeners, what’s your biggest piece of advice for somebody who’s feeling like maybe they’re having the kind of transition that you’re talking about this kind of questioning and readjustment? What’s a helpful thing that we can know or do or try to help us get through it a little bit more smoothly?

Mazi 23:46

The first thing that came to mind, as you were asking the question, is to acknowledge without self-judgment. To just simply begin to be curious about yourself, like, “wow, I don’t think I like my job. Wow, I don’t think I like my career. Wow, I think I’m not feeling fulfilled in my friendships.” To just simply acknowledge it with that curiosity rather than, “What’s wrong with me, I have a good job, and I have health insurance. And there are so many people in our country who can’t say that and, and I’m such a horrible person,” and we’re just heaping shame upon ourselves.

So I think the first thing is to just acknowledge, to name it.

I think therapy is a wonderful gift to give yourself during midlife. And I know I’m a therapist  so I’m a little biased… But I think the benefit to therapy is that you are able to process and talk with someone who has no stake in your life. They are a complete outsider in your life. They don’t have an agenda for you. And so you can just unpack it all. You can wrestle with all the questions, you can wrestle with all the feelings, you can just process it all again, in that judgment-free environment and begin to find those answers, you can begin to explore yourself. And find those answers.

I think reading is really, really helpful, because reading helps us name what we’re feeling and what we’re thinking when we’re not fully aware of it. And so reading books on midlife, reading books on discovering yourself and identity formation, I think can be really, really helpful.

Creativity, that’s something that you often hear in terms of a tool that’s helpful in midlife transition is “get creative”. And I like to really have a broad definition of creativity… we often think of creativity as arts and crafts. And that’s awesome if you love that, but I think creative in other ways. If you like to cook, begin to cook different types of food, if you like to create things, create different types of things. We can be creative in leadership, but just to stretch our minds and to stretch our abilities.

And also, just get ourselves outside of our comfort zone. In our 40s, in our 50s, in midlife we can get bored, life can feel stale, it can feel blah. And so when we’re feeling bored and stale in life, one of the greatest gifts we can give to ourselves is a challenge, begin to challenge yourself, begin to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. We learn so much about ourselves when we step outside of the comfort zone.

Now, that doesn’t mean that we blow up our lives like, “oh, I’ve always wanted to be an actress. So I’m going to leave my family and go to New York and become an actress.”  We have to remember there are responsibilities that we have signed on for, but are there ways that we can feed those desires, and we can stretch ourselves outside of our comfort zone while still honoring the responsibilities that we have.

And then lastly, I would say to have a good support network, to be friends with people who are wrestling with midlife, and who are talking about the angst and the discontent, but also the joy. Just to have people that you can really open up with where you can be honest and say, “You know what, I’m really grateful for my life. But I don’t know that I love it all the time.” And they’re not going to judge you and they’re not going to shame you. Instead, they’re going to be like, “I hear you. I feel the same way. I’m so grateful for my life. But there are days where like, ‘oh, gosh, do I have to keep living that every single day with this job?’” and so on.

Nancy 27:27

And sometimes it’s friends like those who can say, “you know what, you don’t seem happy to me.” I just had this happen a couple of months ago… a friend of mine said “You light up when you talk about the podcast. You are on a different frequency when you talk about the podcast.” And I said “Absolutely. I love it. I love working on this. There’s other stuff that doesn’t light me up so much.” And it was just helpful to hear that reflected back. I hadn’t really thought about it.

Mazi 27:51

Yes, exactly.

Nancy 27:52

In a moment, we’re going to come back with Mazi and talk about mental health during the pandemic, which is ..hard. But first a word from our sponsor.

Nancy 28:01

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MUSIC

All right, welcome back. We’re talking about mental health at midlife. And now we’re going to talk about mental health during COVID. So yes, on top of everything else we’ve talked about in the first part of the of the episode, we’ve got this horrible situation outside everyone’s door. And to me, it sometimes feels like GenX is the glue holding the whole apparatus together.

We’re telling our aging parents that no, you’re not allowed to go out to the grocery store. And, we in some cases can’t go see them, which is heartbreaking. In other cases, we’ve got kids who are… we’re trying to get through school, if you have younger kids… Whatever age our kids aren’t, we’re worried about them. And we’re supposed to be in the ones in the middle being like, “it’s all gonna be fine”.

I saw a CDC report that came out in August that said 41% of adults surveyed as of late June 2020 reported an adverse mental or behavioral health condition. And to me, late June feels like the good old days, because I live in California. And for instance, today, we can’t go outside again, because of smoke. How simple it was when it was just the pandemic and not also the election and everything else? So here’s a dumb question. Mazi, have you seen increased need for your services?

Mazi 31:16

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. You know, COVID. And when you think about GenX, and the things that make us unique, like, of course, during our midlife season, there’s going to be a global pandemic.

Nancy 31:28

Of course, we saw it coming, we didn’t expect anything better, we knew was gonna be shitty. We saw this coming a mile away.

Mazi 31:35

That’s right. That’s right. But COVID is such a fascinating experience, just on so many levels, but particularly from our mental health level. In a lot of ways, COVID has, has been an equalizer because everybody has been impacted. Everyone feels anxious, everyone feels over it, everyone feels frustrated.

Now, I think your season of life, your life stage, that determines exactly how you’ve been impacted. But it’s been an equalizer in that, yes, we are all feeling anxious, we are all grieving, we have all lost something… no one has gotten away from COVID. In so, that kind of begs the question of, “well, why has it been so hard, in terms of our mental health and our coping?” And I think it comes down to is that COVID is just uncertain, still, we’re six, seven months into this, and we still don’t fully understand it, we still don’t fully understand why some people get sick and so sick, and some people don’t. There’s no end date, there’s no finish line. And as human beings, we are wired for finish lines, and, like, I can do anything if you just tell me how long I have to do it.

Nancy 32:54

I saw an article, I think was in The Atlantic, about how we are very well-suited for sudden trauma, that’s when fight or flight kicks in.

Mazi

Yeah, but that’s the problem here. It’s ongoing.

Nancy 33:07

Yes, it is. So then does it come down to does it come down to being resilient? And if so, how do we foster that?

Mazi 33:14

Yes, I think resilience is an important part, I think, knowing how to care for ourselves, so that we can hold on to that mental and emotional strength. Obviously, I’ve been talking a lot about this with clients and with groups. And some of the things that come to mind is, I think it’s important to name our experience. With a lot of things that are traumatic, which this is, traumatic, in the true definition sense of the word. With a lot of trauma, we experience it, and we immediately get into survival mode.

And so I’m in the car accident, I’ve got to figure out what to do next. We don’t really feel, we don’t really experience a lot of emotion and trauma, because we’re in survival mode. But to your point, this is ongoing. And so this is just kind of living in the face of constant trauma.

And so this experience is different in that we can’t stuff our feelings and take the attitude of “Oh, I’ll just figure all that out later. I’ll process that later.” This is an experience where we must feel as we go. And so part of what is helpful in allowing us to feel as we go is to name what we’re experiencing, to name that this is hard, and it feels hard because it is hard. It’s not hard because we’re weak. It’s not hard because we’re doing something wrong. It’s not hard because we’re not disciplined enough in our new routines. It’s hard because it’s hard.

I think it’s important to name our grief, to name what we’ve lost, to name what we long for. “I just want to go to a busy restaurant that’s really loud where I have to shout to have a conversation and I have to wait an hour to be seated. I miss that.” To name that, and to name that without guilt or self-judgment, this is a real opportunity for us to learn to live in the duality of an experience.

I think for a lot of us we feel much more in control if something can be black and white, “I’m so grateful for my life. And so I’m just not even going to let myself go there, where there are things that are hard or painful.” Or the other side of the spectrum. “Life sucks, and everyone sucks. And life is horrible, and there’s nothing good in life.”

But in reality, what is actually helpful thinking and healthy thinking, and what actually does build resilience, is learning to live in that duality. “I am grateful that I am healthy, I am grateful that I have a roof over my head and, and food in my pantry. AND I miss going into my office, and I don’t like homeschooling, virtual teaching my kids, and I’m ready for my kids to go back to school, and I’m ready to have my freedom of movement.” This is an opportunity for us to learn to live in both of those realities, because they are both real.

Finally, I think what is also helpful about this experience is that it is quote, unquote, providing us an opportunity to really practice emotional curiosity and emotional honesty. COVID has taken a lot from us, but it has left us US. It’s left us ourselves, because all of the things that we previously did to manage our stress, and they weren’t necessarily bad things, but going to the gym, or going out to dinner with friends, or staying busy running countless errands, or going meeting to meeting to meeting or traveling for work… All of these things were things we had to do or we chose to do were great escape routes from ourselves. I go, “I’m not going to think about that stressful thing or upsetting thing that happened at work, because now it’s time to go to another meeting”, right? And we could just escape ourselves.

But now there’s no escaping ourselves. There’s nowhere to go. I’m just left with me. And so, being just left with ourselves is an opportunity to develop some emotional awareness to learn how to ask ourselves, how am I feeling? “Well, I’m feeling really angry right now. I’m feeling really frustrated right now. I’m feeling really annoyed with everyone.” Okay, that’s valid, that’s valid. Okay. So I want to remember that anger is a secondary emotion. And so usually what’s beneath anger is either sadness, or fear, anxiety or shame. So what might be beneath this anger? “Well, hmm, let me think, okay, I’m feeling really anxious, I’m feeling really anxious that I don’t know when my kids are going back to school. I don’t know, when I’m returning to the office, I don’t know how my job is going to be impacted by COVID.”

And just developing that awareness of what we’re actually feeling, because that awareness will translate into health and other areas of our lives. Because if we don’t have emotional awareness, and we are feeling irritated, annoyed, angry, then we’re just going to go off on people all the time, rather than taking that pause and going, “Okay, I think I’m really feeling anxious today. So let me share that with someone I trust, that I am having a rough day today.”

And I’m certainly not a silver lining thinking person. I’m not a Pollyanna type person. But I think in terms of how we care for ourselves in COVID, there is an opportunity here to really work on our emotional health because we can’t escape ourselves. And again, that’s going to bear good fruit for us.

Nancy 38:39

Well, I’ll tell you, it has taken 54 years and a pandemic, but I finally went to a therapist for the first time this year.

Mazi

Yay!

Nancy

And listeners, let me recommend it to you highly because the thing that finally drove me… I am a very down to earth person, salt of the earth. I’m the rock. You can tell me anything and I pride myself, I love that about myself. I’m really proud that I can be that person. And I couldn’t do it anymore. I was realizing, I can’t express any of these kinds of things that Mazi’s talking about, the anxiety, the fear, without freaking my family out, because they depend on me.

So I found this lovely lady. And I said to her, “I’m just going to dump everything on you and I’m sorry in advance, but here it comes.” And that’s what I do. I go once a week, and I just… first of all, I don’t get interrupted for an entire hour. And if any of you are mothers who are listening, I think you’ll know the value of that. So I just unburden myself on her.

And it’s been very helpful to do exactly what you’re talking about where she’ll say, “Well, it sounds like you’re feeling this way.” And I’m like, “By golly, I am. I never thought of that before!”

But what I was going to say is, I have also said to her, “Are YOU okay?” As much as we’re all struggling and not only was it The Great Equalizer, but I also feel like every family has one thing on top of COVID. At least one thing. So my poor friend whose house flooded during the heatwave, when PG&E put the power out, because the fires were happening, and so she had three feet of water in her house and couldn’t pump it out. I feel like it’s not even just COVID. It’s COVID plus one. And so for the people who like you, whose job it is to absorb all of that stuff, how do you cope? How are you doing, Mazi?

Mazi 40:32

It’s a really good question. And it has been interesting to be a therapist during COVID. Obviously, it’s been interesting. But the thing about being a therapist is that usually you are not living parallel to your clients life, right?

Your clients going through a divorce, you’re not necessarily going through divorce. And let’s say you were going through a divorce, you probably wouldn’t take on a client who was going through a nasty divorce, because there would just be too much conflict of interest and keeping yourself outside of the room, so to speak. And so just having those healthy boundaries, we usually do not live parallel to our clients.

But in COVID, I haven’t been in my office, my kids have been virtual schooling, we are all we have been in this house. You know, for months, just the four of us…

Nancy 41:25

So fun, all that togetherness, it never stops. All day and all night. Oh, you again. Great.

Mazi 41:33

Yes. And so it has been an interesting experience of living parallel to my clients lives. But at the same time, my job as a therapist is to hold space for them, that is part of the gift of therapy, what you just described. That for an hour, they can just talk about themselves, they can just process and vent or cry, it is their time, and they don’t have to worry about me, they don’t have to worry if I’m okay, or if I’m hanging on by a thread and ‘bout to jump off the COVID Bridge, and that is the gift of therapy.

And so it has been interesting to just navigate that within myself, and really be aware that I have to take care of myself, I have to have those good boundaries so that I can be that safe container for my clients.

And I think one of the things that has been such a saving grace and in my life are my friends I have; all of my closest friends are therapists. So that is enormously helpful when you’re going through a global pandemic. And we text daily and we share and we’re very raw, and we’re very open. And we don’t try to fix each other’s feelings. When we send texts like “Today is awful. I’m really struggling, this isn’t sustainable. I don’t think I can keep doing it. I hate my life.” And we’re all just send like the thumbs up like “I hear you, yeah. Same.”

Nancy 42:57

SAME.

Mazi 42:59

And there has just been such beauty in having those friendships, where you can be honest, and you’re not going to be judged. And the next day, you can come back and say, “Ah, I’m feeling so much better.” And they’re not going to ask you why. They’re just like, “Oh, that’s good”, you know? And there’s just empathy and validation. So my relationships have been such a life preserver for me, during COVID and such an important part of my self-care.

Nancy 43:27

I’m glad to know that. I mean, it seems like a lot for the for the lay person, let alone the people who are professionals in this. Yeah.

So in a second, I’m going to ask you our last question, but first, I want listeners to know where they can find you.

Mazi 43:40

Yes. So you can find me on my website www.MaziRobinson.com . You can also find me on my counseling practice website, which is CultivateAtlanta.com. And if you are on social media, I would love for you to follow me at Cultivate Atlanta, that’s on Instagram and on Facebook. I post every day inspirational posts, psycho Ed posts, sometimes I try to be funny, sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But Cultivate Atlanta – that’s my handle on Instagram, and Facebook,

Nancy 44:16

And you’ve got a book club coming up, right?

Mazi 44:18

Yes, yes. So we are holding a book club starting the week of October 19. It’s going to be a four week book study on the book “13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don’t Do”. I wanted to do a virtual book club this season and I thought well, what would be practical and helpful and applicable to our lives right now? And I think just learning to cultivate mental and emotional strength is really important right now because, for a lot of us, we may feel that our typical self-care coping mechanisms are weighing thin, like “I can’t light another candle. I don’t want to go on any more walks. I don’t want to drink any more tea.”

So okay, so when we find ourselves in that place, how do we really begin to cultivate mental strength. Because this is most definitely a marathon, and not a sprint. And so you can go to our website, https://www.cultivateatlanta.com/ . The sign up will be there. And we’d love for you to join us.

Nancy 45:18

I hope one of the things mentally strong women don’t do is cook dinner, because then I will print that out and show it to my family. “Look. Yes, I’m sorry. I’m just trying to maintain my mental strength here.

Mazi

That’s right. Exactly. Exactly.

Nancy

All right. So, Mazi Robinson, what one piece of advice do you have for people younger than you? Or do you wish you could go back and tell yourself?

Mazi 45:37

Oh, yes, I love this type of question. Two things come to mind. And they’re related.

The first thing that comes to mind, if I could go back and tell my younger self something, I would tell her that nothing will be wasted. That all of the good stuff, the bad stuff, the mistakes, the pain, the heartaches, not an ounce will be wasted. And I think that’s true for all of us, if we heal our pain, if we surrender our pain, if we dig into it, our pain will never, ever be wasted.

And then the second thing that goes along with that is that life is going to be hard. And it’s hard because life is hard. It’s not because you’re messing up necessarily. It’s not because you’re doing something wrong. It’s not because you’re failing, necessarily. It’s because life is hard. But there’s beauty in that hardness, there are lessons to be learned. And none of it will be wasted, you will be able to use all of it.

Nancy 46:32

Oh, I love that. I just love it. Mazi, thank you so much for coming on the show. I hope listeners found this comforting. I hope you feel inspired to go out and make some of the changes or reflect on some of the things that Mazi talked about. And thank you so much – guys, check out her website, and Mazi, I’ll talk to you soon!

Mazi

Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. This was fun.

[MUSIC]

Mazi mentioned how reading more about midlife can be helpful. And I would encourage you to start by checking out my past interviews with authors Jonathan Rauch, who wrote The Happiness Curve;  Barbara Bradley Hagerty, who wrote “Life Reimagined”; and of course, Ada Calhoun, who wrote “Why We Can’t Sleep”. We talk about their books in each and there are links to more resources.

So I’m going to link to those specific episodes in the show notes from this episode. And I’m also adding a helpful list of titles that Mazi recommends all of us read. So check out the show notes for this episode and get started on your reading list.

Okay, so this week was all about midlife mental health. I’ve got an upcoming episode that’s going to be about our physical health in 2020. I’ll be interviewing an epidemiologist from University of California at San Francisco, who’s going to tell us how we can better navigate COVID from a physical standpoint in the months to come.

Here’s why I’m telling you this now. If you have questions for my epidemiologist, get them to me quick! This episode is airing on Tuesday, October 13. And I need your questions for the doctor by Thursday, October 15. So that’s only two days for you to turn around. Let me know what would you like to ask a specialist who knows facts about COVID and pandemics and public health? What do you want to know from him? Ask The Epidemiologist is open for business so get those questions and conundrums over to [email protected] or send me a message via Instagram, Facebook or Twitter at @midlifemixtape. I just want to get a roundup of your questions. I know I’ve got a bunch. So that episode will be coming out a little bit later this fall.

All right, everybody. Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you have a great week!

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Ep 84 Therapist Mazi Robinson appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .