An episode of “Changing the Conversation” podcast
Dina Coughlan shares her experience as a mental health advocate with host Ashley Stewart, and they discuss how to support mental wellness in the workplace. This episode is sponsored by the New England Mental Health Technology Transfer Center Network (MHTTC).
May 22, 2023
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Ashley Stewart, Host (00:05): Hello and welcome to Changing the Conversation. This episode is sponsored by the New England Mental Health Technology Transfer Center, or MHTTC. I am your host, Ashley Stewart, the director of Health Equity at C4 Innovations and a racial equity subject matter expert. Our topic today is mental health advocacy, honoring lived and living experiences. Our guest today is Dina Coughlan, calling in from Massachusetts. Dina is an associate producer at GBH, her local public TV station in Massachusetts, as well as a aspiring mental health advocate.
(00:42): Dina, thank you for joining us today.
Dina Coughlan, Guest (00:44): Thank you so much for having me.
Ashley (00:45): You and I have had such dynamic conversations about mental health in preparation for this call, and I would love to get us started by hearing a little bit more about your story. Can you share what your journey was like and what steps you’ve taken to become a mental health advocate?
Dina (01:03): I think it’s an important conversation to discuss the journey from patient to personhood, and it’s definitely one I’m still always working on. My journey started when I was 19, I was in college, had a bit of a mental breakdown after years of anxiety, and ended up at McLean Hospital, and it really began from there. Unfortunately, I was not in a very good place where McLean was able to help me, but I did go to facilities in Connecticut and New York and was eventually able to turn my life around.
Ashley (01:34): Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that aspect of your story with us and being willing to engage in that transparency. One of the things that we’ve talked about before too is how important transparency is and telling and sharing of one’s story. Has that been something that’s been really important also in your life, the sharing of your story?
Dina (01:54): Yes, it has been a big part of my journey, but for a long time it wasn’t. I was convinced that the way to heal was to put it behind me and to no longer discuss or engage in any component of my life that dealt with that very painful, vulnerable past, but I’m learning now that there is so much freedom that comes when you are honest, because it feels like you’re not hiding a big part of who you are and why you are who you are.
Ashley (02:22): Dina, that reminds me of some of the quotes that I love to use in equity work about how authenticity, how being your full self and showing up as your full self, leads to whole body, whole system wellness. And when we don’t spend as much time or energy covering up or hiding who we are, it allows for more opportunities to be bold and innovative and creative. And so that’s really exciting to think about us getting to a place where people can show up as their full and authentic selves and what that can do, and particularly what they can do in the workforce. When it comes to the workforce, there’s so many conversations about mental health, and oftentimes those are very intellectualized. How do you think we honor people’s lived in living experiences with mental health diagnosis in the workplace?
Dina (03:09): Well, to be totally transparent here, I did not personally experience any blatant stigmatization because I wasn’t forthcoming with my story. So nobody knew. Nobody could say, “Oh, well, she has a mental illness, let’s regard her one way or the other.” It wasn’t until I started coming out with my story that I actually received the opposite, because most people looked at me and said, “I never would’ve known that about you. You hide that well.” But I do, even as a person working in the workforce, see that there is a stigmatization around mental health and mental wellness and the way you get that look in your… “Are you okay?” And it’s like, oh my God, don’t put me in that pile. I’m fine. I’m strong. But to say that I personally experienced it, I didn’t. But I’m very compassionate for those who are experiencing it, and I would love to be able to help anyone that would be going through that sort of an issue.
Ashley (04:06): And every day is different for folk, and I think that that’s the beauty of it too, that’s the critical importantness of it too, is to acknowledge that we treat every day as a different experience for folks. It makes me think of a framework that I like folks to think about as well, which is taking time to pause, pause for emotional wounds in the same way we would pause for physical wounds, if you can think of it that way. It could be I’m doing this podcast and my arm’s bleeding, we’re going to be like, “Let’s record this at a different time.” But creating pauses that are intentional around wellness, mental wellness, is not something that I often see or hear us talk about in the workforce.
Dina (04:49): I think that’s very true and just because someone needs a mental break, it does not qualify them as being a weak person. It means you have no idea what people are going through, and we’re all human, and we just need to have regard. I think also having the right verbiage is always extremely helpful. You don’t ever want to minimize what someone is going through or speak down to people. So I think there’s a lot of work to be done, and of course I have ideas about that too.
Ashley (05:20): Yeah, I would love to hear some of those ideas that you have, because the ideas that are coming from that perspective of advocacy, and specifically advocacy with lived and living experience is so important. Do you have any of those ideas that you want to share?
Dina (05:35): Well, first of all, when I reflect on my own journey, I have to say that everybody’s journey is very different, and that deserves respect in and of itself. So to classify people, even two people with the same diagnosis, experience it very differently and have different ways of overcoming and recovering. I would say patience is something we all need to learn. Because even now, I still have days where I do not want to get out of bed, I cannot face the world, and the first person I’m calling is my mother, and she has to remind me, “You got to do this, you got to do this today.” So I think patience from providers and also with yourself, because this is not a linear process, unfortunately, there are good days and bad days. So patience, non-judgment, empathy, and again, learning that verbiage so that when you are speaking with people, you know what to be saying. And in most cases, it’s saying nothing at all. It’s listening.
Ashley (06:31): That’s so good. Thank you for sharing that. And I particularly appreciate that intentional pause to honor the people, the support, the folks who are the folks who we call to support. And that supports is also a piece that we often don’t really get into. When it comes to support and action, you talked about listening and how essential and critical listening is, and I think that that starts to get to a deeper level of what support could look like rather than some of the superficial things that do show up. Oftentimes when people are unaware of what to do or what to say, people might just say things that we have heard to be a good thing to say, but maybe it’s not all that useful or supportive in the moment. What have you found to be some good practices for providing support?
Dina (07:19): Well, even if I just explained to you my family dynamic a little bit, so in terms of my mother and my father and the way they respond to me, especially when I’m in a crisis position. Now, my father, and this is more of a male thing, I think, is solution-based. So it’s always, “Well, let’s find the solution to this problem,” and it’s out of love. It’s, “Let’s find a solution to this problem.” Whereas my mother’s going to be more like, “All right, let’s talk this through,” or she might just listen. And honestly for me, and for many people, it’s not that they want you to solve their problems, they just want to feel heard. They just want to feel heard in a moment of overwhelming, “God, life is really hard,” and have someone say, “You know what? It really is, and it’s okay that you feel that way.” Not, “Okay, well how do we fix this? And how can we make it less hard?” No, it just is. And I think that is huge.
Ashley (08:13): Mm-hmm. Absolutely. In motivational interviewing and some other different techniques that we often use in our practice is we talk about that righting reflex, this righting reflex, the instantaneous desire, I think the use of the term reflex being so intentional. The desire to fix things. When people come to us that we love, care about or serving, who are connected to our work or our passion, and they present us what we perceive to be an issue, this reflex automatic kicks in that says, “How do I make this work? How do I fix it? How do I resolve it?” And when it comes to a lot of lived and living experiences, that righting reflex does not provide much help. Unless it’s something tangible that folks might need a specific assistance with a task, that righting reflex is actually something that is more attributable to our own feeling of being able to help or serve someone, it’s attributable to us feeling like we did something for someone as opposed to having a benefit to the person who we’re attempting to serve or to show up for.
(09:18): And so that pivot, that righting, that reflex to say, “I don’t have to present a solution. The solution is to be present. The solution is to listen. The solution is to demonstrate care. The solution is to validate,” and let that process happen. I think it sounds like such a simple shift, but if we really did that in action, I think it would have tremendous benefit to you, the work that we’re doing and how we’re supporting people, and across a lot of different issues and topics and experiences.
Dina (09:49): I completely agree. And I also think that in addition to that, having boundaries, even as the listener. So my parents have had plenty of opportunities where I’m offloading onto them, which is something I’ve often done in my life, to get rid of this feeling that I don’t know how to deal with. And they have to say, “Okay, I think that’s something you’re going to talk to your doctor about because we don’t know how to help you with that. So maybe that’s something you work with him.”
(10:13): And it actually came through for me, learning because I’ve had a hard time setting boundaries, I had somebody call me and wanted to talk as I was a mental health advocate, and she was asking me questions that I was not comfortable answering because I’m not a clinician. I can’t tell you what to do or where to go. I can just give you hope and support. And at one point, I literally just had to put up my boundaries. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to help you in that sense. What can I do?” So it’s important for the security of the people who are helping to also be able to set boundaries and know when somebody needs to see a specialist, certain issues.
Ashley (10:48): Being able to set that boundary and say what you’re able to do or are not able to do is not a failure in supporting that people, and I think that sometimes, particularly when we’re thinking about the workplace, if someone’s your supervisor, or someone is your colleague, or someone is a manager, or someone’s in a leadership position, or someone is a caring person within the work environment, that desire to have something right to say or concrete to say can put us in positions where we share inappropriate or unhelpful information, things that could even be potentially more detrimental and learning that, “I don’t know,” is a complete response. “I don’t know,” is an appropriate response, and we don’t need to leave it at, “I don’t know.”
(11:33): “I’m not sure. This is a really great point that you bring up. I’m so glad that you’re sharing this with me. How can we identify or find a solution to this together? Who do you think might be able to provide some more clarity on this? How can I help you identify a place that we can go or something we can do that can give you some more information? Because I’m not actually sure how that works or how to help you process that, but I do agree that it’s important to you.” Saying, “I don’t know,” doesn’t mean that you’re failing that person and actually is preventing us from saying or doing things that will be counter to our attempt to support folk.
Dina (12:11): And I think it’s persevering the mental wellbeing of that person because most likely they care about that other person, and to then take on those issues and not know how to deal with them just causes worry. So in this day and age, there are a lot of resources. You can find people who are qualified to listen, and I would encourage people to do that when they feel stuck. I was also going to mention too, quickly, because I know one thing that I was asked was, what didn’t work well for me in my journey? And I would be very clear to say what didn’t work well was when I tried to progress too quickly. When I said, “Okay, now I’m well, now I have to make up for the last 20 years and have all my successes and graduate from school and get married and have children,” and all the stuff that everybody at my age was doing, because it’s like comparing apples to oranges. We’re in different worlds. So I would say that was one thing that never worked for me, it was something I brought on myself, but rushing the progress, rushing and rushing the process of just reentering life.
Ashley (13:14): Yeah, that’s so important. It’s so important. It’s about grace, giving ourselves grace, being kind to ourselves and being kind to people, recognizing that every day we have to reevaluate and process through what that will look like and what support will look like on any particular day. There isn’t a one size fits all response or reaction.
Dina (13:38): Exactly.
Ashley (13:39): So I know that we’ve talked a little bit about culture and identity and our personal identities, so many different ways the equity and identities show up in this work, and it is important to talk about those intersections, the intersections of people’s lives, intersections of people’s identities. It shows up in my work a lot and in several ways. And as you think about your experiences and advocacies, what kind of conversations you’ve had around culture, what are the things that come to mind or what are the things that have come up in those conversations? How have you seen cultural identity and intersectionality show up in mental health advocacy?
Dina (14:17): I think I would just say in the disparage of resources based for certain communities. It just seems frequently that some people are going to have these problems and there’s no resources for them, while other people have an abundance of resources. So to just equalize that, is what I would personally say I have seen culturally in advocacy.
Ashley (14:40): Yeah, absolutely. I think I’ve definitely seen that too. And I think it also goes back to a point that you made when we first started about authenticity. So one of the ways that I see it a lot is some of our treatment modalities that clinicians have, but also ways that we’ve learned to support people through mental health, has looked in one particular way. But when it comes to really looking at how identity impacts mental health, there need to be those culturally relevant adaptations to how we provide services, culturally attuned responses that are reflective of people within their environment that would speak to the uniqueness of cultural identity and navigating mental health and mental wellness. I think about what hypervigilance looks like in communities that have experienced higher level of surveillance, who have been systemically and structurally marginalized. I think those are conversations that I don’t know that we’ve had as often when it comes to mental health, when it comes to mental diagnoses, when it comes to mental illness, those are things that I haven’t heard as frequently, both in training of people who are providing services, but also in more general advocacy conversations around mental wellness at a larger scale.
Dina (16:01): I agree with you.
Ashley (16:02): We’ve talked about so many things and this has just been such a great conversation, and to the point that we just made, mental health advocacy doesn’t look one particular way. If we were going to recap, what are some opportunities to support mental wellness in the workplace, what are one or two things that you would want listeners or people who are hoping to implement this into their practices to think about?
Dina (16:26): I think just one thing would, obviously an open dialogue, a caring atmosphere. I think we’re all more aware in the workplace now of mental illness being something that’s worthy of speaking up about, so just acknowledging that and accepting that and educating yourself on that. If you’re a manager, seeing it in your workers, making sure they take time for themselves. Just awareness, general awareness.
Ashley (16:55): Yeah. That’s good. Thank you so much.
Dina (16:58): Thank you.
Ashley (16:59): Dina, anything that I didn’t bring up or I didn’t talk about here, but you really feel like is a key takeaway for people to have in mind, as you think about your work and your role as a mental health advocate, both aspiring to do this in different capacities, but also in the ways that you are actively doing it now, as a mental health advocate?
Dina (17:20): Yes. First of all, as I mentioned before, it’s never a linear path. Patience is key. And on the hard days, there’s a quote that I heard, and it resonates in my mind a lot. What if it could turn out better than you imagined? And oftentimes, I remind myself that even if I’m not where I want to be now, where many of us are not, but what if you get everything you’ve ever dreamt of? And that keeps me going. And for me, that’s like self-love and peace, and I can’t even imagine what that’s going to feel like. So on the hard days, first of all, remember you’re not alone. And second of all, remember, it could be very possible that you get everything you ever wanted. So don’t give up.
Ashley (18:06): That’s so powerful. Dina, thank you so much. Thank you for joining us today.
Dina (18:11): Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure.
Ashley (18:15): And to our listeners, join us next time while on Changing the Conversation.
Erika Simon, Producer (18:20): Visit c4innovates.com and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube for more resources to grow your impact. Thank you for joining us. This episode is sponsored by New England Mental Health Technology Transfer Center and was produced by Erika Simon and Christina Murphy. Our theme song was written and performed by Peter Hanlon. Join us next time on Changing the Conversation.
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