1. Content warning: Discussion of suicide. 2. Jenny puts words to her experience of ADD – "being a kitten on cocaine" – and her anxiety – seeing "rainbow fire.” 3. How Jenny felt guilty for years about a way her mental illness impacted her mothering – only to later learn it was her child’s favorite memory. 4. The moment she decided to be honest about her struggles – and how sharing our awkwardness can save the world and cure our loneliness. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255 About Jenny: Jenny Lawson is an award-winning humorist known for her great candor in sharing her struggle with mental illness. She's written four NYT bestsellers, including Let's Pretend This Never Happened (a mostly true memoir), Furiously Happy (A funny book about terrible things), You Are Here (An owner's manual for dangerous minds) and Broken (in the best possible way), which recently won the Goodreads Choice award for Best Humor of 2021. One of those books is a coloring book but she insists it still counts. She lives in Texas with her husband and child and would like to be your friend unless you're a real asshole. TW: @TheBloggess IG: @thebloggess To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why is Jenny Lawson considered a guide for mental health?
With a mind. Yes, I know. You know, it's a mind. But- There are some people whose minds are so special and so different that they can serve as guides for all who have mentals. And our guest today is one of those guides. And she has been a guide for me forever. I have been reading Jenny Lawson's, well, first on her blog, like decades ago. The blog is how I found her.
I think her tagline on her website is like Mother Teresa, but better. That's how I first fell in love with her with just that line. I've always loved Jenny as she's a hero of a lot of folks. And it's for many reasons. One, because she's unbelievably hilarious and honest.
But also because there's so many people who talk about mental health in like our cultural way of talking about it, which is like just from an expert view. or from like a before and after story, like mental health, extreme home makeover. Like they used to be a mess and now they're better. Before and after. Exactly. And it never feels true to me because that's never been true for me ever.
So I don't understand how that, I always feel like people are lying when they're done with mental health illness or something. Like that's not the way it works.
At least it's just not the way it works for you and Jenny.
OK, I feel like for anyone, but I'm sure there's some people who have fixed.
I'm just trying to say that there might be different people out there also.
Yes, but great for them. Happy for them.
And it also speaks to like maybe that is true of those people's experiences, but it's not
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Chapter 2: How does Jenny Lawson describe her experience with anxiety and panic attacks?
That tracks. So your book is called Broken, the most recent one. And it's so interesting because I always had a complicated relationship with that word. My friend Brandy Carlisle named her book Broken Horses. And I was like, no, you cannot name it Broken Horses. Like you're not broken. We had a whole thing. I was like, if you name it Broken Horses- No one will read it. And then she did.
And then it became this huge New York Times bestseller. So that was fine.
As did Jenny's.
Yeah, as did Jenny's. So I'm not getting asked for advice about titles anymore. But can you tell me your relationship to the word broken and your embracing of that word?
So for me, I've always felt a little bit just not right. I have... clinical depression that's treatment resistant and I have anxiety disorder and I have avoidant personality disorder, which just makes me kind of think that everybody hates me all the time. And I have impulse control disorder and I have trichotillomania. Like I collect disorders like other people collect Holly Hobby.
And I, I just was like, there's something really wrong with me because I don't know anybody else like this. The more that I explored it, the more that I realized that the way in which I was broken, and I use that word in a way like of sort of reclaiming it, broken as in shattered in a slightly different way, but in a way that lets the light in.
And it creates this ability to see things from a different perspective. I think that, I mean, it is a horrible struggle to deal with mental illness, but I think that for a lot of people, it creates a very deep well of compassion because you know how hard it is.
And also because, you know, everybody's depression presents in a different way, which was something that for me, I always have to continue to remind myself because some people will be like, oh, I'm really depressed. And so I was crying all day and I'm like, my depression is presents as an extremely uncomfortable numbness. My face feels like it doesn't connect to me, have absolutely no energy.
I just basically have to cling to the couch and be like, keep breathing. Your depression is lying to you. Your depression is telling you some terrible things right now, and none of them are true. And that is awful and terrible, but it also makes me who I am. And that's not to say that if somebody said like, here, take this pill, you can get fixed forever.
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Chapter 3: What does the word 'broken' mean to Jenny Lawson?
I've had to find a whole lot of tools and the really great thing about with, with mental illness, with depression, with anxiety, with is that there are so many people now who are willing to talk about it. They're willing to say like, this is where it works for me. This is what works for me. And you can kind of pick and choose. And I always think like I have my toolbox and,
And I can be like, okay, this works for me. This thing that everybody was like, totally works. This thing does not work for me. And so when somebody is like, you should try yoga, like, fuck you. You're like, I agree, right? It works for everybody else, but no, I don't want to sweat and be uncomfortable. And I'm going to strain something. And also I'm going to fart so many times in public.
Thank you. Right? You're like, that should be good for my anxiety. Exactly. I was thinking about farting in front of 30 people from the PTA. The entire time. And you're in these positions and nobody else farts. I've been to three yoga classes. No one ever farts. And the whole time I'm like, how? There's nothing, nothing. Anyway, it's insane. But I have all these tools.
And so like for me, one that has been really helpful is pink noise, which is, it's kind of like, you know, they have like different kinds of like gray noise and brown noise and whatever. Pink noise, it sounds like kind of like the ocean, but there's something about that particular tone that helps block out.
So like when I have ADD, I hear, like I hear all the light bulbs in the house and I hear, I mean, Everything is very loud all the time. So I can't concentrate on anything else. It's like if everything in your house turned up the volume to 90 and people are talking to you normally and you're going... do you not hear what's going on? We're in the middle of an earthquake.
And they're like, no, it's really not. I'm like, do you hear the lights? And they're like, no. But if you talk to people with ADD, most of them will say, oh yeah, oh my God, the lights in here are so loud, especially like fluorescent lights. Oh, Awful. But pink noise drowns it out.
And the really helpful thing is when I'm writing, because I have a really hard time sitting down and getting things done, there's a YouTube compilation of just free whatever pink noise. And I think it's like 20 minutes long. And so when I turn it on, I can write. And as soon as I start to get distracted, I know that it's turned off. And I can say to myself, I just worked for 20 minutes.
Even if I only got one sentence done, even if I'm going to delete it, it's still... gives me a chance to say, I completed 20 minutes. I think I can do another 20. Let's try it one more time.
Wow. That's awesome. As someone who deals with ADD, does it annoy you or not when people are like, I'm so ADD, like on all their memes and graphics, because they like forgot one thing. Is that an annoyance and a hurtful thing for you?
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Chapter 4: How did Jenny Lawson's approach to parenting affect her child?
So I ignore their emails and I don't look at my DMs or my texts and I don't answer my phone or listen to voicemails because if I just wait until my mind gets better, maybe I could deal with this then, but I don't because it doesn't. And instead I look at those unopened emails from my friends and family and colleagues until I have memorized the subject lines by heart.
And I think about how strange it is. that they probably think I'm ignoring them, when in fact, I am utterly haunted by them. Yes!
I always think, I'm sorry I didn't write you back, it's because I like you so much.
Yes! The idea that you would spend an hour...
Thinking about the email that would take five minutes to write back and not understand why you're such a deeply fucked up person that you have now spent six hours thinking about someone who must only assume that you don't give a shit about them because why won't you text them back for the third time that they're like, just text me back and let me know you're okay.
And you're like, and then you just shut down.
Yeah. Yeah. Then it gets even worse. Yes. My, my husband always he'll walk in and he'll be like, touch it once. That's the rule. You open an email, you immediately respond to it. You close it, touch it once. Never. And I, my, I had hit Mark is unread. That is my like default. I look at an email and I'm like, nope, can't respond to that. Mark is I, and they're, they're simple emails.
They're sit there, but I'm just like, Nope. I don't know. I don't know how words work. And then I'll come out of it. And all of a sudden it's like, like I'm a superhero. Yes. Like, like, oh my God, is this how normal people are? I went, I went to CBS to pick up my medication and didn't have to lay down afterwards. Hero. Oh my God. It's, it's just, it's so insane. Hmm. Oh, it's so good.
Okay. So we are so close to out of time. So we want to end with this. First of all, very quickly, I need to tell you that the word stet I wear around my neck. Yay! Step like the wind, motherfucker. Oh my God. Well, what does step mean? Okay. So step, which Jenny has an entire chapter about in her book. Okay.
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