00:00 Anna Gray I think that people should be guarded and err on the side of their convictions. Have maybe even their own crisis plan written out, which like literally down to their own literally like morals, you know?
00:12 Renee So what would that look like?
00:26 Anna Gray What would your list? I did write a list like this last year. I know. Yeah. And on that list. So last year I did have a legitimate mental crisis, if you want to call it that. This year it's just natural stress, right? But it's nothing that's breaking me to the depths of my soul. Last year, however, was completely different. And I had a moment of sanity before the insanity struck. And I thought because I was getting ready to, well, I was actually getting ready to end a relationship that I needed to close off the chapter two. And in my head, I thought, hmm, the last time this happened, I did not handle it very well. And I think number one, people knowing their downfalls and having other people is key. So my list, gosh, I have it all on my phone. Actually, no, I don't. It's on my laptop. But I had everything from basic human survival. I had to eat two to three times a day with protein. I had drink water. I had stay in prayer. I started with literally physical and spiritual survival, like things that people need. Because when you're not thinking clearly and when you're in a low, you are not always thinking rationally. You're not going to just be thinking of all of these things that you would otherwise list out. At least for me, it's almost like my mind's a blur and I'm a complete and total pathetic recluse. So I had everything from that to and then towards the bottom of the list after I finished basic human survival and functioning as a decent human, I had things like to go and help somebody else. I think something else that is really key is to and in getting your mind off of what you're dealing with, honestly is doing something with people, whether it's helping somebody or letting people in on what you're going through. I think that getting yourself out of your habitat and you've said this before too, like changing your location is really- That's Genevieve Traversy. Oh man, it's so important though. You can do aimless, stupid things that just numb you and are not life-giving. I think doing all of these things that would otherwise bring you joy or a liberation of sorts even when it doesn't feel that way because it's not always going to feel warm and fuzzy. Again, you can choose life or death. For me, my choices were, okay, follow this list. I told very few people. You were one of them who knew all the different circumstances that compiled in January slash February. Then just maybe two or three other people, I told the whole blood, guts, and gore of it. For me, choosing life was these things and having people who knew what I needed as well because my downfalls would be to drink my heart out, to probably aimlessly get on a dating app and talk to men just to feel chased and loved or something. Look, loved. 03:44 Renee Pursued. Yeah, pursued. Just things that would be completely life-sucking and take you right back to square one. Okay, but I'm curious for you though, because when you were in the field and you said you had this piece, do you tend to focus only on what you're anxious about or do you find that it spirals a lot of other thoughts as well? When you found a release of sorts, were you just thinking about one particular thing or do you find that your brain goes to every other? What if?
04:24 Renee No, I'm a little worried because my brain goes, I've talked to you about this fear of being prayerless and I know I've talked about it in other ways, but I'm doing functional things. I'm looking to see if the deer have corn, I'm looking at the birds have seed, I'm looking at the quality of grass, I'm actually watching the dog roll around and so I'm literally looking like what, this is going to sound gross, but what is the scat that is on the ground because I'm trying to identify, because we've had coyotes. One Hello Pella. Exactly. So I'm out there and I'm looking at just the different views of the land. It's fascinating, land is always fascinating to me because you can have land, but there's places you cannot have gone on it and it's just fascinating. It doesn't matter how big it is. It's fascinating to me that you can see different views. My mind spiraled, it spiraled, it spiraled, it spiraled into, it started going playful, which I thought was very interesting. So I all of a sudden went and looked at this hill and I said, that would be a really fun hill to sled down. I saw you guys through a child. Yes, it was. Then I thought about my children when they were little and I was like, why didn't I, of course I was beating myself up as a mother, why didn't I sled with them more? Why did I only make them homemade hot chocolate and whatever warm soups for them to play in and clean up after their clothes? No, I really enjoy watching nature and for some reason that brings me great peace. So that's how you choose life. I think a lot of times instead of, I think I do go with the obsessive thoughts and then I think I break away and I don't know if that's probably… How do you break away from yours? I change locations. Ah, so you're walks. I do. I get out. And looking at our pellets. I don't think this was a now. I think it was something else. So I do go or I do a task that is easily, this is so wild, an easy task. Of course my driveway is a gazillion miles down but I choose to walk to go get the trash can and roll it back and I have this whole system down but I feel like a mighty woman and yesterday I collected firewood because…
07:18 Anna Gray Did you shop your own firewood? Yes, with my teeth. We said you collected firewood.
07:26 Renee Do you have a stash or do you have some? I would like to say that I did the whole thing in a white t-shirt and things like that. No, I don't do that. I actually pick up the phone and call. Okay. I'm exposing you. It's beautiful, beautiful firewood. Or my farm guys come out and when the tree goes down we cut it. If it's good for burning. But I do, it's in a storage place so I do pull it out and I do bring it up and put it in a storage bin up here. And there's something very, very, very… No, this is going to sound hokey pokey. But just connecting to the earth when you do good hard work. I mean, seriously.
08:18 Anna Gray I don't know how you phrased it before. I'm like… It's not the pantheistic for you. No, it's not that. It's not that.
08:30 Renee It's just when you do something and you feel a strength, you feel like confidence. Because not only do I have to get the firewood, I have to go up these steps that are insanely large. They're like boulder steps. And so I carry the firewood up. I do that. And carrying the deer corn bucket out is quite heavy after a while when you load it up and take it out there. So I do these things that are very hands-on that I can complete, task over, but they make me feel good and not exercised in the typical way. But there's something… You're breathing deeply. You're moving. You're doing something. And I think that's why…
09:15 Anna Gray You're getting out of just your walls and you're literally breaking the cycle but doing something physical too.
09:21 Renee Yes. And all you're doing at this point is thinking, can I pick up one more piece of firewood and carry it out? So it becomes something that you can complete. And it's a small task, but there's not even a check mark to it. It just feels great. There's no other way.
09:39 Anna Gray Do you find that when you get really anxious and maybe this is different for you, does it affect your self-esteem at all? Because it affects mine. Do you shred yourself? Or do you focus just on the exact thing that's causing you anxiety or does it affect your inner well-being? I think it…
09:59 Renee I mean, obviously it affects my inner being because I'm on blood pressure medicine, even though I fought real hard not to be on that. Yeah, no, I take it personally. I take anxiety and stress and depression to heart. I literally do. So do I think about them? I do, but that can lead into either hyper alertness or hyper schizophrenia. Schizophrenia. We always were, I'm like, I can't settle and I can't get anything done. So yeah, I do that.
10:43 Anna Gray But what about you? Oh yeah. I mean, I was curious for you because literally tonight at the studio, I looked in the mirror just to have a technique for my shoulders for the dangle. The dangle affects… I looked at my lower half and I was just like, oh, and I said something. I didn't say, oh wow, I feel really fat. But my teacher said, oh, what? And I said, oh, nothing. It was just a weird… Yeah, no, I feel… And I look at you and I'm like, oh, to be that. It's kind of like one anxious thought, not just a small stressor in life. You know, like having a busy day and things to do, that doesn't make me feel like I'm tipping over. It's more so I think when things compile and then I think because it gets me so in my head, I think of everything else that's wrong. And then I go into whether it be my body image or oh, what if someone, you know, I'm going to how other people perceive me or I feel not good enough or…
11:47 Renee And it's skewed. Because for you to look in the mirror and say, oh, this is a problem, it's skewed.
11:54 Anna Gray Well, it is in some aspects. What is very skewed? But I think it makes you wonder what if all of these things are true or if you, you know, have a not so great dance lesson and you think everything is true. I suck. I mean, I go into the loser mode and I call it that. Yes. I said I feel like I'm either laughing or crying and it's been, you know, metaphorically crying and having these weird vertigo things that I'm experiencing right now. Like, OK, the room spinning. It is going back and forth. I'm just going to close my eyes a moment. This is welcome to moral T. This is real life. Are you OK? No, I'm OK. It comes in like these weird waves. But really? Yeah.
12:40 Renee It's like it's still to me like an air pressure problem. Oh, thank you.
12:45 Anna Gray Chocolate chocolate to help my. No, I'm just thinking of this. I think it'll I do think deflection taking your sponsor by Ghirardelli. Yeah. You want some caramel? Um, oh, no, this is caramel. Someone is really OK. Yeah. I was just curious.
13:04 Renee Like, do you feel I think deflection is always and I hate to say it. Maybe that's not the word for it, but rerouting your attention might be helpful. I don't know.
13:15 Anna Gray Is that what? No, it is. I'm just curious if you ever. Oh, and I turned it first. Oh, no, it's good. It only comes for like a second.
13:26 Renee Well, we're about ready to wrap up anyways, but I do have a question for you. So what do you think the moral T is? What is the moral T in this? I think we've hit on it a couple of times because you said it was deeply spiritual. What is the moral T in this whole thing? Oh, my goodness. How are emotions moral? Absolutely.
13:47 Anna Gray I think that. Yes. I don't even know. I mean, emotions are all natural for us to experience, but it's what we do with them that I think can turn because where your thoughts leading you, what are you thinking about? Is it choosing life? Is it choosing death? And then I think when your actions begin to. Coincide with that. Is when like if you're turning to, I think when you turn to your human nature, if that makes sense, which we all wrestle with, but things where it's taking you back into the dark whirlpool where reality is still the same and it's feeding something inside of you that is turning at least for believers and like for myself where it's taking you away from God and more so obsessing over or not obsessive. Obsessive isn't the right word, but hooked on something to satiate you, if that makes sense or to numb you and to numb everything else. So I think 100 percent it's moral, even anxiety, depression. I know this might be kind of a nonpopular opinion, but I think our culture nowadays, we tend to also want to wallow. And I think it's really, it's really important to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to have that kind of environment. And I think it's really spiritually unhealthy. I think it's really important. Just like we're talking and we didn't talk even about our days until powered on, you know, all of this. It's important to talk about what's going on inside. And I guess we're literally exposing it to like you just got caramel. Let's go. But I think that's what we do with it and how we choose to move forward that can make it easier to be able to talk about it. We're not talking about the world right now. We're talking about our culture now that wants us to identify by either a mental illness or literally our emotions and feelings. But it's like we're not I think realizing too at the end of the day, you're not your feelings or emotions. You're experiencing those. But just because you're experiencing right now doesn't mean, oh, it's a bad life. It's a bad day. It's just we put a label on it. Yeah, we put a label on everything. But we're making decisions and living life in such a way that's looking for a particular word. And it's just not coming to me. Life sucking versus life giving. You know, and I say that there are biblical type in a biblical sort of way is when it can become a moral issue or not. But it's like, are you turning to your community and people and prayer, even if you're struggling, are you turning to booze, porn, starving yourself or, you know, frivolously spending money, anything that causes you to, I think, cope that becomes a habit or an addiction.
16:42 Renee And it's really and you're right, because it is life sucking. Because the more you do that, the more you really do hate yourself. Yeah, it is a spiral. But I like that. I love the way you turned that in, because I was really worried that like we were going to come in here and just wine. And I was wondering how's this going to work into being moral tea, tea-ness. And there you go. So what do you think? I mean, no, no, I think you summed it up really well. I think I'm going to have dark.
17:10 Anna Gray I feel like I just work spilled in so many circles as I eat my chocolate.
17:14 Renee But I'm going to have some dark chocolate and. Oh, you didn't eat yours on the mic? High five with your foot. I've been eating on this the whole time. Well, no, I decided I was going to say my calorie for the dark chocolate. I was going to say high five with your foot. Yeah. Anyway, well, I think we're done. We have spilled the tea. We have spilled the tea. On moral tea. And we're finishing our tea. Cheers. Oh, I have caramel on my lip. That's not a bad problem. That's a very good problem to have. Yeah.