Treating Mental Illness Like a Physical Injury with Olympian Alexi Pappas

0:05I was so unwell that I was honest with strangers, right? And so I was telling him I had all these dark thoughts. I thought I had peaked in life. I thought it would never get better. I was certain of it. Two hands up. Yes. I was like, well, I, hello, sir. I've ruined my life and I will never be happy again. I think I had the exact same conversation two and a half years ago. The story of Olympic runner Alexi Pappas felt eerily familiar to my own. Here was a person who spent her whole life striving toward a singular goal. But when she finally achieved it, setting a Greek record in the 10K at the 2016 Olympics, she didn't know what to do next.

0:42I remember I didn't want to lose momentum because I'd finally become an Olympian. I didn't take a day off running. And I was running 120 miles a week. Alexi struggled, falling into a deep depression that threatened to derail her entire career. And she had already lost her mom to mental illness. So the stakes fell extremely high. What I was told growing up is that my mom was just so sad that she had to go. I was afraid of ending up like my mom. But she found the strength to get help and to heal. As an athlete, she understands injuries. This one just happened to be inside her own head. Alexi's story is for anyone who wants to feel a little braver, to face the world new each day, and understand that it doesn't take Olympic strength to change your life and face the unknown.

1:37I think everybody needs a reorientation with the unknown and to actually trust that we have some agency in the world, but there's like so much we don't know.

1:59Before we start the show, I wanted to share that at the end of this episode, I will be giving everyone watching and listening an Enough Bracelet. The Enough Bracelet has been a great tool for me on my journey and sharing with others is one of my greatest joys. So enjoy this conversation and stick around at the end for details on how you can receive an enough bracelet from me as well. Okay, first off, the thing that I'm most curious about to start with is in your book, there's many times you compare yourself to a food. That's so true. You're like a marshmallow, a pickle. So what food are you today?

2:39Oh, that's so great. Okay. Yes, the food metaphors. um well metaphors have been really helpful to me because sometimes it's like really hard to see yourself as you are you know yes and so i want to say that right now as lame as it is i'm like ice cube an ice cube that can become water but then remind itself that it's an ice cube like re-solidify i like it or maybe any other food like that butter um because butter can become butter again yeah maybe butter okay butter yeah yeah okay great yeah better than ice I don't take your personality getting to know you as ice, but butter. A block of butter.

3:19A block of butter. Okay, great. My mom wrote a cookbook called Butter Busters. Really? Wait, what is the busting part of butter? Because she was all about taking the fat out of your diet. It was like in the mid-90s and turned out to be the number one best-selling cookbook in the whole United States. What? For like three years. She made millions of dollars. It was crazy. I feel like you have a lot of stories that are, and it turns out that it, and it's like such an amazing thing. You're like, turns out. And it's like such a cute way to talk about success. Like, you know, it's also very smart. But yes, it did turn out.

3:52Yeah, it worked out. Okay, so we are a stick of butter. Another, you know, kind of talk about food is the crock pot. And I love when I was reading your book, I came across this page. It turns out it's on 150. And that's when I was like, I have to have this woman on the podcast. Thank you. And so if it's okay, I've underlined it and I'd love you to read and kick this off. Because truly, this is the reason I started this podcast. This like when you, well, I'll let you read it and then I'll explain why it was so important when I read it. Wow. Okay. I haven't opened this book in a long time. Okay.

4:31Page 150 of Bravey. I came to think of myself as a slow cooker. I had to throw a lot of things into it and then wait a very long time. If I looked inside mid-cook, it might not appear as though anything was happening. It would have been frustrating to peek into the pot too often, which is why it was important not to evaluate myself based on how I felt on any one day. I was an accumulation of all my days, good and bad. I could never know for sure what the single most helpful thing was for me, because in the end, everything blended into one stew. I just know that it worked, and in time, I became well again.

5:10So beautiful. So beautiful. And the reason it meant so much to me is that the whole reason I started No Magic Pill was because on my healing journey, I realized there was no magic pill. There was no one thing that made me feel better. There was no one thing that got me out of the depression or the chronic anxiety. It was a combination of all these things that I was doing, like being in the crockpot. And then the part I like the most about that is about what it might look like midway. So when you're on a healing journey, and I think a lot of people that are listening and watching this are, if you look at it midway, you might get disappointed.

5:49You might lose heart. But all these little things, if you stick with them, make a difference and you can heal. I mean, you're a perfect example of that. I think I'm an example of that. And that's the whole reason that I named it No Magic Pill is because there is no one way. It takes all these little things together. And, you know, that midway time can actually be really disorienting and discombobulating and feel like you're on the wrong path too, right? Yeah. Because our nervous system, I think, like it doesn't like change, even if the change is like eventually going to be good. So maybe like how someone is in that middle process and they're not because I've been there.

6:32I know with my mantra practice that I shared with you earlier, like day 20, I was like, this is not working. And then day 28, it really started to work. So is there a time specifically you can think of when you maybe looked in and you're like, is this working? And I don't know if it is, but I'm going to continue doing it. And one of the ways that I learned how to look at the middle of the process was the way that we look at a caterpillar evolving into a butterfly. And this was Dr. Arpeya again, who helped me through that post-Olympic depression. And I remember I was going through one of these big changes.

7:09And he, I remember calling him and I was like, I'm doing all the things. I'm kind of a hot mess right now. But I think it's headed in the right direction. but I kind of am, I'm a hot mess. And I kept calling myself a hot mess. And I almost apologetically, I was like, I'm going to put it all back together, but I'm having these thought evolution. So it's starting to have sparks of like growth, but I was a mess. Right. And I think sometimes that can happen in any healing journey or evolution journey. Right. I know something is right, but I feel like a mess. Yeah. And sometimes it's the darkest. I mean, that's what they say.

7:43The darkest part of The night is right before the dawn. Yeah. So sometimes it might be the most challenging right before the breakthrough. Totally. And he was like, Alexi, you keep calling yourself a hot mess. And he's like, but I think you're glop. And I was like, what's glop? And he's like, it's an unscientific term. Yeah. But he was like, do you know that when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, it doesn't just go into the chrysalis and become a butterfly. It becomes total liquid. Gooey mess. Gooey, gooey mess. Right. And he was like, and then it becomes a butterfly. And he's like, now what's the difference between a human and a butterfly?

8:21And I was like, I mean, a lot, but, but in this metaphor, the butterfly, you know, the caterpillar does not feel the pain of glop hood. Right. We do. We feel the discomfort of that middle time. And also the caterpillar can't choose to go back to being a caterpillar. It's going to become a butterfly. But we can make choices to go back. And that's what I'm talking about. When we're in that evolutionary time, we need to understand the difference between pain that is a sensation and discomfort that is a part of a process of change, which is what you're talking about. and pain that means that something's wrong.

9:04Yes. And that is something I'm really passionate about because I think that humans get really confused. Totally. And so talking about these stages and actually giving them like a name or a metaphor, like I just call it glop now, has been really empowering because then I can differentiate between the pain that means like, I need help, something's wrong. And I'm actually going through the change that's going to take me to a better place. Yeah. I mean, both are painful. Yes, exactly. One of the pain is leading you to where your soul or divinity or whatever you believe is calling out of you. Yeah.

9:39I look at my depression that way a lot now. Like when I look at it, it was incredibly painful and I never want to experience it again. And I know that it was exactly the catalyst I needed to make changes in my life that allowed me to then be on a life of purpose again and create the connections, the relationships I needed. So I'm glad you brought that up. I think that it is important for anyone who's listening and maybe going through a painful moment is to really take some time and reflect on, is this a pain telling me to stop doing what I'm doing? Or is this a pain that is saying, my soul is making this so uncomfortable that I'm forcing me to make changes or to maybe adopt new practices?

10:19And I'm curious, like, when you were really depressed and what were the little things? Because I think everyone focuses on the big things. But what were the little things that over time added up to help you come out of that? That's a great question because we talked about how the actions change first and then the thoughts and then the feelings. And so the little actions that helped. I mean, I think in friendships, like if we want to just talk about how someone helped me in little ways. I think it was the friends who knew that something would be helpful in my life, but knew that I felt so much like shame about what was going on that they would help me without needing to tell me something's wrong.

11:07So like my friend and I wrote out in the book, like knew I needed to buy a wedding dress. And she was like, we're going to go buy that dress. Like I ended up like postponing the wedding and everything. But she didn't say like, hey, crazy girl. Like she was just like, I'm going to pick you up at 10. We're going to Portland and we're going to go dress shopping and I will bring you a juice. And so it was like she didn't even make me feel shame. Yes. Because she knew I was trying to get help and I was confused. and that she wasn't that person. She wasn't my doctor, but she knew that I needed a dress.

11:42Yeah. I love this story. And it reminds me of a good friend of mine, Pat Dossett. He's a Navy SEAL and a dear, dear friend of mine. And he says in the teams, they don't ask you, hey, can I help? When someone's struggling, they don't say, hey, can I help you out? Because what happens is that person says no or I'm good or whatever. And then that's the end of the help. Instead, they do exactly what she did. They said, hey, I'm coming over today to bring you lunch. Not do you need lunch or can I help you? But no, I'm coming. And by taking that proactive step, that makes all the difference. And I know that when I was really suffering, I had a situation where a good friend of ours just started showing up at my house.

12:20Yeah. Like didn't even ask. And he's just like, I'm like, what are you doing here? He's like, I thought we'd just go for a walk. Yeah. Just like taking off all the decision making and the layers of justifying. Yeah. And the secondary emotions, like judging all the things you're feeling. Just taking action. Your friend did that. My friends have done that. It's huge, honestly. Because you also, like, may not know what's helpful, and they might know little things that are objectively helpful, even if they don't understand your subjective experience. Totally. Okay, so during this break, I'm going to tell you about two more things that I'm super excited about.

12:58And the first one is something that I talked to Michael Pollan about on my episode with him. And it's this AI therapy app called Sonium. Now, I met the founders at this mental health conference and they encouraged me to try it. And at first I was super skeptical. And then after about two weeks, I was blown away at how deep these conversations were going and how helpful it was. And now I'll be using it for six months. And like, there's not a week that I don't use it. I mean, I still have my therapist, but you know, I don't know about you, but like if I wake up at 4 a.m. on a Thursday with a bunch of anxiety, my therapist isn't available.

13:33And that's when I go to Sonya. And so I just want to share it today because it has had such a huge impact on my mental health and on my healing journey. And I kind of want everyone in the world to know about it. The company just launched, it's in the Apple app store. And I think it's free for the first couple of weeks. So you can just try it. And I just think it's incredible. And I think it really is going to help a lot of people, whether they have a therapist or not. And the other thing that's really interesting is it's also become like a coach to me. Like it will text me on Wednesdays when I'm supposed to work out to check if I'm doing my workout.

14:08So it's like I have a life coach and a therapist in my pocket. And I'm going to play a clip right now because you got to kind of see it to believe me. Hi, Blake. I'm here. What's on your mind right now? Oh, I'm just feeling a little stressed about things right now because I feel like I've got so much going on. I really don't know how to prioritize it. When everything stacks up at once, it can blur what actually matters and make that old not enough story get louder. Let's slow this down by picking one thread to start with what feels most pressing in this moment. The important reframe is this. The projects did not cure the depression.

14:44They arrived because you healed. And when you overwork to prevent relapse, you actually undermine the things that keep you well, like sleep, presence, movement, and connection. When that edge shows up, it is a signal to reduce load and restore choice not to push harder. Okay, now you've referenced Dr. Arpeya. Yeah. For those of us who don't know who he is in your relationship, haven't read the book, tell me a little bit about how you found him and what was that journey like? Because I think a lot of people who might be having a hard time and searching for a therapist or psychiatrist can get kind of very disheartened if they don't find a good connection.

15:22So how did that happen? And any advice on finding a good therapist? Yeah, it's a great question because if you don't find one right away, you can feel like it's your fault or like you're unhelpable. Or you could try to force like a connection that, you know, you really have to think about it like you're an athlete. Yeah. And not every coach would be great for you. Like think about if you were training for a marathon. Yeah. you it's very normal that like you talk to a few coaches one you vibe with another uh you've really you really really vibe with another is just maybe not for you and you and you find the one that works for you same with like physios yeah so it's not so dissimilar and I think once we like make it a little just special to mental health you realize like this happens with a lot of help we get a coach yeah um and so for me I was living at high altitude in Mammoth Lakes after the Olympics and had this incredibly difficult dip that was made worse by the altitude, I later learned.

16:24I was fascinated by that because I lived in Jackson Hole when my depression started. Oh, yeah. And I was literally like, to my son, I was like, oh my gosh, like I was in Jackson when this all started. Maybe that was even part of it that I didn't even know. Yeah, because the oxygen, it can make it worse. That's such a good, I had this thing where I'm like, I'm doing this. I'm like, hey, if you're listening, you live at altitude or you just moved to altitude and you're feeling down, be aware. Totally. What a great tip. Yeah, these facts, right? Yeah, they're just things that we should know. And it makes it, all the facts, all the facts in the world can make things less like personal.

17:01You know, you're like, oh, this is just a fact because I'm a bag of cells and they're affected by things, you know? So I went back to Eugene, Oregon, where I was living and talked to, I had appointments that my dad and brother set up because I was not ready to get help and they set them up. So talk about the help. They were like, you're going to this time. And so I showed up and the first woman I talked to, I just felt, I mean, she was like, you are super high risk and you are about to kill yourself. Like it was so intense and I didn't grow up around a lot of women. And so I was just like very intimidated and it just, it felt like I was a problem.

17:43And then I met Dr. Arpeya and he was in this like wolf shirt from, you know, the gas station type shirts before they were cool again. He was just so awesome and so warm. And I felt like I could trust him. And he also, in that first appointment, helped me understand mental health in a way that in my years of trying to understand it with losing my mom to suicide, he summed it up in a way that I finally understood. Wow. Can you share that? Yeah. So I told him, I don't know, I was so unwell that I was honest with strangers, right? And so I was telling him I had all these dark thoughts. I thought I had peaked in life.

18:24I thought it would never get better. I was certain of it. And all these things. I was so certain. Two hands up. Yes. I was like, well, hello, sir. I've ruined my life and I've made bad decisions and I will never be happy again. I think I had the exact same conversation two and a half years ago. It's so crazy. With anyone who would listen. yeah yeah and it's like it's so it's so cute now because you're like well how could you know certainty about the future is just um you're just not well if you think you know the future but he was like okay so lex you know when you were little and you used to go rollerblading and you would fall down and like scratch your knee or break your leg or something and i was like yeah yeah I have a lot of scabs on my knees you know and he was like well what's happening right now is it's like you fell down and you scratched your brain so you have an injury because mine was a situational depression which is which means I felt okay like good good good my whole life and then a series of changes happened after the Olympics yeah contracts new coaches moved to new place, moved events, all these big changes.

19:31And I fell off like a cliff. And he was like, you have an injury, but on your brain. And it was so helpful to me because he saw me and he said, this is an athlete. This person knows what injuries are. This person knows what the body is. This person can visualize something like this. And so instantly I was like, okay, I have an injury on my brain. And then immediately I could superimpose my entire athletic body knowledge onto my mental health journey because then it's like, okay, this isn't going to heal overnight. No injury does. I'm going to need some help. So do I with my injuries. Sleep will really help.

20:11Not every kind of modality will help me. Just like when you go to a physio for an injury, Some things help you, some things help someone else. And it can heal most of all. I'm helpable. Wow. And it just, it was like, I instantly was like, okay, my dream now and my goal is not to go to the Olympics anymore. It's to heal. This is my Olympic dream now. Yeah. And I shifted the same focus and dedication directly from that Olympic chasing that I had done like three months ago and every month before that to mental health healing. And he was my coach. So it was like an instant like train track, shift to this train track and then go on that one.

20:55Wow. It was life changing. And so I think for people looking for their person, maybe that conversation doesn't happen. and maybe this helps you, but you find a person that you believe can help you. Yeah. I mean, we're not going to stop the podcast right now, but I think we could. Like that right there, if there's one thing that someone gets is this idea that they've scratched their brain and that their brain is going to heal. Because that's one of the things that I, I mean, I'm going to tear up thinking about this. Like, that's what I felt like. I felt like my brain was broken and it was never going to heal.

21:32and if I had thought about it in that perspective of no this is no different than when I tore my Achilles tendon when I was playing tennis or and it was hard it took eight months of rehab and recovery and all these things but I think that is such an important thing for people to understand is that it is an injury to their brain they're gonna it's gonna take time and there's a lot of people that have healed it and they can heal it yeah and if it's you know there are chronic injuries, right? Because some people have, there's a spectrum of mental health stuff, right? And so in my case, it was like expected and hoped that I would like return to how I, you know, return to a feeling of happiness.

22:13But I think some people have other mental health challenges and it's still, you can still treat chronic injuries. You can still figure out a way to live with things. People do it every day. Yeah. And I think it's just important to point out because some people it's like they've been feeling this way for their whole life and and that happens too yeah you know you said something that I have never heard before but it's definitely what I experienced is situational depression yeah you know you you had this experience with the olympics and then afterwards for those who don't know your backstory can you give us a little bit of you know what happened the olympics what was your dream what happened afterward and why did that because most people think oh you went to the olympics for greece you you know set this record like yeah you should that should have been the highlight of your life how did the depression come after that yeah well believe it or not my friend who won gold that year still also experienced his own depression so it i think it happens to people at the peak of a world whether they win first or get last i think you're vulnerable to the same dip because I mean I think it's a combination just like the crockpot of like adrenal fatigue and a deferred like you're never thinking about the moment after because then you wouldn't get there in the first place so there's this element of like it's a cliff even if you did great and then there's this feeling of you I remember I didn't want to lose momentum because I'd finally like become an Olympian And I wasn't paid as an athlete until after the Olympics.

23:54I had food sponsorships. I was like on food stamps. Like there's like so many things that like, like it was like, it was like, and I had college debt. Like I went to Dartmouth like that. You don't like do that and then go do what I did most of the time, you know? And so I felt like I didn't want to lose momentum. And so there's this revving of an engine that's like empty. Yeah. So I think that depression is sort of this disease of like depletion. And I think I was quite depleted. Deep rest. Have you heard that before? So this is one of the things I love. I learned in my journey was if you look at the word depressed, it's also if you break it up differently in syllables, it's deep rest.

24:36So oftentimes different therapists I've talked to think it's actually your whole system, your energetic system saying, I can't do this anymore. I need deep, deep rest. So it forced you to press, it forced you to have low energy, forces you to go down to rest. Oh, that's really, because it's true. Maybe that's what you're experiencing, deep rest. That's what I needed to do, right? And that would have been great. But you didn't. No, I did the opposite. I was like, okay, we're going to move. We're going to sign new contracts. We're going to change coaches. We're going to change events. And like, we're going to like make the most of this base we just built and keep going up the steps.

25:13I didn't take a day off running. and I was running 120 miles a week. Like I ran the next day and I remember I was like, just continued to train because I didn't, I thought that that was the competitive advantage, right? It was to not stop. Just crushing yourself. Yeah. And it was like, I should have just like gotten like partied more, you know, but the depression was really, yeah, just that. I was afraid of ending up like my mom. And that I understand because what I was told growing up is that my mom was just so sad that she had to go. And everybody was like, yeah, she just like, she really had to go.

25:59Like she really want, like, it was just so bad what she was feeling. How old were you, sorry, when your mom committed suicide? I was four, almost five. And, and I guess she was like quite sick for like the whole, maybe like three years leading up, like a lot, lots of, you know, hospitals for different things and attempts and whatnot. And so I, this reductive answer probably made people more comfortable, right? She just was so sad she had to go. yeah like it was so sad that she was so sad but i was like okay but i am 50 this lady like what does that mean for me yeah and so i was like well i better not get so sad or i'm gonna have to go and that was always that feeling scary yeah of like i don't want to not feel okay and so when i even just had little feelings of not feeling great after the olympics i really rejected them because it felt like an Alice in Wonderland hole to death.

27:03Wow. So there was like, I get why I didn't slow down. It wasn't just this like overachieving girl. It was like life or death. And then when you don't slow down, it only makes it worse. But I just kept rejecting that I was depressed because I really thought that that was a death sentence. I really like genuinely did not understand mental health. I didn't get it. Nobody talked about it. this was like Phelps era that's my era of Olympics right and so it was do well and if you're not doing well just disappear for a while figure it out and then come back when you're ready there wasn't like a conversation um and and coaches like I remember they were like weirded out by it like when I had to go back to Oregon my my new coach and my old coach were just like okay like yeah and they're good people but they like it was like I was a weirdo well that goes back to something you also talked about in your book about mental health illness is often invisible yeah you know and this idea that like when you have a broken leg you know your trainers and your coaches and stuff know how to deal with it yes and you know how to deal with it and it's glamorous like you have like a brace on your arm like everyone signs a cast and takes care of you It brings you soup, gives you free time off, whatever, if you're at work.

28:22But when you're mentally suffering, that's what I think is one of the reasons I'm so passionate about helping people in the space is it really is invisible. And also when you're in it, you're not likely to feel well enough to own that. Like even if you could like wear a hat that said it, I think that would bring about a whole other type of conflict just because it would feel like something you were deciding or maybe a doctor. But like it's not the same as an MRI, which is so objective. Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's hard when it's invisible. This year, I met some engineers from Nike who invented a new type of office chair that has not only changed my life, but actually saved my back, especially because I am on about five hours of Zoom calls every day.