If You Feel Overwhelmed, Stressed, or Stuck, Listen to This

Mel Robbins 0:00 Today on The Mel Robbins Podcast, how to feel less overwhelmed and less stressed, and tools for navigating this crazy and exhausting world with extraordinary therapist and best-selling author Kier Gaines. Hey, it's Mel. And before we jump into this extraordinary episode with the one and only Kier Gaines, my team was showing me this, 51% of you who watch The Mel Robbins Podcast here on YouTube are not subscribers. If that subscribe button is lit up, it means you're not subscribed. Would you please do me a favor and hit the subscribe button? My goal is to get that number to 40%. I know you love supporting people who support you, and that's the best way to support me and the team here, and extraordinary experts like Kier Gaines, who, by the way, is gonna blow you away. Thank you in advance for hitting subscribe. I truly appreciate it. And trust me, you're gonna be so happy you're here 'cause this conversation is extraordinary. Kier Gaines, it is an absolute pleasure to welcome you to The Mel Robbins Podcast.

Kier Gaines 1:05 Absolutely crazy. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me, and your beautiful staff welcome me in, and it feels like a very, um, like a very warm place. It's warm and inviting.

Mel Robbins 1:14 It is.

Kier Gaines 1:14 Yeah, I like that.

Mel Robbins 1:15 Yeah, it is. Uh, that's how I roll through life. You know, I think that there's a lot of people, or at least I used to be this way-

Kier Gaines 1:21 Mm.

Mel Robbins 1:22 I would wake up in a bad mood.

Kier Gaines 1:23 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:24 And at times in my life, there was a particular reason why, but I think it became a habit to wake up and be in a bad mood for no particular reason.

Kier Gaines 1:35 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:36 And so I decided that I would just become the kind of person that went through life with an optimistic, warm, and positive outlook, and it really started to shift everything.

Kier Gaines 1:48 Yeah. It... I feel like when you project that out into the world, you also invite it into your life.

Mel Robbins 1:53 Mm.

Kier Gaines 1:53 Um, I'm not quite where you are yet. I'm, I'm, I'm still a little... I'm getting into my old curmudgeon guy-

Mel Robbins 2:00 [laughs]

Kier Gaines 2:00 ... where I wake up some mornings, I'm like, "Grr, I don't want to talk to anyone. Don't look at me." But, um, just taking a moment and, and being grateful and understanding that I can hold two complex things at one time. Like I can be grateful for the life that I have and all the amazing things that are going on, and I can also be frustrated by some of the BS that comes along with it. It just gives me a little bit more harmony. I don't know if I believe in balance, but it gives me a little bit more harmony in my life. It's a more authentic way for me to live.

Mel Robbins 2:28 I think that's the best way for all of us to live.

Kier Gaines 2:31 Oh, I agree.

Mel Robbins 2:32 And it's a really hard skill to hold space for those two things.

Kier Gaines 2:35 It is.

Mel Robbins 2:36 You, you're already, like, starting to drop life-changing small little things. And-

Kier Gaines 2:41 I just speak from the heart, Mel Robbins

Mel Robbins 2:43 ... Yes, you do. And here's how I want you to start. I wanna start by having you just prepare the person who's listening. Buckle up. Like, what is it that could change about their life or their relationships if they truly lean in and take to heart everything that you are about to drop in this episode today?

Kier Gaines 3:04 If you lean in and take to heart everything we're gonna share, what I believe will change for you is the way you manage your stress, the way you manage your relationships, the way you manage the things that are happening in your life. Because it'll go from just you reacting to things, just bouncing off of every single thing that's happening in your life like a pinball, just bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. It'll go from that to you moving with more intentionality, clarity, and way more awareness. You know, the world will have you believe that everything is... it falls into the category of this insatiable desire for hurry. You have to hurry up and do it. You're always in a rush. There's always another thing. There's always a to-do list to check off. No, sometimes the best thing you can do is to pause, and that's counterintuitive because we, we don't pause. We don't... I don't have time to pause. I don't have time to break. I don't have time to think about it. I just have to do, do, do. But when you pause, you're able to gain more control over what's going on with you. You're able to sit and just be. You're able to look at things from a thousand-mile view. When you on the dance floor, Mel, it's hard to tell what's going on around you. You just see motion and bodies. But from the balcony, you get a different perspective. But you can't get that view and you can't get that perspective if you're constantly reactive, if you're not responding to things, if you're not accumulating any intel and information, if you don't have any wherewithal, if you're just on go. I get why you think you need to be on go all the time, but give me a chance to prove you wrong, 'cause I don't think that's the case and I do not think that's beneficial for you.

Mel Robbins 4:48 Why

Mel Robbins 4:49 is it so hard to just exist and live in the world today?

Kier Gaines 4:55 Oh, my goodness, for a million reasons. What a crazy world we live in. Ah. You know, the world isn't really designed to support your peace and happiness.

Mel Robbins 5:09 Mm.

Kier Gaines 5:10 That's not how the world is designed. The world is designed for your productivity and for your attention, and that's it. It's meant to absorb your, your attention and churn productivity out of you. And l- works for the world. That's how we get buildings and how we have infrastructure and how we have all these beautiful creature comforts around us. Sucks for the individual, though. It zaps you of almost everything that you hold dear, everything that's warm and fuzzy about you. But if you just take a look at where we spend the majority of our time, social media, watching the news, being subject to marketing. Well, how do these things make you feel? What are they designed to do? Social media is designed to make you feel like you're behind. Marketing is designed to make you feel like you're being left out. The news is designed... I don't know what the news was o-

Mel Robbins 6:06 Oh, yeah

Kier Gaines 6:06 ... was originally designed for, but now it's designed to scare the hell out of you. This is billions and billions and billions of dollars engineered against your own wellness, and a lot of us don't even have a counter-strategy. We have nothing to combat that whatsoever. So in my work, what I, what I do and what I call an emotional readiness architecture, ERA, which is just a, a really sexy f-

Mel Robbins 6:32 [laughs]

Kier Gaines 6:32 ... fancy therapist way of saying your emotional fitness, how prepared you are to deal with the slings and arrows of life, how well you can traverse and navigate the things that are happening to you every single day. Um, it's, it's never too late to gain those tools. It's just a matter of how you go about doing it, what's your guidance, and what's your instruction. That's why I'm such a fan of therapy. I don't know where you are, person who's listening to this, with therapy. You may th- think therapy's amazing. You may think therapy is okay, but you haven't found the right therapist. Trust me, I get it. Or you may think that therapy is complete BS, which I, I understand if you've had a bad experience, but that guidance piece is so important because it's hard to protect ourselves from messages that we, we don't have any control over. Again, you- when you open up your social media feed, you are being subjected to tens and millions of bad takes and half-chewed ideas unsolicited and without your consent, and it's like you're drinking from a fire hose. If you drink from a water fountain, it quenches your thirst.

Mel Robbins 7:39 Mm.

Kier Gaines 7:40 If you drink from a fire hose, it breaks your teeth.

Mel Robbins 7:42 Mm.

Kier Gaines 7:43 [laughs] And every single day, we're getting our teeth broken by opinions and views that we don't necessarily care for or jive with. What do y- how do you protect yourself? What do you have to secure your ability to move through guilt and shame and blame and to build self-awareness and to secure self-honesty? And I realize that there's a gap where people don't have that, and Mel, that's been my life's work.

Mel Robbins 8:12 Well, I loved what you said about emotional fitness.

Kier Gaines 8:16 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 8:17 And the reason why is some of the words that have been... Like, first of all, I don't like the word mental health-

Kier Gaines 8:25 Mm

Mel Robbins 8:25 ... because I feel-

Kier Gaines 8:25 Ooh, give it to me. Why you don't like it?

Mel Robbins 8:26 Well, I don't like it because it feels like there's something wrong with you.

Kier Gaines 8:30 [laughs] That's, that's the way a lot of people feel, actually.

Mel Robbins 8:33 You know what I mean?

Kier Gaines 8:33 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 8:33 Like, if we're talking about mental health, like there's something wrong with my brain and the way I think, and depressed and anxiety, and all this stuff that I'm... And I love the idea of m- emotional fitness-

Kier Gaines 8:45 Mm

Mel Robbins 8:45 ... because what, what I immediately think is strength. Because I'm constantly saying to my kids, "It's not about mental health. Like, mental health means happiness. Don't you want that? Mental health means you can bounce back. Mental health means you're self-aware enough to know that something on the outside is getting on the inside-

Kier Gaines 9:01 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 9:01 ... and it's time to, like, st-" Like, this is about power.

Kier Gaines 9:04 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 9:05 This isn't about, like, weakness. And so I love what you said about emotional fitness, 'cause I want that. I want that kind of strength. I want the ability to dodge the arrows that are being shot at me. I want the ability to be strategic and to be stronger, especially in the world today-

Kier Gaines 9:23 Mm

Mel Robbins 9:23 ... and not so, like, reactive.

Kier Gaines 9:26 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 9:26 I'm not talking numb. I'm just talking able to catch myself and strategically respond to what's happening versus constantly breaking my teeth from the fire hose. And

Mel Robbins 9:38 you mentioned tools, and I know we're gonna get into them, but can you preview a little bit about what you actually mean when you say there are tools that you can learn and skills that you can build that strengthen your emotional toughness, especially for a world that we're living in today?

Kier Gaines 9:56 What you're hinting towards is what a lot of people think about mental health, but I think we're moving towards more resilience.

Mel Robbins 10:04 Mm.

Kier Gaines 10:04 And resilience is one of the tools that you use within emotional fitness.

Mel Robbins 10:08 Now, resilience sounds kind of cushy. So how do you define, what does it mean if you are somebody that has built the skill of resilience?

Kier Gaines 10:18 It means that you're able to bounce back. It means that bad things happen to you, but bad things happen to you and. The bad thing that happened to you is not the punctuation on the sentence. You still have work to do. Things are hard. Things are hard and. I'm sad. I'm sad and. You're able to still move through. I'm a big football fan. I'm a huge football fan, and I don't, I don't know, person who's listening, I don't know if you're a football fan, but, but allow... Just indulge me for a second, please. In football, there's a position called a running back, and I'm pretty sure this ain't gonna be my last football reference for today, so forgive me if you hate the sport.

Mel Robbins 10:53 [laughs]

Kier Gaines 10:53 But when you're a running back, you're the person in the backfield who takes the ball-

Mel Robbins 10:57 Yep

Kier Gaines 10:57 ... and you're supposed to run up the field and get a touchdown. That's, that's your job. The problem is, there are 300-pound dudes trying to kill you and between you and the touchdown, and sometimes one of these guys stops you, and you don't always immediately get tackled. You don't always immediately get tackled, but any good running back coach is gonna tell you, even when you get stood up, even when you have five people piling on your back, you never stop chopping your feet. You never stop your feet from moving. You're always supposed to keep those feet going. That's resilience. Even when you hit the 300-pound obstacle, even when you can't see what the end zone is like, even when you feel hopeless, even when you feel down, even when you feel unsupported, you keep chopping your feet and progressively moving forward, but that takes self-honesty. You gotta be honest about the circumstances that you're surrounded in. You gotta be honest, not just about your strengths, but about your deficits too, and not allow that to sink you, sink you into a hole of self-deprecation, where you only say negative things about yourself. No. Everybody has strengths and weaknesses. What makes you immune to that? I don't... I'm not afraid of my weaknesses. I hold them tight, and then that allows me to say, "Mel, I'm not very good at this thing. You think you can come in and help me with this?" You think you could tell me what you did, as opposed to me trying to just do it solo? That's how I keep my feet chopping. That's how I build resilience. That's one of thousands and thousands of tools that we use in order to make sure that our wellness is intact.

Mel Robbins 12:23 And we're gonna talk about a bunch of them today, and I had the honor of getting an advance copy of-

Kier Gaines 12:30 Ay

Mel Robbins 12:30 ... your book, It All Starts When You Do.

Kier Gaines 12:33 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 12:33 This is going to be a blockbuster. I read a lot of books. This one is fantastic.

Kier Gaines 12:39 Thank you, Mel Robbins.

Mel Robbins 12:40 It is

Mel Robbins 12:41 so relatable, it is so entertaining to read, and it has so many takeaways, and I wanna read to you-

Kier Gaines 12:47 Okay

Mel Robbins 12:47 ... from what will be this blockbuster of a bestseller that's changing lives.

Kier Gaines 12:51 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 12:52 This is page 24.

Kier Gaines 12:54 Okay.

Mel Robbins 12:55 And the chapter is entitled Do You Accept the Uncomfortable Truths in Life? The problem here is obvious. If you keep listening to that deep down voice, you'll never get what you want out of life. You'll keep thinking that happiness, financial freedom, love, peace, and success are for other people, not you. In those moments, what's happening is that you're a person experiencing insecurity, and you have to follow the trail of breadcrumb to figure out what you're insecure about. You need to know the source of your insecurity so that you can treat it. That diagnosis is the first critical step in starting to feel more secure and having more faith in yourself.

Kier Gaines 13:43 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 13:44 Can you talk a little bit about that and this sense of, "I just don't believe in myself. I feel insecure"?

Kier Gaines 13:53 Yeah. I don't believe in myself is one of the uncomfortable truths that I talk about in the very beginning of the book, and what a uncomfortable truth is, it's, it's a part of our lived reality that we are afraid to accept. We either think it's some type of indictment on our strength and capabilities. We think that it's a statement that we lost, that we're waving the white flag. We try to avoid it at all costs, and we're very good at avoiding things. We have a lot of fancy psycho language now for avoidance. But the uncomfortable truth isn't something that you run from, it's something that you walk towards-

Mel Robbins 14:26 Hmm

Kier Gaines 14:26 ... because you can't overcome something that you refuse to acknowledge is true. So with insecurities, in my practice, I find that they come from a, a lotta different places. Two consistent places that I find, either one is some type of striving for perfection that you fall short of... By the way, perfection is not a thing, and even if you hit your idea of perfection now, it won't be your idea of perfection in five years. It's a frivolous journey. Or two, it comes from a recent failure, uh, or some type of loss that you've taken that was significant to you. It wa- it was meaningful. Um, but yeah, insecurities, the way that we walk out of them, one of the tools that I like to use are I'm statements. I'm sure you've heard a lot of times about I statements when you're having a disagreement with your partner. Instead of saying, "You never wash the dishes," you say, "I would like to have a house where the dishes are washed, and I don't feel like I have enough support in that." Because you take the blame off of the person. You make the problem the problem. You don't make the person the problem. But these are I'm statements, and I'm statements, I am, really help you identify where the soil is the most fertile for your insecurities to grow.

Mel Robbins 15:39 Hmm.

Kier Gaines 15:40 So I'm blank, or I'm always blank. The- whatever's in that blank is gonna be a good indication of where your roof is leaking. So if you say, um, "I'm such a, I, I, I'm always finding a way," or are you saying, "I'm always messing this up?"

Mel Robbins 15:59 Hmm.

Kier Gaines 16:00 Are you saying, "I'm such a smart person," or, "I'm such a dummy"? That's a, that's gonna tell you where your internal dialogue is and where some of those leaks are coming from, because you don't always find your insecurities. Sometimes your insecurities find you.

Mel Robbins 16:18 Give me an example.

Kier Gaines 16:19 Oh, my goodness. Uh, I have... Okay, I'll use myself as an example. I don't get to do this in my sessions a lot. [laughs] 'Cause it's not about me, it's about the person. All right. So I have insecurities around parenthood.

Mel Robbins 16:34 You do?

Kier Gaines 16:35 See, look.

Mel Robbins 16:38 Well, you wanna know why I react like that?

Kier Gaines 16:39 Why?

Mel Robbins 16:40 Because I first bumped into your content-

Kier Gaines 16:44 Yeah

Mel Robbins 16:44 ... and it was so jaw-droppingly profound, and I can't remember if you were brushing your daughter's hair or you're doing something about a bike, and you were in a garage, and you were calmly talking about something that went down, 'cause you have two young daughters-

Kier Gaines 17:01 Yeah

Mel Robbins 17:02 ... and two, and kids tend to act up.

Kier Gaines 17:05 All the time.

Mel Robbins 17:06 And then you were very calmly explaining, and I can't even quite remember what it was, but as I watched you and you were explaining something about how your daughter reacting was appropriate for her age-

Kier Gaines 17:20 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 17:20 ... you reacting to your daughter being upset, even though you had a busy day at work, even though you had a lot going on, and you were, like, like, you're, I can see you in the gar- and you were like, "Yeah, I don't wanna be cleaning the garage." But you choosing not to react to her and modeling something different, I watched this, I sent it to my husband, Chris. I said, "This explains everything I did wrong as a parent."

Kier Gaines 17:46 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 17:48 I now know why I pay for my adult kids to have therapy, because of all the things-

Kier Gaines 17:53 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 17:53 ... that I was completely reactive about, that were-

Kier Gaines 17:56 Yeah

Mel Robbins 17:56 ... showed that I was emotionally immature and, you know, cr- a- and it was so powerful what you were modeling, that you have become somebody that I believe is leading the way in modeling the way to parent extremely effectively because you're managing yourself while also building up strength and independence in your children.

Kier Gaines 18:22 Yeah. But let's-

Mel Robbins 18:23 Can you, can you receive that?

Kier Gaines 18:24 I receive that.

Mel Robbins 18:25 Okay.

Kier Gaines 18:25 And that's the absurdity of insecurity sometimes. Going back to what I originally said, the insecurities come from two things. One, a recent failure, and this is me catastrophizing... Catastro- I suck at that word.

Mel Robbins 18:38 [laughs] Me too.

Kier Gaines 18:38 Making a catastrophe out of a failure. And the other thing is, uh, some, some strike of perfection that I'm trying to reach.

Mel Robbins 18:46 Mm.

Kier Gaines 18:46 I have this idea of what parenthood looks like in my mind that is not realistic, and I think a lot of us have that. It doesn't take into account your own lived experience, the fact that you're tired, the fact that you have complex adult stuff going on. Me-- And thank you for the compliment, I, I really do receive that, and I hear you, but it doesn't take away my insecurities about parenthood.

Mel Robbins 19:08 Mm.

Kier Gaines 19:09 And sometimes I really have to check myself. I real- And this is where the resilience comes in. I really have to check myself and realize that I'm allowed to be human, or I'm, I'm allow... If I'm feeling insecure because my daughter isn't doing the best in math, I automatically take her failures and make 'em my personal failures. But that's not happening to me. It's not happening to me, and it's not something that's necessarily formed against me.

Mel Robbins 19:37 What do you mean it's not happening to you?

Kier Gaines 19:39 Well, it's her, her not being the best that she can be in math is just a, a circumstance of something that needs to change. It's not necessarily something that's happening to me. It's more of a indicator that perhaps we need to adjust something.

Mel Robbins 19:52 Okay. I, I, I wanna stop right there.

Kier Gaines 19:54 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 19:55 Because as you're listening to Kier, I want you to stop and think about a situation in your life, because we all have it, where we-

Kier Gaines 20:03 Break it down to 'em now

Mel Robbins 20:04 ... Yeah, where we literally because of what your either kid is doing-

Kier Gaines 20:10 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 20:10 ... or what's happening with your parents-

Kier Gaines 20:12 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 20:13 ... or what's happening with your partner-

Kier Gaines 20:15 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 20:15 ... that you think that the fact that your partner is outta shape or put on weight, or you think because your adult kid is struggling in their 20s, that it is a reflection on you.

Kier Gaines 20:29 No, not always.

Mel Robbins 20:30 But you just, you just said something I think is really important as a tool, and I'd love to have you unpack it, which is, how do you catch yourself when you recognize that your nitpicking on your spouse isn't actually about them losing weight, it's you managing what you think other people think of you?

Kier Gaines 20:51 Oh, now we're getting into-

Mel Robbins 20:51 You see what I'm saying?

Kier Gaines 20:52 ... w- Oh, no, I see what you're saying.

Mel Robbins 20:53 And so, yeah, and now... And 'cause you were just exposing that if, if your daughter's not doing well in math, you immediate collapse to like, "I'm not doing a good job as a parent," and you said very quickly, which is why I wanna expand this a little bit, "No, no, no, no. There's a different way to look at this. We have a circumstance. We have a situation that needs attention-"

Kier Gaines 21:11 Yeah

Mel Robbins 21:11 ... "but this is not a reflection on me. What I do about this is."

Kier Gaines 21:15 Yeah. Yeah. That, I think that goes back to resilience and greater awareness. It's easy... You're the easiest person to blame in your life. What do you, what... If you blame someone else, you run the risk of rupturing and losing that relationship or them being mad at you. Mel, what you gonna leave yourself?

Mel Robbins 21:32 [laughs] No.

Kier Gaines 21:34 W- W- Where you gonna go? [laughs] It's very easy for you to make yourself the little whipping boy of all of the negative experiences that are happening in your life. So what I ask myself is, "Okay, what else can this be attributed to?"

Mel Robbins 21:47 Hmm.

Kier Gaines 21:48 I used to have... My first car was this car called a 1992 Buick Roadmaster. I was in love with it, but it's basically a refrigerator on wheels.

Mel Robbins 21:57 [laughs]

Kier Gaines 21:57 [laughs] I paid $1,400 for, from it from a auto auction, and it broke down every other week. And sometimes I would try to cut the car on, and it wouldn't work, or there'd just be steam popping up out of the hood. And my first thing was so, it was such a catastrophic way of thinking. You know, "The engine's dead. The, the engine's messed up." But when something breaks on your car, the cheapest and most effective way to try to problem solve is to deal with the easiest to fix option first.

Mel Robbins 22:27 Hmm.

Kier Gaines 22:27 Is there a tube that may be leaking? 'Cause that's a $10 fix. Replacing the engine is a $2,500 fix. Okay, maybe a tube's not leaking. Is there a seal that's leaking? Is my water pump okay? Is my radiator okay? I walk back to easier, more simpler fix- fixes. What else can this problem be attributed to that is, that isn't necessarily something that I did? And also, you have to understand that blame, it grabs all of our awareness. It is a brilliant awareness grabber. But it's not helpful. It's not a helpful tool in your relationship. It's not a helpful tool in your self-messaging. Blame is not helpful. Accountability is helpful because accountability says, "I'm gon- These things are my responsibility, and I'm gonna be empowered to actually do something about it."

Mel Robbins 23:12 Hmm.

Kier Gaines 23:12 Blame is just looking for somebody to pin it all on. And what does... It makes you feel better a little bit in the short term, sure, but in the long term, what does it accomplish? What does it change? What does it transform?

Mel Robbins 23:23 Kier,

Mel Robbins 23:24 I have so many just specific things to ask you, but before we, uh, go any further, I know that this is going to be a episode that so many people send to the men in their life-

Kier Gaines 23:37 Okay

Mel Robbins 23:37 ... their partners, their brothers, their sons, their dads. I would love to have you speak directly to the guy-

Kier Gaines 23:45 Okay

Mel Robbins 23:46 ... who got this in a text, and because it was you, they hit play, or because it was their wife who said, "You really need to listen to this dude."

Kier Gaines 23:55 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 23:55 "I think this is gonna really help you at work." Right?

Kier Gaines 23:57 Her... If you're listening to audio, her head is shaking while she's doing it.

Mel Robbins 24:00 Yeah, yeah, I am. It's like a bobblehead right now. And so I, I... Because that's kinda how I feel when... L- that's the intention.

Kier Gaines 24:06 Yeah, yeah.

Mel Robbins 24:06 You know? When I'm sending that link to my brother or to my, my husband or my son. "You, you need to listen to this," and it's typically an episode with a guy.

Kier Gaines 24:13 Okay.

Mel Robbins 24:14 I would love to have you speak to the, the guy- Who actually have planned this

Kier Gaines 24:18 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 24:19 Because somebody loves them and thinks you can make a difference. What is available to a guy that is so powerful if you build mental fitness-

Kier Gaines 24:32 Oh my goodness

Mel Robbins 24:32 ... and you have more peace in your life?

Kier Gaines 24:34 One thing that I need you to understand is that in a boy's maturation, and I said this before in, in an interview-

Mel Robbins 24:43 What is matur- that's a big word. What does ma-

Kier Gaines 24:45 Maturation, so maturation's just the state of your maturity-

Mel Robbins 24:47 Okay

Kier Gaines 24:47 ... as you were growing up, as, uh, in your upbringing, in your development, as you were becoming a full person. Every single stop along the way is designed to separate you from your emotions. And I already said it, you're really, really good at the things that you practice. So when you are a little teeny boy and you cry and you just want your mom to pick you up and hug you, somebody's probably gonna say, "Hey, stop holding that boy like that. You're gonna make him soft," separating you from m- your emotions. When you become a little kid and you fall off of your bike and you cry because your knee hurts, it's bleeding, somebody's gonna tell you, "Hey, get up. Get back on that bike. Stop crying." When you become a, a young man, when you're a teenager and the person you love broke up with you, they say, "Hey, hey, it's other fish in the sea. What you crying over another person for? Why you crying?" And then you get married or you have a, a long-term partner, and you begin to express your displeasure, or you begin to express your frustration, or they say something that's hurtful or inflammatory or just m- makes you not feel very good, and they say, "What are you, what are you..." This is a new word that you sassy. "Oh, now you being a sassy man. Huh, what are you, in your feelings?" And all of these are designed to separate you from your emotions.

Mel Robbins 26:03 Hmm.

Kier Gaines 26:04 And what happens is your internal, like, your internal sense of being gets thrown off and off-whack, where now you can't access those emotions when you need to. And then the, you don't have the, the ability to know the complexity of what you feel. So, like, there will be an emotion that happens and you'll be angry. There'll be something that happens to evoke an angry emotion. And most people say anger is a secondary emotion. I think it's a primary emotion, but some-

Mel Robbins 26:29 What does that even mean, secondary or primary?

Kier Gaines 26:30 Secondary emotion is just, w- is, is... Secondary, when they say anger is a secondary emotion, what they're saying is there's something under the anger that's causing the anger, which is true, but I have a different interpretation.

Mel Robbins 26:42 Tell me.

Kier Gaines 26:42 I think it's primary, which means it comes first. The anger is the first feeling that you feel. But when you sit with that anger for a little bit and you realize what else may be attached to it, you realize that you're angry because you're disappointed. Oh, so you're not just angry, bro, you're also disappointed, and that disappointment is what we call a secondary emotion, which is the second emotion. Why are you disappointed? And then when you sit with that disappointment and you process it enough, you feel disappointed because you feel hopeless. Oh, so you feel hopeless, and you're trying to solve for anger, but what you really feel is also hopelessness.

Mel Robbins 27:24 Hmm.

Kier Gaines 27:25 If you have a migraine, I don't think allergy medicine is gonna fix that. So now you're trying to... You have a prescription for a feeling that's not working.

Mel Robbins 27:35 Hmm.

Kier Gaines 27:36 And you remain angry. And when you're angry out in the world, anger does multiple things. It gets attention. Because I know men have all the power in the world, absolutely, I get it, all the power in society and infrastructure. Patriarchy's a real thing. But in men's individual lives, men don't feel powerful. They don't feel powerful. So what happens is when you get angry, you get attention. You get... You can regain some of your power and control, but it's at the expense of your relationships.

Mel Robbins 28:02 Hmm.

Kier Gaines 28:03 So if you don't hear anything else I say, just know that we, men have been designed to rebrand their emotions into something that is way more palatable socially, way more acceptable socially. It's, s- a, a man being sad? Like, who cares? Cry, cry me a river, build a bridge, and get over it. You have all the power. Who cares? But that sadness permeates not only into your family, but into the deepest parts of your life and your being.

Mel Robbins 28:30 Hmm.

Kier Gaines 28:31 And if you don't have enough practice accepting that sadness without making yourself feel bad about it, you won't know how to fix and solve it. You won't know what medicine to take in order to, to, to remedy the wound. The manliest thing you can do isn't to ignore your emotions. That's been the motif for, like, the past 30, 40 years. I get it. Maybe when we were out West and the Marlboro Man was a thing, and you lose your kid to some type of illness at the age of five, when life was hard on the frontier, maybe that was true. We live in a different society. I have a phone, and I can, I can get a sandwich right now if I want it.

Mel Robbins 29:08 [laughs]

Kier Gaines 29:08 I can listen to whatever song I want. I don't even eat fish with a head on it anymore, 'cause I don't have to.

Mel Robbins 29:13 [laughs]

Kier Gaines 29:13 Okay? We don't... We're not those people anymore. [laughs] That, that time is done, and we need to adapt with the time. And, and I think just masculinity is having a really tough time adapting, but you don't have to. And instead of rebranding and avoiding your feelings, actually understanding them and having words to them and controlling them is how you become, as my mentor Jason Wilson says, a comprehensive man.

Mel Robbins 29:39 You said that while men may express anger-

Kier Gaines 29:42 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 29:43 ... that's actually not what they're feeling. So as a therapist, and with the global reach that you have, what do you want us to know about what the typical man is actually feeling underneath the pressure of life, given that you've had a lifetime of being separated from your emotion? Just so we can start with a little bit of compassion, because, you know, this is an area that I think is really important for women to understand, too.

Kier Gaines 30:14 Yeah. Yeah. It is, and it's also important that women understand that men are not women's problems to solve. But-

Mel Robbins 30:21 We'll come back to that.

Kier Gaines 30:22 Yeah. [laughs] That's a, that's a whole nother thing. Um, you know, I th- I believe that underneath everything is a sense of fear, and it's a sense of fear that doesn't have the faculties or, like, the, the momentum, the understanding, the touchpoints, the, the amount of... the fingers on it. It, that fear doesn't have a place to go and doesn't have a place to be processed. It doesn't have a safe place to be expressed. Um, and I typically say there's two types of men. There are men who are afraid, and there are men who are terrified of being afraid.

Mel Robbins 30:58 Hmm. What's the difference?

Kier Gaines 30:59 The men who are terrified of being afraid put, put up a bigger front. That's where we get the machismo. That's where we get a lot of red pill content. That's where we get a lot of men not, not indulging in masculinity or, um, not executing masculinity, but performing it, and when you perform something, that's... it's not authentic. It's not authentic to who you are. It's not gonna be helpful to the people around you in the same capacity. It's a performance. And I w- I would love if men, if we just take a step back from performing and focus on actually being. Be the thing. Don't perform it. Be the thing. But to be the thing is a lot harder than to perform it, 'cause you can put up a facade. I can lie to you. I can act tough like I'm a million feet tall in this interview, and then I go cry in the car. What is the point of being, uh, having all of these social wins and being some big giant socially but being a personal failure? What matters most to you? Is it how you appear in the world to everyone else, or how you appear to yourself in the quiet moments? 'Cause that's who you really are.

Mel Robbins 32:04 Can you give

Mel Robbins 32:05 the person listening an assignment for exactly what they should do when they're done listening to this episode with a male friend of theirs?

Kier Gaines 32:15 Let's do it.

Mel Robbins 32:16 Okay.

Kier Gaines 32:16 How about this? Let's do a heavy lift and a light lift.

Mel Robbins 32:18 Great.

Kier Gaines 32:18 Because everybody ain't in the same place with this.

Mel Robbins 32:20 No kidding.

Kier Gaines 32:20 Different readiness. All right. So let's do light lift first. I want you to pick up the phone. I want you to call a friend that you have not talked to in more than two weeks. You don't have to have something to talk about. There might be some weirdness because you feel like you have to have a meeting agenda. I want you to call them. I don't want you to talk about business. I don't want you to talk about work. I want you to just talk about yourselves. It could be a three-minute phone call, but I want you to pick up the phone and just tap in, and if you need a, a template-

Mel Robbins 32:48 Yes

Kier Gaines 32:48 ... for something to say-

Mel Robbins 32:48 Yes, I do.

Kier Gaines 32:49 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 32:50 Tell me what to say, Kier.

Kier Gaines 32:51 I got you. I got you.

Mel Robbins 32:52 'Cause I've not called somebody in two years. I keep texting people.

Kier Gaines 32:55 Hey, no problem. And, and that's one of the points. That's why I feel so empty, because we need those real-life touchpoints. "Hey, bro, I haven't heard you, I haven't heard your voice in a while," or, "I haven't, I haven't heard from you in a minute, man. I was just thinking about you, bro. Just calling to check up. How you been?" And they may hit you with something. Oh, man, men love to hit you with the, "I can't, I can't complain." Push it a little bit.

Mel Robbins 33:14 What do I say?

Kier Gaines 33:15 Instead of saying... When they say you can't complain, "What's been going on good in your life? What's good in your life right now? What are you excited about? What's coming up next for you?" And then that's how you start the conversation. You share a little bit about yourself. Bro, you can get the hell off the phone-

Mel Robbins 33:28 [laughs]

Kier Gaines 33:29 ... if you're not comfortable. That's the light lift. Call somebody and check in on them. Heavier lift, schedule breakfast with one of your bros. Go out to breakfast or go out to lunch.

Mel Robbins 33:37 Breakfast. Why breakfast?

Kier Gaines 33:39 Because one of the problems with therapy is it's not really oriented the way that men externalize and talk about their problems. Men don't even have face-to-face conversations. We prefer shoulder-to-shoulder. In a lot of my therapy sessions, we toss a football back and forth because it's easy to do something. It's easier to talk about something that's hard when you're doing something that's easy and physical. We toss the football back and forth, or we toss the ball back and forth. We may play Connect 4. W- with my female clients, oh, we can just go. Sit down, and boom, we're off to the races. We're having a great session. With men, it's a lot harder to kinda get that, get that, uh, pump primed. So, um, breakfast is, talking over food takes away a lot of the angst and awkwardness of having a face-to-face conversation. It also allows you to share space without words.

Mel Robbins 34:26 Hmm.

Kier Gaines 34:27 Some people feel awkward when there are pauses in the conversation, but when you're stuffing your face full of cheese fries, it takes away the awkwardness. It's giving yourself a lower barrier to entry. It's, it's bringing that branch down to pick the fruit off. It's making it easy. Low-hanging fruit. Go out to breakfast.

Mel Robbins 34:43 I wanted to ask you about something you, you said just a couple minutes ago. Men are not women's problem to solve.

Kier Gaines 34:51 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 34:52 Let's unpack that.

Kier Gaines 34:53 All right.

Mel Robbins 34:54 Because when you talk about holding you close, holding you accountable-

Kier Gaines 34:57 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 34:58 ... I think we tend to fall to the accountable side and solving lots of problems for you, whether it's your weight or it's your motivation or it's your drinking or it's your tone of voice or it's your anger. So as a therapist, Kier, what do you want us to know about what we're doing wrong in our relationships with men and what we can start doing right?

Kier Gaines 35:21 You cannot want something for someone more than they want it for themselves. If you do, when the novelty or the newness or the excitement of this change wears off, you will be stuck holding all the baggage. And in our society, and this is something I didn't know about women until I became a therapist and started having a lot of female clients. In our society, women are praised and rewarded for overfunctioning.

Mel Robbins 35:48 What does that mean?

Kier Gaines 35:49 Overfunctioning is when you do way more than what's necessary in order to meet the goal, and we will clap women out of the building for overfunctioning to their own detriment. And a lot of times, we don't, we don't have a mechanism that says, "Hey, I'm gonna take some of this off of you because it's too much." And you get good at the things you practice. When you are a woman in, especially in Western civilization, if you are a woman who's practicing taking on too much, taking on too much, taking on too much, your button that tells you, "Hey, your bucket is not only full, but it's overflowing and flooding your apartment," that button gets broken So now you are a person holding everybody else's stuff.

Mel Robbins 36:31 Mm.

Kier Gaines 36:32 And a romantic relationship doesn't work when you are taking an inordinate or an unfair amount of the stuff, putting it on your back. It's supposed to be equity there. You all are supposed to take and give from each other. But when you make it your responsibility to take, take, take, take, take, take, take, and then you don't have that mechanism that says, "Hey, I'm going to give you a little bit of this 'cause it's too much," or you don't have a partner that you trust to accept the thing that you're gonna give them that's too much, it bogs you down.

Mel Robbins 36:59 You know,

Mel Robbins 37:00 it makes me think about the fact that a lot of people don't feel good about themselves unless somebody else is approving of everything that they're doing, right?

Kier Gaines 37:10 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 37:11 How do you get out of that trap?

Kier Gaines 37:13 Oh, my goodness. You have to really value what you think about yourself. You have to really value what you think about yourself more than what other people think about you, which is tough because society isn't really built that way. Society, we, we... There's nothing wrong with caring what other people think. There's nothing wrong with that. That in and of itself is not a problem, but when you care what other people think to the elimination of being cognizant, aware of, and deeply caring of what you think and how you present-

Mel Robbins 37:41 Mm-hmm

Kier Gaines 37:41 ... and what you want, then it becomes an issue because other people's opinions begin to override yours. And one of the ways that you do that is, ooh, a lot of people aren't gonna like this. You have to spend time with yourself by yourself.

Mel Robbins 37:54 You're right. I don't like that.

Kier Gaines 37:55 [laughs] I told you you weren't gonna like it. I told you. You have to spend time with yourself by yourself.

Mel Robbins 38:00 So give us an assignment. Like, if somebody recognizes they're always looking outside themselves for approval-

Kier Gaines 38:06 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 38:06 ... they're always looking to other people's opinions, they're always thinking about what other people might be thinking, kind of you're checking outside instead of checking inside-

Kier Gaines 38:14 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 38:15 ... and you recognize, "I don't really approve of myself. I'm not proud of myself," how do you begin this? What are you doing when you're spending time alone?

Kier Gaines 38:23 You have to, you have to practice being the person that you say you are. You have to-

Mel Robbins 38:27 Break that down for me.

Kier Gaines 38:28 You have, you have to practice being the person you say you are. If you believe yourself to be a kind and caring person, what are you doing on the weekends? Go do, go to a soup kitchen and donate your time. Go to a clothing drive and donate your time. Give yourself to community more to reaffirm and reinforce that you are the person that you say you are. If you say you're a helpful person, go be helpful to someone. Who in your family needs assistance? I just helped my cousin, who's 70-something years old, clean out her garage because I realized I wasn't spending enough time engaging with family.

Mel Robbins 38:58 Right.

Kier Gaines 38:58 And it reinforced the idea that I am a person who's centered on family. If you are a person who says, "I wanna read more books," sit your ass down and read a book.

Mel Robbins 39:08 [laughs]

Kier Gaines 39:08 Like, you, you have to do the things. We think that proving it is only for other people. No, you gotta prove it to yourself, too. How can you prove to yourself that you are the person that you, A, want to be, and B, the person that you say you are? But you gotta take those small steps. Be undistracted. That's another one. When's the last time that you weren't on your cell phone? When's the last time that you took a flight and you didn't use your cell phone or headphones or distracted yourself with some type of media and you just allowed your thoughts to exist? What do you do in the morning? Do you wake up and just sit in silence? When's the last time you didn't feel the need to fill space with words? How are you giving yourself an opportunity to even hear yourself think undistracted? That's how we get to know ourselves better. That's how we make sure that we are in tune with a version of ourselves that's updated software-

Mel Robbins 40:00 Mm

Kier Gaines 40:00 ... not the shadow of who we were 10 or 15 years ago.

Mel Robbins 40:03 I love that simple sentence that you said. You think you're proving who you are to everyone else, and we forget that you gotta prove it to yourself.

Kier Gaines 40:12 All the time.

Mel Robbins 40:12 It's like when nobody's there-

Kier Gaines 40:14 You're there

Mel Robbins 40:14 ... the things that you... Yeah, you're there.

Kier Gaines 40:16 You're there.

Mel Robbins 40:16 And the things that you're doing first thing in the morning when no one's watching, that's actually who you are.

Kier Gaines 40:20 Absolutely, and you gotta believe yourself. If, if you don't give yourself enough evidence to believe the things that are going on in your mind, it's just, it's, it's well-dressed wishful thinking.

Mel Robbins 40:31 You know, I think one thing that's really, like, uh, revolutionary, at least it was to me, is, you know, when I was in my 40s, I was miserable. For a lot of my life, I was miserable.

Kier Gaines 40:41 Talk about it.

Mel Robbins 40:42 Oh, my God. I talk about it a lot, but for my 40s in particular, we were struggling financially. I was such a jealous bitch. I was not the kind of person that you wanted to be friends with-

Kier Gaines 40:52 Mm

Mel Robbins 40:52 ... because I was the kind of friend that I was happy for you if I was doing better than you.

Kier Gaines 40:58 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 40:58 [laughs] But the second that you were doing good, I now feel bad.

Kier Gaines 41:03 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 41:04 And you don't wanna be friends with somebody who does not like themselves 'cause they end up hating on you.

Kier Gaines 41:11 Oh, for sure.

Mel Robbins 41:12 Right? And so I just remember constantly being burned up inside when I saw somebody winning. You know, getting to build the new kitchen while I've got liens on my house. You know, being able to take their kids on vacation or joining the fancy club, and, you know, I'm, I'm struggling to just pay the fricking bills and put gas in the tank.

Kier Gaines 41:34 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 41:34 And it just, it just was like, "Ugh." And I remember thinking at one point, "I don't want to spend the rest of my life as this version of myself. I want to be somebody that is confident. I want to be somebody that can celebrate somebody else's success authentically-"

Kier Gaines 41:57 For sure

Mel Robbins 41:58 ... without it, like, making it mean something horrible about me. I want to stop stewing in place and start doing the things that I know I'm capable of doing." I would love to hear you speak to that concept, that there is a version of you right now that is taking you in a certain direction, and you don't have to spend the rest of your life as this version of yourself.

Kier Gaines 42:24 Yeah. It's... Well, f- first things first, I think that's a brave thing to admit. Um- That you could sit and be present with who you were in the moment and not like that version of yourself. Self- self-love and self-honesty are two things that I talk about a lot, and I think you need that in order to make the change. There's two versions of us. There's this ideal self, which is who we ultimately wanna be, and then there's this actual self, which is like [chuckles] it's, it's who we are. If you can get closer to accepting who you actually are and learning that the person who you ideally would like to be is just a fictitious character in your mind that you don't have to aspire to, I think that's a great way to start to pull some self-honesty.

Mel Robbins 43:12 Hmm.

Kier Gaines 43:12 If you can see yourself reacting to something that's not the way that you would like to ideally, I think stopping and saying it out loud, "You know what? I don't like the way I reacted to that," and choosing to move in a different direction, I think that's doing some of the pre-work. I like to ask people that I know, love, and trust, "What do you see when you see me? What do you see? How do I usually react to this thing?" And I listen to them, and it does not feel good, 'cause sometimes they keep it a little too real. Sometimes it burns. But it's valuable information because I wouldn't be able to see that by myself.

Mel Robbins 43:46 You've been very open

Mel Robbins 43:47 about, uh, your diagnosis of depression.

Kier Gaines 43:50 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 43:51 What does progress look like when you're depressed or when you're feeling anxious?

Kier Gaines 43:57 Mm. It doesn't look the way you expect it to, I'll tell you that. You have to shrink your expectations in the moment. Anxiety is a beast because anxious feelings-- And with anxiety and depression, usually where there's smoke, there's fire. Where there's one, there's usually the other. That's just how it goes. Or there's typically the other. So with anxiety, you have to understand that it attaches a narrative to your thoughts. It's your brain trying to predict what's happening next without enough information, so it makes you feel terrible. And it's a constant... It, it compromises the way that you feel. And depression is a mood disorder. It, it's going to distort the way that you're oriented to your own feelings or oriented to the world around you. So you're a little compromised in the moment. You're not bad, you're not broken. You're just a little compromised. And when you're not working at 100% efficiency-

Mel Robbins 44:48 Hmm

Kier Gaines 44:48 ... it's hard to have the goal to complete a 100% efficient task. So you gotta shrink your expectations to meet the moment.

Mel Robbins 44:54 Okay.

Kier Gaines 44:54 We live in a society where thriving is typically the goal. The goal is to thrive. You're supposed to get out here and be the best that you can be. But, uh, but with anxiety and depression, sometimes the goal isn't to thrive, it's to survive the moment. A lot of times in session, people think of, of doing well as getting, on a scale of one to 10, from a two to a five, from a five to a eight, from a eight to a 10. That's amazing. With depression and anxiety, sometimes we're trying to get back to zero. And a win when you have depression sometimes is getting from a negative five to a negative four. That's a win, 'cause we're trying to get back to zero. We're trying to get back to baseline.

Mel Robbins 45:29 Hmm.

Kier Gaines 45:30 Sometimes with depression and anxiety, a win is when you go from negative five and you slide to negative six, a win is being able to not slide down to negative eight. You understand what I'm saying?

Mel Robbins 45:43 I understand what you're saying.

Kier Gaines 45:44 It's stopping the slide. It's, it's, it's a very difficult way to live your life when you have an idealistic i- you have a very i- idealistic viewpoint of what it is that you're supposed to do and what it is that you're supposed to accomplish. You just have to survive the moment. Let's survive the moment. Once we get past this, is this the best we can do? What's possible for us today? Can we get some sunlight today? Can we get some food in our system? Do we feel like being a part of community, calling a friend and having somebody sit with us? Do we need a little bit of solitude right now? 'Cause solitude is not isolation, and sometimes solitude is medicine.

Mel Robbins 46:23 Hmm.

Kier Gaines 46:23 Are we ashamed of the way that we appear? We don't want people to see us? Do we need to feel love? Do we need to feel understood? That's step one. Step two is how do we go about getting that? Do we have the energy to get it? Not tomorrow. Let's not worry about tomorrow. Right now, can we survive the moment right now? Can we get that for ourselves? That's a win. Shrink the expectations in order to meet the moment.

Mel Robbins 46:44 For somebody

Mel Robbins 46:45 that is either in the slide-

Kier Gaines 46:47 Mm

Mel Robbins 46:47 ... or they have somebody that they love who is sliding, do you have specific recommendations for what you could do first or s- just small things? 'Cause you mentioned getting outside, taking a shower. Like, what are a couple things that someone can hang on to specifically that, as a therapist, these tend to just, even in the moment, stop somebody from sliding further?

Kier Gaines 47:17 A number one, get yourself connected with a licensed mental health professional. A number one. A number one, just so you can have another person in the room who sees what you're going through. They have a history of dealing with these things.

Mel Robbins 47:32 Hmm.

Kier Gaines 47:32 They can see your symptoms, and they can give you a realistic treatment plan on what to do to start to climb out of this thing. They can also give you a realistic idea of where you are in the process and, more importantly, where you can go, um, and, and also tell you what you need. For some people, I, I know a lot of people don't approve or they feel a certain way about medicine or getting medicated. Meds exist for a reason, and for some people, y- you gotta take your meds, big dog. Like, that's why you feel that way.

Mel Robbins 47:58 [chuckles]

Kier Gaines 47:58 You gotta take your meds, big dog. For some people, it's different. For some folks, it's a, a, a mix of doing... I can tell you what I do-

Mel Robbins 48:05 Yes

Kier Gaines 48:06 ... in addition to seeing my therapist.

Mel Robbins 48:06 I wanna hear what you do. Yeah.

Kier Gaines 48:07 Oh, yeah. Man, I've been deploying so many strategies, yo. I go fishing with my friends. I spend time with my wife, who is somebody that I just so happen to like tremendously. I spend one-on-one time with her. Um, I try to clear my calendar. I try to do nothing. I think that we're always so busy doing stuff, we're not human beings anymore. We're not being anything. We're human doings. We're doing everything. Um, I try to clear my calendar. I try to read books that I actually enjoy. Um, I like to eat by myself. I love to eat by myself and just let my thoughts wander. I get some sunlight first thing in the morning. I've been going to bed on purpose, Mel Robbins-

Mel Robbins 48:45 [laughs]

Kier Gaines 48:46 ... instead of falling asleep-

Mel Robbins 48:47 Yeah

Kier Gaines 48:47 ... on the couch.

Mel Robbins 48:48 Okay, hold on. That's a big distinction.

Kier Gaines 48:51 Yeah, they're not the same thing.

Mel Robbins 48:51 I'm going to bed on-

Kier Gaines 48:53 On purpose

Mel Robbins 48:53 ... purpose.

Kier Gaines 48:54 I'm preparing for bed, winding my body down, and I'm trying to keep the same window of a bedtime every night. I try to go to bed, like, 9:30, 10:00 sometimes. Have you done that before?

Mel Robbins 49:04 All I'm gonna say is the happier and more successful I have become, the... it's directly tied to how early I go to bed.

Kier Gaines 49:11 I'll te- going to bed early is, like, the, it's, it's the key to successful adulthood. Go to bed early and try to just improve your sleep hygiene by trying to make it, um, the same time every night.

Mel Robbins 49:24 When you get into those periods, 'cause my husband struggles with depression, too-

Kier Gaines 49:28 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 49:28 ... and you're in that moment where the depression and the mood disorder just, it's like the heaviness and the grayness and the doom and gloom, is there something that you say to yourself, Kier, to help you either lift your head up a little and know that this too shall pass, to know that this is a, it's just a stop, it's not the destination? Like, is there something that you say to yourself to give yourself hope?

Kier Gaines 50:00 Yeah. Yeah, I localize it.

Mel Robbins 50:02 What do you say?

Kier Gaines 50:02 I say, I have to call it by name.

Mel Robbins 50:05 Okay.

Kier Gaines 50:05 Say, "Ah, the depression is kicking in. I'm feeling depressed right now."

Mel Robbins 50:10 Mm.

Kier Gaines 50:10 I won't always, I haven't always, but in this moment, this is what it is. And when I call it by name and I te- like, depression, you can't hide from me, bro. I know it's you. I see you right there. You looking at me, I'm looking at you. You looking at me, I'm looking at you. I know you're there, I've dealt with you before, and I know you won't always be here, so I'm gonna do what I need to do to survive the moment. Because when you pass, I still have to be a husband, I still have to be a father, I still have to run my business, I still have to be all the things in the world to everyone, including myself. Those are my responsibilities, and I wear them proudly. But right now, I need to make sure that the venom doesn't spread.

Mel Robbins 50:46 Mm.

Kier Gaines 50:48 You know, depression sometimes is the rattlesnake bite that hits you in the arm, and what I do is I just try to tie it off at the elbow. 'Cause the arm is as infected as it's gonna get. It's not gonna spread from my arm to my chest to my heart and throughout my body. And I stop the spread of the negative feelings or the negative forecasting or, by just being keenly aware that my mood is compromised. And some of it is out of my control. All right, cool, now what can I control?

Mel Robbins 51:14 You know, for somebody who's

Mel Robbins 51:15 listening right now who has never even considered that maybe what they're experiencing in life is depression, as a therapist, Kier, are there just kind of a list of symptoms or experiences that you want the person listening to know, well, these could be signs that this is more than the challenges of life? This is more than just you're in a bad mood or going through a bad period. This is more than, and that you deserve to get some support.

Kier Gaines 51:47 Yeah. Yeah, there, there are. There are about, ooh, don't make me lie, I think there are 10 to 12 symptoms that we look for, and I think you gotta hit about five or six of them, and it can't be attributed to anything else. So I know off the top of my head, one of them is when you lose interest in things that typically brought you joy-

Mel Robbins 52:05 Mm

Kier Gaines 52:05 ... or brought you some sense of satisfaction, um, when you just genuinely lose interest in them, just for n- for n- a reason that you can't quite put your finger on. Uh, one of it is when it affects your, your mood affects your re- e- either your relationships, your ability to take care of yourself, whether you're going to work every day, how you feel about the work that you do, whether you just, whether you're starting to withdraw from other people. Which is tricky, because sometimes you withdraw, and sometimes you-

Mel Robbins 52:33 Right

Kier Gaines 52:33 ... feel, feel bad about your job, but it's not necessarily depression.

Mel Robbins 52:36 Right.

Kier Gaines 52:36 This is why you have to get diagnosed by a licensed clinical professional, because they'll be able to ask the questions, and we give people a inventory sometimes before you walk in, that measures your likelihood of having depression. We look at sleep, how you're getting sleep, whether you have insomnia or hypersomnia, which is you can't stay awake or you can't stay asleep. Uh, sometimes we look at weight gain, weight gain that can't be attributed to anything else. And it hits everybody a different way. I can say you lose interest in the things that you once found really exciting, or I can say you have w- you experience some type of weight gain or sleeplessness. You can have depression and none of that stuff happens to you. You can have high-functioning depression where the way you present out in the world, you can come in every day, you can do your stuff, you can be everything you need to be, you can laugh. "Ha ha, yeah, see you tomorrow, Tina." You can, you can just be your normal, you can perform your daily routines and in your private moments, you start to deconstruct slowly. So, um, you can listen to the symptoms that I'm giving you-

Mel Robbins 53:38 Yeah

Kier Gaines 53:39 ... but if, if there's something in your life that feels like it needs to change, and your mood has been compromised, and it's been going on for a period of time. Let's say it's been two weeks consistently, let's say it's been two months

Kier Gaines 53:51 consistently, or it's reoccurring. When these things keep happening, and despite what you try to do, you can't get out of that rut, I want you to understand, if you could, you would have already. And that's not an indictment on your capabilities. That's a snapshot of where you may be in the moment, and that is a signal that you may need some more help.

Mel Robbins 54:08 I love that. I love that. If someone's listening right now, and they're just overwhelmed by life, what is the first-

Kier Gaines 54:15 You mean all of us?

Mel Robbins 54:16 All of us.

Kier Gaines 54:16 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 54:16 Yes. Well, what is, like, if you're in that moment, though, what is one thing you could do in 60 seconds-

Kier Gaines 54:24 Mm

Mel Robbins 54:25 ... to support yourself?

Kier Gaines 54:27 I think the first thing that you need to do is you need to pause. Just pause. I know. Overwhelm Creates this profound sense of urgency. But when everything is urgent, nothing is urgent. So let's pause just for a moment. Let's just pause. First, pause. Second, I want you to call it out by name, because that's an uncomfortable truth that I talk about. I'm overwhelmed. We're afraid to admit it because we think it speaks to our incapability. Not necessarily true, just speaks to your circumstances. So you pause, you name it, call it out. Call it what it is. Let it exist outside of just your mind. I'm overwhelmed right now. Localize it. I'm overwhelmed in this moment. Then I need you to understand, the third thing, I need you to understand that you don't have to fix it right now. You don't have to fix it all. Overwhelm is really profound because oftentimes when we're overwhelmed, it's not because just because we did something wrong or because we missed a step. Sometimes overwhelm is a failure of systems that are supposed to be designed to hold you up, and you can't fix systems in a moment's notice. So you don't, you don't have to fix it all. You don't have to have all the answers. You just need to slow it down. Um, I told y'all I was gonna say another football reference, but it makes-

Mel Robbins 55:53 Let's do it

Kier Gaines 55:53 ... it makes me think about this running back. His name was Brandon Jacobs. He used to run for the New York Giants back in the day. Man, this dude was like... He was six foot four. He had a neck the size of a torso, and he was two hundred and sixty-four pounds. Most running backs are like two hundred ten. This man was two hundred and sixty-four pounds. That's not a person. That's a wrecking ball with arms and legs and a consciousness. And his job is to run through your face and astral project your soul into oblivion. That man was terrifying, and he was a running back. And I remember a coach was asked one time, "How do you stop Brandon Jacobs? How do you, how do you stop him?" And the coach laughed, said, "You don't stop Brandon Jacobs. You slow him down enough for the defense to catch its breath." You don't always stop overwhelm when you're already in it. You slow it down enough for you to catch your breath.

Mel Robbins 56:48 Hmm.

Kier Gaines 56:48 And once you catch your breath, you can gain that consciousness and awareness that we talked about at the very top of this episode, and then you can try to figure out what it is that you can do about it, how you can offload some of the things you're dealing with, what systems you can probably set in place in the future to make sure this doesn't happen. Who do you need help from? What skills do you need to build? What part of this thing is overwhelming you? Because they could clump it all into one ball. Parenthood is crazy overwhelming for me, but it's not always parenthood. Sometimes it's just the constant emails from the school.

Mel Robbins 57:18 Mm-hmm.

Kier Gaines 57:19 So it's ab- it's being able to dissect it and figure out what part of this is affecting me most, but just slow it down. You don't have to fix it.

Mel Robbins 57:27 You know what I love? And I wanna highlight this because I wanna make sure you take it away-

Kier Gaines 57:31 Hmm

Mel Robbins 57:31 ... as you're listening, 'cause overwhelm is one of those words like stressed that we throw around a lot. And when you just said, "Hold on, overwhelm," in those moments, hit the pause, and now let's separate the circumstances that you're in that are flooding you-

Kier Gaines 57:47 Oh, yeah

Mel Robbins 57:48 ... from your capacity and your capability of handling it. And I also appreciated you saying, "And you typically don't need to handle it right now."

Kier Gaines 58:00 Mm-mm. It feels urgent. It feels like you do.

Mel Robbins 58:03 Yes.

Kier Gaines 58:04 And you can try, but overwhelm comes from more profound circumstances than just a misstep or you overlooking something. It's you juggling more than your bandwidth will allow, so you have to develop a, a methodology, some type of system, some type of game plan, that you can't, you can't do that in this very moment. You gotta handle business. You don't have the time. You don't have the time in the moment. And though your brain may want you to do that, doesn't mean that's within the realm of your capabilities.

Mel Robbins 58:31 I would love to have

Mel Robbins 58:32 you speak directly to the person who's listening-

Kier Gaines 58:34 Hmm

Mel Robbins 58:34 ... and really think about all of the wisdom and tools and stories and perspective that you have poured into us today. If there's one action, let's simplify this, that the person takes after this episode is over, what do you think the most important thing to do right after this is?

Kier Gaines 58:54 Hmm. I think the most important thing that you can do after listening to this conversation... First off, thank you for listening. Thanks for your awareness. That means a lot. A lot of us don't have time. We're still in time, so I appreciate you. I think the most important thing that you can do is ask yourself the uncomfortable question. I think it's easy to soft, like, soft lob a, a question that you can knock out of the park or put yourself in a place where you don't have to feel discomfort, which I completely understand, but I don't think that serves you very well, and I think you know that that doesn't serve you very well. I used to conduct interviews, and we used to ask people all the time, "What's, what's your biggest weakness?" And they would lollipop it, and they'd say, "Oh, my, my biggest weakness is that I care too much or that I work too hard." That's bull. Stop that. Stop that. That's the comfortable thing to say. But exploration isn't comfortable, and transformation isn't comfortable, and while comfort feels good, it comes at a price. And my question to you is, with the comfort, with the, with the price that comes with the comfort that you get from not asking yourself the hard question, from not facing the hard, uncomfortable truth, are you willing to pay that price? Not just today, but are you willing to pay that price for the rest of your life? You are not some type of passenger to your life. You are not in the back seat. You in the driver's seat, and you can take your hands and put 'em at ten and two, and you can control this vehicle and drive it to where you wanna go. But you have to have the awareness, you have to have the emotional fitness, and you have to have the tools. You can do it, but under those circumstances.

Mel Robbins 1:00:40 Kier Gaines, what are your parting words?

Kier Gaines 1:00:45 What do we have here? I have learned over time, Mel Robbins, that the internet is full of... We get a, a lot of our advice from the internet, and the internet is full of people who wanna tell you the thing that makes you feel good. And oftentimes they'll tell you things like, "Oh, goodness is just gonna happen to you. Success is going to happen to you if you believe enough." Um, you know, "All your goals, you can accomplish them. It's gonna just happen. It's gonna fall in your lap." I wish that was true. It's not. It's not gonna happen for you if you don't consciously walk toward it. And the life that you wanna live, the person that you wanna be, um, that journey doesn't start when it's convenient. That journey don't even start when you're ready. That journey starts when you do, and you have to get it started. There'll never be a perfect moment. There's only the moment that we have in front of us right now, so take advantage of that moment and just start.

Mel Robbins 1:01:54 Well, I've learned, Kier Gaines.

Kier Gaines 1:01:56 What you learn?

Mel Robbins 1:01:57 I learned what it looks like when somebody's walking in their purpose.

Kier Gaines 1:02:01 Is that me?

Mel Robbins 1:02:01 That is you.

Kier Gaines 1:02:02 You talking about me?

Mel Robbins 1:02:03 That is you.

Kier Gaines 1:02:04 Yeah, you know, it was hard for me to accept that about two or three years ago. Um, I'm starting to feel it now. I feel it now. I accept that.

Mel Robbins 1:02:11 Well, you know what? My favorite definition of purpose is it's not what you do. Purpose is what happens in others when you do what you do.

Kier Gaines 1:02:21 Hmm. I definitely feel that. I definitely feel that every day. That's really meaningful, so thank you for that. That's a offering that isn't light. I take that very seriously, and I really appreciate it, sincerely.

Mel Robbins 1:02:33 Well, thank you. Thank you. I want to see you, uh, soar. I do. Like, I can feel the positive ripple just coming from the vibration of this conversation out into the world, and it's, you know, the, the thing is, is that this will be around forever as a resource to people.

Kier Gaines 1:02:53 For sure.

Mel Robbins 1:02:53 And it'll just keep circling around and around and around, and I'm so excited for that, so thank you for hopping on a plane. Thank you for being here. Thank you-

Kier Gaines 1:03:03 For you, anytime.

Mel Robbins 1:03:04 Yes.

Kier Gaines 1:03:04 No problem whatsoever.

Mel Robbins 1:03:04 All right. Well, this is just the beginning. I have a feeling. Um, thank you.

Kier Gaines 1:03:10 Thank you.

Mel Robbins 1:03:11 And I also wanna thank you. Thank you for taking the time to listen to something that will truly change your life. Like, I, I feel like there are those conversations that you have, you never know when it's gonna hit, but when it does, it's like the page of a book where you flip one page and the chapter ended and now you're staring at a brand-new one. And one of the things that Kier said to you is that you don't know how much time you have and that there is no perfect time, that now is the perfect moment to get started. And what I'm really excited about is absolutely everything he shared with you. He poured into you. He made you laugh today. He made you think. I hope what he actually did was make you realize that you are the driver of your life, that you can create a completely different future. You can feel different, that you are capable of building emotional fitness and of becoming the kind of person that you're proud of, and I know you also got the tools that you need to start doing that. And in case no one else tells you today, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And I can say that because you now have this episode to listen to on repeat.

Kier Gaines 1:04:36 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 1:04:36 And that is a resource that will help you get started. So go do it. And I wanna thank you for watching all the way to the end, and the next video you're gonna wanna watch is this. You're gonna love it, and I will welcome you in the moment you hit play.