Depression and anxiety are often misunderstood, with many people not recognizing the subtle signs until the issues have become severe. One key indicator of depression is apathy, where an individual loses the desire to engage in activities they once enjoyed. This isn’t just a lack of energy but a deep-seated disinterest in doing anything, even if physically capable. It’s important to watch for behavioral changes like social withdrawal or increasing inactivity, as these can be early signs. Small steps, like setting manageable goals and ensuring proper nutrition and sunlight, can help mitigate the effects of depression.

Anxiety, on the other hand, is often rooted in irrational fears of the future, causing individuals to stress about events that haven’t happened yet. Managing anxiety involves addressing those fears through preparation and planning, especially in areas like finances or life changes. Early intervention in both depression and anxiety is crucial, as allowing these mental health issues to linger can lead to further complications. Seeking professional help, even when things seem manageable, ensures individuals have the tools to stay mentally healthy in the long run.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:04 – Defining Depression and Apathy

01:24 – Signs of Depression in Social Behavior

02:30 – Depression and Energy Levels

03:34 – Apathy vs. Laziness

04:38 – Addressing Depression with Small Goals

05:50 – Anxiety vs. Stress

06:56 – Financial Anxiety

08:11 – Metabolic Impact of Anxiety and Depression

11:53 – Addressing Mental Health Early

15:22 – Finding Mental Health Support

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] So one of the things that. I think it would be helpful if we talked about the fresh perspective on things. I have been talking about this a lot, but thrown out some horror of what it is and how to figure it out, how to see it. I think it might be helpful. Depression and both depression and anxiety have specific terms, but they’re colloquial, like what we were. We think of them as is very, very broad. So the things that you might want to look for that are not super obvious specifically with depression. Depression is also defined by like apathy. You just you have notice that where the person has no desire to do anything. But the problem is that they will just sit there in their room and that’s fine. They don’t want to do that either. Like, imagine imagine not wanting to do anything and everything you’re doing you don’t want to do. But it’s it’s more of the you just don’t want to go you don’t want to do anything. It’s as if you have no energy. It’s a little bit worse than that because you have some energy use. It’s just that everything that is available for you to do. You just really don’t want to do this.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:24] This is one of those things that we should start looking for and people who are normally out doing stuff and, you know, acting on social media or they’re going out around stuff and they start to kind of recede into themselves and do less and less and less. And they’ll feel all right. Like, how do you feel? Fine. You’re not sick. Don’t be hurt. You know, I’m not necessarily tired. I’m fine. And they’re not lying when they say that. That’s how they feel. Yes. How do you feel? Well, for a while I’m sick. My stomach. Well, that’s. You feel that? Like that’s a. Yeah. There’s something here, or I broke my foot. It’s hard to walk. You feel that? You’re. You’re like, I have an injury. But a lot of times with depression, you don’t necessarily feel sick. You don’t hurt. You just. It’s just the more like apathy. You just don’t have any desire to do anything. And it’s normal to be like that Every once in a while you just, you know, I didn’t say it like when you call a great I just kind of like, you know, you just done like. I don’t do anything.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:31] The idea of, you know, laying in bed and sleeping for the rest of the day doesn’t necessarily sound like a horrible plan. You know, some of the stuff, it’s one of those things where, you know, you know, you’re depressed and you’re like, hey, we’re going to transport you. Like when your daddy transports you to the beach, you’re scuba diving. So is that a good idea for that? You’re like, Yeah, that sounds great. Go. Let me just the day is it, you know, your life seem a little monotonous and you deserve some spontaneity and so. Which is a great idea. But when you say guys don’t want to do anything, I just want to sit here and do nothing, you know? Or, you know, I just want to do anything that’s not receding. And so they do less and less. I don’t feel that laziness or that’s what it looks like. Just the sheer. You know, I don’t want to do anything. I don’t feel like doing anything. You know, they just don’t care about some apathy. That’s that’s when you start watching for if you see that your friends and yourself certain others kind of again.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:34] So it’s such an oversight and it’s not one of those things where you can go like, Hey, I see that you have been doing stuff lately. You might be depressed. Why don’t you come play basketball with us? Why don’t you come pizza with us? You know, sometimes you people are going to do some stuff that I like feel a little bit better, but typically it’s not so much. So that’s more of a thing where you start kind of walking through, you know, why they don’t have it, why they don’t have desire to use it. That’s a it’s more of a. Talk to professionals everything say actually help with that. We see like the microdosing stuff can be a solution to that. One of the things that from action standpoint you can do is this is sometimes where dopamine comes in as a player. We try to make small roles where there are small roles for make bigger roles. Bigger roles. We have more direction. We have more focus. We have more things that shoot after, you know, we have more things to strive for. That’s beneficial. Serotonin is also one of these.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:39] So, you know, one of the things you look for chemically, as much as the tryptophan levels are up where they’re supposed to be, the next one to be vitamins, supposed to be, and then sunlight. This is a this is a big deal for sad or seasonal depression disorder. So, you know, it’s one of those things where, you know, if that if it’s gray and dull and blah outside, oftentimes you’ll feel the same way. So recognize those things. It’s not necessarily that you hate yourself or that, you know, you don’t like people anymore. It’s just that it’s, you know, one of the things to look for is for that apathy and your attitude towards going to work is not suppression in your job board. So that’s a thing. So look for that one. The apathy, peace, anxiety is oftentimes, again, like we use this thing for stress is the is the number one thing that I see the goes back and forth, the anxiety. You’re talking about hearing anxiety. There are absolute not I have no anxiety at all, but there is stress like, my gosh, I life is so super stressful about this thing and that thing I you’re worthless now that kids are doing this and that.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:50] So that’s to believe your producer anxiety is oftentimes looked at as an irrational fear of future or dwelling on a fear in the future. So oftentimes like, you know. You know, when I say it’s irrational. So if you said, hey, I am worried that there’s going to be a I see you in Florida and there’s been a natural disaster or storm or something like that. And I should you know, I should worry about that. I should recognize that that that actual fact I should do something about like I’m going to go look at storm shelters or, you know, the window, you know, storm windows or whatever. Great. You know, perhaps you ought to get some food and water just in case. Fantastic. It’s actually a great thing to do for that. Specific worries, too. I have a sexual fear. I want to do these things about it so I can sit back and go, this is this is an actual thing, but I prepared for it. So I’ve got we see this a lot with financial planner because again, this is one of those things where I’m worried about money in the future and they can function.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:57] And so I’m going to start doing things and prepping for things now so I can alleviate that fear in the future. I would say that something inside exists. I think that’s a rational fear. You know, some of the stuff that you’re going to look at for the anxiety is going to be the constant, you know, uncertainty in the future that you’re bothered by. And that’s a great one for mindset. That’s a great way to looking to me like, why do you feel this way? Like, you know, what has happened in your past or has there been something in your past that has happened that is precipitating this fear of the future because you weren’t prepared for it or you were astonished by it or something will happen and you’re worried that this can happen again? Figuring those things out, pulling the things apart and setting up structures so that you can avoid those things in the future is a great way of of putting together one of them can drive you. Metabolically really, really bad places. Anxiety oftentimes will drive, you know, lots and lots and lots of stress, lots of sympathetic, say, lots of cortisol production, cortisol production to protect yourself from things like say, messes up digestive function is then your that’s what they say and that creates all sorts of issues.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:13] Depression can cause, you know. Lots and lots of stuff. A lot of you end up sitting at home playing video games behind around their computer. We got to actually start to get some very lifestyle, lots of stuff that feeds itself into eating constantly and eating junk foods like that for comfort because a lot of chemicals in our food do give us neurologic feedback. So you’re addicted to that. So. Those things are kind of one of those things you are certain of watching for. If you start realizing that you’re overly paranoid or overly, you know, stressed out about future events that have happened yet that you have no control over, you know, what are those for anxiety. If you’re just realizing that you are a friend, have no desire to do anything that’s going that way. Both of these, to me, based off of, you know, this is a school where. Stress and allowing yourself to live in this chaotic, you know, fight or flight world for a long time will start schooling yourself up and create, you know, build it up itself. And so that’s those are some of the things that, you know. Learning by work.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:28] When you know how to calm yourself down, how to take a situation that’s giving you grief and break it apart and look at it and go, okay, this isn’t really the thing I’m worried about. I’m worried about this thing over here. So we go address this thing over here and fix our problems. That’s a great way of doing it because a lot of times, a lot of that happening is that, you know, unconscious mind will have some memory trigger that, you know, you’re right, your brain doesn’t fully walk the path of. And so it has emotion from the amygdala. But amygdala but know it’s tied to, you know, the temporal function of your memory, but it hasn’t made it all the way, the whole package of the nature of consciousness yet. And so you have this thing in your head. It’s constantly giving you grief, but you can’t pin it down. So to learn to stop, unpack it and view what is actually going on, what is actually giving me the grief and loss. So when you break it down, you figure out it’s not necessarily the thing that’s you think of this is this a top of mind? And so that’s really beneficial. There’s a lot of good psychotherapy, talk therapy that does that.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:34] There’s a lot of mental work stuff that teaches you how to assess your problems, breakdown. So these are the things that I don’t think that we’re recognizing, addressing properly or do anything about. It’s the very, very end piece. Medication might be functional for these for a short time, but it’d be much easier to start writing it down. Working on a canvas is fantastic at low doses for anxiety. We’ve seen it work really, really well over and over and over again. Depression stuff, you know? WOMAN Well, aside from specifically, you know, governing hits like figuring out a plan, setting a plan, working your plan, goal setting is a big one for that one. And so there are, you know, you should set out your nutrition right here, your intuition. Right, is is the key for a lot of mental health stuff. So start there always I then sugar hormones but. You know, a lot of this is you know, it’s in the mind. So you got to work through it mentally, either mental work or psychotherapy or something. If you start having this stuff. Address it as soon as you get it. Because the mental thing is exactly like everything else. We if we wait until wrong, it’s really bad. It’s really hard to fix. It takes a lot of time, energy, money and sometimes it’s impossible to fix it.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:54] We start recognizing these things as they’re starting to pop up and we start dealing with small. We start to get help when they’re small. Lots of times you can either stop the degradation and then it’s only a little bit bad or you really reverse it so soon as you notice this and your friends or yourself start kind of, you know, looking for ways to start pushing back against it immediately and talking to some of the talking professionals, There is always a great option because they’re professionals. That’s doing all their time and energy, figuring this out, sitting down, studying it. The reason we pay these people for a reason, they have mental work person or health provider or anything is because they’ve taken all of their time to dedicate to this one thing. So when you have a problem or you have anything, don’t sit there and try to figure out yourself why you’re doing 18 other things and you’re depressed or and you’re anxious, you’re talking to the guys who’s actually spend some time or in many cases lots and lots and lots of years studying it, trying to figure out other options to help alleviate or deal with.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:12:58] So it’s not a it’s not a form of weakness. It’s not a form of it’s not a sign of security or anything like that. I would say not true. It definitely is. I mean, if you if your leg was bleeding and you just sit there and watch the bleed until I got know septic and you died for your you’re setting your hat. If you know that you’ve got something that’s, you know, holding you back or creating a problem, you don’t go, you know, find some help for it, You know, when it’s small that’s on there. Now, if somebody else if the one of your friends, people who actually care about you come to you go, hey, we need you to get some you to talk to somebody, do it for that. Like I but I don’t think I need to. But I understand you stress and anxiety, so I’ll go and I’ll do these things because you know. I we. We need to help everybody around us. But the thing is, is that even if you feel great, even if things are awesome, walking through and working with mental health specialists really helps with the financial life.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:14:00] So it doesn’t matter if you’re if you have a problem or not. Working with some of these guys working on mental health is always beneficial. It’s always beneficial to you and everybody around you. It’s not going to be time, energy or money wise. So if you don’t have something that you’re working with, find somebody. Because one of the exact same reason I told you about who has that herniated disk, who might not need surgery, Am I going to let you introduce yourself to the surgeons? Where do I find these guys? We start talking about what surgery looks like. Like why? I don’t need it yet. Like I know. Well, do you want to wait until you can’t move your right arm or until you can’t? You know, you can’t stop yourself from killing yourself. It’s like it’s really bad.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:14:39] And then when you’re in surgery, which is an emergency, where you go look for people, it’s not a great idea, especially the mental health, because like the guys that I really like, you might this might not work for you. So finding the person, you’re like, all right, this person I can talk to, this person gets me like, you know, this is that person I work with, You know, whatever. Find those people now. So if things get bad or, you know, I’m sorry when things get worse, because. You know, life’s a kick in the teeth. Then you have somewhere to go to actually to talk to. You’ve already established a relationship. Is that, you know, if you let a knife, you really know it sucks. It takes a long time to sharpen. But if you keep the edge on it, it’s always great. You can always use it’s always keen.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:15:22] So that’s kind of it. If you guys are noticing these things, you guys don’t have any right to talk to. Yes, I have a past. We don’t have a mental health protocol set up. Find one. Get one. Get started on it. It’s more important during the general environment. Augmentations, more important hormones. Your mind is the most important thing that you can deal with. So get somebody, you know, even if you’re not going to seem very much once a month, once every six weeks, just find your person, find your team, find your group that you can work with that keeps you ready to be because this is one of those big things that that’s like kick in the teeth. It’s good to have some help. Pretty much, yeah. So. All right. Thanks for your time. It is a good day.

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