Dr. Jacqueline Heller on Transforming Mental Health Narratives: From Stigma to Support

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Yeah, I'm excited to read your story. I was sharing it with my husband just

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that snippet. And he was like, this is really quick. You mean that stuff on

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the jacket? Yeah, on, Amazon.

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It lists like, you know, all your credentials,

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that you are a child of Holocaust survivors that goes into this whole thing.

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And I'm like, I want to read the rest of it to actually hear your

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story. But I'm partially happy I didn't read it because I like

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to get to know you now and who you are now and

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what got you here. I'm happy to be here, and I'm open

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to whatever you wanna talk about.

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Ready? 3, 2, 2. I can't

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use the middle finger this time. I'm sorry.

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We normally do the 3, 2, and then we flip each other off the one,

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but I just I wasn't ready. Yes, but I'm not flipping off. It just doesn't

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feel right. Okay, ready? 3,

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2, one. Welcome back to

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another episode of Shit That Goes On in Our Heads. I'm

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dirtyskittles and I'm joined with G Rex And our guest today is Jackie.

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Welcome to our podcast, Jackie. How are you doing today? Fine. Thanks

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for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm good.

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I cannot wait to just hear who you are

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now. So who is Jackie today? Jackie

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today is a happily retired wife,

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mother, grandmother, a friend and

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doctor still. I mean, in as far as I guess I'm

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more of an author and I'm a doctor more in my head because I don't

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practice anymore, but that's kind of those are the hats I

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wear. I have other things, hobbies and things, but I

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am trying to negotiate having written this book

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and and getting it the word out there. I have my voice. I

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don't think I'm an expert at anything really specific, but

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I'm working on I'm working on getting my my my thoughts out there and

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seeing if I can help a few people. Seems like I have, so that that's

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motivating me. That's where I'm at. I wrote this book,

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wasn't planning on it, but it seems to be, well received,

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and people are liking it and resonating with it in

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some way. Is there something there for most people, it seems?

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And, that's very rewarding and surprising. I wasn't expecting

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that. And the book is called Yesterday Never

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Sleeps. Yes. Yesterday Never Sleeps. How integrating

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life's connect current and past connections improves our

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well-being. That that means a lot of different things.

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Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just that line itself. When I was reading

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up on that before we started recording, I reflected on

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my own journey. And something about that line that you

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just said reminds me of my

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I was a little I was in therapy for over a little bit over a

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year. But my biggest takeaway, and I guess like moment

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in that was acknowledging my

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past, but really identifying what those

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feelings were. And there was something freeing once I

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did that because I knew I didn't have to keep

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living in the past. Right? Like like I went back there, I acknowledged it for

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what it was. I came to an understanding of what happened in my childhood,

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and I don't have to carry that with me every day. Well, we

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live in the we live in the past when we're either traumatized by it

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or don't understand it. I mean, we really should live in the

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moment. And if we're resolved with the past and

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understand it and are and are connected to it, then we should be able to

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have peace of mind and live in the moment and enjoy the moment and be

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fully present. The important things from the past that we haven't resolved, they'll

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find us. We don't need to go looking for them. And if we're stuck living

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in the past, then there are things we have to resolve, you know.

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So, I mean, that's my bent. That's what I that's what I try to explain.

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That's what I try to teach people, and that's what my life's work's

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been pretty much as a psychiatrist and as a

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psychoanalyst and as a as someone I'm

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or someone who's board certified in neurology too. I mean, I really have a

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biopsychosocial model of life. I mean, my my model of

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the mind is based on the body and the social cultural

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aspect of one's life. You know, the way you're placed in the world,

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what your surroundings like, who your who your social life

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is, who you work with, and what your support systems are,

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And your body and your mind and your brain are all connected, and your

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soul and your spirit, they're all connected, and they're not to be

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separated. Yeah. How did that journey and

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that passion start for you? Well, it started

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really because I was a little kid. I was a child of people that were

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terribly traumatized. They had my parents had terrible PTSD.

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They were they were holocaust survivors who immigrated

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to the United States. I mean, I was the first American born in my family,

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and they lived in Europe for a long time, migrating kind of as

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nomadically. And, you know, there's nothing redeeming about

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the Holocaust. It was a horrible thing, but there's something about being the child

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of these people that gave me a reference point

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to appreciate life and to appreciate what I had and that they were my

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parents were very grateful to be alive, and they were very mindful people.

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They could think about things and they could think about how they felt

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and, you know, when something seemed off the wall and out of context,

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and I'll give you some examples, They were able to explain

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things in a way that made sense for me out of things that seemed

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nuts. Kinda like Marilyn Munster in the Munsters.

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You know, how how everyone thought there was something wrong with her, but she was

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kind of really the normal one. But my parents were very good at pointing things

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out, And I think I gave you some examples last time we spoke.

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So, for example, my father would hug us

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really tightly, and he'd hug me very tightly to the point where I'd feel

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like like, oh, that hurts. And he'd often cry while he was

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looking at me. And after when I was old enough, about 6

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or 7, maybe 5, he said I said, why what did I do wrong?

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Because children are, by nature, they're narcissistic. Everything's about

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them, and something goes wrong, it's about them too. And so he'd say to

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me, no. You didn't do it. I'd say, what did I do? He'd say, you

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didn't do anything. I love you so much, but you look like one of my

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sisters, exactly like her, and the Nazis killed her. And

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so I'm sad sometimes when I see your face, I think

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of her. And this is a common thing. This is not just this happens to

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a lot of people. They see their kid and it reminds them of their ex

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husband, and then they they it's hard for them to be nice

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to their kid because they're mad at their ex husband. So that kind of thing

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happens too. But the fact that he could reflect and explain that to

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me made me feel I felt sad for him. I felt sorry for him, and

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I I was sympathetic. And that's how you become empathetic. You become empathetic

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when people treat you well. And when your parents can explain things

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and they can say they're sorry and they can mend new repairs when they do

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something wrong. So I had that benefit. You know, I also got screwed

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up in certain ways from being a child of these people. But so

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that got me into a very, I call it a thinking state

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of mind. Metacognitive, meaning meaning not just being,

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but thinking about how you feel. And if you can

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label your emotions and think about them and place

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put words to imagery, then you can recover from trauma.

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Then you can have a place for things that are just

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kind of floating around in your psyche. And the problem

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with trauma often is that the visual and the words

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do not go together with the experiences often in the body,

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And connecting all of them really is grounding and

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is really good for your brain too because it makes all kinds of connections that

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are very good for the brain itself as far as, you know,

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higher cognitive function, as far as like being rational and reasonable

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and having good reality testing and being able to have

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forethought and sequence things and have good judgment,

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like all the things that make people good at what they're doing

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and, you know, and have agency and be empowered.

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So those things are very important. So I had the benefit of being

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able to think that way. Yeah. I think,

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selfishly, as I'm listening to

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as a parent, there was a very scary moment. I remember my son was very

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young. I think he was probably 2, maybe 3, and he's

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always been pretty vocal. And he'll ask a lot of questions always.

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And I don't remember what was happening, but I was having a really bad day.

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And I it must have been written on my face. I don't hide my emotions

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very well, the face. And I remember him asking me, like

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like, mommy, are you okay? Did I do something like what you're saying?

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And I remember being scared thinking,

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do I am I should I be honest with him? Because I don't necessarily need

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to tell him exactly what it is because it could be an adult type of

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concept that he's not gonna understand. But I remember making the decision

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at that moment, to be honest with my emotions. Like, you know, mommy's

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not having a happy day to day, and mommy's got a lot of things on

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her mind or, you know, trying to find a way to explain it to him.

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So I knew it wasn't him, but I also the reason why

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it was scary for me was because I wanted him to at least know

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what my emotions meant. And I wasn't sure if that was

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the right decision. Right? Like, I was like, because my parents never did that with

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me. So I'm like, do I do this? Do I be honest with him and

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tell him if I'm happy, if I'm sad, if I'm mad, and what in a

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general sense, is causing it. And you never know. Right? Is

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that the right call? You're a parent. You don't know. There's not a book that

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tells you how to do these things, but kind of going off of that

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instinct. An answer. There is an answer to this. Unless you're beating your

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kids up and you're abusing them or you're neglecting them and starving them and locking

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them in a closet and doing terrible things to them, there's no right or wrong

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answer. So anything that any way that you interact with your

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child, if you've if you if it doesn't go over well, you can always

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fix it. You can always correct it. You can always you know, because kids are

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resilient, and they bounce back very quickly. If they know that you love them, and

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that's another thing of mine. My parents loved me to they loved me, and it

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was clear they loved their children even though they made mistakes.

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It it you get over things when you're well loved and when you're nurtured and

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you're basically taken care of well enough consistently enough, and you're

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not withdrawn from and you don't have erratic. You don't have a parent with

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erratic behavior. Your son knows you love him. And the

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truth is with kids and adults too, if people

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don't wanna know anymore, if they've had enough, if they're if that's all they can

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tolerate emotionally because they're starting to get overwhelmed, their emotions are

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overwhelmed. They can't modulate them. They can't regulate them. They stop

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asking questions. So he asked you a and and understand that

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beneath every question, beneath every behavior,

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there's something psychic psychically, emotionally going on. So

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he asked you because he was self referential. He thinks you're you're

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upset. You're mad at him that he did something wrong. Right. So you can explain

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to him as you did. Mommy's not having a good day. It has

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nothing to do with you. Mhmm. And that's it. That how can that be the

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wrong thing to say if you went on to give him gory details?

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Yeah. And, you know, that's not cool. I mean, that that's not

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necessary. And then he'd say stop. He covers there he go. You know, he or

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he'd run away, or he'd start engaging in something else. He'll let you know

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he doesn't need to know anymore. Yeah. So, you know, it's like when kid

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when children ask, mommy, where did I come from? And

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they're 2 years old. You say you came from mommy and daddy, and they're fine

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with that. But by the time they're free, they wanna know how do I come

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from mommy and daddy? And my this happened with one of my kids too.

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Well, how they come? Mommy and daddy got together, and they made a baby

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together. That's okay for a 3 year old. By the time they're 4 or 5,

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they wanna know how they did it, and they keep asking until they're satisfied. And

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you tell them the birds and the bees when you're 18, that doesn't go over

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too well. Doesn't doesn't go over too well when you're when you

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start school, kids know what's going on. So, you

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know, it's so so those kinds of things, I mean, you

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just use your you use your judgment, and, you you can't

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go wrong. As long as you can repair ruptures in

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any relationship, you learn how to argue well. You learn how to

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be how to if you're well attached, if you're well connected, if you're in

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sync, if you're attuned to your child, and and you make a

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mistake or you you go ballistic or you lose your cool, You're

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human, and they need to understand that. Yeah. And they that's how they develop empathy

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too. Yeah. We have that in our house. Like, when we sit for

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dinner, we'll talk about was today a good day or a bad day. And

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we just kinda go round robin. Like, did you have a good day today? Was

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it a bad day? Were there happy moments, sad moments? And he I mean, it's

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just worked out. Like, now he's 6, and he will tell you

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exactly how he feels. And he's really good at identifying that. And for me, that's

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a success because I don't think I learned yeah. I was like, I don't think

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I learned that till like last year. Really, honestly,

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like going back and coming to grips with my past, but

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also understanding and taking a moment. I think that's what it was.

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I was taking the time to identify what I was feeling. And that

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was, I hadn't done that. And do that. It's very important

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because if you don't know what you're feeling, we're gonna put stuff on other people

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and get very mixed up very quickly. Yeah. And our mental

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states affect our perceptions. They sure do. You

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know, that was one of the things I learned early on in

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therapy was, you know, just reflecting on what

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I'm feeling and being truthful with myself. And

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the other thing I really learned is just to let go of my past, Right?

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Like, I can't go back. I can't change it. And I'm a happier

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person because I'm not carrying that

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garbage with me anymore. And for me, it was a lot of garbage.

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Yep. Learning you don't have to carry it. That was huge. Well, I wonder what

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letting go means. What does it mean to you to let go?

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It doesn't consume me. So when right before

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I had my mental breakdown on in 2022,

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I was just holding all that in, and I I wouldn't let

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any of it go, right? And people were holding it against me

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like they would see me as I was 14, 15 years

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ago versus where I am now. And

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I just stopped caring what they thought.

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And for me, that was the most freeing thing in the

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world because I just don't care because I know who I am,

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and I know what I've done and I know what I've accomplished. And I know

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in my heart I'm a good person. Maybe 14, 15 years

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ago when I was still trying to figure out life, Maybe

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I might have had some things going on, but for now, I'm free

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of that burden. I don't carry it anymore. And I'm a

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much happier person because of it. Because I see me

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I see myself the way others around me

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see me. And that's big for me because, you know, I

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spent years beating myself up. So

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Well, having your self perception toggle with your social

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persona and the way people actually perceive you is very good. That's

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great. Most people have a different sense of themselves than the way they're

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perceived. That's okay too. But I think the most important thing is that if

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you were feeling unwell and you had what you call a breakdown,

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that you got well. And and whatever it took for you to do that we

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talked about this a little bit last time. Yeah. Because I really feel like there's

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no glory in suffering at all. And, unfortunately, the stick there's

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still stigma with mental health problems, with brain

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problems as I call them, because it because people

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unfortunately think that you're you're doing things willfully, that you're not

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pulling yourself up by your you're not trying hard enough. We're not pulling ourselves up

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by our bootstraps. And that is the most ridiculous thing. I thought those days would

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be long gone by now, and they're not. People still think it's

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your fault. You know? And we people are self blaming

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about being ill. And, you know, mental

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illness is brain body illness. It's just like diabetes

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is, you know, you have high blood sugar because your insulin is not working

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properly, or you have high blood pressure because you have familial

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you know, you have genetic high blood pressure. You know, you we

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don't blame people to have cancer, do we? No. Right. Because we

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know that's something that is genetically driven or

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environmentally driven. You can't do that much about getting it. But when it comes

00:17:03
to mental health problems, and I don't like calling them mental health because

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it sounds like it's something we can control readily.

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And there's a lot we can do to help ourselves, but some things

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just are biochemical, biological, and we're

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in an age of molecular genetics where one of these years, you're

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gonna be able to check your you know, to have a sensor that'll tell

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you're low in adrenaline brain adrenaline. You're low in, you know, you're

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low in brain cortisol. You're low in in in GABA.

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You're low in serotonin. And Mhmm. We'll and you need to

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adjust the ratio. And so you'll get give yourself a little bit of whatever it

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is, vitamin Prozac or and, you know, and in

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fact, I mean, even a 150 years ago, Sigmund

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Freud knew he was a neuroscientist. He knew that all this stuff would be

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explained, well, on a molecular level someday. But he said until

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then, we need a way to converse about what's going we need a way we

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need to taxonomize. We need to classify these things. We need to know. We need

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to have a way to talk about things, you know, in a

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standardized way. And he wrote, you know, 26

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volumes. A lot of them are a lot of the theories are kind of, you

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know, not fashionable or incorrect, but he had the technical

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principles and he had a model of the mind that's still relevant, still

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very valid about the unconscious versus the conscious mind

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and how the unconscious is really a huge part of our

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brain and our mind and our functioning. And people just don't are

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afraid to go there. It's like a neighborhood they don't wanna visit. You know?

00:18:36
Mhmm. And it's a shame because if we know ourselves, our deep

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structures, our deep wants, because that's where the deepest

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fears, longings, desires, that's where they

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reside. And if we're not in touch with them at all,

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they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna trick us. They're gonna they're gonna

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deceive us, and that's why people are self

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deceptive. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I think

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it's important I think it's

00:19:06
important to know that you can change too. Right? Like, who you are

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or who you were, you know, 5 years ago Absolutely.

00:19:13
Evolves and and continues to develop into somebody that you could be today.

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And one of my least favorite questions is when people ask

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me, like, who are you today? Or because I don't know who I

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am yet. You know? Like, I think and I think I was

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afraid to admit that for a while. And I'm like, no. I'm still working on

00:19:32
that. Like, I'm still processing and thinking

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of who I am today. Like, I know I'm a mom. I know I'm a

00:19:39
wife. I know I am a boss. Right? But, like, there's more to me than

00:19:43
those. We're always evolving, and we're always connecting the

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dots in our life, in our history, and to our ancestry

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too. I mean, if you have a self story and you could

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think divergently, if you can make connections because

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you have an understanding of your history and of the past, then you

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don't then you have good judgment and you can and you have all kinds of

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ways you can think about things. You're not stuck in the same stale

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stale responses, stale, same way of looking at

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something. And that's rigid. That's black or white. You have

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live in a whole gray zone, and you can make all kinds of

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all kinds of answers and explanations for things that go on in

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your life. Yeah. That's what therapy does. I mean, therapy

00:20:29
does you know, I I had a patient, Barbara, who, you

00:20:32
know, who didn't know why she was rejected by it. She'd go on a

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date. They'd never cook. A guy would never call her back. She doesn't know why

00:20:39
she was attractive. She was she had a reasonable job. She was a nice person.

00:20:43
She didn't know what happened. I'd say she's controlling. They say she's not, she didn't

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know. She didn't know why she didn't know what was wrong, but she came to

00:20:49
therapy because she wanted to not be rejected. She wanted to be

00:20:53
accepted. She wanted love in her life. And the fur and,

00:20:56
usually, you know, I we tell our patients.

00:21:01
They they understand the framework. 15 minutes, and this is what the charge is, and

00:21:04
this is when we're gonna meet. You have a framework for working together. You have

00:21:07
an operate an operating kind of agreement or understanding. So

00:21:11
they can't take things personally. Like, if you have to stop the session, they're in

00:21:15
the middle of a story, and you can't really go on for another 20 minutes.

00:21:19
Right? So here we are in the 1st session. She's very open.

00:21:22
She's telling me very trusting with her new doctor, and she's

00:21:26
very good storyteller, good historian. And then

00:21:29
after 47 minutes, 48 minutes, I said, we have to

00:21:33
wrap it up. And she went off me about, oh, of

00:21:37
course, you don't want of course, you don't wanna hear what I say. Of course,

00:21:40
you have better things to do. You know, of course, you you wanna get rid

00:21:43
of me. And, you know, I knew at that point that I put that

00:21:47
on the back burner. I didn't I just calmed her down a little bit,

00:21:51
but that's important data. And I said to myself, okay. This is important.

00:21:55
Is this is a script? This is an automatic script that's in her

00:21:58
head. That's probably an old story of being

00:22:02
rejected, of being not being considered of being low rung,

00:22:06
low person on the totem pole and of not being thought

00:22:09
of fondly and as and and importantly.

00:22:14
And, of course, that came up over and over again. That's called transference.

00:22:17
When your patient lays their stuff on you, that's what happens.

00:22:22
And so I call those automatic mental constructs, these kind of

00:22:25
patterns of behavior and of thinking based on your inner beliefs,

00:22:29
based on your inner relationships, the way you've been treated over and over

00:22:33
again. They get internalized. They get ossified,

00:22:37
and that's and then we have these trigger reactions.

00:22:40
And they could be you know, that's really a problem. So

00:22:44
she finally learned that was going on in her head, and she was able to

00:22:47
figure out why she was that way. So learning

00:22:51
about why we are the way we are is a lifelong process.

00:22:55
We're always evolving. We're always changing. And even

00:22:59
when you're telling your story, you'll make you might make connections. And

00:23:02
that's very good to be creative thinking that way about what

00:23:06
could this mean? What's this about? And so I propose

00:23:10
that in any given day for people that aren't used to this, that you as

00:23:13
you do, you check-in with yourself, especially when there are transitions in the

00:23:17
day, like you're you just got to work or you just got home before

00:23:21
you shift and put a different hat on. I I suggest

00:23:24
you check-in with yourself and say, what am I feeling?

00:23:28
What am I feeling in my chest? What am I feeling in my guts? How

00:23:32
does my head feel? Am I nervous? Am I calm? I'm

00:23:35
nervous. Take a deep breath. Take a few deep breaths.

00:23:39
Focus on your breath because you can we can control our breath. We can

00:23:43
control our nervous system through our breath. We can't control our nervous system

00:23:47
through our with our pulse, through our heart rate, through our blood pressure. We can't.

00:23:50
We can control our breath, and we can calm down the the

00:23:54
autonomic nervous system that puts out cortisol and adrenaline and

00:23:57
makes us fight or fly. You know? Mhmm. And that's important. So you

00:24:01
check-in with your body and you identify your feelings, and then you can think

00:24:05
about, okay, why am I nervous? I'm going home. I'm going to see my

00:24:08
family. Why am I anxious? And as you said before,

00:24:12
you think about it, Farley. You think about it, you get a grip, and then

00:24:16
you go on and you don't do stupid things that you're gonna regret.

00:24:19
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so true.

00:24:23
Like, all things that, like, my therapist talked to me about too is,

00:24:27
you know, just like you said, check-in with yourself 3

00:24:31
or 4 times during the day, and I do that. So when I get up

00:24:33
in the morning, I check-in. Did I sleep well? Do I feel

00:24:37
refreshed? Have I talked to Dirty Skittles today?

00:24:40
Because I make that a I make it a habit. I talk to her

00:24:44
I try to talk to her every day. Midday. Okay. Have

00:24:48
I eaten? Do I feel okay? Am I ready to get on this call? And

00:24:52
then when I get ready to leave the office, I'm like, I wanna leave

00:24:56
all that here. Right? I don't wanna go through the French

00:24:59
doors and take it out to the to the rest of the

00:25:03
family. My stuff is my stuff, and it's been

00:25:06
working really well for me. My wife says that I'm,

00:25:10
like, a totally different person now. Right. That's a

00:25:14
great way of life. To me, that's the most important habit that

00:25:17
anyone can form in their life is to be able to talk to themselves

00:25:21
or be a fly on the wall. Or I think they said something like like

00:25:24
the Truman show, watch you're watching reality show of yourself all

00:25:28
day long In some some level, you have an inner wise person. You talk to

00:25:32
yourself and you ask yourself, and you think about how you

00:25:35
feel. And doing that is is

00:25:39
incredibly important. Because if you can do that, then you if you're

00:25:43
self reflective, if you're introspective, you go in, you know, you go in

00:25:47
and you know how you feel, and you go up to your brain and you

00:25:49
think about how you feel, that there's not there's no better skill to develop

00:25:53
as far as connection, as far as attachments, as far

00:25:57
as becoming an empathetic person and and becoming a kinder human

00:26:01
being. It all starts at home with the parent

00:26:05
and the child, and then it all becomes about you being able to

00:26:08
keep know yourself and keep the other person in

00:26:12
mind as having an independent separate center of initiative,

00:26:16
having their own mind, and being able to keep that in mind

00:26:20
at the same time as you're being yourself. And it's not that

00:26:23
hard to do. I mean, most kids that grow up in a good enough environment

00:26:27
learn how to it's we call that mentalizing. Mentalizing is an

00:26:31
exchange where you can think about yourself and know how the

00:26:35
other person's doing and feeling at the same time. And it involves certain

00:26:38
qualities, like you have to be curious. You have to be attuned. You

00:26:42
have to listen, things like that. And it's very

00:26:45
important for for good attachments, for good relationships that are

00:26:49
healthy. Yeah.

00:26:53
What is one of the if you can go

00:26:56
back to think when you were growing up, what was one of the

00:27:00
biggest lessons you learned from your parents as a child?

00:27:04
One of the biggest lessons I learned? I learned from my father

00:27:07
that connecting to ancestry is very important.

00:27:11
Having connection to your past is very important,

00:27:15
especially in in my situation where a whole generation was wiped out.

00:27:19
It was important to know that the people in my family before

00:27:23
that were vibrant. They that we weren't just victims, that

00:27:26
we had a world that we lived in. And it was important for me to

00:27:30
understand my family history because when you understand

00:27:34
that you're rude, it it gives you a sense of rootedness. It gives you a

00:27:37
sense of connection outside of yourself. You know, today,

00:27:41
too many people and kids are just my life,

00:27:44
me, me. They don't feel connected to the rest of the world. Some of it's

00:27:48
kind of an existential issue. But when you realize you're just one small

00:27:52
person and you're connected to a world and you're connected to a history

00:27:55
before you, it's very humbling. And

00:27:59
humility is very important because humility is kind of the flip side of gratitude.

00:28:03
You know, when you realize you're a speck, and I don't mean it in a

00:28:07
denigrating way, but I mean, you're important, but in the scheme of

00:28:11
things, there's a big world, a big universe out there. It's very

00:28:14
grounding, and it's very it's very rooting.

00:28:18
You know, it's kinda like thinking the trees that you see when you

00:28:22
look down from an airplane. You see the trees in a you see a forest.

00:28:25
You think those tree tops are that's what you see. That's what there is. But

00:28:29
you don't realize how those roots underground are connected

00:28:33
and interconnected and what goes on. So many things go on that we're not

00:28:36
aware of that we don't see. And I think that's very important to

00:28:40
have that vision, to have that understanding. It gives you an appreciation for your

00:28:44
life. So I I learned that from my father because my father

00:28:48
my father was a very unusually interesting man. He was so

00:28:52
capable, but he was doubly orphaned by the time he was 7. Both

00:28:55
parents were gone. He grew up on the street, basically. He was

00:28:59
homeless. And his he had 2 sisters that helped him, but he

00:29:03
basically I mean, if it weren't for the kindness of strangers, he wouldn't have survived

00:29:06
childhood. And he was basically a street urchin. And then

00:29:10
the war came and he was running from the Nazi. He's running like,

00:29:14
like, you know, like a wild person, crazy person running for two and a

00:29:18
half years, not knowing where he was gonna, whether he was gonna survive

00:29:22
the next 5 minutes or not. And so he had a lot of difficult

00:29:25
circumstances. And he taught me, And he didn't have

00:29:29
a picture of him. He never had a soft photograph of himself. He didn't know

00:29:32
his birthday. He didn't even know he didn't even know, you

00:29:35
know, what he looked like. He didn't know what he looked like as a child.

00:29:39
He never saw himself in a mirror. This kind of thing was just shocking to

00:29:43
me. It made me feel like, oh my god. I have to know my

00:29:47
history. I have to know who I am. I mean, how do you know who

00:29:50
you are if you don't even know what you look like as a little

00:29:54
kid? How do you have any sense of continuity? But he managed, and I

00:29:58
that affected me usually. And so that that's one thing I learned from

00:30:02
them. Be connected, and actually is born out

00:30:05
neuroscience. That connection to ancestry is very

00:30:09
important. The kids that are like, I I've talked about this

00:30:13
is a case I really like. The kids that survived hurricane Katrina. Remember

00:30:16
that about 20 years ago? The the kids that survived hurricane Katrina, those

00:30:20
that were connected to their grandparents, who knew where they were from, who knew where

00:30:24
they were, who knew their story. As teenagers, they

00:30:28
developed more autonomy, more independence. It was easier for them to

00:30:31
separate, individuate. They had agency. They had they were

00:30:35
empowered. They were empowered. The kids who had roots, who

00:30:39
felt like there was they were part of something, they they are they're they were

00:30:42
more empowered. And that that continues. That that's

00:30:46
borne out across history, across current

00:30:49
current history, you know, present times. So so that's

00:30:53
what I learned from my dad. From my mother, I learned my mother was a

00:30:56
very happy person. My mother is a very, self assured

00:31:00
person. She was very confident, and she had a very

00:31:03
difficult situation to live with because she was a heroin. She saved

00:31:07
her family, but she also was pawned off. She saved

00:31:11
them because she was pawned off to sleep with a with a with a

00:31:15
an officer who who had the hots for her. And so she

00:31:19
had a double edged thing because she was in those days, in in

00:31:23
small towns in Europe, that was like damaged goods. You know? You're supposed to be

00:31:26
a virgin when you get married. And so she was damaged goods, but she was

00:31:30
also as the savior. And that was a tough thing for her to

00:31:34
deal with. But I learned from her that she became a motivational

00:31:37
speaker. She published them. She wrote her memoir. She wrote 2 books. 1

00:31:41
was for kids that was a bestseller. She had a movie that

00:31:45
Richard Gere narrated, a documentary. She was a public

00:31:49
speaker, and she spoke she was a motivational speaker. And

00:31:52
she taught me that, you know, this kind of hatred and

00:31:56
and terror that you survive does not have to turn you into a

00:32:00
terrible person. It doesn't have to make you have unmitigated

00:32:03
anger and hatred, but she rose from that. And I'm not

00:32:07
saying good things came of it, but she focused. She didn't capitulate to

00:32:10
despair. I learned from her that you can do good things. You can be

00:32:14
a good person. You can help the world, and you can use what you've learned.

00:32:17
You can use your suffering to help other people deal with their suffering.

00:32:22
And that was a big lesson. And I try to follow in her footsteps. You

00:32:25
know, You learn from your hardships, and you help other people

00:32:29
overcome theirs by telling your story. As I said

00:32:33
earlier, you know, I mean, her your role is to help other

00:32:36
people not feel lonely, not feel alone, and know that there's other

00:32:40
people that go through that. This is a human condition. It's hard to be

00:32:44
human. It's really hard. And Yeah. We all we're

00:32:48
all doing it, but we all have our own paths, but we can help each

00:32:51
other with things that we know about that we can

00:32:55
shed some light on. Yeah.

00:32:59
That's exactly what I was thinking of. I'm like, man, that's the goal.

00:33:03
Right? It's amazing. It's very achievable. It's very achievable.

00:33:07
Easier for some people. Not everybody has the easiest circumstances, but it's very

00:33:11
achievable to keep hope alive and to not to

00:33:14
capitulate his despair and to find ways to overcome your

00:33:18
to overcome yourself, you know, to overcome. And the thing is if

00:33:22
you don't, if you've been traumatized, and I

00:33:26
don't mean by like an accent, I mean, if you've been victimized, if you've been

00:33:29
victimized, if you don't get it, if you don't know about it, if you don't

00:33:33
get it, you become a perpetrator. And it's a very harsh statement,

00:33:37
but I feel very strongly that's an important one. If you don't know

00:33:41
what happened to you, you become you end up doing the same thing to other

00:33:44
people, and it becomes generational. And as much as you love your kids

00:33:48
or you love your spouse, or you love your friends, you become an

00:33:51
implementer of the things that you're trying to get away from. And I can

00:33:55
give you 2 quick examples that'll resonate. It'll make

00:33:59
sense of what I'm trying to say. One of them is chapter 2 in my

00:34:03
book. It's about a woman in a boutique who called the police on me.

00:34:06
She called 911 because she thought I had a gun, and she was terrified. And

00:34:10
the police came in an hour later, and they surrounded me, And

00:34:14
they asked me what was in my pocket, and I put my hand down reflexively.

00:34:18
And they threw their guns, and I got frisked, and it freaked me out. It

00:34:22
was terrifying. And bottom line is this woman, and

00:34:25
her judgment was so impaired because she profiled me,

00:34:29
which is not a cool thing to do anyway. But Right. She was twice my

00:34:33
size. She was half my age. I was with a toddler, for God's

00:34:36
sake. She was a little kid. And, you know, it I did not look like

00:34:40
someone that was gonna go rob her story. And so she had poor

00:34:44
judgment. And when the police came, I said, this is crazy. I

00:34:47
mean, this woman's either psychotic, she's mentally ill, She's having

00:34:51
a delusion or she suffered gun trauma. And it was the

00:34:55
latter. She had a knee. She had a hair trigger response,

00:34:59
knee jerk response. She didn't think. She didn't think about her

00:35:02
terror. And she called the police, and she made me feel the way she felt

00:35:06
when she saw a gang shooting when she was a kid. Yeah. I felt the

00:35:09
same way. Like, I was they're gonna kill me. You know? Like, they could

00:35:13
easily pull the gun and pull the trigger and shoot me. You know?

00:35:17
Yeah. So so that there's an example. That's a very good

00:35:21
example. Anyway, that that's an example. I don't need to give you another one, but

00:35:25
that's the idea. That's the idea. Poor judgment. And she was a nice person. She

00:35:28
when she found out that I that I was just a regular person,

00:35:32
she was mortified. I mean, I they watched an hour of camera

00:35:36
footage on this. Wow. She was horrified. She was a

00:35:39
nice she was a nice person, but she created a

00:35:43
situation. She made me as scared as she was.

00:35:47
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I get it. So we talked about the

00:35:51
biggest lesson you learned from your parents. What has been the hardest lesson you've

00:35:54
learned throughout your life and your journey? No. Well, that's

00:35:58
a good question. I never thought about things in terms of the hardest thing

00:36:02
because I don't like to bottom line things like that so

00:36:05
much. But the hardest thing for me, because I thought about this in

00:36:09
giving talks about these kinds of things. And the hardest thing,

00:36:13
which actually has made me more resilient, is dealing with

00:36:17
opposites, dealing with extremes that don't make sense, dealing

00:36:20
with paradoxes and paradigms that don't

00:36:24
make sense, incongruencies. So for example, I'm a

00:36:28
child of survivors, and as a child of survivors or

00:36:32
this is true for refugees, immigrants, people

00:36:35
fleeing situations, you know, whether

00:36:39
they're natural disasters or actually, no. Not too much

00:36:42
natural oh, now with climate change, people are getting really much

00:36:46
more afraid and out of control about what's going on in their environment.

00:36:50
But basically, when you're running

00:36:53
from persecution, when you're running from and man most man

00:36:57
made cataclysms are genocides, and they're social they're

00:37:00
man made social cataclysms. I'm not talking about COVID

00:37:04
or your natural disasters, hurricanes, earthquakes,

00:37:08
and infections, pandemics, but man made cataclysms,

00:37:12
social oppression. When you're running from persecution, you

00:37:16
don't take anything with you. You take out you put everything in your head.

00:37:20
And, and when you're running from persecution, you try

00:37:23
to make yourself very small and invisible. Right?

00:37:28
So, so kids like us that grew up with kids like me, we're we

00:37:32
were told not to belong to groups, not to join groups, not to put

00:37:36
sign petitions. Don't vote. Don't go anywhere where you become a

00:37:39
public. Don't do it. Don't God forbid, don't get don't go

00:37:43
online. You'll get Googled. They'll find you, you know, that kind of

00:37:46
stuff. So, so on the one hand, you're supposed to be invisible, make yourself

00:37:50
small. And I actually didn't even know how to spell my name till I was

00:37:53
in 3rd grade. I think that was partly my parents' unconscious motivations

00:37:57
to not let me be, on the radar in any way. But,

00:38:01
basically, keep yourself small and invisible under a rock. But

00:38:05
on the other hand, if you're a child of survivors like this,

00:38:09
they had they have so much guilt for having survived when everyone else

00:38:12
died. There has to be a reason they survived, and the reason

00:38:16
is they're children, the hope for the future. So on the one hand, I'm supposed

00:38:20
to be under a rock and be invisible. On the other hand, you're supposed to

00:38:22
win a Nobel Prize or be famous or do something that makes your

00:38:25
life worthwhile. So that's a crazy dialectic. It's

00:38:29
impossible. So I've been under a rock. That's why I'm like, I hate social

00:38:33
media. I don't like I don't like being on any of that stuff.

00:38:37
Part of it's this kind of anxiety I have about being out there. And I

00:38:41
wrote when I was writing the book, I'm like, I don't think I mean, I

00:38:43
was encouraged to do it because I got good feedback, and I'm like, well, no

00:38:47
one's gonna read it. But what if someone does read it? What if someone becomes

00:38:50
something? I can't be out there, you know? So so that's a very hard

00:38:54
thing for me. And there are a lot of things like that. Like I've mentioned,

00:38:57
my mother was like a Hester Prince. She had a scarlet letter on her

00:39:01
forehead saying she I'm I'm not a virgin, which makes me in those

00:39:04
days, in her part of the world Right. In Poland, in

00:39:08
19 twenties, thirties, that was damaged goods. That was not

00:39:11
cool. And so she on that on one hand, she's like considered almost

00:39:15
a slut, you know, and, you know, because women got trashed

00:39:19
for using their bodies to save people. But

00:39:23
I learned that, and I, this is very important. I learned that you do not

00:39:26
judge human behavior in any way

00:39:30
at all ever when they're dealing with unfathomable circumstances.

00:39:34
You know, no one should judge, Sophie's choice. No one

00:39:38
should judge what my mother did or didn't do to save her family.

00:39:42
No one should judge my great grandfather who was trying to save a 100

00:39:45
people in a ditch. And 1 there was a pair of newborn

00:39:49
twins, and one of them was screaming, And they decided to suffocate

00:39:53
that baby to to keep to stifle that child, to

00:39:56
keep the other 99 people alive. I mean Yeah. No one

00:40:00
should judge the things that people do to survive and to save others

00:40:04
because they're unfathomable circumstances. So I learned that.

00:40:07
But and so my mother also my mother was on the one hand, she was

00:40:11
a heroine. She saved her family. You know, she saved her family. On

00:40:15
the other hand, someone killed her father before

00:40:19
right after the liberation. She felt guilty for that, and she

00:40:22
was a public speaker. She was a, she was a well known person

00:40:26
in in her circles. And so but she was also

00:40:30
ashamed, and she was also, you know so she was supposed to be

00:40:33
she was a heroine. She was a role model for tons of kids,

00:40:37
thousands of people. But at the same time, she was small because she

00:40:41
was a a a slut. And so that was something she has to

00:40:45
deal with. So these kinds of things were probably the hardest things for

00:40:48
me, these kinds of opposites. But I think they I think

00:40:52
that's what resilience comes from. It comes from those struggles, those

00:40:56
tensions that you become aware of and those tug of wars

00:40:59
within that kind of resolve in a way that works out for

00:41:03
you. Yeah. But I'd say those are probably the hardest

00:41:06
things. That's amazing. And also the normalcy,

00:41:11
the ostensible normalcy, the outside that looks like you're in a

00:41:14
picket in a house with a white picket fence, you go to school, but

00:41:18
inside, the terror the hardest thing is the terror

00:41:22
that and the grief that is so thick and makes the

00:41:25
atmosphere so heavy, but the stories are not told.

00:41:29
And when you said earlier that you didn't know if your son could

00:41:32
tell that you were having a bad day, they these kids know they

00:41:36
know they perceive everything. It's like flick filter down. They

00:41:40
absorb by osmosis. They know if you're not doing well. And if they ask you,

00:41:44
that means they're picking up on it. Yeah. And, you

00:41:48
know, one thing I could say is have respect for the infant, Have

00:41:51
respect for their ability to perceive, to know, and it's

00:41:55
awesome. If you have awe and respect and reverence, you can't be a bad

00:41:58
parent. Yeah. And you guys are good parents.

00:42:02
Right? And because Nugget, you know, he's well rounded.

00:42:06
And, you know, I think you're doing the right things. But I I

00:42:10
love what you're saying here, Jackie. Like, all of this resonates

00:42:13
with me and wow.

00:42:17
Yeah. You you're very inspiring and, I

00:42:21
just the way you can articulate it, you know, like, I don't know. This

00:42:25
has been awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much. We added a new member to

00:42:29
the family. I know. Now I'm invested

00:42:32
and I can't wait for the book to get here so I can read it.

00:42:36
Thank you. Awesome. I I'm I blabbed too much, but I have

00:42:40
a lot of my mind about these things. So No. I love it. I don't

00:42:44
think you blabbed at all. This has been so

00:42:47
amazing. I don't know what one thing I'll say. One thing I'll say about

00:42:51
my book is that and I didn't realize this until this woman

00:42:55
who is a, who's a a lawyer and a

00:42:59
psychologist, she's a clinical psychologist and a jaded. She's

00:43:02
actually has an endowed chair, and she's also suffered with schizophrenia her whole life. She's

00:43:05
a schizophrenia her whole life. She's a genius.

00:43:08
And until she wrote this review for me, which is, like, one of

00:43:12
the nicest things anyone's ever said about me, It's incredible.

00:43:16
Is that one of the things she writes about me is that, and this is

00:43:20
what I have to say about the book. As I, as I said, I've never

00:43:22
thought about it. She quotes me, but to finish

00:43:25
her, not to read the whole thing to you, but she's, this is what she

00:43:29
says. She says, Heller does not simply tell us how to

00:43:32
navigate the seemingly unnavigable. She doesn't simply show us

00:43:36
how to recognize and manage our own demons. Heller travels the

00:43:40
path with us. Yes We Never Sleeps offers hope to those for whom

00:43:43
hope seems only a passing shade on their journey through the

00:43:47
underworld. What an extraordinary gift Jackie Heller has given us.

00:43:50
That's why Ellen Sachs wrote that. And that was one of the nicest things because

00:43:54
I I never thought of it that way, but that's what people are feeling that

00:43:58
because everyone wants things that are actionable. Everybody wants,

00:44:02
you know, you know, exercises and 10 steps to

00:44:05
this and that. I said, I can't write 10 steps to this and that.

00:44:09
But my book is more experiential. You learn from

00:44:13
reading it because it's one of those books that where you read these

00:44:16
stories, dozens of stories, and you say, oh my god, that makes me

00:44:20
think of this. That makes me think of that. And how does it relate to

00:44:23
me? And that's what stories are for. Stories are to connect people.

00:44:27
The stories create empathy. Mhmm. Stories stories create

00:44:31
sympathy and make us better people. Without them, we're

00:44:35
lost. Yes. So

00:44:38
true. So true. Thank you so much, Jackie. This has been amazing. Wow.

00:44:43
And eye contact was great. It's important to have eye contact to note, to be

00:44:46
able to connect. So is touch and so is smell and

00:44:50
so is, you know, hearing and all these things, and they're

00:44:54
all getting lost today, which is really sad. So whatever we

00:44:57
can do to connect kids to their senses. And so they're not

00:45:01
and I don't mean just their thought their thumbs on their phones and

00:45:05
on their video games, but because there there's a

00:45:08
philosopher named Michael Sarris who says, this is the thumbling

00:45:12
age. We're gonna lose we're gonna lose our digits. We're gonna have an opposable thumb.

00:45:16
Thumbs. Yeah. Our DNA is gonna change that

00:45:19
quickly. We end up with opposable thumbs because that's all we use.

00:45:23
So I so I will tell you one thing, Jackie, that I think that's

00:45:27
really important is it's not just the kids. Right? But as adults,

00:45:31
you know, we need to become more in tune with ourselves.

00:45:35
Right? So the other day, I did a little test the other day. I

00:45:39
did no social media, no email, no

00:45:42
computer, no nothing after I got off work.

00:45:47
And I was so in tune with everything that was around me,

00:45:50
right? Like I could have a normal conversation with my wife, even she

00:45:54
put her put down her phone and we just weren't like into

00:45:58
with what was happening at that very moment. And one thing that I

00:46:01
learned from a guest we had on early on is that we

00:46:05
want to live for the moment. And so we took that moment

00:46:09
and we just were we were able to, like, grasp

00:46:13
onto, like, so many ideas and things that we've been talking about

00:46:18
that I just felt like in that one moment, like, we had

00:46:21
resolved, like, years of, like,

00:46:25
stuff that we've been talking about, and we actually put together a

00:46:29
plan. So, I think that it's important for adults

00:46:33
to, you know, be in tune.

00:46:36
Well, it starts with the adults. We can't start with the kids. We have

00:46:40
to start with the parents. This is what I said last week. I did a

00:46:43
webinar about how to teach school, middle school kids about the

00:46:47
Holocaust. The answer is you can't teach them the gory

00:46:51
historic details, You can teach them how to become empathetic, how to

00:46:54
become sympathetic, how to not succumb to peer pressure and to

00:46:58
social pressure and how to stand up for themselves. And

00:47:02
and that's and that starts with the teachers. That starts and I said to the

00:47:06
teachers, you're all either a mother or somebody's child,

00:47:09
so you can relate to the relationship. It's gotta start with you guys. You have

00:47:13
to know yourselves. You have to know yourselves so that you can create an atmosphere

00:47:17
of trust, a nurturing atmosphere of trust where the kids could talk about how they

00:47:20
feel. It's not about teaching. It's not a history lesson. It's about a

00:47:24
lesson in humanity, and that's where it starts. So I

00:47:28
think it's very important that we become very aware of the dangers

00:47:32
of disconnection and this whole thing about, you know, this

00:47:35
whole, epidemic of loneliness that everyone's talking

00:47:39
about. It's It's not just an epidemic of loneliness, epidemic of not knowing how to

00:47:43
be alone. There's a difference. The capacity to be alone with

00:47:46
yourself is different than loneliness. And there's no

00:47:50
separation between the 2. They're entirely different. And the capacity to be

00:47:54
alone is being able to sustain yourself from within the richness of

00:47:57
your own psyche and your own life history. That's why

00:48:01
connection to your history and to your past is important.

00:48:05
Thank you. Thank you, Jackie. This is I think that's, like, the perfect ending note.

00:48:09
Yeah. This has been amazing. I could literally talk to you for hours.

00:48:13
Like, I am Yes. Unhooked. And we

00:48:16
can continue anytime. Happy to talk to you guys.

00:48:20
Awesome. Alright. I'm a pause audio recording. Yep. Me too.

00:48:24
I'm so appreciative. I can't thank you enough, Jackie.

00:48:29
Hi, all. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I'm G

00:48:32
Rex. And I'm DirtySkittles. Don't forget to subscribe,

00:48:36
rate and review this podcast. We'd love to listen to your

00:48:40
feedback. We can't do this without you guys.

00:48:45
It's okay to be not okay. Just make sure you're talking to

00:48:48
someone.