Drew and Adam sit down with mental health expert and creator of the Behind Happy Faces program, Ross Szabo, to talk about stress, how we can best manage it, and how men can do a better job of making mental health a priority in their lives.
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The Gavel Podcast - Ep 4 - Stress Awareness with Ross Szabo
[Intro music]
0:00:31.8 Drew Logsdon: Hello, Adam.
0:00:32.8 Adam Girtz: Hi, Drew.
0:00:33.7 Drew Logsdon: How are you doing today?
0:00:34.3 Adam Girtz: I'm wonderful, I'm wonderful. I actually just got signed up for my vaccine appointment on Sunday, so I'm feeling good.
0:00:42.3 Drew Logsdon: Is this your first shot? Second shot?
0:00:43.1 Adam Girtz: Yeah, first shot. Pfizer.
0:00:45.7 Drew Logsdon: Nice. I'm a Moderna man, over here. I got my first shot I think a week ago, and my second shot is in a few more weeks essentially, so the dreaded second shot. But, well, congratulations, that's awesome.
0:00:58.8 Adam Girtz: Yeah, I'm excited, I'm excited then. I think I'm the last one in my immediate family to have gotten it, so I'm excited that my parents had went before me, so that's cool.
0:01:10.5 Drew Logsdon: Outstanding. Well, we got a great episode of The Gavel Podcast today for our listeners.
0:01:16.4 Adam Girtz: Yes, we do.
0:01:16.5 Drew Logsdon: Our featured guest is, of course, Ross Szabo, who's our go-to mental health expert, right?
0:01:23.1 Adam Girtz: Yeah. He's written some of our curriculum... We've collaborated with him to create some of our curriculum, Behind Happy Faces. That was a pretty big facilitation piece for me as a consultant, leading the first few lessons of that with our active chapters, so it was kind of a moment of starstruck feeling for me meeting him, and after seeing him on our screen so many times, but it was awesome. I got to ask him a bunch of questions that, personally, I wanted to know about, about mental health and how to help our active chapters help each other and continue that spirit of brotherhood. It was a pretty neat conversation, I thought.
0:02:01.3 Drew Logsdon: Yeah, yeah, Ross is just amazing, just a really smart guy. Folks probably would know him from our program, like you said, Adam. Also he's recorded our Mental Health Quick Take videos on our website, so we'll make sure we put links to all those things that Ross has helped us create and deploy to help our alumni and collegiate members with some stuff, we'll put links to those in the show notes. And B, we're having Ross as a guest, because April is Stress Awareness Month, a stressful time of the year, I think, for a lot of folks. It's traditionally tax deadline season, right? This is the time where either Uncle Sam owes you money, or you owe Uncle Sam some money. It's also... I know for most students listening, finals will be next month, but this is like... This is when you do your final papers and you're in the home stretch here, and graduation, stuff like that. This is the time where it's right before the celebratory stuff, the fun stuff, where it's really stressful to put everything together.
0:03:05.9 Adam Girtz: Yeah, this is that big last push, right? So if you're out there studying for finals and getting those final papers done, don't pull the all-nighter. Plan your time accordingly to give yourself a healthy schedule. That's what Ross probably would say. And actually, I believe we asked him about stress for finals and stress with studying and everything like that.
0:03:30.1 Drew Logsdon: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I think we're gonna have a great episode here, I'm really excited for it. But first we do have some news items and some business to get to. The first of which is our giveaway winner, our trivia giveaway winner. So our listeners who were called at the end of our last episode, I threw out a trivia question to our listeners, and the winner would receive a limited edition. And I say "limited" because when I printed these, and full disclosure here, I printed these just to see how they would work. They came out really amazing, but I didn't end up doing a bigger print run because we did something cooler, which was some other memorabilia related to the 150th events, a limited edition run of just 20 150th anniversary stickers.
0:04:21.2 Drew Logsdon: And these are really great stickers from Sticker Mule, they can go on a water bottle, they can go on all kinds of things, but I just have two left. That's it. Just two left. I've given away to folks I run into, just two left, and we did this trivia to give away, hopefully just one. Thankfully, we had two spot-on correct answers, so we will give both of these away to these folks, but we want to congratulate Brian Huff from our Gamma Mu chapter, Illinois, and we also want to thank Justin Bryce Grayson, who I think judging from your Instagram profile, you are from Jacksonville University, our Kappa Theta chapter down there in Jacksonville, Florida. And the trivia question was, of course, in 1948, when Sigma Nu had their very... Opened the Hall of Honor, they had an inaugural Hall of Honor inductee class, and who was inaugurated part of the inductee class? And the correct answer was, and I'm going to... If I sound faint or distant, I'm moving a book around, and this is from... Obviously, you can go to Headquarters and see it right there. This is from the heritage history of Sigma Nu, which has an appendix in the back of some key dates, and the initial class was founders Hopkins, Quarles and Riley, obviously. And then Issac P. Robinson, John Alexander Howard, Carl Lane Clemens, Clarence Everett Woods, Walter James Sears and George Arthur Smith. That was the inaugural class of inductees, so pretty cool, pretty cool history of folks inducted there.
0:05:50.0 Adam Girtz: Yeah, so congratulations to our giveaway winners, not really even a giveaway, 'cause technically you are providing an answer to that, and so it's not for free, you gave your sweat equity and you have now received your reward.
0:06:05.0 Drew Logsdon: Exactly, exactly. Well, we'll make sure we drop these in some envelopes and put some stamps on them and send them out next week, and hopefully you guys get them. And if you get them, take a picture of them and be sure to tag Sigma Nu so we can see you enjoying your limited edition stickers. But we've got some other news items up though, some deadlines coming up here in a few weeks, right, Adam?
0:06:24.0 Adam Girtz: Yes, we do. Speaking of our initial Hall of Honor inductees, we do have our award nominations coming up here for the Alpha Affiliate Man of the Year, Scholar of the Year, Athlete of the Year, etcetera, as well as our chapter awards. Those are going to be due... The nominations for those are due on April 30th coming up here, as is the Pursuit of Excellence submission from each of our active chapters.
0:06:54.1 Drew Logsdon: Yeah. So do not let April 30th slip by you unnoticed. April 30th is a big deadline day in Sigma Nu world, so... I've been there. I think, Adam, you've also been there. Wasn't it commanders, commanders?
0:07:08.3 Adam Girtz: Yes.
0:07:09.5 Drew Logsdon: April 29th is not the good day to put together your PEP submission. You should do that well in advance.
0:07:16.7 Adam Girtz: Again, do not subject yourself to the all-nighter, I know that there will inevitably be some all-nighters that are going to be pulled, but please don't do that to yourself.
0:07:25.1 Drew Logsdon: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Alright. Well, we've got that business out of the way, what do you say, we get to our interview, Adam?
0:07:31.7 Adam Girtz: Let's.
0:07:34.0 Drew Logsdon: Alright, everyone, here we go to Ross Szabo, an interview with Ross, and stick around for our second half as we bring it back here and we'll catch you on the other side. We'll talk to you later.
0:07:43.1 Adam Girtz: Alright.
[Transition music]
0:08:07.0 Drew Logsdon: Alright. Well, we are here joined today by Ross Szabo, and my co-host Adam Girtz as well, as we talk a little bit about Stress Awareness Month. But first to get started off, Ross, why don't you introduce yourself for our listeners?
0:08:22.7 Ross Szabo: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited about this interview. My name is Ross Szabo, I'm the Wellness Director at Geffen Academy at UCLA, and the CEO of Human Power Project. I guess the briefest introduction I can give is, I've spent my life trying to figure out what the gaps are in mental health education, and then how we can fill them. So my first foray was creating large scale mental health assemblies because they didn't exist in middle schools, high schools, colleges and corporations. And then, after doing that for around eight years and running a big organization and training people, I realized that there was a massive gap in mental health curriculum. So we learn about our physical health from kindergarten through the rest of our lives, and what I saw was like we have an opportunity to teach people about their mental health in the same way. And so, I do that through my company with a curriculum called Behind Happy Faces. And then, I also helped create a school that's on UCLA's campus for students in grade 6 through 12, where they actually have a class where they have to learn about their mental health once a week, every week in grade 6 through 12 of their entire schooling. So I got here by really just trying to see what were the gaps and then fill them with different types of mental health education.
0:09:46.0 Drew Logsdon: Outstanding. And all of our listeners, well, those names will sound familiar. Sigma Nu has offered the Behind Happy Faces program, mental health education resources for our undergraduate members and our advisors for a couple of years now, for sure, and so that'll definitely sound similar to folks there. Well, Ross, to get us started off here, I'm interested, and you've done also a you series of YouTube Mental Health Quick Takes that we've recorded... You've recorded that we distributed that's available to all of our members. I'm interested to hear a little bit about how you got into this field of mental health, because I think it's always interesting when people find their passions and what leads them to pursue those things.
0:10:32.1 Ross Szabo: Yeah, I joke with people, I didn't choose mental health, mental health kind of chose me. [chuckle] I don't think you become a mental health advocate because you had a great life, and then you decide to tell people how great life is one day. Most mental health advocates go through some kind of challenge and when I was really young, between the ages of 11 and 12, I went through a lot of trauma and loss. I visited my oldest brother in a psychiatric ward, a couple of months after I visited him, my grandmother died, then my best friend was killed, then my grandfather died. And much like any other middle school kid, I found my own ways to cope with it, which were to hide my feelings and drink alcohol. And so by the time I turned 16 and started having symptoms of bipolar disorder, my go-to mechanisms were to continue to hide and drink. And it made my high school life really challenging because I dealt with depression, in my senior year of high school I attempted to take my own life. And I went through, really, from ages 16 to 22, just an extreme, extreme battle with substance abuse, self-hatred and bipolar disorder, depression, other kinds of extreme moods.
0:11:55.2 Ross Szabo: I found my voice in it because when I was in high school and was hospitalized for attempting to take my own life, and then when I got out of the hospital and went back to high school, people treated me really differently. They called me a psycho and a crazy kid and made fun of me, and then I had a moment in my senior year where I decided I wanted to start speaking about this because I felt like people just didn't understand. And I was able to take the opportunities from that to go back into the introduction I gave and find paths to educate others, but at my core, every day I still have that same passion of like, "Alright, how do we get people to understand this issue because it affects so many of us."
0:12:40.7 Drew Logsdon: Yeah, absolutely. And that's interesting, that's a really fascinating story of how you got into the field and pursued this project here. So Ross, we're meeting today because you are one of our many mental health experts we, as a fraternity, lean on as we pursue this important field for men today, and our collegiate and our alumni men in our Fraternity. So we're talking about Stress Awareness Month, and to kind of... The first question out of the gate, I guess, for that is I feel like a lot of men misinterpret stress, we have different ideas of stress. I'm stressed at work, or I'm stressed in my relationship, and I'm interested to hear your kind of expert take or just from your experience in your professional work of how can we as men, whether we be a collegiate age man, or somebody in their mid-30s or even their 40s, how do we better interpret stress? Because I feel like a lot of times we internalize it as stress is good, you need to have grit. I hear that a lot, grit. And how do we understand what those stressors are and the differences between maybe there's good stressors, maybe there's bad stressors, what's the difference from these two?
0:14:00.7 Ross Szabo: Yeah, I think that's a really important question, and it is important to determine between, "Is stress motivating you? Is it good? Is it helping you get things done? Or is stress bad? Is it debilitating you? Is it taking away from some aspects of your life?" Because both of those things do exist, there is stress that helps us accomplish tasks or get things done, and we feel better after we do it. And then there's also stress that is really debilitating, it shuts us down, it makes us feel angry or frustrated or scared or sad. And the line between good stress and bad stress is different for each person. So I always ask guys to think like, "Hey, if you're stressed at work, if you're stressed in your relationship, if you're stressed out by your family, is there something you can do about it?" And if there is something you can do about it, and it motivates you, then it is falling into that good stress category because when stress lasts for a short amount of time, and then we take an action and it goes away, that is healthy, productive, like really a common kind of good stress.
0:15:16.2 Ross Szabo: When stress last for an extremely, a long amount of time like even a day or more, and it doesn't go away, and we don't feel like we can take action, and that is the bad stress, and that is a stress that can lead to more physical health problems, mental health problems. A lot of guys in relationships will live with that bad stress for a long time and not say anything about it, not ask for what they need in a relationship, not be communicative about what's going on. And guys in general tend to think they have to suck it up or get through it, but you don't get through that by being silent.
0:15:58.7 Adam Girtz: Great advice there, for sure. Especially I think in... Drew and I are both in different stages of our respective relationships, I think that's a sound advice there. Ross, so I wanted to dig into a little bit, something you said there, in developing empathy for others is something that has made me think of, especially for our collegiate men. As you're a student, you have a lot of different relationships with your brothers, with your romantic relationships while you're in school, relationships with the students, professors. How would you advise that somebody finding their way in their collegiate career better develop empathy for others and see others perspectives in their daily life?
0:16:48.3 Ross Szabo: Yeah, empathy is such an important topic. The University of Michigan's been doing studies on empathy in college students for the past couple of decades, and what they found is that every year empathy scores go down. So essentially, every year in college is the lowest empathy scores we've had. [chuckle]
0:17:07.0 Ross Szabo: And I think the key to empathy is really perspective-taking. Any time I'm in a situation as a guy, especially as a White male who's straight, and I hear other people's issues, I try to put myself in their shoes and think like, "Okay, what must that be like for them?" Even in my own marriage, my wife has a lot of experiences that I just don't, and I try to be patient and listen to her and make sense of like, "Okay, she's saying this, it must mean something to her, how would it feel to be in her shoes?" That perspective-taking is what really allows us to better understand others and see their side.
0:17:56.1 Ross Szabo: I think we do live in a patriarchal society, and in that a lot of guys think they're not allowed to have feelings because of that guilt or because of that privilege, but both things can exist. You can still be frustrated, angry, sad, whatever you are, and have to express that and be able to take the perspective of other people. I know with my high school students, it's something we have to work hard on, because they are so worried about understanding others or saying the wrong thing or being cancelled, and so empathy requires a lot of steps, but it really is about perspective-taking.
0:18:38.0 Drew Logsdon: That's interesting, you mentioned the fear of cancellation a bit, and that's something I think a lot of men are having trouble navigating. We all want to be naturally heroes. We all want to be the heroes of our own story. And the confliction is that you want to be a good listener or a good empathizer, but you also want to be a partner, an ally, or be communicative, but I feel like... And maybe I'm wrong in this, but it seems like a lot of men nowadays are pulling back, not because they don't want to share their emotions, because they're afraid of the reaction to those emotions. You know what I'm saying? It's almost sort of like, "I only have this vernacular to talk, this is the language I speak, and so that may not be always the best language, but I'm limited by that and because of my fear of something, I'm going to hold back on that." Do you see that sometimes in your high school students a little bit, or the students you work with, Ross?
0:19:41.3 Ross Szabo: Yeah, I see it with my friends that are my age. I think there's that fear or that you couldn't say the wrong thing. I think a lot of males are worried about messing up or not getting it right. And in that not getting it right, it would require vulnerability. And when it comes to stress, when it comes to relationships, when it comes to anything, vulnerability can be a scary place. But the only way you change that is by trying, and the only way you make that different is by branching out of your comfort zone. The benefit of being in a fraternity, hopefully, is having the community where you can mess up, is having the support where you can mess up, but a lot of times guys feel so much pressure that they don't even take advantage of that community.
0:20:38.8 Drew Logsdon: Yeah, and that's a good segue point there a little bit. How do you have that conversation with a friend that you think may be struggling with stress or mental health issues? I feel like it's so easy for us to bust on each other, riff on each other, we're really good at that. We can have heated debates about offensive schemes all day long, but when it comes to having really tough conversations of, "I think Adam's feeling in a certain way," or, "Ross is feeling a certain way," how would you... Because that's something that... And your students are thankfully learning it but that's something I never had to learn. That's a tool box that you have no tools in, of how do you have that conversation. What's your advice for somebody to have that conversation with a peer of... You feel like there's a warning sign and you just feel like it's better that you address it with that person?
0:21:35.5 Ross Szabo: Yeah, that's a really good question, and there are clear steps. I think the first step is really helping someone feel comfortable enough to have that conversation. I think so many times in our lives, we approach someone or want to talk to someone, and when we say like, "Hey, I noticed something is wrong," their immediate reaction is defensiveness, and that makes sense. You're never going to go out to someone and be like, "Hey, I think you have a lot of problems," and have them be like, "You are right, I have so many problems. Maybe we should have a chapter meeting and talk about all my problems." So it's understanding a language and an approach that you can reach with your brother or your friend or someone and be like, yeah, lessening that defensiveness. "I care about you, I've noticed this." The reality is most male friendships are based on activities and sarcasm. They're not based on an emotional connection. And it's not that guys don't have those emotions, it's that we don't express them. We don't say, "I appreciate you." We don't say, "I care about you." Sometimes when guys are really drunk, they tell someone they love them or that they're their best friend and they wouldn't know what to do without them, but we don't normalize those conversations when we're sober.
0:22:52.8 Ross Szabo: So that first step is really finding a way to help someone be comfortable, and if that is through an activity that you're used to, if that is through addressing some of the real emotions you have, it's important to do that. Because when we stay in a place of, "This person is my friend because we watch sports together. This person is my friend because we do these things together," it limits the potential of the friendship. So that first step is like, "What can we do to help someone feel comfortable enough to open up?" There are a lot of steps after that, but most people really miss that first step.
0:23:35.4 Drew Logsdon: Yeah.
0:23:35.9 Adam Girtz: So Ross, so something I've seen that is starting to pop up in my chapters that I've worked with over the past couple of semesters here, is chapters implementing a mental health chairman or really investing... We have our chaplain position, which serves as the overseer of the ritual and our ceremonies that we have, but also oversees the morale of the chapter and is supposed to have a finger on the pulse of the mental health of the chapter. But like I said, chapters have been formalizing that into, "Hey, we have a mental health chairman now." If you could send a message to all of our mental health chairmen out there or all of our chaplains in terms of advice on connecting with their brothers or maybe curriculum that they could use, what might advice you... Or what advice might you have for them?
0:24:32.4 Ross Szabo: I think the most important thing is to normalize mental health much as you can in your chapter. You get to have this curriculum, you use it, it's amazing that you're doing that. But I think even in a regular chapter meeting, just having some kind of prompt to be like, "Are people stress today? How are people coping? Is there anything happening with our mental health right now? What do we need to be aware of?" Looking at mental health in the news and bringing it in. There's always a report, a celebrity issue, something about mental health happening in the news every week.
0:25:08.7 Ross Szabo: I think where a mental health chaplain or position could be most effective is continuing the conversation and the exposure to mental health, instead of thinking like, "Well, we did that lesson, we're done." How do you use that lesson again and how do you apply it, and how do you use it to build belonging and connection in your chapter? A mental health chaplain shouldn't just be focused on, "Here are all the problems people are having," we should also be celebrating the successes people are having. So if people are able to cope, if people are able to manage their mental health, those are also things we can talk about. And I think that normalization of bringing it back and sustaining it is what's truly going to change the culture in a chapter. I think if we do one-offs then we're just like, "Oh yeah, we did that one thing, so now everybody must know about it," that's not real, they don't know about it. You have to remember, you have members coming into your chapter with 18-21 years of thinking about mental health a certain way. They don't change that perspective because you did one lesson, they change that perspective because you apply and change behavior and connection on a regular basis.
0:26:28.1 Drew Logsdon: I imagine they also... The lesson helps, it creates a foundation of equal understanding. Here's what depression means, or here's what this means, so everyone's on the same... The lesson sets the playing field, so everyone knows the rules of the game, so to speak, and we're not out of bounds, but I imagine a lot of needle moving happens when you hear a peer story. I know in just the men's group I'm involved in through my faith community, it's one thing to say, "Okay, I know these are stressors, and this is how I should handle them," it's another thing to hear somebody who looks like me, talks like me, has a similar background as me to say, "Yeah, these are my valleys, and this is how I got out to the peak, and I still have those valleys." You mentioned normalize that my mind goes to humanizing them, and relating to them. Having that shared experience that could just easily be me in that chair sharing that experience, so to speak, so.
0:27:29.8 Adam Girtz: Yeah, that was one of the most powerful pieces of the Behind Happy Faces curriculum when we were implementing that in the workshops with our chapters, that I would notice is having the... And this is something that the students would respond back in the feedback that they really enjoyed was the anonymous sharing of some of their experiences and being able to read anonymously, like "These are the things that my brothers have gone through and we haven't talked about this." And there was actually one conversation that I had with a brother where he let me know that, "This is a conversation I've never had with my brothers, but I want to have these conversations." He was very emotionally moved by that vulnerability that he experienced during that exercise, so. How can we encourage that within chapters and provide them more opportunities to be vulnerable with each other? And I think that's one of the biggest opportunities that we have with fraternity.
0:28:34.0 Ross Szabo: Yeah, and it's an opportunity that's often missed. So I think one of the best things that you could do is continue... So that activity you're talking about where you allow members to share anonymously, you can change the question. The original question in the curriculum is, what's one thing you wish people knew about you? And if they know this piece of information, it would help them understand you more. But that question could be changed to what's one thing you're hoping to gain from this fraternity experience? What's one thing you're nervous about? What's one thing that you are... One thing that has built resilience in you? You can really be creative in that question and continue that process of anonymity where people feel safe enough to share until you build to the point where people feel okay sharing in person.
0:29:25.7 Adam Girtz: And it does go back to that normalizing, humanizing, belonging conversation, because the more that people do share, the more that people do see and hear from each other, the more comfortable they're going to feel in their own vulnerability and in that connection. So that's one option. Another option is to, again, look at mental health as not just being about problems and having people focus on the other aspects. That mental health spectrum is wide, it's not just you have a problem or you don't. And so, allowing people to describe that variance. People have gone through loss, they've gone through change, they've gone through rejection, and one, how do they cope with it, but two, how do... More importantly, how do we connect around it?
0:30:14.1 Adam Girtz: Yeah, that's a great point. I think you mentioned this in one of your Mental Health Quick Take videos is, as men we're really good at knowing physical fitness. You want to be stronger, you practice physical fitness. And we need to get into a mindset that mental health fitness, I'll choose that term, is similar. You want to have good positive physical health, you need to do these exercises. And you can't do them just for, like you said, once a month. And so, having good positive mental health may mean doing some new practices, whether it be meditation or just some personal reflection, journaling, there's a lot of different things out there they suggest that can help get you there.
0:31:01.6 Adam Girtz: Ross, so this is going to come out in April, right around the finals time, what would your... What's the advice for somebody who is in the middle of the hurricane in the sense of... I use the hurricane analogy a lot, but you're in that long-term stress and it's... You're like almost... There's fight, flight and complete shock, and you're in that shock zone, like "Hey, I've got finals that I'm behind on," and maybe you realize the stress I'm feeling now has lasted longer than a few hours, it's not leading me towards a good direction of productivity or doing things. It's becoming detrimental. What do I do there? What's... I'm on the sinking ship, where are the lifeboats I should be looking for? If that makes sense.
0:31:57.4 Ross Szabo: Yeah. And so, the most important thing to do there is to separate what's happening to you. When we try to approach anything in life, and we don't separate it into different situations, scenarios or causes, we're just overwhelmed. So for example, in a pandemic, people might be stressed out about things being canceled, remote learning, the pressure of also going back in person and changing habits and routines, [chuckle] not being able to see people, all these things. All of those things are separate and you have to separate them. You have to address them individually based on the one that is impacting you the most, and then find what works best for them in an individual capacity. Where I see students and people have always just struggled the most is they're like, "I'm overwhelmed," and I'm like, "Okay, what are you overwhelmed with?" And then they list four very separate things, but they're trying to approach all of them at the same time, and it's just not possible. So the first step is really thinking, "Okay, what is affecting me the most, and then how can I address those things individually based on what has affected me the most today?" Because if you don't have clarity on what it is, and if you don't have a plan for how to address those individual things, you're going to be constantly falling behind, overwhelmed and shut down.
0:33:28.7 Drew Logsdon: Ross, one piece of the Behind Happy Faces curriculum that really has stuck with me was the developing healthy coping mechanisms for stress and developing healthy habits when it comes to my mental health. So for me, especially this last year, that's come into sharp focus with working from home and the stress of the pandemic that we've all dealt with. And so, I'm proud of myself in channeling that into working out in the morning and taking a break to read during the day. What advice do you have for someone who is still struggling with maybe breaking patterns, negative coping mechanisms or patterns that are not productive for them that they've developed either this year or over the course of their life?
0:34:22.2 Ross Szabo: I think the most important thing is to start small. I think so many times when we think about coping or behavior change, we think you have to go from step A to literally step F in a day, and the reality is, that's just not how the human brain works. We go from step A to, I don't know, a tenth of a way past that, and then maybe back to step A, but we don't get even to step B. And I think males in general put so much pressure on themselves to be like, "I have to figure this out, I have to see this change. Well, the change didn't happen, so this isn't working," and we get frustrated and give up, and so it's how can you be patient. And I want to stop binge drinking as an only form of emotional suppression. I had to realize that even if I stopped drinking 'cause it was unhealthy for me, I still have the self-hatred, I still had the anger, I still had the frustration. And so it was a long process for me to be able to learn how to like myself, appreciate myself and build up to the point of being okay with not drinking, it's not a...
0:35:40.2 Ross Szabo: They always say it takes, whatever, 21 days to change your habit. Well, coping mechanisms aren't changing habits. They are foreign behavior patterns that have neural pathways in your brain that have been practiced over and over and over again, that may have also been affected by your biology and your environment. [chuckle] So this concept that you could just change quickly is not a real thing. So be patient and have small, small goals that you're trying to reach.
0:36:16.1 Adam Girtz: Yeah, absolutely. Celebrate those small victories. That's always... It's always a positive. I appreciate that, thank you.
0:36:20.9 Drew Logsdon: That's super interesting you mentioned there, Ross, that's classic guy stuff, right? That's like, "Hey, I'm going to solve this problem top to bottom right now in the minute," and what have you, and trying to break these things up into manageable chunks or what have you, and I'm also... You've hit the nail on the head, that's something that I didn't really know until looking more in the mental health through your program, through Behind Happy Faces and some other stuff, is that you're right. Your coping mechanisms, like you said, have neural pathways, it's almost like your body's instinctive response to stimuli. Now, as opposed to just a daily habit that you've set up for yourself, so great stuff there. Well, Ross, that just about covers our lot of time here. First off, I want to thank you for your time. This is great. This is outstanding stuff. For any of our listeners interested, obviously, Sigma Nu continues to increase and offer new mental health resources. Mental Health Quick Takes, the YouTube video series that we worked with Ross on that Ross is is great. So if you want to see what Ross looks like, that's a good way of doing it.
0:37:35.8 Ross Szabo: I recommend it.
0:37:35.9 Drew Logsdon: Yeah. And you can check those out. Behind Heavy Faces program is a great resource as well too, and this podcast, we'll add to the library as well too, and we'll hopefully have Ross back a little bit. Ross, for our listeners, if they want to maybe reach out to you or get to know what you're doing a little bit more through your work, how can they do that? How can they follow you? Reach out to you is your... Give us a plug here.
0:38:03.4 Ross Szabo: Yeah, sure. The most active I am on social media, which is not active at all, but I'm trying to change that is my Instagram account, @rossszabo, that's R-O-S-S-S-Z-A-B-O. I have a website, it's humanpowerproject.com, but I'm trying to push all the outreach and awareness through social media.
0:38:30.3 Adam Girtz: Okay.
0:38:30.3 Drew Logsdon: Excellent. We'll make sure we put links to that in the show notes here. Before we close up, I do want to make note for our listeners, they won't be able to see this, but Ross, you have an immaculate bookshop behind you that looks like it is color coded. I have deep appreciation for that.
0:38:45.2 Ross Szabo: Thanks. It is color coded. I hope that my cat meowing wasn't too rough during this interview too.
0:38:52.4 Adam Girtz: [chuckle] I was going to say, we did have a guest star in the video version of the podcast, which is not for public release. [laughter]
0:39:00.0 Adam Girtz: I did want to put in a plug for our lead chairman and our active chapters out there. The Behind Happy Faces curriculum is all available to you, it's all chapter, lead, module D as our mental health module. And it is previously five lessons, but now expanded to nine lessons of the Behind Happy Faces curriculum, available to our active chapters and set up to be easily facilitated virtually. So again, I highly recommend it. Ross, I did want to say thank you for the work that you've done with the program. I facilitated it. The only thing... I was going to say, the only thing better than seeing it facilitated once is facilitating at 26 different times.
[laughter]
0:39:49.6 Adam Girtz: And I wanted to thank you for the benefit that I got from the program, seeing it and doing it with our active chapters. It really, really helped me out and gave me a lot of food for thought when it came to my own mental health, and I think I've made strides there, so I appreciate you and I appreciate the program.
0:40:11.6 Ross Szabo: No, thank you so much, guys. I mean, the credit goes to everyone who does facilitate it and takes the time to try and apply it, that's the hard work. So I appreciate this partnership with Sigma Nu. They've been such an involved partner, such a like, "Hey, how can we make this better? How can we reach our brothers? How can we take care of this?" And it's been really just a pleasure to work with. So thanks for all your work, thanks for the podcast, thanks for bringing me in and I'll keep creating lessons for you all to use.
0:40:46.4 Drew Logsdon: Outstanding.
0:40:46.5 Adam Girtz: Excellent looking forward to it.
0:40:47.5 Drew Logsdon: Excellent. Alright, well, thanks Ross.
0:40:50.9 Ross Szabo: Thank you.
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0:41:17.1 Adam Girtz: Awesome, that was a great interview. I loved talking with Ross. It did wonders for my mental health, I'll tell you that much.
0:41:25.3 Drew Logsdon: Yeah, yeah, Ross is a super smart guy. And we mentioned it in the interview a little bit and I hope... I don't know if it'll make the cuts or not, but Ross's bookshelf in the background are color coded, organized by color, which is such a cool idea to arrange books, but yeah.
0:41:43.0 Adam Girtz: So satisfying.
0:41:44.9 Drew Logsdon: Yeah, oh yeah. And Ross, I think he mentions a lot of great pieces in the interview just now that I think the big takeaway for me, Adam, was we don't talk about mental health enough, we just don't. Everyone talks about how often they go to the gym, not many guys talk about how often they do mental health exercises, or... Just like your body, you've got to exercise your mind in positive ways and treat it correctly and everything like that to have good mental health, and so hopefully folks, you'll start talking more about it.
0:42:14.6 Adam Girtz: Yeah. And, Drew, I think we got to talk about this a little bit as well, but your active chapters have really been taking this on themselves, and I think have realized the need for this and the desire for this in their active membership, so I've worked with a couple of chapters that have gone so far as to create a mental health chairman. I think that's awesome. And that's just, I think our active members showing their ingenuity and their drive to provide for their members, and they've recognized the need and have tried to fill that. So hopefully, if you can pass this episode along to that member of your chapter that's been providing this. If you don't have a mental health chairman, consider creating one, or your chaplain has traditionally filled that role in our active chapters, has the finger on the pulse of the morale of the chapter, and now the mental health. So props to our active chapters that have really taken that on in these last couple of years here.
0:43:15.2 Drew Logsdon: Yeah, absolutely. And like Adam said, you should let your membership drive the desire and need. But you don't know what you don't know, so ask them. Ask them, talk to them and make it more frequent conversation, remove the stigma from it, everyone has good mental health days and bad mental health days, and the more we talk about it, the less we can hide it and worry about it so much, so keeping conversations open and... Again, we will put in the show notes the links to all those resources that we offer through the fraternity. And a lot of those things, the Mental Health Quick Bites, man, that's not just for collegiate members, that's for alumni too. I find myself going back to some of that stuff and just kind of watching the good Lord Ross three-minute pick-me-up video about mental health, and that carries me a little bit. So it's great to have Ross on and again, super smart guy. And hopefully, you guys listening could tell we ran out of time. We could spend hours with Ross, and we'll bring him back for sure.
0:44:20.1 Adam Girtz: Absolutely, yeah. As you and I, Drew, have been brainstorming about where we want to take this podcast and what we want to do with this, in the back of my mind, I've always thought, "Let's do long cuts. Let's do long cut episodes. Let's get Ross back into a five-hour Joe Rogan style interview." [chuckle]
0:44:36.9 Drew Logsdon: Oh, yeah. The old man. Well, you could. Ross is one of those guys, you can definitely... We could sit down for hours and hours. Well, it was great. Well, and hopefully our listeners took something out of it. And that was a great topic and timely, and I hope everyone enjoys it for Stress Awareness Month, and I hope everyone mitigates their stress and knows how to manage it and understand it and everything, and like Ross said, understands what's good stress and what's bad stress, and how do we address the bad stuff, so.
0:45:04.8 Adam Girtz: Absolutely. Well, this month, ask your brothers how they're doing, but more importantly, tell your brothers how you're doing. I think that's a good one.
0:45:13.9 Drew Logsdon: Yeah, exactly. Check in and be receptive, but also share that as well too so, outstanding. Well, Adam, if that's all we've got, then I think I'm going to motion to close.
0:45:23.5 Adam Girtz: Alright, second.
0:45:25.9 Drew Logsdon: Alright, all in favor, say aye.
0:45:27.8 Adam Girtz: Aye.
0:45:28.8 Drew Logsdon: Alright, Adam. We'll catch you later.
0:45:29.2 Adam Girtz: Alright. [chuckle] Bye.
0:45:30.6 Drew Logsdon: Bye.
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