Real Talk with Tina and Ann
Tina and Ann met as journalists covering a capital murder trial, 15 years ago. Tina has been a tv and radio personality and has three children. Ann has a master's in counseling and has worked in the jail system, was a director of a battered woman's shelter/rape crisis center, worked as an assistant director at a school for children with autism, worked with abused kids and is currently raising her three children who have autism. She also is autistic and was told would not graduate high school, but as you can see, she has accomplished so much more. The duo share their stories of overcoming and interview people who are making it, despite what has happened. This is more than just two moms sharing their lives. This is two women who have overcome some of life's hardest obstacles. Join us every Wednesday as we go through life's journey together. There is purpose in the pain and hope in the journey.
Real Talk with Tina and Ann
MentalHappy: Tamar Blue’s Mission to Make Mental Health Available to All
Tamar Blue, founder and CEO of Mental Happy, shares how she transformed her personal struggles with anxiety into a groundbreaking digital platform for accessible mental health support. Her HIPAA-compliant service provides expert-led support groups where people of all backgrounds can find community healing without financial barriers or stigma.
• Turning personal pain into purpose by creating the mental health community she needed
• Breaking cultural barriers where mental health wasn't discussed or treated
• Building on her high school peer support program that received White House recognition
• Creating accessible support groups for life transitions beyond traditional therapy topics
• Addressing healthcare gaps for those with geographical, financial, or scheduling barriers
• Providing free mental health resources and tools that don't require constant technology use
• Prioritizing privacy with mobile-only chat features and no session recordings
• Reducing healthcare system burden by preventing mental health crises
• Changing negative self-talk through journaling and positive affirmations
• Sharing personal wellness practices including nature walks, hydration, and boundary-setting
Visit mentalhappy.com to join a support group, access free resources, or become a group leader in creating spaces for healing, community and hope.
Welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne. I am Anne. Today we're sitting down with a woman who's reimagining mental health from the inside out Tamara Blue, the founder and CEO of Mental Happy, a HIPAA-compliant digital platform making expert-led support groups safe, affordable and stigma-free for all. She turned panic into purpose and a whisper for help into a movement that's helped thousands feel seen, heard and healed. Her work with Mental Happy has appeared in major publications such as Nasdaq, techcrunch and Silicon Valley Business Journal.
Speaker 1:She earned her MBA after graduating from Florida State University with a dual degree in sociology and economics. As a first-generation Haitian-American, she's battled anxiety and panic attacks and silence because in her world, mental health wasn't discussed, let alone treated. So what did she do? She built what she needed a community of support, compassion and healing. From starting a peer group in high school that earned White House recognition, by the way, to Mar didn't wait for permission. She created SPACE. Mental Happy is a health platform that offers people of all backgrounds a safe, secure space to address their emotional health and daily challenges. Through free mental health resources and expert-led support groups, they ensure everyone can access the emotional support that they deserve, free from financial or physical barriers. So grab your journal. Maybe a cup of tea caffeine-free, if you're channeling Tamar, and let's get real. First of all, I want to thank you so much for being on the show.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it and thank you so much to the listeners for having me. I'm happy to be here with you guys.
Speaker 1:You know, I've been on your website, I watched some of your videos and I actually joined and I think anxiety is one of society's biggest problems and the stigma of mental health is a real thing and people look away and others feel ashamed and others feel so alone Also our kids. Today this is probably an epidemic and you started your first peer support program in high school Safety Ambassadors and it, like we said, was recognized by the White House. Could we please talk about your story and what brought you to even wanting to start Mental Happy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, thank you. I've probably always been a pretty empathetic person, so I feel things really deeply. And yeah, just in some societies and some cultural backgrounds, it's just you don't really have the space and oftentimes you don't have the language right. Like you don't really have the space and oftentimes you don't have the language right, like I don't think. In my language we even had a term for, like, mental health. That was a positive one. Anyway, a lot of it is like you know you're crazy or it's a weakness, or you know it's just. It's just really kind of shunned away. The first peer-led support group that I started in high school was really empowering and we had an overwhelming amount of people putting in you know anonymous requests and people kind of coming in and getting help. So it made me realize like okay, we're, I'm not the only person who's ever experienced this and we were doing something really positive.
Speaker 2:Fast forward to all of my life experiences, you know graduating college, working a career and really still encountering people. I worked in staffing and they're technically your employee as the staffer, but they work out at other corporations, kind of like temp services, if anybody's ever heard that term before. So I was managing maybe like 200 something people working in the field and what was definitely common was just like people had life stuff. You know people that come into work because this life thing happened to them and I just found myself like listening to people's hardships more than anything. And when I left that career, I really wanted to leverage something using technology, something that I was passionate about, and I remembered that I really love this work in support groups, even like through the churches I was a part of. There were group networks and I was a volunteer in the church like groups like for homelessness or for women with, like who've been victims of domestic violence. So I had been doing this type of like group work with people for a long time.
Speaker 2:I realized the challenge with groups and even when I was looking for, you know, some type of support group, is that they're really hard to find If you're not part of a church or a church doesn't find you, you're not in a school or university system where you know support groups are often pretty common, or maybe you didn't go through acute care in a hospital. Hospitals oftentimes have support groups, but they're run by volunteers and you have to like, call or email to get. It was just like all this brokenness in support groups. It was like really overlooked, other than what it's wildly popularly known for, which is Alcoholics Anonymous, which has been around for 80 plus something years, has high level of, you know, effectiveness. People recognize the brand and how they've changed people's lives.
Speaker 2:But I really thought about how support groups can really meet that gap, for all of the life events that people may experience and all of the life transitions that people may experience, whether it's recovery, or maybe you are an adult and you're now aging right On our platform there a golden, I think it's called like golden aging or aging gracefully, something like that um that I've seen on our platform, like you know people who you know, 50 and older, or people coming from military and back to civilian life, or who've um are caregivers and they're caring for someone who has, like a long-term disability. So it's just it made me realize like there should be a support group for everyone, for everything, not just anxiety or depression or, and that space just really didn't exist in a way that was really affordable, accessible and had really good representation on the different types of people. It served right, whether that's an LGBTQ community, whether that's, you know, a single mom community or whatever it looks like, you can find a group leader that has either been there, has the clinical knowledge or looks like you.
Speaker 1:I mean this is absolutely genius. And what I love, too, is that you've taken your pain and you've turned it into purpose and you have done something. And this is a movement, because mental health can be debilitating and it is probably one of our most ignored, you know, and that is so sad. People really do look the other way a lot of times. Instead of just reach out a helping hand to somebody who really needs it, therapist and therapists are doing really great work or you know it's.
Speaker 2:It's expensive is oftentimes what we hear from people, because you have to come up with 150, 200 something dollars for 50 minutes and it's oftentimes really hard for people to maybe squeeze it in their schedule, right, because it's like it's Monday, it's like going to the dentist, which is so hard, so it's just it becomes like very difficult to kind of fit it in your life.
Speaker 2:But what oftentimes people don't realize with any type of health care whether it's like physical or mental care, mental health care, something that's like not an emergency, right, like you have to be rushed to the hospital is that people who live in rural areas and people who have children also have like barriers to health. When we think about health care barriers, we sometimes think of it's just financial, but it could be you live in a rural area and there's no bus line to get back to the city, you don't have a car to get back to like a metropolitan area. Or let's say you are a caregiver of, you know, maybe, your aging parents and you also have children. You're like in those middle, you're what's considered those middle year adults, right, and you have to get your parents some help, right, but you also out to get help for your mental health treatment, because you have these, you know, social barriers, these responsibilities that are not just necessarily financial.
Speaker 1:I mean you were speaking my language because you know I adopted five kids. I have two older, I have two, three younger, and my three youngers are autistic. Many, many needs, and it is very hard to and I'm the last person that I think of, right, I mean, that's what we do, that we're the last people that we think of, and it's really easy in the evening to get on, watch your videos or do some things like that, or wake up in the morning and that's the first thing that I do.
Speaker 2:Our philosophy at Mental Happy is that, yes, one-on-one care is absolutely important and groups are a good way to either be a supplement to that, like a complement to that, or if you do have all of these limitations maybe cost, maybe distance, you know things like that then groups are a good option because it's great to go to the doctor and you know, learn a lot about you, know your diagnosis and get treatment and get help.
Speaker 2:Or go to a behavioral outpatient program and get help. But the community aspect of it is absolutely aids in the healing and that's what the support groups in Mental Happy can provide where you can chat with people who are living the real life experience that you're experiencing. But it's also led by some type of professional expert. So there is some trust that you can have in the information that you're receiving and just like the real time motivation, encouragement and support that you get from that community is just like really unbeatable. And I'd say, like 99% of the support groups on the platform are virtual. Like you said, if you got a lot going on during the day, maybe you have some time during your lunch, you know, you can transparently see what times your group is meeting for a virtual session, Maybe, if you missed it, you can still get involved in like, chat and communication on the platform through the mobile apps, so it's like all that helpfulness, like right in your pocket.
Speaker 1:I also love that you can log on anonymously. Love that you can log on anonymously I mean some of us and I know that me going in and sitting, you know, in a group sometimes isn't really where I am in my space, you know, I'm just not there, but I could log in to a group on a computer and that just, you know that really frees that up for me, because I've had people oh, you have so much going on. I'll tell you what if and I'm also autistic, so it really makes a big difference. You've created a space for people, neurodivergent, that would never normally walk into a building yeah, absolutely. And you've made it accessible to everyone. What exactly is everything that you offer on the platform? Because there's a lot more than just the group, yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2:You touched on something that's pretty near and dear to my heart. When we started out, there was just there was a lot of information on the internet at the time kind of starting to really talk about like de-stigmatizing mental health, opening up, you know, going, you know encouraging people to go to therapy. But we still kind of with our community that we were growing really on Facebook at the time and we just we felt like there needed to just be tangible, real things that people can kind of get their hands on and I really love like practicing gratitude and journaling and stuff like that. And we started creating these tools. We call them on our website um air free downloadables and it's just different five to 10 minute tools that people can digest quickly and it's a quick, downloadable form that you can take with you. You can share it, teach it to your kids, have really good prompts for encountering life things.
Speaker 2:Maybe you're having a tough time expressing your boundaries. We talk about what that looks like. Give you examples on what to say different audience that you may have to say. So just different life things, maybe shifting little negative, intrusive thoughts throughout the day to replacing them with positive things. Positive self-talk is like a big theme of a lot of those downloadables and people love them and we realize like, while people have the information and they hear a lot of stuff on social media, it's amazing that people actually want to do the work and do like the small practices. But we do it in a way that doesn't overstimulate people. So it's not like you need to play a game on our app or you know you need to like constantly be on the phone. It's just it's something that you can download and do in your own time and it's and it gives you this really cool one sheet that you can print out, you can carry with you, you can read it and it's not something that takes up too much of your day. The other part, other than the actual support groups, is that, as I mentioned, we don't want to overstimulate people, so we don't connect with any other social media platforms because we just don't want any noise or distraction. People are very keen about privacy and security, so the chat feature is only available on mobile so that we disable any screen shotting or anything like that. We monitor screenshots for people to screenshot what anybody said or messaging. We don't allow recordings of the virtual video sessions. So when your group needs virtually. It's not recorded for any reason, for any purposes, not even for training purposes internally, because we just we really want to be sensitive with your data and the things that you're openly sharing.
Speaker 2:It has a lot to offer on the platform and, as I mentioned before, with the places that you would normally find support groups maybe in a church, maybe in a hospital. It's just those places are fantastic and it's great that they offer them. But what I found in my experience in building support groups and even joining them myself is that, let say, you you do have you had some acute care event at a hospital and they do have support groups, or maybe like grief right, and sometimes it's run by a volunteer. That volunteer isn't always available because you know they're, it's their free time and you have to email this person or you have to call this number to the hospital and they have to, you know, forward your information to the volunteer and the volunteer will reach out. Well, if you think about, like, the tough time that you're going through for anything like maybe you were just diagnosed with something, maybe you're going through grief, you know, maybe you're just like struggling so to have to jump through all these hoops to get to a group is just one of the things that we wanted to eliminate on the platform.
Speaker 2:So it's just a quick you sign up, you tell us a little bit about what you're experiencing nothing sensitive, nothing judgmental on the information.
Speaker 2:We just want to know what types of groups you're looking for so that we can suggest some, and then you can search through all the groups that we have available on the platform to really find your match.
Speaker 2:And then, as you saw, anne, on the platform, it gives you full description on what the group is about. Some groups also tell you what they're not about, so that there's no confusion. And then if the group has any triggers, right, like if there are any sensitive words that maybe you're not ready to experience, then the group on the front page will give you a trigger warning so that you don't join and you're jarred. And you see it on the back end. If there's any price for the group, if the group is free, if it's accepting donations, if there's a monthly fee, if there's a one-time fee, all of those things you know up front so that it's not this weird creepy thing that you're going into Because, again, you are going into, you want to feel like it's a safe space, and the only way we can make it feel like a safe space for people is to be fully transparent, with the information up front.
Speaker 1:You have thought of everything. It sounds like I mean you've tried and like you said community helps me come up with ideas.
Speaker 2:We've gotten a lot of great support and ideas from what people want.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, you're listening and that is really important, and you did talk about the specific evidence-based group therapy that you have, and you've talked about grief and stress and trauma and some of those other things. Do you have like a list of some of the other ones that you provide?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I even seen like an adult an adult like adoption support group. So I mean I've seen like a an adult an adult like adoption support group. So I I mean I've seen like everything on the platform like literally yesterday I was looking at a couple of new psychedelic, like psychedelic support groups that have come up. So I've seen really everything on the platform really surprised. And we even have like faith-based groups on the platform that focus on like recovery and stuff like that. And it's not just like therapists that use the platform, it's like therapists and they do non-clinical work on the platform. So I just want to make that very clear. They just provide like psychoeducational support groups and we've seen, I've even seen like doctors teaching things in the support groups.
Speaker 2:Survivors is a big community like people who've like lived experience and have been advocating for the space for a long time.
Speaker 2:But because all of that content and what the groups are about are led from their perspective is why we have such a wide range of different support groups that people can find. If, for some chance, that you come onto the platform and something niche that you're looking for is not available, people can put in a suggestion and then we collect those suggestions and then when someone comes onto the platform, maybe they want to lead a group and they're not entirely sure, we'll say, okay, well, 20 people you know had expressed they're interested in this particular topic, if you have knowledge on it, and then that's how I like, a new group will spawn up. I wish I could say, like I'm the one who like thought of like all these groups, or my team's, the one like thought of all these different categories. We thought of like 30, I think, main categories and then, like once we launched, like people just kind of blew that 30 up to just thousands of different things that we would have never thought of, that people would need.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds like as soon as somebody thinks of something else, you make it available, we make it available, yeah, yeah, I know that you have been looking for health professionals and things like that Anybody that is willing to come on and be a professional. Am I right?
Speaker 2:99 or an employee of ours. You just use our platform to run your community, whether it's. We have nonprofits on the platform. We even have like really small behavioral health hospitals that run virtual support and outpatient things. We have, as I mentioned, survivors that have been doing the work for a long time, just people who have maybe been running support groups in different places that have been hard for them to manage.
Speaker 2:Or the biggest one that we hear oftentimes is that they're running support groups like kind of like in their local town, local city, but it's very difficult to really fill up those groups just because, again, they're like in person, people would have to drive in. But with this platform is that it allows them to, you know, 10x grow their group more so than they would on their own. Because, again, people are coming specifically to look for support groups on our platform and because we don't have those same barriers and limitation on like driving somewhere and there's really no like, let's say, someone is a licensed therapist, there's really no like legal regulations that they couldn't run a psychoeducational group. And you know, you're based in Connecticut and you have participants in your group from all over the United States.
Speaker 1:You also talk about your mission to serve everyone and I think that that's amazing, because there are so many gaps in our health care and, regardless of income, race or background, you are so many gaps in our health care and, regardless of income, race or background, you are closing those gaps. Can you talk more about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was really hard in the beginning because I'm obviously a person of color and there was just a lot of niche at the time in mental health that we noticed. It was just like rich white woman syndrome, where it's just, it was like these mental health that we noticed. It was just like a rich white woman syndrome, where it's just it was like these mental health groups for rich white women. And then there was, you know, mental health groups for just LGBTQ people and it was just like all these small, just people of color. And there wasn't, and there were all these like small platforms that just catered to a particular type of person, type of demographic lifestyle, and I just I got a lot of pushback in the beginning to be very niche, so maybe just focus on people of color, maybe just focus on women.
Speaker 2:And I just thought, like the problem is and I knew this from just personal experience is that when someone is looking for a support group, it is very difficult to find those niche spaces.
Speaker 2:There really isn't one inclusive platform. That's like, you know, a directory, Wikipedia, you know, like it's its own Google search, it's like its own platform to find all of these things Right, Like if you were looking to rent a home, you would go to rentalscom. I don't know if that's a real website, but you know you'd go to like. You know, if you were looking to buy a car, there's carscom for, like, any car you want to buy really anywhere. And there just wasn't this all inclusive space like that for support groups and those niche places had very, very slim pickings in terms of availability. Maybe you don't fit the niche or the demographic or you can't meet the times, so there just really aren't a lot of options on times. So I really pushed hard like really really hard on just really getting finding investors and people and customers and users. That really kind of saw this vision and this alignment of like yeah, there should be a platform for everyone, for every type of support group, and people should be able to find it pretty easily in one app.
Speaker 1:There really are a lot of people that are not getting the help that they need, and health care is one of the biggest problems. It is so difficult for people to even get the mental health help that they need through the health care that we provide in this country. But you talk about self-activated care and preventative care and self-care practice. So if you could talk more about this, because this is really intriguing to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So self-management and self-activated care is really important and people don't. Sometimes I think we've romanticized it in our society as like self-care is doing your hair, it's getting a massage, it's you know, it's getting your nails done, or um, those things romanticize it in a way that also excludes like half the population, because men maybe not necessarily want to like get their nails. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So what does self-care?
Speaker 2:look like for men. You know, um, and that's something we were also very keen about on the platform is platform is making sure that men had like a lot of spaces. So I had to do a lot of recruiting to go out and find leaders that were also men, to bring men's groups to the platform. But for the self-management piece of it, people don't realize how much it actually declogs our overall healthcare system. Because what happens is and I volunteered in a hospital for a little while in high school, so I and then also a little bit clerical, doing admin, clerical work, like in college and what I realized working in the ER is that people weren't just coming into the ER because they broke a leg or they got into a car accident or they're bleeding or they passed out Like. Some people were rushing into the ER because they were suffering from a broken heart, like literally. I remember this man coming in and he was like in crisis because his wife was divorcing him and he thought he was having a heart attack, but it was really just emotional heartache that he was experiencing. So and then people who are experiencing like psychosis. We had a family member who had an issue with like just like a mental breakdown, like it was just a full psychotic breakdown, and he was rushed into the hospital and the hospital was like, well, we don't handle that. And it was just like, well, where do you take? And it took a while for them to find somewhere some behavioral health center that would agree to take the person. So what we don't realize is that mental health issues that don't have a streamline on where to go clog up the healthcare system. So you know, when we're talking about like fixing the gaps in healthcare, we need to talk about like unburdening the people who are doing the important work in the hospitals. You know, in acute care in medical centers, because they're also kind of also having to take on. If there's no behavioral health center with, you know, within a short mile radius around them, they're also taking on mental health issues.
Speaker 2:And you know, if someone is, let's say, they do have an acute care issue but they also have a mental health issue on top of that, it's just very difficult for, like a nurse or a doctor to encounter that because that's not what they went to school for and it adds extra to their workload. And what people don't realize is hospital readmissions are very high, so people go to the hospital for an acute care issue. Right, let's say they just found out they were diagnosed stage something that's like devastating, that changes their world. They leave the hospital, they, you know, leave all those tests and sometimes they come right back into the hospital because of now they're not taking care of themselves, now they have depression, now they have anxiety, and the hospital's like, well, we just can talk to you about your medications, your treatment plan and stuff like that and it's just like, well, what do you do for all the other things that the person is experiencing?
Speaker 2:So these things where people are able to have some tools to manage their care, their emotional care, from home, virtually where, yes, you were maybe diagnosed with something chronic, you know, now something life-changing happened to you, but then now you have this supplemental support group to help you navigate all of the social, environmental and life-changing things that you know, your amazing, amazing doctor, oncologist, whatever in a hospital system is just not some. They do great work sometimes and they do try to help, but they oftentimes don't have the capacity to because of just all the backlog of patients that they have to see and they have to keep re-seeing because patients are coming in for the wrong things that you know. The hospital is just not built for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I personally know a child who has been from acute center to acute center and it's really hard to get them into a regular residential facility, which is where they're going to be going.
Speaker 2:But the beds are full across the country for kids and I mean, I don't know what's happening in our country, but I can tell you something is happening, that the mental health facilities for kids is full it makes up such a huge population on our platform in terms of groups for caregivers is that, yes, people are getting the treatment, but then the language and support in their own family systems is very difficult and the strain and stress on the people who now have to help provide that care, maintain that care, support it. So all these things, all these like self-activated, self-management type tools where people can have the support, build resilience, focus on their coping, is really important and I just can't stress enough how much burden support group. Like every professional I've talked to every type of doctor under the sun, every type of therapist under the sun it's like you know, you're not taking anything away from the work that we're doing, you're actually taking a piece of it that we just, we were just not built to manage and people should have something else once they leave that doctor's office. I was talking to a doctor that he focuses on, you know, diabetic care and he was like it's not just me giving them a shot, a pill, talking to them about their treatment resume, on managing and reducing their diabetes, but it's also like the nuanced things. It's just like finding that community that is going to hold you accountable to your diet, that's going to be able to talk to you on the tough days, is going to be able to share really fun recipes with each other.
Speaker 2:He was like it's all those little things that I can't provide in the you know, sometimes 20 minute doctor's appointments, like he's. Like I know these things, I just don't have time to really teach them. So he took it upon himself to start a support group and he runs his diabetic support group on our platform for his patient and that's just doing an extra thing on top of everything that he has to do as running a practice, being a medical professional and things of that nature. So we need more people who want to be kind of like on the front lines of support groups, because support group leaders are very much, you know, frontline workers.
Speaker 1:They can just contact the website and say this is what I do, this is my knowledge, whatever turn in everything, yeah, so on mentalhappycom.
Speaker 2:They just click, read the website and see what the things are FAQ and all that and then, if you feel like it fits you and what you want to do, just click get started. There's a small form where you can fill out what your group description will be about. You can always edit it and change it later if you want to change your group dynamic, but we review it. We review all groups that come on to the platform because we want to ensure you're a real person and we want to also ensure nowadays, I mean in a world of bots and everything like.
Speaker 2:We just want to make sure we keep the platform safe and we also review what you're going to be bringing to the platform. It really has to be in the compounds of like physical health, mental health, wellness. It could even be like I think we've even stretched it to like spirituality, meditation and colleges, universities. So as long as it's like within the realm of like overarching wellness, and then once your group is approved, then you know our team will show you how to use the platform and then you can start running your group pretty immediately.
Speaker 1:When you first log in. You know and I went on the video you talk about 11 mental health practices. I don't even call your videos self-help, because I think that that's too cliche. I don't even call your videos self-help because I think that that's too cliche. I don't know. I mean, there's just so many of them out there and I think that it's at a different level because you're so personal and they are you and they are transparent and when pain and passion meet, you have purpose, and I feel that that's what you have done. And it's also about connection, because connection is where people grow and heal, and you've created that space. Connection allows people to be who they are, with the people they feel comfortable with, without judgment. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Can you talk more about that? Absolutely, I've just seen from personal experience. So I did mention early on we started Mental Happy, the overarching Mental Happy community on a social media platform and you would think like, with something like mental health and people kind of talking about their problems and things that they're going, you would think like no one would bully someone and pick on someone who's like going through a tough time, like kicking someone when they're down. But we've seen firsthand like on social media sites people would make like negative comments. They'd make off-color comments, unbelievable, and it was just a lot of and it's not just that, it's just people were also being mean to themselves. You know like the negative self-venting. Yeah, so the judgment is not just what we pride ourselves at Mental Happy is that the judgment we want people to realize it's not just coming from the outside. We want you to also learn to not judge yourself and that's really important. So, yes, in our journey we were like we want to not only prevent bullying from other people, but we also want to help people understand how to be kind and less judgmental to themselves. That's the whole reason why some of the most of like the free resources talk so much about like positive self-talk and really changing that inner narrative, because if you can change your inner world, your inner narrative, you can really change your life.
Speaker 2:I heard I follow someone that I really love Her name is Esther Hicks and I was reading in one of her books. She was just saying, like you know, we own things that we don't necessarily need to own emotionally, like in our mind, and it was something like changing your words from you know, from I have XYZ disease to I'm healing from XYZ disease, and that change from I have meaning I'm going to be with this thing forever versus this is just a journey I'm passing through, right, I'm healing through it. It makes a big difference on your mood and your mood impacts how obviously how you feel overall, mentally and physically. And when you feel good mentally, your body, chemically and on a physiological level, really starts to shift as well.
Speaker 1:I don't think people realize how much our mental affects our physical being. So I mean, you're really providing a space that can help our entire being.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and we do that through what the groups. What I really hope the groups are achieving and what we try to coach the group facilitators through, is, like you're giving people education about like life and nuanced things that maybe no one's ever really taken the time to teach them, that maybe no one's ever really taken the time to teach them, and it's certainly nothing we learn in school. Right, you know a lot about Ulysses S Grant, but you don't really know a lot about your actual mind and how that impacts the physicalness of your body, how it impacts your cells, your organs, and how the body stores trauma and things like that where you need that. I mean it's great to know history, but I mean what's more important than knowing thyself?
Speaker 1:You just made me think of something. I mean that is just so important. I mean, why don't we introduce this in the younger years?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're working on it. I would love that. It's like my biggest dream is to really, you know, really pilot this in the schools and maybe even have like a group for, like guardians and parents, and then have groups for the younger, like K through 12 as well.
Speaker 1:I think part of it and I don't know, but I think a lot of it can be that mental health and I don't know, but I think a lot of it can be that mental health, anything mental health, therapy it's looked at as a weakness or a stigma. I mean you touched on that a little bit, you know with your family and how they looked at it. I mean, how did you break through that?
Speaker 2:I think it was just like going away to college. I really encountered different people and different ideas, different cultures, different languages. So I think just the experience of like moving away really opened my world up. But when? But my specific experience when I was having like these weird panic attacks which felt like kind of out of nowhere for no reason, having like these weird panic attacks which felt like kind of out of nowhere for no reason In my 20s I was able to. I saw one doctor and it was just a little bit of a weird interaction between him and I. And then I saw someone else he definitely didn't know why and he was like I could prescribe you something, but I think you should see a colleague of mine. He wasn't eager to give me medication for it, right? So he was like hey, you should go see this person. And that person he sent me to, I believe, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 2:I can never remember if she was like a dietician or a nutritionalist, um, but she was like a doctor, maybe like doctor dietician, and she talked about how food, you know, triggers things in the mind and the mind triggers like the body, and she really got me to. I mean, you know, just a 20-year-old junkie diet like fast food and very little vegetables and berries and antibiotics and stuff I mean not antibiotics, antioxidants which are very helpful for easing anxiety. Okay, yeah, so she just taught me a lot about, like, how all those holistic things are tied together and she taught me how, you know, the mind really does impact the body and she was like one of the first people that taught me about, like you know, stored trauma and sometimes panic attacks could be trauma that's like stored in your body from when you were a child, things that happen to you that you may not even really remember but your body remembers it, and it's like bringing and things trigger it. Like you know, having too much sugar, having not enough adequate water, like these things trigger these traumas to like kind of hit you, and for me they were like night terrors. It would just happen to me in the middle of the night and she was just like it could be something. So she talked a lot about like moving your body and yoga and stuff like that, and I took a lot of that education that I learned from her and I told the team.
Speaker 2:I was like I told my co-founder at the time. I was like I think I want to write this like 11, 12, like mental happy guide thing, like cause, those were like the 10 principles that she had. I think maybe she had shared like seven or eight principles I sense, added a few to them, but they were just like core principles and I'm like no one ever taught me these things and I'm pretty sure that no one ever taught anybody else. And someone said something like oh, you should turn it into a book and sell it, and I was just like now I just want to give it away. So the Mental Happy Guide is free on our website and it just has like these you know, I can't even remember now 11, 12 things that no one really taught you about just living life and how your life could be better if you just did a few small changes.
Speaker 1:See that could be a class. It could be a class for kids. I really do think so. Right, and you know you shared in a blog post because I did some deep digging here with you and you did talk about the severity of your anxiety and your therapist asked you to start journaling and you were really surprised and you did touch on this a little bit. But how you talked to yourself and your negative thoughts in general. Your mantra back then was I will never be able to do this and this is not going to happen for me.
Speaker 1:You know those types of things and you know we just normally I interview with by myself or Tina and I talk together. We do banter back and forth or whatever, but I did one recently with just myself. I interviewed myself. I guess I really touch on self-talk. You know what we think can become action and if it's negative, you know it comes out as a negative about manifesting and the positive thoughts turning into action. How important is self-talk, what you did talk about that in introspection and working on self, and you went from talking completely negative to who you?
Speaker 1:are now.
Speaker 2:I mean really I mean, yeah, it's, it really works. I mean I can, literally I have physical evidence of the things that, because when I first started doing the journaling, it was really like negative. You can pinpoint all the negative things with all the negative, like all the negative words, with all the negative things that were happening in my life. And then, once I started to shift the words even if the physical world hadn't caught up to the words yet once I just started shifting the story and just writing a better story for myself, then the things in my life started to get better and they started to get better and they started to get better. And it was almost like I started, like predicting my own future and my own life, so things that I wanted and things that I wanted to see happen, and even like with Mental Happy, you know, I told you guys in the beginning where, you know, I had this vision and this idea for it to really be this inclusive place. I didn't just want to build a platform that was just for, you know, people of color or you know, women of color or you know, just like a niche thing. I really wanted it to be inclusive. I remember like writing that down and then to see it come into fruition. You know today and you know, and things like where I wanted to be with my business, things that I wanted to see my family go, it's like the more I gave it my positive energy. It's just like it started, even times where I was ill or sick or recovering from something, and I would just work on changing that story. And it's just like the physical world also changed as well.
Speaker 2:So it's really important and I've heard somebody say it this way that it's the best way I can explain it. They were actually talking about like believing in God and they were just like it's almost no bad side in believing in God, right, it's just like, even with like journaling and writing positives, it's just no downside to it. Like even if you don't quite believe it in the beginning, just doing it is no, there's no downside to it. Like you're only saying good things and you know maybe the good things won't happen right away, maybe they'll take a while and maybe the good things will blow your mind and happen better than you wrote it down, you know. So that's like the best way I can explain like shifting your mindset. It is very, very difficult to get started in the beginning. I 100% living proof of that. Your writings in the beginning will definitely be like scrambled eggs, but it's almost like you kind of need to get all that bad stuff out and then kind of start washing that away and then transitioning to the good stuff.
Speaker 1:It's interesting that taking your thoughts and putting it on paper allowed you to be able to see how you were thinking and you didn't really think. You didn't notice that before you actually were looking at it.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and you just kind of, you know, for me I just kind of became disgusted with it. You know, it's just like I didn't want to. I didn't want to continue to be there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's why you know, gratitude is so important, and I think sometimes we do have to force it and maybe really be thankful for whatever the smallest thing is. I'm not really sure, but if we're there in that negative mindset and everything around us appears as if it's not where we want it, then we might have to start journaling in a way where we can start manifesting something bigger and better.
Speaker 2:Right and I on on like very hard days where it feels like there's like nothing to be grateful for because the main things you want you don't have, right, I always tell people, like just think about, well, two things like one, when you don't have anything to be grateful for, just think about oxygen, right, like literally, if oxygen was not on this planet, like whatever you're worried about, whatever you're nervous about, whatever you're sad that you don't have, or you don't look like, you don't feel like you know it just wouldn't even be a thing if there was no oxygen.
Speaker 2:It just exists so that you can exist. And then, in terms of like easing anxiety, I like to tell people because anxiety is sometimes you're thinking way too much in the future. And I like to tell people like, well, if you think about how the sun is in perfect proximity to the earth, right Like that in itself is a major thing. That's just worked out in your favor.
Speaker 2:The sun is in perfect proximity to earth, like you, literally would not live. Nothing would live. Nothing you cared about would even exist, nothing you're worried about would exist. You wouldn't even have the opportunity to achieve, to say about a job that you want, something that you're wanting to heal from. You know, a lover, a mate that you're hoping for, like you know, like everything else that you're hoping and wanting, feels very small compared to this big event that has already worked out in your favor, for free.
Speaker 1:You do talk about verbalizing gave you power. We are in more control than we realize. Than we realize, yeah, yeah, and we think that people are taking power from us all the time. I think.
Speaker 2:And it could feel that way. It really could. I mean, these are weird times, so definitely could feel that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah, I mean that's a whole nother episode, I think. But you know, we do, we give and we give and we end up with nothing sometimes, and so it's really important that we've talked about in here that is self-prioritize and to self-advocate, because who else is going to do it? I mean we have to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you definitely have to pull yourself up, for sure, and there's people that really what I love about mental happy is there's people that really want to see you win In a place where it feels like no one wants to see you win, no one wants to see you get up.
Speaker 1:You know, I feel like we're creating that space for people. I would like to close with some fun questions about Tamar. You've eliminated caffeine, you live a holistic lifestyle, and can you walk us through your day-to-day practices that you've adopted?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I try to walk on like Mondays and Wednesdays. So I live on the West Coast and it's really hard in Northern California to chase sunshine and warmth. So I've been making a habit to go out in nature on the weekends and that's been amazing because we just have so much wildlife here and it hasn't been smoky and burning outside, which is nice. But I also work out a few times a week. I make drinking water a big priority. I learned that very early on that dehydration really triggers anxiety. It can also trigger depression. Yeah, I try to eat as cleanly as I can, but I had five guys burgers the other day on my treat day. You got it. Life is balanced right. Yeah, and I gave up alcohol many, many, many years ago. No judgment to anyone who still partakes. I might have some matcha here and there like very low caffeine. I'm a big like go outside in nature person, like. I really love long walks by myself and dancing and singing. Like you know, I was singing at the top of my lungs, dropping my kid off.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Dropping my kid off to camp.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can embarrass my kids sometimes.
Speaker 2:I know the ceiling really loud. Looking in the car.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we talked about personal affirmations, mantras. You know all that stuff. Can you share some of your own mantras that help keep get you through?
Speaker 2:your day. Yeah, the best one, my favorite one, is everything is working out for me. Okay, it's simple as that. And even on my bad days, I mean, I can write that down like 20 times and then I'll start to feel better. It's just everything is working out for me. And if you don't believe it, you can kind of like look back at your life, at things that you were worried about and whether they worked out or not. Nine times out of 10, they did.
Speaker 1:Mine is trust the process. I love that and I cannot tell you how many times that goes through my head, and it also works for me as being like a thought stopper, because when my brain wants to go in the negative right away and start going towards the worst case scenario, I'll just stop and say trust the process and that instantly really does make me start trusting where I am right now. Right, and then allow it to just be and sit for a minute before I start taking it down the wrong path, because you know that's what our brains want to do. Sometimes you say chopping vegetables is meditative. To you. It is what is your go-to comfort meal when you're nervous Besides five guys, I know.
Speaker 2:I love making eggplant lasagna.
Speaker 2:Oh yum I love eggplant, yeah, and I love any type of like legume stew, so just like a lot of kale and spinach, and I always put eggplant in it and it just it takes a long time to cook down up a carrots in it and yeah, it's a traditional dish from my culture and I mean I've I've probably Americanized it to the max but but yeah, it's just, it's really mad. It just takes a long time to chop the things down and, you know, cook everything down. So it's just, by the time you're done, two hours later, you just you don't even remember what you were worried about before.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, cooking has really helped me. Those types of things help bring me back to center and help me not. I don't remember any of my problems while I'm doing those things. I think that that's really important, you know, is that we need to always find something that brings us back to center so we're not stuck in that negative and we can remind ourselves why we're going the path that we are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and life kind of just gives you so much momentum, so fast, like it's just like it's work, it's you know, it's emails, it's I need to call this person back, I need to this from this grocery store.
Speaker 2:It's like all the mental load of life Just it just feels like so much fast momentum and it just it feels like we need to know the details of like how everything is going to work out, because we need to control it. I had a really great business mentor once upon a time who he used to love saying like don't get caught in the details. Whenever he would share like an idea with us or some new initiative, and you know everybody, all the employees, are like well, what about this and what about that, and that's not going to work. And you know we sometimes talk ourselves out of good things, right, or we overwhelm ourselves with like why this is not going to work out. And he used to always say like don't get caught in the details. And sometimes when I have an idea about something or you know I want to change something or achieve something, I will tell myself, like okay, this is your idea right now. You don't need to get caught in the details of like how and when, and you know your job is just the what.
Speaker 2:And I've already figured out the what you know. And my other favorite one that I learned from a good friend of mine. Her name is Patty. She used to love saying when someone would hit you with like something urgent or it feels urgent and you have to like immediately respond and or maybe someone upset you, she was just like you got to do this thing where you just practice like just letting it sit in your hair for a little while, you know. And she would also say like don't take that call, you know, just cause she was just saying like sometimes when you just don't respond, life has a way of just the thing goes away Like it just sometimes kind of handles itself with just like a little bit of time, a little bit of breathing room, just letting it sit in your hair, just don't take that call too fast, you know, and just like letting it simmer for a little bit.
Speaker 2:Cause in staffing every. This is where we met as friends. But in staffing everything's so urgent and employee you know called out and you know this and that, and she's like everybody that calls you, it's like an urgent call Right, and you're getting 50 urgent calls at a time. So she just really learned to like not let other people's panic be your panic. Oh my gosh, I love that. I think I'm going to write that down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh my gosh, yeah, that is so good, right.
Speaker 2:So it just it gave me this like control of self Right, like I'm now not taking on other people, and you can do that in a lot of different scenarios, like if someone's, if your partner's, upset and angry, and then sometimes you find yourself angry and kind of like elevating your voice too, because you're just absorbing their energy and it's just sometimes like not letting other people's things just become your emotion, so that that's very, very helpful.
Speaker 1:Yes, I have learned that being quiet and allow the other person to just go is sometimes the best thing to do and allow time to resolve it and to walk, and it normally does resolve itself. And balance is key and you've touched on that a little bit and putting up those boundaries. Boundaries are huge to our mental health, protecting our own peace and I'm sure, as the CEO and you know this mental health space, that you've had to do that a lot and you know this mental health space, that you've had to do that a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I've gotten it really just in the last maybe two years, just like with family and trying to balance family and work. I've just had to really get good. And the way I think about boundaries. Boundaries are for us. Sometimes we think of boundaries as, oh, this is just a barrier I'm putting up so other people don't bother me.
Speaker 2:But I think we think about it sometimes in the wrong not necessarily the wrong way, but not in the best perspective, in that boundaries are for you to honor your beliefs and your guiding systems and things that you want to see or you don't want to see, because to say that you're giving someone a boundary, they would have to know what your belief systems are and oftentimes people don't know your belief system right.
Speaker 2:So how could you give someone else a boundary For me? I had to honor my own boundary and just, you know, my belief system is just really trying to be the master of my time. Where I realized is like I was crossing my own boundary and like really just being too nice with my time and helping people and as much as it like pained me when people would reach out and they'd, you know, want help with something, advice with something. I just had to really just brutally be honest like, hey, I'm at the top of my bandwidth on what I can give people of my time and I realized that it wasn't other people violating that boundary, it was just me not honoring that belief that I had that, hey, I'm just very limited on time now because of X, y, z thing.
Speaker 1:One last question, and then we'll close. What advice would you give to somebody who I mean this is obviously pre-mental happy they haven't pushed that button yet, they haven't gone on yet and they are completely full of anxiety and they're overwhelmed and they don't even know what to do with that first step? What? Just talk to them.
Speaker 2:I would say to try to get outdoors. If you can't, if it's the weather's not vibing with you outdoors, just try to turn off, like high sensory things, like turn off your phone, turn off any light. I used to find like a corner, like in a closet, and I used to just like sit.
Speaker 2:Now I sit and I put my hand on my heart and I just, I just do nothing Like I don't, and I tell myself like I don't have any expectations of myself. And whenever a thought would like come in, I would imagine, like I would physically imagine myself kind of like pushing, gently, pushing that thought away. And I think, if you can just breathe and sit for a second, the idea or the thought or the motivation or the impulse to do the next thing that's best for you will come up.
Speaker 1:That's really good advice, I think just sometimes just one step and then the next will reveal itself and not even looking past that, being okay with where you are. I mean, that's just for right, now, for right now yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't have to see the whole staircase.
Speaker 1:Well, tamar, you are an inspiration, thank you. You didn't just want to get mentally healthy. You created an entire space for everyone to come with you, and I think that that's amazing, that you took people on this journey. You realized a need and you acted on it. You left what you knew and you created something because it was needed, and you are to be commended for what you are accomplishing.
Speaker 1:People all over do not have access to mental health. They just don't. They are sitting at home alone or they are even in a room full of people feeling hopeless, and suicide is up, anxiety is up, hurting people are everywhere, judgment of others is up, trust is down, division is up and it's getting worse all the time. So thank you, tamar, thank you, thank you for what you are doing, and I'm going to scream from the rooftops and tell everyone that I know about Mental Happy and go to mentalhappycom and, like I said, I am doing it myself and I'm going to join some of these groups and you know I don't take this lightly. I really do believe in this space and thank you for giving us that space for people like me and for everyone out there that needs help.
Speaker 1:Tamar Blue didn't just start a company. She started a movement, a movement for every person who's ever felt unseen, unheard or they had to carry their own struggles alone. So here's a reminder Mental health is real. It's a real health. Support is strength and healing is not only possible, it's necessary. So visit mentalhappycom, join a group, start your journey, be part of something that could change your life or someone else's. Tamar, thank you for creating the kind of world we all want to live in, one that makes space for healing humanity and hope. And to all of you, listening, thank you for showing up for yourselves today. This has been Real Talk with Tina and Anne and, as we always say, there is purpose in the pain and there is hope in the journey. Thank you for joining and we will see you next time.
