 A lot of you have requested me to do some more story times about my past, my history and all of that. So I decided to talk a little bit about my experience working in mental health treatment and one of the worst parts about it. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health and typically what I do here is I pull different topics from the YouTube community to try to teach you how to improve your mental and emotional well-being. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And all of my loyal subscribers out there, I'm uploading my evening video a little bit early. Why you may ask? Because usually I have my son on the weekends but he asked me to pick him up today on Thursday because it's some really cool new stuff in the Spider-Man game. So I'm picking my son up today after school, spend some time with him so tonight I won't be YouTubeing. I'll be getting my Spider-Man on. And speaking of my amazing baby boy, did you know that my book Rewire Your Anger is now available in the audio book format? Go grab yourself a copy. It'll help you with your anger and it'll help me feed my kid. But anyways, let's do a little story time. I'm not sure how long this video is going to be. But yeah, I want to talk about one of the worst parts about working in the mental health treatment field. So I guess I'll get started. How do I get my job? So I got hired working at this treatment center and I was very fortunate because I knew I wanted to help people with addiction and their mental health. But I dropped out of college after a semester many years ago. And fortunate for me, this job was for an alumni coordinator. I'll explain a little bit more about what that is. And basically they wanted two years clean time. So I was able to get the job, that and my, you know, charming personality. I got that job. And yeah, like basically I was able to, you know, start working at one of the biggest mental health treatment centers, you know, that's nationwide. And when I say this, let me make it clear. This was a dual diagnosis treatment center. So we specialized in helping people with co-occurring disorders. So this means that they had an addiction as well as a mental illness. Okay. So they had addiction and major depressive disorder, addiction and generalized anxiety disorder, addiction and post traumatic stress disorder, addiction and bipolar disorder, addiction, borderline personality disorder. All right. So pretty much everybody in there had addiction as well as a mental illness. So we were treating both. Okay. So a lot of my job revolved around helping people once they left. So I had a work cell phone on me. So basically if somebody was struggling after they left, I was there for them. Okay. So part of what I would tell people when I introduced myself to them when they first got there was like, listen, all right. Once you leave here, we're not just kicking you out and saying so long goodbye. All right. I'm here for you. So call me. I was on social media too. So they can get a hold of me pretty much anywhere. And my motto for them was I used to always tell them I was like, I'm my business card. I wish you would say, call me before you do something stupid. All right. Because it's a lot easier to help somebody before they do something stupid than after they do something stupid. Right. So I would call them afterwards they would follow up with me. And that was honestly one of the best parts of the job. Okay. Is seeing all the success stories. Okay. So that was great. But aside from that, part of the job was, you know, I did a bunch of groups. I did a bunch of groups and it being such a large facility. So we had a residential campus and then we had an outpatient. So at the residential campus, you know, we did everything from detox to residential treatment. And then PHP and IOP was done at the other building. So one of the groups I did was the detox group. All right. All of my fellow addicts and alcoholists out there in recovery. So like that was typically their first week of treatment when they're on detox meds. They're going through withdrawal from alcohol, opioids, prescription opioids, benzos, meth, cocaine, all those things. A lot of people not in a great mood, you know, we're taking the one thing that they love away from them. And now they're also experiencing the psychological and physical symptoms of withdrawal. So in that detox group, I would introduce myself and I would show my story typically. And I would talk about, you know, what helped me get to where I am today. You know, overcoming addiction, depression, anxiety, how my life went from me being suicidal to me living an amazing life today. And that would help me build a connection with them. And then as they were there at the residential treatment center, I would do groups for the men and then I would also do groups for the women. And depending on the groups, typically I would teach them about stuff. I'm teaching you here on this channel except I wouldn't use YouTubers for context. You know what I mean? But sometimes to be honest, I would use celebrity stories and things like that because it helps them understand. For example, for example, like a lot of people would come into, you know, treatment and they wanted to go out and get the job, get the house, get the car, get, you know, the woman or get the man or whatever it was. And I would explain to them, you know, when we had celebrities pass away from overdoses, I'm like, you need to get your priorities straight. Like you need to understand that having those things isn't going to guarantee your happiness, right? So then after residential, they would transition over to outpatient or PHP, which is partial hospitalization program. Now, while they were here, they were meeting with doctors, nurses to give them their meds. But they also had a therapist. We had a psychologist on staff. So a lot of them had a therapist. Okay. And I'm going to get back to that real quick. So, or at the end of this video, so they had therapists who they were talked to. But then once they transitioned over to the outpatient, they would have a new therapist. And then same deal over at the outpatient facility. I was doing, you know, groups for, you know, the men and the women of both levels of care and all of that. And basically one of the reasons I'm explaining to you how I was with them from the time that they got there until the time they got to the end of their stay. I built very, very close relationships with a lot of people. I got to know them. One of the reasons I advocate so much for addiction and try to increase awareness is one because most people with addictions have co-occurring disorders. They have a mental illness as well. But a lot of them struggled with some kind of trauma. If you knew the past or the history of a lot of people who struggle with addiction, a lot of it is rooted in traumatic childhoods. For example, my experience was I was the son of an alcoholic mom. And I didn't really talk to her. I had a lot of whatever, like you've seen my videos about that. Hopefully you have. But my mom, for those of you who don't know, she's sober today. She has a PhD in psychology. She's in the same field as I am. She has a channel. Go check it out. We do some videos together. I'm actually going to see her this next week when I go to visit California. But anyways, I got to know a lot of these people. And that has its pros and cons. So one thing is, and I get it, you know, like when people come at me for my credentials, I get it. And I totally understand. And this is going to, this is going to sound like, you know, me flexing or whatever the kids say nowadays. But a lot of, a lot of the clients would come into my office to talk to me one on one. A lot of them did. And it's because they couldn't connect with their therapist because the therapist, you know, we had some therapists who were in recovery, but not many. So a lot of them would come in and talk to me because they wanted to talk to somebody who was actually sober, who had actually been through what they had been through, right? But I love therapists and I believe, I truly believe, especially with addiction recovery, it's a combination between support, support groups as well as therapy. It's good to get an outside perspective from somebody who has been through, you know, schooling and is educated in all these different forms of therapy. And, you know, like I'm, I'm mainly self-educated, even though I've been taking a course for the last, I don't know, year or so to become a certified alcohol and drug counselor. I put it on hold for a little bit while I focus on more on YouTube, but I'll be going back within the next year or so. But anyways, it's always good to get both perspectives. But anyways, I grew really close to a lot of these people by knowing their stories, having them come in, they would come in and they would celebrate like their successes and stuff like that and say, oh my God, like, and just a little successes. This is why I tell you guys to celebrate your small successes. Like they'd come in and say, yo, my mom called me today and she was calling me these names and this names and told me never to come home. And I handled it really chill and I didn't relapse or use and, you know, and I'm like, dude, that's awesome. You know, you know, I had women who would come in and, you know, I talked to them too about, you know, their families or their kids or, you know, whatever it was and their struggles or, you know, the struggles they were going, that they were having with each other and all of that. Like when I made my video about not shaming Trisha Paytas yesterday, like something I would often teach my clients is like, yo, we're all struggling. We're all struggling and you don't have to be in a treatment center to know that we're all struggling. If you are a human being on this earth, we are all struggling. Like recognize that and be supportive of one another. You know what I'm saying? Like we all have our struggles that we're going through. But anyways, you know, it gave them some comfort knowing that I was going to be keeping in touch with them afterwards. Now because of HIPAA laws and my position, I was one of the only people who can get in contact with people after they left. So part of the law, at least in Nevada is therapists, even other staff members cannot have contact. They cannot reach out to clients after they leave for two years. Okay. Now the clients could reach out to the therapist. So some of the people would say, hey, I want to tell my therapist how good I'm doing and da, da, da, da. So I'd like shoot the therapist an email. I'd say, hey, is it cool if I give them your phone number or whatever? So I would play middleman because with my position, I was allowed to keep in touch with people like my entire, most of my job was keeping in touch with people afterwards. So I would call them up at like 30 days, 60 days, check in and say, yo, how are you doing? But they were always able to call me or hit me up beforehand. So this is where the hardest part of my job came in. And that was dealing with the deaths, you know, like again, going back to credentials, like, you know, it's cute. It's cute to me when I have people coming at me on my channel saying, like, I'm a psychology student. I took a psychology class. Like that's, that's adorable. But I know no discredit to you, no discredit to you. But what I'm just trying to get at is there's no amount of schooling that will teach you how to deal with the amount of death that I've dealt with. All right. Like I've made videos about this in the past. I actually got, you know, a message just a month or two ago about one of my clients who unfortunately committed suicide a little bit after treatment. You know what I mean? And I got these calls all the time. It has been 76 people that I know of, 76 people that I know of that have died from relapse and overdose, alcohol or drug related accidents or suicide. All right. And like I said, unfortunately, there's no amount of schooling that will teach you how to deal with that. And that's something that I dealt with on a regular basis, like, if you guys wonder how I stay in a good mood all the time, and it's just because, you know, there's a combination of have I become, you know, used to it, you know, no, I haven't. But like I've had to learn how to deal with it. Like you guys, there were literally times where I had a group that I had to do for 50 or 60 people. And minutes before I went to do that group, I would get a phone call that somebody else passed away. Right. So what can I do in that situation? I still got to go do the group. So what I would do is similar to what I do with my YouTube channel. I would take that. I would take that thing that just happened and it would fuel, it would fuel the group I did to explain to people like this thing ain't no joke. And if you're feeling hopeless, like things can get better. You know, I make these videos, you know, to reach out to a broader audience to show you that it can get better. If a guy like me can get better, you can get better. You know what I mean? Because there's so many people. There's so many people who just, they feel hopeless. And to this day, I've never met a hopeless cause. All right. So this was the hardest part. Like, I'll never forget. I will never forget. Oh my God. Like, it's hard to even talk about this one, but there was a young woman who, you know, came to treatment. I met her. It was a weird situation because she actually knew my boss from Florida and then she was here in Las Vegas in treatment. And yeah, she stayed clean for a while. She had a relapse and she came back and she was just doing phenomenal. She was doing phenomenal. And what I would do too with the alumni after they left, I would try to get them to come back and share their story, to share their story with the new people coming in. Showing them that like, yo, you can do this because you can only listen so much to me. That's why I do collabs on my channel. But I would have people come in and she was always ready to come in and, you know, share her story. She had overdosed multiple times and survived, you know, traumatic childhood, all of that stuff. And she was just doing so phenomenal. And I remember there was a weekend. It was a three-day weekend there. I was out of town. And usually if I was out of town, I would get some people to come in and speak. So they would speak at the groups that I would usually do. And it was a guy and then it was her. And the guy showed up to the group and he was like, hey, where's so-and-so? And I'm just like, I don't know. And I'm like texting and I'm texting and I'm blowing her up and I go, where are you at? You know, because trust me, I keep my clients and my alumni accountable as well. Like, don't tell me you're going to do something and then not do it. I'm blowing her up and I'm just like, dude, I don't know. I'm out of town. Like just do the group. Go ahead and share your story. He had like a few years so he could share his story, you know. He had experience in that. And then later that afternoon, I got a call from one of my other alumni that she overdosed and was on life support in the hospital. So like, she was doing so well for so long. And then the day she was going to come in and speak, she actually relapsed and she overdosed and was in the hospital. And unfortunately, she passed away from some heart failure. And she was like 24 years old. Most of the people I know who passed away were in their 20s, you know. But yeah, like what separated me from the therapists and other staff members was this. When people would come into treatment, they would have their therapist and they would have their therapist and love their therapist or hate their therapist. Some people hate their therapist. It happens, you know. And once they left treatment, the therapist didn't really know what would happen to them, right? So they can kind of create whatever story they wanted to in their head, you know. Maybe they did great. Maybe they didn't do great. Maybe they just realized or whatever. But my job, my job, I had to hear about all the death. I had to hear about all the relapses. I had to hear about all of the sadness. You know what I mean? So in those situations, I kind of wished I was a therapist where I just didn't know. But you know, I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I was able to see more success stories than those tragic stories. I was grateful that I got to see people stay sober for years at a time. One of the things I was most grateful for was whenever somebody would pass away, all of the other clients who were in treatment with them could message me and turn to me, you know. And, you know, talk to me. I remember we did, for that young woman I just told you about who passed away. We did a candlelight vigil for her. And you know, I'm glad I was able to be there for the others, you know. But the other, you know, the other thing is I've been through it so much. I've been through so much in my life. I'm glad to be able to take that, take all of my terrible experiences and share them with other people. And something that, you know, that wasn't working for me when I first started this channel was I wanted to share that with people, but I couldn't. Like, just because the way the algorithm works, it doesn't want to just promote that stuff. But I figured out a trick. You tie that in with some YouTuber's names, you got yourself some traffic and you can share that message, you know. Because that's pretty much, you know, what I want to do. I've dealt with so much and I'm not delusional. I don't think I'm going to save everybody. I don't think I can save anybody, you know. Like, if you guys ever thank me on Twitter or Instagram or whatever, like, I appreciate it, but you're the one doing the work. Like, I'm just here to remind you that your mental health is important. Whether you're dealing with addiction or depression or anxiety or trauma or toxic relationships or BPD, whatever your illness is, I just want you to have a daily reminder that you need to work on your mental health. Professional help is available, right? If you can't afford professional help, get your butt in a support group. You know what I'm saying? But anyways, I was able to turn YouTube into a full-time gig a couple months ago and I wanted to make this video because I was just thinking about it. Like, I don't get those calls as much anymore. I still stay in touch with a lot of people and it still happens, like I mentioned, just lost somebody to suicide a few months ago, but I don't get those calls as much anymore and I don't know. That might be part of why, you know, I'm happier, why things are going better because I'm not getting those calls like, I used to get those calls sometimes two, three times in a week. You know what I mean? And imagine what that does to this, you know. That's one of the reasons that I'm using, you know, better help therapy now. And that might seem like a plug for my affiliate link, but use it if you want. Don't use it if you don't want to. But I have a lot of stuff that's going on up here that maybe I haven't addressed and I'm glad that I have somebody to talk about it, you know, because even though I'm not a therapist, even the best therapists have therapists, you know. But anyways, I know some of you are thinking about getting in mental health treatment and for all of you psychology students, again, I apologize. You don't want to like, what I said earlier, I don't mean to discredit you or anything. It's just, I just want you to know what you potentially might be dealing with when working in mental health treatment because there isn't necessarily anything set up for you to deal with the tragedies that you're gonna deal with. And one of the reasons a lot of therapists need therapists is because therapist burnout is a very real thing. When you're sitting there, like I told you about getting into my office and having one-on-ones, I heard tragic story after tragic story about childhood abuse and all sorts of abuse and it's rough, it's rough. So anyways, one of the reasons I was inspired to do this is because I just finished doing my gratitude journaling. I hope some of you are doing the gratitude challenge that my mom and I introduced a couple weeks ago. So I hope you guys are doing it too, but I'm grateful that, you know, I'm grateful for the life I get to live today. Like I mentioned, I get to go pick up my son from school pretty soon, play video games. You know, tonight he's got to go to bed early because he has school tomorrow. But anyways, I'm grateful for my beautiful girlfriend. I'm grateful for all of you who take time out of your day pretty much every single day to do some work on your mental health even if it's just checking in with my videos, anything like that. Like I'm grateful for all the people that I've been able to play a very small role in helping them make their mental health a priority. But anyways, this video is longer than I anticipated. I hope you enjoyed it. If you like these types of story times, if you want me to share more stories, let me know down in the comments below. These videos, just because of the way YouTube works, they won't get as much traction, but if there's something that you guys enjoy, let me know down in the comments. But anyways, that's all I got. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos. And a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You are all amazing. And if you would like to become a patron, get some exclusive content, discounts, access to my books for free and all that, click or tap right there. Alright, thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.