In this episode of Finding Your Balance: A Mental Health Podcast, hosts Tiffani Fritzsche and Kirk Fasshauer discuss how to tell the difference between having a bad day and a mental health crisis. Often, some of our bad days can be disguised as a mental health crisis. But meeting some basic needs and providing self-care can help you determine if you are dealing with something more serious, and help you find your balance again. Tune in to learn the signs and spot the differences.

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00:00 Tiffani

Welcome to Season 2 of Finding Your Balance, a mental health podcast. I'm Tiffani Fritzche. I'm a

00:05 Tiffani

licensed mental health counselor, and I'm joined with my friend, Kirk Fosthauer, licensed clinical

00:08 Tiffani

social worker. Hi, Kirk. Hello, hello, hello. So in this season, we're going to be covering a lot

00:13 Tiffani

of topics. And the first one today is understanding the difference between a bad day and a mental

00:19 Kirk

health crisis. Right, right. Because I think people get kind of concerned that, you know,

00:25 Kirk

well, people have bad days. Why is it more serious than others? Well, it can be. But everybody has

00:31 Kirk

bad days. So, you know, part of having a bad day doesn't mean you necessarily need mental health

00:44 Kirk

counseling or intervention. So, you know,

00:50 Kirk

it takes a little bit of time. So bad days tend to be more situational,

00:55 Kirk

right? You've had bad days. Yeah. What do you do during those days? So a lot of times for me,

01:01 Tiffani

I work with kids. And so one of the big things that we focus on is meeting those basic needs. Have

01:05 Tiffani

you slept enough? Have you had a snack? Have you gone outside? And a lot of times I think for me,

01:11 Tiffani

especially whenever I'm having a rough day, if I look at the day. I've been pretty stationary. You

01:16 Tiffani

know, I haven't moved a lot, but also I'm in panic mode and I'm not focusing on anything other than

01:22 Tiffani

what's right in front of me. And I lose track of meeting those basic needs. There's a lot of things

01:26 Tiffani

that a snack and a nap will fix, but some things do go past that. Yeah, I've heard you say that in

01:33 Kirk

several trainings that you've done with me. And it's like, that is so true. A snack and a nap.

01:40 Kirk

Cures all. And as I'm getting older, I'm finding out the nap is just as important.

01:46 Kirk

But, you know, the bad days are situational. So examples of that,

01:52 Kirk

dealing with traffic, looking at your schedule, maybe getting a little overwhelmed because you've

01:57 Kirk

got a deadline coming up and you're not able to meet it or you've missed it. I've looked at my

02:03 Kirk

calendar and gone, oh, shoot, I've missed a deadline. Or, God forbid, this tragedy should happen.

02:09 Kirk

You spill your coffee.

02:12 Kirk

I'm an avid coffee drinker. But those are temporary frustrations,

02:20 Kirk

minor annoyances, and they kind of, you know, resolve themselves. When you do self-care,

02:26 Kirk

the snack and the nap. When I think a lot of those like talking about spilling your coffee, you

02:30 Tiffani

know, or the other examples that you gave for me, sometimes I get this like time blindness. And so

02:35 Tiffani

I'm all in on whatever it's in front of me. And then you notice that maybe you're running a few

02:40 Tiffani

minutes late. Right. And then there's this panic of like, oh, no, I'm late again. And so I think

02:45 Tiffani

sometimes it's as simple as stepping back when you're not in a crisis, because when you're in a

02:50 Tiffani

crisis, your mind is like overloaded. Right. That's not the time for lectures. That's the time.

02:55 Tiffani

just take a minute. But are there simple things that we can do to relieve the stress,

03:01 Tiffani

to maybe solve the problem even temporarily? And so, for example, if you struggle with being on

03:07 Tiffani

time, building in extra margin into your day to where, okay, if I know I've got to be there by this

03:12 Tiffani

time, in my mind, I'm going to say I need to be there, you know, 15 minutes early or something like

03:17 Tiffani

that. Some things cannot be fixed. And those, you know, moments of stress or frustration or panic,

03:23 Tiffani

they happen and they don't go away with quick fixes. Yeah. You know, the example you give of

03:28 Kirk

running late for an appointment is, so you run late for an appointment, what's going to be?

03:35 Kirk

What's going to be the result of that? What is the consequence, I guess, is what I'm asking. So

03:41 Kirk

really... in some realistic perspective. And some of us,

03:46 Kirk

depending on our life experiences, have different frames of reference, which we go for. But

03:51 Kirk

typically with a bad day, you know, just some self-care and time. The bad day doesn't define you.

03:57 Kirk

It's just a little bump in the road for that day. But when it comes to a mental health crisis,

04:02 Kirk

though, that's when things get much more serious. That's when you feel very overwhelmed.

04:11 Kirk

Yes, being overwhelmed, looking at a full calendar and, oh, my God, how am I going to get

04:15 Kirk

everything in today and I have a deadline for something tomorrow, that can be overwhelming. That

04:21 Kirk

could be the start of a potential mental health crisis. But your coping mechanisms usually kick in

04:27 Kirk

in those situations and you do fine. It becomes that temporary bump in the road.

04:35 Kirk

You're not able to cope where you start to freeze. You're not going to those appointments that you

04:40 Kirk

should be going. And it often lasts longer. It's more like days or even weeks.

04:46 Kirk

So you want to watch. I mean, you know, part of our main target group are the college crowd.

04:55 Kirk

You know, you want to watch that because, yeah, this is kind of the first time you've got some

04:59 Kirk

freedom. on your own and you've got to start to learn time management and things like this.

05:06 Kirk

That learning process is stressful as well as understanding you're not always going to hit the

05:11 Kirk

marks because you're still kind of learning. And even afterwards, I miss the mark quite often,

05:17 Kirk

quite honestly. But that's the hectic schedule. That is the line of work I'm in as far as crisis

05:24 Kirk

goes. If a crisis happens. everything else gets pushed back. You know, one thing that you mentioned

05:30 Tiffani

before, it takes like, you know, sometimes the bad days get longer and longer. One thing that helps

05:36 Tiffani

a lot, like you said, just stopping and saying, well, what's the worst thing that could happen?

05:39 Tiffani

There's this idea in mental health called ants, automatic negative thoughts. And so we use this a

05:46 Tiffani

lot to say, okay, well, this happened. OK, now what? And so automatic negative thoughts,

05:52 Tiffani

they pop in and they pop in and they pop in and they become overwhelming. And then you get this

05:56 Tiffani

sense of doom. Right. And so sometimes we'll use the phrase, OK, we've got to squash those ants.

06:02 Tiffani

So one of the ways to squash them is to stop and say, OK, what is the worst thing that could

06:07 Tiffani

happen? All right. I'm running late for this meeting. I'm going to be late. I'm going to walk in.

06:13 Tiffani

They're going to look at me. I'm going to walk to my seat. I'm going to say sorry. And then maybe

06:19 Tiffani

I'll get in trouble. Maybe I won't. But I'm going to live. I have survived every single bad day

06:24 Tiffani

that I have ever come through. And I can make it through this. It may get uncomfortable. I can do

06:30 Tiffani

uncomfortable things. It may be hard. I can do hard things. But I just have to get through this

06:35 Tiffani

moment. And I've gotten through every single moment up until this point. So I can get through this

06:40 Tiffani

moment, too. It's really hard when you're in that moment. And so I think remembering those self

06:44 Tiffani

-care elements help you realize, OK, breathe. I'm OK. This is temporary.

06:51 Kirk

This is temporary. Yes, it's temporary. But right. And it's wanting. You need to recognize when,

06:58 Kirk

okay, this is not temporary. You want to watch for things where you start to pull away.

07:05 Kirk

And in this topic and other topics, you'll hear me probably talk a little bit more about when we

07:11 Kirk

start to isolate, when we start to pull away from friends, family, things like that. For me,

07:17 Kirk

that's a big indicator for a lot of things. So when I do my crisis assessments, it's one of the

07:22 Kirk

things I'm looking for is, is this person starting to isolate? So you want to watch for that.

07:30 Kirk

If you've got that persistent, extreme anxiety, because like you said, you get embarrassed by the

07:35 Kirk

moment and then it goes and you go on. But for some, it doesn't go.

07:40 Kirk

It stays and it haunts them even after the meeting. And they persistently are apologetic for being

07:48 Kirk

late when they should really just, you know, you say it once, you apologize. No harm, no foul. Move

07:53 Tiffani

on. Well, it's so funny that you say that because I'm thinking back all the times that I've been

07:57 Tiffani

like super embarrassed, right? There have been a lot of times where I've been super embarrassed,

08:02 Tiffani

but I can vividly remember certain things that I've done. But if I stopped, I can't remember a lot

08:10 Tiffani

of things that other people have done around me. And so you remember the things that happened to

08:14 Tiffani

you, but you don't always really remember the embarrassing thing that, you know, so-and-so did.

08:19 Tiffani

And so that's so true because, like, I'm thinking, oh, everybody's going to notice or everybody's

08:23 Tiffani

going to remember. Right. They might for the day. Or, you know, that moment and they're like moving

08:28 Kirk

on to the next topic. But you're right. The person in that moment,

08:34 Kirk

it gets stuck. That thought gets stuck there and the ants creep in and it just stays there.

08:40 Kirk

And then you lose being present, you know, because if you go to a meeting and you're late for the

08:46 Kirk

meeting, it's like, oh, my God, I'm late. My boss is over there. They're looking at me and I'm just

08:50 Kirk

you've missed. 15 minutes, 20 minutes, maybe even the whole meeting because you've been worried

08:56 Kirk

about, oh, I've been late. Now I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to try to come up with

09:02 Kirk

an answer or a good excuse for why I was late. And maybe that people are thinking about you and

09:06 Tiffani

maybe they're not thinking about you at all. But you know what? That's so true. More often than

09:12 Kirk

not, they're not thinking about you. They're moving on to the next topic. But we feel…

09:20 Kirk

We're so much in that spotlight at that moment. Just that hyper-awareness. That hyper-awareness

09:24 Kirk

for that moment. And that is part of the anxiety, part of the fear of performance in front of

09:30 Tiffani

people. So what you said about pulling away, I think that it's so true because that sense of

09:37 Tiffani

belonging is vital for that sense of stability. So even if things are going wrong,

09:44 Tiffani

if I know I belong, if I know I'm a part of something, if I know that somebody cares about me, It

09:49 Tiffani

brings a sense of gravity to the situation, a sense of safety. And that's why I love it when I come

09:54 Tiffani

on college campuses. I love it when I come on school campuses. And there's this sense of community.

09:59 Tiffani

There's events and clubs and activities and things to do. And the local universities around this

10:05 Tiffani

area, they understand that and they take it to the next level. They do. They bring such a sense of

10:11 Tiffani

you belong here and come be a part of this. And that's why I love it whenever I come onto campuses

10:17 Tiffani

and I see that engagement. Because that's such a protective factor for mental health. Absolutely.

10:22 Kirk

Absolutely. Being involved in whatever community it is. And college campuses are their own little

10:28 Kirk

communities, right? So, yeah. So watch out for those things growing on you.

10:34 Kirk

Those ants. Those negative thoughts coming in there. Because, you know,

10:40 Kirk

we talk about what you can do. You know, with simple bad days, take a break.

10:46 Kirk

Go for a walk. Yeah, but my schedule is so big. Take a break. Breathe. Maybe look at that schedule

10:53 Kirk

and see if you can cancel one or postpone one so that you can take a moment to breathe.

11:01 Kirk

And practice some gratitude. Give yourself forgiveness for being late.

11:07 Kirk

I try not to be late for things, but it happens. If it becomes a consistent pattern,

11:14 Kirk

that might be something to take a look at. But remember that. Talk to a friend. You know,

11:19 Kirk

reach out to a friend if you've had a bad day and talk about…

11:24 Kirk

kind of what you're thinking. Hey, this is what happened today. Does it sound like I'm crazy or

11:29 Kirk

does it make sense? I know you and I consult with each other on certain things from time to time.

11:35 Tiffani

Well, there's this, if you go to school and you take a class on psychology, one of the first things

11:40 Tiffani

you learn is Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? So you have this, it's really almost like the food

11:44 Tiffani

pyramid. It's a triangle. And at the very bottom is those basic needs. And you have to meet the

11:49 Tiffani

basic needs first. It's sleep. It's nutrition, right? It's those…

11:55 Tiffani

Those pivotal things that if you're not taking care of those things, the other things are not going

11:58 Tiffani

to remain stable, even if they were stable at some time. And so taking a breath, going outside,

12:03 Tiffani

going for a walk, making sure that you're getting enough food, making sure that you're getting

12:07 Tiffani

enough sleep. And I'm the worst about scrolling on my phone at night because my brain needs a

12:11 Tiffani

break. But really putting your phone down and resting your brain, finding places to decompress.

12:18 Kirk

Right. Get off the computer. Get away from that for a while so you can start to rest, start to wind

12:23 Kirk

down. think that the doom scrolling is a way to wind down. Well, that's how I wind down.

12:29 Kirk

It's like, well, not really. Your brain isn't shutting off. It's still firing.

12:35 Kirk

You need your brain to shut off, right? But yeah, it's so important to be able to take that breath.

12:42 Kirk

And you know, you talk about with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, those basic needs, for a lot of the

12:49 Kirk

folks that listen on college campuses and things like this.

12:53 Kirk

They're just starting out. So all those basic needs were provided by mom and dad in a nice

12:59 Kirk

structured environment. Now you're out on your own. You've got to create your own structure. Now

13:04 Kirk

you can mirror that structure that came from mom and dad. Or it's like,

13:11 Kirk

no, I don't want to do that. I'm going to do my own. You can do that too. But do you have a

13:14 Kirk

structure and a schedule? How do you maintain that? Making sure your basic needs are being met.

13:22 Kirk

Now that's all up to you.

13:25 Kirk

The parenting part is now in your hands because you're going to be autonomous.

13:31 Kirk

So how do I make sure I'm getting my basic needs? How am I making sure that my meals are being met

13:38 Kirk

and it's not just like Snickers and coffee to get you through college, you know? So watching for

13:46 Kirk

that kind of thing. Excuse me. But if it gets to a point where it's bleeding into a mental health

13:53 Kirk

crisis, find somebody, and it can be a very close friend. It doesn't have to be a counselor,

13:59 Kirk

but if you need it, most college campuses have a student center with college counselors available

14:07 Kirk

to them. who specialize in working with the college communities because, you know,

14:12 Kirk

that does take a bit of finesse, understanding you're trying to be autonomous. You're also in a new

14:19 Kirk

environment that is kind of its own little culture. It somewhat mirrors what goes on in the general

14:25 Kirk

populace, but, you know. College campuses have their own little thing and how to navigate that.

14:31 Kirk

They understand that and the pressures of academia on top of day-to-day kinds of things.

14:36 Kirk

So you want to find somebody who's listening to you empathically and that can provide support.

14:44 Kirk

Now, if you're that other person, that helper, that friend, you want to be the person who listens,

14:49 Kirk

that provides the support. So you're never alone.

14:55 Kirk

whether it's a bad day or whether it's a mental health crisis. So bad days, you know,

15:01 Kirk

are a normal part of life. Not every day is going to be fantastic. But,

15:07 Kirk

you know, we've got mental health crises that they often need attention and need to get that

15:13 Kirk

professional help where needed. You know, so bad days come and go. But if you know someone who's

15:19 Kirk

facing more, it's okay to ask for help. And I think…

15:25 Kirk

For many years, people have seen asking for help as a sign of weakness. And especially if you're

15:30 Kirk

trying to break out in your own, well, that means I failed. No, no. The opposite is actually true.

15:37 Kirk

That's a myth. It's not weakness. It's not failure. Asking for help is actually a sign of strength

15:43 Kirk

because it takes courage to say, hey, I'm not doing so good today,

15:48 Kirk

and I need to talk about that. So just saying that to somebody.

15:54 Kirk

Making it out loud makes it very real. Makes it very real.

16:00 Tiffani

of vulnerability, but I think a lot of us are not as okay as we, you know, as we put out there.

16:07 Tiffani

And part of that is, like you said, feeling uncomfortable to share a weakness or what you think is

16:13 Tiffani

a weakness. But also like not knowing what is the baseline for like what is healthy.

16:18 Tiffani

I think a lot of us just assume, well, this is just how it feels to be in college. This is just how

16:23 Tiffani

it feels to be on my own. And maybe, and maybe not, maybe this is how it feels.

16:29 Tiffani

And also there's a mental health crisis going on, and maybe you just don't know the difference

16:33 Tiffani

because how do you know what everyone else is feeling? So having that sense of connection to where

16:38 Tiffani

you can be open and honest and share how you're feeling with someone you trust, and maybe someone

16:43 Tiffani

you trust is a friend, maybe someone you trust is a counselor. Maybe it's a professor and saying,

16:47 Tiffani

this is where I'm at, and I don't know if this is okay or not, but this is how I feel. And having

16:54 Tiffani

the people around you who you trust step in and say, I got you. Let me help you.

16:59 Tiffani

And some of that is mental health. And some of it will go later in the season talking about

17:04 Tiffani

nutrition, talking about sleep, talking about coping strategies, but also talking about finances. I

17:09 Tiffani

think for a lot of young adults and even high school students, when they start their first job,

17:14 Tiffani

they have this sense of like, well, I've never had to do these things on my own. And they don't

17:18 Tiffani

know how to budget. And that money goes really fast. Part of adulthood is kind of being your own

17:24 Tiffani

case manager, you know, making sure that you have all of your medical appointments taken care of,

17:28 Tiffani

making sure that you have all of your time management, your finances, your nutrition. There's a lot

17:33 Tiffani

of pressure that's thrust on you all at once. And it's okay to not know how to do the things you've

17:38 Tiffani

never done before. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, that's, you know,

17:44 Kirk

we learn, we focus a lot on the…

17:49 Kirk

Things in academia that, yeah, they're important to know the theories and baselines. We've

17:54 Kirk

forgotten some of the basics, like budgeting, cooking. Because there used to be,

18:00 Kirk

back in my day, sorry, I have to throw that out there. There used to be a class on economics.

18:09 Kirk

So basically budgeting is a fancy term. Yes, there was the larger,

18:15 Kirk

more. Did you take it in high school? Took it in high school. And what was it called?

18:22 Kirk

But anyway, you learn how to cook and you learn how to sew. You learn how to do various things.

18:29 Kirk

They used to have typing. It's now called keyboard if you're doing that. Yes, right? So they used

18:33 Kirk

to have those classes and a lot of that has gone away. So you had a. Did you have a typing class

18:40 Kirk

that you had to take? I did not take the typing class.

18:44 Kirk

It did not fit in my schedule. I was doing some other computer stuff back then. I was working on

18:51 Kirk

computers. But they taught you how to cook and they taught you those basic skills. But you could

18:55 Kirk

learn those basic skills, which we kind of miss these days.

19:01 Kirk

And I had read somewhere at one point they were talking about bringing that stuff back.

19:07 Tiffani

Well, and I think like what you said before, feeling like a failure, if you've never learned these

19:11 Tiffani

skills, how would you know these skills? Exactly. And you have to give yourself that grace. Okay,

19:16 Tiffani

I identify that this is an area where maybe I could grow. So let me do that. And I think sometimes

19:23 Tiffani

we just get stuck as this is an area where I need to grow and I'm a failure because I'm not strong

19:28 Tiffani

here. And getting past that idea, that negative thought of you're a failure because you can't do

19:33 Tiffani

it. No, you haven't tried. You haven't started. Give yourself that grace to be a beginner.

19:38 Kirk

Exactly. We all start somewhere and we all sometimes stumble. We pick ourselves back up and we

19:44 Kirk

learn from those mistakes. You know, that's kind of the fallacy of social media.

19:50 Kirk

You see all the good stuff. You don't realize it took them 27 takes to get that one shot,

19:55 Kirk

that perfect shot. But we only see the quote unquote perfection.

20:01 Kirk

And it's just not realistic. So understanding the difference between I'm having a bad day and.

20:07 Tiffani

I'm having a bad day and I think that I need some help. Understanding those differences really is

20:13 Tiffani

as simple as I've done all the things that I know to do. Right. And I'm not feeling better.

20:20 Tiffani

So now let me ask for help. And Kirk, there's a lot of resources in the community that are there.

20:25 Kirk

20:35 Kirk

That's our emotional support line. It's available 24-7, so people can call that.

20:41 Kirk

They can text in there as well, so they don't have to actually talk to somebody. They can just type

20:46

it on their little smartphones and talk with us through that methodology. There's also,

20:52 Kirk

if things get even more serious, there's 988, which is the lifeline for those that are feeling…

21:00 Kirk

probably a little more suicidal in nature. And we'll definitely talk more about that topic later

21:06 Tiffani

this season. Thank you so much for joining us, for Finding Your Balance, and we look forward to

21:10 Kirk

next time. Excellent. Thank you.