Subscribe to Lemonada Premium for Bonus Content

Description

This was supposed to be an episode about languishing –– a mental health term that came into the spotlight in COVID that means feelings of emptiness, stagnation, or the absence of happiness. But our expert on languishing canceled, due to their own physical and mental health issues. So we thought this was a great opportunity to answer all of the questions we’ve received about mental health in COVID.

 

Where to go for help

• Lasting Marriage app: https://getlasting.com/
• Empathy episode with Dr. Alauna Curry: https://bit.ly/dralaunna
• Grief episode with Claire Bidwell Smith: https://bit.ly/griefepisode
• Nzinga mentioned that she likes watching baby sloth videos. This one is her favorite: https://bit.ly/Nzingababysloths

 

Please note, In Recovery contains mature themes and may not be appropriate for all listeners.

 

Click this link for a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this show and all Lemonada shows go to lemonadamedia.com/sponsors.

 

Have an addiction-related question? We want to hear from you! Call 833-4-LEMONADA (833-453-6662) or submit your question through this form:  bit.ly/inrecoveryquestions

 

To follow along with a transcript and/or take notes for friends and family, go to www.lemonadamedia.com/show/in-recovery shortly after the air date.

 

Follow Dr. Harrison on Twitter, IG, and FB @naharrisonmd

 

Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.

 

Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Dr. Nzinga Harrison, Claire Jones

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  00:04

Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of IN RECOVERY. I’m your host, Dr. Nzinga Harrison. So today we were supposed to record an episode about languishing. But the guests that we had lined up to come on had to cancel because of physical and mental health reasons. And I wanted to start out by sharing that because it goes to show that none of us is immune, right? Even professionals that are expert in mental health are going through the hard times that we’re all going through. Mental health is dynamic, just like recovery is dynamic. And so instead of doing the languishing episode, we wanted to devote this episode to all of the questions that have been coming in about mental health and trying to cope and survive in this time of COVID. And we have a lot so Claire, let’s just get right into it.

Claire Jones

That sounds great. Let’s get to it.

Claire Jones

Our first question says, “How do I deal with anger towards unvaccinated people? I’ve been trying to stay patient and empathetic throughout the pandemic, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult. After watching months of viral videos of people screaming at service workers about mask mandates and seeing the rise of misinformation I’m done. I just had to cancel a trip due to concerns about the Delta variant. And I feel like I’m trapped because people are selfish. The anchor is not helping me or the people around me, but I’m tired of trying to take the higher ground. How do I deal with this anger and resentment?”

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

I wish we had Dr. Alauna on because this is really what she was talking about coming from that place of empathy. That’s like, each and every one of us stands in the beliefs and the behaviors that we have today, because of the experiences that we’ve had up to this point, which have formed our view of the world. And so if we can really try to get into that empathy to understand the folks who are not getting vaccinated, the people who are screaming at service workers, it’s not that I condone it, it’s not that I agree with it. It’s just that, can get some understanding of what brought you to that place in your life, and try to let empathy come from there. Because often, what’s underlying it for a lot of people is fear. What’s underlying it from a lot of people is a life where they’ve not had control, they’ve been marginalized, they’ve been beat down, their voices have not been heard, right? Like when Martin Luther King said, riot is the voices of the unheard bucking against the mask mandate is somebody raising their voice in a way that they can, because in other places in their life, they’re beat down and marginalized.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  02:50

And so I think if we can just try to approach it from there, something of value and nourishment in that person’s life experiences that are just different from our own, then we can try to get away from that anger, and drop more into my own locus of control. So when I’m doing psychotherapy, with people who are having a lot of resentment and anger about things that are out of their control, you always drop into, what you can control. So no, you can’t control that person putting on a mask, you can control you putting on a mask, and that reduces your risk of transmission over 90 plus percent, or whatever the statistic is, with the people who are close to me who are fully vaccinated, I can take a trip to this place, and I can spend time with those people.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

So I mean, I don’t have a magic answer, this is like, go forth, then it’s gonna be great. But it’s really just about your locus of control. The other thing is moderate your social media, okay? Moderate the dose of viral videos that you’re watching of people screaming, because in reality, for every 10 people that screamed at a flight attendant in the air, there were probably 100,000 people that wore their mask and didn’t scream at that flight attendant in the air. And so we’re getting a skewed perception, which is driving our anger and our resentment, which is just hurting ourselves. I don’t know if that was even helpful, because you really just want to be like, put on a mask. And have some manners.

Claire Jones  04:37

I do think that’s helpful. I think especially the last part. So much of what you see is the, you know, the worst of the worst. That’s why it’s viral. That’s why it’s being circulated around. And I think that is often forgotten. So is it ever like is it worth expressing that in some way, you know what certain emotions it’s like, it’s not a great solution to suppress those emotions, but also there’s like a fine line between making yourself suffer more. When it comes down to anger, is it worth expressing?

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

Definitely, it’s definitely worth expressing. It’s also worth expressing what’s underlying that, right? So a lot of times what underlies the anger is fear. What underlies the anger is exhaustion. What underlies the anger is sadness. What underlies the anger is a sense of hopelessness, which is definitely here, right? Like the pandemics never going to end because people won’t put on a mask and people won’t get vaccinated. It’s like double clicking to those underlying emotions and letting yourself feel that trying to grab on to the thoughts that are causing you those emotions, stop them, replace them with something that’s in your locus of control, but also boxing. It could be going for a hard run, it could be going outside and screaming at the top of your lungs, right? Like find seriously, find an adaptive way to let yourself have those emotions. Let yourself express those emotions, but not to let those emotions be poisoning you.

Speaker 3 06:25

Hi, Nzinga, longtime listener, first time caller. Like many people, I spent the last year and a half counting down the days until the COVID restrictions were lifted. With the pandemic being so all encompassing, it felt as if once COVID was, quote, unquote, over, that all of my problems would finally be solved. But even with so many things opening back up and life returning to normal, I still feel like I’m struggling at times. It’s especially hard when life is still throwing you curveballs like reasonably losing a loved one. But you feel like everyone else has been back to enjoying life, socializing, partying, and having fun. This dichotomy is especially present on social media. But when I talk with friends, many of them are dealing with similar feelings. If COVID was making us so sad this whole time, why doesn’t it feel immediately better with the restrictions lifted? Why Does it almost feel worse, with the added pressure of having an amazing, fun filled summer and enjoying the freedom while it last?

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

Yeah, for one, I’m sorry about your recently losing a loved one. This has a lot to do with how you’re feeling grief. Two, we know social media is not real life. Okay? We all know that what you post on social media is not your struggle. Because that’s not what we like to share. We like to share joy; we like to share good times and that way trying to make each other feel better. But then when you get that concept that everybody else is living an amazing life, except for me, which is not true. Overwhelmingly, people are struggling, which is why today’s show was going to be about languishing because people are languishing. And so I think it’s really that cognitive strategy of making sure you’re keeping your perspective, right, keep your perspective. But the second is that we have all been through a collective trauma over this last year. And it’s been trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma, and there is no quick recovery from that. So just think about it, like if I broke both of your legs. And then I put you in cast from your hips down to your toes for 13 months.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  08:48

And then at the end of those 13 months, I took those casts off. And I said, all right, go run a marathon because that’s what you used to do before I broke both of your legs, you will be like, that’s crazy. That doesn’t make any sense. These legs are weak, I have to rehab these legs. I need somebody to help me I have to start with a small walk and work my way back up to a marathon. This is the exact same thing. We have been cast it from hip to ankle for the last 13 months. And so we can expect ourselves to jump right back into the marathon. Especially because we didn’t even get our cast off yet. We didn’t even get our casts off yet. Right. And so the idea, one, that we’re ever gonna go back to, quote, the way things were, not happening. And I’m not trying to be Debbie Downer. We’re gonna have to reconceptualize ourselves in a different way following this experience, but especially unfair to yourself. To feel like you should just be ready to jump straight into amazing fun filled things, given the experiences you’ve had from the last year.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  10:05

So I’m caring for the theme of cognitive intervention, find the thoughts, stop them, replace them with something that’s more helpful to you. What I want to add here is gratitude, gratitude, gratitude, gratitude, because we’ve experienced a lot of loss and pain and suffering. But it actually is neurobiologically very important to find the things that were grateful for. So you see a video of somebody not wearing a mask screaming in the flight attendant’s face or you had to cancel a trip, the gratitude there is like, I had the autonomy and the power to make the decision to cancel that trip. Somebody else didn’t have that. And so they had to go on that trip and fly, even though it felt unsafe. Right? The gratitude, when you talk to your friends, that they’re able to share with you that they’re also struggling. That’s like, there’s beauty in that. And so it can be really, really hard, but I’ve just been trying to do it myself also.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  11:15

And I can tell when I’m not doing it myself, because I start coughing everybody in my head. That’s the space that I’ve been in for the last three weeks. It’s just like constant negative commentary. If every day you just make yourself pull out one thing that you’re grateful for today, it interrupts that constant negative commentary and makes it easier for the healing, that we’re all going through, the rehab, that we all are going through and will be going through to happen. Gratitude lists.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

I feel like, these are great questions, I worry that I’m making it sound too simple. Like these questions are full of struggle. And whereas the recommendations are simple, like the recommendations are thoughts, emotions, behaviors, gratitude, that’s kind of like the current theme. I think it can feel off putting to people, if you make it sound too easy. So I don’t mean to make it sound easy, because I know that it’s not the point is like, even though it’s not easy, we have to try to do those things to protect ourselves emotionally.

Claire Jones 

Like I think that you can say that, I think we should keep this in that it’s not easy. It’s just like, make a gratitude list, and you’ll start to feel better. Like, that’s why this is so hard. Like, that’s why people are having such a hard time.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

Right. Because it really is a hard time. It really is. And it’s like, these are the little things we try to do to make it a little easier on ourselves. But there’s no magic bullet to not feel angry at people who are not vaccinated. You know? It’s definitely hard to navigate now that we’ve been just emotionally and socially, and for a lot of us physically beat down for the last 14 months now. So I don’t mean to make it sound. I don’t mean to just like deliver my recommendations like, oh, just make a gratitude list and find some empathy. I don’t mean for it to come off like that.

Claire Jones 

Yeah, no, no, I think that’s why this is all so hard. And also why it feels so frustrating. It’s like..

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

It’s a wild time. It’s a wild time. And I think it’s like grace that we have to give ourselves that like, this is literally just unprecedented.

Claire Jones 

You know, it’s when so much time passes, it’s really easy to normalize things. That’s like kind of what our brains do. And so it’s a good reminder, I think in your responses just to like, be like, it’s okay to want to still yell at people.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  14:01

Yeah, for sure. Like, why would we expect ourselves to know how to move through this gracefully? Like, just find your way through. You know, try not to hurt yourself. Try not to hurt other people. That’s all we can do

Claire Jones

Yeah, yeah. Let’s take a quick break. And when we come back, we’re gonna listen to a voicemail.

Speaker 4

I’ve noticed lately, especially as the Delta variant has made COVID cases go up, as people continue to remain unvaccinated. And as a result, there’s all these political tensions that are really kind of coming to the forefront again in a significant way, I can’t stop doom scrolling, I’m having a really hard time balancing, wanting to be in the know and wanting to know what’s happening with COVID. And wanting to protect my mental health, and trying to figure out a balance between that all feels impossible, I would love your advice on how to manage that.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

Thank you for asking this question, what I definitely hear is that your coping skills are not able to carry the entire burden of your anxiety right now. So if you think of it, like, when you’re a little bit hungry, you can eat half a sandwich, and your appetite is satisfied. When you’ve gone all day without eating and you’re starving, you eat that half a sandwich, and you’re still at a deficit, you’re still starving, you need more. And like at that point, you’re starving so much that you eat three sandwiches, even though one sandwich probably could have been enough. This is the same cycle that you’re in with that anxiety. So your anxiety is so high right now that whatever coping skills besides doom scrolling that you’re using, are like half a sandwich, when you haven’t eaten all day. And doom scrolling is trying to be the rest of those three sandwiches. And so what we need to do, this is just like, you know, we did season one, and it was like all things can be in an addiction dooms growling can definitely be an addiction.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  16:36

So what we have to do is make sure that we’re getting your anxiety down to a level that your coping skills can hop over and be enough so that you’re not filling that in with doom scrolling. Of course, the catch 22 is that doom scrolling is making your anxiety worse, which is making it a higher bar, which is making it even bigger buckets of fill for your coping mechanisms. So, one, put yourself on a schedule. This is the time of day that I’m going to doom scroll. And this is how long I’m going to do it four times a day, 15 minutes tops, I made that up start with like, we’re going to taper you start with however much you’re doing scrolling right now, but literally schedule it, set an alarm on your phone, recruit an accountability buddy, so that when they hear that alarm go off, they’re like you’re done doom scrolling. And then as soon as you’re done doing scrolling, I want you to think about what are the things that bring you joy? What are the things that bring you peace? Is that mindfulness? Is it meditation? is it taking a bath? Is it watching a funny show? Is it watching Tiktok videos of baby sloths. That’s what mine would be.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

And I want you to immediately like as soon as that alarm goes off, finish doom scrolling, reward yourself with something that brings you peace and calm. As you get your anxiety down, the compulsion to Doom scroll will also go down. But what we’re doing by putting that calming meditation activity of joy right at the end of that Doom scrolling is trying to cut off the legs of the anxiety that the doom scrolling will cause you and continue to taper that doom scrolling by 20%. This is what I tell people that I’m tapering substances and alcohol by 20% every day. So if you did it four times, today, three times tomorrow, two times the next day, if you feel like you can get to abstinence, that’s perfect. If you cannot get to abstinence, just make sure you’re over indexing on the activities that bring you joy and peace and calm so that you can be managing your brain chemistry around the anxiety.

Claire Jones  18:56

Okay, let’s see. So our next question says “it’s been a very long, 18 months or so since the start of this pandemic. I have two little kids at home who are desperate to see friends do fun activities and go back to school. And with all the adults in the house vaccinated, we’ve been integrating them more into quote unquote, real life activities. But with the Delta variant things feel right back to where they were when all of this began, I feel an intense amount of anxiety, which I’ve struggled with all of my life and feel very helpless on the whole. I’m having trouble sleeping. How do I care for myself in the world feels so chaotic and out of control?”

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Yeah, it’s so difficult, and especially for people who believe strongly in vaccines that have kids that are too little to get vaccinated. Like I just remember the sense of relief that I felt when my kids got their first vaccination dose and I didn’t even realize how much anxiety I had been carrying over the idea of my kids not being vaccinated. And so I really can feel you on that. I think this comes back to an answer I was given in one of the earlier questions also, which is like locus of control, the world feels so chaotic and out of control. And it is, but your locus of control is a lot smaller. And so part of the way we undermine ourselves and cause ourselves more anxiety, is by exposing ourselves to that big, often skewed world view of things we can’t control and lack of control neurobiologically, it’s just coded as danger, right?

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  20:39

It comes through that fight or flight reaction that we have. And so what I would ask you to do, definitely start and end each day with something you’re grateful for. Find. And this often takes a conscious effort, because a lot of times our thoughts are running under the surface. And all that’s rising to the surface is that anxiety and sense of lack of control, try to grab onto those thoughts, stop them, replace them with a thought that is more about what you have control over. So if it is, you go to the grocery store, and 80% of the people in the grocery store don’t have masks, and you feel out of control and very anxious. Is there a part of town where people are masking more? And do you have control over driving a little bit further, so that you can be in a grocery store where a higher percentage of people are masked, right?

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

Like really start thinking to what I can control and start controlling those things. So even with the way you’re introducing your kids back to, quote, real life activities, you can do that in safe ways, like you could go outside, which is safer than being inside you can be with other families of adults who are vaccinated, which is safer than just being in public around a bunch of people you don’t know. And so literally start planning and using the question, what about this situation? can I control, control that. And then for the parts that you can’t control, you actively try to squeeze them out of your vision, once you’ve made the decision and go, like, incorporate that into your decision making and to whatever you’re deciding. But once you make that decision, then the narrative in your mind is I have controlled, what I can control, I have made the best decision that I can make. And I will use that comfort to allow myself to undermine anxiety. It’s locus of control, it’s so important, so much is out of our control right now. That we really just have to try to be myopic, and just like focus on what we’re grateful for focus on what we have control over trust and accept that the rest will work out because they will, although we don’t know, on what timeline or maybe even how we just have to trust that it will.

Claire Jones

One follow up I have to that is just about. And maybe this sounds sort of pathetic, but just energy and time. Like when you have to make decisions like that 24/7, because that is just the reality, I think of how COVID works right now. It’s exhausting.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

It is exhausting. But what also is exhausting, is anxiety unchecked. Anxiety unchecked, is actually more exhausting and takes more time. And more effort, then planning inside your locus of control. Planning inside your locus of control is harder, just like everything when you’re first starting to do it. But if you start making it a routine, right, like develop a rubric for yourself. So I’m always like rubric framework. And so like the way that I’m trying to make these decisions for myself, if we get invited to an event, I already know what my list of questions are. It’s exactly the same every time. One, are all the adults they’re going to be vaccinated. If the answer is no, the answer is no. Like no apologies. I don’t care what kind of event it is. The answer’s no. Zaire had his birthday party this last Saturday. I love my sister. She’s not vaccinated. Zero guilt and a very open conversation. I love you. But you can’t come. So like, I already know what my questions are is like, Is everybody going to be vaccinated?

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  25:05

If it’s outside. Am I going to be able to stay out of people’s faces that I don’t know? If they’re going to be kids there that are unvaccinated? Do I know the habits of their parents? Because if I know the habits of your parents, and I know they’re masking, and they’re vaccinated, and they’re being safe, right, like, this is the decision tree that I take myself down. And then my last one, honestly, is just like, do I have the energy? And do I want to do those? Yeah, honestly, should be the first one. Because I can save myself the whole rest of that decision tree, if I would just allow myself, you know, yeah. And so if you think to yourself, like, what causes me the most anxiety, and I make a commitment to myself not to do those things, and I make a commitment to myself not to do those things, and not to feel guilty, that I’m not doing those things. And then just lay out your set of questions. And every time a decision comes, you’re not having to think of it from scratch, you just drop it into that same framework, you have that same discipline. And maybe you even in that with, and I’m grateful that I have the power to make this decision.

Claire Jones  26:15

Yeah, I like that. Okay. That’s helpful, thank you.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

But anxiety and anger, take a lot of time and energy.

Claire Jones

So our next question says, “My partner and I have very different experiences of the pandemic, I’ve been working full time from the start of the lockdown. While she, as a freelancer lost most of her work, our different experiences of the pandemic have really put a strain on our relationship, I’m struggling with the feelings of guilt, because I’m working and enjoying my job while she’s questioning whether she’ll be able to work again. And we’re both having a hard time finding pleasure in our relationship, not only because of the stress and trauma of the pandemic, but also because our individual experiences are so very different. How can I be a supportive partner to her in this situation? What can we do to feel like a team and not like we’re suddenly on two different trajectories?”

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Yeah, this is such a common experience, the two of you are not alone, a lot of marriages are suffering. Because you had a dynamic, right, and that dynamic totally got ripped out by COVID. And then especially when you’re struggling, and you see somebody else who is not struggling, it is very hard to feel any joy for that person. And you on the other hand, are like feeling joy. And it feels terrible when you’re feeling joy and the person closest to you can’t feel joy for you. So let’s like double whammy on both sides of it. Claire, you might have predicted what I was going to say to this, please get in couples therapy immediately. Do not let this pandemic steal your marriage. Do not let the pandemic steal your relationship. Because I see it happening. Get in couples therapy. This is anonymous question. So I don’t know if you’re married. I don’t know if your significant others I don’t know if you’re dating. I don’t know what it is.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  28:30

But I do know that this relationship is important enough to you, that you asked this question. And so regardless of where you are on those societally defined points of relationship seriousness, this relationship is serious enough to you and meaningful enough to you that you need a therapist to help you navigate this because the same way I used to talk about addiction on Season One. And I said what’s critically important is that addiction is not in the middle. It’s you. And addiction is over there. The addiction in this case is the pandemic. So the pandemic is in between the two of you. And you need the two of you to be over here and the pandemic on the other side. You can be supporting her one by just being like, you know what? Empathy, that sucks. Are you afraid? Are you angry? Do you resent that I’m having a good time at work.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

I can feel that, right? But it sounds strange, but your partner also needs to be supporting you and that you’re feeling fulfilled by work. And so get a therapist, get a therapist, get a therapist, if for whatever reason, cost is prohibitive time is prohibitive. You can’t actually get to a couples therapist, and they didn’t pay me to say this, get the lasting marriage app. I know. I don’t know if you’re married we call it lasting relationship app. Because our goal here is for your relationship to outlast the pandemic, everything you’re going through, is so normal. And it is also normal to feel like you can’t talk about it, because you feel like you’re hurting her. When you talk about it, she feels like she’s undermining your joy when she talks about it. And so you don’t talk about and it’s just over there getting bigger and bigger and bigger between the two of you. Either get this app, or get a therapist and start talking about it. So it can be the two of you against the pandemic, instead of a pandemic sandwich.

Claire Jones  30:35

I love that. Thank you.

Claire Jones 

For our last question, this listener says, “How do you deal with all the baggage that comes with being immunocompromised and navigating COVID, it brings up all the feelings of having lifelong health issues and feeling like people are just counting the value of your life.”

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

This is so hard, right? Because it’s getting back again to anxiety and anger, and resentment. And so it’s kind of the same answers to the questions that we’ve gone through earlier in the show, I would say number one, and this is important. So route, this is important for everybody, surrounding yourself with people who care. And then two, a little bit of a reality check that everybody in the world can’t care about your health, which is why you have to be able to make decisions that are right for your health without any guilt. And which is why you have to surround yourself with people who will make decisions that take into account your health. And then it’s the all of the feelings of lifelong health issues is definitely getting into the realm of languishing and struggling and grieving.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  32:01

And so here is where I want you to give yourself some grace. But also to be focusing on finding things that bring you joy, and finding a way to have purpose in the world. Like I know I keep saying that over and over. But I cannot over express the impact that joy and meaning and life purpose have on health. And so, being immunocompromised is especially scary in the time of COVID. You want to take extra precautions to protect yourself. Take those extra precautions. Surround yourself with people who will take those extra precautions. And then find the thoughts that are causing you anxiety, stop them, replace them. And with gratitude, try to put joy in your life. It’s hard. It’s hard as hard as hard. But it’s totally worth it like you will get the return on investment. You know, listen to the grief episode, Claire Bidwell Smith told us, she has people that sometimes schedule when they’re going to grieve. They say, you know what, I’m gonna grieve hard from 12 to four on Saturday, when I don’t have anything else to do.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison 

Feel free to give yourself these time periods to feel sad, to feel overwhelmed, to feel anxious to feel angry to feel resentful. But make sure when you schedule that window, you also have your skills for how you get back to gratitude, and how you call them yourself as most as you can and how you get joy and meaning. Because life is a balance. We try to out balance life and joy and meaning and purpose. But we have to give ourselves time for anger, resentment, sadness, fear, anxiety.

Claire Jones 

I think that’s a wrap. That’s a lot of questions, which I think also goes to show in addition to changing the episode at the last minute that this time is hard. And I think Nzinga I just want to highlight what you said earlier about. While some of your answers seem easy, it’s not. And just to reiterate that.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  34:26

And I want to reiterate what you said earlier, which is we shouldn’t be expecting ourselves to be on Easy Street right now. These streets are hard.

Claire Jones

We are on hard street.

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

And so we have to give ourselves the grace to have the emotions and the thoughts and the behaviors and the struggles that come with being on hard streets with uncertainty about when the hard streets end, that’s the hardest part. Why don’t we end on one thing you’re grateful for? That happened today?

Claire Jones 

I have just been able to spend a really good quality time with a friend I haven’t seen in a long time. And it’s been really nice. What about you?

Dr. Nzinga Harrison

I have had a ton of anxiety for the last six to seven weeks about getting my 10th grader to start a new school. And he started today, and he came home happy. And I’m exceedingly grateful for that.

Claire Jones

Now that the season is coming to an end, we have one more episode coming up. One more. It’d be cool if people left us voicemails with something they’re grateful for. I love that. That way. Everybody who’s listening right now has to think of something they’re grateful for. And you have to call us. I love

Dr. Nzinga Harrison  36:09

that so much. And then we could like play it either at the end of the next episode, or even make it a little bonus gratitude episode.

Claire Jones

Yeah, exactly. I think either way, we’ll play it at the end of next episode or as its own bonus episode. That’s a great idea. So give us a call. Tell us something you are grateful for at 833-453-6662 and we will be here next week for our season finale. Thanks, everyone.

CREDITS

IN RECOVERY is a Lemonada Media Original. This show is produced by Claire Jones and edited by Ivan Kuraev. Jackie Danziger is our supervising producer. Our theme was composed by Dan Molad with additional music by Kuraev. Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer are our executive producers. Rate us, review us, and say nice things. Follow us at @LemonadaMedia across all social platforms, or find me on Twitter at @naharrisonmd. If you’ve learned from us, share the show with your others. Let’s help to stigmatize addiction together.