Hello, this is Richard Jacobs, executive director of the Finding Genius Foundation and also the host of the Finding Genius podcast. This is my ongoing series for our email list and all of our followers that are following along with the anxiety and depression codex. This is a massive literature review that we are doing of approximately 5000 pieces of information. This could be videos about depression, books, lectures, scientifically peer reviewed papers etc. So, our mission and our goal is that if you go to a practitioner and you are suffering from anxiety and depression or if you take someone there who is suffering, that practitioner, no matter how skilled they are s probably likely to know, let’s say 2% or 3% of all the possible treatments out there. With our massive literature review of 5000+ resources and all this aggregation and serration into this big guide for people suffering or people that know people who are suffering, what if we can reach 20% of all the possible treatments out there?

I think that’s a very reasonable percentage. I’m not saying 100%, I’m saying 20%. If you compare 20% to 2%, I think it’s a home run on top of a home run. That’s the whole goal of this project. So, along the way, I’m going to be telling you some insights that I am learning about anxiety and depression because I am in active interviewing mode and we are soon to hire a researcher to begin the study of all this material and the assembly of it.

So, insights for today, this is kind of a skill that I developed over time because as you probably know, my wife and my son unfortunately suffer from depression, My wife has suffered all her life. She had an abusive childhood which has translated into a difficult adulthood. We’ve been together for 22+ years, I love her but at times it’s not easy. Depression is a very difficult thing. I live with it, not having it myself except for an occasion or two many years ago but I live with someone who chronically has it. So, I do have some insights into the process. Although, funny enough, I only know a very small percentage, I haven’t really studied it in full yet. One thing I’ve noticed is that the way I talk to my wife can either be helpful or not helpful and I’ve learned this over the years. So, when I see her and I know her really well.

I can tell pretty much instantly if she is not feeling right. If she is looking sad or if she is looking angry or not feeling good, I say to her, how are you feeling or what are you feeling right now? She will tell me if she is feeling overwhelmed or tired or angry or depressed or whatever it is. I’ll say to her, how intense is it? On a scale of 1 to 10 and 10 is like incredibly intense, she’ll tell me the number.

Regardless of what she says, I’ll say I’m sorry to hear that and I mean it. I’ll tell her when she tells me her feelings I’ll say thank you for telling me, I appreciate it. I’m sorry about what you are going through right now or what you are feeling and I really appreciate you telling me and that seems to work really well. It doesn’t fix the depression but it’s better than what’s wrong with you, snap out of it type of stuff. That, I learned directly doesn’t help. So, one thing I have learned and I hope that listeners can use this either on themselves or instruct other people, if you are depressed or anxious, instruct other people in your life to try this with you or if you know someone who is suffering, try it with them. But acknowledging their feelings, asking about their feelings and then saying I’m sorry to hear that, it starts to go a long way.

It can help take the edge off after a really bad episode. Other questions to ask that may be helpful is probably nothing comes to mind but is there something right now that we can do that would maybe take the edge off or if you know this person or you know yourself, what are somethings you can do to just take the edge off. Let’s say you are having a really bad day, you are feeling like 8, 9 or 10 level of depression and anxiety, meaning you are really deep in this hole, what can you do to get yourself up to like a 5, 6 or 7. I’m not saying get up to the surface but just to get a little bit better so that you are functional and it’s not so deep and dark and evil. Some of these examples could be mean and this is not a medical diagnosis, these are just things I’ve observed but some people will use let’s say psilocybin.

There’s clinical trials going on with this to help depression. Obviously, you’ve got to talk to professionals, don’t rely on just me telling you about it. Some people will take ketamine, they’ll do ketamine infusions and they’ll have what are called ketamine trochees, these little dissolvable ketamine bits that kind of help take the edge off a depressive episode. Some people will exercise if they can bring themselves to do it. That makes them feel better, you can go for a walk or be working out hard. For some people, it’s getting out into the sun even for 5 or 6 minutes, that helps, for other people it could be talking to someone that they care about if they are in the mood to do that or are confident but there are these little things that people can do that help kind of take the edge off and that, combined with passionate responses to the person or to yourself that are in the throes of an episode can really go a long way.

So, I hope this will be helpful to everyone listening. It’s certainly been helpful to me with my relationships in my life and the other people in it and again, I’m taking you on this journey with me every step of the way. What I learn, you will know as we go. So, again, please go to findinggeniusfoundation.org and consider donating because like I said, I’m funding this project. I can’t fund it alone; I really do need your help to get the right professionals involved to go over these thousands of different sources.

Again, these lecture articles, these videos, these interviews, these scientific peer reviewed papers. Our goal here, just to restate is to assemble every possible known treatment for depression and anxiety and any related disorders. I don’t think we are going to get to 100% but if we can get to 20%, that’s approximately 10 times better than what I’ve observed that the best resources have out there. I think that will be a homerun times 10. So, thank you for listening and I’ll talk to you soon.