Mental Health & Psychedelic Therapies – Paul Marlow – MensGroup Podcast

MensGroup

In this episode, Paul Marlow and Sean Galla from MensGroup get into how to deal with anxiety and depression. We also get into the benefits of a morning routine and everything about MDMA Therapy.
Today’s https://mensgroup.com/podcast guest Paul Marlow is the founder of “Never Alone”, a mental health brand created for people struggling with depression, anxiety, loathing, and self-doubt. NA’s mission is to help and inspire them to find their day-to-day routines to start their journey back to a healthy mindset and life.
CHAPTERS:

00:02:11 CHAPTER I – Mental Health

00:04:09 Depression & Anxiety

• The very first thing to do when dealing with mental health issues such as anxiety or depression is to acknowledge them and accept their existence. Unfortunately, most men are used to building inner walls to keep them away from feeling these uncomfortable emotions. Given that this tends to be an unconscious process, it can actually take quite a while for some people to realize that they’re carrying around some substantial amount of depression and/or anxiety.

00:14:00 Dealing with Loss

• Grief includes acknowledging your feelings and emotions and letting them come out into the world. Most of us actually don’t know how to grieve when dealing with a loss because we’ve never been taught how to do so from an emotional point of view.

00:17:43 Getting into Emotions

• Accepting and expressing our emotions can be a hard thing to do at first because it might make us feel vulnerable. However, it becomes quite easier with practice, and it certainly helps to also demonstrate our feelings in a non-verbal way.
• Even though letting out our emotions can come up as a tough thing to do, it’s definitely the best way to go in the long run. Keeping your uncomfortable feelings all bottled up can have a huge negative impact on both our mental and physical health.

00:26:11 Tools for Self-Growth

• Aside from the mourning routine activities that were previously mentioned, there are some other things you can look into when working towards achieving a better version of yourself, such as expressing gratitude and sticking to a healthy diet.

00:30:22 CHAPTER II – Psychedelic Therapies

00:36:57 MDMA Therapy

• If you’re thinking of trying MDMA or any other psychedelic therapy, it’s essential that you get in touch with the right guide. Alternative therapists can be hard to find though, given that their activity is currently illegal. However, doing this stuff led by inexperienced people or worst even all by yourself is strongly inadvisable.
• MDMA can help you open up and tap into subjects you’re usually too uncomfortable to talk about because it provides an overall safety sensation in which you’re not judging yourself and you’re then not afraid of being vulnerable.
• Most psychedelic therapists will advise that it’s not wise to jump into any of these alternative therapies expecting something in particular. That can actually make you resist the journey and where it wants to take you, and potentially end up having a bad trip. As usual, it’s better to allow things to just happen.
• Psychedelic therapies may not solve your problems, but they may certainly help you crack them open and understand different parts of them from unexplored perspectives.