Talk Stigma

Good morning, everyone. Or afternoon. It's afternoon. Hi, my name is Pastor Seth Perry. I live well with bipolar disorder. I'm also in recovery from addiction. I've been clean for 15 years. And this is Talk Stigma. Here I am in the park here. Right over my shoulder is Charlie Brown. Right here, if you can see, there's Charlie Brown's statue. And I'm right outside Landmark Plaza near my condo. And it's been a Sunday. As a pastor, I took this Sunday off and I'm grateful for that. And I'm going to be traveling today, so I'll be talking a little bit about what it's like for me to travel with, you know, with bipolar disorder.

What are the things that I make sure that I do to maintain my mental health when I'm traveling. And maybe you can share in the comments, share with me a little bit about what are some things that you do for your mental health when you're traveling as well. So what am I doing? I'm traveling to a conference, a four day conference for four pastors and. Hi, Rick Cram, welcome. Tell us what do you do when you travel for your mental health? Let me know in the comments. Type in a comment if you can, Rick, and let me know what, what are some of the things that you do to take care of yourself when you're out and about traveling.

And I'll get to my story in a bit, but I'm going to a conference in Atlanta and it's for pastors I'm exhibiting. I have an exhibit booth there and hi. Hi Rick. Thanks for saying hi. I'm glad you're here. Let me know where you're tuning in from as well. I'm here in St. Paul, Minnesota. And Rick, you do exercise. So I got a gym in my hotel, so I'm definitely going to exercise. So here's why I'm going to Atlanta. In Atlanta, I have an exhibitor booth for my podcast, the Our Stigma podcast, a podcast that just released on May 1st.

And the our Stigma podcast is a podcast that explores mental health and addiction stigma in a variety of faith communities. The Somali Islamic faith community here in the Twin Cities, the Hmong faith community. We also do an episode with indigenous folks and we do another episode in the African American community. We look at rural communities. And thanks for tuning in from Boston, Rick. How long have you been on Cadre? Rick, maybe you can let us know in the comments. I'd love, love to hear that as well.

What brings you to Cadre, to the Cadre sphere? And yeah, yeah, Share in the comments. So yeah, it'll be good to have an exhibitor booth there and hello, Speak Wonder. I'm glad you're here. I'm just asking everyone to share what are some ways that you look after your mental health when you travel? Because I'm traveling to Atlanta and so at my exhibitor booth for the Our Stigma podcast, I'm going to be sharing about the podcast and the educational resource that comes along with the podcast. There's a four part discussion series that comes with the podcast so you can use it in your community, in a recovery community organization, or maybe you can use it in your church or just among friends.

So every episode allows people to get together in small groups or medium sized groups to discuss issues of stigma and faith and mental health in their community. And so. Oh, awesome. I'm so glad you're here. Speak Wonder, it's good to see you again here. And Rick, I'm glad that you're getting a lot out of Cadre because there's a lot to, to benefit from, from, for, for. For great value as well because there's always something every day and the team at Cadre really does a good job. So yeah, Speak Wonder if you can share what you do for your mental health when you travel.

That'd be awesome as well. And make sure on any platform, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and on YouTube on Megaphone, every major podcast streaming platform you can find Our Stigma my podcast, a docu series podcast that looks at mental health and addiction stigma. I'm excited that it's out for Mental Health Month. I've been working on it for the last year and it feels good. So back to this educational resource that I'll be introducing to a lot of people when I'm in Atlanta. It's a really simple out of the box discussion guide that takes about an hour and 15 minutes for you to use in after you listen to an episode of the podcast.

So for instance, episode one, it looks at the stigma of mental health and addiction in rural communities. And so it's all focused around the world, those types of issues. So you'd get a group of people together and I'll be running some online groups and I'll be also running some in person groups where I'll be, you know, taking people through the curriculum. Just seven exercises that get people engaged and get people thinking about what the next steps are for mental health and addiction outreach in their community and how they can destigmatize things.

So that's really what I do now. Speak Wonder Says, I love to travel, and I try whenever possible to take the back roads. And that's therapeutic to me. Hey, that's a. That's, that's excellent. I've actually done that too. So I'm from the Pacific Northwest, and so I grew up in Vancouver. We'd always go to Seattle, and one of the best things to do as a family was to take the back road to Seattle. You go along all of the coastline and you see all these little road stops along the way. And so that was something that my family did.

I'm glad you shared that with us. Speak Wonder. So for me, what am I going to do when I'm going to travel? Okay, so number one on the list whenever I travel to a major city, and I often do this every time I go to this particular conference is when I get to that city, I make sure to look up when is a Major league baseball game. And, and I plan a trip. So I'm going to Atlanta and on the, on. On the. I've got plans already with people to go to an Atlanta Braves game. And I really like going to. It's really a relaxing space for me to go to a baseball game.

I've always loved them. There's not a lot of pressure to pay attention to the game. You can have conversations, and I love getting peanuts and a veggie dog and watching the game. So that's one thing that I will do. There's some other things, and I'm glad that Rick said that he likes to exercise because that's something that I'm going to try and pay attention to. There's a gym in my hotel and there's. There's a hot tub and pool. So I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna want to do that, especially after a day sitting at an exhibitor booth.

You know, I'm not going to any of the sessions. I have to be at the exhibitor booth from, from 8:30am until 5. So that'll be fine. I'm looking forward to that and I'm looking forward to working with people, you know, from faith communities around North America that come to this conference. I'm excited for that and I'm also excited because the producer of my podcast will also be there and I'll get to hang out with them and the team and we're having a reception and, and I'm looking forward to that.

So another thing that I do that brings me to my, my last thing that I'm gonna share when I go on trips is I like to socialize. I'm an extrovert. And, and so this trip will give me an opportunity to meet new people, to talk to people and, and, and to, and to kind of share stuff that we have in common, learn about where they're from, because people all over North America will be at this convention. And I'm looking forward to that. com and check out the podcast, the Doc Audio Docu series podcast that I've created.

Episode one and two are out right now. And give it a listen. com. and I've had a wonderful time talking with you all, and thank you.