The Mental Health Moment February 3rd, 2020

February 3rd, 2020 Transcript – Mental Health Moment 

Transcript by Google Voice Typing – Please excuse errors

Topic – Levels of Communication

Welcome to the Mental Health Moment. It’s mental health Monday and time to take a moment and talk about what we can do to improve our mental health. I’m your host Joe Newman from Life Launch Centers and this is the show to find out how to deal with hard emotions, improve your mental health and really just find some answers for life and I want to start by inviting all if you or a loved one is struggling with depression isolation or if anxiety is it doesn’t have to be a lifelong thing you deal with the rather you can learn the emotional skills or tools to actually overcome these hard emotions to include mindfulness resilience how to maintain balance in life and build healthy connections. If you’re ready to kick anxiety and depression to the curb simply give us a call at 833-803-3883 or jump on our website, there’s a lot of great info on there including the archive of all of these radio shows the talk all about our resilience curriculum and tips on how to address many of the major mental health risks out there again the website is life launch centers.com so today in studio I’ve got Kaden with me from Canyon media appreciate your joining me on the show today. Kaden fun stuff on this show and today I’ve been feeling like we need to talk about communication levels of communication and how our communication choices affect our mental health and you know the impacts of the different forms of communication that we choose door and there’s a lot of choices out there today you think about historically how developments in communication where were big deals right yeah you know even if people know that communication is the first military strategy to take over somebody’s and knock out their communication really is everything for development and growth and prosperity and that was a huge development in technology when it was communication in the last 10 15 even 30 years internet you know he’s got the social-media thing we’ve got video conferencing we’ve got it’s amazing how far we’ve come even in my lifetime 26 have that memory and I’m you know I feel young right right when I grew up in an area where Radiohead always been established so that wasn’t a big deal when that came out or even Television right my parents that was a big deal that they forgot for us it was just our environment right now and that’s really what our kids are going through right now they are born in an environment where they’ve had internet they’ve had social media they had cell phone constant connection with another phone so it’s important for us to realize what kind of choices we make with this technology and how it impacts are kids so you know this is something that parents ask me all the time because I think for the most part we’re pretty aware of how communication and Technology are affecting our kids are not quite sure how to what to do with that you know yeah it’s it’s a very good job in framing all of this connection in and did you buy your two-year-old an iPad and get them technologically savvy and all this right so I mean our parents went through this you know that we had some parents put a restriction on how much TV you can watch some parents didn’t care just let their kids run wild like veg out in front of right you could tell the kids watched cartoons all day and their interaction abilities are participating dramatically hindered because they were choosing that form of communication over a face-to-face human in the world watch cartoons you know talking to people actually isn’t all that bad but at the time you know being that young of a kid looking back I can say is his lifestyle choices and spoke like a cartoon because that was his made that was what his major form of influence her coming right right so and that has I think really important relevance to the discussion in today’s communication world with different levels of communication I kind of put them into these levels I this isn’t necessarily like a in a scientific presentation but rather there’s the way I’ve classified these levels of communication have to do with communication and accountability so accountability is actually the part of communication that forms connection okay the more accountability you have to someone the deeper connection you’re going to establish with them because there’s trust there’s reciprocal trust there and it says yeah there’s something that you have to you know be present for now so there’s all these different levels that are so face-to-face human interaction right that’s the highest level of connection because it I mean even uglier than often will in some form of physical touch which is what we know is the most powerful element in our lives that helps us produce oxytocin right that long-term happy hormone that’s produced from Human to human connection well the thing about some of the other levels different counterfeits I called John if it’s because everything good promise connection but don’t help you produce that long-term happy hormone oxytocin so there’s telephone telephone next step down because on the telephone it’s still like immediate response sure you can’t like sit there quiet four minutes thinking of how you want to phrase your response you know if you have you have to be and I throw a FaceTime or Skype into that you can see them around them yeah and and yeah just having not knowing what’s off screen or you know what the person is hiding from what’s on my screen makes a big difference in my accountability and so you know another step down what about a handwritten letter yeah but it is very well and that was a real art form you know I mean back in the day are there was some real power there was you know you could see personality in the style of the how they write their letters of the strikeout you know what like when they would write something and then strike it out and then change what they were going to say you could see you thought process happening there important level of communication with letter next step down from there might be an email right like your emails are usually much shorter in nature but then even even lower than that is text right where it’s like less than a sentence well-thought-out but it’s about a sentence you know or less and think about the the lowest level of accountability associated with text or you can hide behind if you can pretend you didn’t get it you can like all these things that we do to reduce accountability there’s a hierarchy of vulnerability the more you can act so the important thing we do here is teach our kids these different levels of communication and their appropriate places and so I got to take a quick break here but I’m we’re going to come right back next half and actually discuss how to teach your kids about these different levels and how to help these communication devices be helpful in your life rather than harmful and so I if you or anyone you know is struggling with anxiety or depression isolation now is the best time to get help don’t wait just give us a call and we do a free 15-minute phone consultation we can help strategize with you what would be the best course of action to help your loved one the number is 833-803-3883 next apple come right back here with more about levels of communication how to improve communication with your kids will be back in a minute

Second Half

Welcome back to your mental health moment I’m your host Joe Newman with life Launch centers.  Today we’re talking about how the different levels of communication today and how they affect our Mental Health on how they impact us with a different forms of communication we choose last half we talked about some of these different levels like the highest level of communication is the face-to-face human connection interaction discussion deep meaningful conversation and really that there is no substitution for every other form of communication takes away something from that not something is connection okay so I like the next level that we talked about a little earlier FaceTime videoconferencing Marco Polo right this is a new that you know this is a social media platform out there that that is interesting it’s it’s convenient you in the benefit of it is that you can send one video message to a bunch of people write all individually now the fact that they don’t have to respond right away takes away some accountability ads convenience right but I’m takes away accountability and when you take away accountability you take away connection deals on Snapchat but at the same time it is not immediate response for a response at all Snapchats you can’t show somebody once again accountability is equivalent to connection yes when you take that part away you’re taking away my and I are in the studio right now Sydney looking each other eye to eye how would you feel if as I was talking to you I’d had a mirror in front of me the whole time I don’t know cuz it’s hard knowing that you’re in the same room as me but not having a face-to-face conversation that really difficult so I see that whenever I see video from a cell phone because everybody shoots video in selfie mode and so you’re constantly looking at yourself trying to talk to this other person but you see the difference you’re more self-conscious of the way you look and smile and whatever and how they’ve cameras framed and what back like you know all these different elements that go into distraction and decrease that level of communication so that’s enough that’s one of my beats with FaceTime or Marco Polo or any of these things that you have to look at yourself to communicate with somebody else you’re you’re distracted you lower that level of can for sure how do we use these different so I found this just the other day when I was I was wanting to plan a little family vacation with my sisters and so you noticed you know what it was a tax by Davido cuz I don’t I don’t like Marco Polo but anyway I threw this video out to them and it was interesting because there’s a lengthy conversation that had to happen but because I initiated a conversation with his video text they responded the same way interesting and it’s slow down the coal communication process so instead of perpetuating it I just picked up the phone and call them because that was the next higher level communication available to me I couldn’t fly to San Diego right then and talk to my sister face-to-face sure but I could have Elevate the level of communication and call her yeah I think that’s where today’s society we get trapped we get trapped in the lower levels we do instead of elevating to a higher level of communication you and I had an experience and I can meet every day for about 3 hour how my God my sister-in-law town of texting with my brother her husband and finally my brother and Elevate communication have yeah I love that so he chose to elevate the communication and I think that’s the thing that we need to teach kids is communication you’re going to be to have a more meaningful interaction that way you are so you know phone call is great I remember spending hours and hours on the phone with friends when I was a teenager you know there was like the thing like get off the phone you know they’re waiting for a call or you know Mom and Dad are trying to clear the beach cuz the teenagers are on the phone all the time they’re not they’re not phone calling each other teenager text each other primarily and that’s because I think they haven’t been taught to elevate their communication right but the phone call is it really important level of communication because there is some you can have deeper meaningful communication with them even though your sternum in the face and it doesn’t happen through a screen that’s another big important part screens have no research has shown that they the blue light in the in the LCD screen increases the production of dopamine and inhibits the production of of oxytocin and so you know when when you’ve got that screen right just all eliminated in front of you that’s that’s the effect that but when it’s up next to you and you’re talking to somebody on the phone that’s a different experience looking at it you know a lot of parents are also looking for other ways or help their kids experience how to use these communications for positive Nature’s and so my my wife she actually she recognize our kids hadn’t had the experience of the joy of a handwritten letter and this is something that people have done for years that you’ve never even met form a really powerful connection that exercise in high school is fine. Just a random high school and send a letter to someone in their other English class right and litter like I got on Google Earth I just scrolled it ended up in like somewhere in Kansas or something like that and just found whatever that was found their High School it was exciting it was different and it was exhausting another level of communication in my so it’s been fun as my wife what she did was selected one of her good friends from high school lives in another state kids also and there she was cheaper pose the whole pen pal thing to them and they’re like that’s a great idea let’s do this so my kids get letters from her friends kids who they don’t know, but they already are able to establish a relationship just threw the handwritten letter against something more personable more you know personality formed in that handwritten letter than just like a type letter and email limiting your kids are so dumb smartphone and their primary go to form of communication is the lowest form of which is taxed and really text was invented for a really good purpose it was invented to be an interruptive kind of communication where if you were in a meeting where you couldn’t necessarily pick up a phone call someone could text you to get a quick answer to something they needed help with and you could some what kind of you know multitask that way but but today it’s it’s taken over and so kid this is their their primary form of communication and dumb and because we wanted to make it more convenient right we changed from the the 10 key pad that you had to like click on the number one like three times in order to get a letter and that was annoying right was that text was supposed to be interruptive short communication well we gave it a add her full keyboard on your smartphone and now it’s really easy to my son when he was of the age where she wanted a cell phone so great you can have a phone first of all you get to pay for it if you want it that bad pay for the planet we found this great plan called provider Tello bucks a month talk on the phone and text and we wanted him to have that experience of talking become his primary form of short acacian and texting because you know that I’d Last Resort because it’s hard and if he has to use that 10 year arm pad you know pushing the numbers three times to get a letter on their sure and I even know families have dumb phones not necessary for specific soccer practice you get to take the phone with you today so you can call me to come pick you up something like that where they still have the option but I can’t believe how fast I hope everybody that’s the whole point is Elevate the communication to increase connection so I got to wrap it up and I hope everyone out there got some helpful ideas on how to improve communication and the connection in your mind so if you or a loved one is struggling with anxiety depression isolation or any other difficulty motion just give us a call at 833-803-3883 for a free 15-minute phone consultation to help you know what the best course of action would be. The number at Life Launch Centers again is 833-803-3883.  Kaden thank you   so much for joining me today and this is been your mental health moment I’m your host Joe Newman, Join us again next time right here on St George news radio until next time keep those kids safe and keep your sanity.