Inside Bipolar Podcast: Work-Life Balance Is a Scam: What It Really Means

Producer’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to Inside Bipolar, a Healthline Media Podcast, where we tackle bipolar disorder using real-world examples and the latest research.

Gabe: Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. My name is Gabe Howard and I live with bipolar disorder.

Dr. Nicole: And I’m Dr. Nicole Washington, a board-certified psychiatrist.

Gabe: And today while we are at work, we are going to talk about work life balance and, Dr. Nicole, I want to confess to you I’m not great with this at all. I am terrible at work life balance, and almost every hint or tip I have for this episode is advice that I myself am not taking, so I hope that somebody else can utilize it.

Dr. Nicole: Well at least you know yourself. But I am here to tell you Gabe, that I don’t know that you’re probably doing as bad of a job as you think you are. I think that the way that we have packaged this whole work life balance thing. I mean, it is a scam. It is the biggest scam in America. It is it is a scam and a hustle on everybody who works just to make us feel bad. I mean, it, it it just is terrible.

Gabe: I. I love you, Dr. Nicole. Thank you. I have a board-certified psychiatrist telling me it’s not my fault.

Dr. Nicole: Wait, wait, wait. I didn’t say that.

Gabe: Aww.

Dr. Nicole: I didn’t say that. I didn’t say that. You don’t need to consider some changes in life. But I think the way they sell it to us, nobody can achieve that. Nobody can achieve the package or the plan that people set out in front of us when we think about work life balance.

Gabe: For what it’s worth, Dr. Nicole, I love you saying that work life balance is a scam. We’re still going to spend the next 45 minutes talking about it. I mean, it is the topic of the episode, but I’m just curious, why do you think it’s a scam?

Dr. Nicole: Because the way it’s packaged is so unachievable, it it’s laughable. Like, it just it just creates it creates this environment where people just feel bad about themselves. They feel bad about themselves for working. But we all have to work because you can’t make it in this country if you don’t work lots of hours. There’s no winning. There’s no winning with the way that it’s set up as it is.

Gabe: I really think it’s designed that no matter what you do, there’s an area for you to be ashamed of. If you go to work, you should be ashamed that you’re dropping the ball at home. If you stay home, you should be ashamed that you’re not going to work. It really seems like work life balance creates this idea in people’s minds that whatever it is you’re doing, you should be doing something else or whatever it is you’re doing. You could be doing better. And I do think that we’re going to address this throughout the episode, because chances are what you’re doing is already balanced, it’s already good, and you’re probably further ahead than you think. But bipolar disorder is mean. The self-talk with bipolar disorder is really mean. First off, I think that humans in general have this problem. Work life balance is not a thing for people with bipolar disorder. It’s a thing for people. So hey, we’re all in the same sinking ship. But I think that people with bipolar disorder are extra vulnerable to be impacted by these concepts.

Dr. Nicole: It is. They were looking around thinking, does everybody else have this work life balance? Because I certainly don’t have it. But guess what? Everybody’s looking around thinking, does everyone have this work life balance? Everyone.

Gabe: I think I hear what you’re saying, but, but I want to ask a follow up question to make sure I’m on the same page. So you’re saying that there’s nothing wrong with love as an example, but the way that they package love in a romantic comedy is not realistic. So you don’t want to say that you think love is BS. You think that romantic comedies are BS. So you’re not saying that we don’t need to practice balance in our lives. You’re saying that the way that it is portrayed to us, or the expectations or what we believe is his work life balance is largely manufactured and really does more to make us feel bad. Kind of like how we’re all looking for that great love story, which just isn’t real life.

Dr. Nicole: 100% because when you think of balance, you think, oh, I’m going to give equally of myself to my job and to my family, or you think I’m going to figure out all the things that are important to me, and I’m going to divide my time by that number, and I’m going to give an equal percentage of my time. That is ridiculous that that cannot happen. Not only is it ridiculous, it’s dangerous because it just makes people feel bad. Then when they feel that they aren’t able to achieve that and nobody can. I’ve seen people use the term work life integration. Maybe that’s a little bit better way to look at it and think about it. I’m never going to be able to give everything in my life an equal cut. I do have 100% to give, though, and that’s all I got. So there are times when my work life is going to get a little bit bigger piece than maybe I’d like it to, but it is what it is. It’s the role I signed up for. I’m a doctor and I do speaking and I’m podcasting and do some writing. I have lots of hats that I wear professionally. Sometimes I have to give a little bit more of myself to that, and then sometimes I miss stuff with my family. And that’s okay, because we have that agreement and that is fine. But it’s never going to be that they all get equal time because that that never happens.

Gabe: I do agree with what you’re saying, that this work life balance idea sort of creates this idea of a seesaw where you have work on one side and life on the other, and the seesaw is not teetering. It’s perfectly balanced. It’s right there in the name. I think maybe a better way to look at it is that it is the seesaw. Sometimes work gets more, sometimes life gets more, sometimes work gets more. Sometimes life gets more and it’s about being present on each side while it’s going on. You know, there is a definition for work life balance, and I’m going to give it to everybody because I googled it and I want my efforts to not go unnoticed.

Dr. Nicole: Okay. What does it say?

Gabe: Work life balance is defined as the amount of time you spend doing your job, versus the amount of time you spend doing what’s important to you outside of work. Things like spending time with loved ones or pursuing personal interests and hobbies.

Dr. Nicole: There are times that you, as a person living with bipolar disorder and working and having a family and friends and living your best life because you’re in recovery and you’re trying to do all these things, there are times that you have a career that you may have to give that a little bit more time, but then there are going to be times when you can back off a little bit and you can give your family a little bit more of that attention, a little bit more of that love and a little bit bigger slice of that pie. There are times you can do that. And let’s face it, living with bipolar disorder, there are going to be times that you need to reserve a slice of that, that pie chart for managing your bipolar disorder. There are times that you’re going to have to put more energy and effort into that than other times. That time and effort probably takes away from something else that you wanted to be doing. So then you’re left feeling guilty about, well, I couldn’t hang out with my friends because I had to go to bed early. I’m on this work trip I couldn’t do my thing with my coworkers because I needed to make sure I slept, because for me, sleep is a hallmark of me maintaining control. There’s always something.

Gabe: I think people with bipolar disorder do understand this concept a little bit because, for example, bipolar disorder is always defined as highs and lows, highs and lows, highs and lows. And we learn very quickly that it’s not equally represented. You don’t get 50% mania, 50% depression. You don’t get, you know, 20% mania, 20% hypomania, 20% normal mood state, 20% lower mood state, 20% suicidal depression, which I think comes out to 120%. So I’m just bad at math. It’s not you’re all over the place on the spectrum. So I want to point to that and say, this is how we should be looking at work life balance. It’s about making the right decision in the moment. Just like managing bipolar disorder isn’t saying, hey, I just need to tolerate this symptom for another hour because then I’ll get an hour of a more manageable symptom, something that I’m better at coping with. It doesn’t work that way. You very much have to stay present in the moment. But I was thinking about something else, Dr. Nicole I was thinking about another podcast that I host. I’m also the host of the Inside Mental Health podcast. Which Dr. Nicole you have been a guest on.

Dr. Nicole: I have.

Gabe: Yeah, and it was. That’s how we met.

Dr. Nicole: It is how we met.

Gabe: That is, that is that. Aww, good memories. The. But I interviewed a marriage therapist on there and it was a team, a psychologist and a licensed marriage and family therapist. And the two of them are married. And they got together and they wrote a book called “The 80/80 Marriage” and the, the very specific point that I want to point out is that they point out that a 50/50 marriage never works. And here’s why. Because in order to hit that perfect 50/50 mark, you’ve got to keep score. So that’s problem number one. So in order to hit this perfect 50/50 mark and work life balance, you’ve got to decide work versus home. And then you’ve got to start rating those things against each other. And I think very strongly, especially for those of us living with bipolar disorder, trying to rate the quality of work and the quality of home life against each other is probably a fool’s errand. And I really, really believe that sometimes we do things like say, hey, going to work. I do have work life balance because after all, we use that money for little Janey’s daycare. We use that money for little Bobby’s music lessons. We use that money so that Janey can play football or whatever the case may be. So therefore we have perfect work life balance because after all our jobs pay the bills. So there you go. I can ignore my family whenever I want, and I got perfect work life balance.

Dr. Nicole: But I don’t think that’s ignoring your family. And if you work a traditional 9-5, 8-5 job in this country, you are going to spend more time at work during the weekday, then you have available to you to spend with your family in the evenings. By the time you work, you get home. If you have children, there’s dinner. You have to feed them. That’s kind of an obligation to feed those little buggers. And if they’re in school, you have to make sure homework is done and you have to make sure they’re clean and you make sure your environment is clean, and there’s not a lot of time for just hanging out with the family. If you work a 40 hour a week and then you go home and have to take care of the household things, and then there’s the weekend, which I don’t know about y’all, but mine goes way too quickly for my liking. I mean, that is the reality we live in. So you already are starting off on an uneven playing field, and you just have to know that. You have to say, okay, this is the reality I am grinding, I am, I am taking care of my family. I need to be able to make a living, and I just live in a culture where this is the time I have to put in. So you’re already putting work at a higher priority, not because you’re a terrible person, but because that’s just how you live in the United States. Like you, our system, our culture is just not designed for you to have a lot of leisure time. It it isn’t designed that way. Who has leisure time?

Gabe: I mean, I see it represented on television a lot. There’s a lot of commercials where people just seem to be lounging in bathtubs over a cliff, right. Holding hands. I mean, I see representations of people sitting around doing nothing. I, I just assumed that was everybody but me. And I think that’s an important distinction as well. I am fascinated in support groups for bipolar disorder, in my own therapy, in my own coping skills. How I say some version of this statement all the time. Pop culture representations of bipolar disorder are bullshit. You cannot trust pop culture to accurately represent bipolar disorder. Serious and persistent mental illness. It’s just it’s hogwash and it’s absolutely hurting people. And then the next words out of my mouth are. But everybody else seems so happy online, on social media, everybody has free time. They’re going on vacation, they’re spending time with their children. And it’s only me. It’s only me.

Dr. Nicole: Only you.

Gabe: That doesn’t have time to spend quality time with my loved ones, whereas everybody else has this mastered.

Dr. Nicole: And this is another one of those areas where we have to go back to. It’s not just you and your bipolar disorder that feel this, because we can’t trust advertising for anything that’s their job is to sway us and sell us something and sell us a bunch of crap. I mean, that like that, that’s what they do. So of course they sell the oh, you’re going to look like this and be so relaxed and look at those people holding hands, and they’re side by side bathtubs overlooking the ocean. That’s once a year, once every two years, maybe once every three, four years, depending on how much it costs and how quickly you can save to do something like that, that that’s not people’s everyday life, that’s not most people’s reality. But that’s what we get sold. And every time we start thinking about work life balance, we get sold this, you know, you spending all of this just active relaxation time with your loved ones, you’re hiking in the forest, you’re ziplining. You’re doing all these things. We don’t talk about just the everyday things that you can do that can help you with this work life integration.

Gabe: One of the things that I learned really, really early on in managing bipolar disorder was to give myself credit for everything, no matter how mundane it may be. And longtime listeners of the show have heard me talk about writing down a to do list of things that we want to achieve. For example, like getting out of bed is step one, right? Going to the bathroom is step two. Putting on underwear is step three putting on outdoor clothes. Step four you can also, you know, showering, shaving, brushing your teeth, adding all those things. And even if it takes you five hours to achieve that, give yourself credit for having achieved it in the wake of just, you know, monumentally crushing depression. Who cares that it took five hours? Who cares that last year at this time it only took 20 minutes? Just give yourself credit that you did it today and live in the moment. I think these are really good lessons that we need to take forward as we’re learning to manage our lives, because if we’re spending 100% of our times on work, if we’re spending 100% of our thought process on us being bad people for ignoring our loved ones, etc., I really do think that that’s going to take just a massive toll on our mental health, and we’re going to end up back in our Dr. Nicole’s office saying things like, well, I’m experiencing depression. Well, why are you experiencing depression? Is it bipolar disorder, or is it because of this constant negative self-talk.

Dr. Nicole: Yeah. I mean I run into people, patients or otherwise, who feel like we’re all just grinding. I mean how often have you had a conversation with a stranger where it’s like the weekend. Not long enough. Right. Like you know, like we all commiserate over how short our weekends are and how little time we have because we’re all just grinding and working. And I think that’s a very American way of life for most people. And so then you add in the fact that you have bipolar disorder.

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Gabe: And we’re back discussing work/life integration with bipolar disorder.

Dr. Nicole: Patients sit in front of me and they say, why, you know, Doctor Washington, I just I don’t know, I just feel like there’s nothing to life like I feel blah. I don’t I don’t feel like I’m enjoying life and I have to figure that out. I have to tease through that and figure out is that depression? You know, what is that? Is that I’m so exhausted by the end of the day, I don’t have the energy and motivation to do things in the evening? Is that I’m letting too much of work creep over into the. The little bit of personal time that I have? So it does sometimes require conversations to be had. And for us to go a little bit deeper into symptoms and what are we experiencing? Because I think it can feel very much like depression, because you’re just grinding day in and day out.

Gabe: Obviously, if there’s something going on with bipolar disorder, depression, if there’s something going on with, with your depression, if you’re having suicidal thoughts and things like that, you absolutely need to bring that up to your Dr. Nicole. But for the purposes of this episode, I want to talk about when we sort of beat ourselves up, when we back ourselves into a corner. One of the things that I’ve noticed, even in my own life is that even when I do take breaks, I criticize the breaks that I take. For example, I enjoy television, I love TV, I have an 85-inch TV on the wall. It’s 4K. It’s got the giant sound bar. I mean I turned up the volume so loud. How loud did you turn up the volume? Well, I met the neighbors. I just that’s how much I enjoy my television time. And for long stretches, I declared that that hobby, that thing that brought me joy, was me being a couch potato. It was me being lazy. It was even though I was doing something for myself and something that I brought joy. I judged myself because I listened to all of those voices in my head and all of those voices where somebody’s like, well, you should get a bike. I don’t I don’t like to go outside. Well, well, you should get a better hobby. Why can’t this be my hobby? And

Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

Gabe: Listen, if you are. I have also been depressed and watched the same television show on reruns over and over and over and stayed in bed for three days. So obviously everything in moderation. I don’t want people to hear that doing nothing but watching TV is a good thing. But if you got up in the morning, if you got dressed, if you went to work, if you worked hard, if you’re maintaining employment, schooling, if you’re doing the grind, if you’re on the hamster wheel and then you jump off and do something for a couple of hours, that brings you joy. And the first thought that pops into your mind is that that joy is undeserved because it makes you lazy or less than. Or you could have done something better. I you’re doing the leisure activity wrong, and I think we need to own that. As people living with bipolar disorder, we often beat ourselves up for the things that are supposed to just bring us happiness.

Dr. Nicole: Yes, yes and yes. You cannot have it both ways. People will say things like, well, I just feel like I work too much and I, you know, I work too much. I’m always working. I just want more time for rest and to relax, and I want that. But then when you do that, you beat yourself up about it. You can’t have it both ways. Like you, you need to make a decision. Which, which battle do we want to fight? You’re fighting yourself at this point, so I think it’s a good idea to even start with just coming up with what does your work life balance look like? What does that look like for you? For me, it looks like I have flexibility in my day. I know that I have chosen a career path and a lifestyle that I’m probably always going to work more than the average person most of the time, but I have chosen a lifestyle and a structure to my career that gives me flexibility so that I can travel and I can figure out how to balance some of that at some times. Sometimes I am not great at it, but I have figured out how to make my general schedule and my general career work for me. You figure out what that looks like for you. Does that look like. You know, my evenings are for me? I’m not checking emails. I’m not responding to emails. I’m not. There are no email emergencies. Y’all. Let me just tell you that there are no I mean, has anyone ever emailed you something that just absolutely had to be done, like in that moment?

Gabe: I mean, I’m going to say yes because that is how my mind works.

Dr. Nicole: No, no.

Gabe: But, but you are right. You are right. There are no email emergencies.

Dr. Nicole: No. So if your definition of work life balance or that integration is for you to have that set amount of time, those consecutive hours with no dealings of work, maybe that works 90% of the time. But maybe you work in a field where there’s a busy season, or there’s a time where you have to stay later or you know that, okay, well, during this particular time of year, I do kind of have to keep my eye on it. They may need me more. You figure out what that looks like, you set that boundary, but you still decide it has to be what works for you.

Gabe: I think that definition is really important and defining it under your own terms. How much time you spend at work, how much time you spend doing the things that you need to do, how much time you spend recharging your batteries. And then I think the second step, once you define it and loosely define it loosely, give yourself some guidelines here. Rigid doesn’t work for people, and I would

Dr. Nicole: No.

Gabe: Argue that rigid definitely doesn’t work for people with bipolar disorder.

Dr. Nicole: You do have to as they would say level set your expectations. Right. You have to make sure that your plan is realistic. If you say I’m going to join a gym and I’m going to work out with a trainer every day for the next month, and you haven’t worked out or lifted a weight in 20 years, I’m gonna guess that’s not going to be a successful plan for you. At the end of it, you are going to be disappointed in yourself, and that is not going to help you at all. So yeah, you have to be realistic about what you do. And when I said I’d be worried about you if you were watching TV and just doing that every evening all weekend long, sometimes people have a veg out period where they’re like, you know what? I worked hard this week. It was a rough week. People were yelling at me, I’m customer service. Folks were yelling at me, calling me out of my name like, I need to not talk to anybody. I just need to zone out for a weekend. That is perfectly fine. If that becomes a way of life.

Dr. Nicole: I do get worried and sometimes I worry unnecessarily. It’s what I do. It’s like with my kids. I’m like, hey, I’m worried. I saw you do this thing. So whenever a patient tells me, hey, I, you know, I oh, I just spent the whole weekend, you know, in bed. I didn’t get out, I didn’t I didn’t change clothes. Like, I just wore the same thing all weekend. I’m like, oh, so tell me a little bit about that. What was going on? And if they say to me, well, yeah, I just had a rough week and I just really needed to, you know, retreat and not be bothered with anybody. But next weekend I’m going to go see my mom. All good. But if they tell me, yeah, that’s all I’ve been wanting to do lately. So I do get worried about it. So if you bring them up, it is my job to try to tease out. Is that depression or is that just you kind of responding to life stress?

Gabe: It’s good to ask ourselves these questions when we’re trying to integrate all areas of our lives. I don’t think these are bad questions. What I do think is bad is when we always answer them in a way that makes us bad. It’s that negative self-talk. It’s where every answer makes you a bad person.

Dr. Nicole: Right.

Gabe: Hey, did you have fun this weekend? Yes. What did you do? I watched TV. Oh, do you think you watch too much TV? Probably, because I make bad decisions and everything I do, it’s like, wait, wait, how did we go from you said you had a good weekend and you caught up on sleep and that you were relaxed to now all of a sudden you’re bad. I noticed that that happens in myself a lot, and I’ve noticed that it doesn’t happen in work because I get that paycheck. I can always say that work is worth it because I got paid, whereas

Gabe: I can’t say that my free time was worth it because it’s not a tangible thing I can’t point to. I can’t point to a spreadsheet or a bank account or something tangible. So I think a lot of us give ourselves credit for going to work because there’s an obvious pay. We get that paycheck, we get that health insurance also in general, especially if you live with bipolar disorder, if you’ve got a job, people give you credit for that. So there’s even some positive impact to going to work. Whereas when we’re not at work, when we’re taking that, when we’re spending that quality time, when we’re resting, when we’re recharging our batteries, there’s no paycheck, there’s no money deposited. And sometimes people challenge what we’re doing with our free time by calling it lazy or wasting our lives.

Dr. Nicole: I well I mean I think people are very comfortable though with your leisure activities. If they’re active activities, if they’re things like oh I do yoga or I like frisbee golf or I go to the golf course, I play pickleball, I play tennis, I think people I think people are very, very comfortable with that being something you do. They can see the value in a hobby like, oh, I paint. Oh, I do theater on the weekends. Community theater, like people can see because they can see a product like they can see you did this thing, you know, you got your heart rate up, you did this thing, you painted a picture you like. People are okay with that. Not that we should even care what people are okay with, but people are okay with you having those kinds of things to fill your time. What about if filling your time is, you know, you talk about sitting on the sofa and watching TV all week. I mean, what if that’s your thing? What? What if that is how you choose to fill your time? That’s where people don’t see it. And to that I say, to heck with the people, right? Like, I mean, I don’t care what the people think, but for me personally, sometimes I just like sitting in a dark room.

Dr. Nicole: I just like sitting in a room in the dark. No TV, no radio. I’m just sitting there. My husband will come home and he will say, are you just sitting here? Are you are you just sitting here in the dark like you’re not doing anything? I’m like, I am doing something. I’m resting. I’m quieting my mind. I’m. I’m recharging. I’m meditating. Whatever it is I’m doing. It’s a thing. Rest is a verb. Recharging is a verb. And if that’s how you do it, it’s okay.

Gabe: As we end this episode, I just want to give folks a couple of takeaways or a couple of things to consider that have been really meaningful in my life, and that is that multitasking is here to stay. Now, we could do a whole episode on why multitasking is a scam, but it has nothing to do bipolar disorder.

Dr. Nicole: It’s the devil. Multitasking is the devil.

Gabe: [Laughter] But, but, but, but staying on the on the thread of multitasking, I do think that we need to give ourselves credit for the things that we do together. I am the dinner maker in my home. I make all the dinner. I clean up the kitchen, I do the lion’s share of that work, and my wife sits at the kitchen table and talks to me while we’re doing this. I value this a lot, much more than she is probably even aware of. I like those moments. I’m sitting there making dinner, you know, and it doesn’t take very long. 20 minutes, 30 minutes. But I know that as soon as the dinner is done, we’re going to sit down in front of the TV, watch TV, get into the evening, and this is my time to talk to her. My wife and I don’t sit at the dinner table and eat dinner alone. We’re both very busy professionals. We work in different places, I travel a lot, etc. and I really love those moments. Now I could decide that no, I’m just completing a chore. Or I could decide that that’s the time I get to spend with my wife. But here’s the truth. It’s both. I have found a way to complete a chore and make it a little fun. I think there’s lots of opportunities in this. I read mommy blogs all the time where they talk about. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to talk to your children while you’re shuttling them between activities. When your child gets in the car and says, you know, daddy, mommy, daddy, mommy, I did XYZ. Don’t tell them to wait. Listen to them, you know. Don’t

Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

Gabe: Turn on the radio, even if it’s uncomfortable silence. Eventually, they’ll say something. Seize that opportunity. I think there’s lots of opportunities in the lives of people hard stop to take advantage of these moments. And I think with people with bipolar disorder, we have to work extra hard because again, if you’re anything like me, it’s so easy to say, my life is boring. I just shuttle kids around all day. My life is boring. I just cook dinner, my life is boring. I’m just a laundry service. My life is boring. I just go to work and I’m on the hamster wheel. If

Dr. Nicole: Yeah.

Gabe: You can really search hard and find those moments, I really do think that self-talk matters.

Dr. Nicole: Maybe you’re not the one cooking. Maybe you’re taking the role of your wife in this situation and you’re thinking well I don’t even help. I just sit there, I just sit at the table while my significant other just does all the cooking, I don’t even do anything. Obviously she is doing something because Gabe values her being there and he enjoys that time. She is there. She’s there to be present and to catch up with him and to check in and to be a part of what’s going on. Everything that you’re doing serves some purpose. You just have to be able to kind of reframe how you think about it so that you’re not beating yourself up constantly.

Gabe: The last thing I want to say before we get out of here is if you do go to that family dinner, if you do go to the kids’ game and you have to step outside and use a coping skill, don’t beat yourself up. That’s what the coping skills are for. Give yourself credit for going on the vacation, give yourself credit for going to the game. Give yourself credit for making the dinner. Again, don’t look for the opportunities of where you could have been better. Look for the opportunities to praise yourself for where you were great.

Dr. Nicole: I thought you were going to say, if you do go to that family dinner, tell them about the Inside Bipolar podcast. That’s what I thought you were going to say.

Gabe: I think that’s a great idea.

Dr. Nicole: [Laughter] That’s what I thought you were going to say.

Gabe: In fact, if you go to that family dinner, you absolutely need to tell them about the Inside Bipolar podcast. That’s a favor we need. Another favor that we need is to follow or subscribe to the show. It is absolutely free and you don’t want to miss a thing. My name is Gabe Howard and I’m an award-winning public speaker who could be available for your next event. I also wrote the book “Mental Illness Is an Asshole and Other Observations,” which you can get on Amazon. However, you can grab a signed copy with free show swag or learn more about me by going to my website, gabehoward.com. You can also follow me on Instagram and TikTok @AskABipolar.

Dr. Nicole: And I’m Dr. Nicole Washington. You can find me on all social media platforms @DrNicolePsych, or on my website, DrNicolePsych.com.

Gabe: And as we said, sharing the show is absolutely how we grow. So share us with everybody you know and we will see you next time on Inside Bipolar.

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